"The things I do for that kid," Jack muttered as the elevator doors slid open at sublevel 40. He stepped out into the basement of Stargate Command, with several thousand tons of mountain and concrete over him.
Daniel had sent Jack searching for a four year old box of files. Something about Heliopolis and the text of the Ancients and his transcriptions missing a page. So, to keep the Boy Linguist from blowing a microchip, Jack had journeyed to the Center of the Earth for a box.
"Sublevel 40, Storeroom 28."
In the hideous fluorescent lighting, Jack eyed the doors.
"Twenty.....twenty-one...."
The corridor stopped at Storeroom 25.
"Daniel, there is no 28!" Jack said aloud, looking around, a bit bewildered.
Jack backtracked to an area where the corridor had split, and took the other fork. This corridor had fewer doors, some creatively labeled. Doorway to Heaven. 221-B Baker Street. Scrooge and Marley. Jim Morrison. However, others weren’t marked at all.
Jack had a key, and decided to try unlocking one of the unmarked doors first.
The key unlocked the third door.
Jack groped for a light switch inside the doorway. More garish fluorescent lighting revealed a room full of plain white cardboard boxes.
"Oh, for cryin’ out loud," Jack muttered. The boxes were stacked six high and three deep on the floor, with others filling black metal storage shelves. The front of each box bore the number and letter code of a planet.
"P2V-723....P4X-024....P3X-639...that damn box could be anywhere! All right, I’ll look. But if it’s not one of these right in front, Daniel is on his own!"
Jack started picking his way through the piles of boxes that loomed over him like cardboard skyscrapers. He grabbed a box by the handles, expecting it to be heavy, but it was so light that when he yanked it from the pile, Jack lost his footing, and stumbled backwards. A box tower fell against the open door....pushing it shut.
He pried himself from the tangle of boxes on the floor and looked in horror at the door. He grabbed the handle but it wouldn’t turn. He frisked himself for the key and, not finding it, scanned the dusty floor. A recollection stopped his search. Jack’s shoulders slumped as he sighed, "Oh, dammit."
The key was in the lock on the outside of the door.
---------------
"Daniel, have you seen Colonel O’Neill?" Sam Carter asked, sticking her head through the doorway of the linguist’s office.
"Uh, about ten minutes ago. He offered to go find a file box for me in the storeroom. Why?"
"We have a briefing with SG-9 at 1330. They’re going to try to establish diplomatic ties with the Silaerns."
"From P3X-611?" Daniel asked, looking up from his current translations. "Why wasn’t I included in the meeting?"
"Didn’t you get the memo?"
"No, I think I’d have remembered...."
As he spoke, Sam scanned the piles of papers near his computer, and seeing the SGC logo on one of them, slid it from the stack. She scanned the contents, then handed it to Daniel without a word.
"Oh. ‘The following personnel are requested for this briefing Tuesday, 13 July: Colonel Jack O’Neill, SG-1....Major Samantha Carter, SG-1....Dr. Daniel Jackson, SG-1.....,’" Daniel glanced at the clock on the wall. "This meeting’s in a half an hour. How am I supposed to prepare for this?"
"What, you’ve never crammed for an exam?"
"Sam, this is about establishing diplomatic relations with an alien culture, not passing algebra."
"You were the one who noticed the Silaern culture contained elements of Earth’s Nordic and Celtic civilizations....and that they may have a relation to the Cimmerians."
Daniel was now shuffling aside his translation project, seeking a notepad and pen, and closing and opening various files on his laptop.
"Daniel, you’ll be fine. Just give your two cents worth based on what you observed. The meeting is in the main conference room. Meet us there in 15 minutes so we can coordinate our reports and see if there are any discrepancies."
"Uh, okay, yeah....15 minutes." Daniel continued searching his office.
Sam smiled and shook her head, saying, "I’m going to see if I can find the colonel."
