A/N: Sorry it took me so long to get this out. I've actually written several versions of this chapter (mostly due to the fact that my computer is crappy and I kept losing and having to re-write this chapter). Boo on that. But finally, here it is…

Chapter Four – An Uneasy Truce

Tira heard it before the rest of them did. There were no ear-splitting shrieks to herald their arrival; only the soft, repetitive sound of wings flapping. O'Neill and the others gave her questioning looks as she froze, but she ignored them, focusing her full concentration on the sky. The muffled sound of wing-strokes could be coming from anywhere, and she silently cursed the dense fog that was currently blanketing the rooftops, effectively cutting her field of vision to a meter or so in front of her. Even the familiar shapes of her team were blurred where they crouched mere feet away.

Gazing intently at her surroundings, she noticed that the fog seemed thicker in a spot just off to her left, as though it were being driven closer to the rooftop and condensed there. She furrowed her brow in confusion as the air in that particular space began to clear, the fog dissipating into the surrounding mist. The whirring of the wings grew louder, and she realized now that it was the wind generated by said wings that was pushing the haze down and away.

Her eyes darted up, looking for the creature she knew had to be there, and from the sudden and complete silence behind her, she knew the others spotted it at the same time she did.

A large Winger hovered above them, wings beating laboriously in the thick, moist air. She began to reach for the sword hanging over her back when she registered that the creature was not attacking. It took her a few seconds to realize that its eyes, unaccustomed to the heavy smog, had yet to locate them.

"What the hell is that thing?" Demanded O'Neill.

"Quiet!" She hissed. But too late…

With a loud screech the hovering Winger dove toward the small assembly, taloned hands outstretched.

"Down!" Tira screamed, though out of instinct, most of them were already on their stomachs, hands protecting their faces and heads.

Tira watched, momentarily frozen, as the Winger sped toward Nori; the eleven year old, who was still small for his age, had been slower to react than the others, and the winged creature was now diving straight for his unprotected back. Shaking off her daze, Tira lunged out of her crouch with an unintelligible cry that might have been Nori's name, and threw herself in the Winger's path. The creature collided with Tira, its velocity carrying them several feet, one of its clawed hands slashing at her stomach, consequently digging into its own. Tira's blood and the thick blue ichor that ran through the creature's veins ran together and washed Tira's abdomen in warm liquid. Tira hit the ground first, her back dragging against the gravely material of the rooftop. Beneath her shirt, the skin of her lower back was scraped harshly and began to bruise. Not waiting for them to skid to a stop, Tira used her momentum to pull her legs up, and braced her heels against the Winger's torso. She gripped its upper arms in her hands and pushed at the same time with her hands and feet, throwing the Winger off of her, and over her head. The creature bounced once on the roof, and then took to the sky again, wheeling around to rush Tira once more. Despite her injuries, Tira jumped agilely to her feet, ready for the Winger this time.

Drawing her sword, Tira stood her ground and waited the split second it took the creature to reach her. At the last possible moment, she leapt aside, the Winger shooting past her with a shriek of rage as she swung her sword down with all her strength, giving a shout of effort. Her blade caught the creature just below its jawbone, cleaving through tendons and bone to emerge on the other side of the Winger's neck and spark against the concrete of the rooftop.

The Winger's severed head hit the roof a moment before its body did, bouncing a few times and coming to rest near the man with glasses, who looked up from his ducked stance and cried out in surprise. He scrambled backward; afraid it might roll into him. All four of the strangers watched the blue ichor gushing from its veins with something between surprise and disgust on their faces.

"C'mon," Tira called, "the rest of them won't be far behind."

Even as the words left her mouth, the fog surrounding them began to swirl madly, pushed about by eight sets of wings.

Not needing any more persuasion, everyone followed as she ran to the edge of the roof and disappeared over the side, half-climbing half-jumping down the fire escape located there. When she had climbed down several levels, she turned and leaped through a window on the adjacent building that had been missing its glass for who-knows-how-long. She emerged in an abandoned room with no furniture left to hint at its prior purpose. A thick layer of dust had settled on the floor, but her entrance had upset its peaceful rest, and some of it had risen to float weightlessly in the air. More of the gray powder rose as her team, followed shortly by the four strangers, joined her. The last one to come through the window, O'Neill, barely evaded the clawed hand that shot in after him. Unable to reach its prey, the hideous creature screamed in anger and hovered by the window for a moment watching them.

SG-1 watched right back. They'd never seen anything like this before, even Teal'c who'd spent most of his life on a planet other than Earth.

