Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-x-

Smoke.

MacGyver looked up from the desk. He still couldn't figure out how the vacuum pump was supposed to fit to the grinding assembly, and every time he added the syrup the whole thing fell apart. He felt like he'd been at it for hours, and no matter how much it made sense in his head, when he tried to fit the pieces together they moved around. The o-ring wasn't on the grind motor anymore, he needed to stick it back with the syrup-

But why did it smell like smoke?

Mac leaned away from the desk, dimly aware of discomfort. His throat was dry and sore, when he swallowed it stuck to itself and made him choke.

He coughed, sharply, and then he realized that he was asleep.

Mac coughed again, more deeply this time, and pain in his head and his throat tugged him closer to consciousness. He was on his side, lying on something hard, and little sharp bits scraped his cheek and jaw. He coughed so hard he gagged, and a thin spike of adrenaline did little to clear the cobwebs.

It was dark, and he squeezed his stinging eyes shut, bringing up a shaking hand to rub them as he rolled onto his back. The smoke tasted acrid, more wood than electrical. He didn't hear anything besides a muted rumble. Now that he was on his back, there seemed to be light, to his left, and he squinted open watering eyes, unable to make out much besides movement and a warm yellow color.

That got him up.

Or rather, it didn't. Mac lay on his back, trying to catch his breath, and he picked up his head only enough to look around himself. He was lying on a concrete floor, in what looked like the aisle of a storage warehouse. Industrial shelving units were on both sides of him, stuffed with boxes of records in their tidy columns.

Behind the one on his left, he could see the fire. It had already climbed the shelving unit to the ceiling.

He tilted his head up, to find the wall, and his gut clenched when the floor wobbled. Pain radiated from the back of his head into his teeth and down his spine. Mac rolled onto his side again, bringing a hand to the base of his skull. It came away sticky. He looked at the blood a moment, dark on his fingertips, like –

Oil. Motor oil. And black leather driving gloves.

It clicked into place, and he gasped, then choked again and rolled into a low crouch, coughing. Desmond. He'd been disabling the cars by ripping out the fuel lines, rolling under vehicle after vehicle to avoid being spotted on the garage cameras. Most of Desmond's fleet was old school, he was a classic GTO fan and Jack had been over the moon that they finally got to play Grand Theft Auto with muscle cars.

He'd sent Jack ahead to the pier to intercept the buyer. He was supposed to have hotwired the last car and escaped the garage, leaving the majority of Desmond's gang unable to follow.

Clearly something had gone wrong, and that something had clobbered him on the back of the head.

Mac still had his jacket on, but after clumsily patting himself down he confirmed his phone, his swiss army knife, and his wallet were gone. They hadn't been using coms, just in case one of Desmond's guys spotted it when he came in for his 'audition' as a getaway driver. Nikki had no way to track him.

He glanced around again, trying to get his bearings. Wherever he was, it wasn't the garage, and it was much smaller than the warehouse they suspected contained his illegal arms. There were floor to ceiling shelving units, all apparently loaded with bankers boxes. Manilla folders and papers were visible through the handles. He could feel the heat of the fire and his throat was already sore from the hot, dry smoke and fumes. This place was going to go up fast.

On the cinderblock wall in front of him there was a red glass box, and he crawled towards it until the fire flared up and the light showed him that it was empty, containing neither a fire axe nor an extinguisher. He pulled himself into a low crouch, pressing a hand to his skull at a painful throb, and kept as low to the ground as he could, hurrying to the end of the aisle.

There were five rows of shelves. Two were partially engulfed.

Mac put his back to the fire, scanning the far wall. There were a series of doors, he could barely make them out in the thickening haze, and he moved as fast as he dared, using the wall to help guide him. The first door opened into a dark, mostly empty room with a tile floor – a bathroom. The second was an office, no window. The third –

Some kind of break room, and bright white light bleeding in under the far door. An exit.

Mac pushed into the room, sucking in somewhat cleaner air gratefully, and he straightened a little as he crossed the tiny kitchenette, getting a hand on the push bar and shoving.

