i'm not gonna lie i've been excited for this one. thank you all for your continued engagement with this fic, it's kept me excited. and now, on we go!
also i am so sorry to the entire concept of computer science and hacking because i made literally all of this up and can only hope it makes marginal sense.
(title from sleeping at last's "careful hands"
Jack's resentment of his boss is growing by the day.
Mac, Jack, and Riley are waiting in the briefing room when James arrives, ten minutes past their scheduled meeting time and looking harried and put off enough that if he didn't know any better, Jack would say James been the one kept waiting. Not that he really minded the James-free down time pre-assignment. Mac had been showing him and Riley something he'd been working on down in Whittacker and Tam's lab. It was a type of earwig mic receiver that had a much longer battery life than the ones they'd been working with so far, and if you asked Jack, what the kid came up with was really impressive.
When James walks in, the conversation dies pretty much immediately. Riley had been in the middle of asking a question about cross-channel interference when the door opened and her voice cut off as soon as she registered who was walking in. Jack watches her rather than their boss, and takes note of the way her eyes track James across the room, clocking his sour expression, the stack of folders tucked under one arm, the hand still finishing up a text message or email on his phone. From the look of her, Riley isn't any fonder of James than Jack is, and that's pretty impressive, given the very small amount of time for which she's known him. Some people, Jack supposes, just make an impression.
James wastes no time in getting the briefing started, throwing up a map of Budapest onto the screens on the wall. Much like their map of Rio, there's a section that's been circled and enlarged in the next image. He talks for a short time about the area they'd be going into itself, a gathering of smaller houses near the outskirts of the city, near a national park, before cutting himself off, attention zeroed in on Mac, standing to the left of Jack and Riley.
"I'm sorry," he says, in a tone indicating he isn't sorry in the slightest, "Angus what are you fussing with over there?"
True enough, Mac has been twisting the earpiece around in his fingers for the duration of James' speech so far, passing the small object from hand to hand, turning it this way and that, catching a nail in the casing every so often. His hands freeze at his father's words, and after a moment of startled stillness, he holds up the small device.
"The earpiece we were talking about," he says, and even just a couple of months ago, Jack wouldn't have caught the waver in his voice, small and fleeting. "I was working on it earlier today, and-"
"And you decided hey, why not break it before we get the chance to ever test it out?" Mac's head ducks, ashamed, but James doesn't stop, continuing with, "I don't need to be the one to remind you that you've broken equipment before by messing with it when you couldn't sit still for two minutes. Just- Just give me that. You're too smart for this, the kind of things you can build- what is the point if we end up wasting it because you couldn't focus?"
"Sorry." It's mumbled and nearly inaudible, as Mac places the device into James' hand.
James studies it for a moment, and Jack wants to, in a fleeting impulse, take the thing and break it himself, take out his phone and hurl it at the display screens to shatter one of them, anything just to get James' attention off Mac. He manages to contain the impulse and grits his teeth. Next to him, he can practically feel the tension radiating off of Riley in waves, and he takes a small half step over, just enough to put her barely behind his right shoulder. Putting himself between her and James. There's no logical explanation for why he does it, but he doesn't really have the energy to waste interrogating his impulses at the moment, and he could swear she relaxes just a fraction when he does it.
Once James seems to be satisfied with whatever it was he was looking for, he tucks the tech into his pants pocket, and clears his throat. At least now they can get back to-
"Oh for- Honestly, Angus, that's just not professional. Is something going on? Do you have some appointment you're late to?"
A glance once more to the side lands Jack's eyes on Mac's fingers where had been messing with the zipper of his jacket, now stopped rigid and still under the admonishment. Jack can't take it this time, and the words come out of him before he can stop them - and that's if he would've tried to stop them at all. At this point, it's hard to say. Enough got to be enough, he supposed.
"He's not hurting anyone, can't you give it a rest?"
Never mind a pin. If a hair had dropped in that room, you could've heard it, that's how silent it went. The earlier goal of getting James' attention off of Mac seems to have worked, at least, since he is now standing there, mouth pressed into a hard line, looking half incredulous and half royally pissed, staring straight at Jack.
"Excuse me?" he says after a while with the kind of delicate quiet that comes from very powerful men when someone subordinate to them has acted in such an unexpected way that they can hardly wrap their minds around it. "I'm sorry," there it is again, he's quickly ruining the phrase for Jack, "do you want to repeat that, Dalton? Because I could've sworn you just told me to…" James stops, shaking his head once, looking like he just bit into something disgusting and unexpected. "To 'give it a rest'."
