Secrets and Consequences Part Five
Rated: R

Pete figured MacGyver would sleep late, emotionally drained from his visit to the cemetery the day before, all those painful memories resurfacing after keeping them private for so long. He decided not to call and check on him until after noon, but even then he received no response from his friend except the standard greeting of his answering machine. His concern growing, he drove to the houseboat and entered using his copy of the key.

“MacGyver?” He asked, calling out. “MacGyver, are you here? It’s Pete.”

All he received in reply was a profound, unsettling silence, the houseboat swaying and rocking gently on the water, creaking slightly as it did so. Noticing that MacGyver’s preferred, customary place to sleep on the sofa was unoccupied except for a rumpled pile of sheets, he went up the spiral staircase to see if he had either moved to his bedroom or was perhaps in the shower. When he found those rooms empty as well, his worry increased. He had seen MacGyver’s jeep when he parked, so he knew he couldn’t have gone anywhere too far. Searching the premises, he found nothing out of the ordinary, no signs of an intruder or a struggle, nothing ransacked or out of order. MacGyver’s mountain bike and hockey gear were still in their cubby holes near the front door, so he knew he couldn’t have taken some excursion on the nearby bike path or to the local sports arena to practice and take out his depression on the ice as therapy. It was as if he had simply vanished, not a trace of him left behind. Pete knew the police would never declare him missing until a period of time elapsed, and that there was still a possibility that he had gone for a walk somewhere to collect his thoughts and be alone and would still return, but at that point he didn’t consider it likely. He was filled with a sense of dread and unease, knowing that despite all outward appearances and evidence to the contrary that something had gone terribly wrong.

***

MacGyver was stabbing Ashley repeatedly, ignoring her terrified screams and cries for help, watching as her blood pooled around her body, some of it smearing on his clothing.

“Stop! MacGyver, please! Stop! NO!” She screamed, her green eyes filled with fear and tears, sobbing. “Don’t do this to me! Please!”

He continued plunging the knife into her almost mindlessly, as if possessed by some inner evil. As her cries died and he felt her badly wounded body grow weaker and limp in his bloodstained arms, she looked at him with accusing, glassy eyes, tears rolling down her pallid cheeks.

“How could you do this to me, MacGyver?” She asked weakly. “I thought you loved me…”

Releasing a final, shallow breath, he watched, horrified as her eyes rolled back and closed, her body completely still and lifeless…


“Ashley…no…Ashley, I’m sorry…” MacGyver mumbled, staring blankly, sobbing, reaching out to nothing but air and empty space, huddled in the corner of the room where he was being kept. “Come back to me…please…don’t do this…Ashley…”

“That’s what it was like, or at least might as well have been,” Evan said, releasing the button on his controls, ending the violent and gruesome hallucination being projected by MacGyver’s manipulated brain, the shocking and disturbing images of Ashley’s gory form evaporating.

“No,” MacGyver said, staring tearfully up at his captor, relieved his latest torment was over. Seeing a depiction of himself viciously and brutally murdering her was more than he could bear, almost worse than the unendurable pain he had to suffer almost constantly at the press of a button, at the whim and mercy of Evan. “No, it wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t kill her.”

“Oh, but you did, MacGyver,” Evan said, his eyes intense and burning. “You murdered her. Perhaps not as overtly as the hallucination I induced in your mind would suggest, but you did.”

“She took the pills. I didn’t force her.”

“But your actions provided her with the perfect reason and opportunity to do so! When are you going to understand that? When are you going to admit that you were at fault? When are you going to confess to your crimes against her innocence?”

“Would it matter if I did? Would it matter if I told you I’ve thought about it for years? You’re never going to stop this. You’re just going to keep using your grudge and your hatred against me for your own purposes until I die. Even then, you won’t be satisfied. When are you going to realize that? When are you going to understand that it will never be enough for you? Look, I realize you’re hurting. I know you miss her, but this isn’t the solution. Torturing me won’t bring her back.”

“No, but I will have justice.”

“Do you think Ashley would want you to do this?”

“After what you’ve done to her? Of course she would.”

“No. No, I don’t believe she would. She would forgive and recommend that you do the same. Evan, believe me, I understand your pain, but—

“You know nothing about my pain!” Evan shouted, pressing several buttons randomly on his controls, rendering MacGyver blind, paralyzed, and unable to breathe at the same time. He grinned wickedly as he listened to MacGyver choke, his dark, sightless eyes staring emptily, not focused on anything yet widened in panic and fear, his body immobilized and useless.

To MacGyver, the instant blindness combined with the inability to move or breathe was a terrifying experience, like he was being pulled into the murky depths of the ocean attached to a leaded weight, completely disoriented and unable to find his way back to the surface, his lungs quickly filling with water.

