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Chapter Text

“Need a hand?” It took MacGyver a moment to parse the sentence, spoken in Spanish. He shifted the arm over his shoulder and offered a half smile in return at the man standing on the dock. He looked like a local, which meant absolutely nothing in semi-rural Mexico.

“No, my friend here just had a little too much to drink,” he replied, wincing slightly as the words scraped across his inconveniently sore throat. “I’m not carrying you home next time, Frank,” he added in English. The friend in question looked up at his real first name and giggled. It was unnerving, MacGyver thought, particularly considering that the largely unconscious man had been making a good faith effort to put holes through both members of the Phoenix foundation field team less than an hour before.

“Neither am I.” Jack’s voice and its rough warmth were welcome. “Come on, man, Frank’s heavy.”

“Thanks,” MacGyver added, switching back to Spanish. The goal had been to reach the boat without being seen, but hopefully the dearth of ambient light in the harbor had obscured their faces enough to avoid recognition. He’d darkened his own too-light hair with dust, just as a precaution, and now he was glad that he’d made the effort.

The local turned back to his own boat, or at least the boat he was working on, and Jack started down the dock on double time.

“Slow down,” MacGyver hissed, whispering more because it was less painful than in an attempt to prevent eavesdroppers. “We’re trying not to attract attention.”

“I wanna get out of here,” Jack returned, also quietly, but he slowed down.

If getting the double agent onto the boat was an exercise in gracelessness, dragging him below the deck to where he could be restrained without being seen was an exercise in frustration. MacGyver was completely out of breath by the end of it, leaning on the wall while trying not to look like he was leaning on the wall and watching Jack tie a series of effective knots.

“You doing okay there?” Jack asked, once the double agent was secure.

“Fine,” MacGyver said, trying to mask breathlessness with shortness. “Time to get going.”

“Right,” Jack said, but he had the expression MacGyver associated with overprotective behavior.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, feeling the tightness in his chest ease a little, “but I’d rather not be here if that guy calls the police.”

“Right,” Jack said again, with completely different inflections, and vanished onto the deck. The motor started a few seconds later, and MacGyver felt the boat moving away from the dock and toward the open ocean.

“Do you know where we’re going?” MacGyver pushed himself off the wall and up the narrow stairs.

“Nope,” Jack tossed back cheerfully. “North,” he added after a few seconds. “Figuring out the specifics is your job.”

“You’re hilarious,” MacGyver told him, and started the process of navigation.

“I feel like this would be easier if you just used a GPS,” Jack told him.

“Phones off so we can’t be tracked, remember,” MacGyver said.

“Yeah, yeah.” Jack looked at him sideways. “I’m pretty sure no one knows who we are, much less how to track us.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the kind of thing you say right before men with guns show up on jet skis,” MacGyver returned. He was all the wrong kinds of exhausted, or he wouldn’t have made quite that sarcastic of a reply.

“That might be fun,” Jack said, which had the precise and probably deliberate effect of taking all the fun out of it.

“Fun,” MacGyver muttered. “Half a degree back to the left, or we’re going to overshoot our mark.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Jack said. “Straight on till morning?”

“Real cute,” MacGyver said.

The boat shook onwards, the sound of the motor almost hypnotic. MacGyver glanced toward the stairs, but there was no sound from below deck. The double agent they’d apprehended was apparently still drugged; if they were lucky, he’d stay that way until their rendezvous with the Coast Guard.

“Well?” Jack said, idly kicking at the base of his chair.

“Well, what?” MacGyver said, aware as he said it that he sounded sulky and trying not to wince.

“Well, now I know something’s wrong. You’re whining at me.” Jack glanced at him in an overly casual movement, returning his gaze straight ahead just as casually when he met MacGyver’s glare. “Don’t give me that look, Mac. You’ve been off since debriefing.”

“I have not,” MacGyver muttered, resisting the urge to slouch.

“If you’re upset about something, just say so,” Jack said.

“I’m not upset.” MacGyver winced as the sharp words tore at his throat. “My throat hurts. That’s all.”

“Uh huh.” Jack reached toward him and MacGyver couldn’t help flinching back as Jack touched his cheek and forehead with the back of his fingers. “Little warm,” Jack said, still in the casual reassuring tone he used on civilians and witnesses.

“It’s nothing.” If anything, he was cold, and the draft seeping around the windshield didn’t help. He wrapped his arms around himself, leaning back into the other chair.

“Get some sleep,” Jack said. “I got this.”

“You’d be lost within half an hour,” MacGyver retorted, checking the charts again. He didn’t want to take a nap, like an unruly child; he wanted to go home and go to bed.

“I’m headed in the right direction, aren’t I,” Jack said, grinning at him infuriatingly.

“Oh, shut up.”

MacGyver’s hopes for the drugged double agent proved to be false; the man regained consciousness three hours into the trip north and half an hour before MacGyver estimated they’d reach the rendezvous point to hand the agent over to the Coast Guard and catch their own ride home.

“She’s sending the helicopter, right?” Jack asked, and MacGyver startled the rest of the way awake. He’d falling into a half-doze with the engine thrumming through the deck, despite the cold making him shiver. Jack didn’t seem affected by it, so MacGyver refused to ask him to turn up the heat.

“The what?” he asked, blinking.

“Hey, we on course?” Jack peered over at the charts, as if he had any idea how to read them. MacGyver shrugged him off, checking the charts against their direction.

“We’ve been going at the same speed?” he asked.

“Gauge says 22 knots,” Jack said, tapping at the dial in question. MacGyver didn’t trust it. In his experience, boats lied.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “We should be able to see the Coast Guard vessel soon.” He rubbed his eyes. The sore throat had gotten worse while he half-slept, and he found himself speaking in a hoarse whisper.

“Sweet,” Jack said absently, and then, “Did you hear that?”

MacGyver heard it, too; the double agent was shouting obscenities from down below.

“I vote we just let him wear himself out,” Jack said.

“No, I got this. You keep driving.” MacGyver stretched and stood, the cold hitting harder now that he was no longer in the warm seat.

“I got him.” Jack hesitated. “You know how to drive this thing?”

“You say that like I’m not the one here with a pirate certificate,” MacGyver said.

“I’m sorry, you have a what, now?” Going by Jack’s expression, he wasn’t sure whether MacGyver was delirious or deliberately trolling him.

MacGyver started to laugh, and then choked to a stop. Laughing was worse than talking. “One of the things I did finish at MIT was the physical education requirements,” he said. Jack gestured impatiently at him to continue, with his expression clearly conveying that MacGyver had explained precisely nothing. “If you complete archery, fencing, pistol, and sailing, they’ll give you the pirate certificate to show that you’ve met the PE requirements.”

“See, I can’t imagine you with a pistol,” Jack said, pointing at him. “That’s the part of this story I don’t believe.”

“You believe that MIT awards pirate certificates for physical education, but not that I’d finish a course revolving around firearms,” MacGyver said. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

“Yeah, that about sums it up.” Jack bounced out of the seat and gestured toward it. “All right, get us where we’re going. I’ll go talk to our guest.” He vanished down the narrow staircase, the boat’s excuse for a door banging shut behind him. The shouting from below did not abate; if anything, it intensified. By the time he spotted and confirmed the Coast Guard vessel, MacGyver would have been willing to swear it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“Jack,” he said, not nearly loudly enough to get Jack’s attention the first time. “Jack!”

“Yeah?” Jack’s head appeared at the bottom of the stairs, the way Jack was standing making it look as though it were floating six feet above the floor. It was disorienting.

“We’re there.”

“Oh, good.” Jack’s head vanished, to be replaced by Jack himself and the securely bound double agent. “You’re going home, Frankie.”

“Fuck you,” the double agent spat. “And don’t call me Frankie.”

“You’re not my type,” Jack returned, weirdly cheerful, and shoved the double agent up the stairs.

“You’re going to have some trouble getting him up the ladder,” MacGyver said, before noticing that the double agent’s hands had been cuffed in front of him rather than behind.

“Yeah,” Jack said after a moment. MacGyver cut the engines entirely and followed Jack outside. It was freezing out, the combination of ocean spray and lack of warm sunlight conspiring against him.

“Phoenix Foundation,” called someone down from the much higher deck of the Coast Guard ship. “Ladder coming down.”

“Roger that,” Jack called up. “We’re sending Anderson up first.”

“Understood.” The ladder came just shy of the deck, followed quickly by two men in Hawaiian shirts and board shorts. One of them had a large fuel canister hoisted over one shoulder, and both of them were armed. MacGyver didn’t think either of them would trip any alarms for a casual observer, but he could clearly see where their weapons were. “Up you go,” Jack said.

Given a choice between diving into the ocean, some twenty-odd miles off the coast, and moving voluntarily toward a trial for treason, the double agent climbed the ladder. MacGyver gave the two Coast Guard men – fellow agents, possibly, he wasn’t sure – a brief rundown of the boat’s fuel level and current condition, watching the ladder out of the corner of his eye. Once the double agent was over the top, Jack turned around and opened his mouth.

“After you,” MacGyver said, before Jack could speak.

Jack closed his mouth and shot MacGyver a hard look. “Real cute,” he said, deliberately echoing MacGyver’s words at the start of the trip.

MacGyver ignored the resulting confused expressions and let Jack climb the ladder.

“She’s in your hands,” he said, and the taller of the men in Hawaiian shirts extended one of the aforementioned hands. MacGyver shook it, and then eyed the ladder. It seemed, suddenly, insurmountably tall, and he wondered vaguely if he could just stay on the boat instead.

“Come on, man, I want to go home,” Jack called down.

“Oh, shut up,” MacGyver muttered, and went up the ladder. He would have sworn that it got longer as he climbed, but he finally reached the top. Jack was hovering, looking at him with an outright worried expression. MacGyver started to tell him to back off, but then Jack was pulling him over the side of the hull and into clouded darkness. The last thing MacGyver saw was the obnoxious print on Jack’s brightly colored tourist shirt filling his vision.

Bright white was the next thing MacGyver registered, and he blinked at it for a moment before it resolved into sunlight on institutional ceiling tiles. Turning his head got him the familiar sight of the limited medical station at the Phoenix Foundation headquarters. Jack is never going to let me live this down ran through his mind before he pulled his attention to more relevant things. Swinging his feet over the side of the bed went more easily once he disentangled his legs from the blanket, and his priority then became locating a pair of pants.

Emerging fully dressed – someone had thoughtfully left clean pants, as well as a shirt, socks, and shoes – left him tired again, but he was fairly sure Thornton wasn’t going to let him skip the debriefing no matter what had happened on the mission itself. He made it as far as the door, unsure whether he was going to try to sneak out or report in, when Jack caught him.

“Feeling better?” Jack asked, pointedly blocking his path.

“Not really,” MacGyver admitted. His throat hurt less, but his head hurt more.

“You remember getting back at all?”

There were some fuzzy memories, now that he thought about it; answering questions in the medical station, Thornton, nearly tripping over his own feet, and Jack’s obnoxious shirt. “Little bit,” he said cautiously.

“Doc thinks you have something viral,” Jack said. “Thornton gave you two weeks to get over it.”

“It’s just a cold,” MacGyver said, mostly for the sake of protesting than out of any real desire to win the argument, and then couldn’t stop a yawn. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“I have a car.” He could hear the sulkiness in his own voice again, and couldn’t stop it.

“What do you think I’m driving you home with?” Jack grinned and shook the keys at him. “Bozer’ll give me a ride back to my place.

“You told Bozer,” MacGyver said flatly.

“Like he’s not going to notice you not going to work,” Jack said. “There are some secrets you just can’t keep, Mac.”

“He fusses,” MacGyver grumbled, letting Jack herd him down the hall. “You fuss.”

“I do not,” Jack said. “I’m just protecting my assets here.”

“I am not your asset.” MacGyver made a hopeful attempt toward the driver’s side of his own car, but Jack chivvied him into the passenger seat with fairly little effort.

“You’re cranky,” Jack said. “Must be tired. You only get cranky when you’re tired.”

“You’re enjoying this just a little too much.” MacGyver actively tried not to sound cranky, but he could tell that he’d failed when Jack started laughing.

“For once, we came out of a mission with me less banged up than you. Of course I’m enjoying it.”

MacGyver groaned. It was going to be a long two weeks.

Chapter Text

Two Weeks Later

“You’ve been medically cleared,” Thornton said, fixing MacGyver with a practiced thousand-yard stare.

MacGyver handed her the physical letter stating precisely that, knowing she also had a digital copy, and tried to look healthy. “Yes?” he said, when she took the letter and kept staring at him without actually opening it.

“Your spleen was enlarged,” Thornton said, turning to what MacGyver knew was the relevant page of his file, not blinking and not actually looking at it. MacGyver had no idea how she was pulling it off.

“It’s better?” he ventured. He was fairly sure he’d been scanned, poked, and prodded to within an inch of his life, so if something had been off, it would have been noticed.

“Mm-hmm,” Thornton said, and finally turned away, tapping the still-folded letter against her other hand. “Tell Jack he can come in. This briefing is just for the two of you. Riley has another assignment.” She raised her voice slightly. “Of which she is aware, and should be en route towards.”

MacGyver heard a fine, fine from Riley and a pair of footsteps heading for the other door as Jack poked his head past the doorframe. “You looking for me?”

“I have a mission for you both,” Thornton said. MacGyver picked up one of the paperclips in the bowl, fidgeting as Thornton described a remote facility to be checked for holes in its security.

“Federal or private?” Jack asked.

“Private,” Thornton answered. “The company is doing work in applied robotics; they want to make sure competitors don’t get photos of their current projects.”

“Is this something that really needs –“ Jack started.

“Ankara,” Thornton said, without missing a beat.

“Where is this facility again?” Jack asked, suddenly leaning back and body language relaxed. MacGyver looked between the two of them.

“Is there something I should know about Turkey?” he asked.

“No,” Jack said, looking as innocent as he could possibly look. Given that Jack was a terrible liar, the end result was that he just looked shifty. “Should there be?”

“You can’t just sit there and pretend that that wasn’t some sort of code word,” MacGyver protested.

“I didn’t hear a code word,” Jack said. “Did you, Director Thornton?”

Thornton shrugged with one shoulder. “I didn’t hear a code word.”

“You’re both terrible people,” MacGyver told them, giving up. “What kind of security does the facility have and where is it?”

“You’re headed for the Colorado Rockies,” Thornton said. “The facility is high altitude, which improves the atmosphere in the laboratories.”

MacGyver listened intently; the facility required ID cards to unlock the outer doors and biometric scanners to open the research areas. There were motion sensors in the smaller openings to the building and the crawl spaces beneath it, and there were heavy sliding doors that sealed off each section in case of emergency. The rest of the locks were either a standard mechanical key or electric with a numerical code.

“What about access to the building location?” he asked, once Thornton had finished.

“The building can be reached on county roads and then a private drive.” She smiled. “You’ll fly out to Denver and then drive out to the facility. A rental car will be waiting at the airport.”

“Not a minivan,” Jack said.

“Please.” Thornton spun on one stiletto heel and stalked toward the desk in the corner. “The facility will have minimal staff until Tuesday – the company runs four-day work weeks – but you’ll be met by its head of security.” She handed Jack a file folder. “All the information you need is in there. You’ll have time to review it on the flight.”

“Out of curiosity,” Jack asked, “how’d they hear of the Phoenix Foundation?”

“Their head of security used to work with a John Collins. Said the two of you served together, back in the day.” Thornton tapped one immaculately manicured fingernail against the file. “Before he re-enlisted.”

“Aw, Johnny used to talk about me?” Jack shook his head. “Guess I made more of an impression than I thought.”

“You do tend to make an impression,” Thornton said drily.

“More like a crater,” MacGyver said, aiming for under his breath. From the expression on Jack’s face, he missed.

“Still cranky?” Jack asked, electing to ignore any references to his marked tendency to solve problems with explosives.

“No.” MacGyver reached for the folder, but Jack held it out of reach.

“You can have it when I’m done.” Jack bounced off the couch. “When do we leave?”

MacGyver stole the file from Jack as soon as they’d reached cruising altitude, looking it over. The facility in and of itself didn’t look like it would provide too much of a challenge; MacGyver thought the majority of the assignment would be figuring out what the head of security expected and then tailoring his assessment to those expectations, and said as much to Jack.

“Milk run, if we’re lucky,” Jack said absently, flipping the flight safety card back and forth as though it would reveal new information if shaken hard enough.

“So that’s what Thornton meant by Ankara,” MacGyver said, fairly sure he was correct.

“That, and we get paid for it pretty well.” Jack grinned at him.

“I knew this seemed too easy,” MacGyver said. “Almost enough to make me think you did this on purpose.”

“Nah.” Jack looked sideways at him. “Just lucky, that’s all.”

“I want to pick up a few things before we drive up,” MacGyver told him; partly out of irritation and to see just how far he could push Jack, and partly because he didn’t feel like driving into any sort of distant-from-civilization range without an emergency kit. There was only so much he could do with a Swiss army knife.

“What things?” Jack asked, instantly suspicious.

“Basic emergency stuff for the car,” MacGyver told him. “Just in case.”

“We’re not going into the wilderness, Mac. The road’s going to be right there.” Jack was giving him the look that said he knew MacGyver was trying to push buttons.

“Weather forecast said snow,” MacGyver said, knowing that Jack wouldn’t check his phone for the weather until well after they landed and also willing to claim that meteorology was less than specific and changed at the drop of a hat, and that the forecast had said snow when he checked it.

“You realize it’s September, right,” Jack said, and then raised his hands in surrender when MacGyver just kept looking at him. “All right, but let the record show I was the reasonable one on this trip.”

“Record.” MacGyver snorted softly. “Whatever you say.”

 * * *

Somewhat to Jack’s irritation, MacGyver insisted on very specific items for his kit. “What do you want an all-weather blanket for?” he asked, checking his watch. The facility was an hour and a half into the mountains, and they were on the wrong side of late.

“Always be prepared,” MacGyver said absently, fingering one of the offerings on the store shelf and rejecting it. He finally picked up something that looked less like a blanket and more like a foldable tarp, in bright red.

“You know we’re driving on roads, right,” Jack said, and then swore. MacGyver had vanished while he wasn’t looking. Jack found him looking at collapsible shovels. “You’re like a damn ninja, you know that?”

“Always be prepared,” MacGyver repeated, but Jack could see a very slight smirk.

“Did you get bottled water?” Jack asked, because a cranky MacGyver only led to creative problems if not derailed appropriately. His partner wasn’t as recovered as he thought he was, which just meant Jack had to step up his game to keep things running smoothly; the moment when MacGyver had nearly fallen off the ladder had nearly stopped Jack’s heart in his chest, and the last thing Jack wanted was a repeat.

“Uh,” MacGyver said, looking at his basket.

“I’ll get it and meet you by the registers.” The bottled water was in the back of the store, which meant that Jack walked right past a pre-packaged first aid kit on the way. He snagged it off the shelf, picked up a small case of water, and tracked MacGyver down. Somewhat to Jack’s surprise, his partner was in the general vicinity of the registers, looking at flashlights.

“Hand crank?” MacGyver asked.

“It’s not like we have to worry about the batteries going dead over the next three days,” Jack said, dropping the first aid kit in the basket and freeing up a hand.

“You’re right,” MacGyver said, and picked up a crank-powered flashlight.

“That is the exact opposite of what I just said,” Jack muttered.

MacGyver grinned at him. “It runs on batteries, too.” He put it in the basket. “Ready?” He turned hastily toward the registers, clearly suppressing a yawn.

“Yeah, yeah.” Jack followed him, pulling out the company card to pay for MacGyver’s emergency preparedness kit. The entirety of the kit fit in a small duffel bag, also new, and MacGyver threw it in the back seat of the rented SUV. “You got that address?”

“I can navigate,” MacGyver said, buckling his seat belt.

“Or you could just tell me where we’re going, and I’ll get us there. If I start going the wrong way, you can tell me.” The rental car was old-fashioned enough to have a navigational system built in; Jack, who had grown up with paper maps, still found the whole system bizarre. He couldn’t complain about the car verbally giving him directions, though.

“You realize the maps on that thing haven’t been updated,” MacGyver said.

“Just give me the address.” Jack wiggled his fingers in a motion that could have been either give it to me or miming typing into the navigation system.

MacGyver sighed and rattled off an address quickly enough that Jack almost had to ask him to repeat it. “Looks okay,” he said in response to Jack’s inquiring glance, and settled back into the seat.

In the middle of the day, traffic was fairly light; Jack defined that as the car not coming to a standstill on the interstate at any point, although average speed was lower than he would have liked it to be. He took care to drive smoothly, glancing over at MacGyver fifteen minutes into trip to see his partner asleep. Jack kept the volume on the navigation system low as well, looking at the changing scenery as a distraction instead of listening to driving music. The metropolitan area north of Denver gave way to a flat plain, with the mountains clearly visible in the distance. The term distance proved to be deceiving, as the mountains were suddenly closer and then he was driving upwards.

The scenery was beautiful, blue sky with fluffy white clouds giving way to snow-covered trees. Alternating shadow and light flashed past the side of the road, although the road itself was clear. The navigation system on the SUV proved to be updated enough as it directed Jack farther into the mountains and away from other vehicles, finally sending him down a clearly marked private drive. The snow was disturbed around the signpost, which was rather modestly marked for a corporate facility.

From what Jack had seen in the file, the private drive was a good half-mile long, winding through the trees. It had been plowed since the last snowfall, but there were very few tire tracks on it. He stopped the SUV and reached over to the passenger seat. “Wake up, Mac, we’re almost there.”

“What?” MacGyver blinked awake, rubbing his eyes. “We’re what?” He looked around at the trees. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s a quarter mile up the road,” Jack said. “Thought you might want to be awake when we got there.”

“Ha,” MacGyver said, and yawned. Jack took the opportunity to check his phone; there was a text from Thornton asking how things were going.

Almost there Mac wanted emergency supplies, he texted back, and put the car back in gear. Snow crunched under the tires, the sunlight that had brightened the drive giving way to a cloudy sky. It washed the color from the landscape, turning the evergreens darker gray against the pale gray of sky and snow.

“Looks like you were right about the snow,” Jack said. The drive opened up onto a small parking lot, also mostly cleared, and a modest brick building with a sliding glass door at the end of a short walk. Jack parked the car as close to the door as possible, frowning at the lack of other cars.

“The what?” MacGyver pulled out his phone and tapped at it. “I don’t have service up here, do you?”

“Sure, I just sent Thornton an update,” Jack said, glancing at his phone to confirm. A little red button let him know that the text hadn’t sent, and the top of the screen showed no bars. “No, wait. No service.”

“Wasn’t someone supposed to meet us here?” MacGyver said, also appearing to finally notice the empty parking lot. Jack could see an envelope taped to the door.

“I thought so?” he said. “Maybe that’s got something to do with it.”

“They should have called,” MacGyver said, unbuckling his belt and pushing the door open.

“No service,” Jack reminded him.

“I didn’t see any cars passing us,” MacGyver said.

“You slept through the drive,” Jack reminded him. MacGyver hopped out of the car, almost audibly rolling his eyes. “Okay, okay, there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic up here.” He was glad of his boots and jacket when he got out of the car; the wind had picked up, and it sent a shower of snow off the pines and right into his face. “Oh, come on.”

MacGyver grinned at him, and it was Jack’s turn to roll his eyes.

“What’s in the envelope, Mac?”

Feet crunching in the mostly undisturbed snow of the sidewalk, Mac walked briskly to the door and pulled the envelope off. Jack jogged to catch up, locking the car remotely and stuffing the keys in his pocket. Two key cards were inside the envelope as well as a handwritten note.

Emergency at home, read the note. No staff in the building, please conduct the test evaluation as scheduled and send results. Key cards are to get you into public areas of building after hours – feel free to either use them or not. J Would have called, but cell coverage is spotty today. Sorry. L

MacGyver eyed the building, which matched the photos on the website. The glass was one-way, reflecting them from the outside. Jack watched MacGyver find the security camera blinking over the doorway, consider the key cards, and discard the keys they’d been given. “So this is fun,” he said, and tossed some grimy slush at the camera without showing his face. The slush stuck to the lens, and MacGyver started prying at the electronic lock with his Swiss army knife.

Jack left him to it, looking around for anyone moving – the note might have said the building was empty, but he didn’t necessarily trust it – or for more cameras. He found neither. There were footprints through the snow around both sides of the building, in various sizes, which Jack took to mean that the employees were lunatics who enjoyed walking through snow for no good reason. “Hey,” MacGyver said, and Jack turned around.

The door slid open, the electronic lock hanging off the building with its wires exposed. “Can you put that back the way it was?” Jack asked.

“Uh,” MacGyver said, looking back at the mangled lock. “Probably?”

“Can we do this test without causing property damage?” Jack said, and walked through the door. “You sure you want to go in this way?” he added.

“You say that like we’re not going to try to get in here more than once,” MacGyver returned, and Jack sighed. Somehow this cakewalk of an assignment was going to take longer than he’d thought; at least, he thought, MacGyver looked more energetic. The extra sleep had been good for him.

“Well? Are you coming?” he asked. MacGyver followed him into the lobby, which was far more sparsely furnished than expected. It also didn’t really match what he vaguely remembered seeing on the company’s website, although he hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention. The open space held a few desks, one with a monitor, and was dusty with footprints clearly visible on the carpet. MacGyver stopped in the center of the room, looking around. There was a camera in the lobby as well, but it showed no signs of electricity or life.

“Cold in here,” MacGyver said, and then the door slid shut behind them with what Jack, if pressed, would have described as an ominous click.

“I don’t think there’s any heat in the building,” Jack said, and then realized that the lack of heat made no sense. “Wouldn’t their pipes freeze?”

“You’d think,” MacGyver said slowly, turning in a full 360 degrees, eyes darting around the room. “This isn’t right.”

“It does seem weird,” Jack said.

“Are you sure we’re at the right address?” MacGyver asked.

“If we’re not, then who was the note for?” Jack returned. MacGyver nodded in acknowledgement.

“Someone wanted us here,” MacGyver said. “And not to evaluate a security risk.”

“Yeah, I got that, Captain Obvious,” Jack said. “In which case, we should just leave.”

MacGyver tilted his head, just a little, his mouth set in a stubborn line. “What if there’s someone here? You saw all those footprints outside. And in here. We have to check.”

“No, we don’t,” Jack said, but he was already moving toward the back of the lobby. The building wasn’t large, and the dust at least made it easy to see where people hadn’t gone. There was a pit in Jack’s stomach, though, and he knew absolutely that he did not want to go farther into the building than he had to. MacGyver caught up with him, checking the ceiling while Jack kept his eyes farther down and closer to the floor.

Because Jack was watching closely, he saw the tripwire before MacGyver walked into it and pulled his partner back. MacGyver followed his pointing finger down, eyes widening slightly. “There are cameras,” MacGyver said softly, once they were past the tripwire. A quick inspection led to no specifics as to what the wire would have triggered, but Jack did not feel inclined to keep looking. No one was hiding in the walls, as far as he could tell, and he wasn’t cursed with an overactive sense of curiosity.

“Keep going, Mac,” he said, when MacGyver and his inquisitiveness appeared to want to keep looking for the trap. “There’s no one here.”

“I should disarm this one,” MacGyver said.

“We know it’s there,” Jack countered. “We can step over it on the way back.” He could almost see the wheels turning in MacGyver’s head as his partner came to the decision to agree with him.

The footsteps led down a hall, still with no signs of life beyond the two of them, and then to what looked like a sub-basement and up to a closed door. Given that it was the only closed door Jack had seen actually inside the facility, it made him rather wary. From MacGyver’s expression, he felt the same way.

“We could just leave,” Jack said again, but he didn’t think MacGyver was going to take him up on it this time either. His suspicions were borne out when MacGyver started tapping at the incongruous steel door without actually answering him. “Or we could see what’s behind door number two,” he said with resignation.

MacGyver finished his inspection of the door and stared at the wheel in its center for a solid sixty seconds. “This seems weird,” he said. “Doesn’t it seem weird?”

“It seems very weird,” Jack agreed, although he was ninety percent sure that the reasons he thought it was weird and the reasons MacGyver thought it was weird were completely different. “You wanna open it?”

The look MacGyver threw at him said clearly that Jack was an idiot stating the obvious, but he grasped the wheel and turned it slowly. A click sounded and the door cracked open. Nothing obvious happened, but from the way MacGyver was glaring at it, he expected something. Jack couldn’t see anything, and apparently neither could MacGyver, because he pulled the door open just a little farther. Another click sounded, and MacGyver peered through the door with a mix of horror and resignation.

“Is it a bomb?” Jack asked, and threw his hands in the air when MacGyver looked over his shoulder and shrugged just slightly. “It’s a bomb,” Jack said. “Of course it’s a bomb. Why wouldn’t it be a bomb?”

“Countdown started when we opened the door,” MacGyver said, ignoring Jack’s very relevant evaluation of the situation, and slipped inside the room.

“And we are not running in the other direction because?” Jack followed him, because if there was a situation that would prevent him from following MacGyver into impending death, he hadn’t found it yet.

“No time,” MacGyver said, and bent over the bomb. “This is nice work,” he offered, poking at something Jack really didn’t want to pay attention to with his Swiss army knife.

“Could you save your professional appreciation for the explodey death machine for after it’s not going to kill us?” Jack asked.

“It probably won’t kill us,” MacGyver said. Jack could see a timer counting down past his shoulder, which did not make MacGyver’s statement any more reassuring.

“I love how comforting you are,” he said.

“I need something soft,” MacGyver said, in what was a non sequitur to anyone who didn’t know him as well as Jack did. “Absorbent.”

Jack looked around the room, which was full of copper pipes, a furnace, and a hot water heater, none of which were soft. The furnace and water heater were also off, which was irrelevant, although the frost lining the water heater just made Jack feel colder. He was glad for his jacket all over again, which led him to what MacGyver had been asking for. “I like this jacket,” he complained, but he was already ripping a seam near the bottom and pulling out some of the stuffing.

“Perfect.” MacGyver snatched it out of his hand before Jack finished opening his fingers, turning back to the bomb.

“Wouldn’t it be harder to defuse if it actually was a brilliant piece of machinery?” Jack asked. Somehow he usually had the impression that MacGyver did more than what he currently appeared to be doing.

“Who said it was easy?” MacGyver said, and backed slowly away from the bomb. “We should leave now.”

“Oh, now you want to go,” Jack said, but he was already physically hauling MacGyver through the partially open door and running down the hall. Retracing their steps took far less time than the slow and careful search they’d made starting out, and they had reached the tripwire near the door before Jack knew it. MacGyver hadn’t forgotten about it, either; he skidded to a halt almost comically, sliding past the door on his boots before stepping carefully over the wire.

“Watch out,” he said, and Jack gave him an incredulous look; he knew perfectly well there was a tripwire there, thank you. The wire behind them, Jack followed MacGyver through the lobby and toward the exit, where the door obnoxiously refused to open. MacGyver pulled out his Swiss army knife and moved toward the electric control box. Jack looked at his white face and came to a different conclusion. There were two chairs in the office, one of which looked like it had some decent weight behind it. Jack picked it up and swung it at the door. The one-way glass shattered, and MacGyver looked up in surprise. Jack pulled him away from the lock and out of the building, MacGyver barely managing to hang onto his Swiss army knife in the process.

Jack didn’t let go of MacGyver until they were on the other side of the SUV and he was fumbling in his pocket for the key. MacGyver ducked below the hood, crouching behind the vehicle’s front wheel. Jack found the keys and unlocked the doors just as the building exploded. He barely had time to try to duck before the world went dark.

