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."
Damien watches the woman snarl and stumble, hair flying everywhere. He thinks of Jade with the tattoo needle held like a knife for righteous vengeance, her eyes wide, her teeth bared just like that. And there was a line about patterns not to long ago, wasn't there? Something about making connections that weren't there.
Or something.
He watches this woman going for a weapon and remembers he didn't search her. That he wasn't quite sure if she'd died a few hours ago or not until she showed her teeth like Jade. And the closest that Damien's ever gotten to religion was watching Jade Waters beat a man to death with the butt of a shotgun.
I'll kill you, this woman hisses, and he supposes she might. He wonders if he ought to feel some way about that.
"Ernest Thornhill wanted you patched up," he explains, without much emotion.
Root freezes in place like someone hit pause on a tape, then wasn't sure whether to press play again.
Finally, she sinks down slowly to the carpeted floor, the pain overtaking her as the adrenaline fades. Her mind is trying to push thoughts through but it's unbelievably, frustratingly difficult. It's like only a third of her cognitive processing neurons will fire, and all the rest are occupied with this hurts so fucking bad.
"When did you last hear from-- him," she rasps. Him, Ernest Thornhill is a him.
That name meant something to her, if not to him. Earnest Thornhill might be anyone, or no one. Another smiling liar like Church or maybe someone innocent and dead like Brooks Larson. How is he to know? To judge? He keeps getting it wrong.
Damien watches. The woman doesn't go for the gun in his hand, or try to kill him with her bare hands.
She might still try. He ought to stand up. Get a better stance. Or maybe she'll pull something and bleed out in front of him.
Hard to say.
"Don't remember," he says after a moment. "There's a burner."
It's on the side table. He hasn't noticed if it's rung recently.
A burner. There's a burner phone that Ernest Thornhill contacted. This man is-- he can't know much. Root's hazy, stupid, poorly-functioning brain can put together that much. She breathes and breathes and it's more like gulping than inhaling, trying to stay conscious.
The Machine put her here. She hadn't abandoned her. She'd lasted at least long enough to do this much for her. Is she okay? Is Harold okay? Root has so many questions and none of them are whether she's safe. She needs that phone. The Machine can't contact her directly for some reason but maybe she can on this man's phone. It's a lifeline Root would rather die than ignore or dismiss, the only thing worth anything to her.
She starts trying to crawl, painstakingly, toward the table where the phone is. There's a grim determination cast on her face as resolute as bronze. Blood soaks through and stains her bandages, most of her shirt torn off.
She doesn't care. Root needs that phone, arm stretching like she's a supplicant looking for an answer to a prayer.
He watches blood slowly soaking into the fabric of the bandages he placed. There's a slug in her belly. Other wounds either split open or threatening to. The instructions on the phone said to leave the bullet. Didn't say what put it there in the first place, if this woman did something to deserve it. If she'd been judged and found guilty.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
He watches her crawl. Remembers other things. Images superimposing themselves. Stuart House. Before. Blood on the ground. Other things on the ground. The doctors asking are you sure, Damien, are you really sure it happened like that?
He stands, holding his gun in a bad stance, a bad grip. Too easy to break.
Then he takes the burner and drops it in front of her. He doesn't want to touch anyone right now, even a little.
Root isn't expecting or looking for mercy, so this much is more than enough. She has a flash of thought to wonder if it's deliberate -- are they trying to use her to get to the Machine, is this guy just a patsy of Samaritan like so many others -- but she knows the Machine wouldn't fall for that, wouldn't say anything if it would endanger her, and as soon as Root's hand lands on the phone it lights up and gives a quiet ding of a received message.
There's something like a sob trying to break free inside her, but it comes out as a cracked laugh instead, pure joy shattered and left in pieces but lingering as what it is: relief.
Her hands shake as she curls up around the phone and it unlocks itself -- of course -- so she can read the message:
ET: Stay where you are. ET: Instructions to follow.
A barely perceptible pause, before the final message comes.
ET: Rest.
She's not alone. The war isn't lost and she's not alone, and Root's fingers form claws to clutch the phone to her. There must be a reason she isn't using her cochlear implant to communicate, and she trusts her, and she isn't alone.
That's good enough that she passes out again, and the phone goes dead.
The screen lights up. The woman makes a hoarse noise, something past pain or relief into the beyond. Damien watches the red creeping along the edges of her bandages and wonders if he ought to shoot her in the head. She might not even notice if he did it right now. All it would take is pressure. He's done it so many times before it hardly even registers as motion.
Boom, Damien thinks. He doesn't move.
The woman drops, nonetheless. The phone clatters across the carpet.
He wonders if Jade missed on purpose. Or if someone got to her first. They agreed, didn't they, that there wouldn't be any more cages.
