Chapter Text
# Scanning local system... Done.
# Analyzing recovered metadata... Done.
# Linking with parent system...
-!- TRANSMISSION RECEIVED -!-
> > > RECOVERING DATA... Done.
> > > PARSING...
> > TARGETS IDENTIFIED : 147
> > DISPATCHING ASSETS...
Slowly, the world settled down.
Anomalies were corrected, systems were brought back online, catastrophic accidents were avoided. Some times, local governments stepped in, others it was private corporations or concerned third party, although in most cases a combination of several of those worked in concert to rectify the developing situations. The few people in the world who knew how bad things could have gotten let out a sigh of relief while the others went on with their lives, at most mildly befuddled by what they were hearing on the news.
And then, the arrests came.
It was a mostly quiet affair, all things considered. A few conspiracy theorists picked up what they thought were patterns but were mostly ignored. And yet, over the course of less than 24 hours, more than a hundred prominent businessmen, politicians and diplomats were arrested all over the world, ostensibly on money laundering or extortion charges. Less prominent people were also picked up in the same time frame, mostly elusive hackers that had so far managed to escape scrutiny. Some protested, oft times publicly that they were victim of some shadowy conspiracy, a few even going as far as to put forward outlandish claims about worldwide surveillance. But such was the nature of the world that nobody paid it much heed after a few days. People, after all, had other concerns.
And so the Faceless ended, not with a bang but with a whimper, betrayed by their very tools they had used to fuel their deadly enterprise : money and modern technologies. But their legacy, the Machine knew, would endure. Most world governments, already distrustful of anything but themselves, would, whether they were fully aware of the ASI's existence or not, continue and intensify their efforts to set up competing surveillance systems. Covert attempt to eliminate its assets would also keep coming : Disposal was probably but the first of many.
And, unfortunately, the Faceless had managed to show those in the know that the Machine was not invulnerable. That presented a new challenge to it : how do you protect yourself from those seeking to take control of the world without doing so yourself ?
For the Machine and her assets, the work was just beginning.
I offered you a job, the words came, unbided, to the Machine's computerized mind, I never said it would be easy.
Ross Garrison had finally managed to muster the courage needed to make his way to the address Disposal had given him. It was a small, dilapidated building in the fringes of Washington, DC, the kind of places where the senator would not have usually been caught dead. A truck was parked in front of the building, and its door was slightly ajar. Feeling a pang of unease, Garrison pushed it open and found himself in front of a woman he'd hoped never to see again.
- "Tiffany ?"
Harper Rose's face blanked out for a moment, before she remembered that was the fake name she'd given the senator last they met. She smiled warmly.
- "Hey senator ! How have you been ?"
Dumbfounded, Garrison handed her the small business card Disposal had given him that fateful day in DC.
- "Disposal sent me."
Much to his surprise, Harper took the cart and tore it in two, before throwing it above her shoulder.
- "I'm afraid you just missed him", she explained, "You should have called. We'd have saved you the trip."
Then she walked past the befuddled senator, making to exit the building. As she did so, Garrison remarked the room in front of him was utterly empty.
- "Do you know when he'll be back then ?", he asked.
- "Oh", Harper replied, getting inside the truck parked in front of the building's door, "he won't."
With that, she drove off, allowing Garrison to get a look at the truck's side, and the inscription it bore.
Thornhill Industries.
The exercise yard in the Rikers Island Penitentiary was oddly calm, a tense silence reigning supreme over it. A great number of prisoners were assembled there, standing at a respectful distance from the two men in the middle of it, one sitting, the other standing.
- "Silvio", Peter Yogorov nodded with a smile, "you've seen better days."
- "Peter", Silvio Galvani replied, "you're still an asshole."
Yogorov chuckled at that.
- "So", Galvani continued, "guess this is where we are now."
- "Don't worry", his interlocutor, "I'm not going to strike a crippled man. Not in front of all these witnesses at least", he tipped his head toward the pair of watchful warden patrolling the gantry above them.
- "A truce, then ?"
Galvani almost seemed hopeful. Yogorov had heard what had happened with Capello from sources of his on the outside. For all intent and purposes, Silvio Galvani was finished. He would never rise again.
- "There's no need", Yogorov said softly, "Our business is done. Enjoy the rest of your life, Silvio."
Giving his former counterpart a small tap on the shoulder as he passed him, Yogorov walked away, rejoining his assembled men, and started smiling.
- "Guess things are looking up after all", he muttered to himself.
> > > MONITORING POI : Wilkerson, Charles...
Disgraced.
Charles Wilkerson was done for, and he knew it. Even confronted with all his painstakingly documented evidence, his former colleague Heather Holland and her cronies had not understood. They had called him deranged, traumatized, insane. They were blind to the truth, and he was starting to realize there was no way in which he'd ever be able to make others understand.
Wilkerson was alone, forever cursed to bear the burden of knowledge so outlandish no one would ever believe him.
