They'd spent half the night going through several different research facilities that had experienced data breaches, hoping they'd stumble on O'Neill's crew. They had become depressingly familiar from one to the next. With absolutely no luck.
But they knew they were in the right place now.
Hineholds Biotech had a reception area with security guards, all of whom Mac and Jack found unconscious on the floor. Then it had a central lab area. Beyond that, there were interconnected hallways of offices and a few smaller labs. They knew the likely reason for the break in here was toward the rear of the building in the self-contained virology lab.
Jack looked around and quipped, "Well thank heaven for small favors ... At least this seems like a singular apocalypse kinda place. It's been such a pisser of a day already, I was expecting robots again."
"I don't know, Jack. I still think those robots at Terminus were pretty cool."
"Even the one that zapped you?"
Mac rolled his eyes, but flashed a grin. "Well, Five was cool."
Thornton had CDC and FEMA on tap to mobilize to contain any threat beyond the confines of the building. The Tac team was staged across the street, out of sight, in the event that this group was monitoring satellite feeds. And they'd gotten Homeland on board to beef up security at the big game in case they were right about the intended target and things got out of hand here.
But they had to be careful. They didn't want to alert O'Neill and his men of their presence, so it was just Mac and Jack taking point.
Heat signatures confirmed their initial count of twelve men. And the same satellite said that while most of the group had spread out into two of the labs that the blueprints identified as virology, four of the men were patrolling the rest of the building.
Mac and Jack used the code Nikki lifted to enter the building and she kept them apprised of what she could see via the various types of satellite via comms as they moved stealthily toward the main grouping of men in the depths of the facility.
"There's a group of four leaving one of the labs with a cold storage box of some kind."
That was inconvenient. They'd really been hoping to take these guys down before they got what they came for.
"That could definitely be the virus the CDC ID'd as the likely target," Mac said soberly. "What are the others doing?"
"Two of them still seem to be in the other lab. Four are still fanned out. And two ...shit, shit, shit! Two are headed right toward you guys!"
They started moving in the opposite direction.
Mac went through a quick mental list of options.
He needed to be sure they could contain or destroy the virus if things got ugly, and the only thing he could think of was halfway across the building in the fire suppression system by the executive offices, unless he noticed something else along the way.
He exchanged a glance with Jack. "Nikki, direct Jack to the guys with the box. Since they've probably nabbed the virus already, I'm going to get something to destroy it with."
"Of course you want to split up as the zombie apocalypse is about to start," Jack groused, even though he thought it sounded like a pretty solid plan. "I got a feeling things are gonna go from bad to total shit storm here, I'm not gonna lie."
Mac grinned. "If we're gonna start quoting Zombieland again, does that mean I should start calling you ... does that town you're from even have a name?"
"Hey now, don't you start trash talkin' my hometown, boy. What would Nana say?"
"I could call you East Texas, maybe," he grinned, thinking that was the sort of slightly cool nickname Jack would probably adopt for himself forever once this mission wrapped up.
"Oh no you don't!"
"What's wrong with--"
"That's the nickname of this character from another plague-ey apocalypse thing."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, it's called The Stand and it's by Stephen King so you know it's full of bad news."
"You've read a book?" Mac raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
Jack looked around for something to throw at his partner, but couldn't come up with anything. "I've read more than one book, ya brat." He laughed softly. "Just not that one. It was a miniseries back when I was in college."
"Well, I think Mr. King would be flattered since if this virus gets out it could be an actual apocalypse." Mac grinned. "So don't worry, East Texas. I won't let things go from bad to total shitstorm if I can help it."
Jack returned the grin and shook his head. "Aright, Mission City, but if we're splittin' up and you find yourself anywhere near that son of a bitch O'Neill without me, you remember Rule Number One, ya hear?"
"So long as if you get the drop on him, you remember Rule Number Two."
"Oh, I'll remember it alright. But it'll be two in the gut to pay him back."
"Good," Mac said with forced casualness. "I'd like to know he's being interrogated at a blacksight for the next six months."
They bumped fists before they diverged at the end of the hallway Nikki sent them down.
