Spiral Dance

by channeld

written for: the NFA Fibonacci challenge. The aim of the challenge was to use the Fibonacci set of numbers in a story.
rating: T
genre: drama/science fiction
pairing: situational McAbby
also starring: the team, in the background
warning: creepiness factor. You might not want to read this just before bedtime.

disclaimer: As always, I still own nothing of NCIS.

"Ready, contestants? On the count of three:

"One…

"…two…

"…three…

"…Dance!"

Tim looked at the terrified face of his dancing partner. "Whatever happens, Abby—don't let go!"

"I won't, Tim," she said, her voice trembling. She held his left hand; her left hand on his shoulder. His right hand was on her waist. "You don't let me go, either," she said, trying to smile and failing utterly.

They stepped out, nimbly. Neither of them would have claimed to be good at ballroom dancing, but both had done some before. Step, two, three, four, and turn, two, three, four…

Never had the stakes been this high, however.

From what had started to be a tight dance floor, with the different couples so close together that they could almost reach out and touch each other, the pairs grew apart…and apart…and apart…

The "dance floor" started to spread beyond the compact dirt lot into the grassy field. This wasn't a nicely manicured lawn, however, but instead a fallow field in which grasses and sunflowers grew in abandon, about two feet high now in early summer. Their dance path cut through the field; soft ground dotted in a nuisance manner with plants here and there. Flies and other insects buzzed and droned; flew and crawled. The sun was pale behind milky clouds, casting no shadows and giving the afternoon a still, timeless feel.

"You okay?" Tim asked as they continued to dance. "Your heels…" Of all of the things for Abby to be wearing today was boots with high heels. Not stiletto heels, as some of the other contestants wore, fortunately. That was a recipe for calamity: the thin heels invariably catching in the grass and the softer dirt, dragging the women down. They would have to get up and try again. And they could not let go of their partner. That would be against the rules, and the consequences dire; as dire, the judges said, as straying from their path.

The path assigned to Tim and Abby was marked in red, each bit becoming visible for about twenty feet ahead as they danced on. The part of the path where they had been did not fade. At first look it was straight, but a closer look showed that it was a spiral bending out from where they had started. Not a simple Archimedean spiral, though, in which the distance between the curves was constant. No, nothing about this "game" could be simple.

Far back at the beginning point, high up in bleachers, the team (and supporters of the other dancers) watched, helpless to step in and stop the torment. As the judges had stated, at the end, there would be only one couple left on the dance field. That couple, and their friends, would be free to go. The rest… The threat dangled.

Don't let go of your partner.

Don't step off the path.

Don't stop dancing until the judges say so.

"Why are they doing this to us, Tim?" Abby whimpered, knowing he didn't know, either.

He blinked over her shoulder. Abby had stamina, but maybe Ziva would have been a better partner. Her boots were flats, for one thing. But he had not been allowed to choose; the judges had selected which ones from NCIS would perform. Why Abby? Why me? There must be some reason for selecting us…

A cry came from nearby. A couple, dancing on a green path, tumbled as the woman in the set lost her balance. She fell off the path and their contact broke. "No! No!" she cried…and then she disappeared. Her partner, still partly on the path, stood in shock, until within seconds, he, too, winked out of existence.

"Don't look there, Abby," Tim said, fixing his eyes on hers. "Look at me. Don't look at anyone else."

"Look…at you. Yes, I'll look at you," she said, blinking tears away. "I'm scared, Tim."

"Nothing to be scared about. We're going to win this."

"How? We don't know how or why we're here, or even what the judges want!"

The music to which they danced was eerie: atonal, yet with a rhythm and a pattern. "Tim, those beats…" Abby said suddenly, just when he was about to remark on the same thing.

"What about them?"

"They're sequential. Can't you feel it? I think that's the Fibonacci sequence."

He wanted to kiss her, but was afraid of throwing off their dancing. "That must be it! We're dancing on a Fibonacci spiral. The sunflowers around us, with their seed spiral heads…it all makes sense now! In a weird way."

