Mac laid in the middle of the room, watching Murdoc put away his cameras through his tears. He didn't dare move, not after that. His leg hurt too much, more than it should. He wanted to sleep so badly, if he's learned anything during his visit with Murdoc, then it's that pain makes you exhausted. He knew that to begin with, but he learned it too well, he felt like was about done with this lesson.

Now that bat is the least of my worries.

Shut up! No, no, no. Murdoc sent that video to Jack and Matty, Riley will track it!

No! Didn't you listen? They won't find you! You're stuck here with him, it's all your fault! If you had been more careful last night-

He planned this. He was waiting for a moment to strike. The moment I slipped up and he had an excuse...this isn't on me.

But it is.

These mental arguments of his were becoming more frequent and more and more aggressive. He could barely tell which one was actually him, the hopeful one or the realistic one, but he wasn't about to have that "who's the real Mac" moment with himself.

He was lost in his own thoughts and didn't snap out of it until Murdoc came back in his room and began moving him. Mac cried out. "Stop!" He pleaded. "Please, just leave me alone!" He could feel the broken and shattered bones grinding up against each other and cutting against the bruised muscles.

When Murdoc ignored him he began to shake his head viciously. It hurts! He wasn't sure if he'd said that out loud or just in his head. The pain washed up against his leg like tidal waves crashing and tripling up the rest of his body. He was prepared to cut it off. Limit his mobility to remove the years of pain to come, his leg was always going to be an issue either way. It was always going to slow him down, slow his team down if he ever made it back.

The movement stopped. Murdoc had sat him down and laid Mac's head on his lap and began to brush his hair out of his face. "This was your fault. If you hadn't tried to run, there'd be no need to hurt you." Murdoc wiped away Mac's tears of pain, Mac shied away. "I wouldn't have punished you so severely if you hadn't put both yourself and her at risk. You were so foolish."

Murdoc's voice was so tender, careful, and almost fatherly. "I won't let you hurt yourself or that child, I had to do this. You understand?"

Mac still didn't move or make any sound that wasn't related to pain. "I hurt you to keep you from hurting yourself, it's your fault. I couldn't just keep allowing you to think it was okay for you to do that. I just need you to learn. Okay?"

Murdoc reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle of pills. "It's not much but if you're good I will give you some low dose painkillers." Murdoc tucked them back in his pocket and continued to brush his hair. "Alright then, I'll go get-"

"Shut up," Mac whined.

"Excuse me?" Murdoc gently caressed the side of his face with his thumb. "Dear Angus, you're in a lot of pain. I just-"

"Drop it." Mac jerked his head away from Murdoc. "People who 'care' don't throw a sledgehammer to another person's leg and then act gentle and like you actually had their best intentions at heart."

"Well, as you have been saying," Murdoc coyly smiled. "'Worth a try.'" Murdoc's whole demeanour changed back to the man with the hammer raised over his shoulder.

For a brief moment Mac almost fell for it, that was before he'd realized that Murdoc still didn't have a heart. Nothing has changed. Mac's cognitive abilities weren't slowing down when it came to Murdoc, he was listening to what he had to say and not just ignoring it. Especially when it was about Jack. Murdoc would drone on about how damaged he'd be, that he would be more trouble than he's worth, he'll get them both killed, and Mac would never be able to protect Jack.

Murdoc moved from underneath Mac's head and slid his hand down the boy's side meeting his thigh. "I imagine anything I do to your leg now will be quite painful."

Mac knew Murdoc was going to lap up every moment of this, he just had to endure. Endure? Isn't that what you have been doing for the last- what has it been? A month now? How much longer are you going to endure him? Just give in, make everyone's life better.

Jack will think I am weak if I give in. I can't do that to them, I have to be strong.

You are weak. You have always been weak, He is just showing you that. Give in.

No. Even his own voice sounded weak in his head. I can't.

Can't or just won't. There are a lot of things you can do but won't. For example carry a gun. If you carried a gun, you would have had many opportunities to kill Him, but you don't.

