As ever, warnings in Ch. 1

"Shit." Daniel Jackson growled and waved at the flies buzzing around his head. "SHIT!"

"Would that be the same as crap, oh fuck, or is it just plain shit?" Frank paused and looked back at him. His smile was strained, but genuine.

"It would be great, steaming piles of llama dung. Mastaba fecal deposits. Coproliths. SHIT!" Daniel stopped and rubbed his eyes, shoving his glasses up on his forehead. And then scowled at the greasy smudges his fingers, hair, hell, every inch of skin left on the lenses. He took them off and smeared the stuff thinner, squinting to check if he could actually see through them. "I'm sorry. It's just that . . ."

Frank grinned a bit more widely as Daniel waved the dirty glasses at him. "Just that it's hot and raining and your glasses are dirty and your BDU's are itchy after three or four days?"

"And my beard's itchy and I want a shave and a shower and I want to not smell like this and I'm afraid to take my boots off anymore because I'm not sure I'd survive the reek. Yeah. All of that." Daniel hitched his pack up. "And I'm annoyed because this is NOT my pack but just the first pack we grabbed. And every time I put my feet down it's like crusty snow - this junk holds then sags and I nearly trip. And it stinks. And it's buggy. And scary. And I am really, really sick of this place."

"Good man!" The airman gave him a thumb's up. "Don't bottle it up. Let it out, Doc. Tell me how you really feel."

Daniel scratched viciously at the stubble on his chin and threw back his head. "I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE! NUKE IT 'TIL IT GLOWS!"

"Feel better now?" Frank turned and fell into step next to him. "Primal swear therapy always worked for me too. Just as long as the bugs don't hear us."

"The bugs don't hunt by sound. If they did, that one we fought would have gutted us." Daniel sighed. "Well. I'm still itchy and cranky but it did help a bit. Fuck. Merde. Ben zona. Taik! Dau'ul hauc! BOK!"

"Umm." Frank scratched behind an ear and looked impressed. "Okay. I caught about half of those. Variations on a theme, huh?"

"Yeah." Daniel suddenly beamed, feeling tension leak out of his shoulders. "You're right. That felt good."

"Good. 'Cause I'm about to rain on your parade."

Daniel looked up into the drizzle. "Like this stronzo planet can't do that all on its own?"

"Sorry." The airman winced theatrically. "The finishing touch is that something's following us."

"What?" Daniel spun to stare into the jungle behind them then spun back. "Should I have not looked?"

Frank had bitten down on both lips and was making a muffled snicker that rapidly grew to a full belly laugh. Daniel stared at him. "I thought you said we were being followed. Aren't you worried?"

"I was when we picked up the tail." The para-jumper looked back over his shoulder then shrugged and kept marching. "But it's been following us since this morning and it hasn't made a move yet. Getting worried just tires you out unless you can do something about it."

Daniel opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and shook his head. "I guess. But still . . ."

"Still, those bugs are damn scary?" Frank met his eyes and nodded back. "Yep. But we beat the last one. And I figure if this was a bug it'd have come to visit by now. There's gotta be some other critters on this shithole of a planet. I mean, what do things usually eat around here?"

"Huh. Not a burger and fries at least."

"Don't be dissin' the fries, Doc. That's my comfort food you're talking about."

Daniel nodded, falling quiet again. He caught himself trying to hear their uninvited guest but the patter of the rain drowned it out. Frank paused at each cross street, trying to call SG-1, but after a while Daniel almost wished he wouldn't. It was too disappointing to hope and then hear only static time after time. "Why do you keep trying, Frank? I mean, if they haven't answered yet . . ."

The airman hesitated then pointed ahead to the next crossing. "The radios only work on line of sight unless you've got a repeater or a UAV to bounce 'em off, right?"

Daniel frowned. "Why? I know we don't always need repeaters for the radios to work. Is that something about this world?"

Frank pointed up towards the sky. "Usually you get tropospheric scatter, lets you go way past line-of-sight, but this lovely shithole has some crappy atmospheric and solar conditions."

"Let me guess. No tropospheric scatter?"

"Welcome to line of sight land, Doc."

The archaeologist nodded, eager for something to distract him from thoughts of what could have happened to his team. "That first call we made – you think the repeaters were working or maybe there was a UAV?"

"Probably a UAV. Or that's what I'm hoping." Frank swallowed, eyes distant for a moment. He shook himself. "With a UAV we could have been on different streets and it wouldn't matter. With repeaters we'd know SG-1 was on this street, but I think they're on a different north-south boulevard than us. So if we are, then we need to get to a cross street and have repeaters between us."

