(no subject)
*hands the Muse a Very Large Container of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food*
She has been quite nice to me today!
Egeria's Legacy Chapter Seven is done! Woot!
And to top it off, I actually finished Exodus. Sent the last two chapters off to Mab (who is really good at keeping me honest, so who knows how long the revisions may take.) Nose like a greyhound, that one. Just another reason I luvs her. :) But don't you just love it when you can't quite figure out that ending scene and then you just start writing and bam! without even realizing it, you've tripped over exactly what you wanted to say. *sigh* I'll post again when it's finally ready to be read.
Title: Egeria's Legacy
Author: Annerb
Summary: Tok'ra trouble is brewing and Sam gets caught in the middle.
Rating/Warnings: Older Teens (torture and death)
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, S/J
Season: 7 (AU, post Death Knell)
Disclaimer: Stargate isn't mine. Woe.
Part 7: The Dreaming
The familiar rush slowly left Jack’s body as his molecules quietly realigned, leaving him staring at an inactive Stargate. For a moment he was almost overwhelmed by the impulse to demand that the gate be dialed back up immediately so he could charge after Sam. But he couldn’t do that, even if he had done the one thing he swore he’d never do. He’d left her out there alone.
Not alone, he reminded himself quickly. She was with Selmak, at least. Blended, his mind supplied and Jack had to resist the urge to shudder with horror at the thought of a symbiote twining its way around Sam’s spine. But no matter what Jack really felt for the Tok’ra at large, Selmak was someone to be trusted above all others. He knew that.
If Jack was honest, though, it hadn’t been Selmak that had clinched it for him. He’d known he would leave Sam to find Keren on her own the second he had looked in her eyes and seen what he hadn’t even realized was missing: a spark. The last time he had seen her, the day he relieved her of duty, there had just been something dead about her, like she had completely lost her nerve, everything that made her Carter.
Since then she had been kidnapped by a snake hiding in her father’s body, taken a symbiote herself, and been tortured along the way. But beyond all that, he had seen a glimmer of who she used to be. She seemed to think she needed a chance to do this on her own, and he thought she might be right. Maybe it was time Sam Carter was given a chance to truly realize her own strength. Something she couldn’t do under the shadow of her commanding officer.
That was what finally made him step away from her in the end, still blown away by the feel of her lips against his, by the vortex of emotions it had released. Because beyond all that, he knew she needed this. If he ever wanted her back, as friend, subordinate or otherwise, he knew he had to let her go.
If anyone could do it, it was Sam Carter. He had no doubt.
A hand roughly shaking his shoulder brought Jack out of his thoughts to find a concerned looking Daniel standing next to him on the ramp.
“Jack?” he questioned, squinting at Jack in concern. “Are you alright?”
Jack glanced from Daniel to the Stargate one last time, realizing that Daniel must have been talking to him for the last few minutes with no response.
Jack gently clapped Daniel on the back and gave him a wry grin before turning away from the gate.
“O’Neill. Why were you delayed?” Teal’c asked from beside a confused looking Hammond.
When Jack still didn’t answer, Hammond looked his 2IC over, finally asking, “And where is your kit, Colonel?”
Now Daniel and Teal’c were looking him over speculatively.
Jack took a deep breath and decided to just dive in. “I gave it to Carter, sir.”
Hammond’s brow creased as if he wasn’t sure he had heard Jack right and Daniel’s mouth popped open.
“What?” Daniel finally managed to say.
Teal’c, unsurprisingly, was the one to get to the heart of the matter. “Are you claiming to have seen Major Carter?”
Jack could feel Daniel’s hopeful gaze on him. “Yes, Teal’c, that is exactly what I am saying. And she seemed fine, all things considering.”
“But…wait…why…where is she?” Daniel said, looking back at the gate as if expecting her to appear all of a sudden.
Jack grimaced. “There’s a bit of a complication, actually.”
Hammond finally found his voice to say, “You’re going to need to explain this, son. Briefing room. Now.”
Jack let Hammond lead him into the briefing room and told them all a nice, edited version of what had happened. Edited because Sam needed Jack to stay mobile and be able to travel through the gate in case she needed him. He couldn’t implement himself in her plan. He had to make it sound like she went without his permission. She would understand. As for the other omissions…well that was nobody’s business but his own. And after all, even he wasn’t really sure what exactly had happened.
“So she claimed to be implanted with Selmak and refused to come back to the base,” Hammond summarized.
“Yes, sir,” Jack said.
“And you just let her go?”
Jack raised one eyebrow in amusement. As if he just let Sam Carter do anything, let alone Sam Carter with an ancient symbiote in her head.
“I do not believe O’Neill could have restrained Major Carter, even if he wished to,” Teal’c observed. “She will have the superhuman strength of a symbiote.”
Daniel, on Jack’s left, still looked a little shell-shocked, but hopeful. “That would explain how she managed to escape the blast.”
“Even if that is true, there is no way to prove who may have taken up residence in Major Carter’s body,” Teal’c reminded him. “It could have been one of the rebel Tok’ra or even a Goa’uld.”
“Maybe,” Daniel said, mulling it over, “but then why even bother contacting us? She must have wanted to let us know she was okay. Though, how she knew where we were going to be…”
“This is all very interesting, gentlemen,” Hammond interrupted, “but you are all working under one dubious assumption here.”
Jack felt dread twist in his stomach, having some idea of what was coming.
“What is that, General?” Daniel asked.
“That Colonel O’Neill did not imagine the whole thing,” Hammond answered.
Jack just barely managed to mask his wince. “Sir…,” he began, trying to find a way to defend his sanity.
“Jack,” Hammond interrupted. “I know the last few weeks have been hard on you…”
“Hard on all of us, I would imagine,” Jack input, daring a quick glance at Daniel and Teal’c.
Hammond conceded the point, but would not be derailed. “Why were you the only one she approached?” he argued. “Seems a little convenient.”
Jack could tell that Daniel was finally registering that fact, too, looking a little put out.
“I don’t know, sir,” Jack said. “Maybe because she is a sadistic piece of work and knew this would make me look crazy?”
Hammond couldn’t quite hold back a smile. “Tell you what, Jack,” he bargained and Jack had a feeling he was not going to like this, “pay a visit to Drs. Fraiser and MacKenzie and we will revisit this.”
Jack dropped his head to the table in frustration. Carter so owed him for this.
* * *
The air of the stark desert was like a solid wall of heat as Sam stepped back through the gate. Even after all this time, it never ceased to amaze Sam the way the gate could instantly transport her between such vastly differing climates. The full set of kit she wore seemed bizarrely unfamiliar after her weeks away from Earth and sweat instantly began trailing down her back.
Sam automatically set out in the direction she knew the village to lay, but Selmak stopped her.
‘No, head east.’
Sam dubiously turned; registering that to the east was the looming mountain she had observed her first morning here.
‘It will take us most of the day to get there and we have little time left,’ Selmak explained.
‘What’s there?’ Sam asked cautiously. There was just something menacing about the place, the way it was beautiful, harsh and imposing all at the same time.
