I was planning on using this to start part two of the series, but as I wrote it, it felt more like another chapter in part one. So the next few chapters will continue part one and then I will pick up part two at a more appropriate spot in the story.
I don't own Stargate or Sanctuary but enjoy writing about them.
Previously:
"There is no diversity in the appearance of the child. She, and it would have to be female, would look just like the person who contributed the sample." Janet was starting to understand where this was going, even if Sam wasn't quite there yet. "But since we don't have the technology to do this, it would never have occurred to us either." Janet finished.
"But the Asgard do; they just didn't understand what they were doing. Sam, you're not my clone." Helen reassured her, "You're my daughter."
And Now:
The entire room sat in stunned silence, trying to grasp the meaning of what she had just said. It was as if her words had hit them like a ton of bricks, leaving them struggling to process it all. Heimdall stood still, gazing at Helen intently, pondering the meaning behind her words, weighing them against what he knew of the experiments.
"It is possible," Heimdall said slowly, "I would like time to study this theory more in-depth." Before anyone could say anything in response, he was gone.
"So, what you're saying is…," said Jack.
"For Sam to be a clone, the Asgard should have used stem cells or duplicated my DNA like they do when cloning themselves, but according to this file, that is not what he did."
"Henry, we have a sister. How cool is that!" Ashley said as she smacked him on the arm.
"Totally awesome." He elbowed her in return.
"Wait, sister?" asked Jack, motioning between Henry and Ashley.
"Ashley is my biological daughter; I adopted Henry when he was eight." Helen clarified.
"General, may I contact my dad? Now would be a good time to let him know what's happening."
"Of course, Major. Head down to the control room and dial the Tok'Ra. With any luck, he'll be available."
"Yes, Sir." She slipped out of the room without meeting anyone's gaze. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally reached the bottom of the stairs. When she realized she was alone, she let out a breath she didn't even know she was holding. She just needed a minute to process yet more information. She realized that her earlier thoughts about being adopted were not far off the mark.
Despite Sam's departure downstairs, Jack continued encouraging Helen to talk about her work. He leaned closer and maintained eye contact, his tone warm and reassuring. "Does that mean you will finally tell us what had Loki so excited about you?" Jack asked.
"Not yet." She addressed Jack before turning to General Hammond, "You said dial, not call; an interesting distinction."
"Picked up on that, did ya?" Jack quipped.
General Hammond shot Jack a look before answering, "Yes," he confirmed, "She will contact her dad, who is on another planet, by having them dial the gate." He paused before offering, "You can watch if you want. Not much to see unless he can dial back and come immediately." He turned back to Jack. "Daniel, if you would open the blast doors, they can all watch from up here; that includes you, Mr. President, if you're interested."
"Like I would miss that." He got up and followed Daniel across the room, with the Sanctuary team trailing behind him. Daniel pushed the red button and watched the shield rise, slowly revealing the gate room below.
"Best view in the mountain," Daniel said.
"I was expecting something more extraterrestrial than a stone ring as a portal to other planets." Said Henry.
"Just wait for it. Yep, any minute now…" Jack said from next to General Hammond.
"How does it work?" Helen asked.
Before Daniel could explain, the alarm sounded on the base, indicating they were dialing the gate, and the inner ring started rotating.
"That's a little better." Henry laughed.
The chevrons surrounding the gate illuminated individually as each coordinate was successfully locked in.
"Sam is much better at explaining than I am, but the symbols on the gate act as an address. To find a destination within any three-dimensional space, you need six points; the seventh symbol acts as a point of origin. Each planet has a unique set of glyphs, and each one has a different point of origin symbol."
"So, each constellation acts as a reference point in space, and when you use all six, it pinpoints a location? Fascinating. But there must be a hundred million combinations; how did you find one that worked?"
"That's right about the constellations," Daniel said, a bit shocked. Helen looked over at him, waiting for him to continue his explanation, "Oh...a cover stone was found with the gate; it only contained one set of glyphs; they were unable to dial the gate because the seventh symbol, the point of origin, was not with the main set for the gate address and looked slightly different... It took me two weeks to realize that the inner ring was not a language but constellations; how did you…"
"I have had many years of looking at the stars, Dr. Jackson. When Henry was young, he was fascinated with astronomy. To encourage his interest, I bought him a telescope and books. We spent countless nights mapping the sky together; I recognized some of the more common ones."
Before they could continue, the seventh chevron locked, and the unstable vortex of the wormhole blasted forward, surprising most of them who were looking out the window.
