Close Call + Background Noise

"Uuuh, Matty, we've got a problem." Jack's voice burst back through the comms. Matty had been waiting uneasily, knowing any radio-mediated communication could potentially tip off Chandra's goons that something was afoot. She nearly jumped when she finally heard his voice after the nearly half hour of silence.

"Do you have the gas?" She asked immediately, urgently. Already she was thinking about routes between the water treatment plant and Grand Central, where she could cut off Chandra's route to inciting a mass casualty incident. She motioned for Jill to look up the emergency number for the NYC transit authority.

"Not exactly according to plan, but yeah, the gas has been neutralized." Matty let out a barely audible sigh of relief.

"So what's the issue, Jack?"

"Chandra's plan changed. Instead of Grand Central, she decided to dump both canisters into the NYC water supply." Jack said. Matty picked up a little effort in his voice that put her on edge. If the situation was truly over, he should be as relieved as she was. Something wasn't right. "Mac had to improvise. He managed to stop that from happening, and the NYC SWAT team is securing the area and taking all of Chandra's people into custody as we speak."

"Okay… and?"

"And in the process… Matty, Mac's been exposed."

"How bad?" She asked immediately. There was still a level of relief, that the lives of potentially thousands of New Yorkers would be spared, but the dread in Jack's voice told her she should very much still be worried.

"There was a lot of it, Matty, it filled up the room he was in." Matty policed her face, motioning Jill over.

"How fast can we get an ambulance to them?" She asked Jill in a whisper.

"I'll find out." Jill's fingers wizzed across her tablet screen and she tapped her headset.

"How's Mac doing?" Matty asked. It had been a while since she'd had to use any information on nerve agents besides 'they're deadly' but they were always something she kept a foundational knowledge of in the back of her mind. They scared her more than just about any other substance her agents could come into contact with. Even before Jack could answer, she could hear someone coughing forcefully in the background.

"Mac, how you doing, buddy?" She heard Jack ask. There was a pause, more coughing, turning to a kind of pained croaking. "Mac!" The sound of gravel being pushed out of the way and someone falling against Jack. A pained intake of breath. "Matty, he's breathing real bad."

"Jill! Do you have that ambulance yet?" Matty asked urgently.

"There was supposed to be one there, but a SWAT officer was badly wounded in the firefight before they knew about Mac. Another ambulance is en-route but they're pretty remote- its going to be 20 minutes before they're on scene."

"Make it half that. Mac's not going to last that long." Matty said.

"The hell you mean Mac's not going to last that long?" Jack asked over the comms. "He said he had 18 hours!"

Matty looked quizzically at Jill, trying to contain her hope that she was wrong. "Does he have that long?"

"VX? Dermal exposure only, maybe he'd have that long." Jill explained quickly. "But aerosolized in a confined space? If he breathed it in, he could suffocate in 10 minutes."

"Shit, Mac." Matty heard Jack say. "Okay, okay…What do we do? How do we save him?" Matty took a breath. "There's gotta be something we can do, Mats, c'mon." She could only imagine the panicked look on Mac's face, and that was if he was still conscious. Really, the only thing going through her head was get the ambulance there faster. But no matter how much pressure she put on Jill she knew she couldn't change the laws of physics. She looked at Riley.

"I'm trying to line up the traffic signals, but I don't know how much time that's actually going to buy us." Riley chimed in.

"Do you still have the kit I put in Sam's car?" Jill asked.

"No" Sam responded; her voice worried. "When I was captured earlier we lost the car."

"What about Jack- do you still have your tac vest?"

"Yeah, why?" Jack asked hopefully.

"There's a pouch on the front lower right panel. Is it still there?" Matty listened to the crunch of Velcro.

"Yeah."

"Open it. There should be three auto-injectors inside."

"Jill I could kiss you."

"Please don't."

"Hello? Someone want to fill me in?" Matty asked urgently.

"When I found out this mission was going to involve VX I had oc health put together some antidote kits. We should have done a training on them before they left, but there wasn't a lot of time." A wave of relief washed over Matty. There was a chance. There was hope.

"Jack, were you ever trained on DuoDote?" Jill asked.

"A long time ago."

"Okay, they're easy, just take the auto-injector out of the tube, take the safety plug off and slam the green end into Mac's thigh. Count to 5, then remove it." In the background, there was the sound of someone fiddling with plastic. The sound of gravel moving under a knee pad. A click.

"One, two, three, four, five…" The silence was palpable. "Now what?" Jack's voice asked.

"Is he breathing?" Matty asked.

"Barely, Matty, I don't think it worked." Jack was keeping his voice together but Matty could tell he was panicking. She let out her own slow breath.

"Give it a minute or so. The atropine needs to open his airway and that's not always immediate. If it doesn't happen in 5 minutes, give him a second dose."

"Can he go that long without air?"

"I know what you're thinking, Jack, but don't give him rescue breaths unless you have a barrier." Matty looked at Jill incredulously.

"We only have the 3 doses." Jill explained. "If Jack gives Mac rescue breaths, that could expose him, and we don't have enough antidote for both of them."

"You know I don't care about that." Jack said.

"…Besides, Jack, until the atropine works, Mac's airway is too narrow for the breaths to do much good." Matty looked wary at this advice, but said nothing else about it.

"I…"

"Trust me, Jack." There was a disappointed grunt on the end of the line, followed by long minutes of tense silence.

"I think it's working." Sam was the first to report. Matty let out a breath. In the background, the familiar but much more reassuring sound of coughing and choking filled the background noise. It was a lovely sound. "I'm putting him in recovery position, yeah?"

"Do that. EMS should be there in about 5 minutes. They have the hospital alerted and they'll be able to provide decontamination when he arrives." Jill reported.

"Jack and Sam, were either of you exposed? Did you touch Mac with bare skin or come into contact with the nerve agent in any way?" Matty asked.

"Yes." Sam said hesitantly. "Both of us, when we helped him out of the building." Matty went back on alert.

"Are either of you showing any symptoms? Nausea, blurred vision, eye pain, sweating, coughing, runny nose, anything like that?" There was a pause.

"Nope, neither of us." Jack reported.

"Okay, I'm going to have the two of you go to the hospital with Mac. They'll decon you there and you'll stay for however long they want to watch you for, understood?"

"C'mon, Matty."

"You heard me, Jack. I can't have all three of you out of work. Keep me updated on any developments."

She let the line go dead as the sound of sirens filled the background noise. It wasn't always her fault, but it was never easy to make calls like that from a distance. She would have put her head down for a moment to try and clear it, but Riley and Jill were still in the room working, and it would look weird to kick them out now, before the situation was well and truly resolved. Instead, she allowed herself a long breath and a sip of coffee that had long since gone cold.