Stargate SG1: Suffer the Little Children (9/19)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Suffer the Little Children
Chapter Nine
Jack paced the corridor as he waited for Daniel to answer. After the fourth ring, he heard the other end of the line pick up. "Hello, this is Daniel…"
"Daniel! Where are you? Are you all right? Have you got Cassie with you? Listen, I need you to come back to the mountain…"
"… unavailable. If you’ll leave your name and number..."
Jack pressed the disconnect button quickly and angrily. Now was most definitely not a good time for Daniel to decide not to answer his cellphone. Hoping that Daniel just hadn't had time to answer before his call got diverted to voice mail, Jack dialed again.
"Hello, this is Daniel..."
"Damn it!" Jack had to stop himself from throwing the phone across the hallway. Whatever reason Daniel had for not answering his phone, it had better be a damned good one.
"Colonel?"
Janet's voice was much softer than it had been before, and the look in her eyes told Jack that Teal'c had finished explaining what they'd learned about Michael Phillips. She'd obviously been able to put Jack's concerns about Phillips together with the fact that Daniel was supposed to have Cassie with him and, further fueled by his reaction to being unable to reach Daniel by phone, had drawn her own conclusions. His distress was feeding her own, and it showed plainly in her expression.
Jack forced a tight smile, the best he could do to comfort her under the circumstances. "He's picked a lousy time to stop answering his phone." He tried to make his tone light and unconcerned, but he knew he failed miserably.
Janet took what small measure of comfort she could from his attempt. "There are some dead zones near my house, Colonel. It's possible they're just in one of those."
Jack nodded in response, not really believing the answer was as innocent as that but trying his best to give Janet as much hope as possible. "Yeah," he said. "That might be it."
Before he could say any more, Sam's voice came over the base-wide intercom. "Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c to the Briefing Room, please. Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c to the Briefing Room."
Jack looked across the corridor to where Teal'c was standing near the door to the infirmary and motioned with his head for Teal'c to start walking. As Teal'c began to walk toward the Briefing Room, Jack turned back to Janet one last time.
"Maybe you should try them at the house?" he suggested to her as he backed down the hallway. "Maybe he just put his phone down somewhere and he can't hear it."
"You may be right, Colonel," Janet said, turning toward her office. "I'll call the babysitter, too, and see what time he picked her up."
The 'if he ever did' portion of the sentence remained unspoken, though they both knew that it was a very real possibility.
"Agent Phillips?"
Daniel could absolutely not believe his eyes when he turned his head and saw exactly who it was that had pinned him to the trunk of his car. His first thought - his only thought - was that the FBI agent had decided to make Daniel an actual suspect in the murder of the little girl in the park and arrest him. Faced with the prospect of being jailed for something he knew he didn't do, and unable to even move, Daniel did the one thing he did best. He started talking.
"No, Agent Phillips, I told you the truth. I don't know anything about that little girl. I don't even know who she is."
Daniel wished he could get a hand free to get his phone out of his pocket. The first call he'd gotten had gone to voice mail after four rings, and now it was ringing again. Persistence like that could only mean that it was Jack calling. If he could only answer the phone and tell Jack what was going on, then he'd be a lot closer to getting out of this.
"I know you're telling the truth, Daniel," Phillips answered. "And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Michael?"
Daniel nodded quickly, eager to cooperate in any way he could. "Okay, Agent... Michael. Michael." He didn't understand quite what Phillips was talking about, because he'd never told him to call him Michael, but it was obvious that it was important to him, for some reason. He took a deep breath and continued. "Okay, Michael. You know I didn't kill her?"
"Of course I do," Phillips said, his voice full of annoyance. "But I also know that you of all people should know who did."
Daniel blinked in confusion. So Phillips didn't think he'd killed the little girl himself, but thought he knew who did? How was he supposed to know that? He hadn't seen her be killed, he hadn't seen whomever had taken her to the park. He'd only found her body long after the horrible event had taken place. How could he possibly know who killed her?
