oh y'all i'm so nervous about this one. i haven't written riley yet in this au and in writing her entrance, i kept and scrapped and redid so many different pieces of her introduction from canon that i have no idea how it turned out. anyhow, i hope you liked it, thank you again for your continued support and love! [heart emoji]


As soon as it connected for her that Jack was about to ask to bring Riley Davis onboard, Matty understood that the favor he'd been asking her hadn't just been tracking down the Director for him. It's clear right there on his face that, from the moment the word 'prison' exits Jack's mouth, James is in no way on board. Matty notices this and quickly switches off speaker, pulling the phone back up to her ear.

"I'm gonna call you back in a minute," she says, and hangs up without waiting for an answer.

"Absolutely not," James tells her even as she's hitting the button to end the call. His voice is hard and incredulous and while Matty has to admit that, this time, can see where he's coming from with the instant denial, she doesn't think they have a lot of options, and dismissing one outright is not a productive strategy right now. "We just, literally just finished cleaning up from the last time criminals got involved in this agency, we are not bringing one in here on purpose, is Dalton insane? Is the man you convinced me to hire to be my son's partner actually insane, Webber?"

Well, I mean, sometimes I wonder, she thinks, but doesn't dare make the joke out loud. "No, and it's not remotely the same thing."

"Please," he says, voice short and breathless with irritation, "please, I'm asking you, explain to me how different it could possibly be."

"We know already exactly what she was convicted of, and we'll be able to keep a close eye on her." Matty doesn't bother trying to convince him of Riley's integrity despite where she's currently being housed. It would be worthless in the context - James does not care if she's a good person or not. He cares about whether she's going to interfere with his agency. Anything personal about her is irrelevant. She could be history's greatest monster, but if she got in, did the job asked of her, and got out without screwing up or making a mockery of his agency and his leadership, James wouldn't care. A greater proponent of any ends justifying his means, Matty has never met. "We're out of other options. You and I both know we can't allow Rasmussen's program to go active, and neither of them are competent enough with computers to stop it. Not a lot of people are, and she's one of them."

She can see that she's starting to make an impact, the corner of James' mouth twitching. But then he frowns, and raises another point.

"Not a lot of people are, but we probably employ a good quarter of them. How can we possibly be out of other options. What happened to the three people we still have on staff, the ones who were team assigned? It was, uh, Natalie something, and like, Andy?"

"Natalie, Amos, and Cristina," Matty fills in. Jack had already told her about this part on her way over to James' office. "They're all on assignment, can't be reached."

"I thought the man- Amos, I thought he was still on call?"

Matty does not have a good feeling about the fact that there are three, three major assets they have left in their IT department after the infiltration was cleared up and James did not know where all three of them were at the time of sending out his top team on a heavily tech-based mission. It seems odd, even for him, to have dispatched an asset as important Amos Bright on a mission and forgotten.

"You sent him out with the team in Moscow, remember?"

"No, of course I didn't." Just as Matty's about to argue, to point out that they can call the field team if he wanted proof, but the man in question is absolutely in Russia right now, James continues. "I don't dispatch IT assets. That's the job of the head of IT, that's what he gets paid for. To manage his department. Guess he just didn't tell me when he did it." There's a sour look on James' face, and the explanation clicks. It if weren't for the situation it's put them in, Matty would feel bad for the earful she's sure the head of IT is going to get after this.

However, they are still in that situation, which as it stands is up a creek without a paddle or a computer geek to get them out.

"It's one job," Matty reminds him, changing course back to Riley. "It's just one mission, one short mission. I will escort her out there and back myself just to be sure nothing untoward happens, I won't take my eyes off of her for a moment. Just… Trust Jack's word on this one, and if you won't trust his, then trust mine. I know what kind of hacker she is, and what she's capable of. Riley is our best option, and as we've just established, right now she is our only option."

For a long, tense moment, James is silent, looking at her with a hard set jaw. He's still got an expression on like he's bitten into a slice of lemon.

"Fine," he grinds out eventually. "Because we've got no other choice. But you watch her. Don't take your eyes off her for a second."

