Title: Exile: Misfortunes

Author: Elthial

Disclaimer: I do not own the matrix or any of its characters. The various characters you might recognise belong to their respective authors and I wont claim to own them. Also don't sue me because I don't have any money in the first place and it would be fairly pointless.

Author Notes: This is an ATS fic which uses ATS characters and the ATS timeline, although its not exactly canon cause stormy doesn't like other people being canon but her, mordax and redpony. I suppose its fair since it is their series, so I'll give it a front title of Exile instead of agents..... It'll probably become a small series about exiles as I have at least 2 more fics on the way. Another interesting thing to note that while Elthial has my name, he isnt really my SI... was meant to be be turned into another character... oh well.

(*Coughs*) erm. before anyone judges the ATS authors plz have a look at author note 2 at the end, thanks!

Anyway R&R people! Feedback is always helpful.

Program (NA-E) 0001-1356-GM AKA Elthial sat in a booth in the corner of a night club drowning his sorrows. That Agent Brown seemed to have taken a serious dislike towards him. Not that agents didn't already have a hatred of exiles, but every time Elthial attempted anything that blasted Agent Brown appeared. Five times in the past week he had escaped death by mere inches.

His rather miraculous escapes had been a combination of running like hell, conveniently placed doors and the one or two times when he managed to run down a dead end alley with no doors his power had saved his very life. Elthial didn't have one of those awesome powers were you could take on a group of agents single-handedly, rather his powers were more based on deceit and deception.

He was a shapeshifter but unlike others he not only looked like what he changed into, but he felt like it too. He mimicked the very code of the shape, played the code so to speak. Agent Brown had managed to chase him down a dead-end alley with no doors to escape through, so in a fit of rather quick thinking he had dived into some bum's cardboard home and shifted so that he looked like a bum.

Looking suitably startled when a man in a suit with a gun came running into the alleyway, what nearly gave him a heart attack was when Brown focused his eyes on him, picked him up and slammed him against the wall. Fortunately Brown only demanded to know where a blue-haired woman went, the form Elthial had previously been in. Elthial only had to bumble incoherently for a few seconds, sounding like a drunkard, before Brown snarled and threw him down on the floor before storming off.

So here he was trying desperately to relax and calm his nerves. He was watching the humans dancing seeming like they didn't have a care in the world. Humans, they were all the same really. Living out their lives out obvious to the nature of reality. Except for those rebels, they were trouble what with all their pesky reality bending. They could almost be as big a threat as the agents could sometimes, especially when they stuck their noses where they were not wanted.

However looking over all the humans at the club, there was one which caught his eye. A young Japanese woman in the middle of the dance floor. There was something almost predatory about her actions that attracted him to her.

He watched her liquid, feline movements as she danced in the middle of the dance floor, seeming like she had no bones in her body. Maybe humans weren't all that bad he thought, as he shifted into a more attractive appearance and left his corner, moving up to where she was dancing.

Dancing in the crowd around her for a while he caught her looking him over, and nodded towards a quiet corner of the club. She nodded and followed him over to the corner.

"Come here often?" Elthial asked, because he didn't remember seeing her before and being a program he never forgot a face, let alone such a pretty one.

"No, its my first time here." She replied, leaning against one of the walls.

"I'm Mark." He offered, preferring not to give his real name to someone who wasn't an exile. You couldn't be too careful these days.

"Minako." She replied, giving him her name as well.

They chatted idly about one thing or another, danced and generally passed the time until Minako looked at her watch. "Well, I've got to get back to my place."

She paused.

"Hey, want to come with me?" She asked suddenly, with almost predatory interest.

Elthial raised an eyebrow.

"Sure." He replied, after all what was the worse that could happen?

****************

They walked down the dark streets of the city, more confident than either should be considering that neither of them processed any weapons. At least Elthial didn't think Minako had any weapons. However something said to him that she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

Minako came to a stop beside an alley that was pitch black, although Elthial could make out another road at the end and several doors leading out onto the alley.

"The quickest way to my house is down there." Minako said, pointing down the dark alley.

Elthial shrugged. There was little in the dark that scared him, and besides there were several doors down there. If an agent should appear he could be long gone before they even spotted him.

