[One minute, they're both lying in bed, Shaw's mind pleasantly hazy from alcohol, sleepiness, and the warmth of Root's body against her back. The next minute, all three of those things are gone when Root vanishes wholesale, blinking away as if she'd never been there at all.
The experience neatly cuts through both the tipsiness and the tiredness, and when Shaw swings herself out of bed and onto her feet, her mind is alert and racing. It's obvious what's happened: really, the biggest surprise is that this is the first time she's experiencing it. A long-running simulation like this one has to experience glitches and coding bugs. Now she just has to figure out how bad it is - and determine if it's likely to get worse.
Bear comes running into the bedroom, which is the first major relief. The second major relief is that all of Root's stuff is still here, from her tablets on the nightstand to her toothbrush and towel in the bathroom; in fact, a quick overview of the apartment (Bear, as ever, at her heels) doesn't turn up anything amiss at all. Okay, she tells herself, to the beat of her heart thudding in her ear. Okay, okay, okay. Root's gone, but the presence of her hasn't been erased. Root may or may not come back, but none of Shaw's memories are proving to be false or overwritten. Root may or may not come back, but Shaw isn't losing her mind. And that's a hell of a relief, it really is, but--
Root may or may not come back.]
One or two a week.
[She mutters to herself under her breath. It's the statistic she'd been given not long ago, an estimate of how many people vanish into thin air, and the sort of glitch that Root had obviously been made a casualty of. Snatching up her own tablet, she quickly scrolls back to the conversation and reads through it again. Backups, copies, reloading old data--
It probably won't work. She'd told Root that she wouldn't try again because she didn't see any reason to, and she'd meant it. But that was then and this is now, and if she can do something to reboot her tiny little portion of the system, when Root has only just disappeared and her data might not yet have been reallocated or overwritten - then it's sure as hell worth a try, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed.
She shoos Bear out of the room first, closing the bedroom door firmly behind him. And then she picks up her gun from the bedside table, holds it in her hand, and--
Root reappears, just as unceremoniously as she'd vanished. And Shaw, half-raised gun in hand, has a look on her face akin to that of a kid who's been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She may not do guilt, but apparently she does Oh crap, you weren't supposed to see this pretty damn well. She drops the gun, letting it clatter to the floor.]
cw: suicide
The experience neatly cuts through both the tipsiness and the tiredness, and when Shaw swings herself out of bed and onto her feet, her mind is alert and racing. It's obvious what's happened: really, the biggest surprise is that this is the first time she's experiencing it. A long-running simulation like this one has to experience glitches and coding bugs. Now she just has to figure out how bad it is - and determine if it's likely to get worse.
Bear comes running into the bedroom, which is the first major relief. The second major relief is that all of Root's stuff is still here, from her tablets on the nightstand to her toothbrush and towel in the bathroom; in fact, a quick overview of the apartment (Bear, as ever, at her heels) doesn't turn up anything amiss at all. Okay, she tells herself, to the beat of her heart thudding in her ear. Okay, okay, okay. Root's gone, but the presence of her hasn't been erased. Root may or may not come back, but none of Shaw's memories are proving to be false or overwritten. Root may or may not come back, but Shaw isn't losing her mind. And that's a hell of a relief, it really is, but--
Root may or may not come back.]
One or two a week.
[She mutters to herself under her breath. It's the statistic she'd been given not long ago, an estimate of how many people vanish into thin air, and the sort of glitch that Root had obviously been made a casualty of. Snatching up her own tablet, she quickly scrolls back to the conversation and reads through it again. Backups, copies, reloading old data--
It probably won't work. She'd told Root that she wouldn't try again because she didn't see any reason to, and she'd meant it. But that was then and this is now, and if she can do something to reboot her tiny little portion of the system, when Root has only just disappeared and her data might not yet have been reallocated or overwritten - then it's sure as hell worth a try, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed.
She shoos Bear out of the room first, closing the bedroom door firmly behind him. And then she picks up her gun from the bedside table, holds it in her hand, and--
Root reappears, just as unceremoniously as she'd vanished. And Shaw, half-raised gun in hand, has a look on her face akin to that of a kid who's been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She may not do guilt, but apparently she does Oh crap, you weren't supposed to see this pretty damn well. She drops the gun, letting it clatter to the floor.]
I'm not gonna do it.