Chapter 3

Janet wanted to kick something. She wanted to claw and beat at something, anything, with her fists in unreasoning rage, until it bent and broke beneath the force of her will. But will, she quickly learned, was a meaningless concept when your body wasn't under your control to enact it.

Instead, she was forced to watch as Garin walked away from the departing refugees, away from Sam, and took them up to the command level, tearing the doors off several equipment lockers as if they were made of tin foil. She struggled with all her might to stop the movement of her body, to force it to stop and turn around and go where she wanted to go. Her efforts were to no avail and she fumed impotently, battering against Garin's control like a panicked bird against the bars of its cage.

'Nothing will be achieved by watching her go,' Garin told her, not pausing from what he was doing. She didn't want to listen, angered and disturbed by the perception of Garin's thoughts and feelings, a voice that wasn't a voice, a mental experience within her yet distinctly separate. It had no timbre, no resonance, no physicality of any sort, yet it was just as real as if Garin were standing next to her speaking. 'I kept my promise. She is safely through the Stargate.'

Still she fought, thinking this was wrong, so wrong; she needed to be there. She needed to make sure.

Garin finally had enough, and effortlessly pushed her away, tucking her into what amounted to a small, dark corner of her mind. 'Calm yourself,' he ordered brusquely before retreating, closing her off and leaving her alone. She could still see, but colors and sounds and the perception of her own body were all muted and dull, almost dreamlike. It dawned on her that unspoken in Garin's command was the threat that he would keep her here indefinitely, a frustrated passenger in her own body, while he did exactly as he pleased. This must have been how Sam felt when Jolinar took her as a host.

The thought of Sam made the fear and despair well up inside her again. For a moment, she almost gave free reign to it, allowed it to consume the emotional pain of her present situation. But, with effort, she forced the terror down, refused to allow it to swallow her whole. Tuplo would contact the SGC immediately, she told herself; Sam was probably on her way there now and Warner was one of the best surgeons she knew. He'd make sure she survived.

She believed that with all her heart. She had to.

If there was anything good to come of this horrible situation, she told herself, it was that Garin had done exactly as he'd promised. There had to be some hope in that.

Remain calm, she ordered herself. Garin was right about that, she had to calm down. She had to calm down and think. Hell, she told herself, at the moment there wasn't anything else she could do but think. It would be so easy to lose herself in rage, in desperation, but doing that would doom her as surely as if someone put a bullet through her brain. She couldn't let that happen. Her mind, her consciousness was still intact. She had to make certain she stayed intact. She had to remain calm, to watch, to listen.

She had to learn.

As if testing the limits of her tenuous control over her thoughts, she started to examine her current circumstances. It was important to do this, she told herself, important to organize her thoughts and collect data. Garin might have absolute control over her body, but she refused to give him any power over who she was, her identity.

It was strange, she decided, to be stripped of her own body, reduced, in a sense, to disembodied consciousness. It was especially ironic for it to have happened to her, she who had devoted a good chunk of her life to the care and well being of the corporeal form. So far, her battle to regain control over her own body had failed spectacularly, but maybe in time, coupled with her knowledge of the body, her body, she might find ways to prevail.

It was a clarifying experience, too, she realized. Without the distraction of physical stimuli she could efficiently turn her mind to other tasks; she could begin to plan, to find a way to thwart Garin and find her way home, find her way back to Sam. But to do that, she needed information. The place to start, she realized, was at the beginning, at the moment when the symbiote had entered her body.

Her impressions of those first few moments, after Garin had entered her body, were a confused tangle of sensation and memory, of people and places she'd never met or seen, overwhelming emotion tied to events she'd never experienced. Information gathered from a myriad of hosts swarmed into her consciousness; taste, smell, sound, touch, sight, lifetimes worth of information all pouncing on her in the span of seconds. It had left her with a maddening sense of swelling to enormous proportions to accommodate it all, her own sense of self swallowed up by the overwhelming tide of dozens of lives all linked to one another through Garin.

He had spared her some portion of his attention during those suffocating moments of transition. Through the swirl of information she was aware of his presence, his attempts to hold some of the information at bay even as she felt his apology at not being able to do more for her. She wanted to tell him that she understood, that she knew he had other more pressing things to worry about like the rapists coming down the hall, but she hadn't been capable of coherent thought at the time. Just emotion, sensation, madness.

And the sense that he was taking from her even as his own experiences flooded through her. In parallel to what she was experiencing from Garin, as if she were dying, her entire life flashed in front of her.

