Author's Note: This chapter includes MacWhumpage and is already
Edited (by the multi-talented 'Beth, with my adulation) and ready for your intellectual absorption.
As always, I do thank Constant Readers for their support and comments!

-Loth

The Rainmakers, ch 20
Chemistry

Barbara moved quickly through the second lab, heading directly toward the emergency supply cabinet. The fog in this room was not so heavy here as in the first lab, but she knew it was just as potentially dangerous. She held her breath again and, even though it offered no protection against the gas, she kept the cloth that MacGyver had given her pressed firmly over her nose and mouth – the feeling of security that the thin fabric provided was purely psychological, she knew, but – it did make her feel safer.

The cabinets were not locked; she knew that they wouldn’t be. She yanked the doors open and reached unerringly for what she needed. She strapped on the respirator – complete with a small oxygen tank – and drew a greedy breath of the cool, treated air. Then she grabbed another tank and mask for MacGyver and hurried back out of the lab.

MacGyver was not there yet. Setting her supplies on the floor, Barbara went to peer through the porthole into the lab. All she could see was a white swirl; the gas had been stirred up into an vast cloud by her earlier passage, and had not subsided. She could see no sign of MacGyver.

As she waited, however, the vacuum pumps roared to life and the gas began to rise and thin rapidly, sucked into the numerous vents all throughout the lab. He’s done it! She laughed into her mask with excitement and relief, eagerly searching the room with her eyes, expecting to see MacGyver appear any second, barreling toward her with his shirt over his nose like a bandit. Long seconds passed, and she began to frown.

Even the most experienced diver could not have held his breath for so long – something must have gone wrong! “Come on, Mac... I really don’t want to go back in there...” Her palms went clammy at the very thought of it, but if Mac was in trouble . . .

Barbara placed her hand over the door release to the first lab, but just as she did so something crashed noisily in the other lab. Startled, Barbara charged back into that room.

The gas in the second lab was not being vented out; the vacuum pumps in this lab were on a separate circuit, and it hadn’t occurred to her to try to turn them on. Swearing sharply, she waded through the milky smoke. She could not see anything, but there was movement in the fog nearby; a hatch was open between the two labs and some of the fog was being drawn slowly through. It had not been open the first time Barbara had passed – she was sure she would have noticed if it had been.

Barbara hurried toward the opening, but with a sickening lurch she stumbled and fell over something on the floor that had been invisible under the cloud of gas. She jerked herself up with a muffled gasp, realizing that she had tripped over a body, and her gasp rose into a sharp cry as she realized whose body it was.

“Oh, my God... Mac!”

He lay crouched on the floor, his head down on his forearms as if he had been crawling and could go no further. The scrap of cloth he had tied like a bandanna around his face he held pressed to his mouth and nose, his eyes shut tight.

“MacGyver? Mac? Can you hear me?” Barbara touched his throat and the hammering of his desperate pulse beat against her fingers, but when she laid her hand on his chest, she could feel no breath moving within him, only the tremor of straining muscle. “Let’s get you out of here, Mac – come on!”

MacGyver was far too heavy for Barbara to carry, but she had to try. To her relief, MacGyver actually helped her; he drew his knees up and pushed forward, falling as soon as he did but managing to get moving in the right direction. Barbara half-supported, half-pulled him toward the door. “That’s it ... that’s it! Just a few feet further...”

He fell twice more, and after the second time Barbara simply seized his arm and dragged him the rest of the way out of the lab.

⌂

MacGyver became aware of a feeling like he was drowning – and suffocating and starving – all at the same time. Something warm and wet was pressing against his mouth, sending trickles of water down into his drowning lungs. He found that he could swallow again – his throat was no longer locked and frozen – and he realized that it wasn’t water at all that he was drowning in; it was air. He forced himself to relax his jaws, permitting a short, questioning breath to flow into his lungs. It made his head spin and he felt a deep, vertiginous sensation in his stomach – but the horrible stabbing pains in his body began to ebb away. The shock of the release from pain made him drag in another breath, erasing more of his discomfort.

The warmth on his mouth disappeared, to be replaced by something cold. He didn’t like it very much – even though the delicious air continued to flow – it was sharp and hard and not warm and pleasant at all. He caught his breath and raised a hand to bat away the annoying pressure.

Something caught his hand and pushed it back down. “Stop that.” The voice was clear, close, understanding, and encouraging. “Breathe, now. Come on – breathe it in – “

MacGyver opened his eyes. He was lying on his back with his head pillowed on a scrap of torn shirt; Barbara was kneeling over him, holding an oxygen mask to his face. She smiled at him when she saw him looking at her.

