“Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by evil.”
- John Milton, Areopagitica
-------------------------
“Pack ‘em up, boys,” Jack O’Neill said, with all the satisfaction of a man who had always wanted to say that.
The SGC security teams were quick to follow his order. They loaded Illyria and the Groosalug onto stretchers, placed bindings on their hands and feet, and headed out to the waiting helicopters. Daniel and Teal’c had already been evacuated to a nearby military hospital, but these two... these were their first prisoners. The first they had actually succeeded in taking alive. These were going back to the SGC for interrogation. Possibly dissection. Well, one of those ‘tions,’ anyways. They were heading to the SGC, and he and Samantha were going with them - new orders from General Hammond.
The cleanup effort here in Los Angeles was not over by a long shot, but between the fact that half of Jack’s team was out of commission and that they had gathered enough information to make a preliminary report, it was time to head back to Colorado.
And yet, as he climbed aboard the helicopter, and again as he watched the Hyperion dwindling away below him until it was just another building lining the vast network of streets – just another light among thousands – he couldn’t help but feel as though they had barely scratched the surface of what had happened here.
----------------------------
Epigoni
by P.H. Wise
An Angel crossover fanfic
Chapter 2 – Big City, Little Old One
Disclaimer: I don’t own Angel. I don’t own Stargate. Please don’t sue me. This story contains spoilers for the final episode of Angel.
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Several hours later, Colonel Jack O’Neill and Major Samantha Carter stood once more before General George Hammond in the briefing room of the SGC. Under other circumstances, Jack might have voiced his distracted puzzlement over why they called it the briefing room when in fact it was used for both briefing and debriefing, but the seriousness of the situation they had just come from rendered that particular train of thought one that would be unwise for him to pursue, lest he start grinning even as they spoke of the disaster that had struck southern California.
“So there was no indication whatever of advanced technology in use by these creatures?” Hammond asked.
Jack shook his head. “No Sir. No big honkin’ space guns, no death rays, no nothing.” he said. “Of course, Carter’s got a theory.” He said it as if he were saying ‘the sky is blue,’ or ‘the ocean is wet.’
Major Carter smiled in a bemused fashion. “Thank you, sir.” She turned to General Hammond and began her report. “From all reports, the creatures encountered in Los Angeles have no advanced technology, it’s true. But they did have physical superiority, and were often immune to small arms fire. They did not operate in a manner consistent with trained troops, but behaved more like looters and pillagers than an organized army. If I had to guess, I’d say that whoever sent these troops has access to significant biotechnology, and engineered the creatures encountered in L.A. as a kind of shock troops, sent in for the purpose of causing panic and spreading terror amongst the populace. Not all of the creatures fit this description, however.”
Hammond raised an eyebrow.
“We found several dead Unas among the remains of the other creatures, Sir.”
“I see.”
“That would seem to indicate that in addition to whatever biogenetically enhanced troops were sent in, there were also a number of conscripts from races demonstrating obvious physical superiority.”
General Hammond nodded thoughtfully. “And the two you brought in with you?”
“Doctor Warner is trying to identify exactly what they are now.”
“Have they regained consciousness?”
Jack spoke up, then. “Smurfette woke up on the flight over here for as long as it took for a four man squad to zat her back asleep. It took sustained concentrated fire to put her out, sir. More than it took to take her down the first time. We tried giving her some sedatives, and that did exactly squat. He-Man hasn’t woken up yet. The sedatives work on him, at least.”
The names that Jack had given them did not much impress the General, and although he may have privately thought ‘Smurfette’ and ‘He-Man’ amusing nicknames for the prisoners, he would never let it show.
Carter nodded. “She could be adapting to the energies of our zats. Rendering them less and less effective the more often she’s exposed to them.”
Jack shrugged.
Hammond sighed. He had his suspicions about this situation, and as much as he wanted to believe that it wasn’t the sub-terrestrials, all evidence thus far seemed to be pointing that way, with but one important exception: the presence of Unas amongst the fallen enemies. Either way, this was not a good situation; either they had been attacked by a heretofore unknown alien threat with access to highly advanced biotechnology, or the sub-terrestrial world was coming back to bite them all in the ass.
“Sir?” O’Neill asked, seeing the General sigh.
Hammond smiled. “I’m fine. Just a bit tired. It looks like there’s nothing to be done until Doctor Warner completes his analysis, and our two prisoners wake up.”
