Chapter Fifty One: Coming Back
"That's right," said Jack. "I've got control of your fleet and there's not a thing you can do about it. Either you do what I say or you and all your people can go to hell, or wherever it is you guys go to when you've been naughty."
Jack was once again trying to bluff Apophis. Like the former Goa'uld ship now controlled by SG-1, Apophis's fleet was being pulled back to Kallistien by the mysterious force coming from the planet. Jack had contacted Apophis to try to claim the credit for what was happening. Because the SG-1 ship was cloaked by the magic of the witches on board, Jack hoped Apophis had no idea that his enemies were also unable to break free of this force.
"Release my ships or face the consequences," demanded Apophis, who as usual was not going to do what Jack wanted if he could think of any other option.
He seems to accept that we're the ones making it happen thought Jack. One up to us. "You mean you're going to crash your fleet onto the planet just to spite me," Jack replied. "Because that's exactly what will happen if you don't follow my instructions. And this time you won't have any way out."
"What you have not explained is why you should want to stop my fleet crashing anyway," said Apophis. "We are enemies. If my destruction was as certain as you claim you would simply watch it happen."
"No I wouldn't and you know it," said Jack. "It's never been our practice to allow any unnecessary killing. If you were the only one who was going to be killed I'd get in the beers and sit back and watch. But if your fleet crashes it'll kill a lot of people, many of them innocent people. We don't want that but we'll do it if it's the only way to stop you."
"So what do you want?" asked Apophis. "I would prefer to see my fleet destroyed before I handed it over to you."
"But would you want to be destroyed yourself?" asked Jack. "I'm prepared to give you a way out. If you evacuate your ships and use the self destruct on them I'll let you and your people get away. But only on condition you release all of your prisoners, including those witches you snatched from Earth. You can send them off on your shuttle craft before you destroy your ships and we'll let them land on the planet or pick them up before they crash."
"You know as well as I that the Stargates are not working," said Apophis. "Without these ships and the shuttles, how do you propose I evacuate my people?"
"Unlike you, I know why your Gates aren't working," said Jack. "If you follow my instructions I'll have them working again in a little while. Get your people ready for evacuation. Send off your prisoners in the shuttles and get your ships ready for self destruction."
"When all your prisoners are safely with us I'll arrange for the Gates to come back on line so that you can evacuate your people. But you'll have to be ready to move fast. You'll only have the one chance."
At that point Jack broke the connection, to find that the others in the Control Center, including Sam, were giving him curious looks.
"You know why the Gates aren't working?" queried Sam. "And you'll have them working again? Where did that come from?"
"Hey, I'm winging it right?" said Jack. "No, I don't know any more than anybody else why the Gates aren't working but Apophis doesn't know that. And he won't know until after he's released his prisoners. Let's just hope the Gates don't come back on line again before he does that. That would completely mess up my bluff."
"What if the Gates never come back on line?" asked Sam.
"Then we're no worse off than we are now," said Jack. "But you've got a planet full of witches to work with Major. I'm sure if you work with them you'll come up with something sooner or later."
"If Apophis does send off his shuttle craft he might put Jaffa aboard them," said Teal'c. "He might even conceal himself aboard one of them. We will have to be careful about where we allow them to land. We should not let them come aboard this ship."
"Good point," said Jack. "Talk to the Kallistians. Find somewhere suitable where the shuttles can land and the people aboard can be vetted. We can insist that they land one at a time and threaten to shoot down any which ignore our instructions. If Apophis plays ball that is. I expect he'll wait as long as he can and hope the Gates come back up again anyway so he can take his prisoners with him. We've got to think of some way round that."
"I'll talk to the witches we've still got on board," said Sam. "I'll see if there's any way they can check on how many prisoners Apophis has got and whether they'll be able to tell if he releases them all."
"And I've got to do a bit more thinking," said Jack thoughtfully. "There's something else that Apophis might try."
"And what's that?" asked Sam.
"I don't know," said Jack. "I haven't thought of it yet. But it's somewhere in the back of my mind. It's something that should be obvious."
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Willow had never run so fast, even when being chased by demons or vampires. She had certainly never run full speed downstairs two and three steps at a time. But she didn't really notice what she was doing as she sped downwards. She just knew that she was following the thread that would lead her to Tara. She could feel the pull of her presence and at the same time she could feel the presence of the Hellmouth. Whatever that meant it couldn't be good.
Kennedy as a vampire slayer was the only one who could keep up with Willow and even she didn't manage to reach the bottom of the stairs first. At the bottom Kennedy had no problem deciding which way to go. She simply followed Willow who it seemed had no doubts about her destination.
The bottom of the staircase was not the lowest level of the building. It was the level of the kitchens but underneath the kitchens were the cellars. Willow sped through the kitchens past the startled kitchen staff and straight towards the cellar door on the other side of the building.
