Finally got around to putting in some SJ angst nearer the end of this chapter. Not much but it's a start! Review to let me know what you think!

Chapter 8 – When in Rome…

Jack strolled purposefully along the corridors of sub-level 28, followed by SFs. The blast door to the gate room was open and he could see Hammond with the rest of the team, along with Jacob Carter in mid-hug with his daughter.

"Colonel, good to see you," the Tok'ra greeted. "We received your message asking for assistance."

"We have a situation regarding Colonel O'Neill – we were hoping you might have some kind of solution to help us out," Hammond ordered, gesturing from them follow him.

Hammond got straight to the point once everyone was seated around the briefing table.

"Colonel O'Neill has unfortunately become host to an alien mind, who calls himself Einar. It appears to be a similar situation to the one Major Carter suffered with the computer entity."

"You don't have any way of removing him, right?" Jacob confirmed.

General Hammond nodded.

"Since it's possible for symbiotes to be removed from a host safely, I'm sure there is a way," Jacob assured.

"One of our problems is that Einar isn't completely the same as a symbiote, Dad," Sam explained. "He doesn't have any physical aspect – the only thing Colonel O'Neill has is Einar's mind. He's not parasitic by nature."

"Then it'll be more difficult to determine if we can help," Jacob admitted. "What kind of alien are we dealing with here, do you know?"

"His race was called the 'Innarim': some kind of Norse-based culture," Daniel supplied.

Jacob lowered his head, and his eyes flashed white as Selmac took over, shaking his head and frowning: "The Innarim are just a legend, surely?"

At the sound of the distorted voice of the symbiote, Jack jumped upright, knocking over his chair and stumbling backwards into a defensive stance, wide eyes fixed on Jacob. Teal'c stood as well, confused by his commander's behaviour. Everyone stared at him as he waited in tension.

"Colonel, what's gotten into you?" Hammond demanded.

"Jack," Daniel jumped in. "Tell him about the Tok'ra; I don't think he realises."

It took half a minute of silence before Jack relaxed and picked up his chair.

"Einar says he thought the Tok'ra were just a legend, too. So, when he heard Selmac's voice…" Jack trailed off, knowing they all understood.

"The legends claimed the Innarim were great-warriors; god-killers."

Daniel nodded to the Tok'ra: "Apparently, the Innarim made themselves enough of a nuisance to the Goa'uld. Their home planet, Hakon, was destroyed."

"If they were truly powerful warriors, then it would be beneficial to suggest an alliance to any Innarim survivors," Selmac reasoned.

"As far as we can tell, Einar is the only survivor of the Innarim," Sam cut in, her voice solemn, remembering Einar's severe emotional reaction that overflowed into Jack.

"Then he has the deepest sympathy of the Tok'ra," Selmac bowed.

Jack nodded in acknowledgment on Einar's behalf.

"Maybe you can still help us out," Sam began, retrieving one of the kurstallis crystals from a container on the table. "We may have a way of accessing a database from the lab where we found Einar, but in order to power it we need more crystals like these ones."

"We have seen these before," Selmac claimed, examining the damaged crystal in the box. "The Tok'ra have found no current use for them – we should be happy to provide you with some, on the condition that you share with us your knowledge of the Innarim once you find this database."

"Of course," Hammond nodded.

Hours later, Jacob had returned, carrying a simple Tok'ra container. Jack met him at the bottom of the Stargate ramp.

"These crystals are the best ones we currently have in our possession. I hope they can help you," Jacob held the box out to Jack, who took it carefully. "I'm afraid I have to head back to the Tok'ra base immediately."

Hammond nodded at him, and ordered the technicians to dial back. Before long, the wormhole appeared in a swoosh. Jack shook Jacob's hand.

"Einar wants to you to pass on a message to the Tok'ra for him," Jack stated.

"Of course."

"Thank you," he said, very simply, "Destroyers of Anil."

Jacob frowned, but it quickly changed to realisation and he bowed his head. With that, he headed up the ramp and through the active gate.

What the hell did that mean?

I'll explain some other time. Back to the lab?

After we get some sleep.


Einar grinned ridiculously as he pulled a heavy duty mask over his face and picked up a blow torch. Sam stepped back cautiously, keeping safely out of range.

