CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Janet's eyes did not stray from the monitor showing Teal'c's vital signs. She really did not like what she was seeing.
"We're going to need a crash cart standing by in here," she said, heading to the phone to call the infirmary.
"You can't introduce an electrical impulse to the chair like that," Bill said.
"He's right," Sam agreed.
"Sam, if Teal'c suffers one more reset, there's a very good chance that he'll go into cardiac arrest," the doctor declared. She shook her head and began dialing the infirmary. "I need to have one in here regardless. If I can't use the defibrillator, I can at least try the epinephrine. I just don't know if it will be enough to save him."
The others looked at the two men in the chairs, afraid, that, soon, one of them would die for real.
It did not take Daniel and Teal'c long to find the chip, which was a good thing since the door was not going to hold much longer.
Daniel got an idea and explained it to Teal'c, who approved of the plan. The archeologist walked up a wall. He knew that another lab was on the other side. Using as little power as necessary, he knocked a hole in the wall big enough for him and Teal'c to crawl through. It took more power than what it normally would because of the steel plating that was in the walls of all the laboratories. Daniel hoped that he wouldn't have to use his abilities much more. He couldn't afford the distraction that a headache would cause. And he had no doubt that he'd get one if he overdid it. This might all be happening inside a computer simulation, but, as he'd personally found out, the game could inflict pain and would know about his limitations.
Teal'c and Daniel crept up to the open door of the room and positioned themselves against the wall. They could hear the drones still trying to get into Sam's lab. The two men nodded at each other, then rushed out into the corridor. Teal'c aimed his weapon, which now had the modified chip, at the drones as Daniel pinned their arms to their sides. With two shots, they were both dead. The teammates ducked back into the room.
Daniel closed his eyes, trying to sense any other danger nearby. His ability to feel the presence of others was one power that had apparently not been adapted into the game, maybe because there was no way to simulate such a thing. He would not be able to rely upon it to tell him when a drone or Goa'uld was near. But his sixth sense was not sending him any warnings, and he wasn't seeing anything with the two-second precognitive thing. The cloaked drone wasn't here this time.
"I think we're clear," he said. He and Teal'c exited the room. "Okay, so what's next?"
"We must seek to prevent a Naquadah generator from overloading or the base's self-destruct from being activated. Either threat is possible."
Just then, the "two-second warning" showed Daniel that Sam was coming. He turned around to see her come running around a corner.
"Guys! We're in big trouble here," she shouted as she hurried up to them.
"Yeah, we know," Daniel replied. "We took out two of the drones, but there's a third one around here somewhere, probably cloaked, and there may be a Goa'uld, too."
Sam stared at him. "How do you know that? Did you see something in the future?"
"There's no time to explain, Sam. It's likely that they're going to try to blow up the base."
Suddenly, Daniel received a double warning that told him the cloaked drone was there and about to attack.
"Look out!" he yelled, pushing Sam and Teal'c out of the way. The drone became visible in the corridor, firing its weapons. The archeologist threw it backwards.
Distracted by the attack, Daniel did not sense a second threat until it was too late. Before he could turn around, he and Teal'c were shot in the back by Sam, her eyes glowing.
As the game reset, what Janet had feared happened.
"His heart's stopped!" she cried. She dashed across the room and snatched up the syringe of epinephrine. She plunged the needle into Teal'c's heart and injected the drug. Thankfully, it worked.
"He's got a pulse," Sam said in relief.
Janet was not quite as relieved. "For now, but that won't work again."
"I don't want to see that again!" Jack exclaimed, horrified by the sight he'd just witnessed. "When are they going to beat this thing?"
"Unfortunately, in this situation, Daniel's abilities are proving to be almost as much of a hindrance as a help," Sam said. "It's resulted in an even greater threat because the game is now targeting him first and foremost. He's being overwhelmed before he has a chance to take full advantage of the precognitive ability. He needs to find a way to get around that, create a strategy that will make full use of the precognition."
Jack nodded. "Okay. Daniel's up to the challenge. He came up with a strategy to rescue you and Teal'c from Baal. He can do this, too."
"I hope you're right, General," Janet responded. "If there's another reset, Teal'c will likely not survive."
