A/N: Many, many apologies for the long wait. I honestly had no idea what to do with the story. The good news is, it's all written now! No more year-long waits for the next chapter. Thanks to the-bookworm-princess for the beta on these last chapters. Thanks to mari4212 for the beta on chapter 2, since I don't think I thanked her on that chapter.
They had just stepped warily into a white room – their thousandth room, Rodney informed them with a dull sort of pride – and were restlessly taking their positions at the various doors to examine the next rooms. They had a system by this time. Each room was deemed safe or unsafe by Rodney's number system, which he had worked out with the aid of Colonel Sheppard and had something to do with prime numbers, but Elizabeth didn't understand much beyond that. If a room was deemed safe, they would double check it with a boot – though their supply was dwindling and Elizabeth feared for the moment they ran out. They took turns being first into a room, holding their collective breath until their point person had successfully breached the room without harm. Then they would all file through and each take a door: Colonel Sheppard, the door straight across from the entrance; Teyla and Elizabeth, the doors to either side; Rodney, the door in the floor; and, if necessary, Ronon would climb up to check the ceiling door. It worked, their system, and their morale, while still low, was at least not falling as they occupied themselves with this routine. Elizabeth couldn't help but think of their first few days in Atlantis, when every new corner was unknown and a potential danger.
Elizabeth scooted herself into the white room and walked slowly to her door. She could hear Teyla and John doing the same, Rodney following them to check their numbers before examining his own door. Ronon stood by the entrance, scowling. Elizabeth twirled the handle of her door, hoping against hope that any moment now they would get to the edge of this horrific jail and manage to find a way out. Her hope sank with the sliding door as the widening gap above it revealed a sickening orange color and she knew there was only another room beyond this one. Sighing, she propped the door open with a boot and turned to see if the others had had better luck.
It appeared Teyla might have. The boys were clustering around her, moving in that slow shuffle they had all developed, stemming from both dejection and exhaustion. Elizabeth moved toward Teyla's door as well, trying to see what they were all looking at. The light coming from beyond the door was bright and decidedly un-colored, but that in itself wasn't too unusual. As far as they could tell, there were only five different colors of room, so there was often a connecting room the same color as the one they were in. It was a moment before Elizabeth could get in front of Ronon to see what everyone was staring at.
It was…nothing. There was no room there, only an empty whiteness. It was cube-shaped and had a square hole in each wall that was probably the back of a door, but there were no strange geometric patterns on the wall, no colored lighting, no handles on the doors. Elizabeth poked her head further through the door, twisting to see the whole not-room. She gasped as she looked up. The bright emptiness continued upwards for several stories, marked only by the square door-holes every fourteen feet and by odd grooves in the walls that resembled…tracks? Elizabeth remembered when they had first entered the Cube and their room had rocketed rapidly upwards and then sideways.
Rodney had had the same thought. "So that's how they move," he pointed out, curiosity and interest and…hope? momentarily overcoming his despair. "Like a giant puzzle. You know those sliding puzzles where you have to move the pieces around different ways to make the picture?"
"What are you talking about, McKay?" Ronon growled. His temper was on an ever-shortening fuse and Elizabeth feared anything might tip him over the edge soon. "Talk so we can all," he gestured meaningly at himself and Teyla, "understand you."
Rodney appeared to be recovering rapidly in his excitement. Unfortunately, this improvement rendered him his usual sarcastic self and he shot back, "That might take a while, you overgrown ape, and we don't have time for that."
Ronon's eyes flashed and he made a lunging movement toward Rodney. Elizabeth jumped in front of him as Rodney squealed and ducked.
"Ronon! Come on," she tried to soothe him. "We're all a little overwrought right now. Let's just calm down and," she glanced sideways at Rodney, "try not to provoke each other."
"Rodney's just being a jackass like usual," John piped up, slapping Ronon on the shoulder. "The best thing to do is just ignore him."
"Excuse me?" Rodney scowled indignantly.
"You know it's true," John fired back, stepping away from Ronon to square off with Rodney.
"Listen, Sheppard," Rodney spat, "I don't give a sh–"
"BOYS!" Elizabeth shouted, moving to intercede before this got really nasty. "Teyla, a little help here?"
