Chapter 12 – Unexpected Conversation

"Do you need a hand up, sir?" the older man asked.

Daniel shook his head and got to his feet. "Lead on."

As they exited the room, Daniel reflected that it resembled an old house, all wood paneling and parquet floors. For all he knew it was. They headed down a central hallway to a pair of double doors at the far end. Wooden doors concealed who knew what on either side of him. If this was the old house it looked like, they were probably kitchens and a dining room, perhaps even a ballroom. The doors at the end led into a narrow passageway that sloped down and made a slight curve to another set of double doors.

Beyond them, it was as if they'd entered another era altogether. White walls and gleaming linoleum tile, with beige doors. There were number panels beside the doors, but no other signage. It was very institutional in appearance.

The last time he'd been in a place that looked like this, he'd been under heavy medication. He hoped the accommodations here would have furniture at the very least, and a dearth of hulking orderlies.

It was a long hallway with doors on either side. There were a pair of double doors at the end of this one as well, and Daniel wondered where they led. "The residential areas are all above the second floor," Thompson said. "The elevator is halfway down the hall."

Daniel nodded, still looking around as they walked. Residential areas. He filed that away for later consideration. In the meantime, there were voices audible behind some of the doors, and he was growing more curious by the minute. He dropped back a little and Thompson didn't seem to notice. Stopping beside a door with the label "1-R," he reached out to turn the handle. There was a click, and the knob wouldn't turn.

"Dr. Jackson!" Thompson hurried back over to him. "Please, you must come with me."

Daniel dropped his hand from the doorknob and sighed. "What's in there?" he asked.

"People are working. We really shouldn't disturb them."

"Are people working in all these labs?" Daniel asked casually.

"Not all of them are occupied, no," Thompson said. He gestured in the presumed direction of the elevator. Daniel accompanied him with another sigh. When they got on, Thompson stood in front of the buttons and pressed one. There was no LED readout, no indication of what floor they were on. It wasn't more than a second or two before they stopped, though, so Daniel guessed it was probably no more than the third or fourth floor.

Daniel looked out at the hallway beyond the elevator. Here the floor was covered in plush brown carpet, the walls were a neutral cream, and there were elegant prints hanging on the walls. "This way," Thompson said. Daniel followed him past yet more doors. These, too, had numbers, and they had little keypads beside them to open and close the door. "So are there usually people in these hallways?"

"Yes, Dr. Jackson. Mr. Connors had the halls cleared."

"So that I wouldn't see anybody, or so that nobody would see me?" Daniel asked.

Thompson smiled. "Yes," he said simply. Daniel took in a deep breath and pursed his lips irritably. His hands were buried in his pockets, and he was looking around suspiciously. He'd spotted at least three security cameras, and suspected that there were others that had been more cleverly concealed. Who lived here? The people working in the labs below? People like Makepeace who were fugitives that didn't dare show their faces in public? People who were a risk to the organization if permitted to live on their own? People like Daniel, held prisoner 'for their own protection'? "Here we are," Thompson said. He once again blocked Daniel's vision of the buttons, and since all of them made the same high pitched beeping sound, he couldn't memorize the code from that.

The door unlatched and Daniel wanted to turn and run in the opposite direction. Only the conviction that large, armed guards would materialize suddenly and stop him made him think twice about it. "So," he said, "if I decided not to go in there, what would happen?"

"Are you refusing?" Thompson asked, his face a careful blank.

"No, this is really more in the nature of a hypothetical question."

"I see. Well, as the first step, I would try to persuade you that it was the only sensible thing to do." Nodding, Daniel waited for more. "If that failed to be effective, I would summon some of our security staff to encourage you to comply."

"And this encouragement would consist of?"

"At first, I believe they would use their mere presence coupled with your hoped for common sense to give you the proper motivation. After that, they might be forced to be a little more direct."

Daniel nodded thoughtfully. "I see. That doesn't sound like much fun."

