***This is the conclusion of the Valhalla Saga started in Insomnia. To follow the story I recommend reading these stories in this order: Insomnia, Valhalla, Masquerade, 13, Nightmares, and Unleashed. The story picks up immediately after Unleashed. Thanks for reading.

Jack was not surprised to find Mac prowling back and forth like a trapped tiger. Fidget and Elmer who had been running in the overgrown lawn laid panting beside the Shelby watching the blond with canine worry. Jack felt the same worry. The birth certificate felt like it seared into his pocket. He stopped a short distance from his partner and waited knowing that talking to the kid before he'd calmed down a little would be futile.

The late summer forest buzzed with cicada calls and bees and butterflies lazily bumped from field flower to flower. The weather had turned out to be perfect. Sonrisa, Oregon was in the sweet spot. The hottest it got was 80-85 degrees. After traveling most of the deserts of the world and living in California, it was spring to the two men.

Somehow the beauty of the forest made the sagging house an uglier stain. Mac finally let out an angry growl and leaned against the back quarter of the Shelby. His blue eyes sparkled under the perfect unstained sky as Mac glared at the house with a combination of fear and rage that left him shaking. Jack took a deep breath and approached his partner silently leaning beside him. Jack eyed the younger man out the corner of his eye. Mac looked worn and tired. Shadows of the bruises and scars still healing crossed his too pale face. Jack looked away. He'd given Mac some of those bruises.

"Corydon," Mac muttered. Jack frowned at him and waited. They had found out that a person or group had been following Mac his entire life, surveying every day of his life, taking pictures and notes. No one knew why; it was part of the mysterious Corydon. It might be a person, a code name, a CIA project or something much worse. Corydon had taken control of Phoenix, and they hunted the core Phoenix team. Not one to give in to defeat, Phoenix was preparing to strike back, before they could they needed more intel.

This house haunted Mac's nightmares. He needed answers instead they keep bumping into another head of the hydra. Valhalla, Project Tantalus, and who knows what other tentacles reached deep in the highest offices of government. They also were not above using contractors. Six months ago Mac had been kidnapped and tortured. He'd had amnesia and had wondered lost near this very spot. His kidnappers, the RAPM a militia not far from here, had taken him from Los Angeles to this place after torturing Mac. Mac believed that it had been a test, a successful experiment. Mac had been forced to make weapons thanks to a chemical called Blue designed by Sarana, the daughter of the original creator of Valhalla.

Jack shook his head. There were so many twists and turns it made his head hurt. Jack rubbed his forehead. He had his own term of being programmed and still hadn't bounced back. Jack glanced at the bruises Mac sported and the way he held his side when he moved. Jack had beaten the crap out of his partner and shot him believing the kid to be an imposter.

"You ok?" Mac asked. Jack glanced at him but Mac didn't take his concentration off the broken house. Jack swallowed.

"Yeah, just a little ragged around the edges." Mac looked at him and gave him a grave smile.

"Yeah. We're missing something...there's something about this place…" Mac huffed rubbing his forehead. He had broken the automatic conditioning someone had stuck in his head but it had been a painful experience. Jack shuddered remembering Mac's seizure as his memory of his kidnapping and parts of his life before that broke through. Mac let out a small moan closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead. Unfortunately, migraines seemed to be a permanent residual effect. Mac blinked and stood up straight. He turned to face Jack.

"You have rope?" Jack grinned and handed Mac the keys. The kid pulled the rope out of the trunk and trotted back to the house. Jack patted the dogs.

"I think we're gonna be going down into the dark rat-infested basement. If we don't come back go and get help ok, boys?" Elmer slapped the ground with his tail. Fidget stood up and wagged his butt thumping into the Shelby's door. Jack rolled his eyes and braced himself following the trail back to the house.

Sure enough, Mac had tied the rope to the most massive piece of furniture not rotted away and was standing over the round blast hole in the floor. Both men looked down. A rusted child-sized chair bolted to the cement floor with built-in metal manacles was readily visible in the light streaming in from an identical hole in the ceiling. Mac stared at it his hands pressed into white-knuckled fists. Jack could almost hear the grinding of his teeth.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Jack felt obligated to ask. Mac swallowed, his face flashing with fear. Rotten garbage and rodent nests surrounding the tragic tiny chair made both their skins crawl. Mac turned his back to the hole and shrugged the rope over his shoulder and jumped into the dark tunnel. Jack watched him land calf deep in muck and clicked on the flashlight of his swiss army knife. Jack wrinkled his nose trying to not take in the mold and feces rotten smell. He shook his head and followed his partner.

