Title: The Survivors
Author: Phoenixnz
Fandoms: The Pretender/Macgyver
Rating: PG13
Characters: Jane (female Pretender), Sam Malloy (Macgyver), Macgyver, Jarod, Parker
Genre: Crossover, action, drama
Art: ctbn60
Summary: The Onyssius Foundation is called on to help Macgyver's son.
Sam Malloy just knew he shouldn’t have taken this assignment. He just knew it had been a bad idea. He’d told himself that a hundred times. And he hated it when he was right. But Mike had promised him he would look out for him and if it hadn’t been for Mike Thornton’s friendship, or rather, Mike’s father’s friendship with his old man, Sam would have turned him down flat.
But Mike had dangled a carrot of a plum photo-journalism assignment as well and Sam, ever the professional snapper with one eye in the viewfinder and another, keener eye on opportunity, couldn’t pass it up.
Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, his old man used to say. And Harry Jackson, Sam’s great-grandfather, probably would have had some down-home Minnesota wisdom to add to that. Not that Sam had ever met old Harry. But Macgyver had plenty of stories to tell about the old man.
He’d heard it said that the locals here in the rolling desert hills of Afghanistan didn’t really like Americans. They didn’t like journalists either. Which didn’t bode well for Sam’s odds of survival. Since he’d been captured by them. And Sam had a sinking feeling that these weren’t just your average, every-day going about their business townsfolk. Not with the toys these guys were toting.
***
Jane walked along the corridor of the Onyssius Foundation. It had been a week since she’d returned from helping out some new friends, who happened to have a state-of-the-art, complete with artificial intelligence, supercar.
Just a few days before that, her father, Major Charles, had died from a massive brain aneurysm. Jane had stayed long enough for the funeral then gone to visit Metropolis to see her friend Chloe. Lois had come along, even though she was suffering from morning sickness as they’d traversed the local shopping mall. The shopping trip and the time spent with her friends had done her the world of good. She’d been able to open up with the girls, not only about losing both her parents in such a short time, but also about a few other things.
A lot had changed in the year or so since she’d left the Centre. There, she had been forced to Pretend simulations, without the benefit of humanity, or emotions. To use her training and eidetic memory to become anything they wanted her to be. The only reason she was not still there was because the man who had bought the Centre, Lex Luthor, had forced her to kidnap a man she now considered a good friend. Clark Kent. Clark had amazing powers and very few people now knew that Clark had taken on the identity of Superman. While he usually patrolled the streets of Metropolis to prevent crime, he had also helped out in a few disasters around the world.
Jane had no idea why the people of Metropolis didn’t manage to connect the dots and discover that Superman was none other than Clark Kent. She could only assume that Clark used some kind of signal to stop people from learning the truth. But it really didn’t matter. He had become known as Earth’s protector and she wasn’t about to knock it.
It had taken some time for her to get back to a friendly footing with Clark. It wasn’t the fact that Lex had made her kidnap him. Clark understood that she’d had little choice. Back in the Centre, Jane had obeyed orders without question. It was the only thing she really knew how to do. She’d never had an independent thought. At least, not since she’d been an adult. All the abuse she had been through had only reinforced their lessons that she was just a tool. An instrument controlled by their hands.
By the time she left, Jarod, her brother and a fellow Pretender, had organised for her to have extensive therapy. And it had worked, to a certain degree. Determined to make Lex Luthor pay dearly for what he had done to her, and had done to Clark Kent, in which he had nearly killed the young man, Jane had returned to Metropolis with a plan to take Lex down for good. But she hadn’t taken into account how Clark and others would feel about her deception and when they’d realised what she had done, it had almost destroyed the fragile friendships she had made.
It had also destroyed any chance she had of a real relationship with billionaire Oliver Queen. Jane had fallen hard for the blonde man. He’d been the first man she’d ever slept with and it seemed like he had felt the same way about her. But after he’d learned what she had done, he had felt so betrayed he had refused to have any more to do with her.
Jane sighed as she walked along the corridor, thinking about her former lover. In the past few months, he had sunk to new lows. His company had come close to bankruptcy, forcing Jarod and a former business rival, Bruce Wayne, to step in and take over. He had spent half his time partying with every woman who crossed his path. And it had hurt.
