A/N: So I finally decided to revisit this site and post over some of my content from AO3. This is my current ongoing series, and I'll be posting a new chapter every Friday. I'm probably also going to eventually migrate over my other completed stories as well. I don't own anything, because if I did this is how the series would have been written...

LAKE COMO, ITALY

A GREAT PLACE TO SPEND A VACATION...OR SELL A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Riley Davis steps out of the rented BMW, smoothing the skirt of her figure-hugging, shimmery black dress around her legs. On the pretense of pushing back her carefully straightened hair, she switches her comms live.

"Hey gorgeous, you clean up well." Nick Carpenter. Former NSA, top of his class in intel analysis...and interrogation techniques. Riley smirks.

"I kinda miss my messy bun and leather jacket, though." Yeah, the glamorous life of the super-spy. Riley's never been too into this get-dolled-up-and-make-a-statement side of the business. But she can't exactly crash a high-end gala in ripped skinny jeans and a frowzy ponytail. Still she'll be glad to ditch this revealing gown as soon as possible.

"I miss that jacket too." The way Nick says it, Riley knows he's remembering certain times she's worn it…

"Hey kids, I can hear you, you know that right?" Jack Dalton. Former Delta Force, CIA, and my handler. And basically my dad.

"Ok, we'll save it for later," Nick says, and Riley can hear the promise of an after-successful-mission celebration. But first I have to go save the world. Because that's my job.

Riley Davis. Hacker, CIA prodigy, now employed by a secret agency called DXS. Jack, Nick and I are the top team they have. Which is why we're here tonight. Intel places a major WMD sale going down at this gala, tonight.

Riley gracefully climbs the steps, handing over her handbag to the stern-faced guard at the door. After checking it, he hands it back, and Riley pulls out her phone, pretending to check for any messages.

To them, it's just a cell phone. To me, it's everything I need to finish this mission. Riley slips the phone back in her handbag and looks up at the tall, dark haired woman coming down the stairs.

Patricia Thornton. One of the greatest minds in the espionage field. Which is why you've never heard of her.

"It's good to see you again, Ms. Elcar," Riley says, taking a champagne glass from a tray and sipping lightly.

"You really ought to give the art gallery a look, it's quite impressive." Patty glances around the room, then leans in. "That door." She glances to one that's guarded by two massive guys in suits, with comms clearly in. "I trust you can take it from here?" Riley nods, smiling, and moves away.

You know how hospitals have those rules about not using cell phones in the rooms because it might interfere with a machine? Well, the same is true of comms. If you're able to properly modify your phone...

Riley walks past the guards, who are now bent over pulling their earpieces out, and into a small alcove. It's fairly easy to find the hidden door. What's less easy is the scanner.

"Nick, you said the blueprints were for a T-45 single-print scanner. This is a whole-hand model." Riley can hear Nick typing frantically.

"He must have updated security. Riley, can you hack it?"

"Only one way to find out." She jacks her phone into the system and gets to work. It takes longer than it should, but then the door slides open with a soft beep.

Inside there's a small canister bathed in a blue glow. "Guys, it's not a bomb. I don't know what it is." There's a biohazard symbol. Most likely some kind of virus. I've heard some dark web chatter about something they found recently that's some sort of ancient superbug. This might be it.

"Just get it and let's go!" Jack says.

"Ok…" Riley lifts the canister carefully, and then the whoop of an alarm sounds. "Oops."

"Oops like I just stubbed my toe, or oops like I accidentally started the zombie apocalypse?" Oh Jack.

Riley's a little too busy to respond. Three guards burst in, and she dives behind a table before pulling off her heels and flinging one at the closest guy. He falls back, startled, and she takes him down with a hard hit before grabbing his gun and using it to knock out the other two. But there will be more on the way.

Riley dashes through the house, slipping the canister into her purse and tearing the slit in her skirt higher so she can move faster. She leaps over a railing and rushes down the hill toward the water.

"Jack! Start the boat!" He does, and she jumps in just as shots pepper the dock behind her.

Predictably, the goons behind them have their own boat, and the chase is on.

"You cut it kinda close back there," Jack says, focusing on his driving while still somehow finding the time to scold. See? Dad.

"It wasn't my fault we had bad intel on the scanner." Riley jumps when there's a ting and the engine starts coughing. "Shit, they hit our fuel tank." She rips a chunk off the hem of her skirt. "Jack, turn us around."

"Back toward the people with guns who want to kill us?"

"Just trust me!" Riley ties off the steering wheel and then she and Jack dive off the sides of the boat. She bobs to the surface just as an explosion lights up the night.

Jack's still berating her for ruining yet another one of his phones as they walk back to the van.

"Why didn't you just put a waterproof case on it?" Riley asks.

"Because I didn't know we were going swimming, genius."

"It's an L.A.K.E., Jack, maybe it would have been a good precaution?" She waits to hear Nick pop out and chime in, but there's nothing. And then Nick steps slowly around the edge of the van, face tense.

"Nick?" There's someone behind him, a face Riley recognizes from the briefings and her own facial scans at the gala. Kendrick. Works for a shadowy group that's been termed the Organization. He's in town to buy the WMD. Or I guess just steal it.

Jack pulls his gun on Kendrick, but then there's another click and someone has a gun on Jack. Then bashes him over the head with it. He falls to the ground, silent.

"Hand over the canister, and we can all go home." Riley assesses the situation.

First thing they teach you in spy school is to look past the obvious. Right now the obvious is that Kendrick will shoot Nick if Riley doesn't hand over the canister, and if he does get it things will go very bad. But if I don't hand it over, he shoots us all and takes it anyway. I can't run, we're surrounded. There are moonlight glints on gun barrels in the bushes on all sides. Second rule of spy school: You can't save the world if you're dead. Stay alive if at all possible.

"Ok." Riley reaches out, holding the canister out to Kendrick.

"Thank you." He takes it, smiles, and then turns and shoots Nick in the chest, point-blank. He topples over the guardrail and disappears.

"No!" Riley shouts. She's dimly aware of a burning sting in her shoulder and then she's over the railing as well and hits the water. She surfaces, gasping, but there's no sign of Nick. And her shoulder is gushing blood into the still, dark water.