Those bandages keep creeping red. Damien watches for a while.
Then he holsters the weapon and drags her back to the couch. He redoes the bandages. He fixes what he knows how to fix. And then he retreats with blood freshly on his hands and sits back in the same chair. He doesn't want to exist right now, so he decides maybe he doesn't.
Time passes, in some fashion. Time is a human construct. Computers perceive time because they're told to, following their programming. The Machine can experience all points in time simultaneously, all real numbers, all at once. Root doesn't dream exactly but she feels like that, like she is in all points at once, like if there's a second chance for her she's long since passed it but keeps circling back to it again and again anyway.
Her second awakening is just as abrupt as the first, but differently. She slams into consciousness and this time her brain is online. She's had a lot of rest.
(ET: Rest.)
The bandages are new, clean and replaced. It's another day, probably. This guy is in the same position. The Machine got him to rescue her and that's still good enough to be going on with so she doesn't try to kill him, it's good enough, it's enough.
(Maybe her brain isn't fully, completely online.)
Root shifts on the couch to look at him, blinking, resisting the urge to leap to her feet and rush out the door. She wouldn't make it very far, which is infuriating, but reality doesn't care about her feelings. Which is one of the more comforting aspects of reality, as far as that goes. And Shaw -- someone she tells herself adamantly she will see again, and that thought jostles something loose.
"Give me the phone back," is the first thing she says, after a strange delay.
She stares, evaluating, assessing. The Machine knows what she's doing but she isn't exactly forthcoming, especially not lately. Root has to put things together herself.
The human body needs certain things to function. Sleep. Water. Calories. Deprive enough and it'll break. Damien knows that.
He stays in the chair. He exists the way ghosts do, which isn't by much.
There's a voice, eventually.
He doesn't say anything. His gaze drifts over to the woman again. The bandages aren't red anymore. It's been a while since he changed them. Apparently she hasn't died.
He stands without a word and gets the phone. Drops it next to her head and then steps back.
Okay. Maybe her new favorite person for a while with how quickly he did that, and without objecting.
Root braces herself further upright on the couch and grabs the phone as quickly as she can, suppressing winces, eyes fervently glued to the phone screen. It lights up on its own again, but it just displays the same message as before, not even with a new timestamp:
ET: Rest.
Ugh. Limitations of human biology foiling her, she's sure. Root could do so many things right now if she wasn't currently recovering from almost death, and the Machine must need help, must need her.
Staring directly at the phone, she says aloud, "I need to know he's okay." Sameen can take care of herself, but Harold absolutely can't, and the Machine doing this much is all she needs to have hope in that realm. It's Harold she needs reassurance for. He was in the car and there was a sniper and she doesn't know where he is now.
The phone only vibrates in her hand, the single pulse held for a full beat, but again -- again, it's enough. Morse code for yes.
Root collapses back onto the couch, loved ones accounted for.
"Can I have some water," she says, not quite a question. "And a snack would be nice." She is, suddenly, fully aware of how long it's been since she's done anything resembling maintenance for her disappointing organic flesh-house.
There's something odd about that phone. It's a burner, or he'd thought it at first glance. Nothing special.
Yet she didn't unlock it. Hasn't asked for the code. And yet it lit right up.
So, that's happening.
Damien watches the moment play out, only half-listening. There's a he. Someone this woman cares about. There's a player involved, Ernst Thornhill, who's powerful enough to divert the FBI. There's a question of why.
He steps away, retreating to the kitchen. He returns with a water bottle and a granola bar and steps them next to her. He probably should eat something himself but the thought leaves him vaguely sick.
Root drinks the water (slowly) and eats the granola bar (faster) and quite literally chews over her thoughts for some time before she attempts a conversation. Her brain isn't fully online yet, but piece by piece, it's getting there.
"Not much of a talker, are you?" she comments. Her gaze is getting sharper as the fuel gets into her. "What's your name?"
Just how obedient is he? The Machine would have picked him deliberately, carefully, but Root can't pretend to know how her selection process would've worked. It's a calculation entirely beyond her. All she knows is that she would've picked wisely, and well.
He stays standing. There and not-there in his mind. The room is the world and the world is a monster; he doesn't want to touch it. Doesn't want to remember all the awful things it can do to a body because he's stuck in one of those when he bothers remembering it. That's the worst part, Damien thinks. Not what a body can be but how much it can suffer. There's always more than you think, even at your lowest.
The woman doesn't die. He watches her bandages and they stay clean at the edges. He wonders if that matters.
The food disappears. Damien eyes the wrappers. The crumbs. Then his gaze drifts away. He needs to eat something before he passes out but the idea makes his chest ache with an ugly, hot pain. He was shot not so long ago, or thought he was.
Then again, what he thinks isn't always right. Hasn't he been told that his whole life?
