Mathématique: Chapter 52

“So—six days from now, I will get a burning cake?” Ginn asked.

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

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 52

Young woke with his alarm at ass o’clock in the morning. The sun backlit the mountains in the blue-gold of a Colorado sunrise. He hauled himself out of bed, slow and resolute, and stood at his window, studying the distant rise of the Front Range.

He felt sluggish, like the hot, dead weight of the summer was still tied around his neck. He’d be dragging August like a cross for months to come. He wondered how the hell Jackson did it. Did any of it. Young could barely get himself out of bed, even with something real on his to-do list.

There was an unsettling complexity emerging from the shredded nest of his settling memories. A strange, double overlay of David Telford the traitorous, murderous, duplicitous bastard—and a David Telford, brave as hell, who’d walked, without backup, into a waiting abyss. He’d needed to be saved. And there’d been no one to do it.

It was a hard idea to parse, especially when Young could still remember coming for him. Slitting his bonds and crawling up the slope of an active volcano, where pale ash fell from a red sky.

You ever feel like maybe we let him down? Young had asked Cam on the drive back from an SG-1 Che’swings night.

Cam, flint-eyed, had said, No. Don’t you go thinking that. Not you. Not about him. You got that? Get it out of your head.

He’d emailed Shep the same question.

Shep had replied: Yah. Probably. Come to Atlantis. We’ll get coffee. I’ve been dreaming of latte art.

I’ve got a Fields Medalist to find, Young had replied.

Yeah, do that first. Then bring him along.

Young’d heard worse plans.

Even so, it was tough to work up the momentum to make it to base by a respectable 0830 to meet his new command, which consisted of Ginn of the Sixth House, also known as the Piece of Work Who’d Almost Killed Sam Carter.

You’ll like her, Jackson had said.

Sure.

Somehow Young doubted he was gonna get along all that well with a member of Kiva’s crew.

Call it a hunch.

Young slogged his way through the morning—shower, breakfast, coffee, and finally, the fatigues that felt like a lie, that felt like a farce, because with all the shit he’d put his back through, with his less than exemplary commitment to physical therapy, he’d be riding a desk for the rest of his career. Unless some kind of miracle happened. 

Just as he was ready to leave, his phone buzzed, Jackson’s number flashing up, gray on black.

“Jackson,” Young said.

“Daniel,” Jackson shot back, sharp as a stick to the eye.

“Yeah yeah,” Young said, not bothering to hide his amusement. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Jackson was vibrating with something he couldn’t wait to spill. “We have a lead on Vala. Not far. A few hours from here. We’re leaving now.”

“Great.” Young tried to muster some real enthusiasm from the sludge in his head.

“I think this is it. I think this is the one. A local detective picked up an unidentified woman who took down two men trying to hold up a diner. She goes by Val. There’s a picture. It’s her. It’s her. It’s definitely her. I mean, it’s her. I think it’s her? I’m pretty sure it’s her. It’s her! It’s gotta be.”

Young shot his front door a look of skeptical optimism. “Hope so, Jackson.”

The man made a strangled sound. “It’s DANIEL.” And with that, Jackson hung up on him.

Young snorted and pocketed his phone. He pulled the bag of classified files over his shoulder, opened the door, then felt his phone buzz again. This time, it was Mitchell.

“Jackson beat you,” Young said, answering.

“What? God damn he’s speedy,” Mitchell said. “I think he likes you better than me. Hurts my feelings a little bit.”

“I feel like I’m on your team,” Young said. “Why are you guys calling me?”

“Oh. Didn’t I tell you? October is Adopt-A-Miserable-Colonel Month. We picked you.”

“Great. Thanks so much.” 

“I’ll keep you posted. Enjoy your first day back. Sorry I won’t be around to take you to lunch.”

“Don’t worry about it. Go collect your missing con artist.”

“That’s the plan,” Mitchell said.

Walking through the halls of the SGC felt surreal, as though September had hollowed him out and left him the rind of the man he thought he’d been.

