Chapter Text
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
―
Sun Tzu,
The Art of War
**
PART ONE
**
-Jack-
“Hey…eyes on me, kid.”
He was slightly breathless, muscles across his ribcage and belly trembling from the burn of constantly clenching against the slam of fists.
“C’mon, Mac.”
Jack had been in enough situations like this he knew how to protect his more vulnerable parts for as long as possible—and how to assess when the damage was more than a bruise or a strain. So far, he was holding up.
MacGyver, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so lucky.
“Mac!”
He saw the younger agent’s shoulders flinch in reaction to the harsh bark of his tone, but his head stayed hanging low, sweaty blond hair obscuring his face. From his vantage point across the room, Jack could see a red stain matting down the hair along one side of Mac’s head, shadowing the edge of his partner’s jaw, and darkening the collar of the grey Henley.
They’d been stripped of their stolen uniforms and TAC gear within minutes of being compromised, tossed into the eight-by-eight cinderblock room dressed in only their boxers and shirts—no pants or shoes—and, before Mac could scan the bare room for some sort of miracle escape, had been unceremoniously shoved into and then taped to opposing metal chairs.
Jack had known the beatings would begin soon thereafter, and tried to warn MacGyver, but there was no need. They were roughly five feet apart, but Jack had always been able to read the kid like a book. Mac knew the minute the doors slammed behind their silent captors that things were going to get rough.
Awareness sat heavy and raw in his blue eyes, his jaw a hard line of resistance.
The usual tactics hadn’t worked—sarcasm, incorrect data throwing their captors off track, codes that would alert the Phoenix they had been captured. It was as though the men who held them had read the Phoenix Foundation Handbook, if there was such a thing, and stayed one step ahead of them. It wasn’t until a particularly sadistic-minded individual went after Mac with a vengeance that Jack felt his resolve begin to crack.
A fist had slammed across Mac’s cheek, splitting it open and snapping his head to the side. Before the younger man could recover, the punch was followed by a hard hit from what looked like a blackjack, Mac going limp as a result while blood coursed down his face, and Jack had lost his mind.
He didn’t remember what he’d said, threatened, promised.
All he knew is that it drew the men away from Mac and toward him, turning his torso into a punching bag as his arms and legs jerked against the layers of tape that held him fast against the metal chair. After several drawn-out minutes, the beating stopped, the men left, the door clanged shut, and Jack was left alone in the cold, cinderblock room with nothing but an overhead bare bulb and an unconscious partner.
“C’mon, kid,” Jack pleaded, turning his head to the side and spitting blood on the floor. “Gimme a sign, here.”
They’d been hauled in with bags over their heads—blindfolded almost from the moment they’d been caught—and Jack had been unable to track their movement from Undronovitch’s office to the room they were now in.
Jack let his eyes shift from Mac to the corners of the windowless room, trying to get a sense of where they had been stashed, if there was any way they could get free, or get a signal out to Riley—who was always, always listening for them. It was cold in the room—not quite enough for him to shiver, but dressed as they were, he might start to worry about a drop in body temperature if they were left much longer.
The walls were solid and bare. No visible cameras or listening devices. It smelled damp and closed in—a basement room, maybe, or little-used storage area. There was a drain in the center of the room between their chairs and the floor sloped slightly toward it, giving Jack a cold feeling in his gut, and making him wonder how long they were going to have to wait for the waterboarding to begin.
His eyes snapped back to Mac when his partner groaned softly.
“That’s it, kid,” Jack encouraged. “Need you to look at me. Just need to see those eyes, let me know you’re with me here.”
Jack watched as one of Mac’s slim hands shook briefly before curling into a tight fist, the other scrambling clumsily at the edge of the chair arm. Slowly, as though it weighed a hundred pounds, Mac brought his head up, the grimace of pain mirrored sympathetically in Jack’s expression. Blinking slowly, his hair hanging in his eyes, Mac focused across the room, more or less on Jack.
“There you are,” Jack breathed, letting his mouth relax into a smile. “Good nap?”
“Jack?” Mac’s naturally deep voice scratched against the unnatural quiet of the room and made Jack wince.
“Hey, bud.”
Mac swallowed, licking his lips, eyes tracking the room slowly, clearly not quite there. “Happened?”
“Ivan Drago cracked your head open, that’s what happened,” Jack practically growled as Mac lifted his head further, displaying the full effect of the damage.
Blood covered most of Mac’s face—from the cut on his cheek and the crack to his skull—matting the lashes of one eye and tracing down his jaw and neck. It was a horrifying sight, to say the least, but the kid was conscious and speaking, two things Jack marked in the plus column.
“Mac,” Jack called, dragging the blonde’s wandering attention back to him. “Hey, hey, kid. Eyes on me, okay?”
“’kay.”
“You remember where we are?”
Mac rolled his lips against his teeth, a tell Jack had learned to recognize downrange as his partner struggling with a particularly difficult problem. He pulled in a slow breath and closed his eyes.
“Eh, none of that now—”
“’m good, Jack,” Mac whispered. “Just…just really…really don’t want to…to get sick.”
“Oh,” Jack nodded. “Yeah, okay. Roger that.”
After taking a couple additional slow, deep breaths Mac opened his eyes, focusing again on Jack and this time there was clarity in the brilliant blue of his partner’s gaze. Something uncoiled in Jack’s chest and he felt his shoulders drop slightly in unconscious relief.
“Krasnodar,” Mac finally answered him. “Outside Krasnodar Krai…southern Russia.”
Jack smiled and nodded at him. “Good. That’s real good, kid.”
Mac blinked. “Can’t…can’t remember if we….”
“Naw, Ivan and his buds tagged us as soon as we got inside,” Jack growled. “Barely got to the big wig’s office.”
Mac squinted one eye; Jack knew how much it stung to have blood drip into the eye.
“How’d they know…?”
“My question exactly,” Jack muttered, lifting his chin. “Can’t see any cameras or mics,” he informed Mac, “but that don’t mean there aren’t any.”
“Russians have the most adept hacker capability in the world,” Mac nodded slowly. “Odds are, they’re listening to us somehow.”
Jack felt the warmth in his chest spread as Mac’s words spilled out with confidence and clarity. The kid was going to have one helluva headache, make no mistake, but he was hitting on at least eleven of his twelve cylinders.
“You’re thinking someone’s pulling a Departed?” Mac asked, his head tilting slightly as he focused on Jack.
Rolling his neck, Jack searched his memory banks, landing finally on the movie reference, and the insinuation of a spy in the Phoenix.
“Could be,” he nodded. “Seems a bit too easy to land us here, otherwise.”
Mac mirrored his nod, then closed his eyes, breathing slowly through his nose once more.
“You hanging in there, bud?”
Mac hummed a reply. Jack could hear him taking slow breaths, clearly fighting to stave off the nausea. There was no doubt the kid had a concussion. Jack just hoped he would be able to—
No luck.
Mac twisted abruptly to the side, leaning as far over the arm of his chair as his anchored body would allow, and heaved. Jack grimaced, watching, tugging ineffectually against the tape that held his arms solid against the metal arms of the chairs. When Mac was done, he let his head hang low another moment, breathing heavily, before dragging his chin against the shoulder of his Henley and sitting back slowly.
