Author's Note: A huge thanks to the readers, the reviewers, and especially my betas, Dimac and SealRescuer! :D I changed a few things after their corrections but didn't send it back to them because of my own impatience (RL is starting to be an annoying time sucker! -.-) so any mistake big or small are all mine! In fact, even after beta'ing, all further mistakes are mine, too, cause well, I'm the author, and I'm not always smart enough to listen to my beta's suggestions. ;)
Author's Note2: The story's nearing completion and my life is insane!! Who said RL could have priority in the world? What is up with that! Not to mention, what could go wrong has gone wrong this last week. x.x But I move again in just two weeks! Whee! Katchi will be happy, he can finally come out of the box. I'll be happy, cause I need the help with tying up all these loose ends here. :D
Okay, enough of me bugging you all, enjoy and well wishes! :D
------
"Mac, hold up!" Jack called out. His entire left side was engulfed with pain, making it harder and harder to keep going. He seriously needed a break!
MacGyver quickly backtracked to Jack, grabbing an arm and pulling it around his shoulders. "We need to keep going if we're going to stay ahead of the fire."
"It doesn't matter where we go! This fire is always going to be nipping at our heels!" Jack protested, trying to pull away from Mac, but his energy reserves were nearly spent. "Just stop, will ya?!"
The man continued to pull him along so Jack made like dead weight and stubbornly sat down. Incredulous, Mac exclaimed, "Jack, what are you doing?"
"I'm not moving anymore, that's what I'm doing!" Jack snapped.
"Jack, if we don't keep ahead of the fire, it could kill us," MacGyver tried to reason, but Jack honestly didn't care.
"And would it really be so bad if it did?" He demanded, crossing his arms and setting his jaw as he stared his would-be twin down.
MacGyver frowned. "I don't seriously believe you want to die, and neither do I." Jack didn't respond, but turned instead to watch the approaching cloud of smoke. With a sigh of resignation Mac sat down next to the Colonel, and leaning on his knees said, "We still have some time."
The ground began to roll in an earthquake, but it quickly passed. Jack just looked over at Mac and dryly replied, "You were saying?"
MacGyver fidgeted uneasily, but stubbornly insisted, "It's only been a couple of days."
Was that all? It felt much longer than that. Jack was tired, sore, and way past the point of just wanting it all to end. The fire was close enough now that they could see the flames through the smoke. "Even if we started walking in opposite directions we would never breach the area of effect in time. And what would happen then?"
Mac was quiet for a second, and then pensively, he asked, "You think Gent's vision will come true?"
"Maybe not the way he intended, but ya, I do," Jack remarked, momentarily subdued by the idea that he could be responsible for the destruction of his entire planet. Would they even have time to warn the SGC, to activate the Alpha list and preserve Earth's way of life before it was destroyed? All the anger he'd ever felt about what had been done to them rose to the surface. "Our luck has been nothing but a curse! We should never have let it get this far."
"We can't just stop existing because things get a little crazy. I don't know about you, but a lot of good has come from our strange luck, too. I'd have lost a lot of people close to me if chance hadn't been working in my favor."
Jack knew it was the same for him, but there were just some things he could never forget. "I did loose someone close to me."
"You know that was an accident-"
Angrily cutting him off, Jack insisted, "It wasn't! The one and only time I've ever not locked the gun in the lockbox is the one time Charlie finds it and manages to…" He stopped, his voice catching in his throat before he continued quietly, "It's a curse Mac. You never even knew you had a son till he was eighteen!"
"But I might never have known him if we hadn't run into each other."
"Or you might have known him from the beginning! And I…I might not have lost Charlie. And not just him, Mac, I've lost a lot of friends to this curse. I don't want to lose any more."
For a while they just sat in silence. The fire was drawing much closer now. The heat of the flames evaporating the sweat from their bodies as quickly as it was generated. If they were going to make a run for it, they had to do it now, but neither of them moved.
