Hydra Page 12

  Sam was just opening her mouth to tell Harlan to save it for the debriefing when his sudden silence made her spin around. He was clutching his severed arm to his chest, the lifeless hand open on his shoulder like a bizarre gesture of comfort, and looking back the way they’d come. In the flickering light, Sam just caught sight of Daniel, backpedaling awkwardly as he was dragged away by...himself.

  The duplicate flashed her a grin and shouted, “Hi, Sam!” He disappeared around the curve of a water tank before Sam could contemplate a safe shot.

  She and Harlan caught up to them in the next alley. Sam sighted along her P90, pacing evenly to close the distance between herself and the duplicate who was still walking backward, the muzzle of his 9mm pressed against Daniel’s temple. She didn’t shift her aim when Carter dropped from the top of a water tank and mirrored her stance, her P90 aimed steadily at Sam’s head. The patch on the duplicate Carter’s shoulder read: THETA.

  “Let him go,” Sam said.

  “Or what?” theta Carter said.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” Harlan muttered.

  “We can work this out,” Sam said over his fretting. “It doesn’t have to go this way.”

  Theta Jackson tipped his head to say to his hostage, “Diplomacy. Isn’t that supposed to be your routine?” When Daniel pressed his lips together in a stubborn line, the duplicate sighed, and kept dragging him backward. They were close to the gate now. “Cut your hair, I see,” he said to Daniel. “You think that will make them respect you? Think they’ll let you in their little club?” In response to Daniel’s silence, he added, “Sell out,” and gave Daniel a gratuitous jerk that made him grunt in pain.

  They kept moving, Sam and theta Carter mirror images in the alleyway as theta Jackson continued to drag Daniel backward. Sam kept a bead on theta Carter while she listened to the sporadic gunfire, close now as they neared the gate. Behind her, Harlan followed them, his voice thin with fear as he repeated, “Bad malfunctions. Very bad.”

  Sam opened her mouth to tell him to run, but theta Carter flicked a look in his direction and said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea. We’re going to need you to get that power source disconnected.”

  Harlan’s fretful muttering stretched even thinner to become a querulous wail. “I told you! I told you and told you. The power source is integrated. It won’t work outside of this place. Why won’t you believe me?”

  Neither of the thetas had time to answer. One more turn and they emerged into the open space before the gate. Sam hesitated before stepping out of the alley. A quick glance around the corner showed her Rickert to the left, hunkered down behind a control panel that was already smoking and gouged by repeated staff weapon fire, and Hassan to the right, stretched out on a downward flight of stairs with her eyes at floor level. Good positions, defensively speaking, but they weren’t going to be able to access the DHD from there. When the thetas and their hostage got as far as the DHD, theta O’Neill and theta Teal’c broke cover. Sam felt a sick sort of satisfaction to see that theta Teal’c was wounded, his left arm dangling and coated with the sticky gray-white fluid that served as their blood.

  Coming down the steps from behind the gate, theta O’Neill barked, “Carter, dial us up.” When he met the two Daniels he added, “I’ll take that,” yanked Daniel from the duplicate’s grasp and, wrapping his arm across Daniel’s neck, put a 9mm to his head. “Hello there, Carter,” he said to Sam, like they’d just run into each other in a grocery store. When she took another step toward them, he tightened his choke hold so that Daniel’s hands came up and pulled fruitlessly at his arm. “Ah ah ah. Not too close.” He waggled the gun a little and left the rest of the threat unsaid.

  Behind him, the event horizon billowed out and settled again. Sam tried to make out the glyphs on the DHD, but theta Carter’s body was blocking half of the panel.

  Way off at the other end of the installation, something substantial gave way with a roar. Twisting girders wailed. A greasy breath of wind pushed Sam’s hair away from her forehead.

  “Go,” theta O’Neill ordered, and the theta team headed up the stairs. Sam kept pace at a wary distance as theta O’Neill backed up to follow them, Daniel’s reluctant feet catching on the steps. The gate gulped as it swallowed theta Carter and theta Teal’c. Right next to the event horizon, theta Jackson stood waiting, like he was interested to see how it would all turn out.

