PROLOGUE

Lieutenant Dean Barber of the United States Marine Corps had only been a Lieutenant for a short time and a member of SG-5 for even less time. The patch on his uniform was so new that no threads had even come loose yet and he was fastidious about keeping it that way as long as possible. He had pride in it. He had pride in his entire uniform. His boots were perfectly polished and laced with precision. His jacket was smooth and hung well on his tall frame. His pants, despite being standard issue BDUs, almost looked like they had iron creases in the edges.

In comparison, Colonel Jack O'Neill was slightly rumpled as he bounded down the staircase into the main control room for Stargate Command, jacket open and flapping with the downward descent.

"Barber!" he called as the tech locked in the first chevron of the Stargate in the Gate room below. "When you get there, give this to Daniel will ya?" he asked as he pulled a folded twenty dollar bill from his pocket.

Barber looked at it and then back up at Jack, not quite understanding. "Sir?"

"We had a bet." Barber didn't look any less confused. Jack smirked and shoved his hands into his pockets, rocking back slightly on his heels, his impish smile beaming on his face. "I lost."

His smirk was met with a blank stare as if Barber's eyes suddenly stopped focusing on him and instead his attention went fully to the sound of the Stargate spinning and the second chevron locking.

"What'd you bet on?" Major Samantha Carter inquired as she edged alongside her commanding officer.

"Sports related," he mumbled cryptically to her before reaching out to tap Barber on the arm. "Just give it to him. He'll know what it means."

Barber pulled himself back from his near hypnosis as the third chevron locked into place. "Uh, yes sir," he responded, turning to leave.

"What sport?" Sam asked, finding it hard to believe that Dr. Daniel Jackson, team archeologist and resident linguist turned diplomat, would even know enough about sports to place a bet. Then again, he did open the Stargate for them years prior, doing in two weeks what took the military's brightest minds two years to not figure out. He was full of surprises.

"Hmm?" Jack hummed in an attempt to distract her.

"What sport did you bet on?" she repeated.

With Jack O'Neill, half the time even his own teammates couldn't figure out if he was being serious or deadpan joking. Such was the case when he answered, "Curling."

Even though Sam wanted to ask Jack if he seriously watched curling, she instead found herself asking, eyes narrowed in disbelief, "Daniel bet on curling?"

It wasn't typical of Daniel to get engrossed in sports, though she knew there had been at least a few occasions of him having hockey games thrust on him and he seemed to be picking up the lingo of it. Ever since the recent appearance of Shifu, the Harcesis son of Sha're and the Goa'uld Apophis, Daniel had only slowly began to reconnect with his team. He was still distracted, throwing himself into his work with a fervor he had lacked just prior to the boy showing up, but he was slow in coming out of his self-imposed exile.

"Oh yes," Jack said with a hint of sing-song that she still couldn't entirely gauge the sincerity of. "His team won the big Bonspiel." Whatever that was. Sam could just assume it was some sort of actual curling tournament. Unlike Jack, she wasn't very up on the sports of Minnesota.

"Okay. You don't want to tell me what the bet is, that's fine," she said with a smile as she turned to follow along to join SG-5.

"Have fun!" Jack called after her as he trailed along in amusement.

While they headed to the Gate room, Sam turned to glance at him. "So sir, are you sure you'd rather take the weekend off than come with me to see this place?"

"Oh you know how I get when I work my ass off," he joked. "In fact, I'd have figured you'd want some time off to yourself by now."

When they entered the Gate room, Barber was already there waiting at the bottom of the ramp. It wasn't entirely unusual for newer members of the teams to stand right up near the edge of the ramp as the wormhole activated so they never even paid attention to the intensity with which he stared at the ring while it spun toward the last chevron.

"Oh I do but Daniel says that of all the-" Sam stopped in her tracks and turned toward Jack, realization hitting. "That was the bet? Whether or not I'd go? Don't you have anything better to do?"

Before Jack could retort, Sam watched his face fall in shock and loud bootfalls hit the metal of the ramp. The last chevron had clicked into place and the thrum of energy was building that signalled the gate about to engage. Barber was already halfway up the ramp when Jack shouted out to him.

They could just watch in shock as the wormhole formed, splashing outward and engulfing the young lieutenant's form, vaporizing it.

Ice flooded through Sam's veins as she stood there helpless and staring. "Oh my god."