Disclaimers and notes on Chapter One
Chapter Three: Waking With the Roaches
The scream echoes through Level 23 of the SGC. Airman First Class Wade Wilson flinches at the tone of agony it contains. Sergeant Lawrence Olivier (Larry gets teased all too often) stiffens. "The hell was that?"
"Dunno."
Larry looks at Wilson and narrows his eyes. "Why don't you go check it out?"
"Why don't you?" Wade snaps. He shifts, then, uncertain. "We could go together?"
"And leave our post unguarded?"
"Oh, yeah. Like someone's going to get this deep into the SGC." Wilson scoffs. He straightens, "I'm going. Stay here if you want."
The scream has made his blood run cold, it had sounded like a thousand tortured souls being torn to shreds. At least, that's what it probably sounded like. Of course the soundtrack for Scream had been better -- but this had been a real, live, human scream.
Carefully, he turns the corner. Ahead is storage room 19, randomly designated and often used by the younger officers (and scarily enough by the General himself) as a... retreat. So to speak.
No one was sure who had installed the mattress under one shelf. But bets were that it was Mrs. O'Neil, complaining about old bones and muscles. Or something like that.
Across the hall was storage room 20.
No one ever went in.
(It didn't have a broken security camera, after all)
Deciding that the scream had definitely not come from storage room 19 (if it had, he was SO not getting involved), Wilson stepped over and opened the other room's door.
There was a faint tang of ozone in the air, like the smell you get after the fourth sonic boom. And something else. Something he instinctively knew was blood. "Hello?"
Maybe that was stupid. Maybe he shouldn't call out--after all, if there were bad guys down here, then--something grabbed his shoulder. "AUGH!"
"Ease down, Wilson. It's just me."
"Larry, you son of a bitch, didn't anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on a guy?"
"Well, you were takin' so--oh, shit."
"Damn."
She should have been pretty. If the short golden hair was anything to go by, she would have been really classy. Right now, though, she was covered in blood and soot, the dress she'd been wearing barely covering her. It was tattered and obviously blood-stained.
"Medic!"
"Right." Larry hit the button, sending out the alarm, then grabbed for the nearest phone. "This is Sergeant Olivier. We have an unauthorized guest down here in storage room 20. And she needs medical assistance."
Wilson stopped listening as Larry detailed the information they knew. He crouched next to the woman, eyeing the way she was laying, then looking up at the solid used-to-be-mirrored surface in front of her. There were images through it, now. Tangles and multiples of the SGC and other people. And in one, a really menacing jaffa.
"Need to... turn it off..." The voice came from below him.
He looks down, meets pain-filled blue eyes. "What?"
"The mirror... turn it off."
"Oh. Right." He reaches down and pokes at the thing. By luck, he hits the off button. "Got it." He reports happily.
Sadly, there's no golden smile in response, as she's already passed out again.
Obscurely, he feels disappointed.
--
There are voices.
Not that this is a new thing, some part of her decides fuzzily. There have always been voices out there. And voices in here. Sam. Lieutenant Colonel Carter. Jolinar. Thera. And those are only the beginning, she decides as the stars collide and her world continues spinning out of control in her cocoon of pain and blood.
"Will she wake up, Doc?" This one is female, and strangely familiar.
Definitely not as familiar as the next one. "I'm not sure, ma'am. But she seems to be a fighter."
Janet. Oh, dear GOD. Janet's alive here. Wherever here is.
"She'd have to be to have survived what you described."
"Yes."
Janet. She wants to cry, suddenly. Wherever here is, she is safe. She hopes. And that is enough to propel her completely awake. To crack her eyes and stare up at blinding light. To croak, or try to. "Hey."
"She's awake."
"Don't sound so surprised, Janet. You said she was a fighter." Cool hands touch her, lift her head slightly. "Here, drink this."
Sam sips carefully from the proffered cup. The movement is almost enough to exhaust her. "Where... Where am I?"
The hand on her head stills, freezes. "I think a better question is who are you." There's military firmness in the clipped tones.
"I need to speak to General O'Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, or, or Teal'c." Please don't let this be like the last universe, please let this one be different, please let me be safe.
"Oh you do, do you?" The woman's voice is amused. "Honey, I don't get to see Jack all that often. Hell, I have to come here if I want to, half the time. What makes you think you're on his schedule?"
Finally, she has her eyes open. The woman standing next to her is tall and blonde, and she knows her. "Sara."
"You know me?"
"You're Sara O'Neill."
"She's got you there, Sara." Janet's voice is amused.
She doesn't want to turn and face her best friend come back from the dead. But she does it anyway, turns her head and takes in Dr. Janet Fraiser, petite and red-headed and so beautifully, wonderfully alive. "Oh, god. Janet." And it hurts.
"Hey." Sara's hand strokes through her hair. "It's all right."
No. It wasn't. But she has to suck it up. The tears go away for the moment (and she is not a cryer, she thinks fiercely. But this has been a stressful day). She feels, almost, safe. "My name is Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter."
She's looking at Janet still, waiting for the recognition.
It never comes.
But Sara O'Neill makes a strangled noise, and the hand in her hair twists, dragging her back to face the pale and suddenly shaking woman. "What did you just say?"
"Your dog tags say Major." Janet's voice says mildly.
"They belong to a different Sam Carter." She meets Sara's eyes. There's no question in her voice when she says, "I'm dead in this reality."
"You..." Sara's whole body doesn't want to be here. It's stiff and unyielding, and there's a strange pain in her eyes. "I didn't recognize you."
"It's all the blood," jokes Sam, her eyes worried. "Masks everything."
"You were so young..."
"Tell me."