  “I will shoot him,” O’Neill warned Sam.

  Gasping in a breath against the hold on this throat, Daniel said, “No, you won’t.”

  O’Neill raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

  “You could’ve killed us any time,” Sam said.

  “But you didn’t.” Daniel sagged a little in O’Neill’s grip, still clinging to his arm.

  “The day is young.” O’Neill squeezed harder, and Daniel’s eyes closed tight.

  In her peripheral vision, Sam could see Rickert sliding his 9mm up over the edge of the control panel. The angle wasn’t great, but if he was steady, there might be a chance. On the right, Hassan was in a better position. Sam didn’t look directly at her but was able to see her point two fingers at her own eyes and then toward theta O’Neill. Theta Jackson still had his pistol out but was too absorbed by the spectacle on the stairs to pay much attention to the marines. Although, Sam admitted, it was hard to know how the duplicate was processing sensory data.

  “You won’t,” Daniel was saying. They were almost at the event horizon now.

  “And why, pray tell?”

  “Because no matter what’s been done to you, somewhere in there, you’re still Jack.”

  O’Neill’s blandly interested expression turned suddenly venomous. “I’m not him,” he said, each syllable clipped and precise.

  “Then who are you?”

  That seemed to stop him in his tracks and for a second, as he contemplated the answer, O’Neill’s face fell into lines of sadness. Just for a second, though, and then he sneered, his mouth close to Daniel’s ear, “I’m what’s left when there’s no more Mr. Nice Guy.”

  O’Neill lifted his elbow and shoved the gun harder against the side of Daniel’s head, ready to pull the trigger. Turning to Rickert, Sam shouted “Now!” Just as she’d hoped, O’Neill shifted his aim in Rickert’s direction as Hassan bolted upright and took her shot.

  The bullet caught O’Neill in the side, under his raised arm, and his own shot went wild. At that moment, a massive explosion in the lower levels of the installation made the floor heave. As O’Neill lost his balance, Daniel squirmed out of his grip and rolled down the stairs to fetch up under the DHD. Sam’s own shot missed theta Jackson as her feet went out from under her and she crashed down on her elbow with a yelp of pain. Through the grating, she could see a fireball blooming upward, searing heat waves rippling ahead of it. She was back on her feet in a few seconds to find the gate empty and the duplicates gone. Daniel was staring at the DHD.

  “I got the address,” he shouted above the receding rumble of the explosion. Under her feet, the gate platform lurched and she almost fell again. More screeching as the girders underneath it began to buckle.

  Sam shook her head. “Dial us home!” She signaled to Hassan to help her with Rickert, who was slumped barely conscious behind the control panel. As they got him to his feet, she hollered at Harlan, “Come on! Harlan! Let’s go!”

  Another explosion rocked the gate platform. Standing at the edge with his severed arm still clutched to his chest, Harlan looked out into the billowing smoke. Ignoring Daniel’s shout, he headed down the stairs and was immediately lost in the roiling darkness. Daniel had only time to take one step in his direction before another explosion tore up through the grating and threw him backward onto the stairs.

  Sam shoved Hassan and Rickert through the event horizon, then came back and dragged Daniel to his feet just as the remainder of the platform tilted with a deafening shriek toward the flames. They scrambled up the increasing incline, the watery surface of the gate loomin
g impossibly over them, and leaped into safety.

  PART THREE

  corrigenda

  things to be corrected

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NID Secondary Outpost “Hawaii” (P7A-025)

  October 31, 2002, two days after the invasion of Eshet

  “Ouch!” O’Neill yelped and jerked away from Carter’s hands. “Go easy, will ya?”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. When she went back to poking at his innards through the gaping hole left by the sneaky marine’s sneaky bullet, her touch wasn’t any gentler than before. “It’s not too bad. I think you’re going to lose some functionality in this arm. Not much, but some. And the internal radio took some damage. If I can just — ” She wiggled something and the adjustment registered in O’Neill’s brain as an alert message carried on an arc of lightning. He hissed, but managed to stay still while Carter cut away more of his shirt and then his skin to get a better look at the damage. She wiggled the thing again, and this time his raised arm jumped upward and came down again so that his elbow connected hard with the back of her head.

