Yet more plotless storyness. Have fun reading, whoever you are! I sure hope you're liking this…
NEXT SCENE
"I still don't like this idea, Daniel," Jack said the next morning, taking his chances at irritating Daniel.
"I don't really enjoy it either, Jack, but what choice do we have?" Daniel responded.
"I guess none, really," Jack said.
"It will be better than being tortured by Anubis, trust me," he said quietly.
"I guess so," Jack answered.
Suddenly, footsteps were heard. Each member of the team started up their common nervous reaction. Jack tapped his fingers on the hard wall, Carter hummed, Teal'c blinked exceedingly, and Daniel, well, most of his nervous reactions were conducted with his hands, which were tied up right now, so he just stood there...with a nervous expression on his face.
Anubis entered. He was carrying the memory device. Daniel let out a small sigh. He had been wondering all night about whether Anubis might have changed his mind and preferred physical torture over mental. Now Daniel was sure his plan would work...if he did it right.
"Are you ready for more scenarios, Dr. Jackson? What memory shall I choose for you?" Anubis asked.
Daniel shifted uneasily. How would he convince Anubis to take him there? He had originally thought of just saying, "Well, just don't take me to Abydos at such-and-such a time." But right now it sounded too cheesy. He looked over at Jack for help.
Luckily, O'Neill had been thinking along the same lines. "Take him to any time when he was with us and happy," he said.
"Interesting, O'Neill. Perhaps I shall take him to a time when he was not with you. You have no idea what went on when he was on Abydos for a year, do you?" Anubis asked.
Jack, being the wonderful actor that he was given the many years he had been in covert ops, looked nervously around the room to avoid the question. Anubis smiled, assuming the answer was no, and looked at Daniel.
Daniel figured now would be an okay time to present Anubis with his request, "Send me to any time on Abydos. I was happy the whole time I was there. Especially two months after my arrival there, when I was happily married," Daniel was pretty sure that was when he had found the cave writings. He just hoped Anubis didn't believe him.
"I doubt that very much, Dr. Jackson," Anubis said. "Let us take you there, just to make sure. Besides, it will be interesting for me to possibly learn more about the planet that I so easily destroyed."
Daniel gulped and looked around frantically to show off his own good acting skills. Anubis put the device on his head and he didn't have to pretend he was hurt anymore.
Anubis set the timing and Daniel was off on his solo mission...
NEXT SCENE
Daniel found himself in a cave on Abydos. He was bewildered. How did he get here? He tried to concentrate very hard. There were guns left over from when the Air Force soldiers had come. They had left Daniel and the Abydonians with supplies including Earth food, weapons and, at Daniel's request, coffee making supplies.
He reached up to push his hand on his head because of a massive headache that was emerging. But something was wrong. He moved his had through his hair and brought it down, shocked. When had he gotten his hair cut?
Then, it hit him. This isn't real. This is a virtual reality. No, a memory. One of his memories of being on Abydos. Why was he here? He knew the name, it was on the tip of his tongue...Anubis. A Goa'uld. Like Ra. He had friends. Jack, Sam, Teal'c. Those were their names. They were in trouble he had to save them...and himself. He had to find a password, on a cave wall.
But there was something else. Something important that he didn't want to do. Daniel struggled to remember this one important detail he knew he was forgetting. He knew if it took too long, he wouldn't have a chance at this again. But what was it?
NEXT SCENE
Jack stared at Daniel nervously. So far, he was doing nothing. No pain, no words, nothing. If he took too much longer, Anubis would stop it and send him to an actual painful memory. Anubis was getting impatient already.
"C'mon, Danny," Jack thought, "Accomplish your mission. But don't hurt yourself too badly, please. Remember what it is."
Then, almost as if Jack's thoughts had gone through into Daniel, Daniel shrunk down to his knees in pain. He yelled, but it was not as bad as his earlier experience with the radiation memory.
Jack half smiled, knowing Daniel had remembered. At the same time, though, he felt selfish, knowing that Daniel was doing all of this to save
SG-1. He was really in no position to be doing the "saving the day" this time. He just hoped Daniel also remembered not to hurt himself too terribly, or they could lose him...
NEXT SCENE
Daniel screamed. He had remembered seconds earlier that he needed to hurt himself. He couldn't quite remember why, but he decided he would take his chances since this wasn't real anyway. What could happen?
But for some reason or another, stabbing yourself in the side with a knife hurt a lot more than he thought it would in a memory. He yanked it out and placed the blood-covered weapon on a nearby rock. He held his side and breathed heavily. At the same time, though, he began to read the cave walls.
