Work Text:
*vvvvvvrrrrrrrr*
Shaw’s eyes fly open at the sound of the vibration on her phone. She reaches over and grabs the phone from her night table, squinting at the text on the screen:
>>Target Name: Root
>>Contract Amount: $100,000
Shaw snorts and turns off the screen, setting it back down on the night table.
“I don’t get out of bed for less than $500k,” she mutters under her breath and rolls over, settling back into bed and closing her eyes.
A few seconds pass and her phone starts vibrating again. Shaw groans and rolls her eyes, turning over to grab her phone off the night table once again.
>>Target Name: Root
>>Contract amount: $500,000
Shaw blinks a few times to make sure she isn’t hallucinating.
“Huh,” she muses to herself. This Root person must have really pissed off some very important people.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” she says out loud, typing out a response to the message.
<<Confirming contract. Send details of target.
Her phone buzzes again and she taps to open the message, curious to see who this Root is and why there was such a large payout to take them out. Unfortunately, the details sent to her did not indicate any reason why the contract was so high. This woman - Root - doesn’t seem to be anything special, just a gifted hacker with a mysteriously absent paper trail. Intelligent? Apparently. Attractive? Shaw looks at the photo of the hacker on her phone - definitely. But nothing else really stands out when Shaw scans through the target profile on her phone.
She gets out of bed and takes a quick shower, then shovels down a bowl of Fruit Loops and grabs her duffel bag from underneath her bed. She sets out to track down the target using the coordinates that were sent to her phone.
....
Squinting through the scope of her binoculars, Shaw spots Root walking down the busy streets of New York. It’s broad daylight - too risky to take out Root with a sniper rifle in front of so many people. Shaw sighs in disappointment and packs up her rifle. Guess it’ll have to be a close range job, then. She takes out her Nano and USP Compact from the duffel bag and stuffs both into the back of her waistband. She hides the duffel bag in the closet of the empty apartment that she had broken into and climbs out the window and down the fire escape to track her target on foot.
Shaw tails the hacker as she completes seemingly mundane errands - making a deposit at the bank, dropping off some mail at the post office, grabbing a cappuccino at a coffee shop. Shaw glances up from her tall latte every couple of minutes to make sure that her target is still in view. She’s sitting a few tables away from Root, who seems to be engaged in reading a wedding planning magazine. There’s still too many people around for her to make a move, so she opts to bide her time until she can get Root alone.
After several more hours of trailing the hacker, Shaw finally finds an opportunity when Root starts heading back to what Shaw assumes is her apartment. She follows Root to a much quieter part of town - away from the hustle and bustle of the main streets - and silently attaches the suppressor on her USP Compact as she follows Root around another corner. She finds the perfect opportunity when they round the corner and end up in a secluded area, and Shaw raises her pistol to take aim at her target.
A buzzing in her pocket stops her in her tracks and Shaw lifts her finger from the trigger to fish her phone out of her pocket and check the message.
>>Update: Target to be taken in ALIVE
That’s strange, Shaw thinks to herself. Usually when you’re contracted to assassinate someone, the general consensus is that the target should end up dead.
Her phone buzzes again.
>>Get target to safety. You are not alone
Shaw pauses and hears the faint sound of footsteps approaching from behind. Several other footsteps come into range and Shaw realises that she - and Root - are surrounded.
Shaw groans. This was not what she had signed up for. She sprints towards Root, who turns around at the sound of her footsteps.
“Root?” she calls out to the hacker.
“Yes. H-how did you-“
“No time to talk. I’m here to kil-uh, protect you. Come with me.”
Shaw quickly grabs Root by the elbow and pulls her into an alley, ducking behind a garbage dumpster and dragging Root down beside her.
“Who are you?” Root asks, bewildered and breathless from running.
“Doesn’t matter. Apparently I’ve been hired to protect you.”
“Protect me? From who?”
Shaw shrugs. “No idea. To be honest, I’m just in it for the money.”
“Well that’s comforting.”
“Look, all I know is that you pissed off some people in very high places. People who wanna have you killed. Any idea who it could be, or what we’re dealing with here?”
“Sweetie, I’m a hacker for hire. Who doesn’t want me dead?”
“I guess that explains all the goons closing in on us like vultures around a corpse. Follow close behind me.” She stops and turns around. “And don’t call me sweetie.”
“Well what else am I supposed to call you? You never gave me your name.”
Shaw rolled her eyes. “Name’s Shaw. Now follow me. Keep low and don’t say a word.”
“But how am I supposed to-“
“I said shush-“
“-warn you about the three bad guys with guns behind us?”
A bullet whizzes right by Shaw’s ear before Root even finishes speaking, and Shaw turns around to return the fire; grabbing the Root by the arm and shoving the hacker behind her to shield her from the spray of bullets.
“Ever shoot a gun before?” Shaw asks as she exchanges shots with the troupe of bad guys.
“Do video games count?”
Shaw ducks and shoves Root’s head down, both of them narrowly missing another bullet flying at them. She pulls her Nano out of her waistband and hands it to Root.
“Safety. Sights. Trigger,” she says, pointing to each respective part of the gun, “Aim for center mass. Harder to miss that way.”
Shaw fires off a few well-placed rounds and easily drops half a dozen men on the ground. She springs up onto her feet and starts sprinting with Root in tow. After a few minutes Shaw spots a line of parked cars at a sidewalk. She takes off her leather jacket and wraps it around her arm. She drives the butt of her gun through the driver window of the closest car and uses her wrapped arm to clear away the remainder of the shattered glass. Shaw reaches through the window and unlocks the doors to the car.
