"You
really had me going, wishing on a star, but the black holes that surround you
are heavier by far." -
Barely Breathing, Duncan Sheik
|| Samantha Carter ||
A fierce, fiery bolt of lightening arced across the sky, and despite myself I jumped, my heart racing as it did only when we were under heavy fire. I wasn't afraid of the dark. Lightening and thunder was another matter altogether.
And the thunder came soon after, a great explosion of sound that seemed to rattle both sky and earth. At the same instant, the radio in the Colonel's hands went dead. He muttered an epithet, smacking the box's sides experimentally before shoving it back into its place on his belt. "Come on," he urged. "We've got to find cover."
My eyes drifted up to the sky, which was teeming with dark, dangerous clouds. What had gotten Warren so upset? It was just as storm... wasn't it?
The frighteningly scientific fact was that the lightening indicated otherwise.
O'Neill stood in the center of the worn path, looking up and then down it with obvious uncertainty. We were quite a ways up from the ground level, but then again, this trail we'd found might end up leading nowhere. If the radios had been working, we would have split up, one going each way, but as it was, that simply wasn't an option.
He glanced at me. "Up?"
I shrugged. "Why not?"
We turned back up the path, hurrying this time, or at least as much as we could hurry on the incline with the bags strapped to our backs. "Any idea what's going on?" the Colonel asked, his voice tense.
"If I had to guess, I'd say some kind of intense electrical storm."
"That doesn't sound very promising," O'Neill groused. "Is that what knocked out the radios?"
"Probably." At one point, the furrow narrowed, almost to an end, and we had to help each other over the junction. "But it makes me wonder..."
"About what?" His voice sounded strained. The oxygen was starting to get thin, I realized with a shot of pure panic. That was a very bad sign.
"The lack of vegetation. The worn rock. The rock I can understand... if it storms a lot in this area it would lead to erosion. Running water might have even created this path. But water would cause plants to grow, and the only foliage we've seen so far is that shiny ivy."
"Which means what?"
"I'm not sure," I admitted, my breath starting to rasp in my throat. "But it makes me suspect that this isn't just some electrical storm."
As though my words were prophetic, conducting the heavens in some ironic way, the lightening arced again. My body jerked, but not out of nervousness, not this time. A mild electrical shock? That was even worse. "In any case, Warren's right. We need to find some shelter."
We were silent for a few more seconds, trying to keep up the pace but soon realizing that the oxygen depletion was affecting our muscles and our lungs. The charged atmosphere wasn't helping, and as the groove continued, continuing to ascend, I began to worry that all we'd find at the end of our journey was a sheer slab of rock, stretching vertically into the sky.
Which was exactly what we found.
Thankfully, the immense wall of bald stone was split down the middle by a narrow crevice, twenty feet tall but less than four in width. A tight fit to what could quite possibly be a dead end. An entrance? Or just a big crack in a big rock?
Judging by the tone of Warren's voice, we didn't exactly have the luxury of poking around to find out which was the case. That thunder and lightening had been foreboding, and not just because I'd always been unnerved by it. The acrid smell of the air and the stale, stiff wind that gusted around us was a warning in itself.
Silently, O'Neill shrugged out of his pack, and I did the same, knowing that there was no way we'd be able to fit through the tight fissure with everything on. "It could open up," I pointed out, having to raise my voice over the gale's howling.
"Or it could not," the Colonel reminded me, repositioning his weapon so it could be held vertically in front of him, and venturing into the gap as intrepidly as he knew how. I followed him, but not without serious apprehension.
I'd only just stepped between the two stone slabs - fighting the indomitable sense of claustrophobia - when I heard a sound behind me, and turned as well as I could, trying to determine the source. Rain, I realized a split-second later. What I was hearing was nothing more than the droplets hitting the ground; the clouds had finally decided to let up their cargo.
The sky was gray, the ground brown, the only hint of movement or color the fluttering of a patch of ivy as the wind assaulted it. The waxy green leaves and vines had wound themselves up the very outside of the fissure. Not quite sure what I was doing, I reached out a hand and touched it. It certainly felt like any other plant: cold, smooth-
"Ow!"
The exclamation exploded from me before I could even think to censor myself. I jerked my wet forearm back in, wiping it quickly on my pants. The ivy was quite normal, I thought, looking up at the sky with new horror, but the rain...
"Carter? What's the matter?"
I whirled in the small space, startled by O'Neill's voice directly behind me. "Nothing, sir." I returned my gaze to the clouds, suddenly very glad that we were sheltered in the little nook. "But that rain... it's acid."
"Acid rain?"
"But a lot worse than anything the environmentalists on Earth are getting all upset about." Understanding blossomed perfectly in my mind. "That's the reason the rock is so worn and there's hardly any plant life. It could also explain the lightening, to some extent."
"Come again?" asked O'Neill, brushing against me as he tried to edge out for a better look.
"The only kind of foliage we've seen so far is that ivy. It's got a very thick cuticle, which could have developed to protect it from the rain. Any other kind of plants might have simply... died out."
"You're assuming it's not natural. There's no indication of any kind of industry on this planet." He looked down on me. "You think it's not natural?"
I shrugged.
O'Neill watched the sky for a moment more, being careful to keep out of the way of the spray the wind forced into the tunnel, and then turned back down the passage, tugging on my sleeve. "Come on, you have to see this."
"Does it open up?" I asked hopefully, unable to aim my flashlight past him and finally giving up, simply following the sound of his voice.
