Daniel corralled those thoughts before they could go any further. The last thing he needed was to open the door to those memories. It had taken him long enough to get to the point where thoughts of her didn’t ambush him daily. He’d finally made an odd sort of peace with it. Knowing Shifu had helped. But he couldn’t afford to go back there. He had to think clearly — rationally — and figure out what was going on here. What all of this meant.
Daniel scanned the horizon, looking for a sign of anything but the blowing sand. There was, he realized now, something of a pathway that began at the base of the steps and traveled up over a distant ridge. He hadn’t noticed it before. Its visibility seemed to come and go with the shifting winds.
The way did not look particularly inviting, but it wasn’t as if he had any other options. He had already scoured the walls of the chamber behind him and found nothing there to enlighten him. If it was a tomb, it was a fairly austere one. The custom in Ancient Egypt had been to bury the dead with their worldly possessions, or at the very least, symbolic representations of them, to assure their comfortable journey to the Afterlife. However, the only contents of this tomb, aside from himself, had been a small knapsack, filled with some sort of food, a full canteen of water and — this was the odd thing — his own small, leather-bound notebook.
“Not exactly a pharaoh’s treasure,” he muttered aloud, retrieving the paltry assortment of belongings.
He absently rifled through the pages of his journal before stowing it in the knapsack. Wishing that whomever had thought to pack for him had also included his hat, Daniel took one last, quick glance over his shoulder into the darkness behind him and a cold shiver ran down his spine.
Maybe he really was dead. Maybe this was some whole other level of existence.
And maybe he just didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“A journey of a thousand miles,” he mused. Okay. So maybe he was mixing cultures, but some truths were universal.
With a dubious glance at the distant ridge and only the briefest hesitation, Daniel took the first step.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Sam’s voice blew back at her on the harsh wind that swirled snow like brittle needles against her face.
It was a blizzard.
No wonder she’d been half-frozen when she woke up. Especially considering that she was dressed in only the thinnest of linen pants and top. Exactly how she’d come to be wearing them, Sam really didn’t want to think about. Better to focus on more immediate problems. Like getting out of the doorway and back into the comparative warmth of the inner chamber, even if it was as gloomy as a mausoleum. Not even its polished white, marble walls could dispel the intrinsic desolation of the place.
Shivering, Sam retreated to the low, stone platform in the center of the room. As much as she disliked the idea, staying put for the time being was her only viable option. She’d be dead in a matter of minutes if she went outside. Not that her prospects in here were necessarily much better. She might not be as exposed to the elements, but it was only a matter of time before hypothermia set in. She was just postponing the inevitable.
Which made no sense to her whatsoever. Because if whoever, or whatever, had put her here wanted to kill her, then why not just leave her dead in the first place?
At least, she was fairly sure she’d been dead. The Goa’uld had killed Teal’c and Daniel so swiftly, she’d barely grasped what was happening before the zats had turned toward her. She had a vague recollection of a distant, anguished shout, and then nothing. Until she woke up here, alone.
But if she had been revived, maybe the rest of the team had too. All it would have taken was a sarcophagus. Not that she much liked the thought of having been inside one of those things, but still, it was better than the alternative. Of course there was the grim possibility that they had only revived her, but she refused to consider that for more than a heartbeat. It was better to stay positive.
Granted, that would be a lot easier to do if she weren’t freezing, or if whoever had brought her here had given her some decent clothes. They had left a knapsack, but the only useful thing inside it, besides some food and water, was her scanner, which worked, except for a curious malfunction in the date and time mode. No amount of fiddling with it would give her anything but the same error message. She had no way of telling how long it had been since they’d left the SGC. It could have been hours or days — maybe even weeks, if they’d been keeping her drugged. But why? All she had were questions, with no hint of an answer in sight.
A gust of wind swirled an eddy of snow through the open doorway and into the corner of the chamber. The mystery of why she was here would have to wait. Basic survival came first and what she needed most right now was a fire. Outside the tomb were any number of trees, half-buried in the snow. With no little effort she could probably find some fallen branches that were relatively dry for fuel. Igniting them, however, was another matter.
Sam turned the scanner over in her hand. If she could manage to pry open the back she could access its inner circuitry. A few crossed wires and, if she were very lucky, she’d get a spark or two. As long as there was some dry tinder around —
Linen. It was dry. And a natural fiber. It would burn easily.
Sam plucked at a few stray strands of the fabric on her pants until one unraveled. Before long she had a small pile of threads which she carefully tucked into the knapsack to keep them from blowing away.
Unfortunately, that was the easy part.
The only means of getting inside the scanner was to break it open against the marble slab. She hated doing it. It meant giving up the only piece of technology she had and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d come to regret it later. Still. Technology wasn’t going to do her any good if she froze to death. It was a necessary sacrifice.
Her arm was in mid-swing when she stopped. She just couldn’t. Not yet. The catalyst, after all, was the very last thing she needed. There was no point in destroying the device until she was sure she had wood dry enough to burn.
