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Nights like this one, the building housing Samaritan’s command center is quiet.
They’ve nothing to do, not when their adversaries have been so quiet, and Martine makes use of her time by completing her rounds. Jeremy’s most likely asleep somewhere, neglecting his own job, and Martine lets the irritation prick at the edges of her tolerance. Greer himself is in the Control room, conversing with Samaritan’s intelligence. If she’s being honest, Martine’s begun to think of the artificial intelligence as her own type of colleague. An invisible colleague, but a colleague all the same.
(Sometimes, she wishes Jeremy was invisible; it might make it a lot more bearable).
Passing by the hallway that leads to Shaw’s holding, Martine is innately curious. There are new tests that lead to Shaw’s throat running sore. Not from screams, but a different kind of yelling that surpasses pain. Martine wouldn’t go as far to say brainwashing, but morphine washes over Shaw until it doesn’t, dragging her in and out of sleep. Something about the entire situation sits oddly in the periphery of Martine’s head.
She doesn’t think it’s the first time it’s been done (the scientists scoop memories from Shaw’s head with the finesse of a grenade, explosions leaving craters that could rival the moon on her cerebral landscape); it’s too sloppy, but Greer’s never lied to Martine before. She trusts him.
Gun at the small of her back, Martine thinks about checking in on her prisoner while she sleeps, but ultimately decides against it. Shaw will be a Samaritan soldier soon. Then, Martine will be able to check in on her whenever she wants, making sure to tell her exactly what to do.
Three am and sleep’s nowhere in sight; Martine’s going to stay in her bunk here, rather than her apartment. It’s too stale away from work, and it can hardly be called home.
The lock to her room sticks. She jiggles it a bit, leaning on the door to add pressure.
“Don’t move,” someone says behind her, and Martine falls still. The voice sounds far from menacing, almost playful, though Martine doesn’t recognize it. She hadn’t even heard the click of a gun.
All she does is straighten her back, slowly, facing the blank wall with tense shoulders as she keeps her hands well away from her body.
“Martine,” a woman breathes, and there’s the imperceptible click of a safety returning to the ‘off’ position. In a moment, Martine’s turning with a hand in the air, capturing the gun and pushing the unfamiliar woman against the opposite wall. She presses her forearm against a jugular, blood pumping against her own skin with the beat of a ticking time bomb, but there’s a peculiar absence of fear within the eyes meeting her own. The other woman even smiles when she says, “It’s been a long time.”
Debris lands in her field of vision, the gun long forgotten on the floor, and Martine lets the confusion wash over her along with a sense of unease. “I don’t know who you are,” she growls, “but you broke into the wrong building.”
“I was hoping to find you,” the woman whispers, practically melting against the wall; Martine’s almost holding her up entirely, “I’ve missed you.”
Martine just shakes her head, hoping to clear some of it. She doesn’t plan on relinquishing her grip anytime soon. “Who are you?” she demands, emphasizing her words with increasing pressure to the woman’s throat. She can hear the wheezing with each breath the woman takes.
Slack-jawed, intense eyes search Martine’s face for something not there. There’s a blaze behind them, a fire lit with anger as she realizes something Martine’s not privy to. “Nobody you know,” the woman says finally, with a reluctance Martine can practically taste. She whispers the words like they burn her tongue, shaking her head in amazement. “What did they do to you?”
Something about the way the words hang in the air tells Martine the other woman isn’t expecting an answer.
Before Martine knows it, the arm she’s using is being pulled down and behind her back, a spike of pain traversing up her nervous system. Then, she’s pushed away, and it takes a moment for her to realize the intruder’s gotten the best of her; her gun’s decidedly absent from the small of her back and Martine feels the empty space like the hole in her chest she’s sure to have any second now.
All trace of familiarity of gone. Eyes following the barrel of a gun, the woman smiles with a steady hand. “Take me to John Greer,” she says, and her voice is still somewhat soft. “Unless he’s already reached the afterlife.”
Martine considers lying. There’s a multiplicity of options running through her head, like Jeremy who’s probably asleep in his ridiculous pajamas and a gun nowhere in sight. He’d be no help. Staring down the woman in front of her, Martine thinks she could like, but after she’s dead, Greer will be found anyway.
“Fine,” Martine acquiesces. She leads them both down the corridor not with a gun tucked in the waistband of her pants, but rather with one pointed at the small of her back.
She doesn’t hear the other woman trailing behind her. With the step of a CIA agent, maybe, silence coats the woman like the calm after the storm, and Martine figures that’s how she managed to sneak up on her in the first place. Not many are able to (Jeremy’s tried, but the man can barely manage to shoot straight) and she applauds her sure-to-be-murderer in her head for the ability.
The two of them pass the turn that leads to where Shaw is being held and Martine resists the urge to glance. When Greer, Martine, and Jeremy are dead, she wonders whether Shaw will be left to rot, or if Shaw is the reason the woman’s here in the first place. It’s entirely possible she’s an agent of the Machine.
Finally, as they pass several doors, Martine knows the Control room is just beyond. “In here,” she says, but she doesn’t seem to need to. The code is habit by now, and her fingers float over the numbers. The light next to the door burns green. Martine’s surprised the gun doesn’t press into her back, urging her inside.
“I thought you’d gone to bed by now, Martine.” Greer’s back is to her, and she’s wondering, staring at the blank screen, as to why their invisible colleague didn’t alert him.
