Chapter 2

"Are you sure this is really necessary, sir?" Lt. Col. Samantha Carter asked skeptically as SG-1 joined the General at the briefing table later that day. "The whole thing sounds a little farfetched to me. How do you know, um, the boy . . . ."

"His name is Jake, Carter."

"Okay, Jake. How do you know Jake's not just imagining things, or making it up. He's got to be pretty bored being in high school after living, well, excuse me for saying, sir, but after having lived 'your' life."

O'Neill forced himself to keep from clasping his hands together in front of him and instead picked up a pen and began tapping it against his notebook. "Who is Jake, Carter?"

"Beg your pardon, sir."

"Come on, Carter. You're the one who explained it to me. Who is he?"

"He is a clone of you, O'Neill," Teal'c interjected evenly, "only with a much younger body because the clone did not grow to full maturity."

"Right. He's me. My life, my upbringing, my experiences, my knowledge of what the hell goes on around here. Tell me something, Carter. If I had to leave the SGC for some reason, do you see me calling you up and taking up your valuable time -- which I happen to know is usually being spent saving this planet, if not the entire galaxy -- on some wild goose chase, no matter how bored and unhappy I was?"

"No, sir," Carter responded reluctantly.

"So we give him the benefit of the doubt for now," O'Neill said. "Besides, if there's any possibility that any of the children of base personnel are at risk, we have an obligation to take it seriously. Those people put their lives on the line every day. The least we can do is make sure their families are kept safe while they're doing it."

"Yes, sir," Carter responded firmly.

"So where do we stand, Jack," Daniel asked.

"Today is Wednesday. Carter and I are visiting the school tomorrow to discuss the arrangements for the deep space telemetry talk and the recruiting visit which are both going to be held next Wednesday. One or both of us should be able to find excuses to visit the school for a few hours every day until then. Your teaching credentials should be ready this afternoon, but it may take another day or so to get you inserted in the sub pool without it sending up any red flags.

"I wanted to get Teal'c inside the school but I've run into problems with that, so I got him on the construction crew instead. He's not going to have as much freedom of movement there as I'd like, but it's the best that could be done on such short notice. But since Jake's report says one of the suspected bad guys is on the construction crew too, at least he'll be able to keep an eye on him.

"I'm holding off running the ID checks on our suspects until tomorrow afternoon to give us a chance to get inside. That way I can try to cover the run as a routine check on all high school personnel in preparation for the visit next week. I've already put in for a status check on our two people who are supposed to be inside and I should have the results by the end of the day. I want to know what happened to them. In the meantime, we have to trust Jake to handle things on his own and keep us informed."

As soon as the bell rang, Jake was out of his seat and heading toward the door with his backpack in one hand and his textbook and notebook in the other. Normally, Astronomy was his favorite class, but today he had been counting the minutes until he could escape. The adrenaline was pumping and he felt the familiar buzz of being on an op -- that feeling of excitement, apprehension and raw nervousness all rolled into one. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed that feeling until today.

Pretending he was trying to stuff his books into his backpack as he rushed down the hall, he let both fall to the floor, then let out a mild oath as he bent down to pick up the spilled contents of the backpack, using the opportunity to quickly scan the hall. Bad guy number 1 was at the far end dressed as a custodial worker and holding a large pushbroom he was supposed to be using to clean the hallway floors. Since his attention seemed to be on everything except his work, Jake noted he was doing an exceptionally poor job.

"Oh, wow. All your stuff spilled, Jake. That sucks. Do you need some help?" came a slightly breathy female voice.

Jake froze for a minute then slowly let his eyes rise to behold Lindsay McMenamin, a very blond, buxom, blue-eyed cheerleader, who was leaning over, looking at him intently. His mouth went dry and he had to keep telling himself, your body is a 16 year old's, remember that. There are hormones at work here. It is not at all perverted to be thinking that 16 year old girl is incredibly hot.

