The journey is determined by the paths taken at the forks in the road. But fate offers its small but compelling suggestions in there somewhere as well.

It was unfair. There was no other way to describe it. No floral imagery or padding. No way to place it gently. No other word could quite describe it (although 'unreasonable' or 'just plain ridiculous' came pretty close). It was as simple as that.

SG-1 had been through hell and back, saving the planet, galaxy, universe, space-time continuum, themselves et cetera and had always returned...sometimes in more pieces than what they left in, but returned nonetheless. They'd always lived to save the world another day.

So why then, were all of their efforts in four-and-a-bit years reduced to a split second in time?

Why was all the technology they'd worked so hard to acquire rendered useless with a single five-centimeter long canister?

And why did the fate of the universe rest within the twitch of a finger?

He pressed the button.

And that was it. Daniel could feel the gas leaking into the room. He desperately stared at the person who he had once known as Sarah in the futile hope that he might catch her eye one last time before she realized he'd killed her. But, unaware of what he had just done, Osiris ignorantly continued to address the System Lords.

"I am here to represent the vote of another," she stated holding her head high.

What.

Daniel felt the blood rush to his ears. What had she just said? He was sure he heard her, but she couldn't have said what he thought she said. Could she?

"Who do you serve?" demanded Lord Yu.

The gas continued to diffuse from his side of the room. By some miracle, the Goa'uld had not yet fallen victim to its affects. Something inside him felt like jumping up and down like an idiot waving a baking tray to try to rid the room of symbiote poison before the majority of the people in the room dropped dead. He somehow managed to refrain. Just barely.

"Anubis!" retorted Osiris, tilting her head to one side.

If Daniel, at any stage, had bad feelings of what these last three sentences meant, they were about to get ten times worse. The reaction of the System Lords was that of pure shock. Many of them had several things to say on such a topic, but none of them ever had the chance. The poison had crept around enough. Suddenly, there were eight choking Goa'uld, then eight bodies falling to the floor. Then silence. Daniel glanced at the other lo'taurs. They were understandably in a severe form of numbing surprise - eight 'Gods' dead in one day?

Daniel was the first one to move. He checked for a pulse on Lord Yu; the other lo'taurs did similar things.

"Which one of you is responsible for this?" bellowed Ba'al's lo'taur suddenly.

Uh-oh. Time to go.

As subtly as he could, Daniel made his way across the room. He made it to the door unnoticed - all hell had broken loose. The remaining lo'taurs had begun battling one another while conducting reasonably loud arguments.

As soon as he was clear of the meeting chamber, he drew the Tok'ra communicator. "Jacob!" he called, still walking down the hall. "Get me out of here!"

It seemed that the Tok'ra could hear the commotion in the background, and thus did not ask any questions until Daniel was already on the ship again.

"How did it go?"

Daniel hung his head. "Not so good, I think."

"You mean you didn't actually release the poison?" growled Jacob. "Dammit Daniel..."

"I released the poison."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Sarah said she was representing the vote of another Goa'uld - Anubis."

"Anubis?" Jacob shook his head. "It can't be. He's dead."

"Apparently he isn't. He wanted to rejoin the System Lords."

"He was banished over a thousand years ago for crimes that were unspeakable - even for the Goa'uld," said the Tok'ra vacantly. "And we just..."

"Opened up the way for him to rule the whole galaxy," finished Daniel. "Oh God." He looked over to his friend. "Jacob, what have I done?"

The journey back to Revanna was very close to being completely silent. Jacob and Daniel both kept their eyes straight ahead and their mouths closed. The first time either one of them moved other than out of necessity was when they arrived at their destination. They dropped out of hyperspace, immediately cloaking the cargo ship.

A beeping noise sounded - they were receiving a communication. Jacob pressed the appropriate buttons and translated.

"We're being warned away from Revanna," he said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

"Why?" Daniel wanted to know, but he feared he already knew the answer.

"I'm not sure. A warning is programmed to activate in the event that several things go wrong - Goa'uld invasion, among others..." He looked at the dashboard. "We should go."

The archaeologist's eyes shifted. "Hey, wait. What about Sam, Jack and Teal'c? They're probably still down there."

"Daniel, Tok'ra protocol indicates that we should assume no survivors."

"Yes, well, I'm not a Tok'ra." Daniel was bordering 'beyond reason' with worry.

Jacob's eyes widened slightly, instilling no confidence in Daniel's hopes. "Sensors are picking up over five thousand major life signs down there." He sighed, knowing what this likely meant. He turned to explain, regret etched in his features. "We didn't have that many Tok'ra on the base, Daniel. As much as I would like to think that they..."

There was a crash and a shudder as something impacted the Cargo ship.

"We're picking up two gliders closing on our position," reported Jacob, his Earth military training kicking in.

Daniel's head slumped forward. "We should go," he agreed as the ship clanged, and Jacob took them into hyperspace once more.

TBC