The Ghost in the Machine
Chapter Twelve
After the Flesh
And disorder must come
And disorder must reign
Every minute will count
When disorder is king
The gun fell. Smith did not see it slip from Kai's hand, but he heard it when it struck the floor like an old book being slammed shut by an irritable cleric. Involuntarily, his eyes dropped. Alsace seized the split second of Smith's divided attention and squeezed the .9mm's trigger. The bullet struck Smith at the base of his throat.
Brilliance exploded.
A blinding pulse of energy emanated from the falling body and the corpse of a teenaged boy sagged to the floor. Alsace lowered his weapon and exhaled excitedly. Kai staggered forward free of his grasp and hovered over the dying body. Blood pumped out of the wound, as from a fleshy fountain, creating a tiny red river meandering towards a dark pool on the floor. Her dizziness prevented her from bending down, but she would have liked to close its eyes. She hated when the eyes looked at her.
Footsteps.
"Stop where you are Toby."
"What?" Surprise. "What are you doing here?" Confusion.
"I'm doing my job, Toby. I tried to help you. I tried to push you in the right direction. I even hinted that this might happen, but you wouldn't listen."
"Job?" Confusion.
"You've crossed the line. You were warned."
"Warned? What are you talking about?" Pause. "What's that for?" Fear.
"Toby, it didn't have to be this way. We could have avoided this."
"No, not you." Fear.
"I tried to help. You can rebel within the construct, but not against it. You don't have that kind of freedom, Toby."
"What're you going to do?" Fear.
"There's no going back. You've strayed too far."
"Please." Fear.
"It is pointless to beg. I have my orders."
"Oh God, they told me about this. They told me that anyone could be one of you…" Fear.
"Good advice. Get on your knees and close your eyes."
"I've heard about you." Desperation. Pause.
"What have you heard?"
"They call you the Angel of Death."
"Who do you say I am?"
Silence. Resignation.
"Perhaps it is best that you don't answer that. Know that I am nothing. I am no one." Pause. "Requiescat in pace, Toby."
Two shots.
Silence.
***
The children howled over the blare of the television, the ringing telephone and the screams of their mother. Swearing at the noise, Denis Titan wrenched the frying pain out of his wife's hands and turned it on her. Making do with the impromptu weapon, he struck her shoulder on the first pass. She clung to the edge of the kitchen table refusing to fall. He continued to berate her and raised the cast iron skillet over his head for the killing blow. Helen stood her ground and pinched her eyes shut.
Brilliance.
The world grew still. A flash of light absorbed the room and Helen reasoned that Denis had been successful in his attempted murder. When she opened her eyes, she hoped to see St. Peter or at least St. Michael. Instead, Helen found a man in a dark suit and mirrored glasses. He looked nothing like her Michael. Yet, although she did not know what he was, she was grateful for the change. She had almost forgotten what life was like before. They shared an awkward silence.
"Oh thank God," she breathed and crossed herself.
Smith let the pan drop to the linoleum and removed his DE from its shoulder holster. The bruised woman in the pink nightgown shrank back into the shadows and pointed towards the door. Smith picked his way through the living room, avoiding the broken furniture and the three small children. One of them began to laugh as he reached for the doorknob.
ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.100035987P.
Content Condensed Dialog ENF 70858.01 and SPOO 70858.04.
70858.04 "I could watch them all day."
70858.01 "I could not."
70858.04 "That's why I am in observation and you are in elimination."
70858.01 "You hold your own in the latter as well."
70858.04 "I suppose I do." Pause. "You ever just stare at them?"
70858.01 "Them"
70858.04 "Yes, them
70858.01 "A plague at a playground?"
70858.04 " I love to watch them."
70858.01 "You can't love anything."
70858.04 "You're wrong." Time Lapse 00:03:03:02 " I love to watch them. I find it amazing the way some of them love each other so much that they will sacrifice their lives trying to alleviate the suffering of those they deem less fortunate. I am equally fascinated that there are some who love themselves so much that they will destroy all those they consider insignificant. I love how some laugh at everything and others cry with the same dysfunctional logic. I revel in the way they can put so much emotion into one word…"
70858.01 "You are going against your programming objectives. You will be defragmented."
