disclaimer: I own nothing

Author's Note: I am so sorry this is so late! Writer's block, poor time management, and making a birthday cake with my sister took up most of my time this week. But here's the chapter, which had to come before the one I really wanted to write. Still unbeta'd (because I'm impatient).

Thanks to LoneWolfOneill and dpdp for their reviews!

Enjoy this chapter, everyone!

Jack had left them with a gigantic mess to sort out. Daniel understood it in the general sense, but he was still pissed. He and Sam had to deal with Anise and Freya. Jack had walked out and Hammond was still on the phone. Rather than telling Walter to dial up the gate so that she could leave, Daniel, Sam, and the Tok'ra retreated to his lab.

It was a mess, but Daniel hadn't been all that concerned with cleaning it in the past few days. Anise -she was in control at the moment- glanced around as Daniel pulled out a stool for her to sit on. He gestured. She sat down elegantly.

Sam stood beside Daniel. Her eyes were still red and she hadn't had time to clean her face. He knew that she was worried and reeling from the attacks, probably more so than the rest of them, because she'd had family there. Had family. They could still be alive.

"I sense that we have come at a bad time." Anise said.

Sam made a sound at this, but didn't say anything, leaving Daniel to explain.

"Yeah. Yeah, a little bit." he said, scratching the back of his neck.

"Is your world still at war?"

Wow. This was something that Daniel decided that he didn't want to do, but he knew that he didn't have a much of a choice. But with the possibility that there were Goa'uld in multiple world leaders right now, he felt that he could feel the way that he did.

"Yes. It is. A few hours ago our country was attacked directly for the first time. Two of our cities were bombed, simultaneously. You'll have to forgive General O'Neill for his behavior. It's a...rather tense time right now."

"I understand."

"There's a Goa'uld in one of our world leaders." Sam said, cutting to the chase.

Daniel knew that he would have spent time beating around the bush a little bit and he understood that they didn't have time for that. So he let her take over for the moment, watching as Anise's eyes flew open wide, looking stunned. The Tok'ra seemed incapable of speech and her host took over.

"Are you certain?" she asked, her voice much different than that of her symbiote.

"Grace saw his eyes glow. General O'Neill and I saw the footage afterward. There's at least one Goa'uld here on Earth." Sam said, voice flat.

Despite the tone, Daniel could tell that Sam was a ball of energy right now. There were things that they needed to be doing. There were things that Sam needed to be doing and that she could be doing. Daniel could understand her need to return to it. He needed to know too. They might have told Jack, but they needed more before they could go running to Hammond with their theory.

"How is such a thing possible? I thought the Tau'ri took measures to ensure that such a thing would not happen. How could a Goa'uld have made it to Earth undetected in any way?"

Freya looked between them, clearly bewildered. Daniel had hoped that she would have some sort of insight to all of this. She or Anise. It was clear that they didn't. At least, not at this time.

"We have no way of knowing that. But you understand why Earth cannot currently respond to anything that the Tok'ra need." Daniel said.

Sam was the one that was closest with the Tok'ra, even aside from Daniel. She understood them the most and was usually the most sympathetic when it came to them. But she didn't disagree with him. They were basically doing what Jack had done, though they were being polite about it.

"I do understand and I will inform the council. But..." Freya cleared her throat delicately and Anise took back over. "Such a thing is very worrying to Tok'ra, you understand. If a Goa'uld has been unchecked on your planet, especially for some time, it is very worrying."

"So the Tok'ra council knows nothing about this?" Sam cut in, before Daniel could say anything else.

Anise looked offended. Rightly so, in Daniel's opinion.

"If we had known, we would have alerted you to it immediately. There has been nothing about the Tau'ri passing among the System Lords, other than what has been expected. No communications to your planet. Or from it."

Daniel knew that. They would have known if there had been communications coming to or leaving Earth. They monitored those things religiously. If such a thing had occurred, they would have known about it. Which made it strange. Where had this Goa'uld come from? And what was its goal, other than the obvious?