“She tried,” the woman says before Martine can answer. “But our meeting cut her rounds a bit short.”
“Ah,” Greer says, still facing away from both of them. “Ms. Stanton. It’s been quite a while.”
“What did you do to her?” Stanton asks, moving away from them both. She finds a middle ground, pointing her gun at Greer now, and while something tugs at the base of Martine’s consciousness, she’s more focused on the gun she knows to be resting just inside the top drawer of Greer’s desk. It’s two steps away.
Greer finally turns around. On his face resides an expression that Martine has come to know intimately. His lips press together tightly and he stares at Stanton impassively. “You’re referring to Martine.”
That sparks Martine’s attention.
“Of course,” Stanton spits, not even glancing at her. It’s now Martine notices her hands are shaking. She aims with the ease of someone who’s been doing this a long time, but her hands tremble with anger.
Martine had assumed they were talking about Shaw, at first, but now as Greer’s gaze slides over to her, she feels the attention prick uncomfortably at her skin. She admires his ability to stay calm, but she wants to know what it all means. She has no idea who this woman is, and her curiosity is growing by the minute.
“As I said to you years ago,” Greer begins, standing still as a statue, “afterlife exists in many forms.” His head tips slightly to the side. “Hers simply began after we assumed yours did.”
“You’ve hijacked her,” Stanton growls, a desperation seeping into her tone that somehow makes its way into Martine’s chest, as well. “She can’t be gone,” Stanton pleads. “There has to be a trigger phrase, something to snap her out of this.”
“My dear,” Greer says, his voice eerie in the silence of the computers (Martine has heard this condescension so many times before), “the only trigger in this room is the one attached to the gun in your hand.”
Stanton tightens her jaw, steels herself, and says, “Say it.” She pointedly doesn’t look at Martine, but after years of reading people (it was her job, Martine likes to think she was good at it) Martine can tell that she wants to. Can tell she’s fighting the reflex to turn and run, but for whatever reason, there’s something gone in Martine’s mind. She doesn’t know this woman.
Martine’s got a hand on the desk above the drawer, and itch in her fingertips to wrap around the cold handle and put a bullet in the woman threatening everything Martine’s worked for.
“There’s nothing to say, I’m afraid,” Greer admits, and from his tone, Martine thinks he might’ve just given up on reasoning.
A flash, and a bullet’s ripping into John Greer’s chest. Martine moves faster than she ever thought possible. The gun molds into her hand, her arm doesn’t shake, and almost two seconds after the shot goes off, she’s armed and ready to shoot in the case of sudden movement. She barks out her next words in a clipped sentence, “Put the gun down, Stanton.”
“It’s Kara,” Stanton says, though she does put her gun on a desk. “I suppose we should reacquaint ourselves once again.” She meets Martine’s eyes, sadness fracturing her corneas. “I loved you, once. I think you should know that. Even if you don’t remember.”
Martine shakes her head. She doesn’t know how many times she’s done it in the past hour, but she feels like she needs to clear it, somehow, but she ends up feeling emptier than she did to begin with. She gestures to Greer with her weapon. “Is he dead?”
“Not quite yet,” a voice says, and it’s Jeremy, standing at the edge of the room. He looks a bit sick, pale, even, his face ashen as he takes in the entire scene. Looking at Greer on the ground, Martine supposes his stomach’s churning at the prospect of being in charge of an artificial intelligence. Or rather, an artificial intelligence officially being in charge of him.
Kara looks between the two of them, and Martine snaps her attention back to the woman who just killed her boss.
“Kill her,” Jeremy croaks, and Martine thinks he could’ve sounded more official when giving a kill order. Or, at least less like he’s going to throw up.
“She could talk,” Martine argues, partly to argue with him and partly because it’s true. Kara Stanton could have some valuable information, just like Shaw. Even if they couldn’t break the latter.
Jeremy sighs like she’s the incredibly dissatisfying morning paper. “There was a woman in a car,” he mutters, a monotone Martine’s never heard before, “and she died in an explosion.”
Just like that, Martine pulls the trigger because her mind screams threat, but other than that, she doesn’t know why.
“Trigger phrases are versatile,” Jeremy says, “in that there are several we can employ. One to snap them out, one to snap them in, and one to make them follow orders.”
As Kara Stanton lifts a hand to her abdomen, pressing fingers into a wound that seeps, she chuckles, and says, “Funny, I thought she died by a bullet.”
Something clicks in Martine’s mind. “Oh,” she breathes, taking in her surroundings with a sharp inhale. Grief settles heavy on her shoulders, but Kara is right here, in front of her and dying all over again. Jeremy tries to run, but Martine shoots him in the leg. On the other side of the room, Kara stumbles and Martine makes it the few steps just in time to catch her.
“I’ve evaded death,” Kara starts, blood on her lips, “too many times, I guess. It was inevitable.” She glances down at her hands, glistening with crimson in the low light. “Though this time, I don’t think I’m going to wake up.”
“I remember you,” Martine whispers. It’s the only thing she can say. “I remember all of it.”
Kara smiles, white teeth outlined in blood. “That’s all I ask,” she murmurs, drowning in her own blood.
Martine holds her as a pool of blood gathers, each of them choking back tears and blood. She holds Kara’s hand tight on her stomach, stemming the flow, but she’s seen enough fatal wounds to know when to say goodbye. Martine holds Kara Stanton as she dies from Martine’s bullet.
And she remembers everything.