The snake leans over him. Pushing him down, into the bed, against the covers, and he can see six ways to break free and five of them would leave a human dead before he finished moving.

Instead he smiles. Snarls. Same difference. Snake sees both of them, anyway. He tips his hips up, wraps his hand around the snake-host-body's shoulder. Nice body. If it weren't for what's inside, it might even be possible for him to be attracted to it.

He's not. But he's started to do a damn good impression of it. He thinks the snake might even be buying it.

He'd known, walking into this, what he was going to have to do. Known what Ba'al was likely to want from him. Part of why it had taken him so long to be ready for it. O'Neill had known too. They have the same memories, the same sense-impressions, the same shared secrets. Nobody else knows. Daniel had never been there to watch: some last lingering mortal squeamishness, some desire to give him privacy even when he was begging for company. (Daniel had never been there at all. Hallucination. That's all it was. If it had been Daniel, Daniel would have made it stop.)

He hadn't told anybody, afterwards. He's the only one who knows. He'd never told anyone: not Fraiser, not MacKenzie, not Daniel after they'd gotten him back. Lock it up, behind his eyes. Write-only memory. Until he'd tattooed the patterns underneath his skin, and Mitchell had asked --

Don't think about Mitchell. Not here, not now, not while the snake's around him, inside of him. Touching him. Mitchell knew what he was going to have to do, too. Says it won't make a difference when he comes back. But Mitchell's an idealist underneath those cynic's clothes. One of the reasons why he loves the man so deeply, because he was an idealist too, years and years ago, before he got burned one too many times. It's good for him to remember there's idealism still out there. They'll deal with it. Later. Somehow. Once he gets back. He's not going to hide what he's done this time, what's been done to him. Mitchell will stand.

(Would Daniel have?)

Enough. Fuck, he's slipping again. Sit shikantaza in the shower later; dig his fingers into the snake's hips and pull it close now. Expose his throat. Show his belly. Listen to the noises he's making, the snake's making. He's always half-wondered (sick fascination, turning over a rock, watching the worms squirm back into the dark) how much the snakes really wanted human bodies, except as flesh-puppet incubators to walk around in. Now he knows the answer. For this one, at least.

He lets his mind go elsewhere. Body'll take care of itself. The snake will take care of it; it likes when he comes. Gets off on making him get off, likes the shadow-play of self-loathing he always pretends to afterward. Part of their game. Sex, the ultimate power trip. Doesn't actually touch him. It's his body, and he's shared it with some and offered it to others and dangled it just out of reach of even more, but there's only one person who gets to own it (other than himself) and he doesn't want ownership. Just time-share. So everything else he does with his body doesn't matter now; it'll all wash straight down the drain. All he has to do is remember to make it look good.

The snake puts a hand over his mouth when it's done. Puts its mouth against the other side of its hand. Close, so close; he can see the ring of naquadah-buildup around the host-body's pupils. He holds himself still. Makes himself hold still. Familiar, too familiar; his pulse is high and thready, fluttering under his skin.

"I could snap your neck," Ba'al says. Naked flesh against naked flesh. Naked threat.

"You won't," he says, his lips brushing against its palm, grotesque parody of a kiss. "Not until you get a chance to see how useful I can really be."

Ba'al's thumb presses against his carotid. Not quite enough to knock him out. Enough to make the edges of his vision go grey and fuzzy, black spots swimming before his eyes in the low light of his ugly bedroom. Oh-so-carefully calculated; he knows the snake can gauge the time he has, down to the last second. "I haven't seen much evidence of your usefulness thus far."

He holds to consciousness, red in tooth and claw. "Haven't let me show you."

If it weren't for the snake's hand, over his mouth, they'd be kissing. That's one thing the snake hasn't done to him so far. Maybe to them, it means something else. He remembers hearing of Jacob, Selmak, a Tok'ra tunnel. Shudders. Turns it into a stretch, a ripple of the spine, pressing up against the snake's body. I'm not frightened. Not of you.

The snake's smirk says it knows his posturing to be a lie. "I could give you to one of my children, then, instead," it says. "That would allow you to be useful indeed."

His blood is ringing in his ears, the crash and hiss of surf striking rock. Seconds until he greys out. Ten, nine, eight. "They'd fight you," he says. Tries not to sound frightened; tries not to sound smug. Either way would be too far. Gotta play it just right. "I don't."

"Point," Ba'al says. It opens its hand, and he does not allow himself to gasp for air. "We shall see how long that will keep saving you."

*

"Well, you look like something the cat dragged in," Virta says, watching him drop into his chair with coffee in hand. "Boss keeping you up all night?"

So not in the mood. "Fuck off," he mutters, pulling up a login window. "Just not sleeping, is all."

Too tired to make a good show of it, for Virta or for the rest of them or for Cacirelli-the-goddamn-snake, who is watching him over the cube wall with vague and distant interest. He pulls his headphones out of his drawer as soon as he sits down. Headphones mean "don't talk to me". Headphones mean "fuck off". Even if you're not playing music through them, and right now the last thing he wants is more auditory input at all. Of any kind. Right now all he wants is a gallon of coffee. Or a goddamn nap. Hell, he'll take both; the amount of sleep he's not getting would let him crash for twenty-four straight even with a gallon of coffee floating around in his veins.

If he could find someplace he felt safe enough to sleep. Even when the snake's not in the room, his hardwired sentries know he's in danger. He wakes up every twenty. He's been praying it doesn't show on the infrared cameras he knows damn well the snake has planted in his bedroom. Or if it does, he's hoping it looks like bad dreams. He's got enough excuses for a few nightmares locked up inside his skull.

Virta's apparently decided to ignore the universal geek shorthand, though. The kid gets up, stands next to the desk, kicks the chair. Cranes his neck. Doesn't even have the fucking manners to pretend he's not shoulder-surfing. "Hey, come on. Coffee in the breakroom tastes like shit this morning, I think the cleaning people forgot to rinse the soap out of the pot. Come show me where the fuck you get yours. I could use some fresh air this morning."

It's the last thing he wants to do right now. But Virta's looking at him, hopeful like a puppy, and he can't bring himself to kick the kid. "Fine," he snarls. "Whatever. Let me just call over."

Virta doesn't say anything, just watches him pull the cell phone out of his back pocket and dial. He's got Ba'al's private line. The one that rings through to its desk without going through Esmeralda the Wonder Secretary. Ba'al answers on the third ring, no pretense of playing human this time. "What?" it snaps.

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war," he sing-songs. (Look sharp. Play nice.) "Heading out for a field trip. Call up the minders."

The snake sounds pissed at something, and he wonders what's wrong. It hadn't sounded anywhere near this cranky half an hour ago when it had called him back from his run. "I presume you're a big enough boy to wipe your own ass. Stop bothering me with this shit."

Click.

It's like living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Snake. Virta's biting his lip as he disconnects his end of the call, shoves the phone back in the back pocket of his jeans. He doesn't say anything to the kid, just grabs his windbreaker. In deference to the fact that people who aren't him don't like running up and down dozens of flights of stairs, they take the elevator. Virta's still quiet on the way down.

"Cat got your tongue?" he asks the kid, as they flash their IDs to the security guard, clear through the scanners, and make it out, squinting, onto the street. (Sun's out today, first time in weeks. Hallelujah, it's a miracle.)

Whatever he was expecting, this isn't it. The minute they're clear of the invisible radius around the lobby, Virta says. "Look, I'm worried about you. Tell me you're not in any trouble."

Christ on a crutch. His head fucking hurts. "I'm not in any trouble."

"Yeah, you know," Virta says. "I've got a hard time believing that. This gig pays well enough, but it's not worth killing yourself over. If you're in trouble, I could find you something somewhere else. Hell, if Balim's got some kind of weird hold over you, I'm pretty sure Chen could find you something in China. Or Suzukimo still has contacts over in Tokyo. And I know you're good enough to set yourself up a whole new identity that Balim couldn't trace."

He closes his eyes for a fraction of a second. Runs into someone coming in the other direction -- bad idea to stop dead on the downtown streets -- but he doesn't bother to apologize. "Stop talking," he says. "Just ... stop talking."

Virta stops walking instead. Grabs his elbow. The other pedestrians route around them, grumbling the whole way. "No," he says. "No. I mean, you're like the fucking Night of the Living Dead, okay? Let me help."

He pulls his elbow out of Virta's grip. "Nothing to help with," he says. Then sighs, because the kid's trying. Got a good heart, underneath all of the posturing and preening. "I'm serious, okay? I'm just bored and pissed because I'm spinning my fucking wheels with this project. So I couldn't sleep, and I got up at like two in the morning and amused myself by running every single attachment I had in my spam folder to see how long it took my sandbox machine to catch a copy of every single virus or Trojan I could think of. Better than counting sheep."

It's actually not even a lie -- the team's got a contest running this month to see who can design their own worm that will go the furthest, and he's been capturing as much code as he can to decompile it and study it, since he's starting at a disadvantage; they've all got plenty more practice than he does. And if he's not going to be sleeping, at least he can get something useful accomplished. Still, must have been the right thing to say, because Virta laughs and looks a little less worried.

"Hardcore nerd, man," Virta mutters, shaking his head. "I thought I was bad."

"You are," he says, fumbling for the threads of their usual easy banter. "I don't sleep with my Ubuntu install disks as a teddy bear."

The last of the concern passes, and Virta's laughing. "Yeah, well, at least I sleep. You want me to lend you the security blanket, dude? I can smuggle it in under my jacket so nobody notices."

Air's cold, but the sunshine's warm on the side of his face. "You could lend me your mom," he counters. "Come on. You dragged me out here, you're buying."