"Yes, sir," Matty says, relief flooding her like a physical sensation. She doesn't wait for any more of a conversation, already redialing Jack as she lets the door of James' office swing shut behind her. Once the phone call is made, updating Jack and Mac on what's been decided, she goes straight from the building to the car. There's no time to waste. She has a prison to get to.

This is not the first time Matty will be meeting with Riley Davis. She sits in the back seat of the company contracted car as it drives the winding road from the airport a short flight from DXS towards the prison where the woman she's here to retrieve is housed, absently staring at the back of the driver's nondescript head while she goes over what she knows. Matty knows a thing or two about the history between Jack and Riley, what little he'd told her. But she'd also met Riley in her own right, a meeting she's not a hundred percent sure Jack was actually aware of.

Shortly after Riley was convicted and her sentence began, Matty had been chasing a hacker for the job she'd held before this one. He was a bad one, the man she was after, responsible for a lot of security protocols used by criminals on the dark web looking to host depraved material without being traceable by those who'd want to stop them, among other things. In the course of her investigation, she'd come across a young woman who was tangentially connected to their hacker in a way that could be useful.

As soon as she'd heard what the man they were after was being accused of, Riley had readily agreed to meet with Matty and tell her whatever it was she knew. It hadn't been a lot, but it had led to a direct contact of his, and then to his arrest and the decryption of his code. Thought it hadn't been necessary for their investigation or the trial, Matty had gone back to visit Riley after they'd caught him, and told her how what she'd said had led them to being able to catch him and stop his talent from protecting anyone else committing heinous crimes using the internet.

Riley had seemed surprised by this, but appreciated the extra effort put in to tell her how it had all ended, and they'd parted on neutral, leaning towards positive, terms. She was obviously an angry, troubled young woman with a lot going on in her life and in her head, but Matty knew that, beyond whatever she'd been charged with, she was good. If she knew what they needed from her, it's almost a sure bet that Riley will agree to help. Especially if she knows she'll be getting out of lockup to do so. Matty likes to think the credibility and rapport she's built up will help ease the process along somewhat.

They pull up outside the dingy, depressing building housing maximum security federal inmates, and Matty instructs the driver to wait for her in the parking lot until she comes back, with or without Riley. Hopefully with, if all goes well. She walks in and bypasses the fact that she isn't on any visitor's lists with a couple of quick checks on her identity and a badge she produces for the bored-looking guard on desk duty. Matty is led quickly back to one of the rooms usually reserved for confidential meetings between inmates and their legal representation, where she is instructed to wait while they retrieve the person she's here to see.

When Riley walks through the door, orange jumpsuit glaring brightly and hair falling out of its bun down over her shoulders, she doesn't look pleased to see Matty. She looks suspicious, an undercurrent of anger behind it, and Matty doesn't let it phase her. Prison is not an easy place to be, and it's easier of you put a mean face on from the jump. People tend to assume you less easy to manipulate, that way.

"Riley," she says when the girl enters, standing up. "It's a pleasure to see you again. Excuse me, ma'am." The last bit was directed towards the guard who had escorted her in. "Can you remove those, please? I'd like to have a conversation on equal footing here."

The guard, if not aware of exactly who she is, then at least having been intently instructed by her boss to comply with pretty much anything Matty asked her to do, does as she is told, and removes the cuffs from around Riley's wrists. She steps back towards the door when she's done so, but shows no intent on leaving, and Matty can't really have that either.

"On equal footing and in privacy, if you wouldn't mind."

It's an order disguised as a request. Matty's gotten good at those. Walk softly and carry a big stick - words to live by, if you ask her. She smiles politely and waits for the expected compliance with an air that implies that there is no other choice but to do so.

The guard does as she's bid, and when the door closes behind her and the two of them are left alone, Matty turns to face Riley, who's taken the open seat across the dingy, scratched metal table. She's slouched back in her chair, frowning across at Matty with her arms folded over her chest. Her jaw is set in a hard line, and Matty feels like she's being catalogued and evaluated. The gaze prickles over her skin like something physical, and she straightens her back and clears her throat to dispel the feeling.