The body of the creature was, appallingly, that of a human, though it appeared stretched, somehow longer and thinner than any human could ever be. Its arms were stretched even more out of proportion, ending in hands tipped with talons. There were no legs; only stumps that ended far higher than where the knees would have been. The face was an atrocity that couldn't have come from nature. The mouth stretched all the way from one ear to the other, and was equipped with jagged, saw-teeth that were faintly reminiscent of a shark's; the lower jaw was elongated, thrust out beyond the reach of the top. There was no nose, only an empty socket where one should have been, and the eyes, though twice the size of a human's, still held some human quality that made them terrible to look at. All of these sickening disfigurations, however, were far less alarming and out of place than the wings growing out of the creature's back. Leathery, and shaped like those of a bat, they easily spanned twenty feet across.

The Winger gave one last inhuman cry of rage and then pumped its wings and disappeared from view. O'Neill lowered his P90 and turned to address Tira, who was currently cleaning blue "blood" from her sword. "Alright," he said. "I want to know what's going on here. What the hell was that thing, and why didn't you tell us earlier that we might run into it?"

"That thing," Tira snapped as she sheathed her sword, "was a Winger. And I did mention it earlier. You just didn't seem very alarmed at the time."

She closed her eyes and exhaled roughly, trying to reign in her emotions. She concentrated on not letting the stress of the situation carry over into her attitude. The last thing she needed right now was to fight with these people. If they couldn't pull together, they'd never make it out of this alive. She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed; she didn't have time for this…

"Look," she said, not removing her hand or opening her eyes. "I really don't have the time right now to argue over who said what and when." She dropped her hands to her side and opened her eyes to meet his gaze. "All I'm worried about at the moment is getting my people… and yours… to safety. I can't do that if we can't work together. You don't have to like me. You do have to listen to me… Can you do that? At least until we get to the Home and you can talk to Shade. And then you can ask me as many questions as you want. Okay?"

O'Neill stared at her, his jaw set in stubborn indecision. He didn't like the idea of a girl half his age ordering him around like a subordinate. His eyes wandered back to the window where the Winger had been. He also didn't like the idea of trying to lead his team to the gate with those things and God-knows what else out on the streets. He'd already caught a glimpse of at least two other species of creatures; the ones who'd tried to ambush them at the gate. He weighed the two in his mind and decided that taking this teenager's orders for a little while would ultimately be safer for his team, despite the affront to his pride.

"Alright," he said softly. "So what's the plan?"

She stared at him for a moment, her gaze hard, trying to judge how sincere he actually was. He was obviously accustomed to giving orders, not following them, but his concern for his team appeared to hold the upper ground at the moment. She had expected him to protest a bit more…. She nodded once, her respect for him growing.

"We're at Bachalla and Hu'Del Street right now, which means there should be a ground entrance right around the corner. We make a run for it, climb down, and once we're in the sub-trans, we try for Home. If we're lucky, the tunnels won't be infested with Ferrets."

"And if we are not lucky?" Asked the tall black man with the gold symbol on his forehead.

"We find an alternate route," she replied, more calmly than she felt.

He raised his eyebrows and looked to O'Neill, who remained silent.

Tira looked around at the assembled group, wondering who these people were exactly, and if their lives were worth those of her team members if something went wrong. She eyed their weapons curiously; hopefully they wouldn't be entirely useless if it came to a fight. She turned toward the door with a sigh and motioned them to follow her as she hunted for the stairs.

O'Neill dropped carefully from the raised cement platform to rest on his heels. Their speedy trek out of the building and down the street to the "ground entrance" had been nerve-wracking and he simply sat for a moment, allowing his heartbeat to slow as he waited for the others to join him and the girl, Tira.

It was dark where they crouched, and he began to switch on the flashlight mounted on is P90 when a faint glow began to grow into a strong, if slightly eerie, light. He turned to look for the source and found Tira holding what appeared to be a radiant ball no larger than the palm of her hand.

She caught his slightly confused look and answered the unasked question. "Witchlight," she said. "The Myrmidons carry it when they go out at night."

Unfortunately, this information meant nothing to O'Neill, as he didn't know what a Myrmidon was. "Myrmidons?"

"Those tall, hulking creatures that came at you near the ring."

"Ah," O'Neill muttered, remembering. "Those guys."

But Tira was no longer listening to him, her attention now focused on her team as they dropped down to join them on what appeared to be some sort of train tracks. As he contemplated the similarity, Daniel Jackson drew closer to him and whispered, "Look familiar to you?"

