A/N: Holy Hannah! I can't believe I started this story a year ago! Time certainly does fly when you're not paying close attention.
After lunch Cassie went back to crocheting the baby blanket Hardison had so thoughtfully provided materials for while the thieves went back to the prep work they were doing for their job.
She frowned as she wrapped the yarn around her hook again and pulled another loop through. Her hands paused and felt the soft yarn gently, as if it might float away if she was too rough. It was a cream yarn she'd chosen to start with. Cream with little rainbow flecks throughout. It reminded her quite strongly of sprinkle cake but she wasn't sure her baby would mind.
Babies, she reminded herself. Two of them. A hand trailed to her stomach and she held her breath, as if trying to feel the fragile heartbeats that were just beginning to beat. Two bundles of cells. That's all they were at the moment. Placed inside her to await the day they'd be carried through her fallopian tubes and attached to the ready and waiting wall of her uterus. Without any conscious effort on Cassie's part.
When she thought of her unborn children and the people who were after them - who would use them if they could to better their own understanding ... her heart grew black with deadly intent toward any that would think to malign her children's growth and progress. They were hers, whether she asked for them or not, and they were going to stay that way.
Her hands were tense as she picked up the crocheting again, which was unfortunate for the poor acrylic crochet hook in her right hand. The pressure from her thumb and forefinger converged on a weak point in the design and it broke in two with a loud SNAP.
"Crap," Cassie muttered as she looked at both of the pieces now in her hand. She already had a good six inches up on the blanket and she was in no mood to unravel it all and start again with a different sized hook.
"What happened?" Parker asked as everyone's heads came up in surprise.
Cassie held up the two pieces for her to see, "My crochet hook snapped. That's the trouble with acrylic. I think I threw some rosewood ones in my bag before leaving." She eyed Nate warily as she carefully set her crocheting down beside her. "You're not going to tell Eliot to ground me if I go get it, are you?"
"Not if you're back in five minutes," he replied without looking up. "Otherwise I will have to report it to Eliot."
"You make it sound like he threatened you or something," Cassie said as she got up. "I'm just going down the hall. It's not like I'm even leaving the damn building."
"Eliot was rather forceful, Cassie," Sophie put in with her usual soft tones. "I wouldn't want to cross him on this."
Cassie rolled her eyes as she walked through the door. "For crying out loud," she murmured under her breath as she walked down the hall to Eliot's apartment. From her direction of movement the door was blocked by the frame and she couldn't see the abnormality until she was nearly face to ... well envelope, with it.
A rather daunting manilla envelope bearing her name was taped to Eliot's door.
Cassie's eyes flickered back down the hall to Nate's apartment before she tentatively reached up and removed the envelope from the door. Opening it she found a sight that enraged her more than just about anything else could have at the moment.
There was a note printed out in blood red ink on what looked like parchment. It read,
"There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die."
Beneath it, Cassie could feel photography paper. She pulled the photos to the surface and her gut clenched at the sight captured on the frame.
It was a stark grey tiled room. Like the ones they use in the movies for interrogation rooms. It held four people. Three women, one man. Two of the women were tied up expertly to chairs and the man was hogtied at their feet. Cassie squinted as she tried to see the details of his face. He looked familiar.
With a sharp gasp she realized she was looking at Joe Spencer. As far as she knew he was no relation to Eliot, but he had definite ties to Jack and the rest of the SGC. She'd met him once back when Jack was heading up the SGC. He'd seemed like a harmless enough security breach.
One of the woman had striking red hair that Cassie was all too familiar with. Behind Tesa the fourth woman stood with a pain stick clutched like a riffle in her hands. If Cassie had any doubts about what she must do, they disappeared when she identified the gut-wrenching terror in Tesa's eyes. How they had gotten ahold of her, she didn't know. All Cassie knew was that she needed to get Tesa back.
The other prisoner was a mystery to Cassie. She was dark skinned, perhaps twenty-seven years old, and a complete and utter stranger. For all Cassie knew, she was just some unlucky passerby who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There was another picture underneath the first one. Cassie edged it out, afraid of what it would hold.
It was a shot of the waterfront from a fairly high vantage point. She didn't know the spot, but she was pretty sure she could find it easily enough. There was a post-it attached to the picture with directions. And a time limit.
"Sunset. Come alone or their horrors are just beginning."
Like they were bricks of naquadah, Cassie dropped the papers in her hands and looked down at her outfit. She was going to kick some evil bitch's ass in jeans and high heeled ankle boots? They weren't even stilettos!
