[Steve Hamrick]

0958
South Wing Laboratory

The light was too bright, was Steve's first sign. This was not happening, as he pressed his fingers to his temples and tried to reach for "out." It was the act of trying to reach out on the mental interface that really kicked it off.

The migraine had been building for a while, and now it could not be ignored. Steve groaned. He'd prefer to be in bed in a very dark room with hot tea, not stuck in a VR environment with a classic migraine building. "Working on it, Harris."

The aura around the woman was unmistakable. The jackhammers in his brain weren't quite started up yet, but it would come. Steve reached out again on the interface, and he lost his footing from the logs of wood that were under his feet. The smell of kerosene hit his nostrils, and the fire was building. The feelings of that moment came back, the hopelessness.

The memories were mixed, as Steve tried to ignore the incomplete simulation of that night in the Milky Way. The memory of what he said was enough. "Help isn't coming, Blake! Our teams will show up just in time to collect our charred bodies, because they hate us now." "Stan and Gunny Landey will come, and so will Tamara and Jarod and Sheldon. Your fellow Marines, Steve." "Blake, sweetie, we get burned at the stake in an hour by the kind of people your father would just love and the bunch of bigots we work with at SGC are going to let us die!"

Pain and nausea came crashing down with the migraine as Steve turned away from the half-formed and aura-blurred figure of Captain Buchanan. "You really didn't believe we were coming, sir, did you? With all due respect, that's kind of crappy."

He didn't even know his eyes had closed when he opened them, and it was too much light, even as dark as the environment was becoming. But he tried again to reach for exit, even as the jackhammers were becoming a chorus.

The medical outputs were detecting the migraine now, as Steve reached for exit again.

And he felt the seat, the table, but the connection didn't yet quite break. The jackhammers had graduated to anvils dropping from the sky, and the fire was hotter and closer. "I think I can almost withdraw us."

Program corrupted, medical emergency detected, terminating memory file, ther**eutic.

<<tag Kata Harris >>

[Kata Harris]

0958
South Wing Laboratory

".....Working on it, Harris."

His voice sounded like it was coming down a tunnel, she felt the heat on her skin as she opened her eyes but the flamed were not her focus. It was the scene of a car wreck, she recognized the pale gray truck, she knew every scratch and scuff on the bumpers, the crack in the back window, how the left mirror tilted slightly from when her older brother had accidentally misjudged how far away a tree was, but that all was before the accident that killed her father and destroyed the truck.

The same accident she was now staring at. Kata shut her eyes and willed the sight away, she knew she hadn't actually seen what had happened after the other car hit them, she had woken up in the hospital days later, this was all a figment of her imagination, but the more she tried to fight it the more and more her head hurt. So she opened her eyes and faced what was before her.

The old truck was still on all four wheels but one side was horribly smashed in, the engine was smoking and as she took a hesitant step towards the vehicle she saw that all the windows were smashed, "Owen said that I had been thrown..." she muttered to herself as she took another step closer, it had been one of the first things they had told her when she woke up.

Kata stepped around the side of the truck and slowly started towards the drivers side, as she neared the window she saw blood, more blood than she thought was possible from a car wreck, she closed her eyes as she walked up to the window, her boots crunching on broken glass. "Dad was left inside..." she whispered to herself. Kata opened her eyes, fully expecting to see her father inside the truck but what she saw instead horrified her even more. The vacant eyes of her oldest brother stared back, by the state of his body she knew he was dead, but he wasn't really dead, he couldn't be, he was back home on Earth waiting for his wife to have their third kid...Kata blinked and the face changed to another brother, each time she blinked the body changed to another sibling, each other in a more grotesque state than the last.

The sight made her cold. She wished it would stop but she kept seeing the various bodies of her dead siblings, their blood soaking the ground around her, the screams she had been hearing since this entire thing went to hell only got worse. Unable to take it anymore, Kata screamed.

She woke up wide eyes and screaming. Surprisingly it wasn't Harper who made it to her side first but Cooper, "You're okay, just breath." she told the panicked woman as she knelt down beside her, Kata was looking around like she did not quite know where she was. Nick was quick to follow, "Kata talk to me." he watched as his cousin shook her head, she opened her mouth to speak but no words would come out as she looked around to make sure she was actually awake and not in yet another simulation thing.

