06 - Siren Song (7 page)

“Sir… sir.” Sam lifted her hand in an appeasing gesture and then scrubbed
it over her tired face. “I’m sorry, sir. I should have waited for your order.”

“You have done nothing wrong,” Teal’c said, still staring at Jack. They were
toe to toe now, eye to eye. “Nor have I.”

“They’re all in my head,” Carter said haltingly. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“All of them. Every one she took as host.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack said, his voice rising. “Make sense,
Carter!”

“Do not raise your voice to us in this manner,” Teal’c said, tensing with
readiness. Daniel glanced at Aris, who was paying rapt attention to the little
tableau, and then over at Sam, whose features were contorted into a mask of
horror.

“It’s happening again,” Sam whispered. She backed away from Jack and Teal’c
until she hit the wall and could go no farther. “I don’t want your memories!”

In that moment, it clicked for Daniel—Sam was talking about Jolinar. Not
her memories, but the memories from Jolinar’s blending. He leaned as close to
the force field as he could and said then-names sharply, breaking their focus on
each other. “Whatever’s happening here, it’s not about us. Do you hear me? Stop
this.”

Jack blinked at him, then turned toward Sam, who was sinking toward the
ground, curling inward in a fetal position. “Carter,” he said sharply. He took a
couple of steps in her direction, then stopped suddenly and raised his hands to
his head. “What the…” He staggered backwards and Teal’c stopped him, holding
him up with one hand on his elbow. “Okay, that’s…” Jack sat down abruptly; it
looked more like a fall, to Daniel, but Teal’c eased the way. “I know
that’s
not real,” he said, and his hands went to the back of his neck, scrabbling
down the back of his collar and over his bare skin there, and then to his
throat, to smooth the unblemished skin. “Yeah,” he said, as if confirming
something the rest of them weren’t privy to.

Daniel looked up to find Aris watching them. He didn’t seem nearly as wary as
he should; this was obviously not a new experience for him. “What the hell is
happening to us? You know, don’t you?”

Aris wavered under Daniel’s direct, furious gaze, then admitted, “I’ve seen
it before.”

“And you didn’t think you needed to warn us?”

“What good would it have done?” Aris shrugged. “The effects are temporary. I
didn’t think it would take you long to get this thing open.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

“Obviously. My faith in your abilities was clearly misplaced,” Aris said.

“You need to take the others back to the surface,” Daniel said. “I’ll keep
working on this, as long as you want. Just—”

“Not a good idea,” Jack said. He was pale as a ghost. Teal’c helped him up
from the ground; Jack patted Teal’c on the arm, a wordless apology, and Teal’c
released him. The tension between them dissolved as quickly as it had risen.
“We’re not leaving you down here.”

“Jack, I don’t need you here.” Daniel hated to say it, but if the brutal
truth would convince Aris, then he didn’t care. “I don’t need any of you. Not
even Sam.”

“You do need me,” Sam said. She made no attempt to get up, but her eyes were
like laser points, focused on Daniel’s shaky argument. “Maybe if you can’t get
the thing open with words, I can do it with science. That device…” She pointed
to the small indentation in the wall to the left of the door and then let her
hand fall to her lap. “I should stay.”

“I don’t need you,” Daniel said again, a bit more desperately, but he could
tell from Jack’s expression it was a losing battle.

“With what just went through my head… or, didn’t…” Jack cleared his
throat, but didn’t elaborate. “We all stay. Or we all go. I vote for ‘go’.”

“What gave you the idea your vote counted?” Aris said.

“Then tell me what’s happening to us, so we can use it to help,” Daniel said.

“Would if I could.” Aris crooked a finger at him, and Daniel reluctantly
moved away from his friends until he was back before the door. “I’ve seen it in
Sebek’s Jaffa. Even in Sebek himself. It’s been getting worse lately, but he
keeps coming down here. It’s like he can’t stay away.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t think this was information I might need to know,”
Daniel muttered.

“Is that enough of a ‘reference’ for you?” Aris taunted.

“Every piece of information is part of the key,” Daniel snapped.
“You
don’t seem to be affected by whatever this is.”

“Very perceptive,” Aris said. Daniel waited for an explanation, but of course
Aris had nothing else to say on the matter; it was ridiculous to expect him to
give up anything that wasn’t pried out of him.

