Chapter 6

***************SGC Briefing Room***************

While the President was laughing, the three new people attempted to get their bearings. Jack was using the time to observe the new arrivals. The youngest of the three was a blond woman. She was dressed in black leather and a tactical belt with a gun on her fight side. There was an additional gun strapped to her left leg and from what he could tell she had at least three blades on her. Knowing that if she had that many visible weapons on her, than there were more that he couldn't see. Jack moved slowly toward the President just in case the young woman took exception to being laughed at.

The second person was a man, he had that nerdy quality that Daniel had back when he first joined SG1. Jack didn't dismiss him because he knew what Daniel was capable of when threatened, but he was not the biggest threat in the room. He did notice that the new guy stepped in front of the third person in their party as if to protect her. He didn't have a weapon on him like the blonde, but that didn't mean he was not dangerous or unarmed.

The third member of the group he was not able to get a good look at. She was dressed in business attire. A black skirt and blazer with black heals. He was sure that this had to be Helen Magnus. The blonde was too young and the man was out for obvious reasons.

"Jack, you don't have to protect me, none of these people will hurt me." The President spoke up when he realized that Jack had positioned himself to defend him if it became necessary.

"Yes, well Sir, never can be too careful, in case you didn't notice they are pretty heavily armed. The secret service would have my head if I let anything happen to you after I just reassured them that you would be fine." The President stepped out from behind Jack at about the same time that the brunette moved around her male companion; Jack and General Hammond were able to get a good look at her for the first time.

"Dear God!" Hammond blurted out. "Colonel, she could be…" he stopped himself from saying what he wanted.

"Cut her hair and make her blonde and yes Sir, she is the spitting image of Carter." Jack finished for him.

"Mom, what's going on and where are we?" Ashley wanted to know.

"I'm not sure Ashley, but we are in no danger here, are we Henry?" Helen was looking at the people in the room. She knew the President, and could recognize a military uniform from a mile away indicating this may have been the team he had referred to earlier.

"Not at all Helen, we just wanted to get this sorted out as fast as possible." He walked up to her and greeted her by kissing both cheeks. "Let me introduce you to General Hammond and Colonel O'Neill." He turned and brought the two groups to the middle of the room. "General Hammond meet Dr. Helen Magnus, her daughter Ashley and Dr. Will Zimmerman." He stood in the middle of the group. "General Hammond is in charge of the facility and Colonel O'Neill is in command of SG-1."

"Jack, have the rest of SG-1 paged; also grab the non-disclosure agreements from downstairs." He headed to the table. "Alright people, let's all have a seat, we have a lot to discuss" General Hammond took control of the situation. He sat in his seat at the head of the table and looked around.

The President sat down at the other end of the table across from General Hammond. The three new members all sat on one side of the table with Helen on the Presidents right. They took the seats that put them facing all the doors into the room.

"Right, now that we have all been civil," Helen started. "Henry want to explain what in the bloody hell is going on?"

"Actually ma'am we have some non-disclosure forms for you all to sign and then we can get down to explanations." Hammond leaned on the table. He looked at the President. "Mr. President, how is it that you never made the connection between Major Carter and Dr. Magnus?"

"Well George, in my defense, I only met her a few times just after I was sworn in, and I have only seen Major Carter in person once." He looked at her. She looked exactly like she did that last time he had seen her. He knew what she did with the Sanctuary Network and that she headed up the project, but beyond that not much else.

Jack returned with the paperwork for them to sign. He passed them out and gave them pens.

"What we are about to tell you has been classified under section 11-C-9 of the National Security Act. The President has told us that you are all authorized to receive full disclosure of what we do here in the mountain and other members of my team will be here to explain it to you better than I can; after you sign the papers in front of you." Jack took his seat to Hammond's right.

Ashley looked at the papers and picked up the pen. "Mom?" She noticed that her mother didn't make the same move to sign.

"Helen, trust me, you are going to want to sign. If you don't there is very little that we can disclose past the obvious reason for you being here."

"That's just it Henry, the obvious reason has not been made clear to me and my team." She looked around the room. "I still don't know why we are here, or what information you thought we needed that you transported us here the way that you did."

