Fic: Hell, High Water and Amnesia Chapter 2
Title: Hell, High Water and Amnesia: Chapter 2
Author: maekala
Fandom:Person of Interest
Rating: Mature for violence and descriptions of injuries
Word Count: ~37K
Warning: violence and descriptions of injuries and treatments
Spoilers: all of season 1
Summary: Following an explosion, Reese loses parts of memory including everything to do with Finch and the Machine. Not sure who to trust, John evades the FBI, CIA and Carter as he attempts to remember who he's become and why he's drawn to this strange man with a limp.
Author's Note: So this fic was originally started as part of pod_together, but then it kept getting longer...and longer...and longer. And then I saw the announcement for PoI Big Bang and decided that would work better. This fic would never have been written without the initial cheerleading from podcath. I'd also like to thank togsos for her awesome, awesome art. She captured the scene exactly as I'd pictured it in my head. Final thanks go to sevencorvus for letting me participate in the Big Bang at the last minute.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
John's awareness returned slowly as his conscious mind drifted in a drug-induced haze. He knew by the kinds of drugs that he was in a hospital somewhere. The quality of the drugs suggested he was in a country with advanced medical care readily available. He knew that time passed, but he wasn't aware enough yet to know just how much. He kept his body still and his mind calm so that his vitals wouldn't spike with a return to consciousness. It always paid to be aware of one's surroundings before those surroundings could bite you in the ass.
He was aware of dull pain first. It took concentration, but he finally determined the main source to be his head and his arm with a few other varied points. His chest hurt vaguely like he might have cracked ribs. With those kinds of injuries, John was betting there had been an explosion. He couldn't really remember the explosion, but he did think he remembered someone's voice in his ear, concern in their voice.
Sound came next. He could hear a woman's voice talking a few feet away. He was only hearing one side of the conversation, so he assumed she was on a cell phone. He catalogued facts in his brain: she was speaking English-New York accented English more specifically-which put good chances that he was in the United States. Her responses were clipped and direct. She was an authority figure of some kind.
He chanced opening his eyes and saw her to his left. Her back was to him as she looked out the window while talking. Her back was straight, her posture ingrained. Former military. She turned slightly and he could make out the Detective shield clipped to her belt. NYPD. So he was in New York. How had he gotten here? The last he remembered, he was in...somewhere that was not New York City. He blinked rapidly as he tried to remember where his last mission had been to. Was it Poland? Slovakia? No, that had been months or years ago. He remembered South Africa and that had definitely been after Eastern Europe.
I need to contact the agency, he thought, but that felt wrong. Was he still with the agency? Surely he wouldn't have left and come back to New York. Or had he? Everything felt wrong and he couldn't remember what had ever felt right. He knew one thing for sure, though: he needed to get out of this hospital so he could figure it out on his own.
He didn't hear a heart monitor, though he could feel the pads on his chest. That must mean they had the monitor muted, but he knew the nurses would be watching it for any changes in his condition. He needed to subdue the police officer, but wasn't sure how steady he would be on his feet. There was no telling how long he'd been unconscious and he didn't want to alert the woman that he was awake by passing out behind her.
As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard monitors start screaming from out in the hall. Someone wasn't doing very well. Footsteps echoed down the hall as nurses ran to and fro, trying to stabilise which ever patient was crashing. That meant the nurse's station would be down to a single person and those were his best odds.
He waited as the woman told whoever was on the phone to hold on and walked over to close the door. She returned to the conversation as she glanced down over him and he held very still.
“No, Finch, that was someone down the hall. John's fine,” she assured.
An image of a mousy man with glasses jumped before his eyes but he pushed that away. Just because he recognized the name of who was talking didn't make it any better for his chances of escape and he definitely needed to get out of here.
The detective returned to her position by the window, lowering her voice and continued talking. John slowly moved his right hand across his body to his left and pulled the IV line out. That was the easiest part. He watched the woman as he tried to decide if it would be better to take the EKG electrodes off first and then subdue her or the other way around. She was former military and she looked like she could hold her own in a fight.
He glanced up and saw that the readout was on the same side of the bed as she was. He followed the lines with his eyes and decided he should have enough slack in the line to reach her without getting tangled in the line. He'd worry about pulling the individual pads off once he dealt with her.
He was able to sit upright with relative ease and watched the detective's back for signs that she was aware of him. John saw her reflection in the mirror first catch in surprised disbelief then switch to excitement.
“John,” she said and there was suddenly a flurry of sound from the other end of the phone, none of which he could understand.
He moved swiftly, trusting his legs would hold him. He grabbed her by the shoulders then moved his grip to her head. He held her firmly so that his arms were squeezing the arteries in the side of her neck and blocking blood flow to the brain. She gasped for air and managed to say his name before going limp in his arms. Laying her down gently, he picked up the phone and listened briefly as another man-the mousy one?--yelled things into the phone that made no sense.
He dropped the phone, pulled the electrodes from the pads on his chest and headed to the door. He could still hear commotion a few doors away and the distinct steady sound that meant someone's heart had stopped. That room, it seemed, had not turned the heart monitor off.
He approached the door quickly but cautiously and peeked out of the crack the detective had left. No one was coming running because his monitor had stopped transmitting and for that, at least, he was grateful. He left the room, padding barefoot but still silent down the hall and then down a flight of stairs. On the floor below, he made his way down the hall until he reached a door that said “Locker Room.” Doctor's were always carrying around extra clothes and he though it very likely he'd find something in his size quickly.
A quick search turned up scrub pants, slip on shoes, a jacket and ball cap. Despite wondering how bad he'd been hit, he didn't undo the bandages to check his injuries, trusting instead that the hospital had taken good care of them. He headed back down the hallway, bound for a side entrance that he could sneak out of. It only took a few minutes to reach the ground floor and find such an exit. He was passing a shorter man with a limp, his eyes down when the other man suddenly gasped and looked him dead in the eye.
