Author's Note: I did research my facts, but some of it might be a bit exaggerated, but don't light me on fire just yet; I claim poetic license. Also, thank you to all of you who have been reading and reviewing. Wow, I can't believe I'm already at ten chapters. That's a lot for me.
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They had been discussing the latest hockey stats and quietly arguing which team was better, the Colorado Avalanche or the Minnesota Wilds, when they heard the lock turning in the door. They both looked up at each other before turning to the door.
"Show time."
"Good luck."
They separated a little bit and watched as an average looking man stepped through the door. He had black hair, was average height, normal weight. Nothing really stood out, except his dark eyes. They were unnaturally cold, and sent a shiver down MacGyver's spine. They were a killer's eyes, someone who had no remorse for the acts he'd committed. Jack's emotions subconsciously hardened at the sight.
"Which one of you is MacGyver?" The Air Force Colonel sighed and stood up, the man pulled a gun and warned him not to make a move.
"I also answer to hey you, Bubba, and the Easter Bunny."
Mac snorted, trying hard, and failing, not to laugh. They had agreed that Jack would go, he could always manipulate a situation like this better than Mac could, and Jack wouldn't let him go, but he never said that he was going to say that. 'Next time give a guy some warning.'
Jack smiled inwardly, he felt like he just killed two birds with one stone. He had made his brother feel a little better about the situation by making him laugh, and he had pissed off Mr. Average. He knew that when people got mad they often made mistakes, mistakes that he could and had exploited.
A fist made its way quickly across the space that separated the two. Jack had chosen not to dodge it, though, and rolled with the punch to lessen the impact. He had reasoned that it would be easier for him to escape if his opponent underestimated him; which always made things simpler. Mac abruptly stopped laughing; seeing his older sibling take a hit like that would do that to him. Even though he knew Jack was going to try and goad him, it still didn't lessen the dislike.
"Take him," he pointed to Jack. Two men came out from behind him and grabbed him none to gently by the arms and shoved him out of the room. He sent a glare at the other look-alike that was still seated, "Who are you?"
Thinking quickly, Mac took a page out of Jack's book,
"Francis Drake."
The man obviously didn't get the reference, and turned away, slamming the door behind him.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
He doubled over in pain as the man he now knew as Hyse punched him in the same spot where he had been stabbed; reopening the wound and causing it to bleed freely down his side.
"You killed three of my men!" He grabbed Jack's hair and pulled his head back, so he could look this MacGyver guy in the face. All of his intel was wrong, only the picture he got off the Internet was right. "You were supposed to be a pacifist weakling. You hate guns, you fucking hypocrite, yet you had no problem shooting them at me!"
"You were trying to kill me you asshole!"
That earned him a kick in the stomach. Hyse moved away, trying to control his anger. Jack got back up on his feet, he was never one to take things lying down, besides, and he had had worse than that. A kick and a couple punches weren't enough to keep him down. 'Enough playing around Jack,' he thought, 'time to get some answers.' "I thought he wanted me dead, not captured." Hyse turned around, and the anger at seeing him standing clouded his mind enough to not realize that he was no longer in control of the interrogation.
"He does, in fact he thinks you're already dead. I wanted to see you suffer for the trouble you caused me." He stepped forward, now realizing his mistake, and made to swing a heavy punch at Jack, but he had seen it coming, and moved out the way and pulled up his knee. It had happened so quickly that he didn't notice he had moved until he slammed into the joint. An audible crack rang through the small room where Jack was being interrogated.
The move had broken a couple of Mr. Average's ribs, who cried out it pain as he fell to the floor, stunned. Jack circled him as a vulture would circle its prey and asked,
"Who wanted me dead?" he was still in the guise that he was MacGyver, not Jack O'Neill. Hyse could barely draw breath, but he managed to throw a curse to the man who had turned the tables so drastically. Jack mimicked the way he had earlier pulled back his head, and looked him in the eye. Jack had slipped into the kind of man he was during his black ops days. His face was a stone mask, and his eyes cold, not the same as Hyse though. He didn't like killing, but he knew it was something necessary sometimes, Hyse was a sick bastard who took pleasure from seeing the life drain out of the person he was being paid to eliminate. "You will tell me." He said slowly, his voice flat, calm, and unfeeling.
Hyse could feel the blood drain from his face and his bladder empty it's contents in fear of the man before him.
"Kinsey, oh god, Kinsey. Don't…don't…hurt me," he pleaded.
