This is a direct continuation from the last chapter.

-M-

Mac didn't have many ways to keep track of time. He couldn't see his watch, and he could tell from the permanent chill in the back of his right hand that Murdoc's drugs were still dripping steadily into him. The stage lights prevented him from seeing any change of ambient light from outside the – it had to be a warehouse, or maybe a shipping depot. It was still too cold for crickets or other nocturnal insects to give him any auditory indications.

His chest continued to sting and itch in an unbearably consistent way, and his little friend was being quite still, wherever he'd settled in. Mac's inflamed chest ended up being his only method of distracting himself from a gradual but increasingly urgent need to urinate.

His only indication that time was truly passing was Drew.

The first time he looked, it was because the body settled. Drew's head had tipped back a little, but not enough to hide that his cheeks had puffed significantly. His left eye was still open, but the expanding toys in his mouth had pushed the skin up so that his eye appeared to be swelling shut.

Even at his distance, and with the deformities caused by the toy bugs, Drew's face was still a rictus of desperate terror.

The second time Mac looked, it was when cartilage popped and compressed without warning, when Drew's jaw finally dislocated.

Mac was fairly certain he fell asleep – or passed out - before another noise startled him, and he opened his eyes to see that the metal hook attaching the ball gag to its suede strap had failed, and the gag slithered down Drew's chest and rolled out under the right armrest of the chair, bouncing flatly onto the burner plate.

For some bizarre reason, Mac expected that to light it. He heard soft patters rather than the sharp clicks, and he brought his eyes up to see fifty cent piece-sized spiders slowly tumbling out of Drew's gaping, misshapen mouth and down his chest, into a soggy pile in his lap. Some of them were bloody.

The ones in his esophagus had nowhere to go, and they had grown and expanded his throat grotesquely, so that his neck was almost the same width as his head.

They no longer appeared to be toys, and Mac didn't look after that, no matter what sounds he heard.

Every time he thought about it, he tried to squeeze the armrests, or tried to close his mouth. The attempt and consequent failure became such a steady constant that when he was finally able to twitch a finger, he looked to the concrete between him and Drew's body, assuming he'd felt something because he was going to find a trail of hungry ticks, looking for a new source of blood.

He didn't; he was far enough away, and breathing lightly enough, that they hadn't detected him yet. He tried to move again, and the finger bent, ever so slightly.

After that, time seemed to stretch much longer.

Finger twitches gave way to uncoordinated arm and leg movement. He knew the process couldn't be worked out like shock, that it was chemical and biological and would happen as his body broke down the molecules blocking his receptors and eliminated them, which was probably causing his increasing bladder discomfort. Because the adrenaline had had nowhere to go, his blood glucose levels were also probably through the roof, which would explain his growing thirst and sense of fatigue.

Mac honestly hadn't known he could feel fatigue without being able to use his muscles.

And even knowing that it was simply a matter of time, and no amount of twitching or experimenting was going to get his muscles working any faster, he still tried.

When he rolled his head back and realized he could see the ceiling of the warehouse, he knew that it was approaching dawn. His muscles were starting to manage sustained contractions, meaning he wasn't just flopping around like a dying fish, but able to hold weight for a few moments at a time. As soon as he could, Mac levered the chair forward, so he was finally sitting up straight, and he discovered his fine muscle control was still shit when it took him an insane amount of time to finally manipulate open his zipper.

He relieved himself on the floor, knowing that his kidneys were his best defense against whatever Murdoc had given him, and it was at least twenty minutes after that before he was able to pull the needle out of his hand. The bag was long since empty, it didn't matter, but it made him feel a little better.

It also gave him something to do with his hands. He knew if he touched his chest, he was going to scratch the skin right off his ribcage. The only reason he even let himself look was to find the tick. His skin was just as red as Drew's had once been, and Mac found the little parasite nestled into the nook of his armpit and chest. He didn't have the dexterity to cleanly pull it free and he didn't care. Once he laid his right arm across his chest and managed to get a couple finger around it he just pulled.

Figuring he'd left the head embedded in his skin, Mac held onto the barely inflated parasite, and when he was able, he dropped it into the pocket of his shirt.

Evidence. If they knew where Murdoc got the ticks, maybe they could trace it to a place he stayed, or an alias he used.

It was a longshot, but he had to find him, and find him fast.

His chest was on fire where he'd laid his arm across it, and as motor control returned he allowed himself to rub his shirt with the inside of his forearm, hoping that at least not using his fingernails would prevent infection. It brought blissful relief, but only momentarily, and each time the returning itching sensation was worse.

It was that that finally drove him to his feet. He swayed, reaching out for the armrest, but the chair was light, meant to be portable. He landed on the concrete, pulling the chair down on top of himself.

After that, he had to wait until he had the strength to actually pick himself up off the ground. It took longer than he would have liked.

The sun had broken the horizon by the time MacGyver managed to drunkenly get his feet under him. His core muscles were the worst offenders; normally he didn't have to even think about those, but his abdomen and back were just as weak as the rest of him, and he couldn't shift quickly enough or nimbly enough to keep his balance. He'd been right, there was an IV stand behind him, with a small, empty bag of something unlabeled, and Mac left it hanging where it was.

Murdoc was long gone, and the body was clearly meant to be a message. Messages were meant to be found, and read. Everything Murdoc had left, he had meant to leave.

