Brotherhood (8/27)
Title: Brotherhood ( Table of Contents)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of material value from this.
Pairings: Gen
Chapter1 Chapter2a-- 2b Chapter3 Chapter4 Chapter5 Chapter6 Chapter7 Chapter8
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Schizein
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26 September 1999; Briefing Room, SGC; 1000 hrs
The team thought something on the planet with the dead Goa'uld had messed with Daniel--some technology or disease or something--and they just needed to figure out what it was. Rothman only knew he'd tripped over Daniel's unconscious body in the office one morning. The general wanted to know what was making one of his translators crazy. And now the doctors were saying--
"He's schizophrenic?" Jack said.
"While it's far too early to make a definitive diagnosis," Dr. Mackenzie said, "you've seen yourself that his condition has been worsening rapidly. Given the severity of his symptoms, I recommend we begin treatment now."
"Whoa--wait one damn minute," Jack snapped. "Schizophrenia? Daniel? Our Daniel?"
"He's described delusions, as well as vivid visual and auditory hallucinations," Mackenzie said. "They sparked at least one anxiety attack earlier today, and I suspect that might have been what caused him to pass out last week in his office," he added, nodding to a miserable-looking Rothman.
"Daniel doesn't get anxiety attacks," Jack said...except he had, once, or nearly had. There had been a Goa'uld in Charlie Kawalsky and a newly orphaned Daniel cowering in the control room, sleep-deprived and in the grips of a flashback real enough that he couldn't tell memory from reality...
"He's having trouble distinguishing reality from something only he can see," Mackenzie said, "and apparently having trouble focusing at all. For someone who's normally as confident in his mental faculties as Daniel--in fact, for anyone at all--those are frightening things to go through."
"He's tired and stressed," Jack said, clenching his fists under the table. And okay, he'd been worried enough that he'd broken down after only a day and brought Daniel back here to see a shrink, for god's sake, but still... "He hasn't slept through the night since we came back from that Linvris planet."
"Sleep disturbances can be a sign of--"
"He literally tripped over rotting Goa'uld corpses! He probably had nightmares."
"That's what I assumed at first," said the doctor, "given the sharp change from my first meeting with him. That's why I allowed him to go home with you to rest. I'm no longer convinced that's the case."
General Hammond spoke up. "He is a teenager who's often under a lot of pressure, Doctor. Is it possible he's simply..."
"Acting out?" Dr. Mackenzie filled in.
"Stressed," Jack snapped back.
"I don't think it's either," Mackenzie said. "His reactions are too sudden and extreme."
"But," Carter said, looking at Fraiser as if hoping for a better explanation, "he knows something's wrong--that's a good sign, right? Colonel, he's been reasonable?"
And Jack almost agreed--Carter and Teal'c were both looking at him, willing him to agree--but no one else had seen Daniel almost throw himself out of a car, and no one else had been at home yesterday to see Daniel jump on him out of the blue, babbling about Goa'ulds and scrabbling at the back of Jack's neck before snapping back and curling up in a ball on the floor. Jack had tried everything he could think of and had finally been forced to call the doctors for help.
"He did seem aware there was a problem," Mackenzie said. "He was clearly trying to ignore his hallucinations at first, but I think whatever lucid periods he has are slipping, and he's having more difficulty now. He talked about something of the Linvris--their kah-lah?"
"Kalach," Teal'c said quietly. "Soul."
Mackenzie nodded. "He claimed their souls had come to take him as a host."
"What, all of them?" Jack scoffed before he could think.
"That's what he says, Colonel," Mackenzie said, and Jack thought, 'That's crazy. Right.'
"But," Carter said again, "there could be some other explanation. I mean, look at what we deal with around here--who's to say it's not something he picked up off-world?"
"The medical containment team didn't find anything," Fraiser spoke up, "and they were thorough enough even to get samples of the corpses' tissue. Moreover, if this had been caused by something off-world, we'd have to ask why Daniel was affected and the rest of you weren't."
Stubbornly, Carter tried again. "It could be a...a delayed reaction to some traumatic event. God knows he's seen enough over the last couple of years to warrant a few issues."
Jack thought there was probably something very wrong with hoping their sixteen-year-old had PTSD. Then, at least, they'd have an idea of how to deal with it. But this?
"There are factors in Daniel's background that could predispose him to schizophrenia," Fraiser said. "Extended hypoxia in the womb is linked to certain abnormalities in brain structure, not to mention we don't know what a sarcophagus might have done to an unborn child. Arguably, even some of his cognitive traits could point in that direction, though I'm reluctant to say that definitively. I haven't yet dug up his parents' records to look for a genetic predisposition, but--"
Rothman made a sound like he was being strangled and sank lower into his chair.
"Dr. Rothman?" the general said.
"Daniel...has a grandfather on Earth," Rothman said, sounding reluctant. "Nicholas Ballard--we've known about him for a while. He made a big scene in the archaeology field about thirty years ago--claimed to see giant beings of mist who spoke to him in Mayan and were trying to teleport him away using a...a skull. He's rumored to be schizophrenic," he added, looking at the table.
"How do you know that?" Jack asked, annoyed that Rothman had details like that about Daniel's grandfather when he himself didn't. "Wouldn't that have been before your time?"
"His work is famous. Daniel asked, so I helped look him up."
"But," Carter tried again, more desperate and a little angry now, "we would have noticed something before. Come on, this was too fast."
"Dr. Mackenzie has been analyzing psychological data from SG units," General Hammond said in answer. "He's been looking specifically for side effects of 'gate travel."
