Chapter Three: Cyan
A thread of pain shot through Major Carter's back as she regained consciousness. The floor of the cave was cold and uneven. Slowly, she sat up as her vision cleared. When she took in her surroundings, she realized she was no longer in the same cave as the stargate.
The mouth of the cave was only a few feet away, and she could see a large dark mass blocking out the stars. Hard to believe she once found it fascinating. Now it was almost frightening.
"Major Levine?" She called out. "Reed, Cooper. Doctor Murray? Anyone?" Her only reply was the sound of her voice, echoing against the walls of the cave.
A cool breeze picked up. It was a nice change of pace from the near tropical heat. M. Carter checked herself over once, and aside from a few bruises and a few scrapes, nothing was broken. She climbed to her feet and went through her utility jacket, searching for a flashlight. Finding one and relieved that it was damaged, she turned it on and took stock of her surroundings.
This cave was considerably smaller than the one where the stargate was held. Lt. Cooper referred to it as Grand Central Station without the crowd. If M. Carter had to compare this cave to any place on Earth, it would be more like the briefing room back at the SGC. The real question was how she got here.
Not sure of how long she'd been out, M. Carter tried to piece together the events that led up to this moment. She remembered requesting to join SG-14 on their mission to this planet. Once the probes confirmed that the planet had a sustainable eco-system in spite of its dark matter sun, she systematically scrubbed everything else in her date book for the following month. There was no way in hell she was planning to miss out on the major astrological discovery of all time!
Major Levine was happy to have a fifth person joining them. And Doctor Murray had been a big fan of M. Carter's work from the day he was finally assigned to SG-14. Up until a while ago, Carter wasn't sure exactly when, things were moving fairly smoothly.
As far as she could tell, this star was several billion years older than Earth's own sun. Without the Asgard's help it would take a few months to build a platform to launch a solar probe, but until then M. Carter assumed that the sun burned the same basic principals as any other star.
The planet's wildlife was fairly complex, but perfectly adapted for life on a world with no light. Various species of moss seemed to be the dominant plant form, and it gained whatever nourishment it needed from the many streams and lakes that made up the landscape. All of the more advanced life forms consisted of rodents, insects, and fish. Brimeshrimp filled the lakes but the rivers were clear enough to safely drink from.
Dr. Murray discovered that the larger species of rodent, which resembled ferrets, evolved large eyes for adjusting to the low quality of light. They also appeared to use echolocation to locate food and obstacles, just like the bats and dolphins of Earth.
Aside from the sounds of the insect life it was a fairly quiet couple of nights...until they attacked. Silence struck the camp. The insects stopped chirping, and it seemed as though the wind had come to a sudden stop as well. Lt. Cooper and Major Levine were taking first watch that night, but after three nights with no activity they were loosening up a bit too much.
An unseen force struck down M. Levine and Lt. Cooper. Drawn by the noise, M. Carter and Lt. Reed went to check on them. As they exited the mouth of the cave they found themselves surrounded by...well, they were still people, Carter decided. They were pale and thin, and from the various tones of skin, it wouldn't have surprised Carter if they came from every known planet in the gate network.
Reed attempted to communicate, but before he could even finish speaking, two of the creatures attacked. The others made similar attempts and Carter laid down gunfire. Reed was able to squeeze off a round before his gun was yanked from his hands.
"Murray!" Carter shouted. "Dial home, quickly!"
Dr. Murray had all ready punched in the fifth symbol, but there were only two soldiers holding the line and several more of the creatures. Three or four got past Carter and accosted Dr. Murray as he punched in the final symbol.
Reed was able to wrestle free of the monsters, but not before they got several good swipes in. The last thing Carter remembered was Reed trying to rescue her, and the brilliant flash of light preceding the wormhole's opening. Carter lost her gun and was being dragged away by the creatures. One of them managed to bite Reed. After that, something must have hit her hard, because it all went black.
She had no clue how long ago that was. All she knew was that she was hungry and thirsty, and she had a splitting headache. Her canteen was missing, and she didn't have enough time to grab some food for her unplanned trip.
She did have her knife, and an extra handgun, which puzzled her. These things obviously meant to capture her, but why wouldn't they take away her only means of defense? And more to the point, where were her guards? No one was drawn by the sound of her moving about and there was nothing keeping her in the cave. No bars, no force field, not even a watchdog of some kind.
