Soul /səʊl/ (noun)
1. the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.
In the end, Samaritan falls and Greer dies.
Harold Whistler disappears much the same as Harold Finch did and Sameen Shaw does not come back to the land of the living. John Riley and John Reese somehow merge into one and become Lionel Fusco's partner again at the NYPD after miraculously surviving a shot way too close to his spinal cord with all limb movement intact.
The Machine survives too, freer than it was and still helping from the shadows.
Root stays dead, and even though Shaw always knew the improbability of all of them making it out alive, it feels wrong that Root is the only one gone, unfair in a way that Shaw should know better than to expect.
Not long after Samaritan's fall, the Machine starts giving them numbers again, and so for a little while, with Reese still out of commission, it's just Shaw and Finch working the numbers with Fusco helping whenever he can.
Well — not just Fusco. The Machine helps too. She still insists on spewing just numbers and leaving the hard work to them, but with her newfound freedom, she starts giving them the same kind of back-up that she once gave Root.
Some days it feels so much like before, that Shaw almost expects Root to appear out of nowhere with a one liner and join them, as she did whenever she'd return from running errands for the Machine.
Those are the worst days. The ones where the Machine calls her on the phone using her voice instead of texting or going through Harold, and New York just seem to crawl with tall, thin, brunettes wearing leather jackets. It weights on Shaw in a way she's not used to, the gaping hole of missing someone too new and unsettling. She tosses and turns on those days, only to wake up with her heart in her throat, not knowing if it's just another simulation.
Her temper grows shorter and shorter and the understanding looks she receives from Finch and Fusco on those days do nothing to help. She falls back into anger, something familiar and easy to deal with. At the Machine for not protecting Root, at Finch, Fusco and Reese for surviving when Root didn't, and most of all at herself, for believing Root when she told her they would figure it out.
"That's not your voice," she tells the Machine once on a particularly bad day, while shadowing a number, looking straight at a CCTV camera and knowing that she can hear her through her comms.
"It's the voice I chose," the Machine says after a beat.
"It's still not yours," Shaw replies, feeling brittle and unsteady from lack of sleep and unsure of what she thought she would achieve by bringing it up in the first place.
The Machine stays silent and Shaw hopes that she'll just drop it. She's not that lucky.
"Root and Harold let me choose my own voice," she says, a statement. "This is the voice I liked best."
Shaw doesn't answer for a while, just clenches her jaw and keeps her eyes on the store the number just went into as she ponders the wisdom of further engaging with an ASI. She tries not to think of how it was the voice she liked best too.
"Sameen?" And it's at moments like this, when it is just her name in her ear when it grates on her the most, when it's too much like the real thing.
"Just — don't use it with me." As an afterthought she adds, "please," and she blames sleep deprivation.
The Machine doesn't reply, but after a while she receives further information on the number on her phone, and somehow it doesn't feel like a win.
After that the Machine stops using Root's voice when she talks to her, and Shaw thinks nothing more of it until Finch corners her one day after they're done with a number, his eyes cautious as he hands her a small suitcase.
"She asked me to give you this," he says, enunciating each word carefully, leaving no room for doubt of who she is. Long gone are the days he refused to refer to the machine as anything other than "it".
"What is it?" Shaw asks.
"She didn't say," Finch says. "But she did suggest for you to open it in private."
Shaw doesn't say anything else, just eyes the suitcase as she gauges its weight and and tries to rule possibilities in and out. Finch leaves after a few seconds with a small nod and a sympathetic look and Shaw is grateful when he doesn't add anything else.
When she finally gets to her apartment and opens the suitcase she finds in it a small black box, different colored wires, electrodes and a familiar looking set of glasses that make her touch the skin under her ear on reflex. Folded right next to the black box there's a paper sheet with detailed typed instructions on how to set it up and at the very end, a single sentence printed in what's unmistakably Root's handwriting: When you are ready.
She puts everything back in its place,closes the suitcase with more force than strictly necessary and kicks it under her bed. It stays there for weeks before Shaw even thinks about opening it again.
The first time she tries it, it's been a very long week.
