A/N I own neither of these shows. Sure wish I did! I'm aware that some of the backstory for Person of Interest may change as the show continues to dribble out clues about things. I'm working with the most recent information I have. A big thank you to Esperanta-the-beta, who got me watching PoI in the first place! Custom cover image by Hank Roll, thank you so much!

Pixels in the Night

Chapter Ten

The Icarus Gate

New York City

He ran his fingers through his hair a few times—something he knew he shouldn't do, with all that goop in it—and poured himself a small glass of brandy. That was something else he had no business doing, given both his responsibilities and the level of painkillers he was using that particularly damp evening, trying to dull the ferocious ache in every affected joint.

He thought back to his hacker days and his heart ached. Those glorious velvety nights when the two of them danced barefoot (virtually speaking) behind firewalls too puny to hold them back because they were too smart, too determined, too blessed to be denied—and eventually she would pop up in IRC. Even then, although she was a stranger to upper-case letters, she eschewed shorthand and the phony intimacy of l337-speak.

It would always begin the same way:

vectress: what are you wearing?

egedn: feathers, my love

vectress: then i'll have to singe them off

egedn: dare you

His heart pounding with recalled passions, he let his gaze drift over at the three images of Penelope Garcia he had dared to print out and post. He had another twenty-nine on his hard drive, safe from Reese's well-meaning but prying eyes.

He'd never had any irrefutable evidence that vectress was actually, physically, a female when they were sharing sweet intimacies online. For all he'd known, vectress could've been some bald fat sweaty Finn or German guy in his grandmother's cellar, but he had believed that she was young, whip-smart, a fiery redhead with smoldering eyes.

And she had been. Good God, the first time she had stripped him of his feathers, the first time she had let her silken robe slip off her ivory shoulders for him, she had been sixteen years old, beyond his wildest fantasies! The frightening question, however, was what she had believed she was talking to. Probably, she'd envisioned some goth godling, a Kurt Cobain of computing. Certainly she'd understood that he could be a fat, balding old dude in his mom's basement—or what she was really engaging with, a middle-aged geek in thick glasses. She probably hadn't envisioned the penthouse or the designer suit, but those things had meant nothing to vectress.

vectress: why do you tremble when I touch you?

egedn: because your touch is magical—but so is mine

vectress: you give off heat like a furnace, like a solar flare

egedn: it can be yours if you'll just give yourself; the world is yours if you just ask

A faint ping interrupted his reverie. He raised his eyes to his monitor and saw that they had a new Number. A new Number, and Reese was off in D.C., watching Weeks's people, twisting FBI agents' arms, and actually standing right next to Penelope Garcia.

He wondered whether she wore perfume. He would never have the nerve to ask Reese about that, though.

With a deep sigh, hoping the new Number was another easy one, he entered the digits into his search engines.

And gasped.

And the more he discovered, the more distressed he became.

~ o ~

Washington, D.C.

For every bit of bad news, there's generally a piece of good news. What bites is that the reverse is also generally true.

So—on the so-very-plus side, she had spoken to VoD, quite an astonishing voice, so much to glean from it, and on top of it all, he's either egedn or knows way too much about him.

On the minus side: Kevin Lynch had not been working double shifts. He had another little honey on the side, the dirtbag!

On the mehhh side, however, was the sudden knowledge that she couldn't give less of a crap about who—or what—Kevin was getting down and funky with. He, she, or it was welcome to him. Toward the end, the only things she'd really liked about him was that in the right light, and from the right angle, he looked sorta like Starcat from that surfing movie.

Once she got Henry's gifts wrapped, she took a long bubble bath, touched up the red at her roots, wrapped herself in her silkiest, sexiest robe, poured herself a glass of chilled Chablis, and punched up her databases.

Since it was a cinch Kevin wasn't doing his job, which was why he needed her to do it for him—but as long as he was kicking in a third of her rent and utilities, it behooved her to ensure that he kept his job for just a little bit longer—she would finish up that list of people that he'd asked her to investigate.

She decided to start with the four people who were listed as owners of the private New York City club, La Strega Siciliana. To start with, yeah, "The Sicilian Witch" could certainly hint at a Mob presence; the entity frequently referred to as Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing") had its earliest beginnings in Sicily. But millions and millions of perfectly benign people and things had begun in Sicily, too.

First up: Strega was certainly a "loss leader" of some kind. Huge-name performers routinely (and very quietly) popped in to provide an evening's entertainment, in much the way huge-name acts showed up to perform corporate gigs and the celebrations of the appallingly rich. But those name acts were paid what they'd pull in at a standard concert. Unless the club itself was huge—even if, as was entirely likely, its patrons plunked down an easy five-figures for a night's entertainment—it bled money.

So…a money laundry?

