magibrain

Title: Beneath A Beating Sun ch.14: Escape
Chapter Summary: Desperate gambits, and shaken resolve.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index

"Jack!"

Jack tore himself away from the window in time to see Daniel storming down the stairs toward him, eyes lined in murderous grief. "She's not dead!" he shot before Daniel could launch whatever verbal attack he had planned.

Daniel stopped short, pain and anger written from his feet to his fists. "How can you know that?"

"Because if there was any possible way to survive, Carter would find it," Jack said.

"You–" Daniel began, before the words hit him. "...now you believe me."

Jack looked back out the window, scouring the towers in the distance. "She proved herself."

Daniel looked out at the tower, teeth grit. "So that's what you meant by calling you 'sir.'"

Jack closed his eyes – and snapped. "Will you stop it?" he demanded, wheeling around. "Just – stop!"

Daniel jumped. "Wh–"

"Stop acting like I planned this, like I wanted her to die! I didn't like not knowing, but even if it hadn't been Carter, do you honestly think I would have found a way to kill her off?"

"I didn't–"

"And she is not dead! All right? I don't know where she is, but she is not dead. She did not go through the whole Ascension routine just to die here. So don't – go – looking at me like I set this whole thing up! Like I wanted it to happen!"

Daniel stared. Jack's hands flexed, he took a long, shuddering breath, and turned back to the window. His fingers curled into fists around the railing, white-knuckled.

"She's not dead," he said again.

Daniel didn't know what to say. He'd suspected, hoped, whatever, that she'd been Sam. Memory wiped or not, he'd had her back for the time she'd been on base. But between the time he'd seen Jack last and now, Jack had been reunited with her – and now she was gone again. To Jack, it must have seemed like the work of an instant. And if he knew anything, it was that Jack was the one who'd ordered her off – or, if not ordered, okayed her to go.

Part of Jack's insistence was faith, because if she had survived this far, how could she die on an offchance? Part of it was desperation. When he said she wasn't dead, he meant I didn't kill her. Not again.

Daniel approached. Jack wasn't shaking – he'd gone back to full command mode. As far as anyone could tell, he was in control. "What happened?" he asked.

Jack didn't have time to answer. McKay appeared in the doorway, doubling over almost immediately in an attempt to bring himself closer to the air. "There you are!" he said. "Whatever whichever of you did, it worked."

"Didn't do anything," Jack said, turning his back on the window and absently ruffling dust out of his hair. "You all right?"

"Did you know I had to run all the way here?" McKay said. "This place really needs some kind of transit system, or–"

"You could've just called," Jack said.

"Tried that." McKay took in more air than was strictly necessary. "There's a lot of radio interference in the air right now. Probably a result of–" he waved a finger at the sky. "What was that, by the way?"

"Satya," Jack said, cutting him off. "Turned one of the shields into a space gun."

McKay frowned. "How?"

"You'll have to ask her," Jack said. McKay looked around.

"Where–"

"No idea." Jack flicked on his radio. Static came out. "Can you scan for her?"

McKay looked around. "Not from here. Are we staying?"

"Is it safe?"

"Well, for now," McKay said, still trying to catch his breath. "We took a lot of damage to the installation, but it's sealed doors and bulkheads so we're not venting atmosphere from these main areas. But now that Anubis isn't trying to destroy us any more–"

"Good enough." Jack stepped up. "Find her."

"Shouldn't we be trying to–"

"Find her," Jack said again.

McKay stared for a second, but didn't ask. "Fine. I'll be in the sensor diagnostic room if anyone needs me."

"Speaking of Earth," Daniel broke in.

"Right." Jack checked his watch. "Hammond is probably wondering where we've gotten to. I'll call home; you two find Satya."

"Use the MALP's transmitter," McKay suggested on his way out the door. "It may be strong enough to cut through the interference."

"I know," Jack said, turning back to the DHD. He'd almost started dialing when he glanced back again. Daniel was frowning, holding his dosimeter up to the light. Jack stopped so fast that for a moment he stopped breathing. "Daniel?"

Daniel returned the dosimeter to his MOLLE with exaggerated calm. "We got a dose," he said. Jack's dosimeter was up against the lights before Daniel could add "A little one."

The needle had barely moved. Jack told his heart to resume normal operations, and glared at Daniel. "You could've said that part first."

Daniel watched him. "We are so lucky to be alive," he said, as if he wanted Jack to keep it in mind.

