Chapter Text
Shaw wakes with a start. She quickly sits up and locates the source of the noise. Flicking her eyes to the little box on the wall in her cell, she registers that it's glowing red, the light pulsing ominously in time to the loud siren which woke her. In her time here, she has only seen the box light up two colours: green for when they delivered her food and blue for when Greer had wanted to see her for a “friendly” chat.
She wonders idly if this alarm also means that she should go and stand in the painted corner, triggering the metal bars to lower from the ceiling, effectively splitting the room in half and cutting her off from the door. Considering the nature of the alarm, it is more likely than not the facility is being attacked and if this is her only chance to escape then she needs to be ready.
There's no way she's going to risk Greer or his goons being able to trigger the bars remotely to trap her in. It’s not been done before, she’s always had to stand in the corner and wait for the bars to activate but she wouldn’t put it past them to build in some sort of fail safe. She’d attempted to escape too many times to count and she’d killed ten guards in the process. When she had finally managed to take out his top two agents as well, Greer had been forced to act. The triumphant sneer on his face as he ran through the safety features of the cell had Shaw gritting her teeth and vowing to punch him in the face the next chance she got.
Quickly darting to the other side of the room, Shaw strains her ears for any sign of what is happening outside. She thinks there might be gunfire and possibly a grenade over the din of the alarm, but she can't be sure. She knows it's futile to try the door to her cell, it doesn’t open unless the metal bars have been activated, so she crouches down in the corner facing the door ready for whoever enters. The alarm is the only source of light, bathing the room in an eerie red glow.
After a few minutes of waiting, she swears inwardly for being startled when the lock on the door explodes and bursts open, the steel hitting the wall with resounding clang. A tall brunette strides into the room, pistol in one hand and a small duffel in the other. Shaw is just about to pounce when she realises who it is. She almost can't believe it, having spent the last few months convinced that she'd been hidden away in some hell hole where no one would ever find her. She's thought about this moment over and over, imagining what it would be like and playing different scenarios in her head, but nothing prepares her for the look of desperation, cold fury and what Shaw can only describe as a tinge of hope on the other woman's face.
Sweeping the room with her gun hand, Root finds what she is looking for and her face dissolves into a grin, regaining her trademark confidence.
”Hey sweetie, did you miss me?", she teases.
"In your dreams" Shaw replies, not missing a beat. The hacker grated on her every nerve but she sure knew how to make an entrance.
Root chuckles as she slides the duffel over to Shaw.
"You've got two minutes, then we need to get moving."
Shaw immediately begins to strip off her grey Decima-issue pants and top, knowing full well Root is watching her but not caring. Now was not the time to be self-conscious about her body and it wasn’t anything Root hadn’t seen before. She isn't sure whether to be creeped out or grateful when the clothes she pulls out of the duffel fit her perfectly, right down to the underwear.
Making fast work of the combat boots and leather jacket, she retrieves a small case from the bottom of the bag. On opening it, she has to suppress her glee at finding her favourite weapons inside. She slips the spare magazines and suppressor into her jacket, the nano into the waistband of her jeans and then slides the knife into the sheath on her calf. As she stands up with the trusty weight of the USP compact in her hand, Shaw feels more like herself than she has in months.
Root steps forward, holding out an earwig which Shaw accepts. "Ready?"
Shaw simply nods as she follows Root out the door, noticing as Root signals to the two armed men who have been guarding outside. She recognises them as ISA agents straight away and wonders what the hell Root is doing with them. This mustn’t be just a simple rescue mission.
"John, I have her."
"Shaw? Is she hurt? Do you need help? I can come to -"
"I'm fine, Reese." Shaw cuts him off quickly.
"Welcome back Shaw." The overwhelming relief on the other end floods through her ear-wig and she suppresses an eye-roll.
"Root, if you're done, I think Finch could use a hand with the servers."
"Already on our way John."
The two agents fall into line behind them and when they reach the end of the alcove where her cell is located, Shaw looks down the adjoining hallway. The bodies strewn down it look like rag dolls and none are moving. A few are ISA, but the majority are Decima agents. As they walk past, Shaw realises that many are shots to centre mass and there are even some headshots. She sneaks a sideways glance at Root, who is completely unfazed by the carnage they are picking their way through. Taking a second look at the bodies, the gunshots seem more precise than the hacker would normally make, more like the ones that were second nature to Shaw after years of training.
Root leads them down several floors and they pick off the few Decima agents they encounter without incident before finally reaching double doors at the end of a long hallway. Standing guard are another two ISA agents. The one on the left nods to Root, before tapping his ear.
“Cobalt 4 to Dark Knight. Root and Indigo 5A have arrived.”
“Let them through.”
“Copy that.”
Shaw raises an eyebrow at Root. “They let you keep your name as your callsign?” she asks incredulously, shaking off her unease at hearing her old codename.
“Well, they did assign me one but I wouldn’t respond to anything except my name so Control relented after the first mission.”
Shaw can't help but chuckle, it was so Root. She wasn’t a trained agent and it wasn’t like she had a secret identity to protect, she’d chosen a name for herself years ago and crafted an entire life around it.
They step through the double doors with the two ISA agents still following. Shaw takes in the rows and rows of server racks that they pass, a chill running through her as she remembers the last time she’d been in a Samaritan server farm. It must be a good twenty rows before she spots a small control room on the right side. Through the large window she can see Finch sitting at a desk, overlooking a number of monitors and Reese is standing behind him, ever the protector.
They both look up, having heard their footsteps. Reese is looking like he's about to come up and hug her. Sensing that this is a bad decision, he stops himself at the last second opting instead to pat her shoulder awkwardly once she's within reach.
