Stargate SG1: What Dreams May Come (14/21)

[brihana25]

All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: What Dreams May Come


Chapter Fourteen

Dr. MacKenzie had delivered reluctant but sincere apologies to three of the four members of SG-1, but when it came time for the fourth, he hesitated. He appeared to be contemplating the correct words to use, but from the look on his face, it was obvious to everyone else in the room that he would never find them. How did anyone apologize for what he had nearly done? How could any words possibly even begin to make amends?

After several moments of silence, he finally shook his head in defeat. "Dr. Jackson, I know it's not much, and it's not nearly enough, but for what it's worth, I am sorry."

Daniel opened his mouth to accept, but realized quickly that it would be pointless to do so. Even if Dr. MacKenzie had been able to hear him, it wouldn't have mattered.

The psychiatrist was already gone.

The silence of the isolation room was broken seconds later when Teal'c turned toward Jack and said, "O'Neill, I am most curious about the gesture you directed at Dr. MacKenzie before he departed. What is the significance of this one finger?"

Janet smothered a giggle; Sam blushed; Daniel coughed; Jack grinned.

Hammond shook his head and would have laughed if not for the continued seriousness of the situation. "It means something that I'd have to reprimand the colonel for saying to another officer, Teal'c. But since I didn't see it, that means it didn't happen, right, Colonel?" He imagined that he could hear Jack's largely perfunctory and decidedly unapologetic apology.

Hammond allowed everyone in the room a few seconds to enjoy the lightness of the moment before he turned his attention to the serious matter at hand. When he felt the time was right, he turned toward Janet.

"Dr. Fraiser, is it possible to take Dr. Jackson's body through the stargate with portable life support?"

Janet nodded. "Yes, sir. It will take about an hour for me to get the logistics sorted out and assemble a medical team to accompany us, but it's entirely possible."

"All right, then." Hammond addressed the two visible members of SG-1, plus the two he couldn't see. "SG-1, you have a go for a return mission to P2A-759. We'll classify it as a search and rescue mission for Dr. Jackson, because under the circumstances, I think that's the best we're going to be able to come up with. You'll leave just as soon as Dr. Fraiser has her medical team assembled." He looked at Sam and Teal'c and nodded toward Jack's and Daniel's gurneys. "If you'll excuse me, I do have a few details to take care of before the mission. I'll be in my office should any of you need me."

Hammond turned and walked toward the door, but stopped just short of it and turned around. "Dr. Jackson ... I'm so sorry for what happened here today, son. And I'm glad you're still with us." He nodded once more, and then was gone.

"And if you'll all excuse me," Janet said, "I've got a medical detail to get organized, and a whole lot of machinery to get together."

Janet walked out the door and SG-1 was left alone.

The four of them stood close together, simply looking at each other in silence, each privately enjoying the fact that the other three were there with them. It was Sam who finally broke the silence.

"Well, we've got an hour before we leave, and it won't take Teal'c and me long to get ready to go, so why don't we make the most of that time?"

"What are you thinking, Carter?" Jack asked. He knew he could always count on his two scientists to keep conversation flowing, but the way Daniel was looking, Jack didn't know if the archeologist had it in him any more.

"I'm thinking, sir, that maybe if we combine our memories of things that happened the last time we were on 759, we might have an easier time of figuring out what we need to do this time. We also need to talk out and nail down exactly which theories have been disproved, and which still stand; the ones that are still viable, sir, I think we should consider the most likely explanations for what happened."

"All right, then," Jack said. He settled himself to the floor and leaned back against Daniel's bed once more. Daniel, standing beside him, did the same. Sam and Teal'c sank to the floor across from them; Sam leaned against Jack's bed.

"The most obvious issue, I think, is: how did Daniel end up separated from his body in the first place?"

Daniel lifted his head slowly. "You actually all know that already," he said. "You watched it happen."

Jack shook his head. "No, Daniel. We watched you have a heart attack and die while Carter was dialing."

Daniel returned the negative response he'd just gotten. "No, Jack, you all saw what happened. You just don't remember."

"Why would we forget something like that, Daniel?" Sam asked. "How could we forget something like that?"

Daniel closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bed. "Think about it, Sam. Look at everything Belos can do, everything he did to us. Is it really that hard to believe that he could influence memories?"

"The being Nem was able to influence memory," Teal'c observed.

Daniel nodded slowly. "And we know that Nem's mate, Omaroca, was here on Earth at the same time Belos was. And since he killed her, it's logical to assume that he knew who she was, and possibly had access to whatever technology she brought here with her. If she brought one of those memory machines with her, and he managed to find it after she died ..."

Sam nodded in understanding and finished the thought for him. "It's possible that he adapted it for his own uses and took it to 759 with him."

"And just because that nifty little memory thing is the only toy we saw Nem play with, it doesn't mean that it's all he had."

