Chapter Text
Somewhere over the Rainbow
(Treasure Hunt)
Part IV
S and R
IV
The moment he had laid eyes on that kid he had known. It wasn’t even that he immediately recognized himself in looks – it had been close to 40 years since he’d been… what? Sixteen? And still… he had known. Could be the damn thingamajig gene sensed it, Jack had no clue.
And right now, he had more pressing things to do than getting to the bottom of this.
He felt Daniel gripping his shoulders from behind. Solid. Steady. And it was Daniel’s touch providing the balance for Jack to calm down. Daniel, who, by just holding on to him, was telling him he was here to ground him. And there was his kid, alive and more or less in one piece, hanging onto the other kid’s hand, offering the same kind of support.
Wacko.
Jack focused on the fact that they were all here together, that they had found LD. He let that huge piece of a burden slip off his shoulders, allowed himself a moment to bask in that relief.
And the energy started flowing… a familiar tingling all over his body in every single nerve ending… like hundreds of fireflies spreading out, towards the source of the damage that needed repairing…
There were other bruises all over the clone, and Jack would bet good money that Daniel sported similar marks. The chair had already started repairing the ones Jack knew - without having to actually see them - were on the clone’s back. Ignoring those for now, he went straight for the bullet wound.
He felt his jaw clench as a hot wave of agony washed over him, a fierce burn that started in his own shoulder and spread out from there through his body until it reached his head. He dug into skin slippery with blood. There was a pull of something, as if his fingertips were magnetic, sucking a small, hard object out of the wound. Finally, the bullet slipped out from underneath his palm and fell to the ground.
Not wasting any time, Jack’s calloused hands closed the wound, then wandered down the ribs, finding and decreasing another bruise.
The clone’s eyes fluttered open, wide, and unfocused for a second before they settled on Jack’s face hovering over him. The kid moved his lips, blinked, and frowned. “Dad?” At the same time, Jack felt the whole body of his counterpart tense and go rigid.
Oh no, buddy, not by a long shot. But as the aches started leaving his old, tired bones gradually, Jack briefly patted the kid’s shoulder. “Get some rest.”
Damn, he had to sit down before he fell down.
“D’niel?” the clone’s head lolled to the left and as Jack staggered backwards and allowed Big Daniel to help him sit on the ground against the wall opposite the chair, he watched LD probing the area where the shot wound had been while muttering, “I’m here; I’ve got you. You’re gonna be okay.”
A water canteen showed up in Jack’s field of view, and he grabbed it and drank, realizing only now that his throat felt like sandpaper.
Beside the chair Sam handed LD another canteen, and he held it to the clone’s lips.
Jack handed the bottle back to Daniel and rubbed his face. “Not gonna do that again,” he groaned, not sure if he was talking about healing gunshot wounds or… whatever… He gazed at the ceiling, at what the chair was displaying. His mind felt sluggish, and his body just wanted to sleep for like two days straight. But that annoying little part of his brain, which had come online the moment Jack touched that weird screen to activate the rings, insisted that he keep staring at the holographs.
After a moment, he struggled to his feet, brushing off BD’s hands because now they were a distraction, and walked over to the chair where his clone was mirroring Jack’s earlier movement of rubbing his face and groaning.
“Stay there. It’s going to repair the bits I might’ve missed,” Jack said gruffly when the clone started sitting up.
“The chair can heal?” Carter stepped closer and crouched at the pedestal, her new Tok’ra tech toy in hand. “There are two ZPMs here.”
“It’s different from the ones we’ve seen before,” Jack passed on what he had learned from this place. Allowing Ancient tech to access his mind on a deeper level usually cost him a lot of effort, because he naturally tried to shield himself. But after healing Jona, Jack’s barricades had been down. “Has a couple more bells and whistles. As for the healing… it can repair minor damage, but it’s mostly to sustain life until medical help arrives.” To LD he said, “That’s why your new buddy here was still alive when we found him.”
“Hey, the ‘new buddy’ is right here,” the clone said curtly and heaved himself out of the chair.
“I wouldn’t get up just yet,” Jack advised.
“I’m good.”