There wasn't much left of the room. Under the holes explosives had punched out of the building rot, decay and vermin had infested the building. Mac looked up frowning. Jack pointed his flashlight in the same direction. All he saw was a squirming mass of bats hiding in the shadows.

"Ugh...if we don't get rabies it'll be a miracle," Jack muttered. Mac absently nodded studying something above them, "What do you see, bud?"

"The ceiling, it's reinforced steel and concrete." Jack blinked and saw what Mac meant. He frowned. The two men shared a worried look.

"What the hell were they doing down here?" Jack growled. Mac looked like he was going to be sick. Both of them added the silent, and what does it have to do with MacGyver? Rats scurried away as the two men waded through shredded files and moldy leaves. Mountains of rat-gnawed scraps of papers and scientific equipment covered tables circling the room along the walls. Other than a microscope and glass tubing, Jack had no idea what he was seeing. Mac closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

"You ok?" Mac squinted at him and scowled. Ok, Jack admitted, stupid question, "What is all this stuff?" Mac hesitated before answering. Jack smiled. The young genius was translating a whole lot of nerd-speak into Jack-speak.

"Most of this is to take biological samples and study them. That flurescence camera over there is state of the art for studying cells of the brain." Jack frowned.

"How can it be thirty years old and state of the art today?" Mac grimaced.

"Exactly." Mac led them deeper into the dark interior of the house. The back of the room had a wide rusted metal door with no handle. To the side was a broken keypad and retina scanner.

"The plot thickens." Jack muttered looking over his shoulder. He couldn't shake the feeling someone was standing just out of sight behind them. Mac pulled out his knife and removed the electronic box. He grimaced reaching his hand in and pulled out a ribbon data cord.

"What are you going to do with that there isn't any electricity." Mac gritted his teeth and pulled out a long strand of that. He cut it off and slid it along the floor. A corner of the bottom of the door was rusted. He fed the ribbon under the door then pivoted it then yanked. The door cracked like a gunshot in the abandoned house then slid out enough for the two men to grip it and heave it open. Jack wiped sweat from his forehead. The sucker was six inches thick of reinforced steel and concrete.

To their surprise, automatic lights clicked on as they crossed the threshold. They were dim, and quite a few broken, but it let them conserve their flashlight batteries. Jack jumped at a rat squealing as it ran across the floor. Mac glanced at him an amused smile on his face. Jack shot him a glare.

A narrow corridor spread before them, more than a hundred feet long Jack guessed. The secret unit was longer than the house above them by a hundred meters. There was less damage done. Six rooms lined the left side of the hall three on the right.. The hall dead-ended in a single large door like the one they had entered.

"Holy shit!" Jack exclaimed looking through a small glass window in one of the doors to the left. Mac joined him and his eyebrows raised in surprise although he wasn't sure why. The six rooms were tiny cells. They had cribs with high bars or small children's beds. They were ugly white and had little toilets and sink.s It was like a prison for toddlers. Jack felt bile creep up the back of his throat. He glanced at Mac whose face had become an unemotional mask.

"Why the difference?" Mac asked. Jack frowned.

"What do you mean, kiddo?" Mac looked at him his lips pursed.

"The room upstairs was almost homey these...these are jail cells." Jack heard the question under the question. Was Mac born here? A birth certificate with his name on it declaring he was born in Olivet Hospital in Sonrisa OR had hung on the wall of a nursery decorated with care.

"I dunno, bud." Jack murmured. Mac huffed in frustration and pulled out his Swiss army knife. He jacked the rusted lock and opened one of the cells. They both turned away gagging. The room stank of car exhaust and decayed bodies. Jack stepped back into the hall. Even the organic nastiness of the chamber was better than the chemical death lingering in the cell. Mac covered his nose and mouth with his hand and examined the room.

"Huh, check this out." Mac bent over the bed leaning close to the wall. Jack grimaced and pulled his black shirt over his nose and stepped to his partner's side. On the wall over the head of the bed were a vent and speaker unit recessed into the wall. Mac shared a worried look with Jack. They stepped out into the hall gagging.

