So, that was what the dino-goa'uld had been up to with the hand device, was his first thought, when he saw the stone hatch closing the stairs.
His second thought, the idea that they were caught down here, almost made him panic again. They had no idea how huge this lower floor was. There might be miles and miles of catacombs criss-crossing the ground under the temple. It was dark down here, and cold, despite the rainforest above them.
He tried to concentrate on deep breaths again, counting each inhalation, but it did nothing to help him fight the anxiety. He had the feeling that breathing was growing slowly but steadily more difficult as time passed. That wasn't supposed to be the case with broken ribs, was it? What if...
"Jack? If I... You know, if I were bleeding internally or something... I would be doing a lot worse already, wouldn't I?"
Jack had crawled back to his side in a second, and shone the flashlight on him. Enough light reached Jack's face to show how startled he looked. He grabbed Daniel's wrist, checking his pulse, and lifted his shirt to take a look at his side again.
"Doesn't look any different to me, and that's a good sign. I don't know the exact time when the dino got you, but it was sometime in the night, so quite a few hours have passed since. I don't think you'd have been able to walk around, let alone support me, if you'd got really serious internal injuries. Don't think you'd be talking to me now. Why do you ask? Feeling worse?"
Daniel didn't want to worry Jack, but he knew that keeping this to himself wouldn't help at all. He nodded.
"Right... Need something for the pain?"
It wasn't as much the pain as the fact that he felt like he wasn't getting enough oxygen in, though he'd gladly take anything that might make him feel any better. But wasn't the first aid kit in his pack, which he had dropped somewhere in the big hall when they'd first arrived there? He'd been so stupid, so completely idiotic, that he'd left it there. That would mean that they had no supplies at all, except what they had on themselves--little more than sidearms and radios.
"Didn't take my pack."
"You really think I'd have let you leave it behind? I took it. Figured it'd be easier for me to carry it."
Daniel heard Jack rummage the pack, and soon, he handed over a canteen and two pills. Daniel swallowed one, and offered the other to Jack.
"No, no, you take both. We've got enough."
"Okay."
Daniel took the second pill as well, and gave Jack the canteen, hoping he hadn't just been tricked into taking more than his share. Jack was injured too, and by the look of his leg and the way he'd been squirming when Daniel had splinted it, it was pretty bad. Now, after their tumble down the stairs, it had to be even worse.
"How're you doing, anyway?" he asked Jack.
"Hangin' on."
"Let me check?"
Daniel sat up, accepted the flashlight from Jack, and shone it on the splinted leg. So much for the splint. The stick he'd found upstairs and used to make it had snapped into several pieces. There wasn't much hope of finding another one down here. He took the thing apart and wondered what to do.
"I'm out of ideas here... You think we've got anything at all that'd work as a splint?"
"Can't think of anything."
"So. I'll just take the longest bit that's left, and bind that in place. Maybe it'll help a bit."
"Don't worry about it, Daniel. I'll manage."
"Of course you will."
Of course they'd manage. They had no other choice. The future didn't look too bright, though. They couldn't just sit there and hope someone would fight the dinos and open up the stairs and get them out. They'd have to start walking again, and try and find another way out, if there was one. If there wasn't... But there had to be. Daniel tried to push away any thoughts of Egyptian tombs which only had one way in.
Jack had taken the flashlight again, and shone it around the room. It was smaller than any on the floor above--small enough that the light reached all the walls. They were decorated with carvings here as well. They showed several large plant-eating dinosaurs, which seemed to be walking, or even running. Daniel told himself they didn't look like anything one might find in a tomb.
The light revealed two doorways, one leading to the left, the other straight ahead.
Daniel pushed himself up from the floor, cradling his injured side. He'd collected a few more bruises on the way down, but it wasn't that much worse. No new fractures. It wasn't even hurting as much now, since the drugs had begun to take effect. Still, breathing didn't feel any easier.
Jack had stood up as well, grunting on the way. The pathetic excuse of a splint clearly wasn't helping him a lot. Without even asking, Daniel put his left hand around Jack's waist, and Jack reached an arm over his shoulders. They'd help each other walk as best they could, but it'd still be anguish to them both.
