"Could have been a dud." Jack suggested, holding the dart up to the light. A still very conscious Mac tried not to make eye contact as he un-bolted the bomb's remains from the floor and packed them up for further examination.
He'd laid on the floor as the feeling of nausea subsided and the feeling of embarrassment grew, realizing that most of the discomfort had probably been induced by adrenaline, not some mystery drug from the syringe dart. By the time Jack and Riley showed up, he'd pretty much realized nothing bad was coming of it. "You know like the one time I bought a pack of twinkies and then one of them didn't have any filling?" Riley frowned at him. "I'm just saying Bad Guy should get his money back."
"I'm not sure." Riley said. "There's no serial number on that dart, and the pressure chamber's medical grade. Not something I could pick up at Cabela's." She was leaning against the shelf behind Mac, watching him work.
"Then Bad Guy just messed up building it." Jack said. "He didn't want anyone to take out his bomb, but also didn't have access to a real firearm, so he lies in wait with his blowgun and-"
"Or it was a trap." Mac suggested, a measure of frustration with the situation just barely evident in his voice. "He knew the Phoenix Foundation was in the area- lots of people have some level of beef with us- and set the bomb and called in the tip knowing one of us would come looking for it and he could take a prisoner. Then the drug took too long and he decided to get out before the kaboom. Except then the drug didn't work at all."
"Yeah, well, its not an adventure unless there's some mystery to it, right Mac?" Jack said grudgingly. Mac stood up, the bomb and dart neatly packaged in their boxes.
"I'm sorry I scared you guys." He said.
"Not an issue." Jack said.
"Same, without saying." Riley echoed. "But we're telling Bozer. So really that's still a punishment."
The hotel was a small-time BnB, two rooms paid through an anonymous Phoenix Foundation account three days prior to their arrival. Mac staked his claim at the larger room's ikea desk, and began to carefully disassemble the bomb. Riley crashed next to him on a wicker window bench, starting her slow trawl through the hours of security footage leading up to the bomb's placement and subsequent removal. Jack laid on the bed closest to the door and pretended to work on a report.
Mac carefully disassembled each piece, placing one after the other on the desk and taking pictures. Once he was finished, he would dust each for prints with graphite and preserve them with scotch tape, which Riley could then check against the various known terrorist databases.
"I'm bored. You guys interested in a late dinner?" Jack asked a while later. "There's a burger place up the street that's probably still open." Mac looked at his watch. Over three hours had gone by and though most of the bomb was disassembled, there was still several more hours' work before he could report out the evidence to the Phoenix Foundation. Might as well break and come back to it with a full stomach.
"Works for me. Riley?" He asked, tapping her on the shoulder. She didn't look up from the screen as she nodded her agreement.
"Give me a second, I'll be right behind you."
Mac stretched and got his jacket just as Riley was closing her computer.
"Hey guys?" Riley said. Mac looked around.
"What's up?"
"What's that?" Riley asked, pointing to an edge of white paper just barely visible inside the partially disassembled bomb.
"What's what?" Jack said. "See I can do it too."
"It was probably used as some kind of insulat-" Mac started. He checked quickly to make sure he'd disconnected all available explosive before pulling it part of the way out. It wasn't an insulator. There was definitely writing on it.
Writing, it appeared, addressed to him personally. Curious, he pulled the paper the rest of the way out.
"Dearest MacGyver." He began, noting a particularly shocked expression on Jack's face. "I would offer a well-wish, but I am afraid the next few days for you are only going to become more unpleasant. I have been contracted by an agency of great renown, which has leveraged your life against my prison sentence. As I am a gaming man, I will engage you in one last game of skill before the end. The syringe dart you entertained today contained a poison of my own devising, which will kill you slowly over the course of the next 72 hours. The poison is more than enough to kill a man, but by the language of sportsmanship, I am offering you this time as a chance to save yourself. Survive, and rest assured that I rot in prison for several years longer. Die, and do so knowing I am all the freer for it. Bon Chance, MacGyver. Yours in Death, Murdoc."
"Son of a bitch." Jack said after a moment. Mac turned slowly to lean against the desk. "That is not how I saw today going."