‘It is the holy place of the Binghi, where their women hold the most sacred of their rituals.’
‘We’re not here for a cultural exchange, Selmak.’
‘No, but we do need to understand what Keren has stolen from you. They have a way to help.’
Selmak’s words triggered something in Sam’s brain and she felt unease fill her stomach. ‘That’s why you brought me here in the first place, isn’t it?’
Selmak didn’t answer right away and Sam dropped her kit roughly to the ground. It seemed more than a little convenient that this placed housed some miraculous fix it all, when Selmak couldn’t even have been sure Sam would agree to this in the first place. But Sam suddenly doubted convenience had anything to do with it.
‘Why does it suddenly feel like you’ve been manipulating me from the start?’ Sam asked, anger burning just below the surface.
‘I don’t think of it as manipulation,’ Selmak replied in an annoyingly calm and guilt-free voice. ‘More like practicality. This is our way, Samantha. It is the only thing that has kept us alive as a race.’
‘What, being heartless? Using people with no regard for what is right?’
‘And what is right?’ Selmak snapped, a little of her placidity leaking away. ‘Is it really so easy? We have been fighting this war against our own kind, against what is an undeniable part of us, for endless millennia. Do not pretend to understand what that means and do not presume to judge us.’
Sam felt a bit like she had been slapped down for being petty, but didn’t want to lose her material point. ‘But your compassion should be what separates you from them, shouldn’t it?’
Selmak was quiet for a moment. ‘And so it does, even if it does not seem that way to you. Have I not given you ample opportunity to return home? Is this not, in the end, your choice, not mine? I could walk the path Keren chose, but I have not. Instead, I put my future, my very well-being into your hands. It is I, in the end, who has to put complete faith in you.’
No matter how much she didn’t like it, Selmak was right and Sam knew it. But she just couldn’t stand the feeling that she was being maneuvered, being pushed down a path that was not her own choosing. Freewill was just too important to Sam and everything about this made her want to scream. But Selmak was the one whose very life depended on Sam. So maybe that had a little of that in common. They were both trapped.
‘What do you want to know?’ Sam asked defeatedly.
‘That machine Keren used wasn’t a torture device. The pain and damage to your brain were merely side effects.’
Somehow, that didn’t make Sam feel any better.
‘None of them were quite sure what it did or how, only that the technology could produce an engrammatic imprint of a subject’s mind.’
Engrams. Memories.
For a moment Sam was swallowed once again by the swimming lights and faces flying by at breakneck speeds, each punctuated by stabbing, inescapable pain.
‘He never even asked me a question,’ Sam said as the chaos slowly drained away. ‘If he’d wanted to know about something from my past…why not just ask me?’
Selmak quietly helped Sam regain her equilibrium before saying, ‘Because what he was looking for was a little more complex than that.’
Sam paused for a beat, her stomach lurching unpleasantly. ‘So help me, if I hear the word Jolinar I am going to lose it.’
Selmak’s answering silence was all the confirmation Sam needed.
Sam dropped her head into her hands for a moment, rubbing absently at her temples.
Jolinar.
If only Sam had taken a sick day that fated morning. She never would have been violated by Jolinar. She never would have heard the word Tok’ra. She wouldn’t be standing on a desert planet in the middle of nowhere about to get her head shrunk by tribal women in the shadow of an ominous mountain.
‘And Jacob, Colonel O’Neill and countless others would be dead,’ Selmak interjected.
Sam shifted uneasily, knowing the truth of her words. She knew those lives were worth her unpleasant experiences, but it didn’t keep part of her from hating Jolinar and everything she represented.
‘Questioning the past gets us nowhere,’ Selmak reminded Sam.
‘Apparently Keren disagrees with you,’ Sam remarked. ‘I guess I just don’t understand why Keren would need anything from a long dead Tok’ra. Anything Jolinar knew, you would all know, right? As Egeria’s children? Shouldn’t you all already know what Egeria’s Legacy is and where it’s kept?’
‘Yes and no,’ Selmak said. ‘Genetic memory is a bit more complex than simply knowing everything experienced by all your forbearers. You must know something of this. There are generations upon generations of memories. They cannot be simply turned to as if pages in a book. Jolinar’s life is not an easy open thing to you, I think. How much of her previous hosts can you recall? What of Egeria, Jolinar’s mother?”
Sam shook her head. ‘I always assumed that was because we never had a true blending.’
‘No,’ Selmak answered. ‘It is always a bit…chaotic. Add to this the fact that the Queen is able to control what information is passed on to her children. Even if she does provide them with her entire life of experiences, they still cannot possibly be aware of what happens to her after their conception.’
‘Okay…so Egeria could control her children’s memories. But she had friends, right? People who knew her when she lived? Shouldn’t they know what this Legacy thing is?’
‘It was many millennia ago, Samantha. And there was not such thing as Tok’ra at the time. We had no cohesion or central bases. No structure. We were still nothing more than a dream when Egeria was captured. What she may have intended or shared with others, we have no idea.’
‘But you knew her,’ Sam stated with certainty.
‘No. I never met her myself.’
‘Never?’ Sam asked.
‘In fact, I know of none still alive who ever have.’
‘Don’t tell me that Jolinar, of all people, knew her,’ Sam sighed with frustration. ‘Let me guess. They used to be best friends.’
‘No,’ Selmak reassured her, ‘nothing of the sort. What we do know, and which Keren would have also been aware of, is that Jolinar shared a host with one of the oldest Tok’ra, one said to have been an acquaintance of Egeria herself.’
There was a long pause as Sam was torn between hysterical laughter and really bratty screaming. This unraveling discussion felt more and more like some kind of a nightmare as each moment passed.
Sam took a deep breath. ‘Let me get this straight. I am the previous host of a Tok’ra whose first host, thousands of years ago, was previously a host to an ancient, possible friend of Egeria.”
Selmak was silent for a moment as if tracking the convoluted path. ‘Yes.’
‘That is the craziest thing I have ever heard. And that’s saying a lot.’
Selmak made a low sound of amusement. ‘Yes, I agree. You can understand why we have never pursued this before. But Petra’s children seem to lack that perception.’
‘So you can’t even be sure he actually found anything, or that there is anything to be found in the first place,’ Sam concluded.
‘That is correct.’
‘But on the off chance, I still get to have my brain scrambled again,’ Sam said with a sigh, turning reluctantly to the east and the hulking monolith in the distance. “Lucky me.”
* * *
On some level, MacKenzie was aware that Jack was too smart for psychoanalysis, but he ignored it, just like Jack ignored the fact that he would never be anywhere near the doctor under any other circumstance. They both participated in the song and dance, though, each aware that they were just going through the motions. MacKenzie lobbed Jack softballs, and Jack answered exactly as he was supposed to. Eventually MacKenzie signed off on him and Jack knew that the doctor was just as relieved to see him gone as he was to leave.
In some ways it was a relief to have a doctor, inept or not, that was predictable.