Jack hit him across the back of the neck, effectively insuring that he stay unconscious for a long while, and look down at him in disgust, the smell of urine permeating the room. Anger coursed through him at the mention of the senator's name. He couldn't believe it! The ass had put a hit on his brother, how the hell had he found out. He felt his knees weaken slightly in combination of the blood loss from his side and fear of losing Mac. He reached down, and retrieved the man's gun, putting it in the waistband of his pants, and removed his shirt, tying it around his side to apply pressure to the unhealed knife wound in his side.
Now was not the time for anger, it would have its time when he found the bastard, now he had to be careful and get to Mac so they could escape.
He moved towards the door and placed his ear against the cool metal. Not hearing any movement on the other side, he quietly and slowly opened it. He stepped out in the hall and cautiously headed to the room where they had left Mac. It looked like some abandoned hotel or something, but it had a lot of rooms, filled with who knew what. The doors had old fashioned, but effective, slide locks that could be removed with out a key.
He approached the right cell and knocked three times on the door,
"Pizza delivery."
Mac heard the voice and rushed to the door from where he had been sitting in the corner. He had been worried sick that something could have gone wrong. With them, it almost always did. But, he couldn't let Jack know he had been worried, he would never live it down,
"What kind?"
"Uh…pepperoni, extra cheese, sausage, olives, and peppers."
"I think that's the guy next door's, I ordered vegi."
"Too bad, this one's yours."
He looked around the hallway one last time before he unlocked the door. They both winced when it creaked on its hinges, sounding very loud in the small and empty area. Mac quickly took in Jack's appearance and slipped a supportive arm around his back, while guiding one of Jack's arms around his own shoulders. He saw the heavy blood stain on his shirt and decided that when they got out of there, he was going to a hospital, secrets be damned. There would be no point in keeping each other a secret if one of them was dead.
They headed down the corridor toward where they thought would be a good chance for an exit.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?"
"No."
"Okay," he paused for a few seconds, "You wanna stop and ask for directions?"
"No."
"Okay."
They came around a corner and were spotted by two men at the end of the next corridor who immediately shouted for them to stop where they were. Yeah right. Like they were really gonna do that.
"Wrong turn."
"Oh yeah."
"We could ask them for directions."
"Oh no."
They turned on their heels, and hobbled into the closest door they could find, "Let's hope this isn't some janitor's closet, Mac, or people will talk." and quickly locking it behind them. As luck would have it, it was a janitor's closet, or the remainders of one. It had a ton of things Mac could work with. He carefully sat Jack down on an overturned bucket, and quickly searched around. Finding what he was looking for, he handed it over,
"Jack, stick this under the door jamb. Hopefully it will buy us some time." He turned and looked around; inventorying all he had in front of him, and thinking up things he could do with them. Mac was in his element, just as Jack was with weapons and tactics, Mac was a genius when it came to recognizing the different uses of random items that surrounded him. "Lets see what we've got here."
He walked over to the shelf opposite him and began analyzing the labels of all the dust-covered bottles. 'Floor cleaner, Clorox, rubbing alcohol, ammonia, mineral spirits, Simple Green, toilet bowl cleaner, more rubbing alcohol…wait.' Mac grabbed the toilet cleaner and ammonia, and looked at Jack, seeing his funny expression, he explained:
"Old toilet cleaners like this one contain some hydrochloric acid, and when you mix it with this ammonia here-"
"Smoke," Jack wasn't as dumb as he acted. He could only be himself around Mac, even though chemistry was his brother's strong suit, he still got an 'A' on his finals.
"Got it in one bro, give me a hand here." He handed Jack one of the bottles while he went over to the other side of the room to pick up a rag he had spotted. He ripped it in half, tied one around his head over his brother's eyes, and did the same to himself,
"Where's the piñata?" Jack joked.
"They're on their way," just at that moment, they heard a loud thud coming from the door of their little refuge. "Lets get started, Jack, back up a little then toss some of your ammonia on the floor right in front of you. We'll switch off and hopefully create a smoke screen."
"Sure thing. Side order of smoke, coming right up," and thus they started, working together, layering ammonia and the hydrochloric acid in the toilet cleaner, with smoke slowly starting to rise from Mac's improvised recipe for an escape.
"Look away!" Mac knew that the smoke produced from the chemical reaction was dangerous, known to burn the eyes and produce an effect similar to mace or pepper spray.