The rolling cart ended up being a godsent. Mac clumsily shoved everything off of it and used it as a large and unwieldy walker, but it helped him stay upright. The building was definitely a storage warehouse and shipping depot, clearly defunct. It didn't look like anything inside had been touched in over a year. Drew and Elliot – and later Murdoc – had left a pretty obvious trail in the dust, and Mac half walked, half fell across the warehouse until he reached the partially open floor to ceiling double doors, and the chilly morning sun greeted him.

He was facing east.

Along the length of the warehouse had been an old parking lot, and a silver Toyota Camry, some early 2000 model, was parked innocently a few spaces from the main door. It was dusty, even if there was any traffic on the access road – and he'd heard nothing all night – he wouldn't have given it a second look.

Mac trundled his cart towards it, eyeing the car even as he approached. There was no pool of liquid beneath it indicating oil, fuel, or transmission fluid had been cut, but he couldn't bring himself to believe that Murdoc would simply leave him a working vehicle with which to escape.

The point was to make him feel helpless. To make him doubt himself. His ability to protect them.

His ability to protect himself.

Rendering his fine motor skills shit and then presenting him with an IED was just the kind of thing he'd expect from Murdoc. Particularly if his hunch that Murdoc had at least cooperated with the Ghost to wire his house was right. He knew his dexterity would return, but it would take hours, hours he could either be sitting here waiting, or looking for help.

Mac didn't see so much as a fingerprint on that car in the wrong place, but his gut was taut and unhappy, and he backed off.

Which left him the readily apparent tire tracks – more than one set, but of course Murdoc must have been following them in some kind of vehicle to have seen his capture and Jack's murder – down a mostly flat access road that eventually turned a corner.

And outside of knowing he was headed east, that was all Mac had to go on.

He shoved the cart in front of him when he had to, and once he got around the corner and found a fairly straight and relatively shallow decline he sat on the cart instead and guided it using heavy feet as his steering and brakes. He got into trouble a couple of times, enough that he veered off the road altogether and was stopped by undergrowth and uneven terrain, but the speed boost was worth the bumps and scratches. His chest burned, not just from the irritant and the slice Murdoc had cut out of it, but from the inside. From the puke he'd aspirated, as well as his inability to breathe deeply afterwards. It set him to coughing whenever he exerted himself. It was the dry, tickling kind, not a problem yet.

As long as he was within a couple days' walk of civilization. And since he'd only been out for fifty minutes, unless they'd driven sixty or more almost the entire time, his odds of being that isolated were pretty low.

As long as he'd picked the right direction once he'd found the main road.

MacGyver was more relieved than he could say when staggering up the next little hill yielded a lone Texaco station, the sign brightly lit.

Twenty or so minutes later Mac abandoned his cart slash walker and stumbled up to the glass door, taking a moment to determine if it was the push or pull kind. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection.

His shirt was still half unbuttoned, but blood had glued the left side of it to his chest in a very horror movie-esque stain. The irritated skin was bright red, making his face look pale in comparison, and he'd noticed earlier that blood had dripped down his right hand and trailed down the inside of his middle finger when he'd pulled the needle.

So he could expect to draw attention.

Finally determining the door swung both ways, Mac pushed it open and used it to walk into the convenience mart, as steadily as he could.

The place was utterly empty save the attendant. Mac estimated that it was a little after seven am, but apparently this Texaco didn't get much traffic on Sunday mornings, and an overweight fellow in his mid thirties was stocking donuts into a glass case that didn't look like it had had a good cleaning for at least a year.

The guy turned around when the door tripped the electronic chime, and then he froze, tongs hanging in the air in front of him, still holding a glazed donut.

Mac swallowed, and tried to pitch his voice to be friendly.

"Phone."

He was relatively proud of how the word came out, considering he hadn't even tried to speak since last night, and the attendant started at him, blankly. The tongs slowly started to dip, like the weight of the donut was too much.

Vaguely annoyed, Mac gave up and simply stumbled towards the cash register.

". . . hey . . . uh . . ."

Mac catalogued and dismissed him immediately. Unsure, quiet tone, no attempt to move towards him. Not a threat.

He almost tripped over a wire rack shelf of chips, but successfully caught himself on the counter, and he reached across a thick plastic display of lottery and scratch-off tickets to pick up a cordless phone, sitting beside an ashtray with a couple cigarette butts and a half-spent pack of Camels. Despite his movements and fatigue, his mind was still more than capable, and Mac painstakingly mashed his thumb over the correct numbers. He felt like he was trying to dial a phone using a twizzler.

Mac picked up the phone, which seemed unusually slippery, but he was able to get it on his shoulder, and his neck was still so relaxed that he basically just laid his head down on top of it and was able to wedge it in firmly enough.

He probably looked like a zombie. Bloodied, shambling around, strangely flexible, barely able to speak –

The conversation he'd had with Jack, not twelve hours ago, stabbed him in the gut, and when he heard another voice on the line, it took him a second to find enough air to speak.

"If this isn't Mac I don't have time for you right now."

Mac swallowed – very difficult from his position. "M'addy."

She didn't sweat the lack of T's. "Blondie, thank god. Where are you?"

It was a landline. She could damn well trace it, because honestly, he didn't know, and looking around would make him drop the phone. "Gas'stashun. M'fine. 'Lone."

"Alright, we'll figure it out. I'm sending tac to you. You okay? You with me?" Her suddenly patient, less strident tone told him she already knew he wasn't, and hadn't bought his sad slur of an attempt at fine.

She'd been expecting the call. She knew that something was wrong.