It took a second for the meaning to sink in, and then Jack burst out, "Now you're telling me the Stargate made Daniel schizophrenic?"
"The Stargate does brutal things to the body," Fraiser said, "even if you don't notice it. Having your body taken apart, thrown through subspace, and put back together... I've observed transient chemical fluctuations afterward, and we've been almost expecting psychological side effects. We can't discount the possibility that 'gate travel contributed to Daniel's unusually rapid deterioration."
"Transient chemical fluctuations," Carter repeated. "Like a short endorphin rush--but that fades."
"The fact that there's an endorphin response at all suggests that the traveler experiences some trauma in the wormhole," Fraiser said. "Even if it's just from the molecular reconstruction...well, I'm not sure we're in a position to say that's 'just' anything."
"It is, of course, possible that Daniel's condition is also only temporary," Mackenzie said. "However, without being sure, we can't just ignore it and hope it will resolve itself or ignore the possible risk factor."
"I've used the Stargate a lot more than Daniel has," Jack pointed out. "Plenty of people have."
"Like I said," Fraiser repeated, "there are often many factors that come into play. It may be that he's more strongly affected because he's younger and because he's been using the Stargate while his brain hasn't quite finished its development--schizophrenia is often diagnosed around his age. He may also have had a predisposition to the disorder already. But if we're right, then 'gate travel may be a factor that increases risks for anyone who uses it, not just for Daniel."
"What about other humans?" Jack demanded. "Earth just started using Stargates, but you don't think other planets might've noticed that the Stargate made people insane?"
"Do we know any society of human aliens who travel through the Stargate regularly, as much as several times a month?" the general said. "Not Goa'uld or Jaffa, but humans. I've been trying to think of any and haven't been able to."
"Well...there's..." Jack started, then stopped. He looked at Carter and Teal'c and saw the same negative answer. God, maybe there was a reason. "Maybe we just haven't met them yet."
"The Air Force can't take that chance. As we speak, all outstanding SG teams are being recalled for evaluations," the general said.
Carter's jaw dropped. "You're shutting down the whole program," she said in disbelief.
Hammond met her eyes without wavering. "Only until Dr. Mackenzie and his team submit their report. If his theory is proven correct, limits will be placed on the number of missions for each person. Until then, the Stargate is closed."
"What of Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c said, returning to the immediate problem on their hands.
"There are medications that could help him," Mackenzie said. "For now, he can stay in the medical facilities on base to see if his symptoms improve with some rest and treatment."
XXXXX
26 September 1999; Infirmary, SGC; 1030 hrs
There weren't enough chairs in Daniel's isolation room. Normally, this wasn't a problem. Normally, an archaeologist, a colonel, a major, and a Jaffa wouldn't all have been standing awkwardly around the bed, watching Daniel sleep off some sedative. There might have been a general, too, but he was busy shutting down the program they'd all fought so hard to keep only a week ago.
In any case, the chair issue turned out not to be a problem, since Teal'c was comfortable standing, Carter perched herself on the edge of the mattress, Rothman grabbed the single chair in the corner, and Mackenzie and Fraiser dragged Jack out of the room to talk.
"Colonel," Fraiser said quietly, "given the current state of the program, you and your team will be effectively off-duty. You're listed as Daniel's next of kin--would you be comfortable taking charge of decisions relating to his treatment? If not, rest assured that we'll--"
"Listen, Doc--he was fine two weeks ago," Jack said. "What's to say he didn't...inhale some funky alien, I dunno, spores--"
"We ran a lot of tests, Colonel," Fraiser reminded him. "MRI, ultrasounds, CT scan, every possible blood screen... We can't find any foreign substances or other anomalies."
"A diagnosis of schizophrenia requires months," Mackenzie said. "I'm guessing something triggered his first episode, perhaps something from your recent mission or even a delayed reaction to something else he's experienced. From here, it might get better or it might get worse, but the fact is, something needs to be done about his condition now."
"Because he might betray government secrets in his crazy, deluded state, is that it?" Jack said.
"Because he came inches from giving himself a concussion on my desk earlier today when he collapsed," Mackenzie corrected.
"Dammit," Jack spat, kicking the wall next to the door.
"Colonel," Fraiser said. "if medication can bring him a little more clarity of mind, it might go a long way in making him feel better. He may yet make a recovery with medical intervention."
"Clarity of mind--Doc, Daniel's mind can run circles around..." Jack stopped and couldn't make himself finish.
Fraiser wasn't looking at him now, and she stared at her medical chart a little longer than he thought strictly necessary. "There are things you'll want to know," she said finally. "I don't know how the people of Abydos treated mental illnesses, if at all, but Dr. Mackenzie says Daniel doesn't seem to understand what schizophrenia is. Even if he did, that wouldn't...Colonel, just keep in mind that he's very confused at the moment."
Something was wrong. Something could have happened, and maybe it wasn't Goa'uld ghosts like Daniel was saying, but any number of things could have happened. This had only started recently, and what good would it do to pump Daniel full of drugs now? He'd wake up soon and prove that they were all a bunch of paranoid alarmists.
Still...maybe the doctors were right, and something had to be done now, just to make sure he didn't get hurt. They could work on figuring it out in the meantime, but for now...
"What do we need to know?" Jack asked.
They said something about resting and support and cognitive tests, and Jack tried--honestly tried--to pay attention. In the end, Fraiser relented and said, "Why don't you go in, Colonel. We can talk more later."
Rothman walked out just as he walked in, head down and muttering something. Jack had no idea what he was saying, but he didn't care, because then it was just the four of them inside, his team and their little brother, and they all settled in to wait.
