Daniel flipped through pages of notes that he had taken so far, trying to translate the rest of the text on the device. Loran sat nearby, quiet for some time but eventually unable to keep from talking. He'd been so alone, so starved for companionship for so long, that he couldn't help but talk to his new friends.

Taking his ever-present image capture device over to Daniel, he showed him the photograph. "That's my mother and father there," he pointed out. "And that's me!"

Daniel studied the image for a moment, a thoughtful frown creasing the area between his eyebrows. "You were a lot younger there."

"Yeah," Loran said with a smile. "It's old."

"Yeah, about that," Daniel started, only to be cut off by Loran.

"Hey! Can I take an image of you?"

Daniel nodded his assent. "Sure," he said, seeing that for some reason it was important to the kid.

Loran moved away from him and held the device up. It wasn't too dissimilar from the cameras of Earth. The flash was bright and tinted a sort of pink. He hurried back over to hold it out to Daniel to look at, excited to share.

"That's great," Loran said with a wide smile as he crouched near Daniel's seat. "You know, I'm sorry that you can't leave."

Daniel narrowed his eyes a little. "Are you?" he asked. Loran looked up at him and his smile faded. "I mean, it makes sense that you'd want some company. I'm just thinking maybe that's the reason you didn't tell us how dangerous the light was."

"No!"

"It's okay!" Daniel assured him. "I'm not mad."

"That… that's not why," Loran said. He looked like he was about to add something else, but before he could, heavy footsteps signalled the return of the rest of the team.

"What's wrong?" Daniel asked. They looked tired. Actually, Sam looked cranky and Jack looked exhausted. Jack pulled off his hat and slumped forward with a deep breath.

Jack groaned as he straightened back up. "Oh we're just going through that withdrawal thing again."

Daniel didn't get it. "I felt fine the whole time you were gone."

"Actually sir," Carter chimed in. "I'm starting to feel myself again."

Jack realized that the buzz that prickled the back of his neck and the thud-ump of his pulse that was starting to pound in his brain had receded at some point. "Me too. What's going on?"

Leave it to Carter to state the obvious. "Well something other than that light must be affecting us," she pointed out.

"And we must stay in close proximity," Teal'c finished for her.

Daniel felt his heart fall. "So not only are we stuck here, we're…" he motioned to the room. "We're stuck here."

They all went quiet as it sunk in. They were going to have to live out the rest of their days in an abandoned Goa'uld drug flop house.

Jack had never missed his office at the SGC as much as he did in that moment.

Even with the light off, their symptoms continued to improve. It was clearly not the light itself that was causing their addiction so they took to studying it further. Since it was off, Loran tentatively followed them into the room he'd been forbidden from entering before.

It wasn't as elegant as it seemed when the play of light fell across it. The device was a simple array of crystals with curved arms to focus the energy. That much Sam could tell just by looking at it. Part of her itched to tear it apart and delve into the workings of it, as much from professional curiosity as she hoped to find a way to figure things out and be allowed to finally go home without the fear of insanity and death looming over her.

Jack rocked back on his heels and stared at the device. He couldn't believe he'd spent so much time just staring at it, let alone spent so much time thinking about it. It was boring. "Well it's sure not as much fun to look at with the light off."

He wasn't the only one who felt that way. "I feel no compulsion to remain here," Teal'c supplied.

"Sir, I think you may be onto something," Carter said, putting slight emphasis on the sir in an attempt to apologize for her earlier shrewish refusal to acknowledge Jack's rank and authority as team leader. Jack looked at her quizzically. "The light isn't what's affecting our minds. It's just something to take advantage of the altered state of our brain chemistry."

Jack couldn't fight back a comparison to a Goa'uld television. Daniel echoed it with, "So it's… entertainment?"

Carter nodded, glancing back to the device before looking over at Daniel. "Well, probably more than that. The color and light interaction with our optic nerve probably triggers the chemical responses, but it's not the direct cause of the imbalance."

Even though he often played dumb, Colonel Jack O'Neill was just as intelligent as the other members of his team. Well, close. Carter was a genius in her field. Daniel was just a plain genius in general. But he could hold his own. So he followed along without preamble asking her to dumb it down for once. There wasn't time to waste on pretending to not get it. "What is the cause, then?" he asked.

"There must be some sort of a hidden device emitting some form of energy or radiation that we can't detect with our instruments."

It made sense. Jack might not be any sort of expert on biology or energy or physics, but it made sense. He glanced over at the kid for a moment. "Alright Loren, why doesn't this room seem to affect you?" he asked.

Loran looked over. "I'm too young." He shifted his weight from one hip to the other.

