Work Text:
Time: 00:01
Resetting Asset...
Erasing Asset Short Term Memory...
Asset Reset
"Would you believe--" the female voice was unfamiliar; chipper, but exhausted underneath it "--that it was a sex game gone wrong?"
Shaw opened her eyes. She was zip-tied to a bed in what looked like a cheap motel room; there was a water stain on the ceiling. Her wrists were secured to the headboard, and she had to crane her neck to see over her own arm.
The woman was perched on a chair halfway between the bed and the door; she had long brown hair, and there was dried blood crusted beneath her nose like she'd recently taken a punch to the face; she held her gun in a loose grip, aimed more at the floor than at Shaw.
Shaw blinked slowly. Her knuckles felt bruised and swollen as though she'd recently punched someone, hard. She didn't remember fighting anyone; she didn't remember too much of anything.
She knew that her name was Sameen Shaw; she knew how to put bullets into people, and less often how to take them out without killing the patient; she knew that a sex game with this doe-eyed, coltish, easily bruised woman wasn't totally out of the question.
"Sorry," said Shaw, stretching out her spine and shoulders, trying to pull her hands free of the zip-ties, "you're not my type."
The woman smiled a wide, borderline crazy smile. "Oh, sweetie, you have to get to know me."
"If this is another one of Samaritan's tests--"
The woman sat up straight, cocking her head like a dog hearing a familiar command. "You remember Samaritan?"
Shaw snorted, because of course she remembered Samaritan.
Samaritan gave her missions... and inexplicable medical procedures, and barrages of physical and psychological tests.
Before Samaritan there was nothing but a blur of static and white noise in a way that would have been frightening if Shaw was the sort of person who felt fear. But she didn't feel fear, or much of anything else, which was why Samaritan had chosen her as its asset, right?
"Do you remember what we talked about yesterday, Sameen?"
Shaw didn't have any yesterdays. "Listen, lady, I've never seen you before."
The woman leaned back in her chair and smiled. "You know, you're lucky I never get bored of telling the story of how we met. It was very romantic."
Shaw let her head drop back onto the pillow with an audible huff.
"Now, now," the woman scolded her gently, "don't roll your eyes. It's a good story, someone nearly gets tortured with an iron five minutes in."
*
Time: 00:01
Resetting Asset...
Erasing Asset Short Term Memory...
Asset Reset
Shaw woke up zip-tied to a bed.
The woman standing at the foot of the bed had her hip cocked to one side and a smile that would have been suggestive under different circumstances; she was flicking a taser on and off.
"Sex game gone wrong?" she suggested with a raised eyebrow.
Shaw eyed the taser warily. "Not even a little bit interested."
*
Time: 00:01
Resetting Asset...
Erasing Asset Short Term Memory...
Asset Reset
Shaw woke but didn't open her eyes. She was zip-tied to a bed; her arms were secured above her head, and her muscles ached like she'd been in this position for a while.
This was a test. Shaw's mind refused to provide the details of Samaritan's previous tests, but somehow she knew that there had been tests, and that she had not enjoyed any of them.
Well, she might have to take Samaritan's dumb test, but she didn't have to take it seriously.
"Let me guess," she said, without opening her eyes, "sex game gone wrong?"
Right now Shaw's muscle memory was more reliable than her actual memory, and her body tensed automatically for whatever unpleasant stimuli resulted from non-cooperation with Samaritan.
Shaw might not have known what she was expecting, but a throaty, feminine chuckle was not it. She opened her eyes to find a woman sitting on the side of the bed looking at her with wide, doe-like eyes.
"Oh, sweetie, you've no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that."
*
Time: 00:01
Resetting Asset...
Erasing Asset Short Term Memory...
Asset Reset
Shaw opened her eyes to find a woman leaning over her, zip-tying her to a bed; the woman's long hair was falling into Shaw's face.
"Shit!" the woman cursed. "What time is--?" but Shaw had grabbed her stupid, soft curls in her free hand and rammed her head into the wall.
Shaw rolled onto her knees and wrenched; the wooden slat of the headboard broke free with a crack, releasing Shaw's other hand. She threw herself off the bed and made for the door.