"Beamed…we beamed you here ma'am." Jack interjected. Everyone in the room just looked at him. He shrugged. "Well we did."

"Okay, what was so important that we had to be beamed here and since when has the American military had that capability?" She was still looking at Jack when she asked the question and he smiled at her for changing the wording. Before anyone could answer the rest of SG1 and Dr. Fraiser walked in.

"Um, mom…is there something you want to tell me?" Ashley was the first one that noticed the resemblance between her mom and the woman that just walked in the door.

"Jack, what's going on?" Daniel spoke up. Helen Magnus was not what he expected. The three members of SG1 stopped at the door.

"Well Daniel, Meet Dr. Helen Magnus, and her team. Everyone have a seat and we will get introductions out of the way." Sam stood at the door staring at the woman sitting next to the President. Jack got up from his seat and went to her.

"Sam, we will figure out was is going on. I promise." Jack put his hand on her lower back and moved her to the seat next to him. Janet moved with everyone else and sat next to Sam. She needed to be close enough to continue to monitor her for signs of shock. Daniel sat next to Janet and Teal'c took up a position behind Sam.

"Teal'c, have a seat." Jack said looking over his shoulder at him. "She is safe here."

Teal'c responded by bowing his head and took the last chair on "their" side of the table.

Everyone in the room kept looking between Helen and Sam, neither quite believing their eyes.

"Who are you?" Will was the first one to speak up.

"My name is Samantha Carter. You're Helen Magnus?" Sam was confused. She was expecting a woman twice her age, not…this. She turned to Jack. "Sir, did Thor get it wrong? Was there another successful experiment? I don't understand this. She can't be…" She stopped talking.

General Hammond turned to the Sanctuary team, "Alright people, if you want to know more, you need to sign those agreements." Helen picked up the pen and signed hers. Will and Ashley followed her example and did the same.

Ashley looked between her mom and the woman that could be her sister. "Okay we signed your papers. Who are you really?" She was looking at Sam. "Because I think my mom would have told me if she had twin."

"Ashley, I promise you that I don't have a sister, at least not one that would still be alive, even if my father kept it from me." She looked around the table. "So who wants to go first?"

General Hammond spoke up. "Dr. Magnus, let me introduce you to the rest of SG1. This is Dr. Daniel Jackson, Major Samantha Carter and Teal'c." He introduced Sg1 first, "And this is Dr. Janet Fraiser, she is the Chief Medical Officer for the base." He turned to his people. "You have figured out who Dr. Helen Magnus is, I'm sure. The rest of her team is Ashley Magnus, her daughter and Dr. William Zimmerman." He turned to Helen and her team.

"You are in a top secret military facility known to some as Stargate Command, to most it is NORAD located in Cheyanne Mountain, Colorado Springs. It is one of this world's best kept secrets. Dr. Jackson will go into more details about what we do here. Dr. Jackson, please keep it short, we have a lot to discuss." General Hammond turned the floor over and sat back in his seat.

"Hi." He started. "As General Hammond said, this is Stargate Command. The Stargate was found by Dr. Langford in 1928 in Giza. Long story short, it is a device that is used for instantaneous transport from one Stargate to another located on a different planet light years away. We routinely travel to these other planets to make contact with other cultures and to learn from them. Currently there are seventeen SG teams that go on missions through the Stargate." Daniel sat down in his chair. All of SG1 was looking at him like he was crazy.

"That's it Daniel?" Jack was amazed. All this time he had to sit through Daniel giving that briefing to various nations and dignitaries. "Where is the two hour explanation that I usually have to sit through?" Jack wanted to know.

"Well Jack, I think we have better things to discuss than the Stargate. What else do you think they need to know about it that I didn't say?" Daniel leaned forward and put his elbows on the table.

"Absolutely nothing Daniel, but you better give the same speech to everyone from here on out." Jack glanced over and was glad to see Sam smiling, even if Daniel was giving him a dirty look.

"So you are trying to tell us that your – team… travels to other planets through a magic portal?" Will was skeptical of what he was being told. "Can we see it?"

"William, we were just beamed from the Sanctuary to…here in the blink of an eye, and you don't believe them?" She looked across the table. "Don't feel too bad, he didn't believe me when I told him about what the Sanctuary did either. It took me showing him and even then our first few missions were…interesting." She smiled.