Ok yeah. I know you're thinking, "if she's the hero this isn't looking good". But really, I'm not…

…

THREE MONTHS LATER

LOS ANGELES

NOT SUCH A GREAT PLACE TO FORGET ABOUT THE PAST

Riley reaches the trailhead and pauses, hands on her knees, her heartbeat drowning out the driving beat of R&B from her headphones.

No matter what I do, I can't stop seeing that night. Images of Kendrick, Nick falling, Jack dragging her out of the water and begging her to stay awake, it's all a blur. But she does know one thing.

I failed. We lost the canister and it's on me. She turns and breaks into a run again, gasping for air, legs aching. I wasn't good enough.

She's glad to notice she can make it all the way from her apartment to the trailhead and back without having to walk any of the route now. PT's going well. She hurries up the stairs and unlocks her apartment door, almost slamming it into her roommate in the tiny kitchen.

Her roommate, Samantha Cage, is Australian, an intelligence operative who's currently contracting with DXS and needed a temporary place to crash. Riley needed someone to help out around the house while her shoulder healed, and it turned out to be a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Technically, Sam could have gotten her own place by now, and Riley doesn't need help with reaching above her head anymore, but they've never really discussed the possibility of Sam moving out.

"Good run?" Sam asks, turning around from where she's pouring corn flakes into two bowls.

"Yeah." Riley takes her phone off her armband and heads for the shower. When she sees her still-prominent shoulder scar in the mirror, she flinches. There's no forgetting what happened.

When she walks back into the living room, with her hair in a towel and her ancient, faded CIA training sweats on, Jack and Patty are sitting on the couch.

"What's going on?" Riley asks, quickly pulling down the towel and rubbing self-consciously at her hair.

"You need to see this." Thornton says, and clicks play on the tablet in front of her. Three people in biohazard suits, covered in blood, are begging for help. Riley cringes.

"Within ten minutes, every lab tech in that building was dead. CDC sent in containment, and they confirmed that this is the virus that was discovered in that Russian fracking incident you flagged." Riley remembers. The dark web went crazy over it a few months ago...right around the Como job. She'd even thought this might have been what the canister was…

"We think this was a proof-of-concept demonstration. And that Kendrick is planning on selling the canister he stole rather than using it himself," Patty says, her voice shaking ever so slightly. "Whatever he's going to do with it, he's going to do it soon." She absently twists a lock of black hair. "We have no idea where the sale is going to be, and we'd like you to come in and try to help sort data from Como. You know it better than anyone. I'm sorry, Riley, but we could use your eyes."

"If you're not ready for this…" Jack says quickly.

"I'm ready." Anything to make sure Nick didn't die in vain.

"Before you go, there's one other thing." Patty slides a dossier marked with the LAPD's logo onto the coffee table. Riley glances at it; it's an arrest record.

"What's this?"

"Our best chance of ending whatever the Organization has planned."

...

CALIFORNIA CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION

NOT REALLY THE FIRST PLACE YOU'D LOOK FOR A HERO

Jack's seen a lot of Patty Thornton's crazy plans, but this one might top them all.

"Do you really think he's our best chance of stopping the Organization?" Riley asks, looking through the one-way glass at the young, skinny blond in prison orange, handcuffed to the table. She rubs her left shoulder reflexively.

"Patty thinks so. This kid's got a serious reputation for thinking on the fly and coming up with crazy stuff that works. If it hadn't been for a Google Street car in the wrong place at the wrong time, he'd still be pulling his vigilante stuff."

Jack looks down at the file in his hands. When Detective Greer, the arresting officer, had given Jack the file, he'd given the younger man a sympathetic look.

"Good luck with the guy. Hope you don't plan on putting him with a team. Never seen anybody who was that fond of solitary."

Jack's certainly got a knack for working with people no one would call team players. He actually considers himself a lone wolf for life. Hey, relationships are messy. His exception to that rule is Riley, a loner herself.

Riley's a prodigy, a kid from a broken, abusive home with serious daddy issues and serious hacking skills. She was recruited by the CIA right after graduation. If you call the ultimatum, "work with us or face jail time for what you pulled" a recruitment.

She'd been a handful, driving her handlers crazy with her rebellious personality and her penchant for going off-script on missions. Jack had been the first person to get her to fall in line. He'd been pretty much the first stable person in her life, and he was proud to call himself Riley's father figure.

They'd transferred from the CIA to DXS together two years ago, where they'd been teamed up with Nick Carpenter. Jack hadn't liked the idea of taking a pencil-pusher analyst into the field, but it turned out that analysts could also be startlingly good interrogators. And then Como happened.

Jack knows they were close, although Riley never wanted to admit as much. Just proved she thinks of me as a dad, cause the dad's always the last one to hear about the relationship.

They walk into the room, and Jack sits down, spreading the file on the table. Riley stands in the corner, watching.

The man across the table doesn't look like he should be in here. Jack wonders what's happened to this...this kid, behind these walls, because there are shadows behind those eyes that no twenty-five year old should have there. Jack's only seen this in guys he was in the Sandbox with. The kid's fighting a war in here, just to survive.

"Angus MacGyver," Jack drawls, with an emphasis on the first name. "Sounds like a new special at Carl's Jr." He watches the boy flinch. He's probably taken a hell of a lot of flak for that from guys scarier than me. "How'd you survive in here for two years with a hamburger name like that?"

"Solitary's real good for keeping you alive." His voice is a lot deeper than Jack expected. It doesn't sound like it should belong to such a young-looking kid.

"I heard you like being alone." Jack spreads out the file. The kid glances at the mug shot paper-clipped to it and then ducks his head. If possible the picture makes him look even younger. He should have been going to college, getting drunk and dating random chicks, not spending his life in this hellhole.

"Looks like you liked working alone, too." He spreads out the photos of torched gun-running warehouses, burning cars the police found drugs being smuggled in, and several men with gang tattoos tied up with...duct tape?

"I heard about you, for a while, when I was monitoring dark web chatter," Riley speaks up. "They called you the Phoenix."

"I wasn't a hero, if that's what you think. I did what had to be done."

Jack shrugs. "You were a vigilante. And you sure as hell had a code. At least until that gun warehouse you blew dropped on the maintenance guy." The kid flinches again, more noticeably. "You never killed civilians. And you turned yourself in the next day when you heard someone had died."