"We also suspect that there may be more." he said.

Sam was on the fence about agreeing with him on that and he knew that Jack didn't believe that idea in the slightest, but to Daniel it made sense. He had layed the groundwork, but Sam had worked it out. This wasn't such a huge leap. And with something like this, it was best to think of the worst case scenario, prepare for it, and maybe be pleasantly surprised if it turned out that wasn't what was going on at all.

Anise clearly did not believe this in the slightest. That annoyed Daniel. It was a possibility. He had no idea how and it did seem a little impossible, but that didn't mean that it wasn't true. Their lives were a minefield of impossibility turned possible since the Stargate had worked for the first time. He didn't want to argue with Anise about this. He just wished that someone would believe him without arguing with him about it.

"That is impossible. Or the Tau'ri's security is much worse than you have ever claimed." Anise said.

Daniel was starting to not feel very friendly towards Anise. He was usually on good terms with her. And Freya. He plowed ahead with what he wanted to ask. He might as well. He had a feeling that Anise and Freya weren't going to be here for much longer.

"Is there any way that the Tok'ra would be willing to help us now?" he asked, a little reluctantly.

He had the sinking feeling that Jack was right. The Tok'ra had refused to help them when they had first reached out to them. He didn't see how all that much had changed, especially when the Tok'ra wanted their help now and they were refusing. It wasn't really petty, but it certainly sounded petty.

"Your world is still at war with itself. No other world or race is being threatened." Anise said.

"But a Goa'uld is different. Potentially more than one." Sam said.

"Your world is waging war with itself."

"You don't think that a Goa'uld won't try for the Gate at some time?" Sam said, cutting over Daniel as he started to speak.

"If that becomes a possibility, the Tok'ra will, of course, provide aid. But the Tau'ri must stand alone in this. It is your world that is destroying itself. The Goa'uld may have started this war, but your people are certainly taking advantage and glorying in what that Goa'uld started."

Daniel thought, for a moment, that he was going to have grab Sam to prevent her from punching Anise in the face. The look in her eye said that she wanted to. Everything that she had been through up until this point and what had happened today was enough to push her to the edge. She managed to restrain herself.

"Jack's right." Sam said, disgust in her tone. "Have a nice trip back."

Sam spun on her heel and stormed out of the room. Daniel wished that she hadn't done that, but he honestly couldn't blame her for it. He looked to Anise. She was watching the doorway, where Sam had just disappeared, but she looked back at him, an eyebrow raised.

Daniel personally thought that Sam and Jack had it right, but the fact that they had done those things meant that he had to deal with it. He was always the one dealing with things like this. And considering today, Daniel was sick of it. But he wasn't going to lose his temper with Anise, even though he felt like doing so.

"I think they have the right idea. Unless you have any information to give us, it would best if you left. We're dealing with a lot right now."

"Of course."

He could tell that Anise wasn't very happy, but the Tok'ra was too dignified to argue with him or try any sort of persausion or manipulation. He walked her to the control room, noticing that there was a heavy tension in the mountain now. Daniel couldn't imagine that was going to go away any time soon.

With not knowing where Jack was and the fact that Hammond was still on the phone, it was up to Daniel to tell Walter to dial the world Anise had come from and see her on her way. He stood at the ramp with her, bidding her goodbye. He stayed where he was standing after the Stargate disengaged. He stared at it, not moving, then let out a heavy sigh, dragging a hand over his face. He realized that he needed to shave, but it wasn't like that had been very high on his list of priorities.

The Tok'ra dealt with, Daniel knew that he needed to get back to what he had been doing. They needed more before they could go running to Hammond with the theory, so he headed back into the control room, to look at the map once more.

Daniel had plenty of maps in his lab, but most of them weren't of Earth or anything like that. He would be able to scrounge one up, but he wanted to take another look at the work that he had already done. Sam was standing there. He supposed that made sense. He'd had no idea where she had stormed off to, but of course she was working on it. He wouldn't have expected anything less from Sam.