“Listen.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck slowly. “Why can’t Daniel work on
this up top? Take a few notes, maybe… work from them…”

Aris tilted his head to the side, then said, “Too late.” A moment later, the
sound of Jaffa stomping down the corridor came to Daniel faintly, growing
closer.

Jack sighed. “This day just gets better and better.”

Jack wondered if Jaffa did something special to their boots to get that extra
stomping, ringing sound when they marched. It was all about the intimidation and
the rib-cracking, which, admittedly, was pretty intimidating. He figured it
wasn’t a coincidence that the Jaffa stomped in precisely the same rhythm as the
throbbing in his finger and the pounding in his head. A conspiracy all over.

He rubbed his neck and listened to the stomping and the syncopated thudding
of the crushers and pictured Aris Boch on the receiving end of some Jaffa
intimidation. Then he remembered that Aris had probably been there and done
that, thus their current predicament. So, he decided to multitask, turning part
of his attention to actively hating the Goa’uld. Oh, and because they were so
lucky, an apparently obsessive and possibly crazy Goa’uld.

“Is there any other kind?” Daniel asked.

Startled, Jack looked at him through the field. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Yeah.”

“The part about the boots?”

“No,” Daniel answered. “Not the part about the boots.”

“This place sucks.”

Teal’c glowered through the force field at Aris. “I concur.”

Jack was going to respond with something snarky about how nice it was that
Teal’c was such a team player, but Jaffa-shadows were looming, and the stomping
was getting closer, and Jack was too busy counting the shadows to deal with
Teal’c at that moment. Four of them. Two front, two back, Sebek probably in the
middle. And, of course, Aris Boch with his blaster, and the force field, and the
fact that Carter was still hunched over her knees against the wall, staring
blankly, and that Teal’c was standing down but still scowling his most
dissatisfied and scary scowl. There was a crawling in Jack’s skin his rubbing
fingers couldn’t scour away. He saw kneeling and possibly rib-cracking
intimidation in his future.

“What are those? Lizards?” Jack aimed his chin at the helmets of the honor
guard that swept out of the narrow tunnel mouth and down the ramp into the
antechamber. They were in the standard cowls and grieves, two of them in skull
caps and the other two in helmets thick in the neck and extending out into long,
toothy snouts. Red, beady eyes glowed as the Jaffa took up positions in a row
behind their god.

“Crocodiles,” Daniel corrected. “It’s a symbol of rebirth.”

Jack’s smile was thin and bitter. “I love their sense of irony, don’t you?”

Daniel nodded and turned resignedly to face the nemesis du jour. “Funny,” he
said.

Coming as close to the field as he could get without numbing his face, Jack
cocked his head and studied the Goa’uld. “Funny?”

“The tattoos.” Daniel pointed at the forehead of the nearest Jaffa. “That’s
Lord Yu’s mark.”

“Huh,” Jack said. He wasn’t sure whether to celebrate about that or not, but
he didn’t have time to think on it too much, since the Goa’uld was stepping
forward and looking down his nose at them.

As anyone who knew the Goa’uld would expect, Sebek was wearing a fine
specimen of a host, easily six-two-and-a-bit without the elaborate King Tut
headdress. He tipped the scales at two-twenty give-or-take, but was fine-boned,
full of lean muscles, like a gymnast or a diver. His eyes, traced out in dark kohl, were pale grey and
too direct, aimed at Jack like they could flay him, turn him inside out. Even
though his own eyes were burning and his vision was a little foggy at the edges,
Jack looked back and didn’t blink, and Sebek’s full lips curled upward at the
corners in a coy grin, part condescension, part admiration. His skin was dusted
with gold all the way down his neck to the gilded crocodile cowl that encircled
his shoulders and gripped the ends of his linen cloak in sharp ruby teeth. Jack
wondered if any Goa’uld would be able to fight at all in that short linen skirt
and delicate gold-wire sandals. Then again, the ribbon device on Sebek’s right
hand meant that he wouldn’t have to. Rib-cracking intimidation was going to be
the least of Jack’s worries.

Sebek’s smile widened as he leaned forward to run a gold-capped finger across
Daniel’s cheek, grip his chin, and lift his head so he could delve into him with
those eyes. Jack couldn’t stop his hands from clenching and was rewarded with a
flaring stab of pain from his broken finger.