"Ahhh." Daniel nodded again. "I see. You can't count on a UAV coming by just as you need it, so you put in repeaters. But they only work if you're in the line of sight. Corner to corner, in a line of sight down the streets."

"You're not as slow as everybody says!" Frank grinned at him. "We get back, I tell you what. I'll take you up and teach you to jump."

Daniel shuddered. "Oh, I've jumped before. It was a . . . chilling experience."

"Great! Then it's a date. You and me and the big blue sky."

"Uhh. Right." Daniel hesitated a moment, stomping his feet down with each step, trying to get stable footing instead of the crust of decaying vegetation. "I don't know how the South American teams put up with this kind of stuff."

A puzzled look met his comment. "Stargate teams in South America? I don't follow."

"No. No, not a Stargate team. Archaeological teams." Daniel smiled then gasped as the footing sagged out from under him again. "In fact this is how some of the most important Mayan finds were discovered. People just . . ." the ground sagged under him again, "fell right into them."

Frank yelped as he sank into the mould up to his knees. "I am gaining a whole new respect for you guys. This is real disconcerting."

Daniel got a good grip on his wrist and braced himself, pulling, and yelped himself when the ground gave under him. "Oh shit!"

FALLING! Leaves and junk and flashing sense of light and dark as his stomach lurched and the world spun and oh hell he was -

Slammed down into mushy ground. Impact knocked the wind right out of him, left him sprawled, half-sunk in sour leaf rot and looking back up at a ragged break, leaves and water dribbling down. He followed a leaf dazedly, tracking it down what seemed like forever. What was probably thirty or thirty-five feet straight . . . down. Daniel shut his eyes and swallowed against a sour taste in the back of his throat and an ache that wasn't just his head but ran through his whole body until it even felt like his toes ached.

"Oh. Crap." Frank's voice was breathy. "I'll stick with being an airman. At least they give us a chute before they drop us out of shit."

"I miss deserts." Daniel groaned and twitched his hands and feet, momentarily satisfied with even that little motion. "This kind of thing never happened to me in deserts."

"Oooh." There was a rustling sound. "Nothing broken. You?"

Daniel gingerly rolled over and pushed himself up on both arms, looking up to the ceiling again. It wasn't very thick, a porous, treacherous layer of rotting branches and layered leaves let a dim glow reach the floor of the pit. The archaeologist sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "I've got a headache all over, but other than that I'm -"

"Fine?" There was a faint flash of white teeth in the gloom. "I know what you mean. I . . ."

His words trailed off. Daniel looked over at him more closely. "Frank? Are you okay?"

"Yeah." The airman stood slowly, hands braced on his knees. "Where . . . what the hell are those?"

Daniel looked over his shoulder, then turned to see more closely. "Umm. I think they're . . . eggs."

Frank straightened up as if he had to think about each vertebra. "Huh. Looks like we'll be making a couple omelets then."

"What?" Daniel patted the ground, finding his glasses. Omelets? He shook his head and fitted the glasses back onto his face. "How do we get out of here?"

Frank unshouldered his pack and knelt, opening it. "You got your flashlight?"

"Give me a minute." He bit back another groan and eased his pack off his back. It felt like it weighed a ton and the bruises on his back made him wonder if it wasn't full of rocks. Fishing through it for a flashlight convinced him that his bruises probably owed more to MRE's than rocks. Not that there was that much difference, now that he thought about it.

The flashlight rattled suspiciously. He looked up as Frank's suddenly went bright, making him squint. The switch on his slid freely but the bulb stayed dark. "Good thing your flashlight works. Mine's sort of . . ." He shook it noisily.

"You're no shining point of light. Got it." Frank shone the beam around them. It gleamed wetly off tiled walls. "Underground chamber. Maybe some kind of alien subway tunnel."

"Maybe." Daniel pulled his backpack on, scuffing at the detritus at his feet. Frank's flashlight beam played over the eggs, hundreds of them. His beam shone out, finding eggs, big ones. The pale ovoids were more than a foot high, nine or ten inches in diameter, in clutches that gleamed all the way back to the shadows until the beam was swallowed up in darkness in one direction, and rubble behind that blocked the tunnel they'd fallen into. "A subway is certainly a possibility. Do you see any way out?"

"Nothing. Just eggs and shit." The beam skimmed over the eggs, up along the walls, then suddenly swept back. "But nobody builds a tunnel without a way out of it."

Daniel shivered, watching the airman plow forward through leaf mould as if he were walking through high snow. "Didn't SG-4 say something about eggs? That they're bad?"

