Author's Note: I know, this chapter is looooong over due, but RL has been throwing me for a loop lately. I hope you enjoy, and remember: I love reviews.
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"How do you know where you're going?" Murphy asked Mac as she roughly pushed away a twig that had caught on her jacket. She held the cell phone in one hand, her constant connection to Pete, while she followed her friend through the untamed terrain. MacGyver was leading her at a hard pace, eager to reach his brother in time. She debated asking the question again when it became clear that he hadn't heard her, but he effectively stopped her by answering. The question had taken much longer than normal to sink in, his reflexes and reactions slowed down because he had reopened the link to Jack after he had spoken to Pete. It was something they had never tried before, and it was dangerous because Mac was preoccupied with keeping the Zone open instead of being aware of his own surroundings.
"I don't," the words came slowly, as if the words had to struggle through quicksand before they were able to be spoken, "I…just…I feel it. Like a signal getting stronger," it was the only way he knew how to describe it. The weak hold he had on Jack gradually increased its strength as he got closer, and that feeling was the only thing that told him that they were going in the right direction.
Mac's answer had confused Murphy even more, he had just started speaking, barely slowing down, and not even turning around to talk to her. Something weird was definitely going on, only she didn't know what. The only thing that kept her going was the utmost belief in Mac's posture that he knew what he was doing. If Mac was sure, then she had no choice but to be sure as well. They had worked together often enough where Mac had gone out on a limb, and succeeded, for her to be able to continue on pure faith alone; something that, until she had met Mac, she had been unable to do.
Murphy turned her attention to Pete, who had remained on the phone. She could hear their own conversation in the background, quietly spouting their own theories about Mac, along with where Jack was.
"Pete?" she asked quietly, not wanting to distract MacGyver from his task.
"Yeah?"
"What do you think is really going on? I mean… well, you've met his brother, what are they like together? I've never met any of Mac's family. I've never even heard him talk about it, heck, I didn't know he had any…"
"I have no idea what's going on with Mac. I've only seen him with Jack once before all hell broke loose…"
MacGyver tuned out Murphy's voice after he realized that she was no longer talking to him. After his lapse in concentration to answer her, Mac found it somewhat easier than before to find Jack again. He reached out with his mind and sighed with relief as Jack rejoined him. Everything seemed so much clearer as well.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Jack O'Neill stared boldly ahead as the Goa'uld taunted him about his ultimate demise and whatnot. His brother's presence in the back of his mind help to calm him tremendously, and he know found himself comforted in the knowledge that Mac wouldn't let him get snaked. He frowned when he thought about how he had to reveal the existence of such evil to his younger sibling; he had hoped that Mac would never have to know. It wasn't that Jack had never wanted to tell him, how many times had he picked up the phone with the intention of calling Mac, but he wanted to protect him from the constant worry of aliens showing up and annihilating the planet.
'God,' he mused, 'My life sounds like some cheesy sci-fi 'B' movie.'
"Jack, you still with me?" Mac's voice resonated in his head.
"Yeah Mac, still here,"
"Good, just checking you know,"
"Ya can't get rid of me that easily,"
"Aw, shuc-" Mac's voice cut off in the middle of his response, and Jack felt his absence from a place deep inside of him.
"Mac? Mac?! You okay?" 'What happened? Did he get caught? Was he hurt?' Jack struggled against his bonds, trying vainly to somehow get free so he could find Mac. Different scenarios ran through his mind of what had occurred to his twin, none of which were pretty.
The Goa'uld smiled coldly, falsely thinking that the prisoner's agitation was caused by his maniacal taunts. Jack didn't see it when he walked over to a table to pick up a long object resembling a cattle prod.
Jack's struggles ceased and his racing heart calmed when he felt his brother join with him again. He closed his eyes to try to focus on their connection.
"Mac, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED! Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he sheepishly replied, "I…tripped. I think I found your gravel road."
Jack sighed as relief flooded him. When he showed up, he was going to wring his neck! How dare he scare him like that, he almost gave him a heart attack.
"Good," he glanced at Mr. Baddy himself and something in his stomach churned at the cold smile he had on his face, "I don't like the way this snakehead is looking at me. I think you should pick up the pace," he told Mac.
Then Jack noticed what he was holding in his hand. "Oh shit," he said both to Mac and aloud. "Mac hurry!"
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"Mac hurry!"
Uh oh, he didn't like Jack's tone of voice, not one bit.
"Murphy, how far away is Pete?" He waited, shifting nervously from foot to foot as she repeated the question on the phone.
He never got to hear her answer when suddenly, a white hot pain shot through him, searing every nerve ending he had in his body. He doubled over and fell to the ground, screaming and writhing in agony. He had been shot many times before, but this was a pain that was completely new to him.
