Author's Note: This is the continuation of the last chapter. I know it was long as it was, and I figured I'd split it up into a "part two" type deal. Rochelle's expositioning more stuff. But I love her, so give me some slack and soon you will too. Thanks to Macisgate for being super prompt.
Disclaimers/Spoilers: See last chapter.
The briefing room had seen few meetings like this, meetings where one shock and surprise followed another. And for a briefing room in a top secret military base that dealt with interstellar travel, that was saying a lot. Sam's infinitely intelligent brain was trying to process everything. She remembered, somewhere in the blur of the night he returned, the night all the walls came down, the first night they'd made love, that Jack had told her he still contained the Ancient repository in his head. She remembered being briefly astounded by the possibilities but had been immediately distracted. And given everything else that had been going on of late, she hadn't really thought more about it since. She looked around the room to see how everyone else was reacting to this. Teal'c was displaying his surprise by cocking his head slightly and arching an eyebrow. Daniel looked.... confused, the way he did when you showed him a language he'd never seen and didn't know the origins of. Jack, for his part, was gaping like a fish, eyes and mouth wide. Rochelle, the messenger, sat quietly. It was irritating how calmly she was delivering the majority of this information. Sam was surprised they didn't have whiplash from the speed at which Rochelle was lobbing all this new information at them.
Jack sputtered, "Me?"
"Yes," Rochelle confirmed quietly, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.
"But I don't even know what all this stuff in my head means!" he exclaimed.
She nodded, "I know. That's why I'm here. I want to help you decipher it all."
"How?" Sam asked. "It's an enormous wealth of information in a language we understand very little of. Daniel's been studying it for years, and it still takes him a while to figure everything out."
Daniel seemed less than pleased with Sam's not exactly flattering depiction of his Ancient knowledge even though he knew she meant well. He spoke up, "The Asguard have nearly a third of the repository in their computers, and they have yet to figure it out. They don't even know what half of it means, and their knowledge is almost as old as the Ancients."
"But he does know what it means," Rochelle insisted, hitching her thumb at Jack.
"No I don't!" Jack insisted with equal fervor.
"You do too," she replied firmly, like a mother scolding a petulant child. "You just don't know you do."
"Come again?"
Rochelle sighed, and turned to Daniel, "How did you ascertain the repository didn't disappear when General O'Neill revived."
Daniel paused, "The last time Jack...'downloaded' the Ancients' knowledge, his brain began working at 90% capacity, After the Asguard removed it all to keep it from killing him, his brain returned to the usual 5-10% load. When he revived, the doctors ran a bunch of medical tests, including an MRI. The scan showed that his brain was working at 60-75% capacity. We theorized that all the information was still there, but that he had lost the ability to understand it during the healing process, which led to the decrease in capacity."
Rochelle nodded, "I agree." She turned to Jack, "I think you're storing the repository in the part of your brain humans don't use. And without the 'cheat sheet' you had before, the part of you're brain that is always used isn't recognizing it as anything useful."
Jack just blinked and looked at Sam for an explanation.
Sam nodded slowly, taking a deep breath as she tried to explain what she thought Rochelle was saying. "The brain is the most complex and uncharted part of the human body. We only use about five to ten percent of our brains at any given time, but no one knows why. Medical research has been trying to map the human brain for years. "
"Come on, Carter," Jack joked. "You mean to tell me that with all that technobabble gobbledy gook you talk at me all the time, you're still only using ten percent of your brain?" His eyes sparkled mischievously.
"I'm just using it more efficiently, sir," she replied, humoring him. "The point is, the purpose and function of the other two thirds is a mystery."
Jack sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, let's say all that crap is in the unused two thirds of my head. I still don't know how to get at it or know what the hell any of it means."
"That's where I come in," Rochelle replied.
"And how, pray tell?" Jack asked.
"Well, first off, it turns out that I can read Ancient."
