Jack Ryan opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by darkness. At first his pounding head refused to supply him with the reason for this, but when he tried to lift his hand to rub the ache from his forehead, he found he couldn't lift his arm. The thin band of pressure at his wrists told him that his hands were secured to the arms of the chair in which he'd been sitting. He blinked rapidly feeling the sunlight on his face from the large picture window. 'I can't have been out very long then,' he decided a moment before it finally connected inside him that he was blind.
As if reading his thoughts a feminine voice from the darkness to his right said, "Your eyesight will return in a few minutes, Mr. President."
It felt clichéd, but Ryan found himself asking, "Who are you? What do you want?"
"Mr. President, are you alright, sir?" Andrea Price asked. Her voice came from below and somewhere to the left. Jack remembered she'd been standing a few feet behind him observing the meeting.
"Dr. Frasier?" someone said from the couch on his right. "Janet?" For a moment the President couldn't place the voice, then he recognized it as that of Admiral A.J. Chegwidden. The admiral had been brought to the meeting by the newly confirmed Secretary of Defense, Tony Brentano, in order to give his legal opinion about John Clark's 'Rainbow' project.
"I'm fine, Andrea" Jack assured his principal agent. "Let's all keep our heads here. That's an order."
"Yes, Mr. President," Agent Price agreed though her protectee could detect a note of rebellion in her voice. He knew from experience that if she felt she had to Andrea was more than capable of disobeying that order. He just hoped she didn't feel that need.
"We have no interest in hurting anyone," the same female assured him.
"That's a lie, Mr. President!" Senator Kinsey's voice refuted from the general direction of the couch to Ryan's left where he'd been sitting before all this had started.
"You're right," a new voice agreed. "I really wanna hurt you, Kinsey. The others haven't made up their minds yet. So until we tell you to speak, shut up!" The hate and anger in the man's voice struck a chord of recognition within the President. Did he know this man? He didn't think so, but there was something...something he couldn't name.
"Are you going to answer the President's questions?" John Clark asked calmly. He recognized something in the man's voice as well, but unlike the President, John Clark knew what it was he recognized. It was the emotion in the man's voice. It was the same sort of burning rage that had lead to the 'death' of John Kelly and the creation of John Clark. 'This man is fully capable of killing,' John thought remembering a time in his life long ago, 'but he won't do it without thought...without provocation.'
From the sound of John's voice, Jack Ryan was fairly confident his friend and former bodyguard still sat on the couch to his right. John sounded unhurt to Ryan, but he couldn't be sure. The President blinked rapidly trying in vain to clear the black curtain from his eyes.
Congresswoman Latham had her own question. "You know these people, A.J.?"
"Jack, you don't have to do this," Chegwidden said obliquely answering the congresswoman's question.
"There's not enough time to do anything else," said the man Chegwidden had called Jack.
"We want to talk to the Senator, but he's been avoiding us," a second female voice said. There was an echo of the man's emotions in her voice.
"Really, Dr. O'Neill, there's nothing I can tell you," Kinsey plead. Underneath Kinsey's familiar smugly patronizing tone there was a hint of genuine fear in his voice. "I don't know anything."
"You're amazingly well informed for someone who doesn't know anything, Senator," the woman said. "Yesterday you would have properly called me Major Carter."
There was almost an electric charge in the room during the long pregnant pause after her statement as the Senator realized his mistake. During that time, Jack found that his sight was returning. He blinked rapidly trying to bring the world into focus, and suddenly it was. A quick survey of the room told him that all his people were relatively unharmed. His protective detail occupied space on the floor obviously tied up and left where they'd fallen. In the conversational grouping of couches and chairs that dominated the center of the large room, Tony Brentano and John Clark occupied the same couch on which A.J. Chegwidden sat. Congresswoman Latham sat beside her esteemed colleague the Senator, and on her other side sat Jack's Chief of Staff, Arnie Van Damm. Directly across from him Mary Pat and Ed Foley sat in a pair of chairs. Standing side by side in front of the couch where Kinsey sat were a couple who looked like refugees from Dante's Inferno. It wasn't just their physical appearance that gave that impression. The blazing anger in their eyes was unmistakably that of the voices he'd heard. Dr. O'Neill had turned away from the Senator into her husband's embrace. 'Dr. and Mr. Jack O'Neill, I presume,' Jack Ryan told himself. 'Kinsey, you are a dead man if they have their way. O'Neill and Carter. I've heard those names linked before.'
"Well, of course, I was informed about your escape from Panersh. I asked to be kept apprised of your recovery. I was informed yesterday of the verdict at your court-martial," Kinsey said backpedaling to cover the mistake he'd made in addressing Dr. O'Neill. "I know what you're looking for, O'Neill, but I don't know anything," Kinsey swore to the man standing in front of him. "I can't help you!"
Dr. O'Neill turned back to the Senator then fixing him with a laser sharp glare. "For the past ten years, beginning with the Stargate, I've reverse engineered alien technology for the U.S. Air Force. On more than a few occasions, I've rewritten the laws of physics and developed a few new ones along the way. Do you really think breaking into the locked files on your personal computer was much of a challenge in comparison?" she asked him.
Rocking back on the balls of his feet, her husband smirked at Kinsey from her side. "Took her less than an hour," he informed the room at large with obvious pride.
'Stargate,' Ryan thought as the identities of the people around him clicked into place When he'd agreed to become Roger Durling's National Security Advisor, he'd been given a briefing on the Stargate project. Looking around the room once more, Ryan recognized the younger man wearing glasses as the man who'd given him that briefing. 'Dr. Jackson,' the President reminded himself of the name. His gaze swung to the two men sporting gold tattoos on their foreheads standing at opposite points along the wall. 'They're jaffa. Teal'c and Bra'tac,' he guessed remembering the information he'd been given about Earth's allies before turning his head to look at the wiry older man stationed along one of the other two walls. 'He's gotta be General Carter, her father,' Ryan thought remembering what he'd been told of the tok'ra. He couldn't place names on his other two captors but suspected they would also have ties to the O'Neill's and the SGC.
"You're going to help us get Subject A and Subject B back," she commanded leaving an unspoken threat hanging in the air.
Like any trapped rat, Kinsey launched his own verbal attack back at her. "Or you'll do what, Samantha?"
She bent down unsheathing the knife concealed in her boot. Holding it close to the Senator's face she asked, "How'd you like an up close and personal demonstration of what Eszia did to Jack?"
"You wouldn't dare!" Kinsey growled at her.
"I've been a soldier my entire adult life, Senator. Do you think I haven't killed before?" she questioned him.
"You're a scientist...an officer," he rejoined. "You don't have the stomach to torture me."
"I was a scientist. I was an officer. Now I'm a wife and mother," she snarled back. "Besides, after fifteen months as a goa'uld prisoner the veneer of civilization has definitely worn thin."