"Okay, now that's a bit more like it," Ashley said.
"What exactly are we looking at?" Henry asked.
"The event horizon of a wormhole. You won't see much; Sam will only talk to them on the radio to see if her dad can come home. If he can, we will shut down the gate and let them dial in so he can come through." Daniel explained. "We can all have a seat; if she can reach him, we will get notified that there is an incoming wormhole; if not, this is as good as it gets for now."
"So, matter can only travel one way through the wormhole?" Henry asked.
"Indeed," Teal'c said, speaking up for the first time since everyone's arrival.
"Which, as it turns out, is good for us, given the number of hostile worlds we have dialed. If they had been able to come through a wormhole, we opened…that would have been very unpleasant." Jack said.
"Unpleasant. That's one word for it, Jack," Daniel replied.
"Yes, well, you know me."
While everyone was resuming their seats, their bantering allowed Sam to finish in the gate room and return to the briefing room.
"Major, were you able to reach your father?"
"No, sir." She said as she returned to her seat at the table. "I talked to Garshaw, and she told me that my dad is on the new Tok'Ra home world, and it doesn't have a stargate yet. Her team was tasked with moving the last of the Tok'Ra. They are loading the last of the gear and Tok'Ra onto a ship and taking the stargate. The new home world is outside the known network of the Goa'uld stargates. According to her, they will be on the current planet for the next few days, and then it will take about a week to recalibrate the Stargate to the new coordinates."
"So, two weeks or more, depending on whether they give Dad the message right away?" Jack asked.
"Something in that time frame, yes, sir."
"Maybe we can talk to Thor when he gets back and hitch a ride to pick him up," Jack said. He turned to Helen, "Okay, we showed you ours, etc., etc... your turn, as it were."
"Okay." Rising to her feet, she held everyone on the SG team in a steady gaze, making sure to make eye contact with every one of them. "I am the head of the Global Sanctuary Network. I have, at some point or another, run twenty-two Sanctuaries across the world." With a subtle movement, she leaned forward over the back of her chair. This small gesture conveyed a sense of attentiveness, engagement, and openness to the conversation at hand. As she unraveled her hands, she contemplated how best to communicate the essence of her profession.
"Yes, so the president said. I'm assuming you are about to tell us what you do and what abnormals are?" Jack pushed for more.
"No," she said, surprising even herself.
"No?" Jack parroted back to her.
"I'm going to do you one better." She smiled.
"What?" Jack asked.
"Magnus, is that really a good idea with everything that's happening back home?" Will asked, knowing exactly what she was planning.
"Oh, most definitely not," she smirked.
"What?" Jack tried again.
"But you're going to do it anyway," he said, making it a statement rather than a question.
"Absolutely!"
"If I have to ask 'what' one more time…"
"I'm inviting the five of you to return to the Sanctuary with us. We will give you a tour, answer any questions you may have about what we do, and tell you what set all of this in motion."
*********Science Ship in orbit around Earth**********
Helen and her team had not been at the SGC for more than an hour before she announced that she would not share the information the president wanted, much to his frustration. After she had refused for the third time, citing the need to know, Jack contacted Heimdall. They were immediately transported to his ship so Helen could finish her treatment.
Much to the disappointment of those who had never been on a spaceship before, they had been transported to the main medical facility in the center of the ship, so there were no windows to look out of. The sight of nearly fifteen Asgard deeply immersed in their respective experiments was nothing short of exhilarating and, for some, a fair exchange. It was as if the room was pulsating with the energy of their collective knowledge and expertise, which had Henry bouncing from one location to another, trying to see what they were all doing.
"Ashley, please keep a reign on him," Helen said, nodding toward Henry.
"I'll do my best, but I make no promises." Ashley laughed. "This is like a dream come true for him," she said, talking to everyone.
"Ya, just a few weeks ago, he was trying to convince us that a brain-sucking mechanical spider bot was alien." Will laughed.
"Given where we are standing, Will, it could have been possible." Henry defended himself. Addressing SG1, he said, "Thankfully, we were able to discover its origins, and while not exactly alien, it is a seriously advanced piece of technology." Henry clarified from across the room.
At the advanced technology statement, Sam perked up. "Where did it come from?"
"A couple of abnormals infiltrated the Sanctuary and brought it with them. In our defense, they could make themselves invisible. But they were either attempting to recover or erase memories I had from when I died about a month ago; we're still not sure which." Will clarified. "After we captured them, they self-destructed, so we could never question them."
