Chapter Four – Hypnotising Black

(Authors note – they go to a different planet because from the presence of Harry on the ship the ship stayed connected for the full 12 hours to the planets instead of connecting, retrieving the data and then ending the connection and returning to FTL so the distance the ship had travelled was less by the time the humans boarded)

The team returned from the planets surface around 7 hours later, all carrying their respective hauls which consisted of several gallons of water, a variety of fruits and vegetables and the carcass of an animal that looked somewhat like a boar, though the scientists who were on the mission had unanimously voted that the world wasn’t suitable for habitation due to the presence of large avian creatures that had cost them two magazines of rounds just to take out one of. Talks soon shifted to the subject of the stranger was bought up.

‘Did you find the robed guy when we were planet side?’ Eli asked bringing all other conversations to a standstill until Chloe spoke up.

‘Yeah I found him, I just got back from his room’ she announced ‘But… he’s pretty sick’

‘Yes he was coughing when he was here before’ Rush claimed in a tone of voice that showed disinterest in something that they already knew.

‘Not that kind of sick…’ Chloe hesitantly started ‘The… crazy kind of sick’ she continued, clearly hesitant to use the word ‘when I found him he was arguing with himself as if he was different people’ her statement causing a slightly uncomfortable silence before TJ spoke up;

‘If he’s been on this ship a long time by himself then its not really that much of a stretch to assume that he formed coping measures to deal with it’

‘But how did he come to be here anyway?’ Eli asked after a few seconds.

‘I would imagine’ started Rush ‘that when the stargate opened on the world he was on he stepped through and found himself here, but why he didn’t leave and go to another planet is beyond me right now’

‘Well if he knows something about this ship then we need to speak to him’ stated Colonel Young but before he could continue Chloe spoke up

‘I will go and get him’ she quickly volunteered and continued before anyone could argue ‘he tried to help me earlier, I'm sure he doesn’t mean any harm’ looking at the Colonel with pleading eyes before he finally relented;

‘Fine, but if your not back within an hour were coming to get you.. here take this, I assume you know how to use it?’ Young asked while handing Chloe a side arm, receiving a nod in return before she quickly set off down the left passage way towards the strangers ‘home’

Upon entering the make shift room she saw that he was no longer sleeping in the bed, or was even in the room for that matter but when she turned around she instantly jumped back a foot while clutching her chest as the stranger had been stood right behind her.

‘What are you doing in here!?’ the stranger asked angrily, his demeanour completely different than before.

‘I was looking for you… I wanted to talk to you and so do the people that I'm here with’ Chloe stated in a quiet voice as she took in the angry look in his eyes.

‘No! you shouldn’t be here! This is my ship!’ he yelled out causing Chloe to back up in fear before he clutched his head in pain before seemingly trying to shake that part of him away.

‘No… no, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry.. I’ve been alone… alone for so long… don’t go, but I’ll be better.. ok?’ he stated, his voice back to the one he had used when trying to comfort he earlier.

‘Its okay, I'm not going anywhere’ she started in a reassuring tone ‘I'm Chloe Armstrong… what's your name?’

‘Name?... I..I cant remember’ he replied before clutching his head and pacing ‘why cant I remember?’ he continued clearly getting more frustrated and aggravated with every passing second. ‘Why cant I remember… I remember everything and everyone else so why cant I remember my name!’ he thought to himself furiously before settling on a name for the time being as he recognized the worry and pity on the woman's face infront of him ‘Call me Black I guess’ Harry stated thinking of his godfather who had died saving him nearly three years ago, taking several deep breaths to shake off his frustration.

‘That’s great… and I'm sure it will come back to you in time’ Chloe replied in a placating voice before continuing ‘Okay good.. now do you feel up to meeting my friends?’ receiving a short nod in return she led the way back to the gate room with ‘Black’ in tow, stopping off once or twice as he mumbled a quiet argument to himself, clearly trying to bring up the resolve to meet with the others.

They arrived several minutes later to a sea of curious faces as Chloe stepped up to make introductions;

‘This is Colonel Everett Young, Lieutenant Matthew Scott, Lieutenant Tamara Johansen, Dr Nicolas Rush and Eli Wallace, everyone this is Black’ her introductions went mostly ignored but Harry's mind filed the full names for later in favour for staring transfixed at a metal cylinder that had been revealed when a panel had been opened, though Harry had never noticed it before.

As he stepped forward and knelt down beside the broken machinery he heard Dr Rush talking to him;

‘Do you know what it is? Have you seen others like it? Lying around or, or in crates?’ he asked hopefully. But Harry wasn’t really listening, the liquid in front of him had managed to brush past the logical side of his mind and had left him with only one thought in his mind, that the black gunk looked just like a potion, it was this thought that drove his finger forward and before anyone could stop him caused him to dip his finger into the black ooze before placing it back in his mouth hoping for some magical effect he was instead rewarded with his most violent coughing fit yet as he struggled for breath after consuming the toxin.

‘Crap’ TJ whispered to herself as she saw the strange man know known as Black inexplicably ingest some of the C02 scrubber residue before rushing forward pulling out a set of stethoscope as she went, quickly placing them upon his back she listened to his lungs and found them clearly struggling, indicating a deeper problem than simply ingestion of residue. But her now patient didn’t seem to want to cooperate and before she knew what happened he had shot up, lifted a panel off the floor and disappeared into the service ducts and out of sight.

