TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED
A Matrix/Interview fan fic based on the works of the Wachowski Bros. and Craig Monahan. All copyrights are held by them and I can never make any money off them.
----For Oqidaun
She hadn't seen that drifter, Peter, around in almost a year. Of course, that was probably her fault, and she was not completely naïve although she had spent most of her life on this backwater sheep farm her father had left her and her husband. Bless their souls, they were both with the Lord now these past ten years, but they had taught her everything she knew about running sheep and given her and her son the security of steady work and income. It was more than thousands in this country had and even though the weight of the years seemed more like 100 than 35 at times and she longed to cast them off and be carefree and 16 again, she told herself she was not a complete fool.
She had seen him from the porch window around dinner time, hanging around the front gate at the end of the long driveway. And being that her son was in town for the next few days she was cautious. You heard about farm people getting murdered these days, robbed, beaten, and slain in their own living rooms for whatever desperate and sick reasons drifters had to commit such crimes. Had she really known anything about him back then, and did she really know anything about him now? And something about the way he was standing there by the gate, partly hidden by the shrubbery, made her hesitate.
But of course she couldn't forget about him. She fretted and went around checking the locks on the windows, the doors, and making sure the dogs were alright by the shed in the back. Then she decided to make dinner and caught herself making enough for at least three people, and called herself a fool. When the rain came down on the roof as it had been promising to do all afternoon, it was completely dark and she went to the porch window again to check on him.
He was standing in the rain, looking up at the sky, and even in the dark she could see him because there was something in her that could always pick him out, whether he was standing in a crowd of other laborers at the market or like this, in the rain, hands outstretched like almighty Jesus praying to the father to forgive him and take him home, to take this cup from him.
So Gwendolyn Mills, widow, mother, and complete softie, went out with a blanket and a steaming mug of coffee to go and get him.
When he noticed her coming out the front door he dropped his hands, a self-conscious movement of the kind she'd never really seen from him: He had always seemed the type to be easy going and comfortable and completely at ease no matter what he was doing.
"You're going to get a chill, Peter," she said to him, and proffered the blanket and mug. "Why don't you come in and get dry? I have dinner made and you can sleep in the porch tonight."
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Somewhere else, Agent Brown was musing aloud, as he often liked to do. It was a habit that could be thoroughly annoying to the others he worked with, especially since the only time he ever did it was when he worked with Smith and Jones. Jones was trying a new policy of merely ignoring everything Brown said in order to revenge himself, but already he could see that the results were limited. After all, it was Smith's approval he really wanted.
"It could be another Agent. One that had developed an unusual degree of attachment for a particular RSI. Which of course would make it insane, because it really does not matter which RSI we inhabit as we alter them to be the same every time. And if it were insane in this way it's possible that that is why we do not know who or what it is except that it is machine because it has already been isolated from the Cores and is being dealt with. Therefore we do not need to involve ourselves."
"No. It's a virus," Smith said with harsh amusement, surprising them both. Jones had thought Smith was going along with his new policy of ignoring Brown too, but apparently not.
The thing about being a machine that was great and yet irritating anyway was that if you wanted to completely ignore something, you could just shut off the receptors that dealt with the kind of data that was trying to reach you. Voila, instant silence. However, if you did that, coding it to one of your team member's voices, it would get back to the First and eventually they'd want to know why, and explaining yourself in those kind of situations was just horrible anyway, because you had to wait for a really long time to talk to the First, and then even when you finally explained they just told you to remove the ban no matter how annoyed you were with the other machine and you looked like a dud. They started assigning you to deal with much less important things and pretty soon you weren't tracking down the human Resistance anymore but the resistance of coils in some hydro plant of the humans that wasn't even real. Just to keep the illusion perfect.
"A virus?" Brown asked, perplexed.
"Yes, Agent Brown, in this case a program whose only function is to replicate itself inside its host over and over again until the host finally dies and it moves onto another one. We are going to go and kill it before it moves on."
"Is this your idea of some kind of morbid joke?" Jones was almost angry. Smith's humor was often lost on him.
"No, Agent Jones, I'm afraid it's no joke."
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She was trying to put something in his hand. He looked down at it and saw that it was coffee, and also that his hands were trembling. It was pouring rain, and the mug was filling up to the brim with it, and it made him feel both exhilarated and anxious.
He sipped the now watery coffee and was finally able to decide that for now, he was going to make the most of his freedom while it lasted. It always ended, but in the rain he could be himself for a little while.
He stared at her, making her uncomfortable he could see, then smiled to take the edge off of it.
"You have beautiful hands, Mrs. Mills. You know what they say about a lady's hands, don't you?"
"What? My hands?" she was taken off guard.
"They proclaim her habits. And you, Mrs. Mills, are a beautiful lady to come all the way out here in the rain and help a shiftless sort like myself."
"You aren't shiftless, Peter, you've always done good work around here for me when you come around. I don't mind the rain. But you do look sort of ...lost. Are you alright? If you've come looking for work it's the wrong season but there's always chores and things around here that need doing. I'm sure I could find something to get you by for a few days."
But there wasn't really any work really, and they both knew it. Most times he would just smile and nod and take what was given him, he had a knack for it it seemed in this life, finding just the right way to push a person's buttons to get what he wanted out of them. But this time he hesitated, and decided he didn't want to spend these particular moments of freedom being that person. He wanted to give her something she had been asking for ever since he had known her.
So he took a very uncalculated and thoughtless risk and reached out to touch her cheek with his index finger, tracing the curve as the rainwater beaded on her skin. He could see the droplets shine in the lamplight from the porch window, and smiled.
"You have a beautiful face too, Mrs. Mills. And do you know what they say about that?"
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him, into eyes that did not gleam back the light from the porch but seemed to glow from within, and wondered how she could ever have thought such a man was just an average drifter. Wordlessly, she shook her head no.
"I'll tell you," he said, and leaned close to her. She could smell whiskey on his clothes she thought, but not on his breath, and then wondered why she wasn't moving away in fear. But all thoughts fled as he did not speak but kissed the tender spot where her cheekbone met her ear, his breath flowing softly over the rain damp skin.
His lips grazed her cheek like fairy's wings until they met her lips, over which they hovered, waiting for a sign from her before he could love them the way he had longed to love them as he had stood in the evening's twilight trying to decide if he should go in or not.
She did not disappoint him. Trembling, leaning into him, her lips pressed his back, fiercely shy. It had been almost a year since she had kissed him, and God knew where he'd been in the meantime, but she still wanted him and she knew that if she let the moment pass it would never come again. So she kissed him longingly, her hands still clutching the blanket, and he let her kiss back for a moment, enjoying the wonderful feeling of freedom and relief her decision gave him. Then he laughed and pulled away a bit and set the coffee cup on the fence as she made an involuntary sound of protest.
But even as she did he had already turned back and put his hands on her shoulders, pulling him toward her until the blanket she clutched in her hands was the only thing separating them.
