Content Warnings: Second chapter depicts a panic attack, and an unusual and alarming means of dealing with one. The premise of this fic is Elias manipulating Harold, pushing him to extremes, so there are some pretty dark moments in terms of what Elias implies, what Harold imagines will happen, and Harold's thought process in general. There's also a reference to 9/11 that briefly describes the way certain people died.
Given their predicament, it was a necessary move, but Harold had to scrupulously suppress any outward sign of his nerves as he waited for Carl Elias to enter the visitation room.
Since the crime lord's arrest, Harold had been studying his continued influence over the underside of the city; far from diminishing, it had grown broader, more robust. When Elias had stayed his hand for decades before striking at the heart of the Russian mob, he had proven his patience; when he had found ways to leverage the corruption among New York's finest, he had proven his cunning. Even now, from within a jail cell, he was uniquely positioned to run his affairs from the shadows, and Harold couldn't help wondering if going to Rikers had been part of his plan all along.
It would be foolish to underestimate a man that perceptive, a man with a mind that demonstrably keen. Yet Harold was about to let Elias know that they were desperate enough to seek his help, which would give him the edge in negotiations. And on top of that, Harold was about to break one of his core guidelines, and hand over a piece of knowledge that few others were ever privy to: the ability to identify Harold himself by sight.
As uncomfortable as the idea was, it, too, was necessary: Harold needed to negotiate face to face, to see Elias's expression while they bargained, and to be prepared to change tactics based on whatever information he could glean on the fly. Moreover, he needed to ensure that others could not intercept their communication. And Elias was unlikely to take the offer seriously without understanding how the messenger fit into the picture.
But the moment Harold identified himself — not by name, but by association — Elias's smile grew noticeably bigger, and the predatory nature of his gaze shone through for just a moment before he dialed it back to the appearance of affability.
"I suppose I should thank you for saving my life," he said, then added — with no undertone of bitterness — "as well as my current accommodations."
Harold hadn't missed the way that Elias seemed to have the guards in his pocket. It was hardly a stretch to imagine that he found prison life nearly as pleasant as being free.
Their small talk didn't last long before Elias went straight to the point: "What brings you to see me?"
"We need help," Harold started, "with a minor boss whose organization may not be under your control — yet." It was an admission of weakness, to be sure, but also calculated to appeal to Elias's vanity. Doubtless the kingpin would pick up on that, but Harold didn't think it would matter: Elias wasn't the type to get insulted by a fellow manipulator, and the flattery itself was centered in truth, implying that a matter like this could easily be handled using the resources at Elias's disposal. "We hoped we could persuade you to… withhold your assistance."
"So you want me to shut down Massey's little hunting party?" Elias barely paused — Harold had been right about how quickly he took in data, came to decisions. "I suppose I do owe you something for saving my life. Even so… everything does come with a cost."
"I assumed there would be."
This was where the tipping point lay. A negotiator as shrewd as Elias would have a keen sense of the boundaries, know enough to push a little but not make an offer so extreme that they wouldn't, ultimately, agree to it. The knowledge that Harold had access to was a power Elias didn't understand, but coveted; he wanted an inroad into their operation, and this was his first significant chance to get his hooks into them.
Of course, part of the reason Harold had accepted this plan was knowing that it was an unprecedented chance to get their hooks into Elias, as well. There were potential advantages to the alliance, even in a small and controlled form, and, at this stage, there was no telling whose team would benefit most.
Prior to setting out, Harold had reasoned out his best guess as to what Elias's price might be. He'd prepared a mental list of some twenty likely bargains, and a hundred or so unlikely ones, thus knowing ahead of time where he stood on whatever issues Elias might raise. In this way, he'd have some additional armor against Elias's maneuvers, and be less likely to get coaxed into agreeing to something truly out of bounds.
"What is it you want?"
"Well," Elias said affably, "as I said, I have no need of possessions. But having a few key people in my pocket… that's a far more valuable commodity. This isn't the first time you've come to me for help, and I rather thought you would have stopped seeing me as an asset after that affair with the baby, and the one with the detective's son."
