Mac shifted the ice pack the medic had given him for his swelling face to the burn behind his ear. "Sssst."
He moved the ice pack to his knuckles instead. It didn't hurt nearly as much but it would still probably do some good.
Jack looked at him but didn't say anything. He just shifted in his seat, then after a minute he shifted again.
Mac grinned and shook his head. "You're fine, Jack."
Jack shifted a little closer. "You sure, man? Because, we kinda broke that guy's apocalypse containment thingy."
"I appreciate you not just yelling at me for frying it," Mac said with an apologetic grin. "But yeah, I'm sure. These infectious disease people look way too calm for us to be worried."
Jack frowned. "Then how come y'all still look so stressed out?"
Mac frowned. "Do I? I…" Then he darted a glance at Alice, who was talking to someone in full protective gear, and sighed. "I'm feeling badly about frying Five, I guess."
"But not my phone?" Jack asked and Mac couldn't tell if he was teasing or not.
He huffed another sigh, this one a little irritated. "I already said I'd replace it."
Jack's eyebrows went up, but he didn't comment on Mac's tone. "I guess Five was pretty cool?" he said, smoothly edging the subject to one Mac found himself immediately distracted by.
His face brightened. "Really cool. Even without audible speech software, his language was pretty sophisticated. Decision making programming was like nothing I've ever seen. I've always…"
"Always what, kid?"
Mac grinned sheepishly. "I've always wanted to build something like that. My programming skills are awful though."
"Well, now. Seems to me you share a bed at least every weekend with somebody who could maybe help out with that."
Mac frowned. "Nikki thinks it's dumb. Waste of time." Then he grinned. "Not that she complained when I built her her own robot vacuum cleaner."
Jack didn't comment on that particular relationship wrinkle. Jack had always liked Nikki well enough, but he definitely didn't like her with Mac. She was constantly making the dude blush, and not in that accidental way anyone could with Mac. It seemed calculated. He hadn't been surfing since they'd started dating, nor had he cracked out his skateboard. He seemed more … distracted … if such a thing were possible. But not happier. But now wasn't the time to bring it up. Because a couple of the staff were looking their way again. "How come those guys in space suits keep lookin' over here if we're as fine as you say?"
Mac frowned across the room. He'd noticed it too. "I dunno. But I'll find out."
Mac put down his ice pack, rose, and strode across the room. Jack half-grinned. Jack knew he had swagger, style, game. But Mac, who really didn't seem to have any of those things, could walk with authority a five star general could envy. It was an air of command that couldn't be taught, in Jack's experience. And while he often gave MacGyver a hard time about his lack of effort in the romance department, he sort of wanted to point out that when Mac decided to be in control of something, every female head in the place would turn.
Jack frowned when the space suit set shifted and he saw that Nikki had been talking with them the whole time, holding her open laptop. She saw Mac coming and waved him over with an urgent gesture. Mac picked up his pace and joined the group. Jack couldn't hear them and wasn't sure he wanted to know what they were saying anyway.
"Hey, guys. Hey, Nikki, what's up?"
Instead of answering, Nikki spun her computer around for him to see. "Ah, Mac, excellent. You should be able to move things along for us."
"Director Thornton," Mac said with almost total neutrality. He was pretty pleased with himself that his surprise at having the director of DXS communicate with their analyst and not with him stayed off his face. Then he remembered that she couldn't have reached him directly anyway because when he'd fried those robots (including Five, he chided himself), he'd also fried all their tech, including his phone, right along with the one Jack was still complaining about. "What am I moving along?"
"I need you all back in Los Angeles."
"Yes, ma'am. What's the hold up?" Mac glanced at the techs around him. "Is there an issue with the containment of the virus?"
"No, sir," came the muffled reply. "We normally observe a twelve hour protocol for this type of possible exposure."
He glanced back at Nikki, then at Thornton. "It's already been four hours. Is whatever you need us for urgent?"
"I believe you'll think so," Thornton replied with her signature small half smile.