***
Harold observed impassively as Detective Fusco arrested Jonathan Ortega, the man who had come perilously close to killing Kenneth Mann, the number the machine had given him the day before. It had taken much longer to deal with this case than he would have preferred. He and Detective Carter had been taking turns sitting with John for the last four days and Harold had learned after the first case, one Josephine Simmons, that he preferred keeping his laptop with him so that he could coordinate assets from John's side. Some things, though, required a personal touch.
As he was leaving Fusco to his work and his reports and the driver was taking him the short drive back to the hospital, he punched the button in his phone that would connect him to Detective Carter. She answered on the second ring and immediately asked him how his business meeting had gone. He would have to either take John home soon and monitor him from there or take her off babysitting duty. She was every bit as observant as Harold anticipated and that was beginning to cause more of a problem.
They spoke for a few minutes before the sound of monitors frantically beeping out a failing status started passing over the line and he nearly jumped down her throat in his panic that John had taken a sudden turn for the worse. She assured him that wasn't the case and he heard the sound get closer as she closed the door then fade to a barely there background sound as she returned to the other side of the room, likely near the window.
He breathed a ragged sigh of relief as the images of John's too pale face from when he'd been shot overlaying with the passive features he'd been staring at the last few days began to fade.
“John,” breathed Carter, almost startled.
“Detective?” he asked, not sure what to expect now.
There was a scuffle and a gasp before he heard what sounded like her struggling to breath. Had the CIA found John and was now dispensing with Detective Carter? Surely even they wouldn't be so bold. But then why would she have called John's name? He called her again, a bit louder and then louder still when she didn't respond.
He heard a thump like a body hitting the floor then silence.
“Detective? John?” he asked, not daring to hope but wanting it to be him. There was silence on the other end and he motioned for the driver to go faster. They were only minutes away from the hospital and he needed to be there, to see what was happening.
The line went dead and Harold could have screamed in frustration if his throat hadn't swollen shut from worry. The remaining few blocks seemed to take longer than they ever had before and then they were stopping outside the side entrance that Harold had taken to using instead of the main entrance. He limped inside as fast as he could and turned left toward ICU only to see John walking calmly toward him in scrubs and a wool jacket with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes.
“John,” he whispered, stopping immediately and reaching for the other man.
Something dark flashed in John's eyes and Harold was suddenly thrown back against the wall, John's body trapping him in place as the taller man searched Harold's face for something. He didn't say anything, just looked.
“John,” Harold repeated, letting his emotions play plainly across his face for once. “John, it's me.”
John frowned, uncertain and his eyes lost a bit of focus and then Harold found himself stumbling as John released him. His friend was down the hall before Harold could pull himself together enough to say anything.
“John, wait!” he called, forcing his body to follow John.
John didn't even look back and, by the time Harold rounded the corner John had disappeared around, the other man was gone, like he'd never been there. Something stung at his eyes as he realized the man he had just faced was not his John, but whatever the CIA had made John, the man who would kill anyone who got in the way of his objective.
He was pulled from his thoughts when his phone rang and the hospital's caller ID appeared. “Yes?” he asked and found he was slightly out of breath.
“Mr. Carruthers,” said Nurse Jenkins, a slight tremor in her voice.
“John is gone,” he stated, turning and walking back toward the ICU. “I just saw him leave. Is Detective Carter alright?” he asked.
Nurse Jenkins paused as her train of thought was derailed. “Yes, sir. I mean, she will be. We found her unconscious in the room, but she wasn't hurt.”
“I'll be there in a moment,” he said and hung up the phone. He sagged in the elevator as it took him to the correct floor, unsure what he should do from here. One step at a time, he decided. He would take it one step at a time.
Standing straighter, he blew a calming breath and then stepped out of the elevator with a confident step.
***
John went underground as soon as he could, preferring the tunnels of the subway system and the various utility ducts to the street. Here there were no cameras to see him and automatically run facial recognition and the only people he encountered were the ones like himself who preferred to remain unseen.
It took him nearly an hour to cross town but he was confident that no one had followed him and that they weren't likely to search this far away. He went topside long enough to find a thrift shop and trade his expensive wool jacket for a beat up knit hoodie and the scrub pants for jeans and a pair of serviceable boots. He'd found a wallet in the jacket pocket so could even spring for a pair of socks. His entire shopping trip took him seven minutes and he was back underground, hiding in an old maintenance hatch a hundred yards or so down the subway tunnel.
John leaned his head against the concrete wall and took a minute to breathe. He was in New York City, a place he knew reasonably well. He knew he had a concussion so couldn't let himself sleep too long. While in the store, he'd had a chance to look at his head wound. All told, it wasn't that bad and he'd removed the bandages and tossed them and the towels he'd used to clean the dry blood off the side of his head into a storm drain where he knew they'd be washed away.
He gingerly felt his ribs and found that two of them were cracked as he'd suspected. That might hinder him in a close hand-to-hand fight, but not overly so. It was the burns which bothered him. They started just below his right elbow, travelled up to his shoulder and continued along part of his back. He still couldn't remember the explosion, but he was assuming he had been close to it and thrown back. The nurses had apparently recently changed the bandages since he could still feel the analgesic burn cream they had used. He knew he could fight through the pain as he had when he'd subdued the detective at the hospital, but he would have to be careful he didn't break the scabs or allow them to get infected.
He glanced around himself automatically, checking for threats before sitting straighter and closing his eyes. He let his mind wander back to the explosion, trying to remember what he'd been doing. Was he on a mission? Who was his contact here? If he was in New York, he was behind enemy lines and he couldn't count on the CIA to bail him out.