“’m sorry,” Mac mumbled.
“It’s okay, bud,” Jack said quietly. They sat for a moment, simply breathing in the damp, cloistered room. “You hurting?”
“Yeah,” Mac sighed, surprising Jack slightly with his honesty. “But…I’m still in the fight.”
“I know you are,” Jack smiled softly, keeping his eyes on his partner’s face, watching for Mac to lift his face and met his eyes when he did. “So…any ideas?”
Jack was fairly sure their only way out of here was going to be through Matty and the Phoenix…or by getting in a lucky shot when one of the silent Russians returned. But he liked to give Mac something to work on, keep his mind going. He could see the kid’s fingers twitching, his thumb rubbing against the edge of his index and middle fingers in a repetitive motion.
It kept them from shaking at least.
“Took my knife,” Mac muttered, distractedly, his eyes skimming the edges of the cinderblock room, seeking out the darkened corners behind Jack.
A strange expression settled on his face and he went still, his eyes suddenly going distant.
“Mac?”
No response.
“Where’d you go, bud?” Jack frowned, suppressing a sudden shiver.
They had been sitting for a while in the cool room, unable to move much beyond their heads and their hands to generate circulatory heat, and he was starting to feel the effects.
“They’re testing us,” Mac said softly, startling Jack.
“Testing?”
Mac slid his eyes over to Jack and the older man felt himself catch his breath with the look captured in the blue. There had only been a few times in their partnership when MacGyver allowed his walls to fall and exposed his heart to Jack—the last time had been just before he’d started to regularly visit with Jack’s VA counselor friend and former fellow sniper, Freddie Tillerman.
Jack had thought the ghosts of Mac’s past were starting to fade with Freddie’s help, but the look he gave him now seemed to bring them all back.
“Think about why we’re here in the first place,” Mac prompted, keeping his deep voice low, soft, forcing Jack to focus in on his lips to truly grasp his words. “And what that means if…well, if there is a….”
Mole in the Phoenix, Jack finished his thought.
They’d been sent to close out on an old case for Matty, one the CIA was keen to keep off-books. It had sounded simple enough—but, both MacGyver and Jack had learned long ago that simple was sure sign of complicated. They were to infiltrate the office of one Wislaw Undronovitch, President of the Magnit Corporation, one of the largest trade businesses in Krasnodar Krai.
Their only task was to copy the hard drive of Undronovitch’s computer in order to gather the files not stored to the cloud and then get out. They hadn’t been told what was on those files, and to be honest, Jack hadn’t cared in the moment. Matty owed someone—and Jack knew that debt was, in all likelihood, because of something she’d bargained for to save their hides at some point—and they’d readily agreed to the job.
Twenty-four hours, in and out and back on Mac’s deck with a beer and a pizza.
Except.
“They were waiting for us,” Jack nodded, following Mac’s line of thinking. “Which means this goes a lot higher than the Phoenix.”
Mac nodded slowly, rolling his lips against his teeth. “They’re gonna keep pushing us.”
“We’ve taken worse.”
Mac gave Jack another soul-baring look. “It’s not about how much we can take.”
Matty.
“She won’t cave,” Jack said quietly, knowingly.
Mac worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “I know.”
Which meant…they weren’t likely to be rescued.
Before Jack could drum up encouraging words designed to keep Mac rallied, the metal door to his right clanged, and the sound of a bar being lifted from a cradle met his ears. He saw Mac square his shoulders and take a breath and found himself mirroring the posture as their heads swiveled toward the door, watching as it was slowly pushed open just enough to allow three men to enter.
They didn’t close it behind them.
The first man was older with an Al Pacino vibe about him. His white suit was incongruous to the dark room, and his nose wrinkled at the smell of the sick puddled next to Mac’s chair. Looking over his shoulder at the last man in, he nodded once, and the man left.
“I am Wislaw Undronovitch,” he announced in thickly accented English.
“Congratulations,” Jack muttered, fixed an utterly bored expression on his face when the man turned from the center of the room to face him.
“You wish to meet with me?” Undronovitch asked, his head tilted slightly as though curious.
Jack bounced his eyebrows. “I knew you fellas did things differently here, but gotta say, there are better ways to start off a meeting.”
Undronovitch pursed his lips slightly, shifting his stance to clasp his hands behind his back. “Indeed.”
The third man returned pulling a large, black firehose with him. Jack tensed as Undronovitch moved closer to him, but then frowned as the man continued past him toward the back of the room. The other man followed and soon only the third man was standing between Jack and MacGyver, the black hose in his hands.
“It is unpleasant, this smell,” Undronovitch declared from his position behind Jack.
“Probably shouldn’t have let your guy hit me so hard, then,” Mac grumbled, and Jack found himself smirking at the sass.
The man with the hose pulled a lever and a powerful spray of water hit the floor, splashing up against their bare legs. Using the spray, the man cleaned the sick from the floor to the drain and just before he flipped the lever once more to turn off the water, he glanced up over Jack’s head, then nodded.
A cold realization hit Jack in the sternum, but before he could shout any kind of a warning, the man turned the hose on Mac, the powerful spray hitting the younger man in the chest and face. Mac wasn’t even able to gasp. His head snapped back, the force of the water plastering him against the back of the metal chair, his hands clenched into shaking fists.
“Stop! Stop it!” Jack shouted, trying to twist his head over his shoulder to peer at Undronovitch.
The spray continued.
Jack looked frantically back at Mac, horror turning him cold inside as he saw the impossible angle of his friend’s head and neck, his trembling fingers stretching flat. He tugged ineffectually at his bindings, every cell in his body reaching for Mac, wanting to stop the surge of water pressing the younger man roughly against the metal chair.
“You’re drowning him, man! Stop!”
“Ostanovites pozhaluysta, Alexi.” Undronovitch’s mild tone crawled beneath Jack’s skin.
The hose man immediately shifted the lever, cutting off the water, and Mac sagged forward, coughing, and gagging.
“Mac!” Jack stared hard at his partner, but all Mac could do was cough, his rasps for breath wet and thick.
Jack could see he was struggling, unable to bend far enough over to wring the water from his lungs. The blood had been power-washed from his face, but the force of the water left his skin red and angry.
“That’s it, bud, just breathe,” Jack tried to encourage him.
Mac dragged in a ragged breath but then coughed so hard, Jack thought he was going to be sick again.
“Untie him, man,” Jack begged, trying once more to get his eyes on Undronovitch.
“No, I do not think I will,” Undronovitch replied, his hard-soled shoes clacking loudly against the cement floor as he stepped forward to stand next to Jack.
The second man joined him, but Jack ignored them, his eyes pinned to Mac’s hunched form, watching as his shoulders shook with the effort to drag in one steady breath.
“This is my advisor,” Undronovitch continued in the same conversational tone, “Sasha Petrov. He will decide which of you we will free.”
Jack frowned, shooting a confused look toward the man standing next to him. He was shorter and stockier than Undronovitch, silver shot through his black hair and cold, bright blue eyes. Something tugged at the back of Jack’s memory, but he was too worried about Mac to explore it further.
