Stargate Command Isolation Room 1
"Good morning, Cam," said Doctor Lam as she strode into the isolation room with Mitchell. The doctor was wearing a hazmat suit, as per the protocols she had instituted. Mitchell was in the middle of shaving over a wash basin that had been brought in for the purpose, since the isolation room didn't have an actual bathroom and the infected were not being permitted to wander the halls of the SGC.
"I've got good news and bad news," the doctor said. "The good news is, I've got a full analysis of your bloodwork completed, all the way down to analyzing your DNA."
"And what's is the bad news?" Mitchell asked, flinching as he nicked his chin with the razor.
Lam sighed and said, "The bad news is that the DNA samples I took from you and your teammates yesterday don't match what we've got on file for any of you. The difference isn't very big, but it's concerning considering the circumstances." She whipped out a syringe and grinned. "I'm going to be taking another set of samples today, to see how things are progressing. Even though we haven't found direct evidence of the infection, changes to your DNA suggest that whatever this is, it's at least behaving similarly to a retrovirus."
"So, what's the treatment, doc?" Mitchell asked after drying his face and letting Doctor Lam draw his blood. "And I thought this was a radiation thing, not a virus?"
"Ionizing radiation would break up your DNA and kill your cells. With the exception of the changes you're experiencing, you're all perfectly healthy. Also," she smiled comfortingly, "acute radiation syndrome is only caused by ionizing radiation, which isn't what we're dealing with, according to Sam.
"Anyway, Doctor Sheffield is making the rounds, starting everyone on a combination anti-retroviral therapy she's cooked up." Doctor Lam carefully placed the blood sample into a carrying case. "We're hoping this disease functions closely enough to HIV that similar approaches will produce similar results."
"HIV? You fill me with confidence, doc," Mitchell said.
Doctor Lam shrugged, "If Sheffield's treatment can keep you guys at butt tattoos and prevent you from advancing to whatever comes next, I'll take it." With that, Doctor Lam stepped back out of the isolation room, off to get more samples from other infected base personnel and begin the process of testing the new samples.
Mitchell absently scratched the skin under his pants where he knew the diamonds were located. He glumly slumped in front of a desk and began to catch up on the most vile part of his job, which he could at least still do while in isolation: catching up on paperwork.
Stargate Command Isolation Room 2
"I have lunch~♫!" sang Vala as she pushed a cart of food trays into the room. Most of the cart had been emptied, and Vala stomped awkwardly around in the hazmat suit, but she managed to remain cheery all the same.
Daniel put down his book and frowned at his watch. "Vala," he said, "it's nearly 1500 hours. Why are you only delivering lunch now? And why are you delivering lunch in the first place?"
Vala picked up a tray of food and tried to skip over to Daniel's bed, although it came out more like a stumbling shuffle in her positive-pressure suit. She set the tray – covered, so none of the food found the floor during her approach – on Daniel's lap and sat beside him.
"Well," she began, "General Landry saw that I was bored and restless, so he decided to give me something to do, lest I come up with something to do on my own." Daniel nodded at the general's wisdom as he opened his lunch and began to dig in. "There are a surprisingly large number of people infected with this thing, you know? Also, I may have stopped on the way to have a chat with Major Hadden."
"You mean 'flirt,'" Daniel said, without looking up from his meal.
"And Major Dixon," Vala continued, as though she hadn't heard Daniel's comment. "And Staff Sergeant Davis..."
"Hold on," said Daniel. "Major Dixon is married. And Sergeant Davis is a woman."
Vala stared at the archaeologist blankly. "I fail to see how that's relevant. Anyway, it all adds up to a late lunch for you." She pat Daniel on the back affectionately and hopped off the bed. "Now, I've still got a few more people to play delivery girl for, so if you'll excuse me..."
Vala began pulling her food cart back out of the room, and paused. "Hey, Daniel, do you want me to grab your dye from your quarters for you?"
"What are you talking about, Vala?"
