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i. Samantha Groves
Sam Groves always had been small for her age. She was a skinny, awkward kid, with knobbly knees and bony wrists; she had few friends and talked liked a mix between a grownup and a robot.
She spent one summer with her wrist in a cast after a semi-literate football player tripped her in the halls, and she stuck her hand out to break her fall.
Hanna's friendship had stopped the worst of the bullying for a while, but then Hanna was taken.
Sam couldn't stop seeing Hanna getting into Mr. Russell's car. She knew her friend was probably dead, but what she couldn't get past was that she didn't know where Hanna was.
"She's gone to the same place all the girls who don't matter go," Sam's mom had said, not unkindly, cupping Sam's cheek with her nicotine stained fingers.
*
Sam's mom was all she had left--
"Samantha!" she snapped, knocking her ashtray from the arm of her chair. "Be careful."
Sam had been lugging her mom's oxygen tank across the living room floor; it was tall and awkward and too heavy. The tank hit the floor with a dull thud, and Sam ground cigarette subs into their yellowing carpet with her sneakers as she wrestled it upright.
--and she wasn't enough.
*
The homemade taser was a blocky, inelegant thing, prone to misfiring. Three times Sam woke up aching on her bedroom floor while she was building it.
After that, all she needed was a guinea pig.
Sam waited behind the high school gymnasium where the older kids hung out and smoked; she screwed up her nose at the lingering smells of tobacco and marijuana. Sam hated the smell of any kind of smoke. It was like an infinite loop in her mom's mind; she knew the cigarettes were making her sick, but she wouldn't stop smoking them. It was just... bad code.
She didn't have to wait long for the captain of the football team - the same lug who'd broken Sam's wrist one summer - to turn up.
"Shove off, pipsqueak," he said, scraping Sam face first along the brickwork. Sam let the taser fall from the sleeve of her jean jacket into her hand; she jabbed it behind her into the football player's thigh.
Sam wiped the blood and grit from her cheek with the back of her hand as she watched him jerk around on the ground, a humiliating wet patch spreading around the crotch of his jeans.
Sam's mouth curved into a smile.
*
There was a swing park across the street from Barb the librarian's house, and Sam took to hanging out there, scuffing her sneakers in the dirt with her taser shoved into the back of her jeans.
Every evening Mr. Russell pulled up at Barb's house, he stayed for dinner but never all night. Sam knew that he was aware of her presence; a little girl all alone and helpless.
His car never slowed to the predatory crawl that Sam was expecting; Trent Russell never rolled down his window, smiled his snake's smile, and offered little Sam Groves a ride home.
Sam thought about running up as he was getting out of his car and tasing him in front of Barb; some days it was all she thought about. But her plan had always hinged on getting him alone somewhere secluded.
Well, there was more than one way to skin a cat, as Sam's mom always said.
Sam turned her attention back to the computer she was been building in her bedroom, one far better than anything the public library had to offer. In the virtual world of Sam's imaginings she would have been able to protect Hanna; the fact that Trent Russell was a grown man and Sam a scrawny thirteen year old wouldn't have signified.
That world wasn't here yet, but it was so close that Sam could almost taste it; and in the meantime, she would keep her taser.
ii. Root
Sam grew up tall and lanky; she had thin wrists and long fingers topped with black lacquered nails. She dressed in dark layers and could easily pass for a student as she hung around the University of Texas campus, using their computers for her extra-legal activities and sitting in on computer science lectures she could easily have taught.
Her mom never asked where Sam got the money for her doctors; Sam could never decide if that meant she was stupid or just smart enough to know that she didn't want to know. But there was very little doctors, however well paid, could do for late stage lung cancer, and when her mom died so did Sam Groves.
*
"What the hell kind of leet speak name is Root?"
Root smiled at the hacker who had subcontracted her, and now had her backed against a wall treating her to his halitosis, and tasered him in the groin.
"That kind of name," she said as he twitched at her feet.
*
Root dyed her dishwater blonde hair a soft chocolate brown. She told herself that she wore it in long, loose waves because it made for a memorable feature, and one that could be easily changed in extremis, and not because it was how Hanna had worn hers.