He frowned. There was something else about the agency, something that told him he couldn't count on their help even if he had been overseas. Where was Kara? While he certainly didn't expect her to be waiting at his bedside, she would have been somewhere nearby that she could have tracked him down. Or would she? Something nagged at the back of his brain, something that was saying Kara wouldn't be there, the same way he couldn't trust the CIA.
Opening his eyes, he brought himself back to the present and checked his surroundings. The amnesia was probably caused by the head injury. He wasn't sure how much time he'd lost since he wasn't even sure what the last thing was that he remembered. He would wait this out, see if his memory came back. He could hide among the eight million people in New York City, among the forgotten and the unseen. The idea was familiar, felt right.
He would wait. And if images of a mousy man in glasses who walked with a limp kept intruding...well, that could be pushed down until he figured out what was going on with himself.
***
“Are you telling me,” started Carter, leaning toward Harold over her coffee. “That John's running around my city like some kind of deranged Jason Bourne?” She looked around to make sure none of the other cafe patrons had heard her. “And you can't find him?”
“He's hardly deranged,” commented Harold, though he wasn't so sure of that himself. It had been over a day since John had run from the hospital. One of the doctors had reported his locker broken into and Harold had tracked his credit cards, but John knew better. The doctor had reported he'd had over a hundred dollars in cash and Harold was quite certain John had taken that and dumped everything else.
Carter rolled her eyes and leaned back. “But you still can't find him.”
“He's very good at hiding, Detective. You may remember that he's very familiar with the city's homeless after living amongst them for some time.” On that assumption, Harold had pulled up cameras near the various homeless hot spots in town and had them running facial recognition all night, but nothing had hit. There were simply too many places where the homeless tended to congregate and what cameras were in those areas weren't usually functional.
“No kidding.” She sighed and rubbed at her temples. “So what? We just have to wait until he does something noteworthy again? If he's hiding, he won't be in subways beating up wannabe arms dealers.”
“No, he won't. I'm hoping that he'll come to his senses and contact us at some point.”
“And until then? We just let him wander the city? What if he tries to contact the CIA? I'm sure they'd love it if he handed himself in. Heck, they might even be able to brainwash him into working for them again.”
“If he were going to contact the CIA, I think he would have done that by now.”
“And what makes you think he hasn't?”
Harold raised an eyebrow, surprised that Detective Carter still doubted his resources at this point. Although hacking Agent Snow's phone hadn't been as difficult as he might have thought it to be. He was confident that, if the CIA heard anything about John, Mark Snow would be one of the first to know.
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” continued Carter, holding up her hands in surrender. “I probably don't want to know about whatever it is you're doing anyway.” She sighed and let her hands fall onto the table. “So what now? Did you just come here to tell me that we've got a whole lot of nothing?”
“Actually,” said Harold and he actually felt bad for what he was about to do. He pushed a photo of a smiling teen across the table. “She needs our help.”
Carter laughed mirthlessly. “You're kidding, right? John's missing and you're giving me a picture.
“Unfortunately, Detective, my resources wait for no man.” He was actually going to meet Fusco in an hour because the machine had kicked out two numbers during the night. The only reason he'd waited this long was because he wanted to make sure the two numbers weren't connected. As much as he might think their two detectives should be told that they were on the same side, he respected John's request that they remain in the dark about each other for now.
Carter stared hard at him and he could feel her deciding if she should ask about his mysterious resources again or not. Finally, she pulled the photo closer and flipped it over to where he'd written the girl's home and school addresses. She threw some bills on the table to cover her coffee and left with only a mild glare in his direction, though he couldn't say if it was for the situation or as a reminder to find John.
***
John stared at the pharmacy across the street as he considered his next move. It had been three days since he'd escaped from the hospital and he was starting to get his memory back in bits and pieces, but it was slow to happen and he still wasn't entirely sure where he stood with anyone. He'd kept his injuries clean for the most part, but he needed to change the dressings and he wanted some antibiotics. The bottom edge on his back had begun to hurt more and the skin was warmer to the touch like the beginning stage of an infection. As large as the burn was, he could not afford an infection.
He'd come twenty blocks downtown to this place, sure that no one would find where he'd been hiding and he was ready to change locations as needed. Under normal circumstances he'd have just broken in and been done with it, but something had held him back. He didn't have any gloves to mask his fingerprints and he knew flags would go up the minute they hit the system.
He needed the drugs, though. Without them, he'd either die in the street from sepsis or he'd pass out somewhere and EMTs would be called and they'd run his fingerprints then. If it came to that, he'd be too weak to put up any kind of fight and he'd be stuck with whoever came for him, be it friend or foe. His eyes followed the line of the building he was hiding behind. It was a run down apartment building and he might just be able to hide in one of the units and watch to see who came.
Nodding to himself, he pulled the baseball cap down over his eyes. Three days without a razor had produced a silvery scruff of a beard that would mask his features somewhat and he'd thrown a ragged blue overcoat over his hoodie. He crossed the street, a rock in hand and threw it into the glass window. Alarms started blaring immediately, but he calmly stepped through his new door and headed for the first aid aisle.
Within two minutes he had gauze, bandages, ointment and antibiotics to hold him for a month. He also threw in things with street value to cover his actual purpose. Three minutes after he'd broken the window, he was back out and walking calmly between buildings, heading in the opposite direction he'd come.
He could hear sirens approaching and figured he had an hour before he needed to be back to see the action. After all, CSU had to arrive, find his prints and run them before anyone would know that this was anything but a drug run.
***
Harold turned to stare at the screen as he heard the call for a break in at a pharmacy. He'd taken to listening to the police scanner since John had disappeared in case there was any news of him. While a break in at a pharmacy wasn't necessarily John's doing, he knew the man would have to find something to treat his burns to prevent infection. His hand hovered over his phone, ready to call Detective Carter or Fusco to check the scene but he paused. Would John even still be there? Furthermore, if he were hiding, surely he would be halfway across the city by now.