"You'd just made Captain. Jack and I were so damn proud of you, and then..." The hand in her hair twitches, then Sara continues. "You'd come over as a surprise, Jack and I sent you inside to see Charlie--he adored you like an older sister. Which, given how often you were around wasn't a surprise."
She would not ask this woman about her family. Would not demand to know why she had, apparently, spent some time with them. A lot. Captain. She would have been working on the stargate, then.
"Jack had a gun in the house."
It suddenly becomes crystalline. Horribly clear and so obvious she wishes she could take back asking. "I must have surprised him."
"You did. We heard the gun go off. And then he screamed. I didn't know little boys could scream like that."
Sam knows she's crying, can feel the tears sliding down her cheeks. Blames them on the pain in her gut and ribs and the horror this reality contains. "I shouldn't have asked."
"No." Sara's head bows, her free hand reaching up and swiping at her own eyes. "I need to warn Jack. Seeing you, what you could have become--it could hurt him."
"I know." Feeling compelled, Sam says softly, "In my universe, I wasn't there. I was in the mountain working on the stargate. I didn't meet Jack O'Neill until two years later. Two years after his son accidentally shot himself with his service weapon."
Sara's eyes widened. Her whisper is stark with horror. "Dear god."
"I think that's enough." Janet sounds angry, fierce and protective. "The two of you have torn enough emotional wounds in each other."
"I'm sorry."
"No." Sara's hand slowly moves out of her hair. "I think... I think I needed that."
Sudden exhaustion touches Sam. She is safe. There is no other version of her here, so she can stay longer than normal. There will be no entrophic cascade failure. "I'm so tired, Janet."
"Yes. There's something strange about your blood chemistry, Sam."
For a moment, the pain comes back. She hasn't heard Janet say her name for nearly two years. She wants to cry, but feels too tired. "I had a Tok'ra symbiote for a short while, when she died she left a protein marker and naquadah in my blood."
"Ah. That would explain why your body seems to reject the blood." There's a note of frustration in the doctor's voice.
"Transfuse..." Sam pauses, trying to remember what she was going to say. She giggles, "Expose the blood to a naquadah reactor pulse. That's what my Janet used to have to do."
"Get injured a lot, do you?"
"I'm on SG-1," now she's almost mumbling. "Comes with the job."
"Hrmph."
"Janet?" She suddenly wakes up, frantic, reaches out and grabs the wrist of the other woman.
"What, Sam?"
"It's good to see you alive."
--
"You're not going."
"Fine. You're not going, either."
"But I have to!"
Janet crosses her arms, uncompromising. "I'm not letting a critically wounded patient into another room by herself let alone another universe!"
"But--"
"Unless I go."
"NO!"
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not going to watch you die again!" Okay. So maybe that was a) over the top, and b) not quite true. Daniel had watched Janet die. But she'd watched the Colonel get injured and then had to face her best friend being very, very dead. The pain was still hard to bear sometimes.
"All the more reason I should go. I won't get destroyed by entrophic cascade failure. Since," Janet held up one hand to block Sam's protest, "You think they'll be very suspicious."
"I have to go, Janet. You don't."
"Sam, you can't even walk under your own power right now. Why don't you leave the world-saving until later."
"Because they might be dead." And that is why she has to go. And go soon. Before the alternate of herself succeeds in bringing down the SGC from the inside-out. Before she returns to find her friends and colleagues dead and buried and turned to dust.
Before her nightmare becomes reality.
If it hasn't already.
"I'm sorry, Sam," Janet's tone softens. "You're barely well enough to stand. It'll be at least another week before I'll allow you to go back. And when you do, I'm going with you."
She recognizes this tone. Cassie got subjected to it. A lot. Her shoulders slump in defeat. "All right. But you can't stay, once it's all worked out."
"I know."
"Janet. Is Bra'tac still alive?"
"Last we checked, he was."
"Good." She shifts, trying to sit up more. Her stomach protests the movement, stitched muscles and skin being stretched when they really didn't want to be. "Ow."
"Stop that. You'll undo all my stitches."
Sam grimaces. "I look like a road map, don't I."
"Not quite. Sam... who did that to you?"
"Teal'c. In the reality I was in, Bra'tac was already dead. Teal'c was never cleansed, therefore he continued working for Apophis covertly."
"Oh, my."
"Yeah." Sam sighs. "Can we not talk about this?"
"Sure."
It takes only four days before she's moving on her own. Just walking around the level with the infirmary is enough to tire her out. Janet tells her she lost more blood than she should have. Even with the transfusions (and the inherent problems THOSE initially caused) she barely had enough blood volume to survive. But she did. And even though she's weak as a kitten, she is determined to be able to walk through the quantum mirror and back to her own reality.
Janet is almost impressed, and sort of not. It takes Sam another day before she decides to ask what's up.
"I ran a comparison of your blood. When we first took a sample, and then day before yesterday." Janet's hands are steady.
"And?"
"There's... I think there's an instability in it."
"Instability?"
"I think.... I think when you came through the broken mirror you damaged something in your cells."
"Like cancer." Sam guesses, feeling the energy she thought she had draining away.
"I can only make a guess, Sam." Suddenly, Janet looks helpless. "I can't even begin to guess how to treat it, let alone reverse it."
"So... even if I go home..." There is numb, and then there is numbed to the point of stability. Sam Carter can feel the latter deadening her veins and bones and she welcomes it, uses it as a shield, builds a huge fucking wall around her brain and pushes the incidental things to the side. She can't deal with the whole picture. "First A, then B."
"What?"
"I need to get strong enough to go home." Sam stands again, ignoring the way the room wants to sway. "And then I'm going back to my universe and I'm kicking that bitch's ass to the Pegasus galaxy."
--