06 - Siren Song (8 page)

This is the chance,
Jack thought. His muscles tensed, ready for action.
Sebek’s eyes were bright, and they were narrowed at Jack, and a moment later,
when Sebek’s hand came up and leveled the ribbon device at him, Jack could feel
his grimace of pain beginning even before the actual sensation hit. Daniel was
shouting as Jack hit his knees, saying formless words that were lost in the haze
of agony… and then the pain stopped.

Jack pitched forward and caught himself on his hands, panting heavily. That
had been too easy. He’d had worse. Much worse. It wasn’t a good sign; there was
more to come. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and listened to Daniel’s
voice.

“If you do that again, I’ll never help you,” Daniel said, in such a quiet, firm voice that Jack felt enormous pride in him. Even if it was
incredibly unlikely his threat would work. So much for Daniel’s curiosity.

In the silence that followed, Jack got himself together and his legs under
him, and Teal’c’s arm looped under his and hauled him up. He hated himself for
showing such obvious weakness, even if it was out of his control. “Thanks,” he
muttered, and Teal’c squeezed his arm, a silent signal. Jack followed the
direction of Teal’c’s gaze, then met his eyes and Carter’s, who nodded her
understanding. Four Jaffa, one Goa’uld. The odds were even, more or less. There
would never be a better chance.

Sebek moved toward Daniel with his easy predatory grace and stepped into his
space, as if Daniel was a thing he owned. He was too close. If they made their
move, and Daniel wasn’t quick enough… Daniel was standing as straight and
stiff as he could, trying to match Sebek’s height; for a moment, neither moved.

Teal’c’s grip on Jack’s arm tightened before his hand dropped away. As soon
as the opportunity came, they were going to take it.

“Your threats are meaningless,” Sebek said, and waved at the Jaffa, who
leveled their weapons at SG-1. “If your friends mean anything to you, your
choice is simple.”

Daniel didn’t look at any of them. His chin came up, and he pointed to the
Ancient inscription. “Do you see this? Do you have the slightest understanding
of what it means? It’s a warning. It means whatever’s in there is dangerous. A
warning from the Ancients is incredibly rare.” He leaned forward, nostrils
flaring, gaze still locked with Sebek’s, and said, “Only a very, very foolish
person would ignore it. Whatever’s in there is causing… this.” Daniel swept one
hand around in a circle, indicating all of them. “None of us are immune to its
power.”

Sebek threw back his head and laughed with typical Goa’uld condescension.
“Why should a warning from a long-dead race mean anything to us?” he asked. He
gripped Daniel by the neck, long fingers sliding around his throat like steel
talons. “It is that power we must harness. So now you will choose, or we will
choose for you.”

“Don’t do it, Daniel. That’s an order.” It didn’t need to be said, or so Jack
hoped, but the words burst out of him anyway. Daniel’s eyes shifted his
direction, the whites pink with blood from bursting capillaries, and then Sebek
raised him off the ground until the tips of his boots skimmed the dirt beneath
him. Daniel made a strangled sound, words caught up and jumbled in the void of
air.

Jack made his move.

Two steps, one punch, and he knocked the nearest Jaffa on the ground. Their
body armor couldn’t protect their faces, and Jack was on top of him in a split
second, beating, punching, drawing blood with his fist. He heard the commotion
behind him,
zat
fire, a shout, the thump of fists on flesh and a harsh
cry of pain, but no time to stop to see who was coming out ahead. He knew his
team’s abilities; if it could be done, they’d do it. He got to his feet and
turned in Sebek’s direction, but the blinding pain hit him again, so fast it
lifted all the breath from his body. He gasped and fell to his knees, and a hand
landed on his shoulder. Sebek. The stream of light from the ribbon device
blinded him, and the roaring in his ears grew louder as his muscles contracted,
as his body tried to fight the invasion of fire in every cell.

“Sir!” Carter’s voice, from somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t move,
couldn’t fight, couldn’t do anything at all but gasp and breathe and wait for it
to be over. Blackness encroached on the edges of Jack’s vision, a cool darkness
that wanted him, and he wanted to fall into it.

And then he was on the ground, and the light was gone, and there was a sound
so awful he couldn’t process it. Someone was shrieking. Carter? No. Too shrill.
Not Teal’c, or Daniel. Jack struggled to place the noise, but his thoughts were
too jumbled to be any good. Nothing made sense.

