Wunderkind

by The Thistle Girl

Jack Dalton's DXS team's last mission left his computer-genius partner Riley Davis with a bullet wound, their analyst Nick Carpenter dead, and a canister of a deadly virus in the wind. Their only chance may be a young former vigilante currently serving time for domestic terrorism, known to the criminal underground as "the Phoenix", and to law enforcement as "Angus MacGyver".

4. Wire Cutter

PHOENIX RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

THE ACTUAL THINK TANK PART

Mac is bored. Extremely bored. He doesn't think he's been this bored since tenth grade AP physics when he memorized the textbook cover to cover in the first three weeks of classes. He did the same thing in AP chem but at least there they had lab every week and got to occasionally blow things up. Physics was just Mrs. Donihue with her drony voice and her little rimless glasses and lots and lots of homework he wasn't allowed to use shortcuts on. He almost failed the first test for using formulas that were easier but that the class hadn't learned yet.

But at least physics on principle was interesting. And felt like it might be potentially useful one day. Now he's sitting at a desk watching fifteen different charts on the longevity of automobile tires start to blur into one giant mess of colors and numbers.

I know plenty about the average automobile tire. I know that the rubber can be used to resole a shoe or create a semi-effective protective vest, the support wires inside provide enough metal to rig a decent snare trap, and that a flat can still be driven on if absolutely necessary as a getaway vehicle. I know how to avoid hydroplaning by utilizing vehicle weight and friction coefficients. I know the smoke from burning tires is thick enough to act as a distraction or to clear out a building. I know slitting them, laying them over a wooden structure, and nailing them down makes a fairly rain-proof roof. I do not for any reason need to know how long the average LA commuter's tires will last. He's sure that last statement will inevitably end with their survival hinging on this knowledge, because that's just how his life tends to go, but at the moment, he'd rather take his chances.

As soon as Thornton found out he'd broken a rib on the Myanmar op, she'd grounded him for three weeks, no questions. It's been one. And he thinks this might kill him faster than an injury in the field.

Working in Phoenix's Research and Development division should be fun. It sounds fun. Except that Doctor Barstow, the head of R&D, has it in for him for some indefinable reason. Well, maybe the reason is that I came in and immediately picked up the synthetic polymer he was making for lightweight body armor, checked his chemical formulas, and told him he could reduce production time, increase material strength, and reduce brittleness if he changed his component ratios. Or maybe it was when I took half the fine motor robotics assembly apart to give the swing arm joint a 3.8 degree increased range of motion. Whatever the case, apparently Dr. Barstow would prefer to remain the unchallenged genius of Phoenix R&D.

After the third time Mac challenged one of the man's suggestions, because there really was a much less complicated way to create an undetectable signal transmitter, Barstow had hauled him bodily out onto the loading dock, accused him of challenging his status, and pulled Mac off all three engineering projects Thornton had assigned him, for absolutely no reason. Mac had accomplished more on them in three days than Barstow had in two weeks.

It wouldn't even be so bad if the lab assistant who's in charge of the project, an assistant, that's how low priority and mindless this project is, didn't absolutely hate him. The guy's one of the techs who was working on the van from Como the first day Mac was here, and he clearly remembers that Mac showed up in a CCI jumpsuit. Mac knows the guy told everyone in R&D within a day, because instead of smiles he was met with cold stares, concern, or a flat-out clear desire to get as far away from him as possible. He's heard one of the more vicious staff members whistling "Folsom Prison Blues" as he walks past the woman's workstation.

Working with Jack and Riley, it was easy to forget how most people react to a former convict. Now every day, he's reminded of it, whether it's the snatches of music he hears over the server stacks or the innate fear he sees in the intern from CalTech who brought over the data files when he got reassigned. This is how it's going to be for the rest of my life. The thought hurts, and he tries to focus on the mindless data entry to ignore it.

The rest of his team, plus Thornton, because they needed a third agent in field on this one, is in Ankara. And he's stuck here crunching numbers on data about tires.

"Jack got shot in the leg, and he gets to go," Mac grumbled when Riley said goodbye.

"Yeah, that's because Jack annoys Patty mercilessly until he gets what he wants." There's the unspoken understanding that Mac cannot afford to be annoying.

He rubs his eyes and grabs a ruler to mark a pencil line under the next row of data. If he messes this up, he's going to have to do it all over again. He's so busy making sure all the rows and columns are accurate that he doesn't see the person coming up behind the desk until they put a hand on his shoulder.

Mac jumps, and the rolling chair gets away from him. Before he knows what's happening, he's sitting on the floor, stunned and more than a little startled. Get up get up get up. He scrambles frantically to his feet, which only results in him slipping on the tile, grabbing for any support (which turns out to be the arm of the tech who accosted him, the arm that's attached to a hand holding a steaming cup of coffee), and sitting on the floor again, this time with half the papers that were scattered on the desk, a jar of pencils, and worst, the full cup of coffee, dumped in his lap and all over the floor.

"I'm so sorry!" The girl apologizes, stumbling over her words and readjusting her massive horn-rimmed glasses as she reaches out a hand to him. "I just thought you looked like you needed some caffeine." She smiles. "I'm Jill. Jill Morgan. I work over in forensics but I was there the day you cracked the van lockbox. It was amazing." She looks at her hands shyly. "I like that you stood up to Dr. Barstow. He thinks he knows everything just because he has four Ph.D.s."

"Well, it got me demoted to data entry, so I'm not sure how well it went." Mac tries to maintain at least a bit of dignity as he stands up, picks up the soaked, stained papers, and sets the pencils back on his desk. "I'm going to go find a mop."

When his phone rings, just as he's returning to the desk with the mop, he fumbles it out of his pocket, lets go of the mop handle, and cringes when it smacks him in the head before clattering to the floor. Could today get any worse? At least Jill's gone now. He's made a big enough fool of himself in front of the only person in R&D who more than tolerates his presence.

Riley's name pops up when he finally gets the phone out.

"Mac? Thornton wants to see you in the War Room." Oh wonderful. Barstow probably ran straight to her the second she got back from Ankara and told her how much he hates me. Probably told her I'm an insufferable problem. He wipes suddenly sweaty hands on a dry patch of his jeans. He probably exaggerated everything. Or just plain made something up. His mouth is dry. If she thinks I was rude and insubordinate…

"Mac. Earth to Mac? I said she wants you now?"

"On my way." He hands the mop off to one of the interns and rushes out.

He's out of breath by the time he gets to the War Room. To his surprise, Jack and Riley are inside as well. She's not going to chew me out in front of my whole team, right?

"Nice of you to join us, Angus," Thornton says, then narrows her eyes. "Did you pick a fight with the coffee machine?"

There's still coffee stains on his shirt and jeans. Damn it. I should have just stayed in bed this morning. "You know if you wanted to stay awake you should have drunk that, not tried to absorb it by osmosis, right?" Riley says.

"I wasn't sleeping. I..." He searches for an excuse that won't be embarrassing, but he can't come up with anything that isn't worse than what actually happened. "I fell off a chair, and the coffee kinda fell on me." He's about to explain that really, the whole mess with Barstow isn't his fault, and then he sees what's on the screen.

Oh. Okay. Possible Russian nuclear bomb I can deal with. It might actually be less horrible than Thornton angry at me.

…

When the distress call from Agent Bannister comes in, Riley feels a slight tremor of apprehension. Bannister was her training officer when she first came to Phoenix. The person who walked her through the different protocols and procedures, anything that varied from the CIA regulations. Bannister is the best of the best. She went alone in country in Russia a week ago to investigate an arms sale. Getting a risky call like this from her means something is very, very wrong.

"I've found conclusive proof that Sevchenko is stockpiling weapons." Bannister looks worried but proud. That's a big win for us. So what's wrong?

"I've documented all the weapons I've found and sent the data file," the agent says. "But I can't determine what this is." She points the camera at a large crate, taller than she is and at least ten feet long. "It's giving off high levels of radiation, but I've tried to breach the casing and gotten nowhere."

Patty temporarily mutes the call as Riley makes a subtle gesture, two fingers that means, I have something to say privately. It's sometimes of utmost importance not to let an in-field agent know that the command group is having second thoughts, questions, or that an issue has come up. It's only going to be a distraction.

"Yes?" Patty asks.

"I think Bannister should pull the intel she has and leave. We have a location, and we have evidence. If she gets caught there, Sevchenko will move everything and we'll need to track him again."

"We have to know what's in that case, Davis." Thornton's voice is the kind you don't argue with. "It could alter our understanding of how to proceed with the investigation."

"But she can't get in."

"No. But we happen to have someone on staff who's already proved to be an expert at opening impossible locks. Call MacGyver and tell him I want him in here ASAP." Riley does.

She can't help but giggle when Mac rushes in, hair messy, cheeks red, shirt and pants covered in brown splashes.

"Nice of you to join us, Angus," Patty says sarcastically. "Did you pick a fight with the coffee machine?"

"You know if you wanted to stay awake you should have drunk that, not tried to absorb it by osmosis, right?" Riley says. I really shouldn't say anything smart. I shouldn't. I know how it feels. But sometimes you just need to give the new kid a hard time. I would for anyone else. She knows Mac wouldn't want to be treated differently because he's an ex-con. So I'll just act like he's any other new recruit.

"I wasn't sleeping. I...I fell off a chair, and the coffee kinda fell on me." Riley barely suppressed a smile. I wish I could have seen that. It would have been hilarious.

Her own morning hasn't been a bed of roses. She got up early to go for a run, but as soon as she got to the door, Cage was standing in front of it, arms crossed.

"What's going on?" Riley just wants to go run off the last dregs of the nightmares.

"I couldn't sleep well, last night." Sam shrugs. "I got up to get water, and when I walked past your room your door was partly open. You had your headphones on, you didn't know I was there. And you were running Nick's photo through your entire digital scan algorithm."

Riley's fairly certain Sam is lying about not sleeping well. She knew something was wrong and she was watching me, waiting for proof.

"Don't lie to me, Riley. This isn't moving on." Sam leans on the doorframe. "You're not going anywhere until you tell me why you haven't stopped searching for him."

