Standard Disclaimer Applies
AN: Big Props to My Beta Lori, who is perhaps the world's bestest and most fastestest beta ever and whom without this wouldn't make much of the sense!!
Chapter 26
Jack pushes away the now empty Jell-o glass and looks up at Daniel, who is strolling into the commissary in the early hours of the morning, glasses in hand, rubbing tiredly at the lenses. He crosses the floor, looks down at Jack, and smiles,
"Insomnia must run in the family," Daniel quips, but the lame attempt at a joke is clearly lost on Jack.
"Huh?"
"Oh, it's just that you're up and your son is up, and it's two in the morning, and neither of you are asleep."
"Xander's up?" Jack asks, and Daniel nods,
"Yeah, didn't he find you? He was looking for you in the conference room before, so I sent him down to your quarters about an hour ago. Thought you might be trying to catch a few hours sleep while you could," Daniel says as he sits down, dragging a second full dish of brilliant blue Jell-o towards him.
"Nope. I've been with Sam in her office. We were trying to work out a reason why the iris failed and let through our charming yet uninvited friend from earlier," Jack explains, and Daniel is easily able to translate that statement to mean that Sam was trying to work out why the iris failed, while Jack was just in the same room.
"Yeah, any luck?"
"Ah, no. Sam thinks that it might have something to do with an energy spike in the readings she took, but I didn't really understand anything she said after that, so I'm not too sure."
"How could somebody on the other end of a wormhole cause an energy spike in our gate room?" Daniel asks, confused.
Jack quirks an eyebrow and begins stretching his back by raising his hands above his head and reaching upwards gently. "That's what I'd like to know. So, where is he now?"
"Huh?" Daniel asks through a mouthful of Jell-O.
"Ooh, any more of the green?" Mitchell asks, coming up behind Daniel and looking intently towards the kitchen, but Jack shakes his head.
"Nope, this is the last of it," he explains, indicating the Jell-O Daniel is now picking through and popping in his mouth.
Mitchell grabs a spoon from the table and tucks in, as well.
"You find out anything about California?" Jack asks
"Nope. Nobody who knows anything is saying much," Cam answers. Then he continues, "What I did get was that something happened between the army and somebody else, unknown. No mention of Xander, in particular, but one guy I talked to reckons he may have been part of the rescue team."
"Rescue team?" Jack echoes, confused.
"Yeah. Whatever happened went sour for both sides, and they needed to be helped out. Xander was apparently part of a civilian team that went in and righted the situation."
"No idea on what specifically happened?" Daniel asks, rescuing the rest of the Jell-O back from Cam.
"Nope. That was the one issue every source I had refused to say anything about."
"What kind of civilian team helps out the army in a bind?" Daniel continues musing on the subject out loud.
"Spooks, maybe, but that would have come up in the background search that Sam did. She's very thorough," Cam replies, snagging the second-to-last cube of Jell-O.
"Okay. Straight to the source, I guess. Where is he?" Jack asks, standing, and Daniel looks at him blankly. "My son? Tallish young man, dark hair, likes to blow stuff up?"
"Oh, umm. . . . I don't know, probably back in bed, where we should all be," Daniel reasons, and Jack nods his head in agreement.
"You might be onto something there, Danny Boy," Jack agrees, before heading out of the mess hall, leaving Mitchell and Daniel behind, both eyeing the last Jell-o square.
Jack knocks gently on the quarters currently being used by his son, but after waiting a moment for an answer and receiving none, he turns the knob and pushes the door open gently, letting the ambient light from the well-lit corridor flood into the room. Jack frowns as he sees that the bed is a mess of tangled sheets, that the comforter has been thrown to the floor, and the room is empty.
Jack turns around, pausing in thought for a moment as he checks his watch and then heads for the elevator back at the other end of the corridor, before changing direction and taking the stairs up to the level that the conference room sits on. But the big room is empty, too, and—after double-checking that Xander hasn't decided to acquaint himself with his father's office—Jack heads back towards the elevator, hitting the call button a little too eagerly and turning to a young Airman standing guard by the steel doors as he does so.
"You seen my son in the last hour?" Jack asks.
The Airman nods: "Yes, sir. He went down to 30 'bout an hour ago."
"He come back up?"
"No, sir, not that I'm aware of." Jack pats the Airman on the shoulder in thanks and wanders into the empty elevator, whose arrival was heralded by a quiet ding.