Willow did not really notice the people in the kitchens but Kennedy did. Thankfully they seemed to be no threat. Either they had not been affected by the Hellmouth or Cordelia's magic had brought them out of it.
"Leave the building," shouted the slayer to a number of people as she went past. They simply stared after her. "Fire!" she yelled. "Fire!" and at last she got a response. People began to stop what they were doing and rush towards the exit.
For some reason the cellar door was locked. Willow didn't wait to find somebody to open the door but just blasted it with her power and rushed through the space where the door had been and down the steps into the cellar.
Not pausing to find a light switch Willow muttered a short incantation and a witch light appeared above her head. It kept pace with her as she descended into the darkness closely followed by Kennedy.
At the bottom of the cellar steps Willow stopped for the first time since she started her headlong rush. Her concern for Tara had not stopped her from being almost out of breath. The bottom of the steps ended at the base of a wall with a wide open area on the other three sides. Or rather it would have been a wide open cavernous area were it not for the rows of storage shelves and wine racks stretching away into the darkness.
The feeling was strong now but Willow was suddenly cautious. She had been reacting emotionally but the run and the pause for breath had given her a few moments to think. If she ran headlong into danger it wouldn't do Tara any good and who knew what might have come out of the Hellmouth? But direction still wasn't a problem. Willow knew exactly the direction she needed to go. She took a couple more deep breaths and set out towards the Hellmouth at a fast walk, Kennedy by her side, sword in hand.
A few moments later they left the area of the wine racks and came to a large empty space. It hadn't been empty for long because there were fallen and broken pieces of wine racks scattered around. Some force had come from somewhere and cleared the area. A force that might still be nearby.
Willow stopped on the edge of the cleared area and Kennedy stopped beside her, ready to react to any threat. There was a bright glow coming from ahead of them but they could not make out any more than that because of the mist drifting in the area in front of them. Apart from the mist the most noticeable thing was the strong somewhat sulphurous smell.
"Tara" called Willow. "Can you hear me? Are you alright sweetie? Can you orb over to me?"
Willow's call did not produce an answer from Tara but Willow found herself reluctant to step into the mist to search blindly for her partner. Apart from anything else there was a Hellmouth in there and she did not want to blindly fall into it. She also didn't want to be caught up inside some evil magical mist. She'd fallen for that one before.
Willow decided she had better try to do something to clear the mist. She raised her right hand but before she could do anything more the mist started to move anyway. It began to flow from right to left and then into a circle as it picked up speed. Soon it consisted of a spinning funnel of mist which condensed and concentrated in one area in front of them, the area which Willow assumed covered the entrance to the Hellmouth.
"Does that mean the Hellmouth is open again?" whispered Kennedy quietly to Willow. "Is that where the wind is coming from?" Willow shrugged without taking her concentration away from what was in front of her. At the same time she heard the others arrive behind her having caught up at last.
Without saying a word Cordelia and Anya stepped forward on either side of Willow and each took hold of one of Willow's hands. The three of them had worked together before. They would be stronger using their magic together to deal with whatever threat faced them.
By now most of the funnel of mist had floated upwards and begun to fade. It left behind a layer sufficient to cover the floor in front of them. As the upper levels of mist gradually diminished it revealed a figure standing some yards away from them. The figure was lit from behind by a yellowish glow coming up out of the ground behind it and for the moment only an outline was visible, a female outline.
Willow stepped forward, bringing Cordelia and Anya with her. Kennedy and Gwen kept in step to either side ready to take part in any fight.
"Tara?" called Willow once again because she could still feel the thread that connected her to Tara leading in that direction, but once again there was no reply.
But as the figure walked towards them it became clear that it wasn't Tara. It was however a familiar figure which now became properly visible as she walked under the witchlight: Eve!
"Well about time," said Eve. "If you guys hadn't turned up soon I would have had to go looking for you. I thought somebody would be here soon what with the stuff that keeps coming out of that Hellmouth."
Where's Tara?" demanded Willow. "What have you done to her? What are Wolfram and Hart up to now? Willow was not just worried anymore she was angry and getting more angry all the time. As she glared at Eve she felt the darkness begin to rise within her.
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"Look, the future can take care of itself," said Daniel. "We've already established that. But you can't just abandon Glory. She did a lot to save this world. When this is over you've got to do something to get her out of there."
"How? The whole point of what she's doing, the whole point of the closure spell the sisters are doing, is to stop things coming out of the Hellmouth," said Faith. "We can't just open it up again. You saw the sort of things that came out. Even if we didn't have to return to the future we couldn't stay here on guard forever. Anyway, sooner or later something would come through that'd get past us. We've got to shut it down for good and this is our chance to do it. It might be our only chance."
While Daniel and Faith were talking, the three sisters were on the other side of the room gathered around the hole in the floor that was the entrance to the Hellmouth. They were busy carrying out their spell to permanently shut it down, the same spell that they had performed on the Sunnydale Hellmouth.
