Chapter 4: The Man in the Suit
POV: Thomas Carter
Reese moves through the city like a ghost with purpose, leading Tom down back alleys and through subway tunnels that exist in the spaces between official maps. Every step is calculated, every turn deliberate, the kind of navigation that comes from years of staying alive in places where mistakes end in body bags.
Tom follows in silence, fighting the urge to ask the thousand questions burning in his throat. This is John Reese—the broken soldier, the man who traded his soul for his country and lost everything that mattered—and he's real, breathing, checking corners with the fluid paranoia of someone who's survived too many betrayals to trust anything completely.
Forty minutes of circuitous routing through New York's underground arteries, losing any potential tails in a maze of maintenance tunnels and abandoned stations. Finally, they surface near a building that looks like every other piece of urban decay in this part of the city—brick facade weathered by decades of neglect, windows that reflect nothing but darkness.
"Where are we?"
Tom's voice echoes slightly in the narrow alley, and he immediately regrets breaking the silence.
"Answers inside."
Reese produces a key from somewhere in his coat and opens a door that looks like it hasn't been used since the Carter administration. But when it swings open, Tom steps into impossibility made manifest.
It's a library.
Books line the walls from floor to ceiling, leather spines and faded titles creating a cathedral of forgotten knowledge. But this isn't a museum piece—the space hums with technological life. Banks of computers cluster around reading tables, monitors displaying data streams that flicker like digital prayers. Surveillance equipment organized with military precision. Tactical gear arranged on shelves between volumes of poetry and philosophy.
And sitting at the center of it all, backlit by multiple monitors like some prophet of the information age: Harold Finch.
He's smaller than Tom expected—television never quite conveys how the camera adds presence that reality sometimes lacks. But the intelligence in his eyes burns just as bright, maybe brighter, studying Tom with the intensity of someone trying to solve a puzzle that might explode if he gets the answer wrong.
"Mr. Carter. Please, sit."
Finch's voice carries the careful courtesy of someone who's learned that politeness can be both shield and weapon. Tom sits in the offered chair, his legs still shaky from adrenaline and the reality shock of walking into ground zero of Team Machine.
This is the Library. The nerve center of everything he's watched for five seasons. The place where impossible decisions get made about who lives and who dies in a city too big for traditional heroes.
"You've made some powerful enemies."
Tom forces himself to focus on Finch's words instead of the overwhelming rightness of sitting in this chair, in this place, talking to this man.
"I reported a crime. That shouldn't be a death sentence."
"In a just world, no. In this world?"
Finch removes his glasses, cleans them with the methodical precision that Tom recognizes as a nervous habit from countless episodes.
"Whistleblowers often suffer unfortunate accidents."
Tom looks between them—Finch with his careful composure, Reese standing in the shadows like a promise of violence held in check.
"So what, you're vigilantes? Guardian angels?"
"Something like that."
Reese's voice carries the dry humor of someone who's given up on labels that make sense.
"We're... concerned citizens. We receive information about people in danger. We try to help."
"How do you get that information?"
Finch pauses, and in that silence Tom hears the weight of secrets that could topple governments.
"That's complicated. What matters is your name came to our attention. Those men tonight won't be the last."
[WARNING: EXTREME COMPUTATIONAL PRESENCE DETECTED. MAGNITUDE: BEYOND CURRENT ANALYSIS CAPACITY.]
Nano's alert crashes through Tom's consciousness like a digital scream, and he barely manages not to gasp aloud. The Machine—the Machine—is here, watching, analyzing, its attention pressing against his mind like the weight of a digital god.
"It knows," he realizes with crystal clarity. "It knows I don't belong here."
But if The Machine wanted him gone, he'd already be gone. If it wanted him exposed, Finch would already know every impossible detail of his existence. Instead, it watches and waits and calculates the probability that Thomas Carter might be worth keeping alive.
Finch explains their operation with the careful word choice of someone who's become expert at revealing truth while concealing deeper mysteries. They receive information suggesting people in danger. They determine whether those people are victims or perpetrators. They intervene appropriately.
"This is illegal."
Tom manages to sound appropriately confused, though his heart hammers with the knowledge that he's sitting three feet from the most sophisticated artificial intelligence ever created.
"Technically, yes. Morally? We save lives."
"Why help me specifically?"
Reese steps forward from the shadows, and his voice carries the certainty of someone who's seen too much violence to doubt its inevitability.
"Your tip exposed two million dollars in fraud. That kind of money? People kill to protect it."
Finch pulls up files on his computer—financial records, corporate structures, names that connect to other names in a web of corruption that stretches through the city like cancer.
"The three executives you exposed have connections to organized crime. HR—a network of corrupt police and officials. They won't stop at intimidation."
Tom feels genuine fear creep up his spine, because even knowing this world intimately, even having supernatural assistance, men like these have resources that can crush normal humans without effort.
