Mathématique: Chapter 45

“Damn it, hotshot.” Young looked up, as though he could see into low Earth orbit. 

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Panic attacks. Allusions to torture.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 45

Young sat on the rear of Mitchell’s Camaro, his forehead braced against his interlaced fingers as the sun rose over Cheyenne Mountain. His back ached, vicious and horrible. A coiled and tangled mess of nerves curled around his left hip, like a laired serpent.

The briefing, scheduled for 0600, had been postponed.

General Landry and representatives from the Pentagon and NID were waiting for the ground team to finish. The new crime scene had to be documented. Information had to be exchanged.

Young looked at his Charger, askew in the shallow ditch on the side of the road.

Yards away, like people out of another world, SG-1 stood in a loose arc of competence, Teal’c with eyes on the tree line, Mitchell kneeling on the road, Jackson’s hands in his pockets, Carter’s hands everywhere, pressed to her chest, on her phone, teasing samples into evidence bags.

Young had stepped away.

Soon, he’d need to explain his reasons.

“I came to get you out.” The last word cracks with betrayal, and he 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 has seen it before. There’s one at the SGC. They keep it for the orientation of new recruits. It’s a display item, shown as the nature of Goa’uld interrogation techniques are explained.

Soon, he’d need to tell them what he suspected. What he was beginning to—

To realize.

He’d need to figure out how to phrase it.

Young looked at the dull red contours of Telford’s Acura NSX. Someone had killed the engine, but no one had shut the doors. By now, its battery was dead.

Forensics snapped pictures of the car, the road, the coffee, the position of Rush’s phone. The position of his ring.

His ring.

God.

God damn.

The good thing about Telford, the good thing, was—

Young pressed a closed fist against his mouth.

He could imagine it. Easily. The pair of them walking out of the Mountain, skirting the red tape Telford was so good at ducking under and Rush was so good at ignoring. Walking together into the dark parking lot, toward Telford’s car, only one of them knowing where they were really headed.

“Rush, you idiot,” he whispered, his eyes shut. And then, “I came to get you out.”

“I know,” David answered out of memory, the words so ragged they were nearly unrecognizable, his eyes tormented, the rest of him a shifting blur—covered with blood against the door of an LA skimmer, imprisoned in an LA holding cell, or had it been—

Had it been Young who’d been imprisoned?

He tried to put together no narratives, but—

Narratives came together anyway, organizing themselves from the dark places in his thoughts.

And, try though he might, he couldn’t assemble a story that didn’t involve his genius neighbor, who’d been on the wrong end of Ancient tech for weeks now, throwing himself from Colonel David Telford’s moving car. He could picture it perfectly. The snap of Rush’s wrist in the darkness, the snick of a releasing door—

Bold as hell. Stupidly brave. All that, and the guy hadn’t made it.

Telford’s car had been turning as it stopped. Skid marks streaked across the road, black curves in the rising sun.

“Damn it, hotshot.” Young looked up, as though he could see into low Earth orbit.

The good thing about Telford—

The good thing—

The good thing was, he was professional. Even if he’d been warped, even if he’d bent to an Alliance agenda—he wouldn’t lose that. If he lost his professionalism, he wouldn’t be David anymore. Would he? 

Because David—the David Young knew, the David Young had known—would never do this. He wouldn’t betray the SGC, he wouldn’t kidnap a civilian and hand him over to torture and death, he wouldn’t give a scientist to a culture that didn’t understand the value of free inquiry because if he did these things, then—then he wouldn’t be David anymore.

“Did they give you the drug?” Young asks, watching the sensors.

“I don’t think they did.” Telford’s eyes are shut, his hands dark with his own blood. “But how would I know?”

There were places in his mind that weren’t his own.

He might be—he might be just as guilty as David. Just as complicit.

He couldn’t help them. Not Vala, if she needed his help. Not David, who certainly did, whether he knew it or not. Not Rush, who needed it most. And not SG-1, on whose shoulders this whole fiasco would come to rest. He looked at them, arrayed in profile against the dawn, and, like he felt the pressure of Young’s gaze, Jackson turned and met his eyes.

Young gave him a subtle nod.

Jackson shoved his hands into his pockets, broke away from SG-1, and started toward him. Young watched him come, wishing for something, anything, to intervene and put off a moment that should’ve come already.

It should’ve come when he’d knelt in the road, looking at Rush’s ring. It should’ve come weeks ago, when he’d begun to dream of Kiva.

