by Jamie Duncan
“This thing gets out and your son’s good as dead.” Jack got one boot under himself, pushed up. He was on his feet. He wanted to run to her—to it— he wanted it. He wanted to give up, give up, give up. From the corner of his eye, he could see Daniel crawling toward it, on his belly. Carter stepped up and blocked his path and the sound of miserable desperation that Daniel made was a cold hand closing around Jack’s ribs.
Aris’ gaze stuttered across Jack toward Daniel. Then he looked over his shoulder at Sebek. The blaster faltered again, recovered, then fell.
Beyond him, Sebek was a scintillation of color against patterned walls—circuitry, the monster’s brain—framed by a black starburst scar, the mark left by Aris’ blaster shot when he’d aimed it at Jack. A thin ribbon of memory slipped across Jack’s mind: the monster weeping when that shot had hit home, the color of the place changing. Lifting his hand—it seemed to be far away, like it belonged to someone else—Jack pointed at the scar.
“Carter,” he said. “See?”
She followed the line of his arm—her whole body turning slowly, too slowly, away from him toward the wall—and then looked back at him, blank, confused. Her head tilted a little to the side as if she were listening to something distracting. Her mouth fell open and her eyelids fluttered and closed. Daniel started moving forward again, going around her spread feet. Light rose up between Jack and the others like water flooding in. He wanted to say something. Daniel was crawling. Carter’s head tilted the other way, dreamily. Teal’c was on one knee, motionless. Aris was unmoving, blaster at his side. Sebek smiled and came forward to meet Daniel. He was only meters away, talons reaching.
“Major!” Jack shouted, and Carter’s head snapped up, her eyes on him, waiting for orders. He wanted to say something… something. His arm was still pointing, so he followed it himself, now, to the black burn on the wall. “The brain,” he said.
Her head turned again.
She fumbled in her pocket. It took a long, long time, but finally she pulled out a grenade, held it toward him, the question clear.
The room wasn’t that big. The blow-back would probably take them all out.
But Daniel was crawling and Sebek’s fingers were reaching, inches now from Daniel’s face. Sebek’s mouth was open wide, black and empty and ready to swallow them all.
Jack met Carter’s eyes and nodded.
The grenade collided with the wall, rebounded, spun like a top.
The explosion knocked him on his ass again. He could hear something, distant, beyond the ringing in his ears, a child crying, crying. Pitifully. And beyond that, even farther away, a voice roaring. Rage. His skin was being seared away by that voice, the vast, aching rawness of it. He tried to find his hands, his legs, but there was nothing, free-fall, not even wind, nothing but the child and the rage. Then the planet under him convulsed, heaved up like something huge was trying to surface under his back, its shoulders braced against bedrock, then dropped away beneath him, the beast collapsing with exhaustion, the whole weight of the mountain crashing down on top of it.
The darkness was terrifying and beautiful after so much light. He was falling. The world was ending. Jack closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sam wasn’t entirely sure how she got the Colonel moving. It might have been when she smacked him on the face hard enough to make his head stop lolling to the left and loll to the right instead, or maybe it was the sound Daniel made, that gurgling groan and the blood that followed it, or maybe it was Teal’c’s solemn, unruffled announcement that there was “fire in the hole”, indicating the deployment of his own grenade. Whatever it was, the Colonel’s feet were moving. Not in a terribly coordinated fashion, but—she wasn’t afraid to admit now—it was better than she’d hoped for.
The howling chased them down the corridors. The Colonel leaned heavily on her as they stumbled after Teal’c, who had Daniel thrown over his shoulder. One of Daniel’s hands swung back and forth with his steps. The Colonel kept his eyes on that hand, and that was fine. Whatever worked, so long as he kept going.
And they had to keep going because the collapse was chasing them too. The first grenade had taken out an entire wall, which exploded away from them, blasting the bulk of the debris into an adjoining chamber. Like everyone else, Sam had been thrown off of her feet. Her jacket had been burning and she’d rolled, coming up against Aris, who first kicked her away and then helped her beat out the flames. Everything was a jumble, the floor pitching and the sky falling. Frozen with its arms outstretched, obscene mouth gaping, the cyborg was a rigid line of agony. Daniel was sprawled at its feet, one hand wrapped around the thing’s ankle. Teal’c had had to pry his fingers free.
