Jack's grip tightened on his P90 as the tension escalated. He noticed that the kid whose friend had been taken by the Goa'uld, Private Higgie, looked like he was on the verge of hitting the panic button.

"Gone? All of them?" Rory asked.

The young doctor nodded. "Yes, doctor."

Rory listed off a collection of names quickly. "Major Mason? Private Saxon? Captain Bennett? Private Tack? Colonel Gregson? Brigadier Collins?"

Jack saw Sam start at the last two names, especially the first one, and she looked back at Jack, blue eyes wide with shock.

Jack remembered Gregson and Collins. They'd been standing together with the air of a long comradeship. Jack wasn't sure why hearing the names had shocked Sam so. He'd have to talk to her about it later.

Rory had continued to reel off names, and to each one the younger doctor shook his head. When Rory finished, he said, "All of them, Doctor. It's as if they were never there."

At the words were never there, Jack's age-old gut-level bad feeling kicked in at full capacity. He looked around at his team, and the emotions in each of their eyes reflected his own,

Just then, The Doctor reappeared in the same spot he'd vanished from, a curly-haired woman on his arm.

"River!" Amy greeted her, looking relieved to have something to be happy about.

River smiled back at Amy.

"Amy," she said cheerfully. She took in the scene before her, and her gaze fell on Rory. "And the plastic centurion?" She looked up at The Doctor with an alarmed expression until the Time Lord reassured her, "It's alright, he's on our side."

"Oh." She relaxed, and smiled at Rory amiably.

Then River saw Maroxe.

There was no hesitation this time, no looking up to The Doctor for guidance. She whipped out her sidearm and a blast of energy shot out. With a startled yelp, Maroxe leapt away.

"Just what sort of women are you dating these days, Doctor?" he demanded of his fellow Time Lord, who was frantically trying to get River to stop shooting at Maroxe.

She was ignoring his pleas, and finally out of sheer desperation The Doctor grabbed her in a sort of hug, pinning her arms to her sides. River struggled furiously.

"River, stop this," The Doctor said quietly.

"Don't you know who he is?" River demanded as she glared at Maroxe, who was standing warily with an expression that couldn't be described as anything other than spooked.

"Yes," The Doctor replied, glancing up at Maroxe.

"Then you know he's a murderer!" River exclaimed, twisting her neck around to look at The Doctor. "Since when have you been interested in protecting homicidal maniacs?"

"River," The Doctor said slowly, "he's a Time Lord."

River blinked up at The Doctor, looked over at Maroxe, and stared up at The Doctor again.

"He can't be."

"He is."

Something sad flickered in The Doctor's gaze a moment, and his tone was soft as he looked down at her intently. "Promise me you won't hurt him."

"What? Doctor, he's-"

"River." The Doctor said her name with an authority Jack had rarely heard in his life. "Promise me."

River looked at the Doctor for a long time before sighing. "All right. I'll do it your way."

The Doctor nodded and released her. River reluctantly holstered her weapon, watching Maroxe suspiciously as she did so.

She smiled at The Doctor and remarked teasingly, "I'd forgotten how strong you are."

Maroxe snorted loudly, and blanched when River turned an icy glare on him.

"Cough," he said quickly, "It was a cough."

Jack looked up sharply as the sky abruptly became much darker. He heard confused murmurs from all the people, and as he looked back down he saw Maroxe and The Doctor looking at each other with ashen faces.

"That was the sun," Jack realized.

The Doctor nodded, started talking, but Maroxe groaned, clutching his head.

"This is going too fast," he groaned. "I hadn't planned on this."

"Planned?" River looked over at The Doctor. "We're running on his plan?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Sort of."

"We can't trust him," River protested. "He's a psychopath!"

"Not entirely," Maroxe said. "You know me as a homicidal maniac, River, but this is an alternate timeline. Something that was never meant to happen, and if it's fixed, never will. In this timeline-can we call it the Pandorica timeline?"

"Sure," The Doctor agreed.

"Great. In the Pandorica timeline, I never become a killer. You're an experienced time traveler, River. Tell me, have you ever heard of Time Entities?"

