Carter scowled when her phone rang again, but she checked the number while she was stopped at a light and answered it with relief and exasperation. "Finch, where the hell have you been?"

"Is Taylor safe?" he asked.

Joss turned and looked over the seat at him. The boy was quiet, but he wasn't asleep. He was lying on the seat, holding his hands in front of his face and wiggling his fingers. His face had an expression of wonder, as if he'd never seen his own hands before.

"He's been drugged," she said heavily. "Just like the guy at Chaos, according to Fusco."

"Oh, God. Are you at the hospital?"

"No. I'm taking him home. He's alright, Finch. Or he will be."

"How did this happen?"

"The drugs are in Perk," Carter explained. The light changed; she put her phone on speaker and clipped it to the dash board.

"Perk?"

"It's an energy drink. Brand new. Someone was giving out free samples this afternoon. Lots of them. But Taylor only drank half of his, and Fusco got to him in time to clear most of it out before it hit his system."

"Clear most … oh." She could imagine the look on the genius' face.

"Finch, listen. This stuff is all over the city. There may be hundreds of bottles out there."

"Oh, dear."

"So how come your M—" She stopped herself. Finch had warned her, and she had promised, never to speak about the Machine out loud except in very specific safe places. "How come your early warning system didn't give us any early warning?"

Finch sighed. "As I explained, Detective, the system is currently experiencing significant difficulties."

"Will it be able to help us now? Where's John?"

"Mr. Reese is … addressing a related issue."

Carter's eyes narrowed. That sounded like an evasion. "Finch, what …"

Taylor screamed, "Mama! Clowns!"

"They won't hurt you, Baby," she promised.

"I don't wanna see them!"

"You don't have to see them. Here, we're driving away from them, okay? It's okay. They can't keep up with the car."

"What if they run?"

"I'll drive fast."

"Okay."

Carter glanced over the seat. Her son seemed to be asleep again. "Finch?"

"It sounds as if you have your hands full, Detective. Are you certain you don't want to take him to the hospital? I can …"

"We'll be fine, Finch," she snapped. "You need to take care of the rest of the city."

"Of course. Have you notified …"

"The chief of police, the mayor's office, the FBI, DHS. Moss is on it. I don't know about the rest."

Taylor sat up. "Are we at the petting zoo?"

"No, Baby. We're going home."

"When are we going to the petting zoo?"

"In the morning."

"Ooohhhhh."

Finch said, "Please call if you need anything, Detective."

"Thanks, Finch." Before he could hang up, she asked, "How's Christine?"

"She's doing … much better than I could have hoped."

"That's fake."

"I know."

"Mama!" Taylor whined. "I'm thirsty!"

"Talk to you in the morning," Carter said to Finch. She clicked her phone off. "Right. Let's get you home and get you a drink."


His cell phone buzzed, but when he picked it up there was no call, no message.

"Show me," Donnelly murmured, "if you can, show me how I can help you."

His screen went blank. Then it opened a surveillance window. A city street, dark, empty except for a black town car parked by the curb. And a lone man in a suit, standing alone on the sidewalk.

The angle of the camera caught the reflection of the streetlight on his glasses.

Donnelly looked swiftly over his shoulder. His door was mostly closed. No one was watching from the center of the Den. It was dangerous, for all of them. Asena knew that. She would have weighed the dangers with the advantages before she presented this option. Assuming she could still calculate risk reliably. He took a deep breath. "All right," he breathed. "If he can help, hook us up."


Reese was very tired. But his arms and legs were restless, twitching, and he couldn't get any rest.

"Do you want to walk it off a little?" Joan suggested.

John turned, surprised. "When did you get here?"

"I've been here a while. The Narcan, it can make your muscles twitch. It might help if you moved around for a while."

"Okay." He struggled to his feet. It was chilly and damp and dark. "Cold," he commented.

"Here's your jacket." She helped him put it back on. Then she held a water bottle out to him. "You should try to drink."

He sipped a little. The water was luke-warm and stale-tasting. But he was wildly thirsty. He chugged it down. Then he touched the small of his back. "Where's my weapon?"

"We don't allow guns down here," Joan said reasonably.

It was the first rule she'd told him. He remembered that now. She was his friend, this kind, dignified woman. His first friend in a very long time. But she kept the peace in the homeless camp, and she was firm about the rules. He reached inside his jacket. His knife was still there. Knives were okay. Useful for things besides hurting people. Almost every homeless person he knew carried some kind of knife.

John looked around. He'd thought he was familiar with the whole camp, but this place was different. He could tell from the sound and the air that they were underground. "Where are we?"

"It's a safe place," Joan said easily. "Right now there's no one here but us."

His knee twitched so hard it almost buckled. "Walking," he said, to himself. Then, to Joan, he said, "Come with me?"