Daniel and Teal'c nodded in agreement, and Sam leaned forward, clearly excited. "Sir, do you know what that means? It's entirely possible that everything that happened to us on that planet, everything we saw ... it could all be the result of technology that one of our allies possesses!"

"Perhaps in time ... ," Jack muttered.

Silence descended again, and only the constant sounds coming from the life support machines marked its passing. Sam was beginning to worry that Daniel had fallen asleep. The events of the preceding twenty-four hours had taken a serious toll on him, and though they should make it back to the planet within the hour, it was beginning to look as though it wouldn't be soon enough.

She opened her mouth to ask Daniel if he was going to be all right, but he was speaking before she could.

"I think I know how we might be able to do this."

"Do what?" Jack asked.

"We have to do it together," Daniel whispered, and then shook his head. "I don't know how I know that-I've never known how I knew that-but I do. I think I always have."

"Do what together?"

"Okay, think back to the planet. When we first got there ... those energy readings that were floating around ... how did we react to them?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Jack asked.

"Well, let's go with Sam's theory that those energy things are just like me-they're people's consciousnesses that somehow ended up without their bodies. Aynad told me, in my dream, that Belos stole people's bodies. That's what the inscriptions on the walls said, too. So what if, rather than a symbiote, Belos is actually a consciousness that doesn't have a body of his own? What if he's one of those energy clouds, just like I am?"

Jack shook his head. "Still not following you, Daniel."

"Just ... do this."

Daniel reached out with his left hand and grabbed Jack's right. Jack looked down at their intertwined fingers and raised his eyebrows. "We have to hold hands?"

Daniel glared at him, and Jack looked away. "Sam, Teal'c, you need to do it, too." Sam and Teal'c laced their fingers together exactly as Daniel had done with Jack. "Now ... everybody think of the same thing. Start with reaching the stargate ... Jack and Teal'c have just put the stretcher down on the ground, okay? Now close your eyes." All three of them did as Daniel said, and nodded when they'd reached that point in their memories. "Now, Jack ... lean over and touch Teal'c's leg."

Jack cleared his throat. "Are you sure this is necessary? Aren't we getting just a bit ..."

"Just do it, Jack!"

"Okay, okay." Jack opened one eye and leaned forward. He placed his left hand on Teal'c's knee, and wasn't surprised when his hand actually sunk into the other man's leg. "That is so creepy," he muttered as he closed his eyes again.

"Everybody hang on," Daniel said. "Here we go."

He leaned forward just as Jack had done, and brought his right hand down against Sam's leg.

Teal'c was standing on the plain at the foot of the Stargate on P2A-759. He'd stepped away from the others after helping O'Neill settle Daniel Jackson to the ground and was scanning the horizon for signs of pursuit. He knew that the MALP had indicated that the planet was uninhabited, and they had been on the planet throughout the day without having encountered anything that would contradict that finding.

He decided that his vigilance was unwarranted and turned to return to his team.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he felt a hard, malevolent gaze boring into his back.

Someone, or something, was watching them.

He turned back around slowly, reaching out with all of his senses as he tried to determine just where the threat lay. He felt his symbiote move restlessly within him. Teal'c strained his ears and eyes, searching for the presence that every other sense told him was there, but he neither saw nor heard anything.

"Teal'c?"

"Something is wrong in this place, O'Neill," Teal'c answered carefully. "I feel as though we are being watched, but there is no one present."

Teal'c felt the presence again, closer than before, and he spun toward where he felt it to be. Teal'c's symbiote stirred again, and he knew that, whatever it was, it was much nearer to them than he could have imagined. He closed his eyes and concentrated ...

... and she felt the energy prickling at her back again.

It was a familiar feeling already, after having spent the entire afternoon following the energy signatures around the temple. She could feel them clearly; the air almost crackled with their presence.

Sam looked up from the DHD and glanced across at her teammates. Teal'c appeared on edge; Jack was studying the air in front of him. Both looked as though they were scanning the area for a threat and preparing to defend themselves from it. She felt the sensation of an approaching energy signature, but it wasn't as familiar this time. It was cold, dark, evil ...

Sam knew, without knowing how, that she was feeling the energy from two different angles, seeing the scene through two different sets of eyes. She looked across at Teal'c, and was shocked to realize that not only was she looking at her friend and teammate, she was looking back at herself.

As she tried to grapple with the shock of seeing the planet through Teal'c's eyes as well as her own, she felt a wave of coldness approaching. She took one step back and shivered as she felt it course through her.

"What was that?" she heard Jack ask.

Sam opened her mouth to answer him, but something else caught her attention. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a building energy surge, identical to the one she had seen in the ante-room of the temple when the beam had ensnared Jack and Daniel. At the same time, she felt Teal'c's symbiote reacting to the energy's presence, and she knew that somehow this energy source was responsible for its agitated state. Teal'c's impressions of being watched were stronger now, and his eyes were locked on the energy mass that he hadn't been able to see before.

