Chapter Two: Connection

Several hours into his surveillance, John began to realize how fatigued and hungry he was. He never left a job, though, to attend to his own personal needs. John dialed Finch without thinking about clicking on the ear piece. He had become so accustomed to wearing it that sometimes he forgot it was even in his right ear. "Finch, can you get me as much info as possible about the security measures they'll be taking tonight at the NYU game?" Reese asked.

"On it, Mr. Reese," Harold answered. "I'll send it to your phone."

There was another pause in their conversation, but he could see that John was still connected. He then heard a muffled sound from John's end. "Is there something else, Mr. Reese?" Finch asked.

Silence.

"Mr. Reese… is there something else?" Finch asked again. After a short pause with no sound coming from the other end, Finch asked again. "John! John…are you there? Is something wrong?" Harold Finch yelled into his phone.

He could see that they were still connected. Finch grew increasingly anxious.

After another minute, a voice broke the silent connection between them.

"Your man's okay. We won't kill him. Our boss sees to that. Has some irrational allegiance to him," the voice stated.

Harold then knew it was one of Elias's men.

"We'll send you information shortly about your man. But plans must proceed with the Senator." Then the connection between Reese and Finch was lost.

Harold Finch quickly dialed his phone. "Carter!" Finch shrieked into the phone. "I need your help now. It's John. He's been taken by some of Elias's men. That's all I know."

"When did this happen?" Carter snapped back. "I just spoke with him an hour or so ago."

"Just now," Finch answered, aggravated by what he thought was a stupid question. What did it matter when it happened anyway. John needed her help, and he needed her to act immediately.

"What do you need me to do?" Carter asked.

"I'll try and make contact with him to see if he knows where he is. I'll send you the information," Finch fretfully said to Carter.

"Okay, I'll go help our mutual friend," Carter answered. "Send me the information when you get it."

When he dialed Reese's cell phone, it was dead. Apparently Reese's ear piece was still off. At that moment, Finch had no way to contact his partner.

Twenty minutes later, John was awakened by the jolts of the car, and he was thrown toward the back of what he supposed was the trunk of a four door sedan. It smelled like cooked cabbage, diesel fuel, and tires where he was. He wanted to wretch but held back. He could feel something tied against his neck that was covering his head. The jostling wasn't helping his already sore body and head. His arms were clasped together behind his back by what felt like oily, moist chains. His feet were restrained, but he couldn't tell from feel what bound them together. He could hear the muffled voices in the car. To possibly be on a level playing field with these men when the time was right to get himself out of this predicament, Reese strained to make out what they were saying.

Nothing.

He rode that way for awhile until he finally had to succumb to sleep. The diesel smell stung his nostrils and throat.

Sometime later he awoke to punches and jabs and then being pulled out of the trunk. Reese inhaled deeply to try and clear his lungs of the diesel fuel. Falling to his knees, John was unable to walk due to the leg restraints. He then felt the side of his face against grass and what smelled in the distance like horse shit. Where the hell had they taken him? They had to have been out of the city now.

"On your feet!" a loud gruff voice yelled from above as he could feel hands griping his upper arms until he landed on his feet. Then the restraints were removed from his ankles with what felt like a dull knife making upward and downward jabs. John wriggled against the restraints to remove them completely from his legs.

"We've got orders to keep you alive, but we weren't told that we couldn't rough you up a little," the same gruff voice shouted into his ear. John Reese didn't move or even flinch. He was conditioned to respond appropriately—statuesque— to this type of treatment.

"Looks like someone beat us to it," another man's voice snorted sarcastically as he withdrew the black hood that had been tied around John's head, revealing John's already bruised and gashed face.

"No pun intended," another man yelled as he laughed loudly into John's face, hitting him across his mouth.

The five men continued to laugh as they each took whacks at his head and torso.

He made no cries for help or pleas to stop. He knew such verbalizations would only be a waste of his breath and energy. He knew they would stop only when they were damn good and ready.

"Enough!" shouted a figure emerging from the barn behind them. He recognized the voice. It was Carl Elias.

The men stopped immediately.