And then the lights went out.
And then they were running.
Filling the corridors with a palpable darkness, the dust billowed out ahead of the destruction as the maze crumbled from its center, walls slumping inward, revealing the erratic blinking and flaring of the vast hidden network of the mainframe. The mountain was finally coming down, crumbling from above, where the processing plants were still exploding, and below, where their grenades had set off a chain reaction in the systems of the maze—and they were in the middle of it. So what else was new?
Sam forced herself not to look back, not to feel a moment’s regret as the data—so much data—crackled and bled away. Over the rumbling of the collapse, she couldn’t possibly hear the discharging static electricity in her hair, and it really couldn’t have been those last wisps of knowledge sparking into nothingness, but she imagined she could feel all of it dissipating as the maze toppled in on itself. She did hear Aris panting as he came up beside her, looped the Colonel’s other arm around his neck and helped her pick up the pace.
It wasn’t as easy going out as it had been going in, when they’d been lured along by… that thing. Sam shuddered. Maybe because he felt it, the Colonel said something unintelligible. She didn’t stop to ask for clarification. Not for the first time, she was grateful for Teal’c’s keen eye and the fact that he had remembered to leave markers as they’d made the dash into the center of the maze, once the Colonel’s had abruptly stopped. He followed them now, running his free hand over the marks at each corner before setting off again. A few paces away and he disappeared in the dust. Even Aris’ flashlight did little more than show them thicker shadows in the drifting haze. Sam wished she had a bandanna to cover her mouth with.
The Colonel’s breathing was uneven, but, as they got farther away from the cyborg, he seemed to gather a little more strength, finally pulling his arm from around Aris’ shoulder and pushing away from Sam when Teal’c paused at a corner to get his bearings. Bending low, he braced his hands on his knees and coughed so hard Sam expected to see blood. When he straightened up, he reached out to steady himself against the wall, but snatched his hand back as if he’d been burned.
He mumbled something that sounded like “Sea monsters,” and set off after Teal’c.
Sam decided to take his word for it.
At the vault entrance, they got lucky. The shield was down. After tossing a good-sized rock through the opening to make sure, Sam led them into the chamber. The torches were doused and the same thick dust hung in the air, turning Aris’ flashlight beam into a seemingly solid shaft as he angled it around the open space. They all held their breath and listened for any sign of danger before moving cautiously up toward the ramp. From beyond the chamber, they could hear muffled shouting, staff-fire and, after a long pause, an explosion that brought a patter of debris down on their heads.
Then they heard a small voice coming from the angle between the wall and the ramp.
“Father?”
The flashlight beam stabbed into the darkness, revealing Aadi, one hand held up to shield his eyes. In his other hand was a zat, aimed, stiff-armed, at them. Beside him, Hamel was lying on his side. When the light hit him, he made a move to rise, but slumped down again. Brenneka was laid out in front of them, hands folded on her breast.
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br /> “Here,” Aris called, his voice strangely soft.
Aadi didn’t move. The zat wavered a little, shifting toward Aris’ voice. “Sebek?”
“Dead.”
Again, a waver, but Aadi recovered. “The Nitori? Did they come?”
“No.”
“No,” Aadi repeated. “I hoped—Hamel said—maybe they’d come for her. But I knew they wouldn’t.” The zat fell to the floor with a clatter. As he stared, wide-eyed and vacant, into their light, Aadi began to cry.
Finally Aris moved. He crossed the space slowly, as if he were approaching a wounded animal, and settled down onto his knees beside his sister. He brushed the side of Aadi’s face with the back of his fingers, then let the hand fall to Brenneka’s hair, then her cheek, wiping the dust away with his thumb. After a moment, he leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers.
“Jaffa,” Aadi managed. “I killed him.” A shaky arm pointed up at the body sprawled across the ramp.
Aris nodded, silent approval.