The flames fanned out around them, following the edges of the small valley until the two men were completely enclosed in a circle of fire. At the same time, it never once came close enough to do any more than lightly burn their skin. Apparently it wasn't going to kill them after all.
Jack sighed. He'd been kind of hoping maybe it would. Then Mac, sounding rather thoughtful, even for him, remarked, "I don't know everything you've been doing in the galaxy these days, but I seem to recall a couple of rather large explosions in the sky a few years back. News said it was a couple of meteorites that burnt up in the atmosphere, but I know that's not what they were, and with what I know now, I believe they must have been alien ships that blew up, probably right before they were about to attack our native little planet of ours. There's no doubt in my mind that you and your team must have had something to do with it."
Turning to look at the man, Jack found MacGyver grinning. "Tell me, Jack," Mac confidently asked, "Just how many times have you save Earth?"
The Colonel glowered at the man. The response must have been enough of an answer for MacGyver because his smile broadened. Picking up a stone, Jack tossed it with annoyance into the surrounding circle of flames. The motion pulled at his injured side, but right at the moment the pain felt like a nice complement to his mood. "I hate it when you do that!"
"When I do what?" Mac asked, feigning ignorance.
Giving the man a scathing glare, Jack grudgingly replied, "When you make things seem so positive!"
Another minute went by as they watched and listened to the fire crackling around them. Bemused, MacGyver asked, "Does this remind you of anything?"
"Ya. It reminds me of my house burning down," Jack growled out.
Nodding, MacGyver added, "Back then the fire had spread all around us, even along the ceiling." He leaned back and stretched his legs out, acting as if they were doing nothing more life threatening than watching a sun set. "I remember I was so sure we were going to die, but at the same time I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the way the flames moved, as if with a life of their own."
Jack was mesmerized, too, watching now the flickers of red that reached ever higher and higher into the sky. "You wouldn't be so fascinated if it'd been your house that you'd set on fire."
Looking pained, Mac once again apologized, "I'm sorry Jack. You know I didn't mean to, and by that point it was practically inevitable."
"I lost-" Jack began, but abruptly stopped as Mac suddenly let out a startled squeak as all at once the ground beneath him crumbled away. Jack instinctively reached for MacGyver's hand, but he was a second too late as Mac disappeared down into the depths of the Earth.
"Mac!" There was answering cry of pain, and as Jack peered down into the darkness he could see some movement in the shadows. The smoke from the fire was dimming the sun, blocking out any usable light, but Jack didn't think Mac had fallen too far, maybe about twenty feet. "Mac!"
"Jack…don't…" MacGyver's response sounded strangled, accented by several sharp grunts of pain, but at least he was responding.
Moving as little as possible for fear more of the ground would give way, Jack carefully felt around the edges of the hole. It seemed firm, except of course where Mac had been sitting only moments before. "Don't move, Mac. I'm coming down."
He wished he had a rope, but he didn't know what he would have tied it to if he did. The only thing in their circle that wasn't consumed by the fire was a squat little cactus, and cacti with their shallow roots made horrible anchors. Looked like he'd have to do this the hard way.
Grimacing heavily, Jack lowered himself down into the hole till he was only dangling by his right arm. Peering down and hoping he wouldn't land on Mac, Jack finally let go. His feet sharply hit the uneven ground and Jack fell back hard.
"Jack?" MacGyver's voice called out to him. It sounded strained, but it was close enough to easily find the man in the dark.
"Hold on," Jack grumbled, getting a handle on his own breathing before he dared to move. His side hadn't appreciated the fall in the slightest and was vehemently complaining.
MacGyver hoarsely chuckled. "Hold on to what?"
Worried, Jack wasn't sure what to make of Mac's comment, but as the Colonel's searching hands soon found cloth and skin, he suddenly realized what was wrong. MacGyver was impaled on a stalagmite, through his left side, in the same spot where Jack's current injury resided. From the feel of it, it was an amazingly long and thin piece of rock, like a petrified icicle, but the base was still thick enough to suspend Mac's torso a good six inches off the ground.