He cut a too-recognizable figure with the combination of fatigues and cane. The whole base probably knew what’d happened in the infirmary. What he’d asked Jackson to do.

Heads turned. Gazes tracked him down the hall.

Whatever was growing on the grapevine had his name on it, and was probably more suited to making vinegar than making wine. But who the hell could tell, with Jackson working his goodnatured way into the heart of the damned place. Or, maybe, out of the heart of it.

He avoided his new office on Level 18 and went to find Harriman, who could be counted on for businesslike neutrality. The general’s aide was at his desk, rather than in the gateroom. When Young tapped on his doorframe, Harriman stood and fired off a salute that Young returned halfheartedly, in the style of Jack O’Neill.

It didn’t strain his back, he’d say that for it.

“Colonel,” Harriman offered, “Good to see you up and around.”

“And out of a holding cell,” Young replied.

“That too,” Harriman said, deadpan. “What can I do for you, colonel?”

“I’m looking for the LA defector.” Young leaned into his cane.

Harriman nodded. “Just a moment, I’ll find out where she’s quartered.” There was a flurry of clicks. “Level 16.”

“Level 16,” Young repeated. “In a holding cell? I thought she was on a Teal’c style reintegration program.”

“Her threat level is listed as ‘moderate’,” Harriman said. “Teal’c didn’t defect in the midst of a foothold.”

Young shrugged. “Fair enough.” Already he felt for her, against his better judgment and against his own bias. “But who else is up there, Harriman?”

“Ba’al,” Harriman said, the word landing like an apology. “A Ba’al clone and Nerus.”

Young stood in the doorway, his expression neutral, eyeing Harriman in silence until he said, “Yup. Okay then.”

The lockdown on Level 16 was as depressing as Young had expected. The defector was assigned to one of the nicer cells, meaning it had a desk and a bed and a lamp and bathroom with a closing door. Still, it wasn’t much to look at. No windows, no TV, and smack between a Goa’uld System Lord and his former Underlord lackey.

Pretty much worst-case scenario for a former Lucian Alliance operative.

Young was sure it kept Nerus and Ba’al from trading too much escalating rhetoric, and left base security with less of a headache.

Still.

The kid, and she was a kid—early twenties at the outside, maybe even still in her late teens—looked miserable.

Pale, stressed, with flat red hair plastered to her head and lost in an oversized set of fatigues, she was hunched at her desk, brow furrowed as she stared at a laptop.

Young did his best to haul back the shreds of his evaporating grudge.

You’ll like her, Jackson had said.

Damn it.

“I see you’re a colonel,” the Ba’al clone said, arch and debonair and lounging against the back wall of his cell. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I presume you’ve come to—”

“Ah! A colonel,” Nerus thundered from two cells down. “Colonel! Colonel, tell me, what is your name?

“None of your business,” Young said.

“His name is Young,” Ba’al called to Nerus, reading the name off Young’s fatigues.

The defector looked up, her dark eyes sharp and watchful. Maybe someone had given her a heads up as to what was coming.

“Colonel Young! Your reputation precedes you. Not the same Colonel Young who—” Nerus paused, trying to recall any great deeds that might be ascribed to “Colonel Young” and coming up short. “Well I’ve certainly heard of you. Your bravery. Your courage in battle. I must know—has your storied general seen fit to—”

“Quiet, you loathsome excuse for an Underlord!” Ba’al shouted.

Young did his best to tune the pair of them out. He stepped up to the bars of the defector’s cell.

“Hey kid.”

“Hello.”

“How’s your English?” he asked, leaning into his cane.

“I’m fluent,” she replied, with a trace of a native Goa’uld accent.

“What’s your name?”

“Ginn,” she said. And then, like she couldn’t help herself, “I am Houseless.”

Young fought down the ghost of a smile. “Ginn Houseless, huh?”

She nodded. “We are to work together? I’ve been monitoring radio waves. I prepared an electronic document for you describing my progress.”

