Chapter 5
"Hey Sam, have we heard back from the Tok'ra yet?" Daniel asked as he entered the control room.
"Hey Daniel, yeah we just got a message from them. You won't believe this, but it seems that the Tok'ra have finally found themselves a new base home planet and they have developed their own iris for their gate. Now they are able to have the gate in the tunnels which just seems to me to be much easier."
"Really? Well, we have come a long way from being too primitive with nothing to offer them to supplying them with defense technology and various new chemicals for them to experiment with. Tretonin, that stuff that makes you think someone is someone else, and various other things."
"Yeah, I think it's about time that they got around to adopting an iris. Ours has saved us countless times. And now they won't have to worry about any assaults coming at them through the gate and if an air attack comes, it should be easier to escape then when the gate was above ground."
"Well, it's nice to see that the Tok'ra are finally thinking smart. Anyway, what did they say about Greg?"
"Oh, yes, they will perform the procedure to remove the symbiote, but since we don't have their codes yet and it's too risky to transmit them in a subspace communication, they have set a prearranged time for us to gate and they will make sure the iris is open for us."
"Well, that sounds… scary."
"Don't worry Daniel, we'll be fine. It's my dad on the other end, I don't think that he would risk me being squashed against their new iris," Sam answered with a smile.
"Let's hope not. So when do we leave?"
"In about an hour. I was about to inform the General."
"I'll do it, is he in his office?"
"I believe so, yes."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Sara! Grissom! He's saying that if you don't let me go he'll kill me! Please," Greg was straining once again against his restraints. He had been switching between Goa'uld and man for a while now, much to the dismay and bewilderment of his two friends. They watched helplessly as the Goa'uld would take over and threaten them and Greg. Tears had been streaming down Sara's eyes for the past ten minutes without her even realizing it.
She sat in a chair beside the conflicted CSI, clinging to Grissom's arm who sat beside her. This was such a strange and frightening thing to watch that she had no way of knowing how to deal with it.
Grissom sat beside Sara, also unsure how to cope with watching someone that he had known and cared for in such an awful position. He tried to stay as detached as he could, but more and more he found himself wanting just as much to cry like Sara. It was pure pain to watch Greg go through this.
"Greg, he's not going to kill you. It'll kill him too," Grissom was trying to say to him, but he continued to trash against his bonds. He was yelling very loudly now. It was Greg's voice, but there was no way that this could be Greg. Suddenly, his whole body went limp and collapsed to the bed. The heart monitor that had been a constant racing pulse in the back round of the screaming suddenly switched to a chilling sustained whine.
"Greg?!" Sara yelled as she jumped form her chair, reaching to undo one of the arm restraints. "What's happening? That thing wouldn't kill him?!"
Suddenly the door opened and Jack and Teal'c ran in, quickly followed by a young male doctor and a slew of nurses. "Don't touch him!" Jack yelled to Sara as she was struggling with one of the arm restraints. "It's a trick, we've seen this before."
"The Goa'uld would never risk destroying himself to get at the host," Teal'c said.
The doctor rushed up, pushing Sara and Grissom out of the way. After taking a quick look at Greg, he turned to shout an order to one of the nurses only to be cut off by the sound of rhythmic pulses coming from the machine again.
"You see, he thought he could scare you into releasing him," Jack said.
Suddenly completely overcome by the fear and emotions of the last few moments and the few hours before that, Sara doubled over, crying. She was trying very hard to gather herself in front of all of these people, especially Grissom, but there was no stopping the flood gates now.
Grissom, reaching down, pulled Sara up to him and held her to his chest as she continued to cry. He was just as shaken by this new occurrence, and his comforting was as much for himself as it was for Sara.
"Well the news is all of this will be over soon," Jack said as they all began to calm down. "The Tok'ra called, and…"
"O'Neill, he's waking up again," Teal'c informed him.
Jack walked over to look down at Greg as the CSI's eyes fluttered. It took a second for him to pull himself back to consciousness. As he tried to get a clear picture of Jack's face, Greg could hear Jack saying, "Well, Grego, looks like we're finally going to get rid of that snake in your head for you."
Greg, who was currently Greg, finally cleared the cobwebs from his eyes and looked at Jack saying, "MacGyver?" in a half delirious state.
Jack looked up at Grissom and Sara with a questioning glance.
"Don't ask us, he's been kind of delirious for a while now," Grissom said.
"Ah, well I guess I share some sort of resemblance to that actor or something, it's not the first time I've gotten that. Personally I never really got into that show, made me think too much. Now the Simpsons, there's a show that I can relate to."
Sara smiled and tried not to laugh at what she supposed was O'Neill's form of humor. Little did she know that he was being completely serious.
"Well anyway, we're gonna take you to the Tok'ra now and with any luck, you'll be as good as new very soon."
"General O'Neill, are we going to be able to come with you?" Sara asked.
He looked at her for a moment. He and Sam had already talked it over, but he still didn't really like the idea of taking these newbie's with him. But they could really use these two to help determine if the Goa'uld has really been take out and the FBI agents still needed to be convinced why they should stay quiet. The Tok'ra are the best people to explain exactly how evil and dangerous the Goa'uld really are. And like Carter had said, this was really a low risk mission. They were gating to the Tok'ra's secret base that is now protected by an iris when there are few Goa'uld with enough power to think of challenging them.
Reluctantly, O'Neill said, "yeah, you two are coming, as well as the FBI Agents, against my better judgment I might add."
