When Daniel wakes up, it is in the infirmary. It is quiet, here; this usually wouldn't be so strange a thing, but he is on base and surrounded by medical equipment, and it is always buzzing with something here. It's a kind of quiet that sets him on edge, like walking through a house in the dark, only these rooms are huge and cavernous and vastly empty. His head hurts when he stands, a migraine reminiscent of a goa'uld device sitting sharp in his skull, but he pulls on his glasses and begins to wander, calling rough and worn through the halls in search of an answer, but all he gets are echoes.
The control room is as empty as everything else, the stargate lit up behind the wide glass in front of him but all of the computers off, black screens where there is usually so much colour and pattern. He tries to turn one on, but it does not respond, not a single hum of power. He catches the smell of coffee and spots a paper cup, stained brown at the bottom, sitting beside one of the keyboards.
He moves on.
Hammond's office is oddly cluttered, like it is when they have 'incidents' or he takes time off, files and reports scattered in haphazard piles. He flicks through a couple, but his head hurts too much to really focus on the words, so he leaves them be for now. He picks up the phone on Hammond's desk (not the red one, he is not that sure yet), and is met with an eerie dial tone, like he'd expected any more. He puts the phone down, takes out some notepaper and a pen, but when he presses the nib to the paper his vision swims and his ears ring and he has to sink down into Hammond's chair, and once he has recovered, he decides to simply leave it be. He takes his licence out of his wallet and leaves it on the desk instead, hoping that it will suffice if he ever figures out this mess.
Teal'c's room is empty, filled with the scent of burnt candles and little else, sheets clean and pressed without sign of ever being used. Sam's lab is a little more lived-in, bits and pieces of equipment and tools and blueprints and scrawled notes on scraps of paper he couldn't read if he tried. Something in the cupboard is making a light hum, but he isn't keen on opening it just yet; he doesn't want to be sucked into that again.
His own lab is just as he remembers leaving it, except the lights don't turn on and his laptop sits open on his desk, the battery light glowing faint green in the darkness of the room. He sits down in front of it, a hand reaching tentatively to bring it out of sleep, but he is only met with the pulsating white line of an insertion point on a black expanse of screen. He watches, wondering what it means, what he was last doing, and then his name flows onto the screen in bold white text and images flash over it, Jack and Sam and Teal'c and Hammond and the control team and his city back on Abydos and the gold flashes of staff fire and hand devices and a sarcophagus grinding shut above him and blue, so vast and great that he cannot even dream of the end of it, and his name in plain white letters on the screen.
When Daniel wakes up, it is in the infirmary. There is dried blood beneath his nose, smelling of copper and tasting thick in his throat. His head rings with echoes of whatever the hell that was, voices swimming in memories around his mind, indistinguishable. For some reason he thinks of Sam, remembers her sitting on the chair beside him, a cup of coffee and a handful of papers, but she is not there when he looks.
He gets out of bed and takes another look around.
He avoids his lab this time, checking other places he frequents as he wanders through the halls of Command; the armoury, the cafeteria, the gyms, but they are all empty. There are signs that they've been habited recently, but it is only the barest indication, and is certainly not enough to explain why he is alone here.
He tries taking the elevator up to ground level, tries not to focus on the throbbing in his head as he ascends, and when the doors slide open in front of him he steps out to find himself on the same floor he entered on. He steps back in, tries going to another floor within the base and gets there just fine, but whenever he tries for the ground floor he comes out where he started. He has the same problem with the stairs, climbing the whole way up until the door says 'one' and then stepping out to find it instead said 'eleven'.
So getting out is a lost cause. Excellent.
For lack of any other apparent option, he tries the control room again. He doesn't know an awful lot about the computers here, but if he can at least get one on he might be able to figure it out, see if he can get the gate working. He picks at the circuit boards, plugs and unplugs cables, throws switches around, but no matter what he does the systems won't boot up, won't even recognise that he's trying, dammit.
"We know you're trying," Sam says gently, holding a hand over the fresh cut in his arm (because it is so easy to cut yourself when you're picking away at computers, and he has been so frantically determined), but she does not touch him. "Don't give up, Daniel. We're trying, too."