The Machine gave them three overlapping numbers and with Reese still on the mend and a perky brunette involved in one of them that managed to set Shaw's teeth on edge every time she opened her mouth, Shaw feels unsettled, restless in a way she doesn't know what to do with any more.
She grabs a bottle of whisky and moves to the bedroom, where she checks and rechecks the typed instructions. She still sets an alarm to be sent to Finch if she does not deactivate it in six hours and leaves instructions on how to stop the simulation where he's sure to find them. She sits on the bed as she sets the wires and the electrodes, and there's an underlying familiarity about it that does nothing to dispel the feeling that this is not a good idea.
When she's all set, she takes another swing of the bottle and enters a code in the small display in the box. The moment she puts on the glasses she can feel the simulation start and suddenly the sense of deja vu is overwhelming and then—
"Hello, sweetie."
They are in the subway, Root's in front of her sitting on one of the benches and looking straight at her, in black jeans, a leather jacket, and a full-on smile like she does not have a care in the world. It hits Shaw like a punch in the gut.
"You are dead."
"Well, that's not a very nice way to say hello to your best gal," Root replies with a small pout.
Shaw stops the simulation immediately, and breaks one of the electrodes in her haste to take them off her.
"Hello, sweetie."
They are in the subway again, and even though everything is exactly the same, somehow Root looks less chipper than the last time Shaw tried this. It doesn't make her seem any less real, and Shaw has to take a deep breath before speaking.
"You are still dead."
"Technically, my body is dead," Root says, with a nonchalance that rubs Shaw in all the wrong ways.
"This isn't real," Shaw says, as she touches the skin under her ear almost unconsciously.
"Why not?"
"It's a simulation, it's happening in my head."
"Oh, Sameen," Root says, a singsong quality in her voice that the Machine has never managed to get just right. "Just because it's happening in your head doesn't mean it's not real. Besides, it's not just strictly in your head. She's helping."
Shaw looks sharply at her at that. "What the hell does that mean?"
"She does what she's always done," Root answers. "She watches over us. She's why you can leave whenever you want." Root stands up and starts walking towards Shaw, a smile firmly in place. "She's the reason why I'm able to be here."
The look on Root's face is too much, earnest and hopeful in a way that Shaw never thought she would miss and when Root grabs her hand, Shaw takes a sudden step backwards and mutters, "I can't do this."
The last thing she sees before the simulation fades out is the smile disappearing from Root's face.
Shaw does not go back into the simulation for a while.
She tries to ignore the box peeking from under her bed as much as she can, tries not of think of it every time she goes to the subway and sees the bench where Root sat or whenever she catches the end of a conversation between Finch and the Machine.
She fails spectacularly.
With less and less Samaritan operatives left, and a slow week numbers-wise, she finds herself bored, with nothing to distract her, nothing to help her not to think about it, and the more she thinks about it, the angrier she gets, until she ends up at the subway, simmering and trying not to do something she will regret.
"Miss Shaw! I thought you had gone hom—"
"Did you know what was in the suitcase?" she asks interrupting whatever Finch was going to say.
Finch has the decency to look chagrined. "Not at first," he replies after a beat. "She explained after I gave it you."
Shaw doesn't say anything, just glares at him and it's not long before Finch speaks again. "She thought — Ms. Grooves believed death is not the end. The Machine told me she wanted a chance to explain it herself, but she wasn't sure you'd want to hear it."
"Okay then. She wants to explain? Let her explain," she says, and proceeds to kick Finch out of the subway car, closing the doors behind him.
"So, why?" she asks looking straight at the screen, arms crossed and still feeling a bit silly for talking to a TV screen and expecting an answer, despite all these years. "Haven't I been through enough simulations?"
The Machine takes her time answering, and Shaw imagines she can hear the servers working as she goes through all the possible outcomes in order to choose the one that won't get her punched. For a second it feels like a very human thing to do.
"You miss her," the Machine finally says using the same voice as she used to give them the numbers, before. "And she misses you."
Shaw thinks for a moment of the possibility that Root could still be somewhere inside the Machine, and it shakes something loose inside her chest. She clenches her fists and glares at the Machine for all she's worth, and thinks of all the reasons why punching the screen of an all-powerful AI is a terrible idea.
She leaves without another word, and with whatever the Machine shook loose still rattling inside her.
