If you're ever in search of a relaxing place to hide for your life, we recommend Bronze Age Greece. The weather is nice, the people are friendly, and there are more than enough caves, islands and mountain passes to conceal yourself in. The diet leaves a bit to be desired though. In Egypt, the empire was beginning to crumble, but Horus' line was intact, even if they were no longer kings. We didn't care what they did for a living, just that they had one.
The world was changing. Humans were becoming more advanced and began to rely less and less upon their gods. They invented wheels and math and sharper sticks and began to have more and more elaborately structured governments. Actually, it was sort of amusing to watch.
We leant a hand here and there, pointing out deposits of tin, turning kilns into smelting ovens, that sort of thing. The Greeks did not hold their women in very high regard, but they had no end of respect for their goddesses.
Seth was around and looking for us, but we managed to evade him and his human slaves. The fact that what they were looking for was on the other side of Mediterranean helped.
Once, when he was particularly close, we fled with the army. This turned out to be a tremendous mistake as the siege was quite protracted. Eventually, we flat out told them how to breach the walls just so we could go home.
A few centuries later, a blind poet came to out temple and sang the story of that war. It was dreadfully boring, so we gave him a few ideas on how to jazz it up. The second time he told it, he got a much better reception, and created a sequel that was even more fantastic.
Too late we realized that the poet's tales of love, war, horses and long trips home gave us a lot of attention. Seth circled in for the kill, but we had warning of his coming and fled again.
We traveled west until we came to a city with seven hills and a great river.
And there we stayed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anise of the Tok’ra was not jut another highly intelligent being. She was, in fact, two other highly intelligent beings. As such, she was very much aware of two things. Firstly, that the humans distrusted her because of the incident with the armbands and secondly, that the humans distrusted her host because of the incident...well, actually there were quite a few of them. The conclusion she had drawn from these two facts was most logical. She reasoned that, regardless of the validity of any suggestion she were to make in regards to Tok’ra technology, the humans would oppose her out of principle. If, however, the suggestion came from someone else, it might at least be taken under advisement. Granted, this was a roundabout way of accomplishing things, but the end, after all, did justify the means.
To serve that end, she made the suggestion that Halleigh might benefit from a Tok’ra memory scan to Selmak. Selmak told Jacob that it really was a very good idea and Jacob casually brought it to Sam over the pancakes they consumed in the lag time inevitably caused by the DNA sequencing test. Jack, who came into his 2IC's lab for a completely unnecessary status report just in time to hear her make the suggestion to Daniel, did not react well, but some fast talking from both scientists changed his mind from downright opposed to reluctantly resigned and he made the proposal to Hammond.
By this time, Daniel had told Halleigh about the procedure and how it worked, and Halleigh had agreed to try it. So it was that she found herself in a modified OR with Daniel and Anise while everyone else watched from the observation deck.
"This will be mildly painful." Anise warned as she prepared to attach the device to Halleigh's temple. Halleigh nodded, and then flinched as it was put in place.
"That's mild?" Daniel hid a grin.
"You need to relax." Daniel said. "Regulate your breathing and concentrate on your memories."
"I am activating the device." Anise announced. "You may ask your questions in a moment Dr. Jackson. Remember, Halleigh, that as real as your memories might seem, they are only images."
Anise pressed several buttons and the device hummed to life. Halleigh's reaction was immediate. The machines that were monitoring her heart rate and breathing spiked and her eyes looked panicked.
"It's hot, and it's hard to breathe. Daddy?" Halleigh's voice was no longer that of a young woman, it was the voice of a child.
"Halleigh, listen to me," Daniel said. "Where are you?"
"In my house." the real Halleigh was back. "The night of the fire. None of the doors would open. We couldn't get out. There was fire everywhere. My father carried me upstairs. My mother screamed at him, but he kept walking. He opened the window in the bathroom. I remember the fire appearing in the doorway behind us. He told me that I was the best daughter a father could have, and then he threw me out the window. We'd raked the leaves that morning and I'd played in the pile all afternoon. They were under the window."
"Halleigh, think further back," Anise said dispassionately. "What is the first thing you remember?"
"They were glad to see me, even though I was early. He was afraid that I wouldn't make it and kept saying 'My Halla' over and over again. She was in pain, but he held her hand and said it would be over soon. She pushed so hard." Halleigh paused. "It's going backwards in my head."
"You remember being born, even your birth trauma?" Anise said, more worked up that anyone had ever seen her.
"No. They aren't my memories. I'm not me. I'm him."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
"We left her hooked up for as long as we could, sir. Any longer and there might have been brain damage." Sam said.
"Can we try again after Halleigh has had some time to recover?" Hammond asked, looking down the briefing table.