“Hey.” Jackson perched next to Young on the trunk of Mitchell’s Camaro. “You okay?”

“Um.” Young rubbed his jaw.

Jackson reached into his pocket and pulled out Rush’s wedding ring. He offered it, wordless and merciless, in the quiet dawn.

“Jackson, that should be in a labeled bag somewhere,” Young growled.

“There are some things that shouldn't bury themselves in bureaucratic substrata,” Jackson replied. “I already signed it out, ideally indefinitely, post photographing, fingerprinting, and energy signature scanning. I thought you should hang onto it.”

Young shook his head.

Jackson backed off, his elbow coming to rest on his knee. He didn’t re-pocket the ring.

“What about Vala?” Young asked. “You rescue anything of hers?”

Jackson pulled a white flower from the front pocket of his jacket. “It was in her hair,” he said.

“Yeah.” The word was no more than a breath.

“She wasn’t involved in this.” Jackson, radiating quiet confidence, studied the dead husk of Telford’s car. “I know she wasn’t.”

Young looked at him but said nothing, convinced that Jackson only knew she was honest because he walked, open-eyed and defenseless, into every sword that’d ever been pointed his way.

“Take it.” Again, Jackson offered him Rush’s ring. “For safekeeping.”

“You’re gonna have to do it,” Young rasped.

“Do what?”

“All of it,” Young said. “I’m turning myself in.”

“You’re—” Jackson trailed into nothingness.

“I went,” Young said, the words a wreck of broken emphasis, “to get him out.”

Jackson’s eyes stole the eggshell blue of the dawn. “Telford, you mean?”

Young nodded.

“But you did.” Jackson’s voice cracked. “You did get him out, you rescued him—no one could’ve done it but you. You—”

“Did I get him out?” Young asked. “Did I ‘rescue’ him? Or did he come back with me.”

Jackson said nothing.

Young looked at the dry pines, gray in the light of early morning. “For weeks,” he confessed, “I’ve been dreaming of Kiva.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“And what do you dream of, Jackson?” Young snarled.

The other man looked away.

“I’m turning myself in,” Young said again. “I’m asking Lam to test me.”

“Please,” Jackson breathed, “please don’t—” With a painful effort, he cut off the flow of words. Closed his eyes. Took a breath. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

Young nodded.

Slowly, Jackson repocketed Rush’s ring. “You realize,” he said, “once you’ve admitted you’re on the wrong side of that one-way glass, there may be no coming back.”

“I know,” Young said. “I know that—that’s the worst part.”

“Cam will fight you on this,” Jackson said quietly.

“I know that too.”

“So don’t tell him,” Jackson continued, “not until it’s too late.”

Young looked at Mitchell, standing between Carter and Teal’c, his phone pressed to his ear, his eyes hard. “Jackson,” Young began.

“Still Daniel. Still and always Daniel.” Jackson looked to the east, toward the rising sun.

“Daniel,” Young said, “tell me you’re gonna find him.”

“I’ll find him,” Jackson promised. “I’ll find both of them.”

They dressed him in the blue-white scrubs of those medically restricted to the base. It was a courtesy. Because he was in a cell. The same cell Telford had been in before his medical clearance, behind a one-way mirror attached to the infirmary, continuously monitored. A pair of guards posted outside the door stood between him and his ability to be of use. To anyone.

Soon, they’d come to question him.

He wondered who it would be.

He sat on the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands.

“I came to get you out.” The last word cracks with betrayal, and he 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 has seen it before. There’s one at the SGC. They keep it for the orientation of new recruits. It’s a display item, shown as the nature of Goa’uld interrogation techniques are explained.

“And you will,” Telford continues, “just not the way you imagined.”

“You can’t mean that.” Young tries not to show any distress. He suppresses the urge to pull against his bonds.

“I’m sorry.” Telford looks at what he’s holding. “Oh Christ. Oh shit. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“Yes,” Young replies. “It is.”

Jackson, pulled in a thousand different directions, had somehow arranged for Young to be processed through medical, rather than through security, which was where Young would’ve taken himself.

That was how he’d ended up in scrubs on level 21 instead of locked in the holding cells with Nerus, the odd clone of Ba’al, and whatever low-level Goa’uld had allowed themselves to be captured while posing as Tau’ri.

Young stood. He paced the length of wall near the door, across from the one-way mirror.

