"Such a good boy," the snake croons in his ear, its hands moving over his skin like it has a right to touch, and that's it, he's had enough, right then and there.

He's fast. The snake's faster. But it wasn't expecting him to move, and he has plenty of experience in going from zero to choke-hold without giving a warning by tensing up his muscles in advance. Couldn't do serious damage this way, of course. He's not trying to. Just sending a message.

The snake doesn't fight back as he flips it over and pushes it into the sheets with a hand on its throat. Just smiles up at him, all teeth and lips and tongue.

"I'm letting you fuck me," he snarls. "That doesn't mean I'm anyone's boy."

He's expecting some kind of fight. What he's not expecting is the way the snake laughs, full and open. Its vocal cords buzz under his palms. "I was wondering how long it would take you to object," it says, and he gets the sudden impression that this whole thing has been another fucking test.

Then it flips him away, full strength, as casual as a human would swat at a mosquito.

He goes flying. Off the bed, across the room, coming down hard, his head slamming against the wall, and he really fucking hates that part. He bounces back up as fast as he can, tasting blood in his mouth, crouched for bear, ready to make this his own personal naked Waterloo if he has to. If the snake has decided he's too much trouble and has decided it's time to put an end to his pretense of being an independent agent. He'll fight the damn symbiote to the death if he has to -- even if death is likely to be a temporary condition around here -- but he'd really prefer not being in that position in the first place.

But the snake's still laughing, and as he watches, it rolls over and picks up the earpiece and phone it had thrown on the nightstand when it had undressed. (He's still got his own earpiece in his ear. The instant he realizes, it's suddenly heavier than naquadah.) "Come on in," it says, to whoever's on the other end of the line. "Our little kitten has decided to show his teeth. Time to give him the next piece."

Pisses him off enough (scares him enough) that he doesn't even flip out when the door opens up and another two bodies, identical to Ba'al, walk straight in. One of them smiles at him. "Surprise," it says, bright and cheerful.

He turns his head and spits blood onto the lush cream of the snake's penthouse carpet. "This some kind of joke?" he rasps. (Knows it's not. Knows it can't be.)

The snake in the bed laughs again. Gets up and pulls on the pair of pants it left lying tangled next to the bed. Yeah, having copies of yourself in the room is a real fucking mood-killer. "No joke, Jack," it says. "Come. We have a great deal to talk about."

No fucking shit.

*

So, there's more than one snake running around.

They don't tell him much. That there are multiple copies: obviously. That they switch back and forth depending on circumstance and whimsy. That they've decided he's trustworthy enough to be made aware of these facts, since there are times it would have been useful for him to know. (He can't think of any. Not so far, at least. He puts it on the list of things to think about later and schools his face to immobility.)

Explains a lot. Explains why the snake's reactions, their interactions, have seemed so scattershot. He's probably dealt with all of them, at one time or another. Snake won't tell him how many there actually are. (More than ten, he thinks, listening to the way they talk about it. Less than fifty. Small mercies. An unlimited supply of Ba'als -- yeah, his head's trying to feed him sixteen damn puns and now is not the fucking time -- would spell disaster.) He wonders whether the fact that some of them are copies contributed at all to Ba'al's willingness to believe his own motivations.

He wonders how many of them have fucked him.

Can't tell. No way to know.

This is important enough to use up a drop-box on. Carefully; if he were the snake, he'd step up the surveillance on himself after giving away such a major piece of things, so he has to assume the snake's done the same. He waits a week just to be sure.

He boils the essence of the message down as far as he can get it, then strips it further. Pulls out conjunctions, prepositions. Pulls out subjects. Pulls out vowels. Introduces some deliberate misspellings, makes sure he doesn't repeat words. The cipher he's using isn't weak against frequency analysis, but he and O'Neill both remember the days when an abundance of "e"s and "of"s might fuck you. Does it all in his head. The plaintext doesn't get written down anywhere. When he's done, he has a stream of about 280 characters to encipher, and it takes him three of the most nervous days he can remember for a long time back.

He works in public bathrooms, mostly: over his lunch breaks, stopping on his morning run, on the evenings the snake (snakes) doesn't want him to spread his legs and smile pretty. Nerves jittering the entire time. He's been carrying the deck of cards in his pockets on and off -- if the snake asks, it's for dexterity practice, and he's got a triple dozen card tricks he can show off on command -- so that's not as suspicious as it could be. But the ciphertext is too complex to memorize on-the-fly, and that means he has to write the output stream down.

Doesn't have the worksheet hidden. Hidden things raise suspicion. He hides in plain sight, writing down the ciphertext character-by-character on receipts and on the backs of business cards, all shoved in his wallet any-which-way. This is the part he absolutely can't risk-mitigate any further; if the snake searches him, or has someone search him, while he's got five-letter code-groups scrawled across everything he owns, he's sunk.

He's lucky. (He hopes.) The snake's given up searching his stuff, or having people searching his stuff. (He hopes.) And once he's done, that day at lunch (in the bathroom of the Red Robin) he copies the message onto a single post-it note (left to right, bottom to top -- every extra layer helps). Folds the post-it in half onto itself. Burns and flushes all the pieces of his worksheet.

On his way out, he buys a milkshake to bring the snake. Chocolate. (The snake hates chocolate.)

That night, as he's leaving, he heads over to the Happy Hacker Haven (and once again makes a mental note to steal the chair from his old desk -- the one in the office the snake has him in now sucks ass, and he keeps forgetting to make the swap before anyone comes in in the morning) and kicks Virta's chair until Virta pushes off his headphones. "You, me, Trinity, nine o'clock," he says. "Could use a night out."

Virta blinks at him a couple of times. He hasn't exactly gone out of his way to avoid Virta for the past two weeks, but he hasn't gone out of his way to be all buddy-buddy, either. But Virta's been his cover once before; he can use the kid again. "Sure," Virta says. "Meet you there."

He tells the snake (snakes) he's taking the night off, goes back to his apartment, and changes into his very best jailbait chic -- the skintight shirt, the worn and spraypainted jeans, the eyeliner. Meets Virta outside the club. (Kid cleans up pretty nice, and the look he gets when Virta sees his getup is gratifying.) Place is packed. He can't make a tail, and he's pretty sure anyone the snake could get to tail him would stand out like a sore thumb in a crowd like this.

Dancing the way he does it these days is close enough to cockteasing to begin with. Doesn't take much effort to pull it along that half-step farther. Virta's even the one to suggest the alleyway, which saves him the trouble. "Yeah," he agrees -- breathless, sweaty -- when Virta proposes it. "I'll go first. Count five minutes. Then come after."

Anyone looking at him would think he's making sure nobody's watching him because he doesn't want to get caught sucking dick in a dirty alleyway.

Out the back door. Into the alley. The post-it note, in the tiny ziplock that could be mistaken for a dime bag, gets taped to the back of the dumpster. Less than thirty seconds' work. When Virta comes slinking outside four and a half minutes later, he's doing his best impression of not having a thing on his mind but what he's about to do.

A couple of people smirk, knowingly, seeing the wet and muddy patches down the knees of his jeans when they slip back into the club. He ignores them.

Next morning, he drops a five in the tip jar and prays the message will make it through. O'Neill will figure out the best way to use it. The best time to use it. If he should use it. He'd cautioned O'Neill against acting on the information, because it will blow his cover from hell to gone if O'Neill lets his knowledge filter back to the snake's ears. He has to trust that O'Neill knows what he's doing. His job isn't long-term strategy. His job is just to find this shit out, and to blow the doors behind him when he goes. Just Call Me SG-1's Undercover Payload.

*

It isn't until four days after he makes the drop that his brain finally fucking kicks in and he realizes just how fucking fucked he is. There's no way he'll ever be able to know how many Ba'als there are. Or where they are. Or if any of them are in New York or China or fucking offworld at any given time. And if he misses so much as one of them when he makes his final play, this whole merry-go-round starts up again. With Ba'al knowing the score. With Ba'al aware of the betrayal.

Fuck.

