Sam
Shrapnel was flying at us from all angles as my ribs ached trying to keep my heaving lungs still inside. The blood from burst vessels coated a metallic tang to each breath, but I continued running and pushing myself farther. I could see him there in the trees reaching out for help, and if I could just make it in time I could save him. The field before me though started to change consistency until the dirt was silt and from silt it was sand. Each step though my boots felt heavier, my joints tighter, and the terrain tougher.
"Sir!" I called out, voice hoarse and lost in the sounds of gunfire around us. "Sir I've got you! I'm almost there!"
"Save yourself Carter!" He yelled back, "that's an order!"
"I'm not going without you sir!" But each step was harder to pull through, and the expanse of land was stretching farther between us. The sand was growing denser, thicker, wetter into a pasty mud that sucked in my boots with each step.
"Get out of here!" He shouted again as another explosion behind him sent two men flying into the air in pieces. I winced and continued onward for him, Jack, just lying there with a crimson oozing from his abdomen. I was only 50 meters or so away but I could swear each step was sending me backwards, farther from him.
"Major!" I heard a call behind me, "Carter please!" I whipped my head to see someone calling for me, a young man with a buzz cut and deep set hazel eyes I'd never seen before.
Wait, I had, I was on this mission with him. He was my partner. Was he? Where am I? I thought to myself and pulled my feet from the now bog that they were trapped in, trying to find my way back to Jack.
"Help me Major Carter!" The man called out, "I have a daughter, and a wife waiting for me." The garbled pleading coming from him, his arm limp at his side with tendons snapped and bone jutting from tissue. I was so close to him I could turn and help but, what about Jack? I couldn't choose both I, I couldn't support both. I didn't even know if I could support one in this thick mud.
"Help him Carter!" Jack wheezed out, "he, he has a life more important now than mine. He has someone to go home to."
No, I thought, tears pricking at my eyes as I pulled at the thought of who to choose. You have me though Jack, me to come home to. My heart shattered as the tree the young man was leaning against cracked in half from an explosion and took him down with it. I gasped covering my mouth and trudging onward to Jack through the pain, through the tears, each footstep heavier than the last.
"Why didn't you save him, Carter?!" Jack shouted at me, lying there, unable to move. "He had a daughter and you could have saved him! He could have lived! But you had to think about it, and that hesitation cost his life." He spat out a mouthful of blood gurgling up to the surface and as my boots finally hit the dry ground in front of him he took one last breath.
"No, sir no, come back." I searched for a source of the bleeding as his eyes fell in front of me. "No, Jack." I whispered, pulling him into my arms. "We need to go, we need to get out of..." I stopped. "Where are we? What are we even doing here?" I mumbled aloud.
"Open the door!" His voice was around me and yet I couldn't see him.
"What door?" I asked quietly, looking around, looking back at him lying in my arms.
"Dammit open the door! I can't help you if you lock the door Sam."
"I... there is no door? Sir, is that you?" I looked down at the body in my arms, but it was clearly Jack speaking to me. I set him down gingerly onto the ground and walked around the forest deeper, feeling like a fool in search of an entryway in the middle of a war zone. "What's going on? I don't understand." My quivering voice echoed around me as I went in search of the door.
Daniel
I wiped the sweat from my gritty brow with my forearm. The gauzy tan shirt I had hoped would provide some ventilation was clinging to my body with the perspiration the dry desert heat was sucking from my body. I was so close I could taste the victory champagne, the height of my career. The sun was scorching, and there was nothing for miles but sand, aside from the few tents that were set up around us for cool moments in the shade I could make out a town on the horizon where some of the other members of our crew wanted to go to lunch, but not me, not when I was so close to finding this, this?
Wait, I thought to myself, what am I looking for?
"Dr. Jackson!" My train of thought was paused as a woman's voice came running toward me. Her glossy black hair was tied back into a chignon at the nape of her neck, eyes a deep mahogany that kissed up at the corners framed in lashes that would make the thick grasses along the Nile bend in jealousy. Her hips swayed as she moved toward me, more like swimming through the sand than walking on it. She called my name again, and I squinted in confusion.