"I can assure you that it wouldn't be," Thompson said gravely. Daniel sighed and walked into the room. Thompson followed him in and shut the door. "If there is a fire, the door will unlatch automatically, and fire exit signs will light up to tell you where to go. The stairs are immediately beside the elevator."

"Good to know," Daniel said neutrally.

"Should your door be blocked, there is a fire escape outside the window, which will also unlatch automatically." Daniel nodded. "There are children who live in some of these apartments, so I would not recommend setting a fire to help effect an escape."

"Right," Daniel said. He looked around at the room. This was clearly the living room of the apartment. There was a pleasant enough sofa and loveseat arrangement in dark red, and a large oak armoire that presumably contained electronics rather than linens positioned in a good line of sight for both. A telephone sat on the end table beside the sofa. "A telephone?" he asked.

"It calls the switchboard, or you can dial extensions within the facility, though most extensions have, in fact, been locked out of your phone." Thompson walked over and bent down, fiddling with something at the base of the phone. Unwillingly, Daniel followed him. "This is a list of the people you can call." It was depressingly short.

"Charming place," Daniel said.

"There is a kitchen through that door, a bedroom through that door."

"The bathroom?"

"Is off the bedroom," Thompson replied. "Clothing in your size has been provided, and if you put your clothes in the laundry chute, the staff will see that they are cleaned and returned."

"I thought I was only going to be here for a few days."

"Arrangements are being made elsewhere," Thompson said with a small smile. "But we all know how a few days on a project like that can lengthen into a week or more."

"Not having held anyone prisoner before, no, I really don't."

Thompson shrugged. "Lunch has already been prepared, and is waiting in the kitchen. I will return to cook your dinner at around four." Daniel blinked, not certain what to say to that. "Is there anything you'd like to ask, anything you want?"

"Bus fare to Colorado Springs," Daniel said.

"Anything a little more achievable?" Thompson asked.

"Oh, surely they pay you enough to front me that much."

Thompson's lips twitched. "Then I will see you at four, sir." He left and Daniel stared after him, trying to figure out what was going on. He acted like a butler or something. Wrapping his arms around his chest, Daniel wandered around the place. The bedroom was done in greens and blues, with plaid sheets and a dark blue bedspread. The furniture was all oak, like the living room. The bathroom was fairly ordinary. Blue tiles, shower bath, mirror with a medicine cabinet behind it, all the usual stuff. He wandered into the kitchen and found it a very small but functional space. There was a table with room for two at one end, and a galley style food prep area. On the table was a covered plate. Daniel walked over and picked up the cover.

It was a nice, thick sandwich with all the trimmings. Condiments had been left to the side, but there were meat and cheese and tomatoes and pickles and lettuce. He pulled the pickles off and added some mustard. His stomach was rumbling again, despite the stress, though, oddly enough, there was less stress here than there was when he was in the same room with Gregor.

Picking up the plate, he grabbed a soda out of the fridge and walked into the living room. He set the plate down on the table and picked up the remote. He found a mind numbing cop show and settled down to eat.

Even if he could get out one of the windows, he'd have a hell of a time climbing down with his body in this shape. The burned leg was healing very well, despite the lack of care, but his back was feeling very tender and achy, and if it was getting infected . . . He had the sudden urge to take off the bandages and see if he could see what the damned thing looked like, but it didn't seem wise.

The phone rang and Daniel looked over at it perplexedly. Who could be calling? He reached out and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Michael!" The voice was female and breathless. "You're off early! Are you coming! Please say you're coming!'

Daniel blinked. "This is Daniel Jackson," he said distinctly. "I think you have the wrong number." She make a squeaky sound and hung up the phone hastily. Daniel stared at the phone bemusedly, wondering if his little leak of information would have any effect, but then the phone began to ring and he held it back to his ear. A bored voice answered on the second ring. "Switchboard. Can I help you?"

