A/N: Thanks for all the great reviews. I'm glad I surprised you with my orb!

Disclaimer: As before, I don't own Stargate or the characters…


"Oh, Sam. What have you gotten yourself into this time?"

The Orb

Chapter 11

Sam was in the process of being scanned by the MRI machine when she came to again. She was aware of the closeness around her and she wished she could somehow break herself out of her inner prison. She was aware of what was happening around her, but was not in control of her own body. Her head was still throbbing. 'This has GOT to be the worst headache ever.' She reflected.

Janet was still watching from the control room, wishing that her friend would just get up off the gurney and that somehow this was just a dream gone terribly wrong. As she looked through the glass, she remembered many of the good times they had spent raising Cassie, an orphaned alien girl, together. She would miss her friend very much if this time things ended badly.

Sam felt the gurney slide forward and she could hear the knocking noise that the machine made. Suddenly, she felt the throbbing in her head get faster and pain started traveling along her nervous system. The pain made her arm jerk and her hand lift off the gurney. Janet was snapped out of her reminiscing by Sam's movement. She yelled to the nurse who has just returned to the room to see if the doctor needed assistance. "Shut it down! Shut it down now!", and raced into the room with Sam.

"Dr. Frasier, the machine won't shut off. It isn't responding to the computer commands."

Nurse Richards frantically pushed more buttons on the keyboard. Still the MRI kept going.

It was as if Sam was taking the energy into her body from the machine.

Sam could feel the lightning bolts of pain shooting down her arms and legs and she thought her head would explode. Her body was convulsing on the gurney and threatened to fall to the floor. Janet reached the machine and hit the emergency shut off button on the side panel. Sam's body strained one last time and then fell limp onto the gurney.

Janet ordered the nurse to call for help and rushed to Sam's side. She checked lifted her eyelids and found that Sam's eyes had rolled back into her head, a sign of seizure. She checked her pulse and found it racing, but it was returning to a normal rate. A medical team was just arriving.

General Hammond came into the observation room at that moment and saw Major Carter's lower legs moving out of the MRI machine and Janet was pacing in front of the gurney.

"Dr. Frasier, what is going on down here?" The General waited for a response as calmly as he could. He had heard the alarms and was extremely anxious.

"General, Major Carter seemed to have a seizure while she was in the machine." Janet replied.

The phone rang and Janet answered after asking the General to excuse her for a moment.

Hammond looked through the window at the medical team that was checking over the Major.

With a 'thank you' to whomever she was speaking with, Janet hung up the phone.

Hammond looked at her and silently waited for her to report.

"General, I don't even believe this myself. You need to see these scans of her brain." Janet said.

She reset the computer to start with Sam's head scans. When the screen replayed where the MRI scan had her entire brain in the view, she pointed to the computer.

"There appears to be thousands of nanites located in her brain, with uncountable numbers throughout Major Carter's entire body. They are similar to what the Colonel had, but they definitely are not acting the same. They are localized near her major organs and they seem to be moving back and forth through these streams that you will see as the scan continues."

General Hammond leaned forward, shocked at what he was seeing. He couldn't believe that Major Carter was still alive, of course her condition was serious enough already, but how could anyone exist with all these machines running rampant in their body.

"Why weren't they detected in the earlier tests? Have you discovered what they are doing to the Major?" He questioned, the concern very evident in his voice.

"Yes, just after I called for you, I called down to my lab and had the technicians look for the nanites in her blood samples. They rushed the results and that call was from the lab. The nanites were in her blood samples, but we didn't detect them the first time because they had fused with the protein marker and naquadah already in Major Carter's blood. As to what they are doing to Sam's body, from what we can tell the nanites in her brain are blocking the neural centers that tell the major systems what they should be doing. The nanites that are around her organs seem to be just surrounding them for now. Others are just traveling from place to place. As for the seizure, I don't know what caused it yet."

The General informed Dr. Frasier that the Tok'ra had finally responded to their calls. They were going to try to come as soon as Jacob Carter was back from his most recent mission. Maybe the Tok'ra had come across this technology previously. All they could do was wait until the Tok'ra arrived at the SGC.

"Ma'am", Nurse Richards called over to Dr. Frasier, "We're going tot take Major Carter back to the infirmary. She is stable again."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Janet then turned back to her CO.

The General was looking at the scans and was now seeing what the doctor had mentioned about the streams of nanites traveling. The nanites that were around her organs just seemed to be waiting, he thought. Like a battalion of soldiers waiting for their standing orders. Shocked at what he had just imagined, he felt a sinking feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. 'What happens if those nanites "get their orders?"', he thought, and the bad feeling only got worse.

The klaxons sounded along with the announcement, "Unscheduled Off-world Activation" which came bellowing over the PA system. The General excused himself and hurried to the control room. Hopefully, that was the Tok'ra now.

"Dr. Frasier, have the rest of SG1 meet me and the visitors in the briefing room."

"Yes, sir." Janet replied. She made the arrangements and went personally to get Colonel O'Neil from the infirmary, where she knew he would still be camped out.


A/N: I'll try to have the last couple chapters up by this weekend. Thanks for seeing this story through and reviewing!