"It's not that I don't believe them, it is just a bit far out there and still doesn't explain why we are here." Will commented.

"Well, you're here because Helen refused to come without you, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Helen is the only one that we really needed." The President explained to them. "But like SG1, you are apparently a packaged deal."

"Henry, Will is correct, you still have not told me why I am here." Helen pointed out. "I can assume it has to do with why we look alike." She looked as Sam. "What does this have to do with your Stargate?"

"Daniel mentioned that when we travel off world – that's what we call going through the Stargate – we meet other cultures. One of the cultures that we met were the Asgard. They are an advanced race that has spent years studying the people of earth. One of the Asgard that has been studying the people of earth was Loki." Sam started her portion of the explanation.

"As in the Norse God Loki?" Helen asked for clarification.

"Well sort of. They do pose as gods to worlds that are less developed than they are." Jack interjected.

"Fascinating." Helen was soaking up the information a bit impatiently waiting for the part concerning her.

General Hammond let them finish their side comments before picking up where Sam left off. "Just over a year ago, a young man attempted to gain access to the base using Colonel O'Neill's identification and claiming to be Jack O'Neill. He knew classified information that was impossible for him to know." He was talking primarily to the Sanctuary team since his team had lived through it. "During the course of our investigation, we discovered that the 16-year-old was in fact a clone of Jack O'Neill." General Hammond paused to let the information sink in, hoping that Helen would come to her own conclusion about the situation. "We made contact with Thor. He helped us set a trap for Loki who was apparently doing unsanctioned experiments on the people of earth." He sighed. "The real Jack O'Neill was on board Loki's ship in orbit around the planet."

"So you're saying that she is my mom's clone?" Ashley was trying to follow along, but fighting was more her thing than long boring briefings. "I think I liked it better when I thought you were her twin."

"Ashley!" Helen scolded her daughter.

"Until we met your mom, we believed that was the case, but now we are not so sure." Jack said. He looked at his team and General Hammond. "Does this make since to anyone else given what Thor told us this morning?" Jack looked at Sam. "Sam was cloned to give the anomaly in her DNA a chance to evolve farther," He gestured to Helen. "But they are close to the same age. Why clone her at all when he could just continue to monitor the original source." He missed the look that Will gave Helen and continued on. "Unless we are looking at a second clone. Maybe the data was wrong and there was a second successful attempt." Jack put words to what SG1 had been thinking since they met Dr. Magnus.

"Colonel O'Neill, you mentioned something about an anomaly in my DNA, what was different about it?" Helen needed to know how much this alien knew about her.

"Sam?" Jacked looked to her for the explanation.

"Loki was unable to identify a genetic sequence in your DNA that was different from the average human and thought if he had more time to study it as it evolved over time he could figure it out. Using DNA he gathered from you in 1971 he began attempting to create a clone." Sam looked around to make sure that they were following along. "There were several unsuccessful attempts since he was trying to create a clone that would be born and age normally instead of a full size adult."

"What was so important about the DNA? If they are an advanced race, why do they care in the first place?" Helen wanted to know.

"The Asgard are a dying race. They have cloned themselves for thousands of years, but they have no original to work from. From the way Thor describes it the clones are breaking down." Daniel jumped in.

"So they are making copies of copies and they are degrading?" Helen grasped the situation very quickly. "So this alien found something in my DNA that he thought would help with the problem, and in response to that created you to see how the abnormality evolved?" She looked at Sam. "Do you have the same abnormality that I have?" Helen was concerned about how this would affect Samantha in the future.

"We don't know if I have it, we are planning on running some tests to see what we can find, but in the end I think we will have to rely on Thor. He will be able to tell us more than our medical science will." Sam continued to talk directly to Helen. "But it is not possible that I am cloned directly from you," Sam elaborated. "There was a mistake in the data somewhere. We need to talk to Thor."

Helen looked at her daughter and then at Will.

"I don't think that he was wrong." She held up her hand to keep Jack from interrupting her. "I think that it is about time I told you what we do at the Sanctuary, and exactly who I am."