(And we keep getting here the same way.) "I know." He hiked a thumb back at the 'gate. "I'm going to tell Hammond."

And I'm going nowhere, Daniel answered without saying anything. He walked out into the hall.

-

"Unscheduled offworld activation!"

Hammond stepped up to the techs' computers, fighting the urge to order blast doors down. "Who is it?"

"We're receiving a transmission on SG-1's MALP channel," Walter said. "Audio and video."

"Bring it up."

The screens around the control room came on, revealing Colonel O'Neill's face against a cracked and smoking backdrop. Relief at his survival waged a brief but intense war with apprehension at the base's status, ending in an ungainly truce.

"Colonel, what happened over there? We tried to contact you but couldn't establish a connection."

"Anubis jammed our 'gate," O'Neill said. "We couldn't dial out, either. And not for lack of trying."

"Wh – are you all right?"

"For the moment. Turns out the entity was our ace in the hole after all." He shifted, glancing offcamera. "General, for what it's worth, I think Daniel was right. I think the entity is – was – Carter."

"Are you sure?" Hammond asked.

"...no," O'Neill admitted. "As sure as I can be. Gut instinct. Still no proof, though. Not that it helps us now – we have no idea where she's off to. Haven't seen her since the attack."

Hammond tried to parse his tone. Wariness, weariness, resignation, anger – few things could impart that mixture to Colonel O'Neill's voice. He knew he'd never get the full story of what had happened there – even the most comprehensive of mission reports couldn't bring him into the reality of things, the immediacy, the true press of circumstances that had prompted whatever actions had occurred. "What's your status now?"

"Now? We're secure as far as we can tell. Last we saw Anubis' ship was falling out of orbit. McKay thinks it crashed somewhere on the other side of the planet – or, if it recovered, it would have left the system on that side and we wouldn't be able to track it. In any case, we shouldn't leave until we've looked through a few more of these systems." His tone changed, dark humor infiltrating. "This may be the first engagement we've ever had where we managed to kick Anubis' ass, sir. It's worth the risk of staying longer."

"Understood." He searched for something else to say – to address the Carter dilemma, to make it seem more real or better or – or something. "Colonel, if the entity – or Major Carter – reappears, report in. Regardless, I'd like you to check in hourly."

"Got it." Jack hesitated. "General, how's Earth holding up?"

For a moment, the world faded out. His stomach sunk. "We destroyed the al'kesh threatening Earth," he said.

"And–?"

"The Prometheus was lost with all hands on board."

The news filtered through the radio, out the MALP, and Jack looked down for half a second. He looked up again, meeting Hammond's eyes through the camera. "I'm sorry."

"So are we. But the best we can do now is pursue the avenues available to us."

The Colonel nodded. "We're working on it. I can check in with McKay, see exactly what happened."

"Good luck," Hammond said.

O'Neill gave the MALP camera a weak thumbs-up, and cut the feed. A moment later, the wormhole disengaged.

Hammond stepped back. SG-1 was alive. Not everyone had been sent out to die. Not all his teams would join the Prometheus in infamy. For the moment, that was enough.

And if they were right, if Major Carter had survived...

It was a long shot even for SG-1. But SG-1 had a surprisingly good record of making the long shots. It was possible. That was enough, as well.

But this was a long way from over. Carter wasn't back yet. They thought she might be out there somewhere – but the universe was very, very large, and they still had no idea where.

-

She opened her eyes to darkness.

Then she blinked, because the sensation of having eyes to open, real eyes, eyes of tissue and fluid, was so foreign, so alien, and yet so instinctively right that she didn't have words to describe it.

Sitting up, she looked around, then down at herself. Along with the eyes came skin, bone, hair – and blood, if the splatter where her cheek had rested was any indication. Nerves, too – she felt pain all up and down her back, could feel the burst bruise on her cheekbone. And she felt cold.

Her first thoughts bypassed words entirely – surges of confusion, bursts of recollection, experience and causality replaying in her mind. She remembered the dynamics of the attack in precise detail, the opposing entity – and the first word to intrude upon her mind was the name, (Anubis.)

