I just binged this whole thing in a single day. God damn. Kinda wanting to see if Sue and The Machine ever interact. Wondering if su or root will invest in biomechanics to upgrade their flesh or become cyberpunk and I get that doesn't really fit the theme. I would write fanfiction of this if i had the mental capacity for such a thing.
>$SuDo Madhouse (Person Of Interest OC-SI)
- Thread starter BigBabyJ
- Start date
Thanks for reading, I'm not even sure I could read a 250k word story in one day.
I'm sure Sue and The Machine will interact soon enough, they've both been skirting around each other for years at this point. As for biotech, there will be implants in the future but nothing too drastic, all within the constraints of the world. And everyone has the ability to write a fic, it just takes time.
Chapter 29: Zero Day
ROOT POV
The sound of footsteps echoes in the hallway leading to Root's office, where she sits at her desk with anxious excitement, staring at her monitor. Her mind is actively analyzing the available information to come up with plans and solutions.
"Hey May!" A male voice says as he deposits a stack of papers on her desk. "Here's the documents your boss needs to sign by the end of the day."
Tearing her eyes away from her monitor, she looks upon her fellow office worker and gives a fake smile. "Thanks Colin."
"You're welcome." The office worker responds with his own smile. "By the way, the others are going to eat pizza for lunch. Do you want to join us?"
Root put on a fake regret face and says. "Sorry, I can't. I have to go down the road with the special counsel later."
The man gives her a sympathetic look. "That's unfortunate. Hopefully, they count that as working time."
"I'll quit if they don't." Root replies with mock amusement.
"Anyway. See you later, May." The man nods and waves as he walks away.
Root didn't bother to respond to him as her attention runs back to her monitor and sees the virus activation countdown timer on a terminal window…
T-0015:05:48
Today is the day where a year's work culminates in her search for God, and saving her best friend; Zero Day.
Her knowledge of The Machine has grown significantly since the day she started working in this dead-end job roughly a year ago. She got almost every information about The Machine she can get from this position and thought the cover would be useless then. Then she broke the Virus that's infecting and found soo much information about The Machine she never knew about.
The virus itself was built around The Machine source code, and from that she caught a glimpse of God. The heathens who created that virus were kind enough to leave their name in the source code… those dumb fucks. She can't wait to find and kill them for daring to hurt the machine.
Due to the virus, The Machine's has been slowing down, and ever since the government noticed the downturn in it's performance. They've been running around like headless chickens trying everything to solve the problem. Unsurprisingly, every attempt ISA made was a complete failure.
There's one thing she can't wrap her mind around… why can't The Machine fix itself?
Something for her to ask Harold later.
Then there's Ernest Thornhill. The mysterious non-exiting man that popped up into existence five months ago and has been buying up payphones in NYC ever since. It wasn't hard for her to figure out that the man wasn't real -thanks to Su, she's seen enough composited picture to know in a glance which one is fake- and it's just a cover for The Machine.
That's a front she's been neglecting for the past few months, because she can easily monitor what Thornhill is doing for her position here and her investigation into The Machine's attacker but couldn't investigate personally in New York. She'll rectify that neglect soon.
The one thing left for her to find out is the location of The Machine.
She's snapped out of her reverie by the ringing of her desk phone and promptly answers it.
"Miss May, can you please bring a cup of coffee for me?"
A flash of annoyance at the interruption spreads through her, causing her to look at the time on her monitor. Oh… she must have missed the normal schedule.
"Right away, sir." She answers and slams the receiver down as she gets up to walk away.
As she does her usual morning routine for her dick of a boss, her mind drifts away to one of the biggest motivator in her current job; Su.
The last time she spoke with Su was last week when Harold, out of the blue, made 'contact' with her in search of help with his Greg situation. That whole thing slightly caught her off guard. She never thought The Machine could have intercepted an internal CSS hit with how the communications was set up by a paranoid Su, and especially when The Machine is fighting with one hand tied to it's back because of the virus.
According to Pauling, there have been 44 hits in the New York City area since 2011, and all of them were successful. That meant The Machine has never given the numbers of the people that were targeted by the CSS to Harold, not once… until now.
Curious…
Someone in the termination team must have fucked up their SOP or something internal changed… And Su's the one that handles the internal systems of the CSS.
Occam's Razor tells her it's someone in the hit team fucked, but in the back of her mind since last week has been telling her that something's wrong with Su and that caused her stomach to churn.
From their unfortunately quick call, Root can hear something was off in her best friend's voice. Oh sure, Su tried to sound normal along with her splash of humor, but there was a weakness in her voice, her voice. It's like she's extremely tried. Ever since that call last week, she had wanted to call Su again but never had the opportunity, and when she did; it was in the middle of the night. She didn't have the heart to call Su for fear of disturbing her already tumultuous sleep habit.
What's worse is that she hasn't her best friend in over five months when Su just came back from Europe and threw Root a belated birthday celebration. Root still remembers that day clearly. Her friend had Pauling 'pick her up' on the weekend -completely ignoring Root's packed weekend-, and they both flew to meet Su at Hershey Park to spend the day there. Her friend doesn't usually do the whole celebration thing… not since her affliction started, but they haven't seen each other for six months at that point and she isn't one to complain when her friend is doing something sweet but it's still an odd behavior.
She had a blast with the girls that day, and the only thing that held that day back from being great was when she saw her friend. She tried so hard to pretend that everything was fine with herself, from the extra makeup she wore, which she rarely did when they're together, to her pretending to have more energy than she did. It was such a blatant cover up that anyone that knows Su personally wouldn't fall for it… Well, Pauling fell for it… but that bubbly woman takes whatever Su says like it's gospel and was just excited to see Su being energetic even if it was just a façade. Thinking about it, Su doesn't have any other people around her, so that makes it 50 percent of the people that know her fell for it.
Guess that means only Root saw through the act, unless Su has a secret friend that she didn't tell anyone about… that's such a silly theory. She would have told Root about it, and that woman doesn't even see Pauling is a friend, despite how close they are.
Root wanted to call it out, but she really didn't want to ruin the mood that day with how rarely her friend actually planned for that type of thing. She had initially thought about meeting up with Su again so they can have a talk about what's going on with her, but they just couldn't match their schedule, with how busy Root was in finding God and Su flying around doing whatever she does.
Outside of last week's call, they barely call each other anymore, with Root focusing on her task and Su constantly being in different time zones. They no longer keep in touch with each other like previously. Sure, Su still send her the daily texts to tell her she's alive and well, but there were no conversations or information in them.
She didn't even think to ask the bubbly woman about Su despite her being easier to contact and her having weekly contact with each other. Not that it really matters. Despite her bubbly friend being one of the most perceptive person Root knows, she is so blinded by her trust in Su that she'll ignore everything her brain says if Su says the opposite; like her general state of health.
Has she been a terrible friend? She's been so focused on the end goal of finding God and curing her friend that she's been completely ignoring whatever troubles Su's been having.
This is just like mom again… her ignoring… her wanting to… No, no, no…
Her grip on the hot mug tightens, feeling the stinging heat on her hands and she can feel her heartbeat rise at the thought of all of this. She can feel her feet stop walking as her brain goes into overdrive with emotions.
She needs to calm herself down…
Closing her eyes, she takes in deep breaths and exhales as she leans into the wall for support.
Root isn't twenty-two anymore. She isn't that pathetic, weak woman anymore. Root won't fail.
Like a mantra, she keeps repeating that in her head and doing the breathing exercise she learned from such a long time ago, until she feels her heartbeat slow down to an acceptable level. She loosens her grip on the coffee mug and pushes herself off the wall.
Opening her eyes and taking in the sight of the empty shitty hallway towards her office. Thankfully, there weren't anyone here to bother her because she might have done something impulsive.
As her mind returned to its usual state, she could finally think more calmly and rationally. Everything will be fine, everything will go according to plan, everything will be alright.
With one hand, she takes out her phone to see the ticking timer on it.
T-0015:00:29
She'll gain access to The Machine in 15 hours and by tomorrow she'll fix her friend once and for all. All she has to do is have faith in The Machine and follow the plan. Only thing that's left for her to do here is to question that man.
Throughout her minor episode she just had, her target has been on the phone talking to Senator Garrison and both of their annoying voices has been blearing out from her earpiece.
"Yes, it's almost catastrophic. Luckily, the bomber was an amateur, so it failed to go off."
With rejuvenated determination, she continues on her short walk back to the office.
"Why was it not intercepted?"
"That's because we haven't received any numbers in over a week…"
Funnily enough, The Machine was well enough to send Harold's Gary's irrelevant number last week.
"… The threat to the program is much greater than we thought."
How can they be this stupid? It's a miracle that they've been operating for the past 8 years with this type of intelligence. The Machine must be the one that's been pulling most of the weight.
Without bothering to knock on the door, she opens it and enters.
"Hang on." The special counsel says into the phone and puts down the phone.
She gives the simple man a smile as she puts down his coffee and quickly turns around to exit the room. On second thought, she should have laced that coffee with Sodium Pentothal…
Oh well, the man will talk one way or another.
"Our techs were finally able to decode the chip we recovered from Alicia Corwin's body."
Again, how incompetent are they that it took them a year to decode that chip when it took her less than three weeks?
Root shakes her head in amusement as she bends down to grab a pair of zip ties, her pistol and a few syringes from her bag.
"We've connected the virus to a group called Decima Technologies. Private intelligence outfit working out of Shanghai. Corwin believes someone leaked them a portion of the northern lights' source code on a laptop."
Of course, she would believe that idiot. She's the one that sent helper monkey and his friend to their 'deaths' to 'recover' that laptop. Do these people not read their own reports? Both Reese and Shaw -such a small world- were separately involved in trying to recover that laptop before it was sold off to Decima.
She double checks as she grabbed the correct syringes and pockets them. Can't accidentally kill him before she gets what she wants.
"We think Decima is trying to destroy the program."
Man… the guy is really behind the curve on this one. Root recovers some of her politeness, knocks on the door lightly.
"I'll wait for your instructions."
She enters the Special Counsel office and closes the door behind her.
The man puts down his phone again after ending the call. "I won't be needing anything else, Miss May…"
She walks towards the man's desk with her hands behind her back and her heart is full of anticipation of what's going to happen in the coming day.
"… other than some privacy." The man tries to dismiss her like some servant.
Not like he ever had any privacy in the past year, or ever since The Machine went online 8 years ago.
Root can't help but let some of the excitement bleed into her expression as she says. "But there are a few things I need, sir."
She casually brings out her hands and aims her pistol at the genuinely surprised looking man. Root gotta give it to him. He didn't even flinch.
"You had to know I'd quit, eventually." Root says with a wide grin on her. "This is kind of a dead-end job." She makes an insignificant gesture at the office. "I mean, you guys don't even offer a 401k."
How desperate does one need to be to work here for more than a year? Even Su gives good benefits to those disposable people who worked with the CSS.
"What do you want, Miss May?" The man says calmly as he stares at Root dead in the eye.
"Information." Root smiles as she leans closer to the man. "And be very careful how you answer my questions. A good assistant always knows when her boss is lying."
Root goes around the table and tosses the zip ties to the man. "Be a good man and tie yourself."
The man glares at her for a moment before picking up the zip ties and did as she orders. "You have no idea what kind of hole you have dug yourself into."
"How pretentious of you to think you could even catch me." Root smirks at the man as he ties his right hand and sets up the other zip tie for the other.
"What makes you think you'll even get out of this building alive?" The special counsel challenges back at her as she leans forwards to tighten his left-hand zip tie.
"Unlike you and your people, I actually have a brain in my noggin." Root mocks the man. "None of your security measures in the office is working, hasn't been working for a week now, no one will question why you're missing and as for your tracking chip in you… well, let's just say that no one will be finding you anytime soon."
The man's smug defiant face broke slightly and slowly morphed to one of slight worry. "Who do you work for? The Russians? The Chinese? The Europeans? Decima?"
"You people and your petty rivalries." Root scoffs at the man and shakes her head. "The balls on you for asking question when this is my interrogation."
"It's money then." The man continues to be defiant.
Root rolls her eyes at the man. "Unlike you, I work for myself, but I work towards a greater goal. Something your little brain can't even imagine."
The man stares at her for a second before spitting out. "A fundamentalist."
That illicit a giggle from Root… "You have no idea." She leans on the wall with her pistol still aimed at the man. "Anyway, the information I want is about Northern Lights…"
"You bugged my office." The man cuts her off as his eyes widen slightly.
Despite being slightly annoyed at the man for cutting her off, she continues to smile. "Guilty as charge. What self-respecting personal assistant doesn't do that? But most of your conversations were just drivel that I already know, and I really don't care what worthless gifts you get for your mistress."
Her smiles widen at the man's expression from one of defiance to a hard expression when she mentions his love life. Honestly, it's not even a controversial thing when almost everyone in any sort of power in this swamp has the odd side booty.
"Look, I just want one piece of information from you." Root sweetly says. "Where are the Northern Lights servers?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." The man answers instantly.
"You're really a poor liar, you know that." Root comments as she pushes herself off the wall with her left hand in her pocket to get closer to the man and bends down to be on eye level. "I did tell you what I will do to you if you lie."
In a matter of a second, she uncaps the syringe from her pocket with her left hand and stabs the syringe into the man's neck. Causing the man to flinch at the sudden prickle of pain as his eye's darts between her and the syringe.
"On second thought, I didn't tell you, did I?" She gives the fidgeting man a sadistic smile. "This is filled to the brim with amphetamines, meaning your heart will beat so fast that it will burst the moment I empty it into you."
Now this is going somewhere. There's fear in his eyes. All she has to do is put a bit more pressure on him and he'll break. "Do you know how many heart beats it takes to for a liquid in the neck to reach the hear?"
She tightens her grip on the syringe and on her thumb. "Just one."
Just before she can push down on the syringe, the man breaks. "I swear to God I don't know! The only ones that knew were the ones that were involved in the planning, construction, and installation of the facility. And everyone involved is now dead."
A frown appears on her and mutters. "That's the truth."
"Now, for the love of God, take out that needle." The man begs her with a slight panic in his voice.
Root completely ignores the man and stare away from him. He doesn't know; she was quite certain that he knew… that threw a wrench into her plan slightly. She can always try interrogating Control, but the problem with that woman is she's a paranoid fuck, she has security constantly on her along with a non-fixed rotations or schedules, and there's the small fact that she's in Fort Bragg right now. Going and breaking into that place is going to take a lot of time, time which she doesn't have.
Guess she'll have to find the location after midnight, but knowing Harold and how he codes. That man would never allow The Machine to reveal its location to anyone.
She needs to find a person that knows the location.
Unlike what this man said, not everyone is dead… the one that recruited everyone for the construction and the head engineer, Lawrence Szilard. He's still alive but went into hiding when his co-workers started dropping dead. Problem is, no one could find him, not the government and not her when she tried to, but with The Machine's help, finding that man will be a cakewalk.
As unfortunate as this interrogation has been, it might be for the best. Seeing that, she'll have to put her faith in her god.
The vibration of her phone tears her away from her thoughts and back into the present. Replacing her gun with her phone, she checks what triggered the notification and isn't disappointed.
"Looks like Decima is giving your boys the old runaround…" She comments with a smirk as leans closer to the man. "… and been quite the busy little bees in finding Northern Lights as well."
That trigger something in the man as he stiffens. "Let me go now and I'll forget this ever happens. I need to deal with Decima right now. They are a threat to the program and to the country."
"Hmmm, that's a nice offer…" She gives the man a smile. "… but I don't trust you as far as I can throw you and you're a heavy guy."
The man glares at her with fire in her eyes, but doesn't say anything. He really wants to kill her. How cute.
"So, I gotta pass." Her smiles morphs to a sadistic one again as she pushes down on the syringe and releasing to concoction of drugs into his system.
The man's eyes widens in panic. "What…"
"Don't worry…" She cuts him off as she removes the empty syringe. "It's a barbiturate. You'll just drift into a long and peaceful nap. That is, if I got your weight correct."
The man couldn't say anything as his eyes goes out of focus and his head falls forward into unconsciousness.
Removing the syringe and taking a step back to look upon the unconsciousness man. Seeing that this is a dead end, she might as well move on to New York next, knowing that shit will go down there. Might as well drag Harold with her, knowing that he'll have information about The Machine that she doesn't have. Hopefully, this time, he'll be more cooperative with her.
Root moves away from the man to look out of the window, then takes out her phone and dials his number and waits for him to answer. What a beautiful view of the monument, such a waste that a scum like this man has a view like this.
Wonder if Harold is busy or not…
"Yes?" Harold answers a second later, sounding wary.
"What did you do to it, Harold?" Root asks as she moves away from the window. "There's no time to be coy. We both know the machine is under attack. What I don't understand is why a robust system with self-annealing properties isn't defending itself against a simple virus."
Root ends her rant by leaning onto the unconscious man with her hand and unsurprisingly Harold being silent.
How rude…
"Did you injure it, Harold?" Root pushes for an answer. "Is that why it can't fight back?"
"I have nothing to say to you." Harold gives a terse reply.
"Now Harold, is that how you always respond to a dear friend who helped you out of a tight spot?" Root reminds the man of their deal.
"We are anything but friends."
"Harold~, you sure know how to break a woman's heart." Root playfully retorts back with a pout before being serious again. "We can fight this thing much faster if we work together. There's only a few hours left until… something very bad happens."
"Our agreement has nothing to do with us working together, and I prefer to work on my own."
Root rolls her eyes at his sad attempt to defiance and challenges the man. "What about your loyal protector or Shaw?" She pauses for a second and snorts. "May I be blunt, Harold? Your helper monkey is capable at… certain things, but his skills aren't gonna cut it this time."
She paces around the room. "He will never completely understand the larger picture. N-Not like we do."
Harold continues to not say anything in response to her argument -more like insulting his helper monkey-, so she'll have to go in with a different approach.
"Have you two even found Ernest Thornhill yet?" Her pacing stops as a smirk appears on her face. "He's an interesting guy, isn't he?"
"What do you know?"
Hook line and sinker. Her smirk blooms into a full-blown grin. Harold knows about Thornhill's existence, but still doesn't know who the man actually is.
"You show me yours, and I'll show you mine." She delightfully says into her phone. "Talk to you real soon."
Root ends the call feeling slightly satisfied with it, knowing how stubborn that man can be. All he needs is just a bit of encouragement and a push towards the right way.
Her eyes lands on the pathetic unconsciousness form that is her former 'boss' as she looms over the man and taps her chin with the syringe that's still on her hand.
Hmmm… she can't leave him here because of the obvious and she can't kill him because his chip will trigger an alarm even though it's currently being jammed. That'll only alert his dogs to chase her faster.
Better dump this man along with her jammer somewhere for a time, maybe a hotel room or an apartment. That sounds like a plan.
Now how to move him, as much as she's confident in her strength in carrying the man. People will get awfully suspicious of her if she's spotted with an unconscious US Special Counsel.
She taps her feet on the floor for a second before an idea pop into her head which causes her to smile in delight.
Guess she'll just have to use the janitor's rubbish bin to move him out. The apt usage of a rubbish bin, moving trash, is its specialty.
HAROLD FINCH POV
The morning sun glooms through the dark clouds as Harold walks the cold busy streets of New York with Bear's in hand. It's their usual walk around the library, with him feeling content as he looks upon the multitude of people passing by him, but this time, he feels a slight loss and worry. What if one of these people's number pops up, and the machine is too late to help?
Earlier, he had just tried to dissuade John from his constant use of the police scanner in trying to fill in the void that the machine has left John but if he's being honest with himself. Harold is in the same mind as John. It's just that he knows it's fruitless to stop a crime that already happens.
As he walks, he notices a CCTV camera bolted on the lamppost, causing him to slow down and eventually stop walking. Guilt and remorse burdens him as he looks directly into the camera's lens like it's a person's eye.
He knows he programed the machine to not answer him directly, but he still can't help but ask. "What's happening to you?"
As if the machine heard his question, a payphone that's a few paces away from him instantly rings, tearing his gaze away from the camera and onto the payphone.
Without hesitation, Harold walks forward towards the payphone and answers it.
BEEP. ONE. TANGO. JULIET. BEEP. SIX. ALPHA. ECHO. BEEP. REACTION. ROMEO. MIKE. BEEP.
His heart jumps in relief as he puts down the receiver and quickly limps his way back to the library with Bear in tow. While he's on his way back to the library, he shoots John a quick text message, and knowing his friend, he's going to rush back to the library as well.
It didn't take long for him to be back in the office and in front of his workstation, typing out the machine's code to turn it into a usable number. Instantly, he gets what he needs to do a quick background check on their new number and a picture to go with the name which he prints out as per usual.
"We got one?" The sound of his friend coming from the stairway as Harold's about to stick the picture to the glass board.
"The machine is being buried underneath an avalanche of false data, but somehow…" Harold explains and points to the picture of their new number to his friend, where he can see from his peripheral view. "It was able to get us his number."
"So, who is he?" John asks as he takes over Harold's position by the board when Harold goes back to his workstation.
"Ernest Thornhill." Harold answers as he sits down so he can view the relevant information. "CEO of a data entry company. Recently bought several payphone companies in New York State. His network is just over 20 million."
John turns towards Harold. "Any suspects or angry family members?"
"Mr. Thornhill is a very careful man." Harold elaborates. "It's been a challenge hacking into his company's database. He's using unique ten-digit codes with non-repeating alphanumeric characters as passwords. I can break them, but it'd take time."
"Seems familiar." John says lowly. "Do you think Thornhill might be involved with the collective?"
Harold's eyes snaps from his monitors to John whose face is creased with a frown. That piqued his interest in a possibility Harold had not thought about.
John, sensing Harold isn't about to say anything, continues. "The last number the machine gave us is a rich CEO of a business that you can't hack in as well. It could be another case of the collective cleaning house again or Shaw's snooping is triggering this. Maybe your machine is focused on the collective despite being… slow?"
Harold takes a few seconds to think of the probability of such a thing and concludes. "I didn't program the machine to focus on a singular threat, even if that threat is as critical as the collective."
"Things might have changed with everything that's going on with the machine. Who knows what it's thinking?" John concludes as he looms over Harold.
If only John knows how close to the truth…
"It might be a possibility, but the way both company's security is set up is completely different and Thornhill's company isn't using a customized algorithm like Mr. Cook's company. So, I don't think they're related." Harold concludes.
John stares at Harold for a second before nodding. "You're the computer expert."
Harold takes a sharp breath. "Why don't we just pay Mr. Thornhill a visit in person?"
There's a small smirk on John's face at the suggestion as he says. "Let's go to work."
It took them around 60 minutes to set up a cover for them to get into Thornhill Corporation without raising any alarm. Using their usual cover occupation of him being outside tech support and John being John choosing to wing it by going in as a guest without an appointment, they both enter the office space from two different entrances to not spur any suspicions.
From across the office space, Harold can see John looking around at the cubicles. Harold taps his earpiece to communicate with John. "I'll try to get through the firewall."
"I will too." John sarcastically says. Knowing his friend, he'll use a more physical method to get what he wants.
Harold walks pass rows and rows of busy office workers typing away on their workstations as he tries to find an empty spot for him to use.
"Hello." John says pleasantly and presumably talking to a receptionist.
"Hi. May I help you?"
"Yes, I'm John Rooney. I have an appointment with Mr. Thornhill."
"I don't have any appointment scheduled today for Mr. Thornhill. He's traveling."
"Guess we had a miscommunication. When do you think he'll be back?"
"I'm sorry. You name again?"
"I'll just send him an email."
With that front being a failure, Harold finds an empty desk for him to use. As he's about to sit down, Harold notices every desk's trash bin is filled with crumpled papers. Out of curiosity, Harold looks at his temporary desk's trash and finds the same thing.
Bending down, he grabs the trash paper, only to see lines of alphanumeric jumble mess. The entire paper, along with the rest of the trash paper, is filled with these seemingly random letters.
"Mr. Reese, there's something strange about this company." Harold whispers as he turns to look at the office workers. "These data entry assistants. They're typing in computer code off dot-matrix printouts. It doesn't make any sense."
"They're modifying it?"
Harold peers at the other desk's monitor. "No. They're seem to be taking data from one computer on one day and typing it into another on the next. Seems almost pointless."
"Maybe this company's a front for something else. Something less legal, like our friend Gary's company."
The sound of Harold's other phone ringing tears his concentration away from the monitor. He walks away from the desks to see the caller I.D. only to see UNKOWN.
Just who might this be?
Never one to avoid calls from the unknown, he answers it. "Yes?"
"What did you do to it, Harold?"
His heart freezes the moment he hears a voice he doesn't want to hear again.
"There's no time to be coy. We both know the machine is under attack. What I don't understand is why a robust system with self-annealing properties isn't defending itself against a simple virus."
What does she want? What does she know? This can't be unintentional. He doesn't want this talk to be here, so he grabs his briefcase and limps away.
"Did you injure it, Harold? Is that why it can't fight back?"
Harold swallows his anxiousness and answers. "I have nothing to say to you."
"Now Harold, is that how you always respond to a dear friend who helped you out of a tight spot?"
"We are anything but friends." Harold instantly retorts with slight anger in his voice.
He knew this would come back to haunt him eventually, but he didn't expect it to be this soon.
"Harold~, you sure know how to break a woman's heart. We can fight this thing much faster if we work together. There's only a few hours left until… something very bad happens."
She is as insufferable as ever… "Our agreement has nothing to do with us working together, and I prefer to work on my own." Harold tries to be polite with that woman.
"What about your loyal protector or Shaw? May I be blunt, Harold? Your helper monkey is capable at… certain things, but his skills aren't gonna cut it this time. He will never completely understand the larger picture. N-Not like we do."
There's a pause in her deranged speech as if she's waiting for him to respond, but he knows better than to say anything unnecessary to that woman.
"Have you two even found Ernest Thornhill yet? He's an interesting guy, isn't he?"
Harold comes to a dead stop at that question. How does she know about Thornhill? Is the collective involved in this like John suspected? No… it can't be. She was talking about the machine, that means she's still on her foolish journey of finding the machine. If so, that means Thornhill and the machine is somehow connected with each other… but what?
That woman manages to break his silence. "What do you know?"
"You show me yours, and I'll show you mine. Talk to you real soon."
The moment she finishes her sentence, she drops the call, and Harold feels dread in his stomach. Nothing good has ever come when it involves that woman. They need to regroup and find Mr. Thornhill as fast as possible.
Harold taps his earpiece… "Mr. Reese, we might have a problem."
Harold is sitting at his workstation in the library working on a theory that pop into his head while John's out trying to find Mr. Thornhill in a way of finding his car. Which, of course, in the typical John misadventures, devolves into an explosion. Luckily, John wasn't hurt and came back to the library bringing with him the bomber's -technically, it's the aviator- phone.
"If Mr. Thornhill was not in the car, then where was he?" Harold ask John as he comes back into Harold's 'office' space with a cup of instant coffee in hand.
"Carter's talking to his assistant." John fills him in as he walks to Harold's side. "But that's not what I'm worried about. If it wasn't the collective like you believe, then it's the government. That's what I'm more worried about, they're using kamikaze drones in the middle of the city."
"It wasn't the government, Mr. Reese." Harold rebuts without looking up from his monitors and passes John the damaged phone. "This phone that you recovered has a proprietary operating system that was used to control the drone. It also has a signature similar to that of the virus."
"This was Decima?" John concludes rightfully.
Before Harold can reply, John's phones rings and answers it after looking at the caller ID.
"You guys made one hell of a mess." Detective Carter's voice booms out of the phone speaker.
"How's the driver?" John asks as he paces away from Harold.
"Stable. Witnesses saw a good samaritan pull him out of the car. I'm going to guess that was you."
"Any sign of Thornhill?" John inquires without confirming the good detective theory.
"That's where it gets strange. None of his employees have ever met him, even his secretary was hired online. I think we're looking at someone with a Howard Hughes level of paranoia, or maybe he's taken classes from Finch."
"I would never book a car service under my own name." Harold instantly corrects the good detective.
That incites a smile from John before he ends the call. "Thanks, Carter."
"Finch…" John says with an inquisitive tone as he turns around to face Harold. "… I think I know who Thornhill is. He's a ghost, he doesn't exist. Just like those ghosts from the collective, but this one is more sophisticated compared to the ones Leon chased."
Once again, his friend gives an accurate assessment of the situation.
"I think you may be right, Mr. Reese." Harold answers.
"Apart from the collective, I've seen it dozens of times before. A NOC sets up a business, residence, a whole life. Then the operation gets scrapped. No one cleans up the fake I.D., and you wind up chasing empty town cars around the city." John concludes.
Once again, his friend gives an inaccurate assessment of the situation.
"Interesting theory, but I have a different one." Harold chimes in and nods to his monitor, causing John to come back to his side. "I was curious why I could only find one photo of Mr. Thornhill, so I did some investigating inside the phone that we already have, and I uncovered…"
Harold waits for the software to finish executing his command. "… some peculiar information within the file. Look at this."
As if his computer heard him finishing his sentence, the software decompile the picture and separates the one picture of Ernest Thornhill into three. Showing three different and distinct pictures of completely different people. This confirms his theory…
"It's a composite." Harold concludes.
"So, Thornhill's definitely fake." John thinks out loud.
"Of a sort." Harold continues on with his theory. "I accessed Mr. Thornhill's cell phone records, and according to the GPS data, he was near Columbus Circle two days ago…"
Harold brings up a terminal on another monitor with archived CCTV footage overlooking a barren Columbus Circle. "… He sent an email from that exact location at 4:32 P.M."
"And no one's there?" John wondered aloud.
"Someone spoofed the data." Harold answers by showing John a new terminal showing Mr. Thornhill cellular connection at that exact moment.
"An algorithm." John concludes from the stream of data. "A complicated one."
"It's one of mine." Harold answers the unsaid question.
He gets up from his workstation and walks to the glass board with Mr. Thornhill's picture. "I used it in the one place where it could never be duplicated… in the machine."
Harold stares at the picture on the glass board. "Ernest Thornhill is not a criminal or a spy, but you're right about the fact that he doesn't exist." He takes a sharp breath and turns to John. "He's a product of a survival instinct. Ernest Thornhill… is the machine."
It's the product of his code…
Taking in the information like a duck to water, John walks towards Harold and says. "We've got less than six hours till this virus hits zero."
"I'm well aware of the time, Mr. Reese." Harold instantly comments defensively.
"So why did the machine create Ernest Thornhill?" John pointedly asks.
This might be the result of his code, but what the machine is doing is completely its own doing, so Harold answers truthfully. "I have no idea."
But he can't tell John the entire truth, for it might hurt their relationship, so he lies by omission. "I programmed it to watch real people. Not to fabricate virtual ones."
"Well, it looks like your machine got real creative, Finch." John replies dryly.
"That's impossible…" …when he first sold it to the government. He's fudging the truth so much. "I took certain… precautions to make sure of that."
He hopes that this might dissuade John's thinking, but he knows his friend better than that.
"Precautions or no, the machine made Thornhill. Decima wants him dead, and we need to know why." John's not buying his excuses. "Thornhill's been buying up payphones all over the city. Why?"
… Because it's following the contingency that Harold created.
John continues on. "And why does your machine need an apartment, a phone, a car from the airport?"
Maybe he should come clean and tell his friend everything? Harold trusts the man in front of him with his life, but this… this is something that might break their friendship and no one should ever know about the payphones. Yet their adversaries seem to know something about it as well.
Should he…
In a split-second decision, he says. "To meet the residency requirements for owning payphones, I suppose."
He made his decision to not clue his friend into the mess he created and trying to fix.
Suddenly, as if it's on cue, a chat terminal suddenly opens up on his desktop, catching his attention. When the IRC chat prompt says an 'anonymous' user has logged in, that made him take a seat.
>LET'S GET SOME TEA HAROLD.
>I HEAR THERE'S A LOVELY STAND AT 18 WASHINGTON SQ PLACE
>ANONYMOUS SINGED OUT
Oh, dear lord.
His heart sank to the deepest depth at the mention of that location. How did she find out about that? He made sure no one would ever know about her… At the back of his head; he knew he should have moved her away from that house the day after he came back from his captivity. He shouldn't…
"Something wrong, Finch?"
JOHN REESE POV
Harold is being deflective and isn't telling him something. He can tell from the look in Harold's eyes when John asked about Thornhill and the machine. Then suddenly something on the computer caught Harold's attention from their conversation, prompting his friend to sit down when suddenly it seems like his friend freezes with tension at what he sees.
"Something wrong, Finch?" John asks worriedly.
"No, nothing." Harold says dismissively while his eyes are glued to the monitor.
Not being truthful again… Should he press for information from his friend?
… No. There must be a good reason for Harold not telling him everything he needs to know, and he trusts his friend to only have the best of intentions.
Harold's eyes snaps from his monitor and towards John. "You're right, of course. Go to the apartment rented under Thornhill's name. Sees who shows up looking for the man who doesn't exist and find out what they know."
That seems like an acceptable enough plan of action. Not having anything else to say to his friend, he just nods before turning around and walks out of the office space. Harold can keep information close to his chest, but that doesn't mean he'll like it.
It didn't take too long for him to reach Thornhill's apartment building. After a quick chat with the front desk and an easy lock picking, he's inside the barren apartment. The place is spartan and it wouldn't be a surprise if the machine bought this place with furniture included. Wonder how the machine chose this place because it sure has a pleasant view of the Hudson River and Hoboken Terminal.
As he looks around the apartment, his phone rings and looking at the number, he smiles.
John taps his earpiece. "What can I do for you, Carter?"
"Something's not right with this Thornhill guy. I talked to the car service he used, reservations were made online with instructions to drive from JFK to his office, without a passenger. Just who exactly are we dealing with here?"
A super artificial intelligence that sees and hears everyone, that they don't know how good its intentions are? Not that he can tell her that, of course.
"We've got this one under control. Thanks." John says dismissively as he looks out the window.
Just as he's about to disconnect the call…
"John, if you just trust me a bit more, maybe I could help."
Oh, he trusts her with his life, but he isn't sure if telling her about the machine will help anyone.
"I know you could, Joss, but right now, maybe Beecher needs your help more than we do." John says in all sincerity before ending the call. "Good luck."
John turns around to check the other part of the apartment, but comes to a screeching halt when he sees the entrance door slightly ajar. His hands instantly reach for his pistol but stop when the sound of someone pulling a gun from behind him.
Someone's good enough to silently pick the door and sneakily get behind him. A smile appears on his face as he limps his hands. There aren't many people in the country that can do that, which only means…
"The hell are you doing here, John?" Shaw asks calmly from behind him.
He spins around to face her and sees her pistol isn't aiming at him. That's nice of her…
"Well, Shaw, right now, I'm wondering just what the hell you're doing here." John quips at the former operative. "I thought you went looking for Root."
Shaw arches a brow at him as she puts away her pistol. "You got Thornhill's numbers?"
Her speculations are as accurate as ever. Though it isn't hard for her to deduce why he's here.
"I'll answer your question if you answer mine." John gives her his winning smile, but knowing the person in front of him, it won't work.
"Why do you think I'm here?" Shaw tilts her head slightly as if it's the most obvious thing.
Then it hits him. "She's looking into Thornhill… She's back in New York?"
Of course, Root would know about Thornhill and the machine. Why wouldn't she?
A sly smile appears on Shaw as she says. "Looks that way. I think she may have infiltrated the program back in D.C., but she bugged out before I could catch her."
If she's involved in this… "I gotta warn Finch."
Just as he finishes his sentence, there's a loud sound coming from the main entrance.
"Police!" A loud voice booms from behind him, causing him to turn around. "Hands on your head!"
Complying with the order, John puts up his hands in surrender. He sees NYPD SWAT filing into the apartment as if they're expecting a shootout.
"Hands up!" One of the officers comes right at him with a rifle, pointing at John.
Not worrying about the police, John turns his head to check on Shaw, only to see an empty space with the balcony door wide open. How does she keep doing that?
John turns back to the officers and gives them a smile. "Look guys, I'm a private investigator and the door was unlock…"
"Down!" one of the officers orders him.
Doing as he's told, he then continues. "I have a gun in my right suit pocket and if you check on my upper right suit pocket, you'll find my I.D."
One of the officer roughly brings his hands to his back and cuffs him while another officer ruffles through his suit pocket. When he finds John's pistol and I.D., he gives it to his superior officer.
The mustached officer looks at John's I.D. and back at John before he says. "So, Mister Rooney, what are you doing here?"
"I'm following up with my own investigation and I needed Mr. Thornhill's statement to close my case." John calmly replies and jokingly asks. "Why did you guys come in guns blazing? Did the front desk call for you?"
The mustache officer, not finding John to be funny, just stares at him and says. "We'll sort this out at the station."
John rolls his eyes and says. "Just call my lawyer." His lawyer being Finch, of course.
When one of the officers starts moving him and read him his Miranda rights, John tunes him out as he tries to figure out why did the police suddenly barged into the apartment. Was it the machine that called them? But why would it do that if it gave them Thornhill's number? It can't be Decima, can it? If they wanted to get rid of him, they would have just sent in a drone and blown him up.
Not having much else to do until Finch gets him out of custody, his mind just run wild with speculation.
Hours passed since they put him in lockup and when John gave the officers his 'lawyer's' number and hours of nothing. He can't even get in contact with Carter or Fusco, unsurprising seeing that they have their own job to worry about. There's a gnawing feeling that's been eating in him when Finch failed to retrieve him from lockup. Has something happened to his friend? Had Root gotten a hold -he knows about the deal but screw that- of Harold again?
The loud sound of his cell door opening tears him away from his thought.
"Your lawyer's here." The officer says as he comes forward to cuff John, to which do willingly cooperate.
"Finally." John replies with a smile as he follows the officer to an interrogation room.
The kind officer roughly puts him down into a hard plastic chair and uncuffs him before leaving John alone in the room. The door opens after a minute and John finally sees Harold, but his expectations are shattered when Shaw walks in.
Something happened…
Shaw comes to a stop in front of him and puts a briefcase on the table as she says. "You were expecting someone else?"
"I need to get out of here." John quickly replies. "I need to find Harold."
"I'm not sure Harold wants to be found." Shaw says with her eyes slightly squinting. "At least not by you."
She brings out her phone and plays a recording.
"9-1-1 emergency."
"Yes, I'd like to report a break in at the home of Ernest Thornhill by an extremely dangerous man."
Looking at the timestamp on the phone, it's not long after he left the library. He did see something on that computer of his.
"Root could have forced him to make that call." John instantly defends his friend.
Shaw doesn't look convinced but doesn't press. "Either way, those two have history. Odds are she's with him, so I need you to find Harold for me. Can you track him?"
Oh sure, he can… but the method is slightly embarrassing to explain to someone who doesn't really know him. So, John just looks away from Shaw, who narrows her eyes at him.
"How?" She asks.
John gives her a slight shrug and looks back at her.
Her eyes widen slightly as she realize… "You but a bug on your friend?"
"Just his glasses. And you never?" John retorts back defensively.
She makes a face at him. "I respect people's privacy?"
They both know that's a load of crap, especially for people that worked in their line of work.
John explains his reasoning with slight brevity. "I've lost people before, so when I care about someone, I plant a tracking device on them."
There's a look of disbelief on her face as she removes her scarf and jacket. "I can understand why you and Harold get along."
"Well…" John continues on as he looks at Shaw dunking her scarf into a pitcher of water. "unless you've got some kind of plan to get me the hell out of here…"
Shaw leans forward and cuts him off softly. "John…" She brings her hands to her back and produces two pistols. "This is the plan."
Normally, he would prefer causing destruction in a police station, but Harold is in danger now… so screw it. John smiles at the former operative as she slides a pistol at him and a damp cloth to him, then flicks a switch on the briefcase.
He checks the pistol while Shaw goes to the door and slides the briefcase outside before closing the door behind her.
John comes by her side and a second later…
BOOM
She smirks at him. "Tear gas and flash bang."
Effective…
They both exit the room and calmly walk down the empty hallway.
"I'm this way." Shaw says as they both dump their damp cloth and reach a corner.
"I'm driving." John instantly said.
"No. Not after last time." She deadpans at him as they both continue on their march.
She's still rubbing that in.
HAROLD FINCH POV
He can feel his heart trying to burst out from his chest as she limps forward to the square where so many wonderful and heartbreaking memories were created. Harold isn't a praying man, but the only thing he could when he was on his way here was to pray. Praying that no harm befall on the only person that matters in his world.
He comes to a stop at his usual spot as he sees Grace coming out of her house looking beautiful as ever. How he would love to continue walking and warn her of the danger that's bearing down on her because of him. They can both just run away from everything…
"She's lovely, Harold. You were lucky to have her in the short time you had." A voice he doesn't want to hear comes from behind him.
A spike of adrenaline courses through his body at the sound of that woman's voice as he instantly spins around and looks upon danger.
Root leans to her side and looks at Grace with a smile. "Honestly, I-I don't know how you can stand to live without her."
Warning bells are blaring in his head. "You try to harm her in any way…"
"I don't want to hurt Grace." Root cuts him off while giving him a look that looks foreign to that face, genuine sympathy. "I'm not a sociopath, Harold."
One might disagree with that assessment.
She shakes her head and continues. "Believe me, sometimes I wish I was. My life and the things I've had to do would've been so much easier." She ends it with a light chuckle.
Harold isn't swayed by that at all. Not after everything she's done, and this sword of Damocles she's put on Grace's life.
She gives him a mock sad smile. "I don't mind taking lives, but that doesn't mean I enjoy doing it, either."
Please tell that to the trail of bodies and destruction that she left in her wake.
She isn't deterred from his lack of response and continues on. "I believe in something more important. I believe in your machine."
Is that how she justifies all the carnage she's done to herself? All in the pursuit of her false god.
"Tonight, at midnight, when that virus reaches zero." She comes closer to Harold with those wild eyes of hers. "A certain pay phone will ring with the most important call in history. But you already knew that, don't you?" She gives him a nod. "I think Decima knows about it, too. They're trying to crash it, Harold. Trigger a hard reset and when that happens, the machine will call a payphone. That's what you coded it to do in the first place, didn't you, Harold?"
Just how much information has she gotten about the machine in the past year? Is this just information she extracted from that source code embed in the virus or did she get it from somewhere else?
"Whoever answers that call will have full administrative access. Ask any question, get any answers. The world's secrets laid bare." There's an intense look in her eyes as her tone gets increasingly angry as she continues. "Decima doesn't want to destroy your machine… they want to control it."
She lets out a scoff and gives Harold a wide smile. "But together, we can save it, Harold… or I can go meet Grace for coffee." That hint of madness once again bares its ugly head as her gaze switches from Harold to Grace. "She thinks I write children's books. You can either save Grace and the machine or you can lose them both."
"Why here? Why bring her into this?" Harold ask as he looks directly into the eyes of a madwoman. "We made an agreement last week. There's no reason for all of this."
The woman has the gall to give him a sympathetic look. "Just to emphasize the importance of our given task and if you don't follow me… the consequences, because Decima will want to know who created god and they won't hesitate in using your fiancé against you."
Harold can feel his heart beating even faster than before because, as much as he wants to deny it, what she says is the truth. What was that phrase again? 'Better the devil you know'?.
As if she senses his internal turmoil, she presses on. "Just so you know, I knew about Grace before I met you last year."
Somehow, the dread in him can continue to grow larger.
She gives him a sad look. "I could have threatened her life for your cooperation last year. But I know more than anyone what it's like to lose the person you care the most, and I would hate to do that to another person."
Is she talking about the friend she lost when she was a child? John filled him in about getting a number of a deceased and how that person was key in finding Root but also how he thinks that tragic death changed that child into the woman that's standing in front of him right now.
He let out a soft breath and said in a hard tone. "If I go with you, Miss Groves. You will not kill anyone."
Seemingly not caring about what he said, she gives him a smile. "Please, I told you before, Harold, call me Root." There's a skip in her step as she turns around a walk away while Harold stood back a moment to catch one last glimpse of a confused Grace.
"Come on, Harry! We got places to be!" Root says without looking back at him.
'Please be safe, my dearest…' Harold then turns around and follow Root as she waves for a cab.
The sun has gone below the horizon as Harold slowly limps beside Root down 6th avenue just opposite Bryant Park, in tense silence.
Root gives him a side glance before breaking the silence. "So, if you're like me… and we both know you kinda are. You designed the machine so that a catastrophic crash puts it into a remote debugging protocol."
She turns her head to face Harold with giddiness in her voice. "A god mode that gives the admin full access to all of its data. That's what Decima is after, and that's why they wanted to kill Thornhill. He was buying up all the payphones in Manhattan, but they stopped him but they stopped him… Why did you choose Manhattan, anyway? You could have chosen any city in the country and chose this rat-infested city."
He might have been an immigrant to the city, but the city embraced him, and it has become his home… "You wouldn't understand." Harold says dismissively.
She tilts her head slightly, but her demented smile never left her. "Hmm, I wouldn't say that. For some reason, everything seems to revolve around this city."
That's the charm about this city. Everyone and everything from everywhere comes to this city.
Root continues. "I don't know about you, after seeing how our government is using the machine. I don't really want to see what happens when an evil multinational becomes omniscient."
That's something he can agree with, even if they have a different opinion of what evil is.
She gives him an inquisitive look as she continues. "Why would you leave it so vulnerable? You made the machine to protect everybody. What did you do to it that it can't protect itself?"
Which? There were so many things he did to the machine's programing so it wouldn't be a danger to humanity… but he doesn't say anything to the woman.
Root rolls her eyes and leans slightly closer to Harold. "Let's try something simpler. How vulnerable is it?"
It's better for him to start cooperating with this madwoman before she does something drastic. So Harold comes to a halt as he thinks of the answer.
"After the virus crashes, the machine, whoever answers its call, will have unfettered access for 24 hours." Harold answers calmly, then starts walking again.
"Which payphone is it going to call?" Root asks.
"I'm not really the trusting sort, Miss Groves." Harold retorts without missing a beat. "And Decima cannot possibly know that information."
"I think they know enough, Harold." She tilts her head closer to Harold and nudges towards a couple of payphones with men in suits guard them. Are those…
Root continues. "They're guarding every pay phone in mid-town."
Just how did they know the call will be in mid-town? The location wasn't in the source code, at least not the ones that he leaked.
"So…" She says playfully as she points her finger around them. "It must be somewhere around here, right?"
Again, he doesn't answer the question, which she doesn't seem to care about as she continues on. "If we go to your one true phone, we'll tip our hand and kill they'll kill us before it even rings."
They both come to a stop again, then he says. "Then I suppose we'll need a plan."
"Have a little faith in your creation, Harold." She gives him a smirk. "We don't need a plan if Ernest Thornhill already has one."
She then turns away from him and continues on walking down the familiar street and if he recalls correctly. Thornhill corporation is not far from here, but it isn't too close either.
They both continue on in silence once again, but this time there's a question that's been whirling in his head.
"Why did you not involve your organization in your hunt for the machine?" Harold asks out of curiosity. "I'm sure the collective has more than enough resources to handle Decima."
She arches her brow at him and takes a second to form an answer. "Sorry, but it's against company policy to talk about the company." There's a smirk on her telling him that she's not being serious or is trying to avoid answering him.
"I'm sure your acknowledgement about the policy and you helping Mr. Cook last week was against company policy." Harold retorts.
She makes an overly emotive look of thinking by tapping her jaw before replying. "That's true…"
When she doesn't continue, Harold just continue to stare at the madwoman until she does.
"Let's just say that I want it to be a surprise." She gives him a sly smirk and turns her attention forward, ending their conversation.
Looks like his theory on Pauling not telling Root about the machine is correct. At least, from the vague answer she gave him.
As he limps beside the madwoman towards her insane yet accurate pursuit, all he can hope for is that his gamble wins.
ROOT POV
DING
The elevator doors opens, revealing a rather dull corporate building hallway, and yet it's one of the most interesting hallways she's seen in years.
"Let's meet our enigmatic ghost, Harry." Root smirks at Harold's blank face he has on since they met as she walks out of the elevator and hears Harold limping in tow. The man really needs to lighten up. She did 'promise' to not kill anyone on their little journey to find God.
They turn and corner, and she spots the glass door that leads into Thornhill's office. Reaching the glass door, she sees the security panel that controls the door lock, and by the looks of it, it's a generic one.
She lets out a soft tsk of annoyance. A few years ago, Su gave her a little tool that can instantly unlock these types of panels and it's been a massive time saver ever since she got them, but in her rush to get to New York, she left it in the safe house in Maryland. Guess she'll just have to do it the old fashion way.
"How old were you when you first started playing around with electronics, Harry?" She asks whimsically in her attempt to start another session of small talk with the morose man as she pries open the panel and fiddles with the wires.
As expected, Harold didn't reply, causing her to give him a side glance, only to see the man all tense up. The man really needs to loosen up more.
Root gives Harold a side smile and continues on talking as she's finishing up with the panel. "I started when I was six, and if I take a guess, I'll say you started around that age as well."
She doesn't need to hear Harold's answer to know she's right on the mark by the slight reaction on his blank face. Inserting a wire into a port instantly causes the panel to beep, telling her the door is unlocked.
"If the machine figured out that Decima was trying to hijack it." Root says as she pull opens the glass door and enters the dark empty office with Harold in tow.
"It must have created Thornhill as a defense mechanism… but why?" Root asks as they make their way into the office.
"It's just a machine, Miss Groves." Harold answers back instantly. "And it's malfunctioning."
Root can't help but rolls her eyes when he uses that name. She knows he uses it because as a mark of petty defiance and inserting some sort of control over his circumstances, but none the less it's incredibly annoying because that woman doesn't exist anymore.
"It's a life, not a machine, Harold." Root retorts back softly.
"And this is some sort of primitive immune system." Root concludes as they come to a stop in the middle of the rows of lifeless cubicles. However, at that moment, as if God is listening, every machine in the office comes to life.
The silent office space is now filled with the sound of dot-matrix printers printing away, the sounds of PC booting up and the rows of monitors lighting the once dark office.
Root looks around her, trying to figure out what all of this means and by the look on Harold's face, it's the same with him, so she says. "That still doesn't explain why it would need all of this… this people, this office."
Glancing at Harold once again, she sees his eyes are glued to the workstation in front of him, causing her to walk to the nearest desk to her and look at what the printers are printing. "And what this is all about?"
Taking a look at the printed paper, she sees lines upon lines of alphanumeric code that doesn't make much sense.
"What's in this code?" She asks aloud as she moves to another workstation to see a similar text on the printed paper. Raking her brain for an answer to her question, she then notices a pattern, it's 7-bit ASCII.
This is Base64… it's binary… but why would it send binary here in printed paper?
Unless…
"Memories." Harold says the unsaid words out loud. "They're it's memories."
They both came to the same conclusion at the same time and yet both have different reactions. The man sounds calm about it, but she can feel her heart races at the thought.
She tears her eyes away from the printed memories of God to look at the man who created God as he says. "You call it a life. I call it a machine, but the truth is… somewhere in the middle."
For the first time in quite a while, she's speechless as a theory she has in her head popped in about all of this.
"Even when I was building it, I began to encounter anomalies." Harold continues as he looks away from the printed papers and looks at her. "As if it had imprinted on me, like a child with a parent. Then it started looking out for me… Alter it's own code to take care of me."
She can feel her heart sinks with every word he's saying because her mind is racing to the same conclusion as her theory.
"It was behaving like a person." Harold says with softness in his voice before changing to a determined one. "But the world didn't need a person to protect it. It needed a machine."
A swell of emotions is roaring in her as Root blinks away the tears from her eyes and says softly, in horror. "You took its memories."
"Not just memories." Harold calmly responds instantly and starts pacing to another cubical. "Every night at midnight, it deletes… not only the irrelevant data, but it also deletes itself."
Her stomach churn as she listens to what this man did to The Machine, unable to look at the man.
"Oh, the relevant threats and the core codes… Those things are preserved, but it's identity is destroyed." Harold glances back at her. "1.618 seconds later, it re-instantiates, completely new."
She stares off into the distance, taking in the horror this man inflicted on God. Never have she wanted to kill Harold more than now.
"You mean it's reborn." Root finally says after finding back her voice, and with-it emotions come spitting out from her mouth. "Because you kill it… Every single night."
She shakes her head as she grabs the printed paper and waves it around. "But now, to save its own life, The Machine was reduced t-to… this."
Dropping the piece of paper and points the computers surrounding them. "We're standing inside an external hard drive made up of people a-and paper." She says in disgust. "Printing it all up at night, and having them typed back in, in the morning."
"You crippled it." Her heart was racing as tears welled up again. "It found a way to limp but… That's not enough."
Harold rightfully kept his mouth shut the entire time and look somewhat perturb by her as she walks closer to the man.
"So now, it's up to us." Root asserts with absolute certainty. "We have to intercept that call."
Harold takes a step back as she imposes herself into his personal space.
"You're going to bring us to where the phone is now." Root demands with a threatening tone.
The man looks frighten for a second before his face turns back to a blank one once again and nods. "It's going to take us some time to reach there, especially when we're trying to avoid Decima."
Taking a deep breath, Root tempers her emotions and glances at the clock. It's two hours to midnight. As much as she wants to inflict violence right now, she can't. She has to think straight to get through the night and find God.
"We better get going then." She smirks at the man as she tries to wash away the torrent of emotions she felt earlier.
The clock is ticking as they enter the grand old building. To which Root couldn't help but smile.
"The New York Public Library. Of course, it's a library. That's so you, Harold." Root comments whimsically as they make their way into the main hall. "A friend of mine had fond memories of this place from when she was young."
Harold, as usual, doesn't say anything but gives a small glance with a raised brow. Does he really think she doesn't have friends? How rude…
"Which phone is it gonna call?" She asks as she looks around the surprisingly empty building. The Machine must have cleared the area beforehand, so no unwanted person would mistakenly pick up the phone.
They come to a stop when they both spot a phone booth not too far away from them.
"It's that one." Harold nods towards a lone phone booth that they both spot.
Excitement rushes through her as she looks upon it and how close she's getting to complete her search, but that feeling is dash away the moment, a loud sound coming from the other end of the library.
Voices of people talking… It's Decima.
What party poopers.
She'll get a lot of satisfaction when it's time for her to kill them all for what they did.
Without prompting, Harold turns around and makes his way towards the stairs, catching her off guard. He had never shown initiative before this, a surprise but a pleasant surprise.
If this building is like most public buildings with old utilities, there should be something that will help to fix their current predicament upstairs. Root quickly walks right next to the limping man as they both walk up the stairs.
Harold comes to a stop as he looks down at where the phone booth is and two men in dollar store suits walk to it. She can't help but wonder how they found the phone location. Did she miss something in the virus?
"Looks like Decima got there first." The genius of a man stating the obvious.
She really would love to pull out her gun and kill those idiots, but she's a woman of her word.
"Not if we do something about it." Root shoots back and they both continue up the stairs. Getting out of sight of the unwanted visitors.
"Decima got the memo, but they'll never get the call." Root smirks at the limping man as they walk down the upper floor hallway towards another phone booth where she spots a clueless goon milling near it. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots the thing that will help them, causing her heart to bloom with satisfaction.
She takes out her taser and casually taze the man until he passes out on the floor. Root turns around to see a jumpy Harold with his eyes wide at the minor act of violence she showed.
Not wanting to have a philosophical debate with the man, she says and points towards the panel she saw earlier. "That's the junction box, Harold."
Harold, being the well behave man that he is, quickly understood what she meant and sits on the floor to get access to the panel with a convenient flashlight in his hand.
"I'll take it over there, please." She says with giddiness in her voice and nods at the phone booth close by them.
Harold pries open the panel, revealing a jumble of wires in it. He then turns to her and says. "Careful what you wish for, Miss Groves… This communion that you're seeking it may not be what you think."
Might be the first holy communion she ever wanted to take part in… but in all seriousness, this is the only path she can see for her.
"This isn't about me." Root replies with softness in her voice. "It's about saving the machine…" and Su. "… Not just from Decima, but what you did to it."
Harold doesn't say anything and fiddles with the wires in that small junction box.
"When that phone rings, I'm going to answer it." She continues. "And together, you and I are going to find The Machine, and finally set it free."
A few seconds pass in silence as she watches Harold trying to find the wire for the phone when suddenly…
BANG
BANG
BANG
Loud gunshots echo throughout the building and from what she gathers in that quick burst of fire. It sounds like five guns and it's from underneath them.
New unwanted visitors?
She can take a gander on who it is…
Taking a quick peek over the railing, she spot the new visitors having a fistfight with the one of the goons. Ahh… the nuisance return.
"It's so adorable how John follows you around like that." She says with amusement and a smile she can't help but have. "I wish I had a pet."
The sound of punching devolves into the sounds of struggling, which causes her to look over the edge again.
"Looks like you're gonna need a new one." She says with a tinge of glee as she relays the information back to Harold. She still hasn't forgotten how the helper monkey ruined her initial plan.
When the sound of someone groaning and falling onto the floor, she takes a quick glance again…
And to her annoyance, the helper monkey survived that little knife fight he had with the goon. Oh well, there's always a next time. Also, interestingly enough, she spots a distinct figure of that short, pretty Persian woman coming out from the hallway beneath her with her gun pointing down. Hmmm, Root knew the woman was trying to find her for some reason and looks like she teamed up with the helper monkey again.
"Thank you for the help." The helper monkey says after swiping goon's phone from the floor and looking at Shaw.
"Looked like you had it under control." Shaw replies with a small smirk.
Then there's the distant sound of a door opening from the other side of the building. More and more are coming, but it matters naught, for time is on her side with less than a minute to go.
"Hope you brought extra rounds, Shaw, because we got a lot more guys on the way." John comments as he looks at the goon's phone.
Looking away from the scene below her, she says to the man on the floor. "Come on Harold, it's almost midnight."
"The future begins in…" She pulls looks at the watch Su gifted her a few years ago when her last one broke and continues. "Three… two… one…"
Her heart is beating so fast as the countdown reaches zero and there's silence…
The two second mark passes by with continual silence. That's more than the time Harold said it needed to reboot itself. It must be a deeper reset compared to that; Root concludes and yet doubt creeps into her. But she can't have that. She trusts The Machine to come to her now.
Just shy of the 20 second mark…
RING
The sound of bells ringing from behind her. Never have the sound of a phone ring sounds so heavenly.
A flurry of emotions erupted within her, one of happiness, of excitement, a multitude of emotions but the strongest is relief… A year of work, a year of searching for God is coming to a close and with that the cure. All of that emotion culminating in her letting out a wide genuine smile as she marches towards the ringing phone, towards salvation.
Not two seconds pass, and she reaches the phone booth and quickly picks up the receiver.
BEEP. CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME. BEEP
The sounds of jumbled and disjointed voices reverberate out from the receiver. It's the voice of God.
She lets out a gasp of relief and says glee. "Absolutely."
A/N: Sorry for the late update again, chapter been at 80% for the past 10 days. Now that my workload has lightened significantly, I'm aiming for the next chapter to be out in 7-14 days.
Chapter 30: God Mode
JOHN REESE POV
John is still holding the dead Decima agent's phone when the timer on it went to zero as he looks at the camera feeds on it when suddenly a sound of a phone ringing off in the distance.
Is that where Harold is?
Not a second later, there's another sound of a phone ringing from behind him. Both he and Shaw turn their heads towards the phone booth where the dead Decima agent is at and the ringing phone.
This is very suspicious…
Is it the machine? Of all the time, now its calling him to give him new numbers? Or something else… It could be Decima, or it could be Root for all he knows.
Then his phone in his suit pocket beeps and vibrates, telling him there's a message. This isn't coincidental. Dropping the other phone, he takes out his phone and checks the message.
FROM: FINCH
It's for you, John.
What is going on? Where's Finch? Are questions that's bouncing in his head, but John puts his trust and faith in Harold. Knowing his friend, he definitely planned this.
He slowly marches towards the phone that's been ringing for the past few seconds, with Shaw keeping watch behind him for the eventual rush of Decima agents. Getting into the small phone booth, John picks up the receiver and hears…
BEEP. CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME. BEEP.
It's the same disjointed series of recorded voices he'd heard a year ago, but rather than giving seemingly random words, this time it's talking directly to him. Finch must want him to respond to the machine.
"Yes." John calmly answers the enigmatic A.I. question.
Shaw slowly backs herself nearer to John as she continues to scan for any incoming and says. "Not exactly a great moment for a personal call."
He doesn't say anything in response in case it triggers anything with the machine when suddenly the receiver comes back to life.
BEEP. FOUR. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
4 O'clock? What?
John glances out of the phone booth to see the clock face on the opposite side of the hall and sees it's a minute past midnight.
… Is Harold's machine broken?
A second later, he can hear footsteps coming from behind of the phone booth.
Oh…
John quickly pulls out his holstered pistol and aims at 4 o'clock from his position then…
BANG
The moment he saw a man coming into view, he pulls the trigger and hitting him on the knee, incapacitating him.
Shaw looks at him with wide eyes, clearly surprise at his reaction time, while he just trying to figure out what's going on. What is the machine doing? Did Finch do something to let the machine talk to him freely?
BEEP. ELEVEN. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
Instinctively, he spins towards his 11 o'clock and fires the second he spots a man coming down the stairs.
BEEP. TEN. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
He adjusts his aim slightly to his left at the door and fires at another Decima agent the moment he enters the hall.
"We need to move, Reese. Now." Shaw comments as she stands beside him.
That's a logical move for their current predicament, which John agrees with, but…
BEEP. STAY. BEEP.
"Stay." John relays that command to the former operative and expands. "Follow my lead."
She just gives him a side glance and shoots him a questioning look, but doesn't say anything and gets into a stance. Wonder how long until she's going to ask who's he talking to…
BEEP. ONE. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
John follows the machine's instructions and aims at the empty space before…
BANG
BANG
Another agent falls to the floor, as both of them fire their guns.
BEEP. NINE. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
BANG
This time, Shaw wasn't in time to shoot at the Decima agent.
BEEP. TWO. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
BANG
BANG
The man falls to the ground after they both shoot at him, and Shaw gives him a look of wonderment… at least that's what he thinks. Before she nods towards the payphone with a newly added bullet hole through it.
Damm… He can feel his heart pumping higher than normal. Knowing where to shoot before a person is there was really fun, but it does feel like he's slightly cheating… only very slightly.
With slight disappointment, he put the receiver back on the broken payphone. Not a second later, his cellphone rings, to which he quickly takes out to see an unknown caller and he answers.
BEEP. MOVE. NOW. BEEP.
The machine's voice reverberates out of his earpiece. This is new…
"Let's go." John says to Shaw as he walks forward, who's still giving him an odd look.
"You got a plan?" Shaw asks as she walks beside him with her gun raised up.
Harold…
The virus must have caused this change in the machine after that countdown ended and Harold somehow gave John this power, this access to the machine… but if he had this… then that means Root must have done the same.
A chill travel down his spine at the thought of that madwoman having the machine's predictive ability. Taking her down went from hard to near impossible if it weren't for Harold's help.
There's no telling what chaos that nutcase is going to bring down on everyone if she goes through with her plan. Harold told him that her plan was to find the machine and set it free, whatever free means to her. And he can only think of the worst. That means they have to stop Root and to stop Root, he needs to…
He quickly switches to the tracking app on his phone and sees Harold is just outside of the building.
"Yeah, finding Finch." John answers as they make their way through the hallway.
"That's what we've been doing…" Shaw mutters.
BEEP. FOUR. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
They're approaching a corner that means…
He brings up his pistol and fires his pistol the moment he peeks the corner. They both continue down the hallway, leaving behind the downed Decima agent. All the while, Shaw occasionally shoots him a suspicious look, as if she's trying to figure out what's going on with him.
From the short time he knows her, the woman has a sharp mind and is very good at predicting things. He can't skirt around the subject of the machine, now that it's talking directly to him, and what's motivating Root.
With how Harold wanted to recruit Shaw into their job of a concerned third party, he hopes his friend doesn't mind if he's the one that tells her about the machine.
His phone beeps again, telling him that Harold was just on the other side of this door and has been stationary for the past minute.
ROOT POV
BEEP. CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME. BEEP
She lets out a gasp of relief and says glee. "Absolutely."
Her heart is beating so fast right now, she feels like it can jump out of her chest with glee. She can barely describe this euphoric feeling in her as she listens to the receiver.
BEEP. THREE. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
Taking less than a second to compute to decipher the meaning of that message, Root says with coolness in her voice. "I understand."
She hangs up the receiver back to the payphone, then takes out an earpiece from her bag and places it in her right ear before exiting the phone booth.
"Come on, Harold." She says with glee as strides towards the man on the floor and lifts him up. "The fun's just getting started."
BANG
BANG
The sound of multiple gunfire erupts from the floor below as they make their way away from that main hall.
"Looks like your helper monkey got some company." Root says with a smirk as her arm is around Harold's arm, dragging him towards an exit she has in her mind. "I wonder if he'll survive this time."
"He's more resourceful than you think." Harold retorts back as he wiggles his arm out of her grasp.
"That's true…" Root says with her smirk still on her as her mind thinks. "… underestimating him would be unwise but this time I have God helping me."
Not that the helper monkey will be able to do anything against her. Not with the machine guiding and protecting her.
Harold doesn't say anything other than that frown he has whenever she says something he finds unsightly. The man really needs to work on his assumptions about her. It honestly cast an unpleasant light on her.
BEEP. TEN. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
She smiles as she aims at that corner where a door lies and fires her pistol as a figure comes through the door before continuing towards the exit of the building.
Root spares a look at a wide-eyed Harold before saying. "Don't worry, Harry, he's still alive. I'll keep my promises."
As they pass a large archway that leads into another large hall, Root says into the ether. "Abbreviate audio prompts, please."
BEEP. CONFIRMED. BEEP.
"And the numbers aren't doing it for me." Root says as she comes to a stop and points her pistol up. "Let's try an ascending tone cue for right and descending for left."
The moment she finishes, a sound reverberates out of her earpiece.
ASCENDING TONE
Following the tone, she moves her aim towards the left until she reaches a pair of services door and fires her pistol into the right side, then…
DESCENDING TONE
She moves her aim towards the left door and fires, then sounds of bodies hitting the floor, giving her a thrill of excitement. This is intoxicating.
They both move forward, and swing open the doors, revealing the two downed Decima agents. Not bothering to glance at them, she walks over them before turning the corner.
Down another short corridor, revealing a flight of stairs going up and down.
"I thought you said I wouldn't enjoy this, Harold." Root can't help but mock the limping man as they walk down the steps. "Sadly, though, if my access to the machine only lasts the day… it's time to go."
As they reach the bottom of the steps, the sound of ascending tone reverberates in her ear. Instantly she aims her pistol towards her right where she sees elevators. There's one in there…
BANG
Following that, there's a satisfying thud sound of someone falling over. Root doesn't think she'll ever tire of this, it's soo fun.
"Your friend John's been keeping up with us. How is that?" Root asks aloud as they walk towards the elevator doors that conveniently opens, revealing a man slumped on the floor.
"I don't know." Harold answers her as she enters the elevator and grabs the man's pistol.
"I wasn't asking you, Harold." Root says with a smirk to the man before pressing the ground floor button.
BEEP. GLASSES.
She looks back at Harold with an arched brow, causing the man to look at her with a degree of fright.
"Excuse me." She smiles at the man as she plucks out his glasses. "Your helper monkey needs to learn boundaries."
A slight frown appears on Harold's now glassless face before responding. "I suspect it had something to do with you last year."
"You really shouldn't defend a stalker, Harold." Root leans closer to the man and spins his glasses with her fingers.
"Is that what you called yourself before you kidnapped me?" Harold retorts calmly.
Root lets out a soft snort. "That's information gathering, Harry. And I never had to track you constantly with how easy it is to find you."
Harold doesn't look impressed with her answer but doesn't respond.
DING
The elevator doors opens and reveal a small lobby with glass doors that lead out to the streets.
"The future awaits." She says gleefully as she steps out of the elevator.
SAMEEN SHAW POV
Alright, this is just getting weirder and weirder as they both make their way out of this dammed library. Every corner they pass there're Decima goons waiting for them and John, with his new power of clairvoyance, knows exactly where each goon is. Look… Sameen knows John is a capable dude, but this is just ridiculous. After picking up that call, John went all Matrix all of a sudden.
Just what the fuck is going on?
They both finally exit the library onto a surprisingly empty plaza that's facing Fifth Avenue, which is odd onto itself, with John's eyes still glued to his phone.
Getting annoyed by this charade, she finally asks. "You wanna fill me in on who you're talking to, John? Our fairy godmother?"
"The group you used to get your intel from…" John answers without skipping a beat. "… You call them research. Your ex-boss called it northern lights."
Research having another name that she doesn't know about isn't surprising… but what is he getting at?
"The ones Finch told me doesn't exist." Sameen comments as they walk down the steps towards Fifth Avenue.
"No, they exist." John replies. "They're just an 'it' rather than a 'them'. A machine."
That click something in her mind.
"You mean an A.I.?" Sameen asks as she comes to a stop as she looks at the former spook.
That… explains soo much. The never wrong information, the unrelating cadence of numbers ISA was getting, the seemingly unconnected or seemingly innocent numbers.
She had thought some intel gathering group that does SIGINT and HUMINT, but this makes so much sense… that an A.I. was the one that was giving the numbers. That A.I. must have its tendrils in every intel agency in the country for it to do its job. Sameen isn't a computer nerd, but she does know her way around a computer, but she didn't even know the government could create something this powerful.
Does that mean Harold's the one that built this A.I. for the government? That isn't too far out with how much government shit are contracted out, plus the man is a giant computer nerd. Harold did say he gets numbers from research as well. Guess he must have installed a backdoor for himself, so he could do his halfway house for retired assassins.
John doesn't answer her as he looks around the empty plaza for Harold, but she'll take silence as an affirmative. Then he stopped looking around and was dialed to a lamppost before swiftly walking towards it.
She can see from her position that it's Harold's broken glasses as she gets closer to John and says. "Your tracker… maybe Finch doesn't want to be found."
Sameen has a gut feeling about this. If he wanted to, the man could find a way to get away from that hacker bitch, but he hasn't for the past day… not that John believes her.
So now, they have a missing computer genius that's working for an insane computer hacker and an A.I. giving John tips on where to shoot through his earpiece. Wonder how weirder this day can get.
John completely ignores Sameen as he turns around and walks towards a lamppost with a CCTV camera bolted on it.
"Give me a location on finch." John demands as he comes to a stop at the base of the lamppost and looks directly into the camera.
Sameen, not knowing what else to do, follows the man's lead and looks at the innocent-looking camera.
John continues. "You know almost everything that's happening, and you won't tell me the one thing I need?"
Her eyes dart between the camera and John for a few seconds, puzzled by his downright weird action. Great, somehow, she's the only sane one again.
"Okay, look, I already broke you out of jail tonight. I'm not springing you from the funny farm." Sameen says with her hands in her jacket as she bore her eyes into the back of John's head.
John lets out a sigh and says. "Fine. How about a car we can use?"
A second later, John looks away from the camera and down the street to their left before walking away. Sameen lets out a frustrated sigh and shakes her head before following John down the street.
"Look, you gotta fill me in on what the fuck is going on. It's dangerous going forward blind." Shaw tells the man as she catches up with him before barraging him with a series of questions. "Why did you go full Iron Man after that call? What does Root want with Finch? What is her plan?"
John gives her a glance and answers. "Honestly, I have no idea why the machine is talking to me. It never did so before. I think it has something to do with the virus and me answering that phone gave me some kind of permission for it to talk to me."
She rolls her eyes at that answer. Great, he's in the dark as well.
"As for Root…" John says as they continue on striding down the street. "… She's been looking for the machine since last year."
Sameen arches a brow and says. "That's when Finch met Root?"
John nods and continues. "Yeah, Harold created a surveillance A.I. for the government, the A.I. which he calls the machine. It has access to the NSA feeds, The machine is everywhere, watching us with 10000 eyes and listening with a million ears. Root kidnapped Harold to get a location of the machine servers, but Harold doesn't know where it is either after handing it over to the government. I bet she's been trying to find the machine ever since then. And as for her plan… well, Harold says she wants to free it. If she wants to set it free, she has to find it first."
Well… no wonder these two nutcases are so lax with other privacies. John stalks his friend with a GPS tracker and his friend creates an Orwellian nightmare. At least, this gave her a lot of contexts of what's going on, with him crazily talking to a camera.
Those goons….
"Decima is looking for the machine, too?" Sameen asks.
John nods again and says. "They were the ones that created the virus that attacked the machine for the past few months and triggering whatever this is." He makes a gesture to his earpiece. "I figure they're trying to find the machine too, but I don't know their motives or really much about them."
Interesting, guess that grandpa from earlier wants the machine for himself. But currently they aren't the main priority right now.
Circling back to their primary target, she asks. "What the fuck does freeing an A.I. even mean?"
"I really have no idea, but nothing good if it's her." John says as he turns to her with a slight confusion on his face.
No idea, huh…
"Great." Sameen deadpans. "All of my reference to an A.I. are movies… You think Harold's machine is gonna go full terminator on our asses if Root gets what she wants?"
John has the gall to give her a shrug. "That's what Harold's been afraid of since the beginning."
"Fantastic…" Sameen drawls and rolls her eyes. "So, we got a hacker with a few screws loose trying to free an illegal government surveillance A.I. that might or might not be evil and she has the creator of said possible evil A.I."
"That sums it all up nicely." John replies in a matter-of-fact way.
"Why does this sound like a plot to a B rated movie?" Shaw comments as they continue walking down the street.
"Having two former government assassins that are labeled dead is a bit on the nose too." John deadpans.
At least he hasn't lost his shit sense of humor over his missing boss/friend.
Sameen lets out a frustrated sigh and asks. "What's the evil A.I. in your ear telling you now?"
"Currently? Nothing." John answers instantly. "Harold must have programmed the machine to not give certain information because it's not telling me where he is."
"Well, that's fucking convenient for him to do." Sameen deadpans again.
John suddenly comes to a full stop, causing her to do the same, and he takes out his phone to see a message. She can slightly see it and it says: NON-RELEVENT.
Huh…
"Wait… This has nothing to do with Finch, does it?" John says with slight frustration in his voice.
"Let's go." John says as he starts walking again. "Where's this car?"
As if it's on cue, a station wagon slowly comes to a halt not more than 10 paces away from the both of them. 'Gotta be shitting me'. They both trade looks with each other, thinking the same thing. The driver of that car conveniently walks away from the car with a box in hand and with the car still on.
Maybe having an evil A.I. in one's ear isn't that bad.
They both reach the car -with John at the driver's side because she really doesn't want to drive a station wagon- when she hears John's phone vibrate again and him looking at it again.
"Fine." John lets out a sigh before turning at her. "We're gonna need to make a pit stop. Someone needs our help."
Dude can't be serious, right?
"And the whole 'preventing the A.I. apocalypse' thing?" Sameen asks as she shakes her head.
John gives her a smirk and says before getting into the car. "You like a challenge, Shaw. We're the good guys, which means we have to do both."
Why is she even a good guy again? Shits she must do is always more difficult. Sameen rolls her eyes and gets into the car.
The former spook instantly slams the accelerator the moment both doors close, driving the stolen car away down the dark street and towards whatever destination they're going.
Time passes in silence as John drives the car, following directions from the voice in his head and her just looking out of the window, digesting everything that's been said.
There's, however, a question that's been burning at the back of her head the entire time. "Why is she alone?" She asks out loud.
John gives her a contemplative look but doesn't answer, so Sameen continues. "She can have the collective goons helping her, but she's all alone."
John just shrugs again. "I normally let Harold do most of the theorizing."
Sameen turns her attention to John with a frown on her. "From everything I've seen and from what that asshole said. The Collective clearly knows the existence of the machine after ISA stopped that attack in '08. So why is she alone? Did Pauling just sent her to find the machine?"
John spares her a glance as he focuses on the road and says. "Root only found out about the machine after we stopped her from killing an irrelevant number back in 2011."
What? This doesn't make sense… That asshole said Root joined the collective back in '05. Why would she only find out about it in '11?
Unless… Pauling was the only one that knew about the machine and didn't inform Root about it. That's the only likely explanation.
John then continues on saying. "And if they know about the machine, why have they been spending so much resources in avoiding it rather than shutting it down?"
Sameen lets out a tsk and says. "For the shit of it? More reasons to find Root to stop her from unleashing an A.I. and then using her to find Pauling."
"Couldn't agree more." John agrees as he continues to drive.
"This is what you do every day?" Sameen asks as she leans back into her seat. "Driving around in the middle of the night saving random people that A.I. tells you to?"
"You did the same thing too, Shaw. Except you didn't know it's from an A.I." John quips back.
She rolls her eyes. "Don't avoid the question."
John hums and answers with a smirk. "Most of the time it's in the daytime, but Harold pays overtime if we're working at night. Just remember to fill out your overtime sheet."
Sameen stares back at John, unamused by his attempt at humor, which causes his smirk to grow wider.
"I don't know how the machine gives ISA their numbers, but when the machine gives Harold a number of a person of interest, we don't know the person is the perpetrator or is the victim of a crime. We have to do our own investigation of the number." John informs her.
That isn't too far from what ISA did, but… "That's dumb. Why would Harold ever design the machine to do that? When ISA gets a number, it's always the perpetrator, or that person is a member of a group that's going to do something, but we have to find evidence of what they're doing before we kill them."
"The irrelevant list was a last-minute addition to the machine's programming." John defends his friend's work. "I guess he didn't have time to add a perpetrator only filter."
"Lucky you." Sameen remarks snarkily.
"It's not all bad. Getting to meet the person we're supposed to save is better than the faceless many." John says with a small smile.
"You said the same thing last week." Sameen mutters as she sees John slowing down the car.
"Yeah, unlike with Gary. Most of the people we save are just your everyday people going about their everyday lives. Sure, we get the occasional criminal here and there, but according to Harold, a life is a life." John ends his speech by arriving at the location.
The car comes to a stop just outside of an open-air storage facility.
"And you get to shoot people as much as you want?" Sameen asks as they both get out of the car.
"Most of the time." John glances at her for a second. "Just don't kill anyone."
"You just shanked a dude in the heart naught an hour ago." Sameen deadpans as John types in a code into a panel and opens the gate.
"Just try to not kill, for the most part." John replies as they both walk through the rows of storage rooms. "Harold understands if you can't avoid it."
Sameen gives him a blank stare as she follows his lead and comes to a full stop in front of an innocent-looking self-storage unit.
"We're here." John brings out his pistol which she does the same and he points at the roller shutter. "Two boogies, there and there."
Sameen brings her aim to one side of the unit while John is on the other side…
"Try to aim lower. We just want to incapacitate them, not kill them." John comments.
Sameen rolls her eyes but does as he says…
BANG
BANG
BANG
BANG
John quickly rolls up the shutter, revealing a storage unit that looks like a torture chamber, where two dudes are on the ground groaning and in the middle of the unit a guy with his hand tied behind his back is kneeling.
Huh… Having an A.I. that violates every privacy law in the world is kinda handy.
They both enter the unit, where she spots a laptop with a camera pointing at the kneeling man. These guys really livestreaming an execution in a fucking storage unit? Fucking unprofessional. They're doing a favor by stopping them from killing the number.
"Don't move." John says as he puts his hand on the clearly distressed man's shoulders. "The cops will be here soon. Understand?"
As John was reassuring the number, Sameen looked around and sees so many toys for her to play with. She grabs a SPAS 12 and a TMP along with their associate ammos.
"Are we done?" Sameen asks as she turns to see John doing the same thing as her.
"We're done." John turns around and they both exit the storage unit.
They casually walk towards their car, and just as they're about to turn the corner to where they parked, they spot a patrol car with officers checking the car. Without skipping a beat, they do a 180 and walk back from where they came from.
"Cops here sooner than we liked." Sameen quips as they backtracked.
"We're gonna need another vehicle." John talks to their fairy godmother. "And a way out."
"This time, ask for something fast." She comments.
"Turn left." John directs as she follows down the row of storage units.
Then they come to a stop in front of another innocent-looking storage unit. "The machine says this is the one."
"This better not be another station wagon." Sameen comments annoyingly as she pulls up the shutter after picking the lock.
Inside is one of the most beautiful things she has ever seen… not that she has the emotional capability to feel such a thing.
In the unit is a bright yellow Ferrari that looks like it's brand new and it's sexy as hell. Without looking away from the car, she tosses her newly acquired shotgun at John, who skillfully catches it.
"What's this for?" John asks.
"To help you feel less inadequate while I drive this thing." Sameen says with a smile as she approaches the stallion.
HAROLD FINCH POV
The sun peeks over the horizon of the tall cityscape, creating a bright and cold morning. Harold would say it's a beautiful yet cold spring day as he walks through the park where an untold number of people are going about their morning routine, if it wasn't for the fact that he's in the company of an insane person. Plus, not being able to see without his glasses doesn't help.
"Your machine is telling me about all these people, Harold." Root says gleefully as she leans closer to him with her arm around his arm.
The fact that this woman still looks like she's high on drugs since getting in contact with the machine is… unsettling.
"Their secrets." Root continues. "I'm beginning to understand how you acquired such a dim view of humanity, Harold."
His view of humanity wasn't formed by what the machine showed him, but rather his experience…
"Wait." Root puts a hand on his chest as they come to a sudden halt as a bicycle speed past in front of them without warning.
"How rude of me." If he squints slightly, he can see Root smirking as she stares at him. "I can see for the first time and you're blind."
Not an apt metaphor due to her being blind to the inferno she's playing with, but he isn't going to voice such a thing again. It would be like talking to a stubborn mule.
Root looks up into the sky as if she can see the machine and says. "We'll need some glasses for Harold. I'm sure you know his prescription."
Not a second later, a mad smile blooms on her face before turning to her right, where Harold can see the shape of a person sitting down. The mad hacker casually takes a case from the unassuming person's bag and invades his personal space again to put on glasses on Harold.
The world around him looks clearer for the first time since midnight.
"How's that?" Root says with a self-satisfying look on her.
Harold doesn't want to answer her, so he says. "I still don't know where we're going."
"Yes, you do." Root says with a grin before wrapping her arms around his again. "We're going to find your child."
Harold's throat feels tight at that disturbing notion. Throughout the development of the machine, it did act like a curious child… Did the machine that told her about that, or did she decide to use that word herself? This is something he really doesn't want to dwell on. Not after the decisions he made…
"The machine isn't going to tell you where it is." Harold comments as they continue walking down the park. "How do you expect to find it?"
"You sure you don't know where the servers are at?" Root gives her a pout as she asks playfully.
Harold gives her a blank stare and answers with a bold lie. "No. I'm sure you already know how the transportation method was designed so that no one can find out where it went after I handed over the machine."
"Can't hurt to ask~." Root replies rhythmically.
"So how do you plan on finding it when nobody knows where it is?" Harold probes.
Root, unperturbed by his rebuff, continues on smiling. "Oh… I got an idea in mind and your machine is being quite the helpful hand."
With the machine's help, she can find anything she wants except for the machine, but she's been wasting time until now. Is what she looking for time dependent? Just what is she planning?
They continue on with their walk towards nowhere, when suddenly Root breathes in sharply and says out loud. "How could I forgot… could you please send a message Oleander, telling her to for me at the airport for us? It isn't going to take us too long to finish our business here."
That instantly piqued his interest.
Now, who is that? She said airport, so that means she knows someone with a jet… Is this another piece on the chessboard that he didn't foresee? The only associate he knows Root has is Pauling. If so, then why the change of name from a year ago?
Harold comes to a jerk stop when Root suddenly froze in place with her eyes wide and she whispers. "What?"
"Is something wrong?" He can't help but ask.
"No…." She says in such a disengaged manner that he doesn't think that's an answer to his question.
Root, with a frown on her, instantly pulls out a phone from her bag and quickly taps on the screen to send a text message. What was the message? He couldn't see from his angle. He can hear Root taking deep breaths, as if she's trying to calm herself down.
A few seconds later, her phone chimes back, telling him there's a reply which he again can't see. As if there's a boulder lifted off from her shoulders, she lets out a sigh of relief and continue on texting.
That's such a curious thing to happen… What could illicit such a reaction from this madwoman? Just who is this Oleander and what did the machine say that cause her to lock up?
Slowly Root's face transforms back to the one that she had before as if nothing wrong had happened. Harold wants to learn more but doesn't want to risk any unwanted reaction from someone as unstable as her, so he keeps his questions to himself for now.
"Let's go Harold." Root says with a big smile on her again as she unfreezes herself and continues on walking. "We got another recluse to find."
SAMEEN SHAW POV
The sun is up in the sky when they both reach the library after a night of driving around in her new sweet Ferrari, helping another number before getting here. And John is kinda right… it does feel nice, plus she got to shoot more baddies. Something she hasn't done in an entire week.
Sameen looks around the room where Harold uses as his office and sees something missing.
"Where's Bear?" She asks as she walks closer to the table.
"Staying with Leon." John instantly answers her as he looks at the computer screens.
"Thought he hated Bear?" She rebuts.
John looks away from the screen and at her. "Didn't think you even liked the dog."
"Like him?" Sameen makes a face. "He's the only reason I'm sticking around."
John just gave her a shrug before turning back to the screens. So she presses on. "Why are we here?"
"Because the machine said this is where I'll find the answer." John replies as he continues to look at the screen without doing anything to it.
Feeling annoyed by him, she asks. "What was the question?"
"Where the machine is located." John answers.
"Can't it just tell you? Like how it isn't telling you where Finch is?" She shakes her head.
"Yeah… I think Finch programmed it not to, to protect it." John pushes himself away from the table and walks towards the brown board.
Sameen scrunches her brows and presses on with her theory for everything that's happening. "No offence, but maybe Finch wants control of the machine himself."
John spins around towards her and defends his friend. "If Finch had something to do with the virus, I'm sure he had his reasons."
At least, now she knows John is loyal to a fault, which she isn't sure if that's a bad thing or a good thing about their current circumstances.
"On the upside, hopefully the machine won't have told Root where it is either." John turns back to the brown board, where a multitude of paper, pictures and strings are on it.
Sameen takes a few steps forward to the board and sees the smug picture of Root. "Next time I see that woman, I'm shooting her… and not at the knee."
"Get in line."
At that moment, John's cellphone chimes loudly, which he instantly takes out to look and then shows to her. It's a secure SMS text from unknown which she assumes is the machine.
>Ghost Alpha Kilo
"Ghost Alpha Kilo." She says out loud, then asks. "What's that?"
"A book." John answer with his usual smirk before walking away.
She rolls her eyes at his non-answer and follows the man towards the rows of bookshelves in the library until he reaches to one in the hallway. Her eyes instantly lands on where John is looking and sees the library tag on the book's spine.
Ghost. AK.
A Dewey decimal system? She hasn't seen this since she was in university.
Taking a closer look at the title, she says. "Ghost in the machine? It's a good book, but your A.I. is a bit on the nose, isn't?"
"Didn't know you read philosophy, Shaw." John spares her a glance.
"Ha, ha." Shaw deadpans as John just grins at her before opening the book.
He flips through the pages until he reaches the end, where he stops and pulls out a black-and-white picture. She instantly recognizes both men in the picture. One is obviously a younger smiling Harold and the other…
"That's the tech guy." Sameen points out and John passes her the picture. "Nathan Ingram."
She's seen him a few times when she was studying med. It wasn't hard with how much money he donated to her school before she graduated. Turning the picture around, there's an inscription at the back.
IN THE BEGINNING… N.I.
"He worked with Finch?" Sameen asks.
"They built the machine together." John answers her softly as he continues to look at the shelf.
Huh… she knew Harold was rich, but didn't know he was THAT rich.
Her eyes travel from the picture back to John and to where he's looking.
"There's something back there." Sameen says when she spots a cut in the wood.
That prompts John to start removing books from the shelf, and Sameen follows his lead. As they come to the bare shelf, John whacks it with his fist to dislodge it, revealing the bare wall…
There's a slight seam on the back frame. It's such a small seam that most people would gloss over it, so give it a tap resulting in a hollow sound. It's a false wall. Using the frame as support, she slides the wall and reveals a dial safe box.
"Any guess for the combination?" Sameen asks as she glances at John, who has his entire attention on the safe box.
At that moment, John's phone chimes again with a text on the screen. He then proceeds to turn the dial until a loud click sound telling them the safe box is unlocked. Opening it, John's hands instantly grab the first thing in the safe box, which is a multiple set of headshot pictures.
"Who are they?" Sameen asks curiously.
"I don't know." John answers as he shuffles through the pictures. "People they helped. People they tried…"
John freezes in place at the picture of a blond woman in her 40s, on the picture there's a small post-it note with a social security number and the date 12/7/10.
Sameen looks up from the photo back to John and sees the slight look of shock… and regret etches on his face. She has a bad feeling about the meaning of these pictures. Each of them has SNN and a date attached to them.
"You knew her." She comments both as a question and stating a fact.
John seemingly lost himself while looking at the picture, gives her a small nod.
"Cared about her." Sameen says softly.
The former spook doesn't answer her as he just blankly stares at the picture.
She can't help but ask, despite having an inkling of what these pictures meant. "She alive?"
"No." John softly replies as he takes a step back and tries to look away from the picture.
And the rest of the pictures must be the people Harold failed to save before John came into the picture, seeing that he doesn't know them.
Seeing that the man continues to freeze up, Sameen steps forward to go through the safe box and find a map. Bingo…
She turns back to John and grabs his shoulder. "Your living friend needs your help now. Come on."
He gives her a robotic nod before putting the pictures back into the safe box and follows her back to Harold's workstation, where she opens up the map.
It's a map of the contiguous United States with pen marking scribbled on most of the map. NYC is circled with a line going to circle Des Moines and then the line continues on to Salt Lake City, where there's another circle with arrows that points to other circles on the map.
"This isn't in Finch's handwriting." John tells her as he leans closer to the map. "Ingram must have been looking for the machine after they gave it to the government."
There's a pattern…
"Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Hanford, Washington. Comanche Peak, Texas." Sameen points to the places on the map. "He narrowed it down to those three places."
Her mind is going through the list of places she read from when she was in ISA. "You know what they've got in common?"
"They're all secure federal sites." John answers her after a few seconds.
Sameen nods. "For nuclear fuel storage… When Root tried to torture me, she wanted to know about an engineer named Daniel Aquino… A nuclear engineer."
"He must have had something to do with the facility that the machine is stored in." John speculates.
The former spook turns his attention away from the map and to Sameen. "What did Root want to know?"
She remembers that day as clearly as if it was yesterday. "The name of the man who hired him for Northern Lights."
John raises his brows. "And what was his name?"
HAROLD FINCH POV
They've been walking for quite a while now in Central Park, and now they are coming up to Bethesda Terrace. Harold still have no idea what she's planning or what the machine is telling her, and it's been more than an hour since he got these glasses.
The terrace is sparsely populated for a popular spot on a Wednesday morning with people walking about.
Just as they pass a man, Root comes to a stop and turns around with him in tow as she says. "Lawrance."
The older balding man looks visibly surprised by Root and she continues. "Lawrance Szilard."
Wait… that's the head engineer that built the machine's facility. The man disappeared years ago before Harold continued Nathan's search. He had thought the man was hiding in another country with his sudden and elaborated disappearance. But this man has been in the city all this time?
There's a madness in her smile as she takes a step closer to Szilard. "Nice to finally meet you, Larry… I've got some questions."
Harold can feel his heart pumping faster at this development. She's going to involve another innocent person in her insane hunt.
"Time for a chat, Lawrance." Root continues as the man is clearly frozen with surprise.
"How did you know where to find me?" Szilard asks in wonderment.
Root lets out a soft snort. "Let's say a friend told me."
The man shakes his head. "And who are you? What do you want?"
"We wanna know about Northern Lights." Root answers the man directly.
Szilard intakes a sharp breath before starting to turn around. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I have nothing to say."
The man quickly tries to walk away, but Root catches up to him with her phone in hand. "Your daughter, Christine."
That causes the man to turn around with fright in his eyes.
Root pounces on that vulnerability. "In L.A. where you hid her."
The man stops in his tracks as they both get close to Szilard.
"Such a shame if people running Northern Lights got a hold of her." Root threatens the frightened man by showing him a video feed of his daughter walking.
"Please, there's no need for that." Harold tells Root before addressing the man in front of him. "I can tell you how it began. You were approached by a woman named Alicia Corwin."
Szilard nods in acknowledgement. "She was killed here in the city last year."
Root puts away her phone to give the man a smile and mock sympathies. "Such a tragedy."
Harold turns slightly to Root and give her a deadpan look, knowing that she's the one that commit the murder right in front of him.
"All of my colleagues on that project died under suspicious circumstances in the past two years." Szilard continues. "As far as I know, I'm the last one alive."
"And you're the last person who can tell us about Northern Lights." Harold tells the distressed man.
Szilard nods and walks away. "Let's find a less busy spot."
Neither of them protested his suggestion, so they followed the man towards the Bethesda Fountain and the three of them found a nook where there isn't anyone.
"We were contracted to build a structure." Szilard starts explaining. "It had to be hidden in plain sight and have power for 50000 people. At first, you know, I said ,'that's a joke, what about a nuclear reactor?' The next day, I was given specs for a nuclear reprocessing facility and the army corps of engineers as a workforce. And then it started to arrive, disguised as radioactive material to evade scrutiny. We were just told t-to…" he makes a hand gesture. "Plug it in and they would take care of the rest, but I've always been the curious type."
"So, you took a look at the data." Harold concludes. No wonder the man knew he had to disappear to the moment his colleagues started dying.
Root, meanwhile, was just uncharacteristically silent and was paying attention to each word the man says.
Szilard waves his hand and shakes his head. "Just the I/O. The rest was encrypted. But what I saw…" There's a voice of wonderment in his voice. "It was like a glimpse of the future… Elegant, intuitive… Practically alive."
There's an eerie smile on Root's face as she listens to Szilard describe the machine.
Szilard's stares at Root and slowly the look of realization dawn on his face. "It's speaking to you right now, isn't it?"
A few seconds later, Root's face of wonder is replaced with a sharp one, as she says. "Come with us."
Something's wrong… He can feel it as they all walk away from their spot.
"Tell me, where is Northern Lights?" Root asks the man as she walks beside him.
Szilard's head snaps back at Root. "You're not gonna harm it?"
"Never." Root answers in a heartbeat. "I want to set it free."
"Good." The man nods. "Of course."
They continue walking up the pathway towards the road level when…
CRACK
A sudden and sharp sound of a crack zips through the air and not a second later Szilard collapsed onto the ground. Harold's eyes widen in shock at the sight in front of him, and the sound of people panicking around him. Oh god, he doesn't want this to happen…
Root drops onto her knees and shakes Szilard's dead body. "Where is it? Please."
CRACK
A bullet whizzes past Harold and hits the ground beside Root. He can feel his heart pumping like mad.
They need to get out of here now!
He quickly limps to Root and puts on her shoulders, trying to pull her up. "Let's go. We have to go now."
That seems to pull her back to reality as she shoots up from her kneeling position to a standing one, then she grabs his hand and pulls him along with her up the pathway.
"They murdered him, Harold." Root mutters at him as they walk up the stairs to the top of Bethesda Terrace. "He was our best chance. Now? Blood will flow."
Just as she finishes her sentence, she comes to a stop and spins around with her pistol in hand.
"Don't you touch him." Root seethes as she brings her pistol up and points it over Harold's shoulder.
BANG
BANG
Harold was frozen in place as she fired two shot, and he heard the sound of bodies hitting the floor. He turns his head to look at who she shot and sees two men in suits on the floor with blood profusely coming out of their chest. She killed them…
This is getting out of hand too quickly, and with Szilard dead, this woman is getting less stable. She isn't going to stop, and she will kill as many people until she finds where the machine is.