*

Downtown Seattle. Judicial Confederates Manipulate Soldiers' Underlying Problems; their little heart-to-heart means Virta's decided he wants to be friends, and it's getting harder to come up with excuses that won't leave the kid thinking he's some kind of battered boyfriend. He settles for moving his half-hour in the gym from in the mornings before his run to the afternoon, halfway between lunch break and dinnertime, and invites the rest of the team to join him down in the headquarters' gym. (Nicer than any health club he's seen in a while. Farrow-Marshall apparently believes in employee fitness.)

He frames it as a team bonding thing: weight lifting, a little bit of boxing, some light hand-to-hand. Cacirelli declines (unsurprising; a snake would have to work three times as hard to appear human; it is harder to appear less skilled at something than you actually are than it is to appear more skilled than you are). Chen and Suzukimo drop in and out, here and there. (Suzukimo turns out to be capable of nearly kicking his fucking ass in hand-to-hand half the time; it makes him wonder if he identified the wrong person as the snake, but no, she can barely bench fifty pounds without slipping. She's just fucking fast, with some kind of previous training, and she's got no problems fighting dirty.)

Most afternoons it's just him and Virta, bonding over the free weights. They talk about movies, or work projects, or various shit that's happening in the security (and security-breaking) world. Virta's not bad. Not great, either. They've set a goal of getting Virta up to lifting a hundred by the end of winter. It's soothing, having another human being there to shoot the shit with while he's lifting or beating the shit out of the bag. A human body, close enough to touch sometimes. Virta smells nice, too.

Still, as nice as it is to have someone in his space who isn't trying to get into his pants, it cuts his solitary time, his thinking-time, down even further. Now he's just got his morning run left.

The only bright spot is that the snake's stopped yanking his reins so quickly. First couple of weeks, he hadn't been able to complete a single 10K; now he's regularly hitting his goal of fifteen. Gives him time to strategize. To think things over. To plan.

Today he's running up Madison (grey and dingy outside, grey skies, grey buildings, grey puddles and pavement and water, but the clouds aren't doing much more than spitting) and thinking about positioning. About how to get the snake to give him something to do that will let him start piecing together more educated guesses about the snake's plans. What it has him doing now is the equivalent of work-for-hire, something you can give someone and be reasonably certain they won't be able to piece together your Secret Master Plan from it. (Of course, your smart Evil Overlord will construct the Secret Master Plan in such a way as to make sure that no one person can ever assemble enough of the pieces to put together the whole. He's been counting on the notion that snakes aren't smart. If this assumption proves false, he's going to have a hell of a lot of extra work to accomplish.) He has to come up with some way to get the snake to offer him a minor conditional test of trust, something that will let the snake have more confidence in his motivations.

Problem is that he has to come up with some way to get the snake to offer him a conditional test of trust without clueing the snake in to what he's doing, because the people you trust the least are the people who say "what can I do to make you trust me" the loudest.

He knows, from seven years of Daniel's briefings, what Goa'uld society is like. A bunch of minor lordlings, all paying lip service to their chosen more powerful overlord, all of them scheming and plotting ways to backstab and manipulate their way into the top role themselves. A System Lord doesn't trust easily. A System Lord doesn't trust at all, not in the ways humans understand 'trust'.

(A memory:

Him. Daniel. Daniel's office, where they'd retreated, rather than facing the crowds in the commissary. There is no word in the Goa'uld language for 'trust', you know. Daniel's eyes, wide and round behind the lenses of his glasses. The closest you can get is 'temporary alliance'. And it's always got the connotation that you're just waiting for the person to sell you out...

An apple, sitting on the tray. There's a spot on the side, a dimpled flaw that had been carefully hidden on the cafeteria line. He hadn't noticed it until he brought it back with him. The smell of dust, which Daniel's office always collects, despite Daniel's best efforts and the combined forces of the cleaning crews. The haphazard stack of books that Daniel's sweeping hand gestures nearly knock over. The press of Daniel's knees, warm and solid, against his own where they bump beneath the work-bench they're using as a lunch-table.

You're not listening to me, Jack.

I never listen to you when you go into lecture mode, Daniel.

It's amazing the details the human mind retains.)

He knows enough about Goa'uld society to know that there are about fifteen different ways he could present himself to the snake so the snake would treat him like a petty Goa'uld lordling looking for that temporary alliance. He knows every last piece of the body language he'd need to use, the manner of speech he'd need to adopt, to speak to the section of the snake's instincts governing social strata and power plays. He knows how he could make the snake's subconscious think of him as an under-Goa'uld even while the snake's conscious mind knew him to be human, just enough so that he could draw on those societally-programmed roles.

(It's his knowledge, dammit. His. Acquired from briefing and observation and all those conversations with Daniel that Daniel always thought he was sleeping through. Kanan left him nothing. Nothing. He wouldn't have even known Kanan's name if it hadn't been dragged out of him.)

Getting the snake to think of him as an underling isn't the way to go, though. It would open some doors, but it would shut others, always and forever. And those are the doors he's going to have to walk through eventually. An under-Goa'uld is never trusted, never fully briefed, never brought into the fold. A System Lord is always watching for the inevitable betrayal. He can't afford that. He has to get the snake thinking of him not as a temporary ally, but as an unhoped-for pair of hands. Trusted lieutenant. Assistant. Confidante.

He'd asked Teal'c. On the back porch of --

(Stubbing his mental toe, drawing back quickly; it's also amazing how many tendrils and runners creep through the consciousness, roots waiting to rise in the darkness for the unwary traveler to trip over. Don't think about Mitchell.)

He'd asked Teal'c. How much Apophis had confided in his First Prime. How much a lo'tar would know about his Goa'uld lord's plans. Answer: not much. He remembers Daniel, coming back from that royal clusterfuck of an undercover mission, disturbed by so many things but mostly disturbed by a conversation he'd had with Ba'al's lo'tar, a man willfully complicit in his own slavery. Which one's the truth? He'd decided to take the chance. Other System Lords might not share things with their human underlings, but Ba'al's done it once. They're all gambling on the chance that he can get Ba'al to do it again.

He just doesn't know how.

He's moving on autopilot. His mind divided: one part fully inhabiting his body (feet ankles knees hips, head shoulders knees and toes, arms pumping, chest rising falling), one part engaged in circling the problem, round and round again, ashes ashes we all fall down. And he's gotten so used to this time being his (damn it) that he's let himself get sloppy, draw inward, lower his watchdogs: one more anonymous face in a sea of anonymous faces, knowing he's being observed from a distance but knowing that he's doing nothing suspicious and therefore not needing to stay on guard. When he hears the snake say "What do you see in this?" it takes him three whole seconds to realize that the voice comes, not from the earpiece in his left ear, not from the resonance it makes through his headbones, but from the person running to his right.

When startled, when nervous, step forward. "There're these crazy little things called endorphins," he says, timing his breathing just right so he doesn't have to gasp. (Wouldn't have to anyway. He might be running, not jogging, but he's been doing a hell of a lot of running lately and he's in better shape than he's been in years.) "What's the matter, I forget to charge my cell phone or something?"

The snake is dressed (dear God) in gym shorts and a plain white t-shirt, not even darkened at the collar and armpits. Makes him feel overdressed. He runs in the same jeans and t-shirt he wears into the office, used to ignoring the press of damp fabric; he doesn't waste the effort of changing when he gets to the office unless he gets soaked, and sometimes not even then. It's not breathing hard either. Funny thing, that.

"No," it says. Matches his pace perfectly, step for step, stride for stride. Manages to avoid the puddles, too. (Fucker.) "I've watched you engaging in this little routine every morning since you arrived. I thought I'd join you and see for myself what sort of benefit you got from it."

Fucking hell, if the fucking snake decides it wants to come jogging along with him every fucking morning he's going to fucking shoot something really fucking quickly. Like the snake. Or himself. "We can't all be the Six Million Dollar Man just by climbing into a box, you know. Some of us have to work at it."

He's expecting some kind of snide reply -- half the time, he thinks the snake actually enjoys sniping with him -- but instead, there's silence. For a good half a block. He's beginning to think that maybe the snake isn't in the mood for conversation (which would be fucking nice) when the snake says, sounding thoughtful, "You could be, you know."

His heart slam-thuds in his chest, and it has nothing at all to do with the exercise. The snake has a sarcophagus. Of course the snake has a sarcophagus. And it's offering him a timeshare. He tries to ignore the siren's song of want-want-want. (He's kicked heroin and he's kicked sarcophagus-addiction and the fucking heroin was a walk in the fucking park in comparison. Once an addict, always an addict, and even if this body hadn't been the body Ba'al's sarcophagus had rebuilt, over and over, the brain still remembers.)

His first impulse is to get away. But that wouldn't match the persona he's projecting. And the other thoughts fall after it, like a house of cards tumbling, possibility after possibility all narrowing down to one shrieking suspicion: this is a test.

Everything's a test.

Only got a few seconds to figure out how to play it. Which will make the snake less suspicious: yes or no? He doesn't think he could hold his cover while high on a sarcophagus ride, and he's pretty fucking sure the snake knows what the fucking box does to humans. (Daniel, in robes, his glasses missing. Laughing. I just need a little more time.) So he can't say yes. But he's pretty fucking sure the snake also knows that he knows that it knows what the fucking box does to humans (we're a knowledgeable bunch), so he can't say no, at least not in the wrong way.

Fortunately, the few seconds he takes fall in line with what he decides (quickly, too quickly) what his answer has to be: pause, hesitation. Contemplation. "Fucking hell, that's tempting," he finally says, trying to put as much regret into his voice as he thinks he can get away with. "No idea how it'd work on me, though, thanks to how that goatfucker fucked up when he made me. And you know what that thing does to humans. I wouldn't be much use to you on a permanent sarcophagus high."

