Author's Note: I don't own Stargate. Review, Comment, keep the love going .
Chapter Twenty-Two
Oh boy, I was in trouble.
No way out, except for a door across the room. The only thing that stood between me and the door was… a nervous smile pulled at my mouth although nothing about this was funny, "Um… hi Skaara."
Klorel laughed darkly. He approached me slowly, pushing me farther and farther into a corner. He moved with deadly accuracy. Armored plates ran along his arms and across his chest in silver and gold. A fancier version of Jaffa armor, streamlined for more agility.
It was hard to believe that this had once been the Skaara that I loved. Where Skaara had been warm, gentle and caring, the only word I could describe this man now now was malicious. The parasite Klorel had twisted him into someone I didn't recognize anymore. While on the ship bound for Earth there had seemed to be remnants of Skaara beneath the surface, fighting back. Now there was only Klorel, maybe somewhere along the way Skaara had given up. There was no one between me and Klorel. If Klorel got the chance he would kill me. I was alone.
"What are you doing here?" He said reaching into his belt. There was the sound of metal scraping against a sheath and he pulled out a long double bladed dagger.
I raised my zat and aimed at his chest. "Please, don't make me fight you."
"You think you can plead for your life?" He snarled.
"It's not my life I'm worried about."
Klorel lunged for at me, swiping my right arm. Red immediately began pouring out, staining my white robes. I dropped the zat. He lunged again. A quick sidestep from me sent him careening into a wall. See, I did learn something from those staff lessons after all.
I didn't give him time to recover before I delivered a swift roundhouse kick to his back, ramming him right back into the wall. He whirled around and sliced at me, catching my left forearm drawing more blood. In my moment of distraction Klorel took another swipe and grazed my throat, but not quite cutting it. He then grabbed my ponytail and yanked, tearing out the band and some hunks of hair with it.
I fell to my knees, kicking out his feet and rolling away. Jumping up I threw off the constricting robes in the process. My army BDU's were much more suited to close combat.
Before Klorel could get back to his feet I landed a solid punch to his jaw. I wound up to deliver another punch. He grabbed my leg and pulled it our from under me. I literally flipped feet over head and smacked into the floor.
We rolled away from each other and jumped to out feet. Klorel ran at me with a battle cry. I grabbed his arm that held the dagger and brought the elbow of that arm down on my knee. The dagger clattered to the floor.
He wrestled out of my grasp and threw a punch with his uninjured arm. I ducked under his throw and delivered a quick succession of blows to his exposed sides in-between the armored plates of his back and abdomen. All the air in his lungs left him with a gasp. He staggered back and I dove for my zat. He swung around ready to make another move and stopped in his tracks.
"I'm sorry." I said aiming my zat at his chest.
Klorel glared at me in defiance, "Your words are nothing to me."
"I wasn't talking to you." And I fired my zat once.
Klorel's eyes went wide with pain, then dulled into unconsciousness. His body fell back onto the hard floor.
I ran over to him and placed my hand on his chest, good, he was still breathing. For that moment when he wasn't speaking words that weren't his or trying to kill me, this body before me looked like the Skaara I remembered. Cupping his face I titled it towards me and brushed the pad of my thumb over his closed eyes. Would those eyes ever look at me the way the used to ever again? Sitting back on my heels I pulled my now loose hair out of my face and took in several deep breaths. I was bleeding, I was tired, and I had no idea what to do now.
From the door that I had noticed before I heard running footsteps, then someone jiggling the knob. Whoever it was gave up and kept going. Please be who I hope it is.
Standing I walked to the door and quietly opened it, luckily it locked from the inside. There, scurrying down the hallway was just the person I wanted to see.
"Jack." I whispered, but he didn't hear me. "Jack." I hissed a little louder. Still nothing. "Jack!" This time it came out barely less than a shout, all the pent up nervousness, anger, and frustration boiled down into that one word.
He spin around and aimed his zat at me. Seeing that it was me he dropped his arm and rushed to my side. "Come on we gotta go." Jack said grabbing my arm and trying to pull me down the hall.
"No!" I ripped my arm out of his grasp.
He started at me in shock, I'd never done this before, especially in an emergency. But I had a good reason. I grabbed him and hauled him into the room.
"Whoa! It that…?" He asked staring down at the unconscious Klorel.
"On yeah."
"How'd you…?"
"Long story." I sighed. "What should we do?"
"What do you think?! We're taking him with us!"
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Man, this armor was stifling. The three of us trudged along, hiding in plain sight with jaffa armor. It had taken a moment to strip Klorel out of his old clothes and stuff him in Jaffa armor. He'd woken up halfway threw. Thank goodness we had thought to gag him before he woke up. Me, Jack, and a gagged Klorel stopped outside our destination. Jack was the one to raise his fist and knock on the door.