Jane had tried to forget him. She had tried to move on. When she’d met Dean Winchester, a small part of her had hoped that there might be something more. But Dean’s life didn’t have any room for relationships. Then there had been Michael Knight. Smart and good-looking, the sex between them had been amazing. But Mike was in love with Sarah, even if he refused to acknowledge those feelings. And that had left Jane back at square one.
Sighing again, she opened the door to her sister-in-law’s office. Parker looked up.
“That’s quite a sigh,” she remarked.
“Yeah.” Jane flopped down on the chair.
“Everything okay?”
Jane looked at Jarod’s wife. Parker was an incredibly beautiful woman, even if she had a few more lines on her face and more grey in her hair. She often joked that being the mom of twins was enough to turn anyone’s hair grey.
“Yeah.”
“How was the shopping trip?”
“Great. It was fun, actually. Although Lois was still feeling a bit under the weather. Oh,” she gasped, “I meant to ask you. Do you have anything for morning sickness? I think Lois could really use the assist.”
“Sure. I’ll see if I can find my list when I get home and I’ll email it to you. If I have any remedies still at home, I’ll send them over.”
“Thanks. How have things been here?”
“You know Jarod,” Parker said with a shrug. “Throws himself into work rather than deal with everything else.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels.”
“Jarod wanted to talk to you. He’s in a meeting with a potential client right now and he asked me to tell you to stop in.”
“Did he say what it was about?” Jane said with a frown.
Parker shook her head. “But I’d hustle if I were you, sis. You know Jarod gets impatient sometimes.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it,” Jane said dryly.
She walked into Jarod’s office. A man sitting in one of the seats in the office looked around, then got up. He was probably in his late fifties or early sixties, with almost white hair. Jane guessed he would have been extremely attractive when he was younger. He still had a handsomeness about his features, although age had dimmed them somewhat.
“Jane, welcome back. How was Metropolis?”
“Great. Picked up a few bargains. Chloe and Lois have me convinced that retail therapy is always the best kind of therapy.”
“They’re a bad influence on you,” her brother remarked, his eyes twinkling.
“Never!” she retorted. She looked pointedly at the older man, then at Jarod.
“Mister Macgyver, this is my sister, Jane. Jane, this is Mr Macgyver.”
“Actually,” the older man said. “I just prefer Macgyver. How you doing, Jane?” He reached out a hand and she shook it politely.
“Jane, Macgyver has something he wants to discuss with us.”
“Oh? A new assignment?”
“Possibly.”’
Macgyver pulled out a photograph. For a moment, Jane thought it was an old photograph of Macgyver himself. The features were almost identical.
“This is my son, Sam. He’s a photo-journalist. He went into Afghanistan five days ago on an assignment. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Wasn’t there a little uprising a few months ago?” Jane asked.
Macgyver nodded. “Sam’s editor asked him to cover it. Photo essay. I would have gone to try and get him myself, but, well, I hate to admit it, but I’m too old to go halfway around the world. Anyway, an old buddy of mine used to work at the Phoenix Foundation and he suggested you guys.”
“Phoenix Foundation?” Jane frowned. “Isn’t that a think tank?”
“Something like that. It was run by another old buddy of mine. Pete Thornton. Pete passed away a few years ago.” Jane could see from the man’s expression that the loss of his friend had been devastating for him.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Macgyver shrugged.“Pete had been unwell for some time. He went blind due to Glaucoma.”
“Still, I can see it was difficult for you to lose such a close friend.”
“Jane ...” Jarod said warningly. Jane looked at her brother.
“What? It’s called empathy, Jarod.”
“And Macgyver doesn’t need to be analysed.”
She threw up her hands in mock surrender.
“Okay, fine. Macgyver, what is it you need us to do?”
“Get him out.” Macgyver chuckled. “Sam would hate it. I mean he’s pretty self-reliant. He has been since he was nine when his mother was killed, but ...”
“We think there may be some connection between this insurgence and a case you were working on with FLAG,” Jarod said, meaning the Foundation for Law and Government.
“In what way?” Jane asked curiously.
“The weapons they’ve been supplied with came from here.”
