Thursday, May 6
Reality A001
Daniel found a note in with his breakfast tray that ordered him to rest up and work if he could. He crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash, and when he'd finished eating, he went into the office and grabbed a couple of files. Sitting down on the sofa, he started working, not at the hectic pace he'd ordinarily set, but enough to keep Hammond off his back, he hoped.
Today was the beginning of his second month of captivity here. He wondered what his friends were doing back home, whether any disastrous crises had come up, whether something had happened to delay them.
Then he shook his head and got to work. He didn't have energy to waste on things he couldn't change.
Samantha and Jack were a bit late arriving at the base the next morning. Getting him moving had proven to be a nearly insurmountable task. Finally she'd had to remind him that Hammond had ordered him to report to his office, and that any disobedience would be paid for not by the colonel, but by Daniel, who was the only true innocent in this whole mess.
That had gotten him going, finally, and they hit the base at about eight-thirty. Sgt. Jimenez, at the gate, told them that the general had already called twice to see if O'Neill had arrived yet. She put a hand on Jack's arm to keep him from blowing his stack, and they headed into the base. Alarmed by Jack's mood, she stayed with him to make sure he kept his cool all the way to the general's office.
When they got there, the secretary waved Jack in, and Samantha went in with him. She hoped desperately that she could keep Jack under control if Hammond started railing at him. Otherwise, she didn't know what would happen.
Hammond didn't object to her presence, just nodded politely to her before laying into Jack. He'd apparently decided that the colonel wasn't much of a threat, because only Lt. Berman stood behind him today. There was a bank of monitors on the side wall that showed various portions of the base, flipping from location to location every thirty seconds.
She stayed beside Jack, trying to be an anchor for him, to hold him steady and keep him from blowing up. She wondered if Hammond realized just how much danger he was in, taunting a well-trained soldier that had been given aggression enhancing drugs for months. Even if they'd changed the mix, she very much doubted that months of drug therapy wouldn't continue to have an effect.
The atmosphere in the room felt like the tense calm before a storm, and Samantha was terrified of what that storm might bring.
Daniel tossed the file he'd been working on onto the coffee table and leaned his head back against the arm of the sofa. Nine a.m. He'd been up and working for almost two hours. His body ached hideously, and he'd been given no analgesics. He'd have to ask Samantha about that later, if . . . when she came. He'd iced his foot off and on all morning. It was a lovely blue, as were his ribs. He had a feeling that in relatively short order, he'd resemble a crazy quilt put together by someone fond of blues, purples and greens.
The sound of the spoons on the door clanking loudly and violently brought him to his feet in alarm. He was wearing socks, a pair of blue and black plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a black t-shirt. The closest weapons he had, besides the book on the coffee table, were the knives and forks in the drawer by the sink. Before he'd taken so much as two steps in that direction, three people boiled into the living room.
Three incredibly welcome people. Colonel Jack O'Neill, in full combat gear, Captain Samantha Carter, also all geared up, and Teal'c, wearing a goofy hat that warred with the intent fury on his face. He spoke first. "DanielJackson, are you well?"
"Of all the stupid questions!" Jack exclaimed. "He has a broken arm, Teal'c, of course he's not well!"
"I'm fine!" Daniel said. "How did you get here?"
Sam walked forward, a grin on her face. "Well, I figured out a –"
"Not now, Carter!" Jack snapped. "Get the science crap dealt with later, after we get him home."
Daniel rolled his eyes, this was such a familiar response. He wondered how it had been arranged. Samantha had told him that Maybourne had the mirror . . . Samantha . . . Maybourne . . . the bomb. "Um," he said, stepping back. "Do you have some way of dealing with the bomb? Some kind of jamming thing?"
"What?" Jack asked.
The phone on the general's desk rang suddenly, and his eyes flicked to the caller ID screen. His eyes widened and he picked it up immediately. "What is it?" he demanded. There was a pause, then he leaned forward and pressed a button. All the screens on the wall turned to images of Daniel's suite. Both she and Jack looked over with shock. They were there, or versions of them were, in Daniel's rooms.
