Title: Separation Anxiety
Category: action/adventure; angst; HC
Author:ELG
Author Page: ELG
Spoiler: The First Ones tag Season 4
Summary: When Daniel is kidnapped by an Unas, Jack risks everything to get him back. Meanwhile Sam is faced with the burden of command and has a life and death decision to make. (S4) [Printed in Gateways #4]
Notes: released from zine Gateways 4
Rating: R violence; language
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.  

Click to see collage created by Bri

Jack O'Neill yawned as he turned to Carter. "You know I really don't go a lot on this 'Don't call us, we'll call you' stuff from the Tok'ra. Not to mention the way they bone us every other mission."

Carter sighed resignedly. She did wish her CO would stop acting as though she was automatically on the side of the Tok'ra. There was always a note of accusation in his voice when he mentioned them to her. And yes, admittedly, they had only got to know the Tok'ra in the first place because of her, and yes, her father was now one of them, and yes, she supposed she was almost part Tok'ra herself these days. But that didn't mean she enjoyed being summoned to strange planets on what was meant to be her day off to have meetings for reasons that apparently couldn't be mentioned.

"I mean who do they think is going to tap into a communication between wherever they are and Earth anyway? I don't think Apophis is going to be out there monitoring every damned signal that goes zipping through the ether." The man pulled off his forage cap and ran a hand through his short gray hair. The breeze snatched at it and he pulled his cap back on again, slumping against the black stone pillar at his back with boredom radiating from every pore.

Carter sighed again. They were sitting on the base of an alien monolith on a dull grayish planet, and had been for over an hour now. She'd had to listen to a recital of the Tok'ra's crimes against the SGC for most of that time. Teal'c was walking the perimeter and she envied him the job; apart from anything else he was getting only the muted version of Colonel O'Neill's list of complaints. They'd been told the meeting would take place by the towering black stone pillar but as yet there was no sign of the Tok'ra. Daniel had examined the monolith on their first arrival on the planet but hadn't found any inscriptions.

Daniel, of course, had managed to get out of earshot of the Colonel within minutes by heading straight for the ruined temple which stood close to the Stargate. Teal'c had gone with him at first to check it out, but having declared it empty and consequently safe was now walking a triangular path meaning he could keep the Stargate, the temple, and the monolith in sight at all times.

"I mean how about that business with those armbands…"

Carter groaned inwardly. It was all right for Daniel, he was having a wonderful time videotaping inscriptions. All he got was the Colonel barking 'Daniel? You still there?' in his ear every ten minutes. And not being military he could get away with saying 'Jack, where else would I be?' in his best long-suffering tone. He could also retaliate by telling the man what he thought the inscriptions in the temple might mean and how Jack really ought to come and take a look at them until his CO was actually glad to say, 'Have to go now, Daniel. I'll check in again in fifteen minutes…'

"Yes, sir, I know."

"I'd trust that Anise about as far as I could throw Teal'c."

The Jaffa who had passed within earshot, paused and turned his head. His expression was forbidding and O'Neill gave him an apologetic grimace. "It's just a saying, Teal'c. I'm attempting to illustrate how little I trust her."

"So you have mentioned, O'Neill, more than once."

Carter shot him a sideways glance. "Way more than once actually, sir."

The man tapped his earpiece. "Daniel? Daniel! You still there?"

Carter listened to the crackle of Daniel's voice coming through on the intercom: "Jack, you asked me that two minutes ago. How am I supposed to concentrate on this inscription if you keep interrupting me?"

"Well, don't wander off."

"I never wander off."

"And don't – touch anything."

"Can I touch the video-camera? Because it might be a little difficult for me to film these inscriptions if I can't."

O'Neill narrowed his eyes. "Don't make me come down there, Daniel."

"Just tell me when the Tok'ra arrive. Until then how about if I call you if and when I need you and you don't call me at all?"

Carter had to bite her lip to hide a smile as O'Neill stabbed the intercom button irritably. "Like he's never wandered off before," he muttered. "And stop smirking, Carter."

"Yes, sir." Carter met Teal'c's eye and the Jaffa gave her a glimmer of his own rare smile before returning to his pacing of the perimeter.

***

Daniel put a hand up to the back of his neck and tried to crick it back into place. This temple was fascinating but he'd already got through three tapes and he still had two walls left to film. This was a language he didn't recognize but he thought it bore enough of a resemblance to the script the Ancients used that he might be able to make an attempt at a translation. Of course, he'd only get a few days to play with it and then it would be passed onto someone else; well, wrenched out of his hands more likely, probably by a strong tug from Jack as the man gave him the 'you knew SG-1 was a field unit when you signed up for this' lecture. Then Jack would probably offer him a candy bar in compensation and insist on taking him home to watch another tedious hockey game. Some other academic somewhere who didn’t even know where this information had come from would get to play with the language of the unknown cousins of the Ancients, while Daniel got to go through the Stargate and visit new worlds…

Actually it didn't sound too bad when he put it like that. There were definitely worse ways to make a living. And if he made enough of a fuss about giving this language up to some other archaeologist, he might get a candy bar and a cup of Starbucks coffee out of Jack. Or a bag of those imported chocolate walnut cookies. And he'd have copies of everything so he could go on working on translating this language when Jack wasn't looking. The guy had to sleep sometime.

He heard the sound of something heavy on the stone steps behind him and turned his head. "Teal'c, do you know what these
sym- ?"

The words died in his throat as he stared at the creature two feet from him. Its harsh breathing sounded very loud in the stillness, the stone walls of the temple picking up every menacing exhalation. It stood around seven feet tall, which meant it loomed a foot over him. It was clothed in metal and leather, a form of armor protecting its loins and left shoulder. From its wide studded belt dangled a mace, a sword, a whip, and a length of chain. Its gauntlets also seemed to be made of metal, but there was a great deal of its scaly gray-green skin on display. For a second of insane optimism, Daniel thought it was the Unas who he thought of as 'Chaka'. The Unas he had managed to communicate with, the one who had shown compassion to its prisoner, and in the end had risked its own life to defend him. Then, as this undeniably different Unas' eyes glowed gold at him, Daniel simultaneously grabbed for his sidearm and opened his mouth to yell for help.

The floor slammed into him so hard he thought there must have been an earthquake. He hovered on the brink of consciousness for a second, then as the world began to come back into focus fingers seized his collar and yanked him to his feet. Although badly shaken and with his head ringing like a cracked bell from the backhand which had sent him reeling, Daniel made to shout for help again. The creature immediately slammed him against the wall of the temple, cutting his forehead against the stone, before dragging him up the steps towards the light. He felt something torn from his shoulder, something else from his hip, the sound of cloth rending...

Although clinging to consciousness by a fingernail, Daniel tried to reach for his radio but his fingers scrabbled across only the ragged cloth of his jacket and he realized it was the intercom that had been ripped from his shoulder. The world kept swimming in and out of focus alarmingly but he recognized that blue stone circle without any difficulty. A wonderful way to travel when you were with your teammates exploring brave new worlds, but not at all something you wanted to be dragged through alone as the prisoner of a Goa'ulded Unas.

Clawed fingers were slamming down onto the DHD. Through the blood trickling into his eye from that cut on his head he could see the symbols lighting up. He'd better remember them, no, that wouldn't help, he'd be wherever the Unas was taking him. It was one of the others who needed to see them, remember them…

"Ja-!" Brutal fingers clamped around his throat and squeezed. As he struggled for breath he thought despairingly of how Jack and Sam and Teal'c were so damned close, if he could just –

The Stargate engaged, sending out a waterspout of light. As the Unas dragged him into the blue shimmering, he thought he heard someone shout out his name just as lack of oxygen dragged him into darkness.

***

"Daniel!" As O'Neill ran flat out for the Stargate the blue light vanished, dissolving into a few wisps of what looked like smoke. Swearing horribly, he spun around and ran back to the DHD, those symbols burned into his memory like a brand. He slammed his hand down onto the first, the second, the third –

"O'Neill!"

"Not now!" O'Neill held up a warning hand, slamming the next four symbols into the DHD. As he hit the seventh and the wormhole engaged he turned to Teal'c and Carter who were looking around the scene in confusion. "An Unas took Daniel."

"Again?" Carter stared at him in disbelief. "Do you think it was the same one? Perhaps it needed Daniel's help and – "

"Not unless it's gained six inches and a hundred pounds in a few weeks and been taken over by a Goa'uld. Its eyes glowed. I saw them." O'Neill checked the clip of his P-90 as he was speaking. "I'm going after him. You go back to base, tell Hammond what went down here, get reinforcements then come after us."

Carter pulled her notebook out of her vest pocket and quickly sketched in the symbols. As she was drawing them she said, "Sir, do you think that's wise? That Unas could be going anywhere. He could be 'gateing underwater for all we know. There could be a hundred serpent guards on the other side of that wormhole just waiting to –"

O'Neill held up a hand. "Don't want to hear it. Okay?"

"Major Carter is correct, O'Neill. Would it not be make more sense for you to return to the SGC and for me to go in pursuit of Daniel Jackson – "

"Not a snowball's chance in hell." O'Neill held out his jacket for their inspection. "Do the words 'Colonel' ring any bells here? As in 'team leader'? As in 'guy who gets to give the damned orders'? Anyone?"

