Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Tracker in place.” Bozer’s hushed voice crackled through the comms. There were the distorted sounds of a drink being shaken, as Bozer kept up his act as a bartender.

“Good.” Riley’s voice came in at a normal volume, secluded and watching through cameras. “Now he just needs to grab his drink and we’ll get prints too.”

Mac flipped on the faucet, the sound echoing slightly. The public restroom was empty, his procured signage apparently doing its duty. He raked wet hands through his hair, breaking up the gelling and letting it fall naturally.

“I think he grabbed it.” Jack’s voice filtered through. “But someone moved in my way, Riley—?”

“Got it. Target’s prints are on the glass.” Riley confirmed, satisfaction in her tone. It wasn’t a ‘the world is at stake’ op, but it was delicate. Its short length was full of dozens of moving parts, and every movement and potential complication had been rehearsed ad nauseam. Mac wiped his hands off on his suit jacket, grimacing at the tacky feel of the gel on his fingers, before he shrugged the jacket off and fished out the removable shoulder pads. Changing a silhouette could do a lot of heavy-lifting when it came to undercover work. Then he flipped the jacket on inside out, going from blinding white to a sleek black, which was more conformist to the event. Everything he could shed from the eye-catching persona he’d needed to play earlier would make him better equipped to beat a quiet exit without being tailed.

“Boze, you are go for retrieval.” Riley called out.

“On it.” Bozer’s response was intent and focused. Mac ruffled his hands through his hair a little more. Did Riley have to really put so much product in it? It was becoming a nightmare to get it back to looking presentable.

“I have it.” Bozer’s confirmation came soon after, hushed but victorious. “I’m clocking out.” Mac couldn’t help but smile slightly into his own reflection. Bozer and Riley had both taken to most aspects of the job impressively well, but Bozer found special joy in undercover ops like these. He was a natural born actor, and Mac was quietly proud of the fact he finally had stages and characters in abundance. Mac took off his glasses and tucked them into his front pocket, before looking back down again to begin tugging off all his gaudy rings.

“All right.” Jack’s voice held a touch of relief. His main role in the whole op was to jump in if things went pear-shaped, and it was clear that he was happy to have been bored for the evening. “I’m heading out too. Mac?”

“On it.” Mac let the final ring clink onto the expensive marble next to the sink. “Was all the dropped glass finally worth it, Boze?”

“It’s not my fault, I had a bad teacher.” Mac could hear the pout in Bozer’s voice.

“The last time I had to bartend was for an op years ago.” Mac defended playfully. “So what if I was a little rusty?”

“It’s eyes off, guys. I need to pull out and cover my tracks in the system.” Riley cut into their bickering with wry professionalism. “You better pick up the pace, Mac.”

“C’mon, Riles. It takes him time to pretty up.” Jack crooned teasingly.

Mac scoffed, loud enough to be audible over comms, but he was still smiling to himself as he scooped up the rings and tucked them into his pockets. He stepped back from the mirror and frowned at the bulges they formed in his side pockets. It was a small detail, but it could potentially catch someone’s eye. He wasn’t going to take any risks, he didn’t want to be the one to blow the op right as they were getting home free. The others wouldn’t let up ribbing him about it for months. He fished the rings back out and spilled them across the counter, frowning down at them in thought. He could slice open the shoulder pads with his SAK and pack the rings inside…?

Mac was just reaching into his inner jacket pocket for his SAK when a hand clamped over his mouth, forcing his head back, and there was a sharp sting against the side of his neck. It was done quickly. Smooth, professional, and almost casual in nature: hand over mouth, needle into neck. A well-rehearsed one-two.

Mac reacted immediately, trying to pry the hand off his mouth with one hand, and driving his other elbow back.

His elbow lacked the room to be effective, and the hand that had plunged the needle into his neck switched to a restraining hold around his chest. The hand over his mouth was rigid, unshifting as Mac scrabbled for a grip to yank it away.

Then the drug took effect, horrifically quick. Tingling danced across Mac’s body, pins and needles turning his limbs weak, sound distorting. Mac’s hand over the hand on his mouth slipped and dropped down to his side. As his neck went limp, his assailant pinned his head back against their shoulder.

“…out now.” Bozer’s voice crackled in his ear, in and out of focus. Cheery from a job well done.

Mac’s legs were a mess of pins and needles, and they gave out on him. The person behind him lowered him down. The hand stayed across his mouth until it slipped instead to the back of his head to lay it on the cold tile floor, almost mockingly gentle.

Mac opened his mouth, blinking fast to try to clear his blurring vision of the glaring ceiling lights, but sound failed him. His throat felt lax and disobedient, he breathed slow and shallow. He felt cloyingly trapped, like he had on the rare couple of occasions he’d had sleep paralysis.

“…too.” Jack’s voice swam in his ears. Calm and completely oblivious. Close yet impossibly far. “…Mac?”

Mac parted his lips, summoning all of his strength for a final attempt.

A finger slipped into his ear, prying up the edge of the comm and then pulling it free, carrying away the voices of his friends. Another casual gesture, like plucking lint off someone’s suit. Mac felt cold, and terrifyingly vulnerable, lax and immobile, like a puppet with all their strings cut.

A gloved hand cupped the side of his face, turning it slightly until a pale face slowly seemed to materialize. The dark hair, and darker eyes aided in the identification. Mac’s heart started to race in his chest, the only part of his body that seemed to still obey him.

“It just seemed like such a shame.” Murdoc crooned, as if trying to justify himself. His face split across a slice of white teeth. “All dressed up…”

Murdoc’s words and face both fizzled out and then back in. Mac’s eyelids slipped shut, and he only managed to get them back half-open. He struggled to keep his eyes focused on Murdoc’s face, but he felt he had to, like a deer transfixed in the headlights that were about to lay it out across the road in its own trailing entrails.

Murdoc’s voice echoed, echoed, echoed…

“…with nowhere to go.”

Chapter Text

“He’s probably moving through crowds of people, so he can’t talk.” Bozer suggested hesitantly. They were all gathered in an isolated alleyway, the surveillance van idling and Riley and Bozer were both leaning against the front of it. Jack was trying to see if he could wear a line down through the asphalt. He’d been pacing ever since he’d gotten out and Mac hadn’t responded to his inquiry.

Jack paused, for a half-beat, and looked to Riley. “Can you confirm that?”

“I told you.” Riley retorted, slightly defensive. “I’m out of the system.”

“Well get back in it, then.” Jack’s voice rose slightly in frustration.

“Jack, all due respect, but it’s been…” Bozer tugged back his cuffed sleeve to check his watch. “…two minutes. Mac coulda had to wait for the elevator.”

“The plan was for him to take the stairs!” The tension in Jack’s voice peaked, and he gestured with his hands in front of him, as if he needed it to convey his concern.

“You get his point, Jack.” Riley cut back in. Ever since Mac had been kidnapped by Murdoc, her and Bozer had gotten pretty proficient at tag-teaming Jack when he got just a touch too overbearing. Or a lot overbearing. “Just… give Mac a little more time before you barge in and ruin the op. Matty would put your head on a spike. Hell, Mac would want to kill you with how long this took to prep.”

Jack let out a long, slow sigh. He halted in his frenetic back and forth progress, just closing his eyes and letting his head loll back.

“I’m not going to go barging in.” He said, more than a little begrudgingly. “Can you just… can you just get back on the cams?”

Riley gnawed her lip and shared a glance with Bozer.

“Please?” Jack stressed the word after she didn’t respond. “I just got a bad feeling about this one, alright?”

You have a bad feeling about it every time Mac leaves your sight for more than a couple minutes, Riley thought, but she didn’t say that. Jack had an entreating expression that told her this wasn’t the hill to die on. Mac had let her install cameras around parts of his house. Jack had stayed over a few times on guard duty at Bozer’s request. Bozer hadn’t complained after Mac had taken the front door off its hinges and drilled a peephole into it. They’d all learned to give each other a little grace after the whole kidnapping thing.

“Ok.” Riley pushed off the side of the van, wearily giving in. “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll have eyes again.”

“Thank you.” Jack emphasized the words, genuine relief and appreciation sinking through. Then he paused. “A few minutes?”

Riley paused on her way into the van to glower at him. Jack shut up.

***

Mac lost time. He remembered everything drifting away as arms hooked under his armpits and started dragging him. The rings scintillating on the edge of the counter, the heels of his dress shoes sliding across the gleaming tile. Then he blinked. Then he was on his side, not on tile but on something softer, and he was moving.

A car? Mac’s cheek was resting against something… leather-esque? Maybe pleather, or leatherette. A car seat. Faux leather tended to be easy to clean, liquids could be mopped up while fresh before having a chance to sink in, and ammonia did wonders for bloodstains. Mac hoped that fact wasn’t something Murdoc was counting on.

Mac’s whole body felt like it was buzzing, beyond just the vibrations of the car moving, not completely numb, but still excruciatingly weak and heavy. It took him a long few seconds to even pry open his eyes. His view was limited, a third of it taken up by the seat his face was smushed into. He was lying across the backseat, he could feel the middle seatbelt digging into his side, and see the edge of Murdoc’s silhouette driving. He managed to catch a street name as they turned in an intersection. It meant nothing to him, but he committed it to memory anyways.

“You awake back there, Angus?” Murdoc called back, with a sickly fondness in his tone like he was a dad calling back to their sleepy toddler. Mac’s skin crawled. He didn’t respond. He flexed his fingers, debating if he could unlock the door and get out of the car before Murdoc could stop him…

Then what? He highly doubted his ability to walk, but it’d potentially attract attention. Maybe a bystander would call the police. Maybe a particularly brave soul would try to intervene. Maybe Murdoc would shoot them.

“Don’t give me the silent treatment.” Murdoc tutted. “I’m chauffeuring you around and you won’t even grace me with polite conversation? How rude.”

Mac tried to take stock of what he had, it wasn’t easy with the vague numbness still encasing his body. He couldn’t feel the weight of his SAK in his front breast pocket, of course that’d be the first thing Murdoc would take from him.

“What’s the plan?” Mac finally forced out. Every word felt like trying to shift a weight off his chest, and he had to speak haltingly, breathing after every few words. “I’m not telling you anything about Cassian… and you’re not going to be able to hold me… any longer than you did… the last time.”

“Last time was business, MacGyver.” Murdoc sighed, as if the fact was a shame. “I needed you and your friends to help me get my little collective together, after all.”

Mac kept silent. He was sick of playing games with Murdoc, the back and forth that persisted no matter how much Mac refused to play along.