Daniel's eyes went wide with shock. "Wait.... what???"
"How?" Sam asked.
Rochelle shrugged, "I don't know. When I began reading the information the General had given both times, I could just--read it. Understand it." Her eyes twinkled with excitement. "Lends credibility to my theory that the Ancients created Immortals, doesn't it?"
"No kidding," Daniel replied, stunned. "I've been trying to decipher it for eight years, and I'm, at best, only a quarter of the way towards understanding it all."
She turned to him, remarking, "Well then we have a lot to discuss, Dr. Jackson, don't we?"
Daniel nodded wordlessly, exchanging glances briefly with Jack. Had she just flirted with him? Jack, however, was no help.
"Okay, so you're our Unabridged Ancient Dictionary," Jack began. "How do you propose I get at any of it?"
"Well," she drawled, pausing as though trying to carefully choose her words. "I'm a telepath."
This meeting should have come with seat belts.
"A what now?" Jack gaped. No one, not even Mac's niece, was going to go digging around in his head.
"Are all Immortals telepathic?" Sam asked, amazed by the possibilities.
Rochelle shook her head, "When one Immortal takes the head of another, all the energy and knowledge of that Immortal is transferred to the victor. Some Immortals, for whatever reason, possess what we call Gifts--among them are the power to control dreams; the power to change one's complete physical appearance, and the power to read the thoughts and feelings of others." She paused, allowing the information to sink in. "In the beginning, I could only read the thoughts of other Immortals. My abilities with mortals were limited only to the empathic. Over time, my abilities extended to mortals as well. I also developed the ability to delve into any mind I wish and extract whatever information I need."
"That's one hell of an interrogation tool," Jack remarked grimly. Rochelle pursed her lips but said nothing, confirming Jack's suspicions that she'd used her abilities as an interrogative tool numerous times.
Rochelle broke the silence in the room, "Since my husband died, I've walled off my ability even to sense emotions. Immediate telepathy would probably overwhelm me right now. But I can build back up to it. Once I get there, I can start extracting the repository. Once we get it all out of your head, General, we can begin comprehending it."
"And you hope to find the origins of Immortals in there," Daniel surmised.
She nodded, "I'm not going to lie; that is my objective. But the possibilities are endless. The defensive, scientific, and anthropological information could be priceless."
"Just wanna help humanity, eh?" Jack teased. She was a good negotiator. In one full swoop, she had just appealed to all four of them, in different ways. Cunning little thing.
"And kick some Goa'uld ass," Rochelle replied cheekily. "I'm all for the ass kicking."
Jack looked at Sam and Daniel, his eyes sparkling devilishly. "See? I told you I'd like her."
Sam merely sighed and rolled her eyes. Daniel shot him a look that said "Riiiiiiiiiiiiight."
"They're humoring me," Jack whispered conspiratorially to Rochelle. "They think I'm really stupid."
"No," Sam began, trading looks with Daniel.
"Not really stupid," Daniel finished, unable to hide his grin.
Jack resisted his urge to stick his tongue out at them, especially after he swore he heard Teal'c snort in amusement. Teal'c! With the snorting! This was a very strange day.
Nevertheless amused by the display, Rochelle continued, "I know my request to keep all this classified initially seemed a bit--odd, but I hope now you understand. Other than my family and the new leader of my former agency, you four are the only people on this planet who know about my telepathy and Immortality. I need that information to stay classified. I was a tempting enough target just by letting my Immortality leak to the wrong people. I'm sure there are even those in your government who would like a crack at me if they discovered it or any of my other hidden talents."
They all nodded in agreement.
"Okay," Jack said. "Everything we just discussed stays in this room. If at any time it becomes apparent that this information goes beyond the four of us, it is on a case by case, need to know basis."
"Just one thing," Daniel said. "Everyone more or less knows that we're getting a member of a foreign government in SG-1. We're going to need a cover story as to where she came from and why."
