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Reverb, Chapter 15
Well, here's something to get the weekend started -- this is the last chapter of this story (well, novel . . . ).
There is still an epilogue to come, but no further cliffhangers. Those of you who have been waiting until it's finished can consider starting at this point; or wait till the epilogue is posted as well.
Anyone who still wants to make spoilery comments or discuss chapter 14, you can do so by clicking here.
Chapter 15 teaser:
Chapter 15: Direct Object
MacGyver sat at the big wooden table up in his cabin, hunched over the radio. He hadn’t fired up the stove yet and he was still wearing his heavy coat, although the cabin wasn’t all that cold in spite of having been left empty for a week. It had been designed to get the most out of passive solar heating, and he’d found several ways to improve the insulation. But the ambient temperature couldn’t touch or ease the chill inside himself.
Later, he’d have time to adjust to the drastic rearrangement of his mental furniture. Later.
Right now, he was listening to Nikki’s voice on the radio, in full tirade.
“MacGyver, what the hell is going on? You’re damned lucky I was still where they could get hold of me. I wasn’t expecting a radio check-in at all. Why didn’t you email me the – ”
“Nikki, the internet’s out.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t tell me your grandkids took your computer apart this time!”
“Nikki, watch what you’re saying for pity’s sake! They aren’t up here with me and you know that! Anyway, I can’t tell if the radio’s been booby-trapped or not, so I’m using the backup unit. Just in case.”
“Just in . . . you mean Felix Sandoval got up there? How?”
“I don’t know! I mean, I don’t know if he’s been here or not. But it makes sense. It’s what Murdoc would’ve done.”
“Oh God, Mac, get out now! The whole cabin could be a mass of traps!"
Chapter 15 is posted here, and the story actually starts here.
'Beth
August 2010
There is still an epilogue to come, but no further cliffhangers. Those of you who have been waiting until it's finished can consider starting at this point; or wait till the epilogue is posted as well.
Anyone who still wants to make spoilery comments or discuss chapter 14, you can do so by clicking here.
Chapter 15 teaser:
Reverb
Chapter 15: Direct Object
MacGyver sat at the big wooden table up in his cabin, hunched over the radio. He hadn’t fired up the stove yet and he was still wearing his heavy coat, although the cabin wasn’t all that cold in spite of having been left empty for a week. It had been designed to get the most out of passive solar heating, and he’d found several ways to improve the insulation. But the ambient temperature couldn’t touch or ease the chill inside himself.
Later, he’d have time to adjust to the drastic rearrangement of his mental furniture. Later.
Right now, he was listening to Nikki’s voice on the radio, in full tirade.
“MacGyver, what the hell is going on? You’re damned lucky I was still where they could get hold of me. I wasn’t expecting a radio check-in at all. Why didn’t you email me the – ”
“Nikki, the internet’s out.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t tell me your grandkids took your computer apart this time!”
“Nikki, watch what you’re saying for pity’s sake! They aren’t up here with me and you know that! Anyway, I can’t tell if the radio’s been booby-trapped or not, so I’m using the backup unit. Just in case.”
“Just in . . . you mean Felix Sandoval got up there? How?”
“I don’t know! I mean, I don’t know if he’s been here or not. But it makes sense. It’s what Murdoc would’ve done.”
“Oh God, Mac, get out now! The whole cabin could be a mass of traps!"
- - -
Chapter 15 is posted here, and the story actually starts here.
'Beth
August 2010
no subject
So, Mac vs. Félix vs. Yet Another Damned Mountain.
I knew very early on that the dénouement was going to have to involve an Exciting and Tense Scene up in the mountains, dealing with height. I knew that even before I had figured out who Murdoc’s ‘heir’ was, but for a long time I had no idea just what would happen. It wasn’t until I had fully fleshed out Félix’ character, with that icky combination of cocky kid and batshit-crazy killer, that I knew it was going to end with him dying.
In the Mac-verse, of course, the hero isn’t allowed to kill anyone. Bad guys kill each other, or have fatal accidents, or die of their own bad-guyishness. With Félix, it had to be a fall from a height – especially since I had killed off Murdoc by simply shooting him. The pattern demanded the closure.
With that in the eventual offing, I started working on the very appealing idea that a much older MacGyver, after years of being lured into traps, gets a step ahead of his adversary and sets a trap for the trapster: out-Murdocs Murdoc, as it were. But this being Mac, he had to intend for it to be non-lethal – to use himself as bait (a role he knows too well) in hopes of getting his foe at enough of a disadvantage that he can take him alive, in spite of the presumed advantage of youth, and the definite advantage of armament.
My assumption was that Mac didn’t intend or expect Félix to die. He expected betrayal, but not stupidity and carelessness. When it happened, he couldn’t really be sorry, but he could be sorry that he wasn’t sorry. And being Mac, he wasn’t about to find the nearest couch and explain it all to his therapist (although I’ve encountered fics in which he pretty much did just that).
The ‘cliffhanging’ scene really picked up its spark when I decided to make the jump from Mac’s to Félix’ POV. I stick with Mac’s POV most of the time, so it’s a real departure; but I think the jarring effect of the POV change is effectively subsumed into the jarring effect of Félix’ POV itself, which is both fundamentally warped and a deliberately extreme contrast from what we had just seen going through MacGyver’s head. I liked it as a direct, visceral way of bringing the reader through what Mac was doing: luring his opponent onto his own home turf.
Mac not only has the advantage of familiarity, he has the extra bit of oomph from Félix’ assumption that the acrophobia is going to be a problem. Mac fights his acrophobia pretty much the way he fights any foe: he can’t kill it, but he won’t let it beat him.
And once you get inside Félix’ head, the unfamiliarity and its attendant disadvantages become (I hope) even more emphatic. There was a level of disadvantage that MacGyver didn’t know about and couldn’t predict, with Félix being even farther out of his depth than Mac could have guessed. The whole overly confident/batshit crazy element feeds into this.
So, in the end, not only does Félix do the predictable thing and try to kill his rescuer: he does the unpredictable (and dumb-ass) thing, and loses his hold on the rope. Speaking as a Very Smart Person, my perception of Mac, a Very Very Very Smart person, is that in spite of everything, he will always be inclined to underestimate how stupid people can be. Hence, he expects betrayal (the attempt to pull him over the edge), but not a lethal level of sloppiness (Félix loses his grip) (in more ways than one).
It hadn’t occurred to me that it might read as if Mac had set this up, and I might need to go back and tweak it – add a reaction shot of Mac realising that Félix lost his hold on the rope, or something like that.
This is why I love readers who comment in detail! That, and it makes my ego all fat and puffy.
So, um. My goodness. Nothing like writing a freakin' novel about writing a novel . . .
no subject
That makes a whole lot of sense; also, I just always expect them* to lose their damn grip because physics is a bitch and adrenaline makes people sloppy.
Your ego should be well inflated, because you did a job to be proud of.
*You know. People dangling in narratives.