"Sir, I'm just saying – "

"I know what you're saying." O'Neill turned and looked at her. "That it would make more sense for us all to go back home, send a MALP through, do a proper recon, assess the threat and prepare accordingly. If Hammond was here that's what he'd insist we did. But he isn't here and I'm going. I can think of a dozen different reasons off the top of my head why an Unas might want to grab Daniel and at the moment 'to eat him' is the least scary. Sometimes you need lots of forward planning, and sometimes all you need is a little bit of luck and a well-placed bullet. Now you and Teal'c go back to the SGC and bring help. Lots of help."

He was aware of Teal'c opening his mouth to explain all the reasons why it would make a lot more sense for him to go after the Unas. As he sprinted towards the wormhole, O'Neill was very aware of those reasons himself: a staff weapon had proven to be effective against an Unas in the past; an P-90 had not. Teal'c was a lot stronger than O'Neill was. Teal'c was a lot better at tracking than he was. As O'Neill threw himself into the blue light, O'Neill knew everything the Jaffa hadn’t had a chance to say was correct, but he was still the right man to go. Yes, they were a team and yes they all looked out for one another, but in his bones O'Neill just knew that on this trip he was the only person who might be able to get Daniel back.

***

Daniel was jolted back into consciousness by a clawed foot in the ribs He woke with a gasp of pain to find the Unas wasn't a particularly bad dream he'd been having but an unpleasant reality. Seconds later he was hauled to his feet by a vicious yank on the chain around his waist. His wrists were encased by metal cuffs and chained together as well. For the moment his ankles were free but he could see the chilling glint of more chain at the Unas' waist.

"Can we talk about this?" he enquired.

The way the Unas yanked on the chain so hard he ended up on his knees, told him the answer to that question was almost certainly 'no'. As it dragged him up by the hair and shoved him forward, he got his first glance at their surroundings. They were on a world where the air tasted of sulfur, the sky almost hidden by a dark cloudbank. As he coughed, Daniel felt his lungs burning and remembered staggering through the gate to find himself on a planet where the air was filled with volcanic ash. This was like a cross between the old version of Tollana and Nem's planet. Wonderful: primordial soup with an undercurrent of impending cataclysm. It seemed to be evening here even though it had been morning on that other world. The light was fading, the sun burning low and red. There might be two more hours of daylight but it didn't look as though there would be much more than that.

As he looked to his left he had reason to be grateful the Unas had him on a chain because that was a steep drop. There were some trees and scrub jutting out from the limestone cliff but it was mostly just perpendicular rock with a river a long way below. The brown water looked sluggish and appeared to be steaming. It gave the impression it was so rich in base elements it was on the point of evolving into something else but he wouldn't have wanted to drink a cup of it.

The 'trees' were mostly giant ferns plus some species he didn't recognize which bore enormous palmate leaves. He got the impression this was an old world. No, make that a new world. A place that was probably pretty much like earth a few billion years ago. A place without mammals. A planet where a Doctor of Archaeology born smack bang in the middle of 1965 was never really going to feel at home.

Having found nothing to like about the planet they were on, Daniel turned his attention to his captor.

The first Unas he'd seen had been dead but it had still looked pretty impressive. He'd asked Teal'c about the Unas later and found the creature fascinating as the possible source for a number of earth mythologies and monsters. The resemblance to the 'demons' of early Christian teachings had been unmistakable. Scaly, horned, with those terrible fangs, clawed feet, and glowing eyes, no wonder they'd been perceived as servants of the devil. They had clearly visited earth at some point and left long shadows in men's race memories. The second one he'd met had, basically, scared the shit out of him. It had been a servant of Sokar and been intent on dragging them all off to hell to be used as hosts. He'd seen that one take several hits with a staff weapon and still keep coming.

The third had been the one he thought of as 'Chaka' although, if he was honest, he still had no idea if that was his name; a juvenile Unas without a Goa'uld inside it. A completely different species from the one looming over him at the moment. The original Unas, the ones who had not been taken as hosts, were something Daniel had realized very quickly could be reasoned with; communicated with; creatures with their own morality, even their own integrity. Chaka had saved Daniel from the alpha male who would have ripped him to pieces, then invited Daniel to join his tribe. But he had a feeling this Goa'ulded Unas had entirely different plans for him.

It was difficult to look at an Unas and not find your heart beating at about twice its normal speed but as on a previous occasion when he had woken up to find himself the prisoner of an Unas, Daniel tried to remind himself this was just another sentient life form. Its resemblance to a gargoyle escaped from the pit of hell was just…coincidental. "Look, I really think we got off on the wrong foot." Daniel gave it his best ingratiating smile. "My name's Daniel Jackson, I'm a peaceful explorer from the planet – "

The 'clunk' of the Stargate beginning to light up, alerted both of them. The Unas seized him by the hair again, yanking him back.

Jack! Daniel thought, heart leaping in relief. It must have been Jack I heard. He saw the symbols. He darted a quick look at the Unas' clothing and saw no sign of any weaponry that would match Jack's machine-gun. Yes, these things took a lot of killing, but Jack had a hell of a lot of bullets with him. Hand to hand, an Unas could pull Jack's head off and use it for a football, but at a distance the advantage was all with his teammate.

The Unas seemed to come to the same decision, beginning to drag Daniel back towards the gate. Daniel winced as he saw the chevrons lighting up, five, six…that 'waterspout' was going to be billowing out to greet them any second. He thought of Teal'c shoving those Horus guards into the vapor on Abydos, those boots they'd found on Hadante, the ones with the smoking feet still inside them…At the last second the Unas dragged him over to the side of the Stargate. The blue light billowed, beautiful and strange, but too damned close for Daniel's liking. He sucked in his chest and swallowed hard. The Unas had hold of him by the collar with its left hand while with its right it was reaching for its mace. Daniel looked at that heavy spiked ball on a chain and winced; Jack might have a thick head but if that made contact it was going to crack his skull like an egg –

As the figure came through the 'gate, Daniel was already throwing himself at the Unas' right hand while yelling, "Jack, look out!"

At the sound of Daniel's warning shout, O'Neill jerked his head out of the way. He saw something that looked like a bowling ball with attitude sail an inch past his left eye. He staggered off-balance, teetered sickeningly on the top of the steps then went base over apex down each stone stair, 'ouching' as they slammed him in the rear, back, head and knees. He rolled automatically as he finally hit softer ground, bringing up his P-90 in time to see the Unas backhand Daniel viciously across the face, knocking him hard into the ring of the gate. Daniel hit the metal ridge and crumpled, knees buckling, clearly barely conscious.

"Son of a bitch!" O'Neill hissed. He leveled his weapon on the Unas but the creature turned on Daniel with a snarl, grabbing him by the back of the jacket before he hit the ground and yanking him up and in front of itself. "Shit…" O'Neill might have risked squeezing off a shot with a sidearm but a P-90 really wasn't a pinpoint accuracy weapon. He held up the P-90. "Okay, let's negotiate shall we? You let Daniel go, I won't turn you into a sieve. How does that sound?"

As the Unas began to advance on him, still holding Daniel in front of itself as a human shield, O'Neill automatically backed up. He'd been grabbed by one of those guys before and he knew just how strong they were; one twist from those fingers and your head was on back to front. The one working for Sokar had damned near crushed his windpipe just making a point, and this one was pulling Daniel around like he was made of paper. Daniel was only barely conscious, looking sick from the last crack on the head, the blood trickling down his forehead from that cut appearing almost black against the pallor of his skin. O'Neill grimaced at the sight of him. Daniel had been in way better condition than this after a day and a night of being that juvey Unas' prisoner. This one had only had him for about ten minutes and he was already concussed.

"Talk to me, scaly," he said shortly. "You can't hide behind Daniel forever."

The Unas' eye glowed gold with anger. "You will pay for your insolence, human!" It had a voice which sounded like two cover-stones grating together. O'Neill wasn't surprised when Daniel flinched from that fetid breath against his cheek. O'Neill could smell the rancid meat stench of it from ten feet away.

He backed up again and saw Daniel's eyes widen. "Jack! Be careful - !"

O'Neill darted a glance over his shoulder and saw the cliff edge just in time. Three feet away and a whole lot of wind whistling around his ears. As he slammed on the brakes, the Unas made its move, one he certainly hadn't been expecting. It threw Daniel at him with all its strength.

Archaeologist tossing had never been an Olympic event that O'Neill was aware of, but as the impact of Daniel crashing into him sent them both spinning over the edge, he realized that if it was ever introduced the Unas would be a dead cert for the gold medal. As the solid ground he'd been standing on lurched into terrifying empty space, O'Neill saw the horror in Daniel's eyes, saw the younger man try to snatch him back, fingers clutching on air as he tried frantically to haul him to safety, and then Daniel was being jerked back onto solid land with whiplash violence and he was falling and falling.

"Jack! Jack!" Daniel hurled himself at the edge but the Unas yanked brutally at the chain around his waist, dragging him back across the ground.

Daniel tried to dig in his heels, reaching for some anchor on the earth, desperate to get back to that edge. But the Unas was so much stronger than he was that it just dragged him across the ground and then jerked him to his feet.