"You know it, sweetie." She put her hand on his arm and they walked.


The pay phone rang.

Finch looked toward it. Besides Carter's message, there had been fifteen blank notifications on his cell. Chirps from the Machine. And now the pay phone. He had to answer it, of course, if only because Christine had insisted. But he was deeply reluctant. I can't save anyone else until I save my own people.

I won't.

Drugs in energy drinks. How many people had been poisoned? How wide-spread was it? Who would do such a thing?

What hadn't the Machine caught it in advance?

Detective Carter's question was completely legitimate. This was exactly the kind of thing the Machine had been designed to catch. But his answer had been honest, too.

Decima's virus was slowing the Machine more every day. Nothing Finch had tried had been any help. It was only a matter of time now.

Taylor was safe. He couldn't hear anything from John and Christine. There was only one useful thing he could do. He answered the phone.

He heard the familiar whir of the Machine's verbal interface. It went on for five seconds longer than he expected. Then the electronic voice said, "P … p … p …"

Finch moved the receiver away from his ear and looked at it. That was a completely useless gesture, of course. He put it back to his ear. "Errrrrr," the Machine said. "P … er …"

"Perk?" Finch guessed. That was useless, too, of course. The verbal interface was one-way.

But the Machine stopped talking and the line went dead.

Harold hung up the receiver and waited.

Sirens moved past him to the north, and another set, closer, to the west.

He listened. Even without the sirens, the city around him seemed loud, unsettled.

The pay phone rang again. He lifted the receiver. "P…errrrrr …"

"Yes, Perk, I know."

The Machine hung up again.

Then, unexpectedly, his cell phone chimed with a new text message.

It was from an unknown number.

CALLER: NED

FORWARDING MESSAGE FROM: M

MESSAGE FORWARDED: FOR I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM

Harold stared at the screen. He felt cold, sick. Horrified. Possibly the most terrifying line Harlan Ellison had ever written – and there was no doubt it had come directly from the Machine. It wasn't refusing to speak to him. It was unable to speak to him.

Except – it had clearly found a way to speak to someone. NED. Who the hell was NED?

Acting as much on hope as on hunch, he clicked the message and then the green phone key. Unexpectedly, the call went through. It rang once, and then Nicholas Donnelly – Nicholas Ellis Donnelly – said, "Took you long enough."


"This place is cool," John pronounced happily. "Are we going to get in trouble?" His tone said he didn't really mind, he was just curious.

"For being here?" Christine answered. "No. Why would we?"

He looked around the dim cavern. "It doesn't look very safe."

"It's okay. There's no one here but us."

"Yeah, but … they really let kids play down here?"

She considered. "Probably best if we don't tell anybody."

He nodded eagerly. "It can be our secret. I'm good at keeping secrets." He turned in a full circle. "Can we go exploring?"

"Sure."

He started off eagerly. There was a stage – a stage, underground, how weird was that? He jumped up on it, then stomped across it. His feet made a loud thumping sound as he walked over the hollow space. He paused, listened for echoes, then stomped again. "Cool!" he exclaimed. "Come up here, try it!"

He went to the front of the stage and helped Christine up. She stomped with him. "That's fun," she agreed.

John stomped one more pass across the empty stage. "You think they really used to do shows here?"

"Sure. Back in the twenties."

"Like Shakespeare or what?"

"I think more like singers, live music. And probably strippers."

Reese shook his head solemnly. "Not strippers. There's no pole." Then he cracked a wide grin. "You can't have strippers without a pole."

Christine laughed. "These would have been old-timey strippers. The kinds with balloons and tassles."

"Tassles." That word struck him as funny. He giggled. "Tassles," he said again, and laughed out loud.

He moved to the side, where the curtain hung. It had been dark green, he thought. Now it was a lot of ugly colors. Halloween slime colors. He touched it. It was damp, and his hand came away sticky. "Ewwwwww." He wiped it on his pants, but it didn't all come off. "Ewwwwww!"

"Here, let me get that." Christine held his wrist and poured a little water from a plastic bottle over his palm. He worked his hand open and closed, then wiped it on his pants again. "Better?"

"Mostly." It still felt slimy. "Ewww." Then he forgot about it. "What's back there?" he asked, pointing to the back of the stage.

"Let's go see," she encouraged easily.

He started off, then paused to stomp a few more times before he left the stage.

There was a little hallway there, with three open doors. The first was a small room with just a dressing table with a broken mirror, a hanger bar, and a little chair. "For the star," Reese whispered confidentially.

The next room was much bigger, with a long counter, also covered with broken mirror pieces, and six stools. "For the not-stars," Reese confirmed, nodding wisely. In the back corner there was a pile of things under a gray blanket. He moved closer. "Someone lives here!"

