Waiting had always been, and would always be, the worst part of his job.
Jack had taken to pacing the length of the lab about five minutes into Daniel's operation, keeping a sharp eye on the ugly s.o.b. playing surgeon the entire time. He still wasn't sure this had been such a good idea. Whether this was the alien that had helped Daniel escape or not, it could be doing anything to him right now and they wouldn't have a clue.
"You almost done here, Zombie Boy?" he asked on his third pass.
Zombie Boy glanced up at him for a second, but didn't speak. When it looked back down at Daniel, it removed the nasty looking device from his head, placed it carefully on a nearby tray, and picked up a needle.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jack said, holding a hand up to get the alien's attention. He knew the marks on Daniel's body had come from whatever these guys had injected into him during his stay here, and he didn't care to let them use it on him again. Fraiser had even used one of her own sedatives to sedate him before this guy had gotten his claws on him. He wasn't about to take any chances. "What's that for?"
The alien seemed nervous for a moment and looked over its shoulder at its friends. They were more interested in keeping an eye on Carter and Teal'c, so he turned back to Jack. "Fix. Help," it whispered.
Jack lowered his voice and said, "That stuff's gonna fix him? How?"
The alien shook its head, obviously not understanding his words. "They..." it said, gesturing to the others, "hurt. Me... fix."
"They hurt him, so you're gonna fix him. Is that what you're saying?"
It nodded and let out a stream of alien gobbledy-gook that Jack didn't have a hope in hell of understanding.
"Look, buddy," Jack said as it paused to suck in air, "the only things I know about your language are that 'cape' means 'out,' and 'chak' means something dirty. All I need to know is... can you fix him? Make him stop looking like you, and start looking like... himself again."
The alien seemed to be trying hard to follow what he was saying, but it looked down at the needle in its clawed hands for a moment before it spoke again. "You want... fix. Yes?" it asked, looking straight into Jack's eyes.
Jack nodded.
"Me... fix." It held up the needle and then pointed it at Daniel as if asking for permission to proceed.
Jack nodded again and stepped away. "I really hope you know what you're doing," he mumbled.
He went back over to Fraiser's side as the alien continued its work. She looked like she was going to pass out at any second, though she was still standing there with an attitude as strong and formidable as ever. "You okay, Doc?" he asked.
"Yes, Sir," she replied, not taking her eyes off the alien for a second. "I'll be more than glad to go home, but for the moment, I'm doing just fine."
"It said it's trying to fix him," he said. "I'm not sure if..."
He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence, as Fraiser suddenly let out a startled cry and rushed over to Daniel's side. "What are you doing?" she shouted.
Jack followed her and had to grab her by the shoulders to keep her from inflicting bodily harm on Zombie Boy. When he looked down at Daniel's neck, he saw the reason why.
The skin around the brand new puncture mark located frighteningly close to his jugular had started to bubble up, forming a rather disgusting looking boil.
"What the hell did you do that for?" he demanded. He was more than a little tempted to set Fraiser loose on the bastard, but he felt he should let it explain itself first.
The alien looked downright scared, and so it should. It started babbling again, though its strained breaths were getting louder and more erratic. Finally, it hissed, "Help! Fix!"
"Yeah, somehow it doesn't seem to me that causing the guy even more pain is going to help," Jack said.
"No..." It shook its head, raising its hands to each side of its face as it swayed from side to side. "No hurt... fix."
"Wait a minute," Fraiser said. "Are you trying to reverse what you did to him?"
The alien dropped its hands as it looked at her almost excitedly. "Take... back," it said.
"You're changing him back to the way he was before?"
That earned her an emphatic nod.
Fraiser smiled and looked down at Daniel again as if watching for changes already.
"Are you telling me this guy can throw this whole process into reverse?" Jack asked, confused.
"I sure hope so, Sir," Fraiser said.
"Then why the hell didn't he do that in the first place?"
Fraiser shrugged and turned her attention back to the alien, who was preparing to inject a second needle in Daniel's right arm. "I guess he wouldn't have had the opportunity," she said. She looked over at the other aliens and her expression turned dark. "They don't seem very willing to let their subjects go once they've served their purpose."
"Or maybe he didn't want to do it until he found there was a gun pointed at his head," Jack said dubiously. He wasn't quite ready to trust Zombie Boy just yet.
He started pacing again, this time feeling even more restless and impatient than before. He knew that their time was running out - any second now, an alien task force could burst into the building, and the four of them probably wouldn't be able to fend them off. If Daniel wasn't fit to leave soon...
Jack stopped mid-thought and strained his ear to hear over the noise the aliens were making. After a second or two, his suspicions were confirmed.
Daniel had stopped breathing.
He charged over to Daniel's side and thumped Zombie Boy on the shoulder. "What the hell have you done to him?" he demanded.
The alien looked scared and confused. "Fix!" it whispered.
Jack was about to argue the fact when he realized that Fraiser was standing next to him with a smile on her face. He looked down at Daniel then, and saw that he was, in fact, breathing normally.
Breathing. No wheezing, no gasping for air... just breathing.
"I think his condition is improving, Sir," Fraiser said.
"No kidding." Jack laid his hand on Daniel's forehead. Even his fever seemed to be coming down. Somehow he felt that this was happening just a little too easily. "So, now what?" he asked the alien. "He's all fixed?"
The alien nodded. "Take," it said. "Go."
He sized it up for a moment, not sure whether he could actually trust what it was telling him. "What about the thing in his head?" he asked, pointing to Daniel's head as he spoke. "It made him hurt last time. He couldn't think. Did you fix that?"
"Fix," was all it said.
Jack sighed in frustration and brushed a hand over his face. If this alien hadn't done what it said it had done...
