Disclaimer: Don't own Person of Interest.

Thanks to Guest, Torie46, StarlingJedi, Anzer'ke, Bklyngrl, Defender31415, NikaJ, TkdVZ05UUWdObUlnTmpjZ05HVWdOVF, Guest, Lexa-Root-Carter, Clear, Guest, and highlander348 for reviewing last time! The last week has been pretty rough, so your thoughts and enthusiasm for this story helped to keep me going. I hope that you enjoy this update. Thanks again for your support and ideas!

Recalibration

Chapter 4

One Makenna Thornhill walked alongside a limping man, her small hand wrapped around his. To those driving past the pedestrian sidewalk, they appeared to be nothing more than an average father and an over-energetic daughter. There was nothing particularly special about them. Their clothes suggested something of middle class. In crowds, they would both likely blend into the faces and shadows of others.

And so everyone remained ignorant to the fact that the daughter was an AI inside a human body, and that the father was a wanted computer genius hunted by the government.

The Machine was rather enjoying that irony.

"The air composition feels different than before," she said, reaching out her free fingers and waving them in the air. Her voice was in awe. The shine of the risen morning sun was glowing across her face, lighting up her blue eyes. "The sun is heating the earth, and I can feel it."

He nodded. "Yes, that tends to happen mid-morning."

"But I can feel it."

"Yes. That also tends to happen."

A bright smile split her face. "I did not understand the extent to which humans could experience or sense the changes in their environment."

"Well, why do you think we always change clothes according to the season?" Harold asked her, almost amused at her strange innocence.

Her voice modulated with excitement. "I assumed it was simply to protect your skin from elements. I did not know you could feel those elements quite like this."

The Machine herself was still enraptured with the concept of space—that her body did not restrict her to a particular area as it once did through hard drives and electrical lines. She could move her legs and take her body with her. A human body could traverse off of the sidewalk and roam into the streets or into the grass. There were no set paths, no particular method beyond the recommended guidelines of the sidewalk. She had to even make decisions over the manner in which she walked. Choices. Every action was a choice.

Funny, she had not realized that until now. Her early morning experiences before she'd reached her creator's safe house had been wrought with worry and objectives. She'd had no time to experience the world that she had tied herself to. And now, with her hand solidly grasped in her creator's, she felt as if time had slowed down and this vast world was waiting for her. She was Makenna Thornhill now. She had an ability to enjoy the earth and move through it as any human did.

Her desire to keep moving made her almost run down the sidewalk, her footsteps light and quick.

As a result, she failed to recognize that she was suddenly pulling along her creator at a pace just a bit too fast for him. Harold's thin lips were pulled into something between a grimace and an amused smile. "Uh, Miss Thornhill," he declared, voice shaky from the uneven limp of his steps, "if you would care to slow down, that would be greatly appreciated."

She blinked in surprise—did this body of hers have its own mind?—and she consciously chose to slow her steps. She had not realized that her mental stimulation with the world had translated into a physical expression. "I apologize," she said, voice distant with wonder at this strange body of hers. "This world requires exploring. It is a…calling within me. An objective."

Her creator breathed a sigh of relief as they came to a stop at the end of a sidewalk. "If you don't mind, Miss Thornhill, we should hold off on exploring that objective until later," he said. They were nearing the more central part of the housing editions now. Off in the distance were the high-rise apartments, of which a few windows belonged to one Professor Harold Whistler.

The Machine looked up at him. "Why do you call me Miss Thornhill?" she asked. "That use of designation is very formal."

"I often call John Mr. Reese," Harold piped up, eyebrow quirked. "And Root, Miss Groves."

"Yes, but they are not your adopted children."

"You've only been my adopted child for a couple of hours," he said dryly. They began to cross a street, his hand still tightly wrapped around hers. Odd—he was worried that she would wander off in front of a car. Or that a car would not see her. These were silly fears.

"My adoption does not mean it is inappropriate for you to call me Makenna."

"It's a sign of respect. If a normal human child were shipped off to their father's old college friend, there would be an understandable time of distance."

The Machine almost seemed to pout. "But I wish to be called Makenna." Aside from Machine, the title Makenna was the first real name she had. She liked the designation. It was fully her own—not an inherited surname. Not just a false identity.

Harold looked down at her. "You want me to call you Makenna?"

"Yes. Please."

"In public and private?"

