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NOTE:
Forgive yet another delay. I was at a journalism convention for 3 days. But here you have it. Hope you liked it.
--My Microsoft Word isn't working at the moment so please excuse the grammatical errors.--
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And now…
PART SIXTEEN: Deathly Apparitions
"Adrienne, where are we going!" Daniel asked as they ran hand in hand through bars and sashes of yellow and blue lights, violets and reds all amix.
"You wish to find her, no?" she responded, but their voices were lost in time. Somehow he heard her, in his head, just as he imagined she heard him but their voices echoed in such a far distance that seemed as if the lights around them rippled with motion and waves as if in melody. Perfect melody. There was a rhythm to it. Was this what Ree saw all the time? He made it a note to ask her later.
"Why are we going like this? How are you doing this?" he asked, not really wanting an answer. And then he remembered her words that night she would not wake. "Is this what you meant? About seeing time, tasting emotion, passing borders of existence and all that?"
"Yup. Now shush. I'm trying to find her by thought."
"Thought?"
"Human thought has a signature. It's like a voice that calls out to me. And each is different. So shut up or I'll leave you riding the big yellow ribbons!"
Daniel did as he was told. And then a shushing sound came upon him and the yellow ribbons began to break down and stop and the world was visible again, but it was not a world he knew. It looked like a sewer but barred windows showed the large pipes high in the sky. Clouds surrounded them outside. And they walked still. Not ran. Walked. And it was more painful than running through time.
"Where are we?" he whispered.
"Goa'uld mothership. Not sure whose. We never found out. All the Goa'uld died after this, 'cause of her."
"'Cause of Janet?"
"Yup." She said it too easily. Janet meant nothing to her. She had probably never met her, only known her as the one that was compromised.
"I just want to know what the hell anyone would want with a doctor. Why Janet? They could have taken anyone else, anyone with knowledge of the Gate... Sam, Jack, Teal'c, me, you. Why Janet?" he was troubled by the question.
"Think about it this way, love: What does Janet know that they would want? Everything else is just a perk, really." They took a round corner into more sewage water and room-sized pipes. The giant pipes reminded him of the SGC corridors, neverending like a maze. "Sam may be my mother but Janet is the mother of transference cloning technology, Daniel."
"Transference cloning? You mean what the Asgard do where they transfer the consciousness into a new body, right? That's what they did to you? That's what you meant when you said you'd died and been reborn?" She smiled her mysteriously devious smile, the one that told Daniel that was as far as the conversation was going, and that the subject should be put to rest, as it was. But that's when they reached the end, the iron gates to a hell Daniel was more than ready for. He dreaded it with every molecule in his being. "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here..." he said to himself but it made Adrienne smile even more.
It was making him nervous. He still wasn't sure if she even wanted Janet alive. For all he knew, it was already too late and the cryptic smiles cruelly marked this. Adrienne blasted the prison bars away with what Daniel could only see as a simple caress of the rusting iron.
But surely enough, there she was. Janet. Tied up in a metal chair, dressed in white, tubes tied to veins in a metallic operating room the size of the Gate room.
No one in sight. Daniel dropped Adrienne's hand and ran to her, leaving Ree to close her eyes and regret her choices. She could have had him. For what little time it was, she could have had him. She wasn't sure why she wanted him for herself but that was gone now. And Janet was back.
"You've got 6 minutes before the guards come," she said as Daniel tried to wake Janet up, crossing her arms to hide from the cold and desolate feeling of loneliness.
But soon they would be back home and she wouldn't be alone anymore. She'd have Sam.
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Jack, at the sight of her glowing eyes, stumbled back from her, slipping on the cold floor and falling back. Ba'al lifted the sheets off Sam's body and got up slowly as Jack pushed himself back from her on the floor quickly. He looked down at him and smiled, cornering him against the wall. The smile that had once captivated him was bringing his destruction and Jack couldn't handle it. His breathe left him, long before Ba'al knelt down beside him to choke the life from him.
"No... Sam!" he yelled through a coarse gasping. Sam's hand was at his throat, his own trying to pry her off but Ba'al strength was already seeping through her every muscle. Then the blast from a zat gun came out of nowhere and Ba'al moved off, escaping through the door into the hallway. The airman who had fired the zat knelt down to help him while his partner when to follow Ba'al down the hallway.
"No!" Jack yelled, despite his throat. "Don't kill her!"