“This time is pleasure.” Murdoc continued, despite Mac’s silence. He adjusted the rearview mirror and Mac caught a slim glimpse of a smile. “You know what they say, all work and no play…”

“This is going to go badly for you.” Mac interjected. “Your best chance would be to drop me off at the side of the road now.”

“Silly, Angus.” Murdoc huffed a short but mirthful laugh. “That’s not what they say.”

“You try your luck, Murdoc… eventually it will run out.”

“It’s too bad that yours already has.”

***

Riley got back into the system and flipped through the cameras. After the first quick flip through, she frowned to herself and went through them again slower.

“Where is he?” Jack loomed over her shoulder, elbow resting on the back of her chair.

“I’m not seeing him.” Riley muttered. “But there’s so many goddamn floors, just give me a second.”

“Can you rewind back in time on one camera or are they just a live feed?” Bozer asked, looming in at her other side. Riley bit down the urge to shoo them both away.

“Yeah yeah, I’m on it, I just need to access the records which will take me a minute…”

Jack started drumming his fingers on the back of Riley’s chair. She wanted to snap at him over it, partly because she was also starting to get worried now. After a beat she pulled up the logs for a camera that caught the entrance of the bathroom and spun it back in time. The crowd swarmed, ebbing and flowing like the tide, individual people darting around backwards like stop motion ants. Minutes trickled by in seconds. Jack’s tapping got more aggressive. Then, abruptly, Mac flew backwards out of the bathroom, scooping the sign outside it into his arm as he went.

“Wait.” Jack straightened, even though Riley had already paused it. “That’s when Mac first entered. You’re telling me he never left?”

Riley ran the tape forwards, slower this time. Mac strode back into the restroom, smoothly placing the sign outside it as he went. People idled around minutes, no one entered the bathroom, no one left.

“Something’s gone wrong.” Jack asserted, and this time neither Riley nor Bozer could refute him. “He’s been in there too long, and he’s not answering on comms.” Jack was reiterating the obvious, as if Bozer and Riley needed it rubbed in their faces to grasp the gravity.

Riley gnawed at her lip, and started flipping through cameras again.

The van door slammed close behind Jack.

Chapter Text

Murdoc eventually pulled up to an old warehouse. Mac’s heart was pounding in his chest, throughout the drive a lot of the numbness had begun to fade, and with enough adrenaline he finally felt like he could do something. The chances of survival dropped drastically when a kidnapping victim was brought to a secondary location, and the more secluded it was, the worse it was. Mac had already lost a lot of chances, he could practically hear the percentages ticking down in his head with every heartbeat. 

Murdoc stopped to unchain a rusted old gate blocking the car. The moment the door shut behind him, Mac fumbled to the door by his head. He couldn’t manage to prop himself up on his elbow, but he got one hand up to the handle. He pictured the car model in his head the best he could. Not a toggle switch, but a lock and unlock button to the side of the handle. Mac’s hand clumsily swept over to it, and abruptly hit a protruding cover. Mac paused, then whacked the side of his hand against it to try to knock it off, but it stayed firmly on. Murdoc must have added it to keep him from being able to unlock the door and get out. Mac tried not to think about whether it was specifically for him, or if it was an overall convenient feature for Murdoc’s car to go with the easy-to-clean seats. The gate in front of the car squealed as Murdoc swung it open. Mac considered trying to get over the middle console and to the driver’s seat, but Murdoc had taken the keys with him and locked the door behind him. Mac had heard the mockingly cheerful chirp of it. In a last ditch effort, Mac tried the door handle, jamming his shoulder against the door as he did so, but it stayed firmly closed. Mac swore under his breath.

Murdoc got back in the car, started it back up again, and drove past the gate. Mac let his forehead fall back to thump against the seat cushion. Murdoc started humming to himself, something chipper. Mac didn’t want to think about what thought had put him in such a good mood, but there were a lot of things about his current situation that he didn’t want to think about.

Murdoc pulled the car into the warehouse itself, before turning it off again and climbing out of the car. Mac heard the click as he unlocked all the doors. Mac took a shaky breath and rolled painstakingly over onto his side. If Murdoc opened the passenger side door by his feet, and Mac could kick out hard enough the moment the door was open even a crack, he might buy himself the chance to open up the door by his head and scramble out on the other side of the car. He would have seconds, at best, Murdoc wouldn’t be too thrown off by the door being kicked into him. Could he even run? Mac wasn’t sure, but he had to try.

But then Murdoc opened the door by his head, which put a serious wrench in Mac’s plan. Murdoc grabbed the shoulders of Mac’s suit jacket and hauled him backwards out of the car. Mac twisted, trying to drive an elbow back into Murdoc’s side, only to be dropped hard onto his back on the cold cement floor of the warehouse before it could land. He winced at the impact, breath knocked out of him, and Murdoc took the opportunity to kneel with his knee braced on Mac’s chest.

Murdoc caught Mac’s wrists and cinched them together with a zip-tie, nonplussed with Mac’s attempt at a struggle.

“Looks like the drug is starting to wear off.” Murdoc observed cheerfully. “That’s wonderful, you can’t imagine how boring it is when they don’t squirm.”

“You know you can’t keep me here without drugs.” Mac snapped, breathless and terse, letting the back of his head thud against the floor. “You’re just not good enough.”

“You can’t escape with it, which is why you’re trying to wound my ego.” Murdoc smiled and tutted. “Such an obvious ploy…”

“I did last time.” Mac gritted out. “Drugged, handcuffed to a chair, and in a locked room. So you had to switch to something even stronger this time.”

Murdoc’s face curled into a sour frown. He grabbed the front of Mac’s jacket and hauled him up to his feet. Mac’s feet slipped and scrabbled for a second, struggling to even attempt to hold his weight, but eventually he got both under him.

“I let you escape.” Murdoc growled, tugging Mac closer. “I should make that clear before you start getting a big head over it.”

“Liar.” Mac mustered up a coldly victorious grin. “You didn’t expect me to get out. At least not that quickly. You were going to take me off the drip, and then conveniently forget one of your tools in the room. You didn’t think I could get out immediately, you wanted to have some fun first.”

“Whatever lets you sleep at night.” Murdoc dismissed, but there was an edge to his tone that told Mac he’d hit the mark. Mac had found out that when your life depended on telling if a killer was lying or not, you could get pretty damn good at reading them.

“You couldn’t, not after I’d beat you twice. Why else would you go and grab me again?”

“Because it’s my profession.” Murdoc scoffed. His hold slackened on Mac’s collar, and without the extra support Mac’s legs crumpled underneath him, and he landed hard on his knees, his shoulder catching on Murdoc’s leg before he could fully face plant. “I kill people, there’s no need to get an inflated sense of self-importance over it.”

“Now your lying is just getting worse.” Mac huffed. “You’ve never tried to deny your obsession with me before. Did my observation really hurt that badly?”

Mac tried to lean away, he figured crashing down onto the floor was better than any contact with Murdoc, but Murdoc grabbed a fistful of his hair to hold him in place and force his head back. The stinging in his scalp accompanied the burning pins and needles throughout his body, but he managed a smug smile anyways. It was the type of smile that Jack was always complaining about, because bad guys seemed pathologically compelled to try to knock it off his face.

Murdoc was no exception. The backhand caught Mac right across the cheek, and the pain was startlingly sharp. Looking at the bright side, it seemed like at least the numbness from the drug was all gone.

“You’re not making this better for yourself, Angus.” Murdoc’s tone dropped down, mockingly warning, and regaining some level of his composure.

Murdoc was probably right, and his internal voice of reason — which sounded unfortunately similar to Jack — was screaming at him, but it felt damn good to finally be getting under Murdoc’s skin for a change. So Mac kept smiling.

***

“He’s not here.” Jack snapped. He pulled his gun from its hidden holster and set to work clearing all the stalls. They were all empty, and the bang of the stall doors crashing open as Jack kicked them rang throughout the airy bathroom. Each one was a little louder as Jack’s frustrated terror mounted. The bottom hinge on the last one snapped off, and the whole door listed.

“You still haven’t found him?!” Jack rounded back to the sinks, where Mac should have been. “Aren’t you supposed to see everything, Riley?!”

“There aren’t cameras in the goddamn bathroom, Jack!” Riley snapped back over the comms, and Jack forced himself to bite back more sharp comments at the tight fear in her voice. “I’m not omniscient!”

Jack let out a frustrated sigh. It did absolutely nothing to abate the anxiety boiling in his chest. Then he caught the glint of something resting on the counter of the sink. He was over by the sink in a few quick strides, and his stomach twisted when he recognized what it was.

“There’s Mac’s rings, here.” Jack’s head slowly descended towards them, before halting abruptly before he disturbed anything. They were arranged in a perfect circle around a burner phone. Each was an equal distance from the other, and all the gems angled outwards. It was eerie, not the type of game Mac would play, not that he’d be playing any in a situation like this. “And a phone.”

“Bring it to me.” Riley immediately demanded. A touch of security reentered her voice. Jack could get it. She had something to work on again, which was grounding.

“It’s been left on purpose, I don’t know how much we’re going to be able to get from it.” Jack warned, but tucked it into his pocket even as he spoke. After a brief pause he scooped all of the rings into his pocket too, using his shirt sleeve as a barrier. Was it likely they’d get prints from any of the items? Probably not with how cleanly this had been pulled off, but even professionals could slip up. It was a sobering thought, not in the least because it was an acknowledgment of what had gone down. Mac had been taken, Jack didn’t know how else he could explain this. Mac was gone again, and right under his nose at that. Jack wanted to scream.

“Bozer, catch Matty up.” Jack ordered, painfully closing his eyes and letting out a slow, shuddering, sigh. He needed to keep his shit together. Mac needed him to keep his shit together. “Someone’s got our boy.”

Chapter Text

Murdoc zip-tied Mac’s hands behind him around a one of the freestanding support pillars. The pillar was almost as wide as him, so it strained his shoulders to draw them back in order for his wrists to overlap on the other side of it. His arm was also forced up to where his elbows were almost horizontally aligned with his shoulders in order for them to bend at the back corners of the pillar. The whole arrangement gave him very little wriggle room, at best he could pull his upper body maybe an inch away from it, and even that small movement pushed everything from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers from dull discomfort into sharp pain.

“Satisfactory?” Murdoc purred.

Mac tugged on it, trying to hide his reactionary grimace. He would have to pop his elbow out to be able to shuffle around the pillar, and there was no point to it anyways. None of the corners of the pillar were sharp enough to break the zip-tie against, and nothing was within leg’s reach of the base of the pillar.

