Jack's sharp voice startled Sam so that she lost her balance and inadvertently pressed her hand into the middle of the circle. She pulled her hand back quickly but it was too late; with an ominous rumbling, the floor beneath her dropped suddenly. Sam had time to throw Jack a look of panic, hear his equally panicked shout of "Carter!" before she disappeared beneath the floor and the tile closed up, covering the place she had been standing.
Chapter 3 – Into the Darkness
After the initial drop, Sam felt herself sliding down an inclined ramp, not free falling, which in one corner of her brain she had half expected. The tumble was not gentle however; the slope seemed to twist and turn many times, causing Sam to careen into the walls on either side, banging various parts of her body into the hard, stone surface. After what felt like hours, but was actually mere minutes, Sam felt the dreaded sensation of freefall that she had been initially anticipating. The ramp seemed to disappear from under her as she fell, a drop of about 10 feet, where she landed unceremoniously in a heap against a brick wall. Her flashlight, which she had dropped in the initial plummet down the ramp, slid down after her and hit her in the front of the head. Being the heavy duty USAF issue flashlight that it was, it cracked against the front of her skull, causing Sam to moan loudly before she blacked out and crumpled to the ground.
-----
Jack's heart slammed against his chest in sheer panic as he saw Sam vanish beneath the large slab covering the floor. It all seemed to happen in slow motion; the look of panic on her face, his effort to run forward though it felt like he was stuck in cement, and finally Sam disappearing beneath the floor. "Sam!" he screamed again, not even noticing his shift from her surname to her first name. His voice reverberated off the stone walls in the corridor and echoed down to the main chamber. Instantly, his radio came to life.
"O'Neill! What has occurred?" came the concerned voice of Teal'c.
Jack had dropped to his knees, frantically digging at the stone block beneath him, searching for a way to open it and follow after Sam. He reached to his vest to reply to Teal'c, still clawing at the stone. "Teal'c, get down here. Carter's disappeared through the floor!" His voice was tinged with a note of panic that caused both Daniel and Teal'c to look at each other in foreboding before springing into action. Teal'c grabbed his and Jack's packs and his flashlight while Daniel grabbed his own gear and both men sprinted to the opening that Jack and Sam had entered not long ago.
They reached Jack's side in a matter of moments. Teal'c dropped their packs next to Sam's abandoned one and dropped to his knees beside Jack, who had stopped his frantic digging and was resting with his eyes closed, trying to compose his thoughts.
"Jack? What happened?" Daniel asked, his own voice taking on an edge of panic at finding Jack on his knees and Sam gone.
"She was standing here one minute, looking at the symbol on the wall, then gone the next." Jack brushed his hand wearily over his face. "Crap, I told her not to touch anything!" he said loudly, anger beginning to war with the panic he felt inside.
"Have you attempted to contact Major Carter by radio, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked Jack, who shook his head abruptly. "I was trying to move this stone… see if I could go after her."
Keying his own radio, Teal'c stated firmly, "Major Carter, do you read? Please respond."
The three men looked at each other worriedly when there was no response forthcoming. Teal'c tried once again and received the same empty silence in reply.
Daniel stood up to gaze more closely at the symbol on the wall, shining his light to illuminate the strange markings. "This seems to be the same marking as on one of the panels in the main chamber." He turned to look down at Jack, who had taken a thin tool from Teal'c and began trying to pry the stone slab away from the floor, with Teal'c lending his strength to the task. "Jack, what exactly happened before Sam disappeared?"
Jack sat back on his heels in frustration; the slab of stone wasn't moving an inch. He took off his hat and wiped his brow before answering. "We got to this section of the corridor and Carter was copying down the symbol on the left side." Jack shined his light across the passageway to show where Sam had been. "Then she crossed over to this side to do the same thing. We've found a new symbol every 15 feet or so along the corridor and Carter was copying them down. Only here, there was a symbol on this side as well." Jack took a deep breath before continuing. "I'd gone down the corridor a little way to see how much further we had to go. When I turned around, I saw Carter with her hand on the symbol and shouted at her not to touch it. The next thing I knew, the floor opened up and swallowed her whole," he finished, looking to the two of them. "I don't know where the hell she went, Daniel!" his voice filled with desperation and frustration.