With a growl of determination Cassie opened the door to Eliot's apartment and walked into the bedroom, hardly sparing a glance at her surroundings to make sure there were no other nasty surprises lurking about. Once in the bedroom she went straight to the pile of clothes Sophie had supplied. There was a gauzy white sundress in there that would create the perfect effect she was going for.
"What are you doing?" Ganos Lal said as Cassie fished out the dress.
"Going to stop this nonsense," Cassie replied as she shucked off her shoes, followed closely by her jeans and shirt. "What'd you think I was going to do?"
Ganos's eyes widened in irritation, "I wasn't expecting you to change your clothes first!"
Cassie put the stretchy dress on over her undergarments and sighed when she looked down and could still see her black bra poking forth. Luckily she'd been gifted with a natural immunity to gravity for certain body parts so she simply maneuvered her way out of the bra and added it to the pile of clothes at her feet.
"I can't be expected to kick ass wearing jeans and heels. I'm not Sam. Or Buffy."
"Buffy?" Ganos asked, confusion evident.
"The Vampire Slayer," Cassie explained as she got out her duffle bag and searched through it for the gladiator sandals she kept in there. They had been a present from Janet on her sixteenth birthday. "Most impractical wardrobe for fighting evil I've ever seen."
"And just what do you intend to do?" Ganos asked again as Cassie laced up her new footwear.
Cassie looked at Ganos Lal without any humor or sarcasm. She looked at her as a lioness about to go out to battle looks at her fellows. "I'm going to use the gifts my mothers gave me."
Within another forty seconds Cassie on her way out the window, one hand firmly gripping her duffle as she made her way stealthily from the building and into the early afternoon. One way or another, this thing was going to end.
She'd left the others in Nate's apartment four minutes prior.
Ganos shook her head as she followed Cassie through the city. "I didn't know there were any vampires left on this planet to slay."
Cassie made her way to the waterfront, finding the vantage point she was looking for easily enough with the directions given on the ransom note. Her "Spidey-sense" went haywire as soon as she was in sight of the building. It was crawling the naquadah in the form of Jaffa, and most likely at least one Goa'uld.
One hand went to cover her stomach, still flat and taut from years of martial arts and yoga. With twins growing inside her, she wondered how long it would be until that changed. Her body was already changing to facilitate the growth, it was only a matter of time before she began to show.
Once that happened, she knew she'd begin to slow down. Be easier to catch and control for someone with the means and the will. Determination filled her with a hot fire that burned away the chill of the autumn air. She would end this now. In such a way that no one else would come after her or her children again. Ever.
Her shoulder length hair whipped around her face violently as the dress whipped around her body and she began the walk toward the building where evil lay in wait.
"Search inside of you," Ganos said beside her, a disembodied voice that no one else could see. "Find the place where you keep your courage and your strength. The rest will come to you as you need it to."
Cassie nodded, her short locks whipping around her face violently as her determined stride kept moving her closer and closer to her destination. She was going to end this. She was going to take back her life so that she could live it. She was going to kill the Goa'uld who would make a host out of one of her children and a guinea pig out of the other.
Six minutes after Cassie had left their company, Nate sent Parker to go check on her and see what the hold up was. Although it was entirely possible that Cassie was bent over Eliot's toilet throwing up, he sincerely doubted it.
Parker rushed back into Nate's apartment less than thirty seconds after leaving it, in her hand a pile of papers and photos. "She's gone," Parker said irritatedly. She threw down the pile of photos on the coffee table before spinning around and searching through the closet beside Nate's door.
"What are you doing?" Nate asked as he looked through the pictures with a disinterested eye.
"Going after her," Parker replied matter-of-factly, pulling a gun from the closet and strapping it to her ankle.
"Oh my God," Sophie whispered as she picked up one of the pictures. She showed it to Nate, "It's Tesa. Cassie went after Tesa."
Nate nodded, "Do we know who the other prisoners are?"
"What other prisoners?" Eliot asked as he and Hardison walked back in, still in costume from their task of stealing a school.
"How'd it go?" Nate asked first.
Hardison frowned even as he nodded, "We own it." He picked up one of the other pictures and swore. "Tiana." The hacker glared at the others as he asked, "What the hell happened?"
"Cassie's gone," Parker said. "She went after them."
Now it was Eliot's turn to swear as he turned toward the others. "Do we know where she went?"
