The second book was ordinary.

John thumbed through the pages, looking for anything missing or highlighted. After the blank dictionary he'd expected this book to follow suit, or be altered in some other way. In lieu of the Social Security number there'd be some key or detail that would lead to their destination. But this volume lacked even a scribble in the margins.

"Just an ordinary book," he said into the open phone line. He checked the bookshelf behind it, just to make sure. Nothing there either.

Harold didn't answer. Something had distracted him, probably. "You find anything, Finch?" he continued, quickly checking the book next to the one the Machine had picked out. Still ordinary. "Finch?"

He rounded the shelf back to the first book. No Finch. No Finch the next row over either, or in the main hallway. The phone remained silent. Unless Finch was purposefully keeping quiet, he should have at least responded by now. And where was the librarian? There was a bell on the door, old though it was; if they'd left, he would have heard them.

A quick browse through the rest of the library turned up no clues to Harold's silence. The building, as far as he could tell, was simply vacant.

The front door was still unlocked, their car still untouched in the parking lot. He checked underneath the car; no blown tires, no incendiaries. Nothing appeared to have happened at all.

His hand strayed to his firearm, and he drew and checked the magazine on autopilot. They'd been followed - or trapped. Harold wouldn't cut communications unless he had to; he must have been taken somewhere else.

Too much noise if he took the car. He had to surprise whoever had followed them while he still had the chance to. In the time since he'd last heard from Harold they couldn't have gone far.

The streets at the edge of town, where they'd come in, were in disrepair but mostly intact, as if the inhabitants had walked away in the middle of a task. Further away from the library's, someone had helped along the process of decay. Streetlights had been felled, furniture smashed or stolen through shattered windows; glass fragments lay sprayed across the asphalt, amplifying his footsteps and potentially those of anyone following him

There was even a crashed car on the end of the street. Badly crashed too, wrapped halfway around a telephone pole, its chassis melted and scorched.

He approached, steadying his grip on the gun. There was no rust on the body, nor any peeled paint, or waterlogging from being left out in the rain. The wreck was too recent for this town.

A closer look inside confirmed his suspicions. The blackened body in the driver's seat should have been a skeleton by now.

The driver was far too burnt to pick out any features; even the sex and age were indeterminate. Hitting a telephone pole wouldn't start a fire that severe, not in this type of car and not at any speed you could get up to on streets like this. Not unless someone set it. Someone didn't want anyone to know who this body belonged to, and yet the plates were still on the car, with no effort made to disguise any identifying information.

Was this what they were meant to find? he thought, as he looked through the rest of the car. A kitchen knife stuck out of the passenger's seat, too clean to have been used on the body. Had all this been a roundabout way of sending them another Number? Couldn't be. This person had been dead for a while, and why wouldn't it send them a complete Social like it always did? And even if the body wasn't old enough to be among the town's inhabitants, who would leave it here for so long? Why wouldn't they bury it, or dump it in the nearby lake?

The glass in the street popped like a short circuit.

He turned, pointing his gun in the direction of the noise. Someone - he couldn't see who - disappeared around a corner before he could steady his aim. He held his stance, waiting, still and quiet to see if his pursuer would try again. But whoever it was did not return.

Checking the streets and alleys as he passed them, he headed back up the road, towards the library. He'd been put here too long already, especially now that he knew someone was following them. If something had happened to Harold while he was aimlessly wandering the streets…

He knew he should have replaced the tracker on Harold's glasses the second they got back to New York. He hadn't had much time to do so between the three potential Numbers he'd been following, but that wasn't an excuse. He shouldn't have let Harold out of his sight until it was done.

Pop.

He stopped, and backed against the nearest brick wall. Still nothing there, nor on the rooftops or the windows as far as he could see. He slowed his pace as he resumed. If whoever was following him was smart enough to stay out of sight, then they'd be smart enough not to keep -

Pop.

Still-hot reflexes aimed the gun a third time; again, there was nothing at the end of its sights.

Must be deliberate, those noises. Meant to let him know that he was being pursued, or put him on edge. Could he be leading whoever it was back to the library, possibly to Finch if he was wrong about where he'd gone?

Best plan would still be to continue in that direction. There'd be detours or side streets that he could use to draw out whoever was following him - like the gutted alleyway to his right, between two row houses, which he quickly ducked inside. Even someone on the rooftops would eventually betray his position to take a shot, and the buildings weren't tight enough for someone to travel far along them.

