can you hear me?

[godcode]

The tiny red light wakes Root from an already restless sleep.

This isn't her apartment. Technically, she doesn't have one of her own, having moved out of her assigned apartment pretty quickly after arriving in Darrow. Root splits her time between the abandoned subway station they've taken over, Harold's warehouse and any apartment she's sure is empty.

It's a lucky thing her precinct didn't look into her place of residence after her initial 'transfer.'

In the mostly unfamiliar apartment, at first Root thinks there's been a power failure in the night and something's gone on to a back up battery. She's still groggy with sleep, her eyes not quite focused as she sits up, pushing her hair out of her eyes.

It's then that she realizes where the light is coming from. An inconspicuous black briefcase on the dresser across the room, the same as when they compressed Her over a year ago, before Root wound up trapped in Darrow. Suddenly wide awake, Root darts across the room, almost scared to touch the case with her own hands. She'd know it anywhere. And if this is some trick, it's a good one, near flawless.

So she has to treat it like it's not.

"Hello, there," Root says with a soft smile, the words nearly caught in her throat, "I knew you'd find us."

Harold's creation, better than all of them. The Machine had saved Root and given her a purpose. And all of this time without Her, without Her voice in her ear... Root had felt lost. She'd spent her time cycling between identities, trying to learn more about the city, find its weaknesses and maybe somehow continue the work the Machine had set them on, but it'd all felt empty.

At least, until now.

But looking at that light, the events of that night with Harold and John coming back to her, she knows that already, the clock is ticking. That briefcase's battery was never meant to last forever, and Root has no idea how much time they have before it runs out of juice and She starts to lose memory.

Root gets dressed and pulls on a pair of boots in record time, sending a message to John before she's even out the door. They'll need ice, Freon or compressed air... anything that can quickly cool down circuits. That is, if she can find a way to get enough processing power to decompress Her in the first place.

There used to be a plan. The compressed Machine would have to be decompressed once everything was safe, and the door that Root had walked through that sent her to Darrow would have originally put her in a spot to have the materials to do it. Bela and his elicit operations, and his stockpile of Linux-capable gaming consoles would work to suit their purposes. But there's no Bela in Darrow, and Root can't risk stealing the materials for herself.

There's no Bela, but there is a Lisbeth. Times like this, it helps to have at least one contact in Darrow. And between what she can gather from Harold's warehouse and what Lisbeth is willing to provide, it's just about enough space for Her to stretch out.

The processors almost overheat, Root nearly takes too long to figure out Harold's method, but after a tense couple of hours, She's freed. Unfortunately, that's the easy part. Root didn't build Her, and had only begun to understand how Harry programmed Her. Now she's about to get a crash course.

But the Machine saved Root, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to return the favor.

Down in their subway station with a blinking cursor in front of her, Root touches the curve of her ear. The Machine is silent now, but hopefully not for long.

Comments

[primary_asset]

When Root sends him a message to tell him the Machine is here, he doesn't know what to think. He doesn't give himself time to think either; instead, he wakes Karen, tells her what they need to do and trusts that she'll understand he's asking her to do these things without an explanation for a good reason. And she does, of course, because John wouldn't have married anyone who couldn't put that sort of trust in him.

He's been in Darrow long enough to have his own contacts and while he has to don a ski mask to meet with them, he does it without a second thought. This is Harold's Machine and he might not be here anymore, but that doesn't mean John won't still give the respect to the Machine that it deserves.

And beyond that, he's afraid of what it means. The Machine is here. Does that mean Samaritan is soon to follow?

There's no time to ask the question. No point. He imagines Root has already considered the same. With the Machine stable, at least for now, John stands in the subway station, Karen at his side, Bear curled under a table, and watches the cursor blink.

"What next?" he asks.

[itsdarkcorners]

Karen barely knows what's going on, but she doesn't need to. She knows John, and at times like this, that's enough for her. It's serious, that much she can tell just from his demeanor, and it's important, or it probably wouldn't be happening, at least not like this, hurried and in the middle of the night. From just about the very beginning, she thinks, they found this sort of trust in each other, and it's only grown substantially since then. So she goes along, she keeps herself out of sight when she has to, and when she does come to understand what's happening and what they're doing, it makes sense, too. John has told her about Harold's Machine before. The current circumstances, she's a little fuzzier on, but she can put that at least partly down to having been woken up in the middle of the night, stifling a yawn and trying to smooth her hair out a little as she stands back and watches.

All but holding her breath as she watches, she's wondering the same thing, nodding slightly in agreement with John's question. "Did it work?" she adds. "All... this, I mean."

[godcode]

"She's stable for now," Root says to both of them, because things had gotten dicey for a few minute there, servers nearly overheating, which would have left them without enough space for the Machine. Not enough space would mean memory loss, and there'd be no hope of restoring her to what She was.

