Mathématique: Chapter 43

Young could smell smoke. Or, he thought he could. It was fire season.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Panic attacks. Memory loss. Violence. References to torture.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 43

Young leaned against the hood of his car. Heat radiated from the asphalt, from the black paint of his Charger, from the city of Colorado Springs. The night breeze, dry and strong, smelled of distant wildfire.

Was the forest burning? Or was the smell of smoke nothing more than memory?

His back ached, deep and angry.

Yards away, Jackson stood in khaki pants and a brown blazer, illuminated irregularly by the headlights of passing cars. Young couldn’t hear him clearly, but he recognized the leveling of Jackson’s hand near his eyes, the familiar sweep of repeated gesticulation. He was describing Vala. He’d described her five times to five agencies in as many hours.

Young tried to decide if the guy in the suit opposite Jackson was FBI or NID. The maze of what could be disclosed to whom in a multi-agency operation like this was a labyrinth. Every time it opened up, it snared a local cop or an FBI agent with hustle who saw something they weren’t supposed to see. Heard something they shouldn’t hear.

More than a few SGC personnel had been recruited that way.

He checked his watch. 0400. More than eight hours since Jackson had caught a glimpse of Vala’s dark hair and blue shirt vanishing behind the closing door of a nondescript white van.

On a world with a stargate, on a world with Low Orbital Defenses that were a work in progress, on a world with a patchy tropospheric sensor network, on a world infiltrated by the Lucian Alliance and the Goa’uld, eight hours—

It was a long time.

Enough to be halfway across the galaxy. Enough to be in all kinds of trouble.

The night was warm and the darkness was thick beyond the multi-agency lights that shone on Il Fiore Bianco.

Young’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it free and answered.

“Cam. Hi.” He pressed his free hand into the ache in his back.

“Hey.” Mitchell’s tone was hard.

Young knew how he felt. “You guys have anything?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Mitchell said, the steel in his voice tempering toward exhaustion. “We found the van. Abandoned. Choked with surveillance equipment. A fifty-fifty blend of our stuff and Goa’uld tech.”

“Sounds like the LA,” Young growled.

“Yeah, or the Trust,” Mitchell agreed.

“What else you got?”

“Nothing,” Mitchell said. “We started a sweep—on foot, by car, by chopper—fanning from the van’s location, but it’s pretty likely, pretty damn likely, that they ditched the thing and hightailed it via beaming tech. Carter’s scanning as we speak, looking for residual EM signatures but—” he trailed off.

“Yeah,” Young said.

“How the hell did this happen?” Mitchell asked. “She was with Jackson. She was with him.”

“I know.” Young watched the archeologist gesture at the suit in front of him like he was trying to pull Vala out of thin air. “This is bullshit.”

“People are floating theories, but Jackson said it was five minutes she was out of his sight. Less maybe. Either we’re dealing with a level of surveillance that blows the mind, or—”

“Don’t say it,” Young said.

“I’m not sayin’ it,” Mitchell snapped, too fast. He took a beat. “She’s on my team. I’m not ever. Gonna be the one who says it. But it’s gonna get said.”

Young looked up at the glare of the lights, the bleached out front of the restaurant. He couldn’t tell if the air smelled of wood smoke, of burning undergrowth, or of sulfur. Of ash.

“People are gonna say she ran.” Mitchell stopped, regrouped, restarted. “That it was her. That she’s the leak to the LA, that she’s never been one of us.”

“Yep,” Young said, watching Jackson.

The archeologist stood, head bowed, listening to local law enforcement. He pressed a hand to the front pocket of his blazer, as if to prevent something from escaping.

“There’s a briefing,” Mitchell said, “scheduled for 0600.  If I don’t get the chance,” he continued, “you think you could—” Mitchell trailed off.

“What?” Young said. “Name it.”

“It’s gonna come up. The issue of defection, of insurgency. It’s gonna come up. And Jackson,” Mitchell stopped. “Jackson’s not—he’s not doin’ great. You saw what happened in the infirmary, with Rush, right? I heard you were there.”

“Yeah,” Young said.

“Somebody’s gotta prep ‘im. He needs to keep a lid on himself.”

“Are they,” Young began, not sure how to ask the question, “—Jackson and Vala. Do you know if—shit. Are they, or were they—”

“Together?” Mitchell asked, and, over the open line, Young heard the wince in his expression.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “I don’t ask. I mean, I should ask, but it’s different with SG-1. I mean, you try being Daniel goddamned Jackson’s CO.”

“No thanks,” Young said. “I’m good.”

“Whether they’re ‘together’ or not, either way he’s gonna take it hard. He takes everything hard.”

“Yeah,” Young said, “it’s part of his charm.”

“Try and—” Mitchell couldn’t finish.

“Yup,” Young said, “I’ll try.”