Before that her memories muted, which frightened her. She could remember every detail, but the intensity had been turned down – she could remember the energy of the pulsar beating around her, the entities of whom she had been one, but she couldn't re-experience it. A flash of panic tore through her, answered by a second – she couldn't remember this fear, this kind of emotion. It was too strong, too implicit. She looked at her hands, turning them over in renewed anxiety. She'd been frozen in static form. Not as tenuous as her own self-imposed analog, not as prone to violent loss of integrity, but immutable. (Human,) came the second word. (Me. Human.)

She looked around. She was in a room – a small room, walls and a closed door. Another flash of panic moved through her – she was confined. She couldn't get out. Couldn't go through anything, not as a solid, physical being. She stood unsteadily, first trying to consciously moderate her balance and finally letting instinct take over. She walked the few steps to the door, searching for a device to open it. The facility had used devices. Of course, she'd had the advantage of going through the facility noncorporeal first, mapping out what physical bits produced what energetic changes, mapping out the wiring. She found buttons at the side of the door, tried them all in sequence, and gave up – none of them did anything, and trying all possible sequences, especially without knowing how long the sequences were to be, would take too long.

(...too long?)

She paged through her memories – what she'd gleaned from the entities, from Colonel O'Neill, from Daniel, from her conversations with Bregman and McKay. Suddenly, much more was making sense.

"Oh," she said, surprising herself. She tried again. "...oh."

(Sound,) she identified. The words came much easier now. (Sound. Speech.) "Language." It should have been much harder to figure out this system of parts – tongue and lips and vocal cords and velum – than to simply produce the modulations directly in the air, but it wasn't. It felt as if she'd always known how. "Identity." She looked at her hands again. "Identity!"

She thought back, before arriving at the SGC as the entity, before waking in the pulsar – and hit nothing. The same sense she'd been trapped within for as long as she could remember – the sense that something should be there, but wasn't.

"...identity," she said again, feeling bitterness imparted somewhere down in her throat. Another set of words floated up from wherever they'd been hiding. "So much for that."

Then she laughed, and had no idea why.

Searching her mind brought up more words, amusement and hysteria, neither of which she could put her finger on. She couldn't help feeling that something had gone wrong in whatever had happened to make her like this – that she was experiencing human emotion with only an entity's capacity to understand it. Then she wondered if humans had a greater capacity after all. "That's a question I don't have time for," she said aloud, marveling at the ability to quantify time, to divide it into blocks of minutes and hours and seconds. This was as exhilarating as it was terrifying, and she didn't know how to respond to that.

But at the moment – the moment – the duration ahead of her seemed long and dark and cold. She couldn't leave, and wouldn't know where to go in any case. All she could do was wait.

So she waited.

When Anubis came in she had arranged herself in a huddle, cheek tucked against her knees, arms around her legs to conserve warmth. And, had modesty made more than a subconscious announcement of its presence, it would have served that purpose too. She looked up at her enemy without moving her head – he seemed angry. (We disabled the most advanced ship he had,) she thought.

"Do you have clothing I could wear?" she asked politely.

Anubis snarled. "Thank me instead for not rending you asunder," he growled, the energy behind his mask roiling. "If you help me repair this vessel I may be moved to spare your wretched existence."

She regarded him cooly. The threat didn't have the effect it should have. "If you wanted me dead, you'd have killed me," she said. "And you wouldn't put up with me unless you needed to. You'd only keep me alive if I provided something you couldn't get on your own, so you won't kill me now."

Anubis leaned in. "Do not be so certain," he rumbled. "And do not underestimate my own capacities. You assume that there is something I cannot come to know. This is a dangerous assumption."

"Still," she said, "you can't afford to be here long." (Duration!) "The longer you're gone, the more chance the System Lords will defeat your fleets and steal your technology. You need me to speed things up."

"Then perhaps, if my time is already going to be wasted here, I shall console myself with your torture," Anubis threatened.

She looked at the hem of his cloak, exhaling. "I think that will happen whether I help you or not," she said.

"And you would pass up this opportunity to study the technology of the God, Anubis?" Anubis asked, switching tacks. "For if you help me in repairing this vessel, there is hardly any way I could stop you."

"Then you'd kill me as soon as your ship could fly again," she said. "But either way, I'm not going anywhere without clothing. You might not notice, but your life support is damaged. It's very cold in here."

Anubis let out an exasperated roar, and stormed out of the cell. She closed her eyes and, with nothing else to do, soon slept.

-

She woke when a bundle of dark cloth landed against her leg.

She looked up to see Anubis glaring down at her. "Clothing," he snapped.

