Teal'c had one arm around Jack's waist and one around Sam. Daniel was constantly amazed at the strength of the Jaffa as he had easily born the weight of his two teammates. Jack was protesting weakly, trying to stand on his own, but Teal'c would not release him, knowing full well that Jack had not sufficiently recovered.

Sam was otherwise occupied, studying the small vial of the blue liquid she had been allowed to take with her. Jack had half-heartedly made a grab for it a couple of times. He may have been weakened, but not enough to stop torturing Sam.

Daniel was dialing Earth's address when he heard Jack call his name.

"What's up?" Daniel asked, his hand poised over the last symbol.

Jack was looking across at Sam, his brow furrowed. "Tell me again what exactly that stuff is?" A concern was tugging at Jack's conscious mind like a puppy tearing at his pants leg.

"Tam said it was like a conductor for their telepathic abilities. It allowed her to influence our thoughts and acted like a dampening field from outside distractions." Sam's eyes were full an eager light that betrayed her excitement to get the liquid back to her lab and start experimenting.

"Doctor Esche is at the Beta site, right?" Jack asked. Daniel was still paused by the DHD and the symbols winked out. He grunted and started dialing Earth again. "Daniel, wait a second!" Jack snapped, noticing what he was doing. Daniel had again dialed everything but the last symbol and turned to Jack with annoyance.

"For another two months. Why?" Sam asked, her confusion evident.

"She's our bio-weapons guru right? I think she should take a look at this before we bring it back home." Jack was starting to feel decidedly odd, being forced to talk to Sam across the barrel chest of Teal'c, while leaning drunkenly sideways. He wished fervently for the feeling to return to his lower extremities enough to stand on his own.

"Sir, I'd really like a crack at this." Sam had curled her fist around the vial and was hugging it to her chest protectively. Jack thought that she looked like someone was trying to take away a precious toy.

"We have no way of knowing if we've been released to be plague rats." Jack took an experimental step away from Teal'c, who released his grip but kept a wary arm out. "I don't want to find out the hard way that that stuff was not what it was purported to be."

"But-"

"Carter!" Jack snapped, not in the mood for an argument. "It goes to Beta first. That's an order. We'll drop it off there and then head back to Earth to report in." Sam looked like she wanted to protest further, but she was a good soldier and her arm was up, hand holding the vial out towards him before he'd even asked her. Jack took it and slotted it into his breast pocket. He flicked his gaze to Daniel. "Beta site." He instructed.

Daniel nodded once and started dialing.

xxxxx

Doctor Pandora Esche had been assigned to Beta site to test a new virus that SG-14 had brought back from PK3-234. It had turned out to be fairly harmless and she had been officially bored for about three weeks, so relished a chance to study the item brought by SG-1.

She'd placed the vial in a rack on her desk and was setting up her instruments when a head poked around the corner of her lab. "Coffee, Pandy?" Seargeant Anderson asked He'd been teasingly dubbed her personal bodyguard but Esche had had no particular objections to the handsome young soldier being her shadow.

"You read my mind." Pandy grinned. She slid off her stool, following Anderson out of the lab.

Unnoticed was the tiny crack in the bottom of the glass vial, or the liquid that began to seep out.

xxxxx

The humanoid form the creature had been using to imitate life now lay on the bottom of the tank, its usefulness spent. The creature had been fascinated by those it studied but also knew that the fabled Tau'ri were a greater threat to its existence than the Goa'uld had ever been. The Tau'ri were resourceful and resilient but were also willing to sacrifice.

The creature and its kind had been waiting too long for their chance to take the Universe for themselves to be stopped by such an ineffectual race. It was grateful that the Tau'ri had decimated the Goa'uld population so effectively, removing their last obstacle.

The creature stretched out, shattering the glass barrier it had been forced into and pooled across the floor. It allowed itself to fill the room, fanning outwards as its mass grew, devouring the air around it and replacing it with its own form. Soon, the world it now inhabited would be unrecognizable, completely submerged and encased within a living being.

Its growth rate was geometric as it devoured everything in its path, having been confined for too long. Spreading outwards at a faster rate, it removed its essence from the other creatures it had used, guards, the Tau'ri had called them. These forms also flopped lifelessly to the ground to be stripped and consumed along with everything else.

Somewhere out amongst the stars, the creature hoped that its brethren would be doing the same to the Tau'ri homeworld.

xxxxx

"She was most fascinated by the concept of sacrifice. I guess that's why she was sorting through our more traumatic memories." Daniel was explaining. The debriefing had been going for about two hours now, and they'd barely scratched the surface of what had happened to them. Most puzzling was the fact that to three quarters of SG-1, years had passed. All were having a hard time adjusting to the concept.

Especially Hammond.

He was about to ask another in a long line of questions he wasn't quite sure he wanted to know the answers to, when the klaxons began to sound. Instinctively, all in the room rose, making their way towards the Control room.

"What's going on?" Hammond barked, confusion on his features to see that the Stargate was sitting placidly. He'd been expecting unauthorized offworld activation and a spinning 'gate. Walter was bent over a monitor and when he moved aside, Hammond and the members of SG-1 could see a grainy shot of Doctor Esche. Jack moved forward and thumbed the switch on the radio. He looked back briefly to Walter and was concerned to see how pale the man looked.

"Doctor Esche, always a pleasure to see you, but I'm assuming something's wrong." Jack's tone was light but there was worry underneath, barely concealed. In an emergency, it was protocol for the highest-ranking member of the military to call in and for a civilian doctor to be using the emergency channel was unheard of except in the direst of circumstance.