"Damien," he says after a while, without much affect. He's not very good at faking that sort of thing. Jade or Dana always took point on the missions that required talking.
The pause and everything before he gives a name. The Machine sure knows how to pick 'em, and Root is absolutely including herself in that mental comment.
Root drinks the water and eats the granola bar before talking again. It takes a little while, and it hurts to swallow, like all of her organs are protesting that her esophagus is moving even a little. But if she wants to heal as fast as possible then she needs to eat, and Root gets through the sustenance with the blank commitment of someone who thinks of bodies as unfortunate organic annoyances.
"Okay, Damien," she says finally, carelessly leaving her trash on a nearby table. "Earnest Thornhill paid you to save me and bring me here, right? He pay you to do anything else?"
She's assessing her resources, whether or not she can drag him along on what comes next. She's going to need help, that much is clear.
The trash bothers him. Damien eyes it and then lets his gaze drift. It’s hard to focus right now. He supposes wrappers don’t really matter, in the end. Not much does right now.
“No,” he replies in that same empty tone. The money wasn’t the point. He acted because the only other choice was to lie down and die and if you aren’t going to do that, there’s no point in staying motionless. That’s where the enemy traps you.
He watches the woman and doesn’t ask her name. That might not matter, either.
He wonders if Jade is still alive. If any of the others are. What he’d do if he knew the answer.
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no subject
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."
no subject
Damien watches the woman snarl and stumble, hair flying everywhere. He thinks of Jade with the tattoo needle held like a knife for righteous vengeance, her eyes wide, her teeth bared just like that. And there was a line about patterns not to long ago, wasn't there? Something about making connections that weren't there.
Or something.
He watches this woman going for a weapon and remembers he didn't search her. That he wasn't quite sure if she'd died a few hours ago or not until she showed her teeth like Jade. And the closest that Damien's ever gotten to religion was watching Jade Waters beat a man to death with the butt of a shotgun.
I'll kill you, this woman hisses, and he supposes she might. He wonders if he ought to feel some way about that.
"Ernest Thornhill wanted you patched up," he explains, without much emotion.
no subject
Finally, she sinks down slowly to the carpeted floor, the pain overtaking her as the adrenaline fades. Her mind is trying to push thoughts through but it's unbelievably, frustratingly difficult. It's like only a third of her cognitive processing neurons will fire, and all the rest are occupied with this hurts so fucking bad.
"When did you last hear from-- him," she rasps. Him, Ernest Thornhill is a him.
no subject
Damien watches. The woman doesn't go for the gun in his hand, or try to kill him with her bare hands.
She might still try. He ought to stand up. Get a better stance. Or maybe she'll pull something and bleed out in front of him.
Hard to say.
"Don't remember," he says after a moment. "There's a burner."
It's on the side table. He hasn't noticed if it's rung recently.
no subject
The Machine put her here. She hadn't abandoned her. She'd lasted at least long enough to do this much for her. Is she okay? Is Harold okay? Root has so many questions and none of them are whether she's safe. She needs that phone. The Machine can't contact her directly for some reason but maybe she can on this man's phone. It's a lifeline Root would rather die than ignore or dismiss, the only thing worth anything to her.
She starts trying to crawl, painstakingly, toward the table where the phone is. There's a grim determination cast on her face as resolute as bronze. Blood soaks through and stains her bandages, most of her shirt torn off.
She doesn't care. Root needs that phone, arm stretching like she's a supplicant looking for an answer to a prayer.
no subject
Maybe it doesn't matter.
He watches her crawl. Remembers other things. Images superimposing themselves. Stuart House. Before. Blood on the ground. Other things on the ground. The doctors asking are you sure, Damien, are you really sure it happened like that?
He stands, holding his gun in a bad stance, a bad grip. Too easy to break.
Then he takes the burner and drops it in front of her. He doesn't want to touch anyone right now, even a little.
no subject
There's something like a sob trying to break free inside her, but it comes out as a cracked laugh instead, pure joy shattered and left in pieces but lingering as what it is: relief.
Her hands shake as she curls up around the phone and it unlocks itself -- of course -- so she can read the message:
ET: Stay where you are.ET: Instructions to follow.A barely perceptible pause, before the final message comes.
ET: Rest.She's not alone. The war isn't lost and she's not alone, and Root's fingers form claws to clutch the phone to her. There must be a reason she isn't using her cochlear implant to communicate, and she trusts her, and she isn't alone.
That's good enough that she passes out again, and the phone goes dead.
no subject
Boom, Damien thinks. He doesn't move.
The woman drops, nonetheless. The phone clatters across the carpet.
He wonders if Jade missed on purpose. Or if someone got to her first. They agreed, didn't they, that there wouldn't be any more cages.
Those bandages keep creeping red. Damien watches for a while.