"We should probably leave that alone," Christine said calmly.

"But they live here! In this dressing room, someone lives here." He lifted the corner of the blanket. There was a folded jacket there. That was probably a pillow sometimes. There were two cans of tuna, a pack of jerky, and three unopened bottles of water. A grimy white towel, a little bottle of hand sanitizer, a pair of socks. "That's all he has," Reese said in sad wonder. "In the whole world, this is all he has."

"We should leave it," Christine said again.

"Yeah." John dropped the blanket, smoothed it back to where it had been. His hand was still sticky. "Only … do you have any money?" He checked his own pocket, found his wallet, pulled it out and opened it. He counted the bills eagerly. "Wow. I have a lot of money. Where did I get all this money?" He looked at Christine, alarmed. "Did I steal someone's money?"

"No, sweetie. That's yours. You earned it at your job."

"I have a job?"

"What did you want the money for?" she redirected gently.

"Oh. The money … my hand. Do you think it would be okay – do you think I could buy the hand stuff? 'Cause my hand's really sticky. Do you think he'd mind?"

"No, I think that would be okay."

Reese selected a bill. "I have a fifty dollar bill," he said wonderingly.

"That's too much," she said. "Do you have a five?"

"No." He put the bill back, crestfallen. "Oh, but here's a twenty. Is that better?"

"That's better. But we should buy the water, then, too. We're almost out and you're gonna need it."

John bit his bottom lip. "Then we should leave the fifty."

"No, the twenty is enough."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

John squatted down and lifted the blanket again. He squeezed a big blop of hand sanitizer on his palm and worked it over both his hands. It stung some places, where he guessed he had little cuts. But his hands smelled a lot better, and they weren't sticky. He put the rest of the bottle back, tucked the twenty under it. He handed the water bottles to Christine.

Then, while she was busy stuffing them in her shoulder bag, he snuck the fifty dollar bill out and put it with the twenty.

He hurried his companion out before she could notice. It made him giggle.


Finch glanced up at the security camera, then limped off into the shadow of a doorway. "What do you want?" he asked curtly.

"I want to save lives and protect the innocent," Donnelly answered in the same tone. "What do you want?"

"I can't help you. It's too dangerous."

"There may be a thousand people stoned out of their minds in New York City right now. Maybe more. And your Machine is having a melt-down. So you are going to help me, Harold."

Finch took a long slow breath. Beyond the empty street, he heard more sirens scream away. They'd been running all night. Taylor drugged, John drugged. Christine had killed a man … "What are you seeing?" he asked.

On the other end of the call, Donnelly gave an audible huff of relief. "She's just coughing up numbers."

"Identities …"

"No. Just this long endless string of numbers. No breaks in it. Just numbers. And she's …"

"Struggling," Finch supplied. "I know."

"What do I do?"

Harold took a long moment to consider the problem. "Lighten the data load, first."

"How?"

"This energy drink, this Perk. It's apparently all over the city?"

"It went on sale late today. Available in all kinds of stores. And there were samples given away all over the city."

"Start with the stores," Harold instructed. "Find out where the Perk was shipped and in what quantities. If you can identify the manufacturer, the distributor …"

"Already done," Donnelly said.

"Good. I understand Agent Moss has already been activated. Give him the information, have him confiscate all remaining stock from those stores and from the warehouses."

"We don't know if it's every bottle or …"

"You don't have time to sort that out," Finch snapped. "Get it all. Have Moss set up a spread sheet tracking the recovered bottles. The Machine will be able to access that and rule those out as possible threats."

"Alright. What about the bottles that have been sold?"

"The bigger chains," Finch said, "Duane Reade, the grocery chains, they have computerized inventory tracking. You should be able to identify when the product was sold. If they were purchased with debit or credit cards, or with customer loyalty cards, you can identify the potential victims."

"There could be hundreds, thousands …"

"And that's that many fewer numbers the Machine has to consider," Harold answered.

"What about cash purchases?" Donnelly asked.

"Once you've identified non-cash transactions, you should be able to use the computerized sales records to determine the time …"

"… and cross- check them with in-store surveillance," the former agent said. "Facial recognition software should be able to help us there."

"Exactly." Finch nodded. "You'll still have to do leg work on the independent stores, any bodega or gas station that isn't computerized. But it will narrow the field considerably."

"I'll have Moss get purchase locations from the vics that have already turned up in the hospital or in custody," Donnelly added.

"Good."

"The free samples?"

Finch sighed. "That's going to be a problem. We can locate the people passing out the samples, call up surveillance video of their activities, but …"

"Most of it will be low-quality."

"I'm afraid so." More sirens passed on the next street, much closer this time. "Under normal circumstances, the Machine would be able to identify those people."

"Wait," Donnelly said.

There was silence, and then the former agent came back. "She changed the list."