She turned her attention to the clothes. She recognized them, but not from her own memories – it took her a long time to place it. This was the cloth attire of Anubis' elite troops, black and supple. This particular set was probably too large for her, and furthermore, it was smudged with blood and reeked. She glanced up at Anubis.

"I do not keep clothing for human females aboard my ship," he said. "You will take this or you will go without."

"Okay," she said, unwrapping herself to go through the articles. Half of them she had no idea what to do with. She had the unpleasant feeling that they had been torn from a dead Jaffa somewhere on the ship, and that the bloodspatters might be irradiated. Most of the truly confusing bits were the most bloody – probably undergarments. She carefully put those aside.

Anubis stood in the doorway, watching impatiently as she figured out the trousers, the tunic, and finally the jacket with its wide belt. After some experimentation, she got it into a state where it was tight enough not to fall off, loose enough to move around in and not be too uncomfortable. Then she slipped her bare feet into the sandals, lacing them up around her ankles. It still smelled, and it was clearly made for someone of more girth, but it was more than serviceable. (At least he provides his slaves with good equipment. This is very well made.)

"Now," he barked, sweeping a hand toward the door. "Come!"

She straightened up, approaching Anubis. He turned and stalked into the hall, anger apparent in the rhythm of his steps. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"To the engine room, where you will assist me in making this vessel spaceworthy again," Anubis growled.

"We can't do that," she answered. Anubis stopped.

"What?"

"This ship's integrity has been compromised," she explained. "And its engines have been fused. I remember doing it."

Anubis closed the distance more quickly than she expected. It barely occurred to her to duck before one gloved hand caught her across the jaw, unbalancing her and sending her into the wall. His hand felt strange, she thought – not like her own. Colder, more rigid, more knobbed. "If you must forge the crystals anew with zat'n'ktels, you shall remove me from this rock!"

She put a hand to her cheek. At this rate she'd be bruised on both sides. At least that had an agreeable symmetry. "I don't think you have the necessary equipment on this ship to re-forge crystals," she said. "If either of us are going to leave here, we need a smaller, self-contained system. One I couldn't reach."

Anubis considered. "A tel'tak."

"I don't know that word."

Anubis walked past her, close enough for his robes to sweep past her face. His footsteps didn't sound human, either. More like her own, as physical Satya. "Come!"

She stood. "Where are we going?"

"To the tel'tak hangar," Anubis said. "Where you will proof one of my tel'taks against the star."

"I can't do that," she said and ducked when his hand came sweeping around, but failed to anticipate when it came back to close around her throat. Anubis lifted her with unsettling ease – she still thought of herself as solid, massive, heavy – and she realized that she wasn't breathing.

"Do not defy me," Anubis said.

This presented a problem. Speaking required passage of air through the throat, which Anubis wasn't allowing. She shook her head instead.

Anubis dropped her, reacquainting her with gravity again. "I don't know how you proofed this ha'tak," she said. "But those systems have been destroyed. That's why all your Jaffa are dead."

Anubis made a noise she'd never heard a human make. "Then what do you intend to do!"

"There are parts of the universe radiation can't naturally penetrate," she said. "The region through which the Stargate passes is one."

"Subspace," Anubis filled in.

She nodded. "We're protected by the bulk of the planet here," she said. "That's why I'm not dead. So all we have to do is get a craft to enter subspace–"

"Hyperspace."

"Before leaving the planet's shadow."

"Without acceleration," Anubis translated.

"Is acceleration necessary?" She thought back. "Your systems might force it. I don't think it's a physical law."

"Then you can make these adjustments," Anubis said.

She nodded. "I can try."

"Come," he said, and she stepped back on instinct. This time, however, he walked down the hall without attempting to damage her. She followed.

(Anubis is bad,) she thought. (I shouldn't let him off this planet. But I need to get away. I have to sustain myself and I can't, here.)

She looked around. There were things that could be used as weapons – they passed the corpses of Jaffa who still held their staff devices, though those were likely burnt out and she had no way of gauging how much force it would take to injure him. For the moment she put physical aggression out of her mind.

Anubis brought her to the tel'tak hangar, and opened the one nearest the outer hatch. "Perform the modifications," he said. "And explain, as you do so."

(That would give you information. Information is an advantage.) She considered. (Selective misrepresentation of facts.) "I'm sorry. My grasp of language atrophied while I was–" She looked down, aiming her gaze through the floor to where the sun might be. "I'm not capable of explaining well yet."

