It was several hours later that Jack flashed his pass to the guard and began the long descent into the depths of Cheyenne Mountain. The journey down, which took two elevators, was always long but, today, seemed torturously slow. He knew when he got down to the bottom he was going to come face-to-face with Carter and she was going to explain how this had all been a big misunderstanding or a set-up or something... and the storm cloud of anxiety and doubt that was following him about would instantly dissipate. And the missing Daniel and Teal'c would turn up at the base soon with Teal'c in full-on guardian mode and Daniel all indignant and worried on Carter's behalf. Between them, they'd sort out this confusion/kick the collective asses of the conspirators who'd set her up. Everything would be well with SG-1 again and he could get that damn cliff and those frozen faces out of his head. But for any of that to happen, the damn doors on the elevator had to eventually open.
Finally making it to level 28, Jack made a beeline for Hammond's office. Upon reaching it, he saw that Carter was in there but there was no sign of Hammond.
He ducked in.
"Carter?"
She glanced up at him and, presumably, guessed that he wanted an explanation for the General's absence.
"Hi, sir, the General'll be back in a couple of minutes. He just got a call and said he had to deal with it first."
Pushing the doubts as far back as he could, he asked, "Carter, what the hell happened? I mean, you didn't...?"
"I hardly even touched him, sir. Can't see what he got so worked up about. I mean, his nose wasn't even that nice a nose to start off with."
She'd said it so off-handedly that it took him a moment to realise that she'd actually admitted to assaulting the officer in question. Okay, so the first pillar of hope had crumbled but there were others.
Wanting to hear how obviously justified the attack had been, he sat down on the edge of the desk.
"Tell me what happened, Major. From the start."
"I was going stir crazy at my place so I went for a ride on my bike. I just went a little too fast for the guy's liking... and I'll even admit I maybe was a little over even though I could write a dozen papers on how inaccurate those speed guns can be... So, anyway, he pulls me over and checks my licence and then, well, he tried to check out the rest of my credentials, if you get my meaning."
He did and the surge of anger he felt was tempered by relief. Damn civvy officer should've looked at the licence a little closer. Maybe he'd have realised who he was dealing with and backed off without needing a broken nose as an incentive.
But, as both emotions receded again, he tried to get some clarification on just how tight his hands should press if he ever got his hands round the throat of the officer in question.
"So, he behaved... inappropriately?"
She smiled and, leaning back in the chair slightly, said, "No... but he wanted to..."
"So he said...?"
"Wasn't what he said, sir. It was the way he was looking at me."
Okay, so not really sounding as justified as he'd first thought but maybe she'd seen the flash of rage in his eyes and was trying to downplay what had happened to keep him from flying off the handle.
But she didn't look that concerned about him flying off the handle as she smiled and added, "Sort of the way you look at me sometimes when you think I'm not looking."
His eyes widened at the statement so she amended herself.
"Oh, don't worry, I would never break your nose, sir. I like when you do it. Don't behave half as inappropriately to me as I'd like, actually. Know you think about it though."
"What? Carter, I..."
She smiled seductively and tapped at her right temple.
"You forgetting where I just took a vacation?"
Jack turned to look out the window to try to avoid letting the utter panic show on his face. He could've taken just about any explanation for her actions and found some way to justify it but nothing could erase the painful truth that the woman sitting at that desk was not his Major Carter. Their relationship had long been something indefinable and they were so so careful to try and keep it that way. Even if she'd tired of treading that invisible line, this was never the way she'd cross it in a million years.
Before he could look round, though, and confront the Major Carter that sat there, he noticed an extremely sober General Hammond heading towards them.
He came into the office, "Major, MacKenzie's ready for you now."
Nodding acceptingly, she smiled at the Colonel again and sashayed out of the office in a manner designed to make the male eye follow her progress. That, in itself, was distinctly unCarterlike...
Shaking himself awake, he turned to the General.
"Sir, something's not right with..."
Then, catching the ultra-serious look on the General's face, he trailed off and, instead asked, "Sir, what is it?"
"Jack, Teal'c just arrived at the main gate with Doctor Jackson... Apparently, the Doctor is unconscious."
Racing up to the infirmary, Jack found that Teal'c had discovered some sneaky turbo elevator because no way could he have taken that same elevator that he'd taken down and arrived here before him.
Nearly running straight into the back of him, he said, "T?"
The Jaffa turned towards him.
"O'Neill."
"What happened?!"
After a pause, his friend said, "Daniel Jackson grew unwell a few hours ago and agreed that we should return here to have his condition assessed by Doctor Fraiser. He lost consciousness as we approached the base. I do not know the cause of this illness."
