Wunderkind

by The Thistle Girl

Jack Dalton's DXS team's last mission left his computer-genius partner Riley Davis with a bullet wound, their analyst Nick Carpenter dead, and a canister of a deadly virus in the wind. Their only chance may be a young former vigilante currently serving time for domestic terrorism, known to the criminal underground as "the Phoenix", and to law enforcement as "Angus MacGyver".

21. Hole Puncher

Please note, this chapter has warnings for mentions of past sexual assault, past self harm, and threatened sexual assault.

BEHIND THE FENCE AT THE BALL PARK

NOT WHERE JACK WANTED TO BE DURING THE GAME

Jack yells encouragement as Mac steps up to bat. The annual softball game with the local NSA post is...well, things aren't looking good. Jack hopes Mac's crazy physics skills extend to calculating pitch speed and angle on the fly. He's good at pool, he should be good at this too, right?

Jack's not allowed to play. His arm still has two weeks of recovery time; this is why he really, really hates broken bones. He tried to get Dr. Modi to approve softball as a therapy regimen. She refused. "I do not want to see you coming back into my office for another six weeks because you slid into home and broke that arm again," she'd told him.

He doesn't really want to spend more time in PT, but he really wanted to get in there and play. And even though he knows it's probably illogical, he thinks maybe if he was playing, they wouldn't be losing quite so badly.

It's not that the team isn't good. He's been polishing Riley's game for years, Bozer's shockingly a pretty skilled pitcher, and Jill Morgan played softball in college. But that doesn't mean the Phoenix isn't getting their asses kicked out on the field.

Cage is proving surprisingly poor at the game, but Jack thinks it's probably because where she comes from, they play cricket. Apparently the rules to that are different enough that she's struggling. And she's definitely not going to be allowed to be the sub pitcher any longer.

"Come on, Mac, you got this!" he shouts. Riley's on second, if Mac gets in a good hit they might still get two runs this inning. The pitcher winds up and throws…

And Mac swings hard, catching the ball nicely and sending it over into left field. He's already running, and so is Riley.

Unfortunately, the NSA team has a very good outfielder. He snaps the ball up and tosses it to the second baseman, who tags Mac out, and then throws the ball to home. "Riley! Slide, get down!" Jack yells. She does, but it's too late. She's out too.

Mac and Riley look pretty dejected as they plod back to the benches, Riley slapping dust out of her shorts and shirt. Jack decides it's time for an old-fashioned Dalton pep talk.

"Now listen up. Last time we played the NSA Listening Post Number 27 Panthers, we were pretty pathetic."

Matty cuts him off. "We're fourteen runs down, Jack, I think pathetic applies here too."

"Whoa, whoa, little less Debbie Downer, boss lady, hey? We still have a chance to win." Jack purposely avoids looking at the scoreboard and seeing just how big a liar he is.

Mac, of course, looks directly at it, then turns to Jack with a frown. "Uhh...with the runs, the outs, the innings...I'd say our current win expectancy is…"

"Okay, okay, C-3PO, don't tell me the odds. The important word in that sentence is "expectancy". We gotta expect to win or we're not gonna be able to do it." He can tell they're not convinced. He's not convinced. "Now softball is a team sport. And if you take "team" apart...you have "me"." He looks around, pointing at each of them. "You're a me, and you're a me, and…" He stops at Matty's withering glare. "I just meant, all those me's need that extra 't' and 'a' and then they're a team. A winning team."

"Yeah, well, what does the 't' and 'a' stand for then?" Bozer asks.

"Ummm…. 'Try' and...uh…"

"Ardor?" Jill asks. When Jack frowns at her, she shrugs. "I read a lot of harlequins…" Her cheeks go almost as red as her jersey.

"Okay, we'll go with that cause I can't think of anything better." Jack starts tugging people's hands into a circle. "On three, "Trial and Ardor"."

"That sounds like the title of one of your romance novels, Jill," Riley giggles.

Matty isn't amused. "Wrap it up Lombardi. Any longer and we forfeit for delay of game."

"Lombardi was a football coach, thank you very much."

Jack's about to start the counting when Matty's phone buzzes. She hushes them and listens for a second, and then hangs up. "We have to forfeit."

"No! We just got our battle cry! We're gonna bury the Panthers now!"

"If we don't get back to the Phoenix immediately, we might be burying someone else." Jack doesn't like the look on Matty's face. It isn't often something worries her this much. Something really bad is about to happen.

…

Mac has to force himself not to pull a paperclip out of his pocket and start bending it as Matty begins talking. He can feel the tension radiating off of her as she begins loading the briefing.

"We just intercepted intel that an emerging terrorist group known as Omnus is gearing up for a major attack."

"Omnus?" Mac doesn't recall that name popping up before.

"They've been on our radar about four months and they've been pretty active ever since." Matty gestures to the images of bomb sites and shootings. "They're too well-organized to be that new, our intel points to a very patient group of people who've been waiting in the shadows until they were perfectly prepared to begin their plan. Which makes them highly dangerous, and difficult to track. Unlike most emerging groups, they're very careful."

Riley nods. "There's chatter about them all over the dark web, but nothing solid up until this job offer. They're not even recruiting through it. So there's no way to find an access point to even begin trying to hack them."

Jack nods. "Okay, back to the 'major attack' part. We got a what, when and who on that? I mean, I don't really need a why, not when we're dealing with psychos like this, but…"

"Our best bet at finding out all that is for us to find the man they want killed." Matty opens a dossier that is blank aside from a label at the top. "We learned that Omnus has offered ten million dollars for the assassination of someone they code-named 'The Architect'. While the identity of the Architect remains a mystery, the identity of the assassin hired to kill him is not." Matty pulls up a screen. "Our agents, when they intercepted the message, replied to it. Using the IP and one of the aliases of our old friend Murdoc."

Mac sees the rest of the team shudder slightly when the grinning mugshot of the assassin pops up onscreen. He's glad he's not the only one with a case of the creeps. Although I doubt any of them have as much reason to detest him as I do. "Who smiles in a mugshot?" Riley asks, twisting her necklace tightly in her fingers.

Jack turns to Matty. "Ok, I see what you did there. Pose as a real assassin and buy us enough time to find the Architect, because this Omnus thinks someone's on their way to kill him, so they won't send anyone else."

"Wait, what happens when they realize Murdoc is in jail?" Bozer asks. "Won't they know this isn't legitimate?"

Jack shakes his head. "Since we kept our arrest of Captain Banana Boat under wraps, nobody but us knows he's not available."

Mac glances at the screen, at the blank silhouette that they're hoping to fill with a face and a name. "And then when we find the Architect, we get him into witness protection under cover of an assassination, and then use what he knows to get ahead of whatever Omnus is planning. And he gets to start his life over, free of Omnus searching for him."

Jack shakes his head, staring up at the screen. "Ok, this sounds too good to be true. Save the Architect, stop a terrorist attack, get some intel on this freaky new group. So where's the catch?"

"The only people who know who he is are Omnus. And they're not going to willingly give that information up to anyone but Murdoc."

"Wait." Riley glances up. "What's the one thing everyone knows about Murdoc?"

"Is that a trick question?" Bozer asks. "Because nobody except us really knows what he looks like, or his real name, not that Murdoc even is…"

"Exactly. The one thing everyone knows about Murdoc is that no one knows anything about him." Riley stands up. "We intercepted Omnus's communication and posed as Murdoc once. What if we kept doing it?" She taps her laptop. "I've scanned through his emails we retrieved from his phone, I think I could imitate him, right down to typing pattern and speed with the right algorithms."

"There's no guarantee this communication is going to remain online," Matty says. "Omnus never specified what their method of contact with Murdoc would be. What if they ask for a phone call? Or a meeting in person?"

"I could do it," Cage says, and there's suddenly no trace of her heavy Aussie drawl. "I've talked to Murdoc, I know his verbal tics, his mannerisms. And you know I can sell them a stone cold killer."

Riley shakes her head, she's gone back to skimming the briefing on her laptop. "Apparently they've worked with Murdoc before, in their correspondence they said they hoped this time he would live up to his reputation. He's crossed them before, and they're taking a chance. They said the method of contact 'remains the same', and nothing else. The IP that sent the original message traced back to an internet cafe in Shanghai, and its security system was hacked at the same time the message was sent. There's no way to identify the person behind it."

"I'll get everything we need," Cage says. "I just need an approval to interview him, Matty." Mac can see that she's shaken at the thought of this meeting. She's said little about her interview with him when they were trying to catch Chrysalis, but whatever it was made the normally unbreakable woman afraid of him.

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to," Matty says. "But this is our best chance."

…

Jack doesn't like the sound when Matty calls to say Cage has information. It's been too soon for her to have gotten through to Lord Nutbar, if he factors in the travel time to get to the prison Murdoc's being held at. He apologizes to Dr. Modi for running off in the middle of their PT session and heads upstairs to join Riley, Mac, Matty, and Bozer in the War Room.

Matty's got a video call running, and she nods when Jack walks in. "We're all here. What's your status with Murdoc?"

"He says he'll only talk to MacGyver." Cage glances at Matty. "His exact words were, 'I don't share trade secrets with anyone. So unless your name is Angus MacGyver, I'm afraid you're out of luck.' And 'If little Angus decides he wants to come out and play, I'll give him everything he wants to know. He knows I'm a man of my word.' That's all I could get out of him."

"Oh hell no." Jack snaps. "He's not going in there with that freak." He slams his good hand onto the table. "Let me go up there. I'll get him talking."

"Jack, that's not going to do anyone any good," Matty says. "He can't tell us what he knows with a broken jaw."

Cage nods. "Murdoc isn't going to respond to threats. And he's too good a manipulator to let me get inside his head again." She's visibly shaken, which isn't helping Jack's worry at all. If he's getting to Cage, I can't imagine what he could do to Mac. The kid's tough, but his mental state tends to teeter on the edge of fragile, for good reason. And Murdoc would know how to take those tiny cracks and bust them wide open.

"I'll do it." Mac, ever the self-sacrificing idiot, speaks up. I knew he was gonna do something like that. "What he knows is the only way we're going to be able to save the Architect and have a chance at stopping Omnus."

"No way. Mac, I can't let you do that." Jack moves in front of him to catch Mac's eyes. "I'm not letting you get subjected to his every whim. All he's going to do is play mind games. If he won't talk to Cage, he won't talk to anyone. He just wants to mess with your head. And we're not giving him the satisfaction."

"He said he's a man of his word, Jack. That's what he said before the junkyard, too. When he promised not to kill you if I came."

Jack shakes his head. Mac, I get that you want the best possible outcome. But this is a certifiable psychopath we're dealing with here. He can't be trusted. "And I kinda remember Patty getting shot and all of us still having some pretty big guns trained on us until you beat his thingamajig with some rock and roll, so I'm not too sure I'd put much stock in his word."

Matty sighs. "He won't be alone, Jack. If Mac really does go through with this, I'm going in with him."

"He won't talk to me if you're there," Mac says.

"Maybe not. But he needs to understand the ground rules. If he doesn't play nicely, I can make his life so much worse."

…

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON

NOT EXACTLY A TOURIST DESTINATION

Matty can tell Mac is uncomfortable. Actually, that's much too mild a term for the pure terror that filled his eyes the moment they drove through the prison gates. Thanks to some phone calls, the prison authorities turned a blind eye to the former convict walking through their doors, the only name that will ever be listed on the visitor logs is an "Alex Summer".

But the fact that he's able to freely walk these halls isn't doing a thing to make Mac calmer. He jumps at every slam of a door, and he keeps his head down as they walk. Matty can tell he's surprised that the hoots and whistles are kept to a minimum, and are almost evenly split between being directed at him, her, or Riley. Because he's not as clearly a possible victim for them to look forward to. She can't imagine what it's been like for him to walk halls like this in the unmistakable prison clothing. To know he's not going to be able to go back out those doors and out those gates at the end of the day.

She can see him steeling himself against flinching at every voice, every movement from the cells they pass. She wonders if the prisoners can sense a former one of their own, if Mac's reactions give him away. Fortunately, Jack's doing a very good job of keeping things under control. His reaction to every whistle, every comment, every leer directed at any of them, is to basically snarl and glare until the offender decides Jack might not care if he joins them in here on a murder rap.

Once, when she looks back, she sees Riley flinch at a particularly lewd comment, and then wrap her fingers into Mac's. She's probably thinking of the same things we all are. That it's horrible to live with for only fifteen minutes. That a lifetime would be unbearable, and that even those two years were a living hell.

When they get to the empty hall that houses interrogation rooms, Mac relaxes, if only a little.

"Listen, highlights, whatever snarky comment you're about to make, I've heard it a million times before, so good luck trying to get a rise out of me. I'm Matilda Webber, director of the Phoenix Foundation."

"Ah, Patricia's replacement. I hope she didn't retire on injury, that shot to her shoulder should have healed perfectly. If she claims she's suffered permanent damage, she's lying to you. And just to be clear, Director Webber, I have nothing at all disparaging to say about you. I know what it's like to be different. But since what makes me different is all up here," he taps his head, "I have learned to...hide it from the world. For the most part. You haven't been afforded the same luxury. You have my highest regard."

"I don't think a compliment from someone like yourself is exactly the kind of thing I'm going to put in my scrapbook," Matty says. "Your words mean nothing to me. Unless you're telling me how to find Omnus."

"I like her, MacGyver. I like her a lot."

"Flattery, like insults, will get you nowhere with me." Matty sits down in one of the chairs, and Mac hesitantly takes the other. She pulls a manila folder out of her purse and sets it on the table.

"Don't bother telling me why you came, thanks to Miss Cage I know everything I need to about your little plan to fool Omnus. So you want to have someone pose as me to get that information? You want me to tell you how to find them so that you can save this 'Architect', and such a cute nom de guerre, by the way." He laughs, and Matty would almost think it was genuine if she didn't know him. "I do love watching a bloody car wreck as much as the next guy. Well, more than the next guy. But even if you people could pull this off, I have absolutely no reason to help you. It's simply a matter of...motivation. I don't have any." He smiles. "At least not at the moment. But some alone time with Angus...without these cuffs…" he rattles the chains against the table and raises his eyebrows. Matty watches Mac shiver. "Now that...That would constitute proper motivation." He sighs, as if he's just come to a satisfactory decision, and then continues in a voice that's as casual as if he was ordering lunch off a diner menu. "If you want the Architect alive, I want MacGyver. Just half an hour, the two of us. Call it a conjugal visit."