But how long would that take, and how long would he be leaving Finch alone?

The alley rejoined the road amidst a pile of bricks and ruptured cement; he chose his steps carefully to keep his own position masked. He was used to picking out sound from the din of traffic and conversation; among the dust and rubble there weren't even any insects to interrupt the quiet. If he were very close he might even be able to hear a gun load and click, should his pursuers have one.

Pop.

The sound came from down the road, to his left, and before he returned to cover he caught sight of its source.

They limped, aimlessly, across the road from him, too slowly to be a pursuer. Their gait was halting and pained, every step snapping against the timework pavement. He could see from here the bloody footprints trailing behind them.

He began to lower his weapon, to approach the wounded figure, but before he did it staggered just a few steps towards him, and the cloud-covered sun flashed in points across their skin.

The figure's hobbled feet, and every inch of its body, were stabbed full of broken glass.

The longer he stared at the figure the less human it looked, clawing uselessly at its shattered flesh with arms that ended in glass-lanced stumps. Each movement reopened its wounds, drawing sobs from somewhere inside its caved-in body. Not from its mouth - there wasn't one - what was left of its head sunk into its chest like candle wax.

He blinked hard, looked again - and it had wandered even closer and he could see the infection gathering where glass met skin. It couldn't be real. Nothing could look like this, nothing that was still moving. He was making a mistake. Seeing things. Had to be.

As it took another painful step the body turned side to side, casting about with the sightless remains of its head. The snaps and cracks turned to shuffles and scratches. It turned without direction until it faced the alley where he'd hidden, and then - then it stopped, quieting its crying. And watched.

Something stung at his palms like a needlestick, sharp and hot enough to break his aim. He steadied his hands but the pain deepened in answer. The body still wavered, stumbling in place, staring his way.

He stepped back into the alleyway, out of the body's sight, but the gun in his grip still felt like a fistfull of barbed wire. As he holstered the weapon a blood drop fell from its handle, and there were cuts, lacy-thin, crisscrossing his hands and they had not been there before -

Outside of the alley he could hear the body staggering away, as the stinging began to subside. But it wasn't the only sound anymore.

Pop, pop, pop.

There were more. The noises came from the other end of the alleyway, and the opposite end of the street, and they echoed and multiplied and blurred together as they drew closer. Between them there was another set of footsteps, faster, quieter, without the scraping accompaniment.

They were coming up the alleyway now, cutting off his way out. He'd have to take his chances out in the main roads. At least there there'd be room to outrun them. He re-drew the firearm; though the sharp pain had stopped the metal was still too hot on his broken skin.

He rounded the corner, readied the gun -

- and found himself aiming it at a very much human woman, who leaped back with a yelp. She'd had a knife in her hand when she found him; in her surprise it clattered to the pavement.

He barely heard it. He barely heard anything, not even the sounds from the bodies. His grip on his firearm weakened; it seemed suddenly, impossibly heavy. He was dreaming. He was certain of that now.

Oh my god - " she stammered, scrambling for the knife and looking around her for their pursuers. "I thought - I'm sorry, I thought you were one of them, I didn't know there was anyone else - "

"Jess?"

Jessica Arndt looked back at him and froze, rooted to the spot even as the noises closed in. "John?"

Sam was going to watch the cops. She really was. Later.

She'd already tailed them both this morning and it was exactly as dull as she knew it would be. No threats, no danger, no suspicious activity. So she'd left. She wasn't far away if something did happen, and besides when you skulked around a police station all day people started to ask you questions.

Plus, technically speaking she was on her lunch break. Until she finished her sandwich her time was her own, and if she chose to spend it trying to figure out how to get into Root's cell undetected, that was nobody's business but hers.

To the boss' credit he'd picked out a good hospital. It was tightly secured with an eye to keeping the patients, mostly criminals from what she understood, contained. Unfortunately that made for poor prospects of getting in.

A cover ID was probably her best bet; a forcible break-in wouldn't get far. Trouble was her only real source for a solid cover ID now was Finch, and he'd ask questions if she made a request like that.

An ambulance siren blared somewhere up the road. Nothing unusual, but she'd been hearing it for quite some time, and it seemed to be getting closer. The source of the siren rounded the corner and pulled up to the hospital doors; Shaw pointed the camera at the parked vehicle, and waited.

