There was something wrong with this picture. Daniel kept looking askance at the two men clanking down the hall beside him, but the pieces never managed to fall into place, at least not into anything that made sense. Worse, every time he did, they returned his glances with increasingly suspicious frowns in the case of one and pacifying smiles from the other. Neither was reassuring, though if he had to choose, he preferred the outright suspicion. It was direct, for one. And kind of novel. Usually the pacifying smiles were his forte; it was kind of disconcerting to be on the other side of one.

Nothing about this mission was going according to plan. Sure, the plan had fallen apart about as quickly as they ever do- went down the wrong hall at the wrong time, ended up in a firefight with some of Mithras' Jaffa, got separated – but none of that was surprising. Missions not going according to plan was usually part of the plan. It was just a practical consideration. But the part of the plan involving the mission not going to plan (and really, he was going to have to kick Jack for putting it that way, because it was now stuck in his head) rarely involved finding members of captured SG teams wandering mindlessly around a mother-ship. Usually, by the time SG-1 arrived, captured teams had either already made their escape and just radioed for a rendezvous or they were in pretty deep shit and in need of a rescue. An exploration team could usually get out of any situation short of dire- they just were that well trained. You had to be extremely good at what you did to even qualify for the SGC, so...

a) they were the real deal, but strangely inept, or

b) the SGC had a big problem.

He ran that back in his head. No, he could safely say the SGC had a problem either way. These men were not soldiers. They knew weapons, and they moved with the guarded and lethal grace of the S.F.s, but they were too...loose. And they seemed to have slept through every single briefing and mandatory training the SGC offered. Like, oh, the history of the Stargate Program, Jaffa history and psychology, the basics of Goa'uld technology, the basic layout of all Goa'uld ships... At least on the last, he'd had the excuse of having amnesia, and that didn't seem to be the case here.

So, yes. There was a problem here; the only question was which kind of problem it was. Finding two errant members of SG-15 wandering around, apparently ignorant of even the basics was ...not ideal. Daniel could only hope the rest of them were cooling their heels in the cells and not also wandering around like wayward sheep. Rounding them all up was not something he looked forward to.

But - He had no reason to doubt that they weren't SG-15. Hell, he'd seen them at the briefing that morning. And though the fake SG-11 had been superficially convincing, but all the preparation and training hadn't been able to give them the right nuances. Like the half dozen pop-culture references these two had made in the last ten minutes. All used with the depth and fluency acquired over a lifetime.

So.

"You know," he said, interrupting whatever whispered argument the two had been having, "I'm pretty sure wearing that armor is in violation of the Geneva convention."

They both looked over at him like he was nuts. Ah, well. That was familiar ground. But hey, at least now they were acknowledging his presence. It was an improvement over the way they'd simply continued on as if he weren't there. No- that wasn't it. They'd been aware of him, but in the same way you were aware of a table. It was there, but inconsequential. It was disconcerting and not just a little annoying.

"Dude," the first one said, "It's a spaceship," he said this slowly. "In outer space," he added, like Daniel was suffering from some acute mental disability.

"I doubt they were thinking of extrasolar warfare when they drafted it," added the second, the one who had been concealing an impressive amount of weaponry in his uniform. The weaponry had been packed up in a backpack, which he'd swung over one shoulder.

"Besides, what are they going to do, court-martial us?" said the first. The second elbowed him in the ribs.

"I mean yes, of course they could court-martial us," the first amended. "But uh...the lives of our teammates are worth it?"

Daniel blinked. "Right." That foreboding feeling was back. "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your names."

"We didn't say," said the one tersely. The other rolled his eyes and said, "I'm Sam. He's Dean."

Daniel added it to his mental tally of weirdness and just kept staring at them expectantly.

"Oh," added the second one, Sam. "Winchester." Daniel just raised an eyebrow. "Both of us."

"Should you be telling me that? The SGC may be more flexible, but..." He let it trail off, then watched their faces carefully.

"We're brothers," the first one – Dean- growled.

Ha! Daniel masterfully managed to hide a smirk. Baiting them wasn't exactly dignified, but it was good to finally get a reaction. But wait- his eyes narrowed. "You were placed on the same team?"

"Yes," Dean said.

"Really."

Dean shrugged indifferently.

