Hello and welcome to the third installment of Coming to Terms. As always, enjoy the read! I own absolutely nothing relating to the Person of Interest plot or characters.

Chapter 3:

It had been about two hours into the poker game and a while since she had last heard from Root. Shaw had loosened up a bit and finally won a few hands. To paraphrase something Finch would probably say, what's the point of saving the world if you can't beat a few Ivans at a poker game? At present, Team Machine's assassin had just completed a full house and laid it down on the table when the time came to show cards. To the mobsters' frustration, she won the hand and a $2,175 pot.

"Sorry, boys." Shaw smirked rather unapologetically as she raked in the cash. When the more hot tempered Russian at the table looked at her as if he was going to start a fight, she flashed him a subtle yet dangerous look that told him it wouldn't end well. Slightly taken aback, he elected to keep his mouth shut for the moment.

"Having fun, Miss Shaw?" Harold's amused voice rang in her ear and she gave another strained smirk at the table before standing up.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be in the ladies room." Walking off in the direction of the door that was designated as the restroom, she tossed a final comment over her shoulder. "And that money better be there when I get back." She could almost feel the hot-blooded one at the table rolling his eyes at her back. So predictable.

Once she was safely inside the restroom and he had heard the door shut from his end, Harold addressed her again.

"I trust everything is all right."

Shaw heaved a long-suffering sigh, and shot a glowering look at her reflection in the mirror. "It'll be better when everyone stops checking up on me. I got shot; it happens. I'm not an invalid." She was being petulant, that much she knew. She knew her team only wanted her to know they cared, but damn it, she wanted her independence back. She wanted everything back the way it was before the stock exchange.

Well, maybe not everything…

They were all better off with Samaritan offline. Also, had it not been for the team's dire situation that day, her and Root would still be sticking to their old routine of flirtatious banter and falsely embarrassed avoidance. At any rate, the past was the past. The present was waiting for a situation report from her at the moment.

"Anyway, it looks like our guy's got some friends in high places…friends of the organized Serbian crime persuasion."

"Indeed." Harold nodded, though Shaw obviously couldn't see it, "I was able to trace that offshore account to the Hotel Moscow crime syndicate. After a little more searching, I also found that Mr. Rezniczek was arrested twice in 2012 for illegal bookmaking connected to the syndicate's business. He got off both times under rather questionable circumstances."

Shaw considered the facts that Harold was telling her and connected those dots with what she remembered of John's run-in with the mafia that operated out of the bakery she'd been sitting in for the last two hours. Something wasn't right.

"And there 's Don's problem. This bakery isn't a front for Hotel Moscow. It's a front for the Drugonov family's gambling ring…great bunch of men, by the way." Shaw explained to Finch, dripping sarcasm from the tail end of her comment.

"Yes, I had forgotten that. Given what we know, then, it seems likely that Hotel Moscow may be on to his dealings." Harold looked up at an alert on his computer. What? The police were en route to Shaw's location! It could only be a raid on the gambling ring.

"…and, you've got another problem, Miss Shaw." Why hadn't the alert been triggered sooner? According to the map, there was a unit just outside the bakery. "The police will be there momentarily." Finch's voice was urgent, and even as he spoke, Shaw could hear the sirens and the tell-tale sound of a door being kicked open followed by shouts in Russian. Shit!

"Finch, I have to go now."

Shaw exited the bathroom and was immediately faced with the sight of six guns aimed at her while the officers demanded that she put her hands up. Luck seemed to be on her side, though. In the chaos she made eye contact with a surprised Detective Fusco and beckoned him over with a subtle jerk of her head.

He dismissed the officers who had begun tending to her as he walked over and Shaw spoke to him through gritted teeth.

"Lionel…I'm working."

He smirked slightly at the assassin while brandishing a pair of handcuffs in her face. "Yeah, so am I." He finished slapping the cuffs on her even as she rolled her eyes to let him know that she was thoroughly unamused by the situation. He sighed in resignation, "Who is it?"

In response to the question, Shaw's eyes drifted over to Rezniczek, who was standing handcuffed near the table a few feet away. Fusco walked over and grabbed him by the arm then grabbed Shaw with his other hand, announcing on his way out the door:

"These two are coming with me."

Some time after Shaw had left to track down her number, Reese had also left the confines of the subway in favor of the open air of New York. He had left Finch with the simple explanation that he had business and that much was true. He had taken the time to stock up on some necessities for his loft and pick up some dry cleaning.

There was, however, something else.

John had spent the better part of the day hunting for leads on the remaining Samaritan operatives. They had discovered weeks ago that the old warehouse that Decima/Samaritan had been using as a base of operations was left abandoned. The remaining forces had cleaned up any trace of the last battle that took place there and evacuated the building. The team had not been back since making that discovery, but John figured it didn't hurt to take a second look.