Sound returned before vision, distorted and wavering as though he were underwater. He blinked, his vision starting to clear, but all he could see was gray. No, wait, there was gray and it was covered in moving white dots. He flinched as one of them suddenly rushed toward his eye, and felt cold against his closed eyelid. The movement cleared his hearing, and the low drone suddenly resolved itself into words.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” someone was saying. He blinked again, and felt pressure against his shoulders and the back of his head. It was constant, all the way down his spine and hips to his heels. “Look at me,” the voice said, and he realized he was lying on his back and looking at the sky. The voice was still muffled, but getting clearer, and he thought it was coming from his left. He turned his head, the motion blurring his vision for a moment. When it cleared, he could make out someone kneeling next to him; a young man, blond, wearing a heavy jacket but no hat, and holding bare hands towards him. The young face broke into a relieved smile. “Jack,” said the young man, and two things became clear. He had no idea why he was on his back in the snow, and he had no idea who he was.

* * *

The SUV protected MacGyver from the worst of the blast; it had taken longer for the bomb to work its way past the clogging fluff than he thought it would, but less time than he had hoped. If he’d stopped the mechanism entirely, it would have triggered. He’d seen very quickly that any attempt to disarm it would have triggered it. The best he could have hoped for was to slow it down, by stuffing something soft and malleable into its inner workings and hoping that it didn’t clog up the moving parts. As it was, he had no idea whether the mechanism had ground to a halt or simply reached the end of its timer in delayed fashion, and he didn’t really care. Jack had been standing when the building blew, and the shock wave had knocked him to the ground.

MacGyver scrambled over to his friend and partner, shielding Jack’s head from any further falling debris. He didn’t think there was much left; most of the noise had stopped, except for the crackling of the fire started by the explosion. He moved back, the thought occurring to him that Jack hadn’t protested being shielded, and saw that Jack’s eyes were closed. A speck of white landed on Jack’s face, and MacGyver thought it was ash until it melted. He glanced up to see it starting to snow, as if the day hadn’t gone badly enough already.

“Jack?” he said, but there was no response. MacGyver swallowed down the initial panic, closing his own eyes briefly and clenching his hands into fists. He checked for a pulse, and found it strong and steady, and checked Jack’s breathing. The cloud of steam with every breath gave him proof enough of that, even if he hadn’t been able to see Jack’s chest rise and fall beneath his jacket. “Okay,” MacGyver said. “Come on, Jack, wake up.”

When Jack still showed no signs of waking, MacGyver checked for other injuries; he found blood at Jack’s hairline and a bloody gash along one ankle. The wound along the ankle looked more like a scrape than a cut, and was only bleeding sluggishly. MacGyver ignored it and checked Jack’s head and neck again. He thought he remembered that the spine should be kept straight if there was any possibility of damage, and felt that being thrown to the ground by a bomb blast probably counted as creating a possibility of spinal damage. He couldn’t find anything, and careful probing along Jack’s neck didn’t reveal anything obviously out of place or broken.

“Of course, if it was a hairline fracture, how would I know,” he muttered, and Jack groaned. “Jack?” MacGyver snatched his hands away. Jack shifted, moving his feet just slightly, and then stilled. “Jack?” MacGyver said again, and Jack’s eyes moved behind his eyelids. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay, you can wake up now,” MacGyver said, keeping up the stream of nonsense words. His voice hitched when Jack actually opened his eyes. It didn’t look like he was tracking, at first, until a snowflake nearly fell into one of his eyes and Jack blinked. His vision seemed to clear after that, and he looked like he was focusing on the sky. “Look at me,” MacGyver said, and Jack slowly turned his head, slowly focusing on MacGyver. Confusion spread over his face, erasing the awful blank lack of expression. “Jack?”

Jack opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and coughed. “Uh,” he said, not attempting to move but looking straight at MacGyver.

“Jack,” MacGyver said again, but now he could see Jack’s confusion for what it was – Jack had no idea where he was or what he was doing, and the fact that MacGyver was there wasn’t helping.

“Am I Jack?” he said weakly, and MacGyver’s heart plummeted.

“Don’t screw around with me, Jack,” he said. They were in the middle of nowhere, where someone had tried to murder one or both of them with an elaborate setup involving a dummy corporation and a rigged building, with all of one road back to civilization and a vehicle not designed for those roads, and it was snowing. MacGyver couldn’t discount the possibility that whoever had set the trap in the first place was still around, despite the lack of obvious vehicles in the immediate vicinity, taking advantage of the lack of cell service and their inability to summon help. It was, in other words, not a good time for Jack to pull any sort of prank.

“I’m – am I – who are you?” Jack said, still not really moving.

“I mean it,” MacGyver said. “We need to get out of here.” He felt along Jack’s neck again, and that prompted Jack to sit up and push him away. He didn’t seem to be having any trouble moving, which was something of a relief.

“I don’t even know who you are,” Jack said, and winced. He reached around to the back of his head and touched it gingerly. MacGyver could see the blood on his fingers when he pulled his hand back, and added multiple head wounds to the list of potential problems.

“My name’s MacGyver,” he said. “Your name is Jack Dalton, and we have to go. Now.”

“So what, you only have one name?” Jack prodded at the back of his head again, but it didn’t seem to hurt as badly as the first time. Less pain seemed to be good, and so did curiosity, but Jack was focusing on all the wrong things.

“You call me Mac,” MacGyver offered.

“I don’t suppose you can back that up,” Jack said. MacGyver was torn between appreciating Jack’s caution even in his currently compromised state and being irritated that Jack’s need for proof was taking time that they probably didn’t have.

“You have a wallet in your back pocket,” he said. “It has your name.”

Jack stared at him for a moment, long enough that MacGyver started to worry that Jack was having a seizure or a stroke or something, but then Jack shrugged. “I think I trust you,” he said, and warmth spread through MacGyver’s chest at the words despite the thickening snowfall.

“Well, yeah,” he said, feeling himself smiling. “You’ve got my back.”

“Didn’t you say we were supposed to be going somewhere?” Jack asked, interrupting MacGyver’s appreciation of his friend’s trust.

“Right.” If there was someone stalking them, it was a minor miracle that nothing had happened yet. MacGyver didn’t hear anything other than the two of them and the burning building, but that meant nothing. “Do you still have the keys?”

“What keys?” Jack asked. He was looking over MacGyver’s shoulder as he spoke. He didn’t wait for an answer before starting to methodically search his pockets, pausing to brush the slowly accumulating snow out of his hair.

“For the car,” MacGyver said, worried again. Jack should have been able to piece that bit of information together from situational context, and MacGyver didn’t think that lingering confusion on Jack’s part was a good sign.

“That car?” Jack asked, gesturing behind MacGyver. He’d found the keys, but made no movement to either hand them to MacGyver or use them on the car.

“Yes,” MacGyver said, his voice lilting upwards in an attempt to not sound impatient.

“Then we have a problem,” Jack said, and MacGyver frowned.

“What do you mean, problem,” he said, and turned to look at the SUV. It was totaled, the hood smashed in by falling debris and the windshield shattered. From the way it was tilted on its frame, MacGyver would have guessed that not only were the tires on the far side of the car flat, but that the frame itself was bent. “That’s not good.”

“I’m beginning to think you have a habit of understating things,” Jack said, and stuffed the keys back into his coat pocket. “So now what?”

“I don’t know,” MacGyver said. “We need to get out of here.” Normally, he would have said that staying put until rescue showed up was the best option – Thornton knew where they’d gone, and walking through the mountains in what was starting to look like a nasty snowstorm was likely to get them both frozen to death. Even if they followed the road, MacGyver didn’t know how far down it they would have to go before reaching something resembling civilization. Then again, on the road, they weren’t likely to get lost, and MacGyver didn’t want to be a sitting target for whoever had set the trap in the first place.

“In the snow?” Jack climbed stiffly to his feet, crouching behind the SUV and looking carefully around. MacGyver could see him take in the clearly demolished building behind them, the debris-covered parking lot with their ruined SUV, and the total lack of any other signs of civilization. After searching their surroundings, Jack checked himself with a series of gestures that seemed completely unconscious, tapping at both ankles, the small of his back, and under his coat on the left side. Only when he pulled out what MacGyver knew was his favorite handgun – although, if pressed, MacGyver wouldn’t have been able to identify it – did Jack stop, looking at the weapon in his hands as though he’d never seen it before. “Is this mine?” he asked, his grip suddenly clumsy.

“Uh, yes.” What little MacGyver did know about Jack’s pistol was how to make sure the safety was on. He reached for it, only to find himself staring down the barrel as Jack pointed it straight at him with the stance and comfort of an expert. “Take it easy, Jack,” MacGyver said, trying to sound soothing.

“I’m sorry.” Jack lowered the pistol, uncertain once more. “I guess it was habit.” He flipped it over, presenting MacGyver with the grip, and watched as MacGyver gingerly took it. “You any good with that?”

“Me? No.” MacGyver checked the safety and handed the pistol back to Jack. “I hate the things.”

“Oh.” Jack nodded, replacing the gun in its holster and zipping his jacket back up. He paused, rubbing the bridge of his nose and then both eyes.

“You okay?” MacGyver asked.

“Little dizzy,” Jack said. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“It’s a long story.” MacGyver reached for the back door of the SUV. The handle moved easily, but the door only opened a couple of inches before grinding to a halt. “Right now we need the bag in the back seat, and we need to leave.” He yanked on the door, but it refused to budge.

“Here.” Jack braced himself against the rear tire and pushed, scraping the door open just barely wide enough that MacGyver could reach inside and pull out his emergency kit. The bag was covered in broken glass, and he tried to dust it off. He got a shallow cut along his palm for his trouble, and Jack looking at him as though he were the one with the head injury. “I watch your back, you say.”

“Uh.” MacGyver wiped his palm on his jeans. “Pretty much.”

“Well, then, you say you want to get out of here, let’s go.” Jack used the sleeve of his coat to brush the glass off of the canvas bag. “Anything else in there you want?”

“Actually, yeah. Some of the wire harness from under the dash.” MacGyver slid under the car to retrieve one of the long pipes from the exhaust. The look Jack gave him said that he was fairly sure MacGyver was asking for something ridiculous and useless, but he tugged at the front door anyway. From the sound of it, it refused to budge. MacGyver could hear Jack doing something on top of the SUV, and when he wriggled back out with a length of pipe firmly in hand, Jack presented him with a respectable length of wire and three new tears in his jacket.

“The windshield is very inhospitable,” he said in response to MacGyver’s inquiring look.

MacGyver stuffed the wire into the emergency kit. “Do you have gloves?” He’d put his own pair into his coat pocket, and pulled them out now. Jack had apparently done the same thing, for he produced an unfamiliar pair and donned them without a word. “Great.” MacGyver shouldered the bag, hefted the pipe, and started across the parking lot. Before he’d gotten more than a few steps, something hit him and he went down hard. At the same time, he registered a sharp popping noise.

“Stay down,” Jack said, and MacGyver finally processed the sound as gunfire.

“Did you see where it came from?” he asked, although it was probably a futile question.

“Someone’s been watching us,” Jack said, which didn’t answer him at all. “Didn’t make a move until we started for the road.” He was on top of MacGyver, shielding him from the potential shooter. He was also heavy. Without warning, Jack hauled MacGyver back into the dubious cover of the SUV, still between MacGyver and any potential threat.

“How do you know there’s a road?” MacGyver asked, and then felt like an idiot. Of course Jack knew they were heading for a road; it was the only possible conclusion he could have reached. Jack’s silence on the matter did not relieve the sense of idiocy. MacGyver could see the pained expression on Jack’s face without actually having to look at anything other than the back of Jack’s head. “Sorry,” he offered.

“That was a warning shot,” Jack said after a moment.

“How do you know?”

“Because one of us would be dead right now if it wasn’t,” Jack said. “That, or they’re behind the building and couldn’t get a clean shot off.” He paused. “Any particular reason I know how to extrapolate the bullet’s trajectory?”

“Yes.” MacGyver did not elaborate. “You’re very good at your job.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” Jack glanced around. “See that tree there?”

The tree in question was a wide evergreen, branches nearly to the ground. It was a rarity in the surrounding forest, most of which consisted of tall pines with bare trunks and branches high in the air. The tree Jack had indicated stood alone at the edge of the surrounding foliage, and had clearly been deliberately planted. MacGyver nodded, which Jack apparently saw out of the corner of his eye.

“When I say go, make a run for it.”

MacGyver adjusted the bag over his shoulder, so the strap lay across his torso and under one arm, and picked up his length of midpipe. “Where are you going to be?”

“Right behind you.” Jack removed his gloves and pulled the pistol out from under his jacket, clicking the safety off and looking around cautiously. “Ready?” At MacGyver’s second nod, Jack shoved him toward the tree. “Go!”

The popping noise of gunfire sounded again, but MacGyver didn’t stop moving until he reached the tree, ducking around behind it. Jack hit the ground next to him a few long seconds later, and the sound of gunfire ceased.

“He’s behind the building,” Jack said, and MacGyver didn’t question how he knew it. “And there’s only one of him.”

MacGyver tried to peer around the tree at the building, but Jack yanked him backwards. It was a moot point in any case; the snowfall had gotten heavier, and the swirling gusts made it hard to see. If they were lucky enough, they’d be able to use the snowstorm to hide from their assailant and reach the road through the woods rather than down the private drive they’d driven up.

“If you want to reach the road, we’re going to have to get away from him first,” Jack said, echoing MacGyver’s line of thought. “You know where it is?”

“More or less,” MacGyver said. He had a vague idea of the general direction, based on where the private drive entered the parking lot.

“You have no idea,” Jack said flatly.

“Not really,” MacGyver admitted, “but we should probably get moving before he starts looking for us.”

“Great,” Jack muttered. He seemed to know what he was doing with the pistol, at least, checking the magazine and reinserting it with a loud click. “Lead the way.”

“Your hands are going to freeze,” MacGyver said. Jack’s fingers were already red with the cold, and with the snow actively falling on them, it wouldn’t be long before frostbite set in.

“I can’t shoot with gloves on,” Jack returned.

“Let me see them.” MacGyver held out his hand. Jack dug them out of his pocket and handed them over, looking as impatient as MacGyver felt. The scissors on the Swiss army knife in his pocket made short work of the fingertips on the gloves, which would at least let Jack keep most of his fingers intact. He handed them back to Jack with a raised eyebrow.

“Fine,” Jack said, but his posture eased slightly after he put the gloves on. “Can we go now?”

Taking care to keep the tree between the two of them and the building, MacGyver aimed for where he thought the road was most likely to be and started jogging into the now-driving snow. Jack stuck to his shoulder like a shadow, nudging him in one direction after another. The wind howled behind them, and MacGyver wasn’t sure whether it was changing directions or he was. It was mostly at his back, with the driving snow at least not hitting them full in the face, but the lack of direct light made it hard to tell exactly where they were going.

“Does it look like it’s getting darker to you?” Jack whispered, some considerable time after they’d gotten out of sight of the building. He hadn’t let MacGyver slow down at all, keeping them moving at a brisk pace through the unending stands of evergreens.  They’d gone past a patch of leafless trunks at one point, and now they had stopped under a lone needleless tree that was either dead or dormant. MacGyver squinted at the sky, which did look darker than it had a few moments ago.

“Yeah, kinda.”

“Oh, thank god.” Jack still wasn’t going to let him stop moving, apparently. “I thought I was going blind or something.”

MacGyver remembered that he was wearing a watch, and checked it – it was somehow well past four, when he clearly remembered arriving at the facility at no later than one. “Sun sets early in the mountains, I guess.”

“That’s fantastic.” Jack pushed MacGyver around a clump of what might have been brush and might have been a tree once upon a time. “How far is the road?”

“I’m not sure. You were the one with the map.” He knew Jack had woken him before they’d gotten all the way to the facility, and he was fairly sure they’d gone at least a full minute before pulling into the parking lot, but he didn’t know how far they’d gone before Jack had parked the SUV.

The light faded rapidly, going from dim one moment to nearly pitch dark the second. MacGyver stopped walking, and Jack bumped into his back. The high canopies of the pine trees shielded most of the cloudy sky, and the snow was still falling.

“Keep going?” MacGyver asked.

“Can you see a damn thing?” Jack whispered. MacGyver shook his head. “I’m going to assume that’s a no,” Jack said.

“I can’t see much,” MacGyver told him. It was eerie and unnerving; he was used to streetlights reflecting off the clouds, creating an orange glow and keeping darkness at bay. Here, there was almost nothing in the way of ambient light, and what little there might have been was snuffed out by the snowstorm. He shivered, cold now that they were no longer moving.

“If we stop, how likely are we to freeze to death?” Jack asked, and by his tone, he was entirely serious.

“I have a tarp,” MacGyver said. He’d gone back and picked up another one on a whim, in slate gray instead of bright red. He’d stopped near two trees only a couple of arm lengths apart, and it was a matter of trial and more than a little error to get one of the blankets spread out along the ground and the stiff rim of the other wedged between the tree trunks to create a partly open-faced shed. “And you thought we wouldn’t need these,” he said. The duffle bag made a convenient anchor for one side, and Jack slid into the other to leave MacGyver in the middle.

“Clearly I was wrong,” Jack said, keeping his voice low. MacGyver handed him a bottle of water from inside the duffle bag, and Jack downed the entire thing without stopping for breath. MacGyver drank his own water more slowly, retrieving Jack’s empty bottle and placing it back into the bag.

“So you wanna tell me what we’re doing?” Jack asked.

“Do you remember anything?”

Jack hesitated. “Not really. I feel like I’ve heard your name. Mine, too.”

“Well, that’s a start.” MacGyver didn’t know much about head injuries, but he did know that it wasn’t even remotely normal for Jack to have lost his entire sense of identity but still be able to – apparently – form new memories and maintain a sense of orientation. “Do you remember what I told you your name was?”

“It’s Jack, right?” Jack said.

“Do you remember what I said your last name was?”

“Dalton,” Jack said, with more certainty.

“Okay.” The falling snow was beginning to drift up the sides of their makeshift shelter; MacGyver could hear the sound of the wind getting more and more muffled. There was still enough of an opening in the front to let cold air in, which he supposed was preferable to suffocating to death, but he didn’t have to like it. “We’re on an assignment; we were supposed to evaluate the security protocols of some research company, but when we got here the building was empty and rigged to explode.”

“Is that normal?” Jack shifted his weight; MacGyver couldn’t see him in the darkness, but he felt warmer as Jack pressed a little solidly more against him. Not that they had much room to go anywhere, but the physical contact was nice. He moved away anyway, telling himself that shoving the inevitable inappropriate thoughts down back into the recesses of his mind was second nature.

“For most people or for us?” MacGyver turned his movement away from Jack into opening the duffle bag and searching by touch.

“For us,” Jack said, his tone of voice making it very clear that he found it a ridiculous question.

“Um.” MacGyver found the flashlight, flicking it on within the confines of the duffle bag. “This particular situation hasn’t happened before, but we take the weird assignments, so…” he let his voice trail off.

“Are you sure you want that thing on?” Jack shifted again, and MacGyver could feel the sudden tension rolling off of him in waves. “If someone’s looking for us, that’s going to tell them right where we are.”

“I need to be able to see,” MacGyver said. The wire Jack had stripped out of the SUV had somehow worked its way into the bottom of the bag, but he finally pulled it out and separated a single copper wire from the entire harness.

“To do what?”

“Neither of us has a cell signal, and we need to tell our boss that the assignment went sideways.” MacGyver peeled off the insulating sheath around one end of the wire with the Swiss army knife that had not fallen out of his pocket during their run through the snow. “This look like 6.3 inches to you?”

“I have no idea,” Jack said. He wasn’t looking at MacGyver or the wire; he was watching the front of their shelter as if he expected their assailant to materialize out of the storm. “Why 6.3?”

MacGyver cut the wire, aiming for just a little longer than his initial estimate. “Because that’s half the length of the frequency a cell phone uses. And I need your phone.”

“Why my phone?” Jack sounded exactly like himself for the first time since the explosion.

“Because you have better service,” MacGyver said.

Jack’s expression wasn’t particularly clear in the dim light, but MacGyver thought he was on the receiving end of a very skeptical look. “We don’t have the same carrier,” he said flatly.

“Why would we?” MacGyver held out his hand. “Come on. This works better on your model anyway.”

Grumbling under his breath, Jack dug around in his pocket and came out with his cell phone. “Why do I feel like this is how things usually go?”

“You’re not wrong.” MacGyver pried the back of the cell phone off and twisted the copper wire around the appropriate receiver. A small piece of the duct tape that had also worked its way into the bottom of the bag held it into position, and he snapped the back of the cell phone back on. “Let’s see if that worked.”

“If?”

The cell phone had a single bar of reception, which was an improvement over no bars, but as MacGyver watched, the bar flickered out. He tugged the wire straight and trimmed the end. For a moment, the phone showed two bars of reception – enough to trigger a cascade of texts, missed calls, and messages before the reception flickered out again.

“I don’t think that qualifies as success,” Jack said. He reached for the flashlight and turned it off, his invasion of MacGyver’s personal space once again pulling up unwanted thoughts.

“The storm might be the problem,” MacGyver said, trying to keep his voice even. He tapped on the text icon, and Jack snatched the phone out of his hands. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“What am I doing? What are you doing? This is my phone.” Holding the phone under his jacket, Jack started scrolling through the texts.

“You don’t have to hide it from me,” MacGyver said.

“I’m not hiding it from you, I’m trying to make us less visible to the psycho out there,” Jack said. “We have messages from a Thornton and a Riley,” he added a moment later. “Warning us that the assignment is a trap.”

MacGyver resisted the urge to bang his head against the nearest hard surface. “Did they figure that out before or after we didn’t report in?”

“Looks like Riley figured out the Phoenix Foundation network was hit with a virus.” Jack tapped at his phone again, apparently scrolling back and forth. “Something about redirecting their browsers to a dummy site. The corporation we thought we were assessing is real.”

“Let me guess,” MacGyver said. “The physical address was not.”

“Got it in one.” Jack grinned. “I knew you were smart.”

“You had no idea.” The words slipped out before MacGyver could stop them; he had no idea why he’d said something that made no sense whatsoever, but Jack’s sudden grin made it worth it.

“I had a clue,” Jack said, and that little bit of warmth in MacGyver’s chest bloomed all over again. “They alerted the authorities,” Jack said, looking at the phone again. “But it looks like the storm is blocking the roads. Thornton wants us to stay put wherever we are.”

“She’s just hoping we’re not already dead,” MacGyver said quietly. Now that they were no longer moving and not likely to be shot in the immediate future, fatigue was creeping up on him again. He suppressed a yawn; Jack needed to be watched, with his injury, and it was up to MacGyver to do it.

“Is she kind of a hardass?” Jack asked. “Dark hair, always wearing heels, throws a mean right hook?”

“That’s Thornton,” MacGyver said. “You remember?”

“Kinda.” Jack felt along the edges of their makeshift tent and then pulled MacGyver against his side. “Warmer this way,” he said in answer to the question MacGyver didn’t have time to ask.

“You remember Riley?” It was warmer, with Jack firmly on one side. MacGyver tucked his hands into his sleeves and resigned himself to some discomfort. At least his inappropriate and one-sided crush on Jack might help keep him awake.

“A little.” Jack was silent for a long moment. “I got this sense of wishing things had been different, when I saw her name. But not…” He paused again. “Not like – she’s not my daughter, is she?”

MacGyver couldn’t help it; he chuckled. “No. You were apparently involved with her mother, a while back. It didn’t end well.”

“Well, that sucks.” Memory or no memory, Jack still sounded like Jack, which was reassuring. “You and me, we get along okay?”

“You’ve got my back,” MacGyver said, stifling another yawn.

“You go kaboom, I go kaboom?” Jack asked.

MacGyver had a sudden vivid memory of staring at an IED full of green wires with Jack’s voice coming loud and clear through his earpiece. “You said that to me once.”

“You were in a truck,” Jack said. “I was following in a helicopter.”

“You remember?” MacGyver asked again.

“Just bits and pieces.” Jack shrugged. “I think I would follow you anywhere.”

“You followed me here,” MacGyver said lightly, trying to defuse the awkwardness that he wasn’t sure Jack even felt. Jack was one of his closest friends, but he was treading just a little too close now to MacGyver’s unspoken and barely-admitted crush. He wasn’t even sure it was anything more than an unhealthy coping mechanism in response to Jack’s steadfast support through the years they’d known each other. MacGyver was aware that he’d never been the poster child for a healthy relationship, and this was just another symptom of that. He didn’t think Jack knew, but was sure that if he did, everything would change; and maybe Jack did know, on some subconscious level, because he kept his tone light and almost joking every time he told MacGyver he would follow him into hell. But not this time.

“Guess I did,” Jack said, sounding comfortable and completely unaware of the line he’d nearly crossed.

“The phone working?” MacGyver asked, in an attempt to change the subject that had no subtlety whatsoever.

“Nope,” Jack reported after a brief check. MacGyver could see the screen out of the corner of his eye, and there were in fact no bars. Jack pulled the wire out of his jacket, straightening it as much as he could. A single blinked on and off a few times before remaining stubbornly absent. “Definitely nope,” Jack said.

“We’ll aim for the road in the morning,” MacGyver said. “When we can see where we’re going.”

“Thought the boss wanted us to stay put.”

“We already didn’t stay put,” MacGyver pointed out. “And we don’t know that whoever set the trap isn’t still out there.”

“That second thing is a compelling argument not to put ourselves in harm’s way,” Jack said, sounding so unlike himself that MacGyver twisted around to look him in the face, worried that the concussion had suddenly gotten worse. Jack smirked down at him.

“You asshole,” MacGyver grumbled. “You’re trying to piss me off.”

“You looked bored,” Jack said.

“You look bored,” MacGyver retorted.

“What’s going on with you?” Jack asked, and it was so much of an apparent non sequitur that MacGyver was caught completely off guard.

“What do you mean, what’s going on with me? Nothing’s going on with me.” He bit back on the yawn that chose exactly the wrong moment.

“I’ve had my brain scrambled and I still know there’s something off,” Jack said. “Spill.”

The words were unexpectedly hard to get out. MacGyver took a deep breath and let it out. Jack waited with the appearance of patience for him to start talking. “I’ve been sick for the past couple weeks,” MacGyver said. “This is my first assignment back.”

“And?” Jack said. MacGyver felt that it was utterly unfair that the other man could read him so easily despite his memory being fragmented the way it was.

“And I might not be as better as the Foundation thinks I am,” MacGyver muttered. “I’m not contagious, if that makes you feel better,” he offered.

“So you went into the field, knowing you were compromised,” Jack said, and that was not the direction MacGyver had expected him to take. “You can’t do that, Mac. People depend on you. I depend on you.”

“I…” He hadn’t thought of it like that. All he’d thought about was how bored he was, how much he’d wanted to be able to go back to work. He hadn’t considered that he might be a liability to Jack, who tried so hard to keep him safe. “I didn’t – I shouldn’t – I made a mistake,” he said miserably.

“I can’t watch your back if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be watching for,” Jack said softly, and that just made MacGyver feel worse. He saw their current predicament in an entirely new light; he couldn’t help but think that they wouldn’t have been caught in the trap to begin with if he’d been at the top of his game, if he hadn’t blindly accepted the information that they’d been given. That it had been Thornton providing the briefing made no difference – Riley had figured out that the assignment was a trap and had warned them. If she’d been suspicious enough to go digging, he certainly should have seen some sort of warning.

“I got you into this,” MacGyver said.

“Hey, no, that’s not what I meant.” Jack tightened his grip around MacGyver’s shoulders.

“But you were right.” MacGyver bit his lip. “I was bored, and I put you in danger because I didn’t want to be stuck doing nothing. I’m sorry, Jack.”

“I told you, that’s not what I meant.” Jack rubbed MacGyver’s arm in a clumsy attempt at comfort. “Not gonna lie, I’d be happier if you were a hundred percent, but this is my job, too.”

“No,” MacGyver said. “I should have seen this coming.”

“What, you’re psychic now?”

“You don’t have to make fun of me,” MacGyver said. “There must have been warning signs, and I didn’t see them.”

“And neither did Thornton,” Jack said, infuriatingly reasonable. “This ain’t your fault.”

“Feels like it is,” MacGyver said under his breath, but he was fairly sure Jack heard him anyway.

“Get some sleep,” Jack said. “I’ll keep an eye out for our stalker.”

“I’m not the one who got hit in the head,” MacGyver said. “I should be keeping an eye on you.”

“If things haven’t gone south by now, I’m probably fine,” Jack said. MacGyver had no idea whether or not he was right about that, but he wasn’t about to trust Jack’s judgment on the matter.

“Says the man who couldn’t remember his own name,” he countered, knowing it was a low blow but using it anyway. The least he could do to make it up to Jack for getting him into the current situation was to make sure he didn’t lapse into a coma or worse.

“I know my own name,” Jack snapped. “And I think I’m beginning to remember what a pain in the ass you are.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” He almost sounded contrite.

“It’s okay.” MacGyver shifted until he could comfortably sling one arm around Jack’s torso. “I’d be cranky, too.”

“Cranky,” Jack said, and snorted.

“We’ll both stay awake,” MacGyver said. Despite his best intentions, the unrelenting drone of the wind hitting the back of their tent and the whispering sound of the snow hitting its roof lulled him into a half-awake doze within a few moments, and when Jack said his name quietly, all he managed was an incoherent murmur in reply. The sensation of Jack’s incongruously warm hand brushing the hair out of his eyes drove him the rest of the way into true sleep.

* * *

“It was a dark and stormy night,” Jack muttered quietly. “Ha.” He couldn’t remember where he’d heard the phrase – not that he expected that particularly memory to surface – but the words felt wrong in his mouth. The sarcasm didn’t ring true, didn’t feel as though it fit. He wasn’t entirely sure his name felt like it fit, to be fair, but he was willing to take the kid’s word on that.

“And why is it that I trust you, hm?” he asked, just as quietly. He knew that he did, though, without reservation and without a hint of a doubt. Even if the kid had gone to work pretending he was healthier than he actually was, Jack firmly believed that he would pull his own weight and then some.

The wind outside their makeshift shelter didn’t appear to be letting up any, but it also hadn’t changed directions enough to blow too much snow inside. Jack wondered for a moment if the storm would actually bury their little pseudo-tent. The snow didn’t seem to be falling as thickly as it had been earlier, he decided eventually. He had that much memory, at least.

The night seemed to pass slowly, with Jack resting in bits and pieces. He thought he knew how to listen for the sound of someone approaching, even under the cover of the wind, although he didn’t know where he’d learned it. “Would have to be a goddamn idiot to even try.” Talking out loud made him feel better, made him feel as though he were more anchored in the here and now without the weight of the past serving to keep him grounded. “And now you’re just being melodramatic, Jack.”

Under his arm, the kid stirred, but when Jack looked down at him, he was still out like a light. “I feel like I should be more pissed off at you.” He felt more resigned than pissed off, as though he’d been in similar situations often enough that it just wasn’t worth the energy any more.

Bits and pieces of almost disassociated images hovered at the edges of his mind, feeling recent in a way that he couldn’t explain, but every time he tried to focus on one, it slipped away. Jack hit the ground in frustration, but the rest of the night brought him no closer to accessing his stubbornly blurry memories.

The wind died down around the time Jack could see more than vague outlines and shadows, illuminating the snowdrift covering half the opening of the shelter and blanketing Jack in a profound silence. He stuck a finger in one ear and worked it around, worried this time that he’d suddenly gone deaf. His fears were unfounded; he heard MacGyver startle awake perfectly clearly.

“What’s that sound?” MacGyver asked, voice still thick with sleep.