Teal’c shifted Daniel’s weight on his back, and the Colonel rested a hand on Sam’s shoulder for a brief moment. The darkness and the dust seemed to settle into Sam chest. Blindly, she reached out and smoothed Daniel’s hair away from his forehead, feeling the moist heat of his breath on her skin.
She had to clear her throat twice before she could find her voice. “We have to go.”
As if to make her point, a low rumble rolled behind them and more dust belched from the mouth of the maze. The ground shifted under their feet, and the debris that clattered down was big enough and heavy enough to do damage. She shielded Daniel’s head with her body as Aris did the same for Aadi and Hamel.
“Now’s good,” the Colonel agreed, his knuckles rubbing the top of his head where a chunk of the ceiling had landed on him, and then led the way toward the ramp. Taking the flash from his father, Aadi clambered up toward the tunnel opening and shone the light down on them. Sam detoured to help Hamel to his feet, while Aris got his arms under Brenneka’s broken body and rose. Her head resting against his shoulder, her long hair falling away from her face, she could have been asleep. He met Sam’s eyes as if daring her to object. She nodded and helped Hamel up the ramp.
The tunnel that led up toward the surface was blocked by a wall of rubble, but Sam turned left and headed down.
From behind her, the Colonel called, “Uh, isn’t up thataway?”
“Better route, sir,” Sam gasped, turning Hamel awkwardly at the entrance to the intersecting tunnel so she could see her CO. “If it hasn’t collapsed, too.” And wouldn’t that be adding insult to injury, to survive all of this only to be buried alive. She thought of the cyborg raising its skeletal head to look at her with those cold, mechanical eyes. No way. She was not going to get stuck down here with that. Dead or not.
Hamel started to sink and she struggled to get a better grip on him. Aadi helped, taking the old man’s other arm over his shoulders. Sam craned her neck to peer down the narrow passage. Somewhere down there, a torch was burning.
As they made their way down the sloping tunnel, the dust seemed to clear a little and the air grew damper and heavy with the smell of water. That seemed to perk Hamel up a bit. He tilted his head back and to the side to watch where they were going with his one good eye. The other side of his face was a solid burn, black and flaking, that eye closed. Sam could smell cooked flesh.
“Almost there,” she murmured under her breath, more like prayer than encouragement. It seemed farther than it had on the way in.
At-the site of their first battle, Behn was lying where they’d left him, covered now in fallen rocks and drifts of sand that hid his face. Hamel paused and wobbled himself into a crouch to close Frey’s eyes. Rebnet was slumped on his knees against the wall in the next tunnel, shot in the back.
“We’ll come for you,” Hamel whispered indistinctly. His burned lip gleamed with seeping blood.
They moved on into the last tunnel.
It was so quiet here, nothing but their own labored breathing, the scrape of their boots on stone, and now the unmistakable sound of sluicing water. At the point where this tunnel intersected with the short passage to the landing, Aadi stood on his toes to pull the torch out of its sconce, and they all paused in the wavering shadows while Sam and Colonel O’Neill slipped ahead, one on either side of the passage, hugging the walls.
Two Jaffa were sprawled at the edge of the water. They were both dead.
“So,” the Colonel said in a low voice, barely audible over the steady rush of water. “We gonna swim?”
“No, sir,” Sam answered and found herself smiling. She made her way to where the landing stopped at the tunnel wall and, hooking her hand into the anchor ring, leaned out over the water and around the corner. “Eche!” she called. Nothing but her own voice doubled back on itself. She called again, and finally the boat loomed into the light.
Eche stood at the bow, leaning all his weight into the rope so he could heave the boat forward, hand over hand. He was smiling and looking a little wild around the eyes. “I did—” he began, cutting himself off as his hands slipped and the boat skidded backward on the current. One-handed, the Colonel helped Sam guide the boat up to the landing. “They came, and I was hiding, and when they weren’t looking I shot them,” Eche went on in a whispering rush. He looked a little appalled when he caught sight of the bodies.
“Good,” Hamel said from behind Sam. “You did good.”
Eche nodded, but the wildness didn’t fade much.
