A/N: Well, I don't have MASSES of reviews like some, but I'm happy to know that I've got you all wondering what the hell is going on! Some of you seem to be getting the gist of it, which is pretty cool... especially since this chap offers quite a few explanations (well as many as I'll give. As usual, it's not all quite as it seems).

Hope you like.

Chapter 4 – A wintry chill
"Doc! I'm on my way in! Sam's collapsed, but she'd gone kinda nuts before that. I need you to meet me there!" Jack barked into his phone as he sped along the deserted streets towards the SGC. He hadn't hesitated an instant when Sam had fell and it had taken him a matter of minutes to get her into the truck and on the way. He didn't know what the hell was going on but hoped to God or whoever he should be hoping to that Janet could fix it and bring Sam back to him.

As he approached the base he heard Sam stirring in the back seat. She coughed weakly before slowly sitting up.

"Wherarwe?" She said groggily. "Why did-? What's going-?"

"Shhh.. it's ok Sam." Jack cooed as he spied half of the infirmary on the surface waiting for him. "You had an… an… episode." He struggled to find a way to characterize what had happened. "Janet's waiting for us at the SGC, you're gunna be fine."

The letters 'SGC' seemed to have sparked something in Sam and she suddenly seemed incredibly anxious. "The base? I don't wanna go to the base! Jack," she pleaded to him. "Please don't make me go to the base!"

"Sam we have to," Jack said with desperation, feeling more and more hopeless. "Something's up with you and we can only fix it at the base." Once again it occurred to him how strange it was that Sam didn't want to be on base. He made a mental note to mention it to the Doc.

She couldn't be goa'uld, he rationalized to himself while pulling to a stop at the base and following the action as Sam was transferred to a gurney before being wheeled into the complex. She wasn't struggling as such, but definitely seemed uncomfortable with the idea of being restrained and taken under ground.

She couldn't be goa'uld, he continued along his train of thought. For starters, she already had naquada in her blood from Jolinar… But more significantly, the routine scans they were all subject to upon returning from off-world had come up negative like always. Still, if he hadn't have known better, he would have said that there was currently a battle going on in her mind. The fever? He'd never seen her sick before… maybe she was just acting irrationally due to the fever? These and many more thoughts racing through his mind accompanied him on the trip down into the base.

"Sir, you should try to get some real sleep." Janet looked reproachfully at the crumpled-looking Jack who was sitting uncomfortably on a chair next to Sam's bed. "Her fever's gone down, so she should return to normal. Jonas has responded to the anti-biotics as well. It must have been a bacterial infection – they'll be fine within a couple of days at most."

"So when she-?"

"More than likely it was the fever." Janet nodded firmly. Jack had told her of Sam's actions and, although strange, given Sam's condition they didn't cause her too much concern. "She was spiking at near dangerous levels when you brought her here – enough to make anyone slightly gaga."

"Hey!" An indignant little voice squeaked from the bed in front of them. Both Janet and Jack looked down to see Sam smiling weakly at them. "Call me a science geek, call me eccentric, but I'd like to think that I'm at least sane."

"That's right Carter – and I've never seen a tree in my life." Jack replied, almost weak with the relief of hearing her voice.

"Well, Sam's sanity aside," Janet was having trouble hiding an impish grin, "both she and Jonas no longer present any symptoms of the infection apart from some lingering markers in their bloodwork. As long as you're still doing this well tomorrow, I see no reason why SG1 shouldn't be able to return off-world the day after that."

"So when can I go back to my lab/office?" Both Jonas and Sam spoke at the same time, eliciting a hearty laugh from Janet and Jack.

"Welcome back to the land of the living Jonas." Janet said while still beaming. "Since you're both so eager, I really don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to feed your workaholic tendencies after lunch today. But only a couple of hours, got it?"

Both the patients seemed satisfied by this decision and, as if a switch had been flicked, they both sank back into their pillows and returned to the land of slumber.

About thirty milliseconds after lunch, Jonas was crouched over his desk, concentrating so hard on the glyphs in front of him that he didn't even hear Stacey knock on the door almost an hour later. Given this, he nearly jumped right out of his seat when she spoke.

"So this is your office then?" Stacey said conversationally, looking around the strange space filled with all the relics of ancient Egypt and various missions.

"Uh… yeah." Jonas managed to spit out once he'd recovered from the shock. "Well, I mean I'm kinda borrowing it from it's original inhabitant, Daniel Jackson."

"That's the guy who… ascended, right?" She asked, still not fully able to get her head around the idea of Daniel's journey beyond the physical world.

"Yeah I know it sounds kinda strange…" Jonas smiled at her, "but we're pretty sure he's up there somewhere, watching over us – Sam and Jack have both seen him."

"Really?"

"Yep. When Jack was a prisoner of Ba'al apparently Daniel helped him, and then he appeared to both of them before and during the Australia mission."

"Ba'al…" Stacey scrunched her eyes up, trying to remember what she knew about him. "He's the one who was trying to get to the naquada in Australia…"

"Yeah, real nasty piece of work." Jonas raised his eyebrows thinking about their dealings with the diabolical false-god of bad fashion. "Lucky we know the Asgard, eh?"