Angus is looking him in the eyes now. "I thought the building was clear. I swear. I didn't mean for anyone to get killed."

"We believe you," Riley says. "The people we work for have looked over the case again. They think there might be evidence to prove your bomb didn't kill George Ramsay."

The kid looks at her with so much hope it hurts. "It wasn't my fault?"

"Hold on, Hoss, we said maybe." Jack looks at him. "And...we have some conditions."

"I thought so. No one does any good deed for free." The bitterness in his voice stings.

"You used to." Riley says.

"And look what it got me." Angus laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I thought it was helping."

"By taking out gangs like the ones who killed your best friend's brother." Jack sees the kid startle. "Yeah, we did more digging than some minimum-wage cops could be bothered too. Seems like you started all this when Jeremiah Bozer was caught in the crossfire of two rival gangs downtown. He was just on his way to a coffee house cover band gig with his friends. Fifteen years old." Jack sets a picture of a smiling boy, surrounded by a taller one who looks like his brother, and a younger version of Angus, on the table. "Wanted to be a rockstar, just like his brother wanted to make movies, and you wanted to go to MIT.." Now Wilt's working a minimum wage burger job, and Angus is in a supermax, and Jerry's six feet under.

Angus looks at Jack. "Cops tried to help, but the gangs have people in their pockets, and there are too many laws that stop the police from getting the information they need. There's too much red tape. Things take too long. I can get them done fast and save lives." He sighs. "Until one day I couldn't."

"We want to give you the chance to do that again," Riley says. "We'll help you prove your innocence. On one condition. Once you're out, we'd like you to consider our employment offer. We're a dark agency, US government but working under a cover. No one knows we exist. We operate at our discretion across the globe. And right now, we have a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"We...I...lost a canister of a deadly virus three months ago. And now it's resurfaced."

Angus fiddles with his cuffs. "What do you want me to do about that? You think I have a death wish because I've got a life sentence?"

"Yeah, sort of," Jack says.

"Well, I guess getting killed trying to save the world beats reading Crime and Punishment in solitary for the fifth time." Angus suddenly stands up, the cuffs around his wrists unlocked. Jack flinches back out of instinct.

Angus tosses a small object onto the table. It clatters, and Jack picks it up hesitantly. It takes him a minute to realize it's the paper clip from the dossier, now repurposed into handcuff keys. When the hell did he snag that? Jack's beginning to think Patty's dead on right about this Angus MacGyver being their best chance of stopping the Organization. Who the hell is this guy?

"I'm in."

…

Mac shudders when the heavy doors to the cell block clang shut behind him. I didn't really think I'd ever be leaving this place as a free man. But if he'd been responsible for the death of an innocent man, spending the rest of his life inside a supermax was only what he deserved.

But if they're right, and I didn't do it…

He's not entirely sure who these people are, or if he can trust a thing they're telling him. But they're getting him out of here, and at the moment, that's the most important thing. I can figure anything else out later. That's what I'm good at. Improvising.

He ignores the yells coming from the hallways and the yard when he's escorted out. He's been doing that for the past two years, but it never gets easier. He shivers in spite of the warm California sun on his shoulders. If this goes right, I'll never have to hear them again. Except in nightmares. He shakes off the thoughts when they step into a black SUV and the girl...Riley...takes off his cuffs for real this time. Admittedly, she immediately replaces them with a blinking ankle tether, but it feels a whole lot less constricting.

"I get that this is a lot to take in right now. But we're on the clock and we need your help."

"So your first choice was a man doing life for terrorism?"

He sees honesty warring with sympathy in her eyes. "Actually it wasn't my decision. My boss thinks you're the only one who can outsmart the Organization."

"Really? That's what these guys are calling themselves? It sounds like something straight out of a comic book."

"We don't know anything about them. We had to come up with a name." She shrugs. "It wasn't our brightest moment, I'll give you that."

The man, Jack, turns slightly in the front seat. "Riles, can you come up here?" She stands, bracing herself on the seats as they round a turn. Mac can hear Jack whispering to Riley when she sits down in the passenger seat. "Maybe you should leave those cuffs on him until we get to DXS."

They could try. There's enough in this van for me to pick the lock in about twenty seconds. There's a paperclip on the floor, under a seat, and Mac picks it up, carefully twisting it into a key shape.

I'm outside. That's a place to start.

The DXS building is imposing in a way that's totally different from CCI. Mac's used to the constant feeling of being trapped, of being afraid, of being not a person but a number. Of being rejected and hated and judged and feared and hurt. He knows what to feel about steel bars and concrete and mold and barbed wire.

This building is terrifying in a different way. Clear glass and so many windows. It's not secure. But it feels like a trap just the same. Like another cage.

They're met at the door by a woman in a severe black dress, her hair pulled into a tight bun.

The woman's cold glare cuts him. People like her are the ones you avoid on the inside. They're cunning and you're never certain if you're on their good side or if you're just useful for the time being.

"I'm Patricia Thornton. Director of the DXS."

Mac decides the best course of action is to be polite. "Thank you. For arranging my release."

"Conditional release," the woman says cooly. "You are still a convicted felon, and as far as anyone is concerned you are a dangerous terrorist. You are required to remain in DXS custody at all times, until your innocence is proven. Until then, if you do anything that could be considered insubordinate, or an attempt to escape from your handlers, you will be returned to California Correctional immediately."

"I understand."

"Before we allow you any further into our operation, you'll be evaluated by our interrogator, Miss Cage." A slender blonde woman steps up.

"If you'll follow me please?" The woman has a strong Aussie accent. She exchanges a look with Riley, do they have some kind of history? Friendship? She leads him down a hallway into a white, cold room that reminds him too much of the places he's been the past two years.

"Please, sit down." He does.

"What exactly is this?" He asks, fidgeting with the paper clip he's still holding.

Cage makes some notes on a clipboard. "A simple asset evaluation. Whether we should consider you a threat or a resource." She glances at something. "Serving a life sentence for domestic terrorism, most of your two years so far in solitary. Interesting."

"I'm not antisocial," Mac says desperately. "It's…"

"The only way to survive." Cage sits down. "You're not the only one with a checkered past, Angus." She smiles.

"I prefer Mac." He doesn't really know why he tells her.