“A little boring. I’d expected more… flair, from you.” Mac also didn’t have anything helpful on him. Murdoc had left him his suit jacket but had taken the tie, and his SAK had also disappeared. Mac tried not to let the latter get to him, but he sorely missed its familiar weight in his pocket.

Murdoc clucked his tongue. “The best art is a blend between complexity and simplicity.”

Mac flexed his fingers and glanced around. Past Murdoc, and far out of Mac’s reach, was a handful of crates. He hoped they were just coincidental, something that had just come with the rest of the warehouse, but they were probably Murdoc’s tools. Or maybe they were just typical warehouse junk, but Mac knew more than anyone how versatile things like that could be.

Murdoc looking him up and down, appraisingly. There was a small, twitchy, sort of smile on his face, as if he was trying to tamp down on his enthusiasm.

“I had to think for a long time about what to do with you.” Murdoc confessed. He twisted Mac’s tie around his gloved hands and took a lazy step closer to Mac.

“So much daydreaming…” Murdoc continued, letting his head roll back, closing his eyes and smiling slow and broad. The physical embodiment of savoring it. “…can reality even live up to that?”

Mac wanted to quip back, but a lump was rising in his throat.

Murdoc raised the tie towards Mac, spread between both hands, and Mac realized he was going to use it as a blindfold. He ducked and twisted his head away with his limited range of motion. Instead of trying to chase Mac around with it, Murdoc dropped one end of the tie and grabbed Mac’s throat instead, fingers wedged up under his jaw.

“I need both hands for this, Angus.” Murdoc murmured slowly, with mock patience. “So you’re going to have to be good for me, okay?”

Mac considered his options. He could keep fighting it, but Murdoc could easily just knock him out or restrain him further. Forestalling being blindfolded wouldn’t buy him much time, and could put him in an even worse position for escape. Mac stayed still. After a few seconds, Murdoc released his neck and gave him a patronizing pat on the cheek before blindfolding him. The blackness was immediately unnerving, and Mac found himself desperately straining to hear or sense Murdoc’s next movement. His breathing sped up despite his best effort to stay calm.

He flexed his fingers again. It was a useless movement, but there was a slight sense of control with it. It was something he could do even with most of his body immobilized, and even without his sight. It was like telling himself: I still have my fingers, so I still have a chance.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had such a perfect canvas.” Mac felt Murdoc’s hands land on the collar of his shirt, undoing the first button with an almost reverent slowness.

Mac clenched his jaw. Maybe silence was the best play after all, like an animal playing dead.

“I did so much research for you, you know.” Murdoc continued, conversationally. He undid the second button. “I have my usual methods, of course, but it’s been so long since I’ve had a… personal… project that would allow me full creative liberty.”

Third button. “It’s always remarkable to me just how many truly inspired methods of torture exist. We do love to find new ways to hurt each other, don’t we?”

Fourth. Murdoc was past Mac’s chest, now moving down his stomach. There was a fan working somewhere in the warehouse, Mac could hear the thump of it, and feel its moving air on his now bare chest. “I thought about utilizing il tormento della corda. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s this lovely technique of tying someone’s hands behind their back and suspending them from their wrists. Sometimes it requires extra weights to dislocate the shoulders, which can be annoying.”

Mac shrugged his shoulders inwards, reflexively. It didn’t help his imagination that he was already in the position for it, a rope looped through his zip-ties and then up in the rafters would do the trick.

Fifth button. Mac’s skin crawled. “It would definitely keep your troublesome hands inoperable.” Murdoc mused. “But it’s just so passive. Like hanging, you just pull the rope and watch.”

Then Murdoc undid the sixth button, the last one before Mac’s shirt tucked into his pants. Murdoc’s hands raised again, settling on Mac’s collar to pull it open a little wider. “For you I wanted it to be more… hands on.”

“Is there a point to this?” Mac asked. His voice came out far more brittle than he wanted.

“Patience.” Murdoc chided, his hands falling away. Mac didn’t know if he hated the actual contact more, or the tense, anticipatory moments between them.

Footsteps trailed away. After a few seconds, Mac heard the lid of the crate clatter to the ground, and then the clang of two metallic objects bumping into each other. All the noise was intentional, Mac was sure of it. Murdoc was trying to build up as much anxiety as possible before he did anything. It was all a performance piece to him, everything from texting his future victims riddles up until the inevitable kill. Hell, the disposal of the bodies was probably equally ‘artistic’, in Murdoc’s perverted interpretation of the term.

Mac took a deep, slightly ragged, breath. Then the footsteps returned, a languid accompaniment to Mac’s thundering heartbeat. He flexed his hands.

***

“The phone has next to nothing on it.” Riley breathed a frustrated sigh. They’d all convened in the war room after an extensive search around the building that Mac had been taken from had yielded nothing. Phoenix techs were combing through footage from cams around the area. Jack still couldn’t believe someone could’ve gotten in and out of the building without getting caught on any of the multitude of cameras Riley had been monitoring during the mission. “It’s brand new. No calls in or out, no log-ins, nothing to track its owner. There’s just…”

“Just what?” Jack cut in.

Riley’s lips twisted. “Photos, I guess, downloaded onto it.”

Jack braced his hands on the back of her seat, peering at the screen of her laptop. “What are the photos?”

“I haven’t looked—“

“—for christ sake, Riley, we don’t have time to waste.”

Riley pressed her lips tightly together but didn’t say anything back in response. She hit a few keys, and the phone’s photo album blew up wide onto her laptop screen.

Jack’s stomach sunk. That didn’t feel like a good enough word for it. It turned into a ball of ice.

The album was entirely composed of photos of Mac. Every image was crisp and high quality, catching him seemingly unawares and from a distance. There was Mac fumbling for his key at his front door with an armful of groceries, or Mac on a run with earbuds in and zoned out. Some Jack recognized as outings from the last few months. There was one where they were all at the beach, though only Mac was in frame from a slightly top-down view and grinning cheekily at someone outside the shot. Or there was one of them leaving Phoenix headquarters after a mission, Mac looking tired and Jack’s fingers just barely broaching the frame as he’d begun to reach out to pat him on the shoulder. There were at least a couple dozen photos, all different days, different places, different times.

How could Jack not have noticed? He couldn’t help but feel he should have known, somehow, off pure intuition if nothing else. He was supposed to protect Mac, to catch tails, to spot snipers, to take out anything that posed a threat. This had been a hell of a threat. The idea that Mac had been being stalked made Jack’s skin crawl like nothing had made it crawl before.

Riley finally clicked through to the last photo. It was the worst one.

It was shot through two blinds, which formed black angled bars at the very top and very bottom of the photo. The photographer would have had to have gotten close in order to make that shot, far too close. Between the two bars was Mac standing in his bedroom, lit up in the evening with the domestic golden glow of the ceiling light. He was angled mostly towards the camera, though he was looking off to the side. His hair was damp from a shower, and he was shirtless. Four red lines had been drawn on the photo, radiating out from Mac’s head, a crosshair. It was a sickening sort of brag, the kidnapper was saying ‘I could have killed him, any time and any place I wanted to.’

The leather of the armchair squealed in protest as Jack’s grip turned white-knuckled.

“Can you get anything from the photos?” Matty asked, voice cool and calm. Jack realized they’d all unconsciously clustered around Riley to see the screen, Jack behind her, and Bozer and Matty to either side.

Riley didn’t move for a long second, hands completely still on her keyboard. Jack didn’t dare glance at either her or Bozer’s expressions.

“Riley!” Matty snapped. Not angry, but an order. Riley jumped and started typing, presumably doing something. Jack was glad that Matty had her shit together, because that made one of them. Right then about the only thing he felt capable of was snapping Riley’s laptop in half, which would not be helpful.

“Nothing useful.” Riley said finally, her voice tight. “I mean, I can get the date and location of the photos from the metadata, but…”

…we know those already, Jack finished her sentence in his head.

Riley stopped typing after a few seconds. Boxes of text and data were all over her screen, so it was impossible to tell what had caught her attention.

“Riley?” Bozer was the first one to notice, speaking up with quiet concern.

“It’s—“ Riley’s voice shook slightly. She swallowed before continuing, but the shakiness didn’t leave. She spoke stammeringly and quietly, inadvertently making the anticipation brutal. “It’s… he signed it, he encoded it into the… he wrote… it’s.” 

“Fuck’s sake, Riley!” Jack yelled, frustrated, his voice booming far louder than he’d wanted it to. “Just—“

“—It was Murdoc.” Riley cut over him.

Jack couldn’t see what she was looking at. All the little numbers and letters on her screen blurred and bled together in his eyes. So he just asked her. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was tiny, like she was either about to cry or expected to get yelled at again. Maybe it was both.

Matty was looking straight at Jack. He couldn’t even imagine what his face looked like in that moment. His pulse was roaring in his ears. Bozer looked absolutely stricken, which wasn’t helping Jack’s tenuous grasp on control.

Jack painfully released the couch, clenching and unclenching his jaw. The silence was suffocating.

“I’m going to go break something.” Jack finally spoke slowly, with a painfully obviously forced calmness. “And if by the time I come back there isn’t an operable lead, I am going to start a grid search of all of L.A. Capiche?”

Matty watched him. Her expression was unreadable, or maybe that was just because her face was fuzzy too now.

“Ok.” Matty replied, equally slow and calm, as if what he’d said was perfectly sane and logical.

Jack nodded, shortly, and then walked out of the room. 

He found a door to rip off its hinges in the next hallway. He didn’t have it in him to apologize to the startled Phoenix agent on the other side of it.

Chapter Text

The cold, metallic flat side of a knife landed against Mac’s sternum, and he started creating a list in his head.

He couldn’t ignore it, so he made the list about everything he hated about the situation. It was a long list. He started from the small things, then worked up.

He hated that his shirt was being ruined. When he shifted or flinched he could feel the slick fabric brush against his skin before just clinging there, part of it sticking to a cut. It was a white dress shirt, tailored, and Mac used it just about every time he needed to attend a fancy event undercover. It was a nice shirt, and now — if he survived — he was going to have to burn it.

He also hated the feeling of blood on his skin. The way it ran, the way it slowly turned cool and tacky in the draftiness of the warehouse. Warm then cool, slick then sticky. It was just too much on top of everything else.

He hated being blindfolded. On top of the unbearable anticipation, and the infuriating lack of information, it also left him trapped inexplicably in his head. He couldn’t count stains on the tile, or review his surroundings, or plan his escape. No distractions, nothing else to focus on except the languid lines of fire being carved into him.

