Chapter Text
Major Samantha Carter thought she knew all of her colleagues pretty well, especially the ones she’d been working with since the Stargate Program had been born. As the leader of Stargate Command’s Science Division, every scientist on base was under her purview, from the biologists and the chemists to the theoretical physicists like herself. Many of the world’s brightest minds had answered the call of their planet, lending their minds to the defense of the Earth. But of all these scientists, a few stood out in her mind.
One of these was Dr. Dustin Henderson. One of the first people recruited to the SGC after the second Abydos mission turned into the Chulak rescue mission, Henderson had been just twenty-six years old when Carter had put his name on the shortlist of candidates to fill out the SGC’s nascent science program. His exceptional work on theoretical models of wormholes had earned him his doctorate and Sam’s attention. General Hammond had immediately sent out a team to recruit him, and he had joined up – warily at first, but he had proven to be a valuable asset from day one, helping her turn her patchwork dialing program into a far more stable and efficient system.
Yes, Dr. Henderson was a remarkable individual, but to Samantha, he was singular in three respects. For one, he was one of only two people she’d met since joining the SGC who could keep up with her in a conversation about advanced physics, and the only one she actually cared to converse with. (The other one was Dr. Rodney McKay, whom Sam would prefer to never meet again. If only.)
He was also only one of the few people Samantha had ever seen go through the Stargate for the first time without a single moment of hesitation, not even a hitch in his step. Every other time she’d seen such a thing bar one had been during life-or-death situations – and that one was Dr. Henderson’s childhood friend Dr. Sinclair.
And yes, Dr. Henderson didn’t just study the Stargate, he went through it. Following Daniel’s example, he had applied for and earned a spot on a gate team, taking the open spot on SG-2. The team, already cracked by Major Kawalksy’s Go’auld possession and death, experienced a lot of friction in their first months of service, but as the years went on, Ferretti, Warren, Casey, and Henderson became as much of a close-knit squad as SG-1.
Over the years, Samantha Carter had noticed a few strange things about Dr. Henderson – nothing to make her doubt him, just enough to make her question whether there was more to him than met the eye. The arrival of the brilliant Dr. Erica Sinclair, the sharp-witted and sharp-tongued computer scientist and childhood friend of Henderson’s who had been recruited on his recommendation, only added fuel to the fire of Sam’s curiosity. But neither scientist ever spoke about their secrets beyond the occasional cryptic inside joke, and Samantha figured that whatever strangeness was in their pasts, if it hadn’t come up on their background checks, was nothing to worry about. Stargate Command and Planet Earth were the better for their contributions, and that was all that mattered.
Or so she thought.
The sound of a large vehicle pulling into the driveway of his Colorado Springs home made Dustin leap up in excitement. He was already sprinting toward the door and through it before the new arrival had even had a chance to get out of his truck.
“Steve!” he exclaimed, barreling into the larger man and wrapping his arms around him. “How are you, man?”
“Doing pretty well, Dustin,” his best friend replied, leaning back against his truck. It was a white pickup, painted with the logo of the National Park Service. “Pretty damn well.”
They enjoyed the moment for a while before they got rather rudely interrupted. “Enough of the sappy reunion, nerds!” called Erica from where she was leaning against the doorframe of the still-open front door. “Get your butts inside! The call’s about to start!”
And she was right. As usual. Steve and Dustin broke off their embrace and raced back inside, Steve slamming his truck door and locking it behind him. The three of them dropped into their seats around the ham radio set in Dustin’s living room just as it crackled to life.
“Alright, everyone!” came a very familiar voice – the voice of the fourth member of the Scoops Troop. “It’s Rockin’ Robin calling in from good ol’ Hawkins, Indiana. Vickie’s here, too.”
“Hi, guys,” the voice of Robin’s long-time girlfriend and partner chimed in briefly.
“Roll call, over,” Robin said, and with that, the Party sounded off.
“Mike here in Valpo, over.”
“Max and Lucas calling in from Springfield,” came the voice of their favorite zoomer. “And EJ. Say hello, EJ.”
“Hello, EJ,” a young girl’s voice called over the radio waves with a bit of a giggle.
“Over,” added in Lucas.
“Nancy.”
“Jonathan.”
“And Will from the Big Apple, over.”
“Hop and Joyce here in Montauk, over.”
There was a momentary pause.
“No cherry, no deal,” came the voice of Murray Bauman.
“Strawberry is fine,” Hopper shot back tiredly.
“Murray here from… you know where I am. Over.”
