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The next morning was a Monday, which meant that Reese couldn't stick around in the station with Finch and Shaw. He had to go to work.
Once he was gone, Finch seemed to know without being told that Shaw needed to be able to keep an eye on Root. The map filled a computer screen, and she appreciated that Harold unplugged the headphones so that the soft rustling from the microphone filled the subway car.
They heard Root and Evans separate, Evans heading off with the Machine's latest helper, and Shaw found her heart racing at the sound of Root's voice. Given that she was with Evans all the time, it was surprising how little they actually spoke to one another.
A while later, Sameen had taken to running the length of the platform, the endless back and forth making her slightly light-headed with dizziness. She heard a sudden increase in the amount of noise emitting from Finch's speakers and slowed to a stop. As Shaw's breathing calmed, she realized that part of the increase in noise was Root's own breaths.
It sounded like Root was running, and that worried Shaw because it was unusual. There was a routine that had been established and this was not part of it.
Shaw stepped into the doorway of the subway car and saw that Finch had paused in whatever he was working on. He turned and looked at Shaw questioningly.
"She's still inside of the building," he told her. Shaw could tell he was wary of how she might react to this news. She had no idea what that could mean aside from the possibility that Root was in trouble. Shaw's heart dropped at the thought. And even if she'd left the night before, Shaw istill/i wouldn't have been there in time.
A few long minutes passed, and then Shaw watched as Finch jumped at the sudden sound of Root's voice.
"Mike, we need to go," her voice said, muffled by what Shaw had long-since guessed was the sound of Root's clothes bumping the medal.
"What happened?" It was the guy who had been helping them at this location. Shaw couldn't remember his name. Something boring. Mark? Or Charles?
"I saw someone. A woman. I think she was one of them," Root sounded panicked. Shaw stood up straighter at the worry in the other woman's voice. Finch's eyebrows were stuck high on his forehead, his lips pursed.
"One of them? How do you-" This was Evans, cut off by Root.
"Trust me. I know. Carl, you need to lay low. Stay off of their radar. Follow the plan."
Shaw could tell by the sound of Root's voice that they were on the move.
Once the rustling had quieted back to its normal level and the blip on the map had retreated back to the motel, Shaw expected to hear from Root.
But no text came.
And Root didn't call.
Shaw spent hours watching the GPS map. She tracked Root's progress as she traversed the country. Eventually, Reese returned, and they decided to watch the map in shifts. Harold and John both seemed surprised when Shaw gave the plan her okay.
They didn't seem to guess right away that she was secretly grateful. This meant she could get some rest if she could force herself to fall asleep. And she fully intended to bust out of the subway station as soon as Reese left the following morning. John might be tough to get around, but she could give Finch the slip easily now that she knew he had a taser. It was as simple as waiting for him to go into the bathroom, or get comfortable at the computer.
And now that Finch was back, she didn't need to play command center. He was infinitely better at the computer stuff than she was, so really she was just doing everyone a favor by heading after Root. It wasn't just her being selfish.
The blip that represented Root and Evans finally stopped near Neshkoro, Wisconsin.
Reese was still there at the station. Shaw knew he'd figured out what she might be planning and that made her feel the cloud of malaise descending over her again. She was at a loss.
Finch, Reese, and Shaw were all there in the subway station to hear Root tell Evans he could call Tasha. Shaw had learned by now that this meant she was about to receive a call herself, and felt her stomach twist. She didn't want to talk to Root with the guys listening.
"Turn off the sound," Shaw said. The boys both looked at her, confused.
She already had her phone out in her hand when the call came. The phone displayed the 'Unknown Number' tag.
"I don't want her to hear her voice echo," Shaw said by way of explanation now that they understood that she had known the call was coming. It was a half-truth. Really, she just didn't want to have Harold and John listening in. She saw the reprimand from Harold before he spoke and conceded. "I'll put it on speaker."
She answered the call. The anger towards Finch raged quietly inside of Shaw, dulled by the helpless depression.
"Hi," Root's voice was alarmingly small. As if she had passed the level of concern where she was able to hide behind a mask of sarcasm.
"Hey," Shaw replied. She hated how sad and weak her reply sounded.
"It's been a while."
"Yeah."
Shaw wanted to tell Root to be careful, but she didn't want the other woman to know that she'd been being watched for weeks. And she didn't want Harold and John to hear her sound any more vulnerable than she already did.