O'Neill merely raised an eyebrow in return.

"This," Daniel said, motioning with his hands to indicate that he was talking about their surroundings. "Kind of looks like a subway station, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," O'Neill whispered back. "Just without the trains."

As Daniel squinted at him, as if to decide whether or not he were serious, he caught Tira's gaze as she motioned for them to follow.

The group, an odd assembly of children, adults, and an alien, moved warily down the tunnel, their ghostly light casting distorted shadows on the cement walls.

It only took them about fifteen minutes to reach their exit point, but Tira couldn't shake her feeling of extreme unease. She was relieved, of course, that the tunnel seemed to be Ferret-free, but the very fact that it was so empty made her distinctly nervous. It was a dark, dry place. Why wasn't there at least one of the nocturnal creatures in the tunnel? She shook her head, as though to dislodge the troubled thoughts that floated there. She led her companions out of the ground entrance nearest Home, and oddly enough, she was even more disconcerted when they traveled the next two blocks without incident. If she'd been from Earth, the cliché 'quiet… too quiet…' might have come to mind. But as she wasn't from Earth, the best she could come up with was something to the effect of 'what the hell is going on?'.

Creeping down the last stretch of deserted streets that led to the end of their journey, Tira felt for the first time in her life as though there truly was nothing alive in this city, no creatures, no teams hurrying about on their missions… nothing. This peculiar feeling stayed with her until they were a block away from the Home. It was at this point that she spotted shadows moving across the ground; the enlongated shapes of what were obviously humans coming up the side street that they were about to cross. Tira didn't even bother to stop the rest of the group so that she could check it out herself. There were no humans that would be walking down the streets of this city except for one of the teams from Home. Her reasoning was simple and logical… there were no other humans left alive in the city but the ones in the Home, with the exception of a few children, newly escaped from the Dorms, who would never walk the streets in broad daylight. Escapees were somewhat rare, and they usually hid until either someone from the Home found them, or creatures did. So it was with a sense of confidence that Tira glanced down the street as they approached the intersection, to find that she was indeed correct. It was Lonin's team, apparently just coming in from patrol and headed Home. She heard a small metallic click, and glanced behind her to find that O'Neill had thumbed the safety off his gun and raised it to point in Lonin's direction. Tira had never seen one of their weapons used, but she figured they wouldn't carry them if they weren't effective. Stepping in front of his weapon, Tira spoke to the man. "It's okay. They're with us."

O'Neill gave her a calculating glance, but nodded and lowered his gun. Appreciating the fact that he was honoring their bargain and listening to her, she gave him a small smile and said, "We're almost there. It's only another seventy cubits or so."

The man with glasses seemed intrigued by her words and stepped forward. "You measure in cubits?" he asked. "That's… that's interesting…" At O'Neill's questioning look, he explained, "A cubit is a unit of measure that was used in ancient Egypt. It's equal to the distance from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow. It's roughly between seventeen and twenty-two inches."

"That's fascinating, Daniel." O'Neill returned dryly.

While they had been talking, Lonin's team had reached them, and all six of them were staring at the four members of SG-1 with a mix of astonishment and confusion. "I don't understand," Lonin said. "They're so… old."

"Hey!" O'Neill protested. "I'm not that old."

Tira quickly jumped into the conversation. "I'm sorry," she said. "He didn't mean to offend you. We're just not used to seeing people your age because of…. well… I'll just let Shade explain. C'mon, like I said, it's not much farther." She turned to Lonin and examined his bloodstained shirt. "Are you alright?"

Lonin looked down at his chest and grimaced. "Ferrets," he said, by way of explanation. "Near 33rd."

Tira nodded. "Let's get you cleaned up."

The group, who's numbers had now expanded to seventeen, continued quietly around the block to a large, domed building. Making sure that they hadn't been followed, Tira took a quick look around and then led them all inside.

A/N: Wow, sorry that ran so long… I just kept adding and adding to it… And to my wonderful reviewers:

Cari: Yes I was quite partial to that title myself. : ) And by the way, I know I've shown you season one of Stargate now, but have I lent you seasons two and three yet?

Explorerwinds: Thank you very much. I'm glad you find it interesting. And I hope that if you keep reading, that it still is. : )

Jedi Padfoot: Thanks for that wonderful review. Hopefully I'll be able to churn more chapters out fairly quickly. : )

Cheers to everyone else who's reading. I hope you're all enjoying yourselves.

-Ember