X Marks the Spot, Part Three
Teal'c, in voice-over: "Previously, on Stargate SG-1 . . . "
Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
X Marks the Spot
Part Three: In For a Penny
The entrance to the underground maze yawned in front of Teal’c and MacGyver, a toothless black mouth.
“The generator - the lights - ” Mac gestured with his right hand; Teal’c was holding him up by the left.
“If ONeill wanted the lights, he would have turned them on. But I do not think they will work at this time.” Teal’c didn’t stop to try. He hurried on, unfazed by the dark and the twisting passages, surefooted and certain of the route. Somehow, Mac wasn’t surprised.
Light ahead of them, but not the glow of the electric bulbs: the light wavered and pulsed, blue-green and molten gold, like a throbbing nightmare in Las Vegas neon. And sound, a deep thrumming that seemed to resonate through the passages as if they were organ pipes. They rounded a corner and saw Jack and Daniel standing outside the entrance to the inner chamber - the throne room - flanking the opening where the light shimmered and rippled. Waves of light, gold and sea-green, threw the lines and furrows of Jack’s face into deeper contrast, and gleamed on the pistol in Daniel’s hand.
Aw, man - so much for the meek civilian - Daniel held the gun, a Beretta 92, with the smooth expertise of a trained guerrilla. Jack was armed as well, of course, another Beretta. He glanced towards Teal’c and Mac as they approached and flashed a hand signal. MacGyver recognised it and responded without thinking as he and Teal’c slipped behind Daniel. He saw Jack blink at the move - whups, giveaway - and file the moment away for later consideration. Heck. Blown.
Mac looked over Daniel’s shoulder into the throne room, and stiffened. The room had more than doubled in size: the entire back wall had opened up to reveal an inner chamber, with walls covered in the same glittering mosaic tiles, except that the tiles weren’t just reflecting light: the walls were actually glowing, cascades of light and colour streaming along the tesselated lines in patterns weirdly reminiscent of printed circuits. MacGyver squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, opened his eyes again: the scene was still there in front of him, with the insane light show that looked impossibly high-tech. If this was a dream, a hallucination triggered by the leg injury - he’d had some doozies in the crazy-dream category - it wasn’t going away just yet.
“Lacie - ” he said softly, hopelessly. He could see her, lying crumpled like a dropped dishrag on the floor at the entrance to the inner chamber, in front of a low dais. Inside, there was some kind of boxlike structure, a bit like a coffin, dull gold where it wasn’t covered with symbols. Sam Carter was standing next to the box, bent over it, dappled light pulsing on her face.
“I’m pretty sure she’s still alive,” Daniel murmured. “I just saw her take a breath.”
“The sarcophagus is opening,” Teal’c muttered.
Sarcophagus? Whaddya mean? That’s Egyptian! This is Cyprus. Although the symbols on the box looked a lot like hieroglyphs, which made no sense either.
A harsh grinding noise, and the lid of the coffin split and slid aside. A slim hand emerged from within, caught Sam’s hand in a firm grip, and a young woman sat up, opened dark eyes, breathed deeply. She turned to Sam and spoke; Sam shook her head, a helpless smile on her face, but responded to a gesture from the girl, helping her rise to her feet and climb out of the sarcophagus.
“Aw, crap, Carter shoulda been immune - ” Jack’s grunt was barely audible. “What gives . . . ?”
“The Girdle of Aphrodite,” Daniel said softly. “It ‘makes any woman impossible to resist’ - that’s what the inscription said. And it didn’t say it only applies to men.”
“Just great. A snake who isn’t sexist.”
“Um, you know, the most famous of Aphrodite’s worshippers was Sappho of Lesbos - ”
“I so don’t want to go there.”
The girl was standing on the dais now, her fingers still resting in Sam’s hand as she surveyed the room, a young queen examining her domain. She wore a heavy gold necklace and elaborate bracelets, and not much more: her face and figure were staggeringly beautiful, and the scraps of white fabric that passed for clothing did little to conceal the rich curves of her body. On her forehead, MacGyver could see a stylised seashell mark: it looked like the same kind of raised metallic tattoo that Teal’c bore.
Mac stared at her in horror. On her bare stomach, two crossing slashes formed an X: he could see, with hideous clarity, the edges of the flaps of skin. There was no blood, but the girl shouldn’t have been able to stand upright with that kind of mutilation, let alone hold her body straight and her head high.
“She is not a Goa’uld,” Teal’c murmured. “She is Jaffa.”
Huh? “I don’t get it - how can she even be alive after being carved open like that - ”
“A sarcophagus can hold an occupant in suspended animation for years - millenia if necessary,” Daniel said. “She’s probably been lying there for at least three thousand years, maybe four thousand, based on the archaic variations in the inscriptions . . . ”
What?!?
The girl was speaking again, and her voice echoed in the throne room. Jack glared at Daniel. “What’s she sayin’?”
“Who stands at the threshhold of the temple of Aphrodite?” Daniel murmured. He stiffened; the girl gestured peremptorily, and a fresh wave of light washed over him from inside the inner rooms. “Speak, scholar, since you understand me. Repeat my words so that all may know my will,” Daniel repeated mechanically. “Approach me. Let all approach who await the Goddess’ return.”
MacGyver found his legs moving, or trying to move: the left leg was attempting to obey as well as the right one, and it couldn’t. Teal’c had swayed, caught in a struggle of will, fighting against each step as his feet dragged themselves into the throne room, one after the other. Mac staggered and gasped with the pain that shot up his thigh. Jack stepped over, hauled his cousin’s arm over his shoulders and helped him forward.
In the throne room, the girl was taking her seat on the shimmering chair, her exquisite face curving in a smile.
She turned to Sam, still standing beside her. Daniel continued to translate, helplessly, as she spoke. “Tell me who has gathered here in worship.”
Mac could see the struggle in Sam’s face, trying to resist the command. Loophole - no worshippers here, ma’am -
“Tell me the names and titles of these men.” The girl’s order was crisper; her face took on a sly air. She cupped Sam’s face in a quick caress. “Come, tell me. In the name of the Goddess, I command it.”
“This is Colonel Jack O’Neill and Doctor Daniel Jackson, of SG-1.” Sam spoke through clenched teeth. “And MacGyver, principal field operative for the Phoenix Foundation.”
Whoa, how’d Sam find that out . . .
“In the name of the goddess?” Daniel interrupted his own ongoing translation. “Ara ei thea Aphrodite?” Mac’s Greek was way short of Daniel’s, and the question didn’t make any sense anyway. Whaddya mean, is she Aphrodite?
The girl frowned at him. “Would you accuse me of hubris, scholar? I make no such claim! I am Hebe, the Handmaiden, most loyal and devoted servant and priestess of the Holy One, the Fairest of All.” Hebe turned back to Sam. “What of the Jaffa warrior?”
“Teal’c, former First Prime of Apophis, now also a member of SG-1.”
“Ah! Former First Prime?” She looked from Sam to Teal’c and back again. “Is the upstart Apophis dead?”
“Upstart?” Jack muttered.
Hebe slipped off the throne and glided over to where Teal’c stood, studying at him like a starved gourmet examining a full case of pastries. Sam took a step forward, but froze in place at an unequivocal gesture to remain by the throne.
“How long has it been? The world has changed much - your speech is strange, your clothing is stranger.” Hebe ran a hand along Teal’c’s chest, and his posture grew even more rigid than before. “My mistress knew Apophis for an arrogant fool, but he was ever well-served by his warriors. She will be most pleased to take you into Her service.”
“I serve no false gods.” Teal’c spoke through gritted teeth.
“Very wise.” Her voice was still soft and sweet, but her eyes were hard. “Apophis was always better served than his due. Kneel now, Teal’c, proud warrior. Bend your knee in honour of the Goddess.”
She had to reach up to touch Teal’c’s shoulder, but as her hand pressed down against it, MacGyver saw beads of sweat break out on the man’s face as he fought to stay upright. One leg shifted, shuddering like a tree about to fall. Teal’c battled through every agonizing vertical inch of that long, slow obeisance. When his knee finally touched the glowing tiles of the floor, his shoulders were still rigid, his hands clenched, refusing surrender.
Hebe’s smile was smug and radiant. “Aphrodite, wondrous and holy, is beloved of all, men and women alike. Only a fool would deny Her power. Only the heartless would disdain Her blessing.” She grasped the heavy bracelet on her left wrist and twisted it around so that it rested in her palm; when she raised her hand, Mac saw a fierce light flare in the big jewel. “Must I teach you all that the Goddess will be served, and served well?”
“Aw, crap,” Jack muttered. “Here we go.”
“ ‘It is the deepest wish of every mortal woman to serve the Goddess, and to walk in Her path and breathe with Her lips. For this is the will of the Great Ones, that only the most perfect shall serve Her . . . ’ ” Daniel’s voice echoed in the chamber, shifting from ancient Greek to English and back again.
He had everyone’s attention now, especially Hebe’s. “You have read the sacred writings?” she demanded.
“ ‘. . . let none but the Goddess herself bind with the Girdle of Aphrodite’, ” Daniel persisted. “You’re usurping her power by using the Girdle - that’s hubris, isn’t it? Does she know what you’re doing here?”
The question hit the girl hard; her face contorted, first in fear, then in fury. She turned her back on Teal’c, reached Daniel in three quick strides, and slapped him hard across the face. He continued to translate, compulsively, as she stormed at him. “How dare you accuse me?” She raised her left hand, and the bracelet started glowing again.
Daniel stood his ground. “Hebe. You’re remembered as the goddess of youth and health. But the stories say you’re Hera’s daughter, not Aphrodite’s - how did that happen? And if you misuse a healing device like that one - ” the flow of words was choked off as scarlet light flared in the girl’s palm.