NEXT SCENE
Daniel was trying to get his chained up hand to reach his side while he was still on his knees. His breathing was heavy, but consistent.
Jack sighed heavily and sat on the floor, knowing that as long as Daniel was hurt, he would remain in the memory. Anubis was smiling evilly, or, he would have...he was standing up menacingly. That makes more sense, Jack supposed. Either way, he was obviously content with Daniel's pain and wasn't about to stop it any time soon.
All SG-1 could do now was watch, wait, and pray Daniel would get through this alive.
NEXT SCENE
Daniel skimmed through the many hieroglyphs that blanketed the cave wall. He was looking for something specific. A password of some sort. So far, all he had found was mention of a story of a boy who was captured by this Anubis he somehow remembered. But he wasn't sure how this would help. However, afraid that if he didn't read it, he would miss the password, he read on quickly.
Somehow, his concentration had left his pain in the back of his mind. He decided that, for whatever reason, he needed to be in more pain than what he was currently in. He grabbed the knife again and...
NEXT SCENE
Daniel screamed again, seemingly out of nowhere. Jack sat up. "Daniel, don't hurt yourself too bad. You have to tell us the password, too, remember," he thought.
Anubis seemed pleased though, which, Jack thought, was a good thing, in an evil, sickening sort of way. Teal'c also seemed worried though, which was somehow comforting to Jack. At least, it was better than Carter's "sleeping on the job" routine, again.
Jack just hoped Daniel was almost there...
NEXT SCENE
Daniel grabbed his other side and sat down. He set the bloody knife down again. For something not real, it sure felt real. He continued reading. He was getting closer. He was sure of it. It had already mentioned a password in the writings. It was just getting rather hard to breathe now, but he would survive.
Finally, he found it. The password. He smiled at himself. He had accomplished his mission. But now, how would he escape? He could yell, but would anyone hear him? It was worth trying.
"I found it!" he screamed and waited for a response.
NEXT SCENE
"I found it," Daniel whispered, still in pain.
Jack heard it. He shot his eyes toward Anubis. If Anubis found out their plan...Jack didn't even want to think about it. Jack thought about it for a minute. Daniel wanted out, now. How was he to escape? They hadn't discussed that!
Jack thought back to when Anubis stopped him the first time. What had Daniel done?
'Oh, Dr. Jackson, did you have to go and spoil the fun? Once you remember the scenario isn't real, it is no longer as amusing.'
Anubis had said that the first time.
How would Jack get Daniel to remember it? 'Oh, Daniel, just say you know it isn't real and get it over with!'
NEXT SCENE
He still wasn't out. Maybe no one had heard him. He was about to try to scream again, louder. But then, something told him not to. Deep down, he somehow knew it was a bad idea to talk about the password.
How would he escape, then? Maybe, if he said he knew it wasn't real...
"This isn't real..." he yelled, then suddenly felt very dizzy. His eyes rolled back as he fell to the ground and fainted from blood-loss.
NEXT SCENE
"This isn't real..." Daniel said, barely audible. Then, he passed out.
But, this was enough fun for Anubis for the time being. Therefore, he yanked the memory device off of Daniel. Daniel moaned as his blue eyes fluttered open. He looked around, eyes squinted. He turned to Jack.
"Jack? Sam? Teal'c?" he questioned.
"We are all indeed here, Daniel Jackson," Teal'c stated.
"Oh...good, then," he said.
Jack's eyebrow went up. Daniel was quite "out of it".
"I'll be back," Anubis said, and strode off.
Once he was out of hearing range, Daniel seemed to immediately perk up. He looked at his teammates in excitement.
"I found the password," he said.
"And...what was it?" Jack asked impatiently.
"Aten," Daniel answered.
"Ah...you're sure it's not a-nine?" Jack's sarcastic reply came.
Daniel rolled his eyes, "No, Jack. Aten is an ancient Egyptian god."
"I thought you said these guys didn't believe the Goa'uld were gods." Jack said.
"Please explain, Daniel," Carter said.
"No, not most of them. You see, when the Goa'uld came to Earth to take ancient Egyptians to Abydos, they came at different time periods. There was a time in Egyptian history when the people were monotheistic. They were under the rule of Akhenaten. He and his queen forced the Egyptians to burn all of the statues of any other gods than Aten--and early manifestation of the sun. They converted all of the temples to be for him. However, when he died, very few people remained loyal to his beliefs, and set up the temples to be used for the other gods, again. But the very few who remained loyal were probably brought to Abydos with others. There, they created their own little pyramid in which they could worship Aten. That pyramid is the one in the story. The password to get in was Aten, because no one else on Abydos still worshipped him."
"...so no one else would know the password because they weren't familiar with the word," Carter said and nodded.