Past Teal'c, Jack could make out figures buzzing around an infirmary bed but couldn't see past them as yet.
"Unwell? What d'you mean, exactly?"
"When we left the base, we travelled to Major Carter's home and remained there for some time. Later, Daniel Jackson requested that I join him on an expedition he planned to take the following day and offered that I might stay at ‘his place'. However, as we travelled, he began to grow confused. He appeared to be attempting to drive us to the apartment he occupied prior to his ascension. I directed him to his true abode but it seemed almost unfamiliar to him."
After another pause, Teal'c said, "He insisted that he was merely tired and had no need to return here. It now appears unwise that I agreed with his assessment at that time. Today, though, he grew more disorientated and confused. He appeared unable to maintain a conversation and had difficulty in successfully completing everyday tasks. It was then that I insisted we return to the base."
Jack, focused on what could be seen of Daniel's still form, asked, "Then he just...?"
"He has been in this condition for only the last half hour, O'Neill."
So now he had Carter flirting with superior officers and breaking civvy officer's noses and Daniel forgetting where he lived and passing out for no reason. Could he just pretend these things were unrelated to each other? Pretend they weren't related to what that pedestal device had done to them?
Knowing there had been three figures falling from that cliff, he asked, "T, you okay?"
Inclining his head, Teal'c replied to the concerned gaze, "Indeed, O'Neill."
Jack assessed him quickly but could see no evidence of anything other than his ever-stoic comrade.
Slowly, he said, "Teal'c, I think we've got a problem here..."
Storming down the corridor, Jack could feel the rage building with every step. With access to the minds of two geniuses, and the wisest guy he knew, how could he have been so stupid as to think that Grelmin would actually put them all back together right? Now Carter was all messed up and Daniel's mind appeared to be unravelling as quickly as it had been put together. He was comforted, somewhat, by the fact that Teal'c had come out of it unscathed but still...
Diving into the laboratory, Jack thumped down the buttons on the device and, without a second thought, opened the neural link. Grelmin was nowhere to be seen.
Storming across the room, he shouted, "Grelmin! I know you're here, you pathetic excuse for a figment! Get your sorry ass out here now!"
Rather flustered, Grelmin appeared, "Have you returned to have your system purged? We should begin immediately."
Jack launched himself at Grelmin and smashed him heavily into the wall.
"Don't you even think about it."
Still looking flustered and uncomfortable, he said, "Then why are you here?"
"I'm here because one of my friends is getting psych evaluations right now and another one is lying in an infirmary bed because of you, you son of a..."
But Jack had to halt in his rant and release his captive as Grelmin's expression grew utterly bemused for a few moments before, suddenly, his face morphed and changed until standing before him was...
Disbelieving, Jack said, "Daniel?"
Experimentally reaching out, he saw that, as with Grelmin, Daniel appeared solid beneath his hand. He looked tired but healthier than his counterpart in the infirmary.
Looking around, he said, "I made it..."
His gaze alighting on Jack, his expression darkened.
"So... you believe me now?"
"What happened to Grelmin?"
"I've pushed him back into the memory matrix of the device. He won't stay there long but at least this way I'm only sapping the reactor's energy."
"You're the Daniel that was at the cabin?"
As he nodded, Jack thought back to where his doppelganger lay in the infirmary.
"You... the real you... he's..."
"Dying."
Jack locked wide eyes with him as he continued, "I got that part wrong, Jack; thought maybe I'd just be like the others but...he literally can't survive without me for long. Too big a part of him has been ripped out...too many connections are missing."
Thinking of Carter, he replied, "You said you thought you'd be ‘like the others'. What about the others?"
Daniel looked uncertain about replying for a minute before saying, "Look, Grelmin sees certain traits of people as imperfections that led to his initial trials being unsuccessful. He theorised that anything that causes conflict within our own mind decreases the ability for minds to successfully blend..."
"Traits like what?"
"Like fear, self-consciousness, guilt... So, as he ‘refined' the process of Ha'ran, he found methods to filter out all these bugs to his program. Can you guess what happened next?"
Heart sinking as his mind bounded ahead and didn't like the implications it foresaw, Jack replied soberly, "The psychopaths he created all killed each other?"
Daniel nodded morosely, "And those were the more successful creations; those who hadn't simply died in the process or gone completely mad."
"What are you saying?"