“Ortega?”
Jarod nodded. Jane thought for a moment. Sonny Ortega considered himself to be some sort of crime boss. He was basically into anything that would make a solid profit: guns, drugs. It didn’t surprise Jane in the least that someone like Ortega would sell arms to terrorist groups.
“Tell me more about Sam. You said his mom was killed when he was nine?”
Macgyver nodded
“I knew Kate in college. We were together for a few months, then we split up and I met another girl. Amy. Well, Amy and I were pretty serious, but Kate and I were still friends, I guess. I suppose we realised that we were never really meant to be. Anyway, I dropped out just before graduation to take up a job on a tramp freighter, and that was pretty much the end of that.”
“How did Kate die?”
“She was shot. By a Colonel in the Red Chinese Army. She was working on a story about the dissident movement. The official story is she was resisting arrest. But Sam saw it happen and he told me his mother was executed.”
Jane gasped. What a horrible way to die, she thought.
“Anyway, I didn’t know about Sam until he was nineteen. He was chasing a story involving the same man who killed his mother.”
Jane got the impression that Sam got his resilience and his independence from his father as much as his mother. Macgyver certainly struck her as an extremely intelligent man. Not quite up to Pretender level, she thought as she continued to talk with the man, but certainly very high on the spectrum.
She was fascinated as he began to tell stories about his youth and how he had learned the skills to take whatever he needed from his environment to solve problems. She admired the fact that Macgyver seemed to be able to come up with a solution which didn’t require using a gun. Jane didn’t like them much either, but she often felt she had little choice in the matter. Especially when she needed to be taken seriously.
Macgyver told her he had retired to Minnesota. As much as he wanted to go after Sam himself, he knew that he wasn’t up to it. While he still consulted for the Phoenix Foundation on the odd occasion, he had left that life behind him long ago. Now he was happy in his old house in rural Minnesota; fishing, hunting or doing whatever took his fancy. He had considered settling down to raise a family, but the one woman he’d considered settling down for had married someone else.
Sam, on the other hand, still had the wanderlust that seemed to be a common family trait. And now he was in trouble.
Author: Phoenixnz
Fandoms: The Pretender/Macgyver
Rating: PG13
Characters: Jane (female Pretender), Sam Malloy (Macgyver), Macgyver, Jarod, Parker
Genre: Crossover, action, drama
Art: ctbn60
Summary: The Onyssius Foundation is called on to help Macgyver's son.
Sam Malloy just knew he shouldn’t have taken this assignment. He just knew it had been a bad idea. He’d told himself that a hundred times. And he hated it when he was right. But Mike had promised him he would look out for him and if it hadn’t been for Mike Thornton’s friendship, or rather, Mike’s father’s friendship with his old man, Sam would have turned him down flat.
But Mike had dangled a carrot of a plum photo-journalism assignment as well and Sam, ever the professional snapper with one eye in the viewfinder and another, keener eye on opportunity, couldn’t pass it up.
Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, his old man used to say. And Harry Jackson, Sam’s great-grandfather, probably would have had some down-home Minnesota wisdom to add to that. Not that Sam had ever met old Harry. But Macgyver had plenty of stories to tell about the old man.
He’d heard it said that the locals here in the rolling desert hills of Afghanistan didn’t really like Americans. They didn’t like journalists either. Which didn’t bode well for Sam’s odds of survival. Since he’d been captured by them. And Sam had a sinking feeling that these weren’t just your average, every-day going about their business townsfolk. Not with the toys these guys were toting.
***
Jane walked along the corridor of the Onyssius Foundation. It had been a week since she’d returned from helping out some new friends, who happened to have a state-of-the-art, complete with artificial intelligence, supercar.
Just a few days before that, her father, Major Charles, had died from a massive brain aneurysm. Jane had stayed long enough for the funeral then gone to visit Metropolis to see her friend Chloe. Lois had come along, even though she was suffering from morning sickness as they’d traversed the local shopping mall. The shopping trip and the time spent with her friends had done her the world of good. She’d been able to open up with the girls, not only about losing both her parents in such a short time, but also about a few other things.
