Chapter 19: Reunion 


    Place: P8X-169
     Date: October 2000

     'Groaning. Someone is groaning. Daniel usually groans. I wonder if they brought him back after they beat the crap out of me.' Colonel O'Neill remotely wondered as he started to drift back into consciousness. He started to move but felt a hand on his shoulder. A raspy voice spoke close to his ear.
     "Remain still O'Neill. You are injured. I have cleaned your wounds the best I could but I fear you may start bleeding again if you move."
     "Teal'c? Is that you?" His own voice sounded like sand paper to his own ears. His brief movement had made him believe Teal'c's words that he was injured. He was sure at least two ribs were broken and at least one leg, possibly both.
     "It is I, O'Neill. You have been unconscious for little more than a day."
     O'Neill's eyes finally opened and started to focus on the dark silhouette above him. As Teal'c came into focus, he could see that the guards had extended the same service to Teal'c as they had to him. "What the hell is Ra doing alive? Daniel and I killed him years ago." He wondered aloud.
     "It is not the same entity that you killed. This Ra found a similar device to the quantum mirror and came through it to our dimension."
     "How do you know this Teal'c?" O'Neill was almost too tired to care. But any weakness that they might be able to exploit to get the hell out of there was worth the extra effort.
     "Ra attempted to make me join his ranks. He did not succeed."
     O'Neill didn't need to hear any more. He knew that once Teal'c had not willingly turned to Ra's side, he had been tortured much like he was.
     "I gotta sit up. I feel like I'm lying on needles." Teal'c did he best to help him sit up without causing further injury to himself. It proved to be extremely painful but at least his senses were starting to return. He had handled worse pain and lived to tell the tale and he was damned sure going to try to make it out alive with the rest of his team. "Seen Daniel anywhere?"
     "He is in the corner. He too has been tortured but for different reasons than you and I were."
     "Oh?"
     "He has been drugged and keeps talking of how Ra wants him and Vansen to produce a child so Ra can have a new host. It is not an unknown method of torture but it is not something that most System Lords would ever consider."
     "So Ra is trying to make Daniel and Shaine sleep together so he can have a new host? I'm gonna kill this one too Teal'c. As soon as I can stand up without falling over." He looked around him and found Daniel slumped in a corner, bruises all over his face and arms and a dark stain down the side of one his legs. "His leg is injured."
     "It is not broken but the injury is infected. I have been forcing the wound to drain but it has not helped. He will need medical attention soon or else I fear it will be too late for his survival." Teal'c's face usually didn't betray emotion---unless you happened to know him. And O'Neill knew Teal'c well enough to know that he was taking the entire situation as a personal failure.
     "We've been in worse situations before Teal'c. We'll get out of this one alive yet. How're Shogun and Davis?" He wanted to know how the two male SG-13 members were doing.
     "Major Shogun will live but I do not believe that Lt. Davis will. His injuries are quite severe and he has gone too long without proper medical attention."
     "Damn it! What is taking Hammond so long to find us?" O'Neill wondered aloud.
     Noise sounded from outside the door and O'Neill thought he heard a woman's voice. Sure enough, the door was pushed open by a guard and three people were forced into the cell. The guards shut the door and the three women glared after them.
     O'Neill looked at them and couldn't believe his eyes. In front of him stood Carter, Vansen and Chic, each in a costume that looked like it was slightly more than a bikini. "Carter?"
     "Sir! Oh my God--what have they done to you guys?" Carter quickly came over to O'Neill and knelt down. "Your leg is broken. We should set it." She looked around the room for anything that they could use to brace his leg. "How are Daniel and the others?" She purposefully ignored the dirty look O'Neill gave her when she mentioned setting his leg--remembering all too well their little stint in Antarctica.
     O'Neill looked around to see that Chic was checking out Davis and Vansen was hovering over Daniel. The women looked good. Really good as far as he was concerned. He was happy to know that they hadn't been beaten. "Carter? What happened to you three? They didn't...um...they didn't..."
     "No sir. They didn't." She interrupted him before he could go any further. "From what I've found out, they drugged Vansen and Daniel and tried to get them to produce a child."
     "Well," O'Neill sighed. "At least that's something to be thankful for. So what did they do with you?"
     "Nothing really. They put us in these clothes and then we spent most of the time on a floor with other women. They're all wives of this one man that they said had forged this new alliance that would ensure that he was the wealthiest man in the galaxy. And he's got quite the harem too. But from what Ellsa said..."
     "Who?" O'Neill interrupted.
     "Ellsa. She's like the head wife I guess. She said that the three of us belonged to Ra. And then just a short time ago--we were brought here."
     "Ra is not pleased that Daniel Jackson and Captain Vansen did not produce a child." Teal'c interjected.
     "That's because they got the amount of the drug wrong for a non-host human. Gave them so much it knocked them out instead of just making them relax and get into it." Carter was almost blushing, or so O'Neill thought.

     A day later...

