Unbothered, unhurried, Root explains in a pleasant tone, story for story: "I arranged the murder of a man who deserved to die when I was fourteen. It was so easy, I thought, why stop there?"

Root hadn't been totally unaffected by Russell's death. She'd felt things: a sudden release of grief, and vicious satisfaction, and tiredness. She hadn't felt an ounce of remorse, not then and not now. Though she's felt that for other people she's killed, Russell, early on, was a lesson that some deaths are warranted. It taught her to cast them in a different light, to see killing as something more than just a moral absolute shaded bad. It could be so many other things.

She starts pulling down materials from dusty storage shelves and considering them, placing some to the side as options for her experiments.

She's thinking over what Shaw's admission might mean for her life story and ponders out loud. It's kind of cute that Shaw never killed anyone until she had a legal justification for it, but Root can't say she's surprised to hear it.

"It was a relief, right? That in the military who you were was an asset, not an error?"