"Major Carter must be below the surface of this corridor, O'Neill. If she dropped from sight, she could only have gone down," Teal'c stated as he surveyed the area, looking for a possible alternate means to get below the temple.
"Wait a minute," Daniel interjected. "You said she had her hand on the symbol before she disappeared, right Jack?"
"Yeah, a hand that should have been writing, not touching!"
Daniel chose to ignore that comment for the moment. "Did she push on the symbol at all?"
Jack frowned in thought. Those seconds had happened so quickly that he couldn't quite recall every detail, except for Sam's look of fear and panic, which was clearly etched into his brain. But he was almost certain that her hand had pressed into the wall when he called to her. Jack closed his eyes in self-recrimination as realization set in: he had in all likelihood caused this by startling her when he yelled at her.
"Jack?" Daniel softly interrupted his thoughts.
Jack opened his eyes, the guilt shining through, to meet the concerned gaze of Daniel. "Yeah, Danny. I'm pretty sure she pushed on the symbol."
Daniel, though puzzled by Jack's expression, gave a slight smile. "Simple then! We push the symbol as well, the floor opens, and we go find Sam."
Jack sighed. "You know things are never that simple for us, Daniel."
"Well, it's a place to start at least, right?" Daniel asked as he helped Jack to his feet.
"Can't hurt I guess. But everyone stand back – I don't want either of you disappearing like Carter to God knows where." All three of them made sure to stand clear of the large stone slab in front of the symbol. Jack stood to one side, Teal'c to the other, with Daniel standing to the back of it. "Ready?" Jack asked, his hand raised and ready to press the symbol. At their nods, he placed his hand gently over the symbol and pressed in.
While it gave in a little under the pressure, nothing happened. "Try again," Daniel instructed from his place to Jack's right. Jack shot him a look of impatience before pressing again…still nothing. "I told you this wasn't going to be easy!" Jack ground out between clenched teeth.
Daniel frowned in thought. "There has to be something else she did to activate it." He wandered over to the other symbol, studying it carefully. "Do you know if she touched this one too?" he asked over his shoulder.
"I don't know, Daniel. I wasn't watching her every second! I usually trust Carter not to touch things!" he snapped, his anxiety over Sam starting to make him lose his patience.
Daniel turned around and regarded his friend solemnly. "It's not like this is an alien device, Jack. It's a symbol etched in the wall. I'm sure Sam figured there would be no harm in examining its surface a little more closely."
"Yeah, and look where that thinking got her, Daniel!"
Knowing that O'Neill's mood was based on his concern for Major Carter, Teal'c nonetheless interrupted before things between the two men could escalate any further. "I am certain Major Carter will be found safely. But we must carefully plan our course of action and can not do that if there is dissension among us," he stated firmly, eyeing both men equally.
Jack sighed, throwing Daniel an apologetic look. "You're right Teal'c. So Daniel, your guess is that the slab moving might have had something to do with Carter touching both symbols?"
Daniel shrugged. "It's possible, especially since touching just the one didn't do it on its own. Should we try?"
"I believe that would be a wise course of action, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c answered for Jack. Jack raised his eyebrow at Teal'c but said nothing to the man; he was about to say the same thing anyway, though not quite so eloquently of course.
"Let's do it," Jack stated, moving back to the symbol they had tried first. With a nod, Jack indicated that Daniel should proceed. Daniel pushed on his symbol, then nodded to Jack, who pushed on the one he was standing at. Once again, nothing happened.
"Perhaps if you pressed them simultaneously?" Teal'c asked from his place by the slab where he waited for any indication that it was opening.