"Now, we just need to attach these new crystals, and it should be finished," Einar declared, clamping down the loose wires so they couldn't slip off the table, his voice muffled by the mask.

"Have you…" Sam began, "have you ever tried to connect a new power source before?"

He paused, lowering his arms pensively, and Sam could see him blink a few times in hesitation behind the mask.

"Er… just once before," he admitted carefully.

"Did that generator work?"

Einar inclined his head awkwardly: "Not really… it blew up."

Sam stiffened, backing further into the wall.

"But don't worry!" he declared hastily, firing up the blow torch and shouting over the noise. "I'm almost certain I know why it went wrong."

Still unconvinced, she grabbed the second safety mask and gloves, shifting closer to the door. Einar, for all his casual openness, could work single-mindedly – for five minutes straight, he hunched over one of the kurstallis crystals provided by the Tok'ra and welded each of the wires onto its surface. It was an odd sight – the blue flame of the torch flared brilliant white as it touched the crystal, making the room dazzlingly bright. At one point, the security room had called down on the internal base phone line to check what was happening – the light had been interfering with the exposure of the cameras.

With sudden urgency, Einar stopped, switched off the blow torch and backed away quickly. The light died quickly, but the crystal still glowed. Like in the alien lab, it pulsed with an icy blue radiance and hummed faintly. Einar slammed his palm on the light switch and ushered Sam out into the corridor without even turning around, eyes fixed on the glowing crystal now throwing blue light across Sam's darkened lab. The two SFs posted outside the lab nervously moved away from the door at the almost comical sight of two safety-masked and glove-donning officers hurried into the corridor. They gripped their weapons tightly.

"What is it? Do we need to clear this level?"

"Is there a problem, Major?"

"I'm not sure. Is there, Einar?" she turned to the alien in control.

"We did earth the connection, didn't we?" he probed with uncertainty.

"Yes."

"Then we should be fine. The stored energy should slowly drain with the light off."

"Stored energy? Are you saying the crystals absorbed the thermal energy from the torch?"

"Yes, they can absorb it from lots of sources – thermal, solar, chemical, electric… I just didn't want to overload these new crystals straight away since it might have discharged through the generator."

It took only fifteen minutes for the pulsing glow to fade completely, and Einar returned to the wires, connecting the remaining two without further panic of an overload and letting the flicker of energy from the second attempt drain as well. Hesitantly, Sam hovered her hand over the switch on the naquahdah reactor.

"Ready?"

Einar nodded firmly with a smile.

Sam flipped the switch.

She had almost expected blue sparks, short-circuiting… but instead the reactor and the crystal hummed happily, and they were bathed in a steady icy luminance from the kurstallis.

Sam looked at Einar, who stared back blankly for a brief moment. His face broke into a satisfied grin, and he threw back his head, howling: "WOO HOO!"

With overflowing joy, he threw himself at Sam as he laughed to himself, hugging her and swinging both of them about crazily.

"It worked!" he exclaimed.

Before she could work out what was happening, she felt him plant a brief kiss on her cheek. Her expression morphed from exhilaration to surprise. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the security camera in her lab that she didn't even need to look up and see it. Einar watched her mood change with a frown. His own smile faded too. Sensing her tenseness, he released her from his tight hug.

"What is it?"

She swallowed nervously.

"Uh oh, this is another cultural thing, isn't it?"

"Sort of," she managed, beginning to redden in embarrassment.

"Uhm… now O'Neill is shouting at me," Einar winced, tapping his head. "Colourful vocabulary."

"Einar, I know that was innocent, but the military have these regulations about fraternisation. The Colonel and I can get into a lot of trouble for doing something like that," Sam explained, her voice quiet and whispering. "I think that this won't come to anything since Hammond knows that it's not the Colonel in control right now, but doing something like that again could cause problems, OK?"

"Yes, it would be confusing… but why worry so much if you know it's me? I don't act the same way as O'Neill."

Sam would have replied, but Einar jerked his head sharply, as if looking or listening from something sudden to occur. She's seen him act like this a few times before, and she folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"What's he saying?"

Einar sighed and looked completely puzzled. He looked to Sam with a very lost expression.

"When in Rome…"