Chapter 1 - The Beginning...The Re-Beginning?

At last.

Peace and quiet and blessed darkness.

Dying was supposed to be like that; agony, followed by numbness and eventual acceptance of cold, absolutely empty darkness and then…whatever. At least that was the idea John entertained before he was cheated. A never-ending white light that came without warning assaulted him for what felt like forever. It wasn't just the light show either. There was a cacophony of unintelligible sounds, fluctuating in and out with the brightness of the light, accompanied by an overload of zipping past images that made no sense to him except filling his mind with dizzying streaks of colours.

Now, finally, it was over, gone without any warning, just the way it had begun.

The blessed peace lasted maybe about a minute or an hour, he wasn't sure how the time worked in the plane of death just yet, before his stomach decided to announce he was starved with a growl that would have put a lion to shame. Before he could wonder about how that was possible, the sharp smell of antiseptic invaded, heightened by his hunger, inviting a bout of nausea into the mix.

He was in an infirmary, somewhere rather uncomfortably hot and dry. Somebody was snoring loudly to his right. It was a very distinct sound, two deep, ragged breaths followed by a sound of a pig being bludgeoned to death. Rinse and repeat. It was a strangely familiar sound.

"Major, how are you feeling?" That nasal voice married to the southern twang was also familiar. Where the hell was he? How the hell did he get here? Why the hell was he here?

How come he was not in hell? Unless these noises were specially designed to make him suffer in some scary yet undefined way?

"I know you're awake," the voice said, impatiently. "Come on now, open your eyes."

It took him a few tries to unglue his eyelids as he was ordered. When he finally did, he immediately wished he hadn't. The glare of the penlight that welcomed him back to the waking world was a thousand times worse than hellfire, he was sure.

He groaned and tried to move his head so the agony inside his skull wouldn't end up melting his brain. The light and the nasty woman who held it were insistent. After a prolonged moment of that torture, she declared him alive and moved on to other things.

He grabbed the water he had on his bedside table and finished the bottle in one long swallow. That made him feel marginally better. Headache and nausea receded to manageable levels, making him notice, for the first time, that he was wearing desert camos.

Now, that was enough of a shock to make him sit up straight, pain momentarily forgotten. Yes, he had been wondering about death and hell earlier, and he was sure he had a good reason for it too…although he couldn't quite remember why he had been thinking about that.

But, now, this, him in his desert camos, with Lt. Larson snoring on the next bed with his entire left leg in a cast…this entire infirmary he had frequented more than a decade ago…This was wrong.

He looked at the back of his hands. They trembled a little. They also looked different. Tanned to hell, but less hairy and scarred?

There was something terribly wrong. He was wrong. He felt wrong.

Images of a pale, white-haired man with two machine guns, a Silver Bullet trailer and a strange man surrounded by too much light, floated across his mind's eye, confusing him even more.

"You can't leave just yet, Major," another petite woman in scrubs walked over to him. Her name tag identified her as a nurse 'Miller.'

"I–" he winced and cleared his throat before speaking again. "Uh, wasn't trying to–"

"On a scale of one to ten, how's your head feeling?"

"About a six," he answered distractedly, looking around as the more familiar yet wholly wrong things made themselves known. "What happened?"

"An accident at the landing site," Miller said, frowning a little. "You and three others got hurt when–"

"Hammock dipped his bird wrong and crashed into a parked truck." he completed her sentence. He remembered this incident. He remembered the fucking concussion that grounded him for a solid week…or at least, it was supposed to, until–

"Yes, now, I'm going to go get your painkillers," Miller told him, diverting his attention from that confusing line of thought. "We have to keep you overnight for observation and then you'd be free to leave, light duty, of course. Dr Ram will have to sign you off with the note."

"Sure, thanks," Sheppard mumbled as she walked away.

Then it was just him and the disaster in his mind that refused to make sense…plus, Larson's infernal snoring.

Fuck… fuck. Fucking fuck!

Granted, that wasn't his best line of cussing. Concussions and near-death experiences scrambled his brain far too much for that. But, if what he knew, and felt in his gut were correct, there seemed to be a time-travelling stint involved.

