(no subject)
Title: Outside the Lines
Author: Annerb
Rating: Mature (for violence and language in one section)
Summary: How far would you go to make your world right again?
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Team, S/J, 'Chain Reaction' AU
Author’s Note: The title of this fic and the idea were inspired by a song by Lisa Loeb (‘Would You Wander’) on the long commute home. I wanted a look at Sam, her reaction to a major character death and what she might be capable of if she was pushed to the ropes over the protection of her teammates. Here’s what I came up with.
Part 7: Trapped
The room was what you would expect from a maximum security military prison. White walls, white bars and sterile air. A single window high in the wall emanated a small shaft of natural light that patterned the back wall, breaking the overall harshness. Just enough to remind the inhabitants of what they have lost.
Movement in the nearest cell tore Sam’s attention from the patch of sunlight. As if in slow motion, her eyes followed the gentle sway, her ears registering a taunt creak. Like a pendulum in an old clock, she absently thought. The harried voices and clanking of opening bars were distant and unimportant to Sam.
Less than 24 hours earlier she had stood in the same spot. She had slipped away from the SGC, spending two days in San Diego, playing her part, visiting her family, all the while figuring out her next move. Desperation had finally forced one ‘Stacy Miller’ to board a flight to Washington D.C. Pure pluck, or perhaps foolishness in retrospect, had led Sam to the cell of one Colonel Harry Maybourne, incarcerated traitor and one-time member of the illusive NID.
To say he looked startled when she walked in would be an understatement. His eyes widened, darting from her to the security cameras.
She barely took two steps into the room before he spoke.
“You want some advice?”
Sam looked at him in surprise before nodding briefly.
“Disappear. Walk away as fast as you can and never look back.”
‘Never look back.’ His choice of words haunted Sam, but she stubbornly pushed them aside, refusing to submit to second guessing. Maybourne clearly was not in the dark as to recent events.
“Tell me how to bring them down,” she said without preamble, trusting him to know what she meant.
Maybourne’s eyes widened. “The NID?” he said incredulously, his eyes darting uncomfortably towards the security camera again.
Sam stepped up the bars and nodded once more.
“You can’t bring them down, Major. And they’ll just kill you for trying.”
Catching Maybourne off-guard, Sam reached a hand through the bars, grabbed his collar and pulled him ruthlessly against them. “Like they did General Hammond? Like they killed Jack?” she said harshly, clinging to her anger, knowing it was the only thing keeping her upright.
Maybourne’s eyebrows rose at her use of Jack’s first name, but his expression remained serene as if he was unconcerned that she might actually hurt him. He glanced down at her hand that gripped his shirt with white knuckles and cocked his head at her. Almost as if asking if she really thought this was the way to get him to help her.
Sam released him with a small push causing him to stumble a few steps back.
“I can’t help you,” he said, turning his back on her and lying down on the thin government issue cot.
“Can’t? Or won’t?” Sam accused.
Maybourne sighed, maybe accepting that she wasn’t going to be so easily put off. He rolled into a sitting position and met her gaze squarely. “Major, you are walking a very dangerous line and frankly, you have absolutely nothing to offer me. And even if you did, I can’t help you.”
“Why not?” Sam asked defiantly with her arms crossed stubbornly.
Maybourne watched her with a strange gleam in his eye; it might have been esteem or perhaps something slightly less gentlemanly. “Major…as much as I respect your tenacity and loyalty, in this case it is misplaced. Take your out while you still have it.”
“No.”
“No? Goddammit Major, you once accused me of being a shortsighted idiot, but you are really gunning for my title here.”
Sam continued to stare mutinously.
“You’ve already lost,” he finally said with brutal exasperation. “This was over before it started. The moment Hammond died all of your fates were sealed.”
Sam had to look away from him then, pacing a few steps before the bars.
“They’ve already won and there is nothing you can do about that. You just need to accept that.”
“Never,” she whispered fiercely and when she met Maybourne’s eyes she finally saw just a hint of fear lurking there. Whether for her or of her, she couldn’t be sure.
“He wouldn’t want you to get yourself killed over this,” Maybourne dared to say softly.
“None of that matters anymore,” Sam replied, turning her back on him. She placed a card on the table in the middle of the room. “If you change your mind…”
Maybourne didn’t reply, but as she knocked on the door for the guards to let her out, she thought she heard him whisper, “Good luck, Major.”
She had spent the rest of the afternoon in a park near her hotel sitting on a bench, acknowledging that she was way out of her element. She had flown fighters over enemy territory, survived the torture of sadistic aliens and rewritten her fair share of scientific laws. But this was different. This was a world of shady back rooms and double speak, black ops and terminations. Her instinct to turn to her CO for guidance was as ingrained as it was pointless. There was no Jack or Hammond or Teal’c to help her anymore.
A restless night’s sleep found her blearily heading out of her hotel room, but offered no new inspirations. As she pushed out of the lobby, however, the clerk called her back.
“There’s a message for you, ma’am.”
He handed her a small yellow slip. Maybourne wanted to talk to her. Sam prayed that this was the break she needed.
All her hopes were ruthlessly smashed the moment she stepped back into that cell. Like some sick marionette doll, Harry Maybourne hung from the beams of his cell with a noose tight around his neck. An inglorious end to an ignominious man.
After long moments of staring at Maybourne’s gently swinging body, the vivid purple of his face contrasting obscenely with the orange of his clothes, the significance finally sunk in. They knew she had been here. Because while Maybourne may have been on death row for treason, he would never have taken his own life.
They had killed him to keep him quiet.
Adrenaline made Sam oddly still and her gaze methodically swept the cell. She noted the unplugged security camera and the carefully folded blankets. Her eye was caught by a small piece of paper on the floor. She squeezed an arm into the cell and grabbed the crumpled scrap, slipping it into her pocket.
She gave one last glance to Maybourne’s body, knowing what it meant.
They were on to her.
The thought propelled her out the door, past the scrambling guards, ignoring every shout that followed her down the halls.