Of course she did. When he and Jack didn't show up at home last night, Bozer would have gotten immediately worried. He could have reached out to the office, or to Riley, trying to find their phones, and when they couldn't –

And frankly, there was only one other thing she absolutely needed to know. "M'rdoc."

Because she clearly knew the other important thing – she knew Jack wasn't with him, or she would have asked.

Which meant they'd already found Jack.

Somehow, that made him feel just a tiny bit better. Jack wasn't lying on the shoulder of Linbar Drive, scaring church-goers and attracting carrion birds. He was with them.

Jack was already home.

"Okay, Mac. Okay. We're coming to get you. You stay put, you hear me? You stay put, and you stay awake."

Falling asleep was not a problem. Falling on the floor, a little more so.

"Yeah."

Relevant information conveyed, and not in the mood to try to answer twenty questions with a plank of wood for a tongue, Mac left the line open and let the phone slither down his arm to clatter back onto the counter. Then he walked in as straight a line as he could back towards the door. The attendant was right where he'd left him, tongs still in hand, but the donut had bought it at some point during the phone conversation and lay forgotten on the floor.

It reminded him how thirsty he was.

Mac's eyes dragged by a refrigerated case on the way back towards the door, and he stopped, using it as a halfway point to steady himself before clumsily pulling it open and managing to wrap a hand around a bottle of water. He probably still had his wallet, but he wasn't about to go fishing for it, and he certainly couldn't extract any bills out of it, so Mac simply kept walking, and let himself out.

He stumbled along the wall of the storefront until he made it past the glass to the bricks. Then he sat down as smoothly as he was able, not wanting to jostle his shirt and set his chest on fire again, and Mac closed his eyes against the morning sun.

Then he set about trying to open the bottle of water.

After about ten minutes he was almost frustrated enough to cry. He just didn't have the strength to hang onto the cap enough to twist it free, not even with his teeth. In the end, he managed to jam a hand into his pocket, pulling his swiss army knife loose, and he somehow managed to free up a blade.

Then he simply stabbed the neck of the bottle. It looked a little weird, but it got the water out, and it took every bit of his remaining self control to drink the water slowly enough that he didn't overwhelm his sluggish esophagus and drown himself.

The five hundred milliliters did little to quench his thirst. Definitely hyperglycemic.

After that, he just waited.

It wasn't more than twenty minutes later that two black SUVs popped over the far hill, and Mac let his head roll against the bricks, watching them approach. The attendant had never come out, and Mac found himself vaguely surprised that the county police hadn't arrived, sirens blaring. Maybe the guy had picked up the phone and Matty had explained the situation.

Or maybe Phoenix had just intercepted the call. Either way, he was glad to have avoided that complication.

The SUVs roared into the sandy parking lot, barely slowing to a reasonable speed before they got too close, and the first one pulled back around to face the street while the second angled itself between him and just about everything else. Mac pulled himself to his feet, a little surprised that it wasn't easier. The fatigue was getting worse, which didn't make much sense to him. He could not have used the muscles less over the past ten hours. Ignoring sky-high cortisol and histamine levels, his body should have thought it had a relaxing night's rest.

He'd hardly made it to standing before there was a steadying hand on his shoulder – his right shoulder. He recognized Mark Kyser, one of the Phoenix tac medics, and coming around the SUV was Grant Simmons. Both were wearing body armor and carrying sidearms, but it was less firepower than he'd expected, and Mac craned his neck to look at the other SUV, almost missing the fact that Kyser was speaking to him.

"-cGyver. Look at me."

Mac focused back on Kyser, who gave him an easygoing grin. "There you are. Let's get you in the back, okay?"

The hand on his right arm tightened when he stumbled, but he managed to half fall, half sit in the SUV successfully, and Kyser seemed satisfied, helping him pull his other leg up before firmly shutting the door.

Simmons was back in the driver's seat immediately.

"-kage in hand, no sign of him." Mac saw the man's eyes briefly in the rear view mirror, and then Simmons twisted in his seat to face him.

"How you doin', Mac? You alright?"

He nodded. Tac's standing orders had probably just been retrieval, but with Murdoc long gone, and the warehouse being only a few miles away, Mac didn't see any reason the rest of the tactical team shouldn't just secure the scene now. It wasn't like they needed to convoy back; Murdoc wasn't going to strike anytime soon.

This was Step Four. It was up to him to do all the heavy lifting. Make a plan to deal with his fear, and watch it all fall apart.

"Do you know where Murdoc went?"

Mac shook his head as the passenger door opened, and Kyser slid onto the bench seat beside him, with a medkit and a blanket. Mac ignored the medic as Kyser took his left hand and slipped a pulse meter onto one of his fingers, and he focused on Simmons.

"He'scon. Warehouse. Wes'. F'w miles."

The tac leader brought a finger up to his com. "Hey, we got any kinda warehouses or storage facilities west of here, within five miles?" Without missing a beat, the older man's eyes flicked right back to him. He was about Jack's age, similar military background, similar haircut. Just his presence, his no-nonsense attitude, was strangely calming.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"That can wait, we need to get moving," Kyser cut in casually, before Mac could even form the words. "Crank the heat for me, wouldja?"

The medic gave Mac a quick grin, unfolding the blanket and winding it behind him. Mac was surprised to feel that it was heated, and Kyser pulled it down around his shoulders snugly.

"You're a little chilly, there, Mac. Let's get you warmed back up."