"Anise is gone." he said unnecessarily.

Sam nodded. She was studying the map so intensely.

"It's a scary thought." she said quietly. "To think that our world was invaded the whole time we've been fighting them and we never even knew. That what we were doing wasn't going to make one bit of difference."

That was really a pessimistic view on it, but Daniel couldn't help but agree. How long had the Goa'uld been here? They had no way of knowing, but he thought of Hathor and Osiris and Isis, though that Goa'uld had died. They had all been left behind on Earth. It had never really occurred to them at this point in time that there might have been more.

"We're going to make some difference now." he said instead.

Sam nodded, blowing out a breath as she stared at the map, resolutely ignoring the news coverage that was still being displayed all over the control room.

"Let's take this upstairs. I can go through the news footage, see if anything is there."

"I'll find a map." Daniel said.

They went their separate ways.

When Daniel went up to the briefing room, Sam was sitting on the briefing table, watching news footage. She did that when she had reign over the briefing room. There was fresh pot of coffee -which in itself was starting to become a rarity- sitting on the table, a mug next to Sam's hip, indicating that she thought that they were going to be here for quite some time. He had to agree with that theory.

There was plenty of room left on the table, so Daniel spread the massive map of the world he had managed to scrounge up from a storeroom across the table and took his pick of the chairs, facing the window that overlooked the Stargate. He set down his pens and legal pads, then glanced towards Hammond's office. The blinds were still closed.

"Anything yet?" he asked Sam as he started to copy what he had done to the map downstairs.

"No. I don't even know where to look, not really."

Daniel said nothing else to this, focusing on what he was doing. He was able to do this from memory. He had spent a lot of time looking at maps of the ancient world and where their civilizations had been. He was going to have to consult Sam to make sure that he had every place that had been attacked and was at war, but he could wait to do that.

Even as he did all of that, he hoped that he was wrong.

XXXXXXX

When Cassie calmed down -and that had taken quite a while, because she had a lot to get out- Jack had to get her to help him up off the floor a little bit. Cassie's face was red and stained with tears. Jack wished that there was more that he could do for her. But at the moment, there wasn't.

"I don't know where Sam's at." he admitted to her, thinking that Sam might be a better comfort to her right now. "But I'm going to find Teal'c and Grace."

"Can I come with you?" Cassie asked, her voice rough and scratchy.

"Sure."

She could keep Grace occupied and Jack had a feeling that Grace might be able to cheer Cassie up a bit. Grace was good at that.

He tracked Teal'c and Grace down in a common area near the daycare. Grace was building something out of wooden blocks. Teal'c was just watching her. He stood up when Jack and Cassie entered.

"O'Neill." Teal'c greeted. "Cassandra Fraiser."

Teal'c's gaze lingered on Cassie's face, but he didn't ask. Grace waved at Cassie. Jack nudged Cassie towards Grace. He waited to say anything, pulling Teal'c towards the doorway as the girls sat on the floor.

Jack had noticed and become unsettled by the fact that Grace wasn't building a tower. She was building a pyramid, with a ring around the center.

He turned away and faced Teal'c.

"What has happened, O'Neill?"

"The Tok'ra showed up." Jack had decided to lead with that. It was easier to say.

He explained what had happened to Teal'c, hesitating for a moment when he reached the part of the Goa'uld. But he told Teal'c. And then Jack layed out what Sam and Daniel had been cooking up. Teal'c's eyebrows lowered severely over his eyes.

"Do you think that it's possible?" Jack asked.

He wanted Teal'c to tell him that it shouldn't have been possible. That Sam and Daniel were overreacting. Looking for the worst case scenario because it was there, not because it was a real possibility.

"I believe that anything is possible when it comes to the Goa'uld." Teal'c answered.

Jack sighed and turned away for a moment, glancing towards the girls. Grace's creation was still sitting in front of them, but Grace was snuggled in Cassie's lap, just hugging her. Cassie's cheek was resting on Grace's head and her eyes were closed. They looked peaceful. Good.

