Thanks for continuing to come back for more of this crazy-long story and for letting me know how much you're enjoying it! Chapter fifty-four should be posted this coming Friday, December 4th.


Root awoke. She wasn't sure if she'd fallen asleep or passed out. She felt like it might have been the latter. Her mouth was dry, her head was pounding, and her body was stiff from being twisted uncomfortably on the cement floor of the subway station.

She willed herself to open her eyes, and saw that the dog was laying a few feet away, his chin on his front paws. His forlorn eyes were looking directly into her own, almost like he'd been waiting for her to wake up.

Root shifted her weight to turn away from him. She couldn't take his added sadness' weight. She already had too much.

When she rolled onto her side, something hard dug into her hip painfully. Still dopey with sleep, Root struggled to feel around beneath her. There was something inside of her jacket. Something small and uncomfortable. Her hand slipped inside and found it.

She didn't need to look at the little piece of metal to know what it was.

The Order of Lenin.

As soon as she realized what it was, her throat constricted.

Shaw had slipped it into her pocket at some point before leaving. Before going wherever it was that the Machine had sent her. Before leaping headfirst into danger. Before disappearing, and maybe never coming home.

Root closed the fingers of her left hand on the medal so tightly that it hurt.

Her eyes squeezed shut once more, burning with fresh tears, and she suddenly lurched with a full-body sob that caught her by surprise. She sucked in a shaking breath and held it, trying to calm herself. Trying not to think about Shaw and the others in danger. Trying not to think about Harold. But of course, the more that she tried to repress those thoughts, they flooded her. A scabbed-over wound scraped and torn open.

She gasped another sob despite desperately trying to stop herself.

Don't cry. She focused on the words, and her head pounded when she held in another breath.

The dog whined, startlingly close, and a wet tongue lapped at her face. She didn't open her eyes, just put out her empty hand to push him away.

Instead of leaving Root alone, Bear curled up, his back against her knees.

His concern had broken her concentration. She pulled the medal from her pocket, still tightly gripped in her hand, and held it close against her chest. Fresh tears dripped off of the bridge of her nose onto the ground as she cried anew.

At some point, she fell asleep again.


Hours or days later, Root realized that the dog had moved.

Weakly, she got up and went to look for him. She found him asleep under Finch's desk.

When Bear heard her footsteps, his head lifted hopefully. But he recognized her face, swollen from crying, and he put his head down once more on his paws, grief-stricken.

There was no sign of the others. The station was still silent and cold, and Root was still alone.

Alone and trembling.

She had no idea how much time had passed. It somehow felt simultaneously like only moments ago the others had left and that she'd been there crying for years.

Bear's dishes were empty, and she wondered how long he'd gone without food. She filled them with water and the dry chow that they always kept for him, but he made no move towards them.

"You have to eat," she told him. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.

The dog just looked at her, not even bothering to lift his head. She thought it looked like he understood everything that had gone on, and was mourning.

"Come on," she told him, pointing at the dish. He got up, turned around, and lay down once more, facing the other direction.

He had to be hungry. Root knew that it must have been quite a while that they were alone, because she realized that he own stomach felt completely raw.

Thinking that it might entice Bear, she tried to eat some of the food that had been left in the little refrigerator. But when she took a bite, she felt like throwing up. She could barely swallow.

Her mind kept threatening to consume her again with the grief of losing Harold and the predicted demise of Shaw, Reese, and Fusco. It occurred to her suddenly that the others had left Harold there, on the first landing of the stairwell. Reese had put his body down so that he was laying peacefully on his back, hands folded on his stomach.

She had to see him. She wanted to sit with him. Apologize to him. She went to the stairs and slowly walked up them, feeling light-headed as she reached the landing.

But he wasn't there. And the sheet that Reese had drawn over him was gone too. All that was left was a bloodstain. Surprisingly small.

She didn't understand for a minute, standing in stunned, confused silence. And then she remembered that Shaw had said something to John, and that John had mentioned Zoe Morgan. The woman must have come while Root was asleep.

She had missed her opportunity to say one last, private goodbye. Harold was gone. Increasingly gone. That didn't make sense, Root knew. He couldn't be more gone, but her heart raced with panic at the thought of not seeing him again. The reality of her loss hit her once more.

The creator of the Machine had been killed. Her friend. Everything he did was so good. So worthy of veneration. And, not for the first time, he would be laid to rest with only a handful or people even aware of his name. And even that was his assumed name. His memorial would be attended by only a handful of people, when hundreds if not thousands upon thousands of people owed him their lives.