"Come on, Daniel," Phillips said, growing more and more annoyed as the conversation went on. "Just think about it."
Daniel's phone stopped ringing again, and the small bit of hope he'd been holding on to that he'd be able to talk to Jack evaporated. He shook his head in response to Phillips' insistent words. "No," he said. "I have no idea who..."
Phillips leaned down over Daniel, pressing his elbow into Daniel's wrenched shoulder. "You'd better tell me what you know, boy, or this is going to get very messy."
Daniel gasped and turned his head, wanting to see Phillips' face. The hard, dark eyes that stared back at him chilled him to the core and he almost regretted having turned. "I swear to you, I don't know anything about her. I don't know who killed her," he said, fighting to keep his mounting fear out of his voice. Why hadn't anyone come out to see what was going on? He knew that Janet lived in a quiet neighborhood, but this was ridiculous.
Phillips looked surprised and leaned back slightly. Daniel took his first deep breath since the entire incident had started, relieved to feel the pressure on his aching shoulder ease slightly. Phillips cocked his head to the side slightly and looked down at him. "You're not acting, are you?"
Daniel shook his head quickly, hoping that Phillips was truly starting to believe him. Maybe this whole thing was almost over.
"Do you remember me, Daniel?"
Daniel was confused by the sudden turn Phillips questions had taken.
"Of course," Daniel answered honestly. "You're Agent Michael Phillips of the FBI. I met you in the park two days ago."
"Two days ago?" Phillips asked, and Daniel nodded again. "You met me two days ago?"
"Yes."
Phillips smiled then, and Daniel almost wished he'd start glaring again. As frightening as the man had been angry, when he smiled he was almost terrifying.
"Oh, Daniel," Phillips said softly, his smile growing wider. "You've been such a good boy, haven't you? You did exactly what I told you to do."
Daniel shuddered at the tone of voice; Phillips was sounding less and less like an FBI agent as the moments dragged by. A terror that Daniel couldn't explain began to rise in his throat, but even that was not enough to push down the questions that swirled in his mind. He was beginning to get the feeling that this wasn't about the little girl in the park any more, and he had to try to understand what was really going on.
"What did I do?" he asked.
"You forgot me," Phillips answered. "These past few days, I've thought you were lying. I've thought you knew exactly who I was and that you'd told your friends all about me. Especially your Colonel O'Neill. But you haven't told them anything, have you, Daniel? You haven't told them anything, because you don't remember."
Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head as his confusion grew.
"I knew that I'd have to get you away from them, somehow, but I should have realized they didn't know. If they knew, Daniel, if you'd told them... they wouldn't have let you out of their sight. I thought you knew, Daniel. I thought you knew who killed that little girl, and I thought you knew why. But I was wrong."
"Wait, so..." Daniel couldn't even begin to form the thoughts swirling around in his head into a single, cohesive thought. "Who killed her?"
Phillips leaned back down, pressing his forearm hard against Daniel's upper back, immobilizing him once more. He moved slowly, gradually increasing the pressure until Daniel found it almost impossible to breath, leaning so close that Daniel could feel hot breath against the back of his neck.
"I did," Phillips whispered.
The small amount of air that Daniel had managed to pull into his lungs froze there. His eyes widened and fear bubbled up from his stomach, mixing with the sudden bile that had risen into his throat. Oh, God... Phillips was a child killer. Phillips had killed a beautiful little girl, who couldn't have been more than twelve, had cut her throat from ear to ear and left her lying in the park. And now he had Daniel pinned to a car, and Cassie was in the house alone...
'Oh, God!' Daniel thought. 'Cassie!'
Daniel had to keep Phillips talking. If he could keep him talking it might distract Phillips from thinking about Cassie, and it would buy him some time. Time for... what? For Jack to get so upset that Daniel wasn't answering his phone that he came charging to the rescue? Jack had no idea that anything was wrong. No one had any idea that anything was wrong.