“Down on your belly, scholar - if I did not need your skills - ” Her next words went untranslated; Daniel was writhing on the floor, unable to speak.
“Smooth going there, sister. Real smooth.” The mockery in Jack’s voice cut across the chamber. Hebe turned away from Daniel and glowered at Jack; Daniel raised his head, his face still racked with pain, and began to translate again, between gasps.
“Ya know, I betcha Mama Bear’s gonna be pretty pissed off when she finds out you were sitting in her chair.”
Mac wondered, hazily, how well ‘pissed off’ was going to translate into archaic Greek. Pretty well, it seemed. In his current position, draped over Jack’s shoulders, he couldn’t back away and neither could Jack, even if it had been a good idea. They were the same height, which only made it more awkward.
It didn’t help that, in spite of her glowing beauty, he could see that she was terribly young, still in her teens. Her eyes were old, with that look of too much experience that he’d seen way too many times, in too many teenagers, even pre-teens, boys and girls alike. There was something even worse than that here, but he couldn’t put his finger on it - a depth of jaded knowledge that felt as if it stretched back through centuries of debauchery. Mac tried to shake off the feeling, but the pain blazing through his leg made it impossible to concentrate.
Hebe’s expression changed as she studied Mac and Jack, her eyes widening and warming as she examining them. “So alike and so different,” she cooed. Mac felt Jack flinch with obvious disgust. Urk. Shopping for a matched set or something?
“My mistress will be most pleased by Her new consorts. Ares and Hephaestus were always Her favourites.” She turned to MacGyver and tilted her head, considering him. “Your leg pains you, Master of Craft. It is not good, that the body should fail when its strength is most wanted.” She raised the hand with the bracelet cupped in her palm, and it glowed, so bright he couldn’t see clearly. She laid the glowing hand on Mac’s left thigh, and warmth rippled out from her touch, erasing the pain as if it had never existed.
The shock of the change was almost too much; he staggered and heard her low laugh. She ran her other hand up his body to his chest; he tried to pull away from her and couldn’t move. Her mouth curved in a sensuous smile, and a sudden erotic flood slammed into him, painfully intense. His vision was eclipsed with an image of herself, naked and welcoming; an image of himself, naked and triumphant - god, no - not his imagination. Not his choice.
MacGyver fought against the vision, sickened at his own response. She’s a kid for god’s sake, she can’t be a day over sixteen . . . Hebe seemed aware of the struggle; her mouth changed, the purring smile twisting into malice. Spikes of red-hot pain stabbed into his thigh, and he let out a strangled cry and collapsed as the leg buckled underneath him again.
Hebe laughed again. “Hephaestus was always so very easy to control. But Ares, now . . . ” Mac saw her glide over to Jack and press herself against him, saw his cousin’s shoulders and back stiffen and his jaw clench. He guessed it was Jack’s turn to find out about that instant-erection trick.
Jack was fighting, hard; his hand tightened on his sidearm. Hebe smirked. “Oh, show me your weapon, Master of War. It is a weapon, is it not? How does it work? Tell me!” She lifted Jack’s hand in both of hers, examining the gun with interest.
“You aim and pull the trigger,” Jack said through gritted teeth. “The person at the other end dies.”
“Such a small thing? Explain.”
“You pull the trigger and ignite a small explosive charge in a contained chamber,” MacGyver found himself answering. He fought to stop the flow of words. “The projectile is propelled out of the barrel at high speed. The person at the other end . . . dies.”
“Like this?” Hebe smiled sweetly. She placed the end of Jack’s Beretta in her mouth, pursed her lips around the barrel, looked up and met his eyes with a wide-eyed expression devoid of any innocence. Sweat beaded on Jack’s face and the blood vessels in his neck stood out like cords with stress and revulsion. Mac wondered, distantly, if he was fighting to pull the trigger, or to drop the gun and pull away.
The girl removed the pistol from her mouth, almost daintily, and let Jack’s hand fall limp at his side. Her mocking laugh needed no translation.
Jack stirred, lifting his left hand to run it down Hebe’s body. She raised surprised eyebrows, but allowed him to continue, her smile deepening. His long fingers reached her bare stomach and caressed the hideous slashes.
MacGyver choked back a cry of horror as the mutilated skin suddenly rippled. One flap of raw skin shifted, as if pushed from within. The girl’s expression turned rapturous, and she placed both her hands flat on her stomach.
“Soon, soon, my darling - ” Daniel translated the murmured words.
A dark gap had opened, and some - thing - an impossible horror, snakelike, the questing mouth of a blind bird and the frilled crest of a lizard out of a fevered nightmare - emerged.
“She bears a mature symbiont.” Teal’c’s voice was an anguished rasp.
Jack’s hand still lay on Hebe’s stomach, just below the ghastly X that marked the place where normal reality had completely disintegrated. He glanced down, and Mac saw his set jaw twitch - he was still fighting hard to control himself. Hebe closed her eyes, tilted her head back in abandon.
Jack moved like a striking snake, seizing the monstrosity just behind the blind gaping mouth, yanking it right out of the girl’s body. Her piercing scream was drowned in the roar of his pistol as he threw the thing to the floor and shot it pointblank. It squealed, an even more horrible sound to Mac’s ears, and Jack blasted it again. Mosaic tiles shattered and glass shards sprayed up around the oozing pieces of the dead creature.
Hebe had collapsed, moaning and sobbing and clutching her stomach, and the others sprang from where they had been locked in place. Sam ran over to where Lacie lay, while Teal’c erupted to his feet as if a pressure valve had been opened and hurried over to Daniel.
“I honour your courage, Daniel Jackson. But that was foolhardy. She could have easily slain you.”
“She didn’t. How’s Lacie?”
“Still alive, but she’s hurt pretty bad,” Sam answered. “How’s MacGyver?”
“Kinda freaked out, I think,” Jack said. He was scrubbing his left hand hard against his pants leg, over and over, his face screwed up in disgust. “Get Doc Lacie into the sarcophagus. Now.” He holstered the gun he still held in his right hand and hunkered down next to Mac. “Still with us, Brainy-Mac?”
Mac took the risk of sitting up. His head was swimming, but his leg didn’t hurt at all. “Jack . . . how much longer before I just wake up and find out that I fell asleep watching a really bad sci-fi movie? I don’t even like sci-fi.”
“No waking up this time,” Jack said gruffly. “Not for any of us.” His expression confused Mac; he looked . . . sad. “You remember last June, when there were two great big unexplained fireballs in the night sky?”
“Well, of course. The UFO junkies went nuts.”
“And ya know all that guff about Area 51 and a big government conspiracy to cover up alien invasions?”
“And UFO abductions and little green men being held for study at Roswell? You’re sayin’ that’s all real?” Mac spluttered.
“No, that part’s still crap, far as I know.” Jack looked over his shoulder at Teal’c with a questioning eyebrow.
Teal’c tilted his head very slightly to the side. “To my knowledge, ‘Roswell’ has never been used for a landing site.”
“Give ‘em time. Anyway, Mac, the aliens are out there, and they’re not friendly. Well, Teal’c’s real friendly once you get to know him - ”
“Wait, you’re sayin’ Teal’c - ”
“Excuse me?” Daniel was looking jittery. “Jack, what the hell? After that last lecture we got on security breaches - ”
“Relax, Daniel, Sam had his credentials checked while she was off at Akrotiri. Turns out Mr. Rogers here has a clearance level only slightly lower than God.”
Sam had joined the cluster by now. She nudged Jack. “Sir, there was a lot more that I didn’t have time to tell you. Did you ever meet Colonel Jim Taylor? You remember - he was shot down over Mongolia, back in ’85, and reported KIA - ”
“Colonel Taylor?” Mac interjected. “He was a Captain then - oh, yeah, he was Air Force, I’d kinda forgotten that . . . ”
“Waitaminute - you’re saying he’s the one who came back with Crazy Jimmy? After the brass had written him off? Carter, I thought you said Mac was in Intelligence. That stunt was Crazy Stupid.” Jack was studying Mac with a bemused expression. “He brought one of ours home?”
MacGyver gave Sam an aggrieved look. “You couldn’t’a been at Akrotiri for more than a few hours. Just what kinda pull have you folks got to dig all that up so fast?”
Sam was beaming that really great smile again, but it wasn’t making Mac feel the same way this time. “Your file makes great reading. Apparently your boss and our CO go a long way back.”
“Aw, man.” MacGyver pulled his legs up so he could sit tailor-fashion and prop up his hands to bury his head properly. After a moment in that position, he suddenly remembered that he shouldn’t have been able to move his left leg at all. He raised his head slowly to peer at the unoffending limb. “What the . . . ”
“C’mon, Mac, pull yourself together,” Jack said breezily. “I think Snake Girl healed you, then just gave you a nice big zap to keep you in line. Better take a look and get it over.”
MacGyver hesitated, then reached out a slow hand towards the leg of his jeans. He pushed aside the tattered fabric, stiff with blood, and stared at where Lacie’s knife had carved those two long deep gashes down the muscles of his thigh. One slash had driven clear to the kneecap; the other, he was pretty sure, had severed a tendon. He had been sure . . .
The leg was whole, the skin showing only faint traces of faded pink marks where the damage had been.
“That’s impossible.”
Jack shrugged. “The aliens have healing gizmos.”
“But - the pain came back - ”
“That was probably direct nerve stimulation, with no actual tissue damage,” Sam said reassuringly. Mac didn’t find any of it reassuring. “The healing’s real.”
“What I don’t understand is how she was able to use the healing device at all,” Daniel said. He was frowning thoughtfully. “Teal’c, have you ever heard of any Jaffa being able to do that?”
“I have not.”
“She wasn’t just a Jaffa,” Sam said. “She must have been a host herself at some point. I could feel it.”
Daniel snapped his fingers. “The Well of Aphrodite.”
