/
11.
Child's play
She inhales a deep breath. The air is stale and cool; old, like it hasn't been exposed to any living thing in years. She coughs, and the momentary shake of her body makes her aware of the hardness of the ground pressing against her hip and shoulder. It's almost bruising.
She sits up, rotating her aching shoulder, and directs her focus at a single source of light across from her. She realises it's fire - a torch lit and hung from the wall several feet away.
Between her and the torch are bars.
A quick survey of her surroundings in the dim, orange light tells her she's in some sort of prison cell: alone. Her heart starts to thud dully, and the increase of her blood pressure sparks the pinprick of a soon-to-be-nasty headache between her eyes.
What happened?
She feels like she's panicking a little, but she pushes it down, trying to carve through her foggy brain to the last thing she remembers.
It's Anoki. He's the last thing she remembers. He'd come out of the temple while she was waiting for the guys, maybe only 10 minutes or so after Jack's message that they were staying for tea with Sani.
Anoki had brought her tea.
At the time, she thought it was a gesture of politeness.
She really dislikes that child.
"Hello?" she calls tentatively, her voice echoing slightly down whatever passage or tunnel adjoined this room. She realises she must be in some other part of the mines - perhaps one of the tunnels she and Teal'c didn't explore.
She hauls herself to her feet, her head throbbing uncomfortably for a moment, and walks over to the door of her cell. She gives it a firm shake, and although the ageing, rusted metal creaks and rattles, it seems quite secure. Turning her attention to the rest of the cell she walks along, shaking each section, testing for any weakness.
She doesn't hear the soft steps of the young boy approaching.
"You are called 'Sam'..."
Sam startles, and spins towards the voice.
"... an odd name for a slave."
Anoki stands just next to the torch, silhouetted, but the light glints off the overly large glasses he wears, and she knows immediately that they're Daniel's.
"What have you done with them?" she demands, anger and confusion overpowering the fear curling its way up her spine, raising the hairs of her neck.
The boy smiles coldly, his teeth a slash of silver in the shadows.
"You need to let me out of here," she says, grabbing the bars and giving them another shake. "Now."
He laughs at that, and the sound is strange, unnerving - the knowing laugh of someone far older wrapped in the falsetto of a child.
"Anoki..." she says, switching to an almost pleading tone, "... this isn't a game."
"Silence!"
Sam sucks in a breath, the cold grip of dread stilling her mind, her heart, her muscles. Because the voice out of the boy was the deep, almost mechanical bass of a Goa'uld.
His eyes flash like white-hot embers.
"Anoki is dead," he says flatly.
"Anoki is standing right in front of me," she responds, challenging.
He laughs again, this time a low, bassy chuckle that feels like it vibrates right through her.
She feels vaguely ill.
"Nothing of the host survives," he says, pleasure clear in his tone. "You know this - you travel with a Jaffa. The First Prime of Apophis!
"Tell me what you know of Apophis! Tell me what you know of my Amaunet!"
He's shouting now, so loud in the confines of the space they're in that her headache flares, pressing against her temples, making even her eyes hurt. She ignores it, instead focusing on the words he has chosen, and arriving at the only logical conclusion.
"You're Amun."
It's a statement, not a question.
"Where are they, slave?" he asks again.
"We're not slaves," she says forcefully.
"You are all slaves," he responds, and cocks his head to one side, regarding her thoughtfully. "But perhaps... you are lo'taurs."
"Lo'taurs?" Sam asks.
"Enough of this!" He raises one hand in a silencing gesture. "I will have all of my answers. Soon."
For just a moment it's like he's forgotten she's there, and in the pale light and flickering shadows, the boy appears to stare at his hand, and then his body, with what Sam can only describe as destain.
And then he's gone, with just the wavering of the fiery torch as any indication that he'd ever been there.
Sam sighs, leaning her weight forward onto the cell door, her forehead slowly coming to rest against the rusty bars. They must be alive, she thinks. They must be, because Amun would not simply leave her here alone if she was the only source of information, and...
... he had said "you travel".
Present tense.
Also, and more obviously, she realises, why bother to subdue them with some sort of sedative in the tea if the intention was to kill them?
No, the guys were alive, and probably somewhere else in these mines.
