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The Soldier pressed her forehead into her shaking hands. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against the tight knot of panic that twisted between her lungs. Her handlers could be here any second. To debrief her, discipline her, maybe put her under again. She didn’t have time for this.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about him and that shield. The moment she’d touched it, it had sparked something. Not a memory. Just a feeling. Like she’d seen it before.
And him. She’d seen him before, too. That scared her more than anything else. She wasn’t supposed to remember. It was for her own good, they said. It saved her the psychological consequences of… whatever happened that she couldn’t remember.
Remembering was dangerous.
But she knew him.
Jack dropped heavily into the chair Mac always kept beside the workbench for him. He hadn’t even bothered to change out of his uniform or get patched up before he came to the lab. He must have been in rough shape because the moment Mac looked at him his hands went unnaturally still.
“You saw everything,” Jack said. It wasn’t a question.
“Most of it,” Mac said. “Jill found the security feed. I didn’t… I didn’t think she was real.”
Whispers about the assassin had been floating around for years. But not even their best agents and analysts had been able to find anything approaching proof that she really existed. Until now. Until Jack had faced her one-on-one, and walked away with everything he understood about his world shattered.
“She is,” Jack said. He didn’t even recognize his own voice, it was so hollow. His usual optimistic edge drained out of it. “She’s real. And I know her.”
“What?” Mac’s hands stilled again. That unnerved Jack almost as much as seeing a ghost did. Kid was never still. Some part of him was always moving, overflowing with energy. Angus MacGyver was not a person who should ever be still.
Jack swallowed, forcing the words out, slow and halting.
“It was Riley.”
He’d thought saying it out loud would make it seem more real. But it didn’t. Nothing about this felt like something that could actually be happening.
“Riley?” Mac repeated skeptically. “As in Riley Davis?”
Jack nodded.
“But she’s –”
“Dead,” Jack finished. “I know. Or I thought…”
Supposedly, officially, Riley had been dead since 1945. But there was no mistaking that face. A face that hadn’t aged a day, still looking like the twenty-year-old she’d been over half a century ago.
“It was her, Mac,” he said. “I don’t know how, but I know what I saw. And if there’s anyone who has the brainpower to figure out what the hell is going on, it’s you.”
Jack could feel Mac thinking. See the wheels turning in his head. If it were anyone else, Mac would probably try to talk them around, but he and Jack had worked together long enough to take each other on faith.
He nodded, a familiar determination settling into his shoulders.
“Then let’s get to work.”