-------------
"Well, banging on the door and yelling for help isn’t going to work," Jack mused, staring at the locked storeroom door. There was a glass transom above the door, but it was too narrow even for the wiry colonel to fit through. A ventilation shaft near the top of the twelve foot ceiling was even smaller. Jack envisioned his team finding him with his top half stuck in the shaft, and his back half dangling from the opening. There was no telephone or intercom, just metal shelves and boxes.
"All right," Jack said to the boxes, "Daniel knows where I’ve gone. If I’m not back in a few minutes, he’ll come looking for me." He glanced at his watch. "1310. By 1330....ah, damn! The briefing with SG-9 is in 20 minutes. Okay....the briefing won’t take more than an hour....so by 1430...." Jack sighed. "Well, might as well look for that box. It’ll give me something to do."
He turned back toward the city of white cardboard boxes filling the storeroom, considering each of the towers. Looking at the codes on the front, the stacks didn’t seem to be in any particular order, so Jack picked the one closest to him on the left. He tugged on the top box and, again, it seemed light for a box of documentation. Easing it down, Jack removed the lid.
The box contained a half dozen file folders and miscellaneous papers. Jack removed a folder and dropped the box.
"What have we here?" He opened the folder and scanned the papers. "Requisition forms? Dr. Janet Frasier? These are medical supply order forms from accounts payable! And they’re at least three years old." Jack glanced again at the front of the box, which did bear the number and letter code for a planet. "Oh, I hope this is a fluke. Please tell me that the contents of the other boxes actually *match* the labels."
Jack grabbed the next box, which was labeled "P4X-824." Inside were the personal reports of Captain Samantha Carter from her first year with SGC. At first, he was surprised to find important papers casually stored in an unprotected storeroom, but he also realized that filing cabinets did not have an infinite amount of space. These reports were probably also saved on CD somewhere.
He stared at the box in his hands, the little angel and little devil on his shoulders each doing their best to take over his conscience.
"What the hell," he said, then let out at low, sinister laugh, and settled himself on the floor to read.
------------
Major Samantha Carter tried to concentrate on the meeting at hand. She knew she should be providing some backup to Daniel, who was trying to justify establishing diplomatic relations with the Silaerns of P3X-611, but one thought kept nagging at her...
Where is Colonel O’Neill? It’s not like him to miss a briefing. Be late for one, occasionally, but miss one completely?
Sam wondered if she was the only one concerned about this. When she’d talked to Daniel around 1300, he said Jack had gone to storage to retrieve a box of files. She glanced sidelong at Daniel’s watch.
1502? No one has seen the colonel for two hours and no one has said anything?!
"Look, Captain Baxter," Daniel said, striving for patience, "the Silaerns might not be technologically advanced, but they certainly aren’t friends of the Goa’uld. Just because they’d never heard of naquadeh doesn’t make them inferior in any way...."
"All I’m saying, Dr. Jackson, is that on our priority list the Silaerns are about tenth. There are a handful of other civilizations that are more advanced and have more to offer us in exchange. The way I see it the Silaerns have everything to gain, and I have my suspicions...."
"I must agree with Daniel Jackson," Teal’c added. "The Silaerns may not have advanced weaponry or technology, but they have promised a safe haven should we ever have need. A place we can Gate to in an emergency. Also, from what I have seen they are excellent strategists and that could also be beneficial."
"Gentlemen, I hate to interrupt this debate," General Hammond intoned, "I also don’t want to change the subject, but....where the hell is Colonel O’Neill? He’s almost two hours late."
The members of SG-1 and SG-9 looked at each other.
"General, I am concerned as well. No one has seen Col. O’Neill since approximately 1300," Sam said.
The general’s brow furrowed, then he spoke to one of the guards at the door. "Airman, call down to medical and see if Col. O’Neill is ill. If he’s not there, then I’m going to move that we table this discussion until a later date. The Silaerns aren’t going anywhere."
The airman hung up the internal service phone by the doorway. "Sir, Colonel O’Neill is not in medical."