"All right. Let's go and see the sights. At least I'm pretty sure we're free of dinos down here. And dino'ulds."
"Goa'uldosaurs."
"Right. You're the linguist."
The second floor did not appear to be very different from the ground level. There was more light, as the windows were larger and higher up, not as obscured by the thick foliage of the outside jungle. The floor was different, of course, just stone, not covered with plants. The walls were carved with images of numerous different dinosaurs. Surprisingly, many of them were what Teal'c took to be the lower cast, the common, slave-like plant-eaters, not the ruling predators.
The stairs had taken them to a room identical in size to the one below, with only one exit directly ahead. The next room was much smaller and had smooth walls without any carvings or text. However, it had three doorways including the one they'd come through, a door in each wall but for the one with the windows.
"This doorway should lead us closer to Colonel O'Neill and Daniel Jackson," Teal'c told Captain Carter, indicating the one that opened towards the direction where the two others had been.
"And that's where we're going," Carter replied instantly, so they went on.
The next room took Teal'c by surprise. It was dominated by a large pool full of crystal-clear water. A thin aqueduct, low on the floor, lead away from it, disappearing through a small hole in the opposite wall. At least they would not run out of water, even if they would be trapped in these ruins for a longer time.
Far more promising than the water was the fact that, if Teal'c's estimates were correct, the room continued past the point were the separating wall had been on the lower floor. At its far end was a doorway leading ahead, even further to the other side of the ruins, the side where O'Neill and Daniel were.
They walked ahead, and soon found themselves in another room with a door in each wall, except for the one that had windows. They had traversed the ruins, walked across them, from one outer wall to the other. Now, they only needed to find stairs leading down to reach the others.
"I am glad we chose to explore the upper level," he noted, as they walked ahead, hopefully to a part of the ruins that was directly above Daniel and O'Neill.
"We'll just have to be careful not to get lost here," Carter stated. "Because even though the rooms are huge, there's so many of them and so many doorways that this is starting to feel like some kind of a maze."
On through another doorway, and then another, straight ahead, following the wall with windows. At one point, Sam and Teal'c met a windowless wall blocking their way, and had to turn to the left, to the inner part of the ruins, away from the outer wall. The next room had a door leading to their previous direction, and they went that way.
Sam was trying her best to keep count of where they had turned and when, but it wasn't easy. There weren't any landmarks about. Most rooms were identical, or almost identical in size--big, though not as big as the halls below. Ever since they'd left the room with the stairs, they'd seen no carvings on the walls. The floor was hard stone, so they left no marks on it, no footprints or broken plants.
She was glad there were two of them here. Two heads would think better than one, and Teal'c not only had a great sense of direction, but probably had more experience in scouting and finding his way in unfamiliar surroundings than she did. At the moment, though, they had no need to find their way back to where they'd come from. All they needed was a staircase leading down.
Finally, they reached a room with windows that, unless she was completely mistaken, lay at a right angle with the other windowed walls they'd seen. They'd reached the end of the ruins. One turn to the left confirmed her reckoning: it took them to a corner room, with windows in two walls.
"We must've crossed pretty much all of the area above them now," she said to Teal'c, feeling more than a bit disappointed.
"I agree, Captain Carter. It is surprising, and unfortunate, that there seems to be no access to the lower floor from here. Still, there are yet many rooms we have not seen, many doorways we ignored on the way."
Sam checked her watch. It was past noon already, a fitting time for a lunch break, but they had nothing to eat. They'd not taken anything with them when they'd fled from the camp. She wasn't really hungry, either. She was way too worried for that. No need to take a break.
"There's got to be some other way down than the stairs we climbed. Let's keep looking."
Author's Comments: Whew. Starting to feel like I should put a map somewhere so everyone couldkeep count of who's where and which direction's which... On the other hand, none of SG-1 really know that, so I guess you don't need to, either. Of course, I do have a map for myself. I'm just no good at describing such stuff clearly. I mostly suck at giving directions to people. :-P
Oh and by the way, now that I'm writing comments... Happy New Year to all!