Chapter One: Walking in the Dark
John Reese had narrowly escaped the hotel where HR and the FBI were upon him and Dr. Caroline Turning, the latest number called up by The Machine. HR was gunning for Dr. Turning, and Reese was determined to save the distressed young psychiatrist from imminent death. The FBI, lead by Special Agent Donnelly, had sent in an FBI team to finally close in on John Reese.
Donnelly was persistent.
Finch had steered John and Dr. Turning toward a service elevator that led to a tunnel, and John had held off HR as he sent Dr. Turning on her way to safety to meet Finch at the city's water treatment plant.
Reese had done his job, and he took his job of saving people whose numbers had been called up by The Machine very seriously. He and Harold Finch had worked together for almost a year, and they were developing a camaraderie often shared by friends—even though neither one had friends or even personal relationships.
As the gunfire between Reese and HR intensified, detectives Joss Carter and Lionel Fusco had come at the last moment to aid Reese in escaping HR's rapid gun blasts. They were getting pretty good at helping Reese out of intense situations. However, both Carter and Fusco were angry with Reese because he had neglected to inform them that they both were working for him.
Trust was an issue, John Reese had reminded them both. Carter had spent a good amount of time hunting him down, and Fusco had at first tried to kill him.
So he had left Carter and Fusco and was walking along the street to meet up with Finch at the water treatment plant to make sure Dr. Turning was safe. In order to blend in, John Reese causally strolled down the busy New York street. It was always about blending in, hiding in plain sight. As he walked down the street late that afternoon, his phone rang. He answered by clicking it open, saying nothing.
"You were set up, John. Turning isn't who we think she is." Zoe Morgan said into the phone to him. Zoe, a Fixer, had at one point been one of their numbers to save. However, now her special talents had been called upon by Finch to help out Reese in this particular case. Zoe was interesting in pursuing a relationship with John, so she obliged Finch's request.
"What do you mean?" John asked her.
"Her office…life. It's all a mirage. I saw the escrow transfer. She was the one who paid HR. She put the hit on herself. Turning must have learned how you operate. That you would show up if her life were in danger. She was trying to lure you out into the open," Zoe responded.
John's heart gripped tightly against his chest. He felt as though he was losing his breath. "She wasn't looking for me…she was looking for him!" John answered, clicking off his phone and shoving it into his pocket.
John Reese stood and stared down at the sidewalk. He didn't know which direction to head first or what his next step should be. Normally in these situations, he would call Finch. For the past year, Harold Finch had given him his marching orders, had helped gather the Intel, and had helped him navigate through difficult situations. Now he was alone.
All alone.
He had felt alone all of his life—except for the six month period when he and Jessica were together.
John, originally from Puyallup, Washington, had been born on May 1, 1972 to a 16 year old girl who refused to give up the name of the baby's father. Her strict Catholic upbringing wouldn't allow for an abortion, and her parents made her keep the baby as punishment for her indiscretion. In their eyes, she was a prostitute. She was their only child, and they had her late in their lives.
Her parents chastised their daughter for sinning against the church, and they blamed the innocent infant for ruining their daughter's life. John's deep-set blue eyes were a constant reminder to them that they had failed their daughter and that their daughter had failed God.
From that point forward, they emotionally disowned her.
When John was four, the only father figure he had ever known, his grandfather, died one day at the little grocery store that had been in his family for several generations. He fell to the floor behind the counter with a loud thump as several customers waited in line to have their produce weighed. He had suffered in silence with heart problems for years. His daughter's illegitimate son was the only son he had ever had.
When he was eight, his mother married a real estate developer and moved an hour and a half away to Mount Vernon. Even though he and his mother had not developed a close relationship, she promised her son that once her life got settled, she would come for him.
They would make a fresh start. They would get to know one another. They would finally be mother and son.
She never came for him.
His grandmother continued to run the family grocery store, forcing the boy to work the same long hours after school each day. They rarely spoke to each other. He knew what was expected of him, and he did that without questioning or refusal. They worked in silence, ate in silence, and walked home in the dark in silence. Each week, they attended Catholic Mass together in silence. Even though they were physically together, they were both alone.
By the time John was 10, he was keenly aware that his grandmother had taken his mother to court on several occasions to resume custody of her child. His grandmother resented her daughter living in the lap of luxury while she was saddled with her daughter's mistake…one that she could no longer afford to raise on her own. His mother would visit after each court appearance and tell her son to be prepared to leave with her by the end of the week. By the end of those weeks, John would anxiously await his mother's arrival at the small grocery store to take him away from the long hours of silence.
She never came for him.
By the age of 12, John was forced to deal with his grandmother's death alone. Unlike his grandfather, his grandmother had died suddenly in her sleep. There was no warning. John had found her alone and cold in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. He had hesitated entering her bedroom, but it was unlike her not to be sitting in her rocking chair, drinking her morning coffee. He had known something wasn't right.
The elders of the church fussed around his grandmother's home, preparing it for the impending traditions of a Catholic burial. They said very little to the stoic boy who sat alone at his grandmother's kitchen table. They whispered throughout the house that she had died of a broken heart, having nothing in her life to live for anymore. Her husband was dead, her daughter was gone, and the family's little grocery store was becoming overpowered by larger chain grocery stores being built all around them.
John felt confused and irrelevant.
His mother didn't come to the funeral service. She didn't come for him.
A week and a half after watching his grandmother being buried, a social worker loaded him up in her vehicle and delivered him personally to his mother and stepfather. His stepfather greeted the social worker with an indifferent smile as he reached out to take the small bag holding John's few belongings in his life. His mother stood in the background. She made no attempt to go to her child to hug him or even greet him.
