Karttikeya
(With thanks to MMS for The Sentence)
The wet footprints led down a narrow corridor, deep into the heart of the pyramid. Jack pulled up next to an opening in the wall and motioned for Teal'c to take point. Daniel peered cautiously around the Colonel's shoulder, ignoring the other man's angry gesture to withdraw. The Goa'ould stood bent over a grey metal cube, his back to the entrance. His hands were working frantically at the dozens of crystals in the open top panel of the device. The narrow end of the machine pointed at a Goa'ould sarcophagus, a dim light at its tip blinking owlishly with each change in the crystals' configuration. A woman was lying on the sarcophagus, motionless but for her limbs tugging uselessly at the heavy restraints around her wrists and ankles. Jack muttered a curse and Karttikeya looked around, a frown of concentration on his angular features.
"It's too late. You can't stop me now."
His voice echoed around the vast chamber. He turned a small red diamond shape in the control panel. The light at the tip of the device flickered, but this time it stayed on, its glow illuminating the Goa'ould's wry smile.
"This is only the beginning. There will be many. You will look back in time with awe and honour that were present at this moment. If I choose to let you live…"
His smile turned into a grimace of surprise and pain. The shot of blue energy from Daniel's zat crackled over his body. The Goa'ould looked down at the scorch marks on his tunic and raised his hands, his eyes burning with fury.
O'Neill shook his head.
"I hate it when they do that."
He opened fire, followed by Teal'c, and the alien was struck by a hail of bullet s. He sank to his knees with a disbelieving groan.
"You can't stop me," he gasped.
"Whatever." O'Neill gave him a final blast, but instead of slamming into the Goa'ould's body and tearing down his defences, the rounds bounced off a luminous force field and ricocheted around the room. O'Neill ducked back behind the wall until the noise had died down. When he looked back into the chamber, the Goa'ould had gone.
"He must have set up a ring transporter."
O'Neill shot the archaeologist an exasperated look. "You don't say. Carter, turn that thing off. It's time to go home."
She scuttled past him, her answer lost in the increasing vibrations emanating from the machine. She bit her lip, hands hovering over the crystal display, unsure where to start. She grabbed a random crystal, dislodged the blue fluorescent stone and dropped it to the floor. The noise continued, swelling all around her.
"Carter! You have to shut it off!"
Jack's voice was drowned out by the noise of the device. The stone of which the machine rested began to vibrate. Minute cracks appeared in the granite, and Jack watched in horror as they feathered out into the stone floor, reaching the walls as widening gaps.
"This whole place is going to come down around our ears if you don't do something, Carter!"
"I'm trying, Sir!"
She pulled another crystal from the bowels of the machine, but the sound only intensified. The woman on the stone slab lay still, watching them. Only her eyes moved. Daniel motioned to Teal'c and began to work the wrist cuffs. His knife slipped off again and again, there seemed to be no lock or seam he could prize open. Teal'c tried the same at the foot end, even pulling at the metal with his bare hands.
He looked up and shook his head.
"I cannot open these shackles, Daniel Jackson," he yelled.
The noise stopped suddenly. The vibrations petered out, and they could hear dust and lumps of stone falling from the cracks in the walls and ceiling.
"Is it over?" O'Neill asked.
Carter muttered an unlady-like curse. She dropped another crystal onto the pile before her and looked directly at Daniel.
"Get out of there."
It was the last thing he heard.
A beam of white energy burst from the machine and hit him in the chest. The heat forced him to his knees, scorching his soul, and everything in the world disappeared.
It was the first thing he heard.
Everything that had gone before had disappeared. Everything within vision, everything he had known and learned and cared about, everything he had touched and held and loved and allowed to slip away.
Daniel turned away from Carter and the room spun around him. He pulled himself up and stumbled towards the head of the stone, towards the woman lying on the sarcophagus. He knew her name now, knew so much more than a person should know about another, his mind filled with an explosion of conflicting memories. Searing pain forced him to his knees. His whole body seemed to ache, his skull the epicentre of inexplicable torture. He blinked to clear his vision, but he could still see her, Ellen, and at the same time see himself reaching out towards her. She was staring back at him, her eyes a mirror of the agony in his mind, until finally darkness engulfed him.
Daniel awoke with a startled gasp. He lay still, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, and tried to remember where he was. Slowly, memory returned and he moved his head to see the two shapes to his left. Both Teal'c and O'Neill seemed fast asleep. Daniel wriggled out of his sleeping bag and padded barefoot across the room to the door.
He stepped into the night, inhaling deeply. The air was cold in his lungs and cleared away the remnants of the dream. He shivered a little and stretched the muscles in his back, enjoying the silence. The sky over Escuvar was hung studded with brilliant stars. The planet's moon seemed close enough to touch, the wind chasing giant cumulus formations across its rugged landscapes. Daniel stood for a while, silently gazing at the spectacle above.
Without warning, he began to feel queasy. He leaned against the outside wall of the house with his hands on his knees and his head hung low, waiting for the nausea to pass. The pain was swift and unexpected. It turned like a shard of frozen glass in his mind, boring deeper with each breath. A familiar sense of disorientation rose from his stomach as time and space shifted and his mind tried to wrap itself around the universe from two different directions, stretching to breaking point.
There were voices further down the pathway, a man and a woman talking in the night. The kaleidoscope of the universe shifted another degree and Daniel no longer needed to hear to know what they were saying. Ellen's voice echoed in his mind as she bid Medran goodnight and they separated. He could feel the soft breeze on her skin and as if it were his own, close enough to touch but galaxies apart, and the hairs on his neck rose.
Ellen rounded a corner and saw him, the colour draining from her face. Daniel's throat ran dry. The dizziness had gone, replaced by an instant of crystalline clarity, and everything changed.
Once more he could see the world through her eyes, and knew that whatever he felt or thought, she felt it too. The knowledge was involuntary, without control or escape, sweeping as the flood-swollen rivers of Egypt. He could feel himself drowning in her, his mind clogged with the turmoil of her emotions, filling his thoughts like silt. All clarity was lost in these eddies of her soul, until he found a thought, sharp as flint, and clung to it. He didn't need to say the words. His mind formed the command almost unconsciously.
Like a hiss of cold breath, his thoughts dropped into Ellen's mind, swirling like dry ice. The command was short, and sharp. A surgical cut, too deep and clean to feel the pain before she could shut him out again and raise the wall, the mental image that had separated them throughout the day. Medran's gift.
Daniel watched her turn back uncertainly down the path. Within moments, Medran was by her side. The Escuvaran cast a glance over his shoulder, and his eyes narrowed. He put one arm around Ellen's shoulder, whispering to her.
Daniel slipped back into the hut and crawled into his sleeping bag. He stared at the ceiling, trying to make out the grain of the wood in the darkness. He would not go to sleep and risk another one's nightmares again.
TBC