They'd walked away from the crater that had been the Port of LA after Clay had been unsuccessful in retrieving the remote pressure trigger.
They shouldn't have walked away. There was nothing left to walk away from.
It was put down as sheer dumb luck, or a 'mystery of the unexplained' as Jensen delightfully dubbed it. Things had gone on, Pooch had made it in time to witness the birth of his son, Jensen had dragged the whole team along to watch a Petunias game, and then they were back to it again. Despite Roque's betrayal it was better than before, Clay acted like a soldier again, Pooch had his life back, Cougar stopped distancing himself and didn't need as much proof that they were alive, and Jensen stopped grinning like a dead man.
The hacker had been the first to go down, taking a bullet to the back of the head when he'd infiltrated the server room of another company they'd linked to Max. They'd managed to get in and retrieve his body.
They were on their way back to the old warehouse they'd been holed up in when it happened. Jensen's body was in the back of the van; they had no idea what to do with it, they were all still legally dead, but they couldn't just leave him there, or bury him in some abandoned lot. In any case, as Pooch pointed out, his sister and niece had the right to make a decision on what would become of the remains.
None of them spoke, not even Aisha; they all sat silently, Pooch concentrating on driving as though his life depended on it. Cougar had Jensen's glasses in his breast pocket, the blood splattered laptop cradled against his chest.
The noise of the engine drowned out the first gasp for air, and the following small noises of pain. They were all so intent on not looking at the body that they didn't notice the first movements. Nothing drowned out the indignant exclamation that followed.
"Ow, shit, my head!"
Pooch swore, jerked the wheel, sending the van swerving to one side, it mounted the kerb and came to a sudden halt. They scrambled out of the van, Aisha and Clay drawing guns and rounding on the back of the vehicle, pulling the doors open.
Jensen lay where they had placed him, touching the back of his head carefully, blinking up at them, eyes unfocused. "What the hell happened? Please don't tell me I did something lame like fainted and smacked my head."
Cougar stood there, frozen in place, because people didn't just wake up from a bullet to the back of the head. He crossed himself instinctively; the movement caught the hacker's attention, eyes squinting as he tried to make out their forms. The sniper acted on impulse, fishing the glasses out of his pocket and handing them over.
Glasses on and able to see again, Jensen glanced around at them, eyes going wide at the sight of the guns Aisha and Clay had trained on him, confusion printed clearly across his face. He raised his hands cautiously in surrender. "Okay, what's going on? Whatever it was, it wasn't my fault this time, I promise."
Clay cleared his throat, Pooch made a sound as though he was about to talk then changed his mind, but it was Cougar who actually spoke first.
"You died."
"Uh, did not." Jensen's face creased further in confusion, but he made no move to sit up or get out of the van.
"Yes, you did." Aisha countered, hands tensing around the gun slightly. "You got shot in the head, your brains blew out the front of your skull. You were dead."
The thoughts seemed to process through the hacker's, now whole, brain, before he offered, with mock helpfulness, "I got better?"
They weren't sure what caused it, but Jensen had been dead, and was suddenly alive again. His head was pounding; it was almost a relief when he promptly went to sleep when they finally got back. Cougar hovered around him, checking vital signs every half hour, while Clay, Pooch and Aisha put their heads together trying to figure out what had happened.
A few hours later Jensen was up and about again, as though nothing had happened. He didn't really believe them until he went to use his laptop again.
"Oh my god! There are brains in my keyboard!"
