"But that’s- that’s impossible!" Nelson sputtered. "It can’t be her! It has to be just a similarity. Someone who just looks like her."
Silently, Tony unpaused the display again. The camera, Alvesh’s head, followed her movements as she passed by, and she looked directly at him before she was gone. Her hair was longer, and her clothes different, but it was, unmistakably, her.
Tony shut the device off. "Now you know why I wanted to show you first. I must have watched that a hundred times."
Silence invaded the room, interrupted only by barking from upstairs as Sylvia played with Molly.
"Then she really is alive, isn’t she?" Nelson heard himself whisper.
"But how does that prove she’s a member of the Alliance?" Avery put in. "What if she got out of the mountain on Hovak in time, couldn’t make contact with us because we were back on Earth, and she ended up starting a new life somewhere?"
Tony shook his head. "According to Alvesh, the name Sarlaya has been connected to the Alliance at least a dozen times. Nothing more recent than a few years ago, but still, she’s definitely a member. Or was, at least."
Nelson sat heavily in one of the desk chairs. "Now I really know I’m down the rabbit hole," he heard himself say. Finally, he looked back up. "So what do we do?"
"For now, we get more intel." Tony pointed back at the folder on the table. "From what our offworld contacts have been able to tell us, there’s a strong possibility the Alliance will send people here to Earth. Maybe they’re already here. Now, if Suna’s still alive, and still a member, she’d want to be one of those people."
"But how would they get here? The Stargate’s guarded around the clock, and any approaching ships would be picked up by our own ships."
"Maybe, maybe not." Avery shook his head. "We knew there was a cloaked ship orbiting Earth for over a year, and we still couldn’t find it until the cloak was disabled. If the Alliance got their hands on one, they could come and go as they please!"
Tony nodded slowly. "I know. Still, even cloaked ships give off sensor anomalies. If one of them is landed, we might be able to pick it up. That’s why I arranged a visit to the Odyssey later today. I’ll take a quiet look at their sensor readouts while I’m up there. The ship isn’t ready to leave orbit yet, not by a long shot, but its asgard sensors work just fine."
"Boss, why not just ask for that info? Why keep it a secret?"
"Because." Avery put in slowly. "She’s one of them. If the SGC gets hold of her, Homeworld Security won’t show any mercy. They’ll treat her as a terrorist."
"That’s exactly it. Nelson, If Suna got out alive, we have to find her first." Tony’s voice was soft, but his tone left no room for doubt. "All of the Survivors put their lives on the line for us, time and again. The very least we can do is give her the chance to explain herself, even if we have to end up handing her over." He shook his head. "No, for now, we keep this in the family."
As he thought about it, Nelson was forced to agree. Maybe if I hadn’t spent so long away from Earth, I’d feel more guilty about keeping secrets from them now.
"Speaking of the family, sir, why isn’t Pierson here?" Avery inquired. "He might be able to help us with Homeworld Security."
Of all the people who’d made it back to Earth so long ago, Pierson had risen the highest, at least career-wise. He had been offered a position with SGC Logistics almost as soon as they’d come back, and then one with Homeworld Security as soon as the division had been formed. Nelson had heard that he’d turned down a promotion on the way, but Pierson had never mentioned it. He’d been the hardest hit, when Hargrove had self-destructed.
"I tried to contact him, but I was told he was in a meeting at the Pentagon." Tony answered. "I couldn’t get through to him. He won’t be back from Washington for at least a week. David, on the other hand, said he’d be back tonight."
Tony closed the file and palmed the Tok’ra coin. "Avery and I will handle the Odyssey. Before we go, though, I want you two to arrange some personal leave time. If we’re gonna take care of this off the record, we can’t keep on being called into the SGC every day. David’s still on medical leave, so he won’t have that problem." He gave them both a very serious look. "I know I’m asking a lot of you both, but we owe her that much. I just hope we can find her before she gets into more trouble than she already is."
-.-
The wormhole disengaged and David took a long look around the ‘gate room. Everything was the same… but different. Even though he’d been gone less than a week, he felt as though his perceptions had suddenly expanded, and he knew it was because of Alvesh.
It reminded him of when he’d come home from Hovak.
Reaching around his restraint collar, he scratched at an itch on his neck, and heard a familiar laugh from the west entryway. Nelson was there, leaning on the wall. Someone who didn’t know him may not have noticed, but David could tell that his smile and demeanor seemed forced.
Tony must have told him everything.
They exchanged awkward pleasantries on their way out of the mountain. David could feel Alvesh’s amusement in the back of his mind, kind of like a murmuring chuckle from a studio audience.
Oh, be quiet. He responded sternly. This isn’t easy for him, or for me.
