by Stargate
“I’m sorry,” he said to them. They made no answer. He could feel Asha behind him, her silent resentment a cold hand on the back of his neck.
“Whoa.”
Jack’s voice pulled Daniel around to face the center of the cavern where there was...nothing. Inside Daniel’s head, his brain slid sideways, and he bent at the waist to brace his hands on his knees and stare at his boots for a few seconds while the brain righted itself again. Slowly, he lifted his eyes, but couldn’t keep his gaze from sliding away from the center of the room and toward the safe solidity of the walls. The blue light seemed to come from nowhere and in spite of it, Daniel couldn’t shake the feeling that he was staring wide-eyed into darkness. If he concentrated on his peripheral vision, he could almost grasp the shape of it — whatever it was — a sort of column of blankness. He felt like he was standing at the edge of an open elevator shaft; he couldn’t see the empty space, the long, deadly drop, but he could feel it. It was paralyzing and, at the same time, it pulled at him. He couldn’t help but reach toward it, to touch it, if only to confirm that there really was nothing there.
A hand closed around his wrist.
“You just have to put your fingers in it, don’t you?” Jack was mostly turned away from the hovering nothing, one of his eyes squinted almost shut against it. He let Daniel go.
Daniel put both hands in his pockets and tried to keep from tipping down the elevator shaft.
Unlike Jack and Daniel, Teal’c was looking directly into the...whatever it was...and he didn’t look happy about it. Finally, as if he’d proved some kind of point, he bowed his head and closed his eyes. “This is most unsettling.”
“No kidding.” Jack turned to Sam, who was on her knees digging equipment out of her pack. “Carter?” He waved a gloved hand at the elevator shaft.
Sam chewed the inside of her lip as she took her readings, and she didn’t answer right away. After a few seconds, she sat back on her heels and let the monitor fall to her lap. “Well, the readings are similar to what we get from the quantum mirror when it’s active, but these — ” Sam raised her monitor again, wrinkled her nose at the screen and tapped a couple of keys. “ — these are way more chaotic. I can tell you one thing, though — there’s a lot of energy here.”
“Good energy or turn-your-brain-to-goo energy?”
“I don’t know, sir.” She craned her neck to ask Asha. “Has anyone suffered any ill effects from being in here? Tremors, loss of consciousness, anything like that?”
“Ill affects? You mean other than blindness?” Jack asked pointedly.
Asha shook her head. She, too, was staring into the blankness, her hands folded under her chin as if in prayer. She aimed her blank eyes at Jack. “But we are not blind. We see the unseen.”
“Like what?” Daniel stole a glance in the direction of the emptiness. “Like this? What does it look like to you?”
“Like — ” She opened her hands helplessly. “Like everything.”
Daniel was about to pursue the question, but Teal’c spoke up instead.
“Perhaps, then, the theta team intended to use this to escape, as one might with the quantum mirror,” he suggested. “The mirror can be said to reflect everything.”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t think so, Teal’c. The energy from the quantum mirror is far more coherent. This isn’t stable enough to function that way.” Pushing herself to her feet, she angled her head away and held the monitor out at arm’s length, looking at it askance. Again she turned to Asha. “You said that He-They split apart. What do you mean by that?”
Again, Asha made that careful gesture, unfolding and then refolding her hands together. “He became two and three and four, and then he shattered into a thousand fragments, like broken ice. And when they melted, this is what remained. All who looked on became the blind who see as we, their descendents, do.” As if to prove it, she turned to study each of them for a moment from behind her veil. Daniel’s skin prickled when she touched him with her gaze. “The forest howled, and since then the world has been broken here. He-They warned us of this. He-They knew it was to come.”
“How?” Daniel asked.
“This is what happened to the world of He-They. It was supposed to be wonderful, He-They said, a light to burn forever. But there was wildfire and the world broke to pieces.”
Daniel met Jack’s eyes. “Well, that doesn’t sound good.”
“This is his world,” she finished, gesturing with folded hands at the nothing. “It is to remind us not to reach too far.”