“Dark Knight huh? Don’t tell me they codenamed him Robin.”
Reese can only glare at her in return. Finch however, gives her a small grin.
“Ms Shaw. Whilst the circumstances are less than ideal, it is definitely good to see you.”
“Likewise, Finch.”
He turns his attention to Root and gestures to the open seat next to him.
“I’ve just finished setting up. We’re ready to start when you are”.
Root sidles over to the terminal, placing her guns on either side of the keyboard before sitting down. Her eyes are trained on the the screen as a number of windows flash up, text scrolling quickly as she types with fluid accuracy.
“She says we’ll need about 10 minutes to execute the program, John.”
Reese steps outside the room and gestures to the four ISA agents that have been guarding him and Finch as well as the two behind Shaw.
“No matter what happens, these two are the priority. Anybody comes through that door unannounced, shoot to kill. Do you understand?”
“What about you two, sir?” the one to the far left asks.
“Don’t worry about us, we can handle ourselves. ”
The agents spread out, easily covering their position.
Motioning for Shaw to follow, John starts down one of the aisles clearly searching for something. He finds a small terminal a few rows away and stops in front of it.
“Reese, what are you doing?”
“Cover me” he replies, not answering her question.
Pulling out a small USB drive from his pocket, he plugs it into the terminal before also retrieving his cell phone and unlocking it. Looking intently at the camera on the phone, he speaks slowly, painfully.
“Are you there?”
//Affirmative//
“You know what I’m looking for. Save one copy to the USB drive, delete all other traces from Decima's servers. No one can ever know those files existed.”
//Instructions received. Executing.//
Curiousity gets the better of her and Shaw watches as the terminal screen comes to life, windows flashing open and closed too quickly for anything to make sense. A slow feeling of horror slides into her stomach as everything slows and she can finally make out a folder with her name on it being copied to the USB drive. Shaw has to bite back the urge to vomit, knowing what's contained in those files. All of her sessions with Rousseau and Lambert had no doubt been recorded and catalogued by Samaritan. All those times they had tied her up, drugged her and tortured her looking for answers about the team and the Machine.
A progress bar pops up titled “Deleting …”. Each second is agonisingly slow as the Machine dutifully searches and deletes every trace of the files on her.
//Task complete.//
John quickly unplugs the USB drive and hands it to Shaw.
“This is yours. It might come in handy later.”
Shaw knows in the back of her mind that her memories of what she's suffered are not reliable and she could not, would not risk the safety of the team with patchy information. She'd withstood all of the physical torture thrown her way, blocking out the pain as best she could and relishing in Martine's frustration at not being able to break her. However, the number of hallucinogens and psychoactive drugs they'd pumped through her body had left so many days unaccounted for and that's the source of the fear that gnaws at her. With a resigned sigh Shaw pockets the small device, pretending as if the answers it could provide weren't already burning a hole in her.
If she's honest with herself, the team has already risked too much by giving her a gun and letting her roam free. They should've checked first, making sure she hadn't been compromised, that Samaritan hadn't somehow programmed her to kill them, before allowing her out. She wants to yell at Reese for letting them be so reckless, her frustration bubbling up and trying to escape. She hadn't spent however many months locked up for them to take stupid risks now.
As if sensing her impending outburst, Reese speaks up before she can.
"Root would've gone to rescue you first, no matter what the plan was. With or without my help, Shaw. You know that. And she was adamant they couldn't break you, that you'd never betray us. She slapped me for even suggesting it."
He's desperate for her to know that he's trying to hold it together, to keep Root safe, to keep the team safe and to complete the mission. It's always been their job, something that they shared without question but he's had to take the burden on himself during her absence and she can hear the exhaustion in his voice now.
Shaw curses under her breath.
"In any case, the Machine calculated the odds and they were slim enough for us to take the risk."
"Yeah, cos She's never wrong" Shaw shoots back sarcastically.
Reese turns to make his way back to the control room, not wanting their absence to be noticed. He needn't have worried though, as the two nerds are both focused on the programs they are running.
There are so many questions that Shaw wants to ask. To know what they've been up to during the time she's been locked away, but she's not really one for long conversations nor does she have the patience or the ability to draw them out into a proper conversation.
She settles on, "What are they doing?" tilting her head to Root and Finch.
"They're infecting Samaritan with a virus. We had to hit all of the servers at the same time. They’re co-ordinating with the other sites as well."
"This is their HQ?"
His face hardens, "Yes. The most heavily fortified and defended, although we think this is the longest they've stayed in one location."
A few things click into place for Shaw. Images of the times where she'd been sedated and blindfolded, bundled into a vehicle before waking up in a new room, a new building floating into her head. Until one day, she'd woken up in the cell she'd just been sprung from, and just left there. Perhaps Greer had become nervous after what Shaw had done to that blonde bitch and her lackey, smug satisfaction rolling through her at the thought.
She's interrupted from her memories when Root suddenly pipes up, "John, you should call Lionel and his team. He can escort Harry out of the building once he's done running the diagnostics."
Finch looks up then, shooting her a quizzical look, "And just where are you going, Miss Groves?"
Root narrows her eyes, "I think it’s time we had a little chat with Greer", she says motioning to Shaw and Reese.
"Please remember what we talked about, we want him alive."
"Of course Harry". Shaw nearly misses the flash of anger in Root's eyes before she's got that manic grin on her face again. She's certain that Root has no intention of letting Greer leave the building alive, but she's not about to enlighten Finch to that fact.