Chapter 2
In a room of a supercomputing center, a tall, skinny man was examining the computer cluster inside. He checked the units one by one, and for each unit he had checked, he would type a comment or two into his laptop describing the condition of it.
During the entire time, he was humming some country music, his head bobbing with the rhythm.
He was about to check the last cabinet, but heard someone knocking on the door.
He paused, peeking out from the side. However, his sight was completely blocked by the rows of cabinets, and he couldn't see the doorway. He waited, and the knocking came again.
"Who's there?" He asked, stepping away from the units and towards the door.
"All Pest Solutions pest control," a man's voice answered him. "We are here to exterminate the termites."
"Termites?" The supercomputing center employee repeated, frowning. He placed his laptop on the floor and rushed to the door.
Two pest control workers were standing there, both in gray protective suits and each carrying a drug tank. One of them had a mask on, and the other one, a man with glasses, held his mask in one hand and a few sheets of paper in the other.
"You must be knocking on the wrong door, sir," the employee said. "We don't have termites here."
"Really? You haven't heard about the termite incident yet?" The other pest control person spoke. It was female voice, soft, with a hint of teasing, and muffled by the mask.
The man froze. He looked at the two pest control people, before he slurred, "I really haven't."
"Oh you really should, sir," the man drawled with a calm voice. "We've got a report saying that an employee here was admitted to the hospital for high dose of naphthalene poisoning."
"Naph-what?"
"Naphthalene. A deadly, carcinogenic substance released by termites residing here. The Formosan subterranean termites, to be precise," the woman answered him. "Naphthalene has a unique, strong odor.."
The man immediately sniffed the air while turning his head around. "I-I don't think I smell anything."
"Oh, of course, only 40% people can smell it. It's genetic. If you can't, you can't," the woman explained to him. "You know George next door, right?"
"Yeah, yeah of course I do. We often go to lunch together."
"He's the one in critical condition, because sadly, he's one of the 60% who can't smell and he has inhaled too much," the woman told him.
"W-what? George's in hospital? Oh my God, oh my God, am I poisoned? Will I die?" The man started to panic, touching his face and then his thighs. He waved his hand around his nose, as if he could get rid of the odor he couldn't smell.
"Please, let us do our work, so you don't end up like George," the man said and showed him the paperwork of being authorized to open the dry walls and to clean the termites.
"Oh my God...oh my God...I-I'm going to the hospital now," the man mumbled, running out from the room, leaving the other two inside.
After he had completely disappeared, the male worker sighed with relief and turned to the woman. "I am fairly certain that what you have described is cyanide, Ms. Groves. Only 4 out of 10 people can smell cyanide."
"Oh, don't be so serious, Harold. As long as it does the trick," the woman, Root, took off her mask. She briefly combed her hair with her fingers, before she started to take off the protection suit.
She opened the bag that she carried with her, and took out her laptop. Before she opened it though, she heard someone coming.
She reached for her gun, only pulling it out for the slightest bit while approaching the door. A guy dressed as the janitor showed up, pushing a cart with a big trash can, mop and other cleaning supplies towards the door. He placed a "stop" sign at where people might come by, before he nodded at Root.
Root smiled and shoved her gun back into its holster. "Nice to see you, John." She eyed his face for a second or two, before she added, "nice tan."
"I wasn't lying about having a great time in Honduras," Reese replied as he carried the trash can into the room and closed the door behind him. "It's nice to have some time under the sun, drinking, kicking some evil mobsters' asses."
"I'm afraid that this catch up talk would need another time, Mr. Reese," Finch told him, before he reached into the trash can. "You got the thing, right?"
"Please," Reese said in a low voice, a corner of his mouth tilting up.
Finch gave him a mere nod, and quickly removed the trash from the can, which turned out to be some empty plastic bags and ruffled papers that had been glued together as a cover to conceal the system unit under it. The system unit looked exactly like the units in the room.
"Can either of you tell me what's going on here, or shall I just google?" Reese teased, watching Root working on her computer and Finch standing by.
"Well, I am trying to persuade this supercomputing system, this cluster whose name is Lightning, to grant me the access to one of its units," Root explained while working. "And...done. Now, I'm going to tell the system that this unit needs repair, so it'll be turned off without alerting anyone."
After she hit enter, one of the units near Harold had its light off and its fans stopped running. Root turned to nod at Finch, and the man quickly switched two units.
"I'm gonna turn on our little spy there," Root said as she typed a few lines of commands. "Okay, now we have a secure, private wireless connection between here and our mothership."
"This is where the new Machine is going to be located at?" Reese asked.
"Oh, no, John, this is not," Finch explained, "Root and I had a discussion earlier, and we both agreed that we need to make the new Machine portable, a few units at most, as its core. The processing of information will be distributed to the workers, and this supercomputing center is going to be one of them."
