Teal'c grabbed a fistful of uniform and hauled the struggling, swearing man back to his side. "We do not leave behind our people either, Corporal Wilkins. However, all you would accomplish by searching for them now is your own demise. Your weapons are useless against these beasts. If your comrades are lucky and smart, they will not fight but outrun the creatures. You have risked your own life to give them an opportunity for escape. You have done enough."
The corporal's face plainly stated that he begged to differ, but in the end he acquiesced as there were indeed no shots being fired in the jungle. "Sounds like you're right, sir. They're running."
Too fast to even look back and ascertain your whereabouts, Teal'c did not reply. Life had taught him that idealism was a precious commodity, and he had no desire to quash it where he found it.
For a while they sat quietly, watching the glade below. At length, his voice still a little unsteady, Corporal Wilkins declared, "I suppose I should go back and report to Sergeant van Leyden, tell him what happened, bring reinforcements." He scanned the clearing. "Except... You know where that DHD thing is, sir?"
"I do not."
"But they told us it's always by the gate."
"Mostly, but not always," Teal'c answered. "It may have been hidden on purpose. Or it may not exist at all."
"Not exist?" The young man parroted, his face draining of blood. "So what are we-"
In the foliage above a bird began to screech, and at the same time Teal'c felt a diminishing of the vague sense of discomfort the unnatural silence of the forest had caused. Again realization hovered just beneath the threshold of conscious thought, again events dispelled it. A second bird answered the screech, then other animals chimed in, until the normal cacophony of the jungle was restored. Little later a bulky black shape appeared across the glade, not far from where the three Marines had vanished. The beast moved sluggishly, uncertainly, as though it had woken from drugged sleep in a location it had not expected to find itself in. Behind it and at its side, others broke from the forest, all in a similar state, until the whole pack was staggering up the stone tongue and back into their lair under the walls of the ruins.
"I'll be damned," muttered Corporal Wilkins. "They suddenly feel like a nap or something?"
"I do not know, Corporal Wilkins," Teal'c answered truthfully. "However, it appears that now would be a good time to leave."
Within minutes they were back on solid ground. His sidearm drawn and raised, Corporal Wilkins cautiously approached the beast Teal'c had slain. Even in death it seemed gigantic, its body covered in spikes a quarter of an inch thick, its stubby trotters ending in claws. Its snout was pointed and from under slack flews protruded a set of razor fangs stained with old blood.
"That is one danged ugly critter," the corporal declared. Then he holstered his weapon and glanced toward the edge of the jungle. "No good going after the guys, I suppose. Might end up walking in circles for days."
"Indeed," confirmed Teal'c, only too aware of his own experiences.
"So what do you suggest we do, Mr, uh, First Prime, sir?"
"I shall continue to follow the trail of Dr. Fraiser. She is... unwell, and it is imperative that I-"
"Dr. Fraiser's here? And Major Carter, sir?" At Teal'c's nod, Corporal Wilkins swallowed. "Sir, are you trying to tell me you've never been back to Earth?"
"We have not. The Stargate malfunctioned."
"I don't think so."
"Why do you say that, Corporal Wilkins?"
"Colonel O'Neill and Dr. Jackson came looking for you, sir. They..." The young man blushed, clearly uncomfortable. "I think-I know-Colonel Norris lied to them. I spoke to them briefly. Then they disappeared. We were told they'd gone back to Earth. Like you, sir."
Driven by a sudden, sickening certainty about who the two prisoners had been, Teal'c's gaze arrested on the spot where the flexcuffs had lain. They were gone now, trampled under by hundreds of claws.
The cab they'd taken from Sea-Tac International stuttered to a halt at a street comer in one of the least savory areas of suburban Seattle.
"That's forty-five bucks," said the driver.
George Hammond stared at his travel companion who smiled innocently and turned up empty palms so as to indicate penury.
"You gonna pay me today or what?" the cabby snarled.
Clearly the US Air Force was going cover the cab fare as well. Hammond pulled a fifty dollar note from his wallet and handed it to the driver. "Keep the change."
"Ain't takin' nothin' bigger than twenty dollar notes."
