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The minute Jack set foot onto P6G-138, he knew it was trouble. The kind of trouble that gave him grey hairs. The kind that gave him a headache and an upset stomach. Trouble in the form of a vast, crumbling, old - can’t forget old - ruined temple sitting right there just behind a clump of trees near the Stargate: the perfect bait to snag an inquisitive archeologist.
As predicted, Daniel jogged up to the entrance and started to run his hands over the elaborately carved symbols on the wall near the door. “Uhh, Jack? Can we…?” Daniel’s fingers finished the rest of the sentence with a couple of excited jabs toward the interior of the abandoned building.
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as the inevitable headache and indigestion came on. “Daniel, our mission is to locate the Naquadah the MALP detected, not go on an historical field trip.”
“I know that Jack, but I’d just like to take a quick look. These symbols resemble ancient Etruscan. If this planet’s people were transplanted by the Goa’uld from that time period, I’d love to learn a little bit more about how they lived.”
Coming to a stop beside Teal’c, Carter surveyed the temple with a hand raised to shade her eyes from the bright sunlight. “Could be interesting,” she said in an offhand manner.
“Et tu, Carter?”
The astrophysicist offered her CO a small half shrug. “Well sir, the Naquadah readings are coming from inside the temple.”
Ahh, the sound of the final nail being hammered into his coffin. Jack heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Alright, you win. Carter, lead the way. Teal’c, cover our six. And Daniel… don’t touch anything.”
The group started to advance into the temple. The clamor of harsh voices from behind was an unexpected and unwelcome surprise that made four heads turn as one.
Snakeheads. A whole bunch of ‘em marching in unison and shouting to one another in their native tongue.
“For cryin’ out loud – in, quickly. We’ll hide until they’re gone.”
“You sure they haven’t already seen us?” asked Carter.
A staff blast crashed into the wall of the structure just as she ducked inside. More blasts soon joined the first one. “Yup, they’ve definitely seen us,” Jack and Daniel chorused as they slid the heavy stone door shut. Jack dusted debris knocked loose by the impact of the Goa’uld weapons off his hair and shoulders.
“We should begin searching for an alternate exit,” said Teal’c, clicking on his flashlight and sweeping the beam of light around the temple’s interior. They found themselves in a long, very straight corridor that seemed to stretch on indefinitely with no discernible doorways or offshoots. The walls were a metallic golden color and decorated floor to ceiling with a plethora of carved foreign symbols.
“Lead the way.” Jack’s flashlight joined the Jaffa’s, and together with Carter they made their way down the hall.
Daniel hung back while the others advanced forward and trained his light on the walls to see if the inscriptions could tell him anything while the steady thwack of staff blasts hammered on the door. “Hey guys, I think I found another way out. This inscription says—”
That was as far as he got. Something much larger and more powerful, like one of those staff canons, struck the temple door with a concussive boom. It and half the wall and ceiling shattered in a devastating avalanche of gigantic jagged masonry stones.
Instinctively, Jack ducked and covered his head with a shout of warning. As soon as the dust settled, he surveyed the area and found a solid wall of rock now choking the exit. On the other side were a horde of Jaffa yelling orders with angry voices now muffled through the layer of rock. More blasts echoed dully, most likely more staff weapons being used to clear the boulders. Thankfully the Jaffa didn’t employ the staff canon for fear of bringing down more of the unstable building on top of them.
“Everybody okay?” asked Jack.
“Fine, sir. So much for the Naquadah,” Carter muttered.
“I am well, O’Neill,” came Teal’s response.
“Daniel?”
No answer.
“Daniel!” cried Carter. She rushed toward the fallen rock, followed by the rest of the team, flashlights bobbing as they sprinted in the near-complete darkness. Three beams of light illuminated Daniel’s sprawled, inert form. Blood tracked its way down his dusty face from a nasty gash that stood out livid against the pale skin and crooked glasses above his right eye. His right arm and shoulder were pinned beneath a particularly large piece of masonry. For a moment Jack’s memory flashed back to a failed escape from a Naquadah mine on a much earlier mission.