The smoke had filled the room, obscuring everything from sight. Throughout the process, they heard the banging on the door; the bad guys were obviously trying to break it down. If they could have seen through the smoke, which they couldn't, they would have seen that the door was showing signs of starting to give way, so it startled them when it was blown open, clipping Jack in the nose on its swing.
The three men who stormed the room were immediately assaulted by the thick smoke and grabbed at their burning eyes, each groaning or crying out in combined surprise and pain. The two brothers regained their wits sooner, and MacGyver grabbed a broom that he had seen earlier and struck out into the white abyss. The wooden handle connected with a body, and Mac continued his attack until his opponent was down. Jack had used the only weapon he had available, the ammonia bottle, and had waited until he heard one of their kidnappers approach, since they were making so much noise…such language! One stumbled in front of him, cursing like a sailor and Jack viciously struck out at him. He switched to punching with his fist with spectacular accuracy, forgetting about the bottle that he still hadn't let go of. The cursing abruptly ended as his target fell to the floor unconscious. The third guy had realized that he was now blind and alone, and he panicked, striking out wildly in all directions, unwittingly telling Mac exactly where he was. He easily took him down. Even though Mac disliked violence, he was good at defending himself, but when he had his only family left to protect, he could be equally as efficient as Jack.
Jack had thought they had taken out all of the guys, the moaning having ended, leaving the room in silence until his heightened senses told him that there was someone by his side. He turned slowly and…whack!
"Ow!"
"Mac?"
"Yeah! Jack! What'd you do that for!"
"Sorry, thought you were a bad guy."
"Well, I'm not.
"You sure?" Jack could feel the glare Mac sent him without having to see it. "Maybe I should hit ya again just to make sure."
"Take off that darn rag, let's go. I don't want to stick around for when those guys wake up." The smoke was already dissipating, he knew it would only last a few seconds, but still long enough to do what was needed.
"Good job Mac," Jack praised, being serious for a rare moment, impressed by the way his brother could always find a way out of a jam. He was the reason why he always said that, "there is always an 'or'".
Jack draped his arm across his brother's shoulders for support and they once again headed down the hallway, neither knowing where they were going.
"Where are we?" Jack asked, not sure of facility they had been taken to.
"I have no idea." Apparently Mac wasn't either.
With no one left conscious to chase them, they eventually found their way out without incident. As they stepped out into the moonlight, Mac realized that the building they were in was an old abandoned psych ward not far out of town. He had hotwired a black van that they found parked around back, most likely belonging to the idiots who had kidnapped them, and pulled onto the street, heading back to L.A. That was when Jack had passed out. He had lost too much blood.
Mac had resolved earlier to take him to the hospital, and that was exactly what he was going to do. There was no way he could patch him up now, what he needed was a doctor.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
He ran as fast as his feet would take him. This was their only lead they had ever had since his disappearance, and there was no way he wasn't going to act on it as soon as he could. They had been watching police reports and calling hospitals across the country, desperate to find a trace of his location. Daniel knew the General was busy in a briefing with SG-2, but it didn't stop him, he knew he was as worried as they all were, so he barged through the door, barely stopping for breath.
All eyes turned to him, and Feretti nodded his head in greeting,
"General Hammond sir, I've got some news."
"Well go ahead son," the General's attention was now completely on him.
"There's a hospital in LA that called us back saying that someone admitted a man matching his description an hour ago."
"A hospital?"
"What's Jack doing in LA?" Feretti asked. Everyone on base knew about his disappearance, it was hard to miss his absence. The place felt different without him, not to mention the depression of the SGC's flagship team. The General ignored SG-2's commander's question and asked one of his own,
"What's his condition?" If the man was in a hospital, it had to be bad. Colonel O'Neill hated hospitals and would refuse to go to one until his arms fell off.
"They say he's got a nasty stab wound down his side and was losing a lot of blood. She also said that he was lucky it didn't hit anything vital. He's also got a lot of bruises on his face and across his stomach. They say that the worst thing though is the knife wound, and they are watching for infection." The General was quiet for a moment, letting the information sink in, and then he made his decision.
"Doctor Jackson, tell Major Carter to assemble SG-1, you leave on the next flight to LA military or civilian. Good Luck," Daniel turned to leave, eager to get on his way, but Hammond called him back, "Son, it might not be him you know."
"I know sir, but I'm not going to give up."
"I know. But, if it is him…bring him back."
"I will sir," then he bounded out the door, running down the hall once more, this time to go tell Sam and Teal'c that they had a go.
