Tuesday, April 20
Reality A001
Samantha got the work she had to do out of the way quickly, giving as little attention as possible to projects that would ordinarily have taken up a good deal of her attention and interest. She had to be ready to go at one-thirty so that she could meet with Maybourne.
She was just turning to go when Sgt. Siler walked in looking more than a little nervous. He walked in and shut the door behind him. He stuck his hand in his pocket and then said, "Lieutenant, what's going on around here? I don't like what I'm seeing or what I'm hearing."
Samantha gaped at him. "Sergeant, what are you –" she started, glancing towards the camera in the corner.
He cut her off. "I've got something here," he said, pulling his hand out of his pocket and patting it, "that will prevent the cameras from picking anything up until I turn it off again." Her eyes went to his pocket. "I've tested it a few times, very circumspectly, and I can guarantee it works."
"I see," she said. "Well, what are you talking about?"
"Dr. Warner has resigned his commission," he said. "He says he can't keep on here, not with the way things are going. Some of us don't have that option, lieutenant. Some of us are stuck for the long haul, and we want to know what's happening."
"What's happening concerning what?"
Siler's face twisted. "The Dr. Jackson that's locked in that little room, ma'am," he said. She glanced at the clock. Her time was ticking away. "All I know for certain is that he was taken into surgery two days ago, very interestingly timed for when you and the rest of SG-1 were off base. I asked Dr. Warner what was wrong with him, and the man broke down. He started crying and said there was nothing wrong with Dr. Jackson. I figured the colonel had . . ." Siler shook his head. "But Warner said that O'Neill's been totally different with this Daniel. That the general had made him do the dirty work. That he couldn't stay . . . that he had to leave because he couldn't cope."
Samantha gulped. "I hope you did this with whatever that is activated," she said.
He grimaced. "I've used it a little more often than I probably should, lately. The security guys are getting a little worried about the cameras that keep failing, but Hammond's got them so intent on fixing the cameras that they're not looking for outside causes yet. But they will eventually."
"Right," she said. "So, what do you want from me?"
"There are other things going on, things you might not have noticed because you and the colonel have been so focused on the hunt for a Daniel Jackson that would last longer than a month."
"Like what things?"
"Like Hammond pushing the teams so hard that people are coming back dead or not coming back at all. Or some of the newer people he's brought into the program. People I wouldn't want to meet in a back alley, some of them. Black ops at best." Samantha blinked. "Hammond's so obsessed with results these days that he's sending people through the gate with pretty damned heavy ordnance. Nobody can match the results SG-1 got with Dr. Jackson, but Hammond's determined to make them try."
"Meanwhile we're making more and more enemies out there with every raid he runs."
"Yes, ma'am. Word is the Tok'ra don't want anything to do with us anymore, and they were our only allies."
"Where'd you hear this?" she asked.
"I keep my ear to the ground, lieutenant," he said, giving her a very dry smile. "Time was, you wouldn't have to hear it from me, ma'am."
"Time was, we had our Daniel Jackson," she said. "Look, I'm . . . we're going to try to do something to change all that, Siler."
"We?" he asked. "You and who else?"
"I can't really say –"
"Is it Colonel O'Neill? Because I'm not sure how far I'd trust him. He's . . . forgive me, ma'am, but he's flipped."
"He is," she said, "and if you ever repeat that I'll deny I said it." He nodded with a ghost of a grin. "But it might be possible to bring him back. I think a lot of it's Hammond's fault for pushing him so hard."
"And his own fault for killing Dr. Jackson."
"That was an accident," Samantha said sharply.
"I know," Siler replied grimly. "I know it wasn't intentional, but it was still his fault, and he knows it. I think that's a lot of what's wrong with him."
Sam scowled. "You may be right. Look, I've got to go. I have something I have to do, but find an opportunity when we can talk again, okay? I may need your help."
"Yes, ma'am," Siler said. He reached into his pocket again. "It will take thirty seconds to stop interfering. We should be talking about something else when the camera comes back on line." She nodded and he did something in his pocket, then quickly crossed his arms.
"And make sure that the frequency never drops below . . ." She continued for a few moments, giving him perfectly valid instructions for monitoring an experiment that could take care of itself. Of course, there was probably no one on base beyond Siler who would know that.
"Yes, ma'am," he said and she left the lab quickly, heading to the nearest women's restroom. She took the back stall and pulled her feet up, then activated the phase shifter she had under her left sleeve, setting it to level 1. She was just enough out of phase that she could see the people around her as dim shadows, but no one could see her. She'd left the door ajar, so she crept out of the stall and through the halls as quickly as she could. Fortunately, given how late a start she'd gotten, Maybourne's 'office,' really a togged up janitor's closet, was on this level. Unfortunately, it was at the other end of this level.