“So maybe this is just a side effect, residual…” Sam said, mostly to herself.
Jack’s patience was wearing thin. “C’mon, Carter. Give me something here. These guys killed four of our people to get that doodad.” He stabbed a finger at Daniel’s vest where the artifact was tucked away, a cold lump against his ribs. “If they didn’t need it to open this door to Neverland, then what did they want it for?”
Daniel jumped a little as the idea struck him. “The leash.”
“What?”
“The theta team doesn’t want to escape. That won’t solve their problem.”
“Which is what?”
“The leash.”
“So you said.”
Daniel adjusted his glasses. “Dan said that the NID had them on a leash. The duplicates couldn’t rebel against them because the NID had the one thing they need to survive. It’s what they were looking for when they went to Altair.”
“Power,” Teal’c said.
“Yes.” Daniel pointed at him. “The Goa’uld do the same with the Jaffa. The Jaffa can’t survive without the symbiotes, and the Goa’uld control the symbiotes.”
“The leash,” Jack said. “Okay. So how does your doodad fit in?”
Sam joined them and waited while Daniel pulled it out and unwrapped it. In the blue light, the raised symbols gleamed gently. “The artifact we found with the original quantum mirror is a control device,” she said. “But it only works with an interface, the mirror itself. If this works on the same principle, then there must be an interface somewhere, something like the quantum mirror that can focus the energy harnessed from — ” She shrugged, and Daniel could actually see her editing out the million details, equations, and theorems that Jack wouldn’t need to hear. “I don’t know, maybe another universe that’s burning hotter and faster than this one.”
Tipping his head toward the blankness in the center of the room, Jack reminded them, “But she said there was wildfire and howling.”
Beside them, Asha folded her hands again carefully. “He-They warned us that the kei must not leave this place.”
“Right. The universe. Asunder. We got that.” Jack turned on his heel and did a quick survey of the cavern. “You got an interface around here, by any chance?”
Asha looked at him blankly, and it had nothing to do with her blind eyes.
“Okay, so that leaves us pretty much nowhere.”
“Perhaps not, O’Neill.”
Near the entrance to the cavern, the three women were preparing to carry the fallen girl away and were bending low over her to wrap her in a winding-sheet. The nearest woman had long, red hair that fell over her shoulder as she bowed down, exposing her neck.
Teal’c tilted his head to peer more closely at her. “Daniel Jackson,” he said, and pointed.
Daniel put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and asked, “May I?” He waited for Asha’s curt nod. Asha held the woman’s hair aside so that Daniel could get a better look. There, where her neck met her shoulders, was a design tattooed in blue ink. Daniel smiled.
“Asha, what is the meaning of the tattoo? Do you have one? Is it different?”
She nodded. “In the early days, the first Yagwen came to this place and waited and fasted and prayed, and He-They spoke to her. It is from her that we have the story of He-They. She was the last to hear his voice before he broke to pieces. He-They gave her the symbols. We each wear one to remind us of our duty.”
Da
niel’s smile widened. “And let me guess: there’s seven of them, right?”
Carter dropped onto the seat next to Jack at the conference table and handed him the file. He put it on the table without opening it. “So?”
“If the tattoos Yagwen’s acolytes are wearing do, in fact, add up to a gate address, it’s not on the Abydos cartouche. And it’s not among the addresses you entered when the Ancient database downloaded into your brain.”
Teal’c raised an eyebrow, and Daniel nodded, sitting forward to flip open the folder and look at the glyphs in the file. “There be dragons,” he said vaguely and raised his eyes to meet Jack’s questioning look across the table. “Off the map.”
“Ah.” Jack turned to Carter again. “You think this is where they’re headed?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s as good a place as any to start.”
“Except for the universe ripping thing,” Jack pointed out.
“And, you know, the blindness thing,” Daniel added, waggling his fingers at his own eyes. “Or not-blindness. Or whatever that is Asha and her friends have going there.”
