A/N: I feel this needs an explanation. Basically, this piece started off as a section from an unpublished fic. One with half a plot, a really badly thought-out OC and…it was just generally bad, 'kay? So I deleted it from the system. But I felt the need to save this bit. It's probably about as bad as the bits that ended up in the recycle bin, but…whatever. I kind of like it.
Disclaimer: If I owned the Matrix trilogy, Trinity would still be alive. She isn't, therefore I don't. Obviously.
For a long time all Smith knew was pain. But that made no sense. He'd never experienced pain before, not like this, at least. It filled every part of him, and that made no sense either. He didn't exist anymore. But still, the pain was there. Pain and a greyish opaque haze, settled like a fog over his vision. He couldn't see; there was nothing to be seen.
Sounds eventually reached him through the haze: alien words muttered in unfamiliar voices; strange, unnatural sounds, over and over, unbearable and unending. The steady, maddening beep of a machine. The occasional shrill cry of an alarm. There was nothing he could do to block them out, he couldn't move. He couldn't even feel his body, if a body he still possessed.
After a while, shapes came to join the sounds. Odd silhouettes he just recognized as being people, standing over him at intervals, doing things he couldn't see and didn't try to make sense of. A square patch of white light floated mockingly in his peripheral vision, but that came and went periodically, his only sense of time passing in this strange place.
But more maddening than both the sounds and shapes combined were the smells. Things he could never remember encountering before. Something metallic but not metallic, coppery but at the same time strangely organic. Something sharp, too-sweet and filled with chemicals, burning his nose and throat with every inhalation. Something faint yet pleasant, too far away to identify properly. And above all these, dominating them all, the inescapable, sickeningly familiar stench of humanity. It was stronger here than anywhere he had ever been, saturating him to his very core, filling every part of him.
That was when it struck. An impossible thought. Could it be that he had somehow…?
No. No. No. It was not true, nor was it possible. He didn't exist anymore, he'd been eradicated from the system, he knew that.
I should not be alive. I. Should. Not. Still. Be. Here. But the new and overwhelming sensations assaulting him told another story entirely.
Oh god, no. Please. Panic welled up inside of him, sudden, unfamiliar and all-consuming, and nothing he could do would hold back the screaming. All of his dulled senses unlocked at once, overwhelming him with sight and sound and smell and sensation and even taste, he could taste the fear at the back of his mouth, metallic and frightening in itself.
Shadowed figures dressed all in white descended, pinning his new, weak body down with burning hands, and a sharp, sudden spark of pain ignited in his arm. It was gone in a heartbeat, but he still registered it, felt it. Identified it. The cold, clinical prick of a needle.
Heaviness washed through his veins, and along with it, an aching need to shut his eyes. Powerless against the drug, he let it pull him down into blackness; let it lead him away from the madness for a while.
A/N: There you have it. A story for everyone's favorite rogue agent. Heh... it looked longer on Microsoft Word. And it looks funny, format-wise.
Since this is my first Matrix fanfiction, I'm betting there's a billion and one things wrong with it, but any flames will be used for baking cookies.