“Thanks. Sam’s flaggin’ me down,” Mitchell said. “Gotta go.”

“Keep in touch.”

“Will do.” Mitchell ended the call.

A few yards away, Jackson stood, hand over shirt pocket, eyes following the retreating back of the man he’d just briefed. Young caught the archeologist’s eye and waved him over.

Jackson approached slowly. The headlights of cop cars shone off his hair, his glasses, the buckle of his belt, and the buttons on his jacket.

“You okay?” Young asked.

Jackson shot him a look of eloquent misery.

“Yeah,” Young said. “I hear that. NID? Or FBI?” He tipped his chin toward the retreating suit.

Jackson half-turned, all reflex. “NID.”

Young nodded.

“It’s been, what, eight hours now, and no trace of her?” Jackson swept his gaze over the sea of suits and uniforms in front of the restaurant. “Not a good sign.”

“I know.”

“There are people,” Jackson said, “a lot of people from her past who might—” he trailed off. Shook his head. “It was literally—literally no more than five minutes. She got up to go to the ladies room, and I—I got up to look for her.”

“Why?” Young pressed his fingers into the aching muscles in his lower back. “Did you see something?”

Jackson looked away. “I saw them take her.”

“Lucky,” Young said.

Jackson sighed, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and frowned at the dark beyond the high-beams of a dozen agency cars. “It’s questionable. At best. What kind of crazy person follows his date to the ladies room?”

“The same kind of crazy person who sticks to his guns when his story’s questioned,” Young said.

Jackson gave him a sour, grateful look.

“C’mon. I think you've briefed everyone who's gonna be working this from a civilian angle," Young said. “Let's head back.”

"The NID is examining my car," Jackson said absently. “I think it’s ‘evidence’ now.”

“Time for a new car.” Young clapped him on the shoulder. “In fact, for you? It’s been time for a new car for something like fifteen years.”

Jackson sighed.

Young patted the warm metal of his Charger. “Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”

Jackson hesitated, then rounded the hood of the car.

Young eased himself into his seat, mindful of his back, aggravated by an all-nighter spent on his feet. He started the car, and they left the glare of headlights and floodlights behind as they pulled away from the restaurant.

Once they’d put some distance between themselves and the five-agency blockade of Colorado Springs’ most romantic restaurant, Young said, “They found the van.”

“Oh yeah?” Jackson pulled at the cuff of his blazer, as if looking for a thread to unravel.

“It was abandoned. Full of surveillance equipment.”

“Terrestrial surveillance equipment?” Jackson asked.

“A mix. Mitchell will have a report by the briefing at 0600.”

Jackson nodded. “The LA, then, most likely.”

“Jackson,” Young began.

Jackson shot him one hell of a side-eye.

And, yeah.

There was no point in trying to dress an ugly reality in a fancy verbal outfit. “There'll be a faction at this briefing, maybe a big faction, that's gonna suggest she’s running.”

Jackson smiled, quick and wry. “I know.”

“You know?” Young echoed.

“Of course I know. What do you take me for?” Jackson shot back, all edge.

“A nice guy with a tendency to verbally knife people in the metaphorical kidneys who also,” Young paused and glanced at the man, “happens to have a personal stake about a mile wide in what’s about to go down over the next twenty-four hours.”

“The kidneys?” Jackson didn’t smile. “Seems a little harsh. Look. Colonel. I appreciate your concern, but I don't need anyone to tell me that Vala Mal Doran is likely to be accused of defection by the upper echelons of Homeworld Command. Point of fact, you're naive if you think it'll stop there.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there’ll be a huge incentive to pin our information leak on someone, and there’s no better place than Vala to dump all that suspicion. All of that blame. All that anger.”

“Hopefully it won't go that far,” Young said.

“We'll see.”

“Jackson,” Young said.

“What.” The word was blunt and without energy.

Young had no follow through. He tried to scrape together a response, but was saved by the vibration of the phone in his pocket. With a painful shift of his hips, he slipped it free and handed it to Jackson. “Grab that, will you? It’s gotta be Cam.”

There was a pause.

“It’s not Cam,” Jackson said. “It’s Rush.”

Young locked eyes with Jackson, then returned his gaze to the dark road.

Jackson answered the call. “Nick? It’s Daniel.”

Again, Young glanced at Jackson and found the other man looking back at him.

“Nick?” Jackson said. “Hello?”

Young pressed subtly on the gas.

Jackson held his thumb over the phone’s speaker. “He’s not answering.”

“Don't hang up,” Young said, “do NOT hang up.”

“Nope.” Jackson pulled out his own cellphone.

“You calling dispatch?” Young asked.

“Yeah.”

“Have someone locate Rush,” Young said. “He should be on base. He’s supposed to be on base. He’d better be on base.”