“I read it.”

“Did you find it acceptable?” she asked.

“Of course he didn’t, shol’ve.” Ba’al spat at her, but the saliva vanished in a sizzle of blue energy at the periphery of his cell.

Young shot Ba’al an unimpressed look, then turned to the defector. “Ginn,” he said, “this is bullshit.”  

“You do not wish to work with me,” she said, “because I was of Sixth House.”

“The most craven of all houses,” Ba’al remarked, examining his nails.

“I’ll admit, Sixth is probably my least favorite house, and yes, you shot one of everyone’s favorite colonels, so we’ll probably never be—”

“The hubris,” Ba’al continued. “The sheer unmitigated gall. To attack the legendary Samantha Carter. And look at this one. She’s not even beautiful.”

“Pay him no mind, my dear,” Nerus began, “You have qualities that—”

“QUIET,” Young roared. He turned back to Ginn, “That? Right there?” He indicated Nerus with his thumb. “That is what I mean by ‘bullshit’.”

“Oh,” Ginn said. “Then, yes. There is a lot of bullshit in this place.”

Young gave her a hint of a smile. “You’re lucky Carter made it.”

“I know,” Ginn replied solemnly.

“I’ll be back.” Young pressed a hand against the aching muscles to the left of his spine.

“But I haven’t—”

“Hold that thought,” Young replied.

He turned, ignoring the comments of Ba’al Version Whatever Point Oh and Nerus’s pleas for an improved prison dining experience. He walked past the security checkpoint, leaned against the cement wall, took some weight off his left side, and called Jackson.

“Hey,” Jackson answered, breathless. “What’s up.”

“How’s it going?” Young asked.

“Well, not great. We think the Trust beat us to Vala and snagged her by impersonating Sam. Mitchell just commandeered a motorcycle? So, yeah. That’s where we are. How’s your day?”

“You serious?” Young asked, over the screeching tires in his ear.

“Ohhhhh how I wish I weren’t, but yeah. We’re tracking Mitchell via SGC Dispatch who’s relaying with the Odyssey which is scanning for his transponder signal. Oh my god, Teal’c, you can’t drive this thing like an F-302! It’s a suburban. Everett? You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna call you back later,” Young said. “Good luck with—all that.”

“No no,” Jackson said, like a man interrupted in the midst of an email rather than a car chase. “Did you need something?”

“The name of that terrifying IOA lady you love so much? I need some leverage to get the defector into a new living situation.”

“Wray,” Jackson said. “Camile Wray. I’ve been meaning to involve her ever since they moved Ginn from medical. She needs the Tau’ri rehab plan.”

“Did you know they stuck her in a cell on Level 16 between Ba’al and Nerus?”

“They did what?” Jackson shouted right in his ear. “Who did that. WHO. That’s hazing. That’s—that’s worse than hazing. How old is she? You get a name. You get Wray to get you a name. This is unacceptable. Sam. Sam. Have you been to Level 16? To see Ginn?”

Young waited, eyebrows raised, torn between amused and horrified that Jackson was interrupting a car chase for this.

“Sam hasn’t been up there,” Jackson said after a pause. “They meet on Level 19. Sam doesn’t go to 16 because—”

“Yeah okay, Jackson, I don’t need the War and Peace version. You go chase down Mitchell. The defector’s gonna be off 16 by the end of the day, if not before.”

“Oh good. Maybe I can live with myself for the next fifteen minutes,” Jackson replied. “Y’know. Until the next phone call. She’s been with Nerus? Nerus and Ba’al? I can’t take this. I’m gonna go.” He hung up the phone.

“Bye,” Young said, to a dead line.

“Colonel Young.” Camile Wray stood and rounded her desk to offer him her hand. “Nice to meet you.” She was a petite, square-shouldered woman with low heels, long hair, and a neat desk that displayed a picture of her and a young Irish woman grinning into the camera. They looked like they were on a beach somewhere far from Colorado Springs.