  “Ouch!” she shouted and pulled back to glare up at him.

  “Sorry. Robot thing,” he said with a thin smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t wiggle that any more.”

  Carter sat up and stared at him a moment, then shook her head and turned away to rummage loudly in the toolbox on the table next to O’Neill. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she grumbled. “I don’t have what I need here.” She raised her eyes to him again, but this time the ire was pretty much gone. “If we’re going to get you patched up for real, we’ll have to take you back to the lab at Perseus.”

  “Where we will be welcomed with open arms, I’m sure,” O’Neill said. “Just fill the hole and make sure nothing’s going to corrode or explode.” He gritted his teeth as she ducked down again and started going at his delicate insides with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. “And while you’re in there,” he added, “be a pal and deactivate the pain response, okay?”

  Carter shook her head. “Can’t, unless you want me to open up your head.” She waited for the order for a second, then went back to her work with a distinctly disappointed shrug. “Even if I could, though, I wouldn’t recommend it. You need it.”

  “Why? So I can feel more ‘alive’?” He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers for the last word, and raised his voice an octave to mimic Harlan’s panicky squeak. The quotation marks turned into clenched fists when Carter wiggled the whatever-it-was again.

  “So you know when you’re pushing your systems past their limits,” she answered. One last wiggle sent twelve different alerts zinging across O’Neill’s vision, and she sat up, only to duck again out of the range of his killer elbow. “Although the alive thing isn’t exactly inconsequential, either.”

  O’Neill grimaced and lifted his arm a last time to let Carter patch him up with duct tape. Then he leaned back so that she could toss the roll to Teal’c, who caught it one-handed and started tearing off strips with his teeth to wrap around the hole in his bicep. At the same time, Teal’c was monitoring the NID’s radio chatter on his headset. O’Neill watched him for a moment, calculating the effect of the damage on their operational readiness, and said, more to himself than the rest of them, “I could use a little less of that kind of alive right now, thanks.”

  Jackson didn’t look up from the monitor as he said, “Wait 14 hours, 3 minutes, and you’ll get your wish.” Then his gaze flicked up toward O’Neill and away again. “Unless you want to try that out sooner.”

  “Almost did, thanks to you. Way to go with the whole watching my back thing there, by the way.”

  Jackson swung his chair around to face him more directly and narrowed his eyes, thinking, but not, apparently, about letting this go. “Actually, I was just a bit distracted by the spectacle of you putting a gun to my head.”

  “It was not your head,” Teal’c corrected.

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t.” Jackson turned back to the monitor.

  Teal’c continued, “And it was you who did so first.”

  “True. But I didn’t have quite so much fun with it.”

  “Shut up, Jackson,” O’Neill said.

  “Very snappy, Jack.”

  “Daniel,” Carter warned, and he waved a hand over his shoulder, maybe surrendering, maybe just wiping them out of his conscious space. Even with the damage to the comms, O’Neill couldn’t miss the brief fugue of vague, unpleasant images that leaked into comms from Jackson’s end.

  With a growl, O’Neill yanked his cap off and scrubbed at his hair. He couldn’t feel it, not the way he remembered feeling it. Away from Harlan’s magic disco ball, his peripheral systems were powering down again, leaving behind the numbness that now seemed even worse by comparison. Sensors indicated proximity, pressure, direction of movement, in a stream of data that his brain could interpret, but that thereness he’d felt in Harlan’s installation was fading already, like he was an island and his real estate was shrinking with each lapping wave. Still, the pain response was doing just fine. And it was this in-between-ness that was making him nuts: not enough like a man, not enough like a machine. He watched Teal’c fixing a hole in his flesh like he was repairing damaged drywall and felt the very familiar heat of anger and frustration sizzling along veins he didn’t even have. If he needed to, he could ramp up to battle readiness, occupy himself fully again, but only if he wanted to trade duration. The shootout in the Garden of Eden had already eaten up most of the extra reserves they accrued from their exposure to the disco ball. And all he had to show for it was a pain response any really decent evil overlord should’ve edited out of him, a fist-sized hole under his arm, and 14 measly hours.