“So,” Sebek said. Actually, it was more like a purr, his voice low and
insinuating and confident, the voice of somebody who was used to never having to
raise it or repeat anything. He had perfect teeth and showed them all as he
turned Daniel’s head this way and that. “You are going to unlock our treasure
chest.”

The voice crawled up Jack’s spine and slithered into his head. Things stirred
somewhere at the back of his brain, sibilant.

“Aris Boch tells us many things about your people. He has promised us that
you are intelligent, talented in unique ways, and that you will be useful to
us.” Sebek smiled again and let Daniel go. “In addition to being sturdy and
rather beautiful.”

Daniel’s face was taking on that clenched-jawed resistance, his brow notched
in a frown. He met Sebek’s eyes directly, and Jack pretended he didn’t notice
how similar their stares were. Behind him, he could hear Carter getting to her
feet, the faint whisper of her jacket against the stone as she dragged herself
up the wall. Sebek’s eyes slid away from Daniel and looked over Jack’s shoulder
at her, frankly interested and assessing. The slithering at the back of Jack’s skull was making his flesh crawl.

Sebek turned his attention to Teal’c.
“Shol’va,”
Sebek murmured,
drawing out the epithet like it was a term of endearment. The smile thinned and
became satisfied, cruel. “A prize. There are many who would offer great rewards
for your return. There will be a demonstration of our power, and you will remind
your brethren what it means to defy a god.”

“I will not.”

Shrugging Teal’c’s assertion away, Sebek addressed Aris. “You.”

Aris stepped forward, his blaster angled toward the ground. Jack had to
flinch a little inwardly when Aris bowed his head; he could feel the muscles
protesting. His own neck twinged in sympathy and he added that to the list of
things to hate the Goa’uld for, since sympathy for Aris Boch was the last thing
Jack wanted to feel.

“If you are correct about these,” Sebek waved a golden hand in the team’s
direction. “Perhaps your—”

He stopped, and the hand came up to his temple as his eyes rolled up for a
second, showing white. Jack could hear Carter breathing hard behind him and a
sound that might have been, “Oh, God,” but he didn’t turn to look; he focused on
the Jaffa who shifted nervously, hunching their shoulders. The ones in the skull
caps exchanged quick glances; the other two were like machines in their helmets,
but still they seemed to crumple for a moment under the weight of their armor
before recovering. Jack felt like he could crumple a little, too, curl away from
the winding slither along his spine, and he reached out to steady himself on
Daniel’s shoulder, only to yelp out in pain when his hand grazed the field
between them. Not that Daniel would have been able to do much, anyway, since he
was swaying on his feet, eyes wide, unseeing.

Teal’c caught Jack, kept him upright while his vision grayed out and the
hissing in his head tried to resolve into words. When Jack opened his eyes,
confused as hell, Sebek had recovered and was watching him with that same
unwavering gaze. Inwardly, Jack cursed missed opportunities.

The snake angled his head toward Aris, then pointed to Daniel.

“Bring him,” he ordered.

Hopping to it like a well-trained dog, Aris grabbed Daniel and dragged him
after the Goa’uld toward the vault. Daniel’s feet were slow, his body boneless,
and he stumbled in Aris’ grip with both hands cupped over his glasses, his head
hanging low.

“You will open this door,” Sebek said with imperturbable assurance. There was
a faint clatter as his capped fingers ran across the incised writing and then
over the raised Ancient warning. “You will open it, and we will claim our
rightful prize.”

Daniel straightened and looked up at the door, his own fingers reaching out
and sweeping reverently across the writing. “So… you actually know what’s in
there?” he asked faintly.

Oh, no. No way,
Jack thought. He knew that tone of voice. That was the
sound of Daniel disappearing into a question, sliding into that place where all
that mattered was the script and the dead voices. “Hey!” he shouted. “If you’re
so interested in getting in there, why don’t you do it yourself? You’re the
god
here, right?”

Sebek turned his full attention on Jack, and Jack steeled himself for
whatever was going to come next. As so many snakes did, Sebek stared him down,
as if unable to believe the level of insolence that was being shoved in his
face. Jack got some satisfaction out of that. Even if it was the last he was
likely to have for a while. “Release them,” Sebek ordered, and Aris’ hand went
to his wrist, where the controls were. The force field separating them from the
Jaffa fell.