by Jamie Duncan
Jack laid his hand with its crooked, broken finger on the top of the muzzle and pressed down against Aris’ resistance. “Whoa,” he said in his talking-to-mad-dogs voice. “Let’s take a minute here.” Half of his brain was shouting at him to step out of the way and get it over with. The other half was thinking about that smile, the resignation, Daniel’s voice saying, Can’t you see it?
It was true: there were times when the snake’s control wasn’t absolute. Jack had seen it himself, on Tollana, when Klorel and Skaara were in court fighting for ownership of Skaara’s body. And before that, when he’d zatted Klorel on Apophis’ ship, and Skaara had surfaced to apologize—apologize—for not being strong enough. He could even feel a skirling memory of his own, somewhere way back behind the noise and the forgetting, Kanan compelled to return for Ba’al’s lo’tar, to walk into a fortress because Jack would never leave someone behind. But no, he didn’t really remember that. He’d been told that, after. But still, it kind of made sense.
Jack would never leave someone behind.
And Daniel was in there, somewhere, and that despair Jack could feel against his back like a hot breath, that was Daniel, maybe.
Or maybe not.
But if Daniel could get control, even for a moment, there was hope.
Crap.
Aris’ gun hovered over the middle of Jack’s chest, humming with violence. Instead of forcing it, Jack dropped his hand and stared at Aris until he met Jack’s eyes.
“It’s my friend in there. My call,” Jack said in a low, steady voice.
“You believe this?” Aris waggled the gun a little to point at Sebek through Jack’s chest.
Jack said nothing for a long moment. Aris’ gun moved minutely an inch from Jack’s chest, jittering with Aris’ heartbeat. “You need him. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have pulled me off him twice.”
Axis paused for a long moment and then laughed, one sharp, incredulous bark. Then he keyed the safety and lowered his gun. “Okay, Colonel. But this is not a promise. Your friend—if that’s him—gets us where I want to go, he buys himself some time.” He pressed a key and the blaster powered down. “You didn’t strike me as the type to be taken in by Goa’uld tricks.”
The feeling of tension sizzling away was so palpable that Jack could almost see it go, electricity arcing and fading. He let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
Behind him someone—Daniel, Sebek—let out a breath, too.
“Nothing’s changed,” Aris said to Jack, his gaze straying over Jack’s shoulder. “You knew he was in there before.”
“I know.”
“He’s playing you for sympathy. He doesn’t want to die.”
“I know.”
“One thing has changed,” Sebek, or Daniel, answered. Jack had to figure out what to call the guy. He considered something neutral, like Lenny. But the guy didn’t sound like a Lenny. He sounded like Daniel. Sebek-Daniel went on. “It’s harder to kill me now. It was easier to imagine it before when he couldn’t hear me.”
Jack didn’t rum around. He hated snakes. He hated this one most of all, and that was saying something, the whole Kanan thing considered.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I’m sorry you’re in this position. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it from happening.” There was a pause. Jack could imagine Daniel’s eyes darting back and forth as he gathered up the words, and the way he used the time to rein in the panic, pulling back into that deceptively, maddeningly calm voice. But, no, that was Daniel. This was…
Jack closed his eyes.
Daniel, or Sebek, kept right on talking. “I was disoriented and I fell. When I opened my eyes I could see him—it—Sebek—coming, crawling out of the old host, out of his head and I couldn’t—”
Jack turned then, in time to see Sebek-Daniel rub the back of his hand across his mouth like he was trying to wipe away the taste of something nasty.
“At least I won’t have a scar,” Sebek-Daniel said, with that ironic smile again.
“Small mercies,” Jack replied before he could smother the sympathy behind it, so he dropped the ribbon device on the floor and ground the crystal under his heel instead. “All right, Daniel.” He made sure the skeptical quotation marks there were audible in his voice. “Then let’s get out of here.” A new wave of nausea almost knocked him off his feet again, but he squinted his eyes against it and hooked a thumb over his shoulder the way they’d come. “Daylight’s that way.”
