EXPLANATION TIME

He came running into the courtyard, wearing ivory coloured linen pants and shirt with a long, heavy, dark grey coat, and pulled her up from the stone bench, "Lets go for a walk outside," he whispered. Now aware that Anubis' focus had turned to him, he was fearful that their previous conversation may have been overheard somehow by someone within the fort.

The lush grass swayed in a light breeze around dirt paths he knew from memory. They had gotten caught up in the celebrations of his return as they tried to sneak through the city square and Lantash was still annoyed at all the flower confetti that stuck to his coat and was throwing pieces onto the ground as they walked.

There was an urgency in his tone, "You have to get back to the Tok'ra as soon as possible. I have told Anubis too much. Warn the council immediately upon your arrival. I will take you to the gate room tomorrow.

"After your return I am uncertain of what will happen here so I must tell you some of the things I have found out. I should start at the beginning since you have not been briefed. The mission nine years ago that brought me here is of no interest, suffice to say, the council had heard that there were medical experiments being conducted here so I was sent with Aylin and Misra and we infiltrated the army. For a few years we were entirely successful but then I got into a fight. The antagonist, a soldier called Elio, accused me of espionage, which I'm sure he thought he was a lie at the time. My Ôteam mates' were soon caught. They were... " he shook his head in anger and pain, "the scientists extracted our symbiotes. I can't remember anything much after that, and I wouldn't know that fact at all if I had been the first restrained on that operating table...

"There is a room here where rebel symbiotes are kept in stasis and that is where I found Lantash after Kaya's murder."

He took a moment then recounted of the events after he awoke in the gold chamber, from his search for Lantash to his arrest on Tollana. Then he skipped ahead to the last few days.

"Ganev sent me to assassinate Torres thinking I would succeed easily due to the state Torres was in, emotionally and physically. In reality Torres was more dangerous than ever, somehow he'd lost all self control and he strongly desired to kill me. If Ganev had known that, he would have planned better."

Sam frowned, "are you sure of that?"

He stopped, "what do you mean?"

She tugged at her dress caught in the rubble as she came back from a few steps ahead of him on the path, "Are you sure he didn't know? Well, why would he care? I mean, the other guy was your 'brother' and he didn't seem to have a problem doing that to you."

"True," he did begin to wonder if she could be right about that, "I don't have any evidence that this is the case with the general yet, though."

Lantash hesitated awhile as something occurred to him, "no, I think you're right about the general after all."

"He's out to get you?"

"He shot you, Samantha, and I can't reconcile that with what he said about wanting Torres dead all along."

There was a contemplative silence.

"Be careful."

"Never," he winked.