“What?” said Jack.
“That’s what this place is supposed to be - where Aphrodite ‘renewed her virginity’ - ”
“Ewww.”
“What if a Goa’uld Queen changed hosts frequently? Like, every few years? And then made the ex-hosts into Jaffa?”
“Every nine years, for example?” Teal’c looked intrigued.
“Yeah, exactly. And used the Selection process to cull the best of the herd, so to speak, and cross-breed them. Um, that whole business with Ares and Hephaestus - ”
“Whoa, Danny. Maybe the chick had a twins fetish, but trust me, it was just creepy.”
“No, no, you’re not listening - ”
MacGyver met Sam’s eyes. “Are they like this a lot?”
“All the time.”
“Think of the Ares and Hephaestus myth as a metaphoric pattern. The fertility goddess chooses two consorts - one for physical prowess, the other for intellectual achievement - it’s not such a bad set of criteria for rapid genetic advancement, is it? Sam?”
“I’m going to go check on Lacie,” Sam declared brightly. “It shouldn’t take too long to fix a broken arm.” She helped Mac to his feet. “You see, the sarcophagus is primarily a healing chamber; the statis effect is a secondary usage - ”
“Once Lacie Najjar is able to move, we must return Hebe to the sarcophagus. Without her symbiont, she will soon begin to die.” Teal’c looked around. “Where is she?”
Jack’s head whipped around at the question. “Aw, shit - Teal’c, grab her!”
Hebe no longer lay where she had fallen. She had been still for so long that they had assumed she was unconscious, but she had either revived or had been biding her time. She had dragged herself onto the dais and up to the foot of the throne. One hand was stretched up to the right armrest, methodically pressing a long series of tiles. Each one flared as she touched it and continued to glow; patterns of light were beginning to flow down the side of the throne and ripple across the dais to the floor.
Teal’c reached her in a few long strides. She evaded his grasp for a moment, long enough to reach up to the back of the throne and hammer on the tiles there with her fist. The others tried to shield their eyes as raw power forked out from the chair, silhouetting Hebe for a hideous moment and catching Teal’c in a shower of sparks. A terrible smell of burnt hair and scorched flesh filled the chamber.
Teal’c pulled her away from the ruined throne and bent over her, his great hand cupping her face. She glared at him with malice and triumph in her eyes. “You cannot stop it now. I have failed my mistress, but I die knowing She will return.”
“You are free.” Teal’c sounded as if he was pleading. “You need not die a slave. You need not die at all, if you have the will to live. The sarcophagus is still here. It will sustain you, possibly even free you from the need to bear a prim’ta - ”
The lovely face contorted with fury and hatred. She made an effort to spit at Teal’c, but only a little blood oozed at the corner of her mouth. “I am the servant of the Great One. Would you steal even that from me? When my time drew to an end, and She chose a new vessel, I pleaded with Her, I begged Her, if She must leave me, to allow me, somehow, to serve Her still. She granted my wish.” Hebe laid her hands tenderly on her mutilated stomach. “Never before had a woman been given the honour of bearing the seed of Olympus. And now - ”
She glared at the others as they gathered around. “Remain here, murderers, defilers of the temple, and wait. Or flee! It matters not. Soon, the Eyes of Argus will open and speak to the Goddess. She will find you then, all of you, and kill you for your blasphemy . . . ”
Her hissing voice faded. Her eyes rolled up, and she slumped in Teal’c’s grasp. He picked up the still form, his face solemn, and carried her to the inner chamber.
“Aw, crap.” Jack ran a hand through his hair. “Carter - ”
“We’re on it, sir.” Sam was already hunched over, examining the dais around the throne, looking for signs of control panel access. MacGyver crouched beside the throne, running a hand along the portions of the mosaic designs that were still intact. Daniel watched them both for a moment, then started studying the hieroglyphs on the sarcophagus.
“This is crazy. Argus was a myth.” MacGyver looked around the chamber, ran a hand down the bloody shreds of his jeans leg, and winced. “Okay, never mind, so’s Hebe and Aphrodite. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “So what the heck did she mean? Is it actually a problem?”
“Wait, wait, there was something about the Eyes of Argus in the inscriptions, I remember . . . ” Daniel closed his eyes in concentration. “ ‘At the Hour of the Goddess’ . . . that was the one, something about consorts . . . ” One hand circled in the air, as if he was trying to wind up his memory. “ ‘The Handmaiden . . . the Handmaiden shall be summoned to make ready the Blessed and Glorious Ones. The Eyes of Argus - ’ ” he squeezed his own eyes even more tightly shut. “ ‘The Eyes of Argus shall open and the Goddess shall come to choose Her consorts.’ ”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Jack snarled. “What, she had her boss on speed dial? Sam, how do we turn off the phone?”
“Is anyone likely to be there on the other end to pick up the call?” asked Daniel.
Sam looked up with a frown. “I don’t know, sir. Teal’c, is Aphrodite still alive? Is she one of the System Lords?”
“I do not know,” came the grave reply. “Many of the Goa’uld Queens are secretive about their movements. Many of the System Lords cooperate to keep this secrecy.”
“She could still be out there, or she could have an ally who is.” Sam poked at several tiles that seemed promising, and scowled when nothing happened. “Hebe seemed pretty confident that it meant trouble.”
“Daniel, you said this complex was three or four thousand years old,” Jack said. “What’re the odds that the phone’s still workin’?”
“The Girdle was,” MacGyver observed drily. “I guess these aliens of yours build stuff to last.” He stood up, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned around the chamber slowly, frowning.
Jack looked at him, looked imploringly up at the shadows on the chamber’s ceiling, then held up his hands in an expansive gesture. “Spit it out, Mac. Whatcha thinkin’?”
“Um, exactly what is the danger here?”
“That’ll depend on what the Eyes of Argus are. Or is,” Sam replied. “We really don’t know all that much about their technology yet.”
“We do know that if they can get at us, they will,” added Daniel.
“Wait. They’re a threat right now, but they also go back thousands of years? Long enough to have built this place?”
“They live for thousands of years. They’re parasites. Even their technology is mostly stolen from other races.” Sam had finished her circuit of the dais and stood up.
“And - you made it sound like they’re not united, right? They might be at cross purposes? Keeping secrets and hiding stuff from each other?”
“You got it,” said Jack. “Biggest buncha backstabbing double-crossing two-faced fat-cat cutthroats you’ll ever find, outside of Congress.”
“So maybe the Eyes of Argus could be something that the - what did you call them? - Goa’uld? Something that a highly advanced race wouldn’t easily find, or maybe won’t recognise - ” MacGyver’s eyes suddenly opened very wide. “The Eyes of Argus will open - Sam, think. No birds or small animals anywhere nearby, and every so often you get a creepy feelin’ - ”
“Subsonics? How?”
“The Bad Pennies! The copper disks - solid copper, a meter wide, topped with glass - heck, that’s right, you didn’t see the dig records - they were buried only a few inches under the surface, in sandy soil. On a bed of sand and powdered mica four inches deep, in fact. The sand isn’t the native stratum, of course; it was laid in place.”
Sam’s eyes lit. “Antennas. They’re antennas! Sand insulation underneath and on top, and the glass top layer also keeps water off, so it won’t corrode or ground out and lose the signals.”
“Yeah. Low frequency signals will pass through rock, so you can transmit signals, say, oscillating between half a hertz and eight hertz - keeps the critters away and gives the locals the shivers.”
“But why? What’s the point?”
“We wondered why this site was so far away from the seaside and the port towns - I think your Goa’uld gal wanted a base that the rest of the aliens would overlook.” Mac was talking very quickly now. “Multiple antenna segments running on high power will just look like random radiofrequency noise, especially if the signal switches between them fast enough. There’s no single point of radiation you can triangulate on.”
“Multiple segments - oh, god, you mean there are more of them . . . ? Of course. The Eyes of Argus. Plural.” Sam grimaced. “Oh, crap. If the array can be activated so that it switches from the subsonic keep-away signals to ultra-high frequency bursts - ”
“Whoa. What’s it signalling? Nothing’s gonna get anywhere quick enough to whistle up your aliens - no matter how spiffy their spaceships are, an ordinary electromagnetic signal can’t go any faster than the speed of light.”
“MacGyver, moonrise. Things start happening at moonrise! There has to be a relay station of some kind on the Moon.”
Daniel had been looking from Sam to Mac to Sam and back again, and had finally fallen behind. Teal’c had stopped looking at either of them and was gazing straight ahead. Jack’s eyes merely looked glassy.
“Wonder Twin powers, activate.” Jack drawled. “Are you two done yet?”
Mac looked around the chamber. “But it’s gotta have a power source. Otherwise - hold on. How come nothing’s happened yet?”
“No power?” Sam mused. “If there’s no power - or not enough for whatever - we should be okay.”
Jack winced. “Bad move, Carter - jinx - ”
The walls seemed, for a moment, to ripple; the floor shimmered, and several mosaic tiles cracked with faint glassy tinkles.
“Okay, we’re not okay,” Daniel said.
“Aw, man.” MacGyver grabbed at the back of the throne to steady himself. “It’s - ”
He and Sam finished the sentence in the same breath. “ - geothermal!”
“Sir, we need to get the hell out of here. Daniel, can Lacie be moved yet?”
“I think so - um, just what are we doing?”
“We gotta put blindfolds on Argus before he phones home,” Mac said.
Jack winced. “That is the worst mixed metaphor I’ve ever heard.”
*
Lacie Najjar was still unconscious, but her broken arm had knit and her breathing was deep and regular. Teal’c laid the still form of Hebe in the sarcophagus and watched expressionlessly as the twin wings of the lid slid closed and hid the exquisite face.