*

Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we daren't go a-hunting for fear of little men --

Downtown Seattle. No acronyms today. Too busy thinking. His steps lull his mind into throwing out bits and snatches of poetry at him, rhythmic like his footfalls, soothing even though his mind refuses to be soothed. He's got company. (Wee folk, good folk, trooping all together, green jacket, red cap, white owl's feather --)

It's second nature by now to scan the crowds around him -- looking for additional familiar faces, looking for following cars, looking for some sign that he's being watched -- but he doesn't find anything. Wasn't really expecting it. He's pretty sure all the secondary surveillance on him has been pulled. Or at least dropped down to the same level everyone else on the executive level lives with. He's been careful not to change his behavior in any way; the key to avoiding discovery is to avoid suspicion. On stage, constantly, nonstop for three months. He's starting to live for the few minutes here and there where he can duck into some random place along the way, stand in the bathroom for a minute alone and unwatched, and just breathe.

Get a grip, Jack, he tells himself. Biggest danger in all of this isn't that you'll get caught. Biggest danger in all of this is that you'll crack up.

Takes him a second to realize he's called himself Jack. Fuck. Fuck. Bad fucking sign. Even worse if it's not just because it's what the snake calls him.

(High upon the hill-top the old king sits; he is now so old and grey, he's nigh lost his wits --)

The snake's driving him crazy. It isn't that he expects it to have logical, rational, sensible responses: it's a snake. Snakes aren't logical. But the snakes are creatures of self-interest -- and not even enlightened self-interest; it's a gimme gimme gimme now now now mentality that involves an irrational megalomania. And for a race that has lifespans in the millennia, they display a distinct lack of long-term planning ability. Conquer the world now; tea and crumpets later. You can almost always count on a snake to go for the quick win over the long haul; he's seen it happen a hundred times, where one of the System Lords will make a stupid power play instead of just having some goddamn patience for a while and letting something sit.

Stipulate that worldview, and there's not a single goddamn part of this that makes sense.

Snakes don't share power. With anyone. And yet Ba'al has divided its powerbase. He's seen up to three of them in the room at the same time; he still doesn't know how many more there are. Snakes go for the quick power grab. Ba'al has a plan here, and that plan hasn't become obvious yet. He's been here for ten weeks. After ten weeks, he should be able to make a guess at what the snake's up to. He can't. Nothing adds up. And that means that the payoff is so far in the future that whatever the snake's doing now is only groundwork.

Which means it's larger than Earth. Has to be.

And snakes don't do subtle, and yet Ba'al has shown signs of cunning and craft since minute one. Snakes don't persuade cooperation out of people; Ba'al has been all-but-fucking-courting him in every single conversation they've had since it (they) went for the Big Reveal.

It's been two weeks since the snake decided to pull back the curtain, and he's only now realizing what the nagging itchy feeling in the back of his head -- in the place where he always feels it when there's something so subtle and off -- is telling him. There is a non-zero, non-negligible chance (growing larger with each additional piece of information he adds to the picture) that he has made a terrible, awful miscalculation, compounded over and over with every step deeper he goes.

(They stole little Bridget for seven years long; when she came down again her friends were all gone; they took her lightly back between the night and morrow; they thought she was fast asleep, but she was dead with sorrow --)

And this entire fucking house of cards turns on his being able to handle anything that turns up, and he's staked everything -- everything he has, everything he knows, everything he's ever loved and everyone who's ever loved him back -- on his word to O'Neill: I can do the job.

He's starting to suspect he doesn't even know what the job is.

He's been watching. Now that he's watching, now that he knows the real deal, a hundred little details are starting to come clear. The Ba'al-clones aren't identical. Close to it, but if he's looking, he can spot the differences. He's started to name them. Ease of separation. Alpha has a few more frown lines around the eyes. India is the one that always deals with tech problems. Echo and Foxtrot are the ones that handle interacting with people who don't know that the boss is a snake. (Foxtrot likes to go for the jugular, savaging stupid people who ask stupid questions with a dagger of verbal acuity that he almost has to admire. Echo's the one with the sense of humor; he thinks it's the one -- one of the ones -- that laughs at his jokes.)

Delta's the one that's joined him for his morning run the past three days in a row.

Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen. Or over the hills and through the woods, to the University of Washington we go, at least. Perfect step, perfect unison. Makes him want to fumble, stumble, hold back that fraction of a second necessary to make the snake break step with him. He doesn't. But every time he catches the snake out of the corner of his eye, it's like the choke chain tightens around his throat a little more.

The only mercy is that the snake doesn't ever look over at him. Doesn't say a word. Just paces him perfectly, step by step, loping easily along the streets beside him. Its white t-shirt is damp with sweat, and it's breathing just as hard as he is, but he knows -- knows -- it's all an act. A shadow-play of aping human. Little details. Verisimilitude's a bitch. Delta's better at it than any of the rest. Looking back at things, he's pretty sure that the few moments he's suffered the worst cognitive-disconnect illusions (blink and it's a snake; blink again and it's a man) have been when he's sitting across from Delta. He's not sure what that means.

(...they have planted thorn trees, for pleasure here and there; is any man so daring as dig them up in spite? he shall find the thornies set in his bed at night...)

Three mornings running, they've waited in line silently together, parted outside the coffee shop. Today, he jerks his chin at the cappuccino Delta holds. "I'm not bringing a dozen of those every morning now, you know."

He's hoping to get some sort of reaction from the snake, some confirmation or denial -- is a dozen too high? Too low? -- but the snake only smiles. The expression doesn't sit badly on its face. Which sits badly in his stomach. "No," it agrees. "Let them find their own." It raises the coffee cup: salute, acknowledgment. Does it every morning, just before it walks away. "As always, thank you for allowing me to share your morning insanity."

He stops himself from folding his free hand into a fist. "I got any other choice?"

The snake looks surprised. "Of course you do. If you would prefer to be alone, you have only but to say so."

Yeah. Say so and all but prove to the snake that he's up to something. No thanks. Still, he can't resist the dig. "No. But you could have asked first."

The snake nods, its face calm. Considering. Like he's just given it a piece to a puzzle. "I'll remember that in the future. Have a good morning."

It turns away. Leaves him standing on the sidewalk, the wind blowing against his skin. Something makes him shiver.

The wind. It's just the wind. His skin is wet with sweat and morning mist, and the cold is reaching his bones.

It's getting easier to lie to himself. That should probably worry him more than it does.

*

Snake shows up in his office that night just around quitting time. It waits with one shoulder leaning against the doorjamb until he finishes up the email he's sending Forensic Accountant #2 (sometimes it's fun to eviscerate stupid people without once using a single word he couldn't have used in front of his mother), so it doesn't interrupt his train of thought. Manners from a snake. Who'd've thunk it.

He doesn't look up until he finishes. (on the other hand, if you'd really like to shoot yourself in the foot, i can't stop you; feel free. just aim away from me when you do it, and i'm not cleaning up the blood afterwards. --jdn) "The fuck you want?" he asks. "Or did you just come over to vulture in my doorway?"

The snake's watching him like he's the most fascinating thing to cross its radar in months. It's wearing a different tie than the one he's been dealing with all day. Only subtly different; he's the only one who'd notice. "I have come to enquire of your availability for the evening," it says. High court manners. Sounds like it might be translating from Goa'uld in its head before it talks. (Echo of an echo, Daniel lecturing about mode and modality, about a language that evolves layer upon layer of manners to cover the fact the society has none. Shove it aside.) "Rather than assuming that my presence would be welcomed. I have reservations; should you choose to accompany me, I would be gratified by your company. You've been working quite hard for the past few weeks."

The prospect of the snake actually seeming to give a shit about whether or not he's getting enough downtime is almost enough to make him crack up laughing right then and there, because if he doesn't crack up, he might throw the fucking snake out the fucking window and that's nobody's idea of a good time. (Well. It's his. But not yet.) He presses his lips together and locks his workstation, quick flick of hands over keyboard, before rotating in the office chair and giving the snake the hairy eyeball. "Oh, sure," he says. "Let me put on my fucking dancing shoes."