Murphy saw him go down and, startled, she dropped her phone and went to help him. She tried to find out what was wrong, but she just didn't understand it. Nothing was wrong with him, yet he was screaming like he was being burned alive.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Yellow light poured out from underneath his eyelids and from his mouth, opened to let out a pain filled cry. The pain was excruciating, but nothing new. A Goa'uld pain stick was a device that, unfortunately, had been used on him many a time.
He knew that he and Mac were still connected; he could feel his agony. Doing the only thing that he could do to protect his younger brother, he began to shut down the Zone, to block Mac from getting back in, to protect him from the suffering that he himself was about to endure.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
As suddenly as it had started, the pain turned off, leaving a dull ache from its memory. MacGyver lay stunned for a few moments, his pulse racing, lungs heaving, and limbs shaking from the overload of his senses. After he had caught his breath, he tried to reach out to Jack to find out what happened and if he was all right, but he couldn't get through. It was as if he had put up a brick wall, preventing him from joining him in the zone. Mac tried to break it down so he could maybe take away some of the pain, but Jack had had a lot of practice building walls. A mason couldn't have done better.
He cautiously stood up, finding no residual effects from his experience, he turned to Murphy who looked stunned.
"Wha, wha, what just happened?"
But he ignored her completely. It was now more important than ever to get to Jack, their time was running out.
"Tell Pete to hurry," he barked at her as he started off down the gravel road. Though no longer guided by their connection in the Zone, he had found the road that Jack was taken on. He could just follow that to his location.
"Uh, Mac," He paused, turned, at followed her gaze to where her cell phone now lay in pieces on the ground, "I think I dropped it."
He let out a large exhale of breath as he quickly thought up what to do.
"Stay here and wait for Pete and Jack's team, he should be on his way. Tell them to follow this path; they should come upon some sort of warehouse type building. Find that, find us." And he took off, running for all he was worth. The sooner he got to Jack, the less pain, and the better.
There was nothing Kate could do but sit and wait. Though her heart told her to follow Mac and help him, her mind told her that the best thing to do was to direct the backup to where it was needed when they arrived.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
He crouched behind an expensive looking black Lincoln town car, searching the premises for any threat. The car stuck out like a sore thumb beside the abandoned building. He couldn't hear anything, and he wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. He approached the door on the side of the building and cautiously cracked it open. He could see where Jack lay handcuffed to a pipe at the other end of the warehouse. Two men stood about midpoint between the two brothers. One, a man he didn't recognize was showing something in an organ transport container to his companion, someone he was familiar with. Even from this distance, he could tell that Senator Kinsey was afraid of whatever was in that box.
Realizing that there was no way he could waltz right in and grab his older brother and leave, he made to return back outside to think up a distraction, when movement caught his eye.
Jack was slowly but surely recovering from the inflicted torture of the pain stick. The worse thing about it was that the Goa'uld had brought to the brink of losing consciousness before he stopped, not letting him sink into the comforting embrace of oblivion. He had crowed that it would soften him up or the blending, a word that made him sick to his stomach.
He had lifted his head up to watch his captors when he noticed someone crouched by the door. His eyes widened in recognition and he practically sighed in relief, but didn't. it wouldn't do to give away his rescuer when he had come so close.
Their eyes met and they shared a silent conversation, each reassuring the other that all was well and it would be over soon. Mac gestured outside and out his finger to his lips in the universal sign for quiet. Jack just nodded once slowly in response before his eyes wandered back to their original targets.
The younger of the two slipped away and began to search for some, anything, he could use to create a distraction so he could free Jack. He circled the building looking for a shack that might hold chemicals or stored equipment, but there was nothing.
'How can there not be anything?' he thought in disbelief, 'There has to be something! Think MacGyver think! You can do this.'
He desperately scanned the area hoping to spot something he might have missed the first times, but he hadn't. It seemed like his luck had finally worn out. Frustration began to kick in for all he saw was the warehouse itself, and two cars; one the town car, and the other a black sedan parked over by the tree line.
'Wait a minute,' he looked back at the cars, 'No…I couldn't…but maybe…' He jogged over to the town car and slid underneath, just barely being able to clear his upper torso. It was a tight fit, but he quickly found what he was looking for.
Mac reached down into his pants pocket for his Swiss army knife, and opened it to produce a corkscrew. He knew that what he was about to do was very risky, and would happen very quickly, but he had no choice. Jack had shown him exactly what was at stake. He didn't want to lose his brother like that. He reached over to where the gas tank was, and carefully lined up his knife at just the right angle, and using his other hand as a hammer, he shoved the corkscrew in. Immediately fluid began to pour down the knife, falling to ground directly underneath.