Wray pulled a chair for him, shut the door to her office, then took the seat next to him, rather than putting the desk between them.

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.” Gingerly, Young settled into the chair.

“You said it was urgent.” Wray smoothed her skirt and crossed her legs at the ankle.

“Jackson sent me. There’s an HR mess on Level 16 we’re looking to sort out.”

“Daniel sent you?” Wray arched an elegant brow.

“Yup.”

“I owe him more than a favor,” Wray said.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Young asked.

Wray smiled, tight and wry. “Probably. How can I help you, colonel?”

“Are you familiar with the LA defector we’ve got on base?”

“Mmm,” Wray said, knitting her brow. “Shot Colonel Carter; named…Jenn?”

“Close,” Young said. “Ginn.”

Wray nodded. “Technically, I work in HR, but I’m part of the IOA. We approved her request for amnesty on base. To my knowledge, she hasn’t been issued an integration protocol yet. I haven’t met with her. No one’s requested I do so. Normally, we’d get a military go-ahead and preliminary threat assessment before HR takes action.”

Young nodded. “She’s assigned to my command, effective this morning. It’s a two-man detail. We’re technically consultants rather than acting in a military capacity. I went to meet her, and found out she’s in a holding cell on Level 16.”

“Hmm,” Wray said, frowning. “That’s not an acceptable long-term solution.”

“It’s not acceptable in the short term,” Young replied. “Not sure if you have the security clearance for this, but I’ll tell you anyway: she’s quartered between a clone of Ba’al and the Goa’uld, Nerus. It’s an open floor plan. In the five-minute span I was in there, they were harassing her non-stop. I also think it’s possible she’s a minor.”

“What,” Wray breathed.

“We don’t have an age on her. I doubt she knows it herself. The LA isn’t big on birthdays.”

“But you think there’s reasonable suspicion she could be younger than eighteen?”

“She looks like a kid,” Young confirmed. “She’s probably seen more than her fair share of the ugly side of this galaxy, but if it gets her out of that cell, then yeah, I think she could be less than eighteen.”

Wray stood, paced a short line, hand on her hip, then sat back down. “Officially, this is a logistical nightmare.”

“Unofficially?” Young prompted.

She gave him a small smile. “What we’ll do is temporarily remove her from her current situation, then throw up an insurmountable barrier to reentry. To get her off Level 16 right now, for, say, a meeting with me, what would we need in terms of authorization and security?

“She’s classified as Moderate Threat/Low Flight Risk, so—two airmen as a security escort and a formal meeting request.”

“Who approves the formal meeting request?” Wray asked.

“I’m the CO for this two-man team—so I can approve your request to meet with her.”

Wray gave him a hint of a smile. “I’ll send you the form now. Will you call the Level 16 security station, or shall I?”

“You do it,” Young said. “I’ll go get her. Seeing as we’re gonna railroad the people paid to keep this place compliant with federal CYA paperwork, I’m not sure I want just any two airmen.”

“I’d feel more comfortable if you wouldn’t phrase things quite that way, colonel.” Wray’s nails clicked against keys as she blazed through a form.

Young shrugged, wincing as he got to his feet. “What can I say? I’ve been spending too much time with Jackson.”

Wray shot him a look of dry approval and hit a final key on her laptop. “Sent.”

“You’re speedy.” Young pulled out his phone and authorized her request with a virtual signature. “Done. I’ll see you back here in half an hour or so.”

Young found the duty officer and scanned through the day’s roster, looking for the sergeant he’d met in August, the Marine who’d come up through the internal military track and helped Rush and McKay break a DHD. He scanned through the Gs, hoping the man hadn’t already been assigned to a gate team—but he was in luck. Greer, Ronald: base security detail.

Perfect.

The kid was working nights this month. That wasn’t so perfect, but Young wasn’t about to let it stop him.

“I’m gonna need to pull this guy in,” Young said to the duty officer, tapping Greer’s name. “Can you swap some shifts around to free him up for a few days?”