Reese nodded while Root entered the last command.
"Alright, I've gained full access to this whole place now," she said as she showed her laptop to Finch and Reese.
On the command line interface, it displayed "Welcome to the supercomputing center, Root." After that, it was a prompt: "enter administrator mode?"
Root tilted her head to the side slightly and smiled. "See, now it already know that my name. Through here, we can access every single supercomputing center over the world. There is going to be overhead of data transmission and task distribution. Some load balancing problem maybe, but this will definitely work."
Shaw got off the bed slowly. Swallowing hard, she took a step forward. OId memories drowned her. Memories of her mother. Memories of the few years she had spent with this tall, pretty woman. Her smile. Her strong yet soft hands. Her voice. The pilaf she would cook for family gatherings, with rice, chopped vegetable, nuts and saffron.
She wanted to ask her mother why she would be here, but she had already figured out the answer to her own question. Her mother wasn't here as a prison for sure. Otherwise she wouldn't have confident eyes and immaculate hair, and she wouldn't have called Greer by his first name.
"You are working for them, huh? What, they sent you over to talk some sense into me?" Shaw asked as she gazed into her mother's eyes.
"No, Shaw, I don't work for them," the other woman replied her. After seeing the eye roll given by her daughter, she raised one corner of her lips to form a smile that was ice cold. "They work for me."
Shaw gaped at her. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me."
The other woman huffed out a light laugh through her nose. "I am one of the founders of Decima, Sameen. Otherwise why do you think someone would have risked their life and smuggled us out of Iran?"
Shaw opened her mouth, but couldn't get a single word out. Memories of them leaving Iran came to her vividly. She remembered hiding in a specially altered car. She remembered her and her mother cramming in the small space under the backseats. She remembered the smell of that tiny space, that smell of gasoline, cigarettes, leather and sweat.
She remembered that someone, possibly the border police, had ordered the car to stop. She had been dragged out from the darkness and into the scorching sun. She had been pushed around, shoved to the ground, and then picked up. People had been yelling, shouting and cursing around her, with gun firing nonstop.
The next thing she remembered, was her and her mother being shoved into the back of a big truck. Right before its door closed, she had had a glimpse of the outside. Two border policemen were down, their clothes soaked in blood. Another police had been firing back at someone outside the truck while talking on the radio.
A bullet had hit the door and come through, and she remembered her curling up and shaking. The hole let the light shed in, and that was the only ray of light she had had in the dark trunk during the entire trip before they had arrived at a small city in Turkey and met her father there.
She had never really given it much thought before, of why someone would smuggle them out of Iran like that. More importantly, why would her parents have agreed to it? They both had had nice jobs. Her mother had been a director of a travel agency, and her father had been a gardener.
When thinking about the travel agency, she sighed, almost laughing at herself for not having figured this out sooner. It would be such a perfect cover job for an intelligent agent, and that could explain everything, including the way her mother would talk to her. "You were a spy," she finally concluded.
"I was," the other woman nodded slightly. "I used to work for the Ministry of Intelligence. I was a senior interrogator and also a bioelectrical chip designer. The job in the travel agency was my cover for catching an American spy."
"Okay, but can we skip the boring stuff and go to the part where you created Decima?"
"I am getting there," the other woman said, a slight impatience slipped through her tone. "We caught the spy, and I interrogated him. During the process, I learned the secret about a US government program involving a machine that would spy on every single citizen."
"And you were intrigued by that?" Shaw's voice nothing but sarcastic.
"Who wouldn't? It would lead to a brilliant future, where that machine will guide everyone."
"Yeah, by guide you mean spy on and control? I don't think it should be described as brilliant. I think the word you are looking for is shitty, or hell-like."
However, the other woman seemed not to have been offended by that at all. She ignored Shaw's comments, and continued to explain. "That man, that spy, tried to recruit me for that program, but I thought, why would anyone work for someone when they could get their hands on the machine directly? Why can't I work for myself? I killed him, and started a plan."
Shaw closed her eyes and sighed when she heard the word "killed" but saw no emotion shown on her mother's face, not even a flinch. "So that was why we left Iran?"
"Yes. I found his handler, and convinced her that he had flipped me but was killed by my colleagues. She believed me, and arranged the trip for us to get out of Iran. Then, I killed her, and recruited a small group of people and started Decima."
"Okay, you are the leader of Decima. You've found and captured the Samaritan. Great, fantastic for you, but no, I'm not gonna join you," Shaw said, throwing her hand into the air.
"Except that it's not up to you, Sameen," the other woman told her. Her voice was calm and cold, with absolutely no emotions shown. It almost made Shaw shiver.
How can she be so sure? She asked herself as she stared at the confident grin on her mother's face.
"We've given you a little gift," her mother told her, pointing at the back of her head.