John breathed heavily, sucking in as much air as possible into his lungs. His ribs hurt. Hell, just about every muscle in his body was taut with stress trying to compensate for his pain. He fell to his knees, his legs no longer able to hold up his large frame.

"Get him on his feet," Elias ordered.

The men obeyed. John Reese and Carl Elias stood facing each other.

"Hello John," Elias said.

"Elias," John nodded.

"We need you occupied tonight," Elias said.

John didn't respond. He had already made the connection between Elias and Senator Smith's number being called up by The Machine.

"Why, Elias?" John asked. He presumed it was because Senator Smith wouldn't play nice, but he wanted Elias to say it aloud. He wasn't sure what difference it made, but he just wanted Elias to say it…to own it.

One of Elias's men backhanded John across the back of head. "Why do you care?" the man asked.

"I'll handle this," Elias said to the man.

John squinted at Elias. The bright afternoon sun hurt his eyes but wasn't enough to kill the chill in the air. John felt cold.

"Come on, John, let's go inside to get out of this cold," Elias said.

Two of the men dragged Reese by his arms inside the barn. They roughly set him down on a wooden chair resting beside a large hole dug into the center of the ground inside the barn. John moved his jaw back and forth to try and loosen it up. He was beginning to get worried but resigned himself to the fact that he may not make it out alive from this situation. He calmed himself by thinking about many of the dire situations he had gotten himself out of in the past. It was never hopeless.

He thought about the promise he had made to Harold that he would protect the Senator. He was a man of his word; he had to uphold his promise to his partner.

The men circled around his perimeter as Elias approached him with a thin silver rod attached to a wire. The wire led back to what appeared to be a computer monitor. John had the strong impulse to jump up from the chair to physically fight off the men circling him to try and escape this threat.

Looking around the room to eye the sights for an escape route, John noted four windows and a closed back door in addition to the front door he had been dragged through. Elias could easily tell what John Reese was attempting to do.

"No worries, John," Elias said. "We're not here to kill you, but we will kill Senator Smith. And you won't stop us. You see, there is actually nothing you can do to stop us. I will see to that." Elias stood in front of John, completely calm and composed.

John concentrated to keep his heart on a steady beat. Elias took several steps forward, closer to John. He held up the silver rod in front of Reese.

"We are just going to connect you to this controller. If the controller thinks you are trying to wriggle loose from it before the proper time, it will release a lethal dose of poison into your body. If it continues to be imbedded in your shoulder, then you will be just fine. As soon as our little task is completed, we will activate the off switch," Elias said, pointing to the monitor-like machine. Elias continued, "You can then safely remove the rod and be on your way."

John stared at him.

"Don't make me have to kill you, John. But you know I will if I have to," Elias warned.

In an unexpected instance, Elias jabbed the silver rod into John's left shoulder. John screamed. Blood ran down his chest. He grabbed the rod with his right hand and squeezed his shoulder. He could feel blood bubbling up under his fingers. Pain shot down his left arm, his dominant arm.

Elias removed the latex gloves he had been wearing and tossed them to the ground. John boxed up the pain and put it in a different place in his brain so he could concentrate on the men continuing to hold the perimeter around him.

He then faked a complacent nod at Elias.

Elias was smarter than that, though. He knew John Reese well enough to know that he would die fighting any adversary. He was a talented man—one that Elias hoped would join him one day.

Elias turned around toward the front entrance of the barn and took several steps toward the door. Then he abruptly turned around, smirking at John. "Well, John, I guess you think I'm naïve to your incredible talents and survivor instinct," Elias said.

John didn't move or even acknowledge that he understood what Elias was saying.

"Gentlemen," Elias said, turning halfway away from John and pointing to the hole that had been dug next to the wooden chair where John was seated. Despite the pain he was feeling in his shoulder and down his left arm, John maintained his upright position.

John's brain registered the extreme danger he was in. Positioned to leap onto the men, John heard Elias yell from where he was standing. "Careful, John. This is not a hoax. This rod will emit a deadly dose of poison if it comes loose before it's time to come out," Elias shouted.

