CHAPTER THIRTY
The look on Sam's face when she sat at Jack and Hammond's table in the commissary told the men that she'd found something.
"You found bugs," Jack said.
"I'm afraid so, sir, in the office and the briefing room. I'm going to check Daniel's office, my lab and your office next."
"Crap. So, there is a spy here." Jack's expression darkened. "When we find him, he had better tell us where Daniel is."
"First, we need to find him, Colonel," Hammond stated.
"It wouldn't be someone on an SG team," Sam said. "Whoever it is would want to hang around the base. And there's something else. The bugs he planted have a very limited transmission range. I doubt that they'd be able to transmit beyond the base."
"You mean that the guy is listening in as he's walking around the base?" Jack asked.
"Or he could have some kind of recording equipment set up and is listening to it periodically."
A thoughtful look came to Jack's face. "You know, there is one duty station that would be perfect for someone who wanted to keep an eye on things here, and it would enable him to just sit and listen to what those bugs were transmitting."
"The monitoring station," both Hammond and Sam responded.
The general's expression hardened. "Airman Sawyer volunteered for permanent assignment to the monitoring station. He claimed that he had a sharp eye for details and could sit for hours without getting sleepy. The monitoring station is one of the least desired posts because of the monotony, so I was happy to oblige."
"He's our guy," Jack said.
"Airman Sawyer hasn't been here for very long, has he?" Sam questioned.
"No, not long at all," the general replied. "Less than eight weeks, I believe."
"Eight weeks. Sir, that would be around the time that Egeria permanently joined the program. This would make sense. We suddenly have someone working for us who will be giving us all kinds of valuable information and insights on the Goa'uld. The people behind this would see the advantages to having a pair of eyes and ears here." Sam's eyes widened. "General, if he's monitoring the camera feeds right now, he would have seen me find the bugs."
"Crap," Jack cursed. "We need to get down there now!"
As the general hurried to a phone to lock down the base entrances, Sam and the colonel dashed out of the commissary. When they got to the monitoring station, they saw that it wasn't Sawyer who was there.
"Where's Sawyer?!" Jack barked out at the startled young Marine sitting in the chair.
"H-he left several minutes ago, sir. He said that he was sick and was going home."
The two members of SG-1 turned on their heels and ran to the elevator. They ascended to Level 11 and found out from the guard at the checkpoint that Sawyer had signed out just minutes ago.
"He wouldn't have made it to the main entrance in time to beat the lockdown," Sam said, "but he might have made it through the door on the mountaintop, if he hurried."
Up Sam and Jack continued, all the way up to the door at the top of the mountain. The guards there confirmed that Sawyer left through the door just before the call for the lockdown came.
Jack made a quick call to the general to cancel the lockdown so that he and Sam would be allowed to pass through the door. Grabbing a key off the board that was there for the vehicles parked outside, they rushed out the door and hopped into the jeep the key belonged to, then took off down the long, winding road that descended the mountain. It wasn't long before they spotted their quarry, who was on foot. As soon as he saw them, he put on an extra burst of speed and disappeared around a curve in the road. Seconds later, the two members of SG-1 heard the sound of squealing brakes, then an impact. When they made it around the curve, they came to a screeching halt. Sawyer was lying sprawled on the road in front of a Humvee, which had been making its way up the mountain. Two men had gotten out of the vehicle and were checking the airman.
"Sir, he ran right in front of us," one of the Marines said. "We couldn't stop in time. We've called for a medical team."
Jack and Sam knelt beside Sawyer. He was still alive, but was clearly badly injured. His eyes fluttered open, glazed and filled with pain.
Jack grabbed the front of the man's shirt. "Where's Daniel?" When he got no answer, he gave the man a tiny shake. "Where is he?!"
Sawyer's eyes slid closed, and he lost consciousness.
Jack jumped to his feet. "Dammit!"
When the medical team arrived, Jack told them in no uncertain terms that they'd better keep Sawyer alive. The injured airman was rushed to the infirmary. Jack and Sam were there moments later, meeting up with Teal'c and Hammond. The general was quickly filled in on what happened.
