Chapter 20

On the other side, Sam and Jack strolled down to the sunny pasture where the MALP was waiting. Teal'c had gone off in some odd direction he found interesting to do some light reconaissance.

Daniel stayed on the platform as the gate shut behind him and Noli, and turned to watch her reaction to the ride she had just taken for the first time. She looked up at him and grinned widely, apparently very pleased. He had expected her to be at least a little bit naseous, but if she was she wasn't showing it. If anything her whole face was shining, and he had to smile back at the unabashed joy she was displaying. It was impossible not to be affected by the warm enthusiasm she felt for some things; he waited for the sweet, off-the-wall remark he knew she was about to make at this new experience.

Within moments, however, her expression started to change. The grin stayed on but seemed to slowly freeze, and she looked at him slightly questioning - for a short moment he wondered if he had something in his teeth. But then he watched the questioning look in her eyes change into downright confusion. Her eyes stayed locked on his, but her focus was shifting from him to something far beyond as the confusion took over her whole expression. He watched the stiff grin fade as her eyes finally glazed over with something resembling despair. There was something very wrong and he struggled to make a connection - Noli looked like she just remembered she left a raging fire on when she left home this morning.

"Noli? What's wrong?"

Noli started writhing and tugging at her helmet. "Get it off", she muttered between her teeth. Daniel made a hesitant motion to help her before it flew off and she started clawing at the collar of her jacket. The concern he was feeling grew into a chill. If there were alien bees crawling inside her BDU's, he couldn't see them.

"Noli? Noli!" He reached out for her, calling her name, but she didn't seem to notice. Instead she was stumbling to get out of her clothes, fumbling blindly at zippers and velcro she couldn't get a grip on. The strange irritation she felt was growing into a fullblown panic. Daniel's words didn't seem to get through, and she slapped his hands away in the process of flailing her arms around. Finally Daniel wrapped his arms around her to hold her still and called for Jack.

Jack and Sam came running back to find Noli in held back hysterics, breathing heavily with her jaws clenched shut and struggling in spite of herself to free herself of Daniel's clinch.

"What happened?" shouted Jack.

"I don't know! She just went crazy all of a sudden." Daniel withstood a violent wriggle from his prisoner. Jack took a closer look at her face.

"Noli?" He made no contact. "Did she step on something?"

"No! We never moved."

"Could it be some sort of side effect from gate travel?"

Sam shook her head, staring troubled at Noli. She was scraping furiously at one of her shoes with the other.

"I don't think so, nothing like this has ever been reported... Is she trying to get the uniform off?"

"Noli!" Jack tried again. "Carter, dial up, let's get her back home."

Sam ran down to the DHD and started pushing symbols while Jack radioed Teal'c back and Daniel got out of the way of the activating wormhole. Daniel kept his sturdy grip around Noli and he could feel her fighting to regain control of herself, holding her breath to keep from hyperventilating and trying to let him lead her.

"Noli?" he asked cautiously with his cheek pressed to the side of her head. "You ok? What's happening?"

Noli took a couple of shallow, interrupted breaths before responding in a strained voice.

"I don't know." Her tense muscles were starting to relax again. "It hurts."

The splash of the outgoing wormhole appeared. Daniel started walking Noli the few steps back towards the gate. She was no longer putting up a fight, but instead her legs wouldn't support her: she tried walking, pushed onwards by Daniel's whole body but her knees wobbled and gave way underneath her. Finally he risked letting her free to throw another fit and picked her up and carried her through.

---

Back on the base Daniel sat Noli down on the floor of the gate room while Jack shouted for medical attention. She seemed calmer now, although she was still breathing in thrusts and she was aimlessly shifting her hands around as if in defence of something that couldn't be touched. Tiny beads of cold sweat glistened on her pale forehead and her eyes were wandering quickly without landing on anything, full of worry. When Daniel let go and crouched down in front of her she remembered her mission on the planet and started ripping her vest and jacket off again, successfully this time.

Daniel was all frowns. His mind was struggling to find the reason for Noli's predicament, but he didn't know where to begin searching for the problem and Noli was offering no explanation.

"Is there something wrong with your BDU's?" he tried.

"No", Noli muttered and proceeded with her boots, and then started undoing her pants.