Rochelle pursed her lips, "The basic story still holds. In the spirit of good faith, the USAF agreed to take a member for the international community into its ranks. I could say I'm MI-5."
"You don't have a British accent," Jack pointed out.
She frowned, "And I don't really have the patience to adopt one for the duration. Hmmm."
"What about Interpol?" Sam suggested. "Then you wouldn't have to worry about any accents. Your own is fairly Gaelic."
"She's not Scottish, Sam," Jack said. He frowned. "Well I mean, 'MacLeod'...." He sighed tiredly, "You know what I mean."
"Gaelic, in this case, means her speaking voice has no discernible European accent, but it's not the American standard either," Daniel informed him.
Glazing right over his gaffe, Jack looked at his friends and colleagues. "Anyone opposed to the Interpol angle?"
"It sounds like a logical explanation, O'Neill," Teal'c spoke up. Ah, they had the approval of the man of few words. "I believe this entire venture to be most beneficial for Stargate Command."
Jack looked around at his friends, his most trusted advisors. Teal'c, the logical Jaffa, the great warrior and increasingly human stoic. Daniel, the wise archeologist and linguist, his brother and best friend, a man who'd lost his wife and his life and was still, in a way, sorting out his path in life. Sam, the beautiful, smart, sexy, kick-ass woman who had been his 2IC for eight years and had now privileged him by becoming his lover, the woman he loved. He trusted them with his life and knew he'd need their help time and again as situations he wasn't prepared to deal with arose during the first months and probably years of his command. He knew, without a doubt, that they'd be there for him every step of the way.
"Teal'c says it's ok," he remarked wryly. "I don't need much more convincing than that, do you?"
Sam smiled. She knew adding Rochelle to SG-1, a team that could survive perfectly well as a three man team, was a somewhat risky venture. They were so ingrained with each other, so embedded, so close, they could practically finish each other's sentences. Rochelle was an unknown to them, as they were to her. Adding her to the well-oiled machine of SG-1 would be like trying to get used to a prosthetic limb after losing an appendage. They had lost Jack to command but were gaining an Immortal telepath. The possibilities and benefits were enormous. It might be bumpy at first, but they'd work it out.
Daniel took a cursory glance at Rochelle out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't sure how he felt about her. He knew, logically, that the pros of her joining SG-1 outweighed the cons. But it was her background in special ops that worried him. She had been trained as a ruthless assassin for a totally autonomous agency. That kind of conditioning didn't just go away. At the same time, he couldn't help but feel overwhelmingly drawn to her. He'd felt it, like a magnetic pull, the moment she'd walked in the room. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt. It wasn't lust; it wasn't desire. It was...odd, unsettling, and irresistible. Perhaps that was why he had an uneasy feeling about adding her to the team. Not that he had a choice. The President had ordered it. Jack, Sam, and Teal'c were for it. Even if every fiber of his being had been screaming for them not to add her, he would have been severely outnumbered.
"Works for me," he replied evenly.
Sam nodded, "Me too."
Teal'c nodded, having already said all he had to say on the matter.
Jack beamed and extended his hand to Rochelle. "Welcome to Stargate Command, Agent MacLeod."
Rochelle returned the smile and handshake, "Thank you, sir. I look forward to serving with all of you." She rose from her seat and extended her hand to Sam, then Teal'c. Daniel was last. "Dr. Jackson," she said amiably.
Daniel held her gaze but did not immediately take her hand. The pull was stronger now than before, and he felt strange, as though he was being lightly tickled from the inside out.
Before he could figure it out and return the gesture, the klaxons began to sound. Davis's voice rang out over the intercom, "Unauthorized offworld activation!"
SG-1 and the base commander exchanged worried glances. Jack turned to Rochelle, who for the first time since they'd met her, looked a bit on edge. Good. She had feathers that could be ruffled.