Janet was a different experience all together. Her eyes were sharp where MacKenzie’s were indifferent. And Jack couldn’t ignore the way her clinical duty intertwined with her desperate need for Jack to not be crazy. She needed him to be right.
Jack wasn’t worried. Needles and probing, naïve questions and psychobabble he could get through. He could even handle Daniel’s endless litany of questions.
Jack knew Sam was alive.
The only doubts came at night when he sat alone, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t doubt that he had seen her, held her. She was alive. It was just the dark voice in the back of his mind that reminded him of how he had been fooled by Jacob. How he had let a wolf in sheep’s clothing run around Earth and kidnap Sam.
How do you know that was really Selmak? the voice taunted.
Because Carter said so, Jack reiterated, not for the first time. But he knew it was a weak answer. How could he explain that he had just known? In many ways the members of his team were like an extension of himself. He could never be fooled, he was sure of it.
She kissed you, whispered the voice of doubt.
And that was the crux of the issue. Would she really have done that? Or had the snake been playing him, using buried feelings wrested away from the deep reaches of Sam’s mind? Was his weakness finally coming back to bite him in the ass after all these years?
In the dark, alone in his bed, he just couldn’t quite be sure.
In the daylight, surrounded by the personnel of the SGC, Jack allowed the doubts no purchase. He was too busy convincing everyone else.
Three days after Jack had seen Sam, he stood with Janet in Hammond’s office, the last of the reports on Jack spread all over the General’s desk.
It was vaguely reassuring to have that much paperwork supporting his tenuous sanity.
“Alright. I’m glad we are through this,” Hammond said, obviously finally accepting that Jack had seen Sam.
Jack could hear Janet release a long breath and he realized that she hadn’t let herself completely believe him either until this moment.
But Hammond didn’t look relieved or hopeful and Jack couldn’t help but suspect what was coming.
It didn’t make hearing it any easier.
“You understand, Colonel, that I have had to report Major Carter’s situation,” Hammond started.
“Yes, sir,” Jack replied, trying to ignore the confusion now radiating from Janet at the solemn heaviness of the room.
“I am afraid there is no way to confirm whether or not Major Carter has been blended with Selmak or a hostile enemy.”
Jack nodded.
“As such, we are ordered to take her into custody on sight, by any means. If she truly is blended with Selmak, she is considered AWOL, and if not, she is to be treated as an enemy of the state.”
Janet looked like she wanted to protest, but Jack knew that none of this was in Hammond’s control anymore.
“Either way, Major Carter is considered a fugitive at large.”
It wasn’t unexpected, but it still felt like a heavy door was slamming shut somewhere.
Jack steadily met Hammond’s gaze. “I understand, sir,” he said, knowing that Hammond was warning him as much as anything else.
She’s not a member of your team anymore, Jack. Don’t do anything stupid.
But Jack figured it was only stupid if he got caught.
* * *
For three days after arriving at the small village in the shadow of the mountain, Sam was given nothing to eat but a thin, strange tasting broth to drink. The women slept while the sun was in the sky, and late into every night there was dancing and singing, each routine carefully performed to tell the creation tales of this ochre land. In the trance of the fire and her gradually increasing hunger, Sam found she didn’t need Selmak’s translations to understand the meaning at the heart of the pounding music and eloquent gestures. They were weaving a magical tale of birth and death and the primal powers of women.
At sunset on the third day, five elder women came to Sam’s hut. They stripped Sam of her clothing and carefully anointed her skin with rich, musky oils. They then spent many hours drawing delicate designs on her flesh. Long, twining snakes, mystical unfamiliar animals and wide seeing eyes that in Sam’s increasingly incoherent state she vaguely recalled Selmak explaining were meant to be ‘windows into her soul.’
Some small part of Sam’s mind was still wide awake, pushing through the hunger and intoxicating smells. That part was skeptically watching the entire procedure, wondering how drugging her was supposed to make any difference. How was this supposed to help her remember what Keren had stolen from her?
‘It will hopefully allow your consciousness to give way long enough for your subconscious mind to take over,’ Selmak offered as if from a great distance. ‘The vision quest should allow you to meet a manifestation of your subconscious, a guide of sorts, that can lead you through your memories at a safe distance.’
‘You’ve done this yourself,’ Sam realized.
‘Saroosh,’ Selmak replied. ‘She had a great and abiding love for these people and their ways.’
Even after five years, Selmak’s grief for her former host was still strong and in Sam’s weakened state she felt like she might drown in it.
‘I am sorry,’ Selmak said, suppressing the emotion, ‘but this is precisely why I will suppress myself while you undergo the ceremony.’
Sam didn’t find the idea of being completely alone particularly comforting.
The women eventually finished their ministrations and en masse lead Sam to the small dark opening at the base of the mountain. She was given a thick, viscous fluid to drink, handed a small stone oil lamp and left on her own to enter the cavern. Sam took one last deep breath of dry desert air and stepped into the blackness.
Less than fifty feet into the cave, the small passageway had curved and wound its way around until Sam could no longer make out the entrance. The walls seemed to dance eerily in the flickering light of the rudimentary lamp and Sam ruthlessly pushed back any wandering thoughts of Goa’uld tunnels and menacing predators.
After about fifteen minutes of careful walking, Sam was seriously beginning to feel the effects of the strange concoction. Everything seemed softer, more alive. Even the hard stone walls seemed to breathe. The small passageway opened up without warning, revealing a tall open cavern. At the center of the room a greenish pool of water glistened, moisture dripping rhythmically from the ceiling. The remains of a fire pit sat off to one side.
Sam lifted her lamp as she crossed over to the edge of the pool and gasped as the light caught the surface of the grotto. Hundreds of images graced the walls. Handprints, animals, strange writing and abstract drawings. Marks left by countless generations of women who had entered here before.
A sudden wave of dizziness caught Sam off guard and she nearly stumbled. She carefully set down the lamp to one side and kneeled down at the edge of the water. She gazed down at her own reflection.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she whispered out loud.
The only answer was her own voice echoing eerily back as if a record playing on too low a speed.
Sam closed her eyes and lowered her head to the rocky floor.
* * *
Sam is standing in a field, cool green grass sliding between her toes. Soft sun filters down on her through thick trees, creating a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes on her skin as she slowly turns in place.
Everything is just so beautiful. It’s easy to forget the feel of fresh air sliding over bare skin like a lover’s caress, but here in this beautiful place it surrounds her. She thinks there is something she is supposed to be doing, but she is just too content to care.
Sam’s bare toe suddenly makes contact with something solid and she trips, falling to the ground with a hard thump. The ground beneath her is no longer soft grass, but rough gravel and lying next to her is the object she tripped over. The still, staring body of a super soldier.
Sam gasps soundlessly and scrambles away, pushing clumsily through the gravel, each small stone ripping into the heels of her hands. She eventually pushes to her feet and in the distance she can just make out Teal’c and Jack standing with their back to her. Sam’s legs push into motion and she rushes towards them. They step apart as she reaches them and it is only then she registers that they are standing over something sprawled on the ground.
