[ Root gets settled in Etraya, takes some time to reacquaint herself with Shaw and Harry and even the big lug, makes sure she introduces herself to the resident A.I. and ask a series of pertinent questions. Of course she trusts Harry's judgment, but if she's going to be freely talking to whoever contacts her, Root isn't going to turn up the opportunity.
After a few days she moves onto introducing herself to their more extended circle of contacts, and Carver comes up quickly. Shaw brought a friend home, huh? That's so cute. She has to get to know him.
She's actually not thinking that as she goes down into the subway hideout, though. She has no idea he's living here and was just morbidly curious about finding a very familiar vending machine. If it's here, she might as well pick up some things of hers... black nail polish, a taser, you know. Whatever she'd left behind. She definitely wants the bunny slippers.
But she's not an idiot, so she has a gun held comfortably in her hands as she trots down the final stairway. ]
[ It’s not his place, Carver knows, not entirely. Harold’s crew all know the code and there’s no way to change or prevent them from sharing it with anyone else. Even so, it’s safer than the alternative and Carver set to work immediately to trap the fuck out of the place. He doesn’t have access to land mines or much in the way of gunpowder, but he laid out tripwires and several bell traps.
The bells are harmless. The tripwires aren’t. And it occurs to him only after he hears the metal drag of the vending machine opening that he didn’t actually tell anyone he’d set them.
So, that might be a problem.
He draws his one and only pistol, hurrying up the stairs. ]
[ Root stops where she is obediently, her pistol held loosely and pointed down, and she gazes down the stairs at Carver. She tilts her head a little. ]
Shaw didn't tell me she put you up in here, [ she says with palpable interest. Of course she knows what he looks like by now; she'd hardly been sitting around for the past few days. ] She must really like you.
Root assumes she's dead at first. There's quite a few reasons to draw this conclusion: her clothes are bloody but the wounds under them are closed up, scarring nicely already; the sky is cascading colors across the night, not just an aurora but a whole spectacle of the universe; and she's stuck in a frozen hellscape with the wind whistling past her. She finds Bear just as her fingertips start to fully freeze and the two things together convince her she is not, in fact, dead, or at least not in any way that matters.
She spends the next few days getting to grips with her surroundings, thankful she has Bear to talk to as she keeps up an occasional murmured stream of chatter. Root is a city girl but she grew up in a small town and she knows at least a few things. She has a knife and that lovely tactical shotgun she'd stolen off the police officer ages ago, though she quickly realizes she's going to need to conserve ammo, bad.
There's a tiny cabin nearby that's structurally sound enough to provide protection from the weather, and Root makes that her temporary base of operations as she scrounges around the area for supplies. She gets some better clothing for herself -- looking fairly comical bundled up in all these men's layers, but it keeps her alive, four pairs of socks on to make her feet fit into the work boots she found -- and she used her knife to cut up a the outer shell of a half-destroyed parka. She took the strips and some duct tape and made little booties for Bear. She has to make new ones every couple days, but his poor little paws need protection from the snow and ice.
Her cochlear implant isn't working the whole time. More than once she's intensely grateful to have Bear, who has far more acute hearing than her even when both of her ears are working, and warns her of nearby threats. His presence seems to act as a decent deterrent to the wolves, too, at least for now. As the light show in the sky starts to settle, though, her implant crackles back to life, making her wince in surprise. Some quick math makes Root realize how much she needs to conserve its battery life even more than the ammo, so with some reluctance she turns it off shortly after it becomes active.
Eventually she feels well equipped enough to leave her temporary base, and she suits up herself and Bear -- who's wearing a child's tattered down vest as well as his makeshift booties -- as she heads out, shotgun at the ready. It's slow going through the snow, and she really has no idea where she's going or where there even is to go to, but she can't stay here forever. There's very little food, for one thing.
She can't believe she was grateful to find a can of beans yesterday.
Root muses on her devastatingly low current standards and the theological nature of purgatory as she tromps through the snow drifts, and then Bear starts to bark and she springs into alertness, lifting the gun cautiously.
She knows that bark, and as soon as she hears it, she's sure that it's a trick of the woods - and though that suspicion isn't in any way dispelled by seeing him in the flesh just a few seconds after she hears him, that doesn't stop her from dropping to her knees and opening her arms, inviting him to bound right into them.
"Hey, buddy," she murmurs, rubbing his ears and nuzzling her frost-nipped nose into his fur. "Where'd you come from, huh?"
His saliva freezes to her face where he licks her cheek, and she does not fucking care. Bear.
More human-sized footsteps sound off in the woods to her left, boots crunching on snow and fallen branches, and she looks up - not immediately suspecting danger (it hadn't sounded nearly large enough to be the other bear), but alert regardless.
Root trusts that Bear would be acting a lot differently if it were a threat, so she lowers her gun and trudges her way through the snow and past some trees until she sees Shaw.
Oh. Of course Bear ran off.
"Sameen," she breathes, aware she looks like a minor disaster and not caring. She's all haphazard layers of moth-eaten men's clothes and her hair is messily pushed into a toque, she's stepping a little unsteadily in her borrowed shoes, and her face is flushed with cold sweat from the exertion. But her eyes are wide as the realization sinks in and then she starts to laugh in joyous incredulity.
The emotions are pushing up and crowding her, but Root passes them off with her usual flippancy.
"Maybe this is Dante's ninth circle of hell after all. With Bear here I thought it couldn't be, but seeing you, I'm starting to reconsider."