Besides, Daniel really needed to know, needed to understand. What could possess anyone to do what Phillips had done to that innocent little girl?
"Why?" he asked, almost afraid of what the answer would be but knowing that he really needed to hear it. "Why did you kill her?"
"The same reason I killed all the others," Phillips whispered.
There were others? Daniel couldn't believe what he was hearing. This couldn't be real, could it? A wave of nausea that washed over him was very real, however, and he swallowed as hard as the unrelenting pressure on his back would allow. He was really being held down by a man who had just admitted to murdering children. How many little girls had this man killed? How long had he been doing this? Why was he doing this?
"What... what's that?" Daniel forced himself to ask.
"Because they weren't you."
Jack stared at the papers spread out on the Briefing Room table with a growing mix of anger and hatred. Doug had really come through for him, and he was grateful for that, but at the same time, he wanted to call him up and scream at him for not having noticed the discrepancies in Phillips' official report on Jenny Miller's murder. Especially because every single one of those discrepancies involved Daniel.
The official report echoed the words of the newspaper article, listing Daniel as an uninjured witness after-the-fact.
But on the table in front of Jack, in front of all of them, was a medical report - retrieved from deep inside Phillips' personal files - that said something completely different. Daniel had been treated at the local hospital for a stab wound - a two-inch deep, three-inch long stab wound - to his upper left arm, a four-inch long shallow cut on his neck, two broken ribs, and a concussion. It was a rather impressive collection of wounds for anyone to have, let alone a ten-year-old boy. For that child to then be categorized as "uninjured" and for no one to have questioned it... the thought of exactly how much effort went into what was clearly a cover-up made Jack's blood boil.
"He wasn't a witness," Jack muttered, neither knowing nor caring if anyone else was listening.
"No, sir," Carter replied.
"He was as much a victim as the young girl," Teal'c said.
Jack nodded. "Yeah. The only difference is that he didn't die." Jack found himself wondering if it would have seemed better to Daniel, at the time, if he actually had. No child should ever have to think that, but Jack knew with a strange certainty that Daniel had.
The hatred for Michael Phillips surged through his veins again, and Jack slammed his fist into the surface of the table, causing both the papers and the three other people in the room to jump.
"Why would he lie?" Sam asked the question that dominated the minds of everyone seated around the table. "He's an FBI agent. He should have been searching for evidence everywhere, trying to find out who attacked them. Why would he falsify the official report and hide what little evidence he had?"
Jack glanced first at Teal'c and then at General Hammond before giving voice to his own thoughts on the matter.
"Maybe he didn't need evidence," he said with a heated shrug. "Maybe he knew exactly who it was."
"Colonel," General Hammond said, making Jack envy his control. "I understand what you're feeling right now, Jack, but there's no evidence that Agent Phillips was involved in the attack."
"Oh, come on, General! It's right there!" Jack jumped to his feet, startling Sam. She flinched away from the table. Teal'c was equally as surprised by Jack's sudden outburst, and cocked an eyebrow at him. Hammond watched him from the end of the table, intent on the papers that Jack had started rifling through. Jack finally stood away from the table, having found the two sets of papers he was looking for. He waved them in the air to punctuate his words as he spoke.
"This is the official report," Jack said, holding up the folder in his right hand. He raised the stapled papers he held in his left hand as he said, "This is the medical chart we found in Phillips' personal files. This one..." He waved the official report again. "This one says that Daniel wasn't injured. This one..." He held up the medical report. "Says that he damn near died. Someone stabbed him and tried to slit his throat. This one says that he found her body. This one says that he told the doctor he saw who killed her. This one says that Daniel refused to give any statements to anyone. This one says that Daniel was talking to the doctor, answering every question he asked, until Michael Phillips 'interviewed' him. This one says that Daniel was combative and confrontational. This one says that Daniel was scared out of his mind!"