"So, Riley," she says, keeping her voice light and upbeat, like this is a conversation between old friends rather than a strange job proposal between tentatively friendly acquaintances who'd met under strained circumstances, "how are you?"

Riley raises one eyebrow. "Please, take a look at where we are right now and go ahead and answer that for yourself."

"Okay," Matty concedes, dropping the faux-levity and letting her voice fall to the serious register she'd been using to discuss the matter with James. She probably should've known better than to try and start this meeting with meaningless smalltalk. "That's a fair point. I at least hope you've been as well as possible since the last time we met-"

"Listen," interrupts the young woman across from her, sitting forward in her chair and shoving hair that's fallen across her face back behind an ear. "You asked for my help once, Matty, and I helped you. I'm proud of having done that and I'd do it again. But I don't want to sit here and listen to you make small talk about how I'm doing or what the weather is like outside - you pulled me out of yard time, by the way, and I only get an hour of that a day - so if you don't mind can you get to the point, please?"

Matty studies her for a moment. There's always been something about Riley, in their limited interactions before, that's seemed sharp. In the sense of her intelligence of course, but in another way as well. Like she'd ground her soft edges down until all that was left was hard, angry lines, designed to warn anyone thinking to try something that they'd be likely to hurt themselves in the effort.

"I'm here because I need your help again," Matty says. She doesn't let herself cringe or look away or betray any embarrassment or recalcitrance over her reason for approaching Riley again. "It's a bigger ask than last time, it's harder, and it's much more dangerous. But it's important - at least as important as it was when we were last sitting here. And we don't have much time to deal with it, so unfortunately, I can't give you any time to consider. I need to know now."

"What's the problem?" There's something else in Riley's face now, a spark in her eyes that ignited when Matty said 'bigger, harder, more dangerous'. Though she's suspicious and irritated and a miasma of other things, she's also a little excited. It's something that reminds her of Mac, the way she's coming alive at the thought of a challenge.

"We've got a hacker on our hands, and not your kind. He's nowhere near white hat. This man is bad news, and he's built a program that, if it isn't stopped, is going to destroy lives. I'm talking governmental infrastructural instability on an international scale. With the world we live in now, if the systems he's built this worm to destroy go under, a lot of people are going to suffer, and it's going to take years to climb back out of the crater it's going to blow in the region. Best case scenario, local governments are caught in a bureaucratic snarl they may never climb out of, and are knocked back several decades in systems and communications. Worst case scenario, we have mass destabilization that devolves into mass casualties."

"Sounds like bad news."

"It's very bad news, or at least it will be if we don't stop it before it happens. Which is where you come in. Our team on the ground has already apprehended the hacker who wrote the code, but neither of them have the skill or training in this area to even attempt to stop the program itself. So I'm here to ask you to come with me to Brazil and shut this thing down before it has the chance to deploy. We're on a tight clock and if you'll help us, we need to leave now."

Whatever resistance Matty had been expecting, it doesn't come. Riley is already nodding half way through her explanation, and as soon as she finishes speaking, she's got her answer.

"Alright. I'll do it. Let's go."

It would be so easy to accept the win as it was and go from there, deal with the consequences when they reached Rio and Riley saw who was waiting for them. Matty had walked in here prepared for a fight and hadn't gotten one, and comparing that to the general level of obstinate difficulty she's presently dealing with in her every day life, it is extremely tempting to not provoke an argument where she hadn't gotten one. But she knows that having this conversation now will make it faster and less likely to torch the whole plan than if she springs it on Riley once they've already flown to another continent. It has to happen now.

Besides, the thought doesn't sit well with her morally. Never let it be said that Matty is above a little benevolent lying or concealment here and there, when it serves a higher purpose, but it would feel like too much a lie for not enough a reason, if she were to keep this from Riley now.