Jack turned to her and said blithely, "Welcome to the SGC, MacLeod. Hope you're ready to get your feet wet." He turned and jogged from the briefing room, his flagship team directly at his heels.
Disclaimers/Spoilers: See last chapter.
The briefing room had seen few meetings like this, meetings where one shock and surprise followed another. And for a briefing room in a top secret military base that dealt with interstellar travel, that was saying a lot. Sam's infinitely intelligent brain was trying to process everything. She remembered, somewhere in the blur of the night he returned, the night all the walls came down, the first night they'd made love, that Jack had told her he still contained the Ancient repository in his head. She remembered being briefly astounded by the possibilities but had been immediately distracted. And given everything else that had been going on of late, she hadn't really thought more about it since. She looked around the room to see how everyone else was reacting to this. Teal'c was displaying his surprise by cocking his head slightly and arching an eyebrow. Daniel looked.... confused, the way he did when you showed him a language he'd never seen and didn't know the origins of. Jack, for his part, was gaping like a fish, eyes and mouth wide. Rochelle, the messenger, sat quietly. It was irritating how calmly she was delivering the majority of this information. Sam was surprised they didn't have whiplash from the speed at which Rochelle was lobbing all this new information at them.
Jack sputtered, "Me?"
"Yes," Rochelle confirmed quietly, as though it was the simplest thing in the world.
"But I don't even know what all this stuff in my head means!" he exclaimed.
She nodded, "I know. That's why I'm here. I want to help you decipher it all."
"How?" Sam asked. "It's an enormous wealth of information in a language we understand very little of. Daniel's been studying it for years, and it still takes him a while to figure everything out."
Daniel seemed less than pleased with Sam's not exactly flattering depiction of his Ancient knowledge even though he knew she meant well. He spoke up, "The Asguard have nearly a third of the repository in their computers, and they have yet to figure it out. They don't even know what half of it means, and their knowledge is almost as old as the Ancients."
"But he does know what it means," Rochelle insisted, hitching her thumb at Jack.
"No I don't!" Jack insisted with equal fervor.
"You do too," she replied firmly, like a mother scolding a petulant child. "You just don't know you do."
"Come again?"
Rochelle sighed, and turned to Daniel, "How did you ascertain the repository didn't disappear when General O'Neill revived."
Daniel paused, "The last time Jack...'downloaded' the Ancients' knowledge, his brain began working at 90% capacity, After the Asguard removed it all to keep it from killing him, his brain returned to the usual 5-10% load. When he revived, the doctors ran a bunch of medical tests, including an MRI. The scan showed that his brain was working at 60-75% capacity. We theorized that all the information was still there, but that he had lost the ability to understand it during the healing process, which led to the decrease in capacity."
Rochelle nodded, "I agree." She turned to Jack, "I think you're storing the repository in the part of your brain humans don't use. And without the 'cheat sheet' you had before, the part of you're brain that is always used isn't recognizing it as anything useful."
Jack just blinked and looked at Sam for an explanation.
Sam nodded slowly, taking a deep breath as she tried to explain what she thought Rochelle was saying. "The brain is the most complex and uncharted part of the human body. We only use about five to ten percent of our brains at any given time, but no one knows why. Medical research has been trying to map the human brain for years. "
"Come on, Carter," Jack joked. "You mean to tell me that with all that technobabble gobbledy gook you talk at me all the time, you're still only using ten percent of your brain?" His eyes sparkled mischievously.
"I'm just using it more efficiently, sir," she replied, humoring him. "The point is, the purpose and function of the other two thirds is a mystery."
Jack sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, let's say all that crap is in the unused two thirds of my head. I still don't know how to get at it or know what the hell any of it means."
"That's where I come in," Rochelle replied.
"And how, pray tell?" Jack asked.
"Well, first off, it turns out that I can read Ancient."
Daniel's eyes went wide with shock. "Wait.... what???"
"How?" Sam asked.
