Chapter 2

"Hi sir, it's me."

O'Neill looks at the cell phone, a confused and almost pissed look on his face. Sam had known that they were still on active duty and yet, if she is calling herself on her mobile, she is most definitely not on base. Having little time to ponder this, he says, "Carter, where the hell are you?"

Sam does not respond straight away. She waits a moment, trying to find a way to word what she has to say. She has, however, no intention to tell him where she is or why she isn't at the SGC.

"Sir," she starts finally. "I need you to do me a favour." Without waiting for him to say something in reply, she continues. "I need you to tell my dad something. I need you to tell him that-"

O'Neill has no idea what is going on, and it really annoys him.

"Argh! Carter! What the hell is going on? You're going to see him in a couple of days, god dammit! You don't need me to tell him anything!" He doesn't usually speak in metaphors, but this was an exception; the time bomb0 was ticking and he was about to explode. "Carter, I want you back on base, right now! That's an order, Major!"

Sam seems unconcerned that her CO is giving her an order. "No can do, sir. Please tell my dad that I have changed where I keep the key; it is now under the doormat. Tell him this."

O'Neill opens his mouth to say something, but Sam has already hung up. He heads back to the briefing room, thinking things over and the cell phone still held in his hand. Carter has had her insubordinate streaks, but not like this. He walks into the briefing room with Teal'c, General Hammond and Doctor Fraiser staring at him. Just by the curious glimmers in their eyes, they are expecting an explanation.

General Hammond is the first to break the silence. "So? Where is she?"

O'Neill shrugs. "I don't know, sir, but she's not on base. She...uh... she called herself on her mobile phone." He hands the phone to Hammond, who displays an expression of misunderstanding. O'Neill continues. "She said to give Jake the message that her key is under her doormat. I have no idea what it means, sir."

Everybody in the room exchanges glances, everybody asks themselves the same question, which basically is WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

General Hammond is the first one to speak, yet again. "Colonel, you check her house and see if she's there. Teal'c will go with you. I'll check to see if her credit card has been used from here. Let's move, people."

O'Neill jumps out of his seat, Teal'c rises slowly and reverently, General Hammond stands up, goes into his office and picks up the red telephone.

Sam's House

O'Neill steps out of his truck, followed closely by Teal'c. O'Neill goes up the steps leading to her front door and knocks loudly. When there is no reply, he shouts her name. He is now genuinely pissed. While O'Neill is banging on Sam's front door, Teal'c is calmly standing on the driveway, noticing that her motorbike is nowhere to be seen. He decides to check around the back. He jumps the fence and scans her back garden with his eyes. There is nothing. Teal'c goes back to O'Neill.

"SamanthaCarter is not here, O'Neill," he says, his voice full of regret. Jack is pulling out a lock pick and attempting to open her front door. The lock will not budge. Sam's voice rings in his mind.

"The key is now under the doormat."

O'Neill kneels down and retrieves the key from beneath the annoying brown mat that reminds him of excrement.

Hesteps into the hallway. There is nothing missing. No personal items taken from shelves, no mess everywhere to indicate hurry to leave, nothing but an awkward silence.

The SGC

Hammond has checked Sam's credit card details and rung in every marker that could help him find some trace of where she has been. He discovers that her credit card nor anything else useful that could help track her has been used. He sighs, realizing that Sam would not have been stupid enough to use her credit cards while she was on the run. Even so, he is concerned. He picks up the newspaper that is lying disregarded on the floor and starts to flick through it. On the third page, he sees a headline, 'FATAL CAR CRASH KILLS ONE AND LEAVES TWO OTHERS INJURED'. His heart drops into his stomach as he reads the opening paragraph. Hardly any of it goes into his brain; he can only see the words that he doesn't want to. Harley Davidson motorbike in crash...rider killed...woman...blonde...five-nine-ish...

The next thing Hammond knows, he has picked up the phone and is telephoning the morgue. The phone is ringing. The sound is eerier than the floorboards creaking when you're alone in the dark or an owl hooting while you're walking through the forest at night. A man on the other end picks the phone up. Hammond asks for the name of the woman killed in the car crash. The man at the morgue answers. He feels defeated. He is the one that has found Sam, but she is not in the state that they want.