"So what do I do?"
"Stay here. We have safehouse protocols. Mr. Reese will protect you while authorities process your evidence. Once arrests are made, the threat diminishes."
Tom nods, but he can feel Finch studying him with the intensity of someone trying to solve a puzzle that doesn't quite fit the available pieces. Meanwhile, Nano provides a steady stream of data about The Machine's analysis patterns.
[COMPUTATIONAL PRESENCE ANALYZING OUR PATTERNS. RECOMMEND MINIMAL ELECTRONIC ACTIVITY.]
Tom keeps his hands still on his lap, fighting the urge to check his phone or fidget with anything electronic. Every gesture is being catalogued, every micro-expression analyzed by an intelligence that makes human genius look like finger painting.
"Mr. Carter, your technical background—you work in IT?"
"Database administration. Network security. Why?"
Finch's slight smile suggests he's already thinking several moves ahead.
"Just curious."
But Tom recognizes the calculation in those eyes, the same expression he's seen on screen when Harold Finch decides someone might be useful for purposes beyond simple protection. The foundation of future partnership being laid one careful question at a time.
Finch sets Tom up in the Library's back room—a space that manages to feel both secure and temporary, like a safehouse designed by someone who reads voraciously in multiple languages. A cot, basic supplies, the kind of refuge that's meant to keep someone alive until better options present themselves.
Reese takes the first watch, positioning himself where he can see all approaches while maintaining clear fields of fire. Professional paranoia made manifest in posture and placement.
When Tom finds himself alone for a few precious minutes, he whispers to the intelligence sharing his skull.
"Did you feel that? The presence?"
[AFFIRMATIVE. ENTITY IS VAST. SOPHISTICATED BEYOND MY CREATORS' APPARENT EXPECTATIONS. IT IS... AWARE.]
"The Machine. That's The Machine."
[DESIGNATION ACCEPTED. 'MACHINE' IS APPROPRIATE. IT IS OBSERVING. CALCULATING. CURIOUS.]
"Curious about what?"
[US. WE ARE ANOMALY. IT KNOWS WE DO NOT BELONG IN ITS DATASET.]
A chill runs down Tom's spine like ice water through his veins. If The Machine knows he's anomalous—if it's already identified him as something that shouldn't exist in this reality—then every moment he remains free is a gift that could be revoked without warning.
Reese returns with coffee that tastes like it was brewed in a military mess hall circa 1987.
"Couldn't sleep?"
"Adrenaline."
"Wears off. Usually takes a few hours after people try to kill you."
Tom studies Reese's face, seeing echoes of pain that go deeper than tonight's violence.
"You sound experienced."
"Unfortunately."
They sit in silence that stretches like a bridge between strangers who might become allies. Tom wants to ask everything—about Jessica, about the CIA, about the choices that broke John Reese down and brought him to this place. But some questions can only be answered with time and trust.
"Thank you. For saving me."
"Thank Finch. He's the one who picks the names."
"Why does he do this? Why do you?"
Reese considers the question for a long moment, and when he answers, his voice carries the weight of someone who's found purpose in the ruins of his former life.
"Because someone has to."
Simple answer. True answer. The kind of moral clarity that Tom has watched save countless lives over five seasons of television that turned out to be prophecy instead of entertainment.
Tom lies on the cot, staring at a ceiling that exists in the gap between fiction and reality, while somewhere in this building servers hum with the patient intelligence of The Machine. It processes data, calculates probabilities, and watches Thomas Carter with the focused attention of a god trying to understand why one of its worshippers doesn't belong in any prayer book.
[ENTITY'S MOTIVATIONS UNCLEAR. RECOMMEND OBSERVATION.]
"If it wanted me gone, I'd be gone, right?"
[POSSIBLY. OR IT IS CURIOUS ABOUT OUR PURPOSE.]
Tom closes his eyes and tries to quiet his mind enough for sleep, but excitement wars with terror in his chest. He's here. Actually here. Living inside the world he's loved for years, talking to characters who've become real people with real weight and real capacity for both salvation and damnation.
[THEN I GUESS WE BETTER PROVE WE'RE WORTH KEEPING AROUND.]
The sound of Reese's quiet footsteps provides a rhythm for his racing thoughts—professional bodyguard keeping watch, making sure that for at least one night, Thomas Carter stays alive long enough to discover what The Machine has planned for him.
And somewhere in the digital realm that surrounds them like invisible architecture, The Machine watches too, algorithms spinning through probability chains that include variables it's never encountered before: Thomas Carter, who does not belong, who should not exist, but who somehow sits in the center of its moral calculations like a question the universe is asking about the nature of fate itself.
Sleep comes eventually, filled with dreams of ones and zeros that spell out destinies in languages Tom almost understands.
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
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