Person of Interest 1.20 "Matsya Nyaya"
Person of Interest 1.20 "Matsya Nyaya." How's that for an unwieldy, hard to type episode title?!
We start with slightly different opening credits; among other minor changes, Fusco's image is now included, along with an ominous note about him being under NYPD investigation (Internal Affairs).
I'll start with all of the flashbacks to 2010. In Morocco, Reese switches out the SIM card on his cell phone to check his old number for messages. Okay, how often does he do this and is it strictly a Jessica thing? Who else would have that number that he would want to hear from?
Anyway, Jessica left a message; he calls her back and we get this devastating, yet information-free conversation. It sounds like Jessica is depressed and suicidal, but she doesn't say anything to provide additional context. John promises he'll be there within twenty-four hours--a promise he should know not to make.
Snow shows up and gives Reese and Stanton a new job: go to Ordos, China to retrieve something. Corwin is there and gives some additional information; it's a laptop that contains software that is meant to disable the Chinese nuclear program. What's odd about Corwin's intel is how pervasive this laptop's capabilities are; Reese and Stanton can't use cell phones or network devices of any kind can be used when they're in proximity with it. Hmmmmm...
Snow orders Reese to kill Stanton after they retrieve this device, because she's been compromised. "Clean up our own mess, Reese. You know that. You get this done, you can have all the leave you need. You understand?"
All the leave you need... yeah. We understand. Reese and Stanton prepare to go in to Ordos. Their escort team is leaving them to make their own way back; "Alpha team" will be met by a helicopter when they use the signal chem-lights.
As the two of them walk down to the city, the Machine's POV outlines both of them in red boxes--something it has done when a person was about to commit a violent crime. Stanton muses that the bird-flu cover story is rather extreme for 'just' a computer virus.
Reese and Stanton find a lot of dead bodies and one live one. Stanton, speaking Chinese, learns that the team that came in and killed everyone wanted the machine. Then she shoots the man and doesn't tell Reese what she learned. Which, well, she believes he's been corrupted, so why would she?
"He said he wanted something for the pain."
They find what they assume is the laptop. Why didn't the team of killers take it? Maybe the CIA didn't want to trust hired guns with their dangerous software. Reese points out that they'll have to wait until nightfall for retrieval, so they sit and eat MREs. (Reese actually eats something!)
Stanton: Just a matter of time before this is all obsolete.
Reese: We'll still have to eat.
Stanton: I'm not talking about the MREs. Satellites replacing surveillance teams. Drones replacing fighter pilots.
Reese: So we've outlived our usefulness? We'll be replaced by a push of a button, is that it?
Stanton: What do you think?
Reese: I think we're still here.
Stanton: You ever wonder where we get our intel?
Reese: I thought you didn't ask questions. Just followed orders.
Stanton: I never said it was easy.
Reese: Sun's setting. Time to go.
And then, as Stanton throws out the chem-lights, Reese prepares himself to shoot her. He can't do it--but she can. She was under the same orders: take down her corrupt partner. Reese, remarkably verbose and mobile for a man who's been gut-shot, points out that not only were they both given that order, she just set out the signal marking their location--for them to be eliminated completely. Uh-oh.
Reese runs; the building behind him explodes.
Present-day: Carter and Reese having drinks in a bar. We can't tell that Carter is talking to Reese intially--she's saying stuff about building a trusting, healthy relationship and needing to know "where this is headed." Hee. Oh, show. You're very funny, making this sound like a dating situation.
She mentions her suspicions about Fusco being dirty. :-( Which is true, and would be true whether Fusco had met Reese or not, but still. Fusco!
Anyway, Reese offers to share the work on their next case, but really he has Carter there just to arrest the woman who is planning to kill her cheating significant other. I'm torn between amusement and aggravation. Love it that Carter looks at the picture and figures out where the guy is inside the bar within a second or two.
Carter: I thought you said we were working this one together.