"That's what I said," Jack confirms, fire still burning bright in his chest where it was kindled by one time too many seeing James snap at Mac for absolutely no good reason at all. "He wasn't hurting anything or distracting anyone, he's just fidgeting. I don't see what's worth yellin' at him over it."
"I'll say what is and isn't an issue around here," James says after a moment, still in that fragile, spun-glass calm. "And I'll tell you what is most definitely an issue, is your tone with me right now. You'll remember I'm the Director of this organization or you'll walk out the door, do you understand me?"
Pushing the issue isn't going to help anybody. Not Jack and definitely not Mac, especially since Jack doesn't have a moment's trouble believing James would follow through on the threat. It was worth risking the threat of firing, but if he continues to stand up for Mac right now, he'll actually be fired, and likely Riley with him, and who will stand up for the kid then?
"I apologize, sir," Jack says, doing his best to keep his voice at marginally sincere. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Please, try to."
With those words, a final, biting snap that broke away from the icy, quiet chill of his reprimand, James turns back to his briefing presentation and begins talking about their entry point, to the South of the city. As he talks, Jack, already familiar with the area thanks to an assignment he'd been on three jobs ago, looks over to where Mac is standing, having said not a word since his initial explanation and handing over of the ear mic. To his surprise, they make eye contact, as Mac was looking over at him too.
The kid looks surprised. His eyebrows are slightly raised, mouth slightly open in a question he doesn't give actual voice to, and his hands have fallen, distracted, to his sides. Maybe surprised isn't even the right word, it's more like puzzled. Mac looks puzzled, and intrigued, like he's encountered a data set he wasn't expecting, a new reaction he wasn't prepared for when he combined chemicals down in R and D. It reminds Jack that, no matter that he'd gotten shut down, no matter that he'd given in and apologized to his arrogant jackass of a boss, no matter that he'd walked it back, that didn't mean what he'd done hadn't made any kind of an impact. Because no matter what, Mac had seen him do it.
Mac had seen somebody decide 'no, that's enough' and try and step in. Mac had heard somebody speak up for him, and tell James no, actually, that isn't a reasonable criticism. Most of all he had heard somebody, somebody Jack at least hoped he was learning to trust and listen to, say that there was nothing wrong with him. Because really, there wasn't. For whatever reason he'd been fidgeting - restlessness, nerves, Jack highly suspected ADHD - it wasn't causing anyone any harm, and James had no reason to publicly humiliate him for it. And if, just for once in his life, Mac got to hear somebody point that out, then it was worth Jack risking bringing James' anger down on himself to make that happen.
One day, maybe they'll even get to the point where Jack can bring himself to say these things directly, and Mac can bring himself to hear them and not take off running.
Their mission to Hungary, to the outskirts of Budapest's city center, has a fairly simple focus. There's an asset there, an engineer hiding out in a cabin near the forest, who needs to be retrieved and brought back to North America. She's actually Canadian, but made contact with an American diplomat outside the consulate in Hungary, passing along a message that she needed to be removed from the country, as she had information that put her life in danger if she stayed. She wouldn't disclose what that information was, but she'd said enough to get the attention of the diplomat, who'd reached out through his own contacts. And now here they are, having tracked down her location and gotten a message to her that they were coming the next day, ready to go and get her.
On the plane, Jack keeps the edge of his attention on Mac's hands. What he sees is what he had a suspicion he was going to see - every few moments, they'll drift to the arm rest of his chair, or the edge of his briefing packet, or back to the zipper of his jacket, only to snap away the moment he realizes what he's doing. It's hard to watch, the way he so sharply prohibits himself from indulging in that kind of harmless, instinctive movement, shutting down and trying to turn off or carve out something that Jack has come to see as just a part of him. Mac fidgets. It's part of who he is.
As casually as he possibly can, Jack reaches into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small piece of metal. He'd found it earlier, as they'd been leaving DXS, hands shoved into his jeans pockets to keep anyone from seeing the irritated fists they'd been bunched into since his admonishment by James. It was probably pulled from his briefing packet, though he can't remember consciously having done it, and finding it gave him an idea. Now that the moment is upon him, he slides into the seat next to Mac's and holds the object up, offering it to his partner.