Sitting back, Jack found he couldn't feel too upset about this turn of events. He knew Mac would be fine; they just had to figure out the best way of getting him off this particular hurdle. "I was wondering when something like this was going to happen," Jack huffed out.
"Wondering!" Mac exclaimed.
"I have been shot three times now."
"Couldn't…for once…our scars…not match up?" Mac whined between breaths.
"Ha! Who's cursing our curse now?!"
It didn't take long for Jack to realize it would be impossible to just lift MacGyver off the stone spear; they'd have to detach it from the ground first. Jack felt around for two rocks he could use, one to act as the chisel and the other as the hammer. His hands found two exactly like he was thinking of, almost as if they were drawn to him.
"Sorry, Mac, but this is going to hurt. Ready?"
"No."
Grimly, Jack smirked. It wasn't as if there was anything Mac could really do to prepare himself anyway. "Okay then, here we go." He positioned himself and the rocks in as strategic a spot as possible. Then pulling back the hand with the hammer rock, Jack swung it around as hard as he could, striking the chisel rock. With a loud crack, and a cry from Mac, the stalagmite broke away from the ground.
"Here," Jack said, reaching out to where he could hear Mac. Now they just needed to pull the spear like rock from MacGyver's side. Their luck would take care of the rest, just as it had for Jack each time he'd been shot.
"No! Don't touch it!"
"Stop being such a baby."
"I just don't think it's a good idea to- AHHHH!!!"
Jack had easily found MacGyver, even in the dark. Planting a foot against Mac's back and taking a firm grip on the protruding rock with both hands, Jack had forcibly yanked it from the man.
Tossing the rock away and wiping his bloody palms on his seemingly consistently dirty pants, Jack once again reached out to find Mac. His skin was cold to the touch, and he was audibly shaking, Jack could hear the clattering of Mac's teeth.
"Mac?"
The man didn't reply, so Jack lay down next to him to share some of his body heat. After a bit, the shaking stopped and Jack wondered for a moment if MacGyver had passed out from the shock, but not much later, Mac shifted away from Jack and started moving around.
"I'm okay now. The worst of it seems to be over," Mac's voice said from a couple feet away. "The bleeding's stopped, anyway."
Jack grinned. "Welcome back!"
"Ya. Think we'll be able to climb out?"
Looking up to the where the hole was, Jack was a little surprised to see a small circle of red. The flames at last had consumed the last remaining area of land above them. "Not that way."
There was a pause and then MacGyver commented, somewhat worried, "That fire's going to burn away all our oxygen if we don't find another way out."
Once again Jack wished he had some rope, this time so they could explore without the risk of losing each other, but then he felt a slight brush against his cheek and he suddenly had an idea. "Mac, there's a small breeze over here. I think the fire's pulling it from another end."
"Fire over the head of an opening acts like a vacuum. There's no guarantee that it'll be a clear passageway."
"I know that!" Jack testily exclaimed. "But what are the chances that the other end is our way out?"
The Colonel could practically hear the other man grinning. "Almost perfect!"
As soon as the General had dismissed them they'd gone straight to Sam's office. General Hammond had wasted no time in activating the Alpha list so Janet wouldn't be able to help them, but the doctor had handed off the Colonel and MacGyver's files to Sam with a look that easily translated into, 'tell me what happens or else!'
Daniel had pushed Sam's stuff to one end of the table in the center of the room and settled down with his notes from both the metal sheets found in Nathan Redfield's office, and the rubbings of the device on P5X-239.
"So is someone going to finally explain to me just what it is we're doing?" Sam's father testily questioned as he and Teal'c carried in a television set.
"We are searching for O'Neill," Teal'c calmly responded.
"So you keep telling me. Sam?"
Sam always hated when he said her name like that, it made her feel like she'd done something wrong. Well, perhaps this time she had. She was likely to face court martial for withholding information when this was all over, but they still needed to find the Colonel, stop Akh from contacting Sedet, and save the planet. As the Colonel would say, 'piece of cake!'