“Which one of us?” Jack asked.
Undronovitch nodded slowly, as though considering his words carefully. “I am undecided which of you I will kill,” he said with a slight shrug. “Until that time, Sasha will free one of you…and we will see.”
Jack pulled his lower lip against his teeth. “Well, Sasha, you better pick him, or your boss isn’t going to have much to worry about when it comes to deciding.”
Petrov stepped forward and Jack saw that he was dressed all in black, the suit making him appear as a shadow to Undronovitch in more ways than one. He wore several large, gem-encrusted rings, and Jack braced himself, fully expecting the man to land a solid punch. Cracking the knuckles of his right hand in the palm of his left, he rolled his neck and stepped in front of Mac, and tilted his head, watching silently as Mac continued to drag in air.
Dropping his hands to his sides, Petrov shook out his hands.
“Hey, Boris,” Jack goaded. “C’mon, man. My last girlfriend didn’t take this long choosing an outfit.”
Petrov glanced over his shoulder, then with an abrupt about-face, turned toward Jack. Striding forward with clear intent, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket and flicked the blade in the air until the knife was open. Jack had time to pull in a sharp breath as Petrov lifted his arm across his body and then he was suddenly slashing down.
“Ja—” Mac gasped in panic.
Jack tore his eyes from the chilled blue of Petrov’s stare and looked down at himself, fully expecting to see blossoming red. Instead, he realized he could lift his left arm from the metal chair. Petrov slashed three more times and Jack pulled his arms free, the tape still affixed to his skin.
“I trust you can work out the rest on your own,” Undronovitch stated almost primly as he moved around Jack and toward the door.
He stepped from the room, Petrov directly behind him.
“Wait!” Jack called helplessly. “You can’t just….”
The hose man chuckled, shaking his head as he tugged the fire hose toward the door. “On mozhet delat’ vse, chto khochet. On vladeyet toboy.”
“Yeah?” Jack shouted at his retreating back. “You and what army?”
The door slammed shut, the sound of the metal bar dropping into the cradle echoing dully in the cold room. Jack sat still for another moment, feeling slightly breathless, before he bent over and started to tug the tape away from his legs.
“He…he said…,” Mac rasped. “Undronovitch—”
“Save your breath, man,” Jack admonished.
“…can do wh-whatever he wants,” Mac continued, clearing his throat, and coughing weakly. “He owns us.”
Jack tugged the tape from his right leg with a curse, then went to work on his left. “Like hell he does,” he growled. “Only one person owns me, and she could eat Undronovitch for lunch.” The last word came out on a gasp as the tape holding him to the chair came free.
Stumbling free, Jack crossed quickly to Mac’s side, cupping the young agent’s face in his hands, and tilting it up to get a better look at him. The cut on his cheek had started to bleed again, and while the blood from the wound on his head had been washed away, Jack could now see the gaping flesh along his hairline. He winced.
“Nice of Boris to wash off all that blood, yeah?” Jack offered Mac a small smile, trying to see how well his friend was able to track.
“Drinking from a f-firehose,” Mac rasped, swallowing hard as he caught his breath, “has a wh-whole new meaning.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Jack nodded, easing his hands from Mac’s jaw. “Feel like getting out of this chair?”
Mac simply closed his eyes. Jack started tugging at the tape on Mac’s right arm, seeking a starting point. The more he pulled, the more he felt the bindings twist.
“Use…use your t-tape,” Mac rasped, clearing his throat roughly. He coughed hard, then turned his head away from Jack and spat on the floor.
“Come again?” Jack paused, sinking back onto his heels, and looking up at Mac’s face.
Mac rolled his neck and Jack saw a hard shiver course through his lean frame. “Twist the tape from your arms,” he said. “Turn it into…into kind of a…a saw.”
Jack wrinkled his nose. “Kinda wasn’t looking forward to pulling that off….”
“R-russian wax job,” Mac commented, one of his eyebrows flicking up.
Jack huffed out a surprised laugh. “Yeah, okay, junior. Not going to be fun for you either.”
“Better than a f-fire hose,” Mac pointed out.
“Fine, you win,” Jack grumbled, stretching upright. He braced himself, took a deep breath, and then pulled the tape from his right arm with one sharp tug. “Oh, son of a…. Damn, that smarts.”
“Twist…twist it—”
“Yeah, yeah, Hoss. I got you.”
Jack twisted the tape until it was a strong, narrow rod, then worked it under the starting point of the tape on Mac’s arm, sawing it back and forth and loosening the bindings. Mac held still, his only concession to the discomfort an occasional grunt of air as Jack tugged. And then his right arm was free.
“You work on your left, I’ll start on your legs,” Jack instructed, crouching low.
“Jack,” Mac started, coughing roughly into his shoulder as Jack tipped his chin up to indicate he was listening. “I think we know…know the guy…with the rings.”
Jack hid his frown at the way Mac’s words were broken up by wet breaths.
“Who? Mr. Switchblade?”
Mac hummed a response, his body jerking as he managed to pull his arm free, ripping the tape from his skin. Jack grimaced, glancing at the almost glowing red of Mac’s arm from the tape.
“Yeah, I thought there was something familiar about him.”
Jack had Mac’s legs free inside another minute and he reached for the younger agent, pulling Mac up to his feet and gripping his shoulder as he swayed. Finally able to move, Mac grabbed hold of Jack’s arm, bending slightly at the waist and holding himself up with a hand to his knee, coughing as much of the water from his lungs as he could.
Jack kept a steadying hand on the younger man’s back. “Easy, bud. You got this.”
Mac stood shakily, dragging the back of his hand across his lips, and nodding at Jack. His face was still red, the skin across his cheeks and forehead looking as though they were almost sunburnt, and Jack could see where bruising would emerge. Patting Jack’s arm clumsily, Mac pulled away from him and moved shakily toward the cinderblock wall, resting a hand against the grey surface as he caught his breath.
“They’re going to kill one of us, Jack,” he said quietly.
Jack shook his head, not liking the finality in Mac’s tone one bit. “They’re just trying to scare us.”
Mac moved toward the opposite corner of the room, trailing his hand along the wall as he went. “For what purpose?”
“Why do bad guys do anything?” Jack shrugged, tugging distractedly at the last section of tape on his other arm. “A maniacal need for power and control.” He ripped the tape off and swore under his breath.
Mac spared him a glance, then continued his sojourn around the room, fingers trailing along the empty walls.
“How l-long do you th-think we’ve been here?” he asked, and Jack heard his teeth chatter.
Jack rubbed the back of his head, rolling his neck to loosen his muscles. “Not sure…maybe six, seven hours?”
“So, definitely m-missed exfil.”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
Mac reached the corner of the room furthest from Jack, looking back at him over his shoulder. “Think Matty’s l-looking for us?”
Jack could see him shivering, the wet Henley clinging to the lean muscle. “Pretty sure she started looking two minutes after we missed exfil. ‘Course…we got no idea where they took us when we had those ass-smelling bags over our heads.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t keep track of the turns,” Mac sighed, shaking his head at his perceived failure.
