Looking for John Reese had Q dig in deep. Not just into CIA files, but also into data banks that weren't commonly known. He was fascinated by what he found and it had him hunt for more with each report he unearthed from the NYPD, the FBI, the military or the CIA.
The CIA had declared Reese missing. He had been a Special Forces officer for nine years and before he had disappeared he had worked for the CIA for four years.
Q had followed a quite interesting lead to a place called Ordos in China. It was where Kara Stanton had been reported killed and where Reese had been suspected of dying as well. But he hadn't. Somehow he had survived.
Ordos tickled more interest. So he unearthed that information. It was a city in China where Stanton and Reese had been sent to retrieve a laptop that contained a high profile computer virus, stolen from the Pentagon. Ordos had been quarantined by the Chinese government because of a bird flu outbreak. It had, of course, been a cover. Q found nothing after the mention of Ordos, but since Stanton hadn't survived, something massive must have occurred.
Corwin had been involved in that mission. She had given Snow the orders and he had chosen his second and Reese.
Kara had been the pack's second-in-command, which meant she was powerful, though not an alpha. Werewolves were hard to get rid of on a good day and she wouldn't have just walked into a trap.
Unless someone she had trusted had been the one to take her out.
Someone like John Reese.
She might have been the first victim.
Reese had been believed dead, but he had resurfaced in New York and had piqued the interest of the NYPD, specifically Detective Joss Carter. She had called him 'The Man in the Suit' and she had started a man hunt for him. So far without much success.
'The Man in the Suit' had become an interloper in the last two years. He had been in the strangest places, leaving knee-capped people in his wake. Not all of them good guys. Well, most of them had been involved in shady business and to Q it looked like Reese was a strange kind of Robin Hood figure.
He had no idea how the man picked his victims or the people he helped. Neither had the NYPD.
The FBI had become involved now, too. Their theories were a bit wacky, but they were after him and Special Agent Donnelly was a relentless hunter. Q looked him up, but there wasn't a supernatural trace about him. He was simply dedicated.
Q ignored the FBI files and started his own virtual map of sightings. It should have been a long and tedious work, but not really for a technopath. Using his abilities he created the map in less than an hour.
Yes, he was that good. Q smiled with a little pride at his work.
He tapped a command and the line to Bond opened.
"007?"
"Here."
"I'm sending you a rough map of where Reese has been sighted in the past six months. I see quite a file from a Detective Joss Carter. She has apparently been on his trail for a while, always close, never catching him. You might want to start with her."
"Got it."
"I'll keep on looking and let you know if I come up with more leads."
Bond acknowledged. Q turned back to his work.
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In an abandoned building at the corner of Madison Ave and East 37th St. that had once been a library and now didn't exist on any records, Harold Finch looked at one of his many computer screens, a mild frown on his features. He typed a few commands and the resulting answer didn't lift the frown; it actually deepened it.
"This is a problem," he murmured.
There was no other person around to hear him, though a pair of ears pricked and a canine rumble had him glance under the table.
"It seems we have an interested party, Bear."
The Belgian Malinois looked expectantly at him.
"Well, so am I," Finch added and turned to his computer. "Let's see who you are."
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Q was surprised when he was suddenly denied access to a file. He tilted his head, looking almost comically offended, then tried again.
Again denied.
He changed tactics and so did whoever was standing in his way.
His fingers flew over the keyboard and whatever he did, he was always pushed back. Not by a computer or a watchdog program or even what might be called an artificial intelligence. It had to be another hacker/computer expert.
Ah, a challenge.
He smiled.
"Let's see who you are and why you are keeping guard over Mr. Reese."
He slid into the HUD and cracked his technopathic knuckles.
Better than any training exercise.
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Bond had gone to the precinct where Carter worked and he had introduced himself as what he was: an agent of MI6, investigating the death of two colleagues together with the CIA. Carter had, of course, called the CIA and with it Leiter, getting confirmation of the claims, then had answered his questions about 'The Man in the Suit', John Reese.