"I can see why. A pretty boy with a name that's very, very likely to get repurposed…" She glances his way. "Solitary's probably the only reason you're sitting here. But it was a red flag on your file. I had to be sure."

He nods. There's something about this woman that makes him feel like she's looking at his brain with a microscope. But I don't feel like she's going to use it against me. It sounds like this Cage has spent some time somewhere like CCI. Something that gives them something in common. Or she's a damn good interrogator who's making me think she's on my side.

"And domestic terrorism and murder weren't red flags?"

"I think you told the police what you believed was the truth." Cage spreads out the file. "But we recently talked to a bomb expert with the FBI, and he's of the opinion the explosion you caused didn't kill the victim. So you're not a murderer. Just a kid who likes making things go boom." She smirks. "And in this line of work, that can be a very big selling point."

"Do you think I'm dangerous, Miss Cage?"

"Yes." She stares directly into his eyes. "But not for the reasons you might think. I think you like to break the rules. You have better ways to do something and you never ask permission to try your way. I think you like being smarter than everyone else in the room. But none of that makes you the killer people have said you are."

"What happens if I say something to change your mind? Are you going to send me back to prison?" She likes me for now. But people always start out that way, and then when they know more they run. They don't like who I really am. No one wants to take a chance on trusting me.

She gives him an unreadable look. "I think what happens to you now is up to you."

The door opens and Riley steps in. "Sam, I'm sorry, but I'd like to have him come with us. We could use his help with the van."

"Of course." Cage stands. "And for the record, I don't see a threat here. Just a lost, lonely, scared kid who made some mistakes." Ouch.

Riley and Jack are waiting outside the room.

"So, you know how you got out of those cuffs with a paperclip?" Riley asks. "Think you can work your magic on a strongbox lock that caught a bullet?"

Mac nods. I'm actually not certain at all. But if I tell them that they might send me back.

"When we lost that canister, we also lost an agent. Nick Carpenter, our analyst." Riley's clearly holding down emotion.

"Nick was a little paranoid, I guess rightly so. He always kept his computer locked up in the van, in a special compartment, and he was able to get the computer inside before…" She trails off.

Jack picks up for her. "Unfortunately, when Kendrick took him, he shot out the lock so it couldn't be opened. And trying to cut into it will set off a failsafe that burns anything inside."

"I only need a Swiss Army Knife…" Mac realizes saying that was a mistake the second the words leave his mouth.

Jack frowns. "I don't care what you did or didn't do. I am not giving any weapon to someone with criminal charges, who I have never met before today."

He might as well have slapped me in the face. Like I need to be reminded what I am.

"Then I'll need a screwdriver." They're in a large, open room now, the only things in it are a blue van and a fully equipped computer desk.

The techs inside the van, pulling out pieces of it and putting them in boxes, stare openly at Mac's unmistakable orange jumpsuit.

Calm down. These people are staring because they don't know why you're here, not because of what they want to do to you. Still, Mac ducks his head, avoiding meeting eyes.

He finds what he needs inside one of the toolboxes in the van and begins tinkering with the strongbox lock.

When it pops open, he looks over his shoulder to see Riley grinning, Jack giving him a look of grudging respect, and Thornton expressionless. When did she come in?

Riley pulls out the computer and logs in, then sighs.

"When Kendrick took Nick, Nick followed protocol and wiped the hard drive." Riley looks at the computer. "But unless you physically destroy the hard drive, the information is still there. Just going to be a little harder to retrieve."

Mac grins when Riley takes a hammer and smashes the laptop. She's not afraid to get creative to get the job done. I like her already.

"I'll scan it as read only. He's always used my encryptions so I should be able to use anything I find."

Riley puts the disk into the desktop tower and pulls a bag of potato chips out from under the desk. "What? I get hungry when I'm working," she says. "Want some? They're just salt and vinegar." Mac shakes his head.

Riley pulls up video feed from some fancy event, and starts comparing it to a set of dossiers filling her screen. "There's our man. Kendrick was at the gala." Riley sighs. "That doesn't help us track him though."

"His watch," Mac says without thinking.

"What?" Jack asks.

"Zoom in on his watch." Mac glances at the dial. "He's set it nine hours ahead. West coast US is nine hours ahead of Lake Como." Jack and Riley are staring at him. What? Not everyone memorized the world time zones as a kid? Okay, that was a joke...I was a geeky middle schooler.

"So whoever he's meeting is somewhere in that zone." Riley does something. "I'm scanning all image feeds from any device connected to the internet in that time zone." Impressive. She sits back, then jumps. "There. He's in San Francisco." She types rapidly. "And there's another one of our buyers from Como wo just came in at the airport. Benjamin Chen."

"Nice sheet," Mac says. This guy's on multiple terror watchlists and he's got a very, very big grudge against the US of A. Of course.

"So the deal is going down now?" Thornton asks. "That's less time than we anticipated."

"It's a live feed. I can track him," Riley says.

"Then wheels up for San Francisco in ten," Thornton says sharply. "The clock's ticking. Jack, Riley, go get that canister back."

"And me?" Mac asks.

"We haven't had time to fully vet you. This is a very, very high priority mission and I'm not putting you in the field with one of my teams until I'm certain you won't turn on them."

"You said it yourself, he's our best chance," Riley says. "And Cage cleared him." She glances at Jack. "You keep complaining that we're all gonna die anyway going after this thing, so why don't we just take him?" Mac didn't honestly expect the girl to stand up for him. No one does that. Not anymore.

"Well, if you're all 'going to die anyway'," Thornton says sarcastically, "you have nine minutes to catch your plane."

The jet is nice. As in billionaire playboy private jet kind of nice. When you're used to four grey walls and a metal bunk, this is crazy.

"We can't take you out on the streets in that jumpsuit," Riley says. She grabs a large black duffel bag from under a chair. "I don't think any of my clothes would fit you," she smirks, "But you and Jack might be similar enough."

She pulls out a worn Metallica t-shirt and a pair of jeans. "You're a little shorter and thinner than Jack, but it's got to be better than orange."

Mac takes the clothes with a grateful smile. He's more than ready to get rid of anything that reminds him of the supermax. I don't care if these don't fit at all.

...

SAN FRANCISCO

HOPEFULLY NO ONE IS LEAVING THEIR HEARTS ...OR BIOWEAPONS... HERE.