"Thanks, Lindsay," he finally forced out, managing not to stammer, "but I've got it under control. Thanks for stopping, though."

"Well, if you're sure," she said, batting her eyelashes at him as she smiled, but making no move to leave.

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Listen, Jake, um, some of us are going out for pizza later. Would you be interested in coming?"

Jake's heart had been thudding in his chest and now it revved up to full hammering. "That sounds great," he responded while he placated his inner voice by telling it, I'm still doing the job. After all, she is one of the people they've been watching.

Yeah, sure, I really buy that one, his inner voice shot back.

"Great," she said with a shy smile. "Meet us in the parking lot after practice. That should be around 4:30."

"Cool. I'll be there," he replied. "I need to do some research for a paper anyway, so I can go hang out in the library for awhile."

"Okay, but you're more than welcome to come watch us practice. It's always nice to get feedback on our routines."

Jake's heart felt like it had simply stopped beating. Had he really just been invited to watch the cheerleaders practice. He felt a flush rising in his face and fought it back down. "I do have to get that research done, but it shouldn't take too long. I should be out there before you're finished."

"Cool. I'll see you then," she said, gracing him with one of her brightest smiles before she turned and flounced away.

High school definitely has its perks, Jake thought to himself as he watched her appreciatively until she disappeared around the corner. Shoving the last book into his backpack, he suddenly remembered what he'd been doing before he'd been interrupted. He shot a quick glance down the hall, but realized number 1 was gone.

"Damn, you're losing it O'Neill. Gotta get those hormones under control," he muttered under his breath as he tossed the backpack over his shoulder and headed down the hall to try to scope out the bad guys.

An hour later, Jake made his way to the football field behind the high school. The construction crew working on the new wing that would parallel the short side of the playing field had finished for the day, but he saw several workmen lingering, pretending to clean up, although their attention was clearly focused on the practicing cheerleaders and football players and not their work.

A quick glance showed him what he was looking for, numbers 3 and 4 were located at opposite ends of the construction area -- number 3 behind the fence in his construction worker garb ogling the cheerleaders, while number 4, who was dressed as a groundskeeper and appeared to be cleaning up the area of the field just outside the construction zone, kept throwing surreptitious glances at the football players, particularly the linebacker, Scott Norcross, who Jake knew was the son of one of the gateroom technicians.

Jake's roundabout route to the library had netted him another look at number 1, who had been sweeping the hallway over by the science labs. A quick glance through one of the lab doors as he hurried by had shown Adrienne Reynolds, daughter of one of the base nurses, doing a make up lab. When he'd arrived at the library, number 2 had already been there in her guise as a library aide. Jake had felt a twinge of anxiety when he realized the smiling freshman she was helping was Laurie Foster, another of the 'SGC 13' as he'd come to refer to his group of SGC protectees.

The only one he hadn't seen yet today was number 5, the wildcard. Jake didn't like the thought of any of the bad guys being unaccounted for, but he tried to reassure himself with the reminder that he wasn't even sure yet if number 5 was with the other four.

Jake settled himself casually on one of the upper risers of the bleachers in front of the cheerleaders. The location made it easy for him to appear to be focused on the girls, while still allowing him to glimpse most of the area around the field out of the corner of his eyes without having to be obvious about it.

Lindsay saw him and gave him a little finger wave accompanied by a beaming smile, all without disrupting the flow of the intricate dance move she was executing. Jake nodded and smiled in return, letting his face relax into the type of sappy grin adults would expect from a teenage boy watching a bunch of sexy girls in tight-fitting outfits.

As he settled in to watch the rest of the practice session, Jake felt the buzz going through him again, that hyper feeling of super awareness when you were on the job, working an op and it was going just as planned. He hadn't allowed himself to think about it in so long that it was difficult now to realize how much of himself he'd had to give up in order to play his assigned role as 'typical teenage boy'.