It was then Shaw noticed that subtle pulsing sensation on the back of her head, as if one of the blood vessels there got a bit too excited. She reached for it, and touched a small piece of shaved scalp. In the middle, there was a short incision closed by several stitches. The cut was deep, too deep for fixing anything between her skin and the skull. Angry, astounded, and maybe a little scared, her heart raced. It pounded dangerously fast, slamming against her chest.
"What did you do to me?" She hissed at her mother. "What the fuck did you do to me?!"
"Just a small surgery," the other woman told her. Then she paused, as if she was waiting for Shaw to believe her. "We put a nano chip there, and it'll give the Samaritan access to your vision and your hearing."
A loud curse came out from Shaw's mouth, and she grabbed her mother's collar before she shoved her to the wall. She slammed her left forearm against the other woman' neck and reached for her gun with the other. She yanked the weapon out and pushed it against her stomach.
Shaw was about to make a threat, but a cold, electrical rush flooded her brain, paralyzing her. She felt her muscles relax uncontrollably; the gun slipped out from her hand and dropped on the floor.
She fell back, tripping over the corner of the bed before collapsing on the floor.
The loud noise attracted a few Decima agents, but Greer waved them off. Their conversation sounded nothing but a buzzing blur to Shaw.
"Don't challenge...Samaritan. He...watching..." her mother's words came to her, incoherent, broken.
Shaw found it impossible to grasp the meaning because of her spinning head. Seconds later, she passed out.
After having set up everything in the supercomputing center, Finch, Root and Reese went back to their old hideout - the underground train.
"I see you got everything set up already," Reese said as he looked around at several computer system units stacking up in a cabinet in the corner of the old train.
Next to it, there was a table holding three monitors. One of the monitors was on, waiting for commands.
"How's the Machine doing?" He asked while watching finch carrying his briefcase to the cabinet.
Finch paused briefly, raising to look at him while unlatching the briefcase. "We are about to find out," he said, plugging wires into the outlet ports on the side of the RAMs he had used to store the core of the Machine before it had been forced to power off. Then he connected them to the system units.
"Call me if you need me then. I'm gonna go get some lunch," Reese said.
With that he beckoned at bear, who excitedly dashed towards him. Together they walked to the exit of the place and disappeared.
Finch checked the wires and ports again, before he nodded at Root. Root gave him a smile, and entered a copy command.
The word "Copying" immediately showed up on the screen, with a percentage indicating how much information has been copied already. It soon reached 100 percent, and stopped.
"I'll run the decompression program now," Root said simply without looking at Finch. She typed in the commands, and then adjusted the parameters. She moved her index finger tip along the edge of the "enter" key for a few seconds, before she finally hit it.
The system units started to hum, their fans going loud. A percentage number appeared on screen again, changing slowly, so very slowly that it seemed to have frozen there forever.
Root stared at the screen, sucking on her bottom lip, one of her heel kicking the leg of the chair gently. Harold, on the other hand, started to remove any unused items away from the table.
When the number had reached 59 percent, Reese came back with bear. He had two bags of fast food in one hand, and in the other there was a carrier box with two drinks.
He threw the bags at the other two people. Finch missed it, but before his bag hit the floor, Root caught it in her hand. She handed it back to the man with a smirk on her face, and Finch thanked her before he started to grunt about the leaking sauce making his burger bread soggy.
Root ate her food, and sucked on the straw till there were only ice cubes left in her cup. She kept sucking and chewing on the straw nonetheless, making dry, hollow noises.
The number had finally reached 100. Then there was the word "installing" which lasted for more than an hour. After that, it was "configuration" for hours.
Eventually, the screen cleared itself automatically. All previous commands and outputs were gone. The only thing that was on the screen, was a slash indicating that the system was on its root directory, and a short underline stroke acting as the cursor.
Root tilted her head at the screen as she looked at Harold. The man nodded at her, and she gave him her chair.
Finch sat down. Staring at the camera clipped to the top edge of the monitor, he moved the mic closer to him. Then he pulled it even closer, till his lips were less than a quarter inch away from it.
He cleared his throat, sucked in the air that had suddenly became heavy. It was then he noticed himself shaking a little.
He swallowed. "Can you see me?" He finally spoke, his voice dry and tight.
The moment his voice died in the air, the three of them held their breath. Even bear stopped playing and watched them intently.
The cursor disappeared, and then reappeared. Such process lasted for a while, until they were on the verge of giving up all hopes.
Then, a word appeared on the screen. White letters on the dark background.
Yes.
Finch took a deep breath to calm his racing heart. Bittersweetness exploded inside him, making his stomach clench and his legs give out. He turned to Root and tried to give her a smile, but with his eyes stung by tears, he couldn't smile at all.
Root huffed out a light laugh, which sounded closer to a whimper of joy. She clenched her jaw immediately and squeezed the corner of the back of the chair hard, tears welling up in her eyes.