"No, thanks, I didn't mean to call, sorry." He hung up the phone before he could babble any more than that. Who was she? What did she want? Surely the phones were bugged, and not just on his room. All the phone lines had to be bugged.

On a whim, he picked the phone up again and dialed zero. The same bored voice answered. He said, "Can I have an outside line?"

"One moment please," she said, and hope flared. If they had been that careless, if they had counted on his being told he couldn't do it to keep him from trying, he had a chance to contact Jack or Hammond. It was a one shot, though, so he had to choose the person wisely. If the phones were bugged, he wouldn't get a second chance. He decided on the base. Someone would always answer the phone there, and they would undoubtedly have instructions about what to do with a call from him. The operator spoke again. "I'm sorry, your access to outside lines has been revoked. Please contact your supervisor."

"But –" The line went dead and Daniel hung up, feeling flat. Hope sucked sometimes. He stopped himself just in time to keep from thumping back against the sofa. Very gently, he leaned back. It was painful, but not as bad as he had expected.

He wondered how long he'd stay with this particular group of captors.

Thompson showed up at four on the dot and started bustling in the kitchen. He came out and fetched Daniel's plate and the soda can. Daniel was now watching a fairly entertaining movie about sports, The Replacements. Second chances . . . his second chance at his career had cost him his wife and a life he'd come to love. Now someone wanted to steal the life he'd built on the wreckage of the old. If curses had any basis in reality, he'd be certain he had one.

There was a knock at the door, and as Daniel was considering getting up and yelling through the door that he didn't know how to open it, Thompson came out of the kitchen and started pressing little beeping buttons. He opened the door and there was a brief rumble of male voices. "Dr. Jackson?" Thompson said.

"Yes?"

"Would you like to see Robert Makepeace?"

Daniel closed his eyes and sighed. "Sure. You making enough food to feed him?"

"Yes sir."

Makepeace entered the room and Daniel looked up at him pathetically. "Come in, sit down, stay to dinner."

Looking a little startled, he sat down and stared at Daniel. "You okay?"

"Let's see, I've been held prisoner by three different groups of people in the last two weeks, all after being shot at a lot by a whole mess of Jaffa. By the way, do you have any idea if the rest of the team made it back from Russia?"

"They're all in the states now," Makepeace said. "Colfax will make a full recovery."

"Good." Daniel looked down at his hands. Swallowing, he looked up again. "They're all really fine?" Makepeace reassured him again, several times, and finally Daniel sighed. "You know, Robert, I'm not sure why you'd ask that question of me. Am I okay?" He shook his head. "I've just had a man tell me that he plans to take my life's work away from me because he thinks I'm too important to do it. In order to achieve this, he plans to hold me prisoner for an unspecified amount of time for my own good. There's absolutely nothing about that situation that would lead to 'okay.'"

"Daniel, you've got to see that he's got the country's best interests at heart."

"Don't you start!" Daniel said. "If you start that, I'm going to take back my invitation to dinner."

Makepeace tilted his head with an odd expression. "Okay, I won't talk about that."

"Good. Now, I'm not sure I can sit up without putting more pressure on my back than is a good idea." Makepeace stood up, walked over in front of him and held out his hands. Daniel let him help him up. "I hate this kind of thing."

"I'd ask which kind of thing, but I'm not sure I can. Is this to do with your back or other stuff?"

"My back," Daniel said, grimacing sourly. "I hate needing help. I hate admitting that I need help."

"I don't think anyone's fond of it."

Daniel started to shrug, but stopped himself in time. Closing his eyes he cast about for something to help occupy the time. "I don't suppose you play chess."

"I do," Makepeace said. "It's an elemental strategy game."

"It is," Daniel agreed. "Would you like to play? Assuming a chess set can be located."

"Sure," Makepeace replied and looked around. "Not sure where to look." He wandered over to the bookshelves by the door.

Daniel walked over to the armoire and looked in the lower cupboard. "Games," he said. "But I'm not bending over to look at them."