"You know our aim, Mr. Elias," Harold said, portraying more calm than he felt. "When it comes to ensuring the safety of those we protect, at times we must resort to… less savory means."
The grin that never seemed to quite leave Elias's face spread out a bit, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with what Harold assumed was delight. "Of course," he said, "although, I must pause to wonder if your concern is more the safety of your client, or the safety of your asset."
Holding Elias's intense gaze, Harold tried to maintain the bland expression that had served him well in previous encounters with dangerous people in power — people who wanted more information than he was willing to give them. John was so much more than an asset by now, but letting Elias know that would give him far too much leverage. As Elias studied him, Harold could only hope that he wasn't giving much away.
With a quick moue, Elias leaned back in his seat. "So I could imagine that you don't have the luxury of refusing whatever I might ask in return."
"I suppose you'll have to try me."
"That I shall. You know, I've been paying attention to your movements through the city. Oh, not yours specifically," he clarified, although Harold was certain that he hadn't so much as blinked. "The Man in the Suit. Making quite a name for himself, our John. The police reports have been intriguingly devoid of detail, but a little browsing around and you start to get the picture of a man with a certain skill set. Special forces would be my guess. Covert ops."
Harold continued to just stare at him.
"Now, it strikes me that a man of his abilities must have experience with assassination." He leaned forward again, steepling his fingers under his chin. "Some people, I know, are… quite distressed at the idea of the government taking direct action against a person's life, no matter how great a danger that person might pose. Of course, they tend to be distressed by the act itself, whereas I think of it as a power that should not be in the hands of the government."
Grateful for his habitual poker face, Harold managed to hold off his need to swallow until the reflex couldn't be paired with that statement. Not only was Elias perilously close to the subject of the Machine — a link that bound both Harold and John to the government, and a secret that Elias must never be allowed to know — but Harold was starting to get the impression that the crime lord was leading him down a path that Harold knew they couldn't afford to tread.
"Now, you are a man who has seen the dark side of humanity," Elias continued. "You and I, we operate from the shadows; we observe the cancerous cell growth, the rabid dogs roaming the streets. I'm aware that our approaches to the problem are somewhat in opposition, but can we at least agree that there are some elements so toxic to society that they need to be excised before they can do innocent people irreparable harm?"
Harold's stomach bottomed out, and he could only hope that he hadn't gone noticeably pale as well. With pinpoint accuracy, Elias had picked up on a common element between them and employed it as an opening move — and he probably wasn't even aware of how close he'd gotten to the crux of Harold's personal journey since the towers had come down.
°l||l°l||l°
The attack hadn't come close to touching Harold directly, but it had still changed the course of his life. When Nathan had hurried into the room, breaking Harold out of a coding coma, and switched on the news. When Harold had seen for himself the explosions, the smoke, the helpless people falling to their deaths because it was better to jump than to suffocate or burn.
Prior to that evening, without even stopping to think about it, he'd gotten to a place where he saw himself as above the masses, outside the problems that ordinary people had to deal with. He'd never been an evil man, never heartless, simply — oblivious. Brilliant enough to become rich, and rich enough to lead a sheltered life, not caring about what didn't affect him personally.
But that evening, sleepless, alternately staring out at the vacant skyline and down at the tumult in the streets, he'd had to come to grips with his place among humanity: their shared vulnerability to attack; their shared impotence in the face of such savagery. Humans rushing about like ants, trying to save their own lives, when the only certainty was death — and death could strike, literally, out of the blue.
And yet… what to make of these people rushing into the smoke? Not the firefighters, the first responders — that was their job, after all — but the random people who had run toward the danger, instead of away? Some of them doubtless had loved ones in the towers, but surely not all of them. People had been risking their lives alongside the better trained, doing whatever they could to make the tragedy a little easier to bear.
In those acts of selflessness, he had seen people with little to give giving all that they had, and he had come to understand — perhaps for the first time — the proper role of his own gifts.