Jack huffed. “Slacker,” he teased, earning a slight bounce of Mac’s smile.
He continued to watch Mac, muscles tensed and ready for the kid to stumble, falter, give in to the exhaustion and pain. But he never wavered. His head on a swivel as he traversed the room, checking corners, looking closely at cracks, Mac didn’t stop moving until he’d covered the full circumference of the small room.
Apparently satisfied, he turned around at the point where he began and looked at Jack.
“It should be me,” he said quietly, his blue eyes steady, clear.
“What should be you?” Jack asked, confused. He tilted his head, crossing his arms over his sore chest.
“The one Sasha chooses for Undronovitch to kill.”
Jack felt his heart skip and then speed up, dragging his next intake of breath to the back of his throat and threatening to choke him. “What the hell are you talking about, Hoss?”
Mac stepped forward quickly, laying a cold hand on Jack’s folded arms. “Not, like, for real,” he reassured. “I didn’t d-develop a death wish in the last twenty-four hours, man.”
Jack felt his entire body sag in relief. “Don’t do that shit to me, Mac,” he pleaded, stumbling toward the wall, and leaning against it.
“I’m sorry,” Mac said earnestly, moving next to Jack and then sliding down the wall to sit with his knees pulled up. “I gotta stop burying the lead, don’t I?”
Jack slid down next to him. “Hell yeah, you do,” he agreed, a hand pressed to his chest.
Mac grasped his left wrist with his right hand, resting his arms on his bare knees. Jack felt him shiver again and pressed slightly closer. They were directly opposite the heavy door, the two metal chairs between them and the exit, the water from the fire hose having completely drained and now just turning the concrete dark.
“But…still, no way in hell I’m letting that happen,” Jack continued.
“They wouldn’t do it in here,” Mac said, his voice pitched low and soft. “They’d have to take me out of the room.”
Jack felt his stomach clench at the thought. “Yeah, that’s crazy talk right there. How many times I gotta tell you wherever you go, I go?”
“This isn’t about going kaboom—” Mac started.
Jack lightly smacked the back of his hand against Mac’s boney knee. “It’s all about going kaboom,” he corrected. “You know you don’t get to do anything stupid by yourself.”
Mac rolled his head along the wall, his eyes hitting Jack’s then shifting away. “I do plenty of stupid stuff by myself,” he protested.
“Eh, gonna have to disagree on that one, Hoss,” Jack shook his head. “I mean, sure, part of your charm is that I never really know what you’re doing, but I’m always there when the shit goes down.”
Mac was quiet a moment, then Jack felt him sigh. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“’Course I’m right.”
“But…maybe, okay just…listen a second,” Mac pushed. “They’ll drag me out, somewhere Undronovitch can more-easily clean up the mess. Get rid of the body.”
Jack’s throat closed. “How ‘bout we call that Plan ‘A’ and then not do that.”
“Jack,” Mac sighed, rubbing at the bruise blossoming around the cut near his temple. “There’s nothing in here—nothing for me to…to use.” He stretched his hand out flat, gesturing toward the closed door. “They took my knife, the walls are bare, the chairs are smooth-welded metal, I can’t…I can’t get us out of here—”
“Hey, hey now,” Jack lifted a hand, stalling what was sounding like the start of a panic attack. “Who said it’s on you to get us out of here?”
Mac just looked at him.
“Yeah, okay, so…that’s our usual M.O.,” Jack allowed. “But we make a pretty decent team, you and me.”
Mac offered him a small smile. “We make an amazing team,” he said, “but…someday your luck’s going to run out.”
“Not when I have you around,” Jack replied immediately.
“That’s my point,” Mac rubbed his jaw, clearing his throat. “I can’t do anything in here. One of us needs to get out of this room if we’re going to be able to save ourselves.”
“Guess we’re giving up on the idea that Matty’s going to swoop in and save the day, huh?”
Mac lifted a shoulder. “I mean, she’s good, but…kinda think if she knew where we were, we’d have seen her by now.”
Jack sighed, feeling the chill of Mac’s wet clothes seeping into his T-shirt and boxers. Fine tremors shook through the younger man with such consistency Jack had almost forgotten they weren’t typical. He let his gaze rest on Mac’s hands—long, limber fingers curling into fists and then releasing to slide against each other in constant motion. It was one of the ways Mac grabbed control—Jack knew that lacking the typical channel for his ever-present energy in the form of a paperclip, repetitive motion helped to ground him, balance him, keep him from coming apart.
Tucking his bottom lip against his teeth, Jack came to a decision.
“Yeah, okay,” he nodded. “I’m with you—we have to have a plan. And you’re right: Mr. Fussy Britches had a hard enough time with a little vomit.” He glanced over at Mac. “How’s the head, by the way?”
“Hurts,” Mac admitted, gingerly pressing the flat of his fingers against the seeping wound on the side of his head. “I’d kill for a couple Advil right now.”
“I bet,” Jack acknowledged. “Okay, so…you’re out of the room, outnumbered…how are you going to stop him from following through with the whole ‘killing you’ part of his plan?”
“Give him something he wants,” Mac glanced over at Jack, a half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Me.”
Jack frowned. “Mac, you’re a good-looking guy and all, but—”
“No, no,” Mac huffed a laugh. “Not like that. This all started with Matty paying back a favor, right?”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Right….”
“And if there’s a mole in the Phoenix, Undronovitch needs to know if his contact is secure, so he kills one of us and weakens the other to get them to spill…but what if I just cut to the chase?”
Jack chewed on the inside of his lip. “It’s risky, Hoss.”
“So’s fighting them,” Mac pointed out, turn a hand palm up. “But we’ve got a serious lack of weapons, and like you said: we’re outnumbered.”
“I can’t be there to back you up,” Jack resisted, his stomach twisting.
Mac gently bounced his shoulder against Jack’s. “You’re never out of the fight, right?”
Smirking and shaking his head at the kid’s audacity to use his own words against him, Jack scoffed, “It don’t much matter if I’m not even close to the fight in the first place.”
“I’ll be okay, Jack,” Mac promised, dropping his head back against the wall with a wince. “Damn, my neck is sore.”
“Dude, you took a firehose to the face for like…four light-years,” Jack pointed out.
Eyes closed, Mac replied, “A light-year is a measure of distance not time.”
“Right, sorry,” Jack pressed closer to Mac, smiling softly when the kid’s head slid to rest on his shoulder. “I keep forgetting you have a degree in cosmos terminology.”
Mac chuffed softly. “I don’t even have a degree….”
Jack waited, listening, but Mac didn’t say more. After a moment, Jack felt the younger man’s body grow heavier against him, the shivering slowing as he absorbed Jack’s body heat.
He wasn’t asleep, Jack knew. They’d worked in close quarters for so many years, Jack knew the different sounds of Mac’s breathing: resting, thinking, hurting, healing. He knew when the kid was working his way up to a nightmare or a panic attack, when he was solving a seemingly impossible problem, or when he was hurting deeper than any words could convey—just from his breathing.
