“Backflow’s getting worse.”
“Go to full power,” Sam said. She glanced at the control room, saw only Lee and his assistant at the main consoles. Teal’c was inside the chamber as well, bracing himself to hold the door open.
“Full power, yes, ma’am,” Pereira echoed. “Stable, but I don’t think it’s going to last.”
“We have to turn the device on,” Daniel said. “That’s what this is telling me. The power has to go somewhere.”
Sam came to look over his shoulder, hoping against hope that for once he’d gotten it wrong, but the symbols were unmistakable. Why can’t we turn it off? The feedback loop should accept interruption, that was the first thing she’d thought of — unless that was what the blind circuit did, somehow prevented the system from being turned off until the device was used? She shoved the thought away, looked at the technicians. “Pereira, Yasmin, get out of here. You, too, Daniel.”
“Not likely.” Daniel didn’t move from his place, still typing frantically.
“Go,” Sam said, and the technicians went, reluctantly, squeezing out past Teal’c.
“What’s the plan, Carter?” Jack’s voice was weirdly calm.
“We’re going to have to let the device activate,” Sam answered, “or else this whole place is going to explode.” She looked at the diamond wall. “Or something. I’m not actually sure what subspace power will do to living beings, but I don’t think we should find out. I think we’ll be safe behind the wall.” She stepped into Pereira’s place, leaning down to adjust the flow. “It’ll take about a minute for the device to come on line, so we should just have time to get out once I’ve activated it.”
Daniel pushed himself to his feet, though his attention was still on his screens. “Better hurry, Sam.”
Sam took a breath. The switch was obvious, a plain gold button set apart from the rest of the controls, its surface marked with the same ouroboros. “Go,” she said, and pressed it.
The entire chamber shuddered as she turned, and the door slipped from Teal’c’s clutching hands, closing solidly behind him and sealing them in the chamber.
“Well, crap,” Jack said. “Carter —”
“It’ll be worse if we turn it off, sir,” she said. “Subspace energy —”
“Is bad, yeah, I got that.” Jack’s face was drawn into an unhappy grimace. “But this device — is it any better?”
“It’s a transport device, like the Stargate,” Daniel said. His tone was less confident than his words. “It should just open, not — anything else.”
“Stand by the console,” Sam said. She was suddenly consumed by the memory of the prison planet, a pair of smoking shoes that was all that was left after a man was caught in the outflow of the opening wormhole. “Quick, move.”
They scrambled into its doubtful shelter. On the wall above them, the ouroboros was glowing, the light traveling from the head around the circle of the body. It was almost white-hot at the head, and golden at the leading edge, brilliant and strangely without heat. The light was almost at the serpent’s mouth, almost touching itself, and even as she thought it, the light joined into a solid ring. There was a flash, a blow like the sound of thunder, and then nothing.
CHAPTER THREE
Lost City
TEAL’C opened his eyes slowly, assessing the odd, dry smell of the air and the taste of blood on his tongue. His body hurt, a dozen spots bruised and sore, but even as he took his first full breath he could tell that there was nothing seriously wrong. The worst was the cut on the inside of his lip, where presumably he’d hit his jaw as he fell. He tested his joints carefully anyway, moving cautiously until he could confirm that he was no more than bruised, and sat up slowly.
The light was different, cooler, and the ouroboros looked as though the power channeled through it had damaged it. Except that this was not the chamber they had been in before. Teal’c pushed himself to his feet, reaching for a staff weapon that wasn’t there. But of course he had been unarmed in the laboratory, safe among friends. He braced himself against the wall, and even that was different, slick, polished pearl-gray stone rather than the tough white coating. Nor was there a wall of glass and a darkened control room beyond. Instead, there was only blank stone and the ouroboros carved into the wall above the low platform. The others were sprawled beside it, as though they had been thrown from some considerable distance. Teal’c could see their chests moving and assumed from his own condition that they weren’t seriously harmed, but nonetheless it was reassuring to feel their heartbeats beneath his fingertips. They would recover quickly, and in the meantime they seemed to be in no immediate danger. Although there was no telling how long that would last.