Reese: Well, we are! You're taking care of the shooter and I'm making sure the cheating boyfriend doesn't get hurt. [glances at boyfriend] Looks fine to me.
I keep wondering if someday this show is going to cross a line with me and I'll no longer find John Reese adorably irritating and go with just plain irritating. Carter seems amused, though.
Fusco and Carter are the first topic of conversation as Reese enters the Library Lair of Loneliness. Finch thinks it might be a good plan to let Carter know that Fusco is working with HR at their behest; Reese insists that keeping Fusco's work secret is better protection for their assets. I'm siding with Finch on this one. Hopefully the show has something in mind for how the reveal happens, because this is definitely not a secret that can keep. (Another example of how Reese compartmentalizes things, in my opinion. It's still a scary trait, Mister Reese!)
He keeps making this face at Finch. Why so cranky, Mister Reese?!
New number: Tommy Clay, who works for an armored car company. An ordinary guy, as Reese assesses him. Reese gets to be the new security guard to Clay's "hopper" (the one who goes and collects the cargo).
Reese tells Finch that the security is laughable, and then we get something to laugh at--practical jokers, Clay and driver Murray. The noise is alarming; Reese assures Finch it was just a prank. "Oh that's endearing," says Finch with an acerbic tone. Hee--Finch and I agree on practical jokes, then.
Fusco calls and tells Reese that taking down Elias has dried up a lot of HR's usual money sources. "It's like the wild wild west out here." Reese tells Fusco to keep up the work (and implies that he can keep the money he rakes in); we see Lee Fusco get into the car with his dad, who then offers to buy his son new sporting equipment.
Carter calls with information from the license plate. She asks Reese if he stole the plate reader from her cop car. "Well, no," says Reese. "Not your car." Hah! The owner of the car has a nephew who served time for armed robbery; that guy has a pal. Carter offers help, but Reese doesn't think he needs any.
Time for breakfast at a diner with the co-workers. We have our first glimpse of Ashley the waitress/criminal mastermind. Starting the workday, Clay and Reese chat about robberies and the usual boredom of the job. Finch narrates the stops and they figure out that the medical supply company will be shipping platinum--used to make pacemakers. The cases are worth 1.25 million dollars, Finch calculates. Dun dun DUN! The tension mounts via music and a car's squealing tires, but the actual robbery goes down after they're on the road again--with an explosion that knocks over the armored car.
Possibly Ashley the criminal mastermind likes explosions? Or... I'm not sure what. It's a different way of robbing an armored car. Certainly it was unexpected.
Anyway, onward! To Reese lying all cattywampus (or catawampus--I, uh, had a diversion while investigating this word) on the ground.
He blinks and goes fully conscious to the noise of automatic gunfire. Tells Clay to stay inside, goes out, saves Murray the guard, hurrah! Gets shot in the back by Clay, boo! Now we get cattywampus Reese, round two. (His nose really does go slightly to the left. Huh, blacktop50 was right! Heh.) And poor Murray the guard goes down as well.
Reese wakes up in a hospital; in a nearby bed, Murray the driver dies in spite of the efforts of the ER team. Reese pulls out his IV (ouch and bleh), and then Carter shows up. "Looks like you could use some help."
This is a lovely scene. I like Carter's sarcasm (A LOT), but it's nice to glimpse another side of her as well.
Reese figures that he was supposed to stop Clay; Carter is looking to find out who Clay is working with. Finch calls Carter's phone, relieved when he finds Reese still alive and mobile. Mobile enough, anyway.
Fusco watches his boy play sports; he gets approached by Lynch and sent to pick up something in Brooklyn. "Failure is not an option. I know you understand what I'm saying."
Carter interviews Mrs. Clay and figures out that the man is having an affair. Finch is a step ahead of her, answering her phone call from the diner where Ashley is working. He clones Ashley's phone and then talks to Reese about using it to track Clay. Hilariously, as he says all of this to Reese, there are two cops just down the counter from him.
