The past few weeks felt like a blur to Marc Spector and Steven Grant.
After Steven had fished Ammit's ushabti from its hiding place, lodged deep within the gullet of her Avatar's mummy, Marc and Layla had narrowly evaded Harrow's followers and escaped from the tomb, the little statue safely nestled in the pocket of Marc's jacket.
Marc knew he owed Layla an explanation for everything, for her father's death and his hand in it, for Marc's abrupt disappearance and surprise divorce papers, for Steven's very existence. Hell, even Steven was still in the dark about most of their past, and the poor guy had to live in the same body as Marc. But he still couldn't quite bring himself to sit down and talk about these things without feeling the familiar waves of anxiety and shame rush over him, urging him to bury everything deep down within himself and never let them resurface. So Marc leapt on any excuse he could find to avoid having a serious conversation with either of them.
At first, there was no time to talk because they needed to escape from Ammit's tomb and Harrow's cult was hot on their trail. Then he had to rescue Khonshu from the Great Pyramid of Giza, where his fellow gods had imprisoned him in his own ushabti as punishment for turning the night sky back over 2,000 years.
Marc may have felt conflicted about many of the things Khonshu demanded of him, all the violence and death that had stained his hands and his heart over the years, but he owed Khonshu for the sacrifice he made. After all, without his help, they may not have located Ammit's tomb in time to snatch her ushabti before Harrow could free her from her prison.
Steven, of course, vehemently objected to freeing Khonshu and insisted that they were better off without him digging his claws into their lives again. But with so many close calls with Harrow's followers, Marc knew they would need Khonshu's help.
Besides, Harrow still had the scarab. It didn't matter how far Marc ran. No place was safe to stash Ammit's ushabti as long as Harrow had that artifact in his possession. As a result, Khonshu demanded Marc keep the ushabti with him at all times until they could come up with a plan to either steal the scarab back from Harrow or find a way to obscure the location of Ammit's ushabti from him.
As soon he could, Marc slipped away from Layla and tried to put as much distance as he could between them. Steven spent hours shouting at Marc every chance he got for abandoning her without a word yet again.
After several days of intermittently berating Marc and giving him the cold shoulder, Steven finally mellowed out a bit, resigned to Marc dragging him around against his will for the foreseeable future. Even though he didn't like Marc ditching Layla and following Khonshu's orders, he accepted that they needed to keep Ammit's ushabti out of Harrow's hands. Eventually, Steven had grudgingly come around and stopped fighting Marc so much as he dragged him from city to city, country to country.
"Well, at least I can check a few places off my bucket list," Steven had joked, though Marc caught a glimpse of the tight lines around his eyes and the unhappy tilt to his mouth when he glanced at his reflection.
Since Khonshu insisted that Marc keep Ammit's ushabti on his person at all times, and it didn't feel particularly safe just stuffed loose in his jacket pocket, Marc eventually voiced his concern that he might accidentally break the statue himself one of these days. Steven reluctantly offered to walk him through the proper method to safely package it. When Marc's hands clumsily tried to follow his instructions, Steven hesitantly requested that Marc give him control of the body.
"Just for this one thing, then I'll give the body back, I swear," Steven rushed to say, clearly expecting him to refuse.
Marc slanted an inscrutable glance at the mirror, meeting Steven's desperate eyes in the reflection. Steven's heart started to sink when Marc still didn't say anything. He regretted all those times he'd previously refused to switch when Marc asked – well, it was usually more of a demand really – because now Marc obviously didn't trust him not to run off with their body when given the chance.
Just as Steven started working himself into a panic at the terrifying thought that Marc would never willingly give him control ever again, he suddenly blinked and found himself on the other side of the mirror. He let out a quiet sigh of relief, the strange feeling of being trapped and stifled within his own body finally bleeding away as he moved his limbs on his own for the first time in weeks. He risked a glance at his reflection to see Marc watching him quietly with a vaguely pinched expression.