He stepped into the alleyway. Behind him Minako's eyes seemed to flash golden and her face filled with a feral grin. Of cause Elthial didn't see this as he was ahead of her, but if he had it may have tipped him off that something rather unpleasant was about to happen next.

**************

If someone had been watching the alley they would have seen a man and a woman enter. This was followed seconds later by a sound that was a hybrid between nails on a chalkboard and a lion's growl, with an oddly metallic tone to it which sounded totally out of place in the cityscape. A loud cry of "SHHHHIIIIIITTTTT!!!" answered the sound a mere fraction of a second later.

**************

Elthial slammed the door closed and collapsed panting against the wall of the backdoor corridor. 'That was too close.' He thought, trying to gain some self control back and stop his heart from going a hundred beats a minute.

After he regained some semblance of control he stood up and 'shifted', repairing the huge gaping hole in his shoulder where that...... monster, that lizard cat thing had taken a chunk out of him. 'That's the last time I pick up a girl from a night club....' He thought, shuddering.

He was about to walk away and put the whole thing behind him, as one of those really nasty things that happens to poor exiles like himself, when fate decided to smack him one in the face.

Elthial felt his world turn green as his body convulsed and he collapsed again against the wall. Panic flooded his body again as he tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Obviously some of his subroutines were breaking down, which generally wasn't considered to be a good thing. Looking inwards at himself at the very code he was made of, he realised that the creature had taken a large chunk of code clean out of his program.

'Well.....this isnt good.' He thought, the understatement of the century looking at his code destabilising. He briefly wondered why it wasn't hurting, but then thought that it was probably due to shock...... either that or his pain subroutine had already gone.

He considered where do go next. He needed to get his code stabilised, and while he could go to the Merovingian, the last thing he wanted to be was in debt to the Frenchman. Besides he wasn't quite sure the Frenchman had forgotten about the master key he had stolen. Looking down the corridor he set his eyes on one unique door down the corridor with peace stickers over it. Hummer wouldn't mind if he crashed at his place, just till he pulled himself together.

Elthial used the master key he had 'borrowed' off of the Merovingian and opened the door to Hummer's apartment.

"Yo, Dude! You around?" Elthial shouted into the apartment. Not hearing a reply he shrugged and entered.

On the table was a note, he picked it up and read it.

Stef,

Gone out with Nat and Charlie. Be back in few weeks. Look after things.

Hummer

'Well, wasn't that just bloody typical. Hummer's little note is about as informative as saying I'm out, and who the hell is Stef?' Thought Elthial angrily, slamming the note back down on the table.

The best course of action would be to change shape into something small, to make his code more compact and limit the rate of code break down so that his subroutines could repair or at least patch themselves together. Elthial 'shifted' into a cat, lay down on the couch and shut down as many of his subroutines as possible, essentially becoming unconscious while his code attempted to patch its self.

***********

Meanwhile, a rather confused Grimoires licked his lips and tried to figure out exactly where his prey was.

When they had entered the alleyway he had transformed into his original form and bitten a chunk out of the human, but instead of dying the not-human thing had changed shape, avoiding the claws aimed at its throat, and then slammed Grimoires into a dumpster and a load of wires.

While Grimoires was trying to untangle himself from the wires that tangled around him, his prey suddenly just disappeared. One minute it was there, bleeding and giving off fear scent, the next it just vanished as if it had never been there.

Grimoires scowled. His prey had obviously not been human, but some sort of program, despite showing all the signs of being human. The bite he had taken out of it contained nothing but meaningless data. He didn't even have the non-human's self image. Obviously there are some strange things out in this New World. Never mind, they would all be his in the end. He morphed into the form of a man, before slipping silently into the darkness.

***********

Stef Mimosa entered Hummer's apartment.

"Hummer, you here?" She asked round the empty apartment. Noticing the note on the table she picked it up and read it.

"Huh.. wonder where he's gone off too." She mused as she looked around the apartment. There wasn't much here that needed taking care of, except something which caught her eye on the couch. How could Hummer leave a cat locked in an apartment to fend for itself for a few weeks, even though he knew she would be checking in?

Picking the cat up in her arms, she carried it out of Hummer's apartment. She could take better care of it at home(Agency?). Maybe she could even get some of the recruits to look after it when she was away. The cat itself slept on, completely oblivious to what was going on around it.