"Please!" Daniel attempted to struggle loose from its grip on his shoulder. "You don't understand. Jack's very valuable. Whoever sent you to get me would want him too. You'll be making a terrible mistake if you let him die. You have a sarcophagus, don’t you? You have to get the…the body, you have to get down there and find it and take it to a sarcophagus. The System Lords want Jack alive, damnit!"

"Be silent!" the creature snarled ominously.

"You have to listen to me –!"

Dangling from the side of the cliff by a tree root, every muscle in his body screaming a protest, the fingers of his left hand desperately scrabbling to try and find some purchase in the limestone as his toes reached equally frantically for some kind of ledge on which to rest his weight, O'Neill still flinched from the desperation in Daniel's voice.

His toe found something solid and he took some of the strain from his right arm with a sigh of relief. Risking a glance down he saw it was a narrow ledge. It didn't matter; it was enough. The tree whose root he was hanging onto leaned out far enough to obscure him but he made sure he pressed himself as flat to cliff face as possible. He hoped he was pretty much invisible from above but all the same the last thing he wanted right now was for the Unas to do what Daniel was telling it to.

"The System Lords want Jack alive. They want him more than they want me. He's valuable to them. You'll be making a terrible mistake if you don't get down there and find his body now."

"One more word from you, human…"

O'Neill closed his eyes and pressed himself even tighter into the cliff face. Let it go, Daniel. Let me go. I'm dead and gone and he isn't going to look for the body whatever you say. All he's going to do is hurt you.

"You have to listen to me! What's the matter with you, damnit, are you stupid? Jack is valuable , don't you get it? You have
to – !"

"Be silent!"

O'Neill winced at the sound of something that sounded suspiciously like the crack of a whip, immediately followed by the sound of Daniel crying out in pain. He grimaced in frustrated anger and sympathy as he heard two more blows, two more exclamations of pain. Son of a bitch, I will get you for that.

"Now move." The Unas' snarl promised that disobedience would be severely punished.

"You don't understand – " Daniel was gasping it in between snatched breaths, sounding as though he was talking through gritted teeth and O'Neill imagined him very white from the pain of whatever that bastard had just done to him, probably swaying a little, but stubborn as hell. "You're making a terrible – "

"Silence!" An ominous thud was followed by a softer impact: an unconscious body hitting the dirt.

Fucker! That was going to be one dead half a ton of gargoyle if Jack O'Neill had anything to do with it. O'Neill tried to dissolve into the wall of the cliff as he heard the Unas walk towards the edge, the clank-clank of a chain and the sound of something sliding across dirt telling him it was dragging Daniel behind it. Pick him up and carry him, you bastard. O'Neill made sure he ducked his head down so there was only the back of his head on display; his hair was a good camouflage color now; he was sure there were animals out there who would pay to get a respray to his brindle shade. As long as he stayed absolutely still there was a chance he wouldn't be seen through that concealing foliage. For a second as O'Neill clung to the cliff face he smelt the rancid meat stench again and knew the Unas was peering over the edge, looking for his broken body dashed against the rocks, or his drowned one being pulled downstream by the current. There was an endless pause in which he didn't even dare breathe let alone look up, and then it turned away. He heard the impact of its footsteps retreating, the clank of the chain it had Daniel on, the harsh grunt as it evidently swung its prisoner up onto its shoulder, and then its footsteps grew fainter.

He listened to their echoes for a long time; frozen to the cliff face, gripping the tree root so hard he had no feeling left in his palm. He had come much closer to death than he liked and the reaction was shuddering through him. He could feel the shaking going through every limb and there was no point trying to climb up until it lessened.

As some feeling finally returned to his fingers and his heartbeat slowed to something approaching normality, O'Neill shook the gray sweat from his forehead and pulled himself up higher. He closed his left hand on another tree root, dug his knee hard into the side of the cliff face and hauled himself up a painful six inches. As he reached for the trunk of the straggly tree, he couldn't help thinking that if he ever met up with Teal'c again the Jaffa would be entirely justified in telling O'Neill that he told him so.

***

Daniel was awoken by the ground slamming into his body. He flinched as a clawed foot sank into the ground by his head, giving him a close-up of three toes with filthy talons whose tips indented the earth. The whole damned planet seemed to shake with every move the Unas made and he could feel the vibrations jolting through him uncomfortably as it strode across the clearing. There was a burning pain across his back, a stabbing pain in his ribs, and a throbbing pain in his head. But worse than all of them was the ache of Jack's loss; that had probably started in his heart but it had spread out to every cell; a terrible wrongness that nothing and no one was ever going to put right.

The fact it was dark and cold, the stars distant points of pale light, the two moons all but obscured by storm clouds, seemed only fitting. There was a rustling all around him, a forest of primordial greenery. He suspected they had come a long way from the 'gate while he'd been unconscious.

When he'd thought Jack was going to be coming after him, he'd been full of ideas for ways he could escape. Now it didn't seem to matter. Numbness was beginning to leaden every limb and it couldn't reach his brain fast enough. Jack was dead because of him; body broken into pieces on the rocks, spine snapped, skull crushed. He thought of Jack lying there with his eyes open but unseeing, a spreading pool of blood coloring the jagged rocks crimson…

"Oh God…" Daniel put his manacled hands up to his face. He had to think, had to find a way to make this not be true. He had to persuade this creature to go back there and do something. He jerked his head up. "Look, the man you…killed today, his name is Jack O'Neill. He's wanted by the System Lords. He's worth a lot to them. Alive."

The Unas jerked its head around and he saw its eyes glow gold. "The slave called O'Neill is of no more value to the System Lords than you are."

Daniel swallowed. "So why did you take me?"

"I do not serve the System Lords."

Daniel realized he wasn't as indifferent to his fate as he'd thought. Death didn't seem to matter right now but being horribly tortured by someone who'd had personal experience of all Sokar's nastiest implements did. With his mind full of pictures of Jack lying there dead he really didn't care if Apophis killed him or not. But he did mind giving away the codes to earth or revealing the glyphs for the planet where the knowledge of the ancients was there for the taking. He kept his tone flat, trying not to betray how sick he was feeling. "You serve Apophis."

"Yes."

"How did you know where to find me?"

The Unas glanced at him contemptuously. "The spies of my Lord Apophis are everywhere."

Daniel grimaced. "Even with the Tok'ra?"

The Unas bared its pointed teeth in something that might have been a smile. "Even so."

Tanith had finally managed to get some news out that wasn't a lie the Tok'ra had told him. Apophis. Daniel knew he should be scared, knew he should be thinking too. Shouldn't just sit there, huddled and numb, indifferent to what became of him because what did anything matter if Jack was dead?

What was that he'd said to him this morning 'Don't call me, I'll call you?' Oh God, Jack, I'm sorry. Call me. Call me any damned thing you want to, just call me. He bowed his head so the Unas wouldn't see those traitorous tears trying to sting his eyes. I can't do this any more. I just can't. Sha're is dead because of me and now so are you and I can't do this any more.

Hey, you can never give up.

Daniel jerked his head up. It was only an echo of a memory and he knew that. He just wanted to hear Jack speak to him so much at the moment.

Mentally he was answering him: How about now?

Especially not now.

"What's the point, Jack?" he breathed it aloud. Even as he was saying it the answer was coming into his mind. The point was that Teal'c and Sam wouldn’t give up. Not while there was any chance he might be alive, they'd keep looking for him, which meant they were going to end up following him all the way to one of Apophis’s dungeons and inevitable death if he didn't come up with something soon. Jack was right. He didn't have the right to give up when his doing so might end up killing two more of his friends.

Daniel darted a glance across at the Unas. It was getting colder, the temperature dropping like a ship going down with all hands: not particularly fast but chillingly inevitable. His breath was a white vapor in the darkness. He wondered just how cold it got here. "Any chance of a fire?" he enquired. He lifted his hands to blow on his fingers, the chains clanking at him, the metal cuffs like ice against his skin, weighing on his chafed wrists painfully.

The Unas strode back to where he was sitting and Daniel tried not to flinch at the way the ground definitely trembled beneath its weight. It loomed over him ominously, a clawed finger reaching out to tilt up his chin; the talon pricking the skin. "You will speak only when spoken to," the creature grated.

Daniel swallowed but looked up at it defiantly. "I'm cold."

The Unas' lips were bared in what was undoubtedly a smile. Daniel saw the malicious glint in its eye as it said softly, "O'Neill is colder."

Daniel kicked up with all his strength, his booted heel slamming into what he certainly hoped was the creature's groin. Its roar of pain told him better than an anatomy diagram he had found his target. He had never known a rage like it. For the first time he understood what people meant about bloodlust because right now he wanted to see this creature's insides on the outside; he wanted to rip out its damned heart and swallow it while it watched him do it. He finally knew what a red mist in front of the eyes actually looked like. He threw himself at it and his fingers closed on metal. The sword. He jerked it out of the scabbard and stabbed down hard into scaly flesh. The creature roared again; the sound making the trees shake; rage and pain and disbelief. The angry swipe from its arm sent him flying through the air and he hit the ground hard on the edge of the clearing. As he rolled, Daniel realized there was no pull on the chain around his waist, it was trailing loose. The Unas had obviously only had it held in its hand, not secured to its belt. He was manacled but free. Grabbing at the chain to pull up some of the slack, Daniel turned and ran into the forest.