"Okay, people. I’m tabling this discussion. Any objections? Good. Carter, Jackson, Teal’c...my office."
------------
Jack stared at the last pages of Captain Samantha Carter’s reports from their first year of missions. After a few moments, he dropped the stack in his lap.
"She thought I was a complete rat bastard. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say she had a crush on Daniel. All that after I traded my M9 for her. Hmph. And her assessments of Teal’c....bordering on hero worship." Jack tossed the papers back in their box and sat on the floor, staring at them. Then he picked them up again. "Was I really that bad? I didn’t think I was that bad. Ferretti was worse."
Jack put away the papers, slapped the lid on the box, and stood up.
"All right, back to the task at hand. What’s the signature for Heliopolis again? P4X-....no, P3V-....damn." Jack rubbed his face and sighed. After a few minutes of hard thinking, the light came on. "P3X-972! That’s it!"
Working with the assumption that the number and letter signatures on the front of the boxes might in fact match the contents, Jack worked clockwise around the storeroom, moving aside stacks to get a look at the boxes behind. Most of the boxes on the floor, Jack discovered, were empty. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been at it, but he at last cleared a path to the first set of industrial black metal shelves that lined one wall. The boxes on the shelves were standard brown corrugated shipping boxes.
"Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser, Alice."
Jack started on the bottom shelf. There were two cardboard boxes, about 18 inches square. The box wasn’t sealed but the flaps were tucked together to keep it closed.
"Let’s see what’s behind door number one," quipped Jack as he opened the flaps.
With dark, open centers surrounded by white, neatly stacked toilet paper stared back at him like strange eyeballs. Four rolls deep by five rows wide, and three levels of them. Sixty rolls of toilet paper. Jack chuckled in disbelief.
"Whatever," he laughed, and proceeded to the next box. It was heavier than the box of Charmin. Sliding it off the bottom shelf, Jack opened the flaps to find....
"Safety flares?" He picked one up and turned it over in his hands. "Wonder how long these have been here. Too bad they don’t come with an expiration date. Shouldn’t these be stored on the surface with ordnance? If I find a box of M16 clips or grenades or something I’m gonna get nervous. ‘Course, if I did find a grenade, I could blow the door. Yep, George would love that. Probably take it out of my salary. God, Jack, you’re talking to yourself! That’s gotta stop."
On the next shelf up, the boxes contained miscellaneous office supplies -- dry erase markers, fat black labeling markers, notepads, Post-Its, rolls of tape, small boxes of staples. It was as if it had all come from one person’s desk. Jack got the eerie feeling they had all belonged to someone lost in the line of duty, and slid the boxes back into place. For a moment, he wondered if it was Kawalski’s stuff. For the first time in a couple years, Jack felt a pang of loss.
The second shelf from the top contained smaller boxes with the designation "MRE" stenciled on the sides.
"No way! Edibles? They’ve probably been down here since General West was in charge of the place."
He grabbed the first box, opened it, and, sure enough, MRE foil packets gleamed up at him. Jack rifled the contents.
"I like the waffles. Got any of those? Peanuts...peanuts...peanuts....I don’t believe it. A hundred packages of peanuts. Oh, well."
Jack tore open a packet, sniffed the contents, and removed a legume.
"Smells like a peanut. Looks like a peanut," he placed it in his mouth and took a bite, bracing for something nasty, but was surprised. "Wow, even tastes like a peanut!" Jack downed the rest of the package with gusto.
While contemplating what to do next, Jack glanced at his watch.
"Seventeen-forty! I’ve been down here for four and a half hours and no one has come looking for me?! The second in command of a military installation is a no show for a briefing and NO ONE noticed? Not even Daniel, and it was his damn box that sent me down here in the first place! I missed a briefing! Doesn’t anyone around here find that the *least -- bit -- UNUSUAL!!!*" Jack bellowed at the ceiling.
----------
"The airmen I sent to Colonel O’Neill’s home say he’s not there and it doesn’t look like he’s been there since early this morning. There’s cold coffee in a cup on the table and a breakfast plate in the sink, but no sign of recent activity," General Hammond summed up.
"I think I was the last one to see him...or one of the last...I mentioned needing some files from storage and Jack offered to get them for me," Daniel said.
"Which storeroom?"
"Storeroom 40 on sublevel 28. I needed information from the Heliopolis mission to complete a translation..."
The general interrupted, "Dr. Jackson, take a couple airmen with you and go down to the storeroom, just to make sure he’s not down there." He drew a weary but concerned breath. "We’ve checked the most frequently used levels and even NORAD, checked his home, and even called Sara O’Neill and no one has seen him."
"General, I don’t have the key to the storeroom. I gave it to Jack."
The general handed him a key ring with a single key.
"It’s a master key. It’ll open any door on this base."
Daniel grabbed the key, and a comm unit, and left with two airmen on his heels as Sam said…
"Sir, perhaps Thor, um, *borrowed* the colonel and they just haven’t been able to contact us."
General Hammond nodded. "That is a possibility. However, the last time that happened, intruder alarms went off. Nothing like that has happened. Major, go to base security and get all the security tapes of all corridors on the SGC levels between Dr. Jackson’s office and sublevel 28 from the hours of 1300 to 1500."
"General, that’s approximately 50 tapes if we take into consideration all the corridors on all levels!"
"Yes, major."
"Well, sir, do we have that kind of time? What if the colonel is ill or injured?"
"While we’re probing the tapes, I will send security details to sweep each level again, checking locked offices and places that we wouldn’t normally see the colonel. We’ve looked in all the usual places; let’s start looking in the unusual."
-----------
Okay, Jack, you’d better not be in here, thought Daniel as he headed for storeroom 40 on sublevel 28. I want to find you and know you’re okay, but I don’t want to be the one to *find* you. It’s one thing to find the corpse of a 5000 year old pharaoh or Mayan king; it’s quite another to find the corpse of someone you know....like one of your best friends.
Daniel took a deep breath and shook his head to clear away the maudlin thoughts.
He’s fine. Jack is one of the toughest, most resilient people I know. Five will get you ten he fell asleep in someone’s office or an unused conference room....or maybe Sam is right. Maybe Thor "borrowed" him again and they just haven’t contacted us. But there were no klaxons signaling an intruder or unauthorized entry to the base....
He stopped before the storeroom and tried the handle. The door was still locked. There was no key on the floor or in the lock on the door.
"Jack?" Daniel called as he pounded on the door. "Jack, are you in there?"
The silence made Daniel’s stomach knot. His hand shook a little as he put the master key into the lock and turned.
He pushed open the door to the dark storeroom. Light from the hallway revealed part of the room. All he could see were boxes. Daniel felt the wall inside the door and flipped the light switch. As the fluorescent lights flickered on, relief washed over him.
Jack was not here.
But then....where is he?
"Dr. Jackson, this is General Hammond," the comm unit buzzed. "Any luck?"
"No, sir. Jack’s not here. I don’t think he ever was. Nothing’s been moved. No footprints in the dust on the floor." Daniel sneezed. "Which reminds me, general, we really need to *choo* clean down here."
"All right, Dr. Jackson, meet us in Conference Room 4. We have work to do."
"Okay," Daniel sniffed. Note to self: see Janet about more antihistamines.
Daniel and the airmen turned to go, when Daniel said, "Wait a minute....ah-hah!"
"Did you find something, sir?" asked one of the airmen. Daniel walked out of the storeroom with a white box.
"Um...yes," he answered. "My missing files."
-----------
Twelve floors below Daniel, Colonel Jack O’Neill was lobbing rolls of toilet paper across the storeroom, trying to catch them on the tops of the storage shelves. He’d been very successful, creating a white canopy over the storage boxes. He had also fashioned, from the creative stacking of white boxes, two armchairs and a coffee table. On one of the armchairs sat another box, bearing a smiley face in black magic marker.
"Well, George, whaddya think? Maybe I should retire again and go into interior decorating. God knows no one around here is missing me."
Jack walked back to the empty armchair and sat down. About a dozen empty peanut bags littered the floor nearby. He reached into the box and pulled out another pouch.
"Y’know, I just don’t understand it. We’re such a...a team. We’ve been working together going on five years. Granted we don’t get along all the time. We have differences of opinion. I sometimes think Daniel is too soft and he thinks I’m too focused on military objectives. I think Carter needs to work on giving the short answer and not the scientific theoretical long-winded version....and she thinks...." Jack paused, recalling her first-year personal reports. "She thought I was a rat bastard that first year, can you believe that? I’m not a bad guy, really. It’s just with Carter...."
Jack drifted into a well of memories. Frozen wastelands. Goa’uld motherships. Alternate universes.
"We were even married in one of those alternate universes, y’know. She must like me a little. At least, respect me as her C.O."
There came a hazy, pain-filled recollection of nearly dying, and Carter lying next to him, trying to keep him warm until she can think of a way to free them from a frozen cave with an icebound Stargate. Then he remembered another time...on a Goa’uld mothership... the frightened, pained look on her face as a force field separated them, and thundering steps of Jaffa came nearer. He couldn’t touch her...and he couldn’t turn off the force field.
"Why hasn’t anyone noticed I’m gone, George? I mean, Daniel and Carter both saved my hide when I got stuck in a time bubble. Daniel and Teal’c never gave up on us when Carter and I were freezing to death in the Arctic. We’ve always pulled each other out of the fire," Jack slumped in his box chair and looked at George. "Yeah, I know. They’ll find me. But I think we’re gonna be here for a bit. Y’know, I found a box of coffee packets back there. All we need is some water and to master the art of fire and we’ll be all set."
Jack sighed and stared at the ceiling. Between gaps in the toilet paper canopy, Jack could see the sprinkler heads blossoming from the tiles like strange metal flowers.
An idea began to form. He sat up, eyes fixed on the sprinkler heads.
"Fire."
Jack turned and looked behind him at the box of flares.
-----------
Daniel rubbed his eyes. Staring at video tapes and monitors for the last hour has taken its toll. He, Teal’c, and Sam each had their own VCR/TV combo unit, and were poring over the base security tapes, trying to figure out what happened to Jack. The cameras had captured Jack leaving Daniel’s office with the key he’d given him around 1300. He got in the elevator, and the elevator went to sublevel 28. There, it picked up two more people, but Jack never got out. From the angle of the camera, they couldn’t tell if he was still in the elevator.
"We have to assume he was still in the elevator because it didn’t stop on any other floors," said Sam.
"General Hammond, I believe I have found something," Teal’c said. Sam and Daniel rolled their chairs over to Teal’c and the general came up behind. It was the tape from sublevel 30. Everyone on the elevator walked out, including Jack.
"He’s on the wrong floor," Daniel said, confused. Sam snagged another tape from the same level but a different corridor.
"The elevator he was just on only goes to 30. You have to change elevators to go lower," she began.
"But he’s already too low," Daniel broke in. "I’d told him 28..."
"Let’s see if he gets on the other elevator....." Sam did a fast forward and the likeness of Col. Jack O’Neill race walked to the other elevator, and pushed the down button.
"What’s he doing?" Daniel whispered.
The team and General Hammond started at the blaring of the base security alarm and an announcement rang out: "Security alert! Security alert! Fire reported on sublevel 40. Fire on sublevel four-zero. Lockdown of levels 38 and 39 initiated. All personnel on levels 38 and 39 have three minutes to evacuate...."
SG-1 looked at each other.
"Colonel O’Neill!" they said together.
SG-1 and General Hammond left Conference Room Four and ran to security.
"Status report, captain! What’s going on down there?" Hammond bellowed at the security officer on duty.
"Sir, we have detected a fire on sublevel four-zero, confined to one storage room. The sprinkler system has engaged. A fire team is on their way down there."
