AU: When an exploration mission goes way off the left field, Jack and Sam are left to patch up their lives. Will that door stay open?
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are the property of MGM/Amazon. No copyright infringement intended. I am once again taking my favourite two Gaters for a walk in an Alternate Universe. Takes place after 5.05 Red Sky with some canon episodes skipped (overlooked) and others referenced.
Rating: Mature.
Chapter 34: Sacrificial Lamb
Wednesday – Dr Neil Brooks - USAFA Psychiatric Ward
I watched as James MacKenzie walked into the small office that he maintained here and closed the door, leaving his famous patient unattended in one of the many white padded rooms. Now was my chance, maybe the only one I would get. Looking over to the nurse that had been assigned to Major Carter as she came to the edge of the corridor, I saw her nod while she held up four fingers before walking back the way she came. Room E4. Perfect.
Apart from being a very well-known persona in the scientific community, I had inside information from a reliable source affiliated with a branch of the government called the NID that Major Carter was special. There was something in her blood left behind after she was invaded by an alien several years ago. The verbal report my contact provided sounded like it came straight out of Star Trek, but I wasn't going to discount his information if it could help my client. My very rich and influential client who had just managed to get a hold of one of these aliens in the hope it would cure him of his ailment. The problem was we needed to know how the remove it or kill it without killing our client. The Major was the key to potentially unlocking this capability.
Making my way down the corridor, I approached her room. Checking that all was clear, I slipped inside to find Nurse Stevens with a tourniquet already around the Majors limp arm. She looked up at me with swimming eyes, her back pressed into the corner of the room, knees up and head resting on the padded wall.
"What did James give her?" I asked the nurse.
"Diazepam." Stevens responded as she pressed the butterfly needle into the Majors arm a little rougher than normal making her flinch and attempt to pull her arm away from the nurse who held her fast as she continued to push the needle in.
"Ow." She cried out with a delayed reaction, her eyes drooping closed while she fought to keep them open.
"Nurse, please. Is that entirely necessary?" I berated the woman who – in my opinion – was being a little too heavy handed. Major Carter maybe a patient of dubious mental capacity, but she was still human and should be afforded respect. She merely smirked as she connected the first vial.
"Hi. What's your name?" The Major asked me while Stevens took her blood. Stevens had already confirmed that MacKenzie had taken four vials, so we couldn't chance taking too much more. I would have Stevens take more when she recovered and ship them out with my other samples.
Crouching down in front of the blonde beauty, I held my hand out. "Doctor Brooks. You can call me Neil." I told her with a smile. She smiled back languidly as her eyes drooped again. Rumour from the AF circles was that she was a formidable soldier, so Stevens would have to keep her in this state if she hoped to get more samples, or risk being injured. I wasn't sure if MacKenzie had any plans on keeping her medicated. We could only hope that he would continue her on this course since it gave my team easy access to her until such time as we could arrange a more permanent solution.
"Neil. Is that with two ells?" She asked, trying clumsily to hold up what looked like three fingers. My response of 'no' was met with a frown and a sigh. "I like the two ells. Jack has two ells." She drawled slowly then hazily blinked and smiled before talking again, "And an O at the front." She added with wide eyes and a slow nod to her very heavy head. It made me wonder how much diazepam MacKenzie had given her, because it should not be doing this to her unless he had administered lorazepam first and it had not been completely out of her system, or unless whatever secret her blood held was somehow exasperating the effect of the drug.
"Who is Jack?" I asked as I reached out to lift her sagging head. She had the bluest eyes I had seen in a long time. When combined with what I suspected was her natural blonde hair, she was remarkably beautiful despite the red rimming around her eyes caused by the medication. Having her as a subject could prove to benefit us in more ways than just medical.
"Jack's my friend." She slurred, then leant forward while biting her lip and looking around her. "I'll tell you a secret, he's also my baby's daddy. Shhhh!" She shushed loudly with a finger up to her lips and a childish giggle. Suddenly her face turned serious, she scowled. "NO! Not Jack! Jackson... remember?" She asked in a manner that suggested she was talking to herself. "Jackson, Daniel..." She blinked several times and shook her head. "I love Jack... son. Jackson... Neil... son... that was my mothers name." She rambled. "Ya can't tell anyone." She said with wide watery eyes before blinking again. What couldn't I tell anyone about? I had no idea who she was talking about. Suddenly, the information she had given me came together and a name formed in my mind.
Turning to Nurse Stevens, I asked, "Is she talking about Colonel Jonathan J. O'Neill?"
"Ah, Jonathan, not sure, but MacKenzie barred a Colonel Jack O'Neill and a Doctor Daniel Jackson from entry, something about them enabling her delusions." The nurse replied while she packed up the venepuncture kit and handed over the vials of blood I asked for. Jack was a well-known nickname for Jonathan or John.
"Interesting." I murmured pocketing my prize. My NID contact had also mentioned that this Colonel O'Neill was equally special. Something to do with his genetics. If this woman in front of me was carrying his child, then it was likely that whatever special gene this O'Neill had was passed onto his child. Of course, her jumbled ramblings meant that Daniel Jackson was just as likely the father. The only Doctor Daniel Jackson I had heard of was a discredited archaeologist that had disappeared from public life almost a decade ago after he was laughed out of multiple symposiums for his outlandish beliefs. The best way to determine if the foetus carried any special genes was an amniocentesis which I would be unable to perform here. Too many eyes. Yes, having her as a test subject just became a priority in more ways than one. Of course, with that came another set of challenges, namely how to keep her accessible without a form of sedation that would adversely affect her unborn child while protecting the doctors who were working with her.