Jack glanced at the moon as they emerged from the passages. It felt as if days had passed, but the moon lay serene in the night sky, its position showing that Lacie had stabbed Mac and run into the labyrinth barely an hour before. The moon would remain in sight for hours - in line-of-sight, just waiting to relay betraying signals from the mother planet and bring down burning wrath from heaven. And he’d thought it’d been bad when it was just a potential foothold for hostile troop movements. Shit.
“Where’s Mac got to?”
MacGyver had run over to one of the tents and began scrabbling in the camp supplies. Sam was digging through their own gear.
“We only brought one magnetometer with us -”
“Fer cryin’ out loud, Carter, not magnets again."
“It’s a metal detector, sir. We’ve only got one, and it’ll take hours if we only look for one disk at a time. We can send to Akrotiri for a flyover, but that’ll take time also.”
Jack shook his head. “We gotta do better than that. And we can’t wait for daylight. Teal’c, when we were out in the hills earlier, you caught the places where the creepout effect was happening - ”
“Indeed.”
“Think you can find them all again? In the dark?”
“I can.”
“Someone needs to stay here with Doc Lacie. That’s you, Daniel,” Jack said decisively.
Sam handed Daniel a shortwave radio handset. “There’s probably an even number of the disks. Can you keep count if we call in each time we find one?”
“Just what the hell do we do when we find ‘em?” Jack demanded.
MacGyver grinned. “That part’s easy.” He had emerged from the supply cache carrying hammers and mallets from the toolbox, and a sheaf of metal spikes: tent pegs, guywire stakes, shishkebab skewers. “All we gotta do is ground’em. Hammer a metal stake through the disks, and it’ll kill the signal.”
Daniel sighed. “God, I hope Lacie doesn’t wake up and see what we’ve done to her dig.”
The ground rocked and swayed like a raft in a rising sea. Jack caught his balance again and swore. “C’mon, campers. We’ve gotta hurry.”
Sam hefted the metal detector. “If anyone has a cell phone, leave it here. One pulse from any of the disks will fry them. MacGyver, is there any aluminum foil in the cooking supplies?”
“Right here.” Mac tossed her a roll.
She began to tear off sheets. “Everyone except Daniel, wrap your radios in these. Don’t unwrap them except for right after you’ve grounded out one of the disks. After you check in, wrap it up again. Otherwise they’ll fry too.”
Jack gave Mac a long look. “I didn’t know you were contagious.” He dug into his pockets, hunted out a cell phone and tossed it into the welter of gear. “Anything else we oughta know?”
“Um, yeah.” MacGyver was pawing through another pile of supplies, hunting up anything that could be used as a shovel. “When a disk switches to the ultrahigh frequency pulse, it could ground from any ambient metal right into the human body. But that kinda arcing should only happen if you’re in range when the signal switches to that particular antenna disk - ”
“Carter? Translate, please? That’s not one of Daniel’s languages.”
“You know what happens when you put metal into a microwave oven? Well, just imagine that happening to metal items on your body.”
“Yeah. Right. So if our dog tags start zapping us, that’s bad. If we feel them starting to cook, that’s real bad. Except it’ll mean we’ve found one of the giant alien Frisbees, so that’s good. And for once, we’re dealing with something that can’t shoot back.” Jack hefted a folding shovel, a mallet, and a handful of metal stakes. “Anne Rice, eat your heart out. This oughta be a piece of cake.”
*
It was a nightmare.
The moonlight on the pale ground might have provided enough light to see by, but the trails wound through the hills and ducked under the shadows of bluffs. The moonlight was deceptive, deepening and thickening the shadows, hiding rocks and rough patches so that mishaps were frequent.
The earth continued to shiver, the tremors coming with ever-increasing intensity, at ever shorter intervals. Jack gritted his teeth and kept going. Stumble along in the dark till your skin starts crawling and every nerve screams at you. Then stagger around till you find the place that feels worst. Hack downwards with the shovel into the pale packed sand and hope you get lucky.
Really bad luck was when a disk sent out a signal. Jack remembered when he and Sara had just gotten their first microwave oven, and he’d carelessly tried to reheat coffee in it, using the closest handy mug. Sparks had showered and arced from the decorative gold metal replica of the Air Force emblem on the coffee cup.
That had been hard on the nerves, but at least it had been behind a glass window. Now - who ever thinks about how much metal there is on ordinary clothing? When the first pulse hit, every metal eyelet on both of Jack’s boots crackled and zapped, sending dozens of fiery needles into his feet and shins. He practically levitated off the spot, and then had to go back and tackle it again with his nice metal shovel.
The disks were no more than half a foot under the surface. The powdered mica in the sand glittered in the moonlight like fairy dust once the top layer of dirt was cleared away. The coating on the ‘pennies’ didn’t look like glass; it looked like a diseased crust on a moldy fossilised pizza. Setting the metal spike against the centre and pounding down made the nerves scream even louder, but then the tension would pop like a soap bubble and you knew you’d got it. Die, you ugly suckers. Die.
After several eons, a welcome sound overhead - the surveillance plane they’d requested from Akrotiri had finally made it. A moment later, the radio buzzed with Daniel’s welcome voice and an even more welcome message. “Jack, the guys from the plane just signalled to say there aren’t any signals. I mean, other than theirs.”
Teal’c’s voice, just after that. “ONeill. We have now disposed of the disks at all the locations I noted previously.”
And Sam’s voice after that. “Sir, I think we’ve got them all. Mac just checked the satellite communications gear, and there’s no further interference on any of the upper frequencies.”
“How many were there?”
“Sixteen, counting the two the archeologists found.”
“Nice round number. Okay, campers. Time to pack it in.”
The ground didn’t stop quivering as they made their way back to the camp; if anything, it got worse. Practice didn’t make it easier to deal with, either. Jack tried stopping and standing still, feet spread wide, when a tremor hit; then he tried slowing down, but still walking - that really didn’t work - and, finally, he simply hit the dirt every time, before the dirt hit him. He figured the dirt had scored so many points by then that he might as well take a dive.
Back at camp, it looked like the others had all made the same decision, except for Teal’c, who wasn’t wearing any more dirt than you might expect from having to dig in it. Damn him. Even Daniel, who hadn’t been out for the fun nighttime stroll, had apparently been knocked down a few times also. MacGyver was hobbling again, although not badly; one of his falls had been a bit harder than the others.
“Carter, Mac, how much longer is this crap gonna go on?”
“Hard to say, sir - we don’t really know how it’s being controlled - ”
“Hang on!!” That was MacGyver, grabbing at Daniel’s shoulder and pushing him to the ground, as a massive wave seemed to hump itself up under their feet. The earth growled as falling rock crashed somewhere, much too near, and then the ground yanked itself away from underneath and even Teal’c lost his balance.
Jack could hear Mac’s voice, counting out seconds as they lay there through an eternity of the sick, unnatural roiling. Clever of Mac. Mac had always been clever. Count out the seconds, and hang on to the thought that really, it hadn’t been forever at all, it wouldn’t take forever before it finally quieted down . . . one thousand nineteen, one thousand twenty . . .
When they picked themselves up, the landscape lay quiet and peaceful, bathed in soft light from the westering moon. The watchful eyes of hostile alien forces had closed again in sleep - maybe just a short nap, but it would do for now.
The terrain around them was mostly unchanged; not bad, compared to the aftermaths of some of the quakes Jack had been through. The hillside in front of them, though - the passage opening was still there, a dark gap in the pale stony wall, although sand and stones had slid down and were littered on the ground in front. Immediately around the opening, the solid rock looked the same.
Beyond and above that, there was a crumpled depression in the hill, as if a giant thumb had pressed down on a hollow spot underneath and pushed it inwards. Jack drew a mental image of how the labyrinth had been laid out.
“That’s the throne room, isn’t it? Or was . . . ”
“Probably,” Sam said. “I think that last thing Hebe did activated some kind of self-destruct.”
“Good thing we got Doc Lacie out when we did. How’s she doin’, Daniel?” Jack didn’t say anything about Hebe. He could see, in Teal’c reserved face, that he didn’t need to. Teal’c remembered, and they all understood, and nobody needed to talk about it.
“Still unconscious,” Daniel said.
“Lucky her.”
MacGyver was bending over her. “I don’t get it - what’s wrong? Why hasn’t she woken up?”
“I gave her a shot out of the medical kit,” Daniel answered. “I’m sorry, Mac, but trust me, we can’t let her wake up until we’ve got her somewhere safe, somewhere she can be examined thoroughly. I just hope to god it’s still her when she does wake up.”
Sam laid a hand on Mac’s shoulder. “It’s just a precaution. I’m pretty sure she’ll be okay - I don’t sense a Goa’uld in her.”
“I don’t understand - ”
“The snakes,” Jack said, as if that explained everything.
“The Goa’uld use living humans as hosts.” Teal’c deep voice, a simple statement with no false effort to reassure.
MacGyver pulled at Lacie’s shirt, baring her stomach to check for the nightmarish X slashes.
“Not there,” Sam said. “That’s just how the larval form survives. The adults burrow into the brain stem and take over the central nervous system . . . ” her voice trailed away. There was too much to explain, all at once, and she was tired, and the look on Mac’s face hurt.
“We need to get her to that base - there’s a hospital there, right?” Daniel asked. “Don’t worry, Mac. She might not even remember much of what happened. Well, you and I can worry about what to tell her when she starts asking about all the holes we've been digging and why we didn’t document anything properly.”
MacGyver glanced around at the four people who had been strangers, or worse, that morning. He knew what a really tight-knit team looked like, even though he’d never been part of one himself. Not this kind of team. He’d had that with Pete, before the creeping blindness had done what age couldn’t, and stolen Pete away from field ops. Since then, he’d tried to keep moving fast enough so he wouldn’t notice how badly he missed it.
He shook his head. “Okay, so she’ll wake up and be all right . . . ” Lucky her.