“Yes, that too.” Jack scowled at the circles and lines of the schematic on the general’s office window and at the dots indicating the planets on the current contact roster. “Be nice to catch them before they go to a place you can’t even look at straight on, don’t you think?”
“Agreed,” Teal’c said. “We must draw them out.”
After sliding the file out from under Daniel’s hands, Jack flipped a page and rapped his knuckles on the photograph of the device they’d appropriated from Asha and the acolytes on Dunamis. “And we’ve got the bait. The thetas want it bad enough to kill for. I think it’s time we dangled a worm.”
Carter’s thoughtful frown faded as she started to nod. “Okay, but how do we let them know we’re willing to talk?”
Standing, Jack closed the folder and used it to point at Daniel. “That’s where your tin friend in lockup comes in.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NID Primary Project Site, Perseus (P66-421)
October 2002; one week before the
theta invasion of Eshet
Alpha Daniel hadn’t been by to see Piper in over a week, even though the alphas had been on Perseus most of that time. Piper hadn’t run into him, either. It seemed pretty odd, because his read on the guy was that he wasn’t one of those people who only befriended for information and then turned his back.
But then again, he wasn’t the human Daniel, and the things Piper had seen these teams do in the last few weeks…He wasn’t sure what the hell to think anymore.
He pulled his duffel out from under his bunk and rifled through it. Very little clean clothing left, but one T-shirt didn’t smell too badly. Maybe he’d be able to coerce someone into washing a load for him. More than one person owed him a favor for procuring, fixing, or otherwise hooking them up with something they needed. He was handy that way.
The barracks were empty; Piper was sleeping at odd hours now, all based around the missions. The gammas, deltas and zetas were off-world, which meant he had a lot to juggle, and that wasn’t even counting the whole issue with AWOL thetas, but, for the next few hours, at least, he had a break. Someone else was babysitting communications until the first check-in from the deltas was due. Piper should have been out cold. Should have. Couldn’t sleep, though.
Daniel had brought him a dog-eared book from the tiny base library of castoffs the week before: essays about superheroes. Thinly veiled message, maybe. Didn’t matter. Piper was a comics nut from practically the time he crawled out of his mother’s womb. He pulled the book out from under his mattress and propped it on his belly, but after reading the same page ten times and not really getting into it, he gave up.
Ten minutes later, he had the semi-clean shirt on and was nudging Bragg out of the way to reclaim his chair. “I’ll take it,” he told her, holding out his hand for her headset.
“Okay,” she said, valiantly not wrinkling her nose at his stubble. “I cleaned up for you,” she added, like she’d done him a favor. Probably she had. The place was a litter dump, or had been before she had hitched a shift for him. The tiny cardboard box under his cot was filled to the brim with all of that now. She’d stuffed it mostly out of sight. She might even have wiped things down. The suspicious brown coffee drips were missing from one of the screens.
“Thanks,” he said, snatching the equipment from her hand.
“Whatever,” she answered. He noticed she was careful not to touch him when she scooted by him. He lifted his shirt and sniffed: soapy, with a hint of sweaty. So it wasn’t the smell, just the sight.
He settled into his chair with a sigh and started scanning through reports and materials. For the past few weeks, he’d been neglecting his routine reports, mundane crap about the search for leftover Goa’uld weapons and whatnot. Some of the teams were showing a marked resistance to orders — still complying, but with attitude. Mendez didn’t seem too concerned, but Piper was, especially after that scene with the betas. He just wasn’t sure how much of it should go in the official reports. He was getting impatient queries from other teams about their next missions, the schedules, everything under the sun. None of the O’Neills liked sitting on their hands, that was for sure.
When the gate activation klaxon sounded, he breathed a sigh of relief. One more team coming in.
The scream caught him off guard, sent a shiver tearing down his spine. He stabbed at the comms link. “SG-one-niner-delta! Report!”
His only answer was that same sobbing wail, and a grunt, and then…nothing. Static. An emptiness. He shoved back from the console and ran out into the gate-room, where the security forces and two techs were still as statues at the bottom of the gate ramp, staring at…something. Piper pushed through to see.
