When A.J. entered the infirmary the next morning he noted that Teal'c and Dr. Jackson were already there and had been for some time if the stubble on Jackson's jaw was any indication. The two men sat in chairs by the bed where Samantha Carter still slept in the arms of Jack O'Neill. At some time in the night their positions had changed so that now they lay spooned together with Jack's arms wrapped securely around Carter.
"Rough night?" A.J. asked quietly as he pulled a chair up beside the other two men. There were deep bags beneath O'Neill's eyes.
"The sedatives wore off about 2 am," Jack murmured quietly as he continued to stroke the blonde hair of the woman in his arms. "Nightmares started almost right away. They gave Sam the wrong sedative. She was having flashbacks for hours."
"Wrong sedative?" Rabb asked quietly as he approached the bed.
"Sam has some strange drug reactions because of the changes in her body chemistry," Daniel explained in a quiet whispered so as not to wake the woman in question. "There's this one sedative that seems to bring out Jolinar's memories in full force."
"She was reliving Jolinar's mission to Netu," Jack mumbled. "And ours."
Daniel closed his eyes and his shoulder's slumped as he muttered, "Christ!"
Rabb opened his mouth to ask, but a barely perceptible shake of the head from the stoic jaffa changed his mind. Looking into Teal'c's eyes Harm decided he would have to ask the jaffa later.
"Daniel and Teal'c have been getting me caught up on current events. I can't believe some of what they're telling me," Jack said abruptly changing the subject.
A.J. nodded. "I never would have believed it a year ago," he said. "Government's been gutted like a fish."
"SenatorKinsey doubtlessly believes that the current state of your government is to his advantage," Teal'c noted.
A.J. nodded his agreement. "Listen, Jack" A.J. said before hesitating slightly over what he wanted to say next. "I know you want to go after your kids right now, but we need to move carefully. If we spook them, the NID could decide to make the evidence disappear."
Jack closed his eyes tightly trying to banish the images Chegwidden's words conjured in his mind. His arms tightened around Sam for a moment before he forced himself to relax, afraid he would wake her.
"Can you get our trial moved to D.C.?" Sam asked startling all five men who hadn't realized she had woken.
"Why move it?" A.J. asked. "We're going to get it thrown out."
"No," Sam disagreed. "As long as we're on trial, Kinsey will have a false sense of safety."
"Then why move the trial at all, Sam?" Daniel asked.
"Because Kinsey's an egotistical son of a bitch. The twins aren't just a scientific curiosity to him," Sam explained. "They're trophies. They're proof that he finally beat the SGC and, more importantly I think in his mind, Colonel Jack O'Neill."
"He'll want them close. He'll want to see them as he gloats," A.J. agreed having met Kinsey at political functions in D.C.
"Indeed," Teal'c agreed. "SenatorKinsey was greatly angered at you, O'Neill."
"Yeah, well I wasn't too thrilled with him either," Jack muttered darkly. "And that was before he took my kids."
"He'll have them somewhere near D.C." Sam said in the rigidly controlled voice of someone whose emotions were just barely under control. "So we need to get to D.C. while still making it look like we're clueless as to where our children might be."
"G. Gordon left a message at my apartment last night," Daniel said pulling a stack of papers from inside his coat pocket.
Sam managed to grab them before anyone else. She was already reading the first page as she pushed herself to an upright position on the bed. Jack grabbed her hand moving the paper slightly to the side so he could read over her shoulder. "It's the luds from Kinsey's phones. Home, office, cell" she told the men seated by their bedside.
"Lot of calls in the last couple days to...Alexandro Rivera...I don't know that international code," Jack mumbled.
"Portugal," Sam supplied. "Daniel, I need a computer."
"Be right back," he said as he vacated his seat.
"Anything else?" Harm asked.
Sam rifled through the pages. "A note," she answered. "Still looking for more breadcrumbs. G. Gordon."
"I have a feeling we don't want to know who G. Gordon is?" Chegwidden asked.
Jack looked his old friend in the eye. "Probably not," he agreed just as Daniel jogged back into the infirmary with a laptop under his arm.
"Excuse me, sirs" Daniel said as he shimmied by the two Navy officers and knelt down to plug in the laptop.
"Infirmary beds with data connections?" Rabb asked as he noticed Daniel plugging the laptop into a network outlet.
From the doorway into the infirmary Janet explained, "Those are Daniel and Sam's beds. The medical staff lobbied a few years ago to get network access in here. They're much better patients when they're not bored out of their minds."
"You have your own beds in the infirmary?" Harm asked incredulously.
"Well, no. Not really," Daniel denied.
"Not officially anyway," Janet corrected with a smirk as Cassie set the bag she'd been carrying down at her feet. "Colonel. Sam. We have something for you." Reaching into the bag she handed them each a beautifully wrapped package. "From the medical staff, but Cassie did all the work," she told them.
Jack watched as Sam opened the package in her hands first. Inside she found a baby book intricately embossed with the name 'Jacob Daniel O'Neill.' Sam looked expectantly over at the package in Jack's hands. Following her unspoken request, Jack hastily unwrapped the second package to reveal another book similar to the first with 'Georgiana Tia O'Neill' on its cover. Sam opened the book in her hands to find a sheet of paper with all of J.D.'s birth statistics on it.
"I thought about writing it in for you, but then Mom said you might want to have it in your own handwriting," Cassie explained. "I did put the pictures in though. I was afraid they'd fall out otherwise."
"This is..." Jack murmured as he opened the book in his hands to find Gina's birth statistics listed on an identical sheet of paper. He carefully set the paper aside and turned the page looking at the pictures of his daughter.
"Thank you," Sam told the teenager unable to hide the tears shimmering in her eyes.
They looked through the books for almost half an hour before Harm regretfully said, "General Moore and Colonel Rivers are going to be in here in an hour to question you. We need to discuss what you're going to say to them."
Jack nodded and handed the baby book in his hand to Sam who carefully laid both of them on the table beside their bed. "I'll go first," he said.
Rabb nodded as he pulled out a pad of paper and pen and began asking questions. Sam kept half her attention on the conversation as her hands flew across the keyboard as she searched for clues to who Alexandro Rivera was and where Kinsey and the NID could be keeping her children.
She interrupted their conversation several minutes later with a string of swear words that made even Teal'c arch an eyebrow upward.
"Major Carter?" Admiral Chegwidden asked.
"Alexandro Rivera is Doctor Alexandro Rivera," Sam said as she continued to type away on the computer. "He entered the United States three days ago through Dulles."
"What kind of doctor, Sam?" Daniel asked.
"A medical researcher," Janet told them in a hushed voice. "He's had his license revoked here in the States. It was a pretty big scandal a few years ago."
"What was a scandal?" Harm asked.
Janet shot a look at Sam whose hands had stilled on the keyboard. Her face had drained of all color. She wasn't the only one to notice Sam's paleness though. Jack turned the screen on the laptop so he could see what Sam had read and when he did his face paled as well. Both of his arms came up to wrap tightly around Sam. Jack's jaw tightened noticeably before he forced himself to answer, "Human experimentation." As soon as he'd said it Jack found his gaze being drawn to the two books on the bedside table.