Anubis snarled but said nothing. She pulled out one of the crystal shelves, looking over the components. (I wish I knew the energy patterns. I can't see anything in these.)

"This will take a while."

"Work as quickly as you can."

She pulled one crystal out, and the lights flickered. She put it back in again, and slowly set to work.

-

She had no conception of hours. She could feel time passing, and she could divide it, but she didn't know what criteria that division should follow – what constituted a second, what a minute felt like. She had the feeling that a long time was relative, but she didn't know what to relate it to, so she didn't know whether or not it took a long time for her to finish. Compared to how long it had taken for Anubis' patience to wear out, it was. Compared to how long it had taken to come up with a plan, it wasn't.

"I think I'm finished now," she said.

Anubis paced back to her. "You think?"

"I need to see how the engines react," she told him. It wasn't exactly a lie. "I'll bring them online."

Anubis followed her to the control seats, and stood behind her. "Well?"

She brought the computer online. (This would be easier were I not physical.) "Everything works like it did before I changed it," she said. "That's good."

"And the modifications?"

"I know how these systems work," she said. "I can read what it tells me. You check the engines when I bring them online."

Anubis pivoted, stalking off to the rear of the craft as she brought the computers up and checked through the systems again. Engines were good, life support good – (Aha.) Airlock and inner door controls also good, bulkheads intact and stable.

She glanced over her shoulder. Anubis had bent to the console, but hadn't yet opened up the drive controls. (Well, now or never.)

She disabled artificial gravity, and sealed the door.

Anubis whipped around, not fast enough to stop her. The next thing she heard was him slamming against the hatch, and then a quick scrabble against the console.

(Now is better.)

The tel'tak lurched up, and she held onto the seat as well as she could with one hand and both ankles and shins. The rear hatch was still open.

She rolled.

Gravity, realizing that they still hadn't been formally introduced, took the initiative with gusto. She almost slid out of the chair, and had to fight to remain oriented – not upright, because now upright would have her head pointing somewhere at the second seat. She threw her weight against the control, calculating angles and trajectories of fall in the back room. And then she shook the craft until she did slip out of the chair, sliding for the wall.

(Now. Should go now.) She braced herself, re-enabling ship's gravity and scrambling into the seat. If Anubis hadn't been shaken out she was at a loss – she couldn't overpower him, and didn't imagine he would be inconvenienced by a lack of atmosphere. But she had no way of eliminating the risk further, and no way of checking that wouldn't waste time. She brought the engines online, tearing out of the bay as fast as the tel'tak would go.

Radiation was closing around her – the planet's shadow wasn't as large or deep as she'd calculated at first. She hadn't engaged the hyperdrive for fear of taking Anubis with her, but now it had better work. She didn't know that it would.

(Has to be done.)

She hit the command.

The ship lurched, the engines whined, and the hull made an unhealthy protest. Then the field engaged and it skipped in a direction no one'd made a word for, out of normal spacetime, careening her blindly forward–

(It worked!)

Giddiness eclipsed time and whatever situational awareness she'd acquired. Until she came down, she didn't realize that her plan hadn't included what to do now.

That was a problem.

(Okay,) she thought. (I need to find people. I need to ask someone what to do and tell them about Anubis. Where can I do that?)

There was the pulsar planet, of course. But she couldn't approach the planet in this ship, and didn't remember – if she ever knew – the associated symbols. She pulled up the computer's navigation system.

The navigation banks had been synced with the main vessels'. They were more comprehensive than she expected – her experience of travel was through the Stargate and through the empty space between the pulsar and the planet.

High on the list – an artifact of the synchronization was that these had inherited the organization of their parent data – was the targets Anubis had intended to attack. She considered turning past them and finding Earth, but she didn't know how to find a place on Earth to go to. Most of Earth would not be able to help her. A targeted planet meant an enemy of Anubis; one of them had to be friends with her friends, had to help her find them.

(Tok'ra,) she read off. It was a collection of coordinates, really, ranked in what looked like order of probability. (Tok'ra is good. Anubis knowing about the Tok'ra is not so good. I hope they haven't been destroyed.)

She picked the closest coordinates. They were high on their sub-list. The ship dropped out of hyperspace to turn, and she was on her way again.