"God damn it to hell!" Hammond growled. "How did they get in?" He slammed the phone down before the person on the other end could even begin to answer and reached into a pocket. "Well, he's not getting away, not on my watch!"
Jack lunged for the general just as Samantha watched Daniel's eyes widen. He jerked slightly, then his eyes went blank. He fell like a log to the ground, and she watched in horror as the trio gathered around him, desperately trying to resuscitate him. She shook her head in mute horror. His heart was so much ground meat now . . . there wasn't anything they could do. Tears began running down her face. Such a terrible waste . . .
"It's too late, O'Neill, it's done," Hammond said in a dispassionate voice. He'd dodged the initial attack and was pointing at the monitors. Jack turned and stared at the image of Daniel, dead on the floor with his friends gathered around him.
Samantha turned and saw Berman standing, his gun raised and pointing at the colonel. As Jack stared, apparently frozen by the image on the screen, he lowered the weapon. This proved to be a mistake. In an incredibly fast move, Jack turned and grabbed a heavy paperweight off the general's desk and lobbed it at Berman. The bodyguard ducked, but not quickly enough. The paperweight caught him on the temple and sent him to the floor.
Without pausing, Jack lunged for the general. Hammond struggled briefly, but Jack was implacable. He dealt with the struggles swiftly, then broke Hammond's neck with a neat twist. She felt her breath coming in short gasps as Jack stood there, holding the general.
Then he dropped him, eyes wide with grief and horror as he turned back to the screens. They were gone, all four of them. The SG-1 from the other reality had gone, Samantha had no idea of how to make the screens change to follow them. Jack collapsed to his knees, horrible sobs breaking forth from him. She wanted to go to him, but there wasn't time. Fortunately, no guns had been fired in here, so no one knew what was up. She took Berman's gun and stuck it in the back of her pants, yanked the cords off the flags behind the general's desk and tied him up quickly, then turned to the phone.
For a moment she dithered, trying to figure out who to call. Who did you call when your commanding officer had just killed the general in charge of your base? Then she took a deep breath and picked up the receiver and dialed four digits. If he wasn't there, if he didn't answer, she didn't know what she would do.
First one ring, then a second, then the third was interrupted. "Makepeace."
"Sir?" she said, and she thought her voice sounded a little wild. Moderating her tone, she said, "Sir, the general needs to see you in his office."
"Carter? What –" He paused, and she could almost hear wheels whirring. "I'll be there in five minutes, tops."
"Thank you, sir," she said, then hung up.
Berman had come to and was staring at her as if she was some kind of an alien, which he probably thought she was. No doubt he thought she was a Goa'uld who'd somehow escaped all the detection procedures they had in place. She walked over to the colonel. "Sir?" she said softly.
He pulled away and hunched into a ball, arms wrapped around his legs. Tears were streaming down his face, and she only then realized that she was still crying as well. She tried again to talk to him, but he wasn't hearing her. There was nothing she could do. She stood up and turned to see Makepeace entering swiftly, and shutting the door behind him.
"Lock it," she hissed.
He did as she'd said and turned to face her, his eyes taking in the scene. "Where's Berman?" he asked after a couple of moments.
"I'm here, behind the desk," he called. "They've lost it, sir."
"He has," Makepeace said dryly, his eyes on Jack. "Are you all right, lieutenant? You sounded on the verge of hysteria on the phone, for a minute there."
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm not on the verge of hysteria," she said. Evaluating her tone and the way her heart was beating, she went on, "But I can see the city limit sign from here."
"Maybe you'd better sit down, take a minute to –"
"No sir," she said sharply. "If I sit down, I will be gone. I need to stay on my feet and doing something."
Makepeace glanced up at the screens. "Where's that?"
"Daniel's suite," she said.
"Where is he, then?"
"Rescued . . . sort of." She grimaced. "He's dead, sir. That's . . . that's what set the colonel off."
"Damn," Makepeace muttered, looking at the colonel. "What a waste."
"What are we going to do, sir?"