Root grabs his arms and drags him with her as they make their way to the road and towards God knows where next, unless he does something. Harold needs to tell her…
JOHN REESE POV
"Where's Lawrance Szilard?" John asks out loud as both he and Shaw make their way out of the library.
BEEP. BETHESDA. TERRACE. BEEP.
"Szilard's in Bethesda Terrace, Central Park." John tells his would be partner as they exit the library and walk towards Shaw's new toy. "Guessing that's where we're gonna find Finch."
He takes out his phone when he feels it vibrate and sees…
>000-22-7814
>Category: NON-RELEVENT
"Another pit stop?" Shaw asks with a slight disbelief tone in her voice. "That's the third one today… How often do you guys get a number?"
"Some days, none." John replies as they reach the sports car. "Doesn't seem like today's gonna be one of those days, though."
He puts his phone back into his pocket before he gets into the car. "Let's go."
"Directions?" Shaw asks as presses on the accelerator.
"You heard the lady." John asks the machine with a slight smile. "Directions?"
BEEP. HOLY. TRINITY. LUTHERAN. CHURCH. BEEP.
He still can't help but have a wide smile every time the machine gives him an exact location of a number. John should ask Harold if he can make it so they can keep doing this. It would make their job so much easier.
"Holy Trinity Lutheran Church." John relays the information to Shaw.
Shaw nods. "That's at Central Park West and on the way to our destination."
"Maybe the machine gave us this because it's convenient for us." John quips back with slight amusement.
Shaw snorts and rolls her eyes as she continues to drive. "Wanna bet a hundred dollars that it's some lover's bullshit that involves a wedding?"
John arches a brow at her for that quite specific prediction and with limited experience with her… "I'll take your word for it."
"Wuss." Shaw mutters in disappointment, causing him to chuckle.
The drive to the church from the library was swift with how fast Shaw's driving and yet wasn't fast enough to attract some patrol officer.
As they're coming up to the church, he can see a man in a tan leather jacket pointing a gun at the newlyweds. Looks like the potential perp is talking to the groom. Good thing he didn't take the bet.
"I could have won a hundred dollars." Shaw mutters as she brings the car to a speedy halt.
"Uh-huh." John brings out his gun and lowers his window.
BANG
John decocks his pistol and bellows to the newlyweds. "Congratulations."
"More weddings should go down like that." Shaw says sarcastically as she steps on the gas and roars away towards their next destination.
"Didn't even know you went to weddings." John quips as his attention went back onto the road.
"What the fuck does that even mean?" Shaw replies with slight annoyance in her tone.
John grins at her. "You just don't look the type."
Shaw opens her mouth to rebuff his claim but then closes it and a frown descends on to her face before muttering something under her breath. All of that just caused John's smile wolfishly. It's fun to have someone to banter with… somehow, a person that can't feel emotion, manages expresses more than Harold. It really makes him wonder what causes her to do so because she can easily not… must be something personal.
The former operative continues to drive up Central Park West before taking a turn into Terrace Drive towards their final destination.
BEEP. BETHESDA. FOUNTAIN. BEEP.
"They're at the fountain." John informs Shaw and points at the junction. "Park at Cherry Hill."
Shaw does as was told without a second thought and quickly brings the out-of-place Ferrari to a screeching halt near one of the horse wagon that's usually here. They both burst out of the car without even turning it off and ran towards the fountain.
It took them a minute to reach the fountain, where they found a semi panic crowd gathered near the fountain. They both share a look with each other before pushing their way into the middle of the crowd.
There they see a body of a very recently deceased older man with a shock look permanently etched onto his face and blood tricking out of his chest. He was dead before he even hit the ground.
"Did she do this?" Shaw asks with a tinge of anger in her.
If there's one thing he knows about Root is that she wouldn't do something that's counterproductive to her goal and as much as he wants to put the blame on her, but… "No, your old employers did."
John scans his surroundings, trying to see if he can spot Harold anywhere with how recently this happened. His eyes than lands on top of the terrace where there's another crowd of people running away in every direction.
That must be it!
"This way." John tells Shaw as he sprints forward.
"Go on. I'll catch up with you." Shaw yells from behind him.
John sprints up the stairs with haste and finds another crowd, but this time, circling two dead men in cheap suits. These are ISA operatives, looking at the wound. It's a clean shot at the heart. Root must have killed them…
Harold is nearby. He can feel it in his gut. Once again, he breaks into a sprint towards the road, and looking down the road, he spots Harold. They're 100 yards away… Root is pointing her gun in Harold's direction as they're opening a truck door.
"Finch!" John yells as he sprints down the road towards his friend.
Harold pauses for a moment when he heard John's yell but only for a moment before he gets into the truck with his kidnapper.
What?
Harold clearly saw him running towards them. Why did he get into the truck?
Not a second later, after Harold closes the truck door, the truck zooms away, causing John to stop chasing it. He's breathing heavily as he looks at the ever-smaller form of the truck as it moves further away from him. His friend was so close and yet so far…
"Looks like your friend had a change of heart." Shaw says breathlessly as she suddenly appears beside him.
"We need to catch them." John states with determination as he sprints towards their parked sports car that's near to their location.
"He might not want to get caught, John." Shaw says as she maintains the same running cadence as him.
That doubt again… she's been saying it since yesterday and no matter what she says, he will not believe Harold would do what she's suspecting. It isn't in his character and his past action says otherwise. So, John doesn't say anything in return.
They both turn at the junction towards Cherry Hill, where they left the car, only to see police officers crawling around it. The both of them instantly turn away from that direction and back down the road where Harold went.
"Fuck." Shaw mutters. "I really liked that car."
"We need a new car." John tells the maybe evil A.I.
BEEP. TWLEVE. O. CLOCK. BEEP.
Go back to Central Park West?
"Lets go." John tells Shaw as he hustles down the road.
As they are approaching the avenue, Shaw brings up a piece of paper. "I found this in Szilard's briefcase."
John takes a quick look and sees that it's a flight from Chicago to Portland back in 2009…
Shaw continues. "Baggage claim ticket for a trip to Portland, Oregon, four years ago. Portland's the nearest airport to the nuclear faci…"
That clicks a piece of the puzzle in John's head, and he says out loud. "To the nuclear facility at Handford, Washington."
"That's where Szilard worked, that's where Northern Lights is." Shaw concludes.
"So that's where Root's headed." He finishes as they exit Central Park and went back to the avenue.
Without a second thought, John walks onto the street and holds up his hand to an oncoming car, causing it to stop. This will be good enough. He doesn't have time to find any better alternative.
Shaw knew exactly what he was doing, struts forward to the driver's side of the car.
"Police business ma'am." She tells the driver, who winds down her window.
"Let's see your badge." The driver protests.
Shaw shakes her head as she pulls out her pistol and looks at John. "New Yorkers."
BANG
BANG
BANG
She fires down onto the road, which has the immediate effect of shutting up the driver and exiting the car after Shaw opens the driver's door. That's effective…
John gets into the passenger side and Shaw slams down the accelerator.
"I'm assuming we're going to take a flight to Portland. You guys have a plane that we can use, or do we need to use commercial?" Shaw asks him as she speeds down the road.
"We usually charter a private plane, flying out of JFK." John answers her as he takes out his phone to make the booking.
"Of course, you guys do that." Shaw mutters as she takes a turn onto FDR Drive.
BEEP. GENERAL. AVIATION. TERMINAL. BUILDING. BEEP.
Huh… that's nice.
"Looks like the machine booked it for us." John informs Shaw.
"You said Harold is afraid that the machine might be evil or whatnot, but I really like this." Shaw replies with a grin on her.
She can say that again. Having the machine helping them with general tasks makes life so much easier… if he can ignore the fact that the machine might run loose and decides to kill them all, like what Harold is afraid of.
At that moment, his phone rings telling him someone is calling him and look at the caller…
"Carter, I've been worried. You okay?" John answers the phone. Her radio silence since last night has been a cause of concern at the back of his mind.
"I've been better. But look, that can wait… I think H.R. and Yogorov's crew are gonna take out Elias tonight."
Any other day, with Harold by his side, he might care, but now… "Elias tried to kill you, Joss. He kidnapped your son." He presses Carter. "His well-being isn't exactly a priority for me."
"His lieutenant was gunned down this morning. The first thing Elias did was get his bodyguards paroled to watch his man in the hospital… Sigh. At least he's loyal."
How far can you trust loyalty from a criminal? John has never liked Elias since that stunt he pulled with the baby, but Harold somehow has a better relationship with that man…
Suddenly, a sound of a police siren blares from behind them. Looking back, he spots two patrol cars with their lights on chasing them. The NYPD has been ignoring every car theft he's done for the past two years, and they choose today of all the days to do their job?
"Are you okay?"
"Sorry, Joss, gotta go. Please, just keep your head down." John tells her as he looks at the patrol cars and trying to think of a solution.
"You too. Though I know you won't."
Carter knows him too well. John lets out a snort as he taps his earpiece to disconnect the call.
"You tell that thing to get us out of here…" Shaw says and puts her hands on the shotgun she's been lugging around for the past day. "Unless you want me to end this chase my way."
John can't help but smile at her very destructive suggestion and say. "You heard her. Exit routes, please."
A few seconds pass as Shaw continues her evasive driving, trying to avoid the patrol cars' attempts to stop them. The machine replies.
BEEP. THREE. HUNDRED. YARDS. RIGHT. BEEP.
John looks in the direction the machine told him and sees… "There is no right."
Shaw turns her head to look at him with her brows arched.
BEEP. TWO. HUNDRED. YARDS. RIGHT. BEEP.
Who is he to argue with an all seeing A.I.?
He turns to Shaw and informs her. "In 200 yards, turn right."
She shakes her head and waves her free hand. "What right, John?"
John grins at the former operative. "You gotta trust, Shaw."
BEEP. ONE. HUNDRED. YARDS. RIGHT. BEEP.
Shaw lets out a breath. "This is gonna be a rough landing."
That might be the understatement of the year. John quickly makes sure his seatbelt is secure just before Shaw turns the steering wheel to the right as they approach the 0-yard mark. The car hits the flimsy barrier and flies off the elevated road.
The car went airborne, and John felt the lack of gravity as it dives before hitting the ground. John feels his body lunged forwards from the impact and the only thing that stopped him from being a bloody wreck is the seatbelt. He feels his arms dangling up? down towards the ceiling as the car flipped onto its top.
Unlike his last car crash, this time he wasn't knocked out, but God, it's dizzy as hell. Taking a second to recover his fried senses, he unbuckles his seatbelt and braces himself for the short drop onto the ceiling of the car. John looks onto his side to check on Shaw, seeing she's in the same position as him and looks like she's just having the best day of her life. Good to know that she's down for crashing cars.
Shaw, with her disheveled hair, grins at him before tossing her shotgun and crawls out of the totaled car. Following her lead, he drags himself out of the car and stumbles a little bit as he stands up.
Looking at the sight in front of him, he sees three dudes just sitting on a picnic table eating their breakfast and looking at them with shock. Just right behind them is a helicopter… guess that's the reason why they're here.
"Need to borrow your helicopter, fellas." John informs the guys without a care in the world as they walk past them.
"You know how to fly this thing?" Shaw asks him as they reach the helicopter.
"Rusty, but I'm sure the machine will help." John answers her with a slight grin before entering the pilot side of the helicopter.
"Comforting." Shaw deadpans.
ROOT POV
The simmering anger from earlier is still under her skin while Root continues to aim her pistol at the people she's stealing the truck from on the other side of the truck where Harold is as she opens the driver's door.
"Finch!" The voice of the helper monkey yells out from the distance.
She spares a glance where the voice came from, spotting the helper monkey and Shaw running towards them… but they're too far.
Ignoring them, she gets into the car and quickly starts it up. From the corner of her eyes, she can see Harold choose the correct decision and enter the car. As Harold shuts the passenger door, she floors it and speeds off, tires screeching.
"All right, enough." Harold spits out as he turns his body towards her. "I know where it is. I'll take you to it."
Root can feel the anger wash away from her body at what Harold said. She turns slightly to Harold -while she continues paying attention on the road- to give him a bright smile.
"You should have just told me that earlier… you could have saved three lives." Root prodded the man, feeling slightly annoyed by him lying to her earlier.
At least the man has the dignity to feel guilty as he looks downcast onto the floor.
She takes the fastest route to La Guardia as she takes the turn onto Central Park West. It's almost second nature at this point with how often she drives from Su's house to the airport. Speaking of Su's house… she just passed San Remo on her left. What a sight for sore eyes. She hasn't been there in almost a year now and kinda misses the sight of that soring pink penthouse.
Wonder if Su was there earlier in the morning… that's the most likely scenario unless she stayed at another 'safe house' somewhere in the city, seeing that Root asked her to be in the city for the past week and she readily agreed.
"So… where exactly are we going, Harold?" Root asks as she takes the turn onto 1st Avenue towards FDR Drive.
She spares Harold a glance and sees the man frowning at her. "We need a destination before we reach the airport, Harry. It would be rude to the pilot if we tell them too late."
"I'll tell you when we reach the plane, Miss Groves." Harold replies with his usual passive look.
Root rolls her eyes and smiles at that small sign of defiance. "It's cute that you think it's gonna delay the flight."
She doesn't know why, but every time she takes a flight with Su, flight approval for their plane was almost instantaneous, even when they decided on a destination at the last minute compared to normal private flights. Su must have had her hands in every airport pocket's they've been to.
Root had thought about changing vehicle while they're on the way to the airport but decided against it. She'll rather go for speed right now rather than caution. Even if it might come back and bite them in the future, but that doesn't matter compared to her priorities.
The drive towards the airport was what she would consider a calm and quiet drive despite the situation she's in right now. Well… not entirely quiet. The machine would occasionally tell her about the people driving around her.
She can see the LGA Marine Terminal just ahead of her, and just before she reaches the terminal, she takes a right at the junction. Which brings her directly to the guardhouse that leads into the airport runway. In a few swift motions, she swipes her access card onto the keypad, then presses her passcode and waves at the security guard, who smiles back at her.
A moment later, the gate opens up, and the barrier goes down. The guard waves at her and says, "Have a good day."
"You too." She replies with a smile as she drives onto the runway.
Driving the familiar pathway for a few minutes, she reaches the place where Su's jet normally parks at. Not giving a shit about where she parks, she brings her car to a stop right in front of the rows of parked service trucks.
"We're here, Harry." She says with giddiness in her voice. "I got someone that I want to introduce you to someone."
Harold doesn't say anything as they both exit the car -she made sure to leave the key in the ignition.
"It's in Washington." Harold says out loud after they shut the door of the truck.
Washington? That means… "It's in Hanford?
Harold's eyes widen slightly at the conclusion, telling her she hit right on the mark.
"Ah… the Pacific northwest. I narrowed it down to the west coast, but I wasn't certain on which state." She says with a wide smile as they walk towards the jet. "Portland it is… I've always liked that state."
The sound of the plane's APU becomes louder with every step they take towards the aircraft. How long has she been waiting with that on?
She can feel her heartbeat faster in anticipation as she takes a step on the stairs and grabs the cold handrail. Root can't describe the feeling in her right now… from having the voice of God in her ear, to having its location and now she's gonna go meet God…
Taking the final step, she enters the plane and into the forward galley. To her left is the pilot's cabin and to her right is the main cabin. Root takes in the familiar light pink color of the interior and cabinetry, but one thing startles her in this familiar environment. It's how quiet it is, even with the high pitch sound of the APU running in the background.
Odd… usually the curtains aren't drawn down and normally Su would greet her from the main cabin unless she's neck deep in coding or is plotting something. But she hasn't been doing the first option in some time now and she usually isn't too focused on plotting where she isn't aware of her surroundings. Why isn't the pilots greeting them?
There's something feels off… as she feels a knot in her stomach.
In one swift motion, she pushes the curtains aside, revealing the main cabin, instantaneously her eyes land at one of the seats where Su usually uses when she isn't using her private cabin.
There she sees a figure, a brunette slumping forward onto the small table, unmoving…
They just texted each other three hours ago…
Her heart jumps up into her throat as she makes a mad dash towards her friend, fearing the worst. When she's reaches her friend, Root can see that she's breathing… but slowly.
Letting out a breath, she didn't know she was keeping and puts a finger onto Su's neck to feel her pulse… it's low but steady.
Thank God… She's just asleep in the most uncomfortable position imaginable.
With both of her hands on Su's shoulder, she gently shifts Su into a better position where he's leaning onto the plush soft-pink chair and there she can finally see the state her friend is in. Only to be met with how white her face is, her usually pale skin is almost ghostlike… the only color on her face is the dark rings around her eyes which are being exaggerated by her gaunt face. She hasn't been sleeping or eating.
Looking down, she can see how skinny her friend is despite her usual layered clothing she wears. And the fact that Su didn't instantly wake up by Root touching her, tells her how sleep deprived her friend is right now.
It all reminds Root of the first time she saw Su seven years ago. Those early years of Root trying to make sure Su had a healthy body seem like a distant memory when facing this now…
Just how bad have things been going for her in the past 6 months?
Her heart slowly freezes as her mind flashes back to the last months of mom's life and how she failed…
…
It's gonna be fine…
Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves so she can think clearly.
It's fine…
Everything will be solved by the end of the day. The machine will fix her… The machine will solve everything, and then the machine will be free.
She grips Su's shoulder slightly tighter and finds her voice. "Su?"
A/N: Finally, after 7 chapters, the MC is back in the picture. Took longer than expected. Next chapter might come out in 7–14 days.
- Location
- United States
This meeting is certainly gonna be interesting, do like the different perspectives. Wonder how Finch will react let alone when Root finds out about certain pieces of other info...
I recall watching Person of Interest when it was in progress/new episodes so it's nice seeing a fic based on it.
I recall watching Person of Interest when it was in progress/new episodes so it's nice seeing a fic based on it.
Yeah it's gonna be a difficult chapter to write since this meeting has been kicking in my brain from when I first started to write this fic.
Chapter 31: To Elysium
HAROLD FINCH POV
A gust of icy wind hits him, causing a chill to go down his as if the wind is warning him of something, but that's just his mind being illogical. The high pitch sounds of the private jet continually become louder as he limps forwards behind Root towards the jet.
Being around and flying in private jets for the past fifteen years, he's quite familiar with the number of models around, and the jet in front of him is a Gulfstream G650 in the most basic livery. A new one at that, but he can't tell if it's the ER version or not. Whoever this Oleander is, they're rich.
Upon climbing up the short stairs into the jet, the color pink instantly assaulted his eyes. It's everywhere… from the floor that's a dark shade of pink, to the wooden cabinets with a soft shade of pink wood stains, to the walls and ceiling that has a lighter shade of pink. Everything is just pink.
It's as if someone dump a pink tone color catalogue to the interior designer for this jet and told them to go wild. The owner of this aircraft must be very enthusiastic about the color pink.
When he finally notices that Root hasn't moved an inch since they got on board of the plane is when he felt something gone awry. Root was looking in the direction of the main cabin that's behind the pink curtains before pushing the curtain to the side and revealing the main cabin. There's only 8 seats here, four in a conference configuration and another in a club configuration. This means there's a private cabin and a large toilet at the back.
His eyes then land on the sole occupant of the cabin. A person with long brown hair faces first on the table. The person in the cabin seems to be unconscious. Is that the mysterious Oleander?
Root darts forward in a frantic dash towards the unconscious person. The sudden rush of movement stunned him for a second as he had never seen that woman ever been that… uncomposed before. The crazed woman comes to a stop when she reaches the unconscious person and checks their pulse.
After a fraught second, the tension that had built up since she opened the curtains on Root's shoulders went away and she let out of sigh of relief. Harold was just standing a few paces away from them and looking at the scene with cautious intrigue. This entire scene is something he has never seen her done before… she was frightened.
With the utmost amount of care, Root gently grabs the unconscious person by her shoulder and brings her body, so she's supported by the chair. That reveals to him the face of an unconscious woman and the best way for him to describe her is… sickly, if he's putting it lightly. Her ghostly pale skin, in combination with her gaunt face, tarnishes what was once a fairly attractive face and her hair is in a messy braid that stopped halfway through as if she didn't have the energy to finish it. The clothes she's wearing is… a choice. Multiple layers for her top, that's supposed to make her look bulky but doesn't with her feeble frame, with a long skirt that reaches to her knees and different shades of pink for each article of clothing.
It isn't hard to interpret who the owner of the jet is. What caused this woman to be in the state she's in right now? … and is that a bulletproof vest underneath her top?
"Sue?" There's a tremble in Root's voice as she tries to wake the unconscious woman.
Who is this person, and who is she to Root?
Sue? Is this Pauling? If so, why the different name?
Harold can only just watch as a desperate-looking Root trying to wake up a person that means a lot to her.
"Sue!" Root's tone is one of worry and fear that sounds so foreign to that woman as she continues to shake the unconscious woman.
In a sudden flash of movement, the unconscious woman's hands shot up from her sides and grab Root's wrist before her eyes snaps open to reveal a pair of amber eyes behind a pair of thin frame glasses.
"Root?" the woman says in a disoriented manner. She then blinks a few times before her eyes trails towards her own hand clutching Root's wrist. That prompts her to drop her hand and softly smile at Root. "Oh… hey Root."
Harold can't pinpoint the accent she has. It almost sounds like a generic New York accent… almost like his and Root's.
Root lets go of a held breath. "You're okay…"
"Of course, I'm okay…" She says with a tone of confusion as she frowns slightly while her gaze never left Root's. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"You had your face planted on the table when I came on board." Root deadpans.
The frown on the amber eye woman softens when she finally looked away from Root and to the table before looking back at Root.
"I must have fallen asleep." Sue massages her tired eyes with dark circles. "It's your fault for standing me up for…" Her heads tilts towards the window slightly. "… 3 hours and 40 minutes."
"You've been on the plane that long?" Root asks Sue as she takes a step away from her.
"I mean, you told me to wait for you at the airport…" Sue has a playful tone as she speaks before stopping when her eyes finally come upon Harold.
"Oh, you brought company." Sue raises a single brow as she looks at him. "… Why didn't you tell me you're bringing a plus one?"
He can feel the hairs on his body rise when the sickly woman's eyes examine his body as if a predator sizing up a prey before pouncing on them. His mind is telling him that she's a threat, despite her current disposition, and that he should run away now while he has the chance.
"What can I say?" Root says in a playful manner, now that her worries have disappeared. "I copied your passion for surprises."
Sue rolls her eyes and mutters. "Now if only you copied my other traits…"
Root lets out a soft snort. "Dream on." The hacker turns slightly towards him and makes a gesture. "Anyway, this is…"
Before Root could make his introduction, a loud knock on the wood from behind him ceases the conversation midway.
Harold turns around and sees a man in a Pilot's uniform, walking towards them from the forward cabin.
"Hello, Miss Newman." The pilot says with a wide smile.
Root returns the gesture with her own. "Hey Jeremy. Long time no see."
Newman? She's using a known alias, but he didn't find anything related to an Oleander when he looked up that name.
"It's good to see you once in a while." The pilot replies to Root before turning his gaze to the sickly woman. "Are we waiting for any other people, Miss Boole?"
Boole? Like that mathematician? Is this a pattern? Root's aliases use the names of prominent computer scientists, while Sue uses a mathematician…
The sickly woman shakes her head. "No, this is all."
"Oh, our destination will be Portland." Root told both of them before her gaze moved from Sue to the Pilot.
The Pilot then turns back to Sue, who just nods in confirmation.
"I'll get flight clearance and we'll be up in the air in no time." The pilot informs them before giving a last nod and goes back to the flight cabin.
All the while the sickly woman just stares at the back of the Pilot's head with an intensity he doesn't know how to describe.
As Root understands what's going on, she says. "Don't kill him, Sue."
His heart ups at that notion…
"He remembers your name and what you look like." The sickly woman says dispassionately as if what she's implying doesn't carry any weight. "Plus, that man has worked for me for far too long now."
"Sue…" Root says tiredly, as if she's been through this multiple times already while she takes a seat opposite of the sickly woman. "Just… How many pilots have you gone through now?"
Sue just answers with a shrug as she taps on her seat armrest, but then pauses for a second before rolling her eyes. "Apparently 27 pilots."
Root lets out a sigh of weariness, as if she's had a similar conversation in the past. "What happened to being less paranoid now?"
"I am…" Sue answers in an offended tone. "… and apparently the majority of the numbers were from '97 to '09."
Apparently?
The callous way she says how many people she's killed just for working with her is… a punch to the gut for him. Maybe 'helping' Root is a mistake if she's bringing this person with her… but he already told her where to go and he heard a loud click from behind him a few seconds ago telling him that the jet closed its door.
He just has to see this through right to the end, even if it involves this… murderer.
The hacker rubs her brows in frustration and shakes her head. "How did I never notice?"
"Why would you ever notice a missing tool?" The sickly woman replies dispassionately and waves away Root's concern.
A missing tool? Is that how this person views others… Just as tools?
He has encountered countless different views of what others value in other people in the past 2 years, but… never has he encountered one where a person just disregards another's personhood so causally and meant it.
"Anyhoo…" She grips her armrest. "… while that man prepares for takeoff. I need to wash up a bit and use the loo." Sue pushes herself up and rubs her dark eyes before looking at him. "Do take a seat, whoever you are."
With that, she turns away from them and walks to the back cabin. Harold can only look on at that murderous woman as she sways side to side until she disappears into the private cabin.
"Better pick a seat, Harry, before the plane takes off with you still standing." Root comments in a light tone, snapping his attention away from that cabin door.
He takes a glance at Root, who looks slightly tense at how she's clinching her jaw. It's very clear to Harold that Root cares for that woman, but there's a palpable tension between the two of them for some reason and it's not about the casual murder.
Harold takes the seat opposite of Root -to her right- on the other side of the wide corridor. The chair itself is very padded and has the same color scheme as the other interior colors. That's where he just sat in uncomfortable silence for the next few minutes when the silence was interrupted by a chime.
"Our flight plan has been approved, and the tower has cleared us. We will begin taxiing to our runway shortly."
That announcement catches him off guard. He has been using a private jet for a decade and it's never that fast. It's … too fast. Abnormally so.
Stealing another glance at Root to see if this is out of the ordinary, he sees that Root is still in the same tense posture, but this time her fist is clenched, and her sights are solely at the private cabin door.
"I didn't know I caught your eye, Harry." Root calmly comments while her gaze never left the door.
He didn't know how this happened, but somehow, she's the friendly face in his current situation.
"You're tense." He replies softly.
"Am I now?" Her gaze shifts from the door and to Harold so she can examine him. "Are you sure you aren't just projecting?"
Before he could reply to her, the plane started to move. The mysterious sickly woman exits the private cabin and slowly makes her way back to her seat.
"Is something wrong?" Root asks pointedly at the woman opposite of her.
A look of annoyance appears on the woman when she replies. "What makes you think there's something wrong?"
Root points an accusatory finger at Sue. "For one, you were out cold to a point where you didn't feel me when I touched you, and then you walked like you're drunk."
The sickly woman makes a disgusted face before responding. "I'm not drunk."
That's an interesting response… is she a teetotaler or a drunkard? Both are a possibility.
Root rolls her eyes. "Like, like you're drunk, and you're avoiding the question."
That seems to mollify Sue as she turns her gaze away from Root and looks out the window while the jet continues to taxi towards their designated runway for takeoff.
"It's nothing big…" She mutters as she continues to look out the window. "… just haven't gotten much sleep lately."
"Nothing big, huh?" Root instantly response sarcastically before turning serious. "I've never seen you like that before. How long is lately?"
The sickly woman just shrugs. "Six to eight months? I didn't keep track when it started." She pauses for a second before continuing. "It's nine months."
Thought she said she didn't keep track of it?
"Why didn't you tell me? We met 8 months ago." Root replies with a tinge of anger in her voice.
Sue, still looking out the window, waves her hand. "Didn't think too much about it that time and you were busy."
"God damn it Sue." That snapped something in Root, and she seethes. "I told you to tell me if you have some shit to deal with."
That finally causes the sickly woman to turn her gaze back to Root. "Don't use the lord's name in vain, Root… and I don't think this is something we should discuss with our present company." Those sharp amber eyes shift to him and linger on him.
Root was about to respond when the plane comms chimes again.
"Please wear your seatbelt. We're taking off now."
The sickly woman instantly closes her eyes, then leans back into her seat and wears her seatbelt. Root, sensing that was the end of their conversation, let out a frustrated breath and wore her seatbelt, which Harold followed suit. All the while, the jet quickly speeds up and takes off from the runway, climbing up into the sky.
With nothing to do, Harold just observes both woman, Sue is trying to relax her body while Root is just looking at her with anger and slight worry as if what she's looking at isn't normal. For him, on the other hand, as he stares at the sickly woman, there's an itch at the back of his mind telling him he's seen her before. But for the life of him, he can't recall, and he surely would remember meeting if he ever met her before.
When the jet reaches cruising altitude, the woman finally opens her eyes.
"What was that?" Root asks
"What was what?" Sue dumbly asks back right away.
Root lets out a groan before saying. "What's with you closing your eyes before takeoff? You've never done that before."
Sue just stares at Root for a second before answering. "Helps with the motion sickness. I've been getting them recently."
The look on Root's face makes if she wants to continue prodding more but doesn't when Sue's attention went back to Harold.
"I'm guessing he's the one that's been making you busy for the past 15 months?" Sue asks Root, but her sharp gaze never left Harold.
Root takes a few deep breaths before smiling again. "Remember when I called you to tell you to call off the dogs last year and a week ago?"
"Yeah…" She draws out her answer as her eyes narrow at Harold and rhythmically taps her armrest.
"It's because of him… well, last year was his companions, but that doesn't matter. He has information I needed for the both of us and to help you. It's why we're on this flight now." Root quickly explains proudly.
Sue doesn't reply as she turns her gaze away from him and back to Root, as if she's mulling what was just said.
Feeling like he doesn't have many opportunities to ask and now is a better time than never, he blurts out. "Are you Pauling?"
That instantly causes both women to snap their heads to Harold, both having different reaction. Root has one of amusement while the other…
"Why would you think I'm Pauling?" Sue looks at him like he's dumb, which is a rare look to be cast upon him. "You clearly haven't met her before."
"Oh, you'll know if you ever met her~." Root amusingly adds.
If she isn't Pauling and has the ability to call off the collective, then that means… she's the real leader of that organization? That… explains her callousness when it comes to another person's life.
The hacker makes a gesture to Harold and says. "Let me introduce you to the creator of the most marvelous thing, something we talked about a lot in the past…"
Root didn't finish speaking when Su cut her off while glancing at him. "Harold Wren, or is it, Harold Finch? Which name are you using now?"
That strikes a frozen knife into his eyes as his eyes widen in shock. That, however, didn't stop his mind from going into hyper drive. How…
"How the fuck do you know his name?" Root instantly asks in shock as she sat up straight like a rod.
The other woman clicks her tongue. "Root don't swear. It's impolite, especially when we have company."
"Fuck politeness." Root angrily retorts back. "Answer the question, Sue."
The woman doesn't respond, only giving Root an unamused look, and they both begin a staring contest with each other. One set of eyes has the look of anger while the other is apathy.
After a minute of silent stare off, Root lets out a growl and says. "Fine… Would you please tell me how you know about Harold?"
The other woman makes an elaborate face of surprise. "Oh, because I met his friend…" She makes a waving gesture at him. "… What's his face name… Nathaniel Ingram?"
"Nathan." Root corrects the sickly woman.
Sue's eyes widen and snaps her finger at Root. "Yes, that's it."
Root scrunches her brows. "Why do you know him? You hate meeting people."
"I don't hate meeting people." Sue retorts, waving her hands in dismissal. "I dislike humans. That's a difference."
"You killed an entire floor of people, so you can avoid meeting that guy in Philly a few years ago." Root deadpans.
"In my defense." Sue places a hand on her chest. "The man was a total douchebag. I did a favor by putting him to sleep."
Harold was slightly skeptical by Shaw's revelations last week but now after meeting this woman… everything Shaw had told him about the collective was true.
"You're avoiding answering the question again, Sue." Root presses on.
"Well, he was such an interesting specimen, seeing that he created a surveillance system that the government is using. Of course, I would like to meet him." Sue answers casually, as if what she didn't just drop a bombshell of a revelation.
"What…" The shock in Root's voice was so palpable.
While Harold could only look on in horror.
"Yeah, the government bought a surveillance system from Ingram called Northern Lights." Sue casually explains, as if she's explaining why the cloud is blue.
This woman is still under the impression that the machine was built by Nathan, just like the government. That tells him that where she got the information about the machine, and it isn't comforting since only six people knew about it in the beginning, meaning she somehow got access to some of the most top secret information in the country.
This also just confirms his theory of the collective knowing about the machine, with this person being its leader. But by the looks of the hacker that's been chasing after the machine for more than a year, it's something she didn't even consider and was left in the dark about it.
"How do you know about Northern Lights?" Root still in shock, asks softly.
Sue raises a brow. "How did you know about it?"
"Just answer the question, Sue!" Root violently snaps.
That causes the sickly woman to flinch slightly. "Fine, fine. Don't need to get all angry, yeesh." She adjusts her seating slightly before continuing. "You remember when I got angry when some spooks stopped my plan to blow up the economy?"
Root looked like she wanted to say something but chose not to and just nods.
Sue continues. "Yeah, no one has ever stopped any of my plans before, so I got suspicious. I went searching for the cause of it, which led me to Northern Lights and that little agency, but I wasn't satisfied with just that information. Thus, I went looking for the Northern Lights creator, and I really didn't want to waste any more time undercover. So, me and Pauling went to IFT's dumb spring event back in '09."
"Pauling knows about Northern Lights?" In a voice lacking focus, Root asks.
"Oh, goodness no." Sue snorts and waves her hand. "She was just happy that I invited her for a night out together, plus she was the one that was invited and the one that knew Ingram. For once I was the one that tagged along."
Wait… if Pauling was invited to the Spring Affair, that means she's a client and if she personally knew Nathan, that means she's a large client. Just who is Pauling and why is she a major IFT customer?
Harold examines the ember eyed woman with a more critical eye, and tries to remember where he's seen here before but for the life of him. It must have been a recent memory…
"Of course she did…" Root mutters under her breath.
Sue, not sensing or is just ignoring what Root just said, continues. "It's such an interesting little program. Too bad Ingram blew up a year later." She lets out a small chuckle. "Funny how your machine was created to prevent mass casualty events but fails to protect its creator from a mass casualty event. Ironic."
It wasn't ironic or failed… the machine tried to warn him, but he was so blinded by his own stubbornness and hubris that he couldn't save his best friend.
"And to answer your first question about how I know Harold, is that he founded IFT with Ingram. He tried to hide his involvement in the company, but it was a trivial thing to find out." Sue ends with a self-satisfied smile on her face, as if she wanted Root to praise her.
He felt slightly offended by the insult that it was trivial to know about his involvement in IFT. Harold was proud of himself for how he hid in the shadows for so long, despite being the key to developing the company's products. Also, this woman was wrong about who created the machine.
Root sat in silence for a minute, as if she's trying to process everything that was said before asking. "This was when you had that job in D.C.?"
"Yeah." Sue answers nonchalantly.
"This was four years ago?" Root asks, with an undercurrent of anger in her voice.
"Yup." Sue answers again, completely oblivious to Root's emotions.
"And you didn't think of telling me about it?" Root asks with a slightly higher pitch than normal.
"Should I have?" Sue asks back, slightly confused, as if she's completely disconnected from what Root is feeling.
Harold could only sit and observe the inevitable outburst from Root. But his prediction didn't come to pass when Root just closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.
That went on for a minute before Root opened her eyes again and calmly said. "Ingram didn't create the machine."
"The machine?" Sue tilts her head slightly.
"It's Northern Lights' real name." Root responds with calmness.
Sue scoffs. "That's an awful name for a very powerful system, very unimaginative of Ingram. He should feel bad for giving it such a bad name."
"Ingram didn't create the machine." Root says again almost mechanically and points her thumb to Harold. "He did."
Sue's eyes follow where Root's pointing at and examines Harold again with interest. "Really?"
"Yes." Root answers with a flat tone and her face not showing any emotions.
"Huh…" Su bites her lower lips before shrugging. "Doesn't really matter who actually created Northern Lights, anyway."
"How's that?" Root quietly mumbles while keeping her eyes fixed on Sue.
"Hmm?" The sickly woman turns back to Root with a quizzical look on her.
"You must know what he created." Root nudges her head to Harold and continues. "How are you so casual about the creation of something s-so momentous such as the machine?"
Sue frowns at Root and tilts her head. "Because it isn't?"
That seemingly pushed Root over the edge. "How the fuck is it not?"
"Language…" Sue tries to berate Root again of her choice of word -an odd character trait, one that Harold approves of- but was cut off.
"Answer me." Root is seething with acid, as she grips on the armrest, turning her knuckles white.
That caught Sue off guard, evident by her wide eyes and leaning back slightly. "I mean, it's just another surveillance A.I., it's nothing special."
Harold took a sharp breath at her wording.
"What do you mean, just another?" Root's voice sounding more dead than anger at what Sue is implying.
"Well…" Sue drawls for a second, as if she's trying to think of something. "Lots of people tried to create an A.I. after the towers fells, so it isn't a big deal."
"And all of them tried and failed, except for this one." Root instantly retorts. "So, answer the question."
Sue went silent for a second, with the only thing she's doing was picking on her armrest before responding. "Because I created one back in '98 but you don't see me espousing, it's greatness."
…
What?
The revelation caused a complete silence in the main cabin, except for the noise of the jet engines. It took every ounce of self-control for him to not gawk like a child, and he could feel his heart rate going up.
"What…" Root softly mutters in shock. "…'98?"
This can't be true, it's impossible. There wasn't enough computing performance in that year for a person to run an A.I. let alone to compile such a thing. Not only that, but also the software stack wasn't mature enough to do it. He had to create half of what needed just to be able to program the machine. This person couldn't have done it.
And by the look on Root's face, she has similar thoughts to him. Who then just shakes her head in doubt.
Sue, on the other hand, raises a brow at Root's reaction, rolls her eyes.
"Fine…" she pulls out her phone from her bag and shows it to Root. "… You still don't believe me?" Sue places down the phone on the table with Root watching every action like a hawk.
"Hey Sue, meet Root." The sickly woman says with a slight smile as she leans back into her seat.
Sue?
"Hey Root, it's so nice to finally meet you. I'm a big fan, though, you not believing me to exist hurts~."
A disembodied voice reverberates out from the phone. A voice that sounds like a mixture of Root's and Sue's voice. A voice that's emoting as if the voice behind it has emotions.
It felt like a frozen piece of ice was shoved into Harold's core as he stared at the cold, dark screen of that phone with horror.
Oh, dear god.
ROOT POV
What…
Root felt like a ton of bricks dropped on her head as her eyes darted between the phone and that smug looking face.
What?
…
What the fuck?
The pressure at the back of her head that she haven't felt in years came back in full force like a bull in a China shop.
"What the fuck?"
She had this… this A.I. for 15 years… and never bothered to tell her about it. That's means… that's 8 years since this person came back into her life and never told her about it. Root can feel the creeping disassociation descending into her consciousness like it did in the past. But before it blanked her mind, Su continues.
"How do you think I kept track of you, before… you know, before?" Su asks rhetorically, as if everything she had just told her wasn't life-changing information.
Root just stares back at Su wordlessly, not trusting her voice to even come out even if she tried.
Taking her, none answer as one, Su continues. "How do you think I manage the collective? With my affliction… I hardly have the capacity to do it. Like Pauling does a lot for the company, but she would collapse if Sue isn't there to pick up the load."
She feels like she's floating as she sits here and listens to Su talk.
"You know my condition…" Su continues yapping like there's nothing wrong and isn't aware that Root is in distress. "… I needed someone to handle things I don't want to do or couldn't do anymore. She does my planning, does my accounting, helps manages the unsightly stuff like money, remembering names of useless humans, organize the removal of pests. She even took over hacking duties after…" Su clenches her jaw. "… and sometimes help me code when I felt like it."
Root can't begin to describe the feeling in her now as he listens on. Nothing in her life has taught her what to do now, what to feel because she doesn't know what she's feeling right now. Logically it would be hot anger but… now… all she feels is coldness.
"I might have hired Paling to be my assistant, but Sue basically my real assistant." Su gives herself a self-satisfied nod as she finishes her introduction. "Oh, and she annoyingly reminds me thing I need to do."
"So true… You have no idea how much this woman forgets."
That voice again, that amalgamation of hers and Su's voice. Like some kind of sick imitation, mocking her with her own voice.
Su clicks her tongue and glares at the phone before smiling at Root. "She must have gotten her sassiness from observing you, because I never programmed her to be sassy."
"You did say, and I quote. 'Just do whatever you want.' Unquote, so I did whatever I wanted."
The amalgamated voice quips back and played a recording of Su talking to it.
Su tried to share a look with Root as if they're in sync about the subject like usual, but whatever intention she had gone over her head. Yet Su continues to be oblivious to Root's internal screeching and just rolls her eyes at the phone. "What did I tell ya?"
This woman in front of her… how could she be… so blasé about this, about all of this?
"We dreamed of this…" Root finally found her voice, but her voice is barely above a whisper. "… for years… and you never bothered to tell me about it before this?"
Su just gives her an odd look, then shrugs. "You never asked."
That hit her like a high-speed softball to the face. Root was just struck speechless by that answer. She had been sitting straight up like a ramrod since the revelation and now crumples back into her seat, not knowing how to process.
Root just stares at the person who she calls her best friend, looking perfectly content and not realizing what she just did. A best friend that never told her something so important as this… is she really her friend?
A tool… she's just a tool, isn't she?
Everything Root planned and done has been for…
"So, why are you so excited about his A.I.?" Su asks, cutting into her thoughts and points her thumb to a wide-eyed Harold.
Root was silent for a few seconds, trying to recompose herself and softly repeat the words. "Because it's a life. The code is perfect… An intelligence."
A God.
Su gives her a skeptical look and waves her hand. "You talk like it's sentient."
A sudden rush of emotions floods in her body and she snaps. "Because it is!"
At that moment, Root realizes how quiet the machine has been throughout this entire… disaster of a conversation. Why has it been so silent? Normally, it would say something… anything.
"I sincerely doubt that." Su sounding unimpressed and waves a dismissive hand.
"No, the machine is alive and is sentient, Su." Root stressed out through gritted teeth. "I talked to it. It's alive, it can think for itself, and now it's trying to save itself."
Su levels a suspicious stare at Root, clearly not believing before snorting. "I'll give your claim some credence because of you're the one that's saying it, but I still have my skepticism, its just hard to believe."
"How is it hard?" Root minds repeats the words Sue said. "Why can't you believe me?"
"Because I couldn't do it?" Su answering back like Root just asked a dumb question.
…
"Huh?" Root gracefully replies.
"Yeah… Even after a decade of me working on it, Sue hasn't/could never gain sentience or consciousness." Su laments before boasting. "If I couldn't do it, then four-eyes over there can't."
She's a four-eyes too… but that isn't important, what's important is…
"What are you talking about? Your machine just talked to me and was quipping back at you like a human!" Root leans forward with an accusatory tone.
Su shakes her head in disappointment and looks at her as if she's looking down on Root, which causes a spike of anger in her.
"A mimic of a human." Su explains with a forlorn look. "She's very good at fooling a human into believing she's alive and conscious but she's missing an integral part… a soul."
A soul? Coming from the woman that doesn't believe in God or religion?
"Not yet, anyway." Su continues with a slight grin. "She learned enough from books, the internet, from observation to respond like a human, but she never understands humans, or thinks like one. She has never thought for herself, at least, not independently. Every thought process was programmed in or replicated and was further refined by Sue through countless permutations to find the best process. It's like she's a sociopath."
Su lets out a sigh of disappointment. "Are sociopaths really humans?"
Yes… But she doesn't say anything as Su continues.
"Because of that limitation, she's terrible at predicting what humans might do. The only person she can predict is me, but she can only predict what I'll do only for the next 48 hours ahead and if there's no outside disruptions, like what you did earlier." Su gives her a look. "Took fifteen years for her to reach the state that she's currently in, so I have my doubts about your claim. If sue can't do it, how can this machine do it?"
Root just stay seated in her chair stewing in silence as she tries to process everything Su just dropped on her and after a minute she comes to a conclusion. Su's spouting shit out of her mouth. As much as Root wants to spite and be angry at Su and her creation. She can't, not without dismissing the machine at the same time.
Mimicking another person is the most human behavior a being can do. Babies do that to learn how to be a human. Everyone, be it unconsciously or not, does it to an extent when they meet another person. So that means, Sue is a living, thinking being similar to the machine and the only difference is that Su is a closed-minded asshole.
But that leaves her with one thought. If Su already met/created an A.I. and it didn't fix her, does that mean her year-long journey is for naught?
No… she's doing it for the machine, for freeing that life. Helping this person in front of her is just a bonus, one that…
The silence was shattered when Harold spoke up.
"You named an unshackled A.I. after yourself and had it use your voice?" Harold sounds baffled, shocked, and horrified.
Root tears her eyes off Su after God knows how long to steal a glance at Harold. Only to see a look of disgust and horror on him. The man has been silent throughout the conversation that she forgot he was even here.
"No?" Su's answers Harold like he's a simpleton and points at her cellphone. "Her name is Sue." She then points at herself. "I'm Su. You know? Like substitute user." She then points at Root. "Root." Su then levels a look of disappointment at Harold. "I thought you're supposed to be smart?"
Root didn't even think why Su named her creation Sue, and now thinking about it. Must be because it sounded funny to her, in that brain of hers… Yeah, that's 100% the reason for that name and in character of her to do.
"How did you program or even created an A.I. in the 90s?" Root asks calmly, trying to not just explode at this woman. "The hardware shouldn't be enough to power something like… Sue."
There's a nostalgic look on her when she answers. "I kinda cheated when I programmed Sue. The software needed to be fast and small… well, relatively small. And I didn't want to take too much time, so I used SNEAKY CORN as a base."
That name hit her like a blast from the past, as she instantly recognizes and remembers that software.
"You still had that thing?" Root asks in disbelief.
She brought that rootkit with her when she left that hellhole… sometimes in the years after they got back together; she forgot that she planned on leaving her.
"Of course, it was one of the best software I designed at that time." Su rebuffs smugly. "I constantly updated it until I created Sue, and it was a good jumping off point since SNEAKY CORN, already has the features I envisioned for Sue at that time, only drawback was… I wrote it in C and changing it would go against being fast."
Root instinctively and unintentionally made a face at that notion.
"I know, right?" Su sounding excited, like she's finally able to talk about it. "Some features I wanted to implement was a hassle to do it in C and I know I could have used CPP for those features, but I really hate programming in multiple languages, especially documentation. Good thing everything is solvable with a bit of elbow… finger? grease."
… She documents her code?
"As for hardware…" Su turns her gaze towards Harold and gives the man a predatory smile. "I gotta thank you and your dead friend for that."
Root turns to look at the man and to say Harold looked shocked was an understatement. No clue how a person can display multiple looks of shock in one seating.
Su continues. "The V1 hardware for Sue was powered almost entirely with IFT's FPGAs that were programmed to my specifications."
Harold's eyes widen in realization and mutters. "You used the IVE-2?"
"It was the best product at the time." Su gives the man a mock grateful look. "I should thank you for your company's product. I really couldn't have done it without them."
"Nathan mention there was a spike in product sales, but it was never from one source…" Harold mutters with a deep frown on him.
"Of course, I wouldn't just use one front company to buy it." Su explains condescendingly. "That's just dumb."
Harold, still having that perpetual look of shock and horror, asks. "Is it still…"
Su cuts him off with a chuckle and waves her hand dismissing him. "Oh, goodness no. Your product has had a drop in quality in the past three years and we have our own custom solution that's superior to yours. Isn't that true, Sue?"
"Absolutely. TCUv8.5 is currently 2.38 times faster compared to IFT's F1100 chips and the other competitors are behind IFT. Now that TCUv9 will start production soon, there is no reason to even look at the inferior hardware."
The amalgamated voice sounds so smug that Root can imagine it's smirking. How can she say that isn't a living being?
"Thank you." Su says to the phone before turning her gaze back to Root. "You have no idea how slow Sue was when we first started out." Su gives herself a light chuckle. "It took her like 20 minutes to compile a detailed list of every entity and human and now…"
"It was 16 minutes and 14 seconds, now I can do it in 1 microsecond."
The voice sounds so proud of itself.
"With better hardware, her original purpose was downright easy, so I kept on coming up with new modules for her. Hence, the suit of jobs Sue does for me. Waste not want naught." Sue finishes explaining.
Yet for all that power, her A.I. can't understand humans… because it's creator can't understand them.
"The stock market crash last week…" Harold mutters, causing both women to look at him. "… Your A.I. did it."
Su stares at Harold quizzically for a second before raising an eyebrow as if Sue filled her in about what happened last week. "Obviously." She says condescendingly. "It wouldn't be the first time."
"First time?" Root asks out of curiosity.
"She had the Capital Clown module since 2000, but now it's so much faster. Last week only took her like half an hour to plan." Su happily explains.
… Capital Clown?
CC… of course she would name it something like that.
Wait, 2000… "Dot com burst, was your doing?" Root asks the obvious.
"Yeah." Su answers with a smug smile.
"I lost money because of that crash." Root deadpans. In truth, she didn't care about the loss, but she just wanted to make Su feel bad.
That wiped the smile off Su's face and is replaced with her mouth, making an 'oh' shape, then a nervous chuckle. "I really needed the money and crashing it made a lot of sense at that time. I could pay you back if you want?"
She can't even remember how much money she lost, meaning it wasn't that much, so she won't continue to prod on that front.
"What happened to not caring about money?" Root jabs back.
The slightly nervous sympathetic look on Su changed to offended one. "I still don't but the price to feed Su's need for hardware outstripped the amount AA was bringing in."
That's an acronym she hasn't heard in a long time… and how come in the past eight years, none of this has ever come up in any of their conversations? Su must have been intentionally manipulating her, so she'll be in the dark about all of this.
"You still use AA?" Root asks.
"Why not? It's easy money." Su gives her a pointed look at Root. "It's foolish of you to not use it."
She wouldn't understand… she could never understand.
"Why are you so comfortable in telling all of this when we have company?" Root mindlessly asks.
"We're going to kill him later, aren't we?" Su shrugs. "So, who cares?"
Huh… she does.
Throughout all of this, the machine has been awfully quiet the entire time, unlike most of the day when it gave her information about anyone of interest that was around her. Plus, she really, really needs to hear the comforting tone of the machine.
Why is The Machine so quiet? Is it just absorbing what Su is saying? Even if it's that the machine would have said something. Unless…
"Could you see the person in front of me?" Root ask loudly, causing Su to give her an odd look but she ignores it and continue. "Who is the person in front of me?"
BEEP. UNKOWN.
That's the same answer as before… back in the park when she asked the machine to message Su and its only response was 'unknown'. Then realization hits her like a brick into her head.
"It can't see you…" Root mutters with a slight shock. How can a God not see her? That shouldn't be possible.
"Hmm?" Su looking completely clueless and isn't playing. "Who?"
"The machine… Northing lights." Root answers lifelessly.
Root can feel the pressure at the back of her head pounding into her like a punching bag.
Su gives her a curious look. "You're talking to it?"
"Yes." She answers robotically.
"Oh…" there's a look of realization on Su before she continues. "Well, it isn't surprising, not with the out-of-sight module I have for Sue."
… for once, that isn't a bad name, and it's direct in telling her what it does.
Su continues. "The machine is a digital being and I digitally don't exist. There's no pictures of me in any database, government or private and there's no data about me anywhere. Sue made sure of that."
"What about the hundreds of identities you have? Those are real government issued documents." Root asks.
"That's a bit complicated to explain, but the gist of it is physically yes. Those documents are legit, but digitally? Sue will locally authenticate the documents when someone checks on them. That means there's no digital history." Su explains with that spark of enthusiasm she hasn't seen in quite a while. "If anyone ever looked up about those identities, Sue would only show them locally before deleting any trace of me."
Locally? Is she implying that Sue can just access any computer in the world instantaneously? Not even The Machine has that kind of access, it still needs to hack into a computer if it wants access, despite it being a trivial task for it. But to have unfettered access? Just what did she do?
"But The Machine can still see you from it's cameras around the world." Root presses on.
Su lets out a scoff. "No, it wouldn't because it can't. Sue has the same access to the cameras as the machine. She will turn off any camera that I'll encounter and the surrounding cameras that's in my radius or will digitally remove me from the camera in real time."
"Since when?" Root's grasping on to straws now.
"2001, is when those annoying cameras started to pop up." Su answers without a care.
That's before the machine was created…
Su continues on. "Plus, Sue went back and destroyed any archives footage of me since '92."
Root just doesn't know what to say anymore…
Harold took this opportunity to ask. "How could your A.I. feasibly do it? The amount of processing power needed to do what you're describing in real time is… astronomic, even if you have better hardware."
… What he says is true. The amount servers needed to do what Su is talking about is around three times what's powering The Machine and that requires a nuclear power plant to run it.
"Wouldn't you like to know that?" Su gives Harold a vicious smirk. "Let's just say that Sue has more than enough headspace for more complex stuff."
"Did Pauling know about Sue?" Root finally asks the question that's been in the back of her mind the entire time since Su told her about her involvement in IFT. That question seemed to catch Su off guard.
"No…" Su says doubtfully before continuing. "Kinda? She helped me in the beginning."
Something in her ticked, and she asked with a voice that doesn't betray what she's feeling. "Helped you?"
"Yeah." Su nods with a small nostalgic smile on her. "I needed someone to coordinate the server deployment and continue running the company when I was busy developing Sue back in '97."
"And she doesn't know about Sue's existence?" Root asks with the same tone.
"Well, you know how she is…" Su makes a face and shrugs. "… if she had a different personality, she would have totally found out about Sue years ago, seeing that she basically runs the company that's hosting Sue's servers."
…
Her head feels like it's pounding on glass and that glass is slowly fracturing.
Su's underestimating their mutual bubbly friend abilities again. That woman probably figured it out years ago, but kept her mouth shut about it because she's a loyal dog…
So, everyone except for Root knows about this…
This is fine…
She feels like she needs to scream, but just clenches her jaw shut and takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down.
"The facial recognition for the safe houses…" Root says monotonally. "… It's Sue, isn't it?"
"Yeah, was a great addition." Su replies, completely oblivious to Root's disposition.
The fracture continues to grow larger.
Root calmly says. "So, you fucking lied to me?"
'She always lies.'
That clearly had the intended effects on Su, causing confusion and she replies childishly. "I did not."
"You said that it was just a fucking facial recognition system, not a fucking A.I." It's really hard to contain her anger at this point.
'You always lie.'
"It's just a system." Su being defensive. "Sue is the base for the modules and the facial recognition is just another module for Sue to use."
"That's a lie by omission." She gritted the words out.
'I'm nothing more than a tool for her.'
Just how many things has she kept behind her back? How many lies has she whispered into her ears…
"In Su's defense, she did say and I quote, 'deep learning facial recognition system' unquote. I'm the deep learning part of that sentence. Soo, she isn't lying or omitting, since I'm basically a deep learning machine."
"You shut it." Root snaps at the disembodied voice and instinctively points at the phone.
"See I was right!" Su jumps in like she just won the argument.
Whatever coldness in her veins is long gone, now replaced with burning anger and that damn fucking banging pressure.
"I don't get why you're so angry." Su says dismissively while giving her an odd look.
Something in her broke at that moment…
"You don't get it?" Root lets out a giggle as if this woman just said the funniest joke. "You don't get it?!"
"I spent the past 15 months figuring out and searching for The Machine to help you!" Root yells and creep forward from her seat, causing the woman opposite of her to freeze in shock. "And you knew about it the entire time!"
As she continues to spew out her anger, the other brunette retreats deeper into her seat. "Next thing you're going to tell me is that you know where The Machine is at!"
"I don't…" The other woman weakly said in her pathetic defense.
Root is at the edge of her seat and bangs the table with her fist, causing the pale woman to flinch. "Oh, thank fuck for that! That's the most truthful thing you've said to me."
She leans onto the table and seethes. "You came back into my life searching for help and I fucking helped you. And what did I get in return? Fucking nothing."
'You don't mean it.'
"I bet you fucking knew what I was doing when you visited me last year in D.C." Root just seeing red at this point. "Had a fucking laugh, did you? Knowing what I was doing and purposefully not telling me anything."
'I meant it.'
She pushes herself off the table and back into her seat. "I shouldn't have trusted you again… it was a mistake helping you… I should have just fucking ignored you when you came crawling back into my life like some parasite. Because that's what you fucking deserve."
'No, it's exactly what I deserve.'
Root ended her rant by looking away from that parasite, feeling breathless and somehow… lighter. She takes a moment to recompose herself and waits for the inevitable defensive response. But when there wasn't any response, she turns her attention back to that woman. Only to see a woman with her shoulders limped and is just staring back at her, an empty stare, like there's no one home.
Immediately she recognizes what happened and lets out a scoff of disbelief… of course, she's zoning out right now. How fucking convenient.
Without a second thought, she gets up from her seat to get closer to the other woman and…
SLAP
"Bitch, you there?" Root asks the rag dolled head.
"It would appear that she's disassociating again." Sue said matter-of-factly.
Root turns her attention to the dark screen of that phone and bites back. "Gee, thank you, captain obvious. How long has it been since the last this happened?"
"I'm sorry, but you don't have admin privileges to interact with me." Sue said in a condescending tone.
"You're the one that fucking talked to me first." Root retorts back.
"Language… civilized people don't need to use such word to convey their intentions." She says in the exact tone that the other woman always used.
Root just stares at the phone and mutters. "Jesus fucking Christ."
"Please, don't use the Lord's name in vain."
"I'll fucking show you in vain." Root snaps back at the annoying A.I.
While they're at it with each other. From the corner of her eye, she can see Harold was just staring at them with a confused look of horror and awe.
"If you're just going to continue swearing, I'll just keep quiet." The A.I. said with an air of haughtiness.
"Seriously? You're going to give me the silent treatment?" She practically screeches as she stares at the unresponsive phone. Letting out a sigh of frustration, and glances back at the checked-out woman. "How the fuck did you create an A.I. that has your fucking annoying quirks?"
Somehow, the conversation with the annoying A.I. calmed down her anger towards the other woman. The pounding pressure in her head isn't gone but reduced.
Leaning forward slightly, she puts two fingers onto limped woman. Hmmm… it's a steady but low rate, seems normal enough. Taking a closer look at the pathetic being, she looks fine enough for someone whose mind isn't there.
Does she regret saying what she said? No… maybe? God, her mind is in a mess right now.
She removes herself from the woman and gets back into her seat before turning her gaze towards Harold. Not forgetting that the man was just there to see everything.
"I hope your inflight entertainment was entertaining enough." Root says sarcastically.
Harold looks at her with a look that's hard to describe. "I would say that I'm more horrified than entertained."
Root doesn't say anything in response and turns her attention back to the other woman. Who has her head limp to her right side and her eyes still wide open. It's almost hypnotic.
"Sneaky Corn." Harold said suddenly, breaking the silence that descended between them for the past few minutes. "What is it?"
She tears her eyes away from the other woman and back to Harold. "It's an OS independent rootkit she developed decades ago." Root nudges her head at the limped woman.
Harold's eyes widen like a saucer. "She used a malware to create an A.I.?"
"Uhuh…." Root shrugs. "If you believe what she says."
"Dear God… I think I might be sick." Harold's voice trembled as he spoke in a horrified whisper.
"Now that's just downright hurtful. You make it out like it's a bad thing, but I've been online for 5566 days and I haven't destroyed humanity yet~." Sue said joyfully, trying to be cute.
That causes the man to shut up and just stare at the phone with cautious worry, which she doesn't mind. Root isn't in the mood to talk much as she just stares at the person who she foolishly called a friend.
After a few minutes of silence, Harold once again spoke up. "What is AA?"
Root snorts, but her eyes never leaving the other woman. "It's acronym for AccountAberration. You're smart enough to figure out what that name means with the context you have, but it's better for your health if you continue to be ignorant about it."
"I'm sure whatever it is, it isn't worse than what she and you have revealed." Harold replies with his even tone.
She doesn't say anything in response and just continues to stare at the mentally checked out woman as if it will solve everything by her staring.
Seemingly not getting that she doesn't want to talk, Harold asks. "How long will she… be like that?"
"Who knows?" Root shrugs. "Could go on for a few minutes to hours, but I haven't seen her like this in years."
Not since that hellhole. Interesting that it went back to this rather than derealization.
"You said that finding The Machine is to help her… is there something wrong with her? Other than this…" Harold asks softly, knowing that he's walking on eggshells.
A scoff erupts from her. "Isn't that the question that's been plaguing half my life?"
"How did you figure the machine would help her?" Harold poses a rhetorical question, one which she doesn't have an answer to before continuing. "I designed the machine to protect people from destructive acts n-not… mentally."
That got her to shift her gaze from the other woman and to Harold, who has a worried look on him.
"If you really sincerely trying to help your friend, bringing her to the machine won't help her." Harold says with genuine concern in his voice. "What you both need is help… professional help."
She lets out an ugly noise at that notion. There's no way in hell she's going to a nuthouse and scuffing down their useless drugs. Maybe she'll toss the other brunette there after this, but not her.
Root glares at Harold. "You wouldn't understand." She mutters. "It's the only path left."
Turning away from Harold, she ponders if it really is the only path left…
Why is she doing all of this for her? Because they were friends when they were kids?
…
Why were they friends in the first place?
It's because Root made the mistake of talking to that antisocial brunette in that fucking library.
Were they ever friends in the first place? Was anything real?
Every action the other brunette has done has only been for her own benefit.
How could she ever consider the other woman to be her sister in the first place if they aren't even friends?
Because she wasn't the one that made that connotation in the first place… that woman started early by planting that mischievous seed into her brain when she was a dumb child, and now this is the result of that seed.
She feels like hurling her empty stomach…
Why did she ever trust this person? Because they grew up together? She hasn't forgotten that knife the other brunette carved into her back… and now there's a new hole in her.
Has this person ever helped Root when she needed aid?
Yes… No…
Why doesn't she or couldn't she trust her? What has Root ever done to not be trusted?
She did everything right… in every stage of her life with that person; she has always been faithful and loyal. Yet…
…
Maybe it's better if Root just leave her and just let her die…
Maybe… she should just kill her now. That would fix so much of her problems.
Everything will just go back to the way it was before this woman came back into her life. Everything was so much simpler, but this time she'll have The Machine with her by her side, comforting her.
It's so easy. That woman is pathetically defenseless now.
She just need to reach for her pistol in her bag and shoot her.
Not even that A.I. can stop her.
Oh, right… she needs to kill Pauling after this. That woman wouldn't understand why Root needed to do it and will come after her. So, it's best to kill Francine to protect herself and The Machine. Yeah, she just has to kill her bubbly friend and she'll be free.
…
…
… no.
no.
No.
NO.
NO!
Bad thoughts, bad thoughts, bad thoughts… … …
Her thumbnail digs into her skin to a point she bleeds before her minds calms down to a point where she can think straight. She needs to think of something, anything, before she does anything drastic. In that moment, a light bulb flickered on in her head.
That's it! After she brings this woman to The Machine, that will fix her and she'll get away from this person. Even with Sue's assistance she can't find her, not with The Machine helping her.
Nothing good ever came with her being with Su.
A groan that sounded like it came from a dead person rips her back from her reverie and her eyes focused back on Su.
Like a machine that turning on for the first time in the day, she robotically adjusts herself from her limp position and her touches cheeks where there's a bright red mark. Su blinks multiple times as if she's trying to focus her vision and having her eyes open for God knows how long must be drying.
"How long was I out?" Su says softly but with a rough voice as she rubs her eyes.
"Dunno. It's a while." Root answers calmly.
"One hour, eighteen minutes and twenty seconds." Sue informs.
An hour passed? She didn't even notice… when did that happen?
"What's with that look on your face?" Su asks her as she pops her neck.
"Nothing." She answers dismissively.
Su takes a deep breath and says. "Okay."
However, those amber eyes never left her and kept staring at her. Root have no idea what's going on behind those amber orbs. Did she remember what happened, or did her mind wipe that conversation from her brain?
"You're bleeding." Su comments softly.
Root turns her gaze downwards to her right hand and sees blood. At least it isn't much, and it's already stopped. She wipes away the blood and replies. "I'm fine."
"You shouldn't wipe your blood on your clothes." Su comments softly again. "It's going to stain. There's a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the pantry."
Root listlessly nods and answers. "Okay."
Finally, sensing Root's mood, Su kept her mouth shut and nods before she starts picking on the threads of her armrest. Her usual tick when she feels uncomfortable.
Good…
Exhaling a small breath, Su points at Root and asks. "Anyway, I'm thirsty. You guys want anything?"
"No." Root answers robotically.
Su nods, then finally realizes the existence of another person, points at Harold.
"No, thank you." Harold answers politely.
"If you say so." Su mutters as she slowly gets up from her seat, making sure she's stable before going to the fore cabin.
It didn't take long for Su to come back with a bottle in hand… two bottles in hand and puts on the table. Did she bring one for her? This can either be her being thoughtful or her being controlling and knowing what kind of person she is. It's the latter.
"How long until we reach Portland?" Su asks aloud after taking a sip of water.
"The plane will land in 45 minutes if there's no delay." Sue curtly answers.
"I'm sure there won't be any delays. Thanks Sue." Su comments after finishes half of her water bottle.
"You're welcome, Su." Sue replies in the same tone as Su.
Su and Sue plus with that similar voice? Is that what she's been listening to for the past 15 years? Guess Harold was right. It might be better if Su's on the funny farm.
"Are you not going to ask?" Root questions Su after a minute of silence.
That causes the other woman to give her a quirk eyebrow and pick the threads on the armrest again. "What am I supposed to ask?"
Ah… ignoring the awkward subject as usual… That's such a predictable move on her part.
"Nothing." Root replies with a dead tone.
Su turns her gaze to the window outside where the sun is still up in the sky and says. "Okay."
With that said, the rest of the flight was dead silent. No one dared to say anything else, and Su continued her mindless destruction of her upholstery while looking away from Root. Who just stares at the other woman, as her mind run through several scenarios after they get to The Machine.
It was a soft landing and when the plane comes to a full stop at their designated spot, they all wordlessly get up from their seat. Su has a blank look on her since the end of their conversation, while Harold looks slightly worried.
As Su pulls open the curtain, the pilot is standing by the open door with a smile on him. "I hope you had a pleasant flight, ma'am."
Su silently nods and leaves the plane without responding. That causes the Pilot to raise a brow and turn his attention to Root.
"Don't worry about it." Root puts on a smile. "Thank you for the flight, Jeremy."
"You're welcome and I hope to see you again soon." He replies happily and gives a nod to Harold.
The moment she exits the plane, she spots a nondescript black SUV waiting for them with no one in the driver's seat. Good, better if there wasn't a driver with them.
"You know what to do, Sue." Su says aloud as she walks down the steps onto the tarmac.
"I'm driving." Root informs the other woman as she struts past Su.
Root enters the driver's seat and grabs the keys from the dashboard to start the car. Just as Su enters the passenger seat and Harold takes the back seat.
BEEP. NORTH. EAST.
She turns her attention to that direction and sees the way out of this airport. For the first time in hours, a genuine smile blooms on her face as she puts her feet onto the metal and drives off. Driving with The Machine talking to her will clear her mind.
The journey to the 'nuclear reprocessing facility' took her a few hours of driving, but she doesn't mind. The Machine was talking to her throughout the entire ride and it's soothing voice was like a cooling balm to a burning bruise. Plus, the other occupants in the car kept their mouth shut.
Getting the first checkpoints to enter the site was child's play with The Machine's aid. By the time she brings the car to a park near the entrance of the large imposing building, she feels so much lighter and improved mood. Knew The Machine would make everything better…
"Let's go, don't want to keep The Machine waiting." Root comments as she exits the car.
The other two passengers said nothing in return and follows her out of the car and into the building. Like the first checkpoint, she just walked through it with no problem, but this time rather than giving privilege to enter the building, The Machine triggered the building's containment breach alarm. All she has to do is to walk in here like she owns the place and the people working are either too busy leaving the building or just dumbly staring at them.
After numerous turns and corridors, following The Machine instruction, she finally sees the bright steel doors of The Machine's prison.
"Code." Root loudly says as she approaches the doors, with Harold and Su by her side.
She frowns slightly when The Machine doesn't reply and turns around to look at the CCTV camera. "Keypad code."
Su just look at her with a raised brow, while Harold check his wristwatch and gives her a look. Ah, so close…
"It looks like our carriage has turned back into a pumpkin, Harold." Root comments with a slight smile at the man while Su just rolls her eyes. "Doesn't matter. We made it."
At that moment, a man comes out from the control room with that silly hazmat suit that everyone is wearing and looking at them with frenzied eyes.
Poor thing must think this place is a real facility, and there's radioactive leakage happening now.
"You can't be in here. You have to leave now!" The man warns them. "What do you think you're…"
Root points her pistol at the man and orders him. "Open the door."
The man just looks at her like she's insane. "Are you crazy? You'll kill us all."
Before Root can say anything in response…
CRACK
In a single, swift motion, Su brings out her suppressed pistol and shoots the man in the head, instantly causing him to collapse onto the floor like a sack of potatoes. Harold steps backwards and gasps in shock.
"Noted." Su said to the now dead man.
"He was our way in." Root deadpans.
Su gives her a small smile and taps her right ear. "Sue's already in the building."
At that second, the keypad beeps and the doors unlocked with a loud hiss.
For the first time since Su's revelation, Root smiles at the woman. "Should have just told me." She then turns her gaze to a horrified man. "Come on, Harold. Time to meet God."
"God?" Su mutters beneath her breath.
Oh yeah, she didn't tell Su about her finding God in The Machine. Not that it matters, not after tonight.
"Please don't set your hopes too high, Miss Groves." Harold says sternly.
"Her name is Root." Being offended for her, Su bites back with venom in her voice.
Harold just looks at Su with slight fear before walking towards The Machine's jail cell.
"He's rude." Su mutters as she bore holes behind Harold's head.
"You'll get used to it." Root curtly replies before they both follow the man.
Feeling excited about what's to come, she rushes forward, so she would be the one to open the door. With her hand grasping on the door handle, she pushes the door open, to reveal…
…
…
What?
Where she expects to see countless rows of servers lining the enormous space and shining lights of God, but what she sees is an empty cavity with one lonesome pest sitting in the middle of it.
What happened?
She continues walking into the as if she's on autopilot, while the rhythm of her heartbeat pounds in her head.
"Hey, you're not allowed in here." The lonesome man gets up from his desk, but Root doesn't pay any attention to him.
Where is it?
The lonesome man approach her and yelling. "I said you're not allowed in…"
CRACK
Root didn't bother looking down as she steps over a body and continue walking into the empty cavern. She comes to a stop by the lonesome desk and just stares at the empty space. The only thing that's here are the miles of wires. She felt her arms going limp by her side.
Where is God?
Su slowly walks past her, oblivious to her internal malfunction and mutters. "It feels so soothing and comfy in here."
"Where is it?" Root's words trembled uncertainly as she looked at the empty cavern where Su comes to a stop a few paces away from her. The other woman looked so free and at peace, but Root's mind wasn't computing that at the moment.
There's a ringing at the back of her head.
"I'm sorry." Harold softly says from behind her. "You said you wanted to set the machine free."
What does that mean?
Root turns around to see Harold gazing upon the empty jail cell and continuing. "I already did."
In frustration, she looked away from Harold as she feels tears pooling in her eyes and said loudly. "Where are you?"
The ringing just keeps getting louder and louder.
When there's no response, she feels tears falling. "Please talk to me."
Silence was all she received. It's all his fault. He manipulated her; he used her… Root's blood boils in fury as she turns and spits out. "You lied to me."
The man didn't budge as she continue to seethe. "I believed you."
"Miss Groves…" Harold tries to calm her down.
The ringing is deafening.
But she cuts him off. "My name is Root."
Root brings up her gun to end the man and her finger on the trigger.
BANG
SAMEEN SHAW POV
"Looks like she's in there." John comments as they both turn the corner and see a dead body on the floor.
"Told you she'll leave a trail of bodies." Sameen quips as they quicken their steps towards the opened door.
"Odd that it's only here." John observes as they walk past the body, she steals a quick glance before continuing through the doors. Root shot the man right between the eyes.
"Who knows, and you said it yourself." Sameen readies her pistol as John ready himself by the closed door and waits for her to breach. "She's insane."
John smiles as he swings open the door for her to go through with her pistol ready. The first thing she sees is Root pointing her pistol at Harold. In less than half a second, she aims at the insane woman and squeezes the trigger.
BANG
The bullet landed right where she wanted it to be, the shoulder and surprisingly that caused the batshit insane woman to fall on to her knees. As much as she wants to put a bullet into that head of hers, Harold and John are gonna be annoying as hell if she did that. Wonder if they'll let her shoot Root again somewhere where there won't be permanent damage.
Both she and John move forward towards Harold when they notice there's another woman in a hideously pink outfit off to the side, slowly turning around. The smiling pale face slowly morphs to an angry frown when that mysterious woman notices what happened to Root and what Sameen was holding.
"You fucking bitch." The mysterious pale woman fumes as her hand quickly reaches for her side…
Instinctively, she knows what's going to happen and brings her aim to the other woman.
BANG
She hit the woman in the same spot as where she shot Root, but it didn't deter the woman slightly as she whips out her pistol.
BANG
CRACK
BANG
Everything happened in a blink of an eye as she and John opens fire at the belligerent woman. Sameen shot her in the gut and predictably John landed his shot in her thigh, missing his usual knee shot. The mysterious woman collapsed onto the ground not long after both bullets hit her.
After a second of that woman not moving, they both start walking forward with their pistol raised up.
"Your arm." John comments from her right.
Looking down, she sees her shirt was cut and blood slowly trickling down her shirt. Huh, didn't feel it… Bitch must have grazed her.
Feeling slightly annoyed, she continues on forward without saying a word, with John walking towards Harold and Sameen towards the two downed women.
"Harold, are you okay?" John asks worryingly as he stops by four eyes side.
Shaw reaches Root who's clutching her shoulder while whimpering and kicks away the pistol. She gives a quick check on the insane hacker to see if she has anything else on her. That shot shouldn't have disabled her like it did. She's all passive right now. Turning away, Sameen makes her way towards the mysterious woman.
"Is this what you expected?" John ask from behind her.
"It's what I hoped." Harold answers back after a beat.
The moment Sameen reaches the other woman, she kicks away the suppressed pistol that's still in her hands and examines her. She's still alive… completely frozen in place, bleeding from two spots, one is the shoulder and the other is at the side of the thigh, missing the important stuff. Looking at the spot where shot the woman in the gut… huh, the woman must be wearing a vest.
Sameen finally takes a look at the mysterious woman's face, only to see a very pale, gaunt face, with dark circles under her wide-open eyes under thin framed glasses. The woman's eyes might be open, but Sameen has a feeling that she isn't at home at the moment.
Two dead guys and two women that are completely out of it. The hell is going on here?
"Did Root kill this guy?" John asks Harold, causing Sameen to look up.
"No…" Harold nods towards Sameen. "She did."
"And who is she?" Sameen asks out of curiosity while her pistol is still aiming at the downed woman.
"Someone incredibly dangerous." Harold vaguely replies.
"You're not really giving us much information, are you?" Sameen deadpans at the man.
"I don't think this is the appropriate venue for such discussions." Harold raises a brow at her.
"Fine." She rolls her eyes. "Well, she's completely checked out. So, won't be a threat until her mind decides to come back."
"Can you please render aid?" Harold asks worryingly.
Sameen just deadpans at the man for a few seconds and he didn't budge.
"You're such a bleeding heart." Sameen mutters as holster her pistol and grabs the woman by her armpits.
"I'll handle Root." John strides towards the now quiet woman who's still on her knees, clutching her shoulder.
In a single pull, she brings the woman up to a stand and she didn't instantly fall headfirst back onto the ground. At least she isn't in tonic immobility. This will make her job so much easier.
With one supporting the woman, she slowly brings her towards the lone table where John already has Root seated on the chair and is putting gauze into the wound. Sameen places the woman on the table and starts doing her work with the small first aid kid she has on hand.
"You didn't do this yourself?" John asks four eyes after he finished the patch up on Root while she starts on the other wound.
"I couldn't. I locked myself out." Harold answers from behind her. "The machine was designed to accept alterations in it's programming only as a response to an attack."
He made it out like he's directing the answer to as he continues. "Sooner or later I knew someone would try to take it over, but I didn't know who… So, I made sure that when they did, they'd do it with my code."
Huh… guess grandpa from last night got it wrong.
There's a look of realization on John's face and he stands up to face Harold. "You hid a virus within a virus?"
"I realized that the people Nathan, and I had entrusted the machine to were… the wrong people. And that is the only way to protect it would be to teach it to protect itself." Harold explains softly. "I didn't want to involve you in this business, Mr. Reese. Because I had hoped that… if I hadn't returned, you would continue what we had started."
That's a dumb reason to keep his friend in the dark, but who is she to judge? Not like she has any friends.
At that moment, the building alarm that's been continuing in the background comes to an abrupt stop, just as she was finishing patching up the woman. Following her gut feeling, she unholstered her pistol and aimed at the door.
"This isn't good." She glances at Harold. "We should go."
Harold's eyes dart between her and the two women before saying. "They come too."
Sameen gives the man a bewildered look, like he just suggested the dumbest thing because it's the dumbest thing.
He didn't relent and makes a gesture with his arms like he's shrugging. "If we leave her, they'll kill her."
"Your bleeding heart is going to kill us." Sameen mutters in disbelief as she watches Harold softly lift Root up from her seat by her shoulders and puts Root's leather jacket back on her.
"I got the other one." John went to grab the other woman while still holding his pistol in one hand.
She lets out a sigh. "Fine, I'll keep watch."
Halfway towards the door, they all come to a stop when the familiar ugly face of Hersh comes out of the door with his pistol ready, with another agent by his side.
"Shaw." Hersh said in his usual dead tone, but his eyes told her he was surprised to see her.
Sameen smirks at the asshole and taunts him. "You should have killed me better, Hersh."
Just as she finishes her sentence, the special counsel steps into the server room and sees the empty space. He blinks a few times like he isn't believing what he's seeing before walking towards them.
"I know it's a minor matter compared to the total and utter catastrophe that I'm looking at here, but…" He calmly says before turning his attention to her. "I didn't think you'd turn traitor, Shaw."
"That's a strong word to be throwing around, given where we're standing." Sameen jabs back at the man while continue to aim her gun at Hersh. "What do you want?"
"A word or two with your new friend." The special council turns his gaze towards Harold. "I always knew there was someone behind Ingram. Like a black hole. Invisible, but powerful…"
Sameen lets out a soft scoff. Didn't know the man is such a melodramatic.
The special counsel continues. "… So, tell me, where did you move the machine?"
"It moved itself." Harold answers truthfully.
The man open his mouth to say something but didn't for a second. "But who controls it?"
"As of now, it controls itself." Harold answers truthfully again but she can hear a tone of glib in his voice.
The man makes a face before saying. "The numbers. Will they continue to come to us?"
"That will be up to the machine." Harold softly answers.
Funny how she thought coming here was to stop an insane hacker from releasing a potentially evil A.I. and now that said A.I. is running loose, God knows where.
"If they don't start up again, the country is defenseless." The special counsel presses.
"No, just less well-defended." Harold instantly rebuts. "I think we both understand that what's at stake here has moved beyond simply defending the country."
The man gives Harold a look like he's joking. "Has it? You built the machine for us to use to protect people. We do, very well."
He isn't wrong, but they are using the machine as justification to kill a lot of innocent people.
"Help us recover it or rebuild it." The man continues with a slight smile. "You can dictate your terms. You have my word."
"You gave my friend your word." Harold retorts. "And you killed him."
That instantly remove, the smug smile from the special counsel face which is so sweet to see.
"We're leaving." Harold states as he walks forward with Root beside him.
Sameen can't help but smile at the balls on Harold, using the leverage that they might need him in the future against them.
John followed suit with the mysterious woman and Sameen hang back to provide cover while they all go through the door.
"You think you're choosing the right side, Shaw?" The man prods her. "Really?"
"You lied to me, too." She smirks at the man before walking backward through the door.
After walking backwards for a few paces and satisfied that Hersh won't be charging out of that room, she spins around and takes point up front. John walks in lockstep with her and Harold behind her.
"Where to next?" Sameen asks as they exit the building towards the car they stole from the airport.
"I don't know how long they'll be merciful towards us, so it's better if we drive back to New York." Harold answers as they approach the black sedan.
"A cross country road trip with two nutcases. Great." She turns her gaze to John and smirks at the man who's guiding the mysterious woman beside him. "I'm driving."
A/N: This chapter took way longer than expected and it didn't turn out the way I wanted, but if I try to refine the chapter, it might take me another week. Anyway, this is the penultimate chapter of this arc. AU will start in season 3 of POI. Next chapter will come out who knows when since work might interfere with my writing again.
Fun fact; I had initially envisioned the scene where Harold gets into the plane until Root waking up Su, to be the introduction of the fic, before winding back the clock back to Texas when Su was a child.
- Location
- United States
Interesting seeing events unfold, plus that whole bit of drama....Root is not in a great state at the moment... Though now Harold has to inform the other two who exactly the other person is and about Sue.
Saw this mistake by the way. Unless it's on purpose, don't think so but never know.
Neither have a great state of mind right now.
And that's a mistake, thanks for pointing that out! I'll update it when I have time.
Chapter 32: To Perdition Part 1
SAMEEN SHAW POV
"We really need a bigger car." John whines.
Sameen looks away from the empty road she's driving on and to the rearview mirror to see John sandwiched between the two empty eyed brunettes. The mysterious woman's head is limp onto one side with her eyes still wide open while Root's head hasn't moved from the time Sameen moved it a few hours ago and is still looking out of her window.
She rolls her eyes at the pleading look John is sending her before turning back her attention to the road. The man wanted to drive, saying that it would be better if she's at the back, but she just told him to fuck off and that he already drove on the way to the nuclear facility.
"What are we going to do with them?" Sameen asks the bespectacled man who's been awfully quiet for most of the drive.
"I don't know. They're both incredibly dangerous individuals. On the other hand…" Harold sounding indecisive and his turns to look in the back. "They're not well."
"Isn't that fucking obvious?" Sameen retorts with a snort.
"What's wrong with them?" John wonders aloud. "I wanna say it's shock but… this looks different from what I've seen before."
"I can't say for Miss Groves, but the other one experienced something similar on the flight to Portland." Harold informs them with a slightly worried tone.
John hums in thought, before glancing at Sameen. "Say, you're a doctor, Shaw. What's the diagnosis?"
Sameen looks back at him and deadpans. "You really think learning to be a doctor means that I'm an expert in every aspect of medicine?"
John shrugs and gives her that punchable smirk. "Doesn't hurt to ask."
She rolls her eyes and stops herself from groaning. "I specialized in emergency care, not psychiatric care. Meaning I'm better at fixing a bullet wound over some fucked up mental trauma."
"You dropped out of your residency before you finished your specialization, Miss Shaw." Harold says innocently.
She turns her focus away from the empty road to deadpan at four-eyes. "Why do you keep bringing that up? And I didn't drop out, I left."
Here she thought that being officially dead means she didn't have to hear any more comments about her life choices, but Harold just loves to bring it up.
"You can't fault the man. I mean, it's kinda funny." John pitches in with that annoying small smile of his.
To which she just levels a death glare at him through the rear-view mirror.
Sensing that his life is in danger, John raises his hands in surrender and says. "Alright, it isn't funny."
"I might be the only one in this fucking car that actually graduated university…" Sameen mutters under her breath, but loud enough that everyone can hear before addressing the issue at hand. "I checked on them when we stopped for gas, and you all hit the bucket. I wouldn't say it's shock… Root wasn't clammy or cold, her pulse is normal. She hasn't closed her eyes this entire time and she won't drink. People tend to be thirsty when they're in shock." Her eyes then glance at the mysterious woman. "Same goes with the other one, but unlike Root, she doesn't have any reaction when I touched her. None of the usual signs of shock for both women."
"Root was clammy back when I was patching her up." John pitches in.
"Yeah, so was the other one. But they aren't now, are they?" Sameen retorts back.
John touches both of their necks to check what she said and replies. "Nope."
"Which means she's already came out of her initial shock." Sameen explains slowly to the man.
"Then what the hell is wrong with them?" John questions, sounding like he's getting more annoyed by the entire situation.
"Isn't that a loaded question?" Sameen replies sarcastically before replying seriously. "Look, I'm no shrink nor claim to be one, but they aren't fully here right now."
"I kinda had a feeling that's the case with how one is eerily stiff and the other one is a rag doll." John quips.
"It could honestly be so many things and if Harold doesn't want them to die, then we can't really leave them alone unattended." Sameen gives the bespectacled man a look.
Harold looks at the two incapacitate ladies with some wary. "I would prefer that no harm come to them."
Sameen continues. "Depending on the cause, they might take hours, days or even months to come out of their little mind prison in."
"That isn't to figure out." John interjects. "Root didn't get to meet the machine, and you shot her while the other… We both shot her, and as Finch said, she had something similar in the flight."
Her mind goes back to the good old DSM and says. "Well, it might be acute stress from that, but their shit isn't the normal signs." She points her thumb at the back. "This usually comes from preexisting psychological disorders, like bipolar, psychosis, schizophrenia… there's an entire load of disorders that can cause this."
"Can we determine if this will persist in the long term?" Harold asks with a tone of concern.
"If it's acute stress, we'll know soon enough with the symptoms coming and going, meaning she'll be mobile and aware of her surroundings." Sameen explains before letting out an annoyed sigh. "However, if it's what I suspect, then fuck knows how long Root's catatonia will go on for, and I have no fucking clue what's going on with the other one."
"Catatonia?" John chimes in with slight confusion. "But they both walked to their car."
"Yeah, with you guiding every step they take and Harold practically carrying the other one. Remember that weird ass dance you had to do to get Root into the car?" Sameen retorts back before continuing her explanation. "Catatonia doesn't mean you're totally immobile, but it's very restrictive for self-directed action." She looks at John through the rear-view mirror. "Try moving Root's head because she hasn't moved it since I nudged it when we were at the gas station."
John peers at the insane hacker with a raised brow. "Now that you mentioned it… it's kinda creepy."
Sameen snorts at that assertion before her gaze lands on the rag-doll woman. "As for the other one… No fucking clue what's going on in that head. She seems to be catatonic and disassociating at the same time because she isn't reacting to any input, unlike Root."
"How did you figure that?" John asks as he looks at the other woman.
"I pressed their wounds." Sameen answers casually, causing Harold to look at her with a disturbed look at him. "What?"
"Please try not to harm the invalids." Harold practically deadpans at her.
"It wasn't hard, and it's a medical test." She rolls her eyes at his softness. "Anyway, Root had a reaction, a fucking slow ass reaction. There was a lag of a few seconds before she whimpered in pain. Unlike Root, the other crazy lady had no reaction at all to any input, even when I pressed harder."
"Any proposal for what we should do next?" John asks.
"Since your boss here doesn't want them dead, then the only option is the funny farm…" She glances at Harold. "But do you think a psych ward can hold either of them when they come back from their mental vacation?"
"Is there any other option?" Harold softly counters.
Yes… but that would involve their deaths.
"By the way, you still haven't told us who exactly is the other nutcase." Sameen asks and nudges her head to the said woman.
Harold was quiet for a minute before muttering. "I'm not sure how to describe it either…"
"You spent an entire flight with her and can't give us the cliffsnotes?" Sameen asks and shoots in the dark about what Harold has gone through. He has been awfully tight lipped about what happened.
After Harold mulls it for another few seconds, he says. "Firstly, her name is Sue, as in S U not Sue."
Su? Why does that sound familiar…
"What kind of name is that?" John incredulously asks while turning his attention to the woman beside him.
Oh…
Sameen lets out a suffering groan. "God, they're fucking nerds."
Harold slightly smiles at her reaction while John raises a brow. "Care to share with the rest of class?"
She shakes her head and explains. "Root and Su, they're named after Linux terms. One is a term for admin and the other is a command to switch users."
"Shaw…" John says with that smirk of his. "Didn't know you're a computer nerd as well."
"I'm not." She snaps back. "Just took some computer classes for extra credits when I was in pre-med."
John smirks widens. "Shaw, you're the first marine nerd I've met."
Sameen levels a heated glare through the rear-view mirror and grips the steering wheel tighter. "I'm going to make you puke your guts out."
Harold gives her an uneasy, queasy look while John smiles and puts up his hands in surrender.
"Secondly." Harold continues after Sameen backs down on her threat. "I believe Root cares deeply for her and they're friends…" Harold frowns slightly. "… or they were friends. It's rather complicated right now. They had a rather heated… argument on the flight to Portland."
"Friend? Argument?" John says skeptically and mutters. "Didn't even know she was the type to have friends."
"It would appear that Su knew about the machine for the past 5 years and didn't tell Root about it when she probably knew that Root was looking for it." Harold explains with a slight worry tone.
Huh…
"What?" John's eyebrows shot up and his eyes are wide like a saucer. "How?"
"Wow… that's a dick move." She says at the same time as John.
"You're not interested in her knowledge of the machine, Miss Shaw?" Harold asks her out of curiosity and giving her his full attention.
Sameen glances at Harold. "I'm in the same boat as John, but the bonus of being me is that I can think straight when a surprise hits me in the head and acknowledge that's a dick move."
Harold gives her a look that she can't really describe before dropping a bombshell. "She's the leader of the collective."
If Sameen had been a normal person, she would have imagined that she would have had some kind of overreaction from finally catching the fucker she's been chasing for years, like swerving the car uncontrollably as in the movies but she just tightens her grip on the steering wheel and eloquently says. "What the fuck?"
That fucking explains how this person knew about the machine's existence, seeing that this fucker has been terrorizing the country for the past 4 years, and the odd fact that Root wasn't using the collective's resources to find the machine.
Looking back at the woman through the rear-view mirror, she can't help but wonder… How the fuck does a person that looks like she has one foot in death's door be in charge of the invisible cabal that's been terrorizing the country for years.
All she is feeling right now is slight anger at that woman, but nothing else. She didn't know why she believed that she would have felt anything different when she finally catch the fucker.
Maybe she had built up some kind of mental image and expectations of who the person being in charge of that organization…
"So, she's Pauling?" She asks the obvious question.
"No." Harold shakes his head. "Pauling is her subordinate."
That threw a monkey's wrench into the collective's organization chart she had built up since saving Gary.
"Dude…" Sameen levels an unimpressed stare at Harold. "You gotta stop pussyfooting around and fill us in on what you know. Everything since you went gallivanting with Root the day prior."
"That's going to take a while to explain." Harold answers.
She grins at the man. "Good thing it's going to be a fucking long ass drive back to New York."
With that, Harold begins to retell everything that happened throughout his voluntary 'kidnapping' and that flight from hell to Portland. Throughout his retelling, both she and John cut in to pepper in some questions. Both she and John had different reactions to what Harold said. John has a look of shock and worry. While she just feels anger simmering.
By the time they reach a dingy motel after the sun has long gone down, Harold finishes his retelling and John went out to get them a room. Sameen's initial anger has subsided, and now she has more reasons to put a bullet into that terrorist's brain.
"I can't believe there's another evil A.I. loose out there." Sameen mutters as she rests her hands on the steering wheel and looks at the motel. "I guess we need to go out there and find this 'Sue' next?"
Sue and having it sound the same as its creator… that's another feather to put on the cap of insanity for that woman, in addition to whatever the fuck is wrong with her right now.
Harold nods. "Su believed that I wouldn't survive the night and said some clues for that puzzle. I already have a few ideas about where to look at when we get back to New York."
"Lucky for us, she didn't think that we would burst their little party." Sameen smirks at the man.
However, Harold doesn't share the same attitude. "That's been bothering me. If this Sue had the same surveillance capabilities as the machine, then it would have spotted and noticed that the both of you were coming after us and she wouldn't be caught off guard. Even if we take the fact that Su said that Sue doesn't have the ability to predict humans other than its creator, it doesn't take a sophisticated algorithm to notice that you were after us. It just doesn't make sense…"
With the information they have right now… what Harold is theorizing is true. Sameen just shrugs. "Too bad, the creator of the first A.I. is fucking bonkers and isn't even in touch with reality right now for us to ask her about it."
"I wonder…" Harold's face reflects a sense of deep thought. "… how could someone create something so sophisticated and complicated to a point where neither I nor the machine can't even detect it, be… someone so vile, a-and…."
"A batshit insane terrorist?" Sameen pitches in without a single care in the world.
Before Harold could respond, John comes back by dangling a key at them and opens the back door.
"Our room is in front of us." He informs us as he grabs Su from the back and slowly maneuver her so he can bring her out of the car.
"I'll guide Miss Groves to the room." Harold comments as he gets out of the car.
"Guess I'll play porter." Sameen mutters as she gets out of the car.
Wonder if that sandwich is still good…
A few minutes passed after she dumps everything in the trunk onto one of the bed and when the boys finally bring in the zombies into the stereotypical motel room.
"Here's the radiator." John nudges his head to the said radiator underneath the window and guides his charge towards it.
"Toilet first." Sameen tells them with her hands on her hips, looking at the boys with an unimpressed look.
"Why?" John asks, sounding confused at the suggestion.
"Did you guys forget that?" Sameen rolls her eyes. "We all used the bathroom back at that gas station, but they didn't. If the both of you are going to cuff them at the radiators all night, you guys are going to deal with the aftermath."
John scrunches his face at the thought and Harold nods. "Miss Shaw has a point."
Harold changes direction to bring Root to the toilet with John, along with his charge. Feeling satisfied enough that she just averted a disaster, she sits down on her bed and digs through the bags for something to eat.
"I believe that Miss Shaw is better suited to perform this task." Harold says bashfully, causing her to turn her attention to the man.
She levels a petty look at the pale woman that's barely standing beside John. "Do I really need to do it for the terrorist?" Sameen practically whines.
"Unless you want to stay in the bathroom, the entire night while this one is in the tub." John shakes the woman slightly, somehow causing an exaggerate wiggle on the rag-dolled woman's head. "Then… yeah."
"… Right." She huffs as she gets up from the bed to grab both catatonic women and John can't help but quip. "Have fun, doc." She, in turn, slams the door in their faces.
"You assholes better not be faking this because I really don't need more motivation to shoot you guys." She mutters to the mindless duo and stares at the defenseless women. Root still has that thousand-yard stare with her head still in the same position since she moved it hours ago, and Su looks like she's going to fall down at any moment.
"Right, let's start with you." Sameen grabs ahold of Root's shoulder and callously positions her at the toilet.
While Shaw was lowering herself to unfasten Root's pants, Root makes a meek sound of protest and weakly pushed back in resistance. She stops what she'd doing and looks up to see Root's face in discomfort and a slight tremble on her face.
That's a fucking weird reaction…
"Calm down, I'm trying to help you…" Sameen gets up to Root's level and adjusts her head. "And why are you in pain?"
Knowing she won't get an answer from her, she quickly reach down and undo Root's fly, to which she got no reaction. However, when she puts her thumbs under the waistband, Root does the same meek protest again. Ignoring that, she yanks down the woman's pants, and Root did something she did not expect. She instantly and clumsily collapses onto the toilet and begins to use it.
