Root does not seem okay. She's a tall-ish lithe brunette in dirty clothing laying face-down on the concrete, and she completely ignores Peter for the time being in favor of screaming incoherently into the floor. There's fear behind it, but more than fear, there's utter rage, Root railing against her circumstances.
She painstakingly gets her hands under her and pushes herself up, breathing heavily. Her hair is ragged and she has a series of injection marks tracking down her arms on either side. Many of them.
The screaming isn't great on enhanced senses, but there isn't much Peter can do besides squirm on the concrete, watching as the woman collects herself. She looks familiar, something niggling in the recesses of his mind, but dream logic dictates that Peter can't realize what the problem is.
She's been injected with something - experimentation? Peter can't be sure, exactly - and whether or not that's having an effect on her mental state or if it's simply the stress of the whole situation remains to be seen. His fingers flex helplessly, heels digging into the concrete, but he's stuck.
"Um. Ma'am? Lady?" Peter tries again, senses ringing a little - there's ever-present danger, of course, and he can't be sure if any of it is coming from her or not. "Don't try to stand, if it's too much..."
Peter's strapped down to a slab toward the back of the room, and Root was dumped near the front. His voice starts filtering into her mind past the pain. Her whole nervous system is on fire, pain zipping across and up and down incessantly. She'd been injected over and over. Not experimented on, just tortured. Tried to make her talk and betray the Machine.
Root heaves herself onto her hands and then to her feet. She's unsteady physically, but the look in her eyes is past unsteady and onto deranged. If they're going to play dirty then so is she.
"You got tied down?" Her voice is hoarse. She walks heavily toward him. "You must be important to them."
He's here, alive, saved for later. Can she use that? Does she have a hostage? The Machine wouldn't want her to, but Root can't let the Machine die. The Machine gave herself up to save her and she has to go, has to get out of here. Whoever this is might have to be a necessary sacrifice. His life means nothing next to her god's, just like Root's means nothing.
Peter tracks her progress with growing worry as she pushes up off the ground, but it's not until Root stands shakily that Peter's spider sense gives a new, renewed wash of dread. It's been ringing intermittently for God-only-knows how long, but this is fresh, this is immediate and not good, very not good!
"Uh - hey, what, no. No, I'm not I'm just - " Peter wriggles against the slab uncomfortably, his senses ringing, ringing, ringing as she moves closer, but there's nothing he can do. He's at her mercy in this cell, and their captors certainly didn't seem inclined to intervene. The look in her eyes is manic, unpredictable, dangerdangerdangerous.
"My name's Peter!" He blurts out the words, bonds creaking as he cringes away from her on instinct, unable to stop it when his senses are so out of whack - be it from her actually contemplating violence (which...seems likely, based on her expression), the constant state of danger and anxiety he's been in for too long, or the panic that's starting to bubble in his chest because if she does try anything, he can't fight back. "Hi! Hello!"
Root can't fault him for that. It might work on someone who hadn't spent the better part of her adult life as a professional killer, and only the more recent part as someone trying to go for kneecaps instead of headshots. Her nerves are screaming and her mind is blaring with the urgent, unceasing alarm that the Machine is in danger.
Her voice is still rough from screaming but she's convivial in tone, and she stands over him and gazes down with a considering gleam.
"Hi, Peter. My name is Root." She rests a delicate hand on his shoulder. "What are you in here for?"
"Well I'm a person." Peter stresses, but she doesn't seem keen on listening. He squirms on the slab, still unable to find any purchase, though his heels do dig in, hard against the stone. Maybe with enough pressure applied for long enough it would crumble something, but at the moment, he's not so lucky.
"Hi, Root." Peter leans away a little, feeling slightly light-headed from everything - his body, run down after poor treatment; his senses, still buzzing painfully from the immediate danger. Until she isn't considering hurting him, it won't end, and he tries not to cringe at the hand, eyes wide as he looks up at her. "Is it nice to meet you...?"
"Genetic experimentation." It's not a lie, though what point there is in denying he's Spiderman remains to be seen. Still, it's practically instinct at this point. "Lab rat, that's me. Not voluntary, for the record. You?"