[ Let's say they're having a post-mission drink together. It's all very civil, sitting down in Carver's boobytrapped version of the subway station, pulled up on scavenged furniture around a scavenged table, bottle of decent but not great whiskey set up with shot glasses. Root is nursing hers rather than shooting -- it's just the glasses they have on hand -- and leaning back with all the leisurely satisfaction of a cat who did what they wanted and ignored all shouts to the contrary.
It was a good mission. They achieved their objectives and they worked well together, and watching Carver and Shaw relax afterwards like they don't have any other post-mission plans makes Root feel like now's the right time. It's not reckless; it's not impulsive.
She's been waiting. ]
So have you two done it yet? [ Maybe they were talking about something else, but now they're not. Root sounds interested, amused; she doesn't assume Shaw shares everything with her, wouldn't expect her to. ] Because I could cut this sexual tension with a knife.
[ He spent too much time in the infantry to spit his drink out when Root says that, but it sure does snap the conversation to a halt. They were just shooting the shit, not talking about anything important. Post-op comedown, the sort of thing he'd do with Leah and the others after a job back home. Or a raid after the world ended. He's nursing some bruises but nothing serious, nothing worth remembering once they fade. The alcohol's welcome, a reward for survival. And the company's good.
Little by little, day by day, he's found patterns with all of them. They make sense, this group. He has a place inside it.
Still, Carver's eyebrows go up. He lowers his glass. ]
[Shaw also does not spit-take: she just slooooooowly swivels her head to face Root, a very clear Why are you like this expression on her face.]
We are.
[But she says it like it's an aside; like the fact that they're together is completely irrelevant to the question that's just been posed. Exclusivity is not something that they've ever discussed, or even hinted at discussing, and somewhere along the line that lack of discussion had started to feel like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. Shaw knows where she stands on the issue (she's capable of exclusivity, especially with someone who keeps her on her toes as much as Root does, but she also doesn't feel the need for it), and she trusts that if Root felt any particular way about it, she would have brought it up by now. So. They're together, and they'd still be just as together even if Shaw had fucked Carver.
Which she very emphatically has not.]
Sorry about her. I guess she's not holding the social skills ball today.
[ Root is a good enough hacker that almost no one knows she exists, and those that do know were willing to pay a premium price for her services when they were for sale. So there's really no call to have this meeting in person, except she's curious, and still debating whether she wants to go along on this job herself. With the life she leads, she figures she doesn't have a lot of years left until she dies somehow, and that sharpness lends a clarity of purpose that makes her utterly unflinching.
Die now, die tomorrow, die next year -- who cares, as long as she makes sure it's worth something. She wants to enjoy what time she has.
She's not going to pass up an opportunity to meet Deadpool. His whole reputation is ludicrous and wildly conflicting. Having access to dark web conversations just makes the whole thing even more confusing, because it's not like they're reliable sources, and they often contradict one another -- and the Machine, who of course knows everything there is to know about everything, doesn't give her info just for the hell of it. She's meticulous in her ethics that way, Root thinks fondly. Like father, like daughter. No, the Machine gives her just enough to do what she needs to do and nothing more.
So here's Root swanning into a dive bar like she owns the place. She'd given him a location and time to meet and said she'd find him, but nothing more. She's a tall spindly woman in fashionable yet unremarkable black, and she has two pistols tucked into the small of her back under her jacket, a knife handle sticking out of her boot, and a cochlear implant subtly visible through her hair over her right ear.
There's a bright, interested air about her like she's going on a fun jaunt, and she strides right up to Deadpool without an ounce of hesitation. ]
Are we having a drink first or right to business?
[ She's down with either one, but she's at least going to ask -- Root is highly social but also hates most of humanity, meaning when she comes across a novelty she just wants to dig in. ]
[It’s not completely unheard of for a client to request to meet in person, but it’s not necessarily typical either. The type of clients that Wade attracts (people with special needs) garner a certain level of discretion by nature. He’s sometimes done entire jobs without ever seeing a client’s face or even knowing their real name. Risky, yes, but the payoff is usually proportional.
Wade is admittedly more particular about the jobs he takes these days than he’s been in the past. There are reasons for that. Nothing’s ever completely off the table though.
New York City is one of Wade’s old haunts. Even if he doesn’t live here anymore, he finds himself drawn back often. He’s already built up a reputation here, for one. It’s also the territory of several people of interest— heroes, villains, goons, you name it. He’s familiar with the little dive bar his client pinned as their meeting point, and he’s actually a little glad to settle into a dim corner and wait. There aren’t many bars that accommodate guests like him, and thankfully this is one of them.
The woman that eventually approaches him is beautiful, yes— Wade has eyes and they work, thank you very much— but she’s also got an air of confidence that piques his interest.]
Hey, sweetheart. Not that I think just anyone’s gonna come strolling up to a heavily armed masked man sitting in a dark corner alone— kinda cliché, now I think about it— but you mind identifying yourself first? Think of it as a formality.
[He cocks his head slightly, clearly taking notice of the pistols she’s packing herself.]
Then I’ll buy you a drink, promise. Got my customer service face on and everything.
[ Root's never really lived in New York City, but she keeps coming back here, too. At first just because it's a population nexus, so there's a lot of jobs here and it's a convenient place to get lost in and restock -- but now because Harold is here, and that also means Shaw is here, and Root has to stop back in and check on her people every so often.
It's strange, having people. Strange and precious, something she'd walk off a roof rather than betray.
Her confidence isn't arrogance; it's someone who knows exactly who they are, where they're going, and what they're willing to do to get there. Root isn't fearless, she's determined. And she's determined she's going to follow the Machine to the end of her days. The Machine wants her here right now, so she's here. That the Machine approved this meeting also means the Machine thinks Deadpool wouldn't really be a threat to her at the moment, whatever his reputation.