Mac clenches his fists, knuckles going white. He's crossed the line. Now it's time for me to cross mine. Matty can't say she wasn't anticipating this. The way Murdoc talks about Mac, some of the things Cage has said, all of it has left her with the pretty fair idea that the man is obsessed with the young agent, and also of what he might want from him.

"MacGyver, leave the room. It's not a request." He glances at her, confused. "I'd like to talk to him. Alone." She watches until the door closes behind him. He doesn't need to be subjected to this monster's taunts.

Murdoc waits until the door has closed before turning on her. "So what's the play here, boss lady? Send Angus away so he doesn't have to hear you sell him out to get what you want? So you don't have to watch the look in his eyes when you tell me I win? When he realizes what's in store?" He laughs.

Matty just stares at him, until the laughter dies off.

"MacGyver is a son to me. What would you do...for your son?" She pulls opens the file she was carrying and slides it across the table, and smiles just a little at the faint flicker of surprise in his eyes. We're a step ahead of him, for now. The papers are laying open to the photograph of a black haired boy, probably about eight years old.

Murdoc leans forward, hands folded, eyes boring into hers. "And what do you think this means to me, exactly? You may have noticed that unlike you, I am rocking a rather serious case of antisocial personality disorder. So what makes you think that I care if some child lives or dies?"

"You want people to think you're not human, Murdoc, but you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't have gone to such lengths to hide your son away at one of the most expensive private schools in Switzerland. You pay for his room, his board, his education. He even gets gifts on Christmas. It makes sense that you want to keep your son safe. He's an innocent, in a world of dangerous predators, who wouldn't think twice about going after him. And whatever you would do to keep your son safe, I will do to protect mine."

"You're threatening a child?" Murdoc asks. "And here I thought you were supposed to be the good guy."

"Only saying that if you hurt my family, I come after yours." Matty smiles coolly. "Of course I wouldn't put Cassian in danger. A Phoenix tac team is taking him into protective custody as we speak. But if you put a toe out of line, you will never hear a thing about your son ever again, and he's going to find out the truth about what his daddy does for a living."

Murdoc stares at her for a long minute. She can tell he's trying to decide if she's the kind of person to follow through on this. Trying to decide if it's enough motivation for him. I'm not convinced he's completely heartless. He's just twisted.

"You win, Matilda. I won't touch your precious boy genius. Not so much as a hair on his head." He shrugs. "But I do have a counteroffer. I need to talk to him alone. Without Mama Bear breathing down my neck. Or Papa Bear either." He smiles. "Or I walk away, and so does your chance of finding the Architect." She nods, slowly. She'll be outside watching the whole time, but she knows Murdoc isn't lying about this. She walks to the door, but turns around when Murdoc speaks up one more time.

"You're wrong about one thing, Matilda. I don't pretend I'm not human. I embrace my humanity. Because the human is the only creature with the capacity for true evil."

…

The door buzzer makes Mac shiver. He's heard it too many times. He knows he's turning into a nervous wreck in here. His hands are shaking and he's even taken the risk of digging a paperclip out of his pocket, shaping it into a tiny raven. Jack and Riley and Cage seem unsettled too, but he's pretty sure that's mostly due to Murdoc.

Every time he hears the distant clang of a door, he flinches. Once he even dropped his paperclip, and he made no move to pick up the half-finished sculpture because he knows how filthy the floors are. And besides, bending down is dangerous. Never put yourself in a position that leaves you vulnerable. Every protective instinct is on high alert all over again. The distant yelling, the smell of the cheap cleaners, the unidentifiable aura of the prison itself, all of it is absolutely horrible. He feels like this is some trick and they're going to shove him in a cell, lock the door behind him, and leave. He knows that's absolutely ridiculous, but the last time he was in a place like this he had to stay.

He tries to remind himself that in a few weeks he won't have to worry about that again, but he can't help wondering what happens if Charlie's evidence isn't conclusive enough. What if we make things worse? He's pretty sure that won't happen, but he can't shake the thought of being led out of the courtroom in cuffs again, taken back to prison and this time with no chance of being let out to work. He shudders.

He tries to hide it, but Jack notices immediately and puts a hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to do this, Mac. We can walk away right now. Find some other way to catch this Omnus. We don't need that creep."

And then Matty opens the door and steps out. "He's agreed he won't ask for anything physical again." The look in Jack's eyes is pure murder, and Mac flinches. "But he does want to talk to you alone."

"Matty…" Jack begins. Mac cuts him off.

"I'm going to do it." He can't explain, not even to himself, why he feels like he has to do this. Closure, maybe? Seeing someone else in there and not me? Being able to walk out of that room a free man?

And then Murdoc's voice drifts through the door. "Oh MacGyverrr, let's get to wo-ork."

He shivers, but he walks through the door when the guard opens it. He notices his hands instinctively finding the position they'd be in if he was cuffed, and he deliberately moves them apart, holding them at his sides with his fist clenched tightly. I'm not the one chained up, not this time.

"Well, well. It's good to see you again MacGyver. Tell me, how does it feel to be the one on that side of the table for a change? It must all be so surreal for you. Would you be more comfortable in the jumpsuit and handcuffs?" He raises his manacled hands and rattles the chain holding them to the table. "I'm sure that can be arranged."

Mac pulls out the chair and sits down, resting his arms on the table the way Jack did when he came to talk to Mac in CCI. "I'm perfectly fine right here."

"Oh, is this what it felt like? When they came to recruit you?" Murdoc's smile is much too wide. "A welcome relief from that silent little box in solitary? Oh wait, that's right, you wanted to be there. You chose it." He smirks. "I wonder why…"

"We're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about you." Mac needs to keep this conversation focused. While Matty was negotiating with Murdoc, Cage was quickly running Mac though a few key things he'll need to know to keep this interview from going badly. Although there's no guarantee they'll be enough.

"Talking about you, talking about me...It's all the same in the end, though, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you mean." Mac is genuinely a bit baffled. Is he really convinced that the fact that now both of us have spent time behind bars makes us the same on some level?

"Don't pretend we're nothing alike, Angus," Murdoc hisses. "I know who you are. Under all the pretending, all the lies you tell yourself, you and I are the same. We make problems go away. You know as well as I do that the law," Murdoc drums his fingers on the table, "is...unreliable at best. Corrupt at worst. Only people like you and I have the courage to do what needs to be done."

Mac leans on the table. "We're nothing alike. Don't tell me any differently. You know it. You're just trying to make me believe your lies."

"Ohhh so they didn't throw you to the wolves completely unprepared. Looks like you've been taking some lessons from Miss Cage. I must admit, that alias is growing on me." Mac resists the urge to get caught up on a rabbit trail about Sam. Clearly Murdoc knows plenty about her mysterious past.

"All we need to know from you is how to contact Omnus."

"Oh, no, no, no. That's not all you need, Angus." Murdoc shakes his head. "You can't just call Omnus. They're not the sort of place with an answering service and all that. You need to prove you're good enough to work with them. You have to play their game."

"Apparently you've played it before. And won. So tell me what to do."

"And then what? You weren't planning on letting Miss Cage pose as me, were you?" He chuckles. "Oh, I would have loved seeing her face when she realized who Omnus is, but...well, I'd rather kill her myself. So I'm going to give you all a little hint, and say that if she shows up pretending to be me, they'll know they have the wrong assassin."

"So they meet in person."

"Let's just say they like to see who they're working with." He smiles. "They've only seen me from a distance, that's a condition of all my contracts, of course. If you so much as suggest a face to face, they'll know you aren't me, but oh, I assure you, whatever meeting they plan, they will be watching. And, well, it's hard to tell under all those layers, but I think you're a close enough figure. The height...that's a bit of an issue, but nothing you can't come up with a clever way to solve, I'm sure."

"Wait." Mac's still trying to grasp what exactly Murdoc means. "You're saying I have to pose as you?" This must be some sick joke. He's still playing with me, trying to convince me we're equals somehow.

"If you want Omnus to believe it's legitimate. Unfortunately, Jack, bless his heart, doesn't really have the acting skills for a job like this. Oh, I'm sure he could play their killer to perfection, but he doesn't have that extra...flair. The panache. He's a soldier. He gets the job done, but there's no signature. No pleasure, just duty. You, on the other hand...well, a vigilante who called himself the Phoenix...you could probably pull it off."

"I didn't actually choose that name."

"No, but you embraced it." Murdoc shrugs. "Of course, I'll have to do plenty of tweaking, but...I can work with this. But first things first. You're going to have to lose that ridiculous jacket." The way he says it, Mac can sense the underlying desire for a lot more than the jacket to be removed. The look in Murdoc's eyes is unmistakable. Mac's seen that hunger, that predatory want, far too often. And he can't tell himself that the only thing Murdoc finds fascinating about him is his mind.

"I'd rather talk about something other than choice of wardrobe."

"Oh, MacGyver, how cute. Don't you know that clothes make the man? Or, rather, the assassin?" Murdoc smiles. "Now, really, I'll admit, it's partly Hollywood's fault, but the black trench coat and the leather gloves...well, it kind of gives you an automatic respectability. It takes so much of the work out of convincing them you're the man for the job. Now really, how much would I frighten you if I was wearing a sweater vest and glasses?" Mac wants to say that Murdoc would be terrifying if he was wearing a hawaiian shirt and bermuda shorts, but that's because he knows the man. To a potential client, that might not be the case. But still, he thinks anyone who looks into Murdoc's eyes would know in a minute that the man is a cold-blooded monster.

"But I did mean what I said about that jacket. It's distracting. I don't work well with distractions." Mac doesn't like the way Murdoc's eyes follow every move as he slides his arms out of the leather jacket and hangs it on the back of the chair, or the way he licks his lips before he begins talking again. He shivers, feeling suddenly naked, and fights a completely illogical desire to grab the jacket and cover himself from Murdoc's gaze. It wouldn't do any good, what he's seeing is all in his head anyway. Mac doesn't let himself dwell on what he probably looks like now in Murdoc's mind.

"I can't tailor the suit till I see how it fits." His eyes rake over Mac's body again, and Mac shudders. "So indulge me, won't you?"

"What do you mean?" Mac struggles to keep the crack out of his voice. He can't be asking me to...to strip for him. He can't do that, he won't. He'll just walk out that door. But that's how he already sees me.

"The evidence room still has the clothes from when I was booked," Murdoc says. "I'd like you to change into them. You'll need to look the part when I send you on a dry run."

"A dry run?"

"Something completely unrelated to this case. There's always a job floating around for me. My west coast contact in San Francisco will probably have something you can do. One of his "little perfect jobs" as he likes to call them. Give him a ring. Oh, and I would suggest using the alias you met me under...he knows Kurt, not Murdoc." Murdoc grins. "Let's see what raw materials I have to start with, shall we?"

…

Riley was definitely not expecting the people in the back booth to be a middle aged suburban-looking couple. They want to hire a hitman?

Getting in touch with Murdoc's west coast contact was surprisingly easy. After pulling the contacts list off his phone, Riley called the one listed as L. Marquez, with a San Francisco area code, and got her ear talked off by a chatty Hispanic man who was more than willing to give her all the details, including plenty she didn't need to know, about how he'd tracked down a couple named Morse who wanted to hire a hitman. She was able to decipher a location and meet time in amongst the random chatter about a Cousin Diego and something to do with a pottery exhibit at a museum. She thinks there was something about an ex-girlfriend in there too, but she's not entirely certain. Her head is still spinning a little.

She doesn't like being the middleman in all of this. Murdoc needs to be able to see what Mac is doing, so he needs the video feed from the restaurant security camera she hacked. And she's not leaving her rig alone with him.

She can't forget that a few months ago this guy had her, Jack and Patty at gunpoint. But he's shockingly calm around her. Only a "good to see you still alive, Agent Davis, I was a bit worried after that whole mess with your boss Chrysalis," and then he turned to a singleminded fixation on the video feed. He's talking Mac through the whole thing, and Riley hopes no one notices the mini comm unit Mac's wearing. "Try to remember you're not there to get a cat out of a tree. You're here to get a name to turn into an epitaph. And never, never let them see your face."

"Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Morse." The couple look up nervously at the sound of Mac's voice coming from behind them.

"Hello, Mr…" The man trails off, sounding incredibly confused. He sounds like he's trying to hire a house painter, not a contract killer.

"I've collected many names, but I've always been partial to Murdoc." Mac's voice is chillingly similar to Murdoc's tone, and Riley shivers. "I'm sorry for the secrecy, but I'm sure you understand that someone in my line of work can't allow himself to be recognized."

"Good work, Angus," Murdoc practically purrs. "Now get them to tell you a story."

"Why are we here?"

"This is our daughter, Anna. A year ago she was murdered." The woman slides a photo along the windowsill, and Mac takes it to lay on the table in front of him. "This is her with her husband Brad."

Mr. Morse speaks up. "We know he did it. So do the police. But they couldn't find a murder weapon. Or enough evidence to charge him." Riley sees the muscles in his jaw clench. "He beat her. The detective who came to the house cried when he told us. They wouldn't even let us see her face."

Mac's hand, on the table, curls into a fist. The leather gloves he's wearing, Murdoc's gloves, because the creep insisted on Mac wearing his clothes for this, make that action look shockingly dangerous.

"Lock up your feelings, MacGyver. They came for a killer, not some hero."

"I can handle this for you. We just need to settle on my...fee."

Both of them blanch. "N-no, there must be some kind of mistake..." the woman stutters. She gathers her jacket and both of them start to slide out of the booth.

"I'm sorry, you thought I was going to do a job like this for free?" But they're already gone. Mac is speaking to an empty room.

...

Mac can't hide the anger seething under the surface when he opens the door and walks into the holding room. He knows Murdoc probably relishes the visible fury in his face and voice and posture, but he can't bring himself to care. "You kill people...for free?"

Murdoc chuckles. "Oh, poor MacGyver. You didn't have all the information. Well, get used to it. You never have all the information. Clients lie, jobs go sideways, you...have to improvise." Murdoc lifts his hands. "Oh, I thought that was your specialty. Was I wrong?"

Mac paces, too frustrated to sit down.

"The truth is, and you know it, you lost that job long before you asked about a fee. Mr. and Mrs. Morse walked in that restaurant looking for a dangerous predator. Every species instinctively knows how to spot one. If you don't make something in them crawl the minute you open your mouth, they're gonna know you're not the real deal. This isn't starring in some middle school play. It's not enough to pretend to be me. You have to become me."

"So tell me how."

"You have to believe that what you're doing is not only fun, and lucrative, it's right."