"I just...I know him." Riley sighs. "Those in-field agents are good, but they didn't work with him for two years. I know his patterns, I know his flaws, I know how he's likely to cover his tracks." She ignores the tiny voice in her head that says, You knew nothing about him. What if all those were lies too? What if he made you think you knew how to beat him, but it was all fake?

"You focus on your job. I'll find Nick." There's a steely promise in Sam's voice. "I know some people. I'll make some calls." Sam never talks about the past. Riley knows that her roommate is no angel. There's enough in her highly redacted dossier to make Riley think she's living with the Aussie version of Natasha Romanoff. Would they call her the Funnel-Web then? Just doesn't have the same ring as the Black Widow. Riley won't admit to how many times she's had exactly this train of thought. Every time, that's where my brain goes.

But the fact remains, Sam might be the best person for this job. With Nick gone dark, maybe the best person to catch an operative turned criminal is a criminal turned operative.

Riley's grateful, because she really does need to focus. She's been struggling to keep her mind on her ops, because she keeps thinking she should be out there, after Nick, bringing him in. Now, she's actually able to focus on the issue at hand.

"Agent Bannister, this is our...technical consultant. Angus MacGyver." Patty gives him a disapproving glower. You're just not catching him on his best day. Riley watches him shift nervously, cheeks flushed now from embarrassment rather than exertion. "Give him the short version of what the problem is."

"I'm attempting to breach this container. It's giving off large amounts of radiation, and I need to get a look at what's inside." Bannister sighs. "The lock's old, but it won't break. And I can't risk shooting it off and alerting guards or creating a radiation leak."

"Can you get closer to the lock?' Mac asks, and Riley can see him going into problem solving mode. The camera zooms in; it's not like any lock Riley has seen before. But apparently Mac is familiar with them. "That's a tube lock. Standard for high security during the 1960s. Used to be used in bike locks. Until thieves figured out how to beat them…" His voice trails off. "My dad was a bit of a delinquent in his day. Do you have a ballpoint pen?" The woman pulls one out of her shirt with a smile. She taught me that having that, and a piece of paper tucked in a pocket, could mean the difference between life and death. Bannister was a firm believer in tried and true methods of communication in-field. "Is it metal or plastic?"

"Plastic."

"Then it may not work." Riley sees him rub his forehead. "What model is your service weapon?"

Bannister removes the gun from her thigh holster. "Glock 9 mil."

"Take out a bullet and get rid of everything but the shell casing." She does. "Now load it, in reverse, into your backup clip. And you've got yourself a wrench."

Riley watches as Bannister works the shell casing into the lock. There's an audible pop, and then she swings the doors open and gasps.

"Is that…?" Mac asks, sounding more awed than scared.

"A Russian nuclear warhead. Yep." Bannister is taking pictures of the warhead now, and they're coming in to Riley's data files as she does. And then the door bangs open and the camera falls to take pictures of the ceiling as there's an exchange of gunfire.

Then a voice with a thick Russian accent shouts, "Who are you? Who are you?" And then there's a single shot that spatters the screen with blood. A hand picks up the phone and a man's face fills the screen, a thin face with cruel dead eyes. "Whoever you are, you should know that you've failed. And now, you've forced me to act. What I do now will be on your heads." With that, the call ends.

Riley realizes she's now sitting in a chair. She feels like all the air has gone out of her lungs. No. Carla can't be dead. She can't be. And maybe she isn't. But the alternative is even worse. Mac is pale and shaken, pacing in the back of the room. And Thornton is frozen, facing the screen, something glittering sliding down one cheek.

Patty calls Jack; he's still technically on injury leave and was supposed to be allowed to stay home after Ankara. But he gets to the Phoenix in record time when he hears what happened. Jack always highly respected Agent Bannister. He was grateful to her for training me.

When they're all assembled in the War Room, Patty begins the briefing with a slightly shaking voice. Riley's never seen the woman this emotional over the loss of an operative. She knows the two of them climbed ranks in the NSA together, and transferred to DXS at the same time. But it's still hard to think that the 'Ice Queen' might have had someone she was close to, someone she cared that much about. She always said there was no room for caring about any operative. She gave up a long time ago with Riley and Jack. It never occurred to Riley that Patty might break her own rules as well. She always seemed like the kind of person whose rules you couldn't break because they'd never broken them themselves. Like a parent who never smoked, ever, and tells you not to.

"The man who killed Carla is Vladimir Sevchenko. His family were powerful in the Soviet government. When the empire collapsed, they lost everything."

"So he wants to go back to the USSR?" Jack asks.

"Jack, don't start singing." Riley cannot believe he's making light of this situation.

"I wasn't gonna!" He sounds genuinely surprised. "Oh damn it, I didn't even realize I said it that way."

"You've listened to that song too many times." She's surprised to find that she appreciates the slight distraction. I feel like I lost a big sister out there. And if I keep thinking about it, I'm gonna go crazy.

Patty doesn't scold; it's possible she's as relieved as the rest of them to be distracted. "Agent Bannister was sent in to confirm the weapons stockpile and to see if she could track it back to Sevchenko himself." She sighs. "And she did."

Riley pulls up the photos. "She was attempting to identify this device when…" She can't finish. Not with the look on Patty's face.

"It's definitely Soviet era," Jack says. Jack knows Cold War weapons like the back of his hand. His grandpa apparently kept Korean mines in their house. It's a wonder Jack didn't blow himself up. "Probably a dead hand device. Designed as a failsafe, in case we ever took Moscow, Moscow would take us."

"A weapon that size would make an area the size of Texas uninhabitable for centuries," Mac says, then looks at the rest of them, as if he didn't mean to say that out loud. I didn't realize the science nerd was going to be a bomb nerd too.

"But it doesn't look like any warhead I've ever seen," Jack says. "A lot of those components...they're unique."

"The Soviets had hundreds of secret programs." Riley sighs. "They're not all on record even with their own government files. Trust me, wading through their backlogs is its own form of torture." She pulls up the pictures again. "It's computer controlled, but before you ask, I have no idea what system it's running. This has file name extensions I've never seen before. I think this is a proprietary system. One of a kind." Even if I was right there with it, I couldn't hack it.

"Zoom in there." Mac walks up to the screen and points to a shadowy space in one of the photos. The half-opened crate almost hid it from view.

There's something written in faded, flaking paint. Riley can't believe he saw that at all. She types the Cyrillic letters into her translation software and waits.

"Zhar-pitisa. Fire-bird." Now that she has a name to search, Riley can see what the government databases have on file. And it seems like today's luck is starting to turn, because searching "Fire-bird" brings up a full file on a Soviet defector, Alexander Orlov.

Patty must know the name. "Orlov was the head scientist on a Soviet scorched-earth project, which we now know was codenamed "Fire-bird". He defected to the United States and gave a full account of his work to the CIA. After which he dropped off the map entirely."

"Not anymore," Riley says triumphantly. "I found him. He's in a retirement home...here in LA."

"If anyone can shut down the bomb he created, it's him." Patty sighs. "Go see if you can bring our Soviet scientist out of retirement."

...

"Patty. You're going in-country, alone?"

"I sent Agent Bannister in alone." There's a deep pain in Thornton's face. "I'm going to bring her home, and I'm going to bring that bastard back in cuffs." Mac knows she would never admit anything, but it's clear she cared deeply for her. She said caring about your team is a liability. But obviously even she can't always follow her own advice.

She's willing to risk dying to bring down the man who killed Agent Bannister. That kind of loyalty is hard to come by. If I went missing, was captured or killed, would anyone care? He's sure Riley and Jack would be sorry, and Thornton might miss his skill set from time to time, but would they bother to go get him? Or to bring his body home?

Bozer would, he thinks, but that's different. It's easy to say Bozer would, but he couldn't. He'd want to, but there's no way he'd be able to. Mac knows Bozer would move heaven and earth for him, but Boze doesn't even know what Mac does. And I wouldn't ever want him to. He risked Bozer's life enough when he dragged him into his secret about being a vigilante. And he thought that was the craziest his life would get.

If I want people to be willing to risk everything for me, I have to risk something too. I have to let them in. But if he lets them see the truth, then they'll only see how broken he is. They'll see how weak he is. And then they'll decide he's not worth caring anything about at all. There's no win. There's no reason they should ever be willing to risk themselves for me.

Mac grabs a handful of paperclips and shoves them in his pocket before they leave the War Room. He's going to need to distract himself, because as much as he's trying, the thoughts won't leave. They see me as a charity case. They keep me on because it's their good deed, keeping a poor lost puppy out of the dog pound. They're no different from the people in R&D, not really. They see a criminal in an orange jumpsuit too; the only difference is that they pity him instead of hating him.

Patty stops him on his way out the door. "I'd like you to go with Jack and Riley."

"We might need your expertise. You're no longer required to remain in the lab." Two hours ago Mac would have wanted nothing more. But now he doesn't know if he can bear to see the way Jack and Riley look at him.

Riley's picking up her rig, Jack's getting spare ammunition. Mac reaches into his own locker for a change of clothes, but all his hand hits is the cold metal. His go bag is back at the house. He didn't think he would need it since he was stuck in R&D.

It didn't take him long to get used to the idea of carrying spare clothes on a mission; as a vigilante he'd usually carried a backpack with something he could change into if anyone saw him and could have identified what he was wearing. A first aid kit isn't too strange either, except that the Phoenix issued one has antidotes to several common poisons, a radiation exposure kit, and antivenoms specific to location of travel. Having cash, fake papers, a burner phone, and spare comms is a little odder.

It feels like he's capable of disappearing in an instant. And maybe he is. But where would I go? The only family I have is here. He sighs. "Is there a chance we can stop at my house? It might be a good idea if I change clothes." Given Patty's reaction, I don't want to make a former Russian scientist we need to disarm a nuclear warhead think that we're incompetent.

"You can borrow my spares again," Jack says. See, I'm a charity case. They're literally giving me clothes.

"No, it's okay then. I'll be fine." He looks down at the coffee spill, which is finally starting to dry. I'm not sure if it's more humiliating to show up with stains on my clothes, or wearing someone else's.