"It sounds like your lives are just as crazy as ours. I can't wait until we get the chance to sit down and swap stories. As I'm sure you can imagine, it is not an opportunity that often presents itself, given the classified nature of what we do." Daniel said excitedly. "But for now, it looks like Heimdall is ready for you," he indicated to Helen.
"Dr. Jackson, Thor sent a communication and requested that Maj. Carter and O'Neill both undergo scans, so we can compare them against the ones that Loki had in his file. Is that acceptable?"
"He found something else then?" Sam wanted to know.
"He did not provide additional information; he just requested the scans be done. They will only take a few minutes, and you will be conscious the whole time." Heimdall explained.
"Out of curiosity, why didn't he do the scans when I was in a pod earlier." Sam inquired.
"He did not do them out of respect, Maj. Carter," he clarified, "You were not in a condition then to give consent."
"Well, you know," Jack interjected sarcastically. "If I'm getting in one of those things, can you fix my back and knees? They've been acting up lately."
Heimdall's intense gaze towards him could hardly be characterized as friendly, especially considering his eyes narrowed and his mouth curved downwards into a frown. "Is that a condition of your consent?"
Jack thought about that for a second. His back and knees had been giving him trouble lately, and he knew that with Anubis on the way soon, he should say yes. "Not at all, just a friendly request from one ally to another."
An unknown Asgard approached Heimdall and started speaking to him in a language none of the humans could understand, not even Daniel. After a rather heated conversation, the unknown Asgard walked over to O'Neill. "I am Singy. Please follow me, O'Neill." Without waiting for a response, Singy started making his way across the room, assuming that Jack was following.
"I guess I'm going that way. See you, campers, later." He only had to take a few bigger-than-normal steps to catch up with his escort before slowing his pace to match.
"Due to the nature of your injuries, focused healing must be done. It cannot, however, be conducted at the same time as the medical scans or in any of the machines in this room." He clarified as they reached the door. He pressed the crystal next to the door to open it and stepped out into the corridor, making a right turn. After passing several doors they didn't enter, Jack was finally tired of the silence.
"Heimdall seems mad at me. Any idea what that is about?" Jack inquired.
Singy stopped walking and looked at Jack, "By claiming we are not your allies to Dr. Magnus, Heimdall feels you are jeopardizing our chances that she will give us the information we seek."
Jack squatted down to look Singy in the eye, "I know you are our allies. As a matter of fact, of all the races we have met over the years, you are all by far my favorite."
"Because of the technology we can provide, we understand your reasoning."
"No, that's not it at all. The first time I met you guys, you saved my life. After that, most of my interactions with your race have been with Thor, who has…, become a good friend. This whole scenario just really caught me off guard. When he came back, talking about Loki and everything that happened, I was fully prepared for what would happen to me. The fact that he involved Maj. Carter came out of left field." He knew that his behavior was unacceptable, but no matter how hard he tried to keep his mouth shut, he couldn't. "When I am surprised," he explained further, "I tend to say things that I do not mean and that are not well thought out; Humans call it a knee-jerk reaction, and it is rarely a good thing."
"I understand this knee-jerk reaction. You were anticipating Thor's visit regarding Loki's experiments on you. That they were, in fact, on Maj. Carter was a bigger cause for concern."
"Yes. I don't like surprises, and that was a big one."
"You care for her a great deal?"
"More than I am allowed to admit," he said under his breath.
"Like Heimdall pointed out, she would not exist without these experiments."
"Ya, still trying to wrap my head around that one."
With a nod, Sigyn started moving again, and Jack had no choice but to stand up and follow.
In the main science lab, Helen asked for a few minutes with her team before she was ready to go into the healing pod. They were placing a great deal of trust in people that they had just met, and that was very unlike her. Looking around her, she knew that even if she refused to provide them with what they needed, she would have little hope of resisting if they pushed the issue. She regretted bringing her team with her as she could see no way for them to leave if things went badly.
"Will, I'm getting in that pod and be out for a few hours. If they decide that I am too important to let go, you are to agree to anything to get Ashley and Henry out of here."
"Mom, I'm not leaving you here; we can take them in a fight if we need to," Ashley said, "just look at them."
"Ashley, they never once asked us to hand over our weapons. Don't you find that just a little suspicious?"
"You're saying that they don't see us as a threat? Isn't that a good thing?"
"I'm saying, with this level of technology, we're not a threat."