The hotel Riley's tracked Kendrick to is massive. Riley's running her facial rec software on the cameras, but this hotel uses hard-copy booking, and they haven't joined the 21st century yet. She can't find out what room Kendrick is in. He probably knew that when he chose the place.

She's not sure what she'll do when she finds the man. She wants to put a bullet through his chest like he did to Nick, but Patty gave standing orders to bring anyone they can in alive. They know next to nothing about this "Organization", and damn, Angus was right, we need a better name for them, and having one of their operatives alive for Sam to interrogate would be a major breakthrough.

Thinking of Sam makes Riley's gaze stray to Angus. He's jittery and looks like a child in Jack's slightly too-large clothes. She said he wasn't a threat, and I believe her. Riley thought, from the minute she saw him in the holding room, that he wasn't dangerous. But that can be a liability out here in the field.

Riley remembers the first time she killed a man, the guilt and pain she'd felt over it. But I had Jack to help me cope. He had to live two years with the thought that he might have killed a man, and it was killing him. She'd seen the unbelievable desperation in his eyes when she said they might be able to prove his innocence. It wasn't just that he wanted to get out of there. It was that he wanted to know he wasn't a murderer.

The thing is, nice guys like that don't make it long out here. Riley knows that. Jack knows that. Nick learned the hard way. I don't want to lose someone else on my watch. Riley wouldn't ever say she's a cold-blooded killer, but she's done what she had to do to save lives. Innocent lives. If it came right down to it, would he freeze?

Her computer pings, there's a match. Coming in, not leaving. "Kendrick's here. But we'd have to search the whole hotel room by room. Unless you can charm Kendrick's room number out of the grump, overweight man working the front desk, Jack."

"Not happening."

Angus speaks up for the first time. "I think I might be able to help. We don't need to go to him. We can make him come to us."

...

They're all crammed inside the janitorial closet Mac broke into (with Jack's visible disapproval) and Mac is grabbing things off shelves and dumping them into a mop bucket.

"Whoa whoa whoa Carl's Jr., what are you cooking up there?" Jack asks, glancing into the slightly smoking pail. "That's not gonna blow us all to kingdom come, is it?"

"It's harmless. Muriatic acid, ammonia and tinfoil make a lot of smoke and no other byproducts. Where there's smoke, this time, there isn't fire. Just our missing virus and our evil goon." Mac grins. He shoves the pail under the fire alarm and it begins to blare.

You know how I said I was a geeky middle schooler? I was also the middle schooler who broke into the janitor closets and did stuff like this to get out of Mrs. Raffton's fifth period English class. Guess I was always destined for a life of crime.

The three of them spread out along the hotel balcony, watching the guests evacuate. The piercing blare of the fire alarm and the chaos of moving people make Mac nervous. He's been in one riot and it was one riot too many. His hand brushes the scar on his stomach unconsciously. He'd spent two weeks in the infirmary thanks to some other inmate's improvised knife.

He's starting to feel a bit like he might pass out, but he can't do that. He can't afford to panic right now. If he messes this up for everyone they'll send him back.

Not that they won't once this is over. He doesn't for a minute believe they'll keep him. It's all an act to make me cooperate. I know better than to trust them. But he might be able to think of a way out…

He should run now, while the hotel is in chaos. He's in civilian clothes, and it would be a matter of seconds for him to disable the tether on his ankle that's keeping tabs on his location. I could disappear. Go somewhere new. Start over. Now that he's pretty sure he didn't kill George Ramsay, he doesn't feel guilty about wanting to run away from the past and the prison.

He feels slightly guilty about leaving these people, because while Jack may not like him Riley defended him. She might have even trusted him. But that can only last so long. Everyone gets tired of me after a while.

He's about to slip into the chaos of the crowd when he hears Riley gasp. "Nick?"

…

Riley feels like she's had another bullet rip through her chest. "Nick?" The young man below her glances up, and there's no mistaking that face. It's burned into Riley's brain after she watched him fall over a guardrail to his death.

Except that now he's here, in a hotel in San Francisco, standing next to the man who shot him. And then he runs.

Riley flings herself toward the staircase, shoving through the crowd of evacuating people. "Jack! Jack!" She shouts, and she can hear him yelling her name but there's no time to stop. Riley's heart is pounding, her legs are shaking. What the hell is happening? How is Nick alive? Why is he with Kendrick?

She crashes through a door into an alleyway just in time to see Nick getting into a car. He glances back at her once, and then Kendrick slams the door, the vehicle pulls away, and Kendrick turns and fires at her. Riley runs, but there's a wall on each side of her and a chain-link fence in front. And Kendrick is coming fast. She glances at the fire escape beside her and there's a one in ten chance she can pull this one off.

"Looks like our little game of hide and seek ends right here, Agent Davis," Kendrick says, smiling evilly as he closes in. And then Riley's using the rungs of the fire escape to launch herself at him. Her foot cracks squarely against his chin and he goes down before he has a chance to even realize she's coming for him.

Jack bursts out of the door behind her, one hand on his gun, one dragging a frustrated and chagrined Angus along by the shirt collar. Didn't trust him enough to leave him by himself. "What the hell just happened?"

"It was Nick. He's alive." Riley glares down at the unconscious Kendrick. "And maybe he can tell us how."

Fifteen minutes later, Kendrick is tied up in the back of their van and Jack's standing over him with a nail gun and a murderous look.
"Listen, you piece of shit, you hurt my friend here and I want nothing more than to kill you slowly and painfully. So if you don't tell me what I want to know, that's what's gonna happen, you got it?" Kendrick glares at him.

Outside the van, Angus is standing with his hands in his pockets, shuffling, clearly uncomfortable with Jack's aggressive display. And then Jack drives a nail into the floor of the van between Kendrick's legs, and both Angus and Kendrick wince.

"It's too late," Kendrick laughs, the sound bubbling around the broken teeth and blood courtesy of Riley's kick. "You're too late to stop any of it."

"Why is Nick Carpenter working with you? What did you do to make him cooperate with you? What did you threaten him with?" Riley snaps.

"Oh honey, you've got no idea what's going on here. Threaten him?" Kendrick laughs again. "Try bribe. There's a bank account set up for him under the alias Dennis Sullivan in the Caymans. Check it. You'll find five million dollars there. Paid four months ago." Kendrick's bloody smile is unnerving.