Two EMTs emerged from the back of the ambulance, pushing a gurney between them; a man in doctor's whites, probably staff, ushered them in. If he could do that, this must have been a genuine medical emergency, and not a patient flipping out with a taser. Might have nothing to do with Root at all.

Two more, and a second padded sled; that was a little more suspicious. Two patients meant a fight.

The first patient burst through the doors a few minutes later. Through her camera lens she could see scrubs, and an oxygen mask; then, as they loaded up the first, the second gurney came through the door.

It was her.

Sam couldn't get a clear look at her, but she saw what she needed - small frame, curly hair, restraints tethering her to the gurney. An EMT carried an IV bag alongside her.

Couldn't be chance. No one in the hospital knew her to target her like this. And so soon after she'd been admitted? She wanted out, and the ambulance was her ticket.

Least that solved the problem of how Sam was going to get in.

She let the camera fall slack on its strap as she headed back to her car, listening for the direction of the siren as the ambulance began to pull away.

At least he wouldn't have any trouble finding his way back, Harold thought; the hallway was a single, nearly straight path, and Thornhill passed the occasional heavy steel door but never opened them.

Thus far the librarian hadn't behaved much like a captor. He hadn't secured him at all, or issued any threats, and he didn't notice Harold's furtive tugs at the doors as they passed. Not that there was much to notice; all were locked. A few gave inches but remained stuck shut.

One door creaked like an opening casket when he pulled at it, and this, unfortunately, Thornhill did not ignore.

But he showed no anger, issued no punishment for his attempt to stray from the path. He only asked "Where are you going?".

Harold had no excuse he could give so he turned his question back on Thornhill. "Where do these doors go?"

The librarian shrugged. "Who knows at this point. Used to be storage. Some of 'em go down to the water now. Not a good place to be."

Harold looked down; he'd noticed the walkway up ahead but had been too focused on the doors to see what was beneath it. The stagnant water beneath them as they crossed must have leaked from the nearby lake, and yet...he couldn't tell how deep it was from here, but it seemed more of a pond in its own right than a puddle. Debris, most of it metal, floated motionless below them, the dim light glistening off years of accumulated slime. Rust and mold had bred along the walkway grates, a dismal graveyard amid the decrepit but inorganic basement.

The only motion came from a white shape, a sail or a bedsheet that drifted across the surface like a ghost. It had snagged on something, small and strangely shaped among the hunks of concrete and steel. While they were still, the shape beneath the sheet bobbed, and waved thin protrusions like it was carried by a tide.

He continued to test the doors as they passed them, but he realized now that he wouldn't even know where to go if he did happen to find one that worked. They had to be quite some distance from the library by now, far from anything he'd recognize if he did manage to get back aboveground. And by now he was starting to tire from the walking, and from the stuffy heat of the corridor, and from the disorder of his changing surroundings. Even if he could break away he wouldn't be able to outrun Thornhill to the exit.

Past the catwalk over the water the hallway abruptly ended at another door. Though it looked as solid and heavy as the others, Thornhill only had to undo a small latch at the top.

Thornhill waited for Harold to follow him into the room, a plain grey cube with walls of brushed aluminum, but didn't wait for Harold to follow him out. As the first door shut behind him, the identical door across the room shut behind the librarian.

No trap sprung as the two doors shut. No bullet or bomb was waiting for him, which was where his mind had gone after Thornhill had left him. Instead, there seemed to be nothing in the room at all, just flat walls and flat floor and a fan in the ceiling, churning uselessly at stagnant air.

The back door even opened when he pulled it, unlocked. Cool rushed in from the hallway, far more inviting than the parched heat of the aluminum room. Thornhill had still not returned.

Beyond the opposite door, a pay phone rang harsh and clear.

He dropped the door shut instantly, the chime dispelling his nerves. This was what he was expecting, when he'd headed to this strange town. This belonged here.

The pay phone booth was the only feature of the dead-end hall that housed it. Dust clustered at its base, leaking from the metal gratings that passed for walls. No sign of Thornhill, and nowhere for him to have gone - but it didn't matter. There'd be answers, now. Or at least there'd be something.

Just as he suspected, so soon as he lifted the receiver the recorded snippets from its speaker greeted him like an old friend.

But the automated clips gave way to a voice - to her voice, the one that had stayed silent as he'd driven her to the hospital and hadn't uttered a word through her check-in.

"I'm so glad you could come, Harold."