There was something over his face, clinging like saran wrap. O'Neill opened his eyes and figured out it was a space blanket. It was an incredible effort to move his hand and get the blanket off.
They'd moved him to the ring room, which didn't sound right because he was sure they shouldn't have been moving him at all.
Then more of reality came into focus. Jonas was sitting on a lab table, staring at nothing, with an blank look of shock and grief on his face. Sam was sobbing in Teal'c's arms and neither of them seemed to care that her uniform was soaked with blood.
He figured out what it all meant and discovered that it was damn near impossible to let out a horrified scream with no air in his lungs. He tried to get his hand to his throat to check for a pulse, but the attempted movement apparently jump-started his whole nervous system. He instinctively curled up around an awful pain that extended down his whole right side from his collarbone to his hip.
That set off another hurricane of activity. Teal'c gave him a morphine stick. Any of his blood that wasn't on Carter had flooded out on the terrace upstairs, so how the morphine helped was anyone's guess. O'Neill just thanked God it did.
Carter had already cut his gear and clothing off him. He tried to get a look at his wounds, but Jonas was too fast for him. "Lie still, Colonel. Gods, we thought you were dead."
He relearned how to breathe, to force air through his vocal chords. "I think I still am, Jonas."
Teal'c said with eminent practicality, "That is patently ridiculous, O'Neill. However unpleasant your current situation, you are clearly here with us, not in Kheb. Therefore by any common-sense definition of the word, you are alive. You will only make things worse for yourself by giving in to panic."
"T, I am not going to be one of those skeleton things, do you hear me?"
"No!" Sam said. "You're not! Sir, whatever's going on, this place has you stabilized somehow. Nirrti's bound to have a healing device around here somewhere, we just have to find it."
"And the fact that I probably haven't got two drops of blood left in my whole body?"
"Doesn't seem to be a problem right now. Sir, please lie still while we figure out what to do!"
Jonas asked, "Do you think you'd be more comfortable if we supported your wounds with tape?"
"Yeah, that does sound like a good idea." Ten minutes and a lot of mummy wrapping later, O'Neill realized that Jonas had kept him occupied and free of panic while Carter and Teal'c tossed the place. Carter finally let out a cry of triumph and slipped the gadget onto her hand.
O'Neill could feel his body mending, internal organs first, then shattered ribs, finally skin. He found that he could breathe without pain. Sam couldn't restart his heartbeat. He guessed that probably was because there was no blood in his veins for his heart to pump.
OK, so he was some kind of a zombie. Maybe the morphine had calmed him down enough to face that idea without totally freaking out. He crammed his terror back into its box and forced himself to review the situation logically. As far as he could tell Carter had healed his wounds. He seemed to be oriented, even if he was scared out of his wits. He had been dead plenty of times before. The thing was, the other times he hadn't known he was dead.
He never wanted to wake up in another sarcophagus again, ever. But this was just as bad.
Carter put her hand on his arm. "We're going to find out where the ring transporter goes."
"I'm going through first."
"We don't even know if you're strong enough yet to stand up, sir!"
"Don't have to be. I'll just take a look around, then you bring me right back. That's an order, Carter."
Carter gave the others a helpless look, Teal'c raised an eyebrow and Jonas said, "This is a Very Bad Idea."
"Jonas, what the hell else can possibly happen to me now? You three are not dependent on that thingamajig up on the roof. As soon as we figure out how to get you back to the stargate, you people are gonna go home and figure out a way to friggin' FIX THIS!"
Jonas surrendered gracefully, but it was obvious they all shared the same misgivings. It was equally obvious that if anything further happened to him, Carter would never forgive herself for not relieving him of command for medical reasons. That right there sent any thoughts of taking any unnecessary chances whatsoever flying right out of his head.
"Wait a minute, we've got a digital camera, right? Set it to shoot a picture automatically every few seconds or whatever."
Carter did that, and put a tape recorder next to it.
While she was doing that, O'Neill dug clean clothes out of his pack and got dressed. The marks where Carter had healed his wounds didn't look like scars, exactly. More like patches that had been glued precisely in place.
What the hell was he now? How was his brain working without oxygen?
Maybe that was it. Maybe this was one last fever dream brought on by lack of oxygen. Maybe he was still lying on the terrace in the final few seconds of bleeding out.
If that was true, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. On the other hand, if this was real, they still had problems to solve. Shit. Teal'c was rubbing off on him.