Dustin would have sighed at the reporter’s paranoia were it not for the fact that it had saved them and the world numerous times over. Even though they all had scramblers custom designed by Dustin attached to their radio sets to provide a degree of protection from anyone who might try to spy on the Party’s conversations, Murray was still hesitant to share too much over the radio waves.
With Murray’s regular bout of paranoia done, it was time for the last check-in.
“It’s Dustin, Steve, and Erica here in Colorado Springs. Over,” he said, letting his voice be carried to all of his friends via the electromagnetic spectrum.
The channel was silent for a long moment, a tradition that Mike had insisted on from their first cross-country radio call onward. If Eleven were out there somewhere, if she were listening, then she could use the moment to give a sign, no matter how small, of her continued life. But like always, there was only silence and static.
“So, how is my goddaughter doing? Over.” Dustin asked.
“EJ is doing great,” Max reported happily. “She’s enjoying preschool, making friends. They made snow angels this week, and she’s learned to count to twenty…”
Evelyn Joyce Sinclair was the first and currently only child of the Party. Lucas and Max had named her, they said, after the two strongest women they knew – Eleven (indirectly) and Joyce Byers. A roll of a d20 had let Lucas choose between Mike, Will, Jonathan, Steve, and Dustin to name EJ’s godfather, while Robin had been named her backup godmother. (EJ’s real godmother was always unstated, but everyone knew who would take that position should she ever turn up alive.)
Max and Lucas talked on for a while longer, sharing all the best stories they had about EJ’s successes and oopsies. From there, the adults talked a bit about how their jobs were going – Lucas as a process engineer at a metalworks factory in the town of Springfield, Indiana, Max working as a licensed therapist specializing in children. As it turns out, being stuck inside someone’s traumatized childhood memories for a year and a half was good for something, namely giving her what her teachers and colleagues had described as an almost supernatural ability to get to the heart of what was troubling her patients. (If only they knew…)
From there, Steve launched into his own story.
“So,” he began, “we’ve been getting a lot of bighorn sightings in places where they’re not usually seen, so Mark and I were sent out to check in on their usual habitats…”
Steve Harrington, having spent most of his twenties flitting between jobs, had ended up following Dustin when he got recruited to work in Colorado. Looking for a job that would let him his use his physical skills and channel the protective instinct that he’d awoken back in Hawkins, he’d found his calling working in the local state parks. In six and a half years, he’d done his job well, earning a lot of respect for his dedication to protecting nature and humans alike, eventually getting a job at Pike-San Isabel National Forest right outside of Colorado Springs. He and Dustin certainly made an odd pair, but they were brothers in all but blood and remained as close as they had ever been in Hawkins, if not closer, spending their off days together whenever possible.
Dustin piped in every now and then to add something to Steve’s stories, because really, that was all he could do. Unlike the rest of the Party, he and Erica couldn’t really talk about their work. After all, they worked in the most top-secret organization in the country.
After Steve finished telling the Party about sliding twenty feet down a scree slope, Nancy butted in with a fond, “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington,” and then it was Erica and Dustin’s turn.
“Well, there were some… issues at work,” Dustin began hesitantly, and wasn’t that an understatement. “That’s why I couldn’t make last month’s call.”
‘Issues’ in this case referred to Anubis, half-ascended System Lord and current archenemy of Stargate Command, coming with up with a way to breed nigh on invulnerable super-soldiers called Kull. While his friends were having their monthly chat, he was being interrogated along with Dr. Jackson by a group of Honduran revolutionaries. As much as that experience had given him flashbacks to Steve and Robin’s capture by the Russians beneath Starcourt Mall, he was still glad about his choice to volunteer to replace Bill Lee on the mission. His fellow civilian scientist was smart but probably wouldn’t have handled the torture as well as Dustin did.
“Erica told us,” said Lucas. “I know we can’t press for details, but…”
“Everything was resolved,” Dustin said. “Mostly.”
“You know we will get to the bottom of whatever the two of you are doing one day, Dustin,” Nancy warned.
“I’m sure you will.” Erica replied, challenge in her voice. They all knew, though, that there was nobody more determined to get the truth than Nancy Byers-Wheeler. She had achieved her life’s dream of becoming an investigative journalist with the help of inherited contacts from Murray and the constant support of her faithful partner, cameraman, and husband Jonathan. The pair had reunited after Jonathan’s graduation from college and rediscovered the spark of passion that had made them so great together in high school, building a relationship and eventually a marriage on more than just, as Murray had put it once, shared trauma.
