Spoilers: Fragile Balance, Atlantis' Rising 1 & 2, previous spoilers apply
StargateFan- lol. Well, I hope you have made it to the bathroom some time in the last few days!
Airum4u- Sorry about that! I tried getting this chapter up as fast as I could.
Againjustjane- Yep, just AU Jack left… but then again… O! I like being cryptic!
Sophiedb- Sorry, I'm a bit of a cliffhanger junkie!
Star484- Umm… just wait and see.
Gater62- AU Jack is flying via the PJ (which they just call the ship since they don't know that it's called a Puddle Jumper yet)
Janissima- lol… you'll have to wait and see
Feb04- Of course I know what I'm doing! ;) As for them all coming back… keep reading
SG-Fan- Thank you very much!
Sam Carter O'Neill wagtail JEDI- Thanks! And yet again… you'll have to wait and see.
Questionablelight- lol thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it.
LiMiYa- Thank you.
silver shinysilvergrl- Thanks. Yes, I really wanted Sam's death to affect Jack, to further along the story, and just because, lol
Sci Fi Fan Gillian- thank you!
Get Carter- lol, I love action!
Deathzealot- Thank you!
A/N: WOW! I'm so happy with all of the reviews. Hopefully I've still got people reading this after that last chapter! Lol. I tried getting this one up as quickly as possible. It would've been quicker, but I flew back from Aus Wednesday.
Well, I hope you all enjoy this one, it's a little short, but the next will be longer.
"Realities Apart"
-Chapter 8-
AU Jack descended in the elevator, deep into the ices of Antarctica. He was slightly surprised to find no one on the base when he arrived. For a moment he let himself wonder what had happened, and hoped that Ba'al hadn't gotten there before him.
He traced the familiar route to the chair. His sigh of relief at the empty chamber came out in a puff of white smoke, and he wished that he had a nice, warm jacket.
As he stepped up to the chair, he quickly and carefully pulled off his pack.
"Jack."
Jack quickly spun around, and looked at the man standing before him in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm sorry; I just got back and found out what was going on. God, I'm so sorry Jack!"
"You're really you?" Jack asked skeptically.
"Yes…oh, um, I'm not the one from the other reality, it's really me." He said with a small smile.
AU Jack looked at the familiar white sweater he always wore, and the noticeable absence of his glasses. Jack pulled a candy bar from his vest pocket, and threw it at the man in front of him.
The chocolate bar went straight through AU Daniel who rolled his eyes. "Do you always have to throw things through me?
"Where the hell have you been!"
"I was busy, but I'm here now."
"Ok then, you're the one with all the powers, fix this."
AU Daniel shook his head. "Power corrupts."
"You did it with Anubis, and now he's gone! What about Carter, and Teal'c! Are you just going to throw all that away?"
"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."
Jack shook his head in confusion. "How hard can it be, Daniel? Just turn back time a couple of days, or something."
"Time is what keeps things from happening all at once."
"Agh!" Jack cried. "Would you stop with the Oma-isms! This is Earth we're talking about!"
"Jack you know I can't!"
"I don't care about any goddamn rules!"
Daniel regarded him carefully, and spoke in a much calmer tone than Jack. "You seemed to follow the Air Force regulations very carefully for a man who doesn't care about rules."
"Things change."
They stared at each other for several long minutes. Jack's face looked at his old friend filled with malice, while Daniel's blue eyes were deepened by sadness.
"Well, I have something I need to finish." Jack spat coldly to Daniel as he spun on his heal, and inserted the ZPM into place.
"I'm sorry, Jack."
Jack ignored Daniel, and he looked apprehensively at the chair. The last time he'd controlled the weapon his mind had been taken over by an Ancient database. He was unsure how well he could operate it on his own.
Slowly, he sat down in the chair, and the podium lit up and the chair reclined backwards. Jack closed his eyes, concentrating on activating that weapon.
After months of research, it had been discovered that the chair could be controlled by the mind of somebody who possessed the special ancient gene. Jack was lucky enough to have that gene, which had actually caused him to be victim to one of the Asgard Loki's mischievous shenanigans.
Several minutes past before Jack suddenly felt his mind connect with the chair. In his mind he could see the drones leaving the earth under the base, and raising out of the chamber, and fly high into the sky above Antarctica. Suddenly, Jack realized that he was controlling the strange, yellow drones, and allowed his mind to lead them to disperse in different directions.
He was flooded by images of destruction all over the world, as the drones quickly encompassed the earth. Cities were burnt to the ground, some were merely deep craters. So much death and destruction.
Bent of revenge, he led the drones deep within Cheyenne Mountain. He found Ba'al, but not as he expected. The Goa'uld lay dead on the floor of the SGC 'Gate Room, surrounded by the bodies of Siler, Hammond, both of the Teal'cs, the other Jack, and Sam.
AU Jack's eyes flashed open, and he lay still in the reclined chair. Every Jaffa had been destroyed, yet only a single image of all the destruction he'd seen was burned forever on his mind: the 'Gate Room filled with so much loss. Not only had he lost his own friends, but he'd led an alternate reality version of them to their deaths.
"Daniel," he croaked, getting out of the chair.
Daniel was nowhere to be seen.
"Daniel!" Jack yelled louder, desperately.
And then he was alone. He fell to his knees, completely numb to the pain that shot through him from his weak knee.
Suddenly, a white light began to fill the room. It got so bright, that Jack had to squeeze his eyes shut.
"The text that SG-13 found on P3R-451 mentions a device that holds great power and supplied enough power for the whole city, and because the text is…"
AU Jack snapped his eyes open, and looked at the man speaking. "Jonas?"
Jonas stopped talking and looked at him. "Sir?"
Jack looked around himself in astonishment to find himself seated at the briefing room table, and also seated around the table were General Hammond, Major Carter, Teal'c, and Jonas.
"Colonel?" Hammond asked when he didn't reply. Everyone looked at him curiously.
"What's going on?"
"Sir?" Sam threw him a worried glance. "Are you ok? You look like you've just seen a ghost."
"Excuse me, Sir?" Walter interrupted, appearing at General Hammond's side. "You have an urgent phone call from NORAD."
"Thank you, Sergeant." Hammond looked at SG-1, "Excuse me for a moment." He quickly stood from his chair, and hurried into his office, picking up the large, red phone.
Jack's eyes followed the General, his entire attention focused on the conversation in the office which he couldn't hear. A major sense of déjà vu was beginning to kick in.
His team mates threw him curious questions, but to no avail. Merely seconds later, General Hammond hung up the phone, and walked back into the room, his face as pale as a blank sheet of paper.
"NORAD just picked up a couple of dozen Goa'uld motherships entering the solar system."
A/N: Another cliffhanger, I know! lol, it had to be done!
Anyway, let me know what you think, and to everyone who gets SciFi, enjoy the new episodes tonight! I know I can't wait! ;)