"…I have no other name for you to use," she said hesitantly. Something unspoken remained between them. Except for the Machine. "Makenna is my name as a person."

Her creator mulled over her wishes for an odd heartbeat or two. "Very well," he said finally. "Makenna."

The name sounded soft from him, and she felt great happiness at hearing her name spoken from the mouth of her creator. It was a form of affirmation. Of humanity. "Thank you."

He looked up, keeping his eyes on the distant horizon of the skyscrapers. They were nearing closer to the city now. They could likely tag down a taxi anytime. These thoughts were all distractions from the fact that he was holding the hand of a little girl who was now his adopted daughter. Makenna. "You're welcome."

Then the Machine seemed to pause. "…It does not inconvenience you to call me by my first name, does it?"

In response, Harold's lips twitched. "No, it doesn't." If he were to be honest with himself, he was rather tickled by the fact that his AI wanted to be acknowledged as a human being.

And the little girl seemed to almost glow at the sound of her creator's acceptance. Her body was flooded with some kind of chemical hormone that made her feel good. His large hand around her hand made her feel like smiling.

People in business suits, storming by on their cell phones, softened at the sight of the man and the girl, who looked to be happily enjoying a stroll.

A short taxi ride later—it had been almost all the girl could do to remain silent and avoid arousing the taxi driver's suspicions about her total ignorance to normal human experience—found them standing before the apartment complex. The Machine had discovered that riding in cars, feeling the hum of the road, listening to the lilt of the cabby's sharp accent, sliding along the smoothness of the worn leather seats, feeling the warmth of her creator sitting by her side, made her feel connected to the world of humans. That she was following in the footsteps of the many souls she had guarded for years.

She almost felt dazed, the code of her mind striving desperately to keep up. There were so many images, so many senses and textures to everything! But she was already inside the apartment complex now, making her way up the poorly-lit staircase to the second floor, following Harold closely.

For the first time since Harold had tagged down a taxi, she spoke. "Do you not use an elevator to reach your room?" she asked curiously. "Those are typically more efficient." The railing for the staircase was hard and grainy. Metallic. She bumped her knuckles against it, and the resounding sound was a pleasant ding of sorts.

"Stairs are healthier," Harold said, though his voice was a puzzle of sudden concern. "A habit of mine, I suppose. Are you making it up alright?" He hadn't even thought of whether it would be hard for the little girl. (Situations like this were exactly why he worried he would not be a good legal guardian! He hadn't even thought of her abilities.)

"I have traversed stairs before," the little girl said innocently. "Back at the hospital, there were many such constructions." But she had a tendency to plant her feet a little too heavily on each step as they walked up, as if she were still struggling to understand the force necessary to move her body. Her steps echoed as loudly as his did, in result.

He hesitantly continued forward. "Just…let me know if you have any trouble at all."

She remained silent until she made it up the stairs on her own, and she stood there, almost triumphantly. "I do not need assistance with such," she said, realizing that she had been subconsciously counting the steps. She wondered immediately if other humans, like her creator, did such things when they moved through their environment. "Do we have more stairs to climb?"

He shook his head, his face still a curious puzzle, as if wondering of her limitations. "No, my apartment's just down the hall from here. But you might want to know that it's not as…extravagant as our previous place."

The Machine reached out to glide her fingers across the wall as they walked along. "Are you worried that I disapprove of your living conditions?" The wall was a rough feeling, as if someone had sponged paint onto it to obtain a textured effect.

"Well," Harold said, stopping in front of a dark, wooden door with a golden handle. "Let's just say it's not kid-friendly." He unlocked the door and flipped on the entry-way switch.

The little girl popped around him, eyes lit with curiosity. The apartment was much smaller than the safe house, with one master bedroom and a guest room. It was simple and efficient, with classical books and minimalist designs.

Then she heard a strange noise from out of the darkness—movement, sharp clicks against the wooden floor.

"Oh no," Harold's eyes widened. "And I have a dog."

The Machine blinked. "I know."

But then a vicious snarl erupted through the silence. Her body instinctively responded, activating her adrenal glands, releasing the cortisol chemical throughout her body. She quickly hid behind Harold, eyes wide, muscles tensed.

Immediately, Harold ordered Bear to sit, holding his palm out in a commanding stance, and the trained dog obeyed. Its large hackles were raised, but its intelligent eyes remained trained on its master, entire body silent.