***********

The first thing Elthial saw when he came back to consciousness was Brown's ugly face looming over him. There are many words you could use to describe his feelings at that particular point in time, however for the moment we are going to limit it to utter total mind-numbing terror.

Stef Mimosa, being the one unlucky enough at that particular point of time to be holding Elthial's feline form, realised this as his claws dug deep into her flesh.

"OWW!.... Brown get away, you're obviously traumatising the poor thing." Stef said with a (pained?) smirk.

Brown growled in disgust and stormed off.

"Mimosa, why have you got a cat with you?" Jones asked the obvious question, one which, judging by Smith's face, he was wondering too.

"I found him," Lied Mimosa "..and thought the Agency could use a mascot."

There was a blink and a pause.

"A mascot?" Smith asked, incredulously.

Mimosa looked kind of sheepish, which for an agent is a pretty neat trick.

"Well... Its an idea." She half argued back.

Elthial had managed to calm himself down enough, and was listening in to the conversation. The agents weren't much of a threat at the moment, since they still thought he was a cat. All would be good, he would just have to escape at the first opportunity.

Smith sighed in a long suffering manner. "Very well." He said. "You can keep the cat, but make sure the recruits look after him. We have work to do." He gave Mimosa a pointed look, which Mimosa replied with an innocent look.

"Come on kitty." Stef said, talking to the cat in her arms as she walked out of the office and down the corridor. "We're off to meet the recruits."

*********

"No, your obviously not listening to me." Greer explained, exasperatedly rubbing his forehead as he tried to teach Anne one more time.

"Well it's your fault! Nothing you say makes any sense." She responded, sounding equally tired of the situation.

"Right, first you hold the blade like this." Greer explained as he came up from behind her and moved her hands and arms into the right position.

"You'd better not touch my ass again." Anne warned.

"I wasn't touching your ass." Greer protested.

"You so obviously were!" Anne shot back.

"Was not!" Greer said, stepping away from Anne and glaring at her.

"Were!" Anne replied with a much deadlier glare.

"Was n.." Someone coughing at the entrance of the gym cut Greer off mid sentence and both recruits turned to face the noise.

"Have we quite finished children?" Stef asked sarcastically to the two recruits who moments later had been bickering like school kids.

Stef walked into the gym and over to the two recruits.

"I have something I need you to do." She explained, and it was then that both the recruits noticed the cat she held in her arms.

"Would you look after kitty?" She asked, looking half embarrassed as both the recruits raised their eyebrows at the strange request.

"..er... Sure thing Agent Mimosa, just leave the cat with us." Greer said helpfully as Mimosa passed the cat to him.

"Thanks Recruit Greer, it helps." Stef said, thanking him before walking out of the gym and off to find Smith to do. joy of all joys. work!

The two recruits stood in a strange sort of silence as you would expect from people who just found out that they had stepped into the twilight zone.

"Well that was..." Greer started, and then trailed off as he couldn't find the right word.

"Weird? Strange? Bizarre? The agents around here are demented and have such bad fashion sense." Anne complained towards the end of her little ramble.

Greer looked at Anne and spoke half teasingly. "You sure you're not a rebel?"

Anne rolled her eyes "Please.... their fashion sense is even worse... if that's possible." She trailed off musing that fact.

Greer just shook his head at that while idly stroking the cat in his arms, then he turned to look at another recruit who had be in the corner quietly practising fighting moves on a mat alone.

"Hey Johns!" Greer shouted to the other recruit, who looked up at the mention of his name.

"Could you close the doors?" Greer half shouted, half asked, pointing to the gyms double doors. Johns stared at Greer for a second and then sighed before going over and closing the doors.

"Great thanks." Called Greer as he put the cat down, now there was no chance of it escaping and he could focus on teaching Anne how to fight with a blade properly, or at least attempt to teach her.

Elthial, in cat form, walked over to a balancing beam and jumped up before laying down across it and idly watching the this... Greer teach that blond girl Anne... with little success. Every time it seemed that they were getting somewhere another fight would break out. Elthial briefly wondered why the hell Greer even bothered. He was mildly annoyed at the fact the doors where closed, he couldn't escape in his cat form and transforming into a more human shape would be bad since it would set off every alarm the agency had.