“Morning, sunshine,” Jack said. “You’re hearing the golden sound of silence.”

“Morning?” MacGyver pulled himself into a more upright position and looked around. It was almost comical; Jack could practically see the gears in his head start working. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

On anyone else, the question might have seemed like an accusation. From MacGyver, it just sounded plaintive. “Figured you needed your beauty sleep, if you wanted to be as pretty as me,” Jack said lightly.

“Are you okay?” MacGyver had twisted around until he was facing Jack, kneeling awkwardly in the confines of the small tent. He leaned all the way into Jack’s personal space and peered into first one eye and then the other. “Do you remember anything?”

“Get off me, man.” Jack took MacGyver’s shoulders and firmly moved him back several inches. “I’m fine, except for what I can’t remember.”

“Which is?” MacGyver pressed.

“Pretty much everything, still,” Jack admitted.

MacGyver nodded, almost to himself. “Okay. Okay, we got this.” He leaned out of the front of the tent for a moment, and then glanced back at Jack. “Let’s pack up.”

“You’re the boss,” Jack said, and MacGyver froze. “What?”

“It’s weird when you say it like that,” MacGyver said, and zipped up the duffel bag.

“What, you’re not the brains of this operation?” Jack asked mildly. It felt right to check that his weapons were in place, followed by putting his gloves on and pushing the duffel bag out into the snow.

“It’s not like I only keep you around to punch things,” MacGyver said, sounding affronted. “I couldn’t do what I do without you.”

“Hey, you don’t need to defend my honor from me,” Jack said, trying and failing to keep the amusement out of his voice. The kid was acting like Jack had insulted his girl.

“I just.” MacGyver scrubbed his hands through his hair and then squared his shoulders before giving Jack a look of such honest sincerity that Jack’s urge to chuckle faded away entirely. “I don’t ever want you to think that I don’t appreciate what you do,” he said.

“Why would I?” Jack asked, and smiled. “I know you do.”

“Yeah, well.” MacGyver was still staring at him with those incredible blue eyes, as if he were trying to psychically will Jack to understand. “You’re important to – to the team.”

The hitch in his voice was almost imperceptible; Jack held his gaze for a moment longer, the question of why MacGyver had changed what he was going to say at the last second on the tip of his tongue. Something indefinable held him back, and instead of pressing, he grinned wider. “There’s no I in team,” he said, to see if he could break the tension he didn’t quite understand.

“Funny,” MacGyver said, from which Jack deduced that his effort had not quite been the sterling success he’d hoped for. “We should. Um.”

“Let’s go,” Jack said, and MacGyver nodded in obvious relief.

Refolding the all-weather blankets so they fit back in the duffel bag took less time than setting up the tent to begin with, although getting most of the snow off of them proved to be frustrating. MacGyver shouldered the bag, refusing to let Jack take it and or the length of pipe he’d removed from their vehicle. He explained that he wanted Jack’s hands free if their psycho stalker showed up, but Jack felt it had more to do with guilt. He let it slide, because MacGyver wasn’t wrong about keeping his hands free.

“So which way’s the road?” he asked. He thought he had a vague idea of the direction they’d been going when they’d set up their makeshift camp, but the direction MacGyver hesitantly indicated didn’t agree with it at all. “We are going to die out here,” he said. “This is going to be what finally kills the both of us. I can’t believe you spend three years defusing bombs and this is what’s finally going kill you. And take me with you.”

“I’m good at defusing bombs,” MacGyver retorted, and then, “You remember!”

“Not really,” Jack said. He didn’t know why he’d said it, but at least the sudden enthusiasm on MacGyver’s face was a distraction from their imminent death. The kid smiling was like the sun, and Jack found himself smiling back even when MacGyver’s smile faltered. “Come on,” he said, and started downhill. At the very least, going downhill would get them off the damned mountain.

“Here.” MacGyver fell in beside Jack, holding out another bottle of water.

“Thanks.” The water was welcome, even if it was cold. Jack found himself grateful that it wasn’t frozen. “I don’t suppose you packed any food in there.”

“Uh.” MacGyver looked sheepish.

“Next time I get a say in the emergency kit,” Jack said.

“You did have a say,” MacGyver retorted. “You brought the water.”

“Oh, goody for me.” The snow was starting to leak into his boots, and Jack wiggled his toes experimentally between steps. His feet were cold, but not quite freezing; given that they’d just started walking, he didn’t have high hopes for keeping his extremities intact for an extended period of time. “You warm enough?”

“Huh?” MacGyver blinked at him.

“Your feet. And hands. Wiggle your toes when you walk.” The look MacGyver gave him clearly said he thought Jack was concussed and disoriented. “Keeps your blood moving,” Jack clarified.

“Right,” MacGyver muttered, but he didn’t protest. Jack couldn’t be sure he was following directions, either.

The overcast sky made telling direction difficult, which would have been more of a problem if Jack had had any idea what direction they were supposed to be going in the first place. As it was, he stuck to moving generally downwards in hopes of striking either a road or a stream, and periodically pulled out his cell phone to check reception. Occasionally he got enough to receive texts or notifications of missed calls, but there wasn’t enough to send back confirmation that he and MacGyver were alive.

Between the cell phone checks and keeping MacGyver from tumbling down the sometimes-steep slope, Jack fell into a sort of rhythm. It felt almost surreal, as if he’d been walking down the same hill for the entirety of his life and would continue to do so forever.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” MacGyver asked at one point, when Jack stopped again to check the phone, and that snapped Jack out of his half-daze.

“What?” For the first time, he checked the clock on the phone and was surprised to see they’d been walking most of the morning. He turned around to see if he could tell how far they’d come, but there was just a trail of broken snow leading in a more or less straight line through the trees. “I just figure we’ll hit some kind of landmark if we go down far enough.”

“Mountain’s gotta end at some point,” MacGyver said, which uncannily echoed Jack’s own thought process. He took the phone out of Jack’s hand and fiddled with the antenna, producing no apparent results beyond tapping at the screen a few times before frowning at it. Instead of handing the phone back to Jack, he put it in his own pocket. “Right?”

Jack opened his mouth to demand his phone back, but something glinted in the trees behind them and he acted without thinking. “Move!” he barked, grabbing MacGyver and shoving him downwards just as a sharp sound echoed in his ears. He recognized the sound of gunfire a few seconds later, as the second shot rang out, but by that point he was already running.

The air was harsh against his throat, his heart beating hard against his chest. Jack kept one hand firmly gripping MacGyver’s coat, the hardness of the plastic duffel strap digging into his palm, and pushed the other man in front of him. The two of them together were an easier target than if they’d separated, but he knew in the pit of his stomach that if they two of them split up, one of them would end up dead and he was terrified that it would be MacGyver. “Don’t stop,” he snapped when MacGyver slowed down, and the kid kept moving.

Jack glanced over his shoulder, the brief glimpse showing him nothing, and narrowly missed bouncing off a snow-covered tree when he looked back. The snow gave way beneath his boots as his feet pounded the ground, and he slipped. MacGyver’s coat jerked out of his hand, but the kid yanked him back on his feet just as the third shot buried itself in a tree just where Jack’s head would have been.

“Cover,” MacGyver gasped, and Jack ran faster. The trees around them were nothing but bare trunks, starkly beautiful and utterly useless. He ducked around them, MacGyver now a few feet away.

“Left,” Jack said, and MacGyver changed directions mid-stride. The snow had drifted against something, and Jack nearly turned his ankle when he followed MacGyver behind it and found the edge of a solidly frozen stream. MacGyver was flat on the ground, digging furiously through the duffel bag. Jack skidded to a halt next to him, reaching inside his coat for the pistol.  “How much ammo we got?”

“No extra,” MacGyver said, and ducked as another shot scattered snow into the streambed.

Jack cursed, checking the clip. He was going to have to make every shot count; the clip was full, but it was the only one he had. He peered over the edge of the snowbank, carefully, and saw a patch of sky blue poking out from behind a particularly large pine. His shot missed, the patch of sky blue vanishing. “How many you think there are?”

MacGyver threw him an exasperated look and went back to whatever he was doing with the duffle bag and the exhaust pipe he had somehow managed not to let go of. Jack left him to it, looking around the edge of the snowbank again. Three shots rang out in quick succession, the bullets buried in the rock just below the surface of the snow, and Jack ducked back.

“Are you doing anything useful?” he asked.

“I’m always doing something useful,” MacGyver said. Jack glanced at the pipe, getting a vague impression of one end of it having been sealed off. MacGyver was stuffing something into the open end.

“Of course you are,” Jack muttered. The patch of sky blue had migrated closer while he wasn’t looking, but it was more exposed than it had been the last time. Jack aimed carefully and was rewarded with a sudden jerk and their pursuer dropping out of sight.

“Jack, move back.”

“What?” Jack glanced behind him. MacGyver had planted the end of the midpipe firmly in the ground, anchoring it against the side of the streambed, and covered it with his jacket. The arms of the jacket stood out, with the tip of a stick poking out of one wrist telling Jack how MacGyver had gotten it to look semi-human. MacGyver was holding a lighter in one hand, and the end of what might have been a wet shoelace trailing out of the top end of his contraption in the other. He’d strapped the duffel bag across his torso again, which had the ludicrous effect of making him look like a hiker who had no idea what he was doing.

“I don’t know how well this is going to work,” MacGyver said, which was exactly the opposite of an explanation.

“I’m not moving back until you do,” Jack said.

“Jack!” MacGyver’s furious expression would have been more effective if he hadn’t been shivering, the scarf and gloves he was still wearing providing no protection from the cold.

“I mean it.” Jack’s words were punctuated by their pursuer firing again, and MacGyver lit the end of his makeshift fuse with a muttered curse under his breath. The string caught and burned with alacrity, far faster than Jack would have expected.

“Now!” MacGyver all but dragged Jack away, running flat out down the slope. Momentum and gravity propelled Jack faster, MacGyver’s grip painful on his upper arm, but they hadn’t been moving for more than a few seconds when a roar behind them turned into a blast of hot and almost solid air. Jack lost his footing, tumbling downwards and taking MacGyver with him. Sky and snow, almost impossible to tell apart, blurred together in a sickening sense of motion until he slid to a stop in what he could only describe as a ditch. Something heavy hit him a few seconds later, driving the breath out of his lungs entirely.

It seemed like an eternity before Jack’s chest unlocked and he sucked in a breath of cold air. The scent of smoke and pine was the scent of life itself, as far as Jack was concerned. The weight against his chest hadn’t moved, although it was shaking. “Mac?” he asked.

“Yeah,” came the reply.

“You okay?” Jack couldn’t feel anything broken; he felt as though he’d been scraped raw, but he was fairly sure he was in one piece. He wormed his way out from underneath MacGyver, who was breathing heavily.

“I think so,” MacGyver said after a minute, and Jack helped him sit up. The kid was soaked, or would be once the snow caking his shirt melted. Jack tried to brush it off, but it was a lost cause. He stripped off his own jacket and wrapped it around the other man. “No,” MacGyver protested.

“You’re going to freeze to death,” Jack said.

“You won’t?” MacGyver retorted.

“I’m not wet,” Jack said. Given how hard MacGyver was shivering already, Jack was surprised that MacGyver still tried to refuse the coat. “You’re going to wear that, and you’re going to like it,” he said sharply. “You’re not dying on my watch.”

“I’m not dying,” MacGyver said, but he at least stopped fighting the coat.

“What was that?” Jack asked, by way of distraction. MacGyver was shivering a little less, and he had pulled the jacket tightly around his torso.

“Couple of road flares,” MacGyver said. “Lighter fluid. Shoelace. Some rocks.”

“Remind me never to piss you off,” Jack said lightly. From MacGyver’s stricken look, he wasn’t taking it as the joke Jack had intended. Jack stood and offered a hand to MacGyver, pulling him to his feet. The much-abused strap on the duffel bag broke, leaving the bag on the ground. “There’s another good thing,” Jack said.

“What?” MacGyver asked, finally putting his arms through the sleeves. The wind was driving straight through Jack’s sweater and his two layers of undershirts; he didn’t even want to think about how it would have felt were his clothes less than bone dry.

“We found the road,” Jack said, gesturing behind him. They’d literally fallen straight into a drainage ditch. “Pick a direction.”

That brief moment of hope was, of course, when everything went horribly wrong. A sharp noise echoed through the hills above them, and Jack felt a sharp pain in his side.

A man wearing a sky blue parka stepped out from the trees, aiming a revolver in one hand. “If you move, I shoot again,” he said. “Put your weapons down.”

“We don’t have any,” Jack heard MacGyver say. He staggered, his knees hitting the snow, and only MacGyver kept him the rest of the way upright. Pain started pulsing, hot and bright against his ribs, and Jack pressed his hand against his side. It was wet.

“You shot me,” said the stranger, and the words sounded like they were echoing down a tunnel. Jack focused with an effort, and the world fell back into place. It wavered a little at the edges, but he thought he had a solid handle on the center.

“And then the mountain blew up and I dropped my gun,” he retorted, pleased that his voice came out fairly steady.

“I know you have more,” said the stranger. “You’re Jack Dalton. You always have a backup.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Jack had no idea whether or not he should recognize their pursuer at all; MacGyver didn’t seem to know him, or at least hadn’t said anything that indicated he knew who it was.

“Don’t bullshit me!” the stranger spat. His left arm was tucked against his side, a dark patch on his parka on the outside of his arm. “You know exactly who I am.”

“I really don’t,” Jack said. He pushed carefully against his side. He didn’t think he was leaking too badly, all things considered, and if he could keep their pursuer talking, either he or MacGyver would be able to come up with a plan. He shifted, getting one foot underneath him in preparation to stand.

“You asshole!” the stranger shouted, and charged toward them. Jack threw himself between MacGyver and the stranger, keeping as low to the ground as he could as he heard the stranger’s gun ring out over and over. He hit the stranger’s chest with his shoulder, the shock reverberating through him and sparking agony in his side. The stranger went down and Jack reached for his weapon with blood-slick hands. The next few seconds were a blur, and all he ever remembered was getting his fingers around something hard and metallic before a final report sounded and the stranger went still.

“Jack!” The ringing in his ears finally resolved itself into MacGyver, stupidly right behind Jack when Jack had been desperately trying to keep him out of the line of fire, pulling Jack off of what was unquestionably a dead man.

Jack discovered that the wind did, in fact, cut right through his clothes when they were wet. It was unpleasant.

“Jack,” MacGyver said again, and with some difficulty, Jack focused on MacGyver’s face. Warm hands were on both sides of his jaw, and MacGyver’s incredibly blue eyes were a bare few inches from his own. Jack blinked.

“I can see you,” he said. “Get off me.”

“You’re alive,” MacGyver said, and took Jack’s coat right back off, after all the trouble Jack had gone through to make him put it on in the first place.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said.

“Shut up, Jack.” MacGyver draped the coat over him and vanished for a moment. Jack tried to sit up, but the attempt at motion made the sky spin sickeningly above him and he gave up. The ground was freezing, but it was better than the inevitable nausea. His heart hammered madly against his ribs, a solid argument for staying put if he’d ever heard one. MacGyver reappeared, doing something around Jack’s ribs. “I need you to get up,” MacGyver said, and Jack groaned.

“This sucks,” he said, but he let MacGyver pull him upright. The bandage over the hole in his side was clumsy and tight, but he felt less like he was going to pass out and slightly more ready to try standing. “And you’re supposed to wear the jacket,” he added.

“Don’t start with me,” MacGyver said. Jack tried to glare at him; from the way MacGyver calmly returned the look, it was not going well. “I’m not leaving you here and going for help, either,” MacGyver said, forestalling the question Jack hadn’t been about to ask.

“Oh, good,” Jack said. “We can both stay here and freeze to death.” He paused. “I might bleed to death first.” It was possible that he wasn’t entirely lucid.

“You’re not going to die.” MacGyver’s mouth settled into a hard line. “On your feet, Jack.”

“Bossy little thing, aren’t you,” Jack said.

“Stop stalling.” MacGyver slid an arm under Jack’s shoulders, both warm through the wet fabric and cold where the snowmelt pressed against Jack’s skin.

Somewhat to Jack’s surprise, he made it to his feet. His vision whited out for a brief moment, and he was leaning heavily on MacGyver, but he was vertical. “Onward,” he said. It didn’t sound right. The slight rise up to the road itself proved to be almost too much, but the sensation of pavement beneath Jack’s feet was more than enough to give him a new burst of strength. “Which way?” he asked. Those words, at least, came out a little clearer.

“I forgot something,” MacGyver said, and detached himself. Jack wrapped his arms around himself. The few seconds until MacGyver bounded back onto the street with the remains of the duffle bag looped around one arm seemed like an eternity, the brief boost Jack had thought he’d felt fading with stunning rapidity. “Okay,” MacGyver said.

“Okay.” Jack didn’t think he was going to make it very far, but he wasn’t about to give up. One arm over MacGyver’s shoulders, he took the first hesitant step, and then the second. The third was a little tricky, but the fourth went okay. His heart seemed to calm down, the pounding less fierce. For a few seconds, Jack thought he might make it off the mountain after all. His knees had other ideas, giving way and sending him in a slow and graceless slide downwards.

“Come on, Jack.” MacGyver was on his knees beside him.

Jack shook his head mutely, unable to catch his breath. His side felt warm, which he vaguely knew was a bad sign, especially when the rest of him was freezing. “Go get help,” he said, and he had enough air to speak after all.

“I’m not leaving you here,” MacGyver said again. He had one hand against Jack’s side, which seemed like it should have hurt, but all Jack felt was the sensation of pressure.

“Yes, you are.” Jack pushed MacGyver away, or tried to – it was like shoving a granite cliff for all the good it did. He wanted to tell MacGyver that he knew he’d come back for him, that he wanted MacGyver to stay safe, that nothing that had happened over the past day and a half was MacGyver’s fault, but he’d apparently used all the words he had.

“I’m not leaving you. I love you.”

* * *

For a moment, MacGyver wasn’t sure Jack had even heard him. The other man was pale, his eyes not quite focused; then he raised them to look directly at MacGyver. “Is that how it is with us?” he asked softly, an expression of dawning comprehension spreading over his face.

MacGyver shook his head miserably. “I… I never told you,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d want that. From me.”

“Picked a hell of a time.” Jack’s shoulder’s shook, and it took MacGyver several seconds to figure out that Jack was laughing.

Anything MacGyver might have said in response was forestalled by the sound of sirens approaching. The text he’d tried to send from Jack’s phone had gone through after all.

“Cavalry’s coming,” Jack said, and grinned.

The cavalry consisted of an ambulance and a veritable army of squad cars, along with both Thornton and Riley. MacGyver found himself pulled unceremoniously away from Jack and given a cursory check for injury before being given a blanket while Jack was loaded into the back of said ambulance. He pulled the blanket around himself, shivering almost too hard to speak now that help had arrived, and tried to answer the many, many questions.

Eventually Thornton stalked off to handle the authorities, while Riley hovered just out of arm’s reach. “You okay?” she finally asked, when the circus had started to subside and MacGyver had withdrawn into the back seat of Thornton’s rented car.

“That depends on your definition of okay,” MacGyver said, which made Riley look so alarmed that he backpedaled almost immediately. “I’m fine. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, well, boss wants me to take you to the ER too, just in case.” Riley waited for his nod before shutting the door and climbing into the driver’s seat.

“What, you don’t trust me to look after myself?” MacGyver said without thinking, and Riley twisted around.

“I leave you both alone for two days, Jack gets shot, and you end up with hypothermia. Definitely not.” She started the car and shifted it into gear savagely, the car fishtailing slightly before the tires gripped the road.

“I was kidding,” MacGyver muttered. She did not appear to hear him, for which he was immensely grateful.

The experience in the ER was not one MacGyver wanted to repeat; when he emerged from the examination room wearing a set of clean and dry scrubs and his own boots - the only pieces of his clothing he’d managed to retain – Riley was leaning on a wall, arms crossed. “Well?” she said.

“Try to stay out of the cold,” MacGyver said. He’d been pronounced probably healthy and told to take it easy over the next few days, particularly given his recent history of illness. He’d been instructed to visit his own doctor at home if he experienced a relapse, which he had no intention of doing. Nor did it seem like vital information to pass onwards. “Drink warm liquids.”

“Coffee down the hall,” Riley said. She tucked her hands under her arms and stood up straight.

“How’s Jack?” MacGyver asked, falling in beside her as she started down the hallway.

“Don’t know,” she said. “Apparently there’s a list of people who get to ask questions, and I’m not on it.”

“Do you know where he is?” Riley shook her head. MacGyver went off to find someone to ask, which proved to be a moderately daunting task. He would have thought a hospital would be better organized, but it took him longer than he wanted to find something resembling reception and someone willing to talk to him. “I’m looking for Jack Dalton,” he said, when he finally got a human being’s attention.

The receptionist – or nurse, he wasn’t entirely sure – eyed him dubiously and asked for his name and identification. His wallet provoked an even more dubious reaction when he pulled it out; it had been soaked and singed, but his driver’s license was still intact. “Mr. MacGyver,” said the receptionist, and after a few minutes on her computer, her demeanor thawed markedly. “Mr. Dalton has authorized you to receive information regarding his care.”

“How?” Riley demanded over MacGyver’s attempt to say Just call me Mac. “He’s never been here.”

“Same hospital system as Mr. Dalton’s primary care provider,” the receptionist said. “His electronic records are accessible here.”

“Is he okay?” MacGyver asked, shooting Riley a look.

“He’s out of surgery and in the recovery unit. If you’d like to wait over there, I’ll make sure someone comes to get you when he can have visitors.”

“Hurry up and wait,” Riley grumbled. MacGyver thanked the receptionist and pulled Riley into the waiting area.

“You’re jumpy,” he said. “I might almost think you’re worried about Jack.”

“Of course I’m worried about Jack,” Riley said. “He might be an asshole, but he’s our asshole. Besides, you like him.”

“I’m touched,” MacGyver said drily.

“I’ll get you some coffee,” Riley said, and vanished before he could say anything else.

It seemed like a minor eternity before MacGyver finally got permission to see Jack; Thornton had called with instructions for Riley to return to Los Angeles, with MacGyver to follow as soon as possible, which meant Riley got to go in first. By the time MacGyver went in, Jack looked somewhat less than entirely alert.

“Hi,” MacGyver said, suddenly awkward in the face of his confession and the fact that Jack now knew MacGyver had been pining over him like a teenager.

“Hey,” Jack said, and grinned at him. “I hear we ran down a mountain.”

MacGyver blinked. “You don’t remember?”

“Last thing I remember is running outta that building,” Jack said. “Which I am told blew up. I thought you were gonna stop that bomb.”

“You – you don’t remember anything else?” There was a chair next to the bed, and MacGyver sat down in it.

Jack shook his head slowly.

“But you remember everything else,” MacGyver pressed, and Jack gave him a funny look.

“It might be the drugs talking, but you kind of sound like you’re not making any sense.”

“You know who you are,” MacGyver said. “You know who I am.”

“Of course I know who you are.” Jack waved a hand in front of his face and then held up three fingers. “How many?”

“I’m not the one with a concussion,” MacGyver said.

“Just checking.” Jack dropped his hand back onto the blanket. “So what happened after your bomb went off?”

“It wasn’t my bomb,” MacGyver said. “I told you I couldn’t stop it. Just slow it down.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jack waved his free hand impatiently.

“You really don’t remember anything?”

“What I know,” Jack said, “is that somehow we went from a trap to halfway down the mountain, and I got shot in the process. I don’t like getting shot, Mac. I at least want a good story to tell about the scar.”

“Not much to tell,” MacGyver said after a long moment of silence. “We got chased down the mountain by some guy who had it in for you. He got real pissed when you didn’t recognize him. Took a couple of potshots. You saved my life.”

“And you say there’s not much to tell.” Jack eyed him as though he knew MacGyver was holding something back. “I get shot before or after saving your life?”

“Before.” Jack’s gaze was too hard to meet, and MacGyver glanced around the room, not really seeing it.

“Think I still owe you a few, though,” Jack said.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“Now that hurts my feelings, Mac.” Jack sounded like he was joking, but when MacGyver finally looked back at him, the expression on Jack’s face made him pause. “I’m going to think you don’t value my contributions to this outfit.”

“You’re definitely on the good stuff,” MacGyver said.

“When are we heading back to L.A.?” Jack asked, letting him change the subject.

“Thornton wants Riley on a plane an hour ago, and me fifteen minutes after that.” MacGyver ran a hand through his hair. It desperately needed washing. “You get to stay here until you’re okay to fly.”

“Oh, screw that.” Jack made a face. “That’ll take days. I don’t want to be stuck in Denver for days. I don’t remember being here for more than a few hours and that’s already long enough.”

“You’re going to be in here for a couple days at least,” MacGyver reminded him.

“Who told you that?” Jack looked extremely put out, and MacGyver had to smile.

“You put me on a list of people who get information about you,” he said. “Riley’s pissed that she’s not on it.”

“I forgot about that,” Jack said, and then, “No, Mac, I’m not taking you off the list, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Right.” That was something Jack had done while he had no memory at all, too; he’d answered MacGyver’s questions before they were asked. “Maybe they’ll let me drive you back.”

“Given a choice,” Jack said, “I’d rather be stuck in a car with you than stuck in Denver.”

“Oh, thank you.” The rhythm they’d always had was back, easy as breathing, and if MacGyver felt a twinge that his one-sided crush was going to remain a one-sided crush, it was worth it if it meant he still got to keep Jack as a friend.

Chapter Text

“Jack crashed,” Bozer said flatly, audible over the speaker phone.

“Yeah.” MacGyver adjusted the volume slightly and put the phone on the dashboard.

“In Denver.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re still driving back.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me again why you couldn’t just get on a plane?”

“Jack’s not allowed to fly.”

“Because his insides were nearly on his outsides.” Bozer was beginning to sound like he had after the incident in May with Nikki, when MacGyver had turned up with a partially-healed hole in his chest after an unexplained absence. MacGyver opened his mouth to deflect.

“Hey, all my bleeding was internal,” Jack interjected, cutting him off. “That’s where the blood’s supposed to be.”

“No, it wasn’t. You bled all over me,” MacGyver said to Jack.

“I am not liking the way this conversation is going, Mac.” Bozer had not been distracted in the slightest.

“Sorry.”

“No, you should be sorry for not calling me earlier. I’m supposed to be your best friend. You live with me. I worry when you don’t come home.”

“And I should tell you when I’m in an accident.”

“Yes. I’m hurt, Mac.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll forgive you.” Bozer paused, the silence ominous. “This time.”

“Thanks.”

“When are you guys getting back?”

“Uh, we’re almost at Jack’s place.”

“You drove most of the way from Colorado to California before you called me?”

“I said I was sorry!” The guilt at lying to his best friend – at using his best friend, constantly, as a cover – made his voice sharper.

“Wait, did you say Jack’s place?” Bozer didn’t seem to have noticed; he had apparently shifted gears entirely. “You can’t leave him alone over there.”

“Uh,” MacGyver started.

“Yes, he can.”

“Shut up, Jack.”

“Don’t make me use the mom voice,” Bozer said, interrupting both of them.

“Wait, the what?” Jack, not having grown up with Bozer, was unfamiliar with Bozer’s uncanny impression of his extremely formidable mother.

“So help me, Angus MacGyver, Jack Dalton –“

MacGyver winced. “Okay, okay, I won’t leave him alone, I’ll bring him home, don’t use the voice.”

“That’s better.”

Jack, leaning as far away from the phone as he could get without actually climbing out of the speeding car, had the same reaction. “Your friend is scary, Mac,” he said, stabbing a finger toward the phone.

“You know you didn’t hang up, right? I can still hear you.”

“Uh, we’ll be home soon. See you, Bozer.”

Chapter Text

Jack watched MacGyver out of the corner of his eye as he ended the call. The original plan had been for MacGyver to drop Jack off at home and check on him the following morning, but Jack wasn’t going to pretend to be disappointed not to be alone. The hospital, for all its lack of privacy, had been lonely.

“You want me to drive?” Jack asked.

“No,” MacGyver said. He looked exhausted, sitting as though the seat back was the only thing holding him upright. It might have been, for all Jack knew. What should have been a fifteen hour trip had taken closer to twenty-four, as they’d stopped for the night halfway through the drive. Jack had insisted on the break, although he honestly felt pretty good for someone who’d had a bullet lodged in his liver four days before. MacGyver had been the one who’d looked like he was ready to drop, leading Jack to suspect his partner hadn’t been at a hundred percent before they’d started their alleged cake walk in the Rockies, never mind the harrowing two days they’d apparently spent in the mountains.

MacGyver hadn’t let him near the wheel, though. Jack fidgeted in the passenger seat, poking at the edge of the bandage just below his ribs.

“Stop that,” MacGyver said.

“I’m not doing anything,” Jack said, but he put his hand down anyway. Something indefinable had changed while they were up on that mountain; MacGyver had acted so strangely when Jack had first seen him in the hospital that Jack was sure he’d said something to drive him away. He didn’t know what had happened during those two days, but if he’d had to, he would have guessed that something about this particular near-death situation had dragged an admission out of him he had promised never to make.

The problem wasn’t that MacGyver was a man; Jack had found peace with his sexuality and his identity a long time ago – it was a part of who he was, even if the part that was the most public was the part most acceptable to society at large. It wasn’t that they worked together, or that the DXS-turned-Phoenix-Foundation had regulations regarding fraternization among its agents; it was frowned on, but not actively discouraged, and Jack had been working successfully with MacGyver for years now. It wasn’t even MacGyver’s history which, as far as Jack knew, was exclusively with women; Jack didn’t think his friend was the kind of person who would react poorly to same-sex interest.

No, the problem as Jack saw it was that MacGyver might not react poorly. It was the possibility, however slim, that MacGyver might return his feelings that drove Jack to push what he could only describe as a crush as far down as possible. MacGyver deserved better than someone twice his age with Jack’s dubious past. He deserved better than the limitations that would eventually rear their ugly heads. And if Jack were to be completely honest with himself, which he tried very hard not to do, he was afraid MacGyver wouldn’t react poorly or with reciprocation, but with a slow and subtle distancing that would end with the loss of one of the people Jack cared about the most.

The awkwardness when MacGyver had first shown up in the hospital had made Jack afraid that he had, in fact, told MacGyver how he felt and that it was this third reaction that was now taking place. MacGyver had relaxed a few moments into the conversation, though, and Jack thought maybe he hadn’t said anything after all, and that his secret was safe.

Going down that particular train of thought made Jack feel like a voyeur, or a stalker, lurking around his object of affection in a peculiar invasion of privacy and personal space, which was why he tried not to. MacGyver was his friend, unrequited juvenile crush notwithstanding, and that was all he was ever going to be.

“Are you listening to me?” Jack heard MacGyver say, and had to admit that he had not, in fact, been listening to a word the other man had said over the past eight miles. The look of fond exasperation MacGyver threw at him was sweet and painful, and Jack swallowed heavily. He’d made it this far, and he wasn’t about to screw up now.

Chapter Text

Ten Days Later

“There’s a catch,” Jack said. “There’s always a catch.”

Thornton threw her hands in the air. Riley didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone actually do that before, but there it was. “There’s no catch.”

“You want us to spend three days in Miami.” Jack folded his arms, one foot tapping at the floor. Jack fidgeting was profoundly unnerving, Riley found. Jack didn’t fidget. MacGyver was supposed to be the one fidgeting; instead, he was sitting at the other end of the couch, hands resting on his thighs, not fidgeting at all. She didn’t like it.

“Two and a half,” Thornton countered.

“Doing team-building exercises,” Jack said, raising his hands to make air quotes.

