After Ryu got a quick change of clothes the group relocated themselves to the briefing room.
"So Selmak you wanna tell them or should I?" Ryu asked once they were all settled.
"Oh by all means go right ahead." Selmak replied.
"Ok now before I start ya'll might wanna make sure you're comfy this could take awhile."
"Just get on with it please." Hammond spoke up.
"Right so any quick little questions before I really get into the story?"
"I have one." Janet spoke. "How were you able to tell that Major Carter was once a Tok'ra host? You have no naquada in your blood and even if you did you wouldn't be able to tell if the person was Goa'uld or Tok'ra, let alone the name of the symbiote."
"Simple by scent."
"By scent?"
"Yeah. For those of you who may not have noticed before I'm a mutant, and I'll assume you've all heard of mutants how could you've not? And one of my abilities are heightened senses you know sight, sound, smell. Any way just like people every symbiote has their two basic scents: their base scent and their individual scent.
The base scent is what tells me if a person is a mutant or a non-mutant, or in this case or Tok'ra or a Goa'uld. And the individual scent is what tells me who the person is. The more I'm around a person the more I'm able to distinguish their individual scent from others and I knew Jolinar's scent quite well she was like a sister to me."
"But I no longer have Jolinar in me…" Sam jumped in.
"So how was I able to pick up her scent? Basically when a person and a symbiote merge they become one and essentially the host winds up with four slightly merge scents. So even though you no longer carry Jolinar, remnants of her scent are still with you. That answer your questions?"
"Yeah, but you know what? With all the weird and unusual stuff I deal with on a daily basis, the whole mutant issue has never really seemed all that big a deal and interesting to me as it is to other people, so what do say we put the whole mutant thing aside and get to the real issue here?" Jack stated. "How the hell do you know about the Tok'ra and stuff like that?"
"Right…ok to answer that question we're gonna have to get into a bit of a history lesson. What do you know if anything about Rama-Tut and Apocalypse?"
Everyone in the room automatically turned to look at Daniel.
"Um…let's see off the top of my head…I believe they were pharaohs in ancient Egypt roughly some 5,000 years ago or so. I couldn't tell much other than that with out doing some research."
"Yes, but I bet you didn't that Rama-Tut was a Goa'uld, but not just any Goa'uld. He was a Goa'uld from the future who had managed to get his hands on some seriously kick-ass advanced technology. He used that technology to travel back in time to before Ra ever stepped foot on earth, hoping he could use it to his advantage and become the big head honcho instead of Ra... You all may want to take notes I might be quizzing you later…" The others just glared at Ryu, silently telling him to get on with the story. "…Or maybe not."
"Anywayat this same time the first known mutant, En Sabah Nur, was born." Ryu turns to Jack. "And yes I know you don't care about the mutant issue but this is important to the story.
Any way En Sabah Nur, originally a nameless gray-skinned mutant was abandoned at birth to die in the harsh Egyptian desert. However, his cries were heard and a tribe of bandits led by a warrior named Baal rescued him…and no it wasn't the System Lord Baal this was a totally different guy.
Baal named him En Sabah Nur, meaning "The First One" and installed the basic philosophy of the bandit tribe: Survival of the Fittest into En Sabah Nur. Under Baal's tutelage and protection, En Sabah Nur became a powerful, almost invincible warrior. No one could touch him because of his mutant prowess.
During this time, the Pharaoh Rama-Tut fell from the skies, carrying with him a great futuristic technology, which he used to conquer his part of Egypt. However, when word came to him of En Sabah Nur, and his many victories in battle, Rama-tut ordered his destruction, seeing En Sabah Nur as a real threat to his power. Rama-Tut's warriors/Jaffa, what ever you wanna call them, killed all of the bandits, including Baal, but En Sabah Nur survived and was enraged.
In a murderous, vengeful rampage En Sabah Nur used all of his powers and decimated Rama-Tut's armies and land. Witnessing the rampage Rama-Tut realized that with En Sabah Nur as a host he could rule not only all of earth but the entire galaxy. So after luring the mutant into one finale battle Rama-Tut allowed En Sabah Nur to deliver a deadly blow to his host and used that moment to take En Sabah Nur as his new host.
With his new host the Goa'uld quickly rose to power again and took the name Apocalypse, due to all the death and destruction his host had caused. While searching through what remained of his empire Apocalypse found his queen symbiote dead and only four surviving symbiotes all in need of a host, leaving him with no way to create an army of Jaffa.
So taking the four symbiotes Apocalypse found the four greatest warriors alive, two male and two female and had them implanted with the symbiotes. But before making them hosts Apocalypse used an artifact called the Eye of Ages, which he planned to use "To reshape the world in his image" to turn them into mutants like him. Each warrior was given abilities in one of the four basic types of mutant powers: Elemental, Feral, Molecular, and Psionic. These four warriors were renamed War, Famine, Plague, and Death: The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse.