Teyla frowned. "I am offended by Dr. McKay's insensitivity," she shrugged, "and your apparent prejudice against peoples other than your own."
"What?" Elizabeth couldn't believe it. This was turning into a bad comedy, only it wasn't remotely funny. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Don't talk to Teyla like that," Ronon re-entered the fray, arms crossed menacingly as he considered the smaller woman.
It was then that Elizabeth knew things were about to go terribly, terribly wrong. Time seemed to slow as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw John make a move towards Rodney, their argument having escalated despite her efforts. Forgetting Ronon and Teyla for the moment, she lunged for John and caught him by the shirtsleeve in an attempt to stop him doing something he'd regret. Lost in his anger, he tore his arm from her grasp and swung it toward her violently. Her eyes widened and she thought she might have screamed as she watched his arm coming at her in slow motion. She couldn't move; she stood rooted to the spot until the back of his forearm connected with her jaw and she felt herself falling as pain exploded in her head. She thought she heard Rodney scream and the other three yelling in a confused tangle of voices before the pain overcame her and she slipped into oblivion.
She awoke to a blinding headache that was not helped by the white light glaring into her eyes from the floor. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing, listening to see what the others were up to. She heard nothing but her own labored breathing and blood pounding in her ears. Curious – and frightened – she forced her eyes open again and managed, painfully, to sit up. She was completely alone.
She bit back a scream and squeezed her eyes shut again against the rising tears. She needed to stay calm, to think her way out of this situation. She couldn't dwell on the fact that she was now alone in this death trap, abandoned by people she'd thought were her friends, left to die, discarded like so much trash, alone, abandoned, left, discarded, alone, abandoned, die, discarded, abandoned, alone…
She panicked. The pain in her head vanishing in a surge of adrenaline, she staggered to her feet and ran at the nearest door, pounding on it vainly before she remembered to twirl the handle. Blinded by her primal need to escape, to find others, she didn't even notice that she had chosen the door into the empty space, the not-room. She ran across it to another door, pounding furiously with her fists against the handle-less steel. She repeated her futile attack on each door in the walls, then the one on the floor, before turning back to the one she had entered through just as it timed out and hissed shut. It took her fully ten seconds to comprehend just what that meant: she was trapped, truly trapped, now. There were no handles on this side of the doors. There was no way out of here.
She screamed, not in panic or fear or anger, but simple, ancient despair. She was going to die, and she knew it. There would be no last-minute escape, no desperate plan of Rodney's to rescue her. This was the end.
She felt the rumbling before she heard it, and she realized quickly what it meant. Looking up, her suspicion was confirmed as she saw the dark bottom of a room descending rapidly towards her, dimming the light as it loomed ever closer. She briefly wondered if she could squeeze into the door hole in the floor, if that would save her, before realizing she didn't want to be saved. She didn't want to be strung along in this rat maze, as John had called it, until she died of dehydration. She didn't want to wander alone through the massive prison, be killed slowly by some sadistic grisly booby trap. If she was going to die – and she had already realized she would – she would rather it be on her own terms.
She lay down on the flattest part of the not-room and smiled slightly as she waited for death.
Rodney had not wanted to leave Elizabeth. It didn't seem right. She was their leader, after all, and, he had to admit, something of a friend. Besides, leaving anyone in this wretched place all alone seemed horribly cruel at the least and possibly even tantamount to murder. He wouldn't have wished it on Kavanagh, let alone Elizabeth.
But the others had insisted. They said she would simply slow them down, that trying to carry her or support her would only endanger her – and them – even more. Her neck might have been injured and they shouldn't try to move her, Sheppard had reasoned, and besides, they knew the white room they had left her in was safe; if they got out of the damn Cube, they could bring help and come back for her. Rodney didn't want to be on the receiving end of Sheppard's – or Ronon's – temper again, so he didn't say that Elizabeth wouldn't likely stay in one place once she woke up, nor that it would be almost impossible to find her again even if they did come back for her, which he doubted. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face, though, because Ronon had growled, "If you want her along, then you carry her."