"Right. Thanks. I'll just get to it then," Steven said before turning his attention to the half-wrapped ushabti that Marc had dropped in his lap before switching with him. Marc watched in silence as Steven undid his haphazard work.
With the statue uncovered once more, Steven took a moment to examine it under the better lighting conditions of their motel room. Back when they were in the tomb, he hadn't had a chance to get a really good look at it in the dim light. The grinning crocodile head stared back at him. The craftsmanship of the detailed carving was beautiful. It was a real shame they had to hide it from the rest of the world.
When he sensed Marc begin to shift restlessly, Steven shook his head and started wrapping up the statue, fingers moving with a deft confidence Marc had rarely seen in him before.
"Where did you learn how to do this stuff?" Marc asked when it looked like Steven was nearly finished. "Working at the museum?"
Steven's hands slowed as he glanced at his reflection again. "I just worked in the gift shop, remember?"
Marc nodded silently but waited patiently for Steven to continue.
"Well, when I was trying to stay awake because, well, because of you apparently, I read a lot and watched way too many documentaries." He paused and hesitated a moment before fixing his eyes deliberately on the statue in his hands and adding, "Also I may have practiced a bit with those little souvenir statues in the gift shop in case I ever had the opportunity to handle the real things."
Marc figured he might have been a little embarrassed about his admission. He didn't really understand why though. Maybe it was just another Steven thing.
"There we go. Nice and secure," Steven said, giving the package a light, affectionate pat after he smoothed down the final strip of tape. Then he hesitated, shifting uncomfortably, before lifting his gaze to peek at Marc as he tried to swallow the sudden lump forming in his throat. "I suppose you'll be wanting the body back now…"
"You did good tonight, Steven," Marc said after a moment. "Why don't you just keep the body for a while." Marc tried to ignore Khonshu's indistinct grumbling at that.
"What? Really?!" Steven asked, perking up.
"Sure. I'm tired," Marc shrugged before leaning back and closing his eyes.
Steven grinned.
"Just try to stay out of trouble," Marc warned.
When Steven agreed easily, Marc allowed himself to fade into the background, content to leave Steven to his own devices for the rest of the evening.
After that day, something seemed to shift between them, like they had developed an understanding of sorts. Steven kept his word and willingly switched with Marc when he eventually said he needed the body back. A wave of relief swept away some of the tension eating away at Marc when he wasn't forced to fight Steven for control again.
Over the next several days, Marc tentatively offered to switch with Steven on occasion, and Steven never turned down an opportunity to take control of the body. Desperate for some sense of normalcy after the chaotic turn his life had taken after he became aware of Marc's existence, Steven practically jumped on the chance to do mundane things like brush their teeth or shower. Eventually he even popped over to a nearby store to replenish their supplies.
One night when Marc felt his head nodding while driving to their next destination, he asked Steven if he wanted to take over for a bit. Steven didn't answer audibly even when Marc attempted to catch his gaze in the rearview mirror, but Marc felt his awareness being nudged to the side, so he allowed himself to sink back into the darkness to rest.
When Marc woke up the next morning and was greeted by a dingy motel ceiling, he rolled over in bed and found himself looking at Steven, blinking sleepily, in the reflection of a sliding-door mirror.
"Hey, thanks for taking over last night," Marc said, a hint of a smile playing along his lips. "I was getting really sick of driving."
"Huh?" Steven's brow furrowed in confusion. "That wasn't me."
Marc froze.
Steven chewed on his lip, lost in thought as he tried to recall the previous night. "I think I must've fallen asleep while you were driving. Besides I don't even have my license. I thought I was going to get myself killed the last time I tried to drive!"
Marc carefully tried not to think about the fact that they really had been on the brink of death that day in the Alps, crushed beneath fallen logs and the crumpled metal of the cupcake van Steven had stolen. Marc had wrestled control away from Steven, his grasp on the body weakened by his terror and pain, and then healed them with Khonshu's ceremonial armor.