Fidgeting in her seat, Sam ignored her father. She was currently hacking into every government database she could think of in the hopes of finding something, anything, on Ralph Gents. And given that she didn't want to get caught, it was a somewhat sensitive task that needed her full attention.
"Sammy?" her father asked again.
"Hold on," Sam quickly replied with irritation. It was a moment before she realized she'd just snapped at her father. A person wasn't rude to a General without repercussions, and a quick glance revealed a darkening expression on her father's face. Internally, she cringed. What would be worse, the lecture from her father, or the court martial? Somehow she felt she'd prefer the court martial, but that, too, would have to be dealt with later.
At last she found something, and downloading what she needed, Sam quickly logged out. Turning around in her chair she finally answered, "There's something going on with the Colonel that somehow seems to bend…" She struggled for an appropriate word, and finding none, settled on, "reality."
Predictably, her father scoffed at the very notion. "Jack, bend reality?"
"It's not that exactly. Things just seem to…happen, whenever they're around each other."
"They? Who's they?" Her father demanded.
Sam bit her lip, unsure how to answer that, but thankfully Daniel spoke up in her place.
"They, are Jack and MacGyver."
"MacGyver, uh?" Her father mused. He turned to Sam, "Wasn't he your idol at the Academy?"
Sam's cheeks colored and she watched her father's lips curl up with amusement. Curiously, Daniel asked him, "Did you ever get a chance to meet him?"
"No. I wasn't involved in any of the joint projects between the Air Force and the Phoenix Foundation, but I've heard a lot of good things about him." Again he smirked at Sam. She had to force herself to remain calm and relax but it wasn't easy. Mixed thoughts of both MacGyver and the Colonel kept rising in her somewhat still exhausted mind. Unbidden, her cheeks colored again.
"Well, you might not know this, but Mac and Jack are identical."
"Twins?" Her father asked with surprise.
He got three different answers. "Yes," "Sort of," and "Not exactly."
"Well which is it?"
This was the Colonel's secret. This was what he didn't want anyone to know. "They were part of an experiment," Sam finally told him. "One that altered their genetics so that they were identical."
"Why? Identical twins are born all the time."
"This is more exact than that." Sam searched for the words to explain something she herself was still trying to fully understand. "Dad, do you know of any technology that could alter the position of subatomic particles in atoms?"
His head drooped ever so slightly, and with glowing eyes, Selmak emerged. "We have many technologies that utilize atomic energy."
"What about something that didn't change the state of the atom, but instead just…" Again she struggled for the right words, "moved things around?"
Selmak frowned. "I have not heard of such technology, nor would I know its purpose." Then the head dipped again and her father came back to the forefront. "Are you telling me that Jack's atoms have been altered?"
"It's just a hunch," Sam admitted with a helpless shrug.
"In their current state, things are not as they should be within their vicinity," Teal'c stated from his corner where he'd plugged the TV in and was currently flipping through news stations.
"The only thing we know is that the experiment was run by a man named Ralph Gents. The NSA has a file on him, and it's rather dark."
Her father walked over to her, his brow creasing in disconcertment. "What does it say?"
Sam quickly scanned the information on the screen, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up on end as she read about horror after twisted horror. "Most of Gents' files were destroyed in the explosion at FamilyView, but the NSA suspected Gents involvement in the mutation of over forty kids." Sam shuddered.
"Just when you think all the bad guys are out there," her father murmured low enough that only Sam heard.
"Were any of them identical like Jack and Mac?" Daniel questioned.
"No," Sam told him, reading more of the details. "Most died at birth with massive deformities. It doesn't look like they know about the Colonel or MacGyver." Then Sam read something that practically froze her blood.
Her father must have noticed because he put a hand on her shoulder and gently questioned, "Sam?"
"They found one of Gents' journals among the wreckage still intact. In it he describes the progress of his most successful test subjects and his hopes that they'll fulfill his goal. To prove his theory on Equal Matter Displacement."
