meg_tdj | FIC: Incentive (13/16)

Chapter 13

As relieved as he was that Janet didn’t seem to hate him anymore, Daniel got away from her as soon as he could. His skin was still crawling from being in that place again, and he was desperate to have a shower and wash the sensation away.

He couldn’t believe how suddenly it had hit him once he was back on the base and his adrenaline had started to wear off. While he’d actually been there, he’d somehow managed not to think too closely about where he was and what he was doing. Now it was all he could think about.

“Minal kara!”

“I wish you’d just tell me what you want,” he groaned. “I’m not one of your animals. I would understand you if you’d just try to communicate with me.”

It wasn’t interested in communication. It threw him back on the metal slab he’d been given for a bed and held him there while another one started poking around at his most sensitive area.

He finally snapped. He’d had enough. If they wanted to treat him like an animal, he’d start behaving like one.

With a loud scream he lashed out, kicking and scratching and biting and doing whatever was necessary to get free. The pain in his head was intense, but he didn’t care. He started to run.

He didn’t get very far before he was surrounded. The pain in his head escalated until he felt it would explode. Then everything went black.

Through the blackness over his eyes and the fog over his mind, he could hear them moving and feel their clammy hands as they tied him to the slab. Then they left. Thank God they’d left.

But then they came back. He screamed when they touched him down there again. He screamed as loud as he possibly could, hoping their eardrums would burst and they would have to leave him alone.

He felt a sharp pain in his arm as though they’d slit it open. Moments later, his body was wracked with pain so intense that he couldn’t even draw breath. When it subsided, he sucked in a lungful of air and tried to scream again. The pain came back, just as intense as before.

Once he regained his breath, he lay still and quiet while he recovered from the jolts. He could no longer see, move, or speak. He just lay there in numb silence while they violated him…

Daniel shuddered as he left the shower stall and grabbed a towel. If there was one memory he’d hoped would never come to mind again, it was that one. He’d never felt so exposed, powerless, and terrified in his life as he had that day.

As soon as he’d picked up that child, it had all come flooding back. Somehow he knew it had been created from his sperm before Syun had hinted as much. He didn’t know how they’d done it, and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to know. All he knew was that there was no way in hell he was going to let that child go through what they’d put him through.

With that resolve made, Daniel quickly dressed and headed to the infirmary. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he got there, so he hesitated in the doorway for a moment as he looked inside.

He could hear a baby crying quietly, like it had run out of energy but still had tears to shed. It was the saddest sound he’d ever heard. He could see Chloe’s incubator on one side of the room, but that didn’t seem to be where the sound was coming from.

Daniel had to step further into the infirmary to see the small plastic crib on the other side of the room. There was an IV stand next to it, and the wire leading from the bag into the crib was swaying slightly. He glanced around the room to see if anyone was going to answer the baby’s cries, but Dr. Warner was the only one there, and his back was turned to the babies.

Swallowing his anger at the man, Daniel tiptoed over to Chloe’s incubator and looked inside. She was fast asleep, but still wheezing with every breath. Her little face was red with fever, and a patch of the perfect skin she’d once had on her arm was starting to dry out and flake.

He could only stand that sight for a second, so he dragged himself away from her and towards the other baby.

This baby was in more or less the same kind of contraption as Chloe, only the sides were a little shallower and it wasn’t enclosed. He was glad of that. The poor little tyke looked miserable and terrified, and Daniel knew he couldn’t have handled it if he couldn’t at least touch it. He reached in and laid his hand on the baby’s stomach, hoping that would be enough to reassure it.

The baby jumped at the touch, and opened its wet eyes to look up at Daniel fearfully. That little look was like a dagger to Daniel’s heart. God, what had those monsters done to this child?

“It’s okay,” he whispered, stroking the baby’s bare stomach gently. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“He hasn’t stopped crying since you brought him here,” Dr. Warner said, finally noticing Daniel’s presence and crossing the room to stand beside him.

“He?” Daniel repeated. He looked back down at the baby and was surprised that he couldn’t tell it was a boy from the start.

