A/N: sorry if I've confused newcomers. This is the latest in a series that
starts with Reflections of the Soul, then Shattered Souls, then Windows to
the Soul, then this The Sum of a Soul.
Disclaimer: a refresher, they aren't mine; they never were and never will be. I promise that I'll put them back exactly the way I found them, probably, as soon as I'm done. No small gray humanoid beings were hurt in the making of this fanfic.
(Small siblings are another matter entirely)
THREE:
Daniel dropped the journals, three in all, onto the coffee table. They landed with a solid thud, and then the hiss-slide of papers careening to the floor. He ground the palm of his hand into his forehead and tried to convince himself that he was, in fact, going back to bed. The sun hadn't even risen yet. Surely, to God, he could go back to bed and get another hour or two of sleep.
With a defeated sigh Daniel stumbled to the wall and clicked on the lights. They were bright. They hurt his eyes. He slid his hand over his temporarily blinded eyes and tried to order the rest of his brain to wake up.
It worked, sort of. He eventually removed his hand and turned his eyes on his living room. Everywhere he looked was the same pair of dark hazel eyes. And blood, and bruises, and nightmares, which would haunt the anthropologist through the rest of his days. Daniel turned to the coffee table and the journals on top of it. He knocked an open file off of the couch. It coasted to the carpet and landed with a barely audible sigh. He flopped down onto the couch, jarring his bones and forcing himself further into the land of the chronically awake.
In the light the three journals were all varying shades of brown. They were worn around the edges and tied closed with leather thongs. They lay on his coffee table in a lopsided pile. Beneath them the table was covered with papers, legal pads, notes scribbled on napkins, and old paper plates.
One yellow legal pad was filled, the pages already threatening to fall off of their substandard binding. They were scrawled over with notes and hypothesis and, eventually, doodles. Daniel didn't let himself look too closely at the doodles, but he knew what they were anyway. The same pair of angry eyes, drawn over and over and over. He'd spent too much time digging through Jack's past, staring at those eyes. At this point he would almost have believed that he knew more about his friend than his friend knew about himself. Almost, if not for those dark eyes staring out at him from every surface in his living room. Almost.
There were worlds of pain and anger and secrets in those eyes. There was no way to know what lay in the shadows in those eyes. No way short of madness, or death.
Daniel rolled his head on his neck, then reached out and picked up the first journal. The leather warmed in his hands, as he unknotted the thong, until it almost felt like a living thing. He flipped the cover open. The paper was thick and yellowed around the edges. It smelled musty, like a basement library. The page was covered with a neat, easily legible script.
Page after page was filled to capacity. The other two journals were just as full, of course.
Daniel let the journal fall to his lap and fell back against the couch. This was going to take a while.
Damn!
He decided to start with the latest entry and work backwards. Although he wasn't sure that he'd even find anything of use.
The beginning of the last entry was one sentence written in the middle of an empty page, about a third of the way through the last journal.
'Charlie's dead and so is Jack O'Neill.'
All of the pages after it, front and back, were filled with the same sentence, over and over, until there were no more pages. Daniel thumbed through page after page after page. The same sentence, like a mantra, over and over and over. The handwriting grew progressively less neat, more and more frenzied, until the last two pages were practically illegible.
If he still could, Daniel probably would have cried. But he'd used up all of the tears he had, they'd stopped coming sometime between his seventh and tenth revision of Jack's life. They just wouldn't come.
So, he sat on his couch, in his living room, surrounded by pictures of a boy he knew better than he wanted to. He sat, and he wrapped his arms around himself, and he didn't cry.
* * *
"Incoming traveler," the announcement rang through the base.
Sam took off at a sprint, leaving the Colonel's confusing inventions on her worktable. She dashed through the doorway of her lab and down the hall, taking the stairs over the elevator. On the gateroom floor she caught up with a medical team.
Medical team?
'Oh, God, no!' Sam thought, slowing her pace so that the medical personnel could get into the gateroom unobstructed.
Inside the gateroom Teal'c stumbled through the wormhole and down the ramp. His uniform was in shreds, his back a bloody ruin; his knee was cut deep enough to show the white of the bone. But he was the only one to come through the 'gate.
When Sam hurtled into the room the medics were helping the big Jaffa onto his stomach on a stretcher. His back was plainly visible to the room. "Teal'c!" she shouted, sprinting to his side as the medics hoisted him up.
The medics were wondering things like 'massive blood loss' and 'shock.' They started out of the room and into the hallway as someone began an IV.