...x...
Carter and Teal'c were both looking on from the wrong angle, so Jack was the only one to notice when Daniel's eyes finally opened. "Hey," he said quietly, and there was a sudden shift as Carter stood and hurried around to the other side of the bed. Teal'c approached more cautiously.
There was no answer. Jack shifted a little. Daniel didn't seem to notice. Carter tried petting his hair, and he curled up a little more but didn't say anything or try to bat her away. She withdrew. Teal'c was smarter--or more uncertain--than the rest of them and kept his distance instead of crowding.
Jack tried lowering his head enough to catch Daniel's eyes. "How're you feeling? A little woozy?"
Daniel glanced sluggishly at him, then away. He swallowed, then whispered, "Jack?"
"Yeah, it's me," Jack said, relieved.
He bit his lip. "Are you...are you real?"
"I'm...yeah, of course I'm real," Jack said. Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and turned miserably into the mattress. "Calm down, all right? It's okay. The doctors are going to explain some things to you so you understand what's going on."
It took a few more moments before Daniel peeked at him again. "I kept hearing," he said. "And...seeing things that... I don't think they were real. I'm not thinking right. I'm s-sorry; I can't tell--"
"You have nothing to be sorry for, Daniel," Carter said.
Daniel unburied himself a little bit more, tentatively, looking from Teal'c to Sam to Jack, until Jack realized what the problem was. "Them, too. Me and Carter and Teal'c, we're all here."
A slow breath, and then Daniel nodded. "Okay. Okay."
See, he's lucid, Jack wanted to crow. There was nothing wrong with him except whatever drug that was swimming around in his head and a few...a few nightmares, maybe. That might have been all it was. Wasn't confused at all.
But Daniel sat up slightly and cocked his head. "What?" he said, frowning.
"What, what?" Jack said, proud of how calm it sounded when it came out.
"It's too loud," Daniel said, shaking his head dazedly. "I can't hear them."
Jack licked his lips, exchanging a glance with Carter and Teal'c. "Hear...whom?"
Daniel looked at him, dismissed him, and looked away, his head tilted in the way that usually meant he was listening and trying to figure out a new language, but it wasn't that this time, not even close. "I think they're coming. Naturu, they're--"
"It's just us, Daniel," Jack said, a little louder, as if he was actually competing with some other sound. He lowered his voice again. "Me, Carter, Teal'c."
"What about the Goa'uld?" Daniel flinched and inched away from the blank space behind him. "They're not...they're really not...?"
"It's...just us," Jack repeated, because what was he supposed to say to that?
In answer, Daniel burrowed under his blanket, curled into a ball.
"Colonel?" Fraiser hurried into the room, followed closely by Mackenzie. "He's awake?"
"Yeah," Jack said. He reached over to pull the blanket off Daniel's head, not sure if someone could suffocate by trying to stuff himself into the mattress. "Daniel? You with us, kid?"
For the rest of the day, Daniel's only response was to stare at his knees and ignore everyone, so they were eventually kicked out as the first dose of medicine was prepared (an antipsychotic--who the hell came up with these names?), and that was how it started.
XXXXX
27 September - 6 October 1999; SGC
The Stargate program was shut down. Therefore, for the next several days, SG-1 had nothing else to do but finish the last of their paperwork, loiter around base, or watch Daniel.
The next day, after Mackenzie started medicating him, the hallucinations didn't seem to go away, and Daniel did nothing but curl up in a corner and try, occasionally, to run away.
"So basically," Jack said when he cornered Fraiser later that day, "he's going nuts and being sedated and no one's told him why."
He almost felt bad when she looked away for a second but found he couldn't really make himself care. "We are doing our best to talk to him, Colonel," she said. "It takes some time for the medication to kick in and start working. Hopefully, he'll be in a more coherent state when it does."
"What if it's not schiz--"
"This is the only logical course of action, sir," she said bluntly. "It's alarming to see this happen so fast, and it's still early and may still change. But...this might not be something that will go away."
Jack went to the archaeology department to ransack Daniel's desk and the adjoining lab, only to find that Teal'c and Carter had had the same idea. They walked in together and found out Rothman had beaten them all to the punch and had already combed through everything and found nothing suspicious. They looked again anyway.
"What about this?" Carter suggested, pointing cautiously to the tablet from the Linvris chamber. Rothman picked it up himself. "Dr. Rothman, don't; what if it's--"
Rothman put it back down in disgust. "I don't feel any different. But if I go insane, you'll know where to start."
On the second day, Teal'c went to talk to Dr. Fraiser and didn't come out until half an hour later, and then he went without a word to visit Daniel. Then Daniel became convinced that Teal'c was a Goa'uld, so Teal'c left the room, looking like someone had kicked his dog--or his chal'ti--while Carter gave him a sympathetic look and settled next to Daniel. Jack watched from the observation deck.
The next day, Daniel managed to knock Carter off a chair in his attempts to...something. Get away from the Goa'uld by the bed, maybe; Jack couldn't tell. Carter insisted she was okay, but the livid bruise on her elbow made it possible for Jack to accept what Fraiser said next:
"I'd like to move him to Mental Health," Fraiser said. "This facility isn't properly equipped--frankly, it's much too dangerous. He could make a recovery with time, but he needs to be where he can be treated. This isn't permanent, Colonel--just until we can find some treatment that works."
"Can we still visit him, at least?" Jack asked.
"Not right away," she warned. "But yes. Dr. Mackenzie will let you know."
...x...