"Fat lot of good that's doing," he snaps back, his own blood sticky on his skin and his hands trembling from the exhaustion that is setting in thick like so much fog. "I'm stuck, Sam. I don't know what to do."
She smiles, stepping back, and for some reason he can't quite see her face. "Just keep trying. You'll get there."
She's gone after that, and he is left alone in this god-forsaken base again. He works on the computers until every movement in his hands stings, until every console and the main power conduit have been torn open, but it is a lost cause. He's no technician, and he never has been; these are not going to get him out of here.
He's out of ideas, and all he has left is his lab. It's the same as it was yesterday (if that is even the correct measure of time), his laptop open and asleep on his desk in the small niche he keeps for it amongst his artefacts and files. The lights still don't work, but they are out in the hall now, too, and he only hopes that he hasn't broken something in his harried efforts at the control room. He's more reticent about touching his computer now than he was before, worried about what will happen; he reaches for it anyway, waking it to the same black screen as before, only this time it stops at 'Daniel'.
He's not sure what to do. It, whatever it is, typed his name and left it there, no flashing images or blood noses or blackouts. He takes a deep breath, his chest feeling heavier than usual, and types back a simple yes. It writes his name again, so he replies what are you?, and is not surprised when he does not get a proper answer. It writes his name once more, but then it keeps going, the same six letters end to end to end, scrolling down the screen so fast he can't keep up with it, can't spot any anomalies, danieldanieldanieldaniel, until it comes to an abrupt and worrying stop.
Find the way, it writes at the end, and then his brain is fire.
When Daniel wakes up, it is in the infirmary. He is not sure who keeps putting him here, or why, but at least that's one thing he can count on.
He's ruled out his lab as a viable source of answers for the time being, and instead tries to remember what else he thought was weird during his first couple of walk-arounds; he remembers his encounter from yesterday, and then remembers her lab.
There is still no sign of Sam – or anyone else – as he heads down to where her lab is, noticing the increasing pain in his limbs and lack of lights in the halls seeming to branch out from his lab on the way, and is thankful that he at least remembered this correctly; there is still the quiet hum in her cupboard, like a small motor whirring away in its confines, and he is more nervous about this than he was about his computer.
"I wouldn't," Jack cuts in just as he grasps the handle, and Daniel whirls to face him. "You never know what's in those things. She might have a pet replicator in there, or some sort robot dinosaur."
"I have to," Daniel replies, but his hand drops from the handle regardless. "It's the only thing left."
Jack shrugs, gesturing forward. "You want to open a cupboard that hums, in Carter's lab, then be my guest. Probably scrap metal anyway, or a death ray."
He considers it for a moment, tapping his fingers against her desk in trepidation. They still burn from tearing up the control room. "Why are you trying to stop me?" he asks, and Jack arches an eyebrow. "What's in there?"
"Memories," he says, "of things you'd rather not see."
"Will it get me out of here?"
Jack hesitates. "Maybe. That's up to you."
"That's awfully cryptic," he mutters, but Jack is already gone. He sighs, flexing his burnt out hands, then grabs the cupboard door and swings it open before he can second guess.
It is not the gate that greets him this time, but sand, wide and smooth and rolling in dunes like waves. It is dark, the moonlight casting the sands a deep blue and a cool wind rippling across them, and he knows this desert. It is not the deserts of Abydos, but he has been here recently. He just can't place which mission it was, which planet, and decides it doesn't matter. It is almost silent here, gentle whispers as flurries of sand blow across the ground, and then suddenly there is the gunfire.
It happens so quickly, men bursting from their hiding places and laying waste to the ground around his team, low whistles as staff fire hurtles past and explodes at his feet, throwing dirt up into his eyes. His team are shouting around him, throwing back their own fire and trying to find cover, but they have picked this spot perfectly; they are surrounded, completely and utterly, the goa'uld keeping all the high ground and leaving them in the kill box.
There is the heavy grind of rings, flashes of light before he finds himself in a ship he knows to be goa'uld, gold inscriptions in the walls and the heavy rattling footfalls of jaffa. He blacks out between there and the chamber, wide flat ceilings and cold metal floors and his blood thrown across it and fresh new wounds slicing maws in his skin. He's never been tortured quite like this; he has died before, and this is somehow worse, the jaffa biting for information as they rip and tear and hurt.