Daniel ran down the corridor, cursing himself for a fool. He'd fallen right into that one. When Sam joined them, he never considered for an instant that she might be a Goa'uld, which was probably what the game was anticipating. Well, it wouldn't happen again. From now on, Daniel wouldn't trust anyone, except for Teal'c.
The archeologist came to a stop. He was going to have to come up with a different way to do this, one that would actually take advantage of the fact that he was a primary target. With that thought in mind, Daniel slipped into a darkened room and hid behind a table. He closed his eyes and sought out Teal'c's mind.
'Teal'c,' he said telepathically. 'Can you hear me?'
'I can, Daniel Jackson,' came the mental reply.
'Where are you?'
'I am approaching Colonel Carter's lab to retrieve the modulator chip.'
'Okay, I'm going to head that way, too. I've got a plan that I think might work.' He explained the plan to Teal'c, telling him about the ability to see things two seconds in the future.
Keeping his senses alert and trying to use the game-generated precognition as well as possible, Daniel headed to Level 19. Instead of going to Sam's lab, he entered a room two doors down and hid.
'I'm in position, Teal'c,' he told his teammate silently.
'I have found the chip and am also in position.'
'You closed and locked the other door to the lab, right?'
'Yes, the door we entered through before is now the only unblocked entrance.'
'Good.'
Remaining still, Daniel blocked out everything else from his mind but the precognition. It wasn't long before it showed him the approach of two drones.
'They're coming,' Daniel warned Teal'c.
The drones came down the hall, passing right by the room Daniel was hiding in and continuing to Sam's lab. Daniel left his hiding place and took up position behind the wall beside the door.
As the supersoldiers drew up to Sam's lab, Daniel mentally shouted, 'Now!'
At the same moment that Daniel swung out into the corridor, Teal'c did the same from a similar position in the lab. As the Jaffa shot one of the drones, Daniel killed the other by crushing its neck right where he knew the symbiote would be. Both drones fell dead to the floor. The way Daniel had killed his drone may have bothered him a little, if the thing was real.
Daniel ducked back into the room, using every ability available to him to see if the third drone was around. As far as he could tell, it wasn't.
'I think we're clear,' he told Teal'c voicelessly.
The two men entered the hall. Daniel walked up to Teal'c, staring down at the dead drones.
"Yeah, this could work. That two-second precognition is a little like a weird version of what Jack calls my Spidey sense. It's taken some getting used to, but I think I have a handle on it now. The cloaked drone is going to be harder, though, because I can't actually see it coming."
"And the Goa'uld?"
"Yeah. We can't trust anyone, Teal'c, not even Sam or Jack."
"I concur. We must consider ourselves to be alone in this battle."
The two men headed down the hallway, senses alert. Daniel took a P-90 from a dead marine. Though it wouldn't work against the remaining drone, it would against the Goa'uld.
"Okay, in the last two games, it concentrated most of its efforts on killing me, which worked both times," Daniel said.
"But it would be aware that we will be on guard for such a tactic. It may change strategies."
"Yeah. This time, the cloaked drone doesn't seem to be around here, which means it'll be sprung on us later. Before I entered the game, the main goal was to destroy the base. That would still be a goal, just not the only one."
"Another would be to make certain that you die as well."
"Right. Blowing up the base would also kill me, so we need to make it impossible for them to do that, at least with the autodestruct or a Naquadah generator."
"How will we accomplish that?"
"Come on. Let's get to the self-destruct device."
Daniel and Teal'c descended to Level 28. Every person they passed was looked upon with suspicion. The Goa'uld could be in any one of them.
As they entered the room, Daniel gazed at the nuclear device. It was a lot bigger than a Naquadah generator.
"Okay, from what I understand, there's more than one way that this thing can be activated," he said, "so the only way to prevent it is to disable the device itself . . . without blowing up the mountain, which, um, isn't going to be easy since I don't really know what I'm doing. I really wish we could trust. . . ." He abruptly turned to the door, raising his weapon. "Sam's coming."
She appeared in the next second. "What are you guys doing here?" Neither man lowered their weapons. "What's going on?"
"Sorry, Sam, but we can't trust that you're still you. There's a Goa'uld running around here somewhere."
"How do you know that?"
