SG2 - All Eyes on the Path Ahead
Posted on Fri Feb 27th, 2026 @ 7:53pm by Commander Aaron Wander & Scarlett Hayes Dr. & Major Amy Ludd & Pilot Officer Aisling Quinn
Mission:
Echoes of the Fallen
Location: Abydos - Pyramid
4989 words - 10 OF Standard Post Measure
//ON//
Shadows played off the walls of the corridor in strange patterns as the carved stone gave way to ornate metallic panels and then to eerily familiar architecture. There were obvious signs of Go'auld technology and building, but it was seemingly overlaid on something far older. There were sections where the ornate panels curved or bulged out, conduits and control crystals embedded through them and into the technology underneath.
Aaron Wander resisted the urge to reach out and touch the conflicting mix of technology. It reminded him of biology classes where they learned about parasites which took over the host instead of symbiosis. This was that, but on a technological scale. He motioned his flashlight to one of the more clear sections of underlying technology that didn't have a panel or conduit cut into it. "Does that look Ancient to anyone else?"
“Let me see” Scarlett had been hanging back studying everything, as well as making a record of what they were seeing so she could refer back to it later. “Interesting, I think you could be onto something. It’s definitely not Goa’uld in origin that’s for sure.”
Inching forward, her rifle tugged into her shoulder, Amy scanned the corridor before them through the thermal scope.
"Several weak heat spots" she said "The lights" the Major added before flipping the thermal scope back to the side of her rifle.
"We doing this?" she had seen the look that Doctor Hayes had given her, but Amy wasn't comfy letting a non-com lead the way. There didn't seem to be any danger but the galaxy was very well known for trapping everything!
Scarlett nodded. “Lead on, I’m sorry if I came across a bit sharp earlier I just didn’t want to see you or anyone else get hurt.” She offered an apologetic smile.
Aisling stepped in after them and felt it straight away—not fear, not exactly, but that prickle behind the ears that told her the room wasn’t playing fair. The air felt heavier here, sound oddly swallowed. She paused, head tilting, and thumbed her earpiece.
“…Yeah, no,” she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.
She took another few steps, slow, eyes tracking the walls and surroundings where Goa’uld tech littered the room. Her radio answered with a soft wash of static, not loud enough to panic over, just enough to be annoying. The kind that crept up on you when you weren’t paying attention.
“Comms are getting mucky in here,” she said, keeping her tone light but certain. “It’s not dead, just… fuzzy. Feels like the stone’s soaking it up, or the tech’s bleeding something into the air.” She shifted her position and the hiss changed pitch. “Aye—there. It moves when I do.”
She rested a hand briefly against the cool wall, then pulled it back, frowning. “Whatever this place was before the Goa’uld got handsy with it, it’s still got opinions about being talked through.” A glance back to Aaron, half-grin, half-warning. “I can work around it, but if we go much deeper I’ll want to drop a booster or two. Otherwise we’ll be shouting at each other like it’s a bad night in the pub.”
"Start dropping a trail Quinn." Aaron replied with a nod.
Ludd smiled as she lead the way through the corridor. She lead with her rifle, all this was just too strange and... well creepy! The flickering lights were doing nothing to ease her mind and she was expecting a trap, a trip wire or pressure plate at every step.
Just after the next sharp turn, the corridor opened up into a large room. Aaron had been bringing up the rear and watching for any sign of something coming up behind them or shifting within the corridor itself. When he joined his team in the large room he looked around and took it all in.
The dark blue walls, ceiling, and even floor contained geometric patterns and designs snaking across one another and overlapping repeatedly. There was a more steady light in this room, it seemed to emanate from deep within the patterns and glowed outward with a cool blue tinged light. It was strangely beautiful, like someone had woven the stone together as easily as one might weave a basket.
Whatever beauty there was seemed to stand in defiance of the Go'auld technology which seemed less like a parasite here and more akin to a botched graft job. Control crystals and conduits ran in 'neat' clusters from various consoles and panels. Everything seemed to lead to a central pedestal holding something glowing with an angry yellow light. Just behind the pedestal was a large ornately carved golden sarcophagus. Even from the distance, they could see the Egyptian hieroglyphs carved into the surface.