If the CIA were watching either of them, their interest might be piqued when they responded to a scene that was definitely not a homicide. He would wait to call them. Instead, he pulled up footage of the crime scene. There was only a single camera in the area and the angle it showed gave him very little information. He hacked the system and found the recorded footage from when the crime had occurred. He could just make out a figure crossing the street, his stride confident as he threw something, probably a rock into the window.
The resolution was nowhere near enough to give him facial recognition, but the way the figure moved, the easy grace and confident stride...he was sure it was John. Harold grabbed his laptop and headed downstairs. John may be long gone, but he might glean something from the scene, from what the cops were saying to each other.
It took thirty minutes to get there and he parked his car half a block away in shadow. The windows were tinted so the cops wouldn't see him watching them. It was child's play to clone their phones and get ears in. He listened to the conversations and found a half dozen bored officers who would have preferred to be anywhere but here cleaning up what they thought was some addict getting a fresh stash.
He wanted to scream at them to give a full list of what had been taken instead of just talking in “this” and “that” and “those.” When a supervisor arrived, his wish was granted. One of the officers gave a report including items missing: so much of various controlled substances which he didn't really care about and half a dozen bottles of antibiotics, first aid supplies including bandages, gauze and burn ointment. There was no doubt in his mind that this had been John's handy work and that his friend had only taken the controlled substances to throw off the authorities or sell for quick cash.
He pressed Detective Carter's speed dial as he listened with half an ear to the discussion between the two CSU techs who'd been sent to process the scene.
“Carter.”
“Detective,” he greeted, glancing down at his screen. GPS said she was home for once. “I just thought I would let you know that our mutual friend surfaced briefly tonight.” He heard her move into a different room, likely away from her son.
“Where?”
“At a pharmacy in Queens,” he said and paused as the techs started talking excitedly. Apparently they'd found John's prints and just run them through the system. “Are you still listed as a contact whenever his fingerprints are found?”
“Probably. Why?”
“You're about to get a call,” he said cryptically before hanging up the phone. He kept the microphone on her phone active and chuckled to himself as she said some unkind things to the dead line.
He shifted in his seat, getting comfortable as he waited to see what would happen.
***
It had taken twenty minutes for John to loop back around and enter the apartment building. Two minutes after that he was in a vacant unit with a decent vantage of the pharmacy six floors below. He'd managed to get himself in place just in time to see the dark sedan pull up down the street and park. No one had gotten out and the windows were too dark to see who was inside. He made a mental note of the license plate and continued to watch. He immediately wished he had listening equipment so that he could hear the conversations going on below him and absently scratched at his right ear, almost expecting to hear what he needed automatically.
Silence remained and he sat down so he was harder to see from street level and watched. The CSU techs suddenly got excited and started showing their fingerprint scanners. They'd found his prints, it seemed. Almost immediately the officer in charge pulled out a cell phone and made a call, checking the screen for the number. It would seem there was a contact number any time his prints were found.
He frowned and considered that. Would it be the detective from the hospital? The CIA wouldn't need NYPD to alert them since they'd have an automatic alert whenever his prints hit the system. The FBI maybe? He would think they would have the same sort of system.
He waited for another half hour, one eye watching the sedan and noting that whoever was driving was still inside. It wasn't a company car, he knew. The CIA tended to drive SUVs, especially when tracking someone like him. But why would they be tracking him? He still wasn't sure why he didn't trust the agency he'd been part of for so many years, but that same nag he'd felt when he first woke up in the hospital was still there.
He sat straighter when an SUV pulled around the corner, though he noted this one had government plates. Again, not the CIA. A dark haired man stepped out of the driver's side and John had him pegged as FBI before he flashed the badge. The woman from the hospital stepped out of the passenger seat. She didn't seem happy to be with the FBI and he watched her lag slightly behind. She looked around and spotted the sedan before checking something on her phone. John's fingers itched to check a phone of his own to see what she saw and he scratched his ear to help relieve it.
The fed and the detective spoke with the officer in charge and the other officers on scene. The detective seemed to be looking around like she expected to see something the others couldn't. She carefully avoided looking at the sedan, so he knew she wasn't watching for the driver. Did she expect to see him for some reason. He frowned at the thought. Why would he make contact with an NYPD detective? While she had been waiting at the hospital and the phone conversation seemed to indicate that she knew him, he couldn't see any reason why he would be in contact with her.
He watched them talk for ten minutes before another black SUV rounded the opposite corner. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about the vehicle and it had normal plates, but he knew the agency was here. John checked the roof tops and saw two snipers setting up perches. Why would the CIA want him dead? When he looked back down, Mark was exiting the vehicle and approaching the detective and the FBI agent.
John took a shaky breath, suddenly scared. He was being hunted by the CIA, FBI, NYPD and some mysterious fourth party and he had absolutely no idea why. He didn't trust any of the people down there, even though he knew Mark and apparently knew the detective. He scratched absently at his ear again, wishing for...what? Someone to talk to? He had never been a very good conversationalist outside of a mission and his backup had always been Kara.
He stared down at Mark, at his friend's face and found his mind drifting back to another time and another country. He and Kara had been somewhere in the Middle East...Morocco maybe? They were given a new assignment and Mark had pulled him aside, said she had sold out her country.
He suddenly remembered Ordos, remembered her shooting him and realizing that they'd both been set up, that the government had been tying up loose ends. He pushed himself away from the window. He knew why he didn't trust the CIA anymore. They'd tried to kill him.
Deciding he wouldn't get any more information out of this, he headed downstairs, going carefully in case there were other agents canvassing the surrounding areas. There had been a utility tunnel behind this building. He slipped inside easily and left the area. He needed time to think.
