The fallen one looked to be male… a human, she noted absently.  The one still screaming in what sounded like French… or Spanish, she wasn’t entirely sure… was a human female.  Both were dressed in filthy rags, and were liberally covered in what looked like blood and mud.  The male lay where he’d fallen, unmoving and looking quite dead.  He had some sort of spear sticking out of his upper back.

Elizabeth’s observations were interrupted, as additional military personnel rushed into the Gate room with weapons at the ready.

At the same time, two other things happened.  The wormhole began to destabilize, and…

Two figures stepped through the portal.  Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she choked back a scream.

They looked like Egyptian gods.  They were firing weapons that looked like staffs with large bulbs split into fourths on the ends.

“Goa’uld?” Elizabeth murmured huskily.

The woman in front of the Gate bellowed in fury and terror, and bolted for her fallen comrade.  One of the bolts of energy from the new intruders clipped her in the left shoulder, and she was spun around by the force of it as she cried out in pain.  But that didn’t seem to stop the desperate woman, as she scrambled to her companion, yanked the spear out of his back and attacked the nearest creature.

The guards recognized that the woman was disgustingly outmatched, and opened fire.

The Portal continued to destabilize as one of the Jaffa was forced back through it from the ferocity of the woman’s charge.  The other one actually cocked its head to the side a little as bullets ricocheted off of its body armor, and it calmly raised its staff weapon and returned fire with a low rumbling growl.

Two of the guards fell screaming, and the others focused their fire on their foe.  The creature fell back a couple of steps until it was flush against the shimmering wormhole, and turned to the woman, who was now trying to impale it with the bloodied spear.  It smacked the weapon easily from her hands and made as if to grab her by the throat one-handed.

She had none of it, darted in under his arms and punched him in the groin.

Strangely enough, it worked, and the Jaffa stumbled backwards…

Just as the Gate's shield snapped shut.

Most of the creature’s head, left arm and leg crashed to the floor, severed, while its body fell back into the wormhole.

The guards ceased fire immediately, and an eerie silence fell upon the Gate room.

Elizabeth blinked, and realized that one of the men down in the Gate room was Major John Sheppard.  He looked around in mute bewilderment.  Who’d activated the Gate, and what the hell had just happened?

The woman wobbled on her feet as the wormhole blinked out, and finally seemed to notice her surroundings.  She staggered beside her companion, her face white as a sheet under the thick layers of blood and dirt encrusting it.

“Onde o inferno são nós?”

She fainted.

Elizabeth snapped out orders to her people, and the control room erupted into controlled chaos.

“I want a medical team in the Gate room pronto!” she shouted over the bustle.  Major Sheppard had hustled over to the fallen intruders and was checking them for signs of life, while his men fanned out around the room to secure it.

Elizabeth ran down to the Gate room floor once Lieutenant Ford had cleared it.

“Are they alive?” she asked Sheppard breathlessly.  From behind her she heard the medical team entering the room, and she stepped aside to allow them more room to work.

“The woman is, but barely,” John replied tersely.  “The man…” he shook his head.

Elizabeth’s face fell.  Even though she didn’t know these strangers, it still was a blow to find that one had died trying to get to safety.  Now it was her and her people’s job to determine who they were and what they were doing running from the Goa’uld.  Not to mention how the hell they’d managed to override the Gate controls and safety measures.

“Out of the way!” Dr. Carson Beckett ordered tersely, and the few curious soldiers that had gathered around the Gate cleared a path for him.  “What the devil happened here?” he demanded.  When he saw the state of the two people he’d been called to treat, he barked out “Caoch!  Let’s move, people!”

Carson and his team wasted no time, and whisked the man and woman off to the medical labs.  The two soldiers that had been wounded by the Goa’uld’s staff weapons were not far behind.

“Beckett’s right, Elizabeth.  What the hell happened?” Sheppard queried.

“Your guess is as good as mine, John,” Elizabeth replied.  “The gate activated without warning.  The alarm didn’t even go off until after those two came through it.”

Sheppard scowled as he followed her back up to the Gate’s Control Room.  “This is definitely not the kind of surprise I like.”

Elizabeth nodded agreement.  “Especially if it involves the Goa’uld,” she replied quietly.  “We have enough on our hands as it is with The Wraith to have them join the fun as well.”

“I’m posting a security detail in the medical wing until we have a better idea what’s going on.”

Elizabeth nodded.  “I’d say that’s wise.  We have no idea whether or not our guests are friendly.”