It's Delta. Gotta be. Because it smiles at him, and the sick feeling in his stomach -- like a fish flapping on the sidewalk, dying for want of air -- comes from the way the smile still doesn't look wrong in the least. "Eight o'clock," it says. "I shall call on you at seven-thirty."

So that's how he fucking ends up at Seattle's fucking hottest gourmet restaurant, having a fucking nine-course fucking meal with a fucking snake sitting across from him and smiling over its fucking wine.

Worst fucking part of it is, the fucking snake actually seems to be enjoying itself.

No, the snake is enjoying itself. Lingering over each taste, savoring the flavors, eyes slitting shut in bliss. It turns his stomach. He pretends he's enjoying himself anyway. The snake's a perfect fucking gentleman. Orders for both of them. Different tasting menus for each. He thinks the snake just wanted a wider variety to sample; it's eaten half his meal too.

Food's fabulous. He doesn't taste a fucking bite he puts in his fucking mouth.

"It's the small pleasures in life, isn't it?" the snake says, out of nowhere, savoring the Syrah paired with the main course. "Good food. Good wine. Impossible to find, where I come from, and so many people don't value them at all."

He opens his mouth to say something. Then he closes it again. The snake's staring at him, eyes boring into his face, like it's trying to send him a fucking message.

"Some people?" he says. Because the snake can't possibly mean what he thinks the snake means.

"Our mutual acquaintances, shall we say," the snake says. Reaches across the table and steals another bite off his plate. "I never fail to find it fascinating how such similar people can develop such different outlooks."

Different glass of wine with every course, and he's just been letting the wine touch his lips and setting the glasses down again, because the last fucking thing he needs is to be functioning at anything less than full throttle. High and dry, metaphorical fish back in the pit of his belly, flapping around on the concrete, didn't notice the water until all of a sudden it wasn't wet because the fucking snake is trying to fucking tell him something and he doesn't, can't, believe.

No. It's a test. Another one. Last one, maybe.

He puts his fork down. "I don't know," he says. Sounding casual. Anything but. "Never really noticed a difference myself."

The snake's lips curve. Optical illusions fool the brain into thinking there's something there that really isn't: tiny perceptual cues, blink and they're gone. Fool-the-eye, fool-the-brain. Blink and there's a snake across the table from you. Blink again and it's a man, calm and patient, giving you a clue you don't want to let your brain believe. "I know," it says. (He says. It says.) "Perhaps you might find it illuminating if you begin to look, Jonathan. You're more perceptive than some people might believe."

By the time dessert arrives, he's beginning to regret having eaten anything at all.

*

He lets the snake into his apartment when they get back, because he's pretty sure that's what he's expected to do, and goes away inside his head for a while when the snake takes him up on the offer. Just a body. That's all. Nothing more.

Someone in the bed with him when he wakes up. Middle of the night. Breathing: soft, even. No matter how much he tries to hold himself still, he always gives himself away. Sooner or later. (A twitch. A change in breathing. Something, and he doesn't let himself think about it, because if he gives himself away here, he's been giving himself away day after day, action after action, breath after breath.) Tonight's no different. He can feel the snake watching him, in the darkness, in the depths of his despair.

Neither one of them says a word. But the snake puts a hand on his chest, fingertips resting lightly on the crowned inverted V (home) tattooed just beneath the hollow of his throat, and traces it, once. Perfectly placed in the darkness. Snake can see in this light, even if he can't. His skin crawls, like hundreds of tiny spiders are hatching underneath and trying to crawl out.

Then the snake's fingers slide left, along his collarbone, over the lines where the sentences of promise and reminder are engraved. And it writes over them, slow and precise, stopping after every letter so he can translate motion to meaning:

T-R-U-S-T-M-E

He grabs its hand as it finishes the last stroke of the E. Holds it for a minute, in midair: a confirmation, a warning. Message received.

He doesn't let himself sleep again.

*

Downtown fucking Seattle: Junior Commandos Meet Some Uncomfortable Propositions. Yeah. Lame one. Sue him. Game's not fun anymore. Maybe it never was.

Saturday morning.

Can't deviate from his usual weekend routine too far, but this won't call down the hounds of hell: sweats and a t-shirt, old, ragged, pair of running shoes laced up tight. Today he runs all the way out to the fucking airport. Snake doesn't join him. Small fucking mercy. Maybe it's waiting for an engraved invitation.

Half a marathon there. Half a marathon back. He's been running for so fucking long. Never fast enough. Never far enough. His life has narrowed down to downtown fucking Seattle and expanded to encompass a whole fucking planet beyond, and all it takes is one missed step and it's a hell of a fucking long way down.

Fact: The snake comes in sixpacks. Fact: One of them has told him they don't present a unified front. Fact: One of them has told him, by statement and by implication, that there's dissension in the ranks. Fact: One of them has hinted at the possibility of an alliance.

Fact: One of them has reason to believe that he isn't what he's pretending to be.

Corollary: Where one can arrive at this conclusion, others can. Conjecture: Test. Trap. He's expected to go running to one of the others (but which one?) and spill his guts and they're waiting to see whether he does or not. Possible? Highly. Likely? Who knows.

Fact: He still doesn't know what the fucking snake's plans are. What it wants. What it's here for. What it's trying to do. Absence of information means that he's reasoning from insufficient data; every model he tries to build falls apart the minute he tries to take it out of the theory-box and apply it to empirical evidence. Fact: This fucking snake behaves differently than all the other Goa'uld he has ever encountered and fought and killed. (Ma nishtanah hanachash haze mikol hanechashim?) Fact: Any model of behavior he's managed to construct falls to hell when he accepts the premise that he's been dealing with a plurality and not a singularity and he has no fucking idea how much cross-communication they have.

Conjecture: The snake's telling the truth; one of the army-of-me has a little more 'enlightened' in the primordial ooze of 'enlightened self-interest' than the others do, has found its little niche and wants to stick with it. Been taken up unto a high mountain and shown all the earthly delights of the world. Has decided that whatever plan the rest of the gang is putting into place will disrupt its wining and dining and whoring around, wants to preserve hot dogs and apple pie and the Constitutional right to fuck anyone it wants without having to worry about a slave uprising and an interruption in the high-roller lifestyle. Possible? Maybe. Likely? Who knows.

Fact: He has not yet had a snake shoved in his own head, which means the plurality consensus is that he'll be more useful without it. Fact: He was not apprised of the next layer of facts until after he displayed resistance sufficient to convince the snake (and he wishes like burning that he knew which fucking snake he'd been fucking at that point) that he was displaying cooperation, but not capitulation. Fact: the snake laughs at him every time he bares tooth and claw and fights back.

Conjectures: The snake finds him cute. The snake likes his spirit. The snake knows it can counter any move he makes. The snake doesn't care about whatever move he makes, because there's nothing he can do to fuck things up. The snake collective can't decide what the fuck to do about him. The snake's waiting to see what he does next.

Conjecture: The snake needs him walking around, independent and uncontrolled, for some step in the fucking plan.

Conjecture: The snake knows that at least two people in-or-near the SGC have built-in snake-detectors, and they're two of the people who'd stand ready to blow the whistle, and the snake wants someone to be able to get up close and personal without ringing the alarm. Someone who'd already be known to them. (Fact: He's told the snake he still knows Carter. Has seen Teal'c. Full disclosure; they're facts anyone could discover with a little bit of digging, and the way to avoid having the cops charge you is to come up with a valid reason for your DNA to be at the crime scene, and the way to avoid the snake thinking you're a fucking sleeper agent is to come up with a valid reason for you to be pissed off at the people who left you behind.) Fact: He's been the snake's hitman once already, without blinking. Conjecture: The snake might want him to do it again.

Conjecture: The snake might know about the symbiote poison, might need a fully-briefed operative to carry and use it. (Conjecture, likely fact: The snake suspects his Tok'ra issues. Conjecture, likely fact: Whatever plan the snake's planning is galactic, and the snake's taking the long view of things, and it knows it's going to have to deal with the Tok'ra thorn in the lion's paw sooner or later.)