Root included herself in the group that he had saved. Both literally— when he had told Shaw that they couldn't leave her behind in that enormous empty warehouse from which the Machine had moved Herself— and metaphorically.

He had helped teach her that her methods were flawed. That everyone mattered. And he had given her a home and a family, albeit unintentionally. If he hadn't locked her up in the library, she never would have gotten to know Shaw.

The panic was also because it was alarming that Root could have been so unaware of what was going on around her while she grieved.

How could she have slept through Harold being taken away? Zoe wouldn't have come alone, which meant that multiple people had been there, in the subway station, and Root hadn't noticed. Was she really that out of it? And if so, what would happen if someone else came to the station? Someone who wasn't there to help? What if Martine found the station, or any other of Decima's goons? She would be caught off guard, and probably wouldn't even have time to fight back. To defend herself.

Her heart raced in her chest and she could feel herself getting lightheaded.

Root needed to lay down again.

She turned and saw that the dog was sitting near the subway car, watching her.

With unsteady steps, Root went back down the stairs and walked over to the bed. The two mattresses pushed together. The blankets drawn flat and smooth. Tidy. Just like Sameen liked them.

Sameen, who wasn't there.

The bed looked so big now. As if Root would disappear into it if she sat down. It was so empty.

Her throat drew tight and her head pulsated. She was going to cry again, and that seemed impossible because she'd already cried so much that she was surprised there was any liquid left inside of her to lose.

She couldn't do it. She couldn't bring herself to get into the bed that had been Shaw's before it had ever been partially Root's.

Just when she was about to go back to lay down on the floor, she hear the quiet clicking of Bear's nails on the floor. He passed her and hopped up onto the bed, walking gingerly up the length of the cots to curl up near the pillows.

He looked back at her, and Root could have sworn that he was trying to get her to follow. She sat down at the foot of the bed and pulled off her shoes, stalling so that she wouldn't have to face the bed that Shaw was supposed to share with her.

But after she'd sat for a minute, she looked back at Bear. He was still watching her.

Slowly, she scooted up until she was beside him, shaking with unshed tears. He got up and moved to sit on her lap. And then she broke down again.

She sobbed into the dog's fur, deep heaving sobs that made her ache all over, and he turned his head to lick at her fingers twisting in the hair on his back.

His body was overly warm on her lap, but it would never be enough to take the edge off of the cold emptiness. The empty bed in the empty hideout where Root and Bear had been left behind.


Shaw lurched awake. Her hand hurt so much that it was unsettling her stomach and the pain was creeping up her arm and into her elbow. Even her head was aching dully, a tightness behind her eyes.

She had been dreaming of Harold. Again. For the third time in as many days.

Dreaming about the last words he'd ever spoken, which had been to her. Only to her. It was unfair, when John had been right there, and when she was the least likely to appreciate any sentimentality.

And he had struggled to speak those words, with blood on his lips.

"It's okay," he had managed.

In retrospect, Shaw knew that they were supposed to be meaningful words, but she still didn't feel as much as she knew that she should. Just anger. Because it wasn't okay.

It hadn't just been in the US that bombs had gone off. There had been a few scattered across the globe. Japan. England. Germany. Argentina. Russia. India. France. Samaritan had spread itself too thin. The influence of the artificial intelligence extended far and wide, but Samaritan and Greer had underestimated the Machine. And Greer had counted on Samaritan to protect itself with guardians that were bought instead of earned.

He hadn't counted on the Machine being able to get so many people on its own side. Hadn't counted on all of the average men and women whose loved ones had been twisted, taken advantage of, and tossed aside by Samaritan. Men and women, so-called weak civilians, who were offered a chance to stop this conglomerate of companies all manipulated by a single force. Offered a chance to get justice.

The Machine told Shaw that Greer was in London when the attacks occurred. So the three of them— Shaw, Reese, and Fusco— had crossed the Atlantic.

Sameen wasn't clear on whether it had been intentional on the Machine's part to wait until Decima's head was away before waging war.

In any case, he must have realized that Samaritan was completely compromised, and that it left him vulnerable. Because try as the Machine might, it couldn't find Greer. There was no reason to believe he'd left the city, because the Machine was watching every camera, even watching from inside of Samaritan and waiting for the old man to try to interact with this AI, but he seemed to have disappeared. Just like all of the innocent people that he had employed and then eventually gotten rid of to protect himself. He was simply gone.

But although Greer was missing, there were other people that the Machine successfully caught wind of and sent Shaw, Reese, and Fusco after.

Multiple times over, they had followed the Machine's directions and found themselves battling past Samaritan's soldiers to enter a room where a handful of programmers were working at computers. The first few times, all of the people seemed determined but unafraid. And when faced with the Machine's people, they would simply shoot themselves.