"Good boy," Harold praised, then realized his now-adopted daughter had latched onto his side in fear. He could feel her small fingers steeled tight against the material of his coat. "Bear's not going to hurt you," he said. "He just doesn't know you yet."

In that second, the Machine realized she'd been holding her breath. Strange—were humans supposed to hold their breath when afraid? She inhaled deeply, but the stress hormones in her body made it difficult to revert to a calm status. "I…understand that the probability of injury is low. But I…" Her voice trailed off, her code too scrambled with fear hormones to communicate the reason for such a reaction.

Harold looked down at her. "Bear is not going to hurt you," he repeated. "He listens to me."

She stared at her creator, then at the animal. She understood inherently that dogs were a domesticated species that humans used for a variety of reasons—many of them sentimental and without logic. But she also knew that this strange, four-legged creature before her was not like humans, and it had been very well trained for attacking purposes. She'd seen it attack people on Harold's behalf before.

The beast seemed to snarl at her a bit, its furry lips curled up against sharp fangs. It could smell her fear, which seemed to instigate its behavior.

Harold looked perturbed about the way Bear was still not welcoming. "Here," he said, and he kneeled down beside the Machine, holding out his hand. "He might smell something different about you."

And that made the Machine feel fear again, because she had not considered that animals would perhaps be able to sense the altered electrical construct of her body's brain, or of her scent. That perhaps they knew something was unnatural about her.

She tentatively reached out towards Harold's hand, and his roughened skin was a warmth of safety that wrapped around her fingers. "I won't let him bite you," he said. And then he gently guided her hand towards Bear.

Bear tentatively leaned forward and sniffed the little girl's fingertips, his big, black nose brushing against her skin. The pressure was a soft as butterfly wings, his nose cold and wet. He smelled the accepting scent of his master upon the little human, and he recognized suddenly that this child before him had no threatening intentions, despite her odd scent.

He sniffed the girl's wrists too, growing more curious of her as Harold's hand fell away. In that second, it was just Bear and the girl, the space between them growing more comfortable. The Machine pondered the dog, and the dog pondered her. She tentatively reached out to touch its ear, and the dog's ear flicked at her touch, tickling her skin. She giggled at the feeling. "Hi, Bear," she said, voice raised in curiosity. "Do you understand me?"

The large dog suddenly stood on all fours and began to sniff her face, and she backed away, eyes widening, only to giggle when the dog's wet tongue ran across her ear. "Hmm," she said, sweet voice strained with giggles. "Bear does not stay in place for long."

The dog woofed at her happily. And then he snuggled into her, accepting her into his pack, nosing under her arm so that it forced her to pet his head. The dog still didn't quite understand why this human child was different from all other children he'd encountered, but he did enjoy the way she softly pet his fur and indulged his antics. Which meant whatever was wrong with her was quite forgivable.

Harold looked relieved as he stood and shut the front door to keep Bear inside, his expression soft and amused. "Bear is…not as his name would suggest."

"Yes, he is not a bear," the Machine giggled, distracted. She sat on the floor in the entryway, and Bear laid down beside her, rolling on his side so she could rub his tummy. She seemed enraptured by the dog, feeling its soft fur—how different it was from human skin!—and all of the lines and angles that made a dog a dog and not a human. Bear was as large as her, but she seemed to have him already under her thumb, his tail thumping the floor in happiness at her touch.

Something about the image of the girl and Bear warmed Harold's heart. There was a strange innocence of sorts within the girl's actions and the dog's happy acceptance. It made him remember that good things still existed in such a fallen world. That perhaps, even under the rule of Samaritan, the world might yet still have small pleasures.

But Harold also knew that he had responsibilities to take care of, which made him sigh and turn away from the happy sight. He shrugged off his coat and hat and hooked them onto the holder on the wall. Then he carefully limped around the girl and the dog, moving from out of the entryway and into the main living room. He grabbed his work laptop off of the table and sat upon the couch, leaning back into the cushions with a sigh. The sound of Bear's woofs and the Machine's quiet giggles still echoed, which was an odd change from the silence he was used to living with.

He supposed it might take some time to adjust.

As he logged onto his work computer, he heard the Machine struggle back into a stand, her footsteps a bit of an awkward dance. He looked up, almost concerned that perhaps she was about to fall. But she steadied herself easily enough, leaning on the dog, who had stood up as well and accepted the position of being her crutch.

