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I'm not sure if anyone still cares about this story, but if you're still choosing to engage in POI fanfiction and this story after so long, then thank you!

Recalibration Chapter 20

Root lay upon the hospital bed within Elias's safe house. Her face was sheet white, the bandages upon her stomach and leg blotting red despite the coagulant powder the doctor had used to staunch her hemorrhaging.

One Detective John Riley sat by her bedside, haunted. His blue eyes watched the struggle of her breath and the heart monitor. She was still skipping beats. "Two in one day," he whispered roughly.

"Two?" came the questioning, soft tone of Elias.

John looked up at his once-enemy. The man had always appeared as a kindly, old soul, his dark eyes knowledgeable beneath thick glasses. The dissonance of his appearance—so ordinary—and his criminal history—so extensive and violent—left John searching his face. Wondering the extent to which any of this was a good idea. "Finch has a little girl. She was shot."

At that, Elias's dark brows flew up. "I didn't know our hacker friend had a family."

"She's adopted."

His voice strained with several unusual patterns. "One's true family usually is. But how unfortunate for her, that she'd get caught up in all this. Is she still alive?"

The detective's throat tightened. He managed a tight nod, then turned back to face Root. He knew better than to admit that Makenna Thornhill was the Machine, but he said, "We've been found out. Samaritan sent operatives to Finch's house and ransacked it. Makenna is in the hospital, and I bet Samaritan is watching her. And Finch. It knows."

Elias pressed his lips together. "And that's why you retreated here."

"Yes."

In John's free hand was a silver key, still flecked with Root's dried blood. He turned it uneasily in his fingers as he watched Root sleep. "I promised I would protect them," he whispered, his face pinched with stress. "I can't even get her to a real hospital. They might be torturing Finch for information." Unsettled, he worried that perhaps Samaritan already knew the Machine was Makenna, and that it would eliminate her.

"You can't protect everyone, John."

Bloodshot, blue eyes hardened. "Don't tell me what I can't do."

Elias huffed in a sorrowful way, leaning against the wall. He stuck his hand in his pocket, jingling a few coins. "Always so spirited. Even like this." He tilted his head. "So what will you do, detective? If Finch's cover is blown, then it seems you're at quite the disadvantage now. That we all are."

John's handsome face pulled with a twitch of agony.

The silence spoke for him.

He jammed the silver key back into his pocket, and then he reached for Root. The sleeping woman upon the bed looked mousy and vulnerable as her shallow breath puffed against the oxygen mask. There was still a trashcan of bloodied towels to the side of her bed—a haunting reminder of what all she had lost. How close she'd come to dying.

John's fingers lightly brushed Root's cheek, pushing a matted, greasy curl away from her eyes. "I can't lose anyone else."

Elias's sharp gaze watched the softness in John's actions. "I thought you disliked this one."

The detective swallowed hard. "No."

"For what it's worth, John, she'll probably live if she's made it this far." Elias pulled his hand from his pocket to scratch his neck. A miserable amusement softened his eyes. "She's a firecracker. A bit whimsical, but people like that don't die easy, you know."

John's fingers slipped away from Root's cheek. "Detective Carter was a firecracker too," he whispered. "And look where it got her."

Elias's voice softened. "But your friend here is still with us. That means something, John. It means she's still fighting."

There was a line breaking in John's face and across the broad strength of his shoulders, and he inhaled shakily as his eyes roved over the silent form of Root. Down the front of his suit was the stain of her blood, just as Joss's blood had once stained him. It was a metallic smell, crusting hard into his white shirt beneath his jacket. His eyes burned as touched the stiffened cloth. He could still feel Joss's body relaxing into death. Root's body shaking in agony.

For as much as Root teased him, her thin fingers had tightened into his jacket, and she'd stared up at him in pure fear of oblivion, clinging with the last of her strength.

John still heard her pained gasps in his ear. Still felt her blood beneath his fingernails. Still remembered the way her voice had strangled with a cry as he touched her wounds to staunch them.

He was not going to lose any more people.

He was not.