"So the shot at Como was a blank."

"He insisted on faking his death. Wanted to disappear quietly."

"And me?"

"He wanted you unharmed. But he understood things might get messy. He was ready to accept a few casualties." Riley feels a bottomless pit opening below her feet, and anything else Kendrick says is drowned out in a rush of blood in her ears. Some casualties. To him, I was an acceptable loss.

"Where is he going?" Jack's cold fury seeps into every word.

"Like I'd tell you." Riley's computer pings and she glances at it.

"Did you get what you need?" Jack asks.

Riley nods. "Every phoneme in the English language." Jack pulls out a roll of duct tape and slaps a piece of it over Kendrick's mouth.

She pulls a phone out of his pocket. The only number on it is a "Dennis Sullivan". Riley dials it and almost throws the phone across the van when Nick's voice answers.

"I told you not to call unless it was important."

Riley types frantically and the computer recreates Kendrick's voice. "I took care of your friends. They won't be giving us any more trouble."

"Good. Don't call me again. I'll see you in New York." There's a low rumble Riley can hear before the phone cuts out.

"I couldn't track it. Voice over routed through a cloaked IP. He's somewhere in the city but I've got nothing beyond that."

"What about the engines?" Angus asks. "There were airplane engines in the background. He was at an airport."

Jack chimes in. "That wasn't large jet engines. Those were small planes. A private airstrip or something." Jack knows planes. He did a deep cover as a smuggler in El Salvador for two years, before I met him. Has a license and everything. He still has the "Fly By Night Air Service" sign from his hangar in his apartment.

"There's one in San Carlos. About ten minutes away," Riley says after consulting the all-knowing Google Maps. "I'm calling Patty now. She'll ground all flights."

There's nothing more to be said. Jack guns the van, and Angus and Riley sit in the back with the again-unconscious Kendrick (Jack knocked him out before he drove off, and Riley can tell he wanted to do more than pistol-whip the man). Riley's typing frantically, and Angus looks more than a bit shaken.

Jack can be a bit much sometimes. Okay, a lot much. But he's just a papa bear. Kendrick hurt me, or he'd never have done half of that.

"Jack would never hurt any of us," Riley says softly. Angus is actually shaking slightly. "I promise."

"He doesn't seem very fond of me."

"He wasn't fond of me at first either. But he would have taken a bullet for me from the day he was assigned to be my handler." Angus just shrugs. And then Jack crashes the van through a gate and they can see a small plane about to take off.

Quicker than Riley can see, Angus has removed his ankle tether, flung open the supposedly locked van door, and is racing across the airstrip toward the retreating plane. There's no way he's going to be able to catch up...is there?

Jack hollers a curse, slams the steering wheel, and jumps out, but the kid's shockingly fast and he's not stopping anytime soon. Just before the plane takes off, he grabs the landing gear and is carried off with it.

"Where do you think Mr. Wizard's going?" Riley asks, concern twisting her stomach. This would be the perfect chance for him to run. To disappear. I'm sure the Organization would love to get their hands on someone with his skills.

"Hopefully, to stop that plane," Jack says. "If it's anything else I'll hunt him down and kill him myself."

The jet banks into the sky, and Riley sighs. It's all in his hands now.

…

There are very few things I'm afraid of, after everything I've seen. One of them is definitely heights. A very big one.

Mac's currently clinging to the landing gear and wondering why he's here.

Once I help them end this, they'll send me straight back to prison for sure now, after I ran off like that. And here I am trying to help them catch their traitor agent before he gets away for good, and blowing my own chances of staying a free man in the process.

So he's not sure why he's risking his life, hanging hundreds of feet above the ground and terrified. He's got to be crazy. His hands are sweaty, slipping on the metal.

I have to get inside or I'm going to fall. He's shaking, freezing up. He catches his feet on the door to the landing gear and braces himself. Okay, step one done. Not currently quite as likely to fall and die. Now all I need to do is figure out a way to make this plane stop and land again.

Now he can see the electronics for the landing gear, and the hydraulics. He yanks a few wires out, and that should handle the automatic retraction, but he's still got to disable the manual releases.

This would be a lot easier with my knife. Mac forces his numb, shaky fingers to start detaching the hydraulic line. He has to lean out away from the safety of the door he's standing on, and the sight of the rapidly disappearing ground is unnerving.

Don't look down. Then the hose comes loose, a spray of hydraulic fluid spatters his hands and Jack's shirt, hope he doesn't hate me for ruining it, and the plane begins to bank back toward the runway.

As soon as the wheels touch ground, Mac flings himself out of the plane, rolling painfully on the runway. He drags himself to his feet and runs toward the plane's door, where Riley and Jack are already.

Why did you do that? Any of that? For them? He barely knows those two. Their cause has nothing to do with him. And yeah, maybe they're trying to stop a supervirus that could kill everyone, but honestly at this point he'll take his chances. Why am I not running away? And he still follows them into the plane.

...

Jack wants to put a bullet straight through Nick Carpenter's skull. Honestly I wish the guy had actually been dead. It would have been better than this. Because right now that traitor has a gun to his baby girl's head, and looks like he has every intention of pulling the trigger.

"If you want to shoot Jack, you're going to have to go through me," Riley says. "You already had me shot once. Shouldn't be a big deal, right?"

Nick sighs. His finger's on the trigger, and Jack's internally begging Riley to move, even just a little, give him a clear headshot. He hears the hamburger kid come in behind him, but he doesn't have time to focus on the guy right now.

And then Nick puts the gun down and hands it over. Jack sighs. He takes the gun from Riley but doesn't tuck it in the back of his jeans like he usually would. Don't trust Carl's Jr. not to put one in my back if the opportunity presents itself. He's honestly a little surprised the guy hasn't run yet. We haven't exactly kept him on a ball and chain.

"Why? Nick, why?" Riley's voice is a strangled, betrayed whisper.

"Sometimes, it's necessary to do hard things to make the world a better place. You used to believe that, when you were freelancing." How dare you use her past now? How dare you try to pretend you have the same reasons she did? "You didn't used to trust the government, you told me so! And now you want to just hand this over to them? Why do you think they want it?"