“Guess we’ll know soon enough,” Sheppard replied, and left to talk to Ford.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

5 hours later

“So, I hear we have some unexpected guests in the infirmary.”

“I was wondering when I’d hear from you, Rodney.”  Elizabeth sighed without moving her gaze from the computer screen.

“And when exactly were you going to tell me about them?” he shot back acridly.

“When you were finished debriefing from your latest mission,” she replied evenly.

“Ah, yes.  That.”

Elizabeth finally turned to face her chief scientific advisor.  “Yes, that,” she smiled.  “How did it go?”  She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” he muttered as he kept from meeting her level, and now amused, gaze.  He sprawled into the chair behind him and rubbed his face with one hand.  “Let’s just say that what I first thought was a ZedPM turned out to be anything but.”

The corners of Elizabeth’s eyes crinkled.  “But it is Ancient technology, yes?”

“Yep, that it is,” he sighed.  “But damned if I know what it is.  It sure as hell looked like a ZedPM.”

“Relax, Rodney,” Elizabeth soothed.  “You can’t figure them all out right away.”

“It’s my job to figure them out right away,” he shot back irritably.  “Anyway, I have Zelenka working on it now.  I’d like to hear more about our visitors.”

“Not much to tell,” Elizabeth sighed a little.  “Somehow they managed to activate the Stargate, bypass the shield, and shut it back down before too many of their pursuers followed them through.”

Rodney McKay’s eyes grew thoughtful.  “Zelenka mentioned something about the woman having Goa’uld tech on her.”

Elizabeth nodded.  “She had one of the ribbon devices on.  Carson’s hoping you could take a look at it, since it seems to have been spliced with one of our GDO’s, as well as some other technology he's not sure about.”

Rodney’s eyes widened.  “She has a Garage Door Opener?  Did you get her ID code?”

Elizabeth shook her head.  “Unfortunately, it must have been damaged in the fight with the Jaffa, and Carson hasn’t been able to get it to work since.”

“Which is where I come in.”  Rodney’s face firmed.  He wearily hauled himself out of the chair and turned to leave.

“Rodney…” Elizabeth began, and he stopped and twisted around to look at her.  “The woman hasn’t regained consciousness yet, and her companion died soon after they arrived.  And I'm sure you haven't had much sleep lately either.  So don’t go bothering Carson about her yet until you've had some rest too, all right?”

Rodney flashed her a devilish grin.  “Why Dr. Weir, perish the thought.”  And he strode purposely from the room.

All Elizabeth could do was shake her head, and pray that Carson’s normally even temper would hold out in the face of Rodney’s insatiable curiosity.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

“Hey Beckett, how’s the patient doing?” Rodney asked cheerfully as he entered the doctor’s office.

“Ah, good, Rodney.  Yuir here,” Dr. Carson Beckett replied wearily from where he was sitting behind his desk.  “We got some technology here that I for the life of me canna figure out.”  He picked up the hand gear that his latest patient had been wearing when she was rushed to the medical wing.  “It was covered in all sorts of filth, so I had it cleaned as best it could.  Looks like the power supply was damaged.  Hopefully ye can make the little bugger work.”

Rodney strode over to take a closer look.  “Elizabeth mentioned that this woman somehow spliced a GDO with the Goa’uld tech, but I didn’t believe her.”

“Well, see for yuirself,” Carson handed the delicate looking devices over.  “The GDO is set into this leather arm cuff, with the wiring connecting it to the Goa’uld hand devices running in between two layers.  I wonder if she did the work herself?”

“If so, then she must be some sort of engineer,” Rodney replied absently as he studied the device with increasing interest.  “Whoever did this has some mechanical aptitude.”  He paused as a frown crossed his features.  “Did you check either of them for ID?”

“Aye, I did,” Carson answered.  “No dog tags, and if either of ‘em had been implanted with a chip, they dinna have it now.  Although I found this interesting tidbit…” he indicated a small worn leather pouch lying on his desk.

Rodney picked it up, and the contents ‘clink’ed.  He cocked a curious eyebrow at the doctor, and Carson shrugged.

“Take a look,” was all he said.

Rodney loosened the leather thong sealing the pouch shut, and tumbled about half a dozen sets of dog tags onto the palm of his other hand.

“What the hell?!”

Carson nodded.  “My thoughts exactly,” he replied quietly.  “Take a look at the names on ‘em.”

Rodney separated one set and read the name inscribed upon it.  His stomach bottomed out.  “Private Dennis Johanson.”