Aaron glanced at the team and then took a step out front. "Doctor, I want you and Quinn to figure out what that sarcophagus says. Major, you're with me while we take a look at that pedestal. Don't touch any buttons or crystals. Anyone."
Scarlett nodded as she inched cautiously closer to the sarcophagus. The symbols were going to take some time to decipher so the sooner they started to decipher the better. “I would say fascinating, but I’m seriously hoping we don’t have a Goa’uld in here!” She gave the symbols a quick once over something standing out to her straight away. “This symbol…” she pointed to it, it says prisoner. I have no clue how I know that, but I do.” She offered a wry smile.
Aisling nodded once and started moving, hands already busy. She slipped a small repeater from her pouch and set it low against the wall just past the turn, angling it by instinct. The hiss in her earpiece eased. “One down,” she murmured, then followed the others into the chamber.
The room gave her pause.
“Jesus,” she breathed quietly, eyes tracing the blue light woven through the stone. It felt… considered. Calm. Whatever the Goa’uld had added on top of it looked crude by comparison, like someone had tried to fix something elegant with spare parts and impatience.
She set a second booster near the entrance and felt the net settle again. “That should keep us clear,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.
Drifting closer to Scarlett and the sarcophagus, Aisling lowered her voice. “Just so you know,” she said under her breath, almost apologetic, “I’m no good with the writing. If it’s not numbers or behaving badly on a scope, I’m guessing.” A small, self-aware smile. “You’re the expert here.”
Ludd stayed with Scarlett, the Major had an impression that the good doctor was also prone to touching things! Keeping a step or two behind her Ludd kept her rifle up and ready, she side stepped to the right to get a better angle around Scarlett, just in case.
She let Scarlett work and instead edged toward the pedestal, curiosity tugging her the way an open engine always had. The glow here was harsher, yellow and wrong against the blue. She crouched slightly, careful not to touch, eyes following the conduits back to their source.
“It’s… beautiful,” she said, then corrected herself. “Well. Parts of it are. The old bits, anyway.” Her gaze traced the geometry, the way the light seemed to come from within rather than from a source you could point to. “This isn’t just decoration. It’s doing something.”
Her gaze snagged on a familiar mark etched into the casing. “That symbol—I know that one. Ra. Same as the briefings and the off-world files.” She glanced back toward Scarlett, thinking it through as she spoke. “If what you’re seeing there means ‘prisoner’… then maybe this wasn’t built as a tomb at all.”
A beat, the idea settling. “Maybe Ra put them here. Not honoured. Not buried.” Her eyes flicked between pedestal and sarcophagus. “Contained.”
Scarlett nodded. “Yes, this symbol right here…” she motioned to it. “Enemy, so a prisoner who is an enemy of the..” she paused to try and decipher pulling out a pad from her bag. “System…erm…lords. An enemy of the system lords!”
Aisling blinked at Scarlett, then let out a sharp laugh that surprised even her. “An enemy of the System Lords,” she repeated. “Right. That’s… comforting. Nothing like finding out the Goa’uld locked something up because they didn't like.”
She glanced at the sarcophagus and shook her head. “Okay, so—rule of thumb—we don’t open the fancy murder coffin. If it starts glowing or humming or doing anything dramatic, we leg it and pretend we saw nothing.”
Her eyes drifted back to the pedestal, curiosity getting the better of good sense. The yellow light pulsed, ugly against the blue, like it didn’t belong. She circled it once, frowning, and reached out to shift a crystal cluster that looked half-slapped on.
The shock hit instantly.
“Ah—feck!”
She yanked her hand back with a hiss, stumbling a step, fingers tingling like she’d grabbed a live wire. She shook her hand hard, heart thumping, then looked down to see a faint scorch on the glove.
“…Rude,” she muttered.
After a second, she laughed under her breath, more nerves than humour, and flexed her fingers again. The pain was already easing. She looked back at the pedestal, head tilting.
“Well then,” she said, dry as dust. “That’s still alive and in a foul mood.”
