FIC: Disappearing Act (8/25)

[meg_tdj]

Chapter 8

Breaking. Still breaking. It felt like everything around him, even the air, was closing in and crushing him.

There were people with him all the time now. Humans, he reminded himself. People just like him. He tried not to be afraid of them, but sometimes when the fog became too thick for him to see through, they seemed just like them, hovering around him, babbling away in their confusing language and poking him with sharp instruments.

It was easier to believe reality when the woman was there, though. Whenever he saw her, he felt better right away. He knew her - he just couldn't remember her name. He couldn't remember many words at all, but her name was the only one he missed.

He clutched his blankets tightly in his fists and pulled them up closer to his neck. He relished the feeling of being covered now, especially through the night. Even though he was still living in a state of constant fear, he felt that anything would be easier to face if he wasn't as open and exposed as he'd been for so long.

Even though memories of that place would come to his mind every time he started to fall asleep, he was already starting to forget bits and pieces of his time there. He hoped it wouldn't take long before his mind was wiped completely clean. It would hurt so much less if he could only forget. If he hadn't remembered the feel of their cold, unsympathetic hands on his body, he wouldn't have fought off the woman who had tried to wash him. He wouldn't start to panic each time someone touched him or made sudden movements near his bed. He didn't want to fear these people - he knew that he should know them and trust them - he just couldn't seem to control himself when the fog settled in.

He wished he could remember why that was. He knew there was a reason for it. He hadn't been this way forever, as they seemed to believe. He wasn't an animal - he was a human being, just like the ones who were around him now. They could think and feel and speak, so why couldn't he?

His arm was getting sore where it had been sliced open just a little while earlier. He fingered the bandage as he tried to wrap his mind around the reason behind its presence. There had been something in his arm, that much he remembered. They had put it there when they had tried to… no, he didn't want to think about that. He curled up into a tighter ball and buried his face in his pillow.

He remembered that he'd been screaming and trying to fight them off, and that's when they had tied him down and implanted… something… into his arm. The next time he had tried to speak, he had experienced the most horrible, all-encompassing pain of his entire life. He shuddered at the memory.

Why? Why had this been done to him?

He struggled to find the answer to this question as another wave of fog settled in. His thoughts became muddled until it passed, and in the meantime he heard voices all around him and hands on his body. He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe… He caught sight of the woman as he tossed his head from side to side in protest, and felt her hand take his. He squeezed it with all of his might as a man started doing something with a needle. He was afraid that the man would stick it into his skin, but he didn't - he stuck it into a tube that was already attached to his arm. He felt the effects of whatever it was right away as his pain started to ease up, and he began to grow sleepy.

The sleepiness didn't cause him to lose consciousness, even though he felt as though he should allow it to happen. He had fought sleep for so long now that the act seemed foreign to him.

As the fog began to lift again moments later despite the drowsiness, he looked around to see that the woman was sitting in a chair beside his bed, fast asleep. He watched her for a while, finding comfort in the air of peacefulness that surrounded her. After a few minutes of trying to sort through his disjointed thoughts, he finally remembered. Janet. Her name was Janet.

Now that he knew he could use his voice whenever he wanted to, he decided he would try it out. "J…Ja…Janet?" he whispered.

Her eyelids flickered and then opened, and she looked over at him in surprise. "Daniel?"

Daniel. That was his name. He'd almost forgotten that he had one. Why?

This thought sent him into a momentary panic, and it seemed to worry Janet. She stood up and came over to stand at his side, taking his hand in hers. "Are you alright?"

No. No, he wasn't alright. But why? Dammit, why couldn't he remember? Why couldn't he think? "Can't think," he somehow managed to say past a moan. "Why?"

"Daniel, you've been through a lot…"

Why was she telling him that? He knew what he'd been through. He'd been poked, prodded, humiliated, violated, and treated like a lab rat for longer than he cared to know, but why? Why was his mind so foggy? Something… something he should remember…

He slapped his hand against his forehead as he tried to force his brain to think harder.

"Stop that, Daniel," Janet said. "You'll hurt your head." She grabbed his wrist and forced his hand down to his side.

That's when he remembered.

"Head," he said, as that was the only word he could grasp onto for a second.