"Shaw, wait..." the woman had clambered to her feet, a trickle of blood oozing from her hairline. She caught the back of Shaw's shirt; Shaw turned and grabbed her around the throat with both hands, her thumbs digging for her carotid and jugular.
The woman was taller, and wearing heels; she should have had all the leverage, but she didn't use it. Her eyes popped and she croaked, "Sameen..."
It wouldn't have taken much to keep squeezing until the woman blacked out; instead Shaw let go of her throat, fisted her shirt in both hands, dragging her close and off-balance, and then shoved her back hard so that she stumbled against the bed and went down.
It had been a brief, muffled struggle; nobody had screamed and Shaw wasn't sure why she felt like somebody had.
She was nearly at the door when she heard a soft, "Sorry, sweetie," and the taser darts hit her between the shoulder blades.
*
Time: 00:01
Resetting Asset...
Erasing Asset Short Term Memory...
Asset Reset
Shaw woke with a weight pressing her down into the mattress. A woman was straddling her hips; she had soft brown puppy eyes and thumb shaped bruises in the hollows of her pale throat.
The fact that she'd zip-tied Shaw's wrists to a broken headboard and the knife she was holding in one hand wouldn't necessarily have been deal-breakers; the taser that she was holding an inch away from Shaw's clavicle definitely was.
"Much as I'd love to make a sex joke right now," the woman said brightly, "we really don't have time."
She leaned forward until her breasts were practically in Shaw's face, flicked her knife and cut the zip-ties that had been securing Shaw to the bed. She sat up and turned the taser on and off a couple of times, just enough to make Shaw reconsider flipping this woman off of her and making a break for it.
"Now, I really, really don't want to hurt you, Sam. But Samaritan knows where we are, so we have to leave now."
*
Searching...
Asset Not Located...
There were two voices arguing. The female voice belonged to her friend with the taser and zip-ties. She didn't recognize the male voice, but it kind of made her want to roll her eyes and salute in equal measure.
"I share your wish to help Ms. Shaw," said the man, "but is it really advisable to bring her here?"
"I had no choice, Harold. That stupid neural implant they shoved in her head... they were using it to wipe her memories. I would just be getting through to her and they'd wipe her. Every night at midnight they'd erase her memories of the day. The same thing you did to cripple the Machine, Samaritan has been doing to Shaw!"
"That irony is not lost on me, Ms. Groves."
"There's GPS in the implant too; I could only spoof it for a couple of days at a time, so we kept having to move. There are only so many no-questions-asked motels inside the shadow map. I know you've turned the safe house into a giant Faraday Cage, Harry, so long as Shaw's here Samaritan can't use the implant to hurt her."
"And if Ms. Shaw were ever to return to them she'd be able to tell Greer our precise location. And who knows how deep Samaritan's programming goes; you've said yourself that her memories from before her capture are fragmentary at best and non-existent at worst."
"Now you sound like John."
"Perhaps Mr. Reese is right to be concerned. The CIA does have a somewhat fraught history with the concept of brainwashing."
The argument moved away from her door, and without it to eavesdrop on Shaw turned her attention to her immediate surroundings. The bed she was lying on was soft and comfortable, her sheets were of some insanely high thread count, and there was a well-done but impersonal abstract painting on the wall opposite; but her wrists were held down by the sort of padded restraint used on violent psychiatric patients.
If this was an institution, Shaw decided, it was a pretty high end one.
She heard footsteps coming back towards her door; she considered closing her eyes and feigning sleep, but decided she didn't care enough.
"Hi, sweetie."
"Root," Shaw said flatly.
Root fucking beamed. "You remember me?"
"You introduced yourself yesterday in between dragging me all over the city at taser point and shooting me up with a hypodermic full of sedatives."
Root's smile flickered for only a second before it was back full force. "You remember yesterday. That's a really good start, Sam."
*
Searching...
"Sex game gone wrong?" said Shaw without opening her eyes, half-heartedly trying to pull her wrists free of the medical restraint cuffs.
There was a strangled choking sound and a splutter, and Shaw opened her eyes to find a heavyset guy in a bad suit wiping spilled coffee from his tie.
"Please tell me you were expecting someone else," he said.
*
The guy in the bad suit was Lionel Fusco, and he provoked a sense of mild irritation in Shaw.
