Part V

Carter had the laptop computer that she’d taken from Russell dissected on her workbench when Jack entered her lab. She was in the process of hooking up the hard drive from it to one of her own computers. “You find anything?” he asked.

“Not yet, Sir. I’m just about ready to start looking.” Carter connected a ribbon cable to the hard drive, and then turned to her own computer. “Alright, let’s see what we have here.”

She typed something on her keyboard, and looked at the results on her screen. She frowned and typed a little more. “Hmm…this may take some time, Sir. It looks like all their data files are encrypted.”

“How long will it take you to crack it?” asked Jack.

“Depends on how good their encryption is,” said Carter. “Could be anything from a few hours, to never.”

“Never?” asked Jack. “On TV the hacker always cracks the code after trying a couple of passwords.”

“We’re not a TV show, Sir. In the real world it takes longer, and if whoever set this up used a good system, it will take a while.”

“How about their phones?” asked Jack.

“I’ve pulled all the names and phone numbers from their memories, and sent them to Major Davis to run down for us. He’s supposed to get back to me with his preliminary report in a couple of hours.”

Xander sat on a hard chair in a plain, ten by ten foot room with dirty white walls. There was a table in the centre of the room, with another chair on the other side of it. Xander’s chair seemed to have one leg longer than the others, so that it rocked if he shifted his weight. He’d tried the other chair, and found that it had the same problem. The fluorescent light overhead was buzzing, and tended to flicker. The air was warm, and humid, with a faint smell of mildew. There was a door in one wall, but no mirror, like they had in most of the cop shows. In its place was a video camera set in a top corner of the room. He resisted the urge to make faces at it. He just sat and waited, practising a meditation technique that Willow had tried to teach him. He knew that all of this—the wobbly chair, the flickering light, the heat and humidity—was deliberate. Designed to make him uncomfortable, and unable to concentrate: put him off balance for when they finally came around to interrogate him again. He wondered if they’d even try the good-cop, bad-cop routine on him. If he was lucky, it would be the blonde, Carter, who played “good-cop.”

Xander yawned. He was bored, and tired. He didn’t know how late it was; they’d taken his watch too: another thing meant to disorient him. He wasn’t too worried, yet. His biggest concern was Faith: how much of this would she put up with, before she started to bust heads? He supposed that her time in prison would probably make her pretty immune to this sort of thing. She’d spent years in featureless rooms, with uncomfortable furniture, bad lighting and nothing to do. Of course if he still wasn’t allowed to make a phone call when the time came for them to check in, things might get interesting.

He was a little disappointed that they hadn’t actually been taken into Cheyenne Mountain. His inner geek had really wanted to see what the inside of NORAD was like, but he and Faith had only gotten as far as a rather plain looking building that he hadn’t even been able to glimpse the tunnel entrance from when they were taken into it.

He heard the latch scrape in the door, and looked toward it. It opened, and the grey haired man, now wearing a BDU with a colonel’s insignia, and the name “O’Neill” embroidered over the breast pocket came in. He was carrying a folder, and sat down in the chair across the table from Xander. He didn’t say anything at first, he just sat, and leafed through the pages. Years of Scooby research sessions had made Xander pretty good at reading upside down. He could see that all the pages were about him. They seemed to be standard sorts of records: school transcripts, employment history, and stuff. He didn’t see anything that gave any hint about vampires or Slayers. He decided to see if he could out-wait the colonel.

O’Neill finally reached the last page, and looked up. “So, Alexander Harris.”

“Xander.”

“What?”

“No one calls me ‘Alexander,’ except my mom when she’s mad at me. It’s just ‘Xander.’”

“So, Xander Harris.”

“That’s me.”

“Care to tell me why you were following one of our people?”

“I already told you: we weren’t following anyone. We were lost.”

“Looking for the Manitou Springs Inn.”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like to believe you, kid,” said Jack, “but you’re not making it easy. What was with all the weapons in your trunk?”

“Those?” asked Xander. “Faith’s really into the SCA.”

“The SCA?”

“Yeah,” said Xander. “The Society for Creative Anachronism. They dress up in period costumes, hold tournaments, pretend that they’re in the Middle Ages, only with toilet paper, regular bathing, and stuff like that.” That was the story they’d come up with to explain the weapons, if airport security ever asked about them. The weapons bag had been part of their checked baggage, so the question had never come up, which was lucky, because Xander thought that it was a pretty lame explanation.

O’Neill pulled a page with a small white card clipped to it from the folder. He unclipped the card and slid it across the table to Xander. “What’s this?”

Xander looked at it. “It’s my business card. Has how to get in touch with me on it.”

“So, what’s ‘WCI’?”

“It’s the company I work for.”

“What’s it stand for?”

Xander shrugged. “I don’t know. They’ve never told me. I think it’s just three letters.”

“What do they do?”

“Research.”

“You’re a researcher?”

“No, I’m more the guy who builds all their book shelves. Just when I think I’ve gotten ahead of them, they bring in a few hundred more.”

“So, what does Russell do for them? She doesn’t strike me as the research type either.”

“She’s one of the people they send out to gather books.”

“So, what sort of research do they do?”

“All sorts,” said Xander. “Mostly into old myths and legends, stuff like that. A lot of translation work.”

“And you came to Colorado Springs to collect some books?”

“Nyah,” said Xander. “We’re just on vacation.”

“And what about that compass?”

“I guess it was broken,” said Xander. “How long are you going to be keeping us here? If you’re going to hold us, shouldn’t we have a lawyer? Or be allowed to make a phone call?”

“What have we learned about our ‘guests?’” asked General Hammond.