River nodded. "Yes."

"Okay, well, in Real timeline, I had one force-downloaded into my brain, a hostile. It made me a killer. Here, with time and the universe and everything fracturing, everything's bleeding through the edges, and that includes, you guessed it, the Entity in my head. I can barely sense it. It's like a footprint without a foot. Quite a relief, I can tell you."

"But how do we know we can trust you?" River demanded.

"You don't," Maroxe shrugged. "But we're all you've got. Some bewildered blokes from UNIT, lizard people with anger management problems, a hopelessly romantic Nestene duplicate, a woman returned from the dead, a highly cabin-fevered Time Lord, a weird ex-Time Agent, the famous SG-1, plus a man from the Pentagon-"

How did he know who we are? Jack wondered before remembering, Oh, right. Telepath.

"-a trigger-happy archeologist from the 51st century, and a former homicidal lunatic."

"I'm sure we'll all get along famously," said Jack, with obvious sarcasm.

"You can take out the anger management part," General Price said. "Restac and her crew are gone."

"What a rotten shame," Maroxe said altogether too gleefully.

"They must have gone back underneath the surface," The Doctor said.

"No, they're gone," Rory said tiredly. "Along with all the patients in the medical tent."

"I have to get the Pandorica," Maroxe cut in abruptly.

He ran for the entrance to the Underhenge. Jack nodded over at Sam, and the two warriors followed after the Time Lord.

"Oh, hello," Maroxe greeted them as they entered the chamber. He was digging around inside the Pandorica, and after acknowledging them he stuck his head back inside the box.

Jack looked over at Sam.

"Social kind of guy," he commented.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Thanks for coming," Maroxe called back to Jack and Sam. "I could use some help."

He came out of the Pandorica, bonking his head on the top of the Pandorica.

This, naturally, made Jack grin.

Maroxe finished emerging from the Pandorica, muttering to himself in a foreign tongue. He tossed a pair of objects to Jack and Sam and instructed, "Put them on the center circle of the patterns," before turning and once again burying himself inside the Pandorica.

Jack glanced over at Sam, shrugged in reply. They split up and took opposite sides of the Pandorica.

Jack examined the objects in his hands curiously. They were identical, hemispheric in shape, and surprisingly heavy for their size. Jack didn't deny the things were on the large side, each about the size of a giant scone.

Jack experimentally stuck them together, making a perfect sphere. He separated them hemispheres again and took in the devices' other details.

They were primarily made of a metallic material, the same color as the Pandorica. In the center of the dome's top was a large, round light. Surrounding it in thin rings were three other lights. Lastly, the rims of the hemispheres were covered in small, rectangular lights. Each of the lights glowed a piercing white.

Finished examining Maroxe's gadgets, Jack placed one of the hemispheres on the metal circle in the middle of that side of the Pandorica. It stuck there and the lights switched from white to green.

Jack's eyebrows rose. "Sweet," he remarked, with some uncertainty.

Was it just him, or had he heard Maroxe snicker from inside the Pandorica?

Jack moved on and quickly put the other hemisphere in place. He and Sam both returned to where they had been watching Maroxe before.

After some more tinkering and head bonking and a bit of finger burning, Maroxe emerged with a triumphant expression.

"Well, I think that about does it," he said.

The Time Lord then placed his hand on the side of the Pandorica, and the box sealed shut. The chamber was plunged into darkness, until Jack and Sam clicked on the lights mounted on their P90s.

"Oh, yes, thank you," Maroxe said. "Colonel, would you mind pointing your light over my left arm? Yes, that will do."

Maroxe pulled up his sleeve, revealing a strange device strapped around his forearm. Jack recognized circle, ring, and rectangle patterns similar to the ones on the devices Maroxe had Jack and Sam put on the Pandorica.

Beeps testified to Maroxe's fiddling, and Jack looked back at the Pandorica as the hemispheres began pulsing in white and green. A number appeared on the tiny screen on Maroxe's device: ten. Then it changed to nine.

"Oh, by the way," Maroxe said, looking over at Jack and Sam. "This could kill us."

The room exploded in white and green light.