Author's Notes: Danny Whumpers: Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. Maybe not THIS installment, but you definitely will get it...
DISCLAIMER: All characters and property of Stargate SG-1 belong to MGM/UA, World Gekko Corp. and Double Secret Productions. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
Jack reached down with his right hand and tightened his fingers around the butt of his holstered side arm for what must have been the fiftieth time in the last ten minutes. Just made him feel better to know that it was there.
This place was severely creeping him out. They were standing in the enormous central chamber of the largest of a complex of deserted buildings they had just spent the last hour jogging down from the Stargate to reach on the spectacularly wild and seemingly uninhabited world of P8V-201. It had been a bit of a longshot to come here. The hilltop complex had looked fairly advanced and intriguingly anachronistic being that the rest of the world seemed to be conspicuously devoid of people, but the UAV telemetry readings hadn't rendered a lot of information that would tell them if anything remained in the structures that would make the trip worth their while.
So it was pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other, in deciding to make the trip. Normally he didn't like to venture this far off the gate itself, but in the end, it was the fact that they would have had to take a little cross-country jaunt to get to their destination that had been the deciding factor for him. It had been his call in the end, and he had made it with a comment that for some reason seemed to have made Carter a little mad at him. He hadn't the slightest idea what he had said, but it had been something all right.
Hey - he had been married before. He was very well acquainted with - 'the look'.
Well, for crying out loud all he had said is that the walk probably would do the team good he'd been noticing that they'd all been getting a little - soft lately. Too much down time due to injuries. Yeah, it probably was high time they took a little by-the-right-on-the-double stroll through the trees with some nice heavy packs.
Oh wait, there had been something else. Something about well it couldn't hurt to tighten up the old glutes a bit, eh Captain?
Ya know, upon reflection, that probably had not been a particularly smart thing for him to have said to Sam.
It was only once in the proverbial blue moon that she went and pulled gender on him, and when she did he really was completely unprepared for it.
She was such a competent officer and such an integral part of SG-1 that he tended to forget at times that she was a woman. Well - not that she was a woman, that was kinda hard to miss - what he meant is that most of the time she made it really easy to forget that she was, well - female. Because most of the time she didn't act like she was, she. made sense..
Jack realized that he was just digging the hole deeper and decided to mentally move on. Carter and her dorsal sensibilities were put on the back burner for the moment. He brought his thoughts back to the place were he was currently standing and exactly what it was about it that kept making him go back and reach for his gun every 30 seconds or so.
They were standing in a huge room that for all the world looked as if it was a set for a Frankenstein movie. Any minute now, he was expecting some white-coated, wild-haired and equally wild-eyed mad scientist-type to come popping out from behind one of the tables yelling "It's ALIVE!"
He was keeping closer to the exit than usual, just in case.
Jack willed the hair on the back of his neck to lie back down as he scanned around the room. It looked a little worse for the wear. What had obviously at some point in the past been some sort of laboratory, and a pretty advanced one at that if the remains of the equipment were anything to go by, was now mostly a shot up, smashed up and looted shambles. There were pieces of wrecked equipment and machinery strewn all over the place, along with broken glass, twisted wire, a plethora of strange metallic instruments and implements and a of a bunch of - what could only be called specimens. Or rather, what was left of them. Which wasn't a whole lot but bones and dust and a few other various assorted and sundry organic remnants he didn't even want to take a shot at trying to identify.
There had been way too many of those sad little piles of what had once been a living being. A whole lot of death had happened here. Maybe it had been many hundreds of years since these - creatures - had expired, but the place still felt. haunted. It even still smelled like death and something more than slightly unholy.
What was THIS now - his poetic phase? Jack massaged the back of his neck with the hand that was not wrapped around the butt of his pistol. Ready to go now.. Any time.
What they had walked through to get this far had more than told the story of the original function of this facility. Or so Carter had speculated, as they had done the tour. The complex was built in a circular shape, with the place they were standing now as the hub. Radiating from it were 'spokes' - corridor after corridor of cages and holding pens of various sizes and obviously intended to house living specimens from diverse worlds who had required many different kinds of living conditions.
From the holding pens, the remains and the nature of the equipment in the 'lab' it hadn't taken a rocket scientist, even though they handily happened to have one with them, to figure out that this had been some sort of a biological test facility. What wasn't so easy to gather from what little remained of the lab and the aforementioned equipment was what had been the exact nature of the work that had been done here.
And whatever it turned out to be, did they really want or need to know?
There wasn't much left of any of it now, however. Only the remains of the poor things that had once been cooped up here. Someone or something had come in here, Carter figured about five hundred years or so ago, and had shot the place up pretty good. The signs of a rather titanic struggle were plainly read in the gaping blast marks that literally peppered the place and the general, grim thoroughness of the systematic destruction of the equipment and facilities.
Somebody had come in here pretty pissed and they had not left without actively expressing a fair amount of their displeasure.
Well, didn't the psychological types always advocate release as the best form of therapy?