"Well, after O'Neill, I'm next in line to command the base. Since he's clearly not in any shape to take charge, I'm taking command."
"Yes sir," she said.
"And the first thing I'm going to do is lock the base down. Obviously we've had some kind of incursion."
Berman started making strangled sounds. "Bullshit! That was revenge! I'm not going to –"
"Be able to speak for at least a week if you don't shut up right now," Makepeace said, walking over to stand over the bound lieutenant. "What happened here is what I say happened. You should be familiar enough with that, after your years of serving Hammond, right, Berman? You did want to continue to live, correct? Dead witnesses tell no tales."
Berman fell silent, but she didn't trust him as far as she could throw him. Makepeace walked over to the phone. "Did you call anyone else?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"Good." He made the requisite calls to get the base locked down, then called another number. It seemed to take awhile to get through, and he kept dialing other numbers in the process, until finally he said, "Harry?"
Samantha shook her head. It was too much. They were inviting Harry Maybourne to take over the SGC. A month ago, that would have been unthinkable to her, now she wanted to roll out the red carpet. A pungent smell filled the room as Hammond's bowels released.
She walked over to Jack and sat down beside him. Putting her arms around him, she started rocking him, trying to bring him back from whatever no man's land he'd escaped to, all the while wishing she could join him there.
Friday, May 7
Reality L583
"No, I really think it's a square root symbol, Sam," Daniel said. Jack sat in Carter's lab yet again, this time with Daniel standing beside her at the other end of the table. Apparently he'd gotten over his desire not to be in the same room with the mirror, because he was here and it was here, yet he was utterly engrossed in the translation of that schematic whatsit from P3X-233.
"I'm not sure how much sense that really makes, Daniel," she said. "I mean mathematically."
"Well, I can't judge the math, but –"
Teal'c came in and Jack gladly stopped listening to the science babble and turned to the Jaffa. "What's up?" he asked.
"Dr. Fraiser asked me to come down and see if they had taken lunch yet."
"No, they haven't, but you try getting them to." Jack looked over at them where they were both bending close to the facsimile that had been created of the schematic. "Last I heard they were talking math."
"Dr. Fraiser said that she doesn't want anyone working themselves into illness," Teal'c said. "I do not believe that they are in any danger of doing so."
"She's a doctor. They pay her to be paranoid about people's health." He looked over at the brain trust. Well, half their brain trust and half someone else's. God, he wanted Daniel back.
The mirror shimmered into life and Jack turned, his hand reaching for his hip and a weapon that was, naturally enough, not there. It couldn't be Maybourne again, not so soon . . .
He jumped up and stood in front of the mirror and saw Maybourne. "It's him again," he said, his voice cracking.
"Well, tell him to come through," Carter said. Daniel looked tense, but Jack just shrugged and beckoned to the alternate reality Maybourne. Carter had already reached for the phone. Maybourne entered the room and looked around. "Have you sent for Hammond yet?"
"Just now," Carter said. "What's happened? Why are you back so soon?"
He looked around, his eyes searching all of their faces, then his shoulders slumped. "I think I'd better wait for your Hammond."
Jack thought about pushing, but Carter caught his eye and he settled back down in his chair to wait. Waiting wasn't his forte.
It took about fifteen minutes for Hammond to show up, and they stayed in an uncomfortable silence the whole time. Daniel sat back down in the wheelchair he'd arrived in. He was walking, but not long distances, and he still couldn't handle crutches.
Hammond opened the door and walked in. He met Maybourne's eyes and crossed his arms. "Well? Yesterday you said you couldn't see us till Monday because there were problems with accessing the mirror. Has something changed?"
Maybourne grimaced. "Everything's changed," he said. "Hammond's dead, Kinsey stepped down, and . . ." He trailed off, shaking his head. "And I'm avoiding the main point. At approximately nine a.m. yesterday morning, three people broke into Dr. Jackson's suite." He pointed around at Carter, Teal'c and Jack. "You three, though obviously not actually you three."
"What happened?" Hammond demanded. Jack felt in his bones that this couldn't be good news. If it had been good news, Maybourne would have shared it right away, or he'd have Daniel with him. He repressed the impulse to shake the news out of Maybourne.