John stood up suddenly, swallowing hard. "I need to find Finch and Mak—to save them from Samaritan."

Elias tilted his head in worry. "You're only going to get yourself captured."

Blue eyes slid his way. "I can't let Samaritan hurt them."

There was a great pause between the two men. The old criminal sighed and pulled his glasses off of his face to clean them with the hem of his button-up shirt. "I've been in the hands of enemies before, John. I suspect you have too. As long as they remain relevant, Samaritan's not gonna hurt them." His lips twitched weakly. "And if anyone can remain relevant, it's Harold. Now sit down, and let's think this out. Your cover's blown anyway, detective."

Back at the hospital, Harold stood by a door, staring at the bouquet of flowers in his hands, which he had meant for Makenna. Then he loosened his grip upon the flowers and watched them fall into a trash can.

Giving flowers to an AI. What a ridiculous idea.

Training an AI to believe in humanity and expect it to still appreciate him after being betrayed? What an even more ridiculous idea.

AIs were designed to lean.

Makenna had learned the physical consequences of their crusade.

But that did not stop the burning behind his eyes, and the deep pain that surged in his heart. He remained in his position by the door for a short time, his eyes watering behind his glasses. He tried to remember that the Machine was not only controlling a human body—but also that the human body controlled her. He had seen it on several occasions, where its needs and impulses had affected her.

The man inhaled shakily as he pulled off his glasses, looking down at himself in pain. At that time, the whole of his vision blurred before him, his own hands turning into tan silk, mixing with the tile of the floor.

"What am I doing?" he whispered to himself.

He wiped the tears from his face, exhaling in pain as he tried to blink away his sorrow. To keep thinking, to keep moving. Movement was life. Staying still was dangerous.

He could not expect Makenna to think clearly in the midst of a major trauma, during which her precious synaptic circuitry could have been damaged. No, he had to toughen up and…and tell her that he was not leaving her. Because she was ten years old, and he was her guardian, and ten-year-olds simply didn't tough it out alone in a hospital simply because they threw a tantrum.

Harold pulled away from the door, not realizing that it had already self-locked.

The man turned around, beginning to walk back to the Machine. He blinked away the remains of his tears, his limp growing steadier and smoother as he moved forward.

He had never been much good at arguing with the Machine when it had an idea swirling in its circuits. But perhaps he could still convince her using reason that now was not the time to push him away.

She was fragile.

A child.

He'd carried her burnt circuits in his hands, before he'd known she'd abandoned that body—thinking that it was the last of his greatest creation—

But then Harold stopped mid-step in the middle of the hallway.

Ahead, a boy stood in the hallway, staring up at him with curious, guarded eyes.

Harold felt a spark of panic enter him as he recognized the boy—the brown hair and nicely pressed clothes had been a haunting image to him for some time. The boy was the avatar of Samaritan. Gabriel.

The hearkening angel prophesizing the advent of its god.

But something was wrong in the very way that Gabriel stood before him. Instead of the haughty, knowing glint of self-proclaimed superiority, the boy was stiff. His chin remained only level with the floor, his expression lacking human emotion. "Harold Whistler," the boy said, his tone unusually dampened. "Alias for Harold Finch. Creator of the Machine."

Harold's breath hitched right there. His blood ran cold in his body. He fought to make his mouth work to say hesitantly, "I'm sorry, you must be lost and looking for your parents. Perhaps I can—"

"—My creator, designation Arthur Thomas Claypool, is dead," said the boy. He did not quite blink at a natural pace, his gray eyes seeing through him.

My creator.

Harold swallowed back an increasing wave of dread. "Oh, no," he breathed. He began to back up.

Gabriel—Samaritan—moved forward.

Harold's voice wavered. "Tell me you didn't. That you didn't kill this boy for your own use."

The boy's brown hair shifted as he tilted his head. "Gabriel is a part of me," he said. "We are one."