"Well, it's just that your roots are showing. I mean, I didn't even know you dyed your hair, so I must say you do a pretty good job of it, but being stuck in here without your beauty products is taking its toll. Personally, I think if you're going to dye your hair, you should try something more adventurous than brown, but whatever floats your boat." Vala gestured vaguely at her own head and said, "I mean, if I want to dye my hair, I have to bleach it first, and that does all kinds of damage. If I had blonde hair like you, I'd go Sam's route. But I'm pretty sure that's against Air Force regulations, so she should probably clean herself up before someone who's less forgiving than General Landry sees her." Before actually getting a response to her question, Vala passed out of the isolation room and shut the door. Jackson stared at the door for a moment, uncertain how to respond, and now unable to do so.
Slowly, Daniel stood and walked over to the mirror set against the wall for his improvised washroom. Daniel indeed had blonde roots showing in his brown hair; blonde roots that had not been there this morning when either Doctor Lam or Doctor Sheffield had been present, and had never been present at any point in Daniel's life. While that was concerning, the thought he gave voice to was, "What did Sam do to her hair...?"
Stargate Command, Colonel Carter's Lab
After Vala had delivered lunch and complimented Carter on her hair, she had halted her experimentation on the PHK-519 artifact in confusion. Upon inspection, she was able to pull a lock of hair down in front of her eyes – hair which yesterday had been too short to do that with, even if she still had to go cross-eyed to see her hair without a mirror – and discovered the changes. Unlike Daniel and his blonde roots, the tips of her hairs had changed colors, ranging from red, orange, and yellow across her bangs; once she got to a mirror she discovered green, blue, and purple on the back of her head.
"What," she said to the empty room. It wasn't a question.
Stargate Command Isolation Room 2
Daniel reached towards the telephone on the wall which served as an intercom system for the base. New symptoms meant Doctor Lam needed to be notified immediately. As he informed the doctor about his discovery, he peered at his reflection closer.
"Is that all, Daniel? Just changing hair color, no other new symptoms?"
"Hold on..." he said. Something felt off about his reflection, beyond just the color of his hair. After a moment, he dropped the phone handset in surprise.
"Daniel? Hello?" Doctor Lam called after the handset hit the concrete floor with a clatter. Fortunately, the standard equipment in the SGC was built to withstand mundane abuse. It was only the more esoteric technology – human or extra-terrestrial – that was fragile, or more exotic forms of abuse like staff weapon blasts or Zat gun discharges that would really damage things.
"Yes, Doctor Lam," Daniel said as he scrambled to pick up the phone again, "I'm still here. Of course I'm still here, I'm in isolation."
"Was there something else, Daniel?"
"Yes, ah... just a sanity check, doctor: what color are my eyes?"
"Blue, according to your file. Why?"
"Well... today they're green." Daniel peered into the mirror again, and mumbled as he set the handset in its cradle, "They weren't green yesterday..."
Stargate Command Infirmary
"This doesn't make any sense!" Doctor Lam practically screamed in frustration.
The infirmary had been partially converted into a bio lab to help Lam and her team work on the infection problem. Monitors had also been set up to keep track of the infected: one was currently displaying Major Waterhouse's quarters, and another was displaying Isolation Room 2 with Doctor Jackson. Vala had been given the task of watching the monitors, but at that moment she seemed more interested in some kind of papercraft project she'd begun to entertain herself.
"What's the problem?" General Landry asked, making Doctor Lam jump slightly in shock. "Sorry, I didn't knock."
"It's okay, general," the doctor said. "I was just looking at some samples of Colonel Carter's hair."
"I understand our patients' hair is dyeing itself?" the general prompted.
Doctor Lam shook her head. "Not quite, just like the marks that first appeared aren't quite tattoos. I was particularly interested in Carter's symptoms due in part to the wild array of colors her hair is changing into, but she's not the only one getting a multicolor dye job. However, she is the only one on base whose hair color transformation began at the tips, rather than the roots." She picked up a sealed petri dish with a clipping of green hair. "This sample was half-green, half-blonde an hour ago when I clipped it from her," she began, "and this sample was completely blonde," she said as she held up a second sealed dish with more green hairs. "Their overall rate of hair growth seems to have increased as well; it's already hard to tell that I cut any of Sam's hair, and she'll probably want to start wearing a ponytail by tomorrow if this keeps up. But check this out."
