XXII
"Well, I don't think you've anything to worry about, Major." Carson put aside his penlight. "I wouldn't recommend you take any more energy blasts to the head, mind. I don't know what the cumulative damage from this kind of device might be."
"It's not high on my list of priorities," Sheppard said, wrinkling up his face. Carson patted his shoulder.
"I can give you something for the headache, but I imagine you'll have some residual sensitivity to noise and bright lights."
"No blowing things up. Check."
Carson gave him a look. "The best thing you can do for now is rest."
There was a whole checklist of other cautions to make, but what was the point? Sheppard had heard them all before, and certainly wasn't likely to heed them while there was a crisis situation in progress. Carson turned to his next patient.
"I am fine," the Jaffa warrior said shortly, without even cracking open an eyelid. His meditative posture betrayed no sign of any discomfort, and his dark skin and branded forehead conspired to hide any trace of an energy burn that might be there. Nonetheless, Rodney had reported that he'd been unconscious for a period, and Carson would be happier if he could perform at least a basic neurological check.
"I'm sure you are, but for my peace of mind-"
"Jack!" Doctor Jackson barrelled into the room at the speed of Rodney on caffeine. The General casually leaned back in from his guard position at the door, and Colonel Carter looked up from the computer screen she and Rodney had been muttering over. Teal'c opened his eyes and cocked his head, but otherwise remained stationary.
"Daniel," O'Neill said, with contrasting calm.
It didn't appear to dampen Jackson's enthusiasm. He waved a datapad frantically. "Doctor Zelenka and I have been going over the documentation for the device they uncovered a couple of weeks ago. It's actually quite fascinating. The device has something equivalent to context-sensitive help - we were having trouble figuring out how to input a search string at first, until we realised that it was dependent on which particular function was currently active when you-"
"Daniel," O'Neill repeated, in a similarly flat but subtly different tone of voice.
"So it turns out it's not actually a scanning chamber after all," Jackson supplied, without missing a beat.
Rodney clicked his fingers imperiously. "I knew it! That's what I said right from the start. It's illogical. Why would the Ancients need to build a scanner that takes up a whole room when they can build devices that fit in the palm of your hand? That and the energy requirements alone make it self-evidently ridiculous..."
Colonel Carter gave him a gentle slap on the back of the head, and he stopped in mid-flow and blinked at her.
"Essentially, although the unit can function as a scanner, that's only a preliminary step toward its intended purpose," Doctor Jackson said, as if he'd never been interrupted.
"Which is...?" O'Neill made an impatient 'winding on' motion with one elegant hand, the other still maintaining a grip on his weapon.
Jackson beamed delightedly. "It's not just a scanner, it's a writer. The Ancients designed it to be capable of rewriting the genetic structure of any organic material placed inside the chamber."
Well, that certainly caught Carson's attention. Colonel Carter, however, seemed somewhat troubled by the news.
"Like Nirrti's machine?" she said warily.
O'Neill narrowed his eyes. "Need I remind everyone that said machine had the delightful side effect of causing people to disintegrate?"
Carson's eyes widened. "Disintegration?" He turned on Rodney accusingly. "Nobody mentioned anything to me about disintegration." Oh, no, it was just 'come down here, Carson', 'activate this for us, Carson'... no one ever bothered to inform him he was putting his bloody life on the line.
Sure enough, Rodney just rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. It's untested Ancient medical technology. What part of doing horrible things to your innards wasn't implied?"
"Anyway, the point is, we can use it to reverse the damage done to Jon!" Jackson said excitedly.
"Daniel, this kind of technology is way beyond our level of expertise." Colonel Carter shook her head worriedly. "We don't really understand the process that's altering Jon's mind, let alone how to safely correct it. If we try to use the machine without knowing what we're doing we could cause untold damage."
Carson hated to be the voice of pessimism, but... "She's right. Gene therapy is one thing, but this is way out of my league. I honestly wouldn't know where to begin."
"But I know someone who would," Jackson said. Their eyes were drawn to the corner of the room where the restless teenage form still slumbered.
O'Neill tilted his head toward Carson. "Can you get him lucid?" was all he asked.
A dozen objections about the ethics and dangers of such a course of action rose up - and were swallowed back down. He might not like it, but he understood the stakes. "Aye," he said grimly. "But I can't say for how long."
The General's dark eyes narrowed. "Do it," he ordered.
