A/N I am seriously overwhelmed by all the amazing reviews on this story! Thank you all so much! I hope this chapter meets up with your expectations!

MacGyver wasn't sure how long the episode had lasted but he woke up stretched out on the mattress. He watched through half open eyes as Jay and Toby spoke in hushed tones over by the door.

"We have to get him to a doctor," Toby insisted.

"How, Toby? There's no way I can carry him. And, if I bring a doctor here, they'll separate us. You know that."

"I may have a solution," MacGyver offered weakly. Finally feeling a bit of his strength returning, he smirked when Jay and Toby both jumped at the sound of his voice.

"We thought you were asleep," Jay admitted, chagrined. "What's your solution?"

"I have a friend you can call. His name's Jack. He can come here and get me."

"And he won't separate us?"

Mac shook his head against the pillow. "No, he won't. Neither of us will."

"Promise?" Toby asked quietly, reaching up and grabbing his big brother's hand in his own.

MacGyver flashed back to the moment on the plane when he'd asked the same question, in a very similar tone, when Jack said he'd be with him every step of the way. The loneliness hit hard as he wished with all his heart that his friend would be able to keep that same vow just one last time. "I promise," he said thickly, happy that the kids were too far away to see the tear slide down into the pillow.

"Okay, how do we reach him?"

"You got a cell phone?"

Jay looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "We look like we can afford amenities to you?"

"Sorry," MacGyver said, having the good grace to blush at his error.

"But if you want us to call your friend, there's a pay phone just down the street from here," Toby offered eagerly.

"Perfect," Mac said, voice a little breathy again. The Suit had taken his phone and for the first time that he could remember, no pun intended, his memory was failing him, but he finally managed to give the boys Jack's number to call. Jay didn't have a piece of paper handy but seemed to memorize it almost immediately.

'This kid was kinda starting to remind me of myself at that age. Quick on his feet? Check. Good memory? Check. Surly attitude? Definite check.'

"Okay," Jay clarified, "we call this Jack character and then what?"

It was MacGyver's turn to give them a look of confusion as he sagged into the mattress. Funny how having a simple conversation took so much out of him.

"How do we recognize him when we see him?"

'Moment of truth. How was I going to describe my best friend to these two kids. Then I remembered when we'd been trying to find Riley the Christmas before and her computer hacker friend had compared Jack to…"

"You guys ever seen a Kewpie Doll before?"

The arched eyebrows were answer enough. Okay, that would be a 'no'. Who else could he compare…

He offered an exhausted smile – his energy was ebbing fast. "How about… Calvin from the… Calvin and… Hobbes comic… books?" He really hoped Jack would get there soon. He couldn't very well tell these kids that he'd been poisoned. And he certainly wasn't going to let them come with him to confront the Suit. But he also knew he wasn't going to have the strength to get the antidote on his own. And – he glanced at the watch on his wrist – he was running out of time.

'Jay was already a little curious about the countdown watch on my wrist. But Toby? I had a little more than an hour left. How was I supposed to explain to an eight-year-old that, without an antidote, I could… Heck, I couldn't even admit it to myself.'

Mac was brought back to the conversation when he heard both boys chuckle. "He looks like Calvin?" Jay asked with a smirk.

MacGyver paused for a moment, suddenly feeling incredibly guilty because he was being unfair to his friend. Contrary to popular belief, Jack was much more than just lame puns and spiky hair. "Not exactly," he finally said. "Think… Captain America but with… Calvin's hair."

This description got a nod of approval from Jay and Mac smiled, realizing he had just come up with the perfect description of his best friend.

Energy dwindling fast, MacGyver sank further into the mattress and closed his eyes, only to have a sudden thought jolting him awake again. "Just don't tell him I said that," he told the boys as they were closing the door. Jay smirked again but nodded his understanding. He knew all about keeping up appearances. Toby, on the other hand… well, he was already out in the hall and, likely, halfway down the stairs.

The phone call came in a few minutes after 11 o'clock Friday night. Just when Jack was falling into his own version of despair at not having found MacGyver yet. And, for Jack, giving into the misery would involve going to a local watering hole and picking a few fights. Not good for the locals.

He pulled the rental car over to the side of the road to answer, not trusting himself to have enough control of his faculties to talk on the phone and drive at the same time.

From the other end of the line, a kid told him that Mac was alive but needed him. Badly. That was all Jack needed to hear. He jotted the address down quickly on the palm of his hand, then started up the car and pulled back out into the street.

