Author Note: Just to be repetitive, thank you for the reviews! It makes me so happy knowing that this fic is being read and enjoyed. Mara Jade Jedi also deserves major betaing credit.
Chapter Four: The Vorfahren
They rushed in to find Janet on the verge of panic. Somehow, the organism had escaped its' container, and now was on Janet's hands. Janet desperately looked towards her friends for help.
"Janet! The sink!" Sam told her.
"We can't risk it going down the drain…" Sam plugged the drain.
"What will kill this thing?" The Colonel demanded, looking to Carter for the answer.
They had to prevent Janet from being infected. No matter the cost. Even if it was alive.
"You're still wearing latex?" asked Sam.
Janet nodded, "Two pairs. I think that's why it hasn't been absorbed into my skin yet."
Sam ran to the other side of the lab and grabbed a brown box. It had a white plastic nozzle and was labeled "12M HCl". It was highly concentrated hydrochloric acid –very corrosive and dangerous.
Janet's eyes widened. She knew exactly what Sam was planning on doing. She just prayed that the organism hadn't eaten through her gloves in any way.
"What can I do?" asked the Colonel.
"Grab the neutralization salts, and go to the other sink and turn on the water full blast."
As soon as Jack had done as she'd asked, Janet held her hands over the plugged sink.
"On three," said Sam. And after one and two, Sam poured the hydrochloric acid carefully over her friend's hands. The green slime instantly became more fluid and slid off the doctor's hands into the plugged sink.
"Plug the other sink!" cried Janet to the Colonel, as she rushed over to wash off the strong acid.
Janet had her hands under the taps for five minutes before she decided that they were clean. The Colonel had alerted the Hazmat crew and they started to clean up the remaining 'goo' in the lab, but only after Janet took a sample from the sink and made sure the cells were dead.
"Janet, your hands," Sam pointed out. They were red and rough; she hadn't completely escaped from the corrosive acid. "Should you do something for them?" inquired her friend.
"They're not bad," Janet dismissed Sam's worries.
"Let's get something to eat," suggested the Colonel, "While they do what they're doing…" He gestured to the people cleaning the lab.
"I could probably go for some coffee," admitted Janet.
"Good, it's settled then."
And the three went to the commissary, hoping that they would be spared from an emergency for twenty minutes.
The threesome settled down with their caffeinated beverages. The Colonel was discussing the eerie similarities between the cafeteria's Jello desserts and the organism that had nearly contaminated the entire base. Sam let her mind wander back to the problematic translation device. It was mid-coffee sip when she had a sudden moment of insight. Her eyes went wide and she swallowed a bit too much caffeine (burning her tongue in the process).
"I've got it!" Sam proclaimed, tone laced with excitement, and she ran out on snack-time abruptly.
Janet looked at the Colonel. The Colonel looked back at the doctor and shrugged.
"Must be good coffee," Jack commented.
Sam and her MacGyvered translator were in the infirmary a couple of hours later.
"Major, I've found a replacement for you," she announced to Major Stevens as she approached the two linguists. He seemed almost disappointed.
"I think I was just figuring out the syntax structure of Ancient. Daniel and I have been having the most interesting conversation about the natives of P3X 547."
Daniel muttered something under his breath and Sam stifled a laugh from the translation she read on the screen: "I've been asking for a glass of water for the last twenty minutes."
"Well, we'll see if it's working first, Major." Sam promptly left the room, returning five minutes later with a bottle of water. The grateful look on Daniel's face was answer enough.
The translator allowed for Stevens to (finally!) be called away for other duties. Sam stayed for a while, but then she too had to go. (There was a frantic phone call, involving Siler and Gate Diagnostics.) Suddenly, Daniel found himself with little to do. Usually when he was stuck in the infirmary he was sick or dying.
So he tried something a little bit crazy.
"Hello? Anyone in there?" Daniel asked to himself.
He hadn't "heard" anything since earlier that morning, but that didn't mean that the interlopers inside him had decided to leave. Quite the contrary, while Daniel had spent the afternoon arguing with Major Stevens over syntax and irregular verbs, they had been listening to it all. In the process they were learning all the various languages of Daniel's universe.
Hello.
It was like the incident in the morning all over again. It sounded like a million voices speaking in unison. There was a quieter echo of the greeting in several languages.
"I'm Daniel. Who are you?" he replied when the uneasiness in his stomach settled slightly.
We are your vorfahren. Daniel recognized the word immediately. Vorfahren was German for ancestors.
Daniel had the feeling he was in for one hell of a conversation.
"I finished the translation device, sir," Carter announced to the Colonel. She was standing in a doorway, unsure as to whether she wanted to completely enter Colonel O'Neill's office. Her commanding officer looked up from his rarely used desk at the sound of her voice. Finding nothing else he could do, he'd been writing reports.
"Good," Jack replied. He glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven pm. "Go to bed, Carter. It's been a long day." There wasn't anything else they could do for Daniel right now.
Sam nodded, but hesitated from leaving the room. After a moment of indecision, she closed the office door behind her. "We should talk, sir."
"About what, Carter?" He had a feeling, a hunch if you will, about what she was talking about. However, in times of duress, Jack always stuck to what he did best. Playing stupid.
"What happened earlier…" she hinted. Jack continued to look at her cluelessly. "In the hallway outside of the lab…"
Oh. That. Up until now they had done a very good job of ignoring and pretending it had never happened. Jack liked that. He felt comfortable with that.
"Nothing happened." It was the truth. There was nothing to report. There was no actual intimate contact (nose brushing didn't count!) and therefore no breaking of the regulations. He was brushing it off (pun intended) and Sam didn't know if she should be angry or relieved.
"I know. It just…" It was frustrating. 'It' was always there.
He finished off her sentence eloquently, "…sucks."
"Yeah."
"We're okay?"
"We're always okay," she confirmed, "It's just sometimes I think we're going to be stuck there forever." She turned around and made her exit.
Jack couldn't have said it better himself.
TBC
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