Freddie Tillerman had cautioned Jack against this level of co-dependency. As he and Mac began to frequent the VA support group Freddie ran after the near-disastrous mission that put most of El Noche’s operation away for human trafficking, Jack heard him say more than once that Mac was young. There was every likelihood the Phoenix Foundation would be just a pit stop in a long and prosperous career. And in comparison, Jack was winding down a long journey that included careers in both the military and government.
He’d warned Jack there was the very real possibility of Mac finding something else to drive him, some other career to ignite that brilliant mind, and he’d move on—not necessarily bringing Jack with him. Jack was familiar enough with Mac’s abandonment issues, he knew what concerned Freddie, and how he worried something like that would ultimately impact Jack.
But Jack never worried about what might happen to him if Mac every decided to move on; he was more worried that instead, Mac would sacrifice his own future—literally or figuratively—for the sake of Jack. He knew he was too attached; MacGyver was more than his partner and he was more than the kid’s overwatch.
They were brothers in this chaotic world. Connected on levels Jack didn’t think he’d ever be ready to unpack. He couldn’t truly breathe without knowing that Mac was safe, whole, healthy.
“I can hear you thinking,” Mac mumbled, his voice a low rumble reverberating against Jack’s shoulder.
“That’s just ‘cause I don’t do it a lot,” Jack softly joked. “Wheels need greasing.”
“We’ll get out of this, Jack,” Mac said, pulling his head up slightly. “We’ve gotten through worse.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack replied, shrugging. “The plan is a good one.”
Mac pulled further away, turning so he could see Jack more clearly. “You’re not just saying that because it’s the only plan we’ve got?”
Jack glanced at him and saw that his blond hair had dried, a copper-colored stain along one side of his head. The cut on his cheek had also stopped bleeding, blood crusting on his cheek. His eyes snapped at Jack in both a challenge and a bid for reassurance.
“’Course not,” Jack scoffed. “You’re right—we’ve gotten out of worse. Like…catching lightning in a bottle, or…jumping onto a moving plane to disarm a bioweapon.”
“Escaping a US Embassy surrounded by Latvian terrorists.”
“Murdoc,” Jack tilted his head, eyes on the middle distance.
“Dr. Zito infiltrating the Phoenix,” Mac added.
“Getting buried in an avalanche in the Canadian wilderness.”
“Having an entire building fall on top of us.”
Jack glanced at him as they both acknowledged, “Cairo.”
They were quiet a moment, then Jack took a breath. “There’s no one I trust more with my life, man,” he said, holding out a closed fist that Mac instinctively bounced his knuckles against. “And there is no one better at doing this job than you.” He shifted slightly to look at Mac. “But…we’ve been playing with house money for a lotta years now, and….”
“You’re wondering when we’re going to have to cash in our chips.”
Jack nodded. His ribs twinged as he took a breath, and he wrapped his arm around his middle.
“I think we got few good years left,” Mac offered with a small smile. “We’re too young to start cashing anything in yet.”
“Ha,” Jack barked. “Speak for yourself, junior. I was old ten years ago.”
Mac’s smile kicked up to a grin that turned his eyes into nothing but lashes and laugh lines. It was Jack’s favorite expression; he celebrated any moment he got Mac to grin like that, as though a curtain lifted and the darkness they lived through each day gave way for just a moment to a beam of sunshine, illuminating Mac’s whole face.
“Y’know—” Jack started but closed his mouth with a click when the metal bar on the other side of the door scraped upwards and the door creaked open.
In one motion, both Jack and Mac scrambled to their feet, backs flush against the wall. Jack felt his heartrate kick up, his pulse almost choking him. As two men entered, Jack felt the muscles along his back tense, his hands immediately curling into fists.
This was it.
“Boris, Natasha,” Jack nodded at each man.
Sasha Petrov and the man Undronovitch had called Alexi—who’d nearly drowned Mac with the firehose—stepped into the room, shoving the door closed behind them.
Two on two. They’d had plenty of worse odds.
“We’ve come to talk,” Petrov said, twisting one of the rings on his left hand.
Jack felt Mac go still next to him. Sweat broke out across the back of his neck, his lip, his hair line. He pulled in a slow breath, readying himself to launch forward.
Then Alexi pointed a Makarov pistol at Mac.
And just like that, all bets were off.
“That right?” Jack replied, lacing as much sarcasm into his tone as possible. “Want to discuss the weather? Or if the Cowboys’ll make the playoffs this year?”
Petrov moved closer while Alexi kept his weapon trained on Mac, center mass, his eyes never leaving Mac’s face.
“I thought perhaps…corporate espionage might be a good icebreaker,” Petrov replied, continuing to calmly twist the ring.
“Did you, now?” Jack folded his lips down, bopping his head once. “Well, that’s—”
He never got a chance to finish his sentence. Petrov’s fist swung—fast, rough, heavy—and crashed against his jaw, sending him careening against Mac. The younger agent turned quickly to catch Jack and set him back on his feet.
“Stop! Ne dyigaysya!” Alexi barked.
“I was just—” Mac started to protest, reminding Jack that while he had no idea what the guy said, Mac understood Russian perfectly, thanks to a bored month while at MIT.
Alexi surged forward, shoving his forearm against Mac’s sternum, and plastering him against the wall, the pistol shoved into the soft underside of Mac’s chin.
“Ne trogayte yego,” Alexi growled.
Jack didn’t need to understand Russian to pick up on the fact that Mac was being warned.
“’m okay, kid,” Jack managed, shaking his head to clear it. He looked over at Petrov. “You can call off your dog.”
Petrov lifted an eyebrow. “Can I?” he asked, mildly, then backhanded Jack viciously enough the inside of his cheek split open against his teeth.
Jack stumbled to the side, catching himself against the wall, then spit out a mouthful of blood.
“You came here,” Petrov began, stepping forward decisively and crashing his left fist against the side of Jack’s face, opening his cheek with the glinting rings, and sending Jack to his knees.
“Invaded our space,” he continued, bringing his knee up against Jack’s jaw, slamming him against the wall with an oomf of air escaping his lungs.
“Tried to steal our information,” Petrov continued, slapping Jack once more, “and yet you act entitled to conversation.”
Jack’s head was spinning.
He could hear what Petrov was saying, but his thoughts were so scrambled he couldn’t come up with a response. Blood filled his mouth and tracked down into one eye. He was on his hands and knees, could hear his breath rasping out roughly, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip on the swiftly tilting planet long enough to slow it down.
“Stoy, ne nado! Ne nado!”
It wasn’t Alexi this time. That voice…that was Mac. Jack coughed, spitting blood again, and reaching for the wall to pull himself up.
“Ya shazhu tebe to, chto ty khochesh’ znat’,” Mac continued, his tone choked, ragged. Jack remembered the gun, shoved up beneath his jaw.
“Ah, do you hear this?” Petrov asked in that mild, conversational tone that made Jack want to shove those damn rings down the man’s throat. “Your young friend here is willing to tell us what we want to know.”
“Yeah,” Jack managed, pulling himself upright, still on his knees, “he’s a lot friendlier than I am.”
“This I suspected,” Petrov chuckled mirthlessly. He pulled his arm back once more.
“Vasiliev!”