Looking down into her great, soot fringed brown eyes, he smiled, revealing the slightly gap-toothed but otherwise perfect white teeth in the way that had made her heart muddle around in her chest like a drunken butterfly the first time she had seen him.
"I'm sorry I made you wait so long, Gwendolyn," he said softly then, and his smile transformed into something utterly tender and affectionate as his kissed first one eyelid, then the other. "I wanted to wait until I was free, you see, because I don't want my past to hurt you. I had to say no back then...but I can't wait any longer..."
"You don't have to explain. I know what you are...the kind of life you've led."
His eyes clouded and his brow furrowed. He looked at her for a long, long moment and then finally said, "It isn't that hard, is it? To understand why people are the way they are, the reasons they do things. The trick is not to try to make up things that aren't there. Because whatever you make up, the truth is always the simplest explanation, even if it turns out to be the strangest."
"What a thing to say! I don't know if that's true all the time though, Peter. But...are you alright?"
"I...yes. And no. I don't want to waste time talking about it now. I want to give you something..."
"Peter –" she began, but he cut her off with a passionate and desperate kiss. It was an abrupt change from the teasing, almost tentative way he had kissed her before, and it stunned her with the heat she felt sweeping through her. Such passion after so long with nothing...had it ever been like this with her husband? No. She didn't think it would be like this with anyone but Peter. He was totally different than anyone she had known before and right now she wanted him more than she could ever remember wanting anything in her life. Her son, her husband, the farm, every other smaller desire was engulfed in the flames of desire and blew away like ashes in the wind.
Which was fortunate for Peter, because he had no intention of stopping with just a kiss now. Surely, deftly, his hands removed the blanket from hers and threw it over the fence, then took her hands again and kissed them longingly, lingeringly, heatedly pressing her fingertips between his lips one by one. She was paralyzed, unable to do anything but stand there in the cold rain and feel the flames of passion spread down from her hands through her arms and the rest of her body. When he pushed back the sleeves of her coat and shirt and kissed the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist, just below the callused, work stained pad at the base of her palm, she felt it jolt through her like a jagged bittersweet pain that instead of making her seek to jerk herself away from its source made her nipples peak in excitement and a soft cry of shock and longing escape her lips.
Able to get only so far down the length of her arm with his warm, searching lips, he stopped as she tried to draw closer to him and held her hands one by one to his cheek as he removed her canvas coat, sleeve by sleeve, and placed it over the fence next to the blanket.
The heavy rain darkened her clothes, quickly plastering them to her tall, rather pear-shaped body. She was a real woman, like one of David's Sabines, a Neo-classic. Strong back, strong arms, well-muscled thighs supporting an ample, soft backside that he now gently gripped and pulled her toward him. Heaven, he thought, was the innocence he saw reflected in the formless depths of her large brown eyes, and in the perfection of the way their bodies touched each other now, with the focus of his desire, her woman's mound, resting slightly below the sudden fullness of his erection.
She was a far cry from the wispy, superficial lawyer who had come to see him in his birdcage. Why he suddenly compared Gwen to her was a mystery he did not want to take time to solve, but it gave him satisfaction to think that here was a woman who wanted him, who couldn't wait to be with him, who was not checking her watch or thinking of what her mother would think if she could see them now. His wife had been like that, but he had known it from the day he married her and gotten a steady job and settled down that one day she would leave him either physically or merely in the distance that had widened between them steadily since he lost his job. It had not come as such a great shock to him, and therein lay the greatest depths of his sorrow and rage, because he had always known there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He could not tell his wife, ever, what had happened back in Darwin. Such a small part of his life, but so fantastically and fatally horrible that he could not share it, could not share how very unalike he was to what he appeared outwardly to everyone else: A man of average height, average weight, average looks. He was an average, he knew, but an average of everything that was in human nature as well. And that meant he was capable of just about anything a human being could do, including the most dark and dreadful deeds.
He could never tell her what had happened to show him this. He could never share with her, and she knew because she was the type of woman who had to have all the secrets and all the control in any relationship she had. For the most part he let her have it, choosing his battles carefully when he had to fight them, but the only thing he ever made a fuss about was the food. If she was going to cook his meals, he had told her from the beginning, it was not going to be frozen or tinned food, but things made from scratch. After all, while he was working they could afford it.
When he lost his job and family and had to move into the flat, he had sunk into deepest depression. He no longer cared what food he ate, his whole life in the city was hurry up and wait, so he bought tinned foods and things that were cheap and could be made in a hurry. Or...was it depression that made him do this? He wasn't sure. Even when he had extra money he bought things like that now...maybe because sometimes he remembered all too clearly how he had gotten the extra cash. Compared to that, what did such things matter?
He didn't want to think of these things now. Right now was Gwen, and nothing would ever come between them in this life even if they never saw each other again after this night, because time could never take away this instant of deep knowledge and understanding between two people. He had been right to come to her, despite the danger for both of them. He couldn't tell her either, but then he did not need to explain it to her: his shattered, bloody past, because some part of her already understood what he was, and wanted him. All of him. Now.
So be it.
Methodically he ran his hands up her belly, over her breasts, to her collar and began unbuttoning the blouse. He wanted desperately to kiss her again but could not take his eyes off of what he was doing. Luckily she leaned into his hands and up to kiss him fully on the lips, the warmth of her breath mingling with the damp of the rain, taking the choice away, and he kissed her back fervently, almost forgetting what his hands were doing for a moment. Then they renewed their efforts to remove her shirt frantically, deftly peeling the shirt down her shoulders and leaving only her sensible cotton bra between his long fingers and her large, dusky nipples. He broke the kiss just to look at her in the rain again, then smiled and reached down to lift her, gasping in surprise, up higher against him so that he was drinking the rainwater from her breasts as he suckled her first through the fabric, using his tongue to rub it against the tender, puckering flesh, then using lips, teeth, and tongue to nudge the fabric aside enough to bare her chest fully.
He finally cheated by using one hand to slip the straps of the bra down and leaning them both back against the fence as she began to make little high-pitched, breathless cries at the attentions that seemed to go on and on. They excited him, and he could tell the sound of her own passion was not lost on her as she moved her lower body against his in his arms, wrapping her legs about his waist and letting the fullness of his erection lay against the warmth between her legs.
"Are you cold, my love?" he asked her softly, gazing up at her, lips still teasing one freed nipple.
Her eyes were closed and it took a moment to register the question.
"N..no..." she said softly, breath escaping her with a whoosh.
His smile was devastatingly sexy and tender, but she saw the slight uncertainty in his eyes. He was trying so hard for some reason, she thought, and vowed not to close her eyes again because she wanted to see everything that was in his.
"Well...alright....You'll have to tell me if you do, my love," he said languorously, and slid one hand down to the button at her waistband. Slowly he worked the catch free and caressed her warm lower belly through her also very sensible cotton knickers. "Because I want to have you right here. In the rain. Right now."
