Jack looked down at the tangled and bloodied scraps of material he had clutched tightly in one hand. Quietly, he pocketed the tattered clothing, and set his jaw.
Dammit, he thought, scanning the alien terrain. There was no mistaking the clothing. It belonged to Carter.
But where the rest of her was hiding happened to be a whole different story. He couldn't see squat in this mist and the fact dusk had fallen wasn't really making things any easier.
He knew.He knew not to let Carter and Daniel run off and play in that cemetery. Who the hell gets kicks over messing around with foreign alien burial sites anyway?
"They can teach us a lot about Peruvian burial practices," Daniel had said.
Frankly, Jack didn't give a flip how the aliens buried their dead. The fact they had THAT many dead was more of an issue. So, while Daniel had spouted out theories of diet and disease and Carter had went off about technological causes, Teal'c had arched his eyebrow and Jack had gotten that all too familiar bad feeling of his.
The morning hours had quickly passed into afternoon as Daniel dug deeper into the crypts and burial chambers. Jack had made sure Carter remained with him just in case Count Dracula decided to pop out of nowhere and take a bite of archaeologist for a midday snack.
When that time came and went, and Daniel and Carter appeared bite-free, Jack thought maybe his hardened battle sense was on the fritz. Whatever the case may be, it didn't erase the fact that both he and Teal'c were bored.
Despite their boredom, Jack and Teal'c had kept to their patrols of the perimeter, checking in every thirty minutes to an irate Carter and Daniel.
She told him that she had everything under control. She told him that she would watch Daniel's back as they entered the underground crypt. She told him everything was clear as they started shuffling around in the catacombs.
Cursing under his breath, Jack followed Teal'c toward the entrance to the underground chambers. Pausing at the doorway the truth of it hit him; this was exactly how he'd always known it would happen.