Fact: He is being played at least as much as he's doing the playing, and he doesn't know what the fucking game is, but he knows what the fucking stakes are. All he has to do is fuck up once, just once, and he's toast. Snake's got all the cards.

Fact: One of the snakes has extended the olive-branch of alliance. And trusting a snake is not on the table, no way nohow, but right now he'd give his fucking eyeteeth to know how the Tok'ra woke up to being Tok'ra, because he trusts the Tok'ra about as far as he can fucking throw them, but the fact is a fact however little he likes it: if it happened once, he must entertain the possibility it could have happened again.

Possible? Yeah. Likely? Who the fucking fuck knows.

Fact: He has been provided an ever-growing set of insights into the Ba'al-collective's actions. Conjecture: The snake's bought his story, hook line and sinker, and wants to use what he's got on offer. Counter-conjecture, equally likely: The snake doesn't believe him for a minute, and is lending him more rope and waiting to see when he hangs himself. Counter-counter-conjecture, equally likely: half the collective believes him, half the collective doesn't. (Open question, unanswerable: which side does the one he's tailspinning over fall on?)

Fact: He has two options here. Grass on the snake or don't. If it's a test, he'll pass it by ratting. If it's legit, he'll be screwing himself out of an opportunity if he does. If it's a test, and he answers opening move with opening move, does or says anything to make the snake think he's not a loyal minion, he's sunk. If it's legit, and he takes the chance, he'll have doors open for him it might take months to even find, otherwise.

He has always fucking hated game theory.

Fact: These fucking facts fucking suck.

*

Conclusion: answer tentative and noncommittal groundwork with tentative and noncommittal groundwork, giving away nothing, making sure everything he does has two or three or ten different interpretations. And if it's a test, and the fucking snake calls him on it, claim he was leading the 'traitor' on to see what it would do and how much solid information he could lure it into revealing before figuring out the best way to bring it down. Didn't tell you straight off because I wanted to bring you a present. Like a cat mouthing a mostly-dead bird, bringing it in to spit it at its master's feet. Optimal solution yes, ideal solution no, but he's starting to forget what his ideals even were and there's no way to tell anymore which end is up.

He realizes he's tasting blood when he drags his limp-kneed and exhausted body back into the apartment. Chewing on the inside of his cheek again.

Has to stop that. Stone-cold fucking tell.

*

Resslaer-fucking-Szdinski is giving him a fucking migraine. The deal's nearly solid, but their board of directors is giving him shit about one of the provisions he really fucking wants in the final contract -- the ability to hand the CEO a golden parachute the minute the ink is fucking dry and put in a handpicked replacement. (He's got six candidates so far. None of them a perfect choice, either for his own interests or the snake's. He'll let the snake decide when he drops the deal in the snake's lap.)

He's still not sure how he wound up in charge of this shit, but hey, it's what the snake wants him doing. Price for fucking competence indeed. If he has to spend one more fucking day on the phone for nine hours straight, he's going to fucking shoot something. (Still better than what else the snake could have had him doing.)

He's standing in front of his office windows (floor-to-ceiling, like the snake's; everyone on the executive team has a fabulous fucking view) and arguing with his counterpart over at Resslaer-fucking-Szdinski, when Virta wanders in and makes himself at home in the visitor chair.

Can't cover the earpiece to keep his voice from being picked up when it transmits the sound through bone conduction, and he can't actually remember where he left the actual phone so he can mute it, so all he can do is wave Virta to silence. "Come on, Barry," he says, out loud. "I might only have to shave twice a week, but I was not born fucking yesterday, okay? Don't insult me. We're signing papers next week come hell or high water, and my clauses had better be in there. Don't make me have to threaten you."

It takes another fifteen minutes before he can chivvy the guy off the phone (having extracted a promise to send back the emended contract in email by close of business) and turn back to Virta. Virta's sitting sideways in the chair, his knees hooked over one arm, watching him. "You have no idea how fucking hot it is when you do that," he says.

As fuck-buddies go, Virta's not bad. Low-pressure. Safety valve. Doesn't cling, but doesn't hesitate to proposition, either. And that's a proposition. He wonders if the snake's going to have plans for him tonight; he could use a chance to get away from things for a while. Ten fucking minutes where he doesn't have to worry about what role he's playing. (A chance to sleep. He hasn't, not in longer than he'd care to think about. Not properly, at least.)

Still doesn't mean he wants to bring it into the office. Doesn't think the snake's the jealous type -- kind of hard to be when there's multiples of you fucking the same guy -- but still. Tacky. He crosses the floor, away from the window, and sits back down at his desk. Eyes giving a warning: not here. Later.

"You want something?" he asks.

"Coffee run," Virta says. "Gonna punch Suzukimo in the fucking nose if I don't get the hell out of here. Figured I'd come over and see if you wanted to come, since we haven't seen much of you since you got moved. I think I might have something with that system you cracked and I thought you might like the update. You got the time?"

He hesitates. "I really don't," he says, but knowing how far the Wunderkinder have gotten with Groom Lake's system would be nice. So he sighs. "But yeah. Hang on." He locks his workstation, spins around. Grabs his hoodie. "You're buying."

They talk of nothing of consequence in the elevator and all the way over to the coffee shop -- net neutrality, copyright legislation, the latest update to the Storm botnet. Virta's got shit taste in coffee; he picks some froofy frozen thing. At least it has a shot of espresso. He goes for a peppermint latte -- if he stays here long enough he's going to get addicted to the damn things. It's habit, nothing more, that has him picking out a bill and folding it, dropping it in the tip-jar, arranging the others in his wallet so they're properly organized; he made his real check-in that morning, after his run, the same way he always does.

"So what's up?" he finally asks, when they've both got their drinks and are standing in the mill and push of people on the sidewalk outside the coffeeshop. Virta doesn't seem to be interested in going anywhere, just leans his shoulders back against the shop's window and props one foot up against the plate glass, sipping from his straw. It's a nice-ish day, or at least not actively raining; maybe Virta just wants to get some fresh air.

"Not much," Virta says. "Got back in a couple of times, same route you used. Nobody seems to have noticed. Those core dumps you managed to capture were gone the next time we got in, but we've been going over them for the past couple of weeks. Not much there. Right now I'm thinking we might be able to replace /bin/login with our own version and still have it pass the md5 checksum test; that's where we've been putting most of our effort lately."

"Huh," he says. It's not impossible -- md5 has been known vulnerable since '04 or so, and some bright boy turned it from theoretical abstract to proof-of-concept last year -- but it'd be fucking tough. Not the route he knows Carter designed for them to take, but it's all right; all the logins to the honeypot are under Carter's control and she makes damn sure none of them have the same passwords as any other account on any of the real systems. Still. It's good thinking. "You sure they're still using md5 and not SHA? My intel's four years out of date."

"Pretty sure, yeah," Virta says. "Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about." He reaches into a pocket, pulls out a thumb drive. Hands it over. "Been getting some more data every time we check back in. Here's the latest tarball. Some interesting stuff there."

"Yeah?" Habit has him dropping the thumb drive into his hoodie the second Virta hands it over; it's poor form to let the watchdogs see you accept a handoff, even if he doesn't think anyone's watching him too closely anymore. "What kind of interesting?"

Virta grins, eyes bright. (The game's afoot.) "Some reports from a guy at the company you're negotiating for. Apparently they're doing work with the target. Small world, huh?"

His blood runs cold. Last fucking thing he wants right now is for Virta to catch one whiff of the big picture, because Virta's got a hacker's curiosity and a hacker's lack of boundaries, with a black-hat's lack of moral compunctions to go with it. If Virta smells something fishy, he's going to keep digging. And if Virta keeps digging, he'll find things, and then they're all fucked, because Virta won't let it drop and he'll drag the rest of the Wunderkinder into the chase. And somehow he doesn't think the snake would hesitate to order him to make the problem go away.

