Daniel couldn't tell how long he'd slept. All sense of time was lost along with his wristwatch which had been shattered by a falling rock, breaking his wrist in the process. Pain radiated up his arm and spiked in his shoulder. His fingers weren't so bad, although he knew this was likely from nerve damage that had numbed the now-useless digits. Small mercy, really.

With the cave coming down around him, he had narrowly missed being impaled by a falling stalactite when Sam pulled on his tether. The massive rock plowed into the ground, trapping him against the wall and leaving him unable to do anything more than protect himself from flying debris. Above him, the small ledge they found the Asgard stones on collapsed. Daniel threw a hand up over his head to deflect the falling rocks, letting out a cry as a broken section of wall crashed down and pinned his arm to the ground.

Pain slammed into him, knocking what little breath he left out, while above him, the roof split open and rained down rocks and thick dust. Without warning, the tether around his waist pulled tight, reminding him that he we still attached to Sam. He couldn't see her through the maelstrom of debris, but he could feel her trying to pull him towards the entrance to the tunnel, and mindful of the further danger he was putting his team in by lingering in the cave, he found himself choiceless.

The rope jerked again and he heard Sam's panicked voice calling out to him above the roar of the quake. Biting down hard against the pain, he reached behind with his uninjured arm and felt for the knife at his waist. Following the line of rope to a point well clear of his belly, he slashed across the fibres, slumping back against the wall as the tether fell away into the darkness.

Scant moments later, the ground beneath Daniel tilted. The cave seemed to vibrate with the force of the quake, sending yet more rocks tumbling to the floor and crashing about him. He tried to turn away from it all, curling up as small as he could, given that he was pinned tight, but the quake crested in intensity and the wall above exploded, showering him with rocks.

The first time Daniel woke, it had been to the sound of rocks groaning all around him as they settled into place from the collapse of the cavern. There was barely any light. The bioluminescence that had provided them with a modicum of light was virtually gone now, most likely buried under tons of earth and dust, and what little light he could see appeared to be coming from behind him.

He shifted, cautiously testing out his confines, but found he was still wedged into a crevice of the wall, his freedom hampered by a large jagged boulder. His body protested with his every action: muscles tensed and cramped from being inactive for so long and bruises peppered his abused skin. His wrist throbbed in time with his heart and almost matched the banging in his head that was centered where he had been struck by rocks.

Sleep came far too easily.

Daniel wasn't sure what had woken him next, but a need to pee was high on his list of priorities. Wriggling his butt to shake off the numbness from having sat in one spot for too long, he found he had enough room to twist onto his side and drag out his pack with his good hand. His other hand was still wedged under the remnants of the fallen ledge.

The pack was cumbersome to move, but a blessing once he'd managed to move it out from underneath him. Besides working out how to pee without making a mess, he needed to free his hand. Rummaging through his pack produced three light sticks, the last of his supply. Daniel returned two to his pack and pushed it away. Taking one of the sticks, he flexed it against his thigh until the chemical capsule in the center broke with a satisfying crunch. A quick shake and his little corner of the collapsed cave was bathed in a sombre green hue. He tossed the light stick down next to the rock trapping his wrist and reached for his knife.

The blade shone in the dim light and he caught his own hazy reflection on its steely surface. Dust and grime coated his face but not quite enough to hide a myriad of bruises and cuts left behind by the falling debris. They were the least of his problems. Knowing he had no choice but to try and dig his trapped arm out, he wriggled on to his side and began a careful excavation.

Chipping away at the hard earth was eating up all of his energy reserves. The need to pee and drink were becoming urgent, but the pain radiating from his wrist drove those needs to the back of his mind and made him careless. The blade came down on top of a small rock and skidded off to one side, and Daniel lost his balance, falling forward onto the fragment trapping his wrist. It moved under his weight, shifting backwards towards the wall.