Carter ventured outside. The moons were high and bright, making it easier to see. A few feet away she could see what looked like a river. If it was the same river that ran by their original camp sight, she might be able to follow it back. But it also meant that she could at least satisfy her thirst.
Like before, when the creatures attacked the camp, there wasn't a sound. Carter was about to take out her knife, just in case, when the air shimmered in front of her. A woman appeared in front of her, carrying the canteen and wearing a surprisingly clean dressing gown that had seen better days. She was as pale as the other creatures were and her brown eyes were eerie from their near lifelessness.
"I brought you some water," She spoke in lightly accented English. "I did not know how long you would be a sleep so I came back as fast as I could."
It was hard to decide if it was safe to trust this woman. Carter was thirsty as all hell, but the idea that this woman was one of them made her apprehensive.
"I assure you," The woman continued. "This water came from the river. I have not infected it."
After a moment's deliberation Carter put aside her inhibitions and accepted the canteen. After guzzling nearly half of its contents she screwed the cap back on and studied her host.
"You're not human." She observed.
The woman shook her head. "No."
"Well how about an explanation? Cause for all I know my friends are dead, and I'm standing here in the middle of nowhere talking to you."
Damn, Carter thought. I've been hanging around the colonel too long.
"My name is Cyan." The woman began, making herself comfortable on a tuft of moss. She gestured for Carter to sit down as well. "A man came through the Stargate many centuries ago and gave me this name. But I have been here since long before I can remember."
"How is that possible? I know the Goa'uld can possess a host for at least four hundred years without using the sarcophagus."
"I am not a Goa'uld!" Cyan spat at the name, as if just saying it left a bitter taste on her palette. "Those filthy snakes are what did this to me. It is their awful tampering that caused me to desire the blood of the living. For a thousand years I was kept on this world, forced to feed on whomever my master sent to me. But I was young and inexperienced. I didn't know that if I left them alive they would become...like me."
Cyan wasn't the first human victim of Goa'uld experiments. Everyone still joked about Col. O'Neil's inadvertent brush with old age on the planet Argos. A Goa'uld by the name of Pelops developed nanoprobes that increased the natural process of human growth. When O'Neil spent an apparently pleasant evening with one of the young women there, he contracted the probes himself, and nearly died of old age in a matter of weeks!
"What did they do to you?" Carter asked, sympathetically.
"I once lived on the world of the Tauri, during the times when the Goa'uld known as Ra continued to harvest men and women as hosts. I was being groomed for a life as host to one of Ra's children, as was my mother. But shortly after my twentieth year, Isis and Osiris launched and attack. Many of the hosts and Jaffa were captured and Osiris managed to escape this system before Ra retaliated.
"My mother was among the people captured. Isis used my mother and several more potential hosts as target practice for her new weapon designs. Others, host and Jaffa alike were left at the mercy of Osiris' awful experiments. She dismembered men and women and reattached limbs to see how they adapted, performed organ transplants, exposed them to any number of diseases and bacteria. She even performed experiments on her own kind; the infant symbiotes from the Jaffa. But she took a special interest in me."
Cyan stopped for a moment as an old pain surfaced. Carter wondered how much time had passed since Cyan last revisited those times.
"I was kept in a special laboratory, where Osiris took samples of my blood and brain tissue. I remember waking up one morning and discovering that I knew all that she knew, all that every Goa'uld symbiote knew. I could sense the creature inside of its host body."
"But you never had a Goa'uld inside of you?" Carter asked, curious.
"Never. As it was explained to me, Osiris had successfully grafted neurons from one of the symbiotes into my own brain. I was no longer an ignorant slave waiting for the day when my body would no longer be my own. I was a freak of nature. "The realization that the Goa'uld were not truly gods was terrifying to me. For what salvation could there be from serving these monsters? All my life I had been told that rich rewards awaited us in the afterlife, but only if we lived as we were meant to, serving our noble gods. With no one to pray to anymore, I suddenly longed for death. I begged Osiris to kill me off.
"'Oh, you're not going to die anytime soon,' was her reply. I can remember her words so clearly even now. 'In fact, when I am done with you, the only way you will ever die is by your own hand. And you don't have the strength to commit suicide.'
