Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Why don't you write me?
I'm out in the jungle
I'm hungry to hear you
Send me a card
I am waiting so hard
To be near you
--Simon & Garfunkel "Why Don't You Write Me?"

Tuesday evening, the Tawahka Biosphere Reserve, Southern Honduras:

She would like to blame someone for this, either Jack or General Hammond, and she knows it's unreasonable but she's concussed and stranded in a muddy jungle somewhere in Honduras and stupid men with guns are coming to kill her.

But no. She's the one who brought up Chaakh in the first place (Mayan Rain god. Agricultural deity. Genus locum of the four directions.)

It had all started with the Goa'uld of course. Last Monday (eight days ago) Teal'c had gone off to check in with Bra'tac (good) and then on the basis of intelligence received (another word for gossip) the two of them decided to crash the party of Tilgath (Assyrian empire-builder) and Ramius (extremely obscure Fertile Crescent deity), two minor Goa'uld who were intending an alliance (bad).

She'd known Teal'c was going, and she'd known Jack wasn't: nevertheless, Jack isn't at the SGC on Monday morning when she arrives (bright and early because the military hates her). Sammy tells her (over breakfast, which Sammy wasn't going to eat but Dani needs someone to interrogate), that Jack is over at Peterson keeping his quals up to date. Dani misses the point at which she could ask Sammy what "quals" are and why they need to be kept current, because Sammy is the dine and dash sort. Anyway, Dani has the basics: no Jack for an indeterminate amount of time. She'll ask Graham later.

But speaking of up to date, Jack always says that 'bad' is just a way-station on the way to 'worse', and he's usually right. Teal's and Bra'tac got to the alliance meeting place to find everybody dead, and then a Darth Vader wannabe showed up and started trying to kill them. They zapped it with their ma'toks and zatted it, neither of which worked (and the exciting thing is that the zat didn't disintegrate the thing either) and they would both be dead now if the thing hadn't fallen over flat at their feet.

So they came back through the gate to get some Marines and a stretcher and brought it back to the SGC.

General Hammond says Sam should run tests on it to see what they've got. Sammy says she wants to call the Tok'ra in to help her with New Alien Menace, by which she really means Jacob-Selmak which is good since they won't flat-out lie to them.

They can't see anything through the suit, and the MRI only returns static. Jake and Sammy decide to peel the not-an-Ashrak, resulting in a good news/bad news situation.

The good news is that they find things out, such as that it has a Goa'uld symbiote. The bad news is that the host is engineered to be a perfect—if very short-lived—physical specimen. Teal'c and Master Bra'tac didn't kill it. It just dropped dead at their feet. (She has no objection to something like that happening because it saved Teal'c and Master Bra'tac but Teal'c looks a little cranky.)

They all (except for General Hammond) go back down to the lab to stare at the whatever, because of course that's the way to get information. Only not. The helmet is off, and so is the armor. The thing is wearing some kind of black bodysuit underneath. She can see its face now, and it is not a pretty sight. Translucent grey jelly and small needlelike teeth.

"It was definitely created in a lab," Jake tells them.

"A hok'tar?" Sammy suggests. Jake makes a face. (Yeah, it's stronger than a human but it sure isn't superior. They've all got that.)

"And traditionally the Goa'uld are vain about their appearance," Dani says delicately. Alien standards of beauty yadda but this looks like a cross between a jellyfish and a skeleton.

"It was obviously intended to be a new form of foot soldier. Possibly a reaction to the recent uprisings of the Jaffa. What's most interesting is that this creature was not alive when it was first created. It was given life after it reached its mature state."

"Like Frankenstein's Monster," Dani says. Only the Monster wasn't engineered to live out a mayfly existence and then fall over dead for the good of the state.

"How do you know that?" Sammy asks Jake.

It's Selmak who answers. "Remnants of a unique energy signature within its cells. It's similar but not identical to the residual effects left by the use of a sarcophagus."

"So... could a sarc give life to something that wasn't alive in the first place?" Dani can't quite repress a shudder at the thought of an assembly line of ghouls being routed through a sarcophagus. She has plenty of bad memories of her own involving sarcophagi, and she was alive at the time.

"No," Selmak says. "A sarcophagus is designed to boost health and longevity, heal or revive someone terminally injured. They are nowhere near powerful enough to animate non-living cellular matter."

'Non-living cellular matter.' She thinks of frozen Thanksgiving turkeys brought back to terrifying squawking life.

"But something must have done it," Sammy says. "Do you know what?"

"Thousands of years ago a Goa'uld found a device originally created by the Ancients. He determined its primary purpose was to heal. But it was so powerful, its effects on human hosts ultimately proved devastating. However, after much research and experimentation, the Goa'uld was able to use the technology to create the first sarcophagus."

So much for the Tok'ra party line that the Goa'uld never invent things. "Obviously he wasn't able to eliminate all of its negative side effects," Dani says. The Goa'uld TV dinner in the room with them is giving her the creeps.

"The Tok'ra have long sought this device in the hope of using it to perfect the sarcophagus technology, so that we could all benefit from it. Now, it may be the key to fighting this new warrior."

She knows—she knows!—that by "all", Selmak means "all Tok'ra, no Tau'ri need apply". But maybe they'll at least give them the weapon they can derive from this Ancient device.

"Who was the first Goa'uld to find the device?" she asks.

"His name was Telchak," Selmak answers.

This is actually the point at which she should have shut up and run. Maybe someday she'll be that smart.

"Chaakh—my grandfather—" she waves her hands but not even Sammy can read her mind this time. She heads off to her office at a quick trot and the others follow (for some reason). "Mayan god of rain—Nicholas Ballard—"

"Slow down," Sammy says, putting a hand on her arm. But she can't. Not when the ideas are coming so fast.

"Fountain of youth," she finishes, heading for her brag shelf. Most people who wander through her office think the things on the shelf areher journals. Most people are idiots.

On the shelf are journals with articles her father wrote (some where her mother was co-author). The rest are some of Nick's field journals he gave her while they were still speaking to each other. It's not most peoples' idea of a brag shelf but it isn't as if she's ever going to publish, now, is it?

"Nick was looking for the Fountain of Youth before he got distracted by the Crystal Skull. He traced its origins to Chaakh, the Mayan god of rain. He said he thought the source of the Fountain of Youth myth was an alien artifact used by early Mayans around 900 B.C. "

"And you think this Chaakh may have been Telchak?" Jacob asks.

Well considering we have tel'tacs and pel'tacs and probably dozens of other "tel/pel" prefixes... "Just a hunch," Dani says, handing over the journal in question to Jacob.

"Maybe not just a hunch," Sammy says. "The primary function of the device was to heal, right?"

"For the Ancients. For humans to see any positive effect, it would be from very limited exposure at a safe distance," says Jacob and yeah, she can see the shape of the argument the Tok'ra are going to use to take the thing away from them already.

"Nick believed Chaakh's temple was located somewhere in Honduras. He spent decades of his life searching for it but came up empty." Take that, Tok'ra. "I've been over his notes and most of them are indecipherable. The only mention of the temple's location is 'somewhere near a waterfall and a river.'" As if that narrows things down in Central America. There are rainforests there, you know.

"Still, if the device was kept hidden near a water source, it could be the basis of the Fountain of Youth myth," Sammy says,

"This is written in an obscure dialect of Goa'uld," Jacob says, glaring at the book. Dani hasn't looked at it in years. The last time she did it was all wormtracks to her. Meaningless. But she recognizes the language now.

She grips the edge of the shelf in front of her to stabilize herself, her mind racing up through the webby family tree of history, to her great-great-grandfather's brother, who was taken as host by the Goa'uld Seth; who survived in that nearly-kindred flesh until SG-1 killed him (something she saw no reason to mention at the time and it isn't as if Jack knew what her four times great grandfather looked like). Did Seth use Nicholas Ballard as his unknowing minion, sending him in search of the treasures he thought lost on Earth? Did he drive Nick slowly mad with the insistence those things were there to be found?

Was Seth responsible for so much more harm than she first imagined?

Off to the SGC library (there actually is one, for things nobody on staff ever thinks they'll need, like maps of Earth) where she pulls a bunch of topo maps of Honduras and starts narrowing things down, with Selmak reluctantly translating Nick's diary. Finally she has it narrowed down to a ten square mile or so area in southern Honduras (process of elimination, everywhere Nick didn't look) between a river and a lake (or marsh, or whatever, depending on current rainfall).

"Now what?" she asks.

"I think we'd better tell George what you've found," Jake says.

The three of them go down to General Hammond's office and brief him on what they know so far (leaving out the part about a Goa'uld being her many-times-great uncle, for which she is profoundly grateful), and of course General Hammond asks the inevitable next question.

"So where is it?"

She points at the place on the map she has gleefully defaced with red Magic Marker. "It's here. If Selmak's right, Telchak's temple is in southern Honduras."

"Well how can we be certain the device is there?" (General Hammond may be catching on to her little evasions.)

"Um, well, we can't, but um..."

"We think we know who's responsible for creating the Goa'uld warrior," Sammy says. She loves Sammy. Sammy is her friend.

"Telchak?" Hammond asks.

"No." Shut up! Dani tells herself, but it's too late.

This time it's Selmak who diverts General Hammond's attention. "After Telchak created the sarcophagus, Anubis went to war with him for possession of the original Ancient device. And that was long ago, before Anubis attempted to ascend. Anubis defeated Telchak, but he never did find the device. It was always believed to be hidden in one of Telchak's many temples."

"So the three of you think Anubis is behind this?" General Hammond is starting to sound frustrated. It's not that Generals have short attention spans (Jack told her once) as that once all of the questions have been asked, they're the ones who have to come up with the answers.

"He knew about the technology," Sammy says. "While he never actually found the device, he didn't need to. He could've built himself a new one."

