Part II

Part II

Cassie noticed other strange things over the next month that she didn’t tell anyone about. She wasn’t getting any more than three or four hours of sleep a night, and what sleep she did get was haunted by the same dreams. She wasn’t feeling tired because of it, though. She felt full of energy. She was stronger, and she could run faster, and farther than she had before. Sam commented on that a few times, on the mornings that Cassie had been able to join her in her runs. It used to be that Cassie had to work to keep up with Sam, even though Sam had already run a mile before she joined her. Now it was Sam who was having to work harder to keep up with the younger girl, and Cassie knew that she could run a lot faster, if she wanted to: she was holding herself back. They changed their routine so that instead of Sam running the mile to Cassie’s home first, they’d meet about half way in between. No one really thought much about it. Cassie had always been active, and everyone attributed her new speed and endurance to her maturing body. Cassie kept most of her thoughts about Sam’s age starting to catch up with her, to herself.

Cassie was also feeling restless at night, like she needed to be outside. She would often sneak out of the house after her mother had gone to sleep, or on the nights when she was held at the base. She’d wander around the neighbourhood, feeling like she was looking for something, though she had no idea what. She just knew that she would recognize it, when she found it, but she never did. She felt drawn to a couple of cemeteries that were within a couple of miles of her home, and spent many nights roaming between the headstones in the dark.

Her senses were sharper now: she could see better, especially at night; her hearing had improved; she seemed to be aware of everything around her, from insects and rodents hiding in the grass, to larger animals like racoons and skunks in the bushes.

-----
Cassie still hadn’t told anyone about the changes she felt in herself when July came around. The SGC had a picnic on the long weekend for its off-duty personnel, and their families. Several of them had taken over a baseball diamond in the park that they were using, for a friendly little game. Jack was having fun explaining the rules to Teal’c and Jonas.

Cassie was playing left field. She adjusted the Toronto Blue Jays cap she was wearing to keep the sun out of her eyes as she watched Teal’c step into the batter’s box. She, and the rest of the outfield, moved farther back.

Sam was on the pitcher’s mound. She watched the sign that General Hammond—the catcher—flashed to her, nodded, and let the ball fly. Teal’c swung his bat, and there was a loud crack! Cassie could see the ball sailing up into the sky. There were cheers and groans from the offensive and defensive teams, at what nearly everyone thought was sure to be a home run.

Cassie was already moving farther back into the field, while keeping her eye on the ball. She knew she could catch it. The wind knocked her cap off her head as she ran, well past the back boundary of the baseball field, out into the longer grass. She snatched the ball out of the air as it came down to her, spun, and threw it toward third base in one fluid motion.

Jack had been on third, and Cassie knew that he was jogging his way toward home. She hadn’t consciously looked at him, but she had known what he, and everyone else on the field, was doing, even as she had concentrated on catching the ball. She knew that she had a good chance to catch him off base when she fired the ball off to Sergeant Siler at third.

She heard the shouts of the other players warning Jack, and saw him look around. Even from her position in the outfield she could see the surprised expression on his face. He started to sprint back toward third base, but he wasn’t fast enough. She heard the ball slap into Siler’s glove, and then she heard him swearing as he extracted his stinging hand from his glove, and shook it. Her throw had been right on target; Jack hadn’t even been close to getting back to the base that Siler’s foot had been on when he made the catch. Jack was out.

Siler was still trying to rub the feeling back into his hand. Everyone else on the defending team was cheering. Cassie was happy as she jogged her way in from the outfield, scooping up her Blue Jays cap as she passed it. The team at bat was mostly disappointed that what had looked like a sure-thing two run hit for them, had been turned into an inning ending double play. She grinned at Colonel O’Neill as she passed him. “Sorry about that, Jack!”

“Hey, don’t be sorry! That was a great play!” he told her. “You ever think of trying out for the Rockies?”

She waved her cap at him. “I’m from Toronto, remember? If I try out for anyone, it’ll be the Jays.”

Jack grinned at her. Cassie had really taken her “from Toronto” cover story to heart. She cheered for the Blue Jays during baseball season, and the Maple Leafs during hockey season. She and Janet had visited Toronto a few times, when Janet had leave, so Cassie could have some first hand experience with the city that was supposed to be her home town. Her friends in Colorado Springs had been told that she was going back there to visit old friends.