“Well, we’ve almost finished up the bank piece,” Jonathan told the group, regaling them with tales of how they’d uncovered a major case of financial fraud at an institution that they would not name.
“It’s an active investigation now,” Nancy said when their highly redacted story came to a close. “The authorities don’t want us saying anything – not that it’s stopped us before when it really matters – but we will be the ones to break the story when it goes public in a few weeks.”
“Good job,” Joyce congratulated. “Do you and Jonathan want to come down to our place in Montauk tomorrow night, celebrate another successful story?”
“We’d love to, mom,” Jonathan answered.
“But we can’t,” Nancy finished for him. “We’ve finally gotten a lead on our other investigation.”
Dustin and Erica exchanged nervous glances. It was generally accepted among the Party that:
- Dustin and Erica were involved in a top-secret program.
- Said program was doing something big.
- Said program was not morally bankrupt like the Hawkins Lab and its successor programs had been, or they would have found a way to blow the whistle to the rest of the Party.
- Nancy and Jonathan were in the process of uncovering something which may very well be the same program Dustin and Erica were working at, and so they never discussed said investigation when the two of them could hear, lest they be forced to split loyalties.
Dustin honestly hoped they would get to the truth eventually, if only so that he could have two more of his friends in the know. Besides, he could think of no better person to break the story of the Stargate to the world at large than Nancy.
Oblivious to Dustin and Erica’s inner thoughts, Nancy and Jonathan continued on. “Maybe we could do it Thursday evening instead?” Jonathan offered.
“Sounds good to us,” Hopper, now retired Montauk Chief of Police and father figure to every member of the Party, said. Retirement had been good for him, giving him the chance to finally relax, finding peace and contentment in the arms of the second love of his life, Joyce. Though El’s disappearance presumed death had hit him harder than anyone except maybe Mike, he seemed to be doing okay.
“I can make it on Thursday, too,” Will piped in. “Friday I have some plans with Nick, and Wednesday I have a work dinner for the magazine, but Thursday is free.”
“Good to hear it, kid,” said Jonathan.
“I’m not a kid!”
“You’ll always be my kid brother, you know that.”
“And how is Nick nowadays?” Robin wondered.
Nicholas Maynard was one of the two poles, the two key aspects that defined Will Byers’s life beyond his childhood friends and family. A middle school history teacher, Nick and Will had met at a gay bar about five years earlier. Casual flings had quickly turned into a serious relationship, with Nick moving into Will’s apartment about a year after their first date.
The other pole of Will’s life was his job, working as a graphic designer for a weekly magazine. He got to put his art skills and degree to good use illustrating and creating layouts for articles. Dustin’s friend absolutely loved the career he had found, and Dustin loved that so many of his friends had found paths to achieving their dreams. He and Erica got to do awesome science and go to other planets. Lucas and Max got to have a peaceful life with each other. Will got to do art and find his kind of love. Nancy got to be a journalist and Jonathan a photographer. Steve had found a fulfilling career in the wilderness, and Robin had found fulfillment staying in Hawkins with Vickie, running a store on Main Street and occasionally filling in at the Squawk as “Rockin’ Robin”. And even Mike, for all his grief over El, got to tell his stories.
“…and I just finished my latest set of cover art for Mike,” Will was saying. “The Lost Sisters is heading out to shelves next month, right?”
Mike Wheeler had made a name for himself as a moderately successful writer of fantasy and science fiction novels, drawing inspiration from his childhood – both the numerous D&D campaigns he’d played in and run and the experiences he’d had with the Upside Down. His latest book, from the copies that Dustin had helped proofread, centered on two sisters with magic powers, separated as children by the armies of an evil king, uniting in order to bring an end to the tyrant’s reign. A bit more on the nose than usual, but since Dr. Kay hadn’t made a single move to harass any of them since the destruction of the Upside Down, Mike felt comfortable enough finally bringing El and Kali’s story, or at least a version of it, to the masses.
(The dedication page read the same as always. To my mage, though you be long gone.)
Mike spent the next ten minutes telling them all about the book tour he was going to be embarking on once the book was released. There was even going to be a signing in Denver, one that Dustin, Steve, and Erica all immediately made plans to attend when the time came.
The Party talked on and on and on, a motley group bound by shared experiences, unshakeable devotion to each other, and the memories of those they had lost. They talked until the time they set aside for talking came to an end, each of them bidding the others farewell as they went their separate ways, each to their own lives, their own struggles and triumphs.