Here's where Reese and Fusco's storylines first cross: a motel room containing two dead bodies and empty cases... and Reese and Fusco are both looking for Clay. Fusco says that HR helped set up the heist, and they want their share now. He's not happy to have to go back and tell Lynch that someone beat him to it. HR isn't a trusting organization, and Fusco is justifiably concerned that they'll think he's dirty.
Finch and Reese talk about how to trace Clay now. Finch isn't sure protecting Tommy Clay is what they need to be doing. Reese says, "He killed his friend in cold blood and shot me in the back. I wasn't thinking of protecting him."
Ashley the waitress is the key to tracing Clay; Reese waits in her car and she TOTALLY cons him, with her pretty crocodile tears about how Clay abandoned her.
So Finch and Reese are now trying other options. Finch writes a program to look for new Simitel phones that are programmed with the password ASHLEY, finds one and listens to the message. Arturo's boxing club--Reese tells Finch to get Carter to meet him there.
But while Finch is talking to Carter, she has a run-in with Snow and Preppy Friend Evans. (Our last scene with Agent Evans having actual dialogue and not just a voice-over.)
Carter (to Snow): What do you want?
Snow: Say hi. See how you are.
Carter: I'm fine. What do you want?
What they want is for Carter to stop talking to the FBI about our mutual friend. Huh, didn't Reese use that phrase when talking to high!Finch? Yes, he did. With Carter needing to lay low after Snow's visit, Reese goes into the boxing club without backup; Clay, however, does have backup, in the form of Ashley. Finch tries to pull in Fusco to help, but he's with Lynch, hunting down the platinum.
Reese lets himself be tied up. Temporary revocation of license to bad-assery? (Reese has a habit of grabbing people's guns, especially people inexperienced with firearms; I was expecting him to do so with Ashley, but... whatever. *handwaves*)
So while Tommy finishes the knots, Reese analyzes these two would-be bad guys and figures out: Tommy Clay is both perpetrator and victim. Ashley shoots Clay in the back.
Reese uses his cheekbones pyschoanalyzes Ashley and guesses that she's never shot anyone before. He points out that the first one is hard, but the second one can be even harder. She flinches and starts to leave with her loot.
And then Fusco and Lynch show up; Lynch shoots Ashley and Fusco checks that the bag contains the platinum. Lynch is like a cat finding a mouse when he spots Reese tied up; he remembers Reese's threats to him about keeping Carter safe. Lynch even uses the title Carter's guardian angel. (I'm trying to remember how much Fusco knew during 1.09. Was he aware that Carter had been in danger?)
Fusco convinces Lynch to stop toying around with his prey, so Lynch decides to shoot Reese instead. Fusco then shoots Lynch first, using Ashley's gun in order to properly obfuscate the events at the crime scene.
Fusco: I got this one. I shot him with her gun. Simple enough to make it look like Lynch botched the whole thing.
Reese: You're getting good at this, Lionel.
Fusco: I was always good at this. That's why you picked me in the first place, remember?
Back at the Library Lair of Loneliness, Reese has changed back to his usual white shirt and dark suit. Oh, HEEEEEEEEY--the shirt is down another button again! Back to where we were before the temporary rash of modesty! Excellent. Also, hah, Finch's pocket square has ALL the colors.
Seriously, though--doesn't Reese ever get to hang out wearing a sweatshirt and baggy jeans? No?
Finch questions what they've accomplished with this number. Not a lot.
And now the flashbacks with Stanton reflect on the present day. Voice-over with Snow and Preppy; they've gotten some intel from a North Korean "asset" about a wounded agent who was helped in May 2010... and who had a bank account that has been accessed two days before. It's across the street from a hotel. Evans and Snow go into the hotel room and Evans gets shot in the back. Snow is shot in the leg, I'm guessing, and Stanton steps out of the shadows with a gun in her hands.