“No!” Teal’c shouted, and the distress in his voice brought Jack back from
the edge of unconsciousness.

“God, no, oh, God,” Carter cried, and Jack rolled to his side, afraid for
her.

When his vision cleared, he saw her. With a look of stricken horror on her
face, Carter was frozen, one hand still on the throat of the Jaffa she had overpowered, all her attention on Daniel, who was on his
hands and knees, rising carefully, a little uncoordinated but intact. Teal’c,
who held a
zat
in his hand, taken from the Jaffa he had just killed, was
unharmed. Confused, Jack looked back at Daniel, then—it had to be Daniel,
though he seemed fine, he seemed—

On the ground next to Jack, Sebek was sprawled, eyes open. Dead. Daniel must
have killed him. For this, Jack was going to forego the standard ribbing when
Daniel said he didn’t really want beer with his thank-yous. He looked up, the
start of a grateful smile on his face… and then he stopped. Daniel was leaning
on the wall, one hand splayed across the writing, oblivious to it, and he was
staring at Jack. Slowly, a smile spread over his features and narrowed his eyes,
a smile that was unlike Daniel. Not Daniel. But Jack had seen that smile before.

“Daniel,” he whispered, and the smile widened.

“No,” Daniel said, in a voice that was not his own, a voice corrupted by the
thing inside him. A sick horror flooded through Jack as Daniel’s eyes flashed
the terrible yellow-white of possession. Sebek smiled out at him, using Daniel’s
body. “Now your friend will tell us what we wish to know.”

Jack’s entire being rebelled. His stomach turned over and he squeezed his
eyes shut. He couldn’t look. Not Daniel. God, not Daniel. But it was too late.
There was a hand at his collar, and he let it haul him to his feet without
protest; his body was barely under his control anyway. He was no use to Carter
and Teal’c this way.

Or Daniel.

“Be smart,” a voice whispered in his ear, and it took him a moment to
register it: Aris. Fury surged up within Jack; this was Aris Boch’s fault. If
Aris hadn’t brought them there, Daniel wouldn’t be lost to them. Jack pulled
away with a snarl, but Aris snapped him back with little effort. “Be smart,” he
said again, shoving his weapon into Jack’s back.

“Take them,” Sebek said to Aris, and it was Daniel’s voice, on purpose, to
taunt them. Jack heard a small sound that might have been a sob from Carter. He
raised his head, locking eyes with Sebek to see Daniel’s light blue gaze
subsumed by the snake’s will.

Jack turned to check the remainder of his team. Carter’s face was contorted
with her misery, and Teal’c seemed ready to snap Sebek’s neck, even if that neck
just happened to be Daniel’s, too. Aris jabbed Jack in the back again, and Jack
threw his hands out to the side.

“Okay,” he said, and at the sound of his voice, Carter and Teal’c looked to
him, seeking something to hold on to. He nodded to them both. Best he could do.
They’d talk it over later. If there was time.

He caught a last sideways glimpse of Daniel as Aris herded them through the
tunnels and back up to the surface, the remaining Jaffa trailing behind.
Daniel’s hands were running over the writing on the wall; Daniel’s smile was
filled with joy.

No. Not Daniel anymore, Jack reminded himself. Next time he saw the thing
that used to be his friend, he might have to kill it. When the bile rose in his
throat, he pushed it down, merciless.

That thing wasn’t Daniel anymore.

It was good to be away from the pounding in the mine. Sam’s head felt a
little clearer already, except for a roaring in her ears that came from the
inside. It was hard to see through it, think through it. She resisted pressing
her fists against her ears or rubbing them across her eyes. Instead, she counted
intersecting hallways, left turns, right turns. Modeled after the
ha’tak,
whose shadow sliced across the city and blocked out the light of twin moons,
the complex seemed reassuringly familiar. The Goa’uld weren’t innovative. They
organized their space predictably. It wouldn’t be hard to find their way out
again, after they’d taken care of the Jaffa. After they’d taken care of Aris
Boch.