Because of the Magic Ancient Loophole that states that he can use anything he learned on the Ancient plane if he could have gained the same information in a mundane fashion instead. This is the Ancients' idea. She really wonders if she's supposed to like the Ancients. They cause a lot of trouble for everyone who isn't them. (Jack has strictly forbidden her from updating the theology section of the SGC Wiki.)

"Still, it's only a guess," General Hammond says, sounding hopeful.

"Yes," she and Selmak say in unison. But it's a good one.

"The good news is, sir, the original Ancient device is probably still here on Earth," Sammy says brightly.

"If we could analyze the technology of this device, it might be possible to engineer a weapon we can use against these warriors," Selmak says.

"Not to mention the possibility of harnessing its power to heal," Sammy says. Like they'd get a look-in at that. Still, they could try. She wonders who they're going to send looking for this. Someone with a high security clearance and archeological skills isn't going to be that easy to find.

"Very well," General Hammond says in his 'decision's made' voice. "Doctor Jackson, take Doctor Lee and see what you can find. Dismissed."

Wait. What?

She goes up to tell Bill the news. This won't be so bad, right? Honduras has roads. And a capital city. Maybe even an airport. Yes; she remembers that Tegucigalpa is the capital, and fairly near where they want to start looking (for values of "fairly near" meaning two departments and a five hour drive away). They can't take military transport in for something like this, though. The US doesn't even have its own base on Honduran soil and the locals are touchy about overflights of everything (occasionally Jack is good for something. He'd be good for more things if he was actually here right now).

"Hi, Bill," she says. "General Hammond is sending us on a road trip."

At first he likes the idea. She says they'll probably be camping along the way. He says that he and his wife and kids go camping a couple of times a year. He'll just take the family RV.

(Which will break down somewhere still inside Mexico and by the time AAA gets there only the axles will be left.)

She spends the next two hours plotting with (explaining to) Bill the details of the trip they will actually take. One hour in virtually getting themselves to the jumping-off point twenty miles south of Tegucigalpa. The second hour spent in calming Bill down. The phrase "expense account" is used liberally. She also makes possibly-unwarranted claims of how positively this will reflect on his next performance evaluation. And assures him it will be a walk in the park (not like that time Coombs and Felger invaded the Goa'uld mothership). Simple. Easy.

She should stop lying to puppies, kittens, engineers, and other small gullible creatures.

Next stop is Sgt. Bobby Browning, to whom she gives a slightly more accurate description of where they're going and what they intend to do. They both need to be archeologists from the University of Colorado, with all the pocket litter that implies: letters, receipts, ID—all the stuff that will convince everyone but another archeologist that they're the real deal. Bobby says everything can be ready in three days.

She goes back to her office and books two flights to Tegucigalpa. (It has an American Embassy, so it has an airport, QED.) Denver to San Salvador with two layovers, San Salvador to Tegucigalpa. From there it will be bus to points south. If there is one. If not, they hitchike. Maybe she can just tape Bill's mouth shut. She likes Bill, she does, but he does not know when to stop contributing to the conversation. She makes a note to herself to go to the bank and get a large bale of lampiras (standard currency of Honduras); she knows American dollars spend just as well south of the border, but they also make people crazy.

She then types for about twenty minutes, prints out what she's typed, and goes back up to Bill's office.

She realizes she's in trouble as soon as she sees Felger there.

"Dani," Felger says. "Dr. Lee says you're looking for an Ancient power systems specialist."

There are very few people at the SGC that she doesn't want using her first name. Felger is one of them.

"Actually, Jay, I'm looking for an Ancient power system. That's why General Hammond is sending Bill with me. I have the list of stuff you're going to need on the trip, Bill. If you don't have any of those things, just buy them and give Sgt. Browning the receipts. He'll expense you."

She attempts, in vain, to hand the list to Bill. Felger plucks it out of the air and brandishes it. "But as the senior scientist for the department and if I may say so the reigning expert on Ancient technology, I feel it would be far more sensible for—"

She will kill herself before she spends a night in a two man tent or any other form of accommodation with Jay Felger, and not for the obvious reason. The reason is that Jay will spend the night telling her what she and Jack have done in similar circumstances, interspersed with comments that he is swearing himself to secrecy on their behalves.

She grabs the list back and this time manages to get it to Bill while at the same time talking to Felger. "You know, Jay, I am absolutely sure you're right, but since General Hammond is sending Dr. Lee, we just have to assume you'll be studying the device after we get it back here." After which, slap-fights among the engineers will not be her problem.

Felger looks crestfallen and prepares to launch another salvo. She gets in first. "Bill, here's the list. Buy anything you don't have and expense it, like I said. You might want to get out and do that today because we're leaving Wednesday."

She gives Jay the biggest brightest smile she possibly can. It makes her cheeks hurt. "We'll see you when we get back, Jay,” she tells him.

She then goes back to her office to book a hotel in Tegucigalpa and to try to find a guide who knows the area they want to go to.

And that's Monday.

Tuesday is shopping (to be exact, it's taking Bill shopping) and gathering together her old gear, supplementing it with her offworld gear (which will just look like army surplus to anyone who sees it), and buying some new. She nags Bill into buying good hiking boots by threatening to scream at the top of her lungs right there in the store if he doesn't. She probably would, and anyway Bill's feet will thank her.

Jack is back on Tuesday but she's out with Bill by the time she remembers she wanted to ask him what "quals" are and by the time she gets back he's in a meeting.

And that's Tuesday.

Wednesday (early) she and Bill (and their backpacks, which she insists to the flight attendants are carryon luggage), are on a plane. Denver to San Pedro Sula with two layovers, then a bus to Tegucigalpa, arriving a mere 12 hours after their start at that bastion of normalcy, Hyatt Place Tegucigalpa. Bill heads directly for the minibar. She stops him, saying its contents could be (probably are) isopropyl alcohol and food coloring. She hands him the bottle of Scotch from her backpack. It's still sealed.

She'd be up and off again early Thursday, but Bill's wiped (by a plane trip??) So they spend Thursday at the Hyatt. She scopes out the buses (they'll have to make a transfer halfway, and she's pretty sure the bus companies of Central America are going to come as a shock to their very own Bill Lee. Meow. But really.)

Okay, not everybody spends their time on a Gate team going offworld. Not everybody grew up in Central America following a lunatic archeologist around. She's sure she'd have no idea of what to do with an Ancient device other than electrocute herself. And Bill does read bedtime stories to his kids.

(So much for Thursday.)

Friday they are up very early and off to the bus station. It's a luxury ride and pretty much a straight shot south. The bus even has air conditioning. She doesn't tell Bill that's about to change. She thinks he might try to hijack the bus they're on. He's already looking a bit goggle-eyed at the sheer drops beside the road. Honduras is not really competitive agriculturally because everything that isn't up is down. It's all mountains.

They get to a tiny little town (neat and clean, very soothing) where the bus makes its turnaround. It pulls into the bus station. A bus which is probably their next bus is already parked there. She folds a lampira into her hand so just a corner shows and goes go to the other bus and asks if this is the bus going south (her Spanish is really quite good). It is. She gives the driver the money. She displays a second bill and asks him if she and her companion can board now. He agrees, but says they have to have tickets. She sees Bill coming toward her and beckons him over. He climbs into the bus, looking anxious. The second bus is a repainted school bus with no glass in the side windows. That's probably why.

"Sit in this seat," she tells him, plunking him down behind the driver. "Do not move. Do not let anyone touch either of our backpacks." This is accompanied by her plunking her backpack on his lap and picking his up off the floor to put beside it. "I will be right back. Do not move."

The bus driver tells her she owes him a tip for letting her friend board early. She says she will bring it when she brings the tickets, and more besides. Five lampira (about twenty-five cents American).

She goes inside. The single ticket kiosk is besieged by chickens, ducks, an old woman carrying a piglet in a blanket, children leading dogs with strings tied to their collars, young couples, old couples, and all in all far too many people to fit on the one bus, but there is only the one bus and it is going to El Encanto, (the Charm) which is the closest thing to Reserva de la Biosphere de Tawahka (Tawahka Biosphere Reserve). The Rio Parcelas flows through there, and if they can just find a lake...

She gets back to the bus, gives the driver the tickets and his baksheesh, pulls an old lady with a basket full of chickens upright, slides underneath her, and settles herself in the seat beside Bill. Bill looks apologetic with a "but I couldn't stop her face". He'd better pull on his big girl panties for the rest of the trip or they're both going to be walking. She gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. She isn't sure she succeeds.

At each stop, more people and livestock board and only a few get off. The road goes from tarmac, to gravel, to dirt, narrowing each time. The first time another truck has to pass them, Dani gives Bill her canteen. It has the rest of the Scotch in it, and is topped up with water. The old woman has given her the basket of chickens to hold.

She's using a combination of compass and GPS to decide where they are, so when the bus stops at a probably-this-is-it wide spot in the road (literally), Dani juggles people and chickens and her backpack as she gets up yelling to the driver to wait, wait, this is where they're getting off.

They make it down the steps without killing themselves and are standing in the middle of the dust cloud as the bus pulls away. She takes out Bill's canteen and a spare bandana and washes her face before tying the bandana around her throat. Now it's ho! for El Encanto, if she can figure out which way to go. She gives Bill back his canteen, takes back her own canteen, has a drink, and looks around.

"So, uh, where do we go from here?" Bill asks, looking around nervously. The other passengers who debussed with them are already walking up the road.

"That way," she says, pointing. The narrow trail goes off the road on the left, in the direction of Down. She wishes she'd thought to bring her quarterstaff with her. "It shouldn't be far from here. You want to go first?"

