Chapter 7: GHOSTS OF IFT
The number burned into my vision like a brand.
[NUMBER INCOMING]
[SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER: 401-78-3456]
[ALAN PATTERSON — AGE 52]
[CONNECTION DETECTED: IFT TECHNOLOGIES]
IFT. The name hit me like a physical blow. I sat up straighter in the uncomfortable motel chair, suddenly wide awake despite the midnight hour.
IFT Technologies. The company that Nathan Ingram founded. The company where Harold Finch hid in plain sight while building the Machine. The connection to everything that mattered in this world.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTERNAL PRESSURE]
[PATTERN: INFORMATION EXTRACTION ATTEMPT]
I pulled up the system's data package on Patterson. Former IT Director at IFT, 2002-2009. Left after the company was sold to the government. Now working as a consultant for small firms, keeping his head down, living quiet.
Someone's putting pressure on him. Someone wants what he knows.
The pieces clicked together with sickening clarity. Root was hunting the Machine through its history. IFT was a logical target—the company that built it, the people who might still have access codes or technical documentation.
Alan Patterson was a stepping stone. And stepping stones got crushed.
[INTERVENTION WINDOW: 72 HOURS]
Three days. I grabbed my laptop and started working.
Patterson lived in a brownstone in Murray Hill. Nice neighborhood, steady routine, boring life. Exactly what you'd expect from a tech executive trying to disappear into anonymity.
I spent two days watching him.
The man was terrified. He varied his route to work every morning—subway one day, cab the next, walking when the weather permitted. He checked over his shoulder constantly. His eyes had the hollow look of someone who hadn't slept properly in weeks.
Someone's already got to him. This isn't prevention—it's triage.
I tracked his communications through a Backdoor Access into his home network. The skill was getting easier, the drain less severe. Practice made competence, even in supernatural abilities.
[BACKDOOR ACCESS: ACTIVE]
[TARGET: PATTERSON HOME NETWORK]
[ENCRYPTED COMMUNICATIONS DETECTED]
The messages were buried in his email, disguised as spam. Professional work—most filters would catch them, but the encryption underneath was anything but random.
"Provide the access codes. You have one week."
"The records must still exist. Find them."
"We know where your daughter lives."
My stomach turned. Patterson had a daughter in Boston. Graduate student at MIT. Her photo sat on his desk—smiling, unaware that her father's past was about to destroy her future.
I traced the message origins through three proxy servers. The encryption was familiar. Elegant. Almost artistic.
Root.
She's hunting the Machine through IFT's history. Patterson is just another lead to her.
The realization crystallized my options. I could extract Patterson—relocate him, hide him, make him disappear. But that would only delay the problem. Root would find another target, another pressure point. The Machine's history had too many loose threads.
Different approach. Make him useless to her.
Patterson's files were scattered across three different systems—his home computer, a backup drive at his office, and a cloud storage account he probably thought was secure. I spent eighteen hours mapping them.
The data Root wanted was specific: access codes for IFT's archived servers. The servers had been decommissioned when the government took over, but the architecture remained. Someone with the right credentials could potentially trace the Machine's development path.
Can't delete the data—she'd know someone interfered. But I can corrupt it.
The work was delicate. I introduced errors gradually, making the corruption look like natural bit decay. Time stamps were adjusted. File headers were scrambled in ways that mimicked hardware failure. When I finished, Patterson's precious access codes would lead nowhere—just corrupted garbage masquerading as valuable intelligence.
[DATA MANIPULATION: COMPLETE]
[COVER INTEGRITY: MAINTAINED]
[XP +125 — NUMBER RESOLUTION: INDIRECT METHOD]
Patterson was now useless to Root. Not worth killing, not worth pursuing. His files pointed to nothing. His knowledge was outdated. He'd go back to his quiet consultant life, never knowing how close he'd come to dying.
I closed the laptop and rubbed my eyes. The motel room felt smaller than usual. Three AM and I was running on coffee and adrenaline, fighting a war that nobody else knew existed.
At least I'm getting better at this.
The IFT research led me somewhere unexpected.
While mapping Patterson's history, I'd pulled public records on the company's leadership. Press releases, conference photos, corporate filings. Most of it was useless—business noise from a decade ago.
But one photo stopped me cold.
Nathan Ingram and Harold Finch at an IFT charity gala, 2006. Ingram was the public face—handsome, charming, working the camera. Finch stood slightly behind him, almost hidden, his expression guarded and watchful.
Two men who built a god. One's dead. The other's hiding.
I saved the image to my encrypted drive. Finch's face was younger here, less worn, but the careful intelligence in his eyes was unmistakable. This was the man who created the Machine. The man who'd recruit Reese in a few weeks. The man I needed to find.
The system pulsed at the edge of my vision.
[INTELLIGENCE GATHERED]
[TARGET PROFILE: HAROLD FINCH — UPDATING...]
[CURRENT STATUS: ACTIVE — LOCATION UNKNOWN]
He's out there. Building his network. Waiting for the right partner.
I pinned Finch's photo to my investigation board, next to the web of Root's activities. Two hunts, running parallel. Root searching for the Machine. Me searching for its creator.
The difference was what we'd do when we found him.
My arm itched where the knife wound had healed—phantom sensation, the body remembering trauma even after the flesh had mended. I scratched it absently, thinking about the pilot episode that was now just weeks away.
Reese will be recruited. The mission will begin. And I need to be ready.
The system hummed its quiet approval. Somewhere in the city, the Machine was watching. I wondered if it knew what I was doing. If it approved.
Time to find Harold Finch.
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