Together the team moved as many of the smaller rocks as they could before Teal’c lifted the boulder-sized chunk of stone with all of his considerable strength, massive muscles straining, while Carter pitched in on the other side. Gradually the huge masonry block rose, inch by inch, away from the pinioned linguist. Once it was high enough, Jack dragged Daniel away. Teal’c let the block fall with a reverberating crash as soon as he was clear.
Sounds from the other side of the cave-in told the team that the Jaffa continued to shift the rock, desperate to get at their quarry. “They wish to capture us for wealth and status from their system lord,” Teal’c informed them.
“Great.”
Carter bent to examine the injured man. Jack came up beside her. “How is he?”
“Probable concussion, sir,” she replied. “His arm could be fractured… I’m not sure. His shoulder’s pretty scraped up too.” As Carter set about cleaning the gash on his head and the cuts on his arm and shoulder, Daniel began to stir with a groggy moan. His eyelids struggled open.
“Daniel? Can you hear me?” asked Carter.
Daniel blinked a bit more, still trying to process the words being directed at him. He seemed about to answer, but instead lifted himself partway up, twisted around and threw up on the dusty floor.
“Definitely concussed,” said Jack as Daniel collapsed back onto the floor with a groan, head now resting in Carter’s lap.
“Wh-what…?” the linguist started as he shifted, trying and failing to get up. He let out another low groan.
“Easy. You’ve got a concussion,” Carter told him. “His scalp’s still bleeding,” she said to Jack, shining her flashlight toward the archeologist’s face, which elicited another loud groan. She blotted more blood from Daniel’s head before securing the bandage. “Daniel, how do you feel?”
“D-dizzy,” he replied in a weak voice. “Headache.”
“Not surprising. You took quite a blow to the noggin,” said Jack.
“Can you move your arm?”
Daniel blinked fuzzily. It took him a good thirty seconds to process Carter’s question and follow her request. Another utterance of pain escaped him. “No. Hurts…” He trailed off, looking awfully green. “Sick,” he managed to choke out before twisting urgently and making good on his word.
Jack grimaced in sympathy. “Hey listen, I know you’re not feelin’ so hot, but we’ve got a bunch of snakeheads on the other side of that rockfall who are intent on catching us. Eventually they’re gonna get enough of this cleared to come through, so we’ve gotta get out of here. Do you think you can walk?”
The linguist started to nod, then stopped, grimacing. His trembling left hand rose to cover his forehead.
“Take it real slow,” Jack advised. With Teal’c’s help Daniel got shakily to his feet once Carter fitted a sling from the med kit onto his right arm and administered some painkillers. Jack watched the man’s face drain of what little color was left in it. “Daniel, right before the cave-in you were about to tell us about another way outta here from that inscription you read. Care to share?” he asked.
Daniel’s eyes went wide behind the cracked lenses of his glasses. “Jack, I… I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything about how we got here. I-I don’t even know where we are.” The panic in Daniel’s voice sent shivers up Jack’s spine.
“Hey, don’t you worry,” he rushed to assure the agitated linguist. “We’re at the Spooky Fun Fair running from ghouls on Planet Halloween.” Daniel didn’t look amused. In fact, he looked downright terrified. Not an expression Jack saw often on Daniel’s face. “We’re in an old temple chasing Naquadah readings on P6G-138,” he amended. “If you don’t remember the way out, we’ll discover it together.”
Daniel still looked perturbed, but some of the fear seemed to dissipate from his expression. Jack shone his flashlight down the corridor. “Okay kids, let’s go before this place is infested with snakes.” They started slowly down the hallway.
“Daniel, do you think you can read some more of those squiggles on the wall? Maybe there’s another inscription that describes the way out,” suggested Jack.
“Does this mean I have permission to touch things in here?” Daniel’s shaky voice had regained a hint of levity.
Jack snorted. “Don’t push your luck.”
