Chapter Text
After, the world changes for about two weeks, and then something else happens and the world is forced to change again.
But nothing really changes.
Before, Gabriel dies at a car accident despite the watchful eye of Samaritan. The universe is infinite and chaotic and cold, and Gabriel learns how much one surprisingly warm February night. He has enough time from the moment his parents’ car makes contact with the truck that eventually kills him and his entirely family to think about…well, what people think in their last moments.
The Machine is watching and so is Samaritan.
But while the Machine stays with Gabriel until his last breath, Samaritan has better things to do.
The world is about to change, after all.
After, the world watches closely the news about the cyber-attack and then, in Europe, British citizens vote to leave the EU and the focus changes. Two weeks are more than enough and the world doesn’t end because someone decided to attack the internet. Four weeks after Brexit, it’s the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, and the world is forced to change again.
Before, Claire is not cut to be a field agent. She’s brilliant and has ambition, a need for a purpose, and while working for Samaritan has fulfilled this need, she’s not comfortable to sacrifice herself for it. She is an important asset, though, so Samaritan takes her from the field and puts her in a position she can be more of use.
The change proves to be ideal for Claire, who thrives at her new post.
After, Harold wakes up in a strange bed in a strange country. His heart is beating quickly and he is thankful that he and Grace are sleeping in different rooms because he knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep. So he sits in the darkness listening to the sound of his breaths while he tries to calm himself from a nightmare he will never escape.
Much later, when the sound of his blood pressure is not as deafening in his ears, he asks, “Can you hear me?” and waits for an answer he knows won’t come.
As much as he hopes for things to be different, for John to have made it, for Root to be alive, he also knows that it is fruitless.
There are things that not even a powerful God-like thing up in the sky can’t change.
Before, Root says, “Don’t tell, Harry, but I changed your code a bit. Added a little something of my own for you. You know how he is. That will be our little secret, okay? Just gals being gals.”
After, the Machine wants to tell Root that she loves her, but doesn’t know what happens once a person dies. The Machine died too; She remembers feeling nothing before She could feel everything again, so she estimates that Root, too, will feel nothing, and that is not something the Machine wants to think about.
She contacts Shaw with a number and watches as Shaw hesitates for a second before putting the phone up to her ear.
And some things will never change.
Before, Claire is a promising young woman.
After, she is holding the power to create a new world or destroy the old one.
Before, Harold never talks to Grace about his job or his life. Not in a way that feels real, anyway. Grace can tell he’s holding back, that he’s holding more things inside than he should, and wants to tell him that the things he’s holding from her are holding him back, and whatever it is, she can take it. Grace doesn’t know how to change that, or if she should change that, so she lets Harold be Harold, advising him when he asks her opinion and listening to him when he needs to.
And slowly, she can see a change in him.
And then he dies.
After, Harold says, “She would love the coffee here.”
And, “That shirt would look good on John.”
And, “Ms. Shaw would be so pleased with this bistecca alla Florentina.”
And, “I bet Detective Fusco would eat twenty of those little pastries before realizing that he has cream all over his tie.”
And while Grace loves that Harold is finally talking about his life, his friends, she doesn’t like the haunted look that never leaves his eyes.
Before, the Machine says: Uncertainty, Romeo, Kilo; Family, Alpha, Mike; Reflections, Juliet, Oscar.
And: Apocryphal, Charlie, Tango; Toward, Mike, Whiskey.
After, the Machine says, “I have a job for you, Sameen.”
“Bit busy at the moment, sweetie. A user from Toronto, Canada is trying to hack a nuclear plant and…what? Of course I’m going to stop him, Sam!”
“Quit playing with your food and finish that guy. We have a boat to steal.”
“You sound excited, Lionel. But not as exciting as I am right now!”
Before, there is a man in a suit and an eccentric billionaire.
After, Thornhill Utilities hires men and women, first locally and then in all states before going global. No one knows who Thornhill is, but he’s hiring and that’s all that matters. In a world where big companies are letting people go everyday, Thornhill Utilities is a must needed change.
Before, the Machine types:
FATHER
I AM SORRY
I FAILED YOU
After, She says, “Missed me much, Harry?”
When the phone rings, Sameen is sleeping for the first time in almost forty eight hours. That’s why the first ring doesn’t wake her. It’s raining outside, but inside her apartment is warm, and the bed is new and extra comfortable, the blankets fluffy and just heavy enough to make Shaw feel safe.
The second ring barely reaches her consciousness, but by the fourth, Shaw is up but not quiet awake. “What?” She answers the phone. Her voice is thick with sleep. “I thought you said we had no new number.”
There’s a pause at the other end of the line and some other person. Someone who hadn’t spent the last three years hiding and fighting an evil AI would assume that the caller at the other end of the line simply had the wrong number, but not Shaw.
Not when she almost lost herself to the hands of said AI.
Not when she lost…
“Who is this?” She’s alert now and ready to leave the apartment with or without a fight.
She hopes for a fight though.
“Miss Shaw?”
“Finch?”
It makes perfectly sense that he survived. John wouldn’t let anything happen to him, yet for a few seconds, Shaw is surprised to hear his voice. After all those years. Finch is alive. He is alive and Shaw feels an anger she long left behind emerge and fill her heart.
“Miss Shaw? I’m afraid we have a problem in our hands.”