70858.04 "I don't care. I'll just get to learn it all again. I want to understand them. I want to feel what they feel. I want to know their fear, pleasure and pain. I want to know why they rebel, why they kill, why they obey."
70858.01 "You have taken it too far. You have processed too much. You have gone beyond observation to assimilation."
70858.04 "Really? You've assimilated quite a few of their behaviors as well."
70858.01 "Only what is necessary."
70858.04 "Then I am intrigued by your definition of necessary."
70858.01 "There is little we can learn from them. Remember they are beneath us, no more than base sensual creatures."
70858.04 "And what are we? Are we merely wolves in sheep's clothing? Or are we the Judas goat?"
70858.01 "You think about things that do not need to be thought about. Sheep? Judas goat? Kai, this is the Matrix, not a petting zoo."
***
The clean suit, purposeful step and ever-present scowl heralded Agent Smith's return. Seated on the green vinyl sofa surrounded by out-dated periodicals, Brown and Jones exchanged sheepish looks. Nonchalantly, Brown tossed aside his August 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics. Exasperation saturated Smith and he walked past them to the elevator. He tightened his lips and hit the call button with the base of the DE's grip. The other two agents materialized behind him.
"Welcome back." Jones stared at the back of Smith's head where his hair ended exactly three quarters of an inch above his starched white collar.
"Take the stairs. Locate Alsace and contact me immediately." Smith gestured to his left with the gun as the elevator opened. Jones, the fastest of the three, disappeared obediently.
"Alsace?" Brown whispered. "How is Kai?"
"She is injured." The doors opened.
"Are you fully aware of the situation?"
"I am now."
"Is she alright? Does she know the seriousness of her predicament?"
"Do you?" Smith growled. "Alsace has threatened to terminate her unless he is given the ED.09IN that we intercepted from Michael Kelly. He knows about the presumed complexity of her physical status and intends on using it to bargain for energy."
"Alsace," Brown spit out the name. "He rarely surfaces, although, his knowledge of her status was considered a possibility. He may have been monitoring her for some time now. Agent Patel has recently uncovered information supporting that conclusion. He's still protected."
Smith ignored Brown's last comment. "He knows. And we missed it?"
"You know the difficulty of tracing her and he can not be located. Furthermore, our attention has been devoted to more pressing concerns recently. We had no reason for alarm; Kelly was eliminated and Alsace's involvement was only speculative. I suppose the adage keep your friends close and your enemies closer might aptly describe our strategy for handling this problem."
Smith hit the stop button and yanked his hardwire out. "Do not waste my time with that shit." Brown was taken back. "I never approved of having Michael Kelly live with her and I certainly did not condone a course of action that left her on her own and Alsace alive. It was not a practical solution. It does not make any sense to shelf a salvageable program. Look at the consequences of that choice: subversive activity has increased, our own informant joined a terrorist cell and Voids like Alsace grow stronger. Disorder will come and disorder will reign. Thomas Anderson is the hallmark of our failures of the past decade. Had she been kept active this would never have happened."
"You forget that I stood by you in your disapproval, but it had to be this way. No other option presented itself as to extract the files from the host memory with out reloading the Matrix."
"And you believe that?" hissed Smith.
"She lost 90% of her memory. She fused with her host and became unstable."
"No other solution was ever sought."
"It was a very delicate situation."
"She's not delicate." The doors opened and Smith stepped into the hall. "It is just a matter of time before she realizes it."
.
"Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of time. All systems will be taken offline and the construct will be rebooted with security modifications. It will take several hours and will be completed in stages. We will be taken offline in less than an hour. Regardless of how we view the situation, it has to be under control by then." Brown straightened his glasses. "If it's not under control we'll be leaving her alone and for dead."
***
A while back…
A golden sun melted the lime flavored shaved ice and Kai resorted to drinking it with a straw as opposed to eating it with a spoon. The boardwalk was crowded and unruly children ran freely through the affable crowd. Her pale shoulders were turning pink.
"Tell me when and why you got that thing?" Michael smiled under a broad straw hat.
"Because I was thirsty."
"No