Four owners, and their roles were fairly well defined given their backgrounds: Edwin LaSelva, scion of the LaSelva industrial chemicals dynasty, who in spite of his Italian name had not a whiff of Mob involvement in his genes; Marcus Griffith, way, way old New York money through his big-name mother, plus the whole Skull and Bones thing; Lana Whitby, no doubt where her talents lay—she'd bailed from one of the biggest artist management companies a few years earlier; and Geraldo Falcone, who was, frankly, a nonentity, but who appeared to be the main money man.

That's where the problems will be, Garcia realized. She turned the full force of her mad data mining skillz toward Geraldo Giancarlo Falcone, age 53, born in New Jersey, divorced, made a bundle on stocks and futures, most recently profiting from the fall of Virtanen Pharma to the tune of a few hundred million. Didn't profile like Mob; profiled like a money manager. When she dipped further into his life, she learned that he supported public TV and radio, was on the board of a couple high-profile animal rights organizations. She wasn't a forensic accountant, but she sensed that Falcone probably lost a lot of money on Strega, which meant that he was either laundering funds through it or using his involvement to buy an entree into the upper levels of New York society through it.

Personally, she suspected the latter. Money alone didn't buy you access to nosebleed-level artists, politicians, and entertainers. Providing the deep pockets for Strega bought access. Garcia was a hacker; access was everything to her.

Loft apartment in an old building, a graceful building, managed by Tripletex-Eastspace Group, a subsidiary of Pear Tree Equity—huh, the same people who own Harold Jay's place on Staten Island, but it's a huge damn company, so nothing significant there.

Subscriber to New Yorker, Barron's, Rolling Stone, Wired, Variety, Forbes, all reasonable for a money man who pays for entertainment… and Cat Fancy.

Owns a neutered male gray tabby named Reese.

OK, now, that's just too weird.

Reese isn't that uncommon a name; there's Reese Witherspoon, after all. But she's a female. And this is a male. And so is Harold Jay's Reese, the neutered male beagle.

And Geraldo equals Harold.

And Giancarlo is John Carl, which starts with a J.

Harold Jay.

And…stretching the coincidences, a Jay and a Falcon are both birds.

Her genius lay in daring to make goofy associations, so she backed up and looked at the other entity the two men had in common: Pear Tree Equity—and its CEO, Harold Matheson Partridge. Right, partridge in a pear tree, oh we're just too freakin' cute for our own good, aren't we, Harold?

She'd appeared in the chorus of her high school's production of Kiss Me, Kate ("Another op'ning, another show") and now she found herself crooning, "Another Harold, another bird…" to the same tune.

Partridge had a co-op in the city and an estate in the Hamptons—oh, my God, there's money just dripping off this guy—two ex-wives, three polo ponies (none of them named Reese) but he was the right age.

For the first time in at least ten years, she entered "egedn" into all the search engines she could think of. Other than a few histories of the hacker phenomenon, there was nothing. She sighed deeply. She'd really thought she had something there, for a minute.

OK, fine, she decided. One more try.

She reversed the letters and popped them into—let's start simple—Google.

And sat there for a long time, her heart pounding.

Ngede. Swahili for airplane. Or bird.

And I'm the only person in the world who could make that connection and understand it.

~ o ~

"Harold?" the familiar voice panted into his earpiece.

Panting is rarely good.

"Is everything going well, Mr. Reese?"

"It is now." One of those damned chuckles.

"You haven't manhandled any more FBI agents, have you?"

Yet another chuckle. "You're surprisingly protective of the agency currently mounting a huge operation that runs counter to your interests."

"Only particular agents, Mr. Reese. Are you planning to tell me the purpose of this delightful but unexpected call?"

Does she wear perfume? And if so, what scent? Because when I die I want it in my nostrils.

"Now that Freddy and Yuriy are out of the picture, they're doubling down. They've brought in some new talent. Images on their way. First one's five-eleven, one-seventy, second's more like five-six, one-forty."

Two faces resolved in .JPG format on Finch's screens. Neither was immediately identifiable, but he sicced his analytical software on both faces right away. "In progress, Mr. Reese. Is everyone critical tucked in for the night?"

"Small domestic drama playing out here," Reese replied. "Boyfriend got kicked out of Sleek's apartment about half an hour ago. He showed up at Red's, but she's locked him out."

It was Finch's turn to chuckle. Good for you, girl. "Is he likely to be a problem?"

"Depends. He's already called all his female acquaintances looking for a flop for the night and now he's calling the males."

"If necessary, front him money for a motel," Finch said. "We don't want him doing anything fatuous like kicking her door down."

"Wouldn't happen," said Reese. "I doubt he could kick his way into—or out of—a phone booth."

"There are no enclosed phone booths anymore, Mr. Reese."

