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Harold Finch had never been fond of his code name, Omnis. It was something his old friend, Nathan, came up with as a joke. Unfortunately, it stuck. The connotations of it were just a touch too pompous for someone who prefers to be invisible. Harold works best as a ghost.
In a surprising twist of fate, his lone wolf routine had to be cut short, and he was now the leader of a team of superhero vigilantes. Well, 'superhero' is a term that should be used loosely. So should 'team.'
they were more of a, generally, cooperative pack. Try as he might, Harold could never get the others to stick to a game plan. Things usually spun out of control rather quickly, and they'd have to end up working off the cuff anyway.
Like right now, for instance.
The panel of monitors currently shows nothing but smoke, dust, and flying debris. Several angles of smoke, dust, and flying debris, in fact.
"Thrash. Cannon. Are you alright?" Harold asked, voice shaking with worry.
Silence. Harold focuses his mind on communicating with the security cameras, and the screens flicker, cycling through the feeds.
"Where are they, Harold?" Joss Carter snapped. Why does everything always go to shit where the most expensive things are?
She warned them beforehand about being delicate. The Metro Contemporary Gallery was highly prestigious–practically an institution–and housed some very pricey works of art, some on loan from other countries.
And now one wing of it has been damn near pulverized. Budgeting was gonna blow a gasket.
"Mr. Reese! Ms. Shaw!" Harold tried again, foregoing the aliases this time.
The silence stretches. Then, a grunt comes through the audio link. Harold and Carter share a look as more pained grunts and sounds of impact are heard.
"Sorry, Harold. We were a little busy," Reese finally replied in that threateningly soft-spoken way of his. There was a loud crunch in the background.
Someone's nose, if Harold had to guess.
On the other end of the line, John Reese–code name Thrash–has a hapless robber by the throat. he slams the guy into a wall, knocking him out cold. Reese had been careful to watch his superhuman strength, lest he flatten the criminal like a pancake.
Across the room, Sameen Shaw barrels into two attackers, knocking them both to the ground with her momentum. The fools had made the mistake of throwing punches at her after she'd disarmed them. She easily caught their jabs with her own hands to absorb the kinetic energy. Now, it was being thrown back at them tenfold, in the form of a blur also known as Cannon.
The two guys hit the ground hard, and Shaw gives them each a hard slug before they could even attempt to get back up.
Just as she turned, Shaw heard a gunshot and then felt a searing pain through her side. She looked around just in time to see Reese rip the pistol from a battered robber, who was on his last legs. A swift kick from Reese, and Shaw's shooter was out like a light.
"Bastard," Shaw growled.
"Hello, pumpkin. You should take care of that GSW ASAP."
"Root? Aren't you supposed to be foiling some international terrorist plot in Budapest?" Shaw grumbled.
"Done hours ago," the chirpy voice informed her.
"Miss Groves, why aren't you on a plane home if you've completed your mission." Harold's voice was always an octave higher when he was stressed, and he was always stressed when dealing with Root.
"Oh, Harry. Relax," Root answered in her teasing lilt. "I just took a little detour. She had some errands for me to run."
Root was being deliberately vague, because she just couldn't help trying to push Harold's buttons. He liked to believe he was above responding to it, but everyone else knew how uncomfortable it made him.
To be fair, Harold was and still is the most gifted technopath the world has ever seen. His magnum opus is both a gift and a curse–an ambitious project that arose out of a national trauma. It's only natural for him to want to understand everything going on with his own creation.
The Machine was strictly built to save lives, to serve humanity. So he always carried misgivings about the way Root does its biddings without question.
Maybe, though, there was a bit of jealousy there, too. Like with any parent whose child confides more in someone else.
"Thrash. Cannon. Is the threat eliminated?" Carter asked impatiently. There was always too much back-and-forth sassing and not enough being mindful of collateral damage.
"Yes, ma'am," both Shaw and Reese drawled at the same time.
"Then get back for debriefing, now. You, too, Root."
"Ooh, she used the 'Deputy Director' voice. You're in deep doo-doo," Shaw teases Reese with a smirk.
He looks slightly pained, lips pressed in a thin line.
Bear, the team's dog, hops up from his bed next to the command hub the moment the Shaw, Reese, and Root walked through the doors.
Reese gets a good face licking before Bear moves on to attacking Shaw's face with his tongue.
"Welcome back, everyone," Harold greets without looking up from the tablet in his hands. There's a small crease between his eyes, and, when he finally looks up, he seems a bit distracted.
"Is something wrong, Finch?"
At his reluctance to talk, Root adds, "And before you think about freezing us out, Harry, remember that She'll end up telling me anyway if I ask."
Harry frowns at her, "That is not how we use our powers as technopaths, Miss Groves. Nor is The Machine your personal search engine."
"Please. You only look like that when it concerns some potentially catastrophic international incident," Shaw comments. "I'm just worried. Now spill."
Harold sighs. "It's nothing confirmed...yet," he admitted, "but there have been whispers of a cyber doomsday device, and the whispers are getting louder. No one knows precisely what it is meant to do, but even criminals are getting a bit antsy about what it could do."
All eyes fall on Root, whose gaze loses focus for a moment as she listens to The Machine's chatter.
Root hums thoughtfully. "Whoever is behind this is either very good at keeping mum, or they're a ghost. Even She doesn't seem to know much, other than a consensus from the Darknet that it's supposed to be the nuclear bomb of cyber warfare. Whether or not it actually exists or lives up to the rumors, She expects the fear-mongering alone will throw the world into chaos."
A resounding silence follows Root's explanation. All they can do is blink at one another, because even The Machine sounds scared of this thing.
Harold does wonder if it's withholding information from them, even its Analog Interface.
The stunned silence is broken by the hiss of air as the doors slide ope. Carter strides through, followed by Lionel Fusco, another human agent.
"Good, you're all here," Carter exclaims. "Although, I think Shaw needs to be in medical right now to have her gunshot would patched up," she says pointedly.
The woman in question merely shrugs. "Did it myself on the car ride here. It was a through-and-through."
Carter huffs and rolls her eyes, but doesn't push the matter. She knows there'd be no point.
"I'd give you two," she points at Shaw and Reese, "a lecture about all the property damage you caused, but I have a feeling it wouldn't do any good. So let me just say that you need to be more careful next time, or I'll shoot you myself."
Reese smirks, "Unpleasant chat with Budgeting?"
"Not a chat. More like an ambush."
"They called us in there, and Control chewed our heads off because of you. I was in the middle of a very good Reuben," Fusco adds unhappily.
"I can't believe you had an appetite while we were in mortal danger," Shaw mocks.
"More like the robbers were in danger of dying, with you two involved."
"Scold them later, agents. We need to get all three down to Medical for standard check-ups."
Carter sighs. "Fine. All three of you, go. But I expect full debriefs from you afterward."
As they all make their way out, Root leans into Shaw's side.
"I can give you a special check-up later, if you'd like," she whispers with a coy smile.
Shaw gives her a sidelong glance, lips slowly curling into a smirk. "We'll see."
Root bites her lower lip, deliberately falling a step behind so her eyes can trace the contours of Shaw's body.
She does love playing doctor with Shaw.