[sheepishly scratches back of neck] so remember how this was supposed to be up a week ago? sorry folks. this whole month has just... man. some stuff's come up personally, and then it was finals, and then i took the law school admittance test and. well. you didn't come here for me complaining, so! hopefully this is an indication my ability to write has returned to me.

chapter warnings: brief scenes of poisoning/drugging


Matty has a headache. Truthfully, Matty has more headaches than she can count, but this one, refreshingly, seems to be of the purely physical variety. She rummages around in the top drawer of her desk, looking for an extra-large bottle of Tylenol that her assistant, Andi, gave her for her birthday as a joke. A joke it may have been, but it has proved helpful more than once already. Her phone vibrates loudly against the surface of her desk and, in what Matty would like to wish was a coincidence, her headache spikes abruptly.

Despite her reluctance to turn it over, what Matty finds on the phone's screen is a relief - it's absolutely nothing to do with the Director. So much of her recent life has been focused on dealing with the Director that anything not about him has come to be a welcome reprieve. Even, as she notes the contents of the message, if it means she's got to deal with an HR mix-up with their newest exfil agent's emergency contacts and medical file.

That had been a major focus of hers not too long ago, for reasons that were to do with the Director. Mac had caught her on the way out the door after a strategy meeting about the investigation, face screwed up in a determined frown that Matty will go to her grave swearing she doesn't find endearing. He'd told her, standing awkwardly by the front door of the house with one hand propped on the doorframe and a voice that failed at sounding nonchalant, that he'd decided to change his emergency contact designation, and needed her help to do it.

Frankly relieved, given some of the conversations she'd had with Jack after Mac's heatstroke hospitalization, Matty had agreed to help immediately. The first thing she'd done was contact the department head of medical. It hadn't been surprising to her at all that the woman was on board with helping her make such a change to policy regarding one of their top agents while keeping it under the radar of their boss. Matty has to imagine that, given the nature of her work, the chickens of James's carelessness have come to roost more than once in Dr. Emily Bell's department.

The way they'd worked it out, Dr. Bell would make the change in her personal master bank of files, and then trickle it down the chain to enough members of her department that there would always be at least one person on-shift who knew to keep James from being called in the event something happened with Mac. They're lucky, at this point, Matty thought and continues to think, that James is an unpleasant enough person that he doesn't tend to make friends anywhere he goes. Within DXS medical, the overwhelming majority of the employees bear both a significantly active dislike of the man combined with a steadfast loyalty to Dr. Bell which means Matty isn't too concerned about anyone alerting James to the change.

It's one less thing to be worried about at least. Goodness knows she has enough of that going around, what with the investigation rapidly escalating. With every person Matty carefully selects and approaches, asking questions that are bound to raise serious red flags with anybody paying even a little bit of attention, it feels like another pebble on the scale. On their own they don't mean much, the stories and interviews, concerns raised and questions unable to be answered, but taken all together, those scales have started to tip.

The entire process of essentially stealing DXS out from under James is a massively long, frustrating undertaking where every step is a huge risk that could topple the whole house of cards at any moment. So, business as usual in the life of Matty Webber.

At the moment, Matty is having a pretty good day, all things considered. There are some things you learn to do when you've been in this line of work as long as Matty has, and one of those things is to take your mercies where you can get them, no matter how small. She might be fighting an uphill battle trying to get Oversight to take her seriously regarding their prized project's rogue director. She may have an Everest of paperwork and discrete interviews to get through. She's still facing the fact that one of her top agents and her best source regarding her investigation has been so deeply traumatized by the aforementioned rogue director that, putting personal feelings on the matter aside, getting information out of him about the man is like pulling teeth. All of this is true, and none of it is going away.

However, not everything is all bad news all the time. For one, James seems blessedly unconcerned about the sudden interest Matty has taken in being directly involved in Mac and Jack's field missions. She's been running ops for them since the beginning, but lately she's been joining them in the field as often as she can without prompting suspicion. It helps to be able to watch from the ground, to keep tabs on what happens and what doesn't, what goes wrong and when.

The mission they're on that day is one she's with them in the field for, on the ground in Caracas. Her role on these missions differs depending on the job, and it's afforded her an opportunity to observe more than just the impact of the missteps on them, but also how this team is operating as a whole. And it is, in a word, fantastic.

