“OK, what do we know?” MacGyver met Willis in the spare office they’d been given to use, halfway through the morning.

“Right, well.” Willis sat down, squaring his stack of files. “We know it’s –“ he glanced around him. “We know it’s superbugs.” He continued in a whisper. “So the equipment they’re using needs to be kept cold. It also needs to be kept in a sealed room, for safety in case there’s a breach.”

“Good. So we can find out where in the building it’s being stored.” MacGyver broke off as Willis shook his head.

“What if it’s not being stored here?” Willis pushed up his glasses and shrugged.
“Let’s hope it is!” MacGyver’s expression was grim. “If it’s not, we’ve little to no chance of finding it!” he turned around, picking up a tray of bottles of chemicals and placing it on the desk between them.

“Once we’ve found it, we can tag the equipment with this.” He held up a bottle of clear liquid. “We paint it onto anything that can be picked up, onto clean-room suits, onto anything that will be used in that area.” He dipped a paintbrush into the liquid and quickly daubed some onto Willis’s hand.

“Hey!” Willis drew back his hand, looking indignant.

“As you can see, it dries clear.” MacGyver ignored Willis’s protests and attempts to wipe the stuff off his hand. “But shine a blacklight on it and… Voila!” he shone a purplish flashlight on Willis’s hand, which glowed white. It also lit up the smear on his sleeve and the mark where he’d tried to wipe the liquid off onto his trousers. He switched the flashlight off and the marks disappeared.

“That’s actually pretty good!” Willis leaned forward, studying the labels on the bottles. “Does Dr Ortega know you’ve borrowed all her stuff?”

“Um…” MacGyver looked sheepish. “I won’t tell her if you don’t! besides, it’s for a good cause. I’m sure she’d understand. Pretty sure, anyway…”

Willis set to work finding the likely location of the superbug room and MacGyver set up his chemistry equipment on the desk, to make a larger batch of the invisible glow-paint.

“Hey, Mac?” Willis turned away from the computer.

“Yeah?” MacGyver looked up form pouring chemicals.

“What if we get exposed to the superbugs?” Willis looked worried. “When we’re tagging all the stuff.”

“We should be OK.” MacGyver put down the bottle. “We’ll be careful, but that equipment is state of the art. If they’d had any leaks, people would’ve started getting sick before now. I checked with your friend Lucy –“ He grinned as Willis blushed, “And no-one has. We should be OK.”

“OK.” Willis looked unconvinced. “I think I might have found where they’re keeping it…” He waited until MacGyver crossed to the computer and then pointed to the map on the screen. “There’s no reason for the temperature of this room to be so low, and it has a biohazard seal on the door.” He tapped some keys. “And according to the room plan in Dr Ortega’s computer, it should be empty.”

MacGyver peered around the corner before darting down the corridor. In a borrowed lab coat and with his hair tied back and his ‘Dexter’ glasses on, he hoped he would pass unnoticed as just another lab tech. Few enough of the Wellforce employees had seen him that his improvised disguise worked, and he reached the right door without being spotted. He frowned as he saw the keypad next to the heavy door, then felt in the lab coat pockets and fished out a stick of chalk. He scraped dust off the chalk with his penknife, collected it in his hand and blew it gently at the keypad.

Enough stuck to the right keys that could guess at the code, getting it right on the third try. The door swung open on silent hinges, allowing him to slip inside.
He repeated the chalk trick on the inner door, taking a nerve-wracking five tries to find the combination. Hoping he hadn’t set off any silent alarms, MacGyver went through the door and closed it behind him.

The superbug equipment looked surprisingly ordinary. A machine about the size of an oven sat on a trolley, plugged into the mains. The clear lid allowed him to look in at racks of test tubes, filled with yellow fluid. The hum of the machine was loud in the still, cold air and, as MacGyver watched, there was a click and gas hissed into the chamber, curling around the test tubes.

MacGyver shivered both from cold, and horror at the innocent-looking set-up carrying it’s deadly load. He pulled the flask and brush out of his pockets and painted everything he could reach with the invisible paint, backing out of the room and painting both door handles and keypads as he left.

Leaving his lab coat over a chair in an empty lab, he tugged the band from his hair, slipped his glasses into his shirt pocket and tried to look nonchalant as he walked back up to his borrowed office.

When he got there, Willis was talking to Dr Ortega. Without explaining what they’d found, Willis was talking about the project in general and how much benefit it would bring once completed. He looked relieved to see MacGyver return.

MacGyver walked quietly in, dropped his flask and brush into his bag and went to join them.

“MacGyver, how nice to see you!” Dr Ortega turned to greet him. “Been for a walk?”

“Yeah.” MacGyver smiled back at her. “Just wanted to get some air. This sure is a busy building, Dr Ortega.”

“Caroline, please.” She put down her files and sat down. “It sure is – we have seventeen different research projects running at the moment.”

“So every lab’s in use?” Willis turned away from the screen.

“Almost.” Dr Ortega nodded. “There are a few rooms in this building that aren’t being used, The project using them finished a while back and we haven’t needed the space. They’re smaller, and no-one needs biohazard storage at the moment, so…” She shrugged.

MacGyver nodded. There was no hint of deception in her body language.

“So they’re empty?” Again, MacGyver watched Dr Ortega, looking for signs that she might be lying.