He had searched the building for well over an hour and was about to give up before he discovered the outline of a door in the floor of one of the rooms at the ground level. He had been quick to investigate and found that, as expected, the door led to an abandoned section of subway. In it, he found what was left from the clean up operation: bodies in various states of decomposition, weapons, phones, spent ammunition, and computers. After some time of sifting through all the junk, he managed to find a lead with a little help from Finch.

That led him to where he was now; perched atop an apartment building near the bridge in SoHo watching the doorway of another warehouse through the scope of a sniper rifle. He wasn't here to kill; now wasn't the time and he didn't know exactly what he was up against. He was here to gauge the remaining strength that they faced from Samaritan forces.

He watched several familiar faces come and go over the course of a few hours. It wasn't until he was about to leave that something interesting caught his eye. A black unmarked sedan pulled up to the building and several men and women in cheap suits exited.

These were not Samaritan agents. Reese could not be sure how he knew, but his hunches were rarely incorrect. He watched a bit closer to see if he could detect anything telling, but there was nothing that would give away who these people were. If he had to guess, he suspected they were government agents.

"Hey Finch?"

"What is it, Mr. Reese?" Finch limped over to the computer monitor and looked for any sign of trouble in the field. He became slightly confused when he couldn't find John anywhere.

"I'm in a camera dead zone, and so is Samaritan. Apparently, its agents were smart enough to hide from the machine."

"It does make sense." Finch replied, "We would have been able to track them down much sooner had they stayed in the open. I assume by your urgency, however, that you aren't calling to discuss matters of which we are already aware."

John kept an eye on the unfamiliar agents as he answered. Samaritan operatives had come out to greet them and they appeared to be having a meeting of sorts.

"I've got eyes on suits outside Samaritan's new hideout…four of them. I'm pretty sure they're from a different faction."

The only explanation Finch had was the same as John's. But Finch had made sure when he shut it down that there was no chance of bringing Samaritan back online, and all the computers on Samaritan's server were destroyed. The only trace of its technology would exist in the mind of anyone who still remained who had a hand in its programming. That rendered Samaritan's operatives utterly expendable to certain factions who might have an interest.

"Government agents?"

"I think so." Reese affirmed, "But I can't be sure."

It didn't quite make sense to Harold or Reese. Samaritan was useless to the government now, and its operatives were even more useless. The government had plenty of its own highly trained spies, assassins, and hackers. Unless…these operatives had information that they were selling to the government.

"How far away are you, Mr. Reese?" Harold asked, devising a plan to find out exactly who they were dealing with.

John thought about it for a moment, measuring the distance in his head. "I'm across the street and six stories up. So, about thirty feet away and sixty feet above."

"That won't do. You'll have to get closer, I'm afraid."

What exactly was Finch planning? Reese stood, grabbed his rifle, and made his way to the fire escape. He stopped to leave his rifle in the dumpster by the building. When he had made it safely across the street without being noticed, he sidled up next to the warehouse and asked:

"Exactly how close do I need to get, Finch?"

"As close as you can get without detection." Finch spoke, typing commands into his keyboard in preparation for the next step. "When you're close enough, I'll upload a worm to your phone. It will move from yours to all phones in the nearby radius and send all information from those devices back to my computer."

"And if this doesn't work?" John asked under his breath as he snuck in close.

"Then we'll just have to find another way."

"I'm ready, Finch." Reese stated quietly, crouching behind some crates near one of the suits.

With a few more strokes of his fingers across the keyboard, the worm was sent on its way and Finch waited a few moments for the information to begin coming in to his computer before giving John the okay to move.

"It's done, Mr. Reese."

As quietly as he came, Reese snuck away back across the street and retrieved his rifle. With that order of business done for the day, he began to make his way back toward Chinatown through the network of alleyways and side streets.

"So, where are we with Shaw's number?" He questioned.

"Ah, that matter has taken quite an interesting turn. Last I spoke to Miss Shaw, we discovered that our number appears to be offering his services to two rival crime families. That was just before the police raided the poker game."

John stopped in his tracks, "What about the number, Finch?"

"Not to worry—Ms. Groves informed me earlier that the machine arranged for Detective Fusco to be part of that raid. I would assume that Sameen made sure to keep the number with her."

John continued walking, taking in this update on their situation. He knew by instinct and experience, however, that this wasn't the important part of what Harold had to tell him.

"Go on. What about the number?"

From where he was in the subway, Finch nodded as he stooped to fill Bear's food bowl. "Right. As I mentioned, it seemed to be an issue of conflict of interest between two Russian Mafia syndicates. However, after my last conversation with Miss Shaw, I found something interesting when I looked over the payroll of both syndicates. The Drugonov family—some of whom were at the poker game—have one known Samaritan operative on their payroll."

"Well, it's safe to say he wasn't at the bakery. Shaw would've recognized him." John pointed out.

"Agreed." Having tended to Bear's needs for the moment, Harold came to sit back in front of his desk. "However, it does muddy the waters a bit."