She didn’t pause until she was outside the building, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. The numbers blurred and her fingers trembled. There was no guilt for the murdered traitor swinging grotesquely from the rafters, even as she began to realize that he had been correct. She had been shortsighted.
Her thoughts crystallized into one pulsating focus.
Daniel.
Part 8: Objects at Rest
The bench was hard beneath Sam’s back, but the pain did not register. Nothing seemed to matter other than one brutal fact.
She had failed.
Samantha Carter doesn’t fail. She always came through, no matter how bleak, no matter how improbable the situation. People looked to her and she came up with a brilliant fix.
It was a complete shock to her system to realize now, the time that it mattered most, that she had failed. She had no crazy solution, no daredevil antics. Just a silent cell phone and a hard wooden bench beneath her immobile form.
She had dialed every one of Daniel’s numbers frantically, realizing that if the NID was on to her, then Daniel was in danger. She had heard nothing but endless ringing and the cheery sound of Daniel’s voice on his message machine. Finally, in a fit of desperation she had called Janet.
“Sam? Sam, is that you? Where have you been? We’ve been trying to get a hold of you!”
Her uncharacteristically shrill tone tied Sam’s stomach in knots. “What’s happened?” Sam asked in barely more than a rasp.
“It’s Daniel… He’s disappeared. We’ve looked everywhere, but…”
Sam sank bonelessly into a nearby bench. Not Daniel…
“His apartment was trashed,” Janet continued. “Jesus, Sam. Just tell me what the hell is going on.”
Sam found that she had no tears, not a single ounce of emotion left as her world finally fell into nothing more than shattered pieces at her feet.
“Listen to me, Janet,” she said in a low serious voice. “You need to forget about all of this. Stop asking questions and forget you ever knew us.”
Sam heard a strangled sound of protest on the other end but ignored it. “I mean it, Janet. If you love Cassie…” Sam’s voice broke and she took a deep breath. “You’re her mother first. You have to do this to protect her.”
There was a long silence and Sam could just imagine her friend’s face as she struggled between her responsibility to her child and her friends. “God, Sam…How did it come to this?”
But Sam knew exactly how it had come to this.
Hammond, Jack, Maybourne. And now all evidence pointed to Daniel.
Sam pushed to her feet and began pacing down the winding paths of the city park. There was nothing left to fight for. No more moves to make. Part of her wanted to go back to that bench and wait for the NID to finally catch up to her.
Instead, she thrust her hands into her pockets and furiously strode down the paths. It was long minutes before she realized that her fingers were absently playing with the scrap of paper she had found in Maybourne’s cell.
She pulled it out, gently smoothing out the crinkled paper. One word stood out starkly against the white sheet.
Kinsey.
The word was like a bolt of lightning for Sam, galvanizing her, filling her exhausted body with energy.
Suddenly Sam’s head cleared. Maybe she couldn’t fix what had been done. Maybe Jack and Daniel really were dead. Maybe they had lost and the NID was now in complete control of the SGC.
But there was still one last thing Sam could do. It was a long shot. It was crazy, dangerous and probably foolhardy.
Which was exactly why it was going to work.
Part 9: Evidence
Getting in to Kinsey’s colonial neo-classical mansion had been much easier than she would have expected. The Senator obviously needed to get some new consults on his security team. Now she just had to pray that Kinsey was stupid enough to have evidence supporting his involvement with the NID in his house. But at the very least, even if Sam couldn’t take the whole NID down, she would at least get the chance to kill Kinsey. She tried not to think about when exactly she had become an assassin.
The dark house was palatial and seemed almost spooky in the silent stillness of the night. The first pair of double doors she tried led to a huge ballroom, but her second try opened into what looked like Kinsey’s study.
None of his filing cabinets revealed anything of use, other that the fact that U.S. Senators were grossly overpaid. A search of his desk revealed no hidden drawers or coded papers, but Sam had to remind herself that this wasn’t a movie and therefore such things were highly unlikely.
Just as she turned her attention to the small laptop on the desk, the door behind Sam gave a soft creak as it was pushed open. In one swift motion Sam dropped to the floor and pulled out her gun.
A white dog with black spots stared calmly back down the barrel of Sam’s gun, his tongue merrily hanging out of his mouth.
Sam suppressed a slightly hysterical laugh and carefully stowed her weapon away. “C’mere, puppy,” she said, beckoning to the animal that was obviously a very poor guard dog.
The dog bounded over to her and proceeded to lick every exposed inch of Sam’s skin. She grabbed at his tags and quietly said, “Hello, Oscar. You wouldn’t happen to know where your evil owner keeps all his evil papers, would you?”
Oscar just panted at Sam.
“Figures,” Sam mumbled before sitting back up in front of the computer.
A search of Kinsey’s hard drive and emails raised the Senator slightly in Sam’s estimation. He obviously wasn’t as stupid as he looked.
She was about to give up and move on to plan B, when one email caught her eye. Tucked in with all the boring announcements of his schedule and constituent concerns was a subscription notice for an online posting board from two years previously.
Thank you for registering with Dog Lovers of Delaware. We are an online community dedicated to the discussion of our favorite breeds and local dog shows.
Sam skimmed the rest of the email, biting back an annoyed groan when she saw the name Kinsey had registered under: #1American. Pompous ass.
The whole thing just seemed bizarre to Sam and so she followed the link in the email to the board. She was prompted for a password. Sam quickly ran through the most common and egotistical ones such as God, secret, password and sex. Well, chalk another up for Kinsey, none of them worked.
Oscar chose that moment to start drooling on Sam’s foot. She frowned at the dog distractedly and looked back at the screen. But then it hit her. She glanced around at all the annoyingly plastic portraits of Kinsey with his trophy wife and his dog. “It can’t be that easy…”she said, but stuck with her gut anyway and typed in ‘Oscar.’
Welcome, #1American. Thank you for logging on.