She spun around in her chair, still shaking from the shock that someone would even want to do something like that. From the questioning expressions on everyone else faces they obviously didn't understand the full implications of what Gents was trying to do. "Remember when my other…me, came through the quantum mirror? Because I still existed here, she began to suffer from a temporal distortion. We both couldn't exist in the same reality. It's a common theory that two of the same person, like yourself from another reality or let's say from the future, can't occupy the same space. We now know this to be true, at least to a degree. There were still differences between me and the other me, but imagine what might have happened if we'd been exactly the same."
"What?" Daniel asked, his face pinched in confusion.
Sam sighed with exasperation. "Most believe if you come in contact with your future self that you'd both just cease to exist, but some believe, like Gents, that that sudden change would cause a cataclysmic reaction that could destroy the Earth."
"That's what he was trying to do?! But we've seen Jack and Mac touch each other!" Uncertainty filled Daniel's eyes. "Haven't we?"
"Indeed we have," Teal'c responded, putting several of Sam's own fears to rest.
"So it didn't work. Gents' failed," Daniel said with audible relief.
Sam shook her head. "Not completely. Things are being affected. We saw it with the blood samples, and it's likely the longer they're around each other, the worse it's going to get."
"Hold up kids," her father interrupted with raised hands. "If you say something's happening, I don't doubt it," he stated, looking directly at Sam. "But, we didn't even have color television around the time Jack would have been born. Don't you think this sounds just a little…fantastic?"
Sam had to admit that she did, but apparently Daniel didn't. "Not if Gents had help."
"What do you mean?"
"The writing on the device from the ship talks about a wide variety of technology that the Hereta left behind. And in Akh's last orders he commanded his servants to recover it from Ra. Ra didn't just betray the Hereta by denying them new hosts, he found the location of their ship and set guards around it to prevent anyone from waking them up."
"The natives of P5X-239," Teal'c stated.
Daniel nodded, continuing, "Yes, exactly. But there was a lot more on that ship that just the Hereta."
Sam furled her eyebrows in thought. "If Ra scavenged the ship, why would he leave his Key there?"
"He would have known it would be useless without the other two and the help of the Hereta," Teal'c sagely replied.
"And only Ra knew the location of the ship," Sam agreed, nodding her head with understanding as the pieces fell into place. "So Ra probably took some of the old technology to try and figure it out himself."
With an impatient wave of his hand, her father interrupted, "Even if Ra took the Hereta's technology, there's no guarantee he brought it here, to Earth."
"Well," Daniel replied, glancing down at his notes, "According to what Akh wrote, at that time Earth was the only human inhabited planet they knew of. The System Lords didn't exist, jaffa, didn't exist. And that's not all. The device from the ship also talks about three gifts from the Hereta, the gift of power, the gift of shadows, and the gift of control."
"It was rumored that Ra possessed a weapon of immense power," Teal'c informed them.
"And Akh has the gift of control," Sam added, thinking back on the behavior of the men they'd arrested in Portland. At first she'd thought they'd just been fooled because Akh was in Nathan Redfield's body, but the more she thought about it, the more she felt they had actually been brainwashed somehow. It would certainly explain why the guards hadn't reacted when Akh had brought her into the Hert Flowers office building. "It's his pendent. It must somehow influence people's minds."
"Like nish'ta?" her father questioned.
"I don't think so. I don't remember seeing any gas or drug. The pendent just glowed a lot. Plus it could generate an energy shield that protected Akh, one that he could use and control to catch our bullets and return fire with them."
Her father looked at her startled. "I don't know of any goa'uld technology that can do that."
"Well that covers the gift of power and control," Daniel commented grimly. "That just leaves the gift of shadows in the hands of Sedet."
"Cloaking technology perhaps?"
Sam turned back to her screen as she listened to them discuss the possibilities. If Gents had had a piece of the Hereta technology then there was sure to be a record of it somewhere. The NSA were fantastic at keeping track of even the smallest details, including the auction of Gents personal items after his death, but it was all just item numbers and names. Then one name practically jumped off the screen.