Her head pounds, and she becomes acutely aware of the bars pressing into either side of her forehead. Frowning, she pushes away from them to take another look, and realises that they're not positioned very close together. They're close enough only to prevent a man or a Jaffa from ever being able to push through; the likely workers in these mines.
They're also far more rusted than she'd first noticed.
A small child could definitely squeeze through, she thinks, and maybe, with some luck and effort, a slim woman.
She has an idea.
/
/
The first thing Jack becomes aware of is the feeling of hard ground pressing against his eye socket - something he realises he remembers all too well from his days as a POW in Iraq.
The thought is like a slap across his face, and he rolls onto his back before sitting bolt upright, blinking rapidly in the dim light. He does a quick check: no apparent injuries, but also no weapons left anywhere on him - not even his knife.
"O'Neill," comes a familiar voice from across the room.
"Teal'c?" he responds. His eyes finally adjust to the dim light, and he sees that Teal'c isn't in a cell like he is - he's chained to the wall opposite him, arms spread wide and legs bound. "You OK?"
"I am unharmed," Teal'c says softly, calmly.
There isn't even a hint of panic or concern in his voice.
Jack shakes his slightly groggy head and climbs to his feet. "This happen to you often?" he asks, testing the bars of his cell.
"Jaffa are trained to endure torture," he states matter-of-factly. "Imagining it before it occurs is rarely beneficial."
Jack hums sceptically. "I have a little experience with torture myself," he says, reflexively bringing his hand up to his ear. "Thing is, it seems humans don't mend as well as Jaffa, so we tend to carry it with us."
"The scars?"
"The experience."
There's a distinctly male groan from the cell next to his. Shadows slowly shift and move into a sitting position: a very unhappy-looking Daniel.
"Jack?" he says, his voice hoarse.
"That's me," he answers lightly. "You hurt?"
Daniel's quiet for a while, clearly processing the question. "Why can't I see?" he eventually responds.
Jack guesses that means 'no', but crosses over to the side of the cell closest to Daniel, dropping down onto his haunches.
He peers at the man across from him. "That would be because you're not wearing your glasses."
Daniel raises one hand to his face as if to check. "Oh."
He sighs audibly, and then starts gingerly searching the ground around him.
"What happened?" he continues, words coming out slowly and carefully as if each one was an effort. "I feel like... I've been hit by a bus."
"We were drugged," Jack responds, anger slowly uncoiling in his gut. "That old snake of a priest put something in the tea."
He pushes to his feet again, and walks back over to the cell door. Channelling all his anger, he aims a kick at where it looks like it locks. It clangs, and rattles violently, but holds.
"Where's Sam?" Daniel says, finally asking the question Jack had been refusing to ask himself since realising where they were.
"Doctor Carter is not here," Teal'c responds.
"Hopefully, she realised something was up and got the hell out of Dodge," Jack adds.
An unmistakably deep chuckle fills the room then. "None of you are going anywhere."
Jack turns on his heel as Anoki enters the space. The boy grips Teal'c's staff weapon firmly in one small hand, and Jack blinks as he realises that Daniel's glasses are resting across the bridge of the child's nose.
"I knew there was something off about you, kid," Jack says, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head.
Anoki's eyes flash, smile falling from his face as he marches across the room to stand in front of Teal'c. He stretches out the staff, pressing the business end against the Jaffa's forehead.
"You are the First Prime of Apophis!" Anoki bellows in his Goa'uld voice, tapping Teal'c's golden emblem for emphasis. "Where is he? Where is the usurper?!"
Teal'c's face remains impassive. "I would not know. I am free of him."
"You do not defend your God?" Anoki says, clearly taken aback.
"I have no God," Teal'c says emphatically.
Jack can't really see Anoki's face from this angle, but he can imagine. The boy - the Goa'uld - takes a step back, lifting the staff from Teal'c's forehead.
"Ka kek," he states finally, before turning and walking over to his and Daniel's cells.
"Why are we here, Anoki?" Jack asks, wrapping his hands around the bars and leaning in.
"This host is mine now, and do not try to pretend, lo'taur - you know where they are."
"They?" Daniel asks softly, still sitting on the ground.