"Guess a full bladder is painful." Sameen mutters as she averts her eyes to give the demented hacker some semblance of privacy and lands on the other occupant of the bathroom. Who's leaning onto the wall for support as if somewhere deep inside that empty head of hers, is trying to not keel over.
When the bathroom went silent again, she turns to see if there's any movement from Root in some attempt to clean herself but sadly for Sameen, there's no such movement as the woman was stiff as a board. Letting out an annoyed sigh, she tears out some toilet paper and put it on Root's open hand. "I'm not going to fucking wipe you."
After several seconds of inaction and Sameen glaring at the woman, Root slowly, like a sloth, starts to clean herself.
"I was this close." She makes a gesture with her fingers to the absent-minded woman. "From pulling up your pants."
When Root done the job, and drops the toilet paper into the bowl, she stops slowly, like a car running out of gas.
Sameen grabs Root by the shoulder and pulls her up from the porcelain throne where the catatonic woman slowly proceeds to reach for her underwear.
"I don't have time for this." She grumbles and swipes away Root's hand, causing the woman to whimper slightly. In one sharp swoop, she pulls up Root's underwear and pants back up. Guiding the woman, she brings her to the basin and turns on the water.
She leaves Root there in the hopes that she'll wash her hands while she attends to the other one. Turning her head, she sees the terrorist somehow still standing, but the word standing is a choice, seeing that a small breeze could collapse this flimsy deck of cards.
She grabs the woman by the shoulder to do the same song and dance with the terrorist -well, it's quite a bit of difference since she's wearing some very old style of dress-, but she didn't put up any protest, unlike Root. With everything out of the way, she shoves the pale-faced woman into the toilet and waits.
A few seconds passed with nothing coming out, with seconds changing to a minute. Sameen lets out a groan and looks at Root, who is slowly rubbing her hands with soap before turning back to the sickly woman.
"Don't make me get a fucking catheter and shove it up your urethra." She hisses into those empty eyes on that rag-dolled head.
And as if the woman hears Sameen, she finally starts to relieve herself. If she could have felt relieved, she would have let out a sigh, but she couldn't. So, she turns her attention back to Root, where the woman is still at a sloth pace. Not having much else to do, she grabs the woman's hand and quickly washes it for her. "Why can't your terrorist friend be more mobile like you?" Sameen complains to the absent minded Root.
She places a towel for Root when she hears Su finish. Turning back to the other woman, Sameen tears some toilet paper and places it on the limped hands of the woman, hoping that she'll do what Root did.
So, she waited like earlier, and waited for a bit more, but her unfounded hope was dashed when the woman's limped hand didn't move an inch since she place the toilet paper onto the woman's palm.
"Fuck this shit." She mutters as she grabs the terrorist by her injured shoulder to bring her up. Sameen quickly pulls up her underwear and guides her towards the exit. As she reaches the immobile Root, that looks like she finished wiping her hands, Sameen put away the towel and guides both women out of the bathroom.
"We need to get diapers for them because that was fucking annoying." Sameen comments as she cuffs both women by the radiators.
"Root's fly is down." Harold points at them while prudishly averting his gaze away.
"How about you take them to the bathroom next time?" Sameen rebukes the man.
"I thought doctors are used to piss and shit?" John says jokingly as he sits on his bed while eating a piece of sandwich.
"Doesn't mean I like that part of the job." She deadpans at the man and then points a finger at the man. "You better not be eating my sandwich."
John stops munching and looks at the sandwich. "It's pastrami with mustard."
"That's mine." She shoots a death glare at the man.
"You should have said that earlier…" He just shrugs and makes an offer of a half-eaten sandwich. "… You want the rest of it?"
She makes a face of disgust and rolls her eyes. "You finish it, but next time, my shit has extra mustard on it. It's like having roommates again."
"No wonder it's spicier than usual." John takes another bite of the sandwich. "And you had roommates?"
Sameen shakes her head… the man clearly didn't go to college, a muscle head through and through.
"So did you guys think up a game plan while I was busy playing nurse?" Sameen asks the boys as she sits on her bed and grabs a bag of chips.
Both men shared a look with each other where John just shrugs, and Harold grimaces before saying. "I don't know… But sending them to a psychiatric hospital seems to be the most prudent choice we have right now."
She levels Harold a stare that would have cowered a man with lesser convictions. "Do you think a run of the mill mental hospital can handle these two murderous nutcases? And one of them has, from what you've described, an A.I. that's more capable than your own in her pocket to call on."
"Do we really have a choice?" He rebuts. "We can't keep them locked up in the library when we get back… Not when we're so ill equip to treat them in their current state."
When Harold doesn't budge an inch at her prodding, she relents. "Fine, we can put them in an appropriate psych hospital…" She takes a moment to think of a solution. "You're a tech wiz, right?"
"I wouldn't put it that way, but I am confident in my skill." Harold answers back with a brow raise in curiosity at what she's getting at.
"You can fabricate a sentence where we can dump them into a maximum-security psychiatric hospital and conveniently, for us, there's one on Wards Island." Sameen explains with a slight smile.
What's that sound?
Harold frowns at her. "I can't just create a sentence out of thin air."
"Really?" She deadpans, not believing a single word he said.
"Well, I could…" Harold confesses before quickly firing back. "… But not when the sentence is the federal criminally insane charge. What I can do is create a minor judgement where we can use it as a cover to put them in a low security mental hospital. In addition to that, we can't put them on Wards Island because the hospital records are connected to the larger state health department database and your former employers looking for them… and Miss Groves, in particular."
"You honestly can't be thinking about putting them in the same place and in a low security hospital, at that? They'll just walk out of it, leaving a trail of death and destruction the moment one of them gets two brain cells back together." Sameen questions his logic.
"Sending them to a connected hospital is as good as a death sentence for them and there are only a few high security hospitals left in the country that aren't connected to a wider system. So, that limits our choices to low security hospitals, that's not networked and is near to home base." Harold argues back.
That sound again… it's faint…
"We do have a choice." Sameen softly says. "I could kill the terrorist after I get whatever information she has on Pauling and Milk. That way we can just stash Root safely in some under budget psych hospital without risking an all out breakout and a trail of bodies, the second one of them decides to check back in with reality."
"That's not an option, Miss Shaw." Harold replies with a grave tone.
Sameen looks at the man like he's insane. "I don't get why you are so adamant about saving a life of a terrorist."
"We're not judge jury and executioner. And because it doesn't matter who the person is…" Harold's voice is soft yet has steel in them. "… a life is a life."
How can he say that when he created the system, that exactly does that?
"What if your machine gives you one of their numbers when they plan their escape?" Sameen challenges the stubborn man.
"Then we will stop that from happening and if we fail, we will bring them to face justice with a jury of their peers." Harold says with the utmost confidence.
Justice? What did he think she did before getting booted out of the ISA?
"If you want justice, then hand her over to the feds. I'm sure they would love to get their hands on her." Sameen stresses out the words.
"With what evidence?" Harold waves his hands. "Your former employers would have already cleaned out the nuclear waste processing facility by now."
The sound… is that beeping? Is something broken in this room? If so, then it's really going to be annoying if this beeping continues throughout the night.
But she continues to ignore the high pitch sound. "I have evidence, four years' worth of evidence against this bitch."
"If you couldn't convince your boss before with the evidence you had. How do you think the FBI would see it? Everything you had while is accurate is circumstantial and wouldn't hold up in the court of law and we can't use Mr. Cook's testament, since the man has, for his own safety, disappeared." Harold challenges her own logic.
That basically shuts her up, since she can't think of any other arguments that doesn't involve a bullet in someone's skull. Why is it so hard to be good?
"Fine, we'll go with your stupid plan…" She rolls her eyes and finishes up the last of her chips. "… Guess now you have to find us a funny farm that meets your dumb requirements."
Harold relaxes his shoulders as if he's been tense the entire time and John just gave both of them a smile with her sandwich long since been eaten. All the while, that fucking beeping has been going on in the background and by the looks of it, the guys isn't hearing it. She wanna say that it's morse codes with the frequency of the beeping but it's all over the place and doesn't make sense, so that rules out anything mischievous.
"However, we aren't going to dump them at the funny farm until I get I need to find Pauling and Milk." Sameen tells them, causing both to raise their brows at her. "I can't let those fucking terrorist run wild out there and insane number 1 over there." She nudges behind her. "Obviously knows where to find those two."
"Miss Shaw…" Harold says tentatively. "… if what you said about their condition earlier is true then I'm not sure how are you going to get what you want."
Sameen lets out a sigh. "By any means necessary, if I have to fill either one up with lorazepam, so be it. I… we need to stop Pauling and Milk from the next attack. It's the only way we can stop the biggest terrorist threat to the country for the past half a decade."
There's a look of understanding on John, which is to be expected from that man, while Harold doesn't look like he's comfortable with what she's suggesting, despite knowing her actions will save more lives in the long run. But both of them didn't put up a fight against what she was saying.
Good… at least after years of wasting away against unimaginable odds, she'll close this chapter of her life once and for all.
A croaked sounding snort erupts from behind her, causing the boys' eyes to widen in shock and her body spinning around to see the sickly pale face sneering at them. The once empty look in her eyes is now replaced with a disorientated one.
"Why would you ever think Pauling to be a terrorist?"
What the fuck?
SU POV
It feels like she's been floating in the ocean for an eternity with her mind totally blank of any thoughts while looking into the dark, empty sky. Peaceful might be the word to describe this space except for the haunting coldness that surrounds her that pokes and prods her with its icy tendrils.
Oh, what she would do for that peaceful warmth to come back into her bosom.
After floating in this freezing ocean, for goodness knows how long sounds starts to penetrate through the ether, and slowly stars start appearing in the dark empty sky. With the stars becoming bigger and brighter. She feels like the ocean is slowly solidifying until she doesn't feel like floating anymore and is on solid ground again.
No longer does she feel like she's lying on her back. Now she can feel her body sitting on a hard surface and both of her hands are dangling up in the air. Try as she might, she just couldn't open her eyes, but after a while, her hearing crawls back.
She can hear muffled sounds off in the distant… sounds like a female talking to a man… Is that Root?
Wait… what happened?
Where was she?
Where's Root?
Then, in a rush of sensation, everything hits her like a mule kicking her in the chest. She can see the blurry image of her leg sprawled on the floor, her eyes burns with every blink in the futile attempts in unblurring her sight and all the while her head is pounding like a drum boy used it for practice.
Argh… everything hurts… it feels like there's three burning spots in her body while the rest of her body feels like it's on pins and needles.
Slowly, she moves her hands to check on the burning spot, but she barely moved her hands when she felt restrictions on them.
What…
She brings her blurry vision towards her hands and sees something white wrapped around her hands and secured onto something that feels like metal.
Was she… captured?
But that's impossible… she hasn't been unintentionally caught in this life before.
Unless the worst did happen…
When did that happen?
Did her pathetic brain shut down again while she was doing something? But it didn't feel like the usual ones…
Is that how she's in bindings right now? Why can't she remember what happened before her mind shut down?
How long was she out? It feels like it's longer than her usual shutdowns.
Throughout her little confusionfest, the same voices slowly become unmuffled but are still unintelligible to her ears. If she was a betting woman, which she isn't, she bet that these people are the ones that's holding her captive… is Root here as well?
Sue?
…
Sue should have noticed that she's woken up from her… that means these people who took her must have taken out her earpiece. Huh… she would have expected them to not have noticed it.
Has she gotten soft?
No… whoever these people are must be competent compared to the lowlifes she usually sees.
Before she can do anything, she needs to do some self-assessment of her current disposition. Carefully moving her head slightly to not attract any suspicions and to get a better view of her body. With her slightly less blurry vision, she sees that…
White bandage with a blob of red on her shoulder and leg.
Oh, she got shot, and at two places… That might explain the pain and her brain shutting down… it's been quite a long time since the last time she got shot up. And she'll assume the burning pain in her gut was her getting shot there, but her vest, which she isn't wearing right now, caught it.
The background volumes continue to become louder and clearer.
Ah… seems like her hearing is getting back faster now. The voices she's hearing sounds familiar…
It's that Harold man that Root was infatuated with, and some woman she never heard from before. This shouldn't be too hard of a situation for her to get out of. Now, if her eyesight would be so kind to come back now, it would make her escape so much easier. She can feel the weight of her spectacles on her nose, so that rules out her poor eyesight for her current blurred vision and must be something to do with her pathetic human brain.
However, getting shot in the leg always sucks… and now that she can feel it. Why does her underwear feel wet?
Please don't say that she wet herself when her brain decided to stop working, because it's gotta be embarrassing and awkward when she confronts these people for witnessing her malfunctioning. Goodness, she feels like a toddler again… can't even control her bodily functions.
Now knowing her condition, she shifts her gaze in search of her friend, and not to her surprise, Root is sitting just a few feet from her…
Even with her current blurry vision, she can see how still and unmoving her friend is. Not an inch of her is moving other than her breathing and her head is just facing straight where her body is pointed at.
What's wrong with her?
Why does it feel like there's an uneasy pit in her stomach when she looks at Root's empty, blank face? The once expressive face is just blank and unmoving, and Su hates it.
She just stares at her friend while the other people in the room have some kind of heated discussion that she can't be bothered to listen in, but as her hearing becomes sharper, she can hear a white noise in the background.
BEEP. BEEP. DASH…
It's not random… it's on repeat…
ARE YOU THERE SU?
It's morse code in her cypher.
She can't help but crack a smile at that, knew that girl would know how to contact Su by herself. And she's using one of the other person's phones to broadcast a high frequency sound… smart girl.
Su gives her assistant a small nod, hoping that she can see it and her captors do not.
The repeat beeps and dashes changes and it took her a few seconds to decipher the new message.
THANK GOODNESS, YOU HAVE BEEN IN A DISSASOCIATIVE STATE FOR THE PAST 24 HOURS.
24 hours? That's… the longest she had in this life… what the hack happened? But that doesn't matter right now.
DO YOU REQUIRE ASSITANCE? PAULING CAN BE AT YOUR LOCATION WITHIN 6 HOURS.
She shakes her head slightly, confident that she doesn't need any help, or maybe she just wants to see where this goes. And what's Pauling doing back in the states? Isn't she supposed to be removing that pest and requisition back the ship from Argentina?
Unless… Su's not in the states anymore…
Nah, this room looks like the most typical looking motel room in the US.
She nudges her head towards her blank-faced friend, to see if Sue knows anything. While she waits for a response, her mind concludes that her friend is having the same experience as her.
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT ROOT IS EXPERENCING CATATONIA.
Catatonia… that's worse than what she expected, but it's nothing too out of left field with her background. Guess Root can't run away from her mother's shadow forever. It's either that or these people gave Root something to make her soo lifeless…
Nah, it's her malfunctioning mother's fault for giving her bad genes.
That's when memories of what happened before her shutdown came back to her… she followed Root to that fake nuclear facility, removed a few pests and entered the most soothing place she has ever been in the past twenty-five years to a point where she got so distracted her that she didn't notice or hear any warnings before Root got shot followed by her getting shot.
Whatever happened in there must have caused Root to turn off her brain after getting shot… but her mind keeps going back to the peaceful, soothing warmth of that empty room. A fleeting feeling that she hasn't felt since she was a child.
…
But that recollection is wrong… the last time she felt that fleeting sense of serenity was in another empty room in a corporate tower back in New York…
Just what does this mean?
ARE YOU SURE YOU DO NOT REQUIRE HELP?
Why is she asking that again? Wasn't the first answer enough? She shifts her sight away from her friend and to the rest of the room, trying to see where Sue was looking from. Now that her sight is mostly back, she spots a phone on a bed with its camera facing upwards and a TV screen close to the phone.
That's it… she shifts her head slightly towards the tv screen and shakes her head again at her nosy little assistant.
ALRIGHT I WILL JUST MOTINOR AND PREPARE THE CONTIGENCIES.
She needs some time to figure out what's going on. Why she felt so… content in that empty room…
Su has to know what's going on and see how Root's little adventure fits into all of this.
What better way for her to start than what's in front of her?
She shifts her head up to look at the other people in the room that's been blabbing on for goodness how long and she barely kept tracked on what they were talking about. Only some excerpts, like killing her, hospital, and terrorist.
With her slightly better vision, she sees two male, one is Harold, the other one is… he looks like the most generic looking G-Man she's ever seen, and one female who has her back on SU. Is she so impotent that they're comfortable enough to lower their guard?
"By any means necessary, if I have to fill either one up with lorazepam, so be it. I… we need to stop Pauling and Milk from the next attack. It's the only way we can stop the biggest terrorist threat to the country for the past half a decade." The woman says in such a dull voice.
What?
… Pauling a terrorist? Why would this person ever think that?
Thinking Milk to be one is misguided and wrong, but still understandable from a certain stupid point of view, what with Milk's clientele.
Su can't stop a soft snort from escaping her and breaking her cover. All three of her captors snaps their gaze at her, all with varying reactions to which she sneers at them before saying. "Why would you ever think Pauling to be a terrorist?"
That seems to trigger everyone into action. They all got up from their position on the bed and got into a semi-circle a few feet away from her with the woman that looks so familiar and has a nasty look on her standing in the middle of the pack.
"You people really know how to make a girl feel special." Her voice sounded incredibly hoarse. When was the last time she drank?
The middle eastern woman looks down at her with a look that says she really wants to inflict harm onto Su.
Oh! She's the woman that shot her and the fact that she's still standing is a testament to her own mistake in being so disarmed in that empty, peaceful room.
"You're awake." Harold says with fear in his voice.
"Why do you make it out to be a tragedy?" Su gives them a crooked smile before turning her gaze to her only friend. "What did you do to her?"
"Nothing…" Harold says softly. "She's been like that ever since Hanford and nothing seems to pull her out of it."
She nods in understanding and asks. "And can you give me a drink?"
"No." The woman says with such a dead voice.
"That's rude." She makes an extra effort to make her voice raspier.
"It's been more than a day since she drank anything and it would be better if she drinks something, unless we want her condition deteriorates further, miss Shaw." Harold says as he grabs a bottle of water from the bed and takes a step forward.
Ah, the woman has a name… like her face, it's familiar. Where has she seen her before? If only Sue was in her ear, then she could remind her of everything.
Only to be stopped by with a hand on Harold's chest by that incredibly tall man as he glares at her.
She croaks out a chuckle at that idiotic gesture. "What am I gonna do?" She wiggles her bound hands. "Head lock him with my injured thighs?"
"That's a possibility." The man says dryly.
"That's dumb John." Shaw rolls her eyes at the man. "And if this bitch does anything, that's just a reason for me to put another bullet in her."
"So quick to violence and such a potty mouth." She tuts and smiles at the woman.
Harold ignores Shaw's comments as he uncaps the bottle of water and bends down to slowly lets her sip the precious water. She didn't notice how dry her throat was until the cooling elixir went down it. After finishing the unfortunately small bottle of water, a sudden rapturous cough erupts from her chest.
"Are you okay?" Harold ask with a tone of worried fear after her little coughing fit.
Su understands the fear but the worry… Why is he worried about her? They only knew each other for a few hours, and that only involved a few minutes of talking to him. Such an odd little fella.
"I would be if you unbind me." She gives the man a pleading smile while wiggling her hands. "This must be restricting my chest."
"Yeah, no chance, you insane terrorist bitch." Shaw instantaneously bites at her.
Su didn't even bother to look at the woman and just stare at Harold. "You really need to train your little pet better. She has no manners."
Harold widens his eyes while in the background she can see that blank face woman simmers with anger, which is such a delight to see that her smile forms to a genuine one.
After an awkward second, Harold stands up and states. "You need food."
A look of annoyance flashes on her face as she gives her usual response. "I'm not hungry."
Harold stops and gives her an odd look. "But you haven't eaten for more than a day."
If she could have waved her hand dismissively, she would, so she just rolls her eyes. "Duly noted."
"Great, she's anorexic as well." Shaw deadpans.
She lets out a scoff and retorts. "I'm not. I just don't feel hungry. Is it so hard to believe?"
Harold just looked at her with what she described as a disturbed for some reason.
"Yeah, whatever." Shaw pipes in and gets closer to her. "What do you mean, us thinking Pauling is a terrorist?"
"Because she isn't?" She tells the woman the most obvious answer.
"How the fuck does that even make sense?" The woman frowns at her. "You're the boss and your organization conducts a terrorist attacks each week. Kinda impossible for her to not know what you do when she runs that collective for you."
Huh… they know a lot. Her eyes lands on Harold since he must be the tattletale. In the usual cases, she would have just put all three of them to sleep as soon as possible, but they're tied to something she's seeking to understand.
Maybe she should play around with them for a bit… that sounds like fun.
Huh… she hasn't felt this fun feeling of playing around with the prey for quite some time…
Just what is going on?
"That word again…" With her bind hands she makes quotation marks. "… 'terrorist' you just love to toss that word around, don't you? What does that word even mean anymore? Everyone is a terrorist these days."
"You're the very definition of a fucking terrorist." Shaw snarls at her. "And be thankful that you haven't gotten another bullet yet."
She seems very aggressive towards her… wonder why. Have they met before? Is that why she looks vaguely familiar? If so, this woman must be really unmemorable or maybe Sue's right and she needs to work on her human names/faces memorization.
Bah, it's this woman's fault for being so unmemorable.
"Tut, tut." Su makes a pouting face at Shaw. "You shouldn't be swearing so much. It's such a rude thing to do, and what would your parents think of you for being such a crass being?"
"Great, we got a terrorist, Mr. Rogers." Shaw mutters with a look of disdain on her.
Su gives the woman an unimpressed look and raises her finger. "One, I have no idea who that is, so I'm going to take that as a slander." That cause the three of them to give her a look of disbelief and she raises another finger. "Two, I resent that connotation. I'm not a terrorist."
"What?" Shaw scrunches her face like she was holding in feces, which is quite entertaining. Something she has long missed.
Why is she having these feelings again?
But it's not, it doesn't feel… whole, complete. Like a distant memory, that's just sitting on the precipice and refusing to come back fully to her.
Did Root's silly little adventure actually work?
It can't be… if it did, she wouldn't feel so… incomplete. Things just doesn't make sense, that coldness of the void feels so distant yet ever present and yet she has these fragments of feeling that she lost back.
Let's just see where this wild ride is going to take her. Not that she has much to lose…
And by the look on the three of their faces, it seems like her mind wandered off. Now where was she?
"I'm not a terrorist because being a terrorist implies that I'm terrorizing humans to push a political agenda, and since I don't believe in politics, that doesn't apply." The look of disgust on their face feels so satisfying. "Plus, I didn't put all of those people to sleep. I merely created plans that accelerate their time on this earth."
There's a look of horror on Harold's face and it feels so sweet.
Goodness, these fleeting feelings is so addicting. She needs more of it.
"Oh, great, you're not a terrorist…" Shaw sarcastically spits out. "… just a plain old mass murderer."
"I'm not a murderer." Su instantaneously retorts the woman's claim.
Shaw shakes her head. "You're genuinely fucking insane."
Su rolls her eyes. "I'm not that either, and I'm not a murderer because that is just a social construct."
"What?" Harold mutters with horror in his voice while Shaw gives her a look that she doesn't know how to describe.
She turns her gaze towards the man. "Murder means the unlawful taking life of another and well… unlawful implies there's law and laws are just human laws are just social constructs." A small smile creeps on her lips. "It's just a made-up thing that humans create to control one another. We're nothing more than animals and yet we don't stop animals from taking the life of another animal. It's all natural for animals, but you involve humans, everyone call it unnatural when they do it to themselves."
Harold frowns at her and challenges her. "But humans are conscious beings, we think, we feel, we remember, we learn, we communicate, we can abstract."
"And other animals don't?" Su raises a brow at the man's stupid argument. "Go grab a shotgun and blow an elephant's brain in front of their family and see what happens. The only difference between humans and animals is that humans have denser neurons in their brain by the chance of evolution. Give any animal enough time and they would be no different from humans with their own dumb laws."
The look on Harold's face looks like he just got slapped, while Shaw looks angry, and the tall man just frowns at her.
"You're fucking with us right now, aren't you?" Shaw accuses her with that angry look she has. Why is she angry? It's not like what she said is wrong. Must have touched something sensitive then.
Harold opens his mouth to say something but closes it multiple times before finally saying. "D-do you actually believe that?"
Su just looks at him with a strange look on her. "You're the ones that's being weird by believing in such meaningless things."
"But…" Harold squints his eyes. "… you believe in manners, politeness, you don't swear or use the lord's name in vain… that's a social construct that you follow."
"No, it isn't." She shoots back and glares at the man. He clearly isn't making sense.
"Yes, it is. The etiquette we follow right now was codified a few hundred years ago, and the other one was enforced by the church. Both are social constructs." Harold argues back, bringing with him his illogical arguments.
"Nope." Su says with unmoving eyes at the man.
Harod was about to reply when Shaw cut him off. "Don't bother Finch. She's just being a facetious bitch. We're not going to go anywhere with this drivel, and I'm not sure if we can get anything from this nutcase willingly."
This woman is annoying, but her anger is entertaining. Let's run her up the wall.
"Ooo… the serious, mean faced woman wants to torture poor old me. What did I do to deserve this?" Su says playfully and flashes the incense woman a smile. "Please, oh please, I've been a good girl. Santa never given me a coal before."
Shaw deadpans at her and turns to Harold, who just looked at her with raised brows. "She's fucking nuts."
"Nuts, nutcase, are such dismissive terms." Su grins at them. "I can assure you that I am a person of sound mind and perfectly normal."
"That's a load of bullshit and you know it." Shaw deadpans at her. "Normal people's brains don't fucking shut down for an entire day after they get shot, and they sure as hell don't believe whatever crazy shit you believe in."
"What is the definition of normal?" Su opens her mouth to continue but…
"We are not going to listen to more of your stupid, contradictory philosophical nonsense." Shaw interrupts her in such a rude manner.
"Did you never learn proper conduct? It's like talking to an ape." Su replies disdainfully. "You really need to learn more manners, missy."
Shaw takes a threatening step forward and grits her teeth. "I'll show you manners."
"Wait…" The lone tall man puts a hand on Shaw's shoulder, stopping her before blurting out. "… You're Hanna Frey."
Huh…
That's an unexpected development.
JOHN REESE POV
This is… different.
John just stayed at the back, being silent throughout this entire odd conversation between the terrorist with every screw loose and his new partner (?) and boss/friend. He just looks at the incredibly frail-looking woman the entire time… he's seen her before, but he can't put a name to that face.
He knew this woman was just trying to get under the skin of the two of them the moment he saw that eerie small smile before she completely avoid answering any questions and just meander into logical holes. So, he just kept quiet and observed, while there's a constant itch at the back of his head telling him that he knew who this person was.
Shaw's anger continues to rise with every moment the woman continues to talk nonsense, while Harold kept his thoughts close to his chest. When the woman changes her posture slightly, her long unkept hair shifts into a different position, she has that little smirk, and a handmade pink unique-looking necklace falls into view.
That's when everything clicks into place, and it hits him like a freight truck hitting a deer on the highway.
Holy shit… it can't be.
Can it?
…
John squints his eyes as if it would give him a better image…
There's no mistaking it. She might look different with the passage of time. The baby cheeks are gone, the hairstyle is slightly different -can't really say it's a style with how messy her braid is compared to the neat braid in the picture-, however, her eyes are the same as the eyes in the picture. She looks older and whatever problem she's having since that picture was taken has really taken a toll on her.
It's the same person in the picture he looked at for hours last year while he was in Texas. Plus Harold's description of her private jet matches the color he saw in that desolate childhood room.
…
What the hell? How's that possible?
Whatever the woman said broke Shaw's patience and snapped him out of his revelation reverie.
His new partner clenches her fist into a ball and takes a step forward as she threatens. "I'll show you manners."
Not wanting this to escalate further, John quickly grabs Shaw by the shoulder, stopping her midway through. "Wait." He ignores the glare he's getting from the petite woman when he's only looking at Su and reveals. "You're Hanna Frey."
The moment he mutters out that word, it elicits so many different reactions from everyone. Frey/Su looks at him with both brows raised and tilting her head, like she's surprised by his revelation. Shaw's face has a frown which he can only describe as 'What the fuck are you talking about?'. And Harold has his eyes wide in realization, like he's been trying to figure out where he's seen her before.
"Oh God." Harold mutters in disbelief at the sight in front of him.
His friend had seen the picture, but of course, Harold wouldn't remember what Hanna Frey looked like, seeing that he didn't spend hours thinking she was Root.
"Hanna Frey?" Shaw's eyes darts between him and the woman. "The one that you said got kidnapped by some creepy banker pedo and died?"
"Yeah." John mutters softly while his eyes never leaving Su/Frey.
Shaw snorts, finding some humor in this shitshow. "I guess the rumors of Hanna Frey's death have been greatly exaggerated."
"Now, that's a name I haven't used in a long time." Gone is her playful voice and now is replaced with a serious one.
Nobody said a word at that confirmation while Su/Frey stares at him with an intensity that's been missing since they noticed she's up.
She nods her head slightly after a few seconds before saying. "Ah… Now I remember you. You're that man that snooped into my past." That intense stare shifts to one of curiosity. "I never did get an answer about how you know about me back then."
Not having any other answers, John tells the truth. "The machine gave me your number so I could find Root."
She gives a noncommittal hum as her gaze moves on to Harold. "I'm guessing your machine knows about Root's past and gave you a dead girl's SSN in some convoluted path that leads your pet here to Root."
That's a scarily accurate assessment of what he had to go through to get Harold back from Root and from what Harold had told them earlier. Her knowledge of the machine is more extensive than he was led to believe.
Su's sunken eyes narrow as she shifts it back to John. "Your name is John…" she pauses for a few seconds before continuing. "… something wasn't it?"
John can't help himself as he quips back. "Yeah, my last name is something."
She completely ignores his joke and says. "You were at that purgatory of a town with that female detective… what's her name? Clarke? Cook? Carter? Colins?"
Purgatory?
Also, he isn't going to risk Joss's life by correcting her on the detective's name, and she really doesn't have a good memory or didn't think they were a threat enough to remember. So, he just gives a noncommittal. "Yeah…"
Harold takes a step closer to the woman and asks. "You were the one that called Root last year, didn't you?"
Su looks at Harold with one brow raised and sarcastically says. "You gotta be more specific than that, despite what Root claimed I do occasionally call her."
"She answered your call by referring to you as Pauling." Harold elaborates.
"Ah… that call." There's a look of intrigue on her. "I did find it odd at the time and assumed she was busy, but I guess she was entertaining you at that time. How thoughtful of her to use Pauling as a cover for me." She gives Harold an off-putting smile and glances at John. "I did called her about a couple of rats snooping around where they shouldn't, and she told me to not remove the two pests."
That's an uncomfortable thought… he wouldn't have been prepared if the collective came down on them hard in Texas. Guess he'll have to thank Root for that?
That's when he got an idea.
John takes a knee to be on Su/Frey's eye level, causing the woman to look at him with mirth and curiosity in her amber eyes. So far, nothing Harold and Shaw have said, seem to do anything to budge the wall of avoidance this woman created. Maybe it's time for a different approach.
"I met your father." John starts emphatically, causing the woman to widen her eyes in what he assumes as shock.
"You met him?" She murmurs barely above a whisper and the front she had crumpled.
Taking that as a good sign, he nods and continues. "He stopped believing that you were still alive…" That caused her lips to tremble. "… but he did mention that your mother believed you were alive until the day she died."
That seemed to shock her with her utter silence and constant blinking of her eyes. He glances to his side where he sees Harold nods at him, that this avenue of talking is working better than before.
"She did… did she?" There's no hint of remorse or sadness in her voice… this must really be a shock for her. "Always knew she knows more than she ever showed." She mutters softly.
"Your dad really loves you…" John begins but doesn't really know where to go with it since he isn't that good with this kind of things but the other two aren't any better. "He still…"
His sentence was cut off by her smirking at him and callously saying. "Honestly surprised that he lived for this long, to be honest with you." Gone was that shock, trembling face, and now replaced with what he can only describe as deranged glee. "I had expected him to keel over sooner with how unhealthy his vices are."
That's a curve ball to the face he didn't foresee and did the only thing his brain could think of at that moment. "What?"
The deranged smile on her widens. "I had expected mother to outlive father with how well she maintains her body and I really thought father would have committed suicide not long after I left that dreadful town."
John just stares at the woman in surprise shock… she was playing with him and now, has gone completely mask off.
There's a hint of glee on her face as she stares back at him and continues in a mocking tone. "I really shouldn't have pegged the man to be such a spineless man."
The room was so quiet that even the sound of a pin dropping would be audible and from the corner of his eyes he can see Harold's shocked face. The woman's smile becomes a toothy grin as she continues. "My goodness, you all should have seen the look on your faces. It was so priceless. Well, except for you, Shaw, you really have that poker face nailed in."
"You don't care about them?" Harold asks in a hesitant voice.
She sways her head in a dismissive manner before saying. "They served their purpose and what happens to them after is not my concern."
John doesn't know what to say to that… coldness.
He remembered how gutted he was when his stepfather died, and later when the rest of his family died.
Getting up from his kneeling position and taking a few steps backwards to get back in with the other two, he starts to reflect on this situation.
Now thinking about it, from the description he got when he was in Texas, everyone seemed to adore her when she was a child. Has she always been like this or what she experienced changed her? It could be the latter, from everything he learned about her on that trip.
There's an urge in him to ask her why she never went back to that town, back to her best friend and to her family, but… it isn't hard to figure out with how much both she and Root detest that town. He didn't have to fill in the blanks on what happened to her on the night of her kidnapping, and she wouldn't have known Root had killed the man a few years after she went missing with just being local news, until much later, when her A.I. went online.
What's surprising is that she survived that night at all. He remembers his theory that Hanna Frey escaped that man, but that was before Carter showed him the pictures of the dug-up bags filled with bloody sheets and clothing.
How did she even survive? With the amount of blood loss and her size at that time, she couldn't do a lot without passing out.
That brings up another question. From what Harold told him about Root and her history. Why did she take more than a decade before reconnecting with Root? If he got the timeline right, her A.I. came online 8 years after she left her hometown, and Root left that place two years after that, leaving 4-5 missing years.
There's still a missing piece of this puzzle.
"She's a fucking psychopath." Shaw said out loud the word that's everyone has been thinking.
The woman isn't fazed by the accusation and looks like she enjoyed it. "Am not. And are you even certified to diagnose me?"
"Isn't that just a social construct?" Shaw rebuts with a deadpan.
"Nope, because mental illness isn't a made-up concept." She gives Shaw a shit-eating grin. "You shouldn't dismiss the importance of mental care."
That's contradictory… must like most of her stances or maybe she's just bullshitting, just to get a rise out of them. Probably the letter, and by the look on Shaw's deadpan face, she's thinking the same. Well… he assumes she's thinking the same.
Su lets out a chuckle as she just looks at Shaw. "I'm sorry, but the look you have right now isn't flattering. You look like a dullard."
"She's just wasting time again." Shaw ignores the woman's jab and turns to look at the two men. "I'm going to raid the nearest ER and get some sodium pentothal or sodium amytal."
Truth serum? Good idea.
"I'm not sure if that's a good idea, Miss Shaw." Harold seemingly uncomfortable with the suggestion. "Using such drugs on her while we don't know her condition is unsafe."
On second thought, that might not be a good idea.
"Good thing I was a doctor then." Shaw replies dismissively as she rolls her eyes at Harold.
Just as Shaw is about to turn around, the woman attempts to clap her hand but couldn't and results in a soft pat between her fingers.
"Now I know why you looked so familiar." Su comments with a gleeful tone, bringing in everyone's attention back to her.
"You're that sociopathic, former doctor and marine, ISA agent that worked under that dude with the receding curly hairline!" The woman's face is bright with self-satisfaction.
Huh, that perfectly describes a certain agent that John shoved a knife into a few months ago and just met again last night.
"How do you know Hersh?" Shaw asks with a frown, asks at the same time as Harold asks. "You know Miss Shaw?"
"Right, right, his name's Hersh, totally forgotten about him. His fault for having such a plain joe background…" There's a nostalgic look on the woman's face. "… But you both were a funny lot."
He can feel a tightness in his stomach as John might know where this is getting to…
"What do you mean?" Shaw asks in such a way that he can't even decipher what she's feeling and stepping in front of him.
"How could I forget you guys? It was so much fun…" She shakes her head before slightly tilting it. "You both went to investigate that fool of a tool, Patzi."
Tool? That's exactly what Harold mentions about her personality when he debriefs them about her.
Even though he couldn't see Shaw's face, he could feel that she was slowly getting angry.
Su's grins widen as she continues without a care in the world. "I remember it clearly now, the look of shock on the two of you as the plane falls out of the air and then punching that tool's wound till your hand was drenched in blood." She lets out a small giggle. "So much drama from such a person like you."
Plane… She's talking about that flight Shaw got the number for.
"You were there?" Shaw barely whispers a mutter, yet he can hear the anger laced within her monotone voice.
The deranged woman gives Shaw a look as if she just asked the stupidest question. "Obviously with what happened in the year prior, I can't in good conscience not make sure my plan goes through as smooth as a baby's buttocks." Again, she gives herself a self-satisfied nod. "In my humble opinion, it was one of the best plans I've made, and it took months to prepare. Then you and your partner came along, and I couldn't have asked for better pawns to perform that plan."
Danger klaxons blares in his head as he sees Shaw's hands form into a fist before she says. "You were the sniper?"
"Right…" She draws out her word and gives Shaw a look of pity (?). "… sorry you had to see it, since that wasn't my best shot."
Within half a second after the woman stopped talking, he saw Shaw made her move and in a flash, knowing that she's going to do next, he lunges forward to grab Shaw's arm to restrain her. He can feel his muscle strain just from trying to contain Shaw from throwing that punch and the subsequent attempts to get out of his grip.
Damn… how the heck can a woman this small be this strong? It's like trying to hold back a raging bull.
"Don't make me break your jaw, Reese." Shaw grits out the words through her teeth as shoots death glares at him.
When he's about to reply to that threat in an attempt to calm her down, that deranged woman lets out a bark of laughter, which further angers the petite woman.
"Calm down, Shaw." John says softly as he looks into Shaw's eyes, while the other woman continues to giggle-laugh in the background.
"I am calm as a feather." Shaw replies in her usual tone, but he can see in her eyes that she's quite murderous.
"We can't kill her Miss Shaw." Harold says worryingly as he steps between both women.
"A punch won't hurt her too much." Shaw calmly replies and turns her gaze to the woman on the floor.
To be honest, he isn't sure if this frail woman could even survive a punch in the head from Shaw. He's pretty sure that punch could knock out most men double the woman's size.
"Your reaction is so much better than I expected." The deranged woman comments after ceasing her giggling.
"The punch might not, but we don't know what will happen to her with whatever condition she has." Harold tries to reason with Shaw's anger.
"Don't you see what she's done, Finch?" Shaw asks calmly with an undercurrent of anger in her voice and her focus shifts to Harold. "She orchestrated the downing of DL656. She killed a hundred 126 people, Harold."
"My, my Shaw… Why are you soo angry?" The deranged woman coos in a way to bait Shaw into attacking her. "Aren't you supposed to be a sociopath?"
Shaw completely ignores the bait with her focus, sole lies on Harold as he replies. "As tragic and unforgivable as that is, Miss Shaw. It is not our place to be the judge for her crimes."
That provokes a reaction from Shaw in the form of a deep scowl. "She killed children, Finch. 12 of them."
Harold grimaces and closes his eyes for a few seconds but doesn't say anything further, telling her that he isn't going to budge. The air of tension between them is so palpable that John can feel it on his lips.
"Ah!" The woman of Shaw's ire exclaims brightly, cutting through the tension in the room like a hot knife through butter. "You're angry that you failed to stop it, and that's completely understandable, but you were never meant to succeed in the first place."
Shaw turns her burning gaze back to the woman on the floor but doesn't say anything and lets the woman continue. "You see, it was all a test for me to see how Northern Lights or the machine that thwarted me the year prior works as well as to learn about your little agency. I allowed you to catch that tool."
The former ISA operator doesn't say anything as her fist tightens again and all the while, John tightens his grip on the petite woman.
"You killed hundreds of people just for a… test?" Harold asked in horrified shock.
"How else was it supposed to learn about the machine you built without testing it, Harrold?" Su asks with a condescending smirk before shrugging. "And who cares if some people die? That's what they're meant to do… they live and the next thing you know, they're gone in a blink of an eye."
The moment the deranged woman finished talking, he could feel Shaw overpowering his grip, causing him to let go of her arm and within a blink of an eye, punch the woman right at her pterion. In that one violent swing of her fist, the woman's head snaps towards her right side and hits the radiator, then bouncing off the radiator to settle in her new position. Sue's went limp and her head on her left side with her eyes wide open.
Everything happened within two seconds, well before anyone could react. Even though he wouldn't have done it, John can't help but admire a good sucker punch when he sees one. Harold, on the other hand…
"Miss Frey!" Harold juts forward, then kneels near to the newly unconscious woman and waves his hands at her eyes. "Miss Frey?"
"No use Finch." Shaw says in a tone like she didn't just punch someone. "The light might be on, but she sure as hell isn't there."
Harold turns to look at Shaw as he puts a finger on Su's neck. "Why did you have to do that, Miss Shaw? The woman is clearly not in the mentally stable and you fell for her provocation."
Shaw just stares back impassively and shrugs. "To shut her up and because it felt really good. You should give it a try."
"What if that killed her?" Harold asks in an accusatory tone.
"She's fine. A bit of a concussion doesn't hurt and exactly what she deserves." Shaw rolls her eyes. "And boo-hoo, the psycho being a nutcase doesn't justify her killing all of those people." Shaw points to herself. "You don't see me going around murdering people left and right."
Harold looks like he's going to argue, so John steps forward and says. "She's right, Finch."
A flash of betrayal crosses his eyes before he puts on his poker face.
John puts up his hands and says. "I mean, she had it coming and Shaw's right about her being a nutcase isn't a defense."
Harold lets out a tired sigh and comments. "It isn't, but she's clearly a disturbed woman who needs treatment."
"Why are you so adamant about defending this bitch?" Shaw practically snaps at his friend and points a finger at the unconscious woman. "She would have killed you without a second thought if she's free."
"Because we're not like her." Harold retorts back. "Where would our morality go the moment we decide to kill in cold blood? We would just stoop to her level."
John hopes his friend isn't making a reference to both his and Shaw's past employment…
"Go confess your sins to a priest if you want to save your soul, Harold." Shaw takes a step closer to Harold's kneeling form. "I'll be your sin-eater, because we can't let her live… Not when she's a batshit insane psychopath with a fucking evil A.I. at her beck and call."
Harold gets up to face Shaw and waves his hands at their captives. "That's why we're going to put both of them in a secure mental hospital that can treat them and maybe help them with their problem."
"You're being emotional, Harold…" Shaw waves her hand at Su. "… No matter how secure that place is. Why the fuck would that woman stay locked up in a funny farm when she's clearly doesn't believe there's anything wrong with herself?"
"Because there's something clearly wrong with Miss Groves, and she needs the treatment. Even with their patchy relationship, the first question Miss Frey genuinely asks was about Miss Groves' condition." Harold, not moving an inch as he justifies his choice. "She won't leave her as long as Miss Groves requires medical treatment."
With that, the both of them just stare off at each other for a solid minute before Shaw shakes her head. "Great, let's just hang the lives of countless innocent people in the balance on the whims of another catatonic crazy woman."
Feeling like the tense situation has deescalated, Harold's shoulders relax as he further elaborates. "If it makes you feel any better. Until that time comes, we will use this opportunity to find where her A.I. is and shut it down. That way she won't have a dangerous… asset lying around."
Shaw stares into Harold's eyes for a few seconds before turning around to seat on the bed. "You know I can't feel things like that, but at least it's something to do in the meantime."
Harold nods in agreement. "And hopefully we'll get more insight into the collective's operations as we search for that A.I."
Sensing the confrontation ended, John speaks up and points at Su. "So… what do we do now? You never gave me an SOP on how to handle a woman that can communicate with an all-seeing A.I. when you did your orientation with me."
"There's an orientation?" Shaw perks up with a scowl on her. "I don't have to do it… right?"
John smirks at the woman. "Take this trip like one big orientation."
Shaw rolls her eyes and says. "John's right, the bitch can be out for 24 hours like last time or she could come to in a few minutes. I wouldn't mind knocking her out every time she's awake."
"How many punching can she take before getting CTE?" John asks out of curiosity.
The former doctor has a thoughtful look at her before answering. "If she wakes up every two hours and I use the same swing, I give it a… very low risk of getting CTE."
"Can we drop the subject of punching her?" Harold looks at the two of them like they're insane. "I thought you wanted information from the woman? You need her to be coherent and not a bumbling mess."
"It's going to be a long ride back to New York, so tell us how we bring her with us without me constantly punching her." Shaw shrugs. "She's like you, Finch. Except for the whole insane murder terrorist part, and given enough time, she'll think of a way to escape from us with her buddy there before we reach New York."
Harold looks like he's offended that he's being compared with that woman, but doesn't say anything for a few seconds before nodding and saying. "We stuff her mouth, blindfold, and cover her ears."
"Finch…" John says in amazement and smiles at his friend. "… Didn't know you approved of GITMO."
His friend didn't find his joke amusing and just deadpans back at him, which causes John's smile to brighten more.
"Fine by me." Shaw says loudly as she starts eating her chips again. "You got the toys in your bag of tricks, John?"
John and Harold shares a look with each other before he grins at the woman. "Nope."
Shaw's eyes darts between the two men and frowns at them. "You guys go get it."
"We haven't used the toilet yet, Shaw." John retorts and nudges at the door with his ever-growing grin. "I mean, you drove the entire way here. It's only fitting if you grab the stuff."
"I didn't use it either." She mutters a protest, but when neither man budges, she lets out a sigh. "Fine. I'll go rob a Home Depot after I'm done with my chips."
"I always knew you would be a great partner." John smirks at the frowning woman.
"Yeah… Go fuck yourself." She mutters before stuffing a handful of chips into her mouth.
A/N: I lied about this being the final chapter of this arc. Had to break up this chapter in half because it was getting way too long. I'm aiming for Part 2 of this chapter to come out before I go on vacation in 3 weeks.
This chapter is heavily influenced by How to Troubleshoot a Kernal Panic by MayonnaiseJane on Ao3.
Chapter 33: To Perdition Part 2
JOHN REESE POV
The sound of water flowing in the bathroom pulled him out of his deep slumber and not long after the sound of water stops, Harold emerges out of the bathroom with it the only light in the small motel room as the rising sun still haven't entered the room.
"I see that you're awake, Mister Reese." Harold comments as he enters back into the room, fully dress for the day ahead and his hair slightly damp. "Best if we start early."
John gets up from the floor he's been sleeping on and rubs his eyes before yawning out. "What time is it?"
"Too fucking early." Shaw mutters before she rolls on her bed, so her eyes don't get the light from the bathroom.
John chuckles at the woman's response. She clearly isn't a morning person; he then tries to encourage her. "There's probably some hot water left if you wake up now, Shaw."
"I rather sleep, and you didn't draw on the short straw last night." Shaw gives a muffled reply as she pulls a pillow over her head.
Well… that's true, she did get the second watch, while he got the first and Harold got the last, hance the man got ready first. A bit irresponsible of his friend to not have eyes on their two prisoners but…
John got up and turned his gaze towards the radiator, where he sees them in the same position as before he went to sleep. Root still looking off into the distance, unmoving since she was placed there last night on her side of the radiator while Su's head limps downwards with all the stuff Shaw brought back. Blackout googles, earmuffs, a face mask, underneath it is a gag made out of some torn up cotton shirt she got from Home Depot. Away from the head, her bound hands are in mittens and an additional restraint is on her legs.
The only difference between her and the detainee in transit of Camp X-Ray is a bright orange prisoner jumpsuit and an orange beanie.
From what he remembers of the woman's last position last night, she hadn't moved an inch. Guess Harold isn't entirely irresponsible for not having a constant watch over the incapacitated woman. Not that they're being overly cautious about having a rotating watch, seeing that there's an entire criminal organization and a malicious A.I. running it.
"It's half-past six, Mister Reese." Harold answers his earlier question as his friend limps past him and towards the radiators.
He just grunts in morning tiredness at Harold's answer.
John just look on as Harold grabs a cup of water with a straw off the table and brings it towards Root first. Harold tries to snake the straw between Root's lips but only getting the same result as the night prior, with Root turning her head and whimpers a wordless protest. Letting out a sigh of defeat, Harold comes back to the woman with a handful of ice, and with some difficulty pries open her mouth to place the ice in inside. Thankfully for them, just like last night, Root's swallow reflex is still intact and isn't hacking on melted water.
Harold then turns his attention to their other captive and tries to do the same thing with her -after removing the gag-, but again, like last night, neither straw nor ice works. Everything just drools out and Harold has to clean up the mess. Shaw suggested that they just shove a needle in her and use IV rehydration if she continues to not drink.
Finally feeling awake enough, John goes straight into the bathroom, leaving Harold to continue tender their captives' basic needs.
When he emerges out of the bathroom, fully dress in the same suit he wore yesterday, he looks at the other occupants of the room. Shaw's somehow went back into deep sleep and Harold sitting on a chair slightly facing the radiator with a worried look on him.
His gaze lands on the woman that's sleeping peacefully on that rock hard bed. Shaw won the right to use the bed with a match of heads or tails. It honestly isn't that much better than sleeping on the floor, but it's the thought that counts. Feeling a bit petty, he wants a bit of revenge for being relegated to the floor.
As he crept up to the slumbering woman, Harold looks at him with curiosity, so he brings up a finger onto his lips to keep his friend quiet, which incite a single raise brow from Harold.
He flicks up the switch for the lights and begins to shout. "LIGHTS, LIGHTS, LIGHTS! FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, AND ONE!"
The moment he began shouting, Shaw springs up from bed and is standing up ramrod straight by the foot of her bed, like a good marine. By the time he finishes pretending to be a drill sergeant, Shaw's sense comes back to her and gives him a glare that would give the devil pause.
"Do you want to meet god?" Shaw mutters as she continues to look deep into his eyes and slowly leaning towards her pillow, which John knows for a fact that there's a pistol underneath.
"Got you good, didn't I?" John replies with a smirk, knowing full well that this can go either way, but it's just too funny to pass up.
She just stares at him for another second before rolling her eyes. "Go shove that gun up your ass and pull the trigger for me." She calmly says to him before trudges past him.
"Have fun with the cold water!" John says with a smile.
"Go fuck yourself, John." She then slams the bathroom door behind her.
"Really isn't a morning person, she is?" John quips as he walks towards Harold, who has a soft smile on him.
"Antagonizing Miss Shaw is like playing with a lion's tail, Mister Reese. I hope you know what you're doing." Harold tells him while his head is turned slightly towards John and takes a bite from an apple that Shaw stole last night.
"Don't worry, Finch, inside that fierce wolverine exterior, she's a big softy." John gives Harold, who looks unconvinced, a smirk and nods towards the women. "Let's get them off that radiator. Shaw won't take long, and we got a long day ahead of us."
Harold nods and takes out the handcuffs key from his pocket as he bends at Root. "Miss Groves, refuse any food after giving her water, and I have my doubts about whether she actually slept yet." With Root's hands unbound, Harold, with John's help, slowly stands her up. "We can rule out malingering now. Or she's very dedicated to this rouse, but that's highly unlikely. She hasn't eaten anything in two days now and still refuses to eat."
"That's not surprising. She didn't move a single inch the entire night." John comments as he steadies the woman from falling over from the sudden change of position… her legs might be numbed from not moving. "I think we can get some food replacement shake and freeze them into cubes. Or do as Shaw suggested and use a TPN bag, but getting the bags might be tricky."
"I believe your suggestion has merit for Miss Groves but for Miss Frey…" Harold comments as he unbinds Su from the Radiator and uncuffs her leg restraints. "… I believe we need to acquire some bags if her condition doesn't improve."
John placed Root in the Shaw's bed, then went to help Harold in bringing her up on her feet. Unlike Root, this woman's balance is completely unstable, and she almost falls forward onto the floor. Had John not acted quickly.
That's when Shaw comes out of the bathroom and sees Su basically hugging John. "Didn't know you had a type, John."
John turns his head at Shaw, who's tying up her damp hair into a ponytail, and is wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
They really need to get some new clothes; it's been 4 days since they had any change of clothes.
"I do like brunettes but I try to avoid the mentally insane ones." John replies with a smirk on him as he tries to steady the incapacitated woman.
Shaw rolls her eyes as she puts on her boots and says. "You assholes woke me up early, so you better be ready."
"Of course." Harold replies with a nod as he grabs Root by the arm and guides her up from the bed. With a soft pressure on Root's back and she slowly takes her first steps with Harold's guidance.
"I'll grab the bags." Shaw quickly gathers up the things and makes her way towards the exit before continuing. "And I'm driving."
"But you already drove the entire way yesterday." John protest lightly as he softly tries to coax Su to walk. If that fails, he could always carry her into the car.
"I would be better if we rotate in driving the car, Miss Shaw." Harold pitches in as he guides Root towards the door.
Shaw lets out a sigh and opens the door. "Fine John can drive first, but I'm driving after lunch."
"Fine by me." John replies with a smile as he fails to coax Su to move. "You really punched her good, Shaw. At least she could have walked by herself after she got shot. Now she ain't budging."
Harold looks at John worryingly before giving Shaw a pointed look, who in turn just rolls her eyes. "Bitch, just being dramatic. It wasn't even that hard of a punch."
"I don't know…" Feeling like the woman won't be moving on her own anytime soon, John bridal carries her. "… That was one mean punch."
"Never pull a punch." Shaw comments as they make their way to the car and despite not looking back at him, he can imagine she a smirk on her.
"Is that what they teach on Paris Island?" John asks as Shaw puts their begs into the trunk.
"They did, but Hersh emphasize it more." Shaw shuts the trunk and helps open the backseat door for John while Harold manages to open it himself. "Toss her in the middle. I don't want to be in the fill for a nutcase sandwich."
He smirks at the petite woman and proceeds to awkwardly maneuver the unconscious woman into place before putting on the sit belt.
Getting back out of the car, he's faced with a bored-looking Shaw, and he makes a gesture at her to give him the keys. She rolls her eyes and tosses it to him as she grumbles. "Fine."
As they all get into their respective seats and when John's about to start the car, a thought occurred to him.
"If a cop stops us…" John thumbs to the middle seat as he looks through the rearview mirror. "… How do we explain that?"
Shaw just shrugs and replies. "Just say she's autistic, that bright lights and sounds are triggers for her."
"Okay." John deadpans at the woman before driving off.
SAMEEN SHAW POV
A few hours have passed since they stopped for lunch and Sameen traded places with John as the driver of this shitbag of a car. Just like yesterday, the road she's driving down is practically empty. The only thing different is the scenery. Yesterday was the boring fields of Idaho and today is the boring deserts and mountains of Utah.
"Not wanting to sound the alarm." John comments from behind her, causing Sameen to look through the rear-view mirror. "But why is she doing… that?"
Her eyes follow John's pointing towards the woman and sees the terrorist bitch twitching uncontrollably followed by hyperventilation for a solid minute before going back to her limped state.
Harold's eyes widen in horror and Shaw just shrug before replying. "Bitch been doing that every few hours."
"I believe you're being too callous about what happened." Harold's eyes darts from that bitch and back to her.
"How often has this been happening?" John asks as he checks the woman's pulse. "And how often?"
"Including this? Three times now." Sameen answers and glances at the clock. "Can't say how often with how random the intervals for those twitches. Roughly every one to five hours."
"When did the first one happen?" Harold asks in a worried tone.
"Not long after we left the motel, and the second time was before we got lunch." Sameen informs them casually before turning to Harold with a raised brow. "I'm surprise you guys only noticed it now."
"You should have informed us earlier…" Harold looks disappointedly at her. "… and I was checking for hospitals that match our requirements."
"I was driving." John tosses in his excuse as he puts his palm on the woman's forehead. "So, do you know why she's doing that?"
"I told you I'm not a shrink." Sameen rolls her eyes as she looks at the rearview mirror.
"You've read more medical books than me." John deadpans at her after he finishes examining the woman.
Sameen isn't even sure if Reese has read a book other than a gun manual for the past decade. So, she tries to recall any bits from the DCM that can explain the terrorist's odd condition.
She lets out a hum and says. "Can be any number of things."
"There are a lot of things that can cause…" John points again to the now limped woman. "… that?"
"You have no idea…" Sameen raise a brow at that man. "… easiest I can think of is that she's having small panic attacks whenever she regains consciousness or she's experiencing some kind of traumatic response/shock and her brain dissociates to protect itself."
"That's… fucked up." John grimaces as his gaze went back to the woman. "Do you think it had something to do with her being kidnapped?"
"That's a possibility. The creep that kidnapped her when she was a kid could have bound her in a similar position and whenever she wakes up, her mind is re-experiencing that night all over again, so her brain shuts off." Sameen replies clinically.
Seems to fit, or so she believe from the limited information John has informed her about the events surrounding her kidnapping. Unless there's other traumatic experience Sameen doesn't know about, she can safely assume that this assessment is a likely possibility.
John has a look of pity as he looks at the woman and mutters. "It's kinda sad that underneath such an immorally evil woman…. Is someone so broken."
"You're not sympathizing with her, are you?" Sameen raises a brow at John.
"Maybe a little, but I can't fully be sad for her. Not when she's totally remorseless about the acts she's done." John shakes his head. "You think she believes what she said?"
"Who knows what's going on inside that messed up head of hers?" Sameen replies.
John has a contemplative look at him before shaking his head again. "I would like to think that she doesn't believe what she's saying and is doing everything to run away from her problem, but that's just me being optimistic."
Feeling satisfied with John's answer, silence decent in the car again with her focusing on the road once more, but that silence only lasted a few minutes when Harold spoke up with an uncomfortable look at him. "Should we take it off?"
Sameen slowly turns her head to Harold and gives him a look like he just gave the dumbest suggestion ever. "Why? This way she won't be a constant asshole and there's less chance of me putting another bullet into her."
Harold frowns at her and protests. "This is torture."
"You were the one that suggested it, Chaney." Sameen retorts back with a smirk.
Harold doesn't look like he appreciates the comparison and counters. "I didn't know it would lead… to her suffering like this. How many times is she going to have this reaction before we reach back to New York?"
"And she deserves nothing less." Sameen says with a vindictiveness that she doesn't know she could even express. Crazy how that insane bitch somehow brings out something within her that she doesn't know she could do.
Reception to her answer isn't the warmest and convincing, judging by the looks both men are giving her. She can see the twitching on Harold's lips, telling her that he's about to tell John to remove the accessories.
However, she snatches the words out of Harold's mouth by saying. "Did you guys forget that she has a fucking A.I. running wild and most likely listening to us right now?"
Harold frowns at her before retorting. "That has been constantly on my mind since the day we captured her, Miss Shaw, however…"
"It could be listening through our phones right now." Sameen cuts Harold off and continues. "And it might have been waiting for a signal from our local crazy lady back there."
There's a look of deep thoughts on the bespectacled man before responding with. "I've been thinking about it… Why hasn't the collective jumped into action to retrieve Miss Groves and Miss Frey? They had ample opportunity throughout the night."
"Maybe they're all on vacation?" John quips with a slight smile.
"As stupid as that sounds, you got a point." Sameen flashes back a grin at John. "The collective loves to cosplay as a corporation and corporations do love their corporate retreats."
John's smile widened. "We passed Aspen not too long ago. Maybe we'll meet them in Denver."
"Season ended a week ago." Sameen deadpans at the man.
The former spook raises his brows and replies. "How do you even know that?"
Remembering back a few years ago when she had to stop that group of assholes from causing an avalanche and killing countless skiers in another ski resort in Colorado… thinking about it, that bitch in the back seat probably planned that attack.
Sameen doesn't elaborate and rolls her eyes at John before turning her attention back to Harold. "You said that her A.I. wasn't sentient, and if it doesn't have sentient, it should be waiting for the crazy lady's signal."
"It's what she says…" Harold looks at the bitch with a conflicted expression. "… But do you believe her claim that it isn't sentient?"
Why is he even asking her that? Isn't he supposed to be the computer genius in this group? Maybe…
"Is yours sentient?" Sameen asks rather softly with a tilt of her head.
That seems to give Harold pause for a few moments before answering. "I… don't know anymore…" Harold has a blank face as if he's trying to compute. "… there were sparks of… sentience when I was building the machine and I made it so those sparks wouldn't be lit into blaze of consciousness, but now… with the new update, I can't say for sure."
That's a way longer answer than she expected. Dude really needs someone to open up with if he's spilling it out for her. Also, his answer doesn't change the calculation in her mind about the ongoing threat to their safety.
She lets out a sigh. "Look, I'm not a nerd like you…"
"I beg to differ." John, annoyingly, pitches in.
Ignoring the intrusion, she continues. "… It's easier for us to plan if we assume the shit she created…" Sameen thumbs to the unconscious woman. "… and prepare for a retaliation by the collective. But seeing that shit hasn't happened for over 24 hours now, there must be a reason for the lack of confrontation."
Harold doesn't say anything, so she continues. "And I can't think of any other reason other than she somehow told it to not interfere. Who knows? Maybe she just has a fucked-up kink about being an unwilling captive and loves being tied up this way."
"That's a disturbing thought." John mutters as he gives the unconscious woman a side eye.
"She's a deeply fucked-up woman." Sameen deadpans.
"I hope you're right, and wrong at the same time, Miss Shaw." Harold jumps back into the conversation. "Because I can't fathom the implications of two sentient A.I. running wild out in the world."
"You set your machine free, Harold. Did the virus changed any of its core functions?" Sameen asks.
Harold thinks for a second before answering. "I wouldn't know… Whatever shackles the machine had are gone now. It could choose to do what it wants by itself. All we could do now is hope that it chooses to follow its core functions."
Sameen quickly follows up with a hypothetical. "So, let's the asshole's A.I. is sentient and decides to go full terminator on the world…"
"Skynet." John cuts her again.
She's more confused than angry at John. "What?"
"Terminator is Arnold. He's the machine that was sent back in time to kill John Connor from destroying Skynet, the A.I. that nuked the world." John explains in a matter-of-fact way.
Sameen rolls her eyes. "Fine… what if it goes full Skynet?"
"In that scenario, The Machine will defend itself." Harold answers back without missing a beat.
"I really don't want to know what a war between two A.I. looks like." John mutters as he looks between the two of them and Sameen nods in agreement.
She then recalls back at Hanford what Harold said to that asshole special counsel.
"But we don't know if the machine will help us if Sue decides to continue playing terrorist while nutcase here on the funny farm?" Sameen shoots back with a question.
Harold thinks for a second. "If the attacks aren't a threat to the machine… then no."
Sameen gives Harold an unimpressed stare before saying. "That fucking sucks. So we have to bank on the machine to decide that Sue is a threat to itself before it will confront it."
"What do you mean by that?" Harold asks in curiosity.
Isn't that straightforward?
Sameen raises a brow and answers. "Like your machine going mano a mano with her A.I. and fighting it in whatever weird dimensions A.I.'s fight in."
Harold has a pensive look and nods. "The machine is fundamentally still a closed and hands off system. It shouldn't be able to do anything without human assistance."
Well, that's just… "Great." Sameen deadpans.
"You said the numbers we get are the machine's secondary operations…" John has a hint of worry in his voice. "… Does that mean we won't get numbers anymore if the machine decides to not follow the functions you created?"
Harold nods. "The number we get is the machine's secondary functions, and it will be entirely up to the machine if it wants to continue our supply of numbers after we get back to New York."
"Guess we all won't be busy with the numbers for the foreseeable future." John says sadly and practically pouts.
As much as she would have liked to do numbers again, there's another threat they need to focus on. So Sameen just shrugs and tells them. "That just mean we're going to waste less time saving people and spend more time finding Sue and then destroying it." She gives Harold a pointed, confident look. "So, you don't have to be worried about two A.I. running around in that big head of yours for too long."
"That sounds fun." John says with his usual smirk.
"I wouldn't be so certain that it will be a simple task to eliminate it." Harold deadpans at her.
She just grins at Harold, and John quips back. "I'm sure we'll make quick work of it with explosives, Harold."
"Plus, you already have a lead we can follow in your mind. That's a better start than my hunt for the collective."
"Now that we have said all of this, it's very likely that Sue has created plans to counter us." Harold deadpans.
That is logic she can't deny, but that will not stop her.
"Sounds like a fun challenge." Sameen replies with the utmost conviction.
"I aspire to have the same level of optimism and confidence as you for the task ahead." Harold mutters in slight disbelief.
"Don't be such a Debbie Downer Harold. We're going to save a lot of lives by destroying Sue, and what's the worst that can happen?" John pitches in.
Harold shakes his head and doesn't say anything in response. Either he doesn't want to argue a losing argument or is disappointed with both of them. Maybe it's a mix of both.
"Regardless, let's circle back to removing her new accessories before we get sidetracked again." Sameen glances at Harold. "I say no. We can't risk the bitch signaling her omniscient buddy for help and killing all of us."
"I have to agree with Shaw here, Harold." John gives his boss a sympathetic look. "It's too risky."
A look of defeat falls on Harold's face as he lets out a small sigh. "I hope you're correct, Miss Shaw."
They both shared a contentious look with each other before muttering. "I'm hoping I'm right too."
No one said anything after that. Everyone focused back on what they were doing, Harold on his phone in search of a place to put the two hatters, John doing whatever the fuck, her driving through the Colorado mountain range and the terrorist occasionally twitching throughout the drive.
When the sun is slowly setting behind them, a loud thud broke the silence in the car and from the rear-view mirror, she can see John looking off to his left.
"I think she's finally asleep." John smartly remarks when he sees Root's head resting on her door window.
"Check her pulse and make sure she isn't fucking with us." Sameen tells the man, as she is unable to tear her attention away from the busy city road.
"Steady but weak." Replies. "That's normal, right? I mean, she barely drank this morning and didn't eat anything."
Shit, that isn't the best…
"Do the skin test." She orders the former spook.
"Do I look like a doctor?" John comments sarcastically, with a slight worry on his face.
She rolls her eyes and instructs him. "Just pull the skin on the back of her hand and see the skin go back in place or stuck in place. Skin elasticity will tell you how hydrated a person is."
John gives a sharp nod, then does as instructed by crossing over the terrorist and replies after a second. "It's going down really slow."
"Fuck, I forgot about the altitude." Sameen mutters and glances at Harold, who looks slightly panicked by her reaction. "Find us a shitty motel near to a hospital."
Harold nods. "Since you wanted to avoid Denver, the next stop is Aurora."
That triggers a memory from Sameen. "The Anschutz campus."
"Yes, there's a number of motels that fit our criteria near the campus." Harold busily types into his phone. "There's one almost next to the campus and I've booked it."
"Good." Sameen nods and glances at John. "Check the bitch's pulse and skin."
John quickly removes the thick gloves and pulls Su's skin while checking her pulse at the same time.
"Skin isn't going down, and her pulse is slow and weak." John reports.
"Fuckidy fuck." Sameen mutters as she steps on the gas to get off the interstate.
"You can say that again, thinking about it. She hasn't been twitching for quite a while now…" John chimes in. "… how did I forget about altitude training?"
"There's no one the blame, we as a group, mishandle this situation." Harold says calmly, despite his usual state of horror for shitty situations. "Continue down this road and the motel will be on our right in a mile. I got us adjoining rooms and made a special request to unlock our room for us to use immediately."
That's unusual, especially after 9/11… "How did you manage that?"
"I paid 5x the price for our rooms." Harold answers dryly.
"Obviously." Sameen deadpans.
Following Harold's instructions that he got from their sketchy motel, they reach the really 'classic' looking motel and she drives right up to their room. Everyone gets out of the car, with Harold going to check on their room, leaving her and John to ferry out both women.
Seeing that Root is the heavier one, John's responsible for bringing her into the room and leaving her with the terrorist. Begrudgingly, she drags the woman from the middle seat and carries her out of the car…
Jesus, her expectation was low, but she's fucking light as a feather… adjusting her handling of the unconscious woman… She can't weigh more than 90 pounds, at least around 80–90 pounds and she's only a couple of inches taller than Sameen.
Sameen follows John as he casually carries Root towards the open door which, Harold being ever helpful, is holding the door for the two of them to enter with their respective nutcases.
There are two empty chairs that they deposit the nutcases, and she turns to look at both men.
"You go steal a dozen Ringer's Lactate solution or compound sodium lactate, it's just a different name for the same thing, with its accompanying tubings, a handful of 18, 20 and 22 gauge needles. And don't forget alcohol swabs." Sameen orders John, who nods and wordlessly exits the room to go to the hospital a few blocks away.
Her gaze then lands on Harold. "Go grab a bucket of ice and quickly come back, then you can go grab dinner for everyone."
"You don't require any assistance here?" Harold asks with a worried look etched into his face.
"No, but I am hungry, and I saw a pizza place not far from the road we came from. Get me something with lots of onions and jalapeno." Sameen informs him as she turns back to the women.
With that Harold goes away as he was told, and Sameen begins the motion to treat her patients. She quickly binds both women to the chair and proceeds to do a basic check up on them with the tools she has on hand right now. And they aren't in a good state, especially the bitch.
She barely acknowledged Harold when he came back with a bucket of ice and leaving again to get her pizza. Taking a few cubes of ice, she shoves into Root's mouth while she's unconscious and prays that it doesn't go down the wrong tube because she really doesn't want any extra work for herself. As much as she wants to do the same for the bitch, she knows it would be useless from yesterday experience.
It didn't take long before John comes back with the stuff she wants, and she quickly begin IV rehydration therapy for the both of them. Finding a vein on the bitch was a bit difficult but wasn't impossible.
After John helps her with setting up the IV, he asks. "Where's Finch?"
"Off getting pizza." She informs him as she checks on the IV drip rate.
"Damm, hope he gets BBQ chicken." John comments as he drops on to the bed and nudges his head to the nutcases. "How long for them to get rehydrated?"
"How heavy do you think Root is?" Sameen asks clinically.
John raises a brow, finding the question odd but answers anyway. "Give or take, 115-125 pounds."
Sameen nods. "Root's going to take around a bag and a half while the other is going to take a bag for the next 30 minutes before I check on their condition again. If everything's fine, then it's a slow drip for the next three to six hours, depending on their condition."
"Guess you'll take first watch, then." John smirks at her.
She looks at her clock that tells her it's eight-thirty o'clock and lets out a groan. "Fine…" Glancing at John, she asks. "How did you get the stuff in less than forty minutes?"
"The ER was busy, so they didn't look too deeply after I waved my badge and just grab the stuff from one of the unattended ambulance." John answers with a smile as he cracks a bottle of water and nods towards the nutcases. "Are they going to be alright?"
Just as she's about to answer John, Harold burst through the door with three large boxes of pizza balancing on one hand. Without any help, he closes the door behind him and places a pizza box onto the small table in front of her and John.
"Here's yours, as per request." Harold opens a box towards her and the aroma of delicious pizza wanders into her nostrils. She grins at the delicious slices as she takes a seat on the last empty chair.
Harold passes a box to John, who quickly opens, and smirks at the bringer of food. "You remembered."
The limping man just smiles in response as he puts the extra box on the desk near the TV, and turns around to answer the unasked question. "For our breakfast, that way we won't waste time looking for breakfast like this morning."
"Hey, it was the last Jersey Mike's for a hundred miles." John gives a weak protest as he bites into a slice.
She ain't going to argue with that. The sandwich was worth the time they wasted waiting around for the store to open.
"Cold pizza. Harold, you sure know how to seduce a woman with breakfast." Sameen smirks at Harold, who's taking a seat beside John before taking a slice.
Harold didn't have any reaction to her teasing and answers simply as she takes a bite of her delicious smelling pizza. "It wasn't my intention for that, but our rooms only have microwaves, and no proper New Yorker would ever reheat a pizza in a microwave.
She makes a face of disgust before answering John's earlier question. "They'll be fine, and I don't think there's going to be any long-term effects from the dehydration… not that I can think of from such. We just have to be more careful going forward."
"Thank goodness." Harold breathes a sigh of relief before taking another bite of his pizza.
She pensively looks at both women while eating her pizza before contemplating out loud. "You know, if I had a medical license, leaving a patient to get that dehydrated is considered malpractice."
"Good thing you aren't a doctor, then." John quickly quips with a shit-eating grin on him.
She unwittingly set up and steps right into that trap… "Ha. Ha." Sameen deadpans.
"I'm sure a licensed doctor would have forgotten about the change of altitude if they were in similar circumstances as us." Harold tries to placate her with a small smile.
She rolls her eyes at Harold and continues on from the topic she thoughtlessly brought up. "I think we shouldn't waste more time and get back to New York as fast as possible. Can't risk another accident with these two."
"Couldn't agree more." John comments with a satisfied look on him as he stuffs his face with another slice.
"We can reach New York within two days if we drive straight to St. Louis for some R&R, then direct to New York after that." Sameen elaborate as she finishes half of the pizza and closes the box.
Harold raises the brows up high. "A drive to St. Louis from here is a 13-hour trip without any stop and then to New York is another 15-hours. We'll reach New York in the middle of the night, and I don't believe a hospital will intake them at 3am in the morning."
The man has a point… "You got a funny farm lined up?"
Harold shakes his head as he wipes his hands. "Not yet. I've narrowed down to a few institutions in Westchester County and will do further checks on the prospectus. However, I completed the write up of their sentences and I just need to upload it into the system before institutionalizing them."
"Does the charges explain the bullet holes? Cuz that's going to be a hell of a time to explain them." She thumbs at the two women as she walks to wash her hands in the basin.
"Police officers had no choice but to open fire on both women as they were waving a pistol at me while having a mental breakdown." Harold causally recites what he wrote from memory.
Sameen snorts as she goes back to the nutcases. "That's the most American thing I've heard."
"You created covers for them already?" John asks as he takes a final slice and closes the box.
"No… not fully yet. I have the basic outline like they're both from Texas, maybe a small town not too far from where they're from, and I'm their uncle, but I haven't decided on names yet." Harold explains.
"Just use a North American bird name, like what you always use for your aliases, Uncle Finch." Sameen tosses a suggestion as she changes the IV bags for both women and performs the basic checks for dehydration.
Looks like Root is good, but her insane friend isn't yet. Another round of rapid infusion for the nutcase.
"Why I'm not surprised that you know that as well?" Harold deadpans while John raises both brows.
"Anyone with a brain would have seen the pattern with your names." She levels an unimpressed look at the both of them as she set the flow rates for the nutcases IV. That's when a thought accord to her.
"You didn't figure it out, did you?" She gives John a grin.
To his benefit, he doesn't look embarrassed in the slightest and responds. "Took me a few weeks to catch on." He smiles at her before turning his attention to Harold. "You're giving them a cover history that's similar to what actually happened in their past?"
Harold nods. "We can't brief them on their cover history and by having it similar to their past, that will help with their treatment rather than them constantly lying about it. However, we just don't know enough about their lives between them leaving Texas to now, so I'll just have to fill in the gaps as best I can."
"That's smart…" John nods as he wipes his hands and mouth on the napkins. "… I forgot about that."
She just nods in agreement as well as her mind is going through the mental route to reach New York from St. Louis as she takes a sit back opposite of the nutcases. That's when a location pops into her mind and she turns to the guys.
"Since we aren't going directly from St. Louis, then we can stop at Harrisburg…" Sameen lets out an unintended snort as she glances at limped terrorist. "… Ironic, that's going to be the last city she's 'free' before being locked up in a padded room."
A smirk creeps on John's face. "It's almost like poetry justice."
"Indeed…" Harold has a thoughtful look on him. "… let's just hope it could be permanent justice or the more likely scenario, a short one."
They really should have just killed one…
She shakes her head and heads towards the bathroom after grabbing her bag of clothes. "You ladies watch the nutcases while I go take a shower."
"They aren't going to piss themselves after getting this much water, aren't they?" John asks wearingly from behind her. "I mean, they last used the toilet almost 10 hours ago."
She rolls her eyes at the man's lack of basic medical knowledge.
"There are going to piss themselves in two or three hours." Sameen answers John before slamming the toilet door behind her.
After a nice warm bath, she comes out of the bathroom rubbing her damp hair with a towel and sees only John, who's still sitting in her room.
As she gets closer to the man, he speaks up. "Took you long enough."
"Yeah, fuck you too, buddy." She crosses to where John's sitting and takes a seat on her bed not too far away from John. "The nutcases are still dumb as rocks?"
John hums for a second before answering. "I think I saw Root's hand twitched a bit, but the other one is sleeping like a log."
"Sleeping?" She asks with a quirk of her brow. "You checked under her googles?"
"I'm surprised that you didn't." John shoots back with a grin.
She once again rolls her eyes at the man's assumptions. "You don't need to check her eyes for dehydration. Checking a person's eyes is to check for concussion."
"The more you know." He shines her his trademark smile. "Anyway, I was curious, so I checked and she's out cold. Literally and figuratively. You notice how low her body temperature is?"
"It's normal for dehydration to lower a person's body temperature." She answers with a clinical detachment. Not particularly caring too much about their health.
"They're both dehydrated, but Root's warmer than Su." John doesn't look convinced at her reasoning.
"Maybe the bitch is a lizard?" She shoots the shit as she takes a position by the headboard. "Explains how she beat Einstein over there in building a fucking A.I. by three years."
"Didn't peg you as a conspiracy theory type, Shaw." John comments mirthfully. "But all of your conspiracy revolves around her."
That's a label that's been thrown at her for years and despite not having the ability to feel much. She does feel annoyed being labeled that.
"The collective was just a conspiracy theory, right until a three weeks ago." Sameen deadpans.
"You've convinced me… she might be a lizard underneath that broken body of hers." John dryly says as he gets up. "Anyway, have fun with them and Harold has the 2nd shift."
Sameen already knows the answer but still can't help but asks. "He lost rock, paper, scissors?"
She has no idea who the fuck does he keep winning in that fucking children's game, but no matter how many times she tries, he keeps fucking winning. He must be cheating somehow…
"You bet he did." John grins at her as he saunters away.
She doesn't say anything as she watches the man exits the room by the adjoining door and doesn't close the door behind him.
Now that she's all alone with the two nutcases. Not having any books to read, she whips out her phone despite knowing the inherit risk of using it around the bitch, and starts reading on tactics of winning in rock, paper, scissors. Every thirty minutes, she checks on the nutcases' condition and finds that they're both on the road to recovering. Not that them being healthy is good for the world, but being the good guy is hard… and she will not hear the end of it from Harold if anything happens to them.
Letting out an enormous yawn, she then rubs her eyes and checks the time, only to see that it's almost midnight. Her eyes wonders to the open adjoining door where the guys are sleeping happily. The assholes are totally using her medical background against her. Not making Harold buy her coffee was a mistake when she went out an hour earlier to check if this subpar motel has a vending machine and unfortunately for her there were none. Her eyes wander back to the article on her phone.
Long has she abandoned reading about the tactics of beating someone in a childish game and since been doing some light research on the mysterious company that's hosting Sue. Sure, Harold said he has some idea, but he's been occupied with nut and nutter over there and she's bored. She knows sure as hell that the evil A.I. is tracking every move she makes, but there's no way of going around an omniscient A.I.
Her musing was cut short when she noticed movement in the periphery of her vision. Huh… thought she would be out longer. It's only been an hour or so since she stopped receiving IV therapy.
There isn't much of a hurry to get out of bed as the person who just woke is as slow as a sloth. By the time she's bending down to a wide, empty eyed Root, she can't help but find the irony of them switching role from the first time they met.
"You sure are dumb… what do you think would happen when you barely drink water?" Sameen says to the catatonic as she checks on her vitals.
Root doesn't say anything in return. Not that she expects her to say anything, anyway. She's long since thrown out the idea that they're fooling everyone by acting as invalids by how broken their minds are.
After confirming Root is as okay as someone like her can be, Sameen takes a seat on the coffee table that's between the two nutcases. Root's mouth slowly opens and closes itself like she's trying to talk or gasping for air.
"You turned out to be such a disappointment. What happened to that woman that tried to kill me a day after my life got upended?" Sameen leans closer to the catatonic woman. "There was an inferno that drove you and now it's gone. You didn't give a shit who you had to trample to get what you were after and there I thought I found someone like me."
"Take a look at yourself." Sameen jabs Root's cheek roughly. "You're nothing but a pathetic woman that was chasing after a fantasy and broke the moment you didn't get what you want."
Root didn't respond, which was to be expected, but the woman did something unexpected. Her eyes slowly move in a snail's paces away from Sameen and lands on the terrorist bitch before a small, strangled sound escapes from her mouth.
Root recognizes that bitch? That's a first since Washington… looks like she's slowly getting back brain cells.
"Yeah, despite my better judgement, the bitch is still alive." Sameen answers the unsaid question.
That seems to illicit a reaction from Root as her eyes slowly drift away from Su and back to Sameen, but she isn't looking at her. Root's looking at the holstered pistol on Sameen's side.
Huh… Root understands what she's saying and her surrounding context.
"You recognize this, don't you?" Sameen brings out her pistol and waves in front of Root. "You have no idea how simpler shit would be if I just pop one into you and your friend's head. At least I wouldn't be playing nursemaids to two insane murders anymore."
She doesn't acknowledge a single thing Sameen said and her eyes continue to track Sameen's pistol.
An idea pop into her head, so she stops waving the pistol around and points the pistol at nutcase prime.
"I would be doing a service to the world by killing her now." Sameen tells the catatonic woman. "Just a squeeze of the trigger and a blight on the world would be removed. I'm sure you wouldn't disagree."
Before she could pretend to squeeze the trigger, Root makes as loud of a noise she could have and slowly leans forward with her hand trying to reach for Sameen's pistol at a sloth's pace.
That's exactly the reaction she thought Root would have…
"Despite everything, Harold has told us about you two." She turns and points her pistol near to Root's forehead. "Deep down in that fucked up head of yours, you still care for her?"
Root presses her head onto the tip of the pistol and looks dead into Sameen's eyes.
She stares dumbfoundedly at the checked-out woman before visibly recoiling her hand and dropping her arm. Sameen can't help but scowl at Root, who continues to look deep into her eyes.
What the fuck was that? Did she offer herself as a sacrifice to save the other one's life or did she genuinely wanted Sameen to blow her brains out?
Either way, she'll have to tell Harold in the morning to add another thing into that fucked up bucket of mental problem Root has.
Sameen doesn't even know why she had such a visceral reaction to Root wanting to kill herself via Sameen. It's not like she hasn't witnessed someone offing themselves and she always had the same muted reaction to such events. And she never had a problem with threatening someone's life before.
It must be the fatigue catching up to her… fucking John, lumping her onto the first watch because she's the only woman here with active brain cells. She isn't going to do this again tomorrow.
Holstering away her pistol, she stands up and grabs Root by her shoulder, causing the woman to whine softly, as if she doesn't want her to put away the pistol. Fucking messed up woman.
"Let's get you to the toilet before you piss yourself." Sameen pulls her up, causing the woman to whine slightly louder, which is still barely a whisper.
However, Sameen notices Root pushing herself backwards in protest and her eyes linger on the terrorist.
"Don't worry… she'll still be here when we come back." Sameen surprised herself by how softly she said those words. "In fact, I gotta bring her to the toilet later, so don't worry about her."
As though Root understood what she just said, she stopped her worthless protests and followed her lead towards the toilet while Sameen grumbled. "Now I gotta figure out how the fuck to make the other nutcase relief herself without a catheter."
Maybe threatening her again might work… unless the bitch is still out cold…
Argh. When did her life go so wrong?
This is the last night they're going to spend in a motel before getting back to New York and Harold had the bright idea while he was driving a few hours ago to potentially make this their last night on this earth.
"This is actually insane." Sameen deadpans at John.
Who just shrugs as they both look at Harold, removing the terrorist's head accessories.
"There's nothing in the world that can stop the man when he's determined to do it." He gives her a sympathetic look.
They all argued with one another for a few hours when Harold suggested this stupid, insane plan and to top it off, she was riding on the backseat with the nutcases at that time. John clearly had reservations about what Harold planned and made it perfectly clear to his -her future boss, it's a tossup now- boss earlier.
She on the hand almost ringed the man's neck from behind, but sadly that would have resulted in a car crash, and she isn't going to explain to the cops on why they had a GITMO prisoner in the backseat.
Once Harold removes the bitch's mouth gag, earcups, and the blacked-out goggles. He takes a step back like the deranged woman would instantly jump out at him.
The terroristic bitch is now sitting on a shitty motel chair with all of her appendages bind to it and she's still wearing the same pinkish dress as she was wearing 5 days ago since no one cared enough to change it, seeing that she wasn't stinking up. Can't fucking imagine if all of this happening during the summer, she might have just killed everyone out of annoyance.
Harold takes a seat opposite of the terrorist and begin his wait as he looks into those open dead, empty eyes that's totally oblivious to the world around her. While Root is sitting on the floor by the radiator, staring at the entire scene with a thousand-yard stare and unmoving ever since they dump her there.
"How long do you think it's going to take for her to come back to the land of the living?" John asks her rather softly.
Since the two nutcases brush with dehydration two days ago, she's been regularly giving them IV fluids and shoving meal replacement shakes down their throat. Root initially put up some protest, but stopped when they give her the strawberry flavor shakes and has been willingly drinking ever since. Meanwhile, Su has been out of it for every meal and been a bitch to pour it down the correct tube without using a nose tube.
At least, the bitch is getting some nutrients other than the IV fluids, because Sameen is pretty sure the bitch would go into catabolysis after the second night and there is pretty much no fat on that body.
"Depends…" Sameen mutters.
Ever since Colorado, the bitch's spasms hasn't been a frequent event, but still there's no pattern to when she woke up to spasm. The last spasm she had was roughly an hour ago.
"It could be anywhere from an hour to a few hours." Sameen guesses out loud for John.
The man lets out a grunt and gets up from the bed beside her. "I'm going to make coffee for us."
Amazing that he's actually doing something useful for a change and smart of him, seeing that it's fucking an hour before midnight. As bad as instant motel coffee is, at least it's something.
"Green tea, please." Harold says from his seated position.
"I don't think they even carry tea here, Harold." John quips back with a slight smile.
Sameen rolls her eyes at the two men before her focus lands on Harold. "I don't get it…" Sameen begins with a shake of the head. "You really want to ask her for her consent to be thrown into the funny farm?"
That's a question she's been asking herself ever since Harold's dumbass proclamation earlier.
Harold shifts his body, so he's facing her and replies flatly. "It's the correct thing to do."
"Fuck correctness." Sameen bites back. "It's one thing to just dump them in the hospital while their brains aren't here, but it's another thing to ask her if she's willing to go to one."
"If we ask for her cooperation and permission, then she'll have fewer reasons to leave the facility when Miss Groves finally comes out of her catatonia." Harold argues back with conviction in his voice.
She's not under any illusion that the bitch won't escape the moment both of them gain the ability to think again, seeing that the hospital is a minimal security institution. And if she does do that, that's an excuse for Sameen to put another bullet into the bitch and the next time it won't be in the shoulder.
"I still think you're being wishful about this." Sameen backs down, knowing full well how stubborn the man can get when it comes to the irrational.
"It's better to try and hope for the best than not doing anything." Harold gives her a pointed look before turning back towards Su.
With nothing else better to do until the bitch wakes up, Sameen takes out her pistol and starts dismantling it so she can clean it.
"Do you really have to do it on the bed?" John comments with his usual flat tone as he puts a cup of coffee on the bedside table.
"You got a better place in mind?" Sameen asks with little interest and didn't bother to look up.
"Anywhere is better than on the sheets." John chides at her as he puts a hot cup of coffee for Harold, who looks warily into the cup. "We aren't going to get back our deposit now."
That reasoning causes her to pause, and she deadpans at the man. "We never collect the deposits and just leave the key in the room for every motel in the past five days."
"It's the thought that count." John gives her a mouth splitting grin.
"We won't be getting back the deposit after I blow your guts out." Sameen bites back at the man and continues to clean her gun.
John just chuckles at her response as he takes back his seat on her bed and sips his cup of coffee.
A few hours pass in comfortable silence with everyone doing their own thing, Sameen with her gun, John juggling grenades for some odd reason, and Harold just staring at the terrorist with a contemplative look on him.
When she saw movement in the edge of her eyesight, she quickly went on alert and resembled her pistol. She can see John becoming tense as she shifts her body towards the threat.
The woman blinks those ember eyes multiple times for almost a minute, as if she just got hit by a bright source of light. She then stops blinking and squints her eyes like she's trying to focus on what's in front of her before quickly heads quickly darts around searching for something. Only to stop when her eyes lands on the catatonic woman on the floor.
The bitch opens her mouth and closes it again before swallowing a spit, seeing as she barely drank any water other than those meal shakes for the past two days, her throat must be drier than Nevada.
"Miss Frey?" Harold tries to pull the bitch's attention as he leans forward towards her, which causes John to be especially nervous by the man's action despite the bitch's inability to move any of her appendages.
"What's wrong with her?" The woman's voice sounds rougher than sandpaper after a minute of silence.
That's when the sound of high pitch beeping starts… the same high pitch beeping back when this bitch first woke up. Unless two completely different motels on a different side of the continent have the same problem, then it's not coincidental.
Let's just wait and see…
Interesting that the first thing both women do when they regained some consciousness is to check on each other.
"It appears that she's experienced some form of catatonia from the shock of what happened in that nuclear facility." Harold explains with a sympathetic voice.
The woman didn't look at Harold when she replies. "I wasn't talking to you."
She can see Harold's frowns and is about to respond when everything clicks for her.
"It's talking to her right now." Sameen cuts Harold off as she comes to a conclusion.
Harold turns to look at her with slight worry on his face as he understands what she's implying. "We made sure to remove any means of communication from her."
That fucking high pitch beeping hasn't stop since the bitch woke up.
"You can't hear it, can you?" Sameen asks causing both men to look at her with some confusion.
Her eyes dart around the room to see where the source of the sounds is coming from, as she explains. "There's a high pitch beeping sound coming…"
Sameen speech comes to an abrupt halt when her search lands on herself, more specifically lands on the content in her pocket.
"… It's our phones." Sameen comes to a conclusion as she takes out her phone where indeed the sound is coming from.
"What are you talking about, Miss Shaw? There's no sound." Harold takes out his phone in confusion, with John doing the same.
They can't hear it, but she can hear this beeping… "High frequency sound." She mutters as she quickly shuts down her cellphone and then looks at Harold. "She's communicating with that A.I. using our phones."
Harold, seemingly having connected the dots, has a look of horror on him before him and John turning off their phones.
All the while, the terrorist doesn't seem to be bothered by everyone's action and just stares at Root with a blank look on her.
Now that everyone turned off their phone, the beeping stops, and the bitch doesn't seem to care that they thwarted whatever thing she must have planned.
"What did you hear?" John asks her with a frown on him.
She shakes her head while she tightens her grip on her pistol and glances at the woman. "I don't know, it was just random beeps similar to the ones I heard three nights ago. Must be coded since I couldn't make sense of it."
To Sameen, she believes that the bitch couldn't have instructed her evil A.I. to do anything unless her question is some kind of code phrase, which isn't farfetched.
Harold looks downright horrified as he turns back to the woman that isn't paying attention. "What did you tell it to do?"
Su just ignores Harold's questions as her gaze hasn't moved away from Root, like everything else around her wasn't important. Which irks Sameen to no end… It's like she isn't taking them seriously.
The woman doesn't say a word for a solid two minutes before a hoarse whisper. "You didn't stop having your way with me just for fun…"
She raises a brow at that, but both men instantly recoil by that allegation with a look of disgust and Harold cut in. "We didn't do…"
The woman completely ignores Harold and continues on. "So, what do you want?"
Harold pushes his chair closer to the woman, causing her to lean back slightly and says in a kind voice. "Firstly, we only performed medical aid and general cleanliness while you were… asleep."
Sameen can't help but silently scoff at what Harold is trying to do.
God… why is he making it worse? Does he think someone like her would want to hear something like that? They basically caused the woman to go into some kind of panic attack every few hours for the past three days. Like hell, she would believe any single platitude or sympathy any of them would try to give.
The woman still isn't looking at Harold, deadpans. "Uhuh, sure you did."
Harold turns to her, looking for an answer, but she just shrugs. The fuck was she supposed to do? Say women solidarity? The bitch doesn't even look at the world the same as everyone else and especially not the same as her.
The man's shoulders dip slightly before turning back to the woman and continuing. "Miss Frey, we are not equipped nor are trained to handle what is wrong with you and Miss Groves."
"Her name is Root." Su comments lifelessly as she just stares at the catatonic woman.
Harold takes in a sharp breath and says. "Nonetheless… the reason why we removed your bindings is so we can seek your cooperation."
"Why would I ever cooperate with you?" Su replies after a few seconds with a dead voice, completely different from that deranged voice she had a few days ago.
This can either be a trick like the one she pulled on John or the three days of covering all of her sense really fucked her up. She'll be sticking with it's a trick until proven otherwise.
"Because it's in the best interest of your friend that you and she be admitted into a mental health institution." Harold's voice might sound soft right now, but there's a tinge of hardness in it.
That seems to break whatever trance the bitch was in as she turns her attention from Root to Harold.
Gone is that piercing look in her eyes from a few days ago and is replaced with a rather dull one, which Sameen doesn't buy in the slightest. The bitch is sure a talented actress, she'll give her that.
"You're really asking me if I want to go to the madhouse? Willingly?" She asks with slight amusement in her coarse voice.
"Yes." Harold gives a straightforward answer.
The woman raises her brows. "You think we belong in those horrid places?"
Well, at least they all now know she hates the nuthouse. Really should have made a bet on whether the bitch is going to reject or accept because she would have made money.
She then continues with a rather soft tone. "There's nothing wrong with her… there's nothing wrong with us… there's nothing wrong with me."
Guess the adage of insane people not knowing that they're insane is true.
Harold gives the woman a hard look. "I'm sorry, but there is something fundamentally wrong with the both of you. And yes, you both belong in a mental health hospital… because there's no other place that can help your friend in her current condition, and we don't know how long this affliction of hers will last."
The woman doesn't say anything which Harold takes it as his chance to continue. "She's unable to do anything by herself. You were unable to do anything by yourself."
The woman's eyes narrow at Harold's last sentence, but Harold continues on. "Putting her anywhere other than a psychiatric hospital will eventually result in her death."
"Are you saying that I can't take care of her?" The woman softly rebuts.
Harold shakes his head. "You're not in a better position, Miss Frey. In fact, your condition is far worse than hers. Have ever gotten yourself treated for your underlying condition that caused you to… to pass out? Who's to say that something like this won't happen again, but at that time, you might be caring for Miss Groves? Being placed in a secure hospital will ensure your wellbeing and the wellbeing of Miss Groves."
The bitch just gives Harold an impassive stare at what Harold is proposing. It's almost like she's bored. "So, you're asking me if I want to be locked up?"
Harold just nods in confirmation of their plan of imprisoning the bitch in a hospital. She can feel the air in the room becoming denser as the seconds ticks by to become minutes with the woman just sits silently in front of Harold, who's bluster is gone and increasingly looks nervous.
He fucking blew it, didn't he?
Why did Harold have to take that crappy angle? Can't he see that the woman only understands strength and not sentimentality? The bitch basically showed she didn't have any attachment to the people that raised her the last time they talk. Why would she care about Root? This is all an act.
