"Chip? What's he mean, chip?" Walsh growled.
"Oh, he is a slippery devil, isn't he?" Murdoc said with his usual amount of amusement.
"You think this is funny? He's got reinforcements on the way because he snuck a microchip past our search, and that's funny to you?!?"
Murdoc tittered his continued amusement. "Not funny, per se. But it is entertaining, isn't it?"
"No it's not! The drug isn't done yet!"
"They seem to think it is."
"Is that what you got out of that conversation?"
"Big Mac might test the drug on himself out of desperation or, frankly, from what you've said, as a way to put an end to what we're trying to accomplish here by taking himself out of the equation."
"Yeah, yeah, he would. Smug bastard."
"Yes, well, unless he was sure it was at least marginally safe, he wouldn't let young Angus anywhere near it."
"Bullshit. I've told you, Jimmy never gave a shit about that kid."
"No, you've told me that once his dear Mrs. died he got distant and left 'that kid.'" Murdoc cocked an eyebrow at his partner of convenience. "And certainly he's allowed his son to take tremendous risks in his work, but ask yourself why, if he didn't care, he recruited young Angus for DXS. If he didn't care, why become his boss? Why remain as Oversight in light of his cancer diagnosis?"
Walsh gave him a hard look. "That's a good point."
"So, let's see what happens, shall we?"
"What about their backup?"
"If they show up before we can take the formula and leave our friends lined up in body bags, we'll deploy our existing countermeasures."
"You really want to lose the rest of our personnel to the old KX formula?"
"They're hired muscle. If Phoenix arrives, we let the meat grinder do what it does … Make use of our scraps."
Walsh nodded his large head slowly. "Awright. Let's try this your way."
0-0-0
Elliot led the way, using hand gestures Steve clearly understood, but that left Riley clueless. She didn't try to get clarification though. She just followed along through the underbrush, hoping, somewhat desperately, that no giant venomous snakes or horrible insects dropped out of the branches or were already clinging to hair she wished she'd put up.
Despite wearing the spaghetti strapped top she left LA in, she was drenched in sweat. At this point she didn't know if it was the oppressive damp heat of the place or her raw anxious nerves.
There was no way Oversight should've let Mac do this!
Okay, maybe that was unfair. Nobody really 'let' Mac do anything. You kind of either got with the program or got out of Mac's way most of the time. Especially if Jack was in trouble.
The way Mac had sped back to LA from Africa when Jack had gotten in deep with the Russians had surprised even Riley. The way he'd casually nearly sacrificed his father had surprised her even more.
Well, not really.
Mac and Jack were brothers in a way that was even deeper than blood. And though she knew Mac and Jack both danced around it, they often had a father-son relationship that defied both of their rough edges. Jack just had to approach Mac differently than he did her. They had some similar emotional scars, but Riley's had made her act out as a kid, once she grew out of that she found herself more than willing to be emotionally vulnerable, especially with people who showed her genuine love and concern. From bits and pieces she'd collected about Mac over the years, mostly from Bozer, it seemed to her like he'd been trying to prove himself worthy since his dad left, maybe even since his mom died. It was like Mac had walled off his heart. No … not really. Mac loved fiercely and unconditionally most of the time, to the point of absolute recklessness for his family and friends (or complete strangers - see 'trying to prove himself'). So there were walls alright. But he'd scale them for others. When it came to letting anyone in though … Riley thought Mac defended those walls more tenaciously than he ever had anything else. And sometimes … sometimes she wished he would just stop living in that fortress for a while. She felt her face warm and brushed it off as the heat and exertion. The Land Rover they'd "borrowed" wasn't far off, but the trees and underbrush were dense and the terrain was steep and rocky. She wished Oversight hadn't been so keen to comply with Murdoc and Walsh's demands. They should have found another way to get Jack out of here. It's not like their team was the only one at Phoenix!
She probably shouldn't have been surprised that Oversight let Mac be involved in this mission though. In fact, if it served him, Riley figured the boss would've hauled Mac right out of surgery to save his own ass. And since Jack was on the block, even if James MacGyver was a halfway decent father, Mac was a grown man who'd proven he was willing to quit over a lack of respect for his autonomy.
