first of all, y'all, i am sooooo sorry this is so late. i had finals all week last week and then my last couple of shifts at my current job, so it was. a bit of a rocky week there, but now i'm out for the semester and i'm gonna be trained in at the new job soon!
again, sorry for the lateness, thank you all so much for your continued support for this fic, and i hope you'll let me know how you're liking it!
CHAPTER WARNINGS: mildly descriptive torture in middle segment, major character injury in middle and third segments
"New freakin' Mexico!"
The shout from the kitchen island is the first noise containing any kind of excitement or joy that's been heard inside the house since before the ill-fated trip to see The Dark Crystal. It draws the attention of all present, everyone turning to face Riley, who sits with her hands thrown triumphantly in the air, staring at her computer screen with a fierce expression. She looks up and sees the trio of identical raised-eyebrow looks being directed at her, and grins. It probably looks a little manic, but Riley feels a little manic right now. Whether caffeine is the culprit or the elation of what she's just discovered is the cause of the giddy, buzzing feeling, she doesn't know, and she doesn't care.
"Look," she says, swiveling the computer around and jabbing a finger at the screen. "This is from a rest stop along Interstate 40, they've left the 15, they'd still be on it if they were going to Utah, it's New freaking Mexico. They're taking Mac to Roswell. Look."
They do, Jack, Bozer, and Patti crowding around the image she's pointing to.
"It's Nikki," she says, indicating it with her finger. It's a grainy capture from a rest stop camera but it's distinctly Nikki, a three-quarters view of her face, blonde hair obscuring the rest. "She thinks we still don't know about her, so she got sloppy, and she messed up."
The elation of finally having some amount of actionable information is a heady feeling. Riley's finger stays where it is, jabbing at the image of Nikki on the screen. Pixels displace where her nail makes contact with the display and she winces, pulling her hand away but shaking the computer a little to punctuate her point.
"We've got her," Riley says fiercely. "And if we've got her, we've got him."
Jack looks from the screen up to her, then reaches out. His hand clasps her cheek momentarily, falling to her shoulder and squeezing once, hard. He then turns quickly to walk away from the kitchen island, phone already halfway to his ear, but the look in his eye and the ghost of the approving touch are hard to shake, and Riley's throat feels tight. Pride and relief and something else tear at each other inside her chest as she turns the computer back around and stares at the picture of Nikki.
You lose, she thinks. We're going to find him, and he's coming home safe, and you fucking lose.
Patti has stepped away as well, bent once more over the map, and Jack in the background talks to Sam on the phone, but Bozer remains where he is, standing next to Riley and looking at the screen. He's frowning intently, and the look he's wearing now reminds her of how he'd looked outside before, cleaning up broken pieces of gorilla glass and sporadic drops of blood.
"What?" she asks, when the temptation to distract from her own feelings about how close they are becomes too great. "What'cha thinking, Bozer?"
"I…" He starts and trails off after just the first word, shaking his head and glancing away from the screen. "You wanna know the stupidest thing that's been bothering me about this?"
Riley gestures for him to continue, then props her elbows on the island, leaning against the granite and waiting for whatever it is he's going to say. It takes him more than just a moment, leaning on the counter himself, looking from the dark stone, to the picture of Nikki, and back down at his own hands. He picks at the skin around his thumbnail, gives one empty laugh, and looks up to Riley.
"I always had a bad feeling about her," Bozer says, and his voice has an odd quality to it.
"Nikki?" asks Riley, despite already knowing the answer.
"Yeah." He nods, glancing back to the woman on the screen. "Nikki. Something about her seemed off, I had a bad feeling, but I never… I never said anything. I wanted him to be happy, y'know? And it wasn't like she ever did anything to prove me right. I just tried to ignore it, thought I was seeing things, being protective or whatever, so I just… Put it out of my mind. Feel pretty stupid about that now."