Harold had been born with an intelligence few could match; he hadn't earned it, didn't deserve it, had used it selfishly for most of his life — but it was his to employ. Now, instead of amassing wealth, instead of hunting down vulnerabilities and breaching firewalls just to revel in his own cleverness, he had the chance to put his talents to use defending the innocent, putting a stop to the aggressors.
The protection he designed had not come without cost. Defending some meant destroying others; he had had to make peace with that awareness. Yes, people were going to die. Yes, the ones the Machine targeted probably deserved it. Yes, there were alternatives that the government would never pursue, because it was easier and cheaper to snuff out a human life than to imprison them, and assassination didn't risk them getting out into the general public again.
It was even possible that the Machine's predictions would make the government less likely to fund preventative measures, such as better education and a social safety net, so that fewer people got driven to the kind of hate and desperation that terrorism required. Why bother with expensive programs when a bullet was so cheap?
At times, he was sorry to have created the Machine. He'd done his best to shield it from abuse, and yet there was no way to shield it from its core function: pointing the government at terrorists. The fact that Harold was not directly involved in the assassinations didn't absolve him of the guilt of having created the means.
Even so, he could acknowledge the good it did, and the necessity of prioritizing hundreds of innocent lives over the individuals bent on destroying them. He could even appreciate the intangible benefits: Living in a world with less public awareness of terrorism meant less fear, less stress, less paranoia about when and where the next 9/11 might occur.
If he had to live with the guilt of having given power to the wrong people, or setting up a system that could target individuals for assassination without even a trial… so be it.
And yet… he couldn't let that line of logic push him into the kind of solutions Elias was hinting at. As uncomfortable as he was with letting the government murder its own citizens, at least it had some level of checks and balances. Or, at least, that thought was something he had to cling to, just to sleep at night. Putting such power in the hands of individuals, working behind the scenes… unconscionable. Elias could try to leverage the calculation all he wanted, point out the benefits of the act — but Harold would never accept murder as a solution for anything.
°l||l°l||l°
The moment stretched long as they stared at each other. Harold refused to give Elias a clear answer that the man could twist up on him, and Elias, for his part, seemed to be studying him intently, gauging his reactions that went unspoken.
"Hmmm," Elias mused, finally. "You're afraid to voice the truth, there. If you truly believed that I was wrong, you wouldn't have any trouble saying so. I don't blame you for being hesitant, though. It's a scary thought, people having the power to just snuff out lives." He glanced around. "And here I am, living among the type of people who've done it. Not a very pleasant world, let me tell you."
Shaking his head, Elias met Harold's eyes again. "These men, they murder for personal reasons: anger, revenge… even just for fun. When the government kills people unlawfully, they do it out of fear, and quite often they target the wrong people; they can't see into the shadows, can't find the ones we should truly be afraid of.
"It's up to people like us — down here in the trenches, able to see the true face of evil, the true harm being done — to step in and do something about it. Not for revenge, not out of fear, but as an agent of justice. There are people that the law can't touch who are so harmful to society that they need to be taken out of it. You and I, we're the ones who know about these people, and can do something to stop them. We're the ones who should, because no one else can."
By this point, it was fairly clear that there was no deal to be made, but Harold stayed silent. He had to let the man lay all his cards on the table, make his entire point crystal clear before Harold either countered it or just walked away. If there was no hope of securing his help in their current case, at the very least Harold would have information about what sort of man they might be dealing with in the future.
Whatever message Elias gleaned from Harold's silence, he took it as a cue to launch into the full sales pitch: a particular force of darkness working from the underbelly of New York. Murderer, many times over, and not the clean-and-pretty sort, either. Expert in torture techniques. Bomb-maker (though not to the level that he'd attracted the attention of the Machine, or he'd have already been dealt with). A man who dealt in slaves, including sex slaves, including children; dozens of children moving through his operation each month.
And for the personal touch — Harold felt the knife twist — the man was connected to the abduction of Leila.
There was no legal recourse to stop him: No one would testify against him, and no charges had ever stuck. Harold was reminded of Andrew Benton, the rapist, and how John had plowed him straight into police headquarters with a car full of cocaine and he'd still managed to walk free that same evening. There were some people that the law couldn't touch, and that was, in a way, where he and John came in… but not like this.
