Chapter Text
Jack is at home when the world is apparently supposed to end. He watches it all happens and doesn't get one bit of it – one moment it's clear skies as far as the eye can see, and then suddenly, northern lights in the middle of the day. They spread over the sky like a cloak as clouds are blown away, and for a moment the whole world is lit in purple, green and red, as the colours race overhead, the fastest, brightest Aurora Borealis he's ever seen.
So, he thinks, that's weird, and goes to get his phone before it can start to ring – which it does, just as he's putting his fishing gear away. The Northern lights are still going, still bright – he can see them even inside, they're lighting up the whole forest outside his house.
"I take it I'm not the only one seeing this?" Jack says to whoever's calling – and then, the flash.
He's probably lucky he's inside – even then the thing is blindingly bright. The gentle light of the mysterious northern lights is completely overwhelmed by the blinding outpour of just… light. For a moment outside there are no shadows, no shades – just light, as if someone caught a flash of lightning, held it suspended and gave it a slightly yellowish hue. And Jack thinks he knows what it is – he's seen something… a bit too much like it.
"Yep, that's a solar flare," he mutters, to no one on the other end. The line's gone dead. Outside, his truck's hitherto dead car alarm is going wild – the aid conditioning cuts off, as power goes out. The light goes on and on and on… "Well shit."
You must go.
Jack checks his phone screen – yep, it was the mountain – and then goes to get his sunglasses and hat and head off.
Driving under the blinding glare is not the most fun ever, but he manages it – doesn't help that lot of cars are just stalled on the road, their more modern electronics fried. There are lot of car alarms going, sirens in distance, and still somehow everything seems… too quiet. Radio doesn't work, either, and phone lines refuse to connect.
It's not a full disruption, but there's definitely some magnetosphere shenanigans going on in the atmosphere. And damn, if the sun keeps on going on like this, the electromagnetic disturbances are probably the least of their worries.
He times the thing as he drives, going by the moment when the call from SGC cut short. At 17 minutes, 16 seconds, the flare starts wearing off, the sun still flashing sort of worryingly but the blue of the sky becomes clear again, and yep, there's the northern lights, still going strong. Jack chances a glance at them through the windscreen and then pulls his sunglasses firmly back on and puts the pedal to the metal, weaving past stalled vehicles.
The mountain is abuzz – there's cars lining the front, everyone having raced to work apparently. Daniel is there too, squinting at the sky through sunglasses from under a dorky sun hat.
"Jack."
"Daniel. What's going on?"
"You know about as much as I do – I headed back the moment the northern lights started. The front door's jammed – the system went into automatic lockdown," Daniel says and makes a face at the sky. "That was a solar flare, right?"
"Looked like it," Jack says, peering at the sky and then looking down. "Don't look at it."
" You looked at it."
"I glanced at it, you're staring at it. Didn't your parents ever tell you not to look directly at the sun?" Jack asks and shakes his head. "Carter's inside, I assume?" She has shorter trip to make and he can't see her anywhere topside.
"I assume so – she said she had some calculations to go through," Daniel says and then looks up at the sky. "Is it just me or should that have been – bad?" he asks and then motions at the northern lights. "And also, that, is that normal? I'm no astronomer, but that doesn't seem normal. And it started before the solar flare too."
Jack glances at the sky – not at the sun – and then shakes his head, turning to the doors. The airmen stationed there are holding people off. "Gentlemen," Jack greets them. "What's the situation?"
"Sir, the electronics shorted out," one of them says. "We're working on getting the backup running right now and –"
There's a clank, as the massive blast door unlocks from inside, before moment later starting to open.
"Stay back, people!" one of the other airmen call to the civilian scientists filing to enter. "The system is down and we will need to check ID's – get your ID ready and form an orderly line –"
You must hurry.
"Daniel," Jack calls, before pushing to the front and, with the perks of rank, makes it in first.
Outside, the northern lights finally start fading away, the solar flare finally passing.
