Phoenix Field Agent
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Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Gender: Female
Country: USA
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Season: season 3
Episode:Passages
Vehicle: Jeep
Jacket: Black leather
House: House boat
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Shadows and Light Part Six
Rated: PG
Nicholas delivered a brutal smack to Pete’s bald head with the butt of his gun, leaving a deep gash and streaking it with blood. Pete groaned, but did not lose consciousness, determined not to give them the satisfaction of seeing his weakness, glaring at them and defiantly challenging them, his eyes glazed with pain.
“Did you honestly believe you could escape me?” Nicholas barked, signaling to his men.
The bulkier man slammed his fist into Pete’s stomach, causing him to double over, wheezing for breath that had been forced out of him with the powerful punch. He was tied to a chair again, his body shuddering in agony. Nicholas sneered, pleased with the results of the beating. MacGyver was there, once again a silent and helpless witness to his friend’s suffering. Even though his hand went right through him, he placed it supportively on Pete’s trembling shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Help is coming. Just hold on…”
Nicholas carefully opened the black case and displayed the hypodermic of poison again, a homicidal grin on his face. “Your time has run out, Peter,” he said. “I gave you ample time to consider your options, and you instead chose to proceed with the foolish notion of escape.” He tapped on the syringe, prepping it for injection.
“No! Don’t do this! Please!” MacGyver shouted, his words ineffective, Nicholas and his men deaf to them. Had he actually been present, MacGyver knew they would still disregard them anyway. There was nothing he could do except wait, and it frustrated him.
Pete squirmed mightily in his chair, struggling to slacken the ropes that restrained him, but Nicholas’s men grabbed him and held him solidly in place, rolling up his sleeve, searching for a good vein to insert the deadly toxin. MacGyver looked around the room of discarded and accumulated junk, the room they had decided to return to, trying to focus his energy on moving anything even slightly to get their attention. Anytime he tried to move something, he felt himself fading, his energy waning, causing him to stumble backwards, almost collapsing to the floor, feeling the drag of an incredible weight once again trying to pull him away. He stopped trying, realizing that if he kept pressing he might disappear back inside the confinement of his unconscious body again, and he couldn’t afford that to happen if Pete was about to meet his certain death. He had to remain in that room with him. Still, there was little he could do in his present state. Pete was seconds away from dying, and his only chance now was the arrival of the proverbial cavalry that he hoped he had been able to summon with his tape recorded message in Dr. Rhoades’s laboratory.
“MacGyver cannot help you this time,” Nicholas said, approaching Pete with the needle, probing his arm for a decent vein.
That’s what you think, Pete thought, smiling to himself when he remembered how MacGyver managed to reduce them to terrified children. He wondered where his friend was now, reflecting on how once again some powerful force beyond their control had ripped him away from him to origins unknown. He hoped he would return, but he also knew that he had to rely on himself in this situation. Instead of panicking as he supposed his normal reaction should be to watching a needle of poison ready to pierce his skin, he remained calm, another idea slowly forming in his mind.
“Aren’t you worried the ghost in this house will return?” He asked, choking, his voice restricted by the bulky man’s arm being wrapped tightly around his throat.
Nicholas paused, staring at him, trying to remain cold and professional, yet Pete could see the fear return to his eyes. “What are you speaking of?” He asked. “Are you attempting to stall me with some absurdity?”
“I heard it. I heard you and your men running, screaming…”
Nicholas shook his head. “I do not know what you are talking about,” he said. His expression grew fierce and he tried to return his focus to the syringe.
“It will return, you know. Make no mistake about it. It doesn’t want you here.”
Nicholas blinked rapidly, a slight tremor appearing in his usually steady hand. Pete grinned, knowing he had succeeded in worrying him. The man with the weathered, rough features looked around the room.
“What if he is right?” He asked. “What if it does return?”
“Nonsense!’ Nicholas growled, trying to stab Pete’s arm with the needle but finding it difficult, his hands shaky and unsteady. He broke into a cold sweat.
“It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not,” Pete said. “You could be right. Maybe it won’t return—but I will.”
Nicholas froze, his bulging, terrified eyes meeting Pete’s. Pete smiled calmly.
“I’ll come back to haunt you,” he said. “You do know that, don’t you? How long did you think you could keep killing people before one of their spirits would return, seeking retribution?”