The duty officer wasn’t happy about the request, but it got done all the same. Young entered the sergeant’s contact information into his phone and left the office. He didn’t go far. Just outside the door, he leaned against the wall, clamped a hand to his back, wished vainly for his couch and a bottle of NSAIDs, and called Greer.

The man didn’t answer until the fourth ring. It was obvious he’d been sleeping.

“Sergeant Greer,” Young said. “Sorry to wake you. This is Colonel Everett Young. We met in August.”

“Yes, sir,” Greer said, his diction sharpening. “Storm from hell. I remember.”

“Good. Sergeant, I switched your duty roster. You’re off nights and paired up with me for a few days. I’m organizing an unusual security detail.”

“Yes, sir,” Greer said, even crisper.

“You happen to know anyone on the day shift with a good poker face? Someone maybe willing to bend a reg, here or there?”

“There’s an LT who works days,” Greer said. “James. Special Forces. Demolitions expert. Stubborn as hell. Good poker face. We see eye to eye on most things.”

“What’s her first name?” Young asked.

“Vanessa,” Greer said. “She came up internal, same as me.”

“She’s on base now?”

“Should be,” Greer replied.

“Okay. Haul ass down here, sergeant, but eat something first. Could be a long day.”

“Understood.”

“Meet us on Level 18,” Young said. “The converted storage closet across from the Linguistics Library.”

“Be there in twenty,” Greer confirmed.

Young had spent days avoiding his new “office” on Level 18, where about half the civilian consultants had space. Young had never been much of a desk jockey in the past, so, like Mitchell, he’d used a communal workspace in a broom closet on Level 25 when he’d needed to file a report.

It was Jackson, of course, who’d cleaned out the linguistics storage space and gotten someone to set up two desks and shove the bookshelves against the wall. When Young opened the door and flipped on the lights, he found a large, open room containing two desks, a central table, and a dry-erase board. 

The place was lined with bookshelves. There was a section devoted to ancient Mesopotamia, a section for English translations of myths from various cultures, and, perplexingly, a bookshelf in which every book was shelved backwards—pages toward the room, spine concealed from view.

Young frowned and pulled out one of the reversed books. It was titled: Principles in Effective Cross Civilization Conversations (Volume 3): Conversations with Omnipotent Entities in Theory and Practice by Dr. Daniel Jackson.

Young snorted. “Poor Jackson.” He replaced the book.

He dragged the most comfortable chair to the smallest desk and sat. Sitting wasn’t any easier on his back, but it was, at least, a different kind of pain.

He thought about texting Mitchell but decided against it. It sounded like SG-1 was right in the thick of things. Best to leave them to it. God, he hoped they found Vala. What was it Jackson had said? She’d been brought in taking down two guys holding up a diner? Young couldn’t see her blowing her cover for anything. But then, if Jackson’s theory panned out, and she didn’t remember who she was, maybe her instincts had given her away.

He didn’t think they’d get so lucky with Rush. Despite Jackson’s delusional optimism, Young couldn’t bring himself to believe his neighbor was walking around on terra firma without his memory. Odds were good that he was dead, or with David—wherever the hell David was—and the LA chatter Ginn was chasing was just that.

Chatter.

Sinister static from cloaked, hovering insurgents.

He and Ginn would probably turn up something useful, but Young doubted it would be an amnestic mathematician.

He picked up the landline on his desk. To his surprise, it worked. He asked the internal operator to connect him to Wray. He gave her a time-table on retrieving Ginn. She thanked him and told him she’d already started an abbreviated draft of an Integration Protocol she hoped to push through the military liaison to the HR department and straight to General Landry by the end of the day.

After ending the call, he tried to figure out when the shit would hit the fan, and which shit would hit first. There were two options: shit from personnel about a minor being quartered in an open floorplan with the galaxy’s most depraved Goa’uld versus shit about an Alliance operative on a reintegration plan days after the SGC’s most damaging information leak had been resolved.