Rochelle shrugged, "I don't know. When I began reading the information the General had given both times, I could just--read it. Understand it." Her eyes twinkled with excitement. "Lends credibility to my theory that the Ancients created Immortals, doesn't it?"
"No kidding," Daniel replied, stunned. "I've been trying to decipher it for eight years, and I'm, at best, only a quarter of the way towards understanding it all."
She turned to him, remarking, "Well then we have a lot to discuss, Dr. Jackson, don't we?"
Daniel nodded wordlessly, exchanging glances briefly with Jack. Had she just flirted with him? Jack, however, was no help.
"Okay, so you're our Unabridged Ancient Dictionary," Jack began. "How do you propose I get at any of it?"
"Well," she drawled, pausing as though trying to carefully choose her words. "I'm a telepath."
This meeting should have come with seat belts.
"A what now?" Jack gaped. No one, not even Mac's niece, was going to go digging around in his head.
"Are all Immortals telepathic?" Sam asked, amazed by the possibilities.
Rochelle shook her head, "When one Immortal takes the head of another, all the energy and knowledge of that Immortal is transferred to the victor. Some Immortals, for whatever reason, possess what we call Gifts--among them are the power to control dreams; the power to change one's complete physical appearance, and the power to read the thoughts and feelings of others." She paused, allowing the information to sink in. "In the beginning, I could only read the thoughts of other Immortals. My abilities with mortals were limited only to the empathic. Over time, my abilities extended to mortals as well. I also developed the ability to delve into any mind I wish and extract whatever information I need."
"That's one hell of an interrogation tool," Jack remarked grimly. Rochelle pursed her lips but said nothing, confirming Jack's suspicions that she'd used her abilities as an interrogative tool numerous times.
Rochelle broke the silence in the room, "Since my husband died, I've walled off my ability even to sense emotions. Immediate telepathy would probably overwhelm me right now. But I can build back up to it. Once I get there, I can start extracting the repository. Once we get it all out of your head, General, we can begin comprehending it."
"And you hope to find the origins of Immortals in there," Daniel surmised.
She nodded, "I'm not going to lie; that is my objective. But the possibilities are endless. The defensive, scientific, and anthropological information could be priceless."
"Just wanna help humanity, eh?" Jack teased. She was a good negotiator. In one full swoop, she had just appealed to all four of them, in different ways. Cunning little thing.
"And kick some Goa'uld ass," Rochelle replied cheekily. "I'm all for the ass kicking."
Jack looked at Sam and Daniel, his eyes sparkling devilishly. "See? I told you I'd like her."
Sam merely sighed and rolled her eyes. Daniel shot him a look that said "Riiiiiiiiiiiiight."
"They're humoring me," Jack whispered conspiratorially to Rochelle. "They think I'm really stupid."
"No," Sam began, trading looks with Daniel.
"Not really stupid," Daniel finished, unable to hide his grin.
Jack resisted his urge to stick his tongue out at them, especially after he swore he heard Teal'c snort in amusement. Teal'c! With the snorting! This was a very strange day.
Nevertheless amused by the display, Rochelle continued, "I know my request to keep all this classified initially seemed a bit--odd, but I hope now you understand. Other than my family and the new leader of my former agency, you four are the only people on this planet who know about my telepathy and Immortality. I need that information to stay classified. I was a tempting enough target just by letting my Immortality leak to the wrong people. I'm sure there are even those in your government who would like a crack at me if they discovered it or any of my other hidden talents."
They all nodded in agreement.
"Okay," Jack said. "Everything we just discussed stays in this room. If at any time it becomes apparent that this information goes beyond the four of us, it is on a case by case, need to know basis."
"Just one thing," Daniel said. "Everyone more or less knows that we're getting a member of a foreign government in SG-1. We're going to need a cover story as to where she came from and why."
Rochelle pursed her lips, "The basic story still holds. In the spirit of good faith, the USAF agreed to take a member for the international community into its ranks. I could say I'm MI-5."