"You're awfully quiet. Quieter than usual," Root said. Shaw swallowed.
"Yeah." It was all she could muster with Harold's eyes boring into her.
There was a long pause, and Shaw wished that she could see Root.
"I saw someone yesterday."
Shaw didn't reply. Reese shifted his weight, uneasy.
"I think they might know what we're planning," Root continued after a beat.
Shaw still didn't reply. What was there to say? Root had made it clear that she wouldn't answer any of Sameen's questions, and Shaw was always cautious about how much she said for fear that Root might figure out that she was being tracked every minute of every day by someone other than the Machine. Plus Harold was still staring at her, looking constipated.
"Sam, I'm scared."
At this, Shaw felt… too much. She couldn't name half of the things she was feeling. But she could feel her mouth twisting and turned away from Finch and Reese because she couldn't fucking bear their eyes on her. Couldn't bear them knowing that she was torn up inside by the simple fact that Root had said her name and said aloud that she was afraid.
"You shouldn't be," Shaw said. She knew that it wasn't the right thing to say but she didn't know how else to reply. Root needed to be tough. Ready to keep fighting, not admitting defeat. She was on the battlefield, for fuck's sake. There wasn't time to be scared. "This is our job."
"I know. But it's different now."
Shaw hated that her heart was in her throat.
It is different now. But you can't stop. You can't give up.
"No. It's not," Shaw immediately regretted how mean her voice sounded.
Why did I say that? she wondered. Why am I hurting her? And why do I care if her feelings are hurt? She's a big girl, she can handle it.
When she ended the call and turned back toward Harold and John, she saw their disappointed expressions and hated that she felt like a puppy tucking its tail between its legs.
"What?" Shaw growled at them. Harold looked away, returning silently to his desk chair. But John just kept looking at her.
Why does he give a shit? Shaw asked herself, channeling all of her anger into shoving past him and exiting the subway car.
He lurked for the rest of the day, and insisted on staying the night. Shaw's rage burned like acid in her stomach as she laid in bed, and her dreams were fraught with images of Root in danger.
In the early hours of the morning, barely five o'clock, Shaw lurched awake.
A phone was ringing.
It took her a few seconds to process this, then she jolted up.
She turned to locate the source. It was hers, sitting near her cot.
She lunged to it, sure that it was Root calling. At least she could talk to her, if she was in trouble. But Shaw felt sick thinking of the implications of this.
She reached the phone and saw that it was an unknown number. Immediately, she hit the button to answer the call.
"Root?" Shaw asked, too worried to be disgusted by the desperation in her voice.
And then, instead of Root's voice, the Machine started to rattle off numbers in her ear. Shaw hurriedly got up and went to the subway car, scrambling to write them down.
There were three sets.
She hung up the phone when the Machine beeped and then went silent on the other end of the line. She felt simultaneously drained and filled to bursting with despair and something else.
Reese was sleepily sitting up on the bench where he was spending the night, and Finch had come to stand in the doorway. He came to look over her shoulder and started to boot up the computer to research the strings of numbers she'd transcribed.
But Shaw didn't need to look them up. She knew whose numbers she had receiving. Two of them, anyway. Not because she had them memorized, but because the timing was too spot on. She was only surprised that there were three numbers instead of only hearing two.
"Root and Evans, but who's the third one?" she asked Finch. He was beginning to type something. "His girlfriend?"
Then a picture of a young Indian woman popped up on the screen.
"Divya Makkar," Finch read the girl's name. Because really, she wasn't a woman. She looked like a college student. Shaw wondered who she was and why her number was included.
Finch looked up the other two and confirmed Shaw's suspicions. Root and Evans. She swallowed hard, and jerked away when Reese put a hand on her shoulder from behind.
"How long will it take me to get to… Wisconsin?" she asked, looking at the map.
"You can't-"
"Like hell I can't," Shaw snarled at Harold, her temper flaring. "The Machine called me. On my phone. I won't be in the city. Samaritan won't be breathing down my neck once I get out of town."
"If you get out of town. They're going to try to kill you as soon as they spot you on their feeds," John said. Shaw contemplated this. He was right, of course. She would need to be disguised in order to get past their security cameras.
Her mind was racing, thinking of Root in danger. Shaw found the thought of losing her unbearable. It was hard enough with Root traipsing across the country, virtually unreachable, but if Root died… The Machine would be screwed without Root's help. Root was too important.