Anoki sneers down at Daniel; it would be disturbing except that the oversized glasses he wears slip forward slightly down his nose.
Jack snorts, holding back a laugh.
"Tell me, Amun," Daniel says, finally finding his feet. "Why are you wearing my glasses? You're a God - you have perfect vision, don't you?"
Jack hides his surprise, not only at Daniel's unflinching surety of who the Goa'uld was, but at his brazen tone.
Anoki - Amun - chuckles again, softly, eyeing Daniel with disinterest. "Of course I do."
"Yes," Daniel continues, "you do. But you see, Anoki really loves those glasses; would've grabbed them right off of my face if I'd let him."
Jack remembers the forest and their first encounter with Anoki, how the kid was fascinated with Daniel's glasses, the genuineness of it, and he can see it - can see the trail of thought Daniel's weaving for them.
Can see it's implications...
The Goa'uld pulls the glasses from his face and throws them at Daniel. They collide with the bars and fall to the ground, a clear crack splintering one of the lenses in two. "A mere trinket," he spits.
It's all their fault.
"We let you out, didn't we?" Daniel says, solidifying Jack's roiling thoughts, though he's still not sure about the how or when. Daniel reaches through the bars to grasp his glasses. "Apophis won... and you've been here ever since."
"A stasis jar," Teal'c suddenly adds, surprise in his voice. "I was aware of such things, but have never encountered one. They are used as a punishment: preserving alive for all eternity an imprisoned Goa'uld symbiote."
The Goa'uld's eyes are fixed on Daniel alone. Livid, he looks as though he would like to kill the archaeologist where he stands. "He did not win."
The silence is heavy in the musty air.
"I was betrayed," the Goa'uld adds, finally.
"By Amaunet," Daniel states, putting on his glasses. "You know, I find it interesting how gods such as yourselves seem to suffer all the same weaknesses we humans do."
"I will show you weak," Amun threatens, preparing to raise the staff weapon.
Jack strides forward then, stretching his arm through the bars in a placating gesture. "Easy there. We're no good to you dead."
The Goa'uld pauses, eyes shifting from Daniel to him, and back again.
Jack is grateful that Daniel has decided to keep his mouth shut this time. He was all for antagonising Goa'uld, but with Sam possibly out there, he wasn't going to let Daniel die on this particular sword when there was a chance of rescue.
"Yes, you remind me, lo'taur, that I am still undecided," Amun says. "Will it be youth," he continues, giving Daniel a pointed look, and then walking slowly to stand in front of Jack's cell. "Or experience?"
Jack swallows thickly.
"Regardless, this body is too small and immature for war, and I will have my answers - one way or another."
He turns and strides down the passage he emerged from. The torch flickers, and Daniel makes a sound that's half exhaustion, half frustration.
"I'm sorry, Jack," he almost whispers, collapsing cross-legged onto the floor.
Jack catches his eye, and walks over to where his cell joins Daniel's.
"This is all my fault," Daniel continues, his head resting in one hand now, voice slightly muffled.
"Daniel," Jack says, warning in his tone.
"If I hadn't..."
"Daniel."
The other man raises his head to look at him then. "I made the call," Jack says resolutely. "I'm the commanding officer, remember?"
"I don't exactly make it easy for you."
"If you think for one moment that I acquiesce because you can be a giant pain in the ass sometimes, you've got another thing coming."
"I too am to blame, Daniel Jackson. I should have recalled the Goa'uld's use of stasis jars," Teal'c adds.
Jack thinks it's particularly hard to accept apologies from a man chained to a wall. "Shut up," he says, "Both of you."
Daniel huffs a soft breath, the corner of his mouth wobbling slightly in an aborted smile.
"Look on the bright side, Daniel," he says flatly, finding a seat on the cold, hard earth. "At least you can see him coming next time."
/
/
Sam has no idea what time of day it is, but the goosebumps raised along her bare arms tell her that the temperature in the mine has dropped, meaning that the sun had probably set. She's hunched over by the bars in one corner of her cell where she's decided the rust is worse, her jacket tightly twisted and wound around the bars.
The light sweat she's worked up cools on her skin as a waft of air finds its way into the space from somewhere. She takes a moment to breathe deeply, the freshness of it like a balm in the putrid room.