They stopped talking as they watched SG1 with Henry and Heimdall walking over to a wall, and with a few simple presses of a button, a portion of the wall dematerialized, and a platform slid out. There was nothing special to note; it was white and looked like it was made of the same material as the ship. If you looked at it just right, there were several blinking lights around the base and a barely detectable shimmer around the alcove. The walls to the left and right turned from what looked like solid material to machines designed to monitor the subject inside the field.
"Sam and her team look comfortable here; they don't look like they are forced participants in this," Will observed out loud. And you heard Heimdall: They didn't do these tests earlier because she was not in a state to consent."
"I want to trust them, Will. That this perfectly timed healing was not orchestrated in any way, but it is a bit convenient; even you have to admit that."
"Or, maybe what Daniel said earlier about the universe having a plan now includes you," Will replied.
"That's what you're working with, divine intervention?"
"You got something better? Just yesterday, you told me this would not be solved by…how did you put it? Oh, ya, 'I doubt any conventional approach would work.' And now, less than twenty-four hours later, we are on an alien ship, and they not only know you're sick but can provide a cure. What would you call it if not divine intervention?"
"Using my own words against me, William? Bad form!" She smiled.
Before he could reply, Daniel approached the group. "Heimdall is almost done getting Sam set up. He is concerned that if you don't get in and start treatment soon, you will start to feel sick again. He said the measures he took back at the SGC were just a temporary fix and were not designed to be long-lasting."
"What happens to my mom after they heal her? Will she go through the same process as Sam, or will she have a choice?"
"Look, I know what Jack said earlier about them only sometimes being our ally, but the truth is, I sincerely believe what they said about consent and not agreeing with how Loki handled the situation."
"Why is this anomaly so important to such an advanced race?" Will asked.
"The Asgard are a dying race. They have spent thousands of years cloning themselves as a means of immortality. Until recently, it has not been a problem, but they have noticed a breakdown in the new clones because they have no original material to work with."
"So, a copy of a copy of a copy…" Helen clarified with a nod of her head, "I can see how that would pose a problem in the long run."
"Exactly." Daniel
"And they think what Loki found in my DNA could help?"
"Well, they are not sure. You see, a few years ago, Jack had an entire database from the Ancients downloaded in his brain. Unfortunately, it was all their knowledge, and it was not meant for the human brain. It would have killed him eventually. Thankfully, he could use the knowledge he gained to contact the Asgard on their home planet in another galaxy. Because of this, Loki cloned him to run experiments to see if he could hold the key. It had already been determined that Jack is a step in the right direction, but he is not the solution."
"Yet, the experiments he did on me happened years ago. Do you know if he returned periodically and ran tests on Sam without her knowledge? From what I read, he had been unable to determine what the anomaly did, let alone how to activate it. What would have been the next step in the process?"
"That next step and finding out how far he took things concerns us."
"You think that he did the same thing to Sam that he did to me?"
"Honestly, that would be the second best-case scenario."
"The first was he didn't have time to do anything."
"Right. But what has everyone worried is that he did take it further and combined Jack and Sam hijacked genetic material and created a kid."
"Okay, I have a stupid question," Will started. "If he couldn't activate it because he didn't know what it was, and we are operating under the assumption that Sam is your daughter and not a clone, then just like Ashley, the anomaly would not be active in Sam either, right?"
"This is not something I wanted to discuss here for obvious reasons, but Nikola and I determined what activates the gene while we were in Carentan. From our previous conversations at the SGC, I can safely say Sam has the active gene."
"But Helen, that would mean…" Will started to say, putting a few things together from her comments.
"Now is neither the time nor place, Will, to discuss Carentan," Helen said, her tone and body language screaming at him to drop the subject.
"Mom, were you going to tell me and give me a choice?" Ashley asked, looking at her.
"Unfortunately, the only choice is the how and when. But yes, Nikola and I discussed it this afternoon before we were called here." She sighed. "But again, that is a problem for a different day."
Before Ashley or Will could question her further, Heimdall approached them and said, "According to the bio-readings I am getting from the sensors, your organs are beginning to break down again. We should finish your healing without further delay." Without waiting for a response, he walked the short distance to the pod designed specifically for human physiology. They all followed Helen to the pod.
"Daniel, you have been in these before?"
"A few times," he said, "my experience is more with the Goa'uld sarcophagus for my multiple resurrections."
"I will have more questions about that statement later, but what can I expect from this procedure?" Helen asked.
"The pod will render you unconscious while the healing takes place. You will feel nothing." Heimdall explained.