"There aren't any interviews with Jenny's parents," Sam added. "No reports of anyone being interviewed at all, aside from Daniel."
"That's because Daniel was the only one who knew anything," Jack said. "Someone shut him up. And I'll give you ten to one that we all know exactly who that 'someone' is." He threw the papers back down on the table in disgust.
"Colonel...," Hammond began again. He was interrupted by Janet who, in a manner very unlike her, had just bolted up the stairs from the Control Room.
"Colonel!" she cried out as she burst into the room. "Colonel, something's wrong at the house!"
Jack turned toward her, as surprised as everyone else by her sudden and uncharacteristically frantic appearance. "Doc?"
"I called the house, sir, like you said. Cassie answered. I told her not to go outside, but she was crying, and screaming, and she dropped the phone and went anyway."
Sam pushed herself to her feet. "Cassie?" she said. "What happened? What did she say?"
Janet took a deep breath, gulping down the fear that showed so plainly on her face. "She said someone was there, in the driveway. She kept saying that he was hurting Daniel, someone was hurting Daniel. I told her to stay in the house, but she wouldn't..."
Jack bolted toward the stairs before Janet had a chance to finish what she was saying. He was halfway to the elevator before he realized that Teal'c was following him. They burst into the opening elevator side-by-side, neither sparing a glance at the very startled technician who was trying to exit. The doors slid closed, and the first few seconds of their trip went by in silence.
"If he's hurt a hair on either of their heads, Teal'c, I swear to God..."
Teal'c nodded solemnly. "I am in agreement, O'Neill."
"It sucks that we can't kill him."
"On Chulak, we would not be prohibited from doing so. We hold our children most dear to us. A man who would harm a child as this man did to Daniel Jackson, who would kill a child as he did to Jenny Miller, would not be allowed to live."
Jack shook his head in anger as the elevator opened. "We're not on Chulak, Teal'c."
As they ran toward the checkpoint at full speed, Jack found himself wishing that they were.
Chapter Nine
Jack paced the corridor as he waited for Daniel to answer. After the fourth ring, he heard the other end of the line pick up. "Hello, this is Daniel…"
"Daniel! Where are you? Are you all right? Have you got Cassie with you? Listen, I need you to come back to the mountain…"
"… unavailable. If you’ll leave your name and number..."
Jack pressed the disconnect button quickly and angrily. Now was most definitely not a good time for Daniel to decide not to answer his cellphone. Hoping that Daniel just hadn't had time to answer before his call got diverted to voice mail, Jack dialed again.
"Hello, this is Daniel..."
"Damn it!" Jack had to stop himself from throwing the phone across the hallway. Whatever reason Daniel had for not answering his phone, it had better be a damned good one.
"Colonel?"
Janet's voice was much softer than it had been before, and the look in her eyes told Jack that Teal'c had finished explaining what they'd learned about Michael Phillips. She'd obviously been able to put Jack's concerns about Phillips together with the fact that Daniel was supposed to have Cassie with him and, further fueled by his reaction to being unable to reach Daniel by phone, had drawn her own conclusions. His distress was feeding her own, and it showed plainly in her expression.
Jack forced a tight smile, the best he could do to comfort her under the circumstances. "He's picked a lousy time to stop answering his phone." He tried to make his tone light and unconcerned, but he knew he failed miserably.
Janet took what small measure of comfort she could from his attempt. "There are some dead zones near my house, Colonel. It's possible they're just in one of those."
Jack nodded in response, not really believing the answer was as innocent as that but trying his best to give Janet as much hope as possible. "Yeah," he said. "That might be it."
Before he could say any more, Sam's voice came over the base-wide intercom. "Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c to the Briefing Room, please. Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c to the Briefing Room."
Jack looked across the corridor to where Teal'c was standing near the door to the infirmary and motioned with his head for Teal'c to start walking. As Teal'c began to walk toward the Briefing Room, Jack turned back to Janet one last time.