Shaw was startled to find that she thought it was worth the risk of dying herself to prevent the same from happening to Root.
Luckily, she was wrenched out of the confusion of this discovery, because it was the same thought that caused her mind to form an escape route.
"You can take me out in a body bag," she said, looking up at Reese. His eyes narrowed like he thought she was making a distasteful joke.
"You pretended I was dead once, why not do it again?" she continued, turning to Finch. He didn't look thrilled. "Get that sad sack- Leon or Leo or whatever his name is. He can take me outside the city and you can meet me with a car and I'll go after them. You two can stay here, safe and sound in this bunker from hell."
She had brushed past Finch and was already gathering up some clothes from beside her cot and shoving them into the duffle bag.
"Shaw…" Reese was going to try to convince her to stay. She could tell. He had followed her and was standing facing her in his white undershirt and boxers, his mouth an apologetic grimace.
"Look, Reese. Either you help me out of here, or I'm doing it by myself," she told him, and knew he could tell she wasn't bluffing. She lifted the head of the mattress and pulled out the knife that she had threatened him with when he had walked in on Root and herself.
God, it's been weeks. And what have I done since then? Nothing. Watched Root.
She saw Finch's eyebrows raise when he approached and saw that she'd been hiding the knife. Guess he didn't hear about that little incident.
But Reese remembered, and the appearance of the knife had driven home how serious Shaw was. She had been so quick to throw herself in front of Root then. And he knew that there was no keeping Shaw in the subway station now.
Not when Root's number had come up. Not when the Machine and specifically called Shaw with that information.
"Okay," Reese said. Shaw found herself smiling at him a little. "Give me a few hours. I'll get Leon and Lionel to meet us. If we're going to do this, I want to make sure we do it right. Otherwise we're all going to get caught. And if we're all in trouble, no one is going to be able to make it to Root."
He was right. She knew he was right. But it didn't make it any easier to sit around, waiting.
It was almost eight in the morning when the sound from the computer picked up, and Shaw listened anxiously to the familiar sounds of Root's morning routine. By nine, Shaw and Finch heard Root and Evans exiting their vehicle.
The point that represented Root had stopped at the outskirts of Neshkoro when Shaw heard Root start to speak to someone new. She recognized the playful lilt in Root's voice.
"You know smoking kills?"
"Yeah well… doubt I'm gonna die from lung cancer."
"Who is that?" Finch asked, looking at Shaw with worry written all over his face. Shaw didn't know the voice. But it was definitely a female, and Root had definitely turned on the charm, which Shaw didn't love.
"And why is that?" Root asked.
"Well first of all, I don't smoke," the second voice said. It sounded a little surly, and Shaw knew Root was probably enjoying punching the woman's buttons. She's supposed to annoy me like that, she thought, and then felt disgusted with herself for feeling something akin to jealousy. Particularly when Root was in danger, possibly from this woman she was speaking to. "I got a message, told me to pick up a pack. Said I should talk to you outside because the threat level is higher than expected. We're supposed to wait until tomorrow."
Shaw thought she understood now what was happening.
"I bet she's one of the Machine's people," Shaw said. Finch nodded. "But why wait until tomorrow?"
"Because the Machine knows you're coming," Finch said quietly, avoiding looking at her. Shaw saw that he was probably right and her hands clenched into tight fists at her side. Root needed her, and she was just standing around, waiting for John to show up again.
By the end of the conversation between Root and the second person, they confirmed that the woman's voice belonged to their third number: Divya. Shaw felt angry at Root. She'd tried to convince Divya not to be involved because it was dangerous. Shaw knew that it was too late for that. She could tell just by the Indian girl's voice.
She was hauled out of town in a black body bag, on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance that Leon Tao had reluctantly agreed to drive under the condition that she didn't try to murder him this time. She agreed with a smug smirk.
"Think you could have slung me around a little more?" she asked in annoyance as the bag was unzipped and she saw Leon's face.
"Oh I'm sorry," he said, sarcastic. "Next time we're pretending you're dead I'll make sure I bring a limo, princess."
"What'd you call me?" she asked, swinging her legs down from the gurney and taking a menacing step towards him. He shrank back.
"Ok, woah. Calm down," he shook his head.
