With that order, they leaped towards Jack and the limp Daniel on his lap, and started prying him away. Though Jack desperately wanted them to help Daniel, wanted them to reverse what looked like a certainly fatal injury, he still didn't want to let go. Didn't want to let them take him away. But the medics knew what they were doing, and pulled him from Jack's grasp.
"Alert the OR and have Doctor Warner standing by for a possible emergency thoracotomy," Fraiser told one of her staff, as they hurried out of the room.
Jack had no idea what that meant, but the way she said it, it didn't sound good. He wasn't really thinking about what he was doing, with all his attention on Daniel, but his feet knew what to do, so he stood up and followed the medics. They set Daniel's awfully dead-looking body on a gurney and started wheeling him away, towards the infirmary, with the Doc barking orders at them, and depressing medical data flying to and fro.
"He's not breathing."
"Start bagging!"
"No pulse."
"Can't get a BP."
Jack wanted to close his ears from it all. Not breathing and no pulse--as in, dead. That was it. Dead, gone, at the end of his rope, pushing up daisies--no, Jack wouldn't believe that. Daniel had been fine just an hour ago, when Jack had seen him before this, perfectly, physically fine. He couldn't be dead.
One of the medics had just started sticking those heart monitor electrode patches on Daniel's chest, when Daniel started convulsing. Jack hadn't witnessed ECF striking Daniel before, but he recognized it when he saw it. It made no sense, though. Wasn't it supposed to end when one of them was dead? Let alone both of them?
Jack stopped, though it meant that the hurrying medical team quickly escaped him. They were fighting to keep Daniel still now, binding him to the gurney with restraints.
His mind felt sluggish, like glue that refused to come out of its bottle. If there was still ECF, wouldn't that have to mean that both Daniels were still alive?
He'd told the medics to ignore Jackson. They had left his corpse in Daniel's lab, waiting for someone to take it away.
Jack turned around and ran back to the lab.
The door was open, and Jackson was on the floor. Jack couldn't make up if he was dead or not, but nevertheless, the ECF had him in its grip as well. It looked really weird, though, worse than with Daniel. The air around him looked distorted too, as if he was stuck in a bubble where space and physics weren't behaving like they should.
If Jackson wasn't dead, but Daniel was... If, through some miracle, the bullet had lodged itself in Jackson's skull and hadn't done irreversible brain damage after all... Jackson had pleaded to Jack that having him around would be just like having Daniel, so, if they could save Jackson, maybe he really... Wouldn't any Daniel Jackson be better than none at all?
No, Jack couldn't believe he was actually considering that!
He picked up the Beretta from the floor, loaded it and shot at Jackson. Several times.
It didn't change the ECF.
Jack really had no idea how ECF worked. But Carter would know. He'd have to ask Carter.
Jack had sent her off to check on Jackson just before he'd run here. Maybe Carter was still in that VIP room. Hopefully, she was still there. He picked up the phone, and called her. It seemed to ring for ages, and he was sure she wasn't there... And all the while, he didn't know what was up with Daniel... If they'd already given up, decided there was nothing they could do...
"Carter," the familiar voice answered. Hearing it was a huge relief.
"Carter! This ECF thing! Isn't it supposed to end when they're dead?"
"They're--Oh God, Daniel's not-"
"Carter, I need an answer right now," Jack forced himself to sound firm. Keep the worry and the pain away from his voice. Daniel could well be dead already. The medics would probably not be able to do much to help him if they couldn't even keep him still.
"Well, if--No, sir, that's not exactly how it goes. It's just advanced physics, so I'd expect it to go on as long as the physical matter of the person remains. Physics doesn't ask, well, metaphysical questions. Whether or not there's such a thing as a soul, and whether or not it's still in the body, that doesn't mean a thing. It's all about the physical matter."
Jeez--Jack remembered vaguely something that Jackson had said--about having to destroy the other body before the ECF "escalates", whatever he'd meant with that. So, they needed to get rid of the body. That shouldn't be too hard.
"Carter, get a zat. Don't care where from, just get one fast, and meet me at the elevators."
Jack braced himself for whatever, and grabbed Jackson's body.
He was instantly caught in one of the strangest feelings he'd ever met. Like the time everywhere around him had changed into syrup. It was moving very slowly, except when it fell, like a drop, and then landed somewhere and froze for a moment. The space, the air around him, his view of the world, they were twisted as well, stretched and squeezed in turn.
He could barely see where he was going, and carrying a trembling Jackson didn't make it any easier. He struck the wall next to the door, fell back, dazed, caught his balance again, and actually found the doorway on the second try.
He tried to run, but it wasn't any good.
He was too slow.
Through the twirling and twisting time and space around him, he saw a figure in front of him. In uniform. With blond hair. It had to be Sam. She'd come up to meet him.
"Shoot! Carter, shoot!" he yelled at her.
She was a good soldier, and obeyed his order without questioning. The familiar pain of the zat blast hit him. He dropped Jackson involuntarily, and fell to the floor. But he had to stay conscious. One blast wasn't enough.
Jack could see that Jackson was still caught in the ECF. The odd skewing of space and time reached even further from him now.
"Again! Three times!"
He heard the sound of two quick consecutive blasts.
The distorted bubble vanished from in front of him, and so did Jackson. As if he'd never existed.
