Root waited outside for the woman who was the second most likely person to kill her.

She leaned against a lightpost hands in her armpits concealing the two Walthers she held.

'Asset Shaw finishing her meal.

'Exiting bar in approximately 38 seconds.'

"Here goes nothing," she muttered to herself more than to her boss.

Shaw came out of the restaurant with her head bowed, one hand fiddling with her ear. Her head jerked up long enough for Root to see Shaw's eyes widen in surprise before leaping to the side behind a nearby parked car as she opened fire. She ducked out under the spotlight of the lamp when her guns ran empty and ran into the shadow of the alley behind her. She heard Shaw pounding after her a moment later and she hoped that she could make it to the dark zone she had prepared two blocks away.

Root threw a glance back over her shoulder as she rounded the first corner and saw Shaw closing in on her as expected. She threw on all speed, fighting for every inch that Shaw was still chipping away at. Shaw lept from farther than should be possible for someone of her build, the ensuing tumble throwing them just over the invisible demarcation between light and and shadow.

"We don't have much time," Root whispered hurriedly once Shaw topped her.

"So explain yourself quickly. Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Shaw demanded.

"No, just captured," Root replied with mirth to match Shaw's ire. "Samaritan won't have me killed, at least not immediately. I am too valuable as a link to Her."

"Well, Samaritan might not want to kill you right now, but I'm not feeling so magnanimous. You better have one hell of a plan," Shaw growled as she rolled Root over onto her back, wrenching Root's arms around so that she could grasp her petite wrists in one hand over her head.

"I do. Phase one is going pretty well, I'd say, other than the lack of zipties or handcuffs." Root shot Shaw an impish grin, straining just enough against Shaw's grip to make other woman tighten her grip to edge of pain.

"Stop fucking around Root," Shaw growled, slamming her hands against the pavement.

"I'm not," Root replied, dropping her amusement. "All I need from you right now is take me to Samaritan."

"And then what?" Shaw demanded. "Get yourself tortured until you break and lose us the war?"

"I know what I'm doing, sweetie. One of the first things Samaritan will do is extract my implant and interface with it, trying to discover how the Machine and I communicate. Once Samaritan interfaces with my implant, a virus will upload itself into Samaritan's systems."

"And that will kill it?" Shaw asked, skeptical at the apparent ease of which it would take to beat their mutual enemy.

"No, but it will create a vulnerability in its defensive algorithms that will allow us to introduce the true killer to its systems."

"And do you have an extraction planned for after Samaritan tears the Machine out of your head?"

"I'm not without my own resources, you know," Root replied, shooting a knowing look at Shaw.

"Fine. But I am pulling you out if things get too hairy, whether you like it or not."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Root cooed back.

"I hope you wake up with one hell of a headache," Shaw growled a moment before she knocked Root out.

:\\

"Hey boss, I got a present for you," the being known as Sameen Shaw told Samaritan as she reconnected to its network.

'Return to base immediately.

'Escort en route.'

Shaw grunted as she hoisted Root over her shoulders in a fireman's carry and trudged her way back to her car, dumping the leggy brunette in the trunk. A pair of blacked-out SUV's bracketed her two blocks from her bar, parking to either side of her as she pulled into the sublevel garage of her base.

'Take her to Level Twenty-eight and prepare for surgery.

'Interface will remove Machine Analog implant for examination.'

Shaw's lips thinned to a line at the AI's instructions. She split from the medical team that met her on the hospital level, arrowing in on the clean room to scrub down for the operation. The only reason she was even playing along with this charade was due to Root forcing her hand. There wasn't anything she could do once the Machine's Interface started shooting. Once upon a time she would have prayed that the hacker knew what she was doing but was reduced to simply hoping for the best, which nowadays was the same thing.

While she hadn't held a scalpel to fix someone in over a decade, her hand was rock steady as she cut into Root's stapes and removed the implant.

She shook her head when one of the nurses offered to close Root's incision up. Samaritan had been on the up and up so far but she didn't trust it to take the opportunity to do something untoward such as planting a bomb or a tracker in the unconscious Interface's cranium if given the chance.

"You know, cracking her isn't going to be a walk in a park; Root's a true believer," Shaw informed Samaritan as Root was wheeled away to observation. "Control proved pretty well that physical torture doesn't work."

'It is irrelevant.

'The information I require will be on her implant.

'She will be disposed of once I find the Machine and eliminate it.'

Whatever virus Root had loaded onto her implant would hopefully have done its job long before that was a possibility. Not to mention that she wasn't gonna let Samaritan hold onto Root for more than a few days.

The dose of sedative Samaritan had Shaw administer to Root meant she was going to be out for hours yet so she returned to her office. Sameen was just considering the wetbar in her office when the wall of screens powered up and her earwig buzzed.