Mac headed toward where he knew without a doubt he could get his hands on some liquid nitrogen.
He could occasionally hear low calls in a mix of English and Pashto, but his route had him moving away from them. He was mentally running through a checklist of his plan to destroy whatever the Mazari had moved out of that lab in the cold box Nikki saw on heat signatures. So, he sort of lost track of what was going on on comms between all the members of the team going back and forth.
Suddenly, Nikki said sharply, "Mac take a left at the end of that hall and get to the east exit. The other group of four just started heading your way. Fast."
"Copy."
Suddenly Jack's joking reminder about the first rule of Zombieland was much less funny.
He couldn't get picked up by these guys again.
He moved as quickly as he could down the hall, but also, after a second's thought, fished something out of his pocket. Having a backup plan seemed like a really good idea if there was a chance he wouldn't get clear before these assholes caught up with him.
At a shout of, "Over there!" he broke into a run.
He could hear feet on the tile floor behind him, so he picked up the pace to a full sprint. He rounded the corner that would take him toward the exit, and ran right into two huge guys. The other two were suddenly right behind him.
He could hear Nikki, Jack, Thornton, and the rest of the Tac team in his ear, but he couldn't exactly track what they were saying or find the breath to respond to them as he tried to keep from getting his ass handed to him.
It was a losing battle though, and he knew it.
But still, he broke a hold by pushing off the wall into a backflip he hadn't managed since he took martial arts in high school. He landed a textbook snap kick to the midsection of one of the guys that sent the man sprawling.
He had a split second where he almost dared to hope he could get enough of an advantage to take off for the exit again, but someone he hadn't gotten eyes on threw him up against the wall from the side.
He spun to fight back, but one of them got in a pretty solid elbow to the hinge of his jaw.
The hit made the world shift for a second, but a second was all they needed. It was four to one. Mac had known the minute he'd come around that corner that this was how that fight would shake out.
They dragged him into one of the offices right off the hallway. The hit to the jaw must have loosened his earpiece, because he felt it slip out and fall to the floor.
Two of the men wrestled him out of his coat and dropped it on the floor, he assumed because it was faster than frisking him.
They forced him down into a chair, and while they pinned him there, by his arms and throat, another man cuffed his wrists and ankles.
Once he was cuffed, he stopped struggling. They released him and he took several gasping breaths now that the pressure on his windpipe was gone. The room still seemed fuzzy from the lack of air during his futile wrestling match, but as he pulled a few level breaths, things started to clear up.
He looked around at them with a defiant gaze. "So, you caught me. But my partner is on the package. Your plan is still screwed."
The three men surrounding him looked more amused than anything else. One of them even chuckled.
"What's so funny?" Mac asked mildly, trying very hard not to freak out.
These were O'Neill's people. He already knew what being their captive was like. They wouldn't let him survive this time, he was sure of it. And he was pretty sure he'd rather they just put a bullet in him now than drag him somewhere they could torture him for weeks again.
Jack's out there, he reminded himself, There's no way he's not figuring out how to get us out of here and get that virus back. And there's a whole tac team across the street. You're gonna get out of here. Just breathe.
One of the men, who Mac thought looked vaguely familiar, grinned in a way that sent a chill down Mac's back. "What is funny, MacGyver, is that either of you might believe that wasn't intentional."
Mac froze, his jaw tightening. Did we actually walk into a trap here?
His heart started hammering in his chest, like a caged animal that senses a predator nearby. Memories of the beatings, the waterboarding, the constant hunger and thirst, flooded his mind, and he broke out in a cold sweat. His breathing picked up, but he forced himself to slow it down.
You're okay, he assured himself. You've survived these assholes once with almost no training and your backup trying to catch up to you from a world away. Then you didn't just survive them, you blew their camps to shit and got Zack home. Nikki and Thornton were watching so Tactical must be on the way, and Jack is already in the building. And he can probably hear all of this because no one has noticed my earpiece on the floor.
Just stay calm and keep these guys talking or if they leave you alone for a minute, there's always your backup plan.
He flashed an amused smirk of his own that he felt was pretty convincing. "I guess that means you think I didn't let myself get caught to pull all of you off moving that virus so my partner could take out the rest of your team."