"You are?" I looked back down at my field work brushes and then at the beautiful woman in front of me.
"I'm Aya," she smiled down at me and took a seat in the sand so we were at eye level. "Your team is staying in my father's accommodations in town?"
Oh, right. The hotel in town. We checked in last week.
"I have your lunch Dr. Jackson, but well, tell me if this is too forward, I was wondering if you would be interested in joining me for a private lunch. I have so much I'm interested in learning from you." She placed her hand on mine and I recoiled. This, I felt as if I had done this before, but not here and not with this Aya.
"I am dedicated to having this done by the end of the sunlight today. If I don't I, well I think I might lose everything I've worked on, my entire life building to this and I need it done by the end of the day, I need to find it." I paused and took a moment to compose myself. "Would it be possible to have lunch brought here? Nothing fancy." I smiled politely and she pouted in response.
"Dr. Jackson, I had other plans," she slid closer and I stood frozen in confusion.
"What uh, what plans?" I looked down at her hand back on my wrist and turned my eyes back to her.
"I have heard your lonely heart call to me in the night." Her seductive voice was leaving nothing to the imagination.
"Ah I see," I lifted her hand off my arm and set it on the sand, patting it lightly. "You must have confused me for someone else."
"Dr. Jackson, Daniel," she looked up at me from under her hooded lashes, "I know what you want, and I want the same thing."
"I don't even know what I want." I stammered. "I'm looking for something, or was it someone, I'm not sure." I grabbed the brush set next to me, "I think this is it. Yes, this is it. I'm fine. No lunch for me actually, just water will suffice." I had hoped if I continued brushing away and keeping my eyes lowered down on the artifact I was finally uncovering in the caked earth beneath me she would leave, and I would have the answers I had been looking for. Something tugged at me, screamed at me, that what I needed was there under me, trapped inside, and if I could just dig deeper, brush it away, I would get to it. That this thing, whatever it was, held the greatest significance to my very core. I turned to the man who was just beside me working as my assistant only to see that I was alone in the expanse of the desert with Aya.
She sighed and sat in a more comfortable position, "what could be more important than this? The find of your career? You said you've been looking for this your entire life, and here you are so close." She smiled bringing a honey glazed fig up to her lips.
"Did lunch get here already?" I looked around, not remembering anyone else bringing a basket to us.
"While you were toiling away," she nodded, taking a bite of the lush fruit. "In the sun, for others needs before your own." She smacked her lips and held the half bitten fruit toward me, syrup coating her fingers and nectar dripping from the pulpy mass.
My eyes trailed from her hand back up to her face and I declined the offer, this felt wrong. I wasn't supposed to be here, and if I was I definitely wasn't supposed to be eating figs out of the delicate hands of this woman. I stood up and shielded my eyes from the sun looking around the sandy landscape for someone, anyone else. A pair of sunglasses appeared to be covering my own resting on the bridge of my nose. Odd but perhaps I had forgotten they were there.
"Who are you looking for, Dr. Jackson?" She cooed plopping the last of the fig into her mouth and wiping her hands on a towel. I closed my eyes and saw a navy silk handkerchief with stars printed on it, tied in crimson wavy tresses blowing in the wind. I felt a tug on my hand guiding me and my eyes shot open.
"I'm going for a walk to get some water, I'm hallucinating in the heat," I murmured and turned to her as she stood up. "Alone." I said firmly and she nodded innocently as I went off unaware of exactly where I was going, but knowing that it was better than where I was. Yet I was being pulled back to the spot, something was trapped down there, something or someone. It needed to be released, to be cleaned and preserved forever. To be cherished and honored, to be understood and valued, and yet it was there hidden under the layers and layers of sand I had been brushing away being distracted by frivolity. My feet wandered into a tent to grab a jug of water and splashed it over myself when I smelled something in the distance, ashy smoke. It stung my nostrils and my eyes widened as I turned around. My worksite, my dig, it was up in flames. I let out a guttural yell as I grabbed the jugs but realized I had wasted them on myself. Running, I peeled the wet shirt off of my body and slapped the ground and my paper notes with the shirt only to find it too go up in flames.