The second the heated blanket touched his chest, the inflamed skin responded like sunburn. Mac raised his arms before he thought, trying to shrug it off, and Kyser grabbed his hands. He was gentle, and he turned the right one over, bringing the blood on the back of it to Mac's attention. "Do you know what he gave you?"

It was going to be near impossible to say 'non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocking agent,' so Mac went for easy. "Paral'ic."

Kyser was watching him closely – watching his eyes, Mac realized. He was tired of people staring at them, and he let his slide past Kyser's, out the window towards the other SUV. It hadn't moved yet. Simmons had turned back towards the windshield and was talking into his com in a low voice.

Kyser tapped him on the forearm, trying to regain his attention. "A paralytic. A muscle paralytic?"

Mac nodded.

He caught onto the game very quickly. "Were you conscious when it was administered?" When he got a nod, the medic asked exactly the right next question, and Mac was suddenly, almost overwhelmingly grateful to the other man.

"Did your muscle seize up right before it took effect?"

Wordlessly, Mac shook his head. And that was the difference between a depolarizing and a non-depolarizing blocker. That would tell Kyser all he needed to know.

"And it's taking a while to wear off." It wasn't a question.

Mac nodded.

"Okay. That's good, and nothing to worry about. Just affects the skeletal muscles, you feel weak but you're gonna be fine."

Mac already knew that, but the reassurance was nice.

"I'm going to open up your shirt now, Mac, okay? This is going to sting a little."

It was going to sting a lot, and Mac clumsily caught the medic's hands as he reached for the fabric.

"No."

Kyser didn't exactly back off, but he didn't wrestle with him – which was good, because Mac knew he would have lost. And honestly, he wasn't sure himself if there was anything Kyser was likely to have in a quick response medkit that would do anything for what he suspected was an urushiol derivative. It wasn't like he was going to have a bottle of Tecnu wash in there.

. . . unless he did . . .

"Okay, Mac. That can wait." He gestured at Mac's chest. "Did you get splashed with something, a chemical maybe?"

Urushiol was probably not a word the medic would recognize. Again, Mac defaulted simpler. "Pois'n s'mac."

The medic translated that pretty well. "Poison sumac?"

Mac shrugged eloquently.

"Okay, something like poison sumac. I'm guessing it's itching, then, and burning a little?"

"Lot." He couldn't emphasize that enough.

Kyer just nodded. "Okay. Anything else I should know about?"

Mac shook his head. They hyperglycemia would resolve itself in a few hours, now that his muscles were moving again. The water would help with that. And Kyser could clearly see the blood, and that there wasn't enough of it to worry about. Wasn't even deep enough to require stitches.

Simmons threw the SUV into gear. "Satellite has a lumber yard and shipping hub about three miles west of us. That sound like the place?"

Mac could see Simmons' eyes on him in the mirror, and he nodded.

"Site confirmed. Bravo, check it out, see if you can get a lead on that psycho. We're heading back to the Phoenix, ETA is forty." Through the windshield, Mac saw the other SUV pull out, in the direction he'd come, and then Simmons whipped them around the pumps and headed the other way.

Something about that bugged Mac; he was distracted when Kyser grabbed his left hand again. The pulse meter was slipped off, but the medic didn't let go, putting two fingers on his wrist instead and doing a manual check. Kyser's fingers felt hot, even through the latex exam gloves. Simmons had done what the medic had asked, blasting warm air from the front of the vehicle, and the heated blanket was set hot enough to burn.

Mac closed his eyes briefly, trying to set any thoughts of burning out of his mind. The other tac team was in for an unpleasant morning. He wondered what the scene would look like, to them. What they'd make of it. Two unidentified dead men, Drew they'd have to fingerprint to ID, his teeth were probably too damaged now for dental record matching. Once they opened up that suit –

He felt himself physically turn his head, avoiding the memory. If the burner plate hadn't blown when Drew had tested it, it was probably safe. He didn't remember smelling any propane, so there were no leaks -

Explosion.

The Camry.

Mac glanced back up at the rear view mirror, hoping to catch Simmons' attention. "Carb'm."

The man turned a little, his short hair curly and a much lighter brown than Jack's, but the mannerism was almost exactly the same. "You say something, Mac?"

"Carbon?" Kyser was watching him closely, and Mac shook his head and tried again.

"Car . . . bom."

The medic's eyebrows shot up. "Simmons, he said 'car bomb.'"

Their driver nodded. "Bravo, stay on your toes. Mac says there's a car rigged to blow. Stick to basic recon until you're sure there are no other surprises."

Even if he was wrong about that, better safe than sorry.

Kyser tapped him on the forearm again. "Look, Mac, we're going to have to get that chemical off you, and the sooner we do it the better. I know you're a little confused right now, that's because you're hypothermic. When the drug Murdoc gave you wears off, you're gonna start shivering, and that's going to make this a lot less pleasant. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Mac stared at him a moment, a little annoyed at the medic's patient tone. His slurring was because of the paralytic, not cold. And he wasn't confused, his brain was -

And then all the pieces clicked.

Hypothermia caused mood swings, fatigue, slurred speech, confusion, and lack of coordination. And of course he was hypothermic. Ambient temperature last night was around fifty-five degrees. He was running around in jeans and a button up shirt that was only half buttoned. Because of the paralytic, he didn't currently have the capacity to shiver, and his muscles had spent the entire night failing to generate much, if any, heat. His chest was occupying all his attention, the rest of him was probably numb from cold at this point, and he hadn't even noticed.