When she finally returns to the simulation, Root's smile could power a small galaxy.
"Explain," Shaw says harshly, not letting Root even open her mouth. "You have two minutes," she adds, crossing her arms and leaning against the subway car.
Root tries to pout through the smile on her face, but starts talking almost immediately. "She found the software Samaritan used on you and rewrote some parts, mostly focused on the subject awareness module. It's why you can leave whenever you want, and why you always know you are in a simulation."
"So you are just part of the simulation, just as with Samaritan," Shaw says cutting her off. The knowledge sits heavy in her stomach, and she doesn't know what to do with the disappointment it brings.
"Not exactly," Root answers with half a smile, and moves to one side of the bench, letting the other end pointedly empty. When Shaw doesn't move from her spot, Root sighs softly and starts talking again.
"The Machine… she knows us. She's able to predict what we are going to do because she knows us better than we know ourselves," Root continues, the same excitement she's always had when talking about the Machine peeking through.
Shaw moves towards the bench, her arms still crossed, and sits on the arm opposite of Root, leaving as much space between them as she possibly can.
"When I died, She started a new independent process of me, one that started with the same information I had at the time. A process able to react to new input in real-time."
"In non-nerd?"
"I'm an independent simulation run continuously by the Machine. I have memory of my whole life and I respond to stimuli," Root says, managing to sound proud and teasing at the same time, and Shaw feels a pang of familiarity in her chest . "I'm still me, Sameen. I just come in a slightly different format."
Shaw stares, and Root stares right back, looking as earnest as Shaw's ever seen her. She touches the skin under her ear again, and for a moment she imagines that she can feel the electrode she put right there herself.
She can see that Root is nervous, her smile a tad too tight and her hands clasped together in a way that suddenly reminds Sameen of her mother and all the times she made her worry. "I'll think about it," she finally says, and when Root just nods, she leaves.
John's recovery is slow-going at best. After a 15-hour surgery to remove the bullet from his lower back and a nasty inflammation around his spinal cord that took a bit too long to come down, the mess caused by the shrapnel and the bullet in his thigh were almost anecdotic, even if they still did enough damage to require a fair amount of rehab.
Shaw visits him every other day, always when she knows no one else will be there. She checks his chart every single time, talks to his doctors when she catches them and on a few occasions, trash talks him from a chair as he does his exercises. And she always smuggles him something to eat or drink.
They are just getting started with a vintage scotch she found in the warehouse the latest number was using for smuggling when John brings it up. "Finch mentioned the Machine gave you a gift," he says aiming for nonchalant, right before taking a sip from his plastic glass.
She huffs in response at the phrasing. "I'm not sure I would call it a gift."
He grimaces in understanding, but the inquisitive look doesn't go away.
She sighs. If she is going to share with someone, it might as well be Reese. "With Samaritan, every simulation seemed real," she starts, trying to find the right words. "Every scratch and every touch, the weight of a gun or the taste of good whiskey," she raises her glass pointedly. "It all felt no different than it did before, no different than it does now. None of it was ever real, and I couldn't tell the difference."
She fights the urge to touch the skin under her ear, to assure herself there's no chip or scar there. "Some days I still can't." She smiles bitterly, thinking of the nightmares she still has, of waking up to the memories of locked hospital rooms and her friends dead because of her. She looks intently into her glass for a couple of seconds before knocking down what's left in a gulp.
"Is that where you've gotten the bags under your eyes?"
"Just another one of the perks of months of AI-sponsored torture," she says flippantly, suddenly feeling very tired. John looks pensive for a moment, and Shaw guesses he's had his share of sleepless nights.
"Finch told me about Root's theory, about how we are no different from simulations," John says as he refills Shaw's glass.
"Dynamics, she called it," Shaw says scoffing. "Fingers in the sand."
"It sounded like he half-believed it himself."
"Yeah, well, I don't exactly believe in all that mumbo-jumbo," she replies. "I didn't think you did either."
"She did, though" John finally says shrugging. "The way I see it, either she was wrong and the simulations are just simulations or she is right, and from now on they are the only way she's ever going to get any visitors."