And isn't that interesting?
She gives an easy smile that has the same insouciant edge as batting her eyelashes would. ] Most people aren't any fun that way, it's true. I'm Root. [ She'd identified herself that way online when reaching out to hire him, and she has a reputation of her own inasmuch as no one anywhere is willing to admit to knowing who she is. One of her personal costs of doing business. ]
Make it something with whiskey.
[ And she sits herself down at his table, apparently content to let him handle ordering, buying, and waiting on her. ]
[ It is sometimes difficult to tell if Clea's atelier is a workshop or a terrarium, hot and humid as it is. The reason can be found in the gigantic glass enclosure that wraps around two walls of the room, full of tropical plants, logs, and caves as well as one very large boa constrictor. A few smaller enclosures can be found on the opposite wall. ]
Shoes, s'il vous plait.
[ She reminds the other woman with a gentle chide, not looking up from where she's sitting at a vintage hardwood desk, sorting through the photography from her recent trip to the Amazon. Most of the photographs have been placed in the 'lacking' pile, but there are a small number of which Clea approves. She holds a photograph of a small brightly colored frog up above her head, examining it with a frown, going back and forth on its merits.
If she must question, it is a no.
She adds the photograph to the pile of rejects and finally turns to give her 'guest' her full attention.
There are few people Clea allows in her atelier out of a desire to preserve her privacy, but she is one of them. If one wishes to acquire interesting goods, one must make interesting friends, and the best way to ingratiate oneself is to provide services. The jobs provide a suitable challenge and a network which is unburdened by questions of legality, though Clea prefers to keep herself away from the messier side of that world: she's not trying to end up bleeding out in an alley like a common thug. ]
It's been a long time. I was beginning to think you'd become banal - acquired a husband, children, and a golden retriever. Please do not ask for a donation to a children's school.
[ Her voice has a teasing lilt to it, as the notion is ridiculous. ]
What name are we using today, madame?
[ It is fascinating how the other woman so readily inhabits her personae. Clea has never had a talent for acting or disappearing; she is too much herself. Yet this woman is an actress par excellence of the deepest sort, entirely subsuming herself and yet never being lost. ]
For you, chérie, just Root today. If that isn't too prosaic.
[ She does have a fake identity she's working under currently, of course, but it doesn't matter. Root is here on the Machine's orders, specifically as herself -- which is interesting. It's almost like a personal gift if she didn't know better. Root loves puzzles, and excuses to see people she likes -- and she hasn't had much downtime since she decided to follow the Machine. Not that she's complaining (never) but she is, unfortunately, a flesh and blood human who can't go on endlessly.
She's sure this little assignment isn't solely for her benefit, though she does think that might be a secondary motive. The Machine doesn't play matchmaker for her agents' primate social needs, not past that one time when she was young and she introduced Harold to Grace. No, the Machine never tells her much, and in this case it was even more minimal than normal: visit Clea. Someone she hasn't seen in years but has thought about quite a few times since. It's rare that Root clicks on a personal level with someone, and when she does, she latches on. Not tightly -- she's like a cat, always leaving to do her own things but coming back routinely for treats and attention -- but assuredly, leaving no question of her attachment.
Root pauses momentarily to kick off her three inch heels as directed, leaving her in sheer black pantyhose and an understated color-block dress, hair artfully tousled in a chignon. She could be any well-dressed professional Frenchwoman wandering in off the street.
Leaving the shoes carelessly to the side, she pads over in stocking feet to examine the pile of pictures, head tilting to orient them better. A smaller, more honest smile finds its way onto her face. ]
These are the rejects, right? [ she asks, taking a guess. ] Can I have one?
[ Though she would never admit to anything so gauche, Clea does feel a sense of pleasure at the address: Root has never struck her as the sort of woman to bandy about endearments. Clea watches Root approach with interest, looking her up and down to appraise today's presentation. It stands in contrast with Clea's own, as the artist had intended to devote the entirety of the day to working and had dressed accordingly in flowing, impeccably tailored linens allowing for freedom of movement, shirt sleeves rolled up past her forearms and hair tied back in a braid.
Clea's grey eyes flicker over to Root. She wonders what the purpose is of Root's visit: It has been some time since she's requested any of Clea's services. ]
If you insist, though you deserve better.
[ Why she would want one from the rejects, Clea isn't certain. The photographs Root sees all look like they could easily belong in a nature photo exhibition - photographs of exotic flora and fauna both - but in each Clea has identified what she's determined is a glaring flaw.
Clea draws out a photograph from the much thinner pile of those that had met her standards and passes it over to Root for inspection: A large white bellied Caiman alligator in the midst of preying on an anaconda, mouth having just clamped down on the doomed snake. The two animals are framed by lush green leaves and bright blooms - a multilayered photograph Clea had painstakingly developed in the old way in a darkroom.
It's a much more interesting piece than the ones Root is considering. ]
[ It doesn't take long after he arrives for Root to come visiting and introduce herself. Harold gave her some warnings, which just makes her more curious. She also knows Carver enough at this point to have certain expectations formed, and she wants to see how right her hypotheses are. (Carver has probably given Bossie some warnings about her, for that matter. He'd be silly not to, and he did not seem silly.)
She comes swanning up to the subway entrance and stops in front of the vending machine. She stares unerringly and acutely directly into the surveillance camera. ]
Knock knock, [ she says brightly.