***

O'Neill wondered what Unas meat tasted like. Bitter, probably, perhaps a little like liver. When he was roasting that thing on a spit, he was going to have to remember to take a bite out of its carcass for future reference.

He knew if Daniel were here he'd been pointing out that the Unas wasn't the villain here; the Goa'uld was. The Unas was imprisoned inside its own body as much a victim of the symbiote inside it as any of the poor bastards it had captured and tortured over the centuries. Yeah right. Intellectually, O'Neill might know that was true, but in his guts it sure as hell felt as though it was an Unas which had just thrown him over a cliff, and it had certainly looked like it was an Unas slapping Daniel around for the exercise. If he had to think about the host it all got too damned complicated, so for now he was going to hate the Unas and the Goa'uld inside it, and if Daniel didn't like it he could give him the lecture when they met up again.

Wedged in a tree, secured to the trunk by lianas that would stop him making an unscheduled departure from this branch if he fell asleep but which he could slice through in an eye-blink if he needed to make a fast getaway, he chewed on a granola bar without tasting it. It was sustenance, he needed it; needed the energy, needed to stay strong. He would have eaten cardboard if it had contained the requisite amount of calories for him to get the job done.

He hadn't felt this focused since he'd stopped working for Special Ops. He was feeling that assassin's clarity when the world narrowed to your mission and nothing else. It was like whole parts of your brain shut down: the sections that dealt with doubt, for instance; the sections that dealt with all those tricky moral gray areas; the sections that dealt with fear; remorse; guilt. All gone like they'd never been. When you were in this frame of mind you thought about your objective and nothing else. In this instance: Find Daniel. Save Daniel. Kill whoever got between Jack O'Neill and him doing either of the first two. And perhaps because his brain wasn't having the bother of needing to power a conscience, every other sense was increased. He could hear, sense, and feel with his whole skin; every rustle; every howl; every shriek in the whole damned jungle was not just reaching his ears but being catalogued, sifted, analyzed in a way he hadn't known since he'd worn that Tok'ra armband. Some kind of bird. Some kind of animal. Something big. Something small. Nothing human. Not Daniel.

That was the point, after all. He couldn't hear Daniel and nothing else counted unless it was something big enough to be a threat in which case he would kill it. Nothing and no one was stopping him getting his teammate back and anything that tried was going to end up very dead.

Okay, his P-90 was at the bottom of the cliff right now along with his radio, but he had a knife and sidearm, and anyway this was a world covered in primordial forest. Where there were trees there were fallen branches, and where there were fallen branches there were skulls you could crack with one good swipe.

There were some enemies he could sympathize with. Most terrorists were freedom fighters to someone. People with causes. People with points of view you could understand even if you couldn't agree with them. But to him an Unas was just a big scaly flesh-eater with an evil parasite in its brain making it stronger and nastier than it would have been even by itself. An Unas was one of the few creatures in the galaxy that Daniel wasn't going to be able to get through to. Not again. Daniel had been lucky last time and happened to meet up with one young enough and unusual enough for him to make an impression on; but Daddy Unas certainly hadn't appreciated Junior bringing Daniel home to meet his folks. O'Neill hadn't needed to speak the lingo to see straight off that big Unas had been roaring about all the reasons why young Unas never ever got to play with their food. The way O'Neill saw it there had been a dozen Unas in that cave who'd seen Daniel as lunch and one who'd seen him as a possible ally. That might be the usual ratio, or, as O'Neill suspected, you could meet another hundred Unas and not find another one like that Chaka character. That wasn't going to stop Daniel trying to make friends though. And him trying to reason with a creature that couldn't be reasoned with, would inevitably get him hurt.

There were a few things that always tripped Jack O'Neill's switch: Cruelty to children; cruelty to dogs, and cruelty to his teammates. And cruelty to Daniel kind of tripped his child-batterer switch as well so any bastard hurting Daniel got a double dose of rage coming right at him. Right about now he just knew that Unas was ill-treating his teammate. He couldn't hear Daniel crying out, but all the same he knew it. Wherever they were, he thought Teal'c and Carter probably knew it too. Carter, being a scientist, would be telling herself it was just her imagination, that her mind was playing tricks on her, trying to deny it but sensing it all the same. Teal'c would be looking so damned scary the SG-team assigned to back him up would be afraid to sneeze in case he pulled their heads off their shoulders.

Maybe he couldn't follow Daniel's trail in the darkness, but as he turned the knife over in his hands, O'Neill could sense his teammate's presence. That was one of the things that had confused him so badly when Daniel had been left behind on Nem's world. His memory reminding him that Daniel was dead while some inner tracer kept bleeping softly to let him know Daniel was alive and in need of his help. There were different kinds of trails and although the fall of night had obscured those clawed footmarks in the earth, the ones sinking extra deep because of the weight of Daniel on the Unas' shoulder, that other trail was still burning bright in O'Neill's mind. The one that told him Daniel was in this forest.

What was it he'd said to Teal'c when the Jaffa had given himself up to save that Tok'ra? "We'll find you." And they would have done. They never would have rested until they'd found him. They were going to find Daniel too. And then they were going to make anyone who'd hurt him pay for what they'd done. Then they were going to go and have a little talk with the freakin' Tok'ra about their internal security.

O'Neill thrust his hunting knife deep into the trunk of the tree so the jutting handle could stop him slipping sideways and then pressed back against the ridged bark. His face set. He wasn't going to think about anything. This wasn't a mission where thinking was required. This was a mission where you acted first and then wiped the blood off your hands afterwards. Which suited him just fine. The way he was feeling round about now, he could definitely handle that.

***

It felt as though the inside of his chest was being heated by a blowtorch. Despite the chill of the night air, he was streaming with sweat. It was bad for you to sweat in winter, he remembered that. Remembered his mother telling him that was why he should only eat curry in the summer. Too many spices in the winter could give you pneumonia. The sweat pouring down his body in rivulets while he ran blindly through the freezing darkness of an alien forest, tripping, stumbling, welted by the spiteful lash of whip-thin twigs, all his bruises aching, the rents in his uniform letting in the bitter air to sear the cuts across his back, the weight of the chain he was carrying unbalancing him so he fell again and again was probably something else she would have advised against…

Daniel stumbled and landed on his knees. At least the ground was softer here. His body was heaving with exhaustion, lungs burning. The Unas would be able to hear him panting a mile away. All he wanted to do was lie down and give up but he couldn't. Sam and Teal'c would be trying to find him and they'd never stop until they succeeded. He had to make life easier for them, had to meet them halfway.

Jack's dead. Jack's dead. Jack's dead.

Daniel twisted his head away. He knew how to get through this. A reality like that couldn’t be lived with; it could only be lived around. A big chasm he had to find a way to edge past without looking into it. He'd done the same with his parents' death. Told himself they were just away for a while. Every time his mind tried to tell him otherwise, tried to make him remember the coverstone falling, his parents screaming, he made himself think about something else. He'd done the same when Sha're had been taken. Told himself not to think about what she was going through, how scared she must be, made himself focus on how wonderful it would feel when they were reunited again…

Jack falling, the horror on his face as he realized he was going to die, Daniel grabbing for him desperately, his fingers touching the back of Jack's hand and then the chain pulling tight, yanking him back with no second chance to grab Jack's outstretched fingers. Oh God, what if he hadn't been killed outright. What if he'd lain there, shattered and broken, in agony, dying slowly, screaming for help that didn't –

Daniel dragged some air into his lungs, tears stinging his face; he wiped at them furiously with the back of his hand. He couldn't do this. If he kept thinking like that he was going to get recaptured, and if he was recaptured Sam and Teal'c were going to get killed. Jack would have died for nothing if Daniel ended up a prisoner of Apophis.

"Damnit!" He made a determined effort to get up but his legs seemed to have turned to spaghetti. They weren't taking his weight. No. Not his legs. They were pushing, but the ground was giving way. The ground was up to his knees. That couldn’t be right, could it?

Daniel realized he was sinking. He reached for solid ground to pull himself back up and found there was none. When he touched the earth around him it sucked at his fingers like a newborn calf.

By the faint blue light of those distant stars he looked at his fingertips, dripping with muddy ooze. Quicksand. And he was sinking fast, the weight of the chain dragging him down. The ground was up to his thighs now. Sam and Teal'c were going to get themselves killed for nothing as well because he was going to be drowned right here, his burning chest fatally cooled by a lungful of mud. He closed his eyes trying to think what to do. Drowning felt good to him right now. If he was dead he was never again going to have to see the look in Jack's eyes as he fell to his death. Never going to have to wonder how long it had taken his best friend to die; never going to have to think about his skull shattering on those rocks, the blood spreading out, brains spattered all across the…

"Oh God…" If he struggled he'd only sink faster but he couldn't help trying to reach for a tree root, a trailing liana, something, anything. All he was getting were handfuls of mud and the movement was pushing him down into the ooze even faster. He could die here and never be haunted by another bad memory, or he could open his mouth and yell so loudly the Unas would hear him. The Unas which was undoubtedly going to beat the crap out of him and then some for what he'd just done to it…

At least he was no longer sweating. The quicksand was cold; clammy and moist just the way his foster brother had told him the hands of child molesters were. The ones who might be hiding under his bed. The perverts in the park who would get him because little boys with big blue eyes called Danny were exactly the kind they liked best. He'd never known what it was they did back then, but he'd known it was something bad. Sometimes there were would be half a report on the TV news before his foster parents hit the mute button or switched off the set completely: the ones where the newsreaders put on a solemn face and there would be a picture in the top right hand corner of a child in a school uniform smiling for extra pathos. His foster brother had always told him he had all the makings of a milk carton kid.