Raising his eyebrow, Jack took a step back and when LD rushed to help, Jack seized his elbow and stopped him.
Clone boy rose from the chair like a Phoenix from the ashes, hopped down from the pedestal – and dropped like a tree at their feet, uttering a heartfelt, “Ow, crap.”
LD glared. “Jack!”
“Some of us only learn the hard way.” Jack reached down, hauled the clone to his feet, and walked him back to the chair. “Sit. Relax.”
“Fuck you, old man,” was snarled at him, but at least he clambered back in there and got—if not comfortable—into the recliner position.
“You’re welcome,” Jack bit back, knowing full well that he shouldn’t allow himself to be baited. He had learned that lesson from Little D a long time ago, but his nerves were still frazzled, so he gave himself some slack.
BD blinked and cleared his throat. “That was… what was that?”
“The beginning of a wonderful friendship?” LD muttered.
“We’re so screwed,” Jack growled and turned to Teal’c. “Bring the other woman and prop her up beside the guy.” To the clone, he said, “Turn the lights back on while you’re in there. It’s too damn dark in here.” He had tried fixing it before, but it was probably easier doing it via the chair. Plus, Jack was a bit out of practice navigating Ancient tech.
“Two ZPMs,” Carter reverted to her topic. She continued watching her toy. “But one is almost depleted. The other one, however, seems undamaged.” She took her eyes from the display of her gadget long enough to look at Jack. “Sir, aside from having rudimental healing abilities - what are the differences between this chair and the one in Antarctica? Why does it need two ZPMs, do you know?”
“The chair is this place’s power source, much like the one in Antarctica. But it messes,” at LD’s frown, Jack shrugged, “interfaces with the gene on some deeper level. I guess it’s made to keep whoever is in there alive for a longish period of time if necessary.”
“The chair only interfaces on that deeper level in the case of an emergency,” the clone interrupted. “I get it now. It works like a backup system; if there’s a power outage, you can navigate all the systems from here. It literally takes over your brain. It can repair broken systems that way – but you have to stay in here until that’s done, and apparently it could take a while, so it would also take care of the body to sustain it until the process was done.”
“Uh, taking over the brain? Maybe you shouldn’t stay in there after all then,” Carter cautioned.
“No, it’s okay. It needs to be initiated by the occupant. But this whole base is heavily interfacing with the gene,” the clone said. “When we got here it tried to invade my head, and it got worse by the minute.”
“Yeah, I felt that,” Jack agreed. “Takes some practice to zone out the buzz.”
The clone frowned. “How do you zone it out?”
“Jack’s been trained to resist mind altering influences. Up to a point,” LD explained.
For a very brief moment the clone gave Jack a curious look but immediately closed up again. “It’s getting better. I can handle it.”
“This place is a fortress. We’ve encountered Ancient outposts before, but it seems you can’t work any of the systems without the Ancient gene. Not even ring down here,” Big Daniel said.
With several low ‘plings’ the lights came back on and this time they weren’t dim.
“Lights are back in working order,” the clone grinned.
“Braggart,” Jack muttered under his breath and stepped out into the hangar. Bright isles of light made it much easier to threat assess the area now.
Teal’c, who was walking towards him with their other prisoner at zat point, inclined his head. “This is much better, O’Neill.” He ushered the woman with the wild blond curls and the grim face past Jack into the chair room and made her sit down beside Matteo.
The two of them started talking in Italian, probably updating each other on their respective misery. Jack wasn’t worried. He had two linguists with him who would alert him if the situation needed intervening.
The hangar was even bigger than Jack had estimated. He spotted several work stations with screens; some had been powered up, others hadn’t come online. The gate stood still and silent.
“The gate is powered by one of those devices similar to the time loop machine. And the one you used to activate the weapon on Dakara. Jona…” LD’s quiet voice trailed off and when Jack looked at him he was about to self-hug, but quickly lowered his arms upon a wince.
Jack put a casual hand on the back of Daniel’s neck and immediately felt the swelling there. “Who removed the implant? Maligno?”
“No. Vala.”
Right. Those two probably didn’t have a clue how lucky they were to be as far away from Jack as possible. “What about the eye?”