I said nothing. Came the quiet rejoinder. Still, perhaps I should speak to him. It may ease things.
As he had back with Tony, David ‘sat back’ and let Alvesh take the lead, as he’d done during his conversation with Tony.
It was such a strange feeling! He heard his own voice, albeit a bit deeper, but they weren’t his own words. He could feel what Alvesh felt, and what he intended, but he knew those intentions didn’t come from him. He could feel Alvesh’s practiced ease as he navigated the conversation with Nelson. The symbiote knew everything David did, and avoided every pitfall. Soon, they were joking and laughing with each other, as if they’d known each other for years.
For the first time, David was sure he’d been right to volunteer for the blending. Not just for Alvesh, but for himself as well. I’ve always had an eye for the ladies, but I was never able to keep anything long-term going. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t sure what I really wanted. Maybe Alvesh can help me find out.
With a start, he realized that Alvesh could hear everything he’d just thought. His cheeks reddened briefly, but Alvesh mercifully didn’t respond. Privacy, true and utter solitude, it seemed, were things of the past, and he’d have to get used to that.
His truck was still in the parking lot upstairs. He felt himself get into the driver’s seat, and a sense of elation from Alvesh. The symbiote knew how to drive, of course, because he had David’s memories. Still, actually doing it for the first time gave the symbiote a thrill that David found just as funny. It was like reliving his own first time behind the wheel.
The collar made things a bit difficult, but he managed fine. As their conversation continued, Nelson looked closer at it. "Why d’you keep that thing on, Alvesh? Why didn’t you just heal yourself using Tok’ra technology?"
[I have… issues with that kind of healing.] David heard himself say. [As long as neither of our lives is in danger, I prefer to repair the injuries myself.] He scratched underneath the collar again. [It should be safe to remove by tonight. You feel the same way about most medications, don’t you?]
Nelson stared at him in surprise, before chuckling. "Yeah, that’s right. Of course you’d know that." He looked out the window. "What are we doing here, of all places?"
David looked outside. Row upon row of graves stretched on up the hill, some with flowers at the headstones. A few people could be seen standing in front of various plots.
David could feel Alvesh’s hesitation, so he took control again. "I need to see Hargrove’s grave again, Nelson."
Nelson gave him a sceptical look, but said nothing as they wove their way up the hill. It didn’t take them long to reach it.
A simple message was engraved on the small tombstone:
Lucius Hargrove
1969-2001
Friend and Consummate Professional.
May he now find the peace he never could in life.
"If only he’d known Suna was still alive." Nelson whispered. "It would have changed everything for him."
David cast a careful glance around. No one was within a hundred feet of them. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a scanner, carefully depositing it on the grave itself.
"What are you doing?"
"I have to be sure," he answered sharply. After only a few seconds, the readout display flashed, and he snatched up the scanner again. With a sinking feeling, he read through the results. They were in Goa’uld, but of course he knew that language now.
"David. What the hell is going on?" Nelson insisted.
His stomach felt like a lead bowling ball. Looking back at Nelson, he lowered his voice. "When I looked into Alvesh’s memories and saw Suna, my heart almost jumped out of my chest. At first, I was so happy I couldn’t speak! But that didn’t last after I had a chance to think about it. If she made it out of that mountain, she would have tried to make contact with Hargrove as soon as she could. She knew Earth’s ‘gate address. She could have dialed the SGC at any time! Why didn’t she?"
Nelson shrugged. "Maybe she thought he was dead. We made that assumption about her."
"Or maybe she knew he wasn’t." David paced around the grave for a few seconds. "After we got back, Hargrove went into a free-fall pretty quickly, didn’t he? He started drinking a lot, even though he’d never really had a problem with alcohol before. He quit the SGC, cut off all ties with us, and ended up dying in a car crash six months later."
"He was broken up over Suna. Who wouldn’t be?"
David shook his head vehemently. "Maybe, but he would never endanger his own life for no reason like that! You remember how he was after Cayo died. He was cold, calculating, and vengeful. I could see him going after the Goa’uld, maybe going rogue in his pursuit of vengeance, but not drinking himself into an early grave!"
He cut off, and Nelson waited patiently.
"I just ran a scan for a specific radiation signature on the body. It comes from Goa’uld nano-technology, and it’s very easy to spot if you know what to look for." He looked at the scanner again. "It’s there, all right."
"What does this… nano-technology do?" Nelson’s voice was suddenly very quiet as well.
"It’s used to age people rapidly, Nelson. With enough of the nanocytes, a person could go from infancy to adulthood in a month. Maybe less."
"Meaning…?"
"Meaning that’s not Hargrove in there. We buried a clone."
Nelson didn’t respond. His face blank, he stared back at the grave.