"Hey, hey, you sure you wanna do that?" Sam asked, but the determination in Noli's face left no room for protests. She pulled the pants off and tossed them to the side. Being rid of her clothes, sitting on the cold floor of the gate room in her underwear and airforce issue singlet she finally calmed down somewhat, taking deep breaths and rubbing her face with her hands

"Ok... ok... ok." she panted. She went still, holding her hands up in an anticipating gesture and looked around precauriously. The room went silent as her friends waited together with her for whatever it was she was waiting for. For a second or two Daniel noticed his own breathing become a little easier. But the chill took over again when Noli slowly began shaking her head and closed her eyes tight, whispering "No".

"Noli!" Daniel grabbed her shoulder with one hand and her face with the other, forcing her to look at him. A mixture of fright and frustration was gathering in him, because she wouldn't tell him what was wrong, because he didn't know what to do, because the medical team was taking forever, and all he could think of saying was: "Compartmentalize!"

Noli blinked. She looked him straight in the eyes and he knew that she saw him now, locking on to him searching for something to hold on to. He tried to will her to concentrate. Her head was unsteady on her neck but she kept eye contact, and said weakly:

"I feel everything..."

At last the medical team came running with their stretcher, loudly scorn by Jack for the delay. Daniel backed off and let them get to work, shining flashlights in Noli's eyes, pressing stethoscopes to her chest and attaching observation equipment to her body. She endured them with badly withheld aversion, eyes closed and face wincing at every contact. Finally, when she had been placed on the stretcher and someone was attaching little electrodes with plastic adhesives to her temple, she threw out her arm with an annoyed wail and started kicking around, tearing the chords off.

"Get her in restraints before she hurts herself", someone called. Noli grabbed the man with the electrodes by the shirt and pulled him in close.

"Sedate me!" she hissed in his face.

The tired desperation in her voice made Daniel motion towards her, but Jack's hand landed heavily on his shoulder.

"There's nothing we can do, Danny", he said in a low voice. "Let them take care of her."

They all watched in silence as the paramedics wheeled Noli off to the infirmary. They were left feeling strangely responsible for what had just happened, at the same time as they had no clue what that was.

"I don't understand," said Sam. "She's been fine. Hasn't she?" Everyone turned to Daniel for confirmation.

"She, uh... she was feeling a little under the weather yesterday", he answered, uncertain about the relevance of this.

"Perhaps she was exposed to some unknown illness at the planet", suggested Teal'c.

"During the fifteen seconds we were there?" Jack was highly doubtful. "She hardly got out of the gate."

"We should all have been exposed in that case", said Sam. "Although, it's not unlikely Noli's affected differently... by things..."

Daniel was still staring at the door the medical team had disappeared through. "She said she 'felt everything'..." He turned to the others. "Do you think she meant she's feeling everything like she does when she's touching things?"

"We should come up with a name for that..." Jack mumbled.

"I don't see how that could be, she's in total control of it. Unless... I'm gonna go change", said Sam and headed off. The others exchanged looks, hoping Sam was on to something. She usually was.

---

When Sam came to the infirmary half an hour later she was met by Janet.

"How is she?" Sam saw the strained concern in Janet's face that meant she had no straight answers.

The doctor waited a beat before she spoke. "I think you should have a look at this." She lead Sam to the room where Noli had been placed while explaining what had been going on since they left her in her care.

"We've tested for everything we could think of. As soon as she got here she started hyperventilating until she passed out. Being unconcious breathing returns to normal, and she woke up, only to start hyperventilating again. She did that a couple of times until I pumped her full of sedatives. And no small amount either, it's enough to knock out a Jaffa, but she's awake. More or less." She stopped outside the door. "And we had to put her in restraints. She kept tugging the monitors off and I didn't want to give her any more sedatives until I understand what's going on." She took a breath. "I haven't seen her brain activity at its normal. I'm guessing it's a little out of the ordinary. But I'll be damned if it's supposed to look like this."

Noli was lying in the simple hospital bed, dressed in a simple hospital gown. White patches on her temples secured the electrodes reporting signals to the monitor by her side. Her wrists and ankles were secured with soft leather cuffs - she wasn't tugging on them specifically, but writhing and fidgeting in general as if fighting the urge to shake off invisible bugs. Her eyes were open wide and she occationally forced herself to blink.