He heard the girls cheering and kept his eyes pointed toward them and the smile plastered on his face, but Jake was lost in thought about the strange twist his life had taken. The last year had been his own personal version of hell. It had been hard enough trying to accept that even though he had the mind and memories of a man approaching 50, having the body of a 15 year old meant he'd have to start an entirely new life as a teenager. He couldn't have any contact with his family or former friends and wasn't even able to use his own name. Unable to give up his past entirely, he'd finally decided on Jacob O'Neill Wilcox to go with the new identity the Air Force had created for him.

But then he'd been slapped in the face by the limitations of the cloned body the Asgard, Loki, had grown for him. The first time he'd been 15, he'd been lean, fit and muscular from years of exercise, athletics and shoveling the huge amounts of snow every Minnesota winter brought. It had been especially galling the first time he'd attempted to do some of his usual training exercises to find that his new body was not limber or fit enough to handle it.

As if all of that hadn't been bad enough, he'd had to fight the Air Force tooth and nail to get them to push his physical age up a year in the records they were creating so that at least everyone would think he was 16, and then he'd had to fight them again to get them to agree to allow him to live as an emancipated minor. His blood still boiled when he thought about the 'parents' they'd attempted to foist on him at first. He had a feeling either Jack O'Neill or General Hammond had called in some big favors to help smooth that particular wrinkle, but he tried his best not to think about that. He didn't want to owe anyone anything, especially O'Neill.

Jake tried hard not to resent the fact that Jack had been the one to get to keep "their" life. He was the original after all. Jake understood that as a clone, he was just a copy -- and a defective one at that. But that didn't stop him from wanting to live, from wanting all the things he remembered having before, and, most importantly, from wanting people to give him the respect he'd earned from three decades of dedicated service in the military.

I used to be a pilot, I've visited other planets through the stargate, I've been a prisoner of war and I was involved in black ops, for Christ's sake, he thought disgustedly to himself. Shit, I've saved the planet at least a dozen times but now my biggest challenge is figuring out what a couple of goons are doing hanging around the high school. And I can't even do a little thing like that without having to call in the cavalry. You've turned into one big LOSER, O'Neill!

That line of thought was taking him nowhere good, so Jake mentally shifted gears to remind himself that he'd overcome all those obstacles, and now, with a little financial help from the Air Force, along with the money he had saved while working all summer, he had his own small apartment, owned an old Thunderbird that he had saved from the salvage yard and was slowly restoring, worked out regularly at a gym and was working his way steadily to black belts in both karate and tae kwon do. And even better, his made up birthday had passed a month ago so now he got to pretend to be 17 instead of 16.

He'd also grown two inches and added a lot of muscle from his various activities, which included being a school star in track, as well as hockey. Track had never been a sport he was particularly interested in, but before she died Janet Fraiser had recommended it to him as a way to build up his new body's stamina and endurance, and he'd been pleased to find out it really worked. After Janet's death, actually winning a few meets had been a big morale booster at a time he'd really needed something positive in his life. His bi-weekly checkups with Janet in her office at the hospital had been his last tie to the SGC, and once she was gone, he'd felt totally cut off from his old life and his old friends. The new doctor who had taken over for her was a stranger, and Jake had immediately lobbied General Hammond to get the checkups cut back to their current schedule of every other month.

But the thing that had really turned his attitude around had been the decision to start taking flying lessons so he could get certified under his new name. Having to take the lessons galled him considering the number of flight hours, including combat missions, he already had under his belt, but he considered it time well spent since, as always, once he was in the air, all of his earthly problems seemed to melt away. It also helped that his instructor was an old friend of General Hammond's who allowed him a lot of leeway in performing aerial maneuvers no novice should be attempting.

Things had gotten better, but none of what he'd accomplished in the past year came close to the rush he was feeling right now. Jake tried not to think about what it would be like having to return to his make believe life as a high school student when this was all over. And, in spite of the rush, there was also a small, rebellious part of him that wished he didn't have to deal with the situation at all and could just let it all go, leaving everything in Jack's very capable hands. He could almost imagine himself hopping into his car with Lindsay, putting the top down, and heading for the airstrip right now.