She says that because the only possible answer for Bill to make is 'yes'. If he goes behind her and falls—and he will fall—he'll knock her down when he does, and she'll probably end up in the thornbushes that line the trail and then she'll snap at him and his feelings will be hurt. And they don't want that. It should be late afternoon when they reach El Encanto, which means overnighting there before going to look for the temple in the morning (and making one of her three daily check-ins). Fortunately she's borrowed one of the SGC's five satphones. "Any time any place" isn't just a Special Forces motto. It's a promise of connectivity anywhere on Earth. And she'll need to make her check-in with General Hammond.

Bill does fall, but only three times and one trip that doesn't even cost him a sprained ankle, before the road levels out and they're in flatland again. It's humid and muggy, and there are gnats, and it feels like you can hear everything around you breathing. She stops to get her boonie out of her backpack, sprays it with DEET, and puts it on. It helps.

"How much farther?" Bill asks.

"Put on your sunscreen. Not far." About three miles. She's buried Bill's GPS at the bottom of his backpack when he wasn't looking. There are things the chairborne department doesn't need to know.

By the time they reach El Encanto (following the scent of roasting chicken that smells glorious) the sky has that milky color you can mistake for late afternoon, but which is in fact the first outlier of evening.

El Encanto is one of those wide spots in the road that wants to be a village when it grows up. There are probably at least a dozen invisible farms around it, and here is where market day happens. There's a motorcycle that looks in running condition, a car that doesn't, and a couch made out of the car's back seat, where the people tending the cooking chickens sit. Straight ahead (as the road goes) there's a saloon: the bar is about thirty feet long and backed with a mirror and rows upon rows of bottles. They all might not hold what they started with, but she bets none of them is going to poison you.

Dani feels a crushing pang of homesickness so strong it stops her breath. This is home. Home. She wants to run to the nearest Abuela and bury her face in the woman's apron, and...

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Bill asks dubiously.

Dani takes a deep breath and pushes the lying fantasy away. "This is where he said he'd be." For values of "where" being rendered down into GPS coordinates.

"What if he doesn't show up?"

"Well, we have a few beers, make a few friends, find out where we can sleep for the night..." There's an empty table. She takes off her backpack and sits down. The air is blessedly cool against her soaked shirt, and she takes off her boonie to fan herself with it. Bill sits down next to her, still rocking his dubiety. She'd better write him one hell of a glowing letter for his file when they get back.

A man approaches them carrying a tray. "Hola, muy buenos días, caballeros. Quieres una cerveza o una tequila o algo?"

And she's been misgendered once again. Oh well. It will only last until she opens her mouth. She kicks the side of Bill's foot. Hard.

"Um...we're looking for a guide named Rogelio. He's supposed to meet us here," Bill says. Bill has no Spanish. She bets their waiter has a fair grasp of English.

Their waiter turns, calling to someone inside the bar, telling them to take over. He sits down opposite Bill. "I am Rogelio, Rogelio Duran, at your service. This is just my day job. You must be Dr. Jackson."

"Well, er, um," Bill says.

"Actually I'm Doctor Jackson," Dani says brightly. "This is Doctor Lee." This is reason for a round of handshakes. She even finds herself shaking hands with Bill.

"Delighted," Rogelio says. His English is accentless. She wins, and there isn't even anyone here to bet with. "So, you guys want to see some temples?"

"Actually, we want to see one temple in particular," Dani says, bringing out the topo map. (Just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark! Shut UP, Doctor Jones! Doctor Jackson. Whatever.) The poor thing is starting to look more than a little worse for wear.

"Here," she says, pointing. It's the middle of the ten mile area, so they should be able to see any temple complexes from a distance. And the area won't be too hard to do a box search of.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, buena Señora, but there are no temples there. What you want to do is go north. That's where all the good stuff is. There's lots of ruins. My cousin has a truck. We could be there in five hours."

I do not fucking want to go north. "Gracias, muchas gracias, but we really want to go here." She pokes at the map again. The map should put in a call to JAG, NCIS, or AFSOC. It's being badly mistreated.

Rogelio once more attempts to overawe them with his testicles. "Señor, Señora, I've been to this part of the country many times. There is nothing there, I promise you. North—that's where you want to go. Trust me."

She looks at Bill. Bill flinches. She wonders what her face is showing. "Take us south or we can find someone who will," she says simply.

"Oh, okay, okay, okay…it's your money," says Rogelio. The sound of Latin American capitulation. Every victory must be paid for.

"So," Dani says, "you say your cousin has a truck?"

"Mi primo Simón. His house is just around the corner." There is a momentary pause and right now she's so tired she's about ready to laugh out loud at the inevitability of what comes next. "Of course there is the issue of filling the tank with gas."

What is that word Jack likes to say? Bazoinga? Bazonga? Yahtzee? Something like that. She nods to Bill.

Bill pulls out the entire wad of cash in his pocket (bad). She knew he was going to do that at some point so she made sure he was only carrying lempiras (good). He counts them onto the table one by one as Rogelio regards him with the tragic expression of a dog watching its master throw away a steak. Finally Rogelio simply plucks the whole wad out of Bill's hand and stands.

"Okay! Now we're talking business. Let's go, lady and gentleman."

Rogelio strides off. She follows Rogelio. Behind them she can hear Bill saying, "Uh, look, I need a receipt or something. I gotta fill out the paperwork..."

Rogelio's cousin's house smells of frying tortillas. The woman at the stove, catching sight of the two of them plus Rogelio, releases a staccato volley of Spanish indicating that Rogelio is a ne'er-do-well who keeps pretending he'll get a job but never does. And he owes her money as well.

"I'm sure he can pay you now that I have paid him," Dani says, knowing where the axis of power lies here. "He has said his cousin has a truck that can be rented. And Rogelio, too, to serve as a guide.”

The woman flips the latest tortilla on top of the pile. "How much money?" she asks.

"How much does he owe you?" Dani asks, which unleashes a torrent of all of Consuela's husband's cousin's shortcomings and failed get-rich-quick schemes. Consuela names a total figure (four thousand dollars) which is enough to stagger Dani. That is one hell of a lot of money. It's roughly ten thousand lempiras.

Rogelio says this is nothing to concern either Dani or Consuela. It is between Rogelio and Simón. Simón will have no objection to Rogelio borrowing his truck for a day—

"—Week—" Dani says, just to be helpful.

"Renting," says Consuela. "Three hundred fifty American dollars a day, plus gas. And a hundred for Rogelio, which he will give me to pay off his debt."

Actually this is astonishingly fair, all things considered. "Does the truck run?"

"The truck is new," Consuela says in despair. "Two years ago from the Ford dealership in Tegucigalapa, bought with money that was to go for livestock and a new pair of mules. Now there are no mules, no goats, no chickens—"

And if buying the truck wasn't Rogelio's idea, he certainly put the idea into Simón's head. She looks at Rogelio, eyebrow raised.

Rogelio opens his mouth to rejoin the conversation.

"Give Consuela the money Bill gave you," Dani says. "All of it. Then starting in the morning you will get a hundred dollars American per day. The truck will get three hundred fifty American dollars per day. That is a good thing. Smile and nod, Rogelio."

He manages a smile, but it isn't his best effort, Dani can tell. "Si, Señora." He digs into his pocket for what she imagines to be (and what looks like) the whole wad of cash Bill gave him. Consuela snatches it out of his had and stuffs it down into her cleavage.

Dani smiles back. "It is good to have a clear conscience and a stainless soul." Not that she's got either. "Now," she says. "We'll need dinner and a place to sleep. If you can guide us to both of those things, we'll pay for a half day of guiding."

He still doesn't look really happy. "American dollars?" he asks hopefully

"American dollars," she affirms. "Whether or not you get to keep them is between you and Consuela."

Saturday.

In the morning they're up before the sun, making haste between breakfast and going, their gear in the truckbed. She makes Bill sit in the middle and directs Rogelio to the gas pump, The man who owns it comes out of a shed yawning and scratching.

She wants the truck's gas tank filled. Yes, she knows how much it will cost (she checks the prices on the pump, not that this is the rate she's going to get). The truck needs to go a long way.

She turns down the generous offer of a rusty a gas can (undoubtedly with a hole in the bottom) filled against emergencies, and starts the haggling for the cost of filling a fifty-gallon gas tank. It isn't that high, especially for "American Gasoline". She wonders how they get the tanker into the town. Maybe it has a really long hose.

"I'm not sure I want—" Bill says. To be in the middle? Well she doesn't either. Rogelio is likely to mistake her knee for the gear shift and she isn't sure what the best form of retaliation is.

(She wishes Jack was here.)

"I'll scootch over," she says, making about six inches more of room which Bill immediately claims. "We're doing what General Hammond wants," she adds. In case he's forgotten.

It's about two hours down a mutinous dirt road before they reach the big wooden sign that says Reserva de la Biosphere de Tawahka. There is a lot of fine print after that about no littering, no dumping, no poaching, and no a bunch of other "no" things. Dani feels good about that. They must check this place fairly regularly. And all she and Bill are down here for is a little grave-robbing.

They get out of the truck and she and Bill pass their backpacks back inside. They can come back for them if they need any of the contents. Rogelio closes and locks the doors. (This should make her more suspicious than it does.) "What first?" he says.

"Follow the path," she says. See if we find a stream or a waterfall."

Bill heads out first, with Rogelio following. She brings up the rear, ready to shoot any deserters (Jack's voice says in her mind). She wishes he'd go away if he can't be here. And she hasn't got a gun anyway.

They walk for about four hours, with frequent local stops so Rogelio can bitch. The river is beautiful. It has many waterfalls. They hear a lot of local wildlife, mostly birds, Dani thinks. She consults the map at intervals.

They have finally reached a clearing. She sheathes her machete to free up both hands. The clearing is full of groundcover but without trees. (It isn't the trees she hates so much as the branches, one of which has stolen her boonie hat and forced her to make do with a kerchief.)

"According to the map, we're in the right place, but, um... This makes no sense. The legend says that all nearby water flows towards what we're looking for," Dani says. It's a stupid legend, she decides.

"Well how is that possible?" Bill asks.