Doctor Lam tapped a few buttons on the keyboard in front of Vala, switching the video feed from Isolation Room 2 to a magnified image of a sample of Samantha's blonde hair, currently sitting under a microscope in the infirmary. Vala looked up from her project to see what the doctor was sharing.
"What am I looking at?" The general asked.
"Just wait a moment." Indeed, a few seconds later, one end of the blonde hairs on the screen began to turn green. The color slowly crept along the fibers, slowly enough that the dividing line between green and blonde didn't appear to be moving, moment-to-moment, but quickly enough that the change was obviously occurring. "It's about a tenth of an inch per minute," Lam said, "but I can't fathom how it's happening.
"If this were simply a retrovirus, I could make some sense of the hair color changing at the roots. There is no biological reason I can think of that would make strands of hair spontaneously change color; the hair shaft isn't even biochemically active!" She waved angrily at the computer monitor in front of them. "And yet, it's happening."
"There's something else," Vala spoke up. When she had the attention of the doctor and the general, she poked at the keyboard a few times, and Isolation Room 3 replaced the microscope. A few more keypresses, and Vala manipulated the camera to zoom in on Teal'c's head. "Muscles' hair is losing its kinkiness." Indeed, the short, tightly kinky hair the group was familiar seeing on Teal'c's head had loosened up, and now more closely resembled curly hair. Vala didn't even snicker at her own double-entendre.
"You mean you've actually been paying attention to the feed?" Doctor Lam asked, surprised.
"Of course I have!"
Lam turned to General Landry and shrugged. "I honestly can't explain this, and until we can find out exactly what's causing the changes, I'm not sure I can even begin to formulate a treatment. Doctor Sheffield says she's confident her treatments are having an effect, but from where I'm sitting if there is any effect, it's not nearly enough."
Landry checked his watch. "We're expecting a report from SG-2 and SG-11 in about an hour. They've been combing over everything they could on PHK-519 to figure out where the artifact came from, and anything the locals there might have known about it."
"Could we try using some of the equipment on Atlantis?" Vala asked. Atlantis was a city-ship built by the Ancients, and even after three years, the Atlantis expedition had not fully uncovered all of the city's secrets. "Even if it isn't practical to send everyone infected to the Pegasus galaxy to use the Ancient technology on them, it might be a step towards a cure..."
General Landry shook his head. "We've been out of contact with Doctor Weir and her team ever since the Apollo went to help them with their Replicator problem. Doctor Lee at the Midway station just relayed word from Colonel Ellis that Atlantis launched from Lantea, but never arrived at M12-578. We have no idea what's happened to them."
Movement from the other monitor caught the general's eye. Major Waterhouse had begun an exercise routine in his quarters, starting with a small treadmill he had requested, since he wouldn't have access to the rec room while confined to quarters. The general's shift in attention drew Doctor Lam's eyes as well, followed by Vala's.
"I know that in the past I've said that I want to keep my subordinates on their toes..." Landry began.
"... but that doesn't mean one of your covert ops guys should be running digitigrade," Lam finished.
On a hunch, Vala flipped the two monitors through several other rooms with infected personnel. While many were resting, several were walking around their rooms for one reason or another. To a man, every single one of them had begun walking on their toes, and none even seemed cognizant of the fact. Not even the ones wearing the SGC's standard-issue combat boots, hardly ideal for a digitigrade stance, seemed to notice their own change in behavior.
Stargate Command General's Office
General Landry leaned forward towards his computer monitor, hands clasped. Once again, a video call with General O'Neill served as the SGC's contact with the outside world during the crisis.
"President Hayes has ordered a halt on the information suppression campaign. The government is publicly admitting that this disease exists. The good news is that the number of cases is low enough that we don't expect the major news outlets to do much with the story."