"What?"

"It's still an endless list of numbers, but it's much shorter."

Finch nodded. "She's listening to us. She knows the steps we'll take, and which outliers we need her to identify."

"Slick."

"Yes." Against his will, Harold smiled to himself. Despite Decima's virus, this portion of the programming was adapting beautifully.

"I still have … thousands of numbers here," Donnelly said.

Finch looked toward his car. He assumed Christine had left his laptop there when she emptied the tote bag. Then he looked the other way. Three blocks down was the back entrance of Chaos. The café would be closed, of course, but on the third floor was a highly comprehensive computer system. It wasn't his, but he had access. "I'm sending you an email address," he said. "Send me the list. I'll see what I can do with it."

He sent a quick text with one of his stand-by throw-away addresses.

"It's massive," Donnelly protested.

"Then send me the first thousand lines."

"Sending now."

"I'll be in touch."

Finch clicked his phone off before the former agent could answer. He sent a text to Christine – it wouldn't go through yet, they were out of signal range in the underground tunnels, but she would get it when they emerged – then walked as quickly as he could toward her old home.

He was very much aware of the cameras watching him as he limped down the empty street. He knew the Machine would know he'd aggravated his old wounds. He could almost hear it calculating how much force he'd been hit with, how much muscle damage he'd taken to his neck to exacerbate his chronic injuries to that degree. He touched his cheek. It was swollen and very tender.

Tomorrow, he thought, or the next day, John Reese was going to come to his senses and realize that he'd attacked Harold. Finch knew him well enough to know that his guilt would be intense. He wondered if he could stay away from him until the worst of the swelling and bruising went away. But that would take weeks. It was not feasible.

Still, he could hide some of the evidence. He drew out his phone and swiftly dialed into the peripherals of Christine's security system. He set the exterior cameras on a loop. The Machine, and anyone watching the feeds, would think that there was simply nothing happening at the back of the building. Reese, if he decided to recover the feed in a day or two, would not see Finch limping up the back stairs one agonizing step at a time.

It was a small thing, but it was something.


"Mama?" Taylor called softly from the back of the car.

"What, Baby?" They were only a few blocks from home. The boy had slept most of the way.

He was still on his side on the seat. He didn't make any attempt to sit up. "I smell bad."

Carter sniffed. Her son did have the distinct aroma of teen sweat and vomit. "I've smelled worse."

"Do you think Tia noticed?"

"No, Baby. She was probably all sweaty from dancing, too." Joss was pleased that her son's mind seemed to be back in the present.

"I thought I might still be in love with her," Taylor confessed. That was not something he would have normally admitted, Carter thought. "I thought maybe we'd start over. But there's just nothing there, you know? I mean, I still like her and all, but just as a friend."

"Well, that's okay. It's good that you know that now."

"I don't think she loves me, either. But I think she wants to."

"The heart doesn't always do what we want it to do."

Taylor went silent for a long time.

"They're making see-through solar panels," he finally said.

"What?"

"Solar panels that are see-through. So they can be made into windows. Wouldn't that be cool? Windows that are solar panels, too? You could build a whole skyscraper and it would power itself."

Joss nodded. "That sounds very interesting, Taylor."

"Or a car. It could power itself up while it was parked."

"Uh-huh."

The boy sat up suddenly. "Mama!"

"Yes, Taylor?" she answered as calmly as she could.

"Could I have a bubble bath?" His voice had a bouncy lilt to it, like he was five years old.

"Sure. When we get home." A bath would do him good, she decided. And bubbles – why not?

"Do we have any purple ones?"

Carter shook her head. Super-Soapy Purple Grape had always been Taylor's favorite – when he was very small. They'd smelled like grape jam, and Joss had always made him rinse off in the shower after he soaked. "I think we're out. But I have some rose stuff you could use."

"Sounds girlie."

"Would you rather smell like puke?"

Taylor burst out laughing. "You said puke."

He kept laughing until he fell over on his side again. Then he lay there and giggled.

Carter sighed heavily and parked her car.


Reese crouched on his heels. He was careful to keep his face turned away. If he looked at her, as he very much wanted to, she'd get a good look at him. That was inevitable, he supposed, but for the moment she didn't know his clean-shaven identity.

"Glad you took my advice about wearing that vest, Detective," he said calmly. He could hear her breathing, heavy but strong and steady. "I know this doesn't change anything. I know you'll still arrest me if you get the chance." He knew Finch was listening, knew he wouldn't like it. But he didn't care. She deserved to hear the truth right now. "But you should know, whether you like me or not, Joss, you're not alone."

He listened a moment more to her breathing. She was in pain, stunned by the impact of the bullets on her vest, but she would be okay. He straightened silently and moved off into the shadows.

He felt warm, for the first time in a long time.