"A spiral made on the golden ratio, using the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 and so on. I'm not impressed, Tim. What good is geeky knowledge if someone's trying to kill us?"

"Roberta, I can't stand it anymore! I'm going to—"

"No, Dan! You'll kill us both! You'll—" There was a shriek and then, nothing more from where that couple had been.

Tim gripped Abby more tightly. "My guess is that the judges wanted someone to figure this out."

"Oh, so?' Abby laughed, nervously. "To come to that conclusion, and as a reward, kill us?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Abby, do you believe that we're dancing on a Fibonacci spiral? Stop and think for a moment."

She didn't stop dancing, but she did try to concentrate. "Yes…yes, I think so. It looks right."

"And our instructions were to dance along it."

"Yes…yes, they were."

"Do you remember them saying that we couldn't backtrack?"

"What—go back to the starting point?"

"Yes."

"I don't remember anything like that."

"Let's try it."

"Tim! They could kill us!"

"Abby, we don't know any other reason why we're out here except that we're two brainy, nerdy, geeky types who may have been selected for this for our smarts rather than for our looks. We could die at any point. The red path on which we came here is visible. As I see it, we have nothing to lose."

"Okay," she said, her lower lip trembling. "I don't want to die, Tim."

"I don't, either. But we have to try something."

"Yes. Okay." Abby took a deep breath. "Do we walk back, or dance back?"

"Dance. I don't think we dare disregard the judges' instructions. So with the beat, we turn, and…go back the way we came from…Abby, keep your eyes open. I don't want you straying off the path."

"Eyes…open. Yes; my eyes are open."

They'd taken about a dozen dance steps backwards before they both realized that nothing adverse had happened to them. They hadn't blown up, or vanished. They were simply heading back to the point of origin. Abby and Tim grinned at each other, and kept dancing.

The way back in seemed longer than the path going out. Eventually, though, they reached the pounded dirt dance floor again, where their red path became a dull grayish-maroon against the brown dirt. They danced to the very end (or was it the very beginning?). Then they stopped.

"Fibonacci," Tim called up to the judges' cold, almost inhuman stares. Their eyes seemed far-off and unnatural. "You had us dancing according to a sequence. The music, the spiral path…it's all a mathematical formula."

For minutes, there was no answer. Then one of the judges spoke. "That is correct. You are free to go. You and your friends."

Tim and Abby hugged in delight, and saw the people they knew and loved in the stands…Gibbs, Tony, Ziva, Ducky, Jimmy, Director Vance and others…stand up and stretch, smiling.

"What about everyone else? The other dancers, and their friends?" asked Abby. "You should let them go, too."

"Why?"

"Because…because we won, and we're asking you to?"

A sound like an alien laugh came from the judge. "No. You two alone solved the problem. Only the most selected of the species survives." He snapped his fingers, and everyone else in the stands, save for the NCIS people, vanished as the music stopped.

Tim covered his mouth; not wanting to have had it end like this. What had it all meant? Why did so many have to die?

"Tim! Wake up! The movie's over."

"What? How much did I miss?" Tim stretched, mindful of the moviegoer on his other side who probably wouldn't appreciate a sock in the head.

"Not much. The last twenty or so minutes. You weren't kidding when you said you were worn out from the long hours at work this week."

"Did the trapped people get away from the aliens all right?"

"Oh, sure. But you'll never guess how they did it. They figured out—"

"—That it was based on a Fibonacci sequence."

She gave him a stern look. "Timothy McGee! You weren't sleeping at all!"

"No, I really was. It was just something that—I had a weird dream. So I guessed that…well, come on; let's go grab dinner and you can tell me how it ended."

The manager of the small art house greeted them as they exited the theatre. "I do hope you'll come again," she said, smiling. Tim and Abby stared, and shivered.

Her eyes were spirals.

-END-