And there's that thought again, the possibility of Root still alive — or something like it — somewhere by herself, away from all of them. It leaves Shaw unsettled in a way she doesn't know how to handle.
"And I hate to say it," he adds, "but Root wasn't wrong very often."
They drink another two glasses in a long silence that would be uncomfortable for any other two people before they hear one of the nurses start to kick visitors out. Shaw starts gathering her things, still distracted when John speaks again. "Hey, Shaw," he says with a particular small smile that tells her he is about to continue with something rather obvious or stupid, "tell Root I said hi."
Shaw barely has the energy to exasperatedly roll her eyes.
The day after she visits John she's sent to the middle of nowhere, Alabama in a mission for the Machine. She ends up having to stay there longer than she would ever wish on her worst enemy, and by the time she's on a plane back to New York she is ready to never ever set a foot on the state again.
While she's away she receives in her phone updates of John's charts on the days she would have probably visited, a short video of Bear playing with Fusco in the park and directions to what's supposed to be the best steak restaurant in the whole Bible Belt. It's not the first time that's happened while she's been on missions outside New York, but until now she had always thought it was the Machine sending them to her, a way of playing nice.
Now... she's not so sure.
She doesn't stop thinking about it on her way home, the knot in her stomach growing and growing. She starts a new simulation almost as soon as she gets to her apartment — only after food and a much needed shower — and fights the uneasiness she feels the whole time she's setting it up.
When she enters the simulation, Root is not in the bench she usually seems to lounge around, and Shaw frowns, slightly thrown off until a voice calls from inside the subway car. "Shaw! In here!"
She finds Root sitting in front of the Machine — or at least where the console to the machine usually is — typing away in a keyboard. "I'm almost done," Root says looking over her shoulder with a small smile as she keeps typing. Shaw stays near the door without saying anything and watches Root type away.
This was not was she was expecting to find.
She can hear the hum of the servers under the clickety-clack of Root's typing, feel the sturdiness of the subway car behind her back and the scratch from a knife on the plastic under her hands. It feels oddly normal in a way that should be more reassuring than it actually is.
"And… done," Root finally says, turning around in the chair and looking at Shaw with the kind of intensity Shaw's used to by now.
"I'm really happy you've come again," Root says after a beat. "I wasn't sure that you would." And the way she says it pulls at something inside Shaw's chest that she tries very hard to ignore.
"The stuff on my phone while I was away," Shaw says, straight to the point "it was you, wasn't it?"
Root's smile gets wider, prouder. "Was Good Ol' Boys Steak and Catfish Family Restaurant everything it promised to be?"
"Not really," Shaw replies pulling a face. "Too many kids running around — and the steaks weren't that good."
"I miss food," Root suddenly says wistfully. "We never got around to going to that place in Chicago, and food is the one thing that's not exactly the same in here."
It's a small comment, but it's all Shaw needs to be reminded of where they actually are. She crosses her arms before speaking. "So, how does this work."
"The simulation kind of hacks your brain," Root explains. "It reproduces the signals that would reach your brain to inform of certain stimuli. You are really experiencing whatever it is that reaches your brain — just not in the traditional sense." Shaw nods, already suspecting as much from her time with Samaritan.
"You can do whatever you want in here," Root continues, standing up and walking out of the subway car. "You can go wherever you want."
Shaw follows her. "Why are we always in the subway, then?"
Root smiles. "That's actually all you, sweetie."
"What does that mean?"
"You are in control here, Sameen," Root answers turning around. "When you start a simulation, basic environment variables are initialized from your thoughts."
"Does that include you?"
"I'm afraid not," Root replies, teasingly. "If you want to control me you'll have to think of some other way," she says, adding a wink for good measure, and starts moving towards the door.
Shaw huffs, amused despite herself, knowing she walked right into that one and tries very hard not to think of how much she's missed this. She follows Root and she can feel something inside her loosen with each step.
They fall in kind of a routine.
Much the same as Shaw visits John regularly, she starts going into the simulation every once in a while. She doesn't go in for long and she always has a plausible excuse ready, but it happens often enough for it to start feeling familiar.
It's always just Root and her and it always begins in the talk about the numbers and about whatever mission the Machine gave Shaw last, and Root lets Shaw tell her about Bear — even though Shaw's sure she has access to the same feeds the Machine does.