Her mother, too many images and impressions to catalog…

Sitting in a sunny kitchen as a child…

Her favorite record, the one her best friend Lisa had smashed against a cement wall after they'd gotten into a fight…

The look on her husband's face the day she told him why she was leaving...

The first time she ever laid eyes on Sam…

Cassie standing timidly in the room she'd fixed up for her…

Joy and hurt, shame and sorrow, thousands of moments, some not even remembered until that instant, all snatched up by Garin almost faster than they could tumble through her.

Most of the prisoners had been freed by the time she managed to untangle the threads of her own consciousness from the memory of all the new ones dancing in her mind.

'Plotting against me?' Garin asked, interrupting her thoughts. She was horrified, wondering if he was aware of what she'd been thinking about? 'Relax,' he said, and she could sense his amusement. That angered her for a moment and she tried to pull away from the awful, too-intimate touch on her mind. But he persisted, not allowing her to retreat. 'Relax,' he repeated. 'I wasn't monitoring your thoughts. But you've given yourself away with your reaction.'

'Maybe I just don't want to talk to you,' she retorted lamely, communicating with him directly for the first time.

He didn't respond to that, but Janet gradually became aware of her own body, the world around her sliding into sharper focus. They were standing in front of the DHD and she could hear dull thuds and bangs from somewhere nearby. Her hand drifted forward and began pressing symbols, an address she didn't recognize. No surprise there, she thought; Sam was particularly good at remembering specific gate addresses. For her own part, she memorized the ones she needed to know and didn't worry about the rest. Now, she watched carefully, noting each symbol as her hand pressed it.

'We need different clothing,' he told her as he dialed. 'Your uniform is too noticeable. People will remember it.'

There was a memory, not her own; none of the people Garin had been staying with on this planet knew he was a Goa'uld. He'd been careful not to reveal his presence during their escape other than to Sam and the soldiers he had killed. Of course no one thought to ask too many questions; they'd just been overjoyed to be released and didn't much care who had come to their rescue. When Garin had prevented her from giving his name to Sam, Janet had just assumed it was because he didn't want Sam following them. Now, she wasn't so sure. 'Who are these people?' she asked. 'What were you doing here?'

'Later,' he snapped, and they were walking toward the now active Stargate. 'The soldiers will be here any minute,' he said. 'We have to leave now.'

It was night on the planet they arrived on, the air thick and humid. Four moons hung in the sky. Garin stood perfectly still on the Stargate platform, eyes slowly scanning the area. He was looking for anyone who might see them, she realized. Satisfied that they were alone, he turned to the DHD and dialed another address.

Garin was covering his tracks, she surmised. There was little chance anyone back on PR6-342 had managed to break into the transport in time to see them, but Garin was obviously taking precautions just the same.

'I don't like to take chances,' he said as they stepped out of the event horizon again and into a dense forest. It was daylight, though the sun was low in the sky. She didn't have enough information to know if it was rising or setting.

'Then what were you doing lying near death in that transport?'

'My reward for a good deed,' Garin said sourly. 'A mistake I don't intend to repeat again.'

'Who are you hiding from?' she asked. Maybe he was feeling more talkative now that they were out of immediate danger.

Trees surrounded them in every direction, so close together that there was nothing but a thick layer of dead leaves on the forest floor. There was no sign of civilization, and the forest was preternaturally still. Janet wondered if the sound of the Stargate had startled every living thing into silence, or whether there were no living things here except the plants and them.

'There are people here,' Garin assured her. He moved through the trees as if he knew exactly where he was going, and after a moment, Janet realized that he did. He had been here before. 'That's right,' he said. 'The transfer is difficult even under the best of circumstances. Normally you and I would take time to regroup, to rest and heal and learn about each other. But I have an appointment to keep.'

She definitely didn't like the idea of not knowing where they were going or why. And while a part of her didn't want to get to know Garin any better than she already did, she had questions, so many questions. 'You didn't answer me,' Janet said.

'Who am I hiding from?' he asked. 'Actually, it's more like running, I suppose. The answer is Apophis. Or the Tok'ra. Or assorted bounty hunters. Or all of them.'

The casual manner in which he listed everyone he was evading made her blood freeze in her veins. But the only name on the list that genuinely surprised her was the Tok'ra. 'You said you were Tok'ra," she accused.

'I said I used to be Tok'ra. I'm not anymore.'