Daniel didn’t move, but he frowned that schoolmarm frown at him again. “Uh, no.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We have to go that way.” Daniel pointed behind himself where the wall curved into darkness.
“Why?”
Daniel didn’t say, “duh”, but the look on his face was the next best thing. If this guy wasn’t the genuine article, he was at least as annoying. “It’s what we came for.”
“No,” Jack corrected in a tone whose patience conveyed how not patient he was. “Sebek came for it—and you don’t even know what ‘it’ is. We’re just along to do the heavy lifting.” He included Aris in the circle of indentured help.
“I think—”
Jack sliced the air with the blade of his hand. “Did you or did you not just say that Sebek was going to come back, and he was going to kill everybody in a spectacular and bloody way?”
“That’s what he’d do, yes, but—”
“Then the prudent thing to do is to get Sebek out of here before he does that, don’t you think? And since he’s currently piggy-backing on your brain, you should come with.” Shifting his weight, he started to loop his hands over his P90, remembered belatedly that it wasn’t there, and had to settle for folding his arms. “If it’s really you, that is.”
“Jack—”
“You want me to trust you? Come back to the SGC and give yourself up. Then I’ll trust you. Maybe.” And that was a hell of an ultimatum. Jack tried not to think about what life would be like for Daniel on Earth—maybe locked up in some basement level of Area 51—if they couldn’t find a helpful Tok’ra to winnow Sebek out of there. But he could only deal with one gut-wrenching ethical dilemma at a time.
Daniel looked past Jack toward the entrance and then back the other way, his face screwed up like he was in physical pain. And maybe he was. Just thinking about winding their way back through all those dark corridors was enough to make Jack feel like there was a sack of bricks on his back. But he thought of his kitchen and his refrigerator and that last beer all frosty inside it and about how all of that was waiting for him way, way, way, way the hell back there, and it was enough to make it seem worth it. The fact that he wasn’t actually running toward that beer was a problem. He wanted to go. He was standing there, not going. And not because Daniel was dragging his feet, either. That image of his own face reflecting in mirrored eyes flickered across his mind, and he squeezed his forehead with his fingers and thumb.
“It’ll still be here after we get the snake out of your head.”
“You know better than anyone there’s no guarantee of that,” Daniel said, looking at him steadily. “Sebek might kill me first, to spite you. It’s this place, Jack. Something here is helping me get control. I wouldn’t have it for long once we left here. You can’t allow that to happen.”
For a long, sickening moment, Jack heard the echo of what Daniel hadn’t said, what he’d implied. It was what he’d been thinking all along, and Daniel knew it.
“There’s more to it than that,” Daniel said, and reached out his hand. This time, he touched the wall himself, his fingertips tracing one of the glyphs as Jack had seen him do a thousand times, waiting for some old language to tell him how to read it. The symbols beneath his fingertips shone softly. His head snapped back and he gasped, and he jerked away from the wall and staggered sideways. When he opened his eyes, he blinked at Jack as though he couldn’t really see him, until finally, his gaze focused. “It isn’t just you,” Daniel said. “That’s what Sebek really wanted to know. Who
can have access to this place.”
“So you’re telling me anyone can do that?” Jack said, as the alarming possibilities unfolded for him.
“Yes.” Daniel took a few deep breaths. “We’ve won the race to get to it. Even if Yu is on his way, we’re here now.” He looked down the dark curve of the passageway.
Jack was opening his mouth to say something—he wasn’t sure what—when Aris neatly put an end to the argument by nestling the muzzle of his blaster into the notch at the base of Jack’s skull. The hum of the power pack made all the little hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stand up.
“Yu has no right to this,” Aris said. “Neither does Sebek.”
So much for his feigned deference to the god. It seemed that Aris, at least, was either pretty sure he was talking to the real Daniel, or that he didn’t care one way or the other. In Jack’s educated opinion, this was a bad sign.