By the fourth and fifth time that they were sent out by the Machine, it was clear that these were the men and women from the bottom of the barrel. A last attempt to try to salvage Samaritan's infrastructure to renew Decima's power. They were frantic, wrought with despair, and at a loss as to what they should do to keep Samaritan from completely disintegrating. But they had still been fed the lines that Samaritan used to keep its people loyal: if you kill yourself to protect the program, your family will be taken care of. It was a lie, of course. Or the "care" provided was simply not enough for the remaining loved ones to be satisfied when faced with the loss of a member of their family. Especially not now, when Samaritan couldn't protect itself, much less all of the people that made up the families of these people.

Samaritan treated its employees like they were disposable. Paper cups at the dentist— used and trashed. Tossed into a landfill.

Each time that they witnessed a suicide, Shaw and Reese grew angrier. More impatient.

It was only made worse by the fact that at the end of the day, they returned to a spartan, unoccupied office to sleep on faded navy wall-to-wall carpet and prepare for their next raid. They sat in sullen silence, punctuated by bickering that drove Fusco up the wall. He became so frustrated with them that he would retreat into the records room just to get away from them.

They spent the better part of their time waiting for news. For instructions that came as a chatter in Shaw's ear. She still hadn't gotten used to it. And while it did help her keep one step ahead of whatever grunts and gunmen Samaritan sent to protect its glorified IT department, and it did help make up for the disadvantage of having a broken thumb, she wished that the Machine would stop. She hated it.

She hated the way that it didn't answer her questions directly. The way it picked and chose what it wanted her to know. And when she did have a quiet second to ask it questions not related to their missions, she couldn't bring herself to ask what she really wanted to know out of fear that it wouldn't tell her. Or, if it did, that she wouldn't like the answer.

Questions like 'Was there something more that I should have done?' Or 'Where is Root?' 'Is Bear protecting her like I told him to?' and 'Is she okay?' Or questions that the Machine wouldn't know the answer to, but Shaw desperately wanted to know. 'Was Harold in pain?'


Time passed strangely in the subway station. The day and night were indistinguishable. Because there was no sun rising and setting, and because Root found little motivation to get up out of bed. She drifted in and out of sleep. Was prone to bouts of tears. When she did get up, Bear was always close by. Like he was trying to remind her that she wasn't completely alone.

One morning (Or afternoon? Evening? Did it matter?) it occurred to her that instead of simply tracing the images on the Order of Lenin with the tip of her finger, she should check it for some sort of bug. Shaw had used it to keep track of Root without asking before, and she wanted to know if Sameen was watching her now. She turned the medal over in her hand, pulling the ribbon apart.

There was no tracker now. No tiny recording device. Nothing.

It seemed that Shaw had no ulterior motive for giving the Order of Lenin to Root this time around. Instead, it really did appear that it was a gesture. That Root was forgiven, or might have been someday. Something to remember Shaw by. Something to remind Root that Shaw cared. Or had cared once. There was no way of knowing if Sameen still cared now. And there was no way of knowing if Sameen would make it through this fight so that Root could try to explain why she'd done what she'd done.

Root thought back to the last moments that Shaw had still been there. Root decided that Shaw must have put it in the pocket of her jacket when she had hugged her and said… whatever it was that she'd said in Root's ear. Root wondered still if it had been intentional, speaking into the ear that Root couldn't hear out of anymore. Had it been an instruction? A request? An accusation? What? Root didn't know for sure, but the medal suggested that it had been something… kind?

It could have been that Shaw had said the same words that Root herself had landed on as she struggled to overcome her panic attack. Maybe Shaw had told Root that she loved her. That was ridiculous. Stupid.

Right?

Root tightened her hand on the Order of Lenin.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Whatever it was, it had been spoken right after Shaw had crushed Root to her chest. Right before she'd kissed her. Right as she slipped the medal into the pocket of Root's jacket. It didn't seem too farfetched to think that Shaw could have said something sweet in the last moment before she left Root alone. Weeping.

Or the Order of Lenin could have been left with Root because Shaw had attached memories of Root to the little medal, and didn't want anything to do with them anymore. Maybe the lack of tracking device this time around meant that Shaw didn't care where Root was.

Then why would she have kissed me?

As quickly as the thought entered Root's mind, a rebuttal was formed: because Shaw wanted Root to stay, and it was the quickest way to get Root to shut up and do as she was told. A means to an end.

Root had convinced herself of this once before, that Shaw was using Root's emotions as a way to get what she wanted, and she had been wrong then. So she didn't want to believe it could be true now. The kiss had been genuine. It had to have been.

