CHAPTER ONE

0900 hours

"Whoa…" General Jack O'Neill said. SG-1 had just come through the Stargate to P3X-713, a clustered city with, what looked like, former sky scrapers and very tall buildings but were now ominous figures of twisted metal standing desolate and alone in the setting sun. "What a sight…"

"What is this place?" Teal'c asked, scanning the scene that was laid before him: a dry deserted city once riddled with fresh fields of grass and tall majestic buildings.

"I dunno…" Dr. Daniel Jackson said. "Looks like they had better technology though, whoever they were. And it looks as if they were attacked by Goa'uld."

"This is not the work of any System Lord," Teal'c said.

"You sure?" Colonel Samantha Carter asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Oookayy…Well then, let's go check it out," Jack said.

After splitting up and exploring certain parts of the city for about an hour, they all met up—minus Daniel— in a large room at the center of the city, covered by what used to be a large glass dome; it was now half gone. There were pieces of stone and metal lying in all sorts of places, shards of broken glass cold and alone on the floor. Vines grew up and over the walls, no longer green and healthy, but brown and dead.

"Where's Daniel?" Sam asked, watching her footing, stepping on pieces of glass.

"I dunno," Jack replied, doing the same. "He's probably examining some…rocks, or something…"

"I last saw Dr. Jackson when we came to a corridor leading in two directions, and he suggested that we split up," Teal'c replied.

"Hey!" they heard a voice say behind them. Speak of the devil, Jack thought, as Daniel ran towards them from a dark hallway. "I found something!"

"What'd you find?" Jack asked.

"Uh…I'm not quite sure, exactly," he replied, as he approached them. "Just—come on, it's this way." He started to walk in the direction from which he came, glass crunching under his feet.

After walking down a long hallway, then taking some lefts, and some rights (directions that Jack refused to try and memorize) Daniel had them standing in front of a dead end; a bare, metal wall with vines growing up the sides and down the length of the hallway.

Sam was about to say something, but Jack got there first.

"Uh, Daniel…" he said.

"Y-yeah, I know, just, come here…" Daniel stuttered and beckoned to Jack to join him by a hole in the wall, about waist height, letting a ray of light through to the cold hallway. "Look through here…"

Jack sighed. I wonder what kind of rocks I'll be looking at through here, he thought, and tried to suppress a laugh. He bent down and put his eye to the hole, squinting at first to a bright light, then after his eyes adjusted…

"Holy…buckets…" he said.