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Murdoc never tired of playing games.
It was something his coworkers disliked about him— and something his targets despised about him. He was different from the other assassins at HIT, better than the other assassins at HIT, because he quite thoroughly enjoyed his job. For others, it was simply a way to break even, but for Murdoc, it was fun. He took great pride in his work, too. One doesn’t become infamous for sloppy execution, after all.
It was one of those games that had led Murdoc to this cold, barren prison in the middle of cold, barren nowhere, dressed in an unfortunately unflattering jumpsuit and locked at the wrists behind his back. It was not his first time being incarcerated, though the last time he was locked up had been in another life, decades ago. This prison was not altogether different from that one— every institution was the same in the ways that mattered.
A prison guard— a new one, Murdoc thought; too unfamiliar with these halls to be experienced— shoved him forward, grunting when Murdoc stumbled. Pain sparked bright up the side of his worse leg; he had only just gotten the brace off and his body was still getting accustomed to the lack of support. “Sorry,” he lied, his feigned American accent grating to his own ears. “I tripped.”
The officer said nothing, but the rest of the walk proved easy and straightforward. Murdoc was prodded to a cell near the end of a second-story walk guarded only by a flimsy railing, passing by a series of thick, monotonous doors blocking empty cells.
“It’s here,” the guard said bluntly, stopping a little ways away from the final cell. “Have fun with your new neighbor.”
“Neighbor—?” Just before Murdoc was pushed into his new temporary home, he caught a glimpse of the woman in the cell next to his, locking eyes with her. Brown hair, lean face, distressingly familiar. It wasn’t until he was certain the guard had gone that Murdoc spoke, hissing a whisper so as to not alert anyone who may have been wandering about. “Deborah?”
Deborah’s voice was slightly muffled through the stone wall. “You know, I never thought I’d see you here, Murdoc.”
“Jeremiah,” Murdoc said. He didn’t bother with the accent, not when it was just the two of them talking, but he was still wary of his name being passed around in a penal institution. “It’s Jeremiah right now. I’m on a job.”
“I hope it’s not for me.”
“Please. I’m too good for you.”
“Who is it, then?”
“Diana Agapova,” Murdoc said. “Crossed some drug kingpin one too many times, it seems. She’s already in here for possession of illicit substances.”
Deborah laughed. Murdoc couldn’t tell if there was bitterness in the sound, or if it was simply her sharp humour. “Yeah, I know her. You got your hands full with that one. What are you going to do, blow the whole place with all of us in it?”
“The idea crossed my mind.” It had, in fact. Murdoc was fond of explosives and he was fairly sure he could survive even a detonation of that scale. But he ultimately decided not to risk it when there were other, more interesting options available. “But no. I have other plans.”
The conversation lapsed into silence. Murdoc had only just decided to try to get some sleep when Deborah asked, “Don’t you want to know what got me put away?”
Murdoc paused halfway through rising. “I assumed you had finally fumbled a job badly enough that someone caught you.”
“If only.” Now there was certainly a note of bitterness in Deborah’s voice. “I didn’t even finish the job. He tricked me into failing, then offered a ‘better deal’. But I got the short end of the stick.”
Tricked? Murdoc slowly sat down again. “Who was the target?”
“Guy named MacGyver. Never learned his first name, though.”
Murdoc’s heart jumped to his throat at the name. “MacGyver?”
“Yeah. Why? You know him?”
“I’ve… heard of him,” Murdoc said, hoping his voice sounded less hollow through the prison wall than it did ringing in his own cell. “What happened?”
There were a few rattling noises from Deborah’s room, as if she were gathering objects or possibly grabbing a food tray. When she replied, it sounded like she was speaking louder from farther away. She must have walked across her cell, away from their shared wall. “Well, this guy contacted me so he could secure this real estate deal,” she said. “Apparently, if it went through, the environment around it would collapse, and this Phoenix Foundation was standing in the way of that.”
