CHAPTER EIGHT: RETURN TO UNCERTAINTY

"I don't understand…how can you be speaking in Ancient?" Sam asked softly, still not entirely convinced that this wasn't some elaborate scheme cooked up by the Goa'uld. She'd never even considered any other possibility about Janet's disappearance than her presumed Ascension, and having evidence to suggest otherwise was making her uncomfortable.

Janet paused and she closed her eyes, her face scrunching slightly as she tried her hardest to concentrate on something. "Forget…"

Sam's eyes brightened. "You forget? You've forgotten how to speak English?"

Janet nodded slowly. She could understand them well enough, but her thoughts and the Knowledge were jumbled together, and it was making it hard to remember her native tongue. Having the thoughts of thousands of Ancients, all speaking in their own language was making it hard for her own thoughts to translate through to English. She could remember the words, but getting them across was a different matter.

"Of course, that's exactly what happened to Jack," Daniel said, excitement tinging his voice. "He still understood us, he just couldn't remember the words. The Knowledge was taking over his native language. But you understand us perfectly, don't you?"

Janet nodded.

"How…how did this happen?" Sam asked. "Why did this happen?"

"Anubis," Janet replied, hatred tinging her voice in a way that none of the others had heard since Janet's altercation with Nirtti.

"Anubis…Anubis did this to you? How?" Daniel asked.

"Repository," Janet replied, her mind unable to think of the English for the word.

Daniel paled slightly. "He got there first," he whispered to himself.

Jack, Sam and Teal'c all looked at him expectantly. It took him a moment to work out that his teammates were all looking to him to elaborate on his mutterings and he shook himself out of his daze.

"P3X-439," Daniel said. "Anubis got there first. That's why he started shooting at us. He didn't care if he destroyed the repository of the Ancients, because he got there first. And seeing as no one in Anubis' service doesn't have a Goa'uld symbiote, the only way he could access the repository was with someone human."

"Janet," Sam whispered unnecessarily.

Daniel nodded, then shook his head in disgust.

"What did he do to you?" Daniel asked, turning to look at Janet, his eyes intense, yet still sympathetic.

Janet looked away from the group, and SG-1 felt sickened. Even Teal'c was unable to take the news stoically, and the sudden visions and images of the torture that their friend would have gone through ran through their minds.

"What can you tell us?" Sam asked gently. "What did you do to Colonel O'Neill?"

"Took…Knowledge," Janet replied haltingly.

"You took the Knowledge from him?" Daniel asked.

Janet nodded. "Healed."

"Healed…you healed him. The Knowledge was killing him, so to heal him, you took it?" Daniel asked. He waited for Janet to nod before continuing. "Why aren't you…the Knowledge made Jack nearly insane. How are you still, I don't know, functioning?"

"Dolmata," she replied.

"Sleep," Sam remembered. "Where?"

"Sarcophagus," Janet replied. "Ancient technology…not Goa'uld."

"The sarcophagus is originally Ancient technology, not Goa'uld. If Janet could take the Knowledge from Jack with the healing power of the Ancients, then chances are, the sarcophagus could safely change someone's body so they could handle such a huge amount of information," Daniel explained.

"Why wouldn't the sarcophagus just take the Knowledge from her completely?" Jack asked in confusion.

Daniel paused at that. He glanced at Janet, but saw that the doctor's eyes were closed, and her breathing was even. She'd fallen back to sleep, her body needing to rest to fully heal before they could recover fully. Sam tilted her head to the side, a million thoughts running through her mind. Surprisingly it was Teal'c who came up with the answer.

"Is the Knowledge of the Ancients not unlike the relationship between symbiote and host?" Teal'c asked.

"Wait…are you saying that the knowledge of the Ancients is…sentient?" Sam asked incredulously.

"It makes sense I suppose," Daniel mused. "I mean, if the Knowledge was working with the person who downloaded it, then it must be somewhat aware of its surroundings. It wouldn't help a Goa'uld, it wouldn't allow earth to be destroyed, and it was trying to get Jack to put himself into that chamber at the outpost."

"Actually…I think it might be more than sentient," Jack suddenly chimed in.

"Sir?"

Jack paused a moment, trying to think of a way to properly explain his experiences over the last few days. And while he couldn't remember what the secrets of the Ancients were, he could remember impressions and vague feelings that hadn't been his own.

"I remember hearing voices," Jack said. "Different voices all telling me different things. They worked together to explain, but each of the voices had areas they were better at than others."

"All the knowledge of the Ancients," Daniel mused to himself.

The others of SG-1 turned to look at him, wondering what knew theory Daniel had come up with. They watched as a million thoughts flickered through Daniel's mind, his face an expression of consideration and confusion.

"Daniel?" Sam eventually prodded.

"We – we know that the repository contains all the knowledge of the Ancients," Daniel began. "We've never really thought about how that knowledge is made up. Or how it came to be. So…what if, every Ancient being poured more than their knowledge into the repository? What if they put pieces of themselves inside. Echoes of who they were…"

Sam instantly caught on to where Daniel was going with his thought.

"So theoretically, the Knowledge would be made up of the thoughts and memories of thousands of different Ancients," Sam said.

"Exactly," Daniel replied. He turned to their CO, curiousity shining in his eyes. "Jack, you said you heard different voices. How many?"

Jack shrugged a little. "A lot. I couldn't tell them apart, but I knew they were all different, if that makes sense."

"Ayaina," a quiet voice murmured from behind them.

The group turned to look at Janet, who still lay with her eyes closed on the other bed.

"The Ancient being we found in Antacrtica?" Sam asked.

"She told me…taught me…healed Jack."

"Do you know how to heal yourself?" Sam asked, her eyebrows furrowed in worry for her friend.

Janet just shook her head, and opened her eye to look at Sam.

"It's a part of me," Janet explained.

The group looked to Daniel, who immediately translated it for the doctor. SG-1 traded worried glances, and Jack could feel his worry boiling over. He may not have remembered the specifics about what the Knowledge was telling him, but he could remember how strange it felt to have thousands of different voices with different aspects of knowledge crammed inside your mind. It wasn't something he would wish on anyone.

"Colonel O'Neill, glad to see you're awake," a bright voice stated, and SG-1 and Janet turned to look at the newcomer.

Doctor Elizabeth Weir stepped into the infirmary, a smile on her face, and a bounce in her step. She wasn't entirely certain why she was still at the SGC, but she was going to make the most of it, especially now that Vice-President Kinsey wasn't pushing his own agenda forward. She knew that being the CO of such an important facility was going to be stressful, but she was definitely up to the challenge.

Weir stepped up to Janet's bedside, and smiled softly at the other woman. "Doctor Fraiser, good to finally meet you. I'm Doctor Elizabeth Weir," the blonde woman introduced herself.

Janet nodded politely at her before casting a look back at SG-1. "My replacement?" she asked.

Daniel cleared his throat and shook his head. "Uh, not quite. Doctor Weir is General Hammond's replacement."

Janet sat up, startled, and Sam rushed to calm her, a gentle hand touching Janet's shoulder.

"The General's fine, Janet," Sam assured her. "Just some political posturing. General Hammond was in charge of the Prometheus when we were attacking Anubis' mothership. And besides, Doctor Weir's not half bad once you get to know her."

"You're not all bad yourself, Major Carter," Weir said with a smile. "And on a more serious note, we'll be debriefing as both the Colonel and Doctor Fraiser are up to it."