Sam jerked back into reality, her heart beating hard in her chest. Briefly, she raised her hand to her face to wipe away the icky red stuff sliding down it. She looked down at Major Mansfield, whom she had been shielding when the tunnel caved in. He was dead. She pulled off his dogtags and stowed them in her vest pocket for when she arrived back at the SGC...if she returned.

She rose unsteadily to her feet and looked at the debris around her. Bodies were strewn at various intervals of the ruined lab. Dust was still raining down from the ceiling. Chunks of rock lay indiscriminately on person and floor alike. Glass pieces were semi floating in a shallow pool of water...

Wait. Glass. Water.

Lantash.

Her gaze quickly shifted to the bench. The symbiote was no longer in its glass tank. Sam looked around, half of her desperately trying to find it while the other half desperately hoping not to. As she circled the table, she found what she was half-searching for. Lantash lay amongst broken glass, lifeless. The last remaining remnant of Martouf was gone.

Releasing a sigh to control herself, she searched for any signs of life. There were none. She was alone.

Kneeling beside Ren'al, Sam acquired the formula for the symbiote poison, hoping that she could survive long enough to either destroy it or synthesize more.

The base shook as the surface was once more bombarded. Sam covered her head and ducked low until it passed. Pulling herself from out of her makeshift shield, she looked around for any other SGC personnel.

She found Elliot just outside in the hallway, and she knelt to check his pulse. She'd been hardly expecting to find one, but she couldn't help the wave of disappointment that rushed over her as she confirmed her suspicions. He was dead. Sam couldn't help but feel immensely guilty and more than partly responsible. His first mission! He had been killed in action on his first mission. Where was the justice in that? He'd been looking forward to going offworld, and then when he finally did it, he could never go again. In a similar fashion to Major Mansfield, Sam pulled off Elliot's dogtags. She hung her head for a second before moving off. She could do nothing for them now.

Sam spared half a thought for Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill. She hoped they were on the surface, which was maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit safer than down here. She didn't allow herself to dwell on these thoughts long, not wanting to feed the fires of what could ultimately prove to be false hopes.

Suddenly, there was another loud explosion. But this one seemed different. The entire place shook with the impact, and Sam felt herself grabbing onto the wall in order to keep her balance. Newly-formed debris scattered the hall outside the lab.

After coming across the eighth or ninth body in the hallway, Sam felt compelled to address the two pieces of her mind warring inside her skull. One told her to evacuate now; that there were probably no survivors and she should save herself, relaying the symbiote poison formula to Earth. The other told her to wait it out. Surely there had to be someone left! Either way, she figured she didn't have much time.

Or perhaps she didn't have any.

Any thought patterns along these lines were swiftly ended as the sound of rubble moving and footsteps caught her attention. Her ears twitched sensitively. Whoever was there, they were moving lightly and were reasonably stealthy. Sam pulled herself to a sudden stop, listening harder. As she stopped, however, whoever was around the corner stopped too: they could hear her as well as she could hear them. The dull droning sound of sudden silence rung in her ears. She darted around the corner, raising her weapon and her finger readily poised over the trigger - anybody she encountered was very liable to be shot at this stage. The problem was, as soon as she had revealed one inch of herself, she found she was staring down the barrel of a gun herself. Sam's eyes widened and a gasp escaped her lips before she recognized exactly what she was looking at.

It was a P-90. Colonel O'Neill. She practically dropped her own weapon out of pure relief - half from finding him alive, half for not shooting him.

"Carter!" he growled, lowering his weapon and a little on edge. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, sir," she replied, nodding. "You and Teal'c?"

"We're fine." Right on cue, Teal'c walked around a bend further down the tunnel. "Where is SG-15?"

Sam bit her lip. Colonel O'Neill didn't need to have studied human psychology to understand what that meant. The place around them shook with the force of another bombing.

"What do you say we bust out of this place, huh?" suggested the Colonel.

"Indeed," replied Teal'c, hefting his staff weapon. "We must exit via the rings. This way."

Alert, the three of them made their way to the rings.

They reached the end of the corridor quickly - too quickly. Rubble blocked their way. "Uh, Teal'c?" said O'Neill. "Tell me that the rings weren't down there."

"If I were to say such a thing, it would be an utter fabrication," said Teal'c. "The rings were, in fact, in that direction." He gestured at the debris.

"Ay," breathed O'Neill. "Know any other way around?"

Sam nodded. "Through the lab."

They turned and began to double back, feeling anxious at the thought of all the time they had wasted. However, they were unopposed on their journey back.

Something about the place didn't quite sit right with Sam. Sure, there had been several people killed in here just today, and sure, she was struggling to stem the impending wave of panic that threatened to overwhelm her, but something seemed...different. She carefully chose her steps through the ruined place, avaoiding bits of crystal and blood stains.

It was that moment that it occurred to her.

She froze. "Sir, there's no bodies."

While keeping quiet would not have boded well for them, saying anything had been a mistake as well. She had been heard. There was the unmistakable clinking of armour; heavy, solid footfalls of men snapping to attention; orders shouted; staff weapons powered.

They turn and ran for all they were worth. Balls of superheated plasma brushed past them, sometimes missing them only by a hair's width. The Jaffa were too close behind for them to turn and fight, so they just kept running. The rings couldn't be too far off now.

Sam darted around another bend. She took a millisecond to glace behind; O'Neill and Teal'c were still at her heels.

It felt like something out of a cartoon. The moment she turned back to face where she was going, she hit a semi-solid object and rebounded, falling to the floor. Teal'c used the count she was down to shoot the semi-solid object - a Jaffa - and others that were of fast approach. O'Neill had raised his P-90 and had joined the fighting.

There were two significant shots fired, followed closely behind by two groans and bodies falling. Sam looked around, considering trying to shoot her way out. But she knew it wouldn't do any good. Jaffa surrounded them. O'Neill and Teal'c were already unconscious from zatn'k'tel blasts, and she didn't feel like playing with their lives by resisting too harshly.

Sam raised her hands in a peaceful-ish gesture.

I surrender.

The first prime raised the zatn'k'tel, and fired. Sam fell to the ground as she was confronted with blackness.