"Don't pretend this was about ideology. This was about the money," Riley says. "Kendrick already told us everything." She bites her lip and stares at him. "Was everything a lie?"

"No." Nick has at least the decency to look a bit ashamed. "We weren't."

"Yes, we were. You lied to me! I thought you died doing something good!" There's so much pain in Riley's voice. I want to kill him for what he did to her. She didn't deserve it. Riley deserved so much better.

"I was never the hero. That was always your job, Riley."

She turns away, and Jack sees the tears in her eyes.

"Where's the virus?" Jack asks.

"Tear this plane apart," Riley snaps coldly, as she begins patting Nick down. Jack starts working, and so does the hamburger kid. He's surprisingly smart about where something could be hidden in the plane's compartments.

Suddenly Riley stops. "It's not here, is it?" She's watching Nick's face closely. "He's not nervous. He already sold it."

Five minutes later they're outside, on a video call with Patty.

"So Nick's alive and Chen and the virus are in the wind. Yeah, I know, this is bad," Jack says.

"Bad? Jack, Bad is when you accidentally run over your neighbor's dog! This is a disaster of Biblical proportions!" Patty's fear is visible. "We have no idea where Chen is going to release the virus."

"Yes we do," Carl's Jr. pipes up. "It's going to be right here in San Francisco."

"How do you know?" Patty asks.

"Dennis Sullivan was the San Francisco fire chief at the time of the 1906 earthquake. He died in the quake and so when the fires began the firefighters had no real authority to keep the situation in hand."

Jack stares at him. How does this guy know so much random information?

Riley marches over to Nick. "It's here, isn't it?"

"No. His target is Tokyo." Nick glares back at her.

"Nice try. Remember, you taught me everything about spotting lies in interrogation?" Riley snaps. "You trained me too well."

"I suggest you all get out of here." Nick says, shrugging. "You might stand a chance if you're not in the immediate infection zone."

"No one is going anywhere," Jack snaps. "Especially not you." Half of him wants to release the virus himself just to watch this traitor suffer. A bullet to the head is too fast and easy a death for someone who did what he did to my girl.

Riley's already hacking airport security cams. "The drop was here." She's pulling up images of a canvas-backed truck. "Chen drove toward the city. I think there's still time to catch him."

They commandeer a helicopter and Riley gets in beside Jack while they put the hamburger kid in back, cuffed to the handrail. They could have left him with Nick and the DXS tac team, but Jack has a funny feeling that he doesn't want to let this guy out of his sight.

They fly over a small hill and there's the truck, on the highway, headed for the city.

Riley climbs out of the chopper and drops onto the canvas back of the truck with her usual catlike grace. She slashes through it and drops inside, and bends down next to whatever's inside.

"Jack, it's worse than we thought. He's gonna use an IED to send the virus airborne. It'll kill millions." Riley starts pulling apart something Jack figures is the bomb when he sees two guys climb out of the cab and start making their way back toward her.

"Riles, you might wanna hurry this up. You've got company." She turns just as one of the men drops inside, and lands a decent kick before the other guy's nearly on top of her. Through the large tear in the top Jack can see her taking on the two goons at once. One of them flies out the back in a few moments.

The other one is bigger, and he manages to sweep Riley's legs from under her and pin her to the ground, hand on her throat. And then she flips up, impossibly fast, and her legs are around his neck. Jack grins, he taught her that move after she almost bought it in Cairo.

I wasn't gonna see her get that close to dead again. He tries not to think about her pale face, the bluish lips, the way she wouldn't breathe no matter what he did. That was four years ago. She's not gonna end up like that today.

Riley kicks the guy out the side of the truck and then turns to the bomb.

"How's it lookin' down there, kiddo?" Jack asks.

"Like you might wanna get outta here," Riley mutters. She's following the wires with her fingers, muttering to herself.

"No way. It's you and me, kid. I'm with you to the end of the line, remember?" She loves that cheesy line from Captain America. Mostly because she insists Jack is old enough to be Captain America, but still.

"There's a lot of dummy wires here, Jack. You know how they tell you, at the Farm, how to decide between red and blue? These are all green. If I cut the wrong one it goes off right now." She bends down, traces them again, and then clips one. There's a sudden beeping through the comms. "Shit. It's got two minutes on the timer and it just started."

Angus reaches up from the back of the chopper to grab Jack's arm, and Jack jumps and the helicopter sways a little. So help me if he tries to tell me to fly out of here I'm gonna knock him out cold. "I don't have time for this, kid! I told you we might all die on this one, and I'm not leavin' my girl here to save your skinny ass."

Angus looks hurt, but there's a hell of a lot of determination in his eyes too. "I can help her!"

"You know how to defuse an IED?" When the hell would he possibly have learned that?

"Please, just trust me! She's running out of time!"

Jack tosses the kid the handcuff keys. What do we have to lose? He's not sure why, but something is telling him Carl's Jr. here is trustworthy. And Jack has learned after two decades in the field to trust his gut on these kind of things.

Jack watches the kid jump down into the truck. Bring my girl back alive.

...

Riley's heard the whole conversation over comms and doesn't even flinch when Angus drops in beside her.

"What are you thinking?" She glances his way. "Because I'm not seeing a way this ends well."

"We don't have time to defuse it. But maybe we can get the canister out." Angus pulls one of his bent paperclips out of his pocket, and slips it into the rig holding the canister. The vial pops free, and Riley shoves it in her jacket.

"We have thirty seconds left!" Yeah, we got the virus out. But that's not gonna do anyone any good if we get blown up anyway.

"I need your knife!" Riley doesn't hesitate. We're gonna die anyway, right? He rips out a section of the canvas, then attaches some of the tiedowns, all faster than Riley can even follow. "Hold onto me. Don't let go!"

She does, and he kicks off from the floor, the makeshift parachute billowing over them. They fly out the back of the truck and Riley has just enough time to think, dang this is cool, like the kind of James Bond cool I was expecting when I joined the CIA, and then they hit the road and it's way less cool.

Riley thinks her knees and elbows have a pretty decent case of road rash, but she didn't land as hard as Angus. He came down first and she's pretty sure when she fell on him she heard a rib crack.

Still, he rolls over to shield her with his own body just as the truck explodes. Burning shrapnel flies past them and Riley cringes. There's a massive roaring in her ears and then, as it fades, she hears sirens and the slowing whip of helicopter blades.