He hated how random the cutting was. Sometimes the knife dragged deeper, sometimes longer, and always in an unexpected location. Down from his sternum, or across his abdomen, or a waving line in from his side. The speed was also agonizing, sometimes it was one cut right after the other, and other times there were long moments of apparent deliberation between them. He could never know how, where, or when the knife would land. There was no bracing for it, no expectation, just constant tension and flinches.

But even more than any of that, he hated how quiet it was. Just the hum of that goddamn fan, and his own ragged sounds of pain. He should have savored being free from Murdoc’s unnerving rambling, but its absence was somehow even more chilling. It was like Murdoc was fully immersed, beyond the point of commentary. Just like the blindfold, it deprived him of any information. He couldn’t place where Murdoc was, or what he was thinking, or when he’d get bored and just end it. Mac was hyper-aware of how easy it’d be for Murdoc to just slit his throat, or drive the dagger between two of his ribs and wait until he’d drown in his own blood. There was nothing Mac could do about it, and in the silence there was no way for him to predict when it was going to happen.

The silence was also what made the sudden ringing phone so loud. Mac started hard, flinching back into the pillar and to the side, the strain in one of his shoulders ratcheting up into a sharp stab of pain.

Murdoc tutted, the first noise he’d made since he’d started. Mac flinched again when he felt contact against his chest, but no pain accompanied it as Murdoc wiped his knife off on Mac’s shirt. Then the buzzing ring stopped.

“Hello?” Murdoc made no effort to hide an impatient tone in his voice.

A pause. During which Mac breathed shakily and the fan just kept thrumming.

“Well, unfortunately, I’m on vacation.” Murdoc replied to whatever the person on the other end of the phone had said. He continued with a peeved scoff after a short pause. “No, I’m not joking.”

What was this? Some kind of strange, sick, skit? Mac wanted to enjoy the respite, but what felt like his whole chest and stomach was on fire, and he was too on edge about what was going to happen next. Mac had the uneasy feeling that this was just an appetizer, someone as sadistic as Murdoc was probably not just going to start and stop with knives. Was the phone call somehow Murdoc’s prelude to a whole new level of torture? What would be next, waterboarding? Electricity? Burning? With Murdoc, it could be just about anything.

“I’m well aware…” Murdoc trailed off irritably, before smoothing out his tone. “I’m a little tied up at the moment.”

Mac worked his jaw. He needed to do something at some point, but he also couldn’t be stupid. He’d gotten out of handcuffs before by dislocating his thumb, but that was aided by their rigidity. He didn’t think he could pull the same thing off with zip-ties. If he could get them in front of him he could break them with the right tension and angle, but having his arms wrapped back around the pillar made that impossible.

Murdoc had been silent for a long while. Mac was almost convinced he’d hung up the call that was either fake or real, when he spoke again.

“Fine.” Cool, a little begrudging. “I’ll take care of it, but it will cost more.”

A job?

“Two more zeroes should suffice.”

Real or fake? It felt too bizarre to be real, but too pointless to be fake.

“Oh, if you have someone else feel free to call them.” Murdoc put on an airy, careless tone. “As I told you, I’m on vacation. If you require my services, you have to pay me more for the inconvenience.”

Mac flexed his hands. Would this be his chance? There were three possible outcomes. First was the call turned out to be some sort of mental manipulation and the torture would just continue. Second was that Murdoc would leave Mac alone for long enough that he could make a move. Third was that Murdoc would leave, but would kill Mac first.

“Yes. Usual arrangement. Don’t call me again.”

Another crushing silence as Murdoc presumably got off the phone, then Murdoc let out a long, put-upon, sigh. There were some footsteps away, then a metal-on-metal clatter.

“Unfortunately, Angus.” Murdoc said. “I have an errand to run.”

Mac stayed silent.

The footsteps approached again, then looped around behind Mac, as if rechecking the zip-tie was still intact.

“I’ve been so patient for this.” Murdoc mused. “Months of waiting and whetting my appetite. Now I suppose it’s your turn, are you a patient man, Angus?”

“This is a strange game you’re playing.” Mac finally spoke up.

Murdoc let out a small laugh. “Is it? Be good.”

The footsteps trailed away, until even Mac’s straining ear couldn’t hear it. Then there was the sound of a car starting up, and the crunch of gravel as it pulled out of the warehouse.

Mac flexed his hands. This was a trap, it had to be. Murdoc would be waiting outside the warehouse, curious to see if Mac could break himself out. It was just another psychological manipulation, giving the illusion of hope and then crushing it.

But Mac had no choice. He had to do something.

***

Jack had to do something or he was going to lose his mind.

So when Phoenix detained a security guard who Riley had caught on a street camera taking a bribe to let Murdoc in a back entrance to the venue, he abandoned his fruitless grid search and beelined right back.

He knew what holding cell they had the guy in. Even if he hadn’t worked at Phoenix long enough to know all their patterns and routines, there was an extra bubble of activity surrounding that area. The security — Jack’s people — blinked at him for a second as he barreled down the hallway, before parting before him like the red sea.

The door bounced against the far wall. Matty’s back was towards him on one chair, and on the other side of the table bolted to the floor was the security guard facing Matty. Vaguely he noted Bozer’s presence in the corner on Matty’s side of the table. Jack bypassed everyone to go straight to the security guard. The series of events played out first in his mind, then he executed them exactly. No alterations, no hesitation, just thought followed by reality.

Jack caught the front of the guard’s uniform with one hand as he rounded the last corner of the table, twisting his fist into the fabric to get a secure grip before hauling him up to his feet. The chair the guard had been sitting on scraped back, and it wasn’t the only one. Jack kept walking, a few more steps, dragging the guard backwards stumbling over his chair and knocking it over. Then he stepped directly in front of the guard, grabbed onto his collar with his other hand, and with a burst of effort pushed him back hard against the wall.

The guard’s eyes had gone wide, but he hadn’t actually made a noise until his back hit the wall, then he left out a quiet, almost offended sounding gasp.

The small sound made Jack’s blood boil, growing louder and more infuriating every time it replayed in his head. Matty and Bozer were both saying something, but Jack ignored them. He had time. Neither Bozer nor Matty could physically pull Jack off of the guard, and it would take precious time to corral the Phoenix security to lay a hand on him. He was above them in the hierarchy, he was their superior officer, he’d trained most of them. Matty’s command would win out, of course it would, but it’d meet resistance.

“What’d you know about the man you took a bribe from today?” Jack demanded.

Matty said something, equally authoritative, and the guard’s gaze flickered back to her like he was waiting for her to rectify the situation. Jack sidestepped to fully block his view, giving him a small shake to regain his attention. “I know she’s scary, but why don’t you focus on the person who’s a little closer to killin’ you, alright buddy?”

The guard’s face cycled through a convulsive mix of expressions. Fear was somewhere in the mix, but he settled on surprised indignation instead. “I want a damn lawyer.”

Bad choice. Jack’s response was immediate, and in action rather than words. He hefted up, dragging the guard up the wall and leaning his weight in. The collar of the guard’s uniform had been pulled up as it held up the man’s full weight, the front pressing hard against his throat while Jack pinned fistfuls of folds against the wall on either side of his neck. It was strangulation, more or less, but Jack had time before the guard would stop being able to talk. “You’re gonna want a doctor first.”

He watched the man’s face redden, and his expression cycle back through the multitude of conflicting emotions.

Jack gave him a few seconds, but he didn’t have that much time, so he spoke first again. “I’m not going to repeat myself.”

“I don’t know, man!” The guard’s voice came out slightly gargled, but comprehensible. His face was turning more and more red and his expression had settled on fear this time. A better choice.

“You tell me one thing about him, and I put you down.”

“He was driving a black Porsche. It was nice, looked new.”

“What model?”

A small whine broke out in the back of the guard’s throat, voice getting desperate. “C’mon! You said you’d put me down—“

“—what model?”

“Fuck, I’m not a car guy. It had four doors, like a sedan or something.”

Jack let him go completely. His hands smarted, red with blanched white strips where the fabric had dug in. The guard stumbled when he hit the ground, and finally a hand landed on Jack’s elbow. Someone from Phoenix security, firm but not aggressive, a silent ‘please don’t make me do this’ sort of touch.

Jack turned and walked back out. He didn’t look at Matty or Bozer, just fixed his gaze on the doorway and strode out just as forcefully as he’d come in. Phoenix security filled in behind him, apparently just in case he changed his mind and whirled right back around, but Jack didn’t spare them a second glance either.

Jack tapped his earpiece. “Riley, can you do anything with that?”

“Yeah. If I can grab his license plate from when he arrived then I can track it to where he went.” Riley’s voice was hard to read through comms, or maybe Jack just didn’t want to read it. She sounded a little vague, distracted, like she was already working on it which was a reassuring sound. “Murdoc probably parked nearby, he would’ve had to. There was a lot of luxury cars coming into the area of this event, but I can narrow it down with the timeframe of when he paid off the guard…”

“Thanks, sweetheart.” Jack swallowed hard, more emotion had escaped into his voice than he’d wanted to. “Just— just get back to me on that.”

“You’ll be the first person, Jack, you know that.” Her voice strained at the end. They both tapped to mute the comm at the same time immediately afterwards. Locking it all down until it was all over. Jack hated that Riley was getting good at that too, that she had to be, but he was proud of it too.

Jack got back into his car and started driving again. Like a shark, with just the illusion that he could outpace everything, that he knew where he was going.

He thought of the guard, because that was the safest thing to think about. That little initial scoff, replayed, like the guard had no clue of the gravity of what he’d done, like he didn’t have to face the consequences of setting the fox into the henhouse. Jack figured he should’ve just kept holding the guy up, watching his face run the gauntlet of red to blue. He would’ve, probably, if he’d had the time, but he didn’t. Jack had no time at all, Mac had no time at all. Jack kept circling back to that thought, like target fixation, crashing headfirst into it every time. Mac could be… god, Mac could be a lot of things right then, and none of them were good. He could be dead already, he could have been dead since minutes after he was taken. Jack could have been too late before he’d even known something had happened. 

Murdoc always left Jack in lurch, too far behind, too unsteady, and too damn slow in every sense of the word. He didn’t have any time, but he was spending it anyways, at the speed of a ticking watch.

And Mac was the one picking up the tab.

Chapter Text

Mac was… limited, to say the least. The mobility he had to work with was shuffling a few inches to either side, sitting and standing up, and leaning out forwards a few inches from the pillar. The materials he had to work with were only his shoes and socks, which he could toe off and nudge around the pillar far enough to grab and work with while sitting down. He tried to get the blindfold off with his shoulders and the pillar, but it was on too securely.