“I know,” Jackson said, Young’s phone still pressed to his ear, his thumb still shielding the speaker.

“And see if they can't track that call," Young added.

“Telford was released from isolation today,” Jackson said.

Young said nothing.

“Maybe,” Jackson said, “maybe go faster.” He lifted his own phone to his opposite ear. “Hi, hello, dispatch? This is Daniel Jackson. I need someone to locate Dr. Nicholas Rush. Immediately. He should be on base. In the infirmary. Check with Dr. Lam, or uh, whoever’s on call.”

“Ask them about tracking.” Young stopped short at a red light, and his seatbelt dug painfully into his shoulder and hips. “Tracking the call.”

"If you can't find Rush," Jackson continued, "I want a code five called. On Nick Rush. Five minutes. On my authorization. I also need you to put me through to communications. I need a call traced. Yup, I’ll hold.”

"You hear anything on my phone?" Young asked.

“No,” Jackson replied. “Just the sound of an open line. No talking. No distortion. Just silence. How fast can you get up the mountain?”

“Ten minutes, if I push it.”

“Maybe push it,” Jackson said.

“Yup.” Young pressed his foot to the floor as the light turned from red to green. The Charger’s engine roared like a jet, and the acceleration pressed him back into his seat.

“This has to be a coincidence,” Jackson breathed. “It has to be unrelated. This call. Her disappearance. It won’t be what it looks like.”

“What do you think it looks like?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d rather not say, you mean,” Young growled. He powered through the last stoplight in Colorado Springs and began the winding ascent to the base.

“We’re in the middle of something,” Jackson said. “Something that’s unfolding. It’s best not to assume. Best to first—to try to see. So we don’t make mistakes.”

“Do you know,” Young rasped, “how many times Nick Rush has called me?”

“No,” Jackson said.

“Never,” Young replied. “Not one time.”

“She. Would. Not. Do. This.” Jackson broke off each word with low emphasis. “Even if she—even if for some reason she decided to leave or she found a better arrangement, or she orchestrated her own abduction—I just, I know she wouldn't—not Nick. She wouldn't. She stopped running. She made that choice. She didn’t fall into it; she made it. She told me she made it. It was important to her; I could see that.”

Young gritted his teeth and watched the road.

“She wouldn’t.” Jackson was almost panting with strain. “She liked him. She likes him.”

“She likes a lot of people,” Young said. “Not sure how much that means.”

Jackson tensed, his attention shifting to his phone. “Hi,” he said. “Hello? Yes, this is Dr. Daniel Jackson and I need a call traced. Immediately. Like, immediately immediately.”

Young extended a hand, and Jackson passed his own phone back to him. He pressed it to his ear and heard nothing but a silent, open line.

“What's your number?” Jackson asked.

His thumb pressed over the speaker of his own phone, Young gave it to him.

A pattern was emerging that had the ominous feel of a bait and switch.

The code five called on Vala—

It had diverted a lot of resources.

Young shifted his grip on his phone. “Hotshot,” he said quietly, “if you’re on the other end of this line, you gotta let us know.”

He heard nothing. Nothing but soft shifts of silence that distinguished an open line from a dead one.

“They're understaffed,” Jackson said, impatient, looking into the dark pines on the side of the road. “Because of the ongoing code five. This is taking too long.”

Young pulled his phone away from his ear and glanced at it. The call from Rush had come six minutes ago.

“I’m on hold,” Jackson said. “Again. I’ll listen. You drive.”

Young handed his phone to the other man and looked back at the road, at the dark turn ahead.

“We're almost there,” he said, braking just enough to safely round a sharp switchback.

“At this pace?” Jackson replied. “Yeah. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’ll—”

Three quarters of the way through the turn, Young saw the car.

It was stopped, askew across two lanes, high-beams on, interior illuminated, driver's side door swung wide.

Young slammed the brakes and spun the wheel toward the rising slope on his right, rather than the dark drop-off on his left. A bolt of pain shot up and down his spine.

“Shit,” he ground through gritted teeth, inaudible over the squeal of skidding tires.

In his peripheral vision he saw Jackson's hands come up, illuminated touchscreens shining through his fingers.

They grazed the empty car with enough force to send a spike of pain from Young’s knee to the center of his back, to snap his jaw together, and to deploy the airbags.

They spun into a shallow ditch at the border of the road and rolled up the opposite side. The front of the car stopped against rock and the slender trunks of young pines.

“What—” Jackson, disoriented, hands shaking, fought off the airbag and groped over the dash, searching for the phones he’d dropped. “Everett! Are you all right?”

Young killed the engine. For once, his mind recovered before his body. His nerves were screaming. In his spine. In his hip. Down his leg. But, “That’s David’s car,” he said, through a jaw clamped tight against the pain. He unbuckled his seatbelt with fingers that felt numb when stacked against the agony in his back.