Which meant going out to search for fuel. In the snow. In her thin clothes.
Her body recoiled at the thought. She’d had enough bad experiences with snow and ice. Just once it would be nice to get stranded on a tropical island.
Sam sighed. That was the colonel’s line. She could almost hear him in her head, grumbling good-humoredly. That is, when he used to be good-humored. But for some reason he had changed in the past few months, especially toward her. Now she felt like she was treading on egg-shells every time she was around him.
She missed how it used to be between them. The colonel never hung out in her lab between missions anymore, or joined her for meals or, for that matter, talked to her about anything other than work. If even that. And certainly whatever feelings they had agreed to keep in the room during the za’tarc testing no longer seemed to exist. At least, not on the colonel’s part.
Sam took a deep breath. Going down that road wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She needed to focus, to make a plan. The simple fact was, she needed to go out into the cold if she were to have any hope of surviving. And she needed to survive if she was to find out what had happened to the rest of her team. Staying on task was crucial. She could not let her feelings get the better of her.
With determination, Sam returned to the doorway. The wind had changed direction and seemed to have lessened in intensity. If there ever was a time to act, this was probably it.
“Right,” she said aloud, taking a deep breath. She could already feel the sharp wind slicing through her thin garments. Her sandaled feet were nearly numb. Would it have killed them to at least given her a real pair of pants and some shoes?
Fueled by the warmth of her irritation, Sam stepped out the door and into the full force of the wind. She figured she had ten minutes, tops, before frostbite set in.
Time to start the clock — if only she had one.
“One-one-thousand,” she muttered to herself and lung
ed forward into the snow.
“Carter?”
Jack half expected to hear her voice, his usual lifeline to consciousness. It was only when his brain finally kicked in that he actually remembered.
There’d be no answering “Sir.” Not now. Not ever.
And no Teal’c. And no Daniel.
Maybe consciousness wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after all. Being dead had been a whole lot easier. Living was what hurt like hell.
Jack lay there and let it. What was the point in getting up, after all? He’d already tried that. The room had spun a few dozen times and then he’d hit the floor. That had been some time ago, judging by the dried blood that was crusted on his upper lip. He had no desire to repeat the process.
In spite of himself, however, he opened his eyes. A black cylinder was pointed right at his nose. The barrel of a P90.
Crap.
With more energy that he’d thought he could muster, Jack rolled out of its way and into a defensive crouch. He’d been right, it was a P90. In fact, it was his P90 — he could see that now — resting on the floor next to him. There was the telltale scratch from when he’d used it to fend off some over-zealous, knife-wielding Jaffa a few months back. Siler had wanted to fix it, but Jack had said no. There was nothing like a visual reminder of one’s own mortality to keep a guy on his toes.
Too bad he hadn’t remembered that earlier. He should have ordered his team back to the gate instead of giving in to Daniel’s whining and Carter’s technology fetish. The job of protecting them was his and he’d screwed up. Again. The Goa’ulds might have pulled the triggers, but he’d put the weapon in their all too eager hands.
Jack eyed the P90 for a few moments before reaching for it. Next to it was some kind of backpack and a canteen, neither of which were his. But the gun was. Even without the evidence of the scratch, it had a more than familiar feel.
Ignoring his slightly protesting knee, Jack got to his feet. No spinning room this time, which was a start. He prodded the sack with the tip of his gun, but it seemed to be as advertised. Hooking the strap of the canteen, he lifted that next. Nothing happened. Either whoever had left them was the world’s worst booby-trap setter, or the stuff was as benign as it appeared. Since he was still in one piece, he’d go with the latter.
There was food in the backpack and water in the canteen. Seeing as how someone had gone to the trouble of leaving him with the bare essentials for survival, he figured the least he could do was to oblige them by getting the hell out of there.
Having emptied the contents of the sack on the ground to see what else it might hold — which was nothing — Jack squatted to repack it. He didn’t even hear the footfall until a split second before a hand rested on his arm. The sensation of having been pricked by something sharp was forgotten a second later as he leapt to his feet to face this new threat.
Except —
He blinked.
“It’s me, sir.”
“Carter?”
She stood there. In flesh and blood. Alive. And smiling at him.
“Yes, sir.”
Jack was suddenly light-headed, and happier than he had any right to be. He pushed aside the impulse to hug her and grasped her by the arm instead. She felt warm and solid beneath his fingers.
“But how?” Not that the details were important, only that she was there. “I thought you were dead.”
The gigawatt smile faded into a sympathetic, almost pitying look. “I am, sir,” she replied gently, her eyes locking onto his. “But then, you see, so are you.”
Chapter Five
“I’M DEAD.”
“Yes, sir.”
He pointed at her. “And you’re dead.”
“Yes, sir.” She sounded rather matter-of-fact about the whole thing. And here he thought he was the one who’d taken a blow to the head.
“No offense, Carter, but you look pretty damn healthy to me.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure how, Colonel, but I don’t think this is really us.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if sorting through her thoughts, and then opened them. “I mean, it’s us, of course, but not us like we’re used to being us.”