Mac shakes his head. "Murder for hire as a moral code? Sorry for finding that funny."

Murdoc simply leans back with a smile. "So self righteous, MacGyver. Don't pretend you didn't do that too. Don't tell me every one of those cartel thugs survived." Mac feels the hot anger churning in his stomach being replaced by a cold pit of guilt. "Oh, you tried not to kill, but it wasn't always an option, now was it?" Murdoc smiles. "Oh, it certainly wasn't the planned precision of my work, but the meth lab that not all those El Diablos members escaped, the Meridas lieutenant who crashed his car trying to flee the police, because you blew out his tire with some little contraption…" Mac clenches his fists around the back of the chair. I didn't want to kill any of them. Sometimes things just go wrong. But at the end of the day, those men would have killed if they hadn't been stopped. What they were doing was destroying thousands of lives. He'd been able to live with it, until..."And oh, of course, we can't forget poor George Ramsay. Maybe you're right about us being different, MacGyver. I don't go around blowing up innocent janitors. I only kill the people who deserve it."

Mac takes a deep breath. Even though he knows the truth, it doesn't make it any easier to listen to this. What if it was my fault? "I didn't kill Ramsay. And my friends found evidence to prove it. In a few weeks, everyone will know the truth."

"Ooh, so defensive. Do you really think I care if you've killed or not? Do you think that matters to me?" Murdoc twists his fingers in the chains holding his hands. "It only matters to you. Honestly, MacGyver, do you think when people find out, it's going to change anything? This trial won't make headlines. It'll be shoved into the back pages with an article on pollution in the Pacific Ocean. No one cares, MacGyver. People want stories of blood and gore, not innocence. No one wants to hear that you've been cleared, and no matter where you go, you're still always going to have that prison sentence attached to your name. Might as well just start wearing the orange jumpsuit again, because that's all anyone's ever going to see when they look at you."

Mac knows better than to say anything. If I open my mouth, he'll find a way to twist my words, to use them against me. So it's better if I let him talk himself out, and then try to get this conversation back on track.

"Your only chance of acceptance is with those people you call a team. And if you want them to like you, I can help with that. Make this mission a success, make them see how much they need you. So sit back and let me teach you what you need to know."

…

The jacket is gone today, left in the hands of that loyal guard dog pacing the hall, and Angus's sleeves are rolled to his elbows, the shirt collar undone by one button. That alone makes a swallow or two and a tiny, controlled shake of the head necessary before Murdoc is capable of speaking in a normal tone. Such a tease.

Green is definitely his color. Well, Murdoc's fairly sure there isn't one that he can't pull off, but green brings out the sharp blue in his eyes so well. Although I'd love to see him in orange.

Today, they're supposed to be talking about the correct words and phrases to use when negotiating and accepting a contract. But that will take five minutes, MacGyver's mind is like a sponge, he's a fast learner. But that means they have the better part of a day to spend in a more...pleasurable conversation.

"Yesterday was a good lesson, MacGyver. Now you know how much you don't know."

"Which is why I'm here." Angus is clearly anxious, he's got one of those paperclips he's turning into something. Murdoc can't tell what it is yet, it's mostly hidden in the boy's long clever fingers. "So you can tell me what I need to know to make Omnus believe I'm the real thing."

"No, that's not really it, is it?" Murdoc asks. MacGyver looks up sharply. "No, I think the real reason is much simpler. It's that your team needs something, and they told you to walk into my parlor to get it."

"I volunteered. They didn't make me come here."

"Oh, because that's what they let you think. But the truth is, they chose to talk about this case in front of you, did they? They didn't need to tell you I was only going to talk to you. But they did. They let you hear it, and they knew you would take that bait."

"They don't do that. They would never manipulate me."

"Oh but they would. Because everyone does. Oh, it's nothing against them personally, I'm sure they're very nice people. But no one can resist when someone so...pliable...is in their hands. Poor little MacGyver, always so eager to please. To make the problems go away, to make everyone like him. You did it for Daddy dearest, didn't you? And I'm sure you did it all the time in prison."

Angus is grinding his teeth together, and the half-finished paperclip sculpture has fallen to the table. It looks vaguely like a window.

"I've heard the stories about you, beautiful," Murdoc whispers. "Do you remember a Marco Alvarez?" The boy shudders, and his fear is deliciously intoxicating. "Because he remembers you. Oh he remembers."

"I thought I was here to learn more about you." He's still fighting back, still trying to be strong. Perfect. I love a fighter. It's so much more satisfying when they finally break and beg for it to be over.

"Oh, didn't you know, it's not a one-way street. And since you don't seem to want to tell me a single thing about yourself, I've had to ask around. You know, most people are just dying to talk about themselves and their petty little lives and problems and successes. As if I care. But you, you fascinate me. And yet you never tell me anything."

MacGyver stiffens. "There's nothing to tell."

"Oh, I beg to differ. I hear a lot of things. I have an antisocial personality disorder, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm always an introvert. I talk to people. I get to know them. And they tell me things."

"Then you don't need to hear it from me." The boy is losing ground and he's desperate.

"If you want to hear about me, you'll have to indulge me a little. So I can tell you about yourself." He smiles. "When you share a cell wall with someone, you learn what they dream about. What they fantasize about." He licks his lips and watches the boy cringe. He wants to think he's free of that place. Of that past. But the truth is, he'll never disappear from the minds of everyone who's had him. MacGyver might have walked out of the prison, but he's left pieces of himself behind.

Murdoc would be lying if he said he didn't want one of those pieces for himself. Like the pilgrim travelers who spent everything on what hawkers claimed was a piece of the cross of Christ. He's always been fascinated by what people treasure, by what they yearn for. They wanted to feel connected to something, to carry a part of it with them. He thinks he might finally understand it.

MacGyver is clenching and unclenching his fists. "When this case is over, all you're going to be is a memory. Just like everything else in my past."

"Oh, I can assure you, I'm not like the others. They didn't know what a good thing they had. They took you for granted." Murdoc sighs. "But you would never be just another prison whore to me, Angus."

"I wasn't…"

"Oh, don't lie to me. With a face like that, I'm sure you were the one everyone was dying to get their hands on." Murdoc smiles. "Did they let you keep that lovely long hair inside? It's really quite a good look for you. Lets everyone who sees you believe you're still innocent. Still a child. Tell me, how long did it take them to come for you? A week? A day?"

MacGyver flinches.

"And I wonder where it happened...Was it the showers? Someone who couldn't resist such a pretty thing there for the taking?" He swallows thickly at the mental image the idea presents. But clearly he wasn't right, MacGyver's reaction wasn't visceral enough. Not for it to have been his first time. "No...wait, I think it was your cell." The sudden wide-eyed fear tells him he's gotten it right. "Poor frightened little Angus, all alone with nowhere to run to…"

"Stop." His voice has gone harsh, but not a cold harsh. Not like his father's. No, the son's anger is a hot anger, like a fire. Like all those explosions he caused; and it's wonderful, Murdoc feels like basking in the heat of it. But the anger is only a sham. Below it is fear. The boy is begging, and it's even more beautiful than Murdoc could have imagined.

"It's precious, that even after all this time you still think someone will listen when you tell them 'no'. If all those men never paid attention when you screamed it, what makes you think I will now?"

Angus doesn't answer. He slams his hand on the table and turns away, but not before Murdoc sees the way his shoulders shake with suppressed sobs.

His tears are so beautiful. It hurts to want him so much, to be so close. To imagine what it would be like to have him. The boy is beautiful, precious, even if he is damaged. Murdoc feels a sudden surge of rage at every single man who has been given the pleasure he's denied. I'd love to tear them all apart with my bare hands.

They didn't appreciate him, of that Murdoc is certain. Very few people can see the true masterpiece in pain and fear. They had something sublime, and all they cared to gain from it was the pleasure for their own body. A release. He's certain none of them ever bothered to appreciate how lovely the boy's face would be covered in tears; the pure delight of what he would look like trembling in fear and flushed with shame. They're fools. They're like men who had a Rembrandt in their hands and sold it for the price of a loaf of bread. They got what they wanted, but they've wasted so much.

He can't help studying the boy's body, the way he moves when he walks into the room, the way his fingers constantly fumble with the small piece of wire he holds. Such clever hands. Always busy.

He wears clothes that suit his slender body, and it's not terribly hard to imagine what he must look like without them. Murdoc's fingers itch to touch soft skin, to run his fingers through that golden hair. He's beautiful, even now. But it would be so much better to see him scream.

But Murdoc can be patient. After all, the best things are the ones waited for, and anticipation is half the pleasure. He won't be in here forever, and once he's free, there will be no place that the boy can hide from him. Not even his precious guard dog will be able to save him then.

Murdoc half-expects Angus to leave. After everything, after the tears, he should be bolting, ashamed to have shown weakness. That's what everyone else Murdoc has turned interrogations around on does.

But instead, he scrubs at his face with his sleeve and turns back. "Are you finished harassing me? Can we get down to the real business now?" Oh, my dear lovely Angus, I wish we could. But it will just have to wait.

Murdoc nods and leans back. "Of course. What would you like to ask today? I'm an open book." Just for today, he will truly be. The boy's earned it. He's stronger and braver than anyone Murdoc has met. I like him. I like him a lot.

…

Jack paces the halls until Matty tells him to either stop or leave. He tries stopping. But then he can hear Murdoc's voice as he taunts Mac, and he can't stand it. He's trying to turn him against us. Against the only family he has. Jack's sure Mac won't believe the lies, but what if some small part of him does? What if he starts to question his place with them, wonder if they only want him for what he can do for them? If they'll abandon him the moment he proves less than useful?

Who are you fooling, there's more than a small part of him that already believes that. And Murdoc is tearing at it. Jack's not afraid that Mac will turn on them. What he is afraid of is that Mac will think they're going to turn on him.

"Matty, you have to pull him out." Jack doesn't know how she can stand there and listen to this. How she can think it's okay to let that monster torment Mac like this.

When she turns around, her eyes are damp. "And what, Jack? Make him believe the lie? If we storm in there, he'll know we're watching every move, listening to every word. He'll think that it's proof we don't trust him. That we think Murdoc will break him. We pull him out now, we make everything worse."

From the standpoint of cold logic, Jack knows she's right. They can prove that Mac can trust them by trusting him to handle what Murdoc throws at him, by making it clear that they believe he's competent. But Jack's never been a cold logic man, and what his heart is telling him is that his kid is in there being ripped to shreds by a cruel, callous monster who knows just what to say to damage him.

Jack can't stand here and listen to this. He hurries out, and he knows he seems awfully much like a kid stomping his feet as he's dragged to somewhere he doesn't want to go, but he's too angry to care. So write me up for insubordination. He wants to punch something, but his arm's still not fully healed, and he knows a cinderblock wall would do more damage than he can afford. They still have a terrorist ring to take down and an Architect to save, and he's damn well not going to take himself out of commission when it looks like Mac's going to be the key to the whole operation. I have to have his back.

Jack waits in the car. For a while, he listens to a couple of the Willie Nelson CDs he brought with him, but it doesn't feel right without Mac there to criticize his singing when he joins in on the choruses. He misses Riley, but she's running tech from their hotel. He doesn't blame her. Yesterday shook her up. Spending time in the same room as that creep...He doesn't want either of his kids in there. It should be me. He wants to break some bones.

He jumps when Mac knocks on the window. "Done for the day," he says quietly. "Matty's staying to talk to him. She told me to go on back with you, she'll get a ride." Jack doesn't feel any better about hearing that. Whatever happened, she felt it was worth risking the chance of his cooperation to make her point.

Mac is shivering violently, and Jack's sure it's from more than just the chill in the cell. Matty wouldn't have let him get away with anything...right?

"What did he tell you today? How to torture someone?" Jack wonders what it is that left Mac so shaken, but asking the kid outright is only going to make him shut down.

"Something like that." Mac climbs in and Jack watches while he buckles his seatbelt, a habit he's learned to acquire since a near-disaster in Yemen. He starts down the road, and the second the prison gates fade out of the reaview, Mac seems to collapse. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and his shoulders sag forward, making him look like he's curling into himself.

"Hey kid, you hungry? I saw a decent-looking coney place on the way in today."

Mac just shakes his head. Jack was pretty sure that was going to be the response. Luckily, they have food in the room, and not just Riley's chips and dip. Jack made sure she had something substantial while they were gone; he feels like he's raising a teenager sometimes with that girl's affinity for junk food.

Mac huddles up in the seat, knees to his chest. "Jack, he knew. About...about…" Jack doesn't need to hear it.

"Oh Mac." Jack stops, pulling the car over into the first parking lot he sees, he hears the brakes screech as he stops. "I'm gonna strangle him. You're not going back there." He was afraid of this. The way Murdoc looks at Mac, the tone of voice he uses, the faint suggestive things he says; it all pointed to this.

"I have to. We need…"

"No. Whatever the Phoenix and Matty and anybody else need is not your problem. What you need is to never see that psychopath again." He sighs and leans his head on the steering wheel. "I told them this was a terrible plan. I should have insisted…" He sits up with a start when he feels the hand on his shoulder.

"Jack, I'm going to be okay. I'm not there anymore. He can't hurt me. None of them can hurt me. I'm never going back." He sounds like he might be telling himself that too. "In another few weeks this whole thing will become part of my past."

"It's not worth tearing yourself apart for, Mac."

"I'm going to be okay." Mac looks up at him. "I have to be. I have to be able to look him in the eyes and know he can't touch me. And make sure he knows it too. The only way I'm ever going to be able to move on is if I remind myself the past can't hurt me anymore."

Jack reaches for his shoulder. "I get it. If this is what you have to do to get some closure, that's okay. Just don't be going in there for the wrong reasons. Because I guarantee you, trying to make us happy and get us what we want isn't a good enough reason to be in the same room with that psycho."

"Don't worry. I'm not going to let him get to me." Mac's shaky breaths and trembling hands say otherwise, but Jack isn't going to push it.

"You sure you don't want a coney?"

"I don't want to share a room with you after a chili dog." Mac chuckles, and the tension starts to leave his face and eyes. Jack grins. We only have to survive this a little longer.

…

Riley needs something to focus on besides the fact that Mac is trapped in a room with Murdoc. She hates the idea that Mac is anywhere near a prison again. Nothing is going to happen to him. He's not an inmate now, they can't hurt him. But what if something goes wrong, if somehow their work to cover his tracks isn't good enough…

She has to stop thinking about this, and there's nothing here to distract her. Trying to trace Omnus's communication is a dead end, and there are only so many times she can read a dossier about an unidentified target.