He had the feeling the latter shit was gonna hit first, but the former shit was gonna last longer, and cause more of a mess for whomever’d stuck the poor kid in there.

James showed up at 1000 hours on the dot. She had an average build, sharp eyes, and a poker face that betrayed only a trace of anxiety. Just inside the door, she saluted sharply.

“At ease, LT.” Young returned the salute. “Where’d the duty officer pull you from?”

“Level 24,” she replied. “I was stationed in the MALP bay.”

“We’re guarding MALPs now?” Young asked. “Sounds boring.”

“No sir,” James said.

 

“You know Sergeant Greer? He says you have a good poker face.”

Just the hint of a brow lift. “Sir?”

“And he wasn’t wrong. Take a seat, lieutenant. I pulled the pair of you for a special assignment. Should only last a few days.”

James chose a chair and dragged it opposite Young’s shit desk. She sat.

“Greer should be here soon,” Young said. “I pulled him out of bed. He said you were with Special Forces before you joined the SGC.”

“Yes sir,” James said.

“Guarding MALPs has gotta feel like a step down.”

“No sir.”

Young snorted. “You up for a gate team yet?”

“I was assigned to the Icarus Base,” James said. “All set to ship out with the next group, pending command approval. But they didn’t send any of us. In fact, I think they brought some people back.”

Young nodded. “The project’s in a holding pattern.”

“I heard you were slated to be the CO.” James kept her tone painfully neutral.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s not all you’ve heard. At the moment, I’m CO of this desk right here.”

James let a trace of sympathy leak into her expression. Before she could comment, there was a soft knock on the doorframe. Greer stepped into the room and saluted.

Young returned the salute and waved a hand in the direction of the chairs. Greer pulled one from the table and took a seat beside James.

“This is not a tough assignment,” Young began, “but it could get uncomfortable. I’m about to do something unpopular. Shouldn’t rebound on either of you. In fact, I’ll do what I can for you after this. Right now, I’m a direct report to Landry, which means he’s the only one who can give you an order that countermands mine. Landry or another general who has more stars on his shoulders. Got that?”

He got a pair of “Yessirs” in response.

“We’re gonna pull an LA defector out of her cell on Level 16. You two will be acting as a security escort. She’s classified as a moderate threat risk, but do me a favor and don’t tackle her if she straightens her shirt or stops to tie her shoe.”

They nodded.

“We’re going to take her to an HR office,” he continued. “She’ll sit there for however long it takes to get her status changed from ‘Moderate Threat’ to ‘Negligable Threat.’ Could be a while. But we’re not taking her back to that cell unless you hear differently from me, or from someone who ranks me. The rest of it, we play by ear.”

“Yes sir.” James nodded.

“I’m game,” Greer said, with the hint of a troublemaker smile.

“Am I meeting with Colonel Carter?” Ginn asked, when Young showed up again, this time with Greer and James flanking him.

“Something like that,” Young replied. “C’mon, kid. Bring your laptop and anything else you’ve got.”

Ginn visibly tensed, her eyes flicking from Young to Greer to James and back again. “I don’t have anything else,” she said. 

Young eyed her bare cell. “Guess not. C’mon. Let’s go.”

“Colonel,” Nerus called. “Colonel, surely you can be prevailed upon to—”

“No talking,” Greer said, full of simmering threat.

“No talking,” Nerus thundered. “No talking? Do you have any notion of my importance, little warrior?”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Ba’al said, the picture of indolence as he watched Ginn shut her laptop and draw it to her chest. “You’re taking the girl? She can tell you nothing. She’s guild class. The Alliance has certainly ruined her mind in ensuring her loyalty. She’s a viper in the guise of a child, she—”

“We get it,” Young said. “Thanks, bud.”

“You are quite the beauty.” Nerus reached for James and got a shock from the forcefield for his trouble. “Why pull your hair back so? Such severity must be uncomfortable.”

“Get lost, creep,” James said.