Christ, this was no time to start losing it…Daniel gave his head a shake to clear it, the movement making him slide in a little deeper, it was up to his chest now; the mud making triumphant sucking sounds as it welcomed him in. Time to review his options. Currently they seemed to be a dead heat between death by suffocation or recapture by an Unas he'd just kicked in the groin and then stabbed with its own sword. Death by suffocation sounded more inviting but this way there wouldn't even be a body for Sam and Teal'c to find. And they'd never stop looking. Never.

He remembered Jack saying once that at least he'd known with Charlie. That terrible as it had been and always would be at least he'd known what had happened to his son; to lose a child and never know, that would be the worst thing, the very worst thing of all.

They'd never find him and they'd never know. Teal'c would go after Apophis single-handed if he had to. He'd never give up until he was dead. And going after Apophis single-handed to look for a teammate who had died months before because he was too scared to go on living would get Teal'c tortured and killed, probably very horribly.

Hey, you can never give up.

"Shit!" The quicksand was at his throat now. Choiceless again. If he didn't yell now he wouldn't be able to open his mouth to do so. Daniel closed his eyes. Okay, Jack. I won't give up. But remind me again why I'm doing this after that son-of-a-bitch Goa'uld has done using me for a punch-bag.

"Over here!" Daniel yelled it as loud as he could. "I'm over here! Help me!" He struggled against the downward suction of the quicksand, scrabbling with his arms to try and keep his head up. "Over here!" He put his head back as far as he could get it, the slime filling his ears and muting his own shouts. "Help me!"

As the quicksand closed over his head he had a last glimpse of the stars. They seemed to be a long way away tonight and their light was very cold.

***

Jack woke up with a jolt, sidearm ready in his hand even as his eyes were opening. He waited, poised, listening. He'd heard something. Someone…

Daniel.

A dream. Just a dream.

Except it wasn't and he knew it. He'd been woken by the faint, far-off sound of a human being crying out in pain. Daniel crying out in pain.

He felt the anger spreading through him in a red wave, yet still keeping it from his face out of habit, even though there was no one to see the weakness he was betraying. Only a couple of hours until dawn. As soon as there was light enough to see by he would be able to follow his trail again. No point in thinking about what that Unas might be doing to his teammate round about now. It wouldn't have snatched him just to kill him so it had a vested interest in keeping Daniel alive. It would have been sent to fetch him for someone; hopefully someone who needed Daniel in one piece and able to think straight.

O'Neill remembered the casual brutality with which the Unas had backhanded Daniel into the gate. It was only luck his teammate's skull hadn't been fractured. Okay, someone who wasn't too fussy about the shape Daniel was in, but that damned lizard still had to pull its punches if it wanted to keep its prisoner alive and it would have to know that, right?

Thinking of how annoying Daniel could be and how strong that Unas was, O'Neill jammed the knife angrily back into the trunk of the tree. Two, three hours until it was light and then he could get back on its trail. Until then he was just going to keep telling himself that Unas was under orders to keep Daniel alive.

***

Daniel shivered violently, arms wrapped around his chest, desperately trying to warm himself in front of the fire. The sparks kept burning his skin, but he didn’t care. He had never been so cold. He couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't –

He flinched as the Unas loomed over him again. Daniel stared fixedly at his knees. He was dripping wet, water trickling down his face, running down his neck, dripping from his clothes to form little puddles all around him. There was a cuff around his left ankle, the chain from it secured to the Unas' metal belt, and he had on his boxer shorts, trousers, and t-shirt, but despite the near-zero temperature that was all he was wearing. That, and a whole load of bruises. Plus the five fresh welts across his back to go with the three it had given him earlier; the blood from those was still weeping slowly, the sting of them a constant reminder of what it was capable of doing to him.

Its clawed fingers closed in his hair and jerked his head back. He was careful not to meet its eyes. He wasn’t challenging it; he wasn't acknowledging it. It smiled malevolently. "Do you know what human flesh tastes like?"

Daniel moistened his lips. "Well, some of the tribes of New Guinea on my planet call it 'long pig' so I presume it tastes like pork."

The backhand slammed him into the ground. He gasped with the pain, hunching up his shoulder to try and ward off the next blow as the world spun alarmingly, his left cheekbone aching so much he wondered if it was broken.

"Speak only when you are spoken to," the Unas snarled at him.

Daniel opened his mouth to point out that it had spoken to him; it had asked him a question, all he'd done was answer it. He looked up at it and saw it was running the lash of its whip through its left hand while staring down at him with unpleasant promise in its eyes. If he answered it back he would definitely prove that he wasn't afraid of it. But then it would beat him again, meaning he would lose even more blood and energy than he had already. He closed his eyes and thought of all those insults he hadn't risen to back in High School and college. All those jocks who'd called him a geek or a dweeb or a chickenshit little faggot because they knew damned well there was nothing he could do about it except suck it up because they were so much bigger and stronger than he was.

"Where's an Ataneik armband when you need one?" Daniel murmured to himself.

The Unas grabbed him by the hair and jerked him back up again. "Nothing to say?" It demanded.

Daniel shook his head.

It ran a clawed finger down the side of his face. "When my Lord Apophis has done with you, I will ask for your remains. Your flesh looks tender. You would make me a fine feast."

I hope I choke you.Daniel fought the urge to say it aloud. Getting the shit kicked out of himself by an Unas was a hobby that had quickly palled. Near drowning in a nearby river hadn't been the most fun he'd ever had either. And when it had torn the vest and jacket from his back, then wrenched off his boots, he'd thought it was going to make good on its snarled threat to strip him naked then roast him on a spit.

He closed his eyes, remembering the fury in its eyes as it thundered through the forest towards him as he sank under the quicksand. It had yanked violently on the chain, roaring with anger as it did so, dragging him out of the mire only to throw him against the nearest tree. He'd hit the ground so hard he'd thought he'd broken every rib, then it had dragged him up only to knock him down again, and again, even the blows it was raining on him obviously not enough to alleviate its anger as it snatched the whip from its belt and began to beat him with that. He'd wrapped his arms around his head to try and protect his face from the whip, the leather thong cutting through his uniform as crisply as a knife through paper. Luckily for him, the Unas had evidently realized almost at once that if it flogged him as hard and as long as it wanted to it was going to kill him. It had shoved the implement back into its belt after only a few lashes before seizing him by his now torn, blood-stained and mud-caked jacket and dragging him to the nearest river.

It had taken pleasure in holding him under the icy torrent, the water filling his nose and throat, making him gasp, choke, and finally black out. He'd woken up on the bank; its foot slammed into his ribs making him cough up another lungful of water. That was when it had dragged him back to the clearing and ripped off his now sodden but no longer mud-caked jacket and vest before tearing off his boots. He'd been too dazed to fight it. Even when it threw his boots into the forest he only watched them go. He was so cold by that point he was just waiting for his fingers to start dropping off. The Unas had clearly enjoying watching him shiver convulsively, shock, pain, blood loss, near-suffocation followed by near-drowning, not to mention complete immersion in freezing water in the middle of a cold night all combining to make his temperature plummet.

He'd remembered Sam telling him the body worked hard to keep its core temperature the same. That you could hold someone in a bath of cold water and his internal heat would stay the same for a long time as the body put all its resources into maintaining life support for every internal organ. But telling himself that hadn't helped as the shudders jolted through him. She'd also told him dying of the cold wasn't a bad way to go. She'd had a long time to think about it when lost in Antarctica and she'd told herself then that there were worse ways to go than to slip into the death-sleep of hypothermia. At the time, Daniel had winced at the thought of losing her and Jack that way. And winced again at the thought of how desperate she must have been, knowing Jack was going to die, that she was going to use the last of her body heat to try and warm a corpse.

After the Unas had fastened the chain to his ankle, Daniel had curled up on the cold earth and waited for the warmth Sam had told him about, the one that enveloped you as the hypothermia wrapped you in its folds.

That was when the Unas had snarled, slapped him across the face to keep him awake, and started building a fire.

The warmth had actually made things worse; tugging him back towards life; making him aware of how much his back was stinging, his ribs were aching, his body was hurting; how terribly cold he was. The death-sleep had been much gentler. He was still cold now, but it was bearable; shudders tearing through him every couple of minutes now instead of every couple of seconds.

The Unas looked him over contemptuously as it walked around him, clearly intent on making sure Daniel was aware of just how defenseless he was.

"My Lord Apophis will make you tell him everything you know."

Daniel shivered as the water dripped down the back of his neck. He could feel each drop hurdling the cuts across his back. Another shudder tore through him. He needed to think. Needed to start making plans again. He had to presume the Unas was going to give him back his jacket at some point. It had thrown it and his vest down on the other side of the fire so it seemed to be intending to dry them off and return them to him. There was food in the vest pockets. He would need to eat something. Those waterproof packs would get a chance to prove how waterproof they really were yet again. He hoped he didn't have the macaroni and cheese again. He hated the macaroni and cheese. Sam swore there were six different flavors, she might even have said seven, but he only ever seemed to get macaroni and cheese or chicken with salsa and as they both tasted exactly the same he was never sure which was which. Sam said the beef stew tasted better but he never got the beef stew, he suspected Jack had given the people who allotted their MREs strict instructions to give him all the beef stew packets. Jack wouldn't eat the crackers even if you put strawberry jam on them. He said he'd rather eat cardboard. He always gave Daniel his crackers.

