By the time Reese had made it to the neighborhood Shaw was in, he didn't need the exact coordinates that Harold given him to find her. From several blocks away he could see black smoke rising and people, who had probably just woken up to gather their newspapers and drink their morning coffee with the slowly rising sun, meandering towards the source. He phoned Zoe, who quickly agreed to meet him there as soon as possible to provide a safe getaway for the two of them. Reese then opened a link with Finch, who was still jilted over Shaw's blatant dismissal of him earlier.
"Finch, we may need some damage control."
"Oh god", he sighed, "please tell me Ms. Shaw didn't kill that man."
"I'm not sure yet. But if he's still in the house he won't be alive much longer."
"What on earth is that supposed to mean, Mr. Reese?"
"Well", John did his best to hide his amusement (because he knew he should definitely not be amused by this), "it appears as if Shaw may have burnt the house down. With no signs of the agent making it out. And if it were me, and I really wanted to send a message to Samaritan..."
He trailed off, knowing Finch will pick up on his train of thought. Shaw received more or less the same training that Reese had, so he understood her and how she operated more than she cared to admit, or acknowledge. He also knew how the whole world seems to crumble when someone you care about it taken from you - whether on not you want to admit that you actually care about that person, to them or others or even yourself. (Eventually, he thought, Shaw was going to have to admit that she actually cared about the members of their little team of delinquents - even Root.) The other side of the line was silent however, and John wondered if he had somehow lost his connection.
"Finch?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Reese", Harold began slowly after another moment had passed, "I can't have heard you correctly. It sounded like you said Ms. Shaw burnt down a residence in a heavily populated suburban area, and quite possibly left the body of a debilitated Decima agent inside."
As if on cue, Shaw herself strolled up alongside Reese with one hand in her pocket and the other holding a cup of coffee. She looked completely unaffected by the home on fire before her, or the scared citizens gathering around at a safe distance - in fact, if it wasn't for the hardly noticeable traces of dried blood on her jacket and the grey shirt she was wearing underneath, John would actually begin to doubt she was involved in this at all.
"That's exactly what he said, Harold." She cut off his lecture before he even began, still looking blankly at the chaos she had caused. "And don't worry, that agent is alive. In the trunk of a car somewhere near the river. Someone will find him before he bleeds out."
John looked at her skeptically, but she simply shrugged.
"Well. Probably, anyways."
Finch sighed wearily.
"I take it you extracted some information from the poor man first?"
"They have Root, Harold. They have her, and they're torturing her. And-"
Shaw paused, closed her eyes and took a deep breath despite the constriction in her chest. The fire Martine had put there had seemingly combusted her entire being, and she felt like the house just a few hundred feet in front of her - smoldering, and burning from the inside out.
"And they want to trade her for the Machine."
Zoe picked them up shortly after the fire department arrived, pulling her car to a stop a block away and phoning John to let him know she was there. She had tried to ask the two stoic ex-agents about what they case they were working on but was met with silence, so they drove back to the clinic where they had left their borrowed car much as Reese and Shaw had driven there in the first place. When they arrived, however, Finch's car was gone - Decima, he muttered over the line when they let him know, annoyed - so they followed the shadow map to an old parking garage and stole a car there to keep Samaritan off their trail as they drove back to the city.
"I guess it's pointless to ask what happened?", Zoe dared to ask as she pulled next to a curb in Chinatown to drop them off.
Shaw grunted in response, throwing the door open and storming off without closing it. John slowly got out and closed it gently for her, then ducked his head to offer Zoe an apologetic smile.
"Someone took our friend. She's not taking it well." She returned his smile with a sad one of her own, and leaned across the center counsel to press a gentle kiss to his cheek before putting the car in drive again and waiting for him to close his own door.
"Well I hope you find your friend soon. And that Shaw doesn't burn down any more houses in the meantime."
"No promises", he smirked at her. "Thanks, Zoe. I'll call you."
He caught up with Shaw quickly and grabbed her arm above the elbow roughly to stop her. Her instincts took over, as he knew they would, and she spun around quickly drawing her gun. Reese anticipated the action however, expected it even, and used her own momentum to shove her against the wall with the hand holding her weapon twisted behind her back and the elbow of his free arm pressed harshly between her shoulder blades. She grunted, letting her forehead fall against the wall in front of her; she had walked right in to this. Amateur hour, she thought for the second time today. (Was that really just a few hours ago?)