It was hanging directly above Daniel's chest, and tendrils of energy sparked and spiked and snaked their way toward him. Long fingers of lightning stretched out from the central mass, forming hands of electricity that danced above Daniel's unconscious body.

"Sir!" she cried out as a deep feeling of panic and terror flooded through her ...

... and he heard Sam's frightened cry from behind him. "Daniel!"

Jack pushed the fear aside and looked down at where Daniel lay on the stretcher. Jack remembered having seen nothing above Daniel except the unexplainable shadow, but where before there had been only empty air, suddenly Jack saw the ball of energy. It changed form as he watched it, and in combination with the visions of the energy from Sam's mind, and the impressions of location he was getting from Teal'c, Jack's shadows suddenly took the form of a body-two huge arms, two massive legs, a huge chest, a head, a face, fangs and horns, eyes ... He felt it staring at them, and he saw it reaching for Daniel. He saw Teal'c and Sam watching him, watching the energy form, and he knew that they were both trying to understand what was happening.

Jack knew what was happening, though. This had been part of his dream the night before-the night he'd first seen Daniel.

The night Daniel had shown him exactly what had happened to him on the planet.

Jack wanted to close his eyes and turn away, but knew that he couldn't. He wanted to pull Daniel away from the danger, but knew that it was too late. He wanted to scream, or run, or shoot something, but knew that it would be pointless.

This had already happened, and there was nothing any of them could do to change it.

Suddenly, the energy fingers darted out and slammed into Daniel's chest. Daniel's eyes shot open and he gasped in a single deep breath. As the hands withdrew, his whole body jerked violently. All three stood frozen as the energy being raised its hands above its head. They saw the limp, misty form clasped in those fingers, and then Daniel's body became completely still. His eyes fell shut as his chest sank slowly, and the sound of the air escaping his lips carried all the way to Jack's ears. The shadowy energy being looked directly at Jack and smiled at him, a smile that dripped with evil. Its eyes flashed once before it dissipated and then was gone ...

... and it was then that Daniel realized that his body wasn't breathing any more.

"No!" he heard Jack cry out.

Daniel looked around himself, trying to force down the terror that gripped him as he stared at his own pale face and his own lifeless body.

"Your soul has been gathered for the glory of your god," a voice hissed in his ear. "You have been greatly honored by your god this day."

"Get that damn gate open! Now!"

Daniel jerked his head around and looked up at the dark face that stared down at him. He shook his head slowly and backed away.

"You shall be the one to carry your God to your world. You shall become the vessel for your god's greatness."

"Get ready to run."

Daniel saw the dark fingers reaching for his chest, and he tried to back away again. His feet were sluggish, and he tripped over them, falling to the ground, hard, at the thing's feet. Daniel felt an odd sensation in his chest, as though it were suddenly inflating without him drawing a breath, and he saw the thing hesitate.

"Damn it! Carter!"

Daniel pushed the fear aside with effort, and knew that there would be no escaping from this monster. The thing reached for him again; there was nothing to stop it. He felt the cold fingers penetrate his chest and wrap around something inside of him. The pain, loss, and terror were overwhelming.

"No!" Daniel cried out.

"Wait! One second!"

Daniel felt another sensation in his chest-five forced heartbeats followed by a snapping and a sharp pain. The thing threw its head back and bellowed in anger. It began to waver and lose its form, and Daniel took advantage of the momentary distraction.

"Go! Go!"

Daniel pushed himself past the thing with every ounce of strength he possessed.

"Come on, Daniel. Come on!"

"I'm coming!"

Daniel ran as fast as he could, but his team seemed to be too far ahead of him, and he forced himself to run faster. He heard a roar of anger behind him, and spared just a second to look back. He stumbled when he saw the thing still standing on the open plain-the dark, electric shadow that held in one hand a vaguely human form that glowed brightly against the darkness of the thing that held it. Another energy form, brighter than either of the others, hovered just behind them, moving toward them quickly.

Daniel turned back to the gate just in time to see Sam disappear through it. He leapt up the stairs two at a time. Jack stepped through. Daniel didn't slow down.

Just before Teal'c was swallowed by the wormhole, Daniel launched himself into it head first.

Four pair of eyes opened in perfect unison. Jack, Sam and Teal'c all wore small smiles of under-standing, and Daniel exhaled in relief when he saw them. He was no longer the only one that knew the importance of returning to the planet.

Jack's smile faded quickly and was replaced by a mask of anger and hatred. "That slimy snake son of a bitch," he muttered. "He pulled you out of your body."

"And we watched it happen," Sam said softly. "This whole time, we've each known one thing about what happened, one piece of the puzzle. We just had to put them together to see the whole picture."