So. It's not everyday you find out that you and everyone and everything you have ever known should have just died. It's only like, once, maybe twice a year thing. And honestly, Jack thought they were full up on the world-ending-events thing already for the year.
"Prometheus' shields barely held," Carter reports to a room of rather stunned SGC personnel, Hammond at the head scowling with confusion and concern. "Hundreds of satellites were just vaporised – including all the L1 point satellites, which gave barely any warning on time. And the electromagnetic disturbance was pretty much planet-wide. I wouldn't be surprised if any moment now we will start getting reports about power plant failures – certainly most of the power grids must be down, globally."
"I thought this was supposed to be a mild solar event," Hammond says.
"Wait, we knew about this?" Jack asks. "Why didn't I know about this?"
Carter gives him a confused look. "Sir, it's been all over the news for two weeks now," she says and then looks at Hammond. "And yes, it was predicted to be mild – some electromagnetic activity at the poles was expected, but nothing of this magnitude."
"And what was the magnitude of the flare?" Daniel asks. "Because I was out there, it didn't look mild."
"No," Carter agrees, shaking her head, her eyes wide. "No, that was a superflare. This – this was a world-ending event."
Before any of them have the time to even begin to digest that, Walter rushes into the room, saying, "Sir, Colonel Pendergast is on the line – he says they have something you need to hear immediately."
Hammond nods and gets up, all of SG1 following to hear it. The general takes the call in the control room, where everyone is wildly trying to get their systems back running properly – but most of whom stall to listen. "This is General Hammond, what's the situation on orbit, Colonel?"
"Sir, it doesn't look good, but that's not why I'm calling," Pendergast says. "I think this takes priority. Sir, we're detecting energy readings from the planet below – we picked up some of it just prior to the flare."
"What kind of energy readings?" Hammond asks, frowning. "A solar flare of this magnitude could cause catastrophic failures in any number of systems – was it nuclear?"
Aw shit, Jack hadn't even thought of that – what a global sorta-EMP might do to the nuclear arsenal. Holy shit, that's a scary thought.
"No, sir, it was – we think it was alien," Pendergast says. "We only managed to properly catch the tail end of it, but our scientists here say it read like – like a shield, sir."
"A shield?"
"Yes, sir, a ship's shield – an energy barrier which spread over the – the whole world, sir. Our people up here think that was what the northern lights were about – it was the… the energy shield."
There's a moment of silence, while Jack shares looks with his team and Hammond quickly reorients himself. "Do you have coordinates for the origin of the energy readings?" he asks, turning to look at SG1.
"Yes, sir – I'm sending the coordinates now. It was in New York, sir – near a small town named Turin."
Hammons arches his brows at Daniel who shakes his head, wide eyed – apparently nothing overly exciting about Turin, archaeology-wise. "Very good, Colonel," Hammond says so the microphone. "Is your beaming technology online and is it safe to use after the electromagnetic activity?"
"We're running diagnostics now – will know in a couple of minutes."
"Good, keep us posted," Hammond says and nods to Jack.
You must go.
"Gear up?" Jack guesses – he's still wearing a hoodie.
"Looks like you're heading to Turin," Hammond says. "Whatever it is, if we can detect it, others might also be able to – and I don't want any offshoot or NID or Trust or whatever they are calling themselves these days getting their hands to it first. Get there, find out what it was and secure it."
"Gearing up it is," Jack says with a nod.
So, not only was the world going to end, but either someone knew about it, was prepared for it, and somehow had the ability to protect an entire planet from the wrath of a star … or they're dealing with some ancient alien doing them a solid with automatic protection from probably beyond the grave. Jack's money is on the Ancients.
"Either way," Jack mutters. "Not how expect to spend my christmas break."
"It is not Christmas yet," Teal'c comments calmly.
"And look on the brighter side," Daniel comments. "We're not dead."
"You know, for the bright side to work, you would have to have a dark side," Jack says. "I'm not sure it applies here. Like, we didn't even know this was coming. So there's the side where we live and then there' the side where we all die in a super solar flare. How the hell did no one see this coming?"