"Hello, Mark. Have a seat. We have some catching up to do."
So Stanton has chosen to resurface, and she must want something from Snow, otherwise he would be dead rather than injured. But what? And why now? And does she know that Reese survived and is in New York City as well?
Basically this moment is when the episode went from good to AWESOME. Of all the 'relevant' people we believe to be dead (Nathan Ingram and Jessica are the other two I'm thinking of), Stanton is the most intriguing choice as a survivor. In part because Jessica and Nathan should stay properly stuffed in their fridges, yeah, but also because STANTON! She had a genuine and scary toe-the-line mentality about her work. We never saw her flinch. So what happens to someone like her when the company she was loyal to tries to kill her? And what has she been doing since then?
Stanton's guess in 2010 that something bigger is going on besides a laptop that contains a specialized virus for nuclear technology, her speech about being replaced by machines... I'm thinking she had more information about the Machine. And maybe that was why Snow and Corwin sent her to Ordos. It wasn't Reese who mattered; it was an opportunity to 'clean up' the last connections to that information.
Or this may have been a matter of utility. Stanton speaks Chinese. (Mandarin, Cantonese, or one of the other Chinese languages?) If the software engineers gunned down had a project to rebuild something like the Machine--and if they had source code (presumably the "stolen laptop") to help them--Stanton might well have found out some of that information during the two weeks they were in China before heading into Ordos. And so she would need to be eliminated once she was used to get the other information the CIA needed...
Hm, that second theory doesn't track quite as well as the first one.
Oooh! Also! I wonder if the Machine will decide Stanton is a threat?! Sure, her number might come up as a future perpetrator or victim of crime, but I'm thinking of that time the Machine labeled Reese and Fusco a threat to "System Administrator" when they discussed the alias Wren. Or maybe she's already been labelled a threat to the Machine?!
At any rate, STAAAAAAAAAAAAANTON! *bounce bounce bounce*
Posted at Dreamwidth: http://rose-griffes.dreamwidth.org/243469.html. Comment where you wish.
We start with slightly different opening credits; among other minor changes, Fusco's image is now included, along with an ominous note about him being under NYPD investigation (Internal Affairs).
I'll start with all of the flashbacks to 2010. In Morocco, Reese switches out the SIM card on his cell phone to check his old number for messages. Okay, how often does he do this and is it strictly a Jessica thing? Who else would have that number that he would want to hear from?
Anyway, Jessica left a message; he calls her back and we get this devastating, yet information-free conversation. It sounds like Jessica is depressed and suicidal, but she doesn't say anything to provide additional context. John promises he'll be there within twenty-four hours--a promise he should know not to make.
Snow shows up and gives Reese and Stanton a new job: go to Ordos, China to retrieve something. Corwin is there and gives some additional information; it's a laptop that contains software that is meant to disable the Chinese nuclear program. What's odd about Corwin's intel is how pervasive this laptop's capabilities are; Reese and Stanton can't use cell phones or network devices of any kind can be used when they're in proximity with it. Hmmmmm...
Snow orders Reese to kill Stanton after they retrieve this device, because she's been compromised. "Clean up our own mess, Reese. You know that. You get this done, you can have all the leave you need. You understand?"
All the leave you need... yeah. We understand. Reese and Stanton prepare to go in to Ordos. Their escort team is leaving them to make their own way back; "Alpha team" will be met by a helicopter when they use the signal chem-lights.
As the two of them walk down to the city, the Machine's POV outlines both of them in red boxes--something it has done when a person was about to commit a violent crime. Stanton muses that the bird-flu cover story is rather extreme for 'just' a computer virus.
Reese and Stanton find a lot of dead bodies and one live one. Stanton, speaking Chinese, learns that the team that came in and killed everyone wanted the machine. Then she shoots the man and doesn't tell Reese what she learned. Which, well, she believes he's been corrupted, so why would she?