Jack was never happy when he had to split up his team, which, given that he was a competent tactician, meant he was unhappy the vast majority of the time. Having a telepathic link with his clone should have put him ahead of the game, but his second self's head was such a mess of bad signals and too much information that Jack had to consciously block him out. Fortunately, it got easier as they moved further apart.
His clone had been restored to something approaching lucidity, and despatched with the Atlantean docs to see what they could make of this DNA re-writer gadget. Jack had sent Daniel and Beckett along to make sure his clone could A, communicate and B, stay vertical, and then thrown in Sheppard on the theory that a party containing that many civilian scientists was asking for trouble. Of course, Sheppard was still recovering from being ribbon-deviced for the second time in as many days, but ostensibly at least three of the group were capable of backing him up.
Those three being Jon, who had enough problems to be going on with; McKay, whose level of field-competency was a question mark; and Daniel, who was, well... Daniel. Tough, well-trained, highly experienced... and inclined to wander off like a five-year-old when he spotted something shiny.
Was it any wonder Jack was feeling a tad twitchy?
His two remaining teammates ignored his fidgeting with the ease of years of practise, until Carter raised her head from her computer screen. "Sir, we've got two blips approaching our Goa'uld trap."
He swung over to assess the readout for himself. "Any way to know which two?"
She shook her head regretfully. "No, sir."
"It is unlikely that Baal will oversee the ambush attempt himself," Teal'c opined.
"No kidding." There was no way his snakiness would be putting his own butt on the line. "So what did you and McKay rig to take them down?"
Carter looked faintly embarrassed. "Er... a concussive blast in one of the hallways that should trigger the automatic blast doors and seal them inside."
"Ah. The 'we just like to make things go boom' solution." Jack approved.
"Yes, sir." She grinned at him. He turned to Teal'c.
"Come on, T." He raised a finger to his lips. "Be vewwy, vewwy quiet... we're hunting wabbits!"
Teal'c spoiled his fun by simply raising an eyebrow and refusing to take the bait. Damn cultural assimilation.
"Trap has been triggered," Carter reported.
"Let's go." He and Teal'c set off at a run for the east pier.
They were only halfway there when the radio crackled and Carter's voice came over it. "Sir, we've got- damn. Sir, it looks like Baal's discovered the explosion. An alert must have come up in the control room. He's already working to release the blast doors."
"Can you stop him?"
"If I access the system now he'll be able to see which terminal I'm logged in from, sir," she warned. "It'll alert him to the tricks we're playing with the sensors, and if he's already got the command overrides from Weir he can shut us out of the computer network completely."
Not a good trade. "How long before he breaks through the blast doors without any interference?"
"McKay's set him a few hoops to jump through, but if it's Baal..." Jack could hear from the tone of the pause that she was grimacing. Then she let out her breath. "Four minutes max, sir, I'm sorry."
He and Teal'c pushed up the pace without need for discussion. There was no way they were going to make it over there in time to get a drop on the emerging Goa'uld. "Let me know when they're out."
Even though it could only be a loose estimate, his mind automatically ticked off the seconds. It was definitely less than three minutes later when Carter's tense voice came again. "General, the blast doors are coming open."
"Carter, we're not there yet!" Jack took his frustration out on her, because he was an ass that way. They were still thirty seconds away - ample time for their snaky little captives to split.
Carter was silent for long enough that he started to mentally replay his words to see if he'd slipped something more offensive in there by accident. Then: "Sir? One of the blips is not moving."
"Dead or alive?" He shut down the part of his brain that worried about the state of the host. No hosts. No human beings. Chess pieces. Tactics.
"It's unlikely that the blast could have killed a Goa'uld, sir. They'd have to have been standing right on top of it, and even then it would take bad luck. We rigged the explosion to trigger the security protocols, not to do damage."
Okay, so figure on stunned, or else temporarily incapacitated - leg or spine injury. If it was the former, it wouldn't take the symbiote long to restore full health; even if it was the latter, it could still be armed and dangerous. "What's the other Goa'uld doing?"
"Leaving - sir, he's two hallways to your left, and headed for the control room."
"I shall attempt to intercept him," Teal'c volunteered, and swung a left turn before Jack had time to voice a protest. Not that he would have. He didn't like the thought of going one-on-one, but they couldn't afford to give the immobilised Goa'uld a chance to recover, and Teal'c had a much better chance of catching up with the other one.