The door didn't budge. It was pretty dark, but there was still enough light to see that the mechanism wasn't at fault.

It had likely been barricaded from the outside.

Mac banged on it for all he was worth, but there was no sound from the other side, and the door never budged. The hinges were on the outside, and even if they weren't, he didn't have his swiss army knife. Mac threw his back against it in frustration, his eyes drawn to the vent above the other door, where smoke from the main storage room was filtering in.

Above that was a drop ceiling, and greying acoustic tiles. His knowledge of Venezuelan building code was spotty at best, but with his luck, there was probably no fire wall between the two rooms.

Mac gave the break room a once-over, then started tearing it apart. Under the sink he found a bottle of liquid drain cleaner, but as soon as he picked it up he realized it was almost empty. The Soft Scrub beside it was not useful, but the dish detergent could be . . .

The upper cabinets yielded a box of baking soda and some packets of salt. There was an ancient microwave on the counter, the magnetron might help, but there was no power, and he couldn't generate enough with salt, baking soda, and dish soap to do any good.

There was no fire extinguisher.

The mini-fridge held only a single serving carton of citrus punch and half a box of dead pizza. There was no foil in sight. But it was still cool; they'd cut the power recently, or the fire had already knocked it out. It still had refrigerant in it – not in enough quantity to be useful - and copper tubing.

Mac grabbed the paper carton of juice, ripping it open and sniffing it. It didn't smell terribly acidic, and he took a sip. It was sweetened and mostly water – not enough citric acid to activate the baking soda. He drank another gulp, just to get some moisture in his throat, and then he set it down and turned the spigot on the faucet.

There was a weak trickle of water. The main had been shut off.

There was no way he was getting through that door with a cup of refrigerant and nothing else. Even if he had a way to heat it under pressure to the point it ignited, there wasn't enough of it to cut through the door.

There had to be another exit.

Mac grabbed the dishtowel, which had been slung over the faucet, and he used what little water he could coax from the tap to wet it. He tied it around his face, ducking back down, and then he opened the door leading back to the storage room.

Conditions had deteriorated just as fast as he'd predicted. The third and fourth shelving units had caught, and the first one was now completely engulfed, the entire length of the two-story room. Drifting embers of paper were being tossed around in updrafts, and the fire would spread quickly to the rest of the shelves.

There was too much smoke to see much of anything besides flames, and Mac held his breath and eased along the wall until he found the corner. The next wall was the furthest from the fire, and halfway down he finally found the emergency exit.

It was similarly barricaded.

Well, now he knew why they hadn't bothered to tie him up. They probably thought the knock to the head would keep him out until the smoke or the heat finished him off, and without any windows or exits, they were right.

Unless he found a way out, fast, that was exactly what was going to happen.

Mac followed the wall to the next, hoping that he'd find another exit, but he couldn't get more than thirty feet down the wall before the heat started to get too intense. They'd used some kind of accelerant when they'd set the first shelf on fire, it was burning hotter than the rest, and when Mac heard the telltale screech of fatigued metal he backed off, choking his way back towards the break room.

There was too much smoke for him to tell if his fire wall theory held, and Mac went to the only other room with some hope of having ventilation – the bathroom. The door had been opened, so the room was filling with smoke, and Mac used the light of the blaze behind him to get the lay of the land.

There. Above the toilet, there was a vent. The bathroom was single use, and cinderblocks as far up the walls as he could make out.

Mac closed the door, pitching the room into total darkness. No light was coming out of that vent. Not a good sign. It wasn't a large room, and even in the inky blackness he located and stood on the toilet seat, groping around until he found the vent cover. It was screwed on, and he went at it with his thumbnail for a few seconds before he gave up and ripped off his jacket. The zipper pull worked well enough as an impromptu flathead screwdriver, and he got the cover off and discarded it. He reached into the vent, hoping beyond hope he was going to find a pull, or maybe the exterior had gotten covered over with a bird's nest –

But instead he found a hard metal box. It was an electric fan, and the vent didn't go through the wall. It went up the ceiling.

