"Level 28"
---By AriadneInLove---
This is by far one of the most emotional, tragic, and deeply disturbing chapters of the entire story. If you're trying to figure out what's going to happen, don't bother. It will be nothing like you expected. This I promise. And don't think that because most of the mystery is revealed in this chapter, we're anywhere near the end. It changes from here on out, and if you dare, you're welcome to share the ride alongside me till the end.
------------------------------------------------------------------
PART TEN: Grave Revelations
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Master Bra'tac said adieu to his small group of rebels and began his way up the hill alongside Jack and Teal'c.
"So where are we going, exactly?" Jack asked halfway to the hill after an hour of silence.
"The Red Hills, O'Neill," Teal'c answered.
Bra'tac looked around cautiously then elaborated, "There is an army of Terrebelan Jaffa just below those hills. They had hoped to take over Chulak but were abandoned after a shameful defeat. Many are injured beyond healing but their symbiotes remain intact. We may find no need for killing."
"Well that's just excellent," Jack said sarcastically, not even bothering with fake enthusiasm.
"Never is death excellent, O'Neill," Bra'tac said wisely.
"You know, when we get back, I'm getting you acquainted with a friend of mine. She's yellow and 8 years old. Her name's Lisa. You'd get along swell."
Both Teal'c and Bra'tac raised an eyebrow questioningly but continued on the path anyway. Jack had strayed behind, his mind drifting back to the SGC, his eyes focusing on the clay-ridden ground.
He thought of Sam and Adrienne and the short time they'd spent together. He remembered his late-night talks with Adrienne at the peak of Cheyenne Mountain, watching the stars. She said she could feel them moving, dancing. It was calming. He had tried to sneak in questions of the future but she refused to answer and just circumvented to wise rhetorical questions of the universe.
"Who taught you this stuff? It sounds like something out of the Oma Desala handbook," he'd asked. She only smiled and winked, and they spoke of it no further.
The time he had spent with Sam was different. There were moments where everything was perfect. There was no more strange awkwardness. It was as if lifelong friends had finally come to terms with each other's presence and it was so quiet from then on. Simple mutual comfort. It brought a smile to his face even as he looked at the blood-stained earth.
"O'Neill!" he heard Teal'c yell from ahead but it was too late.
Their prey was upon them.
Jack felt a darkness overtake him and looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood, leaking from a fiery hole in his stomach. He looked up with blank eyes and saw Teal'c and Bra'tac running towards him in what seemed like slow motion.
There was yelling in the distance but he couldn't quite make it out. Then there was true darkness and the world melded onto itself. And he saw Sam, smiling at him through the darkness with welcoming blue eyes.
He followed them into the abyss.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrienne awoke in her room, cold sweat making the standard issue linen of the SGC stick to her like peanut butter. That's when she realized she was hungry. She tried to think of the last time she ate but it had been with Jack and that told her it had been much too long.
Three days had already passed and they weren't back, which didn't surprise her. There were times when she had been lost for months and no one had come to rescue her. She'd gotten back alright. Surely they would too. She hoped. She wished. She prayed, something she would have never thought she'd ever do in a million years.
Sam had caught her knelt down beside her bed once and she knelt down beside her. Adrienne was sure she saw a tear but it could have been her imagination.
A week after Jack had left, Sam went to get up from the infirmary bed to go to a mission briefing with SG-3 when she collapsed on the ground again. She'd lost all feeling in her legs. Daniel was freaking out but she only took it with remorse. There were so many things she'd wanted to do but she'd come to terms with never walking again.
Adrienne didn't like how calm Sam was being about everything. Sam had always been tough but she was in a permanent state of denial. In the back of her mind, she refused to lose trust in Jack. He'd come back to her. He had to, Adrienne knew. She couldn't deal with Sam breaking down right now, not when she wished she could break down herself.
No one knew how much Adrienne hurt. Dionysus was getting older by the day. He was in his late teens now. Soon, he would be equal to Adrienne and Daniel would be out of the picture. She wasn't sure if that's what she wanted but she had to fulfill her mission and for that, Dionysus had to be of age.
No one knew how useless Daniel felt. He'd spend days without end researching the old legends on Dionysus and Ariadne and the labyrinth but all he found was hopeless folklore and annoying little chorus songs in their honor. As far as he knew, no Goa'uld had ever taken the persona of either one and it was slightly puzzling to him. With all that Dionysus showed up in Greek tales, one would think that an ego-hungry conqueror would take up name. But it seemed he had been an invention of imaginations, until now.
Then he found the proof in an Ancient plate they'd found along with the tablet telling of the Lost City. They had different origins and it wasn't even written in Ancient so he disregarded it at first. Now, after nonstop days of research, he found a word -- a single word -- that jumped out at him: Zagreus.
He hadn't been looking for it but when he found it, it seemed like the world of puzzle pieces just turned themselves over and another landscape surfaced. He picked up the pictures of the plate and his notes and some books and bit down on his pen before running like hell to the infirmary.
Adrienne sat with Sam, just talking, when Daniel came running in with bated breath. Sam looked slightly scared by his lack of composure. Adrienne just laughed.
"What's going on?" Sam asked expectantly. "Are they back?"
"No. Better. I found him!" Daniel exclaimed, putting his papers and books down on the empty bed beside them and shifted about. "See, I'd been looking through late Greek literature for references to Dionysus in relation to common Ancient activity or possibly relative behavior. But his name meant nothing… until I found this."