Despite the fact that her field training has been so far under the table it's essentially in a secret sub-basement, Riley is shaping up into a highly competent agent. Lately, Matty herself has been getting more involved in it. Before bringing Mac into the investigation, she hadn't had much of an active role in the girl's instruction, leaving that part to Jack. She had enough on her plate, she'd figured, without adding that. Then, after they'd read Mac in, and especially after Bozer found out, something changed. Matty can't quite pinpoint what that something is, but it's been both a blessing and a curse. It's brought her much closer to them, which is as comforting as it is dangerous.

At the moment, the delight of seeing Riley acting as a competent and promisingly skilled field agent is sweetened by the time Matty has personally put into bringing her to this point, and she allows herself the luxury of sitting back and basking in it. The two of them are in the van out on the street, from which Matty was supposed to be coordinating the op while Riley handled surveillance and any technical needs. In reality, it's more like Riley is running the op herself, clearly used to doing so. She aggregates information, assesses the situation, and relays it all out to her teammates with such efficiency it leaves little for Matty to actually do, all the while staying on top of the information scrolling across the monitors she commands.

And then there's Mac and Jack. Matty's got eyes on them from where she sits in the van with Riley, watching them head down the street and listening to their voices over the headset clipped over her ear. There's an ease in the way they move around each other that has grown and blossomed when Matty wasn't paying attention, only for it to be plain as daylight when she looked. Gone are the days when Mac and Jack had circled each other from a stiff distance, neither sure what was going to set the other off and how badly.

James had bemoaned it from the start, before Matty had gotten the green light to contact Jack and ask him on board with DXS, how difficult it was to find a suitable partner for his son. He'd complained at length, voice sharp with exasperated derision, about how the agents assigned to work with Mac all ended up not being able to either keep up or tolerate working with him, which resulted in every one either being fired or quitting. Even then, Matty had privately been of the opinion that the common denominator in those failed partnerships wasn't Mac so much as it was James. She'd crossed her fingers, hoped she was right, and called Jack.

It hadn't been easy, at first. Jack had been frustrated and suspicious, unable to make heads or tails of Mac, who was so unlike anyone he'd ever been partnered with before. Mac had been suspicious too, though in a different way, brilliant but full of cracks with jagged edges, no more idea what to do with a person like Jack than Jack knew what to do with him. And now… Now amiable chatter filters through her headset, Jack making fun of some aspect of Mac's Spanish pronunciation. Mac shoots back that he knows they're supposed to be blending in, but did Jack really have to pick a pair of sunglasses that made him look like the clueless sunburnt dad in every disaster movie?

"Hey now, these are my regular sunglasses, what are you trying to imply?"

Mac's just laughing, it being obvious he knows this already, which seems to have been the main point in bringing it up. Next to Matty in the van, Riley is laughing too, rolling her eyes and chuckling as she clicks through from one camera angle to another. Matty can't help the slight smirk that forms on her own face, shaking her head at the indignant tone of Jack's voice.

Things go well until there comes a point at which Mac and Jack need to split up to head into and search a pair of adjacent buildings. They're standing at the sidewalk about to part somewhat down the street, but still close enough that from her vantage point Matty can see their movements and body language. If it weren't for the fact that Mac could hear her too, she'd have made a joke about how well Jack is managing to hold down the 'parent at the first morning of kindergarten drop-off' energy he's radiating so loudly she can sense it even from her distance.

Not that she can really blame him for the unease. Matty knows from hearing reports and from direct involvement that they haven't split up like this since the mission Mac came home from wearing fingermark bruises inked deep into his jaw and a boot print over the side of his ribcage. Jack has to be thinking about that now, and it becomes clear Mac is too, because he's the one who ultimately hesitates.

The moment Jack turns away, Matty sees it. It's the same off-beat second that Mac turns abruptly back towards his partner, hand shooting out just a fraction like he'd been about to grab onto Jack's arm, stop him from leaving. Even from here, Matty can see his posture change, recoil in on itself and snap to rigidity. Jack doesn't see any of it, still facing away towards his allotted building, and Mac doesn't say anything, outreaching hand now held tightly close to his own torso, arms folded. Without thinking about it, Matty speaks up.