Daniel hobbled closer to the wall, helped by Teal’c. Jack shone his light over the area while they all kept moving forward at a slow but steady pace.
“Well? Anything?” asked Jack after a while.
“N-no. Having trouble… reading these symbols.” The linguist grasped his head. “Can’t… understand… anything. Can’t… think… straight,” he growled, frustrated, tired and dizzy. His head pounded with great, stabbing pulses of pain which sent his stomach churning. The characters swum across his vision as he stood there, trying to make sense of the gibberish.
“Well, I don’t mean to push you, but —”
A rumbling crash resounded from behind, interrupting Jack’s apology. Back down the corridor a thin shaft of light became visible, and silhouetted against it were the running forms of many Jaffa. The light was then blocked entirely by the shapes of more Jaffa guarding the entrance. Loud shouts preceded the pursuers.
“Ah, crap. Time to pick up the pace!”
They had just started to hustle down the passageway when Daniel gave a sharp cry and staggered against Teal’c. His knees buckled and he folded down onto the ground. “P-please… n-no running,” he panted, clearly in pain.
“We must hurry. I will carry you,” said Teal’c, and he bent to lift Daniel into his shoulders.
“W-wait,” Daniel halted him. He pointed. “This symbol…”
Daniel trailed off, trying to marshal his scattered thoughts, breathing through his increasing nausea. He kept losing concentration.
“What about that symbol?” prodded Jack.
“Familiar. Seen it before somewhere…” Daniel reached out and traced the carved symbol with his fingers, straining to remember. Immediately the wall and floor began to move with the sound of stone grating upon itself. The whole wall rotated slowly along with the bit of floor they were standing on, like one of those hidden bookcase passages you saw in movies. Around they went until they came to rest on the opposite side of the wall in a spacious room lit with the soft glow of several torches. They could hear the heavy tromp of Jaffa boots marching past them on the other side.
Daniel moved away from the others on hands and knees and became noisily sick in the far corner while Jack and Carter had a look around. Teal’c examined the golden wall with interest, not finding any hint of a seam where the door had been.
“What now?” asked Jack after making a circuit around the room.
“I don’t… I dunno,” Daniel slurred. He knew there had to be more instructions for finding their way out, but he couldn’t remember them. He was having trouble focusing. Somehow, everything leading up to his injury was a huge blur with only a few bits and pieces remaining in his memory. If only he could recall what the rest of the inscription said. Feeling suddenly very irritable, Daniel slammed his fist against the wall with a grunt of anger, then moaned as the action jarred his injury.
“Easy buddy, we’re safe for the moment. Take your time, we’ll figure it out.”
No sooner were the words out of Jack’s mouth when the hidden wall began to rotate and the forms of four burly Jaffa came into view.
“Alright, get behind me,” said Jack to Daniel as he, Teal’c and Carter raised their weapons and engaged the Jaffa in battle. Daniel stood shakily and backed up, scanning the walls again through worsening dizziness and double vision. He couldn’t remember… why couldn’t he remember! Pain clouded his senses like a suffocating blanket as Daniel pushed his injured brain to come up with an answer.
Four more Jaffa rotated into view, and then another four. Daniel knew they would only just keep coming. With a snarl he pawed at the wall, battering it all over with the weakened fingers of his one uninjured hand, clawing at the symbols with uncharacteristic aggression, demanding them to give up their secrets.
Against all odds, another section of wall began to turn as Daniel’s fingers ran over a character inscribed at about knee height. Daniel stumbled backward, calling to the rest of the team to get their attention. They retreated toward the archeologist, still firing at the Goa’uld soldiers, just in time for Daniel to trace the appropriate symbol again. Once more, they all stood on the floor in front of the hidden door and rotated into another spacious golden-walled room.
But the Jaffa had seen where they went. Eventually they’d figure out which symbol operated the door through trial and error. Daniel set to work again haphazardly tracing the carved characters in a desperate attempt to trigger another secret entrance, though his vision had gone fuzzy and would not clear.