The doors slide open gently at level 30, revealing the empty corridor that stretches down to his quarters, and Jack disembarks the elevator with a yawn. Shoving his hands into his pockets as he strolls along the concrete floor, Jack yawns again and wipes a hand across his eyes tiredly. He thinks regretfully on the past, when he could pull all-nighters with more ease and bounce back more quickly than now. Though his attitude may have lost none of that earlier youthful exuberance, his body keeps reminding him of the passage of time.
Jack's door is still locked, but he slips the key into the lock and checks inside the room for his son, anyway. His eyes sweep longingly over the made bed before turning back to the hallway with a slight frown creasing his features. Jack follows the hallway around a corner and on for a bit before he checks inside an unlocked common room for any sign of Xander.
There's a telephone on the wall next to the door and Jack snatches up the receiver and punches in a number.
"Carter, you got Xander with you?" He asks directly, as soon as Sam has picked the phone up.
"No, sir. Why, should I?" Sam wonders, turning in her office to stare around the empty space.
"No, I just can't find him. I know he's not with Danny or Mitchell, so I thought he might be with you.?
"No, he's not here, sir. But he might be with Teal'c," Sam suggests, and Jack scoffs lightly and then hangs up in concern, as he considers the possibility that Sam might be right, and that --considering the short yet eventful history between Xander and Teal'c -- that could be a very bad thing, indeed.
Jack heads back down the hallway at a slight trot, now, but is brought to a sudden, grinding, heart-stopping halt as he nears the elevators. There, glistening on the concrete hallway, slightly smeared yet unmistakable, was a small dab of blood.
Jack's pulse beats loudly in his ears as he ignores the elevator and pounds up the stairs, past the surprised Airman and straight down the hallway to Sam's office.
"Pull up the video from Corridor 31A from 0100 on," he commands, as Sam's head snaps up in surprise.
"Sir?" Sam asks, momentarily confused.
"Now, Colonel!" Jack roars, and Sam starts rapidly tapping her computer, sparing a glance at Jack who has started to pace past her desk.
"Can I ask what I'm looking for?" Sam asks, slightly put out.
"Xander came down to see me on 30, but I wasn't there. Now he's missing and there's a pool of blood on the concrete."
"What?!" Sam asks, shocked, as she brings up a screen on her computer and hits a few commands on her keyboard.
Jack moves around the desk to stand beside Sam, as the video runs from one in the morning, a mere hour ago and Jack points to the screen.
"There's the blood stain, take it back ten minutes," he orders, and as Sam taps at the computer again, the screen jumps and the picture now showing is of a clear corridor with no discernible blood stain.
"Okay, fast forward," Jack orders.
The picture scrolls forward, though there's no movement on the screen, because essentially nothing is happening until Xander appears from the elevator doors.
"There he is!" Jack states redundantly, because Sam has already slowed the tape to normal speed.
Xander walks down the hallway, looking tired and disheveled. His hair is sticking up all over the place and he wanders down the hallway with a carefree expression on his face, maybe the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. He strolls down the hallway and out of picture.
Not even a minute later, and Xander's back in shot, wearing the same carefree look as before, as he strolls back towards the lift. He's nearly there when Jack see his son stiffen and spin around, staring up the corridor with an unsettled expression. Then Xander starts to back towards the elevator.
"What's he looking at?" Jack demands. Sam clicks a button, and the image is projected onto a large plasma screen hanging off the wall. Jack walks up to it.
"There's nothing there," he muses, confused, watching as Xander starts hitting the call button repeatedly.
Xander's on-screen hand wraps around a necklace that Jack hadn't noticed before, then he whirls around, hands up, ready to lash out at an attacker, should there be one.
Scowling, Xander demands, "Okay, fine, I'll say it. Is there anybody there?"
The light flickers, and Xander checks the elevator before he's sent flying, somehow struck from behind and sent sliding with a crash along the smooth concrete floor.
"What the hell?" Jack growls, as Xander recoils violently into a ball, finally rolling over onto his back with his arm wrapped firmly around his ribs. The young man lies on the floor, panting for a moment, before he hauls his body painfully to his feet, standing stock-still, and closes his eyes.
"He's holding his breath," Sam points out as she stares intently at the screen, and then with an explosion of movement Xander dives away to his left.
The elevator heralds its arrival with a soft bleep, and Xander looks up at the opening doors like they're ice-cream, pushing himself off the floor and sprinting towards them. Gaining speed, he's nearly at the elevator. The doors are open, he's so close to being safe, when he's jerked off his feet with so much force that for a moment he is completely airborne, near horizontal. Then gravity takes over and he slams into the concrete, his head connecting with the floor so brutally that it bounces.