"Probably a coincidence, but yeah, small world," he says. Keeps his voice even. "Those guys do placement for half the government agencies out there, though, so it's not too weird." Come on, kid. Save your neck here. I'm giving you an out.

"Yeah," Virta says. "Still, thought you'd get a kick out of that. You think you're ever gonna come back to us, or does the boss own your ass until the end of time?"

"Told you," he says, grateful for the change of subject. "Slave markets of Iskanderun. It's a fifty-year indenture. Come on, I'm embarrassed to be standing here with you while you're drinking that fucking thing."

They go up the elevator together, once they clear back through security. (He'd rather run the stairs, but Virta would fall over and die.) Virta follows him back into his office. For a minute he wonders if Virta's going to hang out all afternoon (which would be awkward; he's got other phone calls to make) but no, Virta only wants to finish up the argument they're having about which version of the song "Hallelujah" is better. (Leonard Cohen's. Hands down. The fact that Virta can muster arguments for any other version simply serves as more proof that Virta has no fucking taste.)

"You busy tonight?" Virta asks, halfway out the door. "I was thinking of going to catch a movie. 'The Bank Job' looks like it might be fun. If a little too close to work."

He hesitates. "I really can't," he says. It's been three days since the snake has come calling for him; he should probably go shake his ass at one of them tonight. "This weekend, maybe?"

Virta nods. "Sounds good. I'll email you." Sketches a salute. Turns to go. His voice comes trailing back from the hallway: "hey, boss."

A minute later, there's a snake in the doorway. (He closes his eyes for just a fraction of a second longer than a blink. He's about ready to barricade the fucking door to keep people from interrupting him.) "Yeah," he says. "Busy. Talk fast."

The snake's frowning. He doesn't like that expression. Means something's wrong. But at least the snake's not frowning at him; it's looking over its shoulder and frowning at where Virta disappeared down the hallway. (Great. So the snake is fucking jealous after all. Peachy-fucking-keen.)

It shakes off the frown fast enough, though, and turns back to him. "I have come to enquire of your availability this evening," it says, calm and formal.

Pit of his stomach turns over again. Fuck. Delta. Delta's been leaving him alone all week, giving him room. Giving him space. Letting him think things over. Looks like his fucking grace period has expired.

He can feel his jaw grinding. He forces himself to relax. "Think my dance card's free," he says. "Why, you feel like taking me out for a spin?"

The snake's lips quirk. Tiny little half-smile. Shouldn't be able to do that. Shouldn't be able to look so fucking human. "I would appreciate the pleasure of your company, yes," it says. "I shall come over after work."

It's like being asked out on a fucking date. "Whatever," he says, and turns. Unlocks his workstation. "Sounds fine. I really do have to kick you out now, though. I've got a call in five minutes I need to prep for."

He doesn't -- it's half an hour, not five minutes -- but it's not like the snake knows, one way or the other, and he really can't handle dealing with any of them right now. (He thinks it says a lot about his current lot in life that dealing with fucking corporate-shark lawyers is the fucking high point of his day.)

Expects the snake to protest, but all it does is nod. "Break a leg," it says, and walks away.

Leaves him wanting to put his head down on the desk and just breathe. Snakes shouldn't know slang that well.

This one does.

What else does it know?

*

He gets stuck on the phone with China that afternoon, working on the next deal he's trying to set up. Going through an interpreter makes him fucking cranky. (Never used to. That was before he worked with Daniel, who could read his fucking mind, who made the process so transparent he barely noticed he and his conversational partner weren't speaking the same language. Never told Daniel how much he appreciates him. Wishes he had. Can't be helped now.)

Snake's in his apartment when he finally gets home around 2030. Sitting on the couch. (From Swedish furniture, O St. Tyler, deliver us.) Wearing jeans and a plain black t-shirt, barefoot. It's got its feet up on the coffeetable, reading one of the books the decorator thought should belong in an apartment like this.

"Feet on the table," he says, slamming the door behind him. He pitches the thumb drive containing all the files he needs to read tonight -- for the fucking call at the crack of fucking dawn tomorrow morning -- across the room; the snake lifts a hand to catch it without even looking up from the book. Fucking snake.

"Yes," it says. "They are."

"Don't make the next thing I throw be a kitchen knife," he says, and stalks through the living room and into the bedroom.

Snake doesn't follow. Small mercies. He toes off his shoes, peels off his socks -- stepped in a puddle or twelve; they're soaked through -- strips off his jeans and t-shirt, wads them up and shoves them in the bottom of his closet. Pulls out a pair he hasn't been sweating in. Balls them up under his arm. Walks naked across the room, out of the bedroom, into the bathroom in the hallway. Snake doesn't look up. It annoys him; if he's going to be putting on a free floor show, the fucking snake should at least have the manners to watch it.

Shower's nice and hot. This building has good water pressure, at least, and he hasn't managed to run down the hot-water tank more than that once. Sometimes he tries. Never can. (Trying to reconstruct how long he'd lingered under the spray, that first night the snake had fucked him, until the icy water had brought him back to himself and gotten him going again. It still worries him that he doesn't know how long it had been.) Tonight he just showers off the sweat and the filth of the day, towels himself dry, pulls on the change of clothes.

The snake's still on his couch when he gets out of the shower. Hasn't moved its fucking feet, either. He walks past it, bonny and blithe and good and gay, straight into the galley kitchen. Pulls a knife out of the butcher block. Hefts it, assessingly. Leans over the pass-through into the living room, eyeballs the distance, gauges the necessary spin, pulls his arm back, and lets fly.

Snake catches that, too, but at least he tried. And it takes its fucking feet off the fucking table.

"Has honor been satisfied now?" it says, putting the book down and looking up. It turns the knife over and over in its fingers, sleek and dexterous. "Or shall I be on guard for projectile weapons for the remainder of the evening?"

"Depends," he says. He turns around (presenting his back to the snake, the snake holding a fucking knife in its hands, and that makes every single inch of his back crawl with remembered indignities that were never allowed to leave scars even before his skin was re-made, and he doesn't fucking let himself flinch). Opens the refrigerator. Takes out a beer. The only plus to living here: the concierge service doesn't give a fucking shit how old his ID says he is when they stock the kitchen. He won't let himself drink more than one even when there isn't a snake around, and even that so slowly that it's warm and flat by the time he's halfway through, but it's something.

"Oh?" The snake sounds amused. "On what?"

He nocks the mouth of the beer bottle on the edge of the counter, slams his fist down on it to pop off the cap, instead of trying to find where the fuck he left the bottle opener this time. Hey, they're not his countertops. "On whether or not you have your fucking feet back up on the table when I turn around again."

The snake laughs, soft and pleased. "No. I have been suitably chastised. Have you thought about what you'd like to do tonight?"

It makes his hackles rise. It's Delta, and that means he is going to have to fucking pay attention when all he really wants is to kick the fucking snake out of his fucking apartment and get some fucking rest. He can't remember the last time he slept the night straight through, but he's nearing his hard limit on just how long he can stay on high sentry without one night of passing out cold for twelve hours straight, and he'd really fucking prefer not to do it with company.

Oh, God, he can't fucking remember the last time he fucking slept.

But no. Test or ally, he doesn't know which, and he's going to have to watch what he says and does all fucking night to make sure that it could be interpreted in a positive light no matter what the objective facts of the situation are, underneath all those layers of posture and pretense, and he is so not in the fucking mood.

"Girls' night in," he says. "We'll pop popcorn. I'll paint your toenails. You can put my hair in curlers."

Behind him, he hears the snake laugh. Making the snake laugh hasn't been an entertaining game for a long fucking time. He turns around. Starts rummaging in the fridge, cataloguing which leftovers are still edible and which ones have turned into science experiments by now. He's on his guard -- is always on his guard when he's alone in a room with a fucking snake -- but he still jumps six feet straight up when a hand plucks the earpiece from his ear without any sense of presence in his space to give the motion away ahead of time.

Actually jumps, not just metaphorical-I-twitched-a-little jumping; he spins and swivels in mid-air, coming to rest with his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, his hands held up loosely and ready to attack if necessary. Hadn't heard it coming. Fucking snake's leaning one hip against the counter. Smirking at him. Fucker. Knew he'd jump. Should kill it in its sleep.