“I’ve never seen anyone hold their breath after they’d passed out before,” she chided him. “You’d help me out a lot if you’d just relax and inhale.”

MacGyver took a tentative breath, then another deeper, eager draught. It was heavenly. He covered Barbara’s hand with one of his own, pressing the mask more firmly over his face as he drank in the wonderfully breathable stuff and felt it rush all through his shaking body, bringing peace throughout. He had felt as if his very bones were screaming for air.

“That’s better,” Barbara said, enormous relief apparent in her words.

She was half-giddy herself that she’d finally managed to revive him – she had feared that she’d arrived with too little help, too late. If it had taken any longer to find him – ! She pushed that thought away abruptly; she did not want to think about being down here alone again.

MacGyver tried to raise his head. Barbara placed her other hand on his forehead and pushed him back down, gently, and said, “Not yet. Keep inhaling. The toxins in your bloodstream must be completely neutralized, or you’ll relapse.”

MacGyver rolled his eyes up at her. “Wha’s in this stuff?” he mumbled through the mask.

“The counter-agent to the nerve gas being developed in the Alpha Lab,” MacGyver noted that Barbara did not hesitate with her answers anymore, “in an oxygen-rich mixture.”

“Nerve gas! What the – “ MacGyver started to sit up in surprise, but an attack of dizziness made him lie back down immediately. He drew in a couple more steadying breaths while Barbara clucked at him. “And why is a chemical weapon being developed in a lab right alongside environmental research projects, hmm?”

Barbara tilted her head, giving him the pitying look warranted by such a naive statement. “It’s one of those distasteful projects that one is obligated to work on when someone else is footing the bill for your research.”

“Beautiful,” MacGyver muttered ironically. Closing his eyes, he let his hungry lungs devour the steady stream of cool air. He felt better every second that he lay there. He almost felt as if he could take a nap right there on the cold, hard floor – but for the pressing business that he could not completely forget, regardless of how comfortable he might be. “Good thing one of us knows what’s going on around here.”

Barbara’s expression showed no trace of shame or resentment at MacGyver’s statement; “I knew what the gas was, obviously – and I knew what to do if we inhaled any. Would knowing beforehand truly have made any difference?” She removed her hand from his head and allowed him to sit up, but watched him closely.

MacGyver leaned against the wall, still holding the mask in place. The dial on the respirator was edging smoothly toward empty. He took in the last few breaths with relish, then cautiously lowered the mask and sniffed the air. “It might have – but probably not. It’s not like we were drowning in choices.” He met Barbara’s eyes directly as he added, in a voice as reasonable as he could manage, “I’d prefer, from here on in, to be in-the-know on anything else like this, please.”

Barbara returned his gaze levelly. “There were no experiments conducted on the Rainmaker project this morning,” she began to speak, finally answering the question that MacGyver had repeatedly asked. “Dr. Marlow had just arrived, and I was supposed to take him on a tour of the facilities while Dr. Steubens reviewed the results of a test series that the Syndrex Corporation had conducted outside of the lab. But that isn’t what happened… Dr. Steubens changed his mind and he and Dr. Marlow sat down to finish a game of chess they’d started on the Telex.” Barbara lips curled up on an unconscious smile as she spoke about Steubens; MacGyver noticed but said nothing, not wanting to interrupt the flow of information.

Barbara cast her eyes downward for a moment. “I know that Dr. Steubens was – very unhappy when he discovered that these tests had been conducted without his consent. I’ve seen him angry before… but this time,” she flicked her eyes back up to MacGyver’s face, and he could see a gleam of uncertainty in her blue eyes as she continued, “he was so furious… and hopeless. I didn’t understand why – I would’ve thought that he’d be relieved that all the work wasn’t lost. But I didn’t see the results of the tests… the papers weren’t sent through the proper channels, and after he read them he locked them in his desk.”

“An independent test series, eh?” MacGyver sucked the last of the savory drops of treated air from the tank, then set the mask aside. “You wouldn’t by any chance know where those experiments were conducted?”

Barbara shrugged slightly. “I didn’t see the papers, but,” she tapped her lower lip thoughtfully. “I’m not sure it has anything to do with this, but a couple of weeks ago I did see something… a research packet was mistakenly sent back to the KIVA from Syndrex. I opened it thinking that it was for Dr. Steubens from Dr. Marlow, but it was coded – I realized that it was a classified military packet. A little later a soldier showed up at the Operations Center, asking for the packet.”