Root also takes great care of not touching Shaw again, not after Shaw's disastrous second incursion in the simulation. It takes Shaw a while to catch on, too distracted by well, everything — but once she does, it's glaringly obvious. A hand pointing the way instead of just grabbing her by the elbow, actually respecting her personal space — it's quite the realization to finally notice how many casual touches Root used to get away with.
When she arrives she finds Root waiting for her much closer than usual, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. "I have a surprise for you."
Shaw raises an eyebrow in questioning but follows Root as she guides her towards the end of the platform and through a door Shaw is sure doesn't exist outside the simulation. The door turns out to lead to a shooting range with two booths. As she walks closer, Shaw notices two boxes of ammunition and a small suitcase with a small bow on top of it.
She looks at Root as she grabs it, who just smiles softly and says nothing as she leans against the nearest wall. Shaw opens the suitcase without much fanfare and finds what can only be the new Heckler & Kohh USP Compact in it.
"Well, hello gorgeous," she mutters as she picks it up and tests its weight. She opens the box of bullets and starts to load them. She looks at Root again, and when the loaded magazine clicks into place, Shaw throws her a smile more feral than anything else and turns towards the target.
She goes through half a box of ammo before stopping. "You're staring," she says as she starts reloading it again.
"You are just so nice to look at," Root replies without missing a beat. "And you don't visit nowhere nearly enough."
"It's creepy," Shaw says smiling despite herself. "Where did you get this anyway?"
"I happened to come across some blueprints," Root says.
Shaw has serious doubts about how accidental it actually was, but she's certainly not going to complain. "Blueprints for a model still in production? That's really lucky."
"What can I say, I'm a lucky girl. Do you like it, I take it?"
"Oh, I like it," Shaw replies, looking at the gun like it's her new best friend. "I'm getting one as soon as they're out. Maybe more if I get Finch to pitch in."
"I'm sure something can be arranged," Root says, gazing at her from the bench where she's been sitting since Shaw started with the third magazine.
Shaw takes care to put everything back in it's place, the process familiar after years and years of target practice. When she's done, she sits next to Root, way closer than she usually does when she visits, and feels her take a deep breath when their shoulders touch.
They stay in silence for a while and Shaw leans her head back and closes her eyes, basking in the smell of powder and the feeling of Root breathing next to her.
"Hey," she says all of a sudden, "are you always here?"
"No," Root says, and then with a smirk she adds, "I only come for you." Shaw just huffs without opening her eyes. "Subtle," she adds as an afterthought, and she could swear she feels Root grinning even with her eyes closed.
They stay in silence and Shaw feels more relaxed than she has in weeks. She rubs a hand over her eyes, and when she lowers it again it rests next to Root's, their pinkies touching softly. Root's breath catches, and Shaw can feel her turn to stare at her.
Shaw finally opens her eyes and looks sideways at Root. "So. What do you do when I'm not here?"
"Errands for Her. That hasn't changed much."
"Stealing planes kind of errands?" Shaw asks, honestly curious about what Root does for the Machine now.
"Sadly, no. More like hacking errands," she says, something like disappointment in her voice.
"You like those," Shaw replies.
"I do," Root tells her. "Besides, in here we can steal a plane whenever we want."
Root moves her hand softly until it covers Shaw's. It's tentative in a way she's rarely seen in Root, and it tugs at something inside her chest. Shaw focuses on all the points Root's hand is touching hers. She tries to find a way to identify how different it is from before, a way of finding the tell of this simulation, something that will univocally pinpoint to the fact that this is not real.
She doesn't find anything, and so she turns her hand up and lets their fingers interlock.
"I'm holding you to that," she finally says, and Root squeezes her hand in response, her smile full of promise, and Shaw thinks that maybe this not being real is not such a big deal after all.
When John is finally discharged, Shaw goes to pick him up to the hospital.
She gets to his room just in time to see him try to convince the nurse in charge that, he really does not need to be wheeled out to the door. She leans against the frame of the door and watches amused as he finally compromises to at least use a pair of crutches.