"When Grelmin's pedestal device first hit us, Jack, the power source was so depleted it couldn't complete the entire process. We shouldn't have gained consciousness until he'd filtered our minds in and out of our bodies and into yours several times to ‘purify the essence of knowledge' that you were receiving. The crystal broke before even the first pass could be completed."
Continuing, he said, "When you figured out how to reverse the process, Grelmin realised he had an opportunity to finish what he started so he did what you asked. He put them back in their own bodies. Only he had no intention of leaving them there permanently. He was going to purge your system of the remnants of them left in your mind then pull their ‘purified essences' right back in. I tried to find some way to use the neural link to stop him but I couldn't... all I could do was what I'd managed to do with my mind when the Stromos passengers were ‘visiting'... I put you into a comatose state just long enough for the neural link to be severed."
Jack didn't even know what to say. He already aching head was spinning at the revelations.
Daniel, seeming to increase pace, continued, "It wasn't Grelmin's plan to leave parts of them in your head. Those parts you saw before in your dream... they're parts he was trying to wipe from your mind individually before you gave him the opportunity to try the real filtering process but I hid them in areas of your mind which you consciously block off to make it harder from Grelmin to find them. I had to hide even deeper than the rest of them so he couldn't sense me."
His friend looked slightly ashamed for a moment.
"I had to hide myself in amongst your memories of Charlie... I'm sorry but there was no other way... Then, when he couldn't find us on his own, he tried using you to find us all... but I pushed you into the memory of Baal's fortress because... well, I knew you'd want out of there so badly you'd wake yourself up before he could do anymore harm in there."
Eyes looking a little glazed-over, Daniel said, "I don't think I can keep control of this much longer, Jack."
"You're saying that Carter and Teal'c are walking around without a conscience between them?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying. They'll have echoes of those parts of them in their head... but it's only a matter of time until those fade and then..."
"Then what?"
Now he was more glowing yellow than solid flesh.
"I can't stay, Jack. I don't know how much I'll be able to help but... I'll try..."
"Daniel, wait, Daniel..."
But his glowing friend was gone. He waited a few moments but it didn't appear that Grelmin was going to reappear anytime soon either. Jack thought about what his ‘friend' had said. He prayed to god he wasn't right.
Jack tapped uneasily at the table with the pencil as he looked across at Doctor Fraiser. Pale and shaken, the woman did not look like she was about to give him good news. In his mind's eye, he hovered beside Teal'c and watched over Daniel. The Jaffa had been protective of Daniel since SG-1 began and was currently beating himself up for not having gone with his gut instinct to bring Daniel back to the base the previous evening. Teal'c, at least, appeared to have avoided glowy Daniel's nightmare predictions. His other friends on the other hand...
Looking down at the file before her, Fraiser said, "Sir, MacKenzie thinks it's possible that Major Carter is suffering from a personality disorder caused by alterations that occurred during the recent incident."
"Doc?"
Pale and shaken looking, she said, "Sir, personality disorders by their very definition are usually relatively stable over a lifetime. You don't just spontaneously develop one from nowhere but... this technology was capable of affecting the basic make-up of her mind and..."
"And what?"
"Sir, she's been demonstrating an emotional detachment."
Remembering her come-on in the interrogation room, he said, "She didn't seem very detached when I talked to her. Out-of-character... but very much attached."
"Those behaviours are due to a lack of inhibition. She can also display emotions and behaviours she considers appropriate or which will lead to personal gain for her. In fact, in all overt scales, she scored normally. But in the more covert measures she scored extremely low for anxiety and, it appears, she has difficulty feeling empathy for other people. Sir, given her radically low scores... if this were a normal situation with a patient who had displayed these scores consistently over their lifetime, Doctor MacKenzie would have very few doubts about a diagnosis of..."
"Of what, Doc?"
Jack watched the emotional turmoil in Janet's eyes before a wall of professionalism slammed down in front of it.
Of sociopathic personality disorder."
He didn't know what to reply. He couldn't reply. He felt light-headed and was scared to move in case it proved too much and he blacked out altogether. He wanted to throw the file back in MacKenzie's face and call him a moron but that sickening feeling in his gut wouldn't let him forget the fact that glowy Daniel had told him as much only a few hours ago.
His voice not co-operating very much, he croaked, "Sir, I have to go."
Probably noting the look on his face, Hammond nodded.
"Dismissed, Colonel."
Unsteadily getting to his feet, he headed out into the corridor. The world spun and the walls distorted so extremely that he could have easily pretended he was back in that dream place again. God, if only this were a dream...
"O'Neill?"
Jack turned to see Teal'c standing behind him. Still reeling from the recent revelation, he tried to shake himself out his dizzy trance.