"Major Carter," Teal'c said, staring up at her from his odd angle, unable to focus on her face.
"I'm here, Teal'c," she answered.
His eyes fluttered closed as she watched. "I was unable to locate Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c reported. Then he was mercifully swept into darkness.
* * *
"Frankly it's a miracle that he survived, Sir," Frazier reported to the General. They were standing in the hallway outside of the infirmary. "Even with his symbiote."
The General nodded his bald head, the fluorescent light shining off of it. "What are his chances, Doctor," he asked, voice tired. He sounded defeated.
Janet sighed, then turned to look through the open doorway at her patient. "At this point," she said, voice low, "I'd say that fifty-fifty would be optimistic."
The General nodded once more, glanced at Teal'c, Major Carter was sitting at his side, her face blank with shock. Then he turned away. "I'll inform Dr. Jackson," he said.
Janet's lips pressed together in an unhappy line. "I don't know if they'll survive losing another member of their team, General," she said, still staring at her patient.
"I know," Hammond said. They stood, silently, and watched them through the doorway. Then the General turned, and walked away.
* * *
"Jackson here."
"Dr. Jackson, this is Hammond. I'm afraid that I have some bad news for you, son."
"Jack?"
"No! No, Teal'c was injured. He's in the infirmary now, but, his chances aren't-"
"I'm on my way."
* * *
"Come on, Teal'c, we can't lose you too," Sam muttered against her clasped hands, eyes closed.
"We're not going to lose him, Sam," someone said from behind her. She jumped, even though she knew the voice. "And we haven't lost Jack yet either."
Sam nodded, not trusting her voice. She'd been choking down tears since she'd first seen the medical team. She wouldn't cry, she couldn't cry. Her team needed her to be strong. What they did not need was for her to have hysterics in front of them. She could have hysterics when she was alone in her house. Right now she had to be a rock. Rocks don't cry.
Daniel watched silently as Sam nodded her head, over and over, as if she couldn't stop. Or she wasn't aware that she was still doing it. Uncomfortable, Daniel turned to look at his teammate. There were four different IV's hooked up to him. His chest was covered with thick white bandages. There was another bandage around his head. Against the darkness of his skin the bandages were a shocking whiteness.
His eyes were closed.
The anthropologist looked back to Sam. She'd managed to stop nodding her head. Now she was staring down at Teal'c, face empty and blank. Tentatively, Daniel placed a hand on her shoulder. She didn't react, but she didn't shrug him off either, so he kept his hand where it was.
'Dear God,' he prayed silently. 'We could REALLY us a little help here,' he looked from Sam to Teal'c. 'Please.'
* * *
"Fuck off," Jack ordered his alternate, sliding down the wall and to the floor. Jay lowered himself into a crouch, keeping their eyes on a level.
'Luv to, mate," Jay replied. "But this place's got diff'rent plans."
Jack didn't reply. Instead he ground both palms into his eye sockets. God, he was tired. What the heck was he doing here? Letting some wrinkled nutcase he didn't even know lock him up in some underground alien box?
When he looked back up he saw that Jay had plopped down on the floor, legs tucked up in a tailor's seat. The other man was watching him over clasped hands. "What the hell is yer problem with me, anyway?" Jay asked.
Jack stared at him. Face blank. Then a bark of laughter escaped him, short and harsh and not a happy sound. "My problem?" he asked.
Jay nodded, face carefully blank.
"My problem," Jack repeated, using the wall to push himself up to his feet, "is that I've got a goddamned legion of nutcases running around in my head!"
"You made me, Jack."
"You were a mission. That's it. That's all. You shouldn't be in my life anymore!"
"Why not?" Jay asked, looking up at him.
"Jesus," Jack muttered, shaking his head.
"You didn't have a problem with me before, Jack. I got the job done and you got to lie to the military shrinks. What changed?" His voice was tired as he said it, worn.
Jack just stared at him.
Finally he opened his mouth and spoke. Just one word.
"Daniel."
* * *
Jacob sat in his daughter's lab, staring at the maddeningly useless blinking lights. He couldn't find the off switch and Sam was in the infirmary with Teal'c and Daniel.
Still, for all the device's apparent lack of usefulness, it was a prodigious feat of engineering. Selmak had said as much, repeatedly, as they watched Sam put the thing together. Neither on of them could believe that Jack, Colonel O'Neill, was responsible for its creation.
It was inconceivable, but there it was.