She glanced at Scarlett. “If it’s been holding a grudge this long, it’s not here by accident. Someone wanted it contained.” Her eyes moved between the pedestal and the sarcophagus, then up along the ugly Goa’uld conduits. “The coffin doesn’t need help—that thing can run on spite alone. But this?” She tipped her chin at the pedestal. “This feels like a cage. Or a leash.”
She shifted her weight, thinking out loud. “Ancient core, Goa’uld bolted on top. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s powering fields, locks, alarms—anything to make sure whatever’s in there stays where it is. They didn’t build this to heal it. They built it to keep it quiet.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow as Quinn reached out and tried to touch the crystals. "Can we try to not get ourselves fried on the first deployment?" He asked with a sigh.
"So what we have is something that the Go'auld feared enough to contain and an antisocial crystal." He walked around the pedestal and examined crystal albeit at a safe distance. "This might be useful if we can safely retrieve it. Can it be removed without unlocking pandoras box over there?"
“Give me a minute to study these…” Scarlett held up her hand for a moment before she got to looking at the other symbols. “If I’m reading this right, whoever is in here went through hell. Torture…some kind of…experiments.” She shook her head. “I dread to think Goa’uld can be cruel, very cruel, they kill you and bring you back for more!” She shook her head. “If whoever is inside gets woken up there’s no telling what state of mind he, she, or it, will be in.”
"I understand that it was an enemy that put them in there" she nodded at the coffin... no sarcophagus. "But, that does not mean that they are going to be a friend. Is it a good idea to wake them up at all?" Ludd was the new one here, but she had studied the geo politics of the galaxy before it was thrown into chaos by the attack on Earth.
"Ra could have been trying to save if territory from a worse enemy!" Her rifle had yet to leave the sarcophagus, the rounds she had loaded would make a mess of anything that pops out, but after reading off world reports she knew there were things that would survive long enough to straight up murder everyone here before it died!
“I wasn’t suggesting we wake anyone up” Scarlett offered, “I’m not sure I’d know how to safely open this thing anyway. Let me just check…” she moved on to some more symbols comparing them to ones she had already deciphered. “According to this, that…” she pointed to a palm sized crystal inlaid in a golden setting. “..is what’s powering the Goa’uld tech in here.”
Aisling moved in closer, careful now, eyes tracking the pedestal rather than the sarcophagus. She didn’t need the symbols for this part; the behaviour alone was telling her enough.
“Right,” she said quietly, mostly to herself, then a little louder so the others could hear. “That crystal isn’t feeding the sarcophagus. Those things don’t borrow power — they’re self-contained. Nasty bit of kit, but very independent.”
She shifted to one side, crouching just enough to get a better look at where the Goa’uld conduits disappeared into the walls. “This feels like control infrastructure. Fields, suppression, monitoring. Maybe all three. Goa’uld don’t trust anything they can’t leash.”
A brief glance to Scarlett, then back to the pedestal. “If your read’s right and this prisoner’s an enemy of the System Lords, it makes sense. They wouldn’t risk leaving something like that alone in a room. They’d want alarms, fail-safes… maybe a way to shut the whole place down if it tried anything clever.”
She flexed her fingers, remembering the zap, and gave a short, humourless huff. “And yeah. It’s live. Proper live. That wasn’t a warning shock, that was a ‘don’t do that again’.”
Aisling straightened, expression settling into something more serious. “I can pull it. Insulated tools, slow extraction, minimal disturbance. That part I’m confident about.” Then she paused, honest enough not to dress it up. “What I can’t promise is what the room does once it realises something’s missing. Could just kill the Goa’uld systems. Could trip a response we haven’t seen yet.”
Her gaze flicked briefly to the sarcophagus before returning to the crystal. “So if we do it, we do it knowing it might change the state of play in here. Not wake anyone up necessarily — but definitely shake the cage.”
She took a half-step back this time, hands clearly off the tech. “Just saying… whatever’s in that sarcophagus? Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep it watched.”