Though there were distant sounds of gunfire and shouting, laughter rippled through the group.
They shifted, and the familiar, barrel chested figure of Ron O'Neill stepped forward.
Mac didn't have to try to force an expression that didn't betray his fear at being captive again. This man's face made him so blindingly furious, it erased everything but his determination to put an end to the threat he posed.
"Well, well, well. Here's Hollywood, trying to get in our way again. Just a fly in the ointment, aren't you?"
"You bet your ass I am." Mac glared at him, and as a Die Hard quote found its way out of his mouth, he managed a cold smile. "The monkey in the wrench."
Now you have to live through this. Because if you don't make it out of here to tell Jack that you quoted Die Hard to an actual terrorist, he'll know somehow and never forgive you.
O'Neill smiled back just as coldly. "Too bad for you, that's exactly what we were hoping for." He tipped his chin at the door. "The rest of you go make sure his buddy stays chasing that dummy canister. Karim can help me out here. Once we know what his people are up to, we can head to the stadium and set up for the show."
As the other men drew weapons again and moved out of the room, the biggest of the guys, ostensibly Karim, moved behind Mac.
O'Neill stepped closer and leaned forward, pinning Mac's wrists and forcing the cuffs to dig in painfully while he got right in Mac's face.
"You see, kid, we already got the sample we were after. What we want now is to know who you really work for and what they know about our plans today."
Mac forced himself not to pull away from the imposing man who was almost nose to nose with him. He refused to react to the metal digging into his wrists either. He felt nothing but cold fury as he looked into those hard, amused eyes.
"You couldn't get anything out of me in almost two weeks in that hellhole you swaggered around in Afghanistan. What makes you think you can get anything out of me now?"
O'Neill smiled, a wolfish expression that made Mac recoil just a little.
"Well, you see, I've given that a lot of thought." O'Neill backed up and went over to the desk that dominated this office, his back to the rest of the room.
Mac couldn't see what he was doing. He really didn't like that.
"At first I thought you were just some kid who used to be a bomb tech. But, that fake think tank we grabbed you out of, and the way all my operations have gotten taken apart since you blew that first camp to high heaven and half the US government showed up to haul your skinny ass out of there, I figure you're maybe CIA...Homeland...some kind of special forces bullshit ... something like that. So, we've got to step up our game if we don't want you getting in our way again. Since what we tried before just seemed to get more of that brain of yours working on ways to screw up what we're doing."
He turned, holding a syringe and a vial.
Mac stiffened, eyeing O'Neill while still trying to subtly look around for any means to get out of the situation.
Not good, Mac.
O'Neill made a show of drawing a pale yellow liquid into the barrel of the syringe.
"We figured it was better to come prepared to just shut off the part that kept you quiet last time we had a chat. Because I had a sneaking suspicion you were gonna follow the breadcrumbs we left."
Okay, this isn't awesome.
But most drugs aren't as good for interrogation as pop culture would have you believe. And to use them for it at all you'd really need to know what you're doing. Which I honestly doubt he does. I'm not sure if I feel better or worse about that.
But maybe I can at least get him to tell me what it is.
Mac's eyes followed O'Neill's every move. He kept his expression just shy of neutral, letting one side of his lips quirk up into a smirk.
"You must not remember me all that well. My brain is pretty hard to shut off."
O'Neill stopped in front of him, holding the syringe just about at Mac's eye level. "Well, our guy tells me this is pretty good at shutting off brains in general, and you won't even remember what you said afterwards. Which is fun for me. Leaving you confused and your people all chasing your tails before you all die."
Mac couldn't quite manage to take his eyes off the syringe. His brain tried to get past the idea that he was bound to this chair, about to be drugged and interrogated by a man who'd sadistically questioned him before, to figure out what this drug was so he could maybe figure out how to resist it.
And he wasn't Jack. He'd admit that it wasn't his favorite thing in the world, but he didn't get panicky over the idea of an injection in and of itself. This was quite possibly the least ideal way to find yourself on the pointy end of a sharp object though. So, the situation gave him a sense of how his partner felt about it.
He swallowed again.