O'Neill and Teal'c are summoned back to the base. They are confused; Hammond has told them that he has found Sam, but wouldn't tell them where until they are at the SCG. If Hammond has learned anything, it is best to tell someone that one of their close friends or family members has died face-to-face and not over the phone. O'Neill walks into the briefing room with Teal'c at his side. Hammond is sitting at his usual end of the table, his hands in his lap and slightly puffy eyes.

He looks like he's been crying, noted O'Neill notes silently.

Hammond heaves a huge sigh, as if to get himself under control. O'Neill starts to feel really weird. He feels like there is tragedy clinging to everything in the room. O'Neill suddenly realizes what has happened and feels a wave of dread wash over him.

Hammond speaks. "Jack, Teal'c, I have some bad news. Sam…" He pauses, his voice being all wobbly. After what seemed like forever, he continues. "Sam was killed in a motorbike accident. I called the morgue and apparently, she was there yesterday afternoon."

O'Neill is shocked. His eyes are wide- he cannot believe it. Then, something occurs to him.

"Sir," he says, already having a hard time keeping control of his voice. "If Sam was killed yesterday afternoon and I got that call from her this morning, who was it that I spoke to earlier?" He is desperately trying to find a loophole in the general's story.

"I don't know, Jack, but it wasn't Sam Carter."

"Then who the hell was it then?" O'Neill feels the colour drain from his face.

Hammond shrugs, regret hanging heavily in his appearance. "I don't know, Jack."

ΩΩΩΩΩ

At the Morgue

Teal'c, O'Neill and Hammond walk into the freezer room with all the other dead people.

So many dead, thinks O'Neill. It's goddamned ridiculous.

The small man guiding them through the sea of corpses stops rather abruptly at a gurney. He turns to the remaining members of SG-1 and pulls back the cloth covering one of the corpses so that the face is visible. For O'Neill, everything is going in slow-mo. The cloth is peeled back until Sam's head is visible. The small man backs away. It is undoubtedly his fellow colleague, his friend, is lying there, dead. Her face is covered in severe bruises and a series of clean, yet disturbing, deep cuts in her forehead and in her temple. O'Neill is shaking, not only with cold, but also with disbelief. Without saying anything else, he runs out of the morgue and down the street. Hammond and Teal'c stare after him. They have not seen him like this before. Hammond goes to follow, however Teal'c stops him.

"Leave him be," says the big man. "He needs time to grieve."

Hammond nods and turns back to Sam, biting his lip violently in attempt to keep himself together.

O'Neill is slows from his running. He is now in the park, which is a fair way from the morgue. The park is empty, and rain is teeming down like the tears on his face. He stops for a moment, resting against a tree and thinks how stupid he must look. He feels really bad; his last words to her were chucking her own sadness and her own feelings back in her face. She had always had time to comfort people; when Sha're died she was in the infirmary with Daniel offering him a shoulder to cry on or a friend to turn to. Now that Daniel was gone, she had been offered no such support. She had just dealt with it her own way and now look where she was.

Or where she wasn't. She wasn't supposed to be dead: she was supposed to behere with him.

He hears the thunder rumbling loudly. It has been a while since he left the morgue. A tear trickling down his face, O'Neill sits out of the rain, beneath the tree. All of a sudden, Sam's mobile phone rings. He takes it out of his trouser pocket and stares at it. He presses the answer button, but just stares at it in his hand. He can hear Hammond calling his name on the other end. O'Neill is about to drop it when a bolt of lightning strikes the tree. He feels the electricity jolt through his body; he feels almost relieved. He is killed instantly. The phone merely receives a zap before flying out of his hand. No one will find him 'til early tomorrow. He never reports to work again. His phone is given back to the phone company with a new SIM card. Someone buys it. As soon as they get home...

"Hello? This Jack O'Neill here. I was wondering if you could give General Hammond this message..."