He was shivering.
But that didn't make any sense. He felt warm.
Oh hell, and he hurt everywhere. Especially his ears.
He realized it was pressure so, while he couldn't quite open his eyes, he forced himself to yawn. It was followed by a stabbing pain and a pop inside his head, then the pressure released. That was pressure equalizing at altitude.
He was on a plane.
Shit.
He remembered how he got here, who had put him here, and his shivering increased. He remembered being sweaty, but his clothes were no longer damp, and the blood in his hair was dry and itchy, it so he'd been here for a while.
From the level of noise, the general feel, and his vague memories of O'Neill's men tossing him in here, he'd say he was in the fortunately pressurized cargo hold of a plane.
But pressurized or not, that explained his shivering. It was probably somewhere between 36 and 42 degrees Fahrenheit in here. If he'd been here for a while, which his senses told him he had been, he probably had mild hypothermia.
That wasn't awesome.
He was tired, and it hurt to move (not to mention it was more or less pitch black) but lying here and continuing to cool off could actually kill him. Who knew how long he'd be here? He had a creeping sort of sickening suspicion, but he forced it to the back of his mind.
Part of him wanted to argue that drifting off feeling warm and increasingly peaceful was a hell of a lot better way to go than what was in store for him with these guys.
Another much bigger, much louder part of him called bullshit. But it did so in the softest voice he could remember. You never give up, Angus. It's one of my favorite things about you, even when it gets you in trouble.
He sighed. Alright. Alright, Mom.
Mac pushed himself up to sitting, swearing in a way he was sure even imaginary moms probably disapproved of when he realized his thumb was dislocated for sure. At least he wasn't tied up.
But he was going to need both hands.
He'd helped Jack set his shoulder one time. It wasn't long after they met and Jack talked him through the whole thing. He remembered closing his eyes, like it was going to hurt him instead of Jack . But he also remembered enough of the basic procedure, knew enough about anatomy, that he thought he could manage it.
Ah, man, this is gonna suck …
POP!
Yeah, yeah, that sucked alright, he thought, holding his hand to his midsection, breathing shallow, and rocking back and forth until the sweat-inducing burning backed off a little.
The engines droned on, but that was all he could hear. He was alone, and there was no just talking his way out of this, no way Jack could just kick in a door and save his ass.
No escape.
Not from here.
Mac was finally able to move without feeling like he was going to puke. He started crawling around in the blackness. He ran his head into a couple of crates, bent his sore thumb the wrong way several times, and managed to exert himself into a number of cuts and scrapes bleeding again. But after forever he felt the edges of a vinyl tarp. It was just a piece of one, torn and dirty, but it was enough to wrap around his shoulders, enough to cover most of his torso.
Mac wedged himself into a spot between crates that seemed out of the draft that permeated the place. He pulled the tarp close around him, crossing his arms and clasping his elbows. He felt warmer and his teeth stopped chattering after while. He didn't know if that meant he'd successfully gotten warmer or if his hypothermia was worse.
That didn't matter really.
Whether he wanted it to or not, Mac's head sagged forward onto his chest and he slipped back into a restless, frightened sleep filled with dreams of the past, and worse, his imagined future.
0-0-0
Jack paced back and forth. The jet was spacious, luxurious even. But it wasn't exactly the kind of roomy you wanted when you were stuck on it with a caged bear with a sore paw.
The woman sitting at the small white enamel table with Thornton kept glancing up at him as she typed. If Jack has been in a better mood he would have thought she was a real looker, albeit a little odd fashion-wise.
But not only was it pretty clear on short acquathst they didn't play for the same team, so to speak, the heavily made-up leather and corset wearing platinum blonde Amazon was Miles sister, and therefore off limits according to Mac.
As the young man's name flashed a neon sign in his brain again, Jack swore. "Come on Emily!" Jack snapped. "DXS is useless right now so we need your best work!"
Her red painted lips curved in a smirk at the little twitch of annoyance in Patricia Thornton's shoulders when Jack said DXS was useless. "They're doing their best, Jack." Her smirk grew as she threw a condescending look at the twenty something blonde Analyst alone at the back typing frantically and looking at Jack nervously. "Their best just should have taken the offer from Space-X."
Jack gave the young blonde woman an encouraging nod and glanced almost apologetically at Thornton. Then he sat down in the spot nearest Miles sister and gave her his full attention. "Emily, Mac says you're the best and You hacked DXS for him to get inside to help me. Now I need to return the favor and we've got nothing, not even a flight plan worth a damn. Stop jerking me around. I need to know, have you got anything?"
"What's the magic word?"
"Please?" Jack tried.
"No."
"Goddamnit, Em … oh, sorry. What have you got, Invisigoth? You're as bad as Mac about the whole name thing, you know?"
Vis tipped him a smile that was much more sympathetic and less teasing. "Got you out of your own head for a minute though, didn't I?"
She was damned good at that, too, Jack had to admit. Despite not having known her or her brother well or for long, Jack liked both of them. Well, he liked anybody who was inclined to give a damn about Mac. And they were good at … all of this, actually.
Elliot had tagged along too, saying casually that he'd hadn't gotten Mac fixed up after his GSW just to watch the kid waste all his hard work. Patricia had brought along her own staff, but no one who was personally invested in Mac seemed prepared to leave his well-being, present or future, to chance.
Elliot looked up from where he was working on his own laptop and tipped his chin at Vis. "Give Dalton a break. You got anything?"
She shook her head. "Not exactly no, but nothing on Mac or that flight. I do have some financial transactions for goods that might pin down where they got the waste for those dirty bombs."
Jack sighed and got up to pace again.
Elliot frowned. "I know you already bit your boss's head off when she mentioned her team, but you wanna sit down and let me take a look at you? I saw the feed of them whaling on you before Mac busted you out. And you're not moving so hot, man." Jack halfhearted last glared at him. Elliot was undeterred. "Looks like at least an anterior intercostal strain if not a possible costochondral separation and your pupils look a little …"
"You save your doctor talk for your dead folk and police reports and your diagnosin' for when we've rescued ourselves a hostage, you hear?"
Elliot just shrugged. "Let me know if you decide to defy the odds and be sensible." He went back to work.
A quarter hour passed.
"Damn it," Vis whispered.
"What?" Jack asked, snapping his head around and nearly knocking over a DXS employee who was delivering some sorrow paper to Thornton.
"I've lost satellite and radar on the plane." Her fingers flew over the keyboard. That had been the one consistent link they'd had, since their other avenues to finding out where they were headed were dead ends. Without the compound in Brazil that DXS had recently raised, no one had any idea where they might be headed with Mac. All the chatter was unhelpful.
Patricia touched her earpiece lightly, going a little pale. "So have we."
Jack looked a little frantic. Elliot interrupted before Jack could erupt in fury, or Hulk out as Mac liked to put it. "Miles and I may have something. From the financials …"
"Okay?" Jack prompted, running out of patience.
"You're not gonna like it," Elliot said.
"Maybe tell me anyway. Not likin' a thing ain't exactly outta my way today, Doc."
Elliot looked very serious. He and Miles has been pretty sure when they'd gotten the view of Mac being tossed onto that plane. He'd hoped they were wrong.
He met Jack's eyes.
"It's deja vu all over again."