Without power, there was no way he was going to get it to work. Without tools, he couldn't even get it out of the vent column.

Mac dropped back down to the tile, sucking down air that was growing more toxic by the second. Very few people actually died of being burned alive in indoor fires. The vast majority of deaths were caused by smoke inhalation. The heated gases in smoke included wonderful by-products like cyanide and carbon monoxide, which caused pulmonary complications that quickly resulted in respiratory failure and death.

If he didn't find some way to isolate or filter the air, he was going to die long before that fire ever breached the room.

It was a well known fact, supported by multiple main-stream films, that there is unlimited breathable air just on the other side of a toilet u-bend. The theory went, if you stuck a flexible pipe far enough through the toilet drain, you would eventually hit the vent pipe – attached to the sewer pipe - that allows fresh air to enter the piping when a toilet is flushed.

And in theory, that was great. Except that pipe is actually also filled with sewer gas, which is just as toxic as the gases released during the combustion of common building materials. If the electric fan wasn't screwed firmly in the way of the ceiling vent, he could have built a snorkel with the copper tubing from the mini-fridge, but there was no way he could get that tubing past the fan grill.

Mac closed his eyes and pictured the bathroom again. Tankless industrial toilet, sink. Metal box for paper towels. Plastic trash can in the corner. Vent over the toilet. Mirror over the sink.

He stood, keep his head as low as possible as he groped for the sink, then the mirror. It wasn't a medicine cabinet, it was just a mirror, and it had apparently been glued to the wall because it didn't budge.

All he had was the towel over his face and the paper towels in the dispenser. He turned the faucet on the sink, getting even less water than in the kitchenette, and he turned it off quickly, grabbing a towelette and stuffing it into the sink drain. No point in wasting what little he had.

He could wet the paper towels in the sink or the toilet, stuff them into the cracks around the door, but the fire would dry them out almost immediately. He needed something that would retain moisture longer –

The records.

Bankers boxes were pretty thick, he could wet them down, stack them along the door, and preserve what little air was in the bathroom.

Mac rewet the towel around his face from the sink, using apparently the last of the water pressure, and then he braced himself, took a few deep breaths as close to the floor as he could, and slipped out the bathroom door, shutting it instantly behind him.

The fire had made it almost to his side of the room via the second and third shelves, and he used his jacket as a heat shield, grabbing the first boxes he could get his hands on and dragging them back to the bathroom as quickly as he could. Once he had them all gathered, he opened the door, shoving everything in at once, and tripping over the boxes to get the door shut again.

Mac choked and coughed his way through rearranging the boxes, using the water from the toilet bowl and the u-bend from the sink trap to wet down the files inside, and he was a little comforted that even if he died, if the warehouse burned quickly enough, these boxes – and any evidence they held of Desmond's operation, which he was clearly trying to dispose of – would likely survive the fire and the minor water damage he was causing.

His chest and throat were burning by the time he'd completed the stack, keeping damp cardboard against the edges of the door top to bottom, and then there was nothing else to do. Mac stripped off his jacket, curled up against the far wall, put his back to the door, and covered his head and upper torso with the jacket. He still had the damp towel over his face as a crude particulate filter and to try to humidify the air, but every breath seared through his scorched airways anyway.

Idly he wished he'd finished off that citrus punch.

Jack and Nikki were never going to find him.

He wasn't sure what made the thought pop into his head. When he didn't show at the pier, Jack would know something had gone wrong. He'd ask Nikki to ping his phone, which Mac didn't have, and he'd head back to the garage. Assuming Desmond's boys had found alternative transportation – they must have, to have moved him to wherever he was – Jack wouldn't find the gang there, so there would be no one to interrogate. The only other property of Eugene Desmond's that Nikki had identified was the shipping warehouse, and Mac was very sure this was not it.

This legitimately looked like off-site records storage. And the way his head felt, he could have been out for hours. He had no idea where he was.