"I think I found something," Sam told her companions even as she began searching for more information. "Gents had an extensive personal collection of antiques that was sold off after he died. One of the pieces was sold to John Redfield."
"Who?" Her father questioned.
Realizing her father would know nothing of the Redfields, Sam simply explained, "The Redfields are the descendants of Akh's original servants." At last she found what she needed and was startled to find that the item was being housed in a warehouse here in Colorado Springs. Soon after, she located a detailed catalog of the warehouse's inventory, including pictures.
"That would be the Hereta device," Selmak commented over Sam's shoulder.
Sam looked up, startled to hear the Tok'ra's voice instead of her father's. "Do you recognize it?" It was a strange ball shaped device with symbols embossed on the outside.
"No." Selmak pointed to a piece of the object, saying, "But that is azerat crystal."
"It's not far, I can send someone to pick it up," Sam immediately stated.
"Will we be able to figure it out?" Daniel worriedly asked.
But Sam wasn't ready to just give up on the Colonel or MacGyver. "We have to try something."
"We still have to find them," her father reminded her.
Turning to where Teal'c was monitoring the news stations, Sam questioned, "Teal'c?"
"There have been many instances of odd behavior in many cities."
They all looked at the television screen to see a report of a peculiar car accident. When it switched to a view of the vehicle everyone's head tilted, even Teal'c's. The car had driven off the elevated ramp of a freeway and landed on a lamppost. The damaged lamppost had speared its way through the vehicle but the car was still suspended high above the ground at a crazy angle. The announcer reported that as yet, no one inside the vehicle had been injured, and on screen they could see little hands waving from the windows to the growing crowd on the ground.
Teal'c continued to change channels, reporting as he did, "In Albuquerque of New Mexico, all the surrounding bridges have collapsed for no discernable reason. In Phoenix of Arizona, the same individual has won several sizable amounts of currency. Las Vegas, of Nevada, no longer has power but for a pyramid, possibly of goa'uld design."
Sam grinned. "That's just the Luxor, Teal'c," she told him, but the jaffa remained suspicious.
"And this is all caused by Jack?" her father questioned, still sounding uncertain.
Sam nodded, telling him, "The area of effect is a lot larger than I thought it would be, it might not be so easy to find them after all."
They pulled out a map of the States and began marking all the strange occurrences every news station reported. Things were even happening around the mountain as the Colorado Springs news crews reported several alligator sightings in the city. Sam was sure at the center of the peculiar events they would find MacGyver and the Colonel but it was near impossible to identify just where that center would be, outside of a large general area.
"Sam?" Daniel said, getting everyone's attention. He had the television to yet another channel. "Remember in Portland when you told Major Wilder to find out what places still had power?"
"Yes. And we discovered that MacGyver and the Colonel had been at the airport during the quake."
"Well according to this, the epicenter also was at that airport."
"Of course!" Sam exclaimed, feeling her hopes rise again. "Teal'c have there been any other earthquakes since?"
"Possibly one," the jaffa answered. "In Arizona."
"Then all we need is another earthquake and we can pinpoint exactly where they are."
No sooner had she said the words than the mountain began to shake. The group grabbed onto whatever counter space they could to keep their balance. The earthquake lasted several minutes, but did little more than knock a few items over.
When things stilled again, Daniel commented with a slightly shaking voice, "Well, that was just a bit…weird?"
Sam had to agree. Had the earthquake happened because of what she'd said? The thought was a little staggering to contemplate. But if she was right, it'd give them exactly what they needed.
A quick trip to the Control Room and a couple phone calls later confirmed her suspicion. Five states had felt the quake, which they were saying had originated in Arizona and set off a chain reaction along two other fault lines.
While they now knew the location of the Colonel and MacGyver, Sam realized the affects of their proximity was growing quicker than she first realized. Even once they found them, would they be able to help them?