Makepeace walked over and squatted, and after a few moments he pulled out a checkerboard and a box of chess pieces. Sitting on the sofa required too much leaning forward for Daniel to be comfortable, so they went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Daniel turned his chair around and sat across it, leaning forward on it to support his weight. They flipped a coin for the white and Makepeace won. Daniel was just as glad, because it put him in a position to watch Makepeace and judge his game.

Appetizing smells filled the kitchen while Thompson cooked. Daniel was pleased to find in his opponent a good, creative player. It wasn't what he'd have expected of Makepeace, but the man had to have had something or he'd never have gotten into the SGC in the first place. After three games, Thompson informed them that they had to shift the board so he could serve dinner. Makepeace carefully carried the board over to the counter where Thompson gazed sourly at it for a moment before bringing their plates over. Pasta primavera with broiled chicken and garlic bread. He'd evidently already done most of the clean up. What he hadn't done he finished quickly and left.

Daniel looked over at Makepeace. "Why the butler?"

"It's possible that someone mentioned to Connors that you're not always that great about taking care of yourself when you're working."

"Great," Daniel said dryly. "I wonder who that could have been."

"What were you watching when I came in?" he asked.

"I have no idea, honestly. I know there were car chases, and people shooting people, which is sort of appealing at the moment."

"It wasn't the sort of thing I'd expect you to watch, somehow."

Daniel looked up. "What did you expect?"

"I don't know, history stuff, I guess. Archeology."

"There is nothing on earth more frustrating that watching archeology shows," Daniel said with feeling.

"Why?"

Daniel stared at him. "Think about it. I mean, what if someone was doing a show on . . . do soldiers have specialties the way academics do?"

"Sure."

"What's yours?"

"Special forces," Makepeace replied.

"So if someone was doing a television show about . . ." Daniel paused, blinking. "No, I don't suppose you want people talking too much about your job."

"Not really," he said with a smile.

"Well, look at it from my perspective. I have a PhD in archeology, I used to teach undergraduate courses while I was getting both my master's and my doctorate. You have direct experience of the way that I will begin to lecture at the drop of a hat."

Makepeace let out a low, amused laugh. "Oh yeah," he said. "I do remember. There was one time when –"

Daniel thought he could see where this was going. "How much do you know about Hatshepsut?" he asked abruptly.

Makepeace blinked. "Not much."

"Unless you want to know a whole lot more, you won't finish that story."

Grinning, Makepeace shrugged. "You had a point, I believe?"

"Right," Daniel said. "I have a strong desire to spread knowledge. Watching educational shows about archeology that have almost all the key facts wrong and not being able to do the slightest thing about it makes me nuts."

"Surely the stuff about the actual archeology is right?" Makepeace asked.

"Yes, of course, but having met Ra, Set, Hathor, Apophis, all of these aliens who masqueraded as our ancient gods, I have difficulty sitting through shows that talk about them. I mean, I helped kill Ra. Jack killed Hathor. Sam killed Set. They were real people who had specific impacts on our culture and past, not to mention our very real present. And the timelines are all wrong, and there's nothing I can do about it. You should see Sam when she sees specials on science where they get all the facts wrong and she knows she can't correct them." He shook his head. "I mean, maybe you don't want people to know about what you did, but if someone was making a documentary about something you're an expert in, you'd want them to get it right, right?"

Makepeace was nodding. "I suppose I see what you mean. It's hard to watch them get it wrong."

"Very hard." He sighed. "I used to try and publish occasionally, but between the things I had to edit out myself because I couldn't offer proof and the things the government wanted to censor, it was just pointless."

They ate in silence for awhile. "You know, Jackson, eventually this project will be declassified, and the things you've written, the discoveries you've made, will be known and attributed to you."