He got up as quickly as he could, taking the gun off the airman's holder, and went running after her.
But he was too late.
Soldiers already littered the halls. And she was already at the elevator, looking at him with sinister eyes that had never seen him so and a smile that had never hated him so. And he raised his gun and pointed towards the elevator just as the doors began to close, pulling the trigger quickly and watching as he shot the woman he loved before he even knew the gun had fired.
The bullet reached Sam right in the middle of her abdomen but it did not stop her, merely shocked Ba'al into freezing. The gun he had taken fell to the floor but Jack still refused to lower his. He closed his eyes and shot her again, knowing it reached her even if he did not mean it.
Relationships were like that with him. He always hurt the ones he loved, even with his eyes closed. Even if he didn't mean it. Even if he got there... late.
And Sam reached the floor of the elevator. The doors closed just before he stepped in front of her and he was left out.
Her injured body made it down to Level 28 and the doors opened again. Ba'al tried to crawl out of the elevator with much unease. An airman walking by saw her and tried to help her up. He knew her by name, something Sam would never forget, and then Ba'al simply reached for his zat and began to shoot anyone in his way.
All he needed to know was in Sam's head.
He shot all the technicians and a few scientists in his way. General Hammond came running from his office into the control center as soon as he heard shots, followed by 6 airmen. All zatted down or shot, whichever hand was quicker. Hammond was lucky. He only got zatted and fell to the floor. Collapse. All of 28. Down.
But before he could get the Stargate open, Sam's body gave way and he could no longer hold onto the walls and chairs. He could no longer feel his hand on the trigger. He could only feel the cool of his host's blood upon his flesh like a covering. He had to leave her, flee her body. He saw the body of one of the technicians on the floor. Zatted. And took his chance.
He left her body and took over the soldier's, reviving him in mere instants and running for the controls to the Gate. He clicked the final "Enter" button and walked down the stairs to the Gate room calmly. They couldn't stop him now.
And they didn't.
When Jack finally got through the stairs to Level 28, Sam was bleeding to death on the floor and the airman was standing at the base of the ramp, looking up at the control room with his hands in his pockets and eyes full of gold. He gave a wave of his hand and the same smug smile and stepped through.
Jack could have gone after him, could have followed him and hunted him down but there was no point. They'd meet again.
Instead, he ran to Sam and picked her up as carefully as he could and ran her up to the infirmary as quickly as he could before his rush of adrenaline ran out. The whole time, he thought of how he was going to say goodbye. Nothing came to mind.
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Teal'c walked Aileia back to the village. Two hours passed, which he spent with their family planning the assault and their escape. He was still surprised how much Aileia contributed. Usually it was completely control from one sex or the other. Never had he seen someone treat themselves such an equal, let alone someone outside his proud warrior race. When he left, he knew it might be the last time he see her and said his goodbye. But Deryc came with a warning.
"Don't do anything until you hear from me. Do you understand?" he'd told him at the Gate. Deryc had nodded, not responded. Teal'c didn't like it one bit.
He stepped through the Gate and walked right into a death room. Mere hours ago, Hell had risen to take away what little hope in humanity he had left.
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"How long does she have?" Hammond asked the attending nurse.
"Not very long," Adrienne answered before the nurse could respond, coming up and out of the shadows. Jack crept slowly towards them behind her. "Can you give us a few moments?"
The nurses cleared from the solitary room. They had to isolate her. Daniel put a hand on Jack's shoulder before he and Hammond left. It was his way of saying he was sorry for what had happened. Jack took it as misplaced sympathy. He thought himself responsible and no amount of pity was going to erase that.
"Am I too late?" Jack asked.
Adrienne sat beside her on the bed. "She's nearly gone. I don't think she can hear you."
Jack tears refused to leave him. Adrienne thought it was shock or disbelief but maybe he was just mature about it. He could have to come to terms with people dying. It worried her. Maybe he had ignored how much he cared for her. He hadn't shed a tear for the 14 lost. Maybe he considered her one of the victims, another faceless victim.
"There's still time. You can make me see her, right? If she's dead?"
"I have that power, yes, but I don't know if I can make you see her."
"Try, Ree. Please." His voice wanted to tremble and crack but the somberness of his tone hid it. Ree cried for him. She had to go to the past to be able to do that. He would have to too, she thought. He'll cry when he thinks of this moment. Maybe not now but maybe later. Maybe. Maybe he didn't really care for her, but she dismissed that thought when she saw the look in his eyes when he went to hold her hand.