Daniel sighed, if only in his mind. He resolved to find Sam, then return to their regularly scheduled rescue, then get the hell home to his nice-and-above-all unused bed. At that point, the mystery of SG-15 would be Jack's problem...and General Hammond's. It wouldn't be his until tomorrow, after he got some sleep. The call from Major Pierce had come in right as he had started to thinking about heading home for some downtime. And wouldn't you know, Goa'uld ships did not come equipped with Starbucks. Maybe that could be reason enough to go public; the franchise would probably be eager to expand anyway it could.

He rubbed his face with his hand. That was it, he'd finally lost his mind. He wasn't tired exactly, but there'd been this new ancient tablet to work on and he'd kind of spent the last three days on the base. The military was good at many things, but buying comfortable beds weren't one of them. But he'd been this close to finishing the translation. And look where that had gotten him. He'd swear never to do it again, except for the fact that he wasn't going to fool anybody on that point, least of all himself. Plus, when it came to either finishing some research or continuing to unpack his apartment from the last time he'd...ok, died. It wasn't a hard decision.

Daniel rubbed at his temple, mostly to keep it from twitching. So he smiled, probably not that convincingly, and pointed down the hallway. "The control room should be down there. Hopefully we can use it to get an idea...." he trailed off as the unmistakable clank-clank of a Jaffa patrol became audible. "Of course." He looked over at the brothers. "Neither of you were thinking something like, oh, 'this can't get any worse,' were you?"

They shook their heads dutifully, though they still were giving him odd looks.

"Of course not, what was I thinking." he sighed. "We passed a storage room a few yards back. We'll just head back there."

But Dean was still shaking his head.

"What?" Daniel asked, exasperated. "We need to go."

"Look," Dean said, "We might as well just face this thing head on. I'm tired of running around these stupid corridors."

"Corridors, I think you'll find, are far better than cells."

Dean pursed his lips, as if he actually had to think about that one. He shrugged.

"We could end this all pretty quickly," he concluded.

Daniel stared at him. "Yes, it could. That's exactly the problem."

The footsteps grew louder.

"Dean, maybe we should listen to him," Sam said, "he is the...uh, expert, after all." He put an odd emphasis on the word that Daniel could not decipher, but it seemed to mean something to the other man.

"Fine," he said, "But when this ends with me getting shot again, I'm blaming you."

Daniel headed back down towards the storage room, and the two (finally) followed. He punched in the combination to open the door, something that unduly impressed the brothers. It'd worry him more if there wasn't a patrol right around the corner. He managed to get the doors closed just as they rounded it.

"We could probably take them out," Dean groused.

"It'd draw too much attention," Daniel countered. "And you'll find it's a lot easier to sneak around when they're not actively looking for you." It came out harsher than he intended, but the brothers fell silent.

It meant hearing the patrol that much better. Clank, Clank, Clank. You could almost set your watch- They were slowing down. Great. They...were coming into the storage room, weren't they? Of course they were.

He started looking for a place for the three of them to hide.

"Time for plan B," Dean announced.

"And what's that?" Daniel asked, distracted.

"Just try to look scared."

Daniel had one blissful moment of only being confused by this statement. Unfortunately, enlightenment soon dawned. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

Dean shrugged.

"There's no way- you're only going to get yourselves killed."

The brothers seemed unconcerned. "Yeah, probably," Dean conceded, "But this is kind of our thing. Plus, this is nothing."

His brother was nodding in agreement. "Remember that job at the Russian Embassy?" he said, completely ignoring Daniel...again.

"With the-?"

"Yeah."

"Seriously, how did we pull that off?"

Sam shook his head. "You'll have to ask Chuck that one, because I'm still not sure."

Daniel commendably did not try to beat his own brains out against the wall. The doors unlocked.

The brothers drew their weapons and pushed their expressions into something stone-faced and fierce.

The door opened, and in stepped the First Prime. He looked at Sam and Dean with consternation. "What are you doing?" he demanded. The room was suddenly filled with Jaffa.

"We spotted this Tauri dog skulking through the halls." Sam said. His pronunciation was passable, at least. "We captured him."

The First Prime looked pleased- and even more so when he got a closer look at Daniel. Oh yes. This was going to go great.

"Well done. You have served your master well." He gestured to the patrol, who quickly went over to the far wall and picked up a gold chest.

"Come," said the First Prime. "You may present the prisoner to our Lord," he added magnanimously.

"We're honored," Sam replied. The First Prime nodded and left the room.

The rest of the Jaffa shuffled out, bearing the heavy-looking chest on a litter. Dean flashed Daniel a thumbs up as they trailed after them.

Daniel was forced to wonder, not for the first time, if the universe at large just enjoyed screwed with him. He suspected the answer was 'yes'.