"Do you have any idea of how they could have managed it?" Jack asked, feeling that Teal'c would have a better insight.

It couldn't have been anything that had happened before. They had made sure that could never happen again and they had checked so many people to make sure that it hadn't happened. There was no way that the mountain could have been breached. And it wasn't like one of the snakes could have just crash landed on their planet without anyone knowing about it.

"I do not."

"That's what I thought."

Jack dragged a hand over his face.

"You do realize what this means, don't you, Teal'c?" he asked.

Teal'c just looked at him with a patient expression. Even after all these years, Jack still asked questions like that when he knew that he should have just cut to the point.

"We can not trust any of our allies on this planet. None of them. We're really on our own. We are well and truly fu-"

Jack broke off, then glanced towards the girls. Cassie had definitely heard that word before, but as far as he was aware, Grace's ears were still innocent. He wasn't going to be the one to let her hear that word for the first time.

"We may have allies still, O'Neill."

"You're an enternal optimist, aren't you, Teal'c?"

Teal'c arched an eyebrow and didn't reply. Jack looked back at the girls. At Grace. He thought about what Sam had suggested. That they have Grace look at more news footage to see if she could tell if there were more Goa'uld in people. He still really did not like the idea of his daughter being used as some sort of Goa'uld sniffing dog.

"Do you think that she would be able to tell?"

"I do not know. Grace Carter-O'Neill is a unique child. Special. There is no telling what she may be able to do."

Teal'c was repeating what they had been told about Grace. When Jack hadn't been able to bring himself to express his fears about their little girl to Carter, he had gone to Teal'c and Daniel with it.

"She shouldn't have to do anything. She's a little girl. We didn't have her to be the 'next step of human evolution'. She's ours." he said ill temperedly.

Teal'c wasn't going to soothe him about this whole thing or anything like that, but Jack needed to vent. And there was no one else that he could vent to. Daniel was busy. He couldn't put this on Sam right now. Not with everything that was going on with Mark and his family.

Teal'c just stared him down for another few moments.

"I do not believe that there is any harm in trying. Perhaps you and Colonel Carter should discuss this further?"

Jack had known that was going to happen. And he knew that Teal'c was right. They wouldn't do anything with Grace unless both of them agreed on it. They had also long ago agreed that whatever was ahead for Grace, they would face it and make the decisions together.

Which meant that he needed to talk to her, sooner rather than later.

Footsteps approached and there was a knock on the open door. Both Jack and Teal'c turned. Mitchell was standing there, the expression on his face saying that he knew that he had interrupted them, but that he had a good reason.

"General. Teal'c."

"Yes, Mitchell?"

"General Hammond wants you in the briefing room, General."

Which meant that Hammond was finally off the phone. Jack didn't think that anything Hammond had to say could be good at this point, but he also knew that he couldn't blow Hammond off like he had blown the Tok'ra off. He looked at Teal'c.

"I think the two eggheads could your insight on this, T."

"I would be happy to assist Daniel Jackson and Colonel Carter."

Jack looked back at Cassie and Grace. He knew that he could leave them alone -Cassie was more than old enough to be left on her own and look after Grace, as she had done many times before- but he didn't want to. He didn't want Cassie to have to be the adult in the room. That wasn't fair to her.

Mitchell cleared his throat.

"I'd be happy to stay with the girls, General." he said.

Jack nodded sharply.

"Thank you, Mitchell."

Mitchell slipped into the room. Grace had vacated Cassie's lap and had dismantled her disturbing creation. Now the two girls were building something that looked much more ambitious. Mitchell sat down across from them.

"Hey there, girls. What are we building?"

Satisfied that both girls would be taken care of, Jack and Teal'c headed to the briefing room. It had been almost three hours -jeez, he had ditched things longer than he had intended- since he had walked out on the Tok'ra and Jack saw that Sam and Daniel had put that time to good use.

