Chapter 8

Jack stood over a couple of men that now lay motionless on the floor. Maybourne then came around the corner, signaling to Jack with his hands that the immediate vicinity was clear. They moved strategically forward, guns pointed towards the empty space ahead of them.

"This is fun," commented Maybourne quietly and for no apparent reason. Jack made a spasmodic gesture like cutting his own throat to indicate that he was going to give them away if he didn't shut his hole. "Oh, come on!" said Maybourne, uncharacteristically picking a vase off a nearby table and began pressing each of its little patterns intricately painted onto it. "You don't think they don't know we're here? These people don't make mistakes. Let's just leave and let Sam go!" Jack opened his mouth to say something, but was silenced by Maybourne raising a small, device covered in a whole heap of metal that he had mickeyed out of the vase design. Jack instantly recognized it, and played along.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Let's go." With that, Maybourne dropped the device to the floor and, reminding Jack of an oversized chicken, began to stamp on it several times. When he was satisfied that it was destroyed, he picked it up once more and examined it.

"Listening devices," said Maybourne, his voice lowered past the point of a whisper and almost inaudible. "I'll bet this place is riddled with them. Hopefully, the guy monitoring the listening device thinks we're leaving and won't report what he hears."

"What about the guys lookin' after the video cameras?" asked Jack.

"Just keep your voice low, your head down, and your gun at the ready," advised his partner. The advice was taken without complaint.

Their search continued, still turning up nothing. Jack's high hopes came crashing down to Earth. They had gone through the place twice and there was no sign of Sam, or anybody else for that matter. He slumped into a chair, his knees weak. They had come all the way to this place to find nothing and go home without a life being saved. Anger caused him to clasp the arms of the chair to the extent that his knuckles were white. In frustration, he grabbed a nearby lamp and slogged it across the room. Maybourne ducked as to avoid being hit. The porcelain object shattered into a million pieces on the far wall. Jack frowned. Had the sound it made been hollow? He was sure that it had been. He grabbed a metal box and emptied a whole manner of crap out of it before hurling it too at the wall.

There was a 'clunk'. Maybourne had heard it that time as well. He sought a secret trigger in bookshelf close to the wall. After pulling a book entitled something along the lines of "Code-Breaking For The Inexperienced", there was a loud crunching sound of gears turning and soon after that, a door was revealed.

"Holy sht!" commented Maybourne. He studied the door: there were several large locks including a device that required a code number and a combination lock. "Listen, Jack, I can hack into a whole heap of things, but this is state of the art. There's no way that I can get past this."

Jack sighed. "Are you sure?"

"Well, I can give it a go, but I can't guarantee you anything." Maybourne began pressing buttons on the code pad. His thumb hovered over the enter key. "You know, Jack, that if this doesn't work, security will be here in about a minute."

"I know that. Try anyway." There was a beeping noise. Jack almost dared to hope that it had worked. No such luck.

The beeping got louder, and louder, and louder.

"It didn't work," announced Maybourne.

"Yeah, I figured that." Jack scanned the room for anything that could be used as a password for this lock. He looked at the clock to see how long they had until they were arrested. Then, something caught his eye. There were four digits on the clock. Four numbers.

"Try 8532!" yelled Jack. He could hear people approaching. His partner punched in the numbers as ordered and set to work on the combination lock.

Jack's POV

Well, I we were stuffed. They'd caught us. I had forgotten about the other lock.

"OK, that'll be enough, thank you fellows," said a person from behind me. I felt something cold and hard being driven into my back. I didn't need to ask what it is. I glance at Maybourne. He, two, has someone behind him with a gun pointed at him.

"Hands where we can see them," demanded the person behind me. I obeyed, but taking my own sweet time. Another man dealt with all the locks and opened the door to reveal a dark hallway. Me and Maybourne pushed inside, into yet another room even darker and danker than the corridor. I heard two locks being locked and something buzzing. I presumed that was more security.

It was pretty dark in that room, and I had to strain my eyes to see anything at all. I walked around blindly, searching for a wall or an object or something. My foot brushed something. I kicked what ever it was a bit harder.

"I don't want to go to school," said a female voice groggily. I heard her moving. "Who are you and what do you want?"

It took me a while to actually register who was talking to me. "Carter?"

"Sir?" My heart skipped a beat. I got down on my knees, groping until I found on of her hands and holding it in my own. "I'm here Sam." She sounded so scared.

"Are you reallyyouthis time?"

I had to laugh. "Yeah, I'm real. Not a hallucination."

"Are you sure, sir?" She sounded really confused. "Youpeople always say that."

"I'm not a vision." I pressed the matter in a voice that bordered on desperate. I could feel the life ebbing from her like light from a dying light bulb. She was in bad shape. If I didn't get her out of there soon…

"I'm so tired," she complained. "Wanna sleep."

"Not yet. C'mon Sam, keep talking." I knew if she slept she would die. I saw enough people die like this when I was a PoW in Iraq. I sought a topic of discussion frantically. "Uh, what are you working on at the SGC?" I waited a few painstaking seconds for her to reply. For a moment I was afraid she'd gone.

"I'm writing a book on wormhole physics," she said, words becoming slightly slurred and she was barely audible.

"Really?" I never thought I would the question that I was about to. "And what is a wormhole?"

I heard her giggle. "Are you sure you want to know, sir?"

"Um…No, not really, but tell me anyway." I had to bend even closer to hear her.

"A wormhole is a, um, a spatial shortcut that people who explore the galaxy, like us, might use to bypass the speed-of-light barrier and travel instantaneously to travel from one planet to another, within out universe," she said. Crap, I had trouble getting my head around that when I'm perfectly fine; I don't know how she can do it when she's dying.

Dying. I shouldn't have used that word. I felt a shiver go up my spine. Sam was dying, and there was nothing I could do to prevent that. At least, not in that place. But I also knew that escape was nearly impossible unless it was carefully orchestrated. Sam attempted to sit up, and in doing so her hand came to rest on my knee. That decided me. We had to get her out, and failure was not an option.

I heard footsteps approaching, locks unlocking and devices buzzing.

"Jack," said Harry. "If we're going to save her and escape, this is our last chance. You know that, don't you?"

I swallowed hard, choking back tears. I didn't trust myself to say anything for a moment.

"Hang on, Sam," I told her. "We're gonna get you outta here soon."

"Yes sir."

I stood up and braced myself. The moment the door opened and the bastards responsible for this whole situation were greeted first with Maybourne's punches and kicks. He broke one guy's nose and punched the other in the stomach, making him double over in pain. Then, in the same move, he spun and kicked him in the head. I tackled the third man, punching him three times in the face, just to be sure that he was out cold.

There was one last person. Just by looking at him, I could tell he was X. Anger raged in my veins. I began to stalk up to him, eager to get a punch or two through. He began to back off a little. I, for one, was surprised. I would have given him a piece of my mind, but Harry called out to me.

"No, Jack, you get Carter, I'll deal with this guy."

I felt kind of ashamed. I had to admit that for a minute there, my anger had blocked out all thoughts of Sam. I rushed back inside the cell, being careful to leave the door wide open so there would be no chance of us getting locked in again.

I gingerly scooped Sam up into my arms. This would have been nice under other circumstances. I didn't want to cause her any more pain.

"C'mon," I said to her. "We're going home."

The end? I think not.