Chapter 6 – Musical Mayhem
Daniel lay down to go to sleep sometime after sunset. He had no clear idea what time it was because they'd never given him back his watch. Apart from meal deliveries and tray removals, they'd ignored him today, which was fine as far as he was concerned. He didn't have any desire to interact further. He'd continued his mental translation of the inscription from PNR-39X, but there was only so far he could go with that, only so much he could hold in his head at one time.
Boredom was among his least favorite things, but he was damned well not going to let them bore him into playing their stupid game. He also didn't have a mirror, which meant he couldn't check up on the bruising on his back. The hand-shaped bands around arms were lovely shades of magenta, purple and dark blue, where bruises had piled on top of bruises.
It took a long while for him to fall asleep, and it wasn't restful, too full of stress dreams. His mind was seeking an escape, so it put him through every captivity experience he'd had in the last four years, which were too many to be considered comfortably.
He was dreaming about Sokar's moon when the light coming in through the windows awoke him. He got up, took a quick shower and then sunk himself deep in the bath to soak, hoping that hot water would ease the pain of his bruises at least a little. His ankle twinged a little, but the pain had diminished so rapidly the day before that he knew it had truly been no more than a slight wrench.
One of the guards came in with his breakfast and picked up the previous days clothes. "Are you willing to work, Dr. Jackson?" he asked. Daniel just closed his eyes and didn't answer. "Did you hear me, Dr. Jackson?"
Daniel heaved a sigh and spoke without opening his eyes. "Yes, and the answer is no."
The man left the room without another word. After the door closed, Daniel could hear some kind of thumping and shifting on the other side. He wasn't sure what it was, but then an avalanche of sound came through the panel. It took him a moment to identify the noise as orchestral music played at an insane volume.
The speaker must have been placed directly against the door. Daniel could feel the vibration of it coming up through the floor and into the legs of the tub. The sheer decibels were enough to send a man crazy. He slipped deeper into the tub, submerging his ears, but it wasn't much help.
When the water was too cool to do him any good, he climbed out of the tub and got dressed again. The music had not abated. There were intervals between one piece of music and the next, but they were so brief that it was really only enough time for him to hope it was over before another wave of music overwhelmed him again. It continued for the whole day. The man who brought in his food wore ear protection. Daniel wanted to snatch them off his head at lunch, but he wasn't about to show that the noise was getting to him. By nightfall, he wanted to throw the stereo out the window and watch it smash on the ground below. And he never wanted to hear Beethoven again.
Late in the night, it finally stopped, and he fell asleep within minutes.
Jack thought that it might do the world a lot of good if they tied all the diplomats into separate sacks and tossed them into whatever river was nearest. After listening to the ambassador fence politely with his counterpart in the Russian government, Jack was ready to get a real rapier and run them both through. The ambassador had nixed showing them the video of Daniel, and Jack had deferred to him as knowing a little more about the politics of the situation than he did, but if they made the same amount of progress tomorrow, he was going to knock their heads together and find someone with power and sense.
The ambassador handed him a platter of platitudes, and Jack smiled insincerely and went to join the rest of his team.
"Any movement, sir?" Carter asked.
Jack shook his head and thumped down into a chair. "Diplomats should be fed to politicians, then politicians should be fed to sharks.
"Do we really dislike sharks that much, Jack?" Feretti asked.
"Okay, then they should be fed to unas," Jack growled.
Feretti tilted his head. "But Daniel made friends with the last Unas."
Jack glared at the other man. "Quit being logical, Lou!" Feretti shrugged and didn't speak again. Everyone else remained silent. If Daniel had been there, they'd have started a spirited argument on something and eased both their tension, but no one here was able to do that for him.
Of course if Daniel had been there, the situation wouldn't exist. Jack grimaced and got up. He grabbed a plate of food from the buffet at one end of the room. The door opened and an attache came in. "Colonel O'Neill, there's a Dr. Svetlana Markov here to see you."
"Who is she?"
"An astrophysicist," Carter said, sounding a little surprised. "Well known for her theories on quantum mechanics and –"
Jack shook his head. "Who is she?" he repeated to the attache.
"She says she knows something about gates, sir." The young man looked puzzled, as if he didn't quite understand the gist of the message.
They all sat up straight at that. "Please send her in," Jack said. He put his plate down and turned to face the door, crossing his arms. Someone – an astrophysicist – who knew about gates. This could be interesting.
The attache brought in a stunningly beautiful woman with dark, curly hair, deep brown eyes and a somber expression. "I am Dr. Svetlana Markov," she said, glancing around at them. Coming straight for Jack, she said, "You must be Colonel O'Neill."
