22:03. 4.5 hours post poisoning. HR 63/NSR, SPO2 100%, RR 14.
Mac carefully moved the bomb parts to the side of the desk as he set up his workspace. He disassembled the syringe dart the same way he'd started taking apart the bomb, photographing every piece in turn. Then he separated the cartridge that had contained the poison. He pried the top off it carefully without breaking it. There wasn't a lot in there- he'd have to be careful to keep some of it in there for the chemists to take a crack at if his rough tests weren't incredibly fruitful. Still, it might be worth it. "Riley, do you have any cotton balls?" He asked.
"Yeah." She said. "Why?"
"I need to light one on fire."
"As.. one does?" She responded.
"How long have you known this guy, Riles? That's not even the craziest thing he's said today. I'll take the batteries out of the smoke detector."
"See, Jack gets me."
"I'll start planning your wedding." Riley said dryly, fishing in her bag for the cotton balls. Mac let out a snort and turned back to the dart.
I didn't exactly steal the creme brulee torch on purpose, but since I have it and a little extra time before a travel planner at the Phoenix Foundation gets a plane ticket together, I'll put it to good use. You remember in 8th grade science class when the teacher explained how we know what the stars are made of by looking at what colors of light they give off most strongly? Well, I'm about to do that on a much smaller scale.
He pulled a tiny wisp of cotton away from the rest, and clamped it between the pliers on his Swiss Army Knife. Then he soaked up a few precious droplets of the liquid inside the syringe dart's cartridge with it. He lit the butane torch.
"Okay, moment of truth." He said. He held the damp cotton over the blue flame, and for a second, a thin streak of the blue became a bright yellow.
"That was cool." Jack said. Mac sat back. "What's it mean?"
"Sodium." Mac said, frowning. "Probably some other elements the test doesn't reason out like oxygen, carbon, or hydrogen."
"Is that... really bad or something?" Jack asked hesitantly.
"No, just really common." Mac sighed. "A lot of substances can be packaged in a solution of sodium chloride, so the presence of sodium doesn't narrow it down much. Everything else that could be present would be in almost anything active in the human body, so…" He shrugged, frustrated. He just wanted to do something to show he was working on the solution too and not just waiting for someone else to save him. "We'll have to get back to a lab to do anything more special-" Jack's phone rang. He looked at the lock screen.
"Its Matty." He said.
"Put it on speaker."
"Hey, Matty, how's it going with that ticket?" Jack asked.
"Not well. Apparently with the bomb threat today they're taking extra precautions and diverting all flights in the next 24 hours." She sounded as though this was both wholly unreasonable and a great inconvenience to her personally. "No new tickets are available. Fortunately the local train station isn't as anxious. The next train to LA leaves at 0400. You'll all be on it."
"All of us?" Riley asked. "I thought Jack and I were staying to help with the case."
"We'll be able to get a relief team into the area by just after 0400. They'll continue with the field investigation while you three get back to Phoenix and continue with the analysis. We'll keep working on it from this end, but unless anything changes, that's the situation."
"Will do." Mac agreed.
"And MacGyver?" Matty asked.
"Yeah?"
"If you withhold any information about your physical condition from either your coworkers or myself, you'll be fired when this is all said and done, copy?"
"...I copy." Mac said awkwardly.
The phone went dead. "Why is everyone so concerned that I don't have my own best interests at heart?" Mac wondered allowed. Riley and Jack looked at each other.
"Probably Hong Kong." Jack suggested. "Maybe Raleigh."
"Manila." Riley added.
"There was that time in Rio."
"Does Copenhagen count?"
"Oh yeah, Copenhagen definitely counts."
"Alright, alright, so I'm not the best at self-preservation." Mac admitted, rolling his eyes. It wasn't that he was bad at self-preservation, he amended in his own head. He just happened to be pretty good at triage, and given his day-job usually uncomplicated injury and other things he wasn't emergently dying of weren't super high on his to-do list, especially during critical portions of missions. He'd take care of them when the world wasn't seconds from blowing up- heck, he liked to think he'd proven that today with the dart. "If it makes you feel better, I promise to tell you the second anything changes."