He handed them a specific picture of a section of the 3-foot high ceramic plate where he'd circled three little symbols.
"Zagreus," he said joyously. "His name was Zagreus after the second birth. According to mythology, he was born twice. First as Dionysus and later as Zagreus, which might relate to his Ascension and return to physical form. Then the section makes various references to his heart which was implanted in Semele and from there he was reborn."
Adrienne was smiling. Sam was still in slight shock. He looked to Ree but she was extremely intent on not looking back. She looked at the picture of the plate with what seemed like nostalgia. She was trying desperately not to cry but it was pointless.
A tear fell on the photo, which she apologized for and handed it back to him. She got up off the bed and ran out of the infirmary. Sam looked at Daniel who excused himself to go after her. Sam nodded in acknowledgement. She was so glad he left. She didn't want him to see her cry too but the pain was getting to be too much.
In two days, she'd be blind.
When Daniel reached Adrienne outside the infirmary, she just slid down with her back to the wall and was now intent on hugging her knees till it hurt. She wasn't crying anymore but her gaze seemed focused on a fascinating spot of gray wall across the hall.
"Hey," he said, standing over her. "You ok?"
The entire hall was empty so he decided it couldn't hurt to sit beside her in the middle of a top-secret military facility hallway.
She looked at him, sniffed, and went back to her gazing. "You're getting closer Daniel but you're not quite there."
"I am, huh? Well I'm not really worried about that right now. I'm worried about you."
She rested her chin on her right arm as she looked him over. He sat down beside her. "You always were so kind. I'm so sorry, Daniel. I never meant to-"
The alarms cut her off. "Unauthorized off-world activation!" Walter yelled over the speakers. Armed airmen ran past them but Daniel couldn't stop looking at her in her vulnerable state. She seemed so innocent, so fragile. It was freaking him out but he didn't move. It was the closest he'd felt to her since their little escapade in the vents.
He no longer wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hold her but his jealousy and desire subsided. And that's when he realized it.
"What have you been doing to me?" he asked, slightly afraid.
She smirked. "Smart one, eh?"
"So you have been doing something to me!"
"Not intentionally, but we do share a common signal that's been screwing you up probably."
"A signal?"
"We were both once Ascended. It's the signal that draws me to Dionysus, and Sam to Orlin."
"Orlin? When did he come into all of this?"
"Why do you think he was so drawn to Sam? He knew she was going to die, Danny, just like we both know."
"Do you want her to?"
"No. If she never dies, she'll never bring back the address."
Daniel looked at her as if telling her to go on. He was intrigued. She was opening up, telling him the truth. He felt even closer to her.
She continued, "When Sam returns from Ascension, she'll bring with her a code given by the Ancients telling her of Dionysus' whereabouts. It's how you find him, even though the address was never charted by your computers. That's how Sam gets her hands on non-mutagenic, fast-healing DNA for her little science project - yours truly - and how I meet Dionysus. It's funny. After I rescue him from the rogues, he actually told me we were destined to meet."
"Weren't you?"
She half-scoffed, half-laughed. "He used me, Daniel. He used all of us… He's not human."
"Well neither are you really. Neither am I since I technically died."
"You don't get it. He's not an Ancient either."
Then it hit him. "He's who makes you kill all those people, isn't he?"
She nodded quickly, looking away. "I have to kill him now, Daniel, before he realizes what he is." She paused and went back to looking at the spot of gray on the wall. "Disgusting part? He's been waiting for me for centuries. I actually found that romantic before. Now it… it makes me sick."
"What are you waiting for?"
"I can't kill him as a child, Daniel. I just can't."
"So you're making him grow?"
She nodded again, her gaze still away. "Even if it kills me, I'm taking him with me."
"But you love him."
"More than anything."
"Does he know what he's going to do?"
"Nope. Not that I can tell anyway."
"Then there's a chance! You can still change history. Change him before he uses you."
"It's too late. It's too late for all of us. Now it all rests on Jack and Teal'c." Daniel raised an eyebrow and she quickly explained. "If they save her now, she'll never be able to give birth to me and I won't have to kill him."
"But you'll never be born!"
"I can't hurt anyone if I never existed."
"They'll still use him, you know. They can get his DNA and make an army of people like you."
"No… They'd have an army of fetuses. Only Sam can give birth to viable soldiers. The protein marker left in her blood from her incident with Jolinar is crucial to the development and adaptation of the Ariadne Project's 'enhancements'."
"The Ariadne Project? They bred you to… be his mate?"
"I was bred to be a tool of destruction," she said and began to stand up. He followed suit and for a moment, they looked straight at each other with complete mutual understanding and audacity. There was pity in his eyes but she ignored it, not that she knew what that meant.
"We can change the world, Ree. Just you and me. We can do this and you'll never have to live through this again."
"Oh don't worry. I have no intention of staying around when the world wakes up and finds out it's a pawn in a game of chess with only black pieces."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
To be continued in PART ELEVEN:
From now on, no more questions. Only answers.
--Jack and Teal'c return to the SGC just in time to save Sam's life.
--Dionysus realizes what he is and what he's supposed to do.
--Daniel and Adrienne try to stop him.
--Bra'tac gets caught in the crossfire.
--Sam gets taken over by the Goa'uld.
--Sam never gets her midnight stroll.
--But she does get a child. Before this story ends, both Adrienne and Sam will be pregnant… but only one will give birth.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW!