Teal’c thought of the alien ordinance that had been strewn across tables within that lab and remembered how she’d quizzed Hunter the previous night. A grin threatened, the flush of kalach-mek, what the Tau’ri called adrenaline. A battle was due and his blood was burning for the fight. This day, the Amam would know what it was to challenge SG-1.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jack slept. Not deeply, not in this place, but he’d been in enough situations where exhaustion had outweighed danger and he’d learned how to find the balance between sleep and vigilance.
His first realization on waking, therefore, took him more than a little by surprise: something was in the cell with him.
There was a faint regular scraping noise, the nature of which he couldn’t make out, but he kept his eyes closed, wanting to gauge the situation before letting his guest know he was awake. Maybe he could work this to his advantage.
“Your breathing pattern is different,” said a chilling, familiar voice. “Why does your kind sleep for so short a time?”
His eyes flashed open. So much for that advantage.
Jack pushed himself up from the floor, wincing as his joints cracked. He might not mind sleeping on hard surfaces in theory, but his body disagreed with him more and more these days. He eased out the kinks and looked around the cell.
The first thing he saw was the door. It was open.
Was this a test?
The low light of the corridor cast the interior of the cell into starker shadows and Jack blinked away residual sleep, trying to gather his bearings and decide whether it was worth making a run for it. Somewhere close by, the regular tread of the guard patrols echoed down the hallways. The scraping sound continued.
“Why?”
It was then that he saw it. Crazy hunkered in the far corner to the left of the doorway, crouched so that its chin was almost on his knees, like a vulture perched on a tree limb. Its fingers flexed in a rhythm, long talons scraping the floor, producing that strange whispering scratch. Jack fought the urge to shudder. “Why what?” he said.
“Sleep. What purpose does it serve you?”
Jack had no clue how to answer this bizarre question. “You don’t sleep?” he said.
Crazy closed its eyes and, despite the gloom of the cell, Jack thought he could make out some semblance of a smile on the Amam’s face. “Sleeeeeep,” it said, the vowels long and drawn out, as if the very word was something to relish. “We slept, so long, so long, so long. And when we awoke, we fed.” The thing raised its hand to its mouth and, to Jack’s disgust, licked the maw on its palm, as if tasting again the poor bastards whose life it had sapped.
Its eyes were still closed, and so, slowly, slowly, Jack edged towards the open doorway. He leaned back, trying to get a look out into the corridor, but couldn’t see any guards. This was too easy, but if he didn’t take the chance now he might never get out of there.
“You.”
Jack jerked back, away from the doorway, hoping that Crazy hadn’t seen what he was doing. But the Amam’s reptilian eyes were suddenly fixed on him, alert where seconds ago he had seemed lost inside his own chaotic mind.
“Uh, yeah?” he said, when Crazy seemed content to just stare at him, claws scraping softly on the floor.
“You are different.”
“Yeah. My blood. All ancient and stuff. You said that already.”
“No, you are… unlike. You are apart.”
Jack narrowed his eyes, wondering whether this creature could see inside his skull and read the thoughts he’d been batting around in there.
I am apart.
“Why do you try?” it asked. “Why do you think?”
Jack was tired, hungry, thirsty, and the wild mind of this creature left him unsettled. He sighed. “I don’t know how to answer your questions.”
The thing sprang to its feet. Jack fell back, heart in his throat as it came towards him, pinning him against the back wall of the cell. Something clattered to the ground as it moved, but Jack didn’t get a chance to see what it was before Crazy’s face was within an inch of his own. “Why do you try?”
“Because it’s who we are!”
Crazy looked to the side, as if the answer made no sense. Jack didn’t miss the irony of that. Out of this entire situation, it was his answer that made no sense. “Who are you people?” he asked wearily. “What is it you want with this planet?”
But Crazy only hissed, as if wholly dissatisfied with Jack’s response. “You are small. A small worthless species. But you serve.”
“As what? As food?”
“Barely worthy as that. Thin, meager, like dust on the tongue.” It grimaced, as if tasting something bitter; the expression was hideous on such a face. “You huddle and cower. You let us feast.”