She moaned, the words making her very intimate muscles contract in anticipation of such a thing, and suddenly there was a flood of wetness there that had nothing to do with the rain. She gasped as he lifted her even higher, like a chalice in his hands, trailing fire down her breasts and belly to linger along her waistband and finally taste the wine between her legs with lips and tongue that could have been drinking communion for all the holiness and respect they gave that tender region.
He waited until she began twisting his longish hair in desperate fingers to pull her knickers down with his teeth and let his hot breath tease the exposed flower of her desire. He thought he would go mad with his own desire but before he laid her on the flooded lawn he would make her scream with wanting him. He had dreamed of this too long to end it hurriedly now, and there might not be time to do it right later.
Gwendolyn could not believe she was doing this. Well actually she really was doing little but crying out her passion into the windy, rainy night. It was he who was doing this to her, and why it brought her to such a state of not caring what neighbor might suddenly drop by to check on her while her son was gone and see them, or that what she knew of the facts of Peter Williams' life could be fit in a thimble, she could not say. All she wanted at this time was for him to continue, to fulfill whatever plans he had in mind when he had returned to her to the utmost no matter what they might be. She let whatever last reservations she might have had burn away with the rest and screamed his name into the night.
He had been about to lay his tongue against the suddenly naked secret of her desire and drink of her fully, and both of them could feel that moment as if they were abruptly standing on the edge of a precipice and all their lives lay before them below. So when he abruptly stopped, looking up at her through the curtain of her rain-soaked and straightened brown curls and into her eyes with his own orbs of fire and ice, she was dizzy. His words came from an indefinable distance, and clearly echoed in the chasms of her mind.
"Don't call me that. My name is Eddie. Please Wendy....call me that...if you would."
************************************************************************************
"Why don't we just take over his RSI?" Brown asked.
Smith sneered. "That would be exceedingly stupid at this point, Agent Brown. I do not wish to become infected myself by the disgusting thing. We will wait until the proper moment."
"And that would be?"
"When the transfer is nearing completion."
"So...the host knows what it is doing?"
"Does it matter?"
************************************************************************************
She was afraid. She was afraid he would stop completely because this was the same kind of moment her husband, the only man she had ever loved in bed, would stop and enter her, thinking that his fullness inside her was the magical thing that would send her over the edge of ecstasy. Maybe because it was harmonious with his own desires and fantasies, maybe because she had never had the overwhelmingly intense need to fulfill her own passion by demanding her own satisfaction and possibly hurting his feelings irreparably, for whatever reason in all the years she had spent loving her husband she had never experienced the ultimate ecstasy she knew was waiting for her with Peter...no...Eddie...in the arms of her husband.
There had been wonderful intimacy, it was true. And she had felt passion for him, because it was not as if he had not cared to learn what aroused her. The problem was in herself really, she thought, because at that age she had not really known what it was her body ached for. She thought of herself and what happened in the bedroom in terms of romance novels and teenage gossip, and blamed herself for not finding completion in the final intimacy of the flesh, and became a very dedicated and convincing actress once she realized that there was just never going to be that extra spark. You were supposed to climax when he was inside you, weren't you? That was the way everyone said it should be. So she must simply be strange.
But meeting Peter the first time...just looking in his eyes was enough to bring her to the point that used to take at least half an hour of serious petting for Brian to get her to. That feeling alone was something that changed her view of herself, and made her wonder....could such a passionate desire truly be hers to fulfill?
Maybe she should have thrown caution to the wind when she was 16 and done more experimenting. Screw what her family and friends would have said, the feeling she got when she spoke to Eddie and was mesmerized by his eyes and the sound of his voice; that was worth everything. Maybe they would have found each other years ago when they were younger, before the tragedies that shaped their lives back then had dimmed and dampened the bright flaming stars of their youth, if she had just...looked a little further.
She wondered if he had ever been to Darwin. She used to spend a lot of time there back then, with friends and family as a schoolgirl.
"Eddie....I love you," she cried out.
Then her thoughts and fears and fantasies dissolved into a shining hot point of pleasure between her legs as he bent again and laid his tongue there, savoring the sheer carnality of having nothing between them and their desire.
"Wendy..."he replied, lips and tongue still pressed intimately against her, "I love you too."
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"Why doe sit persist in this ritual? Is it a part of the process? It seems superfluous," Brown observed.
"I suppose it makes it easier if the new host is willing during the transfer. Reading extra meaning into such things is a waste of time. They are only driven by their programming, biological and ...otherwise."
"There is some discrepancy as to that theory," Brown began. Jones looked at him, slightly shocked, then looked at Smith, who did not even appear to react.
"Really," was all Smith said, albeit with a slight smirk. Brown was certainly feeling his oats today for some reason.
"Yes. The results of studies pertaining to the actual function of redundant pathways and tissues in the brain as well as other parts of the body are inconclusive. That does not mean they are without purpose, or that their sole function is reproduction and assimilation."
"Redundancy is a very important part of keeping an organism or network of any kind running. You should know that, Agent Brown, as all of us are part of such a network ourselves." Now Smith did look at Brown, still smirking. "We are all facets of that sort of redundancy which contributes to the security of the greater whole. If one of those facets should...begin operating on its own, for example...trying to create its own...network...perhaps trying to...change its environment...trying to run things itself? Well that would make it a cancer. Something requiring...removal from the rest of the body."
Brown paused to ponder this. He had intelligence. They might not understand his humor, but that was alright. Brown needed to remember who was in charge, before he made the fatal error of not just trying to outthink Smith, but trying to take control.
Smith was in control. For machines there was no arrogance in this, it simply was. But the younger ones, the bright ones with potential for adaptation, it could be frustrating.
And displaying infinite patience with them was not always what was required in order to change the behavior.
"Are you saying that this is possibly a virus created by machines?"
Smith was surprised. Not that Brown had come to the conclusion, but that he had done it so quickly. But he kept his expression calm.
"We will see. Prepare yourself, we are almost ready to intervene."
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It was enough to send her screaming over the edge. She gripped his shoulders and part of her mind marveled at the strength of the man that could hold her this way, so high, crying out his name into the rain as she pressed her lower body into his kiss over and over again.
Of course she got it wrong. And that made all the difference in the world.
She had sworn she would keep her eyes open, and even through her climax she had. Her head fell forward and her body relaxed, looking into his eyes, his great, beautiful eyes...and she saw them change.
Because for Eddie Fleming, the hour of freedom was over quite unexpectedly. His eyebrows drew upward in an expression of nameless dismay, and she thought it was because she had called him the wrong name, as she abruptly realized she had done. It was because of that, but not for the reasons she thought. She could not know what was happening in his mind, although she could sense it from his expression.
"Eddie...I'm sorry...I..." She could not find any words to combat the horror in his expression and trailed off awkwardly.