But maybe there's still not a lot of hope, considering the work ahead of them.

"Unfortunately," Root goes on to say, "That was the easy part. What comes next would have been Harry's part."

Root's good at what she does; she always has been. And even though the Machine saved her life and gave her a purpose, she knows that Harry is the one who created Her. He knows her subroutines backwards and forwards because he wrote and designed them. He's the maestro and Root knows she's just second fiddle.

More than once since she arrived in Darrow, Root has wished that Harold Finch was there too, but not more than she does today.

[primary_asset]

John may not talk about Finch very often, rarely in fact, but he knows Karen is aware just how much he misses his friend. Harold Finch gave him his life back, gave him purpose, and the Machine was a big part of that.

But Finch isn't here. Not anymore. They have to figure out what to do without him.

"So what do we do?" he asks. It would surprise most people to find out that John is actually quite adept with computers. Being in the CIA had taught him more than a few tricks when it comes to hacking and taking possession of someone else's information, but in a case like this he would always defer to Finch. And now he'll defer to Root.

He'll do what she tells him to.

[itsdarkcorners]

Karen never got to know Harold particularly well, and she's always been a bit disappointed by that, wishing she'd had a chance to better get to know the man who means so much to John. Now, though, it seems to go far beyond those who knew him before missing him. She's never been a computer person, herself — capable enough, but this sort of thing is far beyond her, and she knows the only real help she can be right now is support. Whether this works or it doesn't, it will affect her anyway, but especially if it does. She wouldn't dream of being anywhere else right now.

For the moment, though, all she can really do is wait for Root's word, glancing over at John and then nodding in a silent echo of his question. If there is anything she can do, she'll do it.

[godcode]

"Now I go through every line of Harry's code and figure how to get Her online," Root replies, well aware that John has asked what he can do to help and she's seemingly shut him out. This is more than a one person job, Root knows, but she also knows this is far from John's wheelhouse.

"This... isn't my expertise," she begrudgingly admits, "So I'll be lucky if I can get her limping. But if I can get Her connected here in Darrow, then there'll be plenty to do soon enough."

A city like Darrow, with its eccentricities, its crime, the strange things that happen... Root has a feeling that The Machine will spit out a lot of irrelevant numbers for them here, as soon as she can get things moving. If she can get things running. She doesn't know what she'll do if she can't. But it must mean something, for Her to have shown up, for them to have the subway station in Darrow too, for them to be able to decompress Her at all.

[primary_asset]

John could offer to find someone else in Darrow who might be able to help them, but he won't. He can't. This is theirs to deal with and he's not comfortable bringing anyone else into this circle. He has friends in Darrow, people he could probably trust, but it's just not something he's comfortable doing.

It puts them in danger. This puts them all in danger.

"So we'll bring you food," he says with a faint smile, then looks to Karen. "Water. What else does someone need when they're likely going to spend the next god knows how long sitting at a computer desk?"

[itsdarkcorners]

"Pajamas?" Karen suggests, mentally running through what she generally needs when she's writing under a tight deadline. Being able to get comfortable helps. So does being able to keep herself awake and energized. "Caffeine?" Food, clothes, hydration — those are easy enough things to accomplish, too. Root is the one who's going to have a difficult job here, at least for now.

After this might well be a different story. Mostly, Karen is trying not to let herself think too much about that yet, not wanting to get too far ahead of herself, but there's every chance that everything here has just considerably changed.

[godcode]

Root casts a glance at Karen and then at John, one eyebrow raised.

"Your better half has all the good ideas, John," Root says with a small smile. She knows this is going to be a long haul and caffeine is absolutely going to come in handy. But for Her... Root is wiling to do just about anything.

"And how do the two of you feel about tapping into some surveillance for me?" she asks, because even though she has her own program peeking at the cameras in Darrow-- the few that there are-- she thinks the Machine is going to need a little more than just a firmware upgrade.

[primary_asset]

"Food isn't a good idea," John says to Karen, voice dry, but there's a faint thread of hope in it, too. Like this may just change their lives in Darrow, how they do things. He's been careful since the day he arrived here, he's never completely let down his guard with anyone but Karen, and the Machine being here will make it easier to keep them all safe.

"We can do that," he says with a nod. "Anywhere in particular you want us to start?"

[itsdarkcorners]

Karen bites back a laugh at John's comment, one shoulder lifting a little. Food will be important, too, but between the two of them, she's sure they can handle anything that Root might need. It's worth it, she thinks. Although she only knows so much about the Machine, she still has some idea of the weight of this, how significant it might be if they can get it up and running, and she means to try to see to it that they do.

"Of course," she agrees. "Whatever you need."