Reese appeared in the open door of the ambulance and put out a hand to help Shaw down. She ignored the gesture and jumped down.
Sameen had never been happier to be outside. Even with snow on the ground and the sky filled with clouds that promised to bring a fresh layer of white powder. Even with the knowledge that she was only outside to try to save Root's ass. She couldn't help but smile a little as icy air burned her lungs.
"Lay low. It doesn't matter that you'll be in a different state, if Samaritan sees you they're still going to try to kill you. So keep a distance until you know more, ok?" Reese said. Shaw nodded, annoyed, and slowly took in her surroundings. They'd already been through all of this.
"Shaw," Reese said. She turned to look at him, zipping up her leather jacket and shoving her hands into the pockets. He was drawn.
"Do me a favor?" he asked. She nodded again and he tried to look something like happy. "Be safe out there."
She smiled.
"Don't get soft on me, John," she told him, reaching out and hitting his arm. His own smile became more genuine and he extended a gun for her. She examined it greedily, excited by the prospect of finally getting some action.
"I packed you some other supplies in the trunk. I'd avoid getting in a wreck. Wouldn't want you to blow up," he said. Leon gave him an alarmed look, but Shaw was as close to giddy as she ever got.
With that, she turned to the little black Porsche 911. It wasn't her top choice for a sports car, but it would certainly do the trick of racing her across the country.
Shaw had a fifteen hour drive ahead of herself. Thirteen if she pushed it, but she'd promised Harold that she wouldn't speed too much. It would only increase the risk of her being caught.
Fifteen hours until she was in the same town as Root. She swallowed to try to make her throat stop feeling quite so constricted. It didn't help.
The car accelerated away from New York, the subway station, and their little team. She watched John and Leon shrink in the rearview mirror and then disappear as she turned a corner.
Shaw had been driving for a few hours and the sky was beginning to get dark when she received a text from Root saying that they were in a holding pattern and asking how she was holding up in the subway station. Now that Shaw was on the move, she felt electric with anger. She sent a quick text in reply asking Root to call her. She wanted desperately to hear the brunette's voice and to chew her out now that she wasn't under Finch and Reese's supervision.
Why couldn't Root see that she was putting herself in danger? Why couldn't she be more careful? Why didn't she get that Shaw needed her to be safe so that she could get back to New York. To Shaw.
God damn it. She wanted so much to feel Root against her. To crush their bodies together and sink her teeth into that pale, smooth skin. She wanted to see that irritating, perfect smirk and those ridiculously over-sized eyes that made her heart race and her stomach burn.
It wasn't long before the cell phone rang and Shaw answered it on the first ring.
"What's the plan?" Shaw asked, fuming. "You gonna run around from warehouse to warehouse until you get killed? You're not even destroying them, you're just putting yourself in enemy territory with a made up name, hoping they don't shoot you, then running away to the next bad situation."
"We can't destroy them yet," Root told her. Shaw hated how calm Root's voice sounded. "This isn't a job for a hammer. Not yet. Right now, all I can do is plant a seed at each facility. All I need is for one worker to doubt their employers."
"A seed?" Shaw growled. How could Root be so stupid? How could she think that this stupid metaphor was enough to win a war. "Root, we need a whole lot more than one seed here. We need the whole god damn forest if we want to win."
"All it takes is one person to change everything. Every one of those single people at each location? That's the forest."
The reply was unsatisfactory. Shaw wished she could grab Root and shake some sense into her.
"Yeah? And what happens when one of those people gets cold feet?" Shaw asked, pausing. "Or gets cut down?"
Shaw was thinking of Divya. Of how Root had tried to convince the girl not to help. But she realized that she couldn't say anything more pointed if she wanted to keep Root in the dark. And she didn't want to give Root a chance to tell her to go back to the city and hide.
"Root?" Shaw asked, wondering if Root was still on the other end of the call, because it had been a long couple of seconds and Root hadn't said anything back.
"Let's hope that doesn't happen," Root finally said. Something like guilt grew in Shaw's chest for making Root's voice become so small and worried.
Shaw drove through the night, unrelentingly directing the car towards Root. She drove with the windows down for as long as she could stand the cold, inhaling the winter wind with gusto just because she could. She was so glad to be out of the subway that she hardly felt the nagging draw of sleep and hunger.
It was past two in the morning when she crossed the border into Wisconsin.