For lack of anything better to do, she starts reorganizing her workspace. She shuffles through papers, putting them in stacks of things she still needs, and things she can throw away. A small post-it flutters down from one heap as she taps them into order.

It's the contact information for the job Murdoc had Mac test. The one the San Francisco contact gave them. Riley prepares to crumple the paper and toss it away, but she finds herself unfolding it again and staring at the name and the meet details.

She hates that the Morses felt desperate enough to hire an assassin to get justice for their daughter. She can't help Mac, but maybe she can do something for this family grieving and having to watch a murderer walk free.

Riley can't imagine what it would be like for a family to lose a child to that kind of brutality. She also knows what it's like to witness it, sometimes to be on the receiving end. But Elwood was no killer.

As much as she despises everything the man did, Riley knows he wasn't vicious. Broken, angry, yes. But it wasn't the animal ferocity of this case. Yes, he could have done something accidentally. But it would never have been this bad. She can't stomach seeing the crime scene photos anymore. There must be some way to make that man pay for what he did. There must be.

…

Mac feels like screaming in frustration. Murdoc is the sort of person who talks in circles, making his point only after a rambling string of insults, degrading comments, and pointless stories. They're three days in, and he still barely knows more than he did to begin with.

Murdoc is still rambling on in strangely poetic descriptions of his craft. It would be chilling if Mac wasn't so desensitized to Murdoc's personality by now. It scares him how quickly he's learned the man's speech patterns, and how easy it's become for him to imitate them. Murdoc is strangely both repellent and unforgettable.

"You have to become a shadow, in the bright sunlight. you have to learn not to leave behind a trail. Nothing financial, nothing biological, nothing digital."

"I've been a vigilante and a government operative. I know how to cover my tracks." They need something more useful. Like the details of how Omnus is going to contact them.

"I beg to differ, MacGyver, you got sent to prison, remember?" Murdoc laughs. "Oh right, that was your conscience talking. You turned yourself in even before they got that nice piece of evidence from the passing Google Street car." He chuckles. "I must say, I'm surprised. Apparently your father left a little too soon to turn you into his mini-me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mac asks. How could he possibly know about that much of my past? The Ramsay case was all over the papers, everyone in LA knew. But only a handful of people know my father walked out.

"Oh Angus. All this time and you still don't know a thing about your precious missing father." The man laughs, a hollow, chilling sound. "Didn't you ever wonder why he never came back for you?"

Mac grits his teeth but forces his voice to stay calm. "I've stopped wondering. He's gone. And I've moved on."

"I could tell you so many stories. I've met him. But you know, he never talked about a son." Murdoc shrugs. "I didn't know you existed until I found out about the hit on you." Mac feels like someone's holding him underwater. Murdoc knows my father? He can't fathom these two ever meeting...but then again, James MacGyver was a very secretive man, Mac doesn't think he ever really knew him.

Murdoc's clearly picked up on his confusion. "Oh, look at this! Boy genius didn't know what Daddy did for a living. All those smarts, and it never once dawned on you? You never even suspected the truth?" His smile is all teeth. "Daddy dearest and I worked together, for a while. Well, I suppose that's a bit generous to say. We...crossed paths. Sometimes a job required combined skill sets. I must say, I've never seen anyone who could build a better bomb."

Mac shudders. I wonder if I ever defused his work. If any of the cartels ever hired him. He assumed the bombs' makeshift nature was because cartel members couldn't be bothered to make something sophisticated when a phone and a few wires would do the trick. But what if it was because someone like him was making them?

"You know, I think I understand now why he left you behind. Why he never talked about you. What kind of criminal wants to admit he has a son who turned himself in to the police and plead guilty?" Murdoc shakes his head. "You have his skills, but you don't have what it takes for him to want you."

"Why would I want someone like that to want me?" But even as Mac says it, he feels like something's shattering inside him. All these years, everyone's told me that that's not the reason my father left. And now I know it is.

"Maybe you don't see it now. But there are certain advantages to living on this side of the law. You wouldn't have had to sit in a cell for two years if you were what he wanted. He could have rescued you easily; I've seen him break men out of far more difficult places. But he left you there. And do you want to know why? Because you were a disappointment."

Mac slams his hands on the table. I was a disappointment? For having a heart? For being human? What kind of a monster is my father?

"Oh, look at that. Maybe you are more like him than he thinks."

Mac shudders. Could I really become someone like that? But when he remembers what he was like, the months after Pena's death, when he came the closest to cold-blooded killing he ever had. I lost a mentor. He lost a wife. And it terrifies Mac that the next person he loses could push him over the edge. If it was Bozer, or Jack, or Riley...The truly horrifying thing is that he knows he would kill. For them. Because of them.

"But you shouldn't be angry at me, Angus. You should be angry at Patricia. And Matilda. All this time, they've known the truth. And they kept it from you." Mac feels like his whole world is falling to pieces underneath him. Is he really telling the truth? Murdoc is a pathological liar, Mac's sure half the things he's heard these past few days are fake. But what does he have to gain from lying about this? All he would do would be to ensure that I didn't trust another word he said. This lie, unlike the things Mac's heard about peanut allergies and random victims Murdoc's had over the years, involves people who could prove him wrong. The rest of his lies have been about himself. This one isn't.

"I'm sure you don't believe me. Why don't you go ask Matilda yourself?" Murdoc gestures to the door. "Oh, aren't you just dying to know if it's true?"

...

The moment Mac opens the door, Matty knows the question is coming. So she beats him to it. "I'm afraid everything he told you is true." There's a long pause. A very long one, where the air seems to get colder and the hallway lights look dimmer and further away than they are. And then Mac takes a deep breath and comes the closest to shouting that Matty's heard from him yet.

"Matty, why didn't you tell me?" She sighs. I was afraid it would come to this. She's always known that sooner or later, Mac would find the truth for himself. She just wishes it hadn't come at the hands of Murdoc.

"Because James MacGyver is one of the most wanted criminals in the covert operations world." She doesn't see any sense in beating around the bushes anymore. "Your father was a rogue operative. He wan an agent for the DXS when it was still the OPI, but after his wife's death he became more and more volatile. There were suspicions that he was dealing his weapons designs under the table to anyone who would pay the right price, but no one was ever able to definitely pin an accusation on him. And then fourteen years ago, he vanished without a trace. As did every project he had been working on for OPI. A couple weeks later, one of his bomb designs was identified at the site of a blast that killed forty-eight civilians and three OPI agents. He's been a CIA, NSA, OPI, and every other alphabet soup agency priority target ever since. But despite the fact that his work keeps turning up, we've never been able to catch him. I just didn't want you to think that everyone saw you as the son of a man like that. I didn't want it to affect how you saw yourself. Because trying to live down your father's reputation would be a sad waste of the person you are."

Throughout the whole thing, Mac's only reaction has been to clench his fist tighter and tighter. Now Matty can see red staining the gaps between his fingers. At first she thinks he's held his hand tight enough to cut himself with his fingernails, but when she turns over his hand in her own and opens it, she sees the edges of a small paperclip. It's been so badly squeezed and mangled she has no idea what it was originally. It's just a jagged, bloodied twist of wire.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and she can't tell if that's about breaking the 'no paperclips' rule, about getting angry with her, or about his dad being a wanted criminal.

"It's not your fault." Matty gently turns his hand over, taking away the bent wire and inspecting the small cuts on his palm. None of them are deep, but they should be cleaned and treated. "You are in no way responsible for your father's actions." Mac is nothing like the monster they've chased for over a decade. Matty isn't quite sure how he managed to avoid being corrupted by James's presence in his life, but she won't question it.

"I should have known," he whispers. "After everything you taught me about how to identify an enemy agent, everything should have made sense. The trips he went on with people I didn't know. The way he took us to the middle of nowhere. The way he wouldn't let me into his workroom. All the phone calls, the meetings…"

"Mac, it's okay. You were ten years old, nothing made sense then. And it's hard to see the past for what it really was. We see what we want to see in the people we love. Even when they hurt us." She knows that all too well. Mac was a child when his father turned. I was a trained government operative, and what Ethan did, I never saw it coming. She can't in good conscience blame Mac for not seeing the signs. Not when she missed them.

"But maybe I could have helped…"

"It's not too late to do that now. But that's for another time. We've been hunting him fourteen years. A few more days won't make any difference." He nods. "You don't have to go back in there, Mac."

She's told him the same thing for the past three days. And every day it's been the same response. "Matty, we need what he knows, and I'm the only person he'll talk to. I'm just doing my job. If it was Jack he'd talk to, Jack would be in there. There's no difference." He shakes his head, running his good hand through his hair. "I don't want you to protect me. Please." She can respect that. He doesn't want to be seen as broken, as needing to be sheltered. She remembers feeling the same after Ethan. I didn't want pity. I wanted to be allowed to do my job like I was any other agent. I wanted them to stop treating me like I was fragile, like they were going to hurt me when things came up in briefings. She and MacGyver aren't so different. But that also means she knows that when he breaks, he'll go down hard.

"Okay. But I'm going to talk to him first. He's not helping us at all if all he does is stray off topic to aggravate you, and there's no point in you being put through it if that's all he's going to do." She leads him down the hall. "Let's go take care of your hand."

…

INTERROGATION ROOM D-4

THE MOST INTERESTING PLACE IN THIS BUILDING

Murdoc's been dragging this out as long as he can, but he has the feeling Matilda is onto his game. She told him just before MacGyver returned with his hand bandaged, that if he continues to play games, he can consider his help dismissed.

Honestly, there isn't that much more to teach. Murdoc can help Angus look like a killer, but really selling it is totally up to him. There's really only one more thing he knows that might be considered helpful. Okay, understatement. It might be the difference between success and failure. Not that it really matters to him, either way he won't be getting to see MacGyver again. So he's going to make the most of the opportunity he has.

He spent half the night planning this one. It's so perfectly marvelous in his imagination.

"There is one more thing about Omnus that might be of some value to you. I think your team would be quite...interested to hear about this new little development." He leans back and smiles. No sense in overselling it.

MacGyver leans forward. "So tell us. You said it yourself, you have a vested interest in keeping me alive. The more we know, the safer I am, right?" Oh how precious. He's trying to play my game now. But so simplistic. He's focusing on the end result I want, and none of the motivations behind it. MacGyver is an amateur. Watching him try to figure out how to beat Murdoc at his own game is like seeing a child try to tie a parent's shoes on his own feet. It doesn't suit him at all. He's too honest, too direct, for that kind of manipulation. But also, it's just cute. It's absolutely adorable that innocent little Angus thinks he's figured out how Murdoc's mind works. This will be so much fun.

"Oh but MacGyver, I don't always work for free. You know, I'd really like to have some compensation for all this. Dragging me out of my room, interrupting my incredibly pleasant me time...I think I deserve a little more than some fuzzy good feelings about 'saving a life', don't you?"

Angus stiffens. It's clear he already has a general idea of what Murdoc means. "What do you want?"

"Nothing much. Well, nothing much for someone as experienced as you." He shrugs. "Just a little lap dance." MacGyver's face goes white.

"No." HIs voice is too quiet, cracking under the strain.

"Oh I'm sure you're very talented. You certainly have the figure for it. I'm sure with those slender hips and those long legs, you'd be perfect. Haven't you done it before?" He smiles, wider, teeth showing. "I'd even let you keep your clothes on. Well, some of them."

"You know I don't have to sit here and listen to you." Mac moves as if to stand up. "You promised to cooperate on the terms Matty gave you. You can't ask for that." His voice is shaking, no matter how strong he tries to sound.

Murdoc twists his lips into a fake pout. "What, are you going to run back home to Mommy Matilda and dear old Papa Jack to tell them that the bad man asked you to do something that made you feel wrong?" He laughs. "When are you going to grow up and learn to deal with your own problems, MacGyver?"

Angus flinches, hands curling into fists. He's so incredibly vulnerable. It's delicious.

"And what's your precious Mama Bear going to do? She said I couldn't touch you, boy scout. She didn't say you couldn't touch me." He nods to where Mac's almost snapped the paperclip he's bending. "And I'm just dying to know how talented those hands really are." He sighs, they really did drag him away from the most pleasant little fantasy, and that reminds him, he wishes he knew the scars MacGyver has. It would make everything feel so much more vivid. Right now, he has to imagine them all.

Angus isn't speaking anymore. He just shakes his head.

"Oh, but you'd feel so good." he smiles. "I should know, I've imagined it enough. I'm sure you know how positively chilly it gets in those lonely cells. The thought of a warm body on mine really makes it so much more bearable. It's almost as good as the real thing." The look on MacGyver's face is priceless, that perfect blend of horror and shame. "But it would be so much better to experience it in person. You know, when I picture you, it's always in one of those hideous orange jumpsuits. Not that it doesn't look perfectly fetching on you...for a while. I wonder if they'd let you borrow one for this?" He can tell MacGyver is fighting not to yell, or cry, or both. "You know, I've heard that professionals at this sort of thing often have a preferred costume. I wonder what your stage name would be? 'Smooth Criminal' perhaps? And it would be the perfect excuse to break out the handcuffs…"

"Stop." Angus's voice is cracking with the strain, and Murdoc swallows audibly. "Y-you can't…"

"Oh, I know I can't make you. But now at least I know what shame looks like on you, and really, I'm quite fond. You're quite the blusher, so attractive!" He shrugs. "I'll just have to imagine the messy hair and the heavy breathing, I suppose." The theatrical sigh he adds, he decides, is the perfect touch. MacGyver's eyes actually start to fill with tears. Oh even better! He's wanted to know what kind of a crier the boy is. If he's a messy one, well, that just takes so much of the fun out of it. So disgusting when they get all snotty and gasping. But it looks like MacGyver is more apt to cry silently, and just when Murdoc thought he couldn't possibly be a more lovely picture, the first tear slides down his cheek. "Oh, you're so pretty when you cry," he whispers, and MacGyver gasps, stumbling to his feet, tripping over the chair he knocks over in his hurry to get away.

Murdoc leans back and laughs. "I'm going to have such good dreams tonight, Angus."

"I don't have to listen to you. I'm leaving." But he stops with his hand on the door handle when Murdoc calls out. Whether he wants to or not, he can't help but listen to me.

