“He what?!”
What had begun as an innocent inquiry into the current state of Janet’s health and the condition of the newly returned villagers had spiraled rapidly out of control. In hindsight, Sam realized, there had been plenty of red flags. They just hadn’t seen them in time. Aeronn and Maram were uncharacteristically composed when they received Esser, and Zephrey had babbled, yes babbled, about the number of young people who had returned. Furthermore, Alison Crombie whom, to the best of Sam’s knowledge was supposed to be Earthside, had her very best game face on and was exerting an iron, if silent, control over her team.
Jack had given his report, interrupted often by Sam, who corrected his pronunciations, and Teal’c, who complimented Esser’s work and then apprehensively dropped the question ‘Have you heard from Daniel lately?’. Aeronn, looking incredibly uncomfortable, had told him an abbreviated version of the story.
If Jack had missed the signs of the impending incident, he definitely did not miss that Crombie wanted a word with him, alone, very, very badly. It was plainly evident that Aeronn was leaving something out, and Sam could only wonder at what it must have been to drive Daniel so far off the edge. It was Maram who provided a way out, when she finally answered Esser’s insistent questions about Eprem, and the four Sandiem set off to see him.
“Crombie, what the hell happened here?” Jack asked almost before Esser, her parents and uncle had made it to the corner.
“Dr. Fraiser got worse, Colonel,” Alison said. “It turns out that once exposed the virus continues to increase in number and infection, regardless of continued exposure to the radiation.”
“But all of my experiments...none of them burnt.” Sam broke in.
“We ran a few of them again,” Crombie said. “Those which had the Sanoctem protein and were not exposed to the radiation still became more infected. They just didn’t explode.”
“I never used a microscope. I should have....” Sam petered out and then straightened. “So Janet went mad?”
“Yes. That’s when Aeronn contacted us. He said he had a treatment.” Alison’s voice hardened. “His treatment was a cloister; a small, locked room with east facing windows and no curtains.”
“And that’s when Daniel blew up,” Jack surmised.
“Yes sir,” Alison replied. “He took Janet and my med kit with him. I had the best kit, sir, but even that...”
“How much of a start?”
“Around midnight, sir. Almost eight hours.”
Jack squinted up. The sun had been up for almost an hour. Where would Daniel go?
“Can you track them, Teal’c?”
“Daniel Jackson is moving quickly with a companion who is either non-responsive or resistant,” Teal’c pointed out. “I believe you could track them, O’Neill.”
Jack glared at him, but then gave up the attempt at any emotion that did not involve large amounts of worry.
“Zephrey took men to the ‘Gate, sir. They’ve been there ever since. Dr. Jackson is still on the planet.”
“The caves!” Sam burst out. “They can be sealed and they’re safe. He went to the caves.”
“All right then,” Jack said. “Trip’s not over yet, campers. We’re going spelunking.”
------------
It had taken six hours to reach the cave. Of course, Daniel had only the vaguest idea where he was going, he was being hunted, it was dark, and the drug Janet was on was wearing off. Still, he managed to find them a cave and seal the door well before sunrise.
Janet had been silent since he’d shut the door, merely sitting slumped against the wall. He lit a fire in the hearth and discovered that the Sanoctem had designed the caves in such a way that the light was reflected and amplified. By lighting the fireplace, Daniel had, essentially, flicked the switch for the whole room. This realization, however, was quickly muffled by something else.
After Abydos, Daniel recognized a Goa’uld naquadah mine when he saw it. And currently, he was sealed up inside one. That explained a lot. The door, the light, the ventilation; all were of Goa’uld of construction, built before the abandonment of their slaves. The shaft extended past the light, but Daniel could not see its end, assuming it even had one.
“Sam’s going to love this,” he mused aloud, half to himself and half out of habit to Janet.
“Love what?” came the completely unexpected reply, and he flew to her side.
“Are you okay?”
“For the moment. I guess coming down off the drug is like waking up: the screws go back into place.” She shook her head and winced. “Where are we?”
Daniel quickly told her everything that had come to pass. He was about to ask Janet another question when a flash of fear in her eyes made him stop.
“Daniel, you have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because the Blood Lust is next.”
“I know.”
“Daniel, go!” she begged.
“If I go, you’ll die of starvation.” How could he be so calm?
“Daniel!” Her eyes widened when she realized his intent.
“You need a specific protein,” he explained, still in that inexplicably calm tone. “Earth animals don’t have it. The ones on this planet do. And so do I.”
“Daniel, no.”
“I love you, Janet.”
“No!” she screamed.
But she couldn’t stop him. Some instinct in her she could not fight hungered for blood and knew that without him, she would never get it. Daniel slid his knife out of his pocket, set his teeth and drew the blade across his wrist.