"I must be," he said. "I presume you're here because you've got something to tell us."
She looked around again, then glanced at the attache. "I do, but is there some less public forum we could speak in?"
The attache nodded politely and excused himself. Once the door was closed, Jack shrugged. "Everyone here knows about the gates and what's been going on."
Dr. Markov looked uneasy, but she squared her shoulders and said, "I was in charge of the gate on the day we intercepted Dr. Jackon's party."
"Were you?" Jack asked. "So, what happened?"
She pursed her lips, then sighed. "May I sit down?"
"Sure," Carter said, guiding her to a chair. The major gave him a Look that told him to sit down and stop looming. He decided he might as well.
Once they were all sitting, Markov started speaking again. "We were preparing to send a team through the gate when it activated unexpectedly. Colonel Maybourne identified the radio signals we were receiving as being from an American team and insisted that we allow them through."
"Maybourne insisted?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
"He did," she replied. "I agreed and reported the matter to my superiors, who instructed me to disarm them and send them under guard to the infirmary. After that, all of them were placed off limits to any but very specific personnel, and I was surprised to discover, days later, that no effort had been made to contact the American government."
"So what happened then?"
"I do not know precisely," she said. "I have heard, without anything to back it up, that Colonel Metzov was involved in the abduction of Dr. Jackson."
Jack leaned forward. "So, Colonel Metzov does, indeed, exist."
"He does," she said, looking puzzled. "Did someone say he did not?"
"We've been told that a time or two," Jack said. "So, who is he?"
"He is to our program what Colonel Maybourne is to yours."
Jack stared at her for a moment. "So, given that you folks are actually working with Maybourne, can I assume that Metzov is correspondingly worse?"
"You may, of course, assume anything you choose," she said primly. "He is an unprincipled individual who should never have been approved for the program."
"Have you got any idea where he would have taken Daniel?"
She shook her head. "No, but I got every piece of information I could out of the computer regarding him." Pulling a disk out of her hand she held it out towards Carter. "I don't know how much help it will be, but it was all I could do."
"What about the guys he had working with him?" Myers asked. "There were four or five other guys with him when he took Daniel." Jack shot him a glance and the captain corrected himself. "Dr. Jackson."
"Of them I know nothing, I'm afraid, and I dare not stay long. My visit, I hardly need tell you, is unofficial."
Jack nodded. "Thank you for coming," he said.
She rose, and he rose with her. "If it had not been for our bad timing in hooking up the DHD, Dr. Jackson would be safe at home right now."
"Yes, he would," Jack said flatly. "But thank you for giving us what information you can." Markov nodded and left. Jack turned to Carter. "Get the information on that disk pulled up pronto. The rest of you, make sure our gear is ready to go."
The lower ranked officers got up and left the sitting area, and Carter walked over to the computer sitting across the room. Feretti stopped by Jack's chair. "A little harsh, weren't you?" he said.
"With Dr. Markov?" Jack asked and Feretti nodded. "I don't think so."
"She couldn't have known . . . I mean, she couldn't have predicted that this would happen."
Jack shook his head. "She's a smart lady. The odds were that sooner or later, they'd catch someone coming in hot. Maybe she couldn't have foreseen this specific sequence of events, but she could have predicted that something like this could happen. She didn't bother. I'm guessing that none of them even thought about planning for it."
"Maybe so," Feretti said. He shook his head. "Well, I'll go check on the kids to make sure they're getting it all right." With that he left Jack to his thoughts, which were not pleasant company.
He really didn't like the notion Daniel and SG-8 owed their lives to Maybourne's intercession. And he couldn't help wondering if they'd have saved SG-8 if Daniel hadn't been with them.
"Sir, come and look at this," Carter said.
He walked over and stood behind her. The screen was dominated by a photograph of a solemn man with salt and pepper hair, glowering into the camera. "That's Metzov?"
"Apparently. And his record doesn't make for pleasant reading." She shook her head. "I'd say he's a good bit worse than Maybourne. He probably would have had Teal'c bent backwards across a table for vivisection before you could blink twice."
"And this charming fellow has our Daniel?" Jack asked rhetorically. "How thrilling."
"Let's see, he's got a daughter, Lizaveta. We might be able to get a lead on him using her. His wife is dead, and he's officially 'retired' from the service.
"Print up the photo and some information about his career, nothing too hot, and give it to me to take with me tomorrow."
"Of course, sir."
"And then print up every detail that might prove useful in searching for the man."
"Yes sir," she said. Jack left her to her work and went to make certain that his dress uniform was perfect. Heads were going to roll in the morning.