-----
Cassie didn’t pull off any more plays as spectacular as the one that had robbed Teal’c of his home run—largely because Teal’c had hit into right field for his other turns at bat—but she still performed flawlessly, fielding everything that came her way. She also went four-for-four in her own turns at bat. She had noticed that some people were looking at her with puzzled expressions on their faces as the game went on, so she was careful not to hit the ball too hard, after her first home run. Her other hits were little bloopers that fell into the holes in the outfield, or ground balls that scooted between the players in the infield.

By the end of the day Cassie was thinking that she should have deliberately struck out a couple of times, or missed some catches in the outfield. Her mother told her that she wanted her to come into the base the next day, so she could run a few tests.

-----
Cassie spent most of the morning being scoped, sampled, scanned, prodded and poked by the SGC medical staff, at the end of which Dr. Fraiser could find nothing wrong with her. The only thing that she could say that was out of the ordinary was that Cassie seemed to be extraordinarily healthy.

Janet let her escape from the medical centre to join Sam, and the rest of SG-1, for lunch in the commissary. Cassie filled her tray with a salad, a club sandwich with fries, and a slice of apple pie for dessert before she went to join Jack and Sam at their table.

Jack looked over her meal. “You sure you’ve got enough there?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Cassie. “If not, I’ll just steal some of your Jell-O.”

“Did Janet find anything?” asked Sam.

“Nope,” said Cassie. “I’m perfectly healthy, but she isn’t going to let me go, yet. She said she wants to test my strength and stamina. All because I managed to catch a fly ball.”

“That was a great catch,” said Jack. “A major league outfielder would have been proud of that play.”

“You’re just mad that I threw you out,” said Cassie.

Jack grinned at her. “That too.”

Cassie felt something behind her. She had first felt it yesterday: a feeling of otherness. She looked around and saw Teal’c and Jonas were on their way over to join them.

She shifted uncomfortably a bit as they sat at the table. Something seemed off about them, especially Teal’c. It wasn’t anything like the feeling she used to get from him when he was still carrying his primta, but she was definitely feeling something. Jonas seemed to be giving her the same feeling, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as what she was sensing from Teal’c.

Outwardly, both of them seemed to be their perfectly normal selves: Teal’c was dour, and reserved; Jonas, happy and outgoing. She really hadn’t seen much of Jonas Quinn over the year that he had been with the SGC—he didn’t get out of the Mountain much—but they had gotten along well the few times that they had met. They felt a certain common bond: neither of them being able to return to their home worlds.

-----
Cassie entered the SGC gymnasium from the women’s locker room, dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and running shoes. She looked around, but didn’t see her mother, or anyone else she really knew. She was aware that a couple of the guys there were giving her a good look, not that she was interested in anyone that old—they were at least twenty—or that they would do more than cast surreptitious looks at Major Fraiser’s daughter.

She shrugged. Her mom had said that there was some equipment that she needed to get to run the tests that she wanted to do. Cassie walked over to an unoccupied weight machine. She had to adjust the seat height a bit before she sat down, grasped the handle and pushed it forward. She felt the resistance of the weights. They seemed a little light, but not so much that she felt the need to adjust them. She relaxed, letting the weights return to their rest position, and pushed again. She might as well get a bit of a workout before her mother got there.

Janet came into the gym, with Sam helping her push a cart loaded with medical looking machines. Sam smiled at Cassie. “Hey, looks like you decided to start without us.”

“Just thought I’d get warmed up a bit, before Mom started in on me.” Cassie pressed the handle forward again.

Sam moved around behind the machine. “Let’s see what you’re lifting here.” She stopped when she saw how the machine was set. She looked back at Cassie, watching her do a couple more repetitions. She looked back at the machine. “Uh…Cassie, did you set this up?”

“Just the seat height. The weights felt about right, so I didn’t change anything back there.” Cassie pressed the handle forward again.

“Is there a problem?” asked Janet.

“No, no problem,” said Sam. “It’s just that this machine looks like it’s set up for Teal’c.”

Cassie let the weight crash back down. “What?”

“Something funny’s going on here.” Sam waved Cassie out of the seat. “Let me try that.”

Cassie got up off the bench. “Go ahead.”

Sam sat down, and grasped the handle. She tried to push it forward. It didn’t move. She pressed harder, her muscles straining. It slowly started to move. It looked like it was taking all of her strength to press the handle forward. She lowered weights back down, and looked up at Cassie. “You haven’t set this up with Colonel O’Neill, have you? A little practical joke at my expense?”

“No!” said Cassie. “You know that if I was going to try something like that, it’d be Jack sitting there, not you.”