Daniel shrugged. “Matteo’s and Bianca’s stooges.”
“Give me some time…” There was no way he could activate the healing magic again right now, but he could give it another thirty or so…
Daniel opened his mouth, probably to say ‘I’m fine’, glanced at Jack and gave him a sheepish look. “Okay.”
“Jona… is that what you call him?” Jona. Jonathan. Made sense.
“Uh, actually, it’s what he calls himself. Vala told him that’s his name.”
“Vala told him?”
“He has no memories of who he… Until today, he didn’t even know he’s a clone. He thought Ba’al stuck him in a stasis pod to experiment on him. Vala made him think he used to be Jaffa. He didn’t know about the Ancient gene; he thought Ba’al had given him some ‘superpowers’.”
“Daniel, that kid called me ‘dad’ when he came out of unconsciousness,” Jack cautioned. There had to be at least some memories buried in there. Granted, it could be that those memories had just surfaced now for whatever reason. Maybe there was some weird connection because Jack had healed him. But still…
LD shook his head. “Probably a flashback. From his childhood…”
“Hey! That’s MY childhood.”
“Fine. Your childhood. He says he sometimes has … images, words, nothing he can really hold on to, though. And you do kind of look like your dad… or how your dad must’ve looked like when he was your age. Jona asked me about The Wizard of Oz. And he once quoted from a Star Wars movie. He also knows military lingo—at least some of it. And I think he’s got some PTSD going on, but I have no idea if that’s connected to his… your... life or the time he spent in that stasis chamber until Vala got him out of there.”
“Oy.”
“Jack?”
He sighed. “Daniel?” No, we can’t keep him.
“Try to be…” LD bit his lip, apparently looking for the right word. “Try to…”
“Daniel, I saved his sorry ass in there and the first thing he tells me is to fuck off…”
“You let him fall out of the chair!”
“I told him to stay put.” Jack crossed his arms and glowered.
“He’s not always very good at listening…”
Jack felt his left eyebrow rise to new heights. “Yeah, well, that reminds me of someone else I know.” The moment the words had left his mouth LD’s face crumbled and he went from his usual fierce defiance to defeat and something that reached way beyond that.
Crap. No parent of the month award for this ole dad.
He watched LD’s rigid back as he walked away.
Scrubbing a hand through his already disheveled hair, Jack followed him.
In the chair room the damn clone had exited said chair and announced all systems were running steadily now. “I fixed it all,” he said baffled, dropping the boastful cool teenager act for the moment. “I actually helped the chair to get everything running again.”
“Good job,” BD said. “By the way… I’m Daniel.”
“I know. The other one.”
“Ye-ah. I go by BD, too, as in Big Daniel.” He quickly introduced the rest of them. “Uh, that’s Sam. Over there we have Teal’c and, well, you already got to know Jack.”
“Jona,” Jona muttered, as a way of introducing himself, and quickly went back on topic. “Uh, when we found the chair Daniel said to look for drones, but I couldn’t find them. I didn’t know why at the time. When Matteo got zatted, I was going to help Daniel fight the others, but when I followed him out of here, I was shot… somehow I knew I had to go back into the chair if I wanted to live. I couldn’t fight the,” he glanced at Jack, “buzz any longer, so I let it happen. And now everything is much clearer.”
“Why couldn’t you find the drones?” Carter asked.
“At some point, long after the Fatum had been launched, Anubis tried to break in here and steal the data or gate on the ship. The drones self-activated and chased him off.”
“Of course. Anubis would try something like that. He had Ancient powers,” BD said slowly.
The clone frowned. “Yeah, and how the hell did that happen anyway?”
“Uh, that’s a long story,” both Daniels said as one.
“So, this place is basically without a defense system?” Jack threw in, trying for casual. Or nice. It dawned on him that the term LD had been looking for earlier when he said Jack should ‘try to be…’ was probably non-threatening.
“Yep. But as the other Daniel pointed out, no one without the Ancient gene can get in here in the first place, sooo…” The clone waved at Matteo and Bianca, who stared back at all of them with sullen expressions on their faces. “These guys never had a chance.”