“Yes.” Thornton met his gaze, unblinking, perfectly steady, the very picture of honesty and sincerity. “You’ve all been off since Denver.”

“I haven’t been off,” Riley muttered. She was perfectly fine, thank you. She’d been the one to figure out that the Phoenix Foundation machinery had been infected and that they’d sent two of their agents into a trap, and she’d done it without outside prompting. The idea, however, that she might not have idly decided to start poking around and simply gone home instead made her blood run cold if she thought about it. Pure chance had led to her discovery – well, not pure chance; pure chance had led to her deciding to exercise her very sharp skills, which had led to the virus.

“You’ve lost focus,” Thornton said, and that was just mean. She hadn’t pointed out anyone else’s specific problems in front of the rest of the team.

“I’m not unfocused,” Riley said.

“You’re so worried that you might miss something that you’re not going to see the obvious,” Thornton said, and there was an edge in her voice that might have been compassion and might have been derision, but either way Riley hated it.

“Whatever,” she said, because she was not going to be the person who started screaming at her boss. She had more self-control than that.

“Your plane leaves in two hours,” Thornton said, as if she hadn’t heard Riley. “It’s a commercial flight, so I suggest you get to the airport. Your itineraries have been emailed to you, and a rental car is waiting in Miami International.”

“You mean you were serious about bringing an overnight bag?” Riley blinked. She’d thought it was some sort of a prank, an attempt to demonstrate a sense of humor, when everyone knew Patricia Thornton had none.

“Such a sweet summer child,” Jack said, lifting a canvas bag from next to the couch. MacGyver held up a messenger bag, and the two of them gave her identical sympathetic smiles. Then MacGyver glanced at Jack, Jack saw him looking, and the smiles vanished.

“O-kay,” Riley said. “I’ll just buy whatever I need. And I’m driving.”

“You’re not driving,” Jack said. “MacGyver’s driving.”

“Sure,” MacGyver said, and stood. “We’ll make it through security on time if we leave now.”

The security checkpoint proved to be what almost made them miss the flight; while Jack had checked his bag, which included what he apparently considered a reasonable amount of firepower, MacGyver elected to carry his on board. The TSA official did not consider his Swiss army knife appropriate to bring on board the aircraft, particularly not after the lengthy inspection of Jack’s luggage.

MacGyver finally let the airport check his bag with ill grace, the Swiss army knife secured in one of its many pockets. The only things in his pockets when security finally cleared him were his keys and his cell phone. The fact that Riley had no luggage at all only made the TSA agents side-eye the group harder, no matter how often she explained that she’d had no warning of the trip. The paperclips she’d pocketed in the office were very nearly a point of contention, after her traveling companions, but they finally made it into the airport proper as the first call for their flight boarding sounded over the loudspeakers.

“Aren’t you guys technically government agents?” Riley asked MacGyver as they rapidly walked toward their gate. “Doesn’t that get you a pass?”

MacGyver shrugged. “It’s the TSA,” he said, as if that were some sort of explanation. It might have been.

Boarding call or no boarding call, Riley wasn’t going to spend five hours on a plane with nothing to pretend to look at. She ducked into one of the ubiquitous newspaper stands and emerged with a paperback that promised to be thrilling and full of twists and unexpected turns. Something weird had happened to both of her teammates on that mountain, no matter how much they weren’t going to talk about it, and she was not about to get in the middle of it. She also wasn’t going to spend the trip staring awkwardly at either one of them while trying to make small talk.

She jogged to catch up with the two of them, who were apparently so busy ignoring each other that neither of them had noticed that she’d vanished. Riley watched both of them blink in surprise and concluded that Thornton might possibly have been onto something with this team-building exercise nonsense after all; the three of them couldn’t function as a field unit if they didn’t notice when someone went missing.

Despite her newfound appreciation for the not-a-mission, Riley still spent the flight staring at her book. It was not, in fact, thrilling; it was the most poorly written piece of trash she’d ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. It was also implausible and full of awful techno-babble that made no sense whatsoever. It was still preferable to talking to Jack, who restlessly paged through every magazine in front of them, put them back, and then started all over again, or staring at MacGyver, who slept through the entire flight. Or pretended to sleep. She wasn’t sure.

“How did I end up in the middle, anyway,” she muttered.

“What?” Jack asked, removing one of his earbuds. She hadn’t seen him put them in.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Hey, Riley.” Jack twisted the cord around his fingers. “I never thanked you.”

She frowned. “For what?”

“For whatever it was you did that got the cavalry to us in time.”

Riley could feel herself flushing. “It was nothing,” she said. “Really.”

“No, it was.” Jack twisted around, facing her straight on, and finally not fidgeting. His unwavering attention was somehow worse. “I would have died up there, if you hadn’t got there when you did. Thank you.”

“Mac would have gotten you out,” Riley said. “Or Thornton would have sent someone, once you guys missed the check-in. Really. I didn’t do anything special.”

Jack regarded her for a moment, face unreadable. “Okay, then,” he said, and sat back in his seat. Earbud firmly in place again, he picked up the same magazine he’d leafed through at least four times and started all over again.

Riley wanted to scream in frustration, and wasn’t sure why.

If the flight had seemed interminable, the wait between touchdown and the cabin doors opening was beyond eternity. MacGyver finally woke – or pretended to – at the bump of wheels hitting pavement, and Jack removed his earbuds for the first time since the ill-fated conversation with Riley. She stuffed the book down in the bottom of the compartment in front of her, realizing it was a mistake only when she had nothing to look at while waiting to disembark.

At least, Riley thought, MacGyver was fidgeting again; he was tapping his long fingers against his knees and the plane window. She wasn’t sure whether she welcomed the return to form or would be driven to distraction by the repetitive noises.

“Here.” She grabbed his hand and put a paperclip in it.

“Thanks,” he said, looking surprised.

“Sure.”

By the time Riley climbed into the aisle and made her slow way out of the plane, she felt ready to crawl out of her own skin. Turning her phone back on just reminded her that Thornton had sent them with an assignment disguised as an itinerary and a plan, and also that she had no toothbrush.

“We go shopping first,” she said, not directing her words to either of her traveling companions in particular.

“Yeah, okay,” Jack said.

MacGyver snapped his mouth shut.

The baggage claim didn’t change the trend of minor irritations; Jack’s bag showed up almost immediately, following the principle of last-on-first-off, but MacGyver’s didn’t appear to have made it onto the plane at all. He stalked off to argue with the staff at the airline counter while Jack swung his own bag over his shoulder.

“Should have just checked it to begin with,” Jack said. Riley shrugged. She wasn’t going to offer an opinion either way.

MacGyver returned, looking angrier than Riley had ever seen him. “They’re going to deliver it to the hotel tomorrow morning,” he said in a mild voice that didn’t match his demeanor at all.

“We’ll just get you a toothbrush, too,” Riley said, which didn’t appear to help. MacGyver made an obvious effort to answer politely. Riley made the decision at that moment not to let either of the men annoy her with their irrationality, because it would only lead to her spending three days in a state of continuous agitation.

Her resolution was put to the test when both Jack and MacGyver balked at the hotel reservations; Thornton had put both of them in the same room, with Riley in a single. It made sense, on the surface, but both of the other two immediately started trying to add a third room. Thornton having picked a reasonably popular facility during a relatively high-traffic time, there were no other rooms to reserve.

“You’ve shared space before,” Riley said, which led to glaring and silence in stereo, and Riley finally found herself sharing the double room with MacGyver just to preserve some sense of peace. She opted to shop for necessities alone, snagging the keys out of MacGyver’s pocket and making off with the rental car before either of the other two had gotten situated.

Because she was such a thoughtful person, Riley returned to the hotel with not only changes of clothes and basic toiletries for herself, but clean underwear, a toothbrush, and a box of paperclips for MacGyver. She half-expected the building to be on fire when she pulled into the parking lot, but there was a marked absence of emergency vehicles on the premises. Deciding to take that as a good sign, she let herself into the room and dropped MacGyver’s bag on the bed closest to the door. MacGyver himself was nowhere to be seen, but she could hear the shower running. Given the heat and humidity despite the season, Riley felt a certain amount of sympathy.

Leaving her bag on the bed near the window, Riley went to knock on Jack’s door.  “You hungry?” she asked when he answered.

“I could eat,” he said.

“Great. We’re getting pizza. And then we’re looking at Thornton’s itinerary.”

“Doesn’t start until tomorrow,” Jack said, and Riley blinked in surprise.

“You already –“ she started.

“Ain’t my first time at a DXS team-building rodeo,” Jack said. “Course, usually there were more than three of us.”

“And here I just thought she sent you to sensitivity training,” Riley said, and was rewarded with the second real smile of the day.

“Wait till she sends you to one of those seminars,” Jack said, and the smile became a grin as Riley snorted in disbelief.

“Please,” she said. “I have more sensitivity in my pinky than you do in your entire body.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Jack said, and the moment was over. There was a slight easing of tension, though, and Riley made her way back to her shared room with a sense of optimism and Jack’s promise to actually order the pizza.

MacGyver was standing with his back to the door, towel around his hips. He turned when Riley let herself in and the towel slid to the floor. Riley clapped a hand over her eyes and fumbled to close the door behind her. “I bought you underwear,” she said, keeping her eyes firmly closed.

“Uh, thanks.” MacGyver sounded less awkward than she felt, although that was a low bar to clear.

“I would have bought you pants, but I’ve seen you wear the same clothes three days in a row without complaining.” Anything to fill the silence.

“No, it’s fine.” Riley heard the sound of crinkling plastic and then cloth. “It’s safe to look,” MacGyver added, and Riley peeked through her fingers.

He still wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he did have pants on. Riley took her hands down and finally moved away from the door. She sat on the chair next to her bed, shaking open the backpack she’d bought and moving her brand-new clothing into it. “So what happened with you and Jack?” she asked, trying to sound conversational.

“What do you mean?” MacGyver paused in the act of pulling on his shirt, leaving the lower half of his face covered and his words muffled. He pulled the shirt the rest of the way down, tugging it into place with more energy than the action warranted.

“You guys are acting weird.” Riley watched MacGyver out of the corner of her eye, ostensibly focused on finding and removing tags. “Since Denver,” she added, echoing Thornton involuntarily.

“Nothing happened,” MacGyver said, but he wasn’t looking at her either.

“You’re acting like something did,” Riley said. “Unless something happened while Jack was staying with you and Bozer. After being shot.”

MacGyver twitched, and Riley’s head snapped up to look at him directly.

“Something did happen,” she said.

“I – no,” MacGyver said. “Stop asking, Riley.”

“Oh my god, what did you do to each other?”

“Nothing!” MacGyver snapped, and then ran both hands through his hair. “I – I’ll be back later.”

“Jack’s getting pizza,” Riley said, but it was too late. MacGyver was already out the door. “That went less than well,” she said to the empty room. “And now I’m sitting here. Talking. To myself.” Oh, yes, this team-building retreat was going spectacularly well.

Although Jack had memorized the itinerary for the two days they were to spend in Miami, Riley had barely glanced at it, and MacGyver hadn’t looked at it at all; Riley discovered her teammate’s delinquency when he looked at his phone over the hotel breakfast, narrowed his eyes at it, and said, “No.”

“No, what?” Riley asked. Jack had been leaving the small common area as she and MacGyver had walked in, carrying a paper cup of presumably coffee.

“This is ridiculous,” MacGyver said.

“What is?” Riley pulled the screen down to where she could see it. “Thinking like a team?” she read.

“It’s four hours of wasted time.” The corners of MacGyver’s mouth were pulled down, and it looked so wrong on him that Riley found herself wanting to give him a hug if it would make him stop frowning. She squashed the impulse.

“It’s mostly building a car out of the material on hand,” Riley said, reading the description. “It’s creatively making things. You like creatively making things.”

“It’s ridiculous,” MacGyver said. “I’m not doing it.”

“I would have expected that out of Jack, not you,” Riley said.

“And since when are you all gung-ho teamwork?” MacGyver retorted.

Riley pulled back, stung. “Well, screw you, too,” she said, and got up to leave, ignoring MacGyver’s call for her to wait.

The conference, such as it was, was being held in the same hotel where they were staying, meaning she had about a fifty-foot trip to make to participate in the seminar and a solid thirty minutes to make it in. Riley opted to detour outside; the hotel was on a beach, and she took off her shoes to walk through the sand. A sign fifteen feet down the beach warning visitors not to swim due to the presence of alligators drove her to put her shoes back on and curse Miami’s swampy ecosystem.

“They don’t come out here much,” came a familiar voice. Riley turned to see Jack standing under the shade of a nearby almost-palm tree and wearing sunglasses to block the light that wasn’t hitting his face.

“That’s so reassuring,” she replied. “What are you doing out here?”

Jack held up his cup of coffee. “Thought I’d go for a walk. Then I remembered that I hate swamps.”

Riley, despite her earlier assessment of Miami as one giant swamp, swept a pointed gaze over the dry sand making up the majority of the beach, with no puddles in sight.

Jack shrugged. “Who puts a hotel on a beach you can’t swim on, anyway?” he asked.

“Miami,” Riley answered. She was starting to develop strong opinions about Miami.

“It’s not so bad,” Jack said, and Riley was beginning to think he was actively trying to be contrary.

“So what happened with you and Mac?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Jack asked. His demeanor remained relaxed and casual, but his eyes were guarded. He tilted his head, just enough to hide behind his shades.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Riley said.

“No, Riley, I don’t,” Jack said.

“Oh, for.” Riley all but threw herself onto the sand at the base of Jack’s tree, leaning against it and wishing she had her own sunglasses. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”

“I really don’t know,” Jack said, and he almost sounded contrite. Riley glanced up to see him hesitate and then close his mouth, as though he’d wanted to say something else and then decide not to.

The conference room was full enough when Riley wandered in that she nearly missed MacGyver, sitting alone at one of the many round tables placed at random around the edges of the space. She meandered through the other attendees, dropping into the seat next to MacGyver without a greeting.

“I thought this was a waste of time,” she said when MacGyver didn’t so much as acknowledge her presence.

MacGyver shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, eyes flicking to Riley’s other side.

Riley could see Jack turning a chair around to sit in it backwards out of the corner of her eye. “We could be on a beach right now,” Jack said.

“With the alligators?” Riley asked.

“Thornton wouldn’t have to know,” Jack said.

“She always knows,” MacGyver said, leaning around Riley.

“It’s a team-building exercise. We can team-build on a beach,” Jack argued.

“Surrounded by women in swimsuits,” MacGyver said, and Riley stared at both of them. They were acting as though they hadn’t spent the entire trip down to Miami giving each other the cold shoulder.

“What is happening,” she muttered, and they both turned to look at her simultaneously.

“Field trip,” Jack said, and somehow Riley found herself in the back seat of their rental vehicle while Jack argued with MacGyver about appropriate beach snacks in the front seat.

“Did I miss something?” she asked no one in particular, and seriously considered breaking into both of their phones to see if they’d resolved their argument via text message. Jack braked suddenly on the approach to a red light, and Riley shook her head. It wouldn’t be appropriate to check her teammates’ phones. She slid over to the passenger side and buckled her seat belt; if Jack was going to attempt to toss her around in the back seat, she was going to make sure she stayed put.

“Tell him he’s wrong, Riley,” MacGyver said, and she looked between the two of them.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”

“Licorice –“ MacGyver started.

“Is delicious,” Jack interrupted. The light flicked green, and Jack gave a cursory glance at the mostly empty street before letting off the brake.

“It’s terrible,” MacGyver said. “Tell him.”

“Nope.” Riley shook her head, and the car lurched violently sideways with the sound of breaking glass. Riley had an impression of rapid motion, a second impact, and a sickening tilt before the car righted itself and fell heavily onto all four wheels. She opened her eyes – when had she closed them? – to find herself pressed into the corner between the seat and the door. For some reason, she was trying to press her foot on a brake pedal that wasn’t there. She tried to speak, and nothing came out. Riley swallowed and tried again. “Are you guys okay?” Second time was the charm; her voice came out wavery, but audible.

“Riley?” MacGyver sounded as shaken as she felt. Riley blinked, looking into the front of the car; it looked wrong, full of something white and puffy. She finally reconciled it as the vehicle’s airbags, fully inflated, just as they decompressed again. “Jack?”

“I’m okay,” Jack said.

The windshield was visible now, covered in silver spiderweb cracks. Riley could see smoke coming from under the hood, or maybe steam. She looked to her left, where the rest of the back seat was, and her brain refused to process what wasn’t there. The back of the car was smashed in, most of the seat gone. Glass fell out of her hair, tinkling as it hit the ground. Riley tugged at her seatbelt, which wouldn’t release. “Get me out of here, get me out, get me out get me out-“

“Riley!” MacGyver said sharply, and she closed her mouth. The words she hadn’t realized she’d been speaking cut off abruptly.

“I’m okay,” she said, and Jack handed her a knife. The air bag in front of him was gone as well, or at least deflated.

“Cut the seat belt off,” he said.

Riley didn’t question why Jack had a knife; of course he had something sharp and pointy. The seat belt finally parted, and Riley pushed the door open. It stuck for a moment, but she shoved harder and nearly fell out of the car. Jack was pulling himself out of the window when she looked up, and MacGyver was standing next to her, reaching for the knife she was still holding. He made it vanish somewhere, and Riley took a deep breath.

Sound rushed over her; approaching sirens and car engines, the wind blowing and the drip of fluid coming from the front of their ruined car. For the moment, there were very few other people around.

The vehicle that had hit them was, improbably, an armored truck. Riley thought its engine was still running, its bumper barely dented. As Riley watched, the door opened and a very large man climbed out, all broad shoulders and narrow hips. She looked up, toward his face, and farther up. He was unshaven, with a look she absolutely knew she did not like.

“Hey, man,” Jack said, finally disentangling himself from the ruins of their car. “You okay?”

The truck driver looked wildly from Jack to MacGyver to Riley and back to Jack, and then hit Jack just under the ribs without warning. Jack folded, and the man grabbed him around the throat. Jack struggled briefly, both to breathe and against the restraint, but the man held tighter and Jack grew still. “Into the truck,” the driver said. His hair was unkempt, stray pieces sticking out from underneath a cap.

“Look, we can talk about this,” MacGyver said, moving slowly toward the man with both of his hands clearly visible.

“Into the truck or he dies,” the man said.

“Okay. Okay,” Riley said, and the driver gestured first her and then MacGyver through the driver’s side door into the other side of the cab.

“No, you’re back there.” The driver gestured, and Riley crawled behind the front seats into the small space in the back of the cab. “You’re driving,” the man said, and MacGyver pulled the driver’s side door shut. The man circled the front of the van and pushed Jack, uncoordinated but breathing raggedly, into the vehicle. Riley saw the glint of the muzzle of a gun pressed into Jack’s side. “Drive,” the man said.

“You don’t –“ MacGyver started, but the man did something with his hands and Jack grunted in pain.

“I said drive,” he said, and MacGyver maneuvered the truck around the wreckage of the rental car and back onto the northbound road. The engine coughed a few times and then settled into a rhythm, and Riley could see a speculative expression on MacGyver’s face.

“Where to?” MacGyver asked, and the man shook his head.

“I’ll tell you when to go where.”

Riley shifted, and the man whipped his head around to glare at her. She froze, bringing her hands back into view on top of the seat.

“Your cell phones,” the man said. “Dump them. One at a time. You first.”

Riley reached into her pocket, slowly, sliding the cell phone out. She hit the space at the bottom that said emergency call, but before it connected, the man knocked it out of her hand.

“Next time any of you try anything funny, he dies,” he said, and shoved the phone out the window. “You next.”

“Don’t have a phone,” Jack said. “It was on the dash when you hit us.”

“Don’t lie to me,” the man said.

“It was on the dash,” MacGyver said hurriedly. “He’s not lying.”

“Then dump your phone,” the man said, and MacGyver pulled his phone out and dropped it out the window without further comment. Riley thought she saw the screen lit up as it fell away, but she wasn’t sure.

“Left,” said the man, and they drove right past two squad cars speeding in the direction of the crash with lights and sirens on.

“It’s not going to take long before there’s an APB on this vehicle,” MacGyver said evenly.

“Don’t try and tell me what to do,” the man snapped. “Turn right.”

Riley had a brief moment of hope that Miami traffic, the stuff of nightmares, would work in their favor and trap them in a gridlock, but the highway north was running clear and smooth, and MacGyver accelerated to the speed limit without trouble.

“Are you part of the plan?” the man asked, looking straight at Riley.

“What plan?” Riley said. She shifted again, keeping her hands in full view when the almost inquisitive look turned into a glare again.  

“What plan, she says,” the man sneered. She wasn’t entirely sure he was firing on all cylinders.

“What do you want?” MacGyver asked, still keeping his voice infuriatingly even.

“Why don’t you go into the back of the truck there and tell him what I want,” the man said, nodding at Riley.

The access hatch to the cargo area was unlocked, and Riley opened it slowly and carefully. Any half-formed plans she had had for getting someone’s attention or creating enough of a diversion for Jack and MacGyver to do something faltered once she climbed through the hatch into the well-lit cargo space.

“Why do you have lights back here?” she called back. There was some sort of machinery in the center of the cargo space, none of which looked familiar at first glance. She didn’t like it; there were wires and what might have been an aerosol dispenser. The part that caught her eye most, though, was the remnants of a plaque that had been kicked to the side and wedged against the wheel well. The plaque read “Infectious Substance,” with a note directing the reader to notify the CDC in case of leakage. “Infectious what?”

“Don’t you recognize it?” the man said, and Riley stared at the hatch.

“What is there to recognize? All I see is a bunch of junk, and a very disturbing sign.” She was starting to have an idea of what was in the back of the truck, but she wanted the man to explain things very clearly to all three of them. She didn’t think any of them could afford misconceptions at this point, and this was very much not in her area of expertise.

“Junk?” the man said. “Junk?”

“Riley,” said Jack, “let’s maybe not piss off the man with the gun.” The color had returned to his face during the drive, and his breathing had evened out; if they were going to do anything, Riley thought, it was getting to be the time to do it.

“That,” said the man, “is a very sophisticated delivery system.”

“Looks like a bomb to me,” Riley said.

“It’s not-“ The man paused, visibly composing himself. “It’s not a bomb. It will ensure a very controlled delivery, with even dispersal across the target area.”

Part of the machinery suddenly made more sense as Riley recognized the basic outline. “Is that a drone?” Riley asked in disbelief.

“Of course it’s a drone,” the man snapped.

“Infectious what?” MacGyver repeated Riley’s earlier question. “What are you planning to disperse?”

“No, no, no,” the man said. “We’re not playing that game.” He peered out the windshield. “Get back up here,” he said to Riley, and with one last look at the drone delivery system, she climbed back through the access hatch. “Take this exit.”

They hadn’t left Miami so much as gone around part of it. MacGyver drove the truck through a series of turns; the only way Riley kept any sense of direction at all was by watching the sun, and as far as she could tell they were more or less driving in a series of jagged circles. The man finally directed MacGyver into a parking garage, and then up to the roof.

“Out,” said the driver.

Riley scrambled out through the front seat, following MacGyver.

“I know him,” MacGyver said under his breath, but Riley didn’t have time for more than a second’s worth of reaction before the driver’s barked orders had her moving to open the cargo section of the armored truck. The drone whirred and rose off the bed of the truck, and Riley exchanged glances with MacGyver.

The driver still had Jack within arm’s reach, which Riley figured was his biggest mistake. Jack met her eyes as she slowly circled toward him. When he nodded, ever so slightly, Riley rushed forward. She barreled into the driver, using momentum to her advantage. Her shoulder jarred with the impact and she scrabbled for the driver’s weapon, feeling her nails drag along his shirt.

Riley felt more than saw Jack beside her, driving an elbow into the man’s ribs, and then she felt the cool hardness of his weapon. Gravity tilted sharply as the three of them went down in a heap, and Riley was focused only on smashing their abductor’s hand into the ground until his fingers fell open. She grabbed the gun and scrambled back, and just like that their brief scuffle was over.

“Jack!”

The downside of the current situation was that their abductor still had a solid grip on Jack, and was attempting to use him as a human shield.

“You go right ahead,” Jack said, and Riley frowned.

“You’re not going to shoot him,” their abductor said, and started to move toward the truck.

“Got shot a couple of weeks ago,” Jack said. “One more time ain’t gonna hurt.”

“There is something seriously wrong with you,” their abductor said, and Riley pulled the trigger. She was trying to aim for the outside of Jack’s leg, something she figured wouldn’t either permanently cripple him or kill him outright with massive blood loss, and missed Jack entirely. Their abductor staggered back, red blossoming from his thigh, and his leg gave way.

“What happened to Mac?” Jack pulled out of their abductor’s suddenly weak grasp with no apparent difficulty, although he was moving oddly.

“I don’t know,” Riley said, turning to scan the parking lot. There were few other cars on it, but as far as she could tell, MacGyver was nowhere to be seen. “MacGyver!” she called.

“A little help,” came MacGyver’s strained voice. Riley thought it was coming from the other side of the roof, but she couldn’t see anyone there. Before she could start moving, Jack had taken off at a run.

“Mac!”

The drone, two of its four engines smashed, came sailing over the fence surrounding the roof and skidded along the ground. The remaining two engines whirred and smoked, but the drone itself remained stationary. Riley followed Jack, looking down to see MacGyver clinging with both hands to the bottom of the wrong side of the fence above an eight-story drop.

“Mac,” Jack said, reaching through the fence to hold onto MacGyver’s wrist. “We’re gonna pull you up.”

Riley saw MacGyver nod, staring resolutely at Jack’s face, and start to pull himself upwards.

“That’s it,” Jack said, and MacGyver reached for the next rail. His hand slipped, and he swung outwards. The only thing keeping him from falling was Jack’s solid grip on his other wrist. “I gotcha,” Jack said, but Riley could hear the undercurrent of effort in his voice. “You’re going to be fine.”

MacGyver was staring downwards, face absolutely white. “I’m going to fall.”

“You’re not going to fall,” Jack said evenly. “That’s the rabbit hole, Mac. Riley, a little help here.”

If the fence was too tall for Jack to reach over, Riley had no hope of reaching MacGyver from the top. She grabbed for his other hand, finding it slick with sweat, and tried to guide it back toward the rail. “Pull him up,” she said through gritted teeth. She had MacGyver’s arm above the elbow, yanking it through the gap above the rail. MacGyver clung to the solidity of the rail with both arms, just high enough that Riley thought they could reach him from over the top.

“You’re still in the rabbit hole,” Jack said. “Focus on what you can control.”

“Screw you,” MacGyver said, but he reached upward for Jack’s hand. Jack grabbed the back of his wrist instead, and with Riley’s help pulled MacGyver over the fence. Riley, for her part, wasn’t entirely sure MacGyver was actually helping at any point.

“What the fuck is that,” she demanded, because now that MacGyver was safely on the roof, he was shaking so hard she could see it.

“Be right back,” MacGyver said, voice trembling almost as much as the rest of him, and staggered to his feet. He moved to the other side of one of the few cars, and Riley could hear him throwing up.

“What?” Riley said again, turning to Jack. He had a hand pressed to the side that had been wounded in their last mission, and his dark shirt looked suspiciously sticky. “And what the hell is the rabbit hole?”

“He’s got a thing about heights,” Jack said, just as MacGyver came back into view.

“A thing,” Riley said flatly. “How has this never come up before?”

“Comes up all the time,” Jack said, and dug in his pocket to produce a phone. “Do me a favor and call Thornton?”

“You lied,” Riley said, taking the phone.

“Of course I lied.” Jack tried to smile at her, but it came out as more of a grimace. “Gonna sit down for a minute.”

“Of course,” Riley said, and then MacGyver was fussing at Jack’s side and no one was paying attention to the huge hulk of a man who’d abducted them or his drone full of poison. Riley had dropped the gun at some point; she found it now, holding onto it with one hand and calling their boss.

Their abductor was gone when she went to look, leaving only a bloodstain. The truck was gone as well, which she supposed answered the question of how he’d gotten off the parking garage. She could only hope he bled to death before he got to wherever he was trying to go, she thought, and then briefly regretted the violence of the thought.

The local authorities showed up not long after that, in both squad cars and an ambulance, and built a quarantine tent around the area.

“It’s still sealed,” Riley heard MacGyver telling someone in a hazmat suit at one point, which she later realized was Thornton. Her sense of time was thoroughly disorganized if she hadn’t realized how long they had been stuck in a plastic tent on the roof.

She was given a dose of antibiotics anyway, before testing on the drone had been completed, on the off chance that she’d been exposed to what she now knew was anthrax.

“And you tried to smash it?” she said to MacGyver, who appeared completely recovered from his panic attack and was sitting on the side of a glorified stretcher pretending to be a bed. Jack’s healing scar had been torn open, but as far as anyone could tell, there was no internal bleeding, and he’d been stitched up and told to stay put. MacGyver sitting next to him was, as far as Riley could tell, the only reason he was following directions.

“Look,” Jack said, drawing her attention to the now-jagged scar. “Actual stitches. Not glue.”

“It didn’t need external stitches last time, Jack,” MacGyver said patiently.

“Bits of thread,” Riley said, leaning across MacGyver. “How very medieval.”

“I think she’s making fun of me.” Jack turned to look at MacGyver, eyes wide. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“On the good stuff?” Riley asked.

“Nah, all he let them give him was a local.” MacGyver crossed his arms.

“Mac, you just took all the fun right out of it,” Jack said, looking and sounding much more alert.

“We’re all bored,” MacGyver said. “Thornton says we get to leave either when they figure out that the canister with the anthrax is still sealed, which it is, or when they figure out that it isn’t and decontaminate all of us.”

“Decontaminate,” Riley repeated.

“Cold shower,” Jack said. “Lots of fun.”

“How did basically a vacation in Florida turn into getting kidnapped?” Riley asked. “Does this happen to you guys a lot? Should I be worried about this?”

“Not all the time,” Jack said. “This doesn’t really come up a lot.”

“Wait.” Riley paced around the stretcher. “Didn’t you say you knew who that was?”

“Yeah,” MacGyver said. “He was in the Marines in Afghanistan while I was there. John Smith.”

“Who would name their kid John Smith?” Riley shook her head. “What was he doing here?”

MacGyver shrugged. “I have no idea. He was always a little off.”

“It’s the Marines. They’re all a little off,” Jack said, as if that were an explanation.

“Says the former Delta commando,” Mac shot back.

“Paragons of sanity,” Jack returned. “All of us.”

“Guys,” Riley said sharply. “Can we focus on Mac’s former army buddy with an anthrax drone?”

“Marine,” Jack and MacGyver said in unison, and Riley rolled her eyes.

“Whatever.”

“It does seem weird that he ran into our car,” MacGyver said. “I mean, of all the cars he could have hit.”

“Yes, thank you.” Riley twisted to look at Thornton through the clear plastic of the quarantine tent. Their boss had exited the tent and removed her hazmat suit, and was talking animatedly with someone in a uniform. “It’s not like we were planning on being here.”

“Sometimes coincidences happen,” MacGyver said, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“Right after our last mission being screwy?” Jack said.

“Chance, then coincidence,” MacGyver said, but Riley wasn’t sure exactly who he was trying to convince.

“Enemy action,” she added, just because that was how the saying went. “I guess we’ll find out next time?”

The saying bothered her, though; it bothered her enough that even after they’d gotten out of the quarantine tent with the news that the sealed container of anthrax was, in fact, still sealed, and returned to their original hotel, she couldn’t sleep. She was still in the room with MacGyver, who was almost suspiciously still and breathing very evenly. Riley threw off the sheet and booted up her laptop, searching for any sign that their trip to Miami had been leaked electronically.