Then he holsters the weapon and drags her back to the couch. He redoes the bandages. He fixes what he knows how to fix. And then he retreats with blood freshly on his hands and sits back in the same chair. He doesn't want to exist right now, so he decides maybe he doesn't.
no subject
Her second awakening is just as abrupt as the first, but differently. She slams into consciousness and this time her brain is online. She's had a lot of rest.
(
ET: Rest.)The bandages are new, clean and replaced. It's another day, probably. This guy is in the same position. The Machine got him to rescue her and that's still good enough to be going on with so she doesn't try to kill him, it's good enough, it's enough.
(Maybe her brain isn't fully, completely online.)
Root shifts on the couch to look at him, blinking, resisting the urge to leap to her feet and rush out the door. She wouldn't make it very far, which is infuriating, but reality doesn't care about her feelings. Which is one of the more comforting aspects of reality, as far as that goes. And Shaw -- someone she tells herself adamantly she will see again, and that thought jostles something loose.
"Give me the phone back," is the first thing she says, after a strange delay.
She stares, evaluating, assessing. The Machine knows what she's doing but she isn't exactly forthcoming, especially not lately. Root has to put things together herself.
no subject
He stays in the chair. He exists the way ghosts do, which isn't by much.
There's a voice, eventually.
He doesn't say anything. His gaze drifts over to the woman again. The bandages aren't red anymore. It's been a while since he changed them. Apparently she hasn't died.
He stands without a word and gets the phone. Drops it next to her head and then steps back.
no subject
Root braces herself further upright on the couch and grabs the phone as quickly as she can, suppressing winces, eyes fervently glued to the phone screen. It lights up on its own again, but it just displays the same message as before, not even with a new timestamp:
ET: Rest.Ugh. Limitations of human biology foiling her, she's sure. Root could do so many things right now if she wasn't currently recovering from almost death, and the Machine must need help, must need her.
Staring directly at the phone, she says aloud, "I need to know he's okay." Sameen can take care of herself, but Harold absolutely can't, and the Machine doing this much is all she needs to have hope in that realm. It's Harold she needs reassurance for. He was in the car and there was a sniper and she doesn't know where he is now.
The phone only vibrates in her hand, the single pulse held for a full beat, but again -- again, it's enough. Morse code for yes.
Root collapses back onto the couch, loved ones accounted for.
"Can I have some water," she says, not quite a question. "And a snack would be nice." She is, suddenly, fully aware of how long it's been since she's done anything resembling maintenance for her disappointing organic flesh-house.
no subject
Yet she didn't unlock it. Hasn't asked for the code. And yet it lit right up.
So, that's happening.
Damien watches the moment play out, only half-listening. There's a he. Someone this woman cares about. There's a player involved, Ernst Thornhill, who's powerful enough to divert the FBI. There's a question of why.
He steps away, retreating to the kitchen. He returns with a water bottle and a granola bar and steps them next to her. He probably should eat something himself but the thought leaves him vaguely sick.
no subject
"Not much of a talker, are you?" she comments. Her gaze is getting sharper as the fuel gets into her. "What's your name?"
Just how obedient is he? The Machine would have picked him deliberately, carefully, but Root can't pretend to know how her selection process would've worked. It's a calculation entirely beyond her. All she knows is that she would've picked wisely, and well.
no subject
The woman doesn't die. He watches her bandages and they stay clean at the edges. He wonders if that matters.
The food disappears. Damien eyes the wrappers. The crumbs. Then his gaze drifts away. He needs to eat something before he passes out but the idea makes his chest ache with an ugly, hot pain. He was shot not so long ago, or thought he was.
Then again, what he thinks isn't always right. Hasn't he been told that his whole life?
"Damien," he says after a while, without much affect. He's not very good at faking that sort of thing. Jade or Dana always took point on the missions that required talking.
no subject
Root drinks the water and eats the granola bar before talking again. It takes a little while, and it hurts to swallow, like all of her organs are protesting that her esophagus is moving even a little. But if she wants to heal as fast as possible then she needs to eat, and Root gets through the sustenance with the blank commitment of someone who thinks of bodies as unfortunate organic annoyances.
"Okay, Damien," she says finally, carelessly leaving her trash on a nearby table. "Earnest Thornhill paid you to save me and bring me here, right? He pay you to do anything else?"
She's assessing her resources, whether or not she can drag him along on what comes next. She's going to need help, that much is clear.
no subject
“No,” he replies in that same empty tone. The money wasn’t the point. He acted because the only other choice was to lie down and die and if you aren’t going to do that, there’s no point in staying motionless. That’s where the enemy traps you.
He watches the woman and doesn’t ask her name. That might not matter, either.
He wonders if Jade is still alive. If any of the others are. What he’d do if he knew the answer.