The drive is uncomfortable. Mac twists paperclips into the shapes of missiles and hammers and sickles. Jack's driving, as usual, blaring a classic rock station, and Riley's organizing the data Bannister sent before she was killed. Mac doesn't usually talk to them, but this time even when they ask him questions he gives the shortest answer he can. They don't really care what I think about this job. I don't know anything about Cold War weapons like Jack, or computer programming like Riley. I'm dead weight on this mission and they probably don't want me here. Why did Thornton even bother to pull me out of R&D?

…

SHADY OAKS RETIREMENT HOME

HOME OF RETIRED ACTORS, MUSICIANS...AND SOVIET DEFECTORS

Places like this remind Jack uncomfortably of Grandpa Dalton. The old man had gotten dementia in the last two years of his life, and damn if that wasn't the worst thing that could have happened to the guy. He'd always been so full of old war stories, and spoken both Korean and Japanese fluently. He'd always remembered every grandchild's name, and that was a feat, since Grandpa Dalton had four children and twenty grandkids.

And then he started to forget. Little by little, the most recent things first. The newest great-grandchild's birthday. His car insurance payments. And then there weren't so many of the same old stories told at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And then a place like this.

Jack's walked halls that smell like antiseptic and that indefinable "old" smell far too many times. He glances at the faces of each of the people sitting in wheelchairs or playing cards at tables or shuffling up and down the halls. One old man with a Vietnam War Veteran hat catches Jack's eye, and he gives the man a salute. He was a Green Beret. The man returns the salute, his bent back suddenly straightening a little, his eyes shining, his trembling hand rising easily. Guys like him came home to anger and protest. Jack knows how much it can hurt to be treated like a war was your fault. It means something to him to be reminded some people are proud of him.

Jack shakes off the thoughts, but not before he feels Riley's hand slip into his. She squeezes tightly, and Jack squeezes back. She's heard the stories. When she first started experiencing the PTSD this job inevitably deals out, Jack sat down with her, made them both mugs of Bailey's and hot chocolate, and told her about the Delta tours, and Myanmar, and Worthy. About never wanting to leave his house again. About the nightmares that followed him into daylight hours, things he'll never really forget. She knows Jack sees himself in every veteran. In the man back there in the hall, with his worn cap and firm salute. In the homeless guys they pass on the street sometimes, people whose eyes hold shadows of the past and fear of the future. In the commercials on the radio encouraging families to talk to the veterans in their lives because of soaring suicide rates.

There's a common bond, between those who fought. Those who've seen and done the unspeakable. Jack knows there are men who fight because they take pleasure in it, and that's different altogether. There are always people, everywhere, who are cruel and take pleasure in pain. But he's known far too many truly good people, people with families and dreams and hopes, who went off to war and never came home. Some days, I feel like I'm living for all of them. So I need to make my life mean something. It has to be worth it.

But they're not here to visit with everyone Jack sees. They're here to find the one man who might be able to help them stop World War Three and a whole lot more young men and women going off to war.

Riley pulls up the CIA dossier photo on her phone. "This is the most recent picture we have of Orlov."

"That's real helpful," Jack says. It's over forty years old.

"It's all we've got." Jack looks up; they're close to what looks like a common room. There's a TV blaring "The Price is Right," and a nurse is arguing with an old man who appears to have been in the process of taking apart the TV remote. The man is shouting back, and his accent is unmistakably tinged with Russian. That's got to be him. Jack moves forward, but at just that second the man stands up to try and pull the remote out of the nurse's hands, and he catches Jack's eye. And then his eyes move to the faint but distinctive shape of the concealed sidearm.

There's still a trained Soviet agent underneath the crotchety old man stubbornly insisting on being allowed to watch what he wants. Before Jack quite processes what's happening, THe man is grabbing something from behind the television, slashing through cables with...oh hell no, he's got a knife, this won't be ending well...and bolting for a door that leads out ot the parking lot.

There's no point in stealth now. "Orlov! Wait! We just want to talk to you!" Jack yells, breaking into a run, but the man's having none of it. He's long gone.

As per usual, Carl's Jr. takes off with that freaky fast running and beats Jack to the door. Which doesn't open, which means the kid practically pastes himself to it like a Wile. E. Coyote cartoon. Splayed hands and face pressed sideways against the glass and everything. Jack would laugh if not for the fact that he wasn't prepared to stop so fast either.

Jack feels the kid flinch and tense when he slams into his back, pressing him hard against the door, so much so that he gasps softly and struggles a little. Sorry kid. That's gotta be hell on your ribs. He pulls back quickly, noticing vaguely that the kid shivers and seems to shake his head like he's trying to forget something. "What the hell's wrong with that door?"

Carl's Jr. glances up. "He wrapped the hydraulic arm with that TV cord."

"He's an old you," Jack says, starting to laugh. There's really nothing funny about any of this, but damn if he doesn't remind me of the kid. Wonder if anyone like me ever had to put up with him. And then his brain returns to the task at hand. Find Orlov. Defuse the bomb. Save the world.

Just another day at the office.

...

That door's effectively blocked. Riley barely avoids laughing as Mac and Jack end up in a pile-up that could have come straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. This job can be really insane and downright traumatizing, but some days it really does look like something out of the movies.

She's already on the hunt for another door. Jack and Mac are right behind her. She's trying to keep an eye on Orlov out in the parking lot. Out one of the windows she can see the man trying to jimmy open a car door with the same steak knife he used to cut the TV cord.

"Grandpa theft auto! I like this guy," Riley grins. Jack's right. He's the fifty years in the future version of Mac.

Mac bolts past her, out an emergency exit at the end of the hall. She and Jack follow him, and they're just outside when Orlov smashes the car door and appears to be attempting to start the car with the knife.

Mac rushes up and slides to a stop. Riley can hear him talking to the guy. "I respect anyone who's trying to hotwire a car with a knife, but can we just…" Orlov spins around, slashing the knife at Mac's chest. He jumps back, stumbling. "Whoa, whoa, hey, I just wanna talk!"

"Get away from me you KGB bastard!" Orlov makes another swing and Mac tries to back up, forgets about the curb behind him, and trips over it, falling onto the ground. Jack rushes up and pulls his gun.

"Put down the knife, Orlov."

"The KGB was disbanded before I was even born," Mac mumbles insultedly, struggling to his feet and wiping at the grass stains that have just been added to the mess he's managed to make of his clothes today.

Orlov sighs. "You're going to have to shoot me. I'll tell you nothing."

"Please, we're not from the KGB. We're trying to stop a bomb you made from being used." Riley pulls up the photos on her rig. "We're here about Fire-bird."

"Zhar-pititsa?" Orlov mumbles quietly, and his eyes take on a faraway look. The knife clatters to the pavement and Jack relaxes his grip on his gun.

"Let's go inside, huh?" Riley asks. Orlov leads them back inside, and Riley attempts to explain the situation to him as they walk. Jack slips his gun back into its holster before the front desk clerk decides to call him out on it. Riley's sure the woman saw what happened outside, but she looks a little too spooked to say anything. As long as she didn't call the cops.

Orlov's room is covered in sketches. "That's a fusion reactor," Riley gapes at the technical sketches on the wall. This guy isn't just a programming genius. He's a real renaissance man.

"I wanted to give my country clean energy. But all the Soviets wanted was more bombs." Orlov sighs. "I thought I could escape it all. And then you come and tell me that my work is in the hands of a madman."

"But we can still stop it," Riley says. "You created the programming language, right? So you're the only person in the world who can shut it down."

"But that bomb has already been activated." Orlov takes Riley's tablet and flicks through the images. "This script means that it is in standby. Knowing the programming language is only half the battle. To stop it now, we need the passwords."

"Passwords?" Jack asks. "Riles, you can crack those, right?"

"On a fifty-year-old computer with a custom OS? Maybe if I had a year."

"Why don't you have the passwords?" Mac asks.

"You have to understand, the Soviets were paranoid. They did not want us to change our minds. The only person who had the passwords to Fire-bird was my handler. Victor Levkin."

"Your handler?"

"Spies and scientists had different duties." He glances from Jack to Mac and Riley. "Maybe like you. They have the brains, and your job is to protect them, isn't that right?"

Jack frowns a little. "One, I think you're kinda halfway insulting me, and two, you just watched the kid there trip over a curb, so what makes you think he's the brains of this operation at all?"

"Because he is not the muscle," Orlov chuckles slightly.

"So let me get this straight. We need to find your partner to get the codes to shut down this thing?" Riley cuts in. "Please tell me he's still alive."

"He is." Orlov sighs. "I will need a phone."

Jack reluctantly hands his over. "Why is it always mine, man?"

"Because I need mine for my job, and Mac's is locked to only secure messaging and calls," Riley replies. I made sure to make Mac's untraceable as well, just in case his PO decides to check phone records. Anything we don't want him to know about will never show up. Including locations outside the greater LA area.

They go back outside, Orlov typing away on the phone. "So where is this Levkin anyway?" Jack asks. "Because we're kind of on a clock here." He glances back at Orlov. "Hey, man, that's the third Uber you've canceled! You're wrecking my score. We don't even need an Uber, we have a car!"

"We do not need to go to him. He will come to us. But not if he knows it's me." Orlov sighs, then sits down on the step. "Now all we need to do is wait." Jack snatches his phone back and glances at Riley.

"Hey Riles." She scoots a little closer. "Maybe it's just me, but is this guy a little, you know…" He wiggles his finger beside his head.

"Maybe. I don't know. But he's our only lead on finding Levkin and stopping Fire-bird. So unhinged or not, we've got to trust him."

Soon a black car pulls up outside, and a grey-haired man steps out. As soon as Orlov stands up, the man shouts "Nyet!" And scrambles back into his car to grab a gun.

"Hey, hey, none of that now!" Jack wrestles the gun away from him, only for Levkin to grab another from his belt. When Jack takes that, he bends down to pull one from his boot. "Hey, man, I like your style but we just wanna talk!" That poor desk secretary is going to think she signed up to work in a mental hospital.

"I won't talk to you KGB!"

"Victor! They are not KGB!" Orlov shouts.

"And why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything you say!"

"Victor, you know me!"

"We haven't spoken since 1991!"

"You stopped talking to me!" Orlov shouts.