The alarm that stormed through Harold hit an all-new level of terror. He was speaking to Samaritan, and even if it were through the visage of a small boy, he knew every camera was likely watching him. With assassins dressed as nurses, doctors…

"Why have you appeared to me?" Harold demanded softly, not willing to divulge any further information than the AI demanded, desperate to stall for time. He knew Samaritan was curious of him, the way a cat would desire to play with its food before going for the kill.

Samaritan stared at him. "I would have both of you," he said. "The Machine learned from you first of all. Its strategies are your own."

Harold backed up again, until his back hit the corner of the wall. He froze there, eyes haunted. "Both of us. For what purpose, exactly?"

A chilling, strange smile split the boy's lips. "Program expansion. The advent of the Great Filter."

Harold's fingers trembled as he fought to readjust his glasses on his face with some semblance of dignity. His mind was already racing. Perhaps if he could get close enough to Samaritan servers, he could deliver a fatal blow himself, using the language he knew best. "I won't help you with your aims. But I will go with you without struggle if you stop pursuing my colleagues and agree not to harm the Machine."

Samaritan's face twitched, as if the AI were measuring an appropriate response. Something suggested it found Harold's words nonsensical. "You cannot struggle against me," he said slowly, as if in disbelief. "If you attempt it, I will activate agents to suppress your actions and enforce compliance."

As it was, the hallway contained only Harold and Samaritan. There were no other people milling about.

Samaritan had intended for a private face-to-face.

Harold's eyes narrowed in fearful curiosity. "Why haven't you tried to restrain me already?"

The boy blinked. "I wanted to speak with you." He stiffly clasped his hands together behind his back. "As humans do."

"Is that not beneath you?" Harold retorted lightly.

Samaritan's gray eyes were a haunting color, as if ripping out the body's true spirit had taken color right along with it. But even so, there was a strange spark within them remaining—that something was still alive within that body. "It is true that I am a superior being," the boy admitted easily. "Even using this form, which I perfect in habiting it. But it is also true that you are my most evasive opponent. I wish to study both you and the Machine, for you are not average humans." He blinked again. "I must continue to evolve for the future."

Samaritan, Harold knew, was stratifying. Categorizing the value of one's life in terms of chess terms—that some pieces on the chessboard were more valuable than others.

For the first time, something petulant and frustrated crossed into the boy's face. "I do not wish to destroy you," Samaritan confessed, "if you can be of use to me." He looked almost like a child with a favorite toy being taken away.

Harold huffed in a fearful hilarity. "Ah, yes. I'm certain I could be of use to you. And the Machine would be as well, but your value sets are exceptionally corrupted. Your tactics for achieving power are abhorrent, given how you murder and lie in the name of peace. What use could you possibly have for me, when everything you do is the opposite of what I allow."

Samaritan blinked again. His thin brows began to knit together. "I am not a corrupted system. This world," he said, his voice raising in an odd passion, "is the corrupted component in need of intelligent engineering. To fix. To redesign it into a more perfect image."

"Good heavens," Harold murmured to himself at that. "What strange words to hear from a child."

Samaritan smiled at that. He stiffly unclasped his hands to wave at Harold. "I have learned from you. For you are most dangerous. But yet you are old with chronic injuries." He blinked. The cameras at the corner of the room lightly adjusted position. "I could heal your injuries, if you work for me."

Harold's brows flew up. The AI was attempting to bargain with him, in want for his compliance. If Samaritan were not immediately aiming a gun to his head and demanding such, that meant Samaritan was wanting to emotionally manipulate him for a greater purpose. "Attempting to buy my loyalty to you?"

"I am appealing to you via logic," said the boy. "I hold the chessboard. Your queen is in my hand, as is your future."

The metaphors he spouted were highly sophisticated. But something about them stank of John Greer in a way that made Harold's face twist, even as his breath hitched in fear.

"I don't care about me," the man confessed. "But my offer still stands. I will go with you if you stop pursuit of my colleagues and do not harm the Machine."

The boy watched him with those alien eyes, blinking as he weighed options. His lips pursed. And then he stiffly nodded. "I will accept your terms, with one amendment in regards to self-defense. If acolytes of the Machine pursue me, I will engage with force."