“Empty and locked, yes.” Dr Ortega frowned. “Is there something going on her that I should be aware of? You two seem suddenly very suspicious!”

MacGyver glanced at Willis, who nodded.

“Caroline, we’ve found some… anomalies in your computer files. Adding them together, it looks like someone’s been siphoning money out of your project – Phoenix’s project – and using it to fund the development of superbugs.” He ran a hand through his hair, watching the colour drain from Dr Ortega’s face.

“No!” Dr Ortega’s hand flew to her mouth. “Do you know who? What is it? Where is it?! What can we…?”

“Caroline, please.” MacGyver held up both hands. “Willis can walk you though what’s happened, but right now I’ve set a trap to catch the people involved and I need you to find a way to keep everyone in the building at the end of the day. Can you do that?

“Yes. Yes I can do that.” Dr Ortega nodded. “I’ll call a full staff briefing. We do it every time we get a new project in, so it won’t seem odd. Will that do?”

“Perfect.” MacGyver nodded. “Make it for half an hour before shutdown this evening. By then, anyone who’s going to fall into my trap will be well and truly in it!”

Outside the office door, a lab tech slowed down to listen. He heard Willis explaining how he and MacGyver had traced the problem the system, and how MacGyver had tagged all the equipment with invisible paint. He frowned down at his hands, wondering if it was on him already. He listened to the rest of the conversation, then drifted silently away.

“This is not a normal staff briefing.” Dr Ortega stood at the reception desk in the entrance hall. “Some of you may have been exposed to a chemical today which, while not dangerous to your health, should be removed before leaving the building.” She indicated MacGyver. “My Phoenix Foundation colleagues Mr MacGyver and Mr Willis will check. Please form orderly queues and be ready to show them your hands.” She took a step back and beckoned to a security guard. “Have we got everyone?”

“Almost. Just rounding up the last few now.” The security guard nodded to her and moved away.

The biohazard door closed, and the two figures beside it exchanged a grim nod. One hurried away down the corridor carrying a cardboard box while the other, the lab tech who’d listed in on Willis earlier, headed for the nearest restrooms. Minutes later, they both joined the crowd in the entrance hall.

The lines shuffled forward. Each employee held out their hands while MacGyver and Willis shone blacklights on them. Once checked, they were allowed to leave.
The next man stepped forward, presenting red, scrubbed hands. Willis played the light over his hands, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell of bleach the man emitted, but the man didn’t glow.

“OK. Next, please.” Willis looked at the thinning crowd and exchanged a worried glance with MacGyver. The next man stepped forward. MacGyver held the flashlight above his hands, and both the hands glowed white.

MacGyver caught the eye of one of the security guards, who escorted the man away. Dr Ortega followed them out of the room, looking furious.

“You son of a-“ Dr Ortega pulled back her fist and punched the man in the face. She stepped forwards to follow up with another punch, but one of the security guards blocked the way. “How could you!” Dr Ortega hissed over the guard’s shoulder as the man was led away. “Sam Gregory, you should be ashamed of yourself! You’re a disgrace to science! You’re fired!”

The hall was silent as she strode back in. MacGyver and Willis checked the remainder of the staff, but no-one else’s hands glowed white. The police arrived and Dr Gregory went with them, followed by Dr Ortega, keen to give a statement.

MacGyver and Willis left a short time later, stopping to let a mail truck rumble out of the facility ahead of them. They drove to a nearby diner and chose a booth at the far end.

“Here’s to catching bad guys with weird science!” Willis held up his milkshake and they clinked glasses.

“Bad guy, anyway. MacGyver took a sip of his drink and shook his head. “I guess I’m just having a hard time believing he was working alone.”

“Yeah.” Willis took a bite of his hamburger, chewed and swallowed. “Although once he had it set up, it wouldn’t take much maintaining. That’s the beauty of it – almost totally automated germ production.” He put down the burger. “That’s actually really scary…”

“It sure is.” MacGyver ate some omelette and salad, forehead creased in a frown. “I mean, you could take that stuff off your hands with ammonia, or sodium hypochlorite, but you’d have to know it was on you…” He shook his head. “I should just be happy we caught him. I’ll call Pete this evening and let him know, and we should be back in L.A in a couple of days.”

“Hoo-rah.” Willis grinned and popped some fries into his mouth. Then he frowned and stopped chewing. “Sodium hypochlorite…” He swallowed and frowned at MacGyver.

"Bleach, right?”

“Right.” MacGyver nodded his head, spearing a tomato with his fork.

“One of the guys I tested smelled of bleach.” Willis shook his head. “I didn’t really look at him, just figured him for a cleaner or something… I’m sorry, Mac.”

“We’ll let Dr Ortega know.” MacGyver finished his salad and pushed the plate away. “He could just have been the janitor, like you said. I don’t see how anyone could have known what we were doing, do you?”

“I guess not.” Willis stirred his ketchup with a fry. “I sure hope you’re right…”

Across town, a man with sore-looking hands reached into his pocket, pulling out a scrap of paper. Hands shaking, he dialled the number on the paper and waited.
“Hello?” he listened to the silence on the other end of the line. “Hello? Dr Gregory said I should call this number and tell you what happened at Wellforce today…”

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