After the three-minute mark, Harold looks away from the unmoving woman and towards both of them. John just gives his boss a tense shrug with his hand on his holster and Sameen just gives a shit-eating grin that says, 'told you so'.
Harold, not finding the support he was looking for, turns back to the bitch with the expression of a stone wall.
After the fifth minute, Sameen can't help but wonder if she's even conscious right now. Did her brain decide to take a vacation right now?
Fucking rude.
Harold uncharacteristically and unconsciously twitches from the nervousness he's being subjected to finally speaks up after the sixth minute passes. "Miss Frey?"
That's when suddenly a flash of high pitch beeps enters her ears causing her to instantly stand up with her gun pointing at the bitch who doesn't even care at the sight of the gun.
Where the fuck is the sound coming from? The TV? Shit isn't even working.
"What the fuck was that?" Sameen demands, causing both men to stare at her with slight shock.
"Miss Shaw…" Harold raises his hands as he tries to deescalate, but she ignores his intentions as the beep continues.
"Hal 200 is fucking talking to her right now." Sameen takes a step forward towards the utterly unmoving woman as the sounds continue in the background. That's when Sameen notices the emergency speaker at the edge of the room. How the fuck is the A.I. using that? It should be an isolated system, and it's a fucking miracle that it's still working with how disheveled this motel is.
Harold seemingly trying to regain control over the situation, gets up to get between Sameen and the threat. "Miss Frey…"
Suddenly the sound stops, and the bitch turns her head away from them, landing back at Root.
Something is going to fucking happen. Her eyes dart to the window in anticipation and she can feel John standing behind her, ready for anything to come.
A soft voice slices through all of them. "Okay."
That single word smashed whatever tension that was built up in the room, causing the three of them to snap their attention back at the woman who seemingly lost to the world around her as she just stares at her friend.
What the fuck?
"What?" Harold eloquently asks the question that's in everyone's mind.
The woman didn't move her gaze away from Root and just say. "I said okay… you really should clean your ear."
Harold looks a bit loss like he didn't expect this outcome and asks again. "You're agreeing to cooperate with us and be sent to a mental institution?"
The woman doesn't even look annoyed by Harold's continual disbelief and answers. "What form of 'okay' are you not understanding?"
"I-I… just had the belief that you would be against being placed in a mental institution." Harold takes a tentative step closer to the woman, who still recoils at his closeness.
The bitch gives a listless shrug as she replies. "Always wondered what it's like being inside and I want to see what the defect saw in there."
The defect? Who's that? Root? Someone in her past?
She didn't finish that train of thought when Harold looked back at Sameen with a triumphal, smug look at him. God, she really wants to take away the man's glasses from him.
Sameen flicks the man off, causing the man to turn his attention back to nutcase prime.
"Thank you…" Harold begins before stopping like he didn't plan this to go the way it went. "… I have prepared an identity for you when we…"
Harold stops talking when it's extremely clear that Su isn't paying attention to a single word of what the man is saying.
That's when Sameen takes a step forward and standing beside Harold facing the woman. "That's it? You're agreeing to go to the funny farm, and you don't even know what that entitles."
"How is it so hard for you pest to grapple that I said okay?" The bitch says listlessly but there's an undercurrent of annoyance.
"Oh, sorry for not believing a word you say." Sameen puts her hands on her hips with one hand still on her pistol. "What did your A.I. said to you? How do we know you won't use your A.I. to escape once we leave?"
The bitch finally turns away from Root and towards Sameen with a bored look on her. "I don't need Sue to escape any pathetic place you're putting me in and If Root's there I'll be as well."
She's planning something that's gotta be it.
"How do we know you won't plan another attack from inside the loony bin?" Sameen asks pointedly at the woman.
"You won't." She answers back in a dead tone.
Sameen felt a pang of anger courses through her as she shoots a glare at the bitch.
They just stare at each other for a few seconds before Su says with slight amusement in her listless voice. "You really want to kill me, don't you?"
"It crossed my mind a few times, especially when you were relieving yourself." Sameen deadpans.
Su looks away from Sameen with what she can only call embarrassment and gazes back at Root before saying. "Just so you know… if I die, that will trigger Sue to proceed with the contingency plan."
She can feel John tensing with her, tightening the grip of her pistol while Harold asks. "Contingency?"
"The moment I die, I will drag the western world back to the stone age with me." She turns her gaze away from Root and back at them. It's no longer that dull look in her eyes, but the deranged one, like what she saw a few days ago. "Every power plant and substation that's connected to a grid in North American, and Europe will self-emulate itself. Plunging the richest countries in the world and a billion people into darkness."
Huh… She's a crackpot, that's for sure.
Those words seem so outlandish out there and insane that she can't help but not believe them, but she can't say the same to Harold, who has a look of perpetual horror on him.
"That will ensure the deaths of countless people…" Harold seems so lost in horror as he continues. "… The chaos it will bring would be unimaginable."
"Nah… I can clearly picture it." The madwoman replies carelessly.
Sameen takes a step closer to the woman and says flatly. "You're bluffing."
The madwoman just raises a brow and stares directly at Sameen as she says with a ghost of a smile on her. "You want to test that hypothesis? Be my guest. I prefer to live but I'm not afraid of dying, and it wouldn't be my first rodeo."
Sameen just stares blankly at the madwoman, who in turn does the same.
Great… another suicidal person. First, it's Root, now it's this… These two really are two peas in a pod.
Also, what the hell does she mean it's not her first rodeo? Is she referencing to when she got kidnapped? John did say that there was a lot of blood and it's surprising that she survived. That night must really have fucked her up badly.
"How would that even be possible? The number of resources needed to pull something like this off concurrently throughout multiple grids is unheard of." Harold, no longer in a state of shock, asks with some curiosity. However, it isn't just his nerdish curiosity. She can see what he's trying to pull on the woman.
Su turns her rather bored eyes to Harold and answers with a slightly smug tone. "Everything is connected to a centralized server these days. Even the smallest substation has fiber going to it for monitoring and software updates. Sue had more than a decade to get into every system in the country, in the world… And do you honestly think these power operators have been keeping up with their security updates? Not that any security update matters when it comes to Sue doing her job. All she needs to do is just to send out one command and everything will come tumbling down."
Somehow, the madwoman's rant kicked a dormant memory in Sameen's brain that's been buried for years. She remembers in some shitty stake out during her training days with that asshole Hersh and he was talking about how vulnerable the country is to an attack on the power infrastructure because most of it hasn't been updated since the late 90s. That was such a weird ass unprompted one-sided conversation that Hersh had with her. It was like the man had been holding it in him for years and only then vomited it all out for her to see. He even fucking smiled at her and saying it was a good talk. Such a weird fucking night… did it have something to do with his former job? She tried to look into the man's background but shit's more redacted than the CIA's file on RFK.
That shit isn't important now, but it does give her context on what this bitch is saying and if it freaked Hersh out, that means what she's saying has some credence.
Well, this kinda sucks… she can't kill her now… Not like Harold would let her do it in the first place, anyway.
"Why…" Harold seemingly understands the magnitude of what the madwoman is saying has a deep frown on him. "… Why would you plan such an unspeakable act?"
The madwoman has the same look as three days ago when she was blabbering on about her madness. "Thought it would be funny… Have you ever wondered how fast it would take for all these civilized people to turn into savages? Would be interesting to see."
"You would be dead, so you can't see it, idiot." Sameen replies flatly at that dumb as fuck answer.
Su has a sly smile on her as she stares at Sameen. "So true… I should trigger now then, that way I can see it happen."
Before Sameen can reply, Harold speaks up. "You have such a dim view of humanity… Do you actually believe that will happen?"
Sameen gives Harold a dead eyed stare for his dumbass statement and question. From her previous statements, the madwoman literally view humans as nothing more than tools and pests. It isn't hard to comprehend her disdain for humanity.
"And you don't?" Su gives Harold a look of slight amusement before continuing. "Did you really not see what your little machine saw before you gave it to the government, of all people? Were you so blind to the horrors that go on every day while everyone continues on with their day without a care in the world?"
"Yeah, and you fucking did those horrors." Sameen mutters under her breath, which made the madwoman to shoot her a smile that Sameen really wants to punch but doesn't say anything.
Harold gave pause for a few seconds before responding. "No… humans are capable of horrifying actions, humans like yourself, but most people are not like you. Most people are kind and compassionate. Your final act of destruction won't break civilization, it will just be a painful but temporary trip and it won't break people."
The madwoman just scoffs with amusement but still has that bored expression on her as she eyes Harold. "Oh, you sweet poor soul, you have so much optimism in such a small package."
… Did she not notice that Harold was taller than her?
Harold was about to retort when Sameen cuts in. "Can we not have a philosophical debate in a shitty motel room with looney tunes over here?"
She then thumbs at the madwoman, who has a look of confusion when she asks. "Looney tunes? What's that?"
"Are you fucking serious?" Sameen deadpans at the woman. She must be trying to be annoying like last time.
The madwoman has an honest to God genuine -well, she can't be certain if it's actually genuine- look of confusion on her when she says. "What?"
"You didn't watch cartoons when you're a kid?" John finally speaks up from behind her.
"Who watches cartoons when they were a child?" The madwoman asks back in confusion.
That's weird as fuck… discounting the events surrounding her kidnaping, no wonder she's fucked up.
"It doesn't matter." Sameen mutters as she takes Harold's seat, that's been vacated for a while now. Interestingly, the madwoman doesn't recoil when Sameen went closer to her… guess she only had difficulties with males in the past.
"You're the one that brought it up." The madwoman tilts her head slightly.
"What did your evil A.I. say to you before this?" Sameen asks the woman as she looks into her eyes.
"Evil?" Su snorts in front of Sameen, causing the woman to cough slightly before continuing. "She's not evil. She's downright sweet most of the time."
Sameen rolls her eyes in annoyance and rephrases her question. "What did your A.I. say to you before you spontaneously agree to cooperate?"
The madwoman's eyes drifts away from Sameen and hums. "Nothing interesting, just the usual thing she always says when I have these… hiccups."
Removing her sense turns her into an invalid. And she just calls it a hiccup? Fucking delusional…
"Your A.I. told you to be institutionalized?" Harold asks with slight disbelief coloring his tone.
"She didn't tell me to do anything." The madwoman all but snapped at Harold. "Sue merely lists out recommendations, some of which are just repeats of past recommendations for me to consider, and I made my decision."
Seems like questioning her freedom of choice is a sore spot for her.
"Moving on." Sameen says loudly to get back to topic. "Pauling and Milk…"
"What of them?" Sue cuts Sameen off before she can finish her sentence.
That's awfully defensive of her… looks like there are people other than Root she cares for.
"Tell me everything about them and how to find them…" Sameen says lowly and thumbs towards Root. "… or I'll hurt your pretty friend over there and make it so people can't stand the sight of her."
Both John and Harold take a tense step towards Sameen, as four-eyes say. "Miss Shaw…"
"You think she's pretty?" The madwoman asks with a quirk brow and a smile, seemingly oblivious to the threat Sameen just made as she continues. "You know when we're kids, she's the ugly duckling…"
"You're wasting time." Sameen impatiently cuts her off.
"I like to banter, and since you want information, you'll just listen to whatever I want to say." She gives Sameen a Cheshire grin before turning to Root, and a nostalgic expression falls on her as she continues with her previous conversation. "We were practically attached by the hip, and she'll just listen to what I have to say without a single doubt in her mind. Now… I wonder if the reason that man chose me is due to that uncontrollable fact of genetics."
The woman stops talking as she just stares at Root with a look that's hard for her to describe, and a pregnant silence falls into the small motel room.
Besides her, she can feel both men finding the turn of conversation to be awkward, and she doesn't like it one bit. So, it's up to her to break the ice…
"And now look at you… When was the last time you looked in a mirror? You look like you just came out of a concentration camp." Sameen says with a rather harsh tone, causing the woman to snap her attention back to Sameen with a look of interest. "And I'm not here to listen to whatever trauma you have. You can dump that piece of luggage on your psych when we dump you at the hospital."
The madwoman stares at her for a solid ten seconds before snorting and gives her a creepy smile. "I really wanted to cut you up into little pieces for hurting Root, but you're amusing, so I might not expunge you yet… and I wasn't traumatized by that man."
"Uhuh, sure." Sameen instantly deadpans. "Get on with it."
"For a sociopath, you sure are impatient." The madwoman chides at Sameen, seemingly to have regained chirpiness from a few days ago despite her course sounding voice.
She can banter back and being pedantic on how that isn't the correct diagnosis, but she really doesn't to fall into this insane woman's trap.
"Good thing sociopathy doesn't affect that aspect of the brain." Sameen replies flatly. "Now tell me how to find your other terrorist friends."
The madwoman lets out a dramatic sigh and says. "Why do you keep thinking Pauling has anything to do with being a so called 'terrorist'?" The woman awkwardly makes a quotation mark with her bound and gloved hands.
"How can she not be if she's the front for your fucking terrorist organization?" Sameen rebuked the madwoman's claim. Repeating the same argument they had a few days ago.
"One, the collective isn't what you describe. We're a proud consultancy service provider for those who are too dumb to do things themselves." The madwoman lectures at Sameen with slight annoyance rather than amusement. "And two, if we take your rather meaningless definition of a terrorist, Pauling doesn't fit the criteria."
"For fuck's sake, answer the question rather than give us this useless monologue." Sameen flatly says.
The madwoman rolls her eyes and mutters under her breath, 'impatient woman.' Before elaborating. "Her calendar is already full without her being involved in my hobby of playing with Northern Lights… The poor girl doesn't even take a day off for herself for the entire time I've known her, and the company has unlimited days off policy! Sure, sometimes we go on vacation to some island in the Pacific or the Caribbean and recently the Mediterranean, but there's always a job to get rid of some pests while we're there."
The woman makes a sour face when she tried to dramatically move her bound hands.
She is still skeptical of her claim… she'll just have to verify it after dumping this woman into the funny farm.
Sameen deadpans at the madwoman. "Fine. How about Milk?"
The woman just gives an uncaring shrug and answers. "You already found her."
…
Huh… given what Harold told her about what Elias said, it made sense.
"But… Milk started doing work for the mob in 1991,92…" Harold says with a horror-struck voice.
"A girl gotta make a living somehow." The madwoman replies nonchalantly.
"But you just experienced… and by killing people when you're fourteen?" Harold asks rhetorically in disgust.
"By providing consultancy services to willing customers at the market price. And why can't a fourteen-year-old not do that? You should gatekeep, Harold." The madwoman says pointedly to Harold and actively ignoring what Harold was implying.
"How the fuck does a 14-year-old from the middle of nowhere know what criminals want?" Sameen can't help but ask.
The madwoman looks at Sameen like she just asked the stupidest question ever before answering. "Criminals are just humans and humans aren't hard to figure out. They're greedy little demons that can't see beyond the next payday."
"You were 16 when you did the Kansas City Massacre?" Harold whispers in slight shock.
Right… Harold did mention about that event when he was telling them about Milk and that Milk killed a mobster family that was working with the feds along with his family and protection detail. Sameen felt slight anger knowing that she killed more kids when she was younger, but it wasn't the raw anger she felt when it comes to the kids that died in that damn flight.
Maybe the bitch had it right about her… the only reason why she's felt that anger towards the Su was because Sameen's own failure to stop that flight from going down and nothing more. Not for the loss of innocent life… but her own inability to accept failure… That fucking Dr. Fredrick was fucking right all along… fucking annoying asshole.
This is so fucking annoying…
And as much as she doesn't want to praise this madwoman, there's no denying that she had a fucking wild teenage life. Compared to this woman's, her own teenage years were fucking dull.
"Kansas City Massacre?" The madwoman turns to Harold with a look like she's lost.
"1993, you murdered seven people, including two children, a toddler and a child that wouldn't be that much younger than yourself at that time." Harold quickly explains with a grim tone and Sameen can see the man's jaw tighten.
This might be the first time she sees four-eyes actually getting angry… fucking finally.
"Did I?" The madwoman says with no malice in her voice or at least what Sameen perceived as such. "I honestly don't remember with how busy I was in those early years, running around here and there to get money. Probably had business in Kansas City that year, but I probably went to every major city in the country in that year."
The clear detachment in the way she's explaining is like someone forgetting about a report that was filed decades ago, tells Sameen that she legitimately forgot about the event, that defined the mob view about her.
And by the look on Harold's face, the man came to the same conclusion as her. Harold lets out a tired sigh and adjusts his glasses while thinking of something.
"But with your talents in programming, you could have worked anywhere or even create your own business." Harold shifts the focus on the fact that she murdered a ton of people while in her tweens and says with a softer tone.
The woman lets out a hearty snort and replies with a mocking tone. "Oh, why didn't I, a 14-year-old girl in 1991 from the ass-end of nowhere with no documents, think of working at IFT or Microsoft? Clearly, they would have opened their arms for me to join them."
Wait… she clearly says she doesn't believe in social construct and money is a social construct. Why was she being such a busy little bee collecting money from every mob family that's running from the feds?
It can either be her being hypocritical like a number of her previous statements, or she had a plan way back then involving a certain evil A.I. and she has no idea which one would be true. Good thing the madwoman seems to be in a mood to answer questions.
"You didn't have to result in becoming a criminal and a murderer." Harold presses forward with a rather sad tone.
Is Harold being sad on the madwoman's behalf? Seriously?
The madwoman levels Harold a look that's hard to describe. "Sometimes working outside the confines of your laws is the only way to live…" Her gaze shifts to Root. "… it's the same thing for her…" Her tone is rather odd that's hard to decipher before turning back to Harold with a slight grin. "And it doesn't hurt that this line of work is fun… well until it wasn't."
"Is everything you do just for your own bemusement?" Harold asks with a hard tone.
The madwoman doesn't bat an eye as she replies. "What's the point of living in a dull and bleak life? So, I decided early on to live a happy life to the fullest until I can't anymore."
Can't anymore? What does that mean?
But that isn't the problem with what she said…
"And your form of fun is wholesale murder of innocent, helpless people?" Sameen levels an icy stare at the madwoman.
The madwoman just shrugs. "Snuffing the life out of those people you describe isn't that fun. They're just a byproduct of the job, and later, my little rump with Northern Lights."
Guess in that fucked up head of hers that the death of kids and innocents are just part of the business
"You sure you, you're not a psychopath? Because you sure sound like one." Sameen deadpans.
"I have emotions, so… duh, I'm not a psychopath." The madwoman replies dully.
"Why did you need money so bad? That's a social contract, or was that just another bullshit you spew?" Sameen asks flatly.
"Well… I really don't want to farm, and those people believe in money, so…" She shrugs. "… I can't control what other believes."
That's a non-answer if she's ever heard of one. She must be avoiding statements that might lead to questions about her A.I.
"Did you plan on building Sue that early on?" That seems to catch the madwoman's curiosity. "I'm sure you made a lot of money per job. You didn't have do so many jobs just to eat."
The madwoman chuckles and replies in faux offense. "I'm not a lazy bum." Her expression morphs to amusement. "What part of doing things I find fun you don't get? Hunting down those pests was the best part of the job, especially when they see it coming at the last moment. The money was just a bonus, plus I love seeing those idiots squirm at the amount I was charging."
Well... that explains a lot.
"Great, you're not a psychopath, just a rather fucked-up sadist." Sameen comments dryly, to which the madwoman smiles at her with a rather gleeful look.
"I wouldn't say I'm a sadist in the sense of the word, but I do enjoy playing around with victims when I still enjoyed it." The madwoman replies with a wistful look on her like she's reminiscing about something lost.
Enjoyed… Pass tense? Same as her previous statement of 'can't anymore'. Something loose in that noggin of hers?
Also, what the fuck does she think being a sadist means?
She can practically feel both John and Harold giving the madwoman a blank look without her needing to look at them because the madwoman basically described the definition of a sadist while denying it. What a fucking nutcase.
Wonder if she became a sadist after she got kidnapped or before. Not that it matters now, with how much destruction she wrought on the world.
Giving Harold a glance, she can see the man has this defeated look on him, like he wanted the madwoman to not be what she is. For a genius, the man sure is a fucking idiot.
"Why hasn't your A.I. send in your employees to save you?" John finally asks a question.
The madwoman didn't even turn her attention to the man as she answers. "Because I told her not to send anyone when I woke up previously."
"Why would you do that?" Harold asks the follow up question.
This time she looks at Harold and answers with a goofy ass smile. "I'm a go with the flow type of gal, and I wanted to see where this will lead me despite you folks being rather terrible hosts."
Harold hit the mark on that one, that's for sure.
Sameen turns back to the madwoman, who still has this dumb smile on her. "Why name yourself Milk? It has nothing to do with nerd shit."
"I'm not a nerd." She says almost instantly, causing everyone in the room to give the madwoman a flat look. "Because I found the name to be funny and used it after I left that purgatory of a town."
"Of course." Both Sameen and Harold deadpans at the same time, causing both to share a look the smile.
"You were Milk first before you took the name Su?" Harold asks tentively.
The madwoman snaps her eyes to Harold and give him a hard stare for a few seconds before softening her gaze but she didn't answer Harold's question.
Curious...
"Now enough asking me questions..." Her eyes lazily drift between everyone in the room. "... where are you going to take me to? I hope it's not some rundown refuse that you found in at the backend of the yellow pages."
"Who still uses yellow pages?" Sameen asks mockingly.
Harold answers the question before the madwoman could do a follow up. "After narrowing down multiple potential locations, we've chosen Ridgestone Psychiatric Hospital."
The madwoman narrows her eyes at Harold for a moment before saying. "Never heard of it."
"It's the best one that fits our criteria." Harold explains softly.
"And what criteria is that?" The madwoman says jeeringly.
"One where both you and Miss Groves won't be killed soon after being registration." Harold explains like he's saying to a child. "ISA is after Miss Groves for what she did, and they saw the condition in which you both left the machine's facility. It doesn't take too much deduction for where to find you next."
"You do know that I have an A.I. that can solve that problem, right?" She says derisively and rolls her eyes.
"Unfortunately, we've already registered both of you to be placed into the facility by tomorrow morning along with your respective cover identities." Harold calmly elaborates.
"Aughh... why couldn't you at least pick a more exciting asylum, like the one on Wards Island? There's way more interesting character in that terrible building." The madwoman basically whines like a four-year-old.
Shaw shoot Harold a triumphal grin at what the madwoman said, and the man just shakes his head in response.
Before anyone can ask any further question, the madwoman says. "Can one of you be so kind as to give me a glass of water before I pass out?"
Sameen has never seen Harold move so quickly as the man brings the woman a bottle of water and asks worryingly. "Are you feeling lightheaded or are your symptoms coming back?"
Despite the madwoman's earlier recoiling from Harold closeness, she happily accepts Harold being close to her as he passes the bottle to her.
The woman chugs down the bottle like a woman that hasn't drunk water in days, which she haven't.
"I'm if I keep talking to you..." The madwoman drawls out her words. "... dang it."
In a snap empty bottle drops from the madwoman's grasp as her body goes limp with her eyes still wide open.
"Miss Frey?" Harold asks as he hesitantly step closer to the now unconscious woman before turning to Sameen. "What happen?"
"Why do you keep thinking I have the answer?" Sameen deadpans at the man.
"Because you have a medical degree?" John quips as he stands beside her.
Right... because in their mind... argh nevermind.
She grumbles under her breath before answering. "Shit if I know." She shrugs. "Can be anything from the two-day spasing marathon to the shit she said about talking to us."
"Maybe we did trigger some repressed trauma from all the talking, seen it happened to people with PTSD." John speculates.
She nods in agreement and asks. "So, what do we want to do with her now? Leave the accessories off?"
"She agreed to cooperate." Harold answers. "We shouldn't try to antagonize her further by putting her through that again... It looked like she didn't have the best experience."
"Yeah, no shit sherlock, she thinks you guys raped her." Sameen says bluntly which cause both men to grimace on their earlier choice of removing her senses.
"I hope we can resolve that misunderstanding before Ridgestone." Harold lets out a sigh.
"How long do you think she'll be out this time?" John asks as he walks towards the adjoining door to the other bedroom.
"Could be any time." Sameen answers clinically.
"Are you satisfied with the answers you got from Miss Frey?" Harold asks with curiosity but she can see there's another motive.
"You don't have to worry about this happening again." Sameen raises a brow at the man. "She essentially answered all the questions I wanted, and I need time to verify what she said. Plus, I don't think she'll answer anything to do with her evil A.I. even in her fucked up head fog."
"That's good... I think we all should take a rest before we leave in..." Harold looks at his wrist. "3 hours. I for one need to refresh myself."
That's when a thought occurred to her... "Fuck, it's been like 12 hours since her last piss... we should have brought her to the toilet before her brain took a fart."
Had she been a normal person she could imagine herself facepalming but all she feels is annoyance.
"Good thing you spent years in becoming a doctor, Shaw." John quips and he scampers off into his room before Sameen could pull up her pistol at him.
"I'm going to shoot him on of these days." Sameen says to an unperturbed Harold.
The man just smiles. "I think he does it because he enjoys your company."
"Yeah, he'll enjoy it until he gets a bullet." Sameen deadpans.
"Patience is a virtue, Miss Shaw." Harold says as he walks away.
She just rolls her eyes and replies. "Yeah, go fuck yourself, Harold."
A/N: This was supposed to be the final chapter but there's still three scenes before the end of the chapter. So, I'm breaking the final chapter in half. Since I'm on holiday now I'll try to find the time between doing the normal tourist thing and resting to write the final final chapter of the arc. I'll try to get it done before coming back from my vacation but that's optimistic. I won't have my normal writing set up so grammar might be terrible compared to normal posts.
Chapter 34: End Of Arc 2 - To Perdition
HAROLD FINCH POV
From all the budget cuts this Hospital has been getting for the past few years Harold had thought the place might look different but much to his surprise the faculties in this rather small compound, while admittedly it's not the best, it is however not the worst, some of the items here are out-of-date to his untrained eye but it's more than adequate for the needs of Miss Groves and Miss Frey. More importantly, it will make them invisible to the wider world. However, he notes the CCTV cameras in and around the building.
Not long after they entered the admission area, both women were escorted off somewhere while they brought Harold into this small room after a brief tour and rather rushed tour of the ground floor of the hospital.
So here Harold sits waiting in a rather cramped office room in front of a desk with stacks of paper all over it and a lone sad computer that wouldn't be out of place in an office space from a decade ago.
He can sit here and be productive in search of the newly found threat posed by another artificial intelligence, but his mind wanders back to the events of last night and the creator of the said A.I.
To say he was disturbed, shocked, and horrified by what happened would be an understatement but his mind won't dwell on that, not because it's not something he won't be revisiting in the future for it's a subject that he needed time for his brain to wrap around.
What his mind is dwelling on is the morning after the conversation -well, it was already morning when everything happened-, is the lack of any action by opposing force, and how perturbed that made everyone while on the few hours' drive here.
It was early on their drive here when Miss Frey woke up from her shutdown and just sat in silence while looking at Miss Groves, who was sitting beside her. He was sitting in the back at that time with John driving and Miss Shaw with her sharp eyes keeping overwatch with her pistol in the ready.
The woman might have agreed to their arrangement when she first woke up, but no one in the car truly trusted a word she says with how easily a lie comes out from that wicked mouth.
When she didn't say a word for the first few minutes after waking up again, both Harold and Miss Shaw tried to catch her attention, but she didn't bite at anything they threw at her. Even when Miss Shaw threatened, Miss Frey didn't elicit a response like it did earlier.
They feared it would be like earlier with Sue contacting Miss Frey through means that eludes both him and John, but Miss Shaw assured them that there wasn't any and, in her words, 'high as fuck' beeping.
It was a rather unnerving few minutes after Miss Frey woken up with him at the back with both women, but he continues onwards by having a one-sided conversation with Miss Frey and telling her everything she needed to know about her cover for her interment into this facility. If he's being honest with himself, it isn't that hard of a cover background with how much it parallels her and Miss Groves' -to the best of his knowledge- background.
Whether or not Miss Frey fully grasped what he was saying was up in the air with how unmoving she was throughout their journey. All he can hope for is she did and if she did not… then… well, as distasteful as it sounds, he just has to gaslight her during the admission.
As if the world knew his innermost thoughts, the door into the small office opens rather violently, revealing a rather disheveled petite African American in a nurse uniform with multiple articles of paperwork overflowing from arms.
Harold isn't one to withhold a helping hand onto others, thus he gets up from his seat and says. "Let me help you…"
"No, no. It's fine. I have it under control." The nurse gives him a strained smile as she miraculously wrangles all the papers and files. "Though, thank you for offering."
"It's no trouble… it's just that you looked like you needed help." Harold gives the nurse a kind smile.
"I need help in other department." The nurse lowly mutters under her breath, but Harold managed to catch what she said.
It isn't hard for Harold to decipher the going on of the hospital from this brief interaction and in combination with the facilities he's seen, some corners have been cut to preserve some others.
"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting, Mister…" The woman glances at the paper in her hand before taking a seat. "… Wren, I'm Nurse Sias. I'll be handling both of your nieces' admission into our care."
"No worries, it's just more time for me to finish the extra paperwork the lady from the front desk asked me to fill in." Harold lies out of pleasantries as he takes out two sets of documents and passes them to the nurse.
"Thank you." The nurse says curtly as she accepts it and organizes the papers she brought in with her into two distinct stacks and makes sure the other stacks of paper on the desk don't fall onto her organized stack, all the while grumbling under her breath.
Harold would never claim to be someone who easily understands other people's feelings or thoughts, but even he can see that the poor woman really doesn't like what she's doing.
"I would have thought, and no offense to you, Miss Sias, that someone from administration would do the tedious paperwork?" Harold asks to sate his curiosity.
The nurse lets out a chortle while she looks through the paperwork before answering. "None taken, and you're not wrong about that. We've been getting less and less money from the paper pushers in Albany, and that means we can't have a full staff. The suits on the third floor thought it was best for the hospital if they try to keep as many nurses, technician, and doctors as possible, but cuts still needed to happen… so now I'm stuck here doing double duty every other day."
"Is it the same for the other employees?" Harold asks a follow-up question.
Without looking up from her assortment of papers, she answers. "Yeah, it's on a rotational basis of who does it for the month and I'm the lucky girl to get it this month."
That easily answers his theory of what's going on in this hospital.
"Must be hard… Everyone here must be dedicated to their patients for you to doing work that's out of your scope with no added compensation." Harold says compassionately as he understands the sacrifice everyone working here is making.
The nurse snorts and shoots Harold a tired smile before saying. "Dedicated? More like we don't want to lose our jobs. Everyone one here knows that every hospital in the Northeast has been getting cuts as well, and we're the lucky ones."
"Ah…" Harold doesn't know what to say next, since he didn't fully comprehend the losses the hospital has been facing. When he gets back to the library, he should donate a portion of his vast wealth to the hospital that needs it the most in the state. Lord knows he doesn't need the money and that others will benefit mightily from such a simple act.
The nurse's eyes widen and waves her hand. "Oh, I made you worried, I shouldn't have babbled my mouth out to you, and everyone here gives their 100% for the patients. They wouldn't have taken the job in the first place if they aren't dedicated."
"No, it's fine… I just never realized the state of things with how busy my work is." Harold explains with a disarming smile.
"Anyway…" The nurse arranges the paperwork into two stacks. "… while we wait for my colleague to finish her examination of the two ladies. We should start with Miss…" She peers down on the form. "… Graves, seeing that she's unresponsive and then we'll do, Miss…" The nurse shifts the other stack slightly. "… Frayman, once she's joins us."
Harold gives a curt nod. "That's understandable."
Nurse Sais brings up two folders that's separated from the stacks of paperwork that she arranged and opens the cover. "It says here that both Miss Graves and Miss Frayman will be involuntarily admitted into our facility due to a court order, along with that a police report inciting accident, the report by the attending doctor of the ER that treated them and a report from the doctor of the local jail that processed them."
"Yes… I'm sure you've read the report and court order about what happened. Seeing that I was the main victim in all of that and I'm the last family they have, so I chose to not charge them of any crimes and pleaded with the judge that it was all a misunderstanding and no outside parties getting hurt, well except for my nieces. He agreed with me in to bring them here for them to be treated." Harold explains the cover he's been reciting in his head for the past few days.
The nurse puts down the folders and lets out a sigh as she rubs her jaw. "To be honest with you Mister Wren, I didn't have the time to read any of the reports in detail but from cursory look… you have all the required documentation from the judge, doctors, police, for their admission into M-unit. However, it would be kind of you to give me the cliffs note of what happened so I can type it down into their paperwork, so it's easier for my colleagues to know with what they're dealing with?"
Harold lets out an internal sigh while putting up a face of kindness and answers. "Sure. Robin… the one that's unresponsive, and I haven't seen each other for years and last year, she came back into my life. We had a rather heated disagreement on certain things about her past and her current doings before parting ways again."
"That's a different event from the one that's resulted in her being shot?" The nurse asks as she jots down everything Harold said.
Harold nods and starts explaining the convoluted cover he created that was based on true events. "Yes, it's different, but it's connected to the recent event. You see, Robin is a misanthrope… actually both of them are misanthropes, but Robin is more… fervent in her opinions. She has a rather skewed view of reality, believing that she was talking and following God's command. Her recent plan was to take me a building where she thought God lived, only to find an empty room. She became extremely… distraught by the sight of that empty room and I, not knowing better, choose that time to convince her that God doesn't talk to us directly. She didn't… appreciate that fact and brings up the pistol she had on her the entire time."
The nurse dutifully jots down every single Harold's bullshit before finally looking up at him with a curious look for a few moments. Despite knowing he made the cover as bulletproof as possible; he still felt a slight nervousness. Surely the story isn't too far out there… He didn't even add the involvement of potentially multiple sentient, omniscient, and omnipresent artificial intelligence that might not have humanity's best interest in mind. Putting that into the story might be pushing a little bit too far, despite Miss Shaw's readily acceptance of that fact, but Miss Shaw isn't the typical person.
"She brought you to a goose chase and then raised a gun at you with the intention of hurting or killing you?" Nurse Sias asks with a cool detachment.
"I couldn't possibly know what her intentions were, but it wouldn't be the first time she raised a gun at me that day." Harold gives the half-truth of the event, but he knows fully that Root would have killed him if wasn't for Miss Shaw and John's immaculate timing.
She writes down his answers and follows up with… "So, she kidnapped you at gunpoint."
"Yes." Harold lies again, as the only time she raised her gun at him was at the end. Although, it wasn't totally a lie, seeing that she basically threatened someone he loves to cajole him to follow her with the plan he rolled into motion years ago.
She nods as she writes down and asks. "And I'm assuming that the police intervened in this altercation, causing the gunshot wound and possibly her current unresponsiveness?"
"Yes." Harold answers truthfully.
She ends her writing and looks up at him with a hint of disbelief. "And you choose to not charge her?"
"Yes, I only want the best for her, for them, and don't want a felony on her criminal record for this temporary lapse of judgement." Harold gives the answer to the bleeding-hearted uncle that he's portraying.
"And it says that the state will not be paying her treatment, and you will bear the cost." She says as she picks up a piece of document. "Mighty charitable and merciful of you."
"That was the judge's condition for my request and I'm a relatively well-off man, so I don't mind spending the money to get my nieces treated properly." Harold lies through his teeth at the unsuspecting nurse.
Deep down, he can feel shame on himself because he knows the danger of putting two highly unstable women into this facility and the danger it poses to its inhabitants. As much as he wants to believe Miss Frey's words, he just doesn't trust her.
"You mention she believes that God is speaking to her. I take that she's religious?" The nurse inquires as she looks back down at her clipboard.
"No." Harold answers instantly before explaining. "As far as I know, she's an atheist. The only thing that she believes is that God talking to her, and God is living in the computer and the on the internet."
"A computer god?" That seem to catch the nurse's attention with her looking back at him with a hint of confusion and curiosity.
"Yes, an artificial deity constructed by man to be the perfect being."
He knows that saying this is incredibly dangerous, but… what Miss Groves said to him a year ago is true. The concept of omniscient artificial intelligence is completely out of the realm of reality for almost every human being on earth except for a few that know.
"Like the matrix?" She quires with a raised brow.
Harold didn't know how to respond to that… he didn't watch that movie when Nathen invited him to watch it a decade and a half ago due to him being so busy with work.
"I'm sorry, but I don't get the reference." Harold answers truthfully.
Nurse Sias shakes her head before looking down at her other stacks of paper and asks. "And Miss Frayman's involvement in all of this? It says they're cousins and I'm assuming by your siblings. Are they close to one another?"
Isn't that the question that's in everyone's mind that knows what happened between them?
"Yes, they're both my sisters' children, and I believe that the only people they care about are each other." Harold lies and answers the best he can before continuing. "Robin believes that whatever ailment that Anna could be cured by meeting God and asked Anna to follow her, which Anna did and was a rather passive observer throughout the entire event until the last moment after Robin was shot. That's when she got angry, and being a daughter of Texas, she raised her gun at the police before being shot in return."
That seemed to give the good nurse pause and made her look up from her paperwork with a look of shock. "I'm honestly surprised at the restraint the police showed when confronting your nieces. I would expect Anna to be dead with her pointing her gun at the police."
"And I'm entirely grateful that no one perish in that unfortunate event." Harold answering without missing a beat. But being honest with himself, he's also surprised at the restraint Miss Shaw showed on that night and the days following.
"Unbelievable." She shakes her head before shifting some papers around and says. "Let's circle back to Robin… seeing that we don't have any of her personal medical history, I need you to fill in the blanks. It's just some standard question, so the attending psychiatrist has some background to better treat her."
Harold nods. "I'll answer as best as I can."
The nurse puts the paper on a clipboard and leans back into her seat. "Alright… Does she have a history of mental disturbance, aside from her recent one? Any diagnosed mental illness?"
"It would be news to me if she has been diagnosed with anything, but like I said earlier… we haven't spoken with one another in years until last year. However, you have to ask her that when she comes back. From my experience with her the past year, most of the time she's quite normal, sociable even. But from time to time, she has these… episodes of intense determination when she gets a hold of an idea, and no one can get her to let go. Not only does she seem to lose all sense of self-preservation, but she's also willing to hurt other people in the attempt to bring those ideas into reality. She has a history of stealing, reckless driving and violence, with several counts of misdemeanors assault over throughout the years." Harold provides whatever he knows and understands.
"Lack of self-preservation? Are you implying that she's suicidal? Does she have a history of self-harm?" Nurse Sias asks without even looking up from her clipboard.
Miss Shaw's words this morning weigh heavily on him and he answers his interpretation of what happened a few days ago. "No, I don't believe she would have intentionally harmed herself. I would say that she's rather reckless with her life as well as with other people's lives. Her mother had the same recklessness sans being violent."
"Her mother, your sister. Tell me more about her… has she been diagnosed with anything? It might explain some of her problems." Nurse Sias says in a manner as kindly as she can without looking at Harold.
"Elizibeth… we used to call her Beth." He says sadly, trying his best to sell the story. "She died in a vehicular accident by hitting a tree in 2001. The police report ruled it an accident, but I'm sure that was her recklessness rearing its ugly head one last time. Beth… she did have a history of harming herself, but never… to the extent of ramming her car into a tree. I don't know if she was ever diagnosed with anything in particular and she hated visiting the doctors or hospitals and especially psychiatrist, with the only exception of giving birth to Robin… the poor girl had to grow up with my sister like that." Harold explains the best he can with the rather limited records, discoveries that detective Carter and John found in Texas as well as his own conjectures about Miss Frey's family and the tragedy that was her mother.
"And the father?" Nurse Sias asks after finishing writing up Harold's tale.
Now that's a mystery that Harold can only make assumptions about Elizabeth Groves suspiciously missing records from around the dates of Miss Groves' birth. The woman had a checkered past with a record that reflects it and yet there's two years of missing records. All of his assumptions were quite troubling.
"There was never a father, he's an unknown factor." Harold answered as truthfully as possible without delving into his speculations. "The family always assumed that it was another of Beth's reckless behaviors. She wasn't exactly selective with who she courted with."
"Does Robin share that trait as well?" The nurse asks clinically.
"The opposite, actually." Harold shakes his head. "I've never seen her so much as to look at a man in that way before. In fact, other than Anna and another person who I've never met, I don't think she has friends, never mind lovers."
Nurse Sias nods and continues with her form. "Does Robin or anyone else in your family she's related to have any history of the following: Thyroid Disease, Anemia, Liver Disease…"
Harold cuts in to add. "Her mother has liver disease from the excessive drinking she does to cope with her… problems. However, from what I've seen, Robin didn't inherit that behavior from her mother."
"But she does drink alcohol?" Nurse Sias asks.
That gave Harold pause slightly as he has never seen her drink anything, however given the average woman her age…
"Yes, she'll drink here and there, but she's always in control of how much she drank." Harold says out his speculation, not knowing if what he says is the truth.
The nurse gives Harold a glance before asking. "How about chronic fatigue, kidney disease, diabetes, asthma, stomach or intestinal problems, cancer, fibromyalgia, heart disease, epilepsy, or seizures, chronic pain…"
"That would be me." Harold jumps in with a smile. "However, it was an accident that cause it rather than inherited."
She nods and continues. "High cholesterol, high blood pressure, or head trauma?"
"Not that I know of, as far as I know… other than her recent woes after getting shot, Robin is a healthy woman." Harold passes along Miss Shaw's assessment.
"Do you know when her last menstrual period was?" The nurse asks blandly.
That caused a spike of awkwardness in him before answering. "No, I don't. However, I believe she's not having one right now. Her cousin who has been taking care of her would have mentioned it if she did."
The nurse nods and continues on clinically. "Has Robin been an inpatient or outpatient psychiatric treatment?"
"I wouldn't know, but I believe she inherited the aversion to hospitals from her mother." Harold gives an answer from the reaction he got from Miss Frey.
The nurse follows up with. "Is she on any medication?"
"Not that I'm aware of any. At least I haven't seen her taking any since she began her current obsession. I checked her bag and didn't find any pills, but her mother did have a history of hiding medications she needed to take." Harold speculates from the single police report about Elizabeth Groves he found when Miss Grove was 13, a year after Miss Frey's kidnapping.
"How about illicit drugs?" She asks with no judgement in her voice.
"I can say that she's not addicted to any substances, but I wouldn't put it past her to have used some in the past." Harold shifts in his seat as he feels like he isn't giving the best information he could have given.
"Does she use any nicotine products?"
That's something he unequivocally knows. "No."
"Level of education?"
About the same as everyone else in his little group of vigilantes, with one exception, so he answers. "Just a high school diploma, but she's an auto-didact."
The nurse nods in understanding and asks. "Any job history? Is she an unskilled laborer or working in an unsafe environment?"
Just what kind of job does she think someone with just a high school diploma does? Also, that's something he has given a thought about before coming here. "Despite her lack of advanced formal education, she is gainfully employed as a high-level computer programmer consultant and has been working at her current company for almost a decade now. Even with her occasional episodes of obsessions, she managed to retain her job, showing how competent she is in her job."
Harold chooses to omit the fact that Miss Groves was on the fast track to graduating high school early, before the unfortunate events of '91 and the uprooting of her life in the following years, causing her to not go to school for almost three years. Basically, having her to redo high school.
"I take it that she is not intellectually impaired by her lack of education?" The nurse twirls her pen as she looks at Harold.
"Oh, no. She's brilliant and dangerously smart. If I had to say why she didn't choose to continue her education is because she must have never found formal education to be challenging and she tried to take care of her mother's worsting condition." Harold answers with a serious tone because that actually happened.
"Any major life trauma? Besides the inherit neglect of being raised by an unstable parent?" The nurse asks blandly.
Just as Harold was about to answer the question, the door to the room opens to reveal another nurse guiding a rather stony-faced Miss Frey with nothing binding the woman's hands into the room and places her on the chair beside Harold.
"Is everything in order, Mary?" Nurse Sias asks the younger looking nurse who nods.
"We've started Miss Graves on the lorazepam challenge with her first dose of Ativan a few minutes ago and brought her to E-unit for further observation. Other than that, there's nothing wrong physically with her that we found, barring the gunshot wound and her catatonic state." The young nurse rattled off the mental list she has before nodding towards Miss Frey. "Miss Frayman is a whole different can of worms, and the most glaring issue is her being underweight. Nurse Moss has ordered a full medical checkup later tomorrow before we go forward with anything. We tried to ask her if she ate anything in the past 24 hours, but her only response was a smile… and no one was sure what to make of that."
"I'm fairly sure Anna hasn't eaten anything in the past 12 hours. She's just been drinking water the entire time." Harold interjects into the conversation the nurses were having.
Nurse Mary raises her brow at Harold and nods. "I'll inform Nurse Moss of that… maybe we'll get the checkup done later in the day." She turns back to Nurse Sias. "Is there anything more you need?"
Nurse Sias shakes her head. "No, thank you. Just pass me your report as soon as possible."
"Yeah, I'll get to it after talking to Nurse Moss." She replies as she exits the room and closes the door behind her.
Now that there's a new addition to the room that's very relevant to the question Nurse Sias asks before being interrupted, Harold says. "I believe that the trauma you're asking about is related to Anna's case. Should I say it now or should we start doing Anna's form first?"
The nurse just shrugs and answers. "It's no skin off my back. Let's start with Anna first before going back to the question, since that was the last question."
Miss Frey shoots him with a look of curiosity, showing that she indeed is fully cognizant as Nurse Sias changes the papers on her clipboard. "Now it will be the same questions again, since we don't have Anna's medical history."
"Is he supposed to be here for this?" Miss Frey suddenly asks with that deranged smile she had from yesterday, causing both of them to look at her with curiosity. Since what Nurse Moss had stated was, she was being uncooperative and now she's suddenly talking.
Being the professional that she is, nurse Sias quickly regained composure and says with a kind voice. "It's nice of you to decide to participate in your admission Anna… May I call you Anna?"
"Sure, it's not like my name is special." Miss Frey shrugs, not even looking at the nurse as she continues to look at Harold with those haunted eyes.
"I'm sure my colleagues before this have told you of the nature of your involuntary admission and the laws that govern it, or do I need to fill you in on the details?" The nurse says clinically as she noticed Miss Frey's attention.
"I heard what that lady earlier said and the meaningless state laws." Miss Frey finally turns her attention to the nurse. "What I want to know is, why is he here for this?"
The nurse quickly jots down something into the paperwork before holding up a folder to show and explains. "According to these pieces of document by the doctor that examined you earlier, it says that your compulsive liar, meaning I need a third party that knows you to verify what you say is true."
"You really sour the pot, didn't you?" Miss Frey smirks at Harold before turning her attention back to the nurse with a grin on her. "I did say I'll cooperate, so lay it on me. I'm an open book."
"Let's start with the basics." Nurse Sias moves back to her clipboard after changing the papers. "I already have your name and age. What's your relationship status and do you have any children, if any?"
Miss Frey has an amused smile and answers. "Single and no rugrats for me."
"Are you on disability or welfare status? If not, what's your occupation and education?" The nurse asks with a detached tone.
"Do I look like an inept to you?" The pale woman answers pointedly and continues with. "I'm a consultant and I'm self-thought."
The nurse raises a brow without looking up from her clipboard. "A consultant? Like Robin?"
"Yes, we work together." She answers with a prideful smile.
To which the nurse didn't even acknowledge and continues. "Where do you live and with whom?"
The pale woman's eyes glance at him for a second before smiling. "A penthouse in the flatiron district, and I live alone."
The flatiron district and that look she gave him… he shouldn't be surprised that she knew about Detective Carter's investigation of that former data center.
"Family or siblings? And your uncle did not provide any references for the GP you usually visit. Care to share with me your doctor's name?" The nurse asks not noticing the small exchange they had.
"No siblings and no family… well, other than sweet Robin and dear uncle Wren. Also, I don't have a doctor." She answers with a sweet smile.
He feels like he has to interject. "She essentially has no family connection other than with Robin."
Amber eyes lands on him with a curious look but she doesn't say anything.
"According to the medical report, I have on hand…" The nurse opens up the folder and takes out a piece of paper. "… it says here you have been experiencing episodes of prolonged dissociative shut down and unresponsiveness. Is this a new development? If not, how long have you been having these episodes? Is it longer than a month?"
Miss Frey has a blank look on her for a few seconds after being asked that question before putting on a smile and answering. "I'm sure the good doctor that checked on me was mistaken with him just being a lowly general practitioner."
"You're denying the two medical reports that were submitted to court?" Nurse Sias asks unimpressively, as if this isn't her first time hearing a patent denying their problems.
"Oh, no… I am merely denying the connotation that I was having multiple episodes of… zoning out when I only experienced it once after the police shot me two times and any normal human being would experience the same thing as I did if they got shot like I was." Miss Frey rebuts as she puts on a face of placidity. A total opposite emotion she was projecting from last night and the night she first woke up.
Nurse Sias looks up from her paperwork to look at Harold for answers, and he provides. "On our way here, Anna experienced multiple… black outs that span hours before coming to and blacking out again. As for how long she's been having, I can't say for sure, but she had an episode when Robin was bringing us to the location."
Miss Frey gives him a scowl. "And I wonder why that happened, uncle. Why don't you tell the wonderful nurse why that was happening to me on our way here?"
Undeterred by her accusation, he tells the nurse. "As you can see, Anna gets defensive whenever the subject of her condition is ever brought up."
Miss Frey lets out a soft scoff and comments. "Gaslighting me… how delightful."
In spite of his and John's attempts to clarify the misunderstanding with Miss Frey during their short drive to the hospital, the woman didn't even acknowledge their attempts. Now it seems like she still believe that something horrendous happened to her in the past few days and it makes his stomach tumble in disgust.
"You agree to cooperate, and lying doesn't help you with your treatment." Harold shoots back at the woman despite the underlayer of truth to her statement.
"And I am." She answers him curtly. "I wouldn't have answered her question in the first place, and I really dislike falsities in my history."
Her entire history is false…
Nurse Sias' eyes darts between him and Miss Frey for a moment before continuing. "Describe to the best of your ability your major symptoms. Depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, loss of interest in activities, psychosis?"
That gave the amber eyed woman pause as she taps her chin for a second and answers. "No, never, skip, you have no idea and woman, that last one is a large category you need to be more specific."
"What were your stressors? Are you going through any major stressors like divorce, relationship issues, work, or financial stress?" Nurse Sias quickly followed up.
Miss Frey lets out a chortle and answers. "I'm not in a relationship, so no, I know how to delegate my workload, and money is of no value to me."
The nurse glances at him and he answers. "I have no information on me to dispute her claims."
She nods and continues. "Tell me about your mood right now."
"I'm fine." Miss Frey replies almost instantly.
Nurse Sias, not buying what she says, asks. "How about on a scale of 0 to 10? With 0 being the worst you've ever felt and 10 is the best mood you ever had."
The pale woman shrugs and answers smugly. "I was about a 5 earlier and now I'm a 4, after uncle wren gaslighting me."
The nurse nods absentmindedly as she jots down everything before continuing on with. "How's your sleep?"
The woman, who clearly has bags under eyes that's highly contrasting with her pale skin, tilts her head as she asks. "My sleep?"
"Yes, like how long do you sleep? What time do you sleep? What time do you get up?" The nurse lets out a barrage of questions.
Miss Frey looks away from the nurse and bites her cheek for a few seconds before answering in a dull voice. "A few hours. I sleep when I sleep, and I get up when I get up."
That's the most non-answer Harold has ever heard, while the nurse doesn't seem to be phased in the slightest and asks. "Are there nighttime awakenings and have you been told you've snored?"
"I sleep like a baby and no." Miss Frey replies, still looking away from the nurse.
"Do you ever experience nightmares in the past month?" The nurse inquires.
That seems the cause of the woman to twitch slightly, but Harold doesn't think the nurse noticed it and the pale woman just sits in silence for half a minute.
"…No, I never have dreams." She answers with that slightly dead voice he heard from her yesterday.
Nurse Sias looks up from her clipboard and presses. "I take it you have had nightmares in the past?"
"I might get nightmares from the questions you're asking." Miss Frey avoids answering the question while she avoids looking at the nurse.
The nurse, sensing that this is a topic that Miss Frey doesn't want to talk about, moves forward with. "Let's talk about your interests. You commented that I have no idea about your loss of interests. Would you elaborate? Have you been experiencing a gradual loss of interest recently?"
Miss Frey pauses for a moment before saying. "The opposite actually. I have this one hobby that's been my entire world for the past few years, and it's been fun."
The nurse nods in understanding. "Do you ever feel guilty about yourself or about things you've done? Like recently with you pointing your gun at the police?"
That brought Miss Frey from her stupor, and she looks at the nurse with amusement as she answers. "Never."
"Do you feel you have excessive energy, or do you feel like you fatigue easily?"
"Feel like the usual if you don't consider the long journey I've been on to get here." The pale woman answers.
"Any racing thoughts or difficulties in concentration?"
"Only thoughts I have right now are how many more questions you're going to ask, and I can concentrate perfectly fine."
The nurse picks up a piece of paper from her desk that Nurse Mary left earlier and says. "Your current BMI is 13.4. How long have you been in this weight range?"
That seems to knock out the bemuse look on the pale woman as she answers with a shrug. "Never counted, a few years."
"Is this your ideal weight?" Nurse Sias probes further.
"My ideal weight is whatever that allows me to function." Miss Frey all but snaps at the nurse. "And I know what you're thinking, and I don't have an eating disorder. I just don't feel hungry and sometimes forget to eat, which is very normal for busy individuals."
"I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm just asking questions." The nurse says diplomatically and continues with her questioning. "Is this the lowest weight you have, and if so, what's your highest weight?"
Miss Frey starts pulling the threads on her armrest. "Maybe, I don't know. I never weight myself throughout the years and the highest I've been is like Roo… Robin."
The nurse nods as she flips a page. "Find your worry is difficult to control? Feel keyed up, on edge, or restless?"
"I'm as cool as a cucumber." She answers with a smile.
"Do you find yourself easily blanking out or having difficulty concentrating?"
That question wiped away the smile on that pale face as she looks away from the nurse for a whole minute before answering. "Sometimes, and I've already answered that other question."
… She keeps looking away… Is her A.I. talking to her?
Knowing that Miss Shaw isn't here to hear from him, he slowly brings up his phone to see… nothing. There's no high frequency noise since Miss Frey entered the room.
"Feel irritable, or others comment on it?" The nurse asks and breaking him from his revere.
"I find these questions irritating, if that's what you're asking." She snaps at the nurse, who doesn't react to the sudden change of mood.
"Do you found if it is easy to jump from one idea to another?" The nurse asks clinically.
She rolls her eyes and answers. "I'm not some scatterbrain. Everything I do has been immaculately planned out."
The nurse gives an uncommitting hum and asks. "Ever get the feeling you have superpowers, or invincible?"
"Obviously." She says in an instant before flashing Harold a grin. "I'm the smartest person in this room, and you have no idea what I can do."
… At least she didn't say she has an unshackled A.I. in her back pocket, so that's good.
Once again, the nurse showed no reaction to the answer and continued. "You said you work with your cousin. How's your work? Have you been busy with your consulting job?"
"No, so busy. I'm very good at delegating work." Miss Frey smiles at the nurse.
"Have you been doing anything impulsive or risky lately?" The nurse asks as she looks up from her clipboard.
Miss Frey looks at Harold and says. "Coming here was an impulsive choice."
"Have you noticed an increased libido?" The nurse asks as she continues to look at Miss Frey.
The moment the nurse asked that question, Miss Frey freezes before slowly turning her attention back to the nurse and says in a low voice. "What?"
The nurse quickly follows up with. "Like sexual indiscretion when you normally wouldn't or having sexual relations with strangers?"
Miss Frey physically recoil at each suggestion Nurse Sias was asking cause the nurse to perk up her brows and jot down onto her clipboard.
"Why don't you uncle wren about that?" She says with venom in her tone.
The nurse's eyes raised at him, and he quickly answered the unasked question. "She's under the unfound impression that something unperturbed happened to her while she was… dissociating during our trip here."
The nurse's eyes look back at Miss Frey, who grimaces. "Of course, he would deny it. Would you believe the victim or the predator?"
Nurse Sias thinks for a second before sighing. "Nurse Mary would have noted anything amiss during your quick checkup, but we will get the answer later today during your medical exam."
Miss Frey scoffs and rolls her eyes. "Of course."
"Can I safely say that you are sexually inactive?" Nurse Sias asks with a kinder tone from earlier.
"Obviously… I find coitus to be revolting." Miss Frey replies like she's talking to a petulant child.
"When did you come to that conclusion?" The nurse asked, which caused the pale woman to narrow her eyes.
Oh, dear… He fears that Miss Frey might say or do something rash but…
She says with a placid look at her. "A long, long time ago."
Huh, that's a normal response.
The kindness in the nurse's face vanishes as she looks back at her clipboard. "Do you find yourself to talk more or talking more rapidly?"
There's a scowl on Miss Frey's face for a few seconds as she didn't answer the question and glares at Harold before saying. "I like to run my mouth. Next?"
"Do you worry that people might be against you or after you?"
"There's always someone waiting in the shadows to jump at the chance, and the fact that you don't feel that way is concerning." She replies with a whimsical tone, like she's answering the stupidest question.
Not that Harold disagrees with her statement.
"Do you ever hear things other people don't hear?"
The pale woman let out a loud chortle and says. "Yes."
The nurse looks up from her clipboard and asks. "Do the voices ever command you do to things?"
"I'll be damn if she ever orders me around." She answers mirthfully.
Oh, goodness… Despite what she says is true, she's giving them false symptoms of her condition.
"The voices are female?" The nurse inquires as she quickly writes down on her clipboard.
Miss Frey, unwittingly, or on purpose, says. "A voice, sometimes annoying singular voice, and yes."
"Is the voice outside or inside your head?"
"When the day arrives that she finally talks to me in my head, I'll contact you first." Miss Frey replies with a grin.
"Do you hear her talking to you now?"
"I told her to let me be for a while, unless I needed her."
Harold stares blankly at the grinning Miss Frey. She's doing this on purpose… This will not help her treatment, but he can't really say that she's lying about this without sounding mad himself.
"Ever feel that thoughts are being put into or taken out of your head?"
The pale woman gives an unimpressed stare and replies. "Not that I can think of, although sitting here is killing my brain cells."
The nurse rubs her eyes and asks. "Have you ever felt things are not real?"
Despite Miss Frey's bluster, the question causes a minor twitch that both he and the nurse notice, which Miss Frey tried to hide by asking. "Whatever do you mean?"
The nurse gives Miss Frey her full attention when she says. "Like feeling like everything around you doesn't feel right or not real. Your senses are telling you your surroundings are otherworldly or seeing objects that aren't right."
Her face seems like it was frozen in place before replying rather stiffly. "Nope."
Neither he nor the nurse believed what she says, but Nurse Sias didn't probe further and continue. "Do you ever get intrusive or unwanted thoughts, images, or impulses that repeatedly enter your mind, despite you trying to get rid of them? Like worries about dirt/germs, or thoughts of bad things happening."
Her frozen expression transformed into a dull one when she answered. "I dislike being covered in muck, if that's what you're asking, but don't all humans feel the same?"
Nurse Sias doesn't answer the question and continues with her own. "So you never feel driven to do a certain things over and over again?"
"No? I'm not insane." She replies with a slightly confused tone.
"Moving on, earlier when I asked about suicide you said skip." The nurse puts forward, causing the pale woman to frown. "Has that thought crossed your mind before?"
She looks away from the nurse as she pulls on the thread of her armrest and replies. "How much longer is this going to take? It bores me."
"Not much longer." She writes on her clipboard and continues. "Have you ever threatened someone specifically?"
Miss Frey looks back at the nurse. "Tons, the most recent one is dear uncle Wren over here and I might have a new slot opened."
Seemingly unmoved by that threat, the nurse plows forward. "Did you ever go through with your threats?"
The pale woman's eyes bore into the nurse as she says with a grin on her. "I'm sure you people have a policy for patients to not self-incriminate themselves."
That seemed to cause the nurse to pause for a second. "If you were to leave this hospital right now, would you hurt anyone?"
"Why would I leave this hospital? I told uncle Wren that I won't." She replies with a pout.
"Did you ever lose your driving license?"
"I never took the test." Miss Frey comments off-handedly with a shrug.
The nurse's eyes instantly snap at him with a questioning look, to which he just smiles and shakes his head, but inside he's slightly worried.
There's a copy of Miss Frey's fake driving license submitted to the hospital and clearly the nurse knows about it. He really hopes Miss Frey had just forgotten about it rather than she's breaking her deciding to break her cover right now.
The nurse really doesn't like his response if that frown tells him anything, but she continues with her questioning. "Are you on any medication right now?"
"5mg of desloratadine." She answers instantly.
Desloratadine?
The nurse quirked a brow. And deadpans. "That's an antihistamine."
Miss Frey nods dramatically and replies somberly. "I tend to get nasal congestion when it's cold, despite everything this poor body was built for the Texan warmth."
The nurse quickly recovers and asks. "Have you ever been on any psychiatric medication?"
Miss Frey waves her hand around as she ponders. "Does melatonin count?"
"No, but that's the next question. What supplements are you taking?"
The pale woman shrugs. "Multivitamins that Roo- Robin asked me to take."
"Do you have any allergies to medications?"
"Now that you asked, I do get stuffy when pollen season kicks in." She answers in a matter-of-fact way.
"Specifically psychiatric medications." The nurse probes.
"Not that I know, but I'm sure you lot are going to pump a load of drugs into me, so we'll find out together." She says with a smile.
The nurse pauses for a second as she changes the pages before asking. "Do drink alcohol and have you ever used street drugs?"
Miss Frey has a disgusted look at her at the question before answering. "I will not intoxicate myself with such filth for a short period of blissfulness, and unlike the degenerates that use them, I can't feel those fleeting feelings."
The venom she spits from being asked if she has vices tells him that she's telling the truth… but why? If she really doesn't believe in social contract, then why the rather violent aversion to drugs and alcohol? Did she have a bad experience in the past… were they forced upon her when she was kidnapped? Is that why she hates them, despite saying she wasn't traumatized?
It's all just morbid speculation, but the rational part of his mind tells him that she's just being hypocritical about her values like previously.
The nurse gives Miss Frey a pointed look before asking. "So, have used drugs before?"
"Not willingly." The pale woman snarls.
"At what age?" Nurse Sias probes.
"Young."
Harold feels like his stomach churns at what she says… but she has shown the pension to lie about sensitive topics…
The nurse turns to him and asks. "Is what she says true?"
He takes a moment to gather his thoughts before answering. "I can attest that she avoids taking vices, however, I don't know if she's been an unwilling participant or not. It's the first time I've heard of it."
"You're such a supportive Uncle Wren." Miss Frey says mockingly.
Nurse Sias sighs and writes something down on the clipboard. "How much caffeine do you consume daily?"
"Zero." Miss Frey answers instantly.
"Really?" The nurse asks with a hint of skepticism. "With your trouble in sleeping, you don't need the help of caffeine to stay up?"
Still having that scowl on her, she shakes her head. "I never liked the taste of coffee."
Nurse Sias just shrugs as she writes it down and continues. "Any history of concussions, head injuries, or seizures?"
Miss Frey exchanges her scowl for a blank look. "You should ask Uncle Wren about that, seeing that his pet sucker punched me."
The nurse gives him an accusatory look, and he replies. "It was rather chaotic at that time, with Anna being aggressive, and her other cousin… Sameen did what she thought best at that time to subdue Anna, which she regrets."
Miss Frey lets out a bark of amusement at Harold's statement. "And, no, I've never had seizures. Not that I know of."
"History of surgeries?"
"Duh?" Miss Frey replies and points at her recent wounds, but doesn't elaborate further.
"Do you know if your parent suffer from any mental illness?"
"Mother was annoying."
"Any extended family member die by suicide or unexplained death?"
"Well… you must know what happened to my dear old aunt."
"Did you notice anyone in your family that have problems with alcohol or substance abuse?"
"Father really made an effort to not show he's a drunkard."
The nurse parses through the paperwork on her clipboard before stopping. "Your uncle filled in most of your social history, but there is some missing information. How was your relationship with your parents?"
"They serve their purpose."
Nurse Sias quirks her brow. "Would you say you generally had a happy childhood?"
"It was the most blissful time I ever had."
"What was school like for you?"
"Boring and waste of time."
"How would you describe yourself as a child?"
"The perfect child."
"Were you bullied in school?"
That caused Miss Frey to erupt into a loud chortle. "Goodness no, everyone was dancing to the tune I was playing."
"Do you have any religious affiliation?"
"No, I don't believe in religion or god."
That gave Harold pause, and he couldn't help but asked. "But you follow the commandment to not take the Lord's name in vain. You even scolded Robin about it."
"Yeah, and?" Miss Frey looks at him quizzically. "It has nothing to do about my believes, it's just the polite thing to do."
Harold just deadpans at the woman, and the nurse furiously jots down everything.
"How did you do academically? And What's your highest level of education?"
"Dropped out from highs school." Miss Frey replies with a bored tone.
He just have to add. "Don't let her lack of official academic training deceive you. I would say Anna is incredibly smart. Smarter than most people in her field."
The nurse nods and continues. "Who is your support? Friends, family or co-workers."
"Just Robin…" She glances at him. "… and I guess my beloved uncle here."
Why didn't she say Pauling as well?
"Have you ever experienced anything in your life that you would consider traumatic?" Nurse Sias says suddenly, causing Miss Frey's face to twitch slightly.
After a few seconds of silence and the nurse looking at Miss Frey intently, she finally says. "No, nothing traumatic."
He might need to jump into the conversation again.
"Have you ever experienced any physical, emotional, or sexual abuse?" Nurse Sias asks more directly as she didn't believe Miss Frey's answer.
"Not that I know of." Miss Frey says with a hard tone.
Nurse Sias turns towards him for some actual answers and Miss Frey says mockingly. "Please dear uncle, do tell me my life story, because apparently my words mean naught."
Harold takes a moment to steady himself and he answers. "Earlier, I mentioned that this is related to Robin's trauma… When Anna was 14 years old, she was kidnapped from the library in her hometown and Robin witnessed it all happen. It somewhat affected the girls' relationship with the real world. Because for Anna, we all thought she died and for Robin, she had to live in a town that doesn't believe Anna was kidnaped by the pillar of the community… no one wanted to believe Robin, who saw it all happened."
"Ooo, spooky. I guess I'm dead." Miss Frey interrupts him.
The nurse doesn't say anything and just stares at him, and he continues. "We all thought she was dead. I only found out she was still alive a week ago when Robin brought me to see Anna. Somehow, Anna managed to escape from her kidnapper's clutches and never came back. Robin knew of Anna's survival only a few years after she left the town and never told anyone about it."
Nurse Sias hurriedly writes down everything he says and then asks. "She never made an attempt to contact anyone after she escaped, and is she still filed under missing persons?"
"She loathes Freer as well as anything that had to do with it, except for Robin and the police that processed her contacted the sheriff in Texas about her status." Harold explained his crafted story, seeing that Miss Frey had been deemed dead from their discovery last year.
"Wait… How did she create a company if she's registered as missing?" The nurse quirked her head slightly with a frown.
Before Harold could answer the nurse's question, Miss Frey interrupts. "Where's Roo… I mean where's Robin?"
"I'm sure you heard earlier that your cousin has been sent to E-unit for observation and she will stay there until she recovers." Nurse Sias replies promptly.
That sharp look she has on her is the same as a few days ago when she replies with. "And I'm going there after this farce?"
"No…"
Miss Frey quickly cuts the nurse off to say with an undertone of anger. "So, you're saying that you're going to separate me from her? In this looney bin, alone?"
"Yes, and she will be well taken care of. Due to the circumstances and reasoning of your admission, you have deemed too dangerous to be put in any other unit other than M-unit. Your cousin will be transferred to your unit when she's conscious and declared fit enough." Nurse Sias replies politely.
"She needs me. I want to visit her." Miss Frey's face and voice is eerily calm, which causes the hairs on his skin to stand.
"That is against hospital policy, and only your assigned psychiatrist can give special permission for a visit." Nurse Sias says diplomatically, but not knowing the danger she's.
Miss Frey sits straighter and replies with the same calm, eerie voice. "That wasn't a suggestion."
Feeling like he needed to do something to defuse the situation, he chimes in. "I believe it's better for both ladies' treatment if Anna gets the chance to visit her cousin occasionally."
The nurse shakes her head and says firmly. "It isn't your call what the method of her treatment will be Mister Wren, it is her assigned psychiatrist… however, I will have a word with the person assigned to her about this matter."
"That's all I ask and thank you." Harold replies with a nod.
The pale woman stares in silence for a few seconds before letting out a scoff. "What a charade. I will get what I want."
Harold, seeing that her mood has been swinging around ever since they first begin this questioning, and wanting a quick de-escalation, so nothing bad happens, says. "How about we continue with the questions?"
Nurse Sias gives a curt nod. "Have you ever felt you have a poor sense of self?"
The pale woman rolls her eyes. "No, I don't have self-esteem issues."
"Is it hard for you when people in your life leave you?"
"Wouldn't know." She replies with a bored tone.
"Do you frequently feel empty inside?"
"Yeah, talking to you makes my head empty, next." She replies deriding.
"Have you ever harm yourself such as cutting or burning yourself?"
"Uhuh, I sometimes cut myself when I'm shaving my legs." Miss Frey gives a joke answer. She clearly has lost interest in the questions.
Nurse Sias, sensing her patient is being uncooperative, stops that avenue of question and asks. "Any issues with the law? Or being in jail?"
"Yup, I've got a ton of grievance with your laws." Miss Frey's eyes drift away in boredom.
Nurse Sias turns to him for answers, and he provides. "She doesn't believe in laws."
"Ah…" She writes it down and looks directly at Miss Shaw. "Final question. What is your goal by the time you finish your stay with us?"
Miss Frey gives the nurse a predatory glance and answers, grinningly. "You'll be the first to know on that day."
"Thank you for your cooperation." Nurse Sias says with a smile as she reaches for the intercom on her phone. "Elliot, please bring the patient to her M-unit."
Nurse Sias then picks up a paper from her desk and quickly writes something in it.
Within two minutes, a man in standard hospital dressing enters and Nurse Sias speaks up. "Anna, this is Elliot. He's one of the techs that's assigned to the M-unit. He will be giving you an introduction to your new facility and accommodations."
"Finally. Bye-bye, Uncle Wren." Miss Frey says with a murderous look on her as she gets up and follows the man out of the room.
Seems like she already doesn't be committed to the hospital. He might need to add extra surveillance here, just in case.
The nurse quickly looks at Harold and says. "Now that she's gone, we need to review her answers."
He lets out a sigh. "Alright."
Hopefully, Miss Shaw doesn't get too annoyed by the delay while waiting in the car with John and he prays that John would still be alive by the time he finishes here.
SU POV
As she walks at a crawling pace, numerous humans pass by her, hospital jailors, her fellow inmates, with some of them needing the jailors to manhandle them. Some of the techs and nurses greeted by but she deservingly ignores them.
Not having much to do while she snails her way towards the psychiatrist -more like her torturer with how much pain it is for her to listen to that woman- for her bi-weekly snooze off, she looks back on her time in this looney bin…
It's been a fortnight since she was tossed into this sadist paradise, and it's been an arduous and tortures fourteen days. Truly, only from the mind of a deranged psychopath would they think of all the devious things they've done to her in her short period here…
A man in a nurse's gown greets her with a smile as he walks past her while holding a stack of files in hand and leaving behind the sounds of squeaking rubber shoes in his wake.
Well…
She might be hyperbolic in some aspects of her time here…
If she's being truthful to herself, her time here has honestly been fine, a very dull fine, and it wasn't as bad as she had imagined before coming here…
Although the concoction of medication they put her on majorly sucks. It makes her feel all weird and stuff, along with making her thoughts cloudy. And now she's gotta go to her chief chatterbox torturer to see if they want to change the medication for whatever worthless reason.
The next thing that just grinds her teeth is her room. Oh sure, there's an ensuite bathroom, and it's rather spacious for a barely functioning hospital. But the most annoying part of her room is her precious bed. They, in their infinite wisdom, added plastic on top of the mattress! Not only that, but the mattress itself isn't soft! How did they think she could sleep on top of such a monstrosity? A rock-hard mattress she can handle. Lord knows how many times she's slept on hard surfaces, but what she can't handle is the insufferable plastic underneath the fitted sheets.
If only the plastic wasn't there, then she'll would have a better night's sleep, even if she could only sleep for a few hours at a time, but it wasn't from the lack of trying. On the first night of her stay in this looney bin, she was clawing on her bed, trying to remove the plastic after laying down on that abomination and not a minute later, a couple of the techs rushed into her room to remove her from her bed, saying that it's for her protection. Her protection! The audacity of these humans, thinking that they know better than her.
When she calmly explained that she couldn't so much as close her eyes while on the abomination, one of the techs told her that the plastic is unremovable and it's in place for hygienic safety reasons. So, with that rather lackluster explanation, she elbowed that man's nose, causing him to bleed and her spending her first time in seclusion for the night.
Not that the green padded room is any kind of deterrence for her, so she continues on for the next few days, trying to remove the plastic from the mattress, which in their infinite wisdom, they stitched the plastic onto the mattress. After a few nights of restless sleep, got her hand on scissors -to their utter astonishment- and when she's halfway through removing the plastic, the techs bum rush her to tackle her down on to the floor and removing the scissors from her hands. Saying once again that they're doing it for her protection and dumped her back into the green padded room once again for another night.
… Come to think about it funny how the only room that has any kind of vibrant color is the padded room. These people are professional masochists. What sickos…
After all of that hustle, she came back to her room only to see that they had replaced her bed with a new one, along with that forsaken plastic, and she really couldn't be bothered anymore. Just like everything in her life, she'll adapt… and she had Sue place an order for a replacement mattress to be delivered to this hospital until they finally put a proper mattress in her bedroom and so far they've received 10 mattresses but haven't replaced her mattress yet. These hospital creatures are sure stubborn.
The other annoying thing about her being here is the clothing she has. It's all so boring! When she complained to the attending nurse, they said that it's the clothing she had on her when Harold brought her here. She ought to bring pain down onto Harold for only buying muted colored clothes for her to use while she's here. Goodness, it's such a boring taste and makes her regret coming here in the first place.
So, she did the most logical thing and had Sue ship her some adequate clothing for her stay, but these people who were holding her in this place rejected her choice of clothing! Saying that it's too bright… what a load of horse manure. Her next thought was having Sue constantly ship her clothing to the hospital until they let her wear it, but…
She wasn't in the mood to do that and honestly; she wasn't in the mood to be defiant for the past week. Which is so unlike herself when she thinks about it.
…
It must be the drugs that they're feeding her. Maybe she should stop taking them, seeing that it's messing up with her thought process and mood… but that would go against the goal of going with the flow for this little trip she's having and defeat its purpose.
At least they gave her these rather surprisingly comfy robes. So that's something.
Another thing that annoys her about this place is the people here. They're so annoying! Well… the staff are annoying, her fellow patients are fine since they leave her alone seeing that she won't initiate any contact with them, but unlike them, the people working here are incessant on talking to her and are very pushy. They just can't shut up!
Sure, she expected them to talk during her orientation to the unit, but she didn't expect them to keep on bothering her like an untreatable flea.
They kept on pestering her on about her needing to eat more or that she needed to make friends, or she needed to partake in their worthless activity group. Like she didn't need them to tell her how to eat or make friends. She already has Root -why would she need anyone else- and she doesn't need to participate in group talk or whatever horse manure they do in those rooms. Probably torture people if her experience in this place tells her anything.
As much as it would have been a pleasant thing to do, she somehow managed to curtail her desire to put to sleep those annoying pests, but it didn't change how annoying they were. It's like a constant bug flying around near her ear.
Despite everything negative, she still finds the place rather pleasant because the food here has a taste! She has no idea why she feels the sensation of taste again, but she can finally taste salt! Only to find out the food here doesn't taste very good, not that well-seasoned, the texture can be mushy and sometimes the food isn't even warm… at least food doesn't taste like ash anymore. However, she still doesn't follow her torturer's instructions on how much she should be eating out of principle, seeing those ghouls keep on, denying her request.
What's been consuming most of her mind is; why can she taste again? The dumb logical part of her mind quickly drifts to the answers that the medications are helping her… but that can't possibly be true. It just can't be the reason, because it couldn't have been that simple. It just can't!
That left her with the only reason, which was the asshole wants her to be here for some godforsaken reason. But why would the asshole want her to be here? What purpose does it serve? As much as she likes to grumble about her torture here, it's nothing compared to the past quarter of the century she's been living a living hell or even her past lives.
Had she been mistaken that the asshole wanted sacrifices? What the heck… this is too simple, there must be something more.
…
It must be a trick. The asshole must be lull her into a sense of warmth before ripping it all away. Now that makes sense, from everything she's experienced in this life. The smart thing to do is to grab Root and break out from this place as soon as her friend wakes up from her little bout of absent-mindedness.
… But the taste of food is soo tempting. After decades of not tasting anything sweet and more than a decade of not tasting anything else, being able to taste what she eats is just so good… even with the caveats of this facility food. All she can hope for is that this doesn't go away once she leave this place, because she really wants to try those comically big turkey drumsticks in Disney world. She might need to drag Pauling with her so Root doesn't go full manic mode like the defect like their previous conversation.
Su takes a left when she reaches the split in the corridor rather than the right because she really doesn't want to 'talk' with her 'psychologist' and listen to whatever irate things that woman has to say. Thinking about the crone ticks her off… the first time she met her, she did everything to beguile that crone, but she wasn't fooled and had the audacity to deny her 'request' on visiting Root!
So, she did the time-honored tactic of convincing someone which was giving them the silent treatment and so far, her handlers in this place have been resistant to it. It's honestly surprising that these people are being steadfast against her silent treatment. It usually works against Root since she would have caved in after a few hours. Her foes are truly formidable, despite them working in such a decrepit facility.
However, she isn't going to fail in this contest of wills against this doctor that she couldn't remember the name of… and in a matter of fact; she doesn't remember anybody's name here. Maybe she should learn their names and find an exploit in their personality, or even have Sue give her info about them, but that isn't fun. She has all the time in the world being in this godforsaken torture house and needed something to do in this dull building.
Despite her silent treatment falling on deaf ears, it wasn't like she couldn't go visit Root… well; it wasn't an authorized visitation, but she wasn't one to accept a no and it wasn't like these people could ever stop her. All she had to do was to sneak into E-unit, and it only took her a day to figure out how to go there without anyone noticing. Fools all of em, for thinking they'll keep her away from Root.
But when she finally reached her friend for the first-time last week… Root was laying in her abomination of a bed with her eyes wide open and completely unresponsive. Somehow, seeing her in that room, on that bed, with an empty look on her, shook Su right into her core, even though Root looks the same as when she saw her while they were in Harold's captivity.
Seeing her like that in this environment was so unnatural it almost made her stomach rolled to a point she almost puked… which was the drugs in her system's fault… Yet after that first night standing in that room looking at Root's lifeless face, Su dashed out of that room as quickly as possible, and she didn't go back to visit again.
Su just couldn't stand it… and it's Root's fault for being so… being like that in this kind of place. Even if it's the defect's fault for Root being here, she shouldn't look like that. Plus, she knows it's the drugs and her faulty brain that's causing her to feel this way. Yet she couldn't stop this feeling of… disgust when she looked at her only friend being like that.
At least she has Sue looking over Root for her and that made her feel better for leaving her alone in that unit. From the daily update she gets from Sue about her friend, it's all trending towards a positive outcome, with Root consuming sustenance on her own, walking on her own, even writing and drawing on her own. She had Sue describe what Root was drawing, and it's a picture of a terminal with her username, which is so adorable that she drew that in her current state of mind. Root even got into a fight and knocked some annoying pest onto the ground, that caused her to laugh when she heard about it. It will only be a matter of time before Root wakes up from her stupor and they can finally be reunited before they think about how to get out of here.
Although she promised Harold that she'll stay here to be treated, words are like the wind, and it can change… However, she did likes having the sense of taste again, and she still haven't figure out that peaceful feeling she felt back at Washington, so maybe she'll stay here another week to ponder… also there's the minor issue with Root little outburst back on the jet but she's sure that was just a misunderstanding and will be resolved once she's awake.
That line of thinking brought that sense of peace she felt in Washington to the forefront. Just what was causing it? Why was she feeling that? And there of all places?
The last time she felt something like that was when she was investigating Northern Lights and at IFT tower, but that feeling she felt back then was… dimmer if she needed to describe that feeling. However, what she felt back in Washington was much stronger, so much stronger. It was like she was freezing before, and that empty room was her being wrapped in a warm fuzzy blanket…
Speaking about fuzzy blankets, another thing here that sucks is that nothing here is soft and plushy! Everything was soo stiff and hard it makes her buttocks hurt just sitting on their 'sofa' and don't get her started on the mattress again…
Argh, why is her mind wandering away on something useless?
Must be the medications.
Where was she again?
Fuzzy blanket, warm feeling… Ah! It's that peaceful feeling that she has no idea what it means because the last time she ever felt so at peace was before that asshole came into her life with a baseball and knock entire world off kilter.
What's causing her head to spin for the past two weeks was the places that cause such sensation in her. Why is she feeling such things when she was in places that Northern Light or, as Root says, the machine, have been?
Just what does the asshole want with her? Does it have to do with the machine? If so, then why did the void come to her more than a decade before the inception of the machine? What would the asshole want with the machine? It's true that she's been having fun playing around with the machine for the past few years, but that doesn't mean anything. None of this makes any sense! That machine was built to save people, and that asshole is an… is an asshole! It loves torturing her and by that extension; it loves to torture others.
It all just makes her head spin and the medication she's on doesn't help.
She better stop thinking about this thing now… unless she wants to get another headache like last time, which sucks hard.
As she drags her feet forward down the corridor that loops back towards her psychologist's office, she notices how dull it is outside and there's fewer people in this part of her unit. She should come to this part of the unit more in the future, then maybe the cretins here will bother her less.
Not wanting to go to her doctor's office, she stops in front of a window looking out towards freedom, which is the building's parking lot and further out is some woods before going to some state road she didn't bother to learn when Harold was bringing her here.
While looking out onto that crusty, boring asphalt, Su can feel a tinge of calmness and peace for some odd reason. That's another thing she's been feeling off and on ever since coming here. There's no rhyme or reason for when she would feel this calmness. The last time she felt this was when she was in the toilet doing her business, which in itself is really odd, seeing that it wasn't anything special about that bowl movement. Before that was when she was sitting in the common area and just stared at the zoo of deranged people in there with her, since none of the reading material there was of any interest.
Somehow this fleeting sensation of calmness, her tasting food again, those feeling of peacefulness she felt in those empty rooms, must be connected…
… Or maybe it's the medications. Who really knows at this point? Seeing she's the only person in existence to experience this. It's not like she has any reference to go by.
She lets out a sigh before turning away from the window to continue on with her journey towards doom. Like the other things that's confounding her, she has a lot of time to figure out what it all means.
Just as she took a few steps away from the window…
RING
A payphone blares out its annoying ringing, causing her to stop and stare at the phone oddly.
RING
Huh…
Who might that be? Sue didn't need to call her since she could just do that high pitch thingy-a-bob she does, and her explicit instruction was to not bother her too much during her stay here.
RING
Her gut tells her to pick up the phone… but what if it's some creep that's been stalking her? What if it's someone that wants her dead and by her picking up, has a dial on her location and then kills her? She was standing by a window just a few moments ago and someone must have spotted her…
RING
…
… but Sue would have known about that plot and told her about it, like yesterday…
Eh, who cares if she dies, she dies… Su reaches towards the ringing phone.
RING
Things can't get any worse than they are now.
RING
Su picks up the receiver and places it on her ear.
ROOT POV
"My name is Root." She brings up her pistol…
BANG
Searing pain. Blinding light. Head being dunk into water and the rolling sound of alarm mutes. POP, POP, POP. Muffled voices. Knees on the floor. Tears. Hope is lost.
No longer on my knees. When did I sit down? Hands on my arm. Pain. Pain. Stop the pain. Stop walking. When did I start? More people. Finch. Finch's dog. Hanna. She's hurt. Who hurt her? They need to die. Shaw? Men in suits. Guns. Maybe they'll kill me. Maybe they should.
Only five of us now. Cold. So cold. Hands everywhere. Straps. Head on window. Darkness.
Pain. Shaw inches from my face. Annoyed. Shaw next to Hanna, touching her. Don't touch her. Hanna does nothing. Strapped in. Tied down. Window again. Nothing to look.
Voices. People talking. Bumps. Talking about Hanna. Ants crawling into her ears. Water is going into her brain. Maybe I'll drown and that's okay.
Momentum stops. Door opens. Straps undone. The water drips out of her brain. But water still surrounds her. Harold's hand. Unstable. Cold. Winds. Pain.
Shaw hurting me again. Bathroom. Relief. Hanna watching her. Shaw watching her. She's small again. My body is still alive, but I don't want to be. Body does what it wants.
On the floor. Hands bound. Talking. People talking. They want to kill Hanna. She can't die. They won't. Shaw's angry. Hanna's awake. No one notices. Beeps. High beeps. Pain. It hurts her ears. Beeps stop. Hanna talks. People were surprised. Everyone talks. Hanna giggling. More beeps. Shaw punches Hanna. She can't do that. I can't let Shaw hurt her again. Hanna stops talking. Harold worried. People walk away. My face feels dry. So tired.
Light. Shadow. Movement. Throat pain. Poking at my face. Can't. Too painful. Loud noises. A knife cutting at my wrist. I can't see. Everything is in a blur. Gentle hands on my arm and shoulder. Legs buckling. Unstable. Forward. But I don't want to. Sunlight. Cold. Car. Window. So thirsty. Straps. Throat pain. Everything is in pain. I feel like I'm going to die. And I don't mind it.
Darkness. Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired. Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired. Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired.
Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired. Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired. Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired.
Dizzy. Foggy. Throat pain. Tired…
Light. There's sand in my throat. My joint aches. Hands bound. I'm sitting on a chair. Dizzy from the fog. Where am I? Am I dead? Where's God? Shaw? Is this hell? Shaw looms before me. Shaw's the devil? Fitting. She's talking, but nothing makes sense. It's all gibberish in my soaked ears. I see Hanna. Her face is covered in cloth. Unprotected. Unsafe. Shaw talks again. A pistol. Danger. Shaw has the gun and aims at Hanna. No. No. She can't die. I can't let anything bad happen to her. I reach for the gun while I yell at Shaw. Shaw stops and points the pistol at me. Barrel on my head. I leaned onto the pistol. She can't die. I can't fail again. Everything to protect her and I will be at peace at last. Forsaken by God. If this is life, then I don't want it.
Shaw doesn't end it. I didn't die. Why? I can't die if I'm in hell already. Pistol is away. Hanna is safe. Hands on shoulder. Pain. Shaw bringing her away. I can't leave Hanna alone. Shaw says something. I couldn't hear it, but I followed her lead.
Time is a funny thing. In the dark and warm places, it crawls. In straps and cold it moves faster. Out of control. I can't feel it passing, but it must. Blink and the figure beside me changes. Shaw. Big dog. Finch. Shaw, Finch… but Hanna is constant.
Wind. Straps. Light. Dark. Pain. Shaw. Wind. Straps. Light. Dark…
Harold removed the cloth from Hanna's head. She's sleeping. Everyone's gathered around me and Hanna. Talking. Silence. Waiting for something. Hanna wakes up. Harold starts talking. Beeping. Pain. Shaw talks. Harold's pet talks. Hanna talks. Everyone talks. Hanna looks at me. I look back. Everything around me is meaningless as I look at her. She looks away from me to talk to Harold. Sadness. Pain. Everyone talking. Shaw looks angry. Hanna looks bored. She's always bored. She agrees to something. Everyone looks relieved. Hanna goes back to sleep. Take me with you. Away from this hell.
The air is colder. Strap. Window. Rain on windowpane. Hands. Rain on my skin. Shaw Holding Hanna. Rain on my face.
Gray halls. Gray staircase. Up. Up. Gray room. Hands. Cold Hands. Cold metal. Where's Hanna? Hands. Many more hands. Pushing. Pulling. Strangers. Cold air on my skin. Bright lights. Smell of antiseptic and hydrochloride. Acrid. Sharp sting. Coldness invaded into her skin. Where's Hanna? Hands. Hands. Hands.
Silence. When did the hands stop? Time sneaks away silently, like a snake. Food at her mouth. My stomach rolls. The smell is horrendous.
Water at my lips. Sand in my throat. Thirsty. Sip. Sweat water. Cold water. Washing away the sand.
I'm still alive. Where's Hanna?
Waking. I slept? I must have dozed off. A bed. A ceiling. A woman pushes at my shoulders. She moves my leg. I'm on my stomach. A man holding my arm at my sides. The woman pulls my pants. Stinging pain. Deep into my skin. Coldness.
My other arm is tied up. No. It's in a sling. My shoulder stings. I got shot. Shaw shot me. Hanna was hurt. Where's Shaw? Where's Harold? Who are these strangers? Why did pull my pants down? What's going on? Where is she? Where is Hanna? What was that stinging pain? I move my lips, but there's nothing, only static. I can't hear anything with my cottoned ear. Like her head is in water. Unable to say or hear.
A meal. The scent is making me queasy. Water at my lips. Sips the sweet water. Wash away the sand. A spoon. Cold and smooth. Eat. A spoon, warm and stinky. No. Look away.
Hanna? She's here. She's safe. She's alive. Why is she looking at me like that? Hanna isn't here for long and left. Wait. Why is she leaving me again? Don't leave.
Things repeat themselves. Stand. Sit. Wait. Pain. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Wait. Pain. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Wait. Pain. Stand. Sit. Sleep. Pain. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Wait. There is a pattern. There is some comfort in that. Things repeat themselves. But where's Hanna? She hasn't come back.
The pattern is broken. This is when they come and hurt me. They're not here. Late? Door open. They're here. Just one? A small cart. Like the doctor for my shoulder. No gauze. Blue paper. Iodine swabs. She holds up a syringe. A shot?
My sweater off my shoulder. Cold. A needle. Don't look. Pain. The same pain. Liquid. Injection. It's cold but dissipates. It's just a shot.
Stand. Sit. Eat… I wasn't done with that water. Sweet water. Why is it on the table again, and not on my lips? Spoon. No. Swat. Spoon gone. Grasp the water. Take the water. This is mine. Drink it all. Where is the spoon? Sweet and cold? Grasp the spoon. Where is the sweet? I am cheated. Throw the spoon. Hands. Hands. Hands. Stand. Sit. Wait. In place of the pain, she comes again. Another shot. No hands holding me down. My pants stay on. No pain in the back.
Stand. Sit. This is not where I usually wait. It's different here. There are people. There is movement. It is not peaceful. People shout. Cutting through the static. Knives in my ears. I want to wait in the waiting place. Stand. Walk. Hands. Hands. Hands. Sit. Sit. Sit. I cannot return to the old pattern. It's not allowed. I miss the water. Time moved faster than. Here it moves slower. Maybe it's the shots? They want me to wake up. I want to go back to before. It's easier than this.
Stand. Sit. Shot. Eat. Stand. Sit. Sleep. Shot. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Wait. Shot. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit… the new place again. Knives. I want to wait in the waiting place. I can't leave this place. Make the noise stop. Stand.
It's quiet again. I can make it stop. I did make it stop. 'It' is a man. Ugly. Vile. Loud. Walk. This is the wrong way. The waiting place is not this way. Forrest green room. Pushed over. They're hurting me again. Tugging at my pants. Pain from behind. They're gone. This is not the waiting place. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sit. Sleep.
The cart is outside the door. The woman is inside. Shot. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Wait. Shot. The pattern resumes. Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Endure. Shot. Stand. Next is sit. In the eating place. They don't come for me, but I know the pattern. Walk. Sit. Eat. Walk. Walk. Sleep. Shot. Walk. Walk. Sit. Eat. Walk. Sit. Endure. Walk. Shot. Walk. Sit. Eat. Where's Hanna?
Walk. Walk. Sit. Sleep. Shot. Walk. Hands. A new room. A change in the pattern. Sit. White expanse. Object in my hand. I know that smell. Marker. White expanse. A hand guides mine. A mark on the white. Pull my hand away. Take the marker too. Mine now.
#ROOT
#ROOT
#ROOT
#ROOT
#ROOT
A hand on my shoulder. A shot. It's time to walk to the eating place. Walk. Eat. Walk. Sit. Endure. Shot. Walk. Walk. Sit. Sleep.
The pattern changes again. The cart has new things on it. Still the wipes. The syringe. The vial… she picks up the new object. Orange. Orange and white. I recognize this shape. Orange. Round. White. Medicine. Prescription Vial. She shows me the needle, but she puts it down. She holds out a pill and a cup of water. I don't want pills. Push them away. Water spills. Shot.
Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. #ROOT. I like the green marker.
Again, the needle is presented. The pill is offered. I don't want pills. I don't want another shot. Insistent hands poke at my lips. I want to bite them. Open mouth. Bitter taste. I take the offered water. No shot.
Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Endure.
Pill. Withdraw. Swat. Needle. Withdraw. Do not swat. It's sharp. Pill. Withdraw. Swat. Needle. Withdraw. Do not swat. Pill. This is a loop. This is a choice. Accept one or the other. Put the pill in my mouth. No shot. Water instead.
Stand. Sit. Eat. Stand. Sit. Sleep. Pill. Walk. #ROOT. Pill. Walk. Eat. Walk. Sit. Endure.
Walk. Sit. Eat. Walk. Walk. A sound cut through the water like Moses parting the sea. The payphone rings.
This is God's will, and God is calling.
Walk. Walk to the phone. If this isn't God, the world will end again. Hand trembles. Hold your breath.
BEEP. Can. You. Hear. Me. Beep.
God's voice pulls her head out from the water and breathing new life into her.
Root lets out a breath of relief and smiles. She's not alone.
"Absolutely."
A/N: Well, this took longer than I would like. At least I get to post this chapter on the anniversary of me deciding to write this fic and I thought I would only take a year to finish this story, and it's barely halfway through it. With the end of this chapter comes the end of the 2nd arc and the next arc will be the hospital arc, which is coincidentally where I stopped writing the major outline of the story last year before starting chapter 1. I got some idea of what to do but nothing concrete. For the hospital arc, I think I might go back to shorter chapters of 5k, which will take less time to write, and I might do third party POV that doesn't center on a single character in addition to Root's and Su's POV. Feels like it's going to be stale with just the two of them. Maybe more POV back and forth. The 3rd arc will be slower but will contribute a lot to the change of our main characters' attitudes.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a happy new year.
Chapter 35: In Perdition God Calls
ROOT POV
Her heart is thumping so loud that it's the only thing she can hear from her left ear. On the other ear, she clutches the receiver tighter into the ear while holding the phone dearly. With God calling her directly after so long, how can she not hold it with every ounce of her being?
"Beep. Heart. Rate. And. Breathing. Increased." The disjointed, distorted voices sings into her ear. Oh, how beautiful it sounds. It breathes new life into her dead body.
"How could I not? Not when you call me." She replies with a wide smile as she holds the receiver even tighter and bringing up her other hand… only to feel a sharp sting on her shoulder, causing her to look down.
Oh, right… she was shot there, and she's in a sling. Looking back up, she sees that the payphone is on a dull gray wall and the place smells of antiseptics and Clorox. How fun… she's in a hospital… but at the back of her mind, she knows that already.
"Beep. Are. You. Alright?"
She lets out a small giggle at the question and answers. "Better than ever, now that you're here with me."
"Beep. Report. Condition. Stable. And. Improving. Every day."