"True," the snake agrees. (Too quickly? Too slowly?) It sounds half-regretful. "Pity, that. It would save you so much of this time you waste in physical conditioning."

If it's a test (and everything's a test), he has no idea if he passed or failed. "Gives me a chance to get out and about, at least. I don't do well with being cooped up. Not anymore."

"True," the snake says again. "I suppose that is an advantage."

He bites back anything else he could say, the temptation to snipe. Unbridled free-floating hostility will only take him so far; he's known for a while that sooner or later he'd have to rein in the rage. To the snake, at least. Too suspicious for him to show up all buddy-buddy from the get-go, but keeping that level of venom too long would make him a liability, not an asset. This is as good a time to dial it back as any. So he shuts his mouth and keeps on running, iron control keeping him from picking up the pace. He's not going to outrun the snake, and he'll only kill himself trying.

After a few minutes, it's almost camaraderie, the weave and dance between the crowd of pedestrians that will only keep thickening as the morning ages, the challenge of keeping in perfect step (heel, toe, heel, toe, marching up and down again, and there's no discharge in the war). He's not going to be the one who breaks it, even when they're parted by this man with briefcase, this woman with stroller. He sneaks a glance over to the snake after one of those interruptions, only to find the snake looking back at him. Smiling. Not a smirk, a smile.

Makes him shiver.

He timed it right today; he can feel the burn starting in his calves and the backs of his thighs just as he (they) makes the turn from Madison onto Second. He drops down to a jog, takes the last two blocks as cool-down. Snake paces him, neatly, precise. He pauses outside the door to the coffee shop and drags a hand through his sweat-damp hair. "Last stop," he says. "All ashore what's going ashore."

The snake just smiles (again) and gestures at the door. "After you," it says.

He closes his eyes, for just a second longer than a blink. "Fine," he says. "But you're buying your own damn cappuccino today."

"I do believe," the snake says, thoughtfully, "that I buy the coffee every morning. You are drawing your allowance from my general fund, after all."

Ha. Ha. He's not actually drawing a paycheck; the snake gave him the keys to the slush fund and told him to pull whatever he needed, and they haven't talked money since. He pays for his coffee with a ten he dredges up from the depths of his pocket, takes the handful of bills and change. Drops the change in the tip jar. Straightens each of the bills so they're facing the same way, the five in the back, the three singles in front (eyes flicking to the serial numbers as he does) and puts a mental subroutine in place: if the snake ever sees him handling folding money again, here or elsewhere, he'll have to tidy it in the same fashion so it looks like a perpetual habit. Thank God there's a bill with the serial number he needs in his change, so he can fold it and drop it in the tip cup without having to come up with some excuse to dig in his pockets again.

For a minute when they get back out of the coffee shop, he's expecting the snake to escort him over to the building, dog his steps the entire way. But all it does is smile at him again and raise the coffee cup in salute. "Thank you for allowing me to share your morning run," it says, all full formality. "It has been a most enlightening experience."

Yeah. That's what he's worried about.

He watches it as it saunters away. Fucking thing didn't even break a sweat.

*

<@azimov> good morning, fearless leader
<@azimov> you look like shit again
<@azimov> still not sleeping?
<@azimov> HEY
<@azimov> NIELSON
<@azimov> DO NOT MAKE ME RICKROLL THIS ENTIRE FLOOR TO GET YOUR ATTENTION
<@hellokitty> Will you two please flirt somewhere other than the irc channel?
<@azimov> shut up, little suzi
<@azimov> NIELLLLLLLLLLSON
<@jdn> oh for fuck's sake what do you want
<@azimov> world domination
<@azimov> a billion dollars
<@azimov> a blowjob
<@azimov> a burger
<@unclevanya> your mom?
<@jdn> that's my line, chen
<@azimov> fuck i'm bored today
<@hellokitty> We noticed.
<@azimov> thought i'd finally managed to get somewhere with this but the fucker keeps crashing
<@azimov> is anyone getting anything accomplished today?
<@unclevanya> not if you don't shut up, we aren't
<@hellokitty> Group /ignore party?
<@azimov> hey
<@azimov> group party
<@azimov> that sounds great
<@azimov> let's go down to temple and play some pool. we can call it an offsite strategy meeting
<@azimov> shit, i forgot i'm not in charge anymore
<@azimov> HEY NIELSON
<@jdn> you really are lucky i don't have you on /ignore
<@azimov> whattya say to taking us all out for an afternoon of playing pool and drinking beer
<@azimov> not that i've ever seen any evidence that you have a life but
<@hellokitty> You know, that's actually not a bad idea.
<@unclevanya> sure, i'm game
<@unclevanya> haven't tested your fake id for a while virta
<@jdn> oh what the hell
<@jdn> grab your wallets
<@azimov> wow, he really *isn't* some kind of advanced robot sent from the future to kick our asses
<@jdn> you're too young to know that movie. saddle up, kids, the terminator always wins at pool

*

He and Suzukimo win, six games to one.

If he closes his eyes and pretends, it's almost like being back at O'Malley's.

*

The worst part is how he almost, almost keeps slipping into thinking that this is normal.

Wake up at 0500. (Or give up and admit that he's not getting back to sleep again. Or to sleep at all.) Shower and change. Coffee. The fucking Ikea-monstrosity apartment comes with hot and cold running concierge service; they stock his kitchen for him, everything from paper towels to coffee to beer to fruits and vegetables he always has to force himself to eat. (Easier to call for delivery. When the snake doesn't want him for a command performance over dinner, that is.) He doesn't usually bother with breakfast; the office has enough food for him to choose from, stocked in the break room. (One of these days he really has to go wandering through the building and see how the peons are treated. He's pretty sure that they don't get the same perks that are de rigeur up where the snake keeps all the people who are working on something it needs for its nefarious purposes.)

He's out on the streets by 0600 most mornings. The car always follows him, from the moment he leaves the building. It's one of the reasons why he knows the apartment is being watched; there wouldn't be enough time for his minders to get moving if it were the concierge desk tipping them off when he goes out. (One morning he's going to roll straight out of bed and out the door, just to be a shit. See whether they park outside all night, in shifts, on watch.) Run for an hour. Two hours. However long it takes for him to see whether the snake is going to call him in today. (It hasn't joined him again. Not past that one morning. Thank fuck for small favors.)

It's stopped calling him, most mornings. Trusting he'll come back when he's done. Giving him a longer rope with which to hang himself. He doesn't stop bringing its cappuccino; those stolen morning moments when he breezes by Esmeralda the Wonder Secretary and watches her turn up her nose at him are worth it, just for the chance to annoy the ever-living fuck out of her. Establishing an identity. See who I am.

From the snake's office back out through the reception area. (He and Narciso, the executive floor receptionist, have an unspoken treaty of mutually benevolent ignoring. Narciso is horrified by his version of corporate attire. He thinks Narciso is a useless waste of space.) Through the glass door, down the rabbit hole (we're all mad here), past where the ninja accountants and the snazzy-suited boys tasked with finding companies to conquer all sit. Back to the back corner, the Happy Hacker Haven. First one of his team in, most mornings. First one on the floor, half the time. He's still never beaten the snake here. Must be an advantage, not to need sleep.

Fucking snake.

From there, a day of staring at code. Trying things. Backing up when they don't work. Trying again. Getting frustrated sometimes, blowing off a few hours by reading his blogroll or getting into revert wars on Wikipedia. Getting bored with that and delving back into the decompiler; catching a brainwave and pounding out line after line of code, trailing off after a while when inspiration deserts him, going to portscan the fuck out of the networks that are on the list of targets Ba'al or Rickowski keeps emailing him for the team. (Hasn't seen Rickowski face-to-face since he got here, but there's an email in his inbox every Monday morning like clockwork, so he knows the guy hasn't dropped off the face of the earth.) Eventually someone orders lunch. Eventually it's mid-afternoon, and he goes to spend an hour in the gym. Eventually someone will look up blearily, blink a few times, and realize it's dinnertime. Sometimes it's even him. Eventually he sleeps. Or doesn't.

The worst part is how it's almost like the life he built for himself.

Easy, so easy, to forget where he is. What he's doing. Why he's doing it. Four years ago he'd woken from his sleep to find that forty years had melted away (in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump). He'd wandered lost for so long. So many choices. So many chances. If things had turned out differently, if he hadn't gotten the bright idea to email Carter and ask her for a name, an address, he might have found himself here, or somewhere much like it, on his own.

He's starting to think of Carter more readily these days. Of Teal'c. (Daniel.) That's a bad sign.

When he'd left Colorado Springs four years ago, he'd left with only a few pieces of knowledge, burning inside his chest like a gaping wound. That he had to walk away completely. That he couldn't ever look back. That he would go mad if he'd allowed himself to dwell on what he'd lost. Months of running until he'd finally realized he had to stop. (Pastor James, with quiet confidence: Jonathan, I don't know what you're running from, but I do know that a life spent running from isn't worth spit. You need to figure out something to run to.) Months after that spent in residence, Zen monastery down in Oregon, where they'd given him his vows and his purpose and his realization: not a curse. A chance.

Start over. Blank slate. Put in the things you've always wanted; leave behind the things that do nothing but weigh you down. How many people ever get the chance to do that? (If I'd known then what I know now...)

But the price of getting what you always wanted is living with the price that others paid to get you there. His life (up until that moment, that realization, sitting next to a stream and hearing Carter and Teal'c and Daniel telling him he wasn't a real boy) had been a series of choices to serve: serve his country, serve his people, serve his ideals. The only way he'd found to integrate that and this had been to box up all his history, all his memory, all the pieces and scraps of the life he was walking away from. Not in the way he always used to. (Ignore. Deny. Repress.) He'd just ... made that life be someone else's.