She is starting to feel, with a truly piercing intensity, that Bill's interests and hers would be better served if he went back and waited in the bar at El Encanto.

"Well, maybe the device has special properties or maybe its just superstition or maybe it means the water flow from that waterfall back there flows in the direction of the temple." She is going to kill him. Both of them, Bill and Rogelio. Consuela will help her bury them.

"Well, in that case the temple should be right here, but, uh…" Bill says.

"Nobody ever listens to me, man. I tell them there are no temples out here but what do they do? They come out here anyways. Now the North… The North has roads. We could drive to any temple we want, but instead we're out here walking through this jungle," Rogelio whines.

Dani takes a deep breath. Latins ignore women who yell at them and Bill is a rabbit. "Yeah, okay. Um, let's spread out, look for a… temple. Or look for a totem or marker of some kind. Anything that might tell us where to go from here," she says.

Bill and Rogelio stare at her looking like wary sheep, Wary motionless sheep.

"Go," Dani says, in her best "fly, my winged monkeys, fly," voice.

Rogelio moves off. She's just turning toward Bill when he takes one step backward and vanishes.

"Found it!" Bill says. His voice echoes.

Dani pulls out a whistle to summon Rogelio back, then hurries over to Bill's last known position. She looks down. He looks up. He's in a hole with a square dressed stone surround, about six by six. Beneath him is a stone floor. Everything looks dusty. He's standing and seems unhurt.

"You okay?" she asks.

"I'm fine," Bill says. "At least you were right about there being something here."

Why didn't you believe me five minutes ago? She levers herself over the edge and drops down beside him. She gets out her light and flashes it on the walls. The walls are stone, small-for-the-Mayans blocks. No inscriptions.

She looks up through the opening at Rogelio and the blue sky behind him. Rogelio is leaning over the edge, digging into his pockets. He produces a set of small two way radios and tosses one of them to Bill.

"Listen; we're gonna go and look around. Stay put," Dani says. Bill and Rogelio compare radios. Dani refrains for eyerolling.

"You got it, Señora. Have fun."

Rogelio is probably imagining at least a one-month dig with a bunch of other people here and lavish gratuities accordingly. The fact of the matter is that once they're sure it's here, if they can't unearth it by themselves they're going to wait for one of the SGC's ships to be in range and ring up everything in sight until they have Telchak's device, leaving another of those unexplained deep holes you hear so much about (along with crop circles and other merry pranks). At least they aren't excavating in Siberia.

Bill and Dani shine their flashlights on the narrow stone-walled passage and start down it. "It's definitely early Mayan stonework," she says. "Definitely" means "probably" in archeology-speak. She's glad Bill's an engineer.

"Oh good," Bill answers, but not quite as if he means it. Maybe engineers know about "definitely" too.

The passage narrows and begins to grade downward immediately. There's signs of insect life, but fortunately, no bats. Bill (it's habit now) is going first. The walls are nearly brushing his shoulders.

"Um, is this cramped thing getting to you? I-I mean, why would they make these passageways so narrow?" he says. (Bleats.) (Says.) (Be nice, Dr Jackson.) (He should see some of the holes she's crawled into.)

"Maybe they were just skinny people, though actually if this is a grave or some kind of storage room it would make sense that the passage is narrow and—"

"Uh, and the roof— Ow, my head! God!" Bill says. He's just run into a block of stone lower than the rest of the ceiling by about eight inches. That's interesting. The Mayans didn't generally go for exposed lintel construction.

"Skinny and short?" Dani suggests.

Just past that the passageway opens out into a room the same shape and size as the one they started from. The walls are lined with symmetrical squares of stones, which, from the look of them, have been here for an extremely long time.

No writing. No inscriptions of any kind. And no more passageways.

"It's a dead end," Bill announces.

"There are no markings on the walls of any kind," she says, just to get into the spirit of mindless exposition.

"Isn't there always writing?" Bill asks. She thinks about it and turns to shine her light directly into Bill's face.

"We could keep looking," Bill says, although both of them already know there's nothing to look for. Nothing, nothing, nothing with a capital "fuck you," from the Universe. "Maybe not," he adds, looking at her face.

Bill checks in with Rogelio to tell him they're going to be a while. Dani sits down on the floor to think. How do they find the device without a sign saying: "This way to the incredibly ancient Ancient device that will make the dead walk?"

It occurs to her that her grandfather might have stood in this precise location and been just this stymied. No. Nick would have torn the place up with a pick-ax before leaving.

Nick. Ancient device. Fountain of Youth.

"All water flows to it," she says aloud. "Give me your canteen." She isn't wasting 12-year-old Scotch on a hunch.

They swap; her flashlight for Bill's canteen. She begins gently pouring water over the floor. Nearly all of the stones are set so tightly that it doesn't drip through.

Except in one place.

She leans over and puts her ear to the stone. Down below, very faint, she can hear the sound of water dripping. You could even say it was dripping toward something.

"There's an open space under here." And she hopes to god it doesn't lead to a tunnel because she already knows who will be going down it.

"You're good," Bill says, sounding relieved.

They go back up the passageway and she calls to Rogelio to bring them their packs and a block of wood. He does this with very little argument after she promises to pull his testicles out through his throat and tell Consuela he's been fucking her goats. It's hot, the dust is making her allergies flare up, she has a headache, and she'd forgotten how many men there are in Central America.

Then she and Bill, two crowbars, two machetes, and the block of wood go back to the other end of the tunnel again.

Lifting a coverstone, no matter what size, is not a walk in the park. They've carved the wood down into wedges, and hammered the wedges into the crack in the rock. If they can lift the stone, they can lever it up with their crowbars and see what's underneath. (Oh, God, she hopes there's something underneath.)

It's a long process, but somatically familiar. Eventually (maybe two hours or so, and she keeps forgetting to see if it's time for her noon check in with General Hammond) they're able to lever back the coverstone. Glory Hallelujah, there is no tunnel.

What is there is a small openwork naquadaah cube, maybe eight inches on a side. There's Ancient writing on the edges. It looks like someone took a Stargate and did origami with it.

"Well, at least it has writing on it," Bill says, peering down. "What's it say?"

"I have no idea." Not without her notes and journals and oh, yeah...time

Bill reaches in to pick up the artifact.

"Wait-wait-wait-wait! This is the root technology of a sarcophagus which causes madness and addiction. So accidentally activating it could be bad."

Bill pulls back as if the cube was suddenly red hot. "Okay," he says.

"Let's just try picking it up without touching it too much." When its out of there she can wrap her bandana around it to carry it. Or something.

They each extend one finger and cautiously, as if this were some sort of children's game, lift the object up. She sees dull-colored jewels on the inside. Is one of them the "on" button?

But she doesn't have time to see much, because the stone they've levered upright falls back into place. There is rumbling and vibrating, and a sound of rushing water.

"I think running would be a good idea right about now," Dani says, with a death-grip on Telchak's magic box. Before she can get to her feet water comes spraying in at them from all sides, pushing the wall blocks with it. "Run!"

She staggers to her feet. Bill is looking panicky and the water is rising rapidly. "That way!" she says, putting him first for this last, desperate, and most needful time. He flounders up the passage and is instantly obscured by jets of muddy water coming from the sides of the passage. She follows as fast as possible, panting to gain all the oxygen she can before the water is over her head. When she runs into Bill she pushes at him to hurry him. Their flight is a matter of running through rising water and it's neither fast nor pretty.

The quaking subsides as they reach the entry chamber, though by now they're both completely underwater. Dani thrusts the Telchak Device up into the air and someone takes it. Where's Bill? She feels around until she finds him and pushes him upward. They surface together, gasping for air.

"I thought you were dead!" Rogelio says.

"I get that a lot," Dani answers. "We triggered some sort of trap."

"I think I figured out why those passageways were so narrow. It's to prevent people from escaping alive," Bill sais with an air of positive discovery.

"You're good," she answers.

"What have you found?" Rogelio asks, waving the Telchak Device around like a garden ornament.

Bill flounders his way out of the watery pit and she follows. The stonework around the edge begins falling in.

She's been looking down and back at their would-be watery grave. Now she looks forward and up. There are four men standing behind Rogelio. He seems to be unaware of them. They all have guns and the happy expression of a bully with the upper hand. They're dressed in jungle-fighter combat fatigues. One has on sunglasses. She raises her hands slowly. Bill's eyes follow her line of sight and he does the same.

"Oh, I'm not going to rob you, Señor; Señora. Consuela—"

"Behind you," Dani says, not moving. Rogelio looks around.

"Usted? Madre de dios."

The men look far too pleased to see them. "Do you know them?" Dani asks Rogelio, and is told to be quiet by the leader. "I don't know who you think we are," she tries again. "We're—" Peaceful explorers are the next words she wants to say, but she bites them back. "Archeologists. We're sorry if—"

That's as far as she gets before the leader steps forward and backhands her. Her head snaps to the side and she falls. The ground is muddy. She struggles up to her knees, shaking her head to clear it.

"You are a woman," the leader says. "Keep quiet."

She would much rather not keep quiet, because the silence gives her mind far too much time to work. She knows that in Mexico the cartels kidnap American businessmen and hold them for ransom. It's a financial transaction. She wonders if the same thing is going on here. And if it will end as fortunately, with the victims being returned alive and well.

Only who will pay their ransom? The University of Colorado has never heard of them, and she can't give these guerrillas General Hammond's number.

She gets cautiously to her feet. Bill is looking wild-eyed. She'd like to reassure him, but she doesn't feel capable of it at the moment. "You can't just do this to us," Bill says, and Dani winces. Yes. Yes, they can.

The leader laughs. "Take off your shirt, muchacho. You will not want to get blood on it."

Bill slowly complies. His hands are shaking and he's slow. Sunglasses Guerrilla feints at him and Bill flinches back, falling into the water-filled pit. The thugs laugh. Bill is shocky, treading water and panting. She braces herself on her knees to give him a hand. He's covered in mud by the time he gets out. At least nobody has kicked her in.