When she got there, he was looking very irritable. He was going through mission reports and making notes of some kind, one of his favorite things to do according to Colonel O'Neill. She took a sheet of paper out of her pocket and carefully placed it on top of the report he was reading. After it had been out of her possession for about forty-three seconds, it would shift back into phase. While waiting for that, she walked over to the corner of the room that was not covered by the security cameras and took out the second phase shifter she'd brought and put it down at the end of the cabinet.
Then she leaned against the wall at the other end of the cabinet and watched Maybourne. She could tell the moment the paper shifted back into phase. It was unlikely in the extreme that any of the cameras would pick it up, but Maybourne's eyes widened and she watched him scan the note.
He was canny enough not to scan the room for her, but he did follow the note's instructions. After a moment, he shuffled the file he had open together, the note somewhere in the middle, then got up and went to that cabinet, squatting down as if looking in it for something. He rummaged for a moment, then stood up and put something in his pocket and walked out of the room. She stayed where she was, leaning against the wall. Maybourne was very quick. He left the door open.
He should be back shortly. In the meantime, Sam leaned against the wall, listening to the voices of people passing by, waiting.
Finally, Maybourne came in, barely catching himself from swinging the door shut. He looked around for her and she could see he'd followed her instructions to a tee. He was even at the right level.
He looked at her with wide eyes. "This takes some getting used to. I feel like I'm walking through a ghost town."
"It is rather like that," she said, nodding. "This is how they take the Daniels. I still haven't found a way to detect it, so it's rather useful."
"Especially for clandestine meetings," he observed. "Well, I believe we left off with a discussion of rumors."
"I believe we left off with me still not certain I should trust you."
He pursed his lips and leaned one hip against his desk. "How can I convince you?"
"Frankly, I don't know," she said, hitching herself up on the cabinet. "By the way, people can see it if we mess with ordinary objects, it takes about forty seconds for things to come into phase with us or go out of phase when we put them down."
"So don't pick anything up because it will be floating for forty seconds," Maybourne said. "Thanks for the warning – wait, does that mean that page was on top of my file for forty seconds before I could see it?"
She smiled at his discomfiture. "Yup," she said, and his eyes widened.
"Well, let's see if this will convince you," he said, standing up and going towards the other side of the desk. He looked at the rolling chair and then at the drawers. "This has its limitations, I see," he said. "I have something I'd like to show you, but I can't open the drawer."
"Tell me about it."
"You know that everyone in the SGC is given weekly shots of vitamins and other health enhancers?" She nodded. She'd had her shot earlier in the morning, as had the colonel. "And that every shot is tailored to the individual?"
"Of course. We all have different needs," she said.
He nodded grimly. "Yes, but hasn't it ever occurred to you how easily that situation could be abused, perverted?"
Her stomach gave an uneasy flip. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"It's ripe for abuse," Maybourne said. "For all I know, it was set up that way to start with. There are vitamins and good things in the shots, lieutenant. But there are also things meant to . . . enhance certain personality traits that the general wants to see enhanced."
"You're wrong!" she said loudly, shaking her head in horror. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "You have to be." She could tell from his sympathetic smile that he knew that she already believed him, but couldn't accept or acknowledge that belief aloud.
"Some people, those who might be considered troublemakers from the general's viewpoint, are given minute doses of tranquilizers, things to make them more submissive. Not enough to be noticeable, never enough to show up on an outside examination, but enough to affect judgment to some degree. Those who the general feels are too sympathetic to . . . well, not to enemies, but to people who aren't useful, they're given things to make them more aggressive." Samantha shook her head, horrified, but she knew he wasn't lying. It matched too well with the sorts of things she'd seen Hammond do before. "You are getting tranquilizers."
She stared into the middle distance, trying to take that in. Tranquilizers. To impair her judgment and make her just that little bit less likely to fight an order she didn't agree with.
"I know for a fact that you are being given mild depressants to make you slightly more apathetic, less likely to make waves. Colonel O'Neill spent a brief time on depressants, but oddly enough they made him more likely to make waves. I could have told them it was foolish to make O'Neill depressed. He'd either get pissy or suicidal, neither of which would serve Hammond's ends."
"So, what is he getting now?"
"Drugs that heighten aggression," Maybourne said.
"How long?" she asked, aghast. "Was it before or after –"
"Well before Dr. Jackson's death," he said, anticipating her question.
"And Daniel?"