“N-no…impossible…” Nicholas whispered. He continued to stare at Pete, taking his threat seriously.
His men looked at each other uncertainly. “We have our orders,” the heavier set man said. “Obtain the information or kill him.”
“You will regret following those orders, I assure you,” Pete said darkly, his voice assuming an intentionally ominous tone. “After I’m dead, I won’t leave you alone, not for one moment. I’ll be everywhere you are, reminding you that you killed me. I’ll find others you have assassinated and ask them to join me in my constant torment of you.”
MacGyver, still relegated to the sidelines as a helpless spectator, couldn’t help but laugh. “Pete, this is brilliant!” He said. “Keep it up! I think it’s starting to affect them!”
Nicholas was visibly trembling now, paralyzed with fear.
“You should know better than to murder,” Pete said. “Your enemies will return to haunt you forever. That will be your punishment for their unjust and untimely deaths.”
MacGyver grinned. “I don’t know where you’re getting this—from a bad horror movie or what—but keep it up, Pete! Keep it up!” He said.
“He is telling lies!” The bulky man hissed.
“But you saw what the ghost was able to do,” the man with the rough features said.
“I do not care! We have a job to do!” The bulky man shouted, snatching the syringe from Nicholas’s limp, clammy hands, preparing to inject it into Pete’s arm.
“No!” MacGyver shouted.
“Drop it and freeze!” A police officer shouted, entering the room and pointing his gun at them. Several policemen and government agents soon swarmed around the tiny room, apprehending Nicholas and his men and untying Pete.
“Thank God,” MacGyver said, watching the sudden surge in activity as the house was secured and Nicholas and his men were led away and taken into custody. “The message got through, after all.”
Dr. Rhoades and her lab assistant Trish entered the room nervously, flashing their Phoenix identification cards to any available pair of scrutinizing eyes, indicating it was their first time around a crime scene, showing their inexperience and excitement, feeling somewhat important as well, the scientific findings of a lifetime about to be revealed to the world.
“Mr. Thornton, are you all right?” Dr. Rhoades asked, approaching him, staring at the bleeding cut on his head with concern.
Pete rubbed his sore, chafed wrists and then tenderly touched the wound on his head. “I...I think so,” he said. He looked at the two women. “What are you doing here?”
Dr. Rhoades and Trish exchanged glances. “We have something to show you after you get cleaned up and are finished here,” she said. “Something incredible.”
***
Pete, his head now bandaged, listened to the recorded message from MacGyver with the same amount of amazement as his colleagues.
“So…he told you to get help,” he said when the message was over. “That’s how the authorities knew where I was. You told them after hearing what MacGyver said on this tape.”
“Not only that, but we recorded higher than normal electromagnetic waves and the temperature dropped dramatically,” Dr. Rhoades said, beaming. “MacGyver’s spirit was definitely present in our laboratory, and this evidence leads us in an important direction to almost proving the existence of some form of life after death or near death conclusively.”
“I’m curious…what did you tell the police when you sought their assistance?”
Trish and Dr. Rhoades looked at each other, grinning. “Well, it was complicated,” she said. “Obviously, we couldn’t tell them that a spirit told us where you were.”
“Of course, given our record they wouldn’t have been surprised,” Trish said with a wry grin.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Thornton. We told them we received an anonymous call informing us of your location. They seemed to accept that.”
Pete nodded slightly, making sure not to jar his sensitive, throbbing head with too much movement. “I wonder if he’s here now,” he said. “He tried to help me by haunting those men, and you should have seen it—I’ve never heard a top KGB assassin, a man considered ruthless and tougher than any other man in his field whimper and plead, cowering in fear. I heard them running all over that house. Things were crashing around, doors banging—MacGyver created quite a stir, all right.”
“It sounds as if he used his energy to move solid objects, something we theorized happens with poltergeists. They use massive amounts of their energy to cause their disturbances.”
“Well, he must have used too much energy, because he vanished,” Pete said sadly.
Dr. Rhoades raised her thin eyebrows. She reached for a pad and a pen and began taking copious notes. “What do you mean, vanished?” She asked, scribbling.
“I mean, his apparition just…evaporated, into nothingness.”
“He could be back in his body now,” Trish said, leaning over to make the suggestion and her contribution to her superior’s notes.