"Oh no," Aya sighed standing there next to me. "Everything you cherished, it's gone."
"Help me!" I screamed out at her, kicking the sand onto my journals and tools. "This is, it's priceless! Don't you care?"
"Care? About what?" She laughed, "there is nothing there Dr. Jackson. It's gone."
Jack
Blue. The cloudless sky, the snowy ground, the leaves on the trees, all shades of blue. Somehow I was sweltering and there was snow on the ground crunching beneath my feet. Cerellean blossoms on trees, azure pasture grass swaying in a breeze on a hill off in the distance caught me off guard as I reached my hand out in front of my face. There was a slight lag, like a hazy line tracing around the tips of my fingers across the path as I wiggled them.
"This isn't working, unless everything is supposed to be blue." I called out reaching for the goggles on my face, but there was nothing in its place.
"Colonel," his smooth voice came over the speakers in the pod I had been resting in. "This is just the settings for your neural sensors. Take two fingers and touch your right temple." I did as instructed and in a flash of light everything auto corrected.
"You have to fix that," I groaned, reaching for my burning eyes. "It's very unpleasant."
"We'll take that into consideration, Colonel. Enjoy your time." I heard the static of the line stop and the world around filled my senses. The sound of gulls squawking and fighting over something in the distance, the lapping of waves against one another, the smell of briney water around me, the mixture of coconut and zinc spread over my nose.
"I could get used to this," I grinned looking down at the large glossy red and white cabin cruiser I was perched on. Another strong intake of sea air to fill my lungs had my gaze set off into the direction of the motor. Smoke, I smelled smoke, but it wasn't the boat, and it wasn't anyone around me. I was in open waters and, wait.
How did I get on this boat? Is this my boat? I opened the cabin and it was pristine. Long navy fabric covered benches framing a waxed wooden central table. Two beers icy and cold waiting for me there, but I could still smell the smoke, even stronger in the air now than before. Two drinks, two beers, am I expecting someone? There should be someone here with me.
"Jack! Jack, we have to help them!" Her voice called out from a door to the left. I ran to grab the brass knob of the glossy white door but I yanked my hand away at the scalding burn from the metal.
"Sam? Sam you need to open the door! I can't help you on this end!" I pounded on the wood and looked around for a hand towel to cover the knob with. The window of the cabin was dressed in a starched white curtain and I ripped it off the wall. Wrapping it around the knob I went to turn, but there was no give.
"No, sir no, come back." Her voice was weak, straining against emotions.
Sir? I thought in confusion, she never calls me sir in private. Are we in private? Where am I? Why am I on this boat? This was my retirement, we were on vacation to celebrate my retirement. I got out of the military to be with her, to make her accept that our relationship could work. That we could work, and now the boat was on fire and I couldn't get to her.
"Open the door!" I called out again to her. There was nothing back, the knob was still locked and I pushed against it with my arm, jamming my body against it. "Dammit open the door! I can't help you if you lock the door Sam." I hurled my entire body into it and smashed through falling to the ground in a pile of woodchips and dirt. "This isn't the ocean." I hissed standing back to my feet and brushing the sediment off of my chino shorts. I wasn't exactly dressed for outdoor adventure and by the looks of the woods around me and the shocked expression on Sam's face I wasn't expected to be.
"Uh, sir. Is that, I mean, you just..." she turned around to look behind her. Her usual tactical field gear was covered in a wash of bloodied stains but she didn't have any indication of injuries.
"Are you okay Carter?" I knit my brows giving her a visual once over.
"Well sir, no. No, you just died. Then I heard you calling for me about a door and now here you are in, what is this, your leisure attire?" She looked equally as confused as I was.
"Yeah it's not my usual. I'm more of a hoodie and jeans guy but when in Rome. Well, I mean we're not in Rome." I looked around again and heard an explosion off in the distance. "Where are we?"
"I don't know sir." She shook her head. "I don't know how we got here or how we leave but it's starting to feel..."
"Manufactured." I cut her off. "Someone is playing a game here with us and I don't like it. We need to find Teal'c and Daniel. Who knows what kind of hellish landscape they're trapped in."