“An idiom! How charming! What is a ‘creep’ and how should one best be lost?”

Greer stepped in with an impressively hostile expression, but Young tapped him on the shoulder and shook his head. He turned and started for the door, leaning on his cane.

Ginn followed close behind, with Greer and James flanking her. As they headed toward the elevators, Young looked back over his shoulder to nod at James. “When your shift ends,” he said, angling his head toward the holding cells, “write that shithead up.”

“Will it make a difference?” she asked. “Sir?”

“Yeah, if he tries to get a commuted sentence for good behavior.”

“I’ll think about it,” James replied.

It wasn’t until they had arrived in Wray’s office, Greer and James taking positions outside the open door, Ginn in a chair next to Young, Wray behind her computer at her desk, that Young finally turned his attention to doing any kind of repair job on the kid’s past few weeks.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he began.

“Why?” Ginn’s face was pale, her eyes dark and watchful.

“That was a terrible—well, uh, look, you never should’ve been down there. You’re not going back, okay?”

“Are you going to execute me now?” Ginn breathed.

“What?” Wray and Young snapped, horrified and simultaneous.

“No,” Wray said emphatically. “NO. We’ll find you a nicer room, and we’ll help you adjust to life as a Tau’ri. Someone will take you shopping at some point. There’s a series of videos—um—you probably don’t know what I mean by that. We’re going to help you.”

“A nicer room?” Ginn said, suspicious. “But I live where you keep your enemies. I’m of the Alliance.”

“Are you?” Young asked mildly.

“No?” Ginn whispered.

“No,” Young repeated. “You’re not. Either way, you don’t belong down there with two of the assholes who’ve been oppressing your people for the last ten thousand years. People like you, we invite to become ‘of the Tau’ri,’ if that’s what they want.”

“You allow them to choose?” Ginn asked. “They choose to be Tau’ri? And then they are?”

“Yeah,” Young said. “It’s a Tau’ri thing. If you choose to be with us, then you are of us.”

“There are others?” Ginn’s expression opened up, and she looked like the kid she was.

“Yes.” Wray smiled at her. “Yes, there are others. Teal’c, a Jaffa, was the first. You might have heard of him? He has quite the reputation. Many others have come after him.”

“This is dangerous for you.” Ginn frowned. “It’s unwise. Loyalties cannot be assured. Such ideological and cultural variance makes governance difficult.”

Young tried not to laugh. “Yeah. It gets us into trouble, here and there.”

Wray, barely able to hide her enthusiasm, said, “We actually have a group that meets to discuss theories of governance! Our system is very different from what you know, but it has its own strengths. Perhaps you’d like to come to a meeting and share your perspective?”

Ginn looked warily at Wray.

“Yeah, or you can think that one over, kid,” Young said. “It’ll seem less weird than it sounds in about two weeks. Our point is: you wouldn’t be the first person to join the Tau’ri.”

“I shot Samantha Carter,” Ginn pointed out.

“Yeah,” Young said. “We noticed. But, fortunately, she lived. That means she could tell us how you helped her reverse the damage to our systems and save the lives of most of the personnel on this base. That’s why this offer’s on the table.”

“So, to become of the Tau’ri I would do the same work as now, but in a nicer cell and I would watch video footage of your theories of governance?”

Young laughed, short and sharp, pressing a hand to his face. “Pretty much. At least for the next week or so.”

“Then what happens?” Ginn asked.

“It gets better,” Wray said. “Better and better every week.”

“Better?” Ginn echoed, as if she couldn’t imagine any greater luxury than a spartan bedroom and a book club on Congressional Ethics or whatever it was that Wray did with her free time.

Hell, maybe she couldn’t. She’d been a scientist for the Lucian Alliance, an organization not exactly known for their tolerance of independent thought and action.

“One step at a time,” Wray said. “Ginn, I’d like to ask you some questions that will help us understand you a little better. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ginn said, like she was tasting the word.

“Is Ginn your only name?”