"That's fun," she says lightly. "And dehumanizing. No wonder you're saying you're a person."
She can't fault him for that one, either, it just doesn't matter to her. But she's still deciding on her plan, so she isn't taking action yet. Root might be violent but she's not hasty. She's always been measured, deliberate. It's the part of her that thinks the Machine is a profound guiding star, to know what she's doing has a purpose and a point behind it.
It's the senselessness of existence that had driven her to the edge of madness until she found her.
Root's fingertips trace Peter's clavicle, gentle and affectionate. "I'm here because they want to kill my god, and I'm the only one with a direct line to her." She'll answer his question, but she won't get distracted. "What kind of genetic experimentation?"
It isn't infeasible Samaritan's goons would be into that. They have their fingers in a lot of pies, their evil A.I. overlord spinning out countless possibilities and tracking as many of them as the Machine can. Unfortunately.
"It's nice to have the reminder." Peter wets dry lips, offering his best attempt at a casual shrug when he's still strung up on the slab. "Gotta do everything myself around here, kind of a pain."
Somehow, the quiet deliberation is worse. Peter's always been a nervous chatterer - certified yapper, actually - and even during his time here, he's annoyed plenty of their guards and scientists with his constant jabbering. He's not sure why they don't use a gag, unless they just like hearing him scream.
"Okay. Yeah, sure, that - totally makes sense." He's lying (and poorly), that much is obvious, head tilting as Root's finger drags along his collarbone. "Killing a god, very not good. Rude actually, in my opinion."
Not that anybody ever asks his opinion. Like, for example, this sucks. Yeah, novel, he knows, but it's true. There's a beat of ingrained hesitation before he admits (because, really, what the hell is the point when the bad guys already know everything and he might not even make it out of here alive without her help?): "I was, uh, bitten by a radioactive spider? It kind of - changed me. Enhanced senses, strength, that kind of thing. Hence..."
He opens his palms as if to say, all this, indicating the cuffs keeping him squarely on the slab.
Root is fast on the uptake, even after torture. She's also conscientious that the Machine would not want her to harm an innocent victim in order to get herself out of here, no matter what that meant for the Machine. It's annoying sometimes, how much Harry had instilled his morals into the Machine, unfailing and unflagging in her dedication to upholding them.
But it's annoying in the same way having to brush your teeth every day is annoying. Endless, constant, and good for you.
She's aware no one else understands her connection with the Machine, or trusts her, or most of the time even knows she exists, so she's unruffled at Peter's poor lying as he attempts to appeal to her. It doesn't matter. Enhanced strength, has to do everything himself. Fellow victim, wants to get out. Okay. She can work with that.
She just can't let onto the audience that she's doing this with intent to free him, but hey, Root has no problem torturing him to begin with, so that won't be hard to pull off. She strokes her hand teasingly down his arm until it reaches the place his wrist is bolted to the concrete slab. She leans in, grabbing his thumb in her whole hand. She has soft slender hands apart from the gun callouses.
"Radioactive spider. I don't think radiation works that way." Root tilts her head, watching him. "My god would want me to save you. She's always such a bleeding heart. But the thing is, I have to save her."
Her hand on his wrenches violently, dislocating his thumb. Root knows precisely which joint, because she's done it to herself before to get out of similar restraints.
"It was spliced with human DNA and it kinda - well they were trying to figure out a way to transfer healing genes from one organism to another, actually." Peter's not fast enough in closing his hand before Root wraps hers around his thumb, and while he could close his fist around her hand and break it, he doesn't want to do that. Instead he stills, a deer in headlights, warning bells ringing. It doesn't matter to his enhanced senses that her intention is, ultimately, to help - first, it has to hurt, and that's what's registering. He doesn't have any wiggle room to pull away, wide, brown eyes turned up to her, the dilation of his pupils unnatural for the level of lighting in the cell. Part of the benefit of the mask was usually hiding his emotive expressions, but that's not an option here, either. "Well don't you think maybe - !"
Whatever nervous suggestion Peter was going to give her is lost to the rough dislocation of his thumb, and Peter bites down on a yell, body jerking against the slab. It does have the benefit of his restraints creaking - he wasn't kidding about the strength thing. "Motherhugger, OW!"