Chapter 3A
Author: maekala
Fandom:Person of Interest
Rating: Mature for violence and descriptions of injuries
Word Count: ~37K
Warning: violence and descriptions of injuries and treatments
Spoilers: all of season 1
Summary: Following an explosion, Reese loses parts of memory including everything to do with Finch and the Machine. Not sure who to trust, John evades the FBI, CIA and Carter as he attempts to remember who he's become and why he's drawn to this strange man with a limp.
Author's Note: So this fic was originally started as part of pod_together, but then it kept getting longer...and longer...and longer. And then I saw the announcement for PoI Big Bang and decided that would work better. This fic would never have been written without the initial cheerleading from podcath. I'd also like to thank togsos for her awesome, awesome art. She captured the scene exactly as I'd pictured it in my head. Final thanks go to sevencorvus for letting me participate in the Big Bang at the last minute.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
John's awareness returned slowly as his conscious mind drifted in a drug-induced haze. He knew by the kinds of drugs that he was in a hospital somewhere. The quality of the drugs suggested he was in a country with advanced medical care readily available. He knew that time passed, but he wasn't aware enough yet to know just how much. He kept his body still and his mind calm so that his vitals wouldn't spike with a return to consciousness. It always paid to be aware of one's surroundings before those surroundings could bite you in the ass.
He was aware of dull pain first. It took concentration, but he finally determined the main source to be his head and his arm with a few other varied points. His chest hurt vaguely like he might have cracked ribs. With those kinds of injuries, John was betting there had been an explosion. He couldn't really remember the explosion, but he did think he remembered someone's voice in his ear, concern in their voice.
Sound came next. He could hear a woman's voice talking a few feet away. He was only hearing one side of the conversation, so he assumed she was on a cell phone. He catalogued facts in his brain: she was speaking English-New York accented English more specifically-which put good chances that he was in the United States. Her responses were clipped and direct. She was an authority figure of some kind.
He chanced opening his eyes and saw her to his left. Her back was to him as she looked out the window while talking. Her back was straight, her posture ingrained. Former military. She turned slightly and he could make out the Detective shield clipped to her belt. NYPD. So he was in New York. How had he gotten here? The last he remembered, he was in...somewhere that was not New York City. He blinked rapidly as he tried to remember where his last mission had been to. Was it Poland? Slovakia? No, that had been months or years ago. He remembered South Africa and that had definitely been after Eastern Europe.
I need to contact the agency, he thought, but that felt wrong. Was he still with the agency? Surely he wouldn't have left and come back to New York. Or had he? Everything felt wrong and he couldn't remember what had ever felt right. He knew one thing for sure, though: he needed to get out of this hospital so he could figure it out on his own.
He didn't hear a heart monitor, though he could feel the pads on his chest. That must mean they had the monitor muted, but he knew the nurses would be watching it for any changes in his condition. He needed to subdue the police officer, but wasn't sure how steady he would be on his feet. There was no telling how long he'd been unconscious and he didn't want to alert the woman that he was awake by passing out behind her.
As if in answer to his thoughts, he heard monitors start screaming from out in the hall. Someone wasn't doing very well. Footsteps echoed down the hall as nurses ran to and fro, trying to stabilise which ever patient was crashing. That meant the nurse's station would be down to a single person and those were his best odds.
He waited as the woman told whoever was on the phone to hold on and walked over to close the door. She returned to the conversation as she glanced down over him and he held very still.
“No, Finch, that was someone down the hall. John's fine,” she assured.
An image of a mousy man with glasses jumped before his eyes but he pushed that away. Just because he recognized the name of who was talking didn't make it any better for his chances of escape and he definitely needed to get out of here.
The detective returned to her position by the window, lowering her voice and continued talking. John slowly moved his right hand across his body to his left and pulled the IV line out. That was the easiest part. He watched the woman as he tried to decide if it would be better to take the EKG electrodes off first and then subdue her or the other way around. She was former military and she looked like she could hold her own in a fight.
He glanced up and saw that the readout was on the same side of the bed as she was. He followed the lines with his eyes and decided he should have enough slack in the line to reach her without getting tangled in the line. He'd worry about pulling the individual pads off once he dealt with her.
He was able to sit upright with relative ease and watched the detective's back for signs that she was aware of him. John saw her reflection in the mirror first catch in surprised disbelief then switch to excitement.
“John,” she said and there was suddenly a flurry of sound from the other end of the phone, none of which he could understand.
He moved swiftly, trusting his legs would hold him. He grabbed her by the shoulders then moved his grip to her head. He held her firmly so that his arms were squeezing the arteries in the side of her neck and blocking blood flow to the brain. She gasped for air and managed to say his name before going limp in his arms. Laying her down gently, he picked up the phone and listened briefly as another man-the mousy one?--yelled things into the phone that made no sense.
He dropped the phone, pulled the electrodes from the pads on his chest and headed to the door. He could still hear commotion a few doors away and the distinct steady sound that meant someone's heart had stopped. That room, it seemed, had not turned the heart monitor off.
He approached the door quickly but cautiously and peeked out of the crack the detective had left. No one was coming running because his monitor had stopped transmitting and for that, at least, he was grateful. He left the room, padding barefoot but still silent down the hall and then down a flight of stairs. On the floor below, he made his way down the hall until he reached a door that said “Locker Room.” Doctor's were always carrying around extra clothes and he though it very likely he'd find something in his size quickly.
A quick search turned up scrub pants, slip on shoes, a jacket and ball cap. Despite wondering how bad he'd been hit, he didn't undo the bandages to check his injuries, trusting instead that the hospital had taken good care of them. He headed back down the hallway, bound for a side entrance that he could sneak out of. It only took a few minutes to reach the ground floor and find such an exit. He was passing a shorter man with a limp, his eyes down when the other man suddenly gasped and looked him dead in the eye.