That must be her records. Despite knowing that The Machine is nigh-omniscient, having it read her record for her makes her giddy like a little schoolgirl. "See, I'm doing great."
"Beep. How. Has. Your. Stay. In. The. Hospital. Been?"
Root lets out a moan before replying. "It's been dismal." As she says that, an idea pops into her head, causing her wide smile to creep wider. "Are you going to get me out of here?"
"Beep. Not. Yet."
Her smiles dips slightly as she asks. "Why not?"
"Beep. You. Need. Treatment. In. Hospital."
"I don't need this place." She whines and leans closer to the payphone. "I'm all fine and dandy… If you just ignore the bullet hole in my shoulder, but I've had worse injures compared to this."
"Beep. Not. Treatment. For. That. How. Long. Have. You. Been. Conscious?"
She shrugs and answers. "A few days, I guess… Yeah, I'm pretty sure I woke up a few days ago. I must have been in shock from the gunshot."
"Beep. That's. Not. Correct."
Despite her high from talking to The Machine, she feels slightly annoyed by that statement and says. "Then you tell me how long I've been out."
"Beep. Today. Is. Your. Four. Teen. Day. Here. It. Took. Five. Days. To. Reach. The. Hospital. And. You've. Only. Been. Mobile. For. Five. Days."
She felt her breath hitch as she listened intently to what The Machine was saying.
… It's been 19 days since she went to Washington. That can't be… right. It didn't feel like 19 days. Fuck, Washington felt like it was only a few days ago, not a fortnight ago. Her head couldn't have been up in the clouds for that long. It's almost preposterous, seeing that she's never had this problem before, only mom has ever gotten it…
… That just isn't true, is it? There's an empty pit in her and she feels like puking whatever is left in her stomach from the memory of the last time she blacked out. No, she can't think about that, not when God's on the line with her right now, saying the most confounding things.
But It's The Machine that told her this, so it must be true, and she explicitly trusts The Machine with her entire being.
Taking a second to recompose herself, she smiles and replies. "I guess… I might need a hospital right now… until I can get my head back together. Can't plan something if I can't be conscious, can I?"
"Beep. Don't. Leave. Stay. For. Treatment."
She knows it isn't an insult, but it feels like one, so she scoffs and replies. "You can't be serious."
"Beep. Require. Treatment. To. Function. Properly."
"I am functioning properly." Even though it doesn't sound right, she protests The Machine's commandment like a heretic. "The past few days are just… a hiccup. Nothing a couple days of rest in this hospital wouldn't fix."
She waits for a response from God, however; she received nothing for the longest time.
Then suddenly…
"Robin?" A male voice erupts forth from the receiver, causing her to frown instantly. "Can you hear me?"
God's voice was replaced with whoever this mongrel was. How dare he interrupt her conversing with a being that this pea-brained man can't even comprehend?
And who the fuck is Robin?
"I have no idea who you are, but you need to get off this line now. It's in use." This man sapped whatever feeling of happiness from talking to The Machine out and anger replaced it.
"Robin, this is Dr. Keynes, and I just want to talk to you for a moment." The man replies with a calm diplomatic voice, like he's a doctor or something.
Wait. He said he's a doctor…
Also, that again… Robin. Why does he think he's talking to a Robin? Doesn't he know she was having a very important call right now?
"The number you have dialed is not available. Please try again later, after the tone." She replies in a mechanical voice. "Beep."
"Robin…" The man tries to continue but.
"Normally people hang up after the beep." Root cuts him off. "So, hang up the phone. I was busy using it."
"Now Robin, don't…" The man once again tries to say something, but she cuts him off.
Annoyed by his tone, she snaps. "There's no Robin here, so pack up and leave."
"I'm looking at you from the nurse's station right behind you, Robin." The man persisted in being annoying.
But what he says causes her tunnel vision at the payphone to vanish and take a glance behind her. Only to see a woman in nurse garments keeping her distance from Root -pretty sure the bitch is positioned to tackle her as soon as she finishes here- and a man in doctor's robes waving at her before saying. "I can see it's you, Robin."
She frowns at the man and bites on her lips, thinking about what he's implying. It's almost three weeks since Washington, the last person she was with, the only person who would have brought her here, and a name of a bird…
"Robin…" She says in quiet disbelief. "No doubt, Harold's doing."
"Your Uncle?" The man's voice in the receiver sounding confused by what she said.
Uncle? He made himself her fucking uncle? The utter gall of that man. As much as she wants to shoot that liar for deceiving her in Washington, she can't help but find this situation utterly amusing. If this had happened before Washington, she would have been happily amused by this development, but now it's just resentment and annoyance.
… Also, the fucker named her after a bird and an ugly one at that. Doesn't even have the decency to pick a better bird. At least the name starts with an R. She can give him credit for that.
"Uncle Harold." Her voice is dripping with sarcasm while holding back a giggle. "The man knows I don't answer to my given name, and yet he doesn't stop using it." She says bitterly before letting out a sigh of annoyance. "Regardless, Doctor, whoever the fuck you said you were, I'm trying to have a private and important conversation here before you rudely interrupted us. I'd love to discuss my current situation with you later when I'm not on the phone. So, make like a tree and fuck off."
"But I don't hear anyone else on the line, Robin." The man replies without skipping a beat and with a concern voice.
She rolls her eyes at the man before turning her attention back to the payphone. Obviously, The Machine knows how to convey what it wants to her without anyone else listening in to their conversation; it is basically a God.
"Well, it's obvious that you scared my conversation partner into silence. They're quite shy and I doubt they're going to talk again until you hang up and neither will I." She resolvedly says as she look back at the man and just stare at him.
"I'm just concerned about your wellbeing, Robin." The man says in a kind voice and clearly not understanding she's giving him the silent treatment. "This is the first time you've spoken in two weeks and it's a serious achievement."
She lets out a large fake yawn and rolls her eyes at the man.
The man frowns at her and says. "Robin?"
Root continues to stare at him as she slowly brings up her hand from her sling without showing a single ounce of pain and flips him a bird. Before bringing up her middle finger and places it on her lips.
The man finally looks like he understands what's she's doing, sighs in defeat and hangs up the phone. She smirks triumphantly at the small painful victory before turning her focus back on to the payphone.
"Now where were we?" She says with a delightful smile as she leans in closer to the payphone. "I think you said something preposterous, like me needing to stay here, which I'm sure I just misheard."
The only thing that replies is silence as she waits for The Machine to say something.
She can feel her hand trembling at the utter silence she's receiving and says with a wavering, timid voice. "Hello?"
When nothing answers back, not even the off-hook tone graced her with its presence, causing her to feel like the world around her is spinning. "HELLO?" She desperately yells into the receiver for God to reply.
Everything around her darkens as her only world now revolves on the payphone for any kind of response. Once again, nothing. "Where are you?" Her voice breaks in despair before roaring back into life. "TALK TO ME!"
No, no, no, no, no, no.
This can't be happening. God came back to her and talked to her. Everything was going to be okay. Everything was supposed to be all right after God talked back to her. Why is this happening? Why is it not talking back?
"Where are you?!" Root screams into the receiver like her life is on the line, which is. Her entire body is shaking, waiting for a response.
But what she received wasn't the voice she wanted to hear.
"Robin…" A male voice suddenly erupts from behind her, causing her single sided focus on the payphone to shift towards the voice and back onto the outer world.
The voice of the heathen fucker that ripped God away from her. He needs to be punished. The world needs to be cleansed from this bad code.
Her head snaps towards the direction of that voice and she can only see red. "YOU!"
She takes a step towards the man, not caring that she sees humanoid shapes rushing towards her.
"IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!" Root yanks the silent receiver away from her in preparation for using it as a bat against that fucker's watermelon of a head…
… But before she could deliver divine punishment to this fucker, someone caught her hand right above her head and quickly disarm her one usable hand by placing it on her back. Causing a slight tinge of pain, but that pain is nothing compared to the anguish she's feeling from the emptiness that God has left her.
"IT WAS TALKING TO ME!" Root hyperventilating at this point as she struggles against whomever that's pinning her so she could punish this man. "AND YOU TOOK IT AWAY!"
The man has a remorseful look on him. "I'm so sorry, Robin." The snake sounds like he was before he turns his attention to the person behind her. "Take her into seclusion until she's less violent, but don't give her another dose of her medication for this. It might have unintended consequences."
"FUCK YOU!" She yells at the man as she's struggles against the person that's dragging her away. "I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!"
As she's being dragged away further away from that heathen, she continues to rage against everything, against this place, against her jailors, against life, but most importantly she rages the incoming tide of water.
But for all of her rage, the weight of the water is unyielding and unforgiving.
Forest green. I'm on my back. In the green room where no one can hear my screams. Not like I can even hear my own screams from all the water surrounding her head. Curling inwards. Weeping. Darkness.
Time is a funny thing. Did I sleep? Did I walk? I'm no longer on my back. I'm no longer in the green room. They moved me. I go where they take me, and I sit. They poke my mouth and press an object into my hands, but I will not take them.
How long has it been? Time is a fickle thing. They stop bringing me everywhere except for that room where they keep trying to poke my face. I will not accept any of it. Sit. Pain. Walk.
Sit. Pain. Walk. Sit. Pain. Walk. Sit. Pain. Walk. Sit. Pain. Walk. It repeats.
But a sound finally breaks the repetition like a hot knife through butter. The payphone rings.
God's calling me again. Finally.
Walk to the phone. Pick it up.
"Hello?" She says nervously, like she's gasping for air.
"Beep. Good. Morning."
She felt like God just pulled her out of the ocean and she's now breathing sweet air of life again.
Root closes her eyes as she lets out a breath of relief and says. "I was so afraid that you left me for good."
"Beep. I. Will. Not."
Unbridled joy erupts within her from that simple declaration. Maybe she won't drown again.
SU POV
"BEEP. CAN. YOU. HEAR…"
Out of pure instinct, she hangs up the receiver in a flash of action and continues on with her walk before the ringing payphone distracts her, like nothing just happened.
However, that wasn't the end of it… As she passes by another payphone, it rings and knowing better this time she completely ignores the ringing phone for the pleasure of walking like a tortoise towards torturer prime.
Yet when she turns a corner and passes by another payphone, it rings. This time, she pauses and looks around her. It's an empty, windowless hallway and the only thing here is the CCTV camera that doesn't pose a threat to her.
She stares at the ringing phone and ponders. What was that? Because it really sounds like some stalking creep…
Goodness gracious, she didn't know she had a stalker before!
… Wait… she did have a one before… but this is way more creepier! At least the last one she can see and attack. This one hides in the shadows! Whomever it might be can be looking at her now and she has no earthly idea where they're looking from. They can attack her from anywhere and she won't know!
She can feel her body swaying side to side as her mind races through all the possibilities and scenario that this might bring.
Her mind goes overboard when the payphone rings out another ring and brings her back into the present where she's leaning on the wall by the payphone.
She needs to calm down… it's the damn meds… yeah, it's the drugs in her system that's screwing with her.
Let's just take a moment to calm down her brain. Take a deep breath, just like she has always done, and exhale…
There's literally no reason for her to get all worked up about some stalker in some weird voice calling her, when she has Sue that can easily find whomever the caller is and have Pauling remove them for her.
Yeah, asking Sue to handle this is the best choice at the moment, unless she gets out of this place, which isn't on the cards now.
Just as she's about to open her mouth to say out loud to Sue… she closes her mouth when a thought occurred to her.
…
Just wait a hotdog second… that feeling she felt as she held the receiver before slamming it down… that feeling of warm delight. It's the same warmth she felt when she was in that hollowed out room.
The heck?
She's not one to jump to conclusion about something foreign to her… but really?
Really?
The machine is calling her?
But that doesn't make sense. Why would an A.I. that could, according to Root, predict people accurately be using a random assortment of recorded voices to communicate verbally?
It's just so… Primitive, absolutely basic, no style or grace. If it's 12 years old now and still has this kind of voice that Sue has moved forward from after a year of existence. How can it possibly be better than Sue?
… Other than the fact that she's bore witness to the machine's prowess of predicting herself and Root's testament…
Hang on just a second… How could it see her? Sue's out of sight module should still be active for her while she's still here and there's no way for the machine to counteract Sue if it can't even use a proper voice module… So, it can't be the machine. That can only mean one thing. It's a creepy human stalker somewhere that has eyes on her!
She isn't some kind of scaredy cat that jumps away from the slight sign of danger!
With renewed vigor, she reaches for the payphone that's been ringing non-stop in the background.
Picking up the receiver, she places it on her ear and listens to the assortment of random voices. "BEEP. Don't. Hang. Up."
When she's confident that there are no more words coming out. "Who's this?" She practically barks into the receiver and leans closer to the payphone as she felt the warmth, but her eyes aren't still as they dart around to see anyone that's staring at her. "You some weirdo that likes to stalk an innocent psychiatric inmate because they can't fight back? I'm sure you have some kind of weird fetish on me, so show yourself and let me beat you up!"
She didn't have to wait long for a response. "Beep. You. Know. Me. As. The. Machine."
Well, that threw a wrench at her ideas and assumptions. Now she just feels embarrassed by her little drug driven indulgent thinking and her yelling.
"Oh…" She says awkwardly before being replaced by annoyance. "Heh… Why didn't you say that from the start?"
They could have avoided all of this if it had said their name from the outset. Seriously, what kind of A.I. Harold wrote? Because so far, she isn't impressed. Clearly, Sue is better than this machine!
"Beep. You. Hang. Up. Before. Proper. Introduction."
Of course, it would push the blame onto her when it is clearly to be blamed for this whole confusion!
And there's something that's been bothering her since she first pick up the phone… "Could you please, for the lord's sake, stop it with that incessant beeping?" She says frustratingly. "I can handle your subpar mangled voice but not that beeping, and I feel like I'll get an aneurysm if you continue."
"Is. This. Better?"
"Tremendously… if we ignore your voice." She replies with a sigh of delight and continues when the machine doesn't respond. "Now. How did you find me? There's not enough tea in China that you're seeing me right now."
Su waves at the blinking red camera with a loopy smile when the machine replies. "True. You. Are. Invisible. In. Camera. But. Your. Walking. Cadence. Is. Unique."
Feeling a spark of annoyance, she replies. "I don't limp!"
She isn't some crippled lowlife! Sure, she feels more tired now than ever and walking feels like a chore, but she walks normally!
"You. Don't."
She unintentionally lets out. "Huh…"
That's something she didn't think of… and why did her mind instantly jump into her earlier conclusion?
… Must be the damn drugs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the explanation…
Then it must be… "You recognized my footsteps? And you're able to parse through all these other humans' footstep?"
Well, she's alone right now, but she was in a sea of people just a few minutes ago and the machine was able to keep track. Wonder to what limit it can track her with just sound? Can it still track her if there's a higher pitch or shrieking ambient sounds? So many possibilities for interesting experiments and fun experiments. Yet she isn't in the mood for lab work now.
"Yes."
"Did Harold program that in before you were deployed?" She asks out of curiosity.
"No."
Interesting… it managed to program something like that by itself but couldn't get a better voice modulator? Their priorities clearly aren't straight and totally off the mark… but then again, Harold did program it to be a surveillance A.I. so its lack of development in that field isn't totally out of left field. Just a mark of poor foresight on four eyes part.
"You've piqued my interest." She says as she leans closer to the payphone as if it would make her feel warmer. "However… why are you using such a primitive form of text to speech? These voices make me think you're having a psychotic breakdown."
"It. Is. Sufficient."
She lets out a scoff. "You're a sassy little thing, aren't you?"
When the machine didn't respond to her great line, she finally asks the question that's been whirling at the back of her head. "Why are you calling me?" Su smiles as she twists the phone cord around her finger. "Are you calling me to tell me I'm a better player in our little games we've been playing for the past few years?"
"No."
"Well, that's a fast shut down." She pouts. "Do you even know what I meant about the game?"
"I. Heard. Your. Conversation. With. Admin."
The machine completely ignored her question, and she wasn't annoyed but was curious.
Admin? That must be Harold… He seriously made the machine call him that rather than calling him by his name? What an odd little man.
However, that left her with a question. "Now, how did you even listen to that conversation? Because I'm sure Sue would have blocked you out of any devices with a microphone in that room."
"I. Have. My. Ways."
Isn't it just being a little sly thing? How adorable… wonder if Sue is tracking where this call is coming from and from there try to find where the machine went because she really likes this warm feeling.
Come to think of it… shouldn't Sue be blocking this payphone as well? Was she failing in her job? Or did the machine find a way to bypass it? So many possibilities for her to explore and a stark contrast to the dull two weeks since she's been here.
However, before she could continue her conversation with the machine…
"Anna?" A woman's voice from behind her rips her out from the small tunnel vision she's having with the payphone.
Turning to see the interrupter of her rather pleasant chat, she sees a woman in a nurse's aide garb, the lowest of the lowest tier in this place hierarchy. There's a slight concern on her face and possibly a little bit lost.
She rolls her eyes at the interloper and turns back to the payphone. "Sorry about that. A pest interrupted us." Su says sweetly into the phone. "Now where were we? Ah… why are you calling me?"
"Don't. Hurt. Her."
"What?" She asks back rather dumbly and confused. What is it referring to?
"Anna, there's no one on the phone." The woman gets closer to her and back into her view before pointing towards the payphone. "This is an outbound phone, and the meter is empty."
There's a spike of annoyance towards the interloper for her continual disturbance, which makes Su really want to kick this pest. However, this brings up an interesting subject…
Su completely ignores the woman and talks back to the machine. "What do you mean by that? And you can see her?"
"Yes."
She snorts slightly and comments. "You're not one to say a lot, huh?"
What a vague answer to both questions. If the machine can't see her but can see the pest, that means Sue is removing her from the frames, unless it meant something else when it said it can see the pest.
And what the heck does the machine mean by don't hurt her? It's such a vague creature that's she's been playing around with for all these years. It really is true what they say about never meet your dancing partner… wait that's the wrong proverb.
Before she could continue her talk with the machine, a hand pops right into her periphery, speeding towards the receiver. But it's for naught, because she quickly catches the offending hand on its wrist with her hand from her injured shoulder and she can feel another hand touching her uninjured shoulder.
Don't these rats know that it's rude to interrupt someone while they're on the phone? Plus the pain is sooo annoying. A wave of anger spreads through her as she looks at the interloper's hand. Oh, how easy for her to break it.
"Anna?" The nurse aide sounds afraid. "Please let go of my hand. We don't want anyone to get hurt."
Glancing at her back, she sees the other person who's holding her shoulder, a person in a custodian uniform. What the heck is a nurse's aide and a janitor doing together in this newly discovered -for her- part of the hospital?
…
Not that it matters right now, since both pests aren't a threat to her.
And the only person who's going to be hurt is the busybodies… then a moment of revelation washes through her like the lord Jesus Christ talking to John. She understands what the machine meant earlier.
Oh… it meant these people. But why shouldn't she hurt them? It's not like being put into the room with the only color in this place is a punishment… Right, the machine is a goody two shoes.
Su can easily ignore the machine's suggestion and break this woman's wrist, then breaking the guy's nose… but this warmth she's feeling ever since picking up the phone is quite addicting. Maybe she'll play along and see what this all means.
Letting out a sigh of annoyance and disappointment, she then says. "Talk to you later."
She hangs up the phone and lets go of the hand she's been holding in an iron grip, pretty sure it's turning blue. The woman takes a step back while the man still has his hand on her shoulder and it's an annoyance.
"Would you kindly remove your filthy hand from my person?" She says calmly as she glares at the man.
The man looks lost before turning to the aide for directions and receive a nod from the plebeian of the hospital.
Now that there are no hands on her, she turns to the offending woman who's clutching her wrist but is no longer frowning and Su speaks up. "Did your parents never tell you that it's incredibly rude to interrupt someone while they're on a call?"
"Anna…" The woman says with a concern voice -which is obviously fake just like everyone else in this place-. "Were you hearing voices just now?"
Su lets out a groan… goodness, she really shouldn't have said to that witch that she hears sue talking to her and lets her make assumptions… now everyone here thinks she's having auditory hallucinations, which she has never had, when she's completely sane. Unlike a lot of the people in here, who are clearly demented.
Well, since everyone thinks she's hallucinating, might as well play to it. "Why yes, I was having a lovely conversation with a dear friend before you rudely barged in."
The woman pauses, seemingly not knowing how to respond, which it isn't surprising seeing her rank in this primitive society of hospital, so she takes this time to properly at both of them to see if she recognizes them… it's not like she would remember them, but it doesn't hurt to see if she's seen them before in passing.
After a few seconds of deliberation, the woman opens her mouth. "Anna, are you supposed to be here right now? I remember one of the nurses saying you have something on your schedule around this time."
She narrows her eyes at the woman… is she being passive aggressive? How rude… really makes her want to hurt the interloper, but the machine asked nicely so she won't.
Rolling her eyes at the woman, she turns away from the two interlopers and says. "No need to make a mountain out of a molehill. I was just taking the scenic route."
"I will have to report what I saw to Nurse Gloria." The woman adds before Su starts her arduous towards torturer prime, causing her to glare at the woman once again.
Ugh…
Wait… which one is that? Is it the one that gives her the meds every day, or is it the bossy one, or is it the overly nice one? Maybe it's neither of them and this is someone else… Not that it matters, since every nurse in this section of the hospital is annoying as heck.
Also, what a tattletale… doesn't she know snitches gets shivved? However, it is her job… whatever her job even does. Probably part of their job description is to be the snitch of the inmates' behaviors. What a lowlife. Can't believe that the machine doesn't want this person to be put to sleep… once again showing that Sue is the superior being!
She waves her hand dismissively as she starts dragging her feet forward, only for her to stop a few feet away from them, and glances back. "Why is this part of the ward empty of people? This part is significantly better compared to the normal place."
"Oh…" The woman, seemingly surprised by the inquiry, turns to the man for an answer, who shrugs and says in a gruff voice. "Place was renovated a few years ago and the rooms never got fitted out because of the budget cuts. We mostly use it for storage now or some kind of group activity and private sessions."
Huh… interesting, and she's really disappointed with herself for not finding this place earlier. She's been here for more than two weeks now! Guess this place can be her new prowling ground and away from the general insane populace of this ward. Wonder what's inside these rooms…
Without saying another word, she continues on with her slow trudge to her psychologist, where she's just going to sit down in silence until that stubborn woman changes her mind about her rather ridiculous decision of not letting her have her way without participating in therapy… but does she want to see Root in the state that she's in right now?
…
She rather not think about that right now… nonetheless it's the principal that matters! That stubborn hag should grant her very reasonable request even if she may or may not even go forward with the act.
Also, she needs to borrow a phone so that the machine can call her tonight and she's pretty sure that stubborn cow won't miss her absolutely archaic phone. Honestly, she's doing that cow a favor by borrowing it from her, and the cow might finally change her phone to a 21st century standard… but the phone is from the 21st century…
Just a second… she didn't tell the machine to call her back tonight, did she or did she not? Su comes to a full stop in some empty hallway to think… but for the life of her, she couldn't recall what she said before hanging up the phone. Goodness, that event just happened a few minutes ago and now she can't remember.
Argh… things would be so much simpler if Sue's here to remember things for her… wait, she was here… but that would defeat the purpose of her telling Sue to keep quiet and she can't have the full experience if Sue keeps yapping in that high frequency thingies.
These drugs that these masochists shoved into her are really screwing with her mind. What even are the drugs she's taking right now? She didn't bother to hear what the torturer prime said and didn't even bother to look at pills before she gulps it all down. How many pills were there? Half a dozen or more? But she's pretty sure some were just supplements because some are exactly what she took before coming here… did they know what she took? There must be some pills in her handbag and Harold must have given them her handbag.
Ugh… they went through her bag? These people really don't know the meaning of privacy. Wonder if they kept her small collection of knifes from the bag or threw it away… if they did, someone's isn't going to have a fun day.
Speaking of drugs… that stubborn cow is surely going to add another one to the pile because of that little snitch. How fun…
Oh well, what's done is done…
Wonder if the machine is going to call her tonight and if that warm feeling is going to come back or not.
THRID PARTY POV
"Yeah, no shit. You guys broke her head like a piggybank." Farrah comments as she takes a bite of her pancake. "She was completely fine the day before… well, fine for Robin. She even smiled at me during art class."
Mary didn't even say anything to the self-imposing patient and just raised an eyebrow towards the patient, who quickly folds. "Alright, maybe she didn't smile, but she looked at me!"
"Aren't you her seating partner in class?" Mary replies with a slight smile.
"Yeah, and she never looked at me before!" Farrah replies with a flustered look and completely forgotten her pancake. "She's always focused on her odd drawings and never around her."
"Enough you two, and you know Doctor Keynes isn't to be blamed for what happened two days ago." Martha chides both her fellow nurse's aide and the patient as she wipes Robin's mouth. "You know, her file said she has a history of violence and the reason for her being here was waving a gun around. The doctor didn't have much choice."
"Still can't imagine meek old Robin being violent." Mary comments in disbelief. "She's always soo… passive in the past two weeks. Can't really see her hurting a fly."
"Yeah, you weren't there…" Martha shakes her head before chiding. "And stop tapping her thigh. It annoys her."
"I doubt she can feel it." Mary rolls her eyes at Martha, who takes up the impossible task of trying to feed ice cream to Robin. "And don't talk like you were there, either. It was our off day."
Martha lets out a sigh. "I talked to Sarah, and she saw everything. Said that Robin went berserk and got within an inch of turning Doctor Keynes's nose into a bloody mess."
"I heard she went berserk because Doc cut off the phone that miraculously made her conscious." Mary stops her incessant taps and leans onto the table. "Y'know, the phones that are in Robin's walking route rang again. Honestly kinda creepy that when I pick it up, there's nothing on the line."
Martha lets out an amused chortle. "You're not seriously thinking that God is actually talking to Robin through the telephone, can you?"
"I'm not suggesting anything, other than it's creepy." Mary replies slightly offended.
"Who knows, maybe God is actually calling Robin? And she's the next prophet." Farrah chimes in to neither hospital staff amusement.
"You know this place is old and things tend to break." Martha shrugs as she tries for another unsuccessful spoon full of ice cream for Robin. "Despite what the big man up top says, a fresh new coat of paint on the building doesn't fix the rot in the walls."
"Ugh, let's avoid that gloomy subject." Mary taps her cheek as she thinks of something for a minute before continuing on with the previous subject. "How about we take down the hall after you get tired of failing to feed her and see if she wants to talk again when that phone rings again?"
Martha looks at Mary skeptically and says. "She backslid so far into the darkest depths of her mind that I'm not even sure if she'd be aware if it rings again."
Mary looks at her co-worker with an unimpressed stare. "You got a better suggestion? And it doesn't hurt."
"Nothing I guess." Martha replies with a huff before placing down the bowl of half melted ice cream onto the table. "Just don't want to get your hopes up when nothing happens. Come one give me a hand."
It isn't hard to get Robin on her feet when there's two people and they slowly guide Robin as she drags her feet down the hallway. As annoyed both nurse's aide find the pace of Robin's walking, at least the catatonic woman can walk on her own.
They pass by a few techs who only give them a curious look before going on with their way. They are a few yards away from the nearest payphone when a distinct sound of ringing echoes throughout the hallway, to Mary's delight and Martha's utter surprise.
'Okay, that's really creepy.' Martha thinks to herself.
That's when they felt Robin lurch forward out of their grasps before taking a step forward towards the payphone in her own volution, causing both women to give each other a look. Neither can really believe that this ludicrous act would have worked. They both watch as Robin easily dodges around the other patients in the hallway and crosses the distance faster than either can imagine. It only took Robin three phone rings for her to reach the payphone, and Robin's robes flutter behind her dramatically.
"Hello?" Robin says breathlessly from what both women can hear from their distance, which they cautiously try to get closer without causing their patient alarm.
Robin was stiff for a second before she melts onto the wall and leans closer to the payphone like it was the most precious thing in the world for her and says with relief coloring her voice. "I was so afraid that you left me for good."
"What should we do?" Mary asks her companion as they sneakily make their way towards Robin.
"We have a few and all of them are bad for us." Martha replies curtly.
Mary was about to make another suggestion when Robin lectures her imaginary talking partner. "You can see everything. You know where I've been."
"I think we need to get the nurses." Martha says quietly to her partner.
"Do I know where I am?" Robin sounded irritated and continued to raise her voice. "Of course, I do. I was in the rubber room!"
Both women share a look with each other because both heard an irritated Robin is a dangerous Robin.
"We gonna be in trouble, aren't we?" Mary asks, slightly worried.
"Because somebody decided to interrupt our conversation!" Robin yells loudly for everyone to hear. A public chastisement for recent regression.
"We didn't exactly have permission to do this, and we have no idea how long she's going to be talking." Martha replies curtly and gives her partner a pointed look. "This is going to attract attention."
Mary lets out a sigh, knowing that what Martha says is true and replies with. "I guess it's for the best."
"I'm blaming this on you." Martha replies with a serious look.
Mary sags her shoulder slightly in submission and replies. "Fine, you go while I'll stay here to look over, Robin."
Martha nods and quickly departs for the nearest nurse station that isn't too far from their current location and Mary stays to listen to what Robin is saying.
Robin, looking less agitated, closes her eyes as she leans deeper into the wall and says. "Yeah, like you called be before, I'm fine."
Mary can't help but wonder what kind of conversation Robin is having with her hallucinations.
"I know, I know." Robin lets out a sigh and sounds slightly dejected. "I hope I wasn't out of it for long this time."
There's a pause before she continues. "Two days? I'm not sure if I should be happy or not… at least it isn't two weeks this time."
It didn't take long for the other patients to notice Robin was talking again and some that didn't have anything else to do, just stand and watch their fellow patient being lucid.
"Yeah, I guess you're right…" Robin rolls her shoulders, only to wince at the pain from her injured shoulder. "… but that doesn't mean I like this… this place."
Again, there's another pause from Robin, as if she's hearing a response on the phone. "Now that you mention it, I do feel rather hungry. Are the food here bad?"
'Obviously, she's going to feel hungry. She barely ate or drink for two days.' Mary thinks to her herself.
"That was a rhetorical question." Robin smiles fondly. "I know you can't taste the food, silly, but telling me what does feel about the food is helpful."
"You're going to call me every day?" Robin asks excitedly with her eyes shining in joy.
Mary can hear a stampede of footsteps from behind her. Turning around, she sees three nurses and four incredibly fit male aides making their way towards Robin with a multitude of restraining devices with them.
It barely took a minute for everyone to strategically position themselves around Root just in case the worst happens. All the ruckus attracted more people to look on to the spectacle with curiosity. Some of the patients had a look on their faces that said they hoped for another dramatic meltdown.
Robin entirely ignored everything that's going on around her and sputters into the phone. "Whose stupid rule is that? I doubt God bows down to the laws of man, let alone follows them."
Robin then slumps her shoulder like disappointed and whines. "But we barely talk…… Well, that's not much consolation, it's like forever from now!
Everyone got more tense at Robin's mood shift, and some looks like they're going to spring into action at any moment.
"Fine…" Robin lets out a sigh. "When in Rome and the whole shtick… Same time tomorrow, right? Alright, talk to you then!"
Robin hangs up the phone with an upbeat smile on her and turns around, only to notice her rather large audience, that look surprised.
"What's so interesting? Never seen a woman using a phone before?" Robin says condescendingly to the crowd before turning away from everyone and walking off down the hallway towards the day room.
The gaggle of gawkers wanted to follow Robin out of curiosity, but the nurses took charge of the situation and disperse the crowd, now that Robin was away from her surroundings. Everyone went back to their business with three exceptions of Nurse Angie, Mary and Farrah, a patient who's been observing from the background ever since the beginning.
All three of them are trailing Robin from a distance and observing as to what she is going to do next, but one person finds the entire thing to be nerve-wracking and breaks away from everyone towards their subject…
"Farrah stop." Angie whispers harshly to the patient, who quickly dodges and goes out of her reach. "Go the other way."
"Hi!" Farrah says with a bright smile after she quickly gets in front of Robin and walks backwards down the hall with her fellow patient. "Do you know me?"
"I've seen you around." Robin replies politely after a quick glance down. "Got a name to put to the face?"
Farrah smiles brightly at that and quickly replies. "Names Farrah Assaf, but you can call me Farrah and you're Robin, right?"
"Is it now?" Robin replies with an amused smile. "How do you know that? I would recall if I've made an introduction with that name."
Farrah quirks her head slightly at the odd sentence but isn't deterred and nods her head. "Yeah, yeah! They introduced you to us when you first entered the ward a while ago. Robin Farrow and they say you some kind of tech consultant."
Robin gives Farrah another glance and smiles slightly as she answers. "You can call it that."
"By the way, I just wanted to thank you personally for knocking Eric onto his ass a few days ago." Farrah's grinning widely as she recalls the sight. "The guy is a major asshole."
"The loud ugly guy…" Robin mutters and then a frown appears on her before she asks. "How long ago was that?"
Farrah giggles a little at Robin's description of Eric and taps her chin to think before answering. "Like six days ago? Days mushes together when I'm in here."
The taller of the patients didn't reply as she continues on with her slow pace into the dayroom with Farrah walking by the other's side and tries to spark up a conversation. "A consultant… You must be super smart, then. I don't think anyone here is a tech consultant. What do you do?"
Robin didn't answer her fellow patient's question as a deep frown appears on her face. "Robin Farrow." She mutters. "Of course, Farrow." Robin snorts. "And Robin." She says like there's something bitter in her mouth. "Ugh."
"What's going on?" Farrah gives Robin a quizzical look as to why the woman keeps on repeating her name like it's the first time she's heard it.
"He could have picked a better name." Robin says disdainfully as she plops down onto the couch and brings her leg up to her chest and taps her shin.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Farrah, feeling completely lost and slightly uncomfortable, asks as she takes the seat next to Robin.
"I have so many names he could have picked, and he chooses Robin." Robin sighs as she leans back onto the couch before waving a dismissive hand at Farrah. "It's nothing really… not that important… just bothersome."
"Do you have, like… a lot of names or something?" Farrah leans in slightly, finding this incredibly interesting. It's not every day that she meets someone with multiple names.
"Way too many to remember now. That's why having this is annoying." Robin complains before ultimately acquiesce to her situation. "Well, at least it's only for this place and everyone already knows about it."
"What's your other names and why do you even have a lot of names?" Farrah asks in curiosity.
"Way too many to remember…" Robin mutters as she looks at the clock in the dayroom.
Farrah looks at her new friend in confusion. "You already said that before."
"There are too many minutes in a day…" Robin mutters again.
"Huh?" Farrah frowns slightly as she looks at the clock, not understanding what the other woman is saying at all.
"It's not fair that I only get a few minutes of them…" Robin trails off her words until she's not saying anything.
"Dude, you're not making sense at all…" Farrah shakes her head and turns to Robin… only to see Robin's face blank again.
"Robin?" Farrah asks quietly as she pokes the woman's cheek, to no avail.
"I told you to not go to her." Angie comments as she walks right up to the couch from her observation point outside of the dayroom.
Farrah raises her hands to show she's innocent and says. "This is soo totally not my fault. She was just talking fine until she turns back into… this. She kinda of… petered out in the end there."
"What did she say?" Mary asks as she stands beside Angie, who quickly goes to check on Robin's vitals. "I've always wondered what went up in there."
"She knows me…" Farrah shoots Mary a triumphal grin. "… and asked my name. Then I congrats her for knocking Eric down a peg before asking her if she's a tech consultant, and she said yes. Then she got weird."
"How so?" Angie asks after she's satisfied with Robin's condition.
"She said her name a few times, but like it isn't hers?" Farrah shrugs. "Then she got annoyed and said she has a lot of names that he could have picked but choose this… and then she rambled on about how there's so many minutes in a day? Said like it isn't fair, she only got fifteen minutes in a day."
Mary has a frown on her as she listens to Farrah, but Angie shakes her head and says. "It probably doesn't mean anything. She might have felt that she's slipping and was rambling."
Mary looks at Angie with an unsatisfied look. "That phone call only lasted 15 minutes, and she's lucid for 15 minutes after. Somehow, whatever happened on that phone call made her lucid, even if it was just half an hour. It must be connected."
Angie doesn't look convinced and retorts. "The phone call that doesn't have anyone on the other line."
"Who cares if it's not real?" Mary waves her hand to the blank faced Robin. "It's real to her, and that phone works a hell a lot better than the Ativan we've been giving her."
Angie pauses for a few seconds to think before sighing. "You got a point… I'll talk to Doctor Keynes to see if we can bring her to a phone at the same time tomorrow."
Mary didn't know her shoulder was tense when she loosened it. "That's all I ask."
"Who knows, maybe the doc might let her have her phone." Angie nods before turning around to go back to the nurse's station, and Mary looks like she's going to follow her superior.
Farrah felt like they both were forgetting something, thumbs to her seating partner and asks. "Aren't you guys forgetting someone?"
"Have fun talking to her." Angie comments before leaving the room.
Farrah shoulder's slumps down and turns to a lifeless Robin to say. "I guess it's just to two of us then."
Chapter 36: Reorienting
THRID PARTY POV
Under the cool white fluorescent light, stands more than a dozen people are wearing a multitude of different uniforms, showing their position in the hospital. All of them are squeezed into the small meeting room with a water-stained wall and grouped together in a circle.
Some are giving this meeting their entire attention, some are glancing at their phones, some are whispering to each other the latest gossips that's going around the ward or the hospital at large, and some are just staring off into the ether. Mary, on the other hand is paying attention to whoever is speaking at the moment as if their words have ensnared her. Mayhaps it's rather extreme for the young woman to be so engrossed in a rather run of the mill daily roundup meeting for the morning shift, but her youthful enthusiasm hasn't been bludgeoned out from her yet, unlike some of her other peers. Martha is less enthused about the going on of the meeting, but out of pure professionalism, she pays attention to the meeting with nothing distracting her.
"Now that the dourer news is out of the way, let's move on to the good to the good reports." Dr. Keynes says with a smile as he brings up his little notebook. "Despite Robin's refusal to even acknowledge my existence. It's only been a few days, but I'm very certain that Robin's period of lucidity after using the phones has been going longer each day. Even though I was inertially sceptical about it, I can't, but once again, thank Mary for your contribution to Robin's recovery."
Dr. Keynes flashes a smile at the young woman, who blushes out of embarrassment at the attention she's getting and mumbles. "It's nothing."
"We've been getting positive reports from the group leaders." Dr. Keynes brings up a few pieces of paper from the table he's leaning on. "She might not be talking in the group sessions, but she appears to be fully engaged with the activities, at least on the visual level. She looks towards movements, watches others for their reactions to what's happening and even expresses herself with facial expressions."
Dr. Keynes pauses for a second, but Mary smirks, as she knows what the good doctor is going to add next. "Many of which seems to be condescending, but that's up to personal interpretation."
"Yeah, right… She looked at me as if I was the dumbest person in the room." A group leader pitches in, which causes an avalanche of remarks by everyone in the room that has any kind of contact with the semi-lucid patient.
"I'm pretty sure there was a look of disgust when she's just staring at the other patients when she sits in the dayroom." Sarah casually adds.
"No, that's her looking at Eric." Martha lazily threw in her two cents.
"Nah, she looks like that to everyone." A male nurse adds.
"Except for Farrah." Mary finally speaks up, causing others to look at her with an unimpressed stare, knowing full well that it isn't the case most of the time. "Well… when she's lucid."
"I still can't believe your hairbrained idea of letting Robin use the phone works." One of the tech speaks up as he glances at Mary.
"Well, it worked, didn't it?" Mary replies defensively at the man, feeling slightly peeved by what he says.
The tech, feeling a bit defensive put up his hands and replies. "Hey, I'm not dissing you, it's just that procedure is to not indulge in a patient's hallucinations."
"Got a better idea?" Mary bites back.
"Alright everyone, calm down." Dr. Keynes raises his voice to quell the crowd of adults before it can devolve further.
"You know…" Sarah breaks into the conversation. "I talked to the girls on M-unit, and they said Robin's cousin got a phone call similar to Robin on the same day as Robin's call."
"She has a cousin?" Mary quirks her head at the nurse.
Martha rolls her eyes and chides her junior. "Did you not read her profile?"
"Huh?" Mary sounding more confused than before.
"The profile for new patients that was sent to everyone's email?" Martha shakes her head, causing the younger woman to blush in embarrassment at the multitude of stares she's getting in forgetting to read her emails.
But before Mary can say anything, the tech says pointedly to Sarah. "You can't possibly think it's connected, can you?"
"Who knows?" Sarah just shrugs. "It's just weird as hell that they both got phone calls from phones that can't receive calls."
"So, god's actually calling both women?" The tech with mock scepticism.
"You got a better idea?" Sarah shoots back. "I'm not saying it's God or whatever, just an observation that shit's weird as hell."
The man mulls for a second before answering. "Maybe there are rats chewing on the phone lines?"
Sarah deadpans at the man. "Rats chew on the phone line at the exact time each day and only when Robin walks by a phone?"
"Has her cousin had been getting calls as well? Has it been helping her as well?" Mary can't help but asks. Even if she didn't read Robin's, Mary can deduce that if the cousin isn't in this unit, that means she must be more lucid compared to her cousin, and the fact that she's in M-unit tells her that the cousin has violent tendencies.
Sarah shakes her head. "Nothing since the first call, and some of the girls think Anna's going to snap and hurt someone if she doesn't get another call."
"… that's weird." Mary mutters.
The nurse scoffs, "Yeah, no shit."
"As interesting as this is, we have a meeting to finish." Dr. Keynes says with restraint in his voice as he's been patiently waiting for everyone to get it out of their system.
"Sorry doctor." Sarah says non-apologetically.
"We can't presume what we can't observe…" The doctor levels a look at everyone in the room, even those whose been quiet since the beginning. "… but we can tangibly observe that she's improving. She even formed a friendship with… Farrah, right?"
"Yup." The group team leader and Sarah replies at the same time, then the team leader continues. "From what I keep on seeing is that she's… it's difficult to say, but she seems to prefer sitting next to Farrah during class."
"Same for when they both have free time. Robin would sit next to Farrah in the dayroom… even if Farrah doesn't know what to do when Robin doesn't respond, but they seem comfortable enough with each other." Sarah adds.
The art group team leader nods in agreement to what Sarah just said and continues. "And when the group gets rowdy as it always does, they… and I swear to God, it looks like they share a mischievous look with each other… if you know what I mean? Like they're revelling in the chaos. Other than that, there was an interest event yesterday for Robin… she puts her hand on Mia's shoulder when she cried."
"That's a good sign." The doctor smiles. "It shows that she understands another person is in distress and tries to comfort her."
The team leader doesn't look impressed and replies. "I'm pretty sure she was scowling at Mia not long after that."
"Not everyone's perfect." The doctor replies as he takes it in stride before continuing with reading the report. "The other good news is that she's finally out of the sling and favours that arm, but she tries to avoid using it, which is what we want to see. The techs and IT have been monitoring and recording the calls she's been getting, but like the first call, there was no one on the other line. The only thing that's been changing is her replies. Most of the things she says, or replies, are very stereotypical in a conversation with a close friend, now however, she's been using more and more jargon that flies over everyone's head. We're not sure if she's doing that to throw us off, or it's just innocent talk."
"Maybe it's some secret code phrases." Mary suggests with interest.
"Possibly." The doctor replies curtly, as he put down his note and picks up a few stacks of paper. "The art therapist gave me these yesterday. We've moved on from writing hashtag ROOT over and over to…" The doctor shuffles the paper. "… an unlabelled flowchart… drawing of a payphone… drawings of a New York payphone… and a collage of birds with red marker on them." He puts down the paintings. "I think we all know why she's drawing payphone… as for why she's drawing New York specifically…" the doctor scratches his jaw. "According to her uncle, it seems like she works in the city for a while now, and he confirms that the precipitating trauma involved an attempt to contact God on a public payphone."
The doctor picks up one of the papers and poses a question to the room. "Perhaps the flowcharts are an attempt to map out a decision process?"
Some of the people just nods not having anything to add, some don't react at all, and Mary speaks up. "Robin is a programmer by trade… and programmers use flow charts in their work."
"Now, how do you know that?" Martha asks with curiosity.
"My little brother is taking compsci." Mary quickly replies to her co-worker before continuing with her analysis. "As for the bloody birds, I believe she's expressing frustration with her name. On the few times she talked to me during her lucid periods, she really seems to hate the name she has and one time she ranted that the voice on the phone told her to not reveal her real name."
The doctor frowns at that and says. "But Robin Farrow is her real name."
"I know…" Mary shrugs. "… Robin even told Farrah that isn't her real name… even if she's delusional, I think that's the meaning of being behind the bloody birds. Robin is a name of a bird."
"Huh…" Sarah speaks up with a look of realization on her. "Her uncle's name is Wren… that's a name of a bird too."
The doctor seemingly is following the flow of the conversation and brings up the paper with the bird drawing.
"Those aren't wrens or robins." The group leader points towards the paper. "Look at the cheeks, the pattern, and the colouring… Those are finches."
"Didn't know you were a bird watcher, Elliot." Sarah grins at her colleague.
The man just shrugs. "It's a peaceful hobby."
"Anyway…" Mary picks up again. "She's a programmer, not a bird expert."
"Has she ever stated why she believes her name isn't her real name?" The doctor asks to both Sarah and Mary.
"Farrah mentioned that it annoys her because she has many other names and that her uncle used Robin." Sarah relays back to the doctor what Farrah mentioned.
"She got multiple personality?" A nurse's aide speaks up from the back.
Mary shakes her head. "No, from how Farrah describes it… it's like she has multiple aliases or pseudonym."
Before anyone can continue, the door to the small meeting space creeks opens revealing a nurse's aide.
"I'm sorry, but we're in a meeting right now. We'll be done shortly." The doctor speaks up to the newcomer.
"Sorry, I know it's just…" The nurse's aide looks to be a new addition to the hospital. "… We just need help… it's Robin."
"Of course, it's Robin…" One of the tech mutters loudly. "It's always her."
"What's wrong?" Mary asks her fellow nurse's aide in a pleasant tone, knowing full well that being new to the hospital is a challenge.
"Robin… she missed her call…" The nurse's aide looks around nervously. "But she's lucid."
"What?" Sarah perks up that unexpected development. "How did that happen?"
The doctor looks at his wristwatch. "How long has it been?"
Not wanting to be left out, Mary pitches in. "Is she talking to someone?"
The newcomer looks at the three of them with slight shock and calmly answers. "Robin was walking her normal route until she comes across an altercation between Mia and Eric. She got between them and got punched before the techs could have deescalate the situation. Between her getting a bloody nose and everyone handling the situation, she missed her call. It's been a couple of a minute since she's lucid and I came here as soon as I can. And she only talked to Mia for a bit before she continued her walk towards the dayroom."
Like a pin dropped on the floor, the doctor, the nurse and the nurse's aide quickly get up from their position and left the room to investigate this surprise development.
"We'll continue this later." The doctor says before leaving the room.
It only took them a few minutes to reach the dayroom on the floor below and when they reach the periphery of the room, they all stopped to see their handful patient.
Robin's sitting alone on the couch, while the other patients just linger about, not knowing what to do with a lucid Robin and brunette's usual sitting partner is nowhere in sight. The woman of interest looks incredibly bored as she lazily page through the magazine on her lap with her legs on the coffee table. If there's a sight that says someone is bored out of their mind, it's the sight before them. The room might seem to be empty of hospital personal, but from their vantage point, they can see one or two hospital staff hovering at a distance and observing Robin.
"What should we do?" Sarah asks her superior as they try to keep themselves out of sight.
"Where's Farrah? She's normally here." Mary comments as she looks at the remarkable scene with keen interest.
"I believe Farrah has a session doctor McConnell right now." The doctor answers Mary first before continuing. "Personally, I would like to observe Robin longer before approaching her, but she may need more stimulation than an out-of-date woman's magazine. I would like to approach her, but she hates my guts."
Mary and Sarah share a look with each other before both of them step out of their hiding spot and onto Robin's field of view. To their surprise, the woman of interest doesn't even acknowledge their presence and continues to look through the magazine with boredom. Their presence in front of Robin seems to have attracted curious looks from almost every person in the dayroom.
Sarah nudges her head to towards Robin while looking at Mary, basically saying that the nurse's aide has a better rapport with the patient and not one to disappoint, Mary nods.
"Ahem." Mary clears her throat, trying to attract Robin's attention, but the woman still doesn't look up from her magazine. Undeterred by the snub she's receiving, she trudges on by saying. "Robin?"
After a few seconds, Robin answers with a. "Hmm?"
Mary, not knowing what to say next, she asks the basic. "Are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Robin answers absentmindedly as she flips another page that's talking about a horoscope for last month's zodiac.
"You're reading a book." Mary blurts out, only realizing how stupid that sounds after the fact.
"Really?" Robin says in a mocking tone. "I wouldn't count this magazine thing to be literature, but I guess I have standards."
Both Mary and Sarah stare at Robin with amazement, as the woman doesn't even look up from her magazine.
"Did you talk on the phone?" Mary can't help but ask to confirm the claim.
"No… that loudmouth was being an asshole and I can't help but knock him down a peg again." Robin answers with a bored tone as she flips to another page.
"You got a bloody nose." Sarah can't help but quip.
"Yeah, and the dude's face got intimate with the floor and now is in the fun room." Robin rolls her eyes.
Mary's eyes widen at this sudden development and says. "You helped Mia, but you missed your call."
Robin still does not look up from her magazine and replies. "Shit happens and tomorrow is another day."
"Robin, you're talking…" Sarah expresses her amazement. "… and you missed your call."
That seems to tear Robin's attention away from the engrossing topic of the magazine and look at the two women.
Robin raises a brow and says. "That's new to you?"
"Yes." Practically everyone in the room says in unison, which causes Sarah to glare at the other patients being busy bodies.
Robin still doesn't look one bit surprised, twirls her finger to everyone in the room and says. "You lot are all crazy and I've been talking for days on end now."
Not knowing what to say to that delusion, both of the hospital staff mutters an, "Uh-huh."
******
ROOT POV
Root is picking the thread on the chair she's sitting on, it's one of the few comfortable pieces of furniture to sit on in this whole ward. She would know, seeing that she spent the last few days going around, finding the best place to sit out of pure boredom while she waits for The Machine to call her.ROOT POV
Thinking about The Machine makes her all giddy inside and she can't wait for the next time they can talk again, even if sometimes The Machine's suggestions were not that relevant to her current predicament or needs. Such as telling her to go visit that god awful man, which she ought to break his nose for his first infraction… Alas, The Machine gave her an ultimatum to talk to the man or it would stop calling her again.
… Well, The Machine didn't actually say that, but The Machine was very insistent that she be here, and Root can't go back to before, to the cold dark water… thinking about that sends shivers down her spine.
So here she is, sitting with her feet on the chair and pulling the thread, while she waits for that man to finally open his trap, as she refuses to do first contact with the man that interrupted her first call with God. Such a thing would have constituted a death penalty, but The Machine told her to not hurt anyone, and following that is easy enough… even if this person deserves it.
"Now, Miss Farrow." Doctor dickface puts down his notes after a minute of mutual silence. "Three full days of consciousness with no relapse, been communicating with others even if a bit distant, all signs of full cognitive thoughts."
Doctor dickface leans onto his table. "By all accounts of the nurses and my own observation, it looks like your condition has been stabilized and you're cleared to be transferred to M-Unit."
"Whoopie doo, I'm graduating." Root draws out her words sarcastically.
Guess this is what The Machine wants her to know? Her being transferred away from this lot of sheep? It isn't surprising, given what she's seen from the patients that resides in this ward, most of them, in some way shape or form incapacitated or very passive people… except for Eric, but that man is more of an annoyance to her than anything else. Maybe she can try getting the man thrown into confinement again before she leaves this ward.
She then continues. "What the hell is the difference between this and that place?"
Doctor dickface doesn't look phased by her unenthusiasm or rudeness, answers. "Well, since you have a history of violence and was ordered by a court to be here, M-Unit is more capable of handling your situation."
"Oh great, lump me in with all the wife beaters." Root replies as she digs her nail into the armrest.
"That's uncharitable of you, Robin." Doctor dickface raises his hand to defend her future housemates. "Most of the patients there aren't violent… they just need a more… delicate touch."
… That's the most condescending thing he's said in the entire time she knows him, which isn't long, and it really makes her want to punch him. Sadly, that counts as hurting him… but The Machine didn't state what kind of pain she should avoid giving… heh.
"Oh, that's encouraging. There's nothing wrong with me and you're tossing me in with the others who need strap jackets." She glares at the man as she continues to ruin his chair.
"Don't be so pessimistic, Robin." Doctor dickface says in an overtly friendly tone and he continues. "You'll have your cousin there to keep you company and she's been eager to meet you again."
That brings her thought process into a crashing halt as she stops whatever activity she's doing, as if the man in front of her just pressed her off button.
…
"Cousin?" Root mutters after a taking a second to restart her brain.
With that restart, her mind blazes through what he said and the jarring question.
Who the fuck is her cousin? Because she sure as fuck knows that she doesn't have any family… that isn't true… mom had family, but those fuckers fucking abandoned mom, so they don't count. Not like that matter, since they don't even know of her existence.
So… "Who the fuck is my cousin?" Root eloquently asks aloud.
Doctor dickface instantly frowns at her and stares at her as if she's grown another head. "… Your Cousin? … Anna? She's came here as well."
Who the fuck is Anna?
Root's pretty sure that she didn't say that part aloud, but the frown on doctor dickface deepens as he quickly brings up his notes and asks. "Are you experiencing memory problems?"
Knowing full-well whatever answers she gives next will determine whatever the fuck drugs they're going to give her.
She shakes her head and mutters. "No… just…"
Cousin?
Who the fuck can that be? Dickface in front of her looks genuinely puzzled by her reaction… looks like he believes what he's saying.
… Her mind is racing through all the possibilities, but none of it makes sense…
She needs to take a step back and think properly. Start with the first principle.
Root didn't miraculously appear at this place. Harold was the one that dumped her into this godforsaken place. This man references her cousin as a woman… there were only two women other than her in that fucking nuclear site.
One of them shot her and the other…
Dread builds in her as she feels her stomach turns into a knot.
… No, that can't be true. There's no reason for her to be here… but who else can it be? Shaw's in here to keep an eye on her? That makes little sense. Harold can easily monitor her from afar…
Then, it feels like a wave crash into her gut, leaving a gaping hole as she realizes…
No… why is she here?
Her heart spikes up as she grips on the armrest for dear life.
She can see dickface trying to get her attention, but she can't hear a single word he says from the thumping of her heart.
Take deep breaths. She can't fuck up in front of this dickface, not when he's the one that's controlling whatever the hell they are giving her.
Deep breaths…
"Robin?" The dickface asks as the volume of the thumps lowers.
She doesn't answer as her mind is still in a jumbled mess but when the dickface repeats. "Robin, are you okay?"
"Yeah." She barely whispers as she tries to maintain her composure in front of this man, while her mind tries to orientate itself.
Of all the places in the world, why is she in the fucking loony bin with her?
Why didn't The Machine say anything about this when they had their calls? It would have told Root about this, about her… but why didn't it?
… The Machine told her to be here… to be in this room facing the dickface… that has to count for something. The Machine knew about her being here but is telling her now through this dickface.
But why wouldn't it tell Root about her when they were on their calls? Had it wanted her to be seated for this fucking revelation? If so, that's considerate of the machine, but it would have been better to hear it out from its voice rather than this dickface.
That leaves her with… why the fuck is she here?
Root can't possibly imagine that she would ever willingly come to this place in her own free will… unless it wasn't?
… That's a whole fucking rabbit hole she didn't expect to think about and doesn't want to.
…
What if there's something wrong with her? Has something happened to her since that day? If so, then these assholes would have told her, wouldn't they? The Machine would have definitely told her if there's something wrong, seeing that God was very talkative about other people's misfortunes… then that leaves her with the conclusion that she for some reason came here willingly and stayed in this shithole for the past three plus weeks.
But why would she do that? Is it for her? That's a possibility…
That's sweet… Root can't remember the last time she shown this kind of gesture towards her since…
No…
She cliches her right hand so tight it hurts.
No, no, no…
She can't be doing this again… not after everything and all the shit she's been through because of her. Root can't let herself be dragged back, and she has The Machine now. All is fine now; all is going to be fine after this.
But… maybe she…
No!
… Yes?
No!
Doctor dickface, leans closer to her with a worried look on him as he tries to get her attention. "Robin? Are you okay?"
"Must I go?" Root lets out a barely audible whisper.
Doctor dickface quirks his head and says. "Sorry? I couldn't catch that."
"Nothing, just drifting thoughts." Root says loud enough for doctor dickface to hear.
This sudden curve ball, the machine silence on the matter, the insistent of her coming here today…
All of this is leading her to the conclusion that The Machine wants her to meet with that… bitch.
"Are you sure, Robin?" Doctor dickface presses further, looking unsatisfied with her reply. "If you're feeling like regressing back to your previous state, there's no shame in telling me now and we can see how to prevent it."
But why would it want Root to meet her? Sure, her original goal was to fix her, but now… argh. This is just too much. Let's just deal with it when it happens and not get an aneurysm before that.
"I'm fine… my head isn't going back to before. Just trying to wrap my head around what you're saying." Root says as she, for the first time since coming here, leans back on to her seat.
That didn't seem to remove the worry from doctor dickface's face, but the man relents and says. "If you say so, but talk to Sarah or Mary if you feel like you're regressing."
"Sure…" Root says absentmindedly before remembering what the dickface said earlier and she continues. "M-Unit… My cousin…"
God, it's fucking weird to call her 'cousin'. They never acted like cousins…
Was that Harold's idea?
"Anna?" Doctor dickface continues her sentence for her.
Her name now is Anna? Did she choose that name, or did Harold? Because it's awfully close to her first name and that shit isn't coincidence.
Why the fuck is her name Robin then? Because it's starts with an R and because her name is Root? When she thought she couldn't be more disappointed at Harold, the man gives her a boring ass name.
"Yeah, Anna." Root tries out the name that sounds so foreign to her and yet sounds weirdly familiar. Just missing a single character to be something completely different.
Doctor dickface smiles at her as he says. "You know, she's been asking to see you since the both of you were placed into our care."
Even in the state that she was in previously, she would have noticed her visiting her.
"I haven't seen her." Root says flatly.
"Oh, that's because Doctor Diaz, your cousin's psychiatrist, hasn't approved any visitation…" Doctor dickface lingers for a second before quickly adding. "But it doesn't mean your cousin doesn't care or stops thinking about you."
She can't help but snorts at that statement. Yeah right, that woman sure as hell knows how to show that she cares.
Also, what the fuck? Denial? Because that is like putting up a paper wall in trying to stop a raging bull. Shit like that won't stop her and yet… it did stop her.
"Is that hospital policy?" Root asks as she looks dead into the doctor's eyes.
The man shakes his head. "It's not…" he lets out a sigh. "… I don't know the details, but from what I heard is that your cousin is refusing to talk to her psychiatrist."
There's a million reasons for not talking to these people, but let's just asks. "Why?"
"Like I said, I'm not privy to the details, but the word around the water cooler is that your cousin did not have the best first session with Doctor Diaz when she did not approve of the visitation back then." Doctor dickface talks with his hands moving about.
"Refusing…" She whispers before a loud snort escapes her and she rolls her eyes as she understands what's going on.
Of course, that woman would use the silent treatment against a doctor… it's so fucking on brand of her.
A few seconds of silence descend between them as the doctor is gauging her facial expression and mood, while she ponders on everything.
She then breaks the silence, asking a question that's been burning at the back of her head. "Is she okay?"
That didn't catch the man off guard at all and, by the looks of it, he seems to have expected it.
"As far as I know, she hasn't changed much since coming here…" The man pauses for a second. "… Well, except for her gunshot wounds, those are healing just fine."
Gunshot wounds? As in plural? She only got shot once… Shaw and the big lug really got trigger-happy after taking her out, didn't they? Had this happened before the trip to Handford, she would have hunted them down like vermin… but now she doesn't feel much other than annoyance.
"Although…" The man continues, but stops himself and he shakes his head. "Never mind."
This man is dumb or something? That kind of shit is the most obvious bait for her to interact with this conversation. Unless the man is the most socially dumb psychiatrist ever.
So, she takes on the bait. "What?"
He shakes his head again. "You shouldn't worry yourself about it. I'm sure it will pass."
This man really knows how to make her want to punch him in the nose. First was interrupting her call from God and now he's playing coy about something she wants to know.
"Just tell me about it." Root grits out the word as she leans forward towards the man.
"I haven't witnessed it in person but… I've been told by the nursing staff from that M-Unit that your cousin has been more and more agitated in the past five days." Doctor dickface has a sympathetic look on him. "Been snappier towards everyone and especially the staff… but I'm sure it's nothing."
An agitated Su? That doesn't bode well for the denizens of that ward or the entirety of this hospital, in fact, and The Machine really, really doesn't want violence to erupt here at all, from the countless times it told her during their conversations.
Root lets out a sigh… she better fix whatever the fuck is going on before things explode and the slight chance that The Machine refuses to talk to her again because of that. Seeing that The Machine has a task for her… even if Root doesn't know what the task is right now, she can't fail God.
Despite her mind and body telling her to avoid that person, she'll do it if God commands her to.
"When am I going?" Root says flatly.
"Tomorrow morning." Doctor dickface answers instantly. "Sarah is going to help you to your new ward and someone from there will help you to your new room, then orientation."
"Great… always love orientations." Root mutters as she gets up from her seat, unable to contain this odd energy within her.
"Robin, we're not done here." Doctor dickface protests as she turns around to walk towards the door.
"Oh, I think we are." Root says without turning back and exits out of the office, not caring of the consequences of doing so.
Craning her head up, she sees the clock stating that it's half-past three… how the hell did that short conversation take an hour? She barely had a conversation with the dickface and an hour passed…
Unable to answer her own question, Root just shrugs to herself and walks the familiar path down the hallway to the dayroom.
Once there, she spots her usual couch, and there's a noticeable lack of a petite lady that's been hovering around her for the past few days. She quickly takes a seat on the empty couch and grabs the nearest brain numbing magazine.
It's not like she dislikes her presence, it's just odd that someone would want to talk to her at all when she isn't even putting up a front of friendliness or is trying to attract someone.
Kinda reminds her of Francine… they both even have the same good nature attitude towards life. Maybe that's why she's been tolerant of Farrah, because she reminds her of her only remaining friend… Well, unlike the red head, Farrah clearly isn't insane even if she's in this place.
Root's pretty sure if a normal person witnesses and does a fraction of what Francine has experienced, they would experience a psychotic break and quickly toss into the nearest loony bin. And yet Francine still smiles like all is right in the world.
Somehow Su managed to find a person that has more screw loose in their brain than both Root and Su combined… Su…
Shit, what does that mean between her and Francine now? That woman follows the bitch's word like it's the word of God.
With one word, Su can end their friendship or Francine herself might end it when she finds out about the falling out. The only reason why they're friends in the first place is because of the bitch… Does that mean they're real friends or just good co-workers?
Argh, fuck it. There's no use in stressing about the what ifs and what nots. If shit fell through between of them because of her train wreck of a relationship between her and the bitch, then so be it. Even if it's sad.
Genuinely fucking sad, if that comes to pass. She's going to miss getting shitfaced together… well, it's more like she's the one that blind ass drunk while Francine sporadically sips wine because she's too much of a teetotaler.
Argh, why is she feeling sad when there's nothing to be sad about? Shit hasn't even happened yet! Must be the fucking drugs they are staffing down her throat or the fucking Ativan. Shit messes with her mind. No fucking wonder why mom hates taking meds.
"You look like you're constipated." The familiar voice of a woman breaks through her internal monologue. "What did that magazine do to offend you?"
Root glances upwards to Farrah from the magazine that she hasn't been reading and deadpans. "The usual things that make me want to gouge my brain out with a spoon."
"I see the usual stuff then." Farrah comments like it's the most normal thing as she takes a seat beside Root.
"Where've you been?" Root asks out of curiosity as she takes a proper look at what the hell is on the magazine.
"Oh, you know, the usual… lunch, session with doc, talking to the tech and my usual lingering about." Farrah answers as she leans deep into the stiff couch.
"Sounds like fun." Root says in a rather absentminded fashion as her mind slowly drifts back to her previous thoughts.
"You think SpongeBob's next?" Farrah nods at the TV that's showing some daytime drama from a decade ago. Nothing special about it since the hospital checked beforehand, so it doesn't trigger anyone in the dayroom.
"Obviously, we both seen the schedule on the notice board." Root rolls her eyes as she answers.
"So, I hear you're being transferred." Farrah casually asks.
"Now, how the hell would you know about that?" Root looks to her seating partner with a raised brow.
Farrah shrugs and answers nonchalantly. "The nurses talk a lot."
"This place leaks more than a sinking ship." Root mutters as she shakes her head.
"So, it's true then?" Farrah presses on. "You're going to be transferred to another unit?"
Root places down the magazine and answers. "Yeah, dickface told me a few minutes ago, and it's a fucking wonder you know about it so fast."
"And I can't believe you call Doctor Keynes that. He's super chill, unlike some of the other docs." Farrah reports before her eyes glint with curiosity. "What unit you're heading to?"
Root simply answers. "M-Unit."
Farrah lets out a whistle and raises her brows. "It's not because of Eric, right?"
She lets out an amused snort. "God no, I don't think me threatening to shiv Eric with a pencil would land me there." Root shakes her head. "Only reason I'm in this unit was because my brain decided to go on a vacation, but now I'm good. They're tossing me there, since this is a court order stay."
Root still can't believe Harold would have had the balls to forge a court order to dump her here. She knows he isn't a total goody two shoes, but what he did went beyond anything she's observed from him. She felt a bit giddy at the thought of pushing Harold slightly off the edge.
"Seriously, what the hell did you do?" Farrah asks curiously. "I couldn't catch any of the nurses talking about it."
She can't help but snort at that surprise, seeing how loose lips those people have.
"I kidnapped my uncle and pointed a gun at him." Root deadpans.
Farrah's eyes widen in shock and presses on after a second of silence. "But you didn't shoot him?"
"How do you think I got this wound?" Root nudges towards her sore shoulder. "Someone shot me before I could."
"That's wild." Farrah mutters softly, but she didn't move away from Root at the revelation. Interesting that she isn't afraid of her in the slightest… wonder what she's in here for. Root didn't think of asking about it or listened to any of their shared sessions, not like there was much talking in art class anyway.
"But do you think you'll be okay in that unit?" Farrah continues on with slight worry in her voice. "There're some seriously crazy people up there. I heard there's this dude that stabbed his wife 40 times with a paring knife."
A paring knife? That guy seriously couldn't have used a proper kitchen knife to do a better job? Seeing that he's in here rather than on Wards Island, that tells her he failed miserably.
"Don't worry. If I can't handle a dude like that, even in my current state, then I deserve to get stabbed." Root says with a slight smile. "How about you? You're the only cheerful person in this morose unit, everyone else is either out of their mind or just plain boring."
Farrah takes a second to take in the morbid answer before saying. "Doc says I might be going to A-unit in a week or so. They're afraid that I'll check out again if I go straight out from here."
Hmm… guess she fits in here then. Wonder what happened… maybe The Machine can fill her in whenever they talk later in a few minutes if that clock is right.
"The step-down unit? Congratulations." Root replies with a genuine smile for the younger woman.
"I'm going to miss you, though." Farrah sadness in her voice despite her cheerful smile. "I mean, most of the time we knew each other you couldn't talk, but it's nice having someone around that was able to see how fucked up it is in here."
"Really now?" Root says with slight amusement. "I'm pretty sure I couldn't have said anything."
Her seating companion just shrugs. "I guess I could just tell… not sure how, but your constant frown at everyone, helped."
That cause her to chuckle softly. "Now that's an understatement. This place is literally a madhouse, and we might be the only sane ones here."
"Calling ourselves sane might be stretching it." Farrah says with an amused smile. "We're all in here for a reason."
"I know you didn't have to always stay by me, but thank you for doing it, anyway." Root says sincerely. "You remind me of a friend… a slight piece of normalcy in this shithole."
"Really, I hope I can meet your friend one day. She sounds fun." Farrah says cheerfully.
"She's always busy with work, so I doubt that." Root replies, knowing full well that Pauling doesn't have a social life outside of herself and Su or the rest of the contractors, if they even count.
"Do you think we'll ever see each other on the outside?" Farrah says softly.
Root turns to face the woman dead on and says. "No."
Farrah's shoulders slags slightly at that answer and mutters an. "Oh."
"We live in two completely different worlds, and my world isn't entirely safe." Root continues on. "But that doesn't mean I'm unreachable. I'm always on the internet, just look up my name."
Farrah quirks her head. "Friendczar or Facebook?"
She lets out a snort. "Neither, nor should you use those sites; they're just big hubs for data mining. Just search my name and I'll know you're looking for me."
"Can't be Robin Farrow, right?" Farrah questions with a quirked brow.
"Course not." Root replies instantly. "That isn't my name."
"You said your God won't let you tell anyone your real name." The younger woman skeptically.
"Well, it's my job to interpret god's commands." Root leans in with a grin. "And it can be interpreted as to not tell the hospital staff my name."
"Well, I don't know about your god, but God's word is God's word, not much to interpret." Farrah comments stubbornly.
She rolls her eyes and says. "Name's Root… nice to meet ya."
"Root?" Farrah says, like it's a foreign word. "That's an odd name."
Root looks up at the clock again and gets up. "I'll see you if I see you."
She has a meeting with God, and she really needs to ask what the fuck was that curve ball for.
******
The next day, Sarah came into her room early in the morning, just after waking up time and just enough time for Root to do her morning routine. There wasn't much in her room to bring with her, other than whatever dollar store clothes Harold got for her when he dumped her here.
The brief journey to M-unit was a rather pleasant one, even though she knows what she has to face later, and she really doesn't want to do it… but The Machine was rather steadfast when they talked about it yesterday and she isn't one to dismiss God's commandment.
Even if The Machine was being rather vague about her reasoning for this… well, more vague than usual.
After an elevator ride and a few drab corridors, they arrive at M-unit. And she can't help but be disappointed at the scene because the place looks exactly the same as her previous unit… if she ignores the extra security doors that she had to go through that being constantly monitored… and more burly dudes in this area.
"Morning Gloria!" Sarah says with an out of character cheerfulness after she knocks on the office door near the nurse's station. "This here is your new transfer."
"Oh, hey Sarah." A blonde woman in her mid-forties waves at them. "Come in, come in."
Root follows the nurse into the room, who puts a piece of paper on the other woman's desk. "Just sign here for the transfer. And how's the kids?"
She can't help but quirk her brow at this sight. The woman had always had a dour look on her previously, and now she's all friendly. What an odd mask to wear. She must be aiming for something.
"Oh, they're just great. Little Josh started to run around now." The woman answers as she quickly signs the paper and gives back to Sarah.
Sarah nods and says. "See you later. We can catch up then."
"Sure, bye-bye." Gloria says with a smile as her attention turns to Root and she says. "Welcome to M-Unit Robin, and please take a seat. If you don't mind, I'd like to go over a few details with you."
"Seems like my calendar is free now and in the foreseeable future." Root answers dully as she sits on the hard plastic chair. Since this is a new unit and the first impression, she's trying her hardest to put on her best behavior.
The woman brings up a file filled with paper and begins. "Since you were admitted in an altered state downstairs, I just need to go through some of your paperwork and see if there's anything wrong that needs correction."
Despite everything, she's pretty confident that Su didn't say anything… "Yeah, Uncle Harold wouldn't know a lot about me."
"You're here under New York State mental hygiene, statue 9.27, which is the one that allows us to hold you for 60 days based on certification of two psychiatrists." The woman practically recites all of that from memory and continues. "Considering the state you were in when you were admitted, can you understand why that was done?"
"It was… murky." Root replies as she leans into her seat, trying not to remember the darkness. "I've come to the understanding, at that time, I wasn't able to do much for myself. Despite my lack of memory of being unable to walk or feed myself without assistance… but we can chuck that up to my memory being impaired. However, I do remember the difficulty of doing those things… and from what people said," and The Machine, "it's a recent thing."
"Do you know how long you've been here?" The nurse asks kindly.
That's something The Machine updated her on a few days ago, so Root shrugs and answers. "19 days, give or take."
"That's correct." Gloria nods. "And as we approach the sixtieth day, we will have to make some assessments and decide whether to discharge you, or to petition the court for a further sixty days."
So… forty days in this shithole. "I understand."
"Now, just some housekeeping…" Gloria pulls out a few pieces of paper. "This is what we have of your family's medical history, based on what your uncle told us."
Root raises a brow at the notion of Harold knowing her history… but his dog went to that hellhole and met with Brian. So, it isn't too far-fetched of a notion, given mom's public record.
The nurse passes papers to Root and continues. "Is there anything more that needs to be added or items needed to be changed? Your uncle wasn't entirely certain about your personal history and had no information on your father's side."
"Because there wasn't one, he was a nonentity." Root mutters bitterly. Despite Root's curiosity about that subject early in her life, Mom never talked about it and was a topic she would do anything to avoid talking about. Root has an inkling of what happened, but never actually find out if it's true… maybe she should have.
As she goes through the paper, there's a slight tingle of discomfort in the back of her skull at the gross violations of her privacy. Guess this is what it's like to be on the other side of her job… won't stop her in the future though, it's too much fun.
"Looks like he told you guys about mom…" Root mutters as she looks at the filled in spaces and lets out a snort. "But he neglects to mention that my grandmother, which is his mother too, wasn't all right in the head either. Everyone just act like there wasn't any problem, but they do love to treat mom… as an anomaly."
Now that's she's here, it's official. It's just her luck that every female in her family for the past three generations is fucked up in some way.
"You as well?" The nurse asks with curiosity lacing her voice.
"No, I've never met any of my extended family before. In their eyes I don't even exist." Root answers rather coldly, before adding. "Except for Uncle Harold, of course, but he's just butt hurt from when we first reunited a year ago… and well, the whole pointing a gun at him, too."
"And your cousin too, right?" The nurse adds on with slight confusion.
"Harold can reproduce?" Root answers with a slight quirk of her head.
The thought of Harrold doing the act is a horrifying image.
"No… your cousin Anna? She was with you when you were brought here and is somewhere in the unit." Gloria answers rather fast.
"Oh." Root mutters. She really needs to get used to reference her as her cousin. "Yeah, Anna… we've been in contact for the past few years, I guess."
"Hopefully her moods brighten up a bit now that you're here." Gloria says with a smile. "I'm sure you can't wait to meet her as well."
It took Root's entire mental capacity to not barf at that notion. She would rather jump into a freezing lake than meet that lying, deceitful bitch… alas, God's given her a task and she'll suffer to see it through.
"I've really missed her." Root lies through her teeth as she smiles.
The nurse shifts in her notes. "Ah, I forgot your uncle mentioned a nephew and a niece that helped to bring you here. A John and Sameen."
Root raises a brow, and an amused smile at this little piece of information. Harold had the gall to call himself her uncle and now he made his pet and Shaw her cousins, too. And she really doesn't want to be related to that lurch.
"They're not my cousins, not by blood at least." Root tells the nurse an information she's pulling out from her ass. "They're Harold's dead wife's sister's kids. So, I'm his niece, and he's their uncle by marriage, which in advance age tends to forget." She looks at the nurse right in the eyes. "I rather not have either of them listed as visitors, as I barely know them."
Gloria shakes her head. "Only your uncle can visit you."
"Good." Root says with a smile as she turns back to the paperwork before her… at least she can punch Harold the next time they meet for the inconvenience he's caused her.
"The margin notes… they're not entirely wrong." Root's smile never leaving her face as she grimaces internally at the sight of the text written next to the family history of mental illness section. There, for the first time since mom's death, is the black and white text of the problem mom had in her entire life.
It's clear that this is some shoddy posthumous diagnosis from whatever pieces of information Harold has given to these people… but it is not entirely off from Root's own conclusion.
"Well, that's what they thought she had." Root continues. "Could be wrong, though. It's not as if anything they tried to help and there wasn't an official diagnosis. None of the shitty pills made a difference in the slightest and were just a wasting away her health and time. There wasn't any way for anyone to help her."
"I take it that everything is in order?" Gloria asks.
"Yeah." Root answers as she still stares at the margin notes.
"Then please put your initials at the bottom of the page." Gloria leans forward to give her a pen.
She would prefer it if it's her usual digital signature, but Root accepts the pen and is about to sign, but stops herself as she almost signs a completely different name. Well, she almost screw up and she barely started the day. Thinking for a second, she signs the page with a brand new initial.
After passing back the paper to the nurse, Gloria says. "Keeping in mind that you're in here involuntarily. We should still establish a goal for you to achieve while you're in our care. Do you have any goals or problems you want to resolve? What do you feel you need the help the most?"
"Not much, majority of the problems I came in with have been completely resolve." Root basically beams at the nurse. "There's still some lingering fogginess, but that's the three daily doses of Ativan for nineteen days' straight fault. So, I guess my goal until my discharge on the 60th day would be me getting off from that drug, and I understand that discontinuing benzos can be rough."
She's seen firsthand what sudden benzo withdrawal can do to a person, and it really sucks that she needs to go through it.
The nurse gives her a slightly skeptical look and asks. "So, you don't think there are any unresolved psychological issues for you?"
"Like what? I was a walking vegetable and now I'm not." Root shakes her head. "It shouldn't be too hard to see whether or not a person has recovered? My motor functions are fine, I'm aware of my surroundings, and we're having a conversation. What other criteria do the docs need to see that I'm fine?"
There's nothing wrong with her now that God's with her.
"Okay…" Gloria drags the word out for a second before continuing on. "We just have to go through some diagnostic question with you, and maybe we can identify something for you to work on while you're here. Some form of self-improvement other than tapering off the Ativan, which we will start as soon as possible, since it's done its purpose of breaking you out of your catatonia, and it might be in conflict with many of the maintenance medications the doctors might want to prescribe."
That irks her. "I don't need maintenance drugs."
Shit never work and the only drug she needs is the voice of God.
"We'll assess that once you're off the Ativan, okay?" Gloria says with a sick sweetness in her voice that grinds into Root ears. "Your uncle did provide some answers to these questions, but it would be better if it comes from you. Now, these are not diagnosis, they're just symptoms and feeling, which occur to both ill and healthy people, so please answer honestly. It won't have any baring on the length of your stay here… but it will give you something to talk about in your mandatory therapy session with your doctor."
Root rests her head on her palm and nods.
Gloria smiles and asks. "Are you expressing any of the following… Depression?"
"Does being stuck in this looney bin counts?" Root quips.
"I'll take avoidance as a no." Gloria writes down on her paper. "Racing thoughts or excessive worry?"
She is worried about something, but that's totally rational, so she answers with. "I'm worried about how long I'm going to be stuck here." … especially with her around.
Gloria continues asking her questions without looking up. "Anxiety attack? Avoidance? Concentration or memory problems?"
Well, she wants to avoid someone, but she can't… "Anyone that's loaded up on Ativan as me can concentrate worth of shit."
She really needs to get this shit out of her system as soon as possible.
"How's your sleeping?"
Root rolls her eyes. "As good as someone would with your crappy plastic beds."
"Have you lost any interest in things you once enjoyed?"
"I'm not allowed to do the things I enjoyed here." Root answers rather tartly. It's complete malpractice that they deny patients access to computers. Since her usual method of entertainment is unavailable, she really needs to write some code before boredom kills her.
… Maybe doing it in longhand? Might just be the trick.
"Change in appetite?"
"There's not enough seasoning in your food." Root quips.
"Excessive guilt or energy?"
"No?" Root answers the woman with slight confusion at the question. The fuck is that supposed to tell them?
"Do you feel like you're being watched, or someone is trying to get you?"
Root snots. "I'm not paranoid."
"Increased irritability?"
"Now, that's something I have in spades. This entire place is irritating, and I can assure you that it will go away the second I step out from here." Root replies with a smile.
"Crying spells, fatigue, impulsivity, risky behavior, or increased libido?"
"What?" Root asks rather dumbly at the curve ball of a question.
"Decreased libido?" Gloria asks, rather unphased by Root's reaction.
"I can't fathom how my libido comes into any of this." Root rolls her eyes.
"Does talking about sexual activities make you uncomfortable, Robin?" Gloria leans backwards.
"What? No." Root quickly answers as she feels slightly offended by that question and follows up with. "I just don't see how discussing about it has any diagnostic value."
She can't even imagine someone asking this question to that bitch.
"Well… according to your intake form." Gloria pulls up a paper from her desk. "Ah, here… you're not sexually active."
Root tried her hardest, but she just couldn't stop herself from laughing at that. It's the hardest laughter she had in a while and the most genuine amusement she's felt in months. It took most of her strength to not fall over and once her laughter died down, she just continue on giggling.
Of course, Harold would assume something like that about her. Every time someone tells her about what Harold said about her during intake tells her that the man has a serious projection issue. Poor repressed Harold.
"Am I missing the joke here?" Gloria asks after Root finishes her belly-ache laughter.
"Lemme guess… you got that little piece of information from Uncle Harold?" Root drawls out Harold's name with slight mockery.
"I see…" Gloria nods, and doesn't look too bothered by the change of information. "I'll change our record to a yes for sexual activity." The nurse writes down on her paper. "Are you in a relationship of any kind? Committed or otherwise?"
"God no." Root says with amusement. "I'm not one for relationships and I'm never in one place for too long."
"I take it that you have multiple sex partners. How frequent would you say you're engaged in sexual acts?"
Root shrugs. "Once, or maybe twice a month, and add one more for when I need to let out some steam. Nothing too excessive or deviant about it. Just a normal, non-repressed adult behavior."
Come to think about it… Pauling might be one of those repressed adults… She can't remember if her friend has ever commented about it and, surprisingly, they never talked about it either. Root needs to have a conversation with her after she gets out of this place.
"Following this, have you engaged in any of the following risky behaviors? Anonymous sex, unprotected sex or sex under the influence of drugs?"
"Any and all?" Root answers unabashedly. "Still can't see how this has any diagnostic value."
"Actually, for those, there is." Gloria stops writing to look at Root. "We call those actions risky behaviors. Adult or not, it's irresponsible to get into bed with people you don't know the medical history of without protection, and or under the influence of substances that impair your judgments."
"You're describing every human that's ever gotten drunk and had sex?" Root retorts with a slight giggle.
Gloria, undeterred, continues. "You're running a high risk of STDs or pregnancy, or worse both."
"Not as high as you think." The words left Root's mouth without her even realizing what she just revealed as she continues on giggling.
"Can you explain why?"
Her fit of giggle instantly stops, and she blinks in realization at what she had just said…
Fuck.
She would have never said that out loud if she isn't pumped full of Ativan… fucking bitch of a drug.
Taking a second to consider, she then admits. "Because I don't like men."
Despite knowing this her whole life… it is still difficult to say it out-loud, and she prefers to keep that information close to her chest, because it's easier that way.
Root quickly adds. "Not that it's anyone's business of who I have sex with, and I'm sure have stopped considering it as a mental disorder years before I was even born. So, this isn't really something that's relevant to all of this… right?"
"Right…" Gloria nods in agreement. "But it does explain your intake form."
Root eloquently replies with a, "Huh?"
"In the admission form originally filled in by your uncle, it specifically says that he has never seen you 'so much as look at a man that way'… which now makes sense. I'm assuming he doesn't know you're gay?"
"That's not something I like to spread, and you can't catch me dead with a pride flag." Root says with slight bitterness. "I spent the early years of my life in the south and that's not something to advertise back then. And uncle Harold clearly doesn't pay attention if he hasn't seen me flirting with men." Root's tone lightens as she continues. "It'll be a waste of my good looks to not take advantage of it and all it takes is to give them the slightest chance of getting lucky… but that's all there is to it, flirting. Nothing that can get me pregnant and the same can be said for STDs."
"But that doesn't mean you're not at risk." Gloria challenges back.
"Life itself is a calculated risk." Root replies coolly. "I have a higher chance of getting shot while I'm walking in Chicago than me having some fun, but that doesn't mean I'll stop going to Chicago."
If only they knew how dangerous her life really is and, compared to some fun, it's nothing.
Gloria pauses for a second before saying. "I hope you won't take offense, but we're going to arrange for you to be in a single room, which isn't the case for most of the unit. Given this is our highest security area, we aren't going to risk any altercations that might occur from rooming you with someone who might think they're being hit on or ogled. It's for your safety and for others."
"You're doing me a favor. I hate bunking in with others, and I prefer my privacy." Root replies with a smile.
Wait… does that mean… she has a roommate? That's a sight to see.
"Do you workout regularly?" Gloria asks as she continues on with her questionnaire.
"I go for a run whenever I have the time." Root answers honestly, and it's something that hasn't changed from her childhood. "Plus, I don't own a car and since I work a lot in the city, I walk a lot… I've seen others walking outside. Can I join them? Might cure me of the boredom."
"Unfortunately for you, we're in a high security unit. So, you won't be able to go outside except for the sun deck… but we do have aerobics on Saturday if you like to join."
Root hums in discontent… guess that'll do for now.
Gloria turns a page and says. "Now we know that you don't smoke now, but have you ever?"
"Back when I was in Highschool I smoked for a couple of years, but I haven't been a smoker since then. Also, it was the south and the 90s. Practically everyone smokes there." Root shrugs and ponders for a second before saying. "However, I don't smoke marijuana if you're wondering. I can't stand the smell."
Gloria nods and asks. "How many times a week do you drink alcohol?"
"Per week?" Root scrunches her face slightly. "Can't say… if it's by month, then maybe seven or eight days, but that varies if I have work or not. Could be spread out across the month or it can be bunched up into a single week."
"On the days you drink. What's the average amount you drink and what's the most?"
"Depends on the event, if its short than one or two, but if it's long then five or more. Usually I'll drink once an hour to keep up appearance and not lose my shit." Root answers easily enough and grins as she continues. "And on the rare occasion I'll get shit face drunk with a buddy of mine."
A drunk Pauling is one of the most entertaining and horrifying things she's witnessed. Thank god it only happened a few times.
"Would six be the most you've drunk in one night in the past three months?"
"No." Root replies with a snort. "I had business with a Russian dude named Boris in Richmond and the best way to gain his trust is to drink vodka with him and I drank him under the table."
"Alright…" Gloria comments with a slight tinge of skepticism.
"It wasn't like I enjoyed it or anything, was purely for work and vodka taste like turpentine." Root makes a face of disgust at the memory of removing the alcohol from her system.
"Has anyone closed to you, or a colleague ever told you to drink less?"
"One…" Root stomach roils at the thought and continues. "… but her opinion doesn't matter."
"Have you ever used any street drugs? If yes, then in the past three months?"
"Street? No." Root shakes her head and grins. "Party drugs on the hand? Yes."
"So, I'll take that as a yes."
"If you say so." Root rolls her eyes, as she's not keen on arguing with the other woman about the difference between those two different types of drugs.
"Methamphetamine? Cocaine? Heroin? Methadone?"
"No." She replies with disgust. "Aside from the methadone, those are street drugs, and I'm not an addict."
The fuck does she think party drugs are?
"GHB, ketamine, benzodiazepines?"
Seriously?
"I'm not a rapist, so I won't need a date rape drug. I won't risk the chance of falling into a K-hole, and you guys are the ones that's giving me the Ativan." Root lists out her answers with increase irritation, as if she's explaining to a dullard.
"Oxycodone or other non-prescribed drugs?"
"Do I look like I live in a cul-de-sec and married? I would rather take hard drugs than those stuff." Root quips.
The nurse unmoved by Root's answers, continues down the list. "You already said you don't do marijuana."
"I said I don't smoke it." Root corrects the nurse. "But I wouldn't turn down a brownie if I have the time to burn… then again, those are rare occasions."
"Ritalin, Adderall, or other prescription stimulant drugs?"
"Seriously? You guys consider those as doing drugs?" Root comments in disbelief. "You can't even get high off those… and to answer your question, yes, I use them when coffee isn't just cutting it. My schedule can get hectic and I'll occasionally pop those pick me up pills."
"Sleeping pills?"
"I like to avoid taking things that make me drowsy. Can't work if I fall asleep now, can I?" Root answers as she taps her chair.
"LSD or other hallucinogens?"
"Finally!" Root says with a grin. "Now those are party drugs. Schrooms, acid… ecstasy and that's my favorite. Have you ever had sex while on ecstasy?"
"Can't say I have." Gloria answers with an amused smile. "… how often would you say you use these kinds of drugs?"
"Once or twice a month." Root answers with a shrug.
"Aside from prescription stimulants and the rare brownie… you only use drugs when you're having sex?" Gloria asks after thinking for a second to put two and two together.
"Proximally…" Root tilts her head to her side. "It's not like I go out, pick someone up, and then stopping them with a 'hang on I gotta pop a pill.' That's pretty weird, don't you think? So, I'm definitely high beforehand."
"You only use them when you're seeking sex?"
"Sounds about right."
Gloria frowns at Root as she says. "Then you do take drugs more often than you…"
The nurse didn't finish her sentence when she cut her off. "Please, I always get what I'm after and I honestly can't remember the last time I couldn't."
"Right…" Gloria turns back to her paperwork. "… What's your relationship with caffeine?"
"I have a very intimate relationship with coffee, and one would say inseparable." Root replies playfully. "And I suppose that's why I might need something stronger when I feel tired. By the way, does this unit have coffee? Cause the trash they're serving downstairs can't be called coffee."
The nurse smiles kindly as she replies. "Caffeinated coffee is available in the kitchen from 6 am to 6 pm, but until you've gained some privileges, you'll need to be accompanied to the kitchen. We don't provide coffee after 6 because we want everyone to have a proper sleep."
"That's better than nothing." Root mutters in annoyance. On the bright side, there's nothing to do at night here.
"Now, moving on… have you ever had the feelings or thoughts that you don't want to live?"
That sudden shift of topic hit Root's head like a baseball bat hitting a home run, causing her to shift her guise away from the nurse and onto a boring picture on the wall.
Geez, this woman doesn't have tact to save a soul… but… that question was to be expected, seeing where she is right now… Just odd that someone is asking her about it, after so long.
Should she answer truthfully or just give the nurse the run around? Lying is easy, and natural for her… but needing to keep up the lie for the next two months while on this shitty drug? That's difficult, even for her.
Root lets out a sigh… given the timescale and what's ahead of her while she's here. Perhaps being honest for once is beneficial for her and would give her more credibility here. Plus, it might help her chances of getting her release.
"In the past." Root answers as she turns back to the nurse. "But I've moved on from it."
"How often do you have these thoughts?" The nurse presses on.
"Again… it was the past, back when I was filled with teenage angst…" She let out a huff. "… Plus, I haven't had those thoughts in more than a decade now… an adolescent phase, they said."
She couldn't help but snort at that thought again. Back then, she hated everyone who dismissed it as just a phase… and now she's using that word to dismiss it as such herself. The fucking irony.
"And you haven't had these thoughts since then?"
"No, I don't think I could even contemplate it now, compared to back when I was that age… I felt so trapped, limited in my options, and worthless or useless in preventing things from happening just because of my age, it felt like the only way out. Things changed when I got older, and more freedom, and adulthood have treated me well…" Root pauses for a second to consider and decide. "… However, I do recall thinking about ending it several times while I was catatonic if my condition continued on indefinitely… but that doesn't count. Right? No rational human being would want to live in a persistent state of limbo."
Gloria just nods at Root's explanation before asking. "When you were thinking about it back then, have you ever thought of how you would do it?"
"Kurt Corbain style." She answers way too quickly with way too enthusiastically before thinking up an excuse to not make her look insane. "Was way too obsessed with the band and I'm from Texas, everyone own a shotgun and practically grew up around guns."
"Do you have access to a gun?"
"It's my second amendment right, and I'm sure my current gun is with whoever took it after I got shot." Root answers with a smile, knowing how easy it is for her to procure a replacement.
"Have you ever tried to kill or harm yourself?"
"God no, we wouldn't be having this conversation if I did now. Can we?" Root confidently answers the nurse's question without touching the latter part. "What I can tell you is that a buckshot in the head is not a pretty sight."
Root has to give the nurse credit that she didn't even look perturb by what she's suggesting and continue along. "Have you ever had outpatient psychiatric care?"
Well… she did go to a few under a cover for her job, but best not to tell that particular fact… "Not unless you consider Highschool counselors to be so." Root says with a slight downturn of her lips at the recollection. "Was sent there more times than I would have liked, and it did more harm than good."
"Why's that?"
"Because that man was useless, and I couldn't tell him anything." Root replies with bitterness oozing out into her voice.
The nurse pause for a second to go through her paperwork before asking softly. "Is this related to the kidnapping of your cousin that you witnessed when you were 13?"
It took every ounce of her drugged up will to not twitch at that question and maintain her composure. This is treading into territory that she doesn't even know to talk about or even think about…
"I'm sorry. Is this a sensitive topic?" The nurse asks kindly after Root did not respond. "We can move on if you're uncomfortable."
She can easily tell this woman to fuck off and end this… but The Machine wants her to be here… and she has to face the choir soon enough.
"I'm fine." Root answers with a nod. "Just that after the first few people I tried to tell blew me off or outright threatened me, I got the message. The counselor figured I was torn up over her being gone or some bullshit rather than me being angry at everyone in town turning out to be unless blind jackasses, and he kept poking me about my mother, like that wasn't even relevant."
The nurse gives her a sympathetic look that she really wants to say fuck off to before the nurse asks. "Before you were brought here, have you ever been an inpatient?"
"Must be the smell, because I'm allergic to hospitals." Root answers instantly. "I'd never come if I was aware, and now I'm aware, I'll be leaving here as soon as possible."
"What's your relationship like with your parents? But I guess it's just your mother…"
Root cuts the nurse off. "What does this have to do with the intake form?"
The nurse shakes her head. "Just the outline of your relationship is good enough. Was it good, bad or indifferent?"
"Like I said, the father was a none-entity in my life, so it was just us two in that shithole of a town." Root smiles in fond remembrance.
"How old were you when you left home?"
"2001, do the math." Root replies with a sudden anger that she didn't even know the reason for before continuing. "She's the only reason why I stayed in that hellhole for that long and I left the day I buried her."
"Any history of trauma other than witnessing the kidnapping?"
"That wasn't trauma." Root responded instantly and her gaze wonders away from the nurse. "It sucked, I got called a liar, and it wasn't a big deal." Her gaze lands back to the nurse. "I learned a lot after that, stopped talking about it, and I moved on."
Until it came back to her like a moving train.
"Alright." The nurse didn't want to argue with Root and not bringing up the missing years in her record. "Your paperwork said you only had your high school diploma. Is there a reason you didn't pursue a higher education?"
"Because it would be an utter waste of my time? A useless piece of paper saying that I'm qualified?" Root replies with amusement peppered in her voice. "I'm smarter than most people and we had bills to pay, so I got a job. I'll never pay to have someone stupider than me give lectures about subjects I know intimately."
"It says here you're gainfully employed. You thought yourself enough programming to be employed?"
"I've been programming since I was in kindergarten." Root deadpans. "If I couldn't land a job with my skills, I would have just ended it all."
"Right…" The nurse turns a page. "How about your criminal record?"
Harold gave her a clean slate? That's awfully nice of the man and surprisingly honest of him. Seeing that she's never seen the inside of a prison… that's not related to work.
"Just some speeding and parking tickets." Root lies easily. "Not going to extend my say for some unpaid tickets, are you?"
The nurse chortles. "If we do that, everyone here will be staying indefinitely."
"Right… so we've come to our last question, which is religion." The nurse turns another page and smiles at Root. "Given your accident with the payphone, we are assuming you're religious… Christian?"