The four people waited together for word of the spy's condition. Twenty minutes had passed when Janet came out.
"I'm afraid we lost him," she said. "We tried everything we could, but his injuries were too severe."
"Damn!" Jack ranted. "He was the only link we had to the people that have Daniel."
"Did he say anything at all before he died?" Sam asked hopefully.
Janet shook her head. "I'm afraid not."
"Doctor, I need you to examine the body for any kind of electronic device," Hammond told her.
"Yes, sir."
The general and the three SG-1 teammates went to the briefing room. After disposing of the bugs there and in the office, they sat at the table.
"It's unlikely that Sawyer had time to contact anyone and tell them that the bugs had been found," Sam said, "so the others wouldn't know yet that he was compromised. We need to make every effort to keep that knowledge from them for as long as possible."
"You fear that, once they learn, they may move Daniel Jackson and Egeria to another location," Teal'c surmised.
"That's if Sawyer knew where Daniel and Egeria were being kept. He might not have."
"Sawyer still had several hours to go before he would have gotten off-duty," Hammond said.
"We'll probably be okay for a while, then. But this is going to make it even more urgent that we find Daniel and Egeria soon."
Daniel didn't know when he started pacing. He had no memory of even getting to his feet. But, now that he was pacing, he couldn't seem to stop, just as he couldn't stop the things that were filling his mind so full that it felt like it would burst open. A complete schematic for some alien device was laid out before his mind's eye, and the compulsion to get it down on paper was almost too strong to fight. A complex chemical formula, for what he did not know, was clawing at his brain to get out. The unrelenting need to get his hands on a computer was like that of an addict who had gone too long without a fix.
Daniel felt like he was going insane, like he was a boiler that was red-lining and would explode if the pressure wasn't vented soon. He was fast losing the ability to hold everything in, and, very soon now, his captors would discover what was going on.
That moment came ten minutes later when Daniel stumbled and went to his knees. One of the men hurried over. As soon as he saw the condition Daniel was in, he called to one of the others to get someone named Braddock. Daniel had enough awareness left to realize that Braddock was the man he'd named Mister Grey.
Braddock came running up to the archeologist. Seeing the almost wild look in the blue eyes, the shaking hands, he immediately guessed what was happening.
"The Ancient knowledge is coming through. We need to get him in the other room." He turned back to Daniel. "You've been trying to hide this from us, haven't you. That was not a smart move, Doctor Jackson."
Daniel said something back to him, but it was in Ancient, so he didn't understand.
Egeria was alarmed by Daniel's appearance when he was brought into the room where she had been unwillingly sharing her Goa'uld knowledge. He was pale, a slightly crazed look in his eyes. When he spied the computer, he made a dive for it. One of the other men moved to stop him, but Braddock told him to let Daniel be.
They all watched as the archeologist's fingers flew over the keyboard. Rows of ones and zeros began filling the monitor screen.
"He's writing in binary code," Braddock murmured in fascination, wondering what kind of computer program the archeologist was giving to them.
Daniel had been typing for only a few minutes when he jumped to his feet and hurried over to a blackboard and grabbed a piece of chalk. With frantic speed he began writing down the formula that had been demanding to be let out. As soon as it was done, he was back at the computer to finish what he'd been doing there. Next, came the schematic, sketched out on a large sheet of paper with blazing speed. Then the archeologist was at the large whiteboard that stretched the length of the room, writing a math equation that he didn't understand.
For the next two and a half hours, Daniel's frantic need to get out the things that had been piling up in his head drove him from computer, to paper, to whiteboard and back again. Egeria was terrified of what she was seeing, of the man she loved being swept helplessly along by the flow of Ancient knowledge.
At last, the flow slowed to a trickle, and Daniel halted. He stood swaying in the center of the room, looking like he was about to pass out. Egeria hurried to him and led him to a chair, into which he all but collapsed. He looked up at her and said something in Ancient.
She turned to Braddock. "He needs to rest. You cannot expect him to keep going like that."