"Hm." Stacey moved closer and leaned over Jonas' work on the desk to see what he was up to. "Any luck translating what we found?"

"I've got a few leads," Jonas said, leaning back on the chair and looking up to meet her eye. "You've gotta understand though, the mission's the fun part – this kind of analysis Sam and I usually do takes way longer and involves a lot more coffee than gallivanting around across the galaxy."

"Ah, but I bet it's more interesting in the long run." Stacey said with a wink. "I mean, seeing something is completely different to actually understanding it."

"Yeah I guess," Jonas stifled a yawn and leaned back in to the desk.

"You sure you're alright? You shouldn't still be resting?" There was suddenly a hint of concern in Stacey's voice upon seeing the apparent fatigue Jonas was trying so hard to hide.

"No I'm fine," he shook his head. "And anyway, you said it yourself – this is the interesting part." He pulled a printout of the photos taken from under a hefty pile to show to Stacey. "Look at this, I've translated the words, but what it means is presenting such a puzzle that I can't leave it."

"Well? What does it say?"

"Ok, well here it's talking about a trial of co-existence between deities." He and Stacey both leant over the desk with heightened concentration. "Two super beings meet, with equal power and strength, and so rather than destroy each other decide to try something different."

"Deity would indicate goa'uld…" Stacey was thinking aloud, "but they would never try a compromise like that."

"Exactly what I was thinking!" Jonas nodded enthusiastically. "But what if this 'other' deity was so powerful that the goa'uld had no choice? Perhaps then…"

"But the planet we found was deserted… what happened?"

"Well, this is where it gets kinda vague." Jonas admitted, pulling another printout towards him. "Apparently the trial failed.."

"Surprise surprise."

"Yeah," Jonas grinned at Stacey's response. "So the trial failed and one power destroyed the other." He looked up to the woman standing next to him. "If we're talking about a goa'uld, I'd be betting he was the winner."

"So the goa'uld then just left the planet?"

"As far as I can tell," Jonas squinted over the image before seeing something. Abruptly, he leapt to his feet in search of a magnifying glass and, with bated breath, crouched over a corner of text that he previously hadn't seen. "Wow."

"What is it?" Stacey was leaning in just as close, although she herself couldn't understand what was written.

"You were right about the goa'uld thing." Jonas murmured quietly, still reading. "The 'other' deity had a plan to survive the wrath of the snakegods." He looked up to Stacey who was waiting for him to continue. "Within the walls." He completed the sentence before sitting back down on his chair, unable to make head nor tails of it.

"What the bloody hell does that mean?" Stacey asked with some frustration.

"I don't know." Jonas said quietly, "The walls collapsed while we were there and there didn't look to be anything inside them… I guess we should ask the others."

Back in her lab, Sam pored over the data she'd managed to gather from the crystals and apparently old-fashioned computers before the building collapse. She took another swig of the herbal tea that she had been drinking as if her life depended on it all afternoon to feel properly alert. Truth be told, she should have been in bed as she still felt a little weak after her unanticipated illness, but the information she was looking at was too intriguing to do so. Jack had been in and out of her lab, trying to convince her to relax, but for the moment she had managed to convince him that she was ok.

There was no way she was going to stop now anyway; what she had found was too good. Despite its appearance the native civilisation's computer systems were actually quite advanced. Although it looked like a throw back to computer in the 1980s on Earth, the technology used was so innovative that it was probably more advanced than what they had in 21st century. The appearance was completely contradictory to what she was looking at. The technology appeared to rival the goa'uld system of crystals; the pathways and functions seemed synonymous, although how both civilizations had got there were obviously different.

All this commentary on the mechanics of the systems didn't tell her much, however. Although it was always comforting to know that there were peoples capable of rivalling the goa'uld without borrowing or stealing technology, the fact that this people had disappeared since didn't bode well. The real interest lay in the photographic data she had managed to recover. They seemed to be historical documentations – something the goa'uld rarely kept. It was for this reason that she'd called Teal'c, who at that moment arrived at the door, accompanied by Jack.

"You wished to consult me, Colonel Carter?" His low voice filled the room easily. "It pleases me to see you in better health."

"Ah yes, thanks." Sam said almost distractedly as they entered the room. She had created a slideshow on her computer of the images and was just flicking through them one more time before sharing her hypothesis with the others.

"You're not working too hard, are you?" Jack had moved closer than Teal'c and was now leaning over her shoulder, his mouth lingering just above her ear so she could feel his breath on her skin.

Sam shivered slightly at the feel of Jack so close, but managed to keep her composure, mindful of Teal'c's presence in the room. "I'm fine." She said, nodding her head slightly before addressing Teal'c. "This is what I called you over here for – have you ever seen anything like this before?"

She leant back and manipulated the angle of the monitor so that they could all see it properly, and waited.

"Humanoid aliens… what a shock." Jack broke the silence to be greeting by a withering glare from Sam.

