| Sophie Baines | ||||||||||||||||
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Sophie Baines was a mortal woman living in Paris, she was working for Jason Landry as his research assistant. She supported her teenage brother, Andrew. She was targeted by Ahriman when she posed a threat to it when she proved to be of potential help to MacLeod's fight against it, and it caused her to throw herself into the Seine. MacLeod dove in to rescue her, she was completely disoriented upon her revival, and MacLeod offered to take her home. It later appeared, however, that he had rescued an image, that the real Sophie had actually drowned.
Joe Dawson informed MacLeod that Sophie was Landry's assistant, but they discovered her office had burned, that her years of research were destroyed. MacLeod then saw her speaking to an image of James Horton, and demanded to know why he was speaking to her. She insisted she didn't know.
Dawson later told MacLeod that she was dead, her body found in the river. Sophie, meanwhile, was told by Ahriman, in its Horton guise, that she was, in fact, dead. She tried to run away, but it appeared before her several times in her flight, and at one point she ran it down, but it appeared again to admonish her. She eventually found herself at the morgue, where she encountered MacLeod, who was there to identify her body. She, too, saw the body and ran from the morgue only to drive off with the Horton aspect.
The Horton aspect then appeared at MacLeod's barge, and told him that it had brought Sophie back from the dead, that it could bring anyone back, and then presented an image of Richie, of Tessa, but MacLeod refused the temptation.
Rescued from the river
Ahriman as Horton then returned to Sophie and told her she lived because it allowed it. It then told her she was allowed to live because it wanted her to kill MacLeod. She refused. It then began to drain her life away, and told her again what it wanted, and threatened her brother. She begged that her brother be left alone, and it told her she knew what she had to do.
She met MacLeod on the bridge she had fallen from, and told him that she'd been told to kill him. She realized by now that MacLeod was the Champion, and asked for his help, that she wanted to live. MacLeod asked her how to deafeat it, and she said she didn't know, "Every champion has to find his own way."
Unfortunately at that point, Andrew Baines shot MacLeod dead, and with a sword in his hand told his sister that he'd been promised that with MacLeod dead, Sophie would live. Sophie said that he could not kill MacLeod for her, but he replied that he had to. When he raised the sword, she climbed to the rail of the bridge, and threw herself into the Seine, this time to save Andrew, and thwart Ahriman.