In fact, if Murdoc hadn't covered the lower half of him with a throw blanket, he probably would have –

And he'd sat outside the gas station for more than a half hour, and poured ice water down his throat.

A little more alert, and feeling more than a little stupid, Mac nodded.

Kyser watched him, apparently making sure before he wrapped a package of wet wipes in the corner of Mac's blanket. "Let's let these warm up a few minutes. While we're doing that, I'm going to clean up your right hand and your face, okay?" Without bothering to wait for a response, he took Mac's right hand, which had been heading for his chest, and redirected it to his knee.

"Simmons, reroute us to LA General." It was the same calm, conversational tone, and Mac saw Simmons' eyes in the mirror again.

"Anything I need to call ahead?"

Mac had the same question. He was still conscious; the hypothermia would be almost resolved by the time they hit Phoenix medical and it clearly wasn't life-threatening.

Kyser didn't dumb it down for Simmons like he'd been doing with Mac, swiping an alcohol pad quickly across the back of his right hand. "The neuromuscular blocker Murdoc hit him with is intended to be administered over an hour, not an evening. It's what you give electroshock therapy patients to prevent them from seizing. There are several drugs that can counter the effects pretty rapidly, and we don't stock them."

Mac barely felt the sting of the alcohol, and he gave the medic a look when Kyser produced a bandaid from his kit. Like that was even necessary at this point.

"Got it. Think they'll keep him overnight?"

The medic gave him another measuring look. "No, but I'm pretty sure he'll stay there anyway." Then he reached up with another wipe for Mac's face.

MacGyver pulled away a little, but Kyser was gentle, and Mac wasn't in the mood to argue with him. Inpatient or not, as soon as he could move without looking like an extra from the Walking Dead, he knew exactly where he was headed.

The wipe in the medic's hand came away from his face stained with red, but there wasn't any pain, and Mac tried to remember if Murdoc had hit him. When he finally realized what it was, it almost felt like he had.

That wasn't his blood.

It was Elliot's.

Mac closed his eyes, and barely heard Grant's voice floating back from the front seat. "This is Simmons. We're rerouting to General, non emergency. Go ahead and get a room prepped on the same floor we secured for Dalton."

His eyes snapped back open.

Kyser was fishing the wipes he'd been warming from underneath the blanket, as if Simmons hadn't just said something extraordinary, and he busied himself with ripping open the packet.

Mac leaned forward, making his voice loud enough to carry to the front. ". . . Jack?"

You didn't secure floors for corpses.

Kyser glanced up, then did a double take. "Oh, jesus – yeah, Mac. I didn't realize – Jack was shot. He got out of surgery earlier this morning. Came through with flying colors."

Surgery. Came through.

Jack was alive.

"He hasn't regained consciousness yet, so he couldn't tell us what happened. We should have told you sooner, I didn't think –" He broke off, his expression moving from guilty to concerned in a blink.

Mac sank back against the joint of the seat and the door, no longer listening. Jack was alive. They'd gotten to him in time. Gotten him to a hospital.

Jack was alive.

"MacGyver, you still with me?"

He felt himself nod, and for the first time since all this had begun, Mac thought he might actually throw up with relief.

"Come on, Mac. You didn't really think that stubborn son of a bitch checked out on you, didja?" Mark's eyes crinkled in a broad smile. "He'll be up and around in no time. And if you expect to be able to keep up with him, I gotta get this stuff off of you." The smile turned into something a little more serious. "You stop me if it gets too bad, okay?"

The medic slipped the blanket up off his shoulders, and Mac was honestly surprised to find that as soon as the too-hot thing was gone, he missed it. Mac went for the buttons before he realized that was never going to happen, so he let Kyser do the honors, very carefully not watching his gloved fingers at work. He slipped the right side off first, letting Mac shake his arm out of the sleeve, and then Mac remembered, and caught Kyser before he could do anything with the left.

The medic blinked at him. "Ah – itches, I bet. Okay, let's just give that a second –"

Mac shook his head, and he clumsily indicated the pocket on the left side of his shirt. "Tick."

Kyser tried to interpret that, and Mac frowned – or thought he did – and patted it. It was just over the cut, and rather than let the medic peel it off torturously carefully, Mac slipped his thumb into the pocket and pulled.

"Whoa-"

He got it unstuck a little more easily than he'd expected, but the stinging hit him a beat later, and it felt worse than the original slicing of his flesh had. Mac held his breath through the worst of it. Kyser took advantage of that, wiping him down starting with his neck, and Mac concentrated on the feeling of his shirt in his hand, making sure the medic didn't take it until he understood.

The tick. It was evidence. And as soon as he saw it, he'd know what to do.

Kyser was firm and efficient, and the blissful relief of having his skin gently rubbed was once again followed by an intense itch. Once Kyser was happy with the cleaning job, he pulled a white tube of some kind of cream from the kit, and applied it liberally everywhere but the cut. It didn't make the skin numb, not by a longshot, but it definitely helped.

"You can give me the shirt, Mac –"

Mac opened his eyes, not quite sure when he'd closed them. The blanket had been pulled back up over his shoulders in the meantime, and Kyser was trying to get the shirt away from him.

"Pogit."

Kyser nodded, showing he understood, and Mac let him have it. The medic felt the fabric of the pocket, looking a little confused, but then he dug around in it like he meant it, and he came back up with the body of the tick. He turned to the window, holding it up in the sunlight.

"This little guy bite you?"