“Yes sir.”
“Both of you, dismissed.”
Jack and Carter left in silence, and the General sank into his comfortable leather chair, his expression a thoughtful one.
-----------------
It was nearly an hour later that Jack, Sam, and General Hammond all sat once again around the briefing room table, listening as Doctor Warner – a rather unassuming man, balding, with glasses, and wearing a lab coat over his clothing – delivered his report.
“Quite frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, shaking his head in amazement.
His audience waited patiently for him to continue.
Well, OK, perhaps ‘patiently’ is the wrong word to describe any behavior of Jack O’Neill, but at the very least, he was making an effort not to fidget.
“Even the male has bizarre biological anomalies – I don’t have the results of the genetic testing back yet, but if I had to guess, I’d say he is at least half human.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Which half?”
Carter smiled, but the good doctor was not amused.
“I have no idea what the other half of his parentage could possibly be, nor can I say how a member of another species could possibly breed with a human. If I had to guess, I’d say he was created artificially.”
“And the woman?” Hammond asked.
“The woman...” Warner shook his head. “That pattern of blue on her skin? That’s actually the pigment of her skin. It’s the same for her eyes and hair. Genetically, she’s 100% human. But she’s also got extensive damage to pretty much all of her internal organs. She’s got a functional circulatory system and lungs, but that’s it. Her organs look like they’ve been... I don’t know - barbequed, maybe. Her heart isn’t pumping, but SOMETHING is causing blood to flow. She’s got no brainwave activity at all, and there’s an absolutely bizarre substance floating around in her blood that I can’t even BEGIN to identify.
And that leather catsuit she’s wearing? That’s biological. It’s actually a part of her body, and is she’s interacting with it on a level that we can’t even begin to comprehend with our current level of technology.”
Carter spoke up, then. “If it’s part of the body, could the ‘catsuit’ be what’s keeping her alive?”
O’Neill blinked. “Venom?” he said.
Carter and Hammond turned towards him, looking in askance.
“You know, like a snake, except it looks like clothes instead of like a snake that lives in your head?” Left unsaid was the painful source of this particular bit of information – Jack’s son, Charlie, had collected comic books before his untimely death.
Warner nodded. “It’s possible. Quite frankly, at this point, we don’t know ANYTHING about whatever technology is keeping that woman alive. But whatever it is, it’s far, far beyond us.”
Carter’s mind began to race. “What if she was just another normal human before whatever was responsible for the attack in Los Angeles joined her with a kind of symbiote capable of not only controlling her, but also of enhancing her physical abilities far beyond the human norm?”
“Far beyond the human norm?” O’Neill asked.
“You saw the way she moved back at the hotel. She’d taken out an entire squad of highly trained soldiers almost single handedly, and she broke several of Teal’c’s ribs with a single blow.”
Jack nodded. “You have a point.” A thought struck him suddenly. “Say, just where exactly is Smurfette being kept?”
Hammond was the one who answered. “She’s being kept in the brig, pending her transfer to a more secure holding facility in Area 51.”
Jack got that horrible, sinking feeling.
A moment later, Carter realized what he was getting at, and the implications struck her with the force of a blow to the stomach. “We put someone with nearly superhuman physical abilities in a brig designed to hold human prisoners?” she asked.
Both Doctor Warner and General Hammond went pale.
And several floors below them, in a small, cramped cell of metal and stone, Illyria’s metallic blue eyes snapped open.
--------------------
“Close all blast doors in and around the area of the brig, and get security to all exits to that area, immediately!” Hammond barked as he strode out of the briefing room and into the control room of the base, with all of its flashing displays, and peculiar beeps, and the distant murmur of human conversation.
His subordinates immediately carried out his orders, and all throughout the base in and around the area of the brig, huge, heavy metal doors slid shut.
But it would take more than metal to stop an enraged Old One.
Several minutes passed.
“Sir!” said Walter – a white haired gate technician wearing glasses and a standard Air Force uniform - staring at the display before him with an alarmed expression, “Blast door 3B has been breached, and the security team dispatched to guard it is not responding on radio!”
“Do we have any idea where the hostile is headed?”
Walter listened to someone speaking on his headset. “Yes, sir. She’s been sighted heading for the emergency escape hatch.”
Hammond grimaced. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He glanced at Jack. “We cannot allow an alien combatant as powerful as this to escape into the general population. As of this moment, I am activating the self-destruct mechanism. Jack, I’ll need you to punch in your code as well.”