"No matter how painful the next few weeks were, no matter how hard I begged, or how loud I screamed, no gods came to save me. I had no hope. Osiris' work was a complete success. Her new strain of bacteria prevented me from aging, and eliminated my need for food, water, and oxygen. I was infected with any number of diseases, and injured in everyway she could imagine, but the bacteria protected me and healed me. For a while it seemed she had found the perfect host.
"But it wasn't a host that she wanted. As I soon came to realize, this bacteria had other qualities as well. It could spread at an unprecedented rate, from my saliva into other hosts. In less than a century I had created an army of walking corpses. And they were also able to pass it on to others by biting.
"Osiris returned to Earth and claimed a portion of Ra's kingdom for herself and Isis. With her new army at her disposal and I as her recruiter, not even Ra's death gliders could stop her. He used his manipulative skills to bring Set to Earth, and it was another century before Osiris and Isis were forced to escape their hosts and go into hiding.
"I was later captured by the one known as Apophis. My brethren and I intrigued him, and he used the stargate to scatter many of them to the other worlds where they could plague his enemies. When this world was discovered, Apophis left me here. For centuries people have been sent through the gate to appease my deadly appetite. But I have created so many of my own kind that I was eventually forced to live here, far from the cave that houses the stargate. "
Carter was intrigued by Cyan's story. If only Doctor Jackson could have been here to hear it. The thought of her friends jolted her back to reality.
"It's terrible what was done to you," She said, with genuine sympathy. "But you should know that my world was able to overcome the Goa'uld's oppression, and we've evolved to a fairly advanced culture. Not as advanced as the Asgard or the Tokra, but we get by all right. If you could show me the way back to the stargate, I'm sure our doctors could help find a cure for your condition."
Cyan smiled. It was too warm a smile for such a cold face, but it was reassuring nonetheless.
"I could never go back to that world. I have lived here for so long that it's the only home I know. But I do know that one of yours is infected. I am linked to the ones who attacked you. He was bitten before he could escape through the stargate, and no doubt he has begun feeding and spreading the disease to your people."
"I'm sure my people can handle it." Carter grinned wryly. "It's not the first time we've been infected by an off world disease."
"I will show you the way to the stargate, but on one condition. You must destroy our gate for all eternity. No one must ever be able to come to this world again."
A thread of pain shot through Major Carter's back as she regained consciousness. The floor of the cave was cold and uneven. Slowly, she sat up as her vision cleared. When she took in her surroundings, she realized she was no longer in the same cave as the stargate.
The mouth of the cave was only a few feet away, and she could see a large dark mass blocking out the stars. Hard to believe she once found it fascinating. Now it was almost frightening.
"Major Levine?" She called out. "Reed, Cooper. Doctor Murray? Anyone?" Her only reply was the sound of her voice, echoing against the walls of the cave.
A cool breeze picked up. It was a nice change of pace from the near tropical heat. M. Carter checked herself over once, and aside from a few bruises and a few scrapes, nothing was broken. She climbed to her feet and went through her utility jacket, searching for a flashlight. Finding one and relieved that it was damaged, she turned it on and took stock of her surroundings.
This cave was considerably smaller than the one where the stargate was held. Lt. Cooper referred to it as Grand Central Station without the crowd. If M. Carter had to compare this cave to any place on Earth, it would be more like the briefing room back at the SGC. The real question was how she got here.
Not sure of how long she'd been out, M. Carter tried to piece together the events that led up to this moment. She remembered requesting to join SG-14 on their mission to this planet. Once the probes confirmed that the planet had a sustainable eco-system in spite of its dark matter sun, she systematically scrubbed everything else in her date book for the following month. There was no way in hell she was planning to miss out on the major astrological discovery of all time!
Major Levine was happy to have a fifth person joining them. And Doctor Murray had been a big fan of M. Carter's work from the day he was finally assigned to SG-14. Up until a while ago, Carter wasn't sure exactly when, things were moving fairly smoothly.
As far as she could tell, this star was several billion years older than Earth's own sun. Without the Asgard's help it would take a few months to build a platform to launch a solar probe, but until then M. Carter assumed that the sun burned the same basic principals as any other star.
The planet's wildlife was fairly complex, but perfectly adapted for life on a world with no light. Various species of moss seemed to be the dominant plant form, and it gained whatever nourishment it needed from the many streams and lakes that made up the landscape. All of the more advanced life forms consisted of rodents, insects, and fish. Brimeshrimp filled the lakes but the rivers were clear enough to safely drink from.