“So he hired you to kill MacGyver?” Murdoc asked.
“He hired me to do whatever it took,” Deborah said. “I didn’t start with killing. That’s why I left HIT; so I could have my options open. I’m a negotiator… Jeremiah. Not just an assassin.”
Murdoc, despite himself, leaned against the wall and pulled his legs closer to him. The pain was starting to return, this time more of a dull ache than a sharp stab, but it was still aggravating. “And how did those options turn out for you?” he asked drily.
“I became his girlfriend.”
Murdoc’s hands tensed involuntarily on his legs; absurdly, he suddenly felt out-of-breath, his heart pounding as though he had seen a snake. “You did what?”
“He lived alone,” Deborah explained, hopefully unaware of Murdoc’s bizarre reaction. “He didn’t seem to have any love life to speak of. So, I figured I’d get close to him, convince him to lay off the whole deal. I became his ideal woman.”
Murdoc didn’t like the note of pride in Deborah’s voice. In fact, he didn’t think he liked any of this conversation anymore. Against his better interests, however, he kept it going. “And what was that?”
“Well, he’s very environment-focused, obviously,” Deborah went on. “Very grounded, down-to-earth sort of guy. I made myself according to his principles. You know, conscientious small-town girl kind of thing. I had a few slip-ups— he wasn’t a fan when I made bacon for breakfast once.”
A laugh escaped Murdoc’s throat without his meaning. “Of course not; MacGyver doesn’t eat meat.”
There was a brief moment of dead quiet as they both realized what Murdoc had just said.
“Just how much have you heard about MacGyver?” Deborah’s voice was thick with skepticism now.
Damn. “It’s entirely possible,” Murdoc started carefully, “that I know more about him than I… let on.”
“He was a target?” The sentence sounded like a question, but they both knew the answer.
Murdoc sighed. Deborah had never been one to let something go when she didn’t know quite as much as she wanted. “Not originally,” he admitted. “He was only a bystander at first, a pawn. It was Peter Thornton I was after, in the beginning— but then MacGyver had to get himself involved. It should have been easy. It would have been easy. I had two men with bazookas pointed right at them. And you know how he got out?” Murdoc didn’t wait for Deborah’s response. “A wrench, some old shoelaces, and a paperclip. A fucking… paperclip. I’ve been trying to kill him ever since.”
The sounds had stopped from Deborah’s cell. She sounded much closer again when she next spoke; she had returned to the wall between them. “How long ago was that?”
“Almost… ten years now,” Murdoc told her.
“Ten years?” Deborah repeated, her voice ablaze with incredulity. “And you still haven’t killed him?”
“Have you?” Murdoc snapped, strangely self-conscious at the thought that there may be some other reason why he had failed to eliminate his target so many times. “MacGyver is hard to kill. He’s smart. Much smarter than everyone else I’ve been contracted for.”
Deborah scoffed. “Well, he won’t be hard to kill for much longer. Not when I get out of here.”
“What makes you think you’ll be able to kill him then?” Murdoc asked, glancing to the side at the wall before remembering that he couldn’t, in fact, see Deborah. “He’s not like other men. How did he trick you the first time?”
“Antifreeze and a jump cable,” Deborah said. “When I came to, he offered a deal: he’d pay me just as much as my original client if I testified against the group— and turned myself in. I almost killed him there. But then I took the deal instead. Next time, I won’t hesitate.”
“Why did you?” A beat of silence. “Why did you hesitate, Deborah?”
“Because I remembered what it was like being with him,” Deborah said quietly, her voice almost completely swallowed by the wall between them. “Say what you will about MacGyver. He’s difficult to hate.”
Murdoc turned the sentence over in his mind. He was fairly certain he hated MacGyver. He wanted to be close to MacGyver, to kill MacGyver, with a ferocity he had never felt in anything else. He needed it, like some unholy drug, some kind of nightmarish stimulant that made him feel alive even when he was at the edge of death. That was hate. Wasn’t it? “Do you hate him now?” he asked at length.