Walter swallowed heavily.
O’Neill nodded, and followed the general to the emergency console. Neither of them had punched in more than half of their codes when Walter spoke yet again.
“Sir, the emergency hatch has been opened. She’s gone.”
That bit of news did nothing to improve Hammond’s mood. He quickly cleared his pass-code from the computer, and then rushed to his office, where he picked up his red ‘direct to the president’ telephone, and waited for the Commander and Chief to pick up.
The President wasn’t going to like this news one bit.
-------------------
She walked in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies. Yet even in her beauty was she terrible; no mere mortal walked here; she was something other: more awful, more divine, but for all her protestations to the contrary, not less human. Calling upon the human memories of the shell for guidance without even realizing she was doing it, Illyria had followed Norad Rd. to the highway. She now walked along the side of highway 115, moving north towards Colorado Springs. The wide world around her was blanketed in a thick layer of snow, for it was winter, and the air’s winter chill stole her every exhalation; she watched them away float in puffs of mist even as she walked with a look of childlike interest. Although Fred had seen winter, she had never seen the snow. Here, now, Illyria could barely take her eyes off it. All around the highway, the trees grew thick and close, each leafless shape standing in vivid contrast with the white snow. Cars passed her by from time to time, their light casting a brilliant glare upon the star-lit snow, and every time they did, she tensed, as if expecting an attack.
An attack that never came.
Even as one part of her mind watched the winter with rapt fascination, another was going over the details of her escape from Stargate Command. She had killed one of the guards put in place to keep her chained there in that cage of metal and stone. The sheer thought of it made her want to snarl; she could scarcely believe the sheer presumption of these humans that they would seek to chain HER. And yet... and yet... that horrible, awful feeling that she had despised even the first time she had felt it simply would not depart from her. Why should an Old One feel guilt? Was she not beyond the scope of these mortals? What power would hold HER accountable that she feared its revenge? Or did she fear revenge at all?
No. Certainly not. She was Illyria, and she feared nothing. And yet that horrible, gnawing feeling of having done something wrong simply would not go away; ever and anon she beheld the face of the soldier that she had killed, dancing before her vision, superimposed upon the winter highway.
Later, she had left highway 125 behind her, and walked now along interstate 25. She resisted the impulse to transform herself into Fred as she approached the city of Colorado Springs. She had been a god to a god – what need had she to disguise herself?
And yet that rationalization did not make the urge to become Fred depart from her. Yet she steadfastly refused to follow that urge.
So it was that those residents of Colorado Springs that were yet out of doors at this late hour, bound up in their winter clothing and determined not to be outdoors for long, beheld a blue haired woman with metallic blue eyes striding imperiously down the city streets, heedless of the bitter cold of winter.
Yet even in the dead of winter, young people yet mingle, and flirt, and drink copious amounts of alcohol in hopes of stripping away their inhibitions and rendering themselves bold. It was not long before Illyria found herself standing before a large building with a sign over it that read, ‘The Pelian Spear,’ before which a crowd of young people in fashionable attire hid beneath winter clothing was gathered, and from out of which raucous music came tumbling.
Illyria stopped before the building, and following an impulse that she herself did not fully understand, went through the crowd and passed within. The bouncer stopped her at the door; or at least tried to stop her. She paid him more mind that it took to shove him aside, and several teenagers took the opportunity provided to rush inside behind her.
------------------------
Within the club, ‘The Pelian Spear,’ John O’Neill, the teenaged clone of a certain Air Force Colonel, sat utterly alone. Music pulsed all around him, and teenaged and twenty something bodies moved rhythmically (and unrhythmically) to the beat, the pulsing music and the flashing lights creating a kind of hypnotic trance in the club goers even as they danced.
John nursed a soda at the bar, more than a little bit annoyed by the fact that he was still too young to buy his own beer. He was beginning to regret asking Cassie to come with him to this place. He had thought that maybe bringing Cassie to a place like this would get her mind off of her mother’s recent death. After all, wasn’t going to places like this what teenagers liked to do these days?
He sure as hell didn’t know, but that’s what he had been told. After almost a year as a teenager, John had come to a very important conclusion: he didn’t understand teenagers at all.