Jack is stunned in silence, and he can only peer intently at the screen. His eyes never leave his son, who is now lifting his head slightly before he passes out. The boy remains unmoving for several seconds, then there is a flash of light and he's gone, and all that remains in the corridor is a small, slightly smeared pool of blood.
Jack closes his eyes, too, and forces himself to breathe. Anger is no good, now; irrational thoughts and actions will not help his son. He must be calm.
His eyes snap open again, as someone at the doorway asks, "What's going on?"
It's Daniel, and he crosses to Jack's side in concern.
"Something on Level 30 took Xander, about an hour ago," Sam explains, and Daniel's eyebrows nearly hit the roof.
"What?! What . . . ?"
"I don't know, I didn't see anything. General, did you?" Sam asks, unsettled, and Jack shakes his head.
"Bring up thermal imaging," Jack suggests, and this time it's Daniel's turn to watch in confusion as Xander battles a completely invisible force, wincing as the young man's head plays bongos on the cement.
"Try infrared."
Sam does, but again Xander's attacker remains unseen.
"I don't suppose we have radar on that thing?" Jack muses, trying to think of another way to see the invisible image.
"No, sir, but . . . ," Sam starts to tap frantically at her screen. "This may take a few minutes," she explains, and Jack looks to her for an explanation as to what she's actually doing.
"We don't have radar, but I may be able to load a program into the computer that lets us see sound waves."
"And what's that going to do?" Daniel asks.
"It should act like a sort of radar, bouncing off any solid object in the corridor, allowing us to construct an image of whatever attacked Xander. Of course, we'll have to program it to ignore the other hard surfaces, like the floor, the walls, the lights. It'll kind of be like a bat's-eye view of the picture," Sam explains, as Jack realizes how much work she's trying to do while simultaneously translating for their benefit.
Jack paces away, as Daniel traverses the floor in the other direction and calls the remaining two members of the team to the lab.
"We'll get him back," Daniel tells his friend. Jack closes his eyes for a moment, blinking back emotion and not answering, because he's unsure of his ability to do so without his voice cracking and the sadness and fear that's welling up inside of him taking over.
Teal'c and Cameron arrive together at a jog. Teal'c crosses the floor and stands beside his closest friend, slapping a huge hand over Jack's shoulder and tilting his head forward softly.
"Got it!" Sam declares.
The four men turn to the screen, and this time the image that's displayed is of the single figure of Xander walking on a plain of nothing.
"Okay, I've removed anything from the corridor that reflects sound -- which is, of course, everything," Sam explains.
Xander reaches the end of the screen and whirls around, but there is still only nothing behind him.
"I don't understand, why isn't this working?" Sam frowns as Teal'c waves a hand at her to silence her.
There is suddenly on screen something standing next to Xander. Something of a ghostly image, no color just a merger of white outlines, a figure represented like a cloud. It's standing still and just in front of him, waiting until Xander turns his back again, before it lashes out with a powerful backhanded swipe. Following its victim down the hallway as he falls, it lashes out with a kick. Then it retreats, as Xander rolls over, gasping heavily.
Xander pulls himself to his feet and stills himself and he and the figure are in a silent standoff for a moment before the figure races down the hallway towards Xander, who dives out of the way just as it passes him. Then Xander's up and running, as the figure pulls itself up and heads after him, yanking him back cruelly by the neck of his shirt. Xander, on the ground now, is unmoving, and the figure stands above him, calmly looking down, before they both disappear.
The team stands in silence for a shocked moment.
"Can you repeat the image at the end and increase the volume of the sound?" Teal'c asks, and Sam cues up the tape to where the figure stands over Xander and then disappears.
"Again, but louder. Much louder," Teal'c directs.
Sam does so, and this time the ambient noise at the start of the small clip is nearly deafening. Jack realizes that it is Xander's ragged breathing.
Then, suddenly, in a hollow wispy voice that sounded like the wind, "She said you'd put up a fight."
Sam stops the playback, and Jack spins on his heel, "Did you log an address from Glory's visit?"
"Yeah, the computer does that automatically," Sam confirms, and Jack looks at the team.
"Then kit up, I know where he is."
TBC
AN:AN: To those who reviewed, thanks for spurring me on, for providing positive and constructive feedback. Much appreciated, very motivating.