"He said he wanted something for the pain."
They find what they assume is the laptop. Why didn't the team of killers take it? Maybe the CIA didn't want to trust hired guns with their dangerous software. Reese points out that they'll have to wait until nightfall for retrieval, so they sit and eat MREs. (Reese actually eats something!)
Stanton: Just a matter of time before this is all obsolete.
Reese: We'll still have to eat.
Stanton: I'm not talking about the MREs. Satellites replacing surveillance teams. Drones replacing fighter pilots.
Reese: So we've outlived our usefulness? We'll be replaced by a push of a button, is that it?
Stanton: What do you think?
Reese: I think we're still here.
Stanton: You ever wonder where we get our intel?
Reese: I thought you didn't ask questions. Just followed orders.
Stanton: I never said it was easy.
Reese: Sun's setting. Time to go.
And then, as Stanton throws out the chem-lights, Reese prepares himself to shoot her. He can't do it--but she can. She was under the same orders: take down her corrupt partner. Reese, remarkably verbose and mobile for a man who's been gut-shot, points out that not only were they both given that order, she just set out the signal marking their location--for them to be eliminated completely. Uh-oh.
Reese runs; the building behind him explodes.
Present-day: Carter and Reese having drinks in a bar. We can't tell that Carter is talking to Reese intially--she's saying stuff about building a trusting, healthy relationship and needing to know "where this is headed." Hee. Oh, show. You're very funny, making this sound like a dating situation.
She mentions her suspicions about Fusco being dirty. :-( Which is true, and would be true whether Fusco had met Reese or not, but still. Fusco!
Anyway, Reese offers to share the work on their next case, but really he has Carter there just to arrest the woman who is planning to kill her cheating significant other. I'm torn between amusement and aggravation. Love it that Carter looks at the picture and figures out where the guy is inside the bar within a second or two.
Carter: I thought you said we were working this one together.
Reese: Well, we are! You're taking care of the shooter and I'm making sure the cheating boyfriend doesn't get hurt. [glances at boyfriend] Looks fine to me.
I keep wondering if someday this show is going to cross a line with me and I'll no longer find John Reese adorably irritating and go with just plain irritating. Carter seems amused, though.
Fusco and Carter are the first topic of conversation as Reese enters the Library Lair of Loneliness. Finch thinks it might be a good plan to let Carter know that Fusco is working with HR at their behest; Reese insists that keeping Fusco's work secret is better protection for their assets. I'm siding with Finch on this one. Hopefully the show has something in mind for how the reveal happens, because this is definitely not a secret that can keep. (Another example of how Reese compartmentalizes things, in my opinion. It's still a scary trait, Mister Reese!)
He keeps making this face at Finch. Why so cranky, Mister Reese?!
New number: Tommy Clay, who works for an armored car company. An ordinary guy, as Reese assesses him. Reese gets to be the new security guard to Clay's "hopper" (the one who goes and collects the cargo).
Reese tells Finch that the security is laughable, and then we get something to laugh at--practical jokers, Clay and driver Murray. The noise is alarming; Reese assures Finch it was just a prank. "Oh that's endearing," says Finch with an acerbic tone. Hee--Finch and I agree on practical jokes, then.
Fusco calls and tells Reese that taking down Elias has dried up a lot of HR's usual money sources. "It's like the wild wild west out here." Reese tells Fusco to keep up the work (and implies that he can keep the money he rakes in); we see Lee Fusco get into the car with his dad, who then offers to buy his son new sporting equipment.
Carter calls with information from the license plate. She asks Reese if he stole the plate reader from her cop car. "Well, no," says Reese. "Not your car." Hah! The owner of the car has a nephew who served time for armed robbery; that guy has a pal. Carter offers help, but Reese doesn't think he needs any.
