Author's Warning: Contains some really disgusting imagery. Can't understand where these things keep coming from. I'm really not evil IRL, I'm actually a very nice girl who wouldn't hurt a fly. Weird. Hope this doesn't put you off completely. And this is the all-story low. It can only go uphill from here.

Daniel was lying on his back on the floor with his eyes closed, too tired and sick to do anything else.

He knew where he was. If he'd open his eyes, he'd see the white, glowing ceiling and the twelve dark stone walls surrounding him, each of them carved with an alien text he had never encountered before and could not hope to translate.

It was completely silent. There was no one else here. The others had left, escaped through the Veraeda, and they had left him behind, to die all alone.

He was alone in the Dodecagon.

Something fell on his face. Something wet. Another something touched his hand.

The barely audible sound of falling rain broke the silence.

He opened his eyes.

The ceiling was no longer white. It was spotted crimson, and the spots would drip and fall down on him, on the floor, on the tables, on the Veraeda, like rain, except that it wasn't rainwater. It was blood. His own. He knew that. How he could be sure, he couldn't tell. How it was possible, he couldn't understand, but it was.

The light rain fell slowly from the ceiling, sliding down the walls, covering the floor with a red film. It felt cool against his burning skin.

He screamed. The sound echoed in the room, repeated endlessly from the walls, but there was no one around to hear it.

Lam looked a bit disheveled. A few strands of hair had escaped her usually neat ponytail, and she seemed really confused.

"What happened, exactly?" Landry asked her.

"I don't know. I turned my back to Galen, and the next thing I knew, I woke up from the floor. He knocked me out, and I don't know how. I'm pretty sure he didn't hit me, though. And when I got up, I saw this on the table, and that on the screen," she showed, pointing to a vial on the table, and a computer screen with a model of a molecule. It was probably the only screen in the base that wasn't black right now.

"And that's supposed to cure Daniel?" O'Neill sounded anxious.

"When I took a closer look at the screen, a mini-Galen with wings entered it and told me in fiery letters that he had figured it out, and that this was what we had been looking for. The only things the computer will show are this screen, and then a simulation of this antiviral working against the Ancient virus. But it's a simulation that's entirely Galen's work as well. And if what I hear about what happened is true, I really don't know if that's to be trusted..."

Mitchell had a pretty strong opinion on that. "We can't trust him. He was a bit like the Orii in it that we'd never get a straight answer from him. He did help us a lot in there, but we can't know what his real goals were, and whether he actually did all he could. I don't think we can even be sure he really was out and unconscious that long all those times we went through the Veraeda. He could've been faking it all."

"I've got to agree. We just can't be sure. I was perfectly ready to trust him, but just taking the gateship like that, without even trying to reason about it... I don't like what that tells about him. Still, I can't see what he'd get out of hurting Daniel more, when he's already..." Carter couldn't finish, just shook her head. She was right about that. Mitchell hadn't heard what Lam's medical opinion was, but from what he'd seen and the way people talked about Jackson, it seemed like he wasn't going to make it, unless they'd figure out something really fast.

"I can test whatever's in that vial, see if it really is what we were looking for, but it's going to take a while."

"How long? You think Daniel's going to... to last long enough?" O'Neill asked.

"I don't know. I honestly don't know. It'll take several hours to be sure if this really is what we think it is and if it's really going to do any good. I can't tell if he'll live that long. His kidneys have already shut down, so we had to put him on dialysis. Sooner or later, and I'm afraid it'll be sooner, his heart will fail as well. And even if everything is fine and this turns out to be a working antiviral drug, it might come too late. It's not going to magically heal everything that's wrong with him. It just might give him a fighting chance."

"And that's all he needs. Just shut up, stop wasting time and start testing the damn thing," O'Neill said heatedly. Those weren't the words Mitchell would've picked, but he shared the feelings. Standing here and talking was certainly not going to help.

Lam looked slightly hurt, but didn't say anything, just picked up the vial and turned to Carter. "Sam, I could use someone else's opinion on this as well. Someone's who's actually here, in addition to all the specialists I can call."

"Sure... " Carter answered, sounding a bit hesitant. She didn't really want to be here. She wanted to be by Jackson's side, just like the rest of them.

"And Cameron, I know you're going to be stubborn, so I'll let it pass for now. The least you can do is change your clothes. I'll get back to you later," Lam told Mitchell.

It took him a while to get what she meant. He looked down at himself. Right. He was still wearing infirmary scrubs. He'd forgotten about that completely. Maybe he'd change, but he'd do it really quickly. There were more important things to worry about.

