Oooh! Shameless flatterers all of you! You're making me blush! (But by all means, continue! Continue!)

Now I know I said in the last one I don't like to pull miraculous and implausible ideas out of a hat and use them to explain away the corners I write myself into. Well this is just a note to remind all of you of that and to reiterate that fact. That being said (or written, as the case may be) I need to add a little warning in here. This chapter at first glance might appear to fit under the category of implausible magic fixes. In fact, it does not. I'd elaborate here, but that would spoil the story. So, read the chapter and I'll explain at the end. If you still don't buy it after that and feel I've lied to you then you have my most sincere apologies. Or whatever. I don't really care if you believe me or not, I know the truth and that's good enough for me.

Anyway, onto the requisite legalese(a.k.a. disclaimer): Don't own SG-1 or any of the other people you recognize in here from the show. I do own the various corpsmen mentioned by name and Dr. Perkins as well as poor little Airman Smith. Please ask before borrowing or at least credit me. (Like you really want to borrow them anyway, right?)

Okay, enough of my prattling, on to the story!

Acting One's Age
by Keaira
Chapter 5 – A Little Bait

"AH-CHOO!"

Jack stopped and looked back over his shoulder as the sound echoed through the vents ahead of him.

Getting out of the supply room turned out easier than he'd expected. Once Jack managed to pull him away from the book he'd been 'reading' Danny was a little monkey when it came to climbing the shelves, and a pair of medical scissors with the protruding rounded end had proven to be more than adequate as a screwdriver, though the angle was a little awkward. And he'd made a fortuitous discovery indeed once he'd gotten the first screw out and looked closer at it. The screws were reversible. Leaving the vents would be simple enough once they figured out where they wanted to go. They just had to make sure there was something close by to use to climb down to the ground.

However, once they entered the network of ducts and started crawling through the thick layer of dust it had been hard to be as stealthy as Jack would have liked. The dust was great for muffling their movements but Danny had been sneezing almost constantly and he couldn't quite smother all of them in his sleeves.

"Danny! You gotta stop sneezing or they're gonna find us!" he hissed impatiently.

"I can't! I'm not doing it on purpose. I told you, I have allerbees."

"I know, but you gotta try. We'll get out of here soon, okay?"

Danny sniffled and wiped his nose on the end of his shirt. "Okay. I'll try."

Jack faced forward again and resumed his slow inching progress.

oOoo

"What's that?"

Sergeant Hawley glanced up to see an adorable little girl with pale blonde hair and bright blue eyes pointing at the workbench next to him. This had to be the much younger version of Major Carter, he decided. She sure was a cute kid.

"This?" he asked, touching the device for clarification.

She nodded. "What is it?"

"It's a centrifuge." She fell silent as she pondered this and he went back to the test he was setting up on a small sample of Teal'c's blood.

"What does it do?"

He pulled away and looked back down at her.

"Huh?"

"The centerfuge," she said slowly, unsure of the exact pronunciation. "What does it do?"

"Centrifuge," he corrected. "It separates blood so I can look at the different parts."

Again there was a pause. "Why?"

"So I can tell if there's something wrong with or different about the blood. That's hard to tell with everything all mixed together."

She cocked her head as she thought about this and then nodded. That seemed to make sense.

He was about to turn back to his work when she piped up again.

"How?"

He turned back. "How what?"

"How does it separate the different parts?"

He regarded her through narrowed eyes. "Shouldn't you be with Dr. Fraiser?"

"She's looking at Teal'c behind the curtain," Sam explained. "She told me I couldn't watch and that I couldn't leave the infirmary. I did what she said," she defended herself. "I'm still in the infirmary."

Hawley smiled. Apparently Major Carter had been a real charmer when she was a kid. He felt a small stab of pity for whoever was assigned to watch her until they got this figured out, then shrugged. He'd humor her for now.

Besides, how was he supposed to say no to those curious blue eyes?

"You remember when Dr. Fraiser took some of your blood, right?"

She held up her arm where a blue band-aid and a cotton-ball covered the puncture mark. "Yup."