It was better this way. The Upside Down was gone, the Abyss forever sealed away. The world didn’t need the Party any more, and while the Party still needed each other, it was not the urgent need that had bound them together during those four fateful years.
When the call shut off, Erica immediately bounded off with a “See you at work, nerd!”, leaving Steve and Dustin to spend some time catching up on their own.
“You’re sure you’re healing up alright?” he questioned, gesturing at the sites of the injuries Dustin had sustained in Central America a month prior. As much as he tried to hide it for the sake of the SGC’s security, Steve always knew when Dustin was hurting, which only made the already pathetic “classified government research project” cover even weaker. “And that you’re happy?”
“I’m doing something important,” Dustin assured him, as always. “I’m happy, and Dr. Frasier gave me the okay a week and a half ago. I’m all healed up.”
“Well, I have no doubt that won’t last long. Now, I’ll be out of phone contact for the next week or so; I pulled backcountry trail maintenance duty. But you know I’ll always have my walkie on me.”
“As will I when I’m not too deep underground for the signal to reach.”
(The SGC really was too deep beneath Cheyenne Mountain for even the high-end radios he’d bought for himself and Steve to connect. But half the time he was ‘too deep underground’, he was in fact on a different planet. Steve almost certainly knew that there was more than Dustin was saying, but rarely mentioned it.)
As the sun set, Dustin stood outside his house to see off Steve’s truck, wishing him the best of luck clearing off trails. Tough work, certainly, but Dustin’s job was just as tough. Because tomorrow, he would be going off world.
Dustin always made sure to get to work a half hour early. It gave him time to get settled, check on his fellow scientists’ research projects, spend a few minutes paging through his favorite art book, grab a coffee from the mess and drink it along with a Three Musketeers (for the nougat). He was a good two-thirds of the way through his nougat, in fact, when everyone’s favorite and most dreaded announcement came over the PA system in the voice of Walter Harriman.
“Unscheduled offworld activation!”
With SG-1 still on mission for another day, Dustin was technically the senior scientist on base, so he made his way up the stairs to the Control Room, taking his place next to General Hammond. “We’re getting an IDC, sir,” Sergeant Harriman reported. “It’s the Tok’ra.”
“Open the iris,” Hammond ordered perfunctorily, even as the gate tech’s hand was already on its way to the iris palm scanner. Dustin remembered when he and then-Captain Carter had put together the first iteration of that device, a countermeasure against some invisible insectoid aliens called the Reetou they had encountered once.
The metal covering the Stargate spiraled outward, and through stepped a male with brown hair in a brown coat.
“Hello, Malek,” the General greeted as Dustin tried to search through his memories to remember where he’d heard the name before. He never got a chance to do so, though, because what the Tok’ra arrival said next completely derailed his train of thought.
“I’m afraid I come bearing grave news. Selmak is missing.”
That was bad news. Selmak, the symbiote bonded to Jacob Carter, was without a doubt SGC’s favorite Tok’ra – both because he was Major Carter’s dad and because they were always one (or was it two?) of Earth’s biggest supporters in the Tok’ra ranks. Last he’d heard, Jacob Carter/Selmak had been part of the mission to destroy Anubis’s base on Tartarus before going off on an unspecified mission for the Tok’ra.
General Hammond nodded at Dustin, and he immediately knew what he had to do. With SG-1 currently offworld, such a high-priority mission would fall to SG-2, the team of which Dustin was proud to say he was a part.
From the moment he’d joined the SGC, Dustin had known that he wanted to join a Stargate team. After all, he was still a nerd at heart, and what nerd wouldn’t want to become a space explorer? Having kept up with his self-defense and fitness throughout college and his doctorate, like any sensible survivor of the Upside Down, he hadn’t had a problem passing the test to qualify civilians to go through the Stargate, and General Hammond had decided to put him in the newly opened spot on SGC’s secondary flagship team.
But in his eagerness to explore the universe, Dustin had forgotten exactly whom he would be exploring it with – military men. Military men like the ones who had been in Hawkins Lab and like the ones who had controlled the MAC-Z. About the only military people he had any respect for at all at first were Captain Carter, because she was just so smart, Teal’c, because he could appreciate someone who, like Eleven, had found a way to escape his evil superiors and find new friends, and General Hammond, because, well…
Dustin Henderson and George Hammond had met for the first time on November 8, 1987. Two days after they had killed Vecna and the Mind Flayer, two days after the Upside Down had been destroyed, two days after Kay had forced Eleven to choose between a life of experimentation and captivity and no life at all. Apparently, Dr. Owens, or what was left of his faction, had managed to call in an independent military taskforce to deal with cleaning up after the MAC-Z and Kay’s forces. Then-Colonel Hammond had been the second-in-command of this taskforce and the one assigned to talk with the survivors of the Party.