I'm not a murderer.

But Jack is. You make him one. Besides a gun isn't that much different from an explosion. One bullet kills one, maybe two people if you're lucky, but an explosion can kill many more. It can level blocks of cities. You can mix the chemicals wrong and kill people with a backfired explosion, a gun is less likely to jam than a brain.

I trust myself to get it right.

How can you trust yourself? How can you do that when you are weak? You just sit here and let everyone else get their hands dirty while you look innocent, you know the truth though.

"Stop!" Mac screamed and threw his hands over his ears.

Murdoc laughed. "What was that?"

"Leave me alone!" Mac was in his own world, completely ignoring Murdoc and beginning to chant. "That's not...I'm not...no...I'm not...not true…"

A scream, his own scream, interrupted his thoughts. "Don't ignore me." He heard.

"What?" Mac cried out again as he determined what made him scream in the first place. Murdoc had both his hands pressed firmly against Mac's lower leg. "Ah~! Let go!"

"Not until you truthfully tell me what that was." Murdoc began using his body weight to add more pressure.

Another painful cry. "What was what?!" Mac was truly unaware that he began talking out loud.

"Fine, fine." Murdoc used his upper body to essentially 'bounce' on Mac's leg. "Have it your way."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Mac tried to push Murdoc off of his body but he couldn't even raise his head, so instead, he laid there with tears of pain finding their own path down each side of Mac's face. "Please…"

"Pathetic," Murdoc said, Mac's stomach sank. Pathetic? No. That's not true, I'm not...but you are. You disappoint Him.

Mac's lower lip quivered. "No." He swallowed hard and looked around, but Murdoc was gone. He left nothing behind to tell him, that that whole ordeal just took place, nothing but the pain that was.

"I'm not." He whispered.

But you are.

The cold was getting to him, after being in the snow, in the middle of winter, with no real protection. On top of that, to come back to an equally freezing concrete box with no blanket or source of heat, was asking for hypothermic shock. Mac began to list all of the symptoms of hypothermic shock in his head to drown out everything else, and part of those symptoms included delirium. That must be it, there's no way I am going crazy.

I don't know, maybe you are more like him than you thought. Mac heard himself laugh in his own head. His own freaking head. He'd called himself crazy and now he is mentally laughing. Just delirium, he tried to remind himself.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Boz stood outside in the hall and repeated "Holy shit. No, Mac. No." Until Kage caught up with him.

"Hey," Kage's auzzie voice cut through Boz's panic attack. "It's going to be okay. We will find them."

"No Kage!" Boz had that sad puppy dog look in his eyes. "Not this time, I don't think even if we get him back he's gonna be okay! You saw what just happened."

"Bones heal Bozer."

"But brains are a different story, especially his brain! He gets stuck up there even with his family around him!" Boz shook his head. "What do you think will happen when Murdoc gets up there with him too?"

"I've seen this before Bozer, plenty of times-"

"You haven't seen Mac!" Boz was not going to take any wise sage advice from Kage. "You've seen this and you've seen that! But you haven't ever seen someone like Mac! You barely know him! He is my best friend and I had to see him in pain after not seeing him for a month! Mac is different Kage! You don't have the faintest idea what he can get like!" Boz wasn't done with Kage yet.

"No offense and I know you got more training tucked under your belt than me but there's only one other person who knows Mac and how his brain works as well as I do and that is Jack! You know nothing! You aren't a Mac-Expert!"

"Most people react the same in those types of situations Bozer! I am trained-"

"Mac isn't most people!" Bozer screamed in the hallways with tears in his eyes.

Jill ignored what was happening in the hallway and briskly walked past the pair and through the double doors of the War Room with a tablet in hand. The moment she walked in everyone went quiet as they saw her distressed look. "It's everywhere. Mac...he's...oh my god, Matty…"

Rena rushed over to Jill because she looked like she was going to faint. "Hey, it's okay. Take a seat if you need one." Rena said with one hand on her back and the other lightly holding her forearm.