"As I predicted, the minute they were in the room with Dr. Jackson, Hammond knew, and he . . . he activated the bomb."
There was dead silence in the room, and Jack could hear a pounding in his ears. Then he slammed his fist down on the lab table. "You stupid, delaying son of a bitch!" he yelled.
"O'Neill," Hammond said sharply.
"Sir!" Jack protested.
"I'm sorry," Maybourne said, and Jack growled. "But it wouldn't have made a difference who it was. If anyone that Hammond hadn't sent himself had gone in there, Hammond would have killed him. It was just one step worse that O'Neill and Carter were in the room with Hammond when it happened. O'Neill incapacitated Hammond's bodyguard and killed Hammond, then collapsed. Carter had the presence of mind to get Makepeace in there and . . ." He shook his head. "She hasn't collapsed, but she's not much use either."
"So, he's dead?"
The voice startled them all. Jack felt his whole body twitch. Daniel was dead, but there was Daniel over there. Just not his Daniel.
"Yes," Maybourne said, his voice full of sympathy that Jack wanted to stuff down his throat. "I'm sorry. There's no way he could have been saved. We're still not sure how they got in and out of the base, but they took the body with them when they went back, no doubt still believing that he was their Daniel."
Tears were running down Carter's face, and the Daniel in the wheelchair looked stunned and bereft. Teal'c looked stoic and Hammond . . . Jack looked away. The general looked utterly devastated. The number of times Daniel had died and come back . . . Jack remembered the way he'd impulsively thrown himself between him and the blast from Ra's Jaffa . . . He pinched the bridge of his nose. "So the body's gone as well."
"Yes," Maybourne said.
"Have you found a way to get . . . him . . ." . . . he waved in Daniel's direction . . . ". . . home?"
"Not quite yet, but it will be soon. I will return with the information as soon as I have it."
"I see. Thank you," Hammond said. His voice was subdued and full of grief. "Please, let us know. This man needs to get back to his family."
Maybourne nodded. "I am truly sorry," he said. The mirror had remained activated, so he simply walked over and touched it and was gone.
There was silence in the lab for a moment, then Jack stood up and walked out. He had to get somewhere else, had to be alone. Daniel was dead, and they didn't even have the body. It was like Nem, but worse, because there wasn't anything they could do. He'd heard jokes about Daniel's nine lives around the base, but it seemed he might actually have come to the end of them.
Reality A001
"Lt. Carter?"
Samantha turned at the new doctor's soft voice to find her squatting by the chair. "Yes?"
"As heavily sedated as he is, he's not aware of your presence."
She looked down at the colonel's peaceful face. "How long will you keep him like this?"
"He'll stay out for another couple of hours," she said. "I don't plan to give him any more after that."
Samantha nodded, and looked into the woman's brown eyes. "I don't like to leave him."
"I understand, but I do need to talk with you more privately." She stood up. "Come into my office when you're ready."
Sam watched the woman move away through the infirmary and sighed. The lockdown had barely lasted fourteen hours. It turned out that the shake up at the SGC had affected national politics, so by the time they were in contact with the rest of the world again, they had a different president and with him, a new chief of staff. There was an investigation into various aspects of how the armed forces had been run over the last few years, and it was touching everything.
Warner had brought a new doctor into the SGC under him and then gone home and attempted suicide. Maybourne had been too quick for him, though, and he was now in one of the isolation units. The new doctor was now in charge, but Samantha didn't even know her name.
Samantha hadn't left Jack's side through all of it. She bent close to him and kissed his cheek. "I'll be back soon, Jack," she murmured, knowing he couldn't hear her. Then she got up and followed the doctor into her office.
"Go ahead and shut the door if you want," the doctor said as Samantha hovered in the doorway.
She closed the door behind her and sat down in the chair the doctor indicated. "I'm sorry, I know someone told me, but I don't remember your name."
"Janet Fraiser," she said, smiling. "I understand you and the colonel were pretty close to the center of this mess. Can you tell me what happened?"