Her hand was cold, died before she did. The wounds on her were covered but the blood still seeped through. It didn't bother him.
She closed her eyes and tried all she could to see her there, her soul hidden in time and in space and in the glimmer of her eyes. She called to her memories and to her senses and there was Sam in the back of her mind, a figure of Sam as she had seen her. Calm and serene in her blue fatigues, surrounded by the darkness of Ree's mind.
She extended her hand for Jack which he took, still holding onto Sam's on the other side of the bed. The powder-light left them from in between their woven fingers. It hurt them, all of them. Sam's heart rate sped up and the beeping of the machines became incessant.
Ree tried as hard as she could but he couldn't see her. There would be no goodbye. There would be no resolution and he'd always have the knowledge that he killed the woman he loved.
"I'm sorry, Jack. There's nothing I can do."
With that, she pulled her hand away and got up from the bed. He blinked and she was gone from the room. Time had left him as well. He looked back and saw she had left the door open. He got up to close it slowly.
The beeping of the machines became constant. She was gone. He leaned his head against the closed door, his hand still on the knob, when he felt a chilly wind that sent shivers from his legs up his back.
He turned around quickly and there she was.
Sam.
Standing a mere inch from his nose.
Her smile hid a lie. Her eyes hid the truth. Her clothes were flimsy and practically see-through, the color of falling snow, her hair fair and blown asunder by the ghost chill.
She didn't look like she was dying. She looked like an angel. As much as his heart beat, as much as he wanted to hold her, he knew she wasn't real.
"I'm too late aren't I?" he half-whispered to himself, half-asked the apparition. "What are you?"
"I'm what you will," it said.
He smiled. How sweet, how perfect its tone like ghostly music calling out to downtrodden soldiers. He felt his heart drop in his chest, melted into him.
"You mean you are my will."
"You will me into being; I am her as you see her."
"I don't want you. I want all of her. If you know my will, you know I don't care for imitations. I want to say goodbye."
The apparition bowed her smiling head slightly and turned to power, flying light-colored pigments in the chilly wind. They receded back into the limp body on the bed.
And just as the lights fell upon her, her eyes opened and a new light lit the morning: her deep blue eyes.
"Jack?" her coarse whispers echoed the room. "What's wrong?"
His solemn smile took away his tearful eyes, hid under lose strands of gray hair. "Nothing's wrong, honey. Everything's ok now."
"Why can't I feel you? Why can't I see you!"
He felt his jaw become unsteady, no long the strong base of emotion. He looked away but a tear was already escaping him. He sucked it up and took her gentle hand in his and raised it to his cheek.
"I'm right here, darling. I'm right here."
"Jack, I'm scared," she whimpered, looking at the empty world he thought he'd taken her from. The she straightened her firm face and looked forward, determined as always. "I'm dying, aren't I?"
"Don't say that." He refused to tell her the truth.
"But it's true," she said pulling her hand away and setting it on the adjacent wall behind the bed, trying desperately to hold her composure.
Slowly, she began to slide down to the floor, her legs useless under her white hospital gown. He quickly caught her as she fell, holding onto her shoulders and calling out, "Hold on, Sam. Don't go."
"But it's calling me."
"Sam, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't tell them, didn't kill Ba'al when I had the chance. I'm sorry I let my feelings for you do this to us. I'm sorry I never told you I loved you. And I'm sorry I never took you fishing or on that midnight stroll... Please! Just don't leave me! I can't do this again!"
"Just don't forget me, Jack. Don't ever forget me."
"I'll find you. I promise. I'll look through every memory to find you so you'll never be gone." Her heart grew slower and slower as his quickened in fear.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, rocking her in his arms on the floor. "I'm so sorry..."
But she was already gone.
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To be continued in PART SEVENTEEN:
--How will Sam ever come back to us?
--Is Teal'c falling in love with a married, pregnant woman?
--Why do we fear Deryc will do something stupid?
--What will happen to Jack?
--Can Adrienne find a way or is it too different now?
--What did they do to Janet?
--What will Sam do when she finds herself not dead but in the company of an old friend?
--And still we do not know... who will betray SG-1 and to whom?
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UP NEXT: The return of an old romance, Orlin. Will the Ascended taken Sam from Jack now that she realizes she can never go back?
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Answers are coming up. Don't forget to add me to your story alert list so you don't miss a single chapter! And if you'd be kind enough...
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