A very pissed off Bra'tac opened the door. "How dare you enter like this?! This house has already been searched." He took out his zat and aimed it at the three of us.
Jack went in first and popped open his mask. "No wonder these guys are always cranky." He motioned for me to bring Klorel in. "Get us out of these things."
I popped my mask open and looked around at what I could see of the room over the serpent's mouth.
Daniel saw my struggles and helped to lift my mask off. "Erin, Jack, where the hell have you been?"
Sam and Teal'c helped Jack get his mask off. After his face was free he looked at Drey'auc with regret.
"What of Fro'tak?" She asked cautiously.
He let out a sigh before starting. "He left here last night and made a beeline for the palace. He was turning us in. I had to stop him. I'm sorry."
Bra'tac shook his head with disappointment. "I never thought he would betray us."
"No." Drey'auc said sadly. "The fault is mine. I made vows I could not keep."
"Wait a minute." Sam said looking between Jack, the still masked Klorel, and I. "If Fro'tak is dead, then who's…"
I reached up to disengage Klorel's mask. "Don't freak out but…"
Klorel's mask slid open. While still gagged he glared out at everyone. Daniel and Teal'c seemed, actually kind of pleased. Sam looked worried. Drey'auc was indifferent, I mean a false god or her son, it really wasn't a toss-up. Bra'tac had the most amusing reaction. It's not every day you see a jaffa warrior pale like he was going to swallow his own tongue.
Kalen stared at Klorel, occasionally his gaze flicked to me. He seemed almost… saddened. A thought popped up in my mind. No, it couldn't be. Could it? Whatever the reason for Kalen's strange behavior, it would have to wait for now.
"We're taking Skaara with us." Jack explained in a way that left no argument. And no one argued with him about it. "Come on, the suns are coming up. Let's get the kid."
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The plan was for me to wait with Klorel and Drey'auc at her house, while Bra'tac and the rest of my team went to rescue Teal'c's son.
In my experience on SG-1, nothing ever went according to plan. We were usually on plan C or D by the time the end rolled around. Imagine my surprise when Bra'tac came to get us, exactly according to the plan.
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"This is all too easy Jack." I said when we were reunited just up the hill from the gate.
Drey'auc was crushing her son to her chest in joy. But none of it added up. Apophis had only placed two guards at the gate.
"Well, we're assuming no one has noticed that Skaara is missing yet." Jack said eyeing the guards.
"Father's taking us to the Tau'ri!" Rya'c exclaimed to his mother.
Jack frowned at the boy. "That was an awful quick turn around." He glanced at me, then over where Kalen and Teal'c had Klorel bound and had their weapons aimed at him.
"Hey, come here." Jack called to Rya'c. When he was right in front of him, Jack knelt down so they were eye level. "All right, Rya'c…what's the scam here?"
Rya'c looked confused. "I do not understand."
"What're you up to? Or better yet…" Jack again glanced in Klorel's direction, "what has Apophis got you up to?"
"I fooled Apophis." Rya'c answered with a smile.
"Then why'd you throw that tantrum when we tried to take you last night?" I asked.
"At the time I was not yet successful in defeating Apophis's control. I am sorry. My mind is not as strong as my father's." Rya'c finished by smiling over at Teal'c.
Teal'c was smiling at his son, but when he turned his gaze to us his expression was dark. "O'Neill, Clark, why can you not accept the possibility that my son's mind was simply too strong for Apophis to control?"
"Come here." Jack motioned for Teal'c to follow to a spot out of the hearing range of Rya'c. "Erin, you're on Skaara."
I took Teal'c's place at Klorel's side with me zat at the ready. "So…" I drew out the word until he rolled his head to look at me, "know anything about what's going on?" I asked.
Obviously he couldn't say anything through the gag, but his eyes were positively spitting daggers.
I looked over at my team, who were having a heated discussion. After a few minutes Bra'tac and Kalen joined in.
Finally raised his voice so everyone could hear. "Bra'tac, Erin, you stay here with Skaara, Drey'auc and the boy while we clear the way."
SG-1 descended the hill and took out both Jaffa in with rapid fire. "Ok, let's move out." Jack called over the radio.
"Bra'tac's staying." Daniel said when he met us halfway down the hill. Klorel had been digging in his heels, making it a struggle to get him to move. He took one of Klorel's arms and helped me lead/drag him to the gate. Everyone had made it through the gate except us and Jack by the time we got there.
Horns blew at deafening levels from the general direction of the palace. "I guess they figured out that Klorel's gone." Daniel said.