"Sir," Carter suddenly called from the other side of the room. She motioned to the window she was standing beside. "We've got company, Sir."
Jack hurried over to her and looked outside. Sure enough, there was some kind of vehicle approaching their position, maybe half a click away. "We've gotta move," he said. "Dammit." He turned back to Zombie Boy and asked, "How do we get out of here?"
It looked confused, glancing from Jack to Fraiser to Carter to Teal'c, and finally back to Jack again. "Cape?" it said.
One of the aliens on the floor suddenly got up the gumption to raise its head and snarl at them some more. Jack couldn't understand what it was saying, but it sure didn't sound like directions.
Zombie Boy looked intimidated by whatever Mouthy was saying, and hung his head as if in shame.
"Hey!" Jack said as he walked over to Zombie Boy again. "Don't listen to what he's got to say. Can you get us out of here or not?" When the alien hesitated, he raised his gun and pointed it at his face. "Need I remind you that I can just as easily kill you?" he said.
"Colonel..." Fraiser said. She sounded scared. She knew he'd do it if given an excuse.
The alien seemed to get the point. It motioned to the wall on Jack's right, where there hung some kind of stretcher.
He nodded his thanks to it. "Teal'c, help me with this thing, would you?" he said as he hurried over to bring it down.
It was time they were on their way home.
The group moved as quickly as they could towards the Stargate. Sam and Teal'c were carrying Daniel on the stretcher their alien friend had provided them with, while Colonel O'Neill hauled the alien along with them as a hostage. Janet had her gun in her hand and was jogging along at Daniel's side. They were hoping to reach the gate before the truckload of alien reinforcements arrived, but it didn't look like they were going to make it.
"Maybe we should take Zombie Boy back with us," Colonel O'Neill said as they ran. "That way, if he did anything to Daniel and we find out about it once we're back on Earth, we can get him to fix it."
"Fix!" the alien cried fearfully. "Me... fix!"
"Shut up," Colonel O'Neill said, yanking on the alien's arm without slowing down.
"Jack."
The sound of Daniel's voice startled everyone enough to make them pause for a second from their running. "Daniel?" Janet said, trying to get a good look at his face as they started again at a slightly slower pace. "Are you alright?"
"I... think so," Daniel said, his words a little slurred from the sedative he'd been given.
Janet was about to speak to him again when she heard an alarm sound and heavy footsteps coming towards them. "Colonel..." she said.
"I know, Doc," Colonel O'Neill said, urging them all to move faster. "I'm pretty sure they're out of firing range. Let's just get to the gate."
A few seconds more, and the DHD was just feet away. Janet summoned up every ounce of energy she had to run ahead and start dialling.
When the others came to a halt beside her, she heard the alien say, "Chak! Them... chak!"
"You want me to tell them to chak?" Colonel O'Neill asked. "Okay, if you say so." He turned to face the oncoming mob, held the alien in front of him with his gun to its head, and yelled, "Chak!"
It seemed to have the desired effect. The alien mob stopped dead in their tracks, and while their weapons were raised ready to fire, from what Janet had seen of those weapons earlier, they still looked to be out of firing range.
Colonel O'Neill backed up towards the gate as it roared to life. "Carter, Teal'c, you guys first," he said.
"Wait," Daniel said, struggling to sit up.
Janet hurried back to his side once she'd sent her IDC through to Earth. "Daniel, it's okay," she said. "You're going home."
"Syun da," he said, reaching his arm out for the alien that had helped him.
The alien's expression softened a little, and it nodded to him. "Minal kara."
"Daniel," Daniel said. "And thank you."
It gave him what Janet supposed could be classed as a smile. "Go," it said.
Daniel relaxed back into the stretcher and allowed Sam and Teal'c to carry him through the gate. Janet followed them a second later, and looked back for the colonel.
A moment or two passed before he jumped through the gate and signalled for it to be shut down.
Janet had never felt so relieved to see a wormhole disengage. She finally felt free to concentrate on Daniel again.
Sam and Teal'c had lowered his stretcher onto the ramp as they caught their breath, so Janet squatted down beside him. "How are you feeling?" she asked, touching the back of her hand to his forehead. He still felt a little warm, but nowhere near as feverish as he had been a few minutes earlier.
"Better," he said. "What happened to Syun?"
"Syun?"
"The alien who helped me," he said. "Is he okay?"
"He's fine," Colonel O'Neill said. "I don't think they knew he was helping us willingly. How's your head?"
Daniel's forehead creased up as he seemed to do a quick internal inventory. "It's okay," he said. "What happened?"
"They implanted another device in your brain," Janet said.
Daniel looked panicked for a second, but then it turned into confusion. "They did?" he said. "I... I can't feel it." He raised a hand to feel around the top of his head and winced when he touched the spot where the alien had done his work. "That's... weird," he said, laying his arm back down and letting his head loll to the side.
"Let's get you to the infirmary and check things out," Janet said as she saw Daniel's eyelids begin to droop.
She stood up and stepped out of the way as a medical team arrived and picked up Daniel's stretcher. She'd just started to follow them when Colonel O'Neill touched her arm to hold her back.
"Zombie Boy slipped this into my hand just before I came through the gate," he said, handing her a small, thin, square-shaped device that fit in the palm of her hand. "All he said was, 'Daniel.' I'm guessing he wanted me to give it to him."
Janet turned it over in her hands, but there was no clue on its surface as to what it was beyond three little buttons on one side. "Thank you, Sir," she said. "I'll pass it on to Sam, see if she can figure out what it is first."
She quickly excused herself and jogged off to catch up with Daniel's entourage. She couldn't help thinking as they made their way to the infirmary that more questions had come out of this experience than answers.