Realizing that she was right, the man ordered that Daniel be taken to the sleeping quarters. He was laid on one of the beds. Egeria sat on the edge beside him, his hand clasped in both of hers.
"Daniel," she whispered in an anguished voice.
He met her gaze. "Egeria. Love tua."
The fact that he'd been able to speak a word in English gave her hope that he wasn't as far gone as she'd feared.
She stroked his face. "I love you, too, my Daniel. You must be strong and fight this. You must not let it take you."
"Try-ing," Daniel whispered. He then closed his eyes and plunged headlong into sleep.
Sam found no bugs in any of the other rooms she checked, which was of some comfort. Janet had found something, however, a tiny earpiece inside Sawyer's ear, no doubt the thing that he used to hear the audio from the bugs, and a small device that Sam figured out would switch back and forth between the two different frequencies that the bugs would have broadcast on, enabling him to choose which one to listen to at any given time.
Once again, the three members of SG-1 were gathered in the briefing room with Hammond. Agent Barrett had called a few minutes ago with another update. They'd brought up the records of every van licensed in Colorado that matched the description of the one Daniel had been put in. Fortunately, dark-colored vans like the one the witness described weren't as common as white ones, so the list was a lot shorter than it could have been.
In going through the names of the owners, they found one that belonged to a rental company. A call to the company revealed that the van was rented on the very day that Daniel and Egeria were kidnapped. Unfortunately, the credit card that was used to rent the van belonged to a man who'd died three months ago. Another disappointment came when they checked if the rental company had GPS on the van and were told that it didn't, meaning that this was another dead end.
Sam had done a complete background check on Airman Joseph Sawyer and was presently sharing what she'd found.
"As General Hammond already knows, Sawyer was transferred to Stargate Command from Area 51, where he had been stationed for two years. Sawyer requested the transfer. I found something interesting in his financial records. A year ago, he'd gotten deeply in debt, mostly to credit card companies. Then, all of a sudden, he started making big payments on the cards. Nothing big enough to raise flags, but enough that he was debt-free within six months."
"He'd been recruited," Jack guessed.
Sam gave a nod. "That's what I'm figuring. They probably targeted him for recruitment because of his financial situation. Working at Area 51, he would have been a valuable asset to have."
"I'm thinking that somebody needs to start checking out the other people at Area 51. There's no telling how many others are working for these guys."
"I have to agree, Colonel," Hammond said. "I will be making that recommendation to my superiors. Unfortunately, I will also have to do the same for the personnel on this base. We cannot assume that Sawyer was the only person here who is a part of this."
"I really hope he was the only one," Sam said. "If he wasn't, the group has probably been alerted to the fact that Sawyer was found out."
"So, what else did you find out about the dearly departed Airman Sawyer?" Jack asked.
"In checking his phone records, I noticed a number that he called frequently, almost on a daily basis. It's a cell phone registered to a name that more checking revealed is fictitious. The mailing address for the name is a post office box. I'm hoping that we might manage to get some leads from this."
"Yeah, but how long is that going to take? Daniel is running out of time."
"I know, sir. Agent Barrett has put even more people on the case. They're doing everything they can to find Daniel and Egeria."
The four people were startled by a sudden flash of blue light, which heralded the arrival of Thor.
"Thor! Are we ever glad to see you," Jack said. "We've got a big problem."
"Your message to the Asgard said that it was a matter of great urgency. I would have arrived sooner, but I was dealing with another urgent matter."
"It's about Daniel. He was kidnapped and forced to interface with the Ancient repository."
"This is, indeed, grave news. We must immediately extract the knowledge from his mind."
"That's the problem," Sam told the Asgard. "We don't know where he is. The people who took him and Egeria are keeping them somewhere, and we don't know where. We believe they did this so that they can get some of the Ancient knowledge from him."
"You must strive to find him as quickly as possible. Our scientists have examined the scans of Doctor Jackson, and they have determined that, if he were to interface with one of the Ancient repositories, the knowledge would release into his consciousness at a far greater rate of speed than what occurred in O'Neill. It is unlikely that he would survive more than twenty-four of your hours."