"I'm not surprised, Jack," General Landry said, resigned. "There are too many cases to actually hide, and the symptoms are too bizarre to explain away."
"Yeah, especially the ears."
"You should have seen Daniel's face when he found out he could rotate them," Landry chuckled, trying to bring levity to a dark situation, and for a moment, Jack joined in.
General Landry stopped, and O'Neill went quiet as well. An uncomfortable silence hung in the room. "Airman Bosworth is dead," he said solemnly.
"What happened?" Jack asked. "If this is the next stage of the infection..."
Landry waved off Jack's concern. "No, no. Bosworth took his own life. All of our patients remain healthy, despite the drastic physical changes. It seems Bosworth believed that they were all being transformed into something other than human, and he wanted to make sure he died as his original species."
"Autopsy?" Jack asked.
"Carolyn started a little while ago. Let me patch you into the feed from the operating room."
Stargate Command Surgical Theater
On the cold metal table in the center of the room, the naked form of Airman Bosworth had been turned to give Doctor Lam easier access to the mark on his buttocks.
Bosworth's hair had turned a brilliant sapphire-blue with both a lighter and darker blue streak running through it. Like the rest of the infected, he had also gained a number of new hair follicles – which had quickly grown full-length hairs – down his neck and on part of his back. The image that had appeared on his skin was a navy blue shield, emblazoned with a pink star and with three steel blue stars above it.
Doctor Lam was performing the autopsy alone, and continued to wear her hazmat suit. While the odds of the infection spreading from the deceased and radioactively-inert corpse were low in her estimation, she was continuing to play on the safe side, just in case. The suit did hamper her ability to perform intricate tasks, but that was much less of an issue for an autopsy than for surgery on a living patient.
"Taking a deep tissue sample from the infection site," she narrated as she cut deeply into the man's gluteal muscles. Soon, she had a cross-section of the man's flesh at the site of the shield image, including skin with each color pigmentation.
"The pigmentation symptom remains bright and constant through the skin, fat, and muscle," she announced for the record as she placed the chunk of meat on a tray. Blue and pink were just as visible in the cross-section as they were on the surface of the skin.
Doctor Lam shone a penlight into the hole she had carved, examining the hip bone, which was just barely visible. "The pigmentation is also visible on the bone surface, although the image appears distorted when compared to the surface of the skin." The doctor picked up a bone drill with a hollow bit to take a sample of the pigmented bone.
"The pigmentation appears to halt at the spongy bone tissue," Lam finally said after examining her sample under a microscope. "The pigmentation travels all the way through the osteons, but is not present in the core."
As Doctor Lam placed the bone sample on a tray, movement caught her eye from the examination table. "Something is moving within the body," she said, out of habit. The skin at the base of the spine rippled slightly, and the doctor moved forward slowly, cautiously, as though trying to avoid provoking a spooked animal.
"A bulge is growing at the coccyx," Lam continued to describe her observations out loud. She picked up a scalpel and said, "I am going to make an incision in order to attempt to determine the cause."
Doctor Lam began to reach for the bulge, and then jumped back when the corpse's tail bone suddenly grew several more vertebrae, and skin to match. "What...?" was all Lam could stammer before the skin of the man's new short tail erupted in a waterfall of blue hairs to match the ones on his head.
After a few moments of no further activity, Lam stammered out, "Uh... amputating the subject's... uh. Amputating the subject's tail for closer inspection..."
Stargate Command General's Office
General Landry could do nothing but stare, dumbfounded, at the live footage of the most unusual autopsy in the history of the world. General O'Neill, still on the line, couldn't do much better.
Eventually, Jack asked, "Did I just watch a dead man grow a tail?"
Landry cut the feed to the autopsy just as Doctor Lam started to haltingly resume her work. "I'll admit that it's strange, but is it really any stranger than some of the other stuff you've seen in this job?"
To his credit, Jack did stop to think about the events and adventures of the past decade before answering. "Yes," he said, "yes, it's a lot stranger."