* * *
In the infirmary Sam and Daniel sat silently at their teammate's side. Teal'c was still unconscious.
Sam closed her eyes, letting her neck rest on the back of the chair. The double beeping of the dual heart monitor was disturbing and soothing at the same time. The only proof that life still lay before them.
The soft beeping droned on and on, and Sam was having a hard time keeping herself awake.
Daniel quietly thumbed through Jack's journal as Sam drifted off beside him. Maybe he could find something useful, maybe not. Either way, it was a sure way to keep himself awake. The journal he was working on was the oldest. Apparently Jack had started it in a military mental hospital, at his psychiatrist's orders. It was a record of his nightmares, and it was written entirely in Arabic.
Apparently Jack hadn't wanted his shrink to be reading about his nightmares. After only having translated three entries Daniel could understand that wish. If he had been Jack's shrink, and had read what he was reading, he would have never allowed the man out of a five by seven padded room.
* * *
Sam jerked awake when the beeping stopped. She opened her eyes. Blackness. All of the lights were out. She reached a hand out, blindly, and found Daniel at her side. He grasped her hand in his own.
A moment later the lights came back on. General Hammond's voice crackled through the intercom. "Major Carter and Dr. Jackson to the observation room!"
Sam turned to stare at Daniel at the same time he turned to stare at her. One thought was on both of their minds.
* * *
Hammond watched as the two conscious members of SG-1 ran into the room, breathless. They came to a stop at the end of the table. Jackson bent over, trying to catch his breath. Carter fared better. Neither was looking at him, though. They were both staring at the small, gray skinned alien standing hi front of the large bullet proof glass window.
"Greetings Daniel Jackson and Major Carter," the alien intoned with a nod of his head.
"Greetings Thor," Daniel replied, upright, his breathing even, his face only slightly flushed.
"Colonel O'Neill?" Sam asked, her voice hopeful.
"Sadly, no," the little alien answered. "I am here because our sensors picked up a," he paused. "A signal, from this base."
"We've sent no signals," Hammond broke in, reminding them of his presence.
"No," Thor said, turning to Hammond, then back to Daniel and Sam. "We have reason to believe that the signal is from Colonel O'Neill."
"Colonel O'Neill is missing," Hammond said, his voice suddenly suspicious.
"We are aware of that," Thor responded.
"Then why do you think the signal is from Jack?" Daniel asked, curious.
"The signal is in the language of the Ancients," he said, "and the message was this: 'We are a very curious species.'"
Ten minutes later Jacob Carter walked into the room. In his hands he carried Sam's recreation of Jack's 'doohickey.' It was still blinking its lights and whirring to itself. Happy as a mechanical clam. He placed it in the middle of the table, then took a seat next to his daughter.
Thor stood, motionless in a way that no human could recreate, and stared at the device on the table. The device blinked benignly at him. A random series of read and green lights chased themselves across the screen.
"Col. O'Neill created this?" the alien asked, still staring at the device.
"He drew the schematics for it, yes," Sam answered, after swallowing. Her mouth was suddenly very, very dry.
"This is not human technology," the alien said. It was a statement, not a question. No one answered him.
Sam's eyes darted from Thor to the device and back again. Her throat felt like there was a rock in it. An unexpected hand on her own startled her. She half turned in her seat and looked at her father, eyes wide. He smiled encouragingly at her.
She licked her lips nervously and turned back to Thor. "Do you know what it is?" she asked, her voice low, but solid.
The alien nodded. Silently he reached out one long fingered hand. One fingertip traced across a seemingly meaningless row of glowing lights. The machine clicked, abruptly, three times. Everyone but the alien jumped.
Above the device a small hologram formed, a hand sized replica of the Colonel. A recorded message. It slowly turned. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the hologram to speak.
"Howdy campers," it finally said, in Jack's voice. " I suppose that you're all worried, and I'm sure that I'll have hell to pay and all," it went on. "I'm sorry if I've hurt you, I really am."
Silence.
No one moved. No one blinked. Everyone waited, silently willing the pint sized Colonel to tell them where he was. "I guess you'll want to know where I am," it said, then sighed, slumping slightly. It looked back up, tiny face determined. "Look for me where you lost me," it said.
And then it was gone.
Everyone sat in silence, staring at the empty air where Jack's simulacrum had stood.
"What the Hell does that mean?" Hammond voiced the question on everyone's mind.
No one answered.
A/N: yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. I am doing my best! PLEASE read and review! Also, go visit my website, you can find the URL on my little blurb thingy. Whatever. Check it out. Go to the links. Read my Blogs! Or not. But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ AND REVIEW!