"No, no. I am fine." Jill said as she passed the tablet to Matty. "It's on every device that's linked to the building's network. That includes the wifi." She pulled out her smartphone to show the same image of Mac laying helplessly under the hammer.

"Riley figure out how he did that, there's no way he can get into the secured wifi signal and all the fire wall's main systems or the core processor of each device without leaving a traceable network trail. Also, check the Nexeton-"

Riley and Jack spoke at the same time. "English Rena, honey." "Already on it."

"What the hell is a Nexeton?" Said Jack, like it was a robot, planning to take over the world.

This time Riley and Rena were in sync. "It's a new system to corrupt all files and replace them with a new one made by…" Both girls stopped as they realized a) they were talking at the same time and b) no one really cared they just wanted a distraction from the same video that they had watched a minute before.

Riley's vicious typing stopped after a minute and she slammed her hand on her keyboard. "Why is he making this so damned hard?!"

"Is it the Nexeton?"

"No, I know how to deal with that but it seems to be his own version of it...It's just too hard to decrypt! It will take hours to do this!"

"Then focus on the next best lead, Riley. Don't stress yourself out too much." Matty said trying to muffle the screams coming from the tablet.

An idea dawned on Rena. "Wait for a second, Riley?"

"Yeah?"

"Your laptop isn't displaying that video is it?"

"No!" Riley smiled as if she knew what Rena was inferring to. "You're a genius!"

"I was just curious, not...you know what, okay. Thank you." Rena looked at her curiously. "But seriously, if you were able to get an idea from that, then you are the one who is smart here."

Jill still stood in the middle of the room, "What do I tell people? Especially the tech department?"

Riley stood up with the laptop. "That it will be gone in about 38 seconds."

"Nice work Riley," Matty said. "Jill I am so sorry all of you guys had to see that. What else do you need? I feel like there is something else you're not telling me."

"Bozer is kinda yelling at Kage for something about Mac and brains."

"He's what?" Matty said in disbelief. "Our Bozer is yelling?"

"Yes, at Kage." Jill turned and quickly exited as to not become more involved.

"Jack, go handle that. Riley, make sure that video is down and our networks are resecured. Then make sure that you follow any trail that leads back to Murdoc or an associate. We have found out he has been working with several people on this." Matty waited for nods from each agent, then turned to Rena. "Ms. Petrona you and I need to have a word about the details of you taking this case since it seems like you will be with us for a while longer."

"Where and when?" She asked nervously. "You know I can't say-"

"Interrogation room. Now." Matty walked out of the room and Rena obediently followed.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The pair sat across from each other in a blue-tinted room. "Mind telling me about this?" Matty slid over a file that contained more than just black marks where the classified informations were.

"How did you get this?" Rena asked panicked.

"I pulled a few strings. How long were you going to keep this a secret?"

"It's classified, Matty." She straightened up. "I couldn't share it."

"Not to me, not anymore. So, why don't you start talking?"

"I can't. How did you get this?"

"Strings. I answered your questions, now you answer mine."

"The same strings that wanted to cut Mac's case?"

"I have lots of strings. Talk."

"Not yet." Rena shook her head. "I'd rather have Jack here for that."

"If you tell the right story here, you'll be lucky if you step another foot in California!"

"That's not going to work on me, Matty." Rena's eyes still didn't waver. "The time hasn't come yet..."

"Time is a social contract, made to keep count of the intervals of life separate from one another. And that's what you're going to be if you don't talk. I'm going to separate you from my team and you're not going near Mac's file photo again if you don't say the right things in here, and you better make it believable."

"Fine Matty, but only the basics."

AN: Personally I have never really believed that Kage belonged with in the MacGyver series, I mean she added a new hint of a shiny new toy, but she became quite disappointing. Sorry if you disagree but Kage is not my favorite. In fact Kage ranks below Thornton, she was cool at first but then she BETRAYED us. Enjoy. Tell me what you think so far. There is still quite a ways before Mac gets rescued though so hang tight!