Chapter 9
"How the hell did this happen? She was fine!"
Dr. Warner shook his head. "I honestly don't know what to tell you," he said. "We don't know enough about this disease to..."
Daniel halted his pacing for a moment to glare at him. "No, you ran all the tests on her that you've run on me, and you told me she was fine!" he snapped. "How could you miss something like this?"
"It wasn't there," Warner insisted. "We checked her blood at least a dozen times while she was in the hospital, and there was no trace of the gene in her DNA. Upon first glance, it isn't even there now."
Daniel narrowed his eyes. "Upon first glance?" he repeated. "Well, how about you keep on glancing until you find the damn thing?"
"Daniel, this isn't helping," Janet said from across the room. She hadn't moved away from Chloe's incubator since they'd arrived at the SGC over an hour earlier, but she had obviously been following their conversation. Daniel sighed when he looked at her. She was worn out and miserable, and it was entirely his fault.
His guilt was starting to make him angry. Very angry.
"What am I supposed to do?" he said in a low voice as he stepped closer to his wife. "Just sit here and watch her die? I can't do that. I don't think you can, either."
Janet spun around to look at him, and if looks could really kill, he would have died on the spot. "They are doing the best they can, Daniel," she said. "Meanwhile, I'm trying to offer our daughter as much comfort as I can while she struggles to breathe. All you're doing is fighting with the people who are trying to save her life, and ordering them to do things they're already doing. Which one of us is being more productive, hmm?"
Daniel's chest constricted as he looked down at Chloe and heard the venom in Janet's tone. God, it was really happening. Their daughter was dying, and Janet had already begun hating him. It was like all of his nightmares were coming true at once. "Maybe I should just get out of everybody's hair, then," he said.
Janet turned back to the baby. "Maybe you should."
Daniel stared at her stiff back for a moment, and then dropped his gaze to the floor. He couldn't even look over at Dr. Warner as he headed for the door and left the infirmary.
He wasn't sure where he was going, but his legs just wouldn't stop moving as he hurried through the corridors of the SGC. He felt as though he needed to get as far away from the infirmary as possible, yet at the same time it was where he wanted to be more than anywhere else in the galaxy. He just couldn't stand to see his child suffering the same way he'd suffered. So far it was just her breathing that was a problem, but soon enough there would be the red eyes, the flaking skin... it made him sick just thinking about it.
Their beautiful daughter was turning into one of them.
Daniel sucked in a sharp breath and huddled against the wall of the corridor as a sudden, vivid flashback entered his mind. He was there... he could hear them moan... he could feel their hands on his skin... he could feel the prick of needles and the burning of the chemicals they pumped into him...
He covered his mouth to stifle his frustrated scream and started to run. He ran down corridor after corridor, stairwell after stairwell, not thinking about anything but putting one foot in front of the other. He had to get away from that feeling - the feeling that they were there, watching him, and that even though they were light years away, they still had control over his entire life. He knew that if he thought about it too much, it would drive him insane.
When he found himself outside his office, he ran inside and leaned against his desk while he tried to catch his breath. He realized as his adrenaline started to wear off that he was shaking from head to toe, and that his legs were starting to feel weak. He sank into his chair before he collapsed completely.
He laid his arms on the desk and rested his head in the crook of his elbow, expecting to cry. He didn't. He was surprised to discover that he didn't really feel anything anymore - not grief, not anger, not fear... nothing. A blissful numbness had taken their place.
With this numbness came clarity. For the first time since the moment he'd heard his child start to wheeze in her sleep, he could think clearly about the situation. It was like he suddenly managed to detach himself from it all and see it from an outsider's point of view.
Chloe was sick... but it was a treatable disease. She didn't have to die. Not if they could somehow find the cure.
And maybe Syun had already given it to him.
With shaking hands, Daniel reached down to open the bottom drawer of his desk. Hiding beneath a jumble of assorted tools and artifacts was the device Syun had handed Jack as they'd made their escape from his planet. Daniel had been through the information contained in this device at least a dozen times, but could looking at it one more time hurt?