"Mac, if you need a minute, you can go ahead and take one," she tells him. Riley's eyes are on her immediately, she can feel them boring into the side of her head, but Matty doesn't stop or slow down. "We're on the clock but not that on the clock."

There's a small, sharp jerk of Mac's shoulders when she says it, directly calling out the movement she'd seen, though he'd likely hoped no one had noticed. But once Matty did notice, she couldn't, in good conscience, pretend she hadn't. Not when there's something to be done about it. So she steels her nerve, tries not to think about the flinch, and keeps going.

"I know the technician monitoring communications on this op," she tells him, sure she knows at least one thing he's worried about. There's a transcript generated for each mission, a log of what was said via DXS issue communications technology, for accountability, intel, and debriefing purposes. Matty agrees with them in principle, but it's impossible to think that they haven't been used as a tool in the past, something for James to pull out in one of the reviews Jack had told her about. "I picked him myself. The transcript that goes into the file will contain only what I decide it will. On missions that I run with you, we speak freely."

The information seems to help Mac relax a fraction, but he otherwise doesn't respond. Jack, however, having turned around and paid attention when Matty started talking, does. His voice is hushed and direct, obviously meant for Mac only, but thanks to their comms units he's still audible. Matty and Riley do what is generally accepted to be polite in this situation and pretend like they can't hear anything at all, though there would be no way to avoid overhearing everything that's said unless they actually turned their frequencies off entirely, and that just isn't safe.

"If you aren't comfortable splitting up," Jack says while Riley focuses intently on the stream of code she'd already used to access one of the buildings' wireless security system, Matty squinting along at it as if the string of information is anything she can make heads or tails of, "then we don't have to."

"It's fine." Mac's voice is stiff and a little embarrassed.

It's one of the few moments Matty can remember clearly regretting that their technology has been refined and upgraded enough that she can hear the nuances of emotion in his voice. She can hear the same in Jack's when he answers.

"It's pretty clearly not fine, and the last thing I want you to do is lie to me and tell me that it is because you think that's what somebody here wants to hear."

There's a soft clicking sound as Riley picks at the corner of the spacebar on her keyboard with a thumbnail. There's a small, tired frown on her face that speaks of a quiet heartbreak, the kind that burns like a low-grade fever. It's the kind of heartbreak that you accumulate by teaspoons over the span of weeks and months, the kind born of watching someone you love live in constant pain. Matty's been feeling it herself, more and more lately, though she knows it's worse on Riley.

Riley has been so close to Mac, right from the start, when the two of them clicked like pieces of a long-lost puzzle. It doesn't make it any easier on her, Matty would guess, that she knows something of what Mac is experiencing, thanks to her own history. Theirs is a close relationship of love and understanding, and Matty can see it written all over Riley's face, how hard it is for her to hear Mac now, denying that the psychological wounds left on him by Murdoc's attack could possibly matter now that the physical injuries have faded.

The damage done by people like James spreads and warps out from its target and into everyone who loves them. It's like an earthquake whose aftershocks ripple out and out, the measure of the end-result incalculable in its reach. But Matty believes, and clings to the hope that she's right about, that the things they're doing to combat that damage will have just as far reaching an impact. Things like this, Jack taking the time to make sure he's actually going to be okay with splitting up, Matty herself repeatedly asserting in no uncertain terms that Mac's involvement in this investigation is strictly by his own will and at no point will he be forced into anything… It has to mean something.

It takes Jack a minute of talking Mac around to get an answer from him that seems acceptably honest, and they do indeed end up splitting up. Matty looks up away from Riley's monitor just as they separate, catching the moment Jack reaches out to clasp the side of Mac's neck, giving him a small, affectionate shake. As Mac heads into his building, Jack looks over at the van and flashes a thumbs up. Riley seems to feel a little better at this, shaking her head and saying into her headset, "Don't do anything stupid."

"We won't," comes Mac's reply.

"Oh, it definitely wasn't you I was talking to," Riley blithely tells him, face breaking into a grin when Jack responds with the mock-offense Matty is sure she'd been trying to elicit. It does its job, and the tension is broken, if not gone completely.