There was only a single narrow door, set close into a corner. It was edged by bands of decorative carving only a little darker than the walls themselves. The designs looked Ancient, but there was no writing, nor, when he examined it, could he find either lock or latch.
The lack of his staff weapon was a sharp pain. Colonel Carter almost certainly had some C4 somewhere about her person, but he would have felt better if he were armed. Still, blowing open the door had to be a last resort, particularly when they had no idea what was on the other side. He went back to the others and began methodically to try to rouse them.
O’Neill came to first, as usual, sat up with a groan and a muttered curse, his eyes flicking from side to side as he assessed the situation.
“Well, crap.”
Teal’c bent his head in agreement. “Indeed.”
“Looks like we’re not in Kansas any more.” O’Neill hauled himself to his feet, wincing.
Teal’c refrained from pointing out that they had not been in Kansas in the first place. “I believe that Janus’s transport device was still capable of function.”
“Yeah, but where did it transport us to?” O’Neill rubbed the back of his neck. “Sam and Daniel?”
“Evidently unharmed,” Teal’c answered. “Or no more so than are we.”
“Your definition of ‘unharmed’ is a lot different from mine,” O’Neill said. Daniel was starting to stir, and O’Neill bent down to shake him gently. “Come on, Danny, rise and shine.”
Carter sat up in the same moment, her face crumpling in pain. “Where —? Ow.”
“I was going to ask you that,” O’Neill said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Carter said. “I have no idea.”
“Well, if the whole system was supposed to take people to Atlantis,” Daniel began, and Carter shook her head, wincing.
“This doesn’t look like anything we saw from the MALP,” she said. She looked at O’Neill. “I’m sorry, sir. That shouldn’t have happened.”
“Yet here we are,” O’Neill said.
“There aren’t any controls in here,” Daniel said. “What kind of transport system doesn’t have some way to enter a destination?”
“A one-way one,” O’Neill said, and Teal’c felt the chill of memory. They had been imprisoned once by the Taldur, who believed that their Stargate opened only to their prison world, and only went one way. But it had been an ordinary gate, and in the end they had found a way to open it. They would do so again.
Daniel was already pacing the length of the room. “This door’s locked,” he said. “But these are Ancient markings.”
“OK,” O’Neill said, and came warily to join him. There was a dull click and the door split open, sliding back to reveal a darkened hall. Lights came on as O’Neill peered out, and Teal’c allowed himself to relax a little. At least this was an Ancient installation, not Goa’uld.
More lights came on as they moved into the hall, and O’Neill looked at Daniel.
“Any idea which way to go?”
“Sorry, no.” Daniel squinted at the walls and shrugged. “I’d guess up, when we get that choice, but until then…”
“Not exactly one of our options,” O’Neill said. “Fine. We’ll go — left.”
Teal’c took him at his word and started off down the co
rridor. They moved in a bubble of light, the curved fixtures coming on as O’Neill approached, flicking off again once he was past. The corridor seemed to curve, so slightly that at first he wasn’t sure it was actually happening. The lack of steady light didn’t help, either, making it impossible to see the full length of the corridor, but after a while Teal’c began to suspect that they were moving in a circle. Perhaps it was just the shape of the installation, he thought, hopefully, rather than that they were being taken back to their starting point. If there were other rooms, or even doors, they were well-hidden. The corridor remained empty and unmarked and seemingly infinite.
Then, quite suddenly, the corridor ended, blocked by a massive pair of doors. Daniel, in the lead, let his flashlight’s beam play across the enormous slabs of bronze, carved like the chamber door in some unfamiliar pattern.
“These look like pressure doors,” he said. “Jack?”
