The End
Shaw walks out of the building, her lips stained as red as blood. She dials a number. "It's done," she says.
The Beginning
The power goes off in Root's apartment.
"Danger," She whispers in her ear. "Power outage only affecting your building. Likelihood of hostile activity: 70%. If hostile, likelihood of Decima involvement: 80%"
She doesn't need Her to translate that for her further. The likelihood is that her cover is blown, Decima's here to collect and they've blown the power to disable any and all help She can give her.
She needs to get out of here, where the odds will be more even. Unfortunately, she imagines that Decima won't be polite enough not to watch the exits now that they've poked her with a stick.
Luckily for her, she's a planner, and she's spent some time plotting what she'd do in this kind of circumstance.
She grins, retrieves her guns from where they were taped underneath the table, and slips out of the apartment to go cause some trouble.
The Middle
Root's breathing is quick and shallow, and she can feel blood dripping to the ground from her useless right arm as she leans against the wall.
She just needs to… rest for a minute.
Just a minute more.
She gotten five. Maybe six. Maybe even seven. But not them all, and not before they managed to get her in return.
It's dark down here. So very dark.
She pushes herself off the wall before her vision can tunnel any further. She's still got to get out of here.
"I told Greer he should have just left it to me," a voice says from behind her.
She stops and turns slowly, wearily. "Shaw," she says, managing to summon up a smile from somewhere within her. "What a pleasant surprise to see you down here."
Shaw's gun doesn't waver one iota from where it's pointed at her heart. "'I wouldn't want to put you in a position where you might have a conflict of interests,' he said," she says in a disgusted tone.
But she hasn't fired, yet, and that's the one last glimmer of hope Root has. "Well," she drawls as best she can. "There was a reasonable amount of sex involved. Sometimes we even stayed the night."
Shaw shrugs the shoulder of the arm that isn't carrying a gun, minutely. "Never really was one for relationships," she says, and Root knows Shaw well enough to understand that's about as much of an apology as she's going to get.
Oh well. It hadn't been much of a hope anyway. "Glad it's you here," she says, her smile becoming lopsided. "One last kiss?"
"One last kiss," Shaw agrees, and her finger tightens.
The click of the trigger isn't anywhere near as loud as the boom that follows.
And afterwards, as Shaw walks away, the crimson smear of her lips on Root's skin slowly disappears beneath the welling blood.