-----
“Cassandra’s strength, and endurance are far outside of normal human boundaries,” Major Fraiser told the people gathered in the conference room. “We couldn’t really measure how strong she is: she easily lifted the maximum weight that the machine could be set for. I didn’t want to try her on the free weights: we didn’t have time to rig something up do it safely. There’s no one who could spot her, at the weights she was lifting.

“We had her on the treadmill, at fifteen miles per hour, for half an hour. She wasn’t even breathing hard at the end of it. Her heart rate rose to 120 beats per minute while she was running, and dropped back down to 65, thirty seconds after she stopped.”

“No wonder she’s been running me into the ground for the last month,” said Sam. “I was starting to think I was getting old.”

“Have you found anything to explain why this is happening?” asked General Hammond.

“Nothing!” said Dr. Fraiser. “I’ve found nothing in any of the tests that I’ve run that could account for this. Medically, Cassie is a healthy sixteen year old girl. Nothing in the medical results can account for her performance.”

“Could this be a result of Nirrti’s tampering with the people of Hanka’s genetics?” asked Teal’c.

“I’ve reviewed Dr. Jackson’s notes, and the records left by SG-7,” said Jonas, “and there is nothing in them about any of the Hankan people exhibiting unusual physical abilities.”

“And there is no trace of Nirrti’s retrovirus, or anything like it, left in Cassie’s system,” said Janet.

“Maybe it’s something Nirrti did when she cured Cassie of the mind fever,” said Sam.

“Why?” asked Jack. “Why would she do something like that? ‘Out of the goodness of her heart’ doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Indeed,” said Teal’c. “That would not be the behaviour of a Goa’uld.”

“Maybe she was planning to come back, once the change took effect,” said Jonas.

Everyone turned toward the sharp intake of breath that they heard. Cassie had been sitting quietly at the end of the table, listening to everyone talk about her, but now her eyes had gone wide with fear.

“Hey, don’t worry,” said Sam. “Nirrti’s dead. She can’t come back.”

“Are you sure?” asked Cassie. “I mean…how many times did you kill Apophis before it took?”

“We’re sure, Cass,” said Jack. “I triple zatted her body before we left. No one comes back from that.”

“What if she told one of the other System Lords what she’d done?” asked Cassie.

“Goa’ulds: not big with the sharing,” said Jack. “Even if it was Nirrti who did this to you, why would she tell anyone else about it? She wasn’t on the best terms with the other System Lords, and anyone she told might get to you before she did.”

“Is there anything else different?” asked General Hammond. “Other than the physical changes.”

“I haven’t even been able to detect any physical change that can account for her improved performance.” Dr. Fraiser turned to Cassie. “Honey, why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I didn’t want to get turned into a lab rat.”

“Oh Cassie, you know I’d never— Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Cassie bitterly.

“Cassie, we’ll never do anything to hurt you,” said Sam. “We’re just trying to figure out what’s happened.”

“And I’m worried about you,” said Janet. “The human body just isn’t designed to operate at the levels that yours seems to be.”

“But you keep saying that I’m perfectly healthy!”

“The last time we saw anything even close to this…” Janet let her voice trail off.

“You’re talking about Anise’s armbands, aren’t you,” said Jack.

“The armbands introduced a virus into your systems, that greatly enhanced your strength and reflexes. Your internal organs were already starting to break down from the stress, before your immune systems negated the virus, to say nothing of the psychological effects.”

“But that doesn’t seem to be happening to Cassie,” said Jack. He looked at her. “Right? You haven’t gone and gotten into any bar fights without telling me, have you?”

“No Jack, I haven’t been in any bar fights…I haven’t been in any bars. I don’t really feel any different from before.”

“Before when?” asked Janet. “When did you first notice anything?”

“I guess it was about the end of school,” said Cassie. “Remember when you started complaining that I was putting all the lids on the jars too tight?”

“Have you noticed anything else, that you haven’t told me about?” asked Janet.

“Well…I haven’t been sleeping much.” Cassie decided to not mention her night-time excursions. “I usually end up reading half the night, but I’m not tired in the mornings, and I think my eyesight and hearing have gotten better.”

“We’ll have to check those,” said Janet.

“Lab rat,” muttered Cassie.

“No!” said Janet. “Honey, I promise you. After we’re done today, we’ll go back home, and you won’t have to come back…not for a while anyway.” She looked toward General Hammond. “Right, Sir?”

“Right, Doctor,” said General Hammond. “I will want you to continue monitoring Cassandra’s health, but you can do that at home. No need to bring her back in, unless there is some other change.”