Finch raised the mic to his lips, and asked, "Who am I?"
Admin. The system answered him, this time with no delay.
"And who is she?" He pointed at Root, his eyes still on the camera.
The cursor flashed. Then the camera buzzed and turned to focus on Root. Immediately after that, three words appeared on the screen.
The Analog Interface.
The words disappeared, and Root gasped. She looked into the camera. "It's nice to talk to you again. What do you need?"
Finch turned to her, and she listened to the Machine. Seconds later, she said, "she says that she had come up with a plan before been taken off the grid. However, the electric surge right after the download caused some loss of the information, and she is only able to recover part of the plan."
"A part of it is always better than none," Finch commented, and Root nodded.
Seconds later, a social security number popped up on the screen.
"I thought the Machine used to contact you through the phone and give you letter combinations that you have to decode into a social," Reese murmured.
"I suppose the Machine knows that I no longer have access to my old library, and we have a tight schedule now," Finch told him, before he entered the number into a search.
A driver license popped out on the screen, together with a few other documents associated with the same number.
"His name is Jack Willows, a local jewelry store owner," Finch murmured.
"Looks like we are going jewelry shopping, John," Root teased as she threw on her jacket.
The ringing in Shaw's head had finally gone. She struggled to prop herself on her elbows. "What the fuck was that?!" She asked, her voice weak and gagging.
"You can consider it as a warning from the Samaritan for trying to kill me," her mother said, standing beside her and looking down at her. "Don't let it down too often, Sameen. The shock the chip gives you whenever you disobey, will eventually cause permanent brain damage."
Shaw dropped back to the floor, staring at the ceiling. Despair suddenly seized her heart. "What do you want from me?" She mumbled, breathing heavily.
"I don't want anything from you, but I am gonna tell you that you are the most precious of all," the other woman told her with a nonchalant tone. "You will fit perfectly in the new world."
"A new world?" Shaw asked.
"Yes, a new world, guarded by the Samaritan and us. A world where there is no crimes, wars, or violence or any kind and-"
"-because whoever disobey would get brain shocked?" Shaw interrupted her.
"Well, soon everyone will learned to obey," her mother said with a smile on her face.
"Yeah, to obey a fucking AI? To follow the orders of a damn computer? Sounds crazy to me."
"Don't you think a lifeless, unemotional entity is the best choice for leading the new world?"
"Whatever. I stopped listening to you before you described the new world. I will not surrender."
"No one is asking you to surrender, Sameen. I'm simply asking you to embrace your new life, to embrace a better future. A future with absolute orders and unbreakable laws."
"No, I will not surrender," Shaw repeated, squeezing each word through her clenched teeth.
"Why not? Are you still wanting to go back to your friends or something?" Her mother scoffed. "Whatever you feel for them, for that Samantha girl, isn't real. You know that, Sameen. You can't feel. It's not in you."
Shaw furrowed her eyebrows at her mother. "How do you know about my condition?"
The other woman huffed out a light laugh while shaking her head slightly. "We prepared you shortly after we entered. We performed a surgical procedure on your. A small brain surgery, where we deactivated the part of your brain that controls feelings and pain. Sadly, your father took you away from me right after that, because he didn't like the idea of preparing you as as soldier who fits perfectly in the new world. It's nice to have you back again."
Shaw took a deep breath, growls of rage humming in her throat. She resisted the urge of ripping her own mother's heart out with her bare hands right now, and closed her eyes. "You prepared me, huh?"
"Yes, we did. It was an amazing decision, considering the prototype chips doesn't work that great with those who has emotional ups and downs," her mother said. "Most of the test subjects died of endless seizures, others of brain damage. You are the only one who can handle it so far."
Shaw didn't say anything. She was too busy forcing air into her lungs just so they wouldn't give out. The ringing in her ears told her to kill, but she didn't go for it. She just raised to look at her mother, a crushed, broken look in her eyes.
"You have nowhere to go, Sameen. This is the only place you can belong. This is where you can make yourself useful," She paused for a bit, watching a hopeless look fleet across Shaw's face. "Once you are ready, the Samaritan has tasks for you."
With that, her mother left the room with Greer and closed the door behind her. Shaw let out that breath she had been holding forever. She drew her knees to her chest and buried her face in, before she fisted her hands. She fisted them too hard, her nails digging into her palms, causing them to bleed.
She can't feel it, though. She just can't.
A/N: I know it would probably take a very long time to break someone like Shaw, and to flip her, but I don't want to drag it for 10 chaps long either cuz I really want to get the story started, so...
I know in the show, Shaw apparently woke up and appeared in the car before the Machine was offline, in my story though, she hasn't appeared in that car yet (she will in next chap), because I am trying to avoid flashbacks and wanting to give her more story :)
