Taken
Shades
"Come on, Ba'al." Sam shifted, lowering her chin and looking up at the Goa'uld through her eyelashes. Her pose suggested innocence, and a good deal of familiarity. The Colonel knew this man well enough to converse freely. "Why don't you just tell me which artifact you're looking for, and I'll tell you if we're worth enough."
The handsome man tossed off a lazy shrug. "I believe your husband would pay a great deal to get you back."
"Who knows? He may have decided by now that I'm a pain in the butt and he'd be glad to be rid of me." The Colonel straightened as well as she could, seemingly ignoring the fact that her hands and feet remained bound with white plastic—Zip Ties—Glinda believed they were called. "You know how I can be, Ba'al, and you never know what Jack's going to do."
"Jack O'Neill." The words dripped with distaste, and Glinda could have sworn that the alien's eyes flashed again. A symptom of anger? Surely it indicated some strong surge of emotion. A glance at the Colonel confirmed this, her eyes had narrowed under the fringe of her bangs, and her chin had set itself into a hard, unyielding line. The alien must have noticed it too, because his smirk changed into a frown. "I still find it unbelievable that he convinced such a female as you to wed with him. The vagaries of human emotion are indeed abhorrent."
"You sound jealous, Ba'al." The Colonel smiled. "I'm honestly not sure whether to be intrigued or disgusted by that."
"You should feel fear. Unless the artifact is made available to me, you will not be returned in any condition to continue to engage him in a wifely manner. After all, I am a God. All knowing, all powerful."
Glinda watched as Sam cocked her head to one side, saw the depth of thought transpiring within those vivid, intelligent blue eyes. Saw her gaze flicker for the briefest of moments to her own arm before returning to Ba'al. "All knowing? Somehow I doubt that."
The Goa'uld grinned wide, then, interpreting the look in a heartbeat. "Surely you don't think that I have not considered every eventuality? Your husband will not be able to find you."
"I don't know what you mean." Sam's words and tone had been chosen carefully.
"I have disabled the transponder. The one currently implanted in your arm." He stepped closer—near enough that the Colonel had to raise her chin to see his face. Peering down at her with hard eyes, he lifted a hand to smooth at his well-groomed beard. "I had planned to cut it out, but decided not to mar the smoothness of your skin. It would be such a waste. Although you are merely a female of the Taur'i, do not think that I have not always admired the—more appreciable aspects of your person."
"Oh please, Ba'al." Sam snorted in derision. "Niirti, maybe. I'd even believe Osiris. But surely you don't expect me to believe that you have the hots for me? That's hardly god-like—lusting after the enemy like that."
His arm shot out before Glinda had any idea that it was intention, the back of his hand colliding with Sam's cheek in a blazing show of brutality. Despite her determination to remain unnoticed, Glinda gasped, her bound hands rising towards her lips. She watched as Sam paused, saw her lick at the drop of blood in the corner of her mouth, saw the younger woman summon up more than mere bravado—the Colonel was now truly angry.
Their eyes met briefly as Sam worked her jaw, measuring her injury with a few subtle motions. The message in that look forced Glinda to lower her hands, to calm her breathing. Nothing more than a miniscule raise of a single eyebrow and a subtle shake of her head had communicated to Glinda, "I'm okay." But there was a warning there, too.
"Do you doubt me now, Colonel Carter?" Ba'al's hands hung loose, ready, at the sides of his elegantly tailored trousers. He glowered at the blond, taking a step backwards towards the door. "Do you doubt the seriousness of your situation?"
"I doubt your sanity." Sam's tongue touched at the corner of her mouth again, but a thin trickle of blood still made its way down her chin. "How long have you been without the sarcophagus? As far as I know, there isn't one on Earth right now, is there? How's that withdrawal working for you?" She paused, and Glinda saw the alien's face harden, saw the muscles beneath the facial hair on his jaw contract. "Or is it old age that's making you lose your control? You know what happened to Lord Yu."
"Yu." Ba'al spat out the name with the same vehemence he'd lent to the General's. "He was a useless relic. Not worthy of the respect afforded him by the other System Lords."
"The other System Lords like Ba'al, you mean."
Glinda shuddered in the resulting silence. It was as if the temperature of the room had dropped several degrees all at once. Grimacing, she turned her head to see the Colonel's gaze fixed on the alien, her right cheek an angry red, her eyes narrow and hard.