“Did you see him? Which branch of the armed forces was he with?”

“I believe he was with the Air Force… he had wings on his jacket.”

MacGyver frowned. I wonder if that has anything to do with my little field trip to Central Asia last week. Bracing one hand against the wall, and one on Barbara’s shoulder, he climbed to his feet. He still felt a little wobbly, but he was recovering quickly. “How much time have we lost?” He checked his watch.

“I’m not sure – maybe half an hour since you broke the glass.”

“Let’s walk and talk, shall we, Spencer? We still have some work ahead of us… if you’re still willing to go on.”

Barbara flushed slightly. “I’d rather go on than back through there.” She shuddered slightly. MacGvyer didn’t press her; he understood why.

He squeezed her shoulder gently before releasing her. “I’m grateful for you pulling me out,” he said earnestly. “Thank you, Spencer. I owe you one.”

“I think we can call it even,” Barbara said lightly. “We have a way to go to reach Dr. Steubens, if – if he’s still – ” she hesitated, glancing down at her hands uncertainly.

“We’ve got even more things to worry about than that,” MacGyver said, checking himself over for other injuries. “Bad news, Spencer. We’ve lost the two-way mike.”

Barbara glanced around, to see if had fallen from MacGyver’s belt nearby where she hadn’t noticed it. It was nowhere in sight. “They don’t know where we are now!”