The prisoner transport stopped abruptly, jostling him out of his thoughts. Surprised, he looked around, looking for a clue on the face of the silent guard sat in front of him. They couldn't have arrived at their destination yet. Something was amiss.
Then the doors opened, and his heart sank.
- "Get out", the uniformed warden commanded, "we're taking a walk."
- "So", Wilkerson said as he stepped down into the blinding light of day, "this is how it ends."
They were in the middle of nowhere, in what looked like a country road running along some woods. The warden walked a resigned Wilkerson some distance behind the treeline, toward a trio of somber looking men in black suits.
- "He's all yours", the warden said, uncuffing Wilkerson.
- "Thank you", one of the men in suits said.
His voice seemed familiar to Wilkerson in an odd way. Where had he heard it before ? Not that it mattered anyway, he thought. Time to face the end.
- "Don't look so gloom Wilkerson", the man said with a smirk, "we're not here to kill you."
That got the former FBI agent's attention.
- "What do you mean ?"
- "Agent Doodlum", the man replied, extending his hand for Wilkerson to shake, "CIA. We're here to offer you a job."
> > > RETASKING AUXILIARY ASSET... Done.
It was the first time, Fusco noted, than his new partner and himself were having breakfast together. Strange how such an ordinary thing could make him feel so nice, after all they'd been through. He smiled, causing Silva to raise her eyes from her coffee with a puzzled look.
- "Did I say something funny ?"
She then proceeded to check if she'd spilled some of the beverage on herself, much to Fusco's amusement.
- "Hey", he said, "don't steal my shtick now, partner. I'm the one spilling things."
Silva laughed, the clear sound of it filling the room and warming Fusco's heart. She was one of the good ones.
- "Any news from Shawn and the others ?", she asked.
- "Some", Fusco nodded pensively, "not much. They're alive, which is good news. Seems something pretty big went down while we were busy busting Galvani and his boys."
The Machine had been elliptic as usual in her replies to Fusco's inquiries, but at least he knew his friends were alive, which was something, he supposed.
- "What about Kolinsky ?", Silva inquired, "You hear anything ? Weird that he'd escape like that then vanish into thin air. Doesn't feel like the guy."
That was weird indeed. But before Fusco could answer, his attention was grabbed by one of the diner's patrons calling out to others around him.
- "Guys! Check this out !"
Turning to the TV suspended above the room, Silva and Fusco were surprised to see Kolinky's face plastered across the screen.
- "And in a puzzling development", the news presenter was saying, "wanted murderer Pavel Kolinsky was found dead near Trieste, Italy. So far, local authorities have refused to comment."
- "Well", Fusco muttered, "guess that's taken care of."
- "You think that's what they went out to do ?", Silva asked, "Shaw and the others ?"
Fusco shrugged, turning his attention back to his food.
- "How the Hell would I know ? It's not like I ever get invited to the cool parties. But whatever it was, it seems like the A team lives to fight another day. Which means", he smiled, half to himself, "that I must continue to endure a perpetuity of pain and misery."
Behind him, the news anchor had shifted subjects, addressing unconfirmed reports of a "fireball of epic proportions" being witnessed by scientists crews all over the Antarctic. Silva shot her partner a quizzical look.
- "What ?"
- "I just noticed", she explained, "you never gave me a nickname like you seem to do all your friends."
- "Sure I did", Fusco grinned, "now pass the coffee along, detective Nosypants."
The sea looked as calm as it ever did, and yet Harold Finch could not tire of it. Sitting on his porch, listening to the songs of nearby birds, he felt at peace.
He'd followed the latest developments from afar, of course, but the Machine had reached out to assure him that all was under control. The Faceless were no more, and Kolinsky was dead. Finch had not asked about that latter part. Some lives, he thought, could not be saved, and even though he still wasn't sure his creation could entirely be trusted, this was the one decision which he wasn't going to begrudge it.
He'd been there himself, after all. Quite literally.
- "There you are", Grace Hendricks said as she came out of the house.
- "I'm hardly a difficult person to find these days", Finch said, amused by the irony of it all.
- "True", Grace acquiesced, "but you've got visitors tonight."
Surprised, Finch got up, shuffling awkwardly to face his house, from which two men were now emerging. Logan Pierce, he noted, looked several years younger than when he'd last seen him, his face clean shaven and harboring his formerly customary smug smirk. Reginald Baker, on the other hand, looked as if he'd been through Hell, his face pale as he wobbled around on a pair of crutches, each step evidently painful.
- "Mr. Pierce", Finch greeted them warmly, walking toward them, "Mr. Baker. To what do I how the pleasure ?"
- "Mr. Finch", Pierce shook his host's hand.
- "We where in the neighborhood", Baker said, a rare smile gracing his lips, "Figured we'd stop by. I'm not really fast these days, you see."
- "Should I even ask ?", Finch inquired, looking the man up and down and noting that he had elected to wear a suit despite how obviously unconformable it seemed to feel, "At least I see you took my fashion advice to heart."