Steven glanced up and met Marc's worried gaze.
"Maybe your mind just went on autopilot or something, yeah?" Steven offered. But the subtle frown tugging at his lips suggested he didn't completely believe his own words.
"Yeah, maybe…" Marc shrugged a shoulder before rolling out of bed to start preparations for the day.
This wasn't the first time he had blacked out while Steven denied having been in control. He knew he needed to get to the bottom of these blackouts eventually, but he figured it would have to wait until they figured out a solution to the Ammit situation. Hopefully, he wouldn't wake up to any more surprise dead bodies in the mean time.
Late one evening, after Marc had spent several days driving through the western United States, Khonshu mentioned that he may have sensed the location of an artifact that could help obscure them from Harrow's sight.
Steven had fallen asleep earlier, and Khonshu and Marc agreed that it was probably best not to disturb him. Although Steven seemed to be warming up to Marc lately, he was still a bit of a wildcard during missions.
The location Khonshu directed him to ended up being what looked like a rundown warehouse on the edge of the city. Dressed in the familiar white wraps of Khonshu's ceremonial armor, Marc launched himself up the side of a nearby building and climbed onto the roof. Carefully crouching low to avoid being spotted as he perched near the edge, he peered at the warehouse.
As he was scoping out the place, he spotted several guards positioned near the entrances. He glanced thoughtfully at the warehouse roof. There were no guards stationed up there. If he could make it across unseen, he might be able to get the drop on the guards down below and take them out quietly before they could alert anyone else in the building.
He stood, his silvery white cape billowing in the wind, and prepared to leap across.
With what must've been the world's worst timing, the man guarding the main warehouse entrance happened to glance up at that moment. He let out a shout of alarm and swung his gun up to aim in Marc's direction.
"Fuck it," Marc cursed. "This suit isn't exactly great for stealth, is it?"
The wind picked up, catching the edges of his cape, and the street lights flickered as he heard Khonshu grumbling indistinctly in the back of his mind.
Swiftly, he tore a crescent dart from the wraps in the center of his chest and flung it at the guard. As it embedded itself in his shoulder, the guard cried out in pain and dropped his gun.
While the guard was fumbling, one-handed, with his radio to call for backup, Marc launched himself off the roof and spread the wings of his cape wide to glide across the gap. The guard's eyes grew wide with fear as he flew toward him, a pale, moonlit blot in the dark sky. He turned to run, but before he could make it through the entrance, Marc smashed into him, knocking him off his feet.
The guard frantically scrambled for the gun he had dropped, scraping his hands on the rough asphalt, as the ghastly figure loomed over him. Just as his fingertips brushed the cool metal of his weapon, Marc grabbed him by his shirt collar and hauled him upright to shove him against the wall. The guard opened his mouth to shout and was promptly punched in the face, the back of his head smacking against the wall behind him with a meaty thud. When the guard's eyes rolled up into the back of his head, Marc let the fabric of his shirt slip through his fingers as he slumped against the wall in a heap.
Marc cursed under his breath as he heard frantic shouting coming from inside. Even though he managed to take out the guard before he was able to call for backup, it looked like the fight had been noisy enough to alert someone inside. So much for the stealth idea, he thought to himself.
Since his cover was already blown, Marc decided to take a page out of Khonshu's book and make a dramatic entrance. Feeling the moonlight flooding over him and enhancing his strength, he aimed a kick at the metal door. His first kick landed with a loud bang and left a huge dent in the door. He gave it another kick and another until the door popped out of its frame and landed with a deafening crash.
The moment he stepped inside, someone immediately opened fire on him. He raised the edge of his cape to block the bullets, and then with a flick of his wrist, sent a crescent dart flying into his attacker's hand. As they dropped the gun with a cry of pain, Marc launched himself at them and smashed his fist into their nose with an audible crunch.