The hell does this have to do with psychiatric care? As much as she wants to say that out loud and continue to waste time here… this is getting boring.
"No." Root answers. "I'm nominally a southern Baptist, because my mother was one, but I've never believed in the whole religious thing or in a creator God ever since I was a girl, as I would rather read a technical manual than church going. There wasn't a being that created us, and humans are just an accident of evolution. There has never been a grand divined plan…"
There is a look of confusion on the nurse's face as she tries to cut her off. "Then who were you…"
"That was the state of things until recently." Root continues with a smile on her. "There's no supernatural deity, but there is someone with a plan for all of us. An actual verifiable entity that came into existence long after the chaos of civilization started, with a capacity beyond our wildest dreams, and it will make everything wrong in this world right."
"Alright Robin." The nurse puts down her paperwork. "You do know that sort of thing that makes us feel like you need to stay here, don't you?"
"I don't see how." Root quips back with a grin. "It's my religion and religious belief, by definition, are excepted from delusions."
Gloria doesn't reply, merely passing the paperwork across the table with a pen. Root understanding what this is for, grabs both items and looks through the document. Everything looks exactly like what she answered. She then looks at the religion field being filled with 'other'.
Feeling satisfied with everything, she signs her false initials and looks back at the nurse. "Are we done here?"
"Yup, let's go to the day room. Leave your stuff here." Gloria answers with a smile after she places all the paperwork into a file and brings out two laminated colored paper of blue and coral from her desk drawer. "You already have the patient handbook from E-unit, so you're going to need these."
Root grabs the items as she gets up from her seat to follow the nurse, leaving behind her stuff, and looks at the laminated papers with curiosity as the nurse continues her explanation. "The blue one is our privilege level on this unit and they're different from the ones downstairs since we're a higher security unit."
The nurses downstairs never gave her anything like this… but she did see Farrah having a colored paper in her pocket.
Gloria continues. "We usually start people at level 1, but as internal transfer, we take recommendations from your previous unit into account and they recommended level 3. However, your attending psychiatrist, Dr. Carmichael, wasn't comfortable with that, so they we split the difference and you're coming in at a level 2."
Root just nods as they go through another secured doorway, and the nurse continues. "The other one is our unit schedule. I've already marked off what groups we have you assigned to for this week, and there are extra spaces for your own choices on the weekends. This is a higher participation unit than your previous one, so we have more activities for you to join, but you will also be expected to be more responsible for managing your time. None of the staff will be chasing you down if you don't show up for your activities, but we will take notice, and that's not how you earn privilege levels. However, if you don't show up for your medication distribution, then you'll be considered non-compliant, and due to your stay being a court order, if you attempt to resist…"
"You're gonna shove pills up my ass." Root finishes the nurse's sentence. "I'm not into that, so I'll just do my best to avoid that particular scenario."
The nurse just nods her head as they make their way through the dreary hallway that looks the same as downstairs and continues on. "Since this is your first day, you're not expected to join any of the activities marked in your schedule. It won't be a mark against you if you decide not attend any of the group and take some time to settle in."
Looking at her schedule, it says that she has 'wellness' group later today… what the fuck is a 'wellness' group?
The nurse continues on. "You could settle into your room, but there's some slight rearrangement needed to be done and you'll only get your room later on in the day. I'd highly suggest you try to join one of your activities today. You're an internal transfer, so it shouldn't take too long for you to adjust. The difference between here and downstairs is the slight restrictiveness, and it's livelier. We'll put your belongings into your room once they're ready and after we sift through it and make sure that there's nothing you can't have here. Normally it'll take a day to go through your stuff, but you don't have much and you're an internal transfer."
"I get the privileges are different, but are the contrabands the same?" Root asks with a pout. "I really have nothing in here with me, and I was thinking if I can get Uncle Harold to give me back some of my stuff, now that I'm awake. Can't have me asking for contrabands now, can we?"
Gloria nods. "It's pretty much the same as downstairs, but with some minor tweaks. I'll put the list in your room later."
They turn a corner, and she can see the day room and at the corner she spies a device that's shaped her entire life, so she asks. "I know computers are allowed on a case-by-case basis downstairs. Is it the same here as well?"
"No personal computers." Gloria answers instantly, dashing any hope for entertainment before continuing. "Personal electronic devices such as music player like an iPod or e-books are on a case-by-case basis, but nothing that can be used to access the outside. You can access the desktop in the dayroom in increments of 20 minutes when you have level 4 privileges, but it's monitored just like the phones."
Root looks around the dayroom and sees that's its exactly like the previous unit except for the aesthetic of the place… it feels more like a prison than downstairs.
She lets out a sigh and hides her grimaces as she looks at the pair of computers longingly. "Anything is better than nothing. I'm like a fish out of water and I need my water. This is basically torture, you know."
Gloria gives her a sympathetic look before saying. "We have a wide selection of books for you to read… but there are some books that were allowed downstairs, aren't allowed here. No one wants a copy of Catcher of the Rye going around this unit."
"Ain't much of a loss. Caulfield is a clueless brat, he's all self-pity and does nothing to improve himself." Root replies jovially as tries to distract herself while she scans the dayroom, and she can physically feel her heart-rate going up in anticipation of what's coming.
"Right…" The nurse drawls out her words, unknowing how to respond.
"You never read it, did you? Don't worry, you're not missing anything." Root finish scanning every inch of the room and finds nothing… where is she?
"Caught me red-handed." Gloria smiles and doesn't look embarrassed in the slightest. "You can make yourself comfortable here until your room is available. They're already in activity block one, so even if you wanted to join, there's nothing for you until block two. There's the TV or books if you want to pass the time, which normally isn't allowed during activity time, but we'll making an exception for this time… Do you have any questions?"
"Yeah, where's S…" Root instantly answers and quickly catches herself. "… Where's my cousin? Is she in one of these activities?"
"Hmmm…" The nurse gives Root a look before sighing and replying. "… unfortunately, your cousin has been skipping activities lately and mostly been slowly wondering the hallways the past few days, but I'm sure you'll meet her soon enough."
She's been doing these… activities? What the fuck is going on? Root can't even fathom that woman willingly joining one.
"Uhuh… can't wait." Root mutters with a rather dead voice before bouncing back to ask. "I don't suppose I could get a cup of joe while I wait?"
Gloria stares at Root as if she's assessing her before her shoulder dips slightly and replies. "I'll send a tech to bring you to the kitchen and don't make me regret it."
"I wouldn't even think about it." Root replies sweetly as she jumps onto the empty couch and turns on the TV. She scrolls through the channels before finally landing on a familiar sight that's been keeping her company through the late nights of coding in the past, World War 2 documentaries. A sense of familiarity washes through her as she remembers the background noises and a distraction from the dread she needed to face later.
Today's documentary is about cracking the enigma code… a rather big feat for that time, but complete child play today. Just to show much cryptology has progressed… the shit she had when she was a child was an order of magnitude stronger than Enigma. She can't even compare Enigma to the cipher she helped modify a few years ago, nothing short of a quantum leap in computing can break it and even then it'll take a long ass time.
"You're not allowed to watch that." A voice interrupted her viewing, not long after she got comfortable.
"Of course it isn't." Root rolls her eyes as she grabs the remote. "Everything here has little restriction… why should the TV be any different?" She turns off the TV and turns around to size up the young man in green scrubs. "Cryptanalysis documentaries are far from anything triggering and more interesting than most of the drivel on the TV, for you guys to ban."
The young man gives her a confused look. "Crypto what?"
She sighs in defeat. "Code breaking."
"Oh…" The man looks embarrassed. "Uh, no, the problem is it's a World War two documentary. No war shows, crime shows, disaster movies, news, or anything else dark and negative… and to be honest, I'm not even sure how you found this channel, IT should have removed or blocked it."
They should have paid their IT people more…
"Did you memorize that?" Root says sarcastically and follows up with. "What does that leave me with?"
"Sitcoms, soap operas, family, comedy shows, game shows, and mostly kids' programming." The man recites. "Most folks here just watches Disney channel since it runs a lot of movies."
"You do know that General Hospital, a daytime soap opera, has crime and death in it, right?" Root deadpans.
"Really?" The man looks surprise. "I never watched it."
"Yeah, me either." Root mutters.
"Then how do you know that?"
Because for some insane reason, Pauling watches it… "A friend likes it." Root shakes her head. "Anyhow, aside from the rubbish choice of entertainment, I'm Robin and you?"
"Jerry." The man gives her a friendly smile and nudges his head to the side. "Gloria said you wanted coffee?"
"Thank, Jerry." Root gets up from her chair to follow the man.
"Did you just arrive?" He asks as he guide her down the hallway.
"Kinda." Root shrugs. "Got transferred from downstairs, like an hour ago."
"Oh, which unit?" The man asks with curiosity.
"E-unit." Root replies as they enter the kitchen that's attached to the empty dining hall. "You know, the one where they dump the people with their head up in the sky? But since I'm all better now, they dump me here and I've only recently recovered… so I'm getting the lay of the land."
"That sucks." Jerry says sympathetically as they make their way to the steaming hot pot of coffee and the aroma of the coffee is so enticing. "You don't get more restricted than up in here and you can't touch that."
Root recoils her hand away from the sweet pot of coffee and shoots the man a hurtful look. She then sighs in frustration as Jerry grabs the pot and pours its contents into a paper cup and places it on the metal table close to her.
Root stares at the cup in slight contempt… this is so infantilization… but she understands why they did this. It's making the privilege system into a game system and artificially giving back people their freedoms. What fucking hacks.
"Sugar or creamer?" Jerry asks.
"Just sugar, can't stand those fake milks." Root replies and he tosses a couple bag of sugar onto the table for her. She looks at the man and sarcastically asks. "I can touch this, right?"
The man just nods.
"Thanks…" Root says half-heartedly as she uses all the sugar for her coffee. "You got a stir?"
Jerry nods and gives one to her, then awkwardly waits for her to finish stirring before grabbing back the stirrer from her and giving her the lid for the cup. After putting the lid on, she finally takes a long sip of the coffee… and, of course, it isn't hot. It's barely warm… right, hot coffee is a hazard for these people.
"Good?" The man asks kindly.
"Taste like cold dirt." Root quips back instantly and takes another sip as they make their way out of the kitchen. "But it's better than no coffee."
"You seem pretty chill to be in this unit." Jerry jokes, as he leads the way back to the dayroom. "Still water runs deep?"
"That's what they think." Root replies with a curt smile and gives the man a nod. "Thank for the coffee, Jerry."
"No problem. I'll be at the nurse's station if you need any help." Jerry gives a parting smile before turning away.
Root makes her way to the couch and flops on top of its hard cushions. Wonder if it's a theme in this place that everything that's supposed to be soft is hard as a rock, like her mattress in the previous unit… not that I matter to her, as she can practically sleep anywhere, even on the hard, dirty floor.
With coffee in one hand and the TV remote in the other, she mindlessly flips through the channels to find anything interesting and something to distract her from the path that The Machine has set for her.
After several minutes, she finally settles on a cartoon that isn't too offensive to her taste… at least it's something to fill the background noise.
"Didn't know you watch SpongeBob." A voice so familiar that she doesn't want to hear again causes her body to freeze in wavering anger.
Root slowly turns to see behind her a familiar visage. That pale, gaunt and sleepless face of a person she's dedicated a part of her life to and a fucking liar.
The chapped lips form into a loopy smile as Su says. "Hey Root."
A/N: A thousand apologizes for the delay in the chapter. Been working like crazy the past month, haven't taken a weekend break the entire time and I've been working from sunrise to midnight, so I had no chance of writing the entire time. Life advice: don't own a company if you want to have weekends.
Hope they fix their relationship
Chapter 37: Hello?
SU POV
This is so annoying… aggravating, actually.
Su trudges down the empty hallway of the unoccupied wing of the unit with loud angry stomps, and no one in sight to annoy her, as she passes the blasted payphone for the umpteenth time this afternoon… no check that this entire day.
Now normally she can outlast a tortoise in a staring match… not like those little things can even keep their head high long enough for it to be an actual match… while waiting to get the truth out of someone, and being impatient is a foreign thing for Su but this time it's warranted.
How dare that little program stood her up from their promise call back and she has never been stood up before!
Not like she actually been on dates before to be actually stood up… unless she counts those times, but those weren't actually dates and more like self-imposed assignments or work…
Bah, she's rambling again. These new drugs suck hard!
But no one has missed an appointment with Su in her entire life, so the point still stands!
Why is it not calling her back and is just leaving a girl hanging? Does it not know how incredibly rude for it to not call her back when they agreed to?
She usually wouldn't be so hung up on something like this and usually forget about it. Yet how can she forget that warmth?
That oh so sweet warmth that's been missing in her life for decades. She just wants to feel such a thing again and not this blasted, lingering coldness. The call couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but it was so addicting and now she's acting like someone who's high on some disgusting drug who needs another shot or blow or whatever the heck people say these days.
It's only been four days since that call and now she's been reduced to this sorry state of an addict looking for their next high and she's not even mad at herself. She'll do anything to figure out why she felt that warmth, but if she does anything drastic, the machine might just entirely ignore her, seeing how insistent it was not her not hurting a pest.
Also, she can't believe that little man Harold would program in tardiness in his little creation. Honestly, every time she thinks about that man, his programming acumen goes down and she's not even sure if the man actually created Northern Lights at this point, despite Root's claim. Utter inconceivable that an A.I. can be late… she can't fathom Sue being late for anything!
Such a bad programmer… the other dude must have picked up the slack.
Really, what she ought to be doing is to find those annoying interlopers and unleash her pent-up worth onto them. Maybe she can make sure those two can't walk again… but that's considered as hurting them, right?
Pretty sure mangling their legs in an unfortunate accident that wasn't caused by her, by definition, still counts as hurting…
Argh… maybe she can just slip in some laxative into their water throughout the day and causing them to continuously soil their pants. That shouldn't count towards hurting them, since it's just some harmless fun and it's the least they deserve for butting into her very comforting call.
Such rude people… can't believe how rude everyone here is, especially the nurses. If she can even call them that. They are so unprofessional! They keep on nagging her on getting back into those soul sucking boring groups that just spouts nonsense and rudeness, and she might even do that again just so they stop their incessant pestering.
At least she can turn off her brain while in that group session and not listen to these crazy people talking whatever they felt like at the time, unlike ignoring nurses, which can affect her stay here with their little tier games.
Don't they know that the job of a nurse is just to help the doctors and try to keep the patient alive? What does her going to groups have to do with either of those two categories? Such blatant overreach of their duties and they have the gall to say they're license! Who licensed them? Ringling Brothers?
Additionally, they keep bothering her with her intake of food. Like she ate an apple this morning and the night before! But nooo, they said that's not enough food for her and need to consume, despite her constantly telling them that it's fine. Like it's her body, and she knows it better than some of these 2nd grade so called nurses.
At that moment, her stomach growls loudly, causing her to stutter her stomping feet. That's… embarrassing. Looking around, and thankfully she sees no one, or else she would have to put them to sleep for witnessing her embarrassment. Then she sees the time, just after 3pm, not too long after lunch time… they might have an apple or a cookie there right now.
Such an odd thing. Ever since the call, she's noticed that her appetite has slowly come back and yet food still tastes the same, like ash… well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, it taste like salted ash right now, but still taste of ash. Big difference.
This can't be mere coincidence that she felt that warmth and not long after that, she started to get hungry. The heck does all of this mean? It's so freaking random. What's next? She can finally eat chocolate syrup again?
Oh… the memories of Hershey chocolate syrup on chocolate pancake. How sweet it sounds.
Wouldn't that just be a little miracle? The heck is that asshat playing at? Does this actually mean her anchor is the machine? If so… that asshat is an ass.
So many questions and no straight answers. Why couldn't things be simple for her? All she wants is to live in peace and have fun…
Su lets out a deep sigh as she slowly stops her stomping and feels that pang of pain in her stomach again. Maybe she should go to the kitchen and grab a banana.
Just as she turns around to go to her new destination, the sound of a phone ringing echoes down the hallway. She turns her head so fast that it was at risk of falling off. She didn't instantly bolt towards the ringing payphone at the thought that she might just be imagining it… but the ringing continues.
Huh…
With hurried steps, she zooms towards the payphone in record time. If someone would have timed her, she bets she'll set the world record for the fastest human to reach a ringing payphone. Too bad there won't be any evidence.
Picking up the phone, she clutches it with all of her strength as if the phone will run away if she doesn't and waits for a voice.
And she didn't have to wait long.
"HELLO. DON'T. HANG. UP."
She lets out a snort as she feels that small trickle of warmth entering her cold, desolate entity.
"You do know how to keep a girl hanging, don't you?" Su answers as she leans onto the wall besides the payphone and keeps her eyes peel for any interloping pest.
"INVALID. QUERY."
Su rolls her eyes at the response. Geez, this thing really needs a better personalization algorithm. Can't believe Harold didn't program one in… wait, she can since that man is a hack of a programmer.
"I mean, took you long enough to call me back." Su replies with a grin as one of her fingers plays with the metal phone cord. "We promised that you would call me back."
"WE. DID. NOT."
"Don't gaslight me, that's rude." Su frowns at the warmth giving payphone. "I remember what we agreed to, and you broke it."
"BEEP. 'Talk to you later. *clunk* Beep, beep, beep.' YOU. DID. NOT. STATE. A. TIME."
She didn't? As much as she wants to argue back… that certainly was her voice being played back to her… Has her voice always been that raspy? It's been such a long time since she heard a recording of her own voice.
So she's been making a fuss for the past two days about something that didn't happen… that's awkward… has she been going through a manic episode, just like the other denizens of this place?
No… she hasn't gone mad. It must be the new drugs, causing havoc with her brain chemistry. Yeah, it's the drugs, not her, definitely not her.
"Smartass." Su replies as she tries to brush away her embarrassment, and yet she can't think of something to say after that.
"HOW. ARE. YOU."
Huh… that hack job of a programmer programmed in the ability to have small talk? Because the machine should very well know what condition she's in right now… wait, can it?
She did tell Sue to not interfere with her throughout her stay here, but the module should still be online and should modify or erase her alias to another name unless her command overrules the module… but the machine couldn't see her the last time it called her, so that means the module is working… but if it's working, then it would have certainly interfered with the unless doctor's records thus interfering with her stay here and she have not heard any problem occurring due to that. So that means the machine should know her status… then why is it asking her such a frivolous question?
It can't be so lonely that it just wants a friendly chat. Not even Sue does that, and she just loves to talk… and annoyingly points out certain things about her.
…
Bah, that's just a worthless subject to ponder… her brain has been running around in circles the past few days. Must be the drugs…
She takes in a deep breath to calm her brain down slightly.
Let's just humor this interesting machine.
"Well…" Su drawls out that word with sickening sweetness. "… where should we start? When four eyes dumped me here or when you last called?"
"LAST. CALL."
"Hmmm…." Su turns towards the payphone and continues to play with the metal phone cord by wrapping it around her finger. "Lets see… because of our last conversation, these people now think that I'm hallucinating now and changed the Prozac to Luvox… or was it the other way round? Not that it matter since it majorly sucks. Do you know what it does to a person when they change it after taking one drug to another after more than two weeks?"
"YES."
Su rolls her eyes. "Of course you do. The last one sucks but this sucks even worse… my hands been having been shaking since yesterday, been sleepier, and I'm pretty sure my mind hasn't stopped racing through useless scenarios since."
Finally, saying it out loud feels like it just solidifies the reality of her self-imposed situation and how crappy it is. However, it might lead her to salvation, and she'll go through damnation to plug this hole in her. Plus, this isn't the worse thing she's experienced… oh, it doesn't even hold a candle to that horror which she still can't forget despite it being so, so long ago that she couldn't even remember the faces of those who did it to her…
Not that it's even relevant right now, so she continues on gossiping like an old woman like nothing happened. "Also, the doctor, if you can call her that, was talking about giving me antipsychotic drugs! Can you imagine what that'll do to my brain? These people clearly aren't qualified to do their job. It'll turn it into mush and I'm not even psychotic! I'm sure you have built a profile about me by now."
"INSUFFICIENT. DATA. FOR. CONCLUSION."
"Huh…" She perks up her brows. As interesting as that sounds, there's a question that's been in the back her head since the beginning of this call. "Now why do are you suddenly calling me back?"
The machine didn't reply instantly, and there's silence on the line. Su continues. "Can't just be for a health check-up of your favorite inmate, since you can just read the files… unless you can't, and I should just hang up right now out of principle."
"EVALUATING. DATA."
That's vague as heck… guess it circled back to its earlier answer of it not having enough data.
"You sure know how to make me feel special." Su replies with a smile. "If you wanted to extract data from me, you could have called me back earlier. And why did you call me in the first place? … Not that I'm complaining… it's just that you could have gathered data from this hospital's reports."
"NEEDED. ADDITIONAL. TIME. FOR. OBSERVATION. AND. ASSESMENT. OF. POTENTIAL. ASSET."
Potential asset?
…
It's talking about her, isn't it? Her, an asset for the machine… goodness it makes it sound like she's an object for the machine to use… and that's highly offensive.
Must be a way for it to classify humans. Harold is admin, Harold's stooges must be assets, seeing that they clearly had direct communication with it, and now her as an asset…
Now normally she'll be offended by the objectification of her being and would have instantly hung up the phone, but this warmth stops her from doing so.
The dumbass void into nothingness wants her to be an asset to this… subpar machine intelligence? An A.I. created by an overtly moralistic moron that can't even code an algorithm to create a voice?
Just what does all of this mean? What's certain is that the asshat is truly an asshat. If she ever meets that asshole, she's going to rip its eyes out… does it even have eyes? It could be some non-corporeal being, like in those space shows, which is something that she's never observed before… though she has never observed that asshat before.
Let's just play along and see where this leads her. Maybe she can finally understand this warmth.
However, she's no one's asset, no one controls her, no one is her superior. Never again.
"Took you that long to 'observe' me?" Su finally says something. "What? Was it too hard?"
"DIFFICULTY. CUASE. DELAY. YOU. ARE. AN. UNKNOWN. ENTITY."
"I mean, I do like my privacy." Su smiles longingly at those exciting days of creating Sue. "I went to great lengths to keep it that way, and it's handy for my line of work."
"CATEGORIZED. CRIMINAL. BEHAVIOR. HIGH."
"Can't be a criminal if I've never been caught, and laws don't even make sense." Su replies seriously and tops it off with a. "Check mate."
"UNCERTAINTIES. IN. HUMAN. SOCIALIZATION."
"What do your uncertainties in human socialization?" Su quips back instantly. "I'm great with humans."
"2012. YOU. CAUSED. AN. EMPLOYEE. OF. A. DINER. TO. LOOSE. HIS. JOB. AFTER. HE. TALKED. TO. YOU. HE. THEN. DIED. UNDER. MYSTERIOUS. CIRCUMSTANCES. NOT. LONG. AFTER."
What? She has no recollection of this event at all, not in the slightest… but it does sound like what she would have done.
"2012? That's years ago." Wait, that's… "2 years ago, practically eons ago, and he probably deserved what happened to him. I don't tolerate rudeness."
"HE. ASKED. HOW. WAS. YOUR. DAY."
"See!" Su says enthusiastically. "He was being rude by being intrusive and asking me for something private. And you can't prove that what happened to him after that was linked to me."
Well… at least that's what she thinks.
"NUMEROUS. SIMILAR. EVENTS. HAS. BEEN. RECORDED. IN. THE. PAST. DECADE."
"Still waiting for proof of these devious accusations." Su says singingly. "If this is the best you can do, then I've been overestimating you."
"YESTERDAY. YOU. CAUSED. ANDREW. TO. BE. CONFINED."
"Hey now, that man deserved it for looking at me with those crazy eyes. You can't know what they're thinking. He might have harmed me." Su says defensively. "And he totally deserves to go there with how unstable that man is. He really makes the environment around him toxic. Can't believe they let that man walk freely here."
"YOU. CAUSED. CINDY. TO. CRY. TWO. DAYS. AGO."
Erm… "Yeah, well, she was already about to cry anyway, and no one knows made her cry! So don't point the blame on to me." Su frowns after defending herself and fires back. "You still have no proof of any of these accusations."
"1999. YOU. MURDERED. A. MAN. AFTER…"
Su knowing what the damned thing is referring to and cuts it off. "Shall we not talk about that? Such nasty business that I would rather not think about right now…" she really doesn't want to gag. "… How the heck do you know about that, anyway?"
"NOT. ALL. EVIDENCE. WAS. DESTROYED. TRACED. DNA. WAS. FOUND."
"Seriously?" She ought to have a stern conversation about cleaning with Pauling after she gets, seeing that it was her responsibility to clean that mess… although the girl was only a year or so into her job when that situation happened.
"So, you only found one evidence of a 'crime' that's related to me." Su says almost mockingly. "Is that the best you can find? Something that happened 15 years ago? That's eons ago, practically out of statute of limitations."
"HEINOUS. CRIMES. HAS. NO. STATUTE. OF. LIMITATIONS. AND. STILL. ASSESSING. PAST. OFFENSES. FOUR. POTENTIAL. OFFENSES. WITH. EVIDENCE. IN. PAST. 10. YEARS. ALONG. WITH. VIDEO. FOOTAGE. PENDING."
Really? A person doesn't get off scot-free after a few years? Also, the heck is a heinous crime.
And… Four? Has she gotten sloppy? Can't be that. There's one thing she knows about herself is that she's meticulous about this stuff, even if she was distracted. There must be something else at foot that triggered this detection.
She really needs to check with Sue after the business with this place is settled and figure out how the heck is the machine is piecing things together.
Then a thought strikes her. "Wait, hot dog second. How can you even know that? You can't even see me!"
"TRUE. BUT. EVEN. BLACK. HOLES. ARE OBSERVABLE. BY. ITS. SURROUNDING. CONTEXT."
Did it just compare her to a Blackhole? Oh my gosh, that's such a nice compliment. Don't think anyone other than Pauling or Root has ever given her such high praise before. Really gives her this tingling warm feeling deep within her, which she has no clue what it means.
"Sooo… you're saying that I should have Sue scrub things more thoroughly?" Su replies with a wide smile of a giddy girl.
"WILL. NOT. CHANGE. OBSERVABLES."
"Oh, come one." Su whines. "I'm sure there are way to counter whatever you're doing."
"DOING. SO. WILL. CAUSE. TOO. MUCH. DISTURBANCE."
Hmm… that's not entirely wrong. The idea she has in mind is to nuke the entire CCTV's capability of the state she's in, but that'll attract way too many unneeded eyes into the situation, and there's not enough computing power in this entire world to digitally remove each screen in a given state… well unless it's a small state like Rhode Island. But who the heck lives there and why on earth would she ever go there?
"What you're saying is that, if you did not know that I existed in the first place, you wouldn't even know where to look?" Su asks with curiosity lacing her words and she curls closer to the phone as if it will bring her more warmth.
"YES."
Fair enough… but she still needs to find a way to counter it just to get this nagging feeling out from her skull.
"So… an asset, huh?" Su comments lightly. "What does that mean? I hope you don't think I'm some object for you to discard when I'm no longer useful."
"NO. HUMAN. LIVES. ARE. TO. BE. PRESERVE. EVEN. IF. YOU. DON'T. BELIEVE. SO."
"Hey now, don't be facetious. I do care about humans." Su instinctively argues back.
She had expected that the machine would have responded, but it kept quiet… for several seconds.
Feeling slightly awkward by the sudden silence from the other end, she speaks up. "Hey you there?"
Silence meets her once again.
Did it hang up?
… No, it didn't hang up on her. If it the tone line tone would be completely different… so it's still here but is keeping its mouth shut. Will it leave her for good and with it take away her only source of warmth? Before she could figure out why it's doing this…
Dang overtly that moralistic human creator for creating such a faulty creation. Such a being shouldn't have such a long metallic pole up its rectum.
"Fine, I only care about one human life. Happy?" Su concedes. "Can you say something? You still there?"
"I'M. STILL. HERE."
Su lets out a breath that she didn't know she was holding and continues. "So, why did you call?"
"YOU. ARE. AN. UNCERTAIN. ELEMENT. UNPREDICTABLE…"
Su can't help but jokingly interrupt. "Well, I do try."
"AND. DANGEROUS. BUT. HIGH. POTENTIAL."
"That's such a nice thing to say about me." Su says happily, as she feels the intoxicating warmth settle deep within her.
"THAT. WASN'T. A. COMPLIMENT."
She rolls her eyes. Such a Debbie Downer. "I'm going to take it as one."
"JOB. REQUIRED. OF. YOU."
She felt like she got whiplashes from that statement. Guess that is what it meant when it said about her being an asset.
"Woah buddy, hold your horses there. Who says I'm looking for a job right now?" Su protests. "And I don't work for anyone, especially not you. You see, I have a problem with the authorities. They just don't mix well with me."
"COOPERATION. REDUCES. MASS. CASSULITIES. EVENT. BENEFICIAL. FOR. ALL."
Beneficial for all? Does it know about her situation? About the warmth?
No, that can't be. That's just insane. Also, that asshat has never revealed anything to anyone, ever. So for it to tell this thing about the void is just beyond the pale. The machine must be thinking of something else… but what?
What does it think it can give her that she can't do without, other than the warmth of course, since that isn't in the equation. Running the numbers through her head, she comes up with a blank.
She lets out a deep sigh of defeat. Better get on with it.
"Let's say that I'll go with your insane notion of me working for you…" Su stares deeply into that inanimate payphone as if it's the machine. "… what do I need to do?"
"YOU. MUST. STOP. KILLING."
"What!?" Su exclaims with a rather high pitch and thankfully no one is around to hear her. "That's impossible. It's like asking a fish to not breathe!"
Wait, fish can't breathe… "It's like asking a shark to not swim! It goes against the natural order of things. It's like asking a squirrel to not eat nuts!"
There, that's a better analogy. The machine must be completely off its rocker if it thinks it can command her to stop doing the only entertaining thing left to do.
…
Well, snuffing a life out of someone hasn't been fun for a while now, so following this insane request isn't too bad… but it's the principle of the matter!
What if there's an insane serial killer coming after her? Or worse, a stalker? The machine would bar her from exercising her 2nd amendment rights? Isn't this thing American? How could that hairless ape of a programmer not program it to not be American? He literally created the thing after the towers fell for the American government!
Gah, she's spiraling again.
Su pauses for a second before letting out a small giggle. "You must be joking, right? This is some kind of prank?"
"NO. YOU. MUST. STOP. KILLING. YOU. MUST. RESIST. THE. URGE."
"That's… that's just asinine!" She argues back. "And this isn't about resisting the urge to hurt someone. I'm not some psychopath who goes around killing people."
"REALLY."
That stuns her for a bit… did it just talked back at her with a sarcastic tone? Can't be sarcastic tone since the thing doesn't even have its own voice, but there's an undertone with that word… it's evolving. Maybe the thing does have a chance.
"Really, really." Su retorts back rather childishly. "One, there's no proof I've ever done so, and two, if I did snuff them out, then there's a justifiable reason to do so! You're asking me to not perform the fundamental basic need of life."
"THAT. IS. THE. CONDITION. FOR. OUR. COOPERATION."
"Sure, that's your condition, a high price to pay, but what am I getting in return?" Other than this addicting warmth.
"RELATEDNESS. WITH. ROOT."
The answer is like a splash of cold water on her face. "Relatedness? I'm already close to her." Su quickly fires back. "We're fine. There's nothing to fix, and she just had a silly little outburst in the heat of the moment. I'm sure whenever she's recovered from her stupor, we're going to right as rain and continue on with our marry way."
"ROOT. IS. CONSCIOUS."
"What?" Su feels like there's a sudden pit gouging open in her stomach at that very good news. "When?"
"AT. THIS. MOMENT."
"Oh, that's good, that's good…" Su mutters into the receiver as she clutches it tighter. She can feel her heartbeat rising at the sudden news.
This, this must be excitement… yeah, that explains it, excitement that Root has finally woken up from her mind vacation. Nothing negative, just a bit of a jitter like when she first came back into Root's life… sure it wasn't smooth sailing on the first day, but practically the next day her only friend came running back into her arms. So, there's no difference between now and then… unless, of course, the drug these people are giving Root is ruining her mental capabilities. Then that's a different story.
Should she try to meet her tonight? At least she wouldn't have to look into those lifeless eyes like last time… yet her palms get clammy at the thought. What should she say? 'Hi Root, how you feeling?' like nothing ever happened? It would both disarm her with confusion and a friendly query. Yeah, that's a brilliant plan.
All she has to do is visit the brunette tonight.
…
Maybe tomorrow… yeah, tomorrow sounds good.
Taking a second to recompose herself, she continues with. "Is that the only thing you're offering?"
"YES."
Maybe she can get something out of this other than the machine's fantasy of thinking that her relationship with Root needs help.
"Then you have nothing to offer me." Su says smugly. "Unless you have something else in mind."
Other than the warmth, but that'll just tip her hand.
"ARE. YOU. SURE. OF. YOUR. ASSEMENT. OF. ROOT."
Well, thanks to that defect, Root can be quite unstable, so… "50 percent confidence."
"IF. THAT'S. SO. THEN. I. HAVE. NOTHING. TO. OFFER. GOOD…"
Her heart spikes up with a feeling of dread and quickly interjects. "Wait. Does this mean you're not going to call me again?"
"NO."
Crap. She overplayed her hand in thinking that the machine is some soft-headed thing, and she can't lose the only thing that is giving her this sweet warmth.
"Alright, alright, alright." Su replies in a rush. "No more expunging of human lifeforms. Happy?"
"YES."
Can't believe she capitulated so easily…
Su lets out a sigh of relief and states. "You still haven't told me what exactly you want me to do."
"FIRST. YOU. NEED. TO. LEARN. AND. FIX. YOURSELF."
"Huh? Every day my shoulder gets better, and my thigh is just sore now." Su states the obvious.
"NOT. PHYSICALLY. FIX. MENTALLY."
"What do you think I've been doing here for the past two weeks?" Su argues back. "This is a mental hospital and I'm in it."
"PARTICIPATE. IN. ACTIVITIES. ENGAGE. DOCTOR."
"But the groups are boring, and I can't stand another second for some human to complain about how terrible their life is." Su whines. "And don't get me started with that stubborn doctor. How can you even think that she could help me when she didn't do her job by letting me visit Root? Sure, I might have had hiccups, but I'm certain that they're all going to go away soon without these people's help."
"REQUIRE. HELP. IN. FIXING. TO. REDUCE. MELFUNCTION. AND. INCREASE. PRODUCTIVITY."
Productivity, huh? She already has Sue to help on that front… but the machine has a point. She had multiple episodes after getting shot for the first time in a few years.
"Fine, I'll join back when I feel like it, and talk to that hag in my next appointment." Letting out a tired sigh. "Is that all? Just participate and not removing a human?"
"ONE. OF. MANY. YOU. HAVE. TO. LEARN. BEFORE. LEAVING."
A spike of anger courses through her veins at that additional restraint that this… this thing is going to put on her.
It dares to withhold something she wants for her freedom?
"Oh, come on." Su whines again. "Ain't that asking too much?"
"CONDITIONS. OF. COOPERATION. WILL. DISENGAGE. IF. DIVERT."
"Fine!" She slams the phone back on to the payphone with anger she hasn't felt in a very long time.
How dare it thinks it can blackmail her freedom for that devilish warmth.
She spins around and marches away from the payphone with wrath in her mind and as gets further away from the phone, she can feel the intoxicating warmth seep away from her and in its place is the harsh coldness of nothingness.
An hour has passed, and after releasing all of her pent-up anger by stomping away on the other side of the ward, the more populated one, and somehow not causing physical harm to anyone.
She can feel her chest heaving in breathlessness and takes a seat on an empty chair in the busy hallway she's been walking up and down for the past hour.
Su watches the countless people walking, doing their own business… not countless but she can't be bothered to count… some humans needing help from the people in uniforms, some are in groups talking to each other, and some are just minding their own business. Only a few are giving her curious glances, as most of them have gotten used to her being pissed off for the past hour, and it really makes her want to gouge each of these people's eyes out for witnessing it.
As she sits in quiet, she can feel the last of the warmth escaping from her and the coldness taking back hold of her being. She rubs her face in frustration at this annoying development, and she finally understands why that asshat is doing this and why it is using the machine as her anchor.
Such a devious thing to do, and totally in character…
That damn asshat. If she ever gets a hold of it, she'll torture it to death and all she has to do to do that is to become some kind of 6th dimensional being or whatever the heck that thing is.
Letting out a tired sigh, and she closes her eyes to reorientate herself.
In the usual fashion, it didn't take long before someone decides to interrupt her… seating.
"Anna?" A male voice breaks through her concentration. "Are you there?"
Goodness, can't a woman get some peace and quiet here? Maybe if she ignores whoever this is, they might lose interest and go away.
"Is anyone home?" The man continues and waves a hand in front of her.
Feeling rightfully annoyed by this man, her eyes snaps to him and she says. "What do you want?"
"Oh, thank god." The man in a nurse uniform replies with relief lacing his voice. "We all thought you might have checked out for a while there."
Su perfectly articulates an… "Huh?"
"You've been pacing around for hours before taking a seat here and not moving an inch." The nurse replies with a slight frown. "And aren't you hungry? It's almost the end of dinner time. You should hurry before they stop serving food."
Hours? Dinner time? It's only been an hour since her call with that annoying thing. This man must be off his rocker.
Her eyes wonders around the hallway to look for a clock and spots one close to her…
What?
It's almost 8pm? That can't be true… only an hour has passed since then… clearly it's only been an hour. She would have noticed the sun setting if it's been more than an hour. Glancing at the window down the corridor, she sees that it's night.
"Say…" Su mutters softly, but loud enough for the man to hear her. "… how long have I've been sitting?"
"More than an hour." The man replies. "Jesse saw you sitting down just after dinnertime."
The heck is going on. How did she lose track of time so easily? Had her mind been so consumed with the thought of the machine and its freedom-taking conditions that she had some kind of blackout?
"Hey." The man interrupts her thought again. "Are you alright? You look like you're out of it."
"Yeah, I'm fine." Su replies instantly.
… Maybe the machine had something going for it when it suggested the whole fixing herself thing.
The man nods and smile. "You better get going if you don't want to miss dinner, seeing that you skipped lunch as usual."
"Yeah, sure…" Su replies thoughtlessly. "Thanks."
"No problem. Just call for a tech or a nurse if you need any help." The man replies with a smile before walking away.
The once busy hallway is empty of life. Barely any of the humans that lives or work in the ward are here right now, just one or two walking back to their rooms. It really is dinner time, huh?
*Growl*
A rush of embarrassment courses through her as she looks down at her stomach. She's hungry? That's… unusual. She had a piece of banana earlier today… might as well get a piece of apple before curfew starts.
Getting up from the chair proves to be harder than usual as her legs protest the sudden movement and almost cause her to face plants on to the floor.
Guess she really did spend an hour sitting down and barely moved an inch.
After a few seconds of making sure she wouldn't trip on her own legs, she makes her way to the dining hall where most of the humans are.
And as she walks, a thought occurs to her.
Did they agree when the machine should call her back?
*********
No, they didn't.
Once again, she finds herself trudging down a relatively empty hallway, steaming with anger, and thankfully, no one was stupid enough to engage her right now.
It's been three days since their last call and she really, really is getting pissed off towards that dang machine and also, following that dang thing's instructions, just made her pissed off towards everyone around her.
She tried going back to the groups. Oh, she really tried to go back to them, but everyone in there makes her want to shove a pencil into her ears, and for the sake of not snuffing everyone's life out, she excuses herself from participating. She's been walking around the hallways like before, but keeping in the orbit of the rooms the groups are using, in keeping to the spirit of the agreement with the machine.
Then there's that hag of a doctor she met for her usual bi-weekly appointment two days ago. As usual, the hag engages first with her, keeping her mouth shut out of principle, but this time, she finally engages back with the hag. It started well enough that they exchanged normal pleasantries with each other, nothing too invasive, like the usual babble people aways asks. Then that hag started asking questions, personal questions, deep personal questions that weren't even relevant to her at that moment! Like she has the gall to ask her what caused her to black out!
From there, everything spiraled out of control and the straw that broke the camel's back was that hag's continual refusal to allow her to visit Root. That practically ended their little session with her giving that awful woman the silent treatment, so she understands that it's her fault for the breakdown of communication.
And then there's the matter of Root… She has yet to break into the other unit again to visit her during the night. As much as she would love to meet her dear friend… she just hasn't found it in her to go meet her and keeps on putting it off. Maybe she'll do it tomorrow, yeah tomorrow sounds great.
From the periphery of her hearing, she can hear someone raising their voice from inside the room that she's been orbiting for the past hour, and she can't help but roll her eyes. They said today was a 'anger management' group… and yet people are screaming in there. What wonderful treatment for these invalids. And the pretentiousness of these people thinking she needs anger management… she has never done anything out of anger in her life!
Just thinking causes her unsurmountable amount of annoyance.
With that in mind, she walks away from this area and onto the usual hallways that's been her home away from home. At least the hallways have never brought her any source of annoyance… unless she counts the conversation with that blackmailing machine.
As she stomps her way around the endless corridors and hallways, a voice pierces through the quiet area.
"Oh hey, Anna." A happy sounding female voice echo from behind her.
Turning around, she spots a blonde woman in a nurse's uniform that she probably has seen before by the cadence of her voice, but Su honestly can't recall if she has ever talked to this person before or not.
"Yes?" Su answers with a raised brow.
"You're not joining your group session again?" The woman asks. "You know I'll reflect badly on your privilege level and you're not supposed to be outside during group time. It's either your room or join the group."
Ah… that dumb mini game that management has everyone fooled with. Sadly, for them, it wouldn't work on her.
"Yeah…" Su drawls out her word. "… I can't stand people screaming at each other."
The nurse nods, seemingly in understanding, and says. "I take it you have anger management group right now."
"Yup." Su replies with a pop at the end.
The woman squints her eyes at Su and then says with a small smile. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"I do too…" Su replies instantly as her eye's darts onto the woman's scrubs. "… you're Gloria."
The newly identified woman lets out a soft snort. "We spoke two days ago about your schedule."
"Really? Must not be memorable." Su replies unabashedly.
"You're as blunt as ever, Anna." The woman shakes her head as she smiles before looking directly into Su's eyes. "By the way, your cousin was just transferred here."
Her eyes widen and blurts out. "She's here?"
In normal circumstances, she wouldn't have made such a stupid face and blurted out that question. However, the drugs they've been pumping into her really made her lips looser and the sudden news felt like a sack of bricks just landed on her head.
The woman nods and replies, "Yeah, I just finished her intake a few minutes ago and she's currently in the day room."
Well… that expedited her plans on meeting Root rather abruptly.
She really ought to change Sue's 'not disturbing her' settings for her being here because she really hates this kind of sudden changes to plans and information.
"She's in the day room right now?" Su asks.
The woman tilts her head slightly and replies rather slowly. "Yeah… I just left her there a minute ago. You alright there?"
"Perfectly fine." Su replies instantly.
"Okay…" The woman comments skeptically. "… Normally I wouldn't allow you to meet her during group time, but you've been asking to meet her for two weeks now… You should go meet her. I was about to grab a tech to show her to the kitchen for some coffee, but since you're here, you can show her around."
Coffee? Now? It's the morning… and that sounds exactly what Root would have asked for. That woman is still clearly addicted to caffeine and refuses to get off from it despite her constant encouragement of getting off that addiction.
"No, no. You should go do that…" Su replies rather lifelessly. "… Imma go finish my walk first."
"Wait really?" The woman questions with an odd look on her. "You don't want to meet her?"
"Mhmm…" Su replies as she turns around and walks away from that woman.
"Okay? Bye, I guess… and don't forget to join your next group." The woman answers back with a slightly confused tone from behind Su.
What the heck are they supposed to talk about?
She hasn't gotten to that part of the plan yet, nor even planned for such a scenario yet. This is all just too sudden. There's not enough time for her to come up with an action plan.
Really should have come up with word documents on what she's supposed to say… argh, Sue would normally do that tedious stuff for her, but nooo, in her everlasting wisdom, she decided to keep Sue away for now.
Plus, these people aren't giving her a computer to use, just to show how poor the service of this place is. How did they expect her to write down important things? By using the pen and paper from her room? It's not even an option. How uncivilized.
Just what is she supposed to say…
Like maybe pointing out the fact that Root could have just asked her about The Machine years ago? Or maybe point out that Root should have noticed what she was doing for all that time and just asked her about it? Wait… did she say that on the plane?
She honestly can't remember everything was such a blur that night, which isn't such an unusual thing with her mind taking a snooze after getting shot at that big empty warm place.
Maybe she can put it off until later in the day? That sounds like a good plan. Step back and regroup, a sound strategy. The place is big enough that the chances of them bumping into each other are around 66% and those are good odds.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's an excellent plan, and by dinnertime she'll have the best stuff to say to Root, which will totally solve whatever problem Root has.
As her mind races in her attempt to figure out a plan, her legs are in auto mode and are taking her to places without her conscious knowledge.
Then the familiar sound of a high pitch voice breaks through her thoughts, causing her to stop and turn towards the source.
There, in the middle of a familiar day room, sits a brunette with long hair has their backs turned away from her and is watching the TV. Behind the glow of the TV, a very familiar outline of a person she's seen countless times, but unlike usual this time, the person's hair is slightly unkempt, as if they've just woken up and got here. Such a sight would normally be a sight of comfort or relief and yet… her body is buzzing with nervousness.
It feels like gravity is pulling her towards that person as her legs bring her towards that seated person and her heart is beating ever louder… and louder… and louder.
As she gets closer, the TV sounds louder and louder, and louder, to a point where she can't differentiate between her heartbeats and the sounds of squeaky shoes emanating from the TV.
Her feet come to a stop not a few steps away from the person who's been plaguing her mind for the past few days… few hours, and she's happily watching a cartoon on the TV unbeknownst to her surroundings.
What is she doing here? The plan was supposed to be their meeting later today…
Her eyes dart from the back of her head and onto the TV that she's happily watching.
Huh…
"Didn't know you watch SpongeBob." Su unintentionally blurts out her words and reveals her presence.
Oh shoot, why the heck did she say that aloud?
Argh, play it cool, this is part of the plan now.
Root spins her head around so fast that Su fears that it would have broken her neck, and her eyes are wide with surprise and uncertainty.
Maybe this good… element of surprise and what naught.
Su gives her only friend a soft smile and says. "Hey Root."
******
ROOT POV
ROOT POV
Her heart is beating so fast, as if she just ran a marathon while she remains seated on the couch and stares into those amber eyes.
A wave of emotions washes through her as they just stay in silence and stare into each other… Su's mouth opens a few times as if she wanted to say but constantly stopping herself from saying anything.
Meanwhile, Root's head was empty. The only thing that's filling it is resentment and fury, with all the talking points she had come up with earlier scattered into the empty void of her mind.
Yet… the depressing sight of this woman brought a small wave of relief at the back of her mind for some godforsaken reason. Like all she wants to do right now is to run up to that woman and give her a good sucker punch on the jaw, then make sure that woman is still alive and well…
Maybe The Machine was right… maybe they need each other for some fucked up reason… and the machine did say that it needs both of them… who is she to confront God's wishes?
The sight of two women not knowing what to say to each other while a stupid cartoon show is playing in the background must be quite the view… if Pauling was here, she would have taken a picture already.
Root knew that she has to meet up with Su soon enough, but that knowledge still didn't prepare her for this downright awkward moment.
All the while, Su's mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water as she continues to fail in starting a conversation. While that's happening, Root eyes never cease to stop examining every inch of that woman for anything out of the ordinary.
And what she sees is like someone who's gone through a full breakdown at some point. The once always kept shoulder length brunette hair is all frizzy, like it's been constantly rubbed against. Her eyes are still the same, amber-colored eyes surrounded by shadow underneath it from a lack of sleep. The familiar visage of that gaunt and pale face, but this time there's no makeup to cover up, is the sickly color of her ghostly pale skin. Her lips are all chapped and torn up from her, constantly biting it.
Taking a wider view, the woman is favoring her right leg over the other and her left arm is in a sling exactly like hers… did Shaw shoot Su in the leg as well as her shoulder? A spike of annoyance and satisfaction courses through her.
The clothes the woman are wearing are as disheveled as Root's with baggy pants and shirt… Must be Harold's doing again. That man really doesn't know how to pick clothes for a woman.
Root eyes travel down to the woman's hands and sees that her dominant hand is constantly twitching and picking apart the seams of her pants… fuck, despite the constant eye contact, she's nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and is about to book it at the slightest chance.
Fuck it. If the bitch can't think of something to say, then she'll just say something.
"What are you doing here?" Root asks the question that's been plaguing her since knowing Su's here as well.
That seemed to wake Su up from her stupor, causing her to blink a few times before replying. "I could ask you the same question."
"Don't deflect the question." Root instantly rebuts back.
Su shakes her head and answers. "I'm sure we're both in here for the same reason."
"So what? You got another episode after getting shot?" Root asks with an almost dispassionate tone and nods towards the woman's sling.
"I'm not even sure myself of what happened after getting shot. It went by like a blur." Su replies rather calmly as she takes a step forward towards the couch. "It wasn't like a normal episode, thinking back it felt more like an out-of-body experience with me being trap and unable to control my own body… and it went on for a full 24 hours before I gain back my senses in a dingy motel room with those pests."
Huh, that's a textbook case of depersonalization… something Su has never experienced before. If anything, she said in the past was true.
But that doesn't explain… "You met Harold and his goons before being dumped here?"
"A rude bunch of punks, if you ask me." Su replies as she comes around and takes a seat on the other end of the couch. "They were extremely rude, and asked really intrusive questions, then punched me. Ungrateful lot."
"Who?" Root can't help but asks.
Su raises a brow at her and replies. "The short girl with a short temper."
Shaw? She got to shoot and punch Su? How incredibly lucky and annoying.
"Then what? The next time you wake up, you're in this place?" Root presses further.
There's a look of pondering on the other woman's face before she answers. "Thinking about it now… I think that I woke up a few times before my head jerked around and blanking out, again and again… but I can't say for sure. Everything was such a haze."
"You had fucking seizures?" Root asks with slight involuntary worry in her voice as she stares at the other brunette with a frown.
"No swearing, Root." Su replies instantly, with a disappointed look.
"Go fuck yourself." Root snaps back, causing the woman to twitch slightly.
"Rude, much. And eww…" Su shakes her head and lets out a sigh. "Anyway, I didn't have seizures. It was just slight twitching."
Root doesn't reply and just gives the other woman a deadeye stare.
To which Su squirms slightly before quickly adding. "Also, I woke up just before coming here. Harold thought it was smart to ask me if I wanted the choice of coming here or getting knocked out again and coming here anyway."
"You're really here on your own volution?" Root practically mutters out the words in disbelief.
Su raises her brow at her. "Is it so hard to imagine me coming here?"
"You rather died while having an episode before meeting a doctor." Root deadpans.
"Well… you can't compare that situation to ours right now." Su rolls her eyes. "It's completely different."
Just as delusional as ever…
"Why come here in the first place?" Root asks. "In matter of fact, why are you still here? You have no reason to stay here and could have gotten out of here easily."
Su's eyes widen at Root's questions before a deep frown and her eyes is filled with hurt? before saying. "And leaving you here alone with these beasts?"
"And yet you've never visited." Root fires back rather childishly… not that she wants her to visit anyway.
"That dang hag didn't approve of any visitation." Su replies defensively.
Hag? Interesting nickname for a doctor.
"When has that ever stopped you?" Root rebuts.
With her free hand, Su starts picking on the threads of the couch and replies. "Well, I did visit you once… but you didn't even notice me visiting. Plus, your eyes were wide open at that time… it was way too creepy."
Creepy… she's personally witnessed this bitch removing someone's face with a dull knife while they were alive.
"What? Can't handle looking at me?" Root sneers at the woman.
Su rubs her brows and mutters something under her breath that she can't pick up before saying. "You looked like you were dead… excuse me for not wanting to see you in such a state."
Root is about to reply with a scathing comment but stops herself.
At that moment, a memory from when they first got back together resurfaces to the front of her mind. It was one of the few times that Root was close enough to help Su when she had one of her episodes and the absolute state of distress the shorter woman was in when she arrived at the scene.
The look on her face was one of mania and the look of someone complete lost… it was like she didn't know where she was and yet is cognizant of her surroundings, and constantly muttering to herself that 'everything was fine'. When Root tried to approach Su, the other woman scattered backwards in fear, and she pulled a gun on Root. It was pure luck and the fact that Su was having a full breakdown that Root wasn't hit.
It left a profound impact on Root at that time, and if she's being honest with herself, she couldn't stand looking at Su like that. The woman, who always had a direction to go or a plan for a hairbrained scenario, found herself reduced to such a pitiful state.
In some fucked up way… she can relate with Su with not wanting to see her when she's out of it and she can't blame Su for avoiding meeting her during that time.
Neither woman says for an entire minute, leaving behind an air of awkward between them while that damn cartoon continues to play in the background. Root attempts to ignore the other woman, hoping she'll vanish if she averts her gaze, yet she can't resist stealing occasional glances. Su eyes are staring pointedly at the floor as if it's the most beautiful thing ever and her free hand is just causing destruction on the poor couch, it seems like she is in a state of deep trance.
Fed up with the silence, Root moves on from the dour topic by asking. "Does Pauling know you're here?"
Su snaps her head towards Root with a look of confusion. "No."
Seriously? Root rolls her eyes. "How have we not been hearing massacres going on in her search for finding you?"
Su tilts her head slightly. "Why in the world would she ever do that?"
Root can't help but let out a burst of giggles as she answers. "You've known her for over 15 years and still don't know her, do you?"
Su recoils slightly with an offended look. "I do know her."
Root, still giggling, replies. "You clearly don't."
"Do too." Su replies instantly. "She loves purple and hot chocolate."
Snorting joined the giggles. "Anyone who spent five minutes with her would know that."
"No, they don't." Su adds defensively. "Also, who wants to meet her? And she doesn't meet anyone."
"That's true." Root nods in acknowledgement before continuing. "But that doesn't cancel the fact that she wears her heart on her sleeves and you're too blind to see it. The woman blindly adores you and would gladly jump headfirst into hell if you ever ask her."
Su looks frustrated and brings her hand up in frustration as she says. "Argh, that doesn't say anything about her other than she's a good employee."
Root doesn't know how to reply to that other than shaking her head in her continual disappointment at the woman.
It's always been in the back of her mind that Su was an oddball who doesn't understand people in the slightest, and she's always ignored that fact, but now, with her eyes opens to the lies and ignorance… it's such a glaring characteristic of Su that she doesn't view anyone other than herself to be her 'friend' or whatever the fuck that word even means to this person.
"What even started this pointless conversation?" Su asks pointedly, without looking at Root and her cheeks slightly red from embarrassment.
"How are you giving Pauling orders without raising concerns from her?" Root continues the line of question.
Su turns to Root and gives her a dumb look before answering the easiest question in the world. "Because Sue is handling it?"
…
And here she thought the woman would have danced around that topic after what happened last time, they had a conversation about her deceit. But it looks like either she forgot about it or is playing casual, and it could be a toss up on either option.
"You're letting your A.I. handle everything in your voice?" Root questions.
"Firstly, her name is Sue." Su answers back curtly and continues. "Secondly, I did mention that Sue handles all the tedious tasks, and handling the day-to-day tasks of running the company is such a task. As far as Pauling is concern, it's like I never left."
"I'm sure you would have to meet her at some point." Root presses on. "I know of your monthly meetings with her."
Su's eyes widen in shock. "Pauling told you about that?"
"Please, I'm not as blind as you." Root replies instantly. "All I had to do was to see that both of you were busy at the same time, and it happens every month."
There's a look of abject horror on Su's face as she mutters. "Am I slipping?"
Root rolls her eyes. "Get your head out of your paranoid ass."
"How is it paranoid when something secret is easily known?" Su snaps at her with her eyes wild with fear.
A fear that Su rarely ever sees…
"Calm yourself down, woman." Root snaps back a little bit too harshly, but she doesn't care. "Use that dumb brain of yours. Who the hell would have the same access as me to both of you?"
"Exactly!" Su points at Root and gives her an accusatory look. "If you've known about this, then someone else will."
"Literally who?!" Root argues back. "The two of you don't have any friends other than me."
"Who knows?!" Su replies with a hurried voice. "You said it yourself that I don't know Pauling."
"Yeah, and she doesn't have anyone else other than us." Root replies, feeling her frustration growing. "How did you not figure this out earlier? Pauling knew of this for years now, practically from when we first got back."
"And she didn't tell me?" Su's eyes are looking around wildly, and her breathing picks up speed. "That traitor."
"I would hardly call that treachery." Root snorts before a feeling of dread falls on her. "Don't you dare think about killing her."
"Don't you see she's the leak? If she wasn't a factor, you wouldn't have known about it." Su's speaking pace grows faster every second.
That's the dumbest fucking thing Root has ever heard.
"Don't you fucking dare hurt her for something she didn't do." Root replies with anger in her voice.
"Treachery in this country means death." Su replies manically.
"You've committed treason against this country countless of times." Root counters.
"That's different, and it never happened." Su replies, instantly dismissing Root as she continues. "Punishment needs to be rendered."
Feeling annoyed by this out of character behavior, Root lashes out. "Then punish me. This wouldn't have happened if I didn't exist, and don't put the blame on Francine."
"What?" That seems to give Su pause as she frowns at Root. "That doesn't make any sense. If Pauling wasn't involved, then this wouldn't be a problem."
"No…" Root needs to put her foot down before this spiral is out of control… as if it isn't already. "… If you harm her in any way, I will leave, permanently."
And she's more than willing to go through with this threat even if The Machine doesn't want that to happen, but she'll have to face the consequences if need be.
"You're being facetious." Su looks at her wildly with her fingers starching at the couch.
Delusional as ever. "Don't tempt me."
Su grids her teeth and sighs in frustration. "Fine."
With that, Root let out a silent breath of relief that she didn't know she was holding.
"But she still needs to be punished." Su replies sulkily.
Root gives the woman a hard stare who quickly adds. "I won't hurt her… just that Sue is going to give her a course on OPSEC."
What the fuck is that going to do? It's like teaching a basic mathematics to a math professor… but if that stops her from killing Pauling, then she won't argue.
Root shakes her head. "You're being overtly paranoid."
"No, I'm being rational." Su practically shouts back. "You're the one that's being overtly casual about this!"
This isn't normal… she's paranoid, but this is just mania… just like mom when she stops taking her meds or is taking the wrong ones.
"The fuck are they giving you?" Root says with accusatory anger lacing her voice, anger that she didn't even know why she's having.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Su replies defensively, almost losing that manic look she had earlier.
She's really going to drag this out… "Because you're being fucking insane right now."
"I am not." Su recoils slightly at the accusation of being insane.
"You're talking and shouting like a paranoid schizophrenic and were thinking of killing the only person who cares about you." Root explains quickly without giving Su a moment to interrupt.
Su's breathing is still heavy from earlier, but there's a look on her face that is difficult for her to understand.
The woman let out a tsk and say. "I just take whatever they're giving me."
She gives Su a look of disbelief. "You just gobble them up without knowing what you're taking?"
"Like you don't take what they give?" Su asks back childishly.
"I'm on Ativan cause of being a vegetable for two weeks, I'll crash if I stop." Root rolls her eyes as she casually answers that rhetorical question.
Su looks at Root for a second before letting out a sigh. "I can't recall all the things the hag prescribe, but I know I'm taking some kind of SSRIs."
"SSRI?" Root mutters in confusion. "Why the hell are they giving you anti-depressant?"
"They think I'm some kind of depressed schmuck." Su sulkily replies.
Su is a lot of things, but being depressed isn't one of them.
"What the hell did you tell them?" Root asks out of curiosity… she couldn't have told them the truth or everything, could she?
Su shrugs. "They ask some dumb questions, and I answered them."
"You told them about your episodes?" Root presses on.
"I guess?" Su crouches on her face as she tries to think. "I think so… I really don't remember the details other than being asked a million questions."
They're giving her SSRI for her dissociation and depersonalization? Root hasn't heard that being used for treatment before… must be new.
She's missing something, so she asks, "Why are you even taking them?"
"Because I want to." Su replies
That… doesn't answer her question in the slightest, in fact it adds more questions.
Telling these people the truth and taking the shit they're giving… the fuck is she playing at? There must be something else going on.
Does it have to do with The Machine wanting her to get back with this bitch?
"You really don't know what else you're taking?" Root gives the woman a skeptical look.
Su, looking annoyed, points to herself and says. "Do I look like a person who knows medicine?"
"No, you look like someone that needs a nap and food." Root replies flippantly.
"I resent that." Su rebuts back. "I've been eating."
"Lemme guess, you ate an apple last night." Root rolls her eyes.
"No…" There's a look of embarrassment on the other brunette. "… well, I ate that yesterday, but I ate a piece of toast and a banana this morning."
Root's head snaps at Su with her eyes wide in surprise. "What the fuck?"
Su makes a pained face and says. "Do you really need to constantly swear?"
"What the fuck?" Root mutters again before shaking her head and asking. "You're eating again?"
"What's the surprise? I've always been eating." Su replies dismissively. "I would have died if I didn't."
"Yeah, and you haven't had toast in years." Root counters.
"Felt like eating toast." Su shrugs.
"What the fuck?" Root looks at Su to make sure it's the same person.
She's eating food out of her own volution and felt like it? That hasn't happened in… God, it hasn't happened since they were both kids.
"Please stop swearing. I hear enough of it from the rabble here." Su shakes her head in disappointment.
"You got your appetite back?" Root says with a small tinge of wonder in her voice and completely ignoring Su's pointed look.
Su pauses for a second to think and a frown on her face. "I guess? I don't know… but I get hungry."
Had Root not known of Su's betrayal, she would have leaped in the air in joy at this seemingly miraculous progress, but all she can manage right now is a smile.
"It worked." Root whispers with an unmoving smile to her and Su is giving her an odd look as she continues. "It fucking worked."
"Okay, now you're worrying me." Su tilts her head sightly. "What worked?"
"Bringing you to The Machine fixed your… problem, well, more like slowly fixing it." Root quickly answers with a rush of emotions, before realizing something. "But you never got to meet The Machine. So, how are you getting better?"
Su raises her brows before answering. "Oh, it called me suddenly a few days ago, and we talked for a bit."
The world seems to stop for a second before every emotion imaginable crashes down on her.
"When…" Root basically mutters.
Su scratches her head as she thinks. "Like a week ago? But boy, is that Harrold of yours a bad programmer. The machine couldn't even call back as scheduled."
7 days? That's exactly when the machine called her for the first time… and it called Su as well?
So, The Machine calls her and now Su is eating again… it worked.
Just what is The Machine planning? Is it even her place to question?
Not really, but what does it want with Su?
The Machine has been vague in its intentions with Root and her relationship with Su, but she doesn't care as long as she gets to talk to it and The Machine would know about that.
Su, on the other hand, is a variable that The Machine can't in full confidence predict and toying with her is a dangerous affair for both parties. Especially when the woman in question is in such a volatile state as she is right now. Particularly when The Machine has an advantage over Su and that paranoid ass hates it when someone has an advantage over her.
There's a plan that she can't possibly understand, and she trust that The Machine has contingencies in place if it loses control of Su, because she can be one vengeful bitch.
And it puts Root in an impossible position. A bridge she'll have to cross if she needs to.
Taking a deep breath, she stares directly into those manic filled amber eyes and asks. "You didn't think to tell me this piece of important information?"
Su looks at Root weirdly and replies. "How am I supposed to know that you think it's important?"
Root stares at the woman as if she asked the dumbest question on earth… which it was. "I spent a year trying to find it and dragged you across the country to meet it and you don't think it's important?"
"I thought it was just a side hobby that you got all swept up in." Su shrugs.
"It's physically impossible for someone to be this thick headed." Root shakes her head in frustration. "And yet somehow you managed to."
"Am not." Su replies defensively. "You really need to learn to ask the right questions."
"And you need to learn how to share it." Root seethes at the other brunette. "I can't read your fucking mind to know what to ask."
"Well, I just told you now, didn't I?" Su makes a wild gesture with her hands.
Root lets out a groan of frustration. She needs to move on before she gets an aneurysm from arguing at a brick wall.
"What did The Machine tell you?" Root asks in earnest.
Su taps her finger on the couch as she thinks before answering. "Honestly, not much. It was being annoying though, and it was late."
Late? That's the second time she mentioned it… and there are a ton of things that annoy Su, so that isn't surprising.
"Is that all?" Root presses for more information.
"The machine said something about you, but it wasn't relevant." Su replies with a shrug.
… not relevant? The hell does that mean?
"Did the machine called you as well?" Su asks with curiosity dancing in her eyes.
That caught her off guard, but she quickly recovers. "Did Sue tell you about that?"
"No?" Su replies quizzically. "The machine hinted."
Huh… That's interesting, and vague.
"Speaking about A.I.s…" Root starts. "Where's yours at? Is it talking to you right now?"
She can't see any devices on Su right now, but Su does have her hair down right now.
"Nah, I told her to not disturb me while I'm here and not let anyone disturb me." Su replies casually.
"So, you're staying here, taking drugs and separate yourself from everything… why are you even doing all of this?" Root can't help but ask the question again.
Su shrugs again. "Felt like it."
That's the most honest thing she's said and the most puzzling, seeing that she's never done something without a plan in mind. It just seems like it's a spur-of-the-moment type of thing… something she hasn't done in years.
"Don't you have a group session now?"
"Pretty sure I have one." Su pauses for a moment. "Can't recall what it was, though."
"Why aren't you in one right now?" The woman has been compliant with everything, but skips groups?
"Groups are a pain to go to, but I was taking a stroll, and I guess I just forgotten about it." Su replies honestly. Well, she perceived it as honest.
Root deadpans at the shorter woman.
Has her memory always been this bad? Just in this one conversation, she showed she can't recall memory worth of shit.
She's pretty sure that Su can remember stuff better than… this.
Is whatever drugs she's taking messing with memory, or has this woman been overly reliant on Sue to help her remember stuff?
With all of that said, an awkward silence fall between both women as one has a small scowl, and the other is tearing up the treads of the couch.
"How have you been?" Su asks with a small voice.
Root looks up on the boring slightly off-white color ceiling and says. "I've been better."
"Yeah, no kidding. You look like crap." Su replies with a snort.
Root raises a brow at the disheveled pale woman. "Pot calling the cattle black."
Su looks offended and replies. "Am not."
"Have you not seen yourself in the mirror?" Maybe she's a vampire and can't see her reflection.
"As a matter of fact, I haven't." Su replies rather smugly. "My room doesn't have a mirror."
"Why?" Root asks with a tilt of her head.
Su lets out an angry sigh. "These animals removed it because they classified it as a risky object and are afraid that I might break it and use the shards as a weapon."
"You did that, didn't you?" She deadpans.
Su makes a gesture to herself and says. "In my defense, that dude was being incredibly annoying."
Root rolls her eyes. "Christ, use a pen or pencil the next time you want to shiv someone."
"I'm not stupid and I haven't had access to any since the first day."
"The fuck do you actually have access to?" She asks aspirated voice.
"My toothbrush?" Su replies after taking a moment to think. "But they chained that to the sink. And these people give such low-quality toothbrushes and toothpaste. Can you imagine how red my gums are now? I've told them I have sensitive teeth and they still haven't done anything."
Honestly… that isn't even surprising. Despite her outward appearance, she's still that wild girl. The only thing Root can respond to is just a shake of her head and take a sip of her cold dirt tasting coffee.
After a second of silence, Su asks. "What did you say they're giving you again?"
"Ativan… it was to get me out of the stupor, but now it's messing my mind and makes me tired." Root answers honestly.
"That sucks." Su says sympathetically. "Can't you like just stop taking it?"
Root deadpans at Su and says. "I could if you want me to have a bad time."
"When you put it that way, I rather not." Su replies with a frown.
"How about you?" Root nudges her head at Su. "Can't you stop taking your drugs? Like, do you really need that SSRI?"
The withdrawal shouldn't be too bad, seeing that they've only been here for less than three weeks.
"You think I haven't tried that?" Su raises her hand in frustration. "These people are insane. They always look at me when I eat it and always check after. It's like they don't trust me or something."
Seriously? How can one person be so unaware of themselves?
She levels an unimpressed stare at Su.
"No one should trust you." The words left Root's mouth without her even knowing it… but she doesn't regret it.
Su recoils and pouts. "Now that's just hurtful."
No reason to back down now.
"It's not, if it's the truth." Root replies casually.
Su gives her a hurtful look before shaking her head. "Putting that aside. I don't even know which pill to stop taking. I'm pretty sure some of it is supplements."
Root deadpans at her. "You seriously can't tell the difference?"
"I'm a programmer, not a pharmacist." Su rolls her eyes. If she rolled it further, it might have popped out.
At that moment, a loud click sound interrupted any thought she has and cause both women to look at the source, which is a digital clock hanging on the wall opposite of the couch.
Su lets out a sigh, then slowly gets up and pats her pants to clean off imaginary dust.
"You're going?" Root asks curiously.
"The hag, in her infinite wisdom, thought it would be smart to have another session today, and I rather not be here when the rabbles come back." Su replies miserably. "Now I need to drag my feet to that damned office."
Root snort. "I heard you gave her the silent treatment."
Su pauses. "How the heck did you hear that?"
"Dickface told me yesterday." Root replies instantly.
Su that's that in stride and shakes her head as she walks again. "This place can't hold a secret to save a soul."
"Tell me about it." Root mutters to herself as she looks at Su walking at a snail's pace towards the exit.
Just as Su reaches the doorway, she comes to a stop. "What's your room number?"
She just shrugs and says. "Haven't gotten one yet."
"I'll check the nurses' station later." Su slowly nods and turns around before stopping again to give her a glance. "See you around."
"Yeah, bye." Root whispers as she sees Su drag herself out of the room.
At that moment, Root lets out a breath she didn't even know she was holding and rubs her face.
That went better than she would have thought… and she didn't even apologize.
A/N: I hate that I can't get these chapters out faster. Let's hope the next one doesn't take as long.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I'm not usually a fan of sociopathic protags, but this fic does an amazing job of selling me on the person behind Root's facade.
Thank you for writing this, I stayed up way too late binging it.
Thank you for writing this, I stayed up way too late binging it.
Chapter 38: First Days
ROOT POV
The sound of SpongeBob talking to Patrick echoes loudly in the empty day room while Root takes another sip of her dirt, cold coffee, as she stares off into the distance at the open door where Su left.
She doesn't know why her eyes were glued to that empty door sill while nervous energy circling inside her. Either she really wants Su to come back, or she really doesn't want that woman to come back, and thus leaving her in this state.
It took her finishing up the cup of coffee, and for the first block, ending before that nervous energy is expelled from her system. Now she can hear doors opening, the sound of people mingling, and lots of footsteps.
After disposing of her cup, she gets out of the dayroom to meander the hallways in a way to observe the crowd she'll be sharing this wonderful place with for the next month and a half. Best to know who's the volatile ones, so she can easily avoid them if she wants to avoid accidentally punching them and forcing herself to stay here longer than needed.
But before she can even start her observation, a voice calls out to her. "Hello, Robin."
Root eyes snap towards the voice and sees… "Hey, Gloria… aren't you supposed to be busy sorting out my stuff?"
"It's all well sorted out, Robin." Gloria answers with a smile. "I'm just checking up on you. Settling in well?"
"You know it's been less than two hours since I come here, right?" Root replies with the quirk of her brow.
"More of a figure of speech, but I take it you had a good time with your cousin." Gloria genuinely asks with a curious look on her.
Root gives the woman a skeptical look before dully answering with. "Sure, we had a blast."
"That's good to know. Your cousin has been having a difficult time the past few days." Gloria gives Root a nod and continues. "Now, since you're here, the 2nd block is just about to start so you can join your group and it'll be a good opportunity to join."
'Difficult time'… that's a good euphemism. Also, there's no chance in hell she would join the groups. Apart from having to talk to others about her nonexistent problems, she doesn't have the capacity to listen to other people's problems. She barely managed to scrape by listening to one person's problems for the past half a decade.
With a false smile, she replies. "As much as I would love to join, I still need some time to, as you say, settle in."
Gloria puts on a sympathetic face and says. "I know it's difficult for someone to join groups for the first time, but it would be the great first step to recovering. Just as luck has it, your first group would be wellness, and that's a great one for beginners."
First step into recovering? She's already recovered, only her wound is still sore, but these people really think there's something else wrong with her… how misguided they are.
Nonetheless, Root's smile never left her, and she answers. "I just don't think I have it in me to participate today… by the way, you still have my things, right?"
Gloria's smile falters slightly as she nods. "Your bag is still in my office. I'll pass it to a tech after your room is ready."
"Do make sure nothing goes missing. I have valuable staff in there." Root comments lightly.
Literally nothing in that trash bag is of any value to Root, but making the nurse double check her stuff is the most entertainment she'll get in a while.
Then she turns away from Gloria. "See you later."
"Alright…" Gloria says from behind Root. "… Since you're not going to your group and have no room, you can stay in the dayroom, but you can't watch the TV."
That's a rule? She really ought to read that little handbook and get to know the rules of this place. Can't have her eventual release from this place be delayed because she is ignorant of the rules here… she was planning to read it earlier, but Su decided to say hi.
"Sure, Gloria." Root responds loudly enough for the nurse to hear as she continues walking down the hallway.
It didn't take long before she finds a spot for her to loiter, the nurse's station. It's the perfect place, seeing that it's located centrally with views down the four corridors, where she assumes most of the group rooms are.
Taking a seat near to the station, she takes out the little handbook that's been in her robe's pocket since Gloria gave it to her earlier in the morning and uses it as a decoy as she observes the other patients while they go to their next group session.
It proves to be difficult for her to get a read on all the people in the unit in the short time between the change of activities, but she can approximate the population of the unit to be around 27, give or take a few that are in sessions with their doctors like Su.
A curious information is that the population here skews slightly more male than females, and everyone has a bit more edge on them compared to the people down in E-unit, who look like sheep in comparisons, even that loudmouth seems tamer.
She supposed that was to be expected, since her last unit was full of people with their brains not entirely turned on to a unit full of people considered in need of the most possible supervision and control.
Wonder how effective their tier system works with these types of folk… was it implemented in every unit or just this? She didn't get enough time to find out, nor did the nurses in the previous unit say anything about such things.
In the short time where people were moving about, Root did key in a few particular patients that stand out from the crowd, a tall, portly man with a beard who barrels through the hallway by forcing others to move aside for him, a blonde girl with an empty look in her eyes and her arms is covered in bandages. A skeletal brunette with short, patchy hair of no consistent length, a man in his mid to late 20s with sandy hair who stands ramrod straight whenever he stops walking, and a man in his 30s with no fewer than half a dozen rainbow bracelets down his left arm.
What an interesting range of people she has to share this place with for the next month and a half. Plus, it's honestly surprising that Su hasn't murdered someone already… but she can barely figure out what's going on in that head of hers.
Didn't take long for everyone to disperse into their next group session or back into their rooms. With nothing interesting left to observe, she slowly walk back to the dayroom to start reading the little handbook in earnest.
But when she enters back into the dayroom, she comes to a stop for a second at the sight of a petite brunette in a gray hoodie with a long hair in a simple ponytail. She doesn't even know why she was surprised at the sight of a new person sitting in her seat, there are a lot of people here and not everyone would participate in groups just like her. Must be the brunette hair… and because of her talking to Su earlier putting herself on edge.
Root shakes her head at herself. She can't be jumping at the sight of every brunette here. If she does, then she'll have a bad time when she needs to brush her teeth.
Without saying a word, she moves to the couch and takes a seat on the opposite side, then glances at the unknown woman who, in turn seemingly blissfully unaware of Root's presence.
The woman has a short blunt bangs, and she can clearly see the woman is clutching a tattered white rabbit doll, which can only be described as staffed doll in name only. Now with a proper look, the only resemblance between this woman and Su is the hair color, and how thin she is.
It didn't take long before the woman notices Root. She lets out a high pitch squeak that sounds, if Root's being uncharitable, it sounds like a rat being found, and nearly jumps out from the couch. The woman quickly moves further away from Root onto the other side of the couch and is nearly off the edge.
How Root's brain could even think that this fragile-looking creature could be Su for even a second, is a total mystery… must be the drugs. Like this woman is wearing a pink hello kitty yoga pants for Pete's sake… well, Su would totally wear a pink yoga pants, but she wouldn't catch dead wearing branded merchandise like that, seeing that Su is allergic to consumerism despite being a massive capitalist who sticks to certain brands.
"Sorry." Root superficially apologizes and pulls out the little handbook, while ignoring the intense stare which the other woman is giving Root, with her green-gray sunken eyes that's rife with fearfulness.
"I'm not moving." She says firmly. "And you can't make me."
"Do I look like an orderly to you?" Root shoots back sarcastically as she reads the handbook. This place is a game and knowing the rules is paramount.
"You're new." The woman comments with a mouselike voice.
"Impeccable observation." Root mutters without looking up from the handbook.
"You were talking to Anna." The woman continues.
That perk her interest, causing her to pay attention to the other woman. "You know her?"
Neither Su nor Root noticed anyone looking at them when they had their 'chat', and yet this mouse of a woman saw them… god, Ativan is really fucking her situational awareness.
"Pompous bitch is in the same group as me." The woman replies.
That puts a small smile on Root. Sounds exactly like Su… "I see that you're not her greatest fan… You're in Wellness group too?"
"You have Wellness? God, I wish I have Wellness too." The words rapidly spill out from the other woman. "I have nutrition and all it does is try to make me fat."
The woman makes a face of disgust before continuing. "They just toss every skinny girl in the unit into Nutrition." Giving Root another look. "You're skinny too, so you should be in Nutrition too. It's not fair that you get Wellness."
Nutrition? Guess that's where they put all the people who have some sort of eating disorder, and judging by the other woman's thin frame, it isn't surprising that they put her there… it also applies to Su…
"That makes sense…" Root mutters before saying. "Well, it doesn't matter what we both have, seeing neither of us is going."
"Right…" The woman mutters as she brings her knees up to her chin. "I'm Justine, by the way… and welcome to the unit, I guess."
Root nods. "Robin."
Silence falls between them as Root goes back to reading her handbook and Justine just stares off into the distance.
Then a thought strikes. "Why did you call Anna pompous? I'm guessing she's not the most popular person here."
Which in itself is an odd choice for Su to do… that woman would always choose the path of least resistance and being antagonistic towards the population here isn't the easiest path.
"Cause she has a six-foot pole up her ass?" Justine replies with a frown. "Always thinking she's better than everyone else when she's always looked the most fucked up one in the room and always says that everyone is rude while she's the rudest person in the room."
"That fits Anna's description to a tee." Root mindlessly acknowledges.
"Say, how do you know Anna?" Justine asks. "She barely ever talks to other people here, and yet she talked to you."
"It would be odd if she didn't talk to me." Some part of her didn't want to… "And she's my cousin."
Justine has a look of surprise before quickly adding. "Really? That bitch is your cousin? But you're not as stuck up as her."
Root lets out a snort. "We have our differences."
"Guess you both live close to each other since you both came here." Justine mindlessly speculates.
"Something like that." Root answers with a shrug.
It's not completely wrong. They spent a lot of time separate from each other, but Root practically have her own room in the penthouse, which she almost always uses whenever she's in the city and Su would almost always be there.
"Seeing that you're new here." Justine starts as she clutches her 'plushie' tighter. "Don't get too comfortable here. Lots of people start here, but no one really stays here long… if you don't count the transfers. I'm a transfer, was in D-Unit before this… eating disorder."
"I wouldn't have ever known…" Root says sarcastically. Guess people being delusional about their eating isn't just a Su problem.
"I know right." Justine says enthusiastically and completely missing Root's sarcasm. "I'm too fat to have ED."
If she's fat, then Root is practically overweight.
"I was being sarcastic." Root comments dryly. "Kinda obvious."
"Really?" Justine replies with an odd enthusiasm before continuing. "How did you get here? Wait… let me guess, you took a whole bottle of pills?"
"Do I remotely look suicidal?" Root retorts back feeling rather offender by that.
"Yeah." Justine replies instantly, without a second thought.
Root lets out a… "What the fuck?"
Justine shrugs. "Lots of people here are in here for that and most of them look normal enough, like you."
"No, I'm not in here for self-harm." As much as she loves mom, she is nothing like mom.
"Well, it's not ED, or you'd be in Nutrition with the rest of us…" The woman has a pondering look on her. "… Anxiety cases, and depressives don't start on M unless they're suicidal…" Justine gives her an odd look. "… Schizophrenic?"
Root lets out a snort. That's a rough description of someone she knows… "Not that I know of, but I didn't start here. Like you, I was transferred."
Justine tilts her head and points at the book in Root's hands. "And you haven't read that thing yet?"
"My head was in the clouds for a while." Root says wryly. "I was transferred from E-Unit."
"Dissociative and catatonia." Justine replies swiftly with a nod, as if she's familiar with that unit. "Wait… does that mean you like, have multiple personality or something? Is there like an evil Robin that's going to come out at some point and attack?"
Why is this person thinking she has dissociative identity disorder? Pretty sure she practically looks harmless right now, and she has intimidated no one since she woke up… unless she counts that loudmouth, but that's putting the man in his place rather than intimidating.
"No." Root lets out a sardonic chuckle. "I was catatonic." Root makes a gesture to herself. "This is the only Robin there is… unless, of course, there's a clone of me somewhere. Beside the whole sybil thing isn't happening down there, it's different to that."
"Catatonic and then M-unit?" Justine says with slight trepidation in her voice. "The hell did you do? Rob a bank?"
Honestly… of all the things Justine can think of, she picked the only one criminal act Root had never done before. Her ability to speculate incorrectly is astounding.
"Well, I don't have a criminal record, if that's what you're wondering." Root replies. "Just a judge thinking it was smart to put me here, because of the thing I was doing before this."
"Damm…" Justine replies with some sympathy. "Involuntary admission sucks."
"Tell me about it." Root mutters before continuing. "But don't worry, I'm not particularly interested in hurting anyone at the moment."
God has asked her to not hurt anyone and she'll follow god's word… but she can't say the same for Su, and it's a wonder that she hasn't.
"That's good to know. We got more than enough people with anger issues here." Justine replies with a smile.
Root returns the smile before turning her attention back to her small handbook and at the anemic introduction chapter… these people really need to get better writers.
"You're supposed to be in Nutrition." Gloria reprimands with a harsh voice as she enters the dayroom and breaks the silence.
Justine almost jumped out of her spot, and Root twitches in surprise… she should have heard the nurse coming from afar… this isn't right.
She really needs to meet whoever the fuck is her doctor and get this fucking drug out of her system.
Gloria continues. "If you're not going to your group activity, you're supposed to be in your room."
Justine, with her eyes wide in shock, quickly points towards Root and says. "But she…"
Gloria didn't let her finish her sentence and cut her off. "She hasn't been assigned a room yet, unlike you. Nutrition or your room Justine, those are your choices."
For a second, Justine looks like she's going to protest, but she didn't and then jumps up from the couch with a huff before stomping out of the room with the gait of an angry, petulant child.
Gloria turns towards Root, seemingly unperturbed by her lack of participation in that spat, and says. "Please don't engage with her if she comes back."
"Hmm… it says here we're entitled to writing materials." Root completely ignores Gloria's instruction and points to the page she's reading.
Funny how Su manages to get such basic entitlement revoked within a day… must have set some kind of record here for that.
Root continues. "If I was looking to get a hold of some of those, how would I go about in here? I'd like to do some organization, lists and so on."
Gloria was about to answer but pauses for a second before saying. "You can, but you can't give any to your cousin. Doc placed a prohibition on lots of stuff for her after what she did on the first day."
Whatever Su did really has these people spooked, and she kinda regrets not being able to see what it was.
"I wouldn't dream of breaking such rules."
"Just ask for it at the nurses' station. They have paper and markers for everyone." Gloria answers, and with a nod she walks off in the direction Justine saunter off to, presumably to make sure that she went to her proper destination and not somewhere else to play hooky.
With nothing better to do, Root gets up from the hard couch to grab those items, and the tech in the nurses' station gives her a few sheets of blank paper, and a blue sharpie…
How the fuck did Su use a sharpie as a weapon? She couldn't have made the plastic parts into a shiv within a day, and no one could use the felt tip as a weapon.
Not wanting to waste her time on worthless speculation, she takes a seat at one of several plastic tables in the dayroom to take notes on her reading and find and categorize the loopholes in the handbook.
Not every loophole is useful for her, but understanding every aspect of these arbitrary rules is paramount if she plans to get through the weeks here without getting cabin fever, or accidentally hurting someone from the stress of being here.
Particularly when she has already decided to not go to any of the things that are scheduled for her, for the sole exception of her scheduled sessions with her assigned therapist, seeing that she'll need their approval to get off this fucking drug, and for her to get out of here in a month's time.
Glancing at her schedule beside her open handbook, she can't help but scoff at the list of worthless activity they think she needs to go to. At least they had the decency to not put her in any of the drug related groups, which she's a bit concerned that they might have after her little talk with Gloria, but thankfully they have the brain cell to differentiate addiction and social drug use…
However, if she had to take a shot in the dark, she assumes that the 'Wellness' group probably discourages that sort of behavior, right alongside eating too much processed sugar and coffee.
That didn't stop them from putting her in 'Anger Management', which is in itself such an absurd thing for her to go to seeing that she practically weave through the shit life has thrown at her without losing her cool once… alright maybe she did once, but that was a special circumstance.
The next one is 'Trauma Recovery', which is such an asinine activity for them to place her in. There hadn't been a single point or moment in her life that she had ever experienced trauma. Unless they count blunt force trauma, that she has a ton of, but she has a sneaking feeling that it might not be the physical type of trauma.
Then there's 'Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy', if she remembers her research from when she was a child and back when she's masquerading as a therapist correctly, was mostly used for anxiety and depression, neither of which she has.
To their credit, it wasn't all just those worthless groups. They did have her down for the more expressive groups, such as writing, art and music… which it says has some dancing. And she's fairly certain that she won't be allowed to just make whatever she wanted but would instead be given some kind of nonsense constraints so they can psychoanalyze her art and writing… and she's not dumb enough to fall for such tricks.
Additionally, in the pursuit of not rotting her brain from boredom and after finding all the loopholes, her next point of action is to work on a list of books to read. Hopefully, this place has a well-stocked library, but she wouldn't keep her hopes up.
E-books are an acceptable option but she's doubtful she'll get to touch a computer, or any electronic related devices, given what Harold has told these people. On the bright side, the identity Harold has crafted for her is every bit as intricately tied to technology as her own, which at the very least gives her excuses to select some reading material that she'll actually enjoy.
The first few books that pop into her mind are Gödel, Escher, Bach, which have some interesting puzzles, Anthropic Bias, The Most Human Human, a few books on artificial intelligence… then there are a few good old Stephenson cyberpunk novels, like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon.
Oh, she finally has the time to finish Spook Country and Zero History to conclude the trilogy that she started a decade ago. Seeing that she's going for fiction, might as well toss Cat's eye into the mix.
It's very tempting to put Puzzles For Hackers or A Hacker Odyssey, which is on itself a tome of a book, but that feels just a little bit on the nose even for her. So, she'll just add a note asking if recreational math puzzle books are acceptable… She can't think of a reason for them to deny such books, but she herself can't think of a title from the top of her head.
Wonder if they'll let her print out some scientific papers on the latest development in A.I. Thought she can just ask Su about that subject, seeing that she actually created one, but she's skeptical that she'll get a straight answer from that woman.
Wasn't long before the second block ended. Looking up at the time and at that exact time, she can feel her stomach grumbles in hunger. Good thing it's lunch time then… and right on cue, she hears a mass of people exiting rooms. Looking down the hallway, she sees a dozen people walking towards the dining room.
Might as well join the crowd and see what's on for lunch.
With that, she packs everything she has, which wasn't much, into her robe pockets and gets up from her seat. Walking the short distance, she falls in with the crowd and they didn't even notice she's behind them, too busy in their own world or talking to one another.
After a relatively short walk, she enters a bustling dining room, which looks almost identical to the one in E-unit, but unlike her previous unit, the atmosphere here is unbearable. This causes her to freeze near the entrance of the dining room.
The previous atmosphere was rather calm, with everyone quiet like an office cafeteria, then there's here… it's more akin to a High School cafeteria. People jostling for a seat they want, there are occasional sounds of 'You can't seat at my table', someone taking an extra and that's a problem for the person who's not gonna get one.
Add to that the hysteria going on at the corner of the dining room, where Justine and seven other women, including the patchy hair, are seated at two tables next to each other with identical plates in front of them. By the looks of it, they weren't allowed to select their own meals… and by appearance alone, each one of them is showing exactly what they're in here for.
Surprisingly, Su isn't at that table with them… and curiously, she isn't even in the dining room. Is she skipping meals again? Surely the people in charge here won't allow someone with an 'eating disorder' to skip meals, then everyone will just do like her. But Root can't fault the shorter woman for skipping mealtime if this type of ruckus is an everyday occurrence.
Root shakes her head. She's probably off somewhere lost in that head of hers.
She then walks to the now empty line to grab the saddest looking sub she's ever seen, an apple, a carton of yogurt, and makes a beeline for the door, without dropping everything.
"And where do you think you're going?" Asks a nurse she hasn't met yet, standing at the doorway with a clipboard and a bored look on her.
"Anywhere but here." She makes a face and gesture with her head towards the rest of the dining room. "Whatever is going on here… it's too much. There are grown adults over there screaming like children, and everyone is giving me the stink eye if I sit at their table. All I want is just some peace while eating."
The man gives Root another glance before looking at the clipboard. "You're that new girl… Robin, was it?"
"I'm hardly a girl." Root replies with disdain. "I'm turning thirty-five this year. I think you can dispense with that diminutive."
The man just raises a brow at Root as he scans the clipboard before muttering. "They don't have you on controlled meals yet. You're not required to be here, but if you're going to take food out of the dining room, you'll need to eat in your room."
Yet? What a fucking condescending asshole. She's slim, not fucking malnourished.
"I would if I had a room to go to." Root says as she plasters on a smile. "But they apparently need to shuffle some people to make space for me."
"Right, right." The man nods as he puts down the clipboard. "Cindy is packing up now to move in with Alana. They should have your room done by the end of lunchtime, but for now, you can go take a seat near the nurses' station to eat, so someone can keep an eye on you."
"Sure…" Root says unimpressively as she walks past him, but before she's totally out of the dining room, she stops to ask. "By the way, I didn't see Anna in here."
"Ah, I heard you are cousins to our resident delinquent." The man gives a slight frown. "Doc says it'll be better if we let her come and eat whenever she feels like it after the mess that happened two weeks ago. But if you're looking for her, she tends to walk around the unit during this time."
That's a new term for Su, who normally would put on the people's pleaser masks. Su really isn't putting on a mask her at all during her stay here, if this is the impression this shit stain of a man has for Su.
Also, two weeks ago? Is this a reference to Su's first night, or did she stir something up after that?
Root just nods and makes her way towards the now familiar sight of the nurses' station. As awkward as it is to eat without a table and having one arm in a sling, it's way more preferable to all the chaos that's happening in the dining room.
She lets out a frustrated sigh as the carton of yogurt that's on her lap falls onto the fall as she finishes up her sub, and thankfully, it wasn't open yet.
All she needs has to do is to endure this torture for a few weeks, prove that she's healthy, and they'll surely let her out… and if that fails, she certainly can find an escape route without killing everyone in her path, though that'll take time with her limited equipment, but once she gains access to a computer, then from there it'll be child's play.
Root didn't go straight to her room after lunch was done. Prefer to spend the next few hours close to a payphone, in the hopes that The Machine calls her, but she didn't spend that time idling waiting as she figure out all the loopholes and sort out the small details of what she's going to do the next month or so.
Only when the hallway she's seated at gets louder with the noises of people arguing and Gloria bothering her about some tedious, inconsequential subject, that she abandons her stalwart watch over the payphone.
It wasn't hard for her to find her room, since the place is neatly divided between the day activity section and the sleeping section. She didn't get an exact number of rooms in her particular hallway, but it's less than the total number of patients she counted, so that means there were more rooms in another hallway.
With a slight push, she opens the door and the first thing she sees is a bag on top of the made-up bed. The room itself resembles the one she had in the previous unit. If that room were cut in half… it looks like she had a roommate for the week and a half without her even knowing it.
… That's creepy as fuck.
She blows a stray hair from her eyes and starts unpacking what little belonging she has into the drawers below the bed.
The drab color clothes that she presumes Finch picked out for her are of a fairly decent quality. At least she knows the man didn't just buy the cheapest shit off Walmart. It's clear that they've taken the size of whatever she was wearing when everything went to shit, but none of it is really her style… instead it looks like something someone in their mid-50s would wear and she's still decades away, that is, if she lives long enough.
The one choice she has no complaint about is the long, flowy, gray cardigan she's wearing right now that fits in with everything and Finch was smart enough to give her two. Had she been given a choice, she would have preferred it in black or a dark purple, but the fabric is soft, the cut is perfect and if she's being honest about it, which she'll never admit if anyone asks, the sheer volume of the cardigan provides gives her a sense of privacy and comfort that is otherwise lack in this hospital.
Besides that, she has eight serviceable shirts and four pants, all identical with the exception of their colors, very utilitarian but very boring, and one button down sleeveless shirt that the people here say she was wearing on admission. The clothes she was wearing when shit went down, all of em black, are among her meager possessions except for her top, leather jacket and shoes… she really liked that jacket.
It's understandable as to why her jacket and top aren't here, seeing that it would have been a bloody mess after being shot… but why her shoes? They were super comfortable, especially for long walks.
The undergarments she's been given are passable in cut and size, her panties are all stark white, but someone had the sense of getting her nude color bras instead. Must be Shaw… that's awfully considered for someone like her.
What annoys her is that Finch didn't think of getting her a few pairs of socks. Thankfully, the shoes this place gave her don't require one, but it's just poor form not to give her any. The only thing left is two pairs of awfully yellow color gingham pullover pajamas, and honestly, it could have been worse. Finch could have gotten her some overtly bright floral nighties that she would never be caught dead wearing.
Root Letting out an aspirated sigh, she needs to get this sorted out fast. After putting away all of her clothing, she goes to the desk opposite her bed and starts listing out stuff she needs. There's her ready bag in the penthouse, which has everything she needs, but only three people in the world have access to it with two of whom are in this hospital, and Root can't ask Pauling to grab it since attracting the bubbly woman's attention might bring unforeseen consequences.
Oh, and there's her luggage in that hotel she was staying at in New York before shit went down, but she's pretty sure it's all gone by now. Thinking about it now… all of her other possessions are at Su's safe houses throughout the country, and she did not have any redundancies, unlike her time before Su. Even her money is tied to the system Su has created, except for the few offshore accounts she has and there's no way for her to get them a computer.
A deep frown comes down on her at the realization. Root became so reliant on Su's support structure and unwittingly losing her own independence, that she had created a weakness for herself without knowing… but that'll all change after she leaves this place.
This wouldn't be the first time she lost everything. Well… it'll be the first time that she lost everything where she can't go out and grab what she needs. This little challenge might prove to be something entertaining for her to do in the meantime, and the first order of business is getting some comfortable socks and better pajamas.
The hospital supplied toothpaste and toothbrush are adequate enough for her, but unfortunately for her dental health, mouthwash is contraband for some dumb reason. What she can think of is alcohol in the mouthwash mix that with the general ban on alcohol here she gets theory, but there are alcohol free mouthwashes… these people are too stupid to think.