"If you put little vials of blood like this," he held one up to show her, "in the centrifuge and turn it on it spins it around really fast. When it does that the different parts of blood come apart into groups. Then I can take out just what I need and put it on a slide to look at under a microscope or I can mix it with different chemicals and use it in one of these other machines to learn more about it."

She listened intently and then nodded when he was done.

"Like that one?" she asked, pointing to another machine.

"Yep. That's one of the machines I use."

"What does it do?"

Repressing a sigh, the corpsman belatedly realized that by answering her initial questions he had opened the flood gates to a whole universe of questions. Apparently, Major Carter had been just as—or more—curious as a child.

Looking around at the others in the room he saw half-hidden grins on more than a few faces, though no one took their eyes off their work. That would be like volunteering to take Sam off his hands. Then he saw one person who couldn't resist glancing over and he grinned, his green eyes sparkling. She'd make him pay for it later, but they were good enough friends it wouldn't be too bad.

"Why don't you go ask Evans what she's doing with your blood?" he suggested and pointed to a petite brunette seated across the room at another counter.

Evans shot him a dirty look then found a small pair of blue eyes watching her and quickly smiled.

Sam looked over the machines by him once more and then shrugged and turned towards her new target. She stopped after a few feet and ran back, her arms up in the air.

Hawley looked at her in confusion and she waggled her fingers, beckoning him to lean down. He did so and she hugged him around the neck and planted a slightly moist kiss on his cheek.

"Thank you." With that she turned and ran over to Evans.

Hawley watched her go and then smiled and turned back to his work, the grin lingering on his face for some time.

Oh she was definitely a charmer.

Heaven help them all.

oOoo

"AH-SHMPH!"

Airman Smith paused in her filing, the hand with the folder hanging in mid-air as she looked around for the source of the half-stifled sneeze.

"Hello?" she said tentatively.

"Sorry!" a small voice whispered.

"Um . . . God bless you?" she said uncertainly, a little creeped out by the disembodied voice.

"Thank you," the voice said.

"Danny!" another voice hissed.

"Sorry," the first voice apologized again.

That was more than enough for Smith. She shut the drawer and set the folder on top of the stack. The filing could be done later when she could figure out a good excuse for why she needed someone to come with her—and when she was certain she wasn't crazy.

Hadn't Doctor Jackson heard voices calling his name before they thought he was crazy last year? she wondered as she replaced her pen in her pocket and verified the cabinet drawer was locked. And did it count if someone else heard the voices calling his name?

Maybe she should go visit Dr. Fraiser and ask if they'd caught all those little things that caused that whole mess. Then again, how exactly did one casually ask if one was crazy or if it was just an alien device influencing one's brain?

Shaking her head to clear the disconcerting thoughts, Smith picked up the stack of folders and left the room—and the strange voices—behind.

oOoo

When she finished with Teal'c physical exam Janet stepped out from behind the curtain to find Sam gone. She looked around quickly even as she wondered how she'd explain to General Hammond that she'd lost three of the four members of his flagship team.

"Over here, Dr. Fraiser," someone called and she spun around to see Sam seated on the hip of Dr. Perkins as he checked on the various personnel running tests. Sam was craning her neck to see what the corpsman in front of her was doing and Janet felt relief wash through her.

Now that she knew Sam was okay and not running loose as well, Janet felt a little stupid for not thinking about who she was dealing with.

She knew Sam better than most of the people in this room and even if she hadn't known her as a child it was pretty much a given that someone as curious as she was as an adult had to have been even more curious as a child. And while the adult Sam had the benefit of experience and military discipline to keep her from wandering off—most of the time—the child Sam didn't appear to have the same restraints.

"Thanks, Mike," she said as she came over to take back her friend.

"I can keep her for a little while if you'd like," Perkins said. "I know you're busy with Teal'c and she'll probably get in less trouble if she's got someone to watch over her."

"You're sure?" Janet said solely in the interest of being polite. If Perkins was willing to watch her she could focus her attention on what she was doing and move a lot faster.