"Hey..." Sam slowly approached the side of the bed. When she gently placed her hand on Nolis arm her head jerked to the side and she stared right at her. Sam was startled by the wild look in her eyes.

"Don't", she whispered. Sam quickly pulled her hand away.

"Sorry."

People got sick or injured all the time on the SGC. Most of the time it ended well. Not all of the time, but most. Noli'd be ok. She wasn't even all that sick, compared to some other cases they'd experienced. But there was something about seeing her this far from her usual self, in inexplicable despair, that unsettled Sam. And she couldn't even pat her on the arm to comfort her. She needed to submerge herself in practical work and try to solve the problem, it was the only way to feel anything but utterly useless right now. Gratefully she let Janet turn her attention to a computer screen.

"I helped myself to an MRI while she was unconcious."

Sam stared at the pictures of Noli's brain. The colored areas that indicated activity were practically covering the surface.

"Her EEG is indicating the same thing. And at that, the activity seems to be increasing."

"Increasing? From this?" Sam baffled. "How can so much of her brain be active at once?"

"It can't. That's the thing." Janet hesitated for a second. "If this goes on for much longer I'm afraid we'll be seeing massive loss of nerve tissue. The brain can't sustain this level of activity. And so far, I've no way of stopping it."

"So what's the damage?" The women turned around to see Jack and Teal'c in the doorway.

"None... yet", responded Janet.

"Sir, something must have happened when we stepped through the gate. Her brain's going haywire."

"I heard. So... no spacebugs?"

Janet shook her head.

"God..." Noli was quietly mumbling in her bed. The four people present all turned their attention to her. She was shaking her head from side to side and had closed her eyes shut again, her face clenched together in an expression of pain. "I can't do this", she whispered.

"Noli?" Janet walked up to her, pulling out her stethoscope. "That's the first sane thing she's said."

"Get away from me!" shouted Noli when she came near. She started tugging at the restraints, purposfully this time. "Let me go!"

"Noli, calm down." Janet used her slow, gentle voice so often used to sooth upset, troublesome patients. Noli would not calm down. She kept tugging and struggling, contorting her face and burst into tears.

"Get out! Get out!" she yelled.

"Noli, you have to tell us what's wrong", demanded Janet in a louder but still gentle voice. Noli pushed her head down into the pillow and clenched her jaw.

"Let's just say I know all of you in here a little too well right now!"

They looked at each other in troubled confusion.

"Daniel! Go away!" yelled Noli.

"Daniel's not in here", Sam explained.

"He's outside..." she moaned.

"Oh, god." Sam looked up at the others in horror. "She's picking up on us." A second passed while the meaning of this sank in, and then they all hurried out of the room.

In the hallway outside they met with Daniel on his way to join them.

"Did she just call me...?" he started asking as they hurried past him.

"We can't be in there. You were right, she's picking up everything now. Including living tissue", said Sam.

Daniel's eyes grew wide as he processed this. "Jesus", he mumbled and followed them away from the room. If she was being involuntarily bombarded with impressions from everything within reach that was bad enough, but if the failsafe that kept her from reading living tissue was no longer working, then... His skin almost physically hurt as he tried imagining being uncontrollably pounded by the all the tingling, humming feelings she had described to him at once. And that was just from the inanimate objects.

Halfway down the corridor, Janet made a halt.

"I'm going to try putting her under. It should buy her a little rest."

"I suggest emptying the room of anything not absolutely necessary", rumbled Teal'c.

"Good thinking, Teal'c." Janet detached herself from the group and they proceeded to a short debriefing with the general.

---

In Sam's lab she and Daniel were pacing up and down in opposite directions. Teal'c stood statue-like inside the doorway, seemingly unaffected by the situation. But the people who knew him so well could see that he displayed the same amount of concern as they did, albeit in a more stoic way. Jack slumped in a chair, feeling a little too useless for comfort. He was a man of action, and if he could he would have killed the bug, donated the blood, blown up the machine, but this was one of those mysterious theoretical problems best left to Sam or Daniel. However, they seemed to be stuck. All they had concluded was that something had happened to Noli going through the gate. It had jumpstarted her. Turned up the volume. Altered her physical... something or other. Sam thought it was because of the raw exposure to the wormhole. Daniel thought the gate had put her back together differently. Upgraded her, so to speak. Or stripped her of some built-up defence mechanism. Teal'c just stood there, saying nothing. Jack was... a little hungry.