Disclaimer: a refresher, they aren't mine; they never were and never will be. I promise that I'll put them back exactly the way I found them, probably, as soon as I'm done. No small gray humanoid beings were hurt in the making of this fanfic.
(Small siblings are another matter entirely)
THREE:
Daniel dropped the journals, three in all, onto the coffee table. They landed with a solid thud, and then the hiss-slide of papers careening to the floor. He ground the palm of his hand into his forehead and tried to convince himself that he was, in fact, going back to bed. The sun hadn't even risen yet. Surely, to God, he could go back to bed and get another hour or two of sleep.
With a defeated sigh Daniel stumbled to the wall and clicked on the lights. They were bright. They hurt his eyes. He slid his hand over his temporarily blinded eyes and tried to order the rest of his brain to wake up.
It worked, sort of. He eventually removed his hand and turned his eyes on his living room. Everywhere he looked was the same pair of dark hazel eyes. And blood, and bruises, and nightmares, which would haunt the anthropologist through the rest of his days. Daniel turned to the coffee table and the journals on top of it. He knocked an open file off of the couch. It coasted to the carpet and landed with a barely audible sigh. He flopped down onto the couch, jarring his bones and forcing himself further into the land of the chronically awake.
In the light the three journals were all varying shades of brown. They were worn around the edges and tied closed with leather thongs. They lay on his coffee table in a lopsided pile. Beneath them the table was covered with papers, legal pads, notes scribbled on napkins, and old paper plates.
One yellow legal pad was filled, the pages already threatening to fall off of their substandard binding. They were scrawled over with notes and hypothesis and, eventually, doodles. Daniel didn't let himself look too closely at the doodles, but he knew what they were anyway. The same pair of angry eyes, drawn over and over and over. He'd spent too much time digging through Jack's past, staring at those eyes. At this point he would almost have believed that he knew more about his friend than his friend knew about himself. Almost, if not for those dark eyes staring out at him from every surface in his living room. Almost.
There were worlds of pain and anger and secrets in those eyes. There was no way to know what lay in the shadows in those eyes. No way short of madness, or death.
Daniel rolled his head on his neck, then reached out and picked up the first journal. The leather warmed in his hands, as he unknotted the thong, until it almost felt like a living thing. He flipped the cover open. The paper was thick and yellowed around the edges. It smelled musty, like a basement library. The page was covered with a neat, easily legible script.
Page after page was filled to capacity. The other two journals were just as full, of course.
Daniel let the journal fall to his lap and fell back against the couch. This was going to take a while.
Damn!
He decided to start with the latest entry and work backwards. Although he wasn't sure that he'd even find anything of use.
The beginning of the last entry was one sentence written in the middle of an empty page, about a third of the way through the last journal.
'Charlie's dead and so is Jack O'Neill.'
All of the pages after it, front and back, were filled with the same sentence, over and over, until there were no more pages. Daniel thumbed through page after page after page. The same sentence, like a mantra, over and over and over. The handwriting grew progressively less neat, more and more frenzied, until the last two pages were practically illegible.
If he still could, Daniel probably would have cried. But he'd used up all of the tears he had, they'd stopped coming sometime between his seventh and tenth revision of Jack's life. They just wouldn't come.
So, he sat on his couch, in his living room, surrounded by pictures of a boy he knew better than he wanted to. He sat, and he wrapped his arms around himself, and he didn't cry.
* * *
"Incoming traveler," the announcement rang through the base.
Sam took off at a sprint, leaving the Colonel's confusing inventions on her worktable. She dashed through the doorway of her lab and down the hall, taking the stairs over the elevator. On the gateroom floor she caught up with a medical team.
Medical team?
'Oh, God, no!' Sam thought, slowing her pace so that the medical personnel could get into the gateroom unobstructed.
Inside the gateroom Teal'c stumbled through the wormhole and down the ramp. His uniform was in shreds, his back a bloody ruin; his knee was cut deep enough to show the white of the bone. But he was the only one to come through the 'gate.
When Sam hurtled into the room the medics were helping the big Jaffa onto his stomach on a stretcher. His back was plainly visible to the room. "Teal'c!" she shouted, sprinting to his side as the medics hoisted him up.
The medics were wondering things like 'massive blood loss' and 'shock.' They started out of the room and into the hallway as someone began an IV.
"Major Carter," Teal'c said, staring up at her from his odd angle, unable to focus on her face.
