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Daniel warily opened the door to the VIP room. It was dark- she must have turned the overhead lights off- save for a small lamp by the bed in the corner. He saw smoke curling against the lit portion of the wall.
"You can't smoke in here."
She looked at him and lifted the cigarette to her lips once more, taking a long, defiant drag that she blew out slowly from the side of her mouth. She tapped some ashes into her empty coffee cup.
"Look. I'm really very sorry about all of this," Daniel began, pulling up a chair to where she sat at the top of the bed.
"Please, Dr. Jackson. Spare me your contrition. You've got what you wanted, didn't you?" she said bitterly, gesturing to her book in his hands.
He handed the book over wit h a sigh. "Your research is remarkable. It's a phenomenal amount of work that you've done, I can't imagine that is, I understand why you were so guarded that night."
"Will I get my computer back or is it now government property?"
"We're downloading a copy of your research files now and then you're done. All property returned and you can go on your way. I'll have to ask, but I think we might be able to fly you back to Providence free of charge. It's the least we can do," he finished apologetically.
She stubbed out her cigarette violently and looked away, shaking her head. "So that's that, then. Taking two years of my life away in a space of a weekend and you think that paying for airfare is my main concern right now?" Her voice shook with anger. "How dare you admire all that I've done when you take it for yourself, without so much as a hint of..."
She broke off abruptly, evidently struggling with her temper. He pressed her to continue. "A hint of what?"
"Dr. Jackson, I know why I've researched these objects. But, tell me, why are you so bloody interested in them? Why is the US government? The Air Force, or excuse me, a branch of the Air Force? What could you possibly gain by it? And how can you read a writing system that, insofar as professionals of four continents are concerned, doesn't exist?"
"I can't"
" tell me because it's classified. Lovely," she commented contemptuously.
"Dr. Effington, I can't tell you what you need to know. It's frustrating, and I'm sorry."
"You're scared out of your wits, aren't you?" she said, her eyes scanning his face curiously. "Whatever this is, it wasn't meant to be found. Wasn't meant to be public. You're frightened of exposure. Are those two men connected with this? Are they colleagues of yours, hell-bent on containing all this information?"
He turned away slightly, becoming disconcerted at the way she could read his face. "You can't research this anymore. You can't talk about it, you can't reference it, you can't tell anyone that you've been here. We're copying your files- not destroying them. I'm sure you can appreciate the difference."
"What about the artifacts?"
"I don't know. Most likely, you will have to give them up. You will be compensated for them but not by much," he admitted truthfully.
They sat in a painful silence, her fingers running lightly up and down the edges of her book, flicking the pages.
"What's this?" she asked a bit later, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from her book that had disturbed her fingertip.
"My translation of the coverstone."
She was reading it through to herself and abruptly looked up. She cleared her throat and gave him a curious look.
"What is it?"
"Did you, well, of course you did, look through all of my files" she commented abstractedly, most of her attention still on Daniel's hastily scrawled translation.
He nodded apologetically. "I didn't have time to really read through most of them as thoroughly as I would have liked"
"And you're being completely honest with me, that this is what the coverstone says?"
"Yes. Why?"
She shook her head ruefully. "I guess that since you'll find it later anyway you remember I mentioned a papyrus that was not like the others? Found on the outside of the vessel? I did get it looked at and professionally set. The beginning and the ending are sketchy, as you might expect. But it's the only piece that was written in Egyptian and only thing I could translate. This," she held up the paper in her hand, "is what it says."
"Someone translated the coverstone into Egyptian glyphs?"
"And added to it, apparently. Your translation makes no mention of the Triad."
Daniel raised his eyebrows questioningly. "What is that?"
"You don't know?" she asked surprised. She shook her head as if she were attempting to clear away her temporary confusion. She had thought he knew everything than she did and more. "I'm not sure myself, but the papyrus says that there were three elders who were devoted to this task of returning the great god. I assume that the figurines represent these men."
"Makes sense," Daniel commented distractedly. Worry kicked in. A group of people on earth loyal to the Goa'uld? Could they possibly have expected to achieve anything?
"Though I think there was later some sort of upheaval. One of the names written on the papyrus has been inked over. Completely crossed out, like the defamation of Akhenaton's cartouches. Though I have no proof, as the statues are nameless, I think the third incomplete figure was destroyed as well."
"One of the elders had a change of heart?"
"It would appear so. Like I said, there is no hard evidence to support such a claim."
Daniel sat silently for a few moments, tugging thoughtfully at his lower lip. "Look, I'm not saying that this could happen, but I have a certain degree of clout here and I could make a suggestion that they allow you to continue your research."
"On the proviso that all my findings will go straight to this facility and nowhere else?" She didn't appear impressed.
"It's the only way it can be. But it would allow you to finish what you started, and the information would benefit us too."
"I don't work for the military," she said coldly. "Why don't you do it? You're more qualified than I am to make an assessment of the objects anyway."
"Yeah," Daniel said dispiritedly, thinking of all of his own work that was still undone. He couldn't do it all; he was just one man. He'd try, of course, and get distracted by seven other things and probably be forced onto medical leave again and even more things would pile up
"But you've come farther than anyone else would have with these things in your possession. And you know them far better than I do. I think that makes you pretty qualified," he said, almost to himself. "Why don't you work here?"
"I told you: I don't work for the military. I will not be party to the Conspiracy to Wreck Civilization with a Ray Gun or whatever your top-secret agenda is. I don't have any desire to help make the US a bigger superpower."
"Our research is a bit removed from that" he laughed at the absurdity of the situation. "I'm offering you the chance of a lifetime. I know it doesn't seem like it, it sure didn't when they approached me, but look, you can leave here empty-handed and never ever have to think about any of this again. Or you can find out what that script on the coverstone is." He grinned triumphantly at her.