And that meant Jack had no idea where he was. Nikki had no idea where he was. Unless Jack could get his hands on Desmond and beat it out of him, or Nikki had somehow gotten eyes on him when they took him to wherever he was now, neither one of them was going to make it to him in time.

But maybe Nikki had gotten eyes on him. Maybe he'd been on camera when they'd pulled him out from under the car, or stuffed him in another one. Maybe she'd tracked the vehicle, even though she'd said the camera coverage in Maracaibo was awful. Maybe she'd called Jack, told him what had happened.

Mac would have rolled his eyes if they hadn't already been closed. Even if Jack was standing outside the building right that very second, it was over. No one could walk into that storage room right now, it was an inferno. He could feel the heat radiating through the cinderblock wall from across the room. The water main had probably been cut off to slow down the firefighters and emergency services, to make sure all the records burned.

Even if Nikki knew exactly where he was – and it was a big if - Jack was not going to get him out of this.

He wasn't going to get out of this.

Mac sighed softly, swallowing down another cough and well aware he was dripping with sweat. He didn't even have a pen. Or enough water to make some ink. Couldn't even leave them a note.

What the hell would he write, even if he did?

Hey you two. Sorry I got caught. You were right, Jack; splitting up was a bad idea. This wasn't your fault, either of you. Hope this evidence helps. Keep an eye on Boze for me. - Mac

He tried to imagine Jack's expression, reading a note like that. And Nikki would –

Mac choked hard enough to make himself gag, and he shifted himself into recovery position as slowly developing nausea made itself known. The air under his jacket was stifling, but given the way his back and legs felt, the rest of the room was just as hot. In a little while, he'd move on to the next stage of heatstroke, and stop sweating altogether.

Of course, by then he'd probably be unconscious. If not for the searing burn in his throat and his lungs, the ache in his head would have lulled him to sleep already.

He hadn't said the 'L' word yet.

He hadn't actually said it out loud. Love. Not even to himself. But that's what it was, he was pretty sure. Like with Frankie, but different. Nikki was very, very good at what she did, but he was her equal. Their skill sets complimented one another.

Their bodies complimented one another, whenever he was in close quarters with her. In Vienna, the cyberweapon mission, waltzing with her in Schönbrunn Palace. Working on her self defense skills in the gym. Sitting beside her on the picnic bench outside DXS. He'd only kissed her the once, but . . .

They just fit together.

That's what people said in situations like this.

I love you.

She knew. She had to know.

. . . didn't she?

Panic gripped him then, and he coughed weakly, the taste of citrus punch in his mouth. He had to tell her. He had to tell them both, tell Jack –

He had to –

He -

Ice on his skin. On his chest. It was so hot it felt like freezing. Shards of ice stabbed into his lungs. He whimpered and tried to pull away. Tried to go to sleep. God, just let him fall asleep. It hurt, he hurt –

The pain shrieked at him, digging in, and it terrified him. It was swooping closer and closer.

When it ended suddenly in a shattering silence, he couldn't help an involuntary flinch. There was something in his throat. It didn't belong. Discomfort was quickly blossoming into pain, and he tried clumsily to grab it. His hands were all tangled up, he –

Something touched him. It didn't hurt. It was soothing. Comforting. He focused on it, trying to distance himself from the pain, and it repeated, over and over again. His head, someone was stroking his head. He felt himself relax, and the pain slowly ebbed.

And then the hand went away.

Confused, MacGyver opened his eyes.

A row of cabinets and a popcorn ceiling appeared. Somewhere to his right there was a rhythmic, quiet beep. He didn't feel much pain, but his left arm was pins and needles.

Mac turned his head a little, taking in the hospital bed, and the blonde hair that was completely blocking his view of his arm. She was curled up in a chair beside the bed, her upper body folded over the mattress, and judging by the fact that she wasn't moving, he was going to wager that Nikki was asleep.

Behind her were two wide windows. He couldn't see any buildings or trees, but the color of the sky indicated that it was just after sunrise.

