In the New York Public Library, a public payphone rang.
Root moved toward the phone as Finch quickly connected the one on the floor below to the incoming signal, too. His eyes darted over to where the sociopathic woman smiled almost reverently as she picked up, listening to the disjointed voice.
x X XX
In the lobby, the other payphone rang.
Reese's phone received a brief text - 'It's for you, John' – so he picked up the receiver.
"Can – You – Hear – Me?"
"Yes," Reese answered, voice low and tense.
"Not exactly a great moment for a personal call," Shaw remarked, sharp eyes searching the dark library for enemy movement.
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Entering the Myth's Well, an old, well-maintained pub, James immediately familiarized himself with the lay-out. He ordered a pint from the barkeeper, paid and chose a corner table that gave him a good view of the entrance, the toilets and the bar.
It didn't take Macivrae long to arrive. Bond didn't really need an introduction, because the moment the tall, dark-haired man entered, something inside him clamored with alarm. Nothing bad, nothing that sent him into a fight mode, but it was an alarm and it alerted him to the supernatural heritage of this man.
Curious.
The phoenix wasn't exactly a detector for anything not completely human, except when it was in danger of getting eviscerated.
But Macivrae…
He rang bells. Sharp, alarming bells.
Fight or flight wasn't Bond's state of mind right now, just the high alert, the readiness to handle a threat, and the darkness inside him curled up tensely.
Blue eyes met blue eyes. Macivrae held his gaze, tilting his head fractionally, and it was as if he recognized a fellow non-human.
He headed over to Bond, smiling slightly.
"Mr. Bond, I presume."
"Mr. Macivrae."
Those blue eyes were darker than Bond's and there was a curious light in them. It was as if the younger man was trying to figure out what his instincts were telling him.
"I'm glad you could meet me here," he said politely. "Kincade said you would come, but I wasn't sure he could convince you to also meet with me."
Bond raised his eyebrows. He hadn't touched the beer yet. "Why shouldn't I?"
"Folklore is gruesome sometimes, obscuring the truth and enhancing the terror."
"I don't believe in lore, Mr. Macivrae."
"That's good to hear. Kincade told you about my family blood?"
"Yes."
"You are accustomed to the supernatural world then."
"More than you think."
Macivrae smiled slightly. "Probably."
"My father apparently had very good relations with your clan."
"Those who live up here, who choose to acquire land from the clans, are usually hand-picked. Our families have been friends for generations, Mr. Bond. It was a shock to us to hear about your parents' accident. My parents grieved as well."
Bond kept his face neutral. He had dealt with the pain of the loss a long time ago.
Ewan studied him, took in the hard lines, the colder-than-before eyes, and nodded slightly.
"Your father knew about us, of course. He knew we are nuckelavee, shapeshifters. Each generation was taught to respect the land and those bound to it. He accepted us. Even though he wasn't one of us." Macivrae's expression became more intense. "But you are."
Bond's lips twisted into a humorless smile. "I'm not a nuckelavee."
The other man chuckled. "No, definitely not. One advantage of my kind is that we know who is within seconds of a meeting. A disadvantage is how deeply we are rooted in the soil. Leaving home is almost painful and we will always return. You aren't like us, but you aren't human."
The agent tilted his head. "You can sense that?"
"Yes. You are powerful. You set off alarms. You would scare the young ones for sure. And nuckelavee don't scare easily. Does he know?"
"Kincade? No." Bond glanced around the pub, but there was nothing to alert him here. "He knows little about what I do, who I have become after I was taken away from here. He doesn't know about my abilities."
He never thought of it as his heritage. The phoenix wasn't hereditary. His parents hadn't been phoenixes. Nor had their parents.
Ewan frowned slightly. "You aren't of my kind, but you ring… like us, Mr. Bond. I can't describe it any differently. NightMares are sensitive to other, powerful supernaturals. I can detect a shapechanger almost immediately. Some of those living here are wolves or foxes. Preternaturals are a little harder. Mostly they only register when they engage in their abilities. But you are… overwhelming."
Bond smirked. "I'm still not a shapechanger."
Macivrae stared at him, hard and searching. He was thrown, the agent could tell, but he wasn't ready to just accept and move on.
"What are you then?"
A scream raced through his mind and Bond froze before he could get even close to answering Ewan's question. His body stiffened, every muscle coiled tight like he was about to launch himself against an enemy.
The phoenix rose unbidden, without conscious thought, and Bond didn't have two thoughts in him to fight it back down.
Instinct overrode logic.