O'Neill held the syringe in his teeth and took a rubber tourniquet from his pocket.
Mac involuntarily moved like he didn't remember he was cuffed to the chair, but Karim pinned him with both hands, pulling his arm hard into the chair, with a death grip on his bicep.
Come on! Think, Mac!
Pale yellow solution ... Lowers inhibitions and has amnesiatic effects ... Doesn't need to be administered slowly by IV ... has to be fast acting ... O'Neill expects it to slow me down ... Midazolam maybe? If it is, it should...
O'Neill smirked into his face as he snugged the band around Mac's immobilized arm. "You're gonna talk this time, kid. About any damn thing I want you to. Real quick like."
Mac let the knowing look that always annoyed Jack and Bozer come over his face.
"You know midazolam hasn't been shown to be especially effective as an interrogation agent. Just because you keep some around for digging bullets out of your thugs doesn't mean that'll get you anywhere with me," Mac said, attempting to confirm his suspicions about the substance, and maybe forestall the inevitable.
An eyebrow went up. "How in the hell do you ... You know what? Your brains are nothing but trouble. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when we turn them down a notch."
Mac squirmed, hoping that the longer he drew this out by making it difficult, the more likely it was for Jack or the DXS Tac team to interrupt what was going on here.
Karim pinned him harder, shifting to wrap one arm around Mac's neck.
He couldn't breathe. Dark spots danced in front of his eyes.
He smelled alcohol, then heard a grumbled, "Christ, you've got shit for veins."
"Sorry for the inconvenience," he gasped as he managed to pull in a little air.
Between his own struggles and Karim's efforts to stop him from doing so, Mac was only vaguely aware of the sting of the needle, but was almost hyper-cognizant of the burning warmth that started to spread through him.
The tourniquet was pulled loose at the same time Karim released him from his strangle hold. Mac was just about panting but he forced himself to take a couple of careful breaths.
When his vision cleared, the two men were standing in front of him, leaning close to peer into his face.
Mac's head wobbled like it was suddenly ten pounds too heavy for his neck. He blinked slowly a couple of times.
"What the..."
He shook his head like he was trying to clear it.
"How much of that stuff did you..." he slurred as his chin headed toward his chest.
He stubbornly pulled his head back up, but he went sort of crosseyed and his head dipped again, staying down this time as he slumped bonessly into the chair.
"Goddamnit," O'Neill swore. He grabbed Mac by the jaw and jerked his head up. The blond didn't react at all. When O'Neill released him, Mac's head dropped like dead weight, his neck making a slight popping sound from the force of being let go under no resistance.
"I knew that was too much for a guy his size," the large man growled. He got out his radio to try to raise their medic. All he got was static. "Son of a bitch." He gave Karim a hard look. "You know anything that counters this shit? Last thing we want is him in a fucking coma and no good to squeeze any intel out of. For all we know, his people already know where we're headed and we need to know if we're walking into an ambush."
Karim shrugged. "Asif didn't say."
"I'm gonna go find him." He gestured at Mac. "He's not going anywhere, but cover the door and hallway in case his buddy comes looking."
O'Neill picked Mac's head up one more time, this time even inexpertly trying to pry an eye open, but not really knowing how to interpret the fact that the blond's eye was mostly rolled back. He felt his pulse, too. Slow and steady. This time when he let go, Mac's head lolled backwards, connecting with a thud against the chair's headrest.
O'Neill swore again, then just gestured for Karim to follow him into the hall to cover any means of rescue or escape.
The door clicked shut.
The clock on the wall marked the passage of a hundred twenty ticks.
Slowly, Mac raised his head, at first just slitting his eyes in case someone was looking in the door or his slightly full ears had deceived him about being alone.
Finding himself as unobserved as he hoped, Mac allowed himself a little grin. Some time he'd have to thank Bozer for getting him into yoga. All that meditative movement had really improved his control over his breathing and heart rate. He took a few energizing breaths to help him clear his head.
Of all the things they could have drugged him with, anything in the benzodiazepine family was what he'd been crossing his fingers for. The stuff just didn't seem to hit him like it did most people. It was exactly the family of stuff they'd found didn't work great before his shoulder surgery. They'd found something that worked after their failed attempt at chilling him out. He couldn't remember what, but he was glad he had that information before today or he might have been a lot more worried about the situation.
