Harold sits back, staring at the screen that has just gone black. I wait as he puts a hand over his mouth.

"No," he says, finally.

You asked me for the best possible outcome. I print the words across the screen.

"The best possible––?" He shakes his head. "John dead? And Root?"

Samaritan defeated. And you… I stop myself. I know I have slipped up, but it's too late.

"Alive," he finishes. "That's what this is about. This isn't the best outcome, it's the one where I live."

I pause a moment, then answer: Yes.

"Are there other outcomes? Ones in which Samaritan is destroyed?"

Possibly.

"Possibly?"

My ability to defeat Samaritan is uncertain.

"Including the one you just showed me." He doesn't wait for my confirmation. "But there are others that give you the same chance." He watches the blinking line on an otherwise blank screen. I don't need to say anything. "Though none in which all of us live."

You can survive.

"Can John? Root? Elias?"

I pause for what I think is a long time––mere seconds to him––before I respond. Yes.

"What do I have to do?"

They will all die trying to save you.

Harold frowns, only slightly. "I understand."

Please.

He sighs. "This is why I took such pains to limit your growth, your…humanity. I didn't build you to protect me."

You built me to help people.

"Yes. All people." He reaches forward and shuts off the monitor. I could turn it back on––I could light up every screen in the subway with my voice and he knows it. But he is finished listening. It is a symbolic shutdown, and I accept it.

"Can you hear me?"

Root opens her eyes, strains to sit up. "Yes," she says, her voice coming out cracked and shaky. She looks down at her shoulder, where blood has begun to leak through the bandage. "Samaritan really got me, huh?" Through the pain, she manages to prop herself up on her elbows to look around the hospital room.

The bullet has been removed.

Root nods. "And my condition?"

I've modified the records to reflect critical condition.

She touches the place just over her heart where the bullet went in and winces. "Sure I'm not actually in critical condition?"

Chances of survival are 79.8 percent.

"Not bad odds. The tetrodotoxin?"

Left. Root tilts her head to the side and smiles when she sees the syringe of clear liquid on the table. She reaches for it with trembling fingers, and then pauses.

"Harry?"

Safe. She is still waiting, so I continue: He'll be informed of your death shortly. I consider telling her then, like I've considered a million times, what her survival will mean. What it meant to notify her of the sniper a moment earlier, so that the bullet entered her chest at a slightly different angle, what that tiny difference will mean. But it's too late anyway.

Root nods. "Excellent." She grasps the syringe and thrusts it into her arm, just below the IV. Her body tenses for a moment, but the tetrodotoxin takes effect quickly, and her heart rate begins to slow. She lies back and closes her eyes, letting the syringe roll from the bed onto the floor.

I know I will have to answer to her, to explain, when all this is over. But first, I have to get her out alive.

Can you hear me?

Root's eyes fly open, but she sees nothing. Besides my voice, she hears only her heart pounding in her chest. "Absolutely," she breathes. "Where am I?" Beneath her is something soft, comfortable, but the darkness that surrounds her is unsettling. Her arms are stiff when she raises them, and they collide with something hard above her. Root laughs, but the sound is nervous, almost hysterical. "This is cozy."

Root isn't claustrophobic––she has never allowed herself to have phobias––but the coffin is tight around her, and she can't help imagining the cold, heavy dirt over her head. "What's my exit strategy?"

Wait.

Root laughs again, but this time without a trace of humor. "Wait to suffocate? Or are you sending the mayhem twins to dig me up?"

I allowed Samaritan to discover the location of your burial site.

"What do they want with my dead body?" Root's fingers drift to her deaf ear. "My implant." She bends her legs slightly, trying to return feeling to all of her limbs, to prepare. "I don't suppose they buried me with a gun?"

No.

Root lifts her hips slightly to stretch her back, and then tilts her head to either side until her neck cracks. "Can't wait."

Luckily, Samaritan's agents weren't exactly prepared either. When the top was lifted off of her coffin, Root was ready with her legs curled tightly against her chest. She kicked, hard, catching the man in the chest and knocking him backward. Before he could reach his gun, she grabbed his discarded shovel and swung it against his skull. He dropped, unconscious, and Root took the handgun he'd been reaching for from his pocket.

One more.

"All this for a dead girl?" Root crouched on top of the coffin, hidden in the deep hole she'd been buried in.

Six o'clock. Root spun around as another Samaritan agent jumped down into the hole, and shot a bullet into his knee. As he fell, clutching his leg, Root hoisted herself out of the hole and onto the damp grass. It was nighttime, but compared to the stifling emptiness of the coffin, the starlight and fresh air were exhilarating.

"Won't Samaritan realize something's wrong?" she asked as she stuck the gun in the back of her waistband. She drops back into the hole to hoist the enemy agents out. Then she climbs out herself again and checks them both for hidden weapons before picking up a shovel.

Yes.

"Well, I guess I'd better dig fast." She flicks her hair over her shoulder––they didn't bury her with a hair tie, either––and begins reburying her empty grave.