"How can we not know what causes this damn thing?" Janet grated out through gritted teeth. "How is it possible that they go for years without seeing so much as a trace of it, then it suddenly sweeps through the population like wild fire?"
"Maybe it lies dormant and awakens every few years?" Sam suggested.
"We have considered that," Meese said as he emerged from behind the quarantine curtain. "However, there is no pattern to be found in the amount of time that elapses between each outbreak." He sighed and rubbed a weary hand across his forehead. "We have been researching for decades, but so far have found nothing of use in preventing or curing this disease. I, among others, am more inclined to believe it is a curse brought down upon us by the gods themselves, from which there can be no salvation."
"Don't give up on it just yet, Meese," Janet encouraged him, though she was running a little low in the hope department herself. "Now that we're helping you in your research, chances are better that we'll come up with something. Besides, the Goa'uld are not gods..."
"So your people have told us," Meese said. "You have yet to offer us any proof of this, I might point out."
Janet sighed and massaged her aching temples. "I'm sorry, Meese, but I really don't have the time right now to prove anything to you. You'll just have to take my word for it. They're evil alien parasites who take over the bodies of humans in order to inflict pain and suffering on..." Her voice trailed off as a light bulb went on in her brain.
"Janet? Are you okay?"
She barely registered Sam's concerned voice as her thoughts started turning a million miles an hour. "Meese, where did your people get the idea that this disease was a curse from the gods? Was it just something you came up with randomly because there was no other explanation to be found, or is there a particular reason?"
Meese looked confused for a moment, but he soon answered, "I am not sure. It is something our ancestors believed when the mind fever first came upon us, but our modern scientists have dissuaded us against these beliefs and convinced most that they are just myths and superstition."
Janet glanced over at Sam excitedly, hoping the other woman's thoughts were going in the same direction as hers. She was met with an identical expression that told her Sam had indeed come to the same conclusion.
"Even if the Goa'uld did create this illness somehow, that still doesn't tell us what triggers each epidemic or how to stop it," Sam reminded her.
"I know that, but they would have needed to create some kind of catalyst to bring it to the population. There's no way they could have engineered something like this to occur naturally, or hide it in their genetic structure without us being able to discover it. There must be something somewhere that serves to set this whole thing off."
"But what?"
Janet chewed on her lip and tapped her heel on the floor as she wracked her brain for an answer. As hard as it was, she had to think like a Goa'uld if she was going to solve this puzzle. What would a Goa'uld do if they wanted to start an epidemic...
Her thoughts soon turned to Cassandra, and the way Nirrti had been conducting experiments on the people of her village. She had planted a retrovirus in their DNA that would bring them one step closer to being hok'taur, and would then make them feel compelled to enter the forest and, consequently, her laboratory.
Wait... the forest...
"Meese, the little girl who first contracted the disease... where had she been in the hours before she fell ill?"
The healer looked confused for a moment as he replied, "As far as I know, she was only playing with the other children on the recreation grounds, until her parents came to take her home. Then, of course, when SG-1 arrived, she was with everyone else in the town center."
Janet hastily rose to her feet. "Show me."
"Wait," Sam commanded, jumping to her feet and blocking the doorway before Janet could go through. "I can't let you go, Janet. You know what the colonel said."
Janet resisted the urge to manually haul her friend out of her way and decided to merely voice her protest instead. "Sam, this is important. Life-or-death important. I have to find whatever made that little girl sick, or all of this will have been for nothing."
"I know how important it is, Janet, but not so much that you need to risk hurting yourself even more by..."
"What difference does it make?"
The entire room went deathly silent at Janet's frustrated outcry. She fought back the tears she felt pricking her eyelids and tried to bring herself back under control before she spoke again. "If Daniel dies, Sam... I don't give a damn what happens to me. And he will die if we don't find a way to treat this... 'mind fever' within the next hour, or possibly even less."
"What do you mean?"
"He was in contact with the infected for much longer than anyone else, Sam. There are more organisms in his system than even in those who have already died. He won't last much longer unless we do something now."
All colour drained from Sam's face at these words. She looked beseechingly over at Meese. "Is that true?"
Meese looked down at his hands and didn't answer. That in itself was confirmation enough.
"If he dies, I would rather die myself than sit around here doing nothing," Janet said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.
"I still can't let you go, Janet," Sam said, her voice breaking. "I'm sorry. Meese and I will go, but you're going to have to stay here."
As much as Janet appreciated the apologetic look in her friend's eyes, her anger and helplessness were too strong for her to see past them. "Fine," she huffed angrily. "Take Dr. Holmes with you. She'll know what you're looking for. I'll... stay here and do nothing," she added bitterly.
She turned away from the two of them and sat back down on her chair to resume watching Dr. Flietstra as he worked.
"Janet..."
"Just don't forget to get the go ahead from Colonel O'Neill first. The last thing you want to do is go against anything he says."
She heard Sam give a sigh of frustration, but Janet didn't turn around or acknowledge her further. She completely ignored her as she and Meese said goodbye and left the room.
"Have you really lost hope for his survival?" a soft voice broke the silence a moment later.
Janet blinked, wondering if she had imagined it. Dr. Flietstra was on the other side of the quarantine curtain, deeply engrossed in the autopsy he was performing, and he hadn't so much as paused or looked up throughout the previous exchange. "Excuse me?" she asked.
Dr. Flietstra did look over at her then. "You heard me," he said. "I'm surprised that you've given up hope already, Janet. You're always the one telling the rest of us never to give up until we've found the solutions we're looking for."
Janet sighed and looked down at her hands. "This time it really does seem hopeless," she said.