Aris wiggled the blaster a little and some compartmentalized portion of Jack’s brain wondered if it was a coincidence that the muzzle was so perfectly shaped to fit in just that spot. He slowly unfolded his arms and let them hang, hands open. He did the math, though, and still came up on the short end. He met Daniel’s eyes and could see him assessing the situation with that studied, neutral curiosity he brought out when confronted with deadly things. But behind that there was the faintest gleam of panic. Both of them together could take Aris, especially if Daniel had any of that souped-up snake-power that made Goa’uld so arrogant and hard to kill.
But Daniel didn’t move. Instead, he turned and looked into the shadows again for a long moment before turning back, not to Jack, but to Aris.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Aris shifted his weight a little behind Jack. “Whatever is in here is meant for us. My people, not yours. You’re going to help me get it.”
Slowly, Daniel raised a hand, a palm-out, soothing gesture. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Okay. We both want to understand this place. But you don’t need Jack. You can let him go. He can find Sam and Teal’c and get out of here before Yu comes. And you and I can keep going. I’ll help you.”
“Not an option,” Jack said. “Putting aside for the moment the fact that we can’t get out, you are not staying here to get picked up by a System Lord.” He stabbed a finger at Daniel’s forehead where all the classified information was kept.
The whine vibrating through Jack’s bones wound up a notch as Aris keyed the safety off. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”
Now Daniel’s patient, placating expression creased into a frown of irritation. “You need me. You don’t need him.”
“Sure I do,” Aris answered, and to demonstrate, he laid his free hand flat against the glyphs on the wall. Nothing happened. No glowing. No fancy colors.
“It doesn’t work for you,” Daniel said, unnecessarily.
“Apparently not.”
“Why?”
Jack felt the gun shift as Aris shrugged. “Same reason we’re resistant to Goa’uld technology, I suppose. We were altered by the beings who sent us here.”
“The Ancients.”
Another shrug. “Your word. My sister calls them the Nitori.”
Daniel blinked, accessing his inner database. “Those who glow.” A smile warmed his face for a second.
Jack piped up. “Yeah, well, if the Ancients locked the place up and broke you so you can’t get the surround-sound-smell-o-vision, then maybe this place isn’t for you, then, hmmm?” He took a step away from the gun. Aris didn’t follow.
When Jack turned around, Aris trained the blaster on his chest.
“Well, I’m no believer in fate or miracles,” Aris said, “but someone made you, and you are conveniently trapped in here to turn stuff on for me. Which of us feels awful down here, and which of us feels fit and happy and capable of shooting holes in people, hmmm?”
“He’s right,” Daniel said in that vague tone that meant most of his brain was elsewhere. “The Ancients must have found a way to make his people impervious to the negative effects of this place, whatever it is that’s making Sebek crazy. And they made them impervious to blending, so that the Goa’uld couldn’t use them to get in here.” Daniel cast him a sidelong glance that made Jack’s heart sink. He braced himself. “And, truth is, you’re the only one who can touch the walls safely, more or less. And that means you’re key to figuring this place out.”
Jack opened his mouth to protest—Daniel could get the lights jumping as well as he could—but Daniel cut him off.
“I can’t do it. I can barely keep a grip as it is. I touch the wall enough to get any real information, and Sebek comes back.” He wrinkled his brow in the sympathy-for-the-screwed kind of way. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
Jack wished that Daniel would quit apologizing and start helping him get the damn blaster away from Aris. But as soon as he started to formulate a plan in that direction, the vertigo hit him again like a riptide pulling the sand out from under his boots and that image of the mirrored eyes and scales like flakes of glass stuttered and flashed in his head. He started to slump, but was caught under the arm and levered carefully to the floor.
When he lifted his head from between his raised knees, Daniel was crouching beside him, peering at him nearsightedly.
“Why didn’t Sebek fix your eyes?” Jack asked.
Daniel grinned a little at the non sequitur. “He’s too busy trying to keep my head from exploding.” He looked over his shoulder at Aris before going on. “Look, Aris isn’t going to let you go. And you’re too messed up to fight him.”