Alerted by the sound of shouts and hurried footsteps, Marc flipped around, another crescent dart clutched in his hand, to see more guards flooding into the room.
At some point, Khonshu appeared behind the line of remaining guards, towering over them. His skull tilted to the side as if he were listening for something buried beneath the shouting and gunfire. Then he turned his head so the dark voids of his eye sockets fixed back on Marc as he deflected bullets and incapacitated another guard with a flick of a crescent dart.
Silently, Khonshu lifted a long arm, wrapped in the same frayed linen bandages that covered the rest of his body, and curled his fingers in a beckoning motion. Then he turned to stalk toward a corridor that branched off from the back of the room, with long, unhurried steps.
Carving through anyone that got in his way, Marc followed Khonshu, his tall form flickering and always just out of reach as he led him deeper into the warehouse. Marc surged through the guards' onslaught, wrists and noses crunching beneath his fists as he moved.
Finally, Khonshu paused and didn't teleport further away when Marc caught up to him. Marc's gaze followed the line of Khonshu's long, tattered arm as he lifted it to point to a door at the end of the corridor.
When he opened the door, Marc came across a staircase and descended several flights of stairs. When he reached a dead end, he passed through another door at the bottom of the landing which opened into a huge room, filled with strange machines and shelves piled with ancient artifacts and devices.
Before he had a chance to take more than a brief glance, a fresh hail of bullets tore at him. Another guard had been stationed at the entrance and clearly had his gun trained on the door before Marc entered.
When the man stopped to reload, Marc lunged toward him and smacked him in the face with his own gun. The guard dropped to the floor with a thump.
"That was the last of them," Khonshu declared, voice rumbling through Marc's mind. "There should be no more interruptions for now."
"Good to know."
Marc ventured deeper into the room. Row after row of tall shelves, littered with statues, tablets, and unknown devices, stretched out before him. Marc had no clue where to start. When he glanced at Khonshu, hoping he would provide some sort of guidance, he was simply met with his inscrutable, hollow stare.
"What exactly am I looking for?" Marc asked, gaze drifting over various artifacts as he slowly made his way past the crowded shelves.
"As my Avatar, you will know it when you see it."
"Or maybe you could try being up front with me for once instead of being a cryptic asshole." As soon as the words left his mouth, Marc instantly regretted snapping at Khonshu, worried that he might be pushing the limits of his patience.
Fortunately, the god merely gave a low chuckle. "Ah, but that wouldn't be nearly as amusing."
Marc sighed and shook his head as he continued his search.
"Should I try to wake Steven up for this?" he wondered idly after a moment.
Steven would probably recognize a lot of this junk, and he would definitely have better luck decoding any hieroglyphs that Marc came across. With Khonshu's strange mood tonight, Marc somehow doubted the god planned on translating anything for him if he asked.
"No, let the idiot sleep. If he sees the artifacts in this place, we'll never get out of here."
"Hmm, yeah, you're probably right. He would definitely be geeking out right now," Marc agreed, the corner of his mouth lifting with an echo of a smile. Then he shot Khonshu a glance. "Also, maybe cool it with the name-calling. Steven's put up with a lot for us lately, and he's not an idiot."
"That little worm refused to relay my message to you to free me," Khonshu growled. "He wanted to leave me imprisoned."
Khonshu had a point, but the reason for his disappearance had been fairly obvious to Marc even without Steven saying anything to him. He clearly remembered the other gods threatening to imprison Khonshu after his little stunt with the unscheduled solar eclipse over Cairo.
"Yeah, well, maybe Steven would like you better if you were a little nicer to him."
"He compared me to a filthy pigeon!" Khonshu bristled.
Marc rolled his eyes. "And you called him a parasite," he replied flatly. "Look, if you're done bitching about Steven, why don't you help me figure out where the hell this artifact thing is so we can get out of here? Can't you at least give me a hint or something?"
