Chapter 3: The Setup
POV: Thomas Carter
Tom's morning coffee tastes like copper pennies and barely controlled panic.
He sits at his kitchen table, newspaper spread before him like a prop in some elaborate theater production, while his hands shake just enough to make the pages rustle. Three days since sending the SEC tip. The surveillance teams have been in position since yesterday, and every fiber of his being screams run.
Instead, he takes another sip of bitter coffee and pretends to read about local politics.
[CAR ALPHA: GREY SEDAN, TWO OCCUPANTS, FOLLOWING AT 30 METERS.]
Nano's voice cuts through his thoughts with clinical precision, overlaying tactical data across his vision like some nightmare video game interface.
[VAN BETA: PANEL VAN, EQUIPMENT VISIBLE THROUGH WINDOWS - LIKELY RECORDING.]
"Perfect," Tom mutters into his coffee mug. "Just perfect."
He forces himself through the motions of normalcy: shower, shave, press a button-down shirt that Thomas Carter would wear to his IT job. The man in the mirror looks like someone who pays taxes and worries about his 401k, not someone with nanobots in his bloodstream waiting for artificial super-intelligence to notice his existence.
The subway platform buzzes with morning commuters, everyone lost in their own small dramas, unaware that among them walks a man being photographed by professional surveillance teams. Tom buys a newspaper from a vendor who probably sells the same stories to the same faces every morning, a ritual of urban anonymity.
[SUBJECT PHOTOGRAPHED: 47 IMAGES CAPTURED IN LAST 12 MINUTES.]
Tom's grip tightens on the paper as he boards the train. The gray sedan's occupants will be radioing his position, noting his routine, building a profile of Thomas Carter's predictable life. But predictability is the point—let them think they know him while The Machine calculates the probability that this particular whistleblower will need help.
At the office, his performance art reaches new heights. He helps Janet from accounting with a database query that's been frustrating her for weeks, his fingers moving across the keyboard with Thomas Carter's practiced competence. He attends a meeting about server maintenance schedules and nods at appropriate intervals while his brain screams about the watchers in the parking garage.
His lunch—a sad sandwich from the building's cafeteria—sits heavy in his stomach as he backs up personal files to encrypted cloud storage and memorizes the locations of every emergency exit on his floor.
"You okay, Tom? You seem tense."
Sarah from HR studies him with the kind of concern that suggests she's already noticed more than she should. Her voice carries the practiced empathy of someone trained to spot workplace stress before it becomes a liability.
"Big project deadline. You know how it is."
The lie slides out easily, wrapped in Thomas Carter's mild demeanor and apologetic smile. Sarah nods and moves on, satisfied with an explanation that fits her worldview of overworked IT consultants and corporate pressure.
"If only she knew," Tom thinks, watching her disappear around a corner toward a life where the biggest danger is missing a deadline.
Across the city, in an abandoned library where shadows pool between towering bookshelves, Harold Finch adjusts his glasses and studies the list that emerged from his creation's digital consciousness. Numbers scrolling past on multiple monitors—social security digits that represent human lives balanced on the edge of violence.
His finger pauses on one entry, something about the pattern nagging at his analytical mind. The Machine's confidence algorithms suggest moderate threat probability, but there's an anomaly in the data structure that he can't quite identify.
Not yet. Not today.
But soon.
Meanwhile, in a dive bar that reeks of stale beer and broken dreams, John Reese stares into his whiskey glass and sees nothing but amber-colored emptiness. Hours from a recruitment that will give his shattered life meaning, he exists in the liminal space between his old death and new purpose.
Tom knows their stories are beginning, can feel the timing click into place like gears in some vast machine of fate and circumstance. The irony isn't lost on him—while he's being watched by corporate criminals, he's watching for the moment when The Machine decides Thomas Carter needs saving.
The news breaks during lunch on day four.
Tom sits in the cafeteria, mechanically chewing a turkey sandwich, when every phone in the building starts buzzing simultaneously. SEC ANNOUNCES INVESTIGATION INTO CORPORATE FRAUD. EXECUTIVES UNDER SCRUTINY.
The office transforms around him like a disturbed anthill. Conversations spike into urgent whispers. Executives cluster in glass-walled conference rooms, their faces grave with the particular tension of people whose secrets have been exposed to federal investigators.
The CFO—James Mitchell, according to the org chart, according to the bank records Tom has memorized—stands near the elevators with his phone pressed to his ear. His voice carries across the lobby in fragments: "...contained...anonymous tip...find who..."
Tom keeps his head down, maintains the facade of confused innocence, but his heart hammers against his ribs when his email chimes with a message that makes his blood freeze:
Mr. Carter, please come to HR immediately.
The elevator ride to the fifteenth floor stretches like a descent into hell. Tom's reflection in the polished steel doors shows a man who looks appropriately nervous—which isn't hard, since terror has turned his skeleton into ice.
The HR conference room waits like a tribunal: three executives he recognizes from corporate photos, two security guards who've never been friendly, and a lawyer whose expensive suit screams damage control.
CFO Mitchell leans back in his chair with the casual arrogance of a man who's never faced real consequences.
"We know it was you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Tom's voice comes out exactly as scared as it should—which, again, requires no acting whatsoever.
"The anonymous tip had your digital fingerprints all over it. Database analysis. Encryption patterns. Technical language that matches your employment history."
The lawyer slides papers across the table with practiced efficiency.
"Your employment is terminated effective immediately. Security will escort you out. You'll receive a separation package contingent on signing this non-disclosure agreement."
Tom stares at the documents, genuine outrage mixing with carefully performed confusion.
"You're firing me for reporting crimes?"
Mitchell leans forward, and suddenly the corporate mask slips to reveal something much more dangerous underneath.
