Author's Notes: Hi all! I'm glad people still like the story. I've really enjoyed everyone's reviews. It's always good to hear opinions and comments. I think this was one of my favorite chapters to write, and in this chapter I drop a large piece of the puzzle for all you wonderful readers out there. :D

Author's Notes2: In regards to Elvaralind's question about Escaflowne, it wasn't the connection between Dilandau and Allen, but rather had to do with Naria and Eriya. I don't follow what happened to them necessarily, it's just what triggered the idea in my head. Which, if you've seen the series and once you've read this chapter will probably make a bit more sense. ;)

Author's Notes3: I just got new nails for the first time in my life and it's really weird to type now. O.o

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Daniel knew it was Goa'uld, or at least a variant of Goa'uld, just like the writing in the ruins above them. It circled the rim of the machine with its gold inscription raise upon the odd glossy black metal. Some sort of message about keys to a network, or something like that. He'd have to study it later, when he could look some of it up, or when the symbols stopped blurring together. Either or would be good right now. At the very least Daniel insisted they take rubbings of the inscription now for them to take back with them. Jack had promptly decided to spend the time scouting ahead while MacGyver had been only too eager to help. At first Daniel was hesitant to let this man anywhere near the device. Damn, but he looked too much like Jack! Yet MacGyver obviously knew something about archeology as he took the rubbing wax and paper and expertly began making copies of the inscription in a neat and orderly fashion. Daniel could only watch with a surprised expression before sinking down to the ground to lean against the wall by their newest alien artifact in pure exhaustion.

"I've got this, Daniel, why don't you relax for a while," Mac told him with a worried glance.

Daniel could only nod and leaned back with a sigh of relief. He closed his eyes and tried willing the pain to go away but it wasn't working very well. He'd taken the meds they carried on hand, but in all honesty, Jackson was no longer certain if the headache was from his injury or this new form of double vision. What would happen if his vision really did double? Then there'd be four Jacks!

"So…ah, Mac. What do you do?"

"Anything."

"Anything?"

"Sometimes."

Even as tired as Daniel was, he knew a diversionary tactic when he heard it, so he tried something else. "You seem to like archeology. Have you been on many digs?"

Mac paused in what he was doing to give the Anthropologist a grin with that same subtle shrewdness to his eyes that Jack often got whenever they were faced with a culture the Colonel didn't trust. Yet Daniel didn't think it had the same meaning in Mac's case as the man only grinned further, replying with a small shrug, "A few." He went back to the rubbings, saying as he worked, "Mostly I have a friend who's interested in ancient cultures and I just get to tag along."

"You have a lot of friends," Jack groused coming back from down the corridor he'd disappeared into. As far as they could tell, the halls with all the rooms lead here, to the machine. Jack gave MacGyver a look of disgust, and Daniel suddenly wondered if Mac's enthusiasm for archeology might have had something to do with Jack's dislike for it.

"Did you find anything?" Daniel asked Jack a little hopefully. His leg was throbbing so bad right now the pain was reaching up into his chest. He really wasn't sure how much further he could go.

Jack and his twin both frowned, each of them giving Daniel equally concerned looks. Daniel wanted to laugh. Seeing them so identical, even in expression, reminded him of bookends and for a brief moment he had an image in his mind of them trying to hold up a life sized set of encyclopedias.

"Danny?"

Daniel looked over at Jack with a sheepish smile as the Colonel suddenly came over and crouched down in front of him. It was Jack, right? His vision blurred the harder Daniel tried to focus, and the bone wariness he'd managed to keep at bay settled in like a heavy blanket. "Which one are you?" The anthropologist asked suddenly unsure.

The man in front of him sighed but instead of responding he reached out with a hand to Daniel's forehead. The touch was like ice and Jackson jerked away with a small cry of protest. "Hey!"

The man just sighed again, and then softly said, "Try to get some sleep Daniel. We'll rest here for a while."

"We need to get out of here," Daniel protested, but the man was patting his arm in reassurance and Daniel's eyelids seemed to be closing on their own accord. He really wanted to go home.

Daniel didn't remember falling asleep, but when he next woke his vision wasn't fuzzy anymore and, although he still felt completely exhausted, his head felt a lot clearer than it had before.

