Author's Note: Apologies for the delay between parts. I had some fairly major surgery mid-June, and some entirely optimistic and naive thoughts about what I could do with all that time lying around afterwards.

Ho, ho, ho. Not so much.

I am getting better now, but this is the first time since the surgery that I've really been able to focus enough to write - the whole thing has taken a whole lot of physical and emotional energy out of me, despite having no complications as of yet. Hopefully, I'll be able to update more regularly now, but I guess we'll see.

The noise in the airport was almost overwhelming.

It wasn't just that she was in Japan, that anything she could overhear she couldn't understand. It wasn't just the unfamiliarity made the urge to twitch her head like a bird harder to resist, the aching vulnerability Control had left her with even more obvious to her jangled nerves. It wasn't just the silence in her remaining ear, the knowledge that Her sight, as omnipresent as it might be in the States, didn't stretch to these shores.

It wasn't *just* a lot of things.

Nevertheless, this was where She required her to be, a mission to accomplish, a potential acolyte to recruit, and Root would attempt to complete her task as best she could.

She couldn't stop her pulse racing, just a little, as she approached Customs. It was nonsense, she knew. Even if she wasn't capable enough of arranging for a clean identity - and she was, she knew that she was - God would never let anything electronic betray her. But it was a choke point, a place where her options were deliberately restricted and…

And if anything *did* go wrong, God had very limited options with which to help her.

Somehow, she managed to keep any of this from showing on her face, and the clearly bored agent waved her through, just like he had done to the couple in front of her.

From there things got a little less difficult, and Root found it easier to breathe, easier to chastise herself for how ridiculous she was being. It wasn't different to things she had done a hundred times before, with even less cover, with absolutely no-one watching her back.

But still, she couldn't help the thought impinging that the last time that she had been an imperfect avatar for Her, the last time She hadn't had access to the feeds covering her, she'd been caught and… and…

It didn't matter, she told herself firmly, as she walked up to the Airport Police office, and fixed an apologetic smile on her face. It was somehow easier than facing the customs agent. Maybe repetition, maybe because this time she was actor rather than supplicant. "Excuse me," she said to the woman behind the glass. 'But has a purse belonging to Jean Bartik been turned in?"

It did indeed transpire that such a purse had been turned in, filled with the normal sort of chaff one would expect. More or less. There wasn't anything major - her contact had clearly followed her list of instructions as to what filler to include - but she couldn't help frowning, her pulse spiking just a little, at the foundation which was clearly not suited for anyone of her complexion.

It was only a little thing, but she'd made her career out of exploiting small mistakes, and the container fund its way into the nearest bin. It wasn't something she'd have tolerated - in a past life - from her usual contacts, but here… Here she was in a position where, unfortunately, she had to rely on recommendations - and recommendations from people who weren't as particular as she was.

That knowledge didn't help the sick feeling in her stomach one bit.

Still, the important thing, the *vital* thing was that, slid down near the bottom of the bag, trapped in the lining, was a locker key. After having retrieved it - using a quick visit to the toilet and a pair of nail scissors that she'd carried in her luggage - she went to locker indicated, and - after a quick scan for anyone displaying undue interest - took the small suitcase that had been contained within.

The train journey to the hotel Betthe Holberton - the name she'd travelled under - was staying at allowed her time to clear her mind, ease her nerves a little. No one was following her, and a quick pass with a bug detector disguised as a cellphone over the suitcase she'd retrieved had revealed nothing.

So far, so good.

It wasn't until she'd gotten to her room and had a chance to go through the contents of the suitcase that she'd really felt like she could breathe again. Armed, both with guns and some electronic gadgetry she'd really not wanted to try and get through Customs, she finally felt ready to face Tokyo and her mission.

At least now, if things went bad, she could go down fighting.

After that, hacking was the meat and potatoes of Samantha's existence. It provided enough money for her and her mother to live off, if modestly, and was certainly a far more useful skill to hone than *anything* she'd been taught in school. The dreams of college that Ms Chotai had tried to foster in her were all well and good, but, in the real world, the world in which she worked, no one cared if you had a degree or not.

They only cared if you could do the job.