The hours seemed to fly by until almost in unison all three recruits suddenly stopped and headed out of the gym chatting, or in the case of Anne and Greer fighting still. Elthial jumped off the balancing beam and shot towards the doors as Johns opened one of them.

"Damn!" Exclaimed Greer. "The bloody cat got away."

"Why worry so much?" Anne asked. "The stairwell doors are locked and it can't exactly use an elevator, can it?"

"Yeah but I told Mimosa I'd look after it." Greer explained looking concerned.

"You look stressed." Anne said, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. "How about a lil fun? We have time." She suggested.

Greer merely unwrapped her arms from around him and gave her a look, Anne drew back and scowled.

"Fine, sod off. See if I care." Anne bit out before storming off down the corridor.

Greer gave Johns a long-suffering look before they went their separate ways back to their rooms.

******************

Elthial was currently scowling, or as close as a cat can get to scowling. He had found out that there was no way for him to get out of the agency as a cat, he was getting surprisingly used to the fact he was surrounded by enemies everywhere, and that was a fact which half worried him. He had to keep his guard up.

With nothing better to do he decided to wander around the agency, maybe he could find out something useful to help him escape. He prowled around the empty corridors, it was about 11 maybe 12 PM so most of the recruits were asleep although it was hard to tell the time from a clock at his angle. He walked past Smith's office and heard voices inside, voices laughing and joking about. Seemed to him that Agents Mimosa and Smith were not getting much work done at the moment.

"So Stef, I've been meaning to ask. What was up with bringing that cat in earlier?" Smith asked.

'Stef??' Thought Elthial, listening from outside the closed door. 'Mimosa was Stef? The same Stef from the letter?' Well that kind of explained why he was now stuck in the agency, but when he got back Hummer was going to have some MAJOR explaining to do.

"Well, I found him all alone and I decided to take care of him." Stef explained, a tiny bit embarrassed. It seemed strange even to her an agent taking care of a pet. Also she was half worried that he would see through her, although it was the truth what she had told him. If he noticed her lying he never said a thing, and smoothly changed the topic onto other things.

Elthial wandered off further down the corridor thinking about what her had heard. Agent Mimosa was strange even to him, he had thought he had seen or heard of most things. However a female agent with a first name, an exile friend and a willingness to look after that friend's 'pets'. Why could he almost imagine the sign saying you have now entered the twilight zone flying over his head?

He was now approaching Agent Jones's office, and once again he could her voices inside. Curious he came closer. From the voices he could tell it was Agent Jones and Recruit Greer in the room, and from the sounds of it they were. busy. Elthial decided to move on quickly before he was traumatised by Agent/Recruit Love.

Walking further down the corridor he came to the recruits rooms. A group of recruits passed him heading back to their rooms after a long night, and one of them broke off from the group and entered a room in front of him before closing the door. Walking further down he heard giggling and suddenly a something landed on him, he crawled out from under it and looked back, only to find it was bra. Looking up he found Anne and some other recruit making out.

"Oh Peter." Moaned Anne while he kissed at her neck, then they heard a low dangerous growling coming from around the corner. 'Peter' looked downright terrified but Anne just dragged them both a little further down the corridor into her room.

Just in time really as Agent Brown came stalking around the corner, obviously attracted by the noise and hoping to have someone breaking rules so he could kick them out. He frowned darkly as he looked at the clothes still scattered around the corridor and stormed down the corridor again, aiming a kick at Elthial who had wandered into his way. Brown missed but barely. Still, it was enough to put him in an even darker mood and Elthial pitied who ever Brown meet next.

Life at the agency was fairly interesting it seemed, and here was Elthial thinking before that all the agents were pre-programmed monsters and half expecting the recruits to be the same. He supposed that was what happened when you only meet people on the battlefield. He was still walking down the corridor when he heard a quiet voice that seemed to be talking alone in what looked like a storage cupboard. Curious, he came closer to listen in on the strange one-sided conversation.

"..that's right, I have found a way to the destroy the Matrix once and for all." The voice said, Elthial didn't recognise it at all.

There was a pause and the sound of someone speaking out of a phone, but Elthial couldn't make the words out.

"Yes, from the tech diversion. I have all the information required."

Again the voice from the phone spoke but Elthial still couldn't make it out.

"The sewers? Like last time?" The voice said from inside the cupboard, there was a pause as he waited for an answer from the phone and once he got one he carried on. "One hour... okay I got it."