Time for breakfast at a diner with the co-workers. We have our first glimpse of Ashley the waitress/criminal mastermind. Starting the workday, Clay and Reese chat about robberies and the usual boredom of the job. Finch narrates the stops and they figure out that the medical supply company will be shipping platinum--used to make pacemakers. The cases are worth 1.25 million dollars, Finch calculates. Dun dun DUN! The tension mounts via music and a car's squealing tires, but the actual robbery goes down after they're on the road again--with an explosion that knocks over the armored car.
Possibly Ashley the criminal mastermind likes explosions? Or... I'm not sure what. It's a different way of robbing an armored car. Certainly it was unexpected.
Anyway, onward! To Reese lying all cattywampus (or catawampus--I, uh, had a diversion while investigating this word) on the ground.
He blinks and goes fully conscious to the noise of automatic gunfire. Tells Clay to stay inside, goes out, saves Murray the guard, hurrah! Gets shot in the back by Clay, boo! Now we get cattywampus Reese, round two. (His nose really does go slightly to the left. Huh, blacktop50 was right! Heh.) And poor Murray the guard goes down as well.
Reese wakes up in a hospital; in a nearby bed, Murray the driver dies in spite of the efforts of the ER team. Reese pulls out his IV (ouch and bleh), and then Carter shows up. "Looks like you could use some help."
This is a lovely scene. I like Carter's sarcasm (A LOT), but it's nice to glimpse another side of her as well.
Reese figures that he was supposed to stop Clay; Carter is looking to find out who Clay is working with. Finch calls Carter's phone, relieved when he finds Reese still alive and mobile. Mobile enough, anyway.
Fusco watches his boy play sports; he gets approached by Lynch and sent to pick up something in Brooklyn. "Failure is not an option. I know you understand what I'm saying."
Carter interviews Mrs. Clay and figures out that the man is having an affair. Finch is a step ahead of her, answering her phone call from the diner where Ashley is working. He clones Ashley's phone and then talks to Reese about using it to track Clay. Hilariously, as he says all of this to Reese, there are two cops just down the counter from him.
Here's where Reese and Fusco's storylines first cross: a motel room containing two dead bodies and empty cases... and Reese and Fusco are both looking for Clay. Fusco says that HR helped set up the heist, and they want their share now. He's not happy to have to go back and tell Lynch that someone beat him to it. HR isn't a trusting organization, and Fusco is justifiably concerned that they'll think he's dirty.
Finch and Reese talk about how to trace Clay now. Finch isn't sure protecting Tommy Clay is what they need to be doing. Reese says, "He killed his friend in cold blood and shot me in the back. I wasn't thinking of protecting him."
Ashley the waitress is the key to tracing Clay; Reese waits in her car and she TOTALLY cons him, with her pretty crocodile tears about how Clay abandoned her.
So Finch and Reese are now trying other options. Finch writes a program to look for new Simitel phones that are programmed with the password ASHLEY, finds one and listens to the message. Arturo's boxing club--Reese tells Finch to get Carter to meet him there.
But while Finch is talking to Carter, she has a run-in with Snow and Preppy Friend Evans. (Our last scene with Agent Evans having actual dialogue and not just a voice-over.)
Carter (to Snow): What do you want?
Snow: Say hi. See how you are.
Carter: I'm fine. What do you want?
What they want is for Carter to stop talking to the FBI about our mutual friend. Huh, didn't Reese use that phrase when talking to high!Finch? Yes, he did. With Carter needing to lay low after Snow's visit, Reese goes into the boxing club without backup; Clay, however, does have backup, in the form of Ashley. Finch tries to pull in Fusco to help, but he's with Lynch, hunting down the platinum.
Reese lets himself be tied up. Temporary revocation of license to bad-assery? (Reese has a habit of grabbing people's guns, especially people inexperienced with firearms; I was expecting him to do so with Ashley, but... whatever. *handwaves*)
So while Tommy finishes the knots, Reese analyzes these two would-be bad guys and figures out: Tommy Clay is both perpetrator and victim. Ashley shoots Clay in the back.