He felt stupid even thinking about it.

Now that the initial shock had faded, the memories, as fresh as fucking daisies, let themselves in and found their seats in their assigned rows.

He knew a few things for certain.

Until about a few hours ago, he was a washed-up detective at Metropolitan Police HQ in Las Vegas.

He was just a little over forty-five years old.

He was neck-deep in a serial killer case with seven shrivelled corpses and unexplained causes of death.

He was hunting an alien who sucked people's life for sustenance. The same alien was also in the process of making a gadget to call home, which was in another freaking galaxy, mind you, when it decided to hunt him back.

In a forgotten corner of the Nevada desert, he made a call to a guy named McKay and got shot to death for his troubles.

He clawed at his t-shirt and looked through the neck opening at his chest- his unmarked chest. He ran a hand over it to be sure. There were no bullet wounds. It was like that incident - or the miserable years of his life before that - never happened.

Instead, here he was waking up in an infirmary in an Air Force base in Afghanistan with a concussion from a training accident. For the second time. A good decade and a half younger if the date indicated on his wristwatch was actually correct.

If things were going to continue to happen the way he remembered, in about twenty minutes, he was going to meet the four people who changed his entire goddamned life.

Even though he hadn't the slightest clue what he had done to earn it, it seemed that an impossible twist of fate had given him another chance to fix that colossal fuck up.

He would have been on his knees by then, praying to the Almighty, had he not given up on the Big Man a lifetime ago.

The four assholes - Colonel O'Neill, Agents Crammer and Winslow, and the guy who never gave his name - walked in right on time, rubbernecking over the beds until they found him.

"Major John Sheppard," the one who was about to introduce himself as Crammer said. "I'm agent Crammer with the NID. Please come with us. We need to speak to you in private."

John didn't make a fuss when they led him to a small private office on the other side of the hallway from the infirmary. It was freaking weird to be living his life on repeat. He just didn't know yet what was to be done about it.

"We have a mission for you, in two days you are to carry out a transport–" Crammer started off the moment the door closed behind them. The Colonel and the other agent, Winslow, went around the table to stand by the welded-shut and burglar-proof window. The other one took a seat and crossed a leg over a knee.

"Umm, I'm grounded," Sheppard cut the agent off and took a seat across from the other guy. "I got knocked out by a flying piece of steel."

"A special sign-off can be arranged for you for twelve hours, Major," Winslow piped up next to the Colonel who nodded once. "Don't worry about it."

"Okay…" Sheppard gave them his best curious look and waited.

"In two days, you will fly a Blackhawk to bring home two very important passengers," Crammer went on just the way Sheppard knew he would. "Dr Keffler and his daughter, Anna, will be waiting for you at this location." the man said, extending him a piece of paper he made no move to take. "Here are the landing site coordinates. Your mission is to retrieve Dr Keffler and Anna, and then safely transport them both to this location."

"Who are they?"

" They are the two humans who are vital to the existence of the rest of the population in this entire world," Winslow declared, sounding like a fanatic rather than an agent of the National Intelligence Department. "The knowledge they carry is to be protected at all costs."

The piece of paper was placed on the table before him and he saw the set of numbers he still remembered like it had been carved into his brain.

"How do I recognize them?" he asked, only sparing a glance at the note.

"They'll recognize you. All you have to do is land your craft at this place on time and announce yourself as the 'Courier.' They'll join you after they confirm themselves as the 'package'.

"Very cloak and dagger like," Sheppard drawled, marvelling at the unoriginality of the set-up. It still amused him a great deal, even for the second time. "Passwords and counter passwords."

"Do this for your country and for your fellow humans." The guy who had been silent until now thundered.

The voice caught him off guard even though he knew it was coming. The weird flash in his eyes and the echoing voice were still exactly the same. Sheppard had dismissed the strange demeanour of the man the first time, thinking he had seen things. But, now, seeing and hearing it for the second time, he wondered if this was not a human . McKay had gone on and on about aliens and other worlds. Maybe this was another species. The word 'Goa'uld' made a round in his head, telling him that was what the guy was. He had no idea what that meant, or how he had learned that word.