“I haven’t received the results from the blood tests yet,” Warner went on, “so I’m not sure yet whether he’s… your, um… clone.”

Daniel had to chuckle at that, though he found no humour in the situation. “He’s not my clone,” he said. “They… had my sperm.”

Warner went silent for a moment, and then gave an awkward, “Oh.” He took a deep breath and continued, “Well, however they created him, they haven’t been taking very good care of him. He’s incredibly small for his age to begin with…”

“Age?” Daniel asked. “How old?”

“I believe he’s somewhere around five months.”

Daniel did a quick calculation in his head, and his stomach turned at the result. If they’d given the boy a nine-month gestation period, they must have started the process as soon as he’d escaped. They must have been planning this all along.

“I also have no idea what kind of experiments they may have done on him, but he has all kinds of needle marks on his skin, especially on his upper chest. He seems very weak, and is extremely dehydrated, so I’ve got him on… wait, what are you doing?”

Daniel wasn’t listening. He couldn’t take it any longer – they were just standing there staring at the boy while he cried and waved his arms with a complete lack of coordination. That was exactly what they had done. He’d been without love and care for the first five months of his life. Daniel didn’t want that to go on for another second.

He gently slipped his hands under the boy’s frail little body and scooped him up into his arms. Once he was nestled against Daniel’s shoulder, Daniel unhooked the IV bag from its stand and tucked it in the crook of his free arm.

“Daniel, you really shouldn’t do that,” Warner said, moving as if to take the baby away from him.

“It’s okay,” a voice said from the door. “Let him take him.”

Daniel and Warner turned to see Janet leaning against the doorframe, watching them. “How long have you been standing there?” Daniel asked.

Janet shrugged. “Not long. Here,” she said, walking over to a rocking chair in the corner of the room. “Bring him over here.”

Daniel obediently moved over to the chair and sat down, cradling the baby in one arm and the IV bag in the other. Janet brought the IV stand over and took the bag from him to hook it back up, and then she grabbed a blanket from the counter beside him and helped him wrap it around the baby.

By this point, the baby’s cries had tapered off to the occasional whimper. He seemed to have worn himself out, and was finally drifting off to sleep. Daniel couldn’t tear his eyes away from his tear-stained face. He could tell that it looked like a miniature version of his own, and it was a little frightening.

He couldn’t believe how quickly his life had changed – first Chloe, and now this baby. And if this baby could save Chloe…

Daniel looked up at Janet as she stood beside him, stroking his damp hair and watching the baby sleep. “We… we can take him in, can’t we?” he said.

Janet didn’t seem surprised by the question, but she didn’t seem overly enthused, either. “Are you sure you could handle that, Daniel?” she asked. “If he brings back memories of that place…”

“Everything in my life brings back memories of that place,” Daniel said. “He needs us. Just as much as, or maybe even more than, Chloe does.”

Janet nodded, but stayed silent for a long moment. Finally she leaned forward and touched the baby’s face. “He needs a name,” she said.

Daniel smiled, knowing that was her way of saying yes. “Yes, he does,” he said.

Janet looked at Daniel until she caught his eye. “Well?”

“What, you think I should name him?” Daniel asked, confused.

“It’s only fair,” Janet said. “He’s your son.”

Daniel swallowed hard at the implications in this statement. His son… not hers. “Are you going to maintain that attitude indefinitely?” he asked before he could think twice about his choice of words.

“No, of course not,” Janet said in surprise. “I’m just saying that biologically…”

“I know,” Daniel said before she could continue that sentence. He didn’t really want to think about the biology of the situation again.

He sighed, trying to think of something that would suit the tiny bundle in his arms. They hadn’t really considered any boys’ names while Janet was pregnant, because they’d known early on that they were having a girl. He considered that he could name him after someone, but that would seem too strange at this point. He wanted to give him a name that was meaningful… something that signified his identity as a human being. He deserved that much after all he’d been through in his young life.

Suddenly, it hit him. The perfect name – symbolic, yet functional. Soft enough to suit him as a child, but strong enough to carry him into manhood. Before he even said it aloud, he knew he could never call the boy anything else.