So his chances were all reliant on his hazy memory. Unfortunately he’d spent very little of his pre-blindfold time looking up, which was the crucial direction. From the brief glance he was fairly sure that each pillar, about a story up, had a horizontal beam branching both forwards — towards the pillar’s pair on the other side of the warehouse — and backwards, into the wall of the warehouse.

He was also fairly sure that there’d been metal brackets holding said beams, which meant a potential sharp edge. Flaking rust, maybe, from an old leaky roof in disrepair, or even just the corners of the metal brackets might work if he could generate enough force. It seemed like a long-shot, even in his own head, but it was the only thing in even theoretical reach that could get the zip tie off. He doubted Murdoc would have left anything sharp nearby that he could reel in with his shoelaces, and even if there was he couldn’t see it.

Mac flexed his fingers, frustrated but focused. A loose plan was starting to come together. He wasn’t a big fan of it, but at least he had one. Fifteen or so feet straight up was a chance at freedom, the only challenge was getting up there… and then getting down.

For the getting down part he prepped his shoes, unlacing them and tying the ends of the laces together, until he had a shoe dangling at each end. Then he got it draped around his neck, which involved enough contorting around to reopen dozens of cuts along his torso, and more flexibility than he’d known he had.

For the getting up part he needed grip, which was where it got… gross. He tried leaning forwards as far as he could and placing his feet one by one flat back against the pillar, but a couple shuffling steps back up the pillar inevitably lead to slipping down. If he could lean forwards more to get more of his weight driven back against the pillar instead of down towards the ground it might have been enough, but a few inches was as far as he could get. The angle was a fixed factor, so he needed more grip.

Chalk would’ve been ideal, but blood would have to do. Luckily the ground was full of congealing, cooling, puddles of it. Silver linings and all that.

Mac hated the sensation, it was almost nauseating, lukewarm and slick and squelching between his toes, but it dried to be tacky.

Mac tried again. He gripped one of his socks hard with both hands, distributing some of the strain from his wrist into his grip, and raised his wrists up to as close to shoulder-height as he could get them. Then he leaned forwards and carefully planted his first bloodied foot back against the pillar, then pressed his weight back through it and lifted his other up next to it.

His shoulders ached. They’d probably be numb by the time he reached the top, which wasn’t exactly optimal but he could work with it.

Mac shuffled one foot an inch up, then the other, then straightened his legs slightly to raise the rest of his body. His arms dragged against the concrete of the pillar, the friction resisting the ascent, but his feet didn’t slip.

One inch above the ground. Proof of concept, at least. Fourteen feet and eleven inches to go, roughly.

Mac took a proper step next, taking a foot from the pillar and bending his leg to re-place it a few inches higher. He pushed up through it the same time he moved his other foot up even higher. It worked, but he felt his one braced foot slip slightly with the weight of his whole body bearing down on it. It unnerved him enough to go back to the first method, keeping both feet braced against the pillar when he straightened his legs.

A few steps later, maybe a foot or so off the ground, it occurred to Mac that he was probably leaving bloodied footprints all the way. It would look like some ghoulish Spiderman — barefooted and bloody — had strolled down the pillar from the rafters, which was the type of mental image that Mac probably shouldn’t have found nearly as hysterically funny as he did. His next huffed breath came out with a delirious hint of a laugh, which echoed in the near-silence and sounded absolutely insane. He clamped his mouth shut and kept going.

Another few steps. Mac’s arms were tingling with numbness, his back and core ached, and his legs were burning from the exertion. What was he, a few feet up now? It was so difficult to judge without eyesight.

More steps, Mac wasn’t counting them anymore. His feet were starting to dry and get less tacky, so he paused to carefully re-dampen them one at a time on the wettest patch he could find on each lower pant-leg. Most of the blood had been halted higher up, so it was scarce picking, but it sufficed.

More steps, he had to be at least halfway up at this point, which was where he decided to stop thinking about the height part. He’d know he reached the beam when he bumped his head against it, he just had to focus on not slipping until then. He did wonder what he should do if he slipped. The fall, with no good way to bleed out the impact at the end, would probably mess up his ankles or legs pretty badly. It could also — if his wrists caught against the concrete and were forced up — dislocate or injure his shoulders. He figured he should just try to slow it the best he could with friction, which would be what his panicked instincts would drive him to do anyways.

More steps. His body was coated in a cold sweat now, which was probably wasting more water than he had at his disposal with how much the cuts had bled. He decided he should probably stop thinking about falling, the phantom swoop in his stomach was making him nauseous.

More steps. His arms had gone mostly numb, like he’d predicted, but at least that dampened the painful drag of friction every time he had to drag them up the wall. His feet were starting to dry again, but the good and bad news was that he could feel blood running down his chest and abdomen again from the exertion. Eventually some of it would reach his feet. Silver linings, as long as he didn’t pass out from blood loss first.

More steps… and Mac’s head finally bumped against the cross-beam. He hit it hard enough to startle him and almost make his feet slipped. His stomach lurched, especially since he now knew exactly how high he was in such a precarious position, robbing him of the ability to pretend otherwise. The beams had seemed so high up from the ground…

Mac hung his head forwards, shuffling up until his shoulders were braced against the beam. Something hard and metal, like protruding metal brackets and screws, dug into each of his shoulders. He wriggled, grimacing, forcing his wrists to painstakingly slide up the back of the pillar until something non-concrete dug into the side of his hand.

It took more fumbling around to find a part of the brackets that was sharp, he stumbled onto it by cutting the outside of his pinky on it and he didn’t think he’d ever been happier to be cut by anything in his life.

Mac renewed his grip on the sock. Once he got the ziptie off it would be the only thing left keeping him secured to the pillar instead of plummeting to the ground. It took a minute or so to cut through the plastic, but when it finally snapped Mac felt a surge of — slightly premature — triumph.

The next bit was going to be… dodgy. Or at least dodgier than it had already been so far.

He technically had two options. He could shuffle down the same way he’d come up, or he could get up on the beam and use the luxury of his newly freed hands to fashion a safer and faster descent. Considering his feet had dried and his arms had gone numb, he didn’t want to chance going down the exact way he’d come up, even if getting on the beam would present it’s own challenges.

For one, he couldn’t see it. He would have to let go of the sock, kick off the pillar, and grab blindly up for the beam. If he missed it he would just plummet to the ground with only the vague hope of rolling off some of the impact when it would slam into him out of nowhere in the darkness.

Mac closed his eyes, though behind the blindfold it made no difference. His heart was thundering in his chest, had been for what felt like forever now, but he could only afford himself a few seconds before making the leap of faith. His arms were only going to get number the longer he waited. The longer he waited the less time he had to get away from Murdoc.

He let go abruptly and kicked off spastically, as if he’d surprised himself, and grabbed upwards. In the end it was almost less scary than it had been in his mind. His shoulders were pressed against the beam, his feet held for a second before starting to slip, and his grasping palms slammed into the upper edge of the beam almost instantaneously. He didn’t waste the momentum, letting his legs swing forwards, hooking one leg over the beam, and then leveraging his whole body on top of it.

For a few seconds he just sat, legs dangling to either side, before the realization that his hands were really free kicked in and he immediately started fumbling to get the blindfold off.

The sudden onrush of light and visual stimulation had Mac blinking and staring into space for a long few seconds. Then he made the mistake at looking down.

It was a mistake for two reasons, the first was seeing his own blood-caked shirt, and the second was seeing the long drop down below him. Neither were good sights. His stomach churned and he felt a little lightheaded, as if his body had just made those two realizations about his current condition and was finally deciding to freak out about it. He couldn’t afford that, not yet and maybe not ever.

Mac pried his attention away from both his injuries and the drop, and pulled the shoes off from around his neck.

Then he paused, fiddling with the blood-ruined material of one of his shoes. There was an urgency still thrumming under his skin, to get moving, to get away, to contact the others, but now apprehension was starting to settle back in. What were the chances he’d be able to walk right out of the warehouse? Maybe the moment his feet touched solid ground again Murdoc would come strolling back in with sardonic applause. Maybe Murdoc was sitting outside idling in his car and watching Mac’s desperate escape attempt with an amused smile.

Mac could feel his heartbeat pulsing in his temples. He still felt trapped, just as thoroughly and horrifically as he’d been lying paralyzed in the back of Murdoc’s car, or zip tied to the pillar.

This was a mind game, that was what Murdoc did. Of course he would fake a call, fake leave, fake give Mac a chance, just to crush the last bit of Mac’s spirit.

Mac flexed his fingers, though this time he could watch them. They were pale and blanched, still regaining blood-flow, but they were moving.

I can think and I can move my hands. Mac reminded himself, sharply, like it was a reprimand against his more panicked, helpless thoughts. As long as I have that, I have everything.

Mac shuffled back along the beam to the pillar, and looped his shoelace contraption around the length of it to hold to get down just the way he’d come up — except facing the pillar this time, and with a much better angle. He just had to keep moving, he just had to try.

***

“Jack?”

Jack started, hand jumping to cup his ear as Riley’s voice filtered through. He’d been driving in complete silence for almost an hour. He was near the coast now, or at least he could swear he heard it past the growl of cars. Waves crashing, a constant buzzing white noise in his head.

“Yeah? You got something?”

“I tracked the car out from the event where he grabbed Mac. He drove out to the docks, to this old abandoned warehouse.”

There was a tone of trepidation in Riley’s voice, not triumph, so Jack didn’t even let the hope seep in.

“And?”

“Then the car left again, I’m trying to keep tracking it but it went into an area with very little camera coverage and… and I lost them.”

The waves were so loud. So so loud. Jack could barely think through them. “When was this?”

“Just… ten minutes ago, at most.”

The slim margin stole Jack’s breath away. If they’d just been ten minutes faster, if sometime in the agonizing hours of search they’d managed to shave just a few minutes here and there… if he’d listened to his instincts blaring and charged into that damn building the moment Mac stopped responding… They knew exactly where Mac was ten minutes ago. It was maddening, it was insane.

Now Murdoc had moved again and all Jack could do was poke through an old warehouse for clues that Murdoc had been too smart to leave behind. He was scared of what Murdoc had left.

Why would Murdoc move Mac again? There was no way he could have suspected them closing in on him, not to this precise of a timing, not to a margin of ten minutes.

Secondary locations were bad in a kidnapping, they always dropped the percentage chance of survival way down. But tertiary locations were worse. Tertiary locations were where they dumped the bodies.