Snapping forward in the seat, Maybourne poked his head through the open partition. "Take it," he hissed. "And we want the change back. All twenty bucks of it."
The tone was steel-edged, suggesting that refusal would be a bad mistake, and the driver knew better than disputing the math. Without another word he gave Maybourne two tens, then growled, "Out!"
Hammond slipped from the cab and watched as it drove off, tires smoking. Obviously the cabby wanted to get the hell out of here, and who could blame him? The street was lined with shops that had gone bust, windows boarded over and signs faded or dangling. The only establishments still in business were a drinking hole, a heavily barred liquor store, and a hot dog stand at the comer of the next block. A wino had occupied a stretch of curb and was ranting at a hydrant. In an alley opposite, two shadowy figures abruptly ducked behind a dumpster when they noted Hammond's interest. A trio of teens, in low-slung jeans wide enough to accommodate a small country, swaggered out of the liquor store, clutching paper bags and giving him the hard man stare.
He turned, expecting to find Maybourne right behind him. Instead, the ex-colonel had made a beeline for the hot dog stand. He'd also pocketed the change from the cab fare. Beginning to appreciate Jack O'Neill's recurring itch to shoot the man, Hammond headed after him. Given time of year and latitude, the night was surprisingly muggy, and he wanted to unzip the windbreaker. Fingers already on the tab, he reconsidered. Presumably the idea was to remain inconspicuous. The Aloha shirt had parrots on it.
At the hot dog stand, Maybourne was squirting relish on a dog that, by Texan standards, was a Chihuahua. A runt at that. The less than sanitary individual manning the stand demanded an extortionate six bucks for the feast, and Maybourne forked over one of the ten dollar bills and grinned at Hammond.
"Want one, George? My treat."
"You could have eaten on the plane," groused Hammond, deciding not to point out the obvious.
"And poison myself with the junk they serve?" Maybourne demanded around a mouthful of hot dog. A glob of relish escaped and left a green trail down his front. Two bites later the dog had disappeared. He scrunched the napkin into a ball and lobbed it into the gutter. "Let's go."
He briskly strode across the street and into the alley, deserted now, apart from a few rats. At its end, Maybourne took a left, crossed another street, found another alley, until they emerged on an avenue that looked somewhat more reputable than the area where they'd started out. Directly opposite rose a tall, institutional gray facade. George Hammond recognized it without ever having been here.
"St. Christina's Hospital. That's where Conrad held Major-"
"No names." Grinning faintly, Mayboume checked up and down the street. "Doesn't look like we've got company yet, but you can bet your two-star derriere that the NID will pick up our trail. We don't have much time."
"Time for what?"
"Getting inside."
Next to the former hospital stood a tenement building. Maybourne headed for the entrance, bounded up the stairs, nudged the front door. It clicked open. "Lucky the landlord's too stingy to fix it. Fire escape would have been a bit too public for my liking. After you, Huggy."
"Don't push it!" Hammond ducked into the building.
The stairwell was dark, smelled of damp newspapers and floor polish, and served six floors. They climbed every single one of them, plus an additional set of steps onto the roof. Sodium streetlight poured over the cars parked belo
w, a few lit windows adding brightness; somewhere nearby wailed an ambulance, its hom drowning out a mix of TV shows and the rattle of cheap air conditioning units. Up the block, a black SUV pulled into the street, crawled past the hospital, and disappeared again.
"Company," muttered Maybourne. "Won't take long till someone decides to see if we're home already. We've got maybe ten minutes, fifteen at the most."
Hammond felt himself shoved along the parapet and out onto a metal catwalk that connected the tenement to the hospital. The handpainted sign Warning! Condemned! wasn't half as forbidding as the notion of jumping the gap between the buildings, so he didn't argue.
Over on the other side Maybourne pushed past him, flung open a hatch and plunged down a dark flight of stairs. "Move it, General! ORs and offices are on the third floor. You don't want to meet the boys from the SUV, I guarantee you."
Guided only by the meager light filtering in from the street, they clattered down the staircase, one floor, two, three, their footfalls echoing through empty corridors and ricocheting from tiled walls. Maybourne shot from the stairwell, barreled down a hallway, scanning room numbers as he went, and stopped outside a closed door. A few seconds later Hammond caught up with him, panting and wishing he were thirty years younger, thirty pounds lighter. By the time he could breathe again, Maybourne had forced the lock.
