Title: Remember Me
Written By: iluvaqt
Disclaimer: as per default chapter.
Author's Note: Thank you, macisgate and Gillian. I really appreciate your feedback.

Chapter 4

Holding Cell, S.G.A.

Jack sat in a small room with Colonel Kawalsky and General Hammond. They sat across the table from him, and both of them were looking at him skeptically.

Throwing his hands up, Jack shook his head and sighed. "The doc said I'm all clear right? I'm Jack O'Neill. Not a clone, a Goa'uld, or anything other alien type, thing. What do I have to do to convince you, I'm not here to sabotage the S.G.C. or anything else."

"He means S.G.A., General," Kawalsky corrected. Turning to Jack again, he gave him a scrutinizing glance and then relaxed. "I guess it makes sense that you are the Jack we've encountered before. But it doesn't explain how you got here," Kawalsky reasoned.

"Colonel Kawalsky advised us of your General's plan for the Quantum Mirror and from our perspective, it was a very smart idea. Rather than run the risk of unwelcome visitors, we destroyed it soon after the Asgard departed from Earth," General Hammond said, "If the only link between alternate realities, is that Mirror, then you can see our problem."

"Look, I don't know how, and I'm not sure why, but I'm here. And since I don't know how I got here, I have no idea how to get back." Yes, you do, his conscience argued. Jack frowned. No, I don't, he argued back. The gold frame in the storage room. It was a mirror, but now it's gone.

"Jack?" Kawalsky prompted.

"General," Jack replied, coming out of his short reverie.

"Yes?" General Hammond answered.

Jack indicated to himself. "I made Brigadier General."

"Oh," Kawalsky replied. "I guess congratulations are in order."

"So they gave you my job then," General Hammond joked.

"Ah, they did," Jack said with an awkward frown. "Just a thought. There are an infinite number of alternate realities, right?"

"Right," Kawalsky answered, wondering where this was headed.

"Then even if there was another Mirror, how is it possible to end up in any specific reality without that controller - remote thing?"

"Just one of those many questions, that will have to go unanswered, for now," General Hammond replied.

"Where's Carter? Her genius might have some plausible answer to all this. She usually does," Jack said in an off-handed manner.

Colonel Kawalsky and General Hammond didn't reply. They gave each other a grave look before turning back to Jack.

"What?" Jack asked, his voice taking on a slightly demanding edge. "Something happened to Carter?"

"Maybe there's a reason why you're back," Kawalsky said carefully. "Last time you were able to help us, because of your knowledge and experience from your reality."

"Doctor Carter, Doctor Jackson and a few others from SG-1 and SG-3 were taken captive while on a reconnaissance mission to P5X-310."

"Whoa, whoa wait a minute. Doctor Jackson?" Jack stated in bewilderment. "Daniel wasn't in this reality, he…"

"Wasn't part of the S.G.A program until after you left," Kawalsky supplied. "Sam found him and recruited him. He was reluctant at first, but when we shared some of our findings with him, he was more than eager to join us."

"Sounds like Daniel," Jack quipped.

"Will you help us?" General Hammond asked.

"Who's heading the team?"

"Me."

At Kawalsky's authoritative reply, Jack rolled his eyes. "Yippee. Well sign me up."


Briefing Room

Jack did his best not to sit there dumbfounded, as Dr. Tobias of SG-3 briefed them on the rescue mission. Must be a pretty standard mission, he thought looking around the room. He counted only, four men, himself included. Either they were going in full stealth mode, or their enemy wasn't going be putting up much resistance. Which didn't make much sense, or else why would they need his help?

Unlike the SG-3 team as in his reality, Colonel Reynold's wasn't team leader. He was told Major Jeffery was, and his team comprised of Dr. Tobias, Captain Wells, and Airman Harris. Since Dr. Tobias and Captain Wells were the only members of SG-3 present, he assumed the rest of their team where captured along with Carter and Daniel. Seeing Wells as part of SG-3 instead of SG-13 wasn't the only thing that bothered him. It was the memories of one of his last missions where Wells was the one they'd rescued, and he'd lost Dr. Fraiser and almost his own life in the process.