Over time the Elemental and Feral fell in love and had a son and the Molecular and Psionic fell in love and had a daughter. Each child had the abilities and most of the memories of their parents. For years the children were kept secrete from Apocalypse, but eventually he learned of their existence and became furious.
Fearing for the lives of their children the horsemen betrayed Apocalypse and trapped him in side the Eye of Ages locking it behind three doors hoping he would never be released. Knowing if Apocalypse were ever freed he would slaughter them, the four horsemen left earth when their children were old enough to look out for themselves, leaving their children behind to keep watch over Apocalypse's tomb.
Like their parents, over time the children fell in love with each other and had children of their own: twins, one boy and one girl. Those children were my sister Arina and myself. We were pure bloods; we had the blood of all four horsemen running through our veins, and all of their abilities as well, powers to rival those of Apocalypse's."
"Ok there is no way I'm going to believe you're nearly 5,000 years old. How would that even be possible?" Jack interrupted.
"If you'll just hold your horses I'll get to that. Now where was I? …Oh right…my sister and me. Anyway my mother, having pre-cog skills, saw many possible futures where Apocalypse was eventually released and she along with my father knew that my sister and I were probably the only hope of stopping him if that ever happened. So when Arina and I were around ten our parents, using the last of the advanced technology not being used to hold Apocalypse, altered our DNA some how so that for roughly every 225 years that go by we aged physically one year.
Eventually our parents died of old age and not long after Ra came to earth. Fearing another Apocalypse scenario my sister and I did what we could to thwart Ra at every turn and keep him from becoming too powerful with out actually being discovered. On one such occasion we sorely underestimated Ra and were almost killed, but at the last second a young Tok'ra named Selmak saved us. Grateful we told Selmak everything about us feeling we could trust the Tok'ra who had saved our lives.
Apparently the Tok'ra had heard stories and rumors about Rama-Tut and Apocalypse because Selmak didn't seem to surprised by our story. Hell the Tok'ra even had a prophecy or something like that about how one day Apocalypse would rise again and only a pure blood, known as the Mah'di, would be able to stop him.
Believing either my sister or myself to be that Mah'di the Tok'ra took us in willingly and taught us everything about their ways. Feeling we had learned everything we could from the Tok'ra we returned to earth and helped lead an uprising against Ra and any other Goa'uld that was on earth, driving them off the planet. Unfortunately my sister was killed towards the end of the rebellion.
Afterwards I felt like I had nothing, no purpose. My reason for fighting was gone so instead of returning to the Tok'ra I stayed here on earth, wandering around from place to place searching for something anything to give me a purpose, a reason to fight again.
Finally a few years ago, after hundreds of years of searching, I found what I was looking for with a group of mutants known as the X-Men. But even I knew it couldn't last forever, if I stayed too long I risked them finding out who and what I really was, so a couple of years ago I left as much as I hated to and have been on my own since."
Done speaking Ryu sat down in one of the empty seats and waited to see if any of the others had anything to say. Nobody spoke for quite some time, all busy taking in and thinking about what Ryu had told them.
"Why now?" Jacob broke the silence. "Why after all these years did you use the Stargate to contact the Tok'ra?"
"To be honest that was never my intention, I didn't come to Colorado to find the gate and contact the Tok'ra. Hell as far as I had known the Stargate was still buried."
"Then for what purpose were you in the area?" Teal'c questioned.
"I was in the area freeing some mutants that were being held by The Friends of Humanity. One thing led to another I got chased, found an access hatch to this place, did a little exploring of the vent system; fell through a vent, and so on. When I figured out the Stargate was here I figured what the hell I may as well get a hold of Tok'ra, I'm gonna need all the help I can get."
"Help with what?" Selmak inquired.
"Oh did I forget to mention the little fact that Apocalypse has almost gotten himself free again?"
"Uh yeah." Jack answered.
"Yeah you see there's this mutant, calls himself Mesmero, that has managed to unlock the first two doors and is currently trying to find the key to unlock the third door. The X-Men and what not are trying to find the third key before Mesmero and keep him from unlocking the third door, but I fear they may not succeed."
"These X-Men just what exactly do they know about Apocalypse?" General Hammond jumped in, a slight tone of worry in his voice.
"Don't worry they don't know anything about the Goa'uld or any of that. All they know is that Rama-Tut was an alien from the future, got his but kicked by Apocalypse, and that Apocalypse is a powerful super mutant bent on world domination. They don't want him free any more than we do. Mutants have a bad enough rep as it is but throw in a homicidal, power hungry, nut job, maniac and it'll impossible for us mutants to live with you non-mutants peacefully."
"Alright, so how can we help?" Sam asked.
"That I haven't quite figured out yet. We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it."