Aaron walked over next to the crystal on the pedestal and leaned down as close as he dared to get a closer look. Even as the distance, he could feel the electric field coming off of it. "I don't like the idea of leaving something like there here. It looks like it's powering a lot more than just that sarcophagus."
He looked over toward Scarlett and then at the conduits and leading to and from the walls and other various instruments in the room. "How about we disconnect everything except the sarcophagus? Then we might be able to transfer in a different power source and get the crystal back with us."
Finally he walked over to the sarcophagus and wrapped his knuckled on the lid. "Can we find out if whoever is in here is alive at least? This hand wringing might all be for nothing."
As if on cue, a sound little more than a harsh whisper came from the sarcophagus itself. "Βοηθήστε με"
Aaron looked around at the others. "Did anyone else hear that? Or understand it?"
Aisling drew a slow breath after the whisper, eyes flicking once to the sarcophagus before she deliberately turned back to the pedestal. Whatever that sound had been, it could wait half a second longer.
“I heard it,” she said quietly. “Not over comms. In the room.” She shook her head once. “No idea what it said, but it wasn’t Goa’uld. Sounded… Earth-like, like somewhere I've been on leave. That’s all I’ve got.”
She shifted a step closer to the pedestal, careful to keep her hands clear this time, eyes following the lines of power where the Goa’uld conduits branched out. “Just so we’re on the same page,” she went on, looking to Aaron, “the sarcophagus is its own system. It doesn’t draw from this. I was told that flat out by someone who’s got experience with them.”
Her focus stayed on the crystal. “That piece there is feeding everything around it. Fields, controls, whatever the Goa’uld layered on top of the original structure. Pull it and the sarcophagus should stay exactly as it is.”
A pause. Then the honest part. “What I can’t tell you is what else drops when it goes. Lights, locks, alarms… or something we haven’t clocked yet.”
She gestured, outlining the plan without theatrics. “If we do it, I isolate the conduits first. Decouple the feeds, bleed off any residual charge, then lift the crystal straight up and out. No yanking.” A beat. “That’ll power down the Goa’uld tech in this room. Whatever that tech was doing will stop.”
Ludd had already expressed her position, she also knew that Doctor Hayes was an expert so instead of protesting again she merely started to prepare for the worst case. Quietly she pulled a flash light from a pocket on her plate carrier and clipped it in place on her chest, then she turned on the light on her rifle and turned off the laser and fitted the bayonet. It would mess with the stability but at these ranges she'd rather have a pointy thing than be accurate at range.
Her eyes lifted back to Aaron. “That’s the gamble. Not the removal — the consequences.”
Another glance to the sarcophagus, jaw tightening slightly. “And for what it’s worth, I agree with you. I don’t love leaving this here either. I just want us choosing which unknown we’re living with.”
“What if there are failsafes or traps? Shutting down the power could trigger something that could kill us all” Scarlett added with an air of caution. “As for what that voice said…” she paused. “It said “help me. At least that’s what I think it said.”
Aisling nodded once, slow and thoughtful, eyes still on the pedestal rather than the sarcophagus.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s the risk. Any system like this is going to assume someone tampering is an enemy. Powering it down could be treated the same as an attack.”
She glanced back to Scarlett briefly. “That’s why I don’t just pull it and hope for the best. If there are failsafes, they’ll be tied into the Goa’uld layer, not the sarcophagus itself. Best chance we’ve got is to step it down clean and watch what the room does before it has a chance to panic.”
A small exhale. “Doesn’t make it safe. Just… safer than doing nothing or rushing it.”
Scarlett gave Aisling an uncertain look. “What if it triggers failsafes that get us trapped in here? Or worse floods this whole chamber with something toxic? It could kill us all.”
"Well," Aaron said as he took a step closer to the crystal. "We could always go home and bury the gate. That worked for a few thousand years before something bad happened last time." Without another word he pulled out his knife and planted it under the crystal and the surrounding Go'auld device before pressing and leveraging against the hilt.
There was a loud popping followed by what sounded like an over worked engine finally wheezing to a stop. Aaron tapped the crystal with his knife and then reached out and carefully touched it with his hand before lifting the whole thing from it's cradle. "No traps, no gases, and we get the prize."