But that didn't mean she wasn't a wreck over the whole thing.
She was nauseated over what might be happening to Jack. That made sense. He was more of a dad to her than Elwood ever had been in even his best moments. But she couldn't quite explain, even to herself, the fluttering in her chest and twist in her guts every time she thought about Mac in the compound they'd gotten satellite footage of, especially since she knew Walsh and Murdoc were the ones who'd dragged him there, barely out of surgery after months of getting sick, one infection after another.
She hated the feeling.
It was utterly helpless and fearful and those were two feelings Riley Davis didn't succumb to easily. She half smirked when she thought of Steve and Elliot's slight teasing back at the jet. But she swore if either one of them said anything like that in front of Mac, she wouldn't just erase their identities. She'd sic Jack on them.
Thinking of getting the guys out of here in one piece and recovered sort of slowed her brain down so she could focus on what was in front of her. Which was good, because as they crested the hill she caught sight of the compound they were hoping to crash.
0-0-0
Jack rolled over with a groan. His chest ached with horrible persistence. His heart skipped along with increasing irregularity. The heaviness in his limbs grew every minute. And the last time he'd pried his eyes open, his fingers had been a discouraging blue-grey color.
"I think this is it, old man," he grumbled to himself.
"Talking to yourself, now?"
Jack startled at the sound of Mac's voice and forced his eyes open.
Mac grinned down at him. "All paranoid and crotchety. Classic case of space dementia. You hate to see it," Mac quoted perfectly from Firefly.
"It's good to see you looking less like you're about to keel over on me, Kid."
Mac's grin morphed into more of a smirk. "And it sucks to see you looking like you're trying to check out on me. But I've got a possible solution."
Jack pushed himself up to partially sitting with an obvious Herculean effort. "Lemme guess, I'm not gonna like it."
Mac forced a laugh. "You know, I never thought I'd get the opportunity to say you have a gift for understatement."
"I mean, we both knew you coming back with more experimental sharp things wasn't exactly gonna thrill me." Then Jack paused, frowning at Mac. "What happened to your hand? I mean, what un-happened? Because you were all bandaged up before."
Mac puffed out a slow breath. "That's what you're not gonna like actually." Mac swallowed hard. "The formula works," he breathed like it was an admission of terrible guilt.
Jack sat all the way up, ignoring how his chest squeezed and his head swam. "You didn't."
It was a simple sentence. Short. To the point. And far more full of Jack's legendary temper than Mac would have believed possible given how bad the man looked.
"I … No … Not like you mean," Mac hedged.
"Spill," was all Jack said in a clipped reply.
"It was just a small amount. Weakened formula. Subcutaneously. It was just to see if we'd gotten to cellular regeneration without reprogramming the cells altogether."
Jack frowned. "What would happen if you reprogrammed the cells?"
Mac swallowed. "Long story, that I can fill you in on later. Point is, once we had that evidence, Oversight took the full dose."
"Go on," Jack said with more steely fury under a thin veneer of calm.
Mac found himself looking everywhere in the room but at Jack. "Like I said, it works."
"How do you know?" Jack asked tightly, still regarding Mac's hand intently.
"Seems like it cured Oversight. And it cleared up my hand in less than ten minutes. So if it can't cure what ails you, we're more screwed than we thought," Mac said lightly.
"Why in the Hell-?"
Mac interrupted. "You can bitch at me for playing Guinea pig later." He gave another somewhat apologetic shrug as he pulled out the full syringe and an alcohol swab. "For right now, I've got other things to apologize for."
"Like?"
Mac hadn't paused in his task, swabbing a slightly less filthy area of Jack's arm, then pinning him by the same wrist and uncapping the syringe with his teeth. "Like how much more this is gonna suck than the other versions," he said, not sure if he didn't spit the cap out to intentionally muffle his words or if he really was in that big a hurry. Either way, when the formula hit Jack's bloodstream, he screamed like a man being skinned alive.
Mac finally spat out the cap, tossed the syringe, and picked up the beaker he'd passed off as water on his way in here. If they hadn't suspected what Mac and Oversight were up to before, they would know now.
Trying to ignore his partner's distress, Mac braced for the enemy to come crashing through the door.