Daniel ran his hand over every square inch of that wall. Nothing happened. Spent, he leaned against the wall, exhausted and dizzy. His eyes drifted closed against his will. “I’m sorry,” he said faintly. “I’m sorry.”
Jack glanced at Daniel, then met Carter’s worried expression. As he did, something gold and shiny glinting in the torchlight caught his eye. It was a tiny plaque embedded in the floor in one corner of the room only visible from just the right angle.
“Carter,” he called, directing her attention to the plaque while Teal’c took up a defensive position with his weapon trained on the hidden doorway. Jack knelt beside it and traced his fingers over all the minute symbols carved into it like he’d seen Daniel do on the wall. A hole opened suddenly in the floor right beside him, causing Jack to leap up with a surprised, “Whoa!” Below yawned a winding staircase that seemed to lead down into the bowels of the earth, minimally lit with more torches. “Think I found our next stop.”
“Nice going, sir,” congratulated Carter, just as the grinding of the hidden stone wall started, signaling the arrival of the pursuing Jaffa.
They started down the stone stairs at a clipped pace. Jack took up the rear with a glance up at the bright-by-comparison room above as the trap door slid closed. “Let’s see those snaky bastards find this.”
Down and down, into the dark and cold they descended for what seemed like hours. Feeling faint and sick, Daniel clung tenaciously to consciousness, no longer fully aware of what was going on beyond knowing that he had to keep walking.
Somebody bad was chasing them. They were trapped in here because he couldn’t remember an inscription he’d read. He couldn’t do his job and he was slowing everybody down. The urge to break into tears suddenly came over him and before he knew what was happening Daniel found his cheeks stained with moisture.
Sam noticed. “Daniel?”
“I’m just… slowing you down,” he said with a frustrated gesture and swiped angrily at the betraying wetness. “Can’t remember.”
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault; you’re hurt. We’ll find our way out,” Sam soothed, rubbing his shoulder.
It wasn’t long before they reached a wide stone landing. Daniel wanted so desperately to rest, but he knew they couldn’t stop, even though he was in so much pain he could barely see. The rest of the team started down the stairs. Daniel tried to follow but he simply could not keep up. An incredible wave of dizziness seized him. He tottered off-balance and crumpled into Jack’s arms.
“Easy. Why don’t you lie down for a minute.”
Daniel didn’t object. He allowed Jack to ease him onto the floor…
Floor? Where was he again? Where was Doctor Fraiser? Why did his head hurt so much, like a pickax chipping away at his brain? The world would not stop spinning. It revolved faster and faster, careening out of control and threatening to fling him from the sphere of the earth into nothingness. Suddenly frightened, confused and disoriented, Daniel closed his eyes and clung to his friend for dear life. “J-Jack… help… spinning too fast, I-I’m gonna fall—”
Jack’s arms tightened around the archeologist. “I’ve got ya. I won’t let ya fall.” He cushioned the back of Daniel’s head with the palm of his hand as he lowered his friend gently onto the cold stone.
Jack sighed and shook his head, watching Daniel’s face scrunch up in pain. When a mission went bad, it really went bad, trapped in a musty old building with a concussed archeologist and a bunch of snakeheads chasing them. How the hell were they gonna get out of here?
“Alright, we’ll rest here a while.”
“O’Neill,” came Teal’c’s voice. “There are more carved characters upon this wall.”
Jack tried to get up to investigate, only to find Daniel clutching his sleeve and a pair of frightened blue eyes pleading silently for him not to go. “Alright, guess I’m gonna stay here.” He patted Daniel’s arm reassuringly and glanced up at Teal’c. “Anything you recognize?”
“I cannot decipher their meaning,” said Teal’c.
The distant scrape of the trap door opening and the echo of boots on the stairs above cut the conversation short. “Time to go.”
Teal’c tried to lift Daniel into his shoulders, but Daniel wouldn’t release Jack’s arm. Damn, he had a surprisingly strong grip. “You’ve gotta let go, buddy, I’m sorry.”