There was a click as the phone, obviously a mobile, was closed and footsteps headed towards the door. Elthial darted into the shadows of the corridor and watched as a man came out, in fact... yes he recognised him, it was Recruit Johns from the gym.

Johns looked around before walking down the corridor, heading towards the stairwell door. When he came to the door he seemed to play with the lock, obviously disabling the fire alarm so it wouldn't go off when the door was opened. Then he stepped into the stairway and closed the door over, but not quite shut, and headed down the stairs quickly and efficiently.

Elthial watched this from the shadows, unsure of what to do. This recruit was going to give... he assumed the rebels... the ability to destroy the Matrix. Obviously he had to stop him but the problem being he was only a single exile. It would be so much easier if he had a group of agents to help him. No, that would never work as the agents would shoot him before he could warn them of the danger. It looked like the fate of the world was in his hands... what a scary thought.

Elthial bounded out of the shadows and slipped between the gap in the door, down the stairs, following Recruit Johns with the silence that only a cat stalking prey can manage. He followed Johns out of the building, down several streets and then eventually into a subway where Recruit Johns entered a maintenance door and closed it behind him. Elthial swore, or did the cat equivalent that looked kind of like a sneeze. He knew where the door led so he jumped off of the platform and ran along of the side the track for several hundred meters before diving in, narrowly being missed by a subway train coming along the tracks.

He was now away from the prying eyes of humans, who could alert the rebels or agents, and sensors, so he changed back to a human form. He quietly walked through the tunnels, keeping to the shadows until he came to the meeting between recruit Johns and the rebels. He needed a plan if he was going to disrupt the meeting, there were about seven rebels and one recruit, hmmm... Elthial shapechanged until he was the form of an agent, and then stepped into plain sight with a Desert Eagle in his hand and shot two of the rebels dead straight from the start. The startled cry of "Agent!" came from the rebels, and Elthial had to duck and hide from the volley of machine gun fire as the rebels fled the tunnels quickly.

Recruit Johns seemed vaguely annoyed at being interrupted, which was unexpected because Elthial would have thought he would have been downright terrified.

"Your too late..." Johns said calmly. "I have already given the rebels the disk and by now they have reached an exit."

Elthial frowned. "Well then I'll just have to settle for killing you." He said, before firing a round of bullets at Johns.

Recruit Johns ducked the bullets and growled before leaping at Elthial, transforming into a werewolf as he did...

'Shit!' Thought Elthial as he dodged Johns lethal claws and teeth, Elthial hadn't been expecting for that to happen. Johns was NOT an exile, his code read as human.

The two fought hard and fast, but Elthial began to get some serious wounds from John's claws and it was becoming obvious that he wasn't really an agent.

"What are you?" Growled Johns as he slammed Elthial into a wall.

"Wouldn't you like to know." Choked out Elthial as he punched Johns in the face, before scrambling away into a part of the tunnel that obviously looked unstable with wooden beams propping the walls and ceiling up. Their fight had led them right down a section of a tunnel and into this very disused looking part.

Recruit Johns, whatever he was, snarled and reached out to pull one of the wooden beams away obviously intent on using it as a weapon.

"No! Don't!" Cried Elthial weakly, half coughing up blood as he saw the danger. But it was too late as Johns had already pulled the beam away. There was a horrible lurching sound before the walls and ceiling collapsed. A huge section of concrete came from the ceiling and smashed into the ground inches in front of him, causing the floor to collapse and Elthial to tumble into darkness, his last sight Johns being crushed to death by another massive slab of concrete.

*****************

Elthial came around to find himself on his back, staring at a pure white ceiling, surprisingly unhurt as he could still remember Johns' claws digging into him and the injuries from the collapsing ceiling. That fall probably wouldn't have done him much good either and if he remembered correctly shouldn't it be dark? Only one vague answer came to Elthial's muddled mind.

"Am I in Heaven?" He asked out loud, not really expecting an answer.

A girl with short blue-black hair stepped into his vision.

"Heaven?" She mused. "I doubt it." she offered him a hand up. Elthial took her hand and pulled himself up. Looking around he was at a cross section of the backdoors, with four corridors expanding outwards into infinity.