"That can't be it. Carter definitely couldn't push them both at the same time," Jack said in frustration. When Teal'c just raised an eyebrow in response, Jack huffed, "Fine, we'll try. Ready Daniel? On three…three, two, one, push." They pressed the symbols at the same time. This time something did happen, although not what they expected. A rumbling sound started at the far end of the corridor, causing loose rocks to crumble from the walls down to the floor. While the destruction didn't quite reach them, Jack ordered a retreat back into the main chamber, just to be safe.
A few minutes later, when the dust had cleared and they had all taken drinks of water to clear their throats, Jack stated, "Well, any more bright ideas?"
------
Sam slowly blinked her eyes as she came to, her hand automatically going up to her aching head, where she felt the beginning of a rather impressive goose egg starting to form. A slow trickle of blood dripped down from the spot as well. Sam groaned; Janet was so going to kill her. A third concussion in as many months did not make for a happy doctor.
Sam took stock first of her body; needing to ascertain if anything had been broken in her tumult down the ramp and subsequent fall against the wall. Flexing legs, arms, fingers and toes, Sam felt the normal aches that would accompany such a fall but nothing felt broken. Battered and bruised, yes, but broken, no. Shifting herself carefully into a seated position, Sam took a sharp gasp at the pain in her side and the accompanying dizziness that followed. Tentatively probing the area, she grimaced as pain and realization clicked in; fractured rib.
"Shit!" she muttered into the darkness. She had no pack with her so could do nothing to bind her ribs, nor did she have any pain killers with her. All she had was her canteen, which had been securely fastened to her hip, a few energy bars that were somewhat the worse for wear, a knife, a handgun, her notebook, which she had somehow managed to hold onto on her wild ride down the ramp, and the flashlight that shined innocently at her from its place on the floor.
She laid these items carefully in front of her, then reached out and grabbed the flashlight, shining it around the large, cavernous room she now found herself in. Like the temple, it was made of stone and built to stand for centuries. Sam seemed to be an alcove of sorts, as about ten feet in front of her, she saw the ramp leading down from the upper floor. Why it stopped ten feet above the floor, she had no idea. To her right, the room widened, revealing a few scattered cloths lying about, piles of rubble, and a door tucked into one corner of the room. On the far side of the room, directly across from where Sam was sitting, thin slats had been carved into the stone of the upper walls, giving off a faint light from beyond and emitting some fresh air that helped to dispel some of the stale air within the room.
As her flashlight once more chased away the darkness in the little alcove where Sam had landed, she gasped in dismay. Lying across from her was a skeleton; its gray bones and shreds of clothing indicating that, whoever it was, they had been here for a long time. Sam shuddered to herself as she took in the grim scene. She had seen many dead bodies over the years of her service to the Air force, but somehow, finding a skeleton staring at her vacantly in this dim room, was enough to send her heart thudding once more.
Every so slowly, Sam inched further away from the skeleton and tried to focus her attention elsewhere. She leaned tiredly against the wall, the pain and exhaustion from that little movement overtaking her. She closed her eyes and took deep, steadying breaths, trying to push away the nausea that seemed to come on strong in the last few minutes. She opened her eyes quickly as she heard a faint rumbling from above, followed by small pieces of stone falling into the room. After a few moments, the noise and the falling debris ceased, plunging her once again into deep silence, broken only by the sounds of her pained breathing.
Sam tried to take stock of her current situation, but her throbbing head wouldn't let her concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. She did have the presence of mind to try her radio, though. Straightening up slightly, she reached for the instrument on her shoulder. As she grasped the object, she moaned in frustration. Even from touch, Sam could tell that the radio had been damaged beyond repair in her tumble down the ramp and would be of no use to her. Sam gave up thinking and trying anything for the moment, leaning back and closing her eyes once again as a wave of pain and dizziness overtook her. "I'll just rest for a few minutes, then get up and take a look around."
"You can't sleep," came a soft voice from across the room. "If you sleep, you will not wake up."
Sam's eyes flew open and darted around the room, looking for the source of the soft voice with the beam of light from her flashlight. She gasped with shock when her light found the familiar figure of a young girl wearing a white dress and regarding her with dark, solemn eyes.
TBC