~ • ~
SG-1 stood assembled outside of a suspected NID warehouse. This was supposed to be a straight-forward mission. Get in, capture any rogue NID members they could, and secure the suspected stolen artifacts.
Several weeks earlier, two anomalies were observed in the Earth's sky. The first event was an unexpected total solar eclipse that swept across North Africa. Then later that night, witnesses across the globe posted videos of the night sky spinning so rapidly, the whirling star trails were visible to the naked eye. Once the spinning finally slowed to a stop, they calculated that the location of the stars matched up with what the night sky should have looked like over 2,000 years ago. Stargate Command also received reports of massive EM spikes flaring up in Cairo, Egypt and several smaller spikes scattered across Europe, Asia, and North America during both events.
Stargate Command suspected that either the NID or possibly Russian agents had managed to get their hands on an ancient artifact that could alter the Earth's sky or possibly manipulate pockets of time. General Hammond sent SG-1 to investigate the location of a smaller, secondary EM spike that occurred in a warehouse they had been discreetly monitoring as another suspected rogue NID base.
Strangely, the first guard they came across was already incapacitated when they arrived, and the door to the main entrance had been smashed open.
"Uh oh," O'Neill said as he skirted around the body, on guard as he slowly rotated, gun raised, to survey the perimeter for other intruders. "Looks like somebody already beat us here."
"What's that sticking out of his shoulder?" Carter asked, gesturing to the body.
O'Neill stooped down to get a closer look. "It's some kind of curved blade." He paused and squinted. "Hey, Daniel, you might want to come take a look at this. Looks like there's some kind of writing on it."
Daniel knelt near the body and inspected the blade. It seemed to be made of gold alloy or possibly bronze, and he could just about make out a series of upraised symbols peeking through the darkened crust of dried blood.
"They're Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It's a little hard to read through the blood splatter," he said, grimacing in disgust, "but it looks like it's an oath to protect travelers in the night." Daniel glanced up. "This could be related to Khonshu."
"Gesundheit," O'Neill responded automatically.
Daniel shot O'Neill a weary look. "Jack…"
"What?"
Daniel just shook his head and sighed. "Khonshu is an Ancient Egyptian deity associated with the moon, healing, and protecting travelers in the night."
O'Neill raised an eyebrow. "You're thinking this guy might be another Goa'uld trapped on Earth?"
"I think they could be," Daniel confirmed, expression grim. "After the incidents with Hathor, Seth, and Osiris, I wouldn't rule it out."
"Well, that's just great," O'Neill grumbled, pinching the space between his eyebrows as if warding off a headache. Then he sighed and dropped his hand from his forehead to wave the others along. "We should keep moving. Hopefully whoever did this is still inside and hasn't swiped anything dangerous yet."
Following O'Neill's lead, the other members of SG-1 entered the warehouse, weapons drawn and ready to engage with potentially hostile forces. They immediately found several more fallen guards, injured and unconscious, but the assailant was still nowhere to be seen.
After doing an initial sweep of the entrance, O'Neill signaled for the team to split into two groups. Carter and Daniel left to check the peripheral rooms while O'Neill and Teal'c followed the trail of maimed bodies and bloody smears left by the intruder.
The trail ended at the top of a stairwell that led further into the depths of the warehouse. O'Neill and Teal'c cautiously descended. When they reached the bottom, they stopped to listen for any sounds on the other side of the door. When they nudged the door open and slipped inside, they discovered another collapsed body.
O'Neill did a quick scan of the room, gun at the ready. When he didn't find any obvious signs of the intruder, he quietly signaled for Teal'c to keep his guard up and follow him into the maze of shelves.
Treading lightly, they weaved through the shelves until they suddenly heard someone moving around and muttering to themselves. Clearly, whoever else was in the room wasn't concerned about flying under the radar. Considering the number of bodies they'd already stumbled across, the intruder probably felt they didn't need to bother hiding.
