A/N: Hi my dear readers. I'm sorry for taking so long to update. I've been a bit busy with college stuff and hadn't had the much time to put into this. Anyway, I want to tell you that this fic is near its end now. I still don't know if I'll do one or two more chapters, but it won't be longer than that, and I'll do my best to deliver the new chapters as fast as I can. Thank you to everyone who is reading and commenting. You guys make my day :)
Shaw went to Root's fridge. She looked at the provisions inside, curling her top lip when she didn't find any alcohol in it.
"Don't you have anything to drink in here?" Shaw asked.
Root chuckled lightly.
"Tap water?" she suggested and she heard Shaw growl. The brunette emerged from the kitchen empty handed.
Root was staring at the bright laptop screen, not that she was reading anything on it, but her gaze froze on it while her brain worked on a plan.
"Shouldn't we call Finch and Reese, let them know what we found?" Shaw asked, standing in front of Root's desk, across from her. Root blinked as Shaw's voice interrupted her thoughts, but she didn't answer.
Shaw knew what that silent meant. Root didn't want to bring anyone else into her plan, probably not even Shaw, so she was recoiling. Shaw was sure that if the hacker continued in this trail of thought, she would try to do whatever needed to be done by herself.
Shaw rolled her eyes. She had seen this happened before.
"Root, tell me you're not considering the stupid possibility of doing whatever it is you're planning on doing alone." She paused, waiting for Root to look at her. "Because that's just not gonna happen."
Root stared at her for a while, before looking away in silence. Shaw was sure she was waiting for the Machine to tell her something, to tell her what to do, what would increase their odds of success. But from Root's disappointed expression, the Machine was probably not saying anything at all.
"I think it's better if I do this by myself." Root said, still looking away to some indefinite point of the far wall of the living room.
"Isn't it always?" Shaw retorted, sarcastically. "Maybe this time I won't be there to save you." She added before walking away from the desk, turning her back on Root.
Root didn't like the comment.
"Do I need to remind you of all the times I saved your life?" Root said, emphasizing the pronouns.
Shaw turned on her heels, placing both palm on the desk and leaning in, staring at Root with darting eyes.
"You or the Machine?"
Root tensed as the words hit her, her chin trembling slightly. Her glistening eyes locked with Sameen's.
"That is not fair." Root said.
"What? Did I strike a chord?" Shaw asked.
Root got up from her chair and turned away, ready to get as far from the other woman as possible. The aim of Shaw's words were to hurt her, and she had succeeded.
Shaw growled, she walked around the desk and grabbed Root's forearm, twisting it up, forcing her to turn around so they were face to face again. Root gasped.
"You're hurting me." Shaw said, but Shaw only tightened the grip on her forearm, standing closer. Too close.
Their eyes were locked. Even through the dim light of the living room, Root could see all the anger - and a trace of something else she couldn't quite identify - irradiating from Shaw's black orbs. She was finding it harder to keep her breath steady, but she tried to control it.
"What is it Shaw? Is this you trying to manipulate me again?" Root said venomously.
Shaw kept staring at her, wordless. Motionless. Her jaws clenched tight and her eyebrows pushed together, threatening.
Root managed a smirk, knowing that her smile was going to infuriate Shaw even more. She leaned in a bit closer.
"What is it that you want, Sameen?" Root enticed. "To kill me, or to kiss me?"
Shaw pursed her lips. She grabbed the collar of Root's jacket with her free hand, pulling the fabric of Root's shirt along, but before she had a chance to do anything else, a phone started ringing. It was Shaw's phone. She glanced one last time at Root before letting go of her and retreating to grab her phone.
Root composed herself, smirk still on, as she watched Shaw step away.
"Finch." Shaw said after picking up the phone. "Yeah, everything's fine." She put the phone on speaker and looked at Root. "Root's got something to tell you."
The next few days were spent at the subway station. After telling Finch what they had found they agreed to study the code in the safety of the subway.
Root and Finch would ramble computer stuff and Samaritan for hours every day. Reese and Shaw would just watch them from afar, thanking God every time the Machine gave them a number to handle, so that they wouldn't have to sit around, doing nothing, and hearing the nerds speak a foreign language.
Reese and Shaw were both occupying the subway car's blue seats, across from each other, cleaning their arsenal whilst Root was sitting on the other end of the car, behind the computers and wires on Harold's desk, typing on her laptop with the older man by her side. Shaw was disassembling a small handgun distractedly, her eyes lingering over Root's frame.
"You seem distracted." John denoted, looking at Shaw from the corner of his eye as he cleaned his own gun.
Shaw turned her head at him. She lifted one eyebrow in a silent "what?"
John chuckled blithely. "I remember you saying you were a pragmatist Shaw, however you seem to be putting a lot of doubt into some things lately."
Shaw kept deadpanning him, not saying a word, pretending to ignore his comment, when deep down she was chewing on the words, on what Reese meant by them. Shaw was a pragmatist indeed, she always took a practical approach to every situation, reasoning it, but not overthinking it, using people and things for what she needed without caring about side effects. Yet she had been overthinking a lot lately, about certain things, about a certain someone. Especially since that night, when Shaw admitted to Root she cared about her, when she had admitted to herself she cared about Root. When she kissed her. What led her to those words and actions, she didn't know. And now she wasn't sure how to deal with that reality. With the reality that she had felt something other than anger when she kissed Root.
"Kids." Root called, snapping Shaw out of her thoughts. "We have a plan."
Both of them paused the task at hand and got up, walking towards Root and Finch to hear what they had to say.