"Thank you, General," Grissom said.
"Yeah, don't mention it," he replied. Turning back to Greg, O'Neill said, "Alright, sorry to have to do this to you, but we're gonna need to knock you out for our journey. We would use a sedative, but the Goold have a habit of not taking to those for some reason. The best thing we can think of is to Zat you."
"Zat?" Greg asked.
"Yeah, it's kinda like a phaser on stun. It'll hurt but it should knock you out, and if it doesn't, it almost always will knock out the snake for a few, so at least you won't have to deal with him."
"I don't think I like the sound of that, but whatever you need to do to get this thing out is fine with me."
"Good. As soon as Carter gives us the word that the gate is open, we'll Zat ya and Teal'c will carry you through the gate. You two," he said turning to Grissom and Sara, "will follow behind with me. The FBI's, Carter, and Daniel will already have gone through, alright?"
Grissom nodded in reply.
They didn't have to wait long before the phone rang. O'Neill quickly went over to it and picked it up, "Yes?" he said into the receiver. A moment of silence, "alright, me you on the other side," and then he hung up. "He's the deal, the gate's open and ready for us, you two," he said to Grissom and Sara, "as soon as Teal'c hits him with the Zat, I need you to remove the restraints quickly so we can get him there before the stun wares off."
"Are you ready, Greg Sanders?" Teal'c asked as he aimed his Zat at him.
"No, but I don't think I have much choice in the matter."
"No you do not," Teal'c said and then proceeded to fire his Zat upon Greg.
A strangled human/Goa'uld yell escaped from his mouth as his body was gripped in the electric blast of the Zat gun. A second later Greg's body went limp and Grissom and Sara each fell to undoing the arm restraints and O'Neill went for the leg. Sara finished with her arm first and immediately went to undo the neck. As soon as she finished with that Teal'c stepped up and lifted the dead weight of Greg from the stretcher and hurriedly carried him out of the room. O'Neill and the two CSI's rushed after the Jaffa and followed him all the way to the gate room.
By the time they had reached the gate, Greg was beginning to come around again but showed no sign of struggling as of yet. Teal'c quickly rushed through the open gate as Jack, Grissom and Sara followed him up the ramp. As the two CSI's reached the event horizon they paused, looking cautiously as the puddle of water in front of them. Jack, who was a step behind them, paused with and allowed them a moment of examination.
"You ready for this?" he asked them.
They both looked to each other and confirmed together that they were ready to take their step. Both reached for each other's hand simultaneously and took the plunge together. It was like a wild rollercoaster ride as they traveled through the wormhole to the distant planet of the Tok'ra's base.
On the other side, they found themselves still underground, but in one of the strangest caves that either had ever seen. But before they could admire they're new surroundings, Jack appeared behind them and hurried them further past the gate, coming quickly up to Teal'c who was quickly conversing to another man with a quickly awakening Greg still slung over his shoulder.
As they approached, the man turned to Jack and said, "Jack, good to see you came too, but I think you're going to want to leave right away again, at least for a moment."
"Jacob! Trying to get me out of here already?"
"Sorry Jack, but if anyone else from Earth needs to get here in a hurry; they are going to need our IRS."
"Internal Revenue Service?" Sara asked.
Jacob smiled and said, "no, Iris Retraction Sequence. Of course it was my idea for the name and the humor is lost on the other Tok'ra. Anyway, here Jack, this is our version of a GDO and this is the sequence," He said as he quickly punched a series of symbols on a Goa'uld looking keyboard.
As he did this, no one noticed as Teal'c talked a few more minutes beside them to another Tok'ra, allowing Greg to see the symbols that Jacob input.
Taking the devise from Jacob, Jack turned to Sara and Grissom saying, "It looks like I'll need to leave you two in Jacob's capable hands for a little while. Don't worry about him too much; he's at least half normal." Then saying to Jacob, "Jacob, this is Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom from the Las Vegas CSI. The Goa'uld we brought is one of their men. They have gotten themselves top clearance, so don't worry about giving anything away to them. They have already seen too much to even try and keep the rest from them."
"And what about those two?" Jacob said, indicating Mulder and Scully as they hovered over Sam's shoulder while she was punching in the Earth address on the DHD. It looked like she was having a grand time answering all of Mulder's questions about the gate and how it works and where they were now and where the gate could go and everything else that he could possibly think of to put to her.
"Yeeeah, those two I guess have full clearance as well. Though I'm still not one hundred percent sure why. But they are FBI agents and should, emphasis on should, be able to keep their mouth's shut once they realize how important it is."
"And how are you going to convince them of that?" asked Jacob.
"Not sure yet, but I'm sure you or Carter or Daniel will think of something. Anyway, I'm off to perform the exciting and dangerous mission of bringing back the new codes I got. I'll be back in a few." And with that the gate opened, causing Sara and Grissom to jump back a step.
"Whoa! That's a pretty powerful discharge of energy there," Sara exclaimed.
"Yes, the Stargate is like giant superconductor that requires a huge amount of energy to establish the stable wormhole which is capable of transporting items and beings such great distances," Carter said as she joined her father and the CSI's, leaving Mulder and Scully to pour over the DHD as they discussed everything in hushed tones.
"Oh nuts!" Jack exclaimed. "It looks like I'm going to miss another one of Carter's fascinating, yet confusing discussions on the Stargate. But duty calls," and with that, Jack smiled and walked backward through the star gate, heading back to Earth.