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[Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - ch.04: Vigil
Chapter Summary: Medical emergencies. Silence on the radio.
Index post: [Fic] Beneath a Beating Sun - Index
He'd barely made it through the gate when the air flashed blue around him.
Half a second of comparative silence shattered in the SGC's alarm, and the Iris closed down over the open wormhole. Jack spun, fighting a moment of disorientation, then ran for the control room. "Walter, what the hell are you doing! We've still got people offworld!"
"Automated defenses, sir, radiation spike," Walter said, hands poised above the controls. "We're broadcasting a 'do not proceed.'"
"Radiation spike?" Jack demanded, pulse too hard in his ears to understand. "How? Why?"
"The shield," Daniel said, bearing crumpling inward.
Jack looked at him, and it hit. "Oh, no," he said, halfway between ordering it and realizing what it meant. "She had that thing working!"
Daniel didn't respond, eyes locked on the iris as if it had come to kill him.
"She had it running!" Jack said again, the only thing he could force past the chorus of (Ohgod ohgod ohgod ohgod) screaming through his mind.
"Sir, the radiation is–" Walter gestured to the screens. The radiation graphs pulsed: strong washes, four seconds apart. The blast door groaned downward to seal the room.
Jack lunged at the radio mic. "Carter!"
No response. (Ohgodohgod–)
"Carter, can you hear me?"
Still nothing.
Jack's heart hastened, triphammering up the back of his throat. Something dark rose with it, sinking in and chilling. "Carter, if you can hear me, respond. Now. That's an order."
Nothing.
"Come on," he added, unvoiced.
"Sir, radiation is rising, even through the iris," Walter said. "We're recording dangerous levels."
Jack let go in a quick, spasmodic gesture. "Shut it down," he said quietly, staring past the blast door to where he knew the Stargate stood. "Shut it off."
"Jack–" Daniel began.
Jack turned to the control room, eyes skipping over everyone without seeing any of them. "Everyone here needs to get down to the Infirmary," he said hollowly. "There's a chance all of us may have been exposed to radiation. We don't know how much, but we aren't taking chances. Everyone down to the Infirmary, right now." He turned to the 'gate techs. "Walter, call in the emergency control room team."
"Yes, sir," Walter said.
The Stargate shut off and the sirens fell silent, replaced in an instant by the rushing of blood past Jack's ears. "Move!" he yelled – at no one, at everyone. They moved.
Vertigo followed silence, and he put a hand out. Before he could think Daniel had grabbed his arm, propelling him down into the hallway with the crowd.
Halfway down the hall – flat grey, lighter than the outpost but as bleak – his stomach clenched up, and despite Daniel's guidance he crashed against a wall. He lost seconds, couldn't feel them pass. The next thing he saw were Daniel's eyes tunneling into him. "Jack. Infirmary. Now."
Daniel didn't have to say anything else, because at that point Teal'c came up behind him and pulled him from the wall. He didn't have to say move it or radiation or Carter or (God, Carter–)
He found his footing as they hauled him away.
-
Daniel kept his grip on Jack's arm, so tight he couldn't tell whose pulse he felt in his fingertips. For the moment everything narrowed down to the task at hand: get Jack help. Radiation. Jack had been exposed. Jack needed help. The thoughts circled in his mind until they'd eclipsed everything else – which was a momentary blessing, because the thoughts they eclipsed were worse. The Infirmary was his goal. The world could fall apart there. No sooner.
He'd barely stepped through the door when a medtech intercepted him. "Doctor," the man said, extracting Jack from his grip and sending him off with another tech. Someone'd told the medical staff to prep for injuries: a full contingent of techs and nurses swarmed through the crowd, while Dr. Fraiser and Dr. Carmichael managed them and the patients at once.
Daniel shook his head, searching for purchase in the confusion. "They're all–" he said, fighting the din. "It's radiation, it came through the gate–"
"We know, Dr. Jackson," the medtech said, pushing him to a bed and pressing scrubs into his hands. "Change into these."