With a feral howl, Janet was on him. Her mouth sealed around his wound, desperately sucking to pull out as much blood as she could. He was completely unprepared for the ferocity of her attack, but he did not fight her. As the life flowed out of him and into her, Daniel collapsed against the wall, pulling her with him. His last thought, before giving into the excruciating blackness, was that maybe the Goa’uld didn’t know so much about light after all.
------------
It was the third time Sam swung out at an offending branch and missed before Jack called her on it. Sam generally had good aim, but the knife she carried was sharp and Jack didn’t fancy catching it between the eyes.
“Carter?”
“Yes sir.” She sheathed the knife, completely aware of his reason for speaking.
“Hey, I hate this as much as the next guy, but I also like my skin right where it is.”
“Sorry sir,” she sighed in frustration. “It’s just...I don’t understand. I hate not understanding.”
“Welcome to my world.” That got a bit of a smile out of her.
“It should have stopped. Janet had no more exposure.”
“What about those Nintendoes?”
“Sir?”
“I believe that O’Neill is referring to the phenomena known as neutrinos, Major Carter,” Teal’c said from behind them.
Sam thought for a few minutes. Jack could hear the wheels spinning.
“Neutrinos would penetrate the caves,” she pointed out, half to herself. Then her eyes widened and she reached for the naquadah detector. “Oh wow.”
“Carter?”
“The naquadah, sir, it’s all over the place.”
“Would naquadah prevent the passage of neutrinos?” Teal’c asked.
“It’s the only explanation I can think of. There’s an awful lot of it. But that still doesn’t explain how the infection worsens in the caves here, let alone how Janet got worse on Earth.”
“You ever bake cookies, Major?” he knew she had, but he forgot what memories were associated with that, and when he remembered, he plowed on quickly. “Did you ever forget to add the baking powder?”
“No.”
“Well I did. I still had cookies. They were still edible. They were just a little...unenthusiastic in the oven.”
“So, you’re saying Janet just needed the baking soda?” Jack could actually feel his eyes glaze over as Sam launched into full science mode. “Sir, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well no, but it was the best I could think of.”
“Madness is the full extent of the disease without external aid,” Teal’c summarized. “Inferno is only reached under catalyst. In this case, the sun.”
“It’s the spark, the last ingredient to set off rapid oxidation.” Sam concluded.
“So we can prevent Fraiser from burning up, but we can’t stop her from getting to sub-critical?” Jack asked.
“Yes sir.”
“How does this help us?”
Sam stopped walking and turned to look back at him. There wasn’t a whole lot of confidence in that look.
------------
“Daniel? Daniel!” The hoarse whispering was accompanied by an almost frantic shaking. “Daniel, please wake up.”
Daniel groaned, then opened his eyes slowly. A full spectrum of emotion flashed through them, and he sat up as quickly as he could. He found himself strangely unable to support his head, and sagged back against the wall of the cave.
“How are you?” he managed to grate out.
“I feel surprisingly alive, actually,” Janet replied. “Which is strange, because I had the most appalling...”
Janet trailed off as Daniel raised his freshly scarred wrist to adjust his glasses.
“Janet?”
“Oh God. I really did it.”
“Janet, it’s okay.”
“No, Daniel it is not okay. I drank your blood.”
“I prefer to think of it as my helping you stay alive.”
“Daniel, stop. Stop trying to make me feel better. Stop hoping. Stop...just please stop.” Her voice was becoming hysterical, high pitched. The madness was closing in again, bringing the blood lust with it.
“Janet, listen to me.” Daniel took her face between his hands, ignoring the scars and focusing on her eyes. “I’ve dosed myself with a sedative. I won’t fight back and increase my own trauma, and you’ll be knock out before you can gut me.”
“I’ll take too much.”
“That’s why I have bone marrow, Janet. I’ll recover.”
“What if you don’t? What if I kill you?”
He kissed her, having failed to find a worded explanation for his actions. She stiffened and started to draw away, but then relaxed and pushed herself so close to him, he could barely extricate his hands from her. But he only needed one, and it inexorably made its way towards the pocket where his knife was sheathed. The small part of Janet’s mind that was still rational in spite of the kiss and the disease realized too late what he was doing.
Janet’s eyes somehow remained sane and desperate for escape from her own body for a few minutes after the smell of Daniel’s blood again filled the air. But then the madness and lust took them over and the temptation of blood became to great and she descended upon him again.
------------
“Why don’t they attack each other?”
“What?”
“The Sanoctem, sir,” Sam clarified. “Why don’t they attack each other?”