When the nurse finally leaves, John walks slowly up to her, still a bit unsteady. "Enjoying yourself, Shaw?"
"Oh, you have no idea," Shaw replies, grinning as she walks up to him. She takes the prescriptions on his bedside table and checks them out. "You done here?"
"Almost. Not soon enough," he says with a grimace, as the nurse comes back with his discharge forms and his crutches.
"I'll get these filled and I'll bring the car around," she tells John, folding the prescriptions and putting her hands in the pockets of her hoodie as she leaves the room. John nods and sighs deeply as the nurse brings up using a wheelchair again.
John exits the hospital walking slowly but surely without the aid of the pair of crutches he's carrying. He leaves them on the lap of a kid in a wheelchair with his leg on a cast, opens the car door and sits next to Shaw, who takes no time in starting the car. "Finch?"John asks.
"We got a new number a couple of hours ago. He stayed doing the initial recon and Fusco's got eyes on her."
After a while Shaw can feel John staring at her, so at the first traffic light she turns to look at him. "What?"
"You look different," he says after a beat. "Healthier. Happier," he adds with a shrug. "Things going well with Root 2.0, I take it?"
Shaw doesn't answer. She isn't sure of how to. Ever since they talked about it right after Finch gave her the suitcase, none of them have brought it up again. It suits Shaw perfectly fine, but every once in a while she remembers that they lost Root too.
"It's fine," she finally says reluctantly, grabbing the steering wheel tighter. "It's different," she adds, and immediately clamps her mouth shut, feeling already like she's telling too much.
"I'll take that as a yes," John says, gentle in a way Shaw still finds unexpected sometimes. Still, Shaw doesn't stop glaring at him, hoping he'll take the hint and change topics — or better yet, shut up.
"It's kind of fitting," he says after a couple of minutes of silence, clearly oblivious to her glare.
"What is?"
"Well — if anybody was going to cheat death by becoming an AI-run bot, it was going to be Root," he says as if it were the most logical thing in the world.
"She prefers entity," Shaw says almost automatically.
"She does, uh?" John says not bothering to hide the smirk on his face.
"I will punch you. I don't care they've just released you."
John puts his hands up in the air in mock surrender, but the smile doesn't leave his face for the rest of the drive, and Shaw makes a mental note of asking Root if she has thought about talking to the guys.
Shaw corners their latest number at the end of one of the many long rows of ceiling-high shelves in the warehouse he was using to launder money. John is not far behind, still not completely back in shape.
The number barricades himself into a corner, using some of the overturned merchandise as a makeshift shield, and starts shooting from it, wild, erratic shots that make Shaw stay put and wonder if she should be calculating when he will run out of ammo.
When he stops, she approaches the barricade carefully only to discover him gone through a hole in the shelf next to him where the big box he used to take cover used to be. "Dammit," she mutters under her breath.
She follows him through the hole and just as she's reaching the next corridor, there's a clunk to her left, followed almost immediately by two shots, one of them uncomfortably close to her, enough to graze her. She gets out just in time to see John, slightly out of breath with his gun out, and the perp on the floor, grabbing his knee and crying.
"Are you okay?" John asks her, nodding towards her middle, which is when she notices the blood on her side. She's about to check it out when she sees the perp on the floor moving slowly and trying to reach a crow bar close to where he's lying.
"Oh, for God's sake," she says exasperated, walking up to him and kicking the bar away. "Fusco better come quick," she tells John. "Next time, it's not the bar I'm going to kick."
John smirks, and moves a bit further away, updating Finch on their number, as Shaw wraps her hoodie around her middle to stop the bleeding a bit and starts working on finding something to make the number stay put — other than her foot on his shot knee — until Fusco gets there.
By the time Fusco arrives with the cavalry, Shaw is feeling more and more tired. She tells Fusco the highlights of the chase, gives him enough details for whatever he needs to put in his report, but it's not until Fusco asks her about it that she remembers the wound on her side.
She takes the hoodie off, well on its way to drenched, and pokes and probes at it. It's enough to realize that the bullet didn't come out — probably the ricochet from the perp's shot — and that she's bleeding more than she should from just a flesh wound.
Crap, she thinks, suddenly lightheaded. She catches John's eyes just as the world fades to black.