Then he was gone, moving swiftly among the crowd.
Daniel dropped onto the edge of the bed, world reeling around him. Nothing made sense: the blips and tones of Infirmary machines, the fear in the patients' voices, the urgent footfalls. Everything should have.
He thought he heard the clicking of a geiger counter, but couldn't make it out. The details passed him by. A nurse came, took a blood sample and bandaged him up. Another on his rounds took his blood pressure, recording everything in sharp jots on a clipboard. One of the medtechs drew the curtains between beds, which should have lessened the torment. Instead his mind filled in what his eyes had no access to. He imagined the teams bleeding, skin cracking open, blood rising like bile up the throat–
He'd been through it. He'd been through Neitu and sarcophagus withdrawal and Nem's mental torture and nothing, nothing compared to that – the scream of nerves as the body fell apart. Literally. As doctors looked on because nothing could be done.
His hands fisted. Radiation was not unknown to the SGC; they had minor cases every now and then. When they'd found Quetzalcoatl's pyramid SG-1 had gone so far as to find a new kind of radiation to be exposed to. But accidental exposure on this scale, from a source so deadly it had already killed one of their own–
He pulled his arms up around his head, fists at the back of his skull, caging himself in with the images that wouldn't dispel. Radiation had come through the 'gate. The same radiation that Sam had faced back there, that they'd left her to, the same pulse that must have–
Jack had been hit. He'd seen it, seen him stumble in the hallway. He couldn't do anything. Radiation gave no second chances. In an instant, it was decided. In an instant, it was over.
From behind the curtain he could hear Jack throw up. It sounded worse than the sirens or muted explosions, worse even than the silence from their attempts to raise Sam. He would have done anything to fall deaf for just a few moments.
Fraiser came around the curtain, checking a clipboard quickly. "Daniel?" she asked, concern breaking through her voice.
Daniel dropped his arms. "What's happening?"
Fraiser explained slowly, answering the obvious question instead of the real one. "Colonel O'Neill was right – most of you were exposed. Fortunately it's much lower-level than it could have been."
"What does that mean?"
"Most of the cases are light or negligible," Fraiser said. "We think the Colonel got the worst of it. Just under three sieverts dose equivalent."
"Three," Daniel said, but the number meant nothing to him. He could remember his own death – disorientation, irradiation. He'd stepped outside the Kelownan lab and vomited. Jack was still retching.
Fraiser looked at him, taking in his haunted gaze. She smiled gently, patting his arm with one gloved hand. "Yeah. He'll be down for a couple of days, and a week or two after that he'll experience renewed fatigue and illness, but he should recover."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure," Fraiser said. "Daniel? Are you all right?"
Daniel stared as if he didn't understand.
Fraiser smiled again, forcing reassurance into her expression. "Just take some slow, deep breaths for me, okay?"
"Sam's still on the planet," he said. (By now there's nothing left,) whispered his mind. (Biological matter is vaporized in the sun.) He couldn't parse it. Ignoring the cold reason, everything in his experience screamed that she had to be back there. They'd left her behind.
Fraiser's jaw clenched, voice soft so it didn't crack. "I know," she said.
There was no oxygen in the air. None that his lungs would recognize. It was impossible. Fraiser couldn't agree. None of this was right. Didn't she see that? Why couldn't he?
Fraiser's glove squeezed down. "I'll be back," she said, and went toward another patient.
"Janet!" Daniel called after her, and she turned. Emptiness passed between them, and she turned away again. He caught the glint of grief before she turned away.
To his side the choking had stopped, replaced by ragged breathing. Daniel's hands twisted in the infirmary scrubs, and when the shaking threatened to tear him apart, he closed his eyes.
-
Six hours passed in agony.
Not physical. Fraiser and her staff tended to everyone, addressed the most minor of symptoms, and scheduled check-ups for every last person exposed. By the end of an hour all but four patients had been released: two gateroom guards, a technician, and Jack.