He half-turned towards his friend.
"Daniel any better?"
"Indeed. He has awoken but he is most confused and requests your presence, O'Neill."
Nodding emphatically, Jack hurried after his friend. After a few corridors, he realised they were heading towards the infirmary overflow rather than the main infirmary.
"Teal'c, where are we going?"
"Daniel Jackson has been moved, O'Neill."
Accepting the comment, he headed after his Jaffa friend. As they finally reached the rooms, he headed through the doorway after Teal'c. Moving past him, he looked around to see all the beds were deserted.
"Teal'c, what's...?"
Then he caught the reflection in the side of a metal trolley and, thought gone, simply reacted. His reflexes saved his life as the hunting knife grazed his arm rather than anywhere more vital. They weren't quick enough, though, to avoid the fist sweeping from the other direction. Flying back, he painfully rolled out of harm's way and sprang awkwardly back to his feet to face his assailant.
Winded from the force of the blow, he gasped, "Teal'c, what the hell...?"
But, as he felt warm blood start to seep down his arm, he could see it there in Teal'c's eyes. Or, rather, he couldn't. There was something... missing from his gaze. And, suddenly, he knew that glowy Daniel and MacKenzie were both right about all of this; and that his need to believe otherwise was about to be the death of him.
Glancing round for something he could use to defend himself, he happened to notice that the security cameras were offline. Help wasn't on the way, apparently.
"Teal'c, why are you doing this?"
The unmistakeable glint of murder in his eyes, Teal'c said, "You tried to destroy us all, O'Neill. It is because of you that Daniel Jackson has suffered."
Okay, his arm was maybe a little more than grazed. Pressing down on the wound with his other hand, he backed away more.
"I didn't mean to, Teal'c, you've gotta know that."
"I do not, O'Neill. Perhaps you secretly wished to become a Ha'ranas creature and steal our knowledge for your own gain. You are no friend to us. You betrayed us all. Daniel Jackson shall be avenged."
Jack considered the odds of him surviving this encounter. He was trapped, injured, unarmed and up against a sociopathic Jaffa. Not great, he concluded.
Trying to get through to anything that might remain of the friend he knew, he pleaded, "Teal'c, Grelmin's messed your head up. Daniel and Carter's too. You're not thinking straight."
"I believe you are in error, O'Neill. It was my previous thinking that was misguided. Now, you shall never harm Daniel Jackson again."
Then, suddenly, there was a swift zipping noise and Teal'c's free hand flew to his neck. As he pulled out the tranquiliser dart, he locked clouded eyes with him.
"I have... protected Daniel Jackson from you. You shall... no longer harm him."
As the sedative finally kicked in, Teal'c folded bonelessly to the floor. Stepping fully in the doorway, one of the SFs said, "Are you all right, sir?"
Still clutching his arm, Jack nevertheless nodded and half-waved the man away. Before he could ask how they'd even known anything was going on, they grabbed up Teal'c and dragged him off to be properly restrained before the sedative wore off. Mentally exhausted and physically drained, Jack slid down the wall and tried to resist the impulse to throw up. The Jaffa's last words sat uneasily in his mind. It seemed strange, if Teal'c was now displaying sociopathic tendencies; he would be worried about protecting Daniel from anybody.
However, as he pressed his hand more tightly to his arm, Jack realised that the sense of duty etched into Teal'c's very being would probably take its time to fully dissolve away and the Jaffa had been Daniel's unspoken guardian since SG-1 first began so would still contrive to protect him even if the emotional attachment was no longer present.
But, Jack considered slowly, what if you took all that duty to protect and took away all emotion? You'd look back over the last seven years and see that Daniel seemed impossible for you to keep safe. And what if you were a Jaffa who thought there was lots of honour in dying but no longer felt any fear, guilt or loss? Well, then... then your answer was simple, wasn't it? Your duty was to protect him so the only way to ensure nothing harmed him again was to...
Suddenly, horribly, he knew why the SFs had been on the alert for Teal'c. Shakily pulling himself to his feet, he headed towards the main infirmary and prayed that he'd jumped to the wrong conclusion. Just before he reached it, he saw a shaken Dr Fraiser heading out of the doorway. Seeing the state of him, she froze.
"Colonel, what...?"
Not even the slightest bit concerned about himself right now, he cut her off.
"Doc, Daniel, is he...?"
It was her turn to cut him off.
"No, he's alive, sir."
The relief flooded through him but the fact she'd thought to inform of that didn't bode well.
Looking at his arm, she ventured, "Teal'c?"