"Alert Dr. Frasier and have her meet us down there. We think that might be our missing colonel. Grab some masks and let’s go," Hammond told SG-1.
"Yes, sir."
"Captain," Daniel asked, "which storage room is it?"
"Number two-eight, Dr. Jackson."
Daniel and Sam looked at each other.
"He got the numbers backwards," they said to each other. Sam rolled her eyes and followed the others out.
-------------
Colonel Jack O’Neill stood in the middle of the storeroom, holding a flashing and smoldering safety flare in his right hand, water cascading down on him from the ceiling and fire alarms blaring in the corridor.
Blinking up at the sprinklers, he observed, "Man, a lotta water comes out of those things. It’s not exactly a lawn sprinkler, is it?"
The toilet paper canopy had disintegrated and collected in mushy blobs on the floor and the contents of the room. The white cardboard boxes began to turn gray and sag as they absorbed the water. He picked up George and tucked him under his arm. "Sorry about this, pal."
Puddles turned into small lakes and within minutes the storeroom floor was under two inches of water. The cold water continued to pour from the ceiling, the alarms buzzed in the corridor, and still no one came.
"I will be the first SGC officer in the history of the base to drown in a storeroom!" Jack cried out in frustration. "Someone get me the hell out of here!" His uniform clung to his skin. The flare went out. Jack heaved a sigh. "You know, George, I would have thought that at least *Daniel* would have come looking for me."
The sound of footsteps and voices snapped him out of his depressed reverie.
"Colonel! Colonel, are you okay?" It was Carter.
"I’m fine!" Jack yelled. "Open the damn door!"
"Okay, sir, stand back..."
"Wait! Teal’c! Hold it!" Jack heard Daniel say. Over the splattering water and blaring alarms, Jack heard a click and the door swung open. Before him stood SG-1 and General Hammond, Dr. Janet Frasier and two orderlies, and a half a dozen airmen, all wearing respirators expecting to encounter heavy smoke from a fire. Residual mist from the sprinklers began to glaze the uniforms of Daniel and Sam, who led the pack. One by one, they removed their masks as they stared in stunned silence at the soggy colonel, a wet cardboard box with a smiley face under one arm, and an extinguished safety flare in the opposite hand, looking like a waterlogged Statue of Liberty.
"Stand down, folks," General Hammond ordered. The alarms stopped, as did the sprinklers. Jack and his comrades stared at each other. SG-1 looked at one another, and Jack could swear Janet was trying not to laugh.
Carter started to say something, and Jack stopped her with a wave of his hand. He splashed up to Daniel.
"I couldn’t find your box."
"Then...what...or *who*....is this?" Daniel asked, pointing at the box under Jack’s arm.
Jack glanced at General Hammond, looking appropriately stone-faced but with his mouth working hard not to let a guffaw escape.
"This? A friend. Just a friend."
Without another word, Jack pushed past Daniel, nodded at Teal’c, and plodded up the slippery corridor clinging to what remained of his dignity.
"Jack?" Daniel said. The colonel turned and looked at him.
"I said storeroom *40* on sublevel *28*."
Jack stared at Daniel, trying to decide between a verbal asswhooping, or just flattening him where he stood. He looked at the other potential witnesses and decided against confrontation all together. Revenge will come later and in a more subtle way.
"I see, Daniel. General, major, doctor....I apologize for any inconvenience my absence might have caused." Jack could see that Janet’s eyes were now watering and her shoulders shaking with stifled laughter. Carter and a couple of the airmen weren’t faring much better.
"It was good of you all to come and find me. If anyone needs me, I will be in the locker room....changing."
Jack’s boots squished as he walked to the end of the corridor and stepped into the elevator. His rescuers at least had the decency to wait until the doors had almost closed to start cackling, with Janet and Sam leading the chorus.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The basement of SGC poses some interesting possibilities. Forget Area 51! Can you imagine what you could find down there?!
© January, 2003 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.