Too Strong Part 3 of 11
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Sam woke with a start, her head coming up off her folded arms as she tried to reorientate herself with her surroundings. Her lab was almost completely dark, except for the soft glow given off by the various indicator lights and strobes on her equipment.
She pushed up her sleeve and twisted her watch to look at the face. 0216 hours.
Damn!
She didn't even remember what she had been doing. Sam blinked, trying to focus on the day. Wait. . . wasn't today Saturday? Why was she even on base?
Sam realized then that she had a small, red handled screwdriver held tightly in the grip of her left hand. She opened her fingers and stared at it, feeling very much like she had never seen such a thing before. What is going on?
She set the tool down and stood off the high stool she had been perched on. How she had managed not to keel over and crack her head open, she didn't know. Sam looked around her lab. There was nothing on the table to indicate what she had been working on . . . no notes, the computer wasn't on.
What the hell?
She shook her head and stepped backwards towards the door. Better get out as stealthfully as she could. If anyone saw her and told the General she was here this late, she'd get an earful on Monday about not having a life.
That and he'd want to know what was so important to drag her back to the base in the wee hours of a Sunday morning.
And since she didn't know, that posed a bit of a problem . . .
"Sergeant Siler has been working on the stock elevator since early this morning. He hasn't determined what caused the short, but is positive he'll have it up and running by 1630, General."
Jack nodded, looking down at the report in front of him. "Good. The guys upstairs are complaining about our supplies taking up to much space. What about the refrigerators in the Mess?"
Walter shook his head, taking from Jack the report he had just signed. "Two are running normally again. Two are running warm, and two are freezing everything."
"What the hell . . ." Jack mumbled, rubbing a hand across his hair.
A shuttering clank rumbled through the air vents overhead, and both Jack and Walter turned their faces to the ceiling. The vent whispered and hissed, and steaming air curling into his office.
"Ah, for cryin' out loud! Walter, go "
"Get Sergeant Siler on it. Right away, General."
As Walter left, Jack shouted after him "I told you to stop doing that!"
Ten minutes later, Jack switched his computer to stand by and rose from his chair to move to the Briefing Room for his meeting with Carter and Teal'c, and the remaining healthy members of SG's three and five. As he rose, a bead of sweat rolled down between his shoulder blades and he glared up at the offending air vent.
The air in the briefing room was no cooler, and he shrugged apologetically as his people took their seats at the table. "Siler is on it," he said in explanation.
Sam sat down beside him, her cheeks flushed red and the hairs along the nap of her neck dark with perspiration. Jack walked back to the low table that sat outside his office and retrieved the pitcher of water and glasses that always just seemed to be there before these meetings, bringing them back with them.
"Considering the heat in here, everyone feel free to . . ." He rolled his hand in the air in the general direction of everyone seated. "Get more comfortable."
Sam was the first to sigh in relief and shrug off her green BDU jacket, revealing the sleeveless tank beneath. Jack sat down and poured a glass of water and slid it towards her across the smooth tabletop, then did the same for Hastings sitting on his other side – just to be polite. Then he pushed the pitcher and glasses away and they were passed around the table to everyone present.
"So, let's talk . . ."
The air vents shuttered and banged overhead, and everyone in attendance collectively looked up. Jack heard a muffled poof sound, and seconds later the room was filled with the vilest stench he had smelled since their nightmare stay on Netu.
Sam's face twisted into an expression that fit Jack's opinion of the situation, and she covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, god . . ."
Major Wong picked up his report folder, waving it in front of his face. "Is that a stink bomb?"
"What, are we back in high school?" Jack cursed, standing with such force his chair rolled back and crashed against the wall behind him. "Walter!"
Sam huffed a breath up her face, trying desperately to cool her skin from the sweltering heat that permeated the air in her lab. The small fan that sat on her desk did little to cool her, succeeding only in stirring the heavy air rather than actually providing relief.
She tried to focus on the scan report in front of her, red and blue lines paralleling each other in peaks and valleys with gamma and alpha readouts that meant little more to her right now than quantum physics would to a nursery school student. The niggling sensation that she was supposed to be doing something else - going somewhere - seeing to something important - tickled at the back of her mind. Her stomach twisted and knotted with the anxiety of something forgotten.
"Everything okay, Carter?"
Sam jumped and looked over her shoulder. Jack stood in the open doorway, the light from the hall glowing behind him to shadow his face and outline his form. His shoulder was against the jamb and his hands were pushed into his pockets.
You know what you have to do . . .