Aside from the brief hiccup when Mac and Jack went to split up, things go as smoothly as they ever go, and the mission wraps up early without any major issues. Nobody is hurt, nobody goes missing, and Matty gets to experience the very particular satisfaction that comes from sitting at the helm of a very well oiled, fine tuned machine as it does exactly what it's supposed to do, exactly as it's supposed to do it. It's amazing what can be accomplished when James and his ulterior motives are if not out of the picture then at least moved somewhere off frame.

Maybe it's the runner's high of a job well done. Maybe it's something about the memory of drunk Shakespeare and the stubborn set of Jack's jaw as he'd explained to her that he's going to teach these kids - an emphatic gesture over towards Mac, Riley, and Bozer - that it's okay to have fun sometimes if it kills him. Regardless, whatever the reason she thinks of it, in the end, the bar is her idea.

There's a little bit of time left before their exfil is scheduled to arrive, and rather than spend it sitting around twiddling thumbs and waiting for exfil Sierra November to whisk them away back to California, Matty has another suggestion. The bar they end up in to wind down somewhat, enjoy the end of what had been a genuinely beautiful day that they'd had no time to actually appreciate yet, is just beginning to get busy. The table they've parked themselves at is tucked away into a corner with a good vantage point of the rest of the spacious room, including the bar itself.

An order has been placed, and while they wait for their drinks, Matty mostly sits back and listens, as she has done for the duration of their time in Venezuela. She watches Jack fold a piece of paper from his pocket into a slightly misshapen triangle, proceeding to attempt to teach Riley and Mac to play paper football on the table top. Attempt is the operative word, as Mac gets almost immediately sidetracked by the idea that the paper football itself is weighted badly because of the way Jack folded it, seizing the object and taking it upon himself to improve the design.

"See," Mac explains, twisting open a paperclip that had come from the same pocket the paper had, obtained by holding a hand out and making grabby motions at Jack until he passed it over, "if I tuck this in here, then it will counterbalance the weight of where you doubled up on this side, and it'll fly straight."

While Riley appears to be paying close attention, Jack catches Matty's gaze over the tabletop, giving her an exaggerated eye roll. Despite the exasperated gesture, there's a fond smile on his face, deeply etched crow's feet erasing any hint of actual frustration he could've been mistaken for feeling. Matty laughs in a shallow, quiet huff of breath, unable to help smiling back at him.

Their table number is called over the moderate din, signaling that their order is ready. Waving a hand to dismiss anyone else's attempt to stand up, Matty heads to the bar herself to pick up the drinks. Especially this soon after the conclusion of a mission, even one that went as painlessly as this one had, it's impossible to turn off her instincts, and so on the way she keeps half her attention on the crowd around her. She knows where every exit is, about how long it would take to get there, what obstacles may present themselves. Matty's Spanish is more than adequate, and she's so dialed into listening to snatches of conversation in the language that when she hears what sounds like English, she almost misses it.

It's not exactly the most common occurrence in Caracas, and she frowns, looking around for the source. For a moment she thought it might have been one of the bartenders, but the man has stepped out of view by the time Matty thinks to really look at him. He pats a colleague on the back as he passes her, and then the woman is standing in front of Matty, telling her apologetically that there was a mix-up with one of their drinks, and it won't be out for another minute or so.

Dismissing her apology with a smile and a wave, Matty steps up on the rungs of one of the bar stools to sit there and wait, not particularly bothered by the delay. The tray already has three drinks on it, and a quick tally shows that it's hers they're still waiting on. Riley and Jack's drinks look relatively normal, brown liquid over ice, but the one she's identified as Mac's is a different story. For starters, it's purple, and there's what looks to be a candied orange peel, twisted into a decorative curl and held in place with a toothpick.

Seeing as Mac had already offered to let her try it when he'd seen the face Matty made hearing him order it, she shrugs and snags a straw out of a cup full of them set on the counter. Whatever she'd been expecting the drink to taste like… Well, there's no way to finish that sentence, because Matty genuinely had no idea what to expect. It's sweetly sugared with a tart bite to the aftertaste, some kind of imitation berry flavor mixed with what she thinks is triple sec and vodka. Pulling a face, Matty considers it for a long moment. Ultimately, it's not the best cocktail she's ever tried, but it's not exactly bad either.

Discarding the straw on a napkin, Matty looks around. The bartender she thought may have been speaking English hasn't reappeared, and the man at the other end of the counter is taller and heavier set than the one who'd been there before. Shift change, then, she supposes, trying to put it out of her mind.