But Root wasn't so sure, and couldn't let herself dwell on that memory of the full-fledged panic attack. It was too easy to slip back into the horror of that day and end up fighting for oxygen all over again. So she stood up from the bed, determined to do something. Her head spun with the sudden rush of blood, and she had to sit down on the edge of the mattress until she could see again.

When she calmed, Bear was sitting in front of her, his front paws half an inch from the tips of her toes, his chin hovering at her knees.

She would go outside, Root decided. She would take Bear and they would get some air. It could only do them good. There was no food left for either of them, not that either one of them had been eating much of anything, and she was fairly sure that the dog had been sneaking into the black tunnels extending from the station to relieve himself.

Shaking, she stood, slower this time. Bear stood up as well, looking up into her face curiously.

She silently walked to the subway car, found his lead and a gun, and started toward the steps.

Out on the streets, she let Bear lead her, pulling on the leash enthusiastically and gluing his nose to the ground, then holding his head high. It was like he was looking for something. Finch or Reese or Shaw. Root didn't know.

When people got to close to them on the sidewalk, the dog growled, deep in his throat. Root kept her free hand on the gun in her pocket, the Order of Lenin pressed against her knuckles. She hardly had the stamina to tug on his leash and tell him to quit. She felt like she was in a haze.

And then, he stopped. Purposefully. He looked up at her, his tongue hanging out proudly, and she realized he wanted her to acknowledge something.

She looked up at the door that he was sitting outside of.

It was the library.

He had found the way back to their old hideout.

Root wanted to turn around and leave. Wanted to get as far from the library as possible, because it had been infiltrated and because she couldn't stand the thought of going to Harold's old space. When she stepped backwards, trying to get Bear to come with her, the dog whined and pawed at the door.

She didn't know why she let the dog's desire win. Maybe because deep down, she wanted to see if Harold's books were still there. If the room where he had once kept her locked up was just as he'd left it.

They went inside quietly, Root keeping a wary eye out for any sign that they weren't alone.

But they were, of course.

Bear lay down on his old bed like he'd never left.

Broken glass littered the floor, and many of Harold's prized books had been torn from the shelves, pages crumpled and torn.

His computer looked as though it had been set on fire. Root wondered if he'd done that himself as he and John left to keep the intruders from accessing his files. It seemed likely.

I'm sorry, Harold. I know it's not enough. Root found herself thinking the same words that she'd said once upon a time. When she had called to tell Harold that he would have to leave the library behind and run, never looking back. Just before they had all parted ways with their brand new cover identities that she had made into blind spots for Samaritan. It had been a lame apology that she offered because she didn't know what else to say. She had already known then that there was almost no way that they would all make it through the coming war alive, even as she told the others that all they could do was survive.

Sitting in the backseat of that car all of those many months ago, she hadn't guessed that it would be Harold that they would lose first. She had been almost completely certain at that point that it would be her that died first. Possibly Reese, throwing himself in front of Finch.

Shaw had been silent in the driver's seat, looking confused and scared when Root caught her eye in the rear view mirror. She had not angrily interrupted, as she usually did. Hadn't offered her opinion condescendingly.

Once Root had started to explain their situation, all three of them, Finch, Shaw, and Reese, had fallen mute.

And as they had parted on the sidewalk, Shaw and Root had looked at one another and it had been the first time that Root had felt like she had really seen Sameen. It had been the first time that Root had thought that maybe Shaw didn't just see her as useful. As more than just a coworker, maybe.

Shaw had nodded at her. Acknowledging the danger they were facing, and the inevitability of having to leave people behind. The inevitability of having to be on your own. But Root had hoped that someday, maybe they would find their way back to one another. Someday, maybe the world would be less scary and treacherous. And they would be safe.

And part of her wish had come true. They had found their way back to one another.

But then, as always, they had to part. Again and again. Every time they were reunited it seemed that they were closer than before. And every time they were forced to separate, it hurt even more.

How had this happened?

When everything was over, there was supposed to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Some possibility of good.

But Root didn't see any.

Where was the hope in the bottom of Pandora's box? How could things just keep getting darker, endlessly black, with no sign that they would ever get better? How had Root ended up the only one left in New York, standing in the destroyed remnants of Harold's old library? How could Harold be gone?

She put a hand on the dirty window, trying in vain to wipe it clear so she could look out at the New Yorkers walking on the street down below.

From behind her, there was a sudden commotion, and Bear growled and ran off down the hall towards the intruders. Root spun, pulling her gun from inside of her jacket and aiming after the dog.