John dropped his eyes to his lap. He felt disheartened but wasn't ready to give up. He just wanted Elias's men to think he had given up. They would be less careful that way.

"Don't forget, John, that you're tethered. Make no mistake that I can and will kill you, but I'm giving you a chance to save your own life by simply taking a little nap in that box. You look tired…just take a little nap right there," Elias said as he pointed down into the hole to reveal the wooden coffin-like box.

John could hear his own breathing louder than normal. He always had difficulties being confined in small spaces.

"Don't worry, John. You'll have adequate oxygen in there until after our little job is completed this evening at the halftime show. Once it is, then the controller will be turned off and you can safely remove the rod and get yourself out of this box of yours. You'll need both of your fists to bust yourself out of there, so I hope you won't attempt escape until you can safely remove the rod," Elias cautioned.

John took in Elias's words.

Elias causally turned around and headed to the front entrance of the old barn.

John sat motionless, scanning through his mind trying to settle on a plan to escape this situation and get to the Sports Center to save the Senator. He simply didn't have time for this shit.

Elias stopped a few feet from the front entrance. With his back still to Reese, Elias shouted, "Unless, of course, our little plan is foiled." Elias then held up something he had fished out of his jacket pocket.

John squinted to see what Elias was holding up.

"That's right, John. It's a remote control device. If our little job is compromised, then I will have no choice but to hit this switch to kill you. It's your choice. Make no mistake about that, John. I am prepared to kill you regardless of how much I like and respect you," Elias concluded.

John continued to sit expressionless and motionless.

"Make sure he's not going anywhere boys," Elias yelled back at his men as he retreated through the front door of the old barn. That was their queue to incapacitate John Reese even more than they and someone else previously had done.

One man punched John in the stomach. John grunted, trying hard to resist doubling over.

Popping his head back into the barn, Elias warned, "Gentlemen, make sure the dispenser stays in place. We certainly don't want anything dreadful to happen to a man as talented as Mr. Reese, now do we?"

Elias's men nodded at their boss. "Yes, sir," they answered.

John knew that Elias's men couldn't care less about the silver rod staying in place in his shoulder— and his fate if it didn't. What they did care about, however, was pleasing their boss. So John felt confident that they would not intentionally kill him-just wish he were dead.

One man came up from behind John and pulled his arms back behind the chair, prying his hand loose from holding the silver rod in place. That action made John's body go flush against the chair's back. The broken spindles jabbed him in the back. The men each took several turns hitting him on his head, face, and torso. They then switched over to kicking his legs. John had experienced quite a few beatings in his life, but it had been a long time since he felt that much pain all over his body. After some time had passed, John allowed himself to drift into an altered state.

Noticing that John had passed out, Elias's men grabbed him and shoved him down into the wooden box. One man held the wire connecting the silver rod in John's shoulder to the controller. He appeared to his comrades as if he were fishing. They made a joke to him that he had caught a big one. They jabbed John in his ribs and laughed as they called him Moby Dick, stressing dick.

John was completely surprised that any of the five would know that reference. "You aren't as stupid as you look," John sarcastically said.

His comment angered the men, who kicked at him several more times as he lay in the box. He was now done, not having much fight left in him. So he stopped resisting. He felt the pain of their beating and knew Elias wasn't lying about the poisonous rod inserted into his shoulder.

"But just in case you think you can get out of there quickly, we're gonna shovel the dirt on top of your pauper's coffin," one of Elias's men taunted.

John thought to himself that maybe they were as stupid as they looked. However, he thought it best to keep that statement to himself. He had done a quick analysis of the depth of the hole that the wooden box was in and calculated it to be a little more than a foot. Obviously, the dirt was spite and revenge, not a deterrent. But the whole thing just really pissed him off. "Damn poisonous rod!" he muttered to himself. He knew that had a poisonous rod not been jammed in his shoulder, he could have been out of that box before the men had time to even get their car warmed up. He could have easily escaped—from the men, from the wooden box, from even being buried alive. Wounds and pain were irrelevant. Poison was not.

