There was no official report filed about the gunfight between the Decima operatives and the corrupt cops that Greer had bought off on one side and a group of ex-SAS led by a man called Alistair Wesley on the other. The story did not make it into any newspaper. No reporter even heard about it. The few witnesses were intimidated into silence by a branch of the government so secret that it may, in fact, not exist at all.
Shaw didn't know anything about this, because she was unconscious, bleeding, dying in the middle of the street.
Nor was she aware that she was given emergency medical attention by a man who had once been a Combat Medical Technician in the British Royal Air Force, which managed to stop her bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds and allowed her to hold onto life long enough to make it to a hospital where she could be given better care.
Nor was she aware that, while she was undergoing surgery to remove what bullets could be removed and treat the damage they had caused, the world had changed. She did not know that, throughout the USA, people were finding that they could no longer access their bank accounts. They could, however, access other peoples. Specifically, the accounts belonging to those who had allowed Samaritan to run, and those who had given it life in the first place.
Nor did she know that every online media outlet now rerouted to an anonymous article which spoke at great length about the invasion of privacy which had been carried out by a private organisation at the behest of certain members of government. These figures were directly named, along with proof that they had wilfully colluded in this invasion. Senator Garrison, Congressman McCourt and John Greer were among the names listed. Control was not. Many underground organisations were quick to take the credit, just as many sought to distance themselves from all accusations.
Shaw did not know, as she lay in a coma fighting for her life, that the article told the world about the prototype AI known as Samaritan, which Decima Technologies had created in order to carry out this mass surveillance. It also told everyone that Samaritan had, apparently, malfunctioned. Rather than passively watching everything, it had actively ascribed everyone an identity which was not their own. It had, in fact, given every US citizen the identity of the men and women who had had a hand in releasing it into the world.
Understandably, this caused chaos. There were riots. This continued even after a group of technicians solved the problem and returned everyone their own identities. The fact that they were in fact lying at the behest of Control was irrelevant, because the Machine had fixed the problem. Government was in upheaval, with members being placed in jail and others quick to proclaim their innocence while knowing that their reputation was irreparably tarnished by these events.
Eventually, though things settled down. Decima was dismantled, and everyone who had been involved in it was imprisoned. Except for John Greer, who was now the most wanted man on the planet. Shaw didn't know any of this.
It wasn't until many days later, when she awoke to find Harold sitting by her bed and Reese standing guard by the door that she found out any of this. Even then, she wasn't quite sure what had happened, or how. None of them were. None of them knew what would happen now. Perhaps more importantly, at least to Shaw, no one knew where Root had gone. She seemed to have vanished. She certainly had never arrived at the hospital.
Time went by. Finch brokered a deal with Control, in which the Machine would continue to work as it always had. Questions were raised about the Machine's capabilities, now that it was no longer hobbled, but no one could answer those. Shaw healed, slowly. Root remained absent. Greer remained elusive, despite the Machine's best efforts.
Shaw didn't like being left out of the action. Admittedly, sitting with a sniper rifle trained on a dangerous drug dealer while Reese went in undercover to investigate the extent of the operation wasn't particularly out of the action, but she still felt as though she was being left out, and she was tired of that. She'd been bedridden for weeks, and this was her first time out in the field. It wasn't as though the pain from her mostly-healed injuries was even that bad, and besides, she kind of enjoyed it. She felt as though she should be down there, in the thick of things. Still, she understood why she was being side-lined, at least temporarily. Even if she didn't like it.
As she sat there, ready to shoot if Reese's cover got blown, she became aware of something.
There are many ways to tell if someone was in the same room as you. You could hear their footsteps, or their breathing, or even the whisper of cloth against skin. Those are just the most obvious.
In Shaw's line of work, it wasn't unusual for people trying to sneak up on her. Generally professionals who knew enough to be able to sneak properly. She had enough experience to be able to sense if someone was standing nearby, if they shouldn't be.
Shaw didn't spin around, ready to shoot. She simply said "You've gotten better at that."
"Nice to see you too, Sameen." Root said.
Shaw didn't turn, didn't look at the other woman. Reese might need her. "Where'd you go, Root?"
"Here and there." Root said airily. "I'm sorry I left you."
Shaw didn't reply. This was her first time in the field since she'd been injured, and it didn't really seem like much of a coincidence that Root chose now to turn up. She wondered, is she looked at Root, she would see the tell-tale marks of someone recovering from a gunshot wound. She didn't look. "What happens next?"
The answer was a long time in coming. "I don't know."
Shaw smiled. "Good answer."