"Right," Daniel said. "Now, I think we've spent enough time explaining it. Let's get out of here before..."
The prison doors opened, catching each member of SG-1 by surprise. Anubis practically ran in. He held a gun that had been confiscated from them when they had been captured.
"You have a plan to escape, do you not?" he asked. "Tell it to me, now!"
"NO! No we don't. What are you talking about? There is no way out of here unless we can defeat you. And, although I would love to do just that, I'm afraid I'm a little tied up right now," Daniel said quite convincingly.
"I do not believe you," he said, "I heard you speaking of escape."
Anubis aimed the metal point of the gun directly at Daniel's heart. But Daniel saw what was coming and at the last minute moved to the right. The bullet hit him in the left shoulder. He jolted back in pain and held in a scream between clenched teeth. Blood ran down his chest. He looked up at Anubis and said, "We--do--not--have--an--escape--plan."
Anubis still held the gun at Daniel, but became more relaxed. The human was correct. There was no escape from this prison. He, Anubis, was invincible. He just had a nervous feeling that the humans were more clever than he gave them credit for. Though Dr. Jackson was smart, he was not very strong, Anubis decided. The gunshot wound would probably cause him to lose a lot of blood, and possibly kill him before the night was over.
He lowered the gun and left, confident that SG-1 really didn't have a plot of escape.
Daniel had his eyes squeezed closed and teeth clenched together in pain. At least he was still breathing fairly regularly, Jack thought.
"Daniel, I'm sorry," he said.
Daniel opened his eyes and gave Jack a small smirk, "For what? For not stopping Anubis? You couldn't have stopped him, Jack. It's not your fault." he said and closed his eyes again.
If he hadn't spent so much time explaining the password, they could have been at the Stargate, possibly the SGC, by now. Well, it had been Carter who asked him to explain...
"C'mon, guys. Let's try the password," he said.
The others nodded in agreement. Teal'c counted out the correct number of bricks and found the one that needed to be pushed in. He lifted his head and nodded to Daniel.
"Aten," Daniel said as loudly and clearly as possible while Teal'c pushed in the brick.
The wall began to shake slightly and Teal'c stepped back. About 1/3 of the wall came crashing down before them. Two Jaffa were guarding the outside. They pointed their staff weapons into the cell, but were too shocked and confused to fire. Teal'c and Jack grabbed the end of their weapons and twirled them so that they escaped the guards' hands. Then, together, they shot the Jaffa.
Jack then turned to Daniel and quickly shot the chains that were imprisoning his friend. Daniel's arms fell to his sides, and, then, he fell. Teal'c ran over to help him rise. Together, they all started running in a dead sprint toward the Stargate before anyone inside heard the commotion. Any Jaffa they ran into were immediately shot by either Jack or Teal'c. Along the way, they also stole a couple of zats for Daniel and Sam. Unfortunately, Anubis did hear the wall fall. He ran into the cell and saw SG-1 fleeing. He grabbed a staff weapon and aimed carefully at Daniel, who was not expecting anything. He fired the weapon, and the blast traveled just far enough to collide with Daniel's back.
Daniel stumbled forward, but Jack and Teal'c had seen. They each grabbed one of Daniel's arms before he hurdled to the ground. With his free hand, Jack fired back at Anubis, for Teal'c still had a staff weapon wound on his right arm. The Zat guns wouldn't shoot far enough to hit him, but neither would his staff weapon blasts hit them. They kept on running, Jack now grabbing on to Daniel with both arms to get a firmer hold on him. They didn't think the shot was enough to kill him, but he had been shot with a bullet earlier. They didn't have time to check; they had to get off of this planet. They could deal with whatever catastrophe Daniel's life was in when they got him back to the infirmary. They were getting closer to the Stargate, and it was now in visual range.
"Carter, dial the 'gate!" Jack yelled over the sounds of staff weapons and zats being shot at them.
"What?" she stopped and turned around to yell.
By the time she had stopped, the three men were already caught up to her. "Never mind, Carter, I'll do it!" Jack said, exasperated.
"What? What did I do?" she complained.
As Jack let go of Daniel, Teal'c put him over his shoulders to carry him through the 'gate. He then turned to Carter and gave her his "shut up, now, or... you don't want to know the alternative" look.
She calmed down with one glance at Teal'c. Then, she said, "Colonel, where are you dialing? You can't dial Earth, we don't have our GDO's."
"I'm dialing the Tok'ra! We can use their IDC to get through the iris!"
"Good idea, sir," she yelled as the 'gate's whoosh emitted. Together, the team ran through the 'gate to P3X 576, the Tok'ra planet.