It took her another few moments to finally be able to form words, "I am awake?" she asked quietly, both Cooper and Harper nodded, "You're back in the real world." Cooper told her with a reassuring smile, "Hamrick?" Nick glanced to the Colonel, "He should be waking up here shortly, I'll be sure to get him some aspirin when he does because I have a feeling he's going to have one hell of a headache.." if it was anything like last time he saw the man use ancient tech, the marine was going to have a headache. Kata nodded, she was still trying to process what she had seen but she was also thankful to be awake. 

[Steve Hamrick]

0958
South Wing Laboratory

Harris had left, he felt it the instant she had but Steve had to get out, past the pounding in his skull. He wanted to vomit but choked down the feeling.

Giving into the nausea was a excellent way to choke himself to death right now, until he could reach consciousness.

He lost his footing on the burning wood and went down on his hands and knees, to the pavement and the smashed truck of the night her father had died. Maybe it was better that he'd been six hours away when Dad had died. He gave it one more try as the throbbing headache set itself solidly behind his eyes. And the disconnect came through.

Steve woke up to his brain pounding and scratching inside his skull.

Blake had been just about to explode at Lequana when he heard Steve's agonized groan from what the anthropologist knew was the migraine headaches the Marine had had for years. He swallowed the tirade he was about to unleash on his former teammate, going instead to Steve and getting an arm under him. "Easy, I've got you, don't open your eyes if you don't want to, the room's pretty bright right now."

Steve gasped but opened his eyes and yeah, the bright as a mother light was way too much. He cursed and put most of his weight on Blake, and gripping tightly to remind himself that they hadn't died together at the hands of a bunch of alien Puritans, that their teams had rescued them.

"Big-ass aspirin, and no freaking light and oh mother-" it was only the bile he was swallowing that covered the curse word as the nausea joined the pounding headache and the too much goddamn noise everybody was making. He'd been able to crawl into a bed in guest quarters on the other Vedas before.

Blake looked at Nick, who obviously knew from the expedition's medical records and lowered his voice. "I've handled Steve's migraines for years. Tomorrow I'll yell at him for touching things, today I just need to put him somewhere dark and quiet for the rest of the day."

<<tag Kata Harris , Robert "Bobby" Oxford Jr >>

[Lequana Ka'ti of Partho]

0957
South Wing Laboratory

As the two finally awoke, Lequana gave a sing of relief and place her middle finger upon the temple of her head as a sign of joy. She held no wish to know what fear they had suffered to wake them up. She was just glad they did.

" I need to run a few scans on this machine, to make sure it's safe,"

With that, Lequana gave one look to Oxford and couldn't help but wonder how he would react for her disobeying orders. He had gave an order and she had broke it.

<tag all>

[Nick Harper]

0958
South Wing Laboratory

"I feel like I am going to be sick.." Kata muttered as she rubbed her face, "Try not to..." Cooper replied as she leaned back, knowing if anyone got sick, she'd be right behind them doing the same. Nick lightly placed a hand on Isabelle's shoulder as the medical team finally arrived, she got to her feet to allow a stretcher to be brought closer to both Hamrick and Harris, "I've handled Steve's migraines for years. Tomorrow I'll yell at him for touching things, today I just need to put him somewhere dark and quiet for the rest of the day." 

Nick nodded, "Colonel, we'll get you feeling better, Major, don't throw up on my boots." he said as she helped his cousin to her feet, while he could have just picked her up, he also did not want to have a black eye from her punching him, "Stop talking about being sick and I won't." she replied, once she was laying on the stretcher she closed her eyes and sighed, "You okay?" he asked her, Kata nodded, "It was just a bad dream....a very bad dream..." Nick nodded in return, not wanting to push the matter.  With the machine now inactive thanks to Lequanna, and the two lab rats situated on the stretchers to go get checked out by a doctor, everyone exited the lab to leave it to start collecting dust again. 

((With that episode Eighteen is done! Thanks to all who participated and lets get ready for episode nineteen!))