"And now we all go for a walk," the leader says, in a voice of spurious cheer, "but there is a surprise at the end we do not want to spoil, so we will cover your eyes."

She's pawed pretty thoroughly as they blindfold her, and they take off her shirt as well, leaving her in a sleeveless T over a sports bra. They zip-tie her hands in front, which makes her think this must be business as usual for them. She isn't sure whether that's good or bad.

"What are you going to do with us?" she hears Bill ask, his voice high and frightened.

"It depends," the leader says, and they all laugh again.

She really wishes Rogelio had told them that terrorists and/or bandits were operating in the area. It might have made a difference. Yeah, like in the content of her calls to General Hammond.

(She wishes Jack were here.)

Before they go, the Bad Guys divide up the contents of the two backpacks among themselves. Anything they don't want—which is about half of it—they throw back down into the water. The water is receding now. She wonders who has the Telchak device at the moment and if they've somehow pushed the wrong button (which is any of them, really). She tries to remember where the satphone is. Did she take it down into the temple with her? Maybe?

And then they walk.

She's at the back, her wrists propped on Rogelio's shoulder. Bill must be in the front. She can still hear the waterfalls on her left. She thinks this may be some kind of goat track. Someone keeps poking her in the kidneys with the barrel of his far-too-large-caliber weapon.

Time to try again.

"Listen, if this is some sort of turf war thing we're not aware of, we're sorry. All we want—"

"Oh, no, Señora, por favor, please, don't speak," Rogelio says. This only confirms her theory that he knows—or knows of—these people, and she would really like five minutes alone with him to find out what he knows.

"I'm just saying that— That whoever you guys think we are, we're not," she says. It's awkward talking to the inside of a blindfold.

"And who do I think you are?" the leader says. She's heard one of the others call him "Rafael".

"I don't know. We're, uh, we're archaeologists. I'm guessing this is a kidnapping for ransom, but I think you should know that we're not worth anything." The SGC would pay their ransom, but there's no way of putting Rafael in touch with them that doesn't violate the whole of the Official Secrets Act.

"Trust me, mujer, everyone's worth something to somebody," Rafael says.

She hears a "body falling down" noise. Rogelio's shoulder is yanked out of her hands.

"I tripped! I tripped! I'm sorry! Gee, I can't see anything." Bill is panicking, and he's not the only one. She hears crashing to the right of the path. Someone's running. Rogelio?

"Chalo!" Rafael cries. There's a cluster of gunshots, followed by a deep final thud. She cringes, bringing her hands up to shield her face. The place where she was hit is sore and there's a cut on the inside of her mouth.

"What happened? What happened?" Bill asks.

"Your guide, he tried to run. What can you do?" Rafael says. "Maybe now we'll all stay on the path, ay, muchachos?"

She starts to get to her feet. Rafael shoves her, making her stagger. "After you. Vámonos."

They walk for a long time. Her mind drifts. It's hardly the first time she's been captured by hostiles. But then her team was either with her or coming for her. And the enemy was predictable. It's odd to think of an alien enemy being more predictable than a few Honduran bandits, but it's true. These guys could shoot her in the head and tumble her into a ditch for no reason. The aliens would almost certainly want her to "kneel before her god" (whoever that was today), then lock her up in a nice quiet cell.

She wonders who has the Telchak Device. She wishes she could see.

She wishes she wasn't here at all.

Her legs ache. She's in decent physical condition, but she can't imagine how Bill is holding up. They've been walking for several hours; she's actually glad of the blindfold because the rest of her exposed skin is being bitten to death by the local mosquitoes. She'd like to be sure of where they are, and how far it is back to El Encanto.

Is Rogelio dead? She heard the gunshots, but she doesn't know if the Bad Guys verified their kill.

Focus. She needs to come up with a story that will work. One that doesn't count on help from Bill, because she doesn't think that will be forthcoming.

Bill stumbles several more times. But nobody gets shot.

They come to a stop. Someone ahead of her whistles. Chalo?

"Chino! Jose! Ven par aca!"

"Far enough," Rafael says. "Cógelo. Llévatelo." Grab it. Take it away.

Does he mean the cube? Probably.

Oh god she really hopes they aren't all going to turn into zombies. She wouldn't mind if Rafael and the rest of the Lost Boys did, but she likes Bill and she values her own non-zombieness highly.

Someone whose name she does not know removes her blindfold. Now she can see. It's the camp. It looks a lot like El Encanto, only sloppier (right down to the bits of junked car; she wonders how they got it in here.) A tent with one side open, but mainly a shelter for several crates, a table and benches inside. A helicopter converted to an RV (more or less). There are a couple of wooden sheds, and a campfire over which someone is cooking.

She does the best gawk she can in the time she gets. The Bad Guys (one on each side) take her and Bill over to one of the shacks, open the door, and throw them in. They don't remove their zip-ties, so they fall hard and it's difficult for them to sit up and get their backs up against the wall. But it's manageable.

"Look I don't know what you expect, but no one's gonna pay anything for us!" Dani shouts. "We're not worth anything!"

"That is unfortunate for you, mujer, because if no one pays, you both die," Rafael says. He slams the door. (It isn't much of a door. The late afternoon sun comes streaming in through it, right into her eyes. So okay, that's west. Not very helpful.)

For the first time since Telchak's temple started collapsing, they've got a breathing space. She wishes she still had her glasses, but being able to stop walking is a sacrament.

She's so thirsty.

"Do you think they'll feed us?" Bill asks.

"Actually, no," she says regretfully. "I'd like to think they'll give us water eventually." She thinks for a moment. "Bill, do you know where the satphone is? I know it was in my pack this morning."

"Rogelio brought the packs to the temple when you asked him to," Bill says, frowning.

"And then we left them up on top when we went down to explore. Did I take the satphone with me?" (Yes? No? These and other crucial questions.)

"I don't remember," Bill says, sounding exhaustedly frantic. "If you did, it's gone. And they threw most of our other gear down into the temple. Is it important?"

"No. Don't worry about it," she says soothingly. She closes her eyes. How is she going to get Bill out of here? And for that matter, where are they going to go? The Bad Guys have all their money and documents, and Tegucigalapa is a long way from here.

She leans her head back against the slats, figuring out how to get there, and falls asleep.

She's awakened in the middle of the night by the precipitous drop in temperature. Everything's cramped, and moving is agony. She looks over at Bill, who is a fetus-like shape a foot or so away. She shakes him and he startles awake.

"C'mon, Bill," she says, and she has the sore throat to end all sore throats. "You gotta move. It'll help, I swear."

She prods him into a sitting position, then a standing position, and makes him turn in a circle waving his bound arms.

"Now what do we do?" he asks, in a voice as raspy as hers.

"Back to sleep for a few hours then do it again. You want to be the big spoon or the little spoon?"

"What?" he asks, sounding groggy. "Oh. I don't know."

"Lie down, Bill," she says, and when he does she fits herself against his back. At least half of her will be warm in a few minutes.

She's missed two check-ins with General Hammond now. Tomorrow morning (Sunday) she'll miss a third one. It gives her hope, and she knows she's going to need hope, because this situation is just about the worst she can remember ever having been in. Even if the SGC looks for them, how can it find them? She and Bill aren't even wearing locator beacons, because they're alien technology-based and that's nothing to wave around on Earth.

And they're in the hands of madmen who are likely to kill them as soon as they become irritated with them and then the Telchak Device will be in freefall. And she doesn't know what buttons to push on Rafael.

It still doesn't take her long to fall asleep.

She's so tired.

Sunday. Morning comes (food doesn't). Dani bullies Bill into another round of stretching exercises. By now his feet and hers are swollen in their boots but she isn't sure she wants to risk taking them off. One, she isn't sure they'll be able to get them back on, two, she isn't sure they'll be allowed to keep them, and three, she doesn't think they can make a run for it barefoot with their tender American feet. On the other hand, they may be crippled if they just leave them on. (She's just glad she's had all her shots for Central America. It isn't a place she wants to be barefoot.) She elects to leave them in place until she can no longer feel her feet at all, and having that much agency makes her feel better.

She's so thirsty.

It's midmorning Sunday. The Hole in the Wall Gang is up to about a dozen people (she and Bill can't escape through the cracks in their prison hut, but they can look through them), Most of them follow Rafael as he comes out of one of the huts and over to their shack. Rafael opens the door and sets down a stool. He seats himself on it.

"I know it's not much, but we do what we can," he says. He takes a knife and cuts through the zip ties on their wrists. Bill first. That's another useless datapoint.

"Are you the concierge?" she answers, with as much pertness as she can muster. "We'd like to order breakfast." She's forcing a confrontation, because he has an audience, but if she's submissive he's likely to be vindictive, audience or not.

Rafael's expression doesn't change. "Here is my proposal. I will ask questions, you give me answers. I believe you, you get water, food, maybe even a blanket at night, okay? Okay. Who do you work for?"

"I don't know what you want to know!" Bill says. "She told you—we're archaeologists!"

"Maybe I was not so clear," Rafael says after a pause. "If I don't believe you, things get worse for you… much worse."

"We are archeologists with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. You kill us, you get nothing," she says stubbornly. She remembers nights in Jack's living room, the four of them, talking about how to resist interrogation as if it were a game. She thinks Jack (and Teal'c) were the only ones taking it seriously then. She'd like to go back and apologize to them.

"Maybe I kill one of you to get your government's attention. Who lives… who dies… that's up to you, my friends," Rafael says.

"You think we're with the government?" Dani answers, aghast. "Like the CIA? No! What would we be doing in a wildlife refuge? We're archeologists. You saw us at an excavation site—we nearly drowned, you must have seen that. Please. Just let us go. We'll leave the country. You can keep our stuff. We won't make any trouble."