“Yes,” Ginn said. “My affiliation was of the Sixth House, but now I am of the Tau’ri.”

“Atta girl,” Young said.

“For paperwork purposes,” Wray explained, “you’ll need two names. Did you have a family name before you joined the Alliance?”

“I did not join.” Ginn frowned. “I went with them so they wouldn’t kill my family.”

“Oh,” Wray said. “I apologize.”

Ginn nodded. “Why do Tau’ri need two names?”

“Well—” Wray began, “—all our computer systems are built around—”

“It’s a convention,” Young cut in. “If you’ve got two, you’ll fit in better.”

Ginn nodded again. “We had no family name,” she said.

“Did you have a family occupation?” Wray asked. “What did your family do in your community?”

“My parents operated a machine for grinding grain after the harvest,” Ginn said.

Wray smiled encouragingly. “On our planet, many people, but certainly not all, take their surnames from the occupations of their ancestors. The surname ‘Miller’ comes from the grinding of grain. Do you like the sound of that name? Ginn Miller?”

Ginn nodded, but Young shook his head. “No. No way. Last name, first name? It’ll look like someone named her after Miller’s Gin.”

“What’s ‘Miller’s Gin’?” Ginn asked.

“A brand of alcohol,” Young said.

“Hmm,” Wray said, amused. “Baker, perhaps?  That would be a person who bakes bread once grain has been milled into flour?”

“Is it important to choose the right name?” Ginn asked.

“Not as such,” Wray said, “but it’ll be with you as you move through our culture. Every day.  All the time. Are there any names you’ve heard that you like? Or any place or object that has a special significance to you?”

“When I was a small child,” Ginn said tentatively, “I fixed broken tools. Broken machines. After the Alliance came to our world they burned all the crops and forced us to plant Kassa. In that season, the season they came, there was no harvest. In return for food for my family, I repaired a Tel’tak for the Alliance. When they left, they took me with them. I’ve worked on ships since that time.”

“Keeler, then,” Wray said softly. “On our world, it means boat-builder.”

“A boat is a starship that goes over the water?” Ginn asked.

“You got it,” Young said.

“Ginn Keeler,” Wray said. “I like it. Do you like it, Ginn?”

Ginn nodded, and Wray typed something into her computer screen.

“Next question: how old are you?”

“I am Time of Ruin.” Ginn said. “Near the end.”

“I’m sorry—Time of Ruin?” Wray looked at Young.

He did some mental math. “She’s somewhere between 16 and 24. The LA doesn’t standardize eras across houses. Sixth operates with named block intervals that tick over with major events. Time of Ruin ended with the death of Ra in 1996. But Time of Ruin was a decades long block.”

“Okay,” Wray said, taking this in stride, “we’ll say seventeen. The next thing you need is a birthday. Did your parents ever tell you what time of year it was when you were born?”

“With the harvest,” Ginn said. “It was inconvenient for them.”

“Oh,” Wray said. “Um, well, it’s harvest time right now, more or less. Let’s say the twentieth of October. How does that sound?”

“Is the day itself significant?” Ginn asked.

“Well, it means that next Saturday, you turn eighteen. Do you have any objections to October twentieth?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Kid,” Young said, “this means that as long as you’re with us, the Tau’ri people you know are going to say ‘happy birthday’ to you on the twentieth day of October every single year. They’ll get you a cake, which is kind of like—you know that shaped almond paste the street vendors sell in the First City?”

“Ona’rev?”

“Yeah,” Young said. “Kind of like that. They’re going to stick little wax sticks in it and light them on fire.”

“So—six days from now, I will get a burning cake?” Ginn asked.

“Yes,” Wray replied. “The HR department provides all Integrating Persons with a cake on their birthday. You blow out the little wax sticks, and your friends sing you a song.”

“Oh,” Ginn replied.

“Welcome to Earth,” Young said dryly.

His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out to see a message from Mitchell.

::Snagged our girl. Bringing her home.::

Young smiled faintly and returned his phone to his pocket.