"There had to be a reason why he gave me this thing," Daniel muttered as he activated it and started flipping from page to page of the alien writings.
If there was an answer in there, he would find it.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
"Cassie? Are you home?"
Cassie sat up on her bed and wiped her eyes at the sound of Sam's voice. "Crap," she muttered. She really didn't want to see anybody, least of all a mother hen. She just wanted to nurse her self-pity and New Year's hangover in private.
"Hello?" Sam called.
Cassie winced as she heard footsteps on the stairs. She grabbed her pillow and lay down on her side with it tucked under her chin. Sam was going to find her, so she may as well fake sleep and hope she went away.
"Hey, there you are," Sam said as she pushed Cassie's bedroom door open. "Are you sleeping?"
Cassie cracked an eye open to look at her. "Maybe."
Sam gave her a sympathetic look and sat down on the side of the bed. "Hangover?"
Cassie glared at her. "Maybe."
Sam leaned forward and whispered, "Don't worry, I won't rat you out for drinking. Your mom just asked me to come check on you, make sure you got home okay last night."
Right. Of course. Janet had asked someone else to come check up on the alien girl while she was busy fussing over her own kid. Made sense. "I got home fine, as you can see," she said. "You can go now."
"Did you get the note they left for you?"
Cassie sighed and slowly sat up again. "If you mean the hastily scribbled message I found on a Post-It on my bedroom door, then yes, I did," she said. "'Cassie, Chloe is sick. We've taken her to the SGC. Call if you need us. Mom and Dad.'" She rolled her eyes, and then winced at the extra stab of pain it caused. "You know, if I'd known nobody would be home, I would have brought the party back here."
Sam gave her that annoying look of sympathy again. "They're doing the best they can," she said, laying her hand on Cassie's arm. "It turns out that Chloe has the disease after all, and they're devastated. I know you may think they're pushing you aside, but..."
"If you know exactly how I feel, then why do you need to be in here talking to me?" Cassie snapped. "You can tell Janet I'm fine and just... go." She lay down again and turned her back to Sam, hoping she'd take the hint and leave.
"So, she's Janet now?"
Cassie sighed in exasperation. "Okay... you can tell Mom I'm fine. Could you please go now?"
Sam hesitated a moment, but then stood up and patted Cassie's back. "Okay," she said. "But just so you know, I'm under strict orders to stay until one or both of your parents comes back, so... I'll be downstairs if you need me."
Cassie didn't answer. She lay in silence until Sam left the room, closing the door behind her.
"My parents died on Hanka," Cassie whispered to the wall. She shivered and buried her face in her arms to cry some more.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Janet swiped a hand across her face in an attempt to wake herself up and wipe away some of the tears she'd shed over the last hour. It was only then that she realized her face was covered not only in tears, but also in sweat.
"Dr. Warner?" she called softly over her shoulder. She looked down at her baby to make sure she hadn't been disturbed by her mother's voice. Thankfully, she was still sound asleep.
"Is there something you need?" Warner asked as he approached her.
Janet turned to him with a hand to her forehead. "I think I'm running a fever," she said. "I've been feeling really tired, but I thought it was just the lack of sleep..."
"I'll fetch a thermometer," Warner said, and hurried off to do so.
It only took a minute to see that Janet's temperature was three degrees higher than it should be, but she could have told him that without confirmation from the thermometer. All Janet wanted to know was why.
A sinking feeling entered the pit of her stomach as a thought occurred to her - maybe she hadn't just been tired all this time. Maybe she was sick, and had somehow made Chloe sick, too.
Maybe this wasn't Syun's disease after all.
"I want you to run every test you can possibly think of on me," she said as she hopped up onto the closest bed to her daughter's incubator. "If there's something wrong with me, it might be affecting the baby, too."
"Janet, I'm sure it's only stress and exhaustion..."
"We don't know what it is," she insisted. "I need to find out. Please."