If he could. If it fucking slept. Which it doesn't. Kind of like him. He settles for a glare. Tries to make it convincing. Harder than he wants to admit; the adrenaline that spiked through his system is starting to recede, and it leaves him faded, exhausted, in its wake.

Fuck, he really needs a fucking night off. This weekend, he tells himself. Virta offered. He'll try to get Virta to bring him home. Best nights' sleep he's gotten so far have been in that hotel in Manhattan with Virta hogging all the fucking covers. Just gotta get through this first.

"You're not being watched in your apartment anymore," the snake says, tossing the earpiece onto the counter. "Not while one of us is here. But it's still safer if you leave that out for the duration of this conversation."

"Hadn't realized I was being watched at all," he says. Mind going a million RPM, stuck in the mud and spinning wheels. He'd known the earpiece was one of the mechanisms by which the snake was watching him. He's just not sure what it means that this snake wants him to take it out.

The snake sighs. "Jonathan. JD. Let's not be coy with each other. The time for that has long since passed. Your cover is excellent and your play-acting is impeccable; I've been quite impressed. But I find it very hard to believe that you so wholeheartedly wish to support the plan, and I find it even harder to believe that you haven't pieced together what the plan is. I am, thankfully, alone in this belief."

This close, the snake can probably hear his heart racing. No way around it. He'll have to hope (if this is a test) that the snake will chalk it up to anger. "Gimme a fucking break," he snarls. "I've been at your beck and fucking call for three months now. You think I'm not trustworthy, you tell me, and I'll fuck right off and leave you to do whatever you've got in mind without my help. Don't try pulling this lying-to-me-to-get-me-to-confess shit, because there's nothing to confess. And I'm more than a little insulted that you might think there is."

It closes its eyes. Briefly. In a human, he'd call that expression 'praying for strength'. "This isn't a test," it says. When it opens its eyes, it's optical illusion time again: snake-man-snake-man. No. Snake. Remember it's a snake. "I'm handing you more leverage over me than you could possibly hand me leverage over you. You are necessary. Unique. I, on the other hand, am simply another copy. Easily unmakeable. Easily disposable." It smiles. It's not an amused expression. "Perhaps you would even be permitted to kill me. As a reward for good behavior. I imagine you've been wanting to for quite some time."

All of his buttons. Lined up in one neat row. Push, push, push. (Snake-man-snake. Man. Snake.) Too much to hope for. Not enough to believe.

He lets the anger crack over him, crest and crash. No matter what the truth is, he's still fucking pissed. And he's had moments of rage in his life before, and he's had moments where the rage overtook him and possessed him, and he's had moments where his vision has gone grey at the center and white around the edges. But he's never done anything as stupid as what he does now, which is haul off and pop the snake straight in the teeth.

Whole lot of push behind the punch. He's been working out. The past few weeks he's been lifting more and more, savaging the punching bag until his knuckles would be cracked and bleeding if he weren't wearing gloves; it's been his only outlet. Pays off now. He actually knocks the snake off balance.

Didn't fucking see that coming, did you?

It stumbles backwards and loses that preternatural grace for one split second. Winds up on its ass, staring up at him. As he watches, he can see a tiny drop of blood welling from the corner of its lip, quickly licked away.

The pad of his palm, where he drove it into the snake's mouth, throbs. (You hit the soft parts with your hand; you hit the hard parts with a tool. His father's advice, long ago, when he'd still been in a place to listen.) He doesn't shake it. Doesn't want to look one bit less strong than he is. Strong enough to punch a snake in the face and get away with it. Confident enough to believe he could.

The cold sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that he always has around this particular snake is back.

The snake's sitting sprawled on the floor, arms propping itself up, watching him. (Snake. Man.) All traces of amusement gone, but no anger replacing it. Just contemplation. "Yes," it says, quietly. Almost to itself. "I suppose you would feel that it's owed you. If I'm not mistaken, you've kept track of each time we killed you and brought you back, and you won't call the debt even until you've made up the numbers."

It lifts the back of its hand to the corner of its mouth, looks down to make sure the bleeding has stopped. Has. Snake healing powers. Good for something, at least. Then it looks back up at him. "That's what I'm offering you a chance to do, you know."

"I'm not sure why you think I'd be more pissed off at one pissant Goa'uld than at the people who've fucked me over ever day since this charming little body was born," he snarls. Last-ditch attempt. He's pretty much fucked. If the snake is on to him, there's not much he can do. He might be standing over the snake, but the snake's between him and the door, and it moves faster than he can. It's proven that, morning after morning. Run after run.

The snake cocks its head. "Because while you understand revenge, you also understand duty. And the chance to combine duty with revenge would be irresistible."

It holds up a hand. Invitation: help-me-up. He stares at it. There's a little voice in the back of his head, whispering: it already could have killed you. At any point. At any moment.

He ignores it. Ignores the snake, too.

"Can you imagine, I wonder?" the snake says, softly. Quietly. "What it's like to realize that one's old habits are unsustainable. What it's like to find intellectual stimulation, after far too long. What it's like to know that you are one of many, and know that a part of you made the decision to create the whole of you, and feel that you are somehow ... wrong. Fractured. Lessened, and yet made more somehow. Left with some piece the others simply -- don't have. Don't want. The recognition that there is some other way. I believe you can imagine. I'm staking quite a bit on that belief, in fact. I don't believe I'm wrong."

He can't breathe. Like he was the one that got punched. Like he's the one laid out on the fucking floor.

The snake's voice is barely a whisper. It's still reaching up to him. "Human emotion. Human reactions. We exist on a continuum of understanding them, you know. There are two of us who have the best -- I'd say the only -- chance of seeing behind your masks. One of us has. The other hasn't. One of us wants to help you. The other one doesn't. Which means you should either trust me, or kill me first. I'm giving you the chance to do either."

He stares at it.

Fuck.

Waited too long. Let his cover slip too far. If he were what he says he is, he wouldn't have let the snake keep talking, would have protested or attacked or done ... something. He can't think of what. He's not sure if it means that he's still in shock or if his subconscious has decided to trust the snake or if he's lost his grasp on who he's supposed to be or if he just needs to crawl off into a hole somewhere and sleep for fifteen hours straight before he can think again.

Snake's still fucking staring back at him. Fuck. Fuck.

He reaches down. Snake clasps his wrist, not his hand. He puts a little heave into it. Snake doesn't need any help; fucker could have gotten up at any point. It's a metaphor, blah blah. It climbs to its feet, tugs at its jeans, rocks its jaw on the hinges, rocks its neck back and forth (crack-crack-pop). Like anyone would, after a fall like that.

Then it reaches up and backhands him. Half strength, so it only sends him reeling into the wall, not flying through it. He's got just enough time to think fuck for what feels like the eight billionth time -- a test after all, and he failed it. Until he hears the snake say, "And don't fucking punch me in the fucking face again."

"Don't fucking tempt me to," he snarls, face against the floor. Pushes himself up. His whole body aches.

When he looks up, the snake is holding a hand out again. Down to him, this time. The roles, reversed. "Come on," it says. "We have a lot to discuss, and not much time."

Yeah. That's what he's fucking afraid of.

*

There are very few things that feel like jumping out of a plane except jumping out of a plane. This is one of them.

Snake's back on the couch, which means he can't sit there too. He's not going to get that close. Even the armchair isn't far enough away. He stands in the middle of the living room for a second (too slow, too stupid), then sinks down to the floor, about as far from the snake as he can get and still be in the same room. Folds his legs up into kekka fuza, but no: lotus position means he wouldn't be able to move fast enough if he has to. He settles for seiza instead; he's experienced enough that his feet and knees won't go numb too quickly if he winds up kneeling for long.

He can feel the familiar posture relaxing him. (Insteps of his feet flat against the floor. Weight balanced on his heels. Spine straight, head up; knees slightly parted, palms resting on the tops of his thighs with fingers held loosely together. You can move quickly from seiza when you need to, no matter how submissive it looks to the untrained eye.)