Dr. Murray discovered that the larger species of rodent, which resembled ferrets, evolved large eyes for adjusting to the low quality of light. They also appeared to use echolocation to locate food and obstacles, just like the bats and dolphins of Earth.
Aside from the sounds of the insect life it was a fairly quiet couple of nights...until they attacked. Silence struck the camp. The insects stopped chirping, and it seemed as though the wind had come to a sudden stop as well. Lt. Cooper and Major Levine were taking first watch that night, but after three nights with no activity they were loosening up a bit too much.
An unseen force struck down M. Levine and Lt. Cooper. Drawn by the noise, M. Carter and Lt. Reed went to check on them. As they exited the mouth of the cave they found themselves surrounded by...well, they were still people, Carter decided. They were pale and thin, and from the various tones of skin, it wouldn't have surprised Carter if they came from every known planet in the gate network.
Reed attempted to communicate, but before he could even finish speaking, two of the creatures attacked. The others made similar attempts and Carter laid down gunfire. Reed was able to squeeze off a round before his gun was yanked from his hands.
"Murray!" Carter shouted. "Dial home, quickly!"
Dr. Murray had all ready punched in the fifth symbol, but there were only two soldiers holding the line and several more of the creatures. Three or four got past Carter and accosted Dr. Murray as he punched in the final symbol.
Reed was able to wrestle free of the monsters, but not before they got several good swipes in. The last thing Carter remembered was Reed trying to rescue her, and the brilliant flash of light preceding the wormhole's opening. Carter lost her gun and was being dragged away by the creatures. One of them managed to bite Reed. After that, something must have hit her hard, because it all went black.
She had no clue how long ago that was. All she knew was that she was hungry and thirsty, and she had a splitting headache. Her canteen was missing, and she didn't have enough time to grab some food for her unplanned trip.
She did have her knife, and an extra handgun, which puzzled her. These things obviously meant to capture her, but why wouldn't they take away her only means of defense? And more to the point, where were her guards? No one was drawn by the sound of her moving about and there was nothing keeping her in the cave. No bars, no force field, not even a watchdog of some kind.
Carter ventured outside. The moons were high and bright, making it easier to see. A few feet away she could see what looked like a river. If it was the same river that ran by their original camp sight, she might be able to follow it back. But it also meant that she could at least satisfy her thirst.
Like before, when the creatures attacked the camp, there wasn't a sound. Carter was about to take out her knife, just in case, when the air shimmered in front of her. A woman appeared in front of her, carrying the canteen and wearing a surprisingly clean dressing gown that had seen better days. She was as pale as the other creatures were and her brown eyes were eerie from their near lifelessness.
"I brought you some water," She spoke in lightly accented English. "I did not know how long you would be a sleep so I came back as fast as I could."
It was hard to decide if it was safe to trust this woman. Carter was thirsty as all hell, but the idea that this woman was one of them made her apprehensive.
"I assure you," The woman continued. "This water came from the river. I have not infected it."
After a moment's deliberation Carter put aside her inhibitions and accepted the canteen. After guzzling nearly half of its contents she screwed the cap back on and studied her host.
"You're not human." She observed.
The woman shook her head. "No."
"Well how about an explanation? Cause for all I know my friends are dead, and I'm standing here in the middle of nowhere talking to you."
Damn, Carter thought. I've been hanging around the colonel too long.
"My name is Cyan." The woman began, making herself comfortable on a tuft of moss. She gestured for Carter to sit down as well. "A man came through the Stargate many centuries ago and gave me this name. But I have been here since long before I can remember."
"How is that possible? I know the Goa'uld can possess a host for at least four hundred years without using the sarcophagus."
"I am not a Goa'uld!" Cyan spat at the name, as if just saying it left a bitter taste on her palette. "Those filthy snakes are what did this to me. It is their awful tampering that caused me to desire the blood of the living. For a thousand years I was kept on this world, forced to feed on whomever my master sent to me. But I was young and inexperienced. I didn't know that if I left them alive they would become...like me."
Cyan wasn't the first human victim of Goa'uld experiments. Everyone still joked about Col. O'Neil's inadvertent brush with old age on the planet Argos. A Goa'uld by the name of Pelops developed nanoprobes that increased the natural process of human growth. When O'Neil spent an apparently pleasant evening with one of the young women there, he contracted the probes himself, and nearly died of old age in a matter of weeks!