"I'm here, Teal'c," she answered.
His eyes fluttered closed as she watched. "I was unable to locate Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c reported. Then he was mercifully swept into darkness.
* * *
"Frankly it's a miracle that he survived, Sir," Frazier reported to the General. They were standing in the hallway outside of the infirmary. "Even with his symbiote."
The General nodded his bald head, the fluorescent light shining off of it. "What are his chances, Doctor," he asked, voice tired. He sounded defeated.
Janet sighed, then turned to look through the open doorway at her patient. "At this point," she said, voice low, "I'd say that fifty-fifty would be optimistic."
The General nodded once more, glanced at Teal'c, Major Carter was sitting at his side, her face blank with shock. Then he turned away. "I'll inform Dr. Jackson," he said.
Janet's lips pressed together in an unhappy line. "I don't know if they'll survive losing another member of their team, General," she said, still staring at her patient.
"I know," Hammond said. They stood, silently, and watched them through the doorway. Then the General turned, and walked away.
* * *
"Jackson here."
"Dr. Jackson, this is Hammond. I'm afraid that I have some bad news for you, son."
"Jack?"
"No! No, Teal'c was injured. He's in the infirmary now, but, his chances aren't-"
"I'm on my way."
* * *
"Come on, Teal'c, we can't lose you too," Sam muttered against her clasped hands, eyes closed.
"We're not going to lose him, Sam," someone said from behind her. She jumped, even though she knew the voice. "And we haven't lost Jack yet either."
Sam nodded, not trusting her voice. She'd been choking down tears since she'd first seen the medical team. She wouldn't cry, she couldn't cry. Her team needed her to be strong. What they did not need was for her to have hysterics in front of them. She could have hysterics when she was alone in her house. Right now she had to be a rock. Rocks don't cry.
Daniel watched silently as Sam nodded her head, over and over, as if she couldn't stop. Or she wasn't aware that she was still doing it. Uncomfortable, Daniel turned to look at his teammate. There were four different IV's hooked up to him. His chest was covered with thick white bandages. There was another bandage around his head. Against the darkness of his skin the bandages were a shocking whiteness.
His eyes were closed.
The anthropologist looked back to Sam. She'd managed to stop nodding her head. Now she was staring down at Teal'c, face empty and blank. Tentatively, Daniel placed a hand on her shoulder. She didn't react, but she didn't shrug him off either, so he kept his hand where it was.
'Dear God,' he prayed silently. 'We could REALLY us a little help here,' he looked from Sam to Teal'c. 'Please.'
* * *
"Fuck off," Jack ordered his alternate, sliding down the wall and to the floor. Jay lowered himself into a crouch, keeping their eyes on a level.
'Luv to, mate," Jay replied. "But this place's got diff'rent plans."
Jack didn't reply. Instead he ground both palms into his eye sockets. God, he was tired. What the heck was he doing here? Letting some wrinkled nutcase he didn't even know lock him up in some underground alien box?
When he looked back up he saw that Jay had plopped down on the floor, legs tucked up in a tailor's seat. The other man was watching him over clasped hands. "What the hell is yer problem with me, anyway?" Jay asked.
Jack stared at him. Face blank. Then a bark of laughter escaped him, short and harsh and not a happy sound. "My problem?" he asked.
Jay nodded, face carefully blank.
"My problem," Jack repeated, using the wall to push himself up to his feet, "is that I've got a goddamned legion of nutcases running around in my head!"
"You made me, Jack."
"You were a mission. That's it. That's all. You shouldn't be in my life anymore!"
"Why not?" Jay asked, looking up at him.
"Jesus," Jack muttered, shaking his head.
"You didn't have a problem with me before, Jack. I got the job done and you got to lie to the military shrinks. What changed?" His voice was tired as he said it, worn.
Jack just stared at him.
Finally he opened his mouth and spoke. Just one word.
"Daniel."
* * *
Jacob sat in his daughter's lab, staring at the maddeningly useless blinking lights. He couldn't find the off switch and Sam was in the infirmary with Teal'c and Daniel.
Still, for all the device's apparent lack of usefulness, it was a prodigious feat of engineering. Selmak had said as much, repeatedly, as they watched Sam put the thing together. Neither on of them could believe that Jack, Colonel O'Neill, was responsible for its creation.
It was inconceivable, but there it was.
* * *
In the infirmary Sam and Daniel sat silently at their teammate's side. Teal'c was still unconscious.