“Telford?” Jackson said, shaken, urgent, two phones in one hand. “Telford’s car?”

“Yes,” Young growled.

Jackson bolted from the passenger-side door, scrambled up the dark bank, falling, catching himself, digging in the dry dirt with his hands for purchase.

Young forced his door open, grabbed the roof, and dragged himself into the warm night. He looked up.

Jackson cleared the lip of the ditch and cut an opaque silhouette against the headlights of David’s abandoned car. He stood on the surface of the road, Young’s phone pressed to his ear.

“Jackson,” Young hissed, anxious at the clear profile the man cut in the Acura’s high-beams, thinking of snipers in the dark, “get down!”

Jackson ignored him. He stood untouched, backlit by headlights.

Young limped up the bank, his back a mass of contracted muscle, his thoughts held in the kind of stillness that preceded massive changes in strategy.

When he cleared the ditch, he drew his sidearm, alert to the dark beyond the Acura’s lights.

The car had been rotated by the impact that’d sent Young’s Charger into the ditch of a shoulder. The high-beams of Telford’s car were pointed up the mountain, along the direction of the road. The interior was empty, the driver’s side door twisted by the recent impact, the passenger’s side door ajar.

The car was still running.

Young took Jackson’s arm. “Outta the lights.” He pulled the archeologist into the shadows.

“You’re sure,” Jackson said, “that this is Telford’s car?”

“I’m sure.” Young swept the tree line, listening for anything below the running motor of the Acura NSX.

They said nothing as they circled the car, staying out of the headlights. Young scanned the front seat, taking in the smell of coffee, the glitter of liquid over the steering wheel. 

His eyes returned to the tree line.

And back to the car.

Coffee ran down the driver’s side window in narrow streaks.

His eyes returned to the tree line.

And back to the car.

On the floor, near the gas pedal, he spotted an empty paper cup—a match to the one that still sat in the driver’s side cup-holder. They looked like they’d come from the SGC mess hall.

His eyes returned to the tree line.

And back to the car.

“I came to get you out,” Young rasps, too loud in the small craft.

“I know.” Telford’s voice is a ragged smear.

Heedless of Young’s grip on his arm, Jackson lunged for the back door, passenger side. Young’s phone still pressed to one ear.

“Jackson,” Young growled, “Jackson, damn it—don’t touch anything. We gotta call this in. We have to—”

The other man pulled a messenger bag out of the back seat. Black, nondescript, unmistakable.

It should have been a surprise, but it didn’t feel like one.

Jackson ripped the thing open, not speaking. He held it up to the light so Young could see what was inside. A packet of math, a hard drive, a laptop.

Young nodded.

Jackson shut the bag, then placed it back where he’d found it. “The scope of our failure—” he trailed off, unable to finish.

“The scope of our failure’s a work in progress,” Young growled.

“Yeah,” Jackson rasped. “I know.”

“Get the results of that trace. Get a team out here. Call code fives on Rush and Telford. Stay off the road and outta the lights until we get some backup.”

Wordlessly, Jackson offered Young his phone.

Thirteen minutes into a silent call.

Young stepped into the shadows, then pressed the phone to his ear.

“Nick,” he said.

There was no answer.

Protocol dictated—

Protocol dictated a lotta things.

He ended the call and redialed.

Stepping into the light, he walked up the road, lit like a target by the lights at his back, casting a long shadow in the Acura’s high-beams.

Rush’s phone went to voicemail.

Still walking, Young dialed again.

The coffee.

The doors: driver’s side flung wide, passenger door ajar.

The position of the car, as if abandoned in the middle of a U-turn.

“I came to get you out.” Young’s whisper is too loud in the quiet room.

“I know,” Telford says.

Young could smell smoke. Or, he thought he could. It was fire season.

Behind him, Jackson spoke into his phone. He was too far away for Young to make out individual words. Only his tone carried, low and urgent.

Rush’s phone went to voicemail.

Young dialed again.

As the light of the Acura’s high-beams lost their intensity, he saw it. A dim glow in the underbrush eight feet or so from the edge of the asphalt.

Seeing it, he heard it vibrating in the dark: a phone, ringing in silence on the side of the road.

Young ended the call. The light went out.

He looked at the sky. Back at the road.

A reflected glint in the soft light caught his attention.

With difficulty, he knelt, driving his bad knee into warm asphalt.

“I came to get you out.” The last word cracks with accusation as Young strains against repurposed bonds of Goa’uld manufacture.

“I know,” Telford says, his voice a ragged smear, as if any amount of guilt could atone for what he holds in his hands.

Young picked up the ring and studied it in the dregs of the Acura’s high-beams.

“Damn it,” he whispered.