"That would be unadvisable, General Hammond." Anise said. "If Dr. Jackson is correct, there are thousands of years worth of memories. We barely scratched the surface."
"Although we did get a good recipe for boiled potatoes." Jack added lightly.
"Jack, thousands of people, and probably a fair number of your ancestors died during the Potato Famine," Daniel pointed out, sounding very much put upon. "A little respect, maybe?"
There was a knock on the door and Hammond admitted Dr. Warner.
"I have the DNA results, sir." he said, handing a file to Hammond and the other copy to Sam. "Miss Madisen has exactly half of her DNA in common with the Isis symbiote, but there are some abnormalities."
Hammond passed his copy to Anise, who examined it for a few minutes before speaking.
"It appears that Halleigh Madisen stores her memories the way in which the Tok’ra and Goa’uld do." She reported. "However, there have only been two, or at the most three, generations of us, so few memories have been encoded into the genetic code."
"How many human generations are there in 10,000 years?" Hammond asked.
"A lot, sir." Sam replied.
"The horse's mouth." Halleigh mused quietly.
"Okay, that's an image," said Jack, typically unhelpful. "How do we get to the bottom of it?"
"I do not know that we can, Colonel O'Nei-"
"Wait a minute," Sam jumped in. "Colonel, what was the first thing you did when you were born?"
"Well, there was a big barbeque and I couldn't have the steak because I didn't have any teeth," he said, somewhat sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "I don't know, Carter. According to my father, I screamed bloody murder."
"Right. And if you were crying, you were breathing."
"Do you have a point, Carter?"
"Who told you to breathe?"
"If I remember correctly, it just felt like the thing to do at the time." Daniel's quickly smothered cough sounded quite suspicious.
"Are you saying I've got instincts, Major Carter?" Halleigh asked.
"It could very well work that way, Halleigh Madisen." Teal’c said, speaking for the first time. "The Goa’uld have very strong instincts."
"As do the Tok’ra." Anise added.
"I don't like this." Hammond said flatly. "I don't want to risk my team and hope that some instinct saves them. Is there any way to test this?"
"No sir," said Sam. "But with all respect, we've done crazier things before."
"All right." Hammond took a long look at the unflinching Halleigh before continuing. "You leave in half an hour."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Halleigh walked into Daniel's lab, feeling incredibly awkward wearing a USAF uniform, to find him buried in a pile of books. Her knock received no response, but he did look up when she reached his desk.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Oh yes. It's been an odd couple of days, and I can't quite shake the 'We've told you, now we have to kill you.' feeling, but I'm okay." she paused for a second. "This Anubis guy you killed, was he like me?"
"A Harceisis? No. He was a normal, if complicated, Goa’uld. More or less." Daniel put down his book. "Out of curiosity, why do you ask?"
"Well, I read what Dr. Gardner told you, and she said that Osiris was in Nephthys' house for a year, while Isis hid and gave birth to Horus." She hesitated again. "And according to legend, which seems to hold bit more water than I thought a week ago, tells us that Horus had a half-brother."
"Right. Nephthys seduced Osiris and gave birth to Anubis," Daniel said. "But I don't think that actually happened. Anubis, or the being that took his name, was a symbiote."
"So who looked after Horus?" Halleigh demanded. "I mean, orphans don't just become kings. Someone had to be looking out for him. I thought Nephthys did it to cover for her own son."
"The gate was already buried and Nephthys was gone." Daniel pointed out. "But it's a good point."
"Okay, so the Goa’uld take hosts and then pretend to be gods." Daniel nodded. "And when they cross cultures, they retain most of their traits?"
"Seth did." Daniel said. "I guess it's easier than establishing the whole thing every time you move."
"Egeria was the Roman goddess of fountains and child birth, and also had the gift of prophecy."
"Yes, I know."
"So did Anukis. Except she was also the Protector of Kings, particularly the babies."
Daniel flew to his computer and began a search for goddesses with those traits.
"I've got Anukis, a Greek nereid called Euagora and Egeria." He reported after a few minutes.
"Can we put Seth in Rome?"
"Not exactly, but Romulus-"
"Killed Remus! Which is a bit of a-"
"There's no such thing as a stretch when you're dealing with mythology, Halleigh."
"All right then, we've got Grendel in Norse mythology. Are there any-?"
"No, but there's a god named Aegir. He's the god of water. She could have-"
"Taken a male host. The names are close."
"Whoa!" came the voice of Jack O'Neill who had been witnessing the lightning exchange from the doorway. "You know, some of us find it enlightening to speak in complete sentences."
"Sorry, Jack. It's just that-"
"Walk and talk Daniel. We don't want to be late for...whatever it is we're doing. Tell me, Halleigh, have you ever been demolecularized?"
"No Colonel, as a matter of fact I haven't."
"Don't worry. We'll catch you on the other end."