Carter clears her throat. "Obviously someone did," she points out.
"I would've preferred heads up, how about you?"
"Whatever stopped the solar flare seems to have been immensely powerful," Teal'c comments. "No Goa'uld has such technology – and it seems unlikely that people of Earth would, either. As such, it is likely whoever set it up was not from Earth."
"Your point?" Jack asks.
Teal'c blinks at him. "Perhaps they did not deem it important to inform us of the protection's existence. Or could not."
Jack scoffs. It's all sensible, and it's not like there's actually that much to complain about being saved from a world-ending events, but damn, he's cranky. He doesn't like this, any of this. He does not like his day being ruined by world-ending events. Sue him.
Turin doesn't seem like much. It's a woodsy nature area, hilly and a bit mountainous, with plenty of rivers and little ponds, with Lake Ontario just a hop and a skip away. Prometheus drops them right in the thick of it, as close to the energy readings as they safely can – something about the location's general magnetic activity made the technicians a bit twitchy, so it's a good walk away from where whatever it was started.
Which is how they find that there's definitely been movement in the area. And not by flying saucers or anything sensible like that.
"Tire tracks," Carter reports, examining the mosses and grasses off the beaten path.
"These seem very recent," Teal'c adds, kneeling down to check them. "And it seems like they left in a great hurry."
Jack glances over – yeah, he can see it. They wore grooves into the moss layer by how quickly they hit the gas – the vehicle even skidded. It's a small wonder they didn't hit a tree. "Recent like, last half an hour recent?"
"Seems like it," Teal'c says, and looks ahead.
"Looks like there's something up ahead," Daniel comments and motions to the side of a hill. "Bet you anything that's a cave."
"No bet," Jack says and grabs his p90 tighter, aiming ahead. "Carter, you take the rear. Teal'c, with me. Daniel, don't touch anything."
It's testament to how weird all of this is that Daniel doesn't even complain. They move as a unit towards the cave mouth, to find that, yeah, there's definitely been activity here, recent and very modern. There's cables running in the cave, scaffolding, platforms for moving things on wheels over rough terrain. Someone had set up a shop here – and left in a damn hurry.
"Don't like this, don't like this at all," Jack says. He'd expected like… ancient automatic security system. He didn't expect an established hideout of very modern equipment. Damn, he's too used to dealing with threats off world. "Carter, call Prometheus, get us some backup down here."
"On it," Carter says, reaching for her EMP proof Asgard-based communicator.
By all rights they should wait for backup, but –
Time is short.
Jack nods and presses onward. "Let's go," and SG1 falls into their usual positions around him, as they move to enter the cave.
Daniel stares at the walls in wonder as they go, murmuring, "I think this cave was used by native Americans – look at those markings – but the carvings beneath, those don't look like anything characteristics to the tribes in this area… and see those clean lines? Incredible…"
Jack ignores him, keeping his eyes up front. There's light ahead. Not a natural light. Yeah, he doesn't like this one damn bit.
They come to a cave, a big-ass cavern of what looks a lot like volcanic rock. Jack only notices that at all is because the rock of the tunnel starts turning into goddamn obsidian and then the cave opens and the thing across the cavern takes all their attention.
There's a glow, obviously very alien… something across the space. A field of white shimmers there, and there's sources of light somewhere in the rock beyond it, and more light past that, and yeah, this is no normal cave.
"Doesn't look like something Goa'uld built," Jack says, tight.
"Yeah, no, this is something… something else," Daniel answers. "It's a little different – but look at the shape of those columns, and the wall there? It looks a little like the architecture on Heliopolis – Ernest's Planet."
The things Daniel remembers – most Jack remembers from the place is that it sucked.
"Sir," Carter says quietly. "Look – computers."
And not just computers. Computers, chairs, beds – it really looks like someone set shop here for a while, for weeks maybe. There's even bags of garbage to the side – with food wrapping sticking out of one of the bags.