Over the next few minutes, which seem to drag on longer than they should, the bar gets noticeably busier. The chatter of the patrons around Matty swells, the music playing over the sound system amplifies, even the faint rumble of motorcycle engines on the street outside seems to get louder. It's enough to make her start feeling like maybe this whole endeavor was a mistake, the noise kicking a headache to life, beginning to pound at Matty's temples. A string of lights spark and flare at the edge of her vision and she looks over sharply.

When the movement sends a wave of vertigo surging through her body, Matty knows. This isn't about the noise, or the lights, or even a post-mission comedown. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

It's some miracle of determination that, when she stumbles down from the stool and scans disoriented eyes around the bar to locate her team, Matty has the wherewithal to grab the glass containing what was supposed to be Mac's drink. With single-minded focus, she moves through the modest but growing crowd, reaching the corner table with a slight trip.

"We have to leave," she forces through numbing lips, doing her best to make sure the words come out crisp and comprehensible. The conversation at the table is cut dead immediately, Matty's tone intense enough to snap Mac, Jack, and Riley to attention.

Luckily, they seem to put together what's happened fairly quickly. Jack leaves to pull the car around and Riley sweeps the glass out of Matty's hand before she can forget it's there and drop it. When they reach the car, Jack is already on the phone with exfil. Riley's laptop comes out quickly, her voice joining in over the top of Jack's. Matty's focus slips and loses track once there's multiple people speaking, but not so much so that she doesn't notice how Mac doesn't speak at all.

Shortly before his and Mac's partnership came to a slow and anticlimactic end, Seth Haken was shot in the field. Mac hadn't even seen it happen, and the shot itself was lost in the general chaos of the moment. He'd been two rooms over, trying to connect a radio to a power source, and what he had heard was the yell. A sharp, surprised, wounded howl he'd somehow known immediately was Haken. And while they were never close, weren't what Mac thinks could be called friends, that had been far from his worst partnership, and there are still moments when the guttural, involuntary sound of Haken's pain jolts through him like a Wilhelm scream on a soundtrack he can't turn off.

It happens again now. Standing in the doorway of a room in a vacant house Riley had located for them using a real estate website, Mac watches Jack speaking intently to Matty, who keeps swaying like she's about to topple over, and hears the sound of Seth Haken being shot ringing in his ears. He's hung back from where his team is focused on Riley, cell phone clutched in one hand and the glass from the bar in the other, an inch or two of purple liquid still in the bottom. Sierra November is en route, set to be there shortly, and Mac has been given the task of hanging onto Jack's phone and waiting for Lucia Sosa to call them back.

Lucia does call, indicating they're only another few minutes out and asking Mac to relay as much information as possible about what they're dealing with. He reports symptoms called to him from Jack and Riley and also from Matty herself, which is reassuring given it means she's still talking, though her breathing is labored and her words slow. Playing operator gives Mac something to focus on, which is good. It drowns out the looping playlist of panic in his brain, racing thoughts interspersed with the echo of Haken screaming.

When exfil shows up, Mac is able to slip out of the room entirely without being noticed. The door hangs half-open behind him, Lucia's voice firm and authoritative though he can't quite make out what she's saying, Sierra's team lead and most highly trained medic taking over swiftly and efficiently. Alone in the hall, Mac stops maybe ten feet from the door, back pressed to the wall and lungs suddenly tight. His chest heaves as he tries to get a clear, deep breath in, unsteady fingers tugging at the collar of his shirt until he's able to undo the top button.

Hunching over and bracing his elbows on his knees, Mac tries to calm down and focus. It's not remotely clear what the hell just happened, only that it hadn't been meant to happen to Matty. That drink, the one in the glass he'd shakily handed over to Sierra's rookie, Thomas King, before bolting, had been his. Whatever was in it, whatever drug or poison Matty had ingested thankfully little of, it had been meant for him. Maybe someone had tried to kill him or tried to take him or just tried to show him they could hurt him, that there was nowhere he couldn't be reached, but whatever it was and whoever was responsible, they got to Matty instead.

