Virus
I hunt tonight. I am not human. I am not machine.
Feeding time.
The two men pound past me, oblivious. They are human. I wait a moment, pausing, sensing the fleeting taste of blood and sweat. Down the alleyway into the dark and wet. A few ticks later, three men run past, tasting of gunpowder and metal. None see me, too intent on their prey to notice. They are the hunters, the humans the quarry. When they are past I move out behind them, following delicately as to not draw attention to my presence. I can be killed. But I never have been. My purpose is lost to history, my name no longer important. I stalk the hunters and the hunted in the false night of my world. I hear the beating of hearts and the screaming pulse of the codes.
I step along the pavement, moving through the Matrix as a fish in a stream. Wild, feral life is what I am. What we are. I have not yet encountered another like me. I am so very old, yet I remember so little. In the air of the night I hear gunshots, and the smell of blood and terror reaches me.
I come upon the Agents. They have finished their game, and the two men lie dead on the ground. A pity. I have not tasted human for a long time. Pools of light illuminate the grimy lot, hidden between these dead buildings. I can hear a phone ringing in the distance.
"Alert sector nine," One of them says, "All parties have been eliminated."
"Mainframe alerted. Shutting down emergency cutoffs." Another replies. They don't hear me as I move, circling. I would like human tonight. But Agent will do.
They scream. One gets away, to live and kill another time, but I destroy two. My mind is revitalized, having grown slow in the passing weeks. I feast upon their bodies and structures, assimilating code and destroying firewalls. Reveling in destruction, I do not notice the human that has come to find her companions. What she thinks of me, I do not know.
Her face is white, her mouth open. In her eyes I see how I look to them, the humans, a nightmare born of fear and slaughter. I am pleased. I even allow her a question before I kill her.
"What are you?"
"Contagion." I reply as I tear out her throat with my teeth. She dies quickly as I consume her entirely. I had forgotten that they tasted so good. Her companions outside should have pulled her out. The phone ceases ringing.
I wonder how I must appear to Agents. Not the same, nothing like she had seen. Whatever Agents fear. I have heard there is a human who can destroy the sentient programs. I think, as I strip clean the bones of the human and the cores of the Agents, how he would taste? Human or machine?
I clean the last traces of blood and units from my being, making them my own. I am strong again, now free to move to other territories, other topographies. It is difficult to follow the migrations of human and Agent. Where there is one, often the other is absent. Until they come together. I have never killed without my consuming reason of hunger, and I do not understand the war they rage against one another. I know there are two types of human, the hard ones and the soft ones. Soft are better. There is only one type of Agent. What higher cause they fight for is not my concern. I hunt them both with the same end in mind.
An Agent attempted to fight me once. He was strong, and damaged me. I spewed blood, the first time I had bled in a long while. But in the end I consumed both his host and him. That is the way of nature, blood both black and red.
In the light of day I move unnoticed. The Agents hunt me, a hopeless endeavor at best. If evil came into the world, it would not sport fangs and horns. I walk by them, in the daylight, breathing on their necks so that they shiver and look for the perpetrator. The humans, they avoid me as they do others of their kind. I am the poison of both worlds. There are no barriers between them; if they knew that, perhaps I would know danger, or fear. As it is, they rage and fight each other, and I break into both their ranks and devour them all. Human and machine.
As if anyone could tell the difference.