"It is very similar to being put under for surgery," Daniel explained. "The top will close, and you will be out and healed before you know it. It's not like going to sleep, at least in my experience; you don't notice the passage of time."
"Interesting. Any side effects?"
"Not unless the pod malfunctions." Heimdall said, "Please get in. The longer you wait, the more healing is required."
Ashley leaned over to Daniel and whispered, "Was that a joke? Do things often go wrong?"
"The Asgard are not known for jokes, but I have never seen one fail or cause damage to the occupant. Your mom will be fine, I promise."
By the time Jack returned from his procedure, Helen was already in a healing pod, and Sam was a good sport and had endured all the tests Heimdall had asked her to do. Regardless of how many scans they did, they were running into a wall regarding the purpose of the abnormality. There was a quiet buzz in the room as they moved around, talking in their own language and discussing the findings from the tests. Unless they were addressed directly, the humans were ignored by the ship's inhabitants and left to talk among themselves. Henry was the only one running around poking at things and asking questions about what everything did, and the Asgard standing closest to him at the time of his inquiry would stop what they were doing and answer before returning to work.
When Sam and Jack finished Thor's requested scans, Helen was still not done in the healing pod. A small request from Sam to Heimdall provided them with a picnic-style table in the corner of the room so they were not in the way. After several tense moments of both groups being forced together, Will finally spoke up.
"Daniel, what did you mean earlier about dying from radiation poisoning? Obviously, you were cured, so did the Asgard step in like with Magnus?"
"Jack and Sam tried to contact them, but we didn't get a response. It was actually a different group of aliens that helped, in a manner of speaking."
"So, you didn't actually die then?" Ashley wanted to know.
"Oh no, I died, or at least my physical body did. But this race of aliens called the Ancients progressed to a level where they ascended to a higher plane of existence. It's hard to explain. But one of them broke the rules and helped me ascend. I was with them for over a year when I broke a few of their big rules, and they sent me back without any memories. Thankfully, when she sent me back, she put me on the path of SG1, and they brought me home. It took a little while, but all my memories from before I ascended came back to me."
"What do you mean by ascending?"
"It is theorized that the mind has limitless power but is restricted by the human body. They advanced to such a point that they shed their physical form and exist just as pure energy. We have seen them do things like control the weather and have miraculous healing abilities. One of their biggest rules is non-interference with the lower plains. That was one of the big rules I broke: I couldn't let an enemy attack Earth and intervened to prevent it."
"Is that the only time you have died?" Will asked.
"No. Let's see…" he paused to think about it, "three times that I was dead and brought back, and a few more where I should have died but didn't. There was one time when we all died together. Thankfully, another race, the Nox, interfered then, and we all survived." Daniel explained.
"That was the first time the Colonel and I died with the Nox. I have come close over the years and should have, by all accounts, died several times over." Sam paused before continuing, "Helen commented that it was her fault, alluding to the fact that she was on the Titanic and was older than she looked. I won't ask what she meant because you won't tell me anyway."
"You're right; we can't tell you because it's not our story to tell." Ashley paused. "I guess it is my story a little bit, given that we share the anomaly from my mom, but when she comes out of the healing, she will tell you."
"You sure about that?" Jack asked.
"Yeah, she'll tell you; she has no reason not to. She was refusing to tell the president on the base."
"Why?" Sam inquired.
"Because there is only one way to duplicate it: passing it on from parent to child. Even then, if only one parent is a carrier, there is only a fifty percent chance of the child carrying the gene." Ashley stated.
"You have discussed this with your mom before I take it?" Sam asked.
"Sure, because I am a carrier, and anyone with whom I would potentially have a child would not be a carrier. She was trying to find a way around that and ensure that any child I have will be a carrier."
"She can do that?"
"I have found that there is not much our mom can't do," Ashley said, looking at Sam.
"Our mom…" Sam started but was interrupted before she could explore that statement further.
"You are incorrect about duplicating it," Heimdall stated as he approached the group. "Loki was able to incorporate the anomaly into O'Neill's genetic code. It has the same signature as Maj. Carters."
"Are you sure?"
Heimdall looked at her and nodded his head.
"Can you run a scan on me? My mom was sure the gene was active in Sam, but not me. Do you think that your machine can tell the difference?"
"Ashley, do you think that is a good idea? Maybe you should wait for Magnus to…" Will started.
"I'm an adult, Will; this is my decision, not hers. Besides, this would not be the first time she kept something from me, thinking she was protecting me. I want to know."
