Chapter 21

When MacGyver awoke, it took him a few moments to fight off some of the residual stinging in his skull, not to mention the disorientation. He blinked several times, grunting as the waves of dizziness faded and the world seemed to take shape around him once again, becoming solid and tangible.

That's when he became aware that he was lying flat on his back on the floor, which contributed to why he felt stiff all over. He began to remember what happened; he'd been in a fight of some sort, and he vaguely recalled being sent head over heels across a large room, where he tumbled over the couch to slam into the coffee table just past it…

Yes, he was on a mission… to save Ruby. The two assailants who'd taken her had subdued him, and now he was lying on the floor and his arm was hanging from someplace just above him, as though caught on something. He gave his wrist a tug, and realized he was handcuffed to a radiator.

Well, at the very least, he was still alive. He was very grateful for that, and he could still do something… he could still save himself and Ruby.

Very carefully, he sat up to get some bearing and familiarize himself with the current state of his surroundings. The room appeared to be an old bedroom, perhaps what had originally been the master bedroom itself–judging from the size of the bed and the closet beyond it.

He quickly spotted the slim figure of someone lying in the middle of the bed, who appeared to be bound and secured in chains. He felt both relieved and disheartened at seeing her like this, especially when her eyes snapped toward him, realizing he was awake.

"MacGyver," she said, the relief evident in her own voice. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I think so," Mac answered, "are you alright?" He gave an experimental tug of his handcuffs, finding it wouldn't budge. No real surprise there. He then turned his attention back to Ruby, his brow furrowing as his eyes took in the full length of her body, noting the chains that were secured around her wrists, arms, midsection and legs, even securing her ankles together.

This was still rather… perplexing. Why had someone gone through all the trouble of practically wrapping her up in chains when all they did was slap a pair of handcuffs on him and leave him next to the radiator? And… why such heavy chains, when ropes probably would have been more than adequate for keeping someone like her immobile?

"I'm okay," Ruby answered readily. "I guess we're gonna be stuck like this for a while." She made a face as the helplessness threatened to overwhelm her.

Mac sighed and immediately began to survey the room, considering any and all possibilities. The first priority had to be to get them out of there, and that meant getting the cuffs off his wrists and the chains off of her.

Of course, if it came to that, he could just scoop her up and carry her out, chains and all, and then worry about getting those things off of her once they were in a safe place. That meant… he just had to find a way to get the handcuffs off of his wrist.

He knew it would be impossible for him to stand up or even move around much. He repositioned himself into a sitting position to help ease the beginnings of pins and needles he was feeling in his leg, no doubt due to the way his foot had been angled after he'd been left here unconscious by the two men who were holding them captive now.

"Ruby," he said after a moment, "can you tell me what happened after I was knocked out?"

"Not much happened at all," Ruby gulped. "One of them moved you down to the spot where you are now, and put those cuffs on you. Then they left the room."

"Do you know these people?" Mac pressed, trying to get as much necessary information as possible.

"Yes, they're from the same place where I was held captive." Ruby eyed her legs indicatively. "They are… associated with the people who made me able to walk again. But they also held me prisoner and tried to…" She swallowed. "They tried to keep me there and wouldn't let me talk to anyone. Now they want to bring me back."

"Why?" Mac demanded. Part of his mind was still working on trying to figure out a way out of here, and how to get the cuffs off, but the unsolved puzzle involving Ruby, her prosthetics and the people after her had remained burning in his brain for much longer. Since it was all connected, he hoped that getting more information about the first puzzle might provide clues to solving the second, even if the former was far more pressing.

Ruby made that scrunched-up face she always did when she felt overwhelmed and like she really didn't want to talk, or just couldn't. She looked away stubbornly, almost defiantly.

Mac sighed. The girl was being as tight-lipped as ever, and he still didn't understand why. "Ruby," he tried pressing again, "what is it about you and these people that you don't want to tell me?"

For a long moment, it seemed she wasn't going to answer or even look at him.

Eventually, however, just as he had almost given up trying to pry anything out of her for the moment, she finally spoke. "MacGyver, there's something you don't know about me that you really ought to know now."

"Oh really?" Even despite his concern, and the situation at large, he couldn't help the trace of snark in his tone. "Ruby, there has clearly been something more going on involving you than meets the eye since I found you in the park. So how about filling me in?"

There was a sense of trepidation as she licked her lips briefly, then she dropped the proverbial bombshell. "I'm a cyborg."

Mac skipped a beat, unsure what he'd been expecting (if anything, really) but it certainly wasn't that. "Ah, come again?"

"I'm a cyborg," Ruby reiterated stiffly, as though that revelation was a painful or embarrassing admission and she did not like having to state it a second time. "When those people took me from the hospital about a year ago, they replaced my legs, my entire spinal column, some parts of my hips and one shoulder, and one of my arms… with robotic parts. They also put some kind of… circuitry in my head, too. It makes me able to control them." She spoke with such distaste over the matter that she might as well have been admitting that her body was full of leeches and her head had been replaced with an iron goldfish bowl.