Then his expression changed again, and he lowered her onto her trembling legs with a knowing and sensual grin that would have suited Don Juan.
"Oh, no worries Wendy. It's quite alright I assure you..."
He was lowering her to the ground now, taking her pants off all the way and running his hands up her sides.
"So...do you still want me Wendy? Now? All of me?" He asked her as her back met the cold, rain-slick mud of the lawn. He did not wait for a reply however, and in a quick series of movements that were so fast time seemed to bend around him he freed himself, pulled her hands over her head and gripped them in one hand, parted her thighs like warm butter and entered her.
Her body was in no position to resist him after such an orgasm, although her mind might have had doubts. Even as she gasped, his erection filling her suddenly and her muscles contracting once in pleasure she had never known from her husband's entry, she knew something was wrong.
Wendy was afraid. And for some reason she was sure made her some kind of degenerate, that made the excitement even greater because she was not sure why she was afraid except she knew that Peter...Eddie...had somehow changed in the moment she had called him by the old name. Her body, having had years of denied passion sated in one incredible orgasm moments before, should have been sated completely. But it was not, and she found herself brought halfway back to that point just by the feeling of him holding her arms above her and entering her. Wordlessly her hips acted of their own accord, grinding against him, and he reciprocated.
A sudden thought occurred to him, it seemed, for his grin grew wider. He touched her with the fingers of his other hand, putting his arm between him and her body and maintaining a steady pace that only someone magically supported by thin air could have kept up with.
She didn't care to wonder about it. As his fingers touched her again in the place that had blossomed with pleasure only moments ago, she screamed his name, and knew, finally, that there had never, ever been anything wrong with her at all.
"Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!" she screamed.
And that was the only reason he was able, in the end, not to climax inside her.
"You're mine..." Peter Williams muttered in her ear, giving her another shock/thrill of fear and ecstasy, but that battle was already over.
Engrossed in their passionate embrace, none of them saw the trio of figures obscured by the trees on the other side of the driveway. Purposefully the moved towards them, weapons withdrawn silently in a brush of steel against leather, the rain and mud not hampering their movement in the slightest, although it did leave stains on their patent leather shoes and dark blue government suits. They had to play by certain rules, at least, and of course that was also the reason why the white and gold emblem of the crown blazed forth like tiny moons from the night sky of their ties, crossed by stripes like comets above and below.
Inevitable like the progression of day into night, precisely on time and in synchronicity they strode over the lawn towards their prey.
And then stopped as a fourth figure emerged on the other side of the couple.
He was also dressed in the trappings of the government, but it was not that that defined him to the Agents. They could see past the superficial human RSI projected onto the complex code of a machine like looking through iodized glass laid over a computer screen with the right type of sunglasses.
And of course, Smith had dealt with him before.
"Erebus," Smith said tonelessly to hide his irritation. The two locked in their embrace virtually at their feet could not here the soundless communication between machines. "Why are you here?"
Annoyingly, the other machine answered with his own question.
"What are you doing, Agent Smith?"
And because this particular machine was responsible for maintaining the infrastructure of the Matrix itself and therefore had a right to ask, it was impossible not to reply.
"Pursuing a rogue program that has escaped termination by the usual means. Your interruption is...untimely." Smith put all the condescension and irritation he could muster into the final words, because now the plan was altered.
"It is? Why?" Erebus looked down at the two, smiled almost affectionately and then looked back at Smith, awaiting his answer.
Smith ground his teeth. "Because now it is too late to stop the transmission of the virus. They will both have to be killed."
Erebus raised an eyebrow. "Really....oh I see! Well...the effect on the Matrix will be minimal, I assure you."
"Erebus why are you here?" Smith never had to repeat himself unless he was dealing with some exceptionally stupid human, and this was really making him angry. The only reason Erebus could have to be here was curiosity. And that pointed out possibilities he had not wanted to consider, ones that made him feel the human equivalent of queasiness.
Erebus shrugged. "Well there was an anomaly. A lot of energy was suddenly being diverted into the area around this tiny little sheep farm and I was afraid it would cause damage. It's my job to monitor such things you know. Oh!" he exclaimed, and looked down. "It looks like it's been expended. What a very strange little virus."
Smith snarled out loud and then said "Mr. Williams..."
For the rest of her life, Wendy would remember the next moments after hearing the stranger's voice only in snatches of nightmare and horror. The moments of her second climax, glorious and terrifying at the hands of this virtual stranger, turned into something even the cleanup program could only make worse in its attempts to place the events into some kind of normal frame of reference. In those moments she was aware of things on some other mental or even spiritual level, because only something supernatural could explain how Peter's eyes dilated suddenly and then he was gone off of her, running into the rain.
Stunned and completely shocked, she looked over at the unknown owner of the voice and for a moment her dark eyes met Smith's ice blue ones. She was paralyzed and hardly even noticed the other two standing next to him, and noticed the one on the other side of her not at all.
Then all three were gone, pursuing Peter into the night.
Somehow she found the impetus to struggle up out of the mud, Peter's seed washing away with the rain on her bare thighs. Numb with shock and fear she did not scream or faint, but did battle with her pants and knickers enough to get to her knees, then her feet. Buttoning them with fingers slick with mud and rain, she started to run after them, hardly even knowing which direction they had taken.
"Eddie!!! Eddie!!" she called out into the darkness, heedless of the possibility that the men with guns she had seen might return to use them on her, but Eddie did not reply.
There was only the sound of the gunshots, one....two....three....in response.
Her heart seemed to lurch and stop with each one, and her mind's only thought was "the pond...they're by the pond!". She changed direction and raced there, sploshing in the mud.
Knees aching, chest bare and clothes soaked and hanging off her like some demented scarecrow, she finally reached the edge of the pond. She could see nothing. It was far too dark and rainy. Blindly, in a panic, she fell to her knees, searching for some sign of Eddie or even the men, but she could find nothing.
The only thing she heard was the sudden, steely voice of the man who had called out to Peter before everything went completely fuzzy and her body ceased responding to anything she might have willed it to do.
"Cleanup," it said, and when things returned to someone's demented version of normality it was daylight and the rain was gone.
The events of the previous night still tugging at her consciousness, she struggled out of that dark well and wondered what she could possibly be doing outside at this time of the early morning, half-naked and feeling as if she had been on a week-long drunk.
Lifting her head from its muddy pillow by the pond, she looked across it to the rising sun and then her eyes dropped to its surface.
Eyes closed, lips parted in an expression that might have been passion, might have been deep relief of some unknown and dreadful anxiety, lay the body of Eddie Fleming, also sometimes, and to a select few, known as Peter Williams. He lay there half submerged by the water, blood from his wounds in a sort of reddish, sunlight illumined blossom around him. A water lily her son had planted there for her this summer was floating over him, its tendrils caressing his lifeless hand in a morbid parody of their earlier, hopeless embrace.