He felt a little fuzzy, but in no danger of passing out or spilling state secrets.
Mac used his tongue to extract the paperclip from where he'd tucked it in his cheek as soon as he realized he was about to face way too many guys to fight off on his own.
He held it between his teeth and leaned forward to get it into his fingers. His fingers felt a little slow and stupid from the drug, but not enough to keep him from working the paperclip into the type of bend he needed.
In less than a minute, he had his hands and feet free. He picked up his jacket off the floor and put it back on before he even tried getting up. The action gave him confidence that he was okay to get moving.
He made the mistake of standing up at his usual speed and nearly fell over in a wave of dizziness, but he steadied himself against the chair and it passed quickly.
He scanned the office for anything he could use to knock out Karim. He felt a little bad about it, but he settled on a boat in a bottle that was on the desk. He worried if he spent too much time looking, there was the possibility that the drug would have a chance to affect him more heavily. Then he noticed his earpiece still on the floor.
He bent carefully to pick it up and stood slowly to avoid another dizzy spell hitting him.
When he slipped the earpiece back in, Nikki, Thornton, Jack, and Ross from Tactical were all talking at once.
"Guys!" Mac interrupted with as loud a whisper as he dared.
Everyone but Jack went silent. "Mac! Where are you?"
Mac forced his brain to remember the trip down the hallway. Then he looked around again. "Executive office. South corridor near the utility room I was originally headed for. One guard."
"You sound drunk, kid."
"They shot me full of midazolam. Fortunately it doesn't work so hot on me. But as far as they know it knocked me out."
"You okay?"
"Mmm." Mac took a breath. That stuff was starting to make him nauseous and sweaty. "I don't know if you could hear them through my earpiece, but the canister we were tracking is a fake. O'Neill said something about heading to 'the stadium' with the real one as soon as they're done with me. I think that means we were right. They're planning to hit the Superbowl."
Several voices spoke at once, but Mac just kind of ignored them.
"I'm gonna knock out this guard, then we need to stop them from leaving this building with that virus."
"Tactical is approaching the west entrance now," Thornton affirmed.
"Oh, and I need some flumazenil. That's supposed to counteract midazolam. And if I'm going to stop a biological terror attack, I'd kinda like to not feel like it's Mardi Gras in my head."
"Oscar Mike to your location," Jack said without any further commentary.
"We'll get you what you need, Mac," Patty affirmed.
Davies, the medic with the team, spoke over comms then. "I don't have any on me, but we should be able to have it here before too long."
"Copy," Mac said gratefully.
"Wait for Jack!" Nikki admonished. "You sound like you're going to keel over!"
"I'm fine. The stuff they dosed me with at the clandestine services school hit me way harder, and I ran like eight blocks after that."
More talk ensued, but Mac pulled out the earpiece. He couldn't listen to Nikki and Thornton and Tactical all talking through the underwater sound that had filled his ears. Mac never liked anything that slowed down his brain. He could count the number of times he'd actually gotten drunk, really drunk, on one hand. Being dosed against his will renewed his earlier anger. Somehow, that cleared his head a bit.
He crept over to the door and wiggled the handle, then he backed up.
When Karim opened it to check on the noise, Mac brought the bottle down solidly against the back of the man's skull and he went sprawling, but didn't fall unconscious the way Mac had hoped. Instead, he struggled back to his feet and started yelling to draw others back to their location.
Distant gunfire from the other part of the building told Mac that Tactical had arrived, but that didn't mean there were members of this group free to respond. And normally Mac felt pretty confident about taking on more than one assailant. But right now, his head felt pretty swimmy, he wasn't steady on his feet, and everything still sounded like it was underwater. So, he just threw himself at the large man and hoped as they began grappling that he'd rung his bell enough to be able to gain an advantage.
After a minute or two of struggle, Karim got the upper hand in the fight and pinned him against the wall by the door. He would have had an advantage over Mac on a good day based on size and experience, but even if the drug wasn't one that affected him in a typical way, it still affected him.