Okay. Now she was starting to scare him. Cryptic wasn’t Carter’s usual M.O.
“Come again?” he said, eyeing her. She tried once more.
“Okay. It’s almost as if the essence of who we are has somehow been manifested into a form that physically resembles how we used to be, so we’re able to talk and walk and do everything we could do while we were alive. But I don’t think these are our real bodies. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re not.”
Jack touched the gash on his lip — the source of the dried blood — and winced. “Oh I don’t know. Feels pretty real to me.” He saw a bemused smile tug at her mouth as she half-shrugged.
“I don’t pretend to completely understand it. But think, sir. You saw me die. We both saw Daniel and Teal’c zatted to death. Odds are, they killed you too. And yet, here we are.”
That part, at least, he couldn’t deny. Still. Carter getting all metaphysical on him? It was weird. Too weird. “Well, here some of us are, anyway.” He looked around. “Where’s Daniel? And Teal’c?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. When I woke up, you were the only one here. But you were unconscious, so I checked outside. I didn’t see any sign of them.”
“And that’s when you came up with this ‘theory’ about essences and stuff…?” He hated doubting her. It was like questioning whether the sun would rise each morning. But this stuff was way out there. He couldn’t imagine even Daniel coming up with it.
“Well, it’s not exactly my theory. Here, I’ll show you.”
Jack followed her to the doorway. Already he could hear the gentle patter of rain on leaves and the singular smell of wet vegetation. Sure enough, a steady drizzle was falling. A heavy fog obscured everything farther away than twenty meters, muffling both sight and sound. It was like being wrapped up in a thick, gray blanket.
“There.”
She pointed at markings that had been engraved on a plaque on the exterior wall of the building. He looked at her askance.
“And you can read this?”
Carter nodded.
“So — what? Suddenly you’re channeling Daniel?” He hadn’t meant for it to come out quite so snide. Carter seemed not to notice.
“I can’t explain it, sir. But when I look at it, I just — I don’t know, I understand it. It’s as plain as English.”
Considering he’d once been capable of both writing and speaking Ancient — or so he’d been told — he wasn’t exactly in a position to doubt her.
“Okay. In that case, what does it say?”
She reached out and ran her fingers over the text.
“Oh you who sleep, awaken and send forth your soul. Fear not for the shell that remains above, for in its stead your Ba shall journey through the realm of the gods. Through Duat shall your shade journey unto the Hall of the Two Truths and upon the scales shall your deeds be measured. In Duat you will be tested and the truth of your heart laid bare.”
He couldn’t help staring. He was used to Daniel spouting that kind of stuff. Not Carter.
“And that means —?”
“Well, it’s pretty clear, I thought.” She traced a line of symbols with her finger. “Fear not for the shell that remains above — that would be our physical bodies, I’m guessing. And this part about the Ba journeying in its stead — Daniel said that it was the Ba which undertook the trip through the underworld, and Duat is the name of the underworld. I recall NebtHet telling us that.”
“And this is why you think we’re, you know, dead?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense, sir.”
Jack pretended to peruse the plaque to give himself time to think. He wasn’t buying it. Carter foregoing a scientific explanation for a supernatural one? It just didn’t feel right. None of this felt right. Especially when there was a much simpler explanation.
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“Or, they could have used a sarcophagus. They’re Goa’ulds, after all. I thought those things were practically standard issue.”
He waited for her response, watching her mull over his suggestion. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. That much, at least, was familiar.
“A sarcophagus does make more sense,” she said finally, nodding thoughtfully. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that, sir.”
And there it was. A sarcophagus should have been the first thing Carter came up with, not some farfetched Ancient Egyptian mumbo jumbo. Sure, she’d been through a lot the past few months. Maybe she just wasn’t completely back on her game, but this was Carter, for crying out loud. She was usually miles ahead of him, not running to catch up.
Those warning bells in the back of his head were really going off now.
Forcing levity he really didn’t feel, Jack grinned. “Good. Then it’s settled. We’re not dead. I feel better already.”
Her answering smile was hardly one of relief. If anything, she seemed a bit disconcerted. Something was definitely off with her. He’d only seen her this way once before. It had ended up with her eyes glowing and the damned snake in her head calling his name from behind a locked cell door.
Maybe he had good cause to worry.
“Come on,” he said, brusquely. “Let’s go.” He would need to keep his eye on her, but, for now, they just needed to get out of here and find Daniel and Teal’c. As much as Jack knew it was probably a trap, there was really only one destination of choice.
“Go where, sir?”
Picking up the knapsack and handing her the canteen, Jack gestured toward the plaque. “Wherever it is whoever put us here obviously wants us to go — the Two Halls.”
“The Hall of the Two Truths.”
“Yeah. That. The sooner we get there, the sooner we figure out what the hell is going on.” Not that he had any illusions that their journey would be straightforward. Someone had thought to leave him his P90, after all.
STARGATE SG-1 29 Hall of the Two Truths Page 6