Mac nodded.

"What'd you say?"

Kyser fished a small plastic sample container out of the kit, and raised his voice to answer Simmons. "Mac had a dead tick in his pocket. Thinks it's important."

"Did you say tick?" Though his voice didn't significantly shift, Mac heard it, and realized that Bravo team had found Drew. They'd been talking in Simmons' ear, this whole time.

And clearly not in Kyser's.

". . . yeah . . . ?"

"Bag that."

A little smile played on the medic's face. "Good idea," he murmured, and gave Mac a conspiratory wink.

Patching up the slice was a simple matter of a couple butterfly bandages; Mac held up a firm hand when the medic came at him with gauze and tape. It was just barely seeping, and rather than wrestling himself into a shirt he'd just have to take off again as soon as he got to the hospital, Mac grabbed the edges of the blanket and pulled it tightly around himself. Kyser could just let that be good enough.

The cream cut the burning and itching to something almost bearable, and Mac let the heat from the blanket and Simmons' driving lull him into a kind of trance.

The tac team was fine. No one had blown up. Jack was alive.

He was surprised when Kyser tapped him on the forearm again, and he opened his eyes to see that they were parked under the Admissions overhang. He nodded, to show that he was awake, and by the time he'd shifted in the seat and gotten the door open, someone in scrubs had approached with a wheelchair. Kyser relieved the man of it, and Mac was pleased to discover that it was easier to get out of the SUV than it had been to get in. He was still fatigued, but his body was responding a little better.

He wasn't happy about the wheelchair, but he understood that it wasn't worth fighting the medic over. He took the heated blanket with him.

Simmons and Kyser never let him out of their sight. It was exactly what Jack would have done, but Jack was Jack, and it was a little disconcerting to have two men, still in SWAT gear, guarding him from nothing. He felt strangely self-conscious, particularly as the doctors and nurses confirmed what Kyser himself already knew.

He was fine. He was still cold, his core temp a hair under ninety-seven degrees, and to make matters worse they'd stripped him down to the usual hospital gown, but warmed saline had been prescribed even before they realized he was hyperglycemic. Besides a skin scrape to ID the irritant, and a tox screen to confirm the drug that had been used, he overheard Kyser request tests for hep B and C, even though it was probably too early to detect it. Simmons must have filled him in on what the tac team had found, but neither man said anything to him about it.

The site where the tick had bitten him had been examined, and the head of the tick removed. Some well-meaning nurse with a stethoscope had detected the fluid building in his lungs, and he was pretty sure a dose of antibiotics had run through the IV at some point. A little medical adhesive had replaced the butterfly bandages on his chest, and while it still itched, a spray had been added over the numbing cream, and it was a least a thousand times better. He'd almost drifted off when a nurse added a small, clear bag to his IV stand, and that was about the time Matty finally appeared. She approached from the opposite side of the bed, giving him a relieved smile. She looked tired.

"Hey Blondie."

Mac nodded, still not trusting his tongue. He was practically mummified under piles of warmed blankets, and outside of his right arm, which was exposed so the nurses had access to the catheter in his elbow, the rest of him was inaccessible. She settled for patting him on the leg.

"You really should look into that loyalty card. You've blown through your deductible and it's only March."

He gave her a little smile, because he knew she expected it.

"The debrief can wait until later, but I need to ask you – those two men in the warehouse. Are they the men who attacked you and Jack?"

He nodded.

"Were they working for Murdoc?"

That was a little harder to answer, but Mac settled for shaking his head.

She correctly interpreted his reluctance. "But they were affiliated to him somehow."

Mac nodded. "Collektiv."

Fine motor control was still hours away, though Mac was hopeful the little bag was the drug Kyser had mentioned on the drive, and he could expect to make much faster progress.

Matty absorbed that. "So Murdoc killed them because they betrayed him."

Mac nodded. That was close enough for now.

"Okay." She rubbed his leg through the blankets. "Get some rest. They'll be moving you to the fourth floor. Bozer and Riley are up there right now with Jack. You can expect some company as soon as the doctors here are done with you."

Mac nodded, more to show that he understood than that he agreed, and then she was gone. That the Phoenix hadn't managed to identify Elliot and Drew yet vaguely surprised him.

And worried him. How many more of the Collective were like Henry Fletcher, and completely off their radar?

How was he supposed to keep them away from Riley, from Bozer, from Matty, if he didn't even know who they were.

And Jack . . . he had no doubt Murdoc would be absolutely thrilled with this turn of events. He'd get his wish, to try to kill them together. Jack was probably the safest one of them, at least for now. Murdoc wouldn't go after him until last.

True to Matty's word, Mac was held in the ED for observation for another half-hour, and when his temperature had climbed another half degree, he was moved upstairs. He'd been given a room, meaning he had been admitted as an inpatient, but Mac didn't really care.

Kyser was quite right – he wasn't leaving the hospital tonight, even if he was discharged.

He'd been labeled a fall risk, literally – he was wearing a bright red band to go with his hospital bracelet – and it took a little bit of convincing to get the nurse to let him up to pee. He planned to make his escape as soon as she was gone, or distracted, but thankfully Kyser chased her off by promising to keep an eye on him.

When Mac exited the bathroom, dragging his IV stand with him, he was surprised to see the medic had acquired a wheelchair, and even pre-padded it with some of his blankets.

The other man smiled. "Look, we all know where you're headed, Mac. If you're sure you're up for it, just humor me and do it my way, okay?"