Flietstra dropped the instrument he was using into the surgical tray with a clatter. "That's bull, and you know it. If the Goa'uld can create something like this, it's also possible to create an antidote. That's the way these things work."
"Not always."
"Why are you so set on the idea that we're going to fail?" he demanded. "Have you really lost confidence in our abilities so quickly? Do you think that just because you can't be active in finding this cure, the rest of us can't handle it?"
"No!"
"Then why?"
"Because my..." She stopped and took a deep breath. "Because Daniel is dying in there, and I can't do a damn thing to stop it," she finished.
Dr. Flietstra's tone became soft and sympathetic again in an instant. "And I ask you again, have you really given up hope that he will survive? Janet, after everything he's been through these last few years, surely you of all people know it's never hopeless."
Janet stifled another sob as it tried to break free. She was getting mighty tired of crying, and that just made her want to cry even more. She leaned forward in her chair and buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry, Brian," she said, not knowing whether he could hear her through her hands and not really caring one way or another. "I'm so tired, my head is throbbing... I just wish I could wake up and find it was all a bad dream."
"Well, maybe you should take Dr. Carmichael's advice and actually rest for a little while."
She looked up at him indignantly at this suggestion. Since when did he gain the right to boss her around? And how did he know what Andrew had told her, anyway?
"Janet..." His warning tone made it clear that he wasn't messing around. "You came up with an idea that Major Carter and Meese can work with. That was good. Now that your work here is done, you really should go somewhere quiet and try to relax. I'll send someone to check on you every now and then." He paused for a moment, but when Janet didn't move, he added, "Go!"
Janet went.
Once she was out in the hallway, she paused, not having a clue where she was supposed to go. Somewhere quiet... one of the empty wards? She knew that none of them had any cots left in them, but there were still chairs and various other pieces of furniture that would do for "resting." Oh how she was getting to despise that word.
The room she entered was dark, lit only by the light streaming through the open doorway from the hall. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust before she ventured very far inside. She sank down into the first chair she came across and propped her feet up on a low shelf nearby. It was actually more comfortable than she had expected it to be.
Within moments, she felt her body begin to relax, the throbbing in her head became muted and distant, and she began to drift off to sleep.
A few minutes later, however, she was jerked awake by the sound of footsteps outside the room. She opened her eyes in time to see a shadow move quickly past the doorway. For some reason, the sight gave her a chill of dread, as though it was some kind of omen that something horrible was about to happen.
"Dr. Fraiser?" she heard someone calling.
With a muffled groan, she rose slowly to her feet and shuffled wearily to the door.
"Dr. Fraiser, there you are," Nurse Penner greeted her as she emerged from the abandoned ward. She looked half frantic, and this fact didn't make Janet feel any better.
"What's happening? What's wrong?" Janet asked fearfully.
"It's Dr. Jackson," Penner replied. "He's suddenly taken a turn for the worst, Ma'am. Colonel O'Neill insisted I come and find you right away."
Janet felt as though the bottom had just dropped out of her world. 'Not now, Daniel,' she silently pleaded. 'Please don't die on me now.'
All traces of exhaustion melted away, and adrenaline took over as she followed the nurse back to the fever ward.
"This way, Major."
Sam and Rebecca Holmes followed Meese through the darkened streets to a park of some kind on the outskirts of the town.
"This is where the children play," he told them.
The streetlamps cast eerie shadows over the open area, and after being in the thick of a living nightmare back in the hospital, Sam found herself quite spooked by the atmosphere of the quiet, abandoned town. "Alright," she said, taking a deep breath and trying to steer her thoughts away from all things paranormal, "we need to check everything these kids might come across only once in a blue moon. We can start with that clump of trees over there."
"I'm sorry... blue moon?" Meese asked.
Sam couldn't help but smile at the man's confusion. "Sorry, Meese, it's just an expression where we come from. It just means something that's very rare."
"I see."
When they reached the small patch of trees, Sam shone her flashlight around the area to check for any visible anomalies they could look into. "I really wish we had daylight for this," she murmured.
"You and me both," Dr. Holmes said, sounding even more spooked than Sam felt.
Steeling her resolve, Sam stepped forward until she felt the branches close in around her. "Better get started," she said, trying to sound brave but failing miserably.
Meese grunted in dissatisfaction. "I really don't see what good searching these grounds will do," he said. "The children play here every day, yet the mind fever only strikes once or twice in a generation. If your friend's situation is as dire as you say, surely this is a waste of time."
"We can't rule out any possibility," Sam said absently as she examined an interesting looking bush.
"Then please, Major Carter, do not rule out the possibility that it has nothing to do with the place in which the children play."
Oh. He sort of had a point there.
"Okay," Sam conceded as she turned to look him in the face, "where do you suggest we look?"
He paused for a moment before answering. "There is a place," he said slowly, "that we have been forbidden to go for as long as any of us can remember. Sometimes the children dare each other to venture close, but even when they do, they never tell a soul for fear of being punished by the magistrate."
"What place is this?" Sam asked, her curiosity piqued.
"It is a strange structure," he said thoughtfully. "Strange writing is on the walls, a language we have never seen elsewhere and cannot translate."
Sam's heart started racing at this startling revelation. Could it be Goa'uld? Could this really be what they were looking for?
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" she demanded.
"I... I have never associated the structure with the mind fever until this moment," he defended weakly. "We are all forbidden to go near it, so I never thought..."
"Never mind. It doesn't matter," Sam interrupted. "Where is it?"
"I will take you there," he said, backtracking through the trees excitedly. "Come."
Sam called out to Holmes to follow them, and the three scientists jogged back the way they had
come.
To be continued...