"Is there a problem, John?"
"I don't know, Shaw", he said through clenched teeth. He let her go - but not without stripping her of the nano in her hand and the M9 she still had in her waistband - and she turned around to face him. "Is there?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"How about the fact that you systematically tortured a Decima agent for information? Or we could talk about how you just burnt down a house in the suburbs to send a message - what message, I'm not sure. That you're pissed? I'm sure they've gathered as much."
Shaw's shoulders fell in something akin to defeat, but she kept her chin high and her gaze locked on John's. There was something John couldn't place in her eyes, but something he recognized - it was the same look that stared back at him in the mirror after Jessica. After Joss. It surprised him, and suddenly everything she had done had made sense. It was more than the world falling around her because someone took Root from right under their noses. It was that Shaw cared for her, and that she was blaming herself for all of this happening in the first place. It was the ground beneath her feet crumbling with every step because she could do nothing to help her, or to save her.
"It's not your fault", Reese said quietly, with as much compassion as he could muster, when Shaw still didn't answer. She finally looked away. "All of this, it's not your fault. Martine did this. Even if you had gone the second you were done at the warehouse, chances are you would have still been too late."
"You can't let this effect how we operate", he added, "because it could be the difference between life and death for Root right now. We need you at your best. She needs you at your best, Shaw."
Her stillness surprised him, which is why he wasn't at all prepared when she reared back and punched him square in the jaw. He brought a hand up to rub at the spot, and Shaw moved quickly to put him in a position against the wall similar to the one she had just been in. Reese had size on her, and could have probably gotten out of the hold if he tried, but he let Shaw get the tension out.
He remembered all too well how it felt.
"If you say that shit to me again, if you so much as mention it again", she said - voice wavering and eyes stinging - as she was retrieving her weapons from him, "I will shoot you."
Bear greeting them happily as they descended into the subway, but Shaw ignored him and went straight to where Finch was still working tirelessly on finding them a lead. He instead went up to Reese, still rubbing absently at his already bruising jaw, and sat dutifully at his feet as he awaited some sort of affection from at least one of them. Feeling bad, he kneeled in front of Bear and used both hands to scratch behind his ears and under his chin.
"Don't worry, buddy", Reese murmured to him and he tilted his head, "she's just having a bad day."
Shaw walked in to Harold typing away on his computer, doing his best to find them a something on where Decima might be keeping Root. His efforts had been in vain thus far, it would seem, but he was working on a lead that he hoped would lead them to something at least moderately useful.
"I put in an anonymous tip about the car by the river", he said to her in greeting without looking up, "and it seems the man found had no memory of how he ended up there, naked, in the truck of his own car, or how he received a gunshot wound in each knee. I wonder how you managed to pull that off, Ms. Shaw?"
Shaw threw down the man's driver's license and a photo of him and his family in lieu of answering, knowing that Finch would be able to put two and two together - now Shaw knew where the man lived, and what his family look like. Just like that, the woman became more terrifying to the Decima agent than Martine, or all of Samaritan's other agents combined. Finch gulped.
"Need I remind you, Ms. Shaw, that we operate differently than you did when you were working for the ISA. You can not torture a man for information this way, whether it be physically or emotionally. We are better than that. You are better than that."
"Need I remind you, Harold, that Root has now been missing for", she glanced down at her watch and grimaced, "twelve hours. And has been being tortured by Martine and her lackeys for who knows how long to get information on your Machine. I think two kneecaps and a Decima safe house in the suburbs are a small price to pay to get her back."
They regarded each other seriously. Finch broke the eye contract first and set his jaw, turning back to his computer and picking up his typing where he had left off without another word to Shaw. She left the subway car and went to where she had been keeping her clothes to change out of her bloodied jacket and shirt. She was halfway through pulling on a clean pair of jeans when she was hit suddenly with an overwhelming desire to hurt someone. And she thought of how she had punched John, and how it didn't actually make her feel better like she had thought that it would, so she decided that if she was going to punish anyone it was going to be herself. Changing quickly into running shorts and tying up her Nike's tightly, she ran out of the subway without a word to either of the boys - they knew that she knew the shadow map well enough to stay out of Samaritan's ever-watchful eye.