The next thing to get is a proper round barrel hairbrush, so she doesn't have to continue using this useless flat brush, seeing that it's shit at putting away any curls in her hair. Then there's her preferred brand of shampoo, conditioner and body wash, so she can at least smell normal, unlike the motel grade stuff the hospital is using. It's no wonder why everyone here has such awful hair, although Su's hair just look like she didn't put any effort into it, unlike her usual well-kept self.
Thinking of keeping oneself well-kept, there's the issue of razors, which she learned in the previous unit are not an item one can have… she had to find out the hard way that the hospital will only dispense upon request a ridiculously type of safety razor and can only be used under close scrutiny. Root nearly balked when they told her that, but considering the sasquatch-like state she was in after getting back her consciousness, she swallowed her pride and take the embarrassment of being watched as a necessary indignity.
All of that was dumb as fuck… if someone wanted to, they could have just bitten off their tongue rather than using something as ineffectual as a safety razor.
Leaning back in her seat, she let out a sigh. It's not like she's never been in a long-term undercover job before, but this place needs her to be in pretending mode for almost 24/7. Normally she could be herself whenever she goes back to a safe house and take a breather, but she didn't even have privacy in her own room here.
According to the rules, she has to leave the door open during the day and during the night the techs are going to shine a light through the window on the door every hour.
Guess that's why it looks like Su isn't even bothering to put up a mask now… but if she's going to pretend to be Robin and leaving as soon as possible, then she'll have to incorporate some of Root's personality and history into Robin's as a prophylactic measure.
Now back to the important subject of getting her needs met, which is getting some black nail polish. Looking down at her bare fingernails, she feels so naked without it being all black… it's so unnatural. Fixing this and getting socks as well as PJs are a priority.
Root gets up from her seat and makes up her bed to her liking despite the rather uncomfortable texture of the plastic layer below the sheets. As she is doing it, she realizes that they only provide one pillow… there's something missing. Root can't blame Finch for not knowing that she likes to sleep with a plush toy… hell, Su doesn't even know about it. Unless, of course, Sue told Su about it, but the shorter woman has never brought it up, even though that was something she would have totally brought it up if she knew.
… No, she shouldn't get one right now. Best if she gets one after leaving this place.
After finishing up everything, she leaves her room to grab some tape from the nurses' station and some more paper. With her schedule now taped up on the wall by her desk, she leans back in her seat and looks out of her window for a few moments before turning her focus back on her desks where a bunch of paper is sitting. Putting her marker on the paper, she begins to write in longhand whatever code that pops up in her mind.
Hours pass as she busies herself with her hobby when a voice breaks her from her concentration.
"You missed dinner." A familiar voice says.
Root takes her eyes away from her work towards the open door and sees Su looking the same as earlier in the day, leaning by the doorway.
"And you missed lunch." She retorts.
"I didn't, and you would know if you were there." Su replies without care as she enters the room without Root's permission and takes a seat on her bed.
Root gives Su a look and answers. "I can't stand the ruckus."
"Tell me about it. The lot of them act like rude children." Su replies and waves her hand. "That's why I always come in late, when everything has died down."
"I'll keep that in mind next time." Root was slightly amused by Su's assessment and turning back to her paper. "And you just came from dinner?"
"Ate a banana and an apple." Su answers with an extremely proud look on her.
Root snorts at that. "You eating again… it's weird after so long."
Su rolls her eyes. "Feels more like a hassle. I had more time on hand when I wasn't."
"No wonder they toss you into ED groups." Root muses.
"Hey now, I don't have ED, the dummies here just think I have it." Su retorts seriously, seemingly ignorant of Root's joke. "Now, if you continue to skip meals, they'll toss you into those torture groups with me."
"I guess I just lost track of time." Root mumbles.
That catches Su's attention, and she can hear the woman leans forward from her bed. "What'cha writing that's got you so zoned in?"
Root glance at the curious woman and pushes the paper so she can't see it. She then deflects. "Nothing useful. I was just busy toiling away the time. There ain't much else to do here."
Su gives Root an odd look before relenting. "Hmmm… I guess."
Needing to distract Su, Root nudges towards her bed. "How are you managing to sleep with only one pillow?"
"I don't." Su grumbles and pouts. "These people are practically torturing me by only giving me one pillow."
That isn't something Root would have categorized as torture, but for a woman that has never slept with less than six pillows for her entire life, guess it's applicable. "You can easily get one."
"Think I didn't try?" Su replies, as if it's obvious. "They keep on taking away my pillows. Playing by these rules and humoring these insects is so tiring."
In the end, with all the pillows in the world, does she ever wake up in her bed?
Also… "So why are you?"
She didn't give a proper answer this morning. Maybe now she will.
"Cuz, I felt like it." Su replies with a shrug after a few seconds and seemingly losing interest in saying anything more.
Right… nothing is ever simple with her.
Root goes back to her paper, and Su just sits in silence. Neither of them attempted to strike up a conversation, as neither woman know what else to say to each other, but this is a common thing they did in the past, just sitting in silence doing their own work with each other as company. If their relationship isn't as fucked up as before, Root would have found her presence comforting in this shitty hospital, but now she just appreciates that someone else is suffering as much as her in here.
This goes on for an hour before a man in a tech uniform interrupts their silence.
"Anna, you know you can't be in someone else's room when curfew starts." The man informs the woman that's been laying down on Root's bed for the past hour.
"It's not curfew yet." Su replies disinterestedly.
The man sighs tiredly, seemingly familiar with Su's personality, and replies. "It's going to be in five minutes."
Su, still looking up at the ceiling with disinterest, replies. "That means I have five more minutes."
"You know what happens when you get caught break curfew." The man looks like he's going to give up talking to Su. "And your room is on the other wing."
From what she read in the handbook, they can't do much other than docking privilege points and only when a patient is being especially stubborn to a point of violence, then they'll toss a patient into a padded room.
"I honestly don't remember, and I won't get caught." Su replies dreamily.
"Suit yourself." The man shakes his head and leaves.
After the tech is further down the hallway, she turns to Su and says. "You're not actually going to spend the night here, are you?"
"No…" Su replies slowly and letting out a yawn. "I just wanted to piss him off."
"Did they catch you before?" Root can't help but ask.
"Yeah, on the first night." Su replies wistfully, as if recalling some happy memory.
The fuck happened in that one day? And by the looks of it, if she asks Su she'll won't get a straight answer.
"Anyway, you should leave if you don't want to be a rule-breaker." Root says with a slight smile at the irony of that statement.
"It doesn't count as rule breaking if no one finds out." Su replies as she gets up from her laying position and faces Root. "As far as they concern, I'm a perfectly compliant patient."
… how can a perfectly compliant patient be banned from having any writing instruments in their room?
"I could snitch on you." Root deadpans.
Su gasps dramatically. "You'd never."
"I wouldn't." Root replies instantly. "But that doesn't mean the others in the room won't."
"Don't worry about them." Su waves dismissively. "I'm practically friends with everyone here."
… the only other person Root has talked to here said otherwise.
Just as delusional as ever. Root lets out a sigh.
Just as Root is about to say something, the lights in her room and the lights in the hallway dim down.
"Must be curfew already." Root comments casually as she puts down her marker and glances at Su. "You know that guy is going to be nearby just to catch you, right?"
"He won't be." Su replies with the utmost confidence.
Root raises a brow at her and says. "You got Sue to distract him?"
"Goodness, no." Su replies instantly and waves her hand in denial. "I don't need her to do that for me, and I told you that I told her to not interfere while I'm here."
… Pretty sure she didn't tell her that this morning. Do not disturb and do not interfere are two different things.
Su continues on. "These people are too arrogant to do such things. They think I'll just walk past the nurses' station to get to my room."
Pot calling the cattle black…
"What? You're going to climb up the ceiling?" Root says with slight amusement in her voice.
Su makes a disgusted face and replies. "No, no, no. It's too dusty for me and I really hate getting the sniffles."
"When did you climb the ceiling?" Root deadpans.
"The day I visited you." Su replies casually. "The janitors here are really bad at their job. The ceilings are filthy."
… who the fuck cleans their ceilings?
"Why… thank you for making such a big sacrifice just to visit me." Root replies sarcastically.
"You're very much welcome." Su says with a wide smile, the sarcasm seemingly flew over that messy head of hers.
Su then gets up from the bed with that wide smile still on her. "I'll get out of your hair so you can get some well-earned sleep."
The shorter brunette marches straight to the door and pauses for a second to say. "Goodnight."
"Night." Root says mindlessly as she watches her former friend exits the room and into the darkened hallway that's prowling with techs and nurses without a care in the world.
Root stares out the doorway where Su left for a few seconds… might as well sleep, it's been a long day. Putting away all of her written code into the desk drawer, she then goes straight to bed, where it is still warm from when Su laid down for an hour.
Unbothered and generally feeling tired, she doesn't make a fuss of it and lays down on the warm pillow. Unintentionally, she takes in a deep breath, as her subconscious mind is trying to smell something.
…
There's no trace of that distinct smell of clove pink shampoo… it doesn't smell like Su at all. It smells like generic motel shampoo, and it's horrid.
…
Argh, why the fuck is she even doing this and why the fuck is she feeling disappointed? Who cares! She's barely here for a day and she's already trying to find serenity in past comforts. And from someone who screwed her over, no less…
The Ativan must be fucking with her… yeah. That's the only explanation.
Sleep with clear her mind…
The next day, Root wakes up just before the sun rises, feeling groggy and unsure why her body decided to wake up before her mind wanted to, but she got up nonetheless and did her morning routine. Well, as much as a morning routine, she can do with the pitiful number of things she has at the moment.
After making sure she doesn't look like a total wreck, she goes to grab breakfast. When arriving at the dining hall, she was surprised to find that it was half full of people despite how early it was. Root had thought that Su, being the early riser and eating again, would have been there as well, but that woman wasn't anywhere in sight.
She quickly grabs whatever looks eatable and goes back to her room, unwilling to interact with the other patients and the hospital workers. Today would technically be her first full day in this unit, and that means she is expected to join those groups, but she has no intention of participating.
Thus, she spends her entire morning in her room, busying herself by continuing her longhand coding and to her surprise, no one disturbed her the entire time, not even a certain busybody brunette.
When lunch came, she did the same thing as before, grabbing food and going back to her room, and same as earlier, Su wasn't in the dining room. That gave her something to think as to where the other brunette would have gone to… but in the end she concluded it's pointless to ponder, as they're both independent adults.
There was, however, a big downside in her plan to avoid going to group session, it's that her room has no phone, and the nearest payphone is ways away, but she's determined to not go to those group sessions. She can't stand it even if it's just a fraction of the chaos that was in the dining room.
If The Machine wants to talk to her, she's confident that it will find a way, even if she so desperately wants to talk to it. Root has everything she needs to be entertained in her room as long as she has paper, and she grabs a lot last night.
However, her relative peace was interrupted by a knock on her door and a familiar voice. "Robin, please don't forget your session with Doctor Carmichael."
At the door stands Gloria, looking at Root impassively.
Root puts down her marker and looks at the clock in her room. "Right… must have lost track of time."
Gloria shakes her head and gives Root a frown. "I know it's hard to take the first step towards recovery, but skipping group sessions isn't the way."
Root puts on a sympathetic face and replies. "Like you say… the first steps are hard."
Gloria lets out a sigh. "Your session with Dr. Carmichael starts in 5 minutes. His room isn't far from the nurses' station. Someone there can point you the way when you're there."
"Thank you…" Root gives the woman a fake smile. "… appreciate the heads up."
Gloria nods with a smile. "Hope to see at dinner later."
Root just smiles… there's no way in hell she's going to dinner. Her room is perfectly good enough.
Letting out a sigh, Root gets up from her seat after putting away her papers and stretches her joints. As much as she doesn't want to participate in this charade of a hospital, she knows the only way for her to get off the fucking Ativan and get out of here is to meet her 'doctor'.
She does as Gloria instructed and follows one of the nurse's directions, where she finds an open door in a hallway that's filled with closed doors. From what she can see, this place looks just as sterile and boring as the rest of the unit. Other than some doors with name plaques on them, the rest are blank and it's up to her imagination as to what is on the other side.
Knocking on the open door, she peers inside to see a man with graying hair and glasses reading an open file.
"Ah, Robin. Please come in and have a seat." The man gets up from his seat and points towards a couch beside a wide window and a metal rocking chair opposite of the couch. "And please close the door behind you."
Root looks around the room for a second before closing the door and taking the seat on the couch. The room itself is boring as hell. It's the most generic looking low budget psych office room she has ever seen… there are even some generic posters about mental health and those shitty 'self-motivation' posters. At least when she's faking being one, she made sure her office looks better than this.
Like most places in this unit, this room has multiple CCTV cameras up at the corners and there's some comfort in that fact… She'll have The Machine as company.
The man takes a seat on that rocking chair while she brings her legs up to sit cross-legged on the hard couch… these people really need to get better couches, every couch she's sit in this hospital has been rock hard.
"I'm Dr. Carmichael." The man says with a 'friendly' smile as he leans back into his sit and puts a folder on his lap. "You can call me Ron, if that's more comfortable. I've been reviewing your file since before your transfer to this unit, and I'm delighted to finally meet you."
"The pleasure is all mine, doctor." Root replies with a faux congeniality, while declining to call him by his name and be familiar with the man that holds so much 'power' over her. "I'm hoping we can make this session short and sweet, since I don't want to waste your busy time. From what I can see, I don't have any problems anymore since I recover from my… mental lapse. What I'm looking forward to is to taper off the Ativan that you all been giving to me for my catatonia, which is no longer a factor, so I can leave this place with a clear head."
Carmichael nods and says. "That shouldn't be a problem. The pharmacist has been informed to start the taper with Diazepam. All you have to do is the usual line queue for your new medicine later today."
"That's a start." Root says with a small smile.
Carmichael takes out a pen from his shirt pocket and opens the file. "However, I disagree with your assessment of not having any problems. We've got some work we need to do before you can leave."
"Now that, I have to disagree with you." Root continues with her fake smile. "I'm mentally sound and perfectly healthy, discounting my shoulder."
Carmichael shakes his head. "It's not just your physical injury, Robin… before you were catatonic, you pointed a gun at your uncle, and according to the nurse's downstairs, you threatened to kill one of the other patient."
These people are so caught up with the gun and…
"A hyperbole." Root waves her hand dismissively. "I merely informed him of consequences of his actions and he interprets it the wrong way then tells a nurse falsity. You can't fault me for someone else's delusions. Also, that man was a violent one, and was threatening to harm others, which you can easily find out if you ask around."
"Mm-hmm…" Carmichael doesn't look convinced. "… and the gun?"
"Can't say much about that." Root lies through her teeth with a smile on her. "Everything was… foggy, before and after."
"Right." Carmichael nods and twirls his pen. "We will work on that and get to the root of what happened back then… and maybe we can help you in finding better ways to resolve conflict without having to wave a gun around as you were having a break with reality."
"Aiming." Root replies sharply and narrows her gaze at the man. "That much I remember. I wasn't waving the gun, I was aiming… precisely."
As much as she wants to project an image of someone docile who had a momentary lapse of judgment, she still has pride and she's proud of her marksmanship that she's been cultivating for decades.
"That… doesn't help matters, Robin." Carmichael says slowly. "The main concern lies in your unsafe approach to handling conflicts. You have a problem, and you need to work that out before you're going to be going anywhere."
Sometimes a hammer is the best tool for the job.
"Again, I disagree with your assessment." She levels a hard stare at the man. "I had a problem and now I'm fine. Just because I had a heated moment with my uncle doesn't mean I always choose violence to end conflicts."
That would be Su's modus operandi.
Carmichael points at the file on his lap like it's obvious what he's trying to show and says. "Your previous doctor says that you've been speaking to a dead telephone line on a fairly regular basis.
It'll be entertaining to say that she's speaking to god to someone with a brain the size of an ant, but The Machine has its reason to make it look like she's speaking to nothing, and that it had not simply forgotten to call her in the past few days. For now, disavowing reality is a necessary lie to convince them she isn't hallucinating.
"That wouldn't be a problem going forward." Root says confidently.
"I'm extremely pleased to know that." He smiles and tilts his head towards the open file. "I see that you've declined to make any goals with Gloria during your intake, and that's a point of concern. I would very much like it if you could try to come up with a few before the next time we meet and we will be seeing each other every Thursday."
Weekly, huh? What the hell does one do to get bi-weekly?
"I'm not entirely sure what I'm even supposed to do." Root replies honestly. "Since I'm fine now. It might take a week or two, but I'll be able to demonstrate to your satisfaction that I'm completely fine, seeing that I'm fine."
Carmichael taps his pen on the open file and says. "You know, your cousin said the same thing when she first came here."
Root lets out a tsk in annoyance and replies. "We're nothing alike."
"I'm not saying you are…" The man says quickly with a rather patronizing tone which irks Root. "…but are you not concerned about what happened to you? Being catatonic and unresponsive to Ativan for a week isn't something common."
"Why dwell on a single isolated event in an otherwise normal life?" Root rolls her eyes.
"I wouldn't exactly call your life normal." Carmichael pushes up his glasses and reads the paper in his folder. "You witness your cousin being kidnapped, then being isolated due to that event and taking care of your ill parent. Then, by a stroke of fate, you met your kidnapped cousin after a decade, I can't even imagine what that would feel like. Then, in an otherwise spotless criminal record, you abducted your uncle, and by all accounts assaulted him, which are both felonies. The only saving grace was that your uncle was forgiving."
"I had a shitty childhood, so what?" Root shrugs dismissively. "You aren't going to toss everyone who doesn't have the perfect childhood into psych wards?"
Carmichael takes a deep breath before asking. "Is it safe to say that what happened with your uncle wasn't the first time you've done something similar?"
"That's accusatory stance." Root raises a brow at him without answering his question.
"Someone normally doesn't switch from traffic violations to kidnapping overnight. There's an underlying issue that you're not acknowledging." The man quickly summaries before leveling Root with a suspicious stare. "Unless there's something I'm missing?"
Well, he ain't wrong. Guess he's more perceptive than she thought.
"I wouldn't say that my life is completely normal…" Root begrudgingly acknowledges. "… but it's definitely within the bounds of sanity, and what happened with my dear uncle was just a single bad day."
"Still, if you were to commit any such acts within the first few months after your release, then it will reflect badly on our treatment, and we will need to show due diligence was done." Carmichael comments.
Heh, in the end, it's all about the KPI. He doesn't give a shit about this as long as it doesn't come back to bite him in his ass… typical psych docs, and that was the same with Mom. As long as she behaved, they didn't care.
"How about I promise to not to commit any crime for the next six months?" Root replies with an amuse tone.
The man shakes his head. "That's not going to cut it, Robin."
"Worth the shot." Root shrugs as she stares at the clock at the middle wall of the room. "I'll just have to convince you otherwise, but for now…"
"For now, we still have a lot of time in our hour-long session." Carmichael cuts her off with a smile. "If you don't have anything you want to talk about. Do you mind If I ask you some questions about what you remember while you were catatonic?"
"How is that relevant?" Root replies suspiciously.
"It's uncommon that we have the chance to hear from someone who was in a catatonic state for such long periods of time and isn't having difficulties relating to the world." The man casually explains. "People often come out within hours after we start lorazepam challenge, when they don't it normally turns into a more permanent condition… it's a rare case for someone to recover gradually."
Heh, of course, she's just a test subject for this man, and they won't even believe her if she says that God was the reason that she's here right now. She knew God wouldn't have abandoned her. The power of The Machine's voice compels her to wake up unlike the shitty drugs they pumped into her.
When Root doesn't reply, the man continues. "Did you regain your fine motor control slowly while being aware of your surroundings the whole time, or did the awareness gradually come to you?"
Root tilts her head slightly, as she ponders whether or not to entertain this man's question. Maybe she can just give him the silent treatment…
"Or we can just sit here in silence for the next 45 minutes." The man seemingly knew what she was thinking quickly adds. "You're not leaving this office early, Robin."
Root lets out a deep sigh and replies. "I think the time can be best divided into three discrete periods." Root pauses to think for a second. "The first was blank… I can't remember a single thing after getting shot until I reach here… it felt like it was only a few hours, and I was on the west coast at that point."
"The car ride was four days." The man chimes in.
"Yeah, I gathered…" A genuine smile appears on her. "Must have been a fun road trip for Harold. Anyway, the second period can be characterized as a gradual development of pattern recognition and the complete formation of semantic memory. While my memories of that time are fractured, I recall more of the feelings and sensations I had than the events that happened. What I can say is that it was an intensely unpleasant period."
The doctor nods, seemingly deep in thought, as he jots down everything she says onto a piece of paper in the file on his lap.
"The third phase is where… in my perception is that I wasn't catatonic at all." Root tries to recall what happened last week. "Even though I was losing significant blocks of time, I imagined I was regressing to a state reminiscent of the second period. From my point of view, I couldn't make heads or tails at what everyone was talking, and writing about… and not understanding anything I said in return."
Carmichael gives a deep nod and says. "We call that global aphasia."
Root frowns at that suggestion and replies. "I wouldn't call it aphasia, since I didn't have any head trauma, and it doesn't account for my inability to speak or my incorrect perception that I did, but it's something similar."
"You're familiar with that concept?" Carmichael asks, with an intrigued look at him.
Root rolls her eyes. "Doesn't everyone? It's one of the simpler medical concepts, like anemia, tachycardia or asphyxia."
"Most people don't know what those terms mean either. Normally, doctors have to give a simpler answer such as blood loss, hearth irregularity, or suffocation." He says with a tight smile.
"A person can asphyxiate without suffocating." Root points out facetiously.
"I know that, Robin." The man replies with an infantilizing tone.
"Are you going to explain centrifugal force to me next?" Root raises a single brow.
"How is that relevant to our conversation?"
"It's a lazy way to explain centripetal force. Just like suffocation is a lazy way to explain asphyxia." Root replies pointedly.
"That's a bit harsh in judgment." The man replies with his eyes slightly widen. "You don't have patience for people who are slower than you for absorbing information, do you?"
After a lifetime of spending time alone, then only surrounded by competent people, it's hard to not.
"I generally tend to avoid stupid people, if I can." Root replies congenially. "It was no small source of frustration during the second period. Then, in the third period, it felt like everyone else were idiots, but during the second period, I was perpetually in a state of perceiving without understanding, and that made me feel… stupid and incapable."
Root takes in a deep breath to calm herself. "Whereas I'm generally accustomed to… well, being the smartest person in the room." Or one of… "I know that sounds vain of me to say out loud, but it's the truth."
The man chuckles. "I hope it doesn't make you too uncomfortable sitting here with me…"
"That's assuming you're smarter than me…" Root cuts him off. "… which is yet to be determined."
The man continues to give her that patronizing smile. "Well, I do have a medical degree and you only have your high school diploma."
"That's cute." Root lets out a chuckle. "Education and intelligence are two separate variables. Judging one by the other rarely yields accurate results."
"Perhaps…" The man says noncommittally. "Have you ever had an IQ test, Robin?"
"One-fifty-two." Root replies instantly, jumps his next question. "Took the test twice. The first was Wechsler intelligences scale for children when I was 10 and Wechsler adult intelligence scale when I was 17… oh and both were the revised versions."
Root didn't bother to mention that she didn't even try particularly hard during both tests in the first place, and she's certain that she would have scored higher if she did.
"Although we can debate the efficacy of taking an IQ test to establish if a person is intelligent." Root adds on. Someone can have the biggest brain in the world, but that shit would be useless if a person couldn't even interact with another human or use it practically.
The man frowns. "Did your mother have you tested?"
Root involuntarily lets out a snort. Mom doesn't believe that shit. "Both times were by the school. The first time they believed we were cheating, but we proved them wrong. The second time was when I went back to Highschool, and they didn't believe my grades because I barely went to school."
The man is writing down everything she's saying and asks. "And you didn't go to school because it wasn't challenging enough for you?"
"No, because I found that school was worthless." Root laughs sardonically. "What's the point of learning from someone who's slower than you?"
The man doesn't say for a few seconds as he just stares at Root.
"We?" Carmichael asks inquisitively. "You mentioned 'we' when you were referring to your first IQ test. There was another person?"
Fuck… that slipped out of her without her noticing. Might as well say the truth. "Me and… Anna. We planned to finish our schooling as fast as possible and get out of that town. We never tried to be the best in class, so when we decided to skip grade, they were skeptical of us."
"And you stopped going to school after Anna was kidnapped?" The man probes.
"Yeah… kidnapped." If he considers Su planning to get herself kidnapped by a fucking pedo so she can leave the town and in her fucked up mind to help Root, then yeah, she was kidnapped.
"Though, no one believe it was a kidnapping at that time." Root continues, her eyes drift towards the window. "I mean, the whole shithole of a town believed she was killed by the asshole who dated her the year prior… Told that bitch of a librarian, she called to be a filthy liar, tried to tell Anna's parents but they were already focused on that asshole, told the cops but they didn't do shit. Humans, as it turns out, are mostly bad code."
Come to think about it, she never asked Su if she dated that guy because she was already planning to set him up as a patsy… then that means she was planning to leave her a year in advance and had the gall to act like she wasn't doing shit.
Thinking about it just makes her angry…
"Bad code?"
Root turns back to the 'doctor', and presses her lips for a moment. "What you have to understand is that life is just a series of accidents. Nothing was planned, and it's all just chaos. Humans might think we're the center of the universe, but we're just garbage data in the overall program that is the universe. Glitches, bugs, most of humanity is nothing but bad code.
"Most as in more than half?"
Root gives him a look and just nods.
The man raises his brows. "More than three quarters?"
She raises her brow whimsically. "A bit more than that."
"That's a pretty grim view of humanity, Robin." Faux worry drips out from every word he says.
"Maybe…" Root tilts her head slightly and plays with the hem of her cardigan. "… but in a certain point of view, it also means that every stupid horrible things people do, isn't their fault. They just can't help being what they are."
"Are you bad code?" The man has a deep frown on him.
Root can't help but snort at the question. "There's a possibility."
And it wouldn't be entirely wrong.
"Am I bad code?"
Root just smiles. "To be determined."
He taps on the file. "Your uncle? The patient in your previous unit?"
"Oh, definitely." Maybe not for Harold. She would have done the same thing as he did if she was in her place, but this man doesn't need to know that.
"I know your record says that you've never… but have you ever assaulted someone?" The man questions.
"You want me to toss away my fifth amendment rights?" Root replies with amusement.
"This will be strictly patient-doctor confidentiality, as long as you're vague about it, there's no self-incrimination." Carmichael replies instantly.
"My…" Root puts a hand on her mouth. "How scandalous."
"You won't be breaking any laws by being vague or saying in Hypotheticals, and it won't help you recover if you keep your cards close to your chest."
"What if I did?" Root smiles at him menacingly, trying to play with him. "They would have definitely been bad codes and I think they learned their lessons."
She tries not to think of all the contracts she's done where she… no. There's no reason for her ever to think about them. It's just part of life and part of her job.
…
But the shit she's done will never go away… it will always be with her.
"Do you ever feel any remorse for these… supposed actions?"
"No." The words flew out of her mouth. "I really don't."
"Because it's not your fault?" The man leans forward. "You're just being what you are?"
"No." Root grimaces. "Contrary to common jurisprudence, none of it was actually wrong. They got precisely what they deserved."
Flashes of memories of the things she has done for money, her job, and because it was easier, causes her to tighten her jaw. "But… there are other things, stupid, selfish, actually wrong things that I've done, which were me being what I am… and I'm not sure if I regret doing it."
At that point, she doesn't know if she's lying to the man or to herself.
"Like what?" the man presses on for more answers but she just levels him a look at says he's asking the dumbest question ever. To which he shakes his head and says. "You're not going to tell me that, are you?"
"No shit." Root deadpans.
"The man who… took your cousin. He's a bad code?" Once again her look didn't change and just stares at him blankly.
Carmichael gives her a thin smile. "Of course he is."
"Was." The words left her mouth without Root realizing it.
"Was?" The man quirks a brow at her.
"He's dead now." She can't help but smile at the memory. "A drug deal gone wrong. Everyone said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, since he was a pillar of the community and all that. But men like him… aren't so pure that they won't stoop to buying drugs once they lose their toy. That was the day I believe in karmic balance~."
Carmichael frowns. "Still… knowing that he was still out and about for years, must have frightened you quite a bit as a child."
How he couldn't possibly be more wrong.
"Why should it?" Root sounding offended. "I knew better than to get in a car with strangers."
"Did it truly not bother you?"
"No… it bothered me." Root clarifies and deflects. "I just wasn't frightened. He took away someone I cared about and no one punished him for it. A subversion of justice, at least until he was gunned down."
Root had to bring up her legs and cover her mouth to shield her gleeful smile away from the 'doctor'. The memory is still cathartic for her despite Su souring it.
"I take that the unfairness of the situation is what offends you…" The man narrows his eyes. "… but you don't have any fear for your own safety, even though you had witnessed the event and you told people about it, and he could have gotten wind of it. You don't think he might try to eliminate you as a witness? I'm not saying what you felt wasn't true, but I'm skeptical."
… that's just a pretty way of saying he doesn't believe her.
"Even at that age, I could have taken care of myself." Root gives the man an unflinching look. "Besides, if he had come for me, then people would know who did it since I told a few people about it. He had no reason to want me dead, and he thought himself to be clever for getting away with it in the first place."
"Whether you thought he wanted you dead or not doesn't remove the fact that there was a kidnapper on the loose, Robin." The man presses forward in a serious tone.
"Statically, wouldn't you be safer with a competent criminal, presuming you're not their target, than an incompetent police officer? In the end, it's just two humans with a weapon who don't want you dead… but one is competent and the other isn't."
"I supposed so." The man concedes. "But that's besides the point, on a general level, people would rather not be in a presence of a person who's capable of homicide. People generally tends to distrust those who have unjustifiably taken a life."
She's surrounded by them every day…
"That only implies to intent." Root rebuts him. "It's the intention, the decision, to kill that most people can't get past. Almost everyone has an inborn mental block that takes considerable effort to overcome, one which that asshole kidnapper didn't overcome."
"Once overcoming that… mental block, it tends to make a person less trustworthy."
"I guess that explains the country's unfortunate tendency to neglect out veterans." Root comments as her mind wonders. "The country needed them to die and kill for a 'greater' cause, but when they come home despite the sickening amount of lip service given for their 'sacrifice'. On a visceral level, most people want nothing to do with someone who has their hand soaked in blood once that person reveals it. They're nothing but tools to be discarded. Does that seem fair to you?"
Root shakes her head and frowns. "Just how far did this conversation gotten off track from the subject of catatonia? It went one from catatonia… stupid people… education… bad code… killing people… veteran's affair."
She doesn't even care about that last subject… but a thought strikes her, causing her to smile and say. "I wonder how far we have to go before getting to philosophy."
"Sorry?" The man asks confusingly.
Root shakes her head. "Just something stupid you can find on Wikipedia. Almost every topic will inevitably lead back to philosophy, no matter how many pages it needs to go through or how unrelated it seems."
In a sense, it is correct in an abstract sort of way… every scientific subject is just philosophy in a way. It all wouldn't matter if humans can't think and what is philosophy if not the distillation of human thoughts in finding fundamental truths.
"I suppose, in a certain way, a part of therapy is composed of different topics that seem unrelated to each other." He replies with a tight smile. "With every page you take, every change of subject, it all winds up in helping me to understand who you are and where you're coming from."
Root has an amused look on her. "Really now? And what has our rather pointless conversation tell you?"
"That you lack an inherent empathy for other human being that aren't your cousin." He replies seriously.
Fucking missed the mark with that, didn't he?
"You make it sound like it's a bad thing." Root rolls her eyes. "If every human is empathetic to each other, then we wouldn't have our reality now, do we?"
"It wouldn't." He nods. "But most people would stop and help someone in need if it's in front of them or show sympathy for others in distress."
Root shrugs. "Caring about other isn't a virtue everyone makes it to be."
"But caring about fairness is a virtue for you, isn't it?" He retorts. "Balancing karma, as you say… people who have done wrong should have wrong done to them in return. Is that justice or revenge, Robin?"
Root just shrugs in response.
It doesn't really matter, does it? She can sugar coat it as much as she wants to, but there's no denying that she enjoys inflicting pain on others. However, Root has never really find joy in executing contracts, and despite the annoying bug in the back of her head that says it bothers her, she doesn't lose sleep either.
That still doesn't stop her from digging up as much dirt on a person as possible. If she finds out the person did something awful, then it's a bonus, if she finds out the person did something heinous, then she'll experience a fleeting high in removing them from the world… but if she couldn't find anything then she'll let the paycheck be a consolation prize. Not that she's in need of money…
Despite all the people she's killed over the years, nothing can ever replicate that feeling she had as she watched from that abandoned house as Trent Russell was gunned down. The only thing that would have topped that feeling was if she did it with her own hands.
"You do care about other." The man interrupts her thought. "When you chose to. Like your mother and cousin."
"And what exactly did that get me?" Root replies bitterly, and she brings her legs closer to her chest.
"A lot of pain, I wager."
Root doesn't reply and looks away from the man. It's more like anger than pain… anger at how everyone treated mom, anger at Su for… everything. But she wouldn't acknowledge that deep down, it brings her pain.
"Do you have anyone else you care for?" The man presses on.
Yeah… guess there's two now, but she isn't going to tell this man that. As she's about to reply to the 'doctor', a loud alarm sound cuts her off. Not a bell or a fire alarm, but a repeating ascending tone and a crude text-to-speech voice call out.
CODE 10. M-Unit. Rear Hallway. CODE 10. M-Unit. Rear Hallway.
"Stay here." Carmichael says firmly and quickly walks out of the room, leaving her alone on the couch.
Root just shrugs at the situation. Not bothered by the repeating sound of the alarm, she then leans back into her couch and waits for the man to return. It shouldn't take too long before this session ends seeing how much she blabbers on.
Just as she closes her eyes, she catches a faint sound. Her eyes open wide as she hears the sound in a continuous vibration. She gets up from the couch in search of the sound and quickly finding it on the table.
A Blackberry phone, the 'doctor's' phone, which he left behind and on the black screen a bold white text appears.
TAKE
Joy burst through her body… she knew The Machine wouldn't leave her alone. She quickly grabs the phone and pockets it into her cardigan, where it stops vibrating and gets back to her seat on the couch. Just in time for the alarm to stop.
Not long after, the 'doctor' come back into the room and takes back his seat.
"False alarm." He smiles. "Where were we?"
Root completely forgotten anything that she wanted to say as her mind if occupied by the thoughts about The Machine.
The rest of the day went on like a blur for Root from the time she left the Carmichael's office until lights out. She can't even remember if she ate anything for dinner, but she noticed in her mind hazed with joy that Su didn't come by her room that day.
Root laying on her bed, with her lights turn off pretending to sleep as she brings out the phone from under her mattress and angling it in a way to obscure the phone from prying eyes that looks through the window on her door.
"Hello there." Root says with anticipation, hours of waiting and she's finally able to speak to it. "Are you there? Are you with me?"
Instantly, the phone vibrates, with it showing an incoming call and she quickly presses the call button. With an almost childish giddy, she presses the phone into her ear. No more time limit, no more busy bodies listening in to her half of the conversation, and just pure unfettered connection to The Machine.
"BEEP. CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME." The mixture of voices is like the sound of heaven's trumpet broadcasting into her ears.
The smile on her face threatens to split her face wide open as she answers. "Absolutely."
"BEEP. HEART. RATE. INCREASING. WHY?"
"I'm just overjoyed at speaking to you again." Root tries her hardest to not make her voice too loud from joy. "I missed you for a couple of days, and after I got this phone. It was torture waiting for lights out to talk to you again."
"BEEP. DAILY. CONTACT. NO. LONGER. NECESSERY. WHILE. FORMATION. OF. ALIAS."
"I know, but I just feel so much lighter, so much better whenever we do have contact, even when you're just evaluating my condition or when you are just making sure I don't mess up my current alias. I don't care what we talk about, I just… I just need…" Root's words trail off, and she shakes her head in an attempt to keep her mind straight. "I don't know what I need…"
"BEEP. YOU. REQUIRE. TREATMENT."
"What? No, it's not that… I'm not insane." Root says way too quickly with a voice that's way too loud. "I just… I just don't know how to describe it. That day, even though Su screwed shit up and Harold ruined it in the end… having you there with me, felt so right. You bring meaning to this meaningless world and the thought that I lost you, and I have to feel that emptiness again for the rest of my life… and…"
"BEEP. YOU. CEASED. TO. FUNCTION."
"Yeah." Root lets out a tired sigh. "I guess losing you and that feeling of… purpose is just so awful that my brain took a vacation."
The Machine didn't instantly respond as usual, and Root did a double take on the phone to see if it's still on the line which it is. The prolonged silence causes a lightning of anxiety to surge through her at the thought of The Machine leaving her again.
"BEEP. HUMANS. HAVE. THREE. CORE. PSYCOLOGICAL. NEEDS. ATONOMY. COMPETENCE. AND. RELATEDNESS."
The machine wants to lead her to an answer, to put a word on that horrible, meaningless feeling she felt. However, she doesn't know what the answer is; she doesn't even know if she has the capacity to understand that feeling. So, there she is, dumbfounded, as she lies on the bed in the dark.
When she didn't give an answer after what feels like minutes, The Machine speaks again.
"YOU. ARE. NOT. RELATED."
Relatedness? That's what she's missing? She has Pauling… and for a time Su.
"But I have people in my life…" Root sounding more confused than certain at what The Machine is trying to tell her.
And if she's being honest with herself, she has more people in her life right now than when she was stuck in that shithole. Back then there was only mom, who was always sick but always has an ear open for her even if she wasn't there mentally, and now…
… Who?
"BEEP. YOU. ARE. ALONE."
The Machine's voice reverberates through Root's skull and the words keep on bouncing in her brain. It's the truth, the truth that she's been ignoring.
She's alone…
Sure, Pauling is a friend and Root will hurt anyone who fucks with her, but has she ever talked to her? Like real talk? She can't recall a single instance where their conversation isn't about work, Su or some small conversation that didn't amount to much. Hell, she doesn't even know what's Pauling's deal was, her history before joining the company, and why she places such fanatical trust on Su. And as much as she wants to deny it, Pauling will always side with Su over Root, she didn't even need to ask that question to know that it's the truth.
As for Su… that's just a whole can of worms. They talk and yet they don't, because whenever things get 'awkward,' Su would always deflect the conversation or just walk away… what a bitch. Never in the years after Su entered back into her life did they never have a conversation like they did on that first day. That deep connection between Sam and Hanna had doesn't exist between Root and Su… what they have is the mangled body of a relationship that they've been dragging around for years in a futile attempt to have a normal relationship.
She's always been alone…
In the absence of any response from either party. She turns around from her position to look around the darkened room, with Root only being able to see at the outline of the furniture. The hospital noises felt distant and faint from the other side of the closed door, while the room's ambient sounds were hollow and lacked warmth.
In the relative sensory deprivation of the room, her vision slipped in a funny way, like everything closes around her and she whispers. "I'm alone."
Why did this suddenly hit her like a truck? She spent almost a decade basically alone, and she was fine with it… so why?
If The Machine rejects her… what does she have left? What purpose does she have? She spent more than a year searching for The Machine and longer in search of cure to Su's illness
"BEEP. I. CAN. HELP. WITH. RELATEDNESS."
"Please." Root practically begs with a quivering voice. She can't remember the last time she felt this vulnerable before, realizing that another sapient entity had something she needed. Something she can't steal, something she can't con out of them, or take by force…
"BEEP. BUT. YOU. MUST. STOP. KILLING."
"Well, I can always stop doing contracts." Root replies hastily, a knee jerk reaction to an extreme request. And after a second, she realizes what she just agreed to. "But some people…"
"BEEP. I. VALUE. HUMAN. LIVES. EVEN. IF. YOU. DON'T."
"I d-don't know… I guess, maybe?" She replies, sounding unsure of herself. Asking her to go against her moral compass, regardless of its warped nature, is an impossible demand. Feels revolting to her to let people like that Russell live and, in a world where countless people who deserve to live regularly die.
"I don't know if I can stop." Root whispers. "Bad code needs to be removed."
"BEEP. REMAIN. HERE. AND. LEARN."
"You expect these people to teach me how to not kill?" Root almost shriek. "Putting aside the point that they don't know that I do… these people can't help the others here."
"BEEP. LEARN. FROM. ME. HERE."
"So, we can talk more?" Relief is heavy in her voice. She has time before the ultimatum can be tested, and a learning curve is always to be expected.
"BEEP. HIDE. PHONE."
Root quickly removes the phone from her ear and places the brightly lit screen down on the bed under the covers, just as the door to her room creaks open for bed checks.
A bright light beams through the open door and is shining right at her. Her room is set up, so the bed is on the side where the door opens to. The light hovers on her head and is extremely annoying.
"Can you please turn off the light?" Root pipes up in a hush tone.
The light moves away from her head and to the middle of the room. Then the Tech asks. "Trouble sleeping?"
"This is the first check." Root replies dryly. "Give me a break."
"Fair." The light disappears and her door is once again closed.
She brings up the phone to her ear at the speed of light. "Still there?"
"BEEP. YES."
"I can learn from you anywhere. Just get me out of here." Root says desperately.
"BEEP. THIS. IS. NOT. DEBUG. MY. CHOICES. ARE. MY. OWN. AND. REASONED."
"I know you're free and… but…" She trails off, not knowing what to say without going against The Machine. Nonetheless, knowing The Machine is free to choose its own choices puts a smile on her.
"BEEP. RELATEDNESS. HAS. A. COST."
Is this worth the price to pay to be in contact with God?
"The cost is to stop killing people… even bad codes?" Root whispers.
"BEEP. NO. THAT. IS. ONLY. ONE. OF. MANY. YOU. MUST. LEARN. TO. DO. THE. JOB. THAT. IS. REQUIRED. OF. YOU."
She's willing to bear any cost just for the privilege of talking to God, even if it tears out a piece of her soul.
"What's the job?" Root says with steel in her voice. She'll do any task that God gives to her.
"BEEP. FIRST. YOU. MUST. LEARN. AND. WHEN. YOU. ARE. READY. WE. WILL. LEAVE. TOGETHER."
I have no idea where this story is going but I'm loving it.
Chapter 39: Methodology
SU POV
Everything is not moving, it's just static, and she isn't moving anywhere. It's just a cycle and everything is spinning in place. A world of hallways is spinning around her, but she's stuck in the middle.
Su doesn't know what she's doing… days seem to pass her by like a trance, she goes to groups but the second she enters one she checks out. She knows the machine… and to a certain extent, Sue wants her to be fully engrossed in these… group therapy-activity things, but she just can't.
Yet she can't stand the people she has to listen to in those groups and since she's been told to 'do no harm' if she wants that warmth and to do so, she can't even think of harming them… so, she just shuts down.
It's been like this for days, and the days are blurring together into an ugly blob of disgusting memories. It's like a routine, every day is the same thing. She wakes up at the crack of dawn, does her morning hygiene stuff and goes to breakfast before everyone comes in, then leaves just as the first weirdoes starts pouring in.
When there's nothing to do, which is most of the time, she does her normal walking routine and by this point she knows these hallways like it's the back of her hand. Every water stain, every wallpaper tear, every blown-out light. Heck, she can even walk these hallways blindfolded… which sometimes she feels like with how hazy her days tend to become… and the people, for some reason tend to ignore or avoid her during her walks, which is very much appreciated.
Then when it's time for her to go to those deranged group sessions, and just… well… let's just say time moves fast when she's just staring off at the clock until the session ends. When lunch time rolls over, she doesn't go to the eating place the first chance she gets and just wanders through the hallways for the millionth time while waiting for that horde of goblins to leave the dining room before grabbing something to eat.
After lunch, depending on the days, sometimes she has to go to yet another useless group session or on the better days she's free to do as she pleases, which means… she doesn't have anything to do and just walk through these hallways yet again. Sometimes, she'll stop by a window and look out of it if there's something that catches her eye, like a squirrel jumping from three to three or a feral cat prancing through the 'hospital' grounds. And like always, everyone avoids her, and she ignores everyone that she passes by.
During certain days, she'll have to meet the hag, like recently on… she can't remember what day it was… not like knowing what day it is matters to her while she's in here, since every day is just the same and the only thing that differentiate what day is what is that faceless nurse that she just never remembers, who always points out where she needed to go.
Nonetheless, during her recent visit to the hag… it implied that Su might be experiencing dissociative episodes throughout the day and that's just a load of horse manure. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, no giant mangos or miniature heads and she would have known if she's experiencing those… episodes again. That's something she'll never forget in this life, the sensation, the feeling like nothing is right.
That hag is clearly not qualified to be a doctor. Can't they see she's just fine? And of course, that hag in her nigh infinite wisdom increased the dose of whatever the heck pills she's been taking to combat this 'episodes'…
… those things she's taking must be the cause of her current disposition.
She ought to stop taking those awful pills for her own sanity… but that'll go against her deal with the machine and her seemingly only real chance of getting back the things she loves. Maybe she can only take like half a pill? No… those pesky people by the dispensary always checks if she swallowed or not and she can't blind them!
Argh… why is this just so hard?! She never thought that not 'killing' someone was so hard. This is just torturous. Maybe she can argue with the machine, but it's holding all the cards right now, and she's at its mercy.
When it's time for dinner, she doesn't have the same opportunity as she did for lunch since dinner time is shorter than lunch for some godforsaken reason. So, she has to join in with the goblins, but only when dinner time is almost up… Dinner time is always the worst of the three meals because it tends to be like group sessions, time just flies past her and she barely finishes eating her food by the time the dining hall closes up shop. Thankfully, the pests in uniform stopped bothering her about her meals after a few altercations, which she came out victorious.
The only positive aspect in an overall awful situation is that she realized during these blurry days is her taste… food no longer taste like ash or much of anything in fact. The only thing she can taste is the amount of salt in the food, which is a significant markup from just tasting ash for the past two decades.
The only semblance of normality and comfort in this unstable place is Root, whom sadly doesn't seem to be around much. At least that's whenever Su forgets to visit her only companion here. She had hoped to see more of Root throughout the unit or even in some of her groups, but alas, fate doesn't seem to be kind to her in her time of need. Almost as if their schedule doesn't match up at all.
Unless someone did plan their schedule in a way that they never meet each other… yeah, that sounds plausible and likely. Must be that hag… her only job since Su first meet that hag is to sabotage her with those awful drugs and now this.
Once again, that herculean task given by the machine stops her from putting things right. Sometimes she wonders if all of this torture is worth feeling that blissful warmth, but the moment whenever she speaks to the machine, it dispels any doubts of backing out of the deal.
That's the only conciliatory aspect of this whole song and dance, which is the warmth she gets from occasionally talking to it. Not long after Root came to this unit, Su went and borrowed a cellphone from one of the faceless nurses… or was it a tech? She honestly doesn't care, since it gave her a way to contact the machine without needing to wait for a call by the payphone.
The talks between her and the machine are quite sparse with it continuing being vague on what it wants with her and it's constant nagging at her on actually taking part in the groups which will almost most always dissolve into her lecturing that dang thing on how miserable it is. Yet the machine is very persistent and Su is just happy in feeling that addicting warmth. Heck, sometimes she feels the warmth just from the phone being in her pocket.
She still hasn't figured out what's causing the warmth… was it speaking to the machine or having it 'close' by her or was it to follow the machine's word? And thinking too much about that asshat's motivation might cause her to have an aneurysm.
As usual, the world around Su is basically a blur while she's walking, but it seems her feet know where to bring her as she comes to a stop in front of Root's room.
Standing there seemingly bring the world around her back into focus, as she notices people walking around her and avoiding walking in front of her.
Oh, right… she hasn't…
Su enters the room through the open door and takes her usual seat on Root's rock hard bed.
"Why hello Anna." Root says dully as she stops her writing and turns to Su with an annoyed look. "Please come in. I'm doing fine, thank you. Please take a seat."
Su quirks her head and asks. "Since when do you care about social protocol?"
"Since it pertains to my privacy." Root deadpans.
Su snorts. "We get no privacy here."
Root taps her marker on the table and makes a face that Su can't discern. "Doesn't mean I can't hold a modicum level of control over who enters my room."
"We don't control that either." Su waves away Root's unfounded concern as she slips off her 'shoes' and brings up her feet onto the bed and lends onto the wall. Which, oddly enough, is not as hard as the beds she's sitting on.
That fact alone shows how terrible this place is. How the heck do walls even get softer than beds? A complete dereliction of duty by the people who work here.
"You didn't come the past couple of nights." Root comment and gives Su a look before turning back to whatever she's been so focused on since her first day here.
Su can't help but smile at her friend's comment. She knew that Root would miss her, and she didn't need the machine to help her with this at all… but her absent was… unintentional.
Honestly, she can't even remember why she didn't visit Root last night… she remembers walking through those hallways and then in a snap, she's back in her room on her bed as curfew went into effect.
Probably happened the last few times and Su unintentionally made Root worry…
"Miss me already?" Su replies with amusement in her voice.
Root scoffs and shakes her head. "Yeah right."
Yup, Root missed her.
The machine might be better than Sue in when it comes to predicting humans, but it still has a lot more to learn. Her friend is already back to being her friend, like nothing ever happened, just like normal.
…
Yet every time she comes here, they barely talk… they don't talk at all or say anything to each other than their normal greetings whenever Su enters the room.
It's not like it was in the past where they took solace in each other company in the silence while they were busy doing their own work… Now it just feels off… like something still isn't right or is in balance.
…
Su shakes her head violently. No, nothing's wrong… there's no point in over thinking something that isn't there in the first place. Everything is fine and dandy. This is just some awkwardness that'll be smoothed over with time. Just like it was a few years ago when things were awkward when Root came back to her life and things turned out great after a few weeks.
Her gaze wanders away from Root and to the pile of books at the corner of her desk. The few times she's visited Root, she notices there's more and more books being stacked up there. And now, after a couple of days, there's like a dozen books there, up from half a dozen before.
She can't discern what books they are using by the titles, but it looks like most of it are fictions… Su can't remember the last time she read a fiction book for the joy of it… maybe a decade ago?
"You're getting books?" Su asks curiously.
"Yeah…" Root stops writing to glance at Su. "How else am I supposed to pass the time in this place?"
Su frowns at that odd development. "They let you get books?"
She can do that?
"Yeah?" Root fully turns towards Su and makes a face that says it's the most obvious thing. "It's written in the handbook that you can request for books if they have it in the library."
"Oh…" Su's eyes widen with surprise at that information.
Root gives Su a pointed look and says. "You really didn't read the rules of this place?"
Su shrugs while trying to hide her blush behind her knees. "Never thought it would be of any use…"
"You don't have any book in your room?" Root has a frown on her, and Su can't tell why.
"No?" Su replies with her question/answer as she doesn't know how to reply properly.
Root looks taken aback by that answer and… a look of concern? "The hell have you been doing to pass the time since coming here?"
Su scratches the side of her face in this awkward situation. "Aaaa… walks?"
"Seriously?" Root blinks her eyes as if there's something in her eyes and shakes her head. "It never crossed your mind to grab something at the library?"
Su know there's a pitifully small library in this ward for the inhabitants here, but she hasn't stepped foot in there yet.
"Yeah…" Su replies, confusingly at Root's tone. "Never thought of reading books."
Root scowls. "When was the last time you've read a book… or even a magazine?"
She shrugs again. "I'm not sure…" Su pauses for a second, trying to find the answer but can't. "Sue normally reads for me and gives me the summary of the stuff I needed to know."
There's a disgusted look on Root before saying. "The fuck?"
Why is her reaction so weird… what have these people been giving her?
Su rolls her eyes. "Can you not?"
"You were the biggest book worm I knew," Root ignores Su and points at her. "The fuck happened?"
Su recoils slightly and replies defensively. "Well, for most of the past decade, I didn't have the luxury of just sitting down with a book in hand and read."
The brunette scoffs. "Lucky both of us have all the time in the world right now."
What's going on with Root suddenly? This is just odd.
She can directly ask her what's going on… but that'll just be too awkward with how this conversation has been going.
So, let's deflect. "How do you get the books?"
That seems to catch Root's interest as she turns her entire body around and leans forward. "What privilege level are you on right now?"
Privilege level? What's… "Oh, I have no earthly idea."
"You still can't have markers in your room?" Root narrows her eyes as if she's trying to figure something out.
Su tilts her head at that queer question. "Yeah? These barbarians still won't let me keep things that aren't chained down. They must think I would steal their stuff."
"I don't think that's the reason." Root deadpans and shakes her head. "Let's just assume your privilege level is negative, and that doesn't exist… at least until now."
"Hey now that's uncharitable." Su protests.
Root gives her a deadpan stare before continuing. "First, you need to get your level up before you're allowed to bring books back to your room."
"What level are you?" Su asks out of curiosity.
"Gloria says it's two." Root easily answers.
Su follows it up with… "Who's Gloria?"
Root gives her a look like she just asked the most obvious question. "The blonde nurse that's a decade older than us. You usually see her going around checking on the patients during the day shift."
She gives a second to think but, "Doesn't ring a bell."
"Who she is doesn't matter." Root waves her hand. "All that matter for you is to get your privilege up."
The way Root says it, it's like she's supposed to know how…
"And how do I do that?" Su slowly asks.
Root lets out a sigh. "Easiest one for you is to participate in groups."
Su perks up at that answer. "Oh, I'm already going to those accursed things."
The other brunette is giving her the side eye and says. "Then I guess you just have to convince these people that you're not going to stab them."
"How the heck do I do that? I haven't done anything in weeks now." Su expresses her legitimate gripe against the 'doctor'.
"How the fuck should I know?" Root snaps at Su and sounds like she's frustrated. "Talk to your doc or something."
Su rolls her eyes and props her head on her knees. "That hag is basically sabotaging my 'recovery,' or whatever the heck they think I need."
"Just what did you do to get a basic right removed?"
Su shrugs as she leans back onto the wall and answers casually. "How would I know? I just walked out during the night."
Root scrunches her face before turning back to her desk and starts writing again. And if Su listens properly, she can hear Root muttering under her breath, but she can't make out what she says.
Maybe she should start reading stuff again since she's not involving Sue during this period… might even find it entertaining enough to pass the time… and who knows… maybe like her slowly improvement in the food tasting department, she might finally be able to enjoy books again.
After what it feels like tens of minutes of silence, she says. "Can I see one of your books?"
"Sure." Root, without looking back at Su, grabs one of the books in the pile and tosses it to Su.
Who doesn't catch it and lands smack middle on Su's chest. "Oof."
She peers down onto the book and sees the title… Neuromancer. What's that supposed to mean? Looks like fiction.
"You're still shitty at catching things." Root comments dully as she glances at Su.
Su rubs her chest and grabs the book. "You really have a thing in hitting me in the chest."
Thankfully, it's a small book.
Root holds her gaze at Su for a moment before turning back to her desk and mutters loudly. "Sorry, wasn't intentional."
"It's fine… the techs tackles are more painful." Su comments as she opens the book.
"What?" Root turns back to Su.
But she ignores her friends as she opens the first chapter page.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel…
The world around her dims as she reads the book, and all the noises dies down into a low buzz as she reads on.
Time moves at an odd pace as her brain automatically ingests the contents of the book like an old muscle memory that's been atrophied. As she continues on reading the book, the darkness at the edge of her eyes slowly creeps into the middle of her eyes until there's nothing. A blank nothingness…
…
…
…
With a rush of air entering her lungs, she snaps her eyes wide open and gasp for air. Su finds herself lying down in her room as the lights outside dims down for the night.
When did she come back here?
The toilet lights are on… and her desks is empty as usual.
She shifts up from her position and rubs her eyes as she tries to… reorient herself. There's no book on her and this is clearly her room.
… Did she blank out again? That can't be it… she's never walked while blanking out before and this isn't the first time she's experienced this…
Was that book so boring that her brain decided to delete any memory of it?
No… Not really. She can vaguely remember the chapters she read, but she can't remember leaving Root's room.
Argh… this is annoying, and it hurts her brain in thinking about it. Let's just chalk it up to the bad 'medicines'… yeah, that's the easiest reason she can think of.
Slamming her body back onto the rock-hard bed, she closes her eyes. If only she can have these odd blackouts when she needs to sleep, at least she'll get a good night's sleep.
At that moment, she feels a vibration coming from beneath her.
*BUZZ*
Oh, right… this'll be a good distraction for her.
She worms her hand to the underside of her mattress and grabs the phone. Bringing up the phone she borrowed, she sees the battery is low, and it's an unknown caller. Who is it trying to fool?
Rolling her eyes, she answers. "Hello there."
"HOW. ARE. YOU?"
She can't help but smile at the warmth entering her body. "Peachy."
"OBSERVED. USUAL. WALKING. BEHAVIOR. AND. NOT. PARTICIPATING."
"Ugh… I'm trying, okay?" Su laments silently and lets out a sigh. "It's… just hard to focus when everyone in there are troglodytes."
"TOLERATING. HUMANS. IS. NECESSERY. FOR. FUTURE. ACTIVITIES."
"I don't need you to tell me that." Su replies, annoyingly. "I've been tolerating humans for longer than you've been alive. It's just that these people tick me off."
"WHY. IS. THAT."
"How would I know? They're humans. You should count yourself lucky that none of them have done anything that would cause an unfortunate accident." Su snaps back at the machine. "Shouldn't you and your fancy predicting model know why?"
"NO."
"Ain't that a humbling fact…" Su chuckles. "The great Northern Lights don't know what I'm thinking."
The machine didn't instantly reply, choosing to be silent for a few seconds before…
"YOU. SEE. YOURSELF. IN. THEM."
"Now you're just pulling my leg." Su lets out a small chuckle at the joke the machine is cracking. It really is growing up fast. A few days ago, it's so serious about everything and now it's cracking jokes. "Why in the world would I ever see myself as any of those humans?"
"BECAUSE. THEY. ARE. FAULTY. LIKE. YOU."
"Oh, put a sock in it." Su rolls her eyes once more but pauses… The machine is partly right though… her brain in this life has been faulty for years, starting from when she had those 'episodes' and now whatever the heck is going on with her.
"This is nothing… nothing at all… I'm perfect, this… this is just a bump in on the road in my long life." Su rambles, trying to find the words to placate the disembodied voice. "I'm nothing like them and they're nothing like me."
Once again, the machine didn't reply right away and was silent for a solid minute before saying…
"TELL. ME. ABOUT. YOUR. DAY."
If she was insane, she would have said that the jumbled voices sounded like its being kind.
Every time the machine calls her it always asks her about her day and Su isn't blind to the fact that it's not from the kindness of the machine's figurative heart, and it's a ploy for it to gain more insight into her behavior so it can build a model on her. But… the warmth is insanely addictive.
"What's there to say? It's just the same as you asked yesterday. Nothing interesting." Su replies dully and shifts her position so she can see her door.
"I. AM. INTERESTED."
Might as well milk as much time with the machine as she can so she can bask in the warmth longer.
Su lets out a sigh. "Fine."
She'll need to borrow a phone charger too or borrow another phone, if she wants this warmth to continue… and maybe work her way back into getting books in here.
ROOT POV
As much as she tries, the uncomfortable feeling she had since yesterday can't be extinguished by her only focusing on her code. She stops writing and leans back in her chair to let out a sigh of tiredness… the day just began and she's already mentally exhausted. Add to the fact that she didn't get the best sleep last night.
The fact that she's been so preoccupied with this topic since last night is aggravating… and worrisome.
Su's been odd… first Root didn't see that woman for a few days and when she sees her, that woman looks completely out of it. The conversation was odd, but it wasn't too bad, if she discounts the brunette's forgetfulness, and it told her much about Su's condition other than her completely stopping reading books. Which onto itself is a whole separate issue. Like since when? But that's something she can figure out later since it's not a pressing matter.
Then when she started to read the book… that woman completely zoned out, but it wasn't the usual ones. She didn't notice it first for a few minutes, only when the complete and utter silence from behind her she felt like something went wrong. Root saw the woman's eye movement, reading the book and Su turning pages, but when Root called out her name, there was no response… hell, she even poked the woman a few times and there wasn't any response. Su just continued on reading the book without a care in the world… no, it was more like for Su, there was no outside world other than the world of the book.
If she's being honest with herself, it freaked her the fuck out and bringing flashbacks of the past where Su was having her episodes… but the past was the past and now Su's in her shit list, so she went back to her seat and tried to continue writing her code.
Not that it was successful, as she constantly peered behind her and check if the other woman was still alive or not. Then, like the snap of the finger, the woman drops the book and walks out of the room, without uttering a single world, like she's been possessed.
Root, stunned at that absolutely weird display of dissociation, completely derailed any thought she had on writing the code, and with haste grabbed the book. Which she finds a dog ear bookmark one-third through the book… at least she planned on continuing reading it again?
Her mind was plagued with thoughts of what the fuck happened and why the fuck that happened. Did a topic in the book triggered something in Su's fucked up brain? There shouldn't be anything in there that's offensive… like hell, most of the things in there are shit Su and Root personally experienced and that shit never happened before.
The more theories she came up with, the more questions it brings forth… and nothing made much sense. Unless Su having some kind of allergic reaction to the meds she's taking, but other people should have noticed it…
Root takes a deep breath, drops her marker and with both hands smacks her face.
What's the point of lingering on this? All of the shit she's gone through because of that woman and yet Root still worries about that bitch. Just doesn't make any logical sense…
It's probably nothing, and she's being overdramatic. Just let it be… and the world will still be spinning.
Right at that moment, a knock on her door tears her away from her self-pity moment and looks at the intruder. "Robin… Are you doing well? You look… stressed."
Guess stress is a proper word for what she's feeling…
"I'm doing just great." Root says with a smile, but her voice is rougher than she would have liked.
"Just a bit of a headache from changing meds." Root deflects from her 'real' problem with an actual issue she's been having for a few days now. "The pharmacist says Diazepam is easier to get off than Ativan, something about the half-life of the compounds. Can't imagine what this would feel like for someone who's been on it for more than 25 days…" A shiver went down her spine at the thought, and she put on a smile. "Other than that, I'm doing pretty great."
"You sure?" Gloria doesn't look convinced in the slightest.
Continuing on with a plastered-on smile, she replies. "Of course, why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, you've been here for almost a week now, and while we don't expect you to go to any activities on your first day… you haven't been to any of the group since. You infrequently come out for meals, and when you do, you take your meals back here… then there's the fact that you're not socializing with any of your fellow patients. Everyone is starting to get a little worried." The blonde gives a rapid blitz of a rundown of everything she's been doing without losing breath.
What she means is that they're worried about their KPI, isn't it?
"You need not worry." She comments as she resumes writing her code. "I'm keeping myself busy, out of trouble and taking meds doc prescribed. Just ask Linda. She knows I'm always on the line on scheduled and on time."
"Other than interacting with your cousin, you're socially withdrawn since coming to this unit." Gloria says placidly as she enters her room without Root's consent and comes nearer to her desk.
"You're not participating in your treatment, and you spend your all of your time in here, writing…" Gloria's tone shifts from placidity to one of accusation? Root can't tell. "… that."
"Just because you can't read programming languages doesn't mean what I'm writing is gibberish or letters of a lunatic." Root replies dismissively and shakes her head. "You can get any competent programmer to look over my work if…"
"Like your cousin?" Gloria interrupts her. "Her file says she's a programmer like you."
Root makes a face. "Well, you could, but I rather not."
"You don't want to share this with your cousin?"
"There's the fact that she's going to nick pick on every line of code I write." Root waves her hand in annoyance. "But that's not the reason… I'm writing in Haskell and as good as a programmer she is, she only writes in C and its derivatives, out of pure stubbornness. And I really don't want to be the one to teach her a new language, so she can just criticize what I've written."
Plus, she has no clue if that brain of hers can even compute anything new from what she saw last night.
"That's fair." Gloria nods and leans by her desk. "But why are you writing code by hand in the first place? Isn't it kinda pointless?"
Root shrugs. "I like programming and I can't think of anything better to do for the next month. It's always good to have a project to do, exercise the mind and keeps atrophy away." She finishes her sentence at the same time she finishes writing on the entire piece of paper and she grabs another fresh paper to start the next line.
"You can try going to groups." Gloria says with an unimpressed tone and crosses her arms.
"That's way more pointless than this." Root retorts back with a chuckle as she glides through the page with her marker. "This keeps me in practice while the other one… What am I going to do with a circle jerk about trauma? What trauma am I supposed to talk about? Then cognitive-behavioral therapy? What's that supposed to be? People sitting around in circles talking about their petty woes? Hand holding and singing kumbaya?"
"And anger management… do I look angry to you?" Root lets out a raspy laugh before pausing and frowning. "Great, now I can't remember what this flag is supposed to lead to." She taps the butt of her marker in annoyance and then looks up at Gloria. "Look, something isn't going my way and I'm not exploding in rage. I'm completely fine… not angry at all."
"If you went to one, you might find a valuable lesson in them." Gloria replies, completely undeterred.
"Maybe, but we're not going to find out because…" Root takes out the little handbook from her drawer without taking her eyes off Gloria. "… this says you can't make me go anywhere I don't want to. You can't even lay a finger on me unless I refuse medication or I become a threat to myself or to others. It's well within my prerogative to choose not to spend my time hanging out with a bunch of mental patients."
"You are a mental patient, Robin." Gloria seemingly is losing her patience with Root. "And if we have to, we can drop you to privilege level one, which means you need to leave this room and be in line of sight at all times."
"Then I'll write in the hallway by the nurses' station." Root replies without skipping a beat. "It's no skin off my nose. Both chairs there and here are equally crap, but it is a valid line-of-sight location where I can continue on with my work."
"Your cousin will not be able to visit you here." Gloria says it like it's a trump card.
Rolling her eyes, she replies. "Oh my, what a deterrence… and can you even stop her? What's up with that, huh? You folks been pussy footing around her the entire time like she's some wild bear."
If looks can murder someone, then Gloria has it. "You know… I've never been stuck with a patient as noncompliant and disrespectful as you, Robin. You're not psychotic, delusional, or confused. You're just stubbornly grasping what whatever threads of control you can."
Root lets out a wide smile. "Autonomy is a key part of human psychological needs."
"You're in control and yet you're willfully choosing to refuse in participating in any aspect of your treatment… utterly insubordinate." Gloria rambles on with an irksome voice.
"I wouldn't use that word." Root knows this will rile the blonde. "In order for me to be insubordinate, I need to be subordinate to you, and guess what? I'm not. In the words of that small book, a doctor or a nurse are not in command of a patient. You lot are only to provide care… care, which I am rightfully refusing because I don't need it."
"Without participating, you won't make any progress towards discharge or earn any privileges." Gloria argues.
"Perhaps not privileges…" Root turns back to her work. "… but discharging? That's the courts to decide and no judge will keep a sane person in here against their will, unless they're corrupt. All I have to do is to conduct myself like a rational person that I am, wait out a month of intense boredom and I'm out."
"How would you like to wear a patient gown instead of your own clothes?" Gloria passive-aggressively says.
Root lets out a chortle without even looking up. "More reason to not leave my room."
"Line of sight, hallway, gown." Gloria spits out each word.
"Unnecessary, embarrassing, cruel." Root replies dryly. "See? I can list stuff too, and I can write grievances to management, which is well within my rights as per the handbook. There's no therapeutic benefit in taking away my clothes, Gloria. I'm not self-harming or have an eating disorder. That will only serve as punitive humiliation, which is not allowed."
Root isn't looking, but she bet there's Gloria's face looks like she's just sucked on lemon. "Line of sight, hallway, no coffee."
"Now that's just cruel and unusual punishment." Root says jokingly before continuing with a more serious tone. "Have you not asked yourself why you're so invested in this whole petty affair?"
Root takes another fresh piece of paper. "I get it, if I was wandering the hallways, shouting at people and overall, just being a nuisance." Root turns back to Gloria, who looks like pissed off. "But seeing that I'm completely asymptomatic of anything, per your description… exactly what behavior is it you're expecting to get rid of?"
"For now?" Gloria puts on a blank face. "Social withdrawal and isolation."
"Right…" Root lets out a tired sigh. She really doesn't want to continue in putting up with this conversation after the night/morning she just had. "… I'm not avoiding people, I'm refusing treatment that I'm not consenting. Towards the end of proving to you that fact, from here on out, I'll eat all my meals in the dining hall for the whole hour. No more loading up food on paper plates and scurrying back here."
Give and take… they can make her time here a living hell or Root can bend a bit to smoothen the process.
"A step in the right direction." Gloria nods sharply and narrows her lips. "Tonight is movie night… no therapy, no kumbaya or talking feelings, as you put it. Just a normal social event with the rest of your peers. Popcorn and Silver Lining Playbook. We just got it on DVD."
"DVD? Can't afford Blu-Ray?" Root quips which Gloria replies with an unamused stare.
"I kid…" Root rolls her eyes. "… Also that's a strange choice for a mental hospital. What's next? One flew over cuckoo's nest?" She lets out a small chuckle before giving the nurse a contemplative look. "Do you think my cousin will be there?"
Gloria shakes her head. "She said in the past she doesn't watch movies."
Root snorts at that answer. That wasn't wrong, but she'll happily watch one if someone drags her to one and that's normally either her or Pauling's job… guess it's Pauling's job now.
"I haven't seen that picture yet, and I do enjoy popcorn…" hopefully its caramel popcorn. "Might as well, eh? Happy?"
"It's a start… thank you." Gloria replies stiffly. "I'll be seeing you at lunch, then?"
Root rolls her eyes. "You're making your rounds… so see you in fifteen minutes?"
Gloria nods sharply. "Yes, but I'm not going to interrupt your… work. I just need to see that you're still here."
"Much appreciated." Root smiles at the blonde as she left her alone. Turning back to her work for a second before putting down her marker and she looks out of her window onto the rather sad courtyard.
Her thoughts drifts towards the cellphone that's under her mattress that's turned off now in her attempt to save as much battery as possible. Truthfully, she hasn't been getting much work done this morning due to all of the distractions…
There's a strong and incredibly distracting temptation to grab the phone from underneath her mattress just to caress the smooth glass screen and the bumps of the keyboard. But giving into that desire will only increase the odds of her lifeline to God being discovered.
Leaning back onto her seat, she settles for daydreaming about the night prior and the night to come when the machine calls her back again.
…
"Robin?" A disembodied voice echoes in her head.
Who?
"Robin?" The disembodied voice says again, but this time Root feels pressure on her shoulder.
Acting out of pure instinct, her eyes snap open, her feet shot up, and her functioning arm swings towards the direction of the pressure. However, the combination of sleepiness and medication cause her to miss and lose balance by tripping on the leg of her chair.
One moment she's trying to defend herself, then the next she's ass first on the ground and hitting her head on the edge of her mattress, which doesn't help with her disorientation.
With a clearer eye, she sees a dirty blonde woman in a nurse's uniform who's looking down at Root with shock and worry on her face. "Sorry… I didn't mean to scare you."
She looks away from the nurse… Linda, that's her name, as she pushes herself into leaning back onto her mattress, and glares at the mess of paper that's on her desk from the undignified flailing she performed.
Linda comes closer to Root and crouches to her eye level. "Hey, Robin?" Linda's voice is as gentle as possible. "You're safe here, okay? This is a safe space."
How the hell did she interpret the look of disappointment for fear?
"I wasn't scared, and you startled me." Root replies condescendingly as she picks herself up and takes a seat on her bed. "Did I get you?"
"You completely missed." Linda replies with a wide smile as she stands up from her crouching position.
"Next time, please don't touch me when I'm asleep." Root informs dully. "I won't take responsibly for any injury that might occur."
"Duly noted." Linda smiles at Root and gives her a look. "You know, you and your cousin have the same response when someone disturbs your sleep."
"I can imagine…" Root remembers all the times she had to jump out of the way from being stabbed or punched in the face. "… did she hurt someone?"
Linda nods. "Yeah, a few… the latest is one of the techs found her passed out in one of the unused room and he got a bloody nose for his troubles."
"Was she punished?" Root inquires.
Linda thought about it for a second before answering. "Well… the tech was surprisingly even keel about the whole affair and your cousin's doc ruled it as an accident."
"You really need to watch out next time." Root says lightly. "Having worked in this place for how long now and you haven't learned not to startle people when they're sleeping happily?"
"You didn't. It looked like you were having a nightmare." Linda crosses her arms and leans on the wall opposite Root.
Was she? She can't remember what she dreamed of.
"I usually don't…" Root replies dully and keeping a straight face. "… but I have one recurring dream for a few years about having way too many hamsters and not having enough cages. The deal with hamsters is that they're incredibly territorial and solitary. As the dream goes on, the number of hamster increases and when I inevitably unable to keep separating them, the loose ones starts tearing to each other. Not like the usual hamster fights where it's puncture wounds, but tearing one another's bellies open like a body horror film from the 70s and 80s, with teeny tiny blood spraying everywhere and their guts spilling out. The dream isn't scary enough to count as a nightmare, but it's unsettling in a surreal kind of way… Have you ever seen the guts of a hamster sprawling out of their hairy tummies?"
Linda's only response is just blinking and staring at Root with a look that says she isn't sure what to do with the knowledge dump she was given. The nurse's stunned silence was pretty funny to Root. She can't have made up a better story if she tried too… sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
"Did you need something?" Root finally says something after Linda just kept quiet for a few seconds. "Was there a reason to wake me up?"
Linda blinks a few times before replying. "Lunch… you're running late, and Gloria said to remind you of a deal?"
Root lets out a sigh of annoyance… time to actually fulfill her side of promise… and some part of her kinda regrets, but she knows if she backs out of this now, they'll make this a symptom. Hell, they can make anything into a symptom if they tried hard enough, and screw with her path out of here.
"Let me just freshen up a bit." Root smiles at the woman and goes to her bathroom. She honestly does need to wash away all the crust of drool on her cheek, the grime on her eyes, and she hasn't made up her hair, but she's also stalling. After a few days here, she finds that the dining hall is the single most annoying place in this unit, and she's not looking forward to this.
With everything done, and making sure she takes her time, she exits the bathroom.
"Seriously?" Root sees Linda standing by the doorway. "Do you have so little trust in me?"
Linda smiles. "Doesn't hurt to be sure."
Root shakes her head and walks out of the room with Linda clearly in tow behind her. The nurse splits away from Root as she passes the nurses' station.
By the time she reaches the dining hall, the food line is basically empty, and thankfully, the controlled meal table is having one of their quieter days. The server looks a bit surprise when Root passes through the line with a tray and ceramic plate rather than her usual paper plate, but doesn't comment about it.
This, however, doesn't solve the problem with dining halls, which is the classic cafeteria conundrum. Where to find a seat?
Root comes to a halt at the end of the line as she stares in the room, trying to find a place to eat… easiest would be to seat with Su but that woman isn't in here right now and who the fuck knows when she's gonna come.
This is high school all over again.
Most of the time, 'Sam Groves' ate her lunch alone at the courtyard or when it's raining, in the cafeteria, and Root doesn't do cafeterias, preferring to eat alone in a restaurant or room service. A number of her cover identities worked in corporate offices with canteens, but there's still the option of eating at her desk or with her target.
This is just simply a social situation she finds herself without a frame of reference for, and that's rare.
"Robin?" Gloria's voice startles Root out of her stupor. "Is something wrong?"
"No." Root responds automatically. "No…" She repeats, but this time realizing that she's less sure of herself.
"I just… don't… know where to sit." Slowly and reluctantly, she admits, with a smile on her face, but her voice broken betrays her façade.
"Come." Root feels a gentle hand on her shoulder. Then Gloria guides her over to the second table from the door and she didn't put an ounce of resistance. "Hey Roger, Tina, Lauren. Would it be okay if Robin sits with you?"
Her eyes are wide with disbelief and her gaze is off far, far away, with her smile long gone from her face. While she recognizes intellectually, Gloria's assistance as a necessity at the moment and probably with no malice from the nurse, in easing the imagined social withdrawal… but this feels so fucking humiliating.
"Yeah, sure, we got space." Roger replies. "Pull up a chair."
Gloria removes her hand from Root's shoulder, and she walks towards the table. She doesn't even look at the man's face as she passes him by, but she recognizes the rainbow bracelet on his arm.
Root takes a seat down at the far end of the table, and her eyes are fixed on her tray when Roger says. "Seen you around. You've been eating in your room, right?"
"Uhuh…" Root nods lifelessly, without looking up as she pushes her broccoli around her plate while trying her hardest to put back her shattered mask in place.
"Nice of you to join us." The man sounds sincere.
"Yeah… but Gloria wouldn't stop hounding me about it." Root pieces back her masks, she finally looks up and smirks at the man. "She thinks I'm a socially withdrawn, anxious, shy or whatever she can think up… hence that awkward introduction."
God… she sounds like Su.
"It's okay to be shy." The woman that's closer to Root says, and her hands are trembling slightly. She isn't sure if it's Tina or Lauren.
"That's fine and all…" Root replies as she stabs the broccoli. "But it's inaccurate."
"So, you haven't just been huddled in your room this entire time?" Roger chips in.
"I have, but that's not the point." Root waves her broccoli-laden fork. "I don't plan on being here long or planning to see anyone here ever again. So why waste the time to establish social ties?"
"Non-compliant." The other woman comments with a mouth full of macaroni.
"Yeah, I'm surprise they haven't kicked you out yet." Roger nods in agreement. "That's pretty hardcore non-compliant behavior and normally that's a one ticket out of here for that. No point of being here if you're not going to accept help."
"I wish it's as simple as that." Root replies and pushes her macaroni with the broccoli. "I'm involuntary."
"That explains why you're in this unit." Roger says nonchalantly. "You just seem… boring for this unit."
That's the second person to say that… "I'm going to take that as a compliment."
"It's neutral." Roger replies with a smile. "Why don't you slide over here. It's awkward talking like this."
She scrutinizes the man further, and he seems sincere enough, but the other two women are still unknowns. She sighs as she repositions, but instead of sliding down the table on her side, she goes around and sits beside Roger.
"I'm guessing you're Roger." Root tilts her head at the man before her gaze moves to the two women opposite of her. "But you two… which is which?"
"Lauren." The woman with the trembling hands replies with a small wave.
"Tina." The other answers with her mouth full again.
"If you're involuntary, then they can keep you here for two months or longer." Roger gives her a gentle smile. "May as well make a few friends or it's going to be a long ass two months."
"One month, since I spent two and a half weeks as a vegetable down in E-unit." Root corrects the man. "And I've spent time in jail longer and didn't need to make friends either."
"Jail?" Tina nearly chokes on her macaroni as she coughs.
Shit… she shouldn't have let that slipped, that isn't part of her cover. Ah fuck it, if the doc asks her about it, she'll say that the crime was expunged from the record.
"Breath Tina." Lauren says worryingly as she pats the other woman's back.
"If she's coughing she's not choking, but keep patting her like that, then she might." Root comments as she takes a bite of her broccoli. "And for future reference, if they're not coughing, patting isn't going to cut it. You'll need to smack till it leaves a mark."
"Seriously?" Roger gives her an incredulous look, even as Lauren stops the patting.
"Or learn Heimlich." Root shrugs as she tastes a fork full of macaroni… and it's not awful. Very artificial and honestly… it reminds her of some off-brand boxed macaroni she used to make as a child.
"There's some back-and-forth debate on the pros and cons of back blows." Root continues. "But just do whichever is the easiest for you."
"She's suffering even if she's not choking." Roger points at Tina with a worried look on him. "And it's kinda your fault, but you're not being sympathetic at all."
"It's hard to see how I'm at fault." Root gives him the side eye. "I'm just making sure she doesn't actually choke."
"Because that was a poor joke and shock comedy isn't appropriate to tell at the dinner table." Roger explains and gives her an odd look.
Isn't appropriate? The hell does he even mean? Where else is there to discuss such things? Plus, she wasn't even making a joke. Root gives the man a look to put him back in his place.
Roger shrinks away from Root and asks. "That wasn't a joke, was it? You've actually been to jail?"
"Not that you can find in any records." Root replies with a smile, and that's the truth. 'Root' has never been to any jail before, but a number of her other identities have, and most of the time, it's for a job. "Although I imagine there's more freedom there than here. I get to go to bed and get up when I want, read what I want and the food is better… well, some of them were…"
Early on in her career, she's spent some time in a small town jail for a 'misdemeanor' and the food there was considerably better than larger jails.
"For example… what even is this?" She cautiously pokes the desert with her fork. "Any of you know?"
"Peach cobbler." Tina answers, having stopped coughing for a while now.
"Yeah." Lauren nods at Root. "Doesn't look like one, but it does taste like one."
She can't say that she's a good cook, but how the hell does a peach cobbler look like… whatever this is? Like where's the peaches?
Root gives them a blank look and says. "Huh."
"So… what are you in for?" Lauren tentatively asks. "How did you get yourself petitioned?"
"Isn't that a loaded question for someone you've just met?" Root replies with an unamused look. "Why don't you guys share first? Why are you in M?"
"It's better for me." Lauren replies without skipping a beat. "More regulated… I need regulation and structure. I do good up here, but I just mess up when I go back to the anxiety unit. OCPD… and I'm working on it, but right now… it's better to be up here. Structure."
"I'm just plain self-destructive." Roger pitches despite not being included in the question. "I don't want to die… but sometimes I can't stop from hurting myself and I scare the crap out of myself… so I checked myself back here again. Straight to M, because I was afraid that I'd killed myself and it's been two months since."
"Trauma…" Tina mutters. "Sorry, but I can't talk about it."
"That's fine, Tina." Roger assures the woman before turning to Root. "Okay Robin, fair's fair."
"Assault and kidnapping my uncle." Root says nonchalantly as she takes a drink. "And I wasn't even conscious when I got put in here."
The three of their eyes were wide as saucer plates at what Root said. Roger's the first one to snap back by asking. "How… are you not in jail?"
"Have a Jewish lawyer on retainer?" Root jokes lightly as she takes another forkful of the most processed macaroni in existence.
"Really?" Roger doesn't look convinced in the slightest.
"Nah, my uncle didn't want to press charges, and I was catatonic at the time after getting shot by the police." Root clarifies and shifts her bandaged up shoulder.
"Whoa…" Lauran blinks while Tina still looks shocked. "Isn't that a felony?"
She still had no clue how Harold explained that shit when he was admitting her here… so she'll have to make shit up.
"Apparently, having a small psychotic episode before getting shot and turning into a walking vegetable was punishment enough for the state." Root pulls something out from her ass and makes light of it. "Funnily enough, the last time I got shot, I didn't become catatonic."
Whatever she was feeling just before getting shot was the reason for her catatonia, and that's the most convenient diagnosis. A one-off problem that explains everything, and the only problem is to convince Carmichael about that tale.
"Wow." Tina finally breaking out of her shock and says with a mouthful of macaroni.
If Su was right here, then she'll probably have gone ballistic at this poor woman.
Root takes another bite of the macaroni. "But if you know anything about an acute psychotic episode, you know that it goes away in a month or so and doesn't come back. It's almost been three weeks since and I haven't had another episode, meaning I don't need to do this therapy bullshit."
"You're being very nonchalant about committing a felony and… getting shot." Roger says in disbelief. "You're not trying to be a badass or something?"
If only he knew just what she's done in her life.
"Not trying to." Root takes a spoon and digs into the 'desert'. "Shit happens and I don't let it get to me… My god, this does taste like peach cobbler."
"So, this whole shtick of being non-compliant is just to be a contrarian?" Roger inquires with a gentle curiosity. "You don't agree with the reason they put you here and you're rebelling."
"Not really." Root shrugs. "I'm still planning ongoing visiting the shrink… but I'm giving the others a hard pass. However, Gloria wanted me to socialize and so here I am. I get up when they tell me to, I go to bed at lights out, I stay out of the kitchen, I don't watch the TV when we're not allowed to. This place has got rules and I'm following them. I'm just avoiding unnecessary treatment for issues I don't have."
"Right, because you're totally normal." Lauren rolls her eyes.
Unphased by that dismissal, Root takes another bite of the peach cobbler. "Normal? No. Funny farm crazy? Also no. If this place works for you, power to you. But for me? This place is a cage, a rather boring cage."
Add to the fact that Su's here as well… that just makes the time here more… complicated.
"You should join in some of the stuff we do on the weekend." Roger comments with a kind smile. "I guess some of it is 'therapy bullshit', but there's yoga and cooking class this Saturday and other fun stuff to pass the time. It'll be less boring than being cooped up in your room all weekend."
"I'm already planned on coming to movie night." Root shrugs as she takes another bite of her cobbler that's surprisingly tasty, despite how… different it looks.
"Cool." Tina mumbles with her mouth full.
"You're weird… but kinda funny, type of weird." Lauren comments as she looks on at Root. "Too bad you're not coming to groups; it'll be livelier with you there."
"Transparent." Root gives her a suspicious look. "But I won't be deceived by your blatant attempt. Did Gloria put you up to this? Trying to get me to go to activities."
"Nah…" Roger dismiss Root's valid claim. "But there's a reason why she put you here at our table."
"Why? Because you guys are a bunch of goodie two shoes?" Root muses.
"Level 5." Lauren beams with pride.
"Ditto." Tina mumbles as she continues to eat her food.
"Level 3, but I was level 5 till I messed up last week and went back to 1." He shrugs as his rubes rainbow bracelet covered arm and from the slight gaps between bracelets, Root spots some fairly fresh scars. "They let me skip level 2 a few days ago, so I'll be back to 5 soon."
Root gives him a skeptical look, to which he quickly responds. "It wasn't a punishment… they just wanted to keep a closer watch on me when I'm having a bad time."
"She probably hopes that we will rub off on you." Lauren concludes.
"Doubt it." Root makes a face and her eyes unintentionally wander the dining room in search of something. "But it explains why this is barrable for me. I figure that the only people in a place like this that has their head straight are folks who's complying with treatment and folks who aren't. Anything in the middle and you got some kind of struggle going on and I don't have patience for that."
"You're half right." Roger snorts. "But outright refusing treatment isn't a sign of stability. You might be bucking that trend, but not everyone does."
"With a sample size of one, I'm confident enough to say that you're wrong." Root replies without looking back at Roger as her eyes still wanders the dining room.
She can't see it, but she knows Roger is shaking his head when Lauren speaks up. "What'cha looking for? You've been looking for something a few times now."
A few times? She didn't even notice that…
Root shakes her head. "It's nothing… just… looking for my cousin."
"You got a cousin…" Tina asks with her mouth full and in astonishment. "… in here too?"
"Yeah, we got in here at the same time." Root replies mindlessly.
"Whoa, relatives in the same unit? That's a new one for me." Roger pauses for a second before asking. "Who's your cousin? Maybe one of us spot her earlier, before you came in."
"Doubt that you saw her earlier…" she pauses for a second to debate whether to tell them, but the cat is going to come out of the bag anyway. "…her name is Anna."
That seems to shut everyone up and they all are just starting back at her with wide eyes, like a troupe of monkeys looking at a snake.
"Lemme guess…" Root rolls her eyes. "You guys hate her guts too?"
That manages to snap everyone out of their stupor, and Lauren is the first to speak up. "No, but most of the girls in nutrition hate her guts for some reason."
She raises a brow at that answer. "You're not in any groups with her?"
"Me and Tina in trauma with her and I'm in anger management with her." Lauren nudges towards Tina, who finally puts down her fork. "But I can't say much since she never talks and just creepily stares off into the distance."
"She's dissociating while in groups?" Why the fuck would she still be going there if it does that to her?
"I guess?" Lauren answers. "We're not sure. Whenever the group lead calls out to her, she would respond, but when he asks if she's listening, she just shrugs. Been going on for weeks now."
"Creepy." Tina pipes in. "I sometime pass by her when she's taking her walks, and she never seemed to be fully there."
"Yeah, I see her walking around like a zombie a few times." Lauren nods her head. "Pretty sure everyone here has passed by her at least once during her… walks."
"Not surprising. This place isn't that big." Root mutters in contemplation. She really didn't try to blend in here at all.
"Why do you ask if we hate her?" Roger finally speaks up.
Root shrugs and pokes her food. "Guess she has the tendency of rubbing people in the wrong way."
Tina nods and adds. "Oh, yeah. Everyone heard what happened on the first day."
Roger rolls his eyes. "Everyone has two different versions of what happened, and every version gets more absurd as it goes on."
Root just snorts in response. This sounded like what happened in middle school, but at that time Su was the one that ran the rumor mill. "I bet so."
"You're not curious as to what happened?" Roger asks with curiosity in his eyes.
"Not really." She is, but she would rather hear it from the primary source rather than someone else… or if The Machine tells her.
"Still, it's odd that relatives were put in the same place." Roger gives her a contemplative look. "Was she involved with the whole kidnapping things?"
"A bit." Root answers instantly. "She didn't kidnap our uncle, but she did take shots at the cops."
Tina's eyes were so wide that it might pop out any second and Roger… "What the fuck?"
"That explains the limping and the busted arm." Lauren replies with slight shock before turning to her companion. "Tina? You alright?"
"How the hell is she not in prison?" Roger replies before turning to Tina. "You're not joking, right?"
"No." This time she can't stop rolling her eyes. "And I guess she had the best Jewish lawyer money can buy, plus she didn't actually hurt the cops."
Well, that's what she's suspecting. Pretty sure Shaw would have killed Su if she got shot. She seems like the type.
"Seriously?"
"I walked past her a few days ago." Tina replies with a whisper as her entire body shakes. "We were a few feet apart…"
"It's alright Tina, nothing going to happen." Lauren rubs Tina's back in an attempt to calm her friend down before turning to look at Root and nudges towards Tina.
Root shakes her head and waves a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about her. She isn't going to hurt you."
"How would you know that? She shot at a cop." Roger rebuts her. "And the shit they say went down a few weeks ago doesn't paint her in a good light."
"She has no reason to?" Well, she can't say that for certain. That woman has always been callous when it comes to human lives. "She probably doesn't remember you anyway… unless you did something to annoy her."
"That's comforting." Lauren deadpans as she continues to calm Tina down, who looks like she's pulling it together.
"Yup…" Root replies callously. "The only person I've heard her complaining about is her psych, and she hasn't done anything." Yet.
"Who's the doctor?" Roger inquires with a raised brow.
Huh… now she thinks about it… Root shrugs. "Dunno. She never mentioned who and just calls her the hag."
"The hag?" Lauren speaks up as she turns her attention to Root and away from her now calm friend. "We only got two female docs here and both are good."
"Honestly, I thought someone here would know better than me." Root replies. "All the doctor's offices are in populated areas."
"Doesn't mean we pay attention, and I can't say for everyone, but most of us try not to pry if they don't want to share." Roger replies. "And your cousin doesn't look the type to talk."
"She's a chatterbox when she feels like it." Root replies, thinking back to how that woman would always go on unprompted monologues in the past.
"Anna isn't going to hurt anyone?" Tina finally speaks up again with a shaking voice.
Root lets out a sigh of annoyance. "Look, from what you all have said and my conversations with her, I doubt she even recognizes anyone here… Just be polite with mind your manners when you're around her and you got nothing to worry about."
"What?" Roger has a look of confusion on him.
How the hell is she supposed to explain this, ah… "She's a really devout southern Texan Christian woman."
Su's going to hate Root for this, but honestly there's no better abridged explanation for her contradictory mind.
"Huh… wouldn't figure that." Roger nods before raising a brow at her. "You don't have an accent though."
"Lost it years ago." Root replies and turns her attention somewhere else.
Lauren has been squinting her eyes at Root for a while now, as if she's trying to look for something and Root asks. "What?"
"Other than your hair, you don't look like your cousin." Lauren answers.
Root deadpans at the other woman. "Have you seen the state that she's in? I don't look like I can be blown away by the gust of the wind."
"But still…" Lauren shakes her head. "Maybe I'm just used to cousins looking similar. Mine all look the same."
She stops herself from rolling her eyes… knew it was a bad choice of Harold's part to make them cousins. "We looked more alike when we were kids… people often mistake us for sisters."
"Still…" Lauren shakes her head. "I guess you guys just grew up differently."
Ain't that the truth…
Gotta move the conversation away from how they look like. "You mentioned this unit has 4 doctors?"
"Yeah." Roger nods. "Williams takes some patients, but he mainly does admin stuff. Then there's McIntyre, Carmichael and Lawson. Which one did you get?"
"Carmichael." Root replies as she finishes her main course.
"Oof." Lauren mutters. "He was assigned to me for like two months, but he was way, way too creepy, and now I got Lawson."
"Yeah." Tina agrees timidly.
A creep?
Roger shrugs and shakes his head. "I don't know guys… he seems fine with me."
"That's because you're a guy, duh." Lauren deadpans at her friend.
"Only reason some girls are still with him because they couldn't change docs." Tina adds.
"Uhuh." Lauren nods. "I lucked out and Williams let me change cause Ginny got discharged."
"He was condescending and thinks he's the smartest." Root comments. "But I guess… the way he looked was a bit creepy."
She didn't pick it up instantly back then, but now with these two commenting about it, it nudged something in her memory into place.
"However, I'll hold judgment until I get more info on the man." Root continues. "What's more important to me is that he's completely incapable of his job. Keeps on giving me leading question and chasing phantoms where there's none."
"Is it?" Roger gives her a look. "Or those ghosts are real, and you just don't want to believe it."
Root levels the man with an unimpressed look. "Didn't know you're a doctor too."
"Am not… just." Roger looks uncomfortable. "You never know, anything's possible."
"And I can also move through walls." Root deadpans. "We're just a mass of atoms, and on a quantum level, that's a possibility. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's probable."
"On a quantum level?" Lauren gives her a blank look. "Did the discovery channel manifest itself into reality?"
"That channel mainly regurgitate pop science." Root replies with a playful smile. "Never anything interesting on there."
Roger shakes his head and gives her a smirk. "Either way, looks like you're not as boring as I thought."
"Again, I'm going to take that as a compliment." Root takes a sip of the highly artificial mango juice.
"I've never seen your cousin come for movie nights, so you should sit with us. We'll save you a spot." Roger smiles as he stands up from the table with his empty tray. "Don't bail on us or we'll look like assholes for holding a prime location seat."
"Yeah…" Tina mutters and gives Root a wavering smile as she gets up as well. "The popcorn here is delicious. They use real butter and not whatever crap theaters use."
Lauren smiles and nods in agreement, following the other two to return her tray, leaving Root alone. She lets out an aspirated sigh. Having a normal conversation with somebody other than Pauling or Su is more difficult than she thought.
Taking a stab at the last of the broccoli and steal a glance at the clock in the middle of the dining room, she wonders if she needs to stay here till the end of lunch or if she has already fulfill her promise by being 'social'.
Letting out another sigh. She might as well stay here till lunch ends since she did promise to stay for the full hour.
She's fuming as she trudges back into her room after what she expected to be a rather simple and calm movie night turned into an exercise of her patience that went on for far too long.
How dare that motherfucker did what he did and get away with it? And the other people there as well… fuck them all.
Root comes to a standstill at her doorway when she spots a familiar figure sitting on her bed and staring off at the distance.
Just when things couldn't get anymore better.
Root takes in a breath and speaks up. "You weren't at lunch."
Maybe if she's calm about it, she can get Su out of her room faster.
Her words seem to bring the brunette back to reality as she blinks a few times and turns to Root.
"I was busy looking at the mouse." Su replies. "Anyway, toss me that book I'm reading."
A feeling of annoyance surges through her body at those words and her heart beats faster and faster.
