A/N: Hello! This update took a little longer that I expected, but it's finally here. Thank you to everyone who is still reading and leaving comments and reviews. You guys are wonderful. Enjoy this one.
Root's world slowed down in that moment as the heat of Sameen's lips spread onto hers. She had wanted this for so long, dreamt about it so many times. However, this didn't feel right.
She lifted her hands to Shaw's shoulders, but instead of pulling the other woman closer and kiss her back, Root pulled her away, breaking the link between their lips. Root turned her head to the side, tilting it down a bit, her chin almost touching her own shoulder. She hadn't opened her eyes yet, not wanting to see the look on Shaw's face. Afraid of whatever she'd find there.
"I know what you're doing Shaw." Root said, forcing a sarcastic smile.
Shaw was taken aback by Root's reaction.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Shaw asked, offended.
Root remembered that day when Shaw's cover was blown. When Shaw discovered that Reese was working on saving Elias and she wanted so badly to go and help him. She remembered how Shaw acted to get the information she wanted from Root, how Shaw tried to use Root's feelings for her to get it from her.
Root chuckled sadly.
"You want me to include you in my plan of action." She lifted her eyes to meet Shaw's then.
With raised eyebrows, Shaw stared at her, unsure of what to say. What Root had said wasn't exactly wrong, she did want to be included in Root's plans, but she hadn't kissed her to achieve that.
"That's not – I mean…" Shaw stuttered.
The hacker let out another stifled chuckle before turning her back on Shaw.
"Good night, Sameen."
Shaw watched as she walked away.
"Root, come on!" Shaw called out, but Root didn't look back. With a sigh, Shaw paced back into the subway station, rubbing the back of her hand violently against her forehead, frustrated.
As she approached the street behind Claire's apartment building, alone, Root felt the knot in her throat tighten. She stopped on the sidewalk where she had once been laying. Her blood wasn't there anymore, but she knew that was the exact spot.
Numbly, Root looked around as if expecting Shaw to appear by her side, even though she hadn't invited her to come. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, biting it down as she remembered the night before; Shaw's lips on hers, that firm hand on her neck… The butterflies started flying in her chest, and she forced herself to shove the thoughts away, to the back of her mind.
She took a deep breath and resumed her way into the building, the street cameras in the vicinity already taken care of.
My building. Under the third step.
Root remembered Claire's message as she entered the building. She walked up the stairs and reached Claire's apartment door. Holding her gun in one hand, Root opened the door and checked the apartment carefully. After verifying that there was no one there, Root searched the place. Claire's computers, servers and all the things that filled the apartment before were now gone. Samaritan operatives had probably retrieved them. She looked for stairs, but the apartment was not a duplex and didn't have any. Root frowned.
My building.
Claire had never said apartment. There weren't stairs there but there were in the building. Root shook her head at her own lack of perspicacity. She walked back outside of the apartment and down the stairs, sitting down on the second step as she gazed at the third.
She studied the marble stone, hitting her knuckles on it and doing the same to step above. The sound was different, like behind the third step was an empty space. She grinned.
Taking a screwdriver from her jacket pocket, Root tried to find a way to displace the marble, but it wasn't really producing any effect.
"Do you need a hammer?"
Root was startled by the unexpected, but familiar, voice. She sighed after her instincts acknowledged that there was no threat there.
"You really can't stay away from me, can you?" Root retorted, putting on her best smirk when she turned to face Shaw, standing behind her with a hammer in her right hand.
Shaw scolded her with her gaze. "Just checking if you need a hand, which you clearly do."
"I can handle -" Root started, but Shaw cut her off.
"Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm usually the stubborn one so, just move aside, will you?" Shaw said, a rare smile on her features as she held the hammer up in her hands.
Root pursed her lips, containing her own grin as she tilted her head forward slightly, consenting with Shaw's demand.
Standing up and moving to the base of the stairs to grant Shaw enough space to manoeuvre, Root watched as the other woman swung the hammer backwards and then forward, the hard head of the tool thudding against the cold stone, breaking it into pieces and dust. Shaw repeated the action three more times before putting down the hammer and starting to move the broken pieces of marble to the side. Root kneeled down beside her, looking at the hole formed in the step. Inside of it was a hard-drive and a small notebook, whited by the dust. Shaw grabbed them, blowing the dust away and wiping off what remained with the back of her fingers before handing both items to Root.
Root turned the hard-drive in her hand for a while, then staring at the notebook on the other. She opened it but, as she was about to start reading what Claire had written, the Machine buzzed in her ear. Get. Out.
She didn't need any other encouragement.
"We have to leave. Now." She said whilst closing the notebook and standing up. Shaw followed her lead, as they ran out of the place, the Machine giving Root the needed instructions. They looked over their shoulder, when Claire's building was almost out of sight, and saw two black SUV's rounding the block. Luckily they didn't see them.
Shaw was disassembling her gun and putting everything back together as she observed Root studying the items they'd found in Claire's building. The hacker's eyes fixed on the laptop in front of her, the hard-drive connected to it, the notebook open between the desk and her left hand.
They were at Root's most recent identity's house. The place wasn't really big, just one bedroom, one bathroom, kitchen and a small living room, but it was cosy.
Shaw was starting to disassemble the gun for the fourth time when Root spoke up.
"You're not helping." Root said, staring at the gun pieces in Shaw's hands and then back into her eyes.
Shaw growled, but eventually let go of the metallic parts, resting them on the small table.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to distract you." She said, an annoyed tone in her voice.
"It's hard not to be distracted when you're around." Root teased, a grin in her face. But she quickly regretted her line and backtracked the playfulness, suppressing her grin and staring back at the computer screen. After all, Shaw had kissed her the night before, and Root wasn't sure of how to handle that occurrence. She wasn't sure what it meant or if something had changed. She wasn't sure if it was okay to keep the innuendos with Shaw.
Shaw didn't seem to notice her hesitation nor act any different from what was her usual response to Root's innuendos. And Root was somewhat thankful for that.
"Have you found anything interesting there, so far?" Shaw asked after a good half an hour.
Root shrugged. "This contains pretty much everything Claire did to defeat the AIs Samaritan put her up against through her recruitment," Root explained, as she kept fumbling the notebook in her hand and tapping on the laptop, "But, it's nothing that we can use agai-"
Root stopped abruptly, her eyes narrowing and her mouth opening slightly. Shaw lifted her gaze at her then, intrigued by the sudden freeze.
"Root?" She asked in an attempt to snap Root back into talking. But Root's eyes kept wondering over whatever she was seeing on that screen, her expression changing millimetrically every second through as realization started to hit her.
Shaw got up and walked around the desk till she was standing beside Root. She looked at the computer in hopes of seeing something she'd understand and that would explain Root's behaviour, but the lines of code filling the black screen weren't really her language. She called Root again, more vigorously this time, asking to be filled in.
"Claire had assess to parts of Samaritan's code. To a tiny fraction of it, but still. It's all here. And her strategy to break the Machine too." Root started.
Shaw wasn't yet sure of what was the big deal about that, so she just waited for Root to continue.
"Remember when Claire said Samaritan's code is weaker than the Machine's?" Root asked, tilting her head up to find Shaw's.
Shaw nodded, and Root stared back into the laptop screen.
"Claire's plan was good. Only not good enough against the Machine." Root paused, a wicked smile appearing on her lips. "I think I can adapt it to be good enough against Samaritan."