"Is that what happened back in Sunnydale?" asked Daniel who was now somewhat annoyed. "Did you have to abandon somebody inside the Hellmouth? Is that what it takes, some sort of blood sacrifice, a volunteer for certain death?"
"A whole bunch of us went into the Hellmouth back in Sunnydale," said Faith. "Including me, Prue and Piper. We thought we'd never come out again but it didn't work out that way."
"So there is a way out. How?" asked Daniel.
"No idea," said Faith. "And nor has anybody else. Once we'd done our job in there we just appeared back in Sunnydale. Everybody assumed it was something to do with 'Higher Powers'."
"So Glory might appear back here when this is finished?" asked Daniel.
Faith shrugged. "Either she will or she won't. I don't think there's anything we can do about it. You're asking the wrong person, but I'm betting she won't. She might just stay in there and take over the place. If you live in a place like that I guess you either have to beat them or join them, or both."
Daniel had never been told by the others all that they knew about Glory's future but he knew they did know a lot that they hadn't told him. "Are you saying you know she'll survive somehow because you know what happens to her in the future?" he asked.
"Let's just say if you meet her again in the future don't assume she's the same person," said Faith. "Bringing her back in the future might be worse than putting up with the Goa'uld."
Daniel raised his eyebrows at that, but before he could question Faith any further the sisters joined them, having completed their closure of the Hellmouth.
"OK," said Prue looking back at what now looked to be a perfectly ordinary floor, with no sign of a hole. "That's the best we can do. And since we used the Power of Three it's pretty good. If Glory's done the same thing on the other side, the Hellmouth should stay shut, either permanently or for a very long time. But I suppose we should stay on guard here for a couple of days until we're certain something doesn't come along and bust it open again."
"After those two days could you orb inside the Hellmouth and pick up Glory?" asked Daniel, looking at Paige.
"Um no, I'm afraid not," said Paige. "I've never been inside a Hellmouth and I don't know how to get into this one. I was one of the guys who had to stay back on the Earth side of the Sunnydale Hellmouth."
"We know that Glory will have to stay where she is for a couple of days anyway," said Prue. "She's got to stop anything from breaking out or we've just wasted our time."
"And that'll give us some time to decide what to do next about Glory," began Piper. "We also have to decide do we go back to the future or do we first try to find out what happened to Lissie and the Key because..."
Piper broke off from what she was saying because things were starting to happen. Things in the room around them began to move, slowly at first then more quickly. The table was suddenly in a different position. The open door was suddenly closed, and then just as suddenly it was open again. Things appeared in the room and disappeared again.
Nobody could move. It was as if they were watching a movie on fast forward from the inside. Daniel realised what was happening. They were moving forward in time. He tried to explain this to the others but found that not only could he not move, he could not speak either.
And then the building disappeared altogether to be replaced by a deep, black fog surrounding them. Try as he might Daniel could not even turn his head to see if the fog obstructed his view in all directions. Just as he was becoming really frustrated it disappeared altogether and they were back. They were back in the basement library of the Witches' HQ in future, or rather in present day, Kallistien.
Nobody had witnessed their return to the same place from where they had left to journey back into the past. But everything looked the same. It seemed that they had arrived at a time when there was nobody else in the library. As far as they could tell they had returned to the same future that they had left.
"So the automatic return part of the time travel spell finally kicked in," said Paige. "I guess that means we were successful in doing what we set out to do."
"I think that Hellmouth must have stayed shut back in the past," said Prue. "Otherwise the future would have been changed and this place would look very different."
"We went into the past to find out how they got rid of the Goa'uld," said Daniel. "And we found that out but it involved Glory and the Key. We don't have either of them here and now, so what happens next? Have we just wasted our time? Or is there some way we can get hold of the Key here and now?"
Faith and Prue exchanged glances at that but neither of them spoke.
"Shouldn't we make sure first we're in the same future we left?" said Piper. "So far it looks just the same but we might go outside and find everybody's two foot tall, or has a tail or something."
"Is it even possible to return to another future?" asked Paige. "And if we did would we even know it was different? Would we still remember the old future?"
"You're back!" said a voice from behind them. They all turned to see Giles, who had just entered the library, cup in hand. "You were successful I hope," he asked.
Faith walked over to Giles and walked around him, carefully studying the Englishman.
"Looks like the same old Giles to me," she said. "Right size and no tail that I can see."
"Tail?" asked a puzzled Giles.
"Well we found out a lot about what happened in the past but we don't know how useful it'll be," said Daniel.
"And I can now find out what happens in the future," said a voice from the other side of the room. A young woman walked out from between the bookshelves.
"Dawn!" said Giles. "When did you get back?"
"Dawn?" said the young woman puzzled. "Who's Dawn? My name is Lissie."