Jack was the reason Daniel hadn't left. Teal'c had stood by his side until Fraiser ordered him out, but she'd given no such directive to Daniel – perhaps because she knew the Colonel would never have left were he in Daniel's place, perhaps because she realized that it would be far kinder to let Daniel stay than to force him out. Daniel had kept a desperate vigil over his friend, noting every symptom as they appeared, comparing them against his fatal sickness of two years before.
Jack looked horrible. His skin had reddened in uneven blotches, garish against the pallor of his face. When he opened his mouth faint streaks of blood gleamed against his teeth, and on occasion his breathing would increase unevenly as if he was about to vomit again. An IV led into one arm, replenishing the fluids he'd lost to nausea. Fraiser had given him a sedative, albeit a mild one, which had lulled him into a state Daniel wouldn't call sleep – his eyes moved beneath his eyelids, slipping open without focusing.
Nurses had come back at two-hour intervals to take blood samples, check his temperature and blood pressure, and make new notes on his clipboard. Throughout it all Fraiser had been nearby, even as her shift drew to a close. No one in the SGC's senior staff would go home today. Daniel had barely moved by the time Jack woke up.
"Control room," were the first words out of his mouth.
Fraiser was at his bedside immediately, pushing him back before he'd risen. Most telling was the fact she was able to. "Colonel, you're in no state to be up and about."
"Bullshit." Daniel jumped – Jack wasn't the cleanest-mouthed on base, but he didn't curse so easily, and usually not at the medical staff. Of course that assumed anything, at the moment, was easy. "I have a SAR. I have to get up there."
Fraiser swallowed to clear her throat. "Sir, you've been out for nearly six hours."
What that was supposed to tell him was unclear – all that could been done had, perhaps, or by now there was even less chance than there had been. The message didn't transfer. "I know. You drugged me," he spat. "I have a duty to perform!"
"I'll call up to have a MALP prepped," Fraiser said, to mollify him. "Nurse Warren can stay on the the phone with them through the entire deployment."
"We came back hot from a planet whose status we still don't know," Jack said. "If Siler doesn't already have a MALP prepped and on the ramp, he's asleep. Now could you please just let me go up there?"
"You're in no condition to leave the Infirmary," Fraiser insisted. "Now, if–"
"Doctor." O'Neill's voice quieted, allowing no argument. "I have to get to the control room." He looked into her eyes, letting the reason pass between them. I have to find Carter. Even if all I can do is send out a MALP.
"Wheelchair," Daniel suggested. Fraiser glanced at him, about to protest, but caught the look in his eyes.
"Wheelchair," she agreed softly. "Despite my better judgement."
O'Neill didn't argue. Colonel Jack O'Neill, who would argue against a wrist brace, accepted the wheelchair with a shallow nod and no words at all.
"No more than twenty minutes," Fraiser admonished. "Less if possible."
"Get me the damn chair," Jack whispered.
Fraiser caught the eye of one of her nurses, and the man disappeared into the back room. Jack closed his eyes, steadying his palms against the edge of the bed. A moment later the nurse returned with the chair, wheeling it to the bedside.
Fraiser looked O'Neill over, taking in what she could at a glance. She didn't want to let him out of the Infirmary, and would have tagged along were she less convinced it would be the wrong thing to do. Colonel O'Neill was on the verge of a breakdown – stress exacerbating illness, illness exacerbating anxiety. His temporary release was in lieu of a sedative, her absence a moment of relative privacy. O'Neill proved instinctively stubborn with doctors, putting on the act that he was haler than he was. The act was one more stressor she wouldn't impose on him, understanding where he was going, and what he would find.
She and the nurse maneuvered him into the wheelchair, transferring the IV to a portable setup. Fraiser ground out her complaints – this was unwise, and she knew that. But to keep him there would be more so.
She looked to Daniel. Given Daniel's concern, he'd bring the Colonel back if he so much as blanched. Scant consolation, but consolation nonetheless. "Daniel, if he shows any signs–"
"Bring him back here." Daniel nodded, hands so tight on the wheelchair's handles that every tendon stood out.
