Chapter 3 - The Pursuit

Macnair and his party of Death Eaters discovered the portal. "Dolohov, you go first, I'm not wasting good men if that's a trap," he ordered. Antonin Dolohov looked at Macnair as if he'd been told to kiss Snape. "No way," he said crossly. He levelled his wand at the portal and said, "Incendio!" "Now, any barriers or anything one of those brats is hiding behind is burning. Let's go!" said Dolohov.

The party of twelve Death Eaters stormed the portal, and found themselves in what Macnair recognized as a Muggle facility. Macnair loved killing, and was keenly interested in both magical and non-magical methods of torturing, killing, and warfare. This interest in Muggle weapons, such as the pistol he always kept in his belt, earned him the ridicule of his fellow Death Eaters, and many Cruciatus Curses from Voldemort. The Death Eaters confronted several Muggle soldiers, and Harry and Neville were among them.

"Crucio!" Macnair roared, pointing his wand at the fat, bald man he assumed to be the leader of the facility. The fat man screamed in agony, and a large black man with a weird golden snake tattoo on his forehead shot Macnair with a snake-shaped weapon he had never seen before, stunning him. Dolohov and another Death Eater were fighting a tall, pretty blonde and an athletic older man with graying hair. The blonde woman shot Dolohov in the groin with her sidearm, and the older man grabbed the other Death Eater's arm and dislocated it. One of the Death Eaters turned to an elderly man in weird robes and asked, "What do we do now, Rookwood?"

The man called Rookwood and the two Death Eaters at his side levelled their wands at the Muggle soldiers and shouted, "Expelliarmus!" The black man was out of their line of attack, and he disabled the two men at Rookwood's side with his weapon, which the Muggle soldiers called a "zat'n'ktel." Rookwood raised his wand at the black man and coldly said, "Avada Kedavra!" A blast of green light flew toward the black man. An injured Muggle soldier threw herself in front of the blast. She could not have known what it was, only that it was not good for her comrade.

When the green light struck her, she fell to the ground, dead. A Muggle man with longish brown hair and glasses shot Rookwood in the chest with another zat'n'ktel, knocking him out. Harry and Neville took guns from the dead Muggle soldiers, and Harry shot two dead. Neville, on the other hand, did not know how to operate the weapon, and shot off his right foot. Howling in pain, he dropped to the ground, managing to get off a shot at the Death Eaters, and kill one of them. The three survivors turned to flee, but the portal was closed. The fat man Macnair had used the Cruciatus Curse on pulled his weapon and said coldly, "I am General Hammond, commander of this facility. Lay down your weapons and no harm will come to you." The Death Eaters did as ordered, outnumbered five to one. "Teal'c," said Hammond to the black man, "take these men to the brig." Teal'c shot them with his zat'n'ktel, and the pretty blonde and older man took them to padded cells.

General Hammond convened a staff meeting to discuss the Death Eaters and their mysterious powers. "They seem to have the power to shoot energy from their weapons using voice commands," he said. Jackson nodded. "'Avada Kedavra' is derived from the Aramaic for 'let the thing be destroyed', which would lead me to suspect they were from one of Apophis' planets if Harry and Neville didn't express such familiarity with them. Also, only one of them has distinctive Arabic features."

"On the other hand," he continued, 'Crucio' is Latin for 'torment', and judging from General Hammond's reaction to that attack, it does just that." Hammond nodded. "You can't imagine. Picture a thousand red-hot knives piercing your body all over." Jackson, Carter, O'Neill, Harry, and Neville grimaced. Teal'c looked unfazed. "We have voice-activated computers and security systems on the base, perhaps these Death Eaters incorporate a similar technology into their weaponry," he suggested. "No," said O'Neill, "we can't find a goddamn thing in this", holding a wand with some weird substance removed from the core, "that would hold microchips, wires, nothing." "Perhaps we should subject these wands and core materials to chemical analysis to check for anomalies", said Teal'c. O'Neill shook his head. "What do you hope to find?" he asked, holding the core material aloft. It looked like something that had been ripped out of a large animal.

"The human brain doesn't look like much, but it is one of the most complex pieces of machinery in existence," said Carter. "General Hammond, I recommend sending a team through the Stargate to see what information we can gather on these 'Death Eaters' who invaded the SGC and murdered one of my engineers." "Very well, Major. Colonel O'Neill will command SG-1, and you will command SG-8 through the gate," said Hammond.