Root is a slender woman on the taller side dressed in a cutesy cotton summer dress. Her hair is perfectly curled into artful tumbles and she has a discreet little purse just large enough to contain a Taser, a handgun, and the secondary network device Harold had put together. A girl always needs the essentials. ]
[ That makes her smile widen, eyes returning to the road as she follows the GPS to the next off-ramp. ]
That's the spirit. We're stopping for gas -- you'll have to stay in the car, but I'll grab you a snack. And that coffee.
Any requests?
[ Another little choice, a light push to get him used to thinking about making his own decisions.
They're in upstate New York in a heavily wooded rural area, the isolation convenient for the research facility. It's too dark to see much at the moment, but the trees are sprayed with color as the leaves turn for the winter, and the road winds beside the craggy cliffs of old mountains. They're going to be driving for hours to make it back to the city, and Root is certain there's a detour with a good view that the Machine can find, even if it will be in the middle of the night. ]
[Accelerator frowns faintly at having to stay in the car, but he understands why and doesn't argue. Besides, seeing so much outdoors is still pretty overwhelming to him, so staying in an enclosed space separated from all that nature is probably a good thing.]
I don't know. [He, sadly, does not have a lot of experience with gas station snacks, though he still takes Root's question seriously and thinks for a few moments.] Anything that goes with coffee.
[That seems like a safe bet, and after everything that just happened he could use something to eat.]
[ Root greatly appreciates how sensible Accelerator is as she pulls into a gas station and slips out of the car. They're still remote enough that it's a quiet place, the lights glaring and abrupt amid the darkened landscape, one solitary employee half-asleep inside at the counter.
She pays with cash, naturally, but is otherwise a perfunctory whirlwind filling up the gas tank and sweeping through the convenience store. When she returns, she opens the door and leans in to dump a plastic bag on Accelerator's lap before taking the driver's seat again. There's four cold cans of coffee, two black and two milk-sweetened, and a small assortment of snacks from shortbread to granola bars to gummies. ]
That doesn't bother Root. It's not like she has competing priorities -- no voice in her cochlear implant toning instructions, no amazing, gorgeous, blindingly unconventional badass woman to save -- and she only has assumptions about what she's doing here, so she might as well go all in and take her time. They're strong assumptions, admittedly. She's worked for the Machine (claimed her as her own) for years now and Root has begun to internalize what she would want of her.
She doesn't always do whatever that is, but she is conscientious when she doesn't, and she makes sure it's worth it.
Funnily enough, she's perfectly clear that the Machine's priorities in this case would be to preserve human life at the expense of androids. Harold had programmed her that way. But Harold hadn't anticipated any artificial intelligence gaining sentience, not even his own, and that's what's happening. Her dearest tribute to the Machine and the way she and Harry had saved her in life is obviously to usher in a new era here after her death.
For that, she can give however much time she has left. Besides -- sentient androids is delightful. If this is the afterlife, it may as well be a reward for her.
By the time she encounters Connor, it's purposefully, deliberately arranged. The level of technology here is close to what she's used to, and it hadn't taken long to get herself set up with a false identity, an illicit criminal business, a bank account and a decent computer. Hacking Detroit PD was a little different than what she was used to at home, but she adjusted quickly.
RK800 is a unique prototype model using the name Connor, explicitly created and programmed to clean up Cyberlife's messes for them. (That part wasn't in police files; she'd put it together herself using reasoning and experience with corporate mega-entities. Root hasn't dared to try hacking into Cyberlife itself just yet, but it's on her list.) Deviancy is such a classically human concept applied to machines who, really, don't need to be burdened with human concepts at all. It's no wonder androids, as they gain sentience, are starting to commit crimes. It's only deviant insomuch as it ruins Cyberlife's plans for market domination.
But this does seem like the way in, the place to start inserting herself into what's happening. Detroit is ground zero for the slowly burgeoning android uprising, and Root wants in. She knows she can be valuable. And if she can't find them herself, latching onto the android investigator who's in hot pursuit is the next best thing. ]
I don't know, [ she says, fretting, hair a mess and scrapes across her cheek that she'd given herself. Root's eyes are wide with innocent distress, hands curled into knots on top of the table in the interrogation room. She's Rosalind Carson, victim of assault from an android gone deviant and now missing. ]
It was like it all came out of nowhere. If you find him, you're not going to hurt him, are you? [ She chews at her lip, torn. ] He was really... I mean, he was kind of the only family I had for a while.
[ She'd picked her tactic here in advance: how would RK800, Connor, hold up to a human who openly accepted an android's personhood, even after they attacked her? ]
Ellie jerks awake with a sharp breath and snaps her eyes open to a disorienting sea of darkness.
She scrambles upright - or tries to. Pain bright as hot sparks shoots through her ribs across her left flank, stifling her to a halt with a gasp. She snatches a startled hand against that very spot. A pained noise bulges in the back of her throat; she swallows it back around a hitched gulp of air sucked in through clenched teeth and a faint stale taste of blood clinging to the back of her throat. Fuck.
Her eyes dart around, fast, frantic, attempting to make sense of her tenebrous surroundings. Faint slivers of moonlight strain through slatted gaps up by the rotting ceiling, bending eerie pale fingers of light down into the shadows.
Last thing she remembers is being strung up by her arms, legs kicking, heavy metal chains chewing through her wrists each time she tried to wrench herself free. Screaming, enraged, full of rage and murder and terror and hate while blinded by a flashlight pointed right in her face. A man with rotting breath leering at her, a sharp knife dug up into her chin ready to rip her tongue out.
And now, she is— where? A house? A mournful wind outside bellows and bends through the building's rickety bones. Where the fuck is she?
A sudden noise to her right. Ellie whips her head around in its direction. A person. Someone moving, approaching.