* * *
~ click here for the epilogue ~
Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
X Marks the Spot
Part Three: In For a Penny
The entrance to the underground maze yawned in front of Teal’c and MacGyver, a toothless black mouth.
“The generator - the lights - ” Mac gestured with his right hand; Teal’c was holding him up by the left.
“If ONeill wanted the lights, he would have turned them on. But I do not think they will work at this time.” Teal’c didn’t stop to try. He hurried on, unfazed by the dark and the twisting passages, surefooted and certain of the route. Somehow, Mac wasn’t surprised.
Light ahead of them, but not the glow of the electric bulbs: the light wavered and pulsed, blue-green and molten gold, like a throbbing nightmare in Las Vegas neon. And sound, a deep thrumming that seemed to resonate through the passages as if they were organ pipes. They rounded a corner and saw Jack and Daniel standing outside the entrance to the inner chamber - the throne room - flanking the opening where the light shimmered and rippled. Waves of light, gold and sea-green, threw the lines and furrows of Jack’s face into deeper contrast, and gleamed on the pistol in Daniel’s hand.
Aw, man - so much for the meek civilian - Daniel held the gun, a Beretta 92, with the smooth expertise of a trained guerrilla. Jack was armed as well, of course, another Beretta. He glanced towards Teal’c and Mac as they approached and flashed a hand signal. MacGyver recognised it and responded without thinking as he and Teal’c slipped behind Daniel. He saw Jack blink at the move - whups, giveaway - and file the moment away for later consideration. Heck. Blown.
Mac looked over Daniel’s shoulder into the throne room, and stiffened. The room had more than doubled in size: the entire back wall had opened up to reveal an inner chamber, with walls covered in the same glittering mosaic tiles, except that the tiles weren’t just reflecting light: the walls were actually glowing, cascades of light and colour streaming along the tesselated lines in patterns weirdly reminiscent of printed circuits. MacGyver squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, opened his eyes again: the scene was still there in front of him, with the insane light show that looked impossibly high-tech. If this was a dream, a hallucination triggered by the leg injury - he’d had some doozies in the crazy-dream category - it wasn’t going away just yet.
“Lacie - ” he said softly, hopelessly. He could see her, lying crumpled like a dropped dishrag on the floor at the entrance to the inner chamber, in front of a low dais. Inside, there was some kind of boxlike structure, a bit like a coffin, dull gold where it wasn’t covered with symbols. Sam Carter was standing next to the box, bent over it, dappled light pulsing on her face.
“I’m pretty sure she’s still alive,” Daniel murmured. “I just saw her take a breath.”
“The sarcophagus is opening,” Teal’c muttered.
Sarcophagus? Whaddya mean? That’s Egyptian! This is Cyprus. Although the symbols on the box looked a lot like hieroglyphs, which made no sense either.
A harsh grinding noise, and the lid of the coffin split and slid aside. A slim hand emerged from within, caught Sam’s hand in a firm grip, and a young woman sat up, opened dark eyes, breathed deeply. She turned to Sam and spoke; Sam shook her head, a helpless smile on her face, but responded to a gesture from the girl, helping her rise to her feet and climb out of the sarcophagus.
“Aw, crap, Carter shoulda been immune - ” Jack’s grunt was barely audible. “What gives . . . ?”
“The Girdle of Aphrodite,” Daniel said softly. “It ‘makes any woman impossible to resist’ - that’s what the inscription said. And it didn’t say it only applies to men.”
“Just great. A snake who isn’t sexist.”
“Um, you know, the most famous of Aphrodite’s worshippers was Sappho of Lesbos - ”
“I so don’t want to go there.”
The girl was standing on the dais now, her fingers still resting in Sam’s hand as she surveyed the room, a young queen examining her domain. She wore a heavy gold necklace and elaborate bracelets, and not much more: her face and figure were staggeringly beautiful, and the scraps of white fabric that passed for clothing did little to conceal the rich curves of her body. On her forehead, MacGyver could see a stylised seashell mark: it looked like the same kind of raised metallic tattoo that Teal’c bore.
Mac stared at her in horror. On her bare stomach, two crossing slashes formed an X: he could see, with hideous clarity, the edges of the flaps of skin. There was no blood, but the girl shouldn’t have been able to stand upright with that kind of mutilation, let alone hold her body straight and her head high.
“She is not a Goa’uld,” Teal’c murmured. “She is Jaffa.”
Huh? “I don’t get it - how can she even be alive after being carved open like that - ”
“A sarcophagus can hold an occupant in suspended animation for years - millenia if necessary,” Daniel said. “She’s probably been lying there for at least three thousand years, maybe four thousand, based on the archaic variations in the inscriptions . . . ”
What?!?
The girl was speaking again, and her voice echoed in the throne room. Jack glared at Daniel. “What’s she sayin’?”
“Who stands at the threshhold of the temple of Aphrodite?” Daniel murmured. He stiffened; the girl gestured peremptorily, and a fresh wave of light washed over him from inside the inner rooms. “Speak, scholar, since you understand me. Repeat my words so that all may know my will,” Daniel repeated mechanically. “Approach me. Let all approach who await the Goddess’ return.”
MacGyver found his legs moving, or trying to move: the left leg was attempting to obey as well as the right one, and it couldn’t. Teal’c had swayed, caught in a struggle of will, fighting against each step as his feet dragged themselves into the throne room, one after the other. Mac staggered and gasped with the pain that shot up his thigh. Jack stepped over, hauled his cousin’s arm over his shoulders and helped him forward.
In the throne room, the girl was taking her seat on the shimmering chair, her exquisite face curving in a smile.
She turned to Sam, still standing beside her. Daniel continued to translate, helplessly, as she spoke. “Tell me who has gathered here in worship.”
Mac could see the struggle in Sam’s face, trying to resist the command. Loophole - no worshippers here, ma’am -
“Tell me the names and titles of these men.” The girl’s order was crisper; her face took on a sly air. She cupped Sam’s face in a quick caress. “Come, tell me. In the name of the Goddess, I command it.”
“This is Colonel Jack O’Neill and Doctor Daniel Jackson, of SG-1.” Sam spoke through clenched teeth. “And MacGyver, principal field operative for the Phoenix Foundation.”
Whoa, how’d Sam find that out . . .
“In the name of the goddess?” Daniel interrupted his own ongoing translation. “Ara ei thea Aphrodite?” Mac’s Greek was way short of Daniel’s, and the question didn’t make any sense anyway. Whaddya mean, is she Aphrodite?
The girl frowned at him. “Would you accuse me of hubris, scholar? I make no such claim! I am Hebe, the Handmaiden, most loyal and devoted servant and priestess of the Holy One, the Fairest of All.” Hebe turned back to Sam. “What of the Jaffa warrior?”
“Teal’c, former First Prime of Apophis, now also a member of SG-1.”
“Ah! Former First Prime?” She looked from Sam to Teal’c and back again. “Is the upstart Apophis dead?”
“Upstart?” Jack muttered.
Hebe slipped off the throne and glided over to where Teal’c stood, studying at him like a starved gourmet examining a full case of pastries. Sam took a step forward, but froze in place at an unequivocal gesture to remain by the throne.
“How long has it been? The world has changed much - your speech is strange, your clothing is stranger.” Hebe ran a hand along Teal’c’s chest, and his posture grew even more rigid than before. “My mistress knew Apophis for an arrogant fool, but he was ever well-served by his warriors. She will be most pleased to take you into Her service.”
“I serve no false gods.” Teal’c spoke through gritted teeth.
“Very wise.” Her voice was still soft and sweet, but her eyes were hard. “Apophis was always better served than his due. Kneel now, Teal’c, proud warrior. Bend your knee in honour of the Goddess.”
She had to reach up to touch Teal’c’s shoulder, but as her hand pressed down against it, MacGyver saw beads of sweat break out on the man’s face as he fought to stay upright. One leg shifted, shuddering like a tree about to fall. Teal’c battled through every agonizing vertical inch of that long, slow obeisance. When his knee finally touched the glowing tiles of the floor, his shoulders were still rigid, his hands clenched, refusing surrender.
Hebe’s smile was smug and radiant. “Aphrodite, wondrous and holy, is beloved of all, men and women alike. Only a fool would deny Her power. Only the heartless would disdain Her blessing.” She grasped the heavy bracelet on her left wrist and twisted it around so that it rested in her palm; when she raised her hand, Mac saw a fierce light flare in the big jewel. “Must I teach you all that the Goddess will be served, and served well?”
“Aw, crap,” Jack muttered. “Here we go.”
“ ‘It is the deepest wish of every mortal woman to serve the Goddess, and to walk in Her path and breathe with Her lips. For this is the will of the Great Ones, that only the most perfect shall serve Her . . . ’ ” Daniel’s voice echoed in the chamber, shifting from ancient Greek to English and back again.
He had everyone’s attention now, especially Hebe’s. “You have read the sacred writings?” she demanded.
“ ‘. . . let none but the Goddess herself bind with the Girdle of Aphrodite’, ” Daniel persisted. “You’re usurping her power by using the Girdle - that’s hubris, isn’t it? Does she know what you’re doing here?”
The question hit the girl hard; her face contorted, first in fear, then in fury. She turned her back on Teal’c, reached Daniel in three quick strides, and slapped him hard across the face. He continued to translate, compulsively, as she stormed at him. “How dare you accuse me?” She raised her left hand, and the bracelet started glowing again.
Daniel stood his ground. “Hebe. You’re remembered as the goddess of youth and health. But the stories say you’re Hera’s daughter, not Aphrodite’s - how did that happen? And if you misuse a healing device like that one - ” the flow of words was choked off as scarlet light flared in the girl’s palm.
“Down on your belly, scholar - if I did not need your skills - ” Her next words went untranslated; Daniel was writhing on the floor, unable to speak.