"We can deal with that later – I think the big alien looking thingy over there takes the priority," Jack says tightly. "Come on."
Together they move across the broken floor of the cavern, Jack peering occasionally into the holes open in it. This place, whatever it was, has gone through a wringer – and why is there lava rock everywhere? New York isn't exactly known for it's volcanic activity.
Up a set of steps, Jack can't tell if they're stone or metal or both somehow, and to the weird mechanism. The white lit space is beyond them.
"Carter?" Jack asks, and she quickly goes to check.
"I don't know the technology, sir," she admits. "It doesn't look familiar at all. I'm getting some energy readings from it, but…" she takes a stone from the floor and throws it into the white. Nothing happens – the stone falls, clatters on the floor, and stalls. "I think it's been… turned off, whatever it is."
"Some sort of shield, perhaps," Teal'c comments, looking at the white shimmer. "The mechanism of it seems to be still be active."
"Got something here," Daniel says, and picks up something from the floor. A flat ring on a leather strap – like someone's necklace, except for the obviously alien designs on it. "I think I found the key to the front door," he comments, looking between the ring necklace and ring-shaped spot on the weird shield mechanism thing.
"Yeah, and I think I can see the guest," Jack says and moves ahead.
There's a body, lying not far from them – a man, it looks like, wearing jeans and a white hood. He's lying spread eagle and awkward on the edge of some sort of pedestal – there's tech of some sort there, kind of weird half-podium thing, and a sort of bowl underneath it.
The man doesn't move, and after making sure there's no one else in the area, Jack crouches down to check for pulse.
"Looks like he's been burned," Daniel comments with a hiss of sympathetic pain. "Look at his hand."
Jack digs two fingers onto the unconscious man's neck, feeling and –
It's not a pulse. Hell, it's not even something he gets from the guy – it's more like suddenly there's voice in his ear, or like someone's put hand on the back of his head, pushing at him, urging him to do something and Jack suddenly realises that he really needs to be doing CPR right now.
So that's what he does, before he even realises what he's doing – he swings the P90 behind his back and moves to resuscitate, kneeling over the guy and beginning to work on compressions. His team doesn't question it, they only act – Daniel moving to do rescue breaths while Carter gets back on the com, calling for Prometheus, telling them to prepare for a beam up – and that they need a medic urgently.
In the corner of his eye Jack sees a shimmer of white, and as he puts all of his strength into getting the unconscious guy's heart beating again, he swears he can hear someone sighing with relief.
The doctor in Prometheus' medical pronounces that the guy will survive – but that depending on how long his brain was without oxygen, there might be side effects. The guy's arm is damaged too – they get some funky readings from it but no radiation damage, so far. Whatever happened to him, it got pretty damn close to killing him. The guy is put on life support, just in case.
"He's gotten a massive shock of… some kind," Carter announces later. "Whatever that thing was, using it wasn't without its risks, apparently."
"Wonder if he knew what he was doing?" Daniel murmurs. "I mean, if what we think happened did happen, he saved the world, right? Almost at the cost of his life. It's…" he shakes his head in wonder.
"Yes, it's very damn impressive – what I want to know is who he is, how he knew about any of this, and what the hell that place is," Jack mutters. "Any idea when he might wake up?"
"After the shock he took to his system?" Carter asks.
"We'll have him transported to the SGC as soon as the doctor clears it," Colonel Pendergast says. "In the meanwhile, we'll secure the site. There's already been some activity in the area."
"What kind of activity?" Jack asks warily. "And do we have anything on anyone, you know… leaving the area in haste, after the deed was done and they left their guy to apparently die?"
"Nothing on that, sir, but we did intercept a van making their way to the area – just some tourists, who wanted to get higher up to have look at what the solar flare had done to the area," Pendergast says. "Nothing to be worried about, but just in case my men have set up a perimeter in the area."
Jack nods, chewing on his nail. "I'm going to go make a report to Hammond, recommend we get a couple of teams from SGC to the site, and some tech experts," he says. "Right. Call me if the hoodie guy twitches."