"Thank you, Bear," she said, patting the soft and wiry fur of his back. "I understand now why humans call you man's best friend."

Harold let out a breath of relief at her safety, then looked down at his computer, only to realize the screen was flashing with numerous message alerts. Already, he'd received a good ten or so emails from his students regarding their assignment. "…Oh, dear."

"Oh, what?" asked the Machine curiously. "Is it your work?"

Harold quickly realized this was one of those awkward moments for which he was not prepared. What did children do while adults worked? Play around? Draw? Would the Machine do those things willingly? Did he even have paper around? Would she perhaps go back to playing with Bear?

"It looks like I have some concerns to tend to," he said slowly. "Will you be okay if I focus on my work for a time?"

She nodded, then climbed up next to him on the couch and wiggled herself into a comfortable, sitting position, which was much easier to mimic than standing up from a hard floor. Bear trotted to the edge of the couch, then set his large head on the cushion beside her, and she listlessly pet his head. "I will be content until such a time that we can speak about my plans for Samaritan." She leaned in to stare at the computer curiously and how strange and inorganic the technology appeared from a human perspective. "I understand that my presence has disrupted many facets of your daily life, and that you must prioritize your alias."

The subject lines of the emails to "Professor Whistler" were a craze of question marks, along with opening lines, such as I am completely confused about this assignment for Friday's class…

"And what an alias it is," he sighed as he began to reply to the emails, only to realize that he had no idea what the assignment even was. "These poor kids. They deserve better than this."

"But," the Machine said, voice a puzzle, "you are a great teacher. What more do they need?"

His eyes slid to her. "I'm not a teacher," he said incredulously. "This isn't a natural skill for me."

She blinked at him. "You taught me ethics. And how to identify people. And how to separate government-relevant from civilian-relevant." The word irrelevant had become something she did not want to use, as her creator had expressed sorrow in the concept. "You are designed to be a teacher."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," he said, lips pursed as he looked back at his computer. "Perception of design doesn't necessarily mean it was designed that way. My students are well aware of this."

The Machine's lips quirked. She leaned sideways and grabbed onto the TV remote, curious about it. "That philosophical perspective would depend upon the subject in question," she said as she turned the remote in her hands, understanding on an intrinsic level that it controlled the TV. She pushed the "power" button, and her eyes lit in delight at the way the TV accepted her command and came to life, bursting into colors and reports from a news station.

"I'm not a TV," Harold said dryly.

The little girl sat back and contentedly settled in to obtain information from the news, now that she no longer had personal, online capabilities. "You are not a TV," she affirmed. "But I know that Harold Finch is fully capable of adaptation because it is in his designed nature. He has become many things that he was not in time past." She looked up at him, eyes full of trust. "As I have become many things."

The level of emotion in her gaze left him uncomfortable, for he did not feel worthy of the open appreciation he saw. It made him readjust his glasses, almost nervously. "You conspired with Miss Groves to create this identity for me, didn't you."

The Machine smiled. "Of course." Then she looked back at the TV. "You were a teacher before I designated you as one. But your attention is divided, which is why you feel unprepared. " She looked a little more fascinated by the words and faces on the TV. "Perhaps I should leave you to your work."

The thought of work was far less fascinating than speaking with this strange AI. Harold sighed in resignation, "I'd almost wish you didn't. I've always preferred practical application over abstract theory."

"And if you didn't like practical application, then I would not be here," the Machine said, voice distracted. Her head tilted as she stared at the TV. A female newscaster was standing before a burning building, firefighters in yellow sharp against the smoke, and something within the Machine pulled strangely. Her code struggled to fight its natural inclinations to act. It made her feel tired and worn and guilty, but she said nothing, for she'd had to adapt outside of her original code. And Makenna Thornhill was not a body through which she could see the future unfolding. It was already too late.

And so the TV played in the background, and Harold marveled at the concept of a child who could stand to watch the news with such attention.

Time passed. Harold typed away on his laptop, responding to email after email—all of it resulting in him simply revising the assignment so that it would be less stress for everyone. The local news channel still played on the TV, but the Machine was no longer raptly paying attention to it.

