CHAPTER 8:

1800: HR [125/TACHY], [RR 30], SPO2 99%

In the pitch dark of the basement, they waited for the emergency generator to kick on. Seconds went by, then minutes. The only light present was an eerie red glow from an emergency exit sign in the hallway. Mac stared at the scored lines in the ceiling and counted the seconds. Something was wrong. The generator should be working by now.

"Guys, I think whatever happened got to the generator too." Jack finally said, turning to face the group. A sense of dread fell over Mac with the words.

"Well shit, then." Gayle looked metaphorically upwards. "This is 'cause I said the 'Q' word last week isn't it?" She shook her head. She felt around on the desk for a second, coming up with an old yellow flashlight.

"How're you doing over here, Mac?" Gayle asked, cuing Jack and Riley to instantly turn their attention to MacGyver, who hadn't yet commented on the experience. Mac turned his head slowly towards them, inwardly cringing. He tried to ignore their concerned faces as he searched for an answer to the question. To be perfectly honest, he was doing crappy. Even moving his head felt like the room was swaying. Even after rinsing it, his mouth still tasted like vomit. It was all he could smell, and he felt like it was on him- sticking to him like the sweat that dried but then repopulated every time he tried to move and his stomach lurched.

"Okay." He deflected, hoping they couldn't see the bucket by his head. Gayle had cleaned it out- to his utter embarrassment- but it still told a tale. "What's going on out there?"

"We don't know." Riley started. "Systems started going down- the internet went out, phones, cell repeaters, then, well, power apparently. Looks like it tripped the emergency lockdown procedures."

"Thanks for telling us where you went, by the way, really helpful." Jack said sarcastically. "We searched about four labs before we got down here. By then the phones were out."

"Sorry." Mac said weakly.

"Well you'll have six hours to hear all about it." Riley said.

"Why six hours?" Gayle asked, concerned. Riley crossed her arms.

"Because Lockdown Procedure 3.5 is a containment strategy." Riley explained. "To keep things in the building if someone's trying to take them. Or, in another sense, to trap people in place to mitigate a threat. It's automatic if someone without a security dongle swipes into a sensitive part of the building. They get in and the building locks down- trapping them for building security to pick up."

"Yeah but why six hours?" Gayle asked again. Riley sighed.

"In order to shut it off, a party outside the building has to send a special radio signal to a receiver in the security office telling them they're in place to respond to the threat. That signal is the only thing that can release the doors, so if there's a hostage taken or someone's holding a gun to a security officer's head, they won't get their way. Unfortunately, the security office is effectively buried in about 10 feet of concrete, so that signal has to go through a repeater in order to be detected." She paused. "In the event that the power fails and the repeaters go down, there's a safety override that trips after 6 hours."

"And there's no other way out?" Gayle asked.

"Nothing short of chipping our way up through the ceiling." Riley explained.

"What if you hack your way through the doors one-by-one?" Jack said. Riley shook her head.

"The locks are technically mechanical, but the mechanism is embedded in the door itself- no access if you want to pick them manually. The only way to open them is with the electronic keypad. I'm good, Jack, but even I can't hack a computer if it's off."

"Okay, so, we're stuck here for a while." Jack said, turning toward Mac. "Not the first time that's happened. You wanna tell 'em about that time in wherever-istan during that raid? Didn't get out of that basement for days." Mac registered the question but the nausea was back with a vengeance. He was more focusing on not heaving more blood into the bucket.

"Mac?" Gayle prompted.

"Gimme a sec…" He forced out, swallowing hard against the acidic sensation in the back of his throat. He felt like if he moved, he was going to hurl, but if he didn't move, it would just get so bad he wouldn't be able to stop it anyway. Even though he'd just emptied his stomach, it felt like it was uncomfortably full. Sweat was all but pouring off him, soaking into his clothing and the bedding below.

He laid there for minutes that felt excruciatingly longer, knowing Gayle, Jack, and Riley all had their full attention on his struggle. The intense feeling of nausea thankfully subsided as he tried hard to slow his breathing, rewarded only with menacing patterns swirling around in his vision. The sense of fullness didn't fade, though, and that was worrying. He knew what was filling his stomach, and the sense of dread that accompanied that knowledge was not helping anything.