"Please follow me. The testing should be quick since we know what we are looking for. There is no reason to go beyond the scope of the anomaly." Heimdall said, leading Ashley away from the group. She went without a backward glance at Will and gave a cursory glance toward where her mom was healing, almost reassuring herself that she would be done before her mom was up.
As Heimdall promised, the tests took only a few minutes, and she was seated back at the table when Heimdall went over to the pod to wake up Helen. When everyone realized he was waking her up, they made their way to her side. She opened her eyes almost immediately after the top had been retracted, stretched, and sat up. She took a few deep breaths and did a quick mental exam on how she was feeling. The pain from her broken ribs was gone, she was able to take a deep breath without coughing, and the nagging headache from the last few days was gone as well. If she had a mirror, she could have confirmed that the bruising from her fight with Adam was also gone. She had no way of knowing if the radiation poisoning was gone entirely, but she assumed the procedure worked as they promised. She swung her legs out and stood up, facing the group waiting for her.
"How are you feeling?" Will was the first to ask.
"Exceeds my wildest expectations," she replied. It was not just the poisoning that they cured, but the injuries from the fight with Adam and a few lingering aches and pains incurred in Carentan. I don't think that I have felt this good in years." She turned to Heimdall, standing a few feet away, looking over the tablet from the attached nodes. "Thank you!" she told him.
"You are welcome. Now that the healing is completed, I can remove the sensors," he said, walking toward her. "After that, we can discuss the test results from the others and compare them to what we already have from you."
"Maybe you can tell us about the anomaly first. It would be helpful to know what they are looking for." Jack pointed out.
"Hopefully, after I tell you, you will understand the importance of the government and the military not finding out about this and why I refused to give the answers you needed while we were at the SGC. I need you to understand the importance of this information not being passed around. A few years ago, a group we called the Cabal kidnapped Henry and Ashley and conducted tests on them. Their primary goal was to find a way to duplicate the effect of this anomaly." Noticing the table, she said, "Shall we sit? This could take a while to explain."
The group made their way to the table and sat down. Heimdall and Sigyn followed, and two chairs appeared at the table more suited to their physiology. They joined in for the explanation. Helen took a few minutes to gather her thoughts and decide where to begin.
"I was born on August 27, 1850. My father…"
"But you are human, you said, right?" Jack interrupted.
"Yes." She said, then paused to see if anyone else would say anything, "My Father, Gregory, was a controversial medical researcher. He helped what we call abnormals. Some are offshoots of humans, while others share no genetic markers with us at all." Helen looked around the room to see if they were following her. "I wanted nothing more when growing up than to be a doctor. I am sure you can imagine how well that went with society. My father used his influence with the medical community to gain me a place to study medicine at Oxford University. However, I only audited classes then as women were not allowed."
Helen got up from the table and turned her back to the room. She rarely, if ever, shared the details of her life with others, let alone a room full of people. Will asked many questions about people she knew, but not even Ashley had all the information she was about to tell if she told them everything.
"Studying at Oxford was a dream come true for me, but as the only woman allowed, it separated me from my peers, and I was little more than an aberration. In my second year of study, I formed a group of extraordinary people who were just as curious as I was about the world around them. But most of all, they didn't mind that I was female. We called ourselves the five."
Helen glanced at her daughter and over to Will. Both were watching her as if they had never seen her before. This was actually a story that they had only heard bits and pieces of: "Due to my father's work, we were able to procure a very rare blood sample called Sanguine Vampiris." Here, she stopped and waited for the questions to start.
"As in Vampire?" Jack asked jokingly.
"Yes, exactly like that." She replied seriously.
Jack snorted in disbelief.
"You're saying that vampires are real?" Daniel asked with an almost childlike glee.
"From our research, we have found that they were, at one point, many thousands of years ago, the ruling class on the planet. Sometime before the dark ages, they were wiped out by a religious group who had decided they were evil." She paused, wishing for a drink of water, considering where to go next. "As far as I know, only one vampire is left, and he was part of the five." As an afterthought, she added, "Although given what I know of them as a species, if there were more, they would not have stayed hidden and would have attempted to return the world to the way it was, with them as the ruling class."
Daniel interjected, "That is amazing."
"As I said, after almost a year of studying the blood, we made a serum and injected ourselves with it. Looking back, it was most likely not the responsible thing to do. I was the first to go, and while painful, it didn't seem to have any effect. The other four members injected themselves with varying results."
