06 - Siren Song (15 page)

Sebek had stripped down to Daniel’s military-issue black t-shirt and BDUs,
and it was a jarring dissonance of the recognizable and the strange. Jack wished
the snake had done something to make himself look less Daniel-like—changed
into one of those wacky Goa’uld outfits, maybe—because seeing him wearing
Daniel like a suit of clothes was unnerving. The only thing that made him
not-Daniel, on the surface, was the tilt of his head, or the curving sneer that
passed for a smile. That, and the ribbon device he wore on his right hand.

Sebek spoke first to Aris, ignoring Jack entirely. The sound of his voice was
Daniel’s voice, roughened and deepened, warped by Sebek’s presence, but Jack
could still hear Daniel beneath, if he let himself listen. “You will remain with
us.”

Aris looked steadily at him, as if trying to decide whether or not it was
worth it to obey, then said, “I have business to do on your behalf. You don’t
need me here.”

“You will do as we command!” Sebek shouted. Aris holstered his weapon and
folded his arms across his chest, but he made no move to leave; it passed for
obedience.

As soon as Sebek’s miniature tantrum passed, it was as though Aris no longer
existed. Sebek turned to Jack with a calculating stare, much as he had assessed
him when he’d first seen him the day before—but this was different from
before; he looked at Jack like he
knew
him, which made the hair stand up
on Jack’s arms. Of course, Sebek now had access to all Daniel’s information,
which was what scared Jack all the way around. There were a few things Daniel
knew about Jack he’d prefer no snake ever find out, too many sore points like fresh, hidden bruises, waiting for someone to jam a finger into
the right spot.

“You are the one called O’Neill,” Sebek said, raising his chin and narrowing
his eyes.

“We’ve met,” Jack said, conscious of Aris moving away from him. He braced
himself.

“Ah, but we have learned much more about you since our first encounter,”
Sebek said. He smiled, a twist of Daniel’s lips that profaned the expression.
“We have our host’s memories to draw upon, and he has been most helpful in
teaching us about you.”

Jack could feel his jaw tighten. He clamped down on the denials he was about
to spew. Too soon in this game to get ribboned to a crisp, so he shifted his
gaze away from Sebek and toward a neutral corner of the room, but Sebek was
already in motion. He moved closer to Jack, closer still, until his chest
touched Jack’s arm. A shiver of revulsion started at the base of Jack’s spine,
but he resisted the urge to pull away. Slowly, Sebek moved around him in a tight
circle, behind Jack, then coming around to face him. “You are a great leader
among the Tauri,” Sebek said. “What a pitiful statement upon their armies, if
you are the best they can produce.”

“Oh, we do okay,” Jack said, and forced his tone of voice into neutral.

“We could not think of a reason not to kill you,” Sebek informed him, in a
conspiratorial whisper. “We were looking forward to it. First you, then the
woman, and the
shol’va
last—a special kind of death, for him. Something
lingering. Something befitting a traitor.”

“Time’s a’wastin’,” Jack said, and met Sebek’s eyes with a calm
born of long
practice. “Or were you planning to talk me to death? ’Cause I’ve got to tell
you, it’s not very efficient.”

“Our plans have changed. This one thinks you can be useful to us,” Sebek
said, tapping his belly, as if Daniel was the snake coiled inside. “He thinks
you should be allowed to live.”

“I thought nothing of the host survives,” Jack said blandly, though a
devastating certainty rose inside him: Daniel probably did want Jack to live,
but he hadn’t given that thought up willingly. The snake was
in there,
burrowing around inside Daniel, stealing everything that mattered to him. “Or have you finally given up on that old
schtick?”

“Nothing important survives,” Sebek said. “We take what we wish, when we wish
to take it. It is unfortunate that you were not privileged to understand this
for yourself, as your previous experiences as a host were sadly interrupted.”

Jack straightened. This was what he’d hoped wouldn’t happen: a snake who knew
just where his wounds were, and how to apply maximum pressure. “A Tok’ra isn’t a
Goa’uld,” Jack said, without any conviction whatsoever. Damn, even after all
these years, he still didn’t quite believe it. With Sebek less than a foot from
his face, staring at him for any sign of a reaction, he couldn’t sell it.

