Chapter Text
The Light is as beautiful as it is deadly.
The withdrawal symptoms are brutal, and Sam is still embarrassed about how she lashed out on the beach. Losing perspective. Angry. Bitter. They’ve talked about that. About how weird it is that their personalities can be altered so easily.
Anger isn’t that hard to talk about. Anger isn’t awkward. There aren’t regulations against feeling it. Not until you act on it, anyway.
There is a much larger elephant in the room that nobody dares mention. Years of writing reports have taught them that sometimes it’s better to pretend no one knows what’s really going on.
Plausible deniability.
No one needs to point out why this building has more luxurious bed than they’ve encounter in all their years of exploration. Why the bathrooms are shamelessly lavish. Why the doors close and lock automatically. Why the walls are thick and soundproof.
Oh, Janet knows.
She included the dopamine levels in the chart she showed the General, but she mentioned a whole other set of hormones to Sam privately. The oxytocin saturation. Sam’s estrogen and progesterone levels. The men’s testosterone.
Before telling her to be careful.
To be safe.
Which is easier said than done when their lives literally depend on staying close to the thing that’s making their blood to go haywire.
Staring directly at the Light is a bad idea. Walking away from it is worse. Doing nothing is absolutely impossible. It always has been.
So Sam explores the building again, trying to find something to do. Something to keep her mind of the fact that she is in what is essentially a pleasure palace with three men, and all their hormones are just about leaking out of their ears.
Not that any of them have done or said anything. These are her guys. She trust them more than she trust herself. And it’s not like she has lost control. She hasn’t turned into an animal. This isn’t the Land of the Light. (Even if, going forward, a healthy skepticism toward anything described as “light” seems prudent).
It’s just there.
A strange, restless energy under her skin. A constant tingling awareness. Too many thoughts that can’t be voiced without consequences, crowding her head until it feels too noisy.
And let’s be honest. It really hasn’t been that long since Thera shoved Jonah up against the wall behind safety pressure valve sixty-nine. Since she kissed him. Since he kissed her back. Since things could very easily have gone somewhere else if the valve hadn’t blown off, forcing them to choose saving the day over indulging bodily impulses.
How terribly symbolic.
There’s a limit to how much a human mind can compartmentalize, and they’ve been pushing it for years. There isn’t much left to give.
She can’t afford to think. She needs to do something. Run three miles. Eat an entire cake. Take something apart.
Keep busy.
She wanders until the hallways distort her sense of direction, eventually finding what appears to be a supply room. It’s hidden behind a door like all the others, but the interior is refreshingly practical.
There are a bunch of cabinets. Shelves stacked with sheets, towels and pillowcases. A corner with cleaning supplies, a trolley for moving things. And an absolutely absurd number of candles.
She opens the top drawer of the largest cabinet and finally finds something that doesn’t immediately make sense. Nearly a hundred identical devices, each small enough to fit comfortably in her hand. Smooth. Curved.
Purpose unclear.
She doesn’t take one right away. This isn’t her first off-world trip. She pulls out her scanner and quickly determines that the drawer is both a charging and a cleaning station, integrated into the building’s power and plumbing. Each device also contains an internal power source, currently inactive.
The power readings are minimal. Closer to an electric toothbrush than anything remotely dangerous.
So really, it’s the perfect distraction. After all, they’re supposed to be acquiring alien technology, and this could easily be another piece of Ancient tech appropriated by the Goa’uld.
She’ll need tools from her pack, though, and those are back in the room she claimed on their first night. Also, true to the universal law of storage rooms, there isn’t a single clear horizontal surface available.
So taking one back to with her makes the most sense. Which means picking it up, but she’d have to do that anyway if she is to figure out what it is for.
Besides, the Colonel isn’t here, and his “don’t touch anything” rule has always been more of a recurring joke than a strict directive.
This is her job, and she still has more than a week here. It’d be nice to spend some of that time being useful.
So she takes two. One to take apart, and one to keep intact for reference. When she lifts them from the drawer, nothing happens. No lights. No sounds.
It’s a little anticlimactic.