Daniel knew he was dreaming. He knew this couldn't be true. He had realized it when the blood covering the floor, his blood, had risen high enough to reach his ears. This was absurd. This couldn't be happening. No human had this much blood in them.

He knew he was caught in a nightmare so gruesome that he couldn't believe he had come up with something like it. Still, he couldn't see how to wake up and come out of it.

The surface was rising slowly, and he was stuck, frozen on the floor, unable to move. He would drown in this absurd amount of his own blood that wasn't real.

There had to be a reality, a real world, somewhere around him. What it was, he couldn't tell. Was he really in the Dodecagon? Was he truly alone?

The blood had reached his cheeks, covered him almost completely.

He couldn't get up, couldn't move. All he could do was panic.

This wasn't true. This wasn't happening. He was imagining it all. It was a nightmare.

He couldn't wake up.

He felt the liquid flowing into his nostrils.

He was drowning.

Mitchell had changed clothes as fast as was humanly possible. Before he'd got to Jackson's room, Lam ran past him, practically shoved him aside and rushed into the room.

Carter came right on her tail, and Mitchell followed them. This could be good, or then really bad.

It wasn't good.

Lam had picked up the defibrillator paddles from a medic that Mitchell didn't know.

"Charging to 300--Clear!"

Mitchell had heard from Lam herself that last time, when Mitchell and Teal'c had destroyed the Ancient communication device, Jackson had woken up the fraction of a second before she'd set the paddles on his chest. This time, he didn't.

It did the trick nevertheless, or at least the monitor that had been alarming started beeping as usual again.

Only now Mitchell took in everything in the room, Carter standing next to him, O'Neill at Jackson's side as if he'd never left, and Teal'c at the doorway, still wearing scrubs.

"That's it," Lam said, when she had put the paddles away and given instructions to the nurses. Now she was gazing at the monitors. "We don't have time for any more tests. Whatever's in that vial, if it's going to help, it's his only hope. It can't possibly make things any worse."

Teal'c stepped away from the door and stood aside to give her room, as she ran out again.

"It's going to work. Everything's looked promising so far. We're just being paranoid. We've wasted time for nothing. There's no reason why it wouldn't work," Carter muttered silently.

"I too believe Galen sincerely wanted to help Daniel Jackson," Teal'c stated. Someone had already filled him in on what had happened.

Landry entered the room, and Lam came in right after him, carrying a syringe. She took the cap off and injected its contents into one of the many tubes connected to Jackson.

"When are we going to know if it did any good?" Mitchell asked silently.

"Well, since it's not really going to destroy the virus, only stop it from replicating further... I don't know. If he survives the next few hours, I think we might be getting somewhere."

"At least it didn't instantly make him worse. That's got to mean something," O'Neill said.

They fell silent. A few hours. They had a tedious wait ahead of them.

Daniel was still lying on his back, but the blood was gone. It had disappeared in a bright flash that had left him feeling liquid. Someone had activated the Veraeda, though he had been all alone.

He gazed at the glowing, white ceiling again. The universe might be different, but the Dodecagon was always the same.

Afraid that the nightmarish rain would start again, he closed his eyes.

Despite the panic that still threatened to engulf him, he fell asleep.

Mitchell, Carter and Teal'c sat in a row against the wall of the room. O'Neill had kept his place right at the side of Jackson's bed. Lam wouldn't have the rest of them there, since she and her staff needed some room to work.

Mitchell had long ago lost count of how many times he'd watched Lam check all the monitors and then take Jackson's vitals by herself. When she was finished, she'd turn to offer them a shrug and an uncertain look. Then Jack would ask her what she thought, as if he hadn't seen her expression, and she'd tell that they had to wait longer.

Mitchell hardly paid any attention to it when she moved in to do it once again. It felt like they were caught in a weird time loop of some kind, with Lam repeating her actions at set intervals, and the rest of them saying the same words, doing the same gestures over and over again.

He peered at his watch. They'd been sitting here for five hours. Every now and then, one of them had left to fetch them coffee or something to eat, but aside from that and going to the bathroom, they'd not moved at all.

Jackson was still alive, and he hadn't crashed again after that one time before they'd given him Galen's antiviral thing. He looked just like he'd looked when Mitchell had first seen him in this room. Of course, Mitchell couldn't imagine how he could look any worse than that.

Lam had finished her round, hung her stethoscope around her neck and turned to face her audience.

This time, she gave them a vague smile.

"Well?" O'Neill asked, as usual.

"I think it's working. I guess we've got to thank Galen after all."