“Smooth going there, sister. Real smooth.” The mockery in Jack’s voice cut across the chamber. Hebe turned away from Daniel and glowered at Jack; Daniel raised his head, his face still racked with pain, and began to translate again, between gasps.
“Ya know, I betcha Mama Bear’s gonna be pretty pissed off when she finds out you were sitting in her chair.”
Mac wondered, hazily, how well ‘pissed off’ was going to translate into archaic Greek. Pretty well, it seemed. In his current position, draped over Jack’s shoulders, he couldn’t back away and neither could Jack, even if it had been a good idea. They were the same height, which only made it more awkward.
It didn’t help that, in spite of her glowing beauty, he could see that she was terribly young, still in her teens. Her eyes were old, with that look of too much experience that he’d seen way too many times, in too many teenagers, even pre-teens, boys and girls alike. There was something even worse than that here, but he couldn’t put his finger on it - a depth of jaded knowledge that felt as if it stretched back through centuries of debauchery. Mac tried to shake off the feeling, but the pain blazing through his leg made it impossible to concentrate.
Hebe’s expression changed as she studied Mac and Jack, her eyes widening and warming as she examining them. “So alike and so different,” she cooed. Mac felt Jack flinch with obvious disgust. Urk. Shopping for a matched set or something?
“My mistress will be most pleased by Her new consorts. Ares and Hephaestus were always Her favourites.” She turned to MacGyver and tilted her head, considering him. “Your leg pains you, Master of Craft. It is not good, that the body should fail when its strength is most wanted.” She raised the hand with the bracelet cupped in her palm, and it glowed, so bright he couldn’t see clearly. She laid the glowing hand on Mac’s left thigh, and warmth rippled out from her touch, erasing the pain as if it had never existed.
The shock of the change was almost too much; he staggered and heard her low laugh. She ran her other hand up his body to his chest; he tried to pull away from her and couldn’t move. Her mouth curved in a sensuous smile, and a sudden erotic flood slammed into him, painfully intense. His vision was eclipsed with an image of herself, naked and welcoming; an image of himself, naked and triumphant - god, no - not his imagination. Not his choice.
MacGyver fought against the vision, sickened at his own response. She’s a kid for god’s sake, she can’t be a day over sixteen . . . Hebe seemed aware of the struggle; her mouth changed, the purring smile twisting into malice. Spikes of red-hot pain stabbed into his thigh, and he let out a strangled cry and collapsed as the leg buckled underneath him again.
Hebe laughed again. “Hephaestus was always so very easy to control. But Ares, now . . . ” Mac saw her glide over to Jack and press herself against him, saw his cousin’s shoulders and back stiffen and his jaw clench. He guessed it was Jack’s turn to find out about that instant-erection trick.
Jack was fighting, hard; his hand tightened on his sidearm. Hebe smirked. “Oh, show me your weapon, Master of War. It is a weapon, is it not? How does it work? Tell me!” She lifted Jack’s hand in both of hers, examining the gun with interest.
“You aim and pull the trigger,” Jack said through gritted teeth. “The person at the other end dies.”
“Such a small thing? Explain.”
“You pull the trigger and ignite a small explosive charge in a contained chamber,” MacGyver found himself answering. He fought to stop the flow of words. “The projectile is propelled out of the barrel at high speed. The person at the other end . . . dies.”
“Like this?” Hebe smiled sweetly. She placed the end of Jack’s Beretta in her mouth, pursed her lips around the barrel, looked up and met his eyes with a wide-eyed expression devoid of any innocence. Sweat beaded on Jack’s face and the blood vessels in his neck stood out like cords with stress and revulsion. Mac wondered, distantly, if he was fighting to pull the trigger, or to drop the gun and pull away.
The girl removed the pistol from her mouth, almost daintily, and let Jack’s hand fall limp at his side. Her mocking laugh needed no translation.
Jack stirred, lifting his left hand to run it down Hebe’s body. She raised surprised eyebrows, but allowed him to continue, her smile deepening. His long fingers reached her bare stomach and caressed the hideous slashes.
MacGyver choked back a cry of horror as the mutilated skin suddenly rippled. One flap of raw skin shifted, as if pushed from within. The girl’s expression turned rapturous, and she placed both her hands flat on her stomach.
“Soon, soon, my darling - ” Daniel translated the murmured words.
A dark gap had opened, and some - thing - an impossible horror, snakelike, the questing mouth of a blind bird and the frilled crest of a lizard out of a fevered nightmare - emerged.
“She bears a mature symbiont.” Teal’c’s voice was an anguished rasp.
Jack’s hand still lay on Hebe’s stomach, just below the ghastly X that marked the place where normal reality had completely disintegrated. He glanced down, and Mac saw his set jaw twitch - he was still fighting hard to control himself. Hebe closed her eyes, tilted her head back in abandon.
Jack moved like a striking snake, seizing the monstrosity just behind the blind gaping mouth, yanking it right out of the girl’s body. Her piercing scream was drowned in the roar of his pistol as he threw the thing to the floor and shot it pointblank. It squealed, an even more horrible sound to Mac’s ears, and Jack blasted it again. Mosaic tiles shattered and glass shards sprayed up around the oozing pieces of the dead creature.
Hebe had collapsed, moaning and sobbing and clutching her stomach, and the others sprang from where they had been locked in place. Sam ran over to where Lacie lay, while Teal’c erupted to his feet as if a pressure valve had been opened and hurried over to Daniel.
“I honour your courage, Daniel Jackson. But that was foolhardy. She could have easily slain you.”
“She didn’t. How’s Lacie?”
“Still alive, but she’s hurt pretty bad,” Sam answered. “How’s MacGyver?”
“Kinda freaked out, I think,” Jack said. He was scrubbing his left hand hard against his pants leg, over and over, his face screwed up in disgust. “Get Doc Lacie into the sarcophagus. Now.” He holstered the gun he still held in his right hand and hunkered down next to Mac. “Still with us, Brainy-Mac?”
Mac took the risk of sitting up. His head was swimming, but his leg didn’t hurt at all. “Jack . . . how much longer before I just wake up and find out that I fell asleep watching a really bad sci-fi movie? I don’t even like sci-fi.”
“No waking up this time,” Jack said gruffly. “Not for any of us.” His expression confused Mac; he looked . . . sad. “You remember last June, when there were two great big unexplained fireballs in the night sky?”
“Well, of course. The UFO junkies went nuts.”
“And ya know all that guff about Area 51 and a big government conspiracy to cover up alien invasions?”
“And UFO abductions and little green men being held for study at Roswell? You’re sayin’ that’s all real?” Mac spluttered.
“No, that part’s still crap, far as I know.” Jack looked over his shoulder at Teal’c with a questioning eyebrow.
Teal’c tilted his head very slightly to the side. “To my knowledge, ‘Roswell’ has never been used for a landing site.”
“Give ‘em time. Anyway, Mac, the aliens are out there, and they’re not friendly. Well, Teal’c’s real friendly once you get to know him - ”
“Wait, you’re sayin’ Teal’c - ”
“Excuse me?” Daniel was looking jittery. “Jack, what the hell? After that last lecture we got on security breaches - ”
“Relax, Daniel, Sam had his credentials checked while she was off at Akrotiri. Turns out Mr. Rogers here has a clearance level only slightly lower than God.”
Sam had joined the cluster by now. She nudged Jack. “Sir, there was a lot more that I didn’t have time to tell you. Did you ever meet Colonel Jim Taylor? You remember - he was shot down over Mongolia, back in ’85, and reported KIA - ”
“Colonel Taylor?” Mac interjected. “He was a Captain then - oh, yeah, he was Air Force, I’d kinda forgotten that . . . ”
“Waitaminute - you’re saying he’s the one who came back with Crazy Jimmy? After the brass had written him off? Carter, I thought you said Mac was in Intelligence. That stunt was Crazy Stupid.” Jack was studying Mac with a bemused expression. “He brought one of ours home?”
MacGyver gave Sam an aggrieved look. “You couldn’t’a been at Akrotiri for more than a few hours. Just what kinda pull have you folks got to dig all that up so fast?”
Sam was beaming that really great smile again, but it wasn’t making Mac feel the same way this time. “Your file makes great reading. Apparently your boss and our CO go a long way back.”
“Aw, man.” MacGyver pulled his legs up so he could sit tailor-fashion and prop up his hands to bury his head properly. After a moment in that position, he suddenly remembered that he shouldn’t have been able to move his left leg at all. He raised his head slowly to peer at the unoffending limb. “What the . . . ”
“C’mon, Mac, pull yourself together,” Jack said breezily. “I think Snake Girl healed you, then just gave you a nice big zap to keep you in line. Better take a look and get it over.”
MacGyver hesitated, then reached out a slow hand towards the leg of his jeans. He pushed aside the tattered fabric, stiff with blood, and stared at where Lacie’s knife had carved those two long deep gashes down the muscles of his thigh. One slash had driven clear to the kneecap; the other, he was pretty sure, had severed a tendon. He had been sure . . .
The leg was whole, the skin showing only faint traces of faded pink marks where the damage had been.
“That’s impossible.”
Jack shrugged. “The aliens have healing gizmos.”
“But - the pain came back - ”
“That was probably direct nerve stimulation, with no actual tissue damage,” Sam said reassuringly. Mac didn’t find any of it reassuring. “The healing’s real.”
“What I don’t understand is how she was able to use the healing device at all,” Daniel said. He was frowning thoughtfully. “Teal’c, have you ever heard of any Jaffa being able to do that?”
“I have not.”
“She wasn’t just a Jaffa,” Sam said. “She must have been a host herself at some point. I could feel it.”
Daniel snapped his fingers. “The Well of Aphrodite.”
“What?” said Jack.