Five levels down, in the conference room outside Landry’s office, they’d be holding the rescheduled briefing. SG-1 would be there. Lam would join them. Lam, who had, for some reason, released Rush from the infirmary last night.

He rubbed a hand along his jaw.

Landry would be there, along with representatives from the pentagon, the IOA, the NID. They’d begin by reviewing all available information. Someone would assemble a narrative. Probably the NID rep.

And then—

The arguing would begin. It would start with someone floating the idea of Vala’s abduction being the bait half of a bait and switch. Jackson would fight that suggestion with every verbal tool he had, fire-eyed and even toned, his relentlessness backed by Teal’c’s quiet support while Mitchell and Carter, exhausted and frustrated, tried not to miss anything and Landry decided which way he’d throw his weight. For Vala, or against her.

Either way, they’d put most of their resources toward finding Rush. Young was sure of that.

He kept pacing.

They’d find him. They had to.

God damn. This was his fault. At least partially, but maybe it was more his fault than he knew.

He stopped pacing and returned to the bed. He wasn’t gonna think about Rush. He wasn’t gonna think about what might happen to him. For Vala—whether she’d run or been taken—there was the hope she’d be able to twist her circumstances to her advantage. She’d done it before, with skill and style.

Rush, though.

The LA would torture him. They just would. They’d do it immediately. They’d do it as policy, whether he cooperated or not. They’d certainly done it to Dr. Volker. It was what they did. What they’d learned from the Goa’uld.

Rush wouldn’t cope well with torture. The guy’d barely coped in his own apartment.

Young pushed away from his cot and paced to the opposite wall. He returned. He sat.

“I came to get you out.” The last word cracks with betrayal, and he 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 has seen it before. There’s one at the SGC. They keep it for the orientation of new recruits. It’s a display item, shown as the nature of Goa’uld interrogation techniques are explained.

“And you will,” Telford continues, “just not the way you imagined.”

“You can’t mean that.” Young tries not to show any distress. He suppresses the urge to pull against his bonds.

“I’m sorry.” Telford looks at what he’s holding. “Oh Christ. Oh shit. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“Yes,” Young replies. “It is.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Telford says, “you won’t remember this.”

“How could that,” Young replies, his voice finally breaking, “be consolation for anyone but you.”

Telford looks away.

Young doesn’t.

His head angled down, Telford says, “Kiva is— Kiva’s decided that it’ll be me who does it.” Even now, even holding the thing in his hands, he can’t say what he means.

“Does what,” Young needles, pitiless. “Does what, David?”

“You don’t understand,” Telford whispers.

“You,” Young snarls. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. Not anymore.”

Young rubbed his jaw.

Distantly, he felt the sickening, waiting ache of his back.

He knew what they’d do to Rush. They’d use devices stolen and backwards-engineered from the Goa’uld. Devices that used electricity to cause pain. He didn’t have to imagine what Rush would look like, his spine arching. He knew. He’d seen it. He’d seen it only a few days ago, when Lam and Dr. Lee had—

Attached the cortical suppressors.

“Oh god, hotshot,” he said, nearly soundless. “You’re fucked.” 

The LA would take them off. They’d take them off. They’d take them off to see what they did, they’d take them off because they were curious, they’d take them off because they were cruel, but, fundamentally, they’d take them off because they’d feel they had to, because they’d worry about broadcasting a signal, and, if there was anyone in that godforsaken organization who could analyze the things without breaking them, they’d realize they were transmitting a signal. And Rush—

Rush would be dead in hours.

Except.

Right, except. Telford wouldn’t let that happen. Even brainwashed, if that’s what he was, even as a defector—Telford wouldn’t allow it. If he had a choice. If he could prevent it, he would.

Telford liked scientists. He’d always liked them. He gave them more respect than usual, even within the science-friendly SGC. He was friends with Carter, he bought Bill Lee a drink from time to time, and he’d taken—god he’d taken every night seminar on the physics of gate travel that Carter gave each fall, he’d gone to every single one of Perry’s “Hops and Hyperdrives Happy Hour” lectures and he’d taken notes; he respected the practice and products of hypothesis testing, and he wouldn’t, even if he were brainwashed he wouldn’t, he couldn’t give them Rush, he must have some other plan. It couldn’t all be brainwashing—but, god, he wished he’d said something to Telford yesterday about the cortical suppressors, he wished he’d hinted at how important they were, how they shouldn’t be removed.