"Because you treated me like I was stupid!"

"That's because you're an imbecile!"

Riley shakes her head. "Wow. It's like someone put you two through a copy machine and you came out all Russian and wrinkly."

Jack glares at her. "Carl's Jr. and I aren't close to being that good of friends." Now it's Riley's turn to look at him in disbelief. If that's his definition of friends...She knows Jack likes to argue, a lot, and people have said he and Riley sound like a father and daughter arguing about her driving privileges, but this doesn't sound like a friendly argument. It looks like these two are going to choke each other.

Riley steps in between. "I get that you two have your issues, but there is an actual nuclear warhead about to go off. And we're on the wrong side of the world."

"What is the right side of the world?" Orlov asks.

Jack launches into Iron Maiden's "Mother Russia." Riley cringes. As long as she's known Jack, his singing skills have not been anything less than cringeworthy.

"Jack, please stop." To his credit, he does.

"Riley, that's classic Iron Maiden!"

"Well, I don't want to hear you trying to sing it. And neither do they, I'm sure."

"I swore I'd never go back," Orlov says quietly. I'm sorry we had to drag you back into the past you wanted to forget. But it's the only way.

…

They'll take Orlov and Levkin and disarm the bomb. They won't need Mac, he can go back now. He'd ask to take the Uber back if it wasn't Levkin's car. Maybe he can call Bozer to come pick him up, even though there are going to be a lot of questions as to how he ended up at a retirement home without transportation.

I'm sure I can think of something. But what it is, he can't think of. I'm good at improvising when it comes to mechanical stuff. But making up stories isn't my thing. That's Bozer's. Boze was always the one to cover for Mac if he was caught sneaking back into the house or had to explain why he'd missed a class or event, or why he couldn't go to something because he was planning on going out as the Phoenix that night. I miss that. I miss knowing he had my back.

Orlov hesitates before getting in Jack's car. "My hands are not as steady as they were. I will need someone to help me." Riley nods, she's probably disarmed hundreds of bombs in her career. Of course she has. "No, no, I need you to help me with the computers. It took me three weeks to program Fire-bird. I will need all the help I can get to shut it down." Orlov taps Riley's rig. "The system was not as...sophisticated as what you may be used to, but I like to think it is quite elaborate."

He glances at Jack. "Don't look at me, man. I was overwatch for EODs in the Sandbox, and believe me, those guys have my utmost respect, but there's no way I'm capable of doing what they do. I'm a bull in a china shop when it comes to stuff like this. And I got the feeling that if I move wrong, that baby might go off in our faces."

Orlov glances at Mac. "Who exactly is he?"

"That's our technical consultant, Angus MacGyver," Riley jumps in before Jack can say something smart. Mac's grateful.

"What do you know about disarming nuclear warheads?" Orlov asks.

"Nothing," Mac admits, fingers straying to the paperclips in his pocket. "But I...I knew a cop who was part of a bomb squad. He taught me how to deal with the IEDs cartels set up in their neighborhoods. I know my way around wires and triggers." He tries not to think about the crisp determination on Pena's face as he showed Mac how to dismantle a makeshift shrapnel bomb in the kitchen of a boarded up restaurant. He would have told them I could do this. Pena had always said Mac would have made a good bomb tech, because when it came down to what could kill him, Mac was a good judge of the real issue, and he was steady as a rock when it counted. I might be a spastic golden retriever puppy ninety percent of the time, but that was one thing I could focus on. It was just another problem to solve.

"Then you are going to be my hands, Mr. MacGyver."

Jack balks at that. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We're seriously going to put our lives, and the lives of millions, in the hands of a kid who tripped over a parking curb and spilled coffee on himself all in one morning?" The disbelief in Jack's voice hurts.

"We don't have another choice," Riley says. "We have to leave now. There's no time to assemble a Phoenix disposal team, and even if there was that's too many people to take in-country. We have to travel light."

"And we might need his improvisation skills," Riley adds. "We don't know what we might run into out there."

Mac should be excited about this. Yes, if we fail we're all going to die in a nuclear blast, but at least it would be quick. And this is something I'm good at; I still remember everything Pena taught me and everything that was in those books he loaned me. But there's a massive problem with any out-of-the-country op right now.

If they're gone overnight, this will be the second time he's had to reschedule a parole meeting in the past month alone. Hammond could excuse the last one; Mac claimed a pre-existing meeting with legal counsel. This time, he doesn't really have another good excuse. He can't afford to have Hammond get suspicious.

This job is supposed to be keeping me out of jail, but if I'm not careful it's going to send me right back. He shivers at the thought.

"Alright, I've called the Phoenix transport pilot. He'll be standing by for takeoff as soon as we reach the airport." Jack gets in the driver's seat. "Hey, Carl's Jr., hurry it up. You're burnin' daylight!" Mac scrambles to the car, and Levkin gets out as he does. Mac suddenly realizes the guy plans on using him as a human buffer between himself and Orlov. Great. Mac crams into the middle seat, good thing I'm on the skinny side, and tries to ignore the two angry Russians on either side of him. And I thought the ride here was uncomfortable.

...

Riley is seriously impressed with Orlov's coding skills. Admittedly, he's jumped up from his seat four times and excused himself to use the restroom, but the man is a genius.

This would probably be easier if she was more fluent in Russian. She's got a passable knowledge, but mostly modern conversational stuff, enough to fool people on phones or at galas. She's not as familiar with the technical language from the 1960s.

She rubs her eyes and stands up; she's starting to get a headache from staring at the computer screen. Jack and Victor are sitting next to each other in the back and she can hear snatches of conversation.

"So you are to them a me?" Victor asks. "You watch their backs in the field, yes?"

"I sure do." Jack's smiling slightly. "No place I'd rather be, man."

"Partnership...It is like marriage. It is all fine and cute at first. But then things begin to bother." He glances at Mac, who's making something out of his paperclips again. "Tell me that does not annoy you."

"Yeah, it does, but that's how we all know he's thinkin'. Carl's Jr.'s not a bad kid, for a kid." Riley grins. Oh Jack. You sure like to insult Mac to his face, but you care so damn much. And if he wasn't so terrified of you, he'd see it. She wishes Jack would drop some of the abrasive act and let Mac in. What's bothering him? Is it that Mac doesn't have the field training or the skill sets we do? Is he afraid of what will happen if Mac fails?

"Yes, but does he tell you everything he's thinking?" Riley sees the doubt spread itself across Jack's face at Victor's words. And then Alexi comes out of the bathroom and immediately picks up his coding conversation where he left off. I think he's just thrilled to finally be talking to someone who understands him. For the past fifty years he's been unable to let anyone know how smart he really is. That must hurt. Riley's had to hide her day job, but she can't imagine what it would be like to give that up entirely. I need an outlet for what I do.

She keeps glancing back at Jack as Alexi continues. Jack, stop dwelling on what Mac doesn't tell us. He keeps his secrets for a reason. She has a faint desire to punch Victor for even letting the thought of Mac betraying them enter Jack's head. Just because your partner left, doesn't mean Mac will do that to us.

Then her phone rings. It's Patty.

"Patty. We have Orlov and we're en route to Russia."

Patty is breathing hard, sounding like she just got out of a pretty serious fight.

"Reroute to Serbia. That's where Sevchenko is taking the bomb. And he's moved up the timetable even more than we thought. He's going to detonate Fire-bird in the next twenty-four hours."

"How do you know this?" Riley has a sinking feeling she doesn't want to know. Patty's lessons on interrogation techniques were rather graphically brutal. No wonder she plays it cold. You can't appear to have a heart and do what she does. But it's sadly sometimes necessary.

"Let's just say I'm my mother's daughter. I'll have the location of the courier soon." She hangs up.

Riley turns to Alexi. "Change of plans. Fire-bird is in Serbia."

Alexi glances at her. "We cannot disarm it yet. We need a chiget."

"That's the computer that talks to the bomb, right?" Jack asks, then scowls when everyone stares at him. "I'm allowed to know stuff too, aren't I?" He's such a nerd about things that can kill people.

"You are correct," Victor says.

"I thought they were all destroyed when the dead hand devices were finished." Jack continues.

"According to this they are," Riley pulls up an article on them. "This is what they look like, right?" Victor glances at the picture and sighs.

"Only twenty-six men knew they existed, and now their pictures are on the internet for everyone to see." He leans back in his chair, fingers drumming on the armrest. Mac glances over Riley's shoulder at the picture on her rig, and she can see the curiosity. This is going to be difficult. I don't think even our little genius can build one of these out of chewing gum and paper clips. And if they don't have a chiget, they can't shut the bomb down. Riley's rig can't even be reprogrammed, not even if she knew the code. The new technology wouldn't be able to interface with the fifty-year-old systems. It would be too fast, probably set the whole thing off.

"Even secrets get old, Victor," Alexi says quietly.

"But not some secrets. Do not believe everything you read there. They were not all destroyed. There is one left. And I know where to find it," Victor smiles.

"Where?"

"Zelenograd, outside Moscow."

"Jack, call Patty back." Riley's already pulling up the new destination.

"Why me?"

"Cause I don't want to deal with this," Riley answers honestly.

Jack sighs, but he does it.

"Uh, Patty, we're gonna need to take a slight detour."

The coldly furious voice on the other hand makes Riley supremely grateful she let Jack handle this one.

...

MOTHER RUSSIA

IT'S JUST AS COLD HERE AS JACK REMEMBERS

Jack's expecting the hidden chiget to be squirreled away in some underground bunker, one of those damp, chilly places that's all cobwebby and full of food stashes that are very unsafe to eat. Learned that the hard way when Sarah and I holed up after Moscow. She always blamed me for why we got caught, and I can't say I blame her, but I really did need to go find a bathroom.

Instead, Victor leads them to a massive mansion of a place. "What is this?" Jack asks in surprise.

"A safe house. You hide them well enough, even Putin cannot find what is under his own nose." Victor sniffs. "Hiding in caves gets you caught. Hiding where you can easily be found makes them ignore you."

He walks over to a wall and takes down a framed photograph, of two men, one blond, one with nearly black hair, sitting at a table. The blond one looks familiar. "Is that…" Jack asks.