Not forgetting. (Never forgetting. There are sentences under his skin in an iconography only he can read; they shout his stories at him when he faces himself in the mirror.) But distancing. For the past two years, he's remembered being Jack O'Neill as one might remember a role assumed in a dream, discarded upon waking. Mere fragments rose from the miasma of recollection to taunt him, piecemeal, when prompted by an association: a look, a taste, a smell. He'd learned not to flee them; he'd learned all the dangers of defining yourself as not. But he'd given them up. Not his, not anymore. The lives and fortunes of a distant stranger, remembered in passing, cherished for the pain and beauty they'd held at the time and set aside in his process of becoming.

He's remembering O'Neill's history again. O'Neill's patterns. O'Neill's self.

To do this, he needs to be O'Neill. Sworn to service. Capable of doing the things that need to be done. And not just O'Neill as he is now; O'Neill as he was, as they were, in the days that aren't written down anywhere, in the days that live only in his (their) mind.

The price of getting what you always wanted is bearing the weight of all the doors you shut behind you. All the things you turned your back on. All the selves you ever were.

The price of turning around and opening those doors again is having to bear up beneath what's behind them.

*

"You never change into gym clothes," Virta says, coming out of the locker room wearing shorts and t-shirt. "You scared that if I see your manly muscles I'll swoon?"

He still has no fucking clue whether Virta's actually hitting on him or if it's just smack-talk. "Lazy," he says. "C'mere. Gimme a hand racking these."

Virta wanders over to the freeweights. Watches him wrestle another twenty-pound weight onto the end of the bar. "No, seriously, man. I don't think I've ever seen you in anything other than jeans and a long-sleeve. You're not hiding something, are you?"

He closes his eyes. "Is this gonna be another round of you prying into my personal life? If it is, we can just skip to the hand-to-hand so I can beat the shit out of you."

"I'm just asking." Virta shrugs. "Thought maybe you and the boss were into something kinky or something, something that leaves marks."

The only way to deal with something like this is to mouth right back. "Why, you looking to get in on the action?"

He looks up just in time to see the blush spreading over Virta's cheeks. Curse of a fine complexion; you can see the instant the kid gets embarrassed. "No," Virta says. "I mean. I just --"

It's awkward enough, fumbling enough, that he takes pity. "I don't like dealing with people, is all. Here." Nobody else in the gym; three o'clock in the afternoon, it's usually deserted. It's why he comes here in mid-afternoon. He crosses his arms across his chest, grabs the hem of his t-shirt. Pulls it up and over his head. Holds out his arms, turns slowly.

Been a while since he's shown off the ink. He and Katelyn designed it so it fits his body like a garment, easily concealed, something he can choose to reveal if he wants. He doesn't mind people seeing, as long as he doesn't have to explain. As long as they won't ask what it means.

It's a good test, he's found. The people who can look at his flesh and see past the delicate black lines, understand and comprehend without needing to be told that they are trophy and remembrance and scar all at once, are the people who are worth getting to know.

"Oh, holy shit." Virta's voice is reverent; he takes an involuntary step forward. Holds up a hand, then stills, giving a look like he's asking for permission to touch. "Holy fucking shit."

"That's why," he says. "People ask stupid questions."

Virta flashes him a quick grin. "Yeah. I can fucking imagine. How much did it hurt, how long did it take, what does it mean, why would you do something like that to yourself. What else you have tattooed. How far down it goes. Am I right?"

He lets his arms drop, feeling like he's letting out a breath he was only barely aware of holding. "Yeah. Something like that."

Virta's hand creeps a fraction of a centimeter closer, his fingertips spread and questing like he wants to feel skin, read the Braille of the sentences there over and over until he can tease forth meaning. "Your artist is fucking incredible. You must have spent weeks getting that right."

For a second, he's tempted to turn into that touch. To feel someone touching him, skin against skin, contact. Something cleaner. Something that doesn't come with a snake's twisted motives behind it.

It shocks him more that it doesn't shock him. He'd gotten too used to having the comfort of human connection; in a way, it's the thing he misses the most. (Don't think about --)

He steps away. Keeps his voice even. Shakes out his shirt, pulls it back over his head. With his armor of clothing in place, he feels less vulnerable, less exposed. Less open. "Yeah," he says. "We did. Come on, let's get moving. I wanna get back to work some time this century."

The lines of his stories underneath his skin itch and burn for the rest of the afternoon.

*

*

The dreams are why he's trying not to sleep much anymore.

*

Enough is enough; time to get this party started. He spends all weekend in the office. That isn't new; he usually spends weekends in the office, sometimes alone, sometimes joined by one or more of the Wunderkinder. Nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday, doesn't apply when you're an evil genius working for an evil overlord. But he has the place to himself this time. He puts it to good use.

Virta's the first in on Monday morning, finding him sitting at his desk, headphones slung around his neck but not on his ears, his fingers flying over the keyboard. "Whoa," Virta says, coming up short. "Somebody declare today an Interesting Problem day and just forget to tell me?"

"Route in," he says, neat and clipped, not looking up. "Broke it last night." And stayed at his desk, working through the night, catnapping beneath the desk when the fatigue began to fog him -- twenty minutes here, thirty minutes there. Making it look good for the cameras. He's had so much coffee that his elbows and wrists are vibrating, faintly, and the outlines of the world look overexposed and blurry.

Virta pauses, like he can't believe what he hears, and then laughs. "Fucking hell. I owe you that grand?"

"Not yet. Haven't gotten that far. But I got a shitload of data off their NIPRNet node. I just yanked it all and wiped the connection logs. We'll be analyzing it for fucking months to see if there's anything we can use in there." He finishes up the paragraph -- the ability to type and speak two different things at the same time is a survival trait around here -- and flips over to the window where he keeps his email open. "Sending you all the postmortem now."

"Nice." Virta sounds full of genuine admiration. "What was it?"

"A chain about eight layers deep, is what it was, but it starts with a race condition in ssh, goes through about five other tortured hops, and winds up getting root through a flaw in emacs." He looks up, smirks. "Guess they were too busy looking for the text editor they lost in there somewhere to notice."

"Oh, fuck you," Virta says -- vim vs. emacs is always good for another round -- and logs onto his own workstation, not even bothering to sit down before pulling up email. "You dump the tarball of what you got on the ftp?"

"Yeah," he says. (Carter spent weeks coming up with a dataset that could be handed over to the snake without compromising anything too sensitive. Mostly techno-babble from R&D about reverse-engineering the Goa'uld tech they have on hand, things the snake already has or can do. Still. It makes his fucking teeth itch to just hand it over.) "Imaged the whole system, too. Didn't change anything. Didn't want to install a rootkit; I know they md5-checksum most of the common targets every night as part of the routine security audit. But I'm pretty confident I can get back in whenever I want."

"Nice," Virta repeats. Then looks up. "You haven't slept, have you."

He leans back in his chair, laces his fingers together, reaches them over his head and to the ceiling. Virta's eyes flash, oh-so-briefly, to the strip of stomach that shows over his waistband, flick away. "Napped a bit under the desk. Here and there. Didn't want to lose it before I got something. You know how fucking crazy this has been driving me."

"Go tell the boss," Virta says. "I'll read your postmortem, pick up from here."

He's not worried -- there's layer after layer to the honeypot, carefully-constructed snake-bait that can keep the Wunderkinder spinning their wheels for months. Thinking they're getting somewhere, and all the while just traipsing down Carter's merry little rabbit-hole. So he can afford to hand it over to Virta now; he's done his part.

This should be worth at least a few credits on the 'trust' side of the equation. If he's lucky.

He opens up his desk, pulls out a thumb drive. "Yeah," he says. "Probably a good idea. I captured a few core dumps they had sitting around, was gonna go trawling through those in case any of them give us another route."

Virta nods. "Go," he says. "I've got it from here. You go show the boss. Then go sleep. You're crazy enough on a normal day, I don't even want to think about what you'll be like if you've been up all fucking night."

"Not much different than usual," he says, just to see Virta laugh, and takes the thumb drive with him when he goes.

*

The snake's opaqued the glass of its office; no fishbowl today. Esmeralda the Wonder Secretary rises as if to stop him, but he sails straight by, opens the door without knocking. "Brought you a present," he singsongs, thumb drive dangling from his fingertips. Snake's on the phone: headset piece in its ear to match the one in his own, arms folded over its chest, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and watching the shafts of uncharacteristic sunlight peeking through the rain clouds. It holds up a hand for silence; he decides that pushing his luck isn't a good plan, so he shuts.

Instead, he drops down into one of the two "let's pretend we're having a serious conference" chairs, hooks one knee over the arm. Watches the snake. It's listening to whoever's on the other end of the line, and it doesn't look happy. He tries to work up some sympathy. Doesn't get very far.

"I said fourteen," it snaps. "Not twenty. That's not acceptable." Pause. He entertains himself by trying to figure out which poor sucker's in serious hot water this time, trying to figure out whether or not he should care about whoever's on the other end of the phone. "I'm not certain what makes you believe I'll accept excuses."

Pause, while whoever's getting his ass handed to him contributes a flurry of words. He can't hear them at all, even as a soft, distant buzz; that's one advantage to the bone-conduction earpiece. The snake looks like it's working up a big head of fury, until its eyes fall on him. Then its face turns thoughtful.

"Stop," it says, and whoever's on the other end must, as quickly as though the snake's words had been accompanied by a shot from a zat. The snake's lips tilt upwards. He doesn't like that smile. "If you can't accomplish what I sent you there to do, I'll send you some ... assistance."

Pause. The snake shakes its head. "No. Find some reason to stall. My agent will be there as soon as possible. And if you fuck it up before then, I shall be most displeased."