“That’s what this place is supposed to be - where Aphrodite ‘renewed her virginity’ - ”
“Ewww.”
“What if a Goa’uld Queen changed hosts frequently? Like, every few years? And then made the ex-hosts into Jaffa?”
“Every nine years, for example?” Teal’c looked intrigued.
“Yeah, exactly. And used the Selection process to cull the best of the herd, so to speak, and cross-breed them. Um, that whole business with Ares and Hephaestus - ”
“Whoa, Danny. Maybe the chick had a twins fetish, but trust me, it was just creepy.”
“No, no, you’re not listening - ”
MacGyver met Sam’s eyes. “Are they like this a lot?”
“All the time.”
“Think of the Ares and Hephaestus myth as a metaphoric pattern. The fertility goddess chooses two consorts - one for physical prowess, the other for intellectual achievement - it’s not such a bad set of criteria for rapid genetic advancement, is it? Sam?”
“I’m going to go check on Lacie,” Sam declared brightly. “It shouldn’t take too long to fix a broken arm.” She helped Mac to his feet. “You see, the sarcophagus is primarily a healing chamber; the statis effect is a secondary usage - ”
“Once Lacie Najjar is able to move, we must return Hebe to the sarcophagus. Without her symbiont, she will soon begin to die.” Teal’c looked around. “Where is she?”
Jack’s head whipped around at the question. “Aw, shit - Teal’c, grab her!”
Hebe no longer lay where she had fallen. She had been still for so long that they had assumed she was unconscious, but she had either revived or had been biding her time. She had dragged herself onto the dais and up to the foot of the throne. One hand was stretched up to the right armrest, methodically pressing a long series of tiles. Each one flared as she touched it and continued to glow; patterns of light were beginning to flow down the side of the throne and ripple across the dais to the floor.
Teal’c reached her in a few long strides. She evaded his grasp for a moment, long enough to reach up to the back of the throne and hammer on the tiles there with her fist. The others tried to shield their eyes as raw power forked out from the chair, silhouetting Hebe for a hideous moment and catching Teal’c in a shower of sparks. A terrible smell of burnt hair and scorched flesh filled the chamber.
Teal’c pulled her away from the ruined throne and bent over her, his great hand cupping her face. She glared at him with malice and triumph in her eyes. “You cannot stop it now. I have failed my mistress, but I die knowing She will return.”
“You are free.” Teal’c sounded as if he was pleading. “You need not die a slave. You need not die at all, if you have the will to live. The sarcophagus is still here. It will sustain you, possibly even free you from the need to bear a prim’ta - ”
The lovely face contorted with fury and hatred. She made an effort to spit at Teal’c, but only a little blood oozed at the corner of her mouth. “I am the servant of the Great One. Would you steal even that from me? When my time drew to an end, and She chose a new vessel, I pleaded with Her, I begged Her, if She must leave me, to allow me, somehow, to serve Her still. She granted my wish.” Hebe laid her hands tenderly on her mutilated stomach. “Never before had a woman been given the honour of bearing the seed of Olympus. And now - ”
She glared at the others as they gathered around. “Remain here, murderers, defilers of the temple, and wait. Or flee! It matters not. Soon, the Eyes of Argus will open and speak to the Goddess. She will find you then, all of you, and kill you for your blasphemy . . . ”
Her hissing voice faded. Her eyes rolled up, and she slumped in Teal’c’s grasp. He picked up the still form, his face solemn, and carried her to the inner chamber.
“Aw, crap.” Jack ran a hand through his hair. “Carter - ”
“We’re on it, sir.” Sam was already hunched over, examining the dais around the throne, looking for signs of control panel access. MacGyver crouched beside the throne, running a hand along the portions of the mosaic designs that were still intact. Daniel watched them both for a moment, then started studying the hieroglyphs on the sarcophagus.
“This is crazy. Argus was a myth.” MacGyver looked around the chamber, ran a hand down the bloody shreds of his jeans leg, and winced. “Okay, never mind, so’s Hebe and Aphrodite. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “So what the heck did she mean? Is it actually a problem?”
“Wait, wait, there was something about the Eyes of Argus in the inscriptions, I remember . . . ” Daniel closed his eyes in concentration. “ ‘At the Hour of the Goddess’ . . . that was the one, something about consorts . . . ” One hand circled in the air, as if he was trying to wind up his memory. “ ‘The Handmaiden . . . the Handmaiden shall be summoned to make ready the Blessed and Glorious Ones. The Eyes of Argus - ’ ” he squeezed his own eyes even more tightly shut. “ ‘The Eyes of Argus shall open and the Goddess shall come to choose Her consorts.’ ”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Jack snarled. “What, she had her boss on speed dial? Sam, how do we turn off the phone?”
“Is anyone likely to be there on the other end to pick up the call?” asked Daniel.
Sam looked up with a frown. “I don’t know, sir. Teal’c, is Aphrodite still alive? Is she one of the System Lords?”
“I do not know,” came the grave reply. “Many of the Goa’uld Queens are secretive about their movements. Many of the System Lords cooperate to keep this secrecy.”
“She could still be out there, or she could have an ally who is.” Sam poked at several tiles that seemed promising, and scowled when nothing happened. “Hebe seemed pretty confident that it meant trouble.”
“Daniel, you said this complex was three or four thousand years old,” Jack said. “What’re the odds that the phone’s still workin’?”
“The Girdle was,” MacGyver observed drily. “I guess these aliens of yours build stuff to last.” He stood up, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned around the chamber slowly, frowning.
Jack looked at him, looked imploringly up at the shadows on the chamber’s ceiling, then held up his hands in an expansive gesture. “Spit it out, Mac. Whatcha thinkin’?”
“Um, exactly what is the danger here?”
“That’ll depend on what the Eyes of Argus are. Or is,” Sam replied. “We really don’t know all that much about their technology yet.”
“We do know that if they can get at us, they will,” added Daniel.
“Wait. They’re a threat right now, but they also go back thousands of years? Long enough to have built this place?”
“They live for thousands of years. They’re parasites. Even their technology is mostly stolen from other races.” Sam had finished her circuit of the dais and stood up.
“And - you made it sound like they’re not united, right? They might be at cross purposes? Keeping secrets and hiding stuff from each other?”
“You got it,” said Jack. “Biggest buncha backstabbing double-crossing two-faced fat-cat cutthroats you’ll ever find, outside of Congress.”
“So maybe the Eyes of Argus could be something that the - what did you call them? - Goa’uld? Something that a highly advanced race wouldn’t easily find, or maybe won’t recognise - ” MacGyver’s eyes suddenly opened very wide. “The Eyes of Argus will open - Sam, think. No birds or small animals anywhere nearby, and every so often you get a creepy feelin’ - ”
“Subsonics? How?”
“The Bad Pennies! The copper disks - solid copper, a meter wide, topped with glass - heck, that’s right, you didn’t see the dig records - they were buried only a few inches under the surface, in sandy soil. On a bed of sand and powdered mica four inches deep, in fact. The sand isn’t the native stratum, of course; it was laid in place.”
Sam’s eyes lit. “Antennas. They’re antennas! Sand insulation underneath and on top, and the glass top layer also keeps water off, so it won’t corrode or ground out and lose the signals.”
“Yeah. Low frequency signals will pass through rock, so you can transmit signals, say, oscillating between half a hertz and eight hertz - keeps the critters away and gives the locals the shivers.”
“But why? What’s the point?”
“We wondered why this site was so far away from the seaside and the port towns - I think your Goa’uld gal wanted a base that the rest of the aliens would overlook.” Mac was talking very quickly now. “Multiple antenna segments running on high power will just look like random radiofrequency noise, especially if the signal switches between them fast enough. There’s no single point of radiation you can triangulate on.”
“Multiple segments - oh, god, you mean there are more of them . . . ? Of course. The Eyes of Argus. Plural.” Sam grimaced. “Oh, crap. If the array can be activated so that it switches from the subsonic keep-away signals to ultra-high frequency bursts - ”
“Whoa. What’s it signalling? Nothing’s gonna get anywhere quick enough to whistle up your aliens - no matter how spiffy their spaceships are, an ordinary electromagnetic signal can’t go any faster than the speed of light.”
“MacGyver, moonrise. Things start happening at moonrise! There has to be a relay station of some kind on the Moon.”
Daniel had been looking from Sam to Mac to Sam and back again, and had finally fallen behind. Teal’c had stopped looking at either of them and was gazing straight ahead. Jack’s eyes merely looked glassy.
“Wonder Twin powers, activate.” Jack drawled. “Are you two done yet?”
Mac looked around the chamber. “But it’s gotta have a power source. Otherwise - hold on. How come nothing’s happened yet?”
“No power?” Sam mused. “If there’s no power - or not enough for whatever - we should be okay.”
Jack winced. “Bad move, Carter - jinx - ”
The walls seemed, for a moment, to ripple; the floor shimmered, and several mosaic tiles cracked with faint glassy tinkles.
“Okay, we’re not okay,” Daniel said.
“Aw, man.” MacGyver grabbed at the back of the throne to steady himself. “It’s - ”
He and Sam finished the sentence in the same breath. “ - geothermal!”
“Sir, we need to get the hell out of here. Daniel, can Lacie be moved yet?”
“I think so - um, just what are we doing?”
“We gotta put blindfolds on Argus before he phones home,” Mac said.
Jack winced. “That is the worst mixed metaphor I’ve ever heard.”
*
Lacie Najjar was still unconscious, but her broken arm had knit and her breathing was deep and regular. Teal’c laid the still form of Hebe in the sarcophagus and watched expressionlessly as the twin wings of the lid slid closed and hid the exquisite face.