Now that it had been a few minutes, things had started to spin a bit and his stomach started to roll with the motion, like being on an amusement park ride with a belly full of ice cream.
He thought he might just pass out as Karim managed to both keep him against the wall and rain blows with his free hand, but suddenly, the large man was pulled off Mac and there was a satisfying crack, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor.
Mac slid down onto the floor to catch his breath.
A second later, Jack dropped down next to him. "Hey, kid, you with me?"
Mac nodded slowly. "Yeah ... um ... starting to feel a little ... um ..."
Jack must've heard something in the hallway that Mac didn't catch, because he jumped up, drawing his gun again. He was out the door a split second later and Mac could vaguely hear the sounds of a struggle and then a gun going off.
Part of him hoped it had been O'Neill coming back and that Jack had just ended him in that hallway, though another part really wanted to see DXS take him alive and take down whatever group he was a part of, and find out how he'd wormed his way into the army to begin with.
Mac used the wall to push himself to his feet, but needed to find the chair and sit for a minute.
Jack came back through the door then.
"O'Neill?" Mac asked.
Jack shook his head. "Some other goon of his." Jack held up a vial. "This says," he squinted, "Flu-somethingorother. Was that the stuff you were hoping for to undope you?"
Mac held out his hand so he could read the label himself, but found he couldn't get his eyes to focus. "I think so? Have to let the medic have a look at it." He squinted up at Jack. "What's going on on comms? I couldn't stand the noise. Had to kill it."
"The package we made when we got here is empty just like you said. And between me and Tactical, we've taken out eight guys. Oh, and that chucklehead," Jack cocked his thumb at the floor where Karim lay bleeding from a head wound.
Mac wasn't sure if he was just unconscious or if he was dead, but he found he actually didn't care at the moment.
He frowned. "That leaves three of the guys we saw on the satellite feed on our way in here unaccounted for. And one of them is O'Neill."
"Son of a bitch," Jack swore. He pressed his earpiece to reactivate the mic. "What the hell do you mean a car just peeled out of here and there's no one in pursuit. Everyone from the Tac unit came inside?" He hit the earpiece again and swore a steady stream. "We just lost those three apparently. I'm gonna be havin' words with Jeffries about this."
Mac got to his feet, managing to keep from swaying. He slipped his earpiece back in and tapped it. "Thornton, we're heading toward the van. I need the medic to meet us there. We may have some of the counterdrug off one of O'Neill's guys." He started toward the door, with Jack right on his elbow. "Nikki, find that car and track it. We know where they're going, I'm pretty sure, but we want all the personnel we can throw at it to be able to ID these guys."
He killed his comm then and had to shoot a hand out at the wall to steady himself. He glanced at Jack's concerned expression and said, "Gimme a hand? If I try to keep going on my own, I'm probably gonna wipe out."
Jack kept his surprise at the request off his face, but wrapped a hand around Mac's arm as they moved out. "You got it, kid."
Mac kept moving and Jack kept him from weaving into the wall or falling on his ass a few times.
They were nearly outside when Jack decided that since Mac asked for his help today, maybe he would be more okay with Jack's need to check in. "You really doin' alright, Mac?"
Mac nodded, then regretted the movement because it made the dizziness worse. "I'll be doing better once Davies reverses this drug for me."
"Is that you dodging the question or are you really that mission focused?"
Mac half smirked. "Both?"
Jack laughed and cocked an eyebrow at him.
Mac shrugged. "Everything's spinning, and I kinda want to throw up." He absently rubbed his forehead. "But I'm gonna be there to take O'Neill down with you. Just need our medic for a sec first."
"Well, I'm sure she can't wait to stab you, kid. But I meant how you doin' in general, too, since they caught hold of you."
Mac caught the door handle to let them outside. His jaw tightened. "We have to get this son of a bitch. Today."
Jack squeezed his shoulder and steered him toward the van so he could sit down on the back as the medic jogged over. "We will, kid. He's goin' down."
Nikki met them at the side of the van. "I clocked a beige Volvo, California plates heading away from here right about the time Jack found you. I'm running a program through the street cams to keep track of it. It's moving slow. Traffic for the big game is already picking up."