Mac crossed to the other side of the hall and worked on the first door's lock. He cursed almost snapping his red knife in half. Mac shook his head and kicked the door. It might as well have been welded shut. He had better luck on the next one. To their surprise, the door opened easily without a creek. No light came on in the room. Mac clicked on his flashlight and stepped into the room. When he reached the middle of the room, the room exploded with swirling circles of light flashing different colors and a painfully familiar dying animal scream. Mac dropped his flashlight and covered his ears with his hands. He hunched forward his eyes pressed shut.

"Shit!" Jack growled. He grabbed his partner's arm and dragged him into the hall snatching up Mac's torch on the way out. He shut the door, and the noise stopped. Mac leaned against the wall, shaking and covered with sweat. Jack stood beside him watching worried, "I'm guessing we found the place they conditioned your response to that goat scream thing." Jack said. Mac nodded and blinked rubbing his temples.

"I'm ok." He answered Jack's unasked question. He straightened and took the flashlight. He managed a weak grin.

"Shall we see what's behind door number three." Jack huffed.

"I'd rather not."

"That's the spirit." Jack rolled his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He didn't like this at all. He especially didn't like the effects it had on Mac mentally or physically, but he knew Mac needed answers. The third door opened as quickly as the second. Jack shoved Mac out of the way and went in first. A dim light came on blinking and sizzling about to blow out.

The room held a single treatment chair like a patient would see in a dentist's office except it had tell-tale stir-ups. Mac closed his eyes. Snap, snap, snap, snap. It's not the same, he reminded himself, but the agony of flesh whipped off the soles of his feet kept replaying. He jumped when Jack put a hand on his shoulder.

"Mac? You can wait outside…"

"No," Mac choked out. He cleared his throat and tried again, "No, I'm fine."

"Yeah, right." Jack sighed and shook his head mumbling about stubborn, stupid geniuses. Mac smiled and circled the chair. There was nothing else in the room.

"I think this is a birthing room." Mac said softly. He didn't meet Jack's concerned eyes. They both understood the implications immediately. Neither wanted to give voice to the question. Mac turned and strode down the hall to the room at the end of the corridor. Jack followed. He could feel the swirling questions burning through his partner.

The final room was as big as two high school gymnasiums side by side. No lights came on until they passed the threshold of the door. Jack jumped and drew his Baretta in one fluid motion. He stopped the final pull of the trigger only because of years of experience and training.

A painted clown cutout had spun out before them the same second a dim green light flashed on the floor in front of it. Mac took a step back bumping into Jack. Jack closed his eyes shaking his head. It was the image of Dewayn Stratson, the sick serial killer who had stalked Mac's entire life. The man was in his perverted clown costume. Mac closed his eyes. There was a reason he hated clowns, and this was it. Before Jack could say a word, Mac leaned closer frowning. He looked back at Jack.

"It's not him."

"What?" Jack leaned forward, and sure enough, it wasn't, "still creepy as hell."

"No kidding." They walked further into the room, and more clown's flipped or jumped out of them. The clowns were different people, some even women or children but they wore the same sick parody of a clown's costume. Jack's heart was beating hard by the time they were halfway through. Mac turned to him.

"It's Hogan's Alley." Jack nodded.

"They're targets. Somebody was teaching shooting. Why the clowns?" Mac looked at one then looked down at the floor.

"Most kids are universally afraid of clowns." Jack's eyebrows crawled up his forehead.

"You think they were training kids? For what…?" Before Mac could say a word, they could hear wild barking outside. They shared a panicked look and ran back the way they came. They had just cleared the hole in the floor when they listened to the heartthrob of a helicopter. The dogs greeted them with frenzied barking encouraging the two-foots to run faster. Jack opened the Shelby door. The dogs scrambled in the back, Mac hopped into the passenger's seat, and they were squealing out of sight leaving a small dust cloud hanging in the air behind them. Jack paused when they were hidden under a full-leaved oak.

"That's a Phoenix Blackhawk." Mac murmured. Jack swallowed. Both men instinctively ducked as they heard the familiar hiss of a Stinger fired from the underside of the aircraft. There was a second's roar then the house behind them was obliterated.