Besides, ever since Samantha had gone to Ms Chotai with her problem, she'd been offered more in the way of sad and disappointed looks than any applications for scholarships. So her attention to school waned, and her concentration on her real life waxed.

Even it did mean more of those looks from Ms Chotai.

It didn't matter.

What did matter was her life as Root, where her skills were desired, valued, even bid on. But after a while simple hacking started to lose some of its lustre. Computer security, at the end of the day, relied on *people*, and people would always make mistakes. Whether it was using a predictable password, opening emailed attachments without due care or just being far too eager to please someone on the end of the phone who claimed to be from IT support, getting into places electronically was *easy*.

The jobs that really started to interest Samantha were the *special* ones, the ones where her talents were utilised as part of some greater effort, to some greater effect.

Accessing records, for instance, just wasn't as interesting as helping to create a believable chain of evidence that some top executive was cheating on her husband.

She took a few such jobs - ones that involved fraud or blackmail, never murder - and, out of curiosity, did some judicious digging and hacking of her own to put together how they were done. And fairly swiftly came to the conclusion that she could do better than the existing local talent.

The only murder she commissioned was one that wasn't a job at all, but something done for her, personally. Finally, two years after Hanna had disappeared, she managed to avenge her death by having her killer dispatched in turn.

The main problem with her new calling was simple - whilst much of the electronic side of things could be done anywhere, there were still things that had to be done in person. There just weren't that many interesting jobs within reach of her hometown, but she wouldn't, couldn't move whilst her mother, the only person in the world who had always been on her side, was still ill.

Finally, though, all the medicines in the world couldn't stave off the inevitable for ever. One October morning, she woke to find that her mother had passed, and, after the funeral, she left Bishop, Texas, and she left Samantha Groves there too.

Samantha never did have much of a life anyway.

Root's was so very much better.

Root picked up her burner phone and dialled a number from memory. "Ms Genda," she said in her professional voice. "Have you managed to locate the target yet?"

"Have you arrived in Tokyo yet?" the woman on the other end responded.

Root let an edged smile spread across her face. Ms Genda and her associates weren't exactly her ideal local talent. But, according to the Machine, out of the options she'd had available, they'd presented the best cross-section of talent combined with greatest reliability. Of course, when dealing with a more or less unknown criminal underground, even the greatest reliability wasn't that high, and the error margins She could offer were less than inspiring.

All of which made Genda's tendency to try and ferret out information wherever possible distinctly unwelcome, though Root had to admit that it might be part of why she was so good at her job.

Still she'd dealt with bolshie contractors before, and at least this one didn't have the leverage of knowing their employment was part of the terms of the job. Never mind everything else, this, at least, she can handle.

"I'm sure that the amount I'm offering, if you succeed in your task, is more than enough to allow me to ask the questions," she said.

There was a sound like a bubble of gum popping. "You wanted us to hang back and pin him down to a general location until you arrived. Unless he was in danger, of course. So, really, the answer could vary."

Root decided to give her this little victory. "In which case, I'm sure you'll be delighted to hear that I'm on location. So?"

There was a sigh. "If you'd asked me a few hours ago, the answer would have been yes. That was before the police turned up, looking for him."

"I did warn you that was a possibility, Ms Genda. You assured me that you could handle it."

"We did. Unfortunately, Mr Okabe slipped away in the confusion. I've got people out looking for him. I was hoping to pick him up again before you arrived."

The Machine started whispering locations in her ear, and she recited them, after telling Ms Genda to look in these places first, then rang off, rubbing around her eyes a little. For what this operation was costing her, it was just as well she had a nice nest egg from her freelance days.

Time that she checked on another contact. She fired up her notebook and opened an anonymous chat window.

'Fenix,' she typed. 'What do you have for me?'

'Your backdoor into the police department worked like a charm,' Fenix typed back. 'At first, all I could find was the basics - that Okabe Daizo was a computer engineer working for Seryo, an electronics company with a lot of government contracts. No record, nothing. Then a few hours ago, a ticket came down, saying he was a person of extreme interest, suspected of espionage for North Korea. Every police officer in the city has been given his description.'

'Who's coordinating the search?'