“I could if I had some help,” Jack answered testily.
With a wince, Daniel looked down at his hands. “I think I have an idea about this place.” He met Jack’s eyes. “When you touched the wall, what did you see?” Jack rolled his eyes and said nothing. “Jack,” Daniel prodded, literally, two fingers jabbing him in the arm.
“I saw a sea monster and his girlfriend.” To Aris’ snort of laughter, he added, “You asked.”
“You saw it, or you felt it?”
Jack shrugged, not wanting to dwell on it, the sinuous bending of his spine, the heavy power of his jaws cracking open impossibly wide and the sea rushing in. “Felt it.”
“What else?”
“A planet. A space station or a ship.” He decided to leave off the part about the big-ass weapons platform.
“Huh,” Daniel said and his eyes went distant. Jack was afraid that when Daniel focused on him again, it would be Sebek looking out. He was more afraid, though, that he wouldn’t be able to tell. Sometimes hope was deadly.
“What?” Aris demanded when the silence stretched out and Daniel kept rummaging around inside the maze in his own head.
When he came back to them, he seemed to be Daniel, still. Pushing himself to his feet, he nodded, confirming something to himself. “It’s not a weapon,” he said. “At least I don’t think so.”
“Then what?” Aris didn’t sound at all happy about this analysis.
Daniel walked over to the wall and ran his hand quickly over the glyphs, an inch above the surface, watching the colored light course its way from panel to panel. He pulled away quickly. “It’s a library.”
“A library,” Jack repeated flatly. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“No, I’m not.” When Daniel turned back to him, his face was alight with the excitement of discovery. He pointed at the wall. “These panels. They must be recordings. Experiences.” He spread his arms wide to take in the maze as a whole. “Millions of them. Some kind of somatic archive. Sense memories.” His hands fell as he gazed with a kind of fevered reverence over Jack’s head and at the wall on the other side of the passage. “It’s… amazing.”
Jack squinted skeptically up at him. “Why would the Ancients lock up a library?”
Daniel looked incredulous. “Are you kidding?”
“No. You’ll know when I’m kidding.”
“It’s knowledge, Jack. Knowledge—”
“—is power. Yeah, I get i
t. But please tell me there’s more to this than sea-monster porn.”
Daniel blinked. “Well, maybe it’s not all that kind of everyday stuff. Maybe there’s other things here. You said you saw a ship.” He licked his lips, letting his eyes roam the walls. “I mean, think about how far we’ve come into this place, and every single surface is covered with these glyphs. Who knows what there might be in here?” He turned to Aris. “Maybe even something to help your people. Maybe something that can help us all.”
“Maybe that’s not good enough,” Aris growled, taking a step toward him. “Yu is on his way here now. We don’t have time to touch each panel until we find something useful.”
Jack said a silent alleluia.
Daniel looked nonplussed for a second. Jack was getting a crick in his neck.
“Well, there must be a system here,” Daniel said with a wave toward the walls. “Categorization of some kind.” He pointed to panels in turn as he spoke. “Desert. Sea monster. Ship. Libraries always have a system. This is a maze, not a labyrinth. Order, not randomness. We just have to figure out the system and then—”
“Or we can ask the librarian.”
Jack followed the line of Aris’ aim toward the curve of the hallway, and damned if his hallucination wasn’t standing there watching them. For a second she seemed to be partially invisible, but he realized that it was a trick of her shining scales that reflected the walls around her in shifting ripples. The scales on her upper body were more iridescent than simply reflective, though, and her breasts, shoulders and arms were faintly blue and covered with rainbows like oil on the surface of the water. Her bald head was angled curiously, and the mirrored eyes, even without irises or pupils, didn’t seem at all blind as she shifted her attention from Aris to Jack to Daniel. When she smiled, fine, pointed teeth showed between her full, white lips.
A quick glance at Daniel confirmed that Jack wasn’t the only one seeing her, but just in case, Jack said, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