"Oh, come on MacGyver, don't you want to be able to go back and tell your precious team what they want to know?" He smiles. "You're right, I do want you alive at the end of all this. But I could care less about Jack and Riley and Matilda. I'm sure you'll be fine, just do what I told you and be prepared to improvise when the job doesn't go as planned. But I'm afraid poor dear family don't share your knack for that." MacGyver looks stricken. His hand moves away from the handle of the door.

"Yes, that's right. It doesn't matter what happens to you, as long as everyone else is safe, right?" Murdoc whispers. He's sure any second now Webber will come in and put a stop to this, he's surprised that she hasn't already. He was speaking low enough that it would have been hard for her to hear what was happening, but he's surprised she didn't respond to MacGyver's panicked flinch that knocked over the chair. Would she actually let him go through with it? Would she sacrifice him to get the information I promised? The thought that he might actually get what he asked for is almost too good to be true.

And then MacGyver's phone rings, and Murdoc has to work to keep the disappointment off his face. So close.

"Ooohhh. Saved by the bell." He doesn't bother to keep the husky longing out of his voice.

Angus glances up at him, his face a mixture of relief and worry. "Omnus just contacted "you". They want to move up the meeting."

"Well. I suppose it's too late for our little deal them" He winks. "Go give someone else a show, then." He laughs when the door slams, and he doesn't stop laughing for a long time.

…

ON THE WAY TO OMNUS'S MEETING

JACK HAS A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS

"Mac. Are you sure you want to do this? Cause I can turn this baby around right here right now." There's something wrong, really wrong, with the way Mac's acting. He's too focused, too wrapped up in the op. Too serious. He's been like that since they got back from Pelican Bay.

Jack knows something happened in that interrogation room. But Matty is refusing to tell him anything at all. He knows her well enough to know that Murdoc didn't do anything unforgivable, at least not physically. But Matty couldn't hear all of what was being said in that room, and by her own admission she was temporarily on the phone with Phoenix about this meet.

"The Architect is the key to stopping whatever Omnus has planned. And the only person they're going to give his name to is Murdoc." Mac's voice is so scarily flat and emotionless. He sounds more robotic than Sparky.

"I just don't like this. Murdoc said they'd be watching, even though he refuses face to face meetings." Jack shakes his head. "If they're not going to give this information to anyone but Murdoc, they have to be prepared to take out an impostor, right?"

"Riley found someone backdooring the security cams in the building the way she was trying to. She's trying to reverse hack them now." Mac sighs. "It's just a dead drop. I'm guessing they have the information rigged to be destroyed if they think something's wrong. They could be watching from anywhere close enough to trigger a self-destruct."

"I'm worried about how big that 'self-destruct' might be," Jack says. "The one thing we know about Omnus is that they have a nasty penchant for shrapnel grenades. And I don't want you anywhere near something like that."

Mac just turns away, staring out the window for a moment and pulling the black baseball cap a little lower over his eyes. He glances back at Jack. "I should take the car myself from here. Murdoc works alone, and we don't want them to have any reason to suspect something is wrong."

"Okay. But I've got your back in there, kid. And remember, if anything seems the least bit suspicious, you get the hell outta Dodge, okay?" No mission is worth losing you.

…

Bozer always used to say the trick to playing a convincing role was to have an anchor, something physical or verbal you do to tie yourself to that character, something that, when you do it, allows you to become them. Fortunately for Mac, Murdoc gave them something already. His whistle.

Mac begins the chorus of "Home on the Range" as he walks into the office building, keeping his head down to avoid the cameras. His comms crackle, and Jack's voice comes through.

"Do you have any idea how unsettling that is?" Jack hisses.

"Just getting into character." Mac avoids the security guard at the end of the hall. He does need the man's security badge to access the elevator he was told to take, but just walking up and forcing the man to hand it over isn't really Murdoc's style. He'd remember me. Murdoc's supposed to be a shadow.

Fortunately, the janitor closet is far less secure than the elevator, down the hall by the public restrooms. Mac picks the lock with a couple of paperclips and finds exactly what he needs. But this time, as he combines the chemicals he needs for chloroform, he wonders if this is something his father used to do. There's a vague memory of James pulling out some bottles from under the sink and telling Mac very carefully what he was supposed to do, and then making him do it himself until he could do it properly. How many times did he use this on the same people he used to work with? How could he do that? How could he betray them?

Mac knows he should shove those thoughts away until the mission is over. But they keep intruding, and when he sneaks up behind the security guard and claps the soaked rag over his face, he sees Jack's holsters and tac gear instead of the blue uniform and clipped on radio. And when the man crumples to the ground, he's wearing Jack's face.

Mac shakes himself out of it and grabs the ID badge. He only has a limited amount of time before someone notices this guy isn't at his post and starts investigating. He needs to have the intel and be gone by the.

"Approaching the elevator." He mutters into the comms.

He can hear Matty's voice in the background. "Teams two and three reporting no movement. Jack, can you see anything?"

"Nope. Which is starting to make my spidey senses tingle like crazy. I don't trust people who seem to trust us."

"Any activity on the 24th floor?" Mac asks. That's the one the instructions from Omnus told him to go to.

"All clear, hoss." Jack says. Mac presses the button. The doors slide shut, and the elevator starts moving.

Immediately, a phone begins ringing. Matty's irritation-tinged voice is barely audible over it on the comms. "Whose cell phone is that? Jack?"

"No ma'am. Mine's on silent. Everyone's is. We checked."

"I think it's coming from in here." Mac glances around, careful to keep his face turned away from what might be a camera in the corner. The sound is definitely coming from the elevator's emergency phone box. He opens it; and there's a cell phone inside. "Yeah. There's a burner phone in the elevator."

"Guess dead drops have entered the 21st century," Jack mutters. Mac picks up the phone, pulls off his glove, and slides the button to answer it.

The voice on the other end is slow and would almost sound friendly if Mac didn't know it belonged to someone who wanted another man murdered in cold blood. "Murdoc. It's been a while. We haven't spoken since the El Salvador job."

He hears a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the comms, and then Matty's voice. "Mac, that's Jonah Walsh." Former Oversight for the Phoenix. Known associate of the Organization. This has just changed the whole game. They're not dealing with an unknown third party, it's very likely they're dealing with the Organization itself. And if he makes a mistake, they'll lose the best chance they have of bringing in Walsh. Is this what Murdoc was considering telling me? That Omnus is the real name of the Organization?

Mac's always had a sort of uncanny knack for imitating voices. He hasn't spoken yet, so he hasn't given himself away. But it's possible I won't be able to change my voice enough to be believable. And he knows what I look like. Thank goodness it's totally in character for Murdoc to be hiding his face from security cams.

"Riley, trace that call." Matty's voice is urgent. "Mac, keep him on the phone. If you can." She knows as well as he does that they can't afford to lose this chance. Mac takes a deep breath and tries to remember exactly what Murdoc sounds like. It's truly chilling that he finds hearing Murdoc's voice in his head, every response in exactly the words he would use, so easy.

"There was no El Salvador job. The last time you hired me was a hit in LA I was unable to complete because of some...complications."

"So I've heard. Pardon my...skepticism, but the last I knew you were in solitary, so I had to be sure I was working with the real you. Escaping a federal prison?" Walsh chuckles. "Nice work. And now I hope that you'll add those hits you failed to carry out to this job as well. Shouldn't be a problem, I assume?"

"Of course not. I don't like to leave loose ends. They'll be taken care of."

"You'll find only one number in the contacts on the phone. Use it to send proof of death."

"And the new target?"

"The dossier is being emailed to the phone as we speak. I'm sure you remember the others well enough. Since they're the ones who put you in a cell. The clock on the Architect's contract is twelve hours. Payment will be made in full once you deliver-"

Mac has the feeling Murdoc would want to hurry this up. "Proof of death. I know. Do you want me to fill out a W-9 too?"

"You'll forgive me for being a bit less trusting after our last deal, I'm sure. And have fun with the others. I'm sure you want to make them pay."

"Oh believe me, I've dreamed of them every night. Of watching them bleed, watching the life drain out of them drop...by...drop." Mac shivers at how easily the words roll off his tongue. It's scary how fast the man's persona rubs off. He's only spent a few days talking to Murdoc, but it's almost as if being around him causes his mannerisms, his verbal patterns, his mindset, to bleed into whoever is nearby.

Suddenly, Walsh's voice changes. "You've picked up a tail, Murdoc. It looks like Phoenix wants to put you away again."

He knows the tac teams are here. He can see them. Mac tries not to let the concern bleed into his voice. "Don't worry. I'll lose the tail and contact you when the job is over."

"Good." Walsh hangs up. Mac wants to collapse in relief, but he can't. Someone is still watching. He has to get out of here. He has to stay in character until he leaves.

He pushes the button for the basement level parking garage. As he walks out, a man with a suit and briefcase walks in. Head down, Mac pretends to accidentally collide with him. When he walks away, he has the man's wallet and car keys. He drops his comm to the floor and grinds it under his heel.

He carefully avoids looking toward the cameras as he opens the car, gets inside, and drives out. He stops to pay the machine for the parking with a credit card from the driver's wallet, the less conspicuous he makes himself, the better. He pulls the car out into traffic and drives away.

…

Jack winces as there's a feedback screech in his ear. He knows that sound all too well. When, a few minutes later, a black car pulls out. It waits an unduly long time for a large gap in traffic. When that car pulled in, it jumped across two lanes of traffic in the block before the office. That driver was careless. This one is nervous. Trying to be as careful as possible. That must be Mac.

"Ok, Matty, Mac just ditched his comms and stole a car. I think he's trying to sell the idea he's losing a tail. We gotta get air assets up right now."

Matty's voice is that kind of soft that Jack knows means she's going to tell him something isn't going to go down the way he wants. "Jack, I know you're not gonna want to hear this, but if we do that we put him in even more danger. Walsh has eyes on our actions. If he thinks Murdoc's situation is compromised, we have no idea how he'll respond. Mac's life could be in danger."

Jack barely restrains himself from flinging his gun to the roof in frustration. Matty's right. Walsh knows exactly how Phoenix operates. He wrote the manual on protocol. If he sees an air team go up, he'll know they're keeping eyes on an asset, and that even if it was Murdoc, that he's working with the Phoenix. It's too big a risk. Mac is on his own.

"At least tell me we have something on Walsh."

Riley speaks up. "He was running that call through at least five false locations. I wasn't able to finish untangling the mess he made of it completely, before he hung up, but I could tell he was in Shanghai."

"Thornton is in Myanmar. I'll get hold of her and let her know about this development," Matty says crisply. "I'm sure she'd love to have a solid lead on his location."

Jack wishes he was with Patty. He'd rather be doing something, anything, than sitting here watching Mac drive away alone. This is all Walsh's fault. I hope Patty breaks more than his nose for this.

…

Riley yelps when Bozer drives the golf cart over a bumpy spot. "Careful, Boze."

He just nods, and then parks them where they have a decent view of the 10th green. A man who matches the photo Riley saw the Morses place on the table for Mac is standing behind a slim blonde woman, hands over hers as he shows her how to make a swing. Bozer shakes his head. "Man brutally murdered his wife, got away with it, and now he's out here golfing with some other woman?"

"He hasn't gotten away with it yet." Riley pulls her rig out of her backpack. "Matty gave us permission to go ahead and try to get something on this guy." Riley knows it was to get her and Bozer out of the office and thinking about something other than Mac out there on his own playing bad guy, but she appreciates it anyway. She really does want to bring him down, and with Mac off comms, Walsh's call traced as far as she can, and the car he stole traced to a random alley, which Mac seems to have left on foot before disappearing into the crowds, she'd just be spinning her wheels in the War Room.

Matty tried to get Jack to take a break too, but he's not leaving. He told Matty in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to do anything else until Mac was back with them. It was clear Matty knew she wasn't going to be able to make him leave, because when Riley and Bozer walked out, Riley had looked back long enough to see Matty putting her hand on Jack's knee when he sat down in one of the chairs. The last time Mac went off alone, he almost got killed. Riley doesn't want to think about that, but it is true. And now he's doing this op solo as well, unless he decides to make contact again.

Mac would have wanted us to catch this guy. She could tell how distraught he was in that restaurant. He did want to help those people, just not the way they wanted him to. When he gets back, he'll be happy to know they did something.

Riley pulls out her new signal booster and plugs it into her rig. Bozer glances at it.

"What's this?"

"Something Mac made me. Boosts bluetooth signals over one hundred meters. Makes hacking way easier." She opens a program on her laptop and begins a call. The automated voice will sound like any other telemarketing scam, but it will get her into his phone and hopefully give her program enough time to hack the protections.

It does, and within minutes she's wading through a truly massive amount of information. This guy is addicted to Snapchat, that's for sure. With good reason; he probably likes that the pictures disappear. But they don't totally vanish for someone like Riley.

She finally gives Bozer a nod and they pull away to a quieter location where they can work without looking suspicious. Riley has a complete clone of his phone, complete with passwords and data.

"Alright. I got text messages, I got emails, I got an affair with his sidepiece dating back way before Rachel was killed." She digs a little farther and then stops, quickly clicking out of the series of images that filled the screen. I did not need to see that.

"Well, look at this." Bozer says, voice dripping with sarcasm. "I'm shocked."

"Yep. Another sidepiece that neither the wife or sidepiece one knew about." Riley glances at him. "Well, it's a place to start."

...

Mac watches from the third stolen car of the night as his target pulls into the driveway of his house. He's written down the license numbers of every car, and where he left them. He'll make sure the owners find them as soon as the op is over.

Joshua Khan is his target, a thirty-six year old employee of a cell phone company. Seemingly unassuming. But his code name to the Organization says differently. What could he have built for them? Electronic devices? Bomb triggers? Mac isn't sure.

He watches the man walk into his house, then into a living room. His heart stops when a woman and a little girl rush into the part of the window Mac can see. The dossier said nothing about a family. And he couldn't exactly contact Phoenix for more information. The phone scrambler Riley made blocks his location, but it won't stop Walsh from snooping through any new contacts Mac makes.

The man picks up his little girl, swinging her in a big circle. Mac can hear her laughter from the car. We did the right thing, deciding to come save him. Because no matter what this man has done, his little girl doesn't deserve to watch her father die. Or to die with him. An innocent child shouldn't pay for what a parent did.

He knows he's projecting his own situation onto this, but he can't stop thinking about what Matty and Murdoc told him. He wants to tell Jack, he needs to, but there's never been a right time to do it. The op comes first, and this is why. If I hadn't done what I had to do to get us here, we might have lost our chance to save them. It makes everything Murdoc has put him through for the past few days at least worth something. And once it's over, he'll be able to process everything.