Waves crashed. After a rough mission Jack and Mac would go down to the beach to dig their feet in the sand and watch the waves hit the shore. After Afghanistan they both had an enhanced appreciation for anything as not-a-desert as the ocean. Even just the sound of it was nice, the sort of sound that seeped into your head and filled it up until there wasn’t room for anything else to fester.

Waves crashed. Jack held on to the sound, even though he knew he wasn’t close enough to the shore to hear it. Waves crashed and somewhere beside him a pensive Mac turned a paperclip around and around. Jack had to hold onto that, or else he was holding onto nothing. Waves were crashing into the sand, and Mac was out there.

“Jack...?”

“Just give me the location for the warehouse.”

Riley did. Jack drove. Waves crashed.

Chapter Text

It was dark when Jack pulled up to the warehouse. Night was starting to fall, leaving a dull dusk glow, and segmented glints of the violet sky shone past other hulking warehouses. The warehouse glowed yellow from the inside, blinding squares of electric lighting shining out of each broken-down window. There was a gate blocking off the warehouse. It looked old, rusty and falling into disrepair, but Jack could make out footprints and light furrows cut into the earth from the gate having been swung open recently.

Ten minutes ago recently. Or more accurately fifteen, with how long it had taken Jack to drive there.

Jack stopped his car, left it idling while he hopped out and opened the gate. He did it all one-handed, his right hand holding his gun low by one leg. Riley had tracked Murdoc leaving, so there wasn’t much of a logical reason for Jack to be going in on such high alert, but he couldn’t help it. Murdoc just had that sort of effect.

Jack drove his car the rest of the way in, parking it right by the entrance to the warehouse. He figured he wanted it close at hand in case a quick exit was called for.

He shut off the car, and then the lights from the warehouse went out, all at once.

Jack froze, breathing slow and even. The sudden darkness was chilling. The warehouse was now pitch black, its only illumination from the ambient twilight. In an instant it had gone from obnoxiously, artificially bright to just another looming black silhouette in the night.

Jack grabbed a flashlight from his car, holding it with a supportive hand under his gun. He swept both up and around to scope out the place.

The doors were closed, the place was silent. Jack could hardly imagine it being anything but empty and abandoned, like this was its natural form.

But someone had turned off the light. The timing couldn’t be a coincidence. Someone had sensed him coming and plunged them both into darkness.

Jack walked with, quick, partly crouched, steps all the way to the warehouse door.

He used the side of his flashlight hand to press down the doorknob while he kept his handgun at the ready.

Abruptly he shoved the door, half knocking it with his shoulder to force the rusted hinges to squeal open, and charged in a few steps. His flashlight hand came back up to support his gun hand and he pivoted, swinging his beam of light along the warehouse. It illuminated grungy concrete floors and brick walls with peeling plaster, cut up with sharp stripped shadows due to blocky concrete pillars. His flashlight landed and then stayed on one particular pillar, and he took a hesitant step forwards to get a closer look. It gleamed wetly, distinct from the other pillars. For a second Jack thought it was water dripping down from somewhere, but it was too dark for that, and it glinted red. Jack swung his flashlight down to the base of the pillar, where most of it was. Splattered puddles of it, and smears of it all around the first few feet of the pillar. Was it enough for someone to have fully bled out? Probably not, in Jack’s experience that was an almost absurd volume of blood, but it still wasn’t exactly a good amount to be all out on the floor. Jack panned his flashlight up, then up more, following a bewildering set of bloodied bare-footed footprints all the way up the pillar, positioned as if someone had walked down it. It just didn’t compute in Jack’s head, the only mental image he could conjure up was a Spiderman who’d just lost one hell of a fight.

Before Jack could come up with a more realistic explanation, there was someone behind him. They moved in so fast and silently, that Jack felt their presence before anything else. An unnerving sixth sense raised all the hair on the back of his neck, a primeval danger alert letting him know ‘hey, there’s a tiger about to sink its claws into you.’

Jack began to pivot, and a garrote looped around his neck before he even completed the first few degrees of the turn.

Jack resisted the instinct to recoil backwards to ease the pressure on his throat, instead he curled in forwards. Leaning back in a fight was a good way to get taken down to the ground, and — unless you were some jiu-jitsu type guy who wanted to roll around on the ground — that was the last place you wanted to be. The flashlight swung wildly, mostly illuminating the floor suddenly filled with scuffling feet, as Jack tried to get his hand under the garrote. It was some sort of cord, threaded and thicker than the average garrote, but it was also surprisingly slick and Jack’s fingers slipped right off of it like it was wet.

It was excruciatingly tight around his neck, and he could feel it being drawn tighter and tighter by the person at his back. They were probably looping it around their hands, and leaning further and further back. It was effectively done, Jack could feel his pulse begin to pound in his head, and a pulsating heat filling his face.

He had time, but not much of it. Seconds, maybe.

Jack let out a guttural sound, a sound a mix of rage and exertion. He dropped down, forwards, to a knee and abruptly curled his upper body down and in, like an excessive follow-through of an overhand throw. The person strangling him was flipped over Jack’s shoulder, hitting the concrete floor hard on their back and the pressure abruptly came off of Jack’s neck. Jack kept moving, his flashlight and gun hands coming back together and aiming at his downed opponent. In the same moment he shifted, beginning to drop a knee down on land on his opponent’s chest to pin them in place.

The light landed before his knee did. It took him a half-second to process what it illuminated, and then he abruptly rotated his knee out to crash painfully down to the ground just to the side of his opponent’s chest.

Mac, harshly lit in the gleam of the flashlight, stared up at him. The first flash was of wide, almost insane looking eyes staring up at him, before Mac started blinking and squinting rapidly. He curled to one side, arms defensively coming up around his face as he was too winded to make any attempt to get up yet. Jack realized that he had the benefit of sight, while in Mac’s point of view, Jack must have only been a darkened silhouette behind a blinding light.

Jack immediately angled his flashlight — and gun — out of Mac’s face, though the damage there had already been done. Mac wasn’t going to be seeing much more than stars for a minute. “Mac!”

Mac breathed hard, then his turn onto his side halted as he went completely still except for his still heaving breaths. His arms were still up around his face, so most of what Jack could see was his shirt, blindingly white in places, but grotesquely red and wet in most.

Jack’s heartbeat pounded in his chest, both from being strangled, and from pure shock.

“Mac!” Jack spoke again, and it came out as the same hoarse, bewildered, and almost awed tone. “Christ— Mac!”

Mac pulled his arms down from his face, rolling back to his back and propping himself up slightly on his elbows. He was still blinking rapidly. Jack figured the poor guy’s vision was probably still more floating blobs of color than anything else.

Mac’s shirt was untucked, buttoned up, and — for all the blood on it — seemingly undamaged. The buttons were smeared with blood and patches all over his front were soaked through with it, some with dried outer halos dulling down to a reddish brown. Alarms were blaring in Jack’s head, he holstered his gun and fumbled for Mac’s shirt to pull it open and assess the extent of whatever injuries lay beneath it.

Mac reacted immediately, almost violently, grabbing Jack’s wrists in an ironclad grip the moment Jack’s fingers brushed the first button.

Jack froze.

“Where’s Murdoc?” Mac demanded, voice sharp and surprisingly strong, but raw and with an uncharacteristic, tremulous, emotion sunk deep into it.

“He left, Riley lost him—“

Mac rose unsteadily but quickly, grabbing Jack’s shoulder along the way up to push himself up. Instinctively Jack grabbed Mac’s elbow to help stabilize him, before rising himself, keeping his hand on Mac’s elbow the whole way up.

Jack noted distantly that Mac had been using a shoelace to strangle him, it hung loosely from one of his hands, glinting wet and red in the beam of Jack’s downwards angled flashlight. God, the whole place reeked of the coppery tang of blood.

Mac strode forwards a few steps towards the door. Jack noticed that he was curled in on himself slightly, shoulders hunched, arm guarding. He stopped a foot or so ahead of Jack, twisting to look back at him. There was a look in his eyes that Jack was struggling to read, maybe because of the dim lighting, and maybe because the concoction of his own emotions broiling in his chest. It was a little unsure, brow furrowed and lips pressed into a thin line, but Jack wasn’t quite sure the meaning behind it. Was he seeing if Jack was following him? Was he doublechecking Jack’s expression for any sign that outside the warehouse was as Murdoc-free as Jack had claimed? Was—

“Are you ok?” Mac said finally, voice hoarse.

Jack blinked, he took a few steps in to close the distance between them. “What?”

Mac hesitated. His expression had melted into something more raw, mouth twisting downwards, eyes still tense but a little damp. His hand raised, hovered, and then made a vague sort of gesture at his own neck.

Instinctively Jack’s hand jumped up to his own neck, but he dropped it just as quickly. It was damp, but he figured it was the blood from the shoelace rather than his own. Not that he really cared if it was his own, something like that was massively buried in his current priority list.

“C’mon, hoss.” Jack pitched his voice into something gentle and affectionate. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Mac’s throat worked, then he nodded sharply.

Jack took the lead, gun swinging back up as he led the way to the warehouse doors. Mac fell in directly behind him, and after a couple steps Jack felt a hand land lightly on his back. Jack didn’t know if Mac was making the small point of contact for his own peace of mind, but to Jack it felt like a buoy in a storm. His gun clearing the space ahead, Mac’s featherlight touch an assurance of his presence safely tucked behind him… Jack felt like a drowning man taking his first breath of air.

Waves crashed to shore, and finally they took Jack with them.

***

Jack was drumming his hands on the wheel next to Mac. The car was rumbling down dark streets, streetlights gleaming. The radio wasn’t on, Mac supposed it would be weird if it was.

Nothing felt real. Not the car, not Jack next to him, not the streets, not his hands sitting in his lap.

Jack broke the silence abruptly, they’d only been driving for… a minute or so? Mac felt like his sense of time had been left behind with a pile of rings on a bathroom counter. A lot of things had been left there.

“If you won’t let me look, can you at least tell me how bad it is?” Jack’s voice strained up at the end. He was worried.

No shit he’s worried. Mac thought in immediate, scoffing, reaction to that thought. It would be weird if he wasn’t.

Nothing felt real, and Mac didn’t feel anything. Or at least he didn’t know what he felt. He’d heard a car drive up to the warehouse, had hit the breaker to shut off the lights, and then had waited for Murdoc to stroll in while he held nothing but a shoelace. It was going to be a final stand, he’d resolved that in his head, had justified it to himself that making Murdoc kill him earlier than he wanted to was a sort of victory. A cold one, maybe, one that wouldn’t mean much to his friends.