Sam closed her eyes, letting her neck rest on the back of the chair. The double beeping of the dual heart monitor was disturbing and soothing at the same time. The only proof that life still lay before them.
The soft beeping droned on and on, and Sam was having a hard time keeping herself awake.
Daniel quietly thumbed through Jack's journal as Sam drifted off beside him. Maybe he could find something useful, maybe not. Either way, it was a sure way to keep himself awake. The journal he was working on was the oldest. Apparently Jack had started it in a military mental hospital, at his psychiatrist's orders. It was a record of his nightmares, and it was written entirely in Arabic.
Apparently Jack hadn't wanted his shrink to be reading about his nightmares. After only having translated three entries Daniel could understand that wish. If he had been Jack's shrink, and had read what he was reading, he would have never allowed the man out of a five by seven padded room.
* * *
Sam jerked awake when the beeping stopped. She opened her eyes. Blackness. All of the lights were out. She reached a hand out, blindly, and found Daniel at her side. He grasped her hand in his own.
A moment later the lights came back on. General Hammond's voice crackled through the intercom. "Major Carter and Dr. Jackson to the observation room!"
Sam turned to stare at Daniel at the same time he turned to stare at her. One thought was on both of their minds.
* * *
Hammond watched as the two conscious members of SG-1 ran into the room, breathless. They came to a stop at the end of the table. Jackson bent over, trying to catch his breath. Carter fared better. Neither was looking at him, though. They were both staring at the small, gray skinned alien standing hi front of the large bullet proof glass window.
"Greetings Daniel Jackson and Major Carter," the alien intoned with a nod of his head.
"Greetings Thor," Daniel replied, upright, his breathing even, his face only slightly flushed.
"Colonel O'Neill?" Sam asked, her voice hopeful.
"Sadly, no," the little alien answered. "I am here because our sensors picked up a," he paused. "A signal, from this base."
"We've sent no signals," Hammond broke in, reminding them of his presence.
"No," Thor said, turning to Hammond, then back to Daniel and Sam. "We have reason to believe that the signal is from Colonel O'Neill."
"Colonel O'Neill is missing," Hammond said, his voice suddenly suspicious.
"We are aware of that," Thor responded.
"Then why do you think the signal is from Jack?" Daniel asked, curious.
"The signal is in the language of the Ancients," he said, "and the message was this: 'We are a very curious species.'"
Ten minutes later Jacob Carter walked into the room. In his hands he carried Sam's recreation of Jack's 'doohickey.' It was still blinking its lights and whirring to itself. Happy as a mechanical clam. He placed it in the middle of the table, then took a seat next to his daughter.
Thor stood, motionless in a way that no human could recreate, and stared at the device on the table. The device blinked benignly at him. A random series of read and green lights chased themselves across the screen.
"Col. O'Neill created this?" the alien asked, still staring at the device.
"He drew the schematics for it, yes," Sam answered, after swallowing. Her mouth was suddenly very, very dry.
"This is not human technology," the alien said. It was a statement, not a question. No one answered him.
Sam's eyes darted from Thor to the device and back again. Her throat felt like there was a rock in it. An unexpected hand on her own startled her. She half turned in her seat and looked at her father, eyes wide. He smiled encouragingly at her.
She licked her lips nervously and turned back to Thor. "Do you know what it is?" she asked, her voice low, but solid.
The alien nodded. Silently he reached out one long fingered hand. One fingertip traced across a seemingly meaningless row of glowing lights. The machine clicked, abruptly, three times. Everyone but the alien jumped.
Above the device a small hologram formed, a hand sized replica of the Colonel. A recorded message. It slowly turned. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the hologram to speak.
"Howdy campers," it finally said, in Jack's voice. " I suppose that you're all worried, and I'm sure that I'll have hell to pay and all," it went on. "I'm sorry if I've hurt you, I really am."
Silence.
No one moved. No one blinked. Everyone waited, silently willing the pint sized Colonel to tell them where he was. "I guess you'll want to know where I am," it said, then sighed, slumping slightly. It looked back up, tiny face determined. "Look for me where you lost me," it said.
And then it was gone.
Everyone sat in silence, staring at the empty air where Jack's simulacrum had stood.
"What the Hell does that mean?" Hammond voiced the question on everyone's mind.
No one answered.
A/N: yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know. I am doing my best! PLEASE read and review! Also, go visit my website, you can find the URL on my little blurb thingy. Whatever. Check it out. Go to the links. Read my Blogs! Or not. But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ AND REVIEW!