"Depressants. Hammond didn't like his tendency towards sympathy with outworlders. He wanted a man who was useful but less inclined to assert himself." Maybourne sighed and looked down at the desk. "We know for a fact exactly what he was being given, because we tested his blood after he died."
"How did you get it?"
Maybourne pursed his lips and looked her in the eye. "We took it from his corpse."
She stared at him in disbelief. "But the body was burned."
Maybourne shook his head. "That was the body of a homeless man who was found dead in a city park. When Dr. Jackson died, we substituted the body so that we could –"
"You what?" she demanded angrily. "What have you done with Daniel's body?"
"Preserved it," he said calmly. "We placed it in stasis."
Her jaw dropped. "You can do that?" she asked.
He nodded. "We had only just obtained the technology when Dr. Jackson died, and we only had the one stasis chamber. It was deemed more important to preserve him in a revivable state than to tear it apart for reverse engineering."
Her heart skipped a beat. "Revivable?" she squeaked.
"If we can obtain a sarcophagus."
"Are you serious? You actually have Daniel's body and are planning to revive him?"
"If we can find a sarcophagus. That has proven difficult."
"But . . ." She ran out of words briefly. "But why haven't you told anyone at the SGC? Do you know what this would mean for the colonel?"
"Reason it through, Carter," Maybourne said. "What would his return mean for General Hammond?" She shook her head, instinctively shying away from giving that too much thought. Then she sat up sharply. Was that the drugs making her draw back from confrontation . . . even when it was only internal? Crap!! Maybourne smiled. "Now that you know about it, you should have some success fighting it," he said. "Hammond never liked Jackson, and he seemed glad enough to have him gone until he realized how necessary he was for the war effort. But he's come to think of him as disposable. Replaceable. Interchangeable. I've wondered if he mightn't be looking for a Daniel Jackson who's of his mindset. In the meantime, one that doesn't set O'Neill off every time he turns around is a good second best."
"And he put a bomb in that Daniel's chest to control him better."
"Indeed," Maybourne said. "It's put us all in quite a pickle. We haven't been able to identify the remote. We got the fact of the operation from Warner, but he didn't know who built it. Since it obviously wasn't you, we don't know where to even look for the information."
She ran her fingers through her hair. "I don't know. This is a lot to take in."
"I know, lieutenant."
"I know one thing . . . we have to get rid of Hammond."
"You came to that conclusion, too?" he said dryly.
She glared at him. "As a matter of fact, it's the conclusion Colonel O'Neill has come to," she said.
Maybourne blinked, and she was pleased to have surprised him with at least one piece of information. "O'Neill wants to get rid of Hammond?"
"He does," Samantha said.
"Well, that's a side effect of giving your people caveman drugs," Maybourne remarked. "What happens when they decide they don't like you?"
"So, do you have a plan or is all of this just informational?" she said.
"There's a lot that needs to be coordinated. I've been in contact with this Daniel's SGC, when I still wasn't sure you'd be willing to help."
"How?"
"We have the mirror. We managed to ram the requisition through finally, and Hammond didn't fight us. I think it's because he figures he can get it back at whim and he's satisfied with the Daniel you have right now. Poor man. Is he just weak or is he smarter than the others?"
"Smarter," she said. Then she thought for a moment. "Or something."
Maybourne raised his eyebrows. "You don't think he's weak?"
She shook her head definitively. "No. He's not weak. But I'm not sure what it is. It's like he recognized something that first night that told him how to act." She gave Maybourne a sour look. "A weak man couldn't have survived the last two weeks."
"It seems to me he's had a lot less to cope with than the others," Maybourne said. "I mean, no injuries to speak of, and –"
"He's walking a tightrope to keep the colonel balanced, and unbeknownst to him he's fighting drugs in addition to Jack's already iffy temper," she said harshly. "He's working sixteen hour days without much in the way of breaks, and he hasn't been out of that room in two weeks. To top that off, he was drugged, cut open and had a murder weapon placed inside his body to make it more convenient for his murderer to kill him when he's ready to." She raised an eyebrow. "Can you think of anything else offhand?"
"I wasn't suggesting he had it easy, lieutenant," Maybourne said defensively.
"Frankly, in a way, the other Daniels had it easier," she replied. "They knew what to expect from Colonel O'Neill. This Daniel has to keep the colonel on an even keel, on top of managing all his other problems, and he never knows what he's going to get when the colonel shows up. It all depends on too many factors. So far he's been pretty successful, but something's got to give."