"Well, you were right, I guess," Riley mutters, then winces. She regrets having said it, and glances quickly over at Bozer to see what sort of effect the words are going to have. To her relief, he smiles. It's bitter and there's that same guilty look as before behind it, but it's a smile.
"Guess I was." Bozer shakes his head. "Just wish I'd said something. Maybe if I had, then-"
"Nope," Riley cuts him off before he can finish, "no. I'm gonna stop you there. I could say the same thing about me, because I came in with new eyes, and I didn't see it either. Mac didn't see it. Jack didn't see it. And, like, no. If you'd said something way in the beginning, if you'd made him come to the freaking movie with us, it wouldn't have stopped this. Nobody and nothing could've stopped this but the people who did it. We couldn't've stopped it then, but we can save him now. That's what we should focus on. Okay?"
Bozer answers her with a wordless nod. Riley, still bolstered by the humming success of finding the security cam footage of Nikki, nods back. It's a firm, decisive dip of her chin, contrasted to Bozer's uncertain agreement. Despite everything, Riley is feeling hopeful. They're so close now, they know where they're headed, and when she switches programs on her computer, she sees the blinking green light of G and Sam's car closing in on the red-flagged city of Roswell, New Mexico. So close. They're so close.
It almost feels to Riley like she could reach into the screen and pull Mac out. Pluck him from the pixelated negative space to the South and West of Roswell, cut out the middleman and bring him home herself. It's a fleeting thought and she shakes her head to dispel it, focusing on dropping a digital pin on the location of the rest stop they'd got the picture of Nikki from.
She reaches absently next to her, the backs of her fingers coming into contact with the cold side of the can leaving beads of condensation on the counter. Coffee stopped cutting it at some point and she'd grabbed an energy drink, which she takes a swallow of now, grimacing at the sharp, artificial taste. Out of the corner of her eye, Riley sees Bozer give her what she reads to be some kind of concerned look, probably due to the volume of caffeine she's taken in since fatigue really started weighing on her, and she rolls her eyes.
It'll be fine. She just needs to stay awake until Mac is home. It'll be fine.
Mac has lost track of time. He could have been here in this featureless, empty room for hours, days, he has no way to know how long has passed. His captors have seemed to decide the best angle from which to approach this interrogation is to overwhelm him into submission, launching a constant onslaught of stimuli on his already fried senses. The concussion he'd arrived with, along with his throbbing shoulders, face, and hand, have stripped away his defenses, leaving him uncharacteristically vulnerable to these attacks.
Amid the continuing stream of the same questions Mac still doesn't know the answers to, punctuated by fists to his torso and blasts of the air horn every time he starts to drift, the gun goes off three more times. The last time it's loaded, a bullet intentionally passing by his head to blow chunks out of the wall. Bits of material scatter through the air hard enough to hit him, even those glancing impacts enough to ratchet up the threshold of the pain he's experiencing. It's a constant battle to think at all, let alone clearly.
Despite not knowing how long he's been in their hands, it's been long enough that Mac is starting to get worried. Not for himself, that ship sailed quite some time ago, but for his team. This is not a situation alien to him. This is not the first time Mac has been held captive and hurt, and though the nature of their answerless questions is disconcerting and scary, these circumstances on the whole are not unfamiliar. However, it's drug on long enough that by now if not an out-and-out rescue, Mac should've gotten at least some indication that his team knows where he is and is working on getting him out.
So far, though, nothing. It's been too long for that not to be an indication of something having gone very, very wrong. It's been long enough that a fear is mounting in Mac's scattered, disoriented head that he may not be the only one in danger here.
If they're not here, if Jack hasn't come to get him by now, something has happened. And if they're in trouble, then Mac needs to get to them so he can help. Now, so much more than before, he needs to get out. And if they're in trouble, if Jack is in so much trouble he isn't here, isn't pulling Mac out of the fire for the thousandth time, he's going to have to rely on himself to get out.