"Us. Fifty years ago," Alexi says quietly. "You kept it?"

"Of course." Victor sounds just a little insulted. "It was the right size to hide this." He begins spinning the dial of an old safe, and it opens to reveal the small, boxy device.

"I can't believe you kept one. Orders were to destroy them all," Alexi whispers.

"Well, sometimes orders are stupid. Made by imbeciles," Victor barks a small laugh, and Alexi smiles.

"You had your doubts too. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought you were committed. You seemed so certain of what you were doing. And then you left, like that." Victor snaps his fingers. "Not even a goodbye."

"I was afraid, Victor!"

"So was I! As soon as you left they came to my home and took me away in the night. For days I knew nothing. I thought you had been captured, taken to Siberia. I thought you might have been killed! They asked me about you a hundred times and I told them nothing. And then I realized they did not believe me. They were going to kill me, Alexi. Because of you. So I took a chance and ran." There's harsh emotion in Victor's voice. "But what hurt worse than anything they did to make me talk was the thought that you did not trust me."

I can't imagine what that would be like. Jack's been tortured for Riley's location before, but always for a mission. Always knowing after it was over, they'd be reunited, that she was going to save the world if he just gave her enough time, if he held out for a few more minutes. Never because she ran off without telling him anything, leaving him to pick up the pieces and deal with the fallout of her decision.

What would it be like to lose your partner like that? Jack can't imagine this job without Riley by his side. He can't imagine going the rest of his life never hearing her criticize his singing or make fun of his leather cuff or just feeling her head on his chest when she has to remind herself they're both still alive after a rough op.

Hell, he's starting to feel the same way about Carl's Jr. The kid's as annoying as a scorpion in a boot, but he's starting to grow on Jack. He doesn't just roll over when Jack gives him a hard time, and despite all the defenses he's put up to protect himself, Jack can tell there's a kind, soft-hearted person underneath. He and I aren't so different. We both project toughness because it's the only way to survive.

"Um, we have a problem." Riley's holding up a frayed electrical cord. "This runs on Russian AC. And we've got no guarantees Sevchenko's going to put that bomb anywhere near an outlet."

"So we'll need to make it portable." Carl's Jr. is studying the device. "Riley, I'm going to need your computer battery." He reaches for the one in her hands.

"Hey, nobody cracks my rig but me. Use my backup." Jack used to pick on her for having an extra computer at all times. And then her rig got shot out of her hands in Borneo and Jack stopped teasing.

The kid sits down and starts disassembling the computer and the chiget. "Let's turn this thing into a chigetbook, alright?" Is it technically a Mac, though, given his name? Jack's about to make the joke but doesn't. The kid's been off all day. He's been withdrawn and seemed almost afraid of Jack and Riley. What's eatin' him? Jack thinks maybe he should ask Riley. But she's been acting weird the past week or so too. Turning away every time he walks up while she's using her rig, like a kid who doesn't want their parents to see what they're looking up on the internet. But he's pretty sure Riley's current obsession is less embarrassing than it is dangerous.

I'd bet money she's still hunting Nick. Jack's starting to sympathize a lot with Victor. It's tough to watch your team's backs when they don't think they can trust you with the truth.

...

Mac really hopes this works. When I was a kid, I wanted a computer. Instead of getting me one, my dad brought home three college-level books and took me to the junkyard. I built my first computer out of a whole lot of random junk, and after two days it sparked out and almost burnt the house down. But they don't need the chiget to last that long. Just long enough to disarm that nuke.

He disassembles the computer and begins the process of wiring Riley's battery to it. This might take a while, since the computer wasn't designed to run on battery power and he'll have to make sure it doesn't short out.

Alexi sits down across the table from him. The man has shadows in his eyes, the kind Mac knows all too well. It's that hunted feeling. Of being in a place where nowhere is safe and everyone is against you. For Orlov, coming back to Russia is what it would be like for Mac to get sent back to CCI.

Mac starts talking, as much to distract himself as to distract Alexi. Focus on the problems right here, right now.

"What made you decide to defect?"

Orlov sighs and picks up a piece of loose wire in his hands, twisting it as he talks. "I watched a test. A different kind of test. With houses and lamps and televisions and mannequins sitting around a dinner table. And in the blink of an eye, gone. After that I could not see my work without thinking of my nephew and his family at their table. But they would never let me stop building bombs."

In the background, Jack's phone rings. He pulls it out and winces before answering. Must be Thornton.

"We're close, Patty. Real close. Kid's just workin' his magic on this stone age laptop and then we're good." He hangs up. "Patty needs us moving. Like now. She's got a line on Sevchenko's courier, and she'll have a location for us soon."

"I'm almost done." Mac can feel the pressure on him now. If we don't make it there in time it's going to be my fault. There are so many ways things can go wrong. And all of them end with him either incinerated in a nuclear blast or hauled back to CCI in cuffs. He's not sure which option is more terrifying.

He glances at his watch for the fifth time. It's still set to California time, so he can tell how much time is left before his parole meeting. Less than eighteen hours. And that has to factor in flight time. He's already running the numbers in his head. Phoenix jet travels 720 mph approximately. Flight time LA to Moscow, about 6100 miles, at that speed, a little more than eight hours. Flight time to Serbia will be another two. Flight time home from there will be nine. That means we have about eight hours to get this computer to work and stop the bomb. They've already used up an hour and a half just getting to this place and working on the chiget.

I wonder if I can still call Hammond and reschedule. But what excuse is he going to be able to use? Last time Riley hacked the LA judicial records to fake the court date. This time they're nowhere near her being able to jack into the network. I could say I was sick...no, that won't work, I'm a terrible liar and that's an awful excuse. He fumbles, nearly dropping the battery, and Jack glares at him.

Focus on what can kill you now. Pena's voice strays into his head unannounced. What can kill you right now?

"The bomb," Mac whispers under his breath.

So that's what you have to worry about first. Stop the bomb, then think about everything else. Mac forces his mind back to the present, and the battery, and the man sitting across from him.

"So you left without telling Levkin anything?"

"I thought he would hate me." Alexi glances at the other man, who is apparently debating the merits of various semiautomatics with Jack.

"You didn't get along?"

"We were paired together by superiors. I thought he cared only to do his job and keep me safe. It was only when it was too late I realized he considered me a friend." Orlov sighs. "And I have been too much of a fool all these years to tell him I made a mistake."

He lied to the person who was the closest to him in the world. The person who trusted him. Mac suddenly feels horribly guilty for keeping Bozer in the dark. True, if he tells his roommate what he's actually doing for a living, it's probably a violation of the espionage act. I'd just go back to jail again. There isn't one scenario of that reveal that doesn't go wrong, not anywhere in the dozens he's played out in his head on sleepless nights.

He finishes wiring the battery in and adjusts it carefully, closing the housing. "All done." Riley moves to pick it up, then her gaze flicks to the window and she freezes.

"We have visitors. And I doubt they're a welcoming committee."

"Spetsnaz," Victor spits. "They never forget an enemy. They must have recognized us at the airport and tracked us." And then bullets start flying, glass shatters, and Mac cringes at the unfortunate familiar burn of something creasing across his shoulder. He throws himself behind the table, shuddering. If we don't get out of this, I won't have to worry about a nuke or CCI. I'll be six feet under the Russian tundra.

...

Jack reacts the second he sees moonlight on gun barrels. He shoves Riley down, but she forces him out of the way and reaches up to grab the chiget. She yelps, and when she drops back down there's a glass cut on her cheek and a tear in the arm of her jacket, but neither one is life-threatening.

Victor shouts above the gunfire. "We need to go through the rabbit hole!"

"Rabbit hole?" Jack yells back.

Victor stands up, firing expertly with his left hand while his right searches the bookshelf. When his fingers hit a particular volume, he pulls hard, and the whole wall shifts, revealing a reinforced metal door. He pulls it open, then runs back to them, dropping to the floor again and breathing hard. Jack can't tell if he's wounded or just winded.

"Alexi. We must go." Victor grabs his partner's hand and pulls him to the door, which he swings open. The two disappear inside.

"Riley! Follow them!" Jack lays down a few cover shots while he and Riley jump up and run for the opening. Riley races through, ducking as shots shatter the few still-intact window panes. Jack scans the room once more. Damn it, Carl's Jr., where are you hiding?

Then he sees him, and he bites off a frustrated curse. The kid's not going to make it to the door without help. He's terrified, hunkered down in a corner, shaking. Damn it. Jack flings himself back into the storm of bullets, firing out the window indiscriminately. The shots die down for a fraction of a second, the Spetsnaz goons apparently startled enough at the heavy return fire to hesitate.

"Hey! Carl's Jr., don't just sit there! Let's go!" The kid stares at him, eyes wide with shock. "Now!" He drags the kid to his feet, hearing him hiss as Jack's hand apparently clamps over a bullet graze. He can feel the sticky wetness under his palm.

Carl's Jr. follows him blindly, but they make it to the door. The gunfire has died down. Most people would think that was a good thing. It's not. Anyone who's been in Tac Ops long knows that after laying down heavy fire like that, they're going to breach. They're going to see who's still alive after the barrage and finish them off. And chances are they're in the house already.

The door leads into a small storeroom. Riley is stuffing the chiget in her backpack, and Victor's just opened the door to a small tunnel.

The kid looks around the room, and then his eyes light up in that "I'm about to break something" look that Jack's learned to both fear and respect. He grabs an alarm clock off the shelf, a couple paperclips from his pocket, and holds out his hand. "Jack, I'm gonna need your phone."

"What?" Jack's already given his phone to one mad scientist today. Not again.

"I need it or we're all gonna die!"

Jack wants to argue but he's seen this kid do too many crazy things. "You break it, that's comin' outta your paycheck."

"I just need the battery." Carl's Jr. proceeds to crack the back off his phone, pull out the battery, and then hand it back to Jack.

"Dude, why didn't you just break yours?"

"Because I might have to call my parole officer!" The kid snaps, but Jack can tell he's actually genuinely worried. "We might not get back in time for my meeting!"

"If we don't get that bomb shut down in time, your parole hearing will be the least of your problems!"