"I'm really not sure what I can tell you," Samantha said honestly, then she realized all the possible interpretations that sentence could have and hastily added, "I mean, I don't know what I'm allowed to tell you."
Fraiser nodded. "I can understand that, lieutenant. How are you feeling?"
Samantha blinked. "I'm not really sure. Numb, I think. I'm having a little difficulty grasping all of what's happened. In fact, I'm not even sure what's happened since yesterday."
"Not a lot, to be honest. I've stabilized Dr. Warner, and there are some people looking after him. I've been looking through his files and we've got quite a mess on our hands. I'm told you know about the mass drugging . . . that you were told recently, I mean, not that you were a part of it."
Samantha nodded. "I was told about two weeks ago I think."
"Well, you're actually one of the lucky ones. Nothing you were on is addictive. You'll have some reactions as it leaves your system, but it won't be anything more strenuous than mild constipation or diarrhea, some depression –"
"Which I probably wouldn't notice right now if it jumped up and punched me in the nose," Samantha said. The doctor gave her a nod of wry acknowledgement. "What about Jack?"
"Colonel O'Neill is one of the unlucky ones," Fraiser said. "The mixture he was on appears to be highly addictive, and I can't even predict all of what his possible reactions could be because there are a number of chemicals in it that I have no experience with. There's at least one hormone that's from a creature called an Unas." Samantha blinked. Nothing would surprise her anymore. "Between the withdrawals and the guilt and other emotions he's likely to feel, he's going to need a lot of support to get well again."
Samantha nodded and met the other woman's eyes. "He'll have it," she said.
Reality L583
Jack sat in Daniel's office looking at the thingamabobs he'd been playing with that Monday a month ago. It had driven Daniel nuts because they were fragile and rare and whatnot. Like Jack would ever drop one of Daniel's fragile, rare thingamabobs. It was a ritual the two of them had played out time and time again.
The door behind him opened. Jack didn't look around. He didn't care who'd come in.
"I thought I'd find you here," Hammond said.
"I'm not clearing out his apartment again," Jack said. "Once was enough, thank you."
"That's a job we can defer till later," Hammond replied. "I just wanted to see how you were."
Jack shrugged. "My little brother's dead. How should I be?"
"Your little . . ."
"The other Daniel and I were talking a few days ago, and that's how I described working with Daniel. It was like you'd entrusted me with looking after my overly curious, accident-prone little brother. And now he's dead, and there's not one damned thing we can do about it."
"The rest of your team could use your support right now, Jack," Hammond said.
"I'm not sure I have much support to give them, sir," he replied. "I feel . . . I want to kill something, someone. And there's no one to kill."
"I understand the feeling." Hammond sat down at the desk and sighed. "It's very hard knowing that there's a version of me out there . . . or there was a version of me that could coldly press a button to explode a man's heart, especially a man like Daniel Jackson. It's beyond my comprehension."
"It isn't you, sir," Jack said. "Anymore than that man in the VIP suite is our Daniel. He's a much closer approximation, but still . . . not him."
"He is extremely upset. He feels guilty, I gather, for not being able to meet their expectations longer, so that kidnapping our Daniel wouldn't have been necessary."
"That's stupid!" Jack growled. "None of us wish it was him that died."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, son."
"I wish it was one of the earlier ones. One of the ones I don't know. One of the ones who doesn't have children."
Hammond patted his shoulder. "Jack, I hate to do this to you, but we need to think about a memorial service."
Jack shook his head. "I'm not ready to think about that yet, sir," he said. "Nem prepared us to accept Daniel's death as a part of what he did to us. I don't . . . I'm not ready for that."
"I understand." Hammond stood up and left the room. "I'll see you later. Let me know before you head home, okay?"
"Of course, sir," Jack said. Hammond walked out and shut the door behind him, leaving Jack alone with his memories.
There was no practical reason to go after a dead body, so that was that. Daniel was gone, have a memorial service and it was done.
Jack grabbed the box of tissues that Daniel always kept on his desk to stave off allergies and tried to pretend he wasn't crying.