Chapter Text
“Setting the charges now.”
“Mac, you have less than twenty seconds. Get out.”
MacGyver’s fingers flew, twisting and connecting wires. “Done.” He leapt to his feet and pounded to the door, the countdown running in his head. He’d set his charge for fifteen seconds. “Heading up.” He wrenched the door open and threw himself up the stairwell on the other side.
Twelve.
Three different bombs in three different places all set to go off at the same time—Mac had set them all to disrupt the much larger bombs Codex operatives had set in the power plant. The location was too remote to threaten a city, but Codex never did anything just for fun. There had to be a reason they’d chosen this location.
But that was a question to puzzle over later. Like, at least ten seconds from now.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
Two flights of stairs between himself and anything like a safe distance. Mac launched himself up two or three steps at a time. The exit sign glowed above him.
Four. Three.
Mac threw himself against the push bar and flew past the door into sunlight.
Two.
One.
The ground shook. The door behind Mac hadn’t fully closed; smoke and fire and force billowed out from the doorway, slamming the door open and pitching the Phoenix agent through the air. He managed to turn his fall into a roll, mitigating the damage, and slid to a dazed stop beneath a pine tree.
The tree shook some pine needles onto him but otherwise seemed unbothered by the explosion. Oh, the resilience of trees.
Mac’s adrenaline sang. “Whoo!” he yelled to the sky. “Detonation successful. Codex’s bombs have been neutralized.”
“Nice job, Mac,” said Matty in his ear. “Desi, Riley?”
“We’re clear. Packed up and ready to go.”
Mac laughed into the air. “Meet you at exfil.”
Then a gloved hand slammed across his mouth, hooking a thumb under his chin as an anchor. A slight sound was all that escaped of Mac’s muffled cry.
At the same time, two other people descended to secure Mac’s arms. He felt handcuffs tighten around his wrists even as he struggled. One of his attackers planted his knee in Mac’s gut, pinning him in place.
And another pulled Mac’s comm out of his ear and handed it up to a fourth person. Unlike the others, who wore black tactical gear, this person was dressed in tan slacks, a forest green button-up, and a brown leather jacket. His blonde hair was tossed to the side and his eyes were a bright shade of blue.
Mac stared up in shock, confusion, and no small amount of horror. The man could have been his clone, if such a thing could be done. The hair, the clothes, even his face—he was an exact visual match for Angus MacGyver.
What the hell?
The doppelganger pushed Mac’s comm into his own ear and smirked down at Mac, waiting patiently while the others patted Mac’s pockets. Though his brain felt like it had just been through an explosion, Mac slowly realized that they were looking for his cell phone or any weapons. But he’d used his phone in his build downstairs, so it was history, and the only thing he carried that resembled a weapon was—
One of his assailants pulled his Swiss army knife out of his pants pocket, handed it up to Mac’s lookalike, then gave him a thumbs-up. As soon as he received the go ahead, the doppelganger pocketed the knife, waved goodbye to Mac, and ran into the forest.
Towards exfil.
Towards Desi and Riley.
Mac planted his feet and twisted his hips, trying to slip out from under the knee that had him pinned. The hand on his mouth pushed his skull into the dirt as the agent leaned forward, gripping a fistful of Mac’s collar with his other hand and trapping Mac beneath his body weight. One man hooked a leg around Mac’s knee and pulled, robbing him of his balance, and another raised a fist and buried it in Mac’s stomach. Air rushed from Mac’s nose at the blow.
Then the man pulled a gun and aimed it directly at MacGyver’s face.
Mac stilled, breathing hard from the blow to his stomach, and weighed his options. They wanted him alive, or they would have killed him already. They’d wanted to replace him, clearly, had likely targeted the power plant for the sole purpose of luring him out here to make the switch, but they seemed to need him for something else—perhaps to provide intel to help their infiltrator pass as Mac, or perhaps to fulfill some other purpose while the Mac-ganger covered his disappearance so the Phoenix wouldn’t even know he was missing. His captors wouldn’t kill him, at least not yet.
On the other hand, a sound suppressor was screwed onto the end of the barrel, so it seemed they were prepared to at least harm him if they felt it necessary. And getting shot wouldn’t help Desi and Riley and the Phoenix any more than it would help him escape.
Mac sagged into the soil and his attackers relaxed. One of them pulled a roll of duct tape from his belt and ripped a piece off.
The hand released Mac’s face. “No—” he said, the word springing helplessly from him just before his captor pressed the tape over his mouth, cutting off his protest.
Then the agents hauled Mac to his feet and pulled him through the forest, away from the power plant, away from exfil, and far away from his team.
Samuel Ryan jogged into the clearing and threw up a hand to shield his face from the wind and debris kicked up by the helicopter sitting nearby. He had faith in his team—the combination of mask and makeup that he wore was some of their best work—but it would hardly do to get it dirty. Cleaning it all without messing it up was a tricky process.
Riley Davis and Desiree Nguyen were already strapped into their seats. Ryan hopped into the chopper like he belonged there, picked an empty seat, and strapped himself in.
“Yeah!” he whooped once he was settled in. He held up his hand to the woman seated next to him. Tight dark curls, punk leather jacket, manicured nails—this one was definitely Riley. Damn, she was hot. “High five!”
“You’re chipper,” Riley said with a grin as she high-fived him.
“Explosions get me pumped!”
The other woman—the file said she preferred to be called Desi—laughed and then spoke into her mic. “Mac’s here. We’re good to go.”
MacGyver came to slowly with a pounding headache. What the…? How…? He thought back, his memories falling sluggishly into place until they clicked. They drugged me…in the van… The edges were fuzzy, but he vaguely remembered being pushed into the back of a vehicle right before a needle had been pushed into his neck.