Things might have gotten tricky then, but Daniel’s eyes fluttered, then closed as he lost consciousness. His hand went lax. Teal’c scooped him up and they dashed down the winding stone stairs. Finally after what seemed like half an hour they reached the bottom, tired, sweaty and panting. Teal’c set Daniel down, then went with Jack to investigate their surroundings.
They were in a dark cave-like room with rough stone walls devoid of carvings of any kind. A dirt floor punctuated by stalagmites thrust upward toward a vaulted ceiling hung with stalactites. Crystals on the walls and growing from the cave floor glittered pink and yellow under the glow of their flashlights. Under different circumstances it would have been breathtakingly beautiful, but Jack only had eyes for only one thing, the one thing that seemed to be absent. “It’s another dead end,” he lamented.
Teal’c and Jack returned to where Carter knelt beside Daniel, who was beginning to stir. “Hey, there,” said Carter. Her expression grew troubled by the linguist’s sickly appearance and by the heavy tread of boots on the stairs growing louder and louder.
Daniel’s eyes didn’t open past the halfway mark. His face was ashen and sweaty under the illumination of their flashlights. He looked altogether dazed and not at all with it. “Hurts,” he panted through a sharp intake of breath.
“I know, Daniel. I can give you more painkillers, but that’s about as much as I can do until we get out of here.” She helped him sit up a bit so he could take the pills, but was startled when Daniel tried again to rise. “Whoa. I don’t think you should get up,” she said and put her hands gently on Daniel’s chest to emphasize the point.
Daniel’s struggled. “No. Remember… remember…”
“What do you remember?” asked Jack.
“Handle… projection… rock.” Daniel struggled to articulate the fragmented image in his brain. “Have to look.” Again he tried to rise. Seeing his determination, Jack steadied him as he struggled upright. “Have to look… see… gotta see…”
“I think he’s trying to say he’ll know it when he sees it,” said Carter.
“Alright. Daniel, you lead the way. I’ll give you a hand.”
Jack steadied the injured man while Carter and Teal’c provided light. The linguist hobbled around the room before exclaiming, “There!”
Jack scratched his head unsure of what Daniel was looking at. The clomp of Jaffa boots grew closer. He could see their shadows growing larger as they moved ever downward, downward.
Daniel half lurched, half stumbled over to a nearby stalagmite protruding from the ground at one end of the room. It was perched at a weird angle and vaguely rectangular, and now that Jack looked closer he saw that it was too regularly-shaped to have been formed naturally. Daniel grasped the lever-like rock and tried to pull it one-handedly until he was forced to stop and give in to his nausea again.
Jack took over. “I’ve got it.”
He yanked on the rock-lever. Gears ground somewhere. Sunlight and blessedly cool air washed over their faces as a slit-like doorway opened. The team hastily slipped outside.
“Aaarrrgg!” said Daniel, grasping his injured head and doubling over in excruciating pain as the brightness of daylight bored its way directly into his brain. He collapsed onto the ground, huddling in on himself to try and shield his eyes from the onslaught. Carter went over to tend to Daniel while Jack and Teal’c examined the mechanism that controlled the door.
With a little finagling, they thoroughly bent and jammed it. Absolutely no Jaffa would be coming through, even if they did manage to find the hidden rock-lever. Jack returned to his friend’s prone form to find Carter ending her radio call for help.
“Failed… let you down… couldn’t remember,” Daniel was mumbling.
Jack knelt beside him. “Not true, Danny boy. You got us through.” He gave Daniel’s shoulder a pat. “You did good. Help’s on the way. You can have a rest now.”
Dazed and hurting, Daniel allowed his eyes to close. “Rest… sounds nice.” His voice faded as he gave in to a twilight of drowsing, and eventually felt himself being lifted onto something sturdy. His head still hurt very badly, but when he heard Janet’s voice and felt the hands of his friends offering him small pats of reassurance, he couldn’t help feeling slightly better, because he wasn’t alone and he was on the way home.