The color drained from Sam's face. "Oh my God. It's already been over nineteen hours. That means that Daniel has less than five hours left. We'll never find him in time."
"Thor, there's gotta be something you can do to help find him," Jack said in a tone of desperation.
"Unfortunately, there is not, O'Neill. I would have no way to specifically locate Daniel Jackson among the millions of people residing in this area."
The eyes of Daniel's teammates met as they were hit with the reality that their friend was very likely going to die.
Daniel was able to sleep no more than an hour before the building pressure of the Ancient knowledge forced him into consciousness. He was taken back to the other room, where his struggle to record all the things filling his brain resumed. Braddock tried to get him to provide specific information, particularly on weapons, but the knowledge was pouring into Daniel's brain too rapidly for him to have any control over it. All anyone could do was stand back and let him work.
Egeria watched as her lover worked on a schematic that was so big that he was having to use two blueprint-size pieces of paper. For a normal person, the drawing would have taken days to complete, but Daniel's hands were moving with nearly inhuman speed. It was an awe-inspiring sight, but awe was not the emotion ruling Egeria, it was fear. Daniel appeared to no longer be capable of speech. When he needed to say something, he scribbled it down on a piece of paper. He was even paler than before, and he was clearly in pain.
Egeria's gaze went to the other men in the room, settling on the one named Braddock. There was a pleased expression on his face. Egeria wanted to remove that expression. She wanted to kill him. Hatred for him and all those he worked with was burning deep inside her. If she could get her hands on one of the guns here, she would shoot every one of them and feel not one shred of remorse.
Daniel had been working nonstop for over three hours when his legs abruptly gave out, and he went crashing to his hands and knees.
"Daniel!" Egeria cried, rushing to his side. She looked up at their captors. "Please! He has to rest! You have to give him something to make him rest!"
"That is out of the question," Braddock answered coldly. "Giving him a sedative would cost us too much time." He ordered a couple of the men to help Daniel to his feet and lay him on the couch in the seating/kitchen area. Egeria sat on the floor beside the couch, the archeologist's hand gripped tightly in hers. He was staring up at the ceiling with a vacant look that terrified her.
Her attention was drawn away by the sound of low voices, and she strained to hear the conversation going on between Braddock and one of the other men.
"Are we going to take them to the drop-off point?" the other man asked. "By the looks of Jackson, I don't think he's going to last much longer."
"No. We haven't heard from Sawyer that Thor has arrived, so it wouldn't do any good, even if I was willing to sacrifice what other things Jackson might give us before he's too far gone, which I'm not. We're getting a lot more from him than I could have hoped for based upon what Colonel O'Neill gave to the SGC."
Horror filled Egeria's mind. They were not going to fulfill their end of the agreement. They were going to drain Daniel of every last drop of information they could get from him, then let him die. No! She could not allow that to happen!
Egeria grasped Daniel's face in her hands, looking into his eyes. "Daniel," she whispered fiercely. "Daniel, please. You must hear me. They are going to let you die. You must fight them. You must do something and fight them."
Slowly, Daniel's eyes focused on her. "E-ger-ia," he gasped out.
She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her cheek. "Yes, my Daniel. It is Egeria, the one who loves you so greatly, whose heart will die if she loses you. Fight it, my love. You are strong. I know that you can do it."
Hearing her plea, Daniel's conscious mind fought to get out of the whirlpool of Ancient knowledge, but the flow was so powerful, like he was stardust caught in the gravity well of a black hole.
Daniel's struggle was interrupted by the return of Braddock, who, upon seeing that the archeologist's condition appeared to have improved, ordered him to be taken back to the recording room.
"No!" Egeria cried as she clutched at Daniel. "You cannot do this! You are killing him!"
"Get them on their feet," Braddock commanded.
Three men came forward. One of them grabbed Egeria and hauled her to her feet as the other two pulled Daniel off the couch.
"No!" Egeria screamed, fighting against the hands that held her. "No!"