"Before I begin General, both Captain Wells and I request to permission to join Colonel Kawalsky with the rescue mission."

"You didn't request this mission?" Jack asked Hammond in disbelief. His General Hammond never believed in leaving men behind, unless there was absolutely no alternative. And even then, he'd found ways around 'no-rescue-mission' orders.

"My concerns regarding Dr. Carter aside, General, the President didn't want to risk open war with the Goa'uld. We don't have the technology, nor do we have the numbers to overpower them. We barely survived the last time. The Asgard managed to get us into the Protected Planets Treaty, and we're going to keep our part of the bargain. We are not to engage in hostile confrontations with the Goa'uld, under any circumstances."

"Begging your pardon, Sir, but I think they crossed that line first, don't you think?" Jack said in exasperation.

"General O'Neill," General Hammond said with an impatient edge. Jack could tell he just about reached that point of being kicked out of the briefing. "If you'll just listen to what Dr. Tobias has to say, you might understand our current position." Sending one last warning look in Jack's direction, he nodded to Dr. Tobias. "Permission to join the team granted, Doctor, please continue."

Dr. Tobias cleared his throat and picked up where he'd left off. "The planet is the home of ruins Dr. Jackson believes, were built by the Ancients. The area is mostly forest, and was supposed to be deserted. An aerial view showed that aside from the landmass around the gate, the rest of the planet is covered in ocean. Dr. Jackson found reason to believe that the planet has been in ruins for at least a hundred years. It seems that someone drove the people out, or destroyed them. We looked, but we couldn't find any burial grounds.

"Among the ruins we found a temple that was built more recently. Dr. Jackson and Dr. Carter were studying the inscriptions in the temple, while the rest of us, surveyed the area around the temple…"

"Oh here it comes," Jack moaned quietly.

"…We didn't even know the place was still inhabited until after the fact, and then it was already too late. I translated a tablet outside the temple that said, "Sekhmet. In the Ancient Egyptian mythology, she is the goddess of war."

"Great," Jack said rolling his eyes. "Sounds like she could be Anubis' partner in crime," he said jokingly.

"She very well could be," Dr. Tobias coincided, to Jack's further disbelief. "I did a quick search and from what I could gather, Sekhmet disappeared after a great battle with the Tok'ra, Jalinor. Sekhmet was second to Ra, until Jalinor started a war among the System Lords. Jalinor was defeated but not without taking out a few of the System Lords. I'd have to go back and study what the temple says about it, but I think somehow Sekhmet was trapped there and Dr. Carter set her free."

"What?" Jack demanded. Suddenly his attention to what was being said jumped ten-fold. He would have thought that nothing could have surprised him, but what he just said couldn't have knocked him for a bigger six. Carter let that thing out? How and why? Carter was smarter than that. Wasn't she? She had to know what those things could do. Then, this wasn't the Carter he knew…

"Dr. Carter has been taken by the Goa'uld, Sekhmet. None of us saw it happen. We were exploring the temple ruins. Dr. Jackson found an alter that was covered with inscriptions. Dr. Carter, Major Jeffery and Airman Harris stayed behind, while the rest of us scouted the area. We returned when we heard gunfire. When we arrived, the rest of our team had been captured. Dr. Carter was on the alter and a man was standing over her. He called himself Kronus."

"The name sounds familiar…" Jack mumbled.

"When Dr. Carter woke up, she'd already been possessed by a Goa'uld. She made the rest of the team submit to her. When Daniel resisted, she picked him and choked him unconscious. We didn't know how we could rescue them all without casualties, so Colonel Kawalsky decided that we should head back and decide on a strategy."

"We've lost a man to a Goa'uld symbiote before. We have to accepted the possibility that Dr. Carter might not make it back to us…" General Hammond said sombrely.

"We can get her back. The Tok'ra have done this before," Jack interjected confidently.