Pushing away his epiphanies to be dealt with later, possibly over a bottle of bourbon, Sheppard glanced at the piece of paper with the coordinates.

"Except this is a no-fly zone," he pointed out. "It's behind enemy lines. I'm not authorised to fly that far and someone from that side or this side is going to take me down if I do."

"You're an experienced pilot, you know how to fly under enemy fire, you need to do this, Sheppard," the Colonel who was going to be introduced as 'Jack O'Neill' at the end of this meeting, finally intervened.

The memory of the name now came attached to an image of a tall, grey-haired man with a pair of intense brown eyes. He somehow knew that this short man with a bald pate and a moustache was not the Colonel he was pretending to be. The confusing information his brain seemed to have accumulated during his demise was not doing his headache any favours. He tried not to squeeze his eyes shut and groan.

"You're the only pilot in his base with the necessary skill set to see this through. The fate of humanity is in your hands."

"Yeah, right," he muttered. "You didn't answer the question…sir."

"This is an off-the-books operation, you will get a bird and flight clearance," the Not-O'Neill continued, not even slightly perturbed by his disrespect, confirming that this guy was no Air Force Officer. "We'll try to keep you from friendly fire from this end, after that you're on your own."

"Thank you, sir, for clearing that up." was all he said, pretending to consider the mission.

"However, once you accomplish the mission, agent Crammer will retrieve you a the handover point–"

"You understand, this cannot be in your service records," Said Not-O'Neill. "Nevertheless, your achievements will be communicated to proper channels–"

It went on like that for thirty more minutes, with them detailing each and every little thing he was supposed to do and not do during the hush-hush mission. After swearing him to secrecy in a hundred different ways and insisting on his signature on a hundred different pages and contracts, they finally left him there. He was told to expect a transfer the next day to another base where he was supposed to pick up the bird for the mission.

He sat there, not bothering to return to the infirmary as he had done the last time. He figured the next logical step would be to try and locate the real Colonel Jack O'Neill, to find out if he was aware that he was being impersonated. That fact alone should keep him from too much trouble for breaking the confidence he had just signed away on a number of legal pages. The only problem was, he had only about fourteen hours to track down the mysterious Colonel who was probably back home. And then he'd have to work on how to persuade the man to listen to his story, which he had to admit when put into words, would make him look mentally ill. Lost deep in circling thoughts, he didn't even hear the mysterious Colonel entering the office until he banged the door loudly behind him, startling Sheppard bad enough, he almost toppled off the chair.

….

O'Neill had thought the days the Ancients and the Ascended beings scrambled his brains and plagued his dreams were over. Evidently, that was not the case. Not by a long shot. This time it wasn't even one he was acquainted with either. If he recalled correctly, Orlin was the Ancient who had the hots for Carter. This guy having 'any time access' to his head was not a good sign. He did not want to be on any Ancient's mailing list - dreaming list? Invasion list? - as a recipient, least of all Carter's ex-amores.'

Despite what he wanted, Orlin had dropped into his head last night, dispersing his rather nice dream about a peaceful fishing trip to harp about a 'John Sheppard' and grave dangers and another bunch of assholes who wanted to conquer the galaxy. O'Neill had ended up promising to search for the guy just to get the man on the cloud to shut the fuck up.

And now, he was here. A 'Major John Sheppard' popped up on the national database not even a minute after Carter entered the name in the system. The man - a kid, really - he was looking for was actually real and he was here. In the back end of nowhere flying high-risk recon missions and conducting combat search and rescue.

O'Neill had to admit that the kid's service record was impressive, even with a warning here and a note there about his propensity to bend the rules or circumnavigate them entirely to complete his missions. He didn't necessarily consider the ability to think outside the box was a bad quality for a pilot, especially one with fighter training and currently attached to special forces.

Now, he just had to find out what the little shit had done to catch the attention of a rather annoyingly persuasive Ascended being who went by the name, Orlin.