“Ben.”

“Ben?” Janet repeated.

Daniel nodded, keeping his eyes on the baby as he imprinted the face and the name together forever on his mind. “It means ‘son.’”

Without even looking at her, he could tell that Janet was smiling. “Then that’s a very good name for him,” she said. She laid one hand on Daniel’s shoulder and stroked the baby’s soft hair with the other. “Hi, Ben.”

“Doc?”

Daniel and Janet both looked up at Jack’s sudden entrance. He seemed to have aimed his hail at Dr. Warner, but then he saw the others in the room.

“Good, you’re here, too,” he said. “I’ve been having a lovely conversation with our friend Zombie Boy, and I thought you might like to know what he’s told us.”

Daniel would have stood up and hurried towards him in his eagerness to hear what Jack had to say, but he settled for leaning forward slightly and holding onto the baby even tighter. “Yes,” he said, “what did he say?”

Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked over to them to get a better look at the baby. “We told him the reason you went back to his planet was to see if they had a cure yet. He started getting all excited… seemed to think it was you who needed it, and said over and over that the baby could fix you.”

Daniel exchanged a cautiously hopeful look with Janet. “And he… he could do it here?” Daniel asked.

Jack shrugged. “We said he’d need to explain the procedure to one of our doctors first, just so we know what we’re getting into…”

“I’ll go,” Janet said, moving for the door already.

“Wait… Janet!” Daniel called after her.

“I’ll go, too,” Dr. Warner said. “The more ears, the merrier.”

Daniel watched open-mouthed as the two of them practically ran out of the infirmary. He’d wanted to at least discuss things with Janet for a minute before she’d left, but she hadn’t even looked back at him. “That was fast,” he said.

He expected Jack to follow them, but instead he sauntered closer to Daniel and touched the baby’s arm. “How’s he doing?” he asked.

“He was crying for a while, but he stopped as soon as I sat down with him,” Daniel replied.

“Chloe?”

“She’s… unconscious,” Daniel said, finally admitting it to himself. He could see her from where he was sitting, and as far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d walked in the room. Her current state went way beyond sleep, and he knew that if he thought about it too closely, it would be too much for him. He sighed heavily and looked up at Jack. “Jack… you’re a pretty good judge of… people,” he said. “Do you think Syun can really do what he says he can do?”

Jack paused for a moment as though he was searching for the right words to say. Finally, he shrugged and said, “He isn’t sick. That’s gotta mean something.”

Daniel nodded reluctantly and looked back down at the baby. “Yeah. I’ve just got kind of a… bad feeling about him.”

“You who traveled halfway across the galaxy to talk to the guy?”

“Well, that was before I realized that he only helped me escape because they were planning this,” he said, raising the baby for a moment to emphasize his point. “Now I’m starting to wonder if he ever had any kind of compassion in him at all.”

“Think he’s got some ulterior motive for getting his hands on you again?”

Daniel shuddered at Jack’s choice of words. He shook his head vaguely, not sure how to answer him, and started rocking the chair back and forth. The motion was oddly calming, and Daniel found he could zone out the world for a few short minutes as he watched Ben sleep.

He wished he could stay there for the rest of the day, but Jack soon reminded him about the scheduled briefing. If Ben had woken up before Daniel had left the room, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to leave him there, but thankfully putting him back in his little crib didn’t disturb his sleep at all. Daniel left the two babies in the care of one of the nurses, and dragged himself off to the briefing room.

General Hammond entered the room as the two of them joined Sam and Teal’c at the table, having just left the holding room where they were keeping Syun. “I’m afraid it’s slow going down there, Dr. Jackson,” he said. “But I know you’re anxious to get back to your little ones, so let’s try to make this quick.”

The phrase “your little ones” took Daniel aback for a moment, and it wasn’t until Jack was already partway into his report that Daniel was able to pay attention to what was being said. Even then, he found himself wishing everybody would talk faster.