If you're sure you're up for it.

That wasn't the right question. He didn't want the attention, that was true. He wanted to think – needed to think. He had no way of knowing how much time Murdoc was going to give him before he started. There were a few things that needed to be done right now, before Jack left the hospital, basic defenses to set up. Bozer and Riley's concern, their questions, that was going to distract him, slow him down.

But his discomfort didn't matter. He needed to be there when Jack woke up. It was non-negotiable.

Him being carted off was the last thing his partner had seen. Sitting beside him, alive and well, that needed to be one of the first things Jack saw next.

Mac nodded his thanks, and sat gingerly in the chair. Kyser threw another blanket over him, like a cloak, and Mac hung onto the IV stand as they made their way out the door and down the hall.

Mac recognized Shane Brown, another Phoenix tac member, in plainclothes at the end of the hall, idly scrolling through his phone. Mac was sure if he turned he'd see another one of Jack's friends securing the other end of the hall. Matty wasn't taking any chances, and she was probably turning away volunteers.

It didn't chase away the cold pit in his stomach, but it eased it a little. There were a lot of people watching out for Jack, for Riley and Bozer and Matty.

And him. They weren't alone, and he had every resource at the Phoenix's disposal to try to find Murdoc before he could make his move.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't enough.

Jack's door was closed, which was no surprise, and Mac released his IV stand to lean forward and press the lever. It swung quietly open, revealing a sunlit room. Riley was the first one to spot him, pulling her feet off the bedrail, and then Kyser got him all the way in, and Mac watched Bozer, on Jack's other side, hastily popping out of the hospital recliner.

"Hey, there he is," Riley murmured in greeting, giving him a big grin.

Bozer was less reserved. "Mac!"

Being in the wheelchair was too close to being in the lounger, he didn't like how helpless it made him feel, and MacGyver kicked up the footrests and stood, intending to take the third chair in the room. Bozer didn't give him a chance; it looked like he was about to swoop in for a hug, but he held himself back at the last moment and settled for clasping hands, eyeing Mac's blanketed chest.

Clearly he and Riley had been kept in the loop.

"Man, it's good to see you." Relief made his voice thick. "When we got the call that Jack was in the hospital, I thought – and then Matty said-" He stopped himself, then shook it off, and gestured at the recliner he'd just abandoned. "C'mere, siddown before you fall down."

Mac started to shake his head, but Bozer put an arm around him and firmly steered, and he was in the recliner and bundled back up before he really knew what happened.

Which left him sitting right next to his partner.

Jack looked . . . about as good as he ever looked in a hospital bed. Not as pale as Mac had feared. He was on a ventilator, which Mac had expected. His IV tree was a little busier than Mac's, at least four bags of various sizes and colors hung there. One of them was clearly some kind of blood product, and the smears of it on the plastic were a little too much like the trails the toy spiders had left down the Tyvek. Mac averted his eyes.

"He looks way better than he did when they first brought him in," Riley assured him, from across the bed. "Doc said he'll wake up sometime in the next few hours, but he's gonna be a little loopy."

"Yeah, just make sure he doesn't try to take out that tube," Kyser cautioned them, dully, like it was a reminder that he'd already repeated a hundred times. "He really hates ventilators. Or anything else that enforces a no talking rule."

Bozer snorted – loudly - and Mac smiled.

Kyser wasn't wrong.

"I'll go see if I can scrounge up some lunch. Sandwiches good with everyone?"

He got a round of nods, and Mark backed the wheelchair into the far corner of the room, out of the way, and came back to the bed. He didn't say anything, eyes on the monitors over Jack's head, and then he dropped a hand to Jack's covered feet, and squeezed one, watching his stats.

Nothing happened.

"Give him another hour. Guess he needs his beauty sleep."

"You guess?" Bozer gave him an incredulous look. "You not wearin' your contacts today or somethin'?"

Kyser grinned and stepped back, giving Bozer a friendly pat on the shoulder as he left, and it wasn't long before the door closed behind him, and the room settled into a curious silence, punctuated with the rhythmic hissing and clicking of the ventilator.

It wasn't the first or even the second time Mac had sat in a hospital room with Jack and listened to that sound. It should have been welcome, proof of life, even soothing with its rhythms and valves, all working in perfect clockwork order.

Mac hated it.

Jack needed that machine to breathe. Because a professional assassin had shot him and left him to die.

And all the reasons Drew might not have taken that second shot, the kill shot, swirled around his head. Didn't want to waste the ammunition. Or maybe Murdoc had talked Jack up, even though he never wasted an opportunity to tear him down to his face. Maybe taking down an operator like Dalton was a notch on Drew's belt, and he wanted to rub it in, make him suffer. Maybe they'd really actually connected over that zombie conversation, and Drew wanted to give him a fighting chance.

But he hadn't had one. The odds were so incredibly stacked against him –

Mac looked across the bed, towards Riley, and found she was watching him, even though her rig was in her lap and open. When he caught her, she gave him a sad little smile.

"I know you can't really talk right now, but I don't suppose Murdoc gave you any clues to where he might be going next?" Her voice was light, but Mac could hear the strain under it. "I'm getting pretty sick of this guy putting holes in you two."

Mac didn't think the truth – that it hadn't been Murdoc, for once – was going to make her feel any better. He'd left plenty of stuff in the warehouse, but knowing Murdoc, he'd meant to. Every single thing there might be a clue, might have been left to make a point, but Mac was pretty sure none of it would lead anywhere Murdoc didn't want it to.