Without moving, Jackson realized he was on his side curled up against the wall with two extra jackets serving as blankets. Opening his eyes, he could see the small stack of folded rubbings ready to be put back into the pack beside him. The Colonel and his twin were sitting up against the wall almost opposite him. It was near impossible to tell who was who now. They both had stripped their gear off and were talking so softly Jackson wouldn't have been able to hear them if this place wasn't so deathly quiet already. Daniel knew he should say something, let them know he was awake, but he knew so little about what was going on between them that he couldn't resist eavesdropping instead.

"It's not the same."

"It is the same. And I'm tired of it! It goes both ways and you know it."

"Yes, I know it, and you know it. We know how it works now. We can use it to our advantage."

"You sound like one of the damn scientists! We've been around each other for, what, about an hour or so? A day if you count from last night. And look what it's already done!"

Daniel watched as one of them angrily pulled out a grenade, pulled the pin, and set it very purposely on the floor in front of them. Eyes widening, Jackson suddenly found he couldn't move, whether because he was still too tired, or too shocked, he'd never know. Nor would he understand what happened next.

It didn't go off.

The one who'd placed the grenade on the floor only made a grunt of disgust while the other sighed, took the pin, put it back into the grenade, and slipped it away into a pocket.

Daniel forced his eyes to close, maybe listening in hadn't been such a good idea. After several moments he felt his heart rate slowly return to normal. Then, as the surge of panic died away, so did any ounce of energy he'd accumulated with his short amount of sleep. As he quietly drifted back to unconsciousness he heard one of them say, "The good and the bad, we can't change what we are, but that doesn't necessarily mean we should hide from it."

*****

Jack gave Mac a darkening glare. "Oh course we should hide from it!" He exclaimed exasperated. "I deal with life and death situations all the time on this job, I don't need our luck messing things up!" O'Neill quickly looked to where Daniel lay asleep seeing if he'd woken the anthropologist up with his small outburst, but the man seemed quite dead to the world, hopefully not literally. Sighing heavily from frustration, Jack tucked his knees up and leaned on them. The stitch in his side from the bullet wound was growing exponentially stronger as the pain meds began to wear off.

MacGyver had remained quiet for a few moments, but after some thought seriously stated, "Jack, I need your help."

"With what?" Jack grumbled into his knees. "The alien rock?"

"The disk? You got it then? Alien...?" Mac trailed off as if he hadn't realized that fact, but then exclaimed, "Of course!"

Jack could feel the man getting up beside him and audibly groaned before forcing himself to get up and join Mac by the machine. "What?" Jack demanded.

Mac had a slight smirk on his lips and gleam of laughter in his eyes as he felt along the top of the large rounded device. "This writing was all over the dig site in Oregon," Mac told him.

"Of course it was," Jack grumbled. "Mac, I don't think it's such a good idea-" O'Neill started, hoping to stop the man, but MacGyver apparently found what he was looking for because the top suddenly opened up like a flower in blossom.

Jumping back, Jack cautiously stepped forward again looking inside the machine. At its center was a black opalescent sheet platform with three white rimmed circles, one of which was filled by an iridescent white stone, just like the one he'd found in the mail and was currently tucked safely away in his pocket.

"We didn't find the reader at the site, but I thought about how light refracts and-"

Jack held up a hand stopping the man before he could get too far into his explanation. He had enough of that with Carter. "Reader?"

"This device. It's basically a UV light board."

Jack just gave him a look, so Mac leaned forward and pressed a hidden button inside. The black panel lit up under the disk and quiet suddenly there were little holographic images floating in front of them. "Whoa!"

"This is what I need your help with," Mac told him simply.

Reaching up, Jack brushed a hand through the floating symbols as if to make sure they were really as harmless as they looked. Much to his surprise they moved with the motion of his hand to the edge of an invisible boundary where they stopped while his hand continued through. He knew there wasn't anything really there, but they reacted to his hand's presence just as if they were.

"All right," Jack drawled out. "What is it?"

"I think it's a key," Mac told him, once again that slight grin on his face.

"A key to what?"

But MacGyver just shrugged. "I don't know. I'm hoping the writings here, or at the site can tell us. Whatever it is, we need to find out."

Jack gave him a glare, even as his fingers itched to mess with the symbols one more time. "Why?"

Returning the glare for a look of incredibility, Mac stated adamantly, "Jack. Men are willing to kill for these disks."

Scowl darkening, Jack was about to repeat his ever so blunt 'Why?' when Daniel suddenly woke up and seeing the floating holograms sat up.

"Ah, guys?"