'Is that why you're running from them?' she asked, already tired of the game of twenty questions in which they were engaged. She also didn't like the idea of being public enemy number one on the Tok'ra most wanted list, either. This was getting worse and worse by the moment.

'Actually, you may come in useful in that respect,' Garin said, and it took Janet a second or two to figure out what he was talking about. In addition to the conversation they were overtly having, he was also picking up her other thoughts and feeling. That was why this conversation was wandering all over the map; he had access to a lot more than just what she was aware of saying to him.

For his part, Garin waited patiently for her to catch up. 'You'll get used to it in time,' he said gently. 'I should have allowed you to give Samantha my name,' he said. 'But I was distracted and not thinking strategically. I was too focused on securing the Stargate and escaping.'

'What do you mean?'

'The Tok'ra have an alliance with the Tau'ri. Now that a valued member of the Tau'ri is my host, the Tok'ra might not be so quick to kill me should they catch up with us. But I didn't give her the information so we will have to deal with things as they come.'

'You still haven't explained why the Tok'ra are after you,' Janet pointed out, thinking that Garin had to be the most exasperating creature in the universe.

'Hardly,' he said. 'I've met plenty of beings who are far more exasperating--'

'Stop that!' she commanded sharply. 'Just answer my questions. If I'm you're hostage the least you can do is answer my questions.'

'You're my host, not my hostage.'

'I don't see much difference from where I'm sitting,' she said darkly.

'You volunteered to become my host. What did you think you were agreeing to?' He was getting angry now; she could sense it as clearly as if the anger originated from her.

'Not this!' She had intended to think it, to keep that to herself, but obviously that wasn't an option now. The truth was, she hadn't thought very far beyond finding a way to save Sam. 'Could you find another host? Let me go?'

She felt Garin twitch with anger, could feel his defensiveness twisting inside her like a living thing. He was desperate, just as desperate as she'd been back in that transport, though he was doing his best to hide it. 'You want to hurt me,' she said, horror washing over her with the realization. 'Hurt me until I do whatever you want. Hurt me just because you can.'

'It would be so easy,' he hissed, anger boiling out of him like pus from an infected wound. They stopped walking abruptly, and stood rigid in the woody twilight. She could feel the muscles of her hands and arms clenching painfully, feel the sharp sting of fingernails digging into palms. Janet waited, not knowing what to expect, terror washing through her as she began to realize just how helpless she was.

He drew several deep breaths, and she felt him deliberately relax the muscles in her hands and arms. When he held up her hand, for her to inspect she realized, she saw that the bloody marks where her fingernails had pressed right through the skin of her palm were already healing. In minutes they would be gone. 'I must never do that,' he said. 'I will never do that. I promise.'

She didn't know whether to believe him or not, though at the moment she sensed that he seemed sincere enough. But the depth of the rage, how quickly it rose to the surface and had nearly overwhelmed Garin, frightened her.

'That's why I need you,' he said. 'And why I can't let you go. Changing hosts is not like changing clothes. It is very dangerous. I could die and so could you.

'You have two choices,' he added. 'You can accept this as the choice you made and we can work together as partners. Or I can subvert your consciousness completely and you can spend the rest of your life seeing and hearing, with no voice, slowly going mad in a waking dream.'

She thought about it for a moment. 'Not much of a choice, when you put it that way,' she said. 'Will you answer my questions?' she asked. 'When I ask them and not before?' she added.

'Of course,' Garin agreed. 'Would you like to walk for awhile? I will direct you. But we must move quickly.'

She agreed, not knowing when she would get the opportunity to move of her own volition again. There was no hope of escape, but it felt good to have this measure of control, no matter how small, again.

'You actually already have the answers you need,' Garin told her as she lifted her hand, relieved to discover it obeyed her commands. She began walking in the direction Garin had been walking in until they'd stopped, assuming he would tell her when to turn. 'And I'm not male.'

'I know,' Janet said. 'The symbiotes are genderless.' The truth was she continued thinking of Garin as male simply because it helped her to further distinguish him in her own mind. Besides, she reasoned, it was only natural since he'd been in a male host when she'd first encountered him. She considered telling him that he'd simply have to put up with it, but checked herself; if that scene a few minutes ago was any indication, he was far too volatile and unstable, and she'd be better off simply humoring him. Then it occurred to her that he was probably aware of her whole line of reasoning and the whole thing was moot.

'Pretty much,' Garin said, confirming her thoughts. Janet swallowed past a thick lump that suddenly formed in her throat. Her steps faltered for a moment, and she paused, leaning shakily against a tree. A wave of sympathy emanated from him.