Ellie launches herself onto her knees and leaps to her feet, pain ripping through ribs like fire. The suffocating gloom of the room spins through her head. She nearly stumbles backwards and catches her balance with a violent flail of her arms. Another burst of pain slicing through her ribs. She flings her arm across to her body and grasps at them, gasping. Fuck, where is she, where the fuck is she?
“I’ll fucking kill you if you get any closer,” Ellie spits, raspy and wild with venom, at the amorphous shadow lurching towards her in the darkness.
"That would be disappointing, because I was hoping you'd take the next shift on watch," Root responds mildly, stopping where she is.
It has the lilt of a quip but not the heart behind it. Root is exhausted. She'd sprained her ankle, so she isn't going anywhere fast, and her companion escapee has her own injuries. Once upon a time, the Machine would've whispered in her ear what to do, where to go, whatever had the best chance of success and survival. She would've known if she could trust the young woman she'd taken with her as she left.
Instead, she doesn't know anything for certain anymore. She's left scrambling around in the dark like everyone else, a frustrating fate for someone who'd gone to her death with the relieved, peaceful assurance that she had, for once, done something unequivocally good. Now she's in this hellscape, wondering if the Machine wants her here or if this is some kind of bizarre purgatory. Root told Shaw that they couldn't be certain reality wasn't a simulation anyway, but she hadn't expected to have that demonstrated to her directly so soon after saying it.
But who she is now is someone who helps people, mostly -- whether they're trustworthy or not -- so she'd dragged them both here as a clearly defensible structure.
They're on the second floor, Root cozied up to a window with a long-distance rifle. The area around the farmhouse and its barn is barren, providing a wide clear space leading up to it that she can keep an eye on. She might be deaf in one ear, and she might not be as good a shot at this range as Shaw, but her eyes still work and she's good enough.
The noise was her dragging her foot in a scrape across the floor as she made to switch posts, rifle held loosely in both hands with proper gun safety posture. She's ragged, run down, even her seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy finally at its end. The lack of food has really done her in. But she's also clear-eyed and unfaltering, staring at Ellie with open assessment, waiting to see which way she'll jump.
She's figuring everything out for herself now, and she's paying attention.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
for carver (etraya)
After a few days she moves onto introducing herself to their more extended circle of contacts, and Carver comes up quickly. Shaw brought a friend home, huh? That's so cute. She has to get to know him.
She's actually not thinking that as she goes down into the subway hideout, though. She has no idea he's living here and was just morbidly curious about finding a very familiar vending machine. If it's here, she might as well pick up some things of hers... black nail polish, a taser, you know. Whatever she'd left behind. She definitely wants the bunny slippers.
But she's not an idiot, so she has a gun held comfortably in her hands as she trots down the final stairway. ]
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The bells are harmless. The tripwires aren’t. And it occurs to him only after he hears the metal drag of the vending machine opening that he didn’t actually tell anyone he’d set them.
So, that might be a problem.
He draws his one and only pistol, hurrying up the stairs. ]
Don’t fucking move.
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Shaw didn't tell me she put you up in here, [ she says with palpable interest. Of course she knows what he looks like by now; she'd hardly been sitting around for the past few days. ] She must really like you.
Carver, right?
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for shaw (singillatim)
She spends the next few days getting to grips with her surroundings, thankful she has Bear to talk to as she keeps up an occasional murmured stream of chatter. Root is a city girl but she grew up in a small town and she knows at least a few things. She has a knife and that lovely tactical shotgun she'd stolen off the police officer ages ago, though she quickly realizes she's going to need to conserve ammo, bad.
There's a tiny cabin nearby that's structurally sound enough to provide protection from the weather, and Root makes that her temporary base of operations as she scrounges around the area for supplies. She gets some better clothing for herself -- looking fairly comical bundled up in all these men's layers, but it keeps her alive, four pairs of socks on to make her feet fit into the work boots she found -- and she used her knife to cut up a the outer shell of a half-destroyed parka. She took the strips and some duct tape and made little booties for Bear. She has to make new ones every couple days, but his poor little paws need protection from the snow and ice.
Her cochlear implant isn't working the whole time. More than once she's intensely grateful to have Bear, who has far more acute hearing than her even when both of her ears are working, and warns her of nearby threats. His presence seems to act as a decent deterrent to the wolves, too, at least for now. As the light show in the sky starts to settle, though, her implant crackles back to life, making her wince in surprise. Some quick math makes Root realize how much she needs to conserve its battery life even more than the ammo, so with some reluctance she turns it off shortly after it becomes active.
Eventually she feels well equipped enough to leave her temporary base, and she suits up herself and Bear -- who's wearing a child's tattered down vest as well as his makeshift booties -- as she heads out, shotgun at the ready. It's slow going through the snow, and she really has no idea where she's going or where there even is to go to, but she can't stay here forever. There's very little food, for one thing.
She can't believe she was grateful to find a can of beans yesterday.
Root muses on her devastatingly low current standards and the theological nature of purgatory as she tromps through the snow drifts, and then Bear starts to bark and she springs into alertness, lifting the gun cautiously.
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"Hey, buddy," she murmurs, rubbing his ears and nuzzling her frost-nipped nose into his fur. "Where'd you come from, huh?"
His saliva freezes to her face where he licks her cheek, and she does not fucking care. Bear.
More human-sized footsteps sound off in the woods to her left, boots crunching on snow and fallen branches, and she looks up - not immediately suspecting danger (it hadn't sounded nearly large enough to be the other bear), but alert regardless.
"Hey, who's out there?"
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Oh. Of course Bear ran off.