Sam shook her head and began skimming through Kinsey’s latest posts. The whole board seemed to be a discussion between about ten people and not a single post was about dogs. One that caught her eyes was from someone named EagleEye to Kinsey from just yesterday.
Dorothy’s shown up at Judas’ home. Should I terminate?
She stared at the words for a long time. It didn’t take an astrophysicist to read through their inane code. Yesterday she had gone to see Maybourne and apparently it earned both of them a death sentence. Seeing an order for her murder in black and white didn’t resonate as much as she would have thought. It was their name for her that made her sway on the spot.
The tunnel was dark and full of fleeing children wearing hoods. Sam rushed along the passage, following closely behind her father.
Jacob pulled roughly on a figure’s robes, revealing the glowing eyes of an extremely pissed off Seth. Before Sam could even open her mouth, a bright pulse of energy knocked Jacob roughly into the wall.
Seth sneered and shoved his way through his former followers.
“Dad!” Sam cried as she fell to her knees beside him.
But it was not Jacob that answered. “Your father will survive,” Selmak reassured her. “Stop Seth,” she demanded before pressing a ribbon device into Sam’s hands.
Sam felt a sick weight in her stomach at the feel of the cool metal. “How? I can’t control this.”
“You have the will within you. You must summon it.”
Sam suppressed the panic that welled in her throat. She was the only one who could do this. The ribbon device slipped over her wrist with sickening ease. She determinedly pushed to her feet, pushing all other thoughts from her mind.
“Hey!” she cried after Seth’s retreating back.
He turned back and raised his device, but Sam had already lifted hers. She felt an uncontrollable build up in her body that was almost painful in its intensity. Like releasing a pent up breath, Sam forced the energy towards the man in front of her.
Seth was flung towards the floor like a rag doll.
But he didn’t stay down and he struggled to raise his weapon once more.
Without much conscious thought, vicious anger rose in Sam and she flung it towards him once more. With a nauseating crunch Seth’s body was broken, half buried in the hard dirt of the floor.
Daniel and Jack appeared at her side as Sam stared in horror at the gruesome sight.
“You killed him,” Daniel said in awe.
“Hail, Dorothy,” Jack remarked lightly.
But Sam just felt a roiling nausea at what she so easily done, wondering what sort of person that made her.
Sam shook off the memory and forced her attention back to the task at hand. She knew this was no time to relive the past, even as Jack’s voiced echoed in her ear. Hail, Dorothy.
Sam determinedly skimmed through weeks of Kinsey’s posts, the majority between #1American and EagleEye. One series of posts that finally had Sam breathing heavily was dated five weeks previously.
The Wizard refuses to listen to reason. Obviously lacks any sense of self-preservation. Please advise.
The Wizard is old, has a bad heart, it would be a shame if his poor health caught up with him.
Understood.
Sam's vision began to blur in anger as she continued to read the file that oh-so-casually outlined the murder of the most important people in Sam’s life. It was more evidence than she could have imagined finding. The takeover of the SGC was meticulously documented in the detached language of people who had no qualms about playing with people’s lives.
She quickly saved herself a copy of the correspondence and Kinsey’s subscription email onto a portable hard drive.
Sam heard the crunch of tires outside and Oscar’s low whine at the same time. Without much conscious thought, Sam used some of her precious last moments to send out an email and place a single phone call. “I’m running out of time,” she mumbled quietly to herself.
“I think that just about sums it up, Major.”
Sam spun around to find Kinsey calmly pointing a gun straight at her heart.
Time's up.
Part 10: Exit Strategy
One, two, three, four.
Turn around.
One, two, three, four.
Sam quickly discovered that her cell was only four paces wide, roughly the length of the rock hard cot. Overall, though, it was the lap of luxury compared to some of the hellholes SG-1 had managed to land themselves in over the years. The natives on P7I-725 had once locked them in a pigsty when Jack had inadvertently insulted the chieftain’s mother. That had definitely been worse. Although in some ways, Sam found the overbearing sterility of this place more disturbing.
Not to mention the solitude.
Sam shook off the thought and paced the length of her prison a couple more times before collapsing on her bunk and pulling her knees into her chest.
“If only Dad could see me now,” she mumbled humorlessly to the empty room.
Not bothering to wait for a response that would never come, Sam dropped her head onto her arms in exhaustion; replaying the events of the night over and over in her mind.
Sam glanced from the gun pointing at her to the sinister black SUVs sitting just beyond the property line. Kinsey’s backup and clean up, if need be. Sam made the quick decision that she had little chance of firing her way out of here.
She knew it didn’t matter.
“You’ve got some nerve…,” Kinsey finally sputtered.
Sam raised an eyebrow in a passable imitation of Teal’c. “I could say the same thing about you.” She gestured at the laptop. “At least I’ve never ordered the murder of a two-star general.”
Kinsey’s sneer dissolved disturbingly into a calm smile. “You know, I must say I’m disappointed. You had a lot of potential and were, of course, quite invaluable to the program. It might have kept you alive if you had only been smart enough to know your place. But obviously Jack O’Neill was too much of a bad influence on you. It’s a shame, really. We had plans for you.”
Sam tamped down the instinctual anger at hearing Jack’s name fall so casually from Kinsey’s lips. The same mouth that ordered his death. Sam felt color flood her cheeks in anger.
Kinsey’s eyes traveled over her face before he leered. “Maybe I’m not that surprised after all. Friendless, honorable Major Carter is looking for a little revenge, isn’t she?”
“I’m not that honorable,” she managed to growl, her fingers longing for the weapon pinching her flesh at the small of her back. The vision of Kinsey in a pool of his own blood swam beguilingly before her eyes. It was probably the first time she had ever wished for the gentle curl of a ribbon device around her wrist.
“Yes, well, larceny certainly isn’t an Air Force endorsed hobby,” Kinsey commented, “but that’s hardly what I meant.”
Sam knew what he meant. If their places were reversed, he would have just killed her in her sleep. Or at least paid someone else to do it. But Kinsey had no idea what it was costing Sam to sit calmly in her chair and listen to the perverse crap coming out of his mouth. Or how close he had come to that fate himself.