MacGyver knew they didn’t have time to look for it. “Let’s find that acid leak.”

~~~Link to Chapter 21

Wooo! Update. I was asking myself where have you been kidnapped I guess life got you busy. Wonderful chapter as usual. Thanks for sharing.

Ha! The mike is gone!

At least that is a reasonable way to loose it. Well done! The way you keep inventing scenes makes the pilot all new and fresh and me wishing we had seen some of these added parts.

Great whumping also. Loved the previous part as well, it did indeed look a bit easy to go through the gas chamber in the pilot. Maybe what you wrote is in the deleted scenes, who knows! To me it didn't even seem they held their breaths at all - only breathing through the cloth. Always thought that this would not help much.


For a long time I wonder now how do you write this story. Do you always watch a little scene and then describing from a different angle and adding to it? Or do you have the whole pilot memorized anyway?

I've watched it so many times I practically have it memorized--I love to watch each episode frame by frame, to capture in my mind every expression and movement-- but it really helps that I have a shiny, nifty transcript written out by someone even more obsessed with canon and detail than myself! It is a most righteous tool that has proved to be invaluable to me time and again--and was drawn up by our very own 'Beth.

Also, I've always thought this episode was meant to be much, much longer than it was.

There are several very obvious places where scenes were cut out, and evidence from the dialogue seems to support this; sometimes the things that the characters say make no sense, as if earlier references were cut out of the final print.

That's where the new scenes come in--born straight out of my imagination, and fleshed out with some supportive brainstorming with my MacFriends, as well as comments and PM suggestions from Constant Readers.

In this sense, everyone in MOL (and LOTRfanMB, and LJ, and FF.net) has contributed to the development of this story.

And yes, I do watch every segment of the show that I'm writing about, to keep the favour of the scene fresh in my mind. I may need to buy a new disc1 soon... I may be wearing this one out!


Thanks Astra! And thanks Ghostdoll, for your kind comments and interest!

Okay, Lothi, now that you've outed me . . . Good thing Astra can't see our YM brainstorming sessions. She'd really think I was obsessed!

One of the byproducts of Lothi's work is that I'm currently finishing off a verbatim transcript of the entire pilot, including notes on camera shots (in some scenes; not all). I got involved with this after Lothi was a couple of chapters in, so I still need to go back and get the opening gambit transcribed.

Rocky, once the transcript is complete, would you like to have it to include it in the MOL resources?

Nicely done, Lothi! Very, very nicely done. This is what fan fiction is supposed to be like.

I've often felt many of the episodes were missing scenes, but especially the Pilot. Most shows (at least today) have pilots of two hours -- some even more. It's just hard to "get to know" your characters in 42 minutes. Although with a 7+ years run, MacGyver certainly won over his audience with that first show.

Wonderful work. I can only imagine how detailed that outline you and MacBeth have put together is.

I can only think of one piece of advice.... Keep it coming!

Who, me? *innocent look* Being a perfectionist myself, I'd never do that! (But I admit before I was a member of this forum I did not even know that there are different kind of Nike-shoes or brown leather jackets, but that's a different thread )


I think you two make a good writing team! Hope there is one or two plot bunnies coming off for you, Beth, as well. Remember, there is a Guiness waiting for you!


Loth, where is your avatar from? I don't recall that look - which makes me feel a lesser Mac-fan right now

It comes from the episode "halloween knights" - this is the disguise Mac came with into the evil people's place

I love the missing scenes. You are definitely making the story more realistic for me. Having RPE about in and near a lab that deals with gases is something omitted from the pilot. While they get round it by having MacGyver and Spencer get out before being overcome (as far as we see) I think it makes more sense that they would know there was RPE and at least one of them go for it.

So far you are writing around established scenes making them more realistic but are you going to make any big changes to scenes we have actually seen? I only ask because we are approaching an irritating scene with MacGyver and Spencer standing around next to sulphuric acid. Not sure how you can write around that to make it plausible without doing something about the scene itself.

the dialogue of the pilot from the subtitles off of my DVD are here - http://www.macgyveronline.com/articles/Pilot.pdf It might help you with any dialogue you are missing.

((((Beth, Bander & Ratty)))) Thanks guys!

I don't plan to make any changes to the original storyline, other than to provide plausible reasons for the actions of the characters.

You're still going to need to apply some of that Suspended Disbelief to any 'canon scenes' where Mac and his companions bend the rules past the breaking point

But I'll try to offer as much plausible deniability as I can!

I'm so pumped that you're all enjoying this story. Thanks tonnes for your support, interest, and comments!

= on the outside
= on the inside

Thanks ghostdoll! I only recall that joker-outfit. Reason to watch that episode again!

Loth, is this actually a democracy here? Can we ask questions and wish wishes? Because I just realized that I always wondered how Mac and Spencer got back to the surface? Did they get to the surface on their own? Might have taken long, with her being hurt. And might have taken too long to rescue her. Or did the medics go down? How? Might be complicated.

I think it is an easy way out, just to snip to the end. But since we're going realistically here and all that - shouldn't their way up take twice as long as the way down? You could write a whole second part to it!

(Just wondered if you have thought that far away yet)


Astra, give her an inch and she takes a mile (or something like that)

A democracy? Hmm... not really. More like a benevolent dictatorship

I value the questions and comments that all brave enough to open their minds to my fanfic assaults. I may not always be able to grant wishes or answer the questions, but I do consider the views of my readers, and often their points of view suggest possibilities to me.

I withhold the right of final edit My brain, my rules

(((Astra)))

As for the icon... I go positively fangirlish when I see Mac in that top-hat

Dignity is challenged... oh yes!

The image is from Hallowe'en Knights, as is the caption -- the outfit is based on nineteenth-century funerary dress, such as might have been worn by a professional mourner. Mac arrives at the HIT costume party in the mourning-coat and scarfed hat, with an elaborate spread of food in a coffin, as part of the staff from 'To Die For Catering'. He changes into the very silly joker's outfit later. (I personally wish he hadn't.)

The screen capture is from the MacGyverDaily community on LiveJournal; the capping is done by a young woman named Jess. I knew Lothi has a particular passion for Mac in that outfit (who wouldn't?). The caps from that episode finally became available a few days ago -- Thursday, in fact -- and I immediately glommed onto them.

In fact, I made that icon for Lothi and sent it to her (along with a couple of others from the same episode) while we were in the middle of an editorial brainstorming session -- I think it was that same evening, right, Lothi? Have to do my bit to keep my favourite author happy -- she writes such lovely stuff when she's happy!

And I now have some screen caps from Hallowe'en Knights in the pipeline for LOLMacs . . .

As for the plot-bunnies -- without Lothi's support, I would never even have started trying to write again in the first place, as you know. She gets her share of the blame for the new one also.

Hey, if I finish and post my new story before Gatecon, do I get a second drink?

Yes! Lovely lovely iconses help the gears and cogs in my brainpan to assemble all the wordies and makes them pour out of my skull in an appealing fashion.


Iconses from 'Hallowe'en Knights' are particularly good for my consent... consense... um, to my ability to focus.

*proudly bears the banner of guilt for enabling Beth's newly re-discovered fic writing talents*

Mission accopnl . . acplincmo . . . uh . . . mischief managed.

Hey, have you two started to drink without me already?

I have something for your sig:

LOL! Tha's great!

And Beth, regarding that second drink..........heck, I'll even buy.

*headdesk*