“They seem to be who they say they are,” said Carter. “Alexander Harris lived in Sunnydale for most of his life. We have his school records all the way back to kindergarten, IRS records show that he worked a series of odd jobs after graduating from high school, until he started working construction a couple of years ago. He was a member of the Sunnydale local of the Carpenters Union.

“We’ve got less on Faith Russell. She dropped out of school in Boston when she was fifteen, and spent the next few years roaming around the country, before she settled in Sunnydale, about two years ago. She’s had a few minor run-ins with the law: little stuff, like shop-lifting. She’s never filed a tax return.”

“Could their records have been faked?” asked Jack.

“It’s possible, but not likely,” said Carter. “If they were, whoever did it, did a first rate job.”

“Any links to the NID?”

“Nothing in their records show anything,” said Carter. “I’ve talked with Agent Barrett. He says that they aren’t part of the NID, nor does he have any information about them being involved with any of their rogue elements.”

“Would he tell you, if they did?” asked Jack.

“He’s always been reasonably straight with us in the past.”

“I checked our own files, from our investigation of Sunnydale,” said Jonas. “We have pictures of both Harris, and Russell among the last group of survivors to get out, though Russell wasn’t identified at the time. We still don’t have any sort of satisfactory explanation for what happened there, and there is definitely something off about the story that last group had for why they stayed in town until the last possible moment.”

“Is their story any fishier than the one most of the town gave, for why they left earlier?” asked Jack. “That whole situation was screwy. I still think we should have put more time into investigating it.”

“I know you do, Colonel, but we found absolutely nothing that ties what happened there to any alien activity,” said General Hammond. “The SGC doesn’t have the resources to follow up on every unexplained phenomenon that happens on Earth.”

“That wasn’t your normal unexplained phenomenon,” said Jack.

“And it is being investigated, but not by us,” said the General. “We were pulled off that investigation. Let’s get back to the matter at hand: have Harris and Russell said anything about what they were doing following Cassandra?”

“They deny that they were following anyone,” said Jack. “They both maintain that they got lost looking for their hotel. I checked, they really do have reservations at the Manitou Springs Inn. Mostly they’re just demanding that they be allowed to make a phone call, and have a lawyer.”

“What about this ‘WCI’?” asked Hammond.

“They are an international organization, based in Britain, but with offices all over the world,” said Jonas. “They are currently undergoing a reorganization. Their head office was the target of what appears to be a terrorist bombing about seven months ago.”

“IRA?” asked Jack. He’d worked in counter-terrorism before he got involved with aliens, and they were the usual suspects for bombings in London. It didn’t feel right to him though. Things had settled down quite a bit in Britain in recent years.

“No one took credit for it,” said Jonas, “which is unusual for terrorists. The British have it listed as ‘probable terrorist activity’ but they don’t have any idea who did it. They also don’t seem to be putting the resources into investigating it that I would expect for an attack of that scale.

“WCI itself has existed since at least the 19th century, and may be older. They claim to do research, like Harris said. They collect all sorts of ancient manuscripts, and artifacts. They are well known for sponsoring archaeological digs, around the world.”

“Anything in Egypt?” asked Jack.

“Not especially,” said Jonas. “Nothing in what they do looks like they’re looking for Goa’uld, or other alien artifacts in particular. They seem to be primarily interested in the mystical, and the occult.”

“Is there any indication that their interest was piqued by the experiments that we ran on Cassandra today?” asked General Hammond. “Could we have a leak?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” said Carter. “Their flight left Cleveland at eight this morning, before we even started to run the tests. And they booked the flight, and their hotel, a week ago, so it couldn’t have been because of what happened at the baseball game. If this is about what’s happened to Cassie, they knew about it before we did.”

“Do we have any evidence that we can use to hold them?”

“Other than the compass?” asked Jack.

“I’ve read your laws, and I’m not aware of any that would make having a compass that points at a particular individual illegal,” said Jonas. “If they continue to follow Cassandra around, we might be able to use some anti-stalking laws against them, but so far, their activities don’t fall into that category.”

“And, um, I think I broke the compass,” said Carter.

“What?”

“I was taking it apart, to try to figure out how it worked, and it just…quit. It’s not pointing at Cassie any more. I don’t know what I did, but it seems to be totally inert now. As far as I can tell, it’s just a compass, with a demagnetized needle.”

“That means that they will be unable to use it to locate Cassandra,” said Teal’c.

“Did you learn anything from their computer?” asked Jack. “Or did you break that too?”

“No, Sir, I didn’t break it,” said Carter. “I haven’t learned much either, other than whoever set up the encryption on it, knew what they were doing. I haven’t been able to decrypt any of their data files, yet.”

“How about their phones?” asked Jack.

“Major Davis ran down all the numbers programmed into their memories,” said Carter. “Most of them belong to Sunnydale survivors. They seem to have scattered all over the world now, but a lot of them seem to be in Cleveland.”

“Cleveland?” asked General Hammond. “What’s in Cleveland?”

“The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?” asked Jack.

“Other than that.”

“WCI has just opened offices there,” said Carter. “That’s the address on Harris’ and Russell’s cards.”

General Hammond frowned for a moment. “Cut them loose,” he said.

“But Sir, they were following Cassandra!”

“I know, Colonel, but we have no proof that they were doing anything illegal. It doesn’t appear that we are going to find out what they are doing by holding them. We’ve placed sentries around Major Fraiser’s home, and we are going to keep Harris and Russell under surveillance. If they go near Cassandra again, we’ll grab them, but for now, we have no grounds to hold them.”