Ba'al turned his back on them both, striding over to stand at the doorway.
"Because you don't actually expect me to believe that you're the real one. Which clone are you? Number eight? Number eighty? Or did he dispense with numbers and name you all? What did he name you? Larry? Moe? No—I've got it—you're Curly."
"I am Ba'al, Colonel." He turned his head to glare at her over his shoulder, his hands balled into tight fists at his sides. "That is all you need to know."
"You're a fake."
"And you are treading onto dangerous ground."
"I would if you'd untie me."
That facetious, handsome-as-sin smile emerged again, and he turned fully around, pivoting in place with a grace that seemed so much a part of him. "You've changed, Colonel Carter. What happened to the eager young thing so willing to work in peace at Dakara? And you and Colonel Mitchell seemed to appreciate the help I rendered whilst finding our way through Merlin's maze."
Sam shrugged, although Glinda imagined that the motion could not have been comfortable. "Stuff happens."
"O'Neill happened."
"Why do you hate him so much?" Sam's voiced drifted quietly across the room. "You've already had your pound of flesh from him. Or at least, your original has."
The conversation had turned personal—and Glinda knew that in between the looks, the exchanges of words, she was missing vast amounts of history. Information about activities and events that she almost certainly didn't want to know. So much of the General's previous life was classified, and he never spoke of it—never even intimated that anything still festered beneath his casually immature surface—that there seethed a warrior within the man who periodically needed new yo-yo strings.
How he lived with that kind of knowledge, Glinda couldn't imagine. She turned her head to look again at the General's wife and suddenly understood something about both of them—knew why they needed each other so intensely.
Because both of them knew. They knew what it was like to be out there, in the galaxy. Knew that entities such as this greasy-smooth alien with his impeccable suit and European boots existed. Knew what he was inside. For all these months, Glinda had possessed only a superficial knowledge of what lay beyond that strange item known as the Stargate. But experiencing this—the superior evil exuding from this man—she barely stilled herself before the tremble made its way down her spine.
One would need to have someone with whom to share those memories. And Glinda was fairly certain that E-Harmony couldn't possibly equate the determiner of having battled ego-maniacal aliens into their match criteria. No matter how thorough their commercials made them sound.
And if they did, it would be in order to weed out the loonies, anyway.
"I am the true Ba'al." Those eerie, inhuman eyes flashed brilliant again. "And if your General O'Neill does not give me what I require, he will hate me even more. For I will send you back to him, Colonel. Only, I'll do it one pound at a time."
With that he pivoted, reaching the door in a few short strides. He paused, then turned, watching the Colonel for an overlong amount of time before shifting his full attention to Glinda.
She tried not to cringe—tried to meet his gaze with the same bravery that her companion had shown. But her position—on her back, hunched up over the bulk of her purse, looking at the man upside down, reminded her of the singularly unpleasant experience she'd had earlier in the year when her regular physician had referred her to a socially-inept gastroenterologist for a colonoscopy. Pertinent to nothing current, she found herself suddenly remembering her conversation with her dear friend Jo Louise the following day about the experience. And now, she felt her cheeks flush pink when she recalled how she had wondered aloud if working with people's nether regions all day made those sorts of doctors resemble them.
But this man didn't resemble anything like unto someone's rear end. He reminded Glinda of a snake—smooth, silent, and deadly. And the sneer on his face distinctly unnerved her—as if he could see right through her and knew how frightened she was, and how hard she fought to keep from looking away.
She would not shame the General. She was made of better, stronger, stuff than that. She had been at the Pentagon for thirty-eight years—nearly thirty-nine! She set her chin. One did not survive as many generals as had she without knowing a bit about being stubborn.
"And you, Miss Baldrich." The Goa'uld's tone reeked of condescension. "Perhaps you can convince Colonel Carter to cooperate. It would be in your best interest, as well."
Glinda's brows rose, her mouth tightened into a little bow. She had always been a woman proud of her ability to control her tongue. But to have this snippy alien staring down at her—a refined woman of sixty-seven years, lying on the floor of all places, tied like a prize hog—some dam inside broke free.
Even then, no one was as shocked as Glinda herself when she opened her mouth and snapped, "It's quite difficult, sir, to take your threats seriously." She stiffened, folding her hands neatly on her abdomen. "Especially when I can see right up your nose."
----OOOOOOO----
She was late.