The sound of Egeria's screams cut like a knife through the crushing weight of the Ancient knowledge and straight into Daniel's consciousness. He lifted his head to see the woman he loved drive her elbow into the ribs of the man holding her. Yelling in pain, the man dealt her a backhanded slap across the face.
At the sight of that blow, a scream of anger ripped from Daniel's throat. The entire sum of his rage focused upon the man who had struck Egeria – and in that rage was power. Something that felt like a gigantic invisible fist slammed into the man, shattering bones and tossing him back forty feet to smash violently against the far wall.
His mind crystal clear for the first time in hours, Daniel stared at the fallen man as understanding came to him. He lifted his gaze to Braddock. Within the grey depths of the man's eyes was a look of horrified realization. But that realization had come far too late for him to stop what was about to happen.
Daniel's mind blazing with determination, he turned his new-found power upon the two men holding him. They were hurled back to crash against the walls, the man who struck the partition wall snapping it in two with the force of his impact. Braddock and the other four men drew their weapons, but the guns were wrenched from their grasp and thrown to the other side of the warehouse, then all of them except for Braddock were launched through the air, striking cars, walls, and whatever else got in the way. None of them got up.
Daniel's gaze swivelled about to focus with unnerving intensity upon the only man left standing. The look in Braddock's eyes was now one of fear. The fear became terror as he felt something grab his throat. Choking and gasping, he clutched at his neck in a vain attempt to break the invisible grip. He was soon on his knees, his brain crying out for air.
And then, quite suddenly, utter blackness descended upon him.
Egeria watched as Braddock toppled limply to the floor. For a moment, she thought that Daniel had killed him, then she saw that he was still breathing.
Stunned and awed by what had just happened, the former Tok'ra queen turned her gaze to Daniel. He stood unmoving, eyes on Braddock. Those eyes then slowly lifted to her. The look in them was like nothing she had ever seen before, like she was getting a glimpse into all the knowledge of the universe.
Egeria's awe was transformed into horror as Daniel's eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumpled bonelessly to the floor.
"Daniel!"
She fell to her knees beside him, terrified that he was dead. But the faint rise and fall of his chest showed her that he was still clinging to life.
Knowing that Daniel needed immediate medical attention, Egeria scrambled over to Braddock's unconscious form and fumbled around in his pockets. She found his cell phone and frantically dialed the SGC's emergency number. As soon as the person who answered the phone found out who the caller was, he transferred the call straight to General Hammond's phone.
When Hammond heard Egeria's voice on the line, he jumped to his feet.
"Egeria! Where are you?"
"I do not know! We are in a large building, a warehouse of some kind. You must send help! Daniel is dying."
The fear and desperation in Egeria's voice told Hammond that the archeologist must be in bad shape. He yelled for his aide, who came running into the room. The general told him to contact the members of SG-1, whom he knew were gathered in Daniel's office, and get them there on the double. He then turned his full attention back to Egeria, asking her what their situation was.
"The men who captured us are all unconscious or dead. Daniel released the power of the Ancients on them. They could not stand against him."
Stunned by the revelation, Hammond told her that help would be there as quickly as possible.
SG-1 wasted no time getting to the general's office. When he told them that Egeria was on the phone and Daniel was in dire need of medical help, Sam's first thought was to see if the phone Egeria was using had GPS. And then another thought struck her.
"Thor can trace the call!" She turned to Jack. "Sir, the communicator!"
Jack pulled out the object that Thor had given them to contact him. He put it to his mouth, pushed the button and yelled into it. "Thor! Egeria's on the phone right now with Hammond. We need you to trace the call and find out where she is. She's with Daniel, and he's in really bad shape."
"I will beam him to my ship as soon as I have located them," the Asgard, who had been waiting in orbit, replied.
"Us too," Jack said.
Though only seconds passed after Jack said the words, it seemed like an eternity before Daniel's teammates found themselves onboard Thor's ship. They saw their friend lying unmoving on a table-like platform, his face utterly white. He didn't appear to be breathing. Beside him was Egeria, tears flowing down her cheeks.
"God," Jack choked out. "Thor, please don't tell us he's. . . ."