Perkins smiled and gave Sam a little half-hug.

"I'm sure. I don't have anything else to do at the moment anyway. We're still waiting on her MRIs to come back from the lab. I just thought I'd check to see how everyone was doing and I found her. She's not bothering me and it's less distracting to these guys and gals if I can answer her questions while they work."

"I'll take you up on that offer then. If you need to give her up-"

"I'll get someone else to watch her. You need to get back to work. Knowing them as adults, I can only imagine what kind of kids they were and I don't think the SGC would survive these three growing up again."

Janet snorted at the mental image this statement produced. "You're probably right on that one. Okay. I'll get back to work then. You know where to find me if you need something."

He smiled and made a shooing motion with his hand and then turned back to look at his new companion as Sam tugged on his sleeve to ask yet another question.

Janet watched them for a second and then shook herself and went back to where she'd left Teal'c.

oOoo

They'd been crawling through the vents for what seemed like days though in reality it had only been a few hours. Jack was beginning to think they were lost when he heard a familiar voice and froze.

It was that doctor lady! How had she found them?

Danny had stopped as well and he started to ask why they weren't moving when Jack shushed him.

He hadn't escaped and crawled through miles of ventilation ducts, enduring hunger, thirst, and a desperate need to pee just to be caught now.

After a few seconds he realized she wasn't coming for him, but talking to someone else. He strained his ears to catch the conversation and caught most of her side of it.

"Found them yet?"

A response was given, but Jack couldn't hear it.

"Well with the teams General Hammond assigned to search every storage closet and empty room up to NORAD, we have to find them eventually."

A deeper voice said something he still couldn't quite hear and then the first voice continued.

"I hope you're right. I'll start to really worry soon if we don't find them. I thought for sure we'd catch them by now, but they haven't shown up at the commissary or any of the bathrooms like I thought."

The second voice spoke again—Jack thought it might be Teal'c but wasn't positive—and then the doctor woman sighed.

"That's why the search teams have been told to check every room, no matter if it's locked or hasn't been opened since this base was built. We don't want to risk missing them."

Another murmur hovered just out of the reach of Jack's ears' range. "No, nothing yet. We should have found something," she said in frustration, "but I don't see anything unusual that would explain this." She sighed. "But we don't have the results of all the tests back yet so I'm still holding out hope that there's something I can work with. I don't know what I'll do if the remaining tests all come back normal. I can't come up with a cure if I don't have any symptoms to treat."

Jack frowned. He had a feeling that this conversation was important, but none of it made sense so he shrugged. He'd figure it out later. There was a shorter pause this time, then Jack heard what he'd been hoping for.

"We're keeping her here to keep her out of trouble. She kept asking questions and bothering my corpsmen so General Hammond had this room put together. Once we find Jack and Daniel it'll really be useful. Especially since we don't know how long you'll all be like this."

Again Jack missed the other half of the conversation.

"We're hoping it'll work long enough to find a solution to this problem, but it won't last forever. I don't know about Jack or Daniel, but Sam is curious about everything. She's been asking questions I wouldn't have expected, even from her."

There was a pause and then, "Everything I've seen so far on her tests show she's fine. If I didn't know better I'd think she's just a perfectly healthy six-year-old girl with more curiosity than a whole litter of kittens. This should hold her for a while though. We've got books, games, anything we could think of that would keep her occupied until we can find a solution."

So they'd found was where they were planning on keeping them, Jack thought. He wondered why they didn't just call their parents to come get them, but then Jack wasn't sure he wanted that either. He wasn't really sure how he'd gotten to that other place, but he had a feeling his parents wouldn't be real happy about him getting lost.

"As soon as I know anything, I'll inform you immediately. Good luck in your search, Teal'c," the doctor's voice said, fading towards the end. She must be leaving, Jack decided.

Silence filled the vent for a few minutes before Danny could wait no longer.

"Jack?"

"What is it, Danny?"

"Are we gonna rescue Sam?"

"Yep. Just as soon as I figure out how."

"Good. Then can we find some food? I'm hungry."