"This will not stop you," Teal'c says over Daniel's screams, standing just behind the other jaffa with his staff held vertical beside him. "You will prevail."
"I can't," he sobs, and then Jack and Sam are there too, their mouths moving silently as they yell to each other, to him, but there are no words coming out, nothing he can discern. "I can't hear," he breathes, "I can't hear you."
"Listen," Teal'c murmurs, as gently as he's ever heard, and rests a gentle palm to his forehead as his ears fill with the grinding sound of stone.
When Daniel wakes up, it is in the infirmary. He's getting a little bit sick of being here; he thinks of when Jack and Teal'c were stuck in that time loop, and wonders how they managed to stay so composed. At least they had functional people around.
Most of the halls are dark now, some so dark that he does not even bother finding a torch to navigate them; they give him a distinct feeling of unease, and they may as well have placed 'do not enter' signs at their fore. He is still able to get from here to the control room to Sam's lab, but he does not go to either of these places, instead deciding to finally explore where he starts.
All the beds are empty, each sterile and clean except for the one he was lying on, blood stained a dark brown in the sheets but no sign of it on his clothes or his skin. There is an IV stand lying on the floor, and he props it back up on its legs as he passes. Janet's office is empty, medical records and research in piles of manila folders and clipboards on the desk and her lab coat draped over the back of her chair. There are scans hanging on the illuminator board above the desk, a fractured arm and cracked ribs, and he gets the distinct feeling that they're his.
Jack settles into the desk chair, spinning it round as he gestures to the board. "Did a good number on them," he commends, which doesn't answer Daniel's question at all, "But you shouldn't be here."
"Where should I be?" Daniel asks, flipping through one of the folders to give his fingers something to do. Stars still burst behind his eyes when he tries to read anything.
Jack smiles, then tilts his head towards the door. "Out there. You know where the answer is."
He knows, but he doesn't want to. It has not provided answers yet, and he is worried about what it will do instead, but Jack isn't there to help him now and the halls are growing colder.
It is dark the moment he steps out of the infirmary, but half of the emergency lights have flickered on enough to help light his way, dull green filtered in patches down blackened hallways, and he follows their path back up to his lab, a long beep humming quietly in the walls every time he passes beneath one of the bulbs. It is exhausting just trying to move, now, his legs dragging and his chest heaving with every breath. His lab feels darker than it ever has, nothing but the dim lights of his computer to guide him as he stumbles across the floor and stands before it. This is it, he thinks; he knows. This is where it ends, though he is still not sure what it is or how exactly it will cease to be.
He brings the screen to life, watches the insertion point flash, on and off and on and off, ready for whatever it is about to throw at him.
Nothing.
He waits, and waits, and nothing happens, and he feels sorely disappointed despite having expected nothing useful. He had expected to at least black out again, hopefully glean something from whatever it decided to tell him, but there is nothing.
"Don't give up," he recalls Sam saying, hand gentle on his shoulder, "You'll make it," and he has no choice but to trust her.
He takes a deep breath, reaches over the keyboard, and he types, This is the way.
When Daniel wakes up, it is in the infirmary. His chest feels heavy and tight and his head aches something awful, and he is more exhausted than he has been in a long time. There is the faint sound of an EEG to his right, and the significantly less faint sound of conversation to his left. The lights are all bright and nearly blinding above him, searing against his eyes after the darkness of his lab, and it is when he cringes against it that the conversation ceases.
"Daniel?" Janet breathes in disbelief, and he opens his eyes again to see them standing above his bed, all of them, shock swiftly giving way to relief on their faces. They tell him what happened, the attack and the torture and the rescue ("daring rescue," Jack emphasises) and the long, slow recovery, the way he has been in and out of consciousness and delirious for the entire duration, violent at times (there is a deep wound in his elbow from where he had torn out his IV in a fit of senseless anger).
He's not sure what to make of it all, still high on sedatives and fever, and as he looks around the room at their tired but beaming faces, all he can think to say when he finally settles on Sam is, "You should really clean out your cupboards," and there is nothing more wonderful to him right now than their laughter of confused relief.