Sophie held up the picture of the waterfront. "They wrote directions on the back for her to follow."
"Then let's go!" Eliot demanded, half way down the hall with Parker by the time the other three managed to get their heads on straight enough to race after them.
There were so many symbiotes swarming the building Cassie had been led to that it felt like her head was on fire. For a moment she wondered if it was how Teal'c felt when he was with his Jaffa family, or if the Jaffa were immune to such ... inconveniences.
Regardless, she knew she had to press forward and forward Cassie went. With a deep breath she searched deep inside herself for her protective instincts and pulled up something she hoped would act as a force field around her and her babies as she walked into the lion's den.
The first few Jaffa inside the warehouse attempted to jump her, but she pushed them back with the wave of her hand. Their bodies flew across the room and landed with a sickening crunch on the opposite walls. The next few Jaffa she passed raised their weapons as if to fire upon her. With a cold sort of detachment Cassie yanked their weapons from their hands and scattered them around the room with the power of a blink.
An evil, cold chuckle filled the air as the woman behind the recent attacks on Cassie's person became visible, her henchman Malichi by her side. "Your rediscovery of yourself will prove most useful to my experiments," Hera said with a malicious smile on her blood red lips.
"I wouldn't count on it," Cassie said, locking eyes with the false god even as her peripheral vision located the three hostages in the background. Rage and determination filled Cassie with a fire she could barely begin to control as her excess of emotion caused her newfound powers to surge, pushing every Jaffa and Goa'uld (aside from Hera) into the surrounding walls.
Hera tilted her head back and laughed at the display as she and Cassie started to circle each other. "Oh what a host you'd have made, Cassandra Fraiser."
Images started popping into Cassie's head about ways to deal with the threat before her. One of particular irony struck her as the perfect course of action. Hera opened her mouth to say something else but Cassie cut her off, "You stupid, stupid bitch. You want to know what your first mistake was? Coming at me in my own home. Want to know your next mistakes?" She motioned with her hand to the captives now behind her, "Kidnapping innocent bystanders." Cassie tried to bring out every ounce of bravery Sam kept on telling her she had as she kept at it.
"You think you scare me?" Cassie asked her, eyes still locked with soulless orbs, "I've witnessed the take down of over two dozen so called 'gods' in the past thirteen years. I've lost three mothers and found out that I've been implanted with pre-fertalized eggs by the monster who pretended to be a goddess.
"You came after my friends, and friends of my friends who had nothing to do with this," Cassie reminded her with a spit of disgust as she found what she had been looking for. "So now, I'm coming after you."
The Alteran tilted her head to one side with what could only be described as a homicidal smirk on her face. "There you are."
Tesa, Joe, and Tiana watched with eyes wide in horror as Cassie, dressed in her white gauze sundress and face devoid of makeup and adornment, lifted her hands and pulled at the air in a motion similar to one someone would use for pulling a rope.
Hera seized up, her own eyes wide in horror and shock as she was raised a foot off the concrete ground of the warehouse. Her mouth opened involuntarily and right from the center of her perfectly painted lips leapt the Goa'uld symbiote that had started all the trouble.
The asexual being shrieked as it flew at Cassie, but she had faster reflexes and caught it with both hands as the former host's body fell limply to the floor.
For the second time in less than a week SG-1 (including back up, this time) burst through the doors just a few moments after Cassie had defeated her enemies.
She didn't see them, but they saw her, as she took a bite out of the center of the symbiote's body and threw the now silent husk to the ground. The chef in her contemplated the flavors she was assaulted with as the naquadah rich blood hit her taste buds.
After she swallowed, Cassie shrugged to herself before turning around and seeing her audience. She spotted Mitchell, Teal'c and Daniel first and waved at them shyly.
"Please tell me you didn't just eat a Goa'uld symbiote?" Mitchell asked after ordering some men to untie the hostages while others got around to securing their prisoners.
"Just a bite," Cassie replied with a shrug. "Daniel, you said it was a fairly common occurrence in other worlds."
"And?" Daniel asked, kicking the dead symbiote with his boot.
She shrugged again, "Add a little tabasco and it wouldn't be half bad."
A/N: Just one or two more chapters to do and then this chapter in the tale is over.
Oh, and I'd like to apologize for all of the plot holes that have riddled this story. For the most part they're minor, but I've just re-read it and noticed so many of them that I'll go back and fix them after this is all over. Nothing major is changing, just making things more consistent.