Reese uses his cheekbones pyschoanalyzes Ashley and guesses that she's never shot anyone before. He points out that the first one is hard, but the second one can be even harder. She flinches and starts to leave with her loot.
And then Fusco and Lynch show up; Lynch shoots Ashley and Fusco checks that the bag contains the platinum. Lynch is like a cat finding a mouse when he spots Reese tied up; he remembers Reese's threats to him about keeping Carter safe. Lynch even uses the title Carter's guardian angel. (I'm trying to remember how much Fusco knew during 1.09. Was he aware that Carter had been in danger?)
Fusco convinces Lynch to stop toying around with his prey, so Lynch decides to shoot Reese instead. Fusco then shoots Lynch first, using Ashley's gun in order to properly obfuscate the events at the crime scene.
Fusco: I got this one. I shot him with her gun. Simple enough to make it look like Lynch botched the whole thing.
Reese: You're getting good at this, Lionel.
Fusco: I was always good at this. That's why you picked me in the first place, remember?
Back at the Library Lair of Loneliness, Reese has changed back to his usual white shirt and dark suit. Oh, HEEEEEEEEY--the shirt is down another button again! Back to where we were before the temporary rash of modesty! Excellent. Also, hah, Finch's pocket square has ALL the colors.
Seriously, though--doesn't Reese ever get to hang out wearing a sweatshirt and baggy jeans? No?
Finch questions what they've accomplished with this number. Not a lot.
And now the flashbacks with Stanton reflect on the present day. Voice-over with Snow and Preppy; they've gotten some intel from a North Korean "asset" about a wounded agent who was helped in May 2010... and who had a bank account that has been accessed two days before. It's across the street from a hotel. Evans and Snow go into the hotel room and Evans gets shot in the back. Snow is shot in the leg, I'm guessing, and Stanton steps out of the shadows with a gun in her hands.
"Hello, Mark. Have a seat. We have some catching up to do."
So Stanton has chosen to resurface, and she must want something from Snow, otherwise he would be dead rather than injured. But what? And why now? And does she know that Reese survived and is in New York City as well?
Basically this moment is when the episode went from good to AWESOME. Of all the 'relevant' people we believe to be dead (Nathan Ingram and Jessica are the other two I'm thinking of), Stanton is the most intriguing choice as a survivor. In part because Jessica and Nathan should stay properly stuffed in their fridges, yeah, but also because STANTON! She had a genuine and scary toe-the-line mentality about her work. We never saw her flinch. So what happens to someone like her when the company she was loyal to tries to kill her? And what has she been doing since then?
Stanton's guess in 2010 that something bigger is going on besides a laptop that contains a specialized virus for nuclear technology, her speech about being replaced by machines... I'm thinking she had more information about the Machine. And maybe that was why Snow and Corwin sent her to Ordos. It wasn't Reese who mattered; it was an opportunity to 'clean up' the last connections to that information.
Or this may have been a matter of utility. Stanton speaks Chinese. (Mandarin, Cantonese, or one of the other Chinese languages?) If the software engineers gunned down had a project to rebuild something like the Machine--and if they had source code (presumably the "stolen laptop") to help them--Stanton might well have found out some of that information during the two weeks they were in China before heading into Ordos. And so she would need to be eliminated once she was used to get the other information the CIA needed...
Hm, that second theory doesn't track quite as well as the first one.
Oooh! Also! I wonder if the Machine will decide Stanton is a threat?! Sure, her number might come up as a future perpetrator or victim of crime, but I'm thinking of that time the Machine labeled Reese and Fusco a threat to "System Administrator" when they discussed the alias Wren. Or maybe she's already been labelled a threat to the Machine?!
At any rate, STAAAAAAAAAAAAANTON! *bounce bounce bounce*
Posted at Dreamwidth: http://rose-griffes.dreamwidth.org/243469.html. Comment where you wish.