Sebek tilted his head, eyes narrowed again. “They are traitors, true, but
they were once as we are. They refuse to wield the power that is their
birthright.” His gaze traveled significantly to Jack’s neck, to his throat, then
back to Jack’s eyes. “But you were host to another, before Kanan.”

Hard to forget that experience; Hathor’s face loomed in his mind’s eye, and
her fist, with the mature symbiote squirming and screaming, waiting to dive
right into him. His skin was crawling now, like a thousand ants marching over
his body. “Right, that. But it didn’t take,” Jack said. He smiled
self-deprecatingly. “I’m snake-resistant.”

“Insolence,” Sebek purred, though he didn’t sound displeased. He sounded like
a cat about to eat a mouse he’d been batting around for hours. “But you have
something we must have.” He reached up one hand and drew a line across Jack’s
forehead with his index finger; the touch was like acid. “You have stored the
knowledge of the Ancients in your mind. We would not believe such a thing, were
it not for our host’s certainty that this is true.”

“Daniel exaggerates,” Jack said, and felt like a jerk for saying it, but it
wasn’t like Daniel was in a position to care about slurs to his character.

“No,” Sebek said. “He does not. He cannot. His thoughts are open to us; he
cannot hide them.” Shoulder to shoulder with Jack, Sebek pointed at the vault
door, then lowered his voice to say, “You will use this knowledge to open this vault for us.”

“That’s your big plan?” Jack said, incredulous. “Listen, if you really know
what Daniel knows, then you know I don’t know as much as you think I know.” He
paused for effect. “Or something like that.”

“Your attempts to confuse the issue are not amusing to us,” Sebek said. “You
remember the language you learned, do you not? You have activated these devices
before by your presence.”

“No, I haven’t,” Jack said. There was a tiny fragment of memory pushing at
the back of his head, a conversation with Daniel where Daniel had gone on and on
about his theory that Jack was the one who activated the Ancient repository by
stepping through the circle on the floor or some such nonsense. Daniel had even
insisted that he was sure Jack remembered some of the Ancient he had learned,
and the accompanying Latin, but Jack was quick to squash that notion, even
though he really did remember a thing or two, or ten. Jack hadn’t been listening
closely enough when Daniel went on about the why and the how of activating the
Ancient devices. It was all geek-speak to him, but now it appeared Daniel hadn’t
let go of that theory. Unfortunately for Jack. He hoped none of it had been
right, because if it was, he was in a world of hurt.

“We shall soon discover the truth of the matter,” Sebek said. “You are
untainted by a Goa’uld presence. You do not possess the marker.”

“Whatever,” Jack muttered. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Find another
volunteer.”

“We do not need your cooperation,” Sebek said, and gestured to Aris. “We do
not even need you alive.”

“Do your worst,” Jack said. Sebek’s face contorted with rage and his fingers
closed around Jack’s throat with a death grip. Daniel’s hands, but with
unnatural strength. Jack felt the breath in his throat die, strangled out of
him, and he grabbed at Sebek’s arm, twisting and prying. Like a solid piece of
iron, his arm was locked in place. Jack’s vision greyed. His lungs burned.

A moment later, the fingers at his throat began to tremble, and their grasp
weakened, easing the pressure by degrees until Jack was able to gasp in a breath. Sebek’s eyes were closed, and the rage on his face
had changed to fear; sweat dotted his upper lip, and he turned pale. Jack
wrenched Sebek’s arm away and shoved him back. Nausea hit Jack then, followed by
the sensation that something was crawling inside him, burrowing into his neck,
winding around his spine.
Not again.
He slapped at the back of his neck,
half-panicked, and the feeling faded away, as suddenly as it had arrived. On the
heels of it came a slow, rolling flow of images: running through a sparse forest
at night toward a Stargate; standing before the Tok’ra Council shouting down
Selmak’s latest ridiculous strategy; wrenching himself out of the body of the
one called O’Neill before the Jaffa can arrive.

Jack pressed the heels of his hands into his closed eyes and growled with
frustration. Not his memories. Not things he wanted in his head, and he would
never be able to get rid of them. He hated Kanan with his whole
body.
Slowly, the tide of images pulled back, until he was able to breathe without
them closing on him.

“Jack.”

He shook his head to clear it, because he was hearing the impossible, his own
wishful thinking. That voice didn’t belong to Sebek. It was—

“Jack, it’s me. It’s really me. Listen. Please.”