At first, Mac had a tough time just overcoming the sense of shock he felt at the revelation, part of him wondering if it could really be true. Yet at least some of the evidence was there… she could walk again, and she seemed to do so better than anything he'd seen in the realm of prosthesis before.

Still processing some of what she said, he found he had to ask, "But why did they replace that much of your body? The way I understood it, only your legs and the lower part of your spine–"

"Yes, that is true," Ruby interjected a bit snippily, like this topic still left a bad taste in her mouth. "When that man approached me in the hospital a year ago, he told me he could help me and I believed him. And he did make me able to walk again, but he didn't tell me that he wasn't doing this to me to help me. He was trying to make me into something more, and he did things to me I didn't even ask for. I just wanted to return to my normal life." Her voice cracked bitterly.

"So what does that mean?" Mac wanted a clarification. The scientist part of him was finding all of this very interesting, especially if it was true. It seemed that Ruby had some kind of prototype technology in her, or at the very least, something that he had never heard of before. The fact that everything was so secretive, that Ruby had been taken from the hospital a year ago through nefarious means and vanished without a trace, meant that something was going on that someone didn't want anyone else to know about.

That could mean it was highly experimental at least, possibly dangerous or an indication of highly questionable motives at worst. It raised a number of red flags.

"Ruby, are those two men cyborgs, too?" he asked her.

"Yeah, they are." Ruby eyed him pointedly. "MacGyver, they can do things that normal people can't do. They…" She gulped. "We… are stronger than… than other people." She winced sharply, clearly hating the prospect of having to lump herself in the category as those people.

The wheels were already turning in Mac's head. He had gone up against opponents before who were stronger and better at fighting than him, but… in two separate instances now, he could have sworn that there'd been something odd about those men when they went hand-to-hand.

For one thing, they did seem to move a bit differently than most people… a bit more swiftly and seamlessly than men of their size and bulk should've been able to. On top of that, Mac had noticed that each time any part of his body came into direct physical contact with any part of them during a fight, he kept feeling like he was trying to wrestle with a steel-based elephant.

"Is this why they have you wrapped up in those chains, Ruby?" Mac asked her. "Are you… strong enough to break out of ropes or cords?"

"Yes." Ruby closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. "They put these… special chains on me because they can't be bent or broken, not even by a cyborg."

Mac did take note of the term 'special chains', though he filed that information away for later. "Then they have to be secured in place somehow," he found himself musing aloud. "Ruby, do you know if they put a lock or something on the ends of the chains?"

Ruby shifted her position and bent her knees to angle her head around, trying to get a better look at the chains that held her. "Yeah, it looks like they might've put a lock somewhere back there… I see it on the back of my right leg."

"Can you turn your back a little more toward me, so I can see the back of your legs and the lock?" Mac requested.

When she finished following his direction the best she could, he found that he could make out a small but sturdy-looking lock. The area of the chain that currently secured her legs together had been looped around three or four times, effectively forcing her legs to stay together without a shred of daylight between them while also keeping her ankles together.

He momentarily winced at how tight they appeared, knowing that if she had her original legs, this would have been cutting off her circulation and would be quite painful for her… but in this case, it was just holding the prosthetics together. He also noted that one of her arms was secured very tightly against her side, but her other arm was allowed a bit more slack… perhaps they didn't want to risk injuring the parts of her that were still flesh and bone?

Mac returned his attention to the lock. It was resting on her calf muscle, on top of the wrapped layers of chain where she couldn't touch it or get at it in any way.

Well, both of them were still in a similar boat… he wasn't particularly sure what her capabilities were, but even if he did have some kind of idea… he preferred to rely on what he knew–what he was experienced with–at least for now. That meant the first order of business would be to figure out how to get the handcuffs off of his wrist, and then either carry Ruby out or perhaps see if he could find a way to get that lock off her chains.

"Alright," Mac said, deciding that the time for inquisitiveness was over for the moment. They had to focus on getting out of here first, anything else could wait–especially learning more or satisfying his own curiosity. "Do you have any idea where they went?" He figured they must have temporarily stepped out or something, otherwise the helpful stranger wouldn't have been able to slip in.

Ruby shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they went out to get something to eat or something."

Mac once again began to survey the room. After a moment, he snapped his fingers as though he'd just noticed or thought of something… or both. "I have an idea," he said.

Ruby blinked. "What, something to get you out of those handcuffs and me out of these chains, or does this include a way out of here?"

"Both," Mac said, warming up to whatever was going on in that mind of his. "And I'm gonna need your help."

Now Ruby was staring at him incredulously. "How? What can I do?"