"You could say that."
We moved further into the channel, leaving behind the gray outside light until I could barely make out Colonel O'Neill in front of me. Wary of running into the side of the narrow passage, stretched out my arm a foot or so until my fingers were almost brushing the fabric of his jacket. At one point, O'Neill slowed - intentionally or not I couldn't tell - and my hand bumped into his back before slipping awkwardly around his waist. "Just a little farther," he told me, and it sounded suspiciously like he was laughing.
Abruptly, the walls of the tunnel didn't seem so close anymore, and the sounds of our tired breathing echoed off something, somewhere. The air cooled unexpectedly and the draft of sour air slowed.
And then there was light.
I tensed immediately, hackles rising, shading my eyes as the omni-directional lightening attacked them, coursing around us. Quickly, I took a step back, prepared to retreat if anything else appeared threatening, and only O'Neill's hand clamped on my arm kept me from flying back to the dubious safety of the cramped passageway. "It's okay," he assured me, and I paused, blinking rapidly.
The walls were slightly curved, the ceiling five or six feet above my head, both made of the same speckled bedrock we'd seen outside. Small, circular lights, trimmed in gold, were set directly into the stone, and seemed to have been activated by our presence alone.
The ground was harder granite and smudged with dust, but under the translucent layer of dust I could see more lights. Broad beams of what appeared to be gold-bordered strips of light -- neon strips, almost the same type that illuminated the SGC. They were no more than a foot wide but as long as the entire cavern, a good hundred feet, glowing softly. Some ran parallel to the others, and some perpendicular, which created a strange crisscross pattern of gold and light.
A gentle humming sound was as distinguishable as the soft lighting, pervasive, singing against the curved walls. It had been silent as a tomb only minutes ago; whatever this was, it must have turned itself on at the same time as the lights.
The question remained: what was it?
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" O'Neill asked, pacing. There was an unobstructed path through the glowing beams which simply begged to be walked, vanishing into a dark corridor on the other side of the cavern.
"Gou'ald."
"Exactly."
It had the distinct feel of the Gou'ald, and the look to boot. The Gou'ald loved using gold and jewels whenever possible; they were in it for the show as much as anything else. The desolation and sorry state of the planet itself only made me more certain. "After all, the glyphs for this planet were some of the last taken from the find on Abydos. As for this place... I don't have any idea what it could possibly be. I don't see any kind of machinery other than those beams, and I can't imagine what they could be used for."
"You can't?"
I smiled. "Okay, maybe I could imagine, but it wouldn't be more than a guess."
"What're you guessing?"
I began to pace, as well; it was addictive. "That this is some kind of Gou'ald laboratory."
"Sweet."
"Depending on how big this place is... well, they could have been messing with the atmospheric conditions on this planet, which would explain the acid rain. I got the impression on the way in that we didn't use the front door."
"So we came in through the back?"
"Or an escape hatch."
"Which would make this..."
"Some kind of decontamination area? Scanners?" I swallowed. "A security system? It could be just about anything, sir."
"Ah." He didn't look exactly pleased at that, but then again, he had gotten somewhat spoiled, expecting me to have an answer or explanation for virtually everything. "And what could that be?"
I looked where he pointed. Between the wall of the cavern and the nearest beam was a comfort space of about three feet, and laying on the dusty ground nearby was something small, square, and flat. Casting nervous glances at the humming machinery, I stooped down, retrieved it, and hastened back to where the Colonel stood. "It's a tablet," I reported, the very breath stirred up by my words lifting some of the dirt from its surface.
"A rock?"
"Yes sir, an artifact." I smiled. "Daniel'll be pleased."
O'Neill wiggled his eyebrows as he looked down at the small slab of rock, which was covered with bizarre, tiny hash-marks... perhaps some dialect of Gou'ald writing. "Yeah, forget the alien lab and technology, we found a old piece of rock. Joy."
"Maybe it'll help explain this place," I reminded him, placing the small vestige in one of the larger pockets adorning my BDU. Despite the covering of dust, it didn't seem too terribly ancient, and I hoped it was still cohesive enough to ride it out, at least until we could meet up with the rest of the team. My bag and all the rest of our equipment was outside getting rained on, I remembered with a grimace.
Glancing down at the beams, which hadn't changed tone or color since our arrival, I took a careful step down the trail that divided the room. I glance over my should showed O'Neill was watching me, a strange and wary expression on his face.
I didn't stop until I was halfway across the cavern, and there I turned, looking down at the glowing rods. I wanted badly to touch them, but that would simply be foolish, I decided. I had no idea what these things were, what they did, or how dangerous they could be.
But I'd be damned if they didn't look... familiar all of a sudden.
No sooner had I completed the though then O'Neill, still watching me from the far side of the room, straightened quite abruptly. "Do you hear--" be began, his voice taking on the old warning tone. Again, I tensed.
I heard it, too. The omnipresent humming was slightly... louder. Higher in pitch.
"I don't like the sound of that," confessed the Colonel, face tight, waving me back towards him.
It happened before I could take a single step. A bright flash. A earsplitting whine, a mechanical scream. O'Neill and the surrounding cavern vanished from view, and the only evidence I had that I was still alive was the sudden jar of the cold granite floor against my skull.
Suddenly, the thunder and lightening didn't seem all that bad.
Every instinct cried out for me to move, to get up, to at least call for help, but forming the mere thought thrust daggers of pain into my brain.
An instant before I blacked out, I remembered.
But then it was gone. And so was I.
The End