Finding the information she wanted was nearly impossible under ideal circumstances, and Riley eventually had to give up. Searching for a needle in a haystack when she didn’t know what the needle looked like, and when it might in fact be a piece of hay, was getting her nowhere.

Riley rubbed at her eyes, and then wondered if there was a connection between the trap set in the Rockies and MacGyver’s bioweapon-stealing Marine. The trap had been set by a former member of Jack’s unit, someone he’d served with under circumstances she didn’t have clearance to access. She wasn’t sure it mattered, in any case, specifically what those circumstances had been. She did learn that the man who’d set the trap had not been honorably discharged from the military, and neither had Smith, but there was nothing she could find that would link the two of them together. Still, something tugged at the edge of her mind and she couldn’t either let go of it or pull it into full view.

“Something’s coming,” MacGyver said from across the room, and Riley shut her laptop.

“You don’t think this was a coincidence?” she asked.

“I can’t really explain it,” he said. “I don’t really have a logical explanation for it.” He sounded like he was making some sort of confession, something he wouldn’t have admitted to under the harsh light of day. He was echoing her own thoughts, things she didn’t quite want to admit either.

“So we keep an eye on each other,” she said. There wasn’t really anything else she could say.

Chapter Text

“I can’t send you anywhere,” Thornton said, standing in the center of her office with the late morning sunlight streaming through the windows. All three members of her best field unit had somehow managed to avoid said sunlight with their chosen seats. “Anywhere,” she repeated for emphasis.

None of them had the grace to look abashed in the slightest; Dalton was leaning against the back of the couch, for once looking tired and less than lethal, while MacGyver sat at the edge of the very same couch with a veritable pile of paperclip constructs on the table in front of him. Davis sat straddling a chair backwards, heeled boots hooked on the bottom of the chair.

“This wasn’t really our fault,” Dalton said.

“No one could have predicted it,” MacGyver said, fingers restlessly folding yet another paperclip into something Thornton couldn’t quite make out.

“We did figure out the last one,” Davis said, and Thornton thought there was a touch of smugness in her voice. Davis had been the one to find the virus in the Phoenix Foundation network, although she’d been unable to figure out how it had gotten onto the network in the first place. The uploader had covered his or her tracks too well.

All three of them seemed guarded, closed off in a way Thornton hadn’t seen from either MacGyver or Dalton since the incident with Carpenter had left MacGyver fighting for his life. Davis had never been an open book, to be perfectly fair, but she was usually less shuttered. Having two separate assignments go spectacularly wrong would shake anyone, Thornton supposed, but she hadn’t expected this particular team to be affected in quite the way that they were.

“I have some assignments for you,” Thornton said. She couldn’t send Dalton out into the field, not until he was completely healed, but there were other tasks he could perform.

“You’re splitting us up?” MacGyver asked, after paging through the folder she handed him, and then peering at Dalton’s folder.

“I’m giving you three separate assignments to accommodate certain recent events,” Thornton said. The hope was that if nothing went wrong, the three of them would stop acting quite so paranoid.

“You want me babysitting?” Dalton complained. “You know I don’t do baby agents, Patty.”

“Don’t call me Patty,” she snapped before she could stop herself, and then took a deep breath. “You’re going to evaluate field tests,” she said, calmly. “It’s not babysitting.”

“It’s babysitting,” Dalton muttered, but he said it quietly enough that she could pretend she hadn’t heard.

“Data analysis?” Davis was the next one to look at her, puzzled. “This isn’t exactly my skill set.”

“Not yet,” Thornton said. “I’d like you to be familiar with patterns.”

“I am familiar with patterns,” Davis said, tucking her hair behind one ear.

“Not quite like this.” Thornton paced over. “You’re very good at what you do, which is why you’re here, but I’d like you to be more rounded before we put the three of you back together as a team.”

“Rounded,” Davis said, and then shrugged. “Always fun to learn, I guess.”

“Excellent.” Thornton turned to look at MacGyver, who was frowning at his folder.

“I’m not exactly good at this,” he said.

“And that’s why you’re practicing,” Thornton said smoothly. “I’ll be right there with you.”

“But this is just –“ MacGyver said.

“It’s a training exercise,” Thornton said. “I don’t expect that there will be anything going on at the event, but you’re going to learn how to blend in and extract information.”

“Like you,” MacGyver said, and something she couldn’t identify crossed his features.

“You’re quick on your feet,” she said to him. “You’re innovative and you’re one of my best. But your discomfort with the type of mission that requires you to act comfortable in a suit and tie is going to hold you back.”

“Hasn’t held Jack back any,” Davis pointed out.

Dalton actually grinned at that. Thornton resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “He has a different skill set, which is why you work so well together.”

“Why’re we all being punished?” Dalton said.

“This isn’t a punishment,” Thornton said. She had thought the three of them might interpret their current assignments in that particular fashion. “You’ve had a rocky few weeks. I’m trying to –“ She paused. “I’m trying to give you a reset button.” She walked briskly across the room. “It’s to help you get a little perspective on the last couple of incidents.”

“Perspective,” Dalton echoed, and actually sighed. “If you say so, Patty.”

“Don’t call me Patty,” she said again.

The three of them filed out of the room, Dalton moving a little stiffly and MacGyver hovering while trying not to look like he was hovering. From the expression on Davis’ face, he wasn’t succeeding at fooling her, either. Thornton watched them all go and let the door click behind them before sitting at the edge of her desk.

None of them had looked any deeper than the surface motivations; she was fairly sure they were all distracted enough that the information that had come across her desk with remarkably poor timing was going to go unnoticed by all three of them.

“I almost think you’re doing this on purpose,” Thornton murmured, staring at the photograph sitting atop the file.

Chapter Text

Two Weeks Later

“Refresh my memory,” Jack said. “How did I get talked into this one?”

Several answers flashed through MacGyver’s mind, most of them having to do with memory loss and age and therefore generally neither appropriate, funny, or something that would be taken well given the recent tension between the two of them. There was also the minor detail of Jack doing a significant portion of the convincing, and MacGyver having been the one who had resisted. Eventually, he settled on “Because Thornton gave you an order.”

“Patty what?” Jack said.

“You asked how you got talked into this,” MacGyver said.

“One, that was a rhetorical question. Two, I said it two minutes ago.”

“Right.” MacGyver leaned back in the small, uncomfortable seat. A C-17 cargo jet had many advantages, none of which were comfortable for its passengers. It was also one of the few planes that would make the flight to Antarctica on a regular enough basis to be of use to the Phoenix Foundation.

“I swear we have planes,” Jack muttered. “Or helicopters.”

“Stop complaining,” MacGyver said. If he and Jack were going to be shuffled off to Antarctica for their own safety, the least Jack could do was not make it worse by whining about the trip there.

“Are you boys the reason we’re making an unscheduled drop?” asked the passenger on Jack’s other side. As far as MacGyver could tell, he was an Air Force pilot.

“Oh, right, that’s another thing,” Jack said.

“You’re just pissed off because Thornton made you evaluate the trainees,” MacGyver said to Jack, and then turned to the pilot. “Angus MacGyver, and this is Jack Dalton.”

The pilot shook MacGyver’s outstretched hand. “Bob Fielding,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” He spoke with a vaguely southern accent. “That big box there yours?”

The box in question was an unmarked crate fitted with an industrial parachute; it would be dropped off at the specified coordinates, and Jack and MacGyver would follow. MacGyver nodded. “That’s the one.”

The box held their transportation to and monthly resupply for their destination, a small research station far enough from McMurdo that Thornton had arranged for the two of them to be parachuted into its general vicinity rather than land in McMurdo and travel to it in a sane fashion.

“We’ve lost contact,” Thornton had said; the base had been a DXS operation before the agency had been dissolved and renamed, and had been doing work valuable enough that the Foundation had considered it worth the risk to keep open. MacGyver wasn’t entirely certain what that work was – it had something to do with microbiology and then he’d stopped paying attention – but it was enough to keep six people on staff through the dark Antarctic winter and add another twelve through the summer. The summer staff had been scheduled to arrive the following week; losing contact with the station meant that Thornton wasn’t about to send anyone until she knew what was going on.

“You’ve been to Antarctica before,” Thornton had said, looking at Jack. MacGyver had blinked and twisted around in his seat. That particular piece of information had somehow escaped him. Jack had apparently not only been to Antarctica, but he’d spent enough time there to be familiar with the environment. Which, according to Thornton, was why he’d been assigned. MacGyver had declared his intent to accompany Jack, to which Thornton had raised one eyebrow and asked why else he thought he’d been instructed to attend the briefing.

“Given the potential connection between John Smith and Tim Walker, I’d feel more comfortable if the two of you were on assignment out of reach while we conduct further investigation here,” Thornton had said, which had nearly sparked outright rebellion. MacGyver wasn’t the sort to cut and run to save his own skin, and this felt like he was letting someone else walk into the line of fire for him – knowing that the individuals behind the last two incidents had both been paid out of the same account and were therefore connected felt personal. Thornton had patiently reminded him that data analysis was not his strong point, that no one was going to be in any sort of line of fire, and finally that he had a job to do which generally involved helping people who were definitely in some sort of trouble. MacGyver had capitulated only after Jack had ascertained that Riley was going to be one of the analysts.

“Find out what happened and extract the research personnel if necessary,” Thornton had said. MacGyver had asked if the Foundation was going to send hazmat suits, in case of biological contaminants, and Thornton had given him a look that suggested she thought he was joking. MacGyver had folded his arms and looked back at her, calmly, and Thornton had thrown up her hands and said fine. The rest of the briefing hadn’t really had any surprises.

The nearly 48 hours of travel had been somewhat of a surprise; Jack had slept through some of it, MacGyver had fallen asleep in every airport in which they’d had a layover. The cargo jet was the final leg, before they parachuted down to the ground. Jack was making the most of it, leaning against MacGyver while MacGyver – too nervous about the jump to really think about sleep – made small talk with Air Force Pilot Fielding on his other side.

Somewhat to MacGyver’s relief, Fielding stopped asking questions about why they were being parachuted into the middle of nowhere after ascertaining which box was going to be shoved out of the plane along with them, and started showing MacGyver pictures of his children.

By the time MacGyver could see ice below the plane, he had learned more about Fielding’s children than he knew about Riley. Every time Fielding paused, giving him a look that said he didn’t think a complete stranger was quite this interested in how his six-year-old had gotten a perfect score on her latest spelling test, MacGyver felt a vague feeling apprehension that intensified at the thought of the drop and asked another question. Fielding proved to be an excellent distraction, right up until the pilot announced that one of the rear cargo doors would be opened and for their passengers to make preparations.

Jack sat up at the first syllable, with no sign of grogginess, and reached for the parachute between his feet. He strapped it and the rest of his gear on efficiently. MacGyver pulled his on, the sensation of dread balling in his stomach. He buckled the straps, finding it harder than it should have been.

“You okay?” Jack asked, and while MacGyver was looking at his face in confusion as to why Jack would ask, Jack’s warm hands were fastening the straps into place around MacGyver’s chest.

“Stop that,” he said, pushing Jack’s hands away and finally noticing that his own hands were shaking.

“You’re falling down the rabbit hole again,” Jack said softly enough that only MacGyver would hear it.

“It’s fine,” MacGyver said. He wasn’t succumbing to panic, regardless of what Jack might think. He knew better; he’d been trained better. The lack of rationality surrounding a phobia had nothing to do with anything.

“You’re approximately the color of my sheets, but it’s fine,” Jack said. “You’ve been on edge, Mac, don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“It’s fine,” MacGyver said loudly enough that everyone in their general vicinity turned to look at him. Jack leaned back, hands up in a gesture of surrender, and then all but bounced out of his seat. MacGyver followed him toward their container and its associated exit. The door swung open, wind whipping through the cargo hold, and MacGyver grabbed Jack’s shoulder for support.

The container was pushed out, its chute opening automatically, and Jack grinned. “Moment of truth,” he said.

MacGyver stepped toward the door, and could not make himself move farther. “Jack,” he said. It was all he could get out.

Jack’s hands were on his again, moving them toward the release for the parachute. “You don’t have to jump,” he said, face inscrutable.

“I –“ MacGyver said, and swallowed hard. “It’s fine,” he said a third time. He’d overcome fear before. He’d hung onto the landing gear of a plane as it took off. He’d made parachute jumps before, specifically because the very idea terrified him. He wasn’t going to let it control him. A significant part of his training had been on assessing an actual threat as opposed to an imagined one.

“Okay,” Jack said, and pushed.

MacGyver flailed for a few agonizing seconds before his hands closed around the chute straps and the training that had been drilled into him took over. At the correct time, he pulled the strap, and the chute opened. It felt like it was yanking him upward, even though he knew objectively that it was just slowing his downward fall.

Few things had ever been as welcome a sight as the ground, firmly underneath his feet, not moving. Momentum took him a couple of steps to the side, wind picking up the parachute and dragging it and MacGyver with it. He unhooked the straps, only remembering after the chute gusted out of sight that he wasn’t supposed to leave traces of anything at the drop site. He tried to stand up to go after it, but his knees didn’t quite want to hold him up and all he could hear was the sound of his heart pounding against his chest.

“You okay there?” Jack had come up behind him and thumped him on the shoulder. He was carrying a bright swath of cloth that MacGyver identified as his parachute, while over his shoulder MacGyver could see Jack’s own chute stuffed haphazardly back into its bag.

“Yeah,” MacGyver said, and tried again to stand. Somewhat to his surprise, it worked. He stumbled a little, but remained upright. “Yeah,” he repeated. “I’m okay.”

“Okay, then.” Jack turned him around, and MacGyver felt tugging at the straps over his shoulder. “Just putting your parachute back in,” Jack added. “Our ride is that way.”

The cargo container had a little transponder, which was sending a perfectly clear signal. The container itself wasn’t large; just big enough to hold a vehicle, and collapsible enough to put in the back of said vehicle. MacGyver secured its final ties as Jack got the vehicle – which had an odd name that MacGyver could not remember – started and warmed up. MacGyver climbed into the passenger seat, eyeing the various controls.

“This thing’ll float, if we fall through the ice,” Jack said, which was almost but not quite the least reassuring thing MacGyver had heard all day.

“Please try not to fall through the ice,” MacGyver said, and Jack laughed as though he thought MacGyver were joking.

“It’ll take us a couple hours to get where we’re going,” Jack said. “We’re a little farther away than we’d hoped for.”

“I’ll call Thornton.” The satellite phone was inside his jacket, although most of their supplies were in the vehicle; it was less of a call than a text that MacGyver sent, with the acknowledgement coming fairly rapidly. MacGyver worked out that it was maybe 5am in Los Angeles, which meant that Thornton had either slept with the phone next to her bed or was awake and actively waiting to hear from them.

“Try to get some rest,” Jack said.

MacGyver didn’t think he could, but the aftermath of the adrenaline rush said otherwise, and he opened his eyes to Jack shaking him out of a surprisingly sound sleep. “What?” he said.

“We’re almost there,” Jack said, and MacGyver had the disorienting sensation that they were outside the research facility in the Colorado Rockies and heading in for an inspection. The almost pure white threw him even more; he was almost sure, for a moment, that there should have been trees.

“Right,” he said, after he’d blinked a few times and remembered where they were. “Right.” He rubbed his eyes; they felt as though they were full of sand. “That’s Lindsay Station?”

The station itself wasn’t quite what MacGyver had expected, as they approached. It was a series of several relatively small pods surrounding a larger central pod and what almost looked like a giant shed off to the side; the smaller pods were on what looked like stilts, whereas the central pod was flush against the ice. No one was immediately visible, and the doors were all closed. The compound itself was completely still.

“I tried radioing,” Jack said. “No answer. Each member of the team has their own transponder, though. All of them are transmitting, all six of them right around here.”

“Well, let’s go find them,” MacGyver said. He rubbed his eyes again and pulled his gloves back on. “Where do we start?”

“Housing module A,” Jack said, which didn’t tell MacGyver anything until he looked at the letters painted along the sides of each module.

“Right,” MacGyver said.

Jack parked the vehicle, which MacGyver suddenly remembered was called a Hagglund, and turned off the engine. He carefully checked his weapons and pulled his cold-weather gear back on. MacGyver followed suit, at least with the cold-weather gear, and followed him out of the truck. The wind had died down, and the sunlight across the icy field on the other side of the Hagglund was beautiful in a way that MacGyver had never seen. Now that he wasn’t falling toward it at not-quite-literally breakneck speed, he had a few seconds to appreciate it.

“You coming?” Jack asked, shattering the moment. He handed the receiver to MacGyver and pulled his gun out.

“Yeah.” MacGyver frowned at the weapon, but it was Jack’s call to make and MacGyver trusted his judgment.

The signal was coming from inside the housing module. Jack motioned MacGyver back, and approached carefully. The door wasn’t locked, and Jack peered through it before going inside. “Wait,” he said, and MacGyver stayed outside until Jack called him in.

The interior of the housing module looked remarkably like a college dormitory, a central room with four doors surrounding a couch and what might have been a heating unit. It wasn’t quite as cold inside as it was outside. All four doors were open, and Jack was holding an unbuckled strap in one hand with his gun stowed.

“This is all I’ve got,” he said. MacGyver recognized the transponder, and also that it did not appear to have been removed by force. The strap and buckle were both undamaged.

“So where’s the scientist it’s supposed to be attached to?” MacGyver asked, not that he expected an answer.

“This belonged to a James Drake,” Jack said, looking at the back. “Support staff.”

“Whatever.” MacGyver turned the transponder over in his hand, but it didn’t tell him anything else about where the original wearer might have gone. A little red light blinked, indicating low battery, which wasn’t helpful at all. “What else is in here?”

Jack shook his head. “I was just looking for people.”

Two of the four doors led to bedrooms with desks and bunkbeds, which only strengthened the sense of a college dormitory. The third door led to a bathroom, and the fourth to what looked like a utility room. None of the rooms had any personal effects; the only thing that looked out of place was the transponder bracelet in Jack’s hand.

“Not that I know what looks out of place,” MacGyver said, after a thorough search of the module had turned up nothing.

“So let’s check the next one,” Jack said.

Housing module B looked almost identical to module A, except that it was in shades of bluish-gray instead of beige, and the search went more or less the same way as the first. MacGyver waited for Jack to finish his sweep of the module, went in, and the two of them conducted a more thorough search. The only difference, except for the color, was that there was no transponder in module B.

“Where in the building was it, anyway?” MacGyver asked. He’d put it in one of his pockets, and it was pressing uncomfortably against his thigh.

“Under a mattress,” Jack said. “Kinda weird.”

“Just a little.” MacGyver tapped the transponder and tried to shift it to a more comfortable position. “Okay, let’s check the next one.”

The remaining two housing modules – unimaginatively titled C and D – actually held personal effects and showed signs of being lived in. Whoever was in charge of cleaning module C hadn’t done a particularly good job of it; there were papers, books, and clothes strewn through the common area in the center as well as throughout both bedrooms. Jack thought one person had been in each room, given the pristine nature of the sheets on the top bunk in each room; MacGyver had no opinion on the subject. Because Jack had found the transponder under one of the mattresses, MacGyver checked under all four and found the first truly odd thing he’d seen since arriving – two flash drives and what might have been a diary. He flipped through it, but it wasn’t written in recognizable English. He pocketed all three items to check later.

“Anything good?” Jack asked.

“Don’t know.”

Module D was cleaner than C, or at least more organized, except for a single dresser that had been thoroughly and hastily searched, if the open drawers and items all but flung around the room were any indication. MacGyver poked through what he could see, but none of it seemed relevant to anything. What he’d learned so far was a confirmation of the information he’d gotten from Thornton – three scientific staff and three support staff composed of two men and four women. All the members of the outpost were crosstrained in multiple specialties, although each of them had a primary specialty. He’d also learned that the nominal head of the outpost team – inasmuch as there was a head, since everything was fairly interdisciplinary and there didn’t seem to be much of a hierarchy within such a small team – had a thing for four-inch heels, and that two of the shoes were missing. “Not a pair of shoes,” he clarified to Jack, “half of two pairs of shoes, two different shoes.”

“With those pointy heels,” Jack said.

“Yes.” MacGyver didn’t think any of the shoes were practical in the slightest, but he wasn’t going to pass judgment on someone else’s coping methods. Outpost Head Jennifer Sato could wear all the heels she wanted as far as he was concerned.

One of the other small modules – larger than the residential modules – was a combined kitchen and dining area with an attached gym, while the final small module was storage and tools. The building in the center was the laboratory, and the camp vehicles were parked in what looked like a much lower-tech garage.  The garage was what MacGyver had initially labeled a shed on approach to the outpost; it held a Hagglund and several smaller vehicles. MacGyver recognized none of them, although Jack clearly did. What it did not have was either a transponder or any of the outpost staff.

“Storage,” Jack said, and that was where things started to get interesting. The shelves had been ransacked, or at least violently disorganized. MacGyver was suddenly glad they’d brought part of the planned monthly resupply in their vehicle, as drinking water and an inexplicable flat of Gatorade were the only items left that appeared to be untouched. Everything edible looked like it had been opened and searched, with several unidentifiable substances scattered across the floor. MacGyver poked at some of it with a boot, but it just crunched into powder. The tools were in similar disarray; there was nothing on the shelves with any sort of sharp edge. MacGyver frowned when he made that particular connection; from the expression on his face, Jack had made the same one. MacGyver picked up a snow shovel and leaned it against the wall.

“Well, something happened here,” Jack said.

“Let’s check the communal module,” MacGyver said. Something about the lab was giving him the heebie-jeebies, and he didn’t want to walk into it until he had more information.

“You’re the boss,” Jack said, and MacGyver frowned again.

The communal module’s two floors made Jack twitch when he opened the door, but he still had MacGyver waiting outside until he cleared the building. MacGyver tried to argue this time, given the additional space, but Jack shut him down. MacGyver made a face at the door once Jack had gone through it, but after several minutes had passed and he heard nothing, he ignored Jack’s instructions and went inside. The entrance was on the upper floor; MacGyver moved slowly and quietly into what he wanted to call a foyer; it was splashed with dark liquid behind the door and smelled like roadkill. He gritted his teeth and picked the right side at random. It was the kitchen, and it smelled worse than the entryway. The same dark fluid, reddish-brown under the fluorescent lights, liberally coated the floor. There was no one in the room.

MacGyver retraced his steps and went through the other door; it was a hydroponics bay, apparently, full of artificial lights, fruits, and vegetables growing in clear pods with very little dirt. MacGyver entered hesitantly, but there was no one in the hydroponics bay, either. It was also clean, smelling of dirt and growing things.

“Hands up,” said a very familiar voice, and MacGyver turned to see Jack in the doorway with his gun held very steady and pointing right at him. “Dammit, Mac,” Jack said as soon as he saw MacGyver’s face. “I told you to wait outside.”

“I like disobeying your instructions,” MacGyver said lightly.

“Right.” Jack blew his breath out his nose. “I think you should come take a look at this.”

“The kitchen? Because I’ve seen the kitchen. And smelled the kitchen.”

“Not the kitchen,” Jack said. “Downstairs.”

MacGyver was absolutely sure that whatever Jack wanted him to look at was going to be extremely unpleasant. “Is there someone downstairs?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Jack said, which was not reassuring in the slightest.

The space in the lower half of the building appeared to have an exercise station, which was both empty and pristine, and a wider space with tables, chairs, and a pair of sofas. The only word that MacGyver could think of to describe the dining area was bloodbath. The sofas had been all but torn apart, soaked in what he now had to recognize as blood, the tables and chairs overturned. One wall was stained dark with soot, and all but one were scratched and dented. MacGyver followed Jack’s pointing finger to a corner behind one of the sofas, which was darker than the rest of the floor with a lighter patch in the center. After a few seconds, the lighter patch resolved itself into a sock-clad foot with no shoe.  MacGyver crossed the room, carefully, and crouched down to look.

The body behind the couch – for there were no signs of life – had been stabbed multiple times in the torso, and then nearly decapitated. MacGyver thought he saw the white of bone glinting out from the neck, and swallowed convulsively. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen this kind of violence before, but somehow the pristine landscape outside and the neat tidiness of what they’d seen in the residential modules made this worse.

“Do you know who it is?” he asked, mostly for something to say.

“Either our buddy James Drake, or one of the biologists,” Jack said. “Can’t remember his name.”

“Richard Coleman.” MacGyver took a deep breath, which was a mistake, because then he gagged on the odor, and spent an agonizing several seconds trying not to throw up. Jack looked at him with an unreadable expression. “I’ll check and see if he’s wearing a transponder,” MacGyver said.

“Don’t touch him,” Jack said.

MacGyver threw him an irritated glance; he knew enough not to contaminate the scene. As far as he could tell without actually moving the body, either-James-or-Richard wasn’t wearing a transponder; both of his wrists were empty. “I think it’s Drake,” he said. “Dark hair. Coleman was blond going gray.”

Jack leaned over his shoulder. “So Drake here hid his transponder in an empty residential module, and then ended up here, stabbed to death.”

“That’s about the long and short of it,” MacGyver said.

“Call Thornton,” Jack said, with an upward lilt at the end making it just barely a question.

“Yeah.” MacGyver searched his pockets, but the satellite phone wasn’t in any of them. “Did I give you the sat phone?”

“What? No.” Jack eyed him again, a mix of wariness and concern now clearly painted over his features.

“Okay.” MacGyver ran his hands over his face. “Then we’ll just have to retrace our steps, see if we can find it.”

Searching for the satellite phone went quicker than looking for the outpost station staff, and yet still seemed to take forever; MacGyver finally found it on the floor of residential module B, but the screen was cracked and it refused to power up. He tapped it a couple of times and opened the back. It had apparently been damaged enough in the fall from his pocket to the floor to shake the battery leads loose, and one of the components had snapped in half. He thought he could fix it, if he could generate enough heat to weld the edges together.

“What the hell,” Jack said, looking over his shoulder.

“I don’t –“ MacGyver held up the phone. “I thought these were more durable.”

“What did you do to it?” Jack asked, taking it gently out of his hands and turning it over.

“I didn’t do anything.” MacGyver corrected himself. “I think I dropped it.”

“Well, can you fix it?”

“I can fix it.” MacGyver looked around. “Maybe.”

“Maybe.” Jack didn’t look like he was happy about that reply. “What do you mean, maybe?”

“I need to weld it,” MacGyver said. “Just this little bit, here.”

“I don’t see any welding equipment, Mac.” Jack was now giving him that hopeful, expectant look that MacGyver associated with being handed a handful of truly random junk and the request to please fix their current problem.

“Yeah, I know,” MacGyver said, and Jack’s face fell. Almost imperceptibly, but MacGyver saw it. He put the satellite phone into a zippered pocket, making sure he couldn’t lose it this time. “The other transponder signals are coming through loud and clear. We should check them first.”

“Sure,” Jack said. “Put your coat back on. Goggles. Scarf.”

“I know how to dress,” MacGyver said more sharply than he’d intended; despite Miami, there was still a gulf between the two of them, and sometimes MacGyver had the uneasy feeling he was walking on eggshells so as to not disturb the fragile equilibrium to which they’d returned. Jack, for his part, put his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

The other transponder signals were far enough away that Jack directed MacGyver to the garage rather than hike to them; he also told MacGyver to leave Drake’s transponder in their Hagglund in case they lost sight of either the outpost or their trail back to it. The garage turned out to have snowmobiles, one of which was designed for a passenger. MacGyver climbed on behind Jack, and directed him to the closest signal.

One by one, they found bracelets that had been removed from the owner; in one case, MacGyver had to dig through two feet of snow to find it. The final bracelet was under what appeared to be a mound of snow at first glance, but when MacGyver started to dig, he found the second body. It was a woman this time, and her face was pristine enough for him to recognize Jennifer Sato. She was frozen solid, the transponder pinned underneath her.

“Goddammit,” Jack said softly.

It was impossible to tell how Sato had died without moving the body; snow had drifted over it, and her cold-weather gear was dark. The fact that she’d been wearing cold-weather gear seemed potentially important, and MacGyver filed it away. “We can’t move her,” he said.

“We can’t leave her here,” Jack countered.

“We know where she is,” MacGyver said. “The transponder led us right here.”

Jack took a deep breath. “Let’s get that phone fixed.”

“I want to take pictures first,” MacGyver said. He had his cell phone with him, although it had no service, and this gave them at least some sort of record. He tried to document every angle of the scene, which he couldn’t quite justify calling a crime scene yet, including the coordinates and time written into the snow next to the body.

Before leaving, Jack covered the body in snow, making sure that no part of it was visible to the casual observer. With MacGyver on the back of the snowmobile, he then headed straight back for their home transponder signal. “The garage,” MacGyver called over the wind. Jack nodded once in acknowledgement. “How much do you think we need all of these?” MacGyver asked, pointing at the snowmobiles once Jack had turned off the engine.

“Are you going to ruin all of them?” Jack asked.

“None of them will be ruined. Maybe one.” MacGyver was already at one of the single-person snowmobiles, removing the battery and some of the copper wiring. “Do you know where the jumper cables are?”

Jack sighed. “I’ll find you some jumper cables.”

The workbench in the garage, such as it was, was below a window; MacGyver brought his items over to it and pulled out the phone. Jack materialized after a few moments with jumper cables and watched as MacGyver attached them to the battery. 

“You can’t jump-start the phone, Mac.”

“I know.” MacGyver wrapped the wire around the appropriate cable lead and grounded the other, using the current from the battery to solder the satellite phone battery leads back together.

“Did you just short out the phone?” Jack asked, not looking at the bright light.

“I hope not.” MacGyver shoved his snow goggles up on his forehead. “We’ll know in a few minutes.”  It didn’t take long for the metal to cool enough to push the battery into place; it was a tighter fit than before, but he thought it would stay in place.

The satellite phone booted up, as it was supposed to, although it blinked that its battery was more drained than MacGyver would have expected. He texted what they’d found to Thornton, followed by Please advise on how to proceed.

Thornton’s reply, as before, was relatively quick, but all she said was Don’t touch anything and wait for further instruction.

“Guess that means we’re not taking Drake’s body out of the living room,” Jack said, and then paused. “You’re going to photograph that, too, aren’t you.” He followed MacGyver through the outpost, photographing each area they thought had been disturbed in the residential and storage modules and thoroughly documenting the aftermath of violence in the communal module.

MacGyver checked the satellite phone every few minutes, but there was no instruction from Thornton on it by the time he decided he’d gotten enough images for the Phoenix Foundation to verify their investigation.

“We should check the lab,” Jack said, and MacGyver realized he’d shoved it to the back of his mind.

“Right.” It wasn’t as though the lab was going to be any worse than anything they’d seen that day.

“And then,” Jack said, “if Thornton hasn’t gotten back to us, or even if she has, you need a break.”

“So do you,” MacGyver said.

“Sure thing,” Jack said.

The lab being flush against the ground meant that its windows were also visible; Jack circled the building once, but there was nothing moving inside. He made his way back to the door, MacGyver following closely. “I’m coming in with you this time,” MacGyver said. It was cold outside, and there hadn’t been anyone in any of the other buildings.

Jack looked him up and down, and nodded. “You’d know better if there was something off,” he said, which hadn’t been where MacGyver was going with that line of thought. MacGyver nodded anyway. “Stay behind me,” Jack said.

The door opened at a touch, unlocked like all the others. Jack presented as minimal a profile as possible going into the entry, which was empty. It led into a corridor circling the exterior of the module, with doors at irregular intervals, which MacGyver simultaneously recognized as a negative-pressure system to keep the atmosphere in the lab inside the lab and also the reason why there had been nothing immediately visible through the windows.