Jack stopped pacing and looked back over the valley. They’d been walking almost four hours how, and the trail was starting to get really annoying. Daniel, it appeared, had been doing a lot of backtracking. Teal’c surmised that the erratic nature of the trail was not Daniel’s attempt to throw off the tracking party, but concluded that Daniel was looking for something and was having trouble finding it. After the third dead end, Teal’c had tactfully suggested that he take the next one by himself. He fooled no one, and Jack let him go.
“I have no idea.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense, sir,” Sam persisted. “Why would they risk attacking the Sandiem? Why wouldn’t they just kill each other?”
“Moral code?” Sam glared at him. “I don’t know, Carter. Crombie mentioned something about proteins while you were sending a message back to Hammond.”
“Proteins.”
“Yeah. When Aeronn told them about the ‘treatment’, Warner thought he meant a protein that was only found here.”
Sam suddenly turned very green and the next thing Jack knew, she was on her knees and he was holding her head while she vomited. She wiped her mouth, horribly embarrassed, and took the water bottle when he offered it.
“Carter?”
“They drink blood, sir,” she stated.
“I know that, Carter.”
“What I mean, sir,” she swallowed, her eyes bugging out slightly. “Is that the protein they need probably comes from the blood.”
“And?”
“There’s only one difference between the blood of a Sanoctem and the blood of a Sandiem. One protein is missing from the Sanoctem,” Sam said thickly. “And Daniel didn’t have it until after he was cured.”
Jack was starting to feel a little sick himself.
“Do you think he knows, sir?”
“Oh, he knows all right,” Jack said grimly and reached for his radio. “Teal’c? You there?”
“I am indeed, O’Neill.”
“Any luck?”
“I believe I have located the cave.”
“Perfect. Stay put. We’ll be along shortly.” Jack switched channels. “Sierra-Golf three niner, do you read?”
“Yes sir.” Major Griff’s voice buzzed.
“Griff, grab a medical team and get up here. Bring a lot of saline. And send someone back to the ‘Gate with a message for Hammond and Warner. Tell them we’re going to need a lot of whatever Daniel’s blood type is standing by when we got home.”
“Yes sir. What’s going on up there?”
“I don’t really have that kind of time right now, Major. I’ll brief you get here.”
“Yes sir. Over and out.”
“Let’s move, Carter.”
------------
Jack and Sam entered a small clearing and found Teal’c examining a door in the side of the mountain. It was massive, and even Jack could tell that it had been altered at least since its construction. At some point, the mechanism which opened the door from the outside had been crudely chiseled off, and a large stone cross had been affixed to the lintel.
“It is of Goa’uld construction, O’Neill,” Teal’c reported without turning around. “It is very old.”
“Can you open it?”
“The mechanism is gone. It can only be opened from the inside.”
“Can you blast it with your staff weapon?”
“No I cannot,” Teal’c replied. “I have been attempting to communicate with Daniel Jackson, but he will listen to neither my calls nor my knocks.”
“We have reason to believe that Daniel’s not in any condition to open the door,” Sam said. “Can I hot wire it somehow?”
Teal’c gestured to the hopelessly mangled remains. Sam looked at them apprehensively, and then fell to work. While she fiddled and cursed and prised at the fused control plate, Jack explained the latest development to Teal’c.
“Sir, I think I’ve got it,” Carter announced after about fifteen minutes.
“Open’er up.”
“I really don’t know if that’s a good idea, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Doctor Fraiser can no longer be exposed to the sun, O’Neill. This cave faces southwest,” Teal’c pointed out. “If we open the door, she will undergo Inferno.”
“An if we don’t, we’re leaving Daniel inside with someone who will eat him,” Jack replied a good deal less sedately.
“Sir,” Sam said uncomfortably, “Daniel knew all this before he shut the door.”
Jack made a face and kicked the door. The door was made of naquadah, Sam could feel her blood singing when she got closer to it. She could not feel Jack’s toes at the moment, but she knew that they were in a significant of discomfort, none of which showed up in Jack’s face.
“Fine,” he barked shortly. “Major, the instant the sun is gone, open that door. Not one minute later.”
Sam nodded and glanced at Teal’c. Teal’c understood her unvoiced question and nodded shortly.
“O’Neill, I believe we should return to the main path and wait for Major Griff. The trail is not well marked, and we wish for SG-3 to find their way with all speed.”
Jack glanced at Sam, fully aware that he was being handled. He nodded and sighed, and went with Teal’c back towards the path. Sam stayed in the glade willing the shadows to lengthened and waiting for the darkness to come.