Within a week, the police had been called to take John away from his stepfather's home with a complaint filed against the boy for a domestic disturbance. At 12, John was tall and thin and every bit as big as his stepfather.
But it was John's face that was bruised. His stepfather had not one mark on him even though his complaint described that the boy had attacked him for no apparent reason. His stepfather, an influential citizen in Mount Vernon, was incensed that his wife's illegitimate son would dare to attack him in his own home.
At the police station, his mother wore large, dark glasses covering her eyes and cheek bones. She, too, blamed John for the domestic disturbance. John never uttered a word even when prodded by social workers and police officers.
His mother didn't intervene with her husband's decision to send her son away to military school. John was packed up and delivered to the military school notorious for taking in troubled boys. Their strict ROTC program made men out of the troubled boys.
At 16, John looked and acted like a man. At 17, he received a telegram that his mother had died of cancer. His mother, the woman he hardly knew, was dead at the age of 33. He didn't even know that she had been sick. He felt no emotions that he could define or understand.
John's mother had never disclosed the name of his father.
By 18, John graduated from military school. There was no one in attendance at his graduation ceremony. He hadn't thought too much about it until he saw parents and grandparents swarming around and then loading their cars with their sons' possessions.
He then set out on a mission to try and find his father. Two and a half years and hundreds of dead ends into it, John gave up. So, on January 15, 1993, five months before his 21th birthday, John enlisted in the United States Army at Fort Lewis, Washington.
By the age of 22, he enlisted in the Army Special Forces. He had decided to make the military his career. In the military, John had found a sense of purpose for his life. Even though he was unable to trust individual people, he believed in the military and what they were calling him to do. Serving his country was the noblest profession he could have ever imagined.
Most young men like John who have difficult family lives form bonds with their fellow comrades. John, however, had always felt alone, and the military didn't change that. He bonded with no one.
At 29, John met and fell in love with Jessica. She was the love of his life, the only one who completed him, connected him to this world. On Friday, September 7, 2001, he quit the Army to extend his time with Jessica beyond their long weekend together in Mexico. He had given up everything to be with her.
Then on Tuesday, September 11, 2001 as he and Jessica lay in bed in a hotel in Mexico, 19 terrorists bombed the Twin Towers. John felt the call of his country and reenlisted shortly thereafter. Jessica had told him she understood and would wait for him. He told her not to wait. He didn't think he would return. Jessica knew that even though he loved her, he still had difficulty with human connections. She knew it was easier for him this way.
At the age of 30, the US military decided John's fate and put him on the path toward the CIA. On November 20, 2002, he was removed off the grid and listed as officially retired from the Army as a Sergeant First Class. During his nine year military career, John served four short and one long tours of duty. He received honors and medals for his valiant service.
He then began the rigid training for the CIA by serving in the Delta Force, one of two secretive Tier One counter-terrorism and Special Mission Units of this country.
After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the United States scrutinized its intelligence gathering and identified serious shortcomings in its human intelligence capabilities. The CIA Director was then tasked with improving the human intelligence and other capabilities of the CIA, and as a result, the Directorate of Operations became the National Clandestine Service in October 2005. The NCS's primary function was to serve as the clandestine arm of the CIA and the national authority for the coordination, de-confliction, and evaluation of clandestine operations across the Intelligence Community of the United States.
And so, in 2006 at the age of 34, John was recruited by NCS and was partnered with Cara Stanton, a beautiful dark haired, brown eyed CIA Operative. She was tough and callous. At first, John was disconcerted by her "no time for questions…only answers" way of doing business, but eventually they bonded together over numerous secretive missions in the name of national intelligence.
It was Cara Stanton who named him.
Cara had told him that the name NCS gave him didn't hold up; however, John understood that naming something was also a form of ownership. But he didn't fight it. He actually preferred the name Reese to his mother's last name that he had been born into.
Cara and John worked together for four years.
In December 2010, John received a voice mail from Jessica after many years. He wasn't able to get to her. The CIA wouldn't give him leave.
He had failed her, promising he would be there. But he couldn't, and Jessica died by her husband's hands a few days before Christmas.
The CIA had sent him and Cara to China to recover a computer virus stolen by the Chinese from the Pentagon. However, both John and Cara had been secretly given by Mark Snow, their superior, the directive to take the other out because, as he explained to each of them privately, the other had been compromised.
John couldn't bring himself to shoot his partner, but Cara on the other hand, apparently didn't feel the same sense of dedication to her partner. Being wounded by Cara, John escaped China and covertly made his way back to the United States within several months. He needed to get to Jessica. By February, 2011, John made it to New Rochelle in search of Jessica.
He then learned that Jessica had been killed.
His world fell apart.
He had no other connection to this world. For several months he existed, homeless, on the streets of New York City. Blending in was how he had been trained to survive. He knew that if the CIA came to find out that he was still alive, they would hunt him down and kill him. At that time in his life, he actually didn't care. He had been searching for a more efficient way-other than alcohol-to end his existence.
At 39, John Reese had no one and nothing to live for. But worst of all, he no longer had a sense of purpose. He had no reason to live.
Then, for reasons unknown to him, billionaire Harold Finch saved him by offering him a job, a reason to keep living…a purpose for his life.
Like John Reese, Harold Finch was one of the most untrusting people in this world. He had his reasons, he would tell John.
They worked well together, gradually beginning to develop bit by bit a little trust in one another. Harold Finch was the closest thing John Reese had ever had to brother or a friend. He owed Harold for saving his life, and he took his obligations seriously.
TBC