"How do you know that?" Jack asked.

"My father told me." Loran looked back at Jack with such sincerity that Jack knew he wasn't lying. The kid was too easy to read, too eager to make friends after his apparent years of isolation.

Carter shrugged. "It is possible that this place can only affect an adult physiology."

Jack shook his head. "Frasier says he's just as addicted as we are."

Loran looked a little nervous. "She's right. The light didn't have any affect on me," he pointed out. He might not have been in the room itself, having avoided setting foot over the threshold, but he'd been close enough to watch it and it never captured his attention the same way it had the SG teams.

"Then what'd it do to your parents?" Jack asked. Loran swallowed back some words and opened his mouth, closing it again. His body language screamed that he was hiding something. Jack felt his anger percolate again, despite the lack of withdrawal. He was tired of not having answers. "We need to know what this thing does!"

Loran flashed his smile again. "When they get back, they'll explain," he assured him.

"They're not coming back!" Jack shouted. "You know that!"

The rest of the team stayed quiet, not wanting to get into the pathway of Jack's anger. Even Loran seemed to pick up on it and shied away slightly, his shoulders turning into himself like he was trying to find comfort where none could be found.

Loran nearly sobbed out, "They are!"

Clearly Loran was delusional and Jack was tired of treating him with kid gloves. It hadn't helped to wait for him to open up, Jack was going to have to take a harder approach. It wasn't easy. Loran reminded him too much of his own failings as a parent and also as a team leader turned mentor turned best friend turned whatever he was to Daniel, not to mention Teal'c. He was done pussyfooting around.

"Someone buried those bodies!" Jack's voice was beyond raised and the acoustics of the room echoed back at him slightly. "Now how do you shut that thing off?!"

He felt almost bad as Loran's mask fell away and he showed the truth he'd been hiding. Jack was staring back at a scared little kid who had been alone for far too long.

Loran stared at him for a moment before hurrying over to the device. He pressed a side panel and the control section began to lower. He ran out before it finished moving.

Jack watched after the kid as he raced from the room back toward where he had made his bedroom. Carter shot him a look and he looked down at the floor for a moment, regretting his shouting at the kid. Daniel and Teal'c tried to look away.

"Figure that thing out," Jack said quietly to Carter as he followed after the kid.

Loran had holed up in his room just as Jack had assumed. He rounded the corner and watched as the kid sat slumped over, eyes fixated on the view screen of his alien camera. Jack slowly moved into the room. "Hey," he said softly. Loran's eyes drifted from the screen but he didn't look over. "I'm sorry."

He sat down on the edge of the bed near the kid and tried to find a way to bridge the gap. "Nice picture," he finally offered. "Your parents?"

When Loran finally turned to look at him, his eyes were glassed over with unshed tears. "I- I killed them," he said, voice heavy.

"You?" Jack asked. "I find that-" He didn't finish, instead taking a breath. "What happened?"

"We found this place." Jack had to strain to hear his words and he watched as tears started to well out of the kid's eyes and onto his cheeks. "All that they would do is stare at that light. All day. The light didn't affect me. My father said it was because I was too young. But they didn't let me in the light room anyway. I told them to stop," he insisted, finally looking up at Jack's face. "Every day. But they'd just tell me to bring them things."

"Okay." Jack tried to make his voice sound forgiving, but he wasn't even sure if that was what the kid wanted or if he even succeeded in adjusting his tone of voice. "So you did that. And?"

For a kid so full of regret and pain and loneliness, his voice was thin. "And one day I stopped."

Jack didn't interrupt, even when the kid took a long pause. "It was days before their hunger was stronger than the light. Then they came out looking for me. Looking for food. And I snuck into the light room and… and I turned it off. Not just the light. Everything. I didn't know that it would hurt them. I just wanted to go home."

"Hey, it's not your fault," Jack assured him.

Loran burst into tears and Jack was reminded that despite looking at a kid about to enter his teens, inside he was still just a little boy who wanted his parents. "They died because of me. They were screaming. They ran outside. They didn't make any sense! They just wanted the light turned back on. So I did. I turned it back on. But they were already in the water, so far away. And they just kept on going." He wiped at his tears. "They just kept on going and screaming and I'd turned it back on! But they just kept on going. And then they were gone. The next day I found them on the shore."

Jack leaned in slightly. "Loran, you were trying to help them. You were trying to free them from something. It wasn't your fault."

Loran's head lowered and he took in a ragged breath. "I miss them," he whined.

Jack nodded and reached a hand up to ruffle the kid's hair. "Yeah," he said quietly, his heart breaking for the kid's loss.