Visiting hours were very limited, especially at first. The doctors had kept Daniel in a rubber room for most of two days, because apparently, they'd had a hard time finding a drug that worked, but they finally trusted him enough to move into a room that didn't look quite as much like a prison of some sort. The team tried to visit him together, Rothman trailing awkwardly after, but they were told that Daniel's mood was erratic and even violent when he was at his most paranoid.
"In fact," Mackenzie said, "I suggest you visit him one at a time until he starts to show improvement, just so you're not all crowding him at once. Which of you...?"
Jack almost wanted to make someone else go first, to stall, but Teal'c said quietly, "Daniel Jackson is most familiar with you, O'Neill."
"Yeah," Jack said. "Me first."
Daniel's fingers were twisting and untwisting the hem of his white scrubs, and he was sitting on the corner of his mattress. He was...calmer, certainly. It looked like they'd finally found the right drug and dosage to make him stop thinking, which was nice in a horrifying sort of way.
The first thing he said was, "Where's Robert?"
Jack clamped down on the surge of indignation and said, "Outside. How are you feeling?"
But Daniel only shook his head and repeated, "I need to..." He stopped, rubbing his eyes and making a visible effort to focus. "I have to talk to Robert."
So Jack sighed and returned to the waiting area. "Rothman," he said, knowing his tone was a little sharper than necessary but not caring, "he wants to talk to you."
Rothman looked just as surprised as the rest of them but switched places with Jack.
"Sir?" Carter said, standing in confusion along with Teal'c.
Jack shrugged. "Daniel only wanted to see him."
She looked down and nodded. Teal'c scowled but didn't say anything.
Rothman returned just a minute later looking bewildered and shaken. "Uh," he said, looking around at them all, "Daniel wants me to finish that translation you guys brought back. With the, uh...the attack plan from the Linvris. And then...he got a little agitated, so they...well, he's sleeping now. They said we could maybe come back."
"Right," Jack said, feeling cheated and then feeling guilty about that.
...x...
For the rest of that day, Jack had people sweep the entire base for anything that might be an alien hallucinogen or that emitted odd energy readings--the usual stuff. General Hammond turned a blind eye at first but eventually stopped them and looked at Jack like he might be going crazy. He was pretty sure, though, that Teal'c managed to scare a few technicians into scouring the last few rooms of moldy artifacts, and he thought he caught Carter asking a biologist about the mold.
"Sir," Carter said tentatively, "maybe..."
"What?" he said, ready for any theory at all.
She looked away. "I've looked at everything, including what we brought back from PY3-948. I can't find anything. Maybe we should...consider that this is really..."
Jack was sure that dent had been there in the desk before he'd kicked it. "Maybe," he admitted once his foot stopped throbbing. "Okay."
...x...
The next day, Mackenzie's team worked its way up to SG-12 in his line of psych evaluations and tests and brain scans, and he was being tightlipped out the results. Eventually, Jack actually couldn't find any more paperwork to do, so the three of them converged at Daniel's desk and watched while Rothman tried to translate something.
"Is that...?" Carter asked, pointing at the tablet they'd brought back from PY3-948. "With the, uh... 'attack plan?'"
"Yeah," Rothman grunted, then slammed the page-turning device onto the lab bench. "Stupid thing. It's broken. I've got half a mind to call and have another PTD shipped over from Area 51 to see if that'll work. Stupid, stupid..."
Carter bit her lip. "Dr. Rothman, you don't really have to..."
"I don't care," Rothman said petulantly, slamming the device down a few more times before picking up the tablet again. "Go away."
So the three of them shut up until they were allowed to visit at Mental Health, where Daniel had since been moved back to his padded room, where it was safer. Jack didn't know what had been so unsafe about a regular room and wasn't sure he wanted to know. But at least all three of them were allowed to visit together now, for all the good it did.
"Hello," Jack said as they walked in.
Daniel was sitting against one of the walls. "I'm not talking to you."
"Ah..." Jack said, trying not to react too strongly. "Really? Why?"
"You're not really here," Daniel informed him.
Carter winced. "We are, actually," Jack said.
For such a weak argument--if Jack had been a hallucination, he so would claim to be real--Daniel accepted it surprisingly easily, but in response, he pulled his knees toward himself and plunged his face into the white scrub bottoms. "I'm sorry. My head...doesn't...it's not right."
"No, Daniel--don't say that," Carter said. "It's okay. It'll get better."
"I keep sleeping," Daniel said. "I can't think."
"That's the medicine," she explained. "It'll get better, and then you won't be sleepy all the time."
He shook his head. "I can't think, Sam. It's getting worse. I can't think anymore. I don't even...maybe you're not...here. Did Teal'c leave?"
"I am here, chal'ti," Teal'c said, stepping into his line of sight and waiting until Daniel's eyes fixed on him and decided he was actually probably maybe there. "I did not wish to startle you again. We have been attempting to determine the cause of your illness."
"Oh," Daniel sighed after a minute, not sounding convinced. Jack didn't have the heart to tell him they hadn't found anything and, honestly, weren't expecting to anymore. "I'm sorry," he whispered, covering his face.
"Don't say that," Carter repeated, looking on the verge of losing it. "It'll get better."
"Can I go home?" Daniel said, muffled. "Please?"
Jack couldn't quite bring himself to ask which home Daniel meant. "Not...just yet," he said. "But as soon as we can, all right? The doctors can help you here--are they treating you okay?"
Daniel nodded once without looking up. "Yes," he said quietly, and then he started to cry.