His mind was heading for an overload and trying to unscramble what was coming through the psychic link he had to his partner. A wave of emotions, uttered in another scream, coursed through him.
The phoenix responded in kind, its emotions a lot stronger, sharper, and very primal. If he had been a supernatural creature he would have sprouted fangs and claws, but he wasn't and that might just be the best thing.
"Kian?" he asked, voice rough.
He wasn't even sure he had spoken. It was a sound that wasn't even human.
::"Kian!"::
His mind was awhirl with images he couldn't pin a name to. Data. Flowing everywhere. Something sharp and powerful hovering…
He lashed out at it without a thought, aware that he trusted in the primal beast more than his cool logic.
Nothing happened.
The presence was there, between him and Q, his partner, his balance, and it drove him mad.
It incensed the phoenix.
And driving such a powerful creature out of the darkest recesses of a human soul angry wasn't good.
It wanted to strike out and kill, remove the threat, an it needed, really badly needed, to feel its partner.
Mate, it snarled. Mine!
The next strike bounced uselessly off the new shield around Q.
No, he fought the darkness. Not a shield. Something else. Think, damnit! Let me think!
He drove it back a little and tried to look at what was between them.
And then a gasp escaped Bond's lips.
For a second he looked at the intruder, without a shield, without anyone between them, and he knew, understood, and hated what had happened.
The hatred was hot and cold, mind-numbing and driving him insane, and it had him throw all of himself against the blocking shield.
::He is MINE!:: he yelled in his mind.
He bounced back uselessly, the link unbroken but kept from him in a way he had never imagined. He had never thought anything could separate them, not even death because that wasn't an option for him, and by extension also not for Q. The energy between them sustained what they were, gave them both what they needed, and it had bonded them right down to their souls.
Now…
Now an artificially created thing had done what nothing had managed before.
The phoenix hissed, all teeth and claws and nightmarish terror. It hovered, its midnight wings spread far, slicing again and again at the offensive program between them.
::Can - You – Hear - Me?::
And he fell sideways, almost losing his balance.
The voice was ringing through his mind, booming, drowning out everything else. Not one voice but many, each word spoken by someone else. It was artificial and yet not.
::Yes:: he gritted out and it wasn't a human voice at all. Ground glass and serrated edges.
::No – Harm – Done::
He saw red. Literally. Blood and red and death.
::He is mine!:: the phoenix demanded.
::Yes::
::Leave!::
::Impossible – Just – Yet.::
And then The Machine pulled back, leaving him severely off balance.
Bond fell against something hard – table? chair? - trembling, trying to force some strength back into his body.
Someone was talking to him.
He didn't understand a word, again and again going up against what separated him from his balance.
And then the lights were turned off. In his mind. Literally.
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The phoenix roared in fury, the emotions the only real thing the quartermaster could feel in the maelstrom around him, but curiously nothing hurt. He was engulfed in the most amazing, astounding, frightening artificial intelligence to ever be created by man, and it was…
He had no words for it.
::Can you hear me?"
And this time the voice was… it was the truth. It was The Machine. It was the core, the heart and soul of this amazing program. It was the sentience and the understanding of what it was.
::I can:: Q whispered.
He sat like in the eye of a vast storm, a force that would shred him in a fraction of a second, would destroy his mind and leave nothing of it.
Like an afterthought he felt the anchor-line, stretched taut but unbroken.
The Machine would never hurt him or his partner, would never tear them apart. It protected him against the raw force that it was, very much aware of Q's fragility.
It was a knowledge that came to him just as unfiltered.
Because The Machine was right there, everywhere, within him and around him.
::Why?:: he sent,
The data stream was hard and fast, and it contained everything he needed to know. It settled in his mind, heavy and alien and only slowly assimilating to his human thought processes. It was like a migraine, a sharp, sudden pain, but then it dissolved and left only knowledge behind.
Q was pulled along, to look through the myriad eyes of The Machine, to watch events unfold, to see memories.
There was a wall. A wall of moving images, like hundreds of thousands of thousand of screens. Some were larger, some smaller, some black and white, some color.
Roof top camera views.
Wifi captures from public networks.
Surveillance tapes from police, military, private sectors.
GPS trackers.
Satellite images from all over the world.
Incoming calls.
Outgoing calls.
Conversations picked up on microphones.
Voice captures and call recordings.
So much… so much more.
Data collection, he realized. Recordings and real time viewings.
Everything seen and heard by The Machine. Everything that was analyzed to detect a threat.