With the whirling of machinery around them dying down, the lights began to flicker and dim. Something did shift deep below them in the ground, but above it all the voice from the sarcophagus could be heard. "Βοηθήστε με"
"Can someone figure out the universal translators and see what they're saying?" Aaron asked. "And let's get a container for our little crystal friend here."
“I don't need a translator” Scarlett added as she moved away from the sarcophagus. “It says “Help me.” She looked around at the others. “If this is an enemy of the system lords, then he or she could be an ally for us.”
Ludd muttered under her breath and reached up and turned the light on her chest on. She swept the room again and listened for movement.
Aisling’s head snapped up so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash.
“—Jesus Christ, Commander!” she blurted, the words tumbling out before rank or decorum had a chance to catch them. “You can’t just—” She broke off as the machinery wound down, eyes darting to the walls, the floor, the now-dim glow where the Goa’uld systems had been alive a second ago.
She stared at the crystal in his hand, colour draining from her face. “You touched it? With your hand?” There was disbelief there, not judgement, but it came out sharp all the same. “That thing’s been feeding half the room and you’ve just—” She made a helpless, slicing gesture in the air. “Right. Okay. Too late now.”
Training kicked in hard.
“Container,” she said quickly, already moving. She dropped to a knee by her kit, yanking open a pouch and pulling out an insulated field canister meant for exactly this sort of ‘we found something we shouldn’t have’ moment. “Set it in here. Gently. Don’t let it touch the sides.”
She flicked a glance back at the sarcophagus as the whisper echoed again, unease crawling up her spine. “Power-down’s clean so far,” she added, forcing her voice back under control. “No atmospheric spike, no EM surge. Whatever failsafes it had, they were tied to the Goa’uld layer. Looks like you got lucky.”
A beat, then softer, breathy. “Please don’t do that again without warning me first. I’d like to survive my first off-world without cardiac arrest.”
Aaron looked at the crystal and then the container. Yeah, probably shouldn't have done that. Of course, sometimes you needed to act and ask forgiveness later. "That's what we have the AEDs for Quinn." Aaron joked as he gently put the crystal into the container.
Once she'd secured it, he looked back to the sarcophagus. "According to that nice Geneva lady, once someone surrenders or requests aid they're hors de combat." Aaron looked around at his team and wondered how they'd interpret that in their current situation.
"So does that count for aliens on distant planets?" He asked aloud as he readied his rifle. "And if it does, how much trust do we put in that they'll keep up their end of the bargain?"
“You don’t want to put any trust in anyone on the side of the system lords” Scarlett added from where she was busy recording everything for future reference and translation. “The only ones you can trust are the Tok’ra, at least as far as my brief flashes of genetic memory go. It was a Tok’ra that gave her life to save both my mother and me, hence the traces of Naqueda in my blood.”
Amy had her rifle pointed at the coffin, she had thumbed off the safety and the flash lights. Her earbuds were in and her ballistic glasses down. She did not like the random voice and she really didn't like the whole thing, like any of it. "Should have stayed at home" she said quietly.
"Is that thing gonna open? Or are we gonna open it? What's the plan?"
“I don’t think forcing it open would be a very good idea, as much as whoever is in there may want help we could end up with a much bigger problem” Scarlett sighed. “I don’t have enough knowledge about how this thing works to be able to open it anyway. I’ll see if I can find anything to help us in these writings.”
Aaron glanced first at Ludd and then Quinn. "Rifles at the ready. Don't shoot until you see the glow of the eyes." He clicked off the safety on his own rifle, but kept it down. "Doctor, you figure out how to open it and then stand clear. I'm not fond of the unknown so we'll figure out who this is instead of leaving it a mystery."
Aisling hovered a little too close to the sarcophagus, eyes flicking between Scarlett’s notes and the carvings themselves. She wasn’t trying to open anything — honestly, she wasn’t — but the way the symbols were set into the frame kept drawing her eye.
“Sorry, just—” she said quietly, half to herself. “This bit here doesn’t look right.”