Mac felt his heart rate pick up. O'Neil. Whatever she has on tap for us has to be related to O'Neil, or else why would she put it like that. "Okay," was what he said instead of launching into an interrogation of their boss. He looked at the nearest tech, attempting to make eye contact, but mostly seeing his own reflection in the face shield on the suit. "Is there anything we can do to move up this protocol? Instead of half a day's worth of observation?" He paused then he smirked. "Because my partner over there is already getting antsy. When Jack gets antsy, he's prone to accidentally damaging expensive equipment. Potentially with bullets."
The tech laughed. Nikki jumped in. "He's not trying to be funny. Dalton gets … funny … around stuff like this. For a guy who risks his neck as often and as willingly as Jack does, the prospect of infectious diseases turns him into a well armed nine year old who just woke up from a nightmare with parents nowhere in sight."
"That about covers it," Mac agreed.
Thornton spoke from the computer. "They're underselling it. He's also probably bored. When Jack Dalton was training with our multi agency program when he first came to work for me, he blew up the entire septic system because he got bored."
One of the other techs shrugged. "I guess we could just run the blood test in the mad scientist's notes."
"How long will that take?" Mac asked.
"You mean after the two hours it'll take you to get Jack to roll up his sleeve?" Nikki snickered.
"Yeah, after that," Mac said with a grin.
Another shrug from the tech … or was it a different tech? They were all in blue tyvek suits and sort of milling around, so Mac was starting to lose track of them. "Just long enough to do the draw and get it under the scope."
"Excellent," Thornton said crisply. "Wheels up in thirty."
"Yes, ma'am," Mac nodded and turned to head toward where Alice was talking to another group of techs and someone in a suit.
"Where are you going?" Nikki called. "You should go grab Jack before he figures out what's up and finds a bathroom to hide in."
Mac grinned. "I'm going to see if the lovely and talented Dr. Stomski is willing to part with her phone number so I can … is blackmail too harsh a way to put this … nah. Blackmail my partner into just rolling up his sleeve."
Nikki laughed. "Not a bad plan."
By the time he made his way back over to Jack, Nikki had already broken the good news. "Ah, man."
"Don't be a baby," she said mildly.
"I'm not bein' a … Mac … is she always this mean?"
Mac snorted and held up a slip of paper between two fingers. "She was just making sure you didn't find somewhere else to be while I got you some motivation."
Jack actually grinned. "Are those the digits I think they are?"
"You better believe it, pal. And I might have asked her for you just because I kind of like the idea of you going out with a scientist so I'm not the only one you yell at for talking like an adult."
"Oh, I talk like an adult."
"Swearing doesn't count, Jack," Nikki laughed.
"Alright. I'm in. Specially if it gets us out of here in a hurry. But … you go first. I wanna know they know what they're doin' before I offer my own arm for sacrifice, phone numbers from pretty girls in lab coats not withstanding."
Mac simply tugged his sleeve up to reveal the bandaid already secured to the crook of his arm. "Done. And they didn't take five tries, which puts them way up on any of the staff at Medical. So, go do the thing so we can get back to LA. Thornton has this other op for us and I get the idea it might be about…."
"O'Neil?"
"Yeah."
"Alright, kid, I'm on it."
When they were in the air less than twenty minutes later, Mac found he couldn't sit still. All he could think about was getting back to LA and finding out what Thornton had on O'Neil.
He didn't even bother trying to hide his nerves about the situation either. He just let himself pace. Even though he could tell it was bugging Nikki.
About ten minutes in to the flight, Nikki's computer chimed.
It was Thornton.
"Change of plans, guys."
"What's up, Patty?" Jack asked, frowning.
"I'm rerouting you. The mission time table has moved up."
"Is this about O'Neil?" Mac asked bluntly, unable to tolerate the uncertainty for another minute, say nothing about through a rerouting.
"It is," Thornton confirmed.
"Where we headin' there, Boss Lady?" Jack asked with a sideways glance at Mac.
"Cairo," she replied.
"Cairo, like Egypt or Cairo, like Illinois, Cairo?"
"What do you think, Jack?"
Jack smirked in reply. "Well, now, I was just checkin'."
"I've always wanted to go to Cairo," Mac mused. "When I was a little kid I wanted to be an archaeologist."
"Well, now you'll get to see it. Including the storage area for the national museum," Thornton said smoothly. "Because that's where we believe the bomb has been hidden."