It’s Sam.
She’s wearing frayed, ripped BDUs and where her chest should be is a ragged hole. Her face is stunned and staring, frozen mid-expression, the mouth hanging grotesquely open as if in shock.
Sam begins to back away from the body, but Jack’s fingers painfully digging into her shoulder stop her.
“Isn’t this what you want?” he hisses, dragging her forward so that she nearly stumbles over the body.
Sam shakes her head, trying to pry herself out of his grip. Then the dead Sam suddenly moves, just her eyes jerking sideways to latch onto Sam’s.
“It was just easier,” the body explains.
“Easier than what?” Sam chokes out.
“Than dealing with them.”
The body’s eyes dart past Sam and she slowly turns with dread rising in her throat, nearly choking her.
She is standing alone in a field of bodies.
Every person she has killed. Every person she has lost. Every life she has failed to save.
She is running, tripping, the bodies tangling with her feet. Martouf, Jonas, nameless Tollan, Jaffa and humans. She’s had a hand in each of them. She sees a flash of familiar blond hair, catches a whiff of long forgotten perfume and veers wildly left, stumbling to a halt in front of Janet.
“No,” Sam mumbles, falling to her knees next to her friend. “You’re not dead.”
“Not yet,” comes a voice from beside her and it’s Hammond, his chest a bloody mess, oxygen mask obscuring his face.
Beyond him she can see countless other familiar faces. Cassie, Teal’c, Pete, Daniel, Siler, Jack.
And Sam is completely still. She finds it easier not to move, hoping that maybe she can just lie down with the rest of them. That maybe she can just stop being all together.
The muddied ground sucks at her knees and she feels rooted, stuck. A familiar feeling.
“You’re not stuck,” comes a soft voice from next to Sam. “You’re just standing still.”
Sam looks up to see the Other Sam standing calmly over her. The one from her hallucinations. The one that haunts her dreams with indecipherable words. Her hand is gently outstretched, offered palm up to Sam.
Sam hesitates and the Other simply smiles. “Come, I have something to show you.”
Sam spares one last glance for the panorama of flesh around her before grasping onto the offered hand like a lifeline. The hand is warm and solid and pulls Sam to her feet, leading her towards the circling, seemingly impenetrable trees surrounding the open battle ground.
They reach the edge of the forest and it seems to Sam that there is no space between the towering trees, their thick trunks nearly overlapping. But her guide simply steps through, tugging Sam along with her.
It seems impossible.
“Trust me.”
Sam takes a deep breath and allows herself to be pulled into the darkness. Brittle leaves cushion her feet and spindly, leafless branches pull at her clothing, scratching her skin.
More than once she stumbles, but her guide is always there, ready to shoulder Sam’s weight and move them ever forward.
Ten more steps and they reach the mouth of a dark cave. Sam wants to pull back, but the other won’t let her. The darkness threatens to swallow them both whole. And just as Sam is sure she can’t take another step everything suddenly changes, and they are standing in a cool green meadow once more.
In the middle of the open meadow is a stone altar with a large black tome resting atop it. It is embossed in gold with abstract designs that Sam finds vaguely familiar.
Gingerly, Sam reaches out and lifts open the heavy cover of the book. Each page pulsates with hyper-realistic images, snap shots from her life. And from the lives of others. Some images are rich with color and movement, others a mellow, ancient sepia. Sam carefully flips through each page, the stack never growing smaller.
Then her guide reaches over and flips the book open to a page near the back. It is an image of a woman with long ginger hair and a smiling face. Behind her the scenery seems to flicker brokenly. One moment it is a green field, the next, the deep depths of the Pangaran temple. Her prison.
The woman looks up out of the picture to Sam, her words echoing as if from a great distance.
‘Is leor nod don eolach.’
And then a pendant resting carefully on her chest begins to pulsate with blue light.
“Egeria,” Sam whispers as she reaches out her hand to touch the surface of the picture. The simple contact causes ripples to flow outward at ever increasing speeds until everything is encompassed in blue swelling light like the dancing mouth of a wormhole.
Sam feels the steady support of her guide’s hand fall away and she tumbles into the light.
Sam woke with a start, Egeria’s name still warm on her lips. Her head pounded unforgivably and her throat felt like she had just been on a three day binge. She pried her eyes open, surprised to feel a soft padded chair beneath her instead of the uneven, rocky floor of the cave.
Bright light assailed her eyes and she groaned softly, the room slowly coming into focus.
Above her hovered a strange contraption that she knew she should recognize. And then a face leaned over her, eclipsing the light.
Keren.
A startled gasp rose in Sam’s throat, caught midway by her rising terror. She tried to sit up with a jerk, but restraints cut into her skin in far too realistic a manner. This can’t be real, Sam thought desperately. It can’t all have just been…
Keren stepped closer, one hand in her hair and cooing noises in his throat.
“Selmak!” Sam called out, tugging at the restraints with renewed vigor.
There was no answer.
Keren leaned in closer, his breath barely a whisper against her cheek. “It isn’t what it seems,” he said.
From Sam’s lap, Schrödinger looked up at her, his tail calmly swaying. “It never is,” he replied sagely.
Sam only had time to wonder if this was a little like what Alice must have felt before darkness claimed her once more.
* * *
Consciousness slowly asserted itself, at first nothing more than casual awareness of dripping water and cool darkness. After long moments of staring sightlessly, Sam finally registered the feel of uneven rock under her back, her eyes focusing on the craggy ceiling arching wide above her. She couldn’t be sure how much timed passed as she lay there, processing what she had seen, and convincing herself of the reality of her present situation.
Sam could feel Selmak beginning to stir in the back of her mind and still she remained motionless. She couldn’t really explain what had just happened to her. She had no logical scientific explanations. She could perhaps write off the whole experience as drug induced nonsense, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she somehow felt different now.
‘It is hard for you to accept that these primitive peoples might have access to something powerful, something that can succeed where technology cannot,’ Selmak observed.
‘No…,’ Sam said, struggling to put her chaotic thoughts into words. ‘That’s not it at all. It’s just…very foreign to me. There is a lot to process.’
You’re not stuck, you’re just standing still.
Sam lifted her body off the rocky floor and walked straight into the pool of cool water. It was deep enough to cover her to her waist and she took a deep breath before plunging beneath the surface. The water cleared her head and washed away the musky oil that made her mind fuzzy.
Once clean, Sam stepped out of the water, kneeling by the fire ring at the pool’s edge. She pushed her fingers into the soft ash, sifting gently through until she found a small chunk of charred wood. Moving to the nearest wall, she pressed the stick against the surface, drawing a large oval shape. Egeria’s pendant.
“Is leor nod don eolach,” Sam whispered out loud, her tongue tripping over the unfamiliar consonants.
‘It is not a language I am familiar with,’ Selmak offered.
Sam sat back and observed her artwork for a moment before calmly rinsing her fingertips in the water and picking up her small stone lamp.
“I think I know someone who is.”
And then she started the long path back up to the surface.