Up ahead of her, the Colonel’s fingers tapped out an uneven rhythm on his
thigh as he walked; he was counting, too. When he turned his head to look down a
passageway, she could see him in profile. His face was expressionless. Behind
her, Teal’c was probably making a similar survey of the complex, although for
him it would be more of a refresher course than anything else. A hundred years
following prisoners through the corridors of Goa’uld mother-ships and bunkers
would leave their mark in his memory, indelible as the lines in his palm. Even
though she knew from experience where the brig was within the rectangular base
of the structure, she counted hallways anyway. Her mind was still a little
unruly and not counting meant thinking about Daniel.

He would be conscious, she knew. He’d watch his hands move, and the gestures
would be all wrong. When Daniel was Daniel, he would read the writing on the
vault door and his fingers would spread out, steepled and stiff above the
incised figures—all those dancing human forms and intersecting curves that
looked like animals balanced on mountains or wave crests—and he’d follow along
each line like the physical movement of his hand through the air could restrain
his brain a little, keep it from rushing ahead. Sebek wouldn’t know this. Sebek
would use Daniel’s hands all wrong.

Sam balled her fists. The Colonel’s hands hung open at his sides. She took a
few deep breaths and made her fingers uncurl.

“Here,” Aris said. The entourage stopped, two Jaffa on either side of the
cell door.

The brig was a little different from the ones she’d been in on the
motherships. The same exterior wall of horizontal bars, a door set into a solid
wall, activated by a code on a touchpad. There were two other cells, one on
either side, both empty. Sam thought of the people she’d seen scrabbling up the
piles in the mine, following the carts, stumbling back down again into the
black-rock darkness, or the ones sleeping huddled up against the fractured walls
of the city, trying to absorb some of the dissipating heat of the day from the
stone. They were rags and angles, and when they watched the Jaffa pass with
their prisoners, there was nothing in their eyes, not even fear. Aris didn’t
even turn his head to look at them. The whole planet was a prison. Sebek didn’t
have much to be worried about.

She couldn’t think of Sebek without the image of Daniel’s face invading her
mind. Sebek would carry Daniel’s weight wrong. He wouldn’t tilt his head back
and let his mouth fall open while he was thinking; “the genius guppy look” the
Colonel called it sometimes, when he was pretending to be annoyed. Daniel would
feel the wrongness of Sebek’s gestures, the horror of them. She shuddered. Sebek
had smiled. He’d raised Daniel’s head, and there had been blood on his lips, and
he’d looked at her.

The roaring in her ears made her feel sick. She followed the Colonel into the
cell, stepped aside to let Teal’c in after her. They all turned to face Aris.

“You son of a bitch,” the Colonel said, matter-of-factly, like he was noting
how old Aris was, or that it was raining outside.

“I told him to work faster,” Aris answered. “Now, he’ll work faster.” He
slapped the panel on the wall. “On the bright side, maybe now I won’t have to
break any more of your fingers,” he added as the door slid shut.

“Well, there’s that,” the Colonel replied with a bitter half-smile. He walked
to the open bars of the exterior wall so that he could watch Aris walk away,
taking three of the Jaffa with him. His jaw worked for a moment, then he turned to face Sam and Teal’c. “Options, people.
Let’s hear it.”

“Sebek knows what Daniel knows,” Sam said. “Codes, everything.”

Teal’c added, “If Sebek is in service to Lord Yu, he will be able to earn
much favor in return for this knowledge. The System Lords will make good use of
it.”

She nodded her agreement. “Especially if we can’t warn the SGC that security
has been compromised.”

This wasn’t news to Jack. “I asked for options.”

Sam frowned and went to the door. There was no control panel on this side.
Reluctantly, she faced him. “Escape. Get Daniel. Steal a ship or find the
Stargate, if there is one. Remove the Goa’uld.”

“That’s what I like about your plans, Carter. They’re elegant in their
simplicity.” He reached to pull his hat off, and remembering that he’d lost it,
scrubbed at his hair instead, his face pulled into a scowl that made the notch
between his eyebrows deeper under the livid red mark from the ribbon device. He
leaned back and angled his face closer to the bars to get a look out into the
hall, where the Jaffa was watching them. He waggled his fingers at him. “How ya
doin’?” After a moment of getting nothing on that front, he shuffled stiffly to
the far side of the cell, slid down the wall and pressed the heels of his hands
into his eyes. His broken finger stuck out at an angle.

“You okay, sir?” Sam asked, coming to crouch beside him. When he dropped his
hands, she peered closely at the burns on his forehead. There were a few small
blisters starting. It had been close.