He doesn't hear the snake swear often; it's a shock whenever it does. The snake's reaching up, pulling out the headset's earpiece, dropping it on the desk. "Congratulations," it says to him. "Pack your bags."

There are a lot of things that could mean. He doesn't like any of them. "Yeah?" he says. "You taking me to Vegas for a weekend of sin and debauchery? I hear the Luxor's nice this time of year. They've got this giant beam of light --"

The snake seems far too pleased with itself. Practically fucking giddy with whatever idea it's just had, and that spells trouble all around, and he knows he is not going to like this. "No," it says. It's being Balim now, all snazzy suit and corporate raider. "I have a test for you."

Shit. Shit. "Yeah, no thanks," he says, ignoring the spike of adrenaline under his ribcage (won't do any good; fight-or-flight isn't an option here, thanks very much, endocrine system). "I bailed on doing high school again because I don't test well."

Ba'al snorts, a harsh and indelicate sound. There's a part of him that's actually proud every time he manages to get the fucking snake to crack that perfectly-controlled seeming. "Yes, yes," it says, waving a hand. It moves to stand by the chair he's sitting in. He squints up at it. "It amuses you to make me think you aren't taking this seriously. It amuses me that you feel the need to. Let us take it as a given for the remainder of this conversation and have a serious discussion about goals."

Fucking flaming shit on a stick. He'd been hoping for this moment, but nothing in the world could get him ready for it. And this isn't how he thought it would happen. Thought it'd take longer. Another couple days, at least. Thought he'd have more time to run the what-ifs in his head. "Yeah?" he says, making himself sound casual. He sets his leg to swinging and tries to look like he's not frantically running attacks and defenses in his head. "What kind of goals you talking about, Skippy?"

Ba'al smiles again. Sits down in the chair across from him, wearing its body as naturally as it wears the suit, perfectly at home. "You came to me and told me you believed we could be of use to each other. You're well aware I hardly trust your offer. I am prepared to stipulate that perhaps your motives may be what you say they are; I'm giving you a chance to prove your use."

It isn't often that he makes the effort to completely drop the hybrid-teenager body language he's been forced to learn, lets himself fill out his own skin the way he still thinks (in a part of him, deep down) that he should, but he does it now. Doesn't quite shift his weight, doesn't quite change his position, just relaxes this and tenses that and when all's said and done, he knows it's Jack O'Neill sitting across from the snake for a little chat, because the snake's eyes get that little glimmer that means he's managed to do something interesting again.

"Yeah?" he says. "I'd ask whose dick I have to suck, but you've already got that covered."

The snake's eyes close, simple irritation. "I did say we could dispense with the sarcasm," it says.

He smirks. "Part and parcel." Delaying tactic, really; he's got a scenario now, or at least a set of lines. "Okay. I'll watch my mouth. What do you have on offer?"

"A mission," the snake says, simply. "I find myself in need of sending several security professionals to provide some assistance to a negotiating team. While you are there, I will assign you some ... additional tasks."

He can feel his eyes going flat. "Keep talking."

The snake rises from the chair, crosses over to its desk. "I have had the pleasure of General O'Neill's acquaintance," it says: bone-dry, bleeding. "I have found him to be a man of a certain level of, shall we say, honor. Commitment to an ideal, perhaps. I've known for quite some time that if he could be persuaded to see things differently, that commitment could be quite valuable to a cause."

It leans over, opens a desk drawer. Reaches far in, does something complex and invisible in the back, and when it stands back up, it's got a file folder in its hands. He pretends at disinterest, but he's watching the whole thing like a hawk: so, that's where the snake keeps things it doesn't want other people to find. He doubts he'll ever have the chance to toss the office, not without being spotted by the security cameras, but it's still good to know.

"I have reason to believe that your goals are quite different than his are," the snake says. "And you've done an excellent job at convincing me that those goals and mine don't diverge too wildly." Yeah, you fucker, you like to think that. "It's time to -- what is the expression? 'Put up or shut up'?"

Trying to figure out how to play this is a fucking bitch and a half, but he takes a stab at it: what's the one thing Ba'al would think O'Neill would be least willing to do? Put that way, the answer comes clear. "Yeah?" he says. "Who do you need me to kill for you?"

He's intending it to be a rhetorical question; he's pretty sure the snake doesn't quail at assassination, but he's also pretty sure the snake has teams of Jaffa to handle those petty little details. But the snake chucks the file folder across the room -- perfect goddamn trajectory that makes it sail straight onto the coffee table and stop just before it pitches over the edge -- and says, "The idiot who believes he can get away with skimming millions of dollars without me noticing. And while you're at it, you'll also be taking over his position on the negotiating committee and get me that company for the price I'm willing to pay for it."

He's glad for the prop; it gives him something to look down at until he's certain he's schooled his face into a proper expression. The dossier's thin, but detailed enough. David Clancy, age 43, lawyer, divorced, two kids, personal net worth 1.4 million official, 8.9 million if you count the assets socked away offshore. Works with Bezian in global dev. In New York right now, negotiating for the purchase of Resslaer-Szdinski Business Solutions. Had his fingers in Farrow-Marshall's accounts for the past six months. Personal data says he's a slimeball. Professional data says he's a stupid slimeball, if he thought he'd get away with fucking the snake over.

Ba'al's watching him from over steepled fingers, and he realizes it's looking for a reaction. Some kind of disgust. Some kind of pushback to give himself away. Ba'al thinks Jack O'Neill would quail at assassination. The Jack O'Neill Ba'al knew might have. Probably would have.

And he would too -- I will not kill, but respect all life, and he'd meant it, he'd fucking meant it, meant it in a way that he's meant very little before or since -- except he fucking can't, and he'd known that this was going to be a possibility from moment one. If he does this, there's a good chance the snake will trust him. Trust him more, at least. There's a good chance the snake will allow him more access, provide him more data, show him the next layer of the onion he's here to peel. One dead scumbag versus the whole of humanity kree'ing on command. He knows which one he'd rather.

Wouldn't be the first time.

So he looks up (calm, controlled). "Yeah," he says. "No problem. Well, couple of logistical problems, nothing major. You want it to look like an accident, natural causes, or a big messy warning?"

Ba'al laughs. Actually laughs, fucking snake, and there's a part of him, even with the armor he's tried to construct -- the armor that will allow him to face the snake without flinching -- that wants to recoil. "Oh, whatever you see fit," it says, waving an artless hand. "I don't believe in micro-management. What logistical problems?"

Keep going. Think fast. He lifts a hand, ticks off the points on his fingers. "Homeworld's gotta know I'm gone by now; they've been keeping tabs on me for years. I travel on my own ID, the game's up before it's even started. I'd get picked up at the airport before I even got on the plane. I'll need new paper."

Ba'al nods. There's a little smile playing across its lips. "Already done. What else?"

Next finger. "I don't work for an audience. Call off the goons." He waits for a response, but all Ba'al does is nod, so he goes on to the next point. "I'll assume that you want to send me in there posing as some kind of security auditor, due diligence on their company systems, something like that?" The snake nods, but doesn't say anything. "And I'll also assume that you want to send one of the Wunderkinder along with me to do the actual break-and-enter while I'm ... otherwise occupied. I want Virta."

He's expecting a protest to that -- expecting the snake to want to send Cacirelli, expecting the snake to want to keep an eye on him -- but all the snake does is nod again. "I had intended to let you choose, yes. Done. What else?"

Something about that easy capitulation rings wrong to him, but he doesn't push. He'll try to figure it out later. For now, he just holds up another finger. "Nineteen-year-old kid. Nobody's going to listen to shit I say. I don't want to be the next head on the chopping block if I don't get your price."

"We'll consider that a nice side bonus if you manage it," Ba'al murmurs. "But I have full faith and confidence."

He snorts. "Yeah. Thanks. Fifth, I don't know shit about the company. I need the file. The real file. I don't work blind."

Ba'al reaches into its suit jacket, pulls out a Goa'uld data crystal from the inside pocket. It repeats the throwing-shit-exactly-where-it-wants-it-to-go trick again; it lands neatly and precisely in his lap. Fucking snake reflexes. "You'll find it on there," it says. "There's a reader unit in the guest office in the southeast section of this floor. Don't try to take the crystal out of the building; the janitorial staff would rather hate to have to clean up your blood and fragments of brains from the marble in the lobby when you cross the threshold."

"Ha," he says. He uncoils himself from the chair, stands up, shoves the data crystal in the back pocket of his jeans (makes a mental note not to sit down too fast, because the damn things look like they break if you so much as breathe on them, and they're more stable than they look, but not by much; he's snapped a few by accident over the years).

The snake's watching him. Combination of curious and amused. "I shall leave the arrangements in your no-doubt-capable hands," it says.

"Hell you will," he says. "I don't do the details someone else can do for me. Have Esmeralda the Wonder Secretary book us tomorrow night, redeye. Into JFK, not LaGuardia. Car to pick us up at the airport. Make sure you book us into the same hotel as Clancy. Separate rooms for the both of us. I don't share. I'll handle the rest of it." He smiles, tight-lipped. "Just tell me what name I'm supposed to be answering to. And have someone deliver a couple of suits in my size to the hotel, because I'll be fucked if I'm going shopping on my own time."