Well, maybe Cassie. He thought he could understand her. She was one of the few teenaged friends that he had managed to make after the incident that had left him this way, and that really only because she had been a friend before the incident. He supposed he could have made other teenaged friends, but the thing was, he just didn’t find the average teenager all that interesting. In his experience, most of being a teenager these days seemed to consist of angsting and being thoroughly miserable over how your every need was provided for, how you had a nice home to live in, and how your parents were seriously impinging on your social standing with their ‘uncool’ protective tendencies.
He hadn’t much cared for it his first time through, and his second time as a teenager was only made worse by the generational divide. Though he was physically their age, he was most definitely not a member of the same generation as his classmates. And the differences were becoming more obvious every day, compelling him again and again to seek his adult friends.
Jack O’Neill’s adult friends.
Janet Fraiser’s death had hit him hard as well. For all that he knew he was the clone, and not the real Jack O’Neill, he still cared about his old friends, and still tried to keep in touch with them, even apart from his alienation from most of his peers. Of all of his friends from Stargate Command, he had remained closest to Teal’c, Janet, and the now teenaged Cassie.
But although she had agreed to come with him, Cassie apparently hadn’t wanted her mind taken off of her mother’s death. Oh, she had tried to enjoy herself at first, and for a few moments, it had looked like she might be able to, and her brilliant smile had made the club almost seem worth it; but now, both she and John were busy being miserable separately.
Damnit, he should have just taken her fishing like he’d originally planned.
He downed his soda in one gulp, paid for it, and glanced about. OK, so he’d find Cassie, and then he’d ask if she wanted to get out of here, they’d get their winter clothing from the club’s coatroom, and then he’d take her fishing tomorrow if she was willing to go.
John smiled lazily. That sounded like exactly the thing to do.
That was when a twenty-something woman with blue hair, metallic blue eyes, skin that alternated between the natural Caucasian skin tone and a blue every bit as intense as her eyes, wearing a red leather catsuit, walked past the young man.
His first thought was this: ‘Hmmph. Kids these days.’
And then his eyes met hers, for the briefest of moments.
His eyes widened.
Oh shit. Whoever she was, she was NOT human. He was observant enough to be able to see that those weren’t contacts she was wearing; and a closer look showed him that the leather gauntlets of her catsuit were streaked with blood that had frozen in the winter cold outside, but was now melting in the warmth of the club.
Immediately, he flipped out his cell phone, and began to dial.
He still knew the phone number for General Hammond’s private line; the General had given him the number for just such an eventuality as this one.
General Hammond would want to know about this.
-----------------------
Illyria quickly decided that this place, for all that it was named after a legendary instrument of war, was tiresome. The smell of arousal was too thick in this place; and mixed with the excitement and adrenalin of those dancing, it nearly overwhelmed her. She quickly made her way to the club’s back entrance, on the way her eyes meeting the eyes of a teenaged boy who bore a striking resemblance to a certain Air Force Colonel, and stepped outside.
The door opened into a dark alleyway, sheltered from the snow by an overhang, but not from the cold. Even as the door swung shut behind her, she heard the sound of struggle.
Well, perhaps ‘struggle’ wasn’t entirely the right word.
A vampire had only just seized a pretty teenaged girl with light brown hair and tear-streaked eyes. Her name was Cassandra Fraiser, although Illyria didn’t know that. The vampire was male, nothing particularly special; mouse brown hair, brown eyes, and slightly overweight, yet still possessed of the strength of a demon.
As he bit her, she gasped, but did not struggle. For the briefest of moments, there was a look of something like peace on her face.
Illyria watched curiously, ignoring the impulse that told her to kill the vampire and save the girl. It had been a long time since she had watched a vampire kill its victim; perhaps she was overdue for seeing it again.
Yet as she watched, and as the girl grew weaker, the urge to save the girl grew stronger, and at length, she spoke.
“You are dying,” she told Cassie.
Cassie’s eyes widened slightly at the thought, but she did not struggle.
The vampire gave Illyria an annoyed glance. “Do you mind?” he asked.
Illyria cocked her head in a puzzled manner. “Mind?” she asked. The vampire didn’t reply, and since Illyria wasn’t interfering, he went back to his meal.
Illyria moved to stand within Cassandra’s field of vision, and looked into the girl’s eyes.
“Do you want to die?” the Old One asked.
Cassie didn’t respond for a long moment, and after a few more seconds of being drained, she found that she no longer had the strength to. No, she didn’t want to die. But the weakness of blood loss was upon her, and she couldn’t find the strength to respond to Illyria’s question beyond the terror that now filled her expression.