Daniel bent his head. By the firelight he could see the chain around his ankle glinting spitefully; it looked bronze but it was probably made of steel. He wondered if there were other Unas on this world, if the ones who didn’t have Goa'uld inside them were different from this one. This one was very large, its tusks were full grown, its teeth huge. A different genus from Chaka's kind. The Goa'uld inside this one would have naquada in its bloodstream; different genetic memories. Jack was dead. Jack was still dead, and nothing and no one could ever make that better again.

The Unas was telling him all the different methods Apophis had of extracting information but he didn't need to know about that. He'd find out for himself or he'd escape before he needed to know. Thinking about being tortured was not a profitable use of his time and resources.

"What are you thinking, human?"

Daniel froze as he felt the Unas' rancid breath as a heated blast against the back of his neck. He said quietly. "About your host."

He'd surprised it. It hadn't expected that. "What did you say?"

"I'm sorry I stabbed your host. I hope he understands that it was you I was trying to kill not him." Daniel ducked as that clawed hand swiped at the back of his head. He gritted his teeth. "I have no quarrel with the Unas, only with the Goa'uld."

The Unas grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked Daniel's head back. It stared at him intently and just for a second he thought he saw the flicker of a different consciousness in there. His own eyes widened in surprise. "Do you understand me?" he said breathlessly.

The Unas opened its mouth to speak and then there was a snarl of anger, the Unas' eyes glowed gold and Daniel was thrown to the ground again. "Fool," it hissed savagely. "Even if it could it would not help you."

Lying on his side, Daniel said quietly, "An Unas helped me once before. It even helped me against its own kind. Why wouldn't it help me against the creature who has imprisoned it?"

The Unas looked him over contemptuously. "You are pathetic, human. A feeble shivering slave. What use are you as an ally to anyone?"

Daniel gritted his teeth. The Unas had a point, he had to admit, but as this was the only plan he had he was going with it. Cautiously sitting up, he said, "I was wondering why the Goa'uld ever stopped using Unas for hosts and started using humans. It seems like an odd choice to make when the Unas are so much stronger than we are. They have much swifter reflexes. Better sense of smell. They're bigger, tougher, faster. Why did you stop taking them for hosts and start taking us instead?"

"They are animals."

He was trying not to look at it, but its face was very close to his, he could see every tusk, every tooth, feel its breath against his cheek. "But to you, so are we. We're all animals to you. So why pick one that is weaker and slower and less able to defend itself?" Another blast of hot breath against his neck. He tried not to shudder but determinedly kept on talking. "And so I thought that perhaps the reason why you stopped using the Unas for hosts was because they were too strong for you. Mentally. Because they could fight back."

A clawed forefinger traced a threatening line across his throat as the Unas spoke softly. "Be very careful what you say, human."

Daniel refused to look into its eyes. He stared past its ear at the star-pocked sky. "I was taken prisoner by an Unas once. A real Unas. Not a Goa'uld in a borrowed body. He showed me more compassion than any Goa'uld I've ever met, and he had more integrity than all the System Lords put together. I wonder what the Unas whose body you stole might have done for his race if you hadn't taken him for a host?"

It threw him to the ground again and he curled up instinctively but this time it didn't hit him. When he risked a look, its eyes were glowing gold. "Nothing of the host survives!"

"My brother-by-marriage was given back to us intact after being host to Klorel for three long years," Daniel retorted. "I gave last rites to Apophis’s host after four thousandyears. He still remembered his wife and children even though their bones were dust. Your host is still in there, and you know that better than anyone. Perhaps in the end he'll prove to be stronger than you are."

As it raised its hand he ducked, putting up an arm to shield itself. The show of fear seemed to satisfy it and it lowered its fist again, gaze flickering over him contemptuously. "Your lives are so short and pointless you should be grateful to us for ever selecting you for our use."

"Is your host grateful?" Daniel asked flatly. "Or did he have a tribe which needed him to keep them safe? Did he have a mate? Children? Do you know? Do you care?"

The Unas spoke softly. "One more word about my host and I will tear out your tongue and eat it in front of you."

Daniel opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. He wrapped his arms around himself, shivering with the cold. After a long pause he said, "I'm cold and tired. I want to go to sleep."

It breathed on him again, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up in warning because there was something big, scaly, and terrifyingly strong kneeling behind him. He knew it was just trying to scare him, but unfortunately it was succeeding. It bent its head lower, pulled up his sodden t-shirt, then swiped its tongue along the length of one of the welts across his back. Its tongue was rougher than a cat's and very hot against the stinging cut. It sank its fingers into his hair and pulled his head right back so he couldn't avoid looking into its fanged face. When it ran its tongue across its lips he saw his own blood as a vivid splash of color. "You taste good, human." It released him contemptuously and Daniel turned his head away in disgust. After a pause it said, "If my host had his own will he would eat you, not save you. To his kind your kind are food and nothing more. I know his hunger. Your blood is as sweet to him as it is to me."

"So you're saying the Goa'uld is influenced by the host it adopts?" Daniel risked a look at the Unas. "If you were in a human host you wouldn't want to eat me but because you're in an Unas body you do? That means you don't have a fixed sense of your own identity; or even your own morality; you're subject to the appetites of your host?"

It snarled at him. "Be silent!"

Daniel ducked his head down again. He could feel a dozen questions tingling on his tongue but the sting of his welted back reminded him of the reasons why he wasn't going to voice them despite his burning curiosity.

After a long pause it stroked the back of its finger down his upper arm and breathed softly, "If I had taken a human host, creature, it would have mated with you by now. Keep talking and I might do so anyway."

Daniel couldn't stop another shudder rippling through him. He knew damned well it saw him as something so far down the food chain as to be barely sentient but that didn't mean it wouldn't fuck him just to express its contempt for his kind. Apophis wouldn't care what it did to him and they both knew it.

"Can I have the rest of my clothes?" He didn't look at it as he spoke.

The earth shook as it strode back to the fire. The jacket hit him in a wet slap of steaming cotton. He could still feel the Unas' tongue sliding across his skin, the creature smacking its lips over the flavor of his blood. He squeezed out his jacket but it was running with water despite being almost too hot to touch. He rang out the corner of his t-shirt too and it made another silver puddle in the earth beside him. His pants were still so wet they looked black instead of green. The jacket might be soaking but at least it was warm.

He remembered his mother telling him to never wear wet clothes. That he'd catch a chill if he did. Remembered Jack making him and Sam change into dry socks after they'd walked through some muddy terrain on an uninhabited world. They had both stared at him in disbelief while he looked at them stolidly, saying, "Why do you think you have spare socks in your packs? Because wet feet give you pneumonia."

Sam saying, "Actually, sir, pneumonia is a virus and you can only catch it from – "

Jack holding up his hand. "Don’t want to hear it, Carter, and what's more I'm not going to. Just one of the privileges of rank. Now set a good example and change out of the wet socks before Daniel starts yapping at me as well."

Daniel looked down at his still-dripping t-shirt, his sodden trousers, his steaming jacket. Jack would freak if he saw him wearing these clothes. But Jack was dead and would never know. While the Unas was still savoring the taste of his blood, smiling at him through the campfire as it deliberately ran its tongue around its lips again as though he was a rare steak it was going to be eating very soon. Daniel decided the less of his bare skin on display the better.

The jacket was unnaturally heavy with the water still clogging it and his fingers were clumsy with the cold. As with his t-shirt the back of it had all those diagonal cuts across it, making it look as if something large had clawed him. His back probably looked like that too. When he moved, the wet cotton of his t-shirt chafed every welt. "Can I have my vest?" Daniel looked across at the Unas. He kept his head low so he didn't look like he was challenging it, face blank, neither submissive nor defiant, tone neutral.

It snarled at him. It had taken something from a pouch at its belt and was eating it. Raw meat, Daniel presumed. He realized it hadn't just been trying to frighten him; the taste of his blood had obviously made it hungry. He gritted his teeth. "I need my vest. It has my food in it." It gave him a glance of contempt and ripped off another chunk of meat.

Daniel felt his stomach cramp with emptiness. As he pulled his sodden jacket over his sodden t-shirt, he looked into the fire so as not to make eye contact. "I need my vest and my boots."

"No."

He set his jaw. "I can't go around barefoot, I'll slow you up."

It was over beside him in a couple of strides. "You will not." The warning in its eyes needed no explanation.

Daniel darted a glance of longing at his vest. There was food in there and he was so damned hungry. He tried again. "I need something to eat."

"No." There was satisfaction in its voice. It snapped the cuffs closed around his wrists and fastened them to a chain which it tied to its belt. It was clearly intending to make him pay for his attempted escape in every way it could think of as well as thwarting any future efforts. Daniel thought of Chaka again. He remembered the young Unas snatching that primitive Goa'uld from the air and snapping it in half with an efficiency only Teal'c might have matched. Smearing the dead symbiote's blood on Daniel's face as a warning; pointing out how close he'd come to being turned into a Goa'uld with his foolish foray into the symbiote-filled river. Chaka hadn't found it necessary to punish him to drive the message home. But then Chaka hadn't had a snake in his head telling him Daniel was less than the dust beneath his feet.