Jack glanced at the moon as they emerged from the passages. It felt as if days had passed, but the moon lay serene in the night sky, its position showing that Lacie had stabbed Mac and run into the labyrinth barely an hour before. The moon would remain in sight for hours - in line-of-sight, just waiting to relay betraying signals from the mother planet and bring down burning wrath from heaven. And he’d thought it’d been bad when it was just a potential foothold for hostile troop movements. Shit.
“Where’s Mac got to?”
MacGyver had run over to one of the tents and began scrabbling in the camp supplies. Sam was digging through their own gear.
“We only brought one magnetometer with us -”
“Fer cryin’ out loud, Carter, not magnets again."
“It’s a metal detector, sir. We’ve only got one, and it’ll take hours if we only look for one disk at a time. We can send to Akrotiri for a flyover, but that’ll take time also.”
Jack shook his head. “We gotta do better than that. And we can’t wait for daylight. Teal’c, when we were out in the hills earlier, you caught the places where the creepout effect was happening - ”
“Indeed.”
“Think you can find them all again? In the dark?”
“I can.”
“Someone needs to stay here with Doc Lacie. That’s you, Daniel,” Jack said decisively.
Sam handed Daniel a shortwave radio handset. “There’s probably an even number of the disks. Can you keep count if we call in each time we find one?”
“Just what the hell do we do when we find ‘em?” Jack demanded.
MacGyver grinned. “That part’s easy.” He had emerged from the supply cache carrying hammers and mallets from the toolbox, and a sheaf of metal spikes: tent pegs, guywire stakes, shishkebab skewers. “All we gotta do is ground’em. Hammer a metal stake through the disks, and it’ll kill the signal.”
Daniel sighed. “God, I hope Lacie doesn’t wake up and see what we’ve done to her dig.”
The ground rocked and swayed like a raft in a rising sea. Jack caught his balance again and swore. “C’mon, campers. We’ve gotta hurry.”
Sam hefted the metal detector. “If anyone has a cell phone, leave it here. One pulse from any of the disks will fry them. MacGyver, is there any aluminum foil in the cooking supplies?”
“Right here.” Mac tossed her a roll.
She began to tear off sheets. “Everyone except Daniel, wrap your radios in these. Don’t unwrap them except for right after you’ve grounded out one of the disks. After you check in, wrap it up again. Otherwise they’ll fry too.”
Jack gave Mac a long look. “I didn’t know you were contagious.” He dug into his pockets, hunted out a cell phone and tossed it into the welter of gear. “Anything else we oughta know?”
“Um, yeah.” MacGyver was pawing through another pile of supplies, hunting up anything that could be used as a shovel. “When a disk switches to the ultrahigh frequency pulse, it could ground from any ambient metal right into the human body. But that kinda arcing should only happen if you’re in range when the signal switches to that particular antenna disk - ”
“Carter? Translate, please? That’s not one of Daniel’s languages.”
“You know what happens when you put metal into a microwave oven? Well, just imagine that happening to metal items on your body.”
“Yeah. Right. So if our dog tags start zapping us, that’s bad. If we feel them starting to cook, that’s real bad. Except it’ll mean we’ve found one of the giant alien Frisbees, so that’s good. And for once, we’re dealing with something that can’t shoot back.” Jack hefted a folding shovel, a mallet, and a handful of metal stakes. “Anne Rice, eat your heart out. This oughta be a piece of cake.”
*
It was a nightmare.
The moonlight on the pale ground might have provided enough light to see by, but the trails wound through the hills and ducked under the shadows of bluffs. The moonlight was deceptive, deepening and thickening the shadows, hiding rocks and rough patches so that mishaps were frequent.
The earth continued to shiver, the tremors coming with ever-increasing intensity, at ever shorter intervals. Jack gritted his teeth and kept going. Stumble along in the dark till your skin starts crawling and every nerve screams at you. Then stagger around till you find the place that feels worst. Hack downwards with the shovel into the pale packed sand and hope you get lucky.
Really bad luck was when a disk sent out a signal. Jack remembered when he and Sara had just gotten their first microwave oven, and he’d carelessly tried to reheat coffee in it, using the closest handy mug. Sparks had showered and arced from the decorative gold metal replica of the Air Force emblem on the coffee cup.
That had been hard on the nerves, but at least it had been behind a glass window. Now - who ever thinks about how much metal there is on ordinary clothing? When the first pulse hit, every metal eyelet on both of Jack’s boots crackled and zapped, sending dozens of fiery needles into his feet and shins. He practically levitated off the spot, and then had to go back and tackle it again with his nice metal shovel.
The disks were no more than half a foot under the surface. The powdered mica in the sand glittered in the moonlight like fairy dust once the top layer of dirt was cleared away. The coating on the ‘pennies’ didn’t look like glass; it looked like a diseased crust on a moldy fossilised pizza. Setting the metal spike against the centre and pounding down made the nerves scream even louder, but then the tension would pop like a soap bubble and you knew you’d got it. Die, you ugly suckers. Die.
After several eons, a welcome sound overhead - the surveillance plane they’d requested from Akrotiri had finally made it. A moment later, the radio buzzed with Daniel’s welcome voice and an even more welcome message. “Jack, the guys from the plane just signalled to say there aren’t any signals. I mean, other than theirs.”
Teal’c’s voice, just after that. “ONeill. We have now disposed of the disks at all the locations I noted previously.”
And Sam’s voice after that. “Sir, I think we’ve got them all. Mac just checked the satellite communications gear, and there’s no further interference on any of the upper frequencies.”
“How many were there?”
“Sixteen, counting the two the archeologists found.”
“Nice round number. Okay, campers. Time to pack it in.”
The ground didn’t stop quivering as they made their way back to the camp; if anything, it got worse. Practice didn’t make it easier to deal with, either. Jack tried stopping and standing still, feet spread wide, when a tremor hit; then he tried slowing down, but still walking - that really didn’t work - and, finally, he simply hit the dirt every time, before the dirt hit him. He figured the dirt had scored so many points by then that he might as well take a dive.
Back at camp, it looked like the others had all made the same decision, except for Teal’c, who wasn’t wearing any more dirt than you might expect from having to dig in it. Damn him. Even Daniel, who hadn’t been out for the fun nighttime stroll, had apparently been knocked down a few times also. MacGyver was hobbling again, although not badly; one of his falls had been a bit harder than the others.
“Carter, Mac, how much longer is this crap gonna go on?”
“Hard to say, sir - we don’t really know how it’s being controlled - ”
“Hang on!!” That was MacGyver, grabbing at Daniel’s shoulder and pushing him to the ground, as a massive wave seemed to hump itself up under their feet. The earth growled as falling rock crashed somewhere, much too near, and then the ground yanked itself away from underneath and even Teal’c lost his balance.
Jack could hear Mac’s voice, counting out seconds as they lay there through an eternity of the sick, unnatural roiling. Clever of Mac. Mac had always been clever. Count out the seconds, and hang on to the thought that really, it hadn’t been forever at all, it wouldn’t take forever before it finally quieted down . . . one thousand nineteen, one thousand twenty . . .
When they picked themselves up, the landscape lay quiet and peaceful, bathed in soft light from the westering moon. The watchful eyes of hostile alien forces had closed again in sleep - maybe just a short nap, but it would do for now.
The terrain around them was mostly unchanged; not bad, compared to the aftermaths of some of the quakes Jack had been through. The hillside in front of them, though - the passage opening was still there, a dark gap in the pale stony wall, although sand and stones had slid down and were littered on the ground in front. Immediately around the opening, the solid rock looked the same.
Beyond and above that, there was a crumpled depression in the hill, as if a giant thumb had pressed down on a hollow spot underneath and pushed it inwards. Jack drew a mental image of how the labyrinth had been laid out.
“That’s the throne room, isn’t it? Or was . . . ”
“Probably,” Sam said. “I think that last thing Hebe did activated some kind of self-destruct.”
“Good thing we got Doc Lacie out when we did. How’s she doin’, Daniel?” Jack didn’t say anything about Hebe. He could see, in Teal’c reserved face, that he didn’t need to. Teal’c remembered, and they all understood, and nobody needed to talk about it.
“Still unconscious,” Daniel said.
“Lucky her.”
MacGyver was bending over her. “I don’t get it - what’s wrong? Why hasn’t she woken up?”
“I gave her a shot out of the medical kit,” Daniel answered. “I’m sorry, Mac, but trust me, we can’t let her wake up until we’ve got her somewhere safe, somewhere she can be examined thoroughly. I just hope to god it’s still her when she does wake up.”
Sam laid a hand on Mac’s shoulder. “It’s just a precaution. I’m pretty sure she’ll be okay - I don’t sense a Goa’uld in her.”
“I don’t understand - ”
“The snakes,” Jack said, as if that explained everything.
“The Goa’uld use living humans as hosts.” Teal’c deep voice, a simple statement with no false effort to reassure.
MacGyver pulled at Lacie’s shirt, baring her stomach to check for the nightmarish X slashes.
“Not there,” Sam said. “That’s just how the larval form survives. The adults burrow into the brain stem and take over the central nervous system . . . ” her voice trailed away. There was too much to explain, all at once, and she was tired, and the look on Mac’s face hurt.
“We need to get her to that base - there’s a hospital there, right?” Daniel asked. “Don’t worry, Mac. She might not even remember much of what happened. Well, you and I can worry about what to tell her when she starts asking about all the holes we've been digging and why we didn’t document anything properly.”
MacGyver glanced around at the four people who had been strangers, or worse, that morning. He knew what a really tight-knit team looked like, even though he’d never been part of one himself. Not this kind of team. He’d had that with Pete, before the creeping blindness had done what age couldn’t, and stolen Pete away from field ops. Since then, he’d tried to keep moving fast enough so he wouldn’t notice how badly he missed it.
He shook his head. “Okay, so she’ll wake up and be all right . . . ” Lucky her.
* * *
~ click here for the epilogue ~