The click of Kinsey cocking his weapon brought Sam’s attention back to the man in front of her.
Some form of surprise must have shown on her face, because he said, “You didn’t really think that you would get out of here alive, did you?”
But just as the words left his mouth there was the sound of wailing sirens in the distance. Kinsey looked at Sam in complete shock.
Sam stood up. “That must be my ride,” she said with a smirk.
“You called the police?” he asked.
“Just another little something I learned on my time in SG-1. Always have an exit strategy.”
She calmly walked to the window to see three squad cars pull recklessly into the driveway just as the ubiquitous black SUVs disappeared down the street. That was the problem with Kinsey and his goons; they were far too concerned with appearances.
“So it seems that you have two choices here, Senator. Put the gun away and let them arrest me for breaking and entering; or shoot me and let them arrest you for murder. Personally, I’m happy either way.”
Kinsey gaped unattractively until the sound of feet pounding on the stairs galvanized him into action. He stowed his gun and hissed, “Do you really think that police custody will keep you safe? We got to Maybourne easily enough.”
Sam knew he was right, but she was only concerned with one thing at this moment, leaving Kinsey’s house alive. That was all that mattered, and the police could easily help her with that.
She didn’t have time for a retort because in the next instant the room was swarming with policemen. They grabbed her roughly by her shirt and slammed her face down on the closest table. A quick pat-down revealed her weapon, cell phone and portable hard drive.
Hawk-eyed Kinsey didn’t waste his chance. “Officer, I believe that is mine,” he said, pointing at the memory device. “She must have pilfered it from my desk.”
“We need to keep it as evidence, Senator.”
Kinsey moved a step closer to the officer, peering at his badge. “I’m afraid, Officer Turner, that it contains sensitive government records and I simply can’t allow it to leave my sight. Classified and all that. I’m sure you understand.” The whole speech was very well done and Sam could see the officers glancing at each other in indecision.
Kinsey stepped forward and pulled the device gently from the police man’s fingers, making the decision for him. “Thank you, Officer, you are doing your country a great service,” he simpered elegantly.
The officers shrugged and went back to handcuffing Sam. They knew it was potentially dangerous to go against an influential Senator and probably didn’t think it was worth the trouble in the end. Kinsey pocketed Sam’s evidence and threw her a triumphant smirk.
Sam didn’t bother reacting. Let him have his hollow victories. His time was fast coming, because while Sam may be a lot of things, she was no fool.
Plans within plans.
Senator Kinsey was about to learn the price for messing with Major Samantha Carter.
Thirty-six hours later in her very own jail cell, Sam was admittedly feeling slightly less certain. Her prison had a little too much in common with Maybourne’s for comfort. Not that any assassins had crept in through the impossibly small windows, but Sam still couldn’t sleep particularly well.
As the hours crept by, the lack of activity and sleep was beginning to get to her. The last thing she needed at this juncture was unlimited time to evaluate every decision she had made and everyone that they had managed to take from her. All the ‘what ifs’ had the power to drive her crazy.
She finally managed to quiet her mind enough to doze off just as the dawn sky began to illuminate the stark room.
The mines were quiet. Teal’c sat nearby doing his best to kelnorim and conserve his energy for another day under the whips of the fake Jaffa. It had now been days since Daniel last came to see them, his eyes burning bright as if with a fever. Jack’s anger at Daniel’s seeming inability to understand that they were slowly dying in these mines had not faded as the days passed.
Sam knew she should rest as well, but as ridiculous as it sounded, she was almost too tired to sleep, like if she closed her eyes she might not open them again. She wasn’t sure how she could possibly pry her body off the floor when dawn finally came. Let alone lift the crude tools with her blistered, aching hands. Death was beginning to seem…restful.
“We’re going to get out of here, Carter,” Jack whispered to her in the dark, almost as if he had read her mind.
Sam turned her head to where she knew he sat, letting her eyes slowly adjust to the gloom. “Yes, sir,” she whispered back, but there was no conviction in her voice.
A slight scuffling sound reached her ears and then a warm body settled down next to hers. “I mean it, Carter,” he said firmly even as he dropped an arm gently around her.
Sam leaned gratefully onto his shoulder. “I’m just so tired, sir.”
“I know. Just rest.”
Sam closed her eyes and began to relax, but suddenly the fabric under her cheek was damp. She leaned back from Jack to see a gaping wound in his shoulder where her head once lay.
Jack glanced calmly from the seeping wound to Sam. He reached one hand out to her face. “You can do this, Carter. I have faith in you.”
Sam jerked awake to the sound of clanking keys and rolling bars. Her hand flew to her face, expecting the warm stickiness of blood even as her sterile surroundings began to chase the dream away.
Blinking blearily, two airmen came into focus in front of her. “We need you to come with us, Major.”
Sam obediently held out her hands and let them chain her wrists and ankles. “Can you tell me where we’re going?” she finally managed to ask in a voice thick with sleep.
The young man just shook his head. “Sorry, Ma’am.”
Sam pushed her exhausted body up from the bunk and let them lead her out of her cell and down the hall to the rear of the police station. Her mind began to swirl with the possibilities. An elaborate assassination plot? Transfer to a military prison?
But Sam suppressed the questions and felt calm steal over her. It didn’t matter. She would deal with it.
The rear door of the building was pushed open to reveal a military transport. Sam was heaved rather inelegantly into the back of the armored truck only to find herself face to face with Major Paul Davis. He looked her over sternly and gestured for the guards to seat her on a thin bench opposite him.
“Remove the cuffs, Airman,” he ordered.
Once the door had closed behind them and the vehicle began to move, Davis handed her a stack of neatly folded clothes. A dress uniform.
“I guess you got my email, then,” Sam said wryly as she carefully took the uniform from him.
For the first time, Davis smiled. “There’s someone who’d like to speak with you, Major.”
“Who?” Sam asked as her fingers dug into the soft fabric of the uniform.
