Chapter 2

Were it not for the contradiction of the fire in her belly and the coldness seeping into her limbs Sam might have been able to convince herself she was dreaming, that this was all some nightmare from which she would shortly awake. But as she struggled groggily to open her eyes the physical reminders of the damage wrought to her body informed her that this was all too real.

She didn't know where she was, and that realization alone was enough to flood her chest with panic. There was someone coming, the sound of boots thudding against metal seemed to vibrate right through her aching body. She forced her eyes open with considerable effort.

There was a shape, a person she thought, standing over her, and for a moment Sam thought she'd lost a few seconds and whoever had been walking toward her was now here. But footfalls were still echoing ominously around her. She blinked once, twice, and the kaleidoscope of colors above her coalesced briefly into a familiar figure before blurring and shifting again.

"Jan--" she started to whisper, the sight of the doctor chasing the fear away. Her voice was non-existent and the breath rasped painfully in her throat. Janet did not acknowledge that she was conscious. Instead, she stepped carefully over Sam, moving to stand stiffly between her and something… The people coming toward them, perhaps. Exhausted, Sam closed her eyes and relaxed momentary, thinking that she would take a few seconds to regroup then try to get Janet's attention again.

Laughter, now, the unpleasant, lewd timbre of it penetrating the fog she couldn't seem to shake away, the fog that seemed to slow the entire world down. She had to get up, had to protect Janet. Her weapon, where was her weapon?

Her arms would not obey her commands, would not lift from her sides, weighed down as they were by that horrible cold stealing through her bones. She'd been wounded; the memory of sudden, searing pain in her back caused her side to throb. Sam whimpered, but grimly redoubled her efforts to move.

A door slammed too close, the sound grinding through her. She managed to turn her head in the direction of the noise. Squinting, she was barely able to make out that the door to…wherever they were stood wide open, having been flung open by a large tan blob standing just over the threshold. She remembered something about tan uniforms on the army that had attacked them.

They weren't laughing anymore. They had become extremely quiet, standing there sizing up the woman who stood in front of them. Sam was just as glad she was too bleary- eyed and disoriented to make out the expressions on their faces; no doubt she would not like what she saw there.

There was a movement above her, and Sam watched as Janet raised one hand. She wanted to call out a warning to her, tell her not to provoke them or give them any reason to attack. Her lips moved, but as before, no words would form.

Then, it was if the air itself exploded around her as bodies began to move too fast and too unnaturally. A shout from the direction of the doorway drew her attention, but was cut off before she could even begin to decipher the information impinging on her subdued brain. Shapes were lurching and twisting around her, accompanied by the din of slow, panicked screams and the grotesque sound of flesh slamming into unyielding metal. Counterpoint to all of this was the sound of her own uneven breaths, the rush of blood in her ears.

How long the chaos lasted, Sam had absolutely no idea. It appeared to go on forever, yet seemed over before it had even begun. When all was quiet again, Sam tried to look around, thwarted once again by extreme exhaustion. She settled instead for looking up at the woman standing over her.

Janet had not moved. She stood protectively over Sam, head moving from side to side, surveying the immediate area. A disconcerting air of satisfaction surrounded her and Sam frowned. Her eyes slid past Janet's legs, and she struggled to focus on the doorway. There was a figure sprawled there, lying motionless. One of the soldiers, she guessed, judging by his uniform, but she had no idea what had happened to him or how he had gotten that way. It frightened her.

Her attention was drawn back to the other woman as she slowly lowered her arm. The gold of what looked like a Goa'uld ribbon device glittered along the length of Janet's forearm. Had she had any strength at all, she would have sat bolt upright and demanded an explanation. As it was, all she managed was another low whimper, this time drawing the other woman's attention.

Maybe this was a dream after all, she told herself, watching fascinated as Janet rested the hand with the ribbon device on Sam's chest and used the other one to expertly check Sam's wound. Lucid, tactile dreams were not uncommon; she remembered something about that from a college psychology course. Soon, she would wake up, and tell the other woman about her nightmare, about how Janet had used a ribbon device to defeat an entire army of soldiers, and they would both lay there and have a good laugh.

Then she was gone, moving abruptly away from Sam's side to one of the fallen soldiers. Sam watched as she bent over and pulled something off his belt before slipping out of the cell, leaving Sam alone with the whirlwind of her thoughts.

What had happened to them? Where were they? Where was the rest of her team? And why was Janet wearing a ribbon device? She moaned again, not because she was in pain or was trying to get someone's attention. It just suddenly seemed like the thing to do.

Get a grip, she ordered herself. What did she know? She was wounded, pretty badly judging from the feel of things. And they were in some kind of room somewhere. She'd been on a mission and had gotten wounded. Sam frowned, trying to remember if they'd seen any structures during their initial survey of the area surrounding the Stargate. The landscape had been wild, she was certain of it, with no sign of civilization for miles. Where were they, then? The thought that she might have been unconscious for some time, long enough to be taken to some facility filled her with dread. This wasn't an infirmary; at least it didn't look like any infirmary she'd ever seen. A prison maybe?