Acid burned up her spine, hitting the base of her skull, leaving an alkaline tang in the back of her throat. Sam swallowed and slowly blinked her eyes, trying to push aside the dark thoughts that had grown more and more frequent in the past hours and days. The slithering voices were worse when she was tired, or when her mind wandered too far from a clear point of concentration, but as time went on they grew more and more persistent.
She wondered how long she could go without saying anything . . . and wondered if she were going insane.
"I'm fine, Sir. Just "
"Hot."
"Sir?"
"It's hot in here." He stood away from the jamb, and as he stepped out of the circle of lights, she saw he wore a black tee shirt that accentuated the refined muscles of his biceps and triceps, and as he shifted his fingers within the confines of his pockets, the tendons and chiseled angles shifted with each movement.
"It's hot everywhere, Sir."
He reached the table where she sat, and his hand left its restrictive pocket to pick up a pen and turn it end over end, bouncing it off her notes. If he couldn't get his hands on a doohickey, a pen would do.
"Did you need something, Sir?"
"Nah. Just . . . checking in."
The air vent rattled and clanked, and Sam braced herself - considering the option of holding her breath. The last time she had heard that noise, the most God-awful stench had filled the briefing room. Instead, the ambient temperature in the room instantly cooled and she sighed.
"Oh, thank God."
"Thank Siler . . ." Jack amended, and Sam smiled.
She shifted her gaze from the gray air ducts overhead to Jack, and her breath caught in her throat when she found him watching her. His dark eyes were intent and unwavering on her face, and his hand had stilled in its fidgeting. Jack hitched up his chin, his lips parting for a moment in a sign she had long ago learned to recognize. He had something to say . . .
"So, everything really okay, Carter?"
Sam shrugged, pressing her lips together with a slight arch of her eyebrows. "Sure. Great."
"You're feeling okay since PX4-133?"
She nodded again. "Yes."
His gaze shifted over her face, and Sam wondered if he knew. If he could possibly guess that right now a serpent whispered in her ear.
He's the one . . . it's all his fault . . . he must die
She swallowed hard, and fought the urge to press her eyes closed against the evil whispers. A shiver shot up her spine, and she couldn't stop the quake that moved through her body.
"Damn it," Jack muttered. "First it's sweltering, now it's the Arctic Tundra."
The fine sheen of sweat that had covered her skin moments before now felt like shards of ice frozen to her skin as the temperature in her lab dropped at an amazingly fast paced. She half expected to look up and see snowflakes escaping the air vent.
"This is insane. Damn gremlins in the works."
Another shiver shot through her, shaking her from the inside out, and Sam crossed her bare arms over her body. Jack looked around, and spotting her discarded BDU jacket, he retrieved it from the back of her desk chair and brought it back to her. As he draped it over her shoulders, Sam reached out her hand to pull it tighter and their fingers touched.
For just a moment, the slightest flash of an instant, the burning pain in her veins eased and she blinked against the relief. Then Jack pulled back and headed for the door, mumbling to himself about never feeding Walter again after midnight.
Sam watched him go, and as he disappeared through the doorway, a thundering pain shot through her temples making her cry out and clutch her head.
HE MUST DIE!
Doctor Brightman sat in her office, the latest lab reports from SG's three, and five stacked in front of her. She had already gone over them twice, but focused again on the top page, preparing to go over them again.
This report in particular.
Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter.
She had been in the Air Force long enough to know not to question the recommendation of her commanding officer, and she had been at the SGC long enough to know that if there was anyone here that knew Sam Carter better than she knew herself - it was General Jack O'Neill.
So, when he came to her two hours before and told her something was off with the Colonel - and asked her to look into it - she wasn't about to refuse him.
Problem was, as of yet, she hadn't found a damn thing.
Beyond the obvious injuries that Colonel Carter had returned with, her physical had come back perfectly normal. Her CT scan was fine, her BP normal, her Pulse OX, respiration levels and heart rate perfectly acceptable considering the situation. Her tox-screen came back fine. No sign of anemia or any other deficiency, no excessive levels of adrenaline or hormones that would indicate stress. Red and white blood counts normal. No foreign chemicals in the blood, especially those they had begun scanning for in the last several years.
She shook her head.
What did he expect her to find?
She rested her temple against her curled fingers and scanned the numbers again. As she reached the bottom of the page, and the factor levels decreased, her breath caught.
Unknown factor: .002
She quickly flipped to Major Rigg's page, her eyes scanning to the bottom of the page.
Unknown factor: .0021
It was the same for three of the ten other SG members. Some unknown factor in their bloodstream that the infirmary's tox-screen could not readily identify. But with the percentage so low, the computer wouldn't send up a red flag.
Doctor Brightman shoved back from her desk and stood to her feet, rushing from the room to find General O'Neill.