"It's not the attribution so much, though that would be nice, it's the fact that most of what 'everyone' knows about ancient Egypt, and ancient Greece, ad nauseum, is a tapestry of lies and misinformation, and those false facts are still being propagated, and will be until we can tell the truth." He shook his head. "Let's not talk about it. I get frustrated just thinking about it."

Makepeace nodded. "Sure. I'm not sure what to talk about instead, though."

"Well, you're an officer, you have to have a degree in something. What did you study?"

"Military history," Makepeace said.

"Any particular period?"

"Napoleonic." There was a pause while Makepeace looked at him ironically, as if waiting for something.

"Do you war game?" Daniel asked.

This evidently wasn't the response Makepeace had been expecting. He blinked a couple of times and said, "I have. It's not an obsession with me like it is with some guys, but it can be interesting."

"I knew a few guys in college who used to run through some of the battles of Alexander, or even earlier conflicts, but I never got into it myself. Too interested in the peace between the wars."

"Well, you have to study the peace between the wars to understand the causes of the wars to begin with," Makepeace said. "After all, war doesn't spring forth of its own accord. The seeds of it lie in the quiet time before it starts."

"True." Daniel was feeling a little guilty. He'd never have expected to have a conversation like this one with Robert Makepeace, and if he analyzed why, it went down to a basic assumption that Marines were stupid by default.

"That's the thing the guys who are so obsessed with working their way through the battles, and figuring out ways the other side could have won often forget. They ignore the precursors, and if you don't change those, you can only go so far in changing what happens in the battle."

Daniel nodded. "I know what you mean. I've run into a few folks who seem to think that the war is a separate entity, something that can be considered in isolation. I even had a class that dealt with the Peloponnesian wars, but the professor wanted us to consider the events in the wars without dwelling on causes or effects."

Makepeace tilted his head curiously. "Something tells me you didn't do well in that class."

"Oh, I scraped by," Daniel said with a self-deprecating laugh. "I was probably wrong about at least some of my opinions then, but I was an undergrad, and very young."

"If I read your records right, you were very young indeed as an undergrad."

"Oh yeah." Daniel bit his lip. "I was young enough to be both overconfident and insecure. The overconfidence made me too sure of my own opinions and the insecurity led me to defend them even once I realized I was wrong. Pretty much I was a pain in the ass."

Makepeace leaned back. "I think we're all like that at that age," he said. "You just had a more challenging environment to do it in."

Daniel snorted. "Are you saying high school isn't a challenging environment?" he asked.

The other man's expression grew thoughtful. "No, I can't say that, but at least everyone around you is doing it at the same time."

"Yeah, I guess." Daniel shrugged carefully. "In high school I was the hotshot twelve-year-old who threw off the curve and screwed everybody up."

"You did have friends, though, right?" Makepeace asked.

Daniel blinked, taken aback both by the concern and pity his companion was showing and by the fact that he was talking so freely. He shook his head. "Why am I telling you this?" he asked.

Makepeace shrugged, looking perplexed. "We were just talking."

"I don't want to talk about this stuff," Daniel said vehemently. Pity wasn't something he wanted. He couldn't figure out what had come over him. He hadn't even been this open with Jack.

"Sorry," Makepeace said, sounding a little nettled.

Daniel looked down at his plate and pushed the remnants of his pasta around with his fork. "You've got to see that this is crazy. You can't just hold someone prisoner and make them work for you. You can't just kidnap anyone you deem necessary for whatever reason."

Makepeace raised his eyebrows. "If I recall correctly, your response to this 'kidnap' was 'Thanks, guys,' which doesn't come across as objecting, you have to admit."

Daniel tossed his fork down and got up. "You know perfectly well that I thought the guys in masks were people from the SGC."

"Be that as it may, I still think that this 'kidnapping' could be more properly called a rescue."

Daniel shook his head. "No. It may have started out that way, but once you decided to hang onto me instead of sending me home . . . rescues end with the rescuee at home and free."

Makepeace gave him a sour look. "You should know, I suppose, you've been the beneficiary of quite a few over the years."