Next
She has been quite nice to me today!
Egeria's Legacy Chapter Seven is done! Woot!
And to top it off, I actually finished Exodus. Sent the last two chapters off to Mab (who is really good at keeping me honest, so who knows how long the revisions may take.) Nose like a greyhound, that one. Just another reason I luvs her. :) But don't you just love it when you can't quite figure out that ending scene and then you just start writing and bam! without even realizing it, you've tripped over exactly what you wanted to say. *sigh* I'll post again when it's finally ready to be read.
Title: Egeria's Legacy
Author: Annerb
Summary: Tok'ra trouble is brewing and Sam gets caught in the middle.
Rating/Warnings: Older Teens (torture and death)
Classifications: Action/Adventure, Drama, Angst, S/J
Season: 7 (AU, post Death Knell)
Disclaimer: Stargate isn't mine. Woe.
Part 7: The Dreaming
The familiar rush slowly left Jack’s body as his molecules quietly realigned, leaving him staring at an inactive Stargate. For a moment he was almost overwhelmed by the impulse to demand that the gate be dialed back up immediately so he could charge after Sam. But he couldn’t do that, even if he had done the one thing he swore he’d never do. He’d left her out there alone.
Not alone, he reminded himself quickly. She was with Selmak, at least. Blended, his mind supplied and Jack had to resist the urge to shudder with horror at the thought of a symbiote twining its way around Sam’s spine. But no matter what Jack really felt for the Tok’ra at large, Selmak was someone to be trusted above all others. He knew that.
If Jack was honest, though, it hadn’t been Selmak that had clinched it for him. He’d known he would leave Sam to find Keren on her own the second he had looked in her eyes and seen what he hadn’t even realized was missing: a spark. The last time he had seen her, the day he relieved her of duty, there had just been something dead about her, like she had completely lost her nerve, everything that made her Carter.
Since then she had been kidnapped by a snake hiding in her father’s body, taken a symbiote herself, and been tortured along the way. But beyond all that, he had seen a glimmer of who she used to be. She seemed to think she needed a chance to do this on her own, and he thought she might be right. Maybe it was time Sam Carter was given a chance to truly realize her own strength. Something she couldn’t do under the shadow of her commanding officer.
That was what finally made him step away from her in the end, still blown away by the feel of her lips against his, by the vortex of emotions it had released. Because beyond all that, he knew she needed this. If he ever wanted her back, as friend, subordinate or otherwise, he knew he had to let her go.
If anyone could do it, it was Sam Carter. He had no doubt.
A hand roughly shaking his shoulder brought Jack out of his thoughts to find a concerned looking Daniel standing next to him on the ramp.
“Jack?” he questioned, squinting at Jack in concern. “Are you alright?”
Jack glanced from Daniel to the Stargate one last time, realizing that Daniel must have been talking to him for the last few minutes with no response.
Jack gently clapped Daniel on the back and gave him a wry grin before turning away from the gate.
“O’Neill. Why were you delayed?” Teal’c asked from beside a confused looking Hammond.
When Jack still didn’t answer, Hammond looked his 2IC over, finally asking, “And where is your kit, Colonel?”
Now Daniel and Teal’c were looking him over speculatively.
Jack took a deep breath and decided to just dive in. “I gave it to Carter, sir.”
Hammond’s brow creased as if he wasn’t sure he had heard Jack right and Daniel’s mouth popped open.
“What?” Daniel finally managed to say.
Teal’c, unsurprisingly, was the one to get to the heart of the matter. “Are you claiming to have seen Major Carter?”
Jack could feel Daniel’s hopeful gaze on him. “Yes, Teal’c, that is exactly what I am saying. And she seemed fine, all things considering.”
“But…wait…why…where is she?” Daniel said, looking back at the gate as if expecting her to appear all of a sudden.
Jack grimaced. “There’s a bit of a complication, actually.”
Hammond finally found his voice to say, “You’re going to need to explain this, son. Briefing room. Now.”
Jack let Hammond lead him into the briefing room and told them all a nice, edited version of what had happened. Edited because Sam needed Jack to stay mobile and be able to travel through the gate in case she needed him. He couldn’t implement himself in her plan. He had to make it sound like she went without his permission. She would understand. As for the other omissions…well that was nobody’s business but his own. And after all, even he wasn’t really sure what exactly had happened.
“So she claimed to be implanted with Selmak and refused to come back to the base,” Hammond summarized.
“Yes, sir,” Jack said.
“And you just let her go?”
Jack raised one eyebrow in amusement. As if he just let Sam Carter do anything, let alone Sam Carter with an ancient symbiote in her head.
“I do not believe O’Neill could have restrained Major Carter, even if he wished to,” Teal’c observed. “She will have the superhuman strength of a symbiote.”
Daniel, on Jack’s left, still looked a little shell-shocked, but hopeful. “That would explain how she managed to escape the blast.”
“Even if that is true, there is no way to prove who may have taken up residence in Major Carter’s body,” Teal’c reminded him. “It could have been one of the rebel Tok’ra or even a Goa’uld.”
“Maybe,” Daniel said, mulling it over, “but then why even bother contacting us? She must have wanted to let us know she was okay. Though, how she knew where we were going to be…”
“This is all very interesting, gentlemen,” Hammond interrupted, “but you are all working under one dubious assumption here.”
Jack felt dread twist in his stomach, having some idea of what was coming.
“What is that, General?” Daniel asked.
“That Colonel O’Neill did not imagine the whole thing,” Hammond answered.
Jack just barely managed to mask his wince. “Sir…,” he began, trying to find a way to defend his sanity.
“Jack,” Hammond interrupted. “I know the last few weeks have been hard on you…”
“Hard on all of us, I would imagine,” Jack input, daring a quick glance at Daniel and Teal’c.
Hammond conceded the point, but would not be derailed. “Why were you the only one she approached?” he argued. “Seems a little convenient.”
Jack could tell that Daniel was finally registering that fact, too, looking a little put out.
“I don’t know, sir,” Jack said. “Maybe because she is a sadistic piece of work and knew this would make me look crazy?”
Hammond couldn’t quite hold back a smile. “Tell you what, Jack,” he bargained and Jack had a feeling he was not going to like this, “pay a visit to Drs. Fraiser and MacKenzie and we will revisit this.”
Jack dropped his head to the table in frustration. Carter so owed him for this.
* * *
The air of the stark desert was like a solid wall of heat as Sam stepped back through the gate. Even after all this time, it never ceased to amaze Sam the way the gate could instantly transport her between such vastly differing climates. The full set of kit she wore seemed bizarrely unfamiliar after her weeks away from Earth and sweat instantly began trailing down her back.
Sam automatically set out in the direction she knew the village to lay, but Selmak stopped her.
‘No, head east.’
Sam dubiously turned; registering that to the east was the looming mountain she had observed her first morning here.
‘It will take us most of the day to get there and we have little time left,’ Selmak explained.
‘What’s there?’ Sam asked cautiously. There was just something menacing about the place, the way it was beautiful, harsh and imposing all at the same time.