"Sameen," she breathes, aware she looks like a minor disaster and not caring. She's all haphazard layers of moth-eaten men's clothes and her hair is messily pushed into a toque, she's stepping a little unsteadily in her borrowed shoes, and her face is flushed with cold sweat from the exertion. But her eyes are wide as the realization sinks in and then she starts to laugh in joyous incredulity.
The emotions are pushing up and crowding her, but Root passes them off with her usual flippancy.
"Maybe this is Dante's ninth circle of hell after all. With Bear here I thought it couldn't be, but seeing you, I'm starting to reconsider."
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my bad, I missed this!
no worries!
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for carver & shaw (etraya)
It was a good mission. They achieved their objectives and they worked well together, and watching Carver and Shaw relax afterwards like they don't have any other post-mission plans makes Root feel like now's the right time. It's not reckless; it's not impulsive.
She's been waiting. ]
So have you two done it yet? [ Maybe they were talking about something else, but now they're not. Root sounds interested, amused; she doesn't assume Shaw shares everything with her, wouldn't expect her to. ] Because I could cut this sexual tension with a knife.
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Little by little, day by day, he's found patterns with all of them. They make sense, this group. He has a place inside it.
Still, Carver's eyebrows go up. He lowers his glass. ]
Thought you two were together, [ he drawls. ]
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We are.
[But she says it like it's an aside; like the fact that they're together is completely irrelevant to the question that's just been posed. Exclusivity is not something that they've ever discussed, or even hinted at discussing, and somewhere along the line that lack of discussion had started to feel like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. Shaw knows where she stands on the issue (she's capable of exclusivity, especially with someone who keeps her on her toes as much as Root does, but she also doesn't feel the need for it), and she trusts that if Root felt any particular way about it, she would have brought it up by now. So. They're together, and they'd still be just as together even if Shaw had fucked Carver.
Which she very emphatically has not.]
Sorry about her. I guess she's not holding the social skills ball today.
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timeskip
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for dp
Die now, die tomorrow, die next year -- who cares, as long as she makes sure it's worth something. She wants to enjoy what time she has.
She's not going to pass up an opportunity to meet Deadpool. His whole reputation is ludicrous and wildly conflicting. Having access to dark web conversations just makes the whole thing even more confusing, because it's not like they're reliable sources, and they often contradict one another -- and the Machine, who of course knows everything there is to know about everything, doesn't give her info just for the hell of it. She's meticulous in her ethics that way, Root thinks fondly. Like father, like daughter. No, the Machine gives her just enough to do what she needs to do and nothing more.
So here's Root swanning into a dive bar like she owns the place. She'd given him a location and time to meet and said she'd find him, but nothing more. She's a tall spindly woman in fashionable yet unremarkable black, and she has two pistols tucked into the small of her back under her jacket, a knife handle sticking out of her boot, and a cochlear implant subtly visible through her hair over her right ear.
There's a bright, interested air about her like she's going on a fun jaunt, and she strides right up to Deadpool without an ounce of hesitation. ]
Are we having a drink first or right to business?
[ She's down with either one, but she's at least going to ask -- Root is highly social but also hates most of humanity, meaning when she comes across a novelty she just wants to dig in. ]
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Wade is admittedly more particular about the jobs he takes these days than he’s been in the past. There are reasons for that. Nothing’s ever completely off the table though.
New York City is one of Wade’s old haunts. Even if he doesn’t live here anymore, he finds himself drawn back often. He’s already built up a reputation here, for one. It’s also the territory of several people of interest— heroes, villains, goons, you name it. He’s familiar with the little dive bar his client pinned as their meeting point, and he’s actually a little glad to settle into a dim corner and wait. There aren’t many bars that accommodate guests like him, and thankfully this is one of them.
The woman that eventually approaches him is beautiful, yes— Wade has eyes and they work, thank you very much— but she’s also got an air of confidence that piques his interest.]
Hey, sweetheart. Not that I think just anyone’s gonna come strolling up to a heavily armed masked man sitting in a dark corner alone— kinda cliché, now I think about it— but you mind identifying yourself first? Think of it as a formality.
[He cocks his head slightly, clearly taking notice of the pistols she’s packing herself.]
Then I’ll buy you a drink, promise. Got my customer service face on and everything.
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It's strange, having people. Strange and precious, something she'd walk off a roof rather than betray.
Her confidence isn't arrogance; it's someone who knows exactly who they are, where they're going, and what they're willing to do to get there. Root isn't fearless, she's determined. And she's determined she's going to follow the Machine to the end of her days. The Machine wants her here right now, so she's here. That the Machine approved this meeting also means the Machine thinks Deadpool wouldn't really be a threat to her at the moment, whatever his reputation.
And isn't that interesting?
She gives an easy smile that has the same insouciant edge as batting her eyelashes would. ] Most people aren't any fun that way, it's true. I'm Root. [ She'd identified herself that way online when reaching out to hire him, and she has a reputation of her own inasmuch as no one anywhere is willing to admit to knowing who she is. One of her personal costs of doing business. ]
Make it something with whiskey.
[ And she sits herself down at his table, apparently content to let him handle ordering, buying, and waiting on her. ]
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Fuck it let's do it - modern POI AU
Shoes, s'il vous plait.
[ She reminds the other woman with a gentle chide, not looking up from where she's sitting at a vintage hardwood desk, sorting through the photography from her recent trip to the Amazon. Most of the photographs have been placed in the 'lacking' pile, but there are a small number of which Clea approves. She holds a photograph of a small brightly colored frog up above her head, examining it with a frown, going back and forth on its merits.
If she must question, it is a no.
She adds the photograph to the pile of rejects and finally turns to give her 'guest' her full attention.