More time passed. It was almost distracting. She sealed and pressurized the back hatch and opened the door – she couldn't hear Anubis, and she'd need to get back there eventually anyway – and checked everything carefully. No Anubis. No malfunctions.

The tel'tak came out of hyperspace in orbit of a small, grey world, and descended into the atmosphere to scan. She held onto the main controller as it moved of its own accord, finally coming to a stop over a nondescript patch of ground.

The ship's ring sensors blipped on, and she swallowed. (Well, it's now or never. Again. ...I hope this is the Tok'ra base. I hope they recognize me. Or at least that they don't shoot on sight.)

She set the ship to hover above, and stepped up to the ring mechanism. Hitting the sequence for delayed transport, she stepped onto the platform and took a deep breath.

(Here goes nothing,) she thought, and the world turned to light and warmth–

–depositing her into a cool tunnel tens of metres below ground in the midst of seven Tok'ra brandishing zat'n'ktels. "Tal'bet!" one snapped, almost before she'd reintegrated. "Tal'shak!"

She raised her hands slowly. She felt she should understand what he'd said – part of it, anyway – but his posture and demeanor left little to be interpreted.

"Na'nei," a second said, lowering his weapon. "Tao've'nu! Ta tau'ri juhok." The weapon dropped further. "Kree Selmak jankin!"

The first Tok'ra lowered his weapon and ran down a side tunnel, leaving her surrounded by a slightly smaller contingent of wary, but not immediately belligerent, sentries. She looked around the circle, lowering her hands. She didn't have much to say, and they didn't seem interested in starting a conversation. Besides, whatever grasp of Goa'uld she'd at one point possessed was submerged in the same grey fuzz as the rest of her life.

The standoff lasted for what she guessed was several minutes before it was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps from one of the spur halls.

"Sam?"

She turned. The voice she'd heard had cracked and quavered, and its owner looked as ready to fall apart.

The ring of Tok'ra split, backing off to make room for him. He looked over her, reaching out one hand to take her shoulder. "Am I goin' mad?" he asked.

"I wouldn't assume so," she said.

And before she knew it, she was enveloped in a hug. "They said you were dead," he said against her ear. "God, Sam – what happened? How'd you get out? ...how'd you get here?"

"Um," she said meekly.

He released her enough to hold her at arms length, looking over every contour of her face. One of his hands moved up to her cheek. "You're hurt," he said.

"I'm fine," she said, trying to wrest memory from an unwilling mind.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

It came back in bits and pieces – disconnected images, smells, sounds, disembodied emotions removed from context or explanation. Nothing that added up to a certainty, or a memory. Just hints that something was there – ephemeral nuances that vanished when she reached for them. She didn't feel all right. She felt lost, without any indication of how to get home.

"Sam?"

"It's, I – ascended, I think," she said. "Not exactly. But my, ah, memory–"

His face fell, but he schooled the expression quickly. "Of course," he said. "I heard that happened with Daniel." He scrutinized her. "No memory at all?"

"A bit. Not much."

"You don't recognize me," he said.

She felt tears welling, and didn't know why. "I want to."

His face changed. The skin around his eyes bunched up, and his mouth looked like a smile but wasn't. "It's me," he said. "Dad."

(Dad.) The word tugged at her – security and longing and lonely things like stars. (Father. Similarity. Family. Identity.) "Dad," she said, and thought (Home. I want to go home.)

Her father pulled her in again, rubbing her back. "Hey," he said. "It'll be okay. I mean, if you can remember something, you can remember the rest, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed.

"But now, let's get you taken care of," her father said, pulling back to look at her cheek. "...and get you a change of clothes. I don't want to say anything, but–"

"I smell like dead Jaffa," she supplied.

His face wrinkled. "I'm not gonna ask," he said. "We'll get you into some proper Tok'ra clothes. And then we'll get you back to Earth and give Jack a heart attack."

(Jack? –the Colonel,) she pieced together. She remembered him, at least – not just him but being in his mind, taking on his memories as her own. Flecks of knowledge flitted just beyond her reach. She could almost remember. (Jacob,) her mind gave her – her father's name. (A heart attack means surprise. Because Sam was – she was – I was dead. And now I'm not, any more.)

"Yeah," she said. "I want to go home."

His face changed again, that not-a-smile reappearing, and his hand didn't move from her shoulder. "Sam," he began, and she could tell he didn't finish the thought. "Let's bring you back."

---