I had her blood. From that I could determine how far along she was. An amniocentesis ran the risk of causing miscarriage inside the first trimester. If I wanted to do that, we would have to get her up to Seattle where she could not be found for an indeterminable amount of time. That was the hard part. The good thing was that we had time. My client, while very sick, was not in dire straits just yet. The longer we left her pregnancy to mature, the better. Checking my watch, I noted we had been here too long. I could not chance MacKenzie walking back in the room and finding us with her. It had been a stroke of luck to discover Major Carter's presence here.
Nodding to the nurse, I slipped out of the room and walked down the corridor as if my presence here were totally normal. Reaching the end of the corridor, I heard raised voices in James' office. Despite the frosted glass, I knew who was in there with him. None other than Doctor Janet Fraiser. That meant it was time for me to leave. She never really liked my presence here and always scrutinised why the hospital manager allowed me to have almost free reign under my guise of fostering young doctors' careers. That wasn't a complete fallacy, I did have an interest in ensuring the future of medical advancement was bright. Part of that included young, up and coming doctors. Another part of that was medical research that crossed a few lines but yielded results.
Heading out the side door, I grabbed my phone from my coat pocket and dialled the number I knew well while barely looking at the number pad.
"Andrew." I said when Doctor Johnston greeted me. "You'll never guess who is in the Academy psych ward." I announced cheerily.
"Who?" He responded with a disinterested tone, the whirring sounds of a centrifuge running in the background.
"Major Samantha Carter, United States Air Force." I replied with a smile.
"Yeah, nice try." Johnston replied with a mirthless chuckle.
"MacKenzie had her committed. She arrived a little over an hour ago, and guess who has her blood." I beamed down the phone while checking for traffic before crossing the street to my rental car.
"There is no way Doctor Fraiser would let her out of the mountain. No matter how crazy she was. You must be mistaken." Johnston stated while he shuffled things in the background.
"Nope, she's got a padded room all to herself." I said as I opened the door and slipped inside, then carefully deposited my ill-gotten vials into a cooler on the passenger seat. "Saw her name on MacKenzie's admission sheet. Schizophrenia." I added while clicking my seatbelt into place.
He was silent for a while as if he was expecting me to stop kidding around. "You're not kidding, are you?" He eventually asked, this time paying attention.
"This Doctor, is one thing I would never joke about." I told him firmly.
"This is… this could be just what we need. We could arrange to have her transferred to Smokey Point and then from there…"
"Hold on, wait Andrew. There is more." I interrupted him as I started the car and navigated my way down the street. I was due to return to Seattle tomorrow but given what we had I would be going tonight. Preparations were required if we were going to pull this off.
"More?"
"She's pregnant." I could hear him thinking of the possibilities, the concentration of the naquadah in the placenta and how that could be a breakthrough. The man was always thinking which is why I recruited him in the first place. "It might be Colonel O'Neill's." I added, waiting for him to put two and two together. If the information about O'Neill's genetic makeup was accurate, that child could be the answer to not just our client's medical issue, but all sorts of degenerative genetic diseases that plagued the human race. A combination of naquadah and whatever it was O'Neill had in his blood would likely yield blood cultures with some very interesting properties.
"How far along?" He asked eagerly. I could hear the excitement in his voice which meant he had joined the dots and realised that a child with both Carter and O'Neill genetics was – for lack of a better turn of phrase – a God send for our research.
"No idea, but likely still the first trimester." That was my best guess since all I had to go on was what Major Carter told me in her delirium. I didn't bother mentioning the chance that the child could just turn out to be ordinary if its father was Doctor Jackson. "Testing her blood will confirm gestation."
"Neil, you have to get her here. Somehow." He pressed. I agreed, but we didn't want to raise any suspicions. His idea of getting her to Smokey Point, while valid, was too close to our set up, despite our location being well hidden in an abandoned hospital. Moving her over the border would be preferable to having her go missing less than an hour from our location. My contact would know the best way to accomplish that without tipping off the FBI, or the Air Force.
"We will, though having her out of the first trimester would be better. We don't want to run the risk of terminating her pregnancy." I counselled. "The longer she is pregnant, the better."
"Conrad doesn't have that long, a few weeks at most." He reminded me. "Besides, having test subjects survive has never been the top of our priority." I nodded to myself while checking my mirrors before changing lanes just before the road my hotel was on. I'd check out and make my way to the airport. The airlines always had standby seats available and if they didn't, most airline staff were willing to bump another passenger for a little extra cash. It was the way things worked.
"Yeah, I know. Get a bed ready. I'll put in a call to my contact and see if can pull any strings." I told him with an inward sigh before hanging up. I had never met Frank Simmons, but I knew just from talking to him that he was a man that could make things happen. It wouldn't surprise me if he could arrange Major Carter to be transferred somewhere like Fort Logan without input from MacKenzie or Fraiser. The first thing they would know about her going missing was when she did not make it to her intended destination.
I reminded myself that what we were doing was for the greater good. Taking a life to potentially prolong many lives was worth the price. The research we are undertaking at the behest of Adrian Conrad could result in a breakthrough that we sorely needed to end the suffering of multitudes of everyday American's. The life of one USAF Major and her unborn child was a necessary sacrifice.
NB: Doctor Neil Brooks was the name on the office door that Jack and Maybourne broke into in 5.11 Desperate Measures. He is the doctor that took delivery of the symbiote from Harry.