"Doc-tor Fray-zher!"
Janet heard a weak plea from the far side of the infirmary. Colonel Mayborne's voice was choked and distorted, as though each sound of Janet's name were a struggle to pronounce. She rushed to his bedside.
All Dr. Frasier had to do was keep the man alive--and confined--until the Tok'Ra arrived. The parasite inside him was starting to make that difficult.
Three months ago, Stargate Command had captured a Goa'uld of unknown origin, lurking on earth in the body of a marine biologist, Dr. Margaret Coleman. When the SGC failed to gain useful information from the alien, the NID stepped in.
Colonel Mayborne came personally to retrieve the prisoner; in the process, he shouted in the biologist's face. With what looked like an aggressive kiss, the parasite created the close contact it needed to transfer from the biologist's brainstem into Mayborne's.
Miraculously, Margaret survived. The presence of the alien had already thrust her into knowledge of the Stargate program, and there was nothing in her background to preclude a security clearance. So at Daniel's suggestion, General Hammond offered the woman a contract as a civilian consultant to the SGC, analyzing biological data brought back from alien worlds. The SGC gained a capable marine biologist, and the appointment kept the scientist close at hand in case a useful memory or an unforseen Goa'uld after-effect emerged.
For his part, Mayborne was carted off to the NID by his own people. Janet didn't really want to know what kinds of interrogation he'd undergone, as the NID tried to get the taciturn Goa'uld to speak. But after only three months they had given up in frustration. They wanted the Goa'uld out.
Which is why the Colonel now sat in her infirmary at the SGC, awaiting the arrival of the Tok'Ra The Tok'Ra were a rebel Goa'uld faction with the technology and the will to drive their fellow parasite from the Colonel without killing him. Unlike most of their species, they regarded their hosts as symbiotic partners rather than slaves, and took only volunteers to reside in. Their alliance with the SGC had been uneasy, but mutually beneficial on several occasions.
At the moment, the intelligence officer was helpless in his own body, as the Goa'uld struggled against the leather restraints that secured him to the infirmary bed. It was not the aimless fury of delerium, but a cold, carefully orchestrated use of leverage to try to slip his hands through the bands around his wrists. Dr. Frasier knew the Goa'uld would not hesitate to use a level of force damaging to the Colonel.
"I need some help over here!" Janet shouted. She grabbed Mayborne's right hand and elbow, and pulled to keep him from crushing the Colonel's hands through the narrow shackles. One of the ubiquitous Marines assigned to Mayborne's security grabbed the Colonel's opposite arm, but not before Dr. Frasier heard something snap.
"Agh! Damn!" winced Mayborne. Dr. Frasier found it disturbing to hear the man's voice speak while his eyes glowed with the rage of the Goa'uld. Undoubtably the parasite had left him conscious so as to subject him to pain.
"Helen!" Janet called to the on-duty nurse, "stick this guy."
The Goa'uld were particularly resistant to drugs. But with Teal'c's help, Janet had arrived at a sedative cocktail that was pretty effective--at least on the Goa'uld larva in Teal'c's belly-pouch. It had also worked on Jolinar, the Tok'Ra who once possessed Major Carter.
Helen leaned in from the foot of the bed and nailed the Colonel in the thigh with an injection. It would take a few minutes for the drugs to be absorbed from the muscle, but Janet knew the concoction would cool the parasite's jets for a while.
"Ow. Thanks," Mayborne grimaced.
The Goa'uld continued to pull calmly against the shackles.
"Helen, get Major Carter," Frasier said. "No, wait, she's probably off-world by now, get Dr. Coleman."
The beast maintained its effort while another of the Marines relieved Janet.
Finally Dr. Coleman arrived.
"What's he been doing?" she asked, wending her way past the vigilants by the door.
"Trying to break Mayborne's hands," Janet replied.
Margaret shook her head. She approached the bed with her arms folded.
"You look so undignified," Margaret cajoled.
The Goa'uld relented. Janet could see the surprise on the Marines' faces as its resistance ceased.
"Give us some space," Margaret said to the Marines. "Let it have room to talk."
Mayborne's eyes watched the marines from beneath bushy brows. Janet moved out of his field of view, to the aisle behind the head of the bed. She lingered, eyes unreading on a binder of lab results, just within earshot.
Mayborne made no comment until the soldiers were too far to hear him. When he did, it was not the Colonel who spoke.
"They plan my death." It was the resonant voice of the Goa'uld, low and almost inaudible. Janet had rarely heard one of the aliens speak; the sound still raised her hair.
"What do you mean?"
"They are sending me to the Tok'Ra, so that I may be excised from my host."
"They want you out of Mayborne. That's not the same as wanting you dead."
"Without a host I will die.""
"I'm sure they'll arrange..."
"You would trade another human life in this one's place? I do not believe it. And I will not be driven to my death alone," bittered the Goa'uld. "What to you is abomination is to us a fact of our existence," it murmured. "Allow me to exist."
"And what about Mayborne's existence?"
"Were it not for incarceration by your own people he would hardly notice I am here."
"You do not have his consent to be there."
"Consent!" sneered the Goa'uld, raising its voice.
Janet heard a rustling among the soldiers.
The creature paused, then continued lowly, "You Tau'Ri are on a war of genocide against my species, there can be no 'consent'. Only submission."
"I wish I could convince you otherwise," Margaret sighed.
"The war occupies this one's mind in ways you cannot know," it murmured.
"And what about my mind? You must remember," Margaret countered.
No one knew how Margaret had acquired the Goa'uld, but they knew from old x-rays it had resided in the biologist for at least two years. Were it not for Mayborne's foolhardy, aggressive interrogation style, it would have been Margaret, rather than the Colonel, who underwent three months of unsuccessful NID interrogation, ending here tied to the bed, awaiting the Tok'Ra. The question of where the creature came from remained unanswered.
"Help me," the parasite pleaded.
"I can't betray my species either."
"Be my host. We will leave. You will see worlds beyond your imagining."
The woman chuckled sarcastically. "You make it sound like a vacation tour. What happened to 'nothing of the host survives'?"
"I do what is required to live. We Goa'uld have a great love of life."
"Of your own lives. Somehow the idea of being a slave trapped in my own body doesn't appeal."
"And when I resided in you before? Were you a slave?"
Janet looked up, and saw the biologist shift uncomfortably. The Goa'uld had remained hidden even to Margaret until Stargate Command ferreted it out. It had exerted influence, leading Dr. Coleman to the artifact which attracted the SGC's attention. But it had never overtly taken control of the woman until after her arrival in the mountain.
Margaret lifted her eyes to Janet, and the doctor could see the woman wanted privacy this time. For a human's request, Dr. Frasier would move--briefly.
Janet stepped out of earshot, but turned to watch the conversation, with no pretenses of doing otherwise. After a few words Margaret fixed the Goa'uld with a look of such disbelieving sarcasm that Janet nearly laughed. The Goa'uld leaned haughtily back to the bed and closed its eyes.
Whatever had been said, the interview was over.
Margaret looked around the room with an expression of consternation. Then Dr. Frasier saw her lay her hand on Mayborne's chest, over his heart. She pinched the Colonel's hand, and Janet saw his lips move drowsily.
The Goa'uld was sulking, but the Colonel was alive and well.
Margaret gave Dr. Frasier a wan smile, then slipped past the marines and out of the infirmary.
Mission accomplished. The Goa'uld was no longer doing damage to the Colonel--at least, none they could see.
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