When Shaw came to, she found herself strapped down to a chair, her arms tied behind her back by an impressively tight zip tie. She struggled against it anyway, but she didn't have enough space to maneuver her hands properly. She let out a frustrated grunt. Given time she could work herself free, but she'd really hoped it could have been done quickly.

The noise drew the attention of the woman who'd followed her here and attacked her. She'd been in another room when Shaw had regained consciousness, but now she returned and Shaw got a chance to take a good look at her. Her clothes were quite simple, besides perhaps the leather jacket that caught Shaw's eye. Shaw couldn't help but also notice the way her hair fell in waves down to her shoulders and the deadly confidence with which she carried herself. Under different circumstances she might have even been interested.

But these weren't different circumstances, Shaw reminded herself. She was tied to a chair, and she was pissed. The woman tilted her head to the side and stood there for a moment, studying her silently. Shaw stared back at her, her glare becoming a scowl as she grew more impatient. If the woman had questions, Shaw just wished she would hurry up and ask them.

After what felt like an eternity, Shaw broke the silence. "So what do you want?" she asked bluntly.

"Like I said, Sameen, I just want to have a little chat." Whoever this woman was, she'd done her research. If she knew Shaw's name, it meant she most likely had ties to the government. If that was the case, and they wanted her gone, then she really needed to get herself free as quickly as she could.

Shaw frowned and stopped working on the zip ties for a moment as a realisation dawned on her. She knew the building she was in was a dead zone, no cameras or surveillance of any kind, but she'd assumed that was so she could be killed quietly and without too many questions. So why would this woman bother tying her up to question her if the orders she'd been given were to kill? It didn't add up. She took another, closer look at the woman who was now setting up her own chair in front of Shaw. She wasn't wearing a wire and it seemed like she wasn't carrying a phone on her either. Even if she did work for the government, she wasn't following their orders right now.

"Who are you?" Shaw found herself asking out of a genuine curiosity.

The woman sat down in front of Shaw as she replied. "I think you're forgetting which one of us is currently strapped to a chair. But," she smiled softly, "in the interest of building trust, you can call me Root."

"Root? That doesn't exactly tell me much."

"Actually," said Root, "given my history, that would tell you a surprising amount, much more than my birth name would anyway."

"Great. Just give me a phone and I'll look you up," said Shaw, flashing a smile. "Oh wait," she continued. "That would mean your employer could listen in on our conversation and you wouldn't want that, now would you?"

Root leaned forward on her chair. "You're good, Shaw. That's one of the reasons I like you, one of the reasons we're even having this conversation at all. But you have no idea what the bigger picture looks like."

Shaw held back a smirk. Now she was getting somewhere. She could keep Root talking for as long as it took to break through the zip tie, then she could escape, hopefully with some valuable knowledge. "Why don't you enlighten me?" she said, prompting Root to tell her more about what was going on.

Root leant back on her seat, making herself comfortable as she lazily rested one arm over the back of her chair. "Believe it or not," she said, "you and I have the same employer."

Shaw's eyes narrowed. "Who sent you? Control?"

A small laugh escaped Root's lips as she shook her head. "Oh I'm much higher than control."

Shaw sighed and rolled her eyes. "If you keep making me guess you're at risk of boring me to death."

"I'm afraid I'm going to need some more information from you before I tell you any more."

Root began to idly pick at her fingers as she continued. "I know you're not a fan of small talk so I'll cut right to it. Why does my boss want you dead."

"It's your boss, you tell me."

"I wish I could, but that's not exactly how I operate. You see, I get targets, not reasons. I remove obstacles and fix problems and normally the reasons are pretty self explanatory. I never questioned my orders because I trusted the one giving them."

"What changed?" asked Shaw.

Root glanced up at Shaw before she replied, but her expression had changed. There was a sadness in her eyes, a sense of betrayal that hadn't been there before. "You were the change."

Shaw huffed. "I don't see how I'm any different to all your other targets."

"It's because I was going to recruit you, Shaw. I thought we'd make a good team."

"Me and you? Really?" Shaw struggled to hide her surprise. Yes, she felt a certain level of attraction towards Root, but she also got the distinct impression that if they tried working together she'd end up wanting to kill her.

Root didn't appear to be offended by her surprise, if anything it only seemed to encourage her. "We're actually more similar than you realise," she said, her initial confidence returning to her expression. "I may not be a sociopath, but I share your disregard for other people."

"You say that," interrupted Shaw, "and yet here you are."

"Well, I do have a few exceptions," said Root with a smile, her eyebrows raised. Now Shaw really did want to kill her.