“We got a drill,” Matteo snapped.
“We were getting close.” Bianca sounded somewhere between resigned and defensive.
“It would have taken months to drill away all that solid rock. And your temple would have collapsed eventually,” LD pointed out.
“We don’t need the temple anymore once we have The Infinite Treasure,” Bianca griped.
“You do realize that treasure isn’t what you think it is?” BD made an all encompassing gesture with his hand. “This. All of this… is part of The Infinite Treasure. And the ship…” He spun around to face Jona. “The ship! Where is the ship? Do you know?”
“Gone.” Jona shrugged.
“Gone – where?” BD prompted. “If that’s where Ba’al… Maligno and Vala gated to it can’t be that far…” When LD and Carter exchanged a very resigned look, BD stopped mid-sentence. “What?!”
“There were nine chevrons,” LD sighed.
“Nine?” BD’s eyes almost popped out. “That’s not possible. You can’t draw that amount of energy to gate to a nine-chevron address – not even from two ZPMs.” Then he blinked. “I didn’t even…”
Carter nodded gravely. “Well, we were distracted. But I noticed at some point… nine chevrons. So, my question would be – where is the energy source capable of dialing a nine-chevron address?”
Jona shrugged. “At the planet’s core.”
“Theoretically, yes, you’re right. We even had a team working on that off world, but the math formula to successfully draw power from the core never worked out,” Carter pointed out.
“I remember that. Doctor Nicholas Rush was the lead scientist on Project Icarus,” LD threw in.
Jack couldn’t help it, he kept shooting the clone covert glances. Had he ever been this young? And this snotty and full of himself? Well… probably. Apparently, no one here found it odd that they were talking to an O’Neill clone. Then it dawned on him that probably no one except LD was aware of the other kid’s identity. It wasn’t like Jack had ever walked around showing off pics of himself as a whippersnapper.
He wasn’t quite sure how that revelation would go over.
Clearing his throat, he said, non-threatening of course, “Assuming the gate address to the ship is a nine-chevron address… and you activated the gate… you’re saying some gizmo down here is capable of drawing power from the planet’s core?”
“Sure.”
“The loop machine!” LD snapped his fingers. “Of course!” And off he was, leaving it to the rest of them to follow.
“Daniel!” But as annoying at this newly developing old habit appeared to be, Jack took it for what it was. Part of Little D was still in survival mode, running on adrenaline.
“I will stay with the prisoners,” Teal’c declared before Jack could tell him to.
When they entered the other cubicle the damn… Jona… Jack decided calling him Jona was better than calling him ‘the damn clone’ all the time… Jona joined LD at the not-loop-machine and rubbed his hands like a magician getting ready to show off his newest trick. “There are a couple of codes that lead to different results. One combination of pressing down on the moving cubes will draw energy from the core.” Jona’s hands pretended to touch several cubes in a certain order to give them a visual. “Another one opens the gate. But before I did any of this, I had to find the ship. And that’s what I did at one of the work counters in the hanger. I determined the current course and could pinpoint the location – and the coordinates were transferred to this machine. Once the machine drew enough power, the dialing process started and the machine fed the coordinates to the gate.”
“Woah, wait…. The gate dials to the ship? Not to a planet where the ship is in orbit?” Now it was Carter’s eyes doing the popping-out thing. Jack admitted he had missed seeing the science twins in action off world.
However… “We’ve dialed onto ships before, Carter.”
“Well, yes, but… those ships we dialed to had to be in close proximity to the planet’s orbit in order to be able to open the onboard gate,” Carter explained. “Jona, are you saying this gate can dial the Fatum no matter where it is?”
LD elbowed Jona. “That means we can still track it?! And gate to it? Like, right now?”
“Theoretically, yeah.” Jona frowned at the cubes.
The cubes that had started moving up and down as if activated by magic.
“What do you mean theoretically? Dial it up!” LD was literally bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Uh, Daniel…” Carter cautioned at the same time as Jack stopped the machine with a mental flick of his wrist. The cubes froze in mid-move. He was getting back into the swing of things apparently.
Jona blinked..
“No one is dialing anything anywhere right now,” he ordered sharply. The kid was way too careless about playing with the gene. “It won’t work anyway.”
