* * *
The virus of the Touched turned half the base into raving degenerates. Formerly rational or even pacifist men and women, soldiers, scientists and technicians all began resorting to violence at the drop of a hat. It was soon established that Jack’s reputation for being dangerous and commanding was well founded. They were admirable qualities in a soldier leading his people in a fight against the Goa’uld but alarming when turned against his own people.
Jack stood out from the crowd, even when that crowd was slobbering and no longer capable of human speech. He wasn’t the first one infected or the first to turn on his friends. The incident in which a deranged Carter had thrown herself at him in the men’s locker room was not unique, although most of the other incidents on base had involved men throwing themselves (often literally) at women rather than the other way around. The fact that he had publicly attacked Daniel in a jealous rage was shocking but then the jealous argument between Roberts and Sandburg had ended with both airmen falling to their deaths, so it was hardly the worst case.
The one thing that Jack did that nobody else on base had managed to do was to escape after being infected, diagnosed and incarcerated. The others weren’t easy to deal with, they attacked one another or themselves, but none of them managed to escape. Jack remembers the incident with Carter and the incident with Daniel. He remembers the feel of the drugs that made him lucid enough to communicate with Doc Frasier. He remembers that but there was a period before where his memory is confused. He doesn’t remember escaping, although he’s seen the camera footage until it cut out when he pulled the camera from the wall with his bare hands.
He does remember the feel of hair gripped tightly between his fingers. He remembers the thrill of pinning a wrestling body beneath him. A glancing blow from a clumsy, desperate elbow. The feel of stubble and straining skin. He knows he must have attacked someone and tried to rape them. He doesn’t know if he succeeded or if he was thwarted. He doesn’t know if everybody knows and is keeping it hushed up or if the victim kept silent and carries the burden alone. He’s not even sure who it was but he’s got it narrowed down to three possibles. Two of them have since transferred out of the SGC, one directly after the incident with the Touched.
Months later when the Stargate program was shut-down, they were all exhausted and devastated. Daniel took off his glasses and brushed his hair out of his eyes, looking more helpless and lost than any of them. That expression seemed so familiar to Jack that he wondered but he’s always been too chickenshit to ask.
The End