'Someone from inside Public Security. I haven't managed to get any access there. Care to wave your magic wand?'

Root smiled. 'Might just have enough fairy dust left for that. Let me know if anything pops up on the police system?' Like as not, Root wouldn't be logged in, but the Machine was always listening.

'Roger Wilco,' Fenix typed, then logged out. Some people, at least, were more reasonable. And were working for a wage other than money - Fenix was a known quantity to her, and had been persuaded to help out a fellow tech-head persecuted by the authorities in return for access to the Tokyo Police system. And now, apparently, access to the Public Security system as well.

Root locked her fingers together and stretched. Time to relocate to somewhere with a more anonymous IP address, let her poisonous seeds loose on the wind and see what havoc she could wreak on the Public Security firewall.

The problem, Root had swiftly discovered after relocating from her home town, was that she may have been a big fish in the small pond around Bishop, Texas, but she was a very small one in the ocean of, say, New York. The only jobs she could get were the ones she already had a name for - to whit, the purely electronic ones that she could have just stayed at home for.

No one wanted her for anything of any complexity unless she had a name. And she could only get a name by doing a decent sized job.

No one wanted her for anything where they had other options, to be slightly more accurate. Where they had time to plan, to select the most qualified people they had access to, to do things properly. There were always the other jobs, the more risky ones, the more desperate ones, where people just used what they had to hand. Maybe even a young almost unknown hacker from rural Texas.

Without that kind of break, she could face years slowly growing her rep.

Which was why, when she got a phone call asking if she'd be interested in a job to get rid of someone in way that couldn't be traced to their employer, she didn't immediately refuse.

'A lieutenant from one of the local bratva who's about to roll over to the feds.'

She paused for a moment. She didn't kill, not even indirectly, but this was a job that could get her on the map.

And, really, someone in that kind of a position doubtless already had blood on his hands. It could be argued that she was helping to perform an act of justice. Just like when she'd framed Trent Russell.

"I'm in," she said.

"You've finally managed to find him?"

Genda snapped a bubble, the sound ringing like a gunshot in the dark alley, the gum an incongruous pink against her business suit. "I have eyes on him right now a couple of streets over. Takaki," she nodded towards a slightly built man, "Will take you there now. The bad news is that the police are swarming the area right now. They had a sighting, but I've managed to throw them off the scent for now." She smirked a little. "The worse news is that there are guys with them I don't recognise."

Root wasn't exactly surprised. Fenix had gotten back to her earlier that evening. The orders to find Okabe Daizo had come from a chief within the first Intelligence Department of Public Security, a man named Akatsuka. 'I'm not sure,' he'd typed, 'but it almost looks like the way is being paved for Okabe not to be taken alive.'

If the name had meant anything to God, She hadn't seen fit to reveal it. Then again, She seemed to prefer to make even her acolytes work for their answers.

"This would have been a lot easier if you'd just let me snatch him," Genda said, not for the first time.

Root ignored her, focussing on Takaki, who shrugged with one shoulder and led her through a narrow gap between two buildings.

Despite the hour, there was still more than enough foot traffic to create a background babble. As they walked through a more crowded thoroughfare, Root didn't have any problem spotting the police keeping an eye on the passers-by, obviously looking for someone, nor the quieter plainclothed presence hanging back, overseeing the operation.

Genda hadn't been exaggerating about the scale of the official presence here. Frankly, it was a miracle that Okabe had stayed free this long, even with their help.

The eyes of the nearest policeman glided over her, and for a moment there was a spike of panic but if they stopped, they certainly didn't halt on her face. As they passed, so did the fear, leaving her with an odd sense of euphoric invulnerability, as if she could do anything.

Takaki led her down another alleyway, stopping her just before an intersection with another alley. "Turn left. Twenty meters. Behind some…" he mimed something leaning against a wall.

She nodded, took a breath and consciously relaxed, then turned the corner and walked into the deeper darkness of the side-alley. She counted out twenty yards in her head, able to see what looked like pallets in the dimness and stopped.

"I was sent here by your friend in Seattle," she said, quietly, calmly. The words may be Hers, but Root still had to sell them. "I can get you out of this alive if you come with me now. I'm not sure the police are willing to say the same."

