Root wakes with a silent gasp.

No -- she's not awake, she's alive. For a moment, it's horrible. Pain like she's never known before, a metal slug buried in her innards, no doubt left there as too complicated and pointless to remove in a field medicine context. She doesn't just ache, she hurts, she hurts so bad, and she doesn't know where Harold is and she touches her ear and the traces of the implant are there but there's nothing, no static and no voice and nothing.

For a moment, being alive feels something like failure.

Then she gets a grip and realizes if she is alive, it's not over, and there's more she can do.

There is a ceiling above her and there is a man across from her, watching, and he has a gun. She half-falls off the couch as she jolts into movement, gasping openly now with pain, and starts fumbling for a weapon. They didn't restrain her-- idiots-- she must have something left on her if they're that stupid, maybe a knife she'd hidden--

"I'll kill you," she whispers in a ragged voice, raw, eyes wide and sincere as they lock onto her captor, "if you did anything to him."