“The President.”
Next
Author: Annerb
Rating: Mature (for violence and language in one section)
Summary: How far would you go to make your world right again?
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, Team, S/J, 'Chain Reaction' AU
Author’s Note: The title of this fic and the idea were inspired by a song by Lisa Loeb (‘Would You Wander’) on the long commute home. I wanted a look at Sam, her reaction to a major character death and what she might be capable of if she was pushed to the ropes over the protection of her teammates. Here’s what I came up with.
Part 7: Trapped
The room was what you would expect from a maximum security military prison. White walls, white bars and sterile air. A single window high in the wall emanated a small shaft of natural light that patterned the back wall, breaking the overall harshness. Just enough to remind the inhabitants of what they have lost.
Movement in the nearest cell tore Sam’s attention from the patch of sunlight. As if in slow motion, her eyes followed the gentle sway, her ears registering a taunt creak. Like a pendulum in an old clock, she absently thought. The harried voices and clanking of opening bars were distant and unimportant to Sam.
Less than 24 hours earlier she had stood in the same spot. She had slipped away from the SGC, spending two days in San Diego, playing her part, visiting her family, all the while figuring out her next move. Desperation had finally forced one ‘Stacy Miller’ to board a flight to Washington D.C. Pure pluck, or perhaps foolishness in retrospect, had led Sam to the cell of one Colonel Harry Maybourne, incarcerated traitor and one-time member of the illusive NID.
To say he looked startled when she walked in would be an understatement. His eyes widened, darting from her to the security cameras.
She barely took two steps into the room before he spoke.
“You want some advice?”
Sam looked at him in surprise before nodding briefly.
“Disappear. Walk away as fast as you can and never look back.”
‘Never look back.’ His choice of words haunted Sam, but she stubbornly pushed them aside, refusing to submit to second guessing. Maybourne clearly was not in the dark as to recent events.
“Tell me how to bring them down,” she said without preamble, trusting him to know what she meant.
Maybourne’s eyes widened. “The NID?” he said incredulously, his eyes darting uncomfortably towards the security camera again.
Sam stepped up the bars and nodded once more.
“You can’t bring them down, Major. And they’ll just kill you for trying.”
Catching Maybourne off-guard, Sam reached a hand through the bars, grabbed his collar and pulled him ruthlessly against them. “Like they did General Hammond? Like they killed Jack?” she said harshly, clinging to her anger, knowing it was the only thing keeping her upright.
Maybourne’s eyebrows rose at her use of Jack’s first name, but his expression remained serene as if he was unconcerned that she might actually hurt him. He glanced down at her hand that gripped his shirt with white knuckles and cocked his head at her. Almost as if asking if she really thought this was the way to get him to help her.
Sam released him with a small push causing him to stumble a few steps back.
“I can’t help you,” he said, turning his back on her and lying down on the thin government issue cot.
“Can’t? Or won’t?” Sam accused.
Maybourne sighed, maybe accepting that she wasn’t going to be so easily put off. He rolled into a sitting position and met her gaze squarely. “Major, you are walking a very dangerous line and frankly, you have absolutely nothing to offer me. And even if you did, I can’t help you.”
“Why not?” Sam asked defiantly with her arms crossed stubbornly.
Maybourne watched her with a strange gleam in his eye; it might have been esteem or perhaps something slightly less gentlemanly. “Major…as much as I respect your tenacity and loyalty, in this case it is misplaced. Take your out while you still have it.”
“No.”
“No? Goddammit Major, you once accused me of being a shortsighted idiot, but you are really gunning for my title here.”
Sam continued to stare mutinously.
“You’ve already lost,” he finally said with brutal exasperation. “This was over before it started. The moment Hammond died all of your fates were sealed.”
Sam had to look away from him then, pacing a few steps before the bars.
“They’ve already won and there is nothing you can do about that. You just need to accept that.”
“Never,” she whispered fiercely and when she met Maybourne’s eyes she finally saw just a hint of fear lurking there. Whether for her or of her, she couldn’t be sure.
“He wouldn’t want you to get yourself killed over this,” Maybourne dared to say softly.
“None of that matters anymore,” Sam replied, turning her back on him. She placed a card on the table in the middle of the room. “If you change your mind…”
Maybourne didn’t reply, but as she knocked on the door for the guards to let her out, she thought she heard him whisper, “Good luck, Major.”
She had spent the rest of the afternoon in a park near her hotel sitting on a bench, acknowledging that she was way out of her element. She had flown fighters over enemy territory, survived the torture of sadistic aliens and rewritten her fair share of scientific laws. But this was different. This was a world of shady back rooms and double speak, black ops and terminations. Her instinct to turn to her CO for guidance was as ingrained as it was pointless. There was no Jack or Hammond or Teal’c to help her anymore.
A restless night’s sleep found her blearily heading out of her hotel room, but offered no new inspirations. As she pushed out of the lobby, however, the clerk called her back.
“There’s a message for you, ma’am.”
He handed her a small yellow slip. Maybourne wanted to talk to her. Sam prayed that this was the break she needed.
All her hopes were ruthlessly smashed the moment she stepped back into that cell. Like some sick marionette doll, Harry Maybourne hung from the beams of his cell with a noose tight around his neck. An inglorious end to an ignominious man.
After long moments of staring at Maybourne’s gently swinging body, the vivid purple of his face contrasting obscenely with the orange of his clothes, the significance finally sunk in. They knew she had been here. Because while Maybourne may have been on death row for treason, he would never have taken his own life.
They had killed him to keep him quiet.
Adrenaline made Sam oddly still and her gaze methodically swept the cell. She noted the unplugged security camera and the carefully folded blankets. Her eye was caught by a small piece of paper on the floor. She squeezed an arm into the cell and grabbed the crumpled scrap, slipping it into her pocket.
She gave one last glance to Maybourne’s body, knowing what it meant.
They were on to her.
The thought propelled her out the door, past the scrambling guards, ignoring every shout that followed her down the halls.