There are few people Clea allows in her atelier out of a desire to preserve her privacy, but she is one of them. If one wishes to acquire interesting goods, one must make interesting friends, and the best way to ingratiate oneself is to provide services. The jobs provide a suitable challenge and a network which is unburdened by questions of legality, though Clea prefers to keep herself away from the messier side of that world: she's not trying to end up bleeding out in an alley like a common thug. ]
It's been a long time. I was beginning to think you'd become banal - acquired a husband, children, and a golden retriever. Please do not ask for a donation to a children's school.
[ Her voice has a teasing lilt to it, as the notion is ridiculous. ]
What name are we using today, madame?
[ It is fascinating how the other woman so readily inhabits her personae. Clea has never had a talent for acting or disappearing; she is too much herself. Yet this woman is an actress par excellence of the deepest sort, entirely subsuming herself and yet never being lost. ]
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[ She does have a fake identity she's working under currently, of course, but it doesn't matter. Root is here on the Machine's orders, specifically as herself -- which is interesting. It's almost like a personal gift if she didn't know better. Root loves puzzles, and excuses to see people she likes -- and she hasn't had much downtime since she decided to follow the Machine. Not that she's complaining (never) but she is, unfortunately, a flesh and blood human who can't go on endlessly.
She's sure this little assignment isn't solely for her benefit, though she does think that might be a secondary motive. The Machine doesn't play matchmaker for her agents' primate social needs, not past that one time when she was young and she introduced Harold to Grace. No, the Machine never tells her much, and in this case it was even more minimal than normal: visit Clea. Someone she hasn't seen in years but has thought about quite a few times since. It's rare that Root clicks on a personal level with someone, and when she does, she latches on. Not tightly -- she's like a cat, always leaving to do her own things but coming back routinely for treats and attention -- but assuredly, leaving no question of her attachment.
Root pauses momentarily to kick off her three inch heels as directed, leaving her in sheer black pantyhose and an understated color-block dress, hair artfully tousled in a chignon. She could be any well-dressed professional Frenchwoman wandering in off the street.
Leaving the shoes carelessly to the side, she pads over in stocking feet to examine the pile of pictures, head tilting to orient them better. A smaller, more honest smile finds its way onto her face. ]
These are the rejects, right? [ she asks, taking a guess. ] Can I have one?
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Clea's grey eyes flicker over to Root. She wonders what the purpose is of Root's visit: It has been some time since she's requested any of Clea's services. ]
If you insist, though you deserve better.
[ Why she would want one from the rejects, Clea isn't certain. The photographs Root sees all look like they could easily belong in a nature photo exhibition - photographs of exotic flora and fauna both - but in each Clea has identified what she's determined is a glaring flaw.
Clea draws out a photograph from the much thinner pile of those that had met her standards and passes it over to Root for inspection: A large white bellied Caiman alligator in the midst of preying on an anaconda, mouth having just clamped down on the doomed snake. The two animals are framed by lush green leaves and bright blooms - a multilayered photograph Clea had painstakingly developed in the old way in a darkroom.
It's a much more interesting piece than the ones Root is considering. ]
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for bossie (etraya)
She comes swanning up to the subway entrance and stops in front of the vending machine. She stares unerringly and acutely directly into the surveillance camera. ]
Knock knock, [ she says brightly.
Root is a slender woman on the taller side dressed in a cutesy cotton summer dress. Her hair is perfectly curled into artful tumbles and she has a discreet little purse just large enough to contain a Taser, a handgun, and the secondary network device Harold had put together. A girl always needs the essentials. ]
Re: for bossie (etraya)
[But he drawls the question with a smile. He's curious, and he has a hunch he knows who this is.
He's not going to just open up the door, though.]
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If you have to ask, this is going to be a really disappointing conversation for me.
[ People that can't keep up with her -- which is most people -- are boring. ]
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[ That makes her smile widen, eyes returning to the road as she follows the GPS to the next off-ramp. ]
That's the spirit. We're stopping for gas -- you'll have to stay in the car, but I'll grab you a snack. And that coffee.
Any requests?
[ Another little choice, a light push to get him used to thinking about making his own decisions.
They're in upstate New York in a heavily wooded rural area, the isolation convenient for the research facility. It's too dark to see much at the moment, but the trees are sprayed with color as the leaves turn for the winter, and the road winds beside the craggy cliffs of old mountains. They're going to be driving for hours to make it back to the city, and Root is certain there's a detour with a good view that the Machine can find, even if it will be in the middle of the night. ]
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I don't know. [He, sadly, does not have a lot of experience with gas station snacks, though he still takes Root's question seriously and thinks for a few moments.] Anything that goes with coffee.
[That seems like a safe bet, and after everything that just happened he could use something to eat.]
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[ Root greatly appreciates how sensible Accelerator is as she pulls into a gas station and slips out of the car. They're still remote enough that it's a quiet place, the lights glaring and abrupt amid the darkened landscape, one solitary employee half-asleep inside at the counter.
She pays with cash, naturally, but is otherwise a perfunctory whirlwind filling up the gas tank and sweeping through the convenience store. When she returns, she opens the door and leans in to dump a plastic bag on Accelerator's lap before taking the driver's seat again. There's four cold cans of coffee, two black and two milk-sweetened, and a small assortment of snacks from shortbread to granola bars to gummies. ]
Gimme. At least one of those is for me.
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for connor
That doesn't bother Root. It's not like she has competing priorities -- no voice in her cochlear implant toning instructions, no amazing, gorgeous, blindingly unconventional badass woman to save -- and she only has assumptions about what she's doing here, so she might as well go all in and take her time. They're strong assumptions, admittedly. She's worked for the Machine (claimed her as her own) for years now and Root has begun to internalize what she would want of her.