O'Neill and Teal'c edged around the shelf to peer around the corner. A figure, shrouded by a bright white cloak that stood out like a beacon in the dim warehouse, stood with its back turned to them. It appeared to be perusing the artifacts on the surrounding shelves.
Then the figure in white shifted slightly, the hooded cloak no longer obscuring the rest of its body, wrapped from head to toe in linen bandages.
O'Neill stared. "Uh, are you seeing a mummy too?" he asked in a hushed whisper. "Or is it just me?"
"I see it as well, O'Neill," Teal'c replied quietly with a short nod.
Although they were trying to keep their voices down, the mummy's head snapped in their direction. Its eyes glowed eerily, two bright white spots of light peering menacingly from the shadows of its hood.
"Well, that's not a good sign," O'Neill muttered.
The mummy lifted a hand to the center of its chest and yanked a golden crescent from the wraps binding it. It seemed to match the blades embedded in several of the bodies they'd stumbled across earlier. With a swift sweep of its arm, the mummy flung the curved blade at them.
O'Neill and Teal'c ducked behind the shelves for cover. The projectile flew over their heads and collided with the shelf behind them. A ceramic pot shattered on impact and rained pottery shards down on them.
Leaning around the corner, O'Neill aimed his MP5 at their assailant to shoot a load of rounds. With a flourish of its cape, the mummy swept the spray of bullets to the side.
O'Neill cursed and ducked back behind the shelf for cover. "What's that stuff made of? Kevlar? Some weird Goa'uld tech?"
The quiet swishing of fabric and soft footsteps echoed in the unsettling silence of the warehouse.
Without a word, Teal'c abruptly stood up.
"Teal'c, what're you doing? Get down!" O'Neill hissed and motioned for Teal'c to return behind cover.
Choosing to ignore O'Neill, Teal'c lifted his Zat gun and took aim. The distorted pulse of the Zat firing echoed through the room, shortly followed by a flash of blue light that shot through a gap in the shelves and hit the ghastly figure in the chest.
It stumbled to its knees, body seizing, but still conscious. It looked like it was straining to keep itself upright, a low growl of pain biting through the linen wraps of its mask. Those eerily glowing eyes seemed to bore into them, almost challenging them.
Finally, the mummy collapsed to the ground in a heap and stilled.
Teal'c deactivated the Zat in his hand, the extended curve of the weapon retracting down to rest against the handle, and lowered his arm slightly. When the figure continued to remain motionless, they approached it to get a better look.
"Huh." O'Neill cocked his head to the side as he surveyed the body, lightly tapping its side with his boot. "Good thinking, Teal'c."
Teal'c stoically inclined his head.
O'Neill yelped and took a step back as the linen wraps mysteriously retracted back into the body, revealing a man with a head of dark hair and a set of basic, utilitarian clothing. O'Neill and Teal'c both aimed their weapons at him and waited.
After a long moment in which nothing else happened, O'Neill figured they should probably hurry up and transport the mysterious intruder back to Stargate Command before he recovered from the Zat blast. If he really was a Goa'uld, then they might already be running short on time.
O'Neill lifted his handheld radio to his mouth. "Carter, the intruder has been neutralized. Got anything to report on your end? Over."
A second passed, and then Carter's voice crackled over the line in response. "Sir, the rooms are clear, and there's no sign of any more rogue NID members or intruders. Over."
"Teal'c and I are going to take this guy back to the SGC. Call in the secondary team to get this place cleared out and then meet us back at the base when you're through here. Over."
After Carter acknowledged the order, O'Neill returned his attention to the strange intruder, who still appeared to be unconscious.
"Uh, Teal'c, do you mind carrying him?" he asked. "I'd offer to help, but…you know."
"I am the only one not at risk if he is indeed hosting a symbiote," Teal'c confirmed, bowing his head slightly. "It is no problem."
He strolled to the unconscious man's side, unhurried, and then easily hefted him up over his shoulder.
O'Neill brought his hands together with a deliberate clap. "Alright, let's get this guy back to the base."