“What are they doing in here?” Jack asked.

MacGyver shook his head. “Not what Thornton told us, not with these environmental controls.” He remembered that he’d off-handedly asked for hazmat suits, which were back with their vehicle. “I think we should maybe suit up before going in there,” he said.

“You were serious about the hazmat suits?” Jack said.

MacGyver shrugged. “We could check the outside hallway first,” he said.

“Fine.” Jack prowled along the corridor; each door to the interior of the lab had its own entry lock, but all of those doors were open. MacGyver prodded at one; it slid half an inch out of the wall when he tugged at it. “Stop that,” Jack hissed, and MacGyver let the door go.

Isolation gear hung haphazardly outside some of the doors; never a full suit, just a boot here or a mask there, sometimes a set of gloves and a pair of pants. The suits were white, almost luminescent against the dark blue paint of the walls, which only served to make the hallway feel darker and narrower than it actually was.

“No blood here,” Jack said when they were perhaps three quarters of the way around the roughly circular laboratory module. “You notice that?”

It hadn’t stood out, but MacGyver looked at the clean corridor - except for spots of melted and dried dirt and slush – and at the apparently undisturbed doors. “So where’s all of their gear?” he asked.

A single glove hung precariously from a hook outside the door Jack was currently examining. MacGyver looked through the door itself, trying to get more of a sense of what was in the laboratory, but its lights were off and the interior was dark. The more doors they passed, the more agitated Jack got about his inability to see inside.

“I don’t like this, Mac,” he said. “Anything could be in there.”

“I don’t think we should go in there without the hazmat suits,” MacGyver said. “Not after looking at this.” He gestured at the hallway.

“We’ve probably seen enough junk to make two whole suits,” Jack said, glancing up and down the hall.

MacGyver glanced at the darkened doorway and at the single glove. It was too small to fit either his hand or Jack’s. “We could try,” he said.

A second trip around the outside of the laboratory got them a pile of not quite matched isolation suit pieces, which fit together well enough to satisfy MacGyver nonetheless. Jack held his gun, pointed toward the floor, and nodded at MacGyver from inside the hood. “I’m ready when you are,” he said.

“If we could just find the light switch,” MacGyver said lightly, looking at what was presumably the main door of the lab. The outer door closed, he pressed on the inner door handle. It clicked, the lab lighting up from inside and the doors to each side of them sliding out of the corridor walls.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Jack muttered, or MacGyver thought that was what he’d said. The suits muffled his voice a little.

The door to the laboratory slid open, and Jack went through first. MacGyver was all but on his heels, looking around. The majority of the equipment, as far as he could tell, looked like every other workstation he’d seen for working on the microscopic level; the center of the lab was, however, separated into sections by transparent walls, none of which appeared accessible except through the outside corridor. The center of the lab itself was an opaque column, also painted dark blue. Nothing moved that MacGyver could see, although the entire section was lit up. It was as cold in the lab as it had been in the outside corridor, which wasn’t much warmer than outside. He thought it was above freezing, but barely.

“You see anyone?” Jack asked. MacGyver shook his head before remembering that Jack couldn’t see it in the hood and gave a verbal negative. “Me either.”

“The workstations look like they were abandoned in a hurry.” MacGyver moved to the closest station; it had tools laid across it with no sense or order that he could make out, and there were slides scattered around one of the microscopes. “Did Thornton say what they were doing, exactly?”

Jack gave him a look of flat disbelief. “That’s your area, man. You point me at things and I shoot them, that’s my job.”

MacGyver rolled his eyes. Jack was deliberately downplaying his role, repeating the thread of the conversation they’d had while Jack was concussed with no memory in Colorado. “You do more than that.”

“Not in here, I don’t,” Jack said absently. He was standing in front of what might have been a refrigerator in another life. “So this says it has samples.”

“Samples of what?” There was a laptop plugged into the wall, which had booted up when the lights had come on. It didn’t ask for a password, just blinked that it was coming out of hibernation. The information that spilled over the screen made no sense to MacGyver, but someone at Phoenix would be able to understand it.

“That’s your job.” Jack was leaning over his shoulder, hovering almost too closely. MacGyver didn’t mind; it was better than pulling away.

“Just as soon as I get this uploaded.”

“This?” Jack repeated. “Uploaded where?”

Given that he had absolutely no idea what most of the information on the laptop signified, MacGyver was planning on just sending a copy of the entire hard drive to the Phoenix Foundation’s cloud. The internet was perfectly adequate, which didn’t surprise him until he thought about where he was. “Good connection,” he said.

“Weird,” was Jack’s comment.

Setting up the upload went without a hitch. MacGyver didn’t like it; it felt like he was being set up for something. He turned to Jack. “Okay, let’s see these samples of yours.”

“They’re not my samples,” Jack protested.

“Yeah, okay.” The door was transparent as well, each of the test tubes clearly labeled with words that might have made sense to a microbiologist, but not to MacGyver. What he did understand was the multiple brightly colored stickers across the majority of the tubes declaring them to be hazardous. “What are they doing down here?”

As it was a rhetorical question, he got no answer from Jack, who was alternately peering into one of the microscopes and poking at the equipment scattered across the tables. Leaving the stock of horrifyingly labeled samples alone, MacGyver glanced at the laptop. A significant portion of the upload had completed, but it would be another several minutes before it finished. He looked into one of the other microscopes, but all he saw was shapes and lines that meant nothing.

“Let’s check the next one,” Jack said.

The airlock sent a decontaminating mist at them before it would open, taking a solid two minutes. MacGyver waited it out, patiently, and then stripped off the suit.

“What?” Jack asked, but he was pulling his off with just as much enthusiasm.

“There were two sections without airlocks.” MacGyver made his way down the hall. “I’m going into one of those.”

“Sure, sure.” Now that the lights were on, Jack was peering through the doors. No one moved inside the lab, which didn’t necessarily mean that no one was inside. “This one?”

The closer of the two non-environmentally-sealed doors led into what looked like an office cubicle, if an office cubicle had transparent walls and half a dozen linked screens. None of the screens were lit. Two chairs at opposite ends of the cubicle held stacks of narrow binders. Through the wall, MacGyver could see the second non-sealed section, which looked like a small clinic. At least one first-aid kit was open, its contents scattered across the otherwise clean floor. “Yeah,” MacGyver answered.

Jack slid the door into the wall and took a single step into the room. MacGyver heard a click and Jack froze. “What was that,” he said, and the lights blinked over to red. MacGyver followed Jack’s gaze downward to the tripwire strung across the door.

“Universal decontamination,” came a voice over the loudspeakers MacGyver hadn’t known were there.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Jack said.

“Do not remove isolation equipment,” continued the mechanical voice. “Remain inside infirmary or office.”

Before either of them could step inside the office, the door slid shut. Jack tugged on it, but it wouldn’t open. Each isolation door along the corridor had also shut and locked.

“Do not remove isolation equipment,” the mechanical voice said again.

“It’s going to poison us,” Jack said.

“Yeah.” MacGyver answered the question Jack hadn’t quite asked. “Can you break the window?”

“Get down.” Jack fired once at the transparent sheet, but it had apparently been designed to withstand bullets.

It might not have been designed specifically to be bulletproof, MacGyver thought as the second and third shots also failed to produce anything resembling a crack. Could be to keep polar bears out. Or recalcitrant outpost staff throwing temper tantrums.

“No polar bears at the south pole, Mac,” Jack said, and MacGyver realized he’d spoken out loud.

“Five minutes until decontamination,” the mechanical voice announced.

MacGyver had a thought – the door was either on its own timer, or it was linked to the decontamination equipment, and while it was theoretically more secure to link the door to the decontamination system, it was easier to set it up on its own timer. There was less wiring and installation involved, and in such a remote area, it made sense to have the simplest system possible.

The door handle was less of a handle and more of a depressible panel; MacGyver pried it off and found wiring connected to an electric timer.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“Opening the door.” MacGyver thought he knew which wire to disconnect; the Swiss army knife that hadn’t left his pocket gave him the means to both cut the wire and wrap it around a metal screw, and then tighten that screw. “I run enough current through the clock, it runs faster, the door thinks the process is over and it opens.”

“You’re giving a lot of credit to the door,” Jack said, but he hung back enough to give MacGyver space to work.

MacGyver cut the wire out of the timer, which blinked with increasing speed until it was solidly lit and the door cracked open.  “Come on,” MacGyver said.

“Four minutes until decontamination,” the mechanical voice helpfully announced.

There were three doors between them and the outside exit. MacGyver pried open the second panel, hissing as the wire sparked against his bare fingers, but the door opened without any complications. The third door left them outside the initial entryway, while the mechanical voice announced that they had two minutes remaining.

“Oh, shut up,” Jack said.

MacGyver pried the fourth panel open, wrapping the wire around a screw with now-practiced movements and cutting the wire. The door cracked open, leaving them standing on the pile of their discarded decontamination suits, and MacGyver pushed at the exterior door. It wouldn’t open.

“Come on,” Jack said.

There was no panel on the exterior door; it was an electronic deadbolt. MacGyver hit it in frustration. “I think this one is actually connected to the decontamination system,” he said.

“Put on the suit,” Jack said. MacGyver had come to the same conclusion, but they had less than a minute to put the suits on. He was just pulling the hood over his head and sealing it when the mechanical voice announced that the decontamination process would start and began a ten-second countdown. Jack tugged his hood into place, giving MacGyver a thumbs-up. MacGyver went back to the external door and saw a lever he hadn’t seen before. He pulled it and the door swung wide open.

“Move!” He shoved Jack outside the door, following him out and slamming the door shut.

Jack lifted him bodily and hauled him away from the lab as external speakers counted down the remaining three seconds. MacGyver, looking back, saw fire blossom through the windows. It was entirely self-contained and eerily silent. Jack continued to pull MacGyver away from the laboratory, until they were behind one of the residential modules. Given that it was thirty inches off the ground, it was questionable at best as a source of cover.

The explosion MacGyver was subconsciously waiting for never came; after precisely two minutes, the flames died down. He pulled off the hood of the isolation suit, watching the flickering of the remaining fire through the windows.

“Is it connected to the rest of the compound?” Jack asked.

“What?”

“The water, electricity, all that stuff, it’s all connected for the living modules.” Jack gestured to a series of pipes partially buried in the snow. “Is the lab connected?”

The fire could spread from the lab to the rest of the compound, MacGyver realized, despite the space between the buildings. The suit was going to slow him down; he removed it for the second time in the space of fifteen minutes and started scanning the base of the lab. “I don’t think so,” he said, after making a thorough inspection. The remainder of the fire seemed to have died down, and he wondered vaguely if it had just run out of oxygen and just how tightly sealed against the environment the laboratory really was.

“Remind me to check for tripwires before going through any more doors,” Jack said, although they’d gone through most of the doors in the outpost.

“You weren’t even on fire,” MacGyver said. “We’re fine.”

“Any word from Thornton?” Jack asked, once they were back inside one of the untouched residential modules and MacGyver had gotten the central heating unit working.

As it turned out, Thornton had sent instructions; the site would be taken over by the appropriate authorities to continue the investigation, but it would take them a few days to get there. MacGyver and Jack were to thoroughly document what they found, and were given permission to move Drake and any other bodies to a location of their choice. There was a further piece of instruction that had Jack frowning.

“She wants us to conduct a search for the other members of the outpost team?”

“I mean, you’ve been out here before. We both know how to set up a standard search grid,” MacGyver said. “They might still be alive.”

The words were empty; they both knew there was very little chance of any of the outpost staff being found alive at this point, not after what they’d already found. It was looking more and more likely that they’d been assaulted and carried off by someone, but without more information it was impossible to determine who had taken the station staff or where they had gone. The search grid was on the remote off-chance that someone had simply walked away from the station.

“Why would they rig the lab to self-destruct like that?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know.” MacGyver clapped Jack on the shoulder. “But like you said, we both need a break.”

There was no way MacGyver was going anywhere near the kitchen, but he thought he remembered a hot plate in one of the residential modules, and there was enough energy stored from the compound’s solar panels to run any equipment he or Jack needed. The one thing they didn’t have was water, but he remembered seeing that as well, in the storage module.

While Jack collected their personal belongings from the vehicle, MacGyver hooked up the hot plate and hauled a jug of water back to residential module A.

“How do you feel about canned spaghetti?” Jack asked, dropping their bags.

“Yum,” MacGyver said.

Jack took one look at MacGyver’s jug of water and vanished outside, returning with half the flat of red Gatorade. He offered one to MacGyver, but MacGyver wanted no part of the allegedly fruit-flavored drink. Over badly reheated and terrible pasta, Jack spread out a paper map of the surrounding area. MacGyver had no idea where he’d gotten it from; Jack just grinned at him when he asked, and then took pity and explained that a map was part of the emergency supplies attached to each and every vehicle in the compound. “This one was on the snowmobile you cannibalized,” he said.

Based on the last time the outpost had been in contact with the Phoenix foundation and the potential speed the outpost personnel had been traveling, an outside perimeter was established. It was depressingly large, even with the knowledge that none of the outpost personnel had taken any sort of vehicle when they’d vanished.

“Probably just means whoever took them had their own transportation,” Jack said dourly.

“They would have to,” MacGyver said, draining his water glass.

Jack rubbed his eyes. “We should get some sleep.”

“Sure.” MacGyver walked toward one of the bedrooms, but Jack shook his head. “What?”

Jack shoved a couch against the exterior door, blocking it from opening, and then vanished into the other bedroom. He came back out with apparently all the bedding, dumping half of it on one couch and half of it on the other before firmly closing all the doors.

“What?” MacGyver said again.

“I don’t want any surprises in the middle of the night,” Jack said.

“Right.” MacGyver flopped onto the couch against the door, and then looked up when Jack just stared down at him with his arms folded. “Now what?”

“This one’s mine,” Jack said.

There were some battles worth fighting, and this was not one of them. MacGyver heaved himself to his feet. “I’m going to take a shower.”

The couch farther from the door was made up in a passing imitation of a bed when MacGyver emerged and Jack shouldered his way toward the single shower stall. MacGyver let the door shut on his heels and fell asleep to the sound of falling water.

* * *

At few points in his life had MacGyver ever known anything with such certainty as he now knew that he was being followed – no, not just followed. He was being stalked. Hunted. The dark walls around him were rough, barely reflecting the directionless light. He moved down the corridor, unable despite the unchanging illumination to see more than a few feet in either direction.

“Where is it,” he muttered, reaching into his pockets. They were empty, but he had no idea what was supposed to be in them. He only knew that he was utterly screwed that it was gone. The floor under his feet was firm, just barely yielding, and met seamlessly with the walls. He rocked back on his heels, not sure what he had been hoping to find. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there, either.

Whatever was stalking him was coming closer. MacGyver glanced down the corridor behind him, where he could see nothing moving. The corridor ahead of him was likewise still, and he suddenly had no idea which direction he’d been going. If he picked the wrong way, he would run into the thing chasing him. If he didn’t move, it was going to eat him alive.

He had no information, nothing on which to base his decision. MacGyver looked up, at the rounded ceiling of the tunnel barely visible through the shadows, and then at the rough walls. There were enough footholds to climb, he thought, and started to pull himself upwards. The wall crumbled under his grip and he slid back down, landing in a heap on the spongy floor.

It was coming. It was coming for him.

MacGyver scrabbled at the wall again, trying to get out of its line of sight before he was caught. It twisted under his fingers, the rough handholds simply melting away. He felt his fingernails tear as he skidded down the wall again, knowing with absolute certainty that he was about to die.

MacGyver sat bolt upright, breathing hard. He hadn’t had a nightmare like that in months. The sheets Jack had laid out on the couch were twisted around his legs, and he kicked at them almost ineffectually before falling off the couch and landing hard on his right shoulder. The sheets finally unwrapped from around his ankles, and he pushed himself away to sit with his forehead pressed against his bent knees.

Racing heart finally slowing, MacGyver turned to look at the other couch. Jack wasn’t on it; the rumpled sheets were almost luminescent in the dark. He stood, searching the darkness. As far as he could tell, the room was empty and the doors – including the outer door – were still closed. The sound of a doorknob creaking sent a spike of adrenaline coursing through him, and he bolted for the couch. Fist curled around a pen – the only thing he’d been able to grab – he lay perfectly still and tried to regulate his breathing.

The bathroom door swung open, and footsteps crossed the floor toward him.

“Mac?” came Jack’s voice softly, and MacGyver felt himself go limp in relief.

“What?” he asked, voice catching.

“Sorry I woke you,” Jack said, and MacGyver could hear him settling back into the other couch.

First the drop and now a nightmare, he thought. Keep this up and you’ll get yanked right off field work.

That particular comforting thought was still with him the following morning; he hadn’t been able to sleep much after the nightmare, even though he tried to keep the tossing and turning to a minimum. From what he could tell, Jack hadn’t slept much better than he had, and very few words were exchanged through the process of getting up, dressed, and more or less ready for the day.

“You want to start with the communal module?” Jack asked over terrible instant coffee. He grimaced at the taste and set the mug aside.

MacGyver thought about it. “No, but we should,” he said.

“I’ll take the communal module if you want to pick up Sato,” Jack said, though MacGyver wasn’t sure if that was Jack’s idea of trying to be helpful or if Jack just thought MacGyver couldn’t handle himself in a field situation. “You know how to drive a Sno-Cat?”

Jack had apparently already processed the positive answer MacGyver hadn’t given. He let it go. “Yeah,” he said. He was more or less sure he could figure it out.

By the time he got back to the outpost with Sato’s body carefully stowed in the rear of the Sno-Cat, Jack had apparently already laid Drake’s body out behind the garage. He’d wrapped it in a tarp, mirroring MacGyver’s actions with Sato’s body. “Great minds,” MacGyver murmured, and then decided that the deaths of two people were not the appropriate time to feel a sense of kinship with his partner.

Sato’s body carefully laid next to Drake’s, MacGyver replaced the Sno-Cat and walked toward the communal module. It was warm, the heat welcome even with the lingering odor of decay. MacGyver checked the kitchen and the hydroponics bay before hearing footsteps on the lower level. “Jack?” he called.

Jack didn’t answer; MacGyver jogged down the stairs. The dining area was empty, as were both couches. MacGyver thought he saw a shadow move in the exercise area and slowed his pace down the last few stairs. “Jack?” he called again, but again heard nothing in reply. The exercise area held several machines and some free weights; MacGyver picked up one of the mid-size dumbbells and walked carefully in the direction he’d seen the figure move. “Jack?” he called again, softly.

Between the dining area and the gym, almost under the stairs, was a mechanical room he hadn’t seen before. MacGyver switched to a noiseless walk, holding the dumbbell in his right hand and sticking close to the wall. The dining area, as far as he could tell, was still empty, but had the door to the mechanical closet just fallen closed?  MacGyver eased the door open, peering into the shadows. The closet was too shallow for anyone to fit inside, but he checked it thoroughly anyway. No one was hiding on the ceiling, either.

“MacGyver?” Jack called from the second-floor entryway.

He hadn’t gone up the stairs; he would have been visible in the gaps between the steps. “There’s someone else here,” MacGyver called back.

“Keep your back to the wall,” Jack said, and MacGyver stuck to the door of the mechanical closet while Jack quickly and efficiently searched the module. “No one here but us, Mac.”

“I saw someone,” MacGyver said. “He was down here. Or she.”

“Well, there’s no one here now, and I didn’t see anyone leave,” Jack said.

“I know what I saw,” MacGyver retorted, starting to get angry.

“I didn’t say that you didn’t,” Jack said, using the same voice he used on witnesses and civilians who were less than emotionally stable.

“Don’t patronize me.” MacGyver started to run his hands through his hair and stopped when he realized he was still holding the dumbbell in one hand. He set it down. “Sorry. I didn’t mean – I had nightmares,” he offered, although it didn’t help explain his actions. He had been trained for situations like this, and he knew better.

“This place is freaky,” Jack said, still calm. “Come on. We’ve got some searching to do.”

With one more glance around the apparently empty communal module, MacGyver followed Jack up the stairs. They’d set up a search pattern according to the maps, and Jack gave MacGyver a considering look before asking if MacGyver wanted to split up. “I have these,” he said, and produced a pair of short-range walkie-talkies. MacGyver hooked one on his belt and nodded, and Jack pointed to a part of the grid.  “You start here,” he said.

The area close to the compound seemed deceptively easy to search; it had footprints and snowmobile tracks that hadn’t been swept away by the ever-present wind. MacGyver set out on foot, checking his position against Drake’s transponder every few minutes and searching for any sign of one of the remaining outpost staff.

He found nothing.

The blinding sun on white snow against the bright blue sky was enough to give him a pounding headache by the time he started back toward the outpost, although he hadn’t been that far from it at any point during the day. He mentally marked off the grid sections he’d searched, verifying his position against Drake’s transponder for one final check.

The transponder signal wasn’t showing up on the screen.

MacGyver shook it, but the little glowing dot didn’t appear. His own signal showed up clearly at the center, but the beacon to lead him home was gone. Did it have a low battery? He couldn’t remember whether or not he’d seen a little red light blinking on Drake’s bracelet, but there was none on the one he’d appropriated. Its battery status light was green and steady. He looked at the screen in his hand again, and thought about trying to retrace his steps.

The wind had already blown his tracks away, leaving them half-defined at best in a landscape of drifting white. MacGyver closed his eyes, trying to remember where he’d been relative to the outpost. He knew what grid section he was in, and roughly how close to the outpost he was supposed to be. What he didn’t know was what direction, exactly, he was supposed to go.

“Think, MacGyver.” He was suddenly and forcibly reminded of his dream; if he picked the wrong direction, he was going to die horribly. If he stayed where he was, he had no chance of survival.

“Hey, buddy.”

The voice on his walkie-talkie startled him badly. MacGyver pulled it off his belt. “Jack.”

“Mac?”

MacGyver repressed the urge to ask who else would possibly be calling. Jack should be able to see his transponder signal and tell him if he was moving in the right direction. “How far did you get?”

“What is this, a race?” Jack sounded genuinely amused.

“No, I’m just, uh, not sure where I am.” MacGyver tapped at the screen again.

“You called me because you got lost?” Jack asked, now sounding incredulous.

“I’m not lost. I just don’t know exactly where I am relative to the outpost.” He knew the grid he’d been searching was northeast of the outpost. If he went in a general southwest direction, chances were fairly high he’d run into something that could lead him back.

“Sounds like lost to me,” Jack said. “Just move toward Drake’s signal.”

“It’s gone,” MacGyver said. “I think the battery on his transponder died.”

“I changed it before we left,” Jack said. “Should be good for days.” There was a rustling sound, and then “Are you sure you can’t see it? It’s showing up loud and clear on my end.”

MacGyver looked at his screen again, and dot showing Drake’s transponder was blinking steadily in the corner of the screen. “No, I see it,” he said. “ETA maybe twenty minutes.”

“Copy that,” Jack said. “See you when you get here.”

Jack was standing outside the garage when MacGyver walked back into the complex, head pounding. He was in the process of pulling the door closed, and jumped slightly when he heard MacGyver coming.

“I take it you didn’t find anything,” he said.

MacGyver shook his head. “Just a headache. No outpost staff. No sign of them.”

“You bring enough water?” Jack tossed him a bottle; it had ice along one edge. MacGyver caught it clumsily and drank most of it, only then realizing how thirsty he’d been. “Guess not.”

“I defer to your vast experience,” he said. “You find anything?”

Jack shook his head. “Nada.”

The two of them made their way into the residential module, MacGyver trying to shake the last of the water out of the bottle and frowning sadly at the ice remaining stuck in it. The sun was still high enough in the sky to light up the inside of the module, until Jack closed all of the doors to the common area again and pulled the shutters closed.

“Got something against daylight?” MacGyver asked.

“Kinda bright out there,” Jack said. MacGyver deduced that Jack had the same sort of headache he did; the first aid kid tucked into the bottom of Jack’s suitcase had ibuprofen in it. He dug it out and tossed the bottle to Jack. Jack shook it once and tossed it back.

MacGyver shrugged and dry-swallowed two, but Jack was right about the electric lights being easier on the eyes. “We got enough electricity for this?” he asked, pointing vaguely at the lights.

“Why?” Jack asked, eyes narrowed.

“Because there’s no power grid here?” MacGyver said.

“Solar panels, remember?” Jack said. “There’s only two of us and the lab ain’t using any juice.”

“Were there solar panels on the lab?”

“I don’t know, man. Point is, there are only two of us. It’s fine.” Jack went through the box of supplies, inspecting and discarding the majority of it. “Anything else from Thornton?” he asked, after he’d found something that met his unspoken standards.

The satellite phone hadn’t left the residential module; MacGyver found it and booted it up. There was nothing. He shook his head, holding it out to Jack. Jack inspected it and then tapped out a message. “Status update,” he said. “Just letting her know we didn’t find anything.”

MacGyver woke the next morning with the nagging sense that he was forgetting something important, but he didn’t think he’d had the same sort of nightmares. At the very least, he didn’t remember them, although he had the vague impression of shadowy figures circling him that faded as soon as he remembered it.

“Bad dreams?” Jack said from across the room, and MacGyver tried not to flinch. He hadn’t heard Jack moving at all.

“Not really.” He rubbed at his eyes until they decided to focus, and didn’t walk into the door on his way to shower.

The search on the second day went more or less the way the search on the first day had gone; MacGyver found nothing, although this time he made sure to leave markers along his trail in case the screen went on the fritz again. It showed the location of the outpost clearly, though, without fail, which was only a partial reassurance against the return of his snow-glare headache. The only break in the monotony was Jack’s announcement late in the day that he’d found the marine biologist, Richard Coleman.

MacGyver found Jack without too much trouble, standing over another half-buried body in the snow. Coleman was crouched behind a rock, as if he were hiding from something, but that hadn’t saved him. MacGyver circled the body, just to confirm what he thought he’d seen; there was a glossy red stiletto-heeled shoe buried in Coleman’s back. It wasn’t his only injury; blood had spilled over the snow from a cut along one leg, frozen solid in the cold. MacGyver wasn’t sure which one had killed him.

“That’s Sato’s shoe,” Jack said, without inflection. If he had an expression, MacGyver couldn’t read it behind the goggles and scarf covering every inch of skin that might otherwise have been exposed.

“You think Sato killed him?” MacGyver asked, trying to triangulate in his head where they’d found Sato in relation to where they were currently standing.

“Hard to say,” Jack said. “It’s not like we can really determine time of death.”

Getting Coleman back to the camp ended up being harder than Sato, both because he was larger and heavier and because he was frozen to the snow beneath him. It was not an experience MacGyver had had before or wished to repeat.

The ibuprofen was still in his bag when they returned to the residential module, and MacGyver dry-swallowed another two while Jack spread the map out on the single table in the common room large enough to hold it. “Where did we find Sato?” Jack asked.

That Sato and Coleman had gone – or been taken – markedly different directions away from the outpost became clear when MacGyver marked the location of Coleman’s body. “They weren’t together,” he said, staring at the map. He hadn’t recognized anything, but deep down he’d been hoping it was because the wind had rearranged the contours of the snow enough to make the terrain unrecognizable.

“So either they were kidnapped by separate groups, or they left on their own,” Jack said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“Maybe,” MacGyver said. A thought struck him. “Or they were lured out.” He studied the map for another few moments. Coleman hadn’t been wearing the appropriate gear for a long cold-weather hike; Sato had, but neither of them appeared to have been heading in the direction of anything reachable on foot.

He started thinking of possible ways the staff could have been lured out of the outpost and then struck in the back, and none of the scenarios that started running through his mind were particularly reassuring. MacGyver finished marking sections off the map, mind whirring, and reached for the satellite phone.

“I sent Thornton the status update,” Jack said. He wasn’t precisely keeping the satellite phone out of MacGyver’s grasp, but he wasn’t making it easy for MacGyver to get a hold of it either.

“Okay,” MacGyver said, and stopped reaching. He could check the phone later. The scenario that was rapidly beginning to gain the most traction was that the staff had been lured out by someone they trusted, which in the low-traffic region in which the outpost found itself meant that one or more of the staff had been a traitor. Either that, he thought, or they’d been replaced. MacGyver had seen what Bozer had been able to do with his masks in his garage, and it was potentially very reasonable to assume that access to higher-quality resources meant high-quality masks that someone might mistake for a real face.

“I’m going to go through the data,” he said, picking up another bottle of water from what they’d pilfered out of the station supply and taking a drink. He wanted to wash the taste of what they’d seen out of his mouth, regardless of how little sense the sentiment made. He emptied the bottle in a single sitting, taking another one to go along with his work.

“Want help?” Jack asked.

MacGyver handed him the book that might have been a diary. “See if you can make any sense of that,” he said, and dug his travel laptop out of his bag. Both flash drives and the diary had been found in the same module, but they hadn’t all been in the same bedroom. The only thing MacGyver knew about who might have been in the bedrooms in Module C was that both of them had been among the outpost staff’s four women.

“Looks like a code,” Jack said, flipping through it and frowning.

“It was in Module C,” MacGyver said. “There might be a key hidden somewhere.”

Jack gave him a measured look and declined to leave the residential module to search for a potential key.

The first of the hard drives held some text files and some videos. MacGyver tried the text files first, but they were all corrupted. He thought they might also have been in some sort of code, but he didn’t have access to any sort of decryption algorithm on that laptop. He uploaded the text files to the cloud instead and tried to play the video files.

There was no picture on the first file, just the sound of something dragging and several clicks at apparently random intervals. After the first thirty seconds, MacGyver began to hear the sound of breathing, hitches telling him that the person filming was terrified. The video cut off abruptly.

The second file looked like it had been filmed through a crack in a door, which appeared to have been barricaded somehow. A blurry figure on it might have been Drake; the hair might have been dark, and the figure looked vaguely male, but the backlighting and narrow field of view made it almost impossible to tell.

“Something wrong,” the figure was saying. “I need help.” It was a male voice; MacGyver mentally identified the man as definitely Drake. Drake kept talking, voice low enough that MacGyver could only make out the odd word. Crazy was one that came through loud and clear, as was symptom. Drake ended by asking for something else. The final phrase was perfectly audible: Please hurry.

MacGyver clicked the end of his pen in a staccato rhythm, alternating clicks with taps against his knee. Drake had seen something odd, which might have lent credence to his theory of the outpost being betrayed from within. It was always possible, he thought, that Drake himself had been the traitor and had been killed for it, but then who had made off with the rest of the staff? He went for the third video file.

“Bad juju,” Jack said, from way too close, and MacGyver flinched hard enough to break the pen. Ink spilled over his fingers and he cursed as it flooded the laptop keyboard. The laptop sparked once and then went dark.

“Are you kidding?” MacGyver yanked his hand away from the keyboard, but it was too late.

“What are the chances of that?” Jack was making the same face he made when he was trying to apologize for something he didn’t feel sorry for. MacGyver frowned at him.

“Low,” he said. “Unless it hit something vital, there shouldn’t be enough ink in the pen to do this.” It was only then that he saw he’d knocked his bottle of water over onto the keyboard, and liquid was still pouring out. He grabbed it and set it upright, leaving smears of ink on the bottle.

“Bad luck?” Jack asked, voice very neutral.

MacGyver quelled the sudden urge to poke at the edges of Jack’s face to see if Jack were really Jack, or someone in a mask. There had been hours and hours that he hadn’t seen or heard from Jack; wasn’t it possible, he asked himself, that Jack had been taken and replaced without MacGyver noticing. It looked like Jack, though, and it sounded like Jack. It was also possible, he thought, that Jack had been turned by the same people that had taken out the outpost.

