Not by blood, but by fire and water

Chapter 1

Shit,' Jack thought as he tested his restraints and tried to figure out just how their current mission had gone to hell.

His partner sat next to him, his wrists and feet bound. Mac was taking an involuntary nap which had been caused by a burly man sucker punching the unsuspecting kid. Jack seethed thinking about it. How had this mission turned fubar so quickly?

Sure, occasionally one of them got caught to be interrogated or tortured - sometimes even purposefully - but never had both of them been caught and tortured for intel. How were they going to get out of this one?

No one knew where they were. They had been in another country when they had last checked in with Matty.

Jack was brought out of his thoughts as a new face walked in, and judging by his swagger and the way he commanded respect from his henchmen, he had to be the head honcho. The first words out of his mouth had Jack's stomach dropping, "You must be Jack. Tell me, did you enjoy your time in the sandbox? Being a former Delta, you must have been a real tough guy," he said smirking, "Well, we shall see about that."

The man stepped toward Mac and Jack felt his heart rate speed up. Keeping a calm front he prayed his best friend stay unconscious for a while longer. In his experience the bad guys tended to leave the unconscious alone since they couldn't get much intel from an unresponsive prisoner.

Grabbing a handful of the kid's blond hair, the man yanked his head back, exposing his neck. Jack's heart clenched, silently begging for Mac to be left alone. He had to get the attention back on himself. He couldn't bear to see any harm come to the kid.

"This must be MacGyver. By his reputation, I thought he would be older but it turns out he's nothing but a boy!" the guy laughed.

"Well, you know who we are," Jack grunted, "Mind telling me who the hell you are? If not, I can always just call you an asshole."

It worked and the guy let go of Mac's hair, but only to step over to Jack and deliver a brutal backhand that split the former Delta's lip. Jack didn't even feel it, he was just happy the psycho wasn't focused on his partner anymore. He feigned more pain than he felt as he watched their captor's face carefully. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw a gleam of pleasure light up in his eyes. Awesome, their captor enjoyed causing pain to others.

Jack had dealt with guys like that before and he came up with a simple plan just then. He would keep all attention on himself and taking every bit of the abuse coming their way to keep Mac and his big and beautiful brain safe so he could get them out of the mess.

"You may call me Mr. Sinclair," the man offered Jack a creepy smile. "I assume you're wondering why you and your associate are here, am I correct in assuming such?"

"The thought has crossed my mind." Jack spared a quick glance at the kid he loved like a brother while Sinclair's back was to him. Mac's head was still slumped down with his chin resting on his chest. Blood had trickled down his neck into the collar of his shirt from the wound near the back of his head. Fortunately the wound wasn't actively bleeding anymore. Looking back to face Sinclair, Jack made the final decision to go through with his plan. "If this is some kind of way to ask me out on a date, you need to step up your came, dude," he quipped.

Sinclair ignored the comment and pushed himself into Jack's personal space, his face coming within inches of the agent's. "You're here, Mr. Dalton, because you took something that doesn't belong to you. You're going to tell me where it is," he said menacingly.

Seeing an opportunity, Jack thrust his forehead into the bridge of Sinclair's nose as hard as he could. Hearing a crunch, Jack smiled. Blood poured from the man's nose. His hired muscle converged on the former Delta operator and started trading punches to his face and body. After several minutes Sinclair managed to compose himself and slow down the bleeding. He called off his guys, motioning for them to step back.

Jack's eye burned from blood running into it from a gash at his left brow. He smirked at Sinclair, "Man, sorry about that. I should have told you, I have a thing about people invading my personal space." Sinclair pulled something out of his pocket and slipped it on his right hand. 'Aww, that's cheating,' Jack thought when he saw the shiny brass knuckles coming toward his middle.

Pain blossomed in his stomach as all the air was forced out of his lungs. Suddenly there was a knife at his side, pushing painfully through his shirt and breaching the surface of his skin.

"You will suffer for that, Mr. Dalton!" Sinclair said with a maniacal look in his eyes. He pulled the knife across Jack's ribs, eliciting a pained grunt from the man.

Looking up, Jack saw the brass knuckles coming toward him again, this time toward his face. The impact shot a spurt of Jack's blood on to the dingy wall next to him.

Effectively knocked out, his chin came to rest on his chest as his blood slowly dripped from it.