‘It is the holy place of the Binghi, where their women hold the most sacred of their rituals.’
‘We’re not here for a cultural exchange, Selmak.’
‘No, but we do need to understand what Keren has stolen from you. They have a way to help.’
Selmak’s words triggered something in Sam’s brain and she felt unease fill her stomach. ‘That’s why you brought me here in the first place, isn’t it?’
Selmak didn’t answer right away and Sam dropped her kit roughly to the ground. It seemed more than a little convenient that this placed housed some miraculous fix it all, when Selmak couldn’t even have been sure Sam would agree to this in the first place. But Sam suddenly doubted convenience had anything to do with it.
‘Why does it suddenly feel like you’ve been manipulating me from the start?’ Sam asked, anger burning just below the surface.
‘I don’t think of it as manipulation,’ Selmak replied in an annoyingly calm and guilt-free voice. ‘More like practicality. This is our way, Samantha. It is the only thing that has kept us alive as a race.’
‘What, being heartless? Using people with no regard for what is right?’
‘And what is right?’ Selmak snapped, a little of her placidity leaking away. ‘Is it really so easy? We have been fighting this war against our own kind, against what is an undeniable part of us, for endless millennia. Do not pretend to understand what that means and do not presume to judge us.’
Sam felt a bit like she had been slapped down for being petty, but didn’t want to lose her material point. ‘But your compassion should be what separates you from them, shouldn’t it?’
Selmak was quiet for a moment. ‘And so it does, even if it does not seem that way to you. Have I not given you ample opportunity to return home? Is this not, in the end, your choice, not mine? I could walk the path Keren chose, but I have not. Instead, I put my future, my very well-being into your hands. It is I, in the end, who has to put complete faith in you.’
No matter how much she didn’t like it, Selmak was right and Sam knew it. But she just couldn’t stand the feeling that she was being maneuvered, being pushed down a path that was not her own choosing. Freewill was just too important to Sam and everything about this made her want to scream. But Selmak was the one whose very life depended on Sam. So maybe that had a little of that in common. They were both trapped.
‘What do you want to know?’ Sam asked defeatedly.
‘That machine Keren used wasn’t a torture device. The pain and damage to your brain were merely side effects.’
Somehow, that didn’t make Sam feel any better.
‘None of them were quite sure what it did or how, only that the technology could produce an engrammatic imprint of a subject’s mind.’
Engrams. Memories.
For a moment Sam was swallowed once again by the swimming lights and faces flying by at breakneck speeds, each punctuated by stabbing, inescapable pain.
‘He never even asked me a question,’ Sam said as the chaos slowly drained away. ‘If he’d wanted to know about something from my past…why not just ask me?’
Selmak quietly helped Sam regain her equilibrium before saying, ‘Because what he was looking for was a little more complex than that.’
Sam paused for a beat, her stomach lurching unpleasantly. ‘So help me, if I hear the word Jolinar I am going to lose it.’
Selmak’s answering silence was all the confirmation Sam needed.
Sam dropped her head into her hands for a moment, rubbing absently at her temples.
Jolinar.
If only Sam had taken a sick day that fated morning. She never would have been violated by Jolinar. She never would have heard the word Tok’ra. She wouldn’t be standing on a desert planet in the middle of nowhere about to get her head shrunk by tribal women in the shadow of an ominous mountain.
‘And Jacob, Colonel O’Neill and countless others would be dead,’ Selmak interjected.
Sam shifted uneasily, knowing the truth of her words. She knew those lives were worth her unpleasant experiences, but it didn’t keep part of her from hating Jolinar and everything she represented.
‘Questioning the past gets us nowhere,’ Selmak reminded Sam.
‘Apparently Keren disagrees with you,’ Sam remarked. ‘I guess I just don’t understand why Keren would need anything from a long dead Tok’ra. Anything Jolinar knew, you would all know, right? As Egeria’s children? Shouldn’t you all already know what Egeria’s Legacy is and where it’s kept?’
‘Yes and no,’ Selmak said. ‘Genetic memory is a bit more complex than simply knowing everything experienced by all your forbearers. You must know something of this. There are generations upon generations of memories. They cannot be simply turned to as if pages in a book. Jolinar’s life is not an easy open thing to you, I think. How much of her previous hosts can you recall? What of Egeria, Jolinar’s mother?”
Sam shook her head. ‘I always assumed that was because we never had a true blending.’
‘No,’ Selmak answered. ‘It is always a bit…chaotic. Add to this the fact that the Queen is able to control what information is passed on to her children. Even if she does provide them with her entire life of experiences, they still cannot possibly be aware of what happens to her after their conception.’
‘Okay…so Egeria could control her children’s memories. But she had friends, right? People who knew her when she lived? Shouldn’t they know what this Legacy thing is?’
‘It was many millennia ago, Samantha. And there was not such thing as Tok’ra at the time. We had no cohesion or central bases. No structure. We were still nothing more than a dream when Egeria was captured. What she may have intended or shared with others, we have no idea.’
‘But you knew her,’ Sam stated with certainty.
‘No. I never met her myself.’
‘Never?’ Sam asked.
‘In fact, I know of none still alive who ever have.’
‘Don’t tell me that Jolinar, of all people, knew her,’ Sam sighed with frustration. ‘Let me guess. They used to be best friends.’
‘No,’ Selmak reassured her, ‘nothing of the sort. What we do know, and which Keren would have also been aware of, is that Jolinar shared a host with one of the oldest Tok’ra, one said to have been an acquaintance of Egeria herself.’
There was a long pause as Sam was torn between hysterical laughter and really bratty screaming. This unraveling discussion felt more and more like some kind of a nightmare as each moment passed.
Sam took a deep breath. ‘Let me get this straight. I am the previous host of a Tok’ra whose first host, thousands of years ago, was previously a host to an ancient, possible friend of Egeria.”
Selmak was silent for a moment as if tracking the convoluted path. ‘Yes.’
‘That is the craziest thing I have ever heard. And that’s saying a lot.’
Selmak made a low sound of amusement. ‘Yes, I agree. You can understand why we have never pursued this before. But Petra’s children seem to lack that perception.’
‘So you can’t even be sure he actually found anything, or that there is anything to be found in the first place,’ Sam concluded.
‘That is correct.’
‘But on the off chance, I still get to have my brain scrambled again,’ Sam said with a sigh, turning reluctantly to the east and the hulking monolith in the distance. “Lucky me.”
* * *
On some level, MacKenzie was aware that Jack was too smart for psychoanalysis, but he ignored it, just like Jack ignored the fact that he would never be anywhere near the doctor under any other circumstance. They both participated in the song and dance, though, each aware that they were just going through the motions. MacKenzie lobbed Jack softballs, and Jack answered exactly as he was supposed to. Eventually MacKenzie signed off on him and Jack knew that the doctor was just as relieved to see him gone as he was to leave.
In some ways it was a relief to have a doctor, inept or not, that was predictable.