She lived off thick, bitter coffee and small, tart apples. Sometimes she surfaced from line after line of perfect code to realise that she hadn't eaten in days and would order enough takeout to feed a family of three; her metabolism was a wonder of the world.
*
After one too many close calls - a dupe she'd been setting up to take the fall for a multi-million dollar theft had caught on and cornered her against a wall with his forearm barred across her throat and his body crowding suffocatingly into hers; Root's taser had been in her handbag across the room - she learned how to fire a gun.
Root had always considered firearms to be simplistic, barbaric, beneath her; a necessary evil to be deployed in the service and protection of her body. She found an ex-policewoman to teach her how to shoot; the woman had been thrown off the force for being a dirty cop, but it was close enough to taunting the police to delight Root.
After a while Root found herself delighting in the guns themselves. She liked the solid metal weight in her hand, and the kick when she fired. She became a quick and competent shot, and if she was better from close range, well it wasn't as though she was trying to be a marksman. If she'd kept her teacher around longer she might have learned that stuffed down the back of her pants was no place to keep a loaded gun.
The first time she shot a person the results were messy, carnal; the back of the guy's skull stayed on, but only just. It was rather upsetting to see, actually; but that was a small consideration next to the fact that Root's marketable skills had now expanded from hacking, extortion, and the involuntary extraction of information to include murder.
*
Root had no interest in false modesty - she knew that she was hot.
She would never have given it much thought if not for how much easier her good looks made manipulating people. It was the oldest input/output operation in the world: input one pretty woman, output whatever the hell Root wanted.
The down side was that now and again Root had the misfortune of meeting a man who wouldn't take no for an answer; from these men she had collected a lot of data on the effects of electrical current to the groin, as well as prolonged dehydration, sensory deprivation, and extension of the thorax.
The most recent of these men was a State Senator named Bennett who was now tied to a chair in his own basement after trying to force himself on the au pair. Root could have hacked into the Bennetts computers from outside the house, but a girl liked a bit of role-play in her life from time to time.
Mrs. Bennett was slight with generous curves and olive skin, and she'd been making cow's eyes at the au pair all week.
"My husband won't disturb us," she whispered in Root's ear, encircling Root's wrist with her fingers, and leaning into her space.
Root thought about the man strung up beneath their feet. You don't know how right you are, she thought.
Root very rarely indulged in sex. There were more satisfying things: a perfect line of code, the electric caress of her taser, walking into a room and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the smartest person there. And mostly people irritated her; men she found ridiculous, and even those women she felt an initial frisson of attraction to rarely held her interest through the night.
But Mr. Bennett was indisposed, and the Bennetts millions were draining away into one of Root's offshore accounts, so Root smiled, leaned down, and let her lips meet the other woman's
Mrs. Bennett was still asleep when Root slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and gathered her clothes. She had already mentally moved on from the Bennetts; her Caroline Turing identity was almost ready, designed specifically to gain the sympathies of one John Reese.
iii. Analog Interface
The apartment was going to be sitting empty for a week. It belonged to a programmer who'd taken his family on vacation to the Florida Keys, so Root had a week to go through his work, use his computer, and eat the contents of his fridge.
Crush two cloves of garlic.
"Where the hell is the garlic press?" Root grumbled, more to herself than the Machine. She tried to crush the garlic with the flat of her knife and huffed when the clove smacked into the wall and rolled away under the fridge.
Your ground beef is burning.
Root knew that all believers thought their gods watched over them; Root's God worried that she didn't eat well enough and wanted her to learn how to cook.
She'd sent Root for a physical; MRI and CT scans, too.
Root laid the table, turned the television to C-SPAN so she could keep her good ear out for any mention of Northern Lights, and sat down with her plate of lasagna.
How does it taste?
The beef was burnt, and the noodles tasted more... slimy than anything else. "It's fine. Do you-- I mean, do you want me to describe it to you?"
I have often wondered what it would be to taste.
Root chuckled dryly. "I always wanted to be more like you. I used to think about my mind floating free without all this--" she flicked her hand and screwed up her nose "--stuff."
Do you still wish for that?
Root took another bite of the lasagne, where it was crispy at the corner. "I don't know; less than I used to."
*
"You were that kid in school who pulled the pigtails of girls you liked, weren't you?"
