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Root is in the ground and Root is in her ear and Schrodinger can kiss Shaw’s ass.
“Two more on your left,” comes the voice in her ear, so familiar and so present and if this is a new brand of simulation from Samaritan, then Shaw’s got to give them credit. This one was hard to see coming.
Two shots ring out from the gun in her hand, almost before she fully registers the rapidly approaching Samaritan agents across the abandoned street. There is something to be said for combining her years of sharply honed reflexes with the omniscience of an artificial superintelligence, Shaw supposes, but she thinks she’d rather have left that up to the person who’d actually wanted it.
Shaw checks around the corner before crossing the road and rifling through the dead guys’ pockets. “Any more?”
“You’re safe for now. But sweetie, you really should-”
“Don’t call me that,” Shaw says flatly, shoving the first goon’s spare clips into the pocket of her hoodie.
“I’m sorry.” The voice is somber, and Shaw can almost see the tears welling up in Root’s eyes as she stood in the park barely over a week ago, leaves rustling overhead as she learned what Shaw had been through. “But you need to go get Bear and leave town for a while. Everything’s too… scattered. I can’t see well enough to keep you safe.”
Shaw grunts. Samaritan is gone, but many of its soldiers remain. John and Finch are dead, taken out in the blast that failed to stop them from uploading a virus to Samaritan’s last satellite. Fusco is caught up in internal investigations, but she’s been assured he’ll eventually be cleared and commended. And Root…
She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“You have to go, Sameen.”
Root is everywhere, and Shaw is lost.
It’s a month into her temporary exile when Shaw first hears the voice outside the context of a life threatening situation.
Snow crunches gently beneath her feet as she adjusts her stance in front of the block of wood before her. She raises the maul above her head and lets it fall, neatly chopping the block in half, and as she bends to toss the pieces aside, she hears the familiar crackle of her earpiece.
“Impressive as always, Sameen.”
The blade knocks against her boot and Shaw glances around sharply, checking for any sign of intruders. Her cabin is isolated, the sole structure on an otherwise empty field; she has a clear view of all points of entry, and the dull cloud cover shields her eyes from the glare of the sun against the vast expanse of snow. She’s alone.
Aside from the obvious.
“Is there a problem?” Shaw can’t see anything, but she’s grown used to the feeling of someone watching her back, knowing things she doesn’t.
“No.” There’s a pause, and Shaw can almost hear the intake of breath signaling hesitance behind it. “We should talk.”
Shaw huffs, little clouds of air forming in the cold. “Not my thing.”
A bird flies overhead and Shaw watches it for a moment before placing another block of wood on the stump. If nothing else, the past few weeks have served to prove to her that she’s not stuck in another shitty simulation - Samaritan never was able to really capture the dull repetitive nature of reality. She raises the maul again and takes a breath.
Reality sucks.
“I’ve found all the remaining Samaritan operatives.” That gives Shaw pause. She lets the maul fall to her side, blinking against the lightly falling snow. “You can go back to New York and get started whenever you’re ready.”
“When I’m ready? Fuck that, I’m ready now, let’s go.” The maul drops to the ground with a cushioned thunk and she gathers an armful of wood before starting off in the direction of the cabin.
“I don’t think you are, Sameen.” The voice sounds apologetic, like it’s trying to keep Shaw placated. Like she’s being handled.
She hates being handled. “Fuck off. I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do, but I think we should talk about the elephant in the room before you go back, don’t you? Or, the elephant not in the room, as the case may be.”
“And what would that be?” Shaw tosses the wood against the cabin and scuffs her boots on the mat at the door a little more aggressively than would be called for if she didn’t have a nagging supercomputer in her ear.
“Me,” the voice says, and Shaw blinks and sees Root standing in front of her, a crooked smile gracing her lips as she shrugs and looks at Shaw like she’s the only thing in the world that matters.
Shaw blinks again and shoves the cabin door open, before the voice stops her in her tracks once more.
“You know I never felt all that connected to humanity anyway, Sameen. Especially not my own.”
Shaw slides into a booth in the back of the diner, facing the entrance. There’s a former Samaritan operative working at a hardware store across the street with his twin brother, and it’s been a little difficult for the eye in the sky to figure out which is which. He’s one of the few left after months of hunting, and Shaw is looking forward to putting an end to this one.