Mac wordlessly shrugged. Then he thought better of it. "Who foun'Jack?"

She tilted her head a little. "Jill did, sort of. Someone spotted him on the road and dialed 911. We didn't know it at the time. Boze texted me when you two didn't show up at the house, had me ping your phones, but they were both off. We eventually found your jeep about ten miles away from where they, uh, they found Jack. As far as we could tell, you guys just disappeared."

"But Matty knew you wouldn't go down without a fight, so we started lookin' for police reports around the time you two left the Claim Jumper, gunshots, anything like that. Started lookin' at area hospitals for gunshot wounds and broken bones, too."

Go down without a fight. Bozer didn't realize that was exactly what they'd done.

"Only three patients came in with GSWs last night, and –" Bozer gestured to the bed. "He was already in surgery."

So he'd been saved by whoever had next driven by. If that person had been later, or chose not to take Linbar in the dark, hadn't been paying attention when they'd come around the curve –

Mac blinked. Actually, he knew exactly who had driven around that curve after them.

He glanced back up at Riley, who was still watching him. "C'n we hear th'call?"

Her eyes shifted as she thought, then she nodded, and started typing. "Yeah, it came in around . . ." She trailed off, then put in an earbud, and he presumed she started screening the call log.

Bozer got tired of standing, and he grabbed the third chair, dragging it a little closer to Jack's bed. "And how're you doin'? Looks like Murdoc put you through the wringer. Are you okay?"

Mac knew what the correct answer was, and he knew Bozer wouldn't buy it any more than Matty had. Was he okay.

He was fine. He would be walking and talking, fully functional before nightfall. His chest would probably become a sheet of tiny blisters in the next twenty-four hours, but he was sure one of the injections had been a steroid, which would keep the inflammation down. The slice was shallow, it would heal without a scar.

No lasting damage. The textbook definition of fine.

And he would be fine when he walked into the house, and found Bozer lying there, waiting for him, wearing that face –

Mac swallowed, and discovered that he was now capable of shivering. He hiked the blanket up a little higher around his neck, and then he opened his mouth.

"Hey . . . guys . . ." Riley's voice came out instead of his. Her eyes were glued to the monitor, but she slowly tugged out the earbud. "You need to hear this."

The speakers were a little small, but Mac could hear well enough over the ventilator.

"9-1-1, is emergency assistance needed?"

There was a pop on the line. "Yes. I'm on Linbar Drive, about a mile east of the intersection of Linbar and Spence. I came around the corner, and there's a man lying in the road. I think he's been shot."

The caller was male, his voice calm.

"Sir, can you – sir? Sir, are you still on the line? Sir!"

The call ended.

Riley tapped a key, then looked up at them, eyes wide.

Beside him, Bozer shifted. "You're . . . no. That wasn't . . . was that –"

Mac nodded, not trusting his voice, and another round of shivers wormed up his spine. He'd heard the man talking not six hours ago.

It was Murdoc. Murdoc had made the 911 call that saved Jack's life.

Murdoc knew. The whole time, he knew Jack was still alive – or at least he knew there was a chance Jack had survived.

Riley just stared at them both in shock, and then turned to look at Jack. Like the sound of Murdoc's voice in the room might have woken him, registered on some subconscious level, and Jack was suddenly going to sit up and rip out the tube and suggest they go find the son of a bitch right now so he could say thank you personally.

But it didn't happen. Jack's eyes remained closed. The ventilator hissed, and his chest rose and fell.

"I'm . . . Matty needs to know." She traded the laptop for her mobile, texting furiously.

Bozer was still having trouble with complete sentences. "But . . . why? Why would he . . .?"

Mac closed his eyes, denying the unsteady little tremor in his next breath. He knew exactly why. Murdoc had told him why.

And Bozer noticed. Just like Murdoc had.

"Mac . . . hey . . . you okay?"

He opened his eyes almost automatically, a night's worth of reminding himself he couldn't close them coming back in a rush, and he looked at Jack for a second before his gaze skittered away, seeking more neutral ground.

". . . no."

He wasn't.

-M-

[crickets chirping]

The premise of this story was a question: how could Murdoc make MacGyver afraid of him? Not afraid of a scenario, not afraid of an action he could take – afraid of the man himself.

It wasn't until we saw Murdoc playing nice with MacGyver and Jack on the train in Murdoc + Handcuffs that I really picked up on what the writers had been laying down all that time. That the artistry for Murdoc was that his victims died terrified. Between the story about the legless spider reaching "peak terror" and Murdoc's spitballing about Mac and Jack strapped in "face to face, screaming in terror as they plunged to a beautiful fiery death" it really became clear that the art, for Murdoc, is making his victims afraid. (Possibly because he hates and fears being terrified himself, from his childhood, and can think of no worse state to die in, but that's neither here nor there.)

The reboot Murdoc is quite a bit darker than his old-school counterpart, and because this is a CBS show on during prime time, what Murdoc does to people is just inferred, or glossed over. I mentioned to Alyssa that with all the near-death scenarios the fanfic community puts Mac in, I was surprised we'd never seen Murdoc just swoop in, unceremoniously kill the bad guy de jour, and then ride off into the sunset, leaving a confused and horrified Mac strapped in to whatever death machine, just staring. Then it occurred to us that he wouldn't waste a perfectly good opportunity to really scare the pants off Mac.

And if he can also send a message to his fractured little collective, well, that's efficiency for you.