     They had been totally ignored by their captors. No guards had come in for more torture sessions. No food or water either. It seemed their captors had changed tactics and were simply going to let them starve to death in the cell.
     Vansen was the only one awake in the cell. She had been pacing but ever since O'Neill had told her to stop, she had been sitting on the floor next to him. She knew O'Neill was only pretending to rest. Knowing that the others, except for maybe Teal'c, were deep into sleep and not likely to wake up given their current physical conditions unless they were hit awake, Vansen decided to talk to O'Neill.
     "Will you answer a question for me sir?"
     "If I can. What is it?"
     "What were you doing following me in D.C.?"
     If O'Neill was surprised by her question, she couldn't tell it from his expression.
     "I wasn't following you."
     "I happen to have proof back on Earth that you were."
     O'Neill's head dropped a bit and she heard a sigh escape him. "I hadn't gone there to spy on you. But when I saw you in the park talking to that woman and then you left in her limousine, I decided it would be a good thing to do."
     "And do you know who that woman is?"
     "Never did find out her name."
     "She's my boss."
     "Your boss? I thought Isis was your boss."
     "For this assignment, Isis is my boss. But the woman is my Boss boss."
     "So you're not really military?"
     "I am. I just answer to a different group of people is all."
     "Do Isis and the others know this?"
     "No. They're not supposed to know, but if I get out of here alive, I'm going to correct that mistake."
     "So then, who are you and what is your mission?"
     "I am Captain Shaine Vansen of the United States Air Force. I am also a spy."
     "A spy?" O'Neill's face was a mixture of rage and disbelief. "Which side or am I not allowed to know that answer?"
     "For our side Colonel. The woman you saw me with in D.C. was a contact of mine. She risked a great deal to see me. You almost cost her her life with your bumbling attempts to track me."
     "Excuse me? Just how in the hell am I responsible for doing that?"
     "You used an unsecure phone to call Cheyenne where you convinced Isis that you thought you saw me but weren't sure. You then kept harassing her with your charms until she gave you the information you wanted to know. Namely--my whereabouts."
     "Let me guess--you're with the NID?"
     "Those losers? No way. They'd sell their own souls if they could. But they were in charge of that operation that went south that I told you about. The one that got some of us killed and most of us injured. In fact, that's what the woman was talking to me about."
     "Did you find out who was the leak?"
     "Yep."
     "I bet it was inside the NID too."
     "Yep."
     "And you have a name?"
     "Yep."
     "Who is it?"
     "Can't tell you. It's classified."
     "Oh yeah right--classified. That's bullshit and you know it Captain. I outrank you and have higher clearance than you, so why don't you just level with me."
     "Colonel, you may outrank me, but I can guarantee you that you don't have as high of a clearance as I do. All you do is go through that damn gate and start fights with cultures that are way more advanced than we are and if they ever decide to call your bluff then the Earth is going to be nothing more than a cold lump of rock revolving around a medium sized star."
     O'Neill looked slightly surprised to find Vansen's mood suddenly shifting around. "What of it? Is that supposed to make me forget about the fact that the SGC has a spy in its ranks. What is your mission at the SGC? What are you doing there?"
     "The woman you saw me with is a Senator's wife, a Senator that you know very well. It was this same Senator who informed the drug czar who we were. It is this same Senator who is trying to shut down the SGC."
     "Kinsey."
     "Actually, it's Kinsey's boss."
     "Kinsey has a boss?"
     "More of an overlord I would say. Kinsey is rotten to the core and would sell his own mother and children to get his way. But he wouldn't sell out the Earth when the sentence was a snake in his head. He's doing what he's doing out of fear. His boss has some secret on him that is powerful enough to make him do whatever he has to do to keep it a secret. I had just found out who that boss of his was... and then you came knocking on my hotel room door."
     "So what's the secret?"
     "I don't know. Didn't have time to find out before we were brought here. He put us at the SGC so when Kinsey succeeded in shutting down the SGC, he could shut down the entire operation since he could no longer get to us out in the field."
     "So this man is powerful enough to have entire groups of people moved?" Vansen nodded her head yes. "Who is this man?"
     "I can't tell you that." O'Neill looked like he was about ready to explode at her. "If I tell you and then you mention it to the wrong person and it gets back to him--we're all dead. Which by the way, I must thank you for taking me out to dinner that night. You did save my life there."
     "I saved your life? How?"
     "The pizza was poisoned. D.C. cops were called in to investigate the mysterious death of a hotel clerk. There was no apparent motive for the death since nothing was stolen. Just a half-eaten pizza was found. A pizza laced with poison."
     "Glad I didn't eat any of it."
     "So... now you know my secret. No one else on 13 knows about me but I'll correct that once we get back home."
     "If we get home." Vansen and O'Neill looked at Daniel.
     "Didn't know you were awake Daniel." O'Neill looked down.
     "Just long enough to hear the part about the poisoned pizza. So what does Ra want with us?" Daniel wondered aloud.
     O'Neill was about to answer just as guards finally came into the cell, dragged everyone to their feet and pushed them out the door.

Another adventure? Or continue this one?