She didn’t pause until she was outside the building, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. The numbers blurred and her fingers trembled. There was no guilt for the murdered traitor swinging grotesquely from the rafters, even as she began to realize that he had been correct. She had been shortsighted.
Her thoughts crystallized into one pulsating focus.
Daniel.
Part 8: Objects at Rest
The bench was hard beneath Sam’s back, but the pain did not register. Nothing seemed to matter other than one brutal fact.
She had failed.
Samantha Carter doesn’t fail. She always came through, no matter how bleak, no matter how improbable the situation. People looked to her and she came up with a brilliant fix.
It was a complete shock to her system to realize now, the time that it mattered most, that she had failed. She had no crazy solution, no daredevil antics. Just a silent cell phone and a hard wooden bench beneath her immobile form.
She had dialed every one of Daniel’s numbers frantically, realizing that if the NID was on to her, then Daniel was in danger. She had heard nothing but endless ringing and the cheery sound of Daniel’s voice on his message machine. Finally, in a fit of desperation she had called Janet.
“Sam? Sam, is that you? Where have you been? We’ve been trying to get a hold of you!”
Her uncharacteristically shrill tone tied Sam’s stomach in knots. “What’s happened?” Sam asked in barely more than a rasp.
“It’s Daniel… He’s disappeared. We’ve looked everywhere, but…”
Sam sank bonelessly into a nearby bench. Not Daniel…
“His apartment was trashed,” Janet continued. “Jesus, Sam. Just tell me what the hell is going on.”
Sam found that she had no tears, not a single ounce of emotion left as her world finally fell into nothing more than shattered pieces at her feet.
“Listen to me, Janet,” she said in a low serious voice. “You need to forget about all of this. Stop asking questions and forget you ever knew us.”
Sam heard a strangled sound of protest on the other end but ignored it. “I mean it, Janet. If you love Cassie…” Sam’s voice broke and she took a deep breath. “You’re her mother first. You have to do this to protect her.”
There was a long silence and Sam could just imagine her friend’s face as she struggled between her responsibility to her child and her friends. “God, Sam…How did it come to this?”
But Sam knew exactly how it had come to this.
Hammond, Jack, Maybourne. And now all evidence pointed to Daniel.
Sam pushed to her feet and began pacing down the winding paths of the city park. There was nothing left to fight for. No more moves to make. Part of her wanted to go back to that bench and wait for the NID to finally catch up to her.
Instead, she thrust her hands into her pockets and furiously strode down the paths. It was long minutes before she realized that her fingers were absently playing with the scrap of paper she had found in Maybourne’s cell.
She pulled it out, gently smoothing out the crinkled paper. One word stood out starkly against the white sheet.
Kinsey.
The word was like a bolt of lightning for Sam, galvanizing her, filling her exhausted body with energy.
Suddenly Sam’s head cleared. Maybe she couldn’t fix what had been done. Maybe Jack and Daniel really were dead. Maybe they had lost and the NID was now in complete control of the SGC.
But there was still one last thing Sam could do. It was a long shot. It was crazy, dangerous and probably foolhardy.
Which was exactly why it was going to work.
Part 9: Evidence
Getting in to Kinsey’s colonial neo-classical mansion had been much easier than she would have expected. The Senator obviously needed to get some new consults on his security team. Now she just had to pray that Kinsey was stupid enough to have evidence supporting his involvement with the NID in his house. But at the very least, even if Sam couldn’t take the whole NID down, she would at least get the chance to kill Kinsey. She tried not to think about when exactly she had become an assassin.
The dark house was palatial and seemed almost spooky in the silent stillness of the night. The first pair of double doors she tried led to a huge ballroom, but her second try opened into what looked like Kinsey’s study.
None of his filing cabinets revealed anything of use, other that the fact that U.S. Senators were grossly overpaid. A search of his desk revealed no hidden drawers or coded papers, but Sam had to remind herself that this wasn’t a movie and therefore such things were highly unlikely.
Just as she turned her attention to the small laptop on the desk, the door behind Sam gave a soft creak as it was pushed open. In one swift motion Sam dropped to the floor and pulled out her gun.
A white dog with black spots stared calmly back down the barrel of Sam’s gun, his tongue merrily hanging out of his mouth.
Sam suppressed a slightly hysterical laugh and carefully stowed her weapon away. “C’mere, puppy,” she said, beckoning to the animal that was obviously a very poor guard dog.
The dog bounded over to her and proceeded to lick every exposed inch of Sam’s skin. She grabbed at his tags and quietly said, “Hello, Oscar. You wouldn’t happen to know where your evil owner keeps all his evil papers, would you?”
Oscar just panted at Sam.
“Figures,” Sam mumbled before sitting back up in front of the computer.
A search of Kinsey’s hard drive and emails raised the Senator slightly in Sam’s estimation. He obviously wasn’t as stupid as he looked.
She was about to give up and move on to plan B, when one email caught her eye. Tucked in with all the boring announcements of his schedule and constituent concerns was a subscription notice for an online posting board from two years previously.
Thank you for registering with Dog Lovers of Delaware. We are an online community dedicated to the discussion of our favorite breeds and local dog shows.
Sam skimmed the rest of the email, biting back an annoyed groan when she saw the name Kinsey had registered under: #1American. Pompous ass.
The whole thing just seemed bizarre to Sam and so she followed the link in the email to the board. She was prompted for a password. Sam quickly ran through the most common and egotistical ones such as God, secret, password and sex. Well, chalk another up for Kinsey, none of them worked.
Oscar chose that moment to start drooling on Sam’s foot. She frowned at the dog distractedly and looked back at the screen. But then it hit her. She glanced around at all the annoyingly plastic portraits of Kinsey with his trophy wife and his dog. “It can’t be that easy…”she said, but stuck with her gut anyway and typed in ‘Oscar.’
Welcome, #1American. Thank you for logging on.
Sam shook her head and began skimming through Kinsey’s latest posts. The whole board seemed to be a discussion between about ten people and not a single post was about dogs. One that caught her eyes was from someone named EagleEye to Kinsey from just yesterday.