Mac nodded slowly in agreement and let the paper fall to his side. He'd suddenly lost his appetite as his brain furiously worked over how seriously to take the situation.
"So it really was a trap." Riley said. "You think it's real?"
"Give me a plane ticket and a half hour in Murdoc's cell and I'll tell you if it's real." Jack said.
"Lets hold up a second." Mac said, not quite sure what to say next but knowing Jack's forming ideas were not where he wanted to go with this investigation.
"Mac, if he made a poison, he would have to have an antidote as a bargaining chip. Maybe Jack's not so wrong in wanting to question him." Riley suggested quickly. "I mean, we know where he is and all. This is a pretty risky move for him. He could be waiting to be tortured, or worse…"
"No." Mac said. "He's safe in that respect. He knows I wouldn't let him be tortured." He paused. "And I doubt he has an antidote, or even knows if there is one at all. This isn't Murdoc trying to get me to do something by holding my life hostage. I die and he gets his freedom and a job doing what he does best. If there's an easy way to save my life, he doesn't want to be the one to provide it."
"So there's a possibility what got injected into you is totally, irreversibly fatal?" Jack asked.
"Maybe." Mac said, not quite letting the weight of that word settle in his own brain. "Listen, Murdoc may not play fair, but he does play. He could have hired someone to put a bullet through my head, earning him his freedom instantly. But he didn't- it's not fun for him if he knows without a doubt that he'll win." Riley looked at him doubtfully while Jack still just looked a little freaked. "Guys, the point is that at this moment, there's a big chance no one, including him, knows what the poison is or how to treat it. So that's our goal. I'll call Matty and explain the situation. Then we'll get started."
Mac sighed as he got off the phone. He never felt comfortable explaining situations like this, and Matty's attitude towards anything not going perfectly never helped matters. Fortunately, while she made her displeasure clear, she took employee safety pretty seriously. She'd interrogated him on his current physical health, then promised to have a plane ticket to a Phoenix Foundation-vetted hospital squared away for him within the hour.
He didn't love the idea of a hospital. He still felt fine and had told her as much, but he knew better than to go against Matty's wishes.
"What did Matty say?" Riley asked.
"The mission's going to continue. I'll be headed back tonight. I'll take the bomb parts with me and continue with analysis there." Mac explained. "You and Jack can keep going with the investigation into the would-be bombing. Maybe if we can figure out who built it, we can put together some kind of picture of who's taking Murdoc's orders."
"And?" Riley prompted.
"And what?" Mac asked. Riley fiddled with her phone for a second or two, bringing up a text message.
"Please remind MacGyver to wear biological monitoring until evaluated by a medical professional." Riley read. Mac groaned. "That's from Matty."
"Matty? Our Matty? Worried about one of us not following her orders to the letter?" Jack said, allowing a moment of mock confusion to enter his voice.
"Its part of the protocol for a medical emergency in the field." Mac explained, staving off the embarrassment a few more seconds. "Plus, she'll probably feel better knowing she can at least look at a screen and know I'm alive." Jack rolled his eyes, but Mac could tell he was a little relieved at the prospect too. He dug in the emergency bag and half-reluctantly pulled out the monitoring kit.
"Biological monitoring" sounds fancy, but it's mostly stuff you can buy for yourself on Amazon, except probably like 20x more expensive because... Phoenix Foundation. The monitor is a ring and three wireless stickers, two placed on each side of the upper chest, and the last one placed just above the right hip. The ring measures pulse and and percent oxygen saturation. The stickers collectively measure a 3-lead ECG and a respiratory rate, and send that info to the ring, which sends it to an app on my phone which logs it and sends it to a computer at the Phoenix Foundation. Its state of the art, low profile, and 100% overkill unless you're actually dying.
Mac donned the monitor, and activated the application before texting a smily face emoji to Matty.
21:38, HR 68/NSR, SPO2 100%, RR 19.
The numbers blinked once on his phone's lock screen as he closed it. That felt… oddly comforting and creepy at the same time. He shook his head. If it would make people comfortable to know he was monitored, he could take the few extra minutes to comply with policy.
Then he moved on to something that was actually going to save his life. Figuring out what the hell was in that syringe dart.