There was a soft click, and Mac turned to his right, where the door had just opened, and an all too familiar silhouette filled the frame.

Jack froze for a second, then came the rest of the way in, closing the door quietly behind him. "Hey man."

Mac blinked at him, then swallowed, somehow surprised when it didn't really hurt. "Hey," he rasped, and suddenly there was a cup of water with a straw at his mouth. He drank slowly, still surprised at the lack of pain, and then shoved the straw out of his mouth with his tongue. "Thanks."

Nikki didn't stir, and Jack took the seat on his right, setting his coffee aside. "How you feelin'?"

And for the life of him, Mac couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

". . . how . . ?"

"How you feelin'," Jack repeated. "I mean, you damn near got your goose cooked, kid."

That was not what he'd meant, and Mac took a slightly deeper breath.

That was a mistake.

By the time he'd finished coughing, he'd figured out where the pain had been hiding - in his chest. There was no reason to be quiet anymore because Nikki was wide awake, fingers intertwined with his, and Jack's firm hand was chafing his back.

"Easy, kid. Just take it easy."

He swallowed some smoke-flavored mucous, taking a few experimental breaths before he felt it was safe to lean back, and Jack helped him ease against the pillows. "There ya go."

But Mac shook his head. "How . . . how did you find me?" His voice was even more raspy than before.

Jack jerked his chin across the bed. "You really think sister here'd take her eyes off you when you were all covered in oil and grease?" He leaned in conspiratorially. "I think she digs the look, man."

Nikki made a sound of agreement, stroking his fingers. "I saw them stuff you into a trunk. Almost lost you in the canopy. Picked you up again at a storage facility by the construction site. As soon as I saw the smoke –" She broke off, and squeezed his hand a little.

Mac squeezed back.

She gave him a shy smile that turned quickly into her usual teasing expression. "I figured, if you could, you'd hole up in one of the side rooms."

"And I got to use a wrecking ball." Jack puffed up a little. "Little harder than I thought it'd be, took me a couple tries but I got the job done."

Mac tried to picture that in his head, and then glanced down at himself, confirming he still had legs. It was hard to see under the blankets, but there were two lumps at the end of the bed that twitched on command.

Jack punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Knocked down the adjoining wall, smartass. So the fire brigade could get you out. They did a number on those evidence boxes, but we salvaged enough."

"Good thing too, since Jack had to abandon the sale to get to you," Nikki added. "Records is still scanning them in, but it looks like you grabbed invoices for the entire east coast operation."

"Which means we'll get that son of a bitch the next time he tries to use any of those accounts," Jack finished. "He and I are gonna have a little chat about his HR department."

"Yeah, he did take firing me pretty literally," Mac grated. "We still in Venezuela?"

"Caracas," Nikki answered. "They wanted you off the ventilator before we flew home."

He had vague memories of the tube in his throat, someone stroking his hair-

Nikki ran her thumb lightly over his, and he tightened his grip, just a little.

"Come on, man, what's that look for?" Jack leaned back in his chair. "You didn't really think I'd let you die in a literal shithole in Venezuela, didja?"

Jack propped his feet up on the mattress, rescuing his coffee, and Nikki gave him that shy smile again, and Mac relaxed back into the pillows.

"Never even crossed my mind."

-x-

In more prep for the Turkey Day sequel, this snippet was needed to fill in a gap MacGyver mentioned to Bozer when they were disavowed in Amsterdam, when he says "On my worst days, I've nearly died alone. On my best days, I've saved hundreds of lives and no one even knew I was there. It's just the job."

The only time in my recollection we saw him nearly die alone (which I interpreted to mean without an ally at his side, as opposed to literally by himself) was with El Noche, and I needed another example. I suppose you could argue when Murdoc kidnapped him he nearly died, but let's be real, Murdoc would have kept him around for days. At any rate, I needed more than the El Noche reference.

I'm sure you can't guess why.

(And apologies if I messed up the details related to smoke inhalation, chemistry, or plumbing, but the sewer gas in the toilet vent pipe really is a thing.)