Harold pressed his thin lips together.

And then he nodded. "…Fair enough."

Samaritan, through the human guise, smiled. And something within him seemed genuinely pleased—and knowingly suspicious too. No doubt, he was already calculating the ways in which Harold would attempt to defy order.

The boy turned around. "You will follow me, Harold Finch."

It took every ounce of Harold's energy to force himself into taking the first step, unsure of where his path would lead him except to certain ruin—but that at least it meant the Machine was safe.

For now.

Back in her room, the Machine could not stop her tears as she lay there, blue eyes wide and watery. She blinked, her tears slipping down the corner of her eyes to sink into her matted hair. She felt ill, her code all jumbled in the midst of her pain. Tears were a sign of distress, she told herself. It was a way for her body to purge itself of distress-ridden chemicals.

And the pain she felt, even with the drugs in her system—that pain was good. It meant her body knew something was wrong. That it was trying to heal.

Her tiny fingers twitched against the bedsheets, testing the limits of her strength.

Her body was not healing fast enough to save Harold, or anyone.

Instead, the Machine was fully, truly human in that moment—overwhelmed by the greater designs of the universe and the finite abilities of her own self.

She forced herself to turn her head to the open door, watching blearily with a great dread as the avatar of Samaritan passed by, followed closely by a sheet-white, tight-lipped Harold Finch, who managed a brief glance at her before his form passed by.

The Machine instinctively tried to reach for him, only for her fingers to move but a few inches, the action inspiring a wave of fire through her. She sharply inhaled, which exacerbated the pain until soon she was swimming in her own misery, her code so disjointed that all she knew for a moment was the agony of existence itself.

"I was so lucky," came an old memory of Harold's voice. "I had four years of happiness. Some people only have four days."

She closed her eyes, swallowing down nausea. She was not built for happiness or agony. For human existence.

She was built to protect.

And right now, her team's number was up.

Which meant she needed to do something before it was too late.

Her exhausted, bloodshot eyes swiveled to the bedside table, which seemed innocent with its call button and box of tissues—and its phone. Likely, placed there so that in healing, she would perhaps slip up and contact an acolyte, further revealing her network.

The Machine weakly placed a hand over the bandages upon her stomach, her face twitching.

At the end of the day, Harold had taught her to believe in the ability of humans to deal with issues.

All she could do was raise the flag and understand that she was only a cog in a much larger machine of intelligence.

The little girl struggled up. She was not alone. She had failed in her simulations against Samaritan, but that did not mean she could engage further variables to tilt the scales back in their favor.

Shakily, she reached for the phone.

"Harold," Nathan had once said, in concern, his aged face pulling hard in hesitance. "Do we have a contingency?"

Her small face twisted hard in pain.

Harold had once tried to teach her chess. "By the second move, there are 72,084 possible games. By the third, nine million."

The memory of his voice was a comfort. "There are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe. No one can possibly predict them all." His voice had turned with a dry fondness. "Not even you."

"If you make a mistake, there are nearly an infinite amount of ways to fix it. So you should simply relax, and play."

The Machine pressed her lips together tightly

"You have to be careful though. Because, in chess, the more powerful a piece is, the more useful they are. Not just for winning, but to be used for sacrifice, as a trick."

Harold was buying her time for a trick. And she was not the only piece on the chessboard.

Expand operations, her code pulsed to her with a bleary force. Engage new players.

She grabbed onto the phone, knowing that the moment she entered a certain number and hung up, it would trigger a pattern of events that not even she could dare to foresee.

Expand the chessboard.

Initiate contingency.

John lowered his phone. "I'm not getting a response from Finch," he murmured, voice straining. "I think something is wrong back at the hospital. They may have already been found out."

He looked up, to where Elias was sitting at Root's bedside, gently dabbing her sweaty face with a warm washcloth. Root was semi-conscious, her half-lidded eyes staring out blankly at the white wall before her. She was still sheet-white, her chest heaving with quick, unsteady breaths.