In truth, the Machine had begun to feel very…drowsy. Almost as if she had over-exhausted her CPU and RAM, and that she was using too much of them. She was struggling to think. Maybe it was because her child-body had not slept in over twelve hours? She did not know for sure. And so she simply obeyed what her body was telling her to do, and that was to shut down. The couch beneath her was soft and squishy, and it felt nice to lean back into it—

Her code began to hibernate in new ways, activating sleep cycles and chemicals in her body.

As Harold typed away on his computer, he did not notice the little girl's fluttering eyes, or the way she seemed to lean more and more sideways until she was lying on her side. When the remote control slipped from her hand and fell to the carpet, Harold startled at the sound. And then he looked to her, eyes wide. What in the world—?

The girl had fallen asleep, her eyes already closed and breath evening out, her fingers curled lightly in unconscious angles. She was still and quiet, her mouth slack.

Oh my, Harold thought, eyes wide. He apprehensively checked to make sure she was still breathing—thank goodness, she was—and he sat there for a second, debating on what to do. Did children do this often? Just…drop off into sleep?

Perhaps, he worried, he had fully exhausted her and had demanded too much of a child. They had walked a ways before they could grab a taxi. And he supposed she'd already had a full night without sleep. He was very out of practice with caring for children. He was inconsiderate.

Perhaps the Machine did not even understand enough to know when to ask for rest?

Careful not to jostle the couch, Harold silently stood, still holding onto his laptop. He began to move towards the kitchen table, thinking that perhaps he could finish up his work there. It was a short walk, but just as he set his laptop down, he realized suddenly that he had left the little girl without a blanket, which seemed to be almost a sort of crime.

In short order, he grabbed the blanket from off of the back of the couch. And he gently pulled the blanket over her, settling the edges against her shoulder. The little girl's face twitched at the feather touch of the blanket against her skin, which was soft and warm. But she instinctively snuggled into it, her face slacking again into peace.

And then Harold returned to work at the kitchen table so that the little girl could sleep. But he sat at an angle that he could keep an eye on her—worried that perhaps she had not coded herself correctly for such human activities, and that she would simply stop breathing.

With great care, he watched the rise and fall of her breath and the careless way her frizzed hair tumbled over her eyes as she relaxed into the blanket. And his heart swelled with something, pride or love, he didn't know.

The little sneak. She was probably doing this all on purpose, simulating adorable human actions, just to manipulate him and worm her way into his heart. How strange that he didn't mind, despite the warnings in the most cracked places of his heart—a little alarm that this softness and joy would not last. That the Machine would eventually awaken, and so would he, to horror.

Back within his headquarters, Samaritan watched his operatives. They had surrounded the various generator locations that he identified as viable systems for the Machine. And yet, when his operatives forcibly onlined the generator systems and tore open their electronics—nothing.

No foreign entities. No scrap of code out of place.

Samaritan truly puzzled at this, his code unsettling, his various cooling fans kicking into a higher revolution. He reviewed the available data again. There were few other options for the Machine's code to go, considering that it had been uploaded to the electrical grid, which was by itself a limitation of sorts. Was the Machine truly eradicated? Had he successfully wiped it from existence through the power outages?

The odds were so small that the Machine had survived. The possibility that he even considered its survival now was borderline insanity. His own operatives had confirmed that the Machine did not exist on any generator large enough to house its code. Surely, this meant it was gone for good.

But instead of calming his circuitry, the silence heightened the AI's calculations that perhaps the Machine had simply thought of…an outside option. A new idea. The Machine was a trickster god, after all. Wily. Perhaps it only wanted him to think it dead.

The concept burned at his code. And so he began again a cautionary measure.

Searching.

Analyzing.

A/N: Sorry for the late update. I had a family friend who suffered an unexplained brain hemorrhage, and who went off of life support today. He and my other family friend had been married only…2 years? They're pretty young. And I—having been involved in re-watching Person of Interest—keep coming back to the episode (1.22) where Harold reminisces fervently about Grace, "I was lucky. I had four years of happiness. Some people only get four days."

It's odd how fiction can speak truth to you at the strangest of times. I guess I still have it in my mind that time is a measure of happiness. How strong Harold must be to see his mere four years with Grace as a blessing rather than a tragedy, yeah? Hmm…

Sorry to ramble. The good news is that I have officially gotten both The Machine and Samaritan on the character list for this archive. (Small victories are worth celebrating in times of sadness, right?) Please leave me your thoughts about this last chapter with any ideas, questions, constructive criticism, or comments! Thanks!