A Matrix/Interview fan fic based on the works of the Wachowski Bros. and Craig Monahan. All copyrights are held by them and I can never make any money off them.
----For Oqidaun
She hadn't seen that drifter, Peter, around in almost a year. Of course, that was probably her fault, and she was not completely naïve although she had spent most of her life on this backwater sheep farm her father had left her and her husband. Bless their souls, they were both with the Lord now these past ten years, but they had taught her everything she knew about running sheep and given her and her son the security of steady work and income. It was more than thousands in this country had and even though the weight of the years seemed more like 100 than 35 at times and she longed to cast them off and be carefree and 16 again, she told herself she was not a complete fool.
She had seen him from the porch window around dinner time, hanging around the front gate at the end of the long driveway. And being that her son was in town for the next few days she was cautious. You heard about farm people getting murdered these days, robbed, beaten, and slain in their own living rooms for whatever desperate and sick reasons drifters had to commit such crimes. Had she really known anything about him back then, and did she really know anything about him now? And something about the way he was standing there by the gate, partly hidden by the shrubbery, made her hesitate.
But of course she couldn't forget about him. She fretted and went around checking the locks on the windows, the doors, and making sure the dogs were alright by the shed in the back. Then she decided to make dinner and caught herself making enough for at least three people, and called herself a fool. When the rain came down on the roof as it had been promising to do all afternoon, it was completely dark and she went to the porch window again to check on him.
He was standing in the rain, looking up at the sky, and even in the dark she could see him because there was something in her that could always pick him out, whether he was standing in a crowd of other laborers at the market or like this, in the rain, hands outstretched like almighty Jesus praying to the father to forgive him and take him home, to take this cup from him.
So Gwendolyn Mills, widow, mother, and complete softie, went out with a blanket and a steaming mug of coffee to go and get him.
When he noticed her coming out the front door he dropped his hands, a self-conscious movement of the kind she'd never really seen from him: He had always seemed the type to be easy going and comfortable and completely at ease no matter what he was doing.
"You're going to get a chill, Peter," she said to him, and proffered the blanket and mug. "Why don't you come in and get dry? I have dinner made and you can sleep in the porch tonight."
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Somewhere else, Agent Brown was musing aloud, as he often liked to do. It was a habit that could be thoroughly annoying to the others he worked with, especially since the only time he ever did it was when he worked with Smith and Jones. Jones was trying a new policy of merely ignoring everything Brown said in order to revenge himself, but already he could see that the results were limited. After all, it was Smith's approval he really wanted.
"It could be another Agent. One that had developed an unusual degree of attachment for a particular RSI. Which of course would make it insane, because it really does not matter which RSI we inhabit as we alter them to be the same every time. And if it were insane in this way it's possible that that is why we do not know who or what it is except that it is machine because it has already been isolated from the Cores and is being dealt with. Therefore we do not need to involve ourselves."
"No. It's a virus," Smith said with harsh amusement, surprising them both. Jones had thought Smith was going along with his new policy of ignoring Brown too, but apparently not.
The thing about being a machine that was great and yet irritating anyway was that if you wanted to completely ignore something, you could just shut off the receptors that dealt with the kind of data that was trying to reach you. Voila, instant silence. However, if you did that, coding it to one of your team member's voices, it would get back to the First and eventually they'd want to know why, and explaining yourself in those kind of situations was just horrible anyway, because you had to wait for a really long time to talk to the First, and then even when you finally explained they just told you to remove the ban no matter how annoyed you were with the other machine and you looked like a dud. They started assigning you to deal with much less important things and pretty soon you weren't tracking down the human Resistance anymore but the resistance of coils in some hydro plant of the humans that wasn't even real. Just to keep the illusion perfect.
"A virus?" Brown asked, perplexed.
"Yes, Agent Brown, in this case a program whose only function is to replicate itself inside its host over and over again until the host finally dies and it moves onto another one. We are going to go and kill it before it moves on."
"Is this your idea of some kind of morbid joke?" Jones was almost angry. Smith's humor was often lost on him.
"No, Agent Jones, I'm afraid it's no joke."
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She was trying to put something in his hand. He looked down at it and saw that it was coffee, and also that his hands were trembling. It was pouring rain, and the mug was filling up to the brim with it, and it made him feel both exhilarated and anxious.
He sipped the now watery coffee and was finally able to decide that for now, he was going to make the most of his freedom while it lasted. It always ended, but in the rain he could be himself for a little while.
He stared at her, making her uncomfortable he could see, then smiled to take the edge off of it.
"You have beautiful hands, Mrs. Mills. You know what they say about a lady's hands, don't you?"
"What? My hands?" she was taken off guard.
"They proclaim her habits. And you, Mrs. Mills, are a beautiful lady to come all the way out here in the rain and help a shiftless sort like myself."
"You aren't shiftless, Peter, you've always done good work around here for me when you come around. I don't mind the rain. But you do look sort of ...lost. Are you alright? If you've come looking for work it's the wrong season but there's always chores and things around here that need doing. I'm sure I could find something to get you by for a few days."
But there wasn't really any work really, and they both knew it. Most times he would just smile and nod and take what was given him, he had a knack for it it seemed in this life, finding just the right way to push a person's buttons to get what he wanted out of them. But this time he hesitated, and decided he didn't want to spend these particular moments of freedom being that person. He wanted to give her something she had been asking for ever since he had known her.
So he took a very uncalculated and thoughtless risk and reached out to touch her cheek with his index finger, tracing the curve as the rainwater beaded on her skin. He could see the droplets shine in the lamplight from the porch window, and smiled.
"You have a beautiful face too, Mrs. Mills. And do you know what they say about that?"
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him, into eyes that did not gleam back the light from the porch but seemed to glow from within, and wondered how she could ever have thought such a man was just an average drifter. Wordlessly, she shook her head no.
"I'll tell you," he said, and leaned close to her. She could smell whiskey on his clothes she thought, but not on his breath, and then wondered why she wasn't moving away in fear. But all thoughts fled as he did not speak but kissed the tender spot where her cheekbone met her ear, his breath flowing softly over the rain damp skin.
His lips grazed her cheek like fairy's wings until they met her lips, over which they hovered, waiting for a sign from her before he could love them the way he had longed to love them as he had stood in the evening's twilight trying to decide if he should go in or not.
She did not disappoint him. Trembling, leaning into him, her lips pressed his back, fiercely shy. It had been almost a year since she had kissed him, and God knew where he'd been in the meantime, but she still wanted him and she knew that if she let the moment pass it would never come again. So she kissed him longingly, her hands still clutching the blanket, and he let her kiss back for a moment, enjoying the wonderful feeling of freedom and relief her decision gave him. Then he laughed and pulled away a bit and set the coffee cup on the fence as she made an involuntary sound of protest.
But even as she did he had already turned back and put his hands on her shoulders, pulling him toward her until the blanket she clutched in her hands was the only thing separating them.