Mac was about to reply but the medic arrived next to him at that moment. Mac squinted up at her but couldn't quite get his brain and mouth to cooperate.
Jack held out the vial they'd confiscated off of one now-dead terrorist. "Is this the stuff Mac said can get his head right?"
She looked it over. "If we trust what they had on them, this looks legit." She looked at Mac. "Because of traffic, the dose I asked for isn't here yet and ETA is at least ten or fifteen minutes. You want to risk it?"
Mac took a short breath. Thinking was getting really difficult. "We have to. We've got to catch O'Neill and his guys before they make any more moves." Something in his brain helpfully kicked back on, too. "If Thornton can get us a bird, we can bypass all the traffic!"
Jack tipped him a grin. "I'm on it, kid." And he tapped his earpiece and took a couple of steps away.
Mac looked at the vial Davies was eyeballing like she really didn't like it. She'd been looking at her tablet, too.
"You ever use this stuff before?" he asked, mostly so he'd know if he could ask what to expect.
She shook her head. "I've seen it used to bring people out of sedation, but never just on a conscious patient." She set aside the vial and opened her bag. "I want to get your vitals now, and after I dose you. This shit can have nasty side effects..."
"I'll be fine," he interrupted.
She kept talking like he hadn't spoken "And you can't just run after those guys if it hits you wrong."
Mac's immediate response was that he was going after those guys even if the boss ordered him not to. But he realized the impulse to just say what he was thinking was probably disinhibition induced by the drug, so he bit down on it. Instead he pulled off his jacket and offered his arm for the blood pressure cuff she pulled out of her bag.
She smirked at him as she wrapped the cuff around his arm. "No arguments from Agent MacGyver?" She raised an eyebrow. "If you don't give me a hard time about something, no one will believe the after action report."
He started to shake his head and just wound up blinking a few times. "I'll try to think of something," he said somewhat hazily.
After she released the blood pressure cuff and retrieved the pulse ox clip he didn't remember her attaching to his finger, she stuck a thermometer in his ear and he flinched and ducked his head away. Then he realized what he was doing and stopped so she could get his temperature.
"You should warn people before you just get near their face," he said a little testily.
It beeped and she put it back in her bag. "Maybe I should warn people named Mac, but I've never gotten any complaints before."
"You work in a place filled with combat vets and people who experience combat type experiences every day." He gave her as hard a look as the drugs he was under the influence of would allow. "Maybe think about what that means once in a while."
Davies cocked her head to one side but didn't give him a real response. "Your vitals are low for you, including body temperature. They must've given you a boatload. You're positive it was midazolam?"
Mac gave a curt not. "That's what I guessed and that pissed the guy off, so I'm as sure as I can be. And that vial is what he sent someone to bring me around with when I convinced them they knocked me out." He could hear the sound of a helicopter in the distance already. That meant this show needed to get on the road. "So I need you to give me that counter drug."
She looked at the vial again. "I'll be right back. I want to check in with the home office before I proceed."
Mac sighed. "Okay."
He let his head drop to his chest and his eyes closed.
Jack came back and sat down next to him. "How you holdin' up?"
Mac shook his head, just barely. "I'd probably want to just lay down on the ground if I wasn't so pissed off."
"I'd be surprised if you weren't. Getting jumped and drugged, not a great way to head into the last leg of a mission."
"Not just that." Mac opened his eyes and sat up straight. "They set a trap, and we walked right into it."
Jack's forehead creased. "Is that what they said?"
Mac shrugged. "More or less. And if it wasn't, they wouldn't have been prepared to drug me."
Jack thought about that. If it was true, he felt like Thornton should have gleaned that from the intel gathering that happened while their team was flying back from Germany. He decided not to comment on it though. Mac was already having a visibly hard time staying focused. "Well, you made 'em sorry they did it, I bet."
Mac's posture shifted and his features hardened. "If they aren't now, they're going to be." He put a hand to his forehead. "Ugh, I hate this," he said almost under his breath.
Davies returned then, offering a sympathetic look. "Everybody already knows how you feel about being medicated, Mac. Even when it's actually good for you."