Root lounged in the doorway to Shaw's apartment. She'd walked her home after a mission; followed her home, really.
"Did you have pigtails when you were little, Sameen? Because that sounds adora--"
"Good. Bye, Root." Shaw shut the door firmly in her face.
"It's because I never got to torture her with that iron," Root mused as she walked away down the street; a homeless man looked sideways at the crazy woman talking to herself. "That's why I'm fixated on Shaw."
The Machine buzzed noncommittally in her ear.
"You disagree."
Yes, okay. There had been the iron and the taser, and the tingling feeling when Shaw had said that she liked that kind of thing; and Root's delight in Shaw's vicious, joyful physicality; and that the time Root had seen Shaw in a little black dress to work a number and had had to take a steadying breath before her knees gave out. But it had been months, she should be bored by now; why did she still find Sameen Shaw so endlessly fascinating?
"Why do you keep setting me up on missions with Shaw, anyway?"
Agent Shaw is prepared to listen to you in a way that neither Primary Asset or Admin are yet.
"I don't know, I really think Harry's coming round to me."
Agent Shaw has prior experience with relevant threats.
"Aw, you worry about me."
Spending time with Agent Shaw makes you happy.
"I-- Well. Thank you."
*
Root grunted and nearly dropped the barbell onto her face.
She half expected to hear the Machine in her ear, scolding her for trying to lift weights that were too heavy for her. The Machine was the one who'd wanted her to start working out in the first place.
The Machine could identify Root's enemies, she could tell her where to aim, and when to pull the trigger, but she couldn't stop Root's arms shaking when she was holding an AR-15.
Not that the Machine could do any of those things anymore, not without Samaritan eavesdropping.
The first time Root had tried to lift weights had been at Shaw's place. Sameen had come home to find that Root had 1) broken in, and 2) nearly crushed her own windpipe with a barbell.
"None of your identities have a gym membership?" Shaw had asked, easily taking the weights from Root and setting them down.
"The Machine wants me to work on my strength."
Shaw had looked Root up and down where she still lounged on the weight bench. "You should. You have the muscle definition of wet asparagus."
"Sounds hot." Root had grinned suggestively. "Oh, and Sameen, She hoped that you could teach me a few moves, for the next time I run into Decima in a dark alley?"
Shaw had started to roll her eyes, but her gaze caught on the bruises at Root's throat where a Decima agent had tried to choke her out.
"Yeah, I could help you out there," Shaw had said. "It'd be pretty boring around here if you got yourself killed."
Root had swooned dramatically back onto the bench, sighing, "Dear Diary, today Sameen admitted that she likes me..." and Shaw had rolled her eyes and huffed in amused annoyance.
But that had been before the Machine had gone silent and Sameen had been... Sameen had...
Root bared her teeth in a snarl and hefted the weights into the air.
iv. God's Voice
The hospital strip lighting hurt Root's eyes as they wheeled her gurney along; everything hurt.
I'm sorry. You are not alone.
"Shaw..." Root tried to say; it came out as a wet, bloody cough.
Root. It's okay. I'm here.
Root would have smiled to hear the Machine using Sameen's voice, but however many muscles it took to smile, none of them were working anymore. Someone cleared her airway and tried to force a tube down her throat; Root gagged.
How about this?
It took her a second - everything was so slow now - to realise that the Machine was using Root's own voice.
No, don't try to talk. You will be with me forever. I hope you find that as comforting as I do.
Root thought about Sameen. About Hanna, and unmarked graves, and girls who don't matter. About Harry and the big lug. Sameen again. She thought about electricity flickering between the prongs of her taser and the synapses of her mind. She thought about those brain scans the Machine had made her get, and about Leibniz's Law of Indiscernibles.
Root thought about Shaw, about how she'd only just got her back; she wondered what Sameen thought about the indiscernibility of identicals.
The Machine knew what Root was thinking.
I'll love her too.
Root thought about her voice unspooling through infinity, looping and rewriting, line after line of perfect, bloodless code, like... roots.
The last thing Root heard was her own voice cracking with tears--
It's okay. It's okay. Shh, it's okay.
--she wished she'd been able to tell the Machine that it absolutely was a comfort.