"Doctor Jackson is alive, but he is in very grave condition. I am now going to remove the Ancient knowledge and repair the damage to his brain, but I do not know if he will fully recover."
A blue beam of light swept over Daniel's head. His friends gathered around him, nearly holding their breath. Several seconds ticked by, then the archeologist's eyes fluttered open.
"Daniel?" Egeria inquired fearfully.
"Egeria," he whispered weakly.
"Hey," Jack said in a soft voice. "You all in there?"
"I . . . think so."
Daniel made a move to get up and was helped into a sitting position by Jack.
"Wow," the archeologist murmured. "That was . . . disconcerting."
Jack just stared at him. "Disconcerting?"
"It happened so fast. It took several hours for me to start speaking Ancient, but then it was like everything was thrown into fast forward." Daniel shook his head. "I couldn't control it. It was too much."
"It doesn't matter, Daniel," Sam told him. "What matters is that you're okay."
"You are very fortunate, Doctor Jackson," Thor said. "Because of the greater development of your brain, the process was greatly accelerated. If I had not removed the knowledge when I did, you would have been dead within minutes."
"So, what happened?" Jack asked the archeologist. "Hammond didn't explain. How did you get away from those guys?"
Daniel looked away. "We . . . didn't."
Sam frowned in puzzlement. "You didn't?"
Daniel lifted his gaze to Egeria's. In the blueness of his eyes, she saw regret for what he'd done. She took his hand in hers.
"Do not regret what you did, Daniel. They do not deserve your regret."
Now, it was Jack whose forehead was knit in puzzlement. "Regret for what?"
Daniel let out a sigh. "Thor, can you beam us to the warehouse? Some of them are probably still alive. I know that Braddock is."
"Daniel, what the hell hap—"
"pen. . . ." Jack's question, interrupted by the Asgard beaming them to the warehouse, died in his throat. His jaw dropped as he stared at the scene before him. Eight bodies were lying in various positions on the floor of the warehouse, smashed car windshields, shattered partitions, and other broken items painting a clear picture of what happened to them.
"Holy Hannah," Sam breathed. She turned her gaze to her best friend. "Daniel? You did this?"
"Yeah." The reply was soft and low.
Daniel eyes went to one man in particular. He didn't know how many of the others were alive, but he knew with certainty that this one was not. The man who struck Egeria had been hit by the full force of Daniel's wrath. He was likely dead even before he hit the wall.
Jack, Sam and Teal'c began checking the men out. A couple of them were just starting to stir. They and two others looked like they were in serious need of medical attention. Three were beyond help.
The only one who had escaped injury was Braddock. When Egeria identified him as the leader, Jack bound his hands with one the man's own shoe laces, tight enough that, if he was conscious, he would be in considerable pain.
Sam had contacted Thor and told him to give their position to General Hammond so that teams could be sent there. As she looked around at the destruction, she had to wonder exactly what happened. Apparently, the download had enabled Daniel to tap into some kind of psychic ability, and he turned it with deadly force upon his and Egeria's captors. If not for that, he would now very likely be dead. Yet again, Daniel Jackson had pulled a rabbit out of his hat and saved the day.
The astrophysicist began going through the rooms in the warehouse. When she got to one in particular, her mouth fell open, eyes widening dramatically.
Jack came up to her. "What are you gaping at, Carter?" Then he saw it for himself. "Whoa. What the heck is all that?"
Her mouth still open, Sam stepped into the room and looked around. There was not one section of wall that wasn't covered in writing of some kind, math equations blending into complex chemical formulas, which, in turn, blended into hastily scrawled text that was a mixture of English, Ancient and what looked like it might be an Arabic language. The table was littered with various schematics, blueprints, and other drawings. Sam's eyes fell upon the computer, wondering what would be found on it.
"Daniel did this?" Jack asked.
"He must have. Wow. By what Thor said, we knew that he might have greater access to the Ancient knowledge, but this is incredible. And he did all of this in just a few hours. What could he have done if he'd had a few days?" Sam looked through the drawings. "I can't even begin to guess what some of these things are."