"It was a real sweet deal. Instead of dismantling the facility, the NID said a silent prayer of thanks and took it over the way Conrad's people had left it." He hit the light switch, illuminating what looked like a cross between a lab and a control room.
The banks of surveillance monitors, the computers, a couple of electron microscopes were easily identifiable, but most of the scientific equipment was Greek to Hammond. Either side of the monitor banks, a large window opened onto an operating theatre. Along one wall stood several empty glass containers. Fish tanks? Hardly. The opposite wall housed nine large steel drawers. Morgue drawers. His gaze drifted back to the OR below, the gurneys there, the operating table.
"This isn't where they held Carter," said Maybourne, as though he'd read Hammond's mind. "She was a couple doors down. If there's time, I'll show you."
"Thanks. I'll pass."
"Suit yourself. So, let's see what we've got." Maybourne walked over to the wall with the drawers, pulled the nearest one, and grimaced at the body inside. "Oh boy!"
George Hammond felt grateful that the corpse was frozen. If he'd had to contend with the smell, too, he might have thrown up. The pale torso looked like something had eaten its stomach from the inside out. "What in God's name is this?" he croaked. "Some Level IV virus? Hemorrhagic fever?"
"No. Even the NID aren't crazy enough for that. Besides, this isn't a containment lab." For once the slick facade had crumpled, and Harry Maybourne actually looked troubled. "Whatever they're doing, it's definitely not healthy."
"Obviously not, but I don't see what that's got to do with the Marine base on `335"
"Check his dog tags."
He was right. The dead man was a Marine. "What the hell?" whispered Hammond.
"Yeah. Two months ago nine Marines dropped off the planet. Nobody knows what happened to them. Looks like we just got a pointer." Maybourne closed the drawer, flung himself into a chair, and switched on a computer. When the machine started to boot, he hit F8, switched into DOS mode, and entered some kind of code, fingers flying over the keyboard. "It's a backdoor I made for myself when I was still a member of the club. Bypasses the security program."
Moments later a list of folders popped up. Lots of folders. He dipped in and out of them, randomly opening files, skimming over information, moving on to the next.
"What are you looking for?" Hammond asked.
"I'll know when I find it."
"How about this one?"
The folder was called Series 3.7. Shrugging, Maybourne opened it. Nine subfolders. Nine names, one of them identical to the name on the dead man's dog tag. They'd found the vanished Marines alright. "Good guess. You play the lottery? You should, you know."
Somewhere on the lower floors a door slammed, putting paid to any further search for information. Maybourne slipped a DVD from his pocket, placed it into the RW drive, and began downloading the files. The burn seemed to take forever. As soon as drive stopped whirring, he snatched the disc, put it back into its jewel case, and shut down the computer. "Let's hope the stuff copied alright. We don't have time to check."
Out in the corridor they could hear voices, hurried footfalls -three men at least, probably more. As quietly as they could, they raced along the hall, back the way they'd come. It wasn't quietly enough.
"Third floor!" somebody shouted.
Seconds later a tall, bulky figure emerged from the stairwell, cutting off their escape route. Skidding to a halt, George Hammond longed for his sidearm, securely stowed in a Washington hotel safe. Nostalgia was nipped in the bud when he recognized the man. Wrong time for wishful thinking.
"Drat!" He turned on his heel, retracing his steps, Harry Maybourne right beside him.
At their six, Adrian Conrad was gaining, and there was no staircase at the upper end of the corridor. Maybourne hung a right, hared into a nurses' station and through a door opposite into an equipment store. Dead end, and Conrad had reached the station. For want of any other bright ideas Hammond slammed the storeroom door, wedged the backrest of a chair under the knob. It'd last five minutes, if that.
Inside the storeroom were three rows of metal shelves, holding linen, the world's most comprehensive collection of bedpans, and nothing even remotely resembling a weapon. Outside, Conrad was working on turning the door into matchsticks.
"Now what?" gasped Hammond.