He rolled his eyes a little. "You get the greenlight to fix it?"
She made a face. "Well..."
"Well what?" he asked impatiently. "Did they authorize it or not?"
"No one at Medical loves it."
Mac rolled his eyes and this time he couldn't quite check his impulse to spout off. "So, instead of using medication for its actual intended purpose, they're okay with me just pounding a few double espressos and hoping for the best while I try to go stop a terrorist from taking out roughly eighty thousand people on national television?!?"
"No." She shook her head. "Medical wants to pull you, bring you back to the office, and monitor you while you sleep this off."
Mac stood abruptly. "Not gonna happen. This is my case!"
"Oversight apparently agrees with you, and ordered me to proceed."
Jack looked at Mac. He didn't love Oversight overriding the entire medical staff about what was pretty clearly a medical decision. But he also knew that Mac getting pulled from the O'Neill takedown would be far more damaging than whatever this drug was, he was pretty sure. But he knew, based on the look on his partner's face, Mac wasn't even going to ask. So, he did. "Risks? Side effects?"
Mac shot him a glare. "Doesn't matter, Jack."
"I didn't say you shouldn't do it, just that you should know what you're getting into. Even Patty's not happy about it now that she's heard from Medical, man."
Mac sat back down and Jack wasn't a hundred percent sure if it was Mac demonstrating that he really didn't care what this drug was going to do to his body so long as it got his brain fully back on line, or if he'd just realized that standing wasn't something he could currently sustain.
"For a change I actually agree with Oversight, Jack. Let's get this done."
Jack got a somewhat skeptical look about him. "Why don't you want her to answer me?"
Mac huffed a sigh and said, "Fine. Side effects can be some mild upset stomach, maybe some sweating and a headache, all the way up to seizures."
Jack ran a hand over his hair. "And I'm guessing you're soft pedaling it for me."
"It's potentially a long list." Mac shrugged again. His eyes looked so heavy, Jack thought sheer stubbornness was keeping them open now that the stuff he'd been given had had time to really hit him. "I already told you, it doesn't matter. I'm not getting pulled from the field today."
Jack squinted. "You really want to risk it?"
"Not especially." He shook his head and gave Jack a slightly amused look. "And I knew you were gonna make that face. But I need to finish this."
Davies butted in then. "If you have side effects, you're no more likely to be able to finish this mission than you are all doped up."
Mac glanced between her and Jack. "Side effects are relatively rare. Most in less than 5% of patients. Those aren't bad odds."
"Why do you know things like that off the top of your head?" Davies asked, clearly a little annoyed that Mac was disagreeing with prevailing medical wisdom and that he was being backed up by the boss.
Mac gave a little head shake and eye roll. People had been asking him that question since he was a little kid. He usually just answered that he read a lot, but he was annoyed that even though she'd gotten the go ahead straight from the top, she was still balking. Their requested helicopter was landing in a parking lot up the street, and the Mazari crew had a good quarter hour of lead time on them. Besides, if she didn't just give him the drug to reverse what they'd given him, he really was going to wind up laying on the ground. His limbs felt like they were made of lead at the moment.
So one eyebrow went up, and he said, "Why don't you?" Her eyes widened just a little. "Look, our ride is here. And I get this isn't ideal. I'm not thrilled about it either. But I need to do my job."
"Alright, but if you get the feeling this is going South on you, we'll be prepared to respond immediately."
An amused look flickered over his features. "Don't be dramatic."
She started going about the business of preparing to dose her patient. Jack cleared his throat. "I ... I'll be right back. I need to check in with Patty about something."
Mac managed not to snicker. "Sure. You do realize nobody is suggesting stabbing you, right?"
"Haha, Carl's Junior." And he did step away to get back on comms with Thornton to give her an earful about Oversight pushing Mac to do something Medical thought wasn't a great idea. It just happened to have the side benefit of him not having to watch his partner be a voodoo doll for Davies.
When he turned back, Mac was on his feet, looking at least 80% more like himself.
Mac gave him his cockiest grin. "You ready?"
"Are you?"
The grin didn't fade. "Let's finish this."