The Explanation

Jack groaned and turned his head to look over at the clock that was now sitting on a tray beside the bed. 0615. Morning. Finally. He started to sit up slowly, and then lay back down when his head throbbed painfully. Damn. When did he get a headache? He rubbed a hand over his face and shifted into a more comfortable position. He had gotten about 3 hours and 20 minutes of sleep last night, so if he couldn't move he might as well try and get some more.

After a few minutes he got frustrated and gave up. He didn't feel so hot—kind of like a hangover or a slow death by dehydration, not that there's much difference—and the more he moved the worse it got.

The Doc had come in with earplugs after she had played her game of twenty thousand questions. Unfortunately they sucked. Oh, they managed to block out all the outer sounds just fine, but he really didn't like to listen to himself breathe for hours on end. It was just as bad as listening to humming and buzzing!

He had been able to handle going with out anything for a while when Daniel came in with some magazines and comic books he had managed to find in Jack's office. He had fallen asleep but then woke up not-too-long later to some beeping sound—he still hadn't figured where the hell that had come from—and that was how it was pretty much the whole night. At some point though one of the night nurses had come in with some cotton, which helped to soften the sounds enough that he didn't end up going completely around the bend.

Jack sighed, gritted his teeth and pushed himself up into a sitting position. Immediately, he hunched over slightly, pressing his thumb and fingers of one hand to his temples, covering his eyes.

Damn, that hurt! He relaxed after a few seconds when the throbbing died down and looked around the near empty room. The lights were on their lowest, but they seemed to be getting progressively brighter the longer he was in here. He closed his eyes and sighed.

Suddenly, he pushed himself off the bed, and bored out of his mind, started to slowly circle the room. When he was at the furthest corner from the bed, his back to the door, he paused, leaning against the wall. For some reason, it seemed a tiny bit quieter there than anywhere else. He slid down the cement until he was sitting, and stretched out, crossing his ankles. Every second he spent in here he hated it more and more.

Just then he heard the door swish open, the machinery activated by that adding to the buzzing already in the room. He didn't react, though, he was way too tired to make his annoyance known to whoever had entered.

He recognized the sound of Fraiser's shoes on the floor—she had been in and out a few times early last night, checking up on him. She came over to him and sat down against the adjacent wall near him, her clipboard in hand as always, but she wasn't writing on it.

Jack glanced over at her after a few seconds when she didn't say anything. "You look tired," he said raising his eyebrows at her.

"Speak for yourself," she said with a slight smirk.

He smiled slightly, and then lazily started to get up with help from the wall.

"Sir," she said following his lead and getting up herself, "from the last blood sample taken about an hour ago, we discovered that the inhibitor is dissipating."

"So…" Jack had a fairly good idea where this was heading, okay well not really, but sort of. He, at least, knew it didn't sound good.

"So, if Daniel is correct, then tonight you… you'll change, sir." She watched him a little pensively for a moment, then looked down at her clipboard.

Jack sighed, and then shrugged his shoulders, frankly he was out of energy to care. He may not, even if he did have the energy. He didn't remember the first time, not any dreams, not vague… anything. Nothing. And from what the Doc told him all he did was circle the room and growl at the mirror…

… That was possibly the oddest thought ever to go through his head, and he's had some weird ones.

Fraiser walked over to a tray that had been left in the room, and placed her clipboard down before turning toward him. "Sir, I'd like to try something."

"Well doctor?" The General said as he and the non-confined members of SG-1 looked over at Janet expectantly.

"Sir, as I guessed before, I can't reproduce the inhibitor. Nor do I think it would be safe even if I could." She pulled out a graph from the folder in front of her and placed it on the table so everyone could see it. "When the active compounds of the inhibitor began braking down this morning they released a mild toxin that the Colonel's body reacted to. According to Dr. Layr's tests, it was unavoidable, but his system should be clear of it in less then 24 hours. Unfortunately, the Colonel's body now recognizes the active compounds as a threat. He won't ever be able to use this inhibitor again."

There was a short pause of silence as this information sunk in, before Janet continued, "I also found from the test results this morning, that the virus is still active, though not as aggressively. I had originally thought that the virus had been cleared, when previous results showed nothing. The virus had just gone dormant. And the Colonel's body still doesn't recognize it as foreign."