"It doesn't matter right now. I need to disable the self-destruct device so that the Goa'uld can't use it to blow up the base."
"What? No, you can't." Sam took a step forward. "We may have to destroy the base to keep an invasion force from coming through the gate and attacking the surface."
"I'm sorry, Sam, but I have no choice."
"No! Daniel, you don't know what you're doing. One wrong move, and you could set it off."
"I know."
"If you have to do this, let me help you."
"I wish I could, but I can't trust you," Daniel said regretfully.
"Daniel, it's me. I'm not a Goa'uld."
Daniel met her eyes for a long moment, then, "Teal'c, cover her." He turned to the device. Closing his eyes, he sought to delve into the inner workings with his mind, not even knowing if this ability would work. It did. Soon, he was viewing inside the thing. The problem was that he didn't understand most of what he saw. Then he saw the core. That he understood all too well.
Daniel stared at some wiring leading from what he thought was the timer. He knew that, when the autodestruct was activated, it initiated a countdown. If he cut all those wires from the timer, that would prevent the device from going off, right? Daniel recalled when Anubis sent a Naquadah-filled meteor on a collision course with Earth. When Jack and Teal'c had to deactivate the nuclear bomb that had been set to detonate, they were forced to do it by cutting wires from the timer to the detonator. Sam had said that if they cut the wrong wire, the bomb would go off. Was the same thing true here? Crap.
Daniel knew that, if he screwed up, he'd get another chance to do this all over again, but would Teal'c? He had to get it right this time.
That's when he remembered something else.
Desperately hoping that he wasn't going to kill Teal'c, Daniel looked at the wires and snapped the red one. Nothing happened. To make sure that the wire couldn't be spliced, he completely destroyed it.
Opening his eyes, Daniel turned to the two other people in the room.
"What did you do?" Sam asked.
"This was a much better designed bomb," he replied with a little smile.
Sam frowned in puzzlement. "What?"
Daniel decided now would not be the time to remind her about that incident with the meteor, how all the wires in the bomb were yellow instead of one being red, the one that needed to be cut. At the time, Jack had complained about the poor design of the bomb. All Daniel could hope was that the red wire was the right one to cut with this device. He didn't dare cut all of them.
"Okay, I hope what I just did will prevent the autodestruct from being set," Daniel said, "but I also have to make sure the bomb can't be detonated manually. That's going to be a little more noisy. Let's get out of here."
With Teal'c still keeping his weapon pointed at Sam, the three of them left the room. Daniel turned back around and looked through the open doorway. His gaze went to the ceiling. Taking a deep breath, he focused his power. A low rumbling began. Cracks formed in the ceiling, racing in jagged lines across its surface. With a roar, the ceiling collapsed, burying the room in tons of concrete.
Sam gasped, jumping back and shielding her face from debris.
"Daniel! You could have damaged the casing!" she cried.
"I slowed the descent of the ceiling around it. It should be okay." Daniel studied his handiwork. "Okay, it would take a while to dig that out, even for a drone. Hopefully, it'll be enough."
Suddenly, a warning shot through Daniel. He spun around as he saw a two-second view of the future.
"Look out!" he yelled as the cloaked drone appeared before them, firing its weapon. He, Teal'c and Sam dove for the floor as Daniel attacked the drone, hurtling it against the far wall. From his position on the floor, Teal'c shot it.
Daniel got to his knees. "Teal'c, you okay?"
"I am unharmed."
Daniel looked over at Sam. "Sam?" When he got no reply, he scrambled over to her. There was a burn from an energy weapon in her chest. Glazed, pain-filled eyes looked up at him.
"Daniel," she whispered, grasping his hand. Then her eyes closed, and her body went limp.
"Sam," Daniel murmured, his stomach clenching. He felt for a pulse and found none.
"Daniel Jackson, this is not the real Colonel Carter," Teal'c said.
Daniel nodded. "Yeah, I know. It just shook me for a second." He got to his feet. "Come on. Now that the third drone is dead, the Goa'uld will target the Naquadah generator."
The two men hurriedly ascended to the level where the storage room containing the Naquadah generator was. They exited the elevator . . . and came face to face with Jack, who aimed his P-90 at them. Daniel and Teal'c responded by brandishing their own weapons.