For a moment, there was silence, and then the pallets were pushed over as a figure rose from behind them. Even in the low light, he looked dishevelled and panicked.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Why are you doing this?"

He still looked suspicious, possibly even still thought that he was undecided, but Root could see faint hope flickering to life in his eyes.

She had him.

"My name is Root," she said, a smile springing to life on her lips as she saw no reason to suppress it. "And you've got an important part to play in the future."

She pressed a button on her phone, sending a pre-prepared message to Genda. In response, streets away shots were fired, and a message went out on the police band, 'Okabe located, officers under fire.'

By the time that the police had stopped swarming, had realised that no one knew who exactly had made that report, Root and Okabe were long gone.

"I haven't seen you around here before," said a deep voice into Root's ear, as she was ordering a drink at the bar.

She closed her eyes for a moment in a brief, useless prayer, before turning around to confirm what the lurch in her stomach had already told her.

The target had noticed her, was standing right next to her, *talking* to her.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

She was only in the bar so she could get close enough to the target to hack his phone, leave traces that he'd been dealing with the Lucchese family as well, to extract as much as possible from his betrayal.

That had been all. Nothing else. Certainly nothing like this.

She managed to summon up a smile. "I'm new in the city," she had said, Texan twang in full force. "Just arrived from small town Texas."

"I saw you noticing me when you came in," he said and for a moment her stomach dropped before she registered that he hadn't said it like a threat, and… and…

Okay, she could do this. She'd messed up, but it was still recoverable. "You're a hard man to miss," she said, letting her eyes drift over him.

He chuckled. "I must admit, I was a little disappointed when you didn't come over."

She shrugged, affecting a mixture of coyness and shyness. "You had friends there…"

"They're not here now. Kazimir Belikov. Please, let me get you a drink."

She said the first name that came into her head. "Charlene Babbage. And I'd love a dirty martini."

She had somehow managed to continue flirting with him until she excused herself to go to the toilet.

"What the hell's going on, Root?" Chandra snapped as soon as she phoned him.

"He approached me as soon as I entered the bar. Apparently I'm his type or something"

"Have you actually managed to do your job yet, or have you been too busy enjoying his company?" he asked acidly.

Root spared a brief glare for her phone. "It's not something I can do with him watching me, but I've managed to add a backdoor that will allow me to do it remotely." Or she would as soon as returned from the bathroom.

"Good. Then ditch him as soon as you can and get out of there. This is not your job."

She ran one hand through her hair. If she could pull this off, she'd get a name for far more than just computer wizardry. "Wait. What if I can get him somewhere by himself, without his bodyguards?"

There was a pause on the end of the phone. "You'd have to complete your hacking bloody quickly, before the police had a chance to go through his phone. And I'd have to get over to his apartment right now to plant the evidence there…"

"On the other hand, at least you know he won't be back for a while."

Another pause. "You were recommended for computer work. Are you actually sure you can do this?"

"I'm already half way there."

And it was almost as simple as that. A few hours of increasingly flirtatious behaviour, and all she'd had to do was suggest, whilst biting her lip, cheeks flushed, that she'd always had a fantasy about being taken in an alley, and he hadn't been at all hard to convince.

She'd felt curiously detached throughout the kissing, the groping, the fumbling at her clothing, as though she wasn't really there, it wasn't really happening to her. But before it could really go anywhere, he'd been ripped away from her, and Jim, another member of the team, had wire wrapped around Kazimir's throat and was pulling.

"Are you alright?" Jim asked after he was finished.

She nodded, a little numbly. Kazimir had been a bad man - she'd researched his crimes as part of her prep, as part of her continual campaign to convince herself she could go through with this. And if he'd figured out she was a plant, she wouldn't have died anywhere near this easily.

But still, to see him there lying in a pool of expanding blood…

Jim clapped her on the shoulder. "Come on then. Apparently you have some hacking still to do."

She jerked a little, then nodded again. The evening was not yet over.

"That's a very big crate you're having shipped back to the States," Genda's voice drawled from behind Root.