“There will be no repercussions for your actions during these events,” he had told them, “nor will any files be kept on you. By all accounts, what you did, what you have been doing for the past four years saved the lives of everyone in this town, if not the entire planet. For that, you have the thanks of the United States government – and my personal thanks. You have earned a life of peace.”
That had been new. It was the first and only time that someone official (or at least, more official than Chief Hopper) had acknowledged their efforts. Even Dr. Owens, after they’d risked their lives against the Demodogs and then the Spider Monster, hadn’t done that.
“Even with her base in the alternate Hawkins destroyed, there is copious evidence that Major General Kay’s obsession with the capture of Eleven and the continuation of Dr. Brenner’s program led to her entirely failing in her duty to contain the situation in Hawkins and to protect its people. She was well aware of the evidence from the Nina files that Eleven was powerless at the start of the March 1986 incidents, and yet she continued to blame her anyway. For this, Kay and her surviving subordinates will be receiving official reprimands and consequences.”
“What consequences?” Hopper had demanded angrily, the needless death of another daughter still grating on his heart.
“I’m afraid,” Hammond had equivocated, “that is still up in the air, nor would such consequences be made public.”
After an hour or so of hammering out details of NDA’s and financial compensation for the Party and Hawkins as a whole (that is, hush money), Colonel Hammond had let the Party go, never to see them again. Dustin had been among the last to file out and paused at the doorway, one question on the tip of his tongue. He would never have talked back to an armed colonel normally, but he hadn’t exactly been thinking straight between his grief for El and his grief or Eddie, only partially assuaged by stabbing the Mind Flayer in the belly with a spear.
“Why?” he’d asked. “Why did you thank us, not just try to keep us quiet?”
The Colonel had looked at him critically. “I suppose,” he’d said, “that I tend to keep a more open mind than most. Always have, really, since… about 1969, I’d say.”
Well, it had taken until Dustin’s second year at the SGC to realize exactly what Hammond had meant by that comment, but less than a year until he grew to trust that the men and women in uniform in Cheyenne Mountain weren’t evil. That was the first step in the long process to filling Major Kawalsky’s spot on SG-2, though he knew he could never replace the man. He bonded with now-Colonel Ferretti over both of them being huge Star Trek fans, with Major Casey over their mutual love of radio equipment, and with Captain Warren over growing up with single moms. They weren’t his Party – there could only ever be one Party – but they were something strong, a team that had served Earth well for seven years, even if not with as many flashy incidents as SG-1 seemed to get into. But Dustin was fine with that. Fine with not being on the team that had to save the world time and again. He’d been there and done that in high school, and second place was a perfectly comfortable place to be.
By the time he’d gathered all of his teammates from their preferred haunts, General Hammond and Malek had already made themselves comfortable.
“Everyone is here?” the Tok’ra asked curtly. “Good, then let’s begin. After coming back from the Tartarus mission, Selmak was assigned to spy on and infiltrate, if possible, another of Anubis’s research facilities, located on this planet.” A six-symbol Stargate address was displayed, along with its designation in the SGC’s catalogue: P1X-811. “The Tok’ra hadn’t been able to get clear information on what, exactly, was being researched there – and we still haven’t. According to Selmak’s last check-in, Anubis’s underlings are building some sort of high-energy device there, though for what purpose, we do not know. Some new weapon like the Six Eyes, perhaps. After Selmak missed his last check-in three days ago, we sent a nearby cloaked vessel to perform an orbital scan, which revealed no life signs of any kind on the planet. Given Selmak and Jacob Carter’s… connection to the Tau’ri, we thought you would appreciate the chance to investigate.”
“Yes, we would,” Hammond agreed. “I’m officially assigning SG-2 to this mission. Find Jacob Carter and Selmak, get him back safe, and try to find out what in God’s name happened on that planet. Dismissed!”
