Brave New World

Prologue

12:43.

Dr. Janet Frasier ran her fingers through her hair, glancing at the clock for something close to the thirtieth time. She stifled a yawn, and her eyes ached from reading and re-reading same three files multiple times over the course of the past two and a half hours. What am I still doing here, anyways? she thought wearily. I promised Cassie I'd be home by 10 tonight, I should have left hours ago. She might just kill me if I put off movie night again...

It wasn't the first time that night that those thoughts had crossed her mind. There wasn't anything particularly pressing that was keeping her, either: no emergencies had popped up recently, both teams currently offworld were on very friendly planets, and only five people were in the infirmary, none of them seriously injured. And no one could deny that she could do with a little time off, either, not after last week's little Egypt excursion. But still, despite everything reason told her, she had stayed in her office, watching through her open door as the night-shift nurses quietly went about their duties. It was actually peaceful, she realized.

Too peaceful.

It was just a gut feeling, really, but after working at the SGC for five years, she had learned to trust those. Something very bad was about to go down, and she needed to be there to clean up the mess.

Still, there was always a chance she could be wrong. And if she was, there was no way on this earth that she was going to be sitting in that chair all night, no matter how ergonomic it was supposed to be. She would give it another 17 minutes, she decided. If nothing had happened by then, she was going to go home to her daughter and her very comfortable bed, even if the powers of hell itself conspired to stop her.

The words had barely come to her mind, when she was interrupted by very sound that she had been expecting all night. The klaxons and alarms alerted her to a medical emergency, and she leaped out of her seat, all the weariness vanishing from her body as a new surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins. Grabbing what few supplies she could find at hand, she ran out the door, her slightly smudged lab coat flying behind her.

Still running as fast as she could, Janet made her way along the long corridor toward the elevator. She had barely gotten it in her sights when the door opened, revealing seven very worried-looking people accompanying a gurney. As always when faced with a situation like this, she breathed a small prayer for the safety of her friends. She would never dream of wishing pain and injury on anyone, of course, but she hated that feeling she got in the pit of her stomach, like she had just eaten something rather disagreeable, when she saw someone she was close to lying on one of her beds. Thankfully, however, she recognized four of the people exiting the elevator as the members of SG-1, obviously distraught, but physically fine.

She thanked God for small blessings.

General Hammond approached the team, striding in quickly from somewhere in the direction of his office. That was no surprise, as he would have been informed of the emergency at the same time that she had been. "Someone want to tell me what exactly happened out there?" he asked, his voice urgent.

Teal'c answered for the team. "The situation did not proceed as planned, General Hammond."

"He means we screwed up, sir," Colonel O'Neill clarified rather unhelpfully, his voice bitter.

"Where's SG-5?" This question was directed toward Colonel.

"They didn't make it."

There was a long pause as the full implication of those words sank in, and the General's face grew even more somber. Janet knew how much he hated losing good men in this war. His often rough exterior belied the fact that he cared for every single man and woman under his command as if they were his own. And Dave Hagert had been one of the best, Janet had been rather fond of him herself. He had even asked her out for a drink once. Of course she had refused, regulations and all that, but part of her had wondered if maybe, in a different situation...