"What do you recommend doctor?" General Hammond asked, the concern evident in his voice.

"We're still testing our options, sir."

Hammond nodded his head. "Let me know when you find anything."

"Yes sir," Janet hesitated, and then continued before the General could dismiss the group, "There's one more thing, sir. I'm not sure how this can be happening, but small physical mutations are happening right now."

"What do you mean?" Sam spoke up for the first time that meeting, before anyone else could. "I thought the mutations were temporarily stimulated all at once?"

"The larger mutations are. But from what I could tell, these are permanent. They're very small, and I probably wouldn't have noticed it, if the Colonel hadn't complained. Due to these mutations, the Colonel's hearing is now at least 4 times more sensitive than an average human's. He can hear frequencies up the 35 kHz! That's at least 15 kHz more than anyone of us in this room!" When she had first discovered this it had been a shock. A human's eardrum wasn't made to hear those high pitched sounds, and that was when she discovered the inner ear mutations that were happening. It was incredible, the way very minute changes to the cilia and cochlea could have such an effect.

But judging from the expressions of the others around the table, they didn't quite grasp what this meant.

"So you're saying that the Colonel could hear something as high pitched as… say a dog whistle?" Sam wished as soon as she said it that she hadn't. It was horribly ironic.

That comment would've been amusing if the situation was a little less serious, Janet thought. "I'm not sure how high pitched a dog whistle is, but that's probably about right." And she noticed that the comment seemed to clue the rest of the people around the table, so she continued on with her results. "I also found that his threshold of hearing is over 5 decibels lower than ours. He can clearly hear a whisper from at least a few feet away, if not more."

"Is the virus causing it?" Daniel spoke up curiously.

"Everything seems to lead back to the virus as the root cause." If she could get rid of that then all the mutations would come to a halt, but she wasn't sure if that was a good thing to do. She was concerned about what Sam, Daniel and Teal'c had told her about what Maeshrin had said—about how he was worried. If, as she suspected, the permanent chemical and physical mutations kept a person alive through the extreme stress of the temporary change, then she didn't feel good about tampering with it, or stopping it prematurely.

"Anything else doctor?" Hammond asked, not sure he wanted the answer.

"Uh, not right now sir, I'll let you know if anything comes up."

The General nodded. "Dismissed."

Janet gathered up the printouts she had taken out of the folder during the meeting, before leaving the briefing room—the three members of SG-1 waiting for her.

"Do you think we can visit him?" Sam asked as soon as they started walking.

"I'm sure he'd like that, but I have to warn you, he's not in a good mood."

Jack was a combination of three things at that moment: tired, bored and annoyed. He was surprised he hadn't lost his mind yet. He'd been like that for 3 friggin' hours. Three! Three hours! Just sitting here, doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well, okay, that wasn't completely true, but… wait, yes it was! Sure he got to leave his isolation room for a whole 2 hours this morning, but where did he get to go? The infirmary. Oh and wasn't that just joyful. Hearing tests, yay.

It was now 1600 hours, exactly.

And he had gotten to walk around the base a little sometime around noon, of course not without a guard and a nurse as escorts. …And he wasn't allowed to leave the level. Does that even count as getting out and about?

The door opened, he heard it, but didn't bother turning to face whoever it was—or from the sounds of it, whoever they were. He couldn't tell who it was from the combination of footsteps. The door closed again, and all but one of the footsteps stopped. The Doc was walking toward him.

"Sir, you have some visitors."

That got his attention and he turned around. When he saw it was SG-1, he almost grinned. He turned to Fraiser quickly. "Hey, Doc, since my fever went down I've wanted to stretch my legs a little." He looked at her with his most hopeful expression.

She smiled slightly. "On two conditions: one, you're back in an hour," she glanced at the other members of the team, "—and I'll expect you three to make sure he is—and two, take the guard outside the door."

Jack shook his head. "Teal'c can take me down if I decide to run."

Fraiser glanced over at Teal'c and then nodded, giving her approval and Jack jumped off the bed with a smile, heading for the door, where his team waited.

Just a note: kHz stands for kilohertz which is how hearing is measured in regards to the pitch of sounds. Humans can normally hear between 20 hertz—a low sound like a bas—and 20 kilohertz (or 20,000 hertz)—a high sound like a squeaky tire. Decibels is quiet to loud