“What a complex thing the mind can be,” he heard Evan say in the darkness. “We take for granted all it is capable of. With just a few presses of these controls, I can make you see and react to things that aren’t there and aren’t really happening. I can make you blind or deaf or paralyzed. I can remove your verbal abilities. I can deprive you of your ability to breathe. I can cause you tremendous pain without actually physically inflicting it. All I have to do is trigger that part of your brain and cause an overload or malfunction, and you’re completely helpless, at my mercy. Ingenious in its construction, and yet so simple to activate, so easy to manipulate.” He released the controls.

Gasping and wheezing, blinking rapidly as light once again flooded his eyes, his vision restored, MacGyver rolled around on the floor, also relieved to find his mobility had returned.

“You…know what I think?” He asked after a few minutes of recovering, still panting heavily, pushing himself upright, trembling slightly. “This has…nothing to do with Ashley. This is your own sick, perverted version of justice. You just…want to test your new toy to see how it works, and I’m a convenient target because I dated your sister and she happens to be dead. You don’t really care about her. How could you? You know she would never condone something like this. This wouldn’t be what she’d want. This is all just a product of your misguided desire for vengeance. If you really loved her as you claim you do, you would end this right now.”

Evan smirked. “Nice try, MacGyver,” he said. “Acting as if you have any altruism. If you loved her, you would never have let her go. You would never have let her kill herself.”

“It was too late to save her when I found her,” MacGyver said, “and I did love her. I told her the truth. It takes love to do that.”

Evan fumed, his facial muscles once again twitching violently with suppressed emotion, his rage returning. “How dare you insinuate that I didn’t love my sister!” He screamed, his voice shaking and full of wrath. “How dare you imply that you loved her more than I do, after you left her to die!” Unable to contain his anger any longer, he pressed the pain stimulus button, sending MacGyver crashing to the floor, writhing and convulsing, screaming and wailing in misery as the sharp, stabbing pains returned, feeling as if he were being eviscerated. Listening to him seemed to calm him, and he watched him with a pleased, contented smile.

A buzzer sounded outside the enclosure, alerting him. Looking up, he saw that it was Dr. Warren, the man who had performed the procedure to insert the chip into MacGyver’s brain. Leaving the room but making sure that the pain stimulus was still activated, hearing MacGyver’s blood-curdling screams even as he closed the secure door, he approached, noticing a look of concern on the older man’s wizened face.

“Well Doctor, what do you think? The device appears to be exceeding our initial expectations, wouldn’t you agree?” Evan asked.

“You should let the man rest,” Dr. Warren said, looking inside the enclosure watching as MacGyver continued to squirm, tormented screams and howls escaping his raw throat, his face pinched in agony.

Evan laughed in disbelief. “Why?” He asked. “The main purpose of this device is to inflict the maximum pain stimulus, is it not? We wouldn’t allow respite to any enemy agent we were interrogating, would we?”

“No, but we would also not let them die before we had a chance to extract valuable information from them, either,” Dr. Warren said.

“MacGyver is not under interrogation. I’m not trying to obtain information from him. I just want him to suffer, immensely.”

“But don’t you think he could have something of value to offer our organization? Something to share that might help us?”

“Possibly,” Evan said, sighing as if bored by the question. He looked in on where MacGyver lay, twisting and moaning. He smiled. “This is far more enjoyable, though. Anyway, that’s not his purpose for being here, for being the test of your new device. He is here to be punished, and that’s exactly what I’m doing to him.”

“So you’re telling me this is a personal endeavor? That you have some vendetta against him? I would never have authorized my invention to be used in such a manner.”

Evan shrugged. “What’s the difference?” He asked. “It works. Isn’t that the most important thing?”

“Evan, I’m warning you…if you don’t allow him time to rest, all his internal systems will become overwhelmed and shut down. He will die.”

A sly grin spread on Evan’s lips. “That’s the idea,” he said. “I want him to die, Doctor. Slowly and painfully. I want him to think about what he did to ruin my life and my sister’s life, to suffer over it. I don’t want him to have a quick, easy, and painless death. He doesn’t deserve it after what he’s done. Your device provides me with the method to accomplish exactly that.”

Dr. Warren sighed and looked in on MacGyver again, his screams completely wrung out of him and reduced to mere whimpers and sobs, his body still shaking violently. He always considered himself a brilliant and capable scientist, but now he realized with horror the implications of what he had created, the knowledge arriving too late. No longer was it within his control. Others were using it beyond its intended purpose, for reasons and designs of their own. Even though he knew his device was meant to torture and was inhumane, he also knew it was only supposed to be used periodically and for brief amounts of time until sufficient information could be gathered from the prisoner. Then, it was to be deactivated. MacGyver had already been exposed to the maximum pain stimulus far more frequently than was recommended, and the damage could be irrecoverable if he lived. In all likelihood, however, he would probably die, and soon, unless he did something to intervene and prevent it.

To be continued…

Man, this man is pure psycho! And Pete always have this "sense" that tells him that his "child" is in big troubles Dr. Warren better have a card up his sleeve... after all Evan said that if anyone tried to take the chip out of MacGyver's brain it would self-destruct!

Thanks for another interesting chapter, MacsChick! The rabid fans are most pleased!

wow wonderful read.