"Pinky swear?" Jack asked cutely, holding out his little finger.
Mac shook his head. At least Jack was taking the situation well. "Why don't we get a few hours' sleep before we have to catch this train?"
Jack laid in bed for about thirty minutes before deciding he couldn't sleep. "Mac? You awake?" He asked quietly. No response. Mac didn't seem to have the same problem he did with sleeping when a deadline was looming. That, or he didn't care all that much about Jack's insomnia, which Jack felt was inconsiderate.
The light was still on under the door separating his and Mac's room from Riley's. Maybe she wanted some company. Jack pushed himself out of bed and then paused. He didn't really want to leave Mac here alone if something could conceivably go wrong. He picked Mac's phone up off the bedside table. If something went wrong, at least he'd know about it and be able to call someone.
Riley was still awake, trawling through the thousands of hours of video footage. Even though the complex had been relatively new, their video system had been installed when flash drives only held in the MBs of data. The video was in extremely low definition. So far she'd managed to get a few decently enhanced pictures of who Mac might have meant. Nothing, unfortunately, that would be admissible in court.
Jack knocked quietly at the door, then let himself in. "I'm not looking." He announced, shielding his eyes.
"I'm decent, Jack." RIley said, setting her laptop aside.
"Phew, good, I didn't think about that until I'd already opened the door."
"Is... everything okay?" Riley asked.
"What? Oh, yeah, everything's good, I just couldn't sleep." Jack explained. "How about you? Why are you still up?"
"I do my best work at night."
Jack squinted at the laptop. "Anything useful?"
"Maybe. We'll have to match up fingerprints but I don't think our 'shooter' was the same guy who built the bomb."
"Oh yeah?" Jack asked.
Riley sighed. "Which could be utter BS, but I needed to come up with some new info." She said. "I'm having a hard time figuring out anything concrete with this video quality." Jack squinted at the screen.
"You never tried to download porn in the late 90s, did you?"
"I was 10 in the late 90s." Riley replied. "Also I was busy hacking the DXS."
"Hey, we all have our talents."
"So, you wanna order a pizza or something?" Riley asked finally. "I realized we never actually went for dinner."
"That's the most relatable thing you've said-" Jack started, then almost jumped as the phone in his hand buzzed loudly.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
"That's a terrible ringto-." Riley said.
"Its Mac's phone." Jack said urgently, looking at the screen which had lit up to show Mac's vitals, one number squared off in yellow and blinking. "What do we do?"
"Lemme see." Riley said, taking the phone from him.
23:45, [HR 48/BRADY], SPO2 100%, RR 12.
"Why is the H.. R thing blinking?" Jack asked, a small amount of panic in his voice. He would be the first to admit he had no idea what those numbers meant, but yellow and flashing had never once meant good things. it looked like a problem, one he knew he didn't know how to solve.
"His heart rate's low." Riley said.
"What do we do?"
"I don't know…" Riley said. She knew CPR, but Mac's heart rate was low, not gone, which it needed to be for that. "Umm... the rest of them are fine, maybe we should call Matty, or…" But Jack had already burst back through the door.
"Mac, you okay buddy?" Riley followed him through the door as he descended on Mac's sleeping form, shaking his shoulder hard enough to break something.
Mac's hand came out from under the covers and caught Jack's wrist, stopping just short of flipping the older agent onto the floor. "Wha-" He sat up blearily. "Jack, what's going on?"
"I… you…" Jack started, surprised. "Your phone, it…" Mac looked over at Riley.
"Translation?"
"Your phone said something was wrong. Jack panicked."
"Oh please, like you weren't worried too. I saw your face." Jack said, pulling Mac's phone out of Riley's hand and showing the screen, now dormant, to Mac. "Look at this."
Mac opened the lock screen, still slightly confused. His vitals came up as they did before.
23:48, HR 74/NSR, SPO2 100%, RR 18.
Nothing was blinking or beeping now. Jack looked indignant. "There was something wrong. That one was yellow." He explained, pointing to the heart rate icon.
"Looks okay now." Mac said warily.