They turned to the anthropologist and Jack was pleased to see a substantial improvement in the man's face. Daniel's eyes still looked a little out of focus, but more from a need for sleep than from the fever and his skin didn't look so drawn anymore.

"Daniel-" Jack began, glad to see him awake but wishing the timing had been better.

The anthropologist wasn't listening. "You, you opened it?" He stammered, trying with little success to get to his feet. A second later, MacGyver was by his side and pulling him up. Daniel barely registered the help; his eyes were completely transfixed on the floating symbols. "What," he tried again but broke off breathless, leaning heavily on the device's frame to keep himself upright.

Inwardly sighing, Jack exchanged an uncomfortable look with Mac. It was going to be harder and harder to cover things up now. As if in response to his thoughts, he heard a noise coming from down one of the halls. Spinning sharply on his heals Jack had his gun out and aimed a second before the origin of the sounds appeared.

Sam and Teal'c froze on the spot at the other end of Jack's gun and stared at him with wide eyes. Well, Carter's eyes were wide, Teal'c just stared. Then Carter hesitantly questioned Teal'c with a pained expression. "Is there…?" She couldn't finish.

Teal'c however understood what she was going to ask and answered, "There are, indeed, two Colonel O'Neills MajorCarter."

Jack made a face and put his gun away. This just couldn't get any better. "Hey guys, welcome to the party."

"Sir..s?" Carter awkwardly questioned her confusion plainly evident on her face.

Jack didn't respond, what could he say? He met her bewildered expression and silently pleaded for her not to ask. Thankfully, Daniel spoke up for him, the rest of SG1's arrival finally diverting his attention from the alien device. "Hey Teal'c, Sam," he greeted tiredly, and then introduced with a hint of sarcasm, "This is MacGyver, Jack's twin brother!"

Sam looked quickly from Jack to Mac and back again. "He looks just like you," she breathlessly commented.

Mac just grinned laughing at her shock, but Jack pursed his lips and dryly remarked, "Ya think?"

Blinking, Sam suddenly blushed with embarrassment, only to blink again as she stumbled out, "MacGyver? The MacGyver?"

Groaning Jack turned away. "Oh, here we go!" He knew this day would come the second he'd heard the word first uttered from her mouth four years ago and had been dreading it ever since.

Sam didn't even notice his chagrin. Her eyes had gotten even bigger if that were possible, and she stammered, "MacGyver, the man who can fix anything, the guy who can make a bomb with whatever's laying about, who can take ordinary items to make…anything!"

"Yep, that's him," Jack caustically stated, wondering at the pang of jealously that was threatening to rise. She never got excited like that over him.

Yet Mac looked quite a bit uncomfortable from the praise. "Not anything," he weakly disputed.

Broadly grinning, and looking so much like she had that first day she'd seen the DHD on Abydos, her first alien planet, Sam practically gushed, "You're legend at the academy and I've heard tones of stories from my professors. I was never really sure you were real, but-" and just as suddenly her grin vanished as she turned once again to Jack. "Colonel, you didn't tell us you had a brother."

"No one asked!" Jack exclaimed.

"But..."

He could easily see her genius mind trying to work out details and realizing they didn't fit. Like the most obvious clue…for twin brothers, MacGyver and O'Neill didn't really sound anything at all alike, and Carter already knew MacGyver wasn't his mother's maiden name. Damn! He didn't think he could get through their quickly made explanation without flubbing it. Not to his team.

In the meantime, Teal'c had walked up to Mac with a smile and a slight bow, saying very sincerely, "I am please to meet you, MacGyver, brother of O'Neill."

Mac looked at the big man startled. "Thank you, I think."

"Sir?" Carter turned to Jack her eyebrows bent in confusion. "How did…I mean, why is…" she wasn't sure quite what to ask first.

Daniel huffed, answering for them, "Who you found at Jack's house this morning was really MacGyver. Apparently he's hiding from some group, the DXS or something like that."

"DXS," Carter repeated in surprise. "But why? I know guys in the DXS, and it's a good organization. Why would…"But she trailed off as both MacGyver and the Colonel started fidgeting.

Daniel noticed it too and eyes narrowing the anthropologist accusingly questioned, "Jack?"

It was amazing how much power one word could have. Jack just fidgeted that much more, and then exasperated with everything stated, "We can explain things later. We need to get out of here first anyway!" All business now, he turned to the Major and asked, "Carter, how did you guys get down here? Can we get back that way?"