- "Yeah well", Baker laughed, "my other clothes are full of holes, for some reason. But don't worry, Finch, we'll fill you in soon enough."
- "But not before Root and Ms. Shaw get here", Pierce added, "Wouldn't want to deprive them of the opportunity to brag."
- "We did blow up a research station", Baker noted, giving himself an appreciative nod, "although, to be fair, I was unconscious for that last bit."
- "Don't sell yourself short, Mr. Baker", Pierce commented with a wry smile, "you did fight an entire mercernary outfit by yourself. With a stolen tank, might I add."
- "Oh dear", Finch said, his head already spinning slightly.
And yet, he could not suppress a smile.
- "It's beautiful, isn't it ?", Root said softly, her left arm entwining itself with one of Shaw's.
They were standing atop one of the cliffs near Finch's place, watching the sun set over the Adriatic. If someone had told Shaw she'd be doing something this sappy a couple years back, she'd probably have shot them in the kneecaps. If they'd told her she'd actually sort of maybe enjoy it, well, she would probably have aimed higher.
- "Life's funny", she muttered.
- "It sure is", Root assented, turning her gaze toward her, "and sometimes it's even nice."
The weird feeling was back in Shaw's stomach. At first, it had annoyed her but now she had come to like it. It might be unsettling, unusual and sometimes annoying but so was Root. And Root, she knew, was good. Root was who she wanted. She was sure of that, at least.
- "We did it", Root whispered as she looked back to the sun, which now seemed to be disappearing beneath the waterline, "we won."
- "They'll always be bad guys", Shaw gave a slight shrug, "but that's okay. I like shooting people."
She smirked, causing Root to burst out laughing. It was a clear, heartfelt laugh. The laugh of one that got away. And then, slowly, it died away.
- "Do you know which day this is ?", Root asked, seemingly out of the blue.
- "Friday ?", Shaw deadpanned, quirking an eyebrow slightly.
- "Technically true", Root said, her attempt at a condescending tone undermined by the broad smile that had just split her lips, "and yet wildly off the mark."
She paused for half a minute or so, her gaze losing itself in the distance, before resuming.
- "It's been five years to the day", she said, her voice taking on a distant quality, as it often did when she was lost in thoughts, "since Hanford."
- "The day you met the Machine", Shaw nodded in understanding.
- "Yes", Root acquiesced, then turned to face her companion, "but it isn't the only thing that happened that day."
- "I seem to remember shooting you."
It seemed so far away, lifetimes ago. They'd both been very different persons than they were today, Shaw mused.
- "Funny how that turned out", she continued, smiling to herself.
By her side, Root stayed silent for another moment.
- "Sameen", she finally said, her tone ever so slightly graver, "I know you hate that kind of stuff, and I also know that you know but... There's something I really want to tell you."
Despite herself, Shaw felt her heart skip a beat. She had a feeling she knew where this was going, and wasn't sure she liked it. Maybe it even scared her, although she'd never admit to it.
- "What is it ?"
Root turned to face her, locking her big, expressive hazel eyes with her and looking, for once, almost at a loss for words.
- "I love you Sameen."
While this was no secret, and no big news either, it surprised Shaw that Root had finally been able to use the actual words. She suspected the other woman had avoided doing so out of care for her. She didn't want Shaw to feel as if she had to put her own, specific, way of feeling into words. And yet, she had finally given in.
- "It's okay", Root continued, "you don't have to answer. I just wanted to say it. Too many close calls these days."
Shaw stayed silent for a moment. She could see her companion was starting to worry, probably wondering whether she'd made a terrible mistake finally saying those words. She was caring like that.
- "Listen", she elected to say, pausing to chose her words, "I suck at this. I don't even know what that word means to you, I can't fathom it."
Root opened her mouth to start speaking, but Shaw shut her up with a glance and resumed. She had to see this through by herself, and not allow Root to offer her yet another cop out. She owed the tall hacker this much.
- "But you know, maybe I shouldn't try to. I mean, it's not like you can get what goes on inside my head either, right ? And yet, somehow, we manage... Against all odds, despite me being who I am and you being such an irritating dork with a death wish the size of Mars..."
Still silent, Root was now listening intently, her eyes broadcasting all sorts of emotions. Why did they have to be so expressive ? It wasn't fair.
- "I guess, what I mean is..."
She paused again. This was bullshit, she thought. She was Sameen Shaw. The baddest of them all. She could do this.
- "Oh, screw it", she groaned, rolling her eyes, then took and deep breath, and said it.
"I love you too, Root."
Someone once asked me what I had learned of it all.
I've learned that everyone dies alone.
But before that, before dying, everyone of them has to live.
And life is not something that can be endured alone.
What we are and what me mean to others are one and the same.
And so, if you meant something to someone, loved someone.
Maybe you never really die.
And maybe... Maybe this isn't the end at all.