Not that the answers had been satisfactory, but the brief time they had talked had told Bond something: Carter knew more about Reese than she let on; she was lying when she claimed she hadn't seen him or investigated his appearances in a while.
Well, so be it.
He hadn't expected to find a good lead. The visit had been to plant one of Q's little toys. It was a bug that would patch Q right into Carter's cellphone and keep an ear on her calls.
"She's already calling," Q could be heard.
"That was quick," he answered.
"Hello, Detective," a pleasant, low voice could be heard. It was dark and smooth and Bond smiled knowingly. "What can I do for you?"
"It's more what I can do for you, John," Carter replied. "I've had a visitor here, asking about you."
So she didn't just look for John Reese. She had found him. And she worked with him.
Interesting.
Q echoed the sentiment. "I believe Detective Carter has become a new person of interest," he remarked.
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Q had never had a problem with being cooped up in a single room, with only a TV, his laptop and a smartphone. He could do more damage with those devices than a whole army could with guns and canons. He hadn't lied to Bond back when they had met at the National Gallery, that fateful first meeting when his life had become entwined with and finally bonded to that of James Bond, 007. Now his partner.
The suite was even better equipped than some hotel rooms and he had cannibalized their network to make a lot of things happen. Like enabling him to log into the street camera network of New York City, access police files and track his partner seamlessly. He had even managed to get into the audio network, the one that could have him drop in on spoken conversation around the city. There were microphones in some places, there were cell phone mics and whole phone conversations he could hack into, and for a technopath it was an easy walk into those data files.
Yes, it was fun.
Q had done his own version of The Hunt for Red October, pinging around the cyberworld and trying to find the other hacker who guarded Reese's CIA files and counteracted all of Q's moves whenever he tried to get closer to the elusive target.
It wasn't easy and he was getting a lot of fake data, mirror sites that were there to deter anyone stupid enough to try and find the mystery man, and once he even ended up halfway around the world.
"You're good," he murmured.
But not a technopath.
And he was getting closer. The defenses were growing more and more vicious, biting at Q's mind, and in turn he grew more tenacious.
Dog with a bone.
And then he was right at the source. From within the HUD, Q could see the central core of the hacker's domain, his heart and soul, and it was heavily armed and even more heavily defended. Whoever this man was, he was damn good and he rivaled Q in his skills.
Well, he thought. Time to put my abilities to the test.
If he wanted to know who was behind all this he would have to make a very quick data grabbing dash. Go in, take what he could, slide out again, without getting caught.
And without knocking himself out in the process.
That would be the hardest part, Q knew. He had never tried to slide into an actively defended zone, one where the creator was just waiting for such an intruder, one where he had no idea about the code underneath all the shielding. Yes, government servers were protected as well, and they had the best software, but Q walked around those in his sleep. They were known. They were structured.
This was chaos.
New code. Dangerous code.
He steeled himself.
"Let's do this."
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Finch was blindsided by the sudden attack on his systems, moving so fast, it was inhuman. Beyond anything a machine could do: Lightning fast, furious, in a split second, leaving no damage. Like a sweep. No data corrupted, none copied, just a peek and then… nothing.
Intriguing.
And worth looking into.
An uneasy feeling registered in the back of his mind. There had been such an incident before, but back then it had been different. This felt different, but who was to say it wasn't related? This hadn't been a normal hack. It hadn't been someone painstakingly singling him out and taking their time to sneak inside. This had been hard and fast and inhuman.
And nothing had been compromised.
Finch pushed away the unease and sent out a few hunter programs.
Whoever had been the originator, they would have left traces. Traces Finch could find.
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"Someone is trying to hack the machine?"
Finch looked at the tall, silent shadow known as John Reese. Softly spoken, the words still carried a threat, a promise of violence, that had him shiver a little. Especially considering the expression in those dark blue eyes; eyes that seemed to hold a ring of silver.
He wasn't afraid of his partner. John Reese was a very deadly man, a trained killer, a weapon to be used by its handler, but there was also something else in that cold, dark core.