A waitress slides a menu onto the table in front of her and she glances idly at its single page as she thumbs at her lip. “I can’t believe this worm willingly lives in Utah,” she mutters. “There’s not even any beer on this menu.”
“He heard you were after them,” Root says in her ear, “and ran as far as his last paycheck would take him.”
Shaw bites back a satisfied smirk. “Smarter than the rest of ‘em, then.”
“You’ve become Samaritan’s boogeyman, sweetie. I’m so proud.”
The air of flirting is unmistakable, Root’s husk seeming to wash over her skin as though she were beside her in the booth. Shaw shifts closer to the wall, pulling the menu along with her. “Got any recommendations from this place?”
“I’d avoid any of the meat if I were you. The health department has cited them for improper storage four times and they’ve never fixed anything.”
“Ugh.” Shaw sits back and flicks the menu away. The waitress swings by and the bell above the front door jingles as she orders a slice of pie, her target walking through the front door. She eyes him as the waitress walks away and the man takes a seat on the opposite end of the diner. “What do you think? Good twin or evil twin?”
Root hums, considering. “Well, he doesn’t have a goatee. You know the rules.”
“We’re not in a science fiction movie, Root.”
“You’re talking to the disembodied voice of an artificial superintelligence that’s been taken over by your dead girlfriend, Sameen. It’s a little late to protest the genre of your biography, don’t you think?”
Shaw nods to the server as her apple pie is slid onto the table in front of her. “That’s… cyberpunk Matrix shit. Evil goatees are mirror universes, totally different things.”
“I’ll remember that the next time you shoot down my movie night suggestions,” Root says, with what Shaw can tell would be a wry grin across the table at her. She digs the side of her fork into the pie and cuts off a large bite, stuffing it into her mouth to hide her amusement. “But I suppose that’s what you’re here to figure out.”
“I could just kill them both,” Shaw suggests. The man across the room has ordered a milkshake and appears to be browsing his phone while sipping at it. “Serve his brother right for sharing a face with a total dick.”
“You know how I feel about that, Sameen.” Root sounds only mildly chiding, and Shaw can’t stifle her smirk this time.
“Nothing at all?” Root sputters protests in her ear, which Shaw thinks is a bit overdramatic for an electronic entity. “You’re on a higher plane now or whatever, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly pro- all humans.”
“It passes the time,” Root concedes, and Shaw can see her dismissive shrug. “But fair enough. Death to all humans.”
The target rises, leaving his milkshake behind, and makes his way to the restrooms. “Okay, Bender,” Shaw says under her breath, digging out a pen from her pocket. She pulls a napkin from the dispenser and writes Long time no see in bold letters along the middle. The last of her pie is shoved into her mouth and she drops a few bills onto the table before making her way across the room and letting the note fall onto the target’s table as she ostensibly heads for the jukebox.
“I love it when you do this,” Root coos.
Shaw rolls her eyes and makes her way out the door. “You love it when I drool in my sleep.” She takes a place on the sidewalk at the corner of the building, pulling out her phone and pretending to check her messages as she keeps an eye on the man’s table through the windows. Cool, crisp spring air fills her lungs; she wouldn’t live this deep in flyover country to save her life, but she can admit there are upsides to not sharing an island with a million other people.
The target returns to his table and Shaw keeps her head down, watching out of the corner of her eye as he picks up the napkin and pales. His panic is palpable as he drops the note and hurries toward the door without paying.
“Think we found our guy,” Root says as the man rushes past Shaw and down the side street next to her. Shaw gives him a few seconds then follows, noting the street is empty aside from a few parked cars on the shoulder. The target is fumbling with his keys at the car in the middle of a set of three and doesn’t seem to notice Shaw’s approach.
“Stiffed his waitress on her tip,” Shaw notes, speaking loud enough for the man to hear. “He’s definitely the evil twin.”
His head raises sharply and he looks stricken, his hand frozen on the door of his car. “What did you say?”
Shaw reaches into her jacket for her gun, her lips curling into a predatory grin that would do Root proud.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Shaw remembers one of the last conversations she had with Root before she died, when they were all still fighting Samaritan and she was still fighting the urge to seek out the chip in the back of her head every five minutes. None of them had the life they want, she had said.
Fuck hindsight.