"Jack," Daniel said.
"Daniel. Would you mind telling me what's going on? I just got a report that the room with the self-destruct device was pretty much destroyed. Now, I'm thinking that you're the only one around here with the ability to do that without the use of explosives."
"Yes, it was me. I had no choice. Did you also hear that Sam is dead?"
Jack's expression changed to one of shock and dismay. "What? You couldn't save her?"
"I probably could have, if I'd tried, but there was no time. There's a Goa'uld around here that's going to blow up the base with a Naquadah generator, if we don't stop them. And, for all we know, that Goa'uld is you."
"I'm not a Goa'uld, Daniel, but I have to wonder if you are. You seem pretty unaffected by Carter's death."
"If Sam really had just died, Jack, I wouldn't be this calm."
Jack's brow furrowed. "Come again? I thought you just said—"
"There's no time to explain, and, even if I tried, you wouldn't believe me."
"Daniel Jackson, we must hurry," Teal'c said.
Daniel's gaze flickered to Jack's weapon, which went flying out of the man's grasp.
"Hey!" Jack yelled in objection.
"Sorry. If you're not a Goa'uld, I'll get you another one. I'm afraid you're going to have to come with us."
His expression making it clear that he meant business, Teal'c gestured at Jack with his weapon.
"Oh, for cryin' out loud," the general muttered.
With Jack in front, the three men ran to the storage room. As they entered it, Daniel's sixth sense was already warning him of danger. Siler was beside the generator, which had clearly been set to overload.
"Sir, it's overloading," he said. "I need to try to stop it."
"Get away from it," Daniel ordered firmly, aiming his weapon at the man.
"What? Doctor Jackson, it's going to explode, if I don't stop it."
"And you may be the one who is responsible for that condition," Teal'c stated.
"Huh?"
"They think you might be a Goa'uld, Siler," Jack said, "although I find the idea of you as a Goa'uld just a little . . . absurd. No offence."
"I'm not a Goa'uld, General, though it probably was one who did this."
Daniel stared down at the generator. The pitch of its whine was getting steadily higher.
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said urgently, knowing they were running out of time.
Daniel looked back and forth between Jack and Siler. "I don't know. I can't tell." Damn. What he wouldn't give right now for his ability to sense symbiotes.
The archeologist knew that this was up to him. If he made the wrong decision, he could be dooming Teal'c. They couldn't trust Siler, but the only other person who would have had a prayer of stopping the overload was dead.
"We need to get rid of it, Teal'c," he said, "throw it through the gate, like you tried to do before."
Putting aside his weapon, Teal'c picked up the generator as Daniel kept a close eye on Jack and Siler.
"Come on. Let's go," Daniel said.
All four men left the room. Daniel saw a phone on the wall down the corridor and rushed over to it. He called the control room.
"This is Daniel Jackson. Dial . . . dial P4M-523 immediately."
"Sir, you don't have authorization to order that," Sergeant Harriman responded.
Crap. "Walter, we don't have time for this! There's a Naquadah generator here that's about to blow up, and we have to get rid of it! Forget about regulations and authorizations."
"Doctor Jackson, I'm sorry, but—"
Just then, Jack snatched the phone from Daniel's grasp. "Walter, just dial the damn gate!" he yelled into the receiver.
"Yes, sir!" the sergeant immediately replied.
Daniel gasped as he was struck with two warnings simultaneously. He jerked around to see Siler, his eyes glowing, pull a pistol out from underneath his coveralls and aim it at him.
With a shout, Daniel struck at the man even as the trigger was being pulled. The sergeant was flung backwards, the bullet zipping past Daniel mere inches from his head.
Siler struck the wall with tremendous force and fell limply to the floor.
Jack stared at him. "Damn. He was a Goa'uld."
"Come on! Let's go!" Daniel exclaimed.
He, Jack and Teal'c hurried down to the gate room, knowing that the generator could explode at any second. The final chevron was locking as they rushed into the room.
The wormhole burst to life. Not stopping, Teal'c headed for the ramp.
And that's when something happened that neither he nor Daniel had expected. His mind distracted, Daniel didn't sense it until the gun was already drawn. Shocked, he spun around to see Jack, a look of determination on his face, aim at Teal'c's back and pull the trigger.