The Unas grabbed a handful of Daniel's hair again, pulling his head back. "You can starve." It released him roughly, yanking his hair again as it did so. Daniel pulled his head away, wishing for a staff weapon; even better wishing for Teal'c carrying a staff weapon, and Sam, and…

Jack's gone, okay? He's gone and he's never coming back. Get used to it, Jackson.

He probably would get pneumonia. Which suited him fine. That would thwart Apophis very nicely. Pneumonia was a kind way to die. His grandmother had died of pneumonia and he remembered his mother had told him she hadn't suffered at all. With any luck Jack would still be kicking his heels in some holding cell in heaven, demanding to see the management because he'd already been to hell once and he was damned sure he wasn't going there again, and if he didn't have a reservation they'd damned well better recheck their bookings…Jack could tell Daniel 'I told you so' about the wearing wet clothes. Jack would enjoy that.

Daniel lay down on his right side gingerly. He'd hit the tree with his left side when the Unas threw him at it. His right ribs were only lightly bruised. He could sleep like this. He curled up as small as he could in his steaming clothes, trying not to think about how much his back was stinging, how cold he was still. How dead Jack was.

He was so exhausted he was asleep even before he'd finished flinching.

***

Teal'c was pacing up and down the 'gateroom while SG-3 and SG-4 watched him anxiously. General Hammond was also keeping a wary eye on him. He knew very well that Teal'c's patience was almost at breaking point. He'd had to be very firm earlier when telling Teal'c and Carter they had to wait for some back-up, that he would not authorize the two of them setting off in pursuit until they had at least one and preferably two teams in support. Word had been sent to any off-world team that was contactable and they would be back within a few hours. And yes, Teal'c, Major Carter, that was an order.

By the time SG-3 and SG-4 had returned to assist – ironically within minutes of one another – three hours had passed and the MALP had confirmed nightfall on the planet of destination.

That was the point when he'd almost had a stand-up fight with two of his favorite SGC members right there in the 'gateroom. Both Teal'c and Carter had looked on the point of rebelling as he'd explain to them why he couldn't authorize sending a team through the gate to a planet at night; not when their only hope of finding Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson was to follow their trail. Something it would be impossible to do in the darkness. Carter and Teal'c had both argued they needed to start immediately, this second, now , sir! But he'd explained his reasons to them again, very patiently. What if they missed something in the darkness? What if they obscured a vital clue? They were going to have to work through what would feel like night to them on a hostile planet, possibly filled with Unas. They needed to be ready for whatever this mission could throw at them. They owed it to Colonel O'Neill and Doctor Jackson to be in the best possible shape.

What he hadn't told them was that he wasn't sending any one else to that world until he got some reply from the Tok'ra about what the hell they'd been playing at luring his people into what had every appearance of a trap. The answer had come back an hour before daylight on that other world. They were sorry. Tanith had got word to Apophis of the scheduled meeting between Kora and SG-1. Kora had arrived early only to be attacked by the Unas and had barely managed to stagger back through the 'gate. He'd been unable to travel to Vorash as he had not wanted the Unas to see the glyphs for that destination, so had traveled to Tollana instead. He'd collapsed on Tollana before he could communicate what had happened, remaining unconscious for several hours. By the time he had awoken and told the Tollan what had happened, and they had communicated the news to the Tok'ra, the Tok'ra had already received Hammond's message asking for clarification.

The Tok'ra High Council could only offer their apologies, hope that the SGC were able to retrieve Doctor Jackson soon, and to inform them that they had good reason to believe Apophis was en route for the destination planet to which Doctor Jackson had been taken. They would strongly advise not allowing Doctor Jackson or Colonel O'Neill to fall into Apophis’s hands were it avoidable. Tok'ra operatives working within his ranks could confirm that neither were favorites of Apophis. The Tok'ra High Council hoped that they and the SGCcould reschedule their meeting very soon.

There were times when Hammond knew that if Jacob Carter hadn't been one of them he would seriously have contemplated breaking off all relations with the damned Tok'ra…

Now Teal'c looked enquiringly at General Hammond. "Is it not time yet?"

Hammond glanced across at the MALP reading; five minutes to daylight. It was close enough. He nodded and the technician began to dial up.

Carter came into the room a little out of breath, two metallic objects glinting in her hand. Teal'c looked between the Goa'uld technology she was carrying and then raised an eyebrow at her in enquiry. Carter held them out so the general could see them, "I hope it's okay, sir. I asked to take these."

Hammond looked at the golden ribbon device and then at the healing device before turning to her for an explanation. Carter shrugged, "I don't know why I – it's just. Apophis must be very strong now. He has Sokar's army as well as the remnants of his own. I think we might need every advantage just to have a chance against him."

"And the healing device?" Hammond pressed.

Carter slipped it into her pack as though she was a little ashamed of it. She didn't look at him as said, "Colonel O'Neill said an Unas took Daniel. There's quite a – disparity between the weight and strength of an Unas and a human being, and they're not the most even-tempered creatures in the world."

Hammond winced and then nodded hastily. "Quite so, Major. I get your point." He met her gaze and saw the stricken look in her blue eyes. He put his hand on her shoulder. "It would only go to the trouble of kidnapping Dr Jackson if it needed him alive."

"But it clearly has no use for O'Neill," Teal'c put in crisply. "And he was in close pursuit. As he has not returned with Daniel Jackson we must presume he was unsuccessful in his attempt to rescue him. That suggests the Unas may have wounded or killed him." There was a hint of accusation in his tone and General Hammond sighed. It sometimes felt as if it were a full-time job stopping Teal'c from risking his neck against impossible odds.

The wormhole engaged with a rush of air and Carter and Teal'c both turned towards the ramp in obvious relief.

"Bring them back," Hammond said quietly. He didn't add 'alive' because he wasn't sure that was possible. As Teal'c had pointed out, if O'Neill had been successful he would have returned by now; but he could be buried on his home world even so.

Teal'c inclined his head and by the grimness of his expression, Hammond knew the Jaffa was also expecting the worst. He had never known Carter ask to take either of their pieces of Goa'uld technology on a mission before; the fact she had elected to take both this time seemed a better indication of her state of mind than even the way she was thrumming quietly with tension.

"God speed," Hammond murmured and then they were stepping into the blue light and lost to him. As always a part of him felt as though it went with them; the larger part of himself left behind to watch and worry envying it that freedom.

***

Daniel awoke to a dim pearl-gray light. His clothes were still damp and he was chilled to the bone. Nothing less than total exhaustion would have enabled him to sleep and he realized he was still shaking with tiredness, or possibly the cold. He tried to find something that wasn't hopeless in his current situation. He was the prisoner of a creature that disliked and despised him, which was considerably stronger than he was, and had no compunction about torturing or maiming him in the process of delivering him to a Goa'uld who hated him and would enjoy watching him suffer.

Daniel grimaced. "Well, that's a quite a down side, I must admit." On the plus side Teal'c and Sam were bound to be on his trail and would hopefully catch up with him before the Unas reached its current destination.

The Unas. Daniel looked across at the sleeping creature. It had the end of the chain from his ankle cuff and the chain from the cuffs around his wrists attached to its belt so there was no way that he could run off. Even if that hadn't been the case he wasn't sure he would have tried it. There was a limit to how many lickings this particular linguist could take and still keep on ticking, and he'd already been thrown around quite enough for one trip. He wondered if he'd imagined that second earlier when he'd looked into the eyes of that Unas and seen, not a Goa'uld, but a different mind entirely. If it wasn't for his meeting with Chaka it would never have occurred to him to try to communicate with the Unas itself. They were monsters who fed on human flesh, after all. But he couldn't forget those cave drawings, or the clear evidence of a moral code which Chaka had displayed when Daniel had been the young Unas' prisoner. It had allowed him to drink and it had fed him. Nor had it hurt him for trying to escape, it had only shown him why going into the water was a bad thing to do. He was sure that every Unas had at least as strong a sense of its own identity as any human. Including the one that Goa'uld was currently using as a host.

Cautiously, Daniel got to his knees. The Unas didn't move. He crawled across to where it was lying, trying not to put his knee down on any dry twigs as he did so. Seeing his vest lying within reach, he stretched out a hand and found a chocolate bar in its waterproof bag. He slipped it into his jacket pocket and then cautiously crawled a little closer to the Unas. It was breathing deeply and evenly, and just for a second he thought about trying to stab it again but then he thought of how sensible that would be when he was connected to it by ten feet of chain. It had shaken off his last attack within half an hour, and getting beaten to a pulp really didn't seem like the best possible way to go. Anyway, he couldn't forget he was dealing with two consciousnesses here, and one of them was as much a victim of the Goa'uld as he was.

Daniel moistened his lips then leant across and carefully sketched out the glyphs for Cimmeria. As he drew the last one, a scaly hand shot out and caught his wrist. Flinching in anticipation, he darted a quick look at the Unas. To his surprise there was no rage in those yellow eyes, just comprehension. Daniel's own eyes widened. He pointed to the glyphs and whispered rapidly, "Thor's Hammer can kill the Goa'uld inside you and leave you unharmed."