Genetics is not her area -- biology just isn't her strong suit -- but Peter sure sounds like an interesting customer. The restraints creaking is a good sign.
There's a camera here, maybe multiple. There's always a camera unless she's in one of the very few blind spots Samaritan has, where absolutely no audio or video pickup is available for a given area, and that's not going to be here. Root has to perform, but she doesn't mind. She's always been good at playing a role. For the time being she leaves his hand where it is without pushing it through the manacle.
"I think you can swear when I break your hand, Petey," Root informs him with amused sympathy. She talks to the camera without breaking eye contact with Peter, walking around the table to his other hand, fingers trailing, her expression a comical pout. "Why'd you leave him in here with me? That wasn't a mistake. You wouldn't be so careless.
"Is there something you want me to get out of him? I can oblige."
If she thought this would really work she might actually take them up on that kind of offer, which means she knows Samaritan will think it's believable. Because it is. Samaritan has a piecemeal and shaky understanding of human motives, and hers are especially complex. Root is willing to bet it won't put together that Root would never cooperate with it, not with how mercenary she can otherwise be. There's years and decades of history of her behavior for it to draw from as precedent. How could it realize that Root would rather shoot herself in the head than give it absolutely anything it wanted?
Peter decides he definitely does not like his new roommate - it's his fault, isn't it, for laying there bored and lonely, wishing he had someone to talk to - even though he knew it was better that no one else was being subjected to this with him. He glares from his position, unable to fix his finger by himself - it'll heal wrong if he doesn't, and he'll have to break it all over again. At least his system is so fucked up that it'll heal slowly - small blessings, he guesses?
"My aunt told me never to swear in front of a lady." Peter tips his head back, tracking her movement around the table, meeting her unerring gaze. He thought he'd been in trouble before, but this was a new level of problem. "Not really sure you count, but she'd be disappointed, so I guess 'shrew' is probably my best curse option, at the moment."
His other hand is clenched into a fist, now, wise to Root's sadistic game. Well, maybe it's not fair to say sadistic - she actually seems terrifyingly polite about it??? - but given that he's serving as the deck of cards in this metaphor, bent and folded from hand to hand, he thinks he's allowed an adjective if he wants one.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Peter groans, thunking his head back against the concrete again, which smarts, but at least it's distracting him from the throbbing in his twisted thumb. "I'm an experiment! They pump me full of drugs and take blood - I don't know anything. What happened to me was an accident, a fluke - "
He's lying. He knows damn well that the secret to stabilizing the Oz formula was his father's DNA - it's why the bite worked for him, and no one else who'd ever taken the serum. Connors, Harry - it was a death sentence or worse, because his father's DNA was the baseline for the spider splicing.
It's a good story. It does succeed in making Root interested in what the real story is, though it's entirely aside from the point. Maybe later she'll get a chance to pry the truth out of Peter in a better setting. She'll buy him boba and everything.
"No one's called me a shrew while I was torturing them before," she muses, "so you get points for originality."
Root stops at the other side of the slab and clicks her tongue at his now-clenched hand. "I'm going to move on to your feet if you don't cooperate. Come on now. Time for the other thumb!"
It's messier to get a foot broken enough to fit through an ankle restraint, but if Peter is determined to be difficult, she can get to work on that. It's a purely practical standpoint; Root isn't enjoying hurting him, it's just something she's good at and knows will get the job done. If there was a better option, she'd stop in an instant, at least to make the Machine less disappointed in her. But in the meantime it's full steam ahead compartmentalization, which has always been her specialty.
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expiationlogs2025-01-13 12:39 pm
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She painstakingly gets her hands under her and pushes herself up, breathing heavily. Her hair is ragged and she has a series of injection marks tracking down her arms on either side. Many of them.
"I'm going to kill them," she whispers raggedly.
no subject
She's been injected with something - experimentation? Peter can't be sure, exactly - and whether or not that's having an effect on her mental state or if it's simply the stress of the whole situation remains to be seen. His fingers flex helplessly, heels digging into the concrete, but he's stuck.