A lot had changed in the year or so since she’d left the Centre. There, she had been forced to Pretend simulations, without the benefit of humanity, or emotions. To use her training and eidetic memory to become anything they wanted her to be. The only reason she was not still there was because the man who had bought the Centre, Lex Luthor, had forced her to kidnap a man she now considered a good friend. Clark Kent. Clark had amazing powers and very few people now knew that Clark had taken on the identity of Superman. While he usually patrolled the streets of Metropolis to prevent crime, he had also helped out in a few disasters around the world.
Jane had no idea why the people of Metropolis didn’t manage to connect the dots and discover that Superman was none other than Clark Kent. She could only assume that Clark used some kind of signal to stop people from learning the truth. But it really didn’t matter. He had become known as Earth’s protector and she wasn’t about to knock it.
It had taken some time for her to get back to a friendly footing with Clark. It wasn’t the fact that Lex had made her kidnap him. Clark understood that she’d had little choice. Back in the Centre, Jane had obeyed orders without question. It was the only thing she really knew how to do. She’d never had an independent thought. At least, not since she’d been an adult. All the abuse she had been through had only reinforced their lessons that she was just a tool. An instrument controlled by their hands.
By the time she left, Jarod, her brother and a fellow Pretender, had organised for her to have extensive therapy. And it had worked, to a certain degree. Determined to make Lex Luthor pay dearly for what he had done to her, and had done to Clark Kent, in which he had nearly killed the young man, Jane had returned to Metropolis with a plan to take Lex down for good. But she hadn’t taken into account how Clark and others would feel about her deception and when they’d realised what she had done, it had almost destroyed the fragile friendships she had made.
It had also destroyed any chance she had of a real relationship with billionaire Oliver Queen. Jane had fallen hard for the blonde man. He’d been the first man she’d ever slept with and it seemed like he had felt the same way about her. But after he’d learned what she had done, he had felt so betrayed he had refused to have any more to do with her.
Jane sighed as she walked along the corridor, thinking about her former lover. In the past few months, he had sunk to new lows. His company had come close to bankruptcy, forcing Jarod and a former business rival, Bruce Wayne, to step in and take over. He had spent half his time partying with every woman who crossed his path. And it had hurt.
Jane had tried to forget him. She had tried to move on. When she’d met Dean Winchester, a small part of her had hoped that there might be something more. But Dean’s life didn’t have any room for relationships. Then there had been Michael Knight. Smart and good-looking, the sex between them had been amazing. But Mike was in love with Sarah, even if he refused to acknowledge those feelings. And that had left Jane back at square one.
Sighing again, she opened the door to her sister-in-law’s office. Parker looked up.
“That’s quite a sigh,” she remarked.
“Yeah.” Jane flopped down on the chair.
“Everything okay?”
Jane looked at Jarod’s wife. Parker was an incredibly beautiful woman, even if she had a few more lines on her face and more grey in her hair. She often joked that being the mom of twins was enough to turn anyone’s hair grey.
“Yeah.”
“How was the shopping trip?”
“Great. It was fun, actually. Although Lois was still feeling a bit under the weather. Oh,” she gasped, “I meant to ask you. Do you have anything for morning sickness? I think Lois could really use the assist.”
“Sure. I’ll see if I can find my list when I get home and I’ll email it to you. If I have any remedies still at home, I’ll send them over.”
“Thanks. How have things been here?”
“You know Jarod,” Parker said with a shrug. “Throws himself into work rather than deal with everything else.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels.”
“Jarod wanted to talk to you. He’s in a meeting with a potential client right now and he asked me to tell you to stop in.”
“Did he say what it was about?” Jane said with a frown.
Parker shook her head. “But I’d hustle if I were you, sis. You know Jarod gets impatient sometimes.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it,” Jane said dryly.
She walked into Jarod’s office. A man sitting in one of the seats in the office looked around, then got up. He was probably in his late fifties or early sixties, with almost white hair. Jane guessed he would have been extremely attractive when he was younger. He still had a handsomeness about his features, although age had dimmed them somewhat.
“Jane, welcome back. How was Metropolis?”
“Great. Picked up a few bargains. Chloe and Lois have me convinced that retail therapy is always the best kind of therapy.”