"You will not make any trouble, mujer, because you will be dead," Rafael says simply. "Okay. We do this the hard way." He gets up and starts to leave, then turns. "Understand this: I will not hesitate to kill you both. Make an example of you for your government so the next time, they will take us seriously. You should know, many prisoners talk as you do, "my friends will come and save me." It gives them hope."

"Teal'c will put your head on a pike," she answers. Of course, we'll probably both be dead by then. But he will. And it will hurt.

They don't feed them that day or the next. And there's no water.

She spends the rest of Sunday and all of Monday handholding Bill. She digs in the ground until she finds some pebbles for both of them to suck on, and encourages him to sleep as much as he can. She hopes she can talk Rafael into sending one of them out with his ransom demand. She'll try to make sure it's Bill. Each night when the temperature drops, they lick condensation from the weeds in their prison. It's barely enough to moisten their mouths, but it gives them a sense of fighting back.

If they can only get out of here they can head north until they hit the river, then follow it. Rogelio's truck is probably still there, and she can hotwire it if they can get in.

She knows she's stuffing her head with hopes and dreams, but she needs to pretend for Bill. He doesn't realize they're going to die here sometime in the next 72 hours.

On Tuesday (she's still keeping track) the door to their jail cell bangs open and two of the Lost Boys drag her out. The moment they pull her upright everything starts spinning, so its just as well that they don't care whether she can find her feet or not. She lurches and staggers as they drag her over to the largest hut, and there's Rafael.

She can smell pineapple.

Beside him is a table. It has a metal pitcher, a cup, and a plate full of pineapple pieces. Her salivary glands make a desperate attempt to function, but all she feels is a pang. Her head aches. Her minders force her down into a chair in front of Rafael and zip-tie her hands behind her back.

Rafael pours water into the cup. It's the kidney-shaped kind that comes in an army mess kit. He slurps it down noisily.

"You have not had water or food for two days," he says.

"Yeah," she answers in a whispery voice. "I've been keeping track."

Rafael ignores her in favor of the pineapple. "Ahh. Hmm. Muy delicioso. Pick of the season. This is very good. Oh, and I should tell you. Your State Department does not care about freedom. Or you. But there is still a chance you can save your lives. Today, we're going to start slow. I'm going to ask you…"

He lifts a cloth (she thinks it's her bandana) off of a lump. The lump resolves itself into the Telchak Device. It is not (thank fuck) glowing.

"What is this?"

She is still trying to disentangle the statement "Your State Department does not care about freedom" and make it make sense. She stares at him blankly.

"And this is the part where you do not talk," Rafael says. He takes a chunk of pineapple and waves it in her face, then brushes it across her lips. Her salivary glands make a last heroic attempt and actually produce moisture. "This? For you and for your friend if you tell me what this is." He takes another drink of water. "I don't know how long someone can go without food, but I believe the human body needs water every three or four days."

Tu madre es una puta, pendejo she thinks. "It's an ancient artifact," she says hoarsely. "Are you freedom fighters? Did you contact our State Department?" The message will have been passed down the chain of command and ended up at the SGC. "They can't act officially, but there are private contractors. They can meet your demands." Or come and kill you all. So long a speech exhausts her, and the end of it comes out in a croaking whisper.

"An artifact?" Rafael says, in tones of arch surprise. "What kind of an artifact?"

Oh, I see, it suddenly isn't about the ransom. "Yeah. I'm an archaeologist. I look for artifacts. Found one!" she cackles, as the room darkens and swirls around her.

"It all makes perfect sense," Rafael says. "You're just an archaeologist, and you look for artifacts."

"Makes perfect sense," she echoes. Her lips are cracked and bleeding. She can't stop looking at the Telchak Device.

"I am going to ask you one last time," Rafael says. "What is this?"

"I just found it!" she croaks. "I don't know."

"What gives you the right to come into our country and steal valuable artifacts? You call yourself a scientist? You're nothing but a thief. You think you're better than me, but I have reasons for what I do."

The fact that she can recognize all the pages in Rafael's playbook doesn't make any of this easier. "Oh, yeah," she says. "Good reasons."

She's finally managed to piss him off (Good going, Dr. Jackson). "Jose!" he calls.

Jose (blond, red neckerchief) comes up from behind her and moves to a long table on her left. He flips a heavy canvas cover off of something that turns out to be two car batteries wrapped together in copper wire. There's a set of jumper cables attached to one of them. He touches the leads together and they spark fatly.

This is going to be bad.

Rafael brandishes his matte black utility knife again. He grabs the front of her shirt and slices it open. Then he cuts open the shoulder straps and pulls the whole thing off. Next comes her sports bra.

She doesn't react. She's trying to find the still quiet place inside where there's no fear and no pain. If she can, she can go there and wait this out.

Rafael grabs her chin and shakes it. "Here is something you should not doubt, mujer. You will tell me what I want to know."

"Blow a dead goat, hijo de puta." Dani answers.

Jose is the mechanic, deciding where to touch her with the leads and when. Rafael studies her face. It's like being stung by a thousand wasps each time. Every once in a while there's a pause for Rafael to ask her what the device is and for her to call him a cabrón de cabras. Finally she can only scream each time the leads are applied, if you can call a hoarse croak screaming. Then she can't even do that.

Without involvement or volition she finds herself back in the sunlight again. She can't feel her body. She's nauseated and shivering. Is she walking? No, she decides: being dragged. The men who are dragging her open the door to the hut and throw her in. She falls like a dead weight. The pain of her burns is a nauseating shock all over her body. Then they reach for Bill.

"No! I don't know anything! I don't know anything! She's already told you everything! No!" The last syllable is a wail, punctuated by the sound of the slamming door.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

The shadows get longer. Eventually she's able to move. She drags herself into a sitting position. Her arms and her torso are covered with burn-welts, like a hundred nipples. Some have blisters. Some of the blisters have popped and bled. It's nice to know she'll be dead before they infect. Electrical burns can be nasty.

She listens for screams but doesn't hear them. Too far away? Or did Bill break early? She hopes so, for his sake. There isn't much Rafael can do with the information that the magic box is a device made by aliens to reanimate the dead. And if State has been notified, the cavalry will be coming. Just a little late, that's all. Every time she closes her eyes she starts to drift off. Every time it's a little harder to open them—but the door slamming open rouses her. Two of the rebels drag Bill in and drop him, face down, on the woven mat floor. He groans.

Dani crawls over and bends over him. She helps him to turn over. Her hands shake so hard she can barely manage it.

"I never thought I'd die like this," Bill says.<

"Have courage," she says. "The State Department knows. Our guys will send someone."

"When?" Bill asks. He has a split lip and a cut on his cheekbone. She can't see any burns. It looks as if they might have beaten him rather than getting out the battery.

"I'm sorry, Dani. I couldn't take it. I told them," Bill says mournfully.

"What? What did you tell them?" she asks. She couldn't expect any more from him but it's still a blow.

"Everything," Bill answers.

She'd cry if her eyes weren't too dry for tears.

The sun is still late afternoon high when they come for her again. It's Jose and someone whose name she doesn't know. They haul her to her feet, but she still can't walk, so they drag her back to the command shack. There they shove her into the chair again and zip-tie her hands to its back.

Rafael comes in, and, without preamble, backhands her. "You will tell me what I want to know," he says.

This time there are about six other Lost Boys in the shack with him, so this is terrorism theater. "Bill Lee already did," she says.

Rafael hits her again. "If you value the life of your friend, you will tell me everything. Your friend told me this device is the Fountain of Youth."

"Yeah, uh-huh," she says. "A myth. The thing about a myth is that it's a myth."

He hits her again. There's something going on here. Since he took them prisoner he's been playing the jolly sadist. Now he's furious. Why the change?

"How does it work?" he demands, raising a fist.

"I don't know!" She tries to twist away. "You grabbed us the moment we found it." The blows have cut the inside of her mouth again and it's bleeding. She spits the blood out. Always make it look worse than it is. Make the enemy underestimate you, Jack's voice says in her mind.

Rafael has lunged to his feet, pacing back and forth in front of her. "Who is this Telchak?"

"Chaakh was the Mayan god of rain. Tel-Chak means "son of Chaakh"." (It doesn't, but they're hardly likely to call her on it.) "He was a culture hero who lived here thousands of years ago."

"So this device is many thousands of years old?" Raphael demands.

"Maybe," she says. This time he grabs her by the throat and shakes her. Black spots dance before her eyes.

"And this Mayan god brought this device to his temple. For what purpose?"

Raphael honestly looks rabid. She wonders why none of the others can see it. Maybe they don't care.

She's too late with her answer. Rafael grabs her breast and twists it. The burns under his fingers sing with agony. She feels some of the blisters pop.

"To hide it, to use it, I don't know! You're asking me things I don't know!"

"Use it how?" Rafael demands.

"On people. People here. Mayans."

"And what would it do to them?" Rafael is pacing again. She can see the whites of his eyes, and not in a good way.

"Look," she says. Calmly. Placatingly. (Roll over and show your belly, Dr. Jackson.) "The research I used to find it just warned that the device was harmful. That's all I know."

Raphael grabs her face in one hand. It hurts. Of course it hurts; he's been hitting her off and on for the last three days. "I do not think it is so harmful. I have never in my life felt as strong as I do right now."

He uncovers the Telchak device again. Now its depths glow a brilliant Event Horizon Blue. She realizes with a panic bordering on nausea that this is why Raphael has been so manic; this is why she's been feeling better (for some values of better) since she was brought in here.

"Turn it off. You don't know what you're dealing with. It's very dangerous. Turn it off. Please!" she begs.

"You're lying," Rafael says flatly.

"What if she isn't?" Chalo says "The device is cursed. Raphael; we should turn it off."

"Turn it off?" Rafael demands. "Do you not feel different as well?"

