Once Fraiser arrived, Hammond and those not needed in the lab – including the rest of the Asgard – went to another room that was close by, where the general had the feed from the security camera in the lab sent onto a large computer screen so they could see what was going on. There wasn't any sound, but at least they could see what was happening this way.

Janet looked at Ian, curiously.

"How long will this take, do you think?"

Not that she was impatient – or had anything else to do – she just wanted to know how long she should wait before she should start worrying about him once he began.

He shrugged.

"No idea."

"Should we do anything in particular?" Shawn asked a little nervously. He wasn't really used to being a lab rat, after all – although he did trust Ian.

"Just sit in a chair so you're still – and don't say anything until I'm done."

Shawn and Thor both complied, and Ian took a deep breath.

"Ready?"

They both nodded.

"Okay. Shawn first…"

Ian walked over and rested his hand on Shawn's shoulder, figuring it wouldn't matter where he touched him; he was going to be able to get a sample of the same DNA. He closed his eyes, and sank his awareness into his friend's skin, and then beyond, seeking first his bloodstream, where he trapped a few blood cells to keep them from moving on and searched deeper into one of those cells, looking for a good DNA sample.

This wasn't hard to find, and didn't take much effort. The tricky part, however, was first separating that part of Shawn's DNA that made him uniquely Shawn, and then pulling the remaining DNA into himself through the pores in his own skin. The last thing he wanted was for the Asgard to end up being any more related to Shawn than they already were – and he certainly didn't want them looking like Shawn.

The second tricky part was keeping that DNA sample safe against his own body's defenses.

Once his body realized there were cells there that didn't belong to Ian, white cells were immediately set loose on Shawn's DNA, and Ian didn't have any control over his own system. He moved his hand away from Shawn, feeling his temperature rise as his body tried to burn out what it believed was an infection. To avoid losing the DNA sample to those white blood cells, Ian moved it around swiftly through his own system to avoid letting it get caught, and walked over to the stasis pod, resting his hand on the chest of the clone inside.

This was tricky; too, because now he had to fight the immune system of the clone while at the same time collect a sample from Thor to add into the melting pot of DNA samples. Luckily Thor was seated close to the clone, so Ian could keep one hand on the clone, and place his other hand on the Asgard's chest.

The clone's defenses kicked in just as quickly as Ian's had, and Ian searched deep, ignoring Thor for just a moment to hunt for a good sample of the clone's DNA. To this he added Shawn's, integrating it into the DNA strand and then collecting a sample of Asgard DNA from Thor – again, making sure to separate that which made Thor unique from the rest of the sample before pulling it into himself.

He moved his hand from Thor, grateful that he only had one thing to deal with now instead of two – even though this was really going to be the hardest part. Not so tricky, just time consuming. The DNA had to line up when he mixed all three samples together to merge it into one, otherwise the clone's defenses would reject it and he'd have to start all over.

He examined the Asgard DNA from Shawn – which was a bit different than that from the clone, and completely different from Thor's – and then continued integrating Shawn's into the clone's strand, struggling to change them both into something that wasn't going to be rejected. As soon as he was close to what he knew he needed, he brought the sample from Thor into the group as well, lining it up and telling the other two that it belonged also – simply by changing the signature Thor's sample left and making it into the same signature as the other two, which was now the signature that the clone would have permanently.

Carefully, he took that sample – the finished product – and introduced it to the immune system of the clone. Before it could be destroyed by those white blood cells that had been sent to kill it, the white blood cells were fooled into believing that the signature was one of their own, mainly because it was – mostly. Enough so that it appeared to belong. Ian 'watched' carefully, waiting to see if the white blood cells would see through his new creation and eventually attack it, but to his relief, they didn't. Instead, they moved on, leaving the new signature alone.

He sighed a purely mental sigh of relief, and then got to work. Before he was done, he had to switch this signature with all the others in the clone's body – enough of them anyways, to make the clone start producing that signature instead of its old one. A daunting task, but one that wasn't all that difficult as much as it was time-consuming. He took a deep breath against the weariness that was setting in, and got started.

OOOOOOOOOO

"Has he failed?" one of the Asgard watching from the other room asked, after they had watched the computer screen for almost an hour.

"He hasn't moved away…" Andrew said, intently, forgetting for the moment that he was the youngest person in the room and probably not expected to answer. He was so involved in watching what Ian was doing that he hadn't realized so much time had gone by until he looked at the clock on the video screen.

"I'm sure he's doing fine," Sam assured them. "He said he didn't know how long it was going to take."

"How long should it take?" Jack asked.

"He's changing the genetic structure of an complex creature," Andrew replied, not moving his gaze from the screen. "It'll probably take a while. I can't even believe he's trying it."

"You don't think it'll work?" Daniel asked.

Andrew shrugged.

"I've never heard of anything like it, really…"

And he'd been learning about genetics and such from the Asgard for years.

"Which does not mean it will not work," another one of the Asgard said. "Especially if he is, indeed, using the knowledge of the Ancients to guide him."

Jack privately thought the Asgard were grasping at straws, taking what hope they could in the procedure working. He, personally, wasn't so sure Ian could do what he was trying to do – especially since Sam had told him that Ian hadn't been all that certain, either.

A movement on the screen pulled him from his thoughts, and he looked over in time to see Ian step back from the stasis pod, his head drooping and even in the utter silence of the video looking about as tired as Jack could remember seeing him look.

"He's done…"

Those who hadn't already noticed turned and looked at the monitor as well. Sam stood up, quickly. He was still on his feet, and she was hoping he'd manage to stay conscious long enough to tell them what happened.

"Let's get in there."