“Do ye recognize the name?”

“Ah, yeah, I think so.”  Rodney tried to swallow past the lump in his throat.  “He was assigned to one of the SGC teams.  Eight, I think.  I'd worked with them once.  He seemed like a good enough kid.”

A woman appeared in the doorway.  “Doctor Beckett, she’s coming around.”

Carson cocked an eyebrow in surprise.  “Strange.  With her wounds I wouldn’a guessed she’d rouse so quickly.”  He came around the desk and motioned for Rodney to follow him.  Which he did, after dropping the dog tags and the pouch back onto the desk.

They entered the private room to witness the woman slowly blinking unfocused eyes.  She had been cleaned up after she was stabilized, revealing long, wavy hair so black it had a bluish tinge to it.  The bone structure in her face was delicate, almost birdlike.  Her skin was a reddish-golden, what wasn’t marred by bruising and various cuts, and her dark eyes slanted ever-so-slightly at the edges; revealing that she was more than likely of Native American descent.

Rodney faltered in his steps.  There was something familiar about this woman… but… it couldn’t be…

“Doctor McKay?”  Carson was beside the woman, checking her pulse.  But his questioning gaze was fixed on his colleague.  “Rodney, is everything all right?”

Rodney blinked.  No, he was mistaken.  “No.  I mean… yes, everything’s fine.”  He strode over to Carson’s side and watched the doctor check over the obviously confused and half-conscious woman.  “She looks like someone I met.”

“Back on Earth?”

Rodney nodded, and then looked down at the device he was still holding in his hand.  “I’m gonna go and check this thing out, Carson, if that’s okay?  Let me know when she’s coherent enough to talk to.  I’m sure I’ll have lots of questions for her about this thing.”

“You’re not the only one,” John Sheppard’s voice came from the doorway.

“Ah, Major,” Dr. Beckett greeted the other man.  “Considering the extent of the lady’s injuries, I dinna expect her to be coherent enough for an interview for at least another day or so.”

“Is she at least human?” John asked, and the doctor nodded.

“Aye, she is.  No modifications that I can ken, and no signs of a symbiont, though it looks like she might have been a host at least once.  We'll know more after the complete work-up.  I am worried about some of her wounds, though.  They look like they might’ve been self-inflicted.”

“How so?” Rodney asked.

Carson pointed to the back of the woman’s right shoulder, which was closest to him.  “As ye know, all SGC and Atlantis personnel were implanted with an identification chip in the muscle above their right scapula.  She’s got a small incision scar in the exact same spot, which leads me to think she might originally be from Earth.”

“That makes no sense, Beckett,” John retorted.  “Why would she be running around the universe all by herself?”

“No idea,” the doctor replied quietly.  “For all I know, maybe she had a team, and the lad with her was all she had left.  We'll know more about him too, once the autopsy's finished.”

“What about the rest of her injuries?” John asked.

“Well, first of all, she’s been shot a few times, I’d say mostly in the past two weeks, with the most recent being here,” he touched the edge of the bandage wrapping the front of her left shoulder.  “Otherwise, a few broken and cracked ribs, compound break of the radius and ulna in her left arm, fractured right femur and left collarbone, all sorts’a bruising, and multiple contusions to the head.  She was beaten repeatedly, and there's evidence of sexual assault, too."  He paused for a moment at John's and Rodney's wince.  "I doubt she’ll be able to make much sense’o anything anytime soon, as the concussion’s pretty severe.  Fortunately, she only had to be intubated for a few hours while we stabilized her vitals.  Now we’re concentrating on monitoring her round the clock to make sure there’s no undue swelling of her brain, as well as trying t’get her fever down.  Some ‘o these wounds had gotten pretty badly infected.”

“Nana'tose.”

Everyone in the room looked down at the woman, whose eyes were now half-lidded.  “What?” Rodney asked in bewilderment.

“Nana’tose,” the woman whispered huskily again, before her eyes drifted shut.

“Well, that made a lot ‘o bloody sense,” Carson muttered.

Rodney’s eyes had widened slightly.  “I’d better get to work on this handset,” he murmured before he hurriedly brushed past Sheppard on his way out of the room.

“You’re excused,” Sheppard growled in irritation to Rodney’s quickly retreating back, but the scientist didn’t seem to hear him.  The Major walked into the room and stood at the foot of the woman’s bed.  “This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder, doc.”

“Tell me about it,” Carson replied with a furrowed brow.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~