Death of Innocence

Day 11

Homeless Encampment, November 2013, same day

Reese'd been in and out of something approaching sleep all morning. Startled awake often, though, by random sounds around him in the Camp, and delaying next steps, hoping the day would warm convincingly. Remembered seeing Ol' Sam's face a couple of those times, but no new offer of a coffee since earlier this morning.

Glanced over to the lean-to, and Joan was gone, out on the streets as usual, he thought.

Close to noon, he'd decided to try to stand up. This could get ugly.

Gravity sometimes works better for getting down, than up. The gunshot that'd been causing the most trouble for him was down and low on the right. Shaw had told him that he didn't have to worry about appendicitis anymore, 'cause they'd had to take it out when they went in after the bullet lodged nearby. Blew it up, she said, and it couldn't stay.

So every time he lifted his long leg on that side, it tweaked the unhappy places inside over there. Tightening his gut muscles seemed to do the same, too, though it felt different to him.

The other shot had hit him as he was going down from the first one. Woulda been a kill shot if he'd been standing up when it hit. Dug a trench across his chest, left to right, instead of straight through. Made a mess of the real estate, but at least he was alive to talk about it.

So, the bottom line was that any push-pull motion on his left upper or his right lower side made him wanna stop immediately. And, he was still wobbly on his feet, even getting to his feet. Joss'd been right. He'd left too soon, part of being a "stubborn cuss" like she'd said.

He kept watch around him, and then picked a time to get himself up, by himself. Rolled onto his left side, and pushed off the cardboard with his right hand so he was mostly resting on his left cheek. Switched to his left hand then, now that he was up, and used the good right hand to drag his right leg in close, bending it at the knee. Shifted his body weight over toward the right, so he ended up on his knees, and bent some at the waist.

Once he was up that far, he could swing his left leg underneath him and push off on that side, to get all the way up. Easier said.

Took a couple of attempts on some of the steps. Wished he had a chair to land on. A wave of nausea and dizziness came over him, and he was desperate not to pass out and land on the floor all over again. Lots of heavy breathing to get outta that one.

Reminded him of when he'd nearly got himself caught in somebody's animal trap – the kind with the teeth. This one was a 10-incher and would've trapped a bear. If he'd stepped square into it, he'd have been caught and stuck there. As a scrawny kid, he wouldn't have had enough strength to get himself out of it by himself. Could have been there for days. Still gave him pause when he thought about it.

Reese remembered thinking: "no one will find you." It was a while before he went wandering on the mountain again. And you can bet he carried a stick to sample the path in front of him after that.

Harold was drinking tea in front of his laptop when Shaw showed up: showered, dressed, and ready to go. It was only because he'd known her for this long, that he could read the small clues available to him of the toll Reese's absence had taken. Harold was aware of some significant level of symbiosis present between the two of them. And of their sibling-like grudging acceptance of each other's capabilities and such.

Sometimes, it was almost comical to watch.

There were times, though, when it had gone far past anything acceptable between normal sibs.

Thus far, his admonitions had sufficed to intervene in those cases. But he sensed that it was at their own discretion that his words had ended the escalation toward violence between them. And that if they'd chosen not to hear his words, there'd have been nothing on earth that would have stopped them.

Like a pair of wild big-cats kept in captivity, against any common-sense argument.

Finch had two tigers by the tail, and he understood, deeply, how this could all come to a bloody ending among them.

"Miss Shaw, I trust you slept well?"

"Well enough, Finch." He watched her sip a coffee from the kitchen, and rip the top off the tin of eggs and other breakfast foods he'd had sent over for her this morning.

"Why don't we heat that, Miss Shaw. It must be cold by now." She stared at him, like she was unused to such a possibility and so it hadn't even occurred to her to do it herself.

She actually nodded and walked it back into the kitchen.

Buzzing and beeps sounded from there, and Bear perked up with the scents wafting down the hall. Could almost see him inhaling the scents and closing his eyes in dog-ecstasy. It wasn't more than a minute before he was up and heading for the kitchen. Miss Shaw arrived back in Harold's office, with her food, heated, and Bear prancing along at her side.

She put him through his paces with a few commands, in Dutch, of course. At the end, she tossed a few chunks of scrambled egg, and two strips of bacon, which disappeared with barely any sounds of chewing. Bear sat there, at attention, in case there'd be more coming his way.

Then, it was Miss Shaw's turn to devour her food. Miss Shaw normally didn't acknowledge the other humans around her - unless she was in the process of accosting them. Then her focus was superb and extreme, a characteristic she shared with Mr. Reese. The thought of the two of them chasing down a suspect should be sufficient to convince him to turn himself into Police, immediately, rather than face the alternative.

While Miss Shaw ate, Harold gave her a run-down of the Machines activities and findings, overnight. She listened and then provided her own one-word summary:

"Bupkis."

"Essentially, Miss Shaw."

The Machine had been monitoring dozens of sites via CCTV and private security systems that Finch had successively hacked to provide real-time visuals of the sites. This did then free Miss Shaw for any other duties, as she saw fit. She considered the puzzle before them.

"We're missing something, Finch."

He considered that, and had to agree, unless:

"Unless Mr. Reese is incapacitated – or, I suppose, captured – and cannot escape or send a signal."

Miss Shaw didn't react – though the thought had caused a sense of dread to course through Harold's mind.

"We need to widen the net then. Since we can't search every alley or abandoned building on Manhattan Island, we widen the net."

Harold reluctantly agreed.