"So, you're saying that the blood had a different effect on each of you? Fascinating." Janet's medical curiosity was killing her. She had so many questions about the results and how they manifested.
"Exactly. And let me tell you that when they started showing abilities…, I will admit to being extremely jealous. As you can imagine, it took some time before my ability became apparent." At this point, she debated how much information to share regarding the other members. Considering all but one was still alive, she didn't want this to possibly impact them. "The blood gave me longevity, or that's what I call it. It essentially gave me the long life of a vampire. I heal faster than a normal human, and it kept me alive when I should have been dead several times over. I was hoping that it would kick in and cure the radiation poisoning; thankfully, that is no longer a concern."
"So let me see if I understand so far," Jack said. "You and four of your college friends injected yourselves with vampire blood and waited to see what would happen? You know how crazy that sounds, right?"
"Sir, is it any crazier than walking through a stone ring every week, not knowing what would happen on the other side or if you would even be able to return to Earth?" Sam was the first to point out to everyone else in the room how crazy what they did regularly was. "They just do it here instead of halfway across the galaxy."
"Fair point Carter. I'm shutting up now. Please continue." Jack indicated that Helen should continue her story.
Helen smiled at Sam.
"You're right, Jack; we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The other group members were Nigel Griffin, Nikola Tesla, John Druitt, and James Watson." Helen sat back down in her chair with a heavy sigh. "Nigel could become invisible, and John could teleport to anywhere he knew of in the blink of an eye. James's ability was almost as subtle as my own. His mind grew to new heights, and he became increasingly smarter as time passed. Nikola was the biggest surprise, however. He had vampire ancestry somewhere down the line and thus became the only vampire we currently know of. So there you have it. The marker in your DNA prevents you from aging. I don't know what that looks like in the long term, but I am 278 years old, and I look like I did when we injected the blood."
All three remaining members of the Sanctuary looked at her when she mentioned her age. Will was aware that more had happened in Carentan than she had let on, but that was not one that he expected.
"But that doesn't add up if you were born in 1850." Sam pointed out.
"True. I was recently trapped in a time-dilation field in Normandy." She didn't need to expand on that since they already had experience with how those worked.
"Mom, you were there more than a hundred years? Why didn't you say something when you got home?"
Will answered her, letting Helen off the hook. "She didn't have time. She hit the ground running when they took the field down."
"Ashley, you must understand. I made friends there, and when I took that field down, I essentially killed them all. It was not something that I was ready to talk about."
"Wait. Our previous experience with time dilation fields didn't work that way." Sam commented, looking to Heimdall for an explanation.
"When we use a machine to create a field, it changes the physics in the area. If one were to occur naturally, then time outside the field would not be able to compensate for the changes when the field collapsed."
"So, that explains why you and Nikola made it out when no one else did. Did you know what would happen when you brought the field down?" Will asked.
"We didn't know right away. It took us time to figure it out, but by the time we did, there wasn't enough time to save them. We spent almost a year trying everything we could think of, but ultimately, we had to make a choice."
"You knew that the field was going to expand and the consequences for the planet." He touched her arm in sympathy. "You had no choice but to do what you did. If you and Nikola couldn't devise a solution, there wasn't one."
"It doesn't make it any easier to live with," she divulged sadly. "But again, this is not the time or place to discuss this." She looked back at the people across the table, "We are here because not only do you have the gene Sam, but it was activated the first time you died. It then did what it does naturally and kept you alive."
"I'm not the only one with the gene." Sam started.
"Yes, Ashley has it, I know. Hers is not activated, however."
Heimdall moved a crystal on his chair, and a holographic image showed four DNA scans. "The one to the right is an old scan from Loki's file for you, Helen, and the next is O'Neill's scan. As you can see, the two have the anomaly attached to your DNA and match exactly. Loki was able to find a way to duplicate it."
"That's impossible without the original vampire blood; trust me, we have unsuccessfully tried to duplicate the experiment over the years. Loki's research indicated several failed attempts at duplicating the anomaly in my DNA."
"Here are the scans from Maj. Carter and Ashley." He put them up side by side.
"I'm sorry, did you say a scan from Ashley?" Helen inquired indignantly.
"I asked them to do it, Mom. I wanted to know if it would be different from yours."
"Why would it be different?" Sam asked.
Before Helen or Ashley could explain, Heimdall spoke, "The scans from Ashley and Maj. Carter is different from both you and O'Neill. The anomaly is not attached to their DNA; it is interwoven. We believe this is because they were born with it while it was added to both of you as an adult."