"Maybe you should try them at the house?" he suggested to her as he backed down the hallway. "Maybe he just put his phone down somewhere and he can't hear it."
"You may be right, Colonel," Janet said, turning toward her office. "I'll call the babysitter, too, and see what time he picked her up."
The 'if he ever did' portion of the sentence remained unspoken, though they both knew that it was a very real possibility.
"Agent Phillips?"
Daniel could absolutely not believe his eyes when he turned his head and saw exactly who it was that had pinned him to the trunk of his car. His first thought - his only thought - was that the FBI agent had decided to make Daniel an actual suspect in the murder of the little girl in the park and arrest him. Faced with the prospect of being jailed for something he knew he didn't do, and unable to even move, Daniel did the one thing he did best. He started talking.
"No, Agent Phillips, I told you the truth. I don't know anything about that little girl. I don't even know who she is."
Daniel wished he could get a hand free to get his phone out of his pocket. The first call he'd gotten had gone to voice mail after four rings, and now it was ringing again. Persistence like that could only mean that it was Jack calling. If he could only answer the phone and tell Jack what was going on, then he'd be a lot closer to getting out of this.
"I know you're telling the truth, Daniel," Phillips answered. "And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Michael?"
Daniel nodded quickly, eager to cooperate in any way he could. "Okay, Agent... Michael. Michael." He didn't understand quite what Phillips was talking about, because he'd never told him to call him Michael, but it was obvious that it was important to him, for some reason. He took a deep breath and continued. "Okay, Michael. You know I didn't kill her?"
"Of course I do," Phillips said, his voice full of annoyance. "But I also know that you of all people should know who did."
Daniel blinked in confusion. So Phillips didn't think he'd killed the little girl himself, but thought he knew who did? How was he supposed to know that? He hadn't seen her be killed, he hadn't seen whomever had taken her to the park. He'd only found her body long after the horrible event had taken place. How could he possibly know who killed her?
"Come on, Daniel," Phillips said, growing more and more annoyed as the conversation went on. "Just think about it."
Daniel's phone stopped ringing again, and the small bit of hope he'd been holding on to that he'd be able to talk to Jack evaporated. He shook his head in response to Phillips' insistent words. "No," he said. "I have no idea who..."
Phillips leaned down over Daniel, pressing his elbow into Daniel's wrenched shoulder. "You'd better tell me what you know, boy, or this is going to get very messy."
Daniel gasped and turned his head, wanting to see Phillips' face. The hard, dark eyes that stared back at him chilled him to the core and he almost regretted having turned. "I swear to you, I don't know anything about her. I don't know who killed her," he said, fighting to keep his mounting fear out of his voice. Why hadn't anyone come out to see what was going on? He knew that Janet lived in a quiet neighborhood, but this was ridiculous.
Phillips looked surprised and leaned back slightly. Daniel took his first deep breath since the entire incident had started, relieved to feel the pressure on his aching shoulder ease slightly. Phillips cocked his head to the side slightly and looked down at him. "You're not acting, are you?"
Daniel shook his head quickly, hoping that Phillips was truly starting to believe him. Maybe this whole thing was almost over.
"Do you remember me, Daniel?"
Daniel was confused by the sudden turn Phillips questions had taken.
"Of course," Daniel answered honestly. "You're Agent Michael Phillips of the FBI. I met you in the park two days ago."
"Two days ago?" Phillips asked, and Daniel nodded again. "You met me two days ago?"
"Yes."
Phillips smiled then, and Daniel almost wished he'd start glaring again. As frightening as the man had been angry, when he smiled he was almost terrifying.
"Oh, Daniel," Phillips said softly, his smile growing wider. "You've been such a good boy, haven't you? You did exactly what I told you to do."