Gritting his teeth and ignoring the spike of pain that sends through his damaged cheek, Mac closes his eyes and tries to concentrate, to get past the barrage of noise and hurt and think. The air horn sounds again, a piercing shriek that sends his eyes flying open and forces a gasp out of shocked lungs. I wasn't sleeping, he wants to scream at them. I wasn't falling asleep, I wasn't.
The plan he comes up with is not his most comprehensive or foolproof. But there is a plan, one he's pieced together as best he can given the circumstances, and Mac is determined to get out of here at the first opportunity. The people interrogating him have never been more than two or three at once, and they've been exiting the room periodically, leaving him alone for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time. He watches them closely, breathing in shallow, slow breaths to try and calm down, center himself and pull his training to the forefront.
Mac reminds himself, coughing through a blow to his ribs, that he's a professional. He knows how to do this. He's pulled harder escapes than this. Ignoring the little voice reminding him that he'd had backup then, Mac does his best to concentrate.
As the last aftershocks of that punch fade, Mac sees his chance. For the life of him, he doesn't know how he manages to get across the room in this state, but when he gets there, the door is open, and he's halfway down the hall before it's barely registered that he's left.
Unfortunately, halfway down the hall is as far as he gets. A hand clamps down on his shoulder, ripping backwards and sending Mac sprawling to the floor. He just manages to twist and avoid cracking his wounded head off the concrete floor, and as it stands, the impact still manages to leave him dazed and gasping, barely aware of what's happening around him. As he's dragged back to the room he'd only barely made it out of, Mac is too stunned to so much as think - perhaps a blessing, after all, it may have been the only thing to save him from imagining what the consequences would be for his failure.
"No, I know," G is saying in the passenger seat of the rental car as Sam drives, continuing to fulfill his adopted role as communications liaison as well as navigator, "and I promise we're gonna call you as soon as we've got anything. Yeah. I promise. Sure." He hangs up and looks at Sam, shaking his head.
"They have updates?"
"Nah," G says, a word encased in a sigh. "They're just going nuts back there, y'know, stir crazy, now that we know where he's probably at. It's just got that much harder not to charge out and get him themselves. Dalton's practically crawling up the walls."
Sam tilts his chin, acknowledging the situation the Phoenix team is trapped in. G is right, it must have gotten measurably harder to hold back and abide by the ruling of the powers that be once there was a narrowed destination, once this was a proper rescue mission and not a frustratingly directionless search and rescue. It has certainly leant a sense of urgency to their drive, and their emotional attachment to the object of their mission is at a minimum, especially compared to the tight, worried voice he keeps hearing on the other end of G's frequent phone calls, the rest of that team waiting back in Los Angeles.
"So, let's rerun the plan," Sam says after a while, seeing a sign indicating they were drawing close to their destination. A collaboration between their technical analysts and Riley Davis involving topographical maps and depth surveys has provided them with a specific location. What was supposed to be an empty stretch of desert twenty minutes outside of Roswell was actually a large, falsely-permitted generic warehouse building, void of distinguishable features, words, or logos anywhere they could find. It had to be there they were headed, and they were about an hour out now.
"Get in, get MacGyver, get out," G intones like they've gone over this a dozen times, which they basically have. "Don't be seen, don't be heard. It's not much of a plan."
"I know." Sam shakes his head and wishes he had some sort of turn to make, some directions to follow, anything but continuing straight on down the same road. "At least it's straightforward."
And it was. Straightforward. The plan, the mission, was not about anything more than simply, as G put it, 'get in, get MacGyver, get out'. They were not focused on the Organization, on gathering information or taking down bad guys. That could wait, and there were people with far more intel than them to do it. Right now, all they had to do was a rescue.
The rest of the drive passes in a stiff silence, both agents preparing themselves for the extraction. Sam parks the car behind the last ridge before the buildings they're headed for, counting on the dying light casting shadows everywhere to shield their approach from anyone who might happen to look. G speaks one last time on the phone with Dalton, whose jangling nerves Sam can feel all the way from California, and they're on their way, approaching by foot.