There were two other guys who came and went from the safe house. Shaw didn't have any siblings - well, none that she remembered - but part of the irritation she felt for John Reese had a particular sort of brotherly flavor to it, the rest of her annoyance at him came from the way he went all still and watchful anytime Harold Finch so much as crossed Shaw's line of vision.
Finch also provoked feelings of mild irritation in Shaw.
Root came to the safe house every day, and she'd skipped right over mild irritation to grate on Shaw's very last nerve. It was less Root's fondness for zip-ties and tasers that bugged Shaw, and more her overuse of pet names and habit of looking at Shaw like she was a basket of puppies snacking on a rib-eye.
She'd showed up one lunchtime with a steak, and watched Shaw eat - with a plastic fork and her fingers, because even Root wasn't going to give her a knife - with her chin in her hands and a soppy, besotted look. Shaw had started chewing with her mouth open in the hope of wiping the expression off Root's face; it hadn't worked.
*
Searching...
Shaw was handcuffed to a chair in the safe house, bored out of her skull, while Fusco rummaged around in the kitchen, Reese stood by the door like some sort of overly tall guard dog, and Root and Finch discussed the chip that had supposedly been implanted into Shaw's head.
Shaw moved around the safe house cuffed to one sturdy bit of furniture after another. She was even handcuffed to the rail when she showered; that had been kind of funny the first time, watching Finch try to decide which would be less awkward: his own mortified reluctance to see her naked or Root's cheerful leering.
Root had carried the day, and had sat on the edge of the toilet dangling the handcuffs from her pinkie finger while Shaw had stripped down. "They say romance is dead," she'd said.
Bored, Shaw tipped her head back and caught a quick glimpse of Fusco pouring sugar into his coffee. If she was planning an escape, Fusco was the weak link in the chain, she decided.
At first glance it seemed like it would have been Finch, who never carried a gun and didn't look like he could kick his way out of a wet paper bag, But Reese and Root watched Harold like hawks watching a chick; one single move towards him and she'd have both of them to deal with. If she had to take Reese on Shaw would prefer to do it with a firearm, which these people were not about to give her, and Root was taking the whole love hurts thing literally.
But Fusco, he'd hesitate, he'd think twice before shooting the woman who'd saved his son...
Wait, where had that come from?
Shaw tipped her head farther back. "Hey, Lionel," she said, "you've got a kid, right?"
Fusco stopped with his mug halfway to his mouth, Reese's eyes bored into Shaw from across the room, and Root and Finch abandoned their mildly disturbing conversation about whether they knew anyone who could perform an ad hoc craniotomy.
"...Yeah."
"Your son. He looks a lot like you, poor kid." Shaw frowned. "Lee?"
*
Searching...
Little things started coming back to Shaw.
Root brought the dog by to keep her company, and the way he ran right over and shoved his head onto Shaw's lap begging to have his ears scratched did more to convince Shaw that she had history with these people than anything Root had said or done.
"You know, I could have done that," said Root, and Shaw rolled her eyes. "Right, his name's--"
"Bear," Shaw finished, and Bear's tail thumped heavily against the floor.
She remembered that Bear only responded to Dutch commands, spoke the language of food fluently, and would scratch up the safe house floor chasing a tennis ball for literally hours.
Well, it wasn't like Shaw was going anywhere.
*
When Shaw - grumpily, reluctantly - spoke to Root, she spoke into Root's left ear.
She was begrudgingly impressed with how well Root hid her deafness, she didn't telegraph it at all. If Shaw hadn't already known, she never would have guessed. Although, she couldn't have told anyone how she knew.
*
There were still more black holes than not in Shaw's memory; Reese still looked at her like she was going to go all Manchurian Candidate on them at any moment, and it wasn't like Shaw could say with any certainty that she wasn't a sleeper agent.
Just because she understood where Reese was coming from didn't mean that he didn't deserve to be tormented a little, though.
Shaw slipped her wrist free of the handcuff - Root had recently started cuffing her to the furniture in ways she had to know Shaw could escape from - leaned forward in her chair and looked at Reese across the disassembled weapon he was cleaning.
"One thing I'm not totally clear on," she said, "what's going on between me and Root? I've got it narrowed down to her being either my girlfriend or my stalker."