Her thoughts were becoming clearer, more focused, though she still felt incapacitated and weak, unable to move. There was little consolation in the realization that she could think, plan, strategize, not when there was little she could actually do about it.

There were more sounds nearby, and she tensed involuntarily, feeling pain flare on her right side. Clangs and shouts and shuffling footsteps, pained whimpers and weeping, mothers and fathers soothing frightened children, the impression of many people running past. She fell into a stupor, exhausted by the effort required to organize her thoughts, a listless waking dream spent trying to figure out the stories told by the sounds of suffering and humanity filling the air around her…

Sometime during her dream, how far into it she had no idea, Janet came back into the room. Sam noticed that the ribbon device was gone. Two men in smelly, ragged clothes, with dirty faces and dirty hands, were with her. They picked up her stretcher and carried her out of the tiny room she was in and into a great black hall. Sam looked about her with detached interest. It was filled with people and it stank of sweat and blood and fear. Adolescent boys and girls were running along the various levels, unlocking doors. People poured out of the doorways, clutching each other and weeping gratefully.

"Call me if her condition changes," someone said nearby. The voice was familiar and Sam turned her head, the world slipping into sharper focus. Janet was here, a teenage girl in tow. At Janet's urging, the girl sat cross-legged next to her stretcher. Sam watched Janet carefully; she wasn't sure what she was looking for but something was wrong. There was nothing overt or obvious, just a feeling somewhere deep in her belly that something was very wrong. Even more disturbing was the sense that she knew this feeling, that it was terrifyingly familiar even if she didn't have a name for it.

"Gather the men. We need to release these cables holding the loading platform." Janet's voice was clear and decisive, carrying a note of authority that Sam couldn't imagine not obeying. She'd heard her use that tone of voice in the infirmary and it was comfortingly familiar. "But hold it in place and drop it only on my command," she instructed.

The girl sitting next to her smiled tensely down at her then patted her shoulder. Janet was gone from her field of view, moving to some other place. Sam closed her eyes, unable to prevent the world from sliding away into a comfortable darkness for awhile.

The sound of weapon's fire roused her again but it was useless to try and see where it had come from. All she could see was a crowd of people pressed against each other all around her. A rough blanket covered her from mid-chest down and she wondered where it had come from and how long it had been there. Hot wind tugged at her hair, and the air was filled with choking sand. Sam squinted against the dust and the light, wondering why it was so bright all of a sudden. There'd been nothing but muted darkness before, lit by intermittent pools of yellow light. Now, the area was filled with light and swirling air, as if some raging tornado had swallowed the sun and carried it into their prison.

The girl was hovering worriedly beside her, doing her best to hold the blanket in place and shield Sam from the debris with her body. It hardly mattered. The pain was still there, but had become a dull, disconnected throb. Thankfully, she wasn't cold anymore either, but she had no idea whether that was due to the blanket, the hot air flowing around them, or because she was that much closer to death.

The light around them dimmed and Sam knew by the reaction of the gathered crowd that it wasn't her imagination or fading consciousness. A murmur, sounding rather like a prayer she thought, rose up from several women standing nearby and the light was gradually obliterated, returning to the dim illumination she remembered from before. Once again she wondered what was happening, and tried to gather her strength. She had to find Janet. Together they had to find the Stargate and escape.

The crowd shifted and jostled against each other, men and women pushing each other back around the small clearing she was lying in to create a wide path. Janet was moving toward her, flanked by a joyous crowd of men and women waving weapons. She appeared oblivious to it all as she walked past Sam and over to the DHD.

The DHD? Sam frowned managing to tilt her head forward just enough to see the upper curve of the Stargate. She wondered if it had been there all along, but couldn't bring herself to believe that that was the case. Had someone moved it here, set it up inside the prison so that they could all flee this place?

It didn't matter, she decided in the end. They were going home; she could figure everything out later. They were going home. Nothing else mattered.

"Find a woman named Drey'ac as soon as you get to the other side," she heard Janet instruct as she walked over to the young girl sitting with her. "Tell her she must contact the Tau'ri immediately. This woman needs help right away." They were going to the Land of Light, Sam realized as soon as she heard the name of Teal'c wife. As Janet spoke, Sam felt her eyes sweeping over her, quickly appraising her condition. "Go find your brothers to carry the stretcher," Janet added, then moved past the girl and knelt down beside Sam.

There was that feeling again, that elusive feeling that something was not quite right. Janet looked steadily down at her for several long seconds, worrying Sam more with each passing moment. The eyes were the same, Sam thought, the same deep, beautiful brown eyes. But it dawned on her that a stranger looked back out at her from their depths. Sam searched them intently, searched for something familiar as the part of her Jolinar had once occupied responded to the presence of another Goa'uld.

Sam finally understood what she had been sensing all along. Or maybe she hadn't wanted to understand until now, she thought. Lifting her eyes, she looked again for the woman she loved, the woman she knew was still in there, trapped. She looked for some part of Janet that she could hold on to, draw out and rescue. Janet slowly lowered her head.