The silver surface of the one-way mirror transformed into a dark window. Lam stood in the dim center of the observation room, her white coat gathering all the light on offer. She was alone.

“Colonel,” she said.

“Yeah.” He stood and approached the glass.

She said nothing, her expression tight with unhappiness.

“Tell me what you can tell me,” Young said.

“Over my objections,” Lam began, quiet and direct, “your debriefing has been turned over to the NID.”

Young nodded. “Am I being charged with anything?”

“You’re not,” Lam said, “but I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good sign.”

Young nodded.

Silently, they watched one another.

“You haven’t asked about your blood-work,” Lam said.

“I’m pretty sure I know what you’re gonna find.”

“I’ll tell you as soon as it’s definitive,” she assured him. “It’ll be a few hours.”

He looked away.

“Colonel,” Lam said, “you’re entitled to representation during your questioning.”

“Great.”

Lam stepped closer to the glass. “Choose Teal’c.”

“Teal’c? Teal’c isn’t a lawyer.”

“Name a lawyer who can help you combat a charge of alien brainwashing. The Jaffa have a method of recognizing and dealing with coercive persuasion. If you want any chance of exonerating yourself, you’ll need to give them something that looks like a resolution. Teal’c has gone through this himself. Teal’c has identified it in others. Teal’c is the Jaffa Ambassador to Earth and has a lot of bureaucratic pull.”

“I doubt he has the time to—”

“He’ll do it,” Lam said. “I asked him after the briefing.”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because it’s my job,” Lam replied. “Because I’ve seen what the NID call ‘questioning.’ Because there’s no evidence that you’ve done anything wrong but they will nail you with this because the only other person to blame is Telford, and he’s gone.”

Young dropped his eyes. Nodded.

“You’re not responsible for something that was done to you,” Lam said, low and earnest. “You’re only responsible for your actions. And sometimes? Around here? Not even those. Remember that. Hang onto that.”

“Yeah.”

“They’ll want a timeline from you. A timeline of what happened when you were on that planet with Telford. They’ll need corroboration for that narrative. But once they get it, once you can pass the Tok’ra’s Za’tarc scan, once Teal’c clears you, they’ll let you out.”

“Should they?” Young asked.

“People have come back from this,” Lam said. “Teal’c has come back from it.”

“Did you say this to Telford?” Young asked. “When he was here?”

Lam, unflappable, said, “Telford was never turned over to the NID because his bloodwork was clear. There are ways he might have engineered a false negative—plasmapheresis would do it. But there’s at least some chance he’s truly negative. That he was never exposed to the agent used for coercive persuasion. I know what that implies to me, Colonel. What does it imply to you?”

“That he was a true defector,” Young answered. “I don’t believe that. I’ll never believe it.”

“We may never know,” Lam replied.

They looked at one another in silence.

“Discover the truth of your own experience,” Lam said, “in whatever way you can. Don’t let the NID keep you locked away just because you were injected with something against your will.”

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“The Icarus Project,” Lam said, “needs a leader. Unnamed Committee Number Four needs another member. Dr. Jackson can’t carry all this by himself. Don’t give up.”

Young thought of Jackson, up all night, powering through the day, a thousand things going wrong while the Ori tore through the Milky Way, planet by planet. “When are they gonna start?” He waved a loose circle in the air, unable to meet her eyes. “With all of it.”

“I’m not sure,” Lam replied. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow.”

“You hear anything about Rush or Vala?”

“I can’t say,” Lam said quietly.

“I know.”

“Let me know if there’s anything you need,” Lam offered.

“One question,” Young said. “What would—” he lost his momentum, regrouped, tried again. “What effect would an electrical torture device have on someone wearing cortical suppressors?”

Lam’s features tightened with dismay. “I don’t know. It’s a delicate device. You think they might torture him?”

Yes.

Definitely.

“Maybe,” Young said.

“My best guess,” Lam began, “is that it would interfere only transiently with the operation of the device. However, if the current was strong enough, it could damage the electronics enough to compromise function.”

Young nodded.

Fast and out of nowhere, Lam brought a hand up and pressed it to the glass.

Young flinched, startled.

“I’m sorry,” Lam whispered, the words strangling her as they tore free of wherever they’d been. “I’m so sorry. That I let him leave the infirmary.”

“Yeah.” Young pressed his hand to the glass where hers rested. “Me too.”