After a brief discussion with Colonel Young, Chloe was leading Lt Scott and TJ towards Harry's room when she stopped short causing TJ to bump into her before she saw what had caused the sudden stop, just around the corner they just came round were two brand new looking C02 scrubbers laid out in the hall.

‘Colonel Young’ Lt Scott called into his radio before getting a reply and continuing ‘We are a couple of decks down and coming near to Blacks room and there are two new C02 scrubbers in the hall infront of us… Chloe informs me that they weren’t here earlier, over’

‘Excellent.. I will send a couple of people to collect them.. carry on with your original objective, this young man clearly knows quite a bit about this ship, Over’

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Continuing on they quickly came upon his room and TJ immediately set to work as they found him deathly pale, his lips now black from the toxin and he appeared to have been coughing up blood before passing out and as TJ started to asses him he was shown to also be suffering from mild tremors and had increased blood pressure.

His condition was out of her held equipments league and it was quickly decided to bring him to the make shift medical bay that had been slapped together while the SG team had been down on the planet.

As Scott lowered Harry's shaking form down onto the bed his robe was removed to get better access giving those present their first sight of the state of Harry's body, his entire chest, back and front, was littered with scars, some looking like they were caused by whip and others by blade.

After staring in shock at the heavily scared man TJ got to work and started to run scans using one of the remaining unbroken medical scanners the SG now had access too, idly thinking how useful it might have been if the SG teams had had these a decade ago when they started going through the gate to other worlds. The analysis quickly came back that he was not only suffering from Carbon dioxide poisoning from ingesting the residue but also had several underlying infections and was severely lacking in several key nutrients. Injecting him with several doses of their limited supplies she was happy to see his tremors subsiding and his breathing even out.

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It was several hours later when Harry awoke to a wave of dizziness as he felt the computer strapped to his wrist send pulses through his arm he quickly righted himself, fighting the nausea that came from the action, and hastily tried to find the reason for the warning his computer was giving him, his eyes widening as the actions the SG personnel were taking were bought to his attention.

Scrambling out of the makeshift hospital bed he was bought to the ground by another wave of nausea and the mild lack of feeling in his legs, his loud crash bought him to TJ’s attention instantly as she tried to usher him back into bed. But ignoring her protests he pulled himself back to his feet and after realising he would never make it to the command room in time focused on his magic and within seconds felt it responding to his desire as thin blue threads of magic materialised around his legs before wrapping themselves around him allowing him to control his own body as if it were a puppet.

The sudden appearance of the strange blue strands that somehow enabled him to walk left TJ shocked still for several seconds before she heard the door opening and her mind finally rebooted as she quickly made her way to follow him. She caught up with him just as he was entering the command room, for a sick guy he sure did move fast.

‘Don’t… don’t do that… that’s not’ Harry started making his presence known, before struggling to carry on as he was clearly having trouble talking ‘that’s not the air… the symbol is wrong… corrupted database… the symbols for air… and water are switched… you would vent the water tanks into space…’ he finally managed to get out before coughing several times.

Gently pushing Dr Rush out of the way Harry showed his intimate knowledge of the system as he quickly moved through half a dozen commands before finding the one he wanted and activated the air purging program that they had been trying to activate to reinitialise the C02 scrubbing system they had just finished fixing with the parts Harry had left out for them.

‘You read ancient then?’ Rush asked in a curious tone as he had watched Harry's ease of use with the system.

Rush’s question again went unanswered as the magic that Harry used to puppet his movements wore off with the dozens of blue threads suddenly reappearing only to all snap with great strain letting Harry fall to his knees and painfully collide with the solid metal floor beneath him with a sickening crunch. Only Colonel Young had noticed how the man known as Black had barely winced upon collision and was able to pull himself around to a semi seated position without too much visible pain. As everyone else was clearly shocked by the strange threads appearance, but you didn’t make the rank of Colonel without being able to notice things like that.

‘Crap’ TJ once again whispered as she pulled up the somewhat baggy trousers that Harry was wearing, idly noting that his legs held as many scars as his torso, before revealing his knees which were visibly shattered, with several pieces actually breaking through the skin, ‘With injuries like that he will probably never walk properly ever again’ TJ thought to herself as she surveyed the damage.

This conclusion was blown right out of the water though as after he had taken a few deep breaths, Harry raised his hands over their respective knees and closed his eyes in concentration and seconds later his hands started to visibly glow with a pale blue light and to everyone's amazement (and slight disgust) they saw his knee caps repair themselves, with the sticking out fragments of bones being sucked back into his legs before the wounds closed up and with two final sickening cracks his legs shot forward until they were led straight, the pain of which quickly returned Harry to the bliss of unconsciousness.

Catching his body as gravity took its affect and he started to fall to the side TJ ended up with the strange mans head buried in her chest as she supported him while looking up at the others with amazement clear on her face, a look mirrored by everyone else, even the usually calm and centred Colonel Young.

It was Eli who broke the silence after nearly a minute;

‘Ummm… is it just me or did he just heal himself?’ he asked with disbelief and awe resonating in his tone.

‘Yeah… yeah he did’ Chloe distractedly answered with wide eyes.

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That’s it for now, hopefully updates will be fairly frequent but I wanted to get this story out there, now I just have to wait for the TV shows plot to progress a bit so that I can start to veer off into new plot lines of my own.

Please review and give me all the suggestions you can, as this is a brand new show I have no idea how it will progress.