The plan seemed simple but at the same time dangerous. And while Root and Harold explained it, Shaw was actually disappointed with the endpoint.
"Wait, that means we're still not going to destroy Samaritan for good?" Shaw asked.
"Sameen, the game hasn't changed that much, we still don't have enough resources to bring Samaritan down." Root said.
"But with this we can disable Samaritan's ability to communicate with Decima and with anyone else while still letting it warn the Government to possible threats, in a way much like how the Machine did." Harold added.
Their plan was to plant a virus inside Samaritan's servers that would spread and change Samaritan's communication source code, crippling it, blocking it from communicating more than a single output, to a single destination - the pentagon. Samaritan would still operate in its entirety, watching everything and everyone, but it wouldn't be able to act or speak its artificial mind.
"Using a human analogy, this virus will cause a degeneration of Samaritan's motor neurons, it can't affect its cognitive functions, but it will cause a failure in Samaritan's speaking capacity." Harold explained.
"And won't it try to fight back and override this virus?" John asked.
Root and Harold exchanged a preoccupied glance.
"It will. And we will hope it won't be able to do so." Root answered with a weak grimace. "If we succeed, Samaritan will be unable to reshape the world. It will be unable to hunt down the Machine . We will set Her free again. You will be able to do your save the irrelevant numbers without worrying if Decima is after you. " Her smile evolved into a more powerful grin as she spoke.
Shaw shrugged in acceptance.
"Sound like it's worth giving it a try." Shaw said, pulling the slide of her handgun back and letting it go with a loud click.
Their plan was to ggo to the same facility that Root and Shaw had broken into almost a year before to produce the identity glitch for them four and Root's three other hackers, and plant the virus there. Harold stayed back in the subway station, monitoring everything from behind his computers. Reese, Shaw and Root were now on the top of the hill, staring down at the concrete structure from afar.
It was different since Root had last been there. There were more guards and security cameras protecting it.
There was no way they'd be able to get inside unnoticed this time. They had to use another tactic. Surprise and speed: Get in and get out as fast as possible before Samaritan could send more agents to kill them.
"Ready for some fun?" Root asked them, her eyes fixed on the facility the entire time.
"Thought you'd never ask." Shaw and Reese said in unison. They smiled at each other and started walking down the hill, Root in the middle, a gun in each hand, John by her left, carrying a rocket launcher on his shoulder and a machine-gun in his free hand, Shaw by her right, a grenade belt across her torso, two handguns tucked in the waistband of her black jeans as she held another machine-gun in her hands.
As they reached the fence that delimited the space around the buildings, John dropped on one knee, getting ready to fire his rocket. Shaw and Root covered their faces as John launched it, destroying the fence and the main gate of the facility. He dropped the barrel on the floor after, and the three of them ran inside, shooting every guard that crossed their path.
Once they reached the servers' room, Root placed her guns on a small table, took out her laptop and connected it into one of the main servers, starting to upload the virus as fast as she could. John and Shaw stayed at the entrance of the server room, one at each side of the door, taking down every guard that tried to intervene.
"Mr. Reese, Miss Shaw, there are Samaritan agents arriving the scene!" Harold warned them through their ear pieces.
"Root, how is that going?" John asked her as he rested the back of his head on the wall whilst a couple of guards fired a few bullets through the door entrance.
"You need to hold them a while longer." Root said.
John looked at Shaw, and she nodded, understanding what he meant without words. That's why Shaw liked working with John, they thought alike, read each other's minds like twins.
They advanced through the door, fearless, machine guns in hand, shooting down the remaining guards and moving to the broad hallway of the building they had exploded with the rocket. If they held the agents further back, it would be give them, and Root, more leeway to act after.
They spotted Greer's agents as they stepped inside the building. Martine leading the troops.
Shaw grinned when she saw her, fond of the idea of putting a bullet in Martine.
Samaritan's agents scattered, taking cover anywhere they could when Shaw threw two hand grenades at them.
The crossfire started immediately after. Shaw took down three agents, John four others. But there were still too many.
"Root, could you hurry up? We're gonna be out of ammo soon." Shaw yelled through the noise of fired bullets.
"A few more seconds, please." Root requested.
"John, Sameen, there is another group of agents entering through the back, they'll get to Miss Groves in seconds if no one stops them!" Harold informed them.
John exchanged another look with Shaw, silently asking her if she could handle Martine and her agents if we went to the back. Shaw nodded, and John hurried to the secondary entrance, taking a few borrowed grenades from Shaw.
Shaw resumed her task, aiming her machine-gun at two agents that tried to run towards her position, taking them down easily. There something wrong though. She couldn't spot Martine anywhere. She held her fire, in an attempt to lure Martine out of cover so that she could locate the blonde, but it didn't work. A few agents appeared from behind a pole, whom Shaw shot instantly, but there was still no sign of Martine.
Shaw threw her last grenade in the direction where she knew two agents were. She heard their cries as the grenade blew. She did her math, all agents that had come through the main door were down, except Martine. Taking a deep breath, Shaw dropped the machine gun and grabbed one of her handguns as she adventured out of cover, searching the space with her firearm ready to shoot at the slightest perceived movement.
That was when she felt something hard and cold against the back of her head. She pursed her lips realizing her mistake. Martine was behind her, holding a gun to her head.
"Hello, Shaw. It was about time for us to meet again." Martine said. Even without seeing her face, Shaw knew she had a smile on her lips. "Any last words?" Martine added, cocking the hammer of her gun.