A scream tore itself from his mouth as bones ground and crunched under the heavy weight of the moving rock. Clamping down hard on his tongue he tried to stop himself from pulling his arm out, but the reflex was too strong. Fear overshadowed common sense, and without any conscious thought, he slumped sideways and pulled his injured arm with him.

Flesh stretched and pulled, bones moved free of joints under the skin as the pain hit its pinnacle and Daniel collapsed, totally unaware that he'd managed to free himself.

~oOo~

Captain Rogan didn't quite fit with Jack's impression of what an engineer should be. The man was built like a Russian tank, with a thick moustache that curled slightly at the ends giving him an Orson Welles type appearance.

"C4 isn't the answer to all of life's problems, Colonel." Rogan gave him a look Jack used to reserve for Charlie when his kid insisted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were the staple diet of all five year old boys. It hadn't worked with Charlie, but Rogan had somehow managed to make the look seem menacing. Years of practice, Jack supposed. "We have procedures for this type of disaster and blowing a hole in the side of a mountain that's just been subjected to multiple earthquakes isn't one of them."

Jack frowned at the man, looked him up and down as though he was sizing him up, and hoped his 'Colonel in charge' look was cutting some mustard.

Rogan didn't even flinch.

"Then what?" Jack asked grimly. "We've pulled about a ton of rock out of the tunnel already and managed to get how far in?"

"I didn't bring the mountain down on you, sir. These things take time."

"Time Daniel doesn't have."

"There's a good chance-"

A hard look crossed Jack's face. "Don't want to hear it, Captain. This is no damn body retrieval mission, got that?"

"The reality of it is, sir, we don't pull many people alive from situations like this. Even if he is alive down there, how long will his supplies last? As I understand it, SG-1's mission was only slated to last one day. A quick in and out mission to verify the intel you were given by the Tok'ra."

Jack eyed the man critically. "I don't need a rehash of my mission parameters, Captain. But if you must know, we were each carrying several days' worth of MREs and other supplies."

The Captain didn't look convinced. "So, what? A week tops? What about water?"

"Two canteens and a spare in his pack. Daniel takes antihistamines so he always carries extra water with him."

"A month."

"For what?" Jack ducked his head and scrubbed a hand across his brow. "Are you telling me it could take a month to reach the cavern? That's a joke, right? I've seen you guys burrow through solid cement to get to someone, how can this take a month?"

Rogan threw his hands up in defense. "Solid cement, yes, and in a building we had blueprints for and some idea of where the missing person was. This is different. You have no idea how many tunnels are running through this mountain. It's an old volcano and probably littered with lava tunnels and caverns just like the one Doctor Jackson is trapped in. Based on the density and composition of the rock we've already excavated, a month would be a generous estimate. It could take much longer, and I don't need to tell you that-"

"Yes, yes, the SGC doesn't have the funding or authorization to mount a rescue for that length of time. Dammit. There must be another option."

"Look, sir." Rogan closed the gap between them, his back shielding Jack from the rest of his team on the other side of the camp. "We'll keep going for another day with the method we're using now. Hopefully we'll hit a pocket of tunnel that didn't collapse. We can reinforce it and go deeper. If that doesn't happen, I can try hitting it with shaped low-yield charges."

"I thought you said C4 wasn't an option?"

"It's not, not in its tactical form. A shaped charge affords us better control of the explosive range and direction, lessening the chances of bringing the rest of the mountain down on top of us. It's still not an exacting science, not as far as using it in a situation as unpredictable as this, so we'll remote detonate."

"What about camera probes and microphones?"

"A possibility," admitted Rogan, "but useless until we've cleared a segment of tunnel big enough to send in a listening device. They're remotely operated and work well in collapsed buildings, a bit harder for this type of rescue when you're talking about unknown quantities of solid rock."

"You carry one with you?"

"Always, sir." Rogan turned and looked across at the rest of SG-1. "For what it's worth, I really do hope we find him for you."

"One thing I've learned about Daniel is never say never. Man is surprisingly hard to kill."

To be continued…