By ways of a reply, Mayboume took three steps to the rear wall and yanked open a flap. "Laundry chute."
"You gotta be kidding!"
"Wanna wait for him instead?"
As if on cue a door panel cracked under Conrad's onslaught. Hammond dived into the chute head first, hurtling down three floors and landing on a pile of dirty linen in a laundry cart, without time to reflect on the synchronicity of his and Jack O'Neill's luck. A rumble above announced that somebody was on his way. He scrambled from the cart, clearing the landing zone. Seconds later Maybourne arrived, followed by a roar of fury.
The ex-colonel disembarked and pushed the cart out from under the chute. "That should slow him down," he stated. "Talk about anger management issues."
"Oh, he has. And I'm sure he'll make his feelings known when I hand you over to him, gentlemen."
The disembodied voice came from a swirl of steam that obscured the ill-lit maintenance tunnel, but Hammond didn't need visuals to recognize the owner of that lazy drawl. "Playing with the rats, Colonel?"
"Given the company you keep, General, I suppose I should be the one asking that question." Simmons materialized from the steam cloud, aiming a Glock 17 at them. `Vow, if you'd please raise your hands and step out from behind that cart. You, too, Maybourne."
"About to graduate to murder, Simmons?"
"What murder, General? SG-1 has tragically disappeared, and you've been abducted, probably killed, in DC. So who's to-"
The report of the shot hammered from walls and pipes and seemed to compress the steam. A gun tumbled through the air, and Hammond, half deafened, saw rather than heard Simmons's shout. Clutching his right arm, the colonel broke to his knees.
"Jack sends his regards," said Maybourne, holding a Beretta whose existence he'd previously neglected to mention. "Shame your back wasn't turned." Still keeping his bead on Simmons, he picked up the Glock, tossed it at his companion. "You may want this, General."
Hammond caught the gun, shook his head. "So help me, Harry, you're starting to grow on me."
"Don't panic. It won't last." Grinning, Maybourne pointed down the tunnel. "Exit's that way."
It happened so fast, the skin seemed to slough while it lost its glow and turned dull and yellow. Angry black moles appeared where cells broke down, always in th
e same places; in the middle of the left cheek and on the chin, growing voraciously. Unless treated in time, he-the real one-would die from skin cancer. Lines and wrinkles crawled like cobwebs, scoring deeper and deeper, until the face looked like an ancient, leathery apple, dry and waxy to the touch-if she could touch it. She wanted to, wanted a way to beg forgiveness, offer comfort, warmth, make it easier for him. And him. And him...
She'd lost count, couldn't remember how many.
I can tell you, healer. I even can show you, if I choose to do so. I can show you all of them again. Every single one of them.
"No!" Janet's teeth were rattling so hard, she could barely talk. "Please... It isn't necessary."
Why bother talking? There is no need. I know. I always know
"I'm human. Talk is what we do."
But, human, you keep telling yourself how inhuman your actions are. Why pretend?
Janet couldn't remember, was too cold and too tired to remember anything, and Nirrti's laughter hammered through her skull and seemed to crush the breath in her lungs. At last the pressure eased, though never enough to feel free or forget the presence in her mind.
Inside the tube muscles atrophied, joints thickened with gout and arthritis, the spine curved and vertebrae fused as discs shrank and were resorbed. His eyes were staring at her-they always did. First with the innocent curiosity of a young animal, then, though there was no rational thought and never would be now, with a visceral awareness and terror of what was happening to his body.
She reached out, touched the glassy surface of the tube; a gesture as ineffectual as anything else she could have done. She still couldn't help it, because she knew what was coming.
The eyes, blue and staring, turned milky with glaucoma, and like a child alone in the dark he began to sob, toothless gums bared, gnarled and shriveled hands groping the inside of the tube. It lasted a minute, two, three-too long, however long. Then the movements stilled, slowly, almost gently, and the ancient body died cell by cell. The amniotic fluid-Janet had no idea what else to call it-inside the tube darkened to purple as its molecular structure and properties changed and it began to break down dead flesh and bone into their component proteins.
Stargate SG-1: Survival of the Fittest: SG1-7 Page 17