"I do, and it scares me. Por favor, Raphael, if you will not turn it off, I will," Chalo says, taking a step toward Telchak's Magic Box.

Rafael grabs a pistol lying on the table top. He turns and shoots Chalo twice in the chest. Chalo goes down.

It's starting, Dani thinks. We don't have time to die; we've got to get out of here.

"He would have betrayed us," Rafael says to the remaining Lost Boys. Dani's pretty sure there are only about half as many as there were a minute ago. "Take her back to her cell."

She's glad to go there, possible concussion and all.

"They've turned it on," she says, as soon as the door's closed, and is relieved to see that Bill looks as horrified as she does "Rafael's already strung out. He shot Chalo for suggesting they turn it off."

"What do we do?" Bill asks.

"Run away," she says grimly.

The plan is to pull slats off the back of the hut to make an opening big enough to get through. She feels around until she finds one where the point of the nail is exposed—not hammered flat—on the other side. She takes off her belt (they both still have their belts; after all, what would the Bad Guys think: they're going to hang themselves?) and threads it around the plank, then starts twisting the belt, leaning back.

"Shouldn't we at least wait till nighttime?" Bill asks.

"I don't think we have that long," she says absently. She pokes at a molar with her tongue, trying to decide if it's loose.

And she isn't thirsty at all and that scares her more than anything else that's happened today.

"We won't get a hundred yards before they kill us," Bill says plaintively.

"If we stay we'll be dead before morning. I saw the short-term effects of that device. I don't think we want to stick around to find out what long-term exposure does," she says. I know what a sarcophagus does to a person's sanity, and this is a lot more powerful.

The plank pops free. She sets it aside. Two more to go.

By the time they're starting on Plank #3, there's an outbreak of machine gun fire from the direction of the command shack (the Telchak Device). She stops caring about the noise and she and Bill just haul as hard as they can. The plank splinters, breaks, and they drag it free.

There's a space. She shoves through and then drags Bill after her.

They're moving away from the camp at a tangent. There's weapons firing behind them. She looks back and sees Chalo firing at a knot of rebels.

(Wasn't Chalo just dead? This is bad.)

She and Bill flee back the way they came like adrenaline-fuelled gazelles who haven't had any food or water for three days. They keep stumbling. But the guerillas have finished their dispute with Chalo and are following them. At least some of them are. She doesn't know where the rest have gone.

Over everything she can hear Rafael screaming about killing them.

This isn't much of a path and the Bad Guys are only about three city blocks behind them. Plus, they're shooting. This isn't the path she and Bill were brought in on because there are a lot of downed trees here and she doesn't remember climbing over any of those. She hears water up ahead but can't see it.

Bill stops at an (upright) tree and clings to it, panting. Dani turns back to grab him.

"Bill, come on. You've gotta keep moving!"

Gunfire hits the tree they're standing beside, which makes Bill move. She can see Rafael and two of the Bad Guys standing not too far away. Only Rafael is sighting his rifle.

They run again. This is nightmarishly familiar but all the other times there was a Stargate at the end of it and then they'd be home and safe.

Bill falls. Dani doubles back to help him up, but Bill is holding his side. "I can't, I can't breathe!" he gasps.

"You can, you can," she says. "You know what they'll do when they catch you. Come on!"

"I can't, Dani. I can't," Bill repeats. There are tears in his eyes.

She helps Bill to move off the line they're following, checking behind them to make sure they aren't seen. She stations Bill behind a tree and pushes at him to crouch down to hide.

"Stay here. I'll draw them off." She runs. The Bad Guys follow.

She vaults over a deadfall and realizes it's taken the last of her strength. She staggers and tries to run again, but before she gets more than a few steps there's a hot shock of burning in the back of her right thigh and the leg goes numb. She falls against a tree and clutches at it, turning to face back the way she came. Rafael is only a few yards away now. He fires a burst of bullets above her and then at her feet. He pulls out the black Special Forces knife again.

"I'm going to skin you alive!" Rafael howls.

She slides down into a sitting position and gropes around at the base of the tree until her hand closes on a large rock. Maybe she can kill him with it. Everything is going in and out of focus. Each time her heart pounds everything turns grey.

And then Rafael and the other two Bad Guys just fall forward, as if they've been shot in the back. And someone runs forward and crouches down and it's Jack.

Jack has come. Jack is here. And she's still alive.

"How many more are there?" he asks, but she can't do anything besides stare. She clutches her rock.

"Indy?" He's moved over beside her. He starts to shake her arm then sees the welts. He takes her by the wrist.

"That's all," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"Never mind that," Jack says. "I think you're out of uniform." He starts unbuttoning his fatigue blouse for her to wear.

Dani finally drops the rock. Jack strips off his belt and loops it around her leg above the bullet wound. He cinches it as tight as he can. She can't feel any pain. Isn't that odd?

"Hold that," he says, handing her the end of the belt. She holds it, peering with vague interest at her leg. There's a hole in both sides of her pants leg. The bullet must have gone through and through.

Jack hands her his fatigue blouse, and when she doesn't take it, he dresses her as if she was a doll. She can feel the fabric scraping over her burns, but doesn't feel the pain of the burns themselves. She supposes she's in shock. It's okay to be in shock with the Bad Guys dead.

"Water?" she asks hopefully. Jack hands her his canteen. It's almost full.

She drinks, and it's warm and metallic tasting, and she's never had anything so wonderful in her life. She only drinks half because Bill is still out there.

"You gonna be able to walk on that?" Jack asks her.

"Run, if I—" she says, and then Chalo appears behind them out of the undergrowth. His eyes are white like Apophis's zombie soldier's. He's carrying a shotgun.

The first blast hits the tree above them. "Telchak's device reanimates dead tissue," she blurts out. And apparently it's the gift that keeps on giving.

"Yeah, whatever," Jack says. He grabs her arm and drags her to her feet, pulling her behind the tree. She can't feel her right leg. Jack leans out from cover and fires his machine gun at Chalo.

It doesn't have any effect.

"No," Dani says.

"Hey, get down!" Someone new. An American. She gets a quick glimpse of jungle camo and a bandolier of grenades before he fires and Chalo becomes a brown mist. Reanimate that, Telchak,she thinks. The American steps around the mist to come toward them. Jack lifts her to her feet with an arm around her waist. She pulls herself higher with an arm around his neck.

"Indy, this is Burke. Burke, this is Dr. Danielle Jackson, one of our two missing scientists."

"I left Bill behind a tree," she says.

"Pleased ta meetcha," Burke says. He blows a large pink gum-bubble. "What's with the guy from Evil Dead?"

There's an awkward silence. She wonders if Jack would mind if she just rested her head on his shoulder and went to sleep.

"Classified?" Burke asks.

"Yeah," Jack says, and Burke laughs.

"You guys are into some crazy shit, man!" he says. Dani thinks Burke must be crazy. She wonders if Jack will ever tell her who Burke is and why he's here.

"Bill," she says again. And Rogelio. They at least have to find his body, for Consuela's sake.

The three of them head back toward the camp. Insects are already crawling over Jose and his companion, but Rafael's face is clear. Nothing wants to touch him. Burke sees her condition and cuts her a walking stick. It helps. She's still bleeding, though, and it makes her lightheaded. Most of the pants leg below the tourniquet is saturated with blood. She gestures vaguely toward a likely-looking tree. Maybe Bill's there.

"Dr. Lee!" Jack shouts. "This is Colonel O'Neill! Come out!"

After a moment Bill appears from behind a tree (not the one she thought). He staggers toward them, weaving back and forth. She holds out the canteen mutely. Bill gulps the remainder down, trying to breathe at the same time.

"Have to go back to the camp; it's the only clear place for Air Rescue to land," Burke says.

"The device is there," Dani says. Her voice feels like it's coming from far away; as if everything she says is a distorted echo of what she hears other people saying.

She absolutely refuses to faint.

She isn't sure how long it takes them to get back to the camp. She's fading in and out. She doesn't think Bill is doing much better. When they arrive, Burke goes into the command shack and brings out the chair she was tortured in; since nobody's tying her to it this time she's willing to sit in it.

He also brings out the pitcher of water and the cup, and she and Bill drink until they're full.

"Bill," she says. "Go in there. Turn it off. Bring it out."

"I'll do a perimeter check," Burke says, moving off.

"Bring back a first aid kit!" Jack calls after him. He pulls out a knife and she cringes, but all he's doing is slicing off the leg of her pants and cutting it into wide strips. The exit wound is about the size of a quarter, and still bleeding. Her skin is covered in dried blood.

"You're filthy," Jack says.

"I've been rolling in mud," she answers. "And dragged through it."

"Comprehensive," Jack agrees. "So. Heard you lost all your gear. Where's the satphone?"

"Is General Hammond going to take it out of my pay? Because I think it's at the bottom of the temple."

"Eh, you're bringing back something better," Jack says. "Even if it only makes local calls."

"Which I do not want to see it do ever again."

A perimeter check apparently involves searching for bodies. Burke doesn't find any live ones. He drags all the dead ones—there are several—into her former jail cell. He comes back with what looks like an Army surplus First Aid kit.

"Here you go," Burke says. "Full of lovely toys for girls and boys courtesy of El tio Samuel."

Bill comes out of the Command Shack. He has the Telchak Device. It doesn't seem to be glowing now.

"Is that the thing that made the guy do the thing?" Burke asks. He doesn't seem to expect an answer. Which is just as well, since he isn't going to get one.

Jack opens the First Aid kit and kneels down in front of her. She's waving off the circling (and crawling) insects attracted by the scent of blood. He picks up her right leg and sets her foot on his thigh.

"It's okay, it's off now," Bill says. He sounds completely exhausted. "Stopped glowing."

"Glowing thing really gives it away, so if it's not glowing anymore it shouldn't be on anymore," Dani agrees. "And that means it's off." She stifles a really-not-hysterical giggle.