The curiosity in the snake's expression is ceding ground to the amusement, and that's good. It's what he's aiming for. He's posturing to conceal any hint that he doesn't want to do this -- really doesn't want to do this -- but the snake isn't going to listen to anyone who isn't willing to get his hands dirty. The snake's probably looking to see if he's going to take the chance to slip his leash, pass intel up to O'Neill or Homeworld about what the snake's up to. He's not going to. Balancing act. He's going to have to trust that O'Neill's people will be able to make him even if he's not traveling under his own name, that O'Neill will know enough to know not to approach him.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" the snake inquires, one eyebrow raised. He gets the impression it's pleased by the show of spine. Of course, he's spent long enough establishing himself as someone who won't just jump when the snake says frog, and any attempt to kowtow now, even when he's setting forth to do the snake's bidding, would be suspicious. Besides, he's pretty sure the snake thinks he's cute. Like kittens and puppies and little baby sharks.

"I'll catch up with you tomorrow for the rest of the details," he says. "Once I have my arrangements made. I'm assuming the Wunderkinder don't know the real mission?"

"You assume correctly," the snake says. "I would prefer that this condition persist."

He nods. "Easier that way anyway. Don't think any of them know what it means to get their hands dirty for real, instead of virtually." He picks up the dossier on Clancy -- he's skimmed through it already; there's not much in there, but it'd look odd if he didn't take it -- and strides for the door.

The snake's voice stops him. "Jack?"

The snake's never called him anything but. (Tiny little power games, over and over, endlessly repeated.) So he puts a snarl in his voice as he turns around. "What?"

"You said you brought me a present," Ba'al murmurs. "And you didn't elaborate."

Oh. Yeah. "Got distracted," he says. He's still got the thumb drive palmed, its chain wrapped around his left hand's fingers; he'd forgotten. He lifts his hand to show it, dangling. "Got in at Groom Lake. Pulled a whole shitpot of data for you. Have fun."

Doesn't bother taking aim, just whips the thumb drive at the snake's head. Tiny little power games. Endlessly repeated. The snake doesn't move to catch it. He's pleased to see that it goes straight where he wanted it to go: straight past the snake's left ear, clattering into the custom-built show-off credenza stuffed with books the snake never reads, skittering into the corner of the shelf the cleaning service won't allow to gather dust.

Petty victory. But hey, it's his.

*

So much for going back to the apartment and going to sleep.

Virta takes the news with annoyance. "Fuck," he says. "This is way more interesting. Why the hell does the boss want us there? Doesn't make sense. We can crack their shit just as easily from here."

He shrugs in response. "Ours not to reason why," he says. "Ours just to pack our bags."

"Bring me back a souvenir," Suzukimo says, snapping her gum. "One of those tacky plastic Statue of Liberty models. We can tie it up and use it as a piñata."

"I worry about the way your mind works," he tells her, and goes off to dig up the reader for the control crystal. Not enough time to cram it all into his head, but he'll make a good start.

He's only halfway through the first layer of it, though, when he finds the part that he knows the snake wanted him to find. Resslaer-Szdinski Business Solutions is one of the companies that provides services to the SGC. Recruiting, mostly, and that chills his fucking blood, because if the snake gets Resslaer-Szdinski, that'll be its route in. A little extra work to find people who'll pass the background check the SGC uses -- thorough enough that he knows they went to talk to Daniel's fourth grade English teacher -- but still.

Even worse: he's going to negotiate on behalf of one of the subsidiaries of Farrow-Marshall, one that doesn't connect to Ba'al -- to Balim -- on paper. Clancy's carried on the books as being employed by Sphynx Engineering, and Sphynx isn't one of the arms of Farrow-Marshall that O'Neill gave him intel on. He knows just enough, now, to know that a background check at the deepest level will never connect Farrow-Marshall (or Balim) with ownership of Sphynx. He's being sent to buy the route by which the SGC will be compromised.

Going to have to trust that O'Neill's people will be smart enough to notice his absence here, his presence there, and assemble the pieces. Going to have to trust that O'Neill will be smart enough not to act on the knowledge unless it becomes pressing, too, because they're playing a long, deep game, and the snake has to believe it's winning.

It's easier -- but only a little -- to put aside the file on Resslaer-Szdinski and turn to Clancy's dossier. The man's dirty all the way down through. One of Ba'al's original liaisons to the Trust, one of the ways by which Ba'al compromised them. Been stealing from Ba'al for years, most likely, which the snake has been letting slide.

He wonders what made the snake change its mind, what makes Clancy's removal such a priority now. Maybe Clancy got a little too greedy. Maybe Clancy's served his purpose. Maybe Clancy knows too much.

Maybe the snake just wants to test him, and in order to do so, someone has to die.

By mid-afternoon he's starting to piece together a tentative plan. Hardest part's going to be keeping Virta from catching a whiff of anything. (He catches himself thinking that and stops. Hardest part's going to be killing a man in cold blood, he tells himself, and he knows it should be true, and it isn't.) He mentions the plan to the snake when he brings the data crystal back. The snake likes it. Likes it enough to tell him where to pick up the extra props.

Turns out there's an entire O-chem research lab in the basement. Who'd'a thunk it. (His keycard works to open the door now, too. He wonders what else the snake's given him access to.) Lab director's pleased as punch to help him out, and doesn't even bother asking why; he's on an all-access pass from the snake, and that's good enough.

He packs for a week. It'll be nice to get away from the snake for a while.

*

Virta's like a kid in a fucking candy store on the flight. First time in first class. First time staying in a luxury hotel. They're booked at the Benjamin; damn nice suites. Better than the place he's staying in Seattle. (Anything would be, even a hole in the fucking wall down in Alphabet City.)

"Listen," he says to Virta, pausing in the hallway as they're about to part ways, each to shower and change before they meet up with the rest of the negotiations team. "The boss gave me some extra shit to do while I'm here. He wants me to sit in on the actual negotiations, see if I can squeeze some extra concessions out of them. I'm telling everybody that I'm his executive intern, here to get some experience in mergers and acquisitions. Don't blow my cover, okay?"

Virta grins. "Awesome. Spy vs. spy, right? Hey, let me come along. It'll be fun."

He closes his eyes. Having an extra person dogging his heels is only going to make this difficult. "We'll see," he temporizes. "Dress up, okay? We're meeting with the team over in room 1604 before we head over to the headquarters."

Virta pretends to salute. It's messy and sloppy and badly-formed, and it makes his stomach turn over. "Yes, sir!" Virta sing-songs. "Rendezvous in twenty minutes, sir!"

Lord, deliver him from amateurs.

The team consists of three people, all lawyers. Clancy's the head; the other two are Aguire and Hopkinson, neither of whom make more than a two-minute impression on him. He introduces himself as Jack Bauerlin, the name on his ID -- snake's got a sense of humor -- and acts stumbling and awkward and nervous: sent to sink-or-swim, pretty sure he's going to fail, dreading Balim's reaction when he does, making a decent stab at it anyway.

He's got Clancy eating out of the palm of his hand within fifteen minutes. Clancy's falling all over himself to be helpful -- poor stupid kid, Balim's going to eat him alive when he fucks up -- and he's not above using it. He picks Clancy's brain about the negotiations with Resslaer-Szdinski the entire time they're in the limo on the way to the office. Virta watches, mouth shut (for a change), eyes shining. When Clancy looks away, Virta mouths, dude, you're scary.

Yeah. He knows.

New York's pretty, even in the middle of the winter. When they get to Resslaer-Szdinski's offices, he sends Virta off with their CTO (mouthing something about a security audit -- Virta's got a briefcase full of CDs and papers, and all he needs is ten minutes alone with a terminal to get any intel he wants). He stays with the negotiations team in the boardroom. Keeps his mouth shut and listens. Clancy's playing softball. He could get a better price for the company with one hand tied behind his back.

They regroup in Clancy's suite that night to discuss strategy, and that's when he suggests they stay in and order room service. Talk over dinner. Figure out what their next move's gonna be. He's looking straight at Clancy when he says it, and he doesn't miss the way the man's shoulders come up, the way he straightens his tie. He's been shaking his ass at Clancy all day -- literally, metaphorically -- while being as charming and disarming as possible. And he's pretty sure Balim has a reputation for how he treats his executive interns -- and what other services those interns are usually expected to provide. Clancy's already thinking about the things he wants Clancy to think about.

Aguire and Hopkinson decline the dinner offer -- something about already having other plans -- but Virta sticks through it. It's a pity; dinner would have been a perfect chance. Still. He makes it a point of charging room service to his own corporate credit card (also issued to Jack Bauerlin, care of Sphynx Engineering) instead of to Clancy's room. He's the one to answer the door when the delivery guy knocks, too. Acts bumbling and awkward, unused to being waited on, insisting on helping with the setup instead of getting out of the way.

Dinner's good. Better than room service usually is. It's what he'd expect, from a place like this.

"Dude," Virta says in the hallway, once they say their goodnights and leave Clancy behind in his room. "You are fucking terrifying when you go into interrogation mode like that. I thought you were going to get him to tell you his fucking life story any second."

He fumbles in his pocket for his room cardkey. "I like people," he says. "I like talking to them. Figuring out their stories. You never know when it might be useful."

Virta snorts. "Sounded more like flirting to me. You sure the boss isn't going to get jealous?"

"The boss told me to get the total price down to one-fifty-five," he says. "Didn't say anything about how I was supposed to do it. If making googly eyes at Clancy is going to get me more information about how to negotiate, it's worth it." He sticks the keycard into his reader, holds open the door with one hand. "If you get me some of the skeletons in Resslaer-Szdinski's closet, it'll be more worth it. Anything useful yet?"

"Not yet," Virta says. "Couldn't drop the Trojan until late afternoon. I was going to crawl through things after dinner. I'll get back to you."

Perfect opportunity, and he's not going to waste it. "I'll come over later on, then, after I get a chance to shower and change again, unwind a little. I need to email the boss and check in, anyway, and there are a few things about Resslaer-Szdinski that I wanted to look up. Then I might go back over and ask Clancy a few more questions, see what else I can put together for tomorrow. I'll come over in a couple of hours, see how far you've gotten."