***
Harold observed impassively as Detective Fusco arrested Jonathan Ortega, the man who had come perilously close to killing Kenneth Mann, the number the machine had given him the day before. It had taken much longer to deal with this case than he would have preferred. He and Detective Carter had been taking turns sitting with John for the last four days and Harold had learned after the first case, one Josephine Simmons, that he preferred keeping his laptop with him so that he could coordinate assets from John's side. Some things, though, required a personal touch.
As he was leaving Fusco to his work and his reports and the driver was taking him the short drive back to the hospital, he punched the button in his phone that would connect him to Detective Carter. She answered on the second ring and immediately asked him how his business meeting had gone. He would have to either take John home soon and monitor him from there or take her off babysitting duty. She was every bit as observant as Harold anticipated and that was beginning to cause more of a problem.
They spoke for a few minutes before the sound of monitors frantically beeping out a failing status started passing over the line and he nearly jumped down her throat in his panic that John had taken a sudden turn for the worse. She assured him that wasn't the case and he heard the sound get closer as she closed the door then fade to a barely there background sound as she returned to the other side of the room, likely near the window.
He breathed a ragged sigh of relief as the images of John's too pale face from when he'd been shot overlaying with the passive features he'd been staring at the last few days began to fade.
“John,” breathed Carter, almost startled.
“Detective?” he asked, not sure what to expect now.
There was a scuffle and a gasp before he heard what sounded like her struggling to breath. Had the CIA found John and was now dispensing with Detective Carter? Surely even they wouldn't be so bold. But then why would she have called John's name? He called her again, a bit louder and then louder still when she didn't respond.
He heard a thump like a body hitting the floor then silence.
“Detective? John?” he asked, not daring to hope but wanting it to be him. There was silence on the other end and he motioned for the driver to go faster. They were only minutes away from the hospital and he needed to be there, to see what was happening.
The line went dead and Harold could have screamed in frustration if his throat hadn't swollen shut from worry. The remaining few blocks seemed to take longer than they ever had before and then they were stopping outside the side entrance that Harold had taken to using instead of the main entrance. He limped inside as fast as he could and turned left toward ICU only to see John walking calmly toward him in scrubs and a wool jacket with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes.
“John,” he whispered, stopping immediately and reaching for the other man.
Something dark flashed in John's eyes and Harold was suddenly thrown back against the wall, John's body trapping him in place as the taller man searched Harold's face for something. He didn't say anything, just looked.
“John,” Harold repeated, letting his emotions play plainly across his face for once. “John, it's me.”
John frowned, uncertain and his eyes lost a bit of focus and then Harold found himself stumbling as John released him. His friend was down the hall before Harold could pull himself together enough to say anything.
“John, wait!” he called, forcing his body to follow John.
John didn't even look back and, by the time Harold rounded the corner John had disappeared around, the other man was gone, like he'd never been there. Something stung at his eyes as he realized the man he had just faced was not his John, but whatever the CIA had made John, the man who would kill anyone who got in the way of his objective.
He was pulled from his thoughts when his phone rang and the hospital's caller ID appeared. “Yes?” he asked and found he was slightly out of breath.
“Mr. Carruthers,” said Nurse Jenkins, a slight tremor in her voice.
“John is gone,” he stated, turning and walking back toward the ICU. “I just saw him leave. Is Detective Carter alright?” he asked.
Nurse Jenkins paused as her train of thought was derailed. “Yes, sir. I mean, she will be. We found her unconscious in the room, but she wasn't hurt.”
“I'll be there in a moment,” he said and hung up the phone. He sagged in the elevator as it took him to the correct floor, unsure what he should do from here. One step at a time, he decided. He would take it one step at a time.
Standing straighter, he blew a calming breath and then stepped out of the elevator with a confident step.
***
John went underground as soon as he could, preferring the tunnels of the subway system and the various utility ducts to the street. Here there were no cameras to see him and automatically run facial recognition and the only people he encountered were the ones like himself who preferred to remain unseen.
It took him nearly an hour to cross town but he was confident that no one had followed him and that they weren't likely to search this far away. He went topside long enough to find a thrift shop and trade his expensive wool jacket for a beat up knit hoodie and the scrub pants for jeans and a pair of serviceable boots. He'd found a wallet in the jacket pocket so could even spring for a pair of socks. His entire shopping trip took him seven minutes and he was back underground, hiding in an old maintenance hatch a hundred yards or so down the subway tunnel.
John leaned his head against the concrete wall and took a minute to breathe. He was in New York City, a place he knew reasonably well. He knew he had a concussion so couldn't let himself sleep too long. While in the store, he'd had a chance to look at his head wound. All told, it wasn't that bad and he'd removed the bandages and tossed them and the towels he'd used to clean the dry blood off the side of his head into a storm drain where he knew they'd be washed away.
He gingerly felt his ribs and found that two of them were cracked as he'd suspected. That might hinder him in a close hand-to-hand fight, but not overly so. It was the burns which bothered him. They started just below his right elbow, travelled up to his shoulder and continued along part of his back. He still couldn't remember the explosion, but he was assuming he had been close to it and thrown back. The nurses had apparently recently changed the bandages since he could still feel the analgesic burn cream they had used. He knew he could fight through the pain as he had when he'd subdued the detective at the hospital, but he would have to be careful he didn't break the scabs or allow them to get infected.
He glanced around himself automatically, checking for threats before sitting straighter and closing his eyes. He let his mind wander back to the explosion, trying to remember what he'd been doing. Was he on a mission? Who was his contact here? If he was in New York, he was behind enemy lines and he couldn't count on the CIA to bail him out.