Sam moved forward so Esche could see her in frame also. She'd been a friend of the doctor since she had started at the SGC and knew in an emergency it was important to see a face you trusted. There was no relief on Esche's features though as she looked from Jack to Sam and back again. She was hunched over the microphone at her end and her eyes were dark.

"We have a…foothold isn't exactly the right way of putting it, but we need you to lock the Beta site out of the dialing computer." Esche said, her voice trembling slightly. Jack blinked and looked sideways at Sam, whose face had drained of colour.

"Say again?" Jack requested. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked back to see Hammond. He moved aside, a small part of him grateful that Hammond was the man in charge.

"Doctor Esche, what's going on?" General Hammond demanded.

"The Beta site has become compromised. We've already sustained heavy losses and the Stargate is now unreachable. Those that dialed out to allow me to send this message are…" Esche closed her eyes for a second and Sam could see clearly even though the vision was blurry, that the younger woman was shaking. "I repeat, the Beta site is compromised. It has become a no-go zone."

"Doctor Esche, what is your situation? Are you currently under fire?"

"No Sir." Esche clarified. "It was…it was the substance SG-1 brought through. It's destroying everything, growing at an exponential rate. It kills everything it touches. At its current growth rate I can estimate that it will cover the entire surface of this planet in a matter of days."

Jack felt himself grow cold. The substance SG-1 brought through. The words echoed through his brain like a death knell.

"Sir, the Stargate will disengage in about thirty seconds. Please don't send anyone here by ship. You need to give the order. No-go zone." Esche repeated. Her trembling had ceased and her eyes were firm.

"That bad?" Sam breathed. Esche's eyes ticked to her and there was real fear present.

"Just think liquid replicators." Esche said, her voice hollow.

"I'll give the order." Hammond agreed gravely.

"Thank you Sir." Esche still looked frightened, but mollified. She looked behind herself and faintly they could hear glass breaking and a man screaming. Esche turned back to the monitor. "I just thank god that you didn't take this to Earth." She said and the connection between them died, leaving the four members of SG-1, Hammond and a handful of techs staring at a blank screen, horror and grief reflected on all faces present.

"Lock the Beta site out of the dialing computer." Hammond ordered, his face falling into careful neutrality. "I have a phone call to make."

xxxxxx

"I'm not going to tell you not to blame yourself." Sam turned at the sound of Jack's voice. She'd been sitting on the bench in front of her locker, staring into space. She'd had one boot on and was lacing it when she'd wound down like a clockwork doll, finding herself unable to complete such a mundane task as putting on her shoes when something so horrible had happened.

"What?" Sam blinked as Jack lowered himself on the bench beside her.

"We're all responsible for this. How many times were we going to bring alien crap through the Stargate that bit us in the ass before we wised up?" Jack's tone was bitter and he slammed a fist against his own locker, making Sam jump. "The difference is, this time we weren't lucky and there was no miraculous save."

"I wasn't blaming myself, and you shouldn't either." Sam admonished. She looked up and saw Daniel standing in the doorway, looking stricken. "Neither should you." She said, her voice stern. "We bring alien crap through because we need to. We opened Pandora's box seven years ago and there is no slamming the lid. The only thing that happens when you do that is you trap hope inside." Sam finished lacing her boot and pulled the other one on. "I want to live in a world where hope is out here, with us."

"But-"

"But nothing Daniel! You, Jack and Teal'c are all carrying around enough guilt for things that aren't your fault as it is. We took a risk and it turned out badly, horribly in fact. I will grieve, of course I will, but I'll be damned if I'm going to add this to our list of sins."

"Sam-"

"I'll see you in two days Sir. We'll go on our mission and we'll find some weird alien artifact that will possibly be beneficial in our fight against the Goa'uld and we will take a risk. We might end up with you pinned to a wall or Daniel in a loony bin or me in a computer, but we also might end up with the way to win. If we don't, we're disrespecting the people who died on Beta."

Sam left the locker room, brushing passed Daniel. She waited till she was down the corridor and around the corner before she let the tears start.

Back in the locker room, Jack and Daniel looked at each other. There would be guilt for all of them, but a part of them also wanted Sam to be right.

Jack opened his locker. He'd lost a son, a lot of friends and three years now.

He decided he could hold onto hope for a little while longer.

xxxxxx

"Sir?" Daniel stood in the doorway of General Hammond's office hesitantly. Hammond's hand was on the handset of the red phone and Daniel wasn't sure if he'd just hung up, or was about to use it. Hammond's hand dropped away and he looked up.

"You should go home, son. You look like hell."

Daniel chuckled briefly. "Thank you sir. I was on my way. I just wanted to say that I was sorry."

"Doctor Jackson, you have nothing to apologise for. You thought you'd found an ally."

"I should have sensed…something." Daniel admonished.

"Son, I would expect you to if you were dealing with humans. I don't expect you to be able to tell when an alien race you have never encountered before is yanking your chain." Hammond said gently. His hand drifted over to the normal phone and he pulled a list of names towards him with his other hand.

"Sir?" Daniel asked as Jack appeared at his elbow, clothed in his dress blues. "We'd like to tell Doctor Esche's family. She had a sister who lives only half an hour from here."

"Of course." Hammond nodded.

Jack put a hand up on Daniel's shoulder. "Let's go then." He said.

Hammond, alone in his office, lifted the handset of his phone.

The concept of sacrifice was something he was acutely aware of. Preparing to call the families of those that had died on Beta, Hammond knew he was also its harbinger.

He dialed the phone and a gentle woman's voice answered.

"Mrs Anderson? This is General Hammond. I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Sacrifice.

Hammond lived with it everyday, but to him it was called MIA.