In the back of Fusco's unmarked unit, Shaw sat working on picking her handcuffs. On one hand, she understood that the detective had to put on the façade of doing his job. On the other hand, it irked her greatly that she was having to pick her way out of the cuffs. It was even more irritating that he seemed to be enjoying watching her effort. She didn't even have to look to know that he was periodically smirking at her in the rearview mirror. She could feel it.

She could also feel the nervous vibes coming off Don from where he sat inches to her left. As she worked at her cuffs, she watched him. Every now and then, he would crane his neck around to peer nervously out the back window. Yep, he was definitely expecting somebody.

With a final twist, Shaw maneuvered her wrists free of the cuffs just as Fusco looked at her again and she smirked at his protests.

"Maybe if you would've cuffed me better, I wouldn't have gotten out." She teased the detective in her gravelly deadpan.

"I was being a gentleman!" Fusco cried with indignant defensiveness as Shaw addressed Don, who was so engrossed with the view out the back window that he seemed not to have noticed her escape from confinement.

"You expecting someone?" She asked, looking out the window herself to see that they were being followed. She had seen that car on the way out of the bakery. No doubt they had been waiting to make a move before the cops raided the place. It was a midnight blue Mercedes-Benz. If she had to guess, Shaw would say that the plates were stolen.

The driver knew what he was doing. He had hung back far enough to avoid rousing Fusco's suspicion, though Shaw was reasonably certain that, even if he wasn't suspicious, he had at least seen the car.

Or maybe he was.

It occurred to Shaw as she paid attention to Fusco's driving that he was doing a heat run: random turns down side streets and alleys in an attempt to lose a tail.

That a boy, Lionel.

"Hey, psycho," He called out to Shaw after a few more turns. He was wondering whether or not to call in a little back up. He had no idea who was tailing him and what kind of conflict it might lead to if he didn't. On the other hand, he had something they didn't. Shaw. There was also the fact that calling in back up would risk exposing Shaw and the rest of the team. He still wasn't completely clear on what exactly they did, but he knew they helped people. And he knew they did so covertly.

"What exactly do ya think we're dealing with here?" He looked at Shaw in the rearview mirror and pressed the gas a little harder as the vehicle behind him began to get a little more aggressive.

"I dunno." Shaw answered casually, looking over at Don, who looked guilty, nervous, and petrified all at the same time. "I take it these are friends of yours?"

Don nodded, looking as if he might start crying at any moment. "Hotel Moscow hit men. Four of them; they always send four to a team."

Before anyone could say anything more, there was a sharp bump to the back of the car and everyone was roughly jerked forward. In response, Don began dry sobbing and pleading desperately with them. Shaw was annoyed.

"I don't wanna die! Please help me!"

"Damn it, Lionel!"

Ignoring Shaw, the detective whipped around in his seat to address Don.

"Hey! Hey, buck up. You're a man for Christ sakes. There is no crying allowed in this vehicle."

Don quieted down and continued to sit quietly and rock himself in the corner of the car as Shaw drew her weapon. She leaned out the window to take a shot, but found herself dodging a bullet aimed for her head.

"Punch it, Lionel!" She fired back two shots. One hit the middle of the windshield and the other passed through the hood on the passenger side.

Fusco complied, but not without complaint. "What do you want from me? This is a Crown Victoria!"

"Just drive." Shaw fired off two more shots. This time she took out the passenger side mirror and managed to hit the man riding shotgun in his shoulder. "And try not to get to the precinct until we lose these pricks."

A few more shots were fired into the back seat and Don hunkered down as low as he could get while Shaw returned fire. It went on like this for a few more minutes, but after exchanging a few more shots and spending a whole clip, Shaw managed to take out one of the tires on the Mercedes.

Lionel continued driving until they were near the precinct and then he wordlessly pulled into an alleyway. Shaw needed no further direction.

"We'll have to take a rain check on that drink." Shaw joked with Don, who was still curled up in something close to the fetal position as she got out of the car. She stopped next to the driver side.

"Good driving, Lionel." Shaw offered the rare compliment as her way of thanks for his help. He just smiled in response, "What do you want me to do with this one?" He pointed into the backseat at the high strung accountant.

"It would be best to keep him in protective custody for the time being. How you get that done is your business. Goodnight, Lionel."

"Goodnight, Sameen."

Shortly afterward when Shaw made her way to the end of the alley, her eyes locked on a nearby security camera that was focused on her. Her eyes narrowed as she was reminded that she wasn't alone. She felt the resentment well up inside her again as she stared the machine down.

"I am not a puppet." She spoke, just loudly enough for the machine to be able to pick it up. "We are not puppets."

With that, Shaw turned back down the alley and headed for the shadow map. She didn't feel like being under the machine's gaze any more than necessary.

And there's 3! Thank you so much for reading. It means a lot and I hope you like it! Please R&R!