I glanced back at Chulack, letting my eyes rove over the landscape I hoped to never see again. This place held way to many bad memories than should be healthy. Then we stepped through the gate.
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"Hello." I said as Klorel woke up. I sat on a bench just out of reach of the bars.
The minute we had come through the gate, Janet had been waiting with a dose of sedative. After a thorough check out showed nothing out of the ordinary, except for the snake in Skaara's head, Klorel had been placed in a cell much like the one Sam had been in when she had been possessed by Jolinar.
Klorel looked around at his claustrophobic quarters. He sat up and stared down in distaste at his army fatigues. Probably wishing it was a golden robe. "Where am I?" His reverberating voice demanded.
"Someplace where you can't do any more harm." I answered standing and walking to the door.
"There's still one person left I can harm." His words sent a chill up my spine, halting me in my steps. He waited until I turned back to face him to continue, threading his arms threw the bars to lean on them almost casually, "You should hear him screaming right now. He's calling your name, over and over right now. I need to teach him a lesson." The brown eyes I loved lit up, he was enjoying this, "Do you know how much pain a symbiote can inflict on its host? Some would call it unimaginable."
I clenched my fists together. "As soon as I have the chance I will rip you out of him."
"Will you now?" Klorel laughed. "The pain I inflict on him is nothing compared to how he feels when he sees you in danger. When we were fighting he became quite distracting." Klorel brought his face as close to mine as the bars would allow, "I'm going to kill you and I'm going to make him watch."
This was just too much. "I'm sorry Skaara." I mumbled, tears began streaming down my face. I threw open the door, startling the guards outside.
"Speaking of my killing you. You should probably stop the boy." He said with complete calm.
I whirled back around to face him. "What…?" My eyes widened as realization hit me. "Oh my God!" Rya'c's rescue had been too easy. I turned and sprinted down the corridor.
"Miss Clark!?" One of the guards yelled from behind me.
"Someone get eyes on Rya'c!" I screamed into my ear piece as I turned around the corner. Waiting for the elevator would take too long. I plowed through the door to the emergency steps, probably breaking the lock in the process. Taking the steps down three and four at a time, I made it to the infirmary's level in record time. I kicked open the door leading out to that level, scaring some orderlies in the process.
"Stop him." I shouted as I entered the infirmary. Daniel and Jack's heads whipped around at my dramatic entrance.
Teal'c already had his hand around Rya'c mouth, and Janet was administering a sedative. Within a few seconds Rya'c was out cold. Teal'c gently laid his son on a cot, then looked up at me.
I collapsed in a heap in the doorway, a panting mess. What did we just stop?
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"What the hell almost happened here?" Hammond asked.
Set up in the briefing room was a live feed to Rya'c's cell where Drey'auc was trying, unsuccessfully, to get through to him. He chomped down hard on his teeth. When nothing happened he reached up and felt his mouth. Felling nothing he whirled on his mother and began screaming and hitting, reducing her to tears. I was grateful that the live feed didn't have the sound on at this moment.
"The teeth were fake, sir," Janet explained, "hollow. Inside each tooth we found a different biological organism, sort of like a virus. They both appear to be dormant, harmless, until you combine them. Then they become deadliest thing I've ever seen."
Sam stood and turned on a computer display at the front of the room. "If he bit down hard enough to break the teeth the two organisms would begin to combine and multiply exponentially, releasing themselves into the atmosphere."
"So that's why he wanted to get outside so badly." Daniel said. Before I had burst into the infirmary, Daniel had explained to me that Rya'c had been frantic to get outside.
"It kinda sounds like anthrax." Jack said.
Janet let out a humorless laugh. "This stuff makes anthrax look like a cold virus."
"It would have taken less than two days for it to spread across North America." Sam pressed a button on the remote she was holding and the display changed. Red spread out from the state of Colorado, consuming the blue map of the United States, state by state. "Less than a week to spread around the world." The red now completely covered all the land masses on Earth.
"What would it have done?" I asked.
"Killed every living thing on Earth within twenty-four hours of contact." Sam explained.
"There isn't any chance the boy has another device implanted in his body?" Hammond asked Janet.
Janet shook her head. "X-rays and CAT scans were negative, sir. All the other tests we ran were normal."
"Miss Clark." Hammond said.
It took a moment to realize that the General was addressing me. Too much had happened today, and this day just wouldn't end. "Yes sir?"
"How did you know about Teal'c's son?" Hammond asked.
Everyone had turned to look at me. I hadn't explained what had happened yet. "Um… I was talking with Klorel. He said… um." I paused, not wanting to go over that again. I saw Daniel watching me closely, he knew something was up with me, he always knew. But now wasn't the time "He hinted that there was something up with Rya'c."