The Machine had been created to detect massive threats and point out how to eliminate them. After Nathan's death, Harold had done his level best to save as many individuals as he could, and, once he'd found a partner, to take care of threats where they could — but not, as Elias was suggesting, by killing them. Not even when the plan was foolproof and the benefits obvious.
Silently, Harold waited until Elias had laid out his plan in full, and looked to Harold for a response. Then he raised his chin.
"We are not assassins, Mr. Elias," he said firmly. "We will not trade one life for another; it is antithetical to everything we do, everything we stand for."
"But you have killed," Elias pressed. "John has killed, in your service — he may prefer to shoot out a kneecap, but that's not always effective in putting down the threat."
"In the heat of combat, to protect an innocent — yes, John will kill. I trust that he does so only when he cannot see any other way. But we are not in the business of preemptive strikes, nor are we here to sanitize the world. While I will admit that we fall under the definition of vigilantes, we are vigilantes with a singularly narrow focus."
"So you will drop everything to save a single life, yet take no action to spare the hundreds who cross this man's path every year — many of whom are denied the luxury of an easy death."
An effective jab — yet deliberately incomplete, and Harold wasn't fool enough to simply dog Elias's steps in this debate. "If we were to attempt to take out every major criminal in New York, surely your name would be near the top of the list. Putting you in jail has not stopped your efforts to take over this city, and I doubt we could arrange for a more effective captivity; the only other options are exile, which we could hardly enforce, or death. Perhaps you should be pleased that we are not that type of vigilante."
Leaning forward, Elias ran a hand over his mouth. "Is it your opinion, then, that I should be concerned about ethics only insofar as it impacts me? That I should never press for an ethical standard that might turn around and bite me? Do you have to be ethically pure yourself to propose a higher ethical standard?"
"Your concept of ethics is questionable, given that you're trying to persuade me to kill a man."
"Whose death would prevent the misery of countless others. He's not a nice man; you don't need to defend him."
"And even if I were to suppose that you were proposing this with no ulterior motive — that you had nothing to gain from my compliance — we are still talking about taking a life."
"When there's no other way to stop him, yes, we are. Kill him, and save many others. It's not a difficult calculation."
The worst part about this debate was that Harold could appreciate Elias's argument. He could never agree to it, but it wasn't outside a reasonably ethical viewpoint; it simply crossed a line that Harold had drawn for himself, as one of the few boundaries he could truly cling to. In this room, that boundary was acting like a lifeline, keeping him from succumbing to Elias's reasoning.
"Where does it stop?" he asked. "When we move beyond the imminent threats and start picking out targets who simply seem likely to do harm… how far do we go? It's not for us to play God, Mr. Elias. And even if we eliminate this man, it will simply cause a power vacuum, and bring in other forces; who knows how much worse they might be?"
"So you choose not to act because you cannot know the effect in advance?"
"We acted to save your life, and look how many have died because of that action."
"Yet you still save lives."
"Save lives, Mr. Elias. Not take lives."
Elias nodded soberly, the grin gone from his face. "So that is where we stand, is it? You come to me for help in a dire situation. I could have asked for money, or information, or any number of other bargains, and you might have handed them over despite knowing that I'd be using them to further my own criminal enterprises. But instead, I lay out for you a nearly foolproof plan to take out a man who, by all accounts, is one of the most evil, destructive forces in this entire city — and that's too much for you, that crosses a line. Better you keep your conscience clear than actually stop a killer."
Drawing in a breath, Harold got to his feet. "If that is the only trade you are willing to offer…."
"It's the one that offers the greatest benefit to the people of this city."
"Then we are done here." Harold pushed the chair in neatly, and turned to go.
Before he was quite to the door, Elias's voice rang out again, disarmingly calm. "If you walk out of here now, I'll triple the bounty on their heads."
Dully, Harold nodded. "And now it is clear what sort of man we are dealing with." He signaled the guards.