"I believe Colonel Carter is commenting on the relationship between the subjects of these records." Teal'c said evenly. "This figure here is labelled as a snake-god." He pointed to the label at the bottom of the image.

"Well, makes sense." Jack said. "He's accompanied by a scary guy who couldn't be anything but Jaffa."

"D'you recognize the symbol on the Jaffa's forehead?" Sam asked Teal'c, ignoring Jack's comments.

"I do not."

"So it's another one we don't know of!" Jack clicked his tongue impatiently. "What's so great about that?"

"Jack would you just be quiet for a moment?" Sam said with uncharacteristic irritation. "Teal'c, what about these guys?"

The image they were currently looking at depicted a meeting of two leaders and was tagged with the label: 'The Agreement'. There was nothing condescending in the goa'uld's pose while dealing with this other civilisation – presumably the natives of the planet who had since disappeared. The representative of this mystery civilisation seemed just as coolly confident as the goa'uld.

"Is it possible that a goa'uld would choose to co-exist with another civilisation? On an equal basis?" She asked, looking at Teal'c.

"I would not have previously thought so." The Jaffa replied. "This image is most perplexing."

What if the goa'uld just couldn't? What if they couldn't be used as Jaffa?" Jack was trying hard to contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

"It is most unlikely, O'Neill." Teal'c turned to his commanding officer. "There are a couple of species for which this is the case – and they have either been enslavened or slaughtered in the past."

"So there must have been something else." Jack said, thinking hard.

"Yes, but I think you're probably right in one way." Sam was nodding vigorously. "Whether it was for biological reasons or not, this goa'uld didn't use these people as slaves or even subordinates – these people were more like rivals." She nodded towards the images which seemed to show a series of tense negotiations.

At the word rival, Teal'c suddenly tilted his head on an angle, a move that Jack noticed quickly. He touched Sam's shoulder and they both turned to look at him, waiting.

"There was a legend of a rival race – a tale propagated among the jaffa depicting a set of evil gods." Teal'c said slowly. "I do not know much of this race, but it was said they did not require the use of a symbiote or Jaffa… that their young came from a malevolent winter breeze."

"A malevolent winter breeze?" Jack said incredulously. "What kind of legend is this?"

"Indeed, O'Neill," Teal'c acknowledged the ridicule. "I had always imagined this tale a childhood story designed to warn our young from wandering from camp in cold weather. It appears, however, that some truth may lie behind it."

"So if these guys were so powerful… what happened to them?" Jack voiced what all three of them were thinking.

Another voice broke the silence from the doorway. "The goa'uld found a way to defeat them." Jack, Sam and Teal'c looked sharply to the door to see Jonas and Stacey standing there, out of breath as if they had run.

Jonas moved into the room and slapped the printouts clutched in his hand onto the small amount of space on the bench. "There was a trial cohabitation of what's termed as two deities," he indicated the relevant section of glyphs. "Apparently it didn't work…"

"So shocking." Jack rolled his eyes but shut his mouth as everyone turned to glare at him quickly before looking back to Jonas.

"As far as we can tell, the goa'uld wiped out the others," he paused for dramatic effect, sharing a glance with Stacey. "But there's a small passage of text here that is interesting." He pointed to the said area and saw Teal'c eyebrows raise.

"What?" Jack said quietly after a moment's pause. Gone was the sarcastic tone, he was now curious apart from anything else.

"There existed a plan to survive the attack of the goa'uld." Teal'c said simply. "Within the walls."

Jack tried to calm himself for a moment but the preposterousness of what was being said got the better of him. "Ok, so first these guys apparently come from a malevolent winter breeze… and now their plan of survival involves something within the walls?" He looked to Sam, hoping she found this as consternating as he did. "Carter? Any clues?"

Sam had gone very quiet. Something very frightening had occurred to her, but she couldn't be sure about it. The look on her face must have alerted Jack to this as he suddenly moved closer, placing a hand on her arm.

"Sam?"

She turned abruptly to Jonas, energised by her thoughts. "What were those walls made of?" Her question was asked with an urgency that shocked them all.

"I… I don't know." Jonas looked at her apologetically.

"It wasn't any form of stone or brick we'd seen before though, was it?" Sam pursued. "It was something synthetic – we saw that when it collapsed." She turned to Jack to explain. "It's true that from the outside it looked like a regular stone structure… but there was something hollow about it. It crumbled much like a kind of plastic combination."

"And?" Jack still wasn't making a connection.

"Sir," Sam said, her voice becoming small as she realised what this may mean. "Man-made building materials like that incorporate air molecules in their structure."

She waited while everyone in the room digested this information.

"Whatever was in that winter breeze was put in the walls." Jack said slowly, his eyes growing wide with fear. "And you two were exposed to it."

To be continued…

A/N: So... I'd like to congratulate liketoread and caligate for being on the right track in their own ways... keep in mind i never really give easy explanations though so we're going to have to see what happens next...

I humbly request that you would do me the honour of furnishing my eager in-box with the fruits of your reflection concerning this passage of fictional creation. (Tranlsation: please review!)