Daniel shuddered at the tone of voice; Phillips was sounding less and less like an FBI agent as the moments dragged by. A terror that Daniel couldn't explain began to rise in his throat, but even that was not enough to push down the questions that swirled in his mind. He was beginning to get the feeling that this wasn't about the little girl in the park any more, and he had to try to understand what was really going on.
"What did I do?" he asked.
"You forgot me," Phillips answered. "These past few days, I've thought you were lying. I've thought you knew exactly who I was and that you'd told your friends all about me. Especially your Colonel O'Neill. But you haven't told them anything, have you, Daniel? You haven't told them anything, because you don't remember."
Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head as his confusion grew.
"I knew that I'd have to get you away from them, somehow, but I should have realized they didn't know. If they knew, Daniel, if you'd told them... they wouldn't have let you out of their sight. I thought you knew, Daniel. I thought you knew who killed that little girl, and I thought you knew why. But I was wrong."
"Wait, so..." Daniel couldn't even begin to form the thoughts swirling around in his head into a single, cohesive thought. "Who killed her?"
Phillips leaned back down, pressing his forearm hard against Daniel's upper back, immobilizing him once more. He moved slowly, gradually increasing the pressure until Daniel found it almost impossible to breath, leaning so close that Daniel could feel hot breath against the back of his neck.
"I did," Phillips whispered.
The small amount of air that Daniel had managed to pull into his lungs froze there. His eyes widened and fear bubbled up from his stomach, mixing with the sudden bile that had risen into his throat. Oh, God... Phillips was a child killer. Phillips had killed a beautiful little girl, who couldn't have been more than twelve, had cut her throat from ear to ear and left her lying in the park. And now he had Daniel pinned to a car, and Cassie was in the house alone...
'Oh, God!' Daniel thought. 'Cassie!'
Daniel had to keep Phillips talking. If he could keep him talking it might distract Phillips from thinking about Cassie, and it would buy him some time. Time for... what? For Jack to get so upset that Daniel wasn't answering his phone that he came charging to the rescue? Jack had no idea that anything was wrong. No one had any idea that anything was wrong.
Besides, Daniel really needed to know, needed to understand. What could possess anyone to do what Phillips had done to that innocent little girl?
"Why?" he asked, almost afraid of what the answer would be but knowing that he really needed to hear it. "Why did you kill her?"
"The same reason I killed all the others," Phillips whispered.
There were others? Daniel couldn't believe what he was hearing. This couldn't be real, could it? A wave of nausea that washed over him was very real, however, and he swallowed as hard as the unrelenting pressure on his back would allow. He was really being held down by a man who had just admitted to murdering children. How many little girls had this man killed? How long had he been doing this? Why was he doing this?
"What... what's that?" Daniel forced himself to ask.
"Because they weren't you."
Jack stared at the papers spread out on the Briefing Room table with a growing mix of anger and hatred. Doug had really come through for him, and he was grateful for that, but at the same time, he wanted to call him up and scream at him for not having noticed the discrepancies in Phillips' official report on Jenny Miller's murder. Especially because every single one of those discrepancies involved Daniel.
The official report echoed the words of the newspaper article, listing Daniel as an uninjured witness after-the-fact.
But on the table in front of Jack, in front of all of them, was a medical report - retrieved from deep inside Phillips' personal files - that said something completely different. Daniel had been treated at the local hospital for a stab wound - a two-inch deep, three-inch long stab wound - to his upper left arm, a four-inch long shallow cut on his neck, two broken ribs, and a concussion. It was a rather impressive collection of wounds for anyone to have, let alone a ten-year-old boy. For that child to then be categorized as "uninjured" and for no one to have questioned it... the thought of exactly how much effort went into what was clearly a cover-up made Jack's blood boil.
"He wasn't a witness," Jack muttered, neither knowing nor caring if anyone else was listening.
"No, sir," Carter replied.
"He was as much a victim as the young girl," Teal'c said.