"Sure. But first we save, Sam."

"Okay."

Jack crawled forward to where a faint light was coming from a vent on the side of the shaft. He looked through and saw a room with chairs and several pieces of equipment, the purpose of which he couldn't even guess. Large windows covered the wall across from him and through them he could see another room.

The second room was decorated with bright colors and had shelves full of kids' books and toys.

Seated at a small table in the center of the room Jack saw the back of a blonde head with a blue ribbon interwoven into the braid between blue-clad shoulders. He wasn't sure what she was doing since he was turned away but it was definitely Sam. He craned his neck to look around and was pleased to discover he didn't see any adults around. They had to be nearby, but they weren't in sight and this might be the only opportunity they'd get to spring Sam.

He was puzzling over the problem of how to get into the room when he spotted what looked like it might be a vent a few inches above one of the shelves.

It would be a little tricky, but he was pretty sure they could do it.

Now they just had to get there.

"Come on, Danny. I think I have a plan to rescue, Sam."

Okay! Now to explain!

I will freely admit it does seem a little implausible that they escaped through the air vents and are roaming free now because of it. But I know for a fact it's possible. This was the very experience that inspired me to write this story as it so happens!

See, about a month and a half ago I was babysitting my nephew. Cute, adorable little seven-year old Jefferson was staying with me because his parents were island-hopping in the Caribbean. Each day of the two weeks he was with me he'd come to the government building where I work and stay in the daycare provided there. There were no problems for the first week. Then on the second Monday we'd been doing this he suddenly disappeared after lunch. Poof! No more Jefferson!

I'd gotten to know Marcia, the lovely woman in charge of the daycare, prior to bringing Jefferson and she called me up in absolute tears because she'd lost my nephew. I was a little upset, needless to say, but I took a deep breath and told her I'd be down to help look and that I was sure he hadn't gotten far and of course I didn't blame her. I didn't really. I knew Jefferson could be a crafty little snot-nosed— I mean, a sweet, little . . . Ah, who am I kidding? I was right the first time. He's the spawn of Satan when he puts his mind to it.

Anyway, I went down and we spent all afternoon looking for him. No joy. He was good and vanished and nobody had seen him disappear.

I returned to my office to get my cell phone and call his parents, hoping they might know where he'd be most likely to run off to (There's a park and an ice cream shop as well as a toy store right near where I work and I know Jefferson had been to all three of them previously), when lo and behold what do I find, but an absolutely filthy Jefferson sitting in my chair, playing Pac-man on my computer! (Ah, no, that game didn't come pre-installed on the computer . . . but my boss knows I have it and he doesn't seem to care as long as I get my work done on time!)

To make a long story short, it took us a few days to figure out how he kept escaping (he categorically refused to tell and no amount of threats or punishments would change it, so three days in a row he did this. Poor Marcia was at her wit's end) but someone finally caught him in the act. He'd crawled up on the bookshelf that first day he escaped and found a vent hidden behind a hanging plant. A dime that he got who knows where had served him as a screwdriver and he'd made good his escape without anyone the wiser.

As to the exit, the ancient air circulation system in my building was replaced three years ago with a new central heating and air conditioning system and the design plans had, for reasons none of my co-workers, nor I, can fathom, called for reversible screws. (for those of you who don't know, that means that instead of one end having a slot or cross in a wide head that stops the screw from going in past a certain point, the screw is simply a cylinder with the threads on the outside and a slot or cross in both ends, thus allowing one to unscrew it, or screw it in from either side. Gotta love government contracts, eh? I'd just love to know how the contractor sold that idea . . .)

Anyway, that's my little story that proves that a seven-year-old with enough determination can get out of any confined space. I honestly don't know that I believe they'd be so stupid as to put reversible screws in a top-secret facility, but frankly, I find it hard to believe they'd be stupid enough to do so in my building. Just goes to show you that you should never assume anyone is too stupid to try something.

Thanks for the reviews and thanks for reading! Until next time . . .

"When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble. When asked to clarify, say 'Trust me.'" – Anonymous

-Keaira