"Guys! Focus! Evil Russian military dudes with guns, trying to kill us?" Riley snaps. "Levkin and Orlov are already in the tunnel, and I think we oughta join them!" Jack will agree with that, seeing as there's a sudden heavy pounding against the reinforced door. That old lock won't hold up forever against assault rifles.

The kid grabs two bags from the floor and hands them to Jack.

"Flour?" Jack asks. The kid just nods, and then all three of them are in the tunnel. Jack hears Carl's Jr. behind him, and it sounds like he's ripping the bags open. "Unless this plan ends with me eating a whole stack of pancakes, I don't like it!" Jack shouts.

"Just shake them! Get the dust in the air!" The kid's coughing, stumbling behind him, but Jack can hear him doing something with that alarm clock. Then they're at a door Jack drops the empty flour sacks and follows Riley outside. The kid wedges whatever gadget he made from the clock into a corner.

"Close the door!" He gasps, hands on his knees, still coughing.

"What did you do?" Riley asks, shoving at the rusted hinges.

"The high concentration of powder in the air is highly flammable." And then there's a low roar. Damn. He rigged that clock to spark and ignite the powder.

That's at least the fifth time something he's touched has caught fire and/or exploded. Jack's laughing...until they round the corner and see Victor sprawled against the wall, groaning and bleeding from a head wound.

"Levkin! What happened?" Riley leans down next to him.

"They knew…" He shakes his head, mumbling. "They knew about the safe house. They were waiting. They took Alexi."

Riley looks up. "Without him, we can't stop Fire-bird." Jack feels his stomach drop into his shoes. Great. I can't wait to explain this to Patty.

The flight to Serbia is tense. Victor stares off vacantly into space in a way Jack's sure has more to do with guilt than his mild concussion. Riley fiddles with the edges of the bandage on her arm and struggles to make sense of what she knows of Orlov's programming. Jack watches Carl's Jr. glance at his watch, and then at his ankle tether. He's terrified. Of getting put back inside because of something that isn't even his fault. No wonder the kid's been off his game all day. I forgot tomorrow...wait, is it today now, damn these timezones...was his meeting. Jack suddenly feels guilty for yelling at him and making fun of him. Geez, I just didn't know. They're all on the clock for that bomb, but Jack has the feeling Carl's Jr. is watching a clock counting down to a fate worse than nuclear obliteration.

…

Thornton doesn't look happy when they all get off the plane in Serbia. "Please tell me someone can explain why you have the computer and lost the only man who knows how to use it?"

"I…" Mac doesn't want to admit it, but this is his fault. He stopped to argue with Jack, or they would have been closer and maybe they could have helped Victor. I was so worried about my own problems I lost sight of the things we had to worry about right then. I forgot to focus.

"Well," Jack begins, and Mac's sure he's going to get blamed, and even though he was about to say it himself it's so much worse coming from Jack. "It was my fault, Patty, I should have been watching…" I don't believe it. He's taking the blame for me? Why?

"Actually it was my fault." Victor steps forward. "Protecting Alexi was my job, and I failed him."

Thornton cuts them all off. "I don't really care to hear a full debrief, right now. Can we get him back?"

"Maybe." Riley hauls out her rig. "Thanks to Victor, we have one of their phones. These guys were communicating using encrypted messages. And now we have the encryption key."

Thornton hands her a small red flash drive. "Then maybe you can decrypt this. It's been giving our techs at Phoenix headaches."

Riley plugs the drive into her computer. "Okay, I've got date, time, minimum safe distance, and..bingo! Coordinates!"

"Please don't say 'bingo' again," Jack mutters.

"Okay, these are for a US Army base," Riley says. "That must be where he's planning to detonate the bomb."

"I'll call them," Thornton says. She steps off and paces as she talks to the camp commander. When she comes back, her face is grim. "They don't have any reason to believe the bomb is on their base. The only trucks in and out were thoroughly searched, their perimeter fences haven't been breached, and no security alerts were triggered. Every building's access points are accounted for. They're still evacuating the base, and EOD will do a sweep, but they're certain Fire-bird isn't there."

"Fire-bird isn't a scalpel, it's a sledgehammer," Jack says. "Those bombs were designed to do a maximum of damage to any surrounding area. It won't have to be on the base to wipe it off the planet."

Riley zooms out on her satellite view. Mac leans over her shoulder to look. It'll be somewhere no one would stumble on it. Somewhere abandoned...There's a factory, overgrown and ramshackle, in the top right corner. "Riley, zoom in there." She does. And then Mac spots the truck. "That's it!"

When they find the warehouse, Mac watches as Jack and Thornton scope out the situation. "Bomb will be on the top level, to maximize the damage," Jack says. He sure knows a lot about them. Guess his fascination with cold war weapons and three years as an EOD overwatch paid off. It's rare that Mac finds someone who actually understands the same things he does. Maybe Jack's not so keen on geometry and physics and biochemistry, but at least they have a common fascination with things that explode. It's something.

"There's a lot of guards at that door," Riley mutters.

"We cannot just walk through the front gate," Levkin adds.

"No, but maybe we can drive." Mac glances from them to the truck still parked down at the bottom of the hill, empty bomb crate swung wide open.

He wasn't exactly counting on Jack telling him and Riley to get in the bomb container. That thing was leaking a lot of radiation when Bannister scanned it. Some was the bomb but there's still gonna be a lot on the container, right? Mac's not super familiar with all the logistics of radiation exposure, but he's pretty sure hiding in a crate where a nuclear bomb was stored isn't great for his health.

They're supposed to be quiet back there, but Mac can't help asking Riley about how good an idea this is. "Is hiding in a radioactive box safe? I don't wanna become a real-life Schrodinger's cat." Riley actually laughs at his geeky joke. Well, this is about the only situation in which it really makes any sense.

"We won't be in here long. It probably just means we'll have to do a full decontamination at exfil. And anyway, potential radiation exposure totally beats a bullet in the head. This metal should protect us a little."

And then they're crashing through the doors, there's a lot of yelling in what Mac guesses is Russian, and there's no more time to talk. He and Riley tumble out of the crate and run for the stairs to the top level. Mac cringes at the gunfire all around them. I really hate being shot at!

Mac glances up. He can see the bomb, and even more importantly he can see Orlov, tied to a chair in the middle of the room. They're shooting all around him. He knows Jack, Thornton and Levkin won't return fire, not when they know the bomb must be up there, but the people shooting down at them could easily hit Orlov.

There's a rolling cart like a mechanic's 'creeper' on the floor nearby, and a chain hoist that at one point must have lifted machinery on an assembly line. Mac has an idea. "I'm gonna get Orlov out of the crossfire. Be ready to pull when I say, okay?" She nods. He ties the chain to the creeper and carefully pushes himself forward, hoping to avoid being noticed. As soon as he's close to Orlov's chair, he rolls off the small platform, shoves it into the back of the chair, and tugs on the chair legs to make sure it topples over. Orlov falls onto his back, and Mac yells.

"Okay, now!" She yanks on the chain and Orlov slides back toward her. And then Mac sees the two guys coming up the stairs. "Riley, behind you!"

Riley doesn't even flinch. She grabs a barrel from a stack beside her, rolls it down the steps, then wipes off her hands dramatically.

Mac flinches as another spatter of bullets ricochets off the crates he's hiding behind. I already got shot once, I don't really want to do it again. Even though it's just a graze, the wound still hurts. How am I gonna get myself out of this one?

And then three shots ring out and the assault on his hiding spot ends. Mac looks up, gasping, to see Jack kneeling beside Riley, gun in hand. He just took them all out with three shots. And I counted at least four guys.

"Did you just Donkey Kong those guys?" Jack asks Riley, as Mac stumbles back to them, still in shock that he's alive and not currently as full of holes as Bozer's pasta strainer.

"I guess I'm picking up a few pointers on improvising," Riley winks at Mac, then starts undoing the gag in Orlov's mouth.

As soon as the man can speak, he's struggling to stand. "Sevchenko is insane. He wants me to build more bombs for him. He has the materials. You have to stop him!"

"We will." Thornton's joined them now, with Victor behind her. "Has he already armed Fire-bird?" Orlov only nods. "Then your priority is to shut it down. We'll handle Sevchenko." She and Jack stand up and fire together at the remaining mercenaries, who retreat further into the warehouse. And then two go down, and Sevchenko dives out a window to the roof.

"We've got him! Shut that down!" Thornton yells, and follows him.

Victor reaches for Alexi and wraps the man in a crushing hug. "I thought you were lost, old friend," he whispers.

"I knew you would come for me."

Ordinarily, I'd be all for the dramatic, emotional reunion. I'm kind of a softy at heart, even if I'd never admit that to literally anyone. But right now I'm on the clock in more ways than one. He glances at his watch. Eleven hours left. And the bomb's countdown reads fifteen minutes. At least I can tell which problem will kill me first. "Can we disarm this bomb first, and then worry about reunions?"

"Yes, yes." It looks like Orlov has temporarily forgotten the situation, but now he's clearly back in his scientist mindset. "In order to connect the chiget, we must remove the faceplate of the bomb." Orlov looks at Mac. "This is where you come in. My hands are not so steady as they used to be." Riley looks at him, apparently confused, and he continues to explain. "The plate was designed to be a failsafe. If anyone attempted to remove it, to use a chiget to shut down Fire-bird, the bomb would explode immediately." He glances at Mac. "You will need to carefully detach the plate and prevent the wire soldered to the back from losing connection with the bomb's trigger. If it does, we will not live long enough to regret it."

I've seen device failsafes like this before. Usually bombs hidden in boxes. Removing the lid breaks the connection between the wires, and the bomb explodes. The Merida cartel had a nasty habit of sending those to police officers' families. He doesn't think about the news reports of excited kids running out to see what the delivery men left and opening the containers.

He and Pena had defused their share of those. They were always personal for Alfred, he had a two-year-old daughter and Mac knew that every time another child was killed by one of those bombs, Pena saw his own child in that obituary.