Jack found himself frozen, even though he was closest and part of him said he should be doing something. He'd seen Daniel upset before--even seen him cry--but always in quiet moments, faces averted so they could both pretend afterward that everything was okay. No teenage boy, much less one being raised and trained on a military base, liked being seen with tears on his face, and Jack found himself lost at the sight of Daniel now sobbing so miserably before them.
Then Carter moved past him, but Daniel jerked away from her, scampering into the corner. A few moments later, Jack shook himself from his paralysis just in time to catch Daniel as he lunged toward her. He couldn't tell anymore whether Daniel was laughing or crying or both, but it was frighteningly easy to hold onto him until the aides arrived.
...x...
Finally, Dr. Mackenzie told General Hammond that the other personnel were unusually stressed--surprise--but didn't seem any more schizophrenic than they'd been at the start of the Stargate program. That meant the Stargate was going to open again. It also meant that whatever was going on in Daniel's head wasn't because of the Stargate, so it was just plain old psychosis.
Carter was told to stop investigating the theoretical effects of molecular deconstruction and reintegration on the volume of gray matter in the hippocampus, at which point she began yelling at the researchers at Area 51 instead, turning her attention aggressively to the Goa'uld communication balls she'd been asking about before PY3-948.
Teal'c marched into General Hammond's office and said he would return to PY3-948 to find the cause for Daniel Jackson's illness. "My symbiote protects me from harm," Teal'c said.
"Dr. Mackenzie seems to think this is simply schizophrenia, son," Hammond said gently.
"We haven't ruled out alien influence," Jack insisted. "We still don't know how those Goa'uld died, which is a hell of a big missing piece of the puzzle, sir. If it's really schizophrenia, nothing will happen to us if we take another look around."
General Hammond finally nodded. "All right. Teal'c, I'll let you go to see if there's anything the medical team missed. You are not to go further than that building where the Linvris were found."
Jack frowned. "Just Teal'c? What about me?"
"Teal'c, you're dismissed," the general said. "Get ready to ship out. Colonel, I need to talk to you."
So then Jack was told that it was understandable if SG-1 needed some extra time, but everyone was looking to them, the first team; they had to get back in the game. Also, about Daniel...
"I hope to God that Teal'c finds something on that planet," Hammond said, "but I'm starting to doubt that he will. In that case, even if Mr. Jackson's condition improves, you know there's little chance we'll be able to allow him to keep working here like this. I could arrange for him to receive medical care here...but is it time to contact Abydos?"
"What?" Jack said, as if he hadn't been thinking about that already.
"Jack," the general said.
So Jack gritted his teeth and said, "At least wait until Teal'c gets back." The general folded his hands on his desk and looked down at them. "And," he conceded, before Hammond could put together a response that Jack didn't want to hear, "if there's nothing, then I'll go talk to the doctors about...what we should tell the Abydons. How they should...take care of him."
General Hammond nodded. "Okay. I think Daniel would want to be at home, Jack."
"I know," Jack admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.
The next day, Teal'c reported that he had found nothing interesting on the planet, which meant it was time for SG-1 to start getting it together and taking missions again.
...x...
Fraiser met them that night when they went together to Mental Health to speak to Mackenzie, and she told them that Dr. Rothman had caught acute schizophrenia.
"You can't catch schizophrenia," Jack told her, and then he caught on. "Wait--are you saying..."
"Wait," Carter said, "but we looked at everything. I--I don't even know what could possibly--"
"We'll just have to look harder," Fraiser said. "One of the anthropologists found Dr. Rothman collapsed in his office this morning; right now, they're isolating everything he and Daniel might have both worked with in the past few weeks. I've also asked them to bring Daniel immediately back to base--we'll keep both of them in the medical isolation rooms for now."
"Ah," Jack said. Something like excitement buzzed in his brain. "Sweet."
He'd always thought the archaeology office was a dangerous place.
XXXXX
7 October 1999; Briefing Room, SGC; 0700 hrs
Actually, most people seemed to think the archaeology office was a dangerous place and didn't know the specifics of what went on in there, so quarantining everything Rothman and Daniel might have touched in the past few weeks meant, basically, sealing off the entire office and lab.
"Maybe it's an infectious agent," Carter suggested, but she looked doubtful.
"You've been around Daniel at least as much as Dr. Rothman, if not more," Dr. Fraiser pointed out. "Do we know what projects they were both working on?"
"Dr. Rothman has been working on a backlog of unfinished Goa'uld and Ancient translations," Carter offered. "Those tend to be Daniel's languages, so it's possible they both handled those...artifacts or scripts at some point."
"I think you're all leaving something out," Jack said. "This all started after the mission in the Linvris chamber where there are dead bodies with no explanation."
"Dr. Rothman has never been to PY3-948," General Hammond reminded them, "and, again, you three have all been there, and none of you is showing any symptoms."
"Teal'c has a symbiote and Carter has..." Jack waved at her and stopped himself from saying 'bits of a symbiote.' "The protein thing."
"And you, Colonel?"
"I was...pretty much standing guard," Jack said. "Whereas Daniel walked in and fell face-first onto a corpse. And then he..." He trailed off, frowning.
"He picked up that tablet," Carter finished. "He was trying to read it."
"Dr. Rothman has also been attempting to read that tablet in recent days," Teal'c said. "If that device is causing this illness, neither I nor a medical team would not have found anything when we returned to the planet."
"So you think he read something that made him nuts?" Jack said.
"In any case," Carter said, "I think that tablet's broken somehow; the display doesn't change. I thought that might be a hint that something was off about it, so I ran every test I could on it and the PTD found with it, and...nothing."
