/Accessing archive footage

/January 9th, 2015

"Have you checked the video for tampering?" Root asked quietly as Shaw's head bounced off the concrete floor when Martine Rousseau put one between her eyes.

"This is the original footage." Root didn't think that she had ever seen Harold look more somber than he did right now.

Root swallowed, trying to dislodge the obstruction in her throat that only let a whistle of air past. The subway was too small, everything was collapsing in on the centermost screen in the car that showed Martine killing Sameen."

"I need to go," Root finally managed, somewhat hoarsely.

"Ms. Groves, I don't think-" Finch began, rising from his chair but was arrested by John's hand on his shoulder. Finch looked back and the former assassin shook his head. Reese left the subway car and paced over to the boxes that contained their on-hand tools and started withdrawing weapons.

"What are you doing," Root asked in incomprehension.

"While I didn't have the same kind of relationship with her that you did, she was my friend and Martine Rousseau killed her. I want payback too," Reese husked, handing her a pair of Browning Hi-Powers out of the duffel, racking a round in the FN P90 he had pointing at the ceiling. "Friends don't let friends go on suicide missions alone."

Root for her part turned back to the four frames of Martine killing Sameen. She could feel the emotion rising in her chest, a swell of grief that she had to get somewhere safe before she could allow it to break her levees.

She was sure she got strange looks, riding in the elevator of the building that one Sameen Gray once resided in with a man carrying a large duffel and a ski mask.. The place had been cleaned out long since, not that Sameen had been much for personal effects in the first place. Still, it was the one place that Root could be sure that Samaritan would be sure to send agents to when they appeared.

Decima. Agents. Arrived. She told her in Her clipped, prerecorded voice thirteen minutes after she broke in.

"How many?"

Two. Teams. Four. Each.

Ascending. Main. Elevator. And. Primary. Staircase.

"How long until they get here?"

Forty-three. Seconds.

It took the two of them scarcely longer to subdue the Decima agents.

"One-hundred twenty-three seconds until the police get here," Root informed John when the last of the suits went down.

"Not much time for an interrogation," John opined.

"You have one chance to tell me where Martine Rousseau is," Root asked quietly as she knelt over the only survivor to fall in the apartment.

"Go to hell-" the agent spat past bloody teeth before Root's gun bucked and cut him off.

"Where is Martine Rousseau?" Root asked one of the two Decima agents in the hall.

"If you think that-" he started to say, but Root interrupted him with a bullet.

"Are you going to opt for the retirement package or are you going to tell me what I want to know?"

"Not a chance, bitch," he spat. Root started to squeeze the trigger halfway through what he was saying but Reese finished policing the bodies and stepped up to Root, pressing the barrel of Sameen's Compact down.

"Why don't we take a little more time to talk to this one. We can question him at the safehouse."

Root sighed but said nothing, simply turning away. A quick examination showed that none of the man's injuries were immediately life-threatening so he struck him on the point of his chin to knock him out and hoisted him into a fireman's carry. Root is standing in the middle of the apartment, facing away from the door.

"You ready to go?"

Root takes a deep breath and turns to face him. "I am now. Let's hope he knows something."

"It's okay, you know. To want something of hers."

"That's not why I came here today. Besides, this was Sameen Gray's apartment, not Sameen Shaw's. There is nothing here to interest me." Her words were said steadily enough but her right hand rose towards the left side of her chest seemingly unconsciously.

Reese grunted and led the way down the stairs to the parking garage. The trip to the safehouse was made in silence, Reese reaching out for Root's elbow as he pulled into the garage under their destination.

"Don't kill him until I get back. I'm going to drop these off at the station," Reese told her, hefting the bag that held the disassembled Decima electronics.

Root nodded silently and stepped out of the car to retrieve their prisoner. She struggled some getting him up to the room and dropped him face down on the threshold of the apartment. From there, she dragged him by his wrists to question room and ziptied him to a reinforced steel chair. about more thorough search of his person found a knife in the toe of his boot, a knife in his sock and one in the buckle of his belt, in addition to the Decima standard issue cyanide tooth. Root shook her head. Honestly, he reminded her of Shaw, less in the number of knives he carried on him but rather the 'crazy-prepared' attitude they would imply.

Root pressed her lips into a thin, white line at the thought of Shaw. Her hands stilled on his shoulders as she paused, standing behind him to wrest her grief back under control. Sameen's murder remained unavenged; tears would only hinder her hunt at this point.

She retrieved a chair from the dining room and placed it out of lunging range of her target. She stood before the blond man for a moment, imagining the agony he was about to experience. Taking his right pinkie finger in hers, she broke it.

He woke with a strangled scream, Root gently tapping his cheeks to get his attention. "Hey, right here, look right here." She snapped her fingers to focus him. She didn't imagine she looked particularly sane, in yesterday's wrinkled clothes, mussed hair, bags under her eyes or the now-permanent graininess that made her blink too often.

As soon as he realized that he had been captured, he clenched his jaw, clearly trying to bite down on something. "Sorry, you don't get to take the easy way out," Root informed him, showing him his tooth in her hand. "Now the rules are simple. I ask you a question. I like the answer, good for you. I don't, I start breaking things. So. What is your name?"

"Richard Drene," he growled.

"Where do you work?"

"RFB Credit Union. I'm in Acquisitions and Litigation."

"You don't say?" Root said with her plastic smile never wavering when she broke his ring finger.

"Where is Martine Rousseau?"

Drene was pale under his tan, his lips bloodless but he still managed to speak steadily. "Sorry. Don't know a Martine Rousseau. Maybe someone in HR can tell you if she works at RFB."

"Where is Samaritan's base in the city?"

"What's Samaritan, that a company?"

She didn't get the chance to answer her next question when the door to the right burst open.

"Reese. That was quick."

"A word, Root?" Reese asked, gesturing to the other room.

"I don't need a lecture on ethics, John," Root said from where she looked out the window.

"I was simply going to ask if you felt better. Because that is the only reason for doing that in there. Physical torture does not get reliable intelligence. You know that." Root didn't say anything, jerking away when Reese laid a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm not saying that you need to talk now, but when you do, I know something of what you are going through."

"You have no idea what I'm going through. You walked away from your woman. I had three and a half seconds with mine."

John pursed his lips. "Do you feel better?" he asked finally.

"Why did you come back so soon?" Root asked instead of answering.

"The Machine gave us his number."

Betrayal shot through Root. "I wasn't going to kill him."

"She seemed to think otherwise." Root had no reply to that. "Harold is on his way here to see if he can't get anything off their phones. There is nothing else to do for the moment; why don't you go lay down in the other room. You don't look like you have been sleeping much lately."

Root shook her head. "I need some air. Please don't follow me." Root retrieved her pea coat from the rack by the door.

She barely made it fifty feet from the front door before the payphone in front of her rang. Root glanced at the street camera that was pointed at her as she moved toward the phone.

The Machine gave her the number in plain language, without Finch's Dewey Decimal cipher and her heart stopped in her chest at the impossibility she was hearing.

Niner-five-four. Five-two. Zero-five-seven-six.

It was Sameen's Social Security number.