Sam shook her head, military training responding to his authority although it was clear she was more interested in knowing what was up the same as Daniel. "There's no visible switch to activate the rings and they surface in the middle of a town."

"Town?"

Teal'c answered, "It was full of humans posing as jaffa."

"I'm sorry sir," Carter picked up. "We were trying to get back to the gate when they ambushed us. For a while I thought they planned to burn us at the stake as demons but then they sent us down here instead."

"They thought you were demons?" Daniel asked with a frown.

"From the ship," Teal'c clarified.

Mac had that thoughtful look on his face that said he had an idea. Jack knew it well, and wasn't surprised when the man remarked, "We can probably use that to our advantage."

"How?" Carter asked confused.

Not really answering, Mac grinned and replied, "I'll let you know once I've figured it out."

O'Neill internally sighed with frustration. "In any case, we can still use the-" He broke off suddenly as a gurgling noise was heard echoing down the hall Sam and Teal'c had so recently arrived from.

Jack had his gun up and ready to shoot, but squinting his eyes all he could see was the image of a large shadow coming down the corridor. The entire group held their breath in anticipation till at last a creature looking something like a cross between a dog and a kangaroo appeared from around the corner.

The Colonel only waited a minute before taking aim and firing. The first shot hit the creature straight in the chest, but it only gurgled out a sharp cry of pain and spinning fled back the way it had come. Turning to his team Jack immediately demanded, "What the hell was that?!"

"I believe it was the creature of the Setesh Guard," Teal'c responded with some surprise, even for the jaffa.

Daniel cringed, "I thought they were fictitious?" He almost sank to the floor again in his exhaustion, but MacGyver quickly had him supported under the arm.

"Well I freely admit I only understand a fraction of what you're all talking about," MacGyver began with a look of worry in his eyes, "how is it that that thing has been living down here this whole time?"

Carter shook her head. "It couldn't have, I mean…" she trailed away unable to explain it.

Then Jack realized something and with a sinking feeling of despair demanded, "Carter, you didn't go into any of the rooms, did you?"

She looked startled, but it was enough of a response to answer the question. Daniel perked up some at that and curiously asked, "What was inside?"

Teal'c was the one who answered, telling them, "A sarcophagus, but it was sealed."

Jack couldn't help but groan and he sourly stated, "Well it's not anymore!"

"A sarcophagus?" Mac asked with a raised eyebrow. "And there was someone alive inside?"

"Not someone, somewhat," Jack retorted in annoyance. His own injury was making his anger at the whole situation hard to ignore. "A gould snake. And it's loose now and could wake up all the rest of the snake heads in this place."

"Wait, if they built this place than-"

But Jack cut Mac off waving a hand at the man and stating emphatically, "No Mac! You don't ask a Gould for help, you kill it!" The man looked ready to argue the point but Jack didn't care. They had to do something and quick. "Carter?"

"Sir?"

"Any ideas on the best place to blow this ship up?" Jack asked.

Carter thought about it for a second before slowly replying, "I think their might be an engine room to the rear of the ship. I'm not sure if we could get any power, but since the goa'uld use a form of crystal energy one large charge from us should be enough to cause a chain reaction. Should," she emphasized, sounding a bit unsure of the theory. But Jack knew most of Carter's theories tended to work anyway.

"Great, lead the way."

"Jack," Daniel called. "If there's a town above us, we can't just blow the ship up. It would kill everyone."

But the Colonel just brushed the excuse off. "We'll deal with that when we come to it. I'm not about to let a ship full of snakes out into the universe. Not if we can do something about it." Then he turned to Mac asking, "You think you can get the rings activated again?"

Shrugging, the man answered simply, "Maybe." To Jack that was as good as a yes.

"Great. Then let's go, who knows how long we have." The sense of urgency in the air was strong enough to keep everyone quiet as they gathered things up. Jack noticed as Mac grabbed the alien rock from the device and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He wasn't the only one who noticed. Carter obviously wanted to ask about it, but Jack interrupted her, handing her and Teal'c one of the extra guns.

They put Daniel's rubbings back in the pack to take back with them and soon the party was heading in what they hoped was the correct direction for the engine room. Jack's insides were twisting with apprehension. Either they'd find the engine room and successfully blow the place, or end up new hosts for these once buried goa'ulds. He really hoped it'd turn out to be the former scenario but from here on out there were no guarantees.