To O'Neill's knowledge, Pinky had not returned to work from lunch on time exactly twice—and both of those instances were times when the office was being put to much better use. He knew this for certain, because he'd been in said office. Both times. Well, three times, if one needed to be exact about it, because one of those occurrences had been a two-fer. Sweet.
But he digressed.
He glanced at the clock and frowned. It was after five, and his front office had sat empty since she'd carefully shut each drawer of her meticulous filing cabinets, withdrawn her purse from the bottom desk drawer where she kept it, and waved him a cheery farewell. She had an errand to run, she'd informed him first thing that morning, and might not be back directly at one.
Twenty minutes here or there, Jack didn't really care about. Four hours, on the other hand—four hours was cause for concern.
He picked up a pen from his desk and started turning it over and over in his hands. Thinking always required fiddling. And Jack needed to think.
He'd called her cell phone. She always had it turned on, and, because she was the most efficient person alive, the phone never ran low on juice. He had asked her once if she had a battery pack of some sort in her purse, but she'd just smiled and shaken her curly silver head in that way of hers. That smile always made him feel as if he'd been transformed into a simple child and she'd been made his caretaker.
To be perfectly honest, that reaction from her had become the 'norm' in their relationship. He'd half-decided to just give her the damned stars already, since she would have made a better General, anyway. But he wasn't sure exactly where she would put them on those tidy little suits she always seemed to wear. She always had some sort of frilly scarfy thing hanging or bunching or arranged around her neck that would hide them.
Perhaps she could use them as earrings.
Jack forced himself to focus, glaring out his office door into the silent front area.
Four hours. If she'd been in an accident, someone would have called him—Sam had made certain that his number was programmed into the emergency list in Pinky's phone. But the only call he'd received that day had been from Landry—something about the Tok'ra and that device that he'd rescued along with Daniel in South America all those years ago.
As if on cue, his office phone rang for the second time that day, and Jack picked it up with a certain amount of impatience, reflected, he was certain, in his gruff, "What?"
"Jack?"
"Daniel." O'Neill rested his elbows on his desk, leaning forward. "I was just thinking about you."
"Really? Why?"
"Nothing important—just traipsing down memory lane." He raised the hand not holding the phone and scratched absently at his head. "You know how it is."
"Yes, well. No sense dwelling."
"I tell Sam that a lot."
Silence stretched itself over the line, and Jack could hear Daniel whispering something to someone about a cookie—probably to one of his twin daughters. He came back into the conversation with a sigh. "I'm never going to live through this Daddy thing. Those two have me totally figured out."
"It's a positive thing to admit your weaknesses." Jack rested his chin on his hand. "At least that's what they say."
"Yeah. They're idiots." Daniel sighed. "Hey—I'm actually calling as a favor for Vala."
"What's she up to?"
"Not much—and that's kind of the problem."
"Oh?"
"She was supposed to meet Sam today. Vala was going to take her to a certain store that she liked for maternity clothes."
"Was supposed to?" The hair on the back of Jack's neck prickled, then rose. "What are you saying?"
This pause was longer, denser. Daniel shuffled something—and then his voice changed, as if muffled somehow. "Vala waited at the shop for over an hour, Jack."
Jack leaned back in his chair, his knuckles white around the phone. He found himself repeating himself. "Daniel—what are you saying?"
Daniel blew out a tight breath. "Jack—Vala has called Sam's phones—both of them. And she tried texting her. She's not answering."
Jack couldn't speak around the pain constricting his throat. He closed his eyes, concentrating on controlling the panic he felt rising within him.
"Have you heard from her today?" Daniel spoke gently, but earnestly.
"Not since this morning." The General grit the words out. "When I left, she was eating breakfast." For the second time—it had become a habit for Sam to force herself to eat again after her daily bout of morning sickness deprived her of her first meal. They tried to laugh about it, but it was tough for Jack to see her so miserable. "I haven't heard from her since then."
"It's probably nothing." Daniel's voice showed a determined attempt at positive thinking. "But I'll be right there."
And as O'Neill hung up the phone, he couldn't quell the little voice in the back of his head—the one that told him that something was desperately, terribly wrong.
What were the chances that both his secretary and his wife would go missing on the same day?
And then he sighed, swiping his hand down his face in a motion that bespoke grudging acceptance.
Because in O'Neill's world, those chances were pretty damned good.