"Well, my primary goal with this meeting was to make sure I had someone who could actually get inside Dr. Jackson's cell. Colonel O'Neill is not reliable, too focused on getting and keeping a Daniel." Samantha nodded. "Kowalski doesn't go in much anymore, but I think that's probably a good thing. The cocktail they're giving him is kind of scary. It dampens all his positive qualities and brings out the asshole that was lurking beneath the civilized surface."
"Son of a bitch! You mean that's why he's . . . I thought he was just suppressing things because it's too hard to cope with everything that's going on."
"Well, if he is, then he's got help."
"Damn it!" she snarled. "I'd like to stab Hammond myself!"
"You're cutting right through that tranquilizer, aren't you, Samantha?"
Resisting the urge to pin Maybourne to a wall for being a condescending twerp, she focused on the issue at hand. "It can't be just Hammond, though," she said. "He'd never get away with it long term."
"You're right at that," Maybourne said. "It goes all the way to the top."
She stood up, staring at him. "The joint chiefs?"
He shook his head. "Higher still, Samantha."
"President Kinsey?"
"I hope you didn't vote for him."
"Are you nuts?"
"Didn't think so," Maybourne said. "Look, I have to go. This was largely to see if you were going to help. Now that I know that you are, I –"
"I want to see Daniel," she said. The words were out before she even considered them or the feasibility.
"You don't honestly think we're keeping him anywhere near here?" he asked incredulously.
"I want to see Daniel," she repeated.
"He's dead," Maybourne replied. "There's nothing to see but a face through a view plate."
She bit her lip. "I still want to see him. I want to know that he's really there."
"It would be dangerous and potentially disastrous, lieutenant," he said. "You could lead Hammond right to us, and what do you think he'd do with Daniel in a box?"
"Hold it over Colonel O'Neill at the very least. He's already holding the current Daniel over the colonel's head."
"Is he?" Maybourne asked, looking intrigued. "And it's working?"
"That's part of why he wants to get rid of Hammond." She bit her lip. "I really want to see Daniel. I don't think you understand what it means to me."
"It's not possible," he said firmly. "And I really don't know what it would prove. For all you know we have a clone, or a really lifelike dummy in a silver box."
"I can't stand the thought that he's out there, dead, but revivable, and nothing's being done to fix him."
"Hammond has to be gone before I'd ever consent to bringing him back," Maybourne said. "And since I make that decision, you can be assured it won't happen until then."
"So you're essentially holding him hostage?" she accused.
He threw up his hands. "If you want to look at it that way, be my guest. I just don't want him to wind up getting killed. Again."
"No." She shook her head. "I can see that." Fury surged and she slammed her fist into a wall. "God, I hate this!"
"I know," he said. "I'm not thrilled with it either."
"How long have you known?" she asked, turning around. "How long have you known about the drugs and all of this?"
He blinked. "Eight months."
She walked towards him, rage filling her to the fingertips. "You've known for eight months and you haven't told anyone? Or done anything to stop it?"
"What could I do?" he demanded, taking a step back as she approached.
"I don't know!" she growled at him, continuing to move towards him. "I don't know what your resources are, what your channels are. I don't know what you could have done, but you damned well could have done something!"
"Not without making things worse."
"When I think of all the Daniels, when I think of what they've suffered and are probably still suffering because they aren't back in their own realities yet, and I know that you've had proof –"
"Proof is altogether different from knowing, lieutenant," Maybourne said. "We could prove that Dr. Jackson was being drugged, but we couldn't prove he was getting it here. We haven't had real proof until the last four weeks, and that's only because Warner finally cracked."
"I knew he'd resigned," Samantha said, puzzled. "What do you mean, cracked?"
"He has withdrawn his resignation, at my request," Maybourne said, and Samantha stared at him in surprise. "He gave us samples of several vials and wangled access to the computer logs of who gets exactly what chemicals. We have proof because he downloaded it to CD-Rom and gave it to us."
"My God. Here I've been cursing the man for putting that bomb into Daniel's chest."
"He still did that, lieutenant. He could have refused, made Hammond find a different doctor to do it. He's not altogether without blame."
"What are they putting in his shot?" she asked, tilting her head.
"I didn't look at his name," Maybourne said frankly. "I was looking at SG-1 primarily."
"Well, if I don't go back soon, I'll be missed," she said. "You'd better go back to whichever bathroom you went into, go in the same stall and go back into phase. If either Colonel O'Neill or Major Kowalski is there, though, wait. They're more likely than anyone else to notice something odd."
"Very well. I'll contact you with the time of our next meeting, shall I?"
"Sure, but don't get too impatient if I'm not on time. Unlike you, people around here actually want to talk to me. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Charming as ever, Lt. Carter," he said, nodding as she left.