She doesn't always do whatever that is, but she is conscientious when she doesn't, and she makes sure it's worth it.
Funnily enough, she's perfectly clear that the Machine's priorities in this case would be to preserve human life at the expense of androids. Harold had programmed her that way. But Harold hadn't anticipated any artificial intelligence gaining sentience, not even his own, and that's what's happening. Her dearest tribute to the Machine and the way she and Harry had saved her in life is obviously to usher in a new era here after her death.
For that, she can give however much time she has left. Besides -- sentient androids is delightful. If this is the afterlife, it may as well be a reward for her.
By the time she encounters Connor, it's purposefully, deliberately arranged. The level of technology here is close to what she's used to, and it hadn't taken long to get herself set up with a false identity, an illicit criminal business, a bank account and a decent computer. Hacking Detroit PD was a little different than what she was used to at home, but she adjusted quickly.
RK800 is a unique prototype model using the name Connor, explicitly created and programmed to clean up Cyberlife's messes for them. (That part wasn't in police files; she'd put it together herself using reasoning and experience with corporate mega-entities. Root hasn't dared to try hacking into Cyberlife itself just yet, but it's on her list.) Deviancy is such a classically human concept applied to machines who, really, don't need to be burdened with human concepts at all. It's no wonder androids, as they gain sentience, are starting to commit crimes. It's only deviant insomuch as it ruins Cyberlife's plans for market domination.
But this does seem like the way in, the place to start inserting herself into what's happening. Detroit is ground zero for the slowly burgeoning android uprising, and Root wants in. She knows she can be valuable. And if she can't find them herself, latching onto the android investigator who's in hot pursuit is the next best thing. ]
I don't know, [ she says, fretting, hair a mess and scrapes across her cheek that she'd given herself. Root's eyes are wide with innocent distress, hands curled into knots on top of the table in the interrogation room. She's Rosalind Carson, victim of assault from an android gone deviant and now missing. ]
It was like it all came out of nowhere. If you find him, you're not going to hurt him, are you? [ She chews at her lip, torn. ] He was really... I mean, he was kind of the only family I had for a while.
[ She'd picked her tactic here in advance: how would RK800, Connor, hold up to a human who openly accepted an android's personhood, even after they attacked her? ]
for ellie
( visual prompts inside; click to expand )
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She scrambles upright - or tries to. Pain bright as hot sparks shoots through her ribs across her left flank, stifling her to a halt with a gasp. She snatches a startled hand against that very spot. A pained noise bulges in the back of her throat; she swallows it back around a hitched gulp of air sucked in through clenched teeth and a faint stale taste of blood clinging to the back of her throat. Fuck.
Her eyes dart around, fast, frantic, attempting to make sense of her tenebrous surroundings. Faint slivers of moonlight strain through slatted gaps up by the rotting ceiling, bending eerie pale fingers of light down into the shadows.
Last thing she remembers is being strung up by her arms, legs kicking, heavy metal chains chewing through her wrists each time she tried to wrench herself free. Screaming, enraged, full of rage and murder and terror and hate while blinded by a flashlight pointed right in her face. A man with rotting breath leering at her, a sharp knife dug up into her chin ready to rip her tongue out.
And now, she is— where? A house? A mournful wind outside bellows and bends through the building's rickety bones. Where the fuck is she?
A sudden noise to her right. Ellie whips her head around in its direction. A person. Someone moving, approaching.
Ellie launches herself onto her knees and leaps to her feet, pain ripping through ribs like fire. The suffocating gloom of the room spins through her head. She nearly stumbles backwards and catches her balance with a violent flail of her arms. Another burst of pain slicing through her ribs. She flings her arm across to her body and grasps at them, gasping. Fuck, where is she, where the fuck is she?
“I’ll fucking kill you if you get any closer,” Ellie spits, raspy and wild with venom, at the amorphous shadow lurching towards her in the darkness.
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It has the lilt of a quip but not the heart behind it. Root is exhausted. She'd sprained her ankle, so she isn't going anywhere fast, and her companion escapee has her own injuries. Once upon a time, the Machine would've whispered in her ear what to do, where to go, whatever had the best chance of success and survival. She would've known if she could trust the young woman she'd taken with her as she left.
Instead, she doesn't know anything for certain anymore. She's left scrambling around in the dark like everyone else, a frustrating fate for someone who'd gone to her death with the relieved, peaceful assurance that she had, for once, done something unequivocally good. Now she's in this hellscape, wondering if the Machine wants her here or if this is some kind of bizarre purgatory. Root told Shaw that they couldn't be certain reality wasn't a simulation anyway, but she hadn't expected to have that demonstrated to her directly so soon after saying it.
But who she is now is someone who helps people, mostly -- whether they're trustworthy or not -- so she'd dragged them both here as a clearly defensible structure.
They're on the second floor, Root cozied up to a window with a long-distance rifle. The area around the farmhouse and its barn is barren, providing a wide clear space leading up to it that she can keep an eye on. She might be deaf in one ear, and she might not be as good a shot at this range as Shaw, but her eyes still work and she's good enough.
The noise was her dragging her foot in a scrape across the floor as she made to switch posts, rifle held loosely in both hands with proper gun safety posture. She's ragged, run down, even her seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy finally at its end. The lack of food has really done her in. But she's also clear-eyed and unfaltering, staring at Ellie with open assessment, waiting to see which way she'll jump.
She's figuring everything out for herself now, and she's paying attention.