When he got flipped onto his back and blinded he’d been waiting to die. All he could see was light, and then — through it — Jack’s voice had finally reached him.

A part of Mac was still convinced that Murdoc had killed him right then and there and that this was all a lucid, dying, dream. Another part of Mac, the torturously logical, dismissed that notion. Mainly Mac didn’t really care either way.

“Mac?” Jack called. There was a terrified edge to his voice that jarred Mac out of his thoughts. Jack’s fingers were blanched white on the steering wheel. “You still with me?”

“Yeah.” Mac finally managed. His mind cast back to what Jack’s question had been in the first place, and his fingers came up to the first button on his shirt. Then they just stayed there.

He’d buttoned his shirt up, back in the warehouse. There hadn’t been much he could do about the cuts, at least not while his main priority was getting out, so he’d just covered it up. Out of sight, out of mind, like selective object permanence.

He didn’t even feel them much anymore, or maybe he’d learned to tune out the sensation — which would’ve been a neat trick to have had back in the warehouse. Now he just felt cold and clammy.

“Mac?” Jack repeated. He ran a red light on a near empty intersection, Mac didn’t comment on it.

“I’m cold.” Mac said finally. He wasn’t sure exactly why he’d said it — he didn’t really care — maybe it was from the lack of anything else to say, or in petulant defense of keeping his shirt buttoned up.

Jack immediately reached forwards and turned the heater on. Warm air began blasting. “I just need to know if you’re gonna bleed out on me or not, alright? We’re just a few minutes out now.”

Mac closed his eyes briefly. Phoenix medical. It sounded like a living nightmare, bright lights and people and hands all over him. Even the thought of it was making him nauseous. He wanted to ask Jack to take him home instead, or to just keep driving until Mac woke up. He refrained from asking because Jack had never once been talked down from taking him to medical, and Mac figured he was hardly going to start now.

“Hoss, please.” Jack’s neck was beginning to prickle with sweat, Mac could see it glint in the unnatural yellow lighting that swung through the car as they passed streetlights or glaring buildings. “You gotta talk to me.”

“I’m not going to die.” Mac mumbled obligingly. He felt like he was lying.

Chapter Text

At Phoenix Jack parked parallel to the curb, across two parking spots. He wanted to angle the car to where Mac’s car door opened with a straight shot to the entrance. He left the car running, blasting heat, and threw open his door. He was around the car to Mac’s side before Mac had gotten out, only the side door swung open and Mac angled to step out. For the first time Jack noticed the blood coating Mac’s feet, and grabbed Mac’s shoulder to prevent him from standing up.

“Whoa, your feet alright, man?”

Mac paused, looking down at his feet as if he only just remembered he had them. He flexed them in front of him, as if processing their bloody condition.

“They’re fine.” Mac said finally, a little distantly. 

Jack attention was caught by the double-doors at the back of Pheonix — the unfortunately often-used quick entrance to Medical — swinging open. A stretcher was being wheeled out quickly, medical personnel flanking it.

“I’m not getting in the stretcher.” Mac commented abruptly. It was almost under his breath, so Jack barely heard it. The stretcher was maybe twenty feet away, closing in.

“Rather me carry you, hoss?” Jack retorted, some mix between a joke and a genuine offer.

Mac pressed his lips together. Jack once again felt a pang in his chest for how battered the kid looked, even avoiding looking down at his shirt. There was a reddened bruise slowly darkening across his cheek, and a hint of blood on his lips. The hell did that psycho do to you?

Mac’s lips twisted sharply. The stretcher and medical team had almost reached them. “I’m not getting on it.” Mac reiterated, still pitched low as if only for himself or Jack to hear. “They’re not strapping me into the damn thing.”

Shit. Of course that was the problem.

“Hey.” Jack sidestepped in front of Mac, between him and the stretcher. “No straps, yo comprende. You can just lay down on it and we won’t do the whole straps thing. Someone tries to strap you in, you just let me know and I’ll punch ‘em.” Jack twisted around to flash the medical team an apologetic smile. “No offense. We don’t gotta do the straps, yeah?”

One of the med team’s gaze flicked to Mac, then back to Jack. “Sure, no straps.”

Mac got on the stretcher, still begrudgingly but without further complaint or issue, and they started wheeling him in under a calm barrage of questions. Jack trailed behind, but he made sure to stick close enough that he could follow through on his word if anyone so much as glanced at one of the straps hanging off the stretcher.

Jack followed the stretcher for a while, listening to Mac’s tired, short, answers to each question.

Then they got him to a room and one of the medical team asked Mac a question just slightly too low for Jack to make out the tail-end of it. Do you want…?

Mac’s gaze flicked up abruptly to Jack’s face, then down and away again as if embarrassed or apologetic. He shook his head no, and the med team member gave a quick nod in response before falling back, putting the back of his hand gently across Jack’s chest to stall him, and quietly offering to find him a place to sit and wait. Another member of the med team yanked the curtain across the room’s opening to shield Mac from view.

Jack swallowed hard, not acknowledging the man who was standing as a polite but firm blockade. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the ugly orange and green curtains. Everything in him was telling him to keep on walking through the guy in front of him, through the curtains, and straight to Mac’s side.

Mac’s head shake replayed in his head, the glance away to avoid Jack’s eye contact.

“Jack.” The guy in front of him, probably a nurse or something, prompted quietly. Of course he knew Jack by name, a fact which lessened Jack’s resolve to bowl right through him. Jack would probably have remembered the guy’s name too, if everyone but Mac was anything more than a blur.

A head shake, an answer to the question. No, I do not want Jack in the room.

Jack took a step back and let himself be guided away.

***

Mac unbuttoned his own shirt. Maybe it was a pride thing, maybe the thought of other hands doing it made his stomach churn in ways he didn’t want to think about.

“Jordan.” The doctor introduced himself, despite the fact that his badge was hanging from his pocket with Dr. Jordan printed on it, and despite the fact that Mac had seen him a handful of times before.

“We’ve met.” Mac’s fingers trembled on the last button. It was so damn cold in here, the heat from Jack’s car was seeping away so quickly. He felt jittery, shaky. It was almost funny that he was shaky now, and not in the warehouse. It was also funny that he wasn’t in the warehouse in general. Maybe funny wasn’t the right word. Weird. He kept circling back to that one.

Jordan smiled faintly. “Well, I figure since you probably see so many doctors that you wouldn’t remember me.”

Mac let out a short half-laugh at that before biting the bullet and undoing the last button. He braced his hands on the cot to either side, trying not to flinch as Jordan carefully parted the front of his shirt with gloved hands.

Jordan’s gaze didn’t noticeably change. Mac was watching his expression instead of looking down at his own chest, like trying to gather the info from it second-hand. Jordan had probably seen worse, and he’d probably seen worse often.

Still there was a little tightness around Jordan’s mouth, a marked heaviness to his face.

“I’m going to need you to take the shirt off, so I don’t miss anything. Are you hurting anywhere else?”

“It’s cold.” Mac said, a blanketed sort of refusal for the first part of Jordan’s statement. He gnawed at the edge of his lip before replying to the other half. “My wrists and shoulders, I guess.” He supposed that wasn’t completely accurate, it was the wrong term. They weren’t hurting, but he knew on a logical level that they were hurt. He resisted the urge to give that correction.

Jordan leaned back and called over to one of the passing medical staff to grab a heated blanket. In the quiet night he could keep his voice at a low, conversational level. He leaned back in to Mac.

“We’ll have to clean those cuts up. There’s a lot of surface area affected, and unfortunately a big chance of infection, so we’re going to start you on some preemptive antibiotics in addition to giving you some IV liquids. You might be in a bit of shock, so we’re gonna also work on getting you warm. We can also give you something for the pain, but nothing heavy duty until the tox screen comes back. Some of those cuts are going to need stitches, but I want to focus on getting you warm and a little better off before worrying about those, so for now we’re just going to clean them and bandage you up. After that we’ll be taking your vitals every now and then, but we’ll mostly be trying to let you rest. Do you have any questions or concerns?”

Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.

“No.”

***

“Yeah he’s back he…” Jack scrubbed a hand across his face. He leaned forwards in the shitty plastic chair and it let out a squeal at the movement. “They’re patching him up. I don’t know the details.”

“You’re not back with him?” Bozer replied through the phone.

“I got every unit I can watching over the damn place. Nurses are tripping over my guys in the hallways, nobody’s getting in through a door or a window or a goddamn air vent, I’m—“

“—whoa, Jack.” Bozer cut him off, sounding taken aback. “I know you’re protecting him Jack, ’course I would never doubt that. Just thought you’d be glued to his side.”

Jack leaned back again, the chair squealed again in the near silent waiting room. Jack briefly met eyes with the security he’d posted at the door, and the agent gave him a short nod. 

“Mac… he wants some privacy right now.” At least that was Jack’s least-painful guess as to what was going on. “And he can have whatever he wants right now, capiche?”

“I’m not challenging that either, man. He’s alright, though?”

“I think so. I mean, he’s not dying on us or anything.” Jack scrubbed his hand over his face again and cleared his throat, trying to tamp down on his frazzled tone. “Did Riley find anything about Murdoc?”

“No. He’s in the wind.” Bozer informed Jack regretfully. “Riley thinks he probably swapped cars somewhere. Did Mac say anything?”

“Not really.” Jack shifted, the chair squeaked again and Jack completely lost patience and stood up to pace. The agent at the door watched Jack out of the corner of his eye, but he’d worked alongside Jack for enough years to not comment. “I mean, what about?”

“…Murdoc? I guess? Where he is?”

“He didn’t say much of anything. Actually, he asked me that. ‘Where’s Murdoc?’ like the psycho was about to jump out around a corner or somethin’.”

“Can’t blame Mac for that.” Bozer said, low and dolefully.

“I’m not.” Jack spat out.

“…I wasn’t saying you were.” Bozer replied, gently, and with a saintly amount of patience. It was far more patience than Jack deserved, and far more patience than either Riley or Matty could have afforded him, but that was Bozer’s nature.

Jack blew out a long, slow, sigh. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Jack. Thanks for getting him back to us. I’ll be over there soon, ok?”

That was the moment to acknowledge and hang up, but Jack lingered, metaphorically and physically.

“…Jack? You still there?”

“He looked so scared, Bozer.” Jack said abruptly, a sort of rushed and helpless confession. He wasn’t sure what he was saying or why he was saying it, maybe Bozer was just an addictively good listener. “He had… he had blood all over his shirt was staring up at me like I was gonna kill him.”