The snow on the sides of the road glowed eerily white as she slowed from the highway speed and got closer to the little place where Root, Evans, and Divya were.
Shaw knew exactly where Root and Evans were staying, at the Super Eight in Wautoma, a few miles North of Neshkoro proper. But now, faced with the very real possibility of seeing Root, she suddenly found herself incapable.
She couldn't explain it. She ached with the need to see Root, but the thought of looking into those brown eyes made her stomach churn unpleasantly. What if things were different now that she was out of her prison? What if whatever it was that they were doing, this thing that they'd avoided naming, simply evaporated once they were apart for so long and and they were both out in the real world.
Instead of lurking outside of the motel, she asked Finch to point her in the direction of Divya's place.
She stopped the car at the address she'd been given. It was a single-story house with a front porch that might as well have been a snowdrift. A beaten up sedan was parked beside the house in a shoveled drive, and all of the windows were dark.
Shaw sat in the idling sports car, not sure what to do next.
Eventually, she decided to walk around and get a feel for the girl. Shaw had heard her talking about her mother earlier, and guessed now that Divya lived by herself in this house hidden away in a wooded area with no streetlights or neighbors. She didn't expect to see much of anything, but she was beginning to feel the draw of sleep and the prospect of her feet in the snow and dirt was appealing.
The car door swung shut behind herself, Shaw shoved her hands into her pockets, one cradling the handgun John had given her, and picked her way across the yard, trying as hard as she could to avoid leaving too much of a trail behind her.
There was nothing of interest inside the car in the driveway, so she headed towards the front porch, her footsteps softly crunching in the icy snow accumulated there.
She thought of the muffled sounds she had been hearing periodically through the bug on the Order of Lenin. Some of the sounds had almost certainly been Root's feet in snow just like this. And when she had called in the evenings, explaining that she'd left Evans inside, she had probably stood outside on nights like this one- clear navy sky above, pristine ivory snow under foot.
Shaw could imagine Root, a hat pulled down over her eyebrows. Those hats she liked to wear always struck Shaw as a little goofy looking, but it was- Cute? Her heart pounded in her chest as she imagined the fog of Root's breath rising from those beautiful lips, her eyes bright and a cheerful grin on her face as she teased Shaw for something. At the thought of this image that was half-memory, half-daydream, Shaw found herself smiling.
Her throat was so tight it hurt.
Am I getting sick? She took mental note of her body's state. She was pretty tired, and more than a little cold, but the ache in her throat didn't seem to be a sign of illness. And anyway, while she was running through a checklist of possible symptoms, the ache had subsided.
She wondered if Root was well and healthy, what with traversing the country in an endless zigzag.
As soon as Root re-entered her mind, her throat tightened again, the ache expanding down into her chest like she was filling with lead and hardening. It wasn't illness. It wasn't cold. It was just Root that was making Shaw feel this way.
Sameen paused in the middle of the porch and sniffed against the cold that was making her nose run.
In the pale light of the moon, something moved in the window.
Shit.
There wasn't anywhere for her to hide. She was in the middle of the snowy porch with no trees or furniture or anything else to conceal her dark shape. She hoped that whoever was inside hadn't noticed her. It was dark enough that that was possible.
She stayed very still for a few seconds, cursing herself.
She had screwed up. How did I screw up? She was out of practice. But it was more than that. Yes, she'd been out of the game for over a month, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that her mind was foggy with thoughts of Root.
She hated Root for messing with her brain like this. No, she realized. She didn't hate Root. She hated herself, maybe, but not Root.
When there was no other sign that anyone was awake, Shaw started to doubt herself. She retreated back to the car and drove to a motel up the road from where Root and Evans were staying.
Luckily, there was a lazy teenager behind the counter. His peach fuzz beard made him look dirty. He clearly thought it made him look masculine. Shaw was impatient with him before he'd opened his mouth.
"I need a room for a couple of hours," she told him, surly with sleep deprivation. He raised his eyebrows and smirked at her. She gave him a threatening look that made him hurry through the check-in process as quickly as he could.
She laid down on top of the bed spread, exhausted and pissed that she was in a holding pattern again and that she couldn't sleep in the strange place. It was too quiet. There was no low hum like there was in the subway station. Plus, she could feel a strange, almost magnetic pull. Like her body knew that Root was nearby.
God, I'm stupid, she thought to herself, rolling onto her side to stare at the faded curtains.