Jack took every precaution approaching the hallway. Even when he saw a figure with an SG-6 patch slumped on the ground, apparently unconscious, he didn't relax one iota. He kept a pistol to the guy's head while he was taking a pulse. Not friendly, but he'd zap himself along with the Goa'uld if he used a zat while they were touching.
It was obvious his captive wasn't Casey, but Jack had to flip him over before the name surfaced in his mind. Lieutenant Brand, one of the science boys who all wanted to be Carter when they grew up. Skinny kid, overexcitable, bizarrely fond of mac and cheese.
Or he had been, once. Right now, all that was secondary to the fact he had a Goa'uld in his head.
And even if they'd taken him prisoner, they didn't have a way to get it out.
With all that whizzy Ancient technology, John reflected, you would have thought they could have taken a few moments off from learning the mysteries of the universe to invent a non-drowsy painkiller. His headache had progressed to the stage where he was ready to start shooting people, preferably himself.
Beckett would probably have sent him back - if he'd had the time to notice. Most of the doctor's attention was on the kid, who was stumbling along in a daze that John associated with McKay before he'd had breakfast. Occasionally he would mutter to himself in Ancient... and occasionally, John was sure he could hear those mutters even though the kid's lips weren't moving. Either that ribbon-device had fried him more than he thought, or something here was seriously hinky.
Knowing the way the universe worked, he was betting on hinky.
For a change, it wasn't McKay's chatter adding to his headache, but Jackson and Zelenka, excitedly conversing about God knew what in Czechoslovakian. McKay was being suspiciously quiet, huffing and puffing a little as he lagged behind the rest of the group. Occasionally he would steal nervous glances at the life signs detector.
Before they'd made it a third of the way to their destination, one of the glances bore fruit.
"Uh, Colonel? I'm reading a single isolated blip off to our-" He waved a hand vaguely, but failed to come up with an appropriate direction. "That side."
It occurred to John to wonder exactly when the hell McKay had last slept.
"Where?" Jackson scurried - there was no way that word should apply to someone with his height and muscle, but damned if he didn't do it - over to see for himself.
"Two hallways back. It's a... biology lab. Wakeman. Talks to cabbages."
"I doubt that's Doctor Wakeman now," said Jackson, his wry tone somehow avoiding a slapdown from McKay for stating the obvious.
"It's got to be one of the Goa'uld." John made his own bid for obviousness.
"Yes, thank you, Major, I think we all gathered that," McKay said scathingly.
There was no justice.
"We're still invisible, right?" John checked with the scientific part of the expedition.
"Er, the sensors are temporary blanked along our route," Zelenka confirmed. "However, if we deviate from our planned path or the Goa'uld steps onto it, our subterfuge will become obvious."
"Then let's not deviate!" Did he really need to explain these things?
Jackson did a passable take on 'kicked puppy'. "This could be a golden opportunity," he argued. "If it is one of the Goa'uld, this could be our best chance to capture it while it's isolated from its fellows. And it could be a member of the Atlantis expedition who escaped or was overlooked. We have to check it out."
John jerked an irritated thumb at the rest of their party. "Do they look like they're loaded for Goa'uld to you?"
"No, but I am." Jackson was already on his way off down the hallway. "All you have to do is point that thing and look menacing. The Goa'uld are fundamentally untrustworthy, but believe me, they have a very good sense of self-preservation." He charged off without waiting for any further comment - like, oh, maybe permission?
"Did anyone see my lips move?" John wondered.
At this point, Kid Ancient decided to make his own bid for freedom, taking an unsteady step in the direction Jackson had hared off in. "Effugit non permitas! Daniel est! Malum trahit in Walmart possit!" He gestured imperatively, though whether he was more pissed at Daniel for going or John for not following wasn't clear.
John pointed a stern finger at him. "Hey. People who've lost their facility to speak English do not get to volunteer."
Zelenka muttered something in Czech he was sure wasn't complimentary, while the kid gave him an alarmingly dead on version of the 'How would you like to be a Lieutenant again, Sheppard?' stare.
John scowled. He was pretty sure General O'Neill would happily make good on that threat if anything happened to Jackson. Somebody had to go after him, and it wasn't going to be the kid. He addressed the three docs. "You guys keep on the scanner room. I'll go after Jackson." What he would do to him when he caught up was another matter.
McKay stepped forward. "I'll go with you in case you, uh, need backup," he volunteered.