Janet was a different experience all together. Her eyes were sharp where MacKenzie’s were indifferent. And Jack couldn’t ignore the way her clinical duty intertwined with her desperate need for Jack to not be crazy. She needed him to be right.
Jack wasn’t worried. Needles and probing, naïve questions and psychobabble he could get through. He could even handle Daniel’s endless litany of questions.
Jack knew Sam was alive.
The only doubts came at night when he sat alone, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t doubt that he had seen her, held her. She was alive. It was just the dark voice in the back of his mind that reminded him of how he had been fooled by Jacob. How he had let a wolf in sheep’s clothing run around Earth and kidnap Sam.
How do you know that was really Selmak? the voice taunted.
Because Carter said so, Jack reiterated, not for the first time. But he knew it was a weak answer. How could he explain that he had just known? In many ways the members of his team were like an extension of himself. He could never be fooled, he was sure of it.
She kissed you, whispered the voice of doubt.
And that was the crux of the issue. Would she really have done that? Or had the snake been playing him, using buried feelings wrested away from the deep reaches of Sam’s mind? Was his weakness finally coming back to bite him in the ass after all these years?
In the dark, alone in his bed, he just couldn’t quite be sure.
In the daylight, surrounded by the personnel of the SGC, Jack allowed the doubts no purchase. He was too busy convincing everyone else.
Three days after Jack had seen Sam, he stood with Janet in Hammond’s office, the last of the reports on Jack spread all over the General’s desk.
It was vaguely reassuring to have that much paperwork supporting his tenuous sanity.
“Alright. I’m glad we are through this,” Hammond said, obviously finally accepting that Jack had seen Sam.
Jack could hear Janet release a long breath and he realized that she hadn’t let herself completely believe him either until this moment.
But Hammond didn’t look relieved or hopeful and Jack couldn’t help but suspect what was coming.
It didn’t make hearing it any easier.
“You understand, Colonel, that I have had to report Major Carter’s situation,” Hammond started.
“Yes, sir,” Jack replied, trying to ignore the confusion now radiating from Janet at the solemn heaviness of the room.
“I am afraid there is no way to confirm whether or not Major Carter has been blended with Selmak or a hostile enemy.”
Jack nodded.
“As such, we are ordered to take her into custody on sight, by any means. If she truly is blended with Selmak, she is considered AWOL, and if not, she is to be treated as an enemy of the state.”
Janet looked like she wanted to protest, but Jack knew that none of this was in Hammond’s control anymore.
“Either way, Major Carter is considered a fugitive at large.”
It wasn’t unexpected, but it still felt like a heavy door was slamming shut somewhere.
Jack steadily met Hammond’s gaze. “I understand, sir,” he said, knowing that Hammond was warning him as much as anything else.
She’s not a member of your team anymore, Jack. Don’t do anything stupid.
But Jack figured it was only stupid if he got caught.
* * *
For three days after arriving at the small village in the shadow of the mountain, Sam was given nothing to eat but a thin, strange tasting broth to drink. The women slept while the sun was in the sky, and late into every night there was dancing and singing, each routine carefully performed to tell the creation tales of this ochre land. In the trance of the fire and her gradually increasing hunger, Sam found she didn’t need Selmak’s translations to understand the meaning at the heart of the pounding music and eloquent gestures. They were weaving a magical tale of birth and death and the primal powers of women.
At sunset on the third day, five elder women came to Sam’s hut. They stripped Sam of her clothing and carefully anointed her skin with rich, musky oils. They then spent many hours drawing delicate designs on her flesh. Long, twining snakes, mystical unfamiliar animals and wide seeing eyes that in Sam’s increasingly incoherent state she vaguely recalled Selmak explaining were meant to be ‘windows into her soul.’
Some small part of Sam’s mind was still wide awake, pushing through the hunger and intoxicating smells. That part was skeptically watching the entire procedure, wondering how drugging her was supposed to make any difference. How was this supposed to help her remember what Keren had stolen from her?
‘It will hopefully allow your consciousness to give way long enough for your subconscious mind to take over,’ Selmak offered as if from a great distance. ‘The vision quest should allow you to meet a manifestation of your subconscious, a guide of sorts, that can lead you through your memories at a safe distance.’
‘You’ve done this yourself,’ Sam realized.
‘Saroosh,’ Selmak replied. ‘She had a great and abiding love for these people and their ways.’
Even after five years, Selmak’s grief for her former host was still strong and in Sam’s weakened state she felt like she might drown in it.
‘I am sorry,’ Selmak said, suppressing the emotion, ‘but this is precisely why I will suppress myself while you undergo the ceremony.’
Sam didn’t find the idea of being completely alone particularly comforting.
The women eventually finished their ministrations and en masse lead Sam to the small dark opening at the base of the mountain. She was given a thick, viscous fluid to drink, handed a small stone oil lamp and left on her own to enter the cavern. Sam took one last deep breath of dry desert air and stepped into the blackness.
Less than fifty feet into the cave, the small passageway had curved and wound its way around until Sam could no longer make out the entrance. The walls seemed to dance eerily in the flickering light of the rudimentary lamp and Sam ruthlessly pushed back any wandering thoughts of Goa’uld tunnels and menacing predators.
After about fifteen minutes of careful walking, Sam was seriously beginning to feel the effects of the strange concoction. Everything seemed softer, more alive. Even the hard stone walls seemed to breathe. The small passageway opened up without warning, revealing a tall open cavern. At the center of the room a greenish pool of water glistened, moisture dripping rhythmically from the ceiling. The remains of a fire pit sat off to one side.
Sam lifted her lamp as she crossed over to the edge of the pool and gasped as the light caught the surface of the grotto. Hundreds of images graced the walls. Handprints, animals, strange writing and abstract drawings. Marks left by countless generations of women who had entered here before.
A sudden wave of dizziness caught Sam off guard and she nearly stumbled. She carefully set down the lamp to one side and kneeled down at the edge of the water. She gazed down at her own reflection.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she whispered out loud.
The only answer was her own voice echoing eerily back as if a record playing on too low a speed.
Sam closed her eyes and lowered her head to the rocky floor.
* * *
Sam is standing in a field, cool green grass sliding between her toes. Soft sun filters down on her through thick trees, creating a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes on her skin as she slowly turns in place.
Everything is just so beautiful. It’s easy to forget the feel of fresh air sliding over bare skin like a lover’s caress, but here in this beautiful place it surrounds her. She thinks there is something she is supposed to be doing, but she is just too content to care.
Sam’s bare toe suddenly makes contact with something solid and she trips, falling to the ground with a hard thump. The ground beneath her is no longer soft grass, but rough gravel and lying next to her is the object she tripped over. The still, staring body of a super soldier.
Sam gasps soundlessly and scrambles away, pushing clumsily through the gravel, each small stone ripping into the heels of her hands. She eventually pushes to her feet and in the distance she can just make out Teal’c and Jack standing with their back to her. Sam’s legs push into motion and she rushes towards them. They step apart as she reaches them and it is only then she registers that they are standing over something sprawled on the ground.