The vampire once again turned to Illyria, quite thoroughly annoyed. He punched the old one in the face with all of his vampiric strength. “I don’t like it when people talk to my food, bitch!” he hissed.
Illyria didn’t so much as budge in the slightest.
Punching the old one was probably the worst move the vampire could have made, for it stirred up Illyria’s pride, and she acted to avenge it immediately.
Moving with nearly inhuman speed, she struck the vampire full in the face, sending him flying into the alley wall with such force that the wall of the Pelian Spear cracked visibly around the site of impact. The vampire had not yet recovered from it when Illyria plunged her hand into his body and tore his shriveled, dried up heart from his chest.
She held it there before his disbelieving eyes for a few seconds before crushing it in her hand.
The vampire collapsed into dust.
With her attacker destroyed, Cassie fell to her knees, wracked with great, heaving sobs.
Illyria looked on with an expression of distaste, and yet, mingled with the distaste was the tiniest hint of... was that sympathy? “No matter where I go,” she said, “I cannot seem to escape human grief.” Her hard expression softened ever so slightly, and a tremor of emotion came into her voice. “So much grief, and still it is like offal in my mouth.”
Cassie continued to weep.
Illyria looked down at the weeping girl, and the emotions of the shell were stirred. “Cease your bleating, human,” she said, and for all that her words were completely inappropriate her tone was more like Fred than like Illyria, “And I will assist you in locating the ones that spawned you.”
Cassie glared murderously at Illyria, but she had not strength enough to act upon the anger that the Old One’s comment had stirred in her.
A moment later, John O’Neill burst out of the back door to the club. “Cassie?” he called. He spotted her a moment later. “CASSIE!”
He was at her side in an instant, applying pressure to the injury on her neck. Cassie slumped against him. “What did you do to her!” he demanded of Illyria, his tone commanding.
Illyria did not reply.
Cassie mumbled something incoherent, and began to drift into unconsciousness, her loss of blood finally taking its toll.
“Damnit, Cassie, stay awake!” He slapped her cheeks, and she stirred blearily. Acting quickly, he flipped out his cell phone with his free hand and dialed 911.
By the time he was finished, Illyria had already vanished into the night.
------------------------
In the sterile white hospital room, Cassandra Fraiser lay unconscious on the hospital bed. She had received a transfusion, and there was an IV in her arm. The steady beep of the electrocardiogram filled the room.
“How is she?” General Hammond asked as he stepped through the door, with Jack and Sam on his heels.
*beep*
John O’Neill looked up, and instinctively came to attention. “She’s not good, sir. She lost a lot of blood. But the doctor said that she’ll recover.”
*beep*
Hammond nodded, visibly relieved. “What happened out there?” he asked.
*beep*
“I don’t know, sir. We went to the club together; we got there at 1900 hours. We danced for a while, and then Cassie became quiet, and went off alone while I was having a drink at the bar.”
*beep*
Jack looked at John in askance.
*beep*
“Of soda,” John clarified, thoroughly annoyed with the man he had been cloned from.
*beep*
Jack smiled faintly. “Ah.”
*beep*
“That was when I saw the woman I reported earlier. I went looking for Cassie, and I found her in the alley behind the club sporting a neck injury, but without any trace of blood on the ground. Smurfette was standing over her. I ran to Cassie, called the paramedics, and by the time I had done that, Smurfette was gone.”
*beep*
“Do you think the woman you described could have caused the injury that Cassie suffered?” Hammond asked.
*beep*
John shrugged. “Hell if I know, sir.”
*beep*
General Hammond’s expression was grim. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he vowed.
---------------------
And back in his cell at Stargate Command, the Groosalug awoke with a shudder. He glanced at the steel walls of his cell, noted the guard standing outside the door, visible through a barred window, and sighed. He had learned many human sayings in his time on earth, and one seemed to him particularly appropriate for this situation:
“It appears that I am no longer in Kansas.”
End Chapter Two
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Feedback is most definitely welcome – particularly constructive criticism. Nothing makes me happier than to know what specifically you (the reader) liked, what you didn’t like, and (most importantly) why.
Author’s note: I know little of Colorado Springs itself, save what could be learned by looking at maps. As such, my descriptions of the place are likely inaccurate. If any of you happen to live there and care to correct me, feel free.
Next: Of Snakes and Groosalugs