"He must have cloned himself," David continued slowly, "and used the nanocytes to bring the clone up to his own age. Then he killed it, put it in his own place, and disappeared." He shook his head. "We found the body, ran an autopsy, and assumed it was him because we didn’t know what to look for. Meanwhile, he was off God knows where, doing God knows what."
Nelson’s voice was shaking. "Are you sure about this?"
"As sure as I can be without actually digging the body up. I can pick up the radiation signature from here."
Nelson’s legs wobbled, and he sat roughly on the grass. David knew how he felt. "But why would he do this?? What possible reason could he have to give us the runaround like this? And how on Earth did he get his hands on these… nanocytes to begin with?"
"I don’t know." David responded grimly. "But something tells me the Colonel won’t rest until he finds out, and neither will I."
-.-
It’s easy to forget just how wondrous all of this really is, Tony reminded himself. I mean, I’m walking down the corridors of a spaceship! We’re in geosynchronous orbit, and about twenty-two miles below us, my daughter is in her middle school, completely oblivious. NASA itself doesn’t even have a clue!
While the older version of Earth’s battlecruisers, the BC-303, was based on Goa’uld technology, the more recent 304s had significant advantages, thanks to the asgard. The technology they had provided Earth had allowed these newer ships to fly between galaxies, use beaming technology to zip from the surface to the ship without the use of rings or shuttles, and even detect deposits of naquadah on the surface from orbit! While the Odyssey was still more than a month from being battle-ready, it was still an impressive sight to behold.
The original 303, later known as the Prometheus, had been hijacked while still under construction on the ground. Since then, once a ship’s hull integrity and life support were finished, it was launched into orbit and finished there, for security reasons.
Behind him, Avery seemed equally awed. When Tony nudged him, he snapped out of his reverie and followed him into the sensor substation.
Most of the room was filled with familiar equipment. A phone on the wall, door-lock keycode readers, keyboards and monitors with information streaming across them. By contrast, in the middle of the room stood a small, white inclined table with a series of stones set on it. That, Tony presumed, was the asgard console.
He pointed it out. "Get to work, Avery. That console should have everything we need stored in its archives."
"Why aren’t we just scanning from the bridge, sir?" Avery asked as he stepped up to it. "It would be a lot easier."
Tony shook his head. "Colonel Emerson’s been given command of this ship, and I don’t know him very well at all. I doubt he’d allow us to use the sensors without a good reason, and I can’t give him one yet. We can use the archive without raising any suspicion, though."
"Pity." Moving one of the stones, Avery hesitated, and then turned it slightly. A monitor on the wall suddenly lit up. "There. I’ve transferred the information. It’ll still need a ranking access code to open the file, though."
Tony approached the console hesitantly. He had the security clearance to open the file, but doing so would leave a trace that someone could follow. This was the point of no return. Up until now, they’d all had the option to back down, and return to business as usual.
No. Not after what Nelson had told him from the surface. Hargrove and Suna were both almost certainly alive, and Tony had to find out for sure. Setting his jaw, he entered the code.
The screen changed to a global view immediately. Tony set it to rotate slowly, showing the results from the last global scan, taken a few weeks ago.
"What are those?" Avery pointed at a few red dots on various continents.
"Discrete sources of naquadah. Because it doesn’t occur naturally on Earth, those had to have been brought here by the Goa’uld, or by our own people." Tony centered on the blurry dot in Colorado. "That’s the Stargate, for example."
"Right."
As Tony continued sifting through the data, Avery took up a position in front of another monitor to help him. All the other sources of naquadah were easily explained: the cult compound outside Seattle, the cave under Glastonbury in England, several sites in Egypt near where the ‘gate had first been found, Area 51 in Nevada, and the Antarctic outpost. He moved on to searching for sensor anomalies, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was entirely possible there was nothing here to find, after all.
Then Avery called for his attention. "There’s a problem here, sir." He pinpointed an area in northern Montana, a fifty foot square a few miles outside one of the smaller cities.
Tony looked it over, but didn’t see anything unusual. "What’s the problem?"
"The time code." Avery zoomed the display out, and then adjusted it to show when each area was scanned. "According to this, the scanning beams passed over this area in the first hour of the scan. It took them about six hours to do the whole planet."
"So?" Tony wasn’t following.
"Well, the clouds in this area aren’t where they’re supposed to be. I ran a check, and this image is from an entirely different scan cycle!"
That piqued his interest. "Someone doctored the image?"
"Looks that way. I’m running a trace now. Whoever did this apparently didn’t know that the asgard programming records all changes made to the file." Avery grunted. "No name, but I have an ID number." He shook his head. "I don’t recognize it."
"I don’t either, but at least it’s a place to start."