He found him not in the infirmary as the base CO informed him, but in the closet of an office in the opposite hallway. He was seated by the small table and had his head buried in his bent arms, looking for all the world as if he was trying to hide away for a minute. O'Neill didn't need to see the face of the kid. The spiky mess on his head - the one that had actually earned him a demerit on personal grooming - was enough to convince him that he had found exactly who he was looking for.

O'Neill banged the door closed to announce his arrival. The kid was startled badly and almost fell off the chair. He walked around the table and settled on the seat across from him and took a good look, trying to figure out what was so special about this pale kid with bad hair and red-rimmed eyes.

"Colonel Jack O'Neill," Sheppard muttered, looking dazed. "Sir. I was just trying to figure out how to find you."

"Hah, lucky for you, I was doing the same thing. And looks like I had better luck."

"Boy am I glad you did," Sheppard mumbled under his breath, looked up and winced, realising he was heard.

"So, Major, you wanna tell me what this is about?"

"Sir?"

"Why you were trying to find me," O'Neill had to remind him. Maybe he really was concussed.

"Sir, not even half an hour ago, I had a meeting with four people," Sheppard said. "Two identified themselves as agents of the NID, one didn't give a name and the last one said his name was Colonel Jack O'Neill, except I knew he wasn't."

"Now that's a new one, even for me," O'Neill admitted, feeling disgruntled. Why would somebody impersonate him of all people on this side of the world? He hadn't been active in a theatre on Earth for quite some time now. He crossed his arms and sat back on the chair, getting as comfortable as possible. "Why don't you tell me everything from the beginning, kid? Leave nothing out."

Sheppard took the order for what it was and started to talk. The next hour turned out to be extremely interesting, to say the least. The kid opened up like a broken dam, and O'Neill had a feeling he had been swimming in the deep for too long by himself, and he seemed relieved to finally let it all out.

Sheppard told him about the meeting that happened the first time, and how he did everything according to the set of highly unorthodox orders he received. How he ended up getting kicked out with a dishonourable discharge around false charges as a result. He described how his life spiralled afterwards into depression caused by self-recrimination, anger and betrayal. He went on to tell him about the way he managed to carve out a living by becoming a detective in Las Vegas. Then, of course, he revealed how he ultimately had the misfortune to encounter another assholish, people-eating alien race called the Wraith.

That was how he had attracted the attention of the SGC. He had met with Dr McKay - who sounded rather tame in his future version compared to the one they had for now by the sounds of it - and how he learned about Ancients, Wraith and spaceships. The kid had then found the troublemaker alien for the future McKay and had been forced to stop a bullet with his breastbone in exchange for saving the world.

That was when Orlin had stuck his glowing nose into Sheppard's business.

"Orlin," O'Neill interjected, earning a confused frown from Sheppard. "The Glow-Stick goes by the name, Orlin."

"Yes, him," Sheppard nodded, shrugging. "Then I woke up, here in the infirmary, fifteen years winded back of my life with all my memories intact, and some other memories I have no idea how they got in here." he waved at his forehead.

"Yeah, well, they can do that kinda thing, when it suits them," O'Neill told him. "Anyhow, the guy you met, the one that sounds like Darth Vadar on steroids, that's a Goa'uld."

"A Goa'uld," Sheppard repeated, his expression twisting a little. "Another alien?"

"Yup. A parasite, a worm-like thing that needs to burrow around the spine and connect to another's brain stem to survive. Then they suppress the mind of their hosts and take over."

Sheppard shuddered. O'Neill felt for him. His introduction to the programme hadn't been the smoothest. First, a Wraith, then an Ascended, followed by a Goa'uld. All bad apples before the ones that were actually not that bad.

Then it was O'Neill's turn to give Sheppard a crash course on the Goa'uld, the Jaffa and the Trust infestation that had taken root in too many places of the government via a network of spies and double agents. There was a high possibility that the people who had talked to Sheppard were agents of the Trust.

"So, these two people that I'm supposed to chauffeur around, they must be valuable to this Goa'uld network?" Sheppard said slowly, calculatingly. "Is there a way I could take them somewhere else? an SGC base or something."