What was left on the ramp was probably Jack. Hard to tell; it was a melted mess, something out of a horror movie, and it looked like a doll in an oven, misshapen, no longer recognizable.
It twitched.
“Jesus,” breathed one of the techs. “We need to…to…shut it down…somebody get me my tools, somebody…”
Behind Piper, one of the security guys was busy puking on the floor.
“Piper,” Mendez said from behind him. Piper tore his gaze away, trying to ignore his roiling stomach, and turned to his boss. Mendez was a shade of green that didn’t occur in nature, but his features were calm, totally expressionless. “When that wormhole’s killed, recall zeta and gamma teams. Tell them nothing about this. Understand?”
Piper nodded. He didn’t trust himself to open his mouth.
It took a couple of hours for the techs to scrape up the mess on the ramp. Piper sat against the wall, watching and thinking about Jack, his sarcasm, the brilliantly Freudian doodles he produced by the bucketful in briefings, and the way he’d picked on Daniel mercilessly. And Daniel annoyed him right back.
They might not be alive, but they were living. Had been, anyway. And Piper was watching them die, over and over, one after the other in ways he could never have imagined before he came to this place.
When it was finished, he went back to work. He had orders. Things he was supposed to do. He gave the dial-up order, activated the comms channel for the zetas, recalled them by rote, didn’t even flinch when he told them it was imperative they return immediately. He pretended the voice in the back of his head wasn’t screaming, that it didn’t matter they were probably going to be put in cold storage, or dissected, or whatever else it was that Mendez did to the duplicates when the teams malfunctioned, and the zetas hadn’t exactly been on their game since they got wiped by the kill switch trial and rebooted, anyway. Their future didn’t look cheery.
He thought of the thing that had been delta Jack and shivered. No way to know what they’d run into. Or if they’d done it to themselves.
No wonder Daniel hadn’t come by to see him. Piper was part of a death machine.
When he activated the gamma channel,
he had tears on his face. “SG-Gamma, do you read?”
“We read,” Jack came back. Behind his signal, something like a loon hooted, twisting Piper’s heart.
“Go to secure channel,” Piper said, reaching for the toggle. “I have some things to tell you, and I don’t have much time.”
NID Primary Project Site, Perseus (P66-421)
October 29, 2002; the day of the invasion of Eshet
Sunshine filtered weakly through the high, thin cloud cover. Daniel shifted around in the grass until he found a comfortable position, then closed his eyes, warmed by the weakened rays of Perseus’s sun. He had his shirt off. The grass tickled his back, and he steadfastly made himself believe, just for these few minutes, that this was real skin, that the itch between his shoulder blades and the skin of his body were real, and he could interact with nature the way he remembered he once had. Sort of.
To his left, Jack was sprawled facedown in the grass, apparently asleep, though Daniel knew that was just a pretense, since Jack did sometimes like to be left completely alone. He sighed and stared up at the sun. No risk of retinal damage. No skin cancer. No allergies, despite all the waving grass beckoning to his nose. It took some of the fun out of it, he had to admit.
To his right, Sam and Teal’c were talking quietly. If he really wanted to, Daniel would be able to hear every word in pristine detail, but he chose not to go there. Sometimes he suspected they were…well, getting closer than their human counterparts ever had.
“Stop thinking so loud. You’re keeping me awake.” Jack flung out an arm and smacked Daniel on the elbow, then resumed his deceptively naplike pose.
“Like you sleep,” Daniel said, one side of his mouth twisting up in a small smile.
“They’ll be looking for us soon. I want to enjoy every tiny second of this.”
“I don’t know why we didn’t break out sooner.” Daniel glanced back toward the direction of the base. The alpha team had found its way out with surprisingly little difficulty. They’d been gone a full fifteen minutes before someone went looking for them. Hunkered down in the grass, they might be able to escape detection by the goons for another half hour, maybe forty-five minutes.