“They’re a bad influence on you,” her brother remarked, his eyes twinkling.
“Never!” she retorted. She looked pointedly at the older man, then at Jarod.
“Mister Macgyver, this is my sister, Jane. Jane, this is Mr Macgyver.”
“Actually,” the older man said. “I just prefer Macgyver. How you doing, Jane?” He reached out a hand and she shook it politely.
“Jane, Macgyver has something he wants to discuss with us.”
“Oh? A new assignment?”
“Possibly.”’
Macgyver pulled out a photograph. For a moment, Jane thought it was an old photograph of Macgyver himself. The features were almost identical.
“This is my son, Sam. He’s a photo-journalist. He went into Afghanistan five days ago on an assignment. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Wasn’t there a little uprising a few months ago?” Jane asked.
Macgyver nodded. “Sam’s editor asked him to cover it. Photo essay. I would have gone to try and get him myself, but, well, I hate to admit it, but I’m too old to go halfway around the world. Anyway, an old buddy of mine used to work at the Phoenix Foundation and he suggested you guys.”
“Phoenix Foundation?” Jane frowned. “Isn’t that a think tank?”
“Something like that. It was run by another old buddy of mine. Pete Thornton. Pete passed away a few years ago.” Jane could see from the man’s expression that the loss of his friend had been devastating for him.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Macgyver shrugged.“Pete had been unwell for some time. He went blind due to Glaucoma.”
“Still, I can see it was difficult for you to lose such a close friend.”
“Jane ...” Jarod said warningly. Jane looked at her brother.
“What? It’s called empathy, Jarod.”
“And Macgyver doesn’t need to be analysed.”
She threw up her hands in mock surrender.
“Okay, fine. Macgyver, what is it you need us to do?”
“Get him out.” Macgyver chuckled. “Sam would hate it. I mean he’s pretty self-reliant. He has been since he was nine when his mother was killed, but ...”
“We think there may be some connection between this insurgence and a case you were working on with FLAG,” Jarod said, meaning the Foundation for Law and Government.
“In what way?” Jane asked curiously.
“The weapons they’ve been supplied with came from here.”
“Ortega?”
Jarod nodded. Jane thought for a moment. Sonny Ortega considered himself to be some sort of crime boss. He was basically into anything that would make a solid profit: guns, drugs. It didn’t surprise Jane in the least that someone like Ortega would sell arms to terrorist groups.
“Tell me more about Sam. You said his mom was killed when he was nine?”
Macgyver nodded
“I knew Kate in college. We were together for a few months, then we split up and I met another girl. Amy. Well, Amy and I were pretty serious, but Kate and I were still friends, I guess. I suppose we realised that we were never really meant to be. Anyway, I dropped out just before graduation to take up a job on a tramp freighter, and that was pretty much the end of that.”
“How did Kate die?”
“She was shot. By a Colonel in the Red Chinese Army. She was working on a story about the dissident movement. The official story is she was resisting arrest. But Sam saw it happen and he told me his mother was executed.”
Jane gasped. What a horrible way to die, she thought.
“Anyway, I didn’t know about Sam until he was nineteen. He was chasing a story involving the same man who killed his mother.”
Jane got the impression that Sam got his resilience and his independence from his father as much as his mother. Macgyver certainly struck her as an extremely intelligent man. Not quite up to Pretender level, she thought as she continued to talk with the man, but certainly very high on the spectrum.
She was fascinated as he began to tell stories about his youth and how he had learned the skills to take whatever he needed from his environment to solve problems. She admired the fact that Macgyver seemed to be able to come up with a solution which didn’t require using a gun. Jane didn’t like them much either, but she often felt she had little choice in the matter. Especially when she needed to be taken seriously.
Macgyver told her he had retired to Minnesota. As much as he wanted to go after Sam himself, he knew that he wasn’t up to it. While he still consulted for the Phoenix Foundation on the odd occasion, he had left that life behind him long ago. Now he was happy in his old house in rural Minnesota; fishing, hunting or doing whatever took his fancy. He had considered settling down to raise a family, but the one woman he’d considered settling down for had married someone else.
Sam, on the other hand, still had the wanderlust that seemed to be a common family trait. And now he was in trouble.
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