"Probably just so he could save his own skin." Jack concluded.
"Yeah…" I looked down at my clenched fists in my lap, "that must be it." I mumbled.
"OK…" Daniel began, silently asking if I was ok, but I shook my head. "So…we're all right. Rya'c is all right. We just have to get his mind back. And how do we do that?"
Sam looked like would be sick. "Deprogramming."
"It's…not exactly the kind of thing you want to put a kid through." Jack said.
"From the time of birth all Jaffa are taught to be strong. Rya'c is my son. He can withstand it." Teal'c assured us.
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Teal'c had been in the cell with Rya'c for almost half an hour. There was constant yelling and the occasional pounding of something or someone being hit.
The cell door opened and a grim faced Teal'c exited. "He has reason to hate me, which only strengthens the twisting of his mind. Do you know of another way?"
Jack looked to Janet. "ECT?"
She scrunched her eyebrows in thought for a moment, then she nodded. "Maybe."
"What is this ECT?" Teal'c asked.
Sam swallowed hard before answering. "Electro-convulsive therapy."
"Whoa! Electroshock? Isn't that kind of…barbaric?" Daniel exclaimed.
Janet shook her head. "Actually, it's not so much anymore. It's done under anesthesia, now, in a more controlled way. I just…don't know about using it on a child, or for that matter a Jaffa." She looked to Teal'c. "It could kill the Goa'uld larva inside him."
"That would kill Rya'c. This ECT…is it similar to a zat'nik'tel discharge?" Teal'c asked.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact." Jack's eyes lit up, he could see where Teal'c was going with this.
"A single zat'nik'tel discharge will not kill a Jaffa of any age, nor the symbiote within." Teal'c looked down at Drey'auc. "It will cause him great pain."
She took a deep breath. "I trust you know what is best."
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Teal'c and Drey'auc entered the cell with a zat. Jack closed the door behind them. There was hushed voices, then high pitched screaming letting those of us outside know that Teal'c had zated Rya'c.
I don't know how Teal'c does it. If it had been Cassandra in there, I don't think I could have brought myself to zat her, even if I knew if wouldn't cause her permanent damage.
Everything inside the cell grew very quiet. Through the hole on the door I saw Teal'c turn his head to look back at us with a smile on his face before he looked back at his family, whole again.
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"Teal'c, you have a go!" Hammond called down from the control room.
Teal'c stood with Drey'auc and Rya'c at the end of the ramp, ready to lead his family to their new home. Sam, Daneil and I were in the gate room with them, to send them off.
"I must thank you all again." Drey'auc shook each of our hands. "I would very much like to stay and get to know you better."
"Well, you wouldn't have much of a life here. You'd be virtual prisoners." Daniel stated the truth of what it would be like.
However, you're welcome in the Land of Light and Tuplo's waiting on the other side. They're good people." I smiled up at them.
"Yep," Jack said entering, "and they got tons of wide-open spaces where you can play and misbehave." He handed Rya'c a baseball glove and ball.
"What is it?" Rya'c asked, placing the glove on his head like a hat.
"Well," Jack lifted the glove off Rya'c's head and placed if properly on his hand. "I guess I'll have to come visit and explain a few things."
Teal'c meet each of our eyes. Coming to Jack, he bowed his head. "I shall return." He said turning and leading his family through the gate, to a better life.
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It was late, pretty much everyone who could go home had done so. But not me. I sat on the cold concrete ground outside Skaara's cell. While they had to keep the guards on the inside of the cell, Jack had convinced the guards outside to let me take over duties for the night. It was Jack's gift, letting me have some time.
"I thought I'd fine you here." A voice said done the hall.
I turned my head and saw Daniel walking towards me. He came to a stop and sat beside me, leaning his back against the same wall as me.
"I know this is a stupid question, but are you ok?" He asked wrapping his arm around my shoulders and letting me rest my head on his shoulder.
"I…no. The things he said." I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to stave off the tears. "We may have his body, that was the easy part. But freeing his mind… that's going to be the real fight."
Daniel didn't say anything, he didn't need to. He was just there with me. And sometimes, that's enough.
Author's Note: Whew! I hope you all enjoyed. Remember, I love to hear from you all. Review, comment, questions, and ideas. Up until this point I have assumed that any episodes that I haven't written have still taken place. However the events that take place in the episode "Secrets" will not take place in this universe. I am saying this to prevent confusion later on. Peace out.
Ps. It might be a while before I update again. The next two weeks I have to get ready for college, and pack. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning this story and I will update as soon as I can. :)