"I approved a request that Dr. Rothman made for a new PTD to be shipped from Area 51," the general said suddenly. "He said that one of the ones he'd been using was malfunctioning. I didn't realize at the time that that was what he was working on, but it's a connection."
"So it's not the Stargate making people schizophrenic; it's a tablet and a thing that looks like a rock?" Jack said. He was going to take this as proof, from now on, that too much reading was bad for one's health. "How many of those devices do they have at Area 51, anyway?"
"Apparently," General Hammond said, "one of our shipments to them contained nearly twenty PTDs that all seemed to be associated with only one or two tablets. That's why they were so willing to ship a spare one over."
Carter nodded thoughtfully. "Then why were there so many? When was this, sir, and which shipment of items was it in?"
"We received it yesterday morning, Major, and it was among the items found on P3C-599," General Hammond said. Jack turned to Carter and Teal'c, who both shook their heads that they didn't know it, either. "That's where the human alien Machello was found. No one suspected that even a simple page-turning device might have been one of his inventions."
"Machello," Jack repeated. "The guy who switched bodies with Dr. Rothman and then made Daniel play musical bodies with SG-2?"
"That is correct, O'Neill," Teal'c said. "He was an inventor who created devices to kill the Goa'uld."
"Well," Jack said, relieved that they had a hint, even if they didn't know where it lead, "that puts a new spin on things."
"Treat that tablet and the PTDs with extreme caution," Hammond ordered. "Go to their office, find those devices, and bring them to the biohazard laboratories until we've figured this out."
Carter stopped in her tracks before they could leave the briefing room. "Hold on," she said. "Machello was a Goa'uld killer, right?"
"I think we established that as a 'yes,'" Jack said impatiently.
"Sir, whatever this is, it answers the question of what killed those Goa'uld in the Linvris chamber," she said, glancing at Teal'c. "And there had been no damage to the hosts, so whatever killed them must have attacked their symbiotes directly."
So Jack turned to Teal'c, as well. "Maybe you and Junior should sit this one out," he said. "You could talk to Rothman and help them try to figure out what he was doing."
"I could not. Dr. Rothman and Daniel Jackson are both in isolation from all but essential medical personnel," Teal'c pointed out. Rothman was in somewhat better shape than Daniel at the moment, since he'd apparently only been nuts for less than a day and was, on top of that, not being drugged, but questioning him was still proving fruitless. At this point, it was a toss-up whether that was because he was in the process of losing his mind or just because he simply had no clue how to help.
"Look," Jack said as Carter and Fraiser started to list out containers and equipment they'd need, "we're not going to be much help to them. Let's get out of their way, and we'll meet up at Lab 3."
...x...
"So the nine Goa'uld on PY3-948," Jack said from the observation deck, watching Carter and Fraiser poke at two PTDs and the tablet in a glove box. "That stuff there, that's how they died?"
"It would appear to be so," Teal'c said.
"Page-turning devices killed the Goa'uld."
"These might be more than they appear, sir," Carter called toward the observation window. "They could contain some kind of chemical or biological agent. In fact, that might explain why we couldn't find anything in the first one, while a fresh one affected Dr. Rothman--maybe the first had already been depleted of the agent."
"The agent...which kills Goa'ulds and makes anthropologists nuts," Jack clarified.
"Schizophrenic," Fraiser corrected absently, then tapped the items in the box. "Now, both of these PTDs were found on Dr. Rothman's desk with the tablet. They're probably activated by attempting to use them on the tablet, as Daniel and Dr. Rothman presumably did in their attempts to read it."
Jack leaned forward, squinting through the observation window. Carter lifted one of the rock-like devices and passed it a few times over the tablet.
"Nothing," she told them, then picked up the other and repeated. This time, something started moving, though it was too far from Jack to see anything but a squirming pile of what looked like big maggots. "Wow," Carter said, waving the PTD around a few more times. "And...I think that's all of them. Sir, there were organisms inside the device!"
"I am counting four...eight in total," Fraiser said. "Assuming Dr. Rothman only tried this device a couple times and was infected, we're looking at about nine or ten per device."
Thinking back to the Linvris chamber, Jack nodded. "Well, that would make sense. Nine to kill the Linvris Goa'ulds, and one more when Daniel activated the device. Ten--nice round number."
"Then Dr. Rothman used the one from Area 51," Carter added, "and was infected by...two of the organisms. That might be why his symptoms progressed faster than Daniel's."
Fraiser rummaged around in the glove box, saying, "Let's try to immobilize one and--"
"Whoa!" Carter yelled, yanking her hands out of the gloves and slamming the box shut.
"Gloves are breached!" Fraiser called, immediately pulling out as well.
Jack shot to his feet. He hit the alarm and leaned into the PA, saying, "General Hammond to B-Hazmat 3 Obser--sir," he amended when the general rushed in. "We have a breach."
"Oh, God," Carter was saying, and Jack saw a few of the maggots crawling up her skin.
Fraiser had grabbed a hose, but she let go with a cry, then stared at her hand. She met Carter's eyes and sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Well."
"Dr. Warner to B-Hazmat 3 Observation. Containment team to B-Hazmat 3," the general ordered over the PA, then asked the two scientists, "Is there any risk of further contamination to the base?"
"Judging by our experience with Daniel," Fraiser said, looking up calmly at the window, though one hand was rubbing the other arm like she could scrub the bugs out, "as long as we stay in here, the base is probably secure."
"Are they all accounted for?" Jack asked.
"Yes, sir," Carter said. "Three"--she pointed at Fraiser, then to herself--"and five."
