Harold Finch was accustomed to working almost entirely alone now. He had John Reese, but other than that, he’d given up on having any sort of personal life. His life was to get Numbers from The Machine now.

But as he sits in The Library, his fingers flitting idly across the pages of a first-edition book he’s reading, Harold can’t help but wonder whether The Machine was the worst thing, or the best thing, that he’d ever created.

Finch stretches out the stiffness in his leg cautiously, his blue-gray eyes thoughtful. John would be back soon, he assumed, with another successful mission under his belt. Maybe running The Machine was all that was left for him now.