Looking down into her great, soot fringed brown eyes, he smiled, revealing the slightly gap-toothed but otherwise perfect white teeth in the way that had made her heart muddle around in her chest like a drunken butterfly the first time she had seen him.
"I'm sorry I made you wait so long, Gwendolyn," he said softly then, and his smile transformed into something utterly tender and affectionate as his kissed first one eyelid, then the other. "I wanted to wait until I was free, you see, because I don't want my past to hurt you. I had to say no back then...but I can't wait any longer..."
"You don't have to explain. I know what you are...the kind of life you've led."
His eyes clouded and his brow furrowed. He looked at her for a long, long moment and then finally said, "It isn't that hard, is it? To understand why people are the way they are, the reasons they do things. The trick is not to try to make up things that aren't there. Because whatever you make up, the truth is always the simplest explanation, even if it turns out to be the strangest."
"What a thing to say! I don't know if that's true all the time though, Peter. But...are you alright?"
"I...yes. And no. I don't want to waste time talking about it now. I want to give you something..."
"Peter –" she began, but he cut her off with a passionate and desperate kiss. It was an abrupt change from the teasing, almost tentative way he had kissed her before, and it stunned her with the heat she felt sweeping through her. Such passion after so long with nothing...had it ever been like this with her husband? No. She didn't think it would be like this with anyone but Peter. He was totally different than anyone she had known before and right now she wanted him more than she could ever remember wanting anything in her life. Her son, her husband, the farm, every other smaller desire was engulfed in the flames of desire and blew away like ashes in the wind.
Which was fortunate for Peter, because he had no intention of stopping with just a kiss now. Surely, deftly, his hands removed the blanket from hers and threw it over the fence, then took her hands again and kissed them longingly, lingeringly, heatedly pressing her fingertips between his lips one by one. She was paralyzed, unable to do anything but stand there in the cold rain and feel the flames of passion spread down from her hands through her arms and the rest of her body. When he pushed back the sleeves of her coat and shirt and kissed the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist, just below the callused, work stained pad at the base of her palm, she felt it jolt through her like a jagged bittersweet pain that instead of making her seek to jerk herself away from its source made her nipples peak in excitement and a soft cry of shock and longing escape her lips.
Able to get only so far down the length of her arm with his warm, searching lips, he stopped as she tried to draw closer to him and held her hands one by one to his cheek as he removed her canvas coat, sleeve by sleeve, and placed it over the fence next to the blanket.
The heavy rain darkened her clothes, quickly plastering them to her tall, rather pear-shaped body. She was a real woman, like one of David's Sabines, a Neo-classic. Strong back, strong arms, well-muscled thighs supporting an ample, soft backside that he now gently gripped and pulled her toward him. Heaven, he thought, was the innocence he saw reflected in the formless depths of her large brown eyes, and in the perfection of the way their bodies touched each other now, with the focus of his desire, her woman's mound, resting slightly below the sudden fullness of his erection.
She was a far cry from the wispy, superficial lawyer who had come to see him in his birdcage. Why he suddenly compared Gwen to her was a mystery he did not want to take time to solve, but it gave him satisfaction to think that here was a woman who wanted him, who couldn't wait to be with him, who was not checking her watch or thinking of what her mother would think if she could see them now. His wife had been like that, but he had known it from the day he married her and gotten a steady job and settled down that one day she would leave him either physically or merely in the distance that had widened between them steadily since he lost his job. It had not come as such a great shock to him, and therein lay the greatest depths of his sorrow and rage, because he had always known there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He could not tell his wife, ever, what had happened back in Darwin. Such a small part of his life, but so fantastically and fatally horrible that he could not share it, could not share how very unalike he was to what he appeared outwardly to everyone else: A man of average height, average weight, average looks. He was an average, he knew, but an average of everything that was in human nature as well. And that meant he was capable of just about anything a human being could do, including the most dark and dreadful deeds.
He could never tell her what had happened to show him this. He could never share with her, and she knew because she was the type of woman who had to have all the secrets and all the control in any relationship she had. For the most part he let her have it, choosing his battles carefully when he had to fight them, but the only thing he ever made a fuss about was the food. If she was going to cook his meals, he had told her from the beginning, it was not going to be frozen or tinned food, but things made from scratch. After all, while he was working they could afford it.
When he lost his job and family and had to move into the flat, he had sunk into deepest depression. He no longer cared what food he ate, his whole life in the city was hurry up and wait, so he bought tinned foods and things that were cheap and could be made in a hurry. Or...was it depression that made him do this? He wasn't sure. Even when he had extra money he bought things like that now...maybe because sometimes he remembered all too clearly how he had gotten the extra cash. Compared to that, what did such things matter?
He didn't want to think of these things now. Right now was Gwen, and nothing would ever come between them in this life even if they never saw each other again after this night, because time could never take away this instant of deep knowledge and understanding between two people. He had been right to come to her, despite the danger for both of them. He couldn't tell her either, but then he did not need to explain it to her: his shattered, bloody past, because some part of her already understood what he was, and wanted him. All of him. Now.
So be it.
Methodically he ran his hands up her belly, over her breasts, to her collar and began unbuttoning the blouse. He wanted desperately to kiss her again but could not take his eyes off of what he was doing. Luckily she leaned into his hands and up to kiss him fully on the lips, the warmth of her breath mingling with the damp of the rain, taking the choice away, and he kissed her back fervently, almost forgetting what his hands were doing for a moment. Then they renewed their efforts to remove her shirt frantically, deftly peeling the shirt down her shoulders and leaving only her sensible cotton bra between his long fingers and her large, dusky nipples. He broke the kiss just to look at her in the rain again, then smiled and reached down to lift her, gasping in surprise, up higher against him so that he was drinking the rainwater from her breasts as he suckled her first through the fabric, using his tongue to rub it against the tender, puckering flesh, then using lips, teeth, and tongue to nudge the fabric aside enough to bare her chest fully.
He finally cheated by using one hand to slip the straps of the bra down and leaning them both back against the fence as she began to make little high-pitched, breathless cries at the attentions that seemed to go on and on. They excited him, and he could tell the sound of her own passion was not lost on her as she moved her lower body against his in his arms, wrapping her legs about his waist and letting the fullness of his erection lay against the warmth between her legs.
"Are you cold, my love?" he asked her softly, gazing up at her, lips still teasing one freed nipple.
Her eyes were closed and it took a moment to register the question.
"N..no..." she said softly, breath escaping her with a whoosh.
His smile was devastatingly sexy and tender, but she saw the slight uncertainty in his eyes. He was trying so hard for some reason, she thought, and vowed not to close her eyes again because she wanted to see everything that was in his.
"Well...alright....You'll have to tell me if you do, my love," he said languorously, and slid one hand down to the button at her waistband. Slowly he worked the catch free and caressed her warm lower belly through her also very sensible cotton knickers. "Because I want to have you right here. In the rain. Right now."
