It wasn't that hard, climbing the mountain. There was a path and everything. There was no need for the Colonel to repeatedly shoot her baleful looks, as though she had wanted to climb the damn thing. He could always have said that he didn't want to see the god. Of course, then Daniel would have complained endlessly and either they would be back at the base being shouted at for not getting the treaty, with Daniel still whining, or they would still be here, trudging along behind Adonis, and they would have headaches as well as being too out of breath to speak. If only it weren't so hot.

Sam consoled herself with the thought that it wasn't much worse than an obstacle course during training. Yes, it was a steep path, and occasionally they had to scramble up a treacherous piece, and there had been that twelve-foot vertical cliff-face section which was only passable if you were fairly good at rope-climbing, but at least there was no crawling under barbed wire while being yelled at and such.

Finally, when even Teal'c seemed ready to collapse from exhaustion, they reached a plateau. A small, circular one, covered in black, heavy soil. In the centre of the circle stood a flat green rock, six foot square, and chained on top of the rock was a man.

Mutely, the team turned to Jack to see what he would do. Jack, in turn, looked at Adonis. "Explanation, please? Who is that?"

"That?" Adonis was surprised. "That, of course, is Prometheus."

Sam could tell from his expression that Jack was unimpressed. "Stole fire from the gods, did he? Gets his liver pecked out every day?" He glanced at her, and added, "Don't look at me like that. We named a ship after the guy; I did some reading."

The chained man turned his head toward them, and his eyes glowed briefly, though he said nothing.

"Snakehead."

Her team each took three rapid steps backward. She stayed where she was. "Sir, I think..."

"Carter," he replied warningly.

She wasn't looking at him – she was captivated by the sight of the man on the stone – but she knew what message his expression would be trying to convey. Please don't say anything that's gonna get us stuck here for more than five minutes. Still, she couldn't ignore the tell-tale tingle in her spine. "Sir, this is a Tok'ra."

Jack sighed, took off his sunglasses, surveyed the scene, and shrugged. "I wish I could say that was unexpected."