Root

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.