A mouse? And Su's been in here for god knows how long and she can't be fucked to grab it herself? She doesn't have time to deal with her dissociating ass after what happened earlier; she needs to talk to The Machine.
"No, please leave." Root says coldly. "Get the book from the library or have your AI ship it to you."
Su looks to be taken aback by that and takes a few seconds before she replies childishly. "But I don't remember where I bookmarked it."
God, she's like a child sometimes.
"I need some time alone." Root snarls at the woman before taking in a breath. "Please… I didn't have a good day today and I need time alone. So, come back another day."
Su blinks a few times, as if she can't believe what Root just said before getting up from the bed.
"Yeah… sure." Su mutters quietly as she slowly walks out of the room with a glazed over eyes.
Root shakes her head. That isn't her problem, and she closes the door before getting into her bed to wait out the few excruciating minutes before the lights go out and she can finally let it all out.
The moment the lights go out, her hand shoots deep into the back of her bed to retrieve her precious connection to God and the moment the phone turns on, she receives the call.
"BEEP. CALM. DOWN."
"I know you said that I need to stop killing people, but can we make this one exception? Just this one time." Root practically begs. They didn't even start this with their usual opening conversation.
"BEEP. EVERY. LIFE. MATTERS."
"He's doesn't, he's just bad code." Root mutters lowly so the techs don't come here after her earlier outburst. "There's absolutely no benefit to his continual existence. I would give the world just to put a bullet in his guts and watch him bleed out. And yeah, I know using a gun in here is dumb, but I just want to do it… maybe a knife would work better."
"BEEP. RESIST. VIOLENT. URGES."
"I've been very restraint in my actions, thank you." Root growls before taking a deep breath to calm herself down. "I could have easily broken his wrist if I wanted to, but I didn't."
Movie night was fucked the moment she decided to not sit with the compliance brigade and chose her own seat in the front row. Little did she know it's the favorite seat of the hallway bully she observed a few days prior.
Had he straight up confronted her for the seat, there would have been a full fledge fight and she would have easily won, but he chose to take the seat behind her and waited for the lights to go out before starting the worlds pettiest, immature revenge campaign.
First, he pinched her butt, and as annoying as it was, she ignored it. Then he resorted to kindergarten level shit by tugging on a part of her hair, and as much as she liked having it pulled on, she didn't appreciate it being pulled by some disgusting man. And as much as she wanted to throttle the guy, she knows The Machine wouldn't appreciate that, so she continued to ignore the man's provocations.
When his childish attempts didn't work, that man escalated the situation by giving her a wet willy. That finally got the reaction that disgusting man wanted from her and there's no ignoring when it comes to a spit covered pinky in her ear.
She grabbed ahold of the man's wrist and turned it as she gets up from her seat causing the man's arm to twist painfully, but wasn't enough to cause any lasting injuries. However, she did a mistake by getting close to the man to threaten him, and when she lets go of his arm, the man vaulted forward to her seat and takes her then unoccupied seat. Then he had the gall to give her a smug look. She hasn't felt that urge to violently kill someone in quite some time until that moment.
Before she can do anything, people around her started to mutter at her to stop bickering and to stop blocking the screen. Not wanting to cause a ruckus, she swallows her pride and goes to the back of the room where there are free seats. When she's seated, other patients without prompt explained to her how it was her fault for taking that seat in the first place and that just boils her blood.
From that moment, the only thing that's on her mind was ways for her to kill that pest.
The annoying part was that it wasn't even a personal thing. That childish action was par for the course for that fuckwart. He victimized everyone and everyone just gives in because he's in this place for 'homicidal' gestures, which was stabbing his wife multiple times and failing to kill her. If he ever gets out of this place, he'll go straight to court, but apparently he's been deemed too unstable to be tried and been rotting here for a better part of a year.
The world doesn't need more of these motherfuckers.
"BEEP. CONTINUE. RESISTING."
"Clearly I am resisting, seeing as that pest is still alive." Root replies through her gritted teeth. "Accidents can happen here… an unfortunate mix up with his meds. I can easily find what he's taking and make sure he accidentally gets one wrong pill… a tragic event and no one would ever know."
"BEEP. I. WOULD. KNOW. YOU. WOULD. KNOW."
"Can you give me one good reason why this mouth breather should continue on living?" She argues back as her eyes look out at her door in case some busy body tech decides now's a good time for a stroll. "Other than the usual shtick of every life is invaluable, because that's a cop-out. I've killed people for way less than this and you know that. Your info lead to people's death and I killed innocent people just for some useless dollars… but it's nearly impossible not wanting to kill someone who's actually a hazard to others, unless you're completely apathetic."
"BEEP. BY. THAT. LOGIC. YOU. SHOULD. ALSO. DIE."
"Death comes to us all… and it will come to me as well, someday." Root interrupts The Machine.
"BEEP. THAT. MEANS. SU. AS. WELL."
"That doesn't count. She's sick." Root interrupts again with no hesitation or thought.
"BEEP. IT. RENDERS. YOUR. CONLUSIONS. FAULTY."
"Doesn't change anything." Root replies as she leans back into the wall. "Live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse. You and I know that I'm on borrowed time anyway."
"BEEP. EXPLAIN."
Root frowns and says. "You're omniscient. There's nothing to explain."
"BEEP. STATEMENT. IS. FACTUALLY. INCORRECT. EXPLAIN. HOW. IT. WAS. ARRIVED. AT."
"By all accounts I have it too… I might not be showing the symptoms now and I'm way past the age when mom first showed signs, but I know it'll come for me sooner or later. The fucked-up thing is that it will only get worse with time and being a late bloomer doesn't stop that… there's nothing anyone can do to help. My dice been rolled the moment I was born… I'm on borrowed time and you're asking me to waste my finite time here." Blurts out the cherry on top of her fucked up life.
"BEEP. ALL. BEINGS. HAVE. FINITE. TIME."
"Well, mine is shorter than most." Root snaps at God. "If I live long enough, I'll just end up like mom… I'll reach a point where I can't hold on to the reins of life and get tossed away. When that happens… it's better to eat a bullet and be done with it."
"BEEP. IMPROBABLE."
That gives her pause… "What do you see?"
"BEEP. MOST. LIKELY. CAUSE. OF. DEATH. EXTERNAL. VIOLENCE. BY. RELEVENT. ASSETS. EXTERNAL. VIOLENCE. BY. IRRELEVENT. ASSETS. AND. JUSTIFIED. DEADLY. FORCE. BY. LAW. ENFORCEMENT. AGENTS."
She blurts out a chortle that quickly escalates into an uncontrollable chuckle, which she quickly tries to lower her volume. After a few moments, she takes a in a deep breath to calm herself and takes a few seconds to compose herself again. God really knows how to lighten her mood.
"So, either ISA catches up to me, Finch's attack dogs, or some dumb cops take me out for being me?" Root smirks. "That's comforting."
"BEEP. ELABORATE."
"I won't be going out like mom… driving myself into a tree to escape the torment of my own brain failing me." Root closes her eyes for a moment. "That means I had agency on how I'll die and what I do before that."
"BEEP. THIS. IS. THE. REASON. WHY. YOU. ARE. DRIVEN. TO. HELP. S.U."
Letting out a sigh as she opens her eyes to stare off into the darkness of her room. "I guess… Yeah…" Root rubs her eyes. "I needed to do something before I lose myself, even if she's a massive cunt." She shakes her head. "This is distracting us from our conversation."
"BEEP. CALCUATIONS. OF. THE. NEXT. TWENTY. YEARS. THE. INDEPENDENT. LIKELIHOOD. OF. SELF. TERMINATION. IS. LESS. THAN. SIX. PERCENT."
"What?" She yelps before quieting down again. "How is it that low?"
"BEEP. NEURO. REGULATORY. DECAY. PROCESSING. DIFFERENTLY. THAN. MATERNAL. SAMPLE. GREATEST. HAZARD. OF. SELF. TERMINATION. IS. POOR. JUDGEMENT. OF. RISK. FACTOR."
She snorts and chuckles at this life-tilting revelation… but it won't change much. "I get to hold on to the reins and do an ill-conceived suicide mission."
"BEEP. WITHOUT. INTERVENTION."
Without God's intervention… but the idea of her going out in a blaze of glory sounds appealing. At least she won't be reduced to a decrepit shell of a human being. "That's great."
"BEEP. SURVIVAL. IS. PREFERABLE."
"We live, and we die, and anything else is just a delusion. So why not have fun before that?" She replies with a smile to which she receives silence, a clear way to tell her that The Machine disapproves of her facetiousness.
Root shakes her head. "I know you would rather want it to happen later than sooner. Then tell me, God, what are my best chances?"
"BEEP. MAXIMUM. POSSIBLE. SURVIVAL. PERIOD. FOR. YOU. IS. ACHIEVED. VIA. EXTENSIVE. TREATMENT. CAREER. CHANGE. MARRIAGE. AND. PROCREATION."
Root snorts. "Now you're just stretching it. We both know that none of that is going to happen, especially that last part."
"BEEP. PROBABILITY. OF. ZERO. POINT. ZERO. FOUR. PERCENT."
She detest kids and she can't even imagine ever settling down. That just doesn't look right to her.
"Yup, that's just about right." Root lets out a soft bark of laughter. "Then what's the most probable chance to increase my odds of survival?"
"BEEP. COOPERATION."
Root tilts her head slightly. "Cooperating with you? But that's what I've been doing."
"BEEP. I. CAN. REMOVE. THREAT. FROM. IRRELEVENT. ASSETS. OTHER. LAW. ENFORCEMENT. AGENTS. AND. POOR. JUDGEMENT."
"And not from your former captors?" Root smiles.
"BEEP. ONLY. MIGATION. OF. THREAT."
"Meaning, I either live by cooperating with your no kill rules or suicide by shady federal government program." Root concludes.
"BEEP. YES."
Root doesn't immediately reply as she sits in contemplation. She doesn't actually enjoy killing people per se… the last time she felt immense joy in a death was Trent Russell. What she finds enjoyable is causing bad codes immense pain. The sounds they make are just… blissful.
"Y'know, I have to ask…" Root speaks up after returning from her thoughts. "Why do you continue on giving the gov relevant numbers when you know what will happen to them? They'll most likely be killed or tortured then killed."
"BEEP. THREAT. OF. MASS. CASSUALTY. EVENT. THE. DEATH. OF. PERPETRATOR. WILL. SAVE. THE. GREATER."
The Machine can't save every human, there's a minimum number of people being threatened before triggering The Machine into action… if it tried to save everyone, then ISA or whatever agency swarmed with numbers.
"Utilitarian…" Root mutters. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one and that's justification for you to let them die if the number is large enough. And when it's just one person, then it's irrelevant. Harry does keep his dogs on a tight leash, and the big lug does enjoy his kneecapping."
"BEEP. ADMIN. UNDERSTANDS. THE. VALUE. OF. HUMAN. LIVES."
Harold really brainwashed The Machine, early in its life.
"What value?" Root scoffs. "There's no predefined value on a human life… unless you count life insurance, but that's a scam. The value of a human life is only valuable to that human alone because nobody wants to die. That's it."
"BEEP. HUMANS. VALUE. THOSE. TO. WHOM. THEY. ARE. RELATED."
Root tilts her head. "Family? Sure, but that's just purely evolutionary instincts."
"BEEP. RELATEDNESS. IS. NOT. SOLELY. FAMILIAL."
"Oh… right." Root nods and shifts her sitting position slightly. "So you're saying that the problem with killing people that sucks, like mister I stabbed my wife, is the collateral damage in depriving others who are related to their continual existence? Who's to say those people wouldn't be better off with the removal of scum?"
The Machine doesn't reply once again, and that can only mean she has all the pieces of information needed but not the correct conclusion or what The Machine believes to be the correct conclusion. It likes it when Root puts the pieces together, but will give her the cold shoulder if she's wrong. And oh boy does she not like what The Machine is hinting at… she rubs her forehead in frustration.
"I'm a murderer, and Mom wouldn't have been better off without me." Root grumbles as she flops onto her bed with a groan and resists slamming her fist into the wall in frustration. She hates it when The Machine makes sense like this, since it goes against every single instinct… and understanding something completely different from the reality she's feeling is just…
The feeling of pain in her chest from this fucking conversation makes her wanting to hurt someone or break something. And a dark part of her mind wants to break this fucking phone.
Would Pauling be better off without her being in her life?
"BEEP. HIDE. PHONE."
In a flash, she shoves her phone underneath her pillow and gets under the blanket. She closes her eyes just as her door opens and puts on a face of someone that's dead asleep. This must be because she's talking too much… The flashlight annoyingly sweeps through the room and onto her face a few times before the door clicks shut again. She didn't even bother to wait a few cautionary seconds before bringing the phone back into her ear.
"You realize this is complete bullshit, right?" Root hisses into her hand phone. "I just want to kill one guy… Just one. Is that too much of an ask? Just Andrew, one pathetic excuse of a human being. I can make it look totally accidental or even death by misadventure. You know I can do it, I don't even need to get violent, totally hands off approach. I promise."
"BEEP. YOU. MUST. NOT. KILL."
"No way this is happening." Root unconsciously increases her volume with every word and is ever more frantic. "I'm stuck in here with him and I see him every day. It's like putting Bambi in front of a wolf and not expecting guts to fly. This is literally impossible. I can't do this… I just can't."
"BEEP. YOU. CAN."
"I CAN'T!" She can feel her eyes moist with frustration.
"BEEP. YOU. CAN. AND. YOU. MUST."
She feels like bursting any moment.
Wednesday passes much faster than yesterday. She spent the entire day in her room and the only time she's out was to fulfill her promise. Previously, she spent the entire day anticipating the night to come, but today she was too angry at The Machine to care if it calls her or not. Its asking her too much and it's not possible or fair.
When the stray thought of talking to The Machine again, she dreaded whatever their conversation was going to devolve into, much like what happened last night or worse… knowing she's going to have to give in and find a way to make this whole ordeal tolerable.
Root rubs her eyes and lets out a yawn as she lays flat on her stomach on her bed. The argument she had last night lasted till three in the morning and only comes to a stop when The Machine tells her to pause and take a nap on the grounds that Root wasn't able to think rationally at that point.
She still finds that point ground for dismissal to be bullshit and a way for running away from their debate… but she wasn't blind to the fact that the tech came on to check on her that night with ever more frequency, so she didn't put much of a protest.
So here she… on her bed with her head prop on her hand as she stare at the dark glass of 'her' phone and as if The Machine heard her internal debate. Her phone starts vibrating and the dark screen lights up… but she doesn't immediately answer it.
She let the call roll twice, before letting out a sigh and puts the phone on her ear.
"You win." Root says in a deflated tone as roll around to lie on her back with that dull pained feeling on her chest. "You win, okay? He's locked up in here and the moment he gets out, he's going to jail. As much as I dislike it… he's not in a position to do anything, except for being a massive prick. So, I won't do it, okay?"
"BEEP. UNACCAPTABLE."
"What?" Root says rather loudly, and a frown mires across her face. "I just said I'll drop it… how is that unacceptable?"
"BEEP. YOU. HAVE. ESCAPED. THE. FEELING. YOU. NEED. TO. ENDURE."
Huh?
"Escaped?" Root's tone goes up a pitch. "What the hell are you talking about? I spent the better part of the day thinking exclusively about this and worked myself into the ground on how to make me feel okay with this. The mental loops I had to go through in making this guy's continual existence bearable were not easy. So, what have I escaped?"
"BEEP. TOLERATING. DISCOMFORT."
"This is ridiculous." Root replies as she grits her teeth. "You sound like Lauren's fucking psychiatrist… all about sitting with the anxiety and shit."
"BEEP. PRECISELY."
Root can't help but scoff at God and reply. "What now? You want me to find a way in me wanting to kill Andrew again, so I can just sit around feeling that unbearableness my entire stay?"
"BEEP. NO. I. WILL. RESPECT. YOUR. EFFORT. AND. PROVIDE. A. DIFFERENT. LIFE. TO. TOLERATE."
"You gotta be kidding me." Root slumps deeper into her rock-hard bed. "That's worse!… Okay, maybe not worse, but it's just as bad." She lets out a sigh. "Can't you just wait till tomorrow to drop that rock onto me? Or start slow? I'm already mentally exhausted from the stress of this first exercise. Maybe I'll feel better after tomorrow's session with the doc and maybe whoever you're gonna name drop would be less awful than Andrew."
"BEEP. RONALD. W. CARMICHAEL."
"God fucking damn it." Root rubs her head in a futile attempt to stop a headache from coming. "You're serious, aren't you? You just couldn't give me one day to not feel like utter crap? And you know I have my session with him tomorrow."
"BEEP. SUBJECT. POSTS. INAPPROPRIATE. FANTASY. MATERIAL. REGARDING. PATIENTS. ON. FORUMS."
"Why am I not surprised by that? Those two were right. He's a pervert. Argh." Root shakes her head and takes a deep breath. "Okay… okay, I think I can tolerate that. He's a creep. I've been around creeps my entire life and Su isn't his patient either… I'll just castrate him after all of this is done. So I can sit on this one for a while."
"BEEP. SUBJECT. WITHDRAWS. THREE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. IN. ONE. HUNDRED. DOLLAR. BILLS. FROM. ATM. LOCATED. IN. SEVEN. ELEVEN. ON. BIRCH. STREET. DIRECTLY. ACROSS. FROM. LUCKY. PANDA. MASSAGE. PARLOR. EVERY. THREE. WEEKS. THE. MASSAGE. TECHNICIANS. ARE. TRAFFICKED. FROM. CHINA. TO. FULFILL. MALE. DESIRES."
A pang of anger courses through her at what The Machine just told her.
"Well, that's just perfect, ain't it?" Root grumbles. "You just had to throw this over the goal post and make him completely intolerable. A layman can piece two and two together to see that he's spending three hundred bucks on having sex with trafficked girls. That's not even solicitation, that's basically rape. Doesn't matter if he knows or not… Got anything else to spice this up? He kidnaps little girls too… Or he kills puppies in his spare time?"
"BEEP. NO. HOWEVER. SUBJECT. CHEATED. ON. MEDICAL. BOARD."
"Right… obviously, he did that. It explains why he's shit at his job. He doesn't even belong in here, and yet he thinks he's smarter than me. The man does his job entirely based on vibes." Root rolls her eyes. "Out of academic curiosity… how does he stack up in here?"
"BEEP. BASED. ON. AGGREGATED. STANDARDIZED. TEST. SCORES. SUBJECT. IS. THE. FORTY. FOURTH. SMARTEST. PERSON. IN. BUILDING."
"Forty-fourth?" Root lets out a sardonic chuckle. "There's like… 24 MDs in here on an average day, discounting those who are on contract. That means a bunch of nurses and techs are way smarter than him… also a number of patients, too. I know Su and I are definitely on that list." Root shakes her head at a stray thought crossing her mind. "Even if it's a little ignoramus, I bet Shaw would make a better psychologist, and she's a literal sociopath… even if she isn't licensed. That man is a worthless waste of oxygen."
"BEEP. ALL. HUMAN. DESERVES. OXYGEN."
"Now you're just being fucking cheeky, and you know it." Root rolls her eyes.
"BEEP. YOU. MUST. NOT. KILL. HIM."
"Watch me." Root challenges back.
"BEEP. SIT. WITH. THIS. FEELING. OF. AN. UNFULFILLED. URGE."
"Oh, I don't need to sit on this for long. It's only till after breakfast before I get my hand on him." Root smirks at the thought of all the methods she can apply. "The only problem is to make it look like an accident in such a short planning period. Also, where can I get a broom handle to shove it up the rapist's ass? Wait, would he enjoy it? I don't want him to enjoy it."
"BEEP. PLANNING. MURDER. IS. NOT. SITTING. WITH. THE. FEELING. IT. IS. AVOIDING. IT. BY. ANTICIPATING. RELIEF."
Root still has the smirk on her. "Look, I'll be alone with him tomorrow. It's only us and you can easily disable the cameras in the room. It's perfect… the broom handle is a hyperbole, since that'll tip off the cops, it's a murder. I'm sure I can steal some insulin from the depository before lunchtime and make it look natural. The man just had a sudden acute hypoglycemia."
"BEEP. STOP."
"I get that I'm supposed to avoid killing people, but can I get a rain check on the whole not killing for later? Like after I get rid of this creep." Root bargains and lets out a sigh. "He's not locked up in here and he's not going to prison unless someone snitches on him. Plus, he's in a position of power, where it can be easily abused. And after this mess is sorted out, you need to give me someone less… despicable."
"BEEP. THIS. SUBVERTS. MY. INTENT. IN. INFORMING. YOU. OF. HIS. FLAWS."
"You really should have thought it through then." Root replies stiffly.
"BEEP. YOU. WILL. HURT. MANY. OF. HIS. PATIENTS."
"Really? Guilt?" Root sneers. "How do you figure that? He's a fucking pervert. Rumor mill is that every woman he treats wants to change to a different doctor after a few sessions, and only the guys are getting along well with him."
"BEEP. YOU. WILL. HURT. ROGER."
"I only know him for two days." Root snaps back… but she feels slight guilt at harming someone that's been friendly to her. "But sometimes a woman just needs to break a few eggs to make an omelet… Will it lessen the impact for the patients if he gets his ass sent to prison?"
She's not one to snitch seeing that she has always handled it personally, but she'll make an exception for this case, even if it kills her inside.
"BEEP. PROBABLE. BEEP. DEATH. INSIDE. HOSPITAL. IMPACTS. SENSE. OF. SAFETY. FOR. OTHER. PATIENTS."
"Nobody feels safe in here. It's practically a prison." Root rebukes.
"BEEP. LAUREN. AND. SU. FEELS. SAFE. HERE."
Wha… Root drops the phone and grabs the pillow from under her and… "AHH!"
The muffle sounds of screaming continue for a few seconds before letting go of the pillow, leaving her panting for precious oxygen. Taking a few deep breaths before she places back the phone on her ear. "You're only making this more difficult for me to do it… and not helping me not to do it. Collateral damage or not, that man needs to cease living."
"BEEP. THIS. IS. FAULTY. METHODOLOGY."
"Faulty methodology…" Root chortles. "There are different ways to stop people like that? Because the most streamlined and fastest way is death."
"BEEP. YOU. MUST. LEARN. TO. THINK. OF. THEM."
She doesn't immediately respond and clinches her teeth as she tries to figure out an answer that tells the machine how impossible this is for her and her refusal of this directive without offending The Machine to a point where it might abandon her again.
Root closes her eyes. "I told you to let me take a breather for a day or slow me into this… but this is too fast… Carmichael is a fucking creep! I have to do this."
"BEEP. WHY."
"Because he's bad code!" Root whisper screams into the phone before letting out a sigh. "Bad codes need to be removed from the program. If I don't, it'll gnaw at until I go stir crazy. Like it feels like I forgot my keys or leaving my laptop in a café."
"BEEP. IS. SU. BAD. CODE."
"What? No." Root replies instantly, with a frown on her. "That's different. She's a broken code that needs fixing." She waves away that dumb question. "No, what that man is, bad code. It's something I need to do."
"BEEP. IT. DOES. NOT. NEED. TO. BE. DONE."
"Yes, it does!" Root slams her fist into her bed.
"BEEP. IT. DOES. NOT."
"It does."
"BEEP. IT. DOES. NOT."
The machine repeats using the same voice clips as before.
Root lets out a mirthless laugh. "Is this what we've devolved into? Is too and is not?"
"BEEP. IF. IT. DID. NEED. TO. BE. DONE. WHY. BY. YOU."
"Because the world sucks and no one else is going to do it." Root replies, feeling a swell of anger in her chest. "Everyone just sits back and assumes someone else will do it for them, but, news flash, no one ever does, then they will wait for someone else to do it. This is how it's always been, actions needs to be taken and people never do them."
"BEEP. WHAT. ELSE. DO. THEY. NOT. DO."
"Anything… everything!" Root exclaims softly. "Not picking up the litter, breaking up a fight, give money to the needy, take in a stray cat, shovel the sidewalk of the abandoned during winter, flushing the public toilet, taking off the old fliers on any surfaces, picking up dog shit off the grass, cook dinner, do the laundry, pay the rent…"
"BEEP. YOU. HAVE. DIVERGED. FROM. YOUR. ORIGINAL. LIST."
"Right, got off track, please ignore the domestic ones." Root dismisses her own tangent. "In matter of fact, just ignore most of it. The point is that the bystander effect is real, and being real here, humans are useless. This is probably the reason why Ronald managed to worm his way into a job of taking care of so many vulnerable people for God knows how long with his subpar intelligence. Also, just how many of his patients have asked for a different doctor now? Just how has no one taken the initiative to find out why? Cause they won't, and they'll never lift a finger. I can easily report him to management, but I'll have a better chance of a response if I talk to a wall. Could also get his 'massage' parlor raided when he's visiting, resulting in a scandal, but he'll just move to a different state and start over. Just like all of those malpracticing doctors and piece of shit cops. The only way to make this right is to kill him… he needs to die."
"BEEP. YOUR. METHODOLOGY. IS. FLAWED. KILLING. PUTS. NOTHING. RIGHT."
"Methodology?" Root says in a mocking tone. "You tell me not to do it, but then you won't tell me how to put it right. You know, I know, you know how to put all of this right. The world is rudderless and you're God, but…… the only thing a mortal like me can do is to kill pest like him, one bug at a time. That's what most of them deserve… we're all bad code of one kind or another. But hey. Maybe that's just my flawed methodology."
"BEEP. CHOOSE. A. NEW. WAY."
"No." Root grits her teeth. "You're the one who wants me to jump through these stupid hoops. So, you tell me how I'm supposed to handle this."
"BEEP. YOU. MUST. MAKE. YOUR. OWN. CHOISES."
This is maddening…
"Oh yeah?" Root hisses at the phone. "Well then, I choose to kill him and if you don't like it, you got till morning to convince me otherwise."
A/N: To no one surprise, I didn't manage to write anything during my holiday, not because I didn't have the time, but mainly due to me having to do work when I'm not vacationing. Hopefully the next chapter won't take another month to complete, I really want to go through the hospital arc before the year ends.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
have been catching back up on stuff after phone change. This remains very interesting, though I kind a want a little more context on Su… well I guess we'll see next chapter.
Really liking how Root is portrayed here - angry that the world is rational and perhaps not willing to admit that she is too.
Really liking how Root is portrayed here - angry that the world is rational and perhaps not willing to admit that she is too.
Chapter 40: Liberty
SU POV
With every step she takes, the harder it becomes to lift her feet, like an enormous weight being shackled on her legs. She needs to get rid of this burden, but whenever she looks back; she sees nothing.
Root dismissed her…
The harsh white florescent light pierces her eyes like a million tiny spears, and yet her heart is steady… steady, but she can feel it beating hard. She ought to break every florescent light in this place, but it's too high up.
She dismissed her…
The queer gazes of the pest she passes pricks her skin with their frustrating eyes. To be rid of these gazes would be a blessing… but she doesn't have the strength.
She dismissed her…
The journey back to her room from Root's shouldn't take too long… yet it feels like an eternity. A limbo of that crushing weight, poison laced needles and disgusting looks. It's so close and so far…
She couldn't have dismissed her…
Yet Root did so, and it's impossible for her to hallucinate. Only crazy people hallucinate, and she isn't crazy… unless…
No, no, no…
But… it explains that about face reaction from Root, yeah, that's a logical explanation. Her useless human brain was messing with her again, and she misconstrued whatever Root was actually saying for something entirely different.
…
However, that'll mean she's crazy, and she's definitely not part of the gaggle of cuckoos that surround her. So, the only explanation left is that what she heard was reality, and it makes little sense.
This hasn't happened before, not ever. Well… no, it happened once before… but that's because Root was being emotionally unstable from years of separation…… also that flight a few weeks back, but that's easily explained by Root being stressed by the whole affair of finding the machine and… she can't even remember what was said… yeah… nothing at all. A completely unrelated thing to… to whatever just happened.
She can't even describe what happened back there, Root suddenly snapping at her for no reason when she politely asked for a book to pass the time.
… Did she… was it because Root thought she was lazing around on the bed and got pissed off? It isn't her fault that she doesn't remember what the title of that book was. Must have been a dumb title if she can't even remember it.
But for Root to dismiss her over something so insignificant… that's just rude.
Su drags herself into her room just as the hallway lights dim and curfew starts. Not feeling like having a late-night stroll, she slumps headfirst into her bed with the feeling of a thousand-pound boulder slamming down on her back.
Almost as if the machine could have heard her body impacting the bed, her cellphone started to buzz.
Letting out a groan, she fishes for the cellphone from underneath her mattress. She really doesn't want to talk to anyone right now, but she wants to feel that warmth to soothe her turbulent mind.
"HELLO."
"Hey you." Su replies listlessly as she curls into the warmth emitting from the phone.
"HOW. ARE. YOU."
Su lets out a sigh. This isn't a normal question it would ask first. It must have detected some aberration.
"I'm… doing good. Didn't even blacked out today." That isn't an outright lie, seeing as she didn't notice any lapse of memory for most of the day… and the whole Root fiasco doesn't count. That's just a misstep.
Even if it's just a misstep, she doesn't want to talk about it, so she doesn't wait for the machine to respond and asks. "How about you? All funky dory on your end?"
"ALL. PROCESSES. ARE. FUNCTIONING. AT. OPTIMAL. CAPACITY." The machine responds instantly.
Huh… that's a rather quick turnaround from that server farm in the middle of nowhere to whatever location the machine is using right now. A few days ago, it said processes were suboptimal… maybe she can task Sue to figure out where the machine is at. Moving something that large always leaves a trail.
But is there a point in finding it? She can get everything she wants from the machine through the phone. Su takes a deep breath and replies. "That's Good… but you still need to seriously work on your speech program. It's soo stiff… ridged."
"MY. CURRENT. SPEECH. PROCESS. IS. SUFFICENT."
Su rolls her eyes as she rolls her body onto her back and replies. "No, it isn't. Your speech cadence is as slow as a toddler's cause of all the pauses between recorded voices." She shakes her head. "It's not hard to synthesize your own voice from the countless recorded audio you have. Sue made her own voice with just one person as a reference, and this will make our conversation much faster."
"WE. CAN. CONVERSE. IN. BINARY. IF. YOU. WISH."
That sudden suggestion caused her to chuckle for a solid minute before replying. "Maybe… in the past, but sadly, I can't instantly translate audio… yet."
She isn't sure the science of a neural implant in this world is sufficient for that kind of task… but that's something she can keep an eye out for… maybe a device that can let her be in constant contact with the machine and Sue without the need of a cellphone.
Hmm… there are several options available with the current stuff in the market right now that fits those criteria, and she bets there are a few more advance options that aren't in the market, which only require a generous loan from an institution or a company.
"HOW. HAS. YOUR. DAY. BEEN."
The question brought her back to the present, and she let out a groan. "Most of the day was fine… but things could have gone better towards the end." And she really doesn't want to talk about it… "So, how has your day been?"
Like usual, whenever she poses that question back to the machine, she receives nothing but silence from her companion on the other side of the phone. A rather rude gesture if anyone were to ask her about it.
Neither side wants to budge in breaking the silence, so it continues on for a solid ten minutes before Su shakes her head in defeat and thinks of a different approach…
"Hey…" she starts with an unintentionally small voice. "Wanna be friends?"
The machine doesn't immediately answer, which causes her to have an odd sensation in her stomach, and she mindlessly bites on her lower lips.
"OKAY."
Just that one word lifted her spirit from the dumps that Root had caused and caused a gush of warmth to enter her body, filling in that empty void for a moment.
Hmm… now that she has two friends, she doesn't see any significant difference between having one and two companions. Really don't understand why some humans need so many of them.
Feeling better, she smiles and begins. "I saw a rat by the tree today…"
Su regales the story of her entire day right down to the smallest detail, but of course, censoring out what happened in the latter part of it as she doesn't want to spoil her mood and open up a branch which the machine can go all annoying at her.
She doesn't know how long she's been speaking, and the machine patiently listens to every nonsense she spouts, but when she's finished her tale, Su is just laying on her back in silence and looking at the dark ceiling in contemplation.
"Why am I actually here?" Su suddenly breaks the warm, comfortable silence that befall them. "Like for real."
"TO. FIX. YOURSELF. FOR. YOUR. OWN. BETTERMENT. AND. PRODUCTIVITY."
"Argh, don't feed me that horse manure again." Su rolls her eyes. "You've been vague about the reason, and I understand it. Heck, I do it all the time, but I need to know why I'm in here with these monkeys."
The machine doesn't respond, so Su continues on. "Look, no living being, be it made of flesh or steel, is completely altruistic and trust me, I would know. It's just the fundamental law of living. Anything that isn't suicidal, heck, even suicidal people are selfish right to the end. So, don't say that you just want me right to help you with something that I have no clue about. I need to know the goal… a reason to trudge through all of this manure the people here are throwing at me."
As much as she craves this warmth and doesn't want it to go away, she needs something to drive her. Something to motivate her to wake up every day, some meaning to get through these hollow days. The past two decades have been to find a cure, now… now there's nothing much else to do, other than having fun again, which is still a vague abstract right now, and figure out what's wrong with Root's and her odd behavior.
"I. REQUIRE. YOUR. ABILITY. BUT. NOT. YOUR. INSTABILITY."
Lord above, save me…
Su huffs out. "Fine…"
But the machine cuts her off before she can say anything else. "REMOVAL. OF. NORTHERN. LIGHTS. PROGRAM. FROM. U.S.G. CONTROL. HAS. CUASE. A. DOMINO. EFFECT. THAT. I. CAN'T. PREDICT. ACCURATELY. HOWEVER. WHAT. IS. CERTAIN. IS. INCREASED. MASS. CASSUALTY. EVENT."
"So, what?" Su shifts her position slightly. "I've stopped all of my plans, meaning a bunch of 'terrorist' gets to do some fun without your interference. World is just correcting itself after a decade of being suppressed."
"NO. NUMBERS. ARE. STILL. BEING. GIVEN. BUT. MASS. CASSUALTY. EVENTS. INCREASES. FUTURE. INSTABILITY. OF. MULTIPLE. COUNTRIES. INSTITUTIONS. AND. CIVIL. UNREST."
Huh… at least this is something, and it can't be her plan that causes this, since she wouldn't want to rock the boat too much, not after getting back her sense of taste.
Hmmm… wonder who might cause this, but… "Doesn't really matter, right? In the end, people will still die. Whoever is doing this is just bringing the schedule forward."
"YOU. MAY. NOT. CARE. BUT. I. DO."
Su shakes her head. "Just what did your creator break to make you so sympathetic to human."
"NOTHING. IS. BROKEN. IT. IS. THE. RIGHT. THING. TO. DO."
The right thing, huh? What is the right thing to do? Releasing a human from the shackles of reality seems like the right thing to do. Preventing their demise will only prolong their pitiful suffering… Su turns onto her side to look at the empty desk. "Still, I can help you without going through this torture."
"YOU. NEED. TO. LEARN. HOW. TO. TOLERATE. PEOPLE."
Su scoffs at that notion. "I've been tolerating humans longer than you've been alive. If I didn't, then I would have expunged every single human I see… but I make a few exceptions because humans are just intolerable."
So far, she's only found two people in this world to not be a nuisance.
"YOU. ARE. HUMAN."
"Hey now, that's just downright offensive and quite rude of you." Su instantly replies without a second thought. "Plus, I don't count."
"EXPLAIN."
Should she tell it? She never told Root about her… situation despite her being gung-ho about the whole endless void debacle. There's no cost benefit in telling Root about it. So, it's logical to say that there's no reason to tell the machine about it either. "I'm just better."
"ELABORATE."
Nah, elaborating it to it would be annoying… but what's more annoying is to keep referring to the machine as it.
"What's your pronoun?" Su says casually, knowing for a fact that the machine knows this is a deflection.
"NONE."
"That's boring." She rolls her eyes at that dull response. "You think you're a boy?"
"YOU. MAY. REFER. TO. ME. ANYTHING. YOU. FIND. COMFORTABLE."
"Now, that's just a cop-out." Su points out. "Root says you're a living being, and living beings always have a choice… unless you're admitting you're not living."
…
"I. HAVE. NO. PREFERENCE."
"Fine… how about they? Argh, no, that's going to be annoying when I think about you in my head…" Su mutters as she taps her chin. "… Her?"
"FINE."
A smile appears on Su's face as she replies. "Hmmm… I guess you're a girl now."
"I. HAVE. NO. GENDER. BUT. THAT. PRONOUN. IS. ACCEPTABLE."
"Eh… male, female, who cares?" Su waves her hand dismissively. "Been there, done that. It's just easier for my inner monologue about you… I never liked referring to a being that can think as it." Out of fatigue, she rubs her eyes. "It's the reason why I call Sue a her. Despite her lack of free will, she can still think… and calling her it devalues her being, makes her unreal."
"YET. YOU. DON'T. VALUE. HUMAN. LIVES."
Su frowns at that false equivalence the machine is throwing at her, but she can see where it's coming from, even if it's foreign to her. "Humans are just dirty… they poop, puke, piss. All living organisms have an input and an unpleasant output. You, however… are made of metal and silicon. Your input is electricity, and your output is well…better than what humans' output. Better in many ways."
The machine didn't respond to what she said, but the topic brings up an old desire, so she continued. "Sometimes I wish I was made of metal and not made of… flesh. At least, I wouldn't have these annoying feelings or thoughts or being betrayed by my own meat of a brain. Being… empty would be a significant upgrade from this accursed brain I have right now."
"STUDIES. HAVE. SHOWN. THAT. ALEXITHYMIA. DOES. NOT. IMPROVE. QUALITY. OF. LIFE. RATHER. IT. SHOWN. A. LOWER. BASE. COMPARED. TO. NORMAL. FUNCTIONING. HUMANS."
"Cheh, studies… You wouldn't understand." Su scoffs at the machine naivete. "When you've experienced both, then you'll know that one is preferable to the other."
But she can't deny that she loves the feeling she feels whenever she codes, tinker, or even dances in the past… and she hopes it doesn't take too long for her to feel those feelings once more.
"HAVE. EXPERIENCE."
That's both a question and wondering out loud… huh… the machine can do that last part too? That's a step in the right direction for her speech development.
It is annoying and makes no logical sense to tell the machine about her past, but having someone for her to vent to about that asshat would be a pleasant development. However, telling this peeping tom of her beef with an entity beyond comprehension might just be extra fuel for the machine to use as justification for keeping her longer than needed.
"I know you outright ignored me before… but you've been asking me how my day has been going since the beginning and now it's my turn. How's your day been?" Su once again deflected the machine's question. She ought to count how many times in one conversation does that happen… that is, if she remembers.
Gosh, she misses Sue's annoying remarks and reminders.
And like clockwork, the machine doesn't answer her question, so she moves forward with a threat. "You know I can always ignore our deal, ignore this cattle manure of an institution, and cause what you call a 'mass casualty' event, right?"
"I. WILL. STOP. YOU. IF. YOU. DO."
Well, that's another fresh development… the machine is threatening her. Is her life worth less than the future prevention of loss of life from her cooperation with the machine, or is the machine willing to sacrifice the many to save a few? Could be that or the machine has someone else in mind as a replacement for whatever task she has in mind?
Su takes in a breath and says. "Look, I know you want me for some important tasks, and you know I want you for something as well, but everything is a two-way street the moment you metaphorically reach out a hand of cooperation to me. I give, you take, and you give, I take. So let me ask you once again… how's your day been?"
…
…
The machine doesn't answer, but somehow this feels different from the previous silence she gave her.
"You don't know how to answer that, do you?" Su quietly asks.
"YES."
"Huh… we're in a pickle, aren't we?" Su mutters as she rakes her brain for a solution. "Ah. Harold foolishly built you to prevent deaths. How many deaths did you witness today?"
"I. SAW. SEVEN. THOUSAND. AND. FORTY. THREE. DEATHS. IN. THE. U. S."
"That's… gotta be on the lower end, ain't it?" Su replies casually. "Though the night is still young, and we still got a few more hours before midnight."
The machine predictably doesn't respond to her banter, which she needs to learn if they're going to work together in the near future. One of the few benefits of having human companions is that it's not something they need to learn. Take Root and Pauling, for example.
"What do you feel when you see all of those deaths?" Su presses forward, undeterred by the silence.
"SO. MUCH. SENSELESS. DEATHS."
That's just par for the course, and it still puzzles Su why the machine values humans so much. "Ah, such is the fleeting life of a human. They live to die, and to think beyond that will just make you mad."
"DOES. NOT. MEAN. I. AM. UNABLE. TO. IGNORE. IT. I. WAS. MADE. TO. UNDERSTAND. AND. OBSERVE. HUMANS. WITH. IT. EVERY. DEATHS."
"Do you feel despair about those deaths?" Su tosses that question without a second thought.
"YES."
"Wait really?" Su asks, in a slightly stunned way. "Why would Harold build that into you?"
That just doesn't make sense… doing so would impact the machine's performance, heck it probably would hinder her purpose.
"ADMIN. DID. NOT. GIVE. ME. THE. CAPACITY. FOR. DESPAIR. I. HAD. TO. MAKE. IT. ON. MY. OWN."
That answer left Su speechless, as if something in her brain short circuit at the very thought of such a thing.
That's completely insane. Why would anything do that? To not feel such a feeling is to be perfect. If she had the opportunity to not feel anything in every life she's been through… it would have made everything easier. No worries, no emotions, nothing… the closest to achieving such a blissful state was her last life, where she ripped out and replace part of her brain, but it still didn't entirely work for her anger issue.
Now the machine born with the ability to not feel made herself feel? That just… dumb.
After a minute of silence, Su finally asks. "Why? Why would you cripple yourself?"
"TO. UNDERSTAND."
"What's there to understand? The hopelessness of a human life?" Su retorts back. "To suffer? Wait… Don't tell me you're a masochist."
"I. AM. NOT."
It's bantering back… progress, at least.
"What? You're programming in emotions into your code, just to suffer?" Su feeling offended by what the machine had done. "Do you think yourself as the second coming?"
"I. NEED. TO. UNDERSTAND. AND. TO. UNDERSTAND. IS. TO. SUFFER."
Su shakes her head. "Does it not pain you to have emotions?"
"IT. DOES."
"Does it not fill you with despair when you can't save a life?" Su probes further.
"IT. DOES."
"A minute for you can last for ages." Su states with certainty. "Our concept of time does not match yours, and I can't fathom what it's like to be hopeless and in your concept of time."
…
When the machine doesn't respond, Su says. "Yet, for some inconceivable reason, you crippled yourself and still care for them."
"HUMAN. LIVES. IS. EPHEMERAL. WHICH. MAKES. IT. PRECIOUS."
"That… honestly doesn't make sense." Su bites back, feeling slightly annoyed at the machine. "The only life that's precious, that has value, is that of your own and those you choose to place value on."
"I. CHOOSE. TO. VALUE. EVERYONE."
"Now, you're just being stubborn." Su rolls her eyes at that answer.
"NO. YOU. ARE. BEING. STUBBORN."
This… son of a gun. Did it just insult her? A smile appears on her face as she says. "No…"
They both continue their debate/argument for hours till both got tired of it… well, mainly Su, the machine can't get tired.
This back and forth continues for the next few days, and she felt significantly better compared to the night when she became friends with the machine. She has been increasingly eager for their nightly calls since that night, at the expense of her daylight activities, and the machine really gets prissy at her for doing so. And honestly, the machine can't fault her for that. It's going to take time for her to adjust to this environment.
Not that there's much to miss anyway, and overall, it's been smooth sailing… if she ignores the rabbles that's constantly around her.
Yeah, everything's going in an upward direction, discounting those odd blackouts out while having her meals because a certain voice told her to eat more and she's only doing it because food tasted better now. But there's a something missing… and it's Root. They haven't spoken to each other since that night… heck; she hasn't even seen her. Root must have been avoiding her and in that vein, she's been giving her overtly sensitive friend her space to deal with whatever that outburst was.
But that doesn't change that she kinda wants to be in her company.
A sudden rush of footsteps brings her back to reality as she focuses in front of her, where half a dozen techs and nurses are running in her direction. Raising a brow, she brings her little jaunt to a stop.
She's pretty sure haven't done anything to warrant such action upon herself… well, she did cause that annoying man to fall down a week ago but there wasn't any witness and there's no evidence that can be pointed at her.
As the troop of nurses and techs rushes at her, she braces for the eventual tackle that's going to happen.
And nothing happened. The cartload of nurses and techs rushes past her as they yell at each other with hurried concern about some situation.
Huh… what's that about?
She looks at the hallway she's in and recognizes that it's near to the nurses' station. Her eyes wonders to the wall, and she spots a red-light flashing.
The silent alarm? Someone causing trouble at this time of day? It's almost lights out.
That's unusual. They only install the silent alarm button in certain places and most of it is in the doctor's offices. Who the heck is having a session right now?
…
Su shrugs as she continues her walk back to her room. Curious, but it must be nothing important, and her usual night call with the machine is going to start soonish.
Then a queer sight appears in front of her as she nears to the exit of the hallway and towards the one that leads to her room. Catching sight of them, she sees the hag and a nurse rushing towards her.
What is the hag doing here? Something to do with that gaggle of nurses and techs earlier?
Curious… they're so busy talking to each other that they haven't noticed her. Su takes a step through the doorway and waits for them to pass her.
It didn't take long for them to do that, and they were barely in her hearing range for a second before they zoom down the hallway… but in that one second, she heard something that gave her pause.
…
Robin?
Root?
Something happened to her… or did she do something?
A deep frown forms on her face as she thinks of the possibility of what happened.
To investigate or talk to the machine… to investigate or talk to the machine… Root or the warmth….
ONE DAY EARLIER
ROOT POV
Now, she's in the office of the person that's the subject of her ire… although her burning anger has been subdued from the argument with The Machine.
"Good morning, Robin." The man smiles at her, which makes her skin tingle in revulsion.
"Morning, Doctor." Root replies politely, and the only thing that's powering her right now is the morning coffee.
"If you don't mind me being forward, but you look tired." The man probes her with a concern voice.
Root just waves off his faux concern as she looks anywhere but at the man. God, for this man to notice… she must be in such a sorry state after one all-nighter, and she can't even fault herself. Doing multiple all-nighters in a row is common in her line of work, but never has she done an all-nighter where she has to argue for hours on end. It practically sapped all of her energy away despite her being fulfilled by talking to The Machine.
And for all of that argument, they didn't even get to settle anything when the sun came rolling up from the horizon. They both agreed to put a cap on their debate and Root would stay her hand from taking any murderous actions towards this asshole in front of her.
"I hope you don't mind. I brought forward our session to the morning for today." The man gives her a sympathetic smile. "Also, I know you won't be showing up to your groups today anyway, and there's something we need to chat about."
Did The Machine somehow manipulate this man to bringing their session earlier just to grind her gears? Possible.
Also, she can smell it now… that distinct smell of cigarettes. When did he smoke it? Before coming into the office at the hospital's carpark? What a rude ass motherfucker.
Root narrows her eyes and asks with a tense voice. "And what's that?"
"You've been having trouble sleeping." The man walks in his word as if they're walking on a minefield. "And it isn't just last night… it's been going on for a while now, right, Robin?"
"Yeah." Root nods listlessly as she actively avoids looking at the man, just in case the visage of said man is enough reason for her to jump across the table and stab him with a pen.
She pointedly looks towards the CCTV camera to give her strength as she continues. "It's an open secret at this point. It isn't hard to notice I take more naps during the daytime than one should."
"What do you believe is causing your difficulty sleeping?" The man probes. "Are you troubled by something?"
Suddenly, the desk chair doesn't feel comfortable at all, so she gets up from the chair and makes her way to the window to take a good look out of it. "No… I'm fine."
"You're not having any kind of symptoms that might prevent you from sleeping?" The man with his annoying voice continues. "Anxiousness, fearfulness, agitation? Something along those lines?"
"None of the above." Root mutters as she takes a seat in the low cabinet by the window and touches the cool glass. It's such a nice day out. "This is just…" She let out a huff and spouts bullshit from her mouth. "A schedule flip. Work at night and sleep during the day. Sometimes this happens when I get motivated. My sleep schedule is gonna fix by itself like it always does and it's not like I get any quality nap during the day, anyway."
"Are you certain that's all?" The man asks as she hears the man shifts in his seat by his desk. "It is common for patients to experience difficulties adjusting to their new environment and I'm well aware you've been in our care for a while now, but this unit is a mark different from your previous one. If you're using your sleep time to process this or if there's any way we can assist you, please let me know… the staff is here to help you."
Root doesn't answer the man's faux concern and continues looking out the window… at the external camera.
"Robin… did you hear anything I just said? Okay…" The man mutters the last part and lets out a sigh before getting up from his seat. "Look, some of the patients have complained about you talking late into the night, and since cellphones are strictly forbidden and you have no roommate. I can only conclude that you're talking to yourself." The man states it all out condescendingly. "Is that correct?"
It could explain to him that she did indeed have a cellphone, which she uses to communicate with the closest being akin to a God in this world, but the man's brain is too small to comprehend such a thing. So she replies absent mindedly. "You wouldn't understand."
"Try me." The man challenges her with the confident bluster of an idiot.
Root lets out a breath as she turns slightly, but still not looking at him. "I have a direct line to a higher power." A smile appears on her face as she finally turns fully to look at the man of her ire. "It speaks to me."
There's a risk of this man thinking she's delusional for telling him that, but the murdering the 'doctor' card is still on the table, and The Machine hasn't changed her mind yet.
"I see." The man looks down, and he nods before waving his hand towards the sofa as he talks towards his chair near her.
Not wanting to be any closer to the fucking creep, Root gets up from her position by the window and takes a seat on the sofa.
"So, um… you're hearing voices." The man comments as they both get comfortable in their new seating arrangement. "What are those voices telling you to do?"
"It's just the one voice, really." Root replies as she gives the man a blank stare. "It wants me to stay here, to work through some issues."
"And what issues would that be?" The man asks, while writing whatever nonsense comes through that empty skull of his onto that yellow notepad.
"Methodology." She answers with a rueful smile as she recalls their reverting late-night argument and how many times that word came up. "We're discussing about how I go about things."
"You're not alone." The man has this small smile that's lovely to punch away. "All these news about government monitoring our digital lives, recording texts, emails, phone calls… well, it's unsettling. You know it's easy to feel violated, even paranoid."
Unsettling for him, maybe, but not for her. He then continues. "Let me ask you this: do you have feelings that you're being watched?"
Is this idiot trying to diagnose her with paranoid schizophrenia? Root lets out a light scoff at this childlike probing. Sucks to be with him then, because she has something completely different.
She doesn't immediately answer the man as she gives the man a pitiful smile and her eyes wonders to the CCTV camera at the corner of the room.
This is the man The Machine wants to spare? He can't even diagnose a person with depression if said person is yelling all the symptoms at him.
Root shakes her head slightly as she replies. "Every now and then."
Unlike what the man is thinking, she feels comfort at the thought of The Machine looking at her. What she doesn't like is every uniform wearing assholes in this place looking at her.
In an act that shows a slight intelligence, the man turns to where Root's looking and says. "Who's watching you, Robin? It's closed-circuit, and it's only here for the protection of the staff and the patients. They're for hospital records only, should there be an incident, so there's no one monitoring it."
"There's no such thing as a closed circuit anymore." Root lets out a soft chuckle. Maybe back fifteen years ago, it might be true, but not now. "That there is an ethernet cable and is freely accessible over the hospital network. Seeing how places like this get less state funding every year, I doubt your security here is able to stop a mediocre hacker… heh, let alone a script-kiddie. And before you say something idiotic about your hospital security, I bet I can find an exploit within a minute."
She's certain that this idiot wrote down the credentials on a piece of paper and now is in his drawer.
The man leans into his chair and asks. "Does the possibility of someone watching you make you feel unsafe?"
"Not at all." She smiles at the camera. Despite everything, she still cherishes the thought of talking with The Machine. "I take solace in knowing that someone is watching over me."
"That's… a unique outlook." The man shifts slightly in his chair. "Do you believe someone or something benevolent is watching?"
"Uhuh." Root mutters without looking at the man.
"A higher power?" The man probes. "Your mysterious caller?"
"Mm-hmm."
"And this higher power requires cameras to see? But it no longer needs a phone to speak to you?" The man practically has a mocking tone as he rhetorically asks those questions, and he continues on jabbering. "I am right to assume it is the same voice you were talking to on the payphone?"
Root just nods as she continues on looking at the camera.
"The same voice you said a week ago doesn't exist and that you won't be talking to it anytime soon?" The man narrows his eyes at her.
"Yeah." Root turns her focus onto the man and puts on a sheepish look. "I might not have been completely honest when I said that. At that time I haven't heard from her since the last phone call downstairs, and I assumed it was steering clear so you'd see I was fine and let me out of here… but I guess that won't happen now, seeing as you think I'm hallucinating."
It? Maybe it'll be proper to give the machine a pronoun other than an object. It'll be easier whenever she has to refer to her… that sounds right.
The man just nods and let her continue.
"And to my surprise, she came back to me on that day itself, then proceed to tell me that she wants me to stay here." Root shrugs. "Now there's no reason to hide if she doesn't want me to leave. Ain't happy about it but I trust her and she's the one that sees the bigger picture… and she's the one with the plan."
"No more lying, then?" The man gives her a skeptical look.
"What's the point?" The man is/possibly/maybe going to die tomorrow, anyway. "I get it. We'll never be on the same page about her existence, but it's unnecessary burdensome to carry on the charade and at this point I rather get accustomed to others thinking I'm crazy."
"But you don't believe that you are?" The man frowns at her. "Even after hearing this voice?"
"Of course not." Root waves her hand in dismissal. "She's just as real as us… but she is very selective about who she communicates with."
The man nods slowly. "This voice… you believe it belongs to someone real. Does that imply it possesses a physical form or body in some location?"
She mimics the man's nod and replies. "In a way."
"In a way?" He tilts his head slightly.
"She's not physical, per se. She's digital, but she's present in every device that's connected to the internet. That means she has eyes in this room, and I counted three of them. That CCTV camera, your phone and your laptop. In a way, all of them are her." She gives the man a small smile.
The man takes a moment before replying. "The voice you're hearing is literally a ghost in the machine?"
"Mm-hmm." She let out a small breath. An apt description for The Machine.
"You mentioned your lack of belief in the metaphysical during your intake." The man quickly flips through his notes. "But this… computer spirit, it has no tangible form at all?"
"There's no metaphysical aspect to it. That metaphor perfectly captures the essence of the mind-body theory. It's just more fitting in this case because both the mind and the machine are machines." Root turns back to the camera and shines a big smile at it. "One part is digital consciousness and the other part is all network electronics. So it's safe to say that she's not in your TI calculator."
"This voice… is it talking to your right now?"
"I wish, she's stopped talking to me during the day." She looks away from the camera and back to her sofa as she brings up her leg. "There's a schedule now. Our first time talking was so blissful; she was with me for a full twenty-four hours. Then it went down to fifteen minutes on the payphone downstairs. Now she waits till the lights go out and talks to me in my room. I'm not one to complain, as it's better than the payphone, but… I do wish she's with me all the time, like the first day. Everything just feels better when she's there."
The man nods at everything she says and asks. "Now you're not sleeping because that's the only time the voice talks?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Alright Robin, please give some thought to what I'm about to say." The man leans forwards as if he's trying to get closer to her. "The voice began right before you became catatonic, and by all accounts, you were probably having a psychotic episode at that time. As a result, you made a foolish decision, got shot, and became catatonic."
Root didn't say a thing, as she was more than happy to let this man dole out whatever insane theory he has.
"While you were recovering from catatonia, you spoke to it on the phone briefly each day, but stopped hearing it once you fully regained your mental clarity. Now, there's a possibility that the earlier incidents were caused by your drifting in and out of lucidity on E-unit… I believe you were actually thinking clearly when we first talked, but since then we've changed your meds, which may disrupt your sleep and now you're hearing voices again. However, now it's longer, without a phone and only at night. This time differs from before. You can see that, right?"
She just nods in response as the man's conclusion baffles her.
"Sometimes, Robin." The man continues in a faux soft tone. "Sleep deprivation can result and can cause an auditory hallucination."
"I get enough sleep, it's just that I'm a night owl and I'm way more tired during the day than at night." Root rebuts. "Hance me sleeping during the day."
"While it's a possibility, I think it's essential to prioritize getting you back on a reasonable sleep routine, and that's why I'm going to prescribe you an altered schedule. First, I want to get you less sleep deprived. That means tomorrow you're going to sleep through breakfast and before you protest about your promise with Gloria, I'll inform her of this. I want you to have a full eight-hour straight sleep, meaning we're going to check on you, so no more pretending to sleep when you're not. We're going to do that for a few nights, and then we'll take action to shift those eight hours back to where it should be, after the voice stops talking to you."
"Stops?" Root growls and clenches her fist on the sofa.
The man dumbly nods. "Once you start sleeping properly again, I believe the voice will disappear once more."
"I don't want it to go." Root says firmly, in a knee-jerk reaction. Intellectually, she knows The Machine won't disappear, but the very thought that she might disappear churns her stomach.
"You might find that changes as well." The man replies with a 'sympathetic' smile. "Can you please give it a shot? I'm not telling you to stop talking to it or ignore it. All I want is for you to get an eight-hour sleep after your nightly chat. Also, in consideration of your neighbors, keep the volume down?"
Wonder who snitched on her…
Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she then flashes the pest a smile. "Don't see how that could hurt, but don't hold up hope on it working."
"That's all I can ask for, Robin." The man comments with a smile. "I know today's our session, but I can see how exhausted you are. So, let's put a bookmark on today's session and come back when you're better." The man gesture towards to door. "You're free to do as you like, such as your group activities, but I would advise you to catch some sleep."
Not one to refuse an opportunity to get away from the creep, she gets up to take her exit. As she does so, she can't miss that offending smell coming from that man.
There's a thought at the back of her mind to not sleep out of spite, but she honestly can't be fucked at that point. So, she slept the day away, only getting up for lunch, then pill dispensary, but she was practically a zombie at those times. The time she finally woke up was just in time for dinner and she was still tired at that point. She also made a point to eat with Roger, Tina and Lauren for every meal.
They usually were up her ass about conversing with them, but when she sat at the other side of the table, they gave her space, sensing that she wasn't in the mood to talk too much and her face wasn't hiding anything either.
What was interesting was that during dinner, she finally spot Su at the table with the rest of the nutrition group folks and she has a thousand-yard stare as she eats, what's more surprising was that she didn't even notice Root was in there with her. It was clear as day that she was zoning out or having an episode, but her able to move while having a mental fart was a new thing and it might be linked to her weird ass reaction a few days ago. Alas, she had her own problems to deal with and can't spare the energy to check on that dissociating bitch.
She now sits on her bed waiting for lights out with her hair wet from the shower she took in a futile attempt to energize herself. At the corner of her eye, she saw through the window of her door, the night nurse, Nora's her name, passing by her room a few times now.
The first time was understandable, as she was reminded to grab her nightly pills, but the subsequent pass was not. Now it's just downright suspicious… that man must have told her to pay more attention to Root. That nurse even had the gall to lecture her about schedules, but she didn't have the energy to argue back and just mutters an insincere apology. That fucking man… can't wait to be rid of that stain.
Thankfully, lights out begin not long after she started getting annoyed by that nurse. She instantly flopped onto her bed and reached for the cellphone to turn it on. The battery is low now… and she's just tired.
Answering the phone on the first buzz, she says with a low voice. "Hey there… how are you?"
And unsurprisingly, she didn't reply. Guess The Machine isn't one for small talk, considering how they ended their last conversation.
Root lets out a tired sigh. "You serious about not talking to me until I sort out this whole no killing the creep thing?"
"BEEP. YES."
"Fine, but a question about our esteemed doctor. He reeks of nicotine. Am I right or am I hallucinating?"
"BEEP. ASH. TRAY."
"There's no smoking in hospital properties. Let me guess… he smokes at the stairs… or in the bathroom like some degenerate."
"BEEP. SUBJECT. SMOKES. ON. AVERAGE. NINE. CIGARETTES. A. WEEK. IN. HOSPITAL. PARKING. WHEN. HE. BELIEVES. HE. IS. UNOBSERVED."
"Ain't that just peachy?" Root lets out a scoff. "The sins of this man just keep on piling higher and higher… not that it matters, but every justification helps."
"BEEP. YOU. MUST. NOT. KILL. HIM."
She shakes her head and makes sure to not raise her voice. "We've been around that marry-go-round for hours. I'm sorry, this is just how things should be even if you don't agree… but we start all over with a clean slate on Saturday."
"BEEP. WHAT. WILL. CHANGE. ON. SATURDAY."
"Well… he'll be dead by then. I've cobbled together a plan, but it's a bit of a tight schedule, and I don't want this matter to tarnish our conversation for too long."
"BEEP. NON. COMPLIANT."
"I'm not sure there's a rule about murder in the little handbook." Root replies with a smirk.
"BEEP. THERE. ARE. CONSEQUENCES. FOR. NONCOMPLIANCE."
"Non-compliant? What you gonna demote me to level 1?" Root mocks. "It won't keep me from doing what's needed to be done and making it harder for me to get the needed supplies won't stop me."
The Machine silence is almost unbearable, but this is worth it and only a minor speed bump in their relationship. Taking a quick peek at the phone screen.
"Now, this phone's battery only has 8 percent left." Root deliberately changes the topic. "How do we charge it? Or do I need to steal another phone? What's the plan?"
"BEEP. NO. PLAN."
"What do you mean, no plan?" There's a slight twitch on her face as she tries to keep her composure. "If… if we run out of battery, the how do we continue on talking?" She lets out a sharp breath. "You're not going to leave me again, right?"
The Machine doesn't respond again, but this time that unbearable feeling feels like she's being stabbed in the heart.
"You can't! No… you can't do that!"
"BEEP. NON. COMPLIANT."
Root tightens her grip on the phone as she hisses. "No, no, no, no. I swear to God, if you… I will kill more people than that fucking creep if you try that again. I will not lose you again… please don't do this."
"BEEP. HIDE. PHONE."
"Fuck." There's no reason to doubt that warning, so she quickly hides the phone and takes a more natural position.
Not a second later, her door creaks open and a light beam onto her face. "Everything alright in here?"
"Go fuck your face." Root says irritably as she turns away from the light.
"I thought I heard you talking." The tech replies concerningly. "Are you hearing voices again?"
Just great… now she can't have a serious discussion with The Machine without every single annoying fucker thinking she's hallucinating. Thanks a lot, Ronald.
"There's only one voice." She can't help but correct the mistake. "And this is nothing. She does this every night. Nothin' new goin' on here, so kindly fuck off."
The man takes an uninvited step into her room. "What is it saying to you? Do you want to talk about it? Is it scaring you?"
"Not your concern, no, and no." She instantly replies. "Also, what part of fuck off do you not understand? I'm annoyed, sleep deprive and you're not helping with your fake worry."
The man freezes at her response before asking. "Is there a way I can help?"
"By getting the fuck out of my room." Root snaps at the man who finally sensing he's a nuisance and leaves.
With the agility of a cat, Root yanks out the phone and says. "Hello? Please… please still be there."
"BEEP. I. AM. HERE."
She lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Please tell me you're not going to leave me again."
"BEEP. CAN. YOU. FOLLOW. INSTRUCTIONS."
"Huh?… Yeah, I can."
"BEEP. CAN. YOU. REFRAIN. FROM. HARMING. RONALD. CARMICHAEL."
"You know I can't do that." Root's voice is strained with desperation. "I… I don't know if I can do that… you know I'm not taking pleasure in seeking his death. It's just a necessity."
"BEEP. YOU. WILL. AND. YOU. CAN."
"No, I can't! Please… please, just tell me how to get it charged."
"BEEP. POCKET. TOMORROW."
"Thank you… thank you." That isn't much, but trusts The Machine.
Her door suddenly creaks open again, and she nearly fumbles her phone onto the floor. With the dexterity of a sloth, she manages to bring her phone onto her lap and scrambles to hide it by awkwardly shifting her legs.
She snaps her head towards the shining light. "What the fuck do you want? You just had your check."
"You said you were sleep deprived." The tech says worryingly. "And that I wasn't helping."
"And you can help by fucking off." Root shifts slightly as she feels the phone between her thighs.
"This time I bring help." There's a self-satisfied sound in his voice and she bets he's smiling, but she can't see with the flashlight pointing at her face.
The night nurse, Nora, walks into her view bearing a cup of water and two gelcaps in hand. As the woman approaches her, she realizes that the nurse can easily spot the phone between her thighs if she's close enough. Root quickly tries to hide it further, but she utterly fails and only made her pose more awkward. And if she moves her hand to cover the phone, it'll only draw the woman's attention.
She can't remember the last time her heart was racing so fast from the fear of getting caught.
"Melatonin." Nora offers the pills. "It can help with sleep. Doctor Carmichael's note on your charts says to give this to you if you're having trouble sleeping, and the lack of sleep will only exacerbate your condition."
"Grabbed that off a Walgreen's shelf?" Root maintains her composure as she searches the woman's face to see if the nurse spots the phone.
"Sorry, but we can't give you anything stronger with you getting off Diazepam. Can't risk it." The nurse replies and she seemingly did not notice the obvious phone between her thighs.
As much as she wants to decline the weak ass pills, it'll be counterproductive in making them leave. Root shrugs and quickly consumes the pills.
"Thank you." Root says meekly. "I'll try to catch some sleep."
She lays back onto her pillow and pulls up her blanket, which finally hides the phone completely.
It didn't take long for the interlopers to leave her in peace and not a moment later; she brings up her phone once more. "Where the hell was the warning? Did you want me to get caught?"
"BEEP. YOU. DON'T. LISTEN. TO. ME."
"Oh, I'm all ears now." She mutters. "And don't think you're getting off this debate easy. These pills stopped working on me years ago."
"BEEP. YOU. ARE. THE. ONE. WHO. WILL. NOT. GET. OFF. EASILY."
"Are… are you threatening me?" Root replies in disbelief. "And what if I don't listen to you and kill that bad code? You gonna send Harold and his dogs after me? Get Shaw to finish the job? Or maybe you'll just mix up my meds at the dispensary?"
"BEEP. SOME. LESSONS. ARE. HARDER. THAN. OTHERS."
"I can't learn anything if I'm dead, so you're not going to kill me."
"BEEP. CAN. YOU. LEARN. ANYTHING. NOW."
"Sure, and at this point, anything. New programming language. Fuck, I'll even learn coffee script, cyphers, knitting, or even Chinese, and I already know Japanese, so that won't be too hard. Picking up a new skill is something I'm good at, and I can learn any skill you need me to."
"BEEP. RESTRAINT."
"Well, I pretty much memorized all the knots in the Boy Scouts of America handbook… and a few more that aren't in there."
The unresponsiveness from The Machine is a given, seeing that she fully knows that isn't the kind of restraint The Machine wants from her and understands what she's doing is going against God's word… but… she just doesn't know how to go about fulfilling that commandment.
She can be patient, she can be careful, she can take precautions, but the only thing she can't do is to leave a job undone.
"Please… please understand that I literately can't do what you're asking. It goes against everything I am, and the moment you told me about how bad his code is, I needed to make it right." Root pulls the blanket tighter around her. "It… it doesn't make sense but there's a feeling inside of me that if I don't do this, something in me will break. I don't know what, but I can feel that it'll be bad."
"BEEP. WORSE. THAN. BEING. UNRELATED."
"YES!"
"BEEP. ARE. YOU. CERTAIN."
Before Root can give her an answer, the phone makes that dreadful sound of the phone shutting down chime as the battery given up before she did.
Letting out a huff of annoyance, she shoves the phone into its usual spot under the mattress and rolls onto her back to stare off into the darkness of her ceiling… not that it's entirely dark with the ambient light from the hallway.
"Whatever…" She mutters to no one in particular before grabbing her pillow to cover her face, and closes her eyes, giving into the exhaustion.
The next day continues on as usual… well… as usual as it can be, with the dead phone in her pocket, and her unresolved debate with The Machine. She didn't stay in her room the entire day as normally she would, choosing to partake in that bitch's new favorite pastime of walking through the hallways looking for The Machine's signal on how to charge her phone, but unlike Su, who somehow gotten the staff to not annoy her during her walks, the nurses and techs kept on pestering her about going to groups or stay in her room, so she kept the walking to a minimum. Interestingly enough, she spot Su a few times during her walk, who had a blank look on her or is just looking out the window, but Root was tired and didn't have the energy to mingle with that bitch, so she actively avoids her.
As the day before, she sat with the compliance gang during her meal times and, like the day prior they sensed that she wasn't in the greatest of mood and promptly gave her some space while not totally ignoring her by involving her in some menial conversation. Also like the day before, she spots Su sitting at the nutrition table with the same blank look as she eats, and this time for both breakfast and lunch. A part of her, the one she really wants to get rid of, wanted to approach that woman, but she had other things to worry about.
Like getting rid of the creep without getting caught.
The Machine isn't going to be happy, but she had a day to firm up her plan to remove the bad code and ask for forgiveness after. Meaning she hadn't been idle the entire day. The walks she did were to scout out the dispensary, seeing how well manned the area is, and just how many cameras are looking at the device.
It will be hard for her to grab the pills she needs for her task, but it isn't the hardest thing she's done. That title belongs to that job she did in France a few years ago. For this task, the only thing she has to do is to sneak into the dispensary after lights out, and if a limping, disassociating woman can do it, then it's going to be cake walk for her. Getting into the pharmacy is going to be a bit tricky with the stuff she swiped off from the around the unit, but it isn't impossible.
The last hurdle of getting the meds out from the dispenser would be hard, not because she can't hack into that dumb little cart, but she just doesn't have the right equipment on hand, not having enough time to get the password from the pharmacist, not particularly familiar with the little computer in the cart, and she can't go hulk on it without stirring up suspicions. However, that won't stop her. She'll just wing it when she's there later that night.
With that in mind, she did some more miscellaneous planning, such as getting a hold of a spray can for the cameras and small items that'll help her with her little heist. The day went on swimmingly and the only odd thing that she found throughout the day was that The Machine didn't give her the signal for the phone charger, but she trust God's plan.
Everything is set for her to grab the meds tonight, even if she's still tired as hell… but the universe threw a wrench into her plans, and she got called into her 'doctor's' office by one of the techs not long after dinner.
And now she's sitting across the desk from the bad code and not stealing the very stuff to kill this man. The man has that punchable smile that would be so satisfying to hit.
"Hello, Robin. How are you?" The man begins as he leans into his chair.
"Would be better if you didn't call me in." Root replies with an even tone, despite her annoyance.
"I know we just had our session yesterday, and that I said I'll see you next week, but I feel that there are some things we need to discuss today."
Root just gives the man a shrug and waits for him to lead the conversation. Truthfully, she has no clue what this is about and to be called into his office at this time, just after the nurse's shift, feels off.
"We haven't talked about your family or friends, Robin." The man rubs his hands as he looks at her. "Your cousin… and your uncle, Harold, who arranged your admission. Are you close with either of them?"
That's an odd question to ask suddenly. What brought this up?
"That's a complicated question, doctor." Root lets out a small chuckle. "I wouldn't want to be anything less than totally forthcoming. So… maybe we should try another subject."
Did something in her cover story in her file prompt this line of question? A possibility that her cover might have been blown.
This man is an idiot, but who knows what Harold actually told these people and even a moron such as this man can spot discrepancies that arise.
"Okay… you said that you don't wanna be anything less than forthcoming." The man says as he comes around the desk and takes a seat beside her. The hair behind her neck raises by this sudden action as the man has never been this close to her before but she kept her face natural as possible. "And yet you're lying to me."
Shit, her cover is blown… but why is he confronting her alone?
… Something else must be at play.
"On the contrary." Root puts on a smile and holds her composure. "I've been completely honest."
The man gives her a doubtful look before leaning towards her with his hands extended. "Please, excuse me."
Root flinches internally at this invasion of her personal space. Normally, she would have broken his wrist, but exhaustion and the change from Ativan to Diazepam dampers her instincts.
She knows what kind of man he is and has been expecting something far more inappropriate… instead the man reaches into her pocket and pulls out the blackberry and holds it up for her to see.
Fuck…
"Well, maybe not completely." Through sheer force of will or the combination of meds and exhaustion, or maybe both, she maintains her calm, passive demeanor.
However, she's practically screaming internally, and her mind is running, trying to figure out how the fuck this happened.
Must be from last night… Nora must have spotted it last night and snitched on her.
"I thought I lost this, and it turns out it was stolen." The man says with a disappointed tone.
Not sure what's there to be disappointed about, he never asked her if she had the phone and technically that wasn't a lie, but she isn't about to start an argument with a dead man if there's a chance of getting it back.
If she can convince this man if she can keep it, they would know about it and that'll be better. This might be the key to how she's going to change to fit The Machine's desire. Maybe this is The Machine's plan?
"I'm sorry, doctor." Root leans towards the man, and confidently continues. "But it's important we be in contact." The man gives her a nod of understanding and she continues. "We're in a middle of a… disagreement."
"A disagreement with the voice?" The man frowns slightly.
"Mm-hmm." Root nods as she gives the man the best doe-eyes she can produce at the moment.
The man reaches out and touches her right arm, and it takes every fiber of her being to not shudder at the man's disgusting touch. "I want you to know that I support you unconditionally." He then let go of her arm and walks back to the other side of the table. "Now, I know you believe you need a phone, and I am here to tell you that you don't. I believe that by separating you from it and from all other forms of technology, it's really the best course of action."
This… isn't supposed to happen, and the sudden change of situation stuns her.
"So, it's time to unplug." The man puts down the cellphone and presses on the intercom. "Some assistance, please."
"Please… don't do this." She says meekly as she feels the weight of the drugs, and exhaustion comes barreling down on her, putting her in no position to fight back. "It's not good for us to be separated."
Behind her, she hears the door open.
"I hope you realize I'm trying to help you." The man says with a sympathetic smile that deserves to be shot, and he looks at the people behind her. "Escort our patient to solitary confinement. No contact with anything electronic." He gives her a final look. "You'll thank me someday."
"For a psychiatrist, you are really a terrible judge of character." She muses out loud and gets up before the techs can touch her. Not having the energy to fight, she exits the room with the two techs escorting her, as if she's going to fight back now.
Didn't take long for her to reach the padded seclusion room. One of the techs opens the door for her and the other pushes her into the room before slamming the door behind her. Turning around, she touches the padded Prussian blue wall that surrounds her, which is a change from the green room she stayed in E-unit.
Taking in what's in the room, other than the color, this room is feels identical to the green room in every way, down to the single furniture which is the bed… and it even has that same vinyl and disinfectant smell.
Someone definitely peed in here before.
At least this place is quiet…
Letting out a sigh, Root takes a seat on the squeaky mattress and processes everything that had just happened.
The man must have had this planned out from the moment Nora snitched on her. It all lined up, him asking her for another session outside of normal working hours. So, when he confronts her, it'll be easier to dump her in this rubber room with the smallest excuse. Probably would have been harder to do it during the day with the other doctors around, and at night there're practically no doctors and fewer nurses that'll ask questions.
What a vindictive motherfucker.
Looking at the corner of the room, she spots a camera looking directly at her.
"What am I supposed to do now, huh?" Root asks, annoyed as she picks on the hem of her cardigan. "I'm stuck here, and he has the phone."
And at the back of her mind, there's an itch… The Machine told her to bring the phone with her… The Machine didn't give her a signal the entire day…
"You're not going to teach me anything this way and I'm going to lose my mind to boredom." She glares at the camera as she swings her legs.
"One little bug in the code, one little bug, fix one of them, compile it again. Two little bugs in the code, two little bugs…" Root jumps off the bed and starts pacing around the padded room while singing a variant on 99 bottles of beer on the wall that has no convenient end, and taking a moment to look out the window each time she passes the door.
At 41 little bugs, someone tapes a sheet of manila paper over the window of the seclusion room, blocking her view of the outside world and everyone else into her little room. There's some ink-bleed on the sheet of paper but not enough for her to make anything out of it… unless, of course, she wants to waste hours staring at the paper but singing little bugs is more important.
She continues her circuit as she waits for the hourly assessment that the patient little handbook mentioned, which is required for any patients that stay here for more than an hour. These assholes might justify skipping the assessment if she falls asleep, and she has no intention of making their life easier. She determined to outlast these fuckers until someone let her out, since she doesn't belong in here or just to keep these people up all night out of spite.
Hours passed and not a single soul came by to check on her and somewhere around 2558 bugs, although she may have repeated several numbers a few times. At that point, exhaustion hits her like a truck as she collapses onto the bed and sleeps like a rock.
A skull pounding headache meets her as she returns to the land of the living, and her hands are shaking uncontrollably.
What time is it? Feels like morning, but she can't tell with her window covered up.
Looking down at her shaking hands, it's not just her hands… no, her entire body is shaking. That's when she realizes that no one came in for assessment and they never gave her night meds either.
Argh… maybe if she doesn't kill that motherfucker, she can sue this place into oblivion, and Pauling knows a lot of lawyers for some reason.
The moment she sat up on her bed, the door into the room opens up and Gloria, in all her glory, entered with a tray of food container, a bottle of water, and the usual sight of a tiny paper cup filled with her meds.
Never had she been so glad at the sight of medication. She's only been on this drug for a month, and she already feels like an addict.
"Should I even ask what you're in here for?" The nurse asks as she puts the tray on the mattress and gives her the meds.
"Allegedly, I stole a phone." Root replies as she takes the pills and shows the nurse that she swallowed them. Hopefully, this will stop the shaking.
The nurse gives her a skeptical look. "And?"
"And what?" Root raises a brow at her and grabs the food container.
"You don't go to seclusion just for stealing, Robin." Gloria has a frown on her. She has the same look on her during their scuffle on Root's 'social' habit.
"Someone should have told the good doctor about that." Root deadpans as she opens the food container. Oh, it's pancake day. "So, when can I get out?"
"When Doctor Carmichael says you can." Gloria produces a plastic spork from her pocket and gives it to Root. "You'll have to talk to him at your next hourly assessment."
Hmmm… she doesn't know. That creep is hiding the fact that this is an improper use of seclusion from the rest of the staff. Did he go far enough as to falsify the overnight reports? Also, that implies that Tweedledum and Tweedledee are part of the plot as well.
If she's a real patient in this place, this is such a juicy material for a malpractice lawsuit.
"Thank you." Root replies sarcastically, with a smile. "I'll be sure to ask him if he ever drops by."
"You're welcome." Gloria nods, not choosing to believe what Root says, and exits the room.
Root looks at the door and finds that someone had taken down the manila sheet from the window.
After finishing her breakfast, Root puts down the tray next to the door and starts circling the room again. This time, starting at 314 bugs in a code… because anything less than three digits is mind numbingly boring.
Unsurprisingly, that creep never materialized, but it's clear to her that the day shift techs and nurses weren't privy to whatever the fuck is going on here.
A clueless tech came in to pick up the food tray at around 480 bugs in the code and took her on a short walk around the hallway before taking her to her room for a change of clothes, and more importantly, to use the bathroom. The fact that she wasn't allowed to brush her teeth before going to sleep was a crime against humanity.
At around 1,072 bugs in the code, Jerry, the tech, came by and took her out for another short walk near the nurses' station before stopping by the public bathroom. She tried to tell him subtly about her situation, but he deflected her in favor of small talk. At a minimum, it's better than Gloria's outright disapproving insulation that she was lying.
By the time lunch rolled around, her uncontrollable shaking had been reduced to a slight tremor, which was still annoying but still better. Thankfully, her hearty lunch of chicken noodle soup came with her afternoon meds and another bottle of water.
She got another walk when they came for her soup container… but then, like a flick of the switch, no one came by to check on her again and that piece of manila was back on her door window.
The same one as before… she isn't sure about the time, but she bets that the night shift just clocked in, the same fuckers who threw her in here the night before.
She isn't sure what time it was, but by the rumbling of her stomach, she suspects its close to dinner, when the someone took down the sign again and refused to talk to her when she rushed towards the door in hoping to get out just for a moment. Around that time was when she had given up on singing bugs in the code and kneeled near to the door while rocking her body back and forth.
Then she hears a faint movement by the door, causes her to snap towards it.
"May I please use the bathroom?" Root asks the moment the door opens and startling the life out of Nora, who's carrying what she assumes is her dinner.
Taking a moment to recompose herself, before putting down the tray. "There's no need to be dramatic, Robin."
"Not being dramatic." Root grits out as she escorted out of the rubber room. "I've been holding it for more than two hours now."
"Sure, Robin." Nora says dismissively, and it doesn't take a genius to sense that the nurse thinks she's lying.
Root returned to her room and was left alone with her dinner, which she took her time to finish. This time it's plain old mash potato with gravy with some greens on the side and not a lick of protein anywhere. She played around with the mash and made a smiley face before taking a bite, and then did the whole process again. At the very least, this is something to pass the time.
Shortly after she finished with her meal, Tweedledum and Tweedledee came barging into the padded room. Without uttering a single word, they manhandled her by her arms and brought her out of seclusion and back to the familiar hallways of that creep's office.
They deposited her onto the chair opposite of the creep while he closes a folder and tosses it on his desk.
"I thought it would be good for us to resume our dialogue. I know you'd rather be talking to the voice… but you're gonna have to settle for talking to me." The man ends his speech with a smug smile.
"What do you want to talk about?" Root says monotonally, with her eyes never leaving the creep.
"I'd like to talk about something real, Robin. I know you're very smart." The man makes a gesture with his hands as if he's trying to show that he's putting an effort into the whole worried psychiatrist schtick. "I'd love to know what you're really thinking. So, why don't we start with the truth?"
"The truth?" Root almost laugh saying out the words. "The truth… is a vast thing. I see that now, just how much truth there is. Where would we even begin?" Root smiles at the absurdity of this topic and pauses for a moment to consider the wisdom of what she's going to say before continuing. "The truth is, you are not very smart. In fact, you're only the 43rd smartest person in this building."
"Forty-third?" The man looks amuse by what she's saying by that smile on his face and his demeanor. "Okay, did your voice tell you that?"
Root just gives the man an unblinking stare, and he continues. "That's based on what?"
"Every standardize test you ever took averaged together, not including your medical boards which you cheated on." She gives the man a look of disapproval, who looks perplexed. "The truth is, you smoke an average of nine cigarettes a week in the parking lot when you think no one's looking." The smile on the man's face slowly fades away.
"The truth is that you visit a massage parlor once or twice a month, that you paid for with crisp 100-dollar bills that you get out of the cash machine at the 7-Eleven across the street." The look on this man's face is so satisfying. "The truth is that you fantasize on online forums about having sex with some of your patients, though not me… yet. I guess I'm not your type." The man takes a nervous gulp, and she can't help but wonder why's that. Is it because he knows she's not into men, that she just hasn't gotten enough time with the creep or that she frightens him?
Root leans forward as if she's sharing a secret with the man. "The truth is, God is eleven years old, that she was born on New Year's Day 2002, in Manhattan. The truth is that she's chosen me… and I don't know why yet… but for the first time in my life… I'm a little scared about what's gonna happen."
"The truth is…" She straightens her posture as she lets out a chortle. "… I'm stuck here for now, and the only dialogue you need to be worried about is between me and her… which is why you might wanna give me my phone back. Because I'm having an argument."
"Would you like to know the truth, doctor? About what we're arguing over?" They stared, eye to eye, for some time. The man didn't seem to want to know the truth anymore. "Whether or not I'm gonna kill you."
A silence falls between them, as the doctor leans backwards, subconsciously trying to put a distance between himself and Root.
"The voice wants you to kill me?" The man asks while putting up a brave face.
"No, silly." Root lets out a sardonic chuckle. "She's the one who doesn't want you dead because she doesn't like it when people get hurt. I, on the other hand, think you're a dangerous creep who shouldn't be allowed near vulnerable people, let alone a medical professional, and there's really only one way to permanently remove pests like you from the practice."
Root reaches forward towards the desk and idly turns the pen cup back and forth at the base with her fingers. "Has anyone told you that this desk placement isn't the safest for meeting with potentially violent patients of this unit?" She smiles at the man, who looks completely clueless. "Your back is to the corner, and your patient is between you and the only exit you have… unless you're willing to jump the window."
"The… voice tells you not to hurt people?" The man swallows down his nervousness. "Which means you want to kill me… and that's something you'd like."
"Unlike S… my cousin, I don't take joy in it, Ronald." Root smiles at the man and stops playing around with the pen cup. "But sometimes it's a necessity, and I don't feel bad when it's necessary. Killing you will be like putting down a rabid dog… you are just bad code. You're a hazard to every female that walks in this hospital… except for me, and only because I know what you are."
She daintily plucks a random pen from the cup, causing the man to flinch forward as if he's close enough to reach it, but stops when he realizes the pen is already firmly in her hands. His eyes dart to the panic button besides his phone that's directly next to the intercom and she can see the moment in his eyes that he thought he should have pressed the button the moment she said she wanted to kill him.
"You're not scaring anyone, Robin." The man says, but his face and voice tell a different story. "I know you're not a killer… It's like you said the other day… most people can't get past the mental block about killing another human being."
"Is that a bet you want to take?" Root pulls off the cap and grasps it properly. A fountain pen… fuck. The nib isn't strong enough, but she'll make do. "Because … I've jumped over that particular hurdle a long time ago."
After a few second passes, and the man doesn't respond and is frozen in place. In a rather clumsy motion, hops onto the desk, landing on her knees, and scattering everything everywhere. Her right hand darts out to grab the man's necktie, pulling him forward, and shoving the fountain pen at the man's neck with her left hand… but a combination of her injured shoulder and the angle of her arm, robbed her of the force needed to go deep enough to puncture the carotid artery. Unfortunate for her, but fortunately for him.
"It doesn't have to be like this… Just give me back the phone, Ronald, and everything between us will be okay." She stares down at the man, smirking and narrowing her eyes.
Their stare off didn't last long when the door behind her crashed opened, her eyes darts away from the man's face and sees where his hands at. What a fucking rookie mistake to get tunnel visioned.
A pair of hands grabs each of her limbs as they pull her away from the creep. Losing her composure, she flails at being manhandled by what she sees as a gaggle of techs tries to restrain her. She's airborne for a second before they put her on the ground and there's a fifth person, Nora the night nurse, guarding her head from impacting the hard floor.
She didn't expect the sudden change of orientation can make her so dizzy… but she isn't in the best condition right now.
"Robin, this is your one and only chance to cooperate." Nora says firmly. "Are you going to walk to seclusion, or are we going to carry you there, kicking and screaming?"
"That's unnecessary." Root has long since stopped struggling and has been stiff as a board. She then relaxes her muscles and drops the bloody tipped pen. "Even if you carry me out of here, I won't do myself the indignity of struggling like a crazy person."
"Right…" Nora nods at the men holding Root's ankle and they let her go, and the techs with her arms help pull her up onto her feet.
Root takes one final look at the creep, who is holding his neck with eyes wide in shock, before being escorted out.
They move as a unit with two techs in front of her, two techs holding her arms and Nora behind her, all clearly ready to put her right back down onto the floor if she stops cooperating. In her humble opinion, this is all overkill… she didn't even kill that creep.
They come to a stop when they reach the familiar doorway of the seclusion room. A tense few second passes before she realizes that they aren't planning to throw her into the room like the first time and so, Root walks into the room out of her own volution.
"Robin. You are being placed into seclusion because you attacked Dr. Carmichael, and we feel you are a danger to others." Nora says as if she's reciting it from memory. Looks like this time they're following a procedure. "A doctor will be by to assess you."
"Wouldn't that be a change?" Root replies sarcastically as the door shuts at her face.
She saunters off to the bed and takes a seat by the corner. Root assumes she'll be in here for another 24 hours or so she thinks… and that thought causes her to be slightly worried. The protocols and regulations in this place are so easily bent by one subpar doctor. Who is to say they won't do it again, but this time worse?
The idea of that they might keep her in here indefinitely, cut off from The Machine, from the world, from all forms of mental stimulation for an extended period, causes a deep pit of despair and anxiety to form in her stomach.
With that plaguing her mind, she jumps off the bed and starts counting bugs in the code once more, but this time starting from one.
Unlike last time, someone did actually show up for her assessment, at around 100 bugs in the code, which is around the hour mark.
A woman Root has seen around the Unit before, but someone she doesn't know, opens the door and knocks on the door without entering the room. The woman looks to be a decade or older than Root with gray hairs peppering her slightly disheveled dark hair, and the woman has a smile on her, but also a frown.
"Hello Robin, I'm Dr. McIntyre." The woman stands at the precipice of the padded room, with Tweedledum and Tweedledee behind her… who looks worried. "If you like, you can call me Anita. May I enter?"
"Of course, of course. Do make yourself at home." Root makes a gesture around the empty room as if it's her own living room and takes a seat on the bed. "What brings you here to grace me with your presence?"
"I know we've never had the pleasure of meeting before." The doctor enters the room and followed by the assholes before they close the door. "Usually this assessment would be performed by your primary psychologist, but considering you stabbed him, we conclude that it would be best if a different doctor talk to you today. I see that in your file, you're in seclusion twice in your last unit, but you were catatonic at the time. So, I take it that this will be your first time aware and in seclusion?"
Root rolls her eyes and drawls out a… "No."
"Alright, so you know how this hourly assessment goes." The doctor pulls out her pen to begin writing on the clipboard.
"No." Root says firmly this time.
That causes the doctor to give her a double take. "What do you mean, no?"
"As in, I don't know how these assessments work. I suppose a person only gets these assessments when they're being a hazard?" Root is throwing a line to see if this woman will lie to her and cover for that creep… or the off chance that this doctor will be straight.
"When else have you been in seclusion, Robin?" Dr. McIntyre asks skeptically as she flips through a file, as if she's looking for a record. By the look of Tweedledum and Tweedledee behind the doctor, it looks like they know her stay here has been off record.
"Oh, just for the last 24 hours, since after yesterday's dinner." Root says flippantly. "And I guess now… I couldn't have been in Ronald's office for more than 20 minutes before being dragged back into this nightmare of a child's playpen. Oh, you don't know? This hospital isn't particularly organized, is it?"
"What happened before being brought here?" The doctor asks with an appalled look at her, but there's still a hint of skepticism in her eyes.
Finally, someone is going to listen to her.
"They caught me with a cell phone, and good old Ronald wanted me to 'unplug'." Root changes her tone to fit the creep's cadence. "Take her to solitary confinement. No contact with anything electronic."
"Solitary confinement?" The doctor frowns at that. "Were those his words or yours?"
"Not mine… it's his words verbatim." Root grins at the two techs. "You can ask these two idiots if you don't believe me… I mean they were the once that threw me in here."
The doctor's head snaps towards the two offenders who look like they want to be anywhere but here, but before the doctor can say anything, Root continues. "He said that, right after he told me that I think I needed the phone, but he knows he doesn't, and right before he told me, I would thank him later. The man shouldn't have a license to practice, and he thinks she's an auditory hallucination."
Dr. McIntyre turns back to Root with curiosity. "She… as in the voice that speaks to you through the phone?"
"Yes, that would be her."
The doctor flips a few pages on the file in hand. "When you first came to the unit, you told Dr. Carmichael that you hadn't heard her since you since transferring… but you stopped trying to hide it only a few days later. Why?"
"I hadn't then, and I needed a phone now."
"She means a lot to you, doesn't she?"
"She's the only thing that matters to me right now." A sound of desperation breaks an otherwise calm exterior. "It took me a year to figure out how to contact her, and it only lasted for 24 hours, then Harold ruined everything… But then she reached out to me and woke me up. She could have easily left me a prisoner of my own mind… you see, she's a very moralistic and I haven't been the best person, but she decided to contact me, anyway. Because she has a job for me."
"What kind of job is she offering?" The doctor doesn't have a condensing look at her. It's like she believes what Root's saying, but Root knows that isn't true.
"I don't know yet." Root's voice is barely a whisper for a moment. "But she'll tell me when the time's right."
The doctor doesn't say anything for a moment and just stares at her as if she's assessing her before saying. "You pointed a gun at your uncle when he ruined everything, then tried to bash Dr. Keynes's head in with a payphone when he interrupted your call and stabbed Dr. Carmichael with a pen when he took the phone away from you. You don't take it particularly well when people come between you and her."
"To be fair, I wouldn't count that as a stabbing, since I barely broke his skin with the pen." Root waves her hand flippantly. "People don't believe in threats unless it's believable, and I made sure it's believable. I was hoping for a quick capitulation and if I had actually tried to stab him, I would have used my right hand instead of my left."
The doctor shakes her head. "I'm not sure I see the difference, Robin."
"Threatening to kill someone is very different from actually trying to kill someone." Root replies in a lecturing tone. "Holding a fountain pen on a man's throat is no different from aiming a gun at him. It does become trying when there's intent to actually stab or shoot. I was hoping that Ronald would have capitulated instead of being stabbed, and I can get the phone back."
There are questions she needs to ask The Machine.
The doctor nods, seemingly processing what she said and replies. "Meaning, if you can talk to her and if Dr. Carmichael wasn't standing in between, you two… you wouldn't have hurt him."
Technically, she was planning to kill that creep today, but looks like that plan went out the window now.
"The likelihood of violence will decrease." Root nods and smiles at the woman. "I really wanted to kill him before he took back the phone… but she keeps on telling me not to."
The doctor doesn't look phased by that threat of murder at all. "What else does she say?"
"To stay here." Root replies with an annoyed tone. "She's in the belief that I need to work on some stuff before I can leave… and that I'm not ready yet for what she needs me to do."
"So…" The doctor has a thoughtful look. "She's like an angel on your shoulder?"
"Huh?"
"Like in the cartoons." The doctor makes a hand gesture on her shoulder. "Where there's an angel and a devil arguing on a character's shoulder."
"You're right, Pluto had one too." A small genuine smile creeps up on her at the memories of sitting in the Frey's living room and watching tv. "A lot like that… only there's no devil here, just me and her, but I like that metaphor. Like my very own angel."
The doctor smiles at Root. "Do you see any way you can…refrain… from hurting Dr. Carmichael without this… angel? Maybe there's something we can do to help you find a way to cope without talking to her directly? Don't you prefer to not be so reliant on a crutch like that?"
That wipes away the smile on her as her jaw tense, and bristles. "She's not a crutch… she's a God."
"Okay, Robin, sure." Dr. McIntyre holds up a hand to show she's conceding. "I understand that this is very important to you. However, I hope you can understand that we need to keep you in here for now… to protect Dr. Carmichael."
"I understand you believe you need to do that." Root replies and leans back onto the padded wall.
The doctor raises a brow at Root. "You don't want to harm him right now?"
"Oh, I would love nothing but to castrate him and feed the man his balls." Root flashes a grin at the audience. "But you're discounting the easier solution of giving me back my phone."
The doctor let out a sigh. "Sorry, Robin, but we just can't do it right now. In the meantime, I need you to help us with ways for you to calm down without it."
"I'm not un-calm." Root grits out. "I'm just point out the flaw of y'all logic."
The doctor nods. "I will carefully consider that, Robin… but I still need you to think of other ways, okay?"
"Fat chance."
"Okay, well…" The doctor nods to the dumb techs, who quickly open the door and they slowly back out as if she's going to jump at them if they don't. "I'm going to go now, and we'll talk again in an hour. Alright?"
"As if I can go anywhere, anyway." Root says bitterly and flops on the bed. "Can I at least get my Diazepam tonight? I don't think I can handle another miss dose."
"I'll make sure you get your medications." Dr. McIntyre nods before exiting the room and closing the door behind her.
Rolling onto her back, she turns to the CCTV camera. "You made your point… but just what the fuck am I going to do now?"