Hammond asked, frustrated, "Is there anything you can do to get them out?"
"I don't think so," Fraiser said, then staggered back into a lab bench and slid to the floor. "Oh. Is it hot in here? Ah...oh, no..."
"Janet?" Carter said uncertainly, then looked up toward them. "The symptoms could work pretty fast, with so many organisms in each of us--"
"It's too hot!" Fraiser whimpered, starting to tear at her clothes. "It's...hot! They're trying to suffocate us!"
As Jack watched helplessly, Carter ran to Dr. Fraiser and bent over her, pulling off her lab coat but trying to get her to keep the rest of her uniform firmly on. "Janet!"
"Carter!" Jack called into the microphone, flicking away a hundred worries that wouldn't help now and focusing on the fact that two of the SGC's head scientists and their chief medical officer had both just become compromised. "Talk to us, Major."
She spread her arms, shaking her head. "I feel fine, sir. I've got more of them in me than she does, and I feel completely normal. Somehow I must be immune."
Or, Jack thought, the symptoms were different in her, but if that was the case, they were basically screwed, so he was assuming 'immune.' Dr. Warner arrived and took in the scene.
"No, get away, you're a Goa'uld!" Fraiser gasped.
Carter straightened sharply, wearing her I-have-an-idea face, and Jack's hopes leapt. "Not anymore, I'm not," she said. "Sir, what if I'm not being affected because of my experience with Jolinar? It...whoa." She winced and caught herself on the edge of a bench, and Jack's hopes plummeted. "Maybe I spoke too soon...ah, God, something's happening..."
And to Jack's utter disgust, five slimy bugs dripped out of her ear.
"Ew," he said before he could help himself.
"I think they're dead," Carter said, apparently less disgusted than he was, because she crouched to poke at them with her finger and picked one of them up.
Jack grimaced as it slimed its way back to the floor. "So what makes you special?"
"I could have sworn I heard... Maybe it is because of Jolinar--she left a protein marker in my blood. These devices were made by Machello, a Goa'uld killer, right? And they killed the Linvris without killing the host."
"Then perhaps they sensed the protein that marks the death of a Goa'uld within you, Major Carter," Teal'c said.
"Exactly," Carter agreed, bending to cushion Dr. Fraiser's head with her lab coat. "Dr. Warner, can we just extract my blood and inject it into everyone who's infected?"
"Not if the blood types don't match," Warner said, finding a computer where he could access files quickly.
"I'm A-positive," Carter told him hopefully, and a look at Fraiser's dog tags told her--"But Janet's O-Neg."
"We could try it with Dr. Rothman," Warner offered, and Carter immediately dug through a drawer for empty syringes and needles. "There's still some risk, but he's A-positive as well. For Dr. Fraiser and Mr. Jackson, we need to separate out the relevant protein factor from the rest of the blood, or their bodies will reject it."
"Uh huh," she said, steadying one arm against a table as she began to draw her own blood hastily. "And how do I isolate the protein?"
"You don't have the necessary equipment in there," Warner said. "And even if you did, without Dr. Fraiser's knowledge about the protein...she might have a protocol for the Goa'uld protein purification, but I don't know it. It would take weeks."
"Well, give this to Dr. Rothman," she said, exasperated, holding up a syringe full of blood. "At least we'll have an extra person to help think and we'll see if this really is the cure. Or maybe there's a clue in that tablet after all. General, please!"
They turned to the general. "All the bugs are dead or accounted for, sir," Jack pointed out.
"All right," Hammond conceded, "but I'll have you ask you to remain in that room, Major Carter. Containment team, stand by."
Teal'c shifted restlessly. "General Hammond, should we assist?"
"No!" Carter called. "Teal'c, you're the last person who should risk exposure to this stuff. You, too, Colonel--I may be the only person immune to this."
There was some quick, nifty sleight-of-hand at the door that resulted in the passing of Carter's blood to a nurse outside, before the door was sealed again, with people scanning and searching and disinfecting anew.
"You're sure his body won't reject it, Doctor?" Carter asked, grabbing another syringe and needle to draw some more. She paused, bent over where Fraiser was hidden from their view, then straightened and said, "She said 'red blood cells.'"
"Red blood cells," Warner said absently. "Which carry oxygen and other...Oh, I see," he said. "Major, those are the cells with the proteins that make up ABO and Rh blood types. Everything else in the blood is more or less the same, except any antibodies in the serum. The soluble proteins we care about will remain in the plasma fraction."
"So can I just separate out red blood cells?" Carter asked, her attention torn between Dr. Fraiser, who was now lying flat on the ground, and the syringe in her arm.
Warner looked back at what Jack could see was Daniel's electronic medical file, and said, "Yes, Jackson's A-negative and Dr. Fraiser's O-negative. There shouldn't be a clotting reaction with your antibodies. Major, get a clean centrifuge tube and find the anticoagulant--it's labeled 'citr--"
"This?" she said, holding up a vial in one hand and ripping off the tourniquet with her other.
"Yes. Now mix it with your blood in the tube at this ratio..."
Jack sat back and watched, no longer surprised but still always impressed by Carter's efficiency and competence as she mixed her blood in the tube and dropped it into the centrifuge.
Rothman staggered into the observation deck as she started the rotor, a nurse hovering behind him as if to make sure he wasn't about to fall over. "Holy crap," the archaeologist said. "...sir," he added when he saw General Hammond.
"Dr. Rothman," the general said. "So the blood transfusion worked?"