Jack nodded. "Yeah. The only difference is that he didn't die." Jack found himself wondering if it would have seemed better to Daniel, at the time, if he actually had. No child should ever have to think that, but Jack knew with a strange certainty that Daniel had.
The hatred for Michael Phillips surged through his veins again, and Jack slammed his fist into the surface of the table, causing both the papers and the three other people in the room to jump.
"Why would he lie?" Sam asked the question that dominated the minds of everyone seated around the table. "He's an FBI agent. He should have been searching for evidence everywhere, trying to find out who attacked them. Why would he falsify the official report and hide what little evidence he had?"
Jack glanced first at Teal'c and then at General Hammond before giving voice to his own thoughts on the matter.
"Maybe he didn't need evidence," he said with a heated shrug. "Maybe he knew exactly who it was."
"Colonel," General Hammond said, making Jack envy his control. "I understand what you're feeling right now, Jack, but there's no evidence that Agent Phillips was involved in the attack."
"Oh, come on, General! It's right there!" Jack jumped to his feet, startling Sam. She flinched away from the table. Teal'c was equally as surprised by Jack's sudden outburst, and cocked an eyebrow at him. Hammond watched him from the end of the table, intent on the papers that Jack had started rifling through. Jack finally stood away from the table, having found the two sets of papers he was looking for. He waved them in the air to punctuate his words as he spoke.
"This is the official report," Jack said, holding up the folder in his right hand. He raised the stapled papers he held in his left hand as he said, "This is the medical chart we found in Phillips' personal files. This one..." He waved the official report again. "This one says that Daniel wasn't injured. This one..." He held up the medical report. "Says that he damn near died. Someone stabbed him and tried to slit his throat. This one says that he found her body. This one says that he told the doctor he saw who killed her. This one says that Daniel refused to give any statements to anyone. This one says that Daniel was talking to the doctor, answering every question he asked, until Michael Phillips 'interviewed' him. This one says that Daniel was combative and confrontational. This one says that Daniel was scared out of his mind!"
"There aren't any interviews with Jenny's parents," Sam added. "No reports of anyone being interviewed at all, aside from Daniel."
"That's because Daniel was the only one who knew anything," Jack said. "Someone shut him up. And I'll give you ten to one that we all know exactly who that 'someone' is." He threw the papers back down on the table in disgust.
"Colonel...," Hammond began again. He was interrupted by Janet who, in a manner very unlike her, had just bolted up the stairs from the Control Room.
"Colonel!" she cried out as she burst into the room. "Colonel, something's wrong at the house!"
Jack turned toward her, as surprised as everyone else by her sudden and uncharacteristically frantic appearance. "Doc?"
"I called the house, sir, like you said. Cassie answered. I told her not to go outside, but she was crying, and screaming, and she dropped the phone and went anyway."
Sam pushed herself to her feet. "Cassie?" she said. "What happened? What did she say?"
Janet took a deep breath, gulping down the fear that showed so plainly on her face. "She said someone was there, in the driveway. She kept saying that he was hurting Daniel, someone was hurting Daniel. I told her to stay in the house, but she wouldn't..."
Jack bolted toward the stairs before Janet had a chance to finish what she was saying. He was halfway to the elevator before he realized that Teal'c was following him. They burst into the opening elevator side-by-side, neither sparing a glance at the very startled technician who was trying to exit. The doors slid closed, and the first few seconds of their trip went by in silence.
"If he's hurt a hair on either of their heads, Teal'c, I swear to God..."
Teal'c nodded solemnly. "I am in agreement, O'Neill."
"It sucks that we can't kill him."
"On Chulak, we would not be prohibited from doing so. We hold our children most dear to us. A man who would harm a child as this man did to Daniel Jackson, who would kill a child as he did to Jenny Miller, would not be allowed to live."
Jack shook his head in anger as the elevator opened. "We're not on Chulak, Teal'c."
As they ran toward the checkpoint at full speed, Jack found himself wishing that they were.