As he nodded, she closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip slightly before opening watery eyes and saying, "I'm so sorry, sir. I should've noticed earlier..."
"Noticed what? What did he do to Daniel?"
"Teal'c got his hands on a vial of morphine, sir. He injected Daniel with it..."
Ignoring the sensation of blood dripping down his hand from his blood-drenched sleeve, he replied, "What? How is he? Is he okay?"
"We administered Narcan to counteract the effects of the morphine. He's still unresponsive but I don't think he's in any worse of a situation than he was before Teal'c... I really should see to that arm, sir."
Feeling rather lightheaded, Jack nodded in agreement and followed her into the infirmary.
Glancing down at the neat row of stitches in his arm, a pale Jack wondered at the fact that the actual injury hardly even smarted but the knowledge that his friend had put it there was agonising.
Teal'c's accusing words echoed through his head as he looked at Daniel's still form. He wasn't thinking straight, true, but he was right about one thing. This was his fault. If he had just let his friends share his head...
He looked down at his pale friend.
"So what do I do now, Danny?"
His mind wandered to his other friends trapped in their respective cells. All three of his friends were in trouble, one way or another, and he might know why but certainly not how to fix it.
Did I wait too long? Is there no way to catch you all before you fall?
"No," Daniel replied, "there is a way."
Eyes snapping to his friend's face, he saw he'd remained just as motionless.
"Daniel?"
Looking up, he saw that Daniel had a visitor sitting on the other side of his bed. This one, though, had tendrils of light flickering around him and looked uncannily like the man he was visiting.
Desperately, Jack said, "What do I do?"
Levelly, the doppelganger replied, "There's only one possible chance of fixing this. The connections between you and the remnants need to be severed so they can be filtered back into the others."
"But I can't..."
"No, you can't... but I can."
"How?"
"It would mean getting everyone back to the pedestal device and letting the Ha'ran process continue."
"What? But that's what Grelmin wants."
"Yes, it is. But if I can steal manual control from him..."
"Can you? Thought you said he was too powerful?"
"I was still too connected to... Daniel last time. It made it a lot harder to try and control the device at the same time."
"Daniel, look... I'm pretty sure you exist and you're not just me going nuts or anything... but how in the hell do I convince Hammond or Fraiser to believe in you?"
"You don't have to, Jack. We'll do what you tried to do with Felger...convince them that you came up with this theory rather than me."
"How, exactly?"
"Well," Daniel said slowly, "given that we're on a tight schedule, it may involve me borrowing your voice for a little while..."
Jack looked down the narrow passageway off the main room of Grelmin's structure onto the green vista beyond and sighed heavily. Earlier, he'd trudged through the verdant vegetation without any sign of an allergic reaction. He just wished that was something he could feel happy about.
Thinking back to the first time they'd set foot on this fateful planet, he wondered if Carter would've been so excited about seeing the fancy mud here if she'd known it'd been basically designed to poison a planet by a man who used it to commit genocide against his own people in the name of scientific progress.
Thinking of Carter, however, brought his thoughts back to the present. The other members of his team would be arriving here soon. He, McKay and SG-5 had arrived earlier with some of the tech-guys to reattach the naquadha reactor and Grelmin's device to the pedestal before the others arrived. This time, however, he'd had to leave overseeing the actual connection to McKay as he no longer had any of Carter's technical expertise to rely upon. He wasn't entirely convinced that he'd done it right but he guessed time would tell.
"Jack..."
Turning, Jack saw Daniel standing, arms folded, against the outer wall of the building. Glancing to ensure that none of the others were watching, he slipped fully out of the doorway and stood beside him. Though he wasn't glowing, the fact that Daniel was slipping into an ever deeper comatose suggested that this was ‘glowy' Daniel.
"I thought I oughta warn you, Jack, this isn't going to be easy. This doesn't fix us. All it's going to do is take us back to square one again. You could still come out of this a Ha'ranas... and not necessarily with you as awareness."
"Thought you said you could handle Grelmin."
"And I hope I'm right but first you're gonna have to sever all connections between you and the others if I'm even gonna be able to attempt it. I just want you to understand the risk involved in this."
Before Jack could ask how he was supposed to do the sever all connections thing, a distant sound made him turn to see his team approaching: Daniel, once again, carried on a stretcher, his second-in-command cuffed and guarded by two marines and Teal'c, secured likewise; four guards with him...Jack wasn't sure that was really enough to restrain the Jaffa securely.
Not taking his eyes off of the scene, he said to glowy Daniel, "Think I'm just gonna have to take that risk..."