------------
Daniel couldn’t move. He had never been in so much pain in his entire life. Vaguely, he recalled ribbon devices and torture sticks. Even passing through the wormhole was nothing compared to this. He was in a cave, but he could not remember why, or how he had got there. His head rested on something soft, something familiar, but he couldn’t place that either.
“You are my sunshine, My only sunshine.”
The voice was thin in the darkness. Thin and weak and mad and infuriatingly familiar. Why would his brain not work? Why could he only ask questions and not find the answers? This was not how things usually were.
“You make me happy When skies are gray.”
There was an irony in that song. A cruel, horrible, aching joke which, if he’d had the strength would have made him laugh or cry. He hadn’t and did neither. He could only dwell on how damn familiar the song was, and how he should know what it was.
“You’ll never know dear How much I love you.”
A hand passed over his face. The hand was familiar as well, but strangely alien. Maybe this was hell for scientists, a place where there are only questions and never answers. The hand was covered with alien scarring, but he liked it. This was comfort. He remembered that much.
“Please don’t take my Sunshine away.”
There were noises coming from the door. He remembered shutting the door, shutting out something horrible and wondered if he should be worried that it sounded like the door was going to open soon. He lost consciousness with none of his questions answered, and Janet, trapped in her own sedated hell of blood and darkness, prayed for light, for salvation. And for death.
------------
“Fire in the hole!”
Despite Sam’s best efforts with technological tinkering, it was C-4 that finally got the door to open. Sam had been able to release the clamps by fiddling with the door mechanism, but it simply would not open. Jack had rigged the smallest amount of C-4 he could to the door, and they’d all held their breath during the explosion, trusting that the mountain would remain above their heads. Of course, there had been a significant delay, which Jack had chafed at and Sam felt personally responsible for. He had restrained from making any disparaging comments, which had only served to worry Sam more; Jack only shut up when he was really worried.
“Clear!” announced Major Griff from inside. “Crombie, you’d better get in here.”
The medical team rushed into the cave, and SG-1 followed. The sight that met their eyes was not a pleasant one. Daniel’s fire had burnt down to embers and when Abernathy rekindled it and light again filled the cave, Sam was not the only one who gasped.
Daniel lay on the floor, horribly pale even in the ruddy glow of the firelight. Janet sat leaning up against the wall. Jack could hear her humming softly as she stroked Daniel’s face, and the light in her eyes reflected madness.
“Dr. Fraiser? Janet?” Alison said calmly. “I need to look at Dr. Jackson.”
“Janet did not move as Alison knelt down and began to examine Daniel. Griff had looked to Jack for permission, and at the Colonel’s reluctant nod, leveled his tranq gun at Janet. Just in case.
“Crombie?” Jack asked.
“He’s lost a lot of blood, Colonel.” Alison wrapped Daniel’s wrist with a pressure bandage as she spoke.
“I was expecting Janet to be a little more...volatile,” Sam admitted, quietly.
Janet had not moved since they entered the cave, though her hand continued to stroke Daniel’s face. She had ceased humming when they began to talk, but she had not looked at any of them or otherwise made any sign that she was aware of their presence.
“I believe this may be the reason,” Teal’c said, holding up a bottle. “It appears that Daniel Jackson has sedated himself.”
He passed the bottle to Alison, who read the label and turned very pale.
“Colonel, we have to get them home immediately. We’ll carry them on the stretchers, and we should probably restrain Janet in case the drug wears off, but we have to go now.”
Jack knew when to defer to a lesser ranked authority, and he stepped back to allow the med team to assemble the stretchers.
“Wait,” said Sam. “Can’t you inoculate Janet here?”
“I can’t, Major Carter,” Alison said heavily. “Dr. Fraiser is allergic to penicillin. The treatment would kill her.”
No one spoke for a few minutes as the med team put Janet on the first stretcher and SG-3 started for the ‘Gate with her. Sam’s mind was full of radiation and cures and sunscreen, all of which were useless to help her friend, and she stood like a stone in the centre of the cave. As Teal’c and Jack lifted the stretcher carrying Daniel, he moaned and Sam flew to his side.
“Janet?” he said desperately.
“It’s okay, Daniel,” Sam said, taking his hand and feeling guilty for lying through her teeth. “We’ve come to take you home.”
“Can’t...penicillin,” Daniel rasped.
“We know, Daniel,” Jack said gently as he and Teal’c moved to the carry position.
“Alternate...alternate...”
“Alternate what?” Sam asked, but Daniel’s head had lolled to the side as he lost consciousness again.
“Come on, Carter,” Jack said as he and Teal’s lifted the stretcher. “He can tell us when we get home.”
With the medical team preceding them, SG-1 came out of the cave and began their long starlit journey back to the Stargate.