He waits until Joshua comes out to throw away the trash, working the jumper cables he found in the car trunk into a makeshift noose. It feels wrong to be making something designed only to hurt, possibly to kill. Even though Murdoc's gloves make tying the knots harder, he doesn't take them off. He can't watch his own hands do this. At least the gloves allow him to believe someone else is. But that's almost just as bad. It's like Murdoc possessed me and he's taken over my body. Like I have no control of what I'm doing. He's not watching any more paranormal movies with Jack for a long time.

When Joshua lifts the lid of the trash can to throw in the bag, Mac steps up behind him and slips the noose around his neck, pulling it just tight enough that the man won't scream and alert anyone to the fact that he's in trouble. Mac leans in toward his ear and whispers, and he's utterly horrified at the low, hissed words that slip out. How far into my head has Murdoc gotten?

"This is a constrictor knot. The more you struggle, the more you choke. If you love your wife and daughter, you're gonna come with me." The man relaxes just a little in Mac's hold. "Okay, good boy." I sound just like him. The thought shakes Mac to his core.

He's thankful the drive to the random motel he booked a room at earlier, under one of Murdoc's aliases, gives him enough time to get the horror under control. Because he's going to have to repeat the performance, and this time longer.

He doesn't bother to keep his face turned away once they're in the room. It'll sell the idea that I plan to kill him, if I let him see me. He doesn't want Khan to think he might just be being held for ransom or have some other possible escape that doesn't end with a bullet in him. Thanks to Hollywood dramatics, people pretty much instinctively know that if a potential killer lets the victims see his face, they're as good as dead.

He ties Khan to a chair with a piece of extension cord he found running to a fan that was probably being used to dry out the shed next to the pool. He'll put it back later.

Joshua is clearly panicking now, his voice is shaking and cracking whenever he replies to one of Mac's questions. "What Omnus? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Joshua, we talked about this. I don't like liars." Mac is fighting to keep his own voice calm and under control. He feels like he's splitting in half. A part of him is screaming at him to believe the man and stop this torture, but the other half...is almost finding a pleasure in seeing the fear in someone else's eyes. To know that he's capable of causing the same helpless panic that's been inflicted on him in the past. He wants that part to disappear. It's not the first time I've felt this. He's known about this little demon on his shoulder since his days as a vigilante, watching the people he captured utterly confused and unable to react to whatever he'd done to trap them, watching those people who made their living out of instilling terror have that same fear and helplessness turned back on them.

He's felt it in prison too, when he finally snapped and fought back, so viciously he knocked out the man tormenting him. I was glad they put me in solitary for that. Because all I could think of, that night, was that I could have killed him. And that the next time, I might. He hadn't slept for two days afterward.

That's always been what he hated most about the murder charge. That it was a constant reminder that some part of him is capable of doing the unthinkable, and always will be. I could kill. But I don't. He's worked hard to keep that the way things are. Yes, sometimes accidents happened. But I tried so hard not to let them. He has three scars to prove that he felt as badly about the deaths of the cartel members as he did about the innocent bystanders he couldn't save.

"I'm not lying. I don't know them!" Khan's face is red, either from the strain of fear or from the fact that the knot around his neck is somewhat tighter than it was. Mac needs this to be over quickly. He just needs to confirm that he's not working with a member of Omnus. If he is, that's going to affect how he proceeds from here. He twists the cord he's holding, and then yanks it while kicking the chair over. It falls back with a harsh thud, and Joshua gasps.

"Well, they know you. Because they hired me to kill you. Why do they call you the Architect? Did you make something for them and then decide you'd rather keep the profits for yourself?" Mac stalks forward with each word, coiling the cord around his hand.

"What? I have no idea! I swear! I work in IT at a cellular company." Joshua's tied hands are shaking. "I don't know anything about an Omnus or an Architect. Please! My wife and I, we have another baby coming. She can't lose me now. You have to believe me!"

Mac opens his knife and bends down next to the man. Khan gasps and turns away as the knife moves toward his throat...and then blinks in shock and takes a deep breath when Mac only slits the knot around his neck.

"I do. I'm not going to hurt you." Mac sighs, feeling like someone's taken a noose off his own neck. He falls back against the wall, panting and shaking, knife falling from his hand to the floor. Did I just do that? What kind of a monster could I be? He can't stop hearing Murdoc's words in his head, the laugh when Mac lost control and slammed his hands onto the table.

"Maybe you are more like him than he thinks."

…

When Jack's phone rings, he's answering before it even gets to the second line of "Fade to Black". It's not his ringtone for any of the team specifically, but the voice on the other end is the one he's been waiting for hours to hear. Mac must have called from a random phone somewhere.

"I found him." Mac sounds scared, and Jack doesn't like it. Did he get into trouble out there? At least his voice doesn't have the breathless cadence of being in pain. "But I don't know why they want to kill him."

"Maybe we can figure that out. What's his name?"

"Joshua Khan."

Jack nods to Jill, who's already typing away. She's standing in for Riley while she and Bozer are out hunting down the guy Murdoc was hired to kill by that family Mac met up with. "Okay, kid, I'm looking at what we know about him right now. He doesn't exactly look like an Omnus operative…"

"That's because he isn't..." Mac's voice is shaking. "Jack, he's...he doesn't know anything."

"So you're saying the Wrath of Khan here isn't our guy?" Jack ignores Matty's eye roll. He can tell Mac's on the verge of a panic attack, and if he's learned one thing about the kid, it's that giving that big brain of his something to distract it, something dumb and random, can snap him back out of it, at least enough to make sure he's still functioning. They can't afford to have him freak out on his own. And Jack is pretty good at dumb jokes, mangled cliches, and terrible puns. Guess it's a good thing we're partners.

Mac chuckles weakly at Jack's obvious joke. "No, he's the Architect. Name, age, address, social security number, they all match the dossier Walsh gave me. He just doesn't know why."

"Jill, I need a new profile on this guy and I need it yesterday." Matty says. Jill nods.

"Ok, born in San Jose, degrees from Stanford and Columbia, works in IT at Televast Communications."

"If this is a cover, it's a good one."

"It's not. Jack...he...he thought I was going to kill him. He was terrified. It wasn't an act; he doesn't know who Omnus is. I…" Jack can hear the choked sob in the kid's voice. "Jack, I went too far." He gasps and Jack can hear the barely controlled tears.

"No, no, you didn't. He's still alive, it's okay." He hates everything about this assignment. Mac having to go spend time with that lunatic Murdoc, the kid having to pretend he's the one thing he never, ever wanted to be, a killer. None of this is right or fair. "Listen, we're gonna come get you, okay? Just hang tight." Jack just wants to hold him, because it sounds like Mac is about to fall apart.

And then he hears something new. A phone ringing. Mac inhales sharply and Jack already knows what phone it is. Jack hears him set down the one he's holding and pick up the cell phone. He must switch it onto speaker, because the second he answers Jack can hear the voice on the other end.

"You tampered with our phone, Murdoc. We can't find your location."

"What can I say? I'm a little paranoid since the last job you gave me landed me in a little concrete box." Damn. The kid sounds like Murdoc. His word choices, his voice patterns...aside from the different, deeper tone of his voice that can't be totally disguised, it's such an eerie similarity. He thought the same thing on comms earlier, but now it seems to come even more naturally to Mac. No wonder he's losing it. Jack's gone undercover as the bad guy too many times to count, and he knows how far you have to sink into a cover ID to become them. It took months to totally shake Duke Jacoby's penchant for betting on horse races, and he still knows how to play plenty of songs on the upright bass. You pick up their habits and vices when you pick them up, and if you're them long enough, stuff stays with you. He's started to lose track of what's him and what's a cover. It was Chad Palomino who smoked, but it took Jack forever (and the mustache Matty despised) to kick the habit when that cover was over. Sometimes he can't help looking at someone the way Bryce Villanova would size up a possible model.

Their vices become yours. And unfortunately, Murdoc's vices are torture and murder. But Mac won't be undercover for long. Jack's going to go get him, and then take the kid home and wrap him up in a blanket and get him hot chocolate and watch whatever Nat Geo documentary the kid wants (the last one about discovering new species wasn't too bad, actually, Jack didn't fall asleep through it at least). He'll do anything and everything that reminds Mac who he is. That he's not Murdoc, and he doesn't have to be.

He's snapped back to what's going on in the conversation by Mac's eerily wrong voice. "If you want someone gunned down in their front yard, you call the Mafia. I'm an artist."

"Then I hope you're standing over a Jackson Pollock of spattered blood on a plastic sheet."

Jack knows Mac well enough to hear the tiny hitch of concern in his voice. He's got to make them think this guy's dead, and he hasn't done it yet. "Actually, I've decided the price of this little masterpiece has just gone up."

"You're trying to re-negotiate?"

"Clearly the Phoenix Foundation is rather interested in me at the moment. I need to lay low for a while; until they get tired of chasing their tails and decide to hunt someone else. And I'd like to make enough money from this job to do it comfortably." He takes a breath. "You made a deal with the devil, did you really think it was going to be fair? If you're willing to pay ten million dollars, I have a feeling you can afford a few more. Say...fifteen?"

There's a scarily long pause, and then Walsh's voice comes through. "Okay. Fifteen, if the job is complete in the next thirty minutes. We'll wire the funds as soon as you send proof of death."

…

"Two mistresses gives Brett motive up the wazoo, but it's not the hard evidence we need." Riley sets down her laptop and rubs at her eyes. She's done all she can for now. The photos are cycling through the DMV database until they get a hit.

"Do you think she knew who she was married to?" Boze asks.

"Maybe, maybe not. People see what they want to see." Riley leans on her hand, sighing and shaking her head softly. "I always told myself I would never, ever become my mom. She dated loser after loser, and she refused to listen when I tried to tell her they were no good. And then I go and date someone who lies to me for two years and gets me shot." She shrugs. "Compared to him, Mom's boyfriends were nothing."

Bozer puts a hand on her shoulder, shaking gently until she looks up at him. "Listen, Jack would have told you in a heartbeat if he thought something was off with Nick. Trust me. No one knew what Nick was. He was good at hiding it."

"It just scares me. That I could end up in the same patterns. That for all I've done to be different, I could still be too trusting." Maybe wanting to see the best in people runs in the family.

Truth be told, that's why she's avoided dating again. If the only way I can keep myself from ending up like my mom is to stay away from people who could hurt me, that's what I'm going to do.

"One mistake doesn't make a pattern." Bozer shakes his head. "I got mixed up with the wrong crowd in high school for a while. I was...I was tired of being the responsible one at home. Being the oldest sibling sucks. Everyone's always worried about you all the time, you've got the family reputation to live up to…"

"Not too different as an only child, really."

"I just wanted to have fun. To be able to break the rules a little. And we almost got into big trouble." He shakes his head. "Fortunately, the teacher who caught us decided it was better to keep us in school where someone was watching us than kick us out. He asked me to help him after classes, and he got me into a community theater where he volunteered. He made sure I learned that my art was where I should be learning to deal with the things in my life. That processing that way was a lot more rewarding than just smoking a joint and temporarily forgetting about it."

Riley just nods.

"Just because you did something once doesn't mean that's what's going to define the rest of your life. So I smoked weed a few times as a kid, that didn't set me on an inevitable path to being a junkie. You made one bad call in a relationship; that doesn't make you your mother."

"Thanks, Bozer." She's about to say more, but her computer pings. They have a positive facial match on Mistress Number Two from the DMV records and an actual name, Amanda Gilling. A few more searches and Riley hits pay dirt.

"Whoa. Amanda works at a place that sells GPS locator tags."

"Would be a huge break if this was the case of her missing keys." Bozer leans back.

"I think it might still help us. Looks like she sold a set to Brett. He let the subscription run out a week after Rachel's murder." That's not suspicious at all...

"They make them for golf clubs..." Bozer glances at the site's ads. "Fourteen clubs in a set. How many did he buy?"

"Fourteen."

"Cause of death was blunt force trauma. And police never found the murder weapon."

"I'll see if I can reactivate his old account." Riley's fingers are flying now, it's easy for her to get into this system. They really need a security upgrade. Within minutes she has Brett's account back online. And the icing on the cake is that the credit card he used to pay for it is still active. He's financing his own conviction. The thought makes her grin more than it should, especially when the tags come online.

"Thirteen clubs at his house...and one in the middle of nowhere."

…

MUSGROVE MATERIALS RECYCLING AND DISTRIBUTION

SOMEWHERE IN BOYLE HEIGHTS

Bozer carefully picks his way around the heaps of mangled metal in the junkyard. His tetanus boosters are up to date, but he still doesn't want to end the night with a rusty nail in his shoe.

"This place reminds me of hanging out with Mac when he worked nights at Weathers's. He'd run the compactor and run lines for my acting classes with me at the same time." He chuckles. "Sometimes that backfired on us, though, because I'd need the background noise to remember a word or phrase."

Riley chuckles. "You two were really something else. You sound like the kind of best friends that only happen on TV."

"I know. I still don't know how I got lucky enough to have Mac around. I was always convinced he was gonna decide that he was too smart to hang around with someone like me, but he never did."

"I think he knew he was just as lucky to have a friend like you." Riley's voice is absolutely sincere. I'm glad I didn't ruin things with us. Bozer's been trying to be okay with the 'just friends' thing, and it's hard, but he'd rather have that than nothing. Jack was right, Riley's an amazing person to have for a friend. And now that he knows more about her trust issues, he can totally accept that she's not ready for a boyfriend. In a weird way, it actually makes me feel better, because I know it's not about me. It's about her family. He knew her aversion to relationships was at least partly because of what Nick had done to her, but hearing about her mom made everything make so much more sense. That's why I don't drink often and never drink alone. Only sometimes, when my friends are around to keep an eye on me. He doesn't want to end up like Mama. He was more worried about it happening when Mac first got locked up. The guilt was almost unbearable. But I threw myself into my film work instead of into an addiction.

He can respect Riley worrying about family patterns. She knows herself better than any of the rest of us. She'll decide when she wants to date.

But he can't say she doesn't look good tonight. Her hair's messy and loose, and her embellished olive jacket makes her look equal parts cute and kickass. Especially when she picks the lock to the storage outbuilding the signal seems to be coming from and lets them both inside.

She holds up her phone, moving slowly in a circle to let it acquire the signal, then walks purposefully over to a large metal crate filled with various odds and ends.

"It's in here." She starts grabbing pieces of metal and tossing them aside, and Bozer joins her, reaching in to grab the handle of a battered golf club. He holds it up and Riley shines her phone flashlight on it.