Jack made quick work of finding a parking spot and jumped out of the car, surprised to have two boys instantly striding towards him.

"You're Jack," the older of the two said. It wasn't a question but Jack nodded anyway. Because it really should've been a question, shouldn't it? Unless, Mac had his phone and showed them a photo. Which, if that was the case, why hadn't he called Jack on his own?

Jack's head hurt with all this back and forth of ideas. He was tired. He was pretty sure some of the drugs from his stay at the hospital were still in his system. Besides, bouncing ideas off each other was one of the things Jack enjoyed most about his and MacGyver's partnership. Mac had all the geeky science ideas, and Jack had the tactical ideas, but it worked. They worked. And, right now, the ideas going around solely in Jack's own head only served to highlight the fact that Mac wasn't with him.

The smaller boy stared up at Jack with a calculating gaze as they walked down an alley filled with dumpsters and poor lost souls with nowhere else to go. Was that what these two kids were? Lost souls with nowhere to go? That thought gave him a heavy heart.

"What?" Jack asked the young boy, unable to take the suspense any longer but also not sure he wanted to know.

"Yup," the kid said with a decisive nod. "MacGyver was right. You do look like Captain America with a Calvin haircut."

Jack's eyebrows rose almost to his hair line.

"Toby," the teen hissed at him. "We weren't supposed to tell him that."

"Why not?" Toby asked with wide eyed innocence.

He didn't have to ask who the kid meant by Calvin, those comic books were MacGyver's favourite. But Jack decided to latch onto the complimentary part of the statement, instead. "Captain America, huh. Mac said that? Really?"

Toby nodded eagerly. "Uh-huh," he confirmed. He glanced up at Jay, then back at Jack. "But shhhh," he said, placing a finger over his lips and speaking conspiratorially. "Don't tell him we told you."

"We?" Jay muttered. "It was just you. There was no 'we' involved, little brother."

Jack leaned down to the smaller boy, winking mischievously. "Your secret is safe with me," he said. Until Mac and I are airborne again and headed home, that is, he added silently.

Shortly after the kids left, MacGyver had fallen asleep but was woken up by another wave of immense pain. The Suit hovered over him with another syringe. "Have you made your decision, MacGyver?" The face abruptly dissolved into El Noche, and the accent changed to match – "Have you made your decision, MacGyver?" – except, instead of the syringe, it was the nitrogen mask descending toward him.

MacGyver threw himself back on the mattress, his shoulders slamming into the wall. He cried out in agony, curling in on himself which only caused more pain to shoot across his still healing ribs.

The boys had just led Jack through the tiny opening on the bottom floor of the building. Jack showed blatant, honest admiration for their burglar alarm – various silverware and trinkets tied together, sort of like a mobile you'd find above a baby's crib except this one was designed to make lots of racket to announce any uninvited guests! His appreciation was interrupted when he heard the tortured cry from upstairs. Jay and Toby looked at each other, then ran up the stairs with Jack close on their heels. He ignored the twinge of pain in his leg because he instinctively knew who that cry belonged to – he just knew.

Jack followed the boys into a small, dingy apartment and slid to a halt when he caught sight of MacGyver writhing on the bed across the room. He raced over to his side, simultaneously wanting to touch but not sure where to touch. The bruises on his face were stark against the astonishingly pale skin, and the restraint marks on his wrists were no less alarming!

Jack reached out to grip his friend's shoulder, dismayed when the younger man cringed away from him. He tried to keep his voice soothing when he spoke, "Mac? Buddy? Can you hear me? It's me, Jack." But, instead of calming down, the eyes that stared back at him were terrified.

"No, don' touch me… y're bein' par'noid… no, no… no more nitr'gen… please… Noche, I c'n explain…"

Noche. El Noche? The kid was flashing back to El Noche? Based on his almost unlimited knowledge of everything MacGyver, Jack was pretty confident that what his young friend was saying was a mixture of what he said to his captors for the purpose of keeping his cover and his inner dialogue - all the fears and insecurities Mac kept hidden deep, even from Jack.

When he wasn't going crazy with fever and hallucinations, anyway.

"J'ck, wh're ar' y'u?"

The last shook Jack to his core. Because the reason he could only assume what was actual dialogue and what was internal was painfully simple… Jack hadn't been there! Not in time to stop the torture.