Dorothy’s shown up at Judas’ home. Should I terminate?
She stared at the words for a long time. It didn’t take an astrophysicist to read through their inane code. Yesterday she had gone to see Maybourne and apparently it earned both of them a death sentence. Seeing an order for her murder in black and white didn’t resonate as much as she would have thought. It was their name for her that made her sway on the spot.
The tunnel was dark and full of fleeing children wearing hoods. Sam rushed along the passage, following closely behind her father.
Jacob pulled roughly on a figure’s robes, revealing the glowing eyes of an extremely pissed off Seth. Before Sam could even open her mouth, a bright pulse of energy knocked Jacob roughly into the wall.
Seth sneered and shoved his way through his former followers.
“Dad!” Sam cried as she fell to her knees beside him.
But it was not Jacob that answered. “Your father will survive,” Selmak reassured her. “Stop Seth,” she demanded before pressing a ribbon device into Sam’s hands.
Sam felt a sick weight in her stomach at the feel of the cool metal. “How? I can’t control this.”
“You have the will within you. You must summon it.”
Sam suppressed the panic that welled in her throat. She was the only one who could do this. The ribbon device slipped over her wrist with sickening ease. She determinedly pushed to her feet, pushing all other thoughts from her mind.
“Hey!” she cried after Seth’s retreating back.
He turned back and raised his device, but Sam had already lifted hers. She felt an uncontrollable build up in her body that was almost painful in its intensity. Like releasing a pent up breath, Sam forced the energy towards the man in front of her.
Seth was flung towards the floor like a rag doll.
But he didn’t stay down and he struggled to raise his weapon once more.
Without much conscious thought, vicious anger rose in Sam and she flung it towards him once more. With a nauseating crunch Seth’s body was broken, half buried in the hard dirt of the floor.
Daniel and Jack appeared at her side as Sam stared in horror at the gruesome sight.
“You killed him,” Daniel said in awe.
“Hail, Dorothy,” Jack remarked lightly.
But Sam just felt a roiling nausea at what she so easily done, wondering what sort of person that made her.
Sam shook off the memory and forced her attention back to the task at hand. She knew this was no time to relive the past, even as Jack’s voiced echoed in her ear. Hail, Dorothy.
Sam determinedly skimmed through weeks of Kinsey’s posts, the majority between #1American and EagleEye. One series of posts that finally had Sam breathing heavily was dated five weeks previously.
The Wizard refuses to listen to reason. Obviously lacks any sense of self-preservation. Please advise.
The Wizard is old, has a bad heart, it would be a shame if his poor health caught up with him.
Understood.
Sam's vision began to blur in anger as she continued to read the file that oh-so-casually outlined the murder of the most important people in Sam’s life. It was more evidence than she could have imagined finding. The takeover of the SGC was meticulously documented in the detached language of people who had no qualms about playing with people’s lives.
She quickly saved herself a copy of the correspondence and Kinsey’s subscription email onto a portable hard drive.
Sam heard the crunch of tires outside and Oscar’s low whine at the same time. Without much conscious thought, Sam used some of her precious last moments to send out an email and place a single phone call. “I’m running out of time,” she mumbled quietly to herself.
“I think that just about sums it up, Major.”
Sam spun around to find Kinsey calmly pointing a gun straight at her heart.
Time's up.
Part 10: Exit Strategy
One, two, three, four.
Turn around.
One, two, three, four.
Sam quickly discovered that her cell was only four paces wide, roughly the length of the rock hard cot. Overall, though, it was the lap of luxury compared to some of the hellholes SG-1 had managed to land themselves in over the years. The natives on P7I-725 had once locked them in a pigsty when Jack had inadvertently insulted the chieftain’s mother. That had definitely been worse. Although in some ways, Sam found the overbearing sterility of this place more disturbing.
Not to mention the solitude.
Sam shook off the thought and paced the length of her prison a couple more times before collapsing on her bunk and pulling her knees into her chest.
“If only Dad could see me now,” she mumbled humorlessly to the empty room.
Not bothering to wait for a response that would never come, Sam dropped her head onto her arms in exhaustion; replaying the events of the night over and over in her mind.
Sam glanced from the gun pointing at her to the sinister black SUVs sitting just beyond the property line. Kinsey’s backup and clean up, if need be. Sam made the quick decision that she had little chance of firing her way out of here.
She knew it didn’t matter.
“You’ve got some nerve…,” Kinsey finally sputtered.
Sam raised an eyebrow in a passable imitation of Teal’c. “I could say the same thing about you.” She gestured at the laptop. “At least I’ve never ordered the murder of a two-star general.”
Kinsey’s sneer dissolved disturbingly into a calm smile. “You know, I must say I’m disappointed. You had a lot of potential and were, of course, quite invaluable to the program. It might have kept you alive if you had only been smart enough to know your place. But obviously Jack O’Neill was too much of a bad influence on you. It’s a shame, really. We had plans for you.”
Sam tamped down the instinctual anger at hearing Jack’s name fall so casually from Kinsey’s lips. The same mouth that ordered his death. Sam felt color flood her cheeks in anger.
Kinsey’s eyes traveled over her face before he leered. “Maybe I’m not that surprised after all. Friendless, honorable Major Carter is looking for a little revenge, isn’t she?”
“I’m not that honorable,” she managed to growl, her fingers longing for the weapon pinching her flesh at the small of her back. The vision of Kinsey in a pool of his own blood swam beguilingly before her eyes. It was probably the first time she had ever wished for the gentle curl of a ribbon device around her wrist.
“Yes, well, larceny certainly isn’t an Air Force endorsed hobby,” Kinsey commented, “but that’s hardly what I meant.”
Sam knew what he meant. If their places were reversed, he would have just killed her in her sleep. Or at least paid someone else to do it. But Kinsey had no idea what it was costing Sam to sit calmly in her chair and listen to the perverse crap coming out of his mouth. Or how close he had come to that fate himself.