Sam just stood there, feeling completely stupefied and shocked, trying to catch her breath.
She had no idea what had happened.
She'd zatted Daniel three times. Annihilated him. Zatted him out of existence. Or, someone who looked just like Daniel. It had to be Jackson. It had surely been Jackson.
She'd zatted Colonel O'Neill too, but just once, so the Colonel was lying on the floor now, looking like he probably felt just like she did, or maybe a bit worse.
"Sir? You all right?" she asked, worried.
"Help me up," he answered.
She offered him both hands, and pulled him on his feet. He started jogging as soon as he was up. It looked as if he really wanted to hurry, but hadn't got enough strength left to run any faster.
"Colonel, what happened?"
"Long story short: Jackson killed everyone."
Her breath caught in her throat. Everyone--he had killed the guards, and they had doubted all along that he'd been the one to attack Teal'c, so he might've killed Teal'c in his own universe, and Sam's counterpart, and Janet--but that couldn't mean that-
"...Daniel?"
"...and tried to kill Daniel, but the Doc's got him, but..." Jack stopped on his tracks. "And they're going to fix it. They've got to."
"How--what-"
"He took a bullet to the chest."
"Oh my God..."
"So, let's run, shall we?"
He didn't need to ask twice.
This time, when they reached the surprisingly silent infirmary, there was no nurse to tell them that there were no news. Instead, General Hammond was there, clearly waiting for them.
"Colonel, Major--I'm afraid they took him straight to surgery, and Doctor Fraiser particularly requested that she doesn't want an audience in the operating room, since this is likely to be... As she said herself, 'it might get really ugly'."
"Then he's still--he can't be dead, if they're operating on him, right?" O'Neill asked.
"Apparently not. I can't tell. I don't even know how he got injured in the first place. Actually, I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me what the hell is going on in my base."
"I know where the story ends, sort of, but the beginning's a bit hazy. Carter, what was up in the VIP room, anyway?"
"I would truly appreciate it if you could explain these things to me as well," Teal'c's deep voice reached them from the other end of the room.
She had nearly forgotten that he was here--as had the others--the thought that Daniel might be dead had been so overwhelming. They all walked over to Teal'c's bedside.
"I only heard of a grave medical emergency, which caused many of the personnel to leave this room and head elsewhere," Teal'c told them.
Sam nodded, trying to collect her thoughts enough to put together an explanation of what she'd seen. "I went to the VIP room, and found that both guards were dead. Stabbed. I also found out that Jackson had cut his hair, so he'd look just like Daniel."
"He did look just like Daniel--I hate to admit, but he really had me there, for a while," Jack picked up the story from her.
"By the time I got to Daniel's lab, he'd already shot Daniel," he fell silent for a while, and put a hand over his heart. "Shot him right here. The son-of-a-bitch. The bastard. He attacked me, too, and--well, I'll be honest, he had me pinned. Either he had better hand-to-hand combat skills than our Daniel, or then Daniel's really hiding his true talent from us. But it was Daniel who really got him in the end. Put a bullet in his brain. That served him right."
"But that didn't stop the ECF, right? And it was threatening to kill--well, to stop them from healing Daniel? That's why we zatted Jackson three times?" Sam checked she'd really figured it out correctly.
Jack nodded. "That's one good reason for it... I could think of others, too. Like, the man was a serial killer. Hell, he tried to kill Teal'c and Daniel. He had it coming."
He'd been a serial killer, he had tried to kill two of her team--and still, he had been Daniel. It was a paradox she still couldn't grasp. Just like the idea that Daniel was fighting for his life now. Though she'd heard it repeatedly from the Colonel, she couldn't picture it in her mind, couldn't believe it, since she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.
Thinking of Jackson, another thought crossed her mind. The mirror. They'd been fixing the mirror with the Tok'ra, and the Tok'ra could use a Goa'uld healing device, far better than she could. Maybe they could help Daniel. She'd have to go and fetch them here.
"I'm going to ask the Tok'ra-"
General Hammond bowed his head at her words, and shook it slightly. "I'm afraid you can't. They received an urgent communication from their High Council, asking them to return as soon as possible. Soon after that, I learned from you that Jackson was not what he appeared, so we would certainly not want to help him escape. So, I told the Tok'ra that we did not need their help anymore, and they could leave right away. They've left already."
That made it her fault, in a way--if she had just known that Daniel had been shot before she'd called Hammond from the VIP room--if he had already been shot by that time. But there was no way she could've known... Still, it made her feel guilty.
"No--but--we can call them back-"
"We can and we will, but--and I don't want to sound depressing, Major--but I'm not sure whether it will make a difference anymore."
She knew that was true, but they'd have to try, at least. She could go and get the healing device herself, but she didn't know if she'd be able to--and besides, she didn't know what was going on, exactly. If Daniel had any chance at all. If anything less than a sarcophagus could still save him.
"I shall go and contact them myself. Just so you know, I'm going to need a full debriefing from all of you about the events of the last day or so," Hammond told them. "But you needn't hurry with it."
"Well, that's good, sir, since, with all due respect--I'm not going to do a damn thing until I know Daniel's going to make it," O'Neill said the very thing Sam had been thinking.
They got a pair of chairs and sat down next to Teal'c.