“Why not?” LD queried. “Jona just said we can track it…”
“Yeah, we can track it. But it has to jump out of hyperspace in order for the gate to be able to connect with it,” Jack said, not even wondering how that bit of new information had wormed its way into his fron. Yep, definitely getting back into it.
Jona grimaced, but admitted, “He’s right. And we can’t ‘make it’ jump out of hyperspace. There is some pre-programmed schedule the ship is following – probably to safe energy. I think it was by pure chance that I was able to open the gate earlier. Because I can’t do it now. The ship must’ve jumped back into hyperspace once the gate shut down.”
“That makes sense,” Carter said. “Sir, I’d like to look at the other workstations with Jona’s help and see what kind of date has been stored here.”
BD immediately sidled up to her. “I think I should join you.”
Jack gave it a moment of thought, then raised a warning finger at Jona. “Don’t mess with anything you can’t handle. And don’t accidentally blow anything up.”
He got another eye roll. “Don’t worry. I don’t want to be buried underneath some Ancient temple anymore than you would.”
Jack continued to scowl at the clone for another moment, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, go ahead. But keep radio contact.” He waved them away, but shook his head when LD was about to follow suit. “You’re with me. C’mon, let’s take a look at those bruises.”
“What? But Jack, not now… I can handle the… owww!”
Jack kept a hand, no more than a feather-light touch, on Daniel’s shoulder until they had both sat down on the bottom step of the machine’s pedestal. He helped him take his shirt off and tried not to suck in a breath when he was presented with the whole extent of what someone had done to his son.
“I’ve had worse,” Daniel said, again, with the typical mulishness of a true Jackson - or O’Neill.
Jack knew he’d had worse. He’d been there for most of the ‘worst’. That didn’t make this mess any less sickening. Dried blood along the purple swollen whip marks, another blue-ish scabbed-over bump at the neck where the implant had been cut out and several minor bruises on his shoulders and his ribs. A burn mark from a pain stick on his upper arm. Nothing Jack wouldn’t be able to fix. Nothing life-threatening.
Yet, infuriating as hell.
He wasn’t perfect at this healing mambo jumbo, and he had never flaunted this particular side effect of the gene anywhere at the SGC or otherwise. He had just kept pretending to be bad at it until Fraiser and the science squad had left him alone, thinking it was a lost cause. Instead, Jack had practiced a little bit at home; as a result, they had a very healthy dog who loved his occasional wellness massages. And once, Jack had patched up LD’s knee after a skateboarding trick gone wrong.
And that one time when BD had almost died on him, he had managed to come up with enough of the healing power to prevent that from happening.
But even though it was tempting to just fix any small injury – nicked skin from shaving or cutting onions, a finger being hit with a hammer when driving in fence posts, a sprained ankle or a sore back – Jack wasn’t up to that. The last thing he needed was to draw attention to his ‘superpower’.
Right now, however, he was grateful for the ‘gift’.
Fixing up Daniel wasn’t nearly as hard as getting the bullet out of his clone’s shoulder. Jack watched with mild fascination as his hands smoothed out LD’s skin, as the encrusted blood vanished and the marks paled and turned from purple to thin red lines until they were just gone. He put his other hand on LD’s neck, brushing aside the stringy hair, which had probably been tied into the same ponytail for days.
Something slipped out of the barely healed neck wound; a tiny black object, flat and round, fell to the floor. “She removed our implant and gave you a new one,” Jack assumed as he continued to close the wound.
“I didn’t know, but it makes sense.” Daniel took a couple of shivering breaths and Jack felt his whole body tense.
“Almost done,” he soothed.
“It’s okay,” LD blurted out.
Jack gently tugged at the ponytail. “Turn around.”
He treated the pain stick burn mark and once it was gone Daniel pulled his shirt, or what was left of it, back over his head. “Thanks. The face really isn’t that bad. I can… You shouldn’t…” There was that haunted look again Jack had noticed before.
Jack shook his head. “Daniel…” He put a finger underneath Daniel’s chin and tilted his head back. “What happened?” He cupped Daniel’s cheek, his thumb probing the swollen area underneath the eye.