Petrov froze. Jack blinked the blood from his eye and dragged himself up to his feet, gaze darting confusedly between Petrov’s raised fist and Mac pinned against the wall next to him.
“How do you know this name?” Petrov demanded, lowering his fist slowly.
Mac was breathing hard through his nose, the end of the pistol digging a bruise beneath his jaw.
“Tell me!” Petrov roared.
“Maybe if your boy Alexi here wasn’t trying to shish kabob him on that goddamn Makarov, he would!” Jack shouted.
Petrov rotated and shoved a fist deep into Jack’s gut, driving the air from his lungs and sending him once more to his knees. The next hit landed heavily across his temple and he felt the impact of the cool cement floor against his cheek before he registered collapsing. The room seemed to white out for a moment, all sound reduced to a high-pitched tone like the one from his old cable TV at three in the morning.
It took several gasps for air before he was able to come back online, voices filtering in like waves on a beachhead. He blinked, realizing that he was lying on the ground, his eyes turned toward the wall. He could see Mac on his knees, his hands up over his head, gripping something.
Jack pushed weakly against the floor, the muscles across his chest pulling painfully, his face throbbing, blood once more filling his mouth and stinging his eye. As he was able to raise his head further, he could see that Alexi had a fistful of Mac’s hair, was pulling his head back at a sharp angle, the Makarov shoved into the muscle connecting Mac’s neck to his shoulders.
Mac had his hands up around Alexi’s wrist, but was basically just holding on. His mouth was bleeding, but his blue eyes were bright, snapping with fury at the black-clad Russian peering over him.
“…where you heard that name!” Petrov was shouting, his face red, veins standing out along his neck.
“Let me…let me check on Jack,” Mac ground out.
Petrov looked up at Alexi. “Strelyayte v soldata.”
“NO!” Mac shouted before Alexi could move. “No, don’t shoot him, please. Please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“The name.”
“I saw…saw it on a file,” Mac stammered, his face folding in a painful grimace. “The CIA…the CIA know it’s your real name.”
Petrov leaned over Mac once more and Jack could hear the man’s teeth grinding as he growled something too low for Jack to hear. Mac simply stared back at him, waiting. Petrov looked at Alexi again.
“My peregruppiruyemsya s Undronovitch.”
Alexi nodded, then released Mac so suddenly, the young agent collapsed forward, catching himself against the cement floor with the flat of his hands. Alexi turned to head toward the door and Petrov looked down at Jack.
He couldn’t help it. He grinned up at the man, tasting blood on his teeth. Petrov reared his leg back and kicked him in the face and the world went dark and silent.
The next thing Jack registered was the feeling of something being gently brushed across the side of his head. He wasn’t quite ready to open his eyes—there didn’t seem to be a single cell in his entire body that didn’t register some level of pain.
Except for the back of his head and his shoulders. He was lying on something soft. Which…unless Petrov had left them a pillow, that had to mean….
“C’mon, Jack,” Mac’s voice cracked, the youth bubbling to the surface in the wake of his fear. “I need you to wake up, man.”
Jack pulled in a slow, deep breath.
“Hey, there you are,” Mac shifted, and Jack felt the movement beneath him, validating his suspicion that he was basically lying in Mac’s lap. “C’mon, big guy.”
Jack blinked, his vision clearing slowly as he looked up at Mac. It took him a moment to register that his eye no longer stung from the blood trickling into it and that Mac’s right sleeve was missing.
“Hey,” he croaked, wincing both at the sound of his voice and the way his shredded cheek caught on his teeth.
Mac’s eyes flooded with tears, but he smiled, both hands on either side of Jack’s face. “Hey,” he replied. “You scared me, man.”
“How long?”
“About…,” Mac lifted his bare shoulder, “like an hour? Maybe? Hard to tell time in here.”
Jack swallowed. That tracked. God, he was so thirsty.
“Can you tell me what hurts the most?” Mac asked, and Jack realized he’d closed his eyes again when Mac’s fingers flattened against his cheekbones.
“Head,” Jack groaned, then narrowed his eyes. “No…ch-chest,” his breath caught as he felt a cough coming on. Good Lord he did not want to—
The cough felt as though it exploded out of him, though he heard only a weak bark of sound. He pressed his hand to his sternum, sending a silent thank you to Mac as the kid’s hands braced his back and rolled him slightly so that the effort wasn’t quite as painful as it probably could have been.
Still wasn’t a party.
“Easy,” Mac was saying, his voice trembling slightly.
As Jack caught his breath, he wondered at that. Mac had always been scarily competent when anyone on the team was hurt, at least as far as Jack could remember. There was something about that tremble in his voice….
“You okay, kid?”
“Me?” Mac’s voice cracked again. “You’re the one that asshole beat the living shit out of.”
“Your mouth was bleeding,” Jack remembered.
Mac eased him back until he was lying once more in the kid’s lap, Mac’s hand bracing his wounded chest. There was also something pressing against the side of his head, but Jack was too busy trying to focus on Mac’s face to figure out what it was.
“Yeah, Alexi got pissed and hit me with the gun, but I’m okay,” Mac reassured him. “Pretty sure you’ve got some busted ribs, and I know you’ve got a helluva concussion.”
“Makes two of us,” Jack pointed out, shifting against Mac. “Help me up, man.”
Mac lifted himself to his knees, pulling Jack with him, and then propped him against the wall. After making sure Jack was steady, Mac turned and sat next to him, using his shoulder to prop him up. Jack kept his hand against his chest. His ribs felt like a bag of loose bones, rattling, and crashing against each other as he moved. He tried to bite back the groan, but he could tell Mac heard it anyway.
“Guess we showed them,” Jack joked.
“Yeah, guess so,” Mac nodded. “They’re gonna be back, though.”
“Hope so,” Jack sighed. “Now that we know their weaknesses, we can totally take them.”
Mac didn’t reply, and Jack let himself close his eyes, resting back against the wall. He was thirsty, his body throbbed with each heartbeat, and holy shit his head. Last time it hurt this bad, there had been a 5th of Jack Daniels and a leggy brunette involved.
“Hey, Jack?”
“Hmmm?”
“I need you to know something,” Mac started, his deep voice steady, serious, heavy. “I don’t…I don’t say it enough, but….”
“Nah, now,” Jack shook his head, lifting a hand and dropping it on Mac’s bare arm. “We’ve not been here long enough for you to start in on that.”
Mac pressed his lips closed, and Jack saw his chin tremble.
“We’re gonna be okay, kid,” Jack reassured him, squeezing his arm. “Although, I’m so not looking forward to the lecture Matty’s gonna have ready for us.”
“Still,” Mac managed, his voice sounding tight, strangled. “I mean it, man.”
Jack patted his arm, then moved his hand away, wrapping his arm around his middle once more. “I know you do, kid.”
Mac sniffed, then scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands, the movement of his bare arm catching Jack’s eye.
“You weren’t down enough clothes already?” Jack asked, nodding at Mac’s arm.
Mac rubbed at the goosebumps visible on his bare skin, then glanced at Jack’s head. Jack reached up gingerly and felt a knot of cloth pressing against the worst of the aches. He carefully pulled the knot free, the blood- and dirt-covered sleeve of Mac’s Henley pooling in his hand.