"Belos must have manipulated our memories," Teal'c said. "Until this moment, I had no conscious memory of any of these events."

Daniel nodded his head. "He did, Teal'c. He couldn't risk any of you remembering, because if you'd remembered, you'd have gone back."

"Wait ... wouldn't he want us to come back?" Jack asked. "We've got your body. If he needs it ..."

"You weren't supposed to take my body from the planet," Daniel answered. "His plan was to make you forget about me entirely. It just didn't work the way he thought it would."

"Why was he not successful?" Teal'c asked.

"There were other forces acting against him right then," Daniel said.

"Like what?" Jack asked.

"Well, like us, for starters. The four of us ... the beam blended our consciousnesses together in such a way and to such an extent that he wasn't able to overcome it entirely. He couldn't completely separate us. And then there was Aynad. He was there, too."

"But why does he need your body anyway?" Sam asked.

Daniel sighed and closed his eyes once more, as though the memories he was accessing were painful to him. "He needs it because he's trapped," he said, leaning back against the bed again. "The race that moved the people from Egypt to that planet was incredibly powerful. One thing that they learned to do was to separate their consciousnesses from their bodies, willingly. Belos was after power, just like any Goa'uld would be. He left Earth not long after he killed Omaroca, and he took what technology of hers he could carry with him. Using that technology, he figured out how to get his consciousness out of his body, and his body died, but then he realized that he couldn't leave the planet."

"He could not operate the stargate," Teal'c said.

Daniel nodded again. "He needed a body to dial the DHD. So he started using other people's,
thinking that it would be easy just to take over. But it wasn't easy; the bodies couldn't go for more than a few minutes before they died. A human body can only support one consciousness at a time ... which is exactly why I should never have tried jumping into you, Jack."

Jack smiled smugly. "Can I say 'I told you so' now?"

"No," Daniel answered, and continued. "Belos experimented with the people, teaching himself how to remove their consciousnesses, but he couldn't get it right. If he took too much or not enough, the body couldn't survive long enough for him to reach the stargate. He killed roughly a third of the population without ever figuring out just what he needed to do. Until the last one-until Aynad."

"You keep talking about him," Jack said. "Who is he?"

"He's the one I met in my dream," Daniel explained. "The one who taught me everything I know about that planet, and about Belos. He's the only one that Belos managed to completely separate from his body. That made Belos entering his body possible, but it also gave Aynad the powers that Belos had wanted for himself."

"So why didn't he use that body to leave the planet?" Sam asked.

"Because he underestimated the people," Daniel answered. "By the time Belos took control of Aynad's body, the people knew exactly what was going on, and they stopped him from reaching the stargate. Belos killed half the people in the village that day, including Aynad's entire family. But they didn't die in vain. They managed to mortally wound Aynad's body; Belos couldn't save it. He had to leave it, or he'd have died with it."

"Why didn't he just do it again?" Jack asked. "He still had the other half of the village."

"He killed them," Daniel answered. "He was so angry with them for what they did to him that he killed every single one of them. In the end, he trapped himself there, and he's spent the last four thousand years waiting and planning for the day someone would walk through the stargate."

"And we showed up for the party; lucky us," Sam said. "It was almost like it was designed to guarantee that we'd be interested enough to explore it. Almost like he was trying to lure us, specifically, into coming through the gate."

"Step into my parlor ..." Jack mumbled.

"So, you're his last chance, aren't you?" Sam asked of Daniel. "If he doesn't get your body, he'll be trapped there until someone else comes through the gate."

"And if we blow that damned gate up before we leave ..." Jack began.

"Belos is aware that he will be trapped forever if he is unsuccessful in his attempt to steal your body."

Daniel nodded. "And the only way to fix what he's done to me is to walk right back into that parlor again."

"Wait a minute," Jack said. "If you've known all of this since that dream you had on the planet, then why didn't you tell me before? This would have been so much easier to explain to everyone else if I'd known what I was talking about."

Daniel shrugged and flashed Jack a weak smile. "I didn't understand it all myself - not really. Aynad showed me exactly what had happened to his people, shared his memories of Belos with me, and told me everything that Belos had done, but I didn't understand what any of it had to do with me. I thought it was just a dream, that it didn't really mean anything."

"Why do we have to go back, Daniel?" Sam asked. "What's preventing you from just ... jumping back into your body the way you did the colonel's?"

"Because I didn't leave that body, Sam," Daniel answered. "The consciousness was removed from it forcefully, against my will. I managed to get past Belos to come here but there's another part of me, a very large part of me, that's still there with him. That part of me and the secret to making me whole again are in that temple. And the longer I stay separated, the weaker I get."

Jack shook his head slowly and spoke one sentence that summed up everyone's thoughts on the matter perfectly.

"Well, that sucks."