Up ahead of him, Carter definitely perked up. Appeared she had found something interesting, and was making for it, Teal'c in her wake. Well, along with the guy that happened to be standing under his hat at the moment, that accounted for three quarters of the team. Where was the usually annoyingly-distant fourth?
Movement out of the corner of his eye. Ah, there he was, the ever-errant, ever-curious Daniel, poking around in the debris in the corner, probably after something shiny that had caught his eye. Jack shook his head fondly at the sight, feeling a little easier in his mind for this rare moment of knowing, for once, exactly where Daniel was.
"Sir?" He swiveled around in response to the sound of Sam's voice.
"Whatcha got for us there, Captain?"
"Not sure sir, but it seems to be a computer console of some kind. Very low power, but it does appear to be functioning. Teal'c can you - what does this mean?"
Carter and Teal'c were fussing over their new discovery, Jack felt himself starting to fidget more than a bit and come to think of it, when he turned around to take a better look at him, so was Daniel.
Something about the way Daniel was acting tweaked Jack's radar. After all this time and so many missions he probably knew how the kid moved and what his usual behavior patterns were almost as well as he knew his own. He'd seen Daniel in as many different situations as there were drops of water in the ocean, watched him engage in all sorts of behavior for an equally diverse number of reasons, but this was weird. This was new.
Daniel was - twitching. Like there was something wrong with his left side. A head tic that would go off every couple of seconds, snapping his head to the left. There! The shoulder twitched. He moved on, seemingly oblivious to Jack's scrutiny, unconsciously brushing away at his ear with his left hand as if there was something buzzing around it that he was trying to drive away.
Jack was about to go over and see what the hell was going on with his friend when Sam hailed him.
"Colonel, I think we have something here."
Crap. Timing, always timing. Jack, the man who was Daniel's friend, knew as surely as he had ever known anything that he needed to go to see what was happening with his friend, and he needed to go now.
However, the Colonel reminded him that they were here to do a job, right now members of his team were waiting to report their findings to their Commanding Officer, him, the guy in charge, and that - he was imagining things. Letting the décor get to him. Best to get on with it and see what the kids had come up with so they could wrap this thing up and get making tracks home. Daniel would keep for a few moments more. He'd still be there five minutes from now. Tabling the mystery for five lousy minutes wouldn't kill anybody. He'd just get this wrapped up and then he could with good conscience give Daniel his full attention.
Jack was to remember this decision well. He would have little choice. It would haunt him mercilessly in the endless, impotent hours that followed.
"Captain?" Sam's rank uttered as a request for detailed information, not simply as a salutation.
"Yes sir, not only is this terminal still functional, but it still contains data. I can't make anything of it, though. Teal'c says that it is Goa'uld."
"That is correct, Colonel O'Neill." The Jaffa turned his serious gaze upon the man he was addressing.
"There are tales of these places among my people," Teal'c said in a grimly booming voice, revulsion for what he was looking at plain in his eyes. "Places of horror, death and pain, where living things are taken to be used in whatever way the Masters saw fit. Where they would do the things to other living beings that they said made them greater than us and therefore gods. I had never thought to see such a place as this. "
Teal'c halted in his dissertation as he panned his stern gaze of judgement all around the room.
"This is an unholy place, Colonel O'Neill. An evil place. I cannot say what you would learn from what is left here but I would suggest that whatever it is, you do not need to know it."
As if to emphasis his point the Jaffa drew himself up and crossed his arms across his chest, after which he glowered at O'Neill in a manner which could only be called baleful.
"Don't mince words there Teal'c, " Jack heard himself saying. "Tell us exactly what you think."
That was stupid. That was his nerves talking. Truth of the matter was, he was with Teal'c.
However, from the fire in her eye, Jack could tell that Carter was going to come out on the opposite side of the net.
"Colonel, Sir, with all due respect to Teal'c, I really don't think it is very scientific or in the best interests of the mission to allow an opportunity to retrieve any sort of data to be sidelined by - sentiment. Even though the means of collecting the information may have been - questionable - still, it's here and just perhaps there is be something here that could be used for good purposes. Colonel, you know yourself we have been told enough that we don't dare pass anything by that might be of use against the Goa'uld.
It was obvious that Teal'c had more to say and was about to say it. Jack had the sinking feeling that he might have the makings of a small riot on his hands when suddenly, his spider sense went off.
Daniel! Behind him, no sound from Daniel. Crap. Something was wrong..
Teal'c felt it too, almost at the same time.
"Colonel O'Neill. DanielJackson is no longer in the room with us. I think perhaps it would be wise to see where he has gone."
Oh, they were going to go after Daniel, all right. A whole lot faster than they had figured.
For those words were no sooner out of Teal'c mouth when from somewhere down one of those distant corridors, they heard a harrowing sound.
Someone was screaming.
Daniel!
Daniel was screaming.
Jack was moving, tearing out of the room and toward the terrible sounds at breakneck speed.