A incredibly loud burst of trumpets jerked Daniel awake. He blinked and stared at the sun just barely peeping above the horizon, and loud music was playing from outside the room. He didn't think he'd been asleep above four hours, though it was hard to be certain. He got up and got cleaned up, submerging himself again for the minimal respite the water offered. The water grew too cold too quickly and experimentation proved that more hot water would not be forthcoming for awhile.
Drying off, he got dressed and ate his breakfast. The sound was battering at him, and the reason for it wasn't hard to fathom. It was merely another form of torture, one that didn't involve hitting him. He opened all the windows, hoping to let the sound disperse a little more, but there was no appreciable difference.
He took the pillow off the bed and held it tight around his head to cover his ears, which provided some relief, and wished that there were neighbors to complain about the loud music.
Just before midday by the sun, the music stopped mid-song, and Daniel lowered the pillow slowly, ears ringing in the unaccustomed silence, wondering what was coming next. He heard shuffling and dragging sounds outside the door and straightened up. Lunch was coming, presumably, though they hadn't turned off the music for that before, and he wanted to look as unaffected as possible.
The door opened and Lizaveta walked in carrying what appeared to be files. He looked up at her, trying to control the sullen glare he could feel.
"Good morning, Dr. Jackson," she said, indecently cheerful. "How are you?"
"Peachy," Daniel replied.
"I am glad to hear it," she said. "I brought you some files to look at, to see if you wanted to reconsider your refusal to work."
He blinked at her, took in a deep breath and sighed. "I see. And if I agree to work, you'll turn off the music?"
She smiled. "Well, we wouldn't want you to be distracted," she said. Her eyes glinting malevolently, she went on, "But equally, we don't want you to have no stimulus at all. If you choose not to work, we will continue to provide music, to ease the solitude and inactivity you must be suffering."
"How very considerate of you," he said.
"It is the least we can do, Dr. Jackson."
"Oh yes, I quite see that."
She held out the files. "So, would you like to get to work?" she asked.
He blinked at her thoughtfully, then shook his head. "Battering me with music is as unlikely to get a positive response from me as using fists."
Her glare intensified. "You're not a soldier, Dr. Jackson. No one would expect you to hold up under pressure. There is no need for this level of heroics."
He looked down at his hands, trying to keep his face from mirroring his disgust and anger. So far he'd managed to piss her off more often than not, and since his only attempt at escape was a dismal failure, he thought maybe he'd better try cultivating some positive feelings. Finally, when he'd managed to bring his expression control, he looked up. Speaking slowly and with careful emphasis, he said, "No, Lizaveta, I will not work for you."
"Then you are a fool!" she snapped and turned to go.
"Wait!" he called and she turned. "Look, if you were captured by someone and ordered to work doing something you thought your government would disapprove of, would you agree?"
"I hold no value for my government. It would not disturb me."
Daniel nodded. "Well, your organization, then, something your organization would tell you not to do."
"I am a soldier and a soldier's daughter," she declared. "Not a soft academic. What I would do has no bearing on what you should do."
Daniel took a deep breath. "I may not be a soldier, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to fold the way you seem to expect me to." Even as he spoke, he realized that he'd probably said the wrong thing.
"If by 'fold' you mean bend yourself to my will," she said, her eyes narrowing, "we shall see."
"Lizaveta –"
"Enough," she snapped. "You have made your choice. I will not offer the option again until tomorrow." She nodded curtly and marched out of the room. Within minutes, the music had started up again. Daniel grabbed the pillow and covered his ears again. After a few moments, though, he shook his head and dropped his arms.
The pillow wasn't solving anything. What would Teal'c do in a situation like this? Probably break down the door and do some serious damage to the people holding him prisoner. Daniel sighed and grimaced at the sudden booming of bass drums from the stereo.
Then he shook his head. Thinking about it in those terms was fruitless. The question wasn't what Teal'c would do in this exact situation, the question was what Teal'c would do in a situation like this. So, define the situation. Held prisoner by means too strong to make unaided escape possible, being subjected to constant noise. What kind of noise hardly mattered. At this volume, Bach was little more than white noise with strings.
Thinking about Teal'c brought images into his mind and he realized abruptly what the answer was. Teal'c would sink himself into kelnoreem if he could manage and ride out the noise in a state of deep meditation.
Well, Daniel had some practice at meditation, and some marginal experience at mind over matter stuff. He sat back on the bed, putting the pillow aside and crossing his legs. The position pulled at the tender skin of the burn, but he tried to ignore it. Stretching the skin was good for healing. Closing his eyes, he attempted to clear his mind of thought. Oddly, the constant noise was almost helpful there. It obliterated thought unless he struggled to maintain it. Letting go of the struggle, he centered himself and dropped deeper and deeper . . .