Frank hesitated, turned back and the flashlight glared into Daniel's eyes. "So we won't break any."

"No, I mean . . ." Daniel dragged a foot out of the mucky stuff and followed him, grimacing in the thick, humid air. "Maybe we should be more careful."

"Careful would have been not falling into a hole in the first place," grumbled Frank. "Sorry. Not your fault. But I don't see anything here that'll get us out of this shithole. I'm open to suggestions but it looks like the best way is down there."

"Right down the deep, dark hole. Of course," sighed Daniel. He scratched idly at his beard and grimaced, sidling up to an egg. They were laid out in a swathe, from one side of the tunnel to the other where light could fall, but no further. No eggs in the gloomy dark. Daniel moved to an outlier and crouched down next to it. "They're big."

"Too big to take with us. And I'll bet they taste lousy, Doc. C'mon." Frank beckoned and started to pick his way into the egg field. "The ground's a little firmer here. Sooner we get a move on the sooner we'll be out of here and back in the rain with the bugs.

No eggs in the gloom. Daniel frowned, still crouched by an egg. Like the others, it was about two feet high, full and ovoid. The shell was leathery and tough, but this one had hairline fractures and a dull surface. Not like the ones in the center of the field that looked resilient and, he tried to find a word and the best he could do was alive. The gray, overcast day didn't show them very well but the ones in the center of the tunnel looked . . .

Looked like they were opening up. A chill ran up Daniel's spine as he looked up and found Frank almost in the middle of the egg field. With his flashlight. Daniel opened his mouth to shout a warning, saw an egg just behind Frank slowly fold back, like flower petals. Leathery was right, leathery, flexible material. He rose quickly, unable to see what was in the egg and pretty sure that he really didn't want to know, either. Hissing a warning, "Frank, look out!"

The airman turned, light passing over an arc and more eggs peeled open in its path. "TURN OFF THE LIGHT, FRANK!"

"Why?" He hadn't seen them, he was looking back at Daniel and oh God, oh no, but he hadn't seen them!

"Turn it off! The eggs! They see the light and you have to turn it off!"

"See . . ?"

The sound was what he registered first. A horrible, wet impact and a sudden shriek cut off almost before it started. He couldn't understand what he was seeing at first. It made no sense. Frank dropped the flashlight and its beam spun crazily, reflecting off the tunnel walls and then lodged between two eggs, shining up, casting curved shadows on the far wall. Frank danced in the beam. That's what it looked like, a wild, spinning dance as he clawed at his face.

Or where his face should be.

Something clung to him; big and ridged and impossible to really see. Like a spider or a crab or something, its legs clutching the sides of the airman's head. Daniel found he was dodging sideways, away from the beam of light, trying to edge through the shadows and get closer to where Frank struggled. He shuddered as his clothes brushed over eggshells, wondered if they could hear them as well as see.

"Frank? FRANK!" He didn't know if the man could hear him, if he were still conscious under that . . . No more than thirty feet away and it might as well be miles. Daniel's stomach rolled, queasy and cold. He heard a soft panting sound and knew he was making it, felt each individual drop of sweat roll icy down his sides, heard a buzzing sound in his ears that didn't dull any of the other sounds, not the muffled gasps Frank made or the mushy sound of water dripping from leaves to land on eggs. Or the sound of his own heart, pounding in his chest.

It was dark along the edge of the tunnel but eggs were here too. Some of them were collapsed and brittle in the shadows. Important. That was important. Some distant, tiny part of his mind was taking notes as he crouched there, observing what was around him even as the biggest part of his mind thought it smelled blood and tasted copper, and knew, just knew, it was going to die and repeated prayers for safe passage in a dozen languages, to a dozen gods he was damn sure didn't exist.

The creature that had attacked them had ignored their voices. Seen them move. No eggs in the dark. Beware the light. Frank was huddled in the light, bent over with his face to his knees. With whatever was covering his face cradled against his knees. He was dying, god but he had to be dying with that thing on his face. Daniel shoved a foot forward and squeaked as a stick snapped under his sole. Keep away from the light. His hands were shaking. He could see them because he'd pulled them up to protect his face, fingers spread and palms out, held between his face and the eggs.

Eggs were closed. The eggs in front of him were closed. His hands shook so hard the sweat was falling off them, quick glitter of droplets in the reflected light. Keep away from the light.

In the back of his mind he suddenly understood that the eggs were laid out where the dim sunlight would trace a daily path from one side of the tunnel to the other, shining through the collapsed street and the web of roots and vines. Rainy day and no shadows, please, please, please, let the rain keep falling. Sun, sun, stay away, shine again some other day.