Reese was damaged goods; like Finch.
He had fought tooth and nail to survive against odds that would have killed others; like Finch.
He was a survivor; like Finch.
Despite their obvious difference, starting with the physical, they were very much alike. Reese had given Finch's quest meaning; he was a weapon and he was a meaning to an end, yes, but he wasn't a soulless, mindless tool to be discarded after use. Reese was loyal and protective and fiercely powerful.
Finch had witnessed it often enough.
And it somehow made him proud to be this man's handler and friend. Reese protected him; not because Finch paid him handsomely. They were way past that stage.
And Finch protected Reese against whoever caught wind of him and tried to find him.
"Someone is trying to find you, Mr. Reese," he said and turned stiffly back to his screen. "Someone is looking deeply into your files, hunting for clues."
"CIA?"
"No. The files that were hacked were your CIA files. Curiously there was also further interest in your former team. Snow's pack. Nothing else."
Reese frowned, eyes growing colder, though there was a tell-tale glow in their depths.
Finch knew John wasn't human, though he had never asked him directly. He knew the CIA file inside out, knew he had been part of a pack, but he wasn't a werewolf. He also knew his military records and there had been hints. Preternaturals weren't obligated to state what they were, what they might be capable of, but supernaturals usually had an entry in their records. The military would have been very interested in a werewolf as a Special Forces operative.
Finch had a few suspicions and the hints John had dropped were tell-tale, but they had never openly talked about it. It seemed like John was simply waiting for the right time and Finch was waiting for him to be comfortable enough with him to talk about it.
Maybe that time was coming.
"It seems whoever is trying to get to know you is also here in New York and following your career as 'The Man in the Suit'."
Reese twitched a smile, then was serious again. His brows lowered as a thought struck.
"Could it be Root?"
Finch shuddered at the memory of the hacker-for-hire/assassin. "No."
"Are you sure, Harold?"
And when had Reese moved so close without him noticing? The fierce protectiveness was there, almost palpable, intense and unwavering. After Finch's abduction by Root, his near-death by her hands, Reese had been hovering closer and closer. On one side it had instilled a sense of utter security in Finch, on the other he had known that if he let it grow a life of its own, Reese wouldn't be able to function normally any more.
New cases had been a welcome distraction. One of those had given them Bear, who now was a means of protection and companionship for Harold.
"I'm very sure," he now told Reese.
There was a barely-there touch, a brush of gentle fingers over his suit jacket, then Reese was pacing around the computer station, clearly not happy about the developments.
"Then who?"
"I don't know, Mr. Reese, but I will find out."
John's phone rang and he picked up, switching on the loudspeaker. "Hello, Detective," he said pleasantly. "What can I do for you?"
"It's more what I can do for you, John," Carter replied. "I've had a visitor here, asking about you."
Finch tensed, looking even more worried now.
"Who?"
"MI6. British government. He said his name is James Bond. Reminded me a lot of you," she said, voice holding a light sarcastic note. "He's investigating the death of two MI6 agents."
"I remember."
She huffed. Carter had been booted from that investigation when the CIA had taken over, since one of their own had been killed. A werewolf. His number hadn't come up and Reese and Finch hadn't involved themselves. That the man had been of John's old unit, part of the Snow pack, had been of little interest. He had long since left that behind.
"Looks like they are looking into you, John."
"Killing MI6 agents?" Reese sounded amused. "Why would I be involved?"
"He didn't say, but he wasn't saying a lot anyway. Just letting you know."
"Thank you, Carter. I appreciate it."
She was silent for a second, then, "Were you involved?"
John smiled widely. Then he cut the connection.
Finch looked at him. "We have someone snooping into your files and a MI6 agent questioning Detective Carter. I find that… disturbing."
"Can you find the hacker?"
"Probably. But he is good."
Reese smiled. "You are better."
"Flattery doesn't get you anywhere, Mr. Reese."
"Oh, I beg to differ." He turned to go.
"And where are you going?" Finch called after him.
"Legwork, Harold."
And he was gone.
tbc...