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” Pete said.
Dr. Rhoades nodded. “It must be more difficult for spirits to sustain their forms if their bodies are still technically alive,” she said. “It’s as if there is some kind of struggle between them, a battle between the body and the soul, trying to remain together, fighting to survive. Once that soul is permanently separated from that body…well, then death occurs.”
Pete sighed deeply. “Well, in that case, I hope he has returned to his body successfully,” he said.
“There are several methods we could try to see if his presence is still here,” Dr. Rhoades said, putting down her pad and pen and grabbing a camera. She turned and snapped a photograph of the room, the bright flash momentarily blinding Pete.
“What did you do that for?” He asked in irritation, rubbing his eyes, a dot of light seared onto his retina that followed him wherever he looked.
“Sometimes an entity will appear on a photograph, either as streaks of light or sometimes even a vague outline of a human form,” Dr. Rhoades said, showing him some of her photographs containing what she believed to be spectral evidence.
“Some people say those are errors in developing the film, perhaps due to exposure,” Trish said.
“Nevertheless, I believe these dots of light represent the manifestation of some form of energy, what we commonly refer to as ghosts,” Dr. Rhoades said, taking the photos back from Pete and placing them on her desk. “If MacGyver is still here, it will appear on the photograph I just took.”
Pete shivered, crossing his arms. “Brr! Did you feel that?” He asked. “I think the temperature in here just dropped twenty degrees!”
Trish looked at their EM detectors. They once again crackled to life, their needles dancing wildly. “Look,” she said.
Dr. Rhoades studied them. “I think MacGyver is back,” she said, looking back at Pete.
“MacGyver? Are you here? Can you hear me? Can you speak to me?” Pete asked, looking around the room. “Where are you?”
“Wait a minute, Pete,” Dr. Rhoades said. “Let me turn on the tape recorder again.” She pressed the record button. “MacGyver, are you here with us now?” She asked. There was no answer.
“I don’t understand,” Pete said. “He was able to communicate with me before. I even saw him! What’s happening now?”
“Be patient, Mr. Thornton,” Dr. Rhoades said. “Spirits manifest themselves in different ways all the time. His energy could still be too weak to fully appear before us. If he’s here, the evidence will prove it on the tape and in the photograph.”
“But, I want to talk to him! I want to see him!”
“You can, Mr. Thornton,” Dr. Rhoades said. “Just ask him any question you’d like, and I’m certain we will hear his response when I play back the tape.”
“Give us a sign, friend,” he said. “Let us know you’re here. Come on, Mac…”
“I’m…here, Pete,” MacGyver said, his voice once again distant and echoing, apparently still unheard by Pete or the others in the room, looking at each other, waiting expectantly. “I’m here. Can’t you hear me? Pete…”
He tried to move something in the room with his energy again, but it made him feel nauseated and weaker. He could feel himself fading, feel himself dying. He was dying, he knew it. His body was telling him, transferring its distress to his spirit, making him feel it, making him aware of it, letting him know that it did not have much time left to survive, that he had to return to it before it was too late. Something began pulling at him again, pulling him away. He saw his body in the hospital room, heard the monotone whine of the heart monitor, the frantic scrambling of the doctors and nurses around him…
“No…”
As he watched, he realized he was being pulled away from his body this time, not towards it. His surroundings grew dimmer…
“NO! Pete!”
Dr. Rhoades, Trish, and Pete looked at each other in alarm. They had heard him that time, his anguished cry echoing eerily through the lab.
“MacGyver, what’s going on? Tell me!” Pete shouted. His wide eyes darted towards Dr. Rhoades and Trish. “Did you hear that? It sounded as if he was in pain! What do you think is happening to him?”
Before either of them could reply, the phone on Dr. Rhoades’s desk rang shrilly. She answered it. Her face blanched as she listened to the person on the other line.
“What? What is it?” Pete asked.
Saying nothing, still in shock, she handed the phone to him and he immediately picked up the receiver. “This is Thornton,” he said, his voice cracking in emotion.
“This is Dr. Simms. I think you’d better come to the hospital as soon as possible,” the sober voice on the other end said.
“Why? What is it?” Pete asked.
“It’s your friend MacGyver, Mr. Thornton,” the doctor said. “His condition has worsened. He’s dying.”
To be continued…
 "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
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