Another chuckle. "My point exactly. If he gets desperate, I'll help him out, though."

They closed off the call.

Finch considered drinking another cup of tea, but he decided the only thing he needed less than alcohol was caffeine.

Because he was, at bottom, obsessive, he took one last crack at Garcia's Bureau computer. He was still locked out with his own software, since IFT had created Solaraion, to which she had made her own tweaks. He could probably get in, but he would leave tracks. Tracks could be very effective, a hell of a message, but he wasn't interested in that kind of message. The most successful hackers were persistent, so he tried her home computer once more before giving up to try another day.

She ran Solaraion on her home computer, too—but there was a hole.

His heart thundered. The hole hadn't been there previously. Solaraion had been around in its various iterations since '96; it had been IFT's first huge seller, one of those projects where he was being paid to design software to keep himself out. He'd left himself a hole—don't look so surprised; we all do it! You would, too!—he could exploit if he had to. Or if he felt like it. He'd called it, for obvious reasons, the Icarus Gate.

Vectress had discovered it on her own, the only hacker he knew who had stumbled across it because her mind worked like his. So, of course, once she was working for the white hats, or at least the nearest equivalent to them in her eyes, she'd cemented shut the Icarus Gate.

And now it was open on her home computer.

That had not happened by accident.

In programming terms, vectress had let her silken robe slip off her ivory shoulders, allowing him a peek into the promises beyond.

But had she opened it to invite him in, or to trap him?

He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. God damn it, vectress, you still own me.

~ o ~

Washington D.C.

Her telephone rang at 2:44 AM.

She groped for the handset, waited for the second ring—only to discover that the number was blocked.

"Hello?" she said cautiously.

The older man's voice said, "I'm wearing feathers." His tone was tense and grave. "Listen to me carefully, please. There's a young woman in Greenwich Village named Carissa Melton-Flynn. She's 22, a short, pudgy blonde who had rhinoplasty six months ago. She arranged with her broker today to sell the shares of BP she inherited from her great aunt. That should net her around seven thousand dollars if the value doesn't plummet overnight."

"Repeat, please," she said, flicking on the lamp and reaching for a pen and a loose piece of paper.

"Carissa Melton-Flynn," he said, and spelled it and gave her exact address. "Rhinoplasty in October, arranged to sell her stocks—and they're her entire inheritance," he added. "In the vicinity of seven thousand."

"You've read our bulletin board."

"It's laughably accessible."

"It is." She sat up in bed. "When did she die?"

"She hasn't, Ms. Garcia. I thought the different angle might be of some use to you. I can't guarantee that this isn't just an awkward and misleading coincidence—life's full of them—but it was close enough that I could not in good conscience keep silent."

"You know that I have to ask you who you are."

"Of course you do," VoD said.

"And you aren't going to answer me, are you?"

"You have a unique grasp of the obvious, my dear."

The line went dead.

She climbed out of bed and kick-started her computers. After a rapid search of her own, she speed-dialed another familiar number.

"Yes, Garcia?" a barely-awake Aaron Hotchner croaked at her.

"Sir, I think I may have the face-ripping guy's next victim. She's in New York City, the Village. I can't prove to you how I got the information, but the more I look at it, the more compelling it looks. And she's already making the arrangements to come up with the money, and it's all she has, so it's important, it's significant, and he's made contact. There's nothing else in her life right now that would justify that kind of need for liquid assets."

"What do you mean, you can't prove how you got the information?" Trust Hotch to zero in on the awkward part.

"I mean, sir, that if it goes to trial I'll have to say I did a massive search and came upon her by accident. I have a couple hacker friends who've been on the alert for that combination, too, and the nature of our relationship is we trust information and don't identify ourselves."

"And did you actually do a massive search?"

She considered that. Technically, she had. And contacting her…friend…had been a part of it. "Yes, sir."

"Then we're covered," said Hotch. "This is pretty thin to send the Team in, you know. But I'd rather we show up than we engage the locals."

"You're—you're going to act on this? It could be—" How had egedn phrased it? "—an awkward and misleading coincidence," she finished.

"Act on it, and bring you along," he replied.

"Me?"

"We're not leaving you here alone and unguarded for whoever the hell in the NSA's tracking you. Besides, that'll allow your mystery angel, Mr. Rensselaer, to return to his home territory."

Ah, right. Mr. Rensselaer—who knows Harold of the Thousand Names.

"My go-bag—I need to repack it—" she began.

"Do it. Maybe we'll get lucky, get out in front of this guy—"

"Yes, sir," she said, added her good-byes and hung up.

She swung back through her previous searches and located a number. When she connected with the voice mail of Geraldo Giancarlo Falcone, she said, "The FBI needs a table for four at Strega for Tuesday night. You know where to send the deets."

There. Now you have something to worry about.