"Does your head hurt?"

"No." He rolled his head from side to side and fought hard to remember how to say it. "Head… inside. Get… out!"

"What? I… I don't understand you…"

"Out!" Daniel cried. He could feel the fog returning, so he knew he had only moments to make her understand. "Head… inside…" Oh God, she wasn't understanding. He tried and tried… why weren't the words there?!

He slapped his arm in the place where the first object had been removed. "Head," he repeated. "Inside… can't think."

"Oh my God… you have another one of those things in your head?"

Daniel sighed. That was it. He didn't need to say anything more. He just lay there and let the fog descend.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"That would make sense," Sam said thoughtfully. "The device in his arm was just a trigger of some kind, giving commands to whatever they implanted into his head."

"Wouldn't one device do the trick?" Colonel O'Neill asked.

Janet waved their conversation off with a quick flick of her hand. "It doesn't matter what it is and why it's there," she said. "The question is, can we get it out?" She turned to Dr. Warner with a pleading look and hoped that the sour expression on his face wasn't as bad a sign as it seemed to be.

"You saw the results of the CT scan," he said in the soft, comforting tone that meant he was about to deliver bad news. "It's directly attached to his brain. Without knowing what it is and how it was implanted, I don't think we can risk removing it. One wrong move and he could be permanently brain damaged… or worse."

Janet rested her hands on her hips and stared at the floor as she tried to think of a way around this verdict. Part of her was sure that Daniel had already suffered brain damage from the damn thing - possibly damage that was made worse with every second it was inside him - and therefore had nothing to lose from the surgery, but the rest of her didn't want to risk losing him completely. Still, if this device was keeping Daniel from being able to function, they had to remove it.

Besides, Daniel had asked her to get it out of him. She couldn't let him down after everything he'd been through.

She sucked in a deep breath as a sudden thought occurred to her. "What about… an EM pulse?" she asked Sam. "When Togar implanted you with the Urgo device, you said an EM pulse would shut it down."

"It… could potentially disable it," Sam said slowly, "but are you sure that's what you want to do?"

"If it's been integrated into his brain processes, it could still kill him, I know." Janet sighed and held her arms out helplessly. "What choice do we have? Daniel seems to believe this device is impairing his brain function, and I think he's right. He seems almost lucid at times, but then the confusion settles in again. I've been keeping track of how often it happens, and there seems to be a pattern. That would indicate that something mechanical is causing it, rather than simply being the result of shock or trauma. If it's this device, we should at least try to get rid of it."

Colonel O'Neill was watching her closely throughout this speech, his arms folded across his chest and a deadly serious expression on his face. As soon as she stopped for breath, he nodded. "If Daniel was in his right mind, that's probably what he'd tell us to do," he said. "I say let's do it."

"If the device is rendered inactive, there would probably be less risk in removing it," Dr. Warner said, though he still sounded dubious.

"If it's rendered inactive, there might not even be a need to remove it," Sam said. "It's worth a shot. I'll go set it up in my lab."

Colonel O'Neill moved to follow her as she hurried from the room. "I'll go run it by Hammond," he said. "Get Daniel ready." Then he was gone, leaving Janet with Teal'c and Dr. Warner.

"Will you require my assistance?" Teal'c asked as Dr. Warner went back over to Daniel's bed on the other side of the room.

"Yes, thank you," Warner said. "We'll need to take him to the lab on his gurney, and we'll need to take a crash cart along just in case."

Janet sat on the edge of Daniel's bed as the two men and one of the nurses bustled about getting everything ready for their little trip. Daniel was half asleep, thanks to the sedative he'd been given a short time earlier, but he moved his hand towards her in acknowledgment of her presence. Janet smiled and took it in both of hers. "We're going to try something that will hopefully turn off the device in your brain," she said. "Is that okay?"

Daniel just gazed at her for a moment through his heavy-lidded eyes before allowing them to flutter and close.

Janet took that as a good sign. He'd been fighting sleep for hours, even through the sedatives they'd been pumping into him. She was confident that this meant they were doing the right thing.

Just a few more minutes, and they would have a better idea of what they were dealing with. Maybe then things could finally go back to normal.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

To be continued...