He frowned. There was something else about the agency, something that told him he couldn't count on their help even if he had been overseas. Where was Kara? While he certainly didn't expect her to be waiting at his bedside, she would have been somewhere nearby that she could have tracked him down. Or would she? Something nagged at the back of his brain, something that was saying Kara wouldn't be there, the same way he couldn't trust the CIA.
Opening his eyes, he brought himself back to the present and checked his surroundings. The amnesia was probably caused by the head injury. He wasn't sure how much time he'd lost since he wasn't even sure what the last thing was that he remembered. He would wait this out, see if his memory came back. He could hide among the eight million people in New York City, among the forgotten and the unseen. The idea was familiar, felt right.
He would wait. And if images of a mousy man in glasses who walked with a limp kept intruding...well, that could be pushed down until he figured out what was going on with himself.
***
“Are you telling me,” started Carter, leaning toward Harold over her coffee. “That John's running around my city like some kind of deranged Jason Bourne?” She looked around to make sure none of the other cafe patrons had heard her. “And you can't find him?”
“He's hardly deranged,” commented Harold, though he wasn't so sure of that himself. It had been over a day since John had run from the hospital. One of the doctors had reported his locker broken into and Harold had tracked his credit cards, but John knew better. The doctor had reported he'd had over a hundred dollars in cash and Harold was quite certain John had taken that and dumped everything else.
Carter rolled her eyes and leaned back. “But you still can't find him.”
“He's very good at hiding, Detective. You may remember that he's very familiar with the city's homeless after living amongst them for some time.” On that assumption, Harold had pulled up cameras near the various homeless hot spots in town and had them running facial recognition all night, but nothing had hit. There were simply too many places where the homeless tended to congregate and what cameras were in those areas weren't usually functional.
“No kidding.” She sighed and rubbed at her temples. “So what? We just have to wait until he does something noteworthy again? If he's hiding, he won't be in subways beating up wannabe arms dealers.”
“No, he won't. I'm hoping that he'll come to his senses and contact us at some point.”
“And until then? We just let him wander the city? What if he tries to contact the CIA? I'm sure they'd love it if he handed himself in. Heck, they might even be able to brainwash him into working for them again.”
“If he were going to contact the CIA, I think he would have done that by now.”
“And what makes you think he hasn't?”
Harold raised an eyebrow, surprised that Detective Carter still doubted his resources at this point. Although hacking Agent Snow's phone hadn't been as difficult as he might have thought it to be. He was confident that, if the CIA heard anything about John, Mark Snow would be one of the first to know.
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” continued Carter, holding up her hands in surrender. “I probably don't want to know about whatever it is you're doing anyway.” She sighed and let her hands fall onto the table. “So what now? Did you just come here to tell me that we've got a whole lot of nothing?”
“Actually,” said Harold and he actually felt bad for what he was about to do. He pushed a photo of a smiling teen across the table. “She needs our help.”
Carter laughed mirthlessly. “You're kidding, right? John's missing and you're giving me a picture.
“Unfortunately, Detective, my resources wait for no man.” He was actually going to meet Fusco in an hour because the machine had kicked out two numbers during the night. The only reason he'd waited this long was because he wanted to make sure the two numbers weren't connected. As much as he might think their two detectives should be told that they were on the same side, he respected John's request that they remain in the dark about each other for now.
Carter stared hard at him and he could feel her deciding if she should ask about his mysterious resources again or not. Finally, she pulled the photo closer and flipped it over to where he'd written the girl's home and school addresses. She threw some bills on the table to cover her coffee and left with only a mild glare in his direction, though he couldn't say if it was for the situation or as a reminder to find John.
***
John stared at the pharmacy across the street as he considered his next move. It had been three days since he'd escaped from the hospital and he was starting to get his memory back in bits and pieces, but it was slow to happen and he still wasn't entirely sure where he stood with anyone. He'd kept his injuries clean for the most part, but he needed to change the dressings and he wanted some antibiotics. The bottom edge on his back had begun to hurt more and the skin was warmer to the touch like the beginning stage of an infection. As large as the burn was, he could not afford an infection.
He'd come twenty blocks downtown to this place, sure that no one would find where he'd been hiding and he was ready to change locations as needed. Under normal circumstances he'd have just broken in and been done with it, but something had held him back. He didn't have any gloves to mask his fingerprints and he knew flags would go up the minute they hit the system.
He needed the drugs, though. Without them, he'd either die in the street from sepsis or he'd pass out somewhere and EMTs would be called and they'd run his fingerprints then. If it came to that, he'd be too weak to put up any kind of fight and he'd be stuck with whoever came for him, be it friend or foe. His eyes followed the line of the building he was hiding behind. It was a run down apartment building and he might just be able to hide in one of the units and watch to see who came.
Nodding to himself, he pulled the baseball cap down over his eyes. Three days without a razor had produced a silvery scruff of a beard that would mask his features somewhat and he'd thrown a ragged blue overcoat over his hoodie. He crossed the street, a rock in hand and threw it into the glass window. Alarms started blaring immediately, but he calmly stepped through his new door and headed for the first aid aisle.
Within two minutes he had gauze, bandages, ointment and antibiotics to hold him for a month. He also threw in things with street value to cover his actual purpose. Three minutes after he'd broken the window, he was back out and walking calmly between buildings, heading in the opposite direction he'd come.
He could hear sirens approaching and figured he had an hour before he needed to be back to see the action. After all, CSU had to arrive, find his prints and run them before anyone would know that this was anything but a drug run.
***
Harold turned to stare at the screen as he heard the call for a break in at a pharmacy. He'd taken to listening to the police scanner since John had disappeared in case there was any news of him. While a break in at a pharmacy wasn't necessarily John's doing, he knew the man would have to find something to treat his burns to prevent infection. His hand hovered over his phone, ready to call Detective Carter or Fusco to check the scene but he paused. Would John even still be there? Furthermore, if he were hiding, surely he would be halfway across the city by now.