“Any reason I’m wearing your shirt on my head?”
“You were…there was just…a lot of blood,” Mac said.
Jack grimaced.
“I had to see if you were okay,” Mac continued, his voice going young again.
“Fair enough,” Jack sighed.
He cautiously ran the fingers of his right hand over his face, feeling the cuts on his cheek and temple. He imagined they matched the cuts Mac sported on his face as well, minus the split lip.
“You’re gonna freeze,” Jack grumbled, glancing at the way Mac wrapped his arms around his narrow torso.
“Not sure I’ll get that chance,” Mac replied.
Jack narrowed his eyes, the pervasive dull ache taking a back seat to the look in Mac’s eyes. “Your Spidey Sense tingling?”
“I remembered where we know Petrov,” Mac revealed. Jack winced, thinking of the rings.
“Yeah, what was that name you said—”
“Zachary Vasiliev,” Mac interrupted.
Jack shook his head. “I remember that last part, but…gotta tell you man, I don’t remember seeing that in any of Matty’s reports.”
“Yeah, I lied about that,” Mac waved his hand, dismissing the words. “We don’t know him from the CIA…well, not directly, anyway. I guess you could argue that it’s because of the CIA we know him, though.”
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dude, land your plane.”
“Jack, Vasiliev—Petrov? He’s Isaac Gray’s father.”
Blinking, Jack took almost a full minute to process that information. The man’s build was roughly the same. Dark hair, silvering with age. The cold, calculating blue eyes were basically the anti-Isaac, but still. He could see it.
“Holy shit,” Jack breathed.
“It tracks, right?” Mac pulled his bare knees up, propping his elbows there and shoving his hands into his hair as if he were trying to keep his head steady. “Isaac told us he got wind that Petrov wasn’t the man’s real name and the name Vasiliev pulled up flags in the CIA database. And tell me that Petrov couldn’t be Isaac in thirty years.”
“Well, yeah, but only if Isaac suddenly turned to the Dark Side,” Jack commented, remember how their friend had joked about getting his ‘Luke Skywalker’ moment when he was hauled in front of the man he’d never known as his father. “This dude beat his own son half to death then tossed him in the gulag.”
Mac nodded. “I know. And by the way he reacted when I said his name, I’m betting he did that to keep his real name a secret from this organization.”
“How’s that going to help us?” Jack pressed the flat of his hand against a sudden sharp pain from his temple. Thinking was not high on his to-do list at the moment.
“I’m…working on that,” Mac sighed. “I was a little distracted by my partner bleeding all over me.”
“Well, we better have a plan before these guys come back,” Jack sighed, closing his eyes, and leaning his head back against the wall.
“I know,” Mac replied quietly.
They sat in companionable silence for several minutes. Jack felt himself drifting, Mac’s heat siphoning into his aching joints and relaxing him slightly. He knew he shouldn’t sleep—not with a concussion, or the pending doom—but he was so tired. The only thing that caught him was feeling Mac’s weight increase against him.
“Hey,” Jack jostled Mac with his shoulder. “None of that.”
“Sorry,” Mac breathed. “Didn’t mean to.”
“I know you’re tired, kid,” Jack acknowledged. “If we’re going to rest, we gotta do it in shifts. Don’t need anyone slipping into a coma. That’d really ruin our day.”
Mac nodded, his hair rustling against Jack’s shoulder. He gave him a few more minutes.
“Hey, Jack?”
“Hmm?”
“You remember the last time we saw Isaac?”
Jack thought about it. “Hospital, after we pulled you out of that freaking amusement park from hell.”
Mac was quiet a moment. “You remember what he said to me?”
Jack knew he’d never forget one second of the terror and relief of those few weeks.
“Don’t run from your demons,” Jack replied, thinking about the way the CIA agent’s blue eyes—so much like Mac’s—had snapped with intensity as he’d focused all his energy into his parting words.
They will run you into the ground if you do. You fight them. Use them as your weapons. You have to repel your demons until they know they’re defeated.
“Yeah, but…he also said that infiltrating the Russian mob had consequences.”
Jack nodded. “True, but what do you—”
The metal creak of the bar being lifted from its cradle just before the door was pushed open shook through the small room and its inhabitants.
“Shit,” Jack muttered. “Help me up.”
Mac didn’t argue; he simply pushed himself to a crouch, got his arms under Jack’s shoulders, and pulled the older man to his feet, pressing him back against the wall, one shoulder in front of Jack in a subtle show of protection.
“Ah, you are awake,” Petrov commented as he and Alexi stepped back into the room, followed by a man Jack didn’t recognize.
The new guy was dressed in what looked like a doctor’s jacket, the white almost glowing in the light from the single, overhead bulb. His face was covered with a surgical mask, a cap over his head. He was carrying a small black case, which he set on the seat of the closest metal chair, then popped it open.
“We have chosen,” Petrov stated, smiling as if he were awarding some kind of prize. “I know the uncertainty had to be stressful, but good news! You can relax now. The stress is over.”
“Dude, you have a truly fucked up definition of good news,” Jack growled, side-stepping Mac’s shoulder and curling his hands into fists. “And we’re going to have one colossal fight when you take me.”
Petrov smiled. “But why would we take you?” he tilted his head in curiosity. “It is clear you know nothing. When you heal up, you’ll be a good worker, just like Alexi. Right, Alexi?”
“Da.”
Jack frowned, momentarily distracted both by Petrov’s condescension and the man with the black box, when it dawned on him that Alexi was moving toward Mac.
“Oh, hell no,” Jack growled, but jerked slightly when he felt Mac’s fingers close around his wrist.
He looked wildly over at his partner, seeing the steady reminder in Mac’s blue eyes. Plan fucking A.
“Now, I must warn you,” Petrov stepped closer to Mac, using his proximity to limit any inclination Jack might have had to pull Mac out of the way. “This may sting a bit.”
“Wait, what…what will sting?” Mac stammered, his eyes darting between Alexi closing the distance between them to pull Mac away from the wall, and the man with the black box who was now removing a large syringe from a plastic casing.
The plan was disintegrating before their eyes. They weren’t removing Mac from the room—they were going to kill him right there! Jack felt something snap in his head, a rubber band breaking, a trigger flipped.
With a roar, he threw himself against Petrov, shoving the man against one of the metal chairs and sending the black box careening across the cement floor. Reason and sanity dissolved like soap bubbles, leaving Jack with nothing but pain and fury. He slammed Petrov to the floor, grabbing the man’s silvering dark curls and grinding his forehead into the cement with all his might.
Blood blossomed on Petrov’s face, spilling across the floor, as the man used his arms to smack ineffectually against Jack’s sides, trying to buck him free to no avail. Jack saw nothing but red: he was going to kill this man with his bare hands.
“Soldat!”
Jack may not know Russian, but he recognized that word: soldier. He ignored it until he heard another word, another voice, the fear in it cracking the sound down the center and spearing Jack’s heart.
“Jack!”
