Mac felt like he was being waterboarded with lava. His eyes kept rolling back in his head and he had a weird wavy feeling like he was an unmoving boat on a tempestuous ocean of searing heat. He forced his eyes open. He looked up, or was it down? Mac really had no idea if he was still on the steel table or pinned like a bug to the ceiling. Sarana's voice was an incessant drill grinding and grinding inside his skull.
"Interesting feeling isn't it? Kind of like the agony of being burned alive and feeling of icy numbness at the same time. It's an incredibly rare plant called Kifo Kiso, I met an old pygmy who told me this plant was a myth, a…"
"P...please…" Mac begged, working hard to move each individual muscle in his mouth to make speech. "P...p…"
"Mac?" Sarana asked. Mac shook his head and forced his eyes to stop rolling and focus on her face.
"Please. Shut. The. Fuck. Up." He managed to gasp out before the fiery ocean around him rolled through him again.
Jack grinned. Hugh Silverman busted out a guffaw. Jack stretched back in his chair, he pulsed his hands into fists then unwrapped them to keep feeling in them. He rolled his shoulders and his neck. He had felt every scream tear through his bones like lightening. Mac had gone quiet after the witch had put those ugly thorns in all of his sensitive pressure points. Jack sniffed wondering when he had begun crying. He looked over to Hugh who was shaking his head. Silverman's nose was swollen and his lip stained with dried blood.
"I tell you this, Jacky boy, he's got spunk, gotta give him that.." Hugh said.
"You have no idea." Jack replied with obvious pride, and this time a tiny fraction of hope. Hugh ran his fingers through his hair. He sat down and and leaned back.
"Settle in, Jacky boy. This is the good part. Hey, do you want popcorn? I think I do…" Jack closed his eyes and forced it down. He mentally placed another black mark on the bill Hugh was wracking up. Jack forced himself to keep watching, but continued flexing his arms and squirming in his chair.
Sarana smiled. "You really are unique. I used the Kiso Kiso to take away your body." She went to the table and lifted a mortar bowl. She had put in chunks of something that looked like some kind of grub and had mashed it to powder. She tilted the bowl and blew through pursed lips. A small cloud of powder blew into Mac's face. Mac tried to move his head to the side, but he couldn't. He gagged and blinked his eyes. He felt himself literally sink into the metal of the table, or the ceiling of the cave...fall into a deep floaty black hole…
"Now I will take your mind." Sarana cooed softly as she petted MacGyver's sweaty wet hair.
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MacGyver stood beside his body. He felt a sort of odd curiosity. The table he was on wasn't steal anymore but a mirror, a blank mirror...the cavern around him was a circle of mirrors reflecting emptiness again and again into infinity. He walked up to one and put his hand out. He pulled it back in pain. His hand was burnt black. He shook it and a fetid smell of burnt flesh and ash clouded around him. Black char began to creep up his arm, an ember flared to life. Mac screamed and beat at it with his other hand, which promptly caught on fire. His flesh squeaked like styrofoam as it darkened then crumbled away. He kept screaming until his face flared like magnesium and melted away...everything tasted like death, the kind of death that clings to your tongue...something more than smell, something that seeped in...until blown away like ash…
MacGyver stood beside his body. He was twelve lying crosswise on his bed reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Mac smiled down at his younger self. He was practically vibrating with excitement. The story had taken over, he was completely lost in the story, going to school with Harry and Ron…The book was a gift from his Dad. He had begged and begged, he was turning twelve tomorrow, and just had to have the book. His dad had smiled and rustled his son's hair affectionately, sure bud, go ahead, you only turn twelve once...I''ll be home tomorrow with your real present anyway...you're going to love it, Angus..."Angus, the bus is here. Angus!" His dad bellowed. Mac turned. He could see the shoulders sag. The slow regret as he left the story and was dragged back into the daily horror of Mission City's Middle School. He walked feeling the weight of each step...the bus was hot stuffy, clinging to him like steam in a jungle Everyone around him seemed to be melting blobs howling at him, Mac was drowning, he reached out to open the window...he was trapped...Hands grabbed him...he felt hot treacle swallow him from his legs up...slowly...then freezing...he watched out the window as his father waved goodbye and turned to walk away...Mac screamed out for him...but couldn't move as the air hardened around him...he could only see his Dad's back as he walked away...farther and farther away... Dad! Dad! Jack! Jack...