The earpiece sitting on her nightstand seems to mock her as she stares at it, sitting on the edge of her bed. A bed she’s never shared with anyone, let alone Root, unless the earpiece counts. It’s been sitting there for three days now, after Shaw tore it out and cast it aside, unwilling or unable to take another second of hearing that voice in her ear telling her all the things Root would say, and some she never got the chance to.
She knows there are cameras and microphones all over the apartment - she installed them herself a few months ago - but she also knows she won’t be disturbed until she picks up the earpiece and signals she’s ready for it again. She gets that level of respect, at least. Although she wonders if Root would have done the same thing when they fought, if she had survived.
Shaw glares at the earpiece and shoves off from the bed, shedding her clothes as she makes her way to the shower. She turns the water on full blast, nearly scalding, and the small bathroom quickly fills with steam. The spray is like daggers on her skin, and she stands beneath it watching her chest turn red.
Root had told her she felt like she belonged. Shaw had been floundering and she had held Root’s hand and felt her tenuous grasp on reality grow more firm, and it had been enough.
It would have been enough.
But this… She doesn’t know what kind of existence this is, but it sucks. It’s not enough and it’s not what Root deserved and it sucks.
“This sucks,” she says to herself. Then, a little louder, knowing the microphone near the mirror will hear her, “this sucks.”
She closes her eyes and ducks her head under the spray, gasping a little at the heat of the water against the days-old wounds on her back. Her hand braces against the wall in front of her and she feels herself sagging a little, her breath coming in a little heavier from the steam or from her anger or from something else she can’t place but has gotten all too familiar with in the past year.
“I hate this.” She can imagine Root straining to hear her with a supportive twinge in her eye, turning her good ear toward Shaw’s voice, and Shaw almost laughs to herself at the thought of the single microphone in the room providing the same lack of stereo to her now before she swallows the hollow sound in her throat. “I fucking hate this, Root. This isn’t what I signed up for.”
The pounding spray of water over her ears is her only answer. “Everything is such bullshit. You’ve been dead and buried for almost a year and you still haven’t changed.” She spits out the water that gathered at her lips as she spoke and shakes her head at herself. “You say things to me, and I can feel you looking at me like I’ve got sunshine coming out my ass, but you’re not. It’s just a bunch of fucking cameras watching me like they’re watching everybody and I hate it.”
She’s not sure what she’s trying to work out, or what the endgame here is. It’s not the first time this has happened, and Shaw is sure it won’t be the last. “I hate it, Root,” she says, quieter this time, but she knows she’ll still be heard. “I hate that this voice stuck in a bunch of circuits can give me more than I was ever able to…”
She drifts off, blinking against the water dripping from her forehead, and her eyes fall to the tattoo on her left arm that she had been convinced to get after the last time she went radio silent for a week. “This really isn’t my thing,” she murmurs, shaking her head at herself. “I think you’re better at being a person than I am.”
The black ink on her skin stands out in the dim light of the shower. A single thin, straight line, running along a vein in her forearm.
“This sucks,” she says again, and reaches for the bar of soap.
It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. But every time it happens, she welcomes Root back into her ear eventually. And every time it happens, Root greets her with a smile she can't see but knows is there nonetheless.
Just… not yet.
“It’s not nice to keep secrets, Sameen.”
Shaw smirks at the whine in Root’s voice, shoving the last of her bags into the car. Her legally obtained car, for a change, and that’s still a novel experience she’s getting used to. Assuming Root manipulating registration records counts as legal ownership, anyway.
“I don’t get many of them anymore, gotta enjoy it while I can,” Shaw says. “And who are you to complain about secrets? How often do I know what I’m getting into when you send me off on a mission?”
“You like it that way, it’s more exciting.”
“Well, so is this.”
Root harrumphs as Shaw slides into the driver’s seat. “You know I’m going to figure out where we’re going as soon as you open the maps app.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I memorized the highway system then,” Shaw grins, and starts the car.
The next two days test her tolerance of having “are we there yet” piped directly into her ear, although Root’s scandalized tone when Shaw pulls in at a motel in rural Tennessee to rest on the first night is almost worth it all. Finally, after a dizzying series of off-road turns that she imagines Root can barely track with GPS, they arrive at an isolated spot in the New Mexico desert just after dusk. Shaw turns off the car and silence surrounds her until Root’s tentative voice breaks it.
“Please tell me we’re not there yet,” Root begs, and Shaw scoffs, throwing the door open and hooking her phone onto her belt.