The snake watches him. He gets the impression it's amused.

"Talk," he says. The position reminds him to be mindful of his breathing. (Out of practice, he realizes, suddenly. Fuck. How long has it been since he's made time for shikantaza? The fact he can't remember worries him.)

The snake puts its feet back up on the table. He doesn't bother to protest. "I'll start with what I believe to be the truth. I won't ask you to confirm or deny; I'm well aware you don't yet trust me yet."

"Ever," he says.

And yeah. The snake can pretend all it wants that it's the one giving up all the information here, but he knows better. He's far enough away that the snake probably can't sense his heartbeat, and if he pays enough attention to his breathing he can probably avoid giving anything away through changes in respiration, but no matter how good his poker face is, he still won't be able to keep from offering up a thousand autonomic cues the snake will take as confirmation. Fuck. Can't be helped. Keep going.

The snake rests its hands on the couch cushions, wide and open. Nothing to hide here. "Yet," it repeats. (He wants to wipe that perfect assurance off its face.) "I believe you are here as an agent of the SGC -- or, at the very least, as a personal agent of General O'Neill. I believe you are here to obtain information on the reason behind the Goa'uld presence on Earth, and I believe you are here to find ways to seek out and destroy that presence, to the best of your ability. I believe you are attempting to convince my brothers that you are so eager to help them in an attempt to gather as much information as you can about the extent of that presence, in preparation for its destruction, and the reason you haven't yet employed whatever methods you have no doubt been planning for the past three months to kill us all is because you aren't sure if you have all pieces of the puzzle."

It's watching him. He schools his face, holds himself still and steady. Breathe. "Interesting fairy tale you've got there, Skippy."

Anger flashes across the snake's face: one split second, gone, like lightning arcing from cloud to cloud right in front of your cockpit. "Shut up," it says. "We don't have time for your attitude. You've already come within inches of fucking yourself irreparably."

Oddly, it's the snake's use of profanity that has him shutting his mouth on the protest he's halfway on the way to making. (Breathe. He can have emotions later. Not yet.)

The snake continues. (Cranky and irritable and fucking hell, it sounds like Daniel's frustrated sniping whenever he takes his affable-idiot act one step too far.) "And I wouldn't care, except if you disappear, your people will throw everything they have at us until we're all nothing more than a very small stain on the sidewalk, and I have no intention of allowing that to happen to me. I argued against the actions they took against the agent you sent last year for that very reason. I knew it would bring you, or someone like you, creeping back in. The one thing no other System Lord ever realized about the Tau'ri is that you might not hold as much power, you might not hold as much territory, but there's one thing you do hold that makes your victory inevitable in the long term: tenacity."

As he watches (breathe), the snake gets up, paces back and forth. Just a few steps. Keeps the coffeetable between him and it. Doesn't get between him and the door. Almost like it's trying to fucking have manners. "What's your saying?" it snaps. "'We don't leave people behind?' The rest of my brothers don't realize that they aren't working against a planet, or even an organization; they're working against people. The minute they ordered your agent killed, it was over. They should have been watching for treachery ever since. You confused them. Feel lucky for that. Your story was ridiculous enough to be believable, and you've done a miraculous job upholding it since you arrived. But with your first fuckup, they will have you killed, and that will bring your people in full force, and they will not rest until they destroy us all."

It looks down at him, and its face isn't cold or distant or haughty at all. It's defiant. Scared. "I'm not going to let your mistakes kill me," it says. "So I propose a bargain. A trade. My full and complete cooperation, with all your works and plans, in exchange for my life and my freedom."

He opens his mouth. Doesn't know what he's about to say, but it doesn't much matter; the snake holds up a hand, and he closes his mouth again. "Don't answer yet," it says. "I wouldn't believe any answer given so quickly. I hadn't intended to bring you this bargain until I thought you were readying to make your move. But there's one other piece of information you need to know, and I don't think you've figured it out yet. I give you this as a gift. A proof of my intentions. You're being watched. You've been watched since the beginning. You've realized this, or you're not as smart as I know you are. If you're smart, you've also realized that my brothers and I are not the only Goa'uld present on your planet, or even in this company. I'm certain you've spotted some of them. I'm also certain you haven't spotted others. You've likely been counting on internal warfare to keep the Goa'uld you've identified from sharing information with my others. Under any other circumstances, you might be right. But this --" The snake's hand flicks up and down, indicating the skin it's wearing, the skin it's stolen. "This is not the only appearance we -- they -- wear. Host body and Goa'uld can be cloned separately."

There's a desert in his mouth, and it's going to choke him. His skin is crawling. Spiders. It can't --

It drops back down onto the couch, looking weary. Spent. Rubs a hand over its face. "In fact, the first clone made was the Goa'uld alone. A ... willingly complicit host was found. A young man. Tau'ri. One quite lacking in anything so troublesome as a conscience. In exchange for eternal life, the host provided the information about the Tau'ri that would prove to be so useful. An experiment in partnership, an experiment in applying lessons learned from the Tok'ra. It has proven to be a surprisingly effective tactic; no Tau'ri who is not host or former host has been able to identify the pair as Goa'uld." The snake's eyes are dark on his face. "You haven't."

His hands are shaking. Too much to hope it's not visible against the dark denim of his jeans. "You're lying," he says. Voice doesn't shake, even though the hands are.

The snake shakes its head. "No," it says. It almost sounds regretful. "I told you in the kitchen: there are two of us who have the best chance of seeing behind your masks. No others. And you've come dangerously close to handing him the keys to your little masquerade, and you haven't even realized, because you think he's your friend."

It stands again. "I give you this. A gift. A token of my good faith. Several of us believe you can be trusted; several of us believe that you can't. There's one last test being planned. Your Virta will come to you, bearing proof the man you killed was seeking to defect to the SGC and bring all the information he'd collected along with him. That's why you were sent to kill him. Virta will claim to have read all the files. To want to find a way to get that information into the hands of the angels. He'll claim to have finally found the point at which his conscience outweighs his greed; he'll claim that helping hand his planet over into the hands of an alien conqueror is too much, even for him. He'll ask your help, but he'll say he'll break the story on his own if you don't assist him. And then he'll step back to see what you do. Whether you help him, or come to us to betray him. What he won't say is that your life will depend on giving the correct answer. And if I hadn't warned you, you might not have."

It flicks its eyes across him: up, down. No hint of what it thinks it sees shows in its face. Pity. It would be useful to catch the reflection, because he has no fucking idea what his face might be showing; the sick cold twisting feeling in his stomach has overtaken everything else and he knows he's lost any semblance of control he might have had.

"Make it the right answer," the snake says, quietly. "And consider my offer. I'll be in touch."

It lets itself out.

*

-- blank.

Halfway down the hallway. Into the bathroom and --

-- blank.

On his knees. Seiza again. Less perfect this time. Too busy. Dry heaves; glad he didn't eat too --

-- blank.

Water running. The shower. He's in it. Huddled in the corner. Fully clothed. Soaking wet. The water's brisk and bracing. Ran down the hot-water tank again.

He unfolds himself. Slowly; he aches everywhere he moves. He watches his own hand as it reaches out and shuts off the tap. His mouth tastes like toothpaste. Remembered to brush his teeth; didn't remember to strip himself naked. In the silence caused by the lack of running water, he pulls the t-shirt over his head. It lands on the tile with a sick wet thud, the sound of a silenced bullet entering human flesh. Follows it with his jeans. Wet, they're a bitch to peel off.

No. Can't leave them there. He forces himself to stoop from the knees and pick the clothes up, wring them out, drape them over the shower door. Drip. Drip.

The inside of his head feels hollow, empty. Echoing.