Her knuckles are white with the grip on her jacket, and she clenches her teeth as she gives the fabric another twist. The metal creaks, warping just a little bit more since the last twist. She waits, hoping that one of the bars will give, but they remain fixed in place. She twists again, groaning with the effort, and is rewarded with a satisfying snap as one corroded bar finally splits under the strain.
She quickly unwinds her jacket and pulls it back on before lying on her back, positioning herself to kick out the broken bar. She drives a booted foot into the place where the bar has buckled the most, and it shifts another inch.
She thinks it's enough.
She scrambles back around, and tests the gap. Her head fits reasonably easily, but she has to wiggle and push to get her shoulders though. With a relieved sigh she clears her shoulders, and now that her arms are free, pulling her hips through is the work of seconds, though she knows she'll have some bruises later.
Finally, she lies in a heap on the other side of the bars, tired and thirsty, and slightly terrified that she could be too late - that she's taken too long to free herself. She climbs to her feet, scans the room, and decides to head in the direction that Anoki had come from.
Out in the tunnel, she realises there are burning torches at regular enough intervals that nearly the entire route is lit, but it looks as though there is absolutely nowhere to hide - if she meets Anoki coming down the tunnel again, there was no crevice or side passage to duck into.
She has no choice.
She jogs swiftly along the passage, careful to keep her steps as light as possible. It seems interminably long, but finally she notices a change in the lighting up ahead; fiery torchlight splashing across red rock running across the top of the tunnel.
She slows her pace, edging towards where it looks like the tunnel joins another running perpendicular to it. Another waft of fresher air hits her, fluttering the torches momentarily, and she guesses the entrance to the mine is probably to her right.
She looks left, peering down the passage which would likely take her deeper into the mine. The passage is bigger, taller, the torchlight unable to reach every inky shadow. Sam guesses this part may have been a central route through the mine, branching out into different connecting tunnels. She takes a deep breath, and starts down it.
A few minutes later, she sees the gaping dark hole of another tunnel to her right. She stands at its entrance, staring into the blackness, considering taking one of the torches hanging from the walls to venture down it.
But the fact that there are no torches along that route tell her that she's unlikely to find her team in that direction.
She closes her eyes momentarily - they are dry and scratchy, and she is exhausted.
When she's back at her hotel, she's sleeping for a month, she thinks.
It's then that she hears it, low and directionless, but unmistakably the sound of muffled male voices.
Voices that were definitely getting closer.
She dives into the darkened tunnel, pressing herself against one wall, and quiets her breathing.
As the voices draw closer she knows that one is definitely Goa'uld, and the other... is most definitely Sani.
Anger flares in her chest, then. Until this moment, she'd been unsure if the old man was working with the Goa'uld, but it's clear to her now that he is.
"You must call for more men from the village, Sani," Amun says as the two men pass the tunnel Sam hides in.
"Of course, my God," Sani replies reverentially. "I surmised as much, and some of your most faithful servants should be here very shortly."
"You surmised?" Amun scoffs. "You pretend to know the needs of your God, priest?"
"No," Sani responds quickly, placatingly. "Of course not, my Lord. Forgive me - I only surmised that there should be more servants on hand to attend to whatever need you may have."
"Very well," Amun says after a beat, voice growing quieter as they move away from her, further down the main tunnel. "Your words are sweet, priest. You will certainly be rewarded when we have located Apophis, and my victory over the usurper is secured."
"Thank you, my Lord," Sani says, his response barely audible now.
Sam thinks she may vomit, her disgust is so palpable.
She waits another minute or two until she's sure she can no longer hear them, and creeps back out into the main tunnel.
If it's just been Sani with one or two others down in these mines, she realises that it's unlikely that they will have lit any tunnels other than the ones they've been using. And there's also likely only a few reasons why they would be down in the depths of this abandoned mine - the top of that list probably prisoner interrogation.
She steels herself, and heads down the tunnel in the direction the Goa'uld and the priest came from, hoping that she finds her team alive and well.
/
A/N: This is the rabbit hole, folks.
As always, thank you so much all followers/favouriters/readers/reviewers!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of the Stargate franchise. All other characters mentioned in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.