Bozer was silent for a second. Jack didn’t even know what he could expect Bozer to say in response to that.

Jack swallowed hard, ducked his head and pretended he didn’t see the agent stalwartly not looking at him. “I’ll uh, I’ll update you when I hear from the doc.” He hung up.

Chapter Text

Mac warmed up, but he didn’t rest. Every now and then someone came in to take his vitals, ask him a few questions, then left. He’d gone through an IV bag and they’d started him on another, they also let him sip on something after he’d reassured them that his stomach felt fine. Mac supposed that meant the scans they’d had him do hadn’t come up with anything that meant they’d need to put him under for surgery, which was good because Mac wouldn’t have let that happen regardless. The electric blankets were nice.

The only problem was that the whole thing gave him time to think. He thought about how absolutely fucked the last however long of his life had been. He thought about how poor of a weapon his surroundings represented if Murdoc slipped through the curtain. If he was fast enough maybe he could grab the defibrillator in the corner, but they took time to charge.

Eventually Jordan came back to stitch him up. As unwelcome as it was, at least it served as a distraction.

The area was numbed out for Jordan to work. Mac already felt a bit floaty from the pain meds they’d already put him on.

“How bad is it?” Mac only dared to ask the question when Jordan had already finished stitching up three different cuts, slowly migrating around from Mac’s chest to his sides. Mac still wasn’t looking down at himself. He was looking at the curtain. He was partly regretting not bringing Jack in with him, having his own personal bodyguard had rarely seemed appealing before. He just hadn’t wanted to see Jack’s face when he’d taken off his shirt and revealed all of Murdoc’s handiwork. Jordan’s stifled frown had already been hard enough to bear. He didn’t need Jack to see that, Jack didn’t need to see that. Mac figured he could hold onto that one last shred of dignity for both of their sakes. He didn’t need a bodyguard anyways, he could take care of himself. The claim felt hollower and somewhat sadder than it had before, as if the answering refrain was ‘sure you can, but it’s going to hurt just as much every time,’ or even the simpler ‘until you can’t.’

“If we take good care of it, there should be minimal scarring.” Jordan replied after a few moments of thought, in that careful, promising-nothing tone that medical professionals so often used.

Minimal. Mac didn’t ask any clarifying questions, like what the hell did minimal even mean in this case?

After Jordan was done Mac was rewarded by finally getting a warm wet cloth to wipe some of the blood off himself. Someone else had to clean off his feet to prevent him from having to curl over and pull at his stitches. A smiling woman who’d introduced herself as Marla and been his constant supplier of electric blankets took up the job. It was an odd, somewhat uncomfortable sensation, every inch of Mac’s being telling him that it was something he was supposed to be doing. Marla hummed to herself as she worked, maybe to make it all less awkward, and Mac watched the little tub of water turn red as Marla dipped the cloth into it.

“You’ve had a hell of a day, honey.” Marla mused eventually, halfway through, in an odd blend of a practical tone with a strong dash of sympathy. “Though I suppose that’s always been the case for you when you’re here.”

“That’s true for everyone who comes here though, isn’t it?” Mac craned his neck to catch his reflection on something to make sure he’d gotten all the blood off his face.

Marla let out an acknowledging hum. “I guess that’s what you learn with this job.” She leaned back, dropping the cloth in the tub as she finished. “There’s always somebody out there having the worst day of their life.”

Mac figured he shouldn’t have found that thought was comforting as he did.

***

Murdoc watched a line of blood slowly glide down the alabaster sternum of his victim with a consternated frown. He fished out a handkerchief from his pocket and halted its progress, mopping up the drop itself before flipping the handkerchief over to a clean side to follow its path up. This was to be a bloodless kill, his client had been very particular on that specific point. 

It was somewhat ironic how much blood was involved in order to stage a bloodless body. It could be tricky, if one was an amateur. The difficulty came after the death, ironically, when the body’s natural pump stopped beating while its tissues were still flush with blood. At that point there were two real options. The first was the use of an artificial pump. There was nothing special about it, you could buy one at any hardware store in the country. The main downside of it was having to haul it around, and the cleaning process being a nightmare. Murdoc mused how Mac would do it, he could probably whip up a homemade pump from the victim’s belongings scattered around the house. Assemble it, get the job done, and then disassemble it and return every piece to its original place, no transport required. It was an entertaining thought, but the reminder of Mac only worsened Murdoc’s impatience with the whole job.

The second option was to use nature’s pump: gravity. Simply slit the throat and string them up with their neck stretched out at the lowest point. It was a classic. Hunters had been doing it since forever, and killers had probably been doing it for just as long.

Murdoc had collected all the blood in a bucket, and painted the foyer’s floor with it. A fun, macabre, touch. The police would have to walk right through it before they could get upstairs to the victim. The dark scarlet also definitely was an improvement from the tiles’ original beige.

The rest of the body’s staging was more or less quick. He nailed the victim to the wall — biblical, and so overdone in Murdoc’s opinion — and cut a long slit across the abdomen. Exposing entrails was one of the quickest ways to make a kill overwhelmingly grotesque. They had a fascinating propensity to protrude.

Finally done, Murdoc took a long few steps back to admire his work. It wasn’t anything particular revolutionary, a bit too aimless for his preferences, but it gave him a wonderful opportunity to contemplate his plans for Mac. He wasn’t nearly ready to get to the whole ‘staging the body’ phase of the operation with Mac. As with dating, moving too fast would only lead to disappointment. But oh, what a delight it was to think about what he might leave for Jack to discover.

The nailing to a wall aspect of this kill was appealing to him. Maybe upside-down instead, less overdone, and the idea of Mac’s golden hair hanging to form a halo around his pale face… it sent an excited shiver up Murdoc’s spine.

And his hands… of course Murdoc would have to take the hands.

Murdoc whistled to himself on his way back to his car. Despite the interruption, he was in a good mood.

***

Someone knocked on the wall, startling the hell out of Jack. He glanced up at the doorway where the medical staff who had kept him from seeing Mac was standing. Ryan, Jack now remembered his name. He was pretty sure they’d had a chat about some action movie a few months back while Jack was getting a gnarly cut on his leg stitched up.

“Mac wants to see you.” Ryan said with an encouraging smile. “He told me you might still be hanging around.”

A potent wave of relief rolled through Jack, and he was up on his feet in an instant. “He’s ok?”

“He’ll be alright.” Another reassuring smile from Ryan. “Just be gentle.”

Jack wasn’t sure whether Ryan’s warning was meant in a physical or emotional sense, so he just decided to take it to mean both.

“Yeah, yeah of course.”

Jack’s first thought when he’d reached Mac’s room was that they’d moved him to an actual room, with a door and stuff, which he hoped was a good sign. His second thought, after he got in the room, was that Mac looked… better.

‘Better’ being the most relative it was ever relative. Mac was perched on the side of his hospital bed, looked tired and haggard. He was in a hospital gown with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders which he held loosely in front of him with one hand. He still looked a little too pale for Jack’s comfort, even without the blood to accentuate it. However, the majority of the improvement was in Mac’s eyes. He was looking at Jack, like he actually saw him, and through his eyes Jack could almost see the usual gears turning that had been jammed up a few hours ago.

Mac spoke first, before Jack could herd his thoughts into anything more coherent than ‘thank god you’re alive’.

“I’d hug you…” Mac said, voice coming out a little wry, and a little sluggish. “…but I think that’d hurt.”

Alrighty. So they definitely had the kid on pain meds.

Jack walked over to the edge of Mac’s bed and, considerate of Mac’s comment, gently cupped the back of Mac’s neck and tugged him forwards enough to rest their foreheads together. Mac obliged, in a tolerant sort of way, like a cat begrudgingly going limp when picked up.

Jack closed his eyes and swallowed hard, leaving their foreheads pressed together and his hand on the back of Mac’s neck. “…I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok.” An instinctual, blasé response, as if Jack was apologizing for accidentally bumping shoulders with him. Jack decided not to pursue it while Mac was out of it.

“Scared the shit outta me.”

“I figured.” Mac said wryly. He pulled back, reaching up with his free hand to catch and squeeze Jack’s shoulder reassuringly. He missed slightly, hand ending up more on the side of Jack’s neck. “Me too.”

Jack swallowed down the impulse to apologize again. Mac’s almost absentminded confession of vulnerability hurt. Like, of course Mac had been scared, who the hell wouldn’t be in that situation? But to hear Mac admit to it felt like chewing glass. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel like something that was supposed to happen, that Jack was supposed to let happen.

“The doc’s been treating you alright?” Jack finally asked, at somewhat of a loss of what else to say.

Mac’s lips quirked up into a small, amused smile. “Yeah, Jack.”

“And you’re… and you’re hanging in there?”

Mac squinted, staying quiet for a long second. “…can you elaborate?”

“I mean— I mean you’re ok.”

“I’m alive.” Mac’s hand slipped off of Jack’s shoulder, landing back on his lap. Jack noted the dark purpled band imprinted across his wrist. Zip-ties. He tried not to think about it further. Mac’s hand was shaking. That was even harder to ignore. “That’s… best case scenario.”

Best case scenario was if none of this ever happened, or hell, if Murdoc had grabbed Jack instead. Jack decided not to bring that up, he knew Mac’s reaction to that sentiment wouldn’t be pretty. Jack had said something similar to Mac a month or so after the first time Mac had been taken by Murdoc, and his response had been an immediate, almost venomous, ‘don’t even say that.’

“You’re right.” Jack tried to muster a hint of a smile. “Look, you should get some rest, man. It’s late, or it’s morning, or something.”

Mac let out a quiet sigh, and then swung his legs back on the cot and sunk back down into the incline. Every movement was slow and ginger, as if trying to avoid reawakening sleeping pains. “Wake me up if the others arrive.”

“Ok, I’m not doing that.” Jack said with a flat sort of humor. “But is it— is it alright if I hang around in here?”

“Sure.” Mac mumbled as he closed his eyes. He said it absently, as if that was what he’d expected Jack to do anyways. 

Jack settled down into a chair. He wasn’t expecting Mac to say anything else, but a minute later Mac called Jack’s name in a quiet, almost apologetic tone, like he was about to make an inconvenient request.

“What is it?” Jack responded immediately, ready to jump right back up.

“Could you watch the door… please?”

“Of course.” The response was instantaneous, would’ve been regardless of what Mac’s request was. It took the words longer to circle around in Jack’s brain enough for him to actually process what Mac was asking for. He swallowed hard. “Yeah, hoss, I’ll do that.”