And if John was completely honest, she had hit him harder than he was letting on and he had no intentions of a repeat performance.
After watching her ascend the stairs quickly and disappear out of sight, Reese headed into the subway car with Bear still in tow.
"Mr. Reese", Harold said as he finally ceased his angry typing and turned away from the keyboard completely. "Could you perhaps fill me in on Ms. Shaw's conversation with Martine? Since she seems less inclined to do so at the moment."
John sat down heavily on one of the seats built into the side of the subway car, the exhaustion of the past twelve hours starting to weigh on him. He was exhausted, and hungry, and in desperate need of a shower, but couldn't find it within himself to take the time to rid himself of those comparatively small discomforts while Root was somewhere still unknown to them being tortured for information that no one could give.
"I'm not sure what else there is to say, Harold. Martine had Root somewhere, torturing her for information on the Machine, and the only way she'll stop - and she did say stop, Harold, not 'let her go' or 'return her to us', just 'stop' - is if we give her the location of the Machine."
"Which none of us knows", Finch finished for him with a frown.
John nodded, sinking a little further into the seat. How were they supposed to save Root if the only information Martine wanted was something that not a single of them was privy to? Not even Root - the analog interface, a person that reveres the Machine as her God and Messiah - knew where the Machine was. And if by some miracle they could get the location, and get it to Martine, the Decima agent had in no way guaranteed Root's safety. She had said she would stop torturing her, sure, but what of the medical attention she had needed even before hours of enduring whatever it was that Martine was doing to her? She had said nothing of returning Root to them, no matter her condition. He felt defeated, as if there was very little if any chance of Root making it out of the situation alive.
He in no way condoned it, but fully understood why Shaw burnt the safe house down. Because what else was there for her to do but destroy everything around her at this point?
Shaw returned two hours later, sweaty from her ten mile run and with a busted lip from the fight she started in a bar in the inner city. Reese walked up cautiously with a towel and handed it to her; she accepted it without looking at him, and went straight to the make-shift shower Reese and Fusco had built when she had first been brought down. She showered quickly and threw on some clean clothes - black jeans and a shirt to match, and the leather jacket with the Decima agent's blood still on it - and was surprised to see John standing just outside the door to the bathroom waiting for her.
"Hungry?", he asked innocently. She smirked at him and nodded, knowing that this was the closest thing to an apology she was going to get from her partner. "I hear there's a decent steak place up the street."
With that the two of them head out, Bear following behind on the leash with his tongue out happily, and towards the aforementioned steak place north of them. They walk in a complacent silence, not entirely uncomfortable but with the air still tinged with words unsaid, for a few blocks when a payphone started to ring. They glanced sideways at each other and decided without words to keep walking, but then the next one started to ring as well, and soon every payphone on the street was ringing. John acquiesced, sighing as he picked up the receiver closest to him.
Shaw bounced from one foot to the other impatiently as he did so, holding Bear's leash in one hand and stuffing the other in her pocket. Reese motioned to her for a piece of paper and a pen, which she didn't have, so she through her hands up helplessly at him with a quirked eyebrow. She watched him for a moment and saw his eyes widen - he pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at Shaw with an expression she didn't recognize - something akin to sympathy, she realized as he extended the receiver to her for her to take. Reaching out with a hand that she just realized was shaking, she took it and placed it tightly against her ear to hear over the noise of the city.
(She thought of how she had done this not too long ago, with the agent's phone pressed just as tightly to her ear as she struggled to hear Martine over all the noise in the background.
Over Root's screaming, she corrected herself.)
"HOTEL. ECHO. LIMA. PAPA. HOTEL. ECHO. ROMEO. HOTEL. ECHO. LIMA. PAPA. HOTEL. ECHO. ROMEO. HOTEL. ECHO. LIMA. PAPA. HOTEL. ECHO. ROMEO..."
Over and over, the generated voice of the Machine said the words in her ear. She mirrored John's reaction, slowly lowering the receiver to her side with shaking hands and her eyes wide.
Help her, it was saying.