With a gasp, Janet lost her balance, toppling over before she could put a hand out to stop herself. Sitting up almost immediately, her eyes looked around wildly and she pulled air into her lungs as though she'd just been released from a vacuum. The Goa'uld had relinquished control with little warning, Sam realized, having experienced something similar with Jolinar. She had the definite sense that Janet was listening to something only she could hear. When Janet finally calmed down, and seemed to understand that she had control of her own body, she looked down at Sam. The expression in her eyes was one of unbearable sorrow.

"I had a dream," Sam whispered, suddenly finding the strength that had eluded her to speak at last. She felt the urgent need to talk, as if that would somehow keep the turmoil rolling inside her at bay just a little longer. She didn't want this; she didn't want this thing to have happened, especially to Janet. Most of all, not to her.

Janet had to lean forward to hold her ear near Sam's lips to hear her. "I dreamed you were a Goa'uld." Janet drew in a very deep breath and held it. "But it wasn't a dream, was it?" She stopped to lick her lips, exhausted from the effort of speaking, knowing it was time to deal with the awful reality, that it did no one, least of all Janet, any good to deny it any longer.

Almost imperceptibly, Janet shook her head, then turned to look down at her, eyes bright with unshed tears. "It was the only way," she said, scooping up Sam's hand and holding it tightly in her own. "I don't have much time. Just enough to say goodbye."

"You're not coming with us," Sam whispered, feeling the bile rise up in her throat with the words.

Janet closed her eyes, then brushed at the tears starting to slip down her cheeks with her free hand. "Tell Cassie that I love her and that I'll always be thinking of her. And you--" Janet's voice choked off as she was unable to finish.

All Sam felt was a cold knot of despair that she fanned into a bright flame of fury. There had to be a way to stop this Goa'uld. There had to be. Rage gave her some small measure of strength. She pressed her fingers against Janet's. "A name," she whispered urgently. "What's its name?" She wasn't strong enough to take the Goa'uld on physically, and she knew she did not possess the ability to rally the crowd against it in her present condition. A name would be a slim lead at best, but it would have to be enough. Information was her only weapon now.

Janet opened her mouth to reply, only to snap it shut again as her eyes glowed brightly for a second. "She did this to save you," the Goa'uld informed her, though the voice was disguised and sounded disconcertingly like Janet's own. "Don't throw that away on a fruitless quest to find us. You will only die in the process."

The Goa'uld moved to pull its fingers away, but Sam somehow managed hold on, willing it to look at her. When it did, Sam lifted her head, ignoring the agony the movement caused in her side. "I'll be seeing you again," she said, eyes blazing. She'd deal with the implication that Janet had done this voluntarily later, and whether or not she could trust anything this thing said. Now, she wanted it to know that she intended to hunt them down, even if she had to chase them from one end of the galaxy to the other.

She held its gaze for a few moments longer, unwilling to give in and break eye contact though her body screamed for her to lie back. Finally, with an indifferent shrug and a smug smile the Goa'uld pulling free from her restraining grip and walking away.

She was moving then, being lifted and carried toward the shimmering event horizon by two adolescents, the girl who had watched over her falling into step beside her stretcher. If the Goa'uld was anywhere nearby, watching their departure, Sam could not see. There was just the mass of disheveled people pressing forward, all eager to make their escape from this place as quickly as possible.

Then everything was swallowed up by the cold and disorienting speed of the wormhole, replaced almost as quickly by the calmer, more temperate climate of the Land of Light. The Goa'uld must have gotten this information from Janet, Sam thought. This was the perfect place to send refugees and make certain that someone could contact the SGC.

But there was so much that didn't make sense, more than she could sort out at the moment, she realized as a crowd of the Untouched led by Tuplo approached them. The former prisoners were frightened, cowering away from the approaching delegation and pulling loved ones to safety as soon as they passed through the Stargate. Sam noted that everyone was staring at one another warily, no one willing to make the first move.

Which meant it was up to her to do something. She had to get back to the SGC. She didn't need to be a doctor to know that she was very badly wounded and that the fact that she was still conscious was simply a minor blessing. Somehow she managed to get the girl's attention, and indicated that they should take her to Tuplo. The girl stared down at her dubiously, and Sam wished she knew what her name was. But she couldn't waste the energy to ask, knowing that she needed to save that for Tuplo and the SGC personnel when they came for her. She was tired, so tired.

As it turned out, Tuplo approached them, catching sight of Sam as the crowd parted in front of him. His nervous yet welcoming smile faded at the sight of her. "Go and fetch Drey'ac," he said, turning immediately to a tall, thin young man. "Tell her to bring the GDO. Hurry!"

Sam closed her eyes, grateful at Tuplo's quick actions. Gentle hands stroked her face, and when she opened her eyes, Tuplo was leaning over her. "Major Carter," he said. "Drey'ac is on her way. She will summon Teal'c. You must stay with us." Nodding slightly beneath his hand, she thought that it would be good to see Teal'c again. She wondered how much time had passed since she'd seen him last. She wondered how much time had passed since Janet had been taken over by a Goa'uld.

"Janet," she whispered thickly, watching Tuplo, the Stargate, the crowd of refugees fade, one by one, into an endless void.

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