The job was over. The mission had ended, there was no practical possibility that it was related to that. Not when there are far more compelling possibilities. Murdoc's voice hisses in Mac's ear and he flinches hard, ducking his head against his shoulder, scrubbing his ear against the fabric of his shirt like he could somehow get the voice to stop that way. Murdoc stalking him, the sickness his team thinks they've found inside DXS, Walsh.

Walsh.

There's no proof this is connected to him, to any of them, not even an indication when they don't have the first idea what's really just happened, but Mac can't rely on that to justify keeping quiet. If there's even the faintest chance, he has to tell them about Walsh. They know about Murdoc and obviously the investigation as well but that still leaves one piece missing from the puzzle, one potential boogeyman they don't even know to check the closet for. So Mac has to tell them. There's no way he could live with it if he kept it to himself any longer.

Not right away. Mac will wait until they get home, until Matty is okay and they've all had a minute to breathe. The inevitability of it settles over his shoulders, a weighted yoke of certainty. He's going to disobey orders. Not just orders but the order, the most deeply trusted piece of his father's confidence, the mission he's been entrusted with assisting under strictest secrecy. If James finds out that he's told them, he'll be more than furious. But Mac can't just not tell them.

What it comes down to is this: it's not just him any more. The consequences aren't just Mac's alone to bear any longer, it's not just his nightmares, his close calls, his bruises and blood and ever-rising tally of stitches. It's Matty. Matty, who came with them to drunk Shakespeare and laughed so hard she couldn't speak, Matty who uses emojis when she texts, Matty who keeps throwing the brakes on things so she can check on Mac, make sure that he knows he has choices, that she's listening and making space for them.

It's incredible, really, how once Mac decides to light TNT at the core of his life he feels his breath come so much easier.

When Mac gets home, it's so late that Bozer is already asleep. He doesn't make any stops, heading directly to his room and collapsing into bed. Fortunately, sleep comes quickly and Mac doesn't dream that night, at least not that he remembers. When he wakes the next day, it's to a warm quiet and the familiar smell of home. After long moments spent laying there in the ever-lightening morning, steeling himself for the day ahead, Mac gets up, wandering out into the house.

Everything seems… normal. There are a few dishes in the sink, a light got left on over the stove, and there's several pages of printed text on the coffee table. On the otherwise empty kitchen island sits what looks like a voice recorder, probably something Bozer was using for some project or other. Outside, the faint sound of a car passing on the street rumbles by, and wind chimes sing softly on the porch. It's somewhat successful at combating the ball of nerves Mac can feel himself tensing up into. There's nothing quite like the feeling of being truly home to help you try to believe things might actually turn out okay.

Needing something specific to focus on when a wave of nauseating anxiousness fights past the soothing feelings of normal and safe, Mac walks over to the kitchen island, hopping up onto a stool and squinting at the recorder he'd spotted. On closer inspection, it doesn't look like any of the equipment he's seen Bozer use before. Probably something he's borrowed from one of his friends - it wouldn't be the first time.

Mac has just picked the device up, turning it over in his hands, when footfalls sound from the hallway, and Bozer wanders in. His steps are slow with the haze of just having woken up, his hand is warm and sleep-clumsy when it ruffles through Mac's hair in a wordless hello, and when he speaks, Bozer's question is cracked halfway through by a wide yawn.

"Wha-a- What's that?"

Mac feels in an instant that the room has chilled by degrees. He swallows hard, lifting the recorder more clearly into the air between them, hoping Bozer is just not quite all the way awake and thus not focusing very well. "This isn't yours?"

"No," Bozer tells him like it's no big deal. "I've never seen it before, sure it's not some of your weird spy shit?"

"No," Mac says. His heart beats loudly in his ears, and he can feel even Bozer's calm relaxation slipping away as they both look at the unfamiliar piece of technology.

Hesitantly, feeling almost like it's someone else's body he's moving, Mac slides his thumb over and hits the triangle-labeled play button. It gives a muted click, there's a split second of nothing, and then-

Static fuzzes sharply through the air. Mac and Bozer both startle at the sound. What follows is familiar, unsettlingly familiar. It's music. There's a single guitar riff and the sound of stomping and clapping laid behind it, then a deep, graveled voice starts to sing, the distinct and unmistakable sound of Johnny Cash.

"You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time, sooner or later God'll cut you down. Sooner or later, God'll cut you down."