He wanted to giggle for an instant at the little nursery rhyme. Counting rhyme. Mother Goose, and the babbling voice in his head remembered that Mother Goose rhymes were political statements. Ring around the rosy. Plague. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Frank had fallen over, pawing weakly at the thing on his face. Limulus. That's what it looked like. The underside of a horseshoe crab. He'd seen horseshoe crabs in markets in the Middle East. Couldn't remember why they'd sell them or why anyone would buy them but remembered seeing dozens of them piled in a stand, reeking in the sun.

Daniel froze, terrified, looking around to see if his shadow was falling on the eggs. No shadow. The eggs were closed, harmless. Harmless, he told himself. Not open. No light. Keep moving. He couldn't feel his legs and couldn't remember how to move. And if he stayed here someday, sometime, it'd stop raining and the sun would come out.

He started to move again. Crouching low as he got closer to Frank and the eggs that were open. A few of them were still open and oh, but he didn't want to see. Didn't want them to see him. That must be how they did it. Leathery, translucent shells, noted his mind, studying the edge of one. He could just see the edge of an open petal as he slunk past, low and holding his breath, eyes skittering back and forth, back and forth to be sure no shadow fell from him to its surface. The thing inside must see the shadow, see the play of light. Most species had a face, people or not, most animals had a face. Had ocular organs high on the body and intakes for food and air. It saw light and dark and lunged at the highest point.

The leafy muck was glued by something that held the eggs, something rough and ridged and dry that had been laid down between them. It felt strange under his fingers. Like spider's silk covered by thin glue. He didn't want to think about it couldn't help but think about it, praying as he crawled along on all fours now, low and sick from being so scared. Tasting bile in the back of his throat and needing to piss in the worst possible way. Instinct, that; the need to dump weight before flight. Zebras pissed as they ran. Stray facts were zinging through his mind as he got nearer to Frank. His shoulder brushed one of the open eggs, couldn't help it, it was so close. Something inside it stirred and Daniel froze, squeezing his eyes shut. But the dark was terrible too and he opened them a second later. Stared down at his hands, grimy and white-knuckled.

He saw spots for an instant, felt the ache in his chest and suddenly knew he'd been holding his breath. Slowly, slowly, he took in a breath. It smelled sour with that chem lab reek and beneath that he smelled urine's sharp tang. Not his own, he thought. He glanced up and saw Frank had rolled onto his back, chest rising and falling. Dark spot on his pants. Lying still. Daniel forced a hand forward, forced a knee to lift and move as he crawled closer and didn't hear the thing in the egg stir again. No sound but the dropping water and his pulse in his ears.

He lay flat across Frank's chest and reached past him, staying as low to the ground as he could. Reached out further than he'd thought he could and pawed at the flashlight, tugging the barrel of the thing back towards him and praying it would stay pointed away. He couldn't feel his fingers anymore, just the tingle of more fear than he'd ever thought he would know. He'd been shot before. Hell, he'd died and he hadn't been scared like this. He could see the thing covering Frank's face from the corner of his eye as he got a better grip on the flashlight. The Goa'uld didn't scare him like this. Nothing scared him like this.

The tiny click of the switch was the loudest sound he'd ever heard in his life.

Daniel Jackson lay motionless across Frank Rossiter's warm, breathing body and waited for what had to be forever. He opened his eyes to the growing gloom of later afternoon. Even if the sun had been out, it'd be too low to fall into this pit anymore and soon it'd be dark.

That was the thought that got him moving again. The thought of being here, in the dark, in the middle of these eggs with Frank as he waited for the sun to rise.

The eggs were shutting, folding back into smooth, ovoid shapes as the light faded away. He rose carefully up to his knees, then into a crouch next to Frank. Shuddering, reaching out to touch the thing on his face. It was cold, hard. Daniel tugged at it but it didn't budge. He couldn't, just couldn't deal with this here. He hands still shook as he hauled one of Frank's arms over his shoulders and rose, pushing up with his legs to drag the airman upright after him. Frank's pulse raced under his fingers. Daniel slid an arm around his waist and hugged him close, then started to walk.

He'd never know how long it took. The light was dimming, gray eggs just a suggestion against darker gray tunnel as he pulled the airman into the black, safe, eternal night of the tunnel. Far from the risk of light, far from where day would fall. Daniel dropped onto his haunches and picked up Frank's wrist, counting. His pulse was regular and strong. The archaeologist reached for the flashlight he'd brought along, but left it off. Couldn't face the thought that those things might see the light. He hunkered down in the dark to wait for the day.

TBC