"Go on," Fraiser said, and no sooner had she finished than they were out the door.
-
True to expectation, a MALP sat on the ramp when Jack arrived. A pair of techs checked it, adjusting sensors and equipment. It bore the hallmarks of special assembly – plating bolted on, casings constructed over the cameras and transponders. MALPs were designed for hostile environments. This one had been modified for a more hostile one.
A technician glanced back as they entered, quickly concealing his shock at seeing the Colonel in a wheelchair. "MALP is almost ready, sir," he said. "About three more minutes before it passes final inspection."
Jack nodded. "As soon as it's ready, send it to PV1-542."
"Yes sir," the tech said.
Jack's fingers curled and uncurled against his armrest, but he gave no other outward sign. His eyes locked on the techs, waiting for the okay. On the tech's screen, a clock flashed slow seconds.
After an eternity, the techs stepped away. One gave a thumbs-up as he stepped off the ramp – good to go. The tech dialed, the wormhole's flush sharp and searing against the control room's grey monotony. With a low whirr, the MALP moved up the ramp and forged ahead into the wormhole.
"MALP is en route," the tech said.
Seconds blinked by with malicious weight.
"MALP is through. We're picking up high background radiation, and–" The line cut. The tech jumped, quickly entering commands before looking back at Jack. "Sir, we've lost the MALP."
Jack stiffened. "How?"
"Radiation spike, sir." The tech checked the log. "Transmission length: two point one six seconds."
"So what you're saying," Jack said, low and even, "is that there's no hope."
The techs exchanged glances. Colonel O'Neill had thrown an accusation – he knew what it meant; he dared them to confirm it. No one wanted to. "I don't know, sir–"
Jack pressed a hand over his eyes, dropping it back to his lap after a moment. "How much radiation? What's the danger?"
The tech hesitated before answering. "It was enough to knock out the MALP, sir. Any human attempting to go through would be killed instantly."
"Are there any areas of the facility more shielded than the gateroom?"
"I don't know, sir–"
"Find out!"
The tech jumped, caught between Jack's order and his duties with no way to get out. "Jack," Daniel said, stepping in because only he could.
"We have survey results from that damn planet somewhere around here," Jack snarled. "Edwards did a full tactical assessment. That includes shielding, so if someone here wants to go find it!"
"Sir," said one of the techs, a braver man than Daniel, "with this much radiation the odds that anywhere on or near the planet's surface would be safe is extremely small. At this strength inert materials in the crust itself would ionize–"
"And if this place wasn't sucking power from a pulsar six hours ago that would mean something to me!" Jack barked. "Sergeant, get the survey!"
Hammond stepped in.
All activity ceased. The General didn't need to announce his presence – within the SGC, he couldn't hide. He could walk into a room and dominate by virtue of his presence there. Even Jack ended his tirade.
Hammond turned to the 'gate Sergeants. "Have you picked up anything on radio?"
"No, sir. With this much interference, only the MALP with its booster could cut through."
"Indications?"
"We didn't get much before the probe was knocked out. From what we can tell, life support is down. Temperature has dropped to about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, pressure to about point eight atmospheres. I can't say exactly what the ambient radiation is – levels were still climbing when the MALP died. If I had to take a guess, I would place it in the thousands of grays if not higher."
He gestured at the open wormhole. "What do you need in order to continue your recon, Sergeant?"
The Sergeant shook his head. "We don't have any equipment that could withstand the radiation on the other side, sir. There's nothing we can do to continue recon."
Jack's jaw worked, but he said nothing. Hammond sighed quietly through his nostrils. "Shut it down, Sergeant. Jack, could you come into my office?"
Jack didn't express it, but an echo of betrayal colored the back of his eyes. "Sir?"
"Just for a moment, Colonel," Hammond said. "Please."
The please finalized it – this wasn't a request. It was the gentlest possible order, and at the same time, the cruelest. Jack knew what Hammond had to say.
"Yes, sir," he answered, steeling himself as he reached for the wheels.