Jack felt his jaw clench, but he needed to get past his anger. Daniel was here. He’d survived. He’d made it through.
“They took Jona and me hostage. We tried to escape on our way to the dungeon, they had us tied up with leather straps. When we started fighting they used those straps to… well, you know… ow…”
“The girl who told us where you might be said Jona and this Vala character scammed Matteo and his sister. And that’s why they locked you away, because there was some unfinished business.”
“Maybe. But they knew we were after the treasure, too, and wanted us out of the way. They took the tablet and the floor plan from us. We took our chances with the guards and paid the price.”
Jack’s fingertips traced the mark to the ear and erased it. He shrugged off the sharp burn on his own face as he took the pain from Daniel.
“Jona took the brunt of it. They kept threatening to hurt me if he didn’t cooperate and he tried to… ouch… protect me…”
“Shhh, we’re almost done,” Jack whispered.
The swelling receded, Daniel opened his eyes wide. A single tear slipped out and ran down his pale cheek. “Maligno... Ba’al. I had no idea. Jack… I’m so… and now they escaped and we can’t… I couldn’t…”
Jack pulled him close and hugged the stuffing out of him. Finally. “Hey, we’re here now. You did good. You stayed on top of the ball and made all the right calls. But you don’t have to face any of this alone now. I’m here. I’ve got ya.”
“You’re here,” Daniel repeated, wrapping his arms around Jack just as tightly. “You’re here.” As if it was finally sinking in.
“I’m here. BD is here. T is here. And as a bonus, we brought Carter.”
Daniel sniffled and giggled all at once, dropping his forehead on Jack’s shoulder. “And Flyboy. You brought Flyboy.”
Jack ruffled his hair. “I thought that goofball could prove useful for a change in tracking you down. One of my better ideas, actually.”
“He’s the best.” Daniel pulled back, probably to avoid another attack on his hair, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
And as if on cue the best dog of all dogs suddenly shoved himself between Jack and LD, demanding cuddles. LD started rubbing his neck and back. “Jack… we can’t present the IOA with the Fatum since we can’t order it to return home or gate onto it right now. But wouldn’t they be interested in learning how to draw power from the planet’s core? And once we figured out the Fatum’s time schedule we could gate on board when she jumps out of hyperspace. It can’t be so hard to take out Maligno and Vala if we have back up with us.” He frowned. “Of course we don’t know if the DHD on the Fatum is working so we could gate back... but I’m hoping Jona might find something in the database.” He bit his lip. “I’d like to go. I know you won’t allow it, but hear me out, okay…”
Jack was distracted by the other dog sitting down beside him. He absently brushed his palm over her bulky head, then watched her stalk off again, probably to find the clone. “Daniel…”
“I won’t go until we’re sure there’s a way off the ship, too. And not until they arrested Maligno and Vala. And I want to take Jona. He has access to everything. And of course, we need marines for safety. And I’d like to request Elliot and Grogan and BD of course. And Bill Lee and…”
“I’ve been relieved of command.” Jack didn’t know how to tell him, so he just said it.
Daniel’s mouth dropped open, then closed. He blinked. “Wha… what?”
“I’m sorry, kiddo, but you were rescued by a bunch of deserters who’ll all face court-martial once we’re back,” Jack said with a wince.
“So you… you… how did you…?”
“We had some help.” Jack got up, ignoring his cracking knees, and pulled LD to his feet. “Our top priority was finding you and getting you home.”
“Home? So we can all go to jail?”
“Well… Dakara is our first stop. We’ll take it from there one step at a time.”
“Jack… can we agree on taking it one step at a time from here?” LD crossed his arms and scowled.
“What?”
“I’m asking you if we can at least take some time to explore this base and find out what we can about the Fatum? Can we,” now he raised his arms, waved at the hangar at large, and spun around in a circle, almost plant boy style, “try and find something that might make me feel like getting into all this trouble wasn’t a total waste of time? That it was at least worth it?” Then he did a sudden double take and groaned. “Oh god, please tell me you didn’t lose command because I went AWOL?”