She crouched slightly, leaning in to get a better look at the edge of the stone where the lid met the base. One of the symbols near the bottom was smoother than the rest. Not worn by time. By hands.
“That’s been touched,” she said, brow furrowing. “A lot.”
She reached out without really thinking, just meaning to trace the edge, to confirm what she was seeing. Her fingertip brushed the symbol—
click.
Aisling froze.
“…Oh.”
There was a low hiss, like air being pulled through ancient lungs, followed by the faint grind of stone shifting against stone.
Her hand snapped back as if burned. “I didn’t— I wasn’t—” She straightened fast, heart slamming into her ribs. “I didn’t push it. I swear. I just— touched it.”
The hiss deepened, steady now, deliberate.
Aisling took a step back, eyes wide as she looked at the others. “Okay,” she said, voice tight but steadying. “That’s… that’s on me. I think I’ve just pressed something I really shouldn’t have.”
The sarcophagus answered her with another soft, ominous exhale.
Scarlett quickly moved back away from the Sarcophagus, she didn’t want to be anywhere near whoever came out of it. “Note for later reference, panels are very touch sensitive.”
As the top slid open Amy was ready, she was far enough away as so not to be caught unawares, close enough that she could see inside.
Ludd sighed and said aloud "I swear, if this guy is Jesus I am done!"
Scarlett was just as worried as everyone else but she was also curious, she studied the man as he slowly started to move, she noted he had long brown hair and a beard. His clothes were simple, a white smock that had yellowed and worn with age. He appeared to be in good shape, but also looked somewhat sickly. “I guess we should try to communicate with him at least, we did set him free.”
The man inside the sarcophagus slowly reached up and grasped the rim of the device and shakily pulled himself into a sitting position. He blinked his eyes against the lights and studied SG-2 in confused silence for a long moment.
"'ant last ghawawulda." The man spoke in halting words. The language was not the same as that he spoke earlier.
Aaron raised his hand to his chest. "I'm Commander Aaron Wander. This is my team. Can you tell us who you are?"
The man blinked a few times and looked down as if deep in thought before he finally responded slowly. "I am Jason, son of Aeson. Captain of the Argo."
Aaron tilted his head to the side ever so slightly and glanced at his team for a moment before looking back at the man. "Jason... as in Jason and the Golden Fleece?"
The man smiled weakly. "I am hopeful that if you know of my quest you are allies who can help me find my shipmates so I can continue it."
Scarlett stood looking astonished. “Jason and the argonauts, one of my all time favourites” she grinned. “My name is Scarlett Hayes, I would very much like to learn more of your adventures.”
Aisling stared at him for a long second.
“…Jason,” she repeated slowly.
Her gaze flicked to the sarcophagus, then back to him, then to the crystal canister still sitting by her knee. Goa’uld tech. Prisoner of the System Lords. Ancient pyramid. And now this.
She let out a soft, disbelieving breath through her nose. “Right. Okay. Grand.”
There was nervous energy under her voice now, that slightly too-bright steadiness that came when reality tilted sideways.
“Just so we’re clear,” she said carefully, eyes narrowing a fraction, “you were inside a Goa’uld sarcophagus in a buried chamber on Abydos. That’s not exactly standard accommodation.”
She shifted her weight, rifle still low but her posture alert. “I’m not saying you’re lying,” she added quickly. “I’m just saying the last time we trusted something that climbed out of one of those, it didn’t go brilliantly.”
A small, tight smile flickered despite herself. “Also… I did not have ‘Greek legend in a pyramid’ on today’s bingo card.”
She glanced briefly at Aaron, then back to Jason, studying him properly now. Pale. Weak. Human. Or convincingly so.
“If you’re really who you say you are,” she said more quietly, “then someone went to a lot of trouble to keep you locked up.”
A beat.
“And that makes me wonder who was more afraid of who.”
TAG FINAL REACTIONS
//OFF//
Commander Aaron Wander
SG-2 Team Lead
Major Amy Ludd
Off World Diplomatic Liaison
Dr Scarlett Hayes
Chief Archaeologist
SG-2
Pilot Officer Aisling Quinn
Communications Officer
SG-2