"I'm going to be completely honest with you, Shaw," said Root, bringing the conversation back on topic. "My orders are to kill you. The thing is, I really don't want to do that. But if you don't give me a reason not to, I'm not going to have any other choice."

"Let me get this straight," said Shaw, growing more frustrated the longer she was stuck in the room. "If I don't tell you why you've been sent to kill me, you'll do it anyway. But at the same time even if I do tell you it doesn't guarantee that you won't kill me?"

"Sorry," replied Root, "but that's just the way it is."

Shaw shook her head. She didn't particularly want to tell Root anything, but she was making agonisingly slow progress on breaking the zip tie and telling Root what she wanted to know on the off-chance that she might let her live was looking more and more like the only viable option. Plus, she was curious to see how Root would react to what she had to say. Given that she clearly had a detailed knowledge of the system and higher powers at play, she might just prove to be Shaw's best chance to escape alive. That was, of course, if she actually believed Shaw and decided to help her.

"I assume I don't need to explain how I operate," said Shaw before she began.

"No, I'm already familiar with your work," replied Root, now sitting ready to listen to what Shaw had to say.

"We never did get much in the way of explanations when it came to missions, which I was quite happy with at first, until I started to notice a disturbing pattern in the people we were being instructed to eliminate."

"What kind of pattern?" asked Root.

Shaw shot Root a deadly glare. "If you stop interrupting me I'll tell you." Root gestured an apology with her hands, allowing Shaw to continue.

"I realised I could put everyone into two categories. There were the terrorists, the kind of people I expected to be killing, but then there was this second category. It was an odd mix: journalists, coders, analysts. None of them seemed to link, and none of them seemed to pose any obvious threat to national security."

"It's still possible they could have been," countered Root, interrupting Shaw again.

"Well that's what I thought at first," replied Shaw. "So I thought I'd look into it myself. I did my own research, and do you no what I found? Nothing. They'd been wiped off of every public record, practically removed from existence."

"If they posed a real threat then why bother hiding their identities?"

"Exactly what I thought," continued Shaw. "The whole thing reeks of a cover up. I may not care about others, but I didn't sign up to kill innocent people."

Shaw could see that Root was conflicted, still unable or unwilling to believe that she'd been lied to by the system she so clearly believed in. She still needed some convincing, but at least Shaw was getting through to her. "I wasn't certain about it either," she added. "That was until my partner was killed last week. That didn't have anything to do with you as well, did it?"

Root appeared to be genuinely shocked by the question. "No," she answered, somewhat defensively. "I was told Cole was killed on mission."

"Yeah that's what they told me too." Shaw laughed quietly to herself. "It looks like they kept us both in the dark."

Root didn't seem at all happy about what Shaw was suggesting. Obviously, she'd believed her employer had been telling her the whole truth about everything. The idea that her trust had been betrayed would no doubt be hard to accept.

But Shaw needed her to accept that possibility, and she needed her to accept it fast. "Look," she said. "You're clearly an intelligent woman, think about it. The research, the killing, and now this… Whoever you work for thinks I know something and they want me gone because of it. What other explanation is there?"

The truth was there wasn't one, and Root knew that just as well as Shaw did. She sat there for a moment in silence, turning things over in her mind, before drawing a deep breath. "If you're telling the truth, then I will help you, Sameen. But if you're lying," added Root, her voice like daggers slicing through the air, "then I promise I will give you a slow and agonising death."

Shaw met her stare, her own voice just as serious as she replied. "Good thing I was telling the truth then."

Root gave a small smile before standing up. "I'm supposed to kill you in a hotel room used by your latest target in three days. If want any chance of surviving this, I expect to see you there. If you try running," she added, "then they will kill you."

"It might help to know who 'they' are," said Shaw. "You do owe me an explanation."

"I suppose I do," admitted Root. "But you're nearly out of those zip ties, and if I'm gone too long it might arouse suspicion. So, maybe next time?" Root leant down close to Shaw and, to her surprise, kissed her on the cheek. "I'll see you around, Shaw," she said with a gleeful smile as she strode out of the apartment.

Sure enough, Shaw was soon free of her restraints. She considered chasing after Root, but she realised the woman was probably already long gone. She scrubbed her cheek with her sleeve as she thought about what to do. To her annoyance, she concluded that Root was right. That frustrating woman really was her best chance of survival. Shaw decided she'd go to the meet as planned, but she'd also make sure she was ready for a fight in case Root decided she wanted to kill her after all. Shaw wasn't at all comfortable with the situation, but at the very least she was still alive, and surely that had to count for something.