"I'll have something for you by then, promise," Virta says. "Anything else you need me to do?"

It's kind of nice having someone listening when he gives orders. Been a long time. He shakes his head. "Just get me something I can use against them," he says, and ducks back into his room.

Alone at last, he takes the time to shower again -- he likes New York, but it always leaves him feel grimy, like a thin film of dust and sweat is collecting on his skin -- and change. Long-sleeved t-shirt, pair of sweatpants. Deep pockets. He fills them with the few things he'll need, then raids the minibar: three bottles in his pockets, one in his hand. Brings a glass with him. He crosses the hallway again, knocks on Clancy's door. Clancy opens it almost immediately; his tie is missing, and the top three buttons on his shirt are open.

He holds up the tiny minibar bottle of whiskey, the glass to accompany it. "Thought I'd come over for a drink, and we could finish that conversation," he says.

Clancy's eyes sweep down his body, back up to his face. He knows what he looks like. Barefoot, freshly-showered, his wet hair loose around his collar instead of pulled back in a ponytail the way he usually keeps it. His skin, slightly red from scrubbing. In his loosest pair of sweatpants, the thin ones, the ones that cling to his body like a film and outline everything underneath. He's not wearing any underwear.

Clancy opens the door. "Come on in," he says.

He crosses the room on bare feet, heads over to the minibar before Clancy can, opens the door of the refrigerator. Two bottles of the whiskey are already missing; it must be Clancy's drink too. He takes out all the bottles he finds there, arranges them on top of the minibar in a neat line, adds two of the ones from his pocket. Makes sure Clancy sees him taking them out. "I was really impressed with the way you dealt with MacMillan today," he says, over his shoulder, as he fills two of the glasses with ice. "I wish I could learn how to keep people from plowing straight over me like that."

It's bullshit -- Clancy let MacMillan, the CEO of Resslaer-Szdinski, walk all over him -- but Clancy preens anyway. "It just takes practice," he says. "You'll pick it up as you get older."

"I don't think I could ever be as good at it as you are," he says. Puts an extra bit of shine in his voice. He makes sure he keeps his eyes on Clancy's, makes sure he holds Clancy's attention on his face. It's only the work of a second to dump the contents of the vial he'd palmed into Clancy's drink, unnoticed, while he talks. He used to be damn good at sleight-of-hand tricks, and this (younger) body has the manual dexterity he'd been starting to lose. And he's been practicing. "Got any tips you can share? I don't want to impose, but --"

It's all bullshit, but Clancy eats it right up. "It's not an imposition," he says. "I'm flattered. I'm happy to help."

Takes longer for Clancy to pass out than he'd been expecting, which means that he has to sit through a good twenty minutes of Dale Carnegie bullshit with a straight face. But it's all right. He doesn't have any particular timetable here.

He waits until Clancy's out cold, then strips both of them down naked and hauls Clancy's unconscious body into the bathroom. Takes a leak while he's in there, and then pulls on the nitrile gloves he'd shoved into his pocket. Turns on the water in the bathtub, as hot as it'll go, which is pretty fucking scalding; even though the gloves, it's uncomfortable to touch. Waits for the water level to get just right. Hauls Clancy into the bathtub, lets the unconscious body slide down until nose and mouth are both underwater. From there, it's only a few minutes until the bubbles stop rising.

He catches himself whistling as he heads back out into the suite, and makes himself stop. He has to do this. That doesn't mean he has to let himself going back to being casual and flippant about it. That way lies insanity. Or Poland.

Back into his clothes. He dumps Clancy's drink out into the sink and rinses the glass, runs the water after it for a good ten minutes. Puts it by the door so he doesn't forget to take it back over to his room with him, puts the bottles of whiskey he'd brought with him back into his pockets. Not the empty; he leaves that there.

He looks around himself. Nothing else needs to get picked up. His prints and his skin cells are all over the place, but it's all right. He doubts the NYPD will bother checking -- unattended deaths need an investigation, but the scene he's painting means the investigation won't be anything more than pro forma; cops like neat explanations, and the one he's handing them is neat enough. Still, he's established a perfectly good reason for any trace DNA evidence he left (if nothing else, the waiter is going to remember him; he overtipped); the heat of the bath water will fuck with time-of-death calculations. He's covered if they poke deeper and find him.

He's got his story all ready, just in case. We all had dinner. Talked about the job. Went back to our rooms. I came back over to see if he had any more advice for me, we had a drink -- yeah, I know I'm underage, am I gonna get in trouble? He said he was going to take a bath to relax before he went to bed, said he'd been having trouble sleeping. Yeah. He seemed really jumpy. I'm not in trouble, am I?

Time to fill out the scene. He finds a paperback book next to Clancy's bedside, drops it in the tub with Clancy's body. Finds Clancy's cluster of pill-bottles on the bathroom vanity. (Viagra. Lipitor. Aquatensin. Lexapro. No surprises there.) All from different pharmacies; the Viagra's an internet special. He pulls out the bottle of Versed from his bag and adds it to the collection. Label's the same grey-market internet pharmacy the Viagra came from, offshore and badly-regulated. The 'scrip is written for a hundred pills, dated last month, and there are eleven left in the bottle. The guys in the lab had been thoroughly helpful; they'd turned the other eighty-nine into a suspension for him. Technology's just grand. Old days, he'd had to grind the pills up and do it himself.

Gloves into his pockets, to be dropped in a ten-percent bleach solution tonight and disposed of in the bathroom of wherever he stops for coffee tomorrow morning -- ideally it'll be a place with single-stall bathrooms and he'll be able to duck into the ladies' room, for even better risk mitigation. One last glance around the room -- yeah, the scene's exactly what he wants it to be -- and he picks up the glass and lets himself out. Shuts the door behind him. Makes sure the do-not-disturb sign isn't on the doorknob.

His hands are completely steady as he lets himself into his own room. He takes Clancy's glass, puts it on the bathroom vanity. (Follow the lady, follow the lady. One of his glasses in Clancy's room. One of Clancy's glasses in his. It'll add up right if anyone does the math.) Dumps the bleach solution (pre-prepared) into it. Makes sure he scrubs around the rim, the outside, everywhere Clancy might have touched, then adds the gloves. They can soak overnight.

Virta answers the door after he knocks for the second time. Looks unfocused around the edges, like he's been yanked out of heavy concentration mode. "What?" he snaps.

The irritation goes away when he holds up the bottle of whiskey. "Thought I'd come over for a drink," he says.

The line works just as well the second time. And as it turns out, hey, he wasn't imagining things: Virta really has been hitting on him. And spending the night will mean having an even better alibi.

Virta's pretty good in bed. And it's nice to get the taste of snake out of his mouth.

*

The next morning, he's up at 0500, same as he always is. Virta mumbles something sleepy and rolls away, tangling up the covers. In the dark, it takes him a minute to find his sweatpants, kicked under the bed. Can't find his t-shirt. He'll come back for it when he can turn on the lights.

He ducks back into his room, pulls out a fresh t-shirt. Decides to leave the sweats on -- he'll be wearing a suit to the negotiations today (and the snake, or the snake's people, found him a few that fit perfectly; he doesn't intend to wear them again after they return, but a suit is a uniform just like a set of dress blues), which means he'll have to come back to change anyway. Puts on a pair of underwear, though. Snowed last night. Slows him down when he's out running, slipping and skidding on the sidewalks. He cuts the run short after only about two and a half miles.

Finds a decent coffee shop to stop at, though. Not Starbucks. He hates Starbucks. (That's because it's shit coffee, Jack. Shut up, Daniel.) Disposing of the gloves only takes a second, and as soon as he does, it's a weight off his shoulders. Case closed. Mission complete. The NYPD will still bag and tag all the evidence from Clancy's room, but they won't bother doing any forensic testing unless the autopsy comes back with something suspicious, and he was careful. The O-chem boys swear that the tox screen results will look like Clancy just took a triple dose, nothing more suspicious than that. The NYPD won't bother screening the evidence for DNA profiles, especially given how backlogged they are.

Good thing, too. O'Neill's DNA profile isn't in CODIS, but is in the armed forces DNA database -- unless O'Neill managed to work some magic -- and while local law enforcement doesn't have access, there's always a chance things could get sticky. Wouldn't do for O'Neill to get a phone call from some NYPD detective about a dead body in a New York hotel room. And having his -- their -- DNA profile stuck in CODIS's forensic index could cause shit down the road.

He comes back with his cup of coffee. One for Virta, too. Why the hell not. Caffeine delivery is a form of geek flirtation, and he's not trying to flirt with Virta (don't think about --) but he needs Virta in a good mood when the cops come calling. (Yeah, he was with me. All night. You got a problem with that?)

He's gotta kick Virta's door for a good three minutes before Virta answers, sleepy and surly, but the coffee goes a long way to smoothing ruffled feathers. "Come on," he says. "Get dressed. I'll cab over with you." They're all in charge of their own transportation over to Resslaer-Szdinski's HQ this morning. (Useful. That way they can all be halfway across the city by the time someone realizes Clancy isn't showing up.)

Virta squints at him. "You are too fucking awake," he says, but he takes the coffee anyway. "Don't talk to me. Twenty minutes. Lobby. Caffeine."

They meet up in the lobby, twenty minutes later. Virta's not treating him any differently than yesterday. Hallelujah. He doesn't have time to deal with messy personal fallout from something that wasn't anything other than a cover story and a chance to blow off some steam.

