Chapter One

Hitting the ground hard and fast Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, leader of SG-1, rolled forward a few feet, cursing loudly as he hit something hard, before he quickly pulled himself upright and spun around to look behind him, only to see the shimmery blue glow of the wormhole disappear, plunging him into darkness.

Total pitch black darkness.

If the dark was a little unnerving, the lack of any sound other than his own heavy breathing made it more so. Standing there realization suddenly hit him.

He was completely and utterly alone.

The rest of SG-1 was on the other side of the gate, dead or at least as good as. He had seen Sam and Daniel killed. Teal'c was by now also dead. The Vala he had known didn't exist anymore. Had in fact never existed at all in the timeline he had just left except as a Goa'uld named Qetesh and General O'Neill had been dead for a year, killed by the hand of Ba'al.

He had known that when he dived through the gate that it was his only choice if he was to set things right and save the lives of his friends. At the time there had been no question about not going through the gate, but now standing here alone, surrounded by silence and blackness, all he felt was a sense of loss.

It wasn't meant to be this way. Everything, everyone he had ever known was gone. Dead. At least it felt like they were dead. For the truth was, if he was in the right place and the right time, they had never been born, he had never been born.

Time travel really did suck, no matter which way you looked at it.

Running his hand through his hair Cameron let out a deep breath, pushing the sorrow that was in his heart back to where it belonged. Now was not the time to be grieving. He had a mission to complete and right now his friends needed him. Trusted him to do the right thing and to put things back the way they were meant to be and that was what he was going to do. It was this kind of determination that had gotten him through the worst that life had so far thrown at him and it would get him through this.

The first thing he needed to do was to figure out exactly where he was.

*S***S*

Searching through his pockets, it was times like this that he could see the one and only positive aspect about smoking because he would at least have had a lighter or a box of matches on him.

Just as he was beginning to think that he wasn't going to have any luck on the light front, his hand slid over the surface of his cell phone. Okay, it was pretty useless to him now that he was stuck in 1929 but just as he was going to reject it and carry on searching he had an idea. Pulling it out he flipped it open, the light from the screen casting out a bluish glow.

Holding it out in front of him, the blue glow revealed the Stargate standing a few feet away. Going over to it he reached out and touched it, enjoying for a moment the familiar feel of its cool, solid surface beneath his fingers, reminding him of the first time he had seen and touched it back on that first day of his command of SG-1. He had been alone then too, though not quite alone as he felt now.

"Don't you worry darling, I'm going to get you back home. That's a promise."

He spoke very softly, with a hint of tenderness in his voice, before he realized that he was talking to the Stargate alone in the dark and smiled at the absurdity of it. Flipping open his phone again he shone the light around, repeating the action as he moved through the room getting his bearings.

Several large wooden crates were scattered around, some stacked upon each other, others laying on their own. Behind the crates were a series of shelves reaching up to the ceiling and stretching several feet along. The shelves were filled with an assortment of objects.

Curious he went over to one of the shelves to have a closer look. A small statue, carved out of bone gleaming white in the light caught his attention and he picked it up. It was some kind of ornament. Egyptian by the looks of it. At least that what he thought it was, since it reminded him of the type of thing that he had seen in Daniel's office many times. Looking further along the shelf he saw similar objects to the one he had picked up, some of which had tags on them, though he couldn't read the language that was written on them.

Exploring further he flipped his phone shut to conserve the battery, using the edge of shelves to guide him along until he came to the end of it.

"You wouldn't happen to know the way out of here, would you?"

Standing tall in its sarcophagus, the mummified corpse seemed to stare back at Cameron, illuminated in the blue glow of his cell phone. The bandages that covered it had worn away in parts, revealing the dried husk of the figure beneath it.

"Didn't think so," he said quietly as he continued moving around, before his light showed what looked like a door.

Going over to it he turned the handle and walked through.

*S****S*

Cameron sat in the hard back wooden chair staring through a row of small high windows, waiting for the sunrise. That he couldn't actually see the sun was a technicality, but in his mind it was close enough.

Slowly the night sky changed as the faint rays of the sun made it's appearance. The stars and the blackness of the night changed, becoming lighter as a myriad of colors filtered across the sky. Black gave way to dark blue, then a lighter blue before a mixture of deep orange and gold streaked out, themselves fading and becoming softer merging into the bright light of day.

People spoke of the rising of the sun as a start of a new day, but for Cameron it was also the start of a new life. Having spent a good hour or so looking around the building , he now knew with complete certainty that he was inside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt and that the year was 1929.

Though he had known the year when he had dived through the Stargate, some small part of him had tried to hold onto the belief that perhaps it was all a mistake, that maybe however unlikely it was, that Sam had been wrong and that when he went through the gate that somehow he would be back home, in the right place and the right time and that all the people he had known were still alive and well. Walking around the Museum had once and for all shattered that hope and he had been faced with the stark reality of the truth. He was stuck on Earth in 1929 and nothing would ever be the same again.

Searching through the building he had come across this room. The layer of dust hinted at a lack of use and for Cameron that meant he might be safe in here for awhile, at least until the museum was open and he could, he hoped, make his exit without anyone ever knowing that he had been here, blending into the surroundings and people that would arrive. The room had obviously once been someone's office with a large wooden desk and a chair, various cabinets and shelves that were overflowing with books and objects to the extent that there were now piles of books and crates and other odds and ends stacked around the room. The whole feel of the room was of abandonment, no longer used as an office but now a dumping ground for things that had no other place to go. Cameron could relate to that feeling and with that had decided to camp out here.

Tired as he was, sleep would not come and so he sat in the chair looking through the small high windows that was his only view to the outside world, letting the peace of the night sky calm his thoughts and taking in the simple joy of seeing the sunrise. For now it was enough.

Once the museum was open he would make his escape and his new life would begin.

*S***S*