The men laughed at the thought of this battered man actually being able to bust out of anything in the condition they had put him in. They hoped he would die. They hated the obligation and allegiance their boss felt toward this vigilante. But most of all, they reviled the respect Carl Elias had for this unknown player in their city.

John lay still in the box as he heard the earth sprawl on top of what might very well be his casket if he couldn't pull himself together. Blowing out some sharp breaths, he listened to try and determine whether the dirt had stopped being cast on top of the box. The rod in his shoulder pulsed pain down into his left arm. It angered him that his dominant, stronger arm was being fed a methodical dose of pain. Having to hold the rod in place with his right hand caused a slight handicap for him.

He gritted through the pulsing pain and formed a fist with his left hand and slammed it into the top of the wooden box. "Shit!" he screamed. He closed his eyes to try to modulate his emotions to conserve his strength for the task at hand and be able to think straight. He focused on staying calm and delivering one hit at a time until the wooden surface would give in and crack.

His mind suddenly flashed onto that moment in 2006 in the airport when he ran into Jessica. He had told her about his new job with the CIA. She had told him she was engaged. His heart clenched inside his chest. He hadn't expected her to wait for him, but the realization that she was marrying another man made him numb.

He was hurt, though he couldn't understand his feelings. "In the end, we're all alone…and no one's coming to save you," he had said to her.

Jessica had responded, "You don't believe that…not really."

He did.

Jessica had asked him to tell her to wait for him and she would. "Say those words," she begged.

He stood, staring through her, paralyzed to being able to articulate words from his feelings. He wasn't used to such intense feelings for another human being.

"Wait for me," he finally said, after she had walked out of ear shot. That moment six years prior had been burned into his consciousness.

John was brought back to reality as the skin from his knuckles tore loose. He concentrated hard to be able to relax his back and breathe in and out for several moments. He finally had to succumb to the low oxygen level in the box and the pain assailing his entire body.

When he awoke a little later, he remembered Finch. Curling his left arm up toward his ear, he clicked on his ear piece to establish a connection with Finch.

"Finch," John whispered, trying to conserve as much of his strength as possible to be able to bust himself out of the wooden box and dig himself out of the hole Elias's men had buried him in. "I'm in trouble."

"Where are you, Mr. Reese?" Finch worriedly asked.

"In a wooden box buried in a one foot hole in a horse barn," Reese answered.

Finch knew better than to ask Reese if he were joking. Reese didn't joke. He used sarcasm and hyperbole, but he never joked.

"Now that your earpiece is on, I can track your GPS and alert Carter to your whereabouts," Finch answered in a reassuring tone. "Are you okay?" Finch asked.

"I'm still alive," Reese answered in a barely audible whisper. "Tell Carter to go Senator Smith," Reese implored.

"Okay, Mr. Reese," Finch answered. "I will be right there."

John didn't respond.

Finch could hear John's rasping breaths in his phone.

His GPS tracking positioned John about 45 minutes away in upper Westchester County.

Never before had Finch been so appreciative of the little mechanical device that bound him and his partner together. "Thank God," Finch whispered into his phone.

John could hear Finch's panic-stricken voice. "Harold, calm down. Don't get yourself all worked up," he said in his usual satirical tone when dealing with Finch under circumstances like these.

Finch's heart raced, and his hands shook. He needed to go to John, but he knew he needed help in getting his partner physically out of the grave Elias had put him in. Finch knew his physical limitations. "John, I need to hang up for a few minutes, but I'll call you right back," Finch said.

Finch dialed Carter to give her John's location. He then called John immediately back. He could hear John's labored breathing. His short, shallow breaths being transmitted over to Finch through the phone line concerned him greatly. He wasn't going to lose another partner.

"Stay with me, John! You don't have to talk. I just want to hear that you're still alive!" Finch said as he grabbed his coat and headed to the door.

"Okay," John answered, as he balled up his left hand again to strike at the cracks beginning to form on the wooden box in which he was trapped. "I'll stay with you."

Harold Finch reassuringly listened to John breathe as he sped through New York to get to his partner, his friend.