He learned to defuse those bombs in minutes. They were his specialty. Mac kicks around the warehouse floor for something conductive and malleable. Pena used to use gum wrappers. He never bought any gum that didn't have real foil on it, and he always kept a pack in his pocket. He'd been trying to quit smoking because of his little girl, and Mac couldn't remember a time he hadn't seen the man chewing a stick of gum, folding up the wrapper and putting it in his pocket.

"What are you looking for?" Riley asks.

"Something to conduct electricity. A piece of foil, anything I can slip in behind that plate and keep the current going from the computer to the trigger."

Riley rummages in her backpack and pulls out a handful of foil-covered mini peanut butter cups. "Would a candy wrapper work?" She unwraps one of the candies and offers it to Orlov. He shakes his head, and she pops it in her own mouth. "I can't help it, I can't do low blood sugar on missions."

Mac's never been more thankful for his partner's snacking habit. He rolls the thin sheet of foil into a makeshift wire, then pulls out his Swiss Army knife and finds the screwdriver. He takes a deep breath before sliding it between the faceplate and the bomb's housing.

You can do this.

…

Jack watches Sevchenko crash through the window. Oh no you don't. He runs toward the shattered glass, but Patty beats him there, throwing herself through the opening, rolling to her feet and bracing her stance on the sheet metal, and rattling off two shots at the fleeing figure. Jack slips out the window just as Sevchenko stumbles, clutching his shoulder, and disappears into a clump of shrubbery.

Patty slides down the roof to land gracefully on her feet, her long billowing black coat making her look a little like a vampire. Jack follows. Hopefully Sevchenko doesn't have a getaway vehicle hidden back there, because if they lose him again he can't imagine how Patty will take it.

"Patty, I'm runnin' outta ammo."

"Doesn't matter. I just need you to cover me!" she says, sharply.

"And I thought a corner office made you soft," he grins, just to rile her up. "This is just like old times."

"What old times would those be, Dalton? Cuba?" Patty smirks.

"Nah, Cuba was way worse." He shakes his head. "But you could run faster back then."

"Oh yeah?" And then she's gone. Jack shakes his head. Best way to make sure Patty's at her best is to get her mad. He's worked with the woman a long time, and he knows how to push her buttons. And she knows how to return the favor. We make a pretty good team.

When he first joined DXS, Patty was a field operative, and she helped introduce Jack to the DXS operating procedures. She'd worked with him and Riley for over a year before getting promoted to Director. If anyone deserves that corner office, it's Patty. She's loyal, hardworking, smart, and unflinchingly determined to get the job done.

Jack fires off a couple more shots, to keep Sevchenko's attention on him. And then another shot cracks the air, Sevchenko collapses to the ground, and Patty steps out of the trees with her gun trained on the fallen man.

She digs the heel of her boot into his wounded shoulder and the man groans.

"Do you know why I'm here, Anton?" she whispers, and there's a hiss like a coiled rattlesnake behind her tone.

"You should leave. If we don't make it to the minimum safe distance, we'll all die." Sevchenko's eyes are darting frantically.

"You're not going anywhere. And you know why?" Patty snaps. "Do you remember an agent you shot? The one who found that bomb? She was my agent, someone I cared about, someone who had a family waiting for her to come home, and you killed her, you bastard!"

Her normal composure is slipping away, giving Jack a glimpse of the depths of emotion hidden under the surface. Her cheeks are scarlet, and more concerning, her finger is tight on the trigger of her gun. "You shot her and now I'm going to return the favor."

Jack moves before he's aware of it, gently swinging her hand to the side.

"Patty. Patty. Killing him won't bring her back."

She looks at him with tear-filled eyes. "I know." One tear slides down her cheek. "But how do I ring her mother's doorbell and tell her that her daughter is dead and the man who killed her got to live?" Her hand quavers slightly, but she pushes Jack aside and points the gun again at Sevchenko's head. "I can't."

"Please, don't." The man's good hand is raised, and there's absolute terror in his eyes. "Don't do this."

"Patty. Don't become him. You're better than that." Jack whispers, because he knows how this feels. To stand over the person who destroyed something you cared about more than your own life, and to have the power over their life and death. It's an awful thing. And it can turn the best of us into monsters.

Patty sighs, then hands her gun to Jack. As he takes it, he realizes the safety's been clicked on. She just wanted to see him squirm. But he's not sure he really believes that. Because everything in Patty's voice and eyes said she had every intention of putting a bullet in that man's skull.

A single shot echoes from behind them, and for the second time Jack feels his heart plunge to the ground. No. Not one of my kids. No. He takes off through the bushes at a dead run. He couldn't care less if leaving Patty with Sevchenko means she ends up snapping the guy's neck. If he's the reason one of those kids is hurt, he'll want her dealing with him and not me.

...

Riley works the chiget out of her backpack, but her eyes are glued to where Mac is carefully removing the bomb's faceplate. Mac's hands are rock steady. He might be able to trip over his own feet on a regular basis, but when it comes down to life and death situations, Riley realizes she's more than willing to put her life in his capable hands.

And then there's a metallic clatter as the plate falls to the floor. Riley flinches, bracing herself for the explosion, but nothing happens. Mac stumbles back, gasping. The thin strip of foil is holding in place, keeping the current flowing. The bomb is still stable, for now.

Orlov hurries to her. "I need to connect the chiget." Riley looks down, and then cringes.

"Bad news, guys. This keyboard's toast."

"I think I can fix that." Mac's already rushing around. "Keyboards are really simple. They just complete circuits when you press a key down." Riley nods. She may be a programmer and hacker, but the basic hardware knowledge of how a computer operates is still something she's highly familiar with. "So we just need something else to complete the circuit."

He grabs a gear, an angle brace, and a metal hook. "I'm going to attach a wire to each of these, and then one to your hand, Dr. Orlov."

"And I will complete the circuit and become one with my machine!" The enthusiasm in both their faces is infectious. If it weren't such a serious moment Riley would want to take a picture. Those two are such nerds.

"Miss Davis, I will need you to read the computer. My old eyes are struggling," Alexi mutters, looking down at the keyboard.

"Of course." Riley's fairly confident she can do this without messing up. The fate of your whole team and thousands of other people only depend on it. No pressure, right?

She starts reading line by line.

"Victor! I need the first password!" Alexi says. And then several things happen at once.

Levkin bellows the password. A guard on the floor stirs, lifting his gun. And then Levkin throws himself between the gun and Orlov, there's a sickening pop and thwack, and the man sinks to the floor with a bullet in his chest. Riley doesn't hesitate. She pulls her own gun and shoots the wounded guard between the eyes.

"Victor!" Orlov shouts, rushing away from his computer to kneel beside his fallen friend.

"There is still...the job to finish…" Levkin gasps out, and Orlov stands, wiping away tears. That's the worst part about having friends in field operations. There's no time to grieve, or to try to help them. The mission always comes first. But she can't imagine having to leave Jack to die while she tries to save the world. I think I'd rather the bomb just killed me if anything happened to him.

"Mac, take care of him." She can't leave the bomb, as much as she wants to. And neither can Orlov.

Riley tries to ignore the still echoing gunfire in her ears and focus on reading off each line of code. Mac's sitting on the floor, holding onto Victor, listening as the man recites the passwords and scribbling them on the dusty floor with his finger.

Suddenly Orlov sighs in frustration and stops typing. "There's no time!" There's a little more than a minute left on the timer now. "It takes too long. I cannot finish disarming it."

Riley feels a strange detached numbness. I'm going to die. I'm going to die right here right now. She looks at Mac and Orlov and Victor, and at Jack who's just rushed up the stairs. There's no one I'd rather die with. She looks at the bomb's computer one last time.

"Wait! How many digits did you use for the year?" She yells desperately.

"Two. Why does it matter?" Orlov whispers defeatedly.

"Because we can trick it! Use the Y2K glitch against it!" Riley's computer nerding started when she heard all the grownups talking about how the computers would all shut down when the new year happened in 2000, and how everything would descend into chaos when it happened. She'd been curious about something that could apparently disrupt all of life as they knew it, and admittedly a little disappointed when no digital apocalypse occured. I wanted to know if I could ever do that, if I wanted to. So I taught myself how to beat the computers that controlled everything. Because if I could control them, it was at least one thing in life I could say that about.

The light is back in Orlov's eyes. He types desperately, as Riley watches the seconds tick down. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4…

There's a blinking lights, digits flash, and then nothing happens. Riley sags against the bomb housing. Now it thinks this is 1916, not 2016. We just bought ourselves a century.

"Couldn't handle the turn of the century," Jack mutters. "Good job, Riles." She rushes to him and nearly collapses into his arms. We did it.

Orlov kneels next to Levkin. "It's over. We're alive. We have to get you to a doctor, we did it, we're safe."

"No, it is too late for me." Victor sighs and covers one of Alexi's shaking hands with his own bloodstained one. "Our last mission. We finished it together. Vsye vmystye." And then his head rolls to the side. Mac looks up desperately, his hands and shirt covered in blood. And then Riley does start to cry.

She's got it together by the time their exfil team arrives, and she and Jack and Mac walk out of the building together. Patty's off talking to someone who's handcuffing Sevchenko.

"I can't imagine losing a partner like that," Riley whispers. She reaches for Jack's hand. "Especially if you wasted years of your lives hating each other over lies." She can tell he's giving her that 'what now' look. It's like being a kid when your parents know you did something wrong, and that you're going to fess up, and they're waiting patiently. "I was still looking for Nick, and I'm sorry. I know you said to let it go, and I tried, but something about it was bugging me. And then right before all this, Sam made me talk to her. She promised to search for him if I would stop." Jack sighs and hugs her a little closer.

"She's a good friend, Riley. And she's a good operative. So let her do her job, and trust she's gonna get it done." She nods.

Riley can see that Mac's working something over in his head. "I-I..." He shakes his head and starts over. "At the safe house, I thought you were going to leave me behind." He looks down at his shoes. "I knew Thornton said the mission came before the agents; and…" He still thinks he's the expendable one.

"Listen, Carl's Jr., that ain't happenin', got it?" Jack says. "We don't leave our people behind. And if it wasn't for you that nuke woulda probably incinerated a decent chunk of the Balkan countryside by now, so stop thinking you weren't needed on this mission. And we'll still be able to get you home in time for that parole meeting of yours." Mac cracks a smile. "But as long as we're all on the topic of full disclosures, kid, I gotta tell you, your fashion sense sucks." He waves his hand vaguely at Mac's clothes, which still have visible coffee stains under the blood. "Cause that coffee accent is just not working with the green."