"Um. Ma'am? Lady?" Peter tries again, senses ringing a little - there's ever-present danger, of course, and he can't be sure if any of it is coming from her or not. "Don't try to stand, if it's too much..."
no subject
Root heaves herself onto her hands and then to her feet. She's unsteady physically, but the look in her eyes is past unsteady and onto deranged. If they're going to play dirty then so is she.
"You got tied down?" Her voice is hoarse. She walks heavily toward him. "You must be important to them."
He's here, alive, saved for later. Can she use that? Does she have a hostage? The Machine wouldn't want her to, but Root can't let the Machine die. The Machine gave herself up to save her and she has to go, has to get out of here. Whoever this is might have to be a necessary sacrifice. His life means nothing next to her god's, just like Root's means nothing.
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"Uh - hey, what, no. No, I'm not I'm just - " Peter wriggles against the slab uncomfortably, his senses ringing, ringing, ringing as she moves closer, but there's nothing he can do. He's at her mercy in this cell, and their captors certainly didn't seem inclined to intervene. The look in her eyes is manic, unpredictable, dangerdangerdangerous.
"My name's Peter!" He blurts out the words, bonds creaking as he cringes away from her on instinct, unable to stop it when his senses are so out of whack - be it from her actually contemplating violence (which...seems likely, based on her expression), the constant state of danger and anxiety he's been in for too long, or the panic that's starting to bubble in his chest because if she does try anything, he can't fight back. "Hi! Hello!"
no subject
Root can't fault him for that. It might work on someone who hadn't spent the better part of her adult life as a professional killer, and only the more recent part as someone trying to go for kneecaps instead of headshots. Her nerves are screaming and her mind is blaring with the urgent, unceasing alarm that the Machine is in danger.
Her voice is still rough from screaming but she's convivial in tone, and she stands over him and gazes down with a considering gleam.
"Hi, Peter. My name is Root." She rests a delicate hand on his shoulder. "What are you in here for?"
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"Hi, Root." Peter leans away a little, feeling slightly light-headed from everything - his body, run down after poor treatment; his senses, still buzzing painfully from the immediate danger. Until she isn't considering hurting him, it won't end, and he tries not to cringe at the hand, eyes wide as he looks up at her. "Is it nice to meet you...?"
"Genetic experimentation." It's not a lie, though what point there is in denying he's Spiderman remains to be seen. Still, it's practically instinct at this point. "Lab rat, that's me. Not voluntary, for the record. You?"
no subject
She can't fault him for that one, either, it just doesn't matter to her. But she's still deciding on her plan, so she isn't taking action yet. Root might be violent but she's not hasty. She's always been measured, deliberate. It's the part of her that thinks the Machine is a profound guiding star, to know what she's doing has a purpose and a point behind it.
It's the senselessness of existence that had driven her to the edge of madness until she found her.
Root's fingertips trace Peter's clavicle, gentle and affectionate. "I'm here because they want to kill my god, and I'm the only one with a direct line to her." She'll answer his question, but she won't get distracted. "What kind of genetic experimentation?"
It isn't infeasible Samaritan's goons would be into that. They have their fingers in a lot of pies, their evil A.I. overlord spinning out countless possibilities and tracking as many of them as the Machine can. Unfortunately.
no subject
Somehow, the quiet deliberation is worse. Peter's always been a nervous chatterer - certified yapper, actually - and even during his time here, he's annoyed plenty of their guards and scientists with his constant jabbering. He's not sure why they don't use a gag, unless they just like hearing him scream.
"Okay. Yeah, sure, that - totally makes sense." He's lying (and poorly), that much is obvious, head tilting as Root's finger drags along his collarbone. "Killing a god, very not good. Rude actually, in my opinion."
Not that anybody ever asks his opinion. Like, for example, this sucks. Yeah, novel, he knows, but it's true. There's a beat of ingrained hesitation before he admits (because, really, what the hell is the point when the bad guys already know everything and he might not even make it out of here alive without her help?): "I was, uh, bitten by a radioactive spider? It kind of - changed me. Enhanced senses, strength, that kind of thing. Hence..."
He opens his palms as if to say, all this, indicating the cuffs keeping him squarely on the slab.
no subject
But it's annoying in the same way having to brush your teeth every day is annoying. Endless, constant, and good for you.