He raised his head and stared at Sebek—Daniel—
whoever
it was.
Daniel leaned against the far wall, hunched over and panting, as if he couldn’t
stand under his own power. His words came out broken, raspy, as he said, “Jack,
1 don’t have much time. It’s too difficult to stay in control. You have to let
us into that vault.”

“Daniel?” Jack shook his head again. It was like he had cotton padding around
his brain. He had to get clear of the fog in his head. This was too easy a trap
to fall into; hope was the worst of all. “If you were really Daniel, you’d never
ask me to give a snake a weapon.”

“Jack, we don’t have any choice. It serves our interests, believe me. The
weapon disrupts the Goa’uld hold on the host. It could be incredibly valuable to
us. If Sam were here, she’d tell you the same thing.” Daniel—Sebek—stretched
out a hand to him. “If you don’t open that door, he’ll kill you. He’ll kill us all, and he’ll still get in.”

“Oh, he won’t kill you,” Jack said hoarsely, and pressed his back against the
wall. He had his breath again, and it was getting easier to speak. “He pretty
much has to keep you around.”

“For now. But he can move to another host anytime.” Daniel doubled over,
grimacing, then raised his head and said, “He’s weak, Jack. He’s insane. He’s
one of Yu’s subordinates -he’s already contacted Yu. A mothership is coming to
get the weapon, or destroy it, if we can’t get in. But we can’t let it be
destroyed.”

“Why the hell not?” Jack said. “You seriously expect me to open that door and
hand him a weapon?”

“We can take it back to Stargate Command.”

“Because that’s always worked out so well for us in the past,” Jack said,
with all the sarcasm he could muster. He watched Daniel closely, watched his
posture, as he clenched his fists and stared at Jack.

Daniel shook his head with that peculiarly frustrated look he sometimes got
when Jack was being deliberately dense. “Think of all the knowledge I carry,
things we don’t want our enemies to know. Things Sebek has already picked
through. If we can get in there, maybe the weapon will destroy him and free me.”

“Oh, right,” Jack said, and now he was sure of who he was talking to, and the
last bit of hope died inside him. He pulled himself all the way upright and
jammed his hands in his pockets, casually. “Because the only thing
Daniel
ever thinks about is himself.”

A flash of gold in Daniel’s eyes, confirming Jack’s belief, and Sebek drew
himself up to Daniel’s full height. With feral speed, he grabbed Aris’ knife
from the holster at his thigh, shoved Aris away, and held the knife to Daniel’s
throat, blade against the tender exposed skin there. Jack lunged forward, but
Sebek pressed the knifepoint deep, drawing blood. Jack stopped short at the
sight of red streaks running down Daniel’s neck. “We will end this now,” Sebek
said, using his own voice again, “and take you as host. This host will bleed out
slowly until he is a lifeless husk, and we will still have what we desire.”

Jack clenched his hands into fists and looked to Aris for any signal that he was ready to move—a nod of the head, a drawn weapon,
anything
to give Jack a reason to move on Sebek. But it wasn’t going to
happen. Aris moved his hand to the hilt of his weapon, but didn’t unholster it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jack said, staring at Aris.

“Whether he takes you, or doesn’t take you, I’ve got nothing left to lose,”
Aris said. His hand remained on the butt of the gun.

Jack shifted his gaze back to Sebek. The knife was dug in now, and there was
a broad cut, creeping too close to Daniel’s jugular. Daniel was going to die for
nothing, here on this world none of them cared about, and Sebek was going to
take him anyway, and there was not one damn thing he could do about it. “You son
of a bitch,” he said, through gritted teeth.

“Your insults are meaningless to us,” Sebek said, pulling the knife another
few millimeters over Daniel’s skin. “Open the door.”

“It might not work!” Jack said, desperate to stop the progress of the knife.

“We will soon see.”

Without taking his eyes off Sebek, Jack made his way to the device on the
right hand side of the vault door.
Here goes nothing.
He stuck his hand
inside. Nothing happened. Relief hit all at once, but it was short-lived when
Sebek ordered, “Turn your hand.”

Jack sighed. Slowly, he moved his hand until it was palm down, and a bright
white light began to glow in the small space. Jack yanked his hand out and
stepped back. “You got what you wanted. Put the knife down.”