Memories of that day still gave Jack nightmares. Mac had given one lopsided smile, then collapsed to the floor. Those had been some of the scariest moments of Jack's life, performing CPR, breathing life into the young man he had come to think of more as a son, until the field doc had made it in from the helicopter with a defibrillator and oxygen mask. Even then, they'd had to physically pull Jack away from his life saving efforts before he'd realized that help had arrived. If Jack had been two seconds later, MacGyver would've either been killed by the goon aiming a gun at him point blank, or by drowning on dry land.

Forcing himself back to the present, focusing intently on the signs of restraint, as well as the puncture mark on the inside of Mac's elbow, Jack knew he'd need to do some more saving very, very soon. Especially, if the digital count down on the kid's wrist was any indication – and there was no way THAT could possibly be a good thing.

But, before he could find out what had happened to his friend, he had to take care of the obvious fall out. Which was MacGyver's various emotional and physical pain compartments crashing down around him. With no other option, he slipped one arm below the quaking shoulders and levered MacGyver up so that he could slide onto the bed beneath him. With one leg on either side of his friend, he leaned the disturbingly feverish body back against his chest.

"How long has he been like this?" he asked the kids, voice a bit more harsh than he'd intended.

"Since just before we called you," Jay said, easing Toby behind him in the wake of Jack's wrath. "He wouldn't tell us what was wrong. He just told us to get you and that you would fix everything."

Toby slipped away from his brother unnoticed and grabbed the cloth from the table. He stepped over to the sink and held the cloth under the cold water again, then handed it over to Jack, hesitant but determined. Jack forced his voice to gentle. "Thank you," he said, accepting the cloth and running it over Mac's fevered face and neck.

MacGyver looked up at him, confused. "Jack?"

"Yeah, buddy, I'm right here," Jack whispered, happy to finally see the recognition in the tear-filled gaze.

At first, relief shone in those blue eyes, but it was quickly replaced by shame. With a pained moan, MacGyver pulled away from him, trying to crawl to the other end of the bed, but Jack just hauled him back and folded him in closer, placing his chin on top of the damp blond hair. The soft whimper revealed so much. Mac was fighting to hold in the pain. For the sake of the kids, no doubt.

Ah, who was Jack trying to fool, MacGyver was trying to bear the agony on his own for Jack's sake, too.

Regardless, with the boys standing just on the other side of the room, staring in awe at one adult male not ashamed to give comfort and affection to another, Jack couldn't even convince Mac to let go this time by telling him it was just the two of them. He knew it was the kids' apartment – and what was that all about, anyway? – but he couldn't help but wish he and his young friend were alone.

He carefully angled MacGyver's quivering form so that his head rested in the crook of his elbow, pain filled gaze looking up at him – and dang if there wasn't still some shame overpowering the pain. "What happened, Mac?"

Jack could see MacGyver trying to make sense of his question. Sweat dripped down his face, along with probably a few tears but Jack wasn't about to call attention to that. Not yet, anyway. So, without a word, he gently wiped both away with the cool cloth as he waited for the answer to his question.

"Poison," MacGyver whispered.

This threw Jack for a loop. Poison? All right, worst case scenario then. "The List," Jack inferred. "Was the hand-off staged? Was it all a set up?" The former Delta Force Commando was even more ready to crush a few heads together now.

The kid – Jack's kid, not the two apparent runaways – was struggling to string words together. "N-no," he stammered. "They got me… after the meet. S-sorry, Jack."

Before Jack could respond, the burglar alarm downstairs announced the arrival of some of those previously mentioned uninvited guests, forks and spoons and butter knives jangling loudly against each other. "Nothing to apologize for, kiddo," he whispered, folding the blond in closer again as his dark gaze moved about the room in search of some form of escape.

"MacGyver," an accented voice called out, tauntingly. "We know you are here, MacGyver. Have you made your decision? I am getting impatient and may just toss your antidote based on principle alone."

Antidote? This relieved Jack but the mocking tone enraged him to no end. He looked down at the blond in his arms. "How many?"

"Three – a Suit… and two thugs who're… even bigger… than you," MacGyver told him. Then he grabbed the front of Jack's shirt with one hand, grip surprisingly strong. "Thirty… minutes, Jack."

Jack glanced down at the digital countdown on his friend's wrist and nodded, placing his own hand over top of Mac's. "It's okay, I've got a plan. Just trust me, okay?"

That seemed to be enough for MacGyver, as he released his fistful of Jack's t-shirt and relaxed somewhat, shoulder pressing more firmly into the broad chest, head hung low with exhaustion.

TBC