Resting her shoulder against the rough bark of the tree, she wiped her lips against the back of her hand, feeling like she was going to throw up. She could sense that Garin was impatient, that he wanted to take control of her body and be on his way. 'Why don't you, then?' she asked bitterly. 'It's not like you have to ask permission.'

'True,' Garin said. 'This will get easier with time,' he added. 'You must believe me.'

The worst part was, she did believe him, but she didn't want to believe him, didn't want this to get easier. Didn't want him inside her. And she also didn't know if she really believed him or if he was putting those thoughts and feelings into her head.

'They're yours,' he hastily assured her. 'I can take control of your body, and know what you're thinking and feeling, but I can't make you think or feel anything.'

'So how does this work?' she asked, pressing the palm of one hand against the tree and pushing herself upright. It was no use; she couldn't hide from him, and that was the worst part. 'Do I get any privacy at all?'

'In time you will develop thought processes that I can't access. You've already noticed that you are not privy to all my thoughts, but I am to yours.'

'Kind of a one-sided partnership, don't you think?'

Garin was silent for a moment. 'You would not want to know everything that I know.' There was such a palpable current of despair radiating from him that Janet nearly stopped walking again.

'The genetic memories?' That had to be the explanation, and she mentally kicked herself for not thinking of it before now.

'You can't even begin to imagine.'

He was right; she didn't want to know. The sense of darkness hanging over him, lurking just beyond her reach sent a chill through her and made her absolutely certain that for the time being she was better off not knowing everything. Jacob Carter had told General Hammond that he knew everything Selmac knew. Now she knew that wasn't entirely true, though Janet suspected Jacob and Selmac had concocted that small lie to reassure both Hammond and Sam. It had worked.

Knowing that Garin was probably privy to all her thoughts, Janet decided to turn her attention to her immediate surroundings. They'd arrived on the planet just as night was falling, she realized, as the darkness grew steadily deeper around him. She didn't particularly relish the idea of wandering around an alien woods at night, but she had a feeling Garin would push them toward their goal through the night. She didn't think having a symbiote enhanced her night vision; so far she hadn't seen any evidence to indicate that that might be the case.

The sun had either set, or was just about to, and the woods had turned positively gloomy. The trees here had to be ancient, she thought, some so huge their trunks were nearly three meters wide. Younger trees, probably only decades old, were sprinkled in and around the older trees.

It was also a paleontologists dream, she realized, catching sight of an enormous fossilized ribcage cradling several species of plants as they passed through the forest. At one point she climbed around a massive, horned skull, glancing down at the enormous, hollow eye sockets, and remembered the nightmare of the pyramid with a small shudder.

Throughout this portion of the journey, Garin had kept to himself, silently ruminating about something, but not commenting on her own thoughts or providing much in the way of guidance. Janet assumed they were still headed in the right direction, and wondered how far they were going to be travelling. And what was waiting for them when they got there.

Garin had said before that she already had most of the answers to her questions, and Janet wondered what on earth he'd meant by that. She wanted to ask, had, in fact, so many questions she almost didn't know where to begin asking. Perhaps Garin had meant that she'd gotten the information during the exchange, when she'd accepted the symbiote into her body, but had forgotten them. If she had, it certainly wasn't a surprise, she mused; there'd been so much, too much information, all of it so painfully foreign and intimate that she'd shied away from most of it.

She wondered if she had access to any of it now, and decided to risk trying a small experiment. So far, certain bits of information, like the fact that Garin's presence on PR6-342 had been a secret, or that he'd been to this planet before, had just drifted into her head. She hadn't actively sought any of it out. Now she concentrated, tried to visualize what was waiting for them.

There wasn't anything definite, just a sense of an appointment that Garin urgently, desperately wanted to keep. He didn't know what who he was meeting looked like, only that the individual in question had an artifact, what Garin thought was a data crystal, that he would kill to get his hands on.

That last thought nearly brought her up short. There was no mistake; he would kill if he had to. He had to get that artifact.

Garin was watching, she realized suddenly, waiting quietly on the fringes of her thoughts. He was also very amused.

'It's a small piece of technology The Ancients left behind,' he told her.

'You don't even know exactly what it is,' Janet said. 'Do you?'

'I think it's a map.'

'And the people you're running from, they all want it?

'They would all kill for it,' Garin told her dryly. 'And so would your people if they knew about it. This may be the single-most important artifact in the galaxy.'

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