Three men stood up and filed out with military sharpness and one with slightly less than military sharpness, making their way to the SG team locker rooms. With practiced efficiency, the members of SG-2 got themselves into their BDU’s and donned their weapons. Dustin’s gear, unlike his teammates’, was filled with science equipment and scanning devices rather than extra ammo, but he still had his standard-issue handgun and P90 along with two slightly more eccentric choices – a shortsword and a blowtorch. The Upside Down had taught him the lesson that bullets couldn’t handle every enemy, that sometimes a more solid weapon was necessary and that when all else failed, fire tended to work quite well. A nail bat and a flamethrower, his preferred options, were a bit too unwieldy to carry on missions, but the sword he’d learned to use in college and a small blowtorch were quite effective and easier to handle, and they had gotten SG-2 out of trouble more than once over the years.
(Once Erica had gotten recruited to the SGC on his recommendation, she too had earned a spot on an SG team – SG-13 to be precise, which Dustin suspected she had gone for just to be contrary given the number’s legendary bad luck – she had also taken to carrying a sword, one which rumor claimed she coated with poison. Dustin was about 50% sure that she had been the one to start the rumor, and only 50% sure that the rumor was false.)
Fully ready to step through the Stargate (never just the Gate in Dustin’s mind – that shortening was reserved for the nightmare-inducing portals of his past), SG-2 arrived back in the control room just in time to see Harriman lock the last chevron and send the M.A.L.P. through.
“M.A.L.P. transiting,” Harriman reported. “We’re receiving telemetry.”
The robotic probe’s camera feed came to life on the control room monitors, revealing a familiar scene for members of the SGC – a DHD sitting alone in the middle of a clearing surrounded on all sides by trees. Less familiar was the presence of several Jaffa corpses, though the M.A.L.P. image was far from clear enough to show details of what had killed them.
“No biological, chemical, or radiological hazards detected,” Harriman read from the display screen full of M.A.L.P. sensor data. Dustin, looking over his shoulder, confirmed the dialing technician’s findings for himself. It never hurt to be careful and double check when it came to interplanetary travel, after all.
“SG-2, you have a go,” Hammond said, and Dustin followed Colonel Ferretti down the stairs to the embarkation room. Raising their guns as a precaution, the team strode up the ramp and through the watery event horizon with a practiced gait.
The sensation of traveling through a Stargate was unusual, and nothing at all like passing between dimensions. Over the years, Dustin had gotten used to it to the point of barely noticing his passage anymore, not even breaking his stride as he fanned out along with his team to secure the Stargate’s immediate surroundings. When Major Casey, the last one through, arrived, the Stargate shut down, cutting them off temporarily from their home world. Not that Dustin bothered to worry about that. Instead, he cautiously approached the nearest Jaffa body, Ferretti right at his back with his P90 raised in a defensive posture, and he knelt down to examine the corpse. He was no medical examiner, nor a biology expert of any kind whatsoever, but Dr. Frasier had taught him enough that he could make snap judgments in field situations like this one. And even without that training, the cause of death was immediately obvious.
“Mauling,” he said aloud, his eyes taking in the irregular, bloody scratches across the alien warrior’s chest and face. “Though what kind of animal’s claws could get through Jaffa armor, I have no idea.”
Well, he did know of one such animal, but Demogorgons were native to a dimension long since rendered inaccessible to this one, so it was quite impossible for them to be here. There was a huge galaxy out there, one filled with strange wonders.
“Sure it’s an animal?” Warren asked as he came over to look at the body as well, his sweep of the perimeter finished. “Couldn’t it be knives or, y’know, swords?” He gestured with his chin at the weapon strapped to Dustin’s back, one which could and had cut through Jaffa armor before. But it was no ordinary sword, but one that had been forged out of a trinium alloy to replace one that had gotten stuck in the neck of a particularly annoying Go’auld underlord.
“No,” Dustin insisted, “this is definitely an animal, definitely claw marks. Too much tearing, not enough simple slicing like a blade would leave.”
The next few Jaffa bodies all showed the same signs, and so the team moved on from the vicinity of the Stargate. There was an easy to find and well-used path off toward the right, one which curved around a few times before letting out in another, larger clearing.
Behind them and to their left was the forest they’d been walking through for the past five minutes, but in front of them was something that Dustin had seen once and hoped he would never see again.
A large machine in a roughly cylindrical shape, full of parts that looked like they were capable of spinning should the machine be turned on. But it was not turned on, for it had achieved its purpose, the purpose that was clearly visible on the cliff face to their right.
For the first time in twelve years, Dustin Henderson of Hawkins, Indiana laid eyes upon a tear in the barrier between our dimension and another.
It was a Gate.
And the machine, one that existed in a secret Russian lab beneath Starcourt Mall that shouldn’t exist here, was the Key that had opened it.
“Mother of God.”