O'Neill walked a few steps around the lab table to see what was going on. He didn't argue when Jonas "suggested" that he sit down on a crate. His legs were shaking with the effort.
"OK, I got it!" Carter looked up quickly to make sure everyone was clear of the rings and sent the camera and the tape recorder on their way. A few minutes later she triggered the rings again.
They checked the images from the camera. The standing stones were obvious in the photos, but they couldn't tell if the skeletons still had the place surrounded. O'Neill said, "Well, if they are still surrounding the hilltop, they aren't in the stone circle. OK, send me through to check it out. Thirty seconds should be plenty."
"Right. Sir--"
"Carter, the rings go up, I take a look around, then the rings come back down again," he said with exaggerated patience that dripped with his usual sarcasm.
"Yes, sir." As she bent her head over her work, he heard her mutter something about "freakin' arrow stuck in your ass" and "don't say I didn't warn you."
The rings materialized before he could come up with a suitable rejoinder. He staggered as he materialized with one foot on and one foot off the altar. He jumped down and flailed to catch his balance, his landing sending a shock wave of pain through his whole body.
If the damn skeletons thought it was funny, they didn't laugh. There were plenty of them with a front row seat.
The rings reappeared. "Our friends are still waiting for us."
Carter swore. "I guess we check out the other two stations."
Teal'c steadied O'Neill as he staggered. The three of them immediately turned into mother hens. He let them talk him into lying down while Carter prepared the rings to go to the next site.
Her eyes met his. Sam would move heaven and earth to get him home, he knew that. And just that suddenly, he threw off the weight of terror that had been threatening to crush him ever since he'd opened his eyes to find that blanket over his face. He was not alone, never alone. Peace settled over him and he gave her a little smile.
A sleeping bag on a hard stone floor wasn't the most comfortable place to lie down, but he was too tired to care. He took a long look around at each of his team, his family, because he wanted to remember every moment and because waking up again wasn't something he could afford to take for granted.
He thought about Sirikat, and realized how much was still left unsaid and undone. She'd already endured one shattering loss when her consorts had been murdered by the Goa'uld, how could he put her through another? His life had been hostage to fate for more than two of her short lifetimes. It would have been better for her if she had never remembered, better if he had never been anything to her other than someone assigned to guard her. He had too little faith left to simply leave her in the hands of her gods.
There were so many more people back home that he would miss. Hammond. Fraiser. Cassie. Ferretti.
Daniel. Wherever he was. After Abydos, O'Neill didn't know what to think.
Sara. He wondered how long it would be before someone told her. It wouldn't come as a surprise. She had been expecting that call for a long time. He thought she might be a little sorry that the other shoe had finally dropped, but surely no more than that. They weren't part of each other's lives any more, just old friends who ran into each other around town once in a blue moon, just fond memories in old photographs of a time and a family that no longer existed.
An exhausted sleep came over him. O'Neill had no sense of time passing while he slept. It seemed he had only blinked when Carter woke him, but according to his watch he had been out almost an hour.
Carter reported that they had found out where the other ring portals were, the stargate was visible from one of them and the last was in one of the other ruins they had previously planned to explore.
"Colonel, Jonas can't walk on his ankle. I'm going to leave him here with you in case we have to run for it. Teal'c and I'll bring back help."
He nodded. "We'll hold the fort, Major."
She and Teal'c left everything except weapons, GDOs, and radios. They stepped into the rings and Jonas sent them on their way.
Carter and Teal'c came out of the rings ready to kill anything that stood in the way of getting help for their teammates. There was nothing. A minute later she was pressing symbols on the DHD, and a minute after that, their boots hit the ramp in the gate room.
Janet gasped when she saw the extent of the damage to Sam's arm.
Carter said, "Shh."
"Sam, what are you trying to--you need to get to Academy General right now to get this put back together!"
"And you think McKay and Lee can figure out how Nirrti's machine is keeping Col. O'Neill alive without me? Until I came through the gate, I was using my arm normally," Sam replied.
"What are you asking me to do?"
"Patch me up so I'll have time to load up a FRED with stuff I'll need from my lab before we head back through the gate."
"I can't, Sam, you'll probably lose your arm if you do that."
"You can and you will. As an Air Force officer, I'm asking you not to leave a man behind. And as my friend, I'm asking you to trust my judgment and stand beside me."
Fraiser nodded and pulled down a suture tray.