She's aware no one else understands her connection with the Machine, or trusts her, or most of the time even knows she exists, so she's unruffled at Peter's poor lying as he attempts to appeal to her. It doesn't matter. Enhanced strength, has to do everything himself. Fellow victim, wants to get out. Okay. She can work with that.
She just can't let onto the audience that she's doing this with intent to free him, but hey, Root has no problem torturing him to begin with, so that won't be hard to pull off. She strokes her hand teasingly down his arm until it reaches the place his wrist is bolted to the concrete slab. She leans in, grabbing his thumb in her whole hand. She has soft slender hands apart from the gun callouses.
"Radioactive spider. I don't think radiation works that way." Root tilts her head, watching him. "My god would want me to save you. She's always such a bleeding heart. But the thing is, I have to save her."
Her hand on his wrenches violently, dislocating his thumb. Root knows precisely which joint, because she's done it to herself before to get out of similar restraints.
no subject
Whatever nervous suggestion Peter was going to give her is lost to the rough dislocation of his thumb, and Peter bites down on a yell, body jerking against the slab. It does have the benefit of his restraints creaking - he wasn't kidding about the strength thing. "Motherhugger, OW!"
no subject
There's a camera here, maybe multiple. There's always a camera unless she's in one of the very few blind spots Samaritan has, where absolutely no audio or video pickup is available for a given area, and that's not going to be here. Root has to perform, but she doesn't mind. She's always been good at playing a role. For the time being she leaves his hand where it is without pushing it through the manacle.
"I think you can swear when I break your hand, Petey," Root informs him with amused sympathy. She talks to the camera without breaking eye contact with Peter, walking around the table to his other hand, fingers trailing, her expression a comical pout. "Why'd you leave him in here with me? That wasn't a mistake. You wouldn't be so careless.
"Is there something you want me to get out of him? I can oblige."
If she thought this would really work she might actually take them up on that kind of offer, which means she knows Samaritan will think it's believable. Because it is. Samaritan has a piecemeal and shaky understanding of human motives, and hers are especially complex. Root is willing to bet it won't put together that Root would never cooperate with it, not with how mercenary she can otherwise be. There's years and decades of history of her behavior for it to draw from as precedent. How could it realize that Root would rather shoot herself in the head than give it absolutely anything it wanted?
It's far from being her beloved Machine.
no subject
"My aunt told me never to swear in front of a lady." Peter tips his head back, tracking her movement around the table, meeting her unerring gaze. He thought he'd been in trouble before, but this was a new level of problem. "Not really sure you count, but she'd be disappointed, so I guess 'shrew' is probably my best curse option, at the moment."
His other hand is clenched into a fist, now, wise to Root's sadistic game. Well, maybe it's not fair to say sadistic - she actually seems terrifyingly polite about it??? - but given that he's serving as the deck of cards in this metaphor, bent and folded from hand to hand, he thinks he's allowed an adjective if he wants one.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Peter groans, thunking his head back against the concrete again, which smarts, but at least it's distracting him from the throbbing in his twisted thumb. "I'm an experiment! They pump me full of drugs and take blood - I don't know anything. What happened to me was an accident, a fluke - "
He's lying. He knows damn well that the secret to stabilizing the Oz formula was his father's DNA - it's why the bite worked for him, and no one else who'd ever taken the serum. Connors, Harry - it was a death sentence or worse, because his father's DNA was the baseline for the spider splicing.
no subject
"No one's called me a shrew while I was torturing them before," she muses, "so you get points for originality."
Root stops at the other side of the slab and clicks her tongue at his now-clenched hand. "I'm going to move on to your feet if you don't cooperate. Come on now. Time for the other thumb!"
It's messier to get a foot broken enough to fit through an ankle restraint, but if Peter is determined to be difficult, she can get to work on that. It's a purely practical standpoint; Root isn't enjoying hurting him, it's just something she's good at and knows will get the job done. If there was a better option, she'd stop in an instant, at least to make the Machine less disappointed in her. But in the meantime it's full steam ahead compartmentalization, which has always been her specialty.