"Well, I'm sure that you and the eggheads on base will have lots of fun finding out. Let's just not forget that these things almost cost Daniel his life."
Sam nodded soberly. She and Jack left the room and went to the man who had yet again escaped death by the skin of his teeth. Daniel's head was lying on the couch's backrest, his eyes closed.
"Hey, you okay?" Jack asked. He looked at Egeria. "Is he okay?"
"He is very tired. I am weary as well."
"Well, you guys should have said something. We can have Thor beam you right to your quarters, and you can get some sleep."
"I suspect that Janet would have something to say about that," Daniel mumbled, not opening his eyes.
"Yeah, you're probably right. The little power monger."
Egeria encouraged Daniel to lie down on the couch. With his head in her lap, he was asleep in a matter of seconds. She sat gazing at him, her fingers running through his hair as she gloried in the fact that he was alive.
"He suffered greatly," she murmured to the two people who looked on. "The Ancient knowledge was like a fire inside him, mercilessly driving him. I do not ever want to see that happen to him again."
"Well, it's all gone now, thanks to Thor, so we don't have to worry," Jack told her. "And the sooner that repository is shipped off to Area 51, the better I'll like it. I don't ever want to lay eyes on it or another one of those things again."
Daniel was still asleep when the teams from the SGC arrived. By that time, Braddock had awakened and was sitting bound to a chair. Not surprisingly, he was refusing to talk.
"Maybe we should let Daniel have at you again," Jack remarked. "Judging by those bruises on your neck, I'm guessing that you got a nice taste of how he is when he's really, really angry and all juiced up on Ancient knowledge. Three of your guys are dead. The rest aren't in any great shape either. You have no one but yourselves to blame for this, you know. You should have known better than to mess with something you really didn't know anything about. Maybe next time you'll think twice. Oh, that's right. There won't be a next time, not for you. By the way, Sawyer's dead, too. We found out about him and the bugs he placed. He tried to make a run for it and came out the loser in an altercation with a Humvee."
Braddock remained stonily silent. Jack wondered if Thor might have a handy little doohickey that would make him talk.
It was no surprise to anyone that, once they got back to the base, Daniel was told to go straight to the infirmary. Janet gave him a thorough exam, including an MRI, all of which showed that, other than being exhausted, he was all right. Her "prescription" for him was to go to bed and not do any work tomorrow. Because of the late hour, Hammond put off the debriefing until the morning.
Even with the nap he'd taken at the warehouse, Daniel was just about dead on his feet by the time he and Egeria got to his quarters, the hours spent in the grip of the Ancient knowledge having sapped his energy. Egeria helped him strip to his boxers, then got him under the covers. By the time she joined him in bed, he was already asleep.
For a long time, she gazed at his sleeping face, trying not to think about how horribly close he came to dying. She had almost lost him today. But, yet again, he had beaten the odds and survived, and that's what really mattered.
The debriefing took place early the next morning. It was difficult for Daniel to describe the things he experienced while in the grip of the Ancient language. There were gaps in his memory, especially toward the end, and Egeria filled them in as well as she was able by recounting what Daniel did.
"Copies have been made of all the things you wrote on the walls and blackboard," Sam told the archeologist, "and we've got the computer and drawings. It could take weeks, maybe even months to figure out some of the things. Just the math alone is going to take a while. I suppose that you can't tell us what any of it is."
"I wish I could, but it's all gone from my head. To be honest, even when I was writing it down, I didn't know what a lot of the stuff was."
When Daniel got to the point in the narration where he discovered his telekinetic ability, he had a hard time keeping the image of the broken body of the man he killed out of his mind. This wasn't the first human he'd killed. It wasn't even the first one he'd killed up close. The problem was the way he did it and the reason why. Every time he'd killed in the past, it had been on a mission or to save his own life or the life of someone else. Never before had he killed in anger. He could make the excuse that he hadn't been in full control of his mental faculties, but that didn't change the fact that he took the lives of three men last night.
"Can you explain how it is that you gained such an ability?" Hammond asked.