Jack rummages through the aid kit and pulls out two battle dressings. He takes them out of their paper, soaks both of them down with hydrogen peroxide, then shakes antiseptic powder into the middle of each. It wicks up the liquid. "Hold this," he says, handing her a roll of gauze. He pours the rest of the bottle of hydrogen peroxide over her leg then presses one pad to the back of her thigh and one to the front. It hurts this time but she's too light-headed to care. Then he wraps the roll of gauze around her leg until it's gone, and makes her hold the gauze in place while he digs out a roll of tape and wraps her leg in that too. Next comes a final wrapper of her former pants leg. Then he takes his belt back. "That should hold until we get you home," he says.

"We need to—" she says.

"No, we do not," Jack says firmly.

"His cousin will want to bury him," she says.

"Who? Rogelio Duran?" Burke asks. "His cousin found him the same day he got shot. He was looking for his truck. Kid took a couple of bullets but he's going to be fine."

Dani closes her eyes. The world spins in a red-grey swirl. "I need to give Consuela some money for goats," she says.

"Don't mind her, she's always like this," Jack says to Burke. They chat inconsequentially about things—apparently they knew each other a long time ago—as Dani holds on to the edges of the chair seat and tries to ignore her leg. Without terror and other associated matters to distract her, the leg is hurting kind of a lot. At least it isn't broken.

Bill is sitting on the grass with the Telchak Device sitting in his lap like the world's most hellish teddybear.

"Here they come," says Burke, and after he speaks she can hear the whuppa whuppa whup of the helicopter blades.

It sets down carefully in the clear space in front of the former Command Shack. It's red and white, and says "Air Rescue" and "Soto Cano Air Base" on the side. It's a big one, but aside from that she doesn't know anything about helicopters and refuses to learn.

The door slides back, and two medical corpsmen hit the ground running. "Where's the gunshot?" one of them asks. He sees her bandaged leg and has the answer to his own question. "Can you stand up, honey?"

"Oh, fuck you," she says, exhausted.

"You'll need a stretcher," Jack says.

"Fuck you, too," she mutters under her breath.

But she doesn't fight back when they settle her on a stretcher, and it's only a matter of minutes before all four of them are aboard. The helicopter revs up again and starts to bumble its way off the ground.

"There's a C-130 at Soto Cano with your name on it," Jack says to her over the noise. "We'll be home in time for dinner."

"Janet's going to chain me to the bed," she mumbles.

"Ah, I'll spring you," Jack assures her.

The middle of nowhere to Soto Cano Air Base is a pretty fast trip. They couldn't talk much even if they wanted to, because helicopters are very loud. She doesn't care for planes (large or small) and she cares even less for something that hovers and swoops unpredictably. She uses the time efficiently to loosen her bootlaces and her boots because she couldn't run now if she wanted to. (Oh, Dr. Jones, it all depends on what's chasing you, doesn't it?) Finally the helicopter stops moving around and lands. Three of them walk out, and the two corpsmen lift her out and set the stretcher on a waiting gurney. The sky, which is most of what she can see, is in streaky sunset colors.

"Come on, kids, let's go," Jack says, and once more they are rolling (in her case) and walking (poor Bill) to an unknown destination. The tarmac is blazingly hot. She keeps trying to sit up to see where they are and Jack keeps pushing her down.

"You guys just gonna bounce?" Burke asks.

"We were never here," Jack answers. (Yeah, considering they're leaving the country with a priceless ancient Ancient artifact they never had permission to dig up (steal) in the first place.)

Burke laughs. "See you round the campus, campers," he says. She's decided that Burke is definitely crazy. She wonders if Jack is going to recommend him for Stargate Command (as the saying goes, you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps).

Between her toes she can see that they're moving toward something large. Probably the C-130 Jack mentioned. She's feeling a combination of exhausted and wired, which is, frankly, a far-too-familiar sensation. The only thing to do is to get past wired and catch up with exhaustion. That's going to take a few hours.

She's wheeled up the loading ramp of the C-130. The inside is dark, muggy, and hotter than the outside. The stretcher's removed from the gurney and set on the floor. They start to strap her down.

She howls in wordless frustrated protest as the cargo tie-downs dig into her burns.

"Aw Jeez," Bill says. She glances over. He looks haggard. But he also knows what she looked like after Jose got through with her.

"Just leave it," Jack says. "I'll do it. Go."

The corpsmen leave. She sits up, untangling herself from the tie-downs with angry efficiency. There are seating benches and some kind of netting along both sides of the plane. She intends to get there, but she isn't quite sure how. She doesn't think her right leg will flex properly.

There's a mechanical whine as the ramp rises and the interior is left in darkness. "You okay back there?" someone calls from the cockpit.

"Ginger peachy," Jack calls back. He gets to his feet and comes over to her. He stoops enough to get his hands under her armpits (her skin is intact there; the burns are only on her chest and from shoulder to elbow on the outsides of her arms) and lifts her nearly to a standing position. Her heels bounce over the uneven floor as he drags her over to the bench and seats her. "Grab the cargo ties when we take off," he tells her. He must mean the netting.

The engines start, and then the plane is moving. She suddenly realizes there aren't any windows back here, and that somehow makes being in the plane worse. She closes her eyes tightly, because she will not have a nervous breakdown here and now.

But Jack is sitting beside her. He came for her. (Okay, for Bill, too, but she thinks if it was just for Bill General Hammond would have been encouraged to send SG-3.)

"How long did it take?" she asks. (The plane leaves the ground and she sucks air in disapproval, clutching the netting).

"To find you? Not long. And I should have checked you into the base hospital, but I wanted to get us out of there as soon as I could. We weren't supposed to be there in the first place."

"I'm fine," she says mulishly.

"You're always fine," Jack agrees inscrutably. He puts an arm around her, carefully fitting it to all the places the burns aren't. The plane stops climbing and evens out. She hitches herself closer to him because it won't matter just this once.

Just this once.

Most of the next 24 hours is a blur. It's the middle of the night when they're wheels down at Peterson, and she and Bill are taken over to the Secured Medical wing of the Academy hospital and put into separate rooms. Janet meets them there. Jack takes Janet aside, and afterward Janet is very careful removing the uniform blouse Dani's wearing. It sticks in a couple of places. The burns look worse than she remembers.

"You should take care of Bill first," she says. "He got hurt."

"Honey, have you looked in a mirror?" Janet asks.

"It's not so bad," Dani says, just to be contrary. When she looks down at herself, she can see bruises mingled with the burns. It looks as if it ought to hurt more than it does.

"You look like the domestic violence poster child," Janet says. She and her nurse sponge Dani's face, and then her chest and arms. They're very gentle, but it's painful. They help her into a sitting position to wash her back.

"Where's Jack?" she asks.

"Over with Dr. Lee. You can see him when I'm done."

"Are you going to be done soon?"

"Fairly soon."

It is not fairly soon. There is glucose and saline and antibiotics and morphine involved, all courtesy of the lovely new IV in the back of her hand. Janet wants to irrigate the bullet wound to make sure there's nothing in it that shouldn't be. That's worse than it sounds. After that, Janet bandages the wound (and everything else) again, and dresses Dani in a hospital gown. Dani demands pizza but there's none forthcoming, though she does get Jell-O and a glass of ginger ale. She's wrapped in a lovely opioid haze that she's struggling to make go away.

"Hey."

She forces her eyes open and sees Jack. He sits down beside the bed.

"Hey," she says. "Janet drugged me."

"Probably afraid you'd climb out of bed."

"Is Bill okay?"

"He's asleep. He'll be fine."

"He was afraid we were going to die."

Jack takes her hand. "Weren't you?"

She thinks about it and feels herself slipping away on the morphine. "Too busy," she mumbles.

She feels Jack's hand tighten over hers. "Stay busy," he says. "Don't die."

"I promise."

The nightmares always come after she's safe, and it's worse when she's drugged. She can argue with an injection but not with an IV drip. She struggles toward consciousness, drawing breath to scream, but a hand tightens on hers.

Jack?

She squeezes back.

Sleep pulls her under again.

It's another 48 hours before she can get out of the hospital and back to the SGC. Bill is released before her, and he comes to see her before he goes. He's unsettled, as if they're still in Rafael's hands. She tells him the whole thing is over and he asks her how she can say that.

She isn't sure what he means. It is over. Jack got there in time and they're home. She tells him he has her complete permission to lie shamelessly to Felger about everything that happened. (Choose your fiction and I'll endorse it.) Bill still seems agitated. He tells her General Hammond told him to take two weeks off. She says Felger will still be there after that, but Bill doesn't smile.

She hopes he's going to be okay.

The day she gets back to the Mountain (and exchanges her wheelchair for crutches) they welcome Sammy, Teal'c, Master Bra'tac, and Jacob Carter back from the mission they went on while Dani was away. The four of them went to Anubis's throneworld, which Dani privately considers to be much riskier than going to Honduras. Or not? She really isn't sure. She never felt closer to death than this last time on Earth.

Sammy has her arm in a sling when she comes through the Gate. Her eyes widen when she sees Dani. By now Dani's looked in a mirror. Two fading black eyes and a split lip with stitches. Janet was right.

As Dani expected, Jake gets possession of the Telchak device at the debrief. "To develop a weapon against Anubis's super soldiers" is the reason given. Dani thinks she might have actually protested if General Hammond had wanted to study it here. (Better it should be anywhere else.)

Jack won't look at her.

After Jake and Sammy are done, it's her turn. She makes the report of her and Bill's visit to Honduras—and their torture—as brief and clinical as she can. She can feel Jack's eyes on her now.

"Nevertheless, I'm glad to see you all returned home safely," General Hammond says when she's finished.

"And I'm not letting either of you go running off by yourselves ever again," Jack adds.

"Yessir," Sammy says blandly.

"Have to catch me," Dani says.

"Dismissed," General Hammond says.