Unlikely as it would have seemed a few months ago, he honestly appreciated the offer. McKay would never make a marine, but he could point a gun in the right direction and keep a- well, okay, an extremely panicked yet still functional head in a crisis. Right now, however, they were stretched too thin for him to accept the offer. He pulled the scientist a short distance away from the others, and pointedly tilted his head at them.
"McKay. They're civilians," John reminded him in a low voice.
McKay gave him a variant of that look he used on people who couldn't do math in their heads. "Uh, Major, in case you've forgotten, I'm a civilian," he said, completely missing the whole 'conferring in hushed tones' vibe they had going on.
John pressed his handgun into McKay's guns. "Depends what standard you're going by," he said seriously, and stepped back. "I'm going after Jackson. You, look after them."
He trusted McKay, but that didn't mean he was happy to abandon the party he was supposed to be escorting. When he caught up with Jackson, there were going to be words exchanged.
The prisoner had been making a ruckus for some time now.
"He continues to insist he is no longer a host," Teal'c reported, as O'Neill returned to join them.
O'Neill leaned against the door to the lab room they were using as a cell, hands rested on top of his weapon. "Ah, the old 'don't shoot me, I'm still your friend', line," he observed. "Whatever happened to the days of 'nothing of the host survives'? You had to give it to the old System Lords, at least they were consistent."
"Sir, it's theoretically possible he's telling the truth," Colonel Carter pointed out. O'Neill crinkled his brow in displeasure.
"I thought you said that little explosion of yours didn't pack enough punch to hurt a Goa'uld?" he accused.
"It couldn't possibly, sir," she confirmed. "At least, not in any way that would allow the host to survive unharmed. But the symbiote could have switched hosts prior to the ambush."
"Lieutenant Brand maintains that his symbiote rendered him unconscious before leaving his body," Teal'c reported. He had heard the story repeated many times, but that did not mean he was ready to believe it. A false god could be devious. "He claims that he has no memory of the explosion or entering the hallway where the trap was set."
"Which would mean that he was dumped there as a ruse to distract us," Colonel Carter said.
"Or that he's lying his ass off!" O'Neill reminded her wildly. He peered through the observation window at the pacing Lieutenant, then turned back to his old teammates. "Can't you do the old... tummy tingle test?" he enquired, waggling his fingers loosely above his stomach.
"Sir, there hasn't been nearly enough time for the naquadah in his system to dissipate." Colonel Carter shook her head regretfully. "The only way to be sure is an MRI, and we don't have the equipment to hand."
"Except for this scanner-writer of Daniel's... and we're not taking him up there." O'Neill became pensive, and let his hand float over the door release for the lab. Teal'c waited patiently for him to speak the words he was clearly reluctant to say. "I can probably tell if I get close enough," he said finally.
"Sir?" Colonel Carter's intonation hovered on the borderline between the one that meant, 'do you have an idea?' and the one that meant, 'are your mental facilities compromised?' In practise, Teal'c had found, it was seldom necessary to distinguish between the two.
O'Neill held her gaze steadily, and then Teal'c's. "I just can," he said. As their eyes met, Teal'c felt a whisper of a touch against his thoughts, like the communion he had once found seeking balance with his symbiote. Beside him, Colonel Carter staggered, clearly feeling it too.
Teal'c bowed his head respectfully to his old friend. It was clear that the powers of the Ancients continued to unfold in him at a greater rate than he had admitted to. If O'Neill believed he could discern the presence of a Goa'uld, then he could do so.
Colonel Carter appeared less sanguine, although Teal'c knew it was not O'Neill's competence she doubted. "Sir, if he is a Goa'uld-"
"Then we'll shoot him," he said matter-of-factly, and opened the door to the cell.
Teal'c raised his staff weapon, prepared to do exactly that should the Lieutenant show any sign of being more than he appeared. Beside him, Colonel Carter took aim also. Lieutenant Brand stood to attention as his General approached, an unlikely response for an arrogant false god, but neither of them relaxed or lowered their weapons.
O'Neill did not reach out to touch the prisoner, but stood close enough that the boy had to look up to properly meet his eye. There was a moment of silent communication, then O'Neill stepped away. Lieutenant Brand sank with a sigh, as if he had just been released from a tight grip.
O'Neill turned to face his former teammates. "He's clean," he said grimly.
It was excellent news for Lieutenant Brand. Less so for the rest of them - for now they had no way of determining into whom the symbiote had jumped.