"How... how did I get here?" Elthial asked, looking curiously at the girl. She didn't read like an exile.... in fact she didn't read at all.

"I brought you here." She said simply, leaning back against the wall of the backdoors.

"er.. Thanks." Elthial said, still kind of in shock at the whole situation. He had been sure he was going to die.

The girl nodded to him, smiling. "You're welcome."

"Who are you?" He asked.

The girl looked at him for a while before answering.

"I am Nike.....Revelation." She said softly, before turning to leave through one of the doors.

"Wait!" Elthial called out to her. "What about the rebels?"

The girl paused and turned to look at him, her face dark, making Elthial feel cold inside, and to be honest, terrified.

"Don't worry, I'll deal with them." She answered simply, before stepping through the door and she was gone.

Elthial stood looking at the door she had left through, before shaking his head and heading for a nearby door. However then he remembered he had left his key at Hummer's, and he looked at the long corridors expanding into infinity with growing despair.

"Oh man!" He moaned.

****************

"Titan, lock that down."

"Mac, get us ready to leave NOW!!"

The rebel captain was ordering his crew to prepare to leave, the agents would have surely sent sentinels after them and he would like to be gone before they arrived. The information the... Informant had given was actually a virus which was supposed to be able to destroy any computer system. They would take it back to Zion so the Council could decide whether or not to use it. Most likely he thought that they would jump at the chance to destroy all the AI's and Machines.

He had just checked that the data was safe in the ship's database when the crew witnessed something that they knew was impossible, but they saw it all the same. It started off with a single red character of code dropping down from about head height, followed by another and another until a shape of a person formed, and then changed into that of a girl with short blue black hair.

The crew stood completely dumbfounded, but the captain managed to choke out a "Who are you?".

The girl smiled darkly "Revelation..." She said simply, taking a menacing step forward with her eyes turning red.

*****************

Several hours later:

A standard sentinel patrol through the area discovered the rebel ship with all its power on and making no attempt to flee or hide its presence, this in itself was anomalous and was recorded in their memory banks. But what the sentinels found as they ripped the ship apart was even more strange. The crew were all dead, but the causes of death were inconsistent with the apparent situation. One member of the crew appeared to be frozen to death while another only a few feet away was cooked to death, there was blood coating all the walls and the rest of the crew seem to have suffered massive random mutations resulting in death.

When the sentinels attempted to retrieve the ships database, they found that the memory chips had been destroyed, turning them to a solidified blob. What was weirder was that metal and fragile components mere millimetres from the memory chips showed no heat damage.

All this was recorded by the patrol before they pulled back and continued their route through the tunnels, leaving the dead ghost ship and its strangeness behind.

*****************

Two days later:

Elthial was relaxing. He was at the club again, sipping his drink just happily passing the time. He had survived his unfortunate adventure to the agency, he was still thinking about the girl with blue black hair and the fact she didn't have a presence in the matrix, no code, nothing, yet he could see, hear and touch her.

He shook his head and then paid for his drinks before heading out of the bar. It wouldn't really help to keep thinking on it as it wouldn't give him any more answers. Caught up in his world he walked down a deserted alley and came face to face with a pair of golden eyes which were attached to .... 'Oh hell' thought Elthial.

"Not again!" He cried as the predator leapt at him.

Authors note: hehehe.. whoops I left some of my beta's comments in, those have now been removed from the fic.

Authors note 2: (to lucien) And after getting a rather interesting review I decided at least try and set the record straight. well Elthial was originally a self insert he's sort of gone off somewhere and now is himself..... My new self would have to be Gemini now cause that characters more like me (you'll meet her later)... anyway this fic is up now and I cant be bothered to take it down to change the names. And sorry if I made Stormy and that lot out to be bitchy, probably in a bad mood when I wrote that, anyway their great people... good authors, I know them all and ATS is a great series. Actually mainly the purpose of this post is to say I don't mind being non-canon, the series is brilliant and always growing. (the reason why I bothered to make my stories in it, I think it has all the good points of the matrix and none of the bad points). Check the stormys stuff out.

Erm.. what else is there to say. oh yes.. thank you for the review, I am glad someone out their actually reads my stuff... feel free to read the rest of my stories and comment. I would recommend origins, beneath a shattered sky and Exile: program. The others stories are scheduled to be rewritten and changed.