Or maybe Jack had been working against him from the very beginning. Jack had never been who MacGyver thought he had. MacGyver swallowed, hard, trying not to let any of his thoughts show on his face. Jack-the-traitor or Jack’s replacement, whoever it was, it wasn’t the Jack that MacGyver thought he knew, had been half in love with without admitting it. It made him sick to his stomach.

“Bad luck,” he said, trying to keep his voice as neutral as Jack’s.

“You hungry?” Jack asked, and MacGyver suddenly knew that Jack was going to poison him.

“Ah, no,” he said. “I just need to get this off of my hand.”

He couldn’t grab the satellite phone without Jack seeing it, but he could barricade himself in the bathroom and pretend he was just scrubbing the ink off his hands. To give the story verisimilitude, he did try to remove the ink. Some of it stayed, sunken into the creases of his skin, no matter how hard he scrubbed.

“You sure you’re not hungry?” Jack asked through the door, followed by, “You okay?”

“Fine, and no thank you,” MacGyver said. He’d drunk enough water that his stomach thought it was full; he wasn’t about to eat anything Jack could have tampered with. He’d sneak out of the module once Jack was asleep, take the satellite phone and contact the Phoenix Foundation.

Jack sleeps in front of the door, whispered a voice in the back of his mind. Don’t you think he did that on purpose?

“Shut up,” he said. Jack had been playing him from the very beginning.

How do you know this wasn’t just a plot to get you out of the way? The voice kept whispering. Jack and Thornton, working together.

“No,” he said, but he couldn’t stop the voice. The only thing keeping him safe was that Jack didn’t know MacGyver had figured him out. He had to act normal, act as though he had no idea what was going on, until he had the chance to escape.

“Mac?” Jack asked again from the other side of the door, and MacGyver opened it.

“Yeah.” MacGyver slipped past Jack, moving slowly, and carefully examined his soaked laptop. It might dry out enough to not be entirely broken, if he let it sit for 48 hours. If I’m here with Jack for 48 hours, I’m a dead man. The laptop had to be discarded. He removed the keyboard anyway, exposing the innards to the air so they could dry more efficiently, soaking up excess moisture with a towel. “I think it can be fixed,” he offered.

“That’s good.” Jack sat on the other couch, eating whatever it was he’d been heating up right from the pan. “You want some?”

MacGyver considered briefly that if Jack was eating it, it might be safe. Then he considered that Jack could have dosed himself with an antidote to whatever he might have put in the stew to put on a show of safety. “I’m not hungry,” he said again.

“You feeling okay?” Jack asked, putting the pan down and looking at MacGyver with what for all intents and purposes seemed like a genuine expression of concern.

“Fine,” MacGyver said. “Just not hungry.”

“Suit yourself.” Jack returned to the stew, shooting MacGyver unreadable glances out of the corner of his eyes. MacGyver saw them, although he pretended he didn’t notice. Jack was watching him.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” he said.

“Headache any better?” Jack asked. There was an undercurrent of something MacGyver couldn’t identify in Jack’s voice, but he didn’t like it.

“It’s fine,” MacGyver said, although the ibuprofen hadn’t helped.

“Maybe you should stay here tomorrow,” Jack said. “Go over what we’ve got on site.” He put the journal on the table next to the ruined laptop.

“Maybe,” MacGyver said. Communication with the outside world would go much more easily if Jack expected to see his transponder signal at the outpost site. That, or an attempt to walk to the second nearest outpost, which was perhaps forty or fifty miles away. It wouldn’t be an easy hike, but he thought he could make it. MacGyver filed the thought away as a last resort; he could neutralize Jack here. “Might be a good idea,” he added, because Jack seemed to be expecting more of a reply.

“Okay.” Jack tapped at the map. “I’ll be in this section,” he said.

MacGyver didn’t mean to fall asleep, but he woke with sunlight streaming over his face and Jack nowhere to be seen. The transponder screen told him that Jack was right where he’d said he was going to be, and there was a bowl of something that might have been oatmeal with a note tacked to it. MacGyver threw it out and searched the box of supplies for something that Jack couldn’t have tampered with.

Breakfast having been found, MacGyver looked for the satellite phone. He searched the entire residential module, looking in every place small enough to hide it. It was nowhere to be seen, and with his laptop also out of commission, the only person he could talk to was Jack, via walkie-talkie. MacGyver had never felt quite so isolated in his life. He rubbed his eyes. He’d thought the headache was due to the glare on the snow, but the pain hadn’t gone away while he slept. He searched for the ibuprofen, swallowing it with water this time, and rubbing at his temples. His walkie-talkie crackled, and MacGyver turned it off before he could hear whatever it was Jack was trying to say.

There was internet access in the outpost. Someone had to have left a laptop, or something MacGyver could use to contact the Phoenix Foundation and report that Jack was actively trying to kill him. He dressed carefully for the cold weather, making sure his Swiss army knife was in a reachable pocket, and left his borrowed transponder in Residential Module C.

No internet-capable pieces of machinery were left in any of the other residential modules; MacGyver saw at least one laptop that had been deliberately smashed, and two cell phones that were both locked via password and had no service to speak of. He pocketed them anyway, on the off chance that they could be useful, after making sure they were both off.

The communal module, with its lingering odor, had no communication equipment; even the television wasn’t hooked up to any sort of external feed. The storage shed, which felt oddly nostalgic, was just as he remembered it, which was to say utterly useless. That left the lab as his only option.

MacGyver circled it from the outside, trying to determine whether anything inside was still usable, but all he could see was the sooty corridor. The lights were down entirely, leaving only murky shadow inside. MacGyver tapped on the exterior door twice, thoughtfully, before easing it open. The air that rushed out smelled of smoke and electrical wiring, and made him cough. He didn’t think it was safe to breathe, until it had been aired out, and left the door hanging wide open.

The only option he had left was to neutralize Jack.

* * *

Jack re-adjusted his goggles, checking off another section on the map. He’d seen no sign of outpost staff so far, either tracks or the staff members themselves, but if he were going to be completely honest with himself, he wasn’t giving the search his full attention. He was more worried about MacGyver; his partner was acting squirrelly, and Jack didn’t like it.

The fate of the outpost staff was at this point a tangential concern; something weird had happened, that much was clear, and whatever information MacGyver had sent back might help someone figure out exactly what that was. Jack had seen MacGyver upload both the text and the video from one of the thumb drives before the laptop had been shorted out, flagging it just as he’d flagged the information from the lab so that Riley would see it and forward it to the appropriate personnel.

As far as the outpost staff themselves went, Jack was not particularly optimistic about their chances of survival. He figured, at this point, a week after contact had been lost, that they were most likely dead, and he was out here searching for corpses. It was possible, he supposed, that one of them had made it to the relatively nearby Russian station, but not particularly likely.

Jack tapped the satellite phone in his pocket; he’d sent updates to Thornton regarding what they’d found, but he hadn’t said anything about MacGyver. After the past month, he didn’t want Thornton re-evaluating MacGyver’s suitability for fieldwork; Jack knew perfectly well that his partner was fine, but the past month didn’t exactly look that good on paper.

Except that now MacGyver wasn’t acting as though he was fine. MacGyver was acting as though he thought Jack was a threat, and that was so far out of the ordinary that Jack wasn’t entirely sure how to parse it. He had actually tried to check his pulse and temperature while MacGyver was asleep, but he’d nearly woken him and Jack didn’t have a good explanation. Jack had tried leaving breakfast as a peace offering, but given that MacGyver hadn’t answered the walkie-talkie, Jack wasn’t optimistic as to the chances of MacGyver accepting it.

Jack knew he’d screwed up somewhere; MacGyver had pulled away from him, after the incident in the Rockies. He’d gotten distant, started acting polite instead of like himself, and Jack had pushed. He’d demanded that MacGyver tell him what had happened that he couldn’t remember, and hadn’t backed off when MacGyver had said that Jack hadn’t done anything wrong. It had gone downhill from there into the worst fight the two of them had ever had.

Miami, weirdly, had helped. Something about a life or death situation, Jack supposed. Even if MacGyver hadn’t wanted to tell him just what had happened in the mountains, he’d at least stopped acting as though he didn’t want to be anywhere near Jack, and Jack had decided that whatever MacGyver didn’t want to say was MacGyver’s business. If Jack had said what he’d told himself he was never going to say, he’d take it if MacGyver was going to pretend Jack had never said it. At least this way, he got to keep his friend.

None of which, Jack admitted, was helping him right now. MacGyver had been fine until they’d reached the research station. His acrophobia – and Jack had learned that word just to tease his partner with it – had admittedly been worse than Jack had seen it since MacGyver had nearly fallen off the parking garage roof; to be fair, that would screw with anyone’s head, but MacGyver wasn’t just anyone. Jack didn’t think that was really it, though. No, the problem was that MacGyver had started watching Jack when he thought Jack wasn’t paying attention, and eating ibuprofen like candy. He was pale and shaky, and Jack had heard the audio on the recording talking about how the research staff had gone crazy.

Jack was afraid the same thing that had happened to the research staff had happened to MacGyver; he was sure, now, that they hadn’t been kidnapped or forced to leave against their will. He was sure they had turned on each other, for some reason, and whatever that reason was, it was contagious. Jack could only be relieved that he’d escaped whatever had affected everyone else. He pulled a bottle of water out of his pocket and drank deeply, grimacing at the taste of it. Half the Gatorade that had been in the storage room had been cracked open, and Jack didn’t quite trust them; he’d finished the rest, and this morning had been forced to resort to the station’s terrible bottled water. It wasn’t that he didn’t like water, it was just that he preferred the Gatorade.

Jack tapped at the satellite phone in his pocket. Thornton’s instructions had been to continue the search for the station personnel and to send back any data they could find. Jack didn’t know if MacGyver had sent the photos he’d taken, but he’d sent back confirmation that he’d received the instructions. Thornton had let him know that, weather permitting, they’d be picked up by helicopter on Thursday – that left him the rest of today, the following day, and whatever time they didn’t spend packing up on the day itself to figure out what was going on and for MacGyver to stop acting paranoid.

Jack thought that maybe, if MacGyver didn’t stop acting paranoid, he would see if Thornton could get them out earlier, and to hell with whatever it did to MacGyver’s field ratings. He stowed the half-empty bottle of water in his pocket and continued his search.

* * *

Most people, MacGyver thought, would have decided that the research station didn’t have much that could be used defensively or offensively, particularly since the lab had been flash-fried. Most people, he thought, didn’t quite look at things the right way. He’d taken several empty bottles and filled them with vinegar and other unpleasant substances – someone on the station had had a thing for spicy foods, and there was both chili paste and cayenne that dissolved in the vinegar quite nicely and would burn when it touched any delicate tissue. The addition of baking soda would give him, essentially, low-tech tear gas.

MacGyver had also strung up bits and pieces that would rattle when doors were opened and let him know when Jack was coming. It wasn’t a particularly sophisticated warning system, but it would have to do. Once Jack was neutralized, MacGyver could restrain him and call for extraction. He was currently in the hydroponics bay, surrounded by the scent of fresh, growing things. Some of them were drooping, and MacGyver found that the water supply was low. The research station ran on snowmelt, he thought, which must have been a time-consuming process, and they were running out of running water. He poured some bottled water on the plants that looked like they needed it the most; gathering snow for the station was not a high priority.

Each module had a walkie-talkie set up near the door; there had been a set in each vehicle in the garage, and MacGyver had had just enough to remotely monitor the entire station. He had a row set up, just inside the hydroponic bay door, in the little alcove that was hard to see from the door itself, and he waited.

Jack took hours to return. MacGyver checked his watch far too often, sure that it had stopped or was moving backwards, watching the digital display tick far too slowly. He considered taking it apart, to see why it wasn’t working properly, but it was the only timepiece he currently had. It informed him that it was closing on 1900 hours local time before Jack tripped the first perimeter alarm by opening the door to Residential Module C.

“Mac?” came through the associated walkie-talkie.

MacGyver froze, keeping himself still and breathing as shallowly as possible. He didn’t think Jack would see the walkie-talkie, but MacGyver didn’t want to make it easier to find by making noise. He didn’t want to give Jack any hint as to where he was, either. The tear gas was a last resort, his final line of defense; if possible, MacGyver thought it would be kinder – and easier – to neutralize Jack in his sleep.

“You in here?” Jack’s voice continued, and MacGyver could hear footsteps. “Aw, hell.” There was a rustling noise, followed by something hitting a hard surface. The transponder, maybe, MacGyver thought. There was another round of footsteps, accompanied by doors opening and closing, until there was a loud tap. “What the hell?” came Jack’s voice, and then, “Mac, are you listening? You on the other end of this?”

MacGyver deduced that Jack had found the walkie-talkie, and breathed even more shallowly.

“I can see that the channel is open,” Jack said. “Look, I’m not – something weird happened here, and I’m worried about you.”

That was exactly what Jack would say if he were trying to lull MacGyver into a false sense of security. MacGyver remained silent.

“Mac, I think there’s something in the air. Or the water. Hell, I don’t know. You saw the same video I did.” The sound of the module door opening and closing came over the walkie-talkie, and MacGyver could hear Jack’s boots crunching in the snow. “I think whatever happened to them is starting to happen to you.”

And what about you, MacGyver did not say. He wasn’t the one who’d tried to poison his partner, who’d cut his partner off from all communication.

“We have to trust each other, Mac.” There was the sound of another door opening and closing, echoing across the walkie-talkie from Residential Module A. “Goddammit,” Jack said softly, and then came the sounds of another search. “Mac, come out from wherever you are.”

He wasn’t about to fall for that. Jack had training in counter-terrorism measures, training in how to induce a false sense of security in detainees. MacGyver hadn’t had quite the same training, and he wasn’t as well versed in interrogation methods, but he knew enough not to fall for Jack’s tricks.

“Seriously?” Jack said, and then there was a click as the walkie-talkie associated with Module A was turned off. “Mac, this is weird. Even you have to admit that you’re acting weird.” There was another click as Jack turned off the walkie-talkie from Module C.

Jack tried to be quieter, after that, but MacGyver could hear him start to search the rest of the compound. He heard every time Jack opened a door, found the walkie-talkie, and switched it off, and it was getting harder and harder to quell the sense of incipient panic. Jack was going to find him.

Jack did not find the walkie-talkie stashed in the lab; he approached the building, with its door swinging open and banging in the wind, and then walked away again. MacGyver didn’t know if that was because Jack had decided he wasn’t in it, or because he’d decided MacGyver was there and was trying to get him to make a mistake out of nervous anxiety. MacGyver wasn’t going to fall for that tactic, either.

The communal module was the last one on Jack’s apparent mental list; MacGyver heard him search or at least enter the rest before the tripline laid across the door shook gently to warn him that Jack had opened it. There was no walkie-talkie at this door, and MacGyver couldn’t hear Jack’s footsteps from inside the hydroponics bay, but the shaking stopped after a few seconds. Jack was inside the communal module.

MacGyver dumped baking soda into one of his bottles of vinegar as quietly as he could, tightening the cap, and waited for the door to open.

The door did not open.

Either Jack had left the module, or he was moving silently around it. MacGyver waited, tension ramping slowly upwards, gripping the makeshift tear gas in a bottle, but the door remained closed.

A sudden thump from the first floor made him jump, almost reflexively twisting the cap off of his bottle. Unintentional as it was, the pressure was high enough that the cap burst off. MacGyver turned away, trying not to get the resulting mess in his own eyes, as the irritant spattered the space in front of the still-closed door. The sound of spattering liquid faded away, and MacGyver could hear another thump from the first floor, followed by pounding feet coming up the stairs and a single gunshot. The tripline shook violently, and MacGyver heard the door slam.

Someone else was in the outpost.

For a moment, MacGyver stood frozen, the possibilities of potential ally or potential new enemy flickering through his mind. The sound of another gunshot from outside the communal module galvanized his feet, and he found himself hauling the door open and rushing outside.

Jack stood, back to the door, in the very familiar position of pointing his weapon at a threat that was currently under control but had the potential to go sideways very quickly. “Tell me where he is,” he said. MacGyver looked from Jack to where the other person should be standing, and felt a rush of confusion when it finally clicked that there was no one there. Jack was pointing his gun at the empty space between two of the residential modules.

“Jack,” he said.

Jack, on hearing someone behind him, reacted exactly as MacGyver had seen him react before – he moved quickly to both evaluate the new potential threat and keep the current target within his field of vision. “Don’t think I won’t shoot you, too,” he said.

“Jack,” MacGyver said again. Something was very wrong, or Jack was trying to throw him off, and while Jack was extremely good at his job, this was not typical Jack methodology.

“I said shut up,” Jack said, and fired once at the empty space. His eyes narrowed briefly, and then he swung around to face MacGyver directly. “What did you do with MacGyver?”

“Jack, I’m right here,” MacGyver said with a sinking feeling in his gut. Had this been Jack’s plan all along – had he decided to cover up his treachery by claiming that MacGyver had been taken and then killed during a rescue attempt? But there was no reason for him to be playing this game with MacGyver himself.

Jack advanced toward him, moving slowly. “That way,” he said, nodding toward Residential Module B. “Go real slow, and keep your hands where I can see ‘em.”

MacGyver, hands in the air, walked carefully into the residential module. The common area had had its furniture shoved to the side, one couch stacked on another with a single chair set near the heating element. MacGyver’s heart thudded once in his chest at the certainty that Jack was going to tie him to the chair and execute him. He would not let himself panic. As soon as Jack was close enough to touch, MacGyver dove toward him.

The gun discharged once, but he felt no pain. MacGyver reached for it, intending to knock it out of Jack’s hands, but Jack’s fist connected with the side of MacGyver’s head and his vision blurred. His grip weakened and Jack hit him again, driving the air out of MacGyver’s lungs. He unceremoniously dragged MacGyver over to the single chair and efficiently tied him to it. MacGyver felt the tightness of the ropes before his vision cleared, and for a moment it felt as though the pressure around his wrists and ankles was driving the thoughts out of his head.

Jack sat on the heating element, which made MacGyver wince for a moment until he realized that it was off entirely and also that it was freezing inside the residential module.

“Now,” he said conversationally. “I know you’ve done something with my boy, and you’re going to tell me what it is.”

“No, Jack,” MacGyver said. “This is not a game we are going to play.”

“That’s real cute,” Jack said. “What did you do with him?”

“Jack, I am right here.” MacGyver tugged at the ropes around his wrists, but Jack had tied him well enough that he wasn’t going to get anywhere without some dedicated effort.

“I don’t think you get it,” Jack said. “I’m responsible for his safety, and if you think I won’t hurt you to keep him safe, you’ve got another think coming.”

MacGyver glared at him. “Screw you, Jack.”

“You think I won’t, just cause you look like him?” Jack leaned back and grinned, predatory. “I know you’ve been lurking around. I know you’ve been freakin’ him out.” Jack crossed his arm. “Reason he’s been all squirrelly is because of you. I just figured that out.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Only thing I can’t figure – besides what you did with him – is why he didn’t tell me,” Jack said. He checked his gun, and clicked the safety on. MacGyver frowned. Jack slid the gun into its holster, which was somehow more unnerving than if he’d continued pointing it at MacGyver.

“You’re the one who was trying to kill me,” MacGyver snapped.

Jack frowned. “This isn’t a game,” he said, and MacGyver wasn’t entirely sure they were actually both having the same conversation.

The sun shone directly in MacGyver’s eyes, and he blinked.

“You look at me when I’m talking to you,” Jack said, and slammed the shutter closed. MacGyver hadn’t seen him get up, or move across the room. “You’ve got five seconds to tell me exactly – Mac?”

Jack was staring at him as though he had no idea where MacGyver had come from, as though he hadn’t been the one to tie him to the chair and proceed to start an admittedly shoddy interrogation. “What?” MacGyver snapped.

“Where –“ Jack’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and then, “Where did he go?”

“Where did who go?”

“I was – there was…” Jack shook his head. “Something real weird’s going on here, Mac. You weren’t you.”

“You’re the –“ MacGyver started, and then snapped his mouth shut. Jack was trying to kill him. He knew – or he had known – that Jack was trying to kill him. For some reason, now he wasn’t quite so sure. That the man in front of him could be some kind of impostor was absurd; he could see the play of muscle beneath Jack’s skin, and he knew the face wasn’t a mask. MacGyver took a deep breath, and shoved down the feeling that the Jack in front of him couldn’t be trusted. “Something weird,” he agreed.

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out and holding it in front of MacGyver. “Found this in one of the bedrooms,” he said. “It was behind the shutter, with one corner peeking out. Like someone wanted it to be found.”

The paper had a list of items, most of them crossed off, most of them everyday objects that were all over the compound. It was written in sloppy handwriting, in multiple colors of ink, and creased beyond just being in Jack’s pocket, as though someone had been carrying it around before shoving it under the shutter. The items that were left were underlined, and MacGyver leaned closer to read the irregular letters. “Does that say water?”

“It does.” Jack flipped the paper around and glanced at it. “Water. Whatever that is.”

“Ethidium bromide,” MacGyver said.

“Whatever that is.”

“Something in the lab, maybe.”

“Fine. Water, this bromide junk, and salt.” Jack tapped the folded paper against his thigh. “It’s the words not safe across the top that are making me just a little bit nervous.”

“Nervous,” MacGyver repeated, trying to process, and then shook his head. “No.” It wasn’t right. He had known beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jack had been trying to kill him, had been putting poison in the food. He’d seen – he didn’t know what he’d seen. But if Nikki could betray him, then so could Jack. MacGyver pulled at the ropes around his wrists, to no avail.

“And there is clearly something wrong with you,” Jack said. “You’ve been off, Mac. You’ve been nervous. You got lost. You’ve been hiding from me. Me, Mac.” He shifted his weight on the heating unit, and then MacGyver saw it. The bones under Jack’s face shifted, stretching just enough to make it look entirely inhuman before snapping back.

“Get away from me,” MacGyver said.

“Hey.” Jack slid off the heating element and came toward him, telegraphing every movement, hands clearly visible. “Look at me, Mac.”

“Don’t touch me.” If that thing wearing Jack’s skin touched him, MacGyver thought he might vomit. “Stay away from me.” He tugged at the ropes again, but Jack – or the thing pretending to be Jack – knew its job far too well.

“Mac, it’s me,” the Jack-thing said, stopping just short of reach.

“You’re not Jack,” MacGyver said, and now it knew. It knew that he knew the truth, it knew that he knew it wasn’t Jack, and it was going to murder him to death. MacGyver felt sticky wetness against his wrists, but he couldn’t stop pulling on the ropes.

The Jack-thing circled around behind him, still moving slowly enough that MacGyver could see everything he did, and stopped just at the edges of MacGyver’s peripheral vision. “Aw, Mac, come on, you gotta stop that,” he said, and stepped just a little bit closer.

It was going to touch him. MacGyver threw himself away from it, the chair wobbling to the side and then falling over. His shoulder hit the ground with an agonizing thud and a lurch that might or might not have pulled it right out of its socket, but he didn’t stop trying to move away from the Jack-thing.

“Mac,” it said, sounding exactly like Jack. MacGyver’s stomach twisted and he swallowed down bile. The Jack-thing retreated, carefully keeping itself in MacGyver’s line of sight until it was directly in front of him, and then it crouched down to look him in the eyes. “There’s something wrong, Mac,” it said. “You saw those videos. I don’t think the staff was kidnapped, I think they were poisoned and driven crazy.”

MacGyver was barely listening; he was trying to push himself away from the Jack thing, but he couldn’t get any grip with his fingernails on the floor, couldn’t get any leverage with the one foot that was actually touching the floor.

“I think Drake wrote this,” the Jack-thing said, keeping its voice low and even. It was that voice he used on civilians again, the one that he used when trying to calm people down. It was not one of Jack’s stronger skills, and the Jack-thing was no better. “I think he made a list of what might have affected his coworkers.”

MacGyver stilled. The ropes around his wrists seemed looser, more slippery. He moved his arms experimentally, and found a little bit of give. Not quite enough to pull free, not yet, but enough to work with. He tilted his head to look the Jack-thing in the face, willing it to not pay attention to what his hands were doing behind his back. He could figure out how to kill it once his hands were free.

“You and I both know we didn’t touch whatever was in the lab,” the Jack-thing said, and its hands contorted this time, the bones stretching out in a latticework to cradle the grimy sheet of paper it was holding. “And we couldn’t find the salt.” It tapped the list with a sharp fingernail that retracted before MacGyver’s eyes into a perfect human hand. “It’s in the water, Mac. Whatever it is, it’s in the water.”

The ropes slid around on his wrist, and MacGyver flinched as they dragged across raw skin.

“Ah, hell,” the Jack-thing said, and stood. It walked behind him, quick and efficient now, not trying to reassure MacGyver by moving in a way that he could see. “Dammit, Mac.”

Strong hands gripped MacGyver’s shoulders from behind, lifting the chair into an upright position. Pain flared along MacGyver’s shoulder, and the Jack-thing’s fingers probed the joint carefully. Something clicked, and the pain faded slightly. MacGyver felt the Jack-thing’s hands on his wrists next, gentle against the ropes. Bile rose in his throat again and he swallowed it down.

“This is going to be a problem,” the Jack-thing said, and returned to MacGyver’s field of vision. It had the satellite phone in its hands, and it was busily tapping away. “I’m letting Thornton know what we found,” it said, and the tone was conversational. “We’re scheduled for exfil day after tomorrow, which you know, via helicopter and then a flight out of McMurdo, which you also know.”

The Jack-thing had tightened the ropes again while it was messing around behind MacGyver’s back. He felt a wave of despair wash over him; it was going to kill him, and probably eat him, all while pretending to still be his friend. MacGyver wondered if it had killed the real Jack, or if it had just been the real Jack all along. “When?” he asked.

“Day after tomorrow, Mac,” the Jack-thing said, worry creasing its face.

“No,” MacGyver said. “When did you replace him?”

“Replace?” The Jack-thing’s brow creased in artfully feigned confusion.

“When did you replace Jack?” MacGyver glared up at him. “I know you’re not him. I know you’re not human.”

“Aw, no, Mac.” The Jack-thing’s face softened into a look that was somewhere between pity and sympathy with an edge of horror. “I’m me. I promise I’m me.”

“I saw your face,” MacGyver hissed. It was going to kill him anyway; it didn’t matter what he said now. It didn’t matter if it knew. “I saw your hand. I saw your bones move. You’re not Jack.”

The Jack-thing abruptly reached out and laid a hand along MacGyver’s face, unavoidable even though MacGyver tried to flinch backwards out of reach. The Jack-thing’s skin was cool and dry, and it gripped the back of MacGyver’s head to hold it still when he tried to turn it away. “I can’t leave you alone,” the Jack-thing said, finally releasing MacGyver. “You’d get out of that chair. Can’t really lock you in one of these, either.”

“I’m going to stop you,” MacGyver told it.

“Right.” The Jack-thing moved across the room to turn on the lights, and MacGyver blinked. He hadn’t noticed the sun going down, but now he could see a brilliant display of color on the horizon. The Jack-thing did something to the heating element, and then stared at MacGyver for a long moment. “I’ll be right back,” it said.

Once the Jack-thing was out of sight, MacGyver redoubled his efforts to break free of the rope. If he could have reached his pocket, he could have cut himself free, but that proved to be futile. The ropes began to slide around on his wrist again, and he was beginning to feel optimistic about his chances for getting his hands back when the door opened and the Jack-thing came back into the room. He had a bag over one shoulder, and was carrying the first-aid kit in one hand. In the other, he had a bucket full of packed snow.

“Okay, Mac.”

The Jack-thing moved behind him again, and in the increasingly stifling heat, MacGyver could feel it tugging on his hands and wrists. He struggled, which only got him a smack on his uninjured shoulder. He felt pressure on his upper arms, and then something being spread over his wrists. The Jack-thing, still being strangely gentle, wrapped his wrists in something soft, and then MacGyver heard the unmistakable click of handcuffs. That was the Jack-thing’s mistake, he thought; all he needed was something the size of a pin to work himself free.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the Jack-thing said, still conversational, and then it wove the rope around the handcuffs to hold them in place. MacGyver could feel it going along his sleeves, looking for anything MacGyver could use to work his way out of the handcuffs. “I’ve got your back,” it said. “You’re gonna be okay, Mac.”

MacGyver could have screamed.

The Jack-thing melted the snow in the bucket, drinking some of it and trying to get MacGyver to drink some of the rest. He kept his mouth stubbornly closed. The Jack-thing tried to feed him, too, but MacGyver was having none of it. The headache he’d had for the past three days had returned with a vengeance, and the light felt as if it were stabbing into his brain. The Jack-thing noticed, and angled the lamp away from MacGyver’s face. “Try to get some sleep, at least,” the Jack-thing said.

“You’re not going to lull me into a false sense of security,” MacGyver snapped.

“Goddammit, Mac.” The Jack-thing rubbed its face with one hand in a gesture so quintessentially Jack that it drove a lump into MacGyver’s throat. His friend was dead. Jack was dead and MacGyver was never going to see him again, and this thing in front of him was making a mockery of it. “At least drink something.”

MacGyver closed his mouth tightly.

“Fine.” The Jack-thing sighed. “Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.”

The night passed slowly, the Jack-thing sleeping – or pretending to sleep – in bits and pieces, checking on MacGyver every so often. Toward dawn, as MacGyver began to see the sky lighten along the edge of the horizon, the Jack-thing fell into a deeper sleep, breathing slowly and evenly. MacGyver eyed it for a very long moment, but it didn’t seem to be faking. He felt along the handcuffs, and then along the ropes binding them, as he’d done for most of the night, trying to find the weak spot. He thought he’d identified it. He’d also realized that it wasn’t specifically his ankles tied to the chair, it was his boots, and he’d worked enough give into those ropes to carefully work his feet free.

The sun was well over the horizon by the time MacGyver could put both bare feet onto the floor, his socks having stuck inside the boots. He kept looking over at the Jack-thing with eyes dry from the persistent headache and the fatigue settling into his skin, but it was still asleep. He kept forgetting that it wasn’t Jack. He stood, carefully and as quietly as possible, and walked across the common area in an awkward shuffle. There was a pen, now within reach if he could just turn around and not knock the chair into something.

The chair leg hit the side table with a resounding clatter and Jack startled, bounding upright within half a second of opening his eyes. MacGyver made a grab for the pen anyway. Jack crossed the room and swiped it out of his hands, and MacGyver overbalanced. Jack caught him, lowering the chair to the floor.

“You still think I’m going to kill you?” Jack asked. Inexplicably, he did not re-tie MacGyver’s feet to the chair.

MacGyver shook his head. “I don’t know.” His eyes felt like they were full of grit. He tried to fix it in his mind that Jack wasn’t Jack, but the thought was slippery.

“Will you drink some damn water,” Jack said, and MacGyver’s tongue felt like sandpaper as he shook his head.  “Come on, Mac.” Jack opened the door and took the empty bucket, filling it with snow. “I’m not putting anything in it.”

“We’ve been walking on that snow,” MacGyver shot back. “That’s disgusting, Jack.”

“You are just never happy.” Jack dumped out the bucket and closed the door. MacGyver watched him as he went through a strange approximation of a morning routine, melting fresh snow for water and walking in and out of the common area. MacGyver didn’t hear the shower running, but Jack reappeared in fresh clothes at one point with wet hair. He tapped one bare toe on the floor and made a new plan.

“Can I use the bathroom?” He’d been tied to the chair for the better part of the night; it was a perfectly reasonable request. That it happened to be an honest request didn’t change the situation.

“This isn’t going to go well, is it,” Jack said, and sighed with what sounded like resignation. “At least try to remember that you’re not wearing any shoes, and that frostbite is a terrible thing.” He tugged at the ropes and then pulled MacGyver to a standing position. Stiff from limited movement, MacGyver nearly overbalanced, but Jack held him steady and then gave him a gentle push into the bathroom.