Both Mac next to him, and Riley across from them, raise their eyebrows at him, and Jack says, defensively, "What?"
"Why are you trying to give me a paperclip?" Mac asks, and Jack shrugs.
"I mean… Y'know. Thought maybe it'd give you something to do with your hands. Long flight, gets boring." Try and teach you it's okay to just let yourself fidget without your dad breathing down your neck about it.
For a moment, it doesn't seem like it's going to work. Mac is eyeing the paperclip like it might be somehow boobytrapped, and Jack can feel Riley's curious eyes boring into the side of his head. She's got an expression on like at the same time that Mac is evaluating the paperclip, she's evaluating him. Jack hopes that whatever she sees, it's good. The paperclip at least seems to pass Mac's test, because eventually, with cautious fingers, he reaches out and takes it.
"So," Jack says, clapping his palms down on his thighs, distracting from where Mac is turning the paperclip over between his thumb and forefinger, delicately, like he might break it. "About this security, then?"
"Right," Riley says quickly, when she realizes what's happening. "Security around our engineer's house."
There's a moment of understanding passed between her and Jack, and it feels pretty good to realize it's happening, that for maybe the second time after their dinner night with Mac and Bozer, they're on the same page.
Dr. Libby Parker is a woman who, at least on paper, reminds Jack very much of Mac. Her house, at least from the somewhat distanced surveillance they'd been able to conduct on her rather isolated cabin, was very well guarded. She's obviously frightened of someone - or multiple someones - if the way she's tricked out the land around her house is any indication. None of it was purchased directly from home security providers, but rather cobbled together herself, as none of it was quite anything their surveilling team had encountered before. A lot of it was very much similar to things they'd seen before, but with enough of a homemade twist that made this a job for Mac, Jack, and Riley rather than the recon team itself.
As they go over their plan of approach to Dr. Parker's house, Jack sneaks a glance every now and then over to the side, at Mac. Just as he'd hoped, the kid has started twisting the paperclip, unfolding it out into its full length as they discuss the best way to go about getting up to the house itself. By the time they've settled on a vantage point to set up temporary camp and gone over the site for exfil when they've finished, he's twisted it into a shape of some kind. And, on top of that, it's just about the most focused Jack has ever seen him sitting on the plane en route to their mission's location.
They land without incident. When Mac gets up and heads towards the front of the plane to disembark, Jack glances to the side and notices the paperclip - or what had once been the paperclip. It's laying, forgotten, in Mac's seat, crudely twisted into some kind of angled curl that could have been a spiral with more time and attention. He picks it up without really thinking about it, sticking it back in the pocket it came out of when it had been in its original form, and follows Mac and Riley down off the plane.
The cabin currently housing Dr. Libby Parker is exactly as well fortified as they were warned it was going to be. Mac crouches in the treeline at the crest of a hill overlooking the cabin, looking down over it. The river Danube curves through the city in the distance, visible through the smoke plumes rising from a factory. It's a cold December in Budapest this year, and he shivers a little, drawing his outer jacket tighter around his body and tugging at his hat, looking away from the city and back to their objective. Even from this far away, he can tell that even getting close to the cabin, never mind entering it, is going to be quite a feat.
"So, how exactly is this supposed to work?" It's a fair question from Riley, somewhere to Mac's left. He glances over at her, then looks back down at the cabin, letting Jack answer her question while he focused on the task at hand. "What's our plan?"
"We break in," is Jack's succinct answer, and Mac cringes. He'd like to be able to qualify that somehow, but really, that is the long and short of it.
"Break in," Riley repeats. "That's our whole plan, is just… Walk up to the house of a freaked out wizard of an engineer who for all intents and purposes seems to be Mac in another life and just. Break in."
Mac sits back, stowing the small pair of binoculars he'd been using to scrutinize the baseboards of the front porch, and turning to look at his teammates. "That's what our orders are. If we had a better option, that's what we'd do, but she's not gonna answer the phone, and if we just knock on the front door she'll probably blow us away, we know she's got a registered shotgun at least, maybe more. We know she's afraid for her life, and it sounds like she's got a pretty good reason to be."
One of the papers in the briefing folder had been a picture of Dr. Parker's car. Or, there had been a picture of at least what used to be Dr. Parker's car, before it had exploded in the middle of the day outside the last apartment she'd lived in, in Budapest's ninth district. The official police report said faulty gas line, but Mac has seen the pictures. Fuel-line related explosions don't look like that - homemade explosives rigged under the hood of someone's car do.