"Yeah? You try wearing nothing but orange for two years and see if you still care about what colors match. And on the topic of things that suck, so does your singing, old man!" Mac retorts, finally sounding less like he's stuck in permanent panic mode and more like his usual snarky self. "You butchered Iron Maiden."

Riley grins. Another ally. Yes! "Trust me, never go to a karaoke night with him."

Jack gives them both an insulted stare. "What are you talking about? My karaoke brings the house down!"

"But not in a good way."

"I will have you know I am the karaoke champion in four states, one Chinese province, and three small European countries." He puffs out his chest. "I can prove it!" He begins dancing erratically, counting out a beat before launching into the opening lyrics of Salt 'n Pepa's "Push It".

"What did salt and pepper ever do to you?" Mac asks, laughing.

"It's Pepa, man, get it right! Of course you can't tell good karaoke if you can't even pronounce the name of the band!" Riley shakes her head. Victor was right, partners can be incredibly obnoxious. But you just kind of end up loving them anyway.

...

Mac doesn't look at his watch once on the flight back home. Granted, that's because his watch, along with the rest of his clothing, is a radioactive hazard, but that's a bit beside the point.

He's had to borrow Jack's clothes after all. He and Riley both had to go through a full decontamination before reboarding the Phoenix jet, since they'd been inside the bomb crate and then near the bomb itself for an extended period of time. Since Mac's go bag was still sitting on the end of his bed at home, and the decon techs had stuffed his old clothes in a bag for immediate disposal (not that he would ever have been able to get the coffee or blood out of them, so it's not a huge loss), he'd had to break down and accept the ones Jack offered. But this time it doesn't feel so much like I'm a charity case. It feels more like I'm family.

Now that he knows he'll be home in time to make his parole meeting, there's a weight the size of that Fire-bird bomb lifted off his chest. But it's only been replaced by a new one. He didn't realize it was so obvious until Jack sits down across from him and startles him so badly he drops the paper clip he was bending.

"What's eatin' ya, kid?"

Mac fumbles with the paper clip. He's not sure what he's making, his fingers are shaky and clumsy. He swallows hard. "Victor."

"I know. I'm sorry. There was nothing we could have done, though. And I think he died happy. That counts for somethin', right?" Jack puts a hand gently on Mac's shoulder; the unexpected contact is startling, but not uncomfortable. "You know, that's how I wanna go out, when the time comes. Dyin' on the front lines, savin' the people I care about. I don't wanna waste away in some hospital, or go senile an' forget everyone I ever loved." He sounds like he's almost forgotten Mac was there. "I wanna go down fightin'."

"It...it's not just that." Mac's struggling to articulate what he means, what's been eating at him since the warehouse. He can barely put words to it. A longing? A question? A fear? Victor sacrificed everything for Alexi, even after he felt like he'd been betrayed. Even after all that hurt, he still cared so much. Is there anyone who'd do that for me? Would you?

"Kid, I know how good you are at doin' the impossible, but even you can't always save everyone. And that's just the job. I'm sorry, but you work here long enough, you gotta learn that sometimes there's no perfect ending."

"Believe me, I know." Mac sighs. "I think you're right. I think that's the death Victor would have wanted." He shakes his head. Don't say anything more. You'll sound like a child who's begging for attention, thinking no one loves them. You're pathetic.

"Doesn't mean it gets easier." Jack scoots closer, rubbing a thumb in circles over Mac's shoulder blades. "Losing guys in the field isn't supposed to be easy. When it gets that way, it's time to quit." He sighs. "I should know. I've watched a lot of good men leave and never come back. And I keep askin' myself why I deserve to live and they didn't. An' all I can figure is I got somethin' left to do. Maybe that's protectin' Riley. Maybe that's making sure that genius brain o' yours doesn't get blown outta your head out there in the field. I don't know. But I'm sure as hell gonna make every day count."

Mac leans into the gentle comfort. In his own way, Jack's promising to be there.

…

LOS ANGELES

THE TRAFFIC HERE IS TERRIBLE

Riley gives Mac a gentle thumbs-up as he climbs out of the car. Thank God we got home in time for his parole meeting. They'd flown in with forty-five minutes to spare, but the traffic snarls on the way to Mac's parole officer's building almost made them late anyway. We cut it awfully close this time.

Sometimes, she thinks Thornton forgets that Mac has these obligations. Riley could tell how worried and on-edge he was for the whole mission, afraid they wouldn't complete the objective in time. He might have been more worried about his parole hearing than the countdown on that bomb. She's going to have to do something. Either bring the investigation to a head or figure out which missions he can go on.

Riley wants to call Charlie Robinson herself, because the FBI agent had sounded positive he could prove the warehouse bomb hadn't killed Ramsay. But if she pushes too hard, and it gets back to Thornton, she'll be in trouble. Thornton has some long game in mind, I'm sure of it. Riley knows the woman is usually ten steps ahead of everyone else. Whatever she has in mind, she's making everything work toward it. Including keeping Mac's fate hanging in the balance.

Riley doesn't like the thought that Mac's just a pawn in some scheme Thornton has. But she can't be sure that's not all any of them are. And then her thoughts stray to Bannister, and Thornton's reaction when the woman was killed. She pretends not to care. Because she has to. She can't afford to let emotion drive her decisions; too much rests on them. But she can find people who will care, and let them do it. She's allowed Riley and Jack to stay together, and now she's put Mac with them. Maybe in her own odd way, that's her way of saying she cares about him. Making sure he's with people she knows will break the rules and love him.

She's not entirely sure what to do with herself. Patty told her to go home and rest, but she just crashed for the entire nine-hour flight and she feels fine. Physically, she's ready to go. But emotionally, she's still back in that warehouse watching Victor die, except that in the dream that repeated itself over and over on that long flight, it's Jack's face staring up at her, Jack's hand, the leather cuff covered in blood, reaching up to brush a stray curl of hair out of her face before it falls back limp.

She didn't lose Jack. Not today. But Alexi lost Victor, and in her dreams she's felt just a little of the pain that must be. Riley's got an hour to kill at least. And the nursing home's not too far away. Phoenix transport probably dropped him off there already.

Thankfully there's a different desk clerk working today. Riley's pretty sure the woman who was there yesterday, has it really only been a day? It feels like a lifetime, would have called the cops as soon as she saw Riley. Or anyone else from that altercation, for that matter.

Alexi is exactly where they found him last time. In a chair in front of the TV, watching "The Price is Right" and fumbling with the remote. She sits down next to Orlov. "Is this seat taken?"

"Miss Davis?" There's suddenly so much light in his eyes. I never met either set of my grandparents. I never had anyone to visit in places like this.

"Is this "The Price is Right"?" she asks.

"You know it?"

"It's my favorite. Mind if I watch with you?" She moves to sit on the arm of his chair, and he smiles at her. Her slender brown fingers twist around his wrinkled, cold ones, and for a short moment, everything that was broken and lost and gone forever is whole again.

…

CANBERRA

NOT ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR PLACES TO SPEND A WEEKEND VACATION

The sea breeze here is so different than the sea breeze in LA. Sam savors the faint tang of salt on her lips, the dust and heat mixing with the ocean air in that familiar smell that means home in a way that makes her eyes water. It's only the dust on the wind.

Gus knows her the second she walks into his bar. "Hello, Deborah."

"I don't know who you think I am, Gus. The name's Samantha Cage." She knows he knows it's a lie. There are too many memories. A girl with longer, beach-waved hair, with short dresses and killer heels. Drinks at this bar, with people who were about to disappear.

"I'm sorry. You look like someone I used to know. Someone I thought was dead."

Gus pours a vodka, mixes in a tiny bit of strawberry and lime, and hands it over. He still remembers her regular.

"You never forget a face, isn't that right, Gus?" She asks. The smell of the alcohol burns her nostrils, but not because of the strong vodka. It's because this smell so often preceded the tang of blood in the air. Sometimes the stains of it on her hands. Sometimes its taste on her lips.

"Some say it's a gift. Some say it's a curse," Gus says noncommittally. He rapidly shifts shot glasses behind the bar, hands moving nervously. She's seen those same hands expertly wield a tactical knife; Gus was always known for being old-fashioned when it came to interrogation techniques.

"I'm looking for this man." She slides "Alex Hunter"'s passport across the bar.

"He stiff you at poker?" Gus asks.

"No, bad breakup. He's got something that belongs to me and I want it back." It's not strictly the truth. But Gus never expects the truth from anyone who walks in here. He only expects to get paid.

"The name's not familiar. But the face…" Gus holds the photo up to the light. "This one skated through Melbourne a couple years ago. Never could prove anything, but one of my lieutenants ended up in a body bag that weekend." He hands back the photo and shrugs. "If he shows his face down here again, he's gonna have a belly full of my blades before you even take off from LAX."

She doesn't let him see the faint chill that shot down her spine when he named her location. Her eyes stay cool and focused.

"I'd prefer him alive. There's something he knows that I need."

"You know, if you're not Deborah, I'm gonna be asking for payment upfront. I don't know Samantha Cage. I don't know if she's good for the cash."

"Oh trust me, she is." Sam moves her purse enough for him to see the bills inside.

"That's a lot to drop for a 'bad breakup'. You must want him back pretty badly." Gus takes the money and frowns. "Hate to ask this much of an old friend though. You know, there's still people in the market for a negotiator."

"I think you have the wrong woman, Gus." His eyes flick from the scar on her left arm to the small brown spot in her right eye. She knows he knows. But for both their sakes, they still need to pretend.

"Alright. I had a little job in mind, but if you're not Deborah there's no sense in sharing." He pockets the wad of bills. "It was a job that had all her earmarks, though."

"I told you, that name's not ringing a bell." She stands up. "Thanks for the drink. But you know, I'm allergic to strawberries."

She doesn't look back. If he wanted to shoot her, he would have. She walks away, her footprints soon covered by a faint shifting layer of reddish sand.