"These...things came out of my ear," Rothman said, sounding indignant even as he blinked hard and swayed a little. "What's going on?"
XXXXX
7 October 1999; Infirmary, SGC; 2100 hrs
By the time Carter finished playing with her blood and used part of the liquid to cure Fraiser, Jack was on his feet and more than ready to go see Daniel. He waited just long enough for Dr. Fraiser to recover before leading the way to the medical isolation room.
They filed in to find Daniel still sedated and secured to his bed by one arm, though he woke up, at least a little, when they approached.
"All right, Daniel," Carter said, bending to be able to reach him and uncapping the syringe.
"No," Daniel said halfheartedly, but he only watched dully as she found a vein on his arm.
There was a brief scare when he jerked away and Carter almost dropped the syringe, but she managed to keep her grip on it, and, especially in Daniel's current condition, Teal'c easily held him still while she began to depress the plunger.
Suddenly, Daniel surged up, frenzied again, straining against them and the restraint on his wrist and managing to rip the syringe away from his arm before being held down again. "No, no, wait!" he cried as Carter cursed and chased after her protein and Fraiser grabbed a pad of gauze to press against the blood seeping from Daniel's arm. "Teal'c--something just...went into Teal'c, it went into him, Jack, look, it just went into--"
"Daniel Jackson, calm yourself," Teal'c said, still holding his struggling body. "Htapi, chal'ti!"
"Hold him still," Carter ordered as she twisted off the dirtied needle and reached for a clean one.
"No, you don't understand!" Daniel said, panting, tiring but becoming more frantic for all that. "Jack, it's in him! You have to help him, let me go, get it out, get it out--"
"Sam, just do it," Fraiser said, "don't even worry about a vein, just--"
Daniel gasped. "Machello?" he breathed, then slumped back onto the bed.
Carter stopped with the syringe poised to plunge into his arm.
"What?" Jack said.
"I think you're supposed to hear Machello's voice when the thing dies," Rothman said nervously. "I heard him when the thing came out of my ear."
"So did I," Fraiser confirmed, bending to verify that Daniel was only unconscious or asleep.
"I heard something, too," Carter said, holding the syringe like she wasn't sure anymore whether to use it. "But I didn't think I'd actually injected anything yet."
"Then what happened?" Jack demanded as everyone stood around uncertainly. "You're not telling me he's hallucinating Machello by coincidence?"
"Maybe I did inject a little, sir," Carter said doubtfully. "It might have been enough."
"Then where's the organism?" Fraiser said, checking Daniel's ears and every other orifice she could reach without starting to pull off clothes.
Teal'c grunted and started to sag to the ground.
"Teal'c?" Jack said, moving to catch him.
"Oh, god," Carter said, her eyes wide. "Daniel said something went into Teal'c--"
"Not in his right mind!" Jack pointed out, easing Teal'c down as Fraiser called for orderlies.
"We know those organisms can pass through skin while alive, and they seem to seek out a viable host. What if one of them jumped from Daniel to Teal'c? It won't just make him schizophrenic, sir; it'll kill him."
"Teal'c?" Jack said again, bending over his friend.
"My..." Teal'c said, then grimaced, closing his eyes. "My symbiote...is distressed."
"She's right, sir," Fraiser said, holding out her hand. "Major!" Carter pressed the syringe into her hand, and she quickly slid the needle into Teal'c's arm.
Teal'c raised a shaking hand to close over the doctor's before she could administer the protein. "It may still...be within him."
"I have to assume it's in you, now, Teal'c," she said, pulling his hand away easily and pushing the liquid through. "Daniel will be all right."
Jack looked back over his shoulder, where Daniel was still dead to the world. They might not be sure the bug had gone into Teal'c, but while Daniel was going nuts, Teal'c could be dying--one could afford to wait for another dose to be prepared, and the other might not have that time.
They needn't have worried, though. Teal'c shuddered once, then turned his head to one side as the bug dribbled out of his ear.
"Teal'c? Did you hear the voice?" Carter asked, touching him gently on the arm.
"Indeed." Teal'c opened his eyes again, took a deep breath, and said, "Thank you." He pushed himself to a sitting position, scowling at the first orderly who dared to try to help him up and standing carefully by himself.
"So...is that it?" Jack said, looking between his linguist and his Jaffa and noting the exhaustion on the others' faces. "Everyone's cured, all the bugs are dead, we're all good? That's it?"
Dr. Fraiser nodded tiredly. "Everyone should be cured. Teal'c?"
When there was no answer, Jack turned to see Teal'c staring at Daniel, wearing an expression that Jack could only call stricken. "Teal'c?" he prompted.
"I am well," Teal'c said, though Jack thought he looked like he could do with more than a little kelno'reem. "Daniel Jackson?"
"Yeah, is there any...permanent...anything?" Jack asked, not sure if or how you could possibly have your brain scrambled for a couple of weeks and come out with it unscrambled.
Their attention was drawn to the still-sleeping figure on the bed. "From our experiences, I'd think not," Fraiser said, unfastening Daniel's restraint. "At least...not physically. But I can't say for certain yet--let him sleep it off, and we can worry about long-term side effects later."
From the next chapter (" Awakenings"):
"Am I, uh..." He steeled himself. "I don't feel crazy." Unless Teal'c and everyone else was imaginary, too, which was possible, but he really, really hoped that wasn't the case. "But I remember...being crazy, and the way everyone's acting... Am I?"
"It would be best for Dr. Fraiser to explain," Teal'c said.
"Or maybe," Daniel said tensely, "it would be best to tell me if I'm still losing my mind, Teal'c!"