"Does anybody want anything?" He straightened and prepared for take-off. Sam turned her head and stared at him mid-sentence.

"What? No. Thanks. Sir." She started pacing again. "The molecular structure..."

"Actually I'm kinda hungry", said Daniel carefully. Jack slapped his knees and got up and left for the vending machine or the commissary, whichever was closest. He couldn't remember.

"If it doesn't stop she'll die, Sam." Daniel looked at her with something of a plea in his eyes. She stopped pacing.

"I know." She sank into a chair. "But how do we stop it? It's basically built into her physionomy."

"Perhaps the effect will wear off in time", suggested Teal'c.

"If the neuron patterns have a uniqely different, natural state in her.. which is probable... that is what should happen after at while, when they fall back to that state. Only we don't know how much time it would take. It could be days."

"And she doesn't have days..." Daniel sank into another chair.

"You know, I can't help feeling like we did this to her."

Daniel looked at Sam. Then he looked at his hands. He knew what she meant. But he also knew that if he dwelled on it, the feeling would grow into full-blown guilt over causing the imminent death of the team's baby sister because he was too lazy to go about things the old fashioned way and x-ray the damn rocks he was so curious about himself, and there was just no time for that. He guessed Sam was thinking in the same direction as she got up and started pacing again.

"Perhaps it would be easier to find a solution if we returned to the root of the problem", mused Teal'c.

"And the root of the problem would be..." wondered Jack, returning from the vending machine. He tossed a candy bar to Daniel, who caught it distractedly.

"The rest of the world", he said with a hint of bitterness. He looked at the candy bar. 'Snickers'. Noli's favourite. It had peanuts in it. Maybe if he went over and waved it in her face she'd come to. It usually worked when he wanted her to tear her eyes from her computer and do something for him. He suddenly felt like a manipulative bastard, always using her for his own selfish purposes. Like we already concluded, there's no time for that, he thought and tried to shake it off. "The rest of the world", he repeated, "is her problem." He tore the wrapping open and took a bite off the bar.

"Because everything around is giving her constant impressions. Those impressions are about to burn out her brain." Sam chewed on her lip. "To remove the impressions would at least buy us some time, let her rest while we figure this out."

"Yeah, and how do you go about removing the rest of the world?" said Jack, less than enthusiastic. "If we put her in one of the empty chambers on the bottom level... No, it won't work, as long any part of her is touching the floor she's still in contact with everything else. Actually I'm not so sure we should rule out the possibility that contact isn't even necessary anymore. If she's so sensitisized she feels people, the vibes might just reach her through the atmosphere."

"Great", muttered Daniel. The caramel and chocolate melting in his mouth had no taste, but he kept chewing mechanically.

"Some sort of forcefield perhaps." Teal'c looked around at them. "Something of the likes of the personal shield Apophis possessed."

Sam thought about it for a second. "Possibly. But forcefields like that oscillate. There would still be a 'drumming' of contact. Not to mention we don't have one..."

The group fell silent. It seemed they were getting nowhere. Daniel decided to get up and go see how the main character of the drama was holding on - at least it felt like he was doing something.

He stood outside the room where Noli lay and looked in through the plexiglass window in the door. It was eerily empty in there. Janet had had everything not bolted down - and some of that as well - removed and the grey of the walls and floor seemed all the more cold and pasty when naked. The pale character on the hospital bed was lying very still, but the flinching, desperate expression of her face told him she was still conscious. The only thing keeping her company was the EEG attached to her head, a sorry grey box that melted into the background.

"I gave her as much as she could possibly take", said a voice behind him. "She won't sleep." He turned around to meet the big brown eyes of Janet, full of sympathy. He drew breath to speak, but his throat constricted and nothing came out. He didn't know what to ask anyway, he'd thought about everything and there were no answers.

"Her brain activity seems to have landed at this level, nothing is making much difference anymore. If you want to go in..."

"No", he quickly answered. He couldn't bear the thought of adding to Noli's discomfort by approaching her. Janet nodded silently and withdrew, leaving him alone.

His head was numb, and somewhere inside it the urge to go in there and stroke Noli's hair and tell her everyting was going to be alright was tangling with the urge to run.

---

In the lab, Jack muttered to himself: "If you don't like to be wet, don't dwell in the tub."