"Does that look like dried blood to you?" She nods, and then holds her hand up. It takes a second for him to realize she's going for a high five.

He's just slapped her hand when her phone rings, and she hurriedly digs it out of her pocket. Despite the fact that it's not on speaker, Bozer can still hear Matty's voice distinctly. "Riley, we need you back here right away."

"On my way." Riley hangs up and turns to Bozer. "Guess we see how well I learned to drive in traffic from Jack." Boze swallows. I've been in cars with Jack when he's driving in a hurry. He hopes Riley has at least a slightly better sense of self-preservation. But he highly, highly doubts that. I'm surrounded by crazy people. And he's surprisingly okay with it.

"And call the police on the way," Riley says. "I'm sure they'd like an anonymous tip about that case…"

…

Mac hangs up the phone, sighing shakily and running his hands through his hair. I scared myself. Again. He turns around to see Joshua watching him with the same kind of panic Mac thinks must be on his own face. "I thought you said you weren't going to kill me? And now you re-negotiate the price?"

"I'm not actually going to kill you. My best friend and I filmed a lot of homemade monster movies as kids. I know how to make a pretty convincing fake death scene." Mac smiles just a little at the memories of covering Deja and Jerry (always the unfortunate victims of everything from rampaging swamp monsters to invading aliens) in ketchup, and then better fake blood when Mac figured out how to make it more realistic while in chemistry class. Just as quickly, that happy memory is replaced by the fact that every time he thinks of Jerry, he can picture him dying on the sidewalk because he's seen him covered in blood and gasping, even if it was all fake. I watched him die. He knows Bozer threw away all those tapes after the funeral. None of us wanted that image in our heads. We didn't want to think that we could possibly have predicted it. He pushes that thought aside into the growing pile of things to deal with later. "And on the bright side, it's gonna be a still photo, so you don't even have to hold your breath."

Mac knows at least four recipes for fake blood. One of them is bound to work with what's available, and sure enough, the room's supplies and the vending machine in the reception area have what he needs for one of the less complicated versions. Cocoa packets, soap shavings, and a bottle of some kind of red juice. The dark slurry it makes in the paper hotel coffee cup turns his stomach. Fortunately for me, I don't have to drink it. It just has to fool the camera.

He tears down the shower curtain and spreads it on the floor, then splashes some of the fake blood around on the walls. He saves enough of it to mix with the little bottle of complimentary hand lotion and mold into what appears to be a bullet wound in Josh's head. Remind me to thank Bozer for making me watch all those do-it-yourself stage makeup tutorials with him.

"Okay, Josh, what were you saying?" He's been trying to figure out exactly what this guy did to piss Omnus off enough to kill him, but unless they were disgruntled Televast customers, he can't see the connection between them. All he's getting out of this is a bunch of tech jargon that he really wishes Riley was here to translate; she's not back to Phoenix from wherever she was when he called. He knows the basic terms, but some of this stuff is just...obscure.

"And then about four months ago we started getting calls from customers complaining about static in the calls." He continues talking as Mac dribbles more of the fake blood down his forehead, and then gets out his knife and starts scraping at the wall. "And for months I was going nuts, trying to figure out what was causing it. Wait, what is that for?"

Mac stops scraping plaster off the wall. "Have you ever seen a corpse that wasn't pale? I promise, I'm not trying to give you lead poisoning from the paint. I would avoid opening your mouth while I'm putting this on you though. I don't think this hotel's been repainted in a while." He shrugs. "I'll wait till you're done telling me about this.

"So anyway, eventually I realized I couldn't locate the source of the interference, because it wasn't interference. It was data. Some kind of high frequency tone buried in the cell traffic."

That's Phoenix's standard method of covering communication signals. Riley designed a method and...Oversight implemented it for the whole agency's comm traffic. That's standard procedure. That's the whole reason they were able to clear their names in Amsterdam weeks ago. He glances toward where the hotel phone is still off the hook

"Jack, Matty, are you guys hearing this?"

"Yes we are." Matty says, and her voice is clipped. "Looks like Walsh decided to take some Phoenix programs with him when he split. But that does mean that we should be able to reverse hack it, since it's based on our programming. We just didn't know where to look."

Jack speaks up. "That makes sense. They started complaining about the static on the line four months ago, right? We nailed Walsh four months ago. When he lost the ability to talk to his buddies through the Phoenix servers with his little VPN Boze found, he changed methods."

"Which worked until a network systems architect outsmarted him." Mac sighs. "Thus the choice of code name."

"I think I know what they wanted stopped," Josh says suddenly. "My decryption program."

"You found a way to decrypt this?" Jack sounds incredulous. "Man, Riley is gonna be pissed. She's gonna want to talk to you when this is all over and fix that little bug. It's a wonder you were homing in on Omnus and not Phoenix comm traffic."

"Who's Riley?" Khan asks.

"Our network architect."

Mac can hear Jill on the call as well. "Okay, I got us into Josh's work files. What are we looking for exactly?"

"A file called HF ." Joshua says. "I was still working out a few bugs in the program, but it was close to being ready to be deployed on the whole network. It should turn the signals into something we can understand. I was hoping that could lead us to whoever was sending them."

"Did you tell anyone about this?" Mac asks.

"It wasn't a top secret project. It even went in the monthly newsletter we sent out to customers. So they would know we were working on a solution."

"When was this newsletter sent?" Matty asks.

"About a week ago, maybe a little more."

"That's when the hit was placed." Mac rocks back on his heels. "Probably at least one member of Omnus is a legitimate Televast customer. When they got the newsletter, they realized their whole network was about to become a lot less private." At least everything is falling into place now. "Once I send proof of death, Khan will be safe and you can come pick us up so we can start working on a way to use this signal decryption against them." He picks up the cell phone Walsh left him. "Okay, just lay still and look dead."

Khan's performance may not be quite Oscar-worthy, but the picture does look good. Mac's pretty proud of his work, he'll have to show Bozer. "Okay, should be done."

There's a sound that vaguely resembles running footsteps, and then Riley's out of breath voice comes on. "Whoa whoa, Mac, don't send that photo!"

"What if I already did?" Mac suddenly feels cold. What did I do?

"The scrambler on the phone blocks your GPS locator. But every photo you take has the GPS coordinates embedded in the metadata. You just sent your exact location to Omnus."

"Maybe we'll get lucky and they won't look?" Bozer sounds as out of breath as Riley. Where have they been?

"With our luck?" Jack asks. "Not a chance." There's a lot of overlapping chatter for a while, and then Riley's voice comes back in clearly and alone. Everyone must have been bringing her and Bozer up to speed.

"Now that I know it's based on my work, I was able to use one of my own backdoors to enable signal tracking on the network Omnus is using. And you have fifteen signals converging on your location."

He hears Jack kick something and swear under his breath. "Something tells me they've known you weren't Murdoc this whole time."

"Walsh must have made me at the dead drop. But he played along because he wants me and Josh dead." Mac suddenly feels a lot less enthusiastic about his acting skills.

"And now there's a kill squad comin' to clean your room, homie. Mac, you better get out of there. Now." He can hear Jack getting up. "I'm on my way to you right now. Just lay low and we'll get you out, okay?"

"Yeah." Mac hangs up and turns to Josh, who's inspecting the rifle Mac brought as a prop.

"How many bullets do you have for that thing?"

"None. It's just for show. I'm not a big fan of guns." Mac glances around. There's plenty to work with in a motel, he just has to decide what they want to do. Do I want to give us cover to run, play this defensive, or do I want to go on the offense? That might be more of an advantage, they might not expect it. But Walsh would have told them about my improvising...He doesn't know what the best option is in this game now.

"But the people who are coming to kill us have guns."

"Yeah, a lot. Which is why I'm not a fan. I've been shot at. A lot."

"So what are we going to do?"

He's asking the question Mac's been asking himself. "Well, we have two options. Run and hide, or stand and fight." Mac sighs. "I know run and hide sounds good. But we have no way of knowing exactly where those Omnus operators are, and we could run right into them. If we stay here, we have a tactical advantage, the team coming to get us doesn't need to search for us, and we can make them come to us."

"We want them to come to us?"

"We can make a chokepoint if we play it right. If we can make them come at us from the direction we want, we can fight back." Mac's done that more times than he can count with cartels. He'd deliberately show himself after setting up a gauntlet of traps, and they always seemed to fall for it.

"We still have a little time. I need to get some supplies. I need you to block off every access to the room but that staircase at the end of the building, okay? I don't care how, just make sure they can't come in any other way. Jam doors, stack furniture, whatever you need to." Khan just nods. "We just have to slow them down long enough for Jack to get here."

"Who is this Jack?"

"He's...he's the guy who's always got my back." Mac says. That's so not even scratching the surface of what Jack is, but it's all Josh needs to know right now.

Mac hurries down to the pool area and checks the recycling can next to the vending machine. He pulls out the bag of cans, and on his way back to the room grabs a cart from the housekeeping supply room. He can see a pile of chairs at the end of the hall. Good work, Josh.

"Empty cans and a cleaning cart? Seriously?" Khan asks as Mac starts spreading out his supplies on the floor.

"Just trust me. And put the soap in that coffeepot. As much as you can make fit." He flings several bars at Josh, who does as he's told. He concentrates on making as many small explosives as he can.

He really hopes they have enough time for this plan. He thinks he can hold them off, but he's not sure. Just in case, he kicks out the window and runs the extension cord he was using to tie up Josh out of it. "If we can't stop them, you go down that and run like hell. Don't worry about me and don't look back." Mac feels oddly detached; this is like some kind of last stand in one of Jack's action movies. And I'm the self-sacrificing hero who's got about a fifty-fifty chance of living through it.

He still has to go back down to the pool for one last thing. But he doesn't dare not go prepared, he doesn't know how long he has left. And he can't leave Josh alone in the room. So both of them hurry downstairs, each one carrying a couple of Mac's homemade flashbangs, and the melted soap mixture.

Mac dumps the soap into the now-empty recycling can, and then puts the finishing touches on a fog machine. He's made this enough times for Bozer's movies for it to be second nature. And then he sees the black SUVs pulling in. They're out of time, it's now or never. He plugs in the cord and the machine whirrs to life, filling the whole area with a white, swirling mist.

Joshua looks both stunned and impressed. "You built a fog machine? That's a hell of a distraction."

"Only if we live. Come on!" They have to get back to the room...but their chokepoint is only set up in the building. And these guys are swarming in from all directions...They're stuck out here in the open with no cover. Mac can see operatives getting between them and the building. We ran out of time and we're on our own.

Mac shoves Joshua in front of him toward the back of the building. They have to get out of here, that open area is what Jack would call a killbox. Bullets ping off metal and stone, scarily close and moving closer. Mac guesses these guys have some kind of thermal imaging.

"That didn't slow them down long!" Josh gasps.

"No, but this will!" Mac lights up one of his flahsbangs and throws it, and the world behind them explodes in a blast of heat and light. They keep running, into a narrow alley, Mac flinging another one of the cans when he sees movement behind them.

And then he hears footsteps ahead of them. They cut us off. We're surrounded. He prepares to fling another one of the flashbangs and try to buy Joshua enough time to run, when a familiar figure steps out of the shadows.

"Jack?"

"I just followed the sound of things blowing up, figured I couldn't go wrong. Good to see you're still upright. Unlike you-" Jack smashes into one of the goons, knocking him back, "Or you-" another Omnus agent goes down, shot in the leg.

Riley, behind him, carrying her own gun and wearing her kevlar, yells something about him not messing up his arm or he should hope these guys kill him before Dr. Modi gets her hands on him. "Just let me do the punching!" She shouts after him, taking down two more of the oncoming guys without breaking stride. She and Jack have been itching for a fight since this whole thing started.

Mac follows them, leaving Josh in the hands of a couple of the tac team. He still has a couple flashbangs left, and he can help.

He can hear someone talking on the balcony above him, and he breaks off from the others, climbing the stairs as quietly as he can. A man in a suit, instead of the tac gear the rest of the Omnus people are wearing, is pacing and shouting into his comms.

"Team leader, where are you? What's your status?"

"Bleeding!" Mac lunges forward, tossing the last of his homemade grenades and throwing a punch at the same time. Disoriented, the man goes down, and Mac whips off his own belt to tie the man's hands.

"Mac?" He can hear Jack yelling. "Where are you? We're clear here, kid."

"Up here!" Mac calls back, knowing it's safe to announce his location now. He leans back against the railing with a sigh. It's over. We did it.

…

Jack doesn't like the way Mac stumbles as he walks down the stairs behind the tac team members dragging away the guy he knocked out. "Mac, are you okay?"

Mac shakes his head wordlessly. Jack puts a hand on his arm gently...and flinches when he feels something hot and slick under his fingers. "Mac, bud, I think you got shot."

"No, I didn't." Mac shakes his head. "I would have noticed."

"No, kid, you're bleeding." Jack sits him down on the stairs. "Adrenaline does a real good job of masking out the pain sometimes, but that's definitely a gunshot wound, and it's bleeding pretty nicely. Not that I'm worried about you ruining Captain Chaos's jacket here, but I think we oughta take a look at that." He helps Mac out of the coat, and Mac hisses softly when he moves his arm back to pull it out of the sleeve. Jack resists the urge to say "I told you so". Mac doesn't need that right now. Instead, he pulls a field kit out of one of his pockets and begins cleaning the shallow gash. "You're damn lucky, kid. To get only a graze in a killbox like that, under the kind of fire I was hearing…" He doesn't want to admit to how scared he was when he stepped into that alley and heard it. Hearing stuff blowing up was actually a relief, because it had meant Mac was still functioning enough to do his thing.

"I knew you were gonna say that." Mac grins weakly before hissing at the pain. "That's like your favorite word or something."

"Only when it applies to the situation. And it did."

Jack can hear Riley talking to Khan in the background, she's going a mile a minute with the tech jargon. Guess it's nice when she finds people who speak her language. Jack guesses for her that's like what happens when he runs into a veteran in the grocery store.

He does finally understand some of what she's saying, when she stops talking about encryptions and rotating daisy something or others. "You're free to say no, but we'd like you to consider a job offer."

"With your agency?" Khan sounds floored.

"Until we hunt down Omnus, you're going to have to stay out of sight. And since you designed a way to listen in on their communications, we'd like you to help us sift the data." Riley laughs. "And besides, you broke a secure US government encryption channel. We can't just release you back into the wild. Who knows, you might accidentally expose the Phoenix instead of a rogue agency next time. We'll make sure you and your family are given new identities and placed in protection."