She looks up to see Jack running toward them.

"Riley! You okay?"

"I will be." She stands up, then frantically checks the canister in her jacket. No cracks, no leaks. All secure. She leans down to give Angus a hand to his feet, and he straightens up with one hand on his ribs.

"How you holdin' up, Carl's Jr.?" Jack asks. "Nice work back there, man." It's the closest Jack will get to thanking the kid for saving her. Because if he hadn't been there, Riley would be blown to bits and the virus would have been unleashed on San Francisco.

She can hear the sirens getting closer, and Angus looks near-terrified. Right. Last time something blew up around him he went to a supermax for two years. "Let's go, yeah? I don't really want to explain to the cops why three people, one of whom is still on charges of domestic terrorism, are standing around an exploded IED with a canister of deadly virus."

They all climb into the helicopter; Patty will sort things out with the authorities. Riley sits in the back, next to Angus, and as they take off she reaches for his still-shaking hand.

"Thank you for saving my life." He smiles, just a little. I like his smile. And I'd like to see it more often.

…

Mac steps out of the car dropping him off at his house, feeling the odd, off-balance weight of the new ankle tether he's been fitted with. Riley's work, and supposedly tamper-proof, although if he wanted to he could probably take it off in about ten minutes.

I really didn't think this was going to happen. He'd been fully expecting to be taken back to prison as soon as the chopper landed at DXS. After all, he removed his tether, disobeyed orders to stay with the team at all times, and was incredibly reckless. Yes, they saved the world, but people like Thornton tend not to like people like him who color outside the lines.

Instead, she greeted him with a frown and a new tether band. "I hear I have you to thank for preventing the apocalypse." She took the canister from Riley. "Agent Davis tells me separating the canister from the IED was your idea."

"There wasn't time to risk anything else."

"Still, it was an impressive display of thinking outside the box." Thornton glanced at the others. "And that's something we at the DXS put a high value on, whether it's in our think tank operations or our field personnel. That doesn't mean you'll be given license to go off script whenever you want on missions, but it does mean that you'll be accepted, with probationary status, as a member of this field team." He could feel Jack's groan and Riley's smile. I think I could learn to work with them. If Jack ever warms up to me. And stops making jokes about my name.

He hasn't been home in almost three years, and looking at the house, he feels a strange mixture of pain and happiness.

After my dad left, I moved to LA to live with Grandpa Harry. Which is where most of the stuff that happened to me, good and bad, started.

LA is where Mac met Wilt Bozer, where Grandpa died, where Bozer's little brother got shot. Where Mac tried to make a difference and ended up almost ruining his own life.

This was his grandpa's house. He knows where the spare key is. But he knocks anyway.

"If you're soliciting votes for mayor again, I already told you…" Bozer yanks open the door, cook's hat askew and apron half-tied.

"Mac?"

"Hey Boze."

They have a lot of catching up to do. And even less time than Bozer, who has to leave for work in half an hour, realizes. Mac's new team is arriving any minute.

When the doorbell rings, he answers it, and Riley and Jack step through, followed by Thornton, who looks only slightly less severe with her hair down. She gives a pointed look at the tether still blinking on his ankle, and then a small nod of approval.

Mac introduces them, as agreed, to Bozer as Roger Preston, Dana Baumann, and Rebecca Daniels. All supposedly members of the legal defense team working to clear his name. Bozer immediately tries to flirt with Riley, but she shuts him down fast. So fast Mac can see that Bozer's already thinking of ways to get on her good side. He likes a challenge.

"I've gotta go to work. I'll catch you all later." As soon as Bozer leaves, Thornton turns to the others.

"I'm afraid this isn't just going to be a celebration of a job well done. I've been informed by Oversight that the DXS will have to disband. What Carpenter did exposed our covert operations and put us at risk. Effective twenty-four hundred hours we're shutting down all operations and migrating all personnel."

Mac shudders. Without them employing me, without their resources put into proving I'm innocent, I'll have to go back. The others can all move on, find new jobs, new agencies. But Mac will be right back where he started. I should have known better than to hope something good was about to happen. And he's just been getting used to the idea of life outside those walls again.

Thornton continues as if she didn't just crumble his world in those few words. "We'll be rebuilding from the ground up. A new cover, and a new name. And you'll get to pick it."

Mac hears Jack joke that it should be "The Three Amigos," and he feels a sudden jolt of something unfamiliar. Three? Does that mean I'm still part of the team?

"Jack, that's three men," Riley says.

"Brush up on your Spanish!" Jack laughs. "Okay, what about Thunderstallions?"

Mac can't help the small, half-hysterical laugh. That's ridiculous.

"Why don't you pick, Angus?" Riley asks. Okay. Now I know for sure I have to be staying.

It's still taking a minute for the idea that they'd keep him, even when they didn't have to, to process. If they wanted to, they could have let my deal die with the old agency. This new one isn't bound to honor any of the agreement. But they want me. They actually really want me. He brushes a hand across his face to hide the probably visible tears. Come on, it's not worth getting that emotional about. "I thought...I thought now that the DXS was gone I'd have to go back."

"We're not going to give up on you that easy, Carl's Jr." Jack hands him a box. "I think you've earned this." Mac opens it and gasps. Inside is a thick red Swiss Army Knife. "You saved a lot of people out there with nothing more than your wits and a paperclip, and I think it's pretty safe to trust you with this thing. If you wanted us dead you'd have let that bomb go off." He's smiling, and Mac realizes he's actually joking a little. Progress.

"Wait," Riley says, and there's a spark in her eyes. "Why don't we call it the Phoenix?"

Mac stares. Seriously? You want to name our entire new agency after my old code name?

"In the myths, the Phoenix rose from the ashes of its death stronger than ever," Riley continues. "I think it's more than fitting."

"I'll drink to that," Jack says. "Hey Carl's Jr., got any beer in this house?"

Mac grins as he walks to the fridge. Rising from the ashes. Leaving the pain and mistakes in the past. I like the sound of that.

…

Miles away, Nick Carpenter sits in the back of a secure transport, on the way to the Box. But he knows he's never going to get there. He carefully twists two wires out of the band of his watch and sets to work on his cuffs. The job isn't over yet.