Rodney had tried. He really had. But Elizabeth had a couple of inches and quite a bit of muscle on him and he hadn't been able to get her even to the door, let alone through it. He had considered staying with her, thinking that at best they could manage to get out themselves and at worst at least they wouldn't die alone, but he had opened his big mouth once too often and the others wouldn't leave him behind.
It was the damn numbers that did it. He just couldn't resist playing with numbers, even when he was about to die in a stupid, sadistic torture chamber of a prison. Sheppard had figured out the prime number thing, though Rodney had refined it when he realized the key was powers of a prime. He had had a niggling feeling that that wasn't all the numbers did, however, but couldn't figure out what it was until Sheppard – quite unintentionally – gave him a clue.
"Hell is other people," Sheppard had muttered as they argued over what to do with Elizabeth.
"What?" Ronon grunted, typically frustrated by the Earth references Rodney and Sheppard were prone to using.
"It's a quote," Sheppard explained, his speech slurred slightly by the button he was sucking on. "From a play or something. By a French guy. Descartes, I think."
"Sartre," Rodney corrected him automatically from his slumped position on the floor. "Descartes wasn't a playwright; he was a mathematician." He blinked, sitting up straighter. "Descartes. Maybe…"
"What the hell is it now, McKay?" Sheppard asked wearily.
"Descartes," Rodney repeated unhelpfully. "Cartesian coordinates. Obviously the Grotebroers wouldn't have known Descartes, but it's entirely possible they developed similar theories. After all, they have prime numbers. 'Ears,' or whatever they call them. The wheel was invented separately at least twice and probably more on Earth alone –"
"Shut the hell up and explain what the hell you're talking about or I'll throttle you," Sheppard threatened. Under normal circumstances, Rodney would have assumed he was teasing and said something along the lines of, "How am I supposed to explain what I'm talking about if I shut the hell up?" but after almost eight hours in this vile contraption, he wasn't sure what to make of Sheppard's state of mind.
He meekly explained, "Cartesian coordinates, like you learn in algebra. X, Y, and Zed axes. I think," he was careful to emphasize his uncertainty, "that maybe the numbers could tell us where we are in this thing."
"Numbers can tell you that?" Ronon asked, raising an eyebrow disbelievingly. Rodney didn't want to upset him with another 'overgrown ape' comment, so he settled for a curt nod.
"But the rooms are moving," Teyla pointed out. Rodney wasn't sure if he detected a slight triumph at the idea of stumping him behind her very reasonable comment. She was doing better than the rest of them for the most part, but she had taken Rodney's earlier comment quite badly and still hadn't forgiven him.
"It's just an idea, all right?" he exploded, though mildly compared to his usual legendary explosions. "Maybe they can at least tell us where the damn things start in this maze. If we find one that connects to the outside, all we have to do is stay there until it moves back to its starting position."
"Or maybe," Sheppard drawled, "the numbers can tell us everywhere the room goes."
"What?" Ronon asked, at the same time as Teyla said, "How?"
"Permutations," Rodney and Sheppard had chorused, glaring at one another.
Rodney was jolted back to the present by Teyla tapping him on the shoulder. "Colonel Sheppard would like to know if you have factored the prime numbers yet," she said. Sheppard had stopped speaking to Rodney after they had left Elizabeth in the white room, whether from guilt or anger, Rodney wasn't sure.
"You can tell Colonel Sheppard," he replied loudly, disgusting himself by being reminded of his mother yelling at his father while ostensibly talking to Rodney, "that prime numbers don't factor; that's why they're prime. And factoring numbers this large, thank you very much, takes time, even for a genius."
Sheppard opened his mouth to call something back when he was cut off by a faint, but very disturbing, scream. It was difficult to tell which direction had come from, but Rodney was fairly certain it emanated from the way they had come. He swallowed hard as he wondered what Elizabeth had felt upon waking up to find herself completely alone, what trap she had walked into in an effort to follow them. Guilt welled up inside him; he should have stayed with her, Ronon's threats and Sheppard's pleading notwithstanding. He had let his own needs supersede what he knew was right, just like he had with Gaul, just like he had with Project Arcturus. He was a coward and it had gotten someone killed again, only this time it was someone he really cared about.
Another thought crept into his head, unbidden and horribly unwelcome. One down, four to go, it said. Rodney shuddered.