O’Neill came toward them and an orange circle began to glow at the point where the doors met. O’Neill placed his hand against it and the doors slid ponderously open, the metal groaning softly.
Beyond was a circular chamber with a square central console, and two more doors lay beyond that, one open onto what looked like stairs, and the other closed.
“Finally,” Daniel said, and started toward the console before he remembered. “Um, Jack?”
“General Lightswitch O’Neill, that’s me.” O’Neill laid a hand on the console and, to no one’s surprise, the screen lit. Daniel made a noise of satisfaction and began touching keys.
“Any luck?” O’Neill asked, after what Teal’c thought was an unreasonably short amount of time.
“Not — well, some,” Daniel answered. “It’s only the emergency stand-by systems that are running, and I can’t get anything else to come on line. But as far as I can tell, that door —” He pointed to the closed one. “ — will take us to the control room.”
“That’s helpful,” O’Neill said. He advanced on the door and it slid obediently open. Behind it was a small room, lights fading reluctantly on to reveal ruddy walls and bronze fittings. There were neither controls nor a further door to be seen.
“OK,” O’Neill said, after a moment. “That’s not funny.”
“Wait a minute, sir.” Carter was leaning over Daniel’s shoulder. “It’s a — transfer chamber, I supposed you’d call it. If we all step in there — and if you, sir, think about the control room — it should take us there.”
For just an instant, Teal’c thought that O’Neill was going to remind them that this was how they’d gotten into this situation in the first place, but instead the General just nodded. “OK,” he said. “You people better get in first, in case I set it off.”
That was logical and Teal’c turned toward the open door. Still, the situation was uncertain enough that he couldn’t help saying, “I would be more comfortable, O’Neill, if we were better armed.”
“You and me both,” O’Neill said. “But…”
He shrugged. Teal’c nodded, and followed Carter and Daniel into the chamber. O’Neill squeezed in after them, but for a long moment nothing happened.
“Oh, for —” O’Neill began, and the door slid closed. There was an odd flicker from the light and the door opened again to reveal an entirely different room.
A familiar room, Teal’c thought. He had seen it in the images transmitted by the MALP, seen it again and again as the SGC’s scientists analyzed the footage frame by frame, waiting for the expedition to make contact and tell them more. They had found Atlantis’s gate room, though it stood empty and shadowed, filled with grayed light.
“Whoa,” Daniel said. “This — Janus’s device worked.”
“But if this is Atlantis,” Carter said, “where is everyone?”
They filed out into the echoing space. The Stargate loomed to their left, filling one end of the room, walls of colored stone or glass behind it. Opposite it was a broad staircase that led to what appeared to be a control room, tucked into a mezzanine that overlooked the gate room. The consoles were dark, the silence like a weight, without even the sound of moving air. Teal’c turned in a slow circle, scanning the room. It was undeniably beautiful, with its soaring walls and elaborate carvings, but it was also uninhabited, and looked to have been so for some time.
There was something lying at the base of one of the columns, small and dark enough to be overlooked at first glance. Teal’c crouched beside it, turned it over carefully, as though that might change what he had found.
“O’Neill.”
The general turned, surprise changing to recognition as he saw the stash bag unfolded in Teal’c’s hand.
“The expedition was here,” Tealc said.
O’Neill nodded. “Yeah. But where are they now?”
Once they looked, there were more signs of the expedition’s presence: a bundle of MRE wrappers, another empty bag, an unfired shell. But no note, no marker, nothing to see where they were or why they’d gone. Jack looked up at the control room and started up the stairs.
The consoles came on at his approach, offering lights and soft chimes. As far as he could tell, things were normal, or at least nothing was seriously wrong, and he stepped back to let Carter take a seat before the controls. She studied the screens for a moment, then began to poke at the controls, searching through a series of displays.
“Jack!” Daniel waved at him from the floor at the gateroom, and Jack came forward to the rail.
“You got something?”