"What did they do to you?" Carter asked, sympathetically.
"I once lived on the world of the Tauri, during the times when the Goa'uld known as Ra continued to harvest men and women as hosts. I was being groomed for a life as host to one of Ra's children, as was my mother. But shortly after my twentieth year, Isis and Osiris launched and attack. Many of the hosts and Jaffa were captured and Osiris managed to escape this system before Ra retaliated.
"My mother was among the people captured. Isis used my mother and several more potential hosts as target practice for her new weapon designs. Others, host and Jaffa alike were left at the mercy of Osiris' awful experiments. She dismembered men and women and reattached limbs to see how they adapted, performed organ transplants, exposed them to any number of diseases and bacteria. She even performed experiments on her own kind; the infant symbiotes from the Jaffa. But she took a special interest in me."
Cyan stopped for a moment as an old pain surfaced. Carter wondered how much time had passed since Cyan last revisited those times.
"I was kept in a special laboratory, where Osiris took samples of my blood and brain tissue. I remember waking up one morning and discovering that I knew all that she knew, all that every Goa'uld symbiote knew. I could sense the creature inside of its host body."
"But you never had a Goa'uld inside of you?" Carter asked, curious.
"Never. As it was explained to me, Osiris had successfully grafted neurons from one of the symbiotes into my own brain. I was no longer an ignorant slave waiting for the day when my body would no longer be my own. I was a freak of nature. "The realization that the Goa'uld were not truly gods was terrifying to me. For what salvation could there be from serving these monsters? All my life I had been told that rich rewards awaited us in the afterlife, but only if we lived as we were meant to, serving our noble gods. With no one to pray to anymore, I suddenly longed for death. I begged Osiris to kill me off.
"'Oh, you're not going to die anytime soon,' was her reply. I can remember her words so clearly even now. 'In fact, when I am done with you, the only way you will ever die is by your own hand. And you don't have the strength to commit suicide.'
"No matter how painful the next few weeks were, no matter how hard I begged, or how loud I screamed, no gods came to save me. I had no hope. Osiris' work was a complete success. Her new strain of bacteria prevented me from aging, and eliminated my need for food, water, and oxygen. I was infected with any number of diseases, and injured in everyway she could imagine, but the bacteria protected me and healed me. For a while it seemed she had found the perfect host.
"But it wasn't a host that she wanted. As I soon came to realize, this bacteria had other qualities as well. It could spread at an unprecedented rate, from my saliva into other hosts. In less than a century I had created an army of walking corpses. And they were also able to pass it on to others by biting.
"Osiris returned to Earth and claimed a portion of Ra's kingdom for herself and Isis. With her new army at her disposal and I as her recruiter, not even Ra's death gliders could stop her. He used his manipulative skills to bring Set to Earth, and it was another century before Osiris and Isis were forced to escape their hosts and go into hiding.
"I was later captured by the one known as Apophis. My brethren and I intrigued him, and he used the stargate to scatter many of them to the other worlds where they could plague his enemies. When this world was discovered, Apophis left me here. For centuries people have been sent through the gate to appease my deadly appetite. But I have created so many of my own kind that I was eventually forced to live here, far from the cave that houses the stargate. "
Carter was intrigued by Cyan's story. If only Doctor Jackson could have been here to hear it. The thought of her friends jolted her back to reality.
"It's terrible what was done to you," She said, with genuine sympathy. "But you should know that my world was able to overcome the Goa'uld's oppression, and we've evolved to a fairly advanced culture. Not as advanced as the Asgard or the Tokra, but we get by all right. If you could show me the way back to the stargate, I'm sure our doctors could help find a cure for your condition."
Cyan smiled. It was too warm a smile for such a cold face, but it was reassuring nonetheless.
"I could never go back to that world. I have lived here for so long that it's the only home I know. But I do know that one of yours is infected. I am linked to the ones who attacked you. He was bitten before he could escape through the stargate, and no doubt he has begun feeding and spreading the disease to your people."
"I'm sure my people can handle it." Carter grinned wryly. "It's not the first time we've been infected by an off world disease."
"I will show you the way to the stargate, but on one condition. You must destroy our gate for all eternity. No one must ever be able to come to this world again."