To his surprise and relief, no one mentioned that fact that he’d shot Teal’c and Jack before making his escape, instead making it sound as though he’d stolen away while their backs were turned. When it came his turn to share his side of the story, he rushed through it in as few breaths as possible, neither confirming nor denying that this was the truth. General Hammond didn’t call them on it, so he sent each of his friends a grateful look. They’d kept him out of a lot of trouble.

He hurried out of the room as soon as they were dismissed, and by the time his brain caught up to his feet, he was entering the infirmary.

“Ah, Daniel,” Warner greeted him. “We just called General Hammond to find you, and he said you were on your way…”

“What happened?” Daniel demanded, looking from Warner to Janet, who was standing over Chloe’s incubator with her back towards him.

“I… think you should probably sit down for this,” Warner said, ushering Daniel over to the rocking chair.

“That isn’t filling me with a whole lot of confidence,” Daniel said, still staring at Janet’s back as he sat down. “What did Syun say?”

Warner grabbed a stool and set it down in front of Daniel. “He… told us as much as he could about the procedure in his limited English,” he said, slowly sitting down on the stool and folding his hands in his lap. “From what I can tell, it’s all to do with the thymus gland. That’s probably why they couldn’t use you directly to create their cure, Daniel. You see, the thymus is a very important part of our immune system while we’re young, but once we hit puberty, we don’t really need it anymore, and it shrivels up to let other components of our immune system take control. I believe what Syun is doing is taking something from this baby’s thymus gland and injecting it into those who have this disease, effectively allowing their bodies to fight the disease and send it into remission.”

Daniel kept half an eye on Janet as he tried to follow what Warner was saying. “Like an immunization,” he said.

“More or less, yes. Only the problem is… it’s killing the baby’s thymus. While a child can live without its thymus gland with the help of medication, this baby is already very frail. I don’t know what his chances would be if he undergoes many more of these procedures.”

Daniel felt as though the world stopped for a second when he heard this. “What… so he’s just… a living donor?” he said, more than a little disgusted by the idea. “They created him to be immune to the disease just so they could kill him?”

Warner sighed and nodded. “I’m afraid that seems to be the case, yes.”

Daniel felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He turned open-mouthed to Janet, but she still hadn’t moved a muscle. “Janet?” he said. “What are we going to do?”

Janet stiffened even more and turned her head halfway towards him. “We’re going to do the procedure,” she said.

Daniel was on his feet before he even knew he was moving. “What?”

“We’re going to do exactly what you went back to that planet to do,” Janet said, finally turning to face him. “We’re going to save our daughter.”

Warner cleared his throat quietly and scurried out of the room, but Daniel didn’t take his eyes off Janet. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard her say.

“You’re willing to kill this child to save ours?” he said in a low voice.

“The damage is already done, Daniel,” she said, sounding tired and stressed to the max. “One more procedure…”

“Could kill him!” Daniel said angrily. “Considering how dead set against hurting our baby you were before she was even born, I can’t believe you’re considering this.”

“I’m dead set against hurting our baby now, Daniel! If we don’t do anything, there’s a good chance that both of these babies could die. Isn’t it worth it to save one of them?”

Daniel shook his head and paced away from her. He hated to admit it to himself, but she probably had a point – there was no sense in sitting back and watching both babies fade away.

But Ben still had a chance. They couldn’t be sure that one more procedure wouldn’t be the straw that broke the camel’s back. They didn’t know how often Syun had done it already, after all. Could they really justify harming him like that?

His mind was flooded with images of Syun’s colleagues hovering over him, injecting him with painful needles and doing unspeakable things to him with no anesthetic whatsoever. He couldn’t handle the thought of them doing the same to this helpless child. Especially not while he had to stand by and watch.

Despite the foul taste it left in his mouth, however, he knew the decision he had to make. He knew that Janet would never forgive him if he’d done what he’d done and brought home another suffering child for nothing.

He also knew that he would never forgive himself if Ben died after saving Chloe’s life.

“Okay,” he said, avoiding meeting Janet’s gaze. “We’ll do it.”

He just hoped he wouldn’t live to regret that decision.

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

To be continued...