Chapter 6

It had been a month since Jack and Sam's return to their true home and they were settled in once more into their house. Though many tests had been carried out nothing had been found to deactivate the machine still attached to Sam's spine and they were quickly loosing hope that anything could be done about it. Sam remained philosophical about it all, continuing to assure Janet that even if nothing could be done she would be happy simply to be home. Jack had rejoined SG1 and, under his request, Lieutenant Hailey had been interviewed and accepted for Sam's place on the reformed team.

To celebrate SG1's return from their first mission in two years another party had been arranged at Sam and Jack's house.

Jack finished off making coffee and carried it through into the living room. Looking around the room as he entered he saw no sign of Sam, but he thought nothing of it, placing the tray on the coffee table. When he was finished, Janet stood, frowning, and gestured to him to follow her outside.

"Is Sam OK?" She asked when they were out of the room.

"Why do you ask?"

"He hardly ate anything tonight and she winced when Cassie hugged her earlier. She disappeared a couple of minutes ago."

"She winced? Where did Cass lean on her?"

"I don't know, her shoulder maybe... I..." Jack was gone before she could finish.

He stood quietly outside the open bedroom door, watching Sam stretch full length across the floor. She pulled her arms over her head, reaching upwards, and Jack didn't miss the flash of pain that crossed her face.

"How bad is it?" He asked, lying down beside her so that they were face to face.

"It's getting worse."

"You need to go to Janet, Sam. She might be able to do something about this."

"I know what it is Jack, the machine is breaking down, it's not getting any maintenance."

"This has happened before, when were still in there, and it grounded you then. At least then you were able to get treatment for it - to have it repaired again. Think about the level of pain it could cause if you have it treated."

"Janet can't do anything about it." She said, continuing the exercises. She drew her hands over her head again, dropping them by her sides.

"She can give you pain killers."

"I don't need pain killers yet." She started drawing her upper body up and stretching out. Jack caught her as she dropped back with a moan.

"Really?"

"It was a line of treatment that you, or at least that Janet advised me to take on. One of the things they said was that I wouldn't be able to back out of it, if I stopped the treatment I would be in for a painful withdrawal. It was once every thirty days exactly. I would get backaches on the couple of days leading up to the next treatment, but nothing too bad. I've been thinking about it and I think this was their chance to check up on the machine, do some maintenance on it or something like that.

"About eight months ago, at least as far as we were concerned, SG1 were lost on a planet called Tenne. They were captured by a Gou'ald who thankfully knew nothing of their reputation. He took SG1 on to work as human servants. A couple of plans were put into action to rescue them but they all failed. The Gou'ald had a shielding system unlike any we had ever seen before. Eventually I get enough information from the SGC to put together plans for a machine that would be able to break through this shield, but it took us two months to put it together because the people in charge thought it was going to cost too much. They fed me the parts for this machine one piece at a time and I ended up missing two sessions of the treatment. When the SGC called me to tell me all of SG1 were home safe I was in the middle of a seizure. It took me three months to get back to work."

"You're missing out the fact you didn't eat or sleep for at least a month because you were in so much pain. The fact that you couldn't move without screaming for the first few weeks after your first session back." Jack added, a frown on his face from the memories.

"And you're saying that - if this was their way of cleaning out this mechanism or something - you're going to be in that state again if we can't find a way of treating this." They nodded in unison.

"When is the next treatment due?"

"Two weeks ago."