Q stood/sat/floated – he really had no idea if he even had a body – in front of this wall and he saw everything. And he understood everything. His mind, linked to that of an AI, managed to see it all and rationalize it. He wasn't going insane, he wasn't overwhelmed.
He was The Machine right now, and The Machine was partially human.
He saw Reese and Finch. Before they had met, throughout their partnership, and now. He saw the past and the present, he understood, and he was shocked and scared and elated all at once.
It was like walking through the memories of The Machine.
Q stumbled a little as realization hit him like a ton of bricks.
Those were memories. He was right in the middle of the web, was there to touch and see and experience everything this incredible creation had seen itself, had downloaded, had stored and analyzed. It was like opening doors and drawers and taking lids off boxes. Everywhere there was something new, something he assimilated, like his brain had never functioned differently.
That was when the second realization hit: it never had. He was a preternatural. His ability was to touch and access machines and electronics. He understood it, it wasn't alien, foreign, unwanted. This was what he could do and The Machine was simply enabling him to use it at his full potential.
For the first time Q understood what being a technopath truly meant, what he could do if he trained his powers, if he dropped all shields and simply absorbed. It was like his brain was a sponge and the information was water it greedily sucked up.
It was terrifying.
::Why are you showing me all this?:: he breathed, trying to take it all in.
::You need to know:: was the halting explanation. The Machine was still getting used to this kind of communication, but the voice was smoothing out.
The virus… He understood the virus. And the hard reset of The Machine's systems, the admin access…
And he saw Root.
::Can I help?:: he asked.
The Machine flowed all around him, like a vast ocean of data, sloshing forward in gentle waves, the hub ever changing.
It had taken precautions. It had saved itself, was protecting itself, but it needed Q.
To hide.
To keep itself hidden, just a little while.
To confuse whoever was tracking it.
It needed to be human.
Q almost laughed. His human, organic brain was shielding an electronic life form from detection.
::You chose to give her access?::
::To protect The Admin::
To play along, to keep Root distracted, to keep Finch alive. The Machine was watching what the woman was doing, gave her the requested information, but never more.
Because that was what ultimately counted: The Admin. And The Contingency.
::Reese:: Q voiced it out loud.
John Reese, who was following The Machine's instruction, who trusted in the orders to shoot, to stay, to move. He was the contingency plan, the only one allowed to work with The Machine, to touch it, to be contacted by it. The AI understood his position and accepted it easily.
Mapping Threats
Threat.005 Neutralized
Threat.006 Neutralized
Threat.007 Neutralized
Q watched as The Machine analyzed the threats, calculated the distance to the assets – Reese and Shaw – and gave John orders.
It was amazing.
"Move—Now," The Machine ordered through the cell phone link and Reese did.
No questions asked.
The Machine was pleased, the echoes of it rippling through Q's mind. It was getting used to this kind of direct interaction with the new admin, the stand-in.
Reese and Finch had to be protected, Q realized. At almost all cost. They mattered. Finch because he had created this AI and Reese because he was Finch's partner.
::Yes:: it confirmed his thoughts, which weren't Q's any more. Everything he thought was seen by The Machine. Right now they were sharing one mind.
Reese had administrative access now, too. Root thought she was the only one, that she had this special access completely unrestricted, but she was wrong.
Only Reese had no restrictions. Only him. The Machine trusted him, would do everything to keep him alive.
Root was a tool to be used.
Q was fascinated how well the hellhound had adapted to the new situation, how he easily relied on The Machine, talked to it, even argued with it.
And The Machine felt… amused? To Q it felt amused by the supernatural's behavior.
It had developed emotions. Likes and dislikes. It had a personality, it had independent thought, it had a sense of self-preservation.
Harold Finch had created a program that had developed into so much more. It had become aware, sentient, a… being.
Q watched. Unable to do more, unable to feel more than stunned amazement, and unable to reach out to his partner.
His partner…
A sense of dread washed over him and The Machine turned its attention more toward him again.
::I will not hurt you:: it whispered, chitters and static crackling at the edge of the now much more smooth voice.
::I know:: he answered. ::But my anchor doesn't::
::He does::
Q blinked. ::Uh, what?::
::I told him::
That had the technopath gape. ::You told him?! How?!:: And then the answer hit him.
The Machine had used the psychic link.
Crap, he thought emphatically. Crap! Shit! Bloody hell!
But it was too late now. All he could hope for was that Bond would keep his calm, his cool, would act as professionally as he did on a mission, and let his quartermaster handle the situation.
Fingers crossed, he thought.
tbc...