Warner sighed and nodded. "It can't hurt to be sure," he said.
"Thank you." Janet lay down on the bed as Warner started preparing to draw her blood. "Wait," she said before he could insert the needle in her arm.
"What is it?"
Janet was about to ask that he call for Daniel first, but then she remembered the way they'd parted. He seemed furious with himself for being the cause of their baby's illness, so what would happen if it turned out it was actually her fault? Would he turn his anger on her?
No, it was better if he didn't know about this until it had been confirmed one way or another, she decided. It might be hours before the test results came back, and she could do without his pacing and frustration in the meantime.
"Nothing," she said. "Do it."
She laid her head back and tried to relax as the vials filled with her blood. She wasn't sure whether to hope they'd find the answer this way or not, so she closed her eyes and braced herself for the agonizing wait.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Daniel laced his fingers through his hair and gave it a hard yank as he skimmed over yet another page of alien text. He'd looked at page upon page of it - articles on the drugs the aliens used to transform his genetic structure, a complete history of the alien disease and how it had come to be, even the occasional photograph of the people and animals exposed to this disease both before and after they became symptomatic. It was starting to drive him mad.
One more click of the button and he was looking into the faces of what appeared to be this planet's version of cattle as they were being led into the medical compound. Daniel shuddered at the sight. Not only did he pity those poor animals their fate, but the building itself was enough to freak him out. From what Daniel could gather, the kind of experiments Syun and his companions were conducting weren't exactly condoned by the general populace, so they'd had to smuggle their subjects into the building under the cover of darkness. Seeing the place that had held him captive for so long shrouded in shadow with those aliens circling around their new guinea pigs...
Daniel almost jumped out of his skin when his office phone rang.
He grabbed the receiver and tried to stop himself from shaking as he lifted it to his ear. "Daniel Jackson," he said.
"Hey, Daniel," Sam's voice greeted him. "Am I calling at a bad time?"
Daniel sighed and took off his glasses so he could rub his tired eyes. "No, not at all," he said. "I was just... doing some work. Trying to keep my mind off things."
"How's Chloe doing?"
"She's... hanging in there," he said. "How's Cassie taking all of this?"
Sam paused for a second, and then said, "Actually, she's why I'm calling. I've been here for a few hours, and she's been in her room the entire time. When I went to check on her, it looked like she'd been crying. And... I told her I wouldn't tell you about this, but... it also looked like she'd been drinking last night."
Daniel suddenly realized that his head was pounding. "I see," he said. "Well... Janet's with the baby, and I doubt Cassie would want to talk to me, so..."
"That's just it, Daniel. I think she does want to talk to you. I remember when my mom died, and I was mad as hell at my dad for years, all I really wanted was for him to sit down and talk to me. Even though I probably would have lashed out at him if he had... I think that was something I needed to do."
Daniel closed his eyes as resignation started to set in. He knew that being a father meant being there for your children through thick and thin and teenage rage, and right now he wasn't being there for either of them. He'd thought going through the information on this damn device would yield some kind of result, but instead he'd just been wasting time he could have spent at his baby's side. And now Cassie was going out drinking and doing God knew what else because he was trying to avoid her to prevent getting into another fight.
He had to fix this. He had to stop wallowing in self-pity long enough to do his job for at least one of his children. And right now, Cassie was probably the easier of the two to deal with.
"Okay," he said with a sigh. "I'll be there in a few minutes."
"I don't want to drag you away from Janet and Chloe for this," Sam said. "I just thought you should know..."
"No, it's okay," Daniel said. "Really. There's not much I can do here anyway. I was just..."
He stopped as he looked down at the device. Something in the picture caught his eye... something he hadn't noticed the last dozen times he'd seen this photograph.
"Daniel?"
"Yeah," he said absently as he picked up the device and looked at it more closely. "Hey, Sam? Just out of curiosity... can you find a planet's co-ordinates based on the constellations they see in their sky?"
Maybe there was a way he could fix everything.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
To be continued...