It took a fair amount of shuffling to get them all into the boat, Sam and Aadi staying until last to hold it steady. Eche hesitated and then held Aris’ arm to brace him so he could step over the side to settle Brenneka into the stern. Then Aris and Eche hunched down on either side of her. The Colonel went next and got Daniel under the arms as Teal’c stood him unsteadily in the boat. The Colonel couldn’t take the weight too well, though, and the two of them fell together, Daniel sprawled on top of him. There was some grumbling about too many walnut cookies and somebody having to go on a diet while Hamel clambered in after Teal’c, then Aadi, and finally Sam, who let the rope play out. The current caught the boat and they slipped into the tunnel, going twice as fast downstream as they’d come up.
Teal’c kept a guiding hand on the rope as they surged away from the mine and down under the city. Sam leaned her head back against his knee, looked up at the ceiling, and wondered what was going on up there. Something big had rallied most of the Jaffa out of the mine. She guessed they had Brenneka and the Order to thank for that. Aris sat in the stern beside his sister, one arm around her, the other thrown over Aadi’s skinny shoulders. Pale tracks of tears showing through the dust on his cheeks, the boy stared blank-faced over Sam’s head and at the guttering torch wedged in at the bow. Eche was reaching out to touch Hamel’s burned face, but the old man swatted his hand away, then caught the kid’s fingers, squeezed them tightly and didn’t let them go. At Sam’s knees on the other side of the boat, the Colonel slouched, his chin tucked in to his chest. Daniel was curled up under his steadying arm. In the torchlight and the oblique angle of Jack’s flash, which was upended between spars on the floor, Daniel’s neck and chin looked black with drying blood. When the Colonel coughed, covering his mouth with the back of his hand, Daniel stirred, rasped out something she couldn’t hear, and the Colonel patted his shoulder. “Easy, easy,” he said between coughs. “Almost home.”
Sam could imagine that was true. At least, they’d come an awfully long way. They had to be close. It was only fair.
The boat coursed down the tunnel, and time seemed suspended. The walls that passed by on either side were the same liquid black, the water murmured and clapped against the boat, breath came and went, around and around. Sam was surprised to feel Teal’c’s hand shaking her, waking her from a doze. They were getting there. Daniel was sitting up, still leaning on the Colonel, his eyes closed.
Colonel O’Neill, though, was watching her, angling his hea
d to see around Eche who was helping Teal’c to slow their progress when the landing came into sight. “Good work, Major,” the Colonel said simply.
Sam could only nod, and a smile ghosted across his drawn face.
“Okay, Daniel,” he said, tapping the back of Daniel’s head with his fist. “Nap time’s over. Let’s go.”
When Daniel’s eyes opened and then squinted, annoyed, into the torchlight, Sam found herself actually laughing a little, and at the same time feeling a bit watery with relief inside.
“What?” he mouthed. No sound came out at all. But the Colonel rapped his head again, and Daniel rubbed at it with the heel of his hand. “Ow,” he said, and this time it was audible. Whiny and broken, but audible.
While the others crawled out of the boat, Colonel O’Neill felt around inside his jacket and pulled out Daniel’s glasses. “Here,” he said, handing them over.
Daniel put them on carefully, his hands shaking a little, and raised his head to peer at Sam. One of the lenses was a spider’s web of cracks. He squeezed that eye shut. “Gee, thanks,” he whispered, the slight curve of a grin softening the sarcasm a little.
With a grunt that might have been a rebuke but which came out more like a laugh, the Colonel pulled the glasses off of Daniel’s face, poked his finger through the broken lens, shook the pieces out into the river, and reseated the glasses on Daniel’s nose. “Better?”
The intact lens was opaque with torchlight, but Sam could see Daniel’s other eye crinkle up. “Much,” he said dryly.
“Good.”
They were a little closer to home.
The Colonel held Daniel’s elbow as they clambered out onto the landing, and Sam held the Colonel’s when he slipped on the slick stone and almost tipped backward into the water. Teal’c and the others waited for them where the tunnel started to angle upward away from the river, but Arts and Aadi weren’t with them. Aris’ boots rang on the stone as he carried Brenneka toward the light of the chapel. After checking to make sure that Colonel O’Neill and Daniel seemed steady enough on their feet, Sam led the way, Hamel stumbling along between Teal’c and Eche.