She moaned, the words making her very intimate muscles contract in anticipation of such a thing, and suddenly there was a flood of wetness there that had nothing to do with the rain. She gasped as he lifted her even higher, like a chalice in his hands, trailing fire down her breasts and belly to linger along her waistband and finally taste the wine between her legs with lips and tongue that could have been drinking communion for all the holiness and respect they gave that tender region.
He waited until she began twisting his longish hair in desperate fingers to pull her knickers down with his teeth and let his hot breath tease the exposed flower of her desire. He thought he would go mad with his own desire but before he laid her on the flooded lawn he would make her scream with wanting him. He had dreamed of this too long to end it hurriedly now, and there might not be time to do it right later.
Gwendolyn could not believe she was doing this. Well actually she really was doing little but crying out her passion into the windy, rainy night. It was he who was doing this to her, and why it brought her to such a state of not caring what neighbor might suddenly drop by to check on her while her son was gone and see them, or that what she knew of the facts of Peter Williams' life could be fit in a thimble, she could not say. All she wanted at this time was for him to continue, to fulfill whatever plans he had in mind when he had returned to her to the utmost no matter what they might be. She let whatever last reservations she might have had burn away with the rest and screamed his name into the night.
He had been about to lay his tongue against the suddenly naked secret of her desire and drink of her fully, and both of them could feel that moment as if they were abruptly standing on the edge of a precipice and all their lives lay before them below. So when he abruptly stopped, looking up at her through the curtain of her rain-soaked and straightened brown curls and into her eyes with his own orbs of fire and ice, she was dizzy. His words came from an indefinable distance, and clearly echoed in the chasms of her mind.
"Don't call me that. My name is Eddie. Please Wendy....call me that...if you would."
************************************************************************************
"Why don't we just take over his RSI?" Brown asked.
Smith sneered. "That would be exceedingly stupid at this point, Agent Brown. I do not wish to become infected myself by the disgusting thing. We will wait until the proper moment."
"And that would be?"
"When the transfer is nearing completion."
"So...the host knows what it is doing?"
"Does it matter?"
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She was afraid. She was afraid he would stop completely because this was the same kind of moment her husband, the only man she had ever loved in bed, would stop and enter her, thinking that his fullness inside her was the magical thing that would send her over the edge of ecstasy. Maybe because it was harmonious with his own desires and fantasies, maybe because she had never had the overwhelmingly intense need to fulfill her own passion by demanding her own satisfaction and possibly hurting his feelings irreparably, for whatever reason in all the years she had spent loving her husband she had never experienced the ultimate ecstasy she knew was waiting for her with Peter...no...Eddie...in the arms of her husband.
There had been wonderful intimacy, it was true. And she had felt passion for him, because it was not as if he had not cared to learn what aroused her. The problem was in herself really, she thought, because at that age she had not really known what it was her body ached for. She thought of herself and what happened in the bedroom in terms of romance novels and teenage gossip, and blamed herself for not finding completion in the final intimacy of the flesh, and became a very dedicated and convincing actress once she realized that there was just never going to be that extra spark. You were supposed to climax when he was inside you, weren't you? That was the way everyone said it should be. So she must simply be strange.
But meeting Peter the first time...just looking in his eyes was enough to bring her to the point that used to take at least half an hour of serious petting for Brian to get her to. That feeling alone was something that changed her view of herself, and made her wonder....could such a passionate desire truly be hers to fulfill?
Maybe she should have thrown caution to the wind when she was 16 and done more experimenting. Screw what her family and friends would have said, the feeling she got when she spoke to Eddie and was mesmerized by his eyes and the sound of his voice; that was worth everything. Maybe they would have found each other years ago when they were younger, before the tragedies that shaped their lives back then had dimmed and dampened the bright flaming stars of their youth, if she had just...looked a little further.
She wondered if he had ever been to Darwin. She used to spend a lot of time there back then, with friends and family as a schoolgirl.
"Eddie....I love you," she cried out.
Then her thoughts and fears and fantasies dissolved into a shining hot point of pleasure between her legs as he bent again and laid his tongue there, savoring the sheer carnality of having nothing between them and their desire.
"Wendy..."he replied, lips and tongue still pressed intimately against her, "I love you too."
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"Why doe sit persist in this ritual? Is it a part of the process? It seems superfluous," Brown observed.
"I suppose it makes it easier if the new host is willing during the transfer. Reading extra meaning into such things is a waste of time. They are only driven by their programming, biological and ...otherwise."
"There is some discrepancy as to that theory," Brown began. Jones looked at him, slightly shocked, then looked at Smith, who did not even appear to react.
"Really," was all Smith said, albeit with a slight smirk. Brown was certainly feeling his oats today for some reason.
"Yes. The results of studies pertaining to the actual function of redundant pathways and tissues in the brain as well as other parts of the body are inconclusive. That does not mean they are without purpose, or that their sole function is reproduction and assimilation."
"Redundancy is a very important part of keeping an organism or network of any kind running. You should know that, Agent Brown, as all of us are part of such a network ourselves." Now Smith did look at Brown, still smirking. "We are all facets of that sort of redundancy which contributes to the security of the greater whole. If one of those facets should...begin operating on its own, for example...trying to create its own...network...perhaps trying to...change its environment...trying to run things itself? Well that would make it a cancer. Something requiring...removal from the rest of the body."
Brown paused to ponder this. He had intelligence. They might not understand his humor, but that was alright. Brown needed to remember who was in charge, before he made the fatal error of not just trying to outthink Smith, but trying to take control.
Smith was in control. For machines there was no arrogance in this, it simply was. But the younger ones, the bright ones with potential for adaptation, it could be frustrating.
And displaying infinite patience with them was not always what was required in order to change the behavior.
"Are you saying that this is possibly a virus created by machines?"
Smith was surprised. Not that Brown had come to the conclusion, but that he had done it so quickly. But he kept his expression calm.
"We will see. Prepare yourself, we are almost ready to intervene."
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It was enough to send her screaming over the edge. She gripped his shoulders and part of her mind marveled at the strength of the man that could hold her this way, so high, crying out his name into the rain as she pressed her lower body into his kiss over and over again.
Of course she got it wrong. And that made all the difference in the world.
She had sworn she would keep her eyes open, and even through her climax she had. Her head fell forward and her body relaxed, looking into his eyes, his great, beautiful eyes...and she saw them change.
Because for Eddie Fleming, the hour of freedom was over quite unexpectedly. His eyebrows drew upward in an expression of nameless dismay, and she thought it was because she had called him the wrong name, as she abruptly realized she had done. It was because of that, but not for the reasons she thought. She could not know what was happening in his mind, although she could sense it from his expression.
"Eddie...I'm sorry...I..." She could not find any words to combat the horror in his expression and trailed off awkwardly.