Aguire's the one to call over to the hotel when it's coming up on 0930 and there's still no sign of Clancy. First the hotel room, then the front desk. The cops are over about two hours later to deliver the news. Too bad, so sad. He's in the process of trying to browbeat the Resslaer-Szdinski team of lawyers into seeing things his way when they arrive. (Aguire and Hopkinson keep staring at him like he's grown an extra head, but whatever. The calendar-age thing is working to his benefit, to his surprise; the other side's lawyers keep getting creeped out by him and giving in.)

Giving his statement only takes about half an hour, tops. He plays a neat combination of shocked (nineteen years old, hasn't run into death enough to be inured to it yet) and self-centered (no skin off my nose, only met the old guy yesterday, how is this going to affect me?) He lucked out; the detective looks like he's counting down the days until he hits his twenty and doesn't have much more to go. Doesn't relax too much -- that much experience means the cop will have a well-developed sense for when something's off somehow -- but he doesn't think there are going to be problems.

There aren't. He spends the next five days taking over the negotiations by day (neither Aguire nor Hopkinson protest, especially after he gets the other side down to three-point-five mil less than the fucking snake told him to buy for) and fucking around with Virta by night. (No harm, no foul, and Virta's skinny ass doesn't fill out the other side of the bed the way his subconscious tells him someone should, but he still sleeps better than he has in weeks.)

Doesn't spot anybody watching him.

Doesn't mean there isn't.

*

Downtown Seattle. Jihads Can Mean Some Uncomfortable Plans; he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the snake to give him another target and another contract hit. Price for fucking competence. It disturbs him how easily he'd found the state of mind necessary to be able to kill, cleanly and calmly, without having to search for it. Even O'Neill can't find that mindset on command anymore. And he knows he'd be able to find that place in his head, again and again, if he has to. Makes him nervous. He knows enough to know that if he did, he'd be fucking the op worse than walking into Ba'al's office and coming completely clean would, because the person it would turn him into wouldn't be the person who'd be able to care about why he's doing what he's doing. He'd proven that a long time ago.

(No. O'Neill had proven that. He's not O'Neill anymore. Even if he remembers being.)

So. Doesn't feel like trying to learn a new route today; back down to the Sound, up the railroad tracks, and the snake never calls him, because the snake hasn't called him back for weeks now. It's raining. Big shock there. Still, it's better than the slush and grime of Manhattan. The Pacific Northwest is one of his favorite parts of the country; he's known that ever since his time with the monks.

His broken vows are heavy in his mind, on his tongue, as he runs. Yeah. Fucked those up right good. But hey, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. (Or the one.) Maybe he can be a Vulcan Zen Buddhist.

Snake's pulled him off the electronic-intrusion gig full-time, which is annoying. He'd been enjoying it. (Mostly.) But the snake says that since he did such a good job with the acquisition negotiations (makes him feel like a fucking puppy being patted on the head; he grits his teeth) that he can follow up with it, while he starts looking for other companies that might be a 'good fit' for Farrow-Marshall to acquire. Untraceably, the snake says. Doesn't say anything more about what kind of companies.

Another test. (Everything's a test.) He grits his teeth more and starts doing what he can to assemble lists of the companies that contract with the SGC. Recommends five or six others, from minor suppliers to major subsidiaries. The snake seems pleased. Gives him three forensic accountants on-call to help him put together plans for doing it undetected; he doesn't have enough experience to make it look good without the help, and the snake would find it suspicious if he did a halfassed job.

Circles within circles. Tests within tests. There's a part of him constantly turning over the old saying -- if the devil ever succeeded in replacing God, he would find he would have to assume the attributes of divinity -- and knowing that it works in reverse. Working wholeheartedly in Ba'al's best interests makes tactical sense, even if it makes him feel like he's committing murder of a different kind. Murder of an idea, maybe. An ideal. But it's not just a case of pride in his craft (always his downfall) that has him closing all the loopholes; this is still a test, and always will be, for as long as he's here, and he's the one playing both ends against the middle.

All it takes is one slip and he's fucked.

So. He'll play the snake's game, do the snake's bidding. And trust that O'Neill is smart enough to follow, and smart enough to keep his hands off.

Right now, he'd give just about anything to be able to chance one fucking phone call out, to hear a friendly voice. Not to Mitchell. (Don't think about Mitchell, and he's been under for eight fucking weeks and he still has to tell himself that six times a day, and every time he does it threatens to overwhelm him with the thoughts of everything he's betrayed. Five minutes wouldn't be enough to deal with it. A lifetime isn't going to be enough.) But there are two people in the world he trusts beyond all else -- yes, even now -- and Mitchell's only one of them, and the other one is a man who can't look at him without thinking what-if, what-else, what-next.

O'Neill would still take the call. But he can't make it. O'Neill's still being watched. And the snake might have called off his own tail, but he knows better than to think the snake's cancelled the electronic surveillance. They've got protocols for how to make contact, and just picking up the phone and dialing without any precautions isn't on the list.

What's pissing him off is how none of this makes sense. That the snake should want to conquer Earth: sure, he'll buy that. Better bad guys have tried. That the snake should want to do it under-the-table, clandestinely: okay, maybe. But this is a hell of a lot of effort for (what he can only see as) minimal short-term reward, and he just can't fucking figure out what the hell game the snake is playing. Cloak-and-dagger isn't a snake thing. The fuckers are over-the-top. Gaudy. Ostentatious. All flash, no substance; not a single one of them would recognize subtle if you hit them in the face with it.

All flash, no substance: Ba'al isn't. And that worries the ever-living hell out of him, because he'd been willing to stake the fate of Earth on his being able to figure out the plans of any damn snake, given sufficient points of data, and he just flat-out can't put together this one.

He's starting to wonder if control of Earth might not be the snake's final endgame after all. It's somehow not comforting at all to think that the subjugation of your entire planet is just a single milestone in a larger plan.

Eight weeks in. Eight weeks under. Winter's almost over; February is drawing to a close. They planned for six to nine months. Anything longer than that and he's going to start running head-first into (more) problems caused by insufficient data about what's happening on the other end of the deal: in Washington, at the SGC, in the galaxy at large. He's got passphrases by which to recognize a courier, if it should become vital, and he trusts O'Neill to get him intel on anything he desperately needs to know. If anything major changes, O'Neill will find some way to get it to him. But on an op like this, information always flows one-way unless it's an absolute emergency: from the inside out, because there's never any way to know if a courier contact is going to fuck the situation worse. He knows O'Neill knows it. They were the same person when they were students of that particular school.

But the longer this runs, the more fucked he's going to be anyway, because it's not just the big-picture details that build a best plan of action. It's everything. You never know when one tiny fact might make or break it all. (How many times has he seen Daniel pull six unconnected details out of long-term memory storage and put them together to save their asses from the fire?) Not knowing what's going on in the galaxy at large, as time goes on, is just going to leave him with an ever-increasing risk of accidentally doing the one thing that will cinch the snake's master plan without even realizing it. If he helps the snake, he wants to know he's doing it.

Maybe they've miscalculated. Maybe the snake doesn't have a master plan; maybe all it wants to do is make a shitload of money and live out its life in idle richness on the only planet in the galaxy that doesn't know what it is. Maybe it's setting all this up so it can launder offworld tech into Earth patents, to guarantee a steady supply of income. Maybe it's trying to lock down all the secondary support markets, use its influence to keep the program from ever going public to preserve that backwater idyllic bucolic paradise.

Maybe he's likely to strip himself naked, paint himself green, and stand in Pioneer Square as a human statue.

Still. He's really ready to go home. Already. (Still.) And he'd known before he came under that he wouldn't be able to come in from the cold until he was ready to topple Ba'al's empire and leave the snake dead behind him -- because the minute he walks out of here, Ba'al will know, and the fucking snake wouldn't have any compunctions about trying to destroy anything it could find of his life. So far, the snake hasn't gotten the idea of using Mitchell or his family as hostages of fortune. He's gone to great lengths to leave the impression that he just doesn't give a shit about them anymore: business partnership of convenience and a pity fuck on both ends of the deal, broken off now, not hurtful enough to want vengeance and not emotionally-connected enough to be used for leverage against him. It's held so far.

But if he checks out without salting the earth behind him, the snake's going to figure something else is up. And if the snake goes looking and finds him ensconced back safely in the loving bosom of Mitchell's family, nobody will be able to count the bodies.

Enough. Don't fucking think about Mitchell anymore.

Killing Ba'al isn't the problem. He could do it now, if he really wanted. He knows the SGC's developed a symbiote poison -- it's one of the possible exit strategies he and O'Neill have discussed, and the one he'll most likely settle on if he can come up with a plausible way to get some smuggled in. Couldn't bring any with him. Had to plan on living with everything out on display, the first few months at least, and getting caught with the poison would be a one-way ticket back to the little cell where down is up and up is down and this time there wouldn't even be Daniel there to keep him company. (Daniel wasn't there last time, either. Hallucination. Imagination. Nothing more.) But the snake's strong, and the snake's fast, and the snake's paranoid, but he's good. Damn good. And not even the snake can be on guard 24/7. He could find a way.

What he doesn't want to do is kill Ba'al and then find out that it didn't change shit, and he'd accidentally gotten rid of the one person -- snake -- who knew all the bits of the master plan.

So he runs an extra mile, an extra two miles, his knuckles still aching from his time with the punching bag this morning. (Buddham saranam gacchami, dhammam saranam gacchami, sangham saranam gacchami -- form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form, form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form --) Stops for coffee. Orders his usual, for him and for the snake. Second number odd, and he doesn't worry that none of the baristas look particularly glad to see him back, because he still doesn't want to know which one's his actual contact, and he'd made sure to signal before he dropped off the grid for that week in Manhattan. And he goes, step-step-step, up to deliver the coffee and figure out what the snake wants him to do today, and he pushes everything else out of the way and goes to be a good little minion.

No turning back now.

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