"Is there a difference between Ashly and Sam?" Helen asked.
"There is one major difference. If you look here," he zoomed in, "Maj. Carter has a dark spot here, like yours and O'Neill's. We believe this indicates that the gene is active. Ashley doesn't have that dark spot, but it is a guess without a larger sample size to compare it to."
"Is there anything in Loki's file on me that explains how he could introduce this anomaly into my DNA? Thor said that he put a lock on my genetic code that should have prevented this from happening," Jack asked.
"I understand that the anomaly was introduced before he cloned you, not after," Heimdall stated. "He didn't know what to look for to notice a difference until Maj. Carter's file was uncovered."
"Does that mean John will also have it? If it was done before Loki cloned him, then…"
"We need to find John and do a test to see if he has it," Daniel interjected.
"Crap!"
"Carter?"
"Not just John," Sam said. Will spoke up before Jack could ask any further questions.
"Who is John?"
"A sixteen-year-old version of me, well…he would be eighteen now. When Loki cloned me, it didn't work as planned. The copy he made was a younger version, and without Thor's intervention, he would have died. So, we faked his background and dropped him off at high school. The Ari Force should be keeping tabs on him, but he and I agreed it would be too weird for us to stay in contact since he had all my memories."
"That wasn't why he agreed," Sam said.
"Carter? What did you do?" Jack asked softly, already having an idea of where this was going. "Why?" He asked before she could explain.
"There were no rules or regulations keeping them apart. Not only that, but he had just lost everything he had worked his life for; it wasn't a sacrifice for me."
"And Thor just went along with it?"
"Of course he did, Jack. The Asgard got what they wanted without having to worry about destroying SG1. It was a win-win situation." Daniel added, realizing what they were talking about at the last minute.
"Would anyone care to share with the rest of the class?" Will asked, using one of his favorite phrases.
"Sam had Thor clone her to be with John," Daniel told them.
"You have got to be kidding me," Helen exclaimed.
"If a near-death experience causes the gene to be active, then they would be a good sample to compare Ashley against."
"You're saying there are two more people out there with the inactive gene? A younger version of you and Jack?" Ashley said.
"Well, our family just keeps getting bigger and bigger," Henry said.
"Wait, are you including mini-me in that statement?" Jack asked.
"Sure, if Sam cloned herself to be with him, don't you think they got married legally as soon as they could? Ergo…family." Helen elaborated.
"Just like that?"
"When you have lived as long as I have, you bury everyone you know eventually. Having more people around that I can watch grow and live is a blessing. Until now, there were only five of us, and until a few days ago, I didn't know how to activate the gene in Ashley."
"Five? I would have assumed three." Sam said. "You said that the gifts you all received were different, the vampire, I understand, and the two of you. How did the other two survive this long?"
"John and I were in a relationship back in school; we were engaged. I gave him my blood, hoping that it would keep him alive. It turned him into a killer, or that's what we thought then. It was not until recently that we discovered that it was not my blood that had a negative effect but his ability to teleport. James Watson is the other one of the five still alive; he created a device that has prolonged his life. He runs my New York Sanctuary."
"Just injecting your blood gave him your ability? Why haven't you done that with anyone else to make them live longer?" Jack asked.
"James and I tried, and it failed; we theorized that it didn't work because they didn't have the original gene."
"You didn't try it with this Nigel fellow in your group or James himself to test the theory?" Jack asked.
"By then, Nigel had a wife and daughter; he didn't want to live with losing them." Helen explained, "James did accept the blood transfusion, and it kept him alive, but it only lasted so long; a second dose had no effect; we don't know why. There is only so much testing we can do on our blood. We no longer have access to the source blood that we used."
"Why not?" Daniel asked.
"My father found out what we did and hid it. The only way to access it is with all five abilities working in consort. He was planning on destroying it, but I was able to talk him out of it at the last minute. I convinced him that we may need it at some point as we didn't know what effects it would have on all of us. He only did it to protect me."
"This is a lot of information all at once. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am tired and hungry. Heimdall, is there anything else we can do tonight, or are we done here?" Jack asked.
"There is one thing left to do before we all retire to the Sanctuary. If you want, I will submit to your testing. If you're interested, I am curious if anything is different between my initial scans and now." She addressed Heimdall.
"We can do the scans and review them over the next few days until Thor returns."
"That is acceptable. I have things to deal with back at the Sanctuary, so the sooner we get started, the better."
Fun times are coming at the Sanctuary in the next chapter. Please review.