Getting into the building is easier and less eventful than he had expected, which makes Sam nervous. They only encounter two members of the Organization as they carefully creep down the hall, peering into rooms to check for MacGyver. Both of them are dispatched quickly, left unconscious in the nearest room as they continue further into the converted warehouse. It's a loud, abrupt sound from down the hall that catches their attention, something like a siren but only coming from one room. One short blast, followed by an angry voice. Sam and G look at each other, then book it the rest of the way down the hall.
The man inside the room is taken by surprise when they burst in the door, air horn dropping from his hand and rolling across the room. The sight of it sends a nauseated jolt through Sam's gut. G takes care of the man who'd been holding it while Sam focuses on the object of their search, handcuffed to a pipe across the room.
He doesn't look much like the picture Dalton gave them, right now, with his battered appearance and the wild, raw look of pain and fear on his face, but there's no mistaking who that is. It's Angus MacGyver, and he looks awful. Sam snaps his fingers, getting G's attention, gesturing towards the boy without looking away.
"See if you can find the key to the cuffs on the guy you dropped," he says quietly, directed back at his partner, before refocusing on the task at hand.
MacGyver is watching with wide eyes as Sam approaches, quick pants of breath hitching his shoulders rapidly up and down. There's blood in his blond hair, an deep bruise darkening on the side of his face with an untreated cut at the center. This, along with a black eye, a split lip, and Sam approaches slowly, and when he gets within arm's reach, MacGyver pushes back into the pipe behind him, trying to get away. Of course he is - they've never met, and the guy's just been beaten half to death. Of course he's afraid.
"It's alright," Sam says gently, holding his hands up, palms out, trying to signify peace. "We're here to help. My name is Sam." A tap on his shoulder, and G passes him the key, which Sam takes, and turns back. "I'm just gonna get you out of those cuffs, okay?"
MacGyver doesn't say anything. Sam moves around to the side, standing at an awkward angle to get at the cuffs behind the pipe. He frowns at them, taking in the angle, the rigid link between the bracelets, the torn skin where the metal has bit into the kid's wrists. Put on too tight on purpose, to keep him from slipping them. Sam grits his teeth, swallowing down the anger that's been rising in his chest since he first saw the amount of damage that's been done to this young man.
"Easy," Sam mutters as he works the cuffs off, doing his best not to cause any more harm. One of MacGyver's hands seems to be hurt beyond just what the cuffs have caused, ugly bruising mottling the back in a way that makes Sam wonder if something might be broken. "It's gonna be alright. Easy."
"Who are you?" MacGyver asks. His voice is hoarse and it makes Sam's throat hurt just to listen to him. "Wh- Who are you?"
"My name is Sam Hanna," he says, trying to sound as steady and non-threatening as possible. "I work for NCIS. This is my partner, Callen. We're… We're friends of Jack Dalton's. We're working with him, we're here to get you and bring you home."
With a tiny shake of his head, MacGyver takes a step away, to the side as he's already as far back against the wall as he can get.
"I don't…" Another headshake, one that causes Sam to wince because of the gash it exposes behind his ear, the source of the blood in his hair. "I don't know you."
Before Sam can answer, there's a shout from down the hall signalling that someone's stumbled upon the incapacitated Organization lackeys they'd left in one of the empty rooms. He whips around to look at G, who wears the same 'oh no' look, and they both run out into the hall.
It's only one person, radio raised halfway to his mouth about ready to sound the alarm but unable to get the message out before G gets to him. Seeing as there's only one of them, and there's another pressing issue at hand, Sam leaves him to deal with that, and turns back to the room they'd left MacGyver in. When he gets to the doorway though, he freezes there and stays frozen until G gets back.
"What?" G asks, apprehension in his voice. "What's happened?"
Wordlessly, Sam steps aside to reveal the room. The room which is now completely empty.
MacGyver is gone.