PROTEUS
Harold Finch: "Not a whisper."
Well. As long as Sameen Shaw isn't out murdering people for a hobby – no reason to, really, she may not care about death but she also didn't seem to like bringing it, and she chose over and over to do something useful with her skills, not something for personal benefit – or being murdered, it's not a problem. Maybe she'll come back, or not. They'll see.
(Alan Fahey): "FBI, don't move. Hands up. I want to see some ID."
It's so obvious the man doesn't know how to do this in real life, it would be pathetic if John had a tendency to mock people in over their heads. Paper pusher, probably, more time behind a desk than working in the field. Useful, certainly, in his own specialty, but here it's more of a liability.
Erica Schmidt: "Hey, gents, you may have jurisdiction and authority here, but one thing you don't have is my cooperation. For now, mother nature takes priority."
John can't even blame her. If she doesn't handle the tempest, people may die – still, it doesn't help any, and other people may die for a different reason if they don't find that serial killer. Since she's being abrasive, John doesn't see why he shouldn't be sarcastic right back.
(Alan Fahey): "Tell me, what do you know about making a body disappear?"
That's not a question he gets often, and the answer is probably more than he should tell an FBI analyst.
Harold Finch: "My meteorological equipment. I've been a certified member of the National Storm Chasers and Spotters Association for over ten years."
Well. That's not a Harold John has met before. The man really has identities for all occasions – and the capacity to sound disgruntled when someone disparages his fake identities, apparently.
John Reese: "Okay, so how do you spot someone who's that good at being anyone else?"
It's not just making a fake history, it's taking someone else's, pretending it's your own and not getting caught at it and then doing it all over again with someone else. John knows a lot of people who are good at lying about themselves, but not so much at claiming someone else as their own.
John Reese: "So who else knew you had that knife?"
It was obvious, to John. He's known Victor Engquist wasn't the murderer after about two minutes watching him – military on the run, most likely a marine, way too busy to steal someone's life like that – but he needed to be sure. They're up against a chameleon, after all.
John Reese: "Unbelievable. We're hunting a killer, and instead we get amateur drug night in the sticks. You smuggle it in on your boat? Ah, don't say anything. Just bleed if I'm right. Ordinarily, I'd make sure you went behind bars. But I got bigger fish to fry. So you go in the trunk."
Great, he's talking to the unconscious drug dealer. And he's being snippy, too. Must be the weather and the serial killer on the loose.
John Reese: "It was smart enough to tell us about a killer with multiple identities."
Once again, he wonders: how does It do it? How does the Machine choose, between the murderer and the victims? How does it choose which number to give, and why? Does it calculate the number most likely to lead them to the truth in time? How, then? If John asked, Harold could probably explain, and yet. He's not quite so certain Finch is really aware of everything he made into that Machine, of the implications to Its choices of numbers.
I'll note that "Alan Fahey" who might or might not originally be Alex Declan boasts about spotting impostors, but completely overlooked John. What it means, I'm not sure, but what's certain is that he isn't so infallible as he'd like to believe.