Reese grimace-smiled. "Yes."
*
Searching...
Asset Located...
Initiating Emergency Recall...
Shaw had finally managed to escape the safe house.
She'd convinced Root to spoof the chip's GPS and let her tag along to the subway station via a ridiculously circuitous route that kept them off-camera.
Not that there was much to do underground but try to eavesdrop on Finch and Root's increasingly terse whispering about the Machine.
Shaw's memories of the Machine were muddled in the extreme, and just going by Root and Finch it was either God or a slightly less evil version of Samaritan - a magic box with all the moral neutrality of cancer, that sounded a lot like a god to Shaw.
Bored with philosophizing for the day, Shaw considered borrowing one of Bear's squeaky toys to amuse herself with.
*
Emergency Recall Failed...
Shaw woke up back in the safe house; the medical restraint cuffs were back in place, and Finch was sitting in the chair next to the bed.
"What happened?"
"Spoofing the GPS didn't work this time. Samaritan used the implant to force you to attempt to return to them."
Shaw let her head thud softly back onto the pillows. "Restore to factory settings," she said darkly.
"At least they didn't wipe your memories this time. I don't think any of us would relish having to go through this process again."
Speaking of memories, Shaw and Finch hadn't been alone in the subway station-- "Root?"
Finch couldn't meet her gaze. "She had to go to the emergency room." Shaw closed her eyes, and Finch awkwardly said, "Sameen, Ms. Groves loves you a great deal..."
"You don't sound sure that's a good thing, Harold."
Finch sighed. "I'm not. What I am sure of is that nothing Samaritan has done to you would make Root, would make any of us, regret bringing you home safely."
*
Root showed up with a smile on her face and a cast on her wrist.
Shaw remembered standing up in the subway station, suddenly compelled to leave. She remembered Root's hand on her shoulder, and her gentle, questioning, "Hey?" She remembered turning to face Root's confused expression, grabbing her wrist and twisting.
"The nurse at the hospital gave me the number of a domestic violence helpline," said Root easily, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.
"Root."
"I did say that it wasn't your fault, but as I could hardly tell her that a rogue artificial intelligence has put a chip in your brain to force you to do its evil bidding, I don't think she believed me."
"Root."
Root crossed one leg over the other and swung her ankle back and forward. "Let's talk about something else, shall we?"
"Fine," said Shaw. "What were you and Finch fighting about back at the subway?"
"Oh." Root pushed her hair back over her shoulder. "He found out that I'd added a line of code to the Machine when we were rebuilding Her. I needed to be sure She'd do something for me, so I hardcoded the command into Her."
"What did you need her to do?"
Root met Shaw's eyes with that doe-eyed look that Shaw could never hold. "To find you for me, Sameen."
"Why bother, why not just ask?"
"Because I love Her," said Root, "but I don't trust Her anymore."
Shaw's gaze lingered on Root's broken wrist.
*
The chip was going to have to come out of Shaw's head, obviously.
Her glare encompassed Finch and Reese, and probably Fusco even though he was at work and not actually present in the safe house.
"You're telling me that in all the time you nerds have been doing this you haven't saved a single brain surgeon?"
"Maybe we're going about this backwards," suggested Root. "If we can't remove the chip we'll just have to stop Samaritan using it."
*
Signal Lost...
Signal Lost...
Signal Lost...
There was the piece of code that Root had coaxed, begged, and blackmailed the Machine into writing that stopped Samaritan from sending or receiving signals from Shaw's chip; Root and Reese blew up no less than six separate buildings; and there was the blinding headache that knocked Shaw clean out when her connection to Samaritan was severed.
Shaw woke up with her head in Root's lap. "Hi, sweetie."
Root smelled of smoke, her face was smudged with ash, and the ends of hair were singed; even upside down it was kind of hot. Shaw swatted at her - "Get off!" - and propped herself up on her elbows.
"How do you feel?"
"Like I don't have an evil AI in my head anymore."
"You know," said Root with a smirk, "now that you're feeling more yourself, I thought we could revisit the subject of that sex game we were talking about earlier?"
Shaw rolled her eyes. "I keep hoping that the rest of my memories are going to come back, and I'll remember that I don't actually like you after all."