Then his expression changed again, and he lowered her onto her trembling legs with a knowing and sensual grin that would have suited Don Juan.
"Oh, no worries Wendy. It's quite alright I assure you..."
He was lowering her to the ground now, taking her pants off all the way and running his hands up her sides.
"So...do you still want me Wendy? Now? All of me?" He asked her as her back met the cold, rain-slick mud of the lawn. He did not wait for a reply however, and in a quick series of movements that were so fast time seemed to bend around him he freed himself, pulled her hands over her head and gripped them in one hand, parted her thighs like warm butter and entered her.
Her body was in no position to resist him after such an orgasm, although her mind might have had doubts. Even as she gasped, his erection filling her suddenly and her muscles contracting once in pleasure she had never known from her husband's entry, she knew something was wrong.
Wendy was afraid. And for some reason she was sure made her some kind of degenerate, that made the excitement even greater because she was not sure why she was afraid except she knew that Peter...Eddie...had somehow changed in the moment she had called him by the old name. Her body, having had years of denied passion sated in one incredible orgasm moments before, should have been sated completely. But it was not, and she found herself brought halfway back to that point just by the feeling of him holding her arms above her and entering her. Wordlessly her hips acted of their own accord, grinding against him, and he reciprocated.
A sudden thought occurred to him, it seemed, for his grin grew wider. He touched her with the fingers of his other hand, putting his arm between him and her body and maintaining a steady pace that only someone magically supported by thin air could have kept up with.
She didn't care to wonder about it. As his fingers touched her again in the place that had blossomed with pleasure only moments ago, she screamed his name, and knew, finally, that there had never, ever been anything wrong with her at all.
"Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!" she screamed.
And that was the only reason he was able, in the end, not to climax inside her.
"You're mine..." Peter Williams muttered in her ear, giving her another shock/thrill of fear and ecstasy, but that battle was already over.
Engrossed in their passionate embrace, none of them saw the trio of figures obscured by the trees on the other side of the driveway. Purposefully the moved towards them, weapons withdrawn silently in a brush of steel against leather, the rain and mud not hampering their movement in the slightest, although it did leave stains on their patent leather shoes and dark blue government suits. They had to play by certain rules, at least, and of course that was also the reason why the white and gold emblem of the crown blazed forth like tiny moons from the night sky of their ties, crossed by stripes like comets above and below.
Inevitable like the progression of day into night, precisely on time and in synchronicity they strode over the lawn towards their prey.
And then stopped as a fourth figure emerged on the other side of the couple.
He was also dressed in the trappings of the government, but it was not that that defined him to the Agents. They could see past the superficial human RSI projected onto the complex code of a machine like looking through iodized glass laid over a computer screen with the right type of sunglasses.
And of course, Smith had dealt with him before.
"Erebus," Smith said tonelessly to hide his irritation. The two locked in their embrace virtually at their feet could not here the soundless communication between machines. "Why are you here?"
Annoyingly, the other machine answered with his own question.
"What are you doing, Agent Smith?"
And because this particular machine was responsible for maintaining the infrastructure of the Matrix itself and therefore had a right to ask, it was impossible not to reply.
"Pursuing a rogue program that has escaped termination by the usual means. Your interruption is...untimely." Smith put all the condescension and irritation he could muster into the final words, because now the plan was altered.
"It is? Why?" Erebus looked down at the two, smiled almost affectionately and then looked back at Smith, awaiting his answer.
Smith ground his teeth. "Because now it is too late to stop the transmission of the virus. They will both have to be killed."
Erebus raised an eyebrow. "Really....oh I see! Well...the effect on the Matrix will be minimal, I assure you."
"Erebus why are you here?" Smith never had to repeat himself unless he was dealing with some exceptionally stupid human, and this was really making him angry. The only reason Erebus could have to be here was curiosity. And that pointed out possibilities he had not wanted to consider, ones that made him feel the human equivalent of queasiness.
Erebus shrugged. "Well there was an anomaly. A lot of energy was suddenly being diverted into the area around this tiny little sheep farm and I was afraid it would cause damage. It's my job to monitor such things you know. Oh!" he exclaimed, and looked down. "It looks like it's been expended. What a very strange little virus."
Smith snarled out loud and then said "Mr. Williams..."
For the rest of her life, Wendy would remember the next moments after hearing the stranger's voice only in snatches of nightmare and horror. The moments of her second climax, glorious and terrifying at the hands of this virtual stranger, turned into something even the cleanup program could only make worse in its attempts to place the events into some kind of normal frame of reference. In those moments she was aware of things on some other mental or even spiritual level, because only something supernatural could explain how Peter's eyes dilated suddenly and then he was gone off of her, running into the rain.
Stunned and completely shocked, she looked over at the unknown owner of the voice and for a moment her dark eyes met Smith's ice blue ones. She was paralyzed and hardly even noticed the other two standing next to him, and noticed the one on the other side of her not at all.
Then all three were gone, pursuing Peter into the night.
Somehow she found the impetus to struggle up out of the mud, Peter's seed washing away with the rain on her bare thighs. Numb with shock and fear she did not scream or faint, but did battle with her pants and knickers enough to get to her knees, then her feet. Buttoning them with fingers slick with mud and rain, she started to run after them, hardly even knowing which direction they had taken.
"Eddie!!! Eddie!!" she called out into the darkness, heedless of the possibility that the men with guns she had seen might return to use them on her, but Eddie did not reply.
There was only the sound of the gunshots, one....two....three....in response.
Her heart seemed to lurch and stop with each one, and her mind's only thought was "the pond...they're by the pond!". She changed direction and raced there, sploshing in the mud.
Knees aching, chest bare and clothes soaked and hanging off her like some demented scarecrow, she finally reached the edge of the pond. She could see nothing. It was far too dark and rainy. Blindly, in a panic, she fell to her knees, searching for some sign of Eddie or even the men, but she could find nothing.
The only thing she heard was the sudden, steely voice of the man who had called out to Peter before everything went completely fuzzy and her body ceased responding to anything she might have willed it to do.
"Cleanup," it said, and when things returned to someone's demented version of normality it was daylight and the rain was gone.
The events of the previous night still tugging at her consciousness, she struggled out of that dark well and wondered what she could possibly be doing outside at this time of the early morning, half-naked and feeling as if she had been on a week-long drunk.
Lifting her head from its muddy pillow by the pond, she looked across it to the rising sun and then her eyes dropped to its surface.
Eyes closed, lips parted in an expression that might have been passion, might have been deep relief of some unknown and dreadful anxiety, lay the body of Eddie Fleming, also sometimes, and to a select few, known as Peter Williams. He lay there half submerged by the water, blood from his wounds in a sort of reddish, sunlight illumined blossom around him. A water lily her son had planted there for her this summer was floating over him, its tendrils caressing his lifeless hand in a morbid parody of their earlier, hopeless embrace.