“Nope, that actually happened just moments before BD returned to Earth to tell me you were missing,” Jack said, not without a hint of resentment at the timing and a tad of shame because he had yelled at BD and acted like a jerk.
LD hung his head. “I’m sorry.” Then he squinted at Jack. “But… why?”
“Evaluation, budget cuts, this, that…” Jack took one look at his miserable kid and, wrapping one arm around his shoulders, led him back into the hangar. “Let’s not dwell. You’re right, too. We’re no longer on a budget or a clock. We’re Renegade SG-1 now. Go… explore.”
Chances were they could use the Ancient ship or the knowledge of how to draw energy from the core as their backdoor out of court martial. It was always good to have leverage.
LD smiled, and Jack sneaked in another hair ruffle without a rebuke before he watched him join the others around one of the workstations.
He went to check on T and the prisoners who were complaining loudly, demanding to be released. “Non ti siamo di alcuna utilità,” Bianca snarled, then translated her own words. “We are of no use to you. We can’t do this magic the ragazzo can do.”
“Is the tesoro infinito really only… Data? No gold, no artifacts?” Matteo asked, his face one deep frown.
Bianca threw in, “How can something be a treasure if there is no… treasure?”
“Treasure is defined differently by anyone. The Ancients considered knowledge the highest treasure there is,” Teal’c provided.
“We have wasted all those years for… what?” Bianca groused.
“Chicken scratching and fairy tales?” Jack didn’t feel sorry for the two, but he certainly understood their frustration. “Don’t be fooled though, you never know what you might find hidden among those ole boring scrolls or tablets.” He raised a finger. “Could be a gate address to the holy grail; could be a Goa’uld in a Canopic jar; could be just Oma de Sala’s recipe for intergalactic waffles.”
“If it’s not something we can sell or trade for, it’s of no value for us,” Matteo concluded. “And since we won’t be able to access this place without your help…” He held up his tied hands. “You can just let us go? Lasciaci andare?”
“You cannot leave this place without our help either,” Teal’c reminded the treasure hunter.
“Hey! Your people beat up my kid and his friend, threw them into prison and left them there to rot. You should consider yourself lucky all we did was tie you up,” Jack snapped.
“Those ragazzo tried to escape their escorts,” the woman hissed.
“Oh yeah, I get it, it was all in self-defense. Why don’t you try and walk out of here and find out what I’m gonna do to keep you from escaping?!”
“Our hands are tied,” Bianca snarled. “We are no danger to you!”
“The boys had their hands tied, too. Didn’t keep your goons from whipping them.” Jack wasn’t going to physically hurt their prisoners, but it was good to get this out of his system.
It was Matteo, who grudgingly apologized. “Maro and Tonio did not harm the adolescente with my permission. Their order was simply to escort them to the dungeon. The one called Jona is not to be trusted. I am sorry they got hurt.”
“It appears you need to get a better handle on your people,” Teal’c observed coldly.
“No. My people just don’t take kindly to being scammed. Or to others trespassing on our grounds,” Bianca ground out.
Matteo barked something at her in Italian and Jack assumed he was telling her to trap it. The expression on her face was sullen, but she lowered her head and stared at her boots.
Deciding he had made his point, Jack chose a less threatening tone. “Alright, we’ll drop you off at your village on our way out. But the kids want to play awhile so you better get comfortable.”
He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a power bar, opened the wrapper and took a bite. Upon Teal’c’s prompting look he got out a second one and tossed it over to the Jaffa. “We should make sure the kids eat something, too.”
They had left their packs by the rings. If he remembered right, there should still be sandwiches.
“Will we take your clone back with us, O’Neill?” Teal’c’s quiet question reached Jack just as he was about to leave the chair room.
He paused, then turned and was presented with the Teal’c eyebrow. And the pink elephant in the room. Because this was something he wasn’t ready to even think about yet. And again the statement I’m not gonna do that again popped to the forefront of his mind.
“So, you figured it out, eh?”
Jack could have sworn Teal’c’s mouth twitched into a smirk for a nanosecond. “I recognized the attitude. And you both possess the Ancient gene.”
He shrugged noncommittally. “We’ll see.”