Mac scrambled out from under the car, closed the knife and replaced it in its rightful place. He patted his pants down, searching for the matchbook that he always carried with him, but he couldn't find it. He couldn't believe it! It must have slipped out earlier at the house.
'Damn,' he didn't have time to waste, so thinking quickly he opened the car door and pushed the button on the cigarette lighter. While waiting for that to heat up, he opened the glove compartment and rifled through it, looking for anything flammable. He pulled out a copy of the insurance and registration.
'Oh well, he won't need it anyway after I'm done.'
He pulled out the lighter and held the paper to it. It took a few seconds for it to ignite, but the moment it did, he leaped out the car and placed the burning paper in the growing pool of gasoline. It quickly lit, the flames licking at his hand for a split second before he pulled away.
He didn't even turn back as he ran. He went as fast as his legs would go, trying to get as far away from ground zero as he could. He hid right beside the door, trying to flatten himself as much as he could, practically becoming part of the wall in the process. He had just gotten into position when a massive explosion rocked the area. The heat was so intense that he could feel its burn on his face. He felt the resounded shockwave reverberate through his body and the building he was leaning against. There was surprisingly little debris, just a lot of flame.
His stunt had the desired effect as two men promptly emerged from the warehouse, come to see what had happened. As they watched, stunned, Mac slid behind them into the building and ran to the far end where Jack was currently trying to stand, his hands still behind his back.
"You never could resist blowing something up could you?" Jack whispered harshly, not wanting to alert the captors that the prisoner was about to break free. Mac smiled at his brother's retort.
"Nope, and you can't resist to piss of the bad guys!" Jack wanted to say, 'Neither can you,' but he decided that it was more important to get out of there than to argue. Instead, he turned slightly and lifted up his arms, "You don't happen to have the key do you?" he asked.
Mac shook his head while he once again pulled out his knife, this time removing from the side a metal toothpick, "Hold still," and he proceeded to pick the lock while Jack stood impatiently. The click confirming that he was now free seemed too loud in the warehouse, but none of them paid it any heed. MacGyver noticed that Jack seemed to be favoring his right leg and there were pain lines furrowing his forehead.
"Can you walk?"
"I think so," but Mac wouldn't risk it. He pulled his left arm around his shoulder and put his own right arm around his brother's waist, taking some of his weight and supporting him. He heard him wince at the motion.
"What else Jack?"
"I think I reopened the stitches on my side. It ah…hurts…a bit,"
"Sorry, I forgot about that. The moment we get outta here, you're going to a hospital. No buts or exceptions," this time Jack didn't protest and that bothered him somewhat. Though they both hated hospitals, they were a necessity sometimes… sometimes.
"Is there another exit, a back door maybe?" Mac really didn't want to risk going back out through the front. HE was lucky once, he might not be so a second time.
"I didn't see one,"
"Damn," looked like they weren't going to have a choice. They headed towards the door, but only made it a few feet before a mechanical voice echoed weirdly through the warehouse,
"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!" Both brothers' heads shot up and they found themselves staring into the cold face the Goa'uld from across the floor. Jack silently muttered a curse under his breath upon being discovered.
"What are you screaming about, there's no possible way he could…" Kinsey had entered behind him and trailed off when he saw Mac and Jack. He stared confusedly at the two twins, his eyes darting from one to the other.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Kinsey had been forced to watch while the Goa'uld prepared the symbiote for implantation with a growing sense of unease. Just the sight of the thing made him squirm with disgust. Everything was quiet until suddenly a loud explosion resounded through the warehouse.
They had both run outside to see what had happened when he saw his car in flames.
"My car!" he cried. 'What the hell happened?' He didn't know what was going on. Surely there was no such thing as spontaneous combustion. That meant that someone was here, but whom? And why would they bomb his car? He had turned around, when he heard his cohort yelling at someone in the warehouse. The only person in there was the bumbling idiot and sorry disgrace of the United States, and he was tied up and barely conscious. He walked inside and stopped at the sight that beheld him.
Standing there were two Jack O'Neills!
"What the Hell?!"
Now he was in his own personal Hell! For some stupid reason, aliens liked to make copies of him, and apparently Stargate Command missed one.
No, this Xerox was different somehow, he wasn't sure how, but it was.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
'Shit shit shit, why couldn't this have been easy for once?' Something was always going wrong, and Jack was sick and tired of it. He sagged in Mac's arms, part out of defeat, and part out of exhaustion. Now how were they going to get out of this? He looked up at his younger sibling.
Now he had gone and brought him into trouble as well. He mentally kicked himself in the butt for being so weak, for being a complete idiot. If he hadn't been distracted, he would have never put them both in this position. He knew better than to let his guard down, especially on a mission. All this was his fault. He just hoped that somehow a miracle would happen and Mac would be able to escape unscathed.