Daniel held up a bottle. Jack recognized it with a chill as the champagne he’d sent through the gate just before it closed.
“There’s a message in it,” Daniel called. “I’m going to have to break it to get it open.”
Jack nodded. “Go ahead.”
The sound of shattering glass was loud in the dull air. Jack flinched in spite of himself, Carter looked up from the console, and even Teal’c looked momentarily startled. Daniel poked cautiously among the shards of glass, and came up with a sheet of paper rolled into a narrow tube.
“It’s a gate address,” he called.
“Anything else?”
“No.” Daniel held up the sheet of paper. Someone had scrawled the symbols across it in thick red marker.
Croatoan. Jack felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. That story had given him the willies when he was a kid: the Roanoke colonists vanishing into the forest, leaving nothing but a single word carved into a tree to say where they had gone, what had happened to them…
“Sir!” Carter’s voice was sharp and he spun on his heel.
“Sir, we’ve got a problem.” Her hands were busy on the console’s controls, her eyes darting from screen to screen. “I don’t know where they’ve gone, but I think I know why. Power levels are dropping rapidly everywhere in the city.”
“What?” Jack came to stand behind her. He didn’t know what every display meant, but he couldn’t misunderstand the flashing lights and warning symbols that filled one screen and spilled over into another.
“It looks as though the city’s ZPM is very nearly depleted,” Carter said, frowning at the displays. “We turned on a bunch of systems getting up here, and that’s causing problems. I’m shutting them down as fast as I can, but —” She touched more controls, her frown deepening at the result. “There’s one big drain, it says it’s a shield surrounding the city —”
“O’Neill!”
That was Teal’c voice, and Jack turned back to the rail. “Yeah?”
“The city is underwater.” Teal’c’s face was impassive, but Jack thought he heard the first notes of concern in the Jaffa’s voice. “There is some kind of force field protecting the city.”
“Damn it!” Jack turned back to Carter. “You hear that?”
“Yes, sir.” She gave him a wry smile. “I guess I can’t reduce any power to the shield.”
“I don’t think that’s a good plan,” Jack answered. “Shut down everything else, see if you can stabilize things.”
Carter nodded. “I’m almost there.”
Daniel came to join them, the slip of paper still rolled in one hand. He seated himself at the console next to Carter’s, and called up a second screen. She nodded again, approval and agreement this time, and they both worked in silence for what seemed a very long time.
“Ok,” Carter said at last, and Daniel shook his head.
“It’s not enough.”
“It’ll hold for now,” Carter said. She looked up. “But Daniel’s right, sir, this isn’t a permanent solution. What I’ve been able to do is turn off everything that we’ve turned on, but just being here is still drawing too much power.”
“Is there any chance of dialing Earth?” Jack asked, without much hope, and wasn’t surprised when Carter shook her head,
“No, sir. There’s not nearly enough power left for that.”
“We go where they went,” Daniel said. He flourished the roll of paper. “The expedition left this for anyone who came after them — they must have arrived here, figured out the power problem just like we did, and found a safe world to dial out to.”
“Or they just dialed blind,” Jack said.
Carter was already touching keys, frowning at the screens that appeared. “No, Daniel’s right, I think. It looks as though someone was searching the databanks quite recently, checking gate addresses, and I’m guessing that was our people.”
Jack looked over his shoulder at the empty gateroom, the soaring glass and the immense ring of the Stargate itself. There was nothing here — they’d seen nothing in the halls they’d passed on their way to the gateroom, and it was unlikely they’d find anything more even if they took the time to search. The smart money was to follow the expedition. They’d obviously been confident enough in their choice of world that they felt safe telling the next expedition to follow them, but he hated jumping blind. Blind and unarmed, except for sidearms, and even then he’d bet none of the others had more than a single spare clip, if that. He shook the thought away. That was just another reason to go find his people. They’d get food and supplies and then they’d find a way home.
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