Author's Note: Lo and behold, here it is! Chapter three! Dun dun dun!
Nareem staggered away from the shimmering energy of the Stargate. Its blue silver color was tinged by the redish field he had just passed through, the demolecularizer device.
He collapsed on the cold metal floor against a stack of cargo containers. He felt nauseous and sharp pain all over. If he had had the strength, he would have screamed for the pain. His head felt like it had been put through a shifter, the kind little kids use to play with sand.
Everything was dark. In the back of his mind he thought that he must be unconscious. '...no wait, then there wouldn't be any pain...I must be blind...'
A few minutes passed. The aftereffects of the demolecularizer device gradually wore off, and his thoughts started to clear, slowly.
He wasn't blind after all, the lights were off. He was in a storage room. A storage room on...
The realization of his location hit him with almost as much shock as his actual arrival had.
He had made it. He was alive, and his destination still existed, after all this time. They were still alive. They had to be. They had to be...
An alarm was blaring. It screeched, "Intruder, Intruder..." in a calm but harsh voice.
Nareem just lay there on the ground, his eyes squeezed closed, and tried to listen to what was happening.
Boots pounded down a long hallway nearby, then two pairs stopped, and a hatch whooshed open somewhere to his right. The lights flickered on, and Nareem heard two voices.
"Hey! Someone's in here!"
"It's the intruder!"
"Are you sure?"
"Who else would it be, Kerlan? That's not a Fleet uniform he's wearing!"
The man bent over and prodded Nareem in the ribs with the butt of his weapon. He groaned and tried to turn his head to look at them.
"I mean, he doesn't look like he's doing much invading."
"Kerlan—Look at that! It's glowing! That's the old Stargate! The surface-to-ship one from the war!"
"I know what it is!"
There was a pause. Nareem was recovering. He started to breath easier.
Kerlan said, "I'll report in. You'd better go and bring Security, and a Medic." Then, as an after thought, he added, "And the Captain."
One set of booted feet left.
Each second Nareem felt better, the painful aftereffects fading away. He opened his eyes to look up at the person still standing there. After talking softly into a small comlink he took up position supposedly guarding Nareem, his weapon was pointed in his general direction, but the young man's eyes kept moving from the Stargate to his prone body in amazement and disbelief.
The young soldier, his name must be Kerlan, wore a uniform that was the traditional Tolan grey tones but it also had two thin black stripes that ran down the pants. And he wore a red overjacket that had various military insignia and a short rank bar on the front.
His weapon was a nasty, efficient, supped-up rifle version of the energy guns that the security teams used back home. It was the military model, one the Tolan people had not needed to use for many years. It reminded him dimly of SG-1's favorite weapon, though much more advanced, of course.
The soldier's comlink beeped at him and more people arrived outside the door of the small, cramped storage room.
Nareem took a deep breath. He moved into a sitting position. He was so tired, everything was so crazy, and his head still ached a little. But none of that mattered. All that was important now was what he had to do next, everything he had to tell them.