Panting, breathless, Jack stopped trying to turn Petrov’s face into pulp and twisted around, staring with rage-filled eyes to where Alexi had Mac on his knees, the kid’s face once more bleeding, his arms pulled painfully behind his back and up, his neck straining to keep his face lifted and toward Jack. Next to him stood the mysterious third man, the liquid-filled syringe poised against Mac’s neck.
“You see,” Petrov panted, pulling himself to his knees, spitting blood to the cement floor, then staggering to his feet. “It will sting because,” he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, stumbling away from Jack and toward the other end of the room where Mac was held prisoner, “the liquid in this syringe will burn away everything that is you. Every thought, every memory, every instinct, every habit. You will cease to exist.”
“What is it? Some kind of…of poison?” Jack asked, his voice cracking at the edge of the word.
He couldn’t pull his eyes from Mac. He was too weak, too wounded, to beat all three of them and there was no chance for Mac to get free with the way Alexi held him. Jack’s heart started to pound painfully in his chest, a staccato rhythm of no no no nononononono….
“Essentially…yes,” Petrov said, approaching Mac and reaching out to ruffle his blond hair, patting him as though he were an especially well-behaved child. “You might say it is a form of domoic acid…,” Jack didn’t miss Mac’s instinctive gasp at the words, “with some special additives our friend here has combined to create some truly remarkable results. Alexi,” he nodded, and Alexi released his painful hold on Mac’s arms, allowing the young agent to straighten.
His relief was short-lived, however, as Alexi grabbed a fistful of Mac’s hair and jerked his head back, exposing his pale throat. Jack watched his Adam’s Apple frantically bob as he swallowed.
“Look, man,” Jack tried, staggering to his feet, one hand out in supplication. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t. He doesn’t know anything.”
“Oh, that is where you’re mistaken,” Petrov glanced over his shoulder, the blood from his forehead spilling down his face in a ghoulish mask. “He knows quite enough.” He patted Mac’s head again. “In fact, I believe you know what is in this little concoction, don’t you?”
“Domoic acid is a neuro...neurotoxin,” Mac gasped.
“Indeed,” Petrov nodded. “One that has been known to cause memory loss, brain damage,” he traced a finger down the flash of Mac’s throat, “and death.”
“Stop, okay? Enough!” Jack charged forward, pausing briefly as Petrov pulled the Makarov from Alexi’s belt and swung his arm around to point it at Jack. “You think that’s going to stop me, you’ve got another thing coming,” Jack growled continuing forward until the barrel of the gun was pressed to his chest, only stopping when Mac pulled in a sharp breath from the prick of the needle. “Please, man, don’t. We can work something out.”
“I do not think so,” Petrov said calmly. “Sdelay eto.”
Before Jack could move, the man with the syringe shoved the needle into Mac’s neck and depressed the plunger.
“NO!” Jack shouted as Mac cried out sharply in pain.
Alexi released Mac’s hair and Petrov lowered his weapon, all three Russians stepping back as Jack lunged to catch Mac, the younger agent falling forward, a hand pressed against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Jack clumsily gathered him up in his arms, logic taking a back seat to desperation.
“I gotcha, I gotcha,” he whispered, his mouth against Mac’s ear as he tried to pull both of them to their feet and ended up on his knees, Mac shuddering and gasping against him. “I’m right here, I’m here, kid. I gotcha. It’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna be okay.”
“J-Jack?” Mac gasped, and Jack held him close, cupping the back of his head and pressing Mac’s face to his shoulder, frantically trying to quiet the jerks and gasps.
But they were increasing, Mac shaking violently against him, one hand scrambling for a grip against Jack’s back.
“No, no, no, c’mon, man. C’mon, kid, stay with me!” Jack couldn’t hold him, his fatigued muscles trembling from the effort. “C’mon, Mac. We’re getting out of this, now. C’mon!”
“I do not believe that is the case,” Petrov said mildly behind him.
Jack ignored him, holding as tightly as he could to Mac’s trembling form.
“Alexi,” Petrov sighed.
Jack sensed movement to his left. He looked up, meeting the Russian’s dark eyes. “Alexi, you touch one hair on his head, and I will rip your fucking throat out Roadhouse style, you read me?”
Alexi paused at that, eyes darting uncertainly between Jack and Petrov for a moment, before reaching once more for Mac.
“No!” Jack growled desperately as he felt someone grip his arms from behind as Alexi pulled Mac away.
Jack tried to reach for him, but what held fast. Mac’s blue eyes were cloudy, roaming desperately, a pain-filled keening sound slipping from between his parted lips.
Whoever held Jack—Petrov? The syringe man? he wasn’t sure—had an iron grip and try as he might, Jack’s bruised and broken body wasn’t up to the challenge of pulling away. Alexi lowered Mac to the floor, and Jack watched as Mac suddenly arched up, clutching his head, palms pressed tight against his temples as if he were trying to keep it from exploding. His back bowed painfully, the keening sound building until his scream tore through the air and Jack found himself joining.
“No!” He screamed. “Mac! Hey, kid, I’m right here. I’m right here, man!”
Mac’s fingers shook, clawing at the sides of his head. He screamed until his voice cracked, until the only sound that came from his opened mouth was a desperate wheeze of air. His body seemed to slowly melt into the cement floor, his clawed hands relaxing, his head lolling to the side, his face away from Jack.
“Well,” Petrov exhaled, the grip on Jack’s arms loosening. “That certainly took longer than expected.”
“Some subjects fight harder than others,” the syringe man finally spoke, his voice a strange, rasping whisper.
Jack sank down to sit on his heels, all the fight, all the energy, siphoned from him with that last desperate wheeze from Mac. He stared hard at the kid’s chest, willing it to move, unable to clearly see anything that gave him hope that he’d not literally just watched his partner and best friend die in agony before his eyes.
“Alexi, podobrat’ yego.”
Sighing, Alexi bent over and pulled Mac to a seated position, the kid’s head flopping forward, then hefted him over his shoulder, standing up.
“Is he alive?” Jack asked dully.
“It really doesn’t matter to you. Not where you’ll be going,” Petrov replied as Alexi carried Mac from the room.
Jack swallowed hard. “Just…please. Is he alive?”
Petrov wiped the flat of his hand across the blood on his forehead, then regarded it curiously. “The body is a shell,” he replied, “a vessel.” He stepped forward, patting Jack’s cheek with his blood-covered hand, leaving finger marks behind. “And we will refill it.”
With that, he nodded at the syringe man, then moved out of the room. Jack sat staring at the space on the floor where he’d watch Mac writhe in pain, unable to do one thing to stop or help. He jerked in surprise when he felt the prick of a needle against his neck.
“This will not hurt,” came that strange rasp once more. “It will help you heal in a dreamless sleep.”
Jack felt a surge of warmth flood his system and he suddenly couldn’t keep his head up. Hands were at his shoulders, cupping the back of his head, lowering him almost gently to the cement floor. His vision blurring, he found he was staring up at a balding man with a scarred visage. He tried to open his mouth, tried to ask what was happening to him, but nothing seemed to want to follow his commands.
“The real pain will begin when you next wake,” the whisper promised, a glint of demented glee sparkling in the man’s eyes.
Jack fought one last time to speak, but his body betrayed him, pulling him into darkness.
**