"No!" Daniel screamed as he struck, too late, at the man who was yet another Goa'uld, sending him flying all the way across the gate room to slam with fatal force against the wall. At the same time, Daniel tried to deflect the bullet, but was horrified to see it strike its target. Teal'c crumpled on the ramp.
His sixth sense clamoring within him, Daniel scrambled up the ramp, wrenched the generator from underneath Teal'c's body, and threw it with all his might into the wormhole.
"Shut it down!" he yelled at the top of his voice.
Harriman complied, and the gate disengaged.
With a feeling of dread, Daniel knelt beside his friend. "Teal'c?" God, please don't let them have come so close only to fail now.
With a groan, the Jaffa slowly sat up, clutching his left shoulder. "I am fine, Daniel Jackson." He smiled. "We are victorious."
All at once, the gate room vanished. Daniel opened his eyes and found himself in the lab, the real Sam, Jack, Bill and Janet all staring at him.
Feeling a little disoriented, he asked, "Is it finished?"
Sam smiled. "Yeah. You did it."
Daniel laid his head back with a relieved sigh, his eyes closing.
Teal'c's eyes slowly opened.
"Shutting off power to both chairs," Sam said, walking over to the controls.
Jack stepped up to Teal'c.
"O'Neill," the Jaffa said tiredly.
"Hey." Jack patted the man on the shoulder, smiling.
"We have won."
"Well . . . it's what we do."
Teal'c nodded and smiled in satisfaction. Jack returned the smile.
"Excuse me, General," Janet said. Jack moved out of the way for her. "How are you feeling, Teal'c?"
"I am tired."
The doctor smiled in understanding. "Yes, I imagine you are. There's a gurney on the way to take you to the infirmary, where you can sleep to your heart's content." She turned to Daniel. "How about you?"
"I'm okay, just eager to get disconnected from this thing."
"Nevertheless, I'll want you to go to the infirmary, too, so that I can check you out. You died four times in the game, which did put a physical strain on your body."
The two men were taken to the infirmary. Daniel would have preferred to walk there under his own power, but Janet insisted that he use a wheelchair.
Not long after they got there, Teal'c was asleep, his exhausted, adrenalin-deprived body giving him no other choice.
"How's he doing?" Jack asked Janet.
"He'll be all right. It was a close thing, though. I really don't think he'd have survived another reset."
"And Daniel?"
"He's fine, just a little tired."
Jack went over to the archeologist, who was sitting upon one of the beds, fully clothed. Sam was there as well. A nurse had just finished taking his blood pressure.
"How's Teal'c doing?" Daniel asked.
"The doc says he'll be okay." Jack gave his friend a look. "So, Daniel. I understand why you had to attack me in the game, but did ya have to throw me so hard? You probably broke every bone in my body . . . his body. It made me hurt just seeing it."
Daniel looked contrite. "Sorry. I was a little upset."
"Ya think?"
"I almost can't believe the game put in a second Goa'uld," Sam said.
"I guess it was getting in one last twist," Daniel responded.
Jack patted his shoulder. "You did good, Daniel. You and Teal'c beat it."
"Barely. I sure hope we don't go through anything like that for real. In a real situation, we wouldn't get any do-overs."
"Daniel, you've gotten do-overs almost more times than I can count."
"It would be a little tough to come back to life after being incinerated by a Naquadah or nuclear explosion, Jack."
"Yeah, you do have a point there, although it wouldn't surprise me if Oma ascended you again."
"Daniel, I was wondering about something," Sam said. "You couldn't sense who was a Goa'uld?"
"No. My ability to sense the presences of others didn't exist in the game, probably because it didn't have a way to simulate that."
"Or maybe it was cheating just a little bit," Jack remarked. The others turned to him. "If you'd known who the Goa'uld was, you'd have had a really big advantage. The game couldn't have surprised you like it did with Carter and then with me."
"Sir, like I said, the chair doesn't have an ego," Sam said, "and its programming wouldn't allow it to cheat."
"Oh, it definitely wasn't cheating," Daniel stated.
"How do you know?" Jack asked.