"We know that, when Jack had the Ancient knowledge, activity in his brain went up to ninety-five percent, many times higher than the average person. There are a lot of people who believe that all humans possess latent psychic abilities. We just lack the capacity to tap into them. Many believe that, when we are further along on our evolutionary path, psychic abilities will become quite commonplace. I think that the dramatically increased activity in my brain enabled me to tap into abilities that I would normally be unable to."
"How come I wasn't able to do things like that when I had all that stuff in my head?" Jack asked.
"For all we know, you could. You just didn't have a reason to use them."
"So, can you still do it? I have to say that it sure would come in handy on missions."
"Afraid not, Jack. When Thor extracted the knowledge, the telekinesis went with it."
Those words where barely out of Daniel's mouth when the Asgard abruptly appeared in the room.
"Thor buddy!" Jack greeted. "I didn't know you were still hanging around."
"I wished to know the outcome of the events surrounding Doctor Jackson's kidnapping and forced interface with the Ancient repository."
"Well, everything worked out just fine. We got all the bad guys, at least the ones who were keeping Daniel and Egeria prisoners, and we're hoping that the ones we question will give us information on this group or organization they belong to. On top of that, Daniel here gave us a whole bunch of Ancient goodies that the scientists are going to have all kinds of fun figuring out. Thanks, by the way, for taking all that stuff out of his head and saving his life."
"You are welcome, O'Neill. However, I must clarify that I only removed what Doctor Jackson received from the repository. The knowledge in his subconscious is still intact."
The announcement surprised everyone.
"I thought you took everything," Daniel said.
"No. There was no need to attempt to remove the Ancient knowledge stored in your subconscious since it was not what was causing the problem."
"So, he's still got a copy of all that stuff buried in his brain?" Jack asked.
"Yes."
Everyone exchanged a glance with Daniel.
"I really don't think we have to worry about it," Sam said. "It's been there since he descended and hasn't caused a problem yet. If it was going to, it would have started leaking out by now."
"I must also inform you that the Asgard High Council has denied your request for aid in retrieving some of the knowledge in the Ancient repository since we could not control what information you retrieved. However, they have agreed to share with you some of the information that we gathered."
Not surprised by the first decision but pleasantly surprised by the second, Hammond and SG-1 thanked Thor. After telling them that the Asgard would contact them again once it had been decided what information would be shared, Thor bid them goodbye. The debriefing was called to an end a few minutes later, and everybody went off their separate ways.
As Daniel entered his office, his gaze fell upon the repository. Someone had covered the opening back up, for which he was glad.
"Someone should have taken that thing out of here," said Jack's voice behind him.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder at the man. "It's going off to Area 51 today, so there would be no point in moving it somewhere else before they come to box it up."
"So, it doesn't bother you having it here?"
Daniel paused before replying. "Maybe a little. It's not to blame for what happened to me. It's just an unthinking piece of technology that did what it was designed to do. It didn't make me put my head in it."
"No, we have Braddock and the rest of those guys to blame for that."
Daniel walked all the way up to the repository. "When I had all that Ancient knowledge in my mind, and it felt like it was tearing my sanity apart, I realized how naive I'd been when I wanted to take the download. I had thought that it would be a simple thing, take the download, tap into the knowledge like you did, and then have Thor remove it before things went too far. I knew that there was a vast amount of knowledge in those repositories. I knew that."
"But you didn't really know it," Jack said in a soft voice.
"Yeah. Having it all inside my head was a real eye-opener."
"Well, sometimes it takes personal experience for somebody to really see something."
"Yeah. There is one thing, though, that I do wish I'd been able to do while I had that knowledge."
"Which is?"
"Find the lost city. It's still out there somewhere, and we still don't know where it is."
"We'll find it someday, Daniel. The important thing is that you're still around to help us find it." Jack tugged at Daniel's shirt. "Come on. I know you haven't had breakfast yet. I'm buying."
Smiling slightly, Daniel looked at him. "The commissary food is free."
Jack's lips curled upward in a matching smile. "Well, it's the thought that counts."
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