It’s Sam.
She’s wearing frayed, ripped BDUs and where her chest should be is a ragged hole. Her face is stunned and staring, frozen mid-expression, the mouth hanging grotesquely open as if in shock.
Sam begins to back away from the body, but Jack’s fingers painfully digging into her shoulder stop her.
“Isn’t this what you want?” he hisses, dragging her forward so that she nearly stumbles over the body.
Sam shakes her head, trying to pry herself out of his grip. Then the dead Sam suddenly moves, just her eyes jerking sideways to latch onto Sam’s.
“It was just easier,” the body explains.
“Easier than what?” Sam chokes out.
“Than dealing with them.”
The body’s eyes dart past Sam and she slowly turns with dread rising in her throat, nearly choking her.
She is standing alone in a field of bodies.
Every person she has killed. Every person she has lost. Every life she has failed to save.
She is running, tripping, the bodies tangling with her feet. Martouf, Jonas, nameless Tollan, Jaffa and humans. She’s had a hand in each of them. She sees a flash of familiar blond hair, catches a whiff of long forgotten perfume and veers wildly left, stumbling to a halt in front of Janet.
“No,” Sam mumbles, falling to her knees next to her friend. “You’re not dead.”
“Not yet,” comes a voice from beside her and it’s Hammond, his chest a bloody mess, oxygen mask obscuring his face.
Beyond him she can see countless other familiar faces. Cassie, Teal’c, Pete, Daniel, Siler, Jack.
And Sam is completely still. She finds it easier not to move, hoping that maybe she can just lie down with the rest of them. That maybe she can just stop being all together.
The muddied ground sucks at her knees and she feels rooted, stuck. A familiar feeling.
“You’re not stuck,” comes a soft voice from next to Sam. “You’re just standing still.”
Sam looks up to see the Other Sam standing calmly over her. The one from her hallucinations. The one that haunts her dreams with indecipherable words. Her hand is gently outstretched, offered palm up to Sam.
Sam hesitates and the Other simply smiles. “Come, I have something to show you.”
Sam spares one last glance for the panorama of flesh around her before grasping onto the offered hand like a lifeline. The hand is warm and solid and pulls Sam to her feet, leading her towards the circling, seemingly impenetrable trees surrounding the open battle ground.
They reach the edge of the forest and it seems to Sam that there is no space between the towering trees, their thick trunks nearly overlapping. But her guide simply steps through, tugging Sam along with her.
It seems impossible.
“Trust me.”
Sam takes a deep breath and allows herself to be pulled into the darkness. Brittle leaves cushion her feet and spindly, leafless branches pull at her clothing, scratching her skin.
More than once she stumbles, but her guide is always there, ready to shoulder Sam’s weight and move them ever forward.
Ten more steps and they reach the mouth of a dark cave. Sam wants to pull back, but the other won’t let her. The darkness threatens to swallow them both whole. And just as Sam is sure she can’t take another step everything suddenly changes, and they are standing in a cool green meadow once more.
In the middle of the open meadow is a stone altar with a large black tome resting atop it. It is embossed in gold with abstract designs that Sam finds vaguely familiar.
Gingerly, Sam reaches out and lifts open the heavy cover of the book. Each page pulsates with hyper-realistic images, snap shots from her life. And from the lives of others. Some images are rich with color and movement, others a mellow, ancient sepia. Sam carefully flips through each page, the stack never growing smaller.
Then her guide reaches over and flips the book open to a page near the back. It is an image of a woman with long ginger hair and a smiling face. Behind her the scenery seems to flicker brokenly. One moment it is a green field, the next, the deep depths of the Pangaran temple. Her prison.
The woman looks up out of the picture to Sam, her words echoing as if from a great distance.
‘Is leor nod don eolach.’
And then a pendant resting carefully on her chest begins to pulsate with blue light.
“Egeria,” Sam whispers as she reaches out her hand to touch the surface of the picture. The simple contact causes ripples to flow outward at ever increasing speeds until everything is encompassed in blue swelling light like the dancing mouth of a wormhole.
Sam feels the steady support of her guide’s hand fall away and she tumbles into the light.
Sam woke with a start, Egeria’s name still warm on her lips. Her head pounded unforgivably and her throat felt like she had just been on a three day binge. She pried her eyes open, surprised to feel a soft padded chair beneath her instead of the uneven, rocky floor of the cave.
Bright light assailed her eyes and she groaned softly, the room slowly coming into focus.
Above her hovered a strange contraption that she knew she should recognize. And then a face leaned over her, eclipsing the light.
Keren.
A startled gasp rose in Sam’s throat, caught midway by her rising terror. She tried to sit up with a jerk, but restraints cut into her skin in far too realistic a manner. This can’t be real, Sam thought desperately. It can’t all have just been…
Keren stepped closer, one hand in her hair and cooing noises in his throat.
“Selmak!” Sam called out, tugging at the restraints with renewed vigor.
There was no answer.
Keren leaned in closer, his breath barely a whisper against her cheek. “It isn’t what it seems,” he said.
From Sam’s lap, Schrödinger looked up at her, his tail calmly swaying. “It never is,” he replied sagely.
Sam only had time to wonder if this was a little like what Alice must have felt before darkness claimed her once more.
* * *
Consciousness slowly asserted itself, at first nothing more than casual awareness of dripping water and cool darkness. After long moments of staring sightlessly, Sam finally registered the feel of uneven rock under her back, her eyes focusing on the craggy ceiling arching wide above her. She couldn’t be sure how much timed passed as she lay there, processing what she had seen, and convincing herself of the reality of her present situation.
Sam could feel Selmak beginning to stir in the back of her mind and still she remained motionless. She couldn’t really explain what had just happened to her. She had no logical scientific explanations. She could perhaps write off the whole experience as drug induced nonsense, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she somehow felt different now.
‘It is hard for you to accept that these primitive peoples might have access to something powerful, something that can succeed where technology cannot,’ Selmak observed.
‘No…,’ Sam said, struggling to put her chaotic thoughts into words. ‘That’s not it at all. It’s just…very foreign to me. There is a lot to process.’
You’re not stuck, you’re just standing still.
Sam lifted her body off the rocky floor and walked straight into the pool of cool water. It was deep enough to cover her to her waist and she took a deep breath before plunging beneath the surface. The water cleared her head and washed away the musky oil that made her mind fuzzy.
Once clean, Sam stepped out of the water, kneeling by the fire ring at the pool’s edge. She pushed her fingers into the soft ash, sifting gently through until she found a small chunk of charred wood. Moving to the nearest wall, she pressed the stick against the surface, drawing a large oval shape. Egeria’s pendant.
“Is leor nod don eolach,” Sam whispered out loud, her tongue tripping over the unfamiliar consonants.
‘It is not a language I am familiar with,’ Selmak offered.
Sam sat back and observed her artwork for a moment before calmly rinsing her fingertips in the water and picking up her small stone lamp.
“I think I know someone who is.”
And then she started the long path back up to the surface.
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