Mark Watches ‘Person of Interest’: S03E09 – The Crossing

In the ninth episode of the third season of Person of Interest, the team takes on Alonzo Quinn. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Person of Interest.

She heard the car across from them, over the intersection that was still slick from the rain. It shimmered under the streetlights, and when she looked up at John, his eyes shimmered, too.

That kiss, she thought. Of all that had happened over the last day, of every twist and turn, that had surprised her the most. It’s not that she hadn’t thought of John in those terms. He was attractive; mysterious; capable; loyal. And tall, she thought, then laughed at that. She couldn’t help it. She maybe had a thing for tall men. Cal, Paul, and now John. Do I have a type?

“Looks like your ride is here,” she said, and she gestured with her head in the direction of Harold, who now exited the black sedan that sat diagonally from them. “Guess we were all worried about you.”

John glanced back at Harold, but it was quick. His gaze returned to Joss’s, and she saw that sparkle again, that glimmer in his eyes. It wasn’t there when they first met, that night in the precinct so long ago. He was cold then; mistrustful and swimming in grief and sadness. Here, standing before her, he was thankful. He was alive.

“If my number was up, I’m just glad I was with you,” he said, then smirked.

She jammed her hands in her pockets, felt giddy as she stared at him. She heard something to her right, far away, high and tinny, but she ignored it. Tears welled in her eyes, but not out of any sort of sadness. She was thankful that he was here, that he’d been with her the night before as they tried to escape the morgue. We escaped, she realized, and the emotion swelled within her again. We made it.

That ringing. She looked at Harold, who stared at a phone booth, but she found herself looking once more at John.

He kept going. “No one I’d rather be with at the end,” said John.

His lip curled. He meant it.

“Your time’s up!”

To her left. Her mind flared in shock, and then she scolded herself. Damn it, Carter! she thought. You let your  guard down! DAMN IT!

He came out of the shadows, and she almost didn’t recognize without that uniform on, that damn hat, that smug look of certainty on his face. Simmons floated towards them.

“Told you I’d end you,” he said, and then his arm raised, and there it was, in his hand, pointed straight at John, and she heard the pop of the gun, and her instinct kicked in.

She raised her own firearm as Simmons popped off another shot, and she fired, saw the blood spatter from Simmons’s shoulder as she yelled out. “No, not today!”

He ran. Simmons always ran, and there was a part of her that wished he had stayed, that they had fought to the death, if only for the certainty of knowing that it was over. But as Simmons scurried away, he turned back, his right hand holding in the blood from where she had shot him.

“I won’t stop,” he yelled, “until I get everyone you love. Everyone!”

He was gone, lost in the shadows again, and John moaned on the sidewalk next to her. Harold was there, too, his mouth open in shock. “Quick,” she said to him, “we need to stop the bleeding.”

Harold remained frozen. “NOW, Harold!” she barked at him.

John groaned again, and blood rushed between her fingers. “Not today, not today,” Joss repeated. “Stay with us, John, we got you!”

“No one,” John muttered, and Harold was trying his best to push aside his terror to call for Shaw while applying pressure to the second wound that Simmons had left.
“What?” said Joss. “What are you trying to say?”

“No one,” John repeated, his breathing light and shallow, “at the end.”

His eyes closed, and Joss’s heart dropped. “No, no, not today!” she shrieked. She rubbed his face – that handsome face, she thought – and slapped at it gently. “Stay with me!”

John didn’t respond.

*

Joss paced back and forth. She hated waiting. She hated not knowing if John would be okay. She pulled out her new phone, mostly out of habit, but it was pointless. They were all inside, and Harold had asked her to step out. “You’re making Dr. Madani nervous,” he had said.

So she waited. And waited. She sat down and wondered if she should call Paul again, tell him that she would be late picking up Taylor. Should I even go there? she thought. What if Simmons knew where Paul’s apartment was? What if she’d put them all in danger?

She paced again, and when the doors to the examination room burst open, she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Joss,” said Harold, who stood in the doorway, a grim look on his face. The color had washed out of him, and it made the blood look all the more brighter, all the more horrifying. “You can come back in now.”

“John?” she said, her voice pitching high in alarm. “Is he okay?”

Harold stepped aside, using his back to open the door wider. She saw Dr. Madani removing his gloves, saw him drop them in a trash can, saw Shaw and Fusco leaning up against the wall, saw the sheet and –

“Is he okay?” Joss said, and she crossed into the room, and her gaze fell on John’s face, and he smiled.

“Didn’t want to scare you too much,” he said. “Just a little bit.”

She wanted to slap him on the arm, but instead, with tears jumping back to her eyes, she laughed, a nervous sound, too loud. “Oh, John,” Joss said. “I was so worried.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he said softly, and the right corner of his lip curled up in a tiny smile. “The doctor here stitched me up all right. Got both bullets out.”

She nodded to Dr. Madani. “Thank you again,” she said. “We owe you one.”

“Do we?” said Shaw. “Harold here thinks he owes us.”

Joss ignored that one. “You gonna be okay, John?”

“I’ve taken worse,” he said. “But we have a bigger problem to discuss.”

“Oh?” said Joss. “And what’s that?”

“You,” said John.

*

They were at the train station, and she had stared out the window as it pulled away. Cleveland, she thought. She had heard it was cold there, colder than New York. She turned back to her son and Paul, who were crowded over an iPad, chatting away over some new TV show they were obsessed with.

She pulled up her bag from the floor of the train and sat it in her lap, then riffled through it until she pulled out the thick yellow envelope. Harold had explained everything to her, how to completely disappear, how to immerse herself in her new identity. “But what about Simmons?” she had said. “I have to stay here. I need to get him for what he’s done.”

“Leave that up to us, Carter,” said John. “What good is taking down Simmons if you’re dead, too?”

She didn’t have a response to that. She had grimaced, pursed her lips in frustration. “But I feel like I failed,” she said. “I feel like I failed Cal, failed this city.”

“You took down HR,” Shaw had said. “Almost entirely by yourself. And you were pretty good with that thirty-seven, I might add.”

“But is it enough?” She had looked the three of them in the eye, one after another, after saying it. “Does this mean he wins?”

“Joss, if losing means that you get to be alive, that Taylor has his mother, that you can build a life with people who love and care for you, then…” Harold went quiet. “You’ll have gained an opportunity many of us will never get a chance at.”

“Take it,” said Shaw. “Be boring and suburban. I’ll bet $20 you’re really good at it.” She looked at Harold and John. “Any takers? $50 then?”

“You won,” said John. “Let us handle the last move. You handled all the others.”

Joss pulled out her new Ohio State ID card. April, she thought. Such an ordinary name, nothing like what she had known her life. She looked up at Taylor – well, he was now Rashad, and Paul was André. How was she going to remember them?

She repeated them in her mind, over and over, looking upon them both. She would miss a lot of New York City, and maybe, years down the line, she would be able to return, whenever Simmons was taken care of, whenever HR was certain to be completely gone. The train lurched forward and picked up speed as it barreled out of Manhattan, and Joss Carter put away her new identity. She watched the city disappear, and with it, she let her life working for Harold’s mysterious computer fade away.

Some day, she told herself. Some day, I’ll come back.

The video for “The Crossing” can be downloaded here for $0.99.

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