O'Neill liked the way the kid thought. But, he couldn't just order the pilot to deviate from a planned operation just like that, especially when he knew that the Trust had steps in place to prevent such things.

"They want you to fly their bird, Sheppard, which means your flight is going to be monitored throughout, and if they spot the slightest change, they are going to blow you up remotely," he explained. "They'd rather destroy their resources than let them fall into our hands."

"They were rather persistent about all the details."

"The best option I can give you is to take you with me now. I'll arrange your transfer to SGC from here," O'Neill said, making up his mind. "You know too much. You back out now, they'll just send someone to kill you, or arrange an accident–"

"Or flush my life down a toilet just a little earlier than they originally planned," Sheppard muttered.

"Or that."

Then the Major looked away, tapping a quiet rhythm on the wooden table in a distracted manner, thinking. "Sir, I could always complete this mission in a way that might make me valuable to them," he said softly.

It was O'Neill's turn to be intrigued. "What do you mean?"

"I know exactly what is going to go down, sir, every little thing that's going to happen. I know that these two people don't get to show up at the pickup site on time, and I know I'm gonna have to dodge a few tails because a bunch of Russian commandos also want these two…. I just thought that we could use that."

"You know, they say that time travel could affect the events of the past. Just the fact of you and me having this meeting could impact the event you have already lived through," O'Neill felt the need to point out. "At least that's what Carter says. Or it could have been Spock. I'm not sure."

"But the meeting I just sat through, that was exactly the same: the names, the coordinates, their words, nothing was changed." Sheppard insisted.

O'Neill raised an eyebrow inquiringly. "You have an idea you wanna share?"

He indeed did. Sheppard wanted to turn the entire thing around to their advantage. A little delay here, a fight there, a few misdirections and a whole lot of moving parts that depended on his luck, skill, his handlers for the mission and his package.

Since he already knew them and how they reacted in certain situations already, Sheppard was confident he could make his risky, chaotic plan work. The end result would be a double agent of their own, deep undercover inside the belly of the beast of the Trust. If the kid succeeded, he would become a goldmine of intel.

"It's a damn crazy plan, kid," O'Neill said. He had to give him that. "I can't order you to go through with it."

"You're not ordering, sir, I'm offering," Sheppard grinned. Then he turned serious. "Orlin told me to make the right choices, just before he did…whatever he did. This feels right, sir."

O'Neill considered it. On the one hand, it was the most unorthodox way to go about planning an undercover operation. And there were just too many risks. He couldn't really be sure if sending the kid to a situation where he had a big chance of getting killed was what Orlin wanted him to do. On the other hand, Sheppard had a few good points. He was in a rather unique position to do exactly as he suggested, He already had some solid insider information. Now that Sheppard had given them the names, Carter could always dig in from their end to see what they could dig up about these two characters as well. But, Sheppard could always get them more once he was within their circle.

With a long sigh, he made up his mind. If Orlin didn't approve, he could always send him a memo in his dreams.

"What do you need from me?"

"Just that you become my handler, sir," Sheppard said instantly. "I don't want to transfer to NID. I need you to keep my identity to yourself until I invoke Sanctuary."

This time, O'Neill was surprised, He hadn't realised that the Major had thought that far ahead. Maybe he wasn't as impulsive or crazy as his service records made him seem to be.

"You plan to stay immersed for that long?" he had to inquire because that archaic law came into play when the Air Force had to invest in very-long term undercover ops.

"If it can help us to take out the Trust network, won't it be worth it?" Sheppard asked quietly.

"It would," O'Neill admitted. "It definitely would."

Sheppard nodded. "Then I'll do it, sir."

"Let's go find something to eat," O'Neill said, standing up from his chair. Sheppard followed. "Then I'm going to make some calls and see about going to get your paperwork done in a few hours."

"Thank you, sir."

O'Neill shook his head as they left the office together in the direction of the mess hall.

"Don't thank me. I feel kinda terrible about this."

"It'll be fine, sir," Sheppard flashed a smirk.

"Let's hope so," he muttered distractedly, already making mental plans to list things he would have to do as a handler to keep this operative who fell into his lap out of nowhere, safe as he possibly could during his mission.