Gayle fought with herself as she went to get another blanket and washcloth for him. A sense of realization was dawning with her too. MacGyver was already in shock. The letter may have lead them all to believe he had another two days, but based on his vitals and the amount of blood he had already brought up, if no interventions were initiated really soon, he would bleed out before the lockdown lifted.

She placed the washcloth under the fawcett and turned the knob. The stream came out strong at first and then dwindled. "Really?" She muttered to herself. "Pumps must have been electric too." She said as she pulled a basin off the supply shelf and stuck it under the weak flow. If there was any water pressure left in the building, she wanted it.

"No water either?" Jack said. "Well this is just like wherever-istan, isn't it." Mac chuckled weakly at the remark.

"What did you two do there for water?" Gayle asked, trying to push back the uncomfortable conversation until she had something more concrete to say about things.

"This jackalope built a still." Jack said, cringing. "And not the good kind neither."

"Hopefully it won't get to that in the next 6 hours." Riley said, her face worried. "But Gayle, Mac's not looking good. You have any idea what's going on?"

Gayle covered Mac with another blanket and handed him the washcloth and cup again. "Do I have your permission to talk about your health in front of Jack and Riley?" She asked seriously, hands on her hips.

"Mm-hm." Mac consented warily. It was all he could do to swish the water around his mouth and spit it into the bucket without vomiting again. The world was spinning but he still desperately needed to hear what she was about to say. She watched him for a moment, as if wondering if he was about to change his mind.

"In that case, you're right, Riley, he's not looking good." Gayle started. "His heart rate is too high, his blood pressure's low, and he's bleeding, badly, into his stomach." She said. "If I had to bet, I'd say the poison was making his body unable to clot blood. He might have lasted the 72 hours if he hadn't started bleeding, but now that he is, he's on a clock."

"How much time's on that clock?" Riley asked.

"I can't answer that." Gayle shook her head matter of factly as she pulled the emergency bag off its hook on the wall, and set it on the bed next to Mac's. "I'm going to put the bed completely flat, then start an IV and get some fluids into you." She explained quickly, trying to change the subject. He looked at her, worried, as she cracked open a very dusty binder of emergency protocols. "If you-"

"You can answer it." He said. Gayle stopped.

"You're right." She said finally. "But I'm not going to. You'll thank me when this is all over." She dug into the bag, coming up with an IV start kit, tubing, and bag of fluids, which she set between Mac's legs on the blankets. "Arm" She demanded, pulling back the covers just enough for Mac to move his arm over them.

"Hold up now." Jack said, piecing things together. "You sayin what I think you're saying?"

"Hold this." She said, handing the flashlight to Jack. it had been a good three years since she'd put in an IV, probably 6 since she'd placed one in the dark on someone as anticoagulated as Mac was. She regretted the drama she'd accidentally stepped into with her comments, but she needed to focus. Fortunately, Mac had excellent veins, even for his blood pressure. "Fluids aren't going to solve the problem. At the end of the day you're still low on blood and still losing more. But it will give us a little bit of a buffer and hopefully make you feel a little better until we can figure some things out." She explained.

"All for it." Mac said. He was sweating again, and almost shivering despite the blankets, staring straight at the ceiling and trying to make the blood stay in his stomach. He hated being so quiet, barely able to say a couple of words at a stretch. He wanted to help. Things felt so urgent, even as slow and controlled as Gayle seemed to be going. He couldn't place it, but he also couldn't bring himself to speak or banter with Jack or do anything to lighten the mood or even help with the technical aspect. Heck, he wasn't sure if he could stand or fight off a threat, which was the real point at which he knew something was seriously wrong.

"Okay, poke." He felt the needle enter his arm, felt her move it sideways and a sharper poke that almost made him move his arm out of the way. "I'm in." Gayle said unnecessarily, letting out a breath as she collected a tube of Mac's blood from the fresh IV, attached a pigtail and flushed the line, covered it in a clear plastic film, and capped it. She let his arm go and took a few seconds to spike the bag and prime the line and then attached the whole setup to Mac's IV.

"Okay, now I need a volunteer."