"Do you have one?"
"One what?" Riley asks, countering Jack's sudden question with one of her own. There's a wary hesitation in her voice, like she thinks she might be walking into a trick, brow furrowed.
The frown only deepens when Jack clarifies, saying, "A better option. You made a face when Mac said we didn't have one. Do you have one?"
There's a pause, and in it, Riley seems to be debating whether or not to answer. Mac can't blame her. There's no way in hell he'd answer a question like that.
"Actually, yeah. I do."
Mac finds himself holding his breath, waiting for Jack's response. When all the man does is sit back on his heels and gesture, telling her, "We're all ears," it feels like a hand lifts from his throat, and, in the immediate aftermath of being able to breathe again, Mac feels really stupid.
This is Jack. This isn't James. The difference has been carving itself out by increments for months now, closer to a year than he'd ever thought they'd get. He should've known better than to expect a James response - he isn't here. Jack is.
Belatedly, Mac realizes with a start that Riley is looking at him, waiting for double confirmation that her take is welcome. She's waiting for his go-ahead before she gives what her 'better option' is, and something about that makes M feel strange and crawly inside.
"Yeah, please, go for it," he says quickly, hoping to get the attention off him as soon as possible. It works, because Riley then explains her extremely simple idea in one short sentence.
"We talk to her first, and then we break in."
"We can't talk to her," Jack points out. "Like Mac said earlier, she's not gonna answer the phone. We know because we've been trying to reach her but the recon team found her phone in like, six hundred pieces in a ditch."
"There are other ways to talk to somebody. I know some of 'em, and maybe one could work. It's worth a shot at least, right?" She looks from Jack, to Mac, then back again, and pushes on, any trace of hesitance now replaced by determination. "Listen, she's an engineer, but not a computer engineer. I'm sure her network defenses are good, but not as good as I am, and if I can break through them, I can talk to her that way. She may have destroyed her phone, but she's still got to have a computer in there, and if it's on, that's our way in. If she doesn't answer, and it doesn't work, and you guys decide it's taken too long, we'll go with the original plan but…"
Riley trails off and shrugs, excited explanation of her idea petering out into something almost shy. Next to him, Jack looks as impressed and thoughtful as Mac feels.
"I want to at least try," Riley says. "Poor woman's probably scared enough as it is. I'm sure she won't just, like, believe me when I tell her who we are and that we're here to get her out, but if we can at least try to calm her down a little bit, maybe she'll be less scared when we actually make it into the house. Or at least be a little less likely to load us full of buckshot or whatever, right?"
"And you can do that with what you have here?" Mac asks, sitting up straighter and gesturing back at the car parked some fifteen feet behind, hidden in the trees and scrub. Riley nods.
"I've got my rig in my bag in the car, I've got what's basically a second, hyper-powered external battery that'll give me enough life to work for two days without a charger. Give me a chance to at least try?"
An agreement sits in the back of Mac's throat, ready to get on board with the new plan immediately. On an impulse, before he speaks, he glances sideways at Jack, searching for an indication of… something. Jack's already nodding, and so Mac turns back and nods too, relieved to be on the same page.
"It was gonna take forever already," Mac says, which is true. Dr. Parker's cabin is pretty shored up, at least from what he can see. "While you work on the network I can start with what I can see and plan an approach angle. Let's do it."
"Alright," Riley says, breaking into a relieved and verging-on-excited grin. "I'll go get started." She hops nimbly to her feet and starts back towards the car.
James would hate this. They're deviating from the strategy, first of all, and they're risking a significant time delay for what mostly amounts to doing everything they can not to further scare an already terrified civilian. Sure, it's in the name of their own safety, too, but not significantly enough that James would care.
If he'd been here with his former partner O'Reilly, the man would've already charged down there and kicked the door in, if he'd been here with his partner before that, Cassandra Hall, she'd have already been on the phone reporting back to James of the insubordinate-waste-of-time, exactly-what-he'd-signed-up-for plan he'd just agreed to. But no. Riley is about to work for hours to break into a network to reach out to a woman who was probably not even going to listen, just to try to put her at ease, and Jack is standing next to him, just as bought into the plan as he is.
For the first time in a long time, he's exactly where he's supposed to be, and there's no one he'd rather be with.