Root slowly turned around, using the time to count how many of the people around the airfield were Genda's men. Five, as far as she could see. Three with her, two near likely exit points. "I picked up a few odds and ends whilst I was here in Japan," she said mildly. "I thought we'd concluded our business already, and you had received the agreed-on payment."

Genda snapped a bubble and smiled wryly. "I might be a criminal, but I'm not a traitor. Did you really think I was going to let you walk out of Japan with a spy?"

"Would it make a difference if I told you that Okabe isn't a traitor, that the president of Seryo had wanted him to sign the rights to a chip he'd designed over to the company and when he'd refused, the president used his influence with his uncle, a chief in Public Security, to have him declared a traitor?" Root asked with a smile that plainly declared she didn't believe any protests of patriotism.

Genda shrugged. "You got me," she said. "The reward for turning him in is just that good."

"And why have just one payment, when you can have two?"

"Exactly! I knew you'd see it my way. Tell you what, make this quiet, and we'll let you go afterwards, no hard feelings. Make this loud…" she said, and nudged open her coat to reveal a pistol. Not that it mattered. The few people around in this airfield were well paid not to pay attention to this kind of thing.

Root's smile sharpened. "Well, when you put it like that, what choice do I have?"

It had gone bad at the end, when they went to collect payment. Before she knew it, shots were fired, Chandra was down on the ground, screaming and clutching his stomach, and Jim had produced a gun from seemingly nowhere and was firing back. And everyone seemed to be ignoring her, after she'd dived onto the concrete by sheer reflex.

Apparently, the Russians believed in cost saving measures, she couldn't help thinking, almost hysterically.

She lay there motionless for what seemed like forever until she noticed some of the Russians moving to encircle Jim, and once he was down…

She had to act.

She skittered across the floor to where a downed Russian had dropped his gun, and started firing in the general direction of the men. She didn't think that she managed to hit anyone, but the shots sent them scuttling for cover, and Jim used the distraction to take care of them himself.

Afterwards, after it was all over, Root was still holding the now empty gun in a white-knuckle grip, unable to let it go, unable to even lower it. Jim cautiously approached her, and pushed the gun down.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here before the cops arrive."

It hadn't been the first time that Root had contemplated the person hiring her trying to double-cross her, not even the first time they'd tried, but it was the first time it had ever involved guns and blood and death.

Root swore to herself to be far more careful in future. She was going to make sure that anything like this only happened on her terms, and no one else's.

"Leg," Root said.

"What?" asked Genda just as a hole appeared in her left leg, and she collapsed with a muffled scream.

Root's smile was now positively wolf-like. "Guns down on ground," she said in badly accented Japanese. "Now!"

There was an answering clatter of metal.

She produced her own gun. "Go," she said. "Go!" Two of the men approached the fallen Genda, but she waved them away with her pistol.

"Now," she said, squatting down next to Genda. "What shall I do with you?"

"Nice trick," Genda said. "Having a friend with a rifle watching the airfield, just in case."

Root shrugged. "Once I'd slipped away with Okabe in Tokyo, an airfield that'd allow me to smuggle Okabe out of here was the natural choke-point, if you wanted to double-cross me." She looked at her pistol, then at the woman sprawled in front of her. She'd expected to be wrecked if this happened, her heart pounding, her hand shaking.

Instead, she felt almost euphoric. The only things that had gone wrong were the things she'd planned for, and in a few hours she'd be flying out of here.

For the first time since she'd set foot in Japan, she felt like she could breathe.

She pointed the gun at Genda's head, almost expecting an instruction from God to leave her alive, but- nothing.

Apparently this was going to be her choice.

She looked at Genda's greying features, both from blood loss and from anticipation, and made a decision.

Holstering her gun, she said, "Any more interference, let the authorities know about me or my business, and I'll have you and all your men killed." She smiled thinly. "Have a good day," she said and walked off whistling.

Even She hadn't directly commanded it, Root thought She would be pleased at her choice. She wasn't so sure Shaw would agree, of course. And just leaving her alive wouldn't stop Root from hacking Genda's bank accounts when she was safely back State-side. Or, if she was feeling malicious, sending a few anonymous tips to the Tokyo police.

And, best of all, she didn't feel like Customs was going to bother her one bit on the way back.

Today was a *good* day.