The click of Kinsey cocking his weapon brought Sam’s attention back to the man in front of her.
Some form of surprise must have shown on her face, because he said, “You didn’t really think that you would get out of here alive, did you?”
But just as the words left his mouth there was the sound of wailing sirens in the distance. Kinsey looked at Sam in complete shock.
Sam stood up. “That must be my ride,” she said with a smirk.
“You called the police?” he asked.
“Just another little something I learned on my time in SG-1. Always have an exit strategy.”
She calmly walked to the window to see three squad cars pull recklessly into the driveway just as the ubiquitous black SUVs disappeared down the street. That was the problem with Kinsey and his goons; they were far too concerned with appearances.
“So it seems that you have two choices here, Senator. Put the gun away and let them arrest me for breaking and entering; or shoot me and let them arrest you for murder. Personally, I’m happy either way.”
Kinsey gaped unattractively until the sound of feet pounding on the stairs galvanized him into action. He stowed his gun and hissed, “Do you really think that police custody will keep you safe? We got to Maybourne easily enough.”
Sam knew he was right, but she was only concerned with one thing at this moment, leaving Kinsey’s house alive. That was all that mattered, and the police could easily help her with that.
She didn’t have time for a retort because in the next instant the room was swarming with policemen. They grabbed her roughly by her shirt and slammed her face down on the closest table. A quick pat-down revealed her weapon, cell phone and portable hard drive.
Hawk-eyed Kinsey didn’t waste his chance. “Officer, I believe that is mine,” he said, pointing at the memory device. “She must have pilfered it from my desk.”
“We need to keep it as evidence, Senator.”
Kinsey moved a step closer to the officer, peering at his badge. “I’m afraid, Officer Turner, that it contains sensitive government records and I simply can’t allow it to leave my sight. Classified and all that. I’m sure you understand.” The whole speech was very well done and Sam could see the officers glancing at each other in indecision.
Kinsey stepped forward and pulled the device gently from the police man’s fingers, making the decision for him. “Thank you, Officer, you are doing your country a great service,” he simpered elegantly.
The officers shrugged and went back to handcuffing Sam. They knew it was potentially dangerous to go against an influential Senator and probably didn’t think it was worth the trouble in the end. Kinsey pocketed Sam’s evidence and threw her a triumphant smirk.
Sam didn’t bother reacting. Let him have his hollow victories. His time was fast coming, because while Sam may be a lot of things, she was no fool.
Plans within plans.
Senator Kinsey was about to learn the price for messing with Major Samantha Carter.
Thirty-six hours later in her very own jail cell, Sam was admittedly feeling slightly less certain. Her prison had a little too much in common with Maybourne’s for comfort. Not that any assassins had crept in through the impossibly small windows, but Sam still couldn’t sleep particularly well.
As the hours crept by, the lack of activity and sleep was beginning to get to her. The last thing she needed at this juncture was unlimited time to evaluate every decision she had made and everyone that they had managed to take from her. All the ‘what ifs’ had the power to drive her crazy.
She finally managed to quiet her mind enough to doze off just as the dawn sky began to illuminate the stark room.
The mines were quiet. Teal’c sat nearby doing his best to kelnorim and conserve his energy for another day under the whips of the fake Jaffa. It had now been days since Daniel last came to see them, his eyes burning bright as if with a fever. Jack’s anger at Daniel’s seeming inability to understand that they were slowly dying in these mines had not faded as the days passed.
Sam knew she should rest as well, but as ridiculous as it sounded, she was almost too tired to sleep, like if she closed her eyes she might not open them again. She wasn’t sure how she could possibly pry her body off the floor when dawn finally came. Let alone lift the crude tools with her blistered, aching hands. Death was beginning to seem…restful.
“We’re going to get out of here, Carter,” Jack whispered to her in the dark, almost as if he had read her mind.
Sam turned her head to where she knew he sat, letting her eyes slowly adjust to the gloom. “Yes, sir,” she whispered back, but there was no conviction in her voice.
A slight scuffling sound reached her ears and then a warm body settled down next to hers. “I mean it, Carter,” he said firmly even as he dropped an arm gently around her.
Sam leaned gratefully onto his shoulder. “I’m just so tired, sir.”
“I know. Just rest.”
Sam closed her eyes and began to relax, but suddenly the fabric under her cheek was damp. She leaned back from Jack to see a gaping wound in his shoulder where her head once lay.
Jack glanced calmly from the seeping wound to Sam. He reached one hand out to her face. “You can do this, Carter. I have faith in you.”
Sam jerked awake to the sound of clanking keys and rolling bars. Her hand flew to her face, expecting the warm stickiness of blood even as her sterile surroundings began to chase the dream away.
Blinking blearily, two airmen came into focus in front of her. “We need you to come with us, Major.”
Sam obediently held out her hands and let them chain her wrists and ankles. “Can you tell me where we’re going?” she finally managed to ask in a voice thick with sleep.
The young man just shook his head. “Sorry, Ma’am.”
Sam pushed her exhausted body up from the bunk and let them lead her out of her cell and down the hall to the rear of the police station. Her mind began to swirl with the possibilities. An elaborate assassination plot? Transfer to a military prison?
But Sam suppressed the questions and felt calm steal over her. It didn’t matter. She would deal with it.
The rear door of the building was pushed open to reveal a military transport. Sam was heaved rather inelegantly into the back of the armored truck only to find herself face to face with Major Paul Davis. He looked her over sternly and gestured for the guards to seat her on a thin bench opposite him.
“Remove the cuffs, Airman,” he ordered.
Once the door had closed behind them and the vehicle began to move, Davis handed her a stack of neatly folded clothes. A dress uniform.
“I guess you got my email, then,” Sam said wryly as she carefully took the uniform from him.
For the first time, Davis smiled. “There’s someone who’d like to speak with you, Major.”
“Who?” Sam asked as her fingers dug into the soft fabric of the uniform.
“The President.”
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