Daniel took initiative, pushing him out into the hall at a quick walk and toward the elevator as Hammond took the stairs. Jack tried not to grimace, tried not to argue – the minor indignity of having Daniel wheel him from place to place paled in comparison to what had coming.
Daniel walked him there and maneuvered the wheelchair to sit before Hammond's desk, carefully avoiding the General's eyes. "Thank you, Dr. Jackson," Hammond said. "If we could have a word alone."
"Yeah," Daniel breathed, and escaped, closing the door behind him.
Hammond sat down heavily, reaching for words he'd hoped never to need. "Jack–"
"Sir," O'Neill said, cutting him off at the outset. "I'm sorry if I seem a little driven at the moment. We might not have much time."
"To do what?"
"To find Carter!" Jack sat up straighter, trying to impress urgency upon Hammond through the strength of his gaze. "General, every four seconds we're sitting around doing nothing–"
"What exactly do you think has happened here?" Hammond asked.
"I think we left a key member of my team in a hostile situation," Jack answered. "And I think we are going to extract her."
Hammond gaped. Jack was the realist of SG-1 – while Teal'c sometimes tended towards fatalism, Jack's optimism had always been tempered by long experience. But he could don impressive blinders when his team was concerned. If he'd been told that he could sift the radiation from the air, the next minute would see him on the planet trying. "We can't go through the Stargate. You've seen that. And even assuming we could get close enough to the planet to find anything of any use, most of our spacefaring allies are either avoiding us or wiped out–"
"We have to go back, sir," Jack stressed. "We don't know the planet's status. She could have a partial shield up, she could have found a protected area of the base–"
"Colonel," Hammond said.
"The bottom line is she could still be alive!"
"Every scientist I've spoken to has said that the safeguards are either on or off. With that much radiation there's simply no way to shield part of the installation without it spreading," Hammond put in. "And from your own initial reports, all safeguards were about to fail before you went through."
"We don't know that, not for sure!" Jack took a deep breath, reloading as he scrambled for points. "We still don't know how the systems there work, but they are so far beyond us. Isn't there the chance–"
"Colonel."
"If there's a chance, we have to take it! Don't we owe it to her to try?"
"That's not the point!" Hammond protested. "You saw yourself the effects of that much radiation. There is no way–"
"So we find some radiation – suit, some something! We get the Asgard to lend us a probe, we time a UAV to go through in the window, we–"
"Colonel!" Hammond interrupted. "Jack. ...it's over."
Jack stammered to a halt. "General–"
"I'm sorry," Hammond said softly.
Jack collapsed, letting his forehead fall into his palm. He dragged his fingers through his hair, finally dropping his hand onto the desk. "...she's gone," he said.
Hammond didn't confirm it. He didn't need to. O'Neill had known the truth when the iris had closed behind him. "I'm sorry," was all he could say.
O'Neill didn't raise his head. Hammond's gut twisted – Jack was so obviously ill, glanced by the same radiation that had taken his second in command. Hammond didn't want to sit him down at the briefing room table, turning the cameras on him – put him through the torture that was and always had been investigations of mission casualties at the SGC.
"If I'm dismissed, sir, I think I'd like to return to the Infirmary," Jack said. Most frightening was the chill in his voice. He didn't speak as someone whose hopes had been shattered, he spoke as someone who hadn't honestly hoped to begin with.
"Of course," Hammond said, standing. Jack made half an attempt to rise before reason caught up with habit.
Hammond opened the door to find Daniel sitting against the wall outside. For a moment Hammond stared at the pathetic figure he cut – he seemed smaller than the man he'd grown into. "Dr. Jackson," he said softly, speaking in the silence rather than breaking it.
Daniel looked up, almost through him.
Hammond wanted to reach out to him. The hardest part of his job was the distance, self-imposed or imposed from above, from below, from the letter of the regulations or the spirit behind them, he had to keep from the men and women under his command. He knew what Daniel felt – felt a good part of it himself, had felt it in totality more times in his life than he cared to recall.