“Yes,” Deborah said. “No. I don’t… I don’t know. But I won’t let that stop me, not next time.”
Murdoc shifted closer to the door, oddly desperate for a reply to his next words despite regretting them before they left his mouth. “Tell me what it was like.”
“What?”
“Tell me…” Murdoc faltered. “Tell me what it was like to love MacGyver.”
There was silence from Deborah's side of the wall. Of course there was. It was a ridiculous demand, Murdoc knew, and he only made a fool of himself by saying it. He didn't even know why he did.
“It was strange,” Deborah said finally. “You know, I don't even know if ‘love’ is the right word for it. I didn't care about him. But he was kind. And he really did care about me. I could see it in his eyes, every time he looked my way. Almost made me feel bad that he was loving a lie.” She gave a short, rueful chuckle. “Of course, he didn't love me once he realized I was trying to kill him.”
“No,” Murdoc said, “he does tend to look down on attempts on his life.” He shifted uncomfortably; the air in his cell felt too thick. The floor was too hard. He didn't understand why Deborah's last comment clawed a chasm in his stomach.
Murdoc heard a long, exhausted sigh from Deborah's cell. “I've never met anyone like that man,” she said.
“Neither have I.”
“Shame he'll be dead soon.”
“Shame you'll be back behind bars soon,” Murdoc corrected. “You'll never be able to kill him. He'll win the game; he always does.”
A sharp clang came from the other side of the wall, metal on concrete. Murdoc guessed it was Deborah tossing her food tray to the ground. The prison officers would make their rounds in the morning and collect the trays, but over the nights, prisoners were left with sheets of metal to do with as they wished. Murdoc had hoped he would get a meal soon after incarceration, but the universe wasn't that kind.
“So what's your plan?” Deborah asked. “For Diana?”
“Frame her for killing another inmate,” Murdoc explained. “A strong one. So not you, don't worry. I'll make a knife, using one of those meal trays the warden so helpfully leaves with us. After that, one of two things will happen: the people who used the dead inmate for protection will take matters into their own hands and kill Agapova themselves, or Agapova will try to escape, and the guns outside will take care of her.” There was a risk that his target herself might overhear this whole description, Murdoc was aware of that. But it was an unlikely risk, and he took too much pleasure in describing his plans, anyway. He tried to ignore the part of him that took the opportunity to steer the conversation away from MacGyver's love life. “On the off-chance she succeeds in escaping, I have bombs wired outside in the most likely escape path. I have a camera set up outside with the mines and one set up in here, for whichever outcome.”
Deborah snorted, apparently amused and unimpressed. “If you're going to kill someone anyway, why not just kill Diana, get your evidence, and leave?”
Murdoc grinned even though Deborah couldn't see his face. “Now, where would the fun be in that?”
There was a moment before Deborah spoke again, a moment that turned the silence cold. “Why do you treat this job like a game?” she asked, all traces of amusement gone from her tone.
“Everything's a game, my darling,” Murdoc responded. “It's just a matter of changing the rules so you're the one winning.”
“Yeah,” Deborah said icily. “That's why MacGyver will never love you.”
She must have gone to bed, then. She said nothing after that, and neither did Murdoc. He simply sat there, back against the wall, struggling to grasp why it felt so much like his heart had been ripped from his chest. It didn't matter if MacGyver couldn't love him. It was better if MacGyver couldn't love him. He hated MacGyver. He wanted MacGyver dead. He hated MacGyver.
Murdoc couldn't be sure of how long it was until he picked himself up and moved to the bed. It didn't help much, the thin mattress with its wire frame pushing through, but it was better than the wall. Murdoc closed his eyes and told himself to fall asleep. Told himself to think of the job he had ahead of him, told himself to focus and prepare. Instead, his mind kept wandering to things he didn't want it to.
Instead, he curled cold in his cell and tried to imagine what it was like to love MacGyver.