Dead Ends

Be really careful, and you can see any dead end twitch.

"We must've missed something on the way."

If anyone thought Sam's opinion was wrong, they kept quiet. Not only was optimism generally better in situations like theirs, but they had seen their fair share of dire fixes, and all dead ends twitched sooner or later.

"Right, then we go back and check for it." Cam pointed the flashlight back towards the corridor they had come from. "At least we know there's no one in here with us."

"Unless we missed that, too," Daniel reluctantly pointed out.

"And we know where all the bones came from," Vala added in a falsely casual voice. "Others must have tried to find the way out—"

"Ah!" Mitchell raised a hand to stop her. "Let's not jump to conclusions. If this is a test of sorts, it was designed to have a solution. We just have to find it."

Silence fell for a few seconds, and Vala was the first to break it.

"I know you're all thinking it, and someone has to say it, so here. What if it isn't a test at all, but a trap, and there is no way out?"

"Then we'll make one," Cameron firmly resolved. "But let's check for the exit sign before we start digging."

"Hey, Sam…"

She stopped a few steps ahead of him in the tunnel. Even further ahead, Teal'c had gone to investigate the first room. The distant light from his lantern cast long, deformed shadows that danced along the grimy corridor walls.

"Any ideas on what we might've missed?" Cam asked as he caught up with her, his flashlight covering every bit of the floor between them in the process. "Secret passage? Ring platform?"

"Big traffic sign?" she shrugged with a hint of a smile.

Behind them, Daniel and Vala were also looking for the missing clue. When the chinked tablets and half-collapsed niches revealed nothing, they continued with the remaining bit of the passage, the one that ended so abruptly a few feet away from the room.

"Actually, you had a point: if people lived here, there has to be a way out."

"Unless there was a cave-in."

He gave her a wry look.

"Aren't you a ray of sunshine."

Vala scratched a smudge of dust away from the tip of her nose.

"Ugh…don't put that image in my mind, I'm dying for sunshine already." She moved the light around on the ceiling, not wanting to think how many tons of rock were above them. "And did I mention I don't like confined spaces?"

"Yes, you did, actually." He knew she would remember their first trip to an underground cave system, and the tests they had survived then. "And there's something to keep in mind: we got out of that tight spot, we'll find a way out of this one."

"I like your optimism, Daniel." She smirked. "Among other remarkable traits, of course."

Minutes later, they gave up on the stump of tunnel. Returning to the third room, they radioed Mitchell only to find out the rest of the team had come up similarly empty-handed. The place was just what it seemed: a deserted cave that had once been inhabited by the cavern-dwelling predecessors of one of the societies on the surface of the planet.

"That still doesn't explain how we got here," Vala frowned as she did another sweepof the room with her flashlight. "Think about it, Daniel. This planet is at the outskirts of the civilized galaxy, its society is mostly agricultural and has been so for the past few millennia! And I'm willing to bet you there were hundreds of people to pass through those woods and none of them got here." She fixed him with a pointed look. "Someone's trying to tell us something."

As he neither argued nor agreed, Vala dropped the issue, focusing instead on the rudimentary cave drawings. The crookedly etched symbols said nothing to her, although she could sometimes recognize a stylized drawing of the sun as a circle with radial lines coming out of it, or the five-sticks-and-a-head representation of a man. Daniel was right, she knew, there was nothing useful carved on those walls. Then her gaze fell on one of the chipped tablets.

"Daniel…? Would you come here for a second?"

He recognized her falsely calm tone. It usually heralded nothing good. As he walked up to her, Vala offered a deadpan expression, and silently nodded to the stone tablet.

"I'm no linguist," she said as he frowned at the symbols, "but those certainly look different from the rest of the markings here."

After studying the tablet for almost a minute, Daniel raised his glance to her. He looked perplexed.

"It's Ancient."

As the echo of his words died down, another voice rang out in the small room.

"So it is. But focus on the tablet later, Daniel Jackson. Right now the time is short, and you need to hear what I have to say."

A/N: Thank you all for reading! Feedback is loved, as always: I love to hear your thoughts. Until next time!

Myosotis