"The tear in the dimensional pocket is closed." He reported. "That weird black mist is now trapped."
"You saw the true form of the Conduit?!" Holland Manners exclaimed.
"Yes. I've actually seen something like it before."
"Where?" He asked, bewildered.
"None of your business. Status, Colonel?" He asked Colonel Reynolds.
"We've secured the building. Your team is cleared for entry."
Alexander tapped his communicator. "Faith, you're on."
"On our way." She responded. A few minutes later, she, Gunn, Buffy and some of Gunn's crew entered.
"I'm reading 26 demons in the building. Follow me." They went floor by floor, eliminating the demons as they found them, which didn't take long.
"I still need to close the tear in the basement." He said. "Let's head down there." Soon the originally known tear was closed.
Once the demons had been eliminated and the tears closed, they returned to the SGC.
"We keep finding hints to connections to Pegasus." He said, after he'd finished his report. "The Monks of Dagan, for instance. But what I found in that dimensional pocket is more disturbing then humans that might have accompanied our people back here after they abandoned Pegasus. In our exploration of Pegasus, we encountered another race that Ascended."
"Yours wasn't the first?" Daniel asked, it never having occured to him that others might have also Ascended.
"Of course not, the universe is nearly 14 billion years old. Entire races lived and died long before we ever did. We have no idea how many Ascended. But we did encounter one such race. They fed on a variety of energy sources and appeared as black mists. Just like the one I saw in that dimensional pocket. Whether it's the same race as the ones we encountered in Pegasus or a totally different one, that just appears the same way, I don't know. But this one didn't recognize me as an Alteran, just as a human. It seemed surprised that I could see its true form. It said, I'm supposed to see what it wants me to see. It's trapped in that pocket now. But it worked with demons that prey on humans, so I'm not going to worry about it."
"The impact of arresting the employees of Wolfram and Hart and shutting down those tears is causing some other issues." Jack said. "They have branches all over the world apparently and were involved in more then just being dirty lawyers. They seem to have their fingers in alot of different pies, science, medicine. Their stock prices are dropping and so are the stock prices of companies they seem to be associated with. Several governments are trying to stabilize the situation. We think most will manage, but some may collapse. "
"Damn, one step forward, four steps back." Alexander muttered.
"Pretty much, yeah." Jack agreed. "In the short term, this is going to be nasty. In the long run, eliminating them may save alot of lives and make us more stable. Who knows how they might have been holding us back from advancing just so they could have control and power."
"There's also going to be alot more arrests happening." General Hammond said. "What the FBI is finding in their files is cause for concern as well. Blackmail, paid to create problems and undermine their clients opponents. CEOs, government agents and several polititans seemed to be involved with them. Recall elections will be happening. Their client's companies are also going to affected. We had no choice but to move fast on the information we had, waiting would have given them time to hide evidence or gain information they could have used to protect themselves. Or stonewall us. The number of investigations the FBI has tried is over fifty and none of them got anywhere because evidence kept being lost or misfiled. Witnesses died or recanted. With those tears closed, they lose a great deal of the power structure that made all that possible. But Jack's right, there's going to be consequences to this. We'll hopefully be able to ride it out."
"And more bad news, Ba'al has stepped into Anubis' former territory. He's claiming it for himself. He's now the Supreme System Lord of the Gou'alds." Jack said sourly.
"But in the good column, the Free Jaffa's ranks are swelling. The psychological bid for Dakara seems to have had at least some effect on the Jaffa. So, not a completely bad day." Daniel said.
"Once the dimensional energy has recovered, we'll close the other tears in L.A." Alexander said. "It'll take a day or two to recover. Meanwhile, the satellite is continuing to scan. When it finds another tear, we'll close it too."
"Hermiod will be here tomorrow." Carter said. "We'll install the transporter on the outpost first. Then you can tow it to the moon."
"And then we get back to work. We need Atlantis more then ever." General Hammond said. "We need to stabilize the galaxy so we can begin openly trading out there, it'll go a long ways towards stabilizing Earth's now shaky economy. The new technology we can develop will also help with that."
A/N The energy the Beast pulled out of the little girl looks suspiciously like a smaller version of the energy creature the Ancients were studying. The one McKay drained the personal shield getting rid of.