“Get in,” she motions to Root with a gesture of her head, and Root hurriedly runs to the passenger side and gets inside. Shaw enters through the driver side and makes quick work of hotwiring the car. The engine roars to life and the car peels off onto the street, narrowly missing a fresh round of shots coming from the swarm of additional men who are now just catching up to them.
“Well that was close,” Shaw mutters, looking back at the rear view mirror to make sure that the distance between them and the goons was increasing by the second.
“Maybe a little too close,” Root hisses through gritted teeth.
Shaw looks over and spots the blood starting to soak through the sleeve of Root’s left arm.
Shaw leans over, grabs Roots right hand, and places on the source of the bleeding. “Keep pressure on that wound. I’ll take a look at it once I can get you somewhere safe.”
Root nods and does as instructed, pushing against the wound despite the stinging pain.
After a while, they approach Shaw’s apartment. Shaw parks the car a few blocks away from her building and they continue walking on foot. Shaw quickly looks over the gunshot wound on Root’s arm and nods when she sees that the bullet shot clean through her arm.
“Looks like you’re gonna be okay. I’ll patch you up when we get to my place,” she says to Root, who winces when Shaw lifts her arm to examine it.
“Do you make it a hobby to patch up strangers whose lives you save?” Root asks.
“I don’t save lives, I take ‘em,” Shaw says gruffly.
“I guess I must be pretty special for you to save mine instead of taking it,” Root teases.
“Yeah, you’re special alright. $500k type of special. Now what did I say about not talking?”
“I thought we were bonding. We just went through a near-death experience together. That’s a pretty special bond.”
“Shut up, Root. Otherwise the only special bond you’re gonna get is getting handcuffed and gagged.”
“Is that a promise?”
Shaw grunts in frustration and rolls her eyes. She should be paid double the amount for having to deal with the annoying hacker.
They finally make it to Shaw’s building and Shaw does a quick sweep of the apartment to make sure it hasn’t been compromised. She shows Root to the bathroom and takes out her medical kit to start patching her up.
Root hisses when Shaw cleans the wound with the antiseptic swabs, but refrains from making any other noises after Shaw applies a local anesthetic to numb the pain.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Root comments, studying the way Shaw’s hands gently and skillfully stitch up the wound.
“I was a doctor once, but I quickly found out that I was much better at killing people than saving them,” Shaw mutters as she works.
“Until now,” Root adds.
“Like I said, I’m only doing this for the money.”
“Right. And what is ‘this’, exactly?”
“I don’t know. I get a text that tells me how much money I’ll get for taking you out. Then I get another text, and it tells me I have to keep you alive. So here I am, keeping you alive.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
Shaw rolls her eyes and wraps the gauze around the newly patched up wound. She tapes the gauze in place and turns to put away her supplies.
“So, what kind of people are you pissing off that are powerful enough to send a bunch of assassins out to kill you?” Shaw asks, carefully sterilizing her tools and placing them back in the medical kit.
“The kind of people that I would need professional help to get rid of.”
Shaw hears the unmistakable sound of the safety being clicked off a gun. HER gun. Her Nano, to be specific. She slowly turns around to see Root casually leaning against the door frame, aiming Shaw’s own gun at her with a steady hand. A hand that’s definitely shot a gun before.
Root reaches behind Shaw and removes the USP Compact from her waistband as well. Shaw can’t help but catch a whiff of Root’s shampoo as she leans in, and it’s a little intoxicating if she’s being honest. Root clicks the safety off the second gun and lets her finger rest against the side of the pistol.
“Two guns at once?” Shaw comments. “That’s kind of lame.”
Root smiles. “Two handguns are better than one.”
Shaw snorts. “So are you gonna tell me how I fit into this plan of yours, or am I going to have to shoot it out of you?”
Root laughs. A laugh that Shaw does not find completely unpleasant, which…is not what she should be concerned about right now while she has two guns pointed at her.
“Sorry, sweetie, I couldn’t shake those guys off my tail, so I had to get a little creative.”
“Creative how?” Shaw gritted through her teeth.
“Well you’re right about me pissing off some people in high places. See, I had to kill a few people to get access to a few important things, and I guess some of those people had associates who wanted what I took and are willing to kill for it. As you can probably figure out, that can be very bad for business, not to mention very irritating. So I needed some help getting rid of the hitmen that are being sent after me. That’s where you came in. I needed a top tier assassin to take out these helper monkeys without getting my hands dirty.
“So you got my attention by what…putting out a hit out on yourself?”
“Exactly. I read your file, Sameen - the file that you thought had been redacted and stored away in a bunker somewhere it would never be found - and I have to say that I’m big fan.”
“I’m flattered,” Shaw said flatly.
Root pouted. “No hard feelings, sweetie. I just needed a bit of help, and you were the perfect candidate to help me. If it makes you feel any better, I am a woman of my word - $500,000 deposited into your bank account. Remember earlier today when I went to the bank? That was me transferring the money into your account.”
“Great, an honest hacker. That’s gotta be a first.”
Root grinned. “Have a little faith, Sameen. The mail I deposited at the post office today contains my contact information. The mail will arrive here at your apartment within 3-5 business days, should you wish to reach out in the future-“ Root leans in close “-and I really hope you do.”
“Oh, I’m gonna be in touch in the very near future,” Shaw growls.
Root smiles “I’m counting on it.”
Root looks at her phone. “Sadly, I’m on a bit of a clock, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut our conversation short,” she backs out of the bathroom, gun still pointing at Shaw. Root admires the gun she’s holding in her hand. “Thanks for the lovely souvenir!”
Root quickly backs out of the hallway and disappears out the apartment door. Shaw runs after her, but loses sight of the hacker as soon as she gets to the door.
“Next time I see that woman, I’m shooting her,” Shaw grumbles to herself.