MacGyver stood beside his body. He pounded on the door of Mr. Erickson's lab, he could see Bozer and Mr. Erickson laughing inside...the lab was warmly lit, welcoming...Angus looked behind him...His heart beat like a drowning bird in his chest...he pounded harder on the door...please, please they were almost here...please...please...let me in...please...Angus turned and ran...the corridors were full of students, he darted around and through them with desperation...Penny stood with her back to him, talking with her friends...desperately he stopped and grabbed her...Penny please...He whirled her around...her face was broken into pieces like a bloody mirror held together with duct tape...she smiled at him sweetly…"don't you think you've done enough already, Angus?" She pulled free from him and turned back to her friends...He turned to run, Jack wearing a lettered school jacket grabbed him and pulled him into the chaos of people around him...Mac grinned breathing in relief...Jack! Everything was going to be...Jack smiled, "Later, Dude, got places to see." He turned and threw Mac through the door to the cafeteria...Mac landed hard. He jumped to his feet desperately looking around him. The tables of the cafeteria were where they always were, and the students sat where they always did, but they were frozen, bloated...staring at him, blaming him...He saw a line of windows, he raced to them, they were small, like on a plane… he looked out at the football field...the nuclear blast blew in the windows, Mac managed to grab a sharp edged window pane, his hand was shredded, his skin slowly pulled apart and unravelled...he glanced back...the dead students covered with cobwebs were blown sideways in a whoosh of nuclear wind...always the taste of death...ash…
MacGyver stood by his body. He sat with Smitty and Frankie in a warm bohemian apartment...Mac frowned, this wasn't right...the walls were covered with slick red silk floating in some sort of wind...dripping like blood...Smitty and Frankie sipped from their wine glasses. He went to join them, tell them that he had discovered a new kind of flight recorder...they gave no sign that they knew he was there...he reached down to tap on Frankie's shoulder. His fingers passed through her...skeleton hanging in place before it fell to the ground...Mac steps back, gasping in horror, smitty laughs and drinks his wine and salutes Mac. "That's one way to shut the bitch up."...
MacGyver stood beside his body. He was in a desert. Nothing moved...no wind...nothing else alive as far as the eye could see...he screamed for help...Jack! Jack! JACK!...he was alone...the blue wide sky above him turns to flames, he turns away from a blinding, painful explosion...the desert is black, blowing,..He could see hands reaching out for him from the desert...he sunk up to his knees in the black clinging fine dust...He grabs one...Riley! Bozer! Maddy! They cling, he holds and holds...then they melt away...Cruel grey grit digs at his skin...wears it to blood...to bone...he slumps...he's become a thing...a monster? An infection?...alone...always alone…
He thinks he hears someone call his name...Jack?...but there's no one...alone, no one coming...no one wants him...no one...alone…
MacGyver falls. He stops. Mac closes his eyes and stops…
And there it was. Jack closed his eyes, his head dropping to his chest. Jack had no idea what Mac had been hallucinating, but he had seen it all in his young partner's light blue eyes. He had seen the happy boy MacGyver, the bullied MacGyver, the ancient hurting twenty-something Mac had been when they had first met over in the Sandbox...he had watched MacGyver be stripped bare layer by layer. His eyes rippled with them...then he had screamed for Jack, looked for him desperately...and Jack had not come. Jack's shoulders slumped. Hugh had won. He had seen the instant, the very second when the final spark had gone out of Mac's eyes, when he stopped waiting, stopped looking...stopped hoping. Jack had screamed and thrashed in the chair with impotence. Now he looked up at Mac's completely blank face. His eyes stared up at nothing, they blinked at regular intervals as if by habit, but Mac was gone. He was curled up hiding in some cold dark corner of his ginormous beautifully frightening vast brain.
"And there it is!" Hugh crowed. He stood clapped around the bowl of popcorn he held in his lap. "That was good wasn't it, Jacky boy. Damn!" He glanced at his watch, "five hours...he lasted for five hours...whew…" And there it was, the instant Hugh recognized his mistake. Jack slowly looked up into his face.
There is a side of Jack Dalton very few have seen. Very few. Jack had thought him dead when he left Budapest. He never showed it to MacGyver or Riley. They only saw hints, shadows that would cross his face only to be offset by an easy joke or soft gaze of his eyes. Even Maddie and Sarah had never seen this side. Hugh dropped his popcorn. He knew this side. He had helped hone Jack into this. Jack's face was devoid of humor or kindness, or even rage or hate. It was cold, clinical, deadly. He arched back and lashed out with his feet. The chair made a loud crack of surrender and Jack fell to the floor among the pile of broken bamboo. He quickly slid his hands out of the nooses that held him. He had been working his bonds the whole time and moving the chair constantly, working the bindings that held the bamboo together. His blood coated skin slid easily from the plastic loops and he was on his feet.
Hugh grinned and went for his gun. He froze when he realized that it was in his jacket. His jacket hanging over his chair ten feet away behind Jack. He had forgotten it in his excitement. Jack, this Jack, hadn't. He moved with the speed and grace of a panther, lifting one of the chair legs and headed for Hugh.