"Sam told me about why it was that my powers suddenly started working in the game, about how it read my memories. Okay, so reading my memories would tell it what I was capable of doing, but it wouldn't enable it to know what I was making my abilities to do each time I used them in the game. Like, for instance, when I telekinetically threw a drone or a Goa'uld through the air. How did it know that's what I wanted to do? I didn't say it out loud. I just mentally thought it. So, the only way those abilities could have worked right was if the game was reading my thoughts."
An expression of realization filled Sam's face. "Daniel, you're right. That is the only way it would have worked."
"Okay, so what does that have to do with not cheating?" Jack asked.
"Think about it, Jack," Daniel answered. "If it could read my mind, it would have known what I was planning at the beginning of that last scenario when I telepathically talked to Teal'c. If it wanted to cheat, it wouldn't have made the drones walk right past my position. It would have had them look in that room, ruining the plan. There are dozens of ways it could have cheated, taken advantage of things it read in our minds or heard us say."
"Yeah, okay, so it didn't cheat. I still think we should pull the plug on the thing and never let anyone else sit in one of those chairs."
"Sir, this won't happen again," Sam said. "The program will be changed to eliminate the danger. It would still be useful for what it was originally intended to be, a training device for personnel."
"Uh huh. Well, I did learn one thing. Rather, I realized there was something that needed to be done." Jack looked at his best friend. "You now have the authority to order the gate dialed, even in foothold situations and when the base is under attack."
"Thanks. I just hope I never have to use it."
"And now, everyone, I am going to bed," Jack said. "It has been a very, very long day, and the sun will be up before we know it."
"Yeah, I'm going to get some sleep, too," Sam said, muffling a yawn.
Daniel got to his feet. "Make that three of us." He smiled slightly. "Dying four times in one day kind of wore me out."
"As often as you've died for real, I'd think you'd be used to it by now," Jack remarked. "You know. All in a day's work."
"Have you gotten used to it?"
"Hell no. The day I actually get used to dying is the day I retire."
The three friends stopped by Teal'c's bed on the way out, seeing that he was still dead to the world.
As they were walking toward the elevator, Sam noticed that Daniel was frowning slightly.
"Something the matter?" she asked.
"I was just thinking about something. We figured that a lot of what the game did was in an effort to give Teal'c a real challenge. Well, when I entered the game, the same would be true for me since I was now a player, too, right?"
Sam nodded. "I would think so."
"But my strengths and weaknesses are not the same as Teal'c's." Daniel's eyes met Sam's. "When your character was shot, the way she acted, how she looked at me and held my hand was like. . . ."
"Like what?" Jack asked.
"Well, in the earlier replays of the game, Sam and you were killed numerous times, but it was never done in a . . . well, in a sad way. You died quickly, and the game continued. That last time was different. Sam's death happened in a more upsetting way. Now, if it had been only Teal'c playing, he'd have continued like nothing happened because he'd immediately reason that it wasn't really Sam. But with me . . . for a few seconds, it really upset me. My first instinct was to heal her. I think that's exactly why the game did it. It was another challenge for me to overcome. If that situation had been real, I'd have wanted to heal Sam even though it would have cost precious time and weakened me."
"I suppose you could be right," Sam said. "The game could have evaluated your character, like it did Teal'c's, and determined that your emotions control your actions far more than Teal'c's do and that something like having my character just about die in your arms would upset you and might influence your actions."
"Yeah. It decided that how I feel about you and my other friends could be used as a weapon against me, just like Anubis did when he chose to possess you instead of someone I had no emotional attachment to."
"Well, it's over, Daniel," Jack said. "You won the game, just like you beat Anubis."
The ship landed on the barren, frozen planet. Rejel hated these trips to this godforsaken block of ice, but this planet was the only one accessible to him that had the rare mineral the people of Meshdool prized so greatly. The money he made was well worth a few frozen fingers and toes. The trader – and sometimes smuggler – just wished that he had a way to take that Stargate sitting all alone and unused. But then, it didn't have a dialing device, so it was pretty much useless.
As Rejel prepared the equipment that would begin the mining process, he failed to see the black, fog-like apparition coming up behind him. By the time he became aware of it, it was far too late to do anything more than cry out in fear. And then the consciousness of Rejel Deen knew no more.
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