She was torn between disgust and extreme curiosity. Eventually, she sighed and shook her head, unsure. "You're crazy."
He smiled at that, and merely said, "Think it over," before leaving the room.
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Hammond turned to Jack. "Do you believe that she presents a security threat to this facility?"
"Yes."
Daniel raised his eyebrows, wide-eyed as he entered the conference room and took at seat next to Jack. Hammond nodded slightly in his direction before giving the colonel a look of mild surprise.
"It's not that I don't like our chances of taking her," Jack clarified. "The guys at the airport, however"
"The tail bothers me too," Hammond nodded solemnly. "You say that she had no idea that she was being followed?"
"None. For all we know, they could have been her shadow for two years or two days. We have no leads on positive ids- we don't even know where to begin looking."
"She mentioned something to me just now," Daniel interjected. "It got me thinking: we've been going about this assuming that her being tagged would lead to whoever they are discovering us. But what if it's the opposite?"
"That people interested in the Stargate program learned of her meeting with you?" Hammond queried.
"She's been making the rounds with her research for two years. What if someone who knew its relevance, someone connected to us, had seen fit to make sure she didn't see anything she wasn't supposed to?"
"I dunno, Daniel," Jack said, rubbing the back of his neck thoughtfully. "She had some pretty heavy-duty software on that computer of hers. That says to me that she knew that the information was valuable and might provoke some sort of threat."
"You're saying that because she's protective of her research that that means she's some kind of what? Spy?"
"No. But I'm very curious how she managed to get a program only licensed to ranking American military personnel on her personal computer."
Hammond passed to Jack his own folder. "There were some additions to her file since this afternoon."
Jack scanned the pages in front of him until he saw some of the revised text. "A military connection? I thought the father was just an ambassador"
"Her brother was in the CIA- Near East Ops. Died in the line three years ago in Istanbul. Apparently COMINT's been building quite substantial background records for her for some time now."
Jack raised his eyebrows and Daniel eyed the two men bewilderedly. "And for all of us civilians, COMINT is what?"
"It's a branch of the NSA- their global recon division. They tried calling her in for a crypto consultancy several times and were turned down."
"That's not surprising," Daniel commented, looking over Jack's shoulder and giving his glasses a nudge upwards. "Half the people at Chicago were solicited by the military- especially if they're fluent in Arabic and other Near Eastern dialects."
Jack muttered something unintelligible under his breath about know-it-alls infiltrating the military and passed the papers back to the general.
"All these papers seem to point to her being trustworthy enough," Hammond said, tapping the file in front of him. "So Colonel, I think we'll have to disagree- I don't think that she's a security risk to the facility at this time."
"She certainly has no love for the military," Jack remarked.
"She just hasn't gotten time to know you," Daniel murmured. "Give her some credit, Jack. She's not going to deliberately sabotage us out of spite."
"The past two years aren't sufficiently accounted for, but it doesn't point to anything alarming, given the circumstances," Hammond said and looked Jack square in the face. "And by your own account, those men could be long gone by now. We don't even have any proof that they are in anyway connected to her research or this facility. Colonel, I think it's time to let her go her own way, with the pieces or no."
"We have all the new addresses into our computer system now, lifted from off her computer," Daniel nodded in agreement. "We really have little use for the pieces themselves at this point. I think thus far she's shown that she can keep quiet about them."
"Then, thank god. Let's get her outta here," Jack sighed heavily.
"General- if I might make a suggestion?" Daniel clasped his hands in front of him on the table. "Would you consider her for the SGC?"
"Hire her? Ha!" Jack laughed loudly. "I think she's made it pretty clear that she wants nothing more than to be rid of us. And I agree," he said. Looking at Daniel's resolute countenance, he sighed exasperatedly. "What could we possibly do with her?"
"You did decimate my staff during my time away," Daniel remarked pointedly. "She doesn't know anything about geology or much about archaeology but if she handled translations I could work more on those things- it's what I'm trained for, really, like cataloguing those archaeological specimens from PX3-217 And the dig sites off-world have been totally neglected since Rothman died, Nyan has limited mobility since he's alien personnel But mainly, something about this doesn't feel right. She knows those pieces intimately and there might be something else involved here."
He explained to Hammond and Jack what Dr. Effington had told him regarding the Triad. "It's quite possible that these elders might have left other things behind, Goa'uld technology or more addresses I know that I wouldn't want someone on the outside finding these things if they do exist. She could help us cover our bases."
"You really think this is a good idea? Letting her," Jack emphasized the pronoun distastefully, as if he were a child referring to sour medicine, " work here?"
Daniel nodded, looking hopefully at Hammond. "I think she'd be a great asset to the facility I just don't know if she'd do it."
The General raised an eyebrow and shook his head. "Well, Doctor Jackson, you can certainly do your best to convince her," he commented, soundly less than convinced himself. Why Jackson wanted to accomplish this fool's errand was beyond him, but everything that he had read pointed to this woman being a substantive ally, though stubborn as all hell. "If she says yes, we'll give it a try. Let me know the verdict in 24 hours. You're dismissed."
"Thank you, sir."
Jack eyed him askance as they got up from the table. "You're crazy, you know that?"
Daniel smiled back, smugly. "So I've been told."
FIN.
A/N: Thus ends the first of a would-be series. A great thanks to any and all that bothered to peruse this fiction and a HUGE shout out to DJ Werrwolf, jd, and Brone Greyclaw for biting the bullet and reviewing. Thank you so much for your feedback- it was greatly appreciated.
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