Person of Interest Episode 2.01 The Contingency

Picking up where the show left off in the Season One finale, Root has kidnapped Finch and Reese begs the machine to help find him. The machine has other ideas, however, and simply gives Reese a new number. That number leads Reese to Leon Sung, a crafty accountant who stole a lot of money from a violent Aryan Brotherhood gang. Upset with the machine's refusal to help him, Reese hands him over to Fusco for safekeeping. Fusco and Leon get corned by Aryans and kidnapped, so Reese tracks them down, subdues the Aryan Brothers, and takes the leader's trained attack dog in the process. Carter gets Reese a lead on a DMV worker who sold Root a driver's license, but he finds a rotting corpse in a storage facility she'd rented instead. Thinking quickly, he has Leon look into any financial transactions she might have made, given that he's an expert at hiding and tracking down money. Unfortunately, Root has completely covered up her trail, leaving them at another dead end. When the Aryan boss, a monstrous man by the name of Titus, finally tracks Reese and Leon down, Reese tells the machine that he'll let himself and Leon get killed unless it gives him a lead on Finch's whereabouts. After a few pulse-pounding seconds, the machine relents and gives him a new code via pay phone, and Reese manages to save Leon's life yet again--this time with some help from Carter and Fusco. Hopeful, he goes back to the library to decode the machine's message, and the new number turns out to be the social for a girl who went missing in Texas 22 years ago. Could this be Root? He calls Carter and tells her to pack her bags; they're going to Texas.

Meanwhile, Root takes Finch on a road trip to see "an old friend," who later is revealed to be Denton Weeks (Epis 111). Root incapacitates Weeks, then explains to Finch that she needs to find the machine so she can "set it free." She's going to make him tell her where it is, one way or another.