Sam was going through footage, her eyes slightly glazed and suggesting that her emotional roller coaster was coupling with the dullness of her task. Daniel must have had several cups of the coffee that was sitting on the table, because he was writing and marking like a mad man. All he really needed to acheive that was some string and pins connecting things on the map.

Once, Jack might have made a crack about that. But he had been saying things like that less and less as time went on, because it seemed even less appropriate for him to say them now.

Hammond walked out of his office, looking grave. He was looking at Daniel's project, but he looked up when Jack and Teal'c walked in.

"I hear that you turned the Tok'ra away, Jack." Hammond said.

Jack had no idea if he was being reprimanded for the choice or not, but he didn't care. He stood by it. He folded his arms behind his back, straightening his spine and keeping his chin up.

"Yes, sir, I did. I do not believe that the Tok'ra will be of any help to us during all of this and chose not to waste my time."

"You made the right call. Doctor Jackson has informed me of the conversation that he had with Anise and Freya. It is clear that they are more than willing to leave us on our own."

"Yes, sir."

"He also presented me with his and Colonel Carter's theory that there is more than one Goa'uld on this planet. Do you think it could hold any merit?"

It was a testament to how used they were to things being doubted that Sam and Daniel continued working while this conversation was happening like they weren't even there.

"I don't want to believe it does, General. But I think we would be fools to ignore it." he admitted reluctantly.

Jack might not have liked this idea, but there was no way that he was going to let his personal feelings get in the way of what he had to think of and consider as a general.

"I believe so as well." Hammond frowned at the map as he spoke.

"Have you informed the president of this theory yet?" Jack asked.

"Not as of yet. I was hoping to have some concrete evidence to present him with, but we may have to forgo that in the interest of warning him before it's too late."

"We can't trust anyone else, sir, if this is true." Sam said, breaking into the conversation.

She slid off the table to stand up and face Hammond properly.

"Colonel?"

"We have no way of knowing how many world leaders are infected. Our own allies very well could be. We have no idea of the true nature of the alliances that have formed and are being formed. We could be putting ourselves at risk and not even know it."

Hammond's expression darkened at Sam's words, which echoed what Jack had been feeling. But hearing it layed out like that, it wasn't good. The United States could stand alone if it had to, but no one wanted to stand alone in something like this. They may have stood against the Goa'uld and all manner of other alien threats alone, but this was different. Because it was happening in their home.

"Could there be the possibility that the president is infected?" Daniel asked.

He just had to say that.

"I don't see how he could be." Hammond said.

"Teal'c. Carter." Jack said, not looking at either of them. "Have either of you been near the president recently?"

"I have not, O'Neill."

"Last time Grace and I went with you to Washington." Sam offered. "I didn't sense anything then. And I know I would have."

Jack was remembering now. Sam had gone with him to some fancy thing that the president had attended. Sam had been very close to him and shaken his hand. She would know.

"Okay, so he's in the clear. But we have no way of knowing who else is." he said.

A heavy, dark silence filled the room. They all looked at each other. This was supposed to be the best of the best, right here in this room. The flagship team and their stalwart general. The originals. The people that had done the most to keep this planet safe. Those who had fought over and over again, gone against orders, actually died for it. The geniuses. The soldiers. The God damn tireless warriors that had never let this planet fall. That had always saved it.

And. They. Had. Nothing.

Nothing but realizations and theories and realities that shouldn't have been happening.

Nothing but fear and a world tossed upside down. Nothing but the world they had done all that for, falling to pieces around them.

And the knowledge that they now stood alone.

Author's Note: I decided to try Daniel again. Hope that worked out.

I have a new story I'd like you all to read! It's called 'Come Now, Little One...' and it's from the point of view of our beloved Sam Carter. It is a dark!fic that resides in the Stargate SG-1/Sanctuary archive, but can be accessed from my profile. Please read and tell me what you think!

Questions will be answered at the beginning of the next chapter. Any and all reviews are always welcome.

Please review!