  “Fourteen hours,” he muttered and slid off of the table with a wince. He walked around Teal’c and stepped over the body of the tech to stand in front of the poster by the big wall monitor. Palm trees leaned out over the waves, and happy pink and yellow letters invited him to Hawaii. He stared at it for a few long seconds and then slammed his fist through it. Buried to his wrist in the concrete, his hand flared briefly with pain and another series of alerts cascaded across his vision. A little avalanche of dust and debris clattered out of the hole when he pulled his fist out of the shattered beach.

  “Feel better?” Carter asked. She’d been closing up her toolbox but opened it again.

  O’Neill waved her away, and she closed the case. “Much. Thanks for asking.” He turned away from them and yanked his T-shirt off over his head. The fluid that had leaked out of him had hardened to a crusty plastic-like consistency, turning blue as it dried and making the shirt stiff and brittle. Weirdly, the smell of it reminded him of something, something that belonged to another life, like pudding or candy — cloying, sweet, and a bit unnatural. Not at all like blood, in any case. According to Carter, the fluid had something to do with data transfer. She thought it was the height of interesting. He thought it was creepy. Frowning with distaste, he balled the material up and tossed it into the corner before pulling on a spare shirt he’d found in the bunk room. It was a little big, but he wasn’t planning on going on a date anytime soon, and it didn’t matter so long as the duct tape was covered and he could pretend that he wasn’t patched up like one of the derelict machines in Harlan’s installation.

  While Teal’c finished his own repairs, Carter put her toolbox away and pulled out the black stone pump primer they’d scored from the Von Trapps on Eshet. Since the trip to Altair had earned them a spectacular load of nothing, the gizmo was their next best bet. The thought of Harlan’s disco ball and all its feel-good energy going up in flames and down in rubble was enough to make a grown robot cry. A lump of black stone seemed a miserable substitute, especially since it gave off no feel-good vibes at all. With a grunt of resignation, O’Neill hooked a chair with his foot, dragged it over to the monitor, and straddled it.

  “Okay, kids, what’s the news?”

  Jackson had about forty windows open on the monitor and was clicking
through them at a rate of about one every two seconds, opening more as he went. It looked like he was assimilating anything that had even the vaguest connection to the gizmo Carter was turning under the light at her table and poking with her pliers.

  Teal’c tossed the tape into her toolbox and came to stand with his hands behind his back on the other side of Jackson’s monitor. “There is a high density of radio traffic. It seems that the handler is in the process of recalling the remaining teams and support personnel. Piper’s code repeats at regular intervals. We are ordered to return.”

  “Right.” O’Neill tried the smile again. “We’ll just pop back home then, shall we? Catch up with the gang. Get back to work.” He folded his arms, but stopped himself from picking at the edges of the duct tape through his shirt.

  “I vote no,” Jackson said, and added hastily with mock deference, “not that we’re a democracy or anything.” The rapid flutter of changing screens reflected in his eyes and made him look, well, like a robot.

  O’Neill focused on Teal’c instead, who was waiting patiently for his turn. O’Neill’s fingers weren’t itching to tug at the tape, but there was enough remembered sensory data from the original template to make him think they were. He unfolded his arms and locked his fingers across the back of his neck. “Okay, so how’s that going? The recall, I mean.”

  Teal’c answered, “The gamma versions of O’Neill and Teal’c are unaccounted for, but gammas Carter and Jackson have returned. There has been no sign of the alphas. The zetas remain inoperative on Perseus.”