"We're protecting our business. I suggest you protect yourself. Cooperate with our investigation, withdraw your statements to the SEC, or things get... difficult."
The threat hangs in the air like ozone before a storm. Tom reads the subtext in Mitchell's eyes: We know where you live. We know your routine. We have resources beyond legal channels.
Security escorts him out past coworkers who stare like he's grown a second head. His access badge gets deactivated with a plastic snap that sounds like a cell door closing. The elevator descends in silence heavy with professional embarrassment and barely contained fear.
Outside, three watchers wait with the patience of predators who know their prey has nowhere to run.
Tom walks home through streets that suddenly feel like a maze designed to trap him, while Nano provides a steady stream of tactical updates that do nothing to calm his nerves.
[WARNING: THREAT LEVEL ELEVATED. RECOMMEND CONTACTING AUTHORITIES.]
"No cops," Tom whispers under his breath, aware that long-range microphones might be capturing even his subvocalizations. "They're part of the problem. We wait for The Machine."
[ACKNOWLEDGED. MONITORING ALL FREQUENCIES FOR INTERVENTION SIGNALS.]
The walk home stretches like a death march through a city that suddenly feels hostile in every shadow and doorway. Tom's apartment building looms ahead like a fortress that's already been breached, and every step closer feels like walking into a trap he's built for himself.
But if this works—if The Machine notices the pattern and decides Thomas Carter deserves salvation—then the trap will spring in his favor.
He just has to survive long enough for artificial intelligence to care about one more human life balanced on the edge of violence.
The attack comes at 11 PM, when the city outside has settled into its nocturnal rhythm of distant sirens and muffled conversations through thin walls.
Tom jolts awake to the sound of his apartment door exploding inward, wood splintering around lock and frame like his security was made of cardboard. Two figures in ski masks move with professional efficiency, no wasted motion, no hesitation.
He barely has time to roll out of bed before they're on him.
"Where are the backup files, Carter?"
The voice cuts through his sleep-fogged brain like a blade, urgent and impatient. A fist drives into his stomach before he can form words, doubling him over as air explodes from his lungs.
"I don't—"
"Don't lie. Where?"
Tom gasps, fighting for breath, his mind racing through options that all end badly.
"Cloud storage. Encrypted."
The second man steps forward, and Tom can see calculation in his eyes even through the mask.
"Encryption key. Now."
[POLICE RESPONSE TIME: 8 MINUTES. RECOMMENDATION: DELAY.]
Nano's tactical assessment scrolls across his vision, but eight minutes might as well be eight hours when professional killers are demanding information. Tom's mind races—give them the real key and lose his only leverage, or give them a fake one and buy time he might not survive to use.
"It's in my email. Drafts folder. File named 'grocery list.'"
They force him to the laptop, his fingers moving slowly across the keyboard while he mentally maps the apartment for escape routes. The fake email file loads with agonizing deliberation, passwords and encryption keys that will lead them down digital rabbit holes while the real evidence remains safely locked away.
A slight click echoes from the front door—so subtle Tom almost misses it.
"Did you hear that?"
Both men turn for just two seconds, attention split, and Tom runs.
Pure panic drives him toward the window, no supernatural speed or strength, just primal survival instinct overriding every rational thought. The glass explodes outward as he crashes through onto the fire escape, shards cutting his arms as he tumbles onto metal grating.
Their pursuit pounds behind him—heavy boots on steel, curses in multiple languages, the mechanical sounds of weapons being readied. Tom slides down the ladder with gravity and terror as his only allies, metal burning his palms as he drops toward the alley below.
His feet hit pavement and he runs into the New York night, lungs burning, heart hammering, the city's maze of streets suddenly offering sanctuary instead of imprisonment.
[UNKNOWN PARTY INTERVENING. ANALYZING...]
Two gunshots crack through the night—sharp, precise, deliberately non-lethal. Tom hears his pursuers drop behind him but doesn't slow, doesn't look back, doesn't stop running until a deep voice cuts through his panic like a lifeline.
"You should be more careful, Mr. Carter."
Tom turns slowly, his entire body shaking with adrenaline and relief and the surreal recognition of impossible reality made flesh.
The man in the alley is tall, wearing a dark coat that seems to absorb the city's neon glow. His eyes have seen too much, carry weight that speaks of choices made in shadows. John Reese. The John Reese. Standing there like he walked out of Tom's television screen into three dimensions of breathing, dangerous reality.
For a moment, Tom forgets how to breathe.
Reese steps closer, and his voice carries the calm certainty of someone who's made a career out of violence in service of protection.
"Someone wants you alive, Mr. Carter. That someone has resources. Questions can wait. Right now, you need to come with me."
Tom's voice cracks when he finally finds it.
"Who are you?"
Reese's slight smile holds no warmth, but it holds something better: competence.
"Someone who wants to help. Come with me if you want to stay alive."
And despite everything—the impossibility, the danger, the sheer insanity of transmigration into a fictional universe—Tom laughs. Because he's heard that line a hundred times watching the show, and now it's being said to him, about him, for him.
"Yeah," Tom manages, his voice still shaking but his decision crystal clear. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."
Reese nods once and turns toward shadows that suddenly seem welcoming instead of threatening.
"This way. Stay close."
As they disappear into New York's labyrinth of alleys and possibilities, Tom's mind reels with the reality of what's happening: It's happening. It's actually happening. I'm meeting Team Machine.
The thought terrifies and exhilarates him in equal measure, but beneath both emotions runs a deeper current of rightness, as if pieces of a puzzle he's been solving his entire life are finally clicking into place.
Time to see if Harold Finch is everything Tom has hoped he would be.
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