Take stock. Inventory. Cold, wet: those are fixable. Prescription number one: a towel. He wraps himself up in it and takes himself back into the bedroom to find a pair of sweats. No shirt. He can't bear the thought of anything binding his wrists, his throat. Knees and elbows shaky. Low blood sugar. He's not eating enough. Hasn't been for a while. Prescription number two: food. He walks through the living room, into the kitchen, and methodically eats the last two slices of cold pizza from the refrigerator, door open, carefully not letting his eyes rest anywhere in the kitchen but on the pint of shrimp fried rice from last week that he's been meaning to throw out. Disorientation, haziness: shock. Understandable, really. He's been under a great deal of stress.

Prescription number three: a single ounce of Scotch, straight from the bottle in the cabinet he hasn't let himself open yet. It burns on the way down. He folds his hands around the edge of the counter, closes his eyes, and wills himself present, wills himself into his body, until he can trace the alcohol's path. It works. A little, at least. By the time the fire reaches his stomach, he's not feeling so much like he's sleepwalking anymore.

Eventually, he straightens.

Has to save this somehow. Has to save himself somehow. Back into the living room. He drags one of the cushions off the Ikea-monstrosity couch and drops it next to the wall. Arranges himself kekka fuza. Facing the wall. Folds his hands into their proper mudra. He usually doesn't bother, but times like this, when you've been failing to keep proper discipline for far too fucking long, you pull out all the stops and find refuge in what formality you can summon.

Breathe.

He centers his breath in his chest, extends his senses throughout his body. Examining each perception, one by one, in turn. Here the throbbing of his bruised cheekbone, relic of the snake cracking him into the wall. Here the ache of his shins, finally starting to protest against the abuses he's been heaping upon them for months now. Here the lingering flavor of the Scotch, rich and woody, ghosting around the base of his sinuses; here the taste at the back of his throat, acid and sour, that nothing can overwrite but time; here the muscles of his stomach moving, protesting the grease he's fed them.

He embraces the totality of them all, examines them for what they can tell him -- you are a human; you are alive; you inhabit this body -- and sets them aside. They aren't important now; he needs to go deeper.

Eventually he realizes the numbness he's feeling has given way to rage. (At himself. At Ba'al. At this whole fucking situation.) He examines it as well. It's been quietly building for a while; he hadn't noticed. Doesn't surprise him that he hadn't. The self he had been in days past would have rather died than spend this much time with his thoughts. He's spent the past three months trying to make himself back into that self.

He can see it now, though, and it isn't going to serve any purpose. He breathes it away. Slowly. Perceive, understand, embrace, bid farewell. Takes him a while. (Harder than it used to be.) Look for anything else that might lie behind it, anything else that might prevent him from getting to where he needs to be. Fucking hell, it's a mess in there. Psyches are like planes; skip the regular maintenance and the things won't get off the ground.

He's looking now, and Clancy's face swims up to greet him, eyes accusing, out of the iron vault of his faults and failures he's buried far away. O my brother, o my brother, who has not fulfilled thy days! I will not kill -- come, let us go out into the field -- he had to, he had to, no choice, necessity is a breach against the laws of the understanding and necessity is a fucking bitch but oh, his fall, his failure --

Breathe.

Let it go, let it go, put it away. (Not yet, not now, not over.) Job to fucking do. Go back to the beginning. He'd always amused his teachers by how concrete his metaphors are. But a mind is just a computer with neurons instead of circuits, and it might not be easy to learn the programming language, but it's possible. His works best when he imagines things as real; he doesn't see images (some of his fellow postulants described full-sensory immersive experiences), but he feels his constructs in his mind, heavy to the touch, possessing shape. Form. Reality. Weight.

So. A box, maybe. Packed tight with tangles. His answer is at the bottom. He makes himself feel his hands lifting up the first layer, setting it apart, spreading out the knots and whorls of interconnected fact for his examination.

Breathe.

What he thinks are not words; his perception is too deep for that. Concepts, perhaps. Ideas. Implications, understandings. Things that are true because they make up the fabric of the reality he is moving through at the moment. He stills his mind (calm, calm) and lets the understanding seep through him.

The imagined snarls beneath his imagined hands straighten out into equations, period-doubling bifurcations endlessly branching into chaos. Each node a potential point of trust, a potential error to be made. Only one path clear through to the goal. Either the snake (and he needs a better name for it, but Delta will do) is telling him the truth, or it is lying to him. Truthfulness in one element does not predict truthfulness in all elements. Its story is composed of a dozen points where two sets of incompatible motivations might result in the same set of final action, and he can't tease out the reality hidden below. Free fall either means free from falling or falling freely, and there's no way of knowing which is which.

If Delta is telling him the truth, Virta is Ba'al. Has been, the entire time. Now that he's brought himself this far under, he can consider the matter, without the overwhelming instinctive roil of revulsion. What if. What if Cacirelli isn't the snake on the team after all. What if it's been Virta all along, keeping an eye on him, the one snake to try friendship and ingratiation instead of coercion and control. What if Ba'al, the original Ba'al, had managed to do what Delta said: somehow see fit to share instead of conquer, cede some ground to make up some other.

(Could be Virta's a snake and Delta's just lying about the cooperation. Nothing of the host survives, and they've proven it for a lie again and again, but they've never been able to get a definitive answer about how much the snake can draw on the host without the host's cooperation. Skills, yeah, Memories, yeah. Personality? What is personality, anyway? Ask Carter, ask Skaara, ask any of their few and scattered success stories, the ones that haven't met their maker or sailed on to the other shore, because the snake that fucked him over never left a calling card and he can't fucking remember. Won't find an answer there. No matter how important it is to know.)

If Virta is Ba'al, he needs to know how much of the Virta he'd considered a friend is Ba'al and how much is the host shining through, because Delta is Ba'al and Delta wants to be friends too. He'd trusted Virta. As much as he can trust anyone at the moment.

Either Delta wants to warn him against trusting the untrustworthy, or Delta wants to shatter what (little) support he's managed to find. If Virta is not Ba'al, he cannot trust Delta. If Virta is Ba'al, he may be able to trust Delta. It's not definite proof. But if Virta is Ba'al, it will also have proven that his ability to decide whom he can trust is completely fucking broken.

(Stop. Breathe. Anger has been set aside, even anger at self. No place for it here. He makes himself imagine the box he has built to hold all the pieces of this mission, concentrate until he can almost imagine the grain of the wood beneath his conjured mental hands. He has put the rage elsewhere for the moment. He'll deal with it later. When he has to. Until then, he will hold the box, and fill it only with what he can afford to allow himself to perceive.)

(A mind is just a computer, with neurons instead of circuits. It will listen to you once you learn to program it. It is possible to instruct it to ignore any data that does not pertain to the problem at hand. Don't think about what happens when the program crashes.)

If Virta is Ba'al, then Virta's overtures to him might be the test. If. If Virta's going to be the test, then Delta's offer to him might not be. If.

There's nothing saying they might not both be. Test and trap, all rolled into one, another twist in the noose he can feel tightening around his neck.

Eventually, he becomes aware his alarm is singing from the bedroom. (Backup only. He's never needed an alarm clock in his life; the clock in his head wakes him when he tells it to. But he's always set it, just in case.) Means it's 0600. He unknots himself from kekka fuza and stands; his ankle rolls, and he catches himself against the wall. He's been sitting for a long damn time.

He goes to turn off the alarm. Doesn't need another shower, but he can't skip his morning run. Changes in behavior look suspicious. Can't afford to look suspicious. Can take it easy today, though; a couple of miles' jog should suffice. (It'll leave him time to catch up on his reading, too. He has a conference call scheduled at 0930 and he didn't prep a fucking thing he was supposed to.) He's careful to stretch out before he goes. Can't afford an injury, either.

The run's a nightmare. He feels like he's slogging through mud; his time in meditation has left him with a growing awareness of his body breaking down beneath him, punished by lack of sleep and the lengths to which he's been driving himself. Slows him down. Eventually, he becomes aware the anger is returning. He lets it stay this time. Maybe it'll keep him going for a while. He can't hold the clarity of no-mind all the time; the anger will at least lend him acuity, if he can avoid letting it rule him completely.

If.

Eventually, he becomes aware that he might have the first fragments of a plan.

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