Chapter 19

The Mountain

"Welcome to Colorado," Hammond whispered, not wanting to wake anyone who was sleeping. They had finally passed the border. By now, the trip had taken on a surreal, dreamlike quality. Though no more monsters attacked them, the car passed many signs of the tearing time bubble. There would be patches of weirdness by the side of the road that really didn't seem to belong on Earth. They might see a tree with strange gourds hanging off it like fruit, or hear a howl that most definitely wasn't a wolf. Once thye very nearly hit a thing in the middle of the road. It had antlers and fur but it was not a deer, and it bared its teeth at them as it bounded out of the way. It was high time for the time bubble to be set right.

"I always liked mountains," Jack murmured, only half awake, "And hockey."

"Cold," Daniel whispered from his lap. No one else stirred, except for Mrs. Hammond who managed to pull out a blanket from under her seat and drape it over Daniel. The car ride went on for another hour in silence. Then everybody began to wake up and realize that their destination was fast approaching.

"So now what?" Mark asked, "Are we going to a space ship?"

"A wormhole," Sam answered gleefully, "Beneath a mountain."

"It won't be easy to sneak all of us in," Jack said, frowning, "It's a top security facility." Daniel tugged at Jack's sleeve.

"I can't swim," he whispered to him, his eyes wide and serious. Jack looked down at him in confusion.

"You don't have to swim," he assured him. Sam frowned, her face taking on a look of deep concentration.

"Is there water in the wormhole?" she asked, "I remember walking into water." Daniel nodded in agreement, his expression earnest and worried. Jack looked back and forth between the two of them and then at Teal'c.

"It isn't real water," he said at last, at a loss to explain it better. Sam was always the one who explained how wormholes worked. And though he was quite certain it wasn't water, and they didn't swim to different planets, his own memory felt vague. Like walking through wormholes was something he had seen on a television show. He remembered everything but it was like it had happened to someone else. He hoped he wasn't going to start losing his memory like the other two.

"How will we get to the Stargate?" Teal'c asked, bringing them back on topic.

"My dad could get us there," Mark said, proudly, "He can get anywhere."

"Is this not the same man who has accused me of kidnapping you?" Teal'c asked.

"Well yeah," Mark answered, "I'm just saying if he was here, he could do it."

"We don't need Dad," Sam insisted, "We have Jack. And Lieutenant Hammond. They are super good at sneaking into places. I have an idea, we make an explosion, and when everyone goes to see what it is, we sneak in!"

"We could make the rocks fall!" Theresa piped in enthusiastically, despite the fact she had no idea what they were talking about. She just remembered learning that loud noises in the mountains made rocks fall.

"No!" Daniel screamed, "No falling rock!"

"Ah, but that would be cool," Mark said, oblivious to Daniel's sudden terror, "We could crush the bad guys!"

"No!" Daniel cried again, starting to sound hysterical. It took Jack ten minutes of Arabic to convince him they weren't going to cause an avalanche or crush anybody, and ten minutes after that for him to stop trembling in Jack's lap. It didn't help that he had banged his broken legs in his distress and they were now throbbing painfully. Then Sam suggested they wait for a demon to appear and distract everyone so they could sneak in. Mrs. Hammond even made the suggestion of pretending to be a tour group.

"Like in that one movie with the AI and tic-tac-toe, except the boy was sneaking out, not in!" Jack said. That earned him a lot of blank looks and one raised eyebrow. By the time they made it to five miles from Cheyenne mountain, they still hadn't come up with a concrete plan. Teal'c had already sneaked through the facility once, but he acknowledged that it might be harder to get in than out. Not to mention there were quite a few more people now than then, most of them children with no tactical training, or at least none that they now remembered.

"I think the Hammonds should leave us once we get there, and take Mark back to his parents," Jack said.

"I'm not leaving without Sam!" Mark answered furiously. The Hammonds seemed hesitant to leave them but equally unhappy to go with them. At the very least it was agreed that Mrs. Hammond and Theresa shouldn't be a part of it. Everyone also agreed that Mark shouldn't go except for Mark himself.

"I don't really understand this," Mrs. Hammond said, looking with motherly concern towards the children. Though they had told her again and again that they were from the future and they had to go back, they still looked too young to be sneaking into a government facility, particularly one like NORAD. She had visions of trigger happy guards not realizing their youth until it was too late.

"We pretend to be terrorists or something!" Mark exclaimed when he heard her reservations, "No really, see, everyone thinks you kidnapped all of us, so pretend you did and we're your hostages!"

"Soldiers don't like to negotiate," Daniel said, his face a mask of perfect innocence. Jack stared down at him. The comment was so much like the adult Daniel that he wasn't sure what to make of it; was that something he had learned as a child or was Daniel actually teasing him? Daniel glanced towards him, trying to hide a giggle and not quite succeeding.

One plan they finally agreed upon was for them to drive past the facility, trying to get a good view of the security, and then to keep on going. Jack still had hopes that they could get to one of the more obscure entrances and find it unguarded. They came to the familiar entrance, got a good look at the fences and guards, and were about to drive on. Which was right when the sudden popping noise and the equally sudden appearance of what could only be described as a dragon managed to unravel every half-formed plan they had.

Hammond, who was still driving at this point, had to slam on the breaks when the creature broke into the air right in front of them. It screamed at the car and launched itself forward, long claws crunching into metal and the car jolted to a halt and skidded backwards. Everyone screamed as they felt the car rise into the air and then fall, rolling, and finally coming to a halt on its side. Above them, the dragon roared. Then came the sound of gunfire.