"You don't have a British accent," Jack pointed out.
She frowned, "And I don't really have the patience to adopt one for the duration. Hmmm."
"What about Interpol?" Sam suggested. "Then you wouldn't have to worry about any accents. Your own is fairly Gaelic."
"She's not Scottish, Sam," Jack said. He frowned. "Well I mean, 'MacLeod'...." He sighed tiredly, "You know what I mean."
"Gaelic, in this case, means her speaking voice has no discernible European accent, but it's not the American standard either," Daniel informed him.
Glazing right over his gaffe, Jack looked at his friends and colleagues. "Anyone opposed to the Interpol angle?"
"It sounds like a logical explanation, O'Neill," Teal'c spoke up. Ah, they had the approval of the man of few words. "I believe this entire venture to be most beneficial for Stargate Command."
Jack looked around at his friends, his most trusted advisors. Teal'c, the logical Jaffa, the great warrior and increasingly human stoic. Daniel, the wise archeologist and linguist, his brother and best friend, a man who'd lost his wife and his life and was still, in a way, sorting out his path in life. Sam, the beautiful, smart, sexy, kick-ass woman who had been his 2IC for eight years and had now privileged him by becoming his lover, the woman he loved. He trusted them with his life and knew he'd need their help time and again as situations he wasn't prepared to deal with arose during the first months and probably years of his command. He knew, without a doubt, that they'd be there for him every step of the way.
"Teal'c says it's ok," he remarked wryly. "I don't need much more convincing than that, do you?"
Sam smiled. She knew adding Rochelle to SG-1, a team that could survive perfectly well as a three man team, was a somewhat risky venture. They were so ingrained with each other, so embedded, so close, they could practically finish each other's sentences. Rochelle was an unknown to them, as they were to her. Adding her to the well-oiled machine of SG-1 would be like trying to get used to a prosthetic limb after losing an appendage. They had lost Jack to command but were gaining an Immortal telepath. The possibilities and benefits were enormous. It might be bumpy at first, but they'd work it out.
Daniel took a cursory glance at Rochelle out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't sure how he felt about her. He knew, logically, that the pros of her joining SG-1 outweighed the cons. But it was her background in special ops that worried him. She had been trained as a ruthless assassin for a totally autonomous agency. That kind of conditioning didn't just go away. At the same time, he couldn't help but feel overwhelmingly drawn to her. He'd felt it, like a magnetic pull, the moment she'd walked in the room. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt. It wasn't lust; it wasn't desire. It was...odd, unsettling, and irresistible. Perhaps that was why he had an uneasy feeling about adding her to the team. Not that he had a choice. The President had ordered it. Jack, Sam, and Teal'c were for it. Even if every fiber of his being had been screaming for them not to add her, he would have been severely outnumbered.
"Works for me," he replied evenly.
Sam nodded, "Me too."
Teal'c nodded, having already said all he had to say on the matter.
Jack beamed and extended his hand to Rochelle. "Welcome to Stargate Command, Agent MacLeod."
Rochelle returned the smile and handshake, "Thank you, sir. I look forward to serving with all of you." She rose from her seat and extended her hand to Sam, then Teal'c. Daniel was last. "Dr. Jackson," she said amiably.
Daniel held her gaze but did not immediately take her hand. The pull was stronger now than before, and he felt strange, as though he was being lightly tickled from the inside out.
Before he could figure it out and return the gesture, the klaxons began to sound. Davis's voice rang out over the intercom, "Unauthorized offworld activation!"
SG-1 and the base commander exchanged worried glances. Jack turned to Rochelle, who for the first time since they'd met her, looked a bit on edge. Good. She had feathers that could be ruffled.
Jack turned to her and said blithely, "Welcome to the SGC, MacLeod. Hope you're ready to get your feet wet." He turned and jogged from the briefing room, his flagship team directly at his heels.