"There's something else you should know, before we leave. About my team on the ground, and why I came to you first." Riley looks suspicious, and Matty supposes that's fair. She continues, trying not to sound as hesitant and nervous about this as she feels. "I didn't just come here because I remembered you from the last time you helped me, though that didn't hurt. It was suggested to me that I come to you by a colleague at the new organization I work for, one of our team on site." Rip the bandaid. Just rip the bandaid. "Jack Dalton."

The process Riley's brain goes through on hearing the name is jarring and visible across her face as it happens. She cycles through confused and angry and a grab bag of other things before saying, "There's no way one of your ground team is a tile salesman."

"No, he's not," Matty confirms, mentally directing towards Jack, Tile? A tile salesman? Was that really the best you could do?

"Whatever he is, I'm not working with him. I'll help you, but I won't help him."

Ah. There's the fight Matty had been expecting. And, much as she'd be ready to send Jack off somewhere essentially on time-out else for basically any halfway-decent reason, she can't. She needs him there and, more to the point, Mac needs him there.

"Unfortunately, for all that I would love to send Jack home while you dealt with the technological aspect of our problem, I can't. His partner is there on site as well, and Jack's primary function is protecting his partner, whose skillset far more resembles yours than it does his. Jack was CIA when you met him, and now he's-"

"DXS, like you."

If Matty hadn't lost the ability to be surprised since joining that self-same organization, she'd ask how it was Riley knew that. As it stands, she nods. "Yes. And regardless of whatever mistakes he made when he knew you, and trust me, I know what a great big buffoon the man can be sometimes, he's a good agent and a good man, and he's not going to leave his partner there alone. And if this goes badly, we're going to need him there. I guess what you need to decide now is if however much you hate Jack is stronger than however much you want to help people.

Silence. Silence, for a long, stiff moment. Matty doesn't realize she's holding her breath until Riley breaks the silence and she releases it with a soft whoosh.

"If I do this," Riley says, voice loud and acidic. She points at Matty, jabbing with one finger. "If I do this, if I come with you and work with him, then I do not come back here. Got it? Whatever you've gotta do, favors you gotta call in, strings you gotta pull, I leave this building with you now and I don't come back. Do we have a deal?"

It's not worth mentioning at that point that Matty was never planning to send her back to prison after this to begin with, so she just nods. "We have a deal."

Riley nods and begins to stand, but something stops her as she's halfway out of her seat. She sits back down and crosses her arms, narrowing her eyes at Matty. Though, this time, she looks more confused than antagonistic, like she's done the math and there's something that's just not quite adding up.

"I have one more question," she says. Matty gestures out with a hand, a wordless invitation to ask it. "Why are you in any way comfortable asking me this? I'm a criminal. You know what sort of things I've done- Well, some of them anyway. You could probably find another hacker, one you wouldn't have to break out of prison, if you really tried, called in some favors, but you're here instead. How do you know you can trust me?"

It is, all things considered, a fair question, and its asking serves to further convince Matty that she's making the right call, here. Most people would take the opportunity and not risk talking the person about to spring them from federal prison out of doing that.

"You're guilty of the crime that put you here." It's not a question, but a statement of fact. Matty knows this to be true - she'd done some poking around after their last interaction, wanting to get her out if there was anything she could do to make this happen.

"I am," Riley agrees. Her face is guileless and open and dares Matty to say something more about it. Say something more about it she does, but probably not in the way Riley had been expecting.

"Knowing what you know now," Matty says, voice slow and careful, "about what the consequences would be, what would happen to you because you did it, would you do it again?"

"Yes." There isn't a second of hesitation, a moment's consideration, before she gets the answer. "It was what was right. I didn't have any other choice."

Matty likes to think she's fairly good at reading people. And when they'd met before, the person she'd met had been a bright, principled girl who had made a choice and lived with the fallout with her chin held high and her gaze daring anybody to tell her she should be ashamed of it. A handful of infractions in her time in supermax, none of them violent, didn't really give Matty much pause for the offer she was about to make next, nor the conviction that landed her here to begin with. The last of her own reservations were hinged entirely on Riley's answer to that one question - Would you do it again?

"Then that's all I need to know."