"Thank you." The man sounds incredibly relieved, and Jack can't blame him. But I think Riley made a good call recruiting him. He's had one hell of a night, and he hasn't cracked up yet. This guy might make a really good agent.

Mac shakes his head when a medic walks up to him. "No, I'm okay, Jack took care of it." He turns back to Jack. "I don't want to go to medical. Please, can I just go home?"

Jack takes one look at the wide, frightened, haunted eyes, and he can't say no. "Yeah, kid. Let's go."

…

The room is so cold. Mac shivers, the cold metal of the chair and the table and the cuffs is sapping all the warmth out of his body, the thin orange jumpsuit doing nothing to keep him warm. He's all alone, the grey walls taunting him. He belongs here, he's always belonged here.

And then there's the familiar buzzing that sends an electric pulse up his spine, and the door opens. Murdoc stalks in, in the red prison clothes he's been wearing every time Mac saw him.

"Well, look at this. So willing to sacrifice yourself for your team."

"Let's get this over with," Mac says sharply. "And shouldn't we take the cuffs off for this?" He doesn't see how he's going to be able to give Murdoc a lap dance when he's the one chained to the table.

"Oh, you see, I've changed my mind about what I want. And dear Matilda won't be interfering. She knows that what I have to say is more important than what happens to you, Angus. Besides, why should she care about someone whose father betrayed his own agency? She might as well get what she can from you while you're still compliant."

Mac shivers again, and he can't stop. The metal is so cold on his skin, and when he looks down he can see why. He thought he was wearing a jumpsuit like Murdoc's, but he's naked. No wonder he's so cold.

Murdoc stands up and walks over to stare down at him. Mac tries to move his legs to cover himself, to hold onto any shred of dignity he has left, but his ankles are chained to the legs of the chair. He's trapped, completely exposed to Murdoc's predatory, lust-filled gaze.

Murdoc's hands run down his arms, and Mac gasps and shudders. "Oh Angus, this is going to be fun."

"No, no, I don't want this. Please, let me go." This is too much, he can't take this. Why would Matty let this happen? Where is Jack? Someone, anyone, please…

"Help me!" Mac cries out, thrashing, shoving the hands away from him. "No, go away! Please!"

"Mac, it's just me, kiddo. I was just tryin' to wake you up." That's not Murdoc's voice, it's Jack's. Mac blinks and looks up to see warm, kind brown eyes looking down at him, instead of cold, hungry black ones. "You were shakin' and cryin'." There's a mixture of concern and pain in Jack's voice, and it hurts.

Mickey jumps up from where he was crouching at the foot of the bed, rubbing his nose against Mac's shoulder. Mac digs his fingers into the puppy's fur and holds on tight.

"You scared him too. He was whinin' and pawin' and tryin' to wake you up." Jack says. "You scared both of us, kid."

"I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for."

Mac shudders, pulling the blankets tightly around him, even though he's wearing sweatpants and one of Jack's t-shirts and the house isn't cold. He still feels like he's naked, unable to hide from Murdoc's eyes.

"It was Murdoc. He was going to...going to..." Mac gasps back a sob.

"He's not going to be able to hurt you, ever again. He's locked away where he can't touch you." Jack rests his hands lightly on Mac's shoulders. "It's over my dead body that that creep lays a finger on you, understand?" Jack says softly, brushing Mac's sweaty hair out of his eyes, and holding him while he shivers. "Hey, it's okay, Just go to sleep, I'm right here. No one's gonna hurt you. I got you. It's okay, Mac…"

"Mac?"

Jack looks down at the crimson soaking through his shirt. Mac shakes his head. This isn't right. He was supposed to be faking Josh's death, not Jack's.

"Mac, I thought this was fake?" Jack looks up at him accusingly, more and more red welling up and spilling onto the shower curtain. That's not right. Mac couldn't have made enough fake blood for that, there's too much.

Jack's been shot. Mac bends down and frantically presses a hand to the wound, only to feel something cold and heavy in his gloved hand. He looks down at it, even though he already knows what he's going to see. A gun.

"Why?" Jack asks, and Mac can hear the blood bubbling in his lungs. "Why did you shoot me?"

"Because I could." Mac can hear his voice, but it's not him saying it. And then his arm raises without his consent, and his finger pulls the trigger, and Jack's eyes go blank as a second wound appears in the middle of his forehead.

Mac hears a slow clapping behind him. Murdoc is standing there, in his black coat, smiling that eerie smile. "Wonderful work, MacGyver. The pupil may yet be like the master." He kicks Jack's outstretched hand with the toe of one boot. "I must say, I'm surprised you could do it. Your first kill, and it was your own partner. Riley and Matty and Bozer don't stand a chance, if dear old Jack didn't."

He turns away, and Mac looks up to see himself in the mirror by the door. But that's not his face, it's James's…

He bolts upright with a scream, and flails, his hand meeting something solid.

"Whoa, kid, easy on the arm. Dr. Modi'll kill me if I made it through a firefight in one piece and then got my arm messed up by a skinny kid who barely weighs more'n a newborn foal soaking wet."

"I killed you." Mac chokes out the words like they're burning his throat.

"No you didn't. I'm right here. It's okay." Jack pulls him a little closer.

"But I could," Mac whispers. "Murdoc...he told me my father betrayed the Phoenix when it was still the OPI, and he killed some of their agents, and now he works with people like Murdoc. He's a monster, and I could turn out just the same. And I know Murdoc wasn't lying, because Matty told me it's all true." He's been debating, since the mission was over, if telling anyone else is the right thing to do. I know why Matty kept that secret. Because now that Mac knows the truth, what he did tonight scares him more than he'll ever admit. And if the others know the truth about James, they would be afraid of me becoming that. He doesn't want them to look at him that way again. He doesn't want them to wonder when he's going to snap. Because he's worried enough about that for all of them.

Jack doesn't look as shocked or horrified as Mac was expecting. "I was wondering about that myself," He says quietly. "Some of that stuff you told me...it just screamed rogue agent."

Was I the only oblivious one? That's almost worse. Do they all already know, and they worry, but they didn't want me to know they were wondering? He feels sick.

"Mac, are you okay?"

No. He can't lie, not to Jack, not this time. "No, I'm not!" It comes out sharper than he means, and he flinches. "My father is a monster who betrayed the same people I work for, how can I be okay?" He's either going to scream or sob, and right now it seems like the scream is the choice his emotions are going for. "Nothing about this is okay, and I just want…" He doesn't even know what he wants. Maybe for the last three days to disappear from his mind. To have never seen Murdoc; to not know these horrible things. "I just want everything to go back to normal."

Jack pulls him up close against him. "Mac, things are never gonna be 'normal' when it comes to you. Not as long as you're still blowin' stuff up with chewing gum and shoestrings."

"You know I need a few more things than that to make a bomb, right?" Mac asks. But the thought that follows that quickly kills the faint smile. "Everything I do, I do because my dad taught me. And now it's just what makes me...me. Who knows what else he made part of me?"

"He couldn't make you into something you're not. And you're not a killer," Jack says quietly. "You proved that when you turned yourself in for what you thought happened to Ramsay."

"Murdoc said that's why he didn't break me out. That I was a disappointment." Mac knows it should be a good thing, but some part of him is still that child in the kitchen with an almost all As report card, hoping it's enough to make his dad smile at him, just for a few minutes.

Jack sighs, and his grip tightens a little more. "It doesn't matter what some creep who runs around blowing people up thinks of you. He may be your biological dad, but he was no good father to you. And for what it's worth, kid, I'm proud of you. I'm so damn proud."

Mac's thought of Jack as the closest thing he has to a read dad for a while now, and knowing Jack feels the same way is always reassuring. He keeps wondering when Jack is going to give up on him like everyone else, but Jack never does. He never walks away. But knowing he has a parental presence who does like him the way he is doesn't solve Mac's real problem. That the way he is might make him dangerous someday.

"If he could go dark, who's to say it won't happen to me?" Mac shakes his head, shuddering. What would it take to push me over that edge?

"I say. You're not your dad, okay? You're you. And there's way too much goodness in you to ever end up like Murdoc or your father," Jack whispers.

Mac sighs. Jack may believe that, but Mac just can't. I'm always going to have the darkness inside me, and I'm terrified that one day it's going to win.

…

PELICAN BAY

IT BETTER BE THE MOST SECURE PLACE IN THE WORLD

Jack knows this isn't going to go over well with Matty. He's not technically allowed to be up here, they're supposed to have cut off communication with Murdoc after the op. And yet he's taking a personal day, leaving Mac in the capable hands...and paws...of Boze and Mickey, and driving up to Pelican Bay to try and put the fear of God into the devil himself.

In between nightmares, Mac ended up spilling more about both his father and about everything that happened with Murdoc. He swears up and down that Murdoc never actually physically did anything to him, and Jack desperately wants to believe him. He hopes Mac's not lying to him again.

He never should have been put through any of that. Jack is absolutely furious that Mac had to sit there and listen to that monster filling his head with the kind of horrible things that left the kid sobbing into Jack's shoulder half of last night. Jack wants to cry at the memory of holding the thin, shivering boy and knowing that the second Mac drifted off to sleep he had to let go, before Mac's shattered mind convinced him those hands were Murdoc's. That sick bastard might not have laid a finger on him, but he tore into Mac's mind and left his scars there.

Jack claims he's here on official Phoenix business, and the guards let him through. He has to wait while they bring Murdoc from his cell, and pacing the room only makes Jack more stressed. Seeing the inmates walking the yard only reminds him of what Mac's already suffered. He shouldn't have had to endure it again. Every time they let Mac go inside a prison, bad things happen. We shouldn't have done this to him. If Jack has his way, Mac will never see so much as the gates of a prison ever again.

"Well, you haven't killed me yet, so I assume MacGyver survived the whole thing." Murdoc is killingly casual, leaning back in his chair with that self-satisfied smirk.

"Yes, no thanks to you. You knew Omnus was the Organization, didn't you? You knew all along. And you didn't think it was worth telling us."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I withhold information again? Well, maybe if MacGyver had been a little better at that lap dance..." Jack goes stiff. No. No, no, no. He didn't actually do that...did he? If that's why Mac was acting so strange, Jack is going to kill this monster right here right now. Matty wouldn't let that happen, right? But she had stepped away for that phone call...how long was it? What could Murdoc have convinced Mac to do?

"He didn't." Jack shakes his head. I have to believe Mac. Jack is certain that Mac would tell him if something had happened. He trusts me. I have to trust that. "Mac told me what you did, what you threatened him with. What you asked for. And he told me he didn't do it."

"Oh really?" Murdoc leans back, steepling his fingers. "And you believe him? Little Angus doesn't want you to know what he's done for you. He doesn't want you to feel guilty." Murdoc shrugs. "He wanted to help you. The only way he knew how."

Jack almost, almost, believes it. That would be such a Mac thing to do. But there was nothing but honesty in Mac's eyes last night. Honesty, pain, and shame. He told Jack the truth. Murdoc got inside Mac's head in more ways than one. Not only has he damaged my kid, he's learned what makes Mac tick. Instead of teaching Mac about him, his real goal this whole time was to learn about Mac. So he can use it against all of them. Jack is suddenly horrified. "You're just lying to get a rise out of me. And it's not gonna work, cause I'm not gonna give you the satisfaction. Mac didn't do that."

Murdoc shrugs, still smiling. "Yes, but he thought about it. If Matilda hadn't called him, he would have done whatever he had to to get that information. Because he can't disappoint his precious team. He can't risk failing them. Making them decide they don't need him." Murdoc grins. "He's so insecure, Jack. All that abandonment and the daddy issues. Not that I blame him, Daddy dearest wasn't exactly parent of the year."

"Yeah, well, he doesn't have to even think about that man anymore if he doesn't want to."

"Oh, is Papa Bear trying to take that place?" Murdoc laughs. "You're so protective, Jack. You want to keep precious little Angus safe from everything in the world. But you can't. You can't protect him forever. So you might as well just accept it." He laughs.

Jack leans on the table, and he knows his voice has reached that absolutely lethal tone. "Let's get one thing straight, Count Creepula. The next time I see you, I don't care if it is in this concrete box, I am going to snap your twiggy little neck like a chicken. Comprende?"

Murdoc just smiles wider. "Oh Jack, you can believe what you want to believe. You want to think MacGyver is safe from me, that I'm never going to leave this place, never going to be able to touch him." His fingers twine together and he leans forward. "But you have no idea what is coming."

…

THE PHOENIX FOUNDATION

THIS ROOM TECHNICALLY DOESN'T EXIST.

Matty paces the small interrogation room, eyes fixed on the man her team captured last night at the motel. "Your name is Daniel Horn. You were born August 5, 1975 in Chandler, Arizona. You attended Torrance Elementary and then Thomas Edison Middle School and High School. You grew up with a dog named Piper, a little pomeranian. Both your parents passed, you have a sister and a brother but you haven't seen them in decades." She pauses for a moment, letting what she's already told him sink in. "You have a BA in poli-sci and joined the Army after graduation. Rose to cyber-command sergeant before a dishonorable discharge in 2009 for selling DARPA codes to North Korea's Bureau 121 hacker unit. After that you fell off the grid, but we've matched your signature to over a dozen cyber attacks around the world. Most recently, a water treatment plant in Chile, on behalf of the group we now know as Omnus. You see, I know everything there is to know about you."

Horn leans back in his chair, looking strangely calm for everything she's just thrown at him.

"What you don't know, Matilda, is that I wanted to be caught."

Matty stares at him for a long moment. He won't be able to resist telling me something, he's already gloating. And then her phone buzzes in her pocket. There are only three numbers that are allowed past the "Do Not Disturb" setting she switched on before going into the interrogation. A call from any of them means something too important to miss is happening.

Matty steps out into the hall and answers the incoming call. "Hello, Patty."

"Director Webber, I heard about what happened with Murdoc. I'm glad it was a success." Thornton sounds tired, run ragged. But also energized in the kind of desperate way that operatives have when things on a mission are about to reach boiling point.

"I don't think a simple congratulations warrants pulling me out of an interrogation."

Patty takes a deep breath before continuing. "I've tracked Walsh's whereabouts in Shanghai. But unfortunately, he's eluded me once again. He boarded a flight to Los Angeles." Patty sighs and looks down. "I think he's coming back to take down Phoenix once and for all. I'm on my way, but I suggest you prepare. Because he's not coming alone."