“I can’t get my pants down with my hands behind my back,” MacGyver pointed out. Jack gave him a look.

“You want help?” he asked.

MacGyver grimaced. “No. Just – let me have my hands in front of me.”

“Not a chance,” Jack said, and unfastened MacGyver’s pants. “You’re creative. You’ll figure it out.”

“Cute,” MacGyver said. He did not wish to repeat the experience, ever, but once he was finished, he inspected the bathroom. It was identical to the one in Module A, as far as he could tell, and the window didn’t open at all. There was a cupboard under the sink, and MacGyver nudged it open with a toe. A number of bottles was inside, and he crouched down to read the labels, carefully selecting two and nudging them out and onto the floor.

“Mac? You okay in there?” Jack knocked on the door after the first thud sounded.

“Fine,” MacGyver said. He twisted the cap off the first container, letting the liquid splash all over the floor. It started seeping out underneath the door.

“Mac!” Jack tried to turn the knob, but MacGyver thought the lock would hold him for at least a few seconds.

The second bottle was a little harder to open than the first, but MacGyver got the cap off and the contents spilled into the puddle just as the door broke open. White smoke billowed into the air, and MacGyver held his breath.

“What the hell?” Jack coughed at the smoke, and MacGyver darted past him.

The door was unlocked, and he stumbled out of it, barely feeling the snow under his feet. He ran for the communal module, which had more places to hide and a better shot of having something useful in it, ice crunching beneath his toes. He didn’t get more than a few feet before Jack tackled him from the side, sending him hard to the ground. The impact jarred the breath out of him, and by the time MacGyver’s chest unlocked and he could inhale, Jack had hauled him back into the residential module and put him roughly back in the chair.

“You pull a stunt like that again,” Jack said, and there was nothing gentle in how tightly he secured MacGyver to the chair this time. He tied MacGyver’s feet down, too, inspecting them as he went.

“Three seconds isn’t going to give me frostbite,” MacGyver muttered.

“Yeah, you tell me that again when your toes fall off,” Jack said, apparently satisfied. He didn’t let MacGyver out of his sight again, watching him carefully almost every second that he wasn’t tapping away on the satellite phone. He didn’t speak much, either, except to periodically ask MacGyver if he was hungry, or thirsty, or if he could feel his fingers. He inspected MacGyver’s fingers every time he asked, regardless of MacGyver’s answer, and kept checking his toes.

It was annoying at first, and then became monotonous. It became monotonous enough that MacGyver, without noticing, fell asleep in the chair, despite the discomfort of having his hands still tied behind his back. He woke with the sun shining in his eyes, and a terrible taste in his mouth.

“How are you feeling?” Jack appeared in his field of vision almost as soon as MacGyver blinked.

“Awful.” MacGyver tried to stand, and was rudely yanked back by pressure on his wrists and shoulders. Memory came rushing back, and he looked down at the ropes tying his bare ankles to faux-wooden chair legs. The specifics were hazy, though, and a lingering headache around his eyes worsened when he tried to pin anything down.

“You gonna try and stab me if I let you up?” Jack said, eyes fixed on his face.

“I wouldn’t stab you,” MacGyver said. “That just seems sloppy.”

“Ha ha,” Jack said, and untied MacGyver’s feet. He moved on to MacGyver’s hands, and MacGyver tried to get stiff limbs to cooperate in bringing his arms around. Pins and needles pricked at his fingertips, and he flexed them in an attempt to fully restore circulation. His shoulders ached. “Here.” Jack had vanished and then rematerialized, and was holding out a cup full of water.

MacGyver hadn’t realized how thirsty he was; he drained the cup in what seemed like a single swallow.

“More?” Jack said, and MacGyver nodded.

“You still think I’m not me?” Jack asked.

“What?” MacGyver stared at him over the rim of the second cup, and the memory surfaced. He clearly remembered seeing the bones shifting underneath Jack’s skin, but he knew just as clearly that he couldn’t have seen it.

“Yeah.” Jack rubbed a hand over his hair. “You remember what I said about the outpost staff?”

“Something altered their state of mind,” MacGyver said. He did remember that particular conversation, and then he remembered the videos. “Drake. Drake figured it out, and they must have killed him for it.”

“Not real optimistic about any of the rest of them,” Jack said, and there was a note of sadness in his voice. “I always knew those stiletto heels were dangerous, though.”

The image of a formal shoe buried in a man’s chest flashed through MacGyver’s mind. “You find anyone else?” he asked quietly.

“Just the three you know about,” Jack said, and then changed the subject. “Thornton moved up the exfil, they’re sending a helicopter to pick us up as soon as it gets light tomorrow.”

“Fantastic,” MacGyver said. “You have a sample of whatever was in the water?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Even put it in a biohazard bag.”

“You’re funny,” MacGyver told him.

Jack kept his hands busy by unstacking the furniture in their current module before turning off the heat and herding MacGyver back to Module A, where he’d apparently been melting snow for hours. Module A was surprisingly warm, too; MacGyver stripped off his coat the second he got in the door.

“Come on,” Jack said from behind him. “Some of us are still standing outside in sub-zero weather.”

“It’s at least fifteen degrees,” MacGyver said, but he moved out of the door.

“At least fifteen degrees,” Jack repeated, and shoved the door closed. “That’s still cold.”

“Hey.” MacGyver dropped the jacket on the couch he’d slept on, which was still a mess of tangled sheets and blankets. “Thank you,” he said awkwardly.

Jack dropped his armful of odds and ends on his own couch, and gave MacGyver a confused look. “For what?”

“For not letting me – you know,” MacGyver said.

Jack grinned. “I got your back. You know that.”

“Yeah, but.” MacGyver paused, the words not coming easily. “I wouldn’t have blamed you for taking more drastic measures to keep me contained.”

“Are you trying to thank me for only tying you to a chair?” Jack asked, carefully neutral.

“That’s not –“ MacGyver huffed. “You know what I meant.”

“Well, if I’d known you liked being tied down,” Jack said, but the effort at a joke fell flat.

“Oh, shut up.” MacGyver sank down on the couch, leaning his head against the back, and squeezed his eyes shut. At some point, during the long night he’d spent trying to work himself free, he’d started keeping himself awake by composing and re-composing what he would say to the real Jack, if he ever saw him again. Knowing now that he’d been drugged and hallucinating, though, made what he’d wanted to say no less real. Close calls came too often in their line of work to waste time the way he had been for weeks on end. “Jack,” he said, after gathering the strength of will to speak.

“What?” Jack said, for the second time in the space of a minute without a trace of impatience against the backdrop of rustling noises.

“I didn’t, uh.” MacGyver kept his eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling. Every sentence he’d memorized was gone. “You know when we had that – you know how you asked me what happened in Colorado?”

“And you told me nothing did,” Jack said, and the background noises stopped. There was something MacGyver couldn’t identify in Jack’s voice, and he still wasn’t going to look at him to figure out what it was.

“I might have told you I was in love with you,” MacGyver said. “When I thought you were going to die.”

Silence came from the other side of the room, and MacGyver quelled the rising urge to either fidget or look over at Jack to see how he was reacting.

“What did I say?” Jack asked, finally, still well outside MacGyver’s field of vision.

“You wanted to know if that was how it was with us, and then you said I picked a hell of a time to tell you,” MacGyver said.

“And then?” Jack asked.

“Thornton showed up.” MacGyver ran his hands along his thighs, trying to dry his inexplicably wet palms. “And then you went into surgery.”

“I remember waking up,” Jack said softly. “You were acting all weird.”

“How was I supposed to act?” MacGyver’s fingers twitched, and he had to make a conscious effort not to ball them into fists.

“You should’ve told me the truth,” Jack said.

“And what would you have said?” The ceiling was an inoffensive shade of beige, but there was a dark spot just off-center that looked almost like a butterfly. MacGyver stared at it, blinking firmly to keep the burning in his eyes from spilling over.

“I’d’ve told you you were being a damn idiot,” Jack said, and the bottom dropped out of MacGyver’s stomach. He’d finally done it; he’d done with a few words what he hadn’t managed to do with years of pulling stupid stunts that nearly got both him and Jack killed on a regular basis. Jack, however, wasn’t done talking. “You deserve better than me,” Jack was saying.

MacGyver sat upright, eyes fixed on Jack. He was standing next to the heating unit, an open canister of instant coffee in one hand.

“Don’t give me that look,” Jack said. He put the coffee down.

“What look?” The clear implication was that Jack had feelings for him.

“That’s not – you can’t, Mac.” The look on Jack’s face was painful to see, hope and hurt and disappointment all rolled into one.

“Why?” MacGyver demanded, standing and taking half a step toward Jack.

“You’re all – you, and I’m – Mac, you know I love you. You’re one of the most important people in the world to me,” Jack said, and there was something raw in his voice.

“Then what-“

“I’m not the right person for you,” Jack said.

MacGyver’s heart skipped a beat, because that wasn’t a denial. “I don’t think that’s your decision to make,” he said.

“It’s not entirely your decision!” Jack took a step backwards, crossing his arms defensively.

“Are you telling me,” MacGyver said, speaking slowly and carefully, “that you don’t have – that you don’t want me?”

Jack looked almost hunted now, and MacGyver felt a pang of regret for pushing so hard.

“That’s all you have to say, and I’ll drop it.” MacGyver held up his hands. “Tell me you think of me like a brother, and that’s all, and I’ll never mention it again.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” Jack took a deep breath and let his arms drop to his sides. “You’re taking advantage of the fact that I can’t lie to you.”

“You’ve been lying for – how long?” MacGyver flung his arms out to the side.

“Not telling my way-too-young partner I have feelings for him isn’t the same thing as lying,” Jack snapped back. He turned away and picked up the coffee again, spooning it into the pot bubbling gently on the hot plate.

“Too young,” MacGyver said flatly.

“I’m twice your age,” Jack said, without looking at him.

“No, you aren’t.” MacGyver knew exactly how old Jack was, and that statement was mathematically false.

“Close enough,” Jack retorted, which might have been correct, depending on the definition of close. MacGyver felt that Jack’s definition of close was dead wrong.

“Was that the only thing holding you back?” he asked.

“Aw, come on, Mac.” Jack slammed the jar of grounds down on the table and turned to face MacGyver again. “We both know I’m not your type.”

“What do you think my type is?” MacGyver couldn’t stop himself from putting little air quotes around the word type, and he got irrationally irritated when Jack’s mouth twitched.

“You like blondes,” Jack muttered. “With, um.” He made a vague gesture in the general vicinity of his chest.

“You do know I don’t only date blonde women,” MacGyver said. He’d dated men, and Jack knew it.

“No, because it’s not like you’re cagey about your romantic history or anything,” Jack said, which was patently unfair. It wasn’t like MacGyver kept secrets. It wasn’t like Jack was the one who’d been blindsided by his partner’s old boyfriend ruining a delicate operation by showing up unexpectedly. Jack could blame MacGyver for Cairo all he liked, but MacGyver hadn’t been the catalyst for everything going wrong.

“That’s beside the point! And – and, Jack,” MacGyver started.

“Getting involved with your coworkers is a bad idea,” Jack interrupted, before MacGyver could get started on the potential hypocrisy of Jack calling MacGyver cagey, and that particular statement set MacGyver on a whole new train of thought.

“You’re only saying that because of Sarah,” he said. “And Nikki. Neither of those are a solid argument. You and Sarah weren’t because you worked together, it was because she wanted something you didn’t that had nothing to do with your job. And Nikki was – something else.”

“Yeah, well,” Jack said. There was something suddenly guarded in how he held himself, and he too-casually turned his attention back to the pot of probably terrible coffee still boiling on the hot plate.

“You think I’m still hung up on Nikki? I’m not,” MacGyver protested, but his own mind threw up the multiple times he’d told Jack he was over Nikki, only to be caught visiting her apartment in L.A. and staking out another apartment based on little more than a rumor.

“I’m not going to say the word ‘rebound’ never crossed my mind, Mac,” Jack said quietly, and turned off the hot plate. He poured the coffee into a mug.

MacGyver looked away, stung. “I care about you more than that.”

“I think,” Jack said carefully, hands wrapped around the coffee mug and gaze focused intently on the same, “you only think you’re in love with me because I’m everything Nikki wasn’t. Except for that whole secret agent thing.” He gave MacGyver a half-hearted attempt at a smile that was gone almost as soon as he made it.

“And I’m too young to know what I want?” MacGyver snapped, letting the bitterness wash through his voice. “Is that it?”

“That’s not what I said,” Jack said.

“Then what are you trying to say?” Somehow he’d gone more than halfway across the room without noticing, and was just barely within arm’s reach of Jack.

“Nikki messed with your head, Mac,” Jack said. “I think you just need a little more time to get it back on straight. It’s only been a few months.”

“I’m not the one who brought up Nikki,” MacGyver said.

“You kinda are,” Jack replied, and took a sip of his coffee. He grimaced at it, and then took another sip.

“You –“ MacGyver stopped. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings for you,” he said, finally.

“Okay,” Jack said, and put his cup down with more force than necessary. Dark liquid sloshed over the rim. “Let’s say we do this. What happens when it inevitably falls apart? I lose my best friend. I can’t handle that, Mac.”

“Inevitably?” MacGyver narrowed his eyes. “You’re not giving me a whole lot of credit here.”

“Every relationship I’ve ever had has gone south,” Jack protested.

“You’re letting your experience influence your actions,” MacGyver said, and took half a step toward Jack. Jack didn’t back away.

“That’s what experience is for,” Jack retorted, and MacGyver had to admit that he wasn’t that far off the mark.

“Still,” he said, stepping so close to Jack that any movement at all would bring them together, and tilting his head up just enough to look Jack in the eyes.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Jack said, and reached for him.

MacGyver met him halfway. Jack tasted like coffee, bitter against his tongue. MacGyver clung to him, pressing himself against Jack’s body hard enough to shove Jack back against the table. Jack chuckled against his lips, one hand dipping below MacGyver’s waist.

The motion of Jack’s mouth triggered a sudden visceral flash of the bones moving under Jack’s skin, and MacGyver shoved him away. There was nowhere for Jack to go, and MacGyver stumbled backwards instead, losing his balance and scrambling backwards on all fours.

Jack froze, hands outstretched, watching him carefully. “Mac?”

“I,” MacGyver said, trying to catch his breath. “I’m sorry.”  Jack took a step toward him, and MacGyver flinched back, not able to stop the flash of memory.

“You okay?” Jack asked, voice calm and even, keeping his hands where MacGyver could see them.

“Yeah, just.” MacGyver cleared his throat. “Just, uh, stay there. For a minute.” He stood carefully, eyes on Jack’s face. His bones didn’t move.

“Why don’t we talk about this when you’re feeling better,” Jack said, still using the soothing tone that he generally reserved for spooked civilians.

“Don’t patronize me,” MacGyver snapped. Knowing that Jack had his best interests at heart didn’t help, nor did knowing that the toxin that had destroyed the outpost was still working its way through his system.

“That’s not my intent,” Jack said, still not dropping the voice. “I’m not gonna take advantage of you, Mac. This can wait.”

Chapter Text

The trip back to the States was complicated by the fact that armed guards – not that they were conspicuously armed guards, but Jack still knew exactly what their escort was, and so did MacGyver – hovered around them at each step. The teams switched out at each stop, and all of their luggage had been essentially shrinkwrapped to be shipped as potentially hazardous material, no matter how much MacGyver insisted that it was harmless.

To add insult to injury, both of them were placed under observation as soon as they reached Los Angeles.

“Because being watched during the entire 48-hour trip home wasn’t enough information,” MacGyver said to Thornton, while Jack resisted the urge to facepalm. He could see the gears turning in her head as she came to the conclusion that whatever toxin it was hadn’t been neutralized, or worked its way out of MacGyver’s system, just before she said as much, calmly, to MacGyver’s face.

MacGyver, for his part, managed to make what Jack knew was a sulky hissy fit look like a dignified refusal to participate further in the conversation.

“Do you have anything to say?” Thornton demanded, rounding on him.

“Me? No,” Jack said, giving her his best innocent look. Thornton’s eyes narrowed at that.

It took three days of tests and evaluations for MacGyver to be declared fit for duty; Jack escaped after 24 hours, but it felt like the longest day of his life.

“I’m not a pincushion,” he muttered after blood was taken for the third time, and poked at the bandage in the bend of his elbow.

“Yes, you are,” MacGyver said absently. He was lying on the room’s sad excuse for a sofa, legs hanging off the side. “New job description: pincushion.” He paused. “Jack,” he said, with the same tone Jack had heard several times since they’d been placed in isolation.

“I told you, Mac, we’re not having that conversation until we know both of us are clean,” Jack said. “You being in an,” he waved his hand vaguely, “altered state of mind is exactly the wrong time to be talking about relationships.”

“I’m not in an altered state of mind,” MacGyver muttered.

“That’s not what your bloodwork says,” Jack countered.

“I’m just an experimentee to you,” MacGyver said, but now at least he was smiling.

“That’s not a word,” Jack said, which he would later maintain was why he hadn’t heard the door open.

“It is now.” MacGyver levered himself up on one elbow. “Riley!”

“Hey,” she said from behind Jack, who absolutely did not flinch in surprise. “A little jumpy, are we.”

“I am not,” Jack muttered.

“You seemed bored,” Riley said, depositing a laptop on the only table in the room – a small end table next to the short couch – and dropping into the mismatched chair.

“You’re watching the camera feed?” Jack asked, feeling vaguely insulted. It was one thing to know that the Phoenix Foundation’s medical staff was evaluating their behavior, but having Riley watch it seemed somehow more invasive.

“No,” she said. “I just know you both.”

“You have something that will make us less bored?” MacGyver swung his legs around and sat upright.

“You know how both Smith and Jack’s mad bomber were both getting payments from the same account?”

“He wasn’t my mad bomber,” Jack said, nudging MacGyver to the side and joining him on the couch. MacGyver pushed back, and Jack shoved him a little harder, the struggle ending with MacGyver leaning against Jack’s side.

“Beside the point,” Riley said, giving both of them a deeply skeptical look. “Walker and Smith. Both probably getting paid to make your lives difficult.”

“Who was doing the paying?” MacGyver asked.

“That’s the fun part,” Riley said. “While you were playing it safe in Antarctica, we connected the account number to this dude who calls himself a negotiator.”

“That sounds less than pleasant,” MacGyver said.

“Oh, it is.” Riley spun the screen around to show them a photograph and footage of a classically handsome brunet. “I’m not sure what his real name was, but the most common name he used was Beckett Gray.”

“So that’s what he looks like,” Jack said, and both of his teammates turned around to stare at him as though he’d grown a second head. “What?” he asked. “You don’t spend time in the CIA without learning a few things.” Neither of them looked mollified, but Jack was distracted by Riley’s choice of tense. “Wait, was?”

“I’m not done,” Riley said, and Jack gestured graciously for her to continue. Riley had the temerity to roll her eyes at him. “See this here?” She pointed at the video footage. It was a man who might have been Gray loading crates onto a ship. “This is the resupply vessel serving –“

“Those are for Lindsay Station,” MacGyver interrupted, leaning forward to peer at the screen. “Are you trying to tell us that this Gray was setting a trap for us?”

“Like he did with both Walker and Smith,” Riley said. “Lindsay Station was run by the DXS before it became the Phoenix Foundation, right? Anything went wrong, Gray – or whoever hired him – knew the DXS would send someone to investigate.”

“Gray’s one of the best,” Jack said. “But he’s more or less a gun for hire. He doesn’t work unless he gets paid for it.”

“What you’re both saying,” MacGyver said, “is that someone hired Gray. To assassinate us. Someone who knew the DXS, intimately. Someone who knew the types of assignments we would be given.”

“While making it look like business as usual,” Riley said. “I’m new at this, but that seems like it would be a really short list.”

“Real short,” Jack said, and felt MacGyver tense up. “Only one name.”

“She wouldn’t,” MacGyver said.

“Do I need to remind you that she tried to have you killed once already?” Jack said.

“Nikki?” Riley asked.

“Yes,” Jack said, but he was drowned out by MacGyver.

“This isn’t her style,” he said. “She’s – she doesn’t do things like this. It’s too indirect.”

“Too indirect?” Jack raised his eyebrows. “She was a double agent for months. That’s the opposite of direct. Aside from which, who else knew that much about how cases are assigned? Patty? You wanna tell me Patty hired someone to assassinate her top team?”

MacGyver pushed himself off the couch, planting an elbow in Jack’s ribs along the way, and stalked to the other side of the room. “No,” he said after a moment.

Jack followed. “I know this sucks,” he said, and MacGyver seemed to deflate. He turned to face Jack, and there was something almost defeated in his face. “Aw, hell, Mac.” Jack wrapped his arms around MacGyver, and after a moment MacGyver was clinging to him like a drowning man. “I’m a little less insecure about your ex now,” Jack said eventually, and MacGyver barked what was almost a laugh before letting go. Jack pretended not to see him swipe a hand over his eyes.

“If you two are done male-bonding over there,” Riley said, giving them both a speculative look. “I have some more actual facts.”

“I’m all ears,” Jack said.

“Beckett Gray was found dead,” MacGyver said, moving around Jack and sinking back down on the couch. “No evidence to show who did it.”

“Execution style,” Riley said. “I would ask how you knew, but.”

“You kept talking about him in the past tense,” MacGyver said. “And if you knew who’d done it, you would have led with that.”

“So now that we’ve established that the negotiator who was hired to kill us was inexplicably assassinated before completing his job,” Jack said. “What, you think she had a change of heart?”

“As far as I know, it’s business as usual for us,” Riley said. “We dig a little deeper into a situation before putting boots on the ground, maybe.”

“That so reassuring,” Jack said drily. “I don’t suppose you have anything to say about when we get out of this room.”

“Oh, you can leave any time,” Riley said. “Thornton sent me to tell you that your bloodwork came back clean.”

“It’s about time,” MacGyver said, a sentiment with which Jack wholeheartedly agreed.

“I meant Jack,” Riley said. “Sorry, Mac. You’re not cleared yet.”

“That’s patently unfair,” MacGyver said under his breath.

“The stuff in Lindsay Station’s water was pretty nasty,” Riley said. “Hallucinogenic. Induced paranoia. Basically caused a psychotic break. The autopsy reports from the staff at the station are here, if you want them.”

“Not really,” Jack said, over MacGyver’s “So they found the other three?”

“None of them survived,” Riley said softly, and there was a moment of silence. “But Jack’s okay,” Riley added. “Medical still wants to run a few tests on you, Mac.”

“I’m fine,” MacGyver grumbled.

“You had a higher dose,” Jack reminded him. “You were drinking it for days.” MacGyver pulled a face, to which Jack responded by sympathetically patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll come back and visit you,” he offered. MacGyver did not look as though the offer cheered him up at all.

“You’re both traitors,” he said when Jack and Riley walked out the door. Jack was fairly sure he didn’t mean it seriously.

Despite his best intentions, Jack was kept too busy to swing down to the sub-basement apartment and keep MacGyver company until he happened to overhear Thornton say that MacGyver was cleared to return to work, and also, incidentally, to leave the Phoenix Foundation building.

“Can I tell him?” he asked from the door, and watched Thornton twitch in either surprise or irritation.

“I thought I gave you better things to do than lurk outside my door and eavesdrop,” she said.

Jack sauntered inside and dropped the report on her desk. “You did, and there it is.”

Thornton picked up the folder and leafed through it. “Oh, all right.” She dropped it again. “Yes, you may go collect MacGyver and go home. I don’t want to see either of you here before Monday.”

“Much obliged, Patty,” Jack said, and Thornton just gave him a rather put-upon sigh in response.

MacGyver was hunched over a laptop when Jack got there, fingers flashing over the keys, and a pile of intricately-folded paperclips was scattered across the end table.

“Still bored?” Jack asked when MacGyver didn’t look up as the door opened.

“You’re late,” MacGyver said.

Jack leaned over his shoulder; he’d been playing some sort of solitaire. “You are bored,” he said. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“You know I hate it when you start a briefing like that,” MacGyver said.

“Okay, fine. All I have is good news. You happy?”

“Extremely.” MacGyver closed the laptop. “Is it that I get to leave?”

“Yes,” Jack said, and watched MacGyver go from automatically starting to argue to joy to suspicion.

“Are you messing with me?” he asked finally.

“Patty sent me down here to tell you you’ve been medically cleared. And to tell you to go home.”

“You have no idea how happy that makes me,” MacGyver said. “She means I can go back to work, right?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Jack said, and then, “You are one of the only people I know who does not react positively to being told to take the rest of the weekend off.”

“I’ve had three days off,” MacGyver said, pointing at him accusingly. “Three extremely boring days. You actually got to leave.”

“Patty had me evaluating field tests again,” Jack said. “Paperwork. Do I have to remind you how much I hate paperwork?”

“At least you had something constructive to do,” MacGyver countered, packing the laptop up as he spoke.

“You want to keep arguing or you want to get out of here?” Jack was entirely sure he’d never seen MacGyver move that quickly, including on the numerous occasions in which someone had been actively trying to murder him to death. He tried not to laugh at the sight of MacGyver all but bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet outside the door, but it was a losing battle.

“Are you coming?”

Jack thought about pointing out that MacGyver had his own car and didn’t need to wait. “Yeah, I’m coming,” he said.

MacGyver didn’t need to be reminded that he could drive himself home, and also apparently didn’t want Jack’s company when he got there. Jack got an awkward amalgamation of a handshake and a hug in the parking lot and watched MacGyver’s taillights merge into LA traffic with an odd sense of heaviness in his chest.

The range in the basement of the Phoenix Foundation was empty when Jack got there. He settled the noise-dampening headphones over his ears and set about trying to cluster shots in paper targets. The first set was anything but neat, and he thought he might have missed entirely at one point; the mix of anticipation that hadn’t quite managed to entirely fade into disappointment kept throwing off his aim.

Jack shook his head and actively tried set aside any emotion, and by the time he managed to cluster six neat holes into the paper targets head, he’d reached a sort of equilibrium. When he finally pulled the headphones off his ears and around his neck, he thought he’d convinced himself that he wasn’t disappointed that MacGyver hadn’t wanted his company. For anything.

The range had filled up while he wasn’t watching, at least three of the baby agents he’d been tasked with evaluating practicing their own marksmanship. Jack was glad to see that the ones he recognized were the ones he’d noted as needing the practice; at least someone was paying attention to him. He found the downside to his temporary-if-he-had-anything-to-say-about-it role as mentor when he tried to walk out of the range and all three of them intercepted him, individually, to ask about some of the finer points of their evaluations. He did not point out that none of them were supposed to have access to the specific wording of their evaluations; if they were sloppy enough to give their snooping away, Thornton would come down on them pretty hard.

It took an unexpectedly long time for Jack to escape the baby agents, and he snuck out of the building under cover of what darkness there was under the myriad streetlights just in case any of the other newbies were lying in wait. He was prepared to admit that it was perhaps moderately paranoid behavior, but since he reached his car unmolested, he was also prepared to argue that he had chosen the correct course of action.

Once in his car and probably safe from prying questions, Jack pulled out his phone to let Patty know which baby agents had given away their acquisition of theoretically restricted information. He found three texts and a missed call from MacGyver, wondering where he was.

what do you mean where am i, he texted back, and threw his phone onto the passenger seat. The reply came almost immediately, before he’d had time to do more than turn the key in the ignition.

thought U were following me home

Jack blinked. Clearly he’d missed something. see you soon, he texted back. All the disappointment he thought he’d gotten rid of came crashing back only to dissipate into excitement. It was ridiculous was what it was, he told himself, but he was already pulling onto the street heading toward MacGyver.

The front door was open when he got there. Jack hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should just let himself in. He’d always done that before, since they’d gotten back to the States and both been hired by the DXS, since they’d kept in touch with each other instead of pretending their time overseas was something firmly in the past. It felt somehow awkward now, to just walk in. It also felt awkward to ring the bell.

“What are you doing?” MacGyver asked, pulling the door open and giving him a quizzical look. He’d changed out of the clothes he’d been wearing in isolation and into a t-shirt and jeans riding low on his hips.

“Uh,” Jack said intelligently.

“Stop hovering on the doorstep in the dark. It’s creepy.”

Jack stopped hovering. The bike MacGyver had been slowly building was in pieces in the living room, instead of the garage where it belonged, and Jack stepped around it. It didn’t look like MacGyver had actually managed to do anything constructive with it; there were parts scattered all over the floor, and not in the sense of organization that made sense to MacGyver and no one else. Jack knew what that looked like, and this was just chaos.

“Bozer is not going to be happy with that,” he said.

“Is Bozer really what you want to talk about?” MacGyver asked.

Jack shook his head, and before he could actually say anything, MacGyver barreled into him. Jack felt his lips for a fleeting moment before he staggered backwards under the unexpected onslaught and tripped on one of the many objects scattered across the floor. He went down, MacGyver on top of him, something digging into one shoulder.

“Are you okay?” MacGyver tried to pull away, a horrified expression on his face. Jack yanked him back down.

“How easy you think I break?” he said, moderately sure nothing was damaged beyond repair. The floor wasn’t that hard. MacGyver was giving him a deeply skeptical look. Jack flipped him over and set about convincing him otherwise.

* * *

Early morning sunlight shone through MacGyver’s eyelids, and he blinked awake. Jack was still asleep on the other side of the bed, one ankle hooked around MacGyver’s knee. A bruise was blossoming on one shoulder, and MacGyver traced it lightly with one hand. Jack stirred, and MacGyver withdrew.

“I didn’t say stop,” Jack muttered, half into the pillow.

“Last night wasn’t enough for you?” MacGyver teased.

Jack opened his eyes fully at that, turning to face MacGyver. Backlit by the window, his expression was hard to read. “Mac,” he started.

“You are not backing out on me now,” MacGyver said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack said finally, and hesitated for a moment. “Are you –“

“I don’t care how much older than me you are,” MacGyver said. “It’s not like retirement is guaranteed in our line of work, anyway. It’s practically a given that one or both of us is going to get killed on the job.”

“It’s not going to be you,” Jack said softly, and actually put his finger over MacGyver’s mouth in a shushing gesture when MacGyver opened his mouth to argue. “That’s the only way this is happening, Mac. I watch your back.”

“My life isn’t any more valuable than yours,” MacGyver said, pushing Jack’s hand away.

“To me, it is.” Jack’s face was still unreadable in shadow, but his voice was full of conviction.

“You don’t get to just unilaterally decide –“

“I love you,” Jack interrupted.

“And I love you, so unless you want to sit there and disparage my judgment –“ MacGyver began, breaking off when Jack started laughing at him. “What?”

“I love that you’re lying there, completely naked, using words like ‘disparage’ in an argument,” Jack said. MacGyver hit him with a pillow.

“You’re making it very difficult to stay mad at you,” he said. Jack leaned over and caught him around the waist, planting a kiss on MacGyver’s temple.

“That was my plan all along,” he said.

“No, it wasn’t.” MacGyver turned, reaching up to pull Jack down on top of him. “You’re just lucky I think you’re cute.”

“Cute?” Jack struggled ineffectually, but he wasn’t actively trying to get away. “I’m insulted, Mac. Cute is not a masculine adjective.”

“Three-syllable words, I’m impressed,” MacGyver said, laughing when Jack growled something half-unintelligible about showing him three-syllable words and proceeded to demonstrate absolutely nothing whatsoever requiring verbal coherency.

The future, he thought, before abandoning thought entirely, was looking bright.

* * *

END

* * *