Beyond the Iris: A Stargate Story

Chapter 22

Eleanor

The Goa'uld in my friend had me at gunpoint on the other side of the gate. I could feel the barrel taunting my spine as we walked. "What's your endgame? SG-1? They're not going to risk their lives for me."

"I have been living like human vermin, lurking from host to host, hearing stories across the Galaxy of you pathetic Tauri and SG-1 taking down Ra, Apophis, Hathor, well seemingly everyone. What a power vacuum you've all created." He cocked his head to the side and chuckled menacingly, "not you. You're nobody. But your precious Dr. Jackson, the sholv'a Teal'c, know it all Carter and O'Neill the Asgard's ass. No, I've been watching and waiting for my chance to regain power. With the guidance of Anubis I will rise again." I shook my head in disbelief, people murdered in cold blood, innocents who had done nothing but volunteered to go this morning on a diplomatic mission to help with my transport. His face contorted and twisted into something foreign, something disgusting and ruthless. A primeval anger bubbled up to the surface and I could feel it radiating in the air around us, choking us with the fumes in a fog of disdain. "Don't place your pity on their deaths." His voice was smooth and calculating and no longer Lonnie's. It slithered up my arms and into my eardrums, the sound scraping at my thoughts, twisting and squeezing out horrified gasps.

"How long has this charade been going?"

"You tell me?" He smirked walking towards me and I lunged, eyes stinging in hatred and fear. "I was hidden in the false Jaffa camp, the one that the shoulv'a thought would become something to be behold." I swung at him but in one swoop he grabbed my wrist and with his free hand smacked me across the face. The tang of defeat split my lip like an overripe berry, my tongue swiping over the gash leaking out a metallic ooze. "I was a human on the planet, in the woods, and your friend came to my aid. All I needed was him to try and attempt to resuscitate me as I slipped into his body. Lucky me, an SG member. Ba'a was thrilled at my cunning manipulation."

"He was a person. He had a life." I gasped out.

"Had." He shrugged and I spat a red mouthful of blood and spit at him, smattering across his face like freckles. That look on my friend horrified me, and the venomous beast within him saw it. With one swipe of his arm he wiped it away and glared back. "This isn't about you," his eyes narrowed in serpentine slits. "You, you were a blip in all this. This game I've been playing for centuries. Nothing but a small kernel of information to seal this all in, to finish humanity. Even if I don't rise above Anubis, I can at least be a major player in his army. You never realize how much hatred can truly fuel you until seeing the existence of the Tauri persevere over and over again." His mouth cracked into a mocking smile. "Thank you for fueling that." He took my head in his hands, feeling his fingers intermingle in the strands of my hair and tug so that we both knew I was there in his grasp, being controlled like a puppet. His eyes burrowed into mine, and a light glazed across them again sealing the final part of me that had hoped this was some disgusting act. The man I knew was trapped in there somewhere, hopefully, but for now I was looking into the eyes of something wicked.

He yanked on my scalp again and walked me over to a temple carved in stone. Pillars high and daunting as the night sky domed over us. I clawed at his arm but he only yanked harder guiding me through the massive angular entrance of a singular roomed building. Inside black walls of rock formed into a hexagon, each wall holding the same device fused into the rock and I knew exactly what it was just on mission reports alone. My breathing hitched and he laughed, "so you know what this is then? I guess it is pretty infamous. O'Neill went crazy with these, but the Asgard can't help you now."

"I can take all this information in but there is nothing that will make me divulge any of it." I spat back at him squirming in his grasp as he lead me to one of the walls. There was nothing else in the room I could have tripped and kicked toward him. Empty, as if this were only a mental library.