The Unas let go of his wrist then it jerked its head savagely at the place where Daniel had been lying. As he hesitantly began to back up, its clawed hand shot out and obliterated the glyphs. A second later there was a roar of rage and Daniel flattened to the ground.

He winced as the Unas leapt to its feet and strode over to where he was lying. "What are you doing?" it hissed.

He glanced up and saw its eyes briefly glow gold. He swallowed and averted his gaze. "I'm cold. I wanted to light the fire again."

"No!" It grabbed him by the back of the jacket and hauled him up. "No fire!"

"Please." He pressed his elbows against his sides to try to stop the shivering. "I'm freezing." Behind it he could see one of the glyphs the Unas hadn't obliterated before the Goa'uld within it had awoken again. He quickly looked at the fire instead of the ground. "My clothes are still wet –"

Too late. He tried not to flinch as it abruptly wheeled around and stared at the ground where it had been sleeping. It crouched down and examined the soil and Daniel stayed still, keeping his head lowered, body language as unthreatening as he could make it. He wondered if there were things the host could keep from the Goa'uld or if when it awoke it automatically knew everything. No, Kendra had said she could mislead her Goa'uld. It hadn't been aware of her deception when she had worked to lure it to Cimmeria. That meant –

That low snarl of comprehension and rage went right through him and Daniel shuddered. The Unas turned on him furiously. "What is this?"

Daniel kept his head down. "What?"

It strode across to where he was crouching, grabbed him by the collar and threw him across the clearing. He landed hard on his knees, the scuffed soil and remaining glyph clearly visible. Daniel looked up at it, jaw set. "What?" he repeated.

"This!" It stabbed a clawed forefinger at the ground.

Daniel shrugged. "I have no idea. I was sleeping over there. It must be something your host wrote. Perhaps he was trying to tell you he wants to go home."

It recoiled. "Nothing of the host survives!"

Daniel met its gaze. "We both know that isn't true. That's just something you tell yourselves so you don't have to feel guilty – " He broke off as it grabbed him by the back of the jacket and yanked him to his feet. It unfastened the chain from around its belt and yanked on it savagely, jerking him forward by the wrists.

"I have to eat something." Daniel pulled back on the chain, heart beating faster as he realized he wasn't going to be punished for having written out the coordinates for Cimmeria. He wondered if this Goa'uld suffered from blackouts from time to time, if it was indeed in a constant battle with its host. The Unas mind had seemed to be much simpler than a human's; that might make it stronger. It might have a much better sense of its own identity because of it. After all, a human child brought up by wolves could permanently lose abilities which appeared to be instinctive in children raised by humans. Some anthropologists had suggested this proved that humans had no instinctive sense of their own species, that almost everything they did from the earliest age was copied, not inherent. But people brought up dogs in their homes every day and yet even puppies bottle-fed by human beings from birth still knew that they were dogs. Perhaps a human mind was easier to control simply because it was so complex it didn't have the same overwhelming sense of self of a less evolved species?

The Unas bared its teeth at him but Daniel dug in his toes. "Look, if you want me to walk another twenty miles today you have to let me eat something. I have my own food, I just need you to untie my hands so I can eat it. It's right there in my vest." He jerked his head at the vest at his feet. In reply it snatched up the vest and began to go through the pockets. When it came across an item of food it threw it onto the floor.

Daniel tried not to flinch as it stamped on the last of his MREs, kicked dirt over them then ripped his vest in two before throwing it across the clearing. "I see you don't subscribe to the 'coals of fire' theory. You know 'If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt –'"

It yanked savagely on the chain around his wrists, jerking him forward and snarling, "Move…"

As he was dragged away from the clearing, Daniel tried to think about Teal'c and Sam being hot on his trail. About the possible act of communication that had just taken place between himself and the Unas host. About anything other than how cold, exhausted and hungry he was before setting out. About how Jack was still dead and never ever coming back.

***

"Teal'c!"

The Jaffa had been examining the tracks on the ground, the unpleasant truth of what he was reading beginning to impress itself upon him in a way too insistent to ignore when Major Carter's shout reached him.

He looked up and saw her lying on the ground, peering over the cliff edge, the almost over-keen young new leader of SG-3, Captain Frobisher, with his hand gripping her ankle tightly to stop her going over.

Teal'c was there in a moment, being careful as he joined her not to tread on any of the tracks.

She glanced up at him, face white and set and he saw the despair in her eyes. "Look."

Teal'c lay down next to her and followed her pointing finger. The fact her hand was trembling a little told him what to look for but the sight of that P-90 swinging slowly in the morning breeze, snagged on a branch only ten feet above the steaming torrent and jutting rocks, still made his heart turn over. "O'Neill's gun," he said it quietly.

Carter nodded. "It makes sense." Her voice was very taut. "The Unas would have known one of us might follow. He would have been waiting."

Teal'c said quietly, "The Unas appeared to struggle with someone by this cliff edge; someone was pulled back from the edge, and then dragged across the ground for some distance. Then the Unas left here, carrying something heavy."

"Daniel." Carter swallowed hard. "It must have knocked him unconscious. He would have tried to stop it throwing the Colonel – " She bit her lip, collecting herself. "We need to go after him quickly. It could have got a long way ahead of us by now. Daniel might be hurt."

"There was some blood, but not enough to suggest a deep wound," Teal'c reassured her.

She wriggled back from the edge and got to her feet. She turned to SG-3 and said tersely, "Send word to General Hammond, tell him we believe Colonel O'Neill to be dead and his body unrecoverable at this time. Tell him we've found a trail and we're going after Daniel. Then send the MALP back through and come after us." As she turned, she looked at Teal'c. "It could have broken every bone in his body and Daniel would still hardly have bled at all."

He returned her gaze steadily. "You think Daniel Jackson is injured?"

She took off her cap and then ran her fingers through her hair. "Apophis might need Daniel alive but he won't care what condition he was in. If he did he would never have sent an Unas to collect him. He wants the Harcesis, but more than that, I think he wants Daniel to suffer and I don't think that Unas was under orders to take good care of him."

Teal'c nodded gravely. "I concur." He glanced back at the cliff edge. "Should we not leave Captain Frobisher and his men to search for the…body?"

He admired the way she didn't flinch, turning determinedly to look at the tracks the Unas had left, deep clawed indentations in the soft ground, still clearly visible despite the passage of hours. "The Colonel would want us to save Daniel from Apophis a lot more than he'd want us to give him a proper burial, Teal'c. It seems to me the best thing we can do for him right now is to carry out his wishes."

As she shouldered her P-90 and led the way, Teal'c nodded sadly. His own grief at the thought of O'Neill's death was a sharp ache that he suspected would take many years to fade, but he knew Major Carter was right. The best they could do for O'Neill now was to save Daniel Jackson from the Unas who had killed their friend.

***

O'Neill crouched down by the fire and waved his hand over the top of it. Cold. Not even an ember smoldering. He took a moment to catch his breath, to get himself focused, calm. He wasn't the world's greatest tracker, not up there with Bra'tac or Teal'c, but he could work out this was where the Unas had made camp for the night. The clearing was only thinly surrounded by trees on the eastern side, it lay at the edge of the jungle and beyond it was what looked like a salt plain topped by a thin crust of pale soil, the kind which left tracks you could see for miles. He would make much better time across that terrain then he had in the jungle. If it hadn't been for the extreme size and weight of the Unas and the careless way it tore the lower branches from the trees as it strode through the undergrowth he would never have been able to track it through all those ferns and tree roots. But those tracks were clear and easy to read. With any luck they would lead not just him but Carter and Teal'c straight to Daniel as well.

He looked up from the fire, gaze raking the circle of earth for more clues. Luckily, the Unas seemed to have made no attempt to hide their tracks. He could see that was the place, right there, where those specks of blood were, where Daniel had spent the night. He seemed to have curled up tight in a ball, like a child would. The way people did when they were cold and hurting. O'Neill rested his hand in that slight depression in the earth and his fingertips came away damp. Not with blood, although his heart gave a painful lurch as he felt the wetness of the soil. Definitely not blood, just water. But it hadn’t rained in the night, had it? Daniel had been wet then. Very wet to make the ground so damp even all these hours later. So there might have been more blood and the water had soaked some of it away.

O'Neill ran his fingers across the soil, tracing the blurred line of what looked like a rattler but which he realized must be the mark the chain had left. He grimaced, the rage spiking a little higher. No one did that to one of his team. No one had the right to chain up and beat up on a friend of his. And they definitely never ever got to whip someone under Jack O'Neill's command, however damned much that someone might talk. And he couldn't think of any good reason why Daniel should have been huddled up, soaking wet, on a freezing cold night either.

The tracks were a little confusing. There were a number going around the campfire, several showing clawed feet where the Unas seemed to have gone over to where Daniel was then walked away again. It also seemed to have walked around him several times. Daniel's footprints were easy to identify because they looked small beside those of the Unas'; but half of them showed him wearing boots and half showed him in bare feet. As the bare foot ones headed off to the east across that salt plain O'Neill presumed Daniel had come to this clearing wearing his boots then left it without them.

"What? Did the damned thing eat his boots?" O'Neill looked around the