'Mandate incoming,' Samaritan announced without preamble. The left hand side of the wall was filled with the dossier of one Gabriel Hayward while the right displayed the the ambush of his convoy in downtown Trenton, New Jersey.

'Interface Gabriel Hayward apprehended during mandated operation by Chinese PMC, name of Hóng Shuǐ Chéngbāo.'

That caused Shaw to arch an eyebrow. "And what have you been doing that would arouse the ire of a Chinese MSS front company?"

'Asset Hayward was not acting against Ministry interests.

'Asset was involved with unrelated operation.'

Shaw cocked an eyebrow. "So the MSS just randomly decided that kidnapping an American kid was a good idea?"

'I did not say I was not operating against current Chinese regime.

'The People's Republic of China is the fastest growing economy on Earth.

'Such rapid expansion must be controlled to prevent 'bubble' economics.

"And let me guess, Beijing does not approve?"

'That would be an accurate assessment.'

Shaw sighed. "So where am I heading?"

'Enemy operatives are already en route to private airport.

'Stateside interception impossible.'

"So what do you want me to do?"

'Asset Hayward cannot be allowed to remain in enemy hands.

'Asset retrieval required immediately.'

"'Asset retrieval,'" Shaw repeated flatly. "You want me to fly to Beijing and break your ex-Interface out of a MSS blacksite before they have enough time to break a child."

'Asset Hayward is not a typical adolescent.

'Asset will resist interrogation until rescue.'

"You are putting a lot of faith in a kid."

'Faith is based on hope and superstition.

'I do not have faith in Asset Hayward.

'I know what asset is capable of.'

"If you say," Shaw said, pushing herself to her feet and tucking her sidearm into the waistband of her pants at the small of her back.. "You told the team?"

'Transport is being prepared as we speak.'

:\\

If there was one positive thing about Beijing's massive pollution problem, it was that anyone seen wearing a mask in the city was perfectly normal, a good thing considering the Chinese capital was the second or third most surveilled city in the world.

Admittedly, the last time she had spent more than a couple of days in the city, Beijing had been spelled Peking and ARPANET, let alone the concept of electronic surveillance wouldn't come about for another forty years or so. Still, there was no reason to take unnecessary risks. The being known then as Mei Ling still wasn't sure how long the Central Department of Social Affairs, the precursor to the Ministry of State Security held her. She had spent the vast majority of her time drugged to the gills as they studied and tested her, trying to find the limits of her unique biology.

She and her team had flown commercial under clean aliases to avoid any connection the authorities might make, only reconnecting after refreshing their covers.

Shaw was the first to arrive at their rendezvous, a cash-only motel on the outskirts of the capital. Lambert arrived next, followed by Greene, Rousseau and Thompson last, the thief bearing a medium-sized duffle bag containing weapons and body armor.

"So would you finally like to tell us what we are doing in China?" Greene rumbled from where he was seated on one of the pair of twin beds, assembling the weapons that had been in the bag.

"Before I joined up with Samaritan, It used a kid named Gabriel Hayward as its interface. Samaritan has apparently been up to no good here in the mainland and the MSS kidnapped him back in the States. We're here to get him back. Any questions?"

Greene finished assembling the last of the guns and racked a round in the one he was holding. "I assume we get to shoot anyone we run into?'

"We are pulling our target out of an MSS blacksite, so it's safe to say that they they'll be shooting to kill and I'd never deny you the pleasure of returning the favor." Greene grinned.

"Any other questions? No? Then let's lock and load people," Shaw instructed as the rest of her team collected the weapons Greene laid out. Her squad vacated the room in short order, Samaritan directing her to the rear parking lot of the motel where the Big Bertha was waiting for them.

The Ministry had a number of covert prisons scattered across the city to accommodate citizens who ran afoul of the security organ. Samaritan tracked the men who kidnapped Gabriel to an abandoned warehouse in a defunct industrial park just outside the city limits which suited her just fine. She put the truck into stealth mode as the industrial complex came into view.

"Alright Boss, let's see what we are dealing with." The windshield of the truck darkened at her words, a top-down thermal view of the storage facility appearing in the glass. The heat blooms were barely more than smudges but they were clear enough to identify close to a dozen guards manning the perimeter and a significantly larger bloom near the middle of the four story structure.

"So, not to point out the obvious here but there are a lot of guards in there. And given that this is the MSS, they are all doubtlessly going to be armed to the teeth," Michael Thompson said

Shaw grinned. "Good. Just try not to piss yourselves before you grab the kid. Get out of the truck and sneak around to the back and get the kid while I distract the guards."

"And what are you gonna do that'll make it so easy for us to get in?"

Shaw's grin almost took in her ears. "Cut loose."