But he wasn't Daniel. Nor was he Jack or Teal'c. He could understand from a distance, but he couldn't enter into that grief – he could offer support, but he couldn't impose it. The members of SG-1 – the surviving members – needed each other, now, to the exclusion of other concerns. If Hammond had taken three hours to get through to Colonel O'Neill, Daniel would still have been waiting when he opened the door.
He stepped aside. "If you could escort Colonel O'Neill back to the Infirmary," he began.
Before he could finish the thought Daniel was up, hands on the wheelchair. Hammond schooled his expression as he watched – they seemed like half-people, there in form but not in spirit, going through motions that offered no hope because their only other choice was to stop moving. Neither said a word, neither met his eyes. Their senses were trapped in another, shared world of mutual grief.
-
Fraiser waited on tenterhooks until Daniel and O'Neill returned, and as soon as they did she could see his condition had worsened. Not through exertion or medical complication, but through defeat.
It hurt, because it was an indication of what she'd known. Perhaps more than combat officers, her job dealt with death, but to her, death was the nemesis. She would and had worked to the point of exhaustion to stave it off, to keep a soldier breathing, keep his heart beating just another second, just another hour, just another day. In the course of her duty she poured every movable part of her soul into the blood and bone of another person – and if they died, they took a part of that soul with them.
It was harder when she was given no chance. Without that attempt, what she could have done, or couldn't, gaped so loudly it seemed to want to evaporate her into the vacuum. A friend as close as a sibling had died, too far away to reach. The distance engulfed her.
Daniel helped O'Neill onto his bed again, and Fraiser took charge of the IV. "Get some rest," she instructed him. The Colonel didn't acknowledge her. He stared at the ceiling, thoughts light-years away.
Daniel backed into his own bed, sinking onto the edge. His time on '542, the tension, the adrenaline, coupled with the emotional toll of the base team's return... all of these had taken their toll. Unlike Fraiser, he had no medial expertise – he couldn't take direct action. He could only watch, and make sure that Jack wasn't left alone.
"Why don't you find Teal'c to sit with him?" she suggested. O'Neill was deaf to the world, but out of deference she pitched her voice so he couldn't hear. "You need rest, too."
Daniel blinked. "Teal'c," he said, as if just remembering. A hint of the frantic edged up on his tone. "Where is he?"
"He went to his quarters," Fraiser said gently. "He's still here." By "here" she didn't mean on base – she meant findable, nearby, alive. A blow had been dealt to Daniel that he was too, too used to receiving; someone he knew and loved, a member of his family, had been stolen from him. Though he'd never admit it, never impose, he needed to see that no others had slipped away without his noticing.
"You'll call me if–" the sentence ran into a wall.
"I'll call you if anything changes," Fraiser said. "He'll be fine."
Three sieverts had a lethal dose near LD40/30 – forty percent of those exposed would die within thirty days. For the moment, Daniel didn't need to know that. Surgical limitation of knowledge. Given the math, he might break down completely.
Daniel stayed a moment longer, extracting every drop of reassurance from the sterile air. Moving on had never been his strong point – surviving was. In this aftermath, he found it hard to do both.
-
Teal'c's door swung open when he knocked, swinging back into dim light. Heat and scent wafted out around it; hot wax, sandalwood and myrrh. Myrrh was a funeral scent: burned at Roman cremations, used in Egyptian embalming. Daniel halted in the doorway, unable to enter the room.
Teal'c replaced the last of his candles in its box, standing straight. "Daniel Jackson," he said softly.
"You've been in here since we got back," Daniel said, guilt plain on his face. "I should have found you earlier."
"That was not necessary," Teal'c said. "I have been meditating."
"Kel'no'reem," Daniel filled in.
"Kel'renek'mel," Teal'c corrected.
Daniel shivered. A dark place inside him had grown darker. "...vigil for the dead."
"The honored dead," Teal'c corrected again.
Daniel's words tangled deep in his throat, knotting up beside his heart. "How did this happen?"
Teal'c looked down at him, eyes deep and distant. "How could it not?"