If the CIA were watching either of them, their interest might be piqued when they responded to a scene that was definitely not a homicide. He would wait to call them. Instead, he pulled up footage of the crime scene. There was only a single camera in the area and the angle it showed gave him very little information. He hacked the system and found the recorded footage from when the crime had occurred. He could just make out a figure crossing the street, his stride confident as he threw something, probably a rock into the window.
The resolution was nowhere near enough to give him facial recognition, but the way the figure moved, the easy grace and confident stride...he was sure it was John. Harold grabbed his laptop and headed downstairs. John may be long gone, but he might glean something from the scene, from what the cops were saying to each other.
It took thirty minutes to get there and he parked his car half a block away in shadow. The windows were tinted so the cops wouldn't see him watching them. It was child's play to clone their phones and get ears in. He listened to the conversations and found a half dozen bored officers who would have preferred to be anywhere but here cleaning up what they thought was some addict getting a fresh stash.
He wanted to scream at them to give a full list of what had been taken instead of just talking in “this” and “that” and “those.” When a supervisor arrived, his wish was granted. One of the officers gave a report including items missing: so much of various controlled substances which he didn't really care about and half a dozen bottles of antibiotics, first aid supplies including bandages, gauze and burn ointment. There was no doubt in his mind that this had been John's handy work and that his friend had only taken the controlled substances to throw off the authorities or sell for quick cash.
He pressed Detective Carter's speed dial as he listened with half an ear to the discussion between the two CSU techs who'd been sent to process the scene.
“Carter.”
“Detective,” he greeted, glancing down at his screen. GPS said she was home for once. “I just thought I would let you know that our mutual friend surfaced briefly tonight.” He heard her move into a different room, likely away from her son.
“Where?”
“At a pharmacy in Queens,” he said and paused as the techs started talking excitedly. Apparently they'd found John's prints and just run them through the system. “Are you still listed as a contact whenever his fingerprints are found?”
“Probably. Why?”
“You're about to get a call,” he said cryptically before hanging up the phone. He kept the microphone on her phone active and chuckled to himself as she said some unkind things to the dead line.
He shifted in his seat, getting comfortable as he waited to see what would happen.
***
It had taken twenty minutes for John to loop back around and enter the apartment building. Two minutes after that he was in a vacant unit with a decent vantage of the pharmacy six floors below. He'd managed to get himself in place just in time to see the dark sedan pull up down the street and park. No one had gotten out and the windows were too dark to see who was inside. He made a mental note of the license plate and continued to watch. He immediately wished he had listening equipment so that he could hear the conversations going on below him and absently scratched at his right ear, almost expecting to hear what he needed automatically.
Silence remained and he sat down so he was harder to see from street level and watched. The CSU techs suddenly got excited and started showing their fingerprint scanners. They'd found his prints, it seemed. Almost immediately the officer in charge pulled out a cell phone and made a call, checking the screen for the number. It would seem there was a contact number any time his prints were found.
He frowned and considered that. Would it be the detective from the hospital? The CIA wouldn't need NYPD to alert them since they'd have an automatic alert whenever his prints hit the system. The FBI maybe? He would think they would have the same sort of system.
He waited for another half hour, one eye watching the sedan and noting that whoever was driving was still inside. It wasn't a company car, he knew. The CIA tended to drive SUVs, especially when tracking someone like him. But why would they be tracking him? He still wasn't sure why he didn't trust the agency he'd been part of for so many years, but that same nag he'd felt when he first woke up in the hospital was still there.
He sat straighter when an SUV pulled around the corner, though he noted this one had government plates. Again, not the CIA. A dark haired man stepped out of the driver's side and John had him pegged as FBI before he flashed the badge. The woman from the hospital stepped out of the passenger seat. She didn't seem happy to be with the FBI and he watched her lag slightly behind. She looked around and spotted the sedan before checking something on her phone. John's fingers itched to check a phone of his own to see what she saw and he scratched his ear to help relieve it.
The fed and the detective spoke with the officer in charge and the other officers on scene. The detective seemed to be looking around like she expected to see something the others couldn't. She carefully avoided looking at the sedan, so he knew she wasn't watching for the driver. Did she expect to see him for some reason. He frowned at the thought. Why would he make contact with an NYPD detective? While she had been waiting at the hospital and the phone conversation seemed to indicate that she knew him, he couldn't see any reason why he would be in contact with her.
He watched them talk for ten minutes before another black SUV rounded the opposite corner. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about the vehicle and it had normal plates, but he knew the agency was here. John checked the roof tops and saw two snipers setting up perches. Why would the CIA want him dead? When he looked back down, Mark was exiting the vehicle and approaching the detective and the FBI agent.
John took a shaky breath, suddenly scared. He was being hunted by the CIA, FBI, NYPD and some mysterious fourth party and he had absolutely no idea why. He didn't trust any of the people down there, even though he knew Mark and apparently knew the detective. He scratched absently at his ear again, wishing for...what? Someone to talk to? He had never been a very good conversationalist outside of a mission and his backup had always been Kara.
He stared down at Mark, at his friend's face and found his mind drifting back to another time and another country. He and Kara had been somewhere in the Middle East...Morocco maybe? They were given a new assignment and Mark had pulled him aside, said she had sold out her country.
He suddenly remembered Ordos, remembered her shooting him and realizing that they'd both been set up, that the government had been tying up loose ends. He pushed himself away from the window. He knew why he didn't trust the CIA anymore. They'd tried to kill him.
Deciding he wouldn't get any more information out of this, he headed downstairs, going carefully in case there were other agents canvassing the surrounding areas. There had been a utility tunnel behind this building. He slipped inside easily and left the area. He needed time to think.
Chapter 3A