He was frustrated with the doom and gloom everyone was carrying. This wasn't a hopeless situation. They needed to get in there. The longer they waited who knows what could happen. They could already have left the planet for goodness sake's. He wasn't going to spend the rest of his lifetime combing the galaxy for Carter. He wouldn't. Daniel lost Sha're, and it almost drove him crazy. He wasn't about to loose Carter. He didn't know why he cared about her so much. She wasn't his Carter, but maybe that was just it. In this reality, she was his. Well, his alternate reality self anyway. Who was he kidding? He was getting more confused by the second.

The sooner they got this over with, the better. He needed to figure out what was going on. He needed to find away back to his world. He'd been here only a couple of hours and already he hated it.

"When?" Captain Wells asked.

A puzzled look crossed Jack's face. What had he just said? Oh yeah, the Tok'ra. If their reality had progressed in a similar line to his, then perhaps the Tok'ra alliance was still shaky. Then again, how could he be sure of anything? Their world had supposedly been practically wiped out from obit by the Goa'uld.

"Can I just ask, how do you have so many people here when the world was supposed to be wiped out? I mean you're Beta site was supposed to have buried their gate…right?" Jack asked.

"The Asgard helped us make contact with the Beta site. The sent a team to assess the damage, and eventually, everything returned to normal. Can we get back to the situation at hand?" General Hammond asked, giving Jack a strained look. As if to say, satisfied yet?

"Gotta love those guys," Jack said. "Sorry Doctor, please go on."

When the briefing had ended. General Hammond turned on Jack. "Col… General. You can still be an extreme pain in the…"

"Sir," Colonel Kawalsky cut in. Giving an apologetic to the General for interrupting, Kawalsky turned to his friend, "Jack, I have all the time in the world for your questions, later. Can we just do this first?"

For the first time, since he sat down, Jack took a look at the brief. Flipping open the cover, he scanned the contents. Images taken by the MALP seemed to jump out at him and he re-read the summary of the planet again, just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. This couldn't be happening. Wake up, damn it. This had to be a nightmare. There was no way he was stepping through that wormhole, to get shot again. Maybe this time he wouldn't be so lucky. Who knew what their vests were like in this reality. Carter had worked on new specs after their encounters with Anubis' super soldiers. What if their Carter hadn't? Too many variables. This was crazy.

"Jack?" Kawalsky prompted. His friend had zoned out again and all colour had drained from his face. He'd gone deathly quiet.

"We're not going." Jack flipped the brief closed and pushed his chair back. He knew why the description of the planet sounded so familiar now. He also understood why he had such an uneasy feeling seeing Wells again. This wasn't just an uncanny resemblance to some mission he did, he was about to relive it. He stood abruptly and stared across the table at Kawalsky. "Set one foot through that gate and you can kiss half your team goodbye."

"Aren't you being a little melodramatic?" Kawalsky started. "Nothing about the planet suggests anymore than a handful of…"

"They have some sort of high tech communicator. Just by setting foot in those ruins, you sent a message that will have Anubis' cronies down there like that." He snapped his fingers.

"Did your Sam become their people's goddess?" Kawalsky asked.

"No, the place was deserted but…"

"Then how is this the same as in your world?" Kawalsky argued.

Jack thought about it for a moment. SG-13 had stayed and triggered the signal. They hadn't found any alter. Carter was never there the first time around. Everything could play out very differently. And even though she wasn't the same Carter, he'd be damned before he'd let some Goa'uld take her body for eternity.

Unclenching his fists, he noticed that Kawalsky and General Hammond were expectantly waiting for an answer. He turned around to look at the Stargate through the briefing room window. It looked just like home. And whether he cared to admit it, part of him was already anticipating the rush of stepping through that ancient wonder once again. Could he take a chance? He risked going through the mirror the first time to save Carter's life. 'This is your chance to make a difference,' a voice inside said.

Jack looked over his shoulder and then back toward the gate. "I'm in."