His irritated sigh hissed out of his nose and he realized the duct tape still covered his mouth. He shifted his jaw, trying to work it loose while he assessed his surroundings. He was lying on his side on the floor of a small, featureless white room with one door. It looked like reinforced steel, so that would be fun getting through. Probably guards on the other side.
His bonds had changed. Instead of a single pair of handcuffs, Mac’s wrists were bound behind him by what felt like manacles, thick bands of metal chained together and fastened to the ground with a slightly longer chain. Mac explored the floor with his hands and found a ring welded onto a metal plate screwed into the floor. He shifted his feet and confirmed that his ankles were bound the same way, shackled to another plate secured to the floor. In addition to the manacles on his wrists and ankles, thick cords circled his arms and chest above the elbow, again at his waist, pinning his manacled wrists against his back, and twice more above and below his knees.
Seemed like overkill to Mac. What on earth did they expect him to do?
With a pained grimace, Mac shifted until he could reach the metal plate with some slack in the short chain that ran from said plate to the manacles on his wrists. He grabbed the chain and pressed it by feel down onto a screw, using a link as a wrench. After a few seconds of careful leverage and a few grunts of effort from Mac, the screw loosened enough to turn. Mac worked the screw quickly and carefully, his eyes on the door.
He only had the screw halfway up when he heard a series of quick beeps followed by the cheerful chirp of an accessed retinal scanner. With only a second to act, he quickly twisted the screw back down with his fingers without tightening it.
The door opened and a woman stepped through. Her white-blonde hair flowed straight to her shoulders and her green eyes viewed Mac with cold interest as she entered. Two men, dressed in the same black fatigues Mac had seen from his captors earlier, entered the room with her, one placing a chair a few feet in front of Mac and the other taking up a post beside the doorway. Once he’d placed the chair, the second gunman stepped back, closed the door, and stood on the other side of it, just behind the woman.
She sat in the chair and crossed her legs, resting a white tablet on her lap. She looked to be perhaps in her fifties, with long, strong fingers and a sharp expression in her eyes. Her heels added an inch and a half to her height and her white pants suit flared fashionably at the bottom, the fabric swaying as she moved. Once she’d settled, the woman nodded to one of the guards. He stepped forward and hauled Mac into a sitting position, pulled the duct tape off his face, then resumed his post. Mac grimaced as the tape was pulled free, grateful that he’d had a chance to loosen it before it was removed. It made for a slightly less painful removal.
The woman watched him adjust and waited until he met her gaze again before she spoke. “Welcome, Mr. MacGyver. I trust you slept well.”
Mac let out a dry huff. “I slept like a baby.”
“Good.”
“Though, not to be rude, I must say I’m finding the accommodations here less than five-star. Two at best.”
“I apologize for your discomfort, Mr. MacGyver, but you have a certain reputation. I was told to leave you as little wiggle room as possible.”
“Told? By whom?”
“Irrelevant.”
“What exactly is relevant?”
“The location of the Codex scepter.”
Mac fell silent. That confirmed his theory—Codex had planted the bomb at the powerplant for the sole purpose of luring Phoenix—specifically MacGyver—to a remote location where they could kidnap him and replace him with one of their agents. After Bozer’s success in creating realistic, lifelike disguises, he supposed he should have expected that Zito’s wouldn’t be the only false face he’d see.
He just hadn’t expected to see his own—hadn’t expected to see a disguise so well done that his enemies could take someone with a similar height and build and create a passable clone.
“How’d you do the voice?”
“Excuse me?”
“My double’s voice—I assume he’s not just going to mime his way through conversations with my friends.”
“An implant. We’re working on a device that will allow an agent to replicate any voice they hear, but for now this one is built to imitate just the target’s voice.”
“Incredible.”
The woman smiled. “We thought so. Now, Mr. MacGyver, as much as I’d love to talk shop with you, I need to know—where did Russel Taylor hide the scepter?”
“The what?”
She raised an eyebrow. “The Codex scepter on which Codex leaders like Leland stored all of Codex’s sensitive and critical data. Hard drives, financial records, history…et cetera.”
“Oh. No idea what you’re talking about.”
“It was supposedly held in the DoD vault in Fort Belvoir, but apparently Taylor managed to successfully mislead Leland, or he moved it before our agents could acquire it. Either way, we know it’s at the Phoenix. We just need to know where.”
“This is fascinating information, but I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Taylor never told me about any kind of spire.”
“Scepter,” she corrected.
“Whatever.”
“I find that unlikely, Mr. MacGyver.” She tapped her tablet with a manicured nail. “Our intel indicates that the scepter is being stored securely somewhere in Phoenix headquarters. You are on Taylor’s elite team, one of his most trusted allies. You really expect me to believe you don’t know where he keeps his valuables?”
Mac shrugged. “Taylor isn’t exactly forthcoming. Part of his job, I guess, though honestly, it’s really annoying.”
“And you’re just a fount of secrets.”
“It’s a little different with us,” Mac said. “What’s your name again?”
She smiled. “Sylvia. Sylvia Terrance.”
“I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Terrance, but I’d have preferred to have this conversation at a café somewhere with a cup of coffee. Or in one of Phoenix’s holding cells.”
“Alas, here we are instead in one of mine.” Sylvia leaned forward, resting her elbow on her knee. “You will tell me what I need to know, Mr. MacGyver, because if you don’t, your double will kill your friends.”
“He can’t. Not at the Phoenix. He’d get caught and you’d never get your scepter.”
“Then I suppose you have until your friends leave the Phoenix. Rest assured, Mr. MacGyver, that if I don’t have that scepter by the end of the day, our agent will start slaughtering your friends in their beds.”
She let that sink in, watching Mac’s jaw clench impotently. “You have time to think about it,” she said. “But not very much.”