“You saw me pack a tent,” she says, pulling the bundled up tent out of the trunk and pointedly shaking her hip at it to draw Root’s attention to it through the camera on her phone. “You knew camping was in the picture.”
“I guess I was hoping for some place less…” Shaw tosses a sleeping bag toward the tent, wanting to get everything set up before the last of the light is gone. “Primitive. My satellite signal is fine, but electricity will be a bit of an issue, Sameen.”
The last of her equipment falls to the ground at her feet. “Got a couple portable chargers in there somewhere. Figure we’ve got about ninety hours before we have to head back to civilization, assuming I don’t get bored before then.”
“My hero.”
Shaw finds the miniature tripod buried in one of her duffel bags, the one with the food, and sets her phone up on the trunk of the car. Root is content to watch her pitch the tent, making only a handful of terrible puns before Shaw finishes without any issues and moves inside to create her sleeping space.
Night has fallen by the time everything is settled, and Shaw spreads a large blanket out on the ground outside the tent. “It’s kind of hard for me to see out here, sweetie,” Root complains. “Did you bring anything for a fire?”
“Not tonight.” Shaw moves to the tripod and unclips her phone before moving back to the blanket. “I’ll find something tomorrow, but we don’t need it right now.” She tosses her phone onto the blanket while she removes her boots, then lies back and stretches out her limbs, still slightly sore after hours of driving. Her fingers seek out her phone, finding it near her head, and she places it on her sternum with the camera facing the sky.
“Oh,” Root says, and Shaw feels the phone shift on her chest when she huffs out a laugh. She had sought out a place far from any light pollution, and the Milky Way shines brighter in the southern sky than she has seen it in over a decade. There’s a silence, and she knows Root wants to make some sappy comment, but all that comes out is, “one of my satellites will be passing nearly overhead in a few minutes. Wave, Sameen.”
Shaw watches the sky until then, an occasional bat fluttering its wings nearby and some animal howling in the distance. She sees the blinking lights of a satellite flying by just as Root tells her it’s there, and she raises her hand and gives half a wave, watching it zoom along its orbit out of sight.
“New profile pic,” Root says happily, the phone on Shaw’s chest vibrating a little.
Shaw raises an eyebrow. “No way could that thing see anything down here.”
“Infrared cameras. Now I know just how hot you are for me.”
“Ugh.” Out of morbid curiosity, Shaw picks up her phone and turns on the screen. A blurry false-color image shines back at her on the lockscreen, a vaguely human-shaped mass of reds and oranges sitting amongst a field of green and blue. She squints, and she thinks she can see a slightly brighter spot in the center of the form, where her phone had been. She nearly smiles, then remembers the front-facing camera on the phone and drops it back onto her chest. “You’re impossible.”
“Gotta test out these new high-res algorithms somehow. What better subject than you?” Root makes a kissy noise and Shaw almost swats her away before she catches herself.
They lie in companionable silence for several long moments, watching the stars light up the night, before Shaw finds herself compelled to break it herself for a change.
“I actually thought about taking you out here, before.” Before the stock exchange, before Samaritan. Before Root had been killed. “Thought it’d be good to get you a vacation from the Machine before you killed yourself.” She huffs at the irony.
Root hesitates before replying, sounding unsure of herself. “We’re here now.”
The air around the campsite has rapidly grown cooler, and Shaw’s sigh breathes warm eddies of air across her skin. Root says she’s with her, and she is. Shaw can accept that, most days. But Shaw can’t ignore the ways she’s not, either. She’s not looking up at the sky with eyes that reflect starlight the way Root’s eyes would. The chill in the desert air isn’t cut by Root’s warmth beside her. She can imagine Root’s expression with every word she says, but she can’t see it.
“I know you always wanted to get closer to it. I guess… I guess I’m glad you got what you were looking for, in the end.”
There’s a pause, and Shaw can hear the regret in Root’s voice. “This isn’t what I wanted, Sameen. Not in this life.”
Shaw swallows, her throat working hard against something she can’t define. “Yeah.”
She glances down and sees a faint light shining in the glass of the camera on her phone, and becomes aware of the heat of its battery seeping through her shirt, warming her skin. Root pipes up again, neatly deflecting the mood by telling her sordid tales of the pilot of the jet flying overhead. She's got a phone on her chest and Root in her ear, and most days, it's enough.
Tonight, it’s enough.