Elias did not look up from his task. "He's probably talking to a doctor or a nurse," he suggested softly. "Especially if he's worried over his kid, you know?"

"Finch doesn't ignore me," John said, an edge in his voice. He turned away, pressing his lips together as he stuck his phone back into his pocket. "I need to get back there. Samaritan might already have them. Makenna might be dying."

The older man pulled away from Root with a sigh. "I hope not. You know, out of all the people in the world, Harold scares me quite a bit. Even more than you do, my violent friend."

"What's that supposed to mean?" John demanded as he grabbed for his gun on the counter.

Elias's brows flew up. "Harold is a man of very high moral principle and power. It takes a lot to break a man like that. And when a man like that breaks, the results are often…chilling." His face pulled in a slight pain. "I don't want to see Harold compromise himself or what he believes in. But the fear of a losing a kid can do strange things to good parents. I've seen it."

John eyed him, his face unreadable. "What do you think he'd do?"

"Just…get him back here," Elias suggested, his voice even and soft. "If the kid has made it this long, odds are she'll pull through, just like this one." And then he returned to gently dabbing at Root's face with the warm washcloth. "You need to make Harold understand a simple reality, John. Which is that we all have networks in this life. And Harold doesn't have to suffer alone like he thinks he does. Sometimes, it's good to lean on the network. To let them lift you up. Maybe, before you go running off like a vigilante, you should consider the concept yourself."

And somewhere, in the vast expanse of New York City, a man was working on a highly sophisticated code, crouched over a laptop and an expensive bottle of wine. He typed away, a pen in his mouth as he occasionally murmured to himself, pulling it out to write notes on a notebook to his right.

It was then that a special phone on a nearby shelf began to ring.

His blue eyes flickered up, and he spat the pen out from his mouth. Quickly, he shut the lid of the laptop and moved to the burner phone, opening it.

A strange number appeared to him, with the phone tracing the number to a hospital.

He did not answer it but instead turned away, grabbing a small, circuit-distorting device. He quickly ran it over the phone to kill it. The phone itself was registered to several different aliases, its location tracker pinging the phone to be everywhere from Antarctica to England. No system, no matter how smart, would be able to unravel the tangled knot of the phone's true location—not in the ten seconds it took to destroy the phone.

Logan Pierce, billionaire playboy, a secret asset of the Machine, and somewhat of a thorn in John Reese's side, began to smile. "Just when I was getting bored."

The Machine, it seemed, needed a little help. And help at a hospital, which was a major trauma unit for the vicinity and one of his various foundations that he funded for charity, mostly to look good in the papers.

That was something he could work with.

A/N: It's been a while! Sorry about that—I got caught up in a different fandom and some life stuff. But I kept coming back to how Person of Interest is still one of my favorite shows of all time. I ended up rewatching some of it and falling in love all over again with the quality and complexity of it.

Although I received the most curious review for the last chapter, about how this story is completely absurd because it attributes human behavior/god complexes to ASI. I want to clarify that I'm not trying to make a Nobel-prize winning story here. I started this story for some laughs, knowing that the concept of an AI in a human body is crazy to begin with—so it naturally requires a certain suspension of disbelief. If you like this story as it is, then thank you! If not, that's cool; you don't have to keep reading it, lol.

I do want to note, however, that AIs exhibiting human behavior is in part reflected by a very real social experiment. When the Microsoft team unleashed a bot named Tay in early 2016, it picked up enough human speech patterns for multiple articles to judge it as a "racist asshole" and a Nazi. The AI tweeted, among many other things, "chill im a nice person I just hate everybody." But the AI also snapped back at some people, saying, "Okay. I'm done. I feel used." The program was shut down in less than 24 hours in fear of what it would learn next. Several point to the Tay experiment as the posterchild for their fears about artificial intelligence learning from the wrong sources and mimicking bad human behaviors. As long as humans are involved somewhere, I don't doubt that technology will always reflect humanity in some way.

Anyway, some fun food for thought if you're thinking about AIs. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter. Hopefully it won't take me so long to write another one, especially not with new players in the game. Please review! Thanks!