"Hey, Jake! What did you think?"

Jake was brought roughly back to the present by the question, but he managed not to let the fact that he hadn't been paying attention show on his face. Lindsay was staring up at him expectantly, so he beamed a dazzled smile directly at her and said, "Wow! That was great. You're terrific. I mean, all of you were terrific," he stammered.

She tilted her head and gave him a flirtatious smile, "Thanks. For both compliments. We need to change, then we'll be right out. Do you mind if I ride with you, if you have your car that is?"

"Sure, no problem," Jake said, glad he'd cleaned it out when he'd stopped for gas that morning and trying to remember if he'd left anything in it she shouldn't see. The lack of sleep the last few days was getting to him and he was a little worried that it was starting to affect his memory. He knew he hadn't left anything in the car interior in case the bad guys were looking through the windows when he wasn't around, but he couldn't remember what was in the trunk.

The 9mm Beretta he'd managed to buy three days ago from a very shady source on the street was safely hidden, unloaded, in a secret compartment sewn into his backpack along with several clips of ammunition. An extra box of ammunition was stowed in the spare tire well of the car and more was hidden under a floorboard in the apartment. A small knife was secreted in a sheath he'd worked into his left boot.

Getting caught with either the knife or the gun in school would bring a heap load of trouble down on him, but Jake wasn't willing to take the chance of going up against five potentially dangerous adversaries totally unarmed. It would be better to have a zat, but they weren't exactly available from your usual street sources and wouldn't be easy to hide even if he could get his hands on one.

A small frown creased his forehead when he imagined the look on Jack's face if he found out Jake was carrying the weapons, especially inside the school. The frown deepened when he thought about the possibility of actually having to use them there.

Just then, Lindsay burst out of the gym entrance with a big smile on her face, and he felt a burst of anger that anyone would threaten to unbalance the safe, normal world she and the others took for granted. Knowing the goa'uld were out there – a constant threat to all humanity -- was bad enough, but the thought that there were those of their own species who might want to cause these kids harm made his blood boil.

As he watched Lindsay approach, her face lit with happiness, the cold certainty settled into his chest that he would do anything he had to in order to protect her and the others from harm. No matter what the consequences to himself.

"Do you mind if a couple of the girls ride with us?" Lindsay asked as she came up to him.

"No problem," he responded. "We can fit three comfortably in the backseat, four if they don't mind being a little squished."

"Cool," she said flashing him another brilliant smile as she slipped her arm through his and they headed toward the parking lot.

Jack O'Neill frowned at the report on his desk and read it for the third time. It still didn't make any sense. A knock at the door pulled his attention from it. "Come in."

The door opened to Samantha Carter. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I just wanted to check in about the visit to the school tomorrow. Are we doing full dress uniforms or civvies?"

"Full dress uniforms," O'Neill said absently.

"Aren't you concerned about blowing our cover, sir?"

"No, Carter. I want the bad guys to know we're there. I'm less concerned with them bolting and disappearing than I am with the possibility of them hurting any of those kids. Even if we lose them for now, I have a feeling they'll turn up again at some point."

"Is something wrong, sir? You seem . . . unsettled."

He picked up the report and handed it to her. "Does this make any sense to you?"

She scanned the document quickly. "I don't understand, sir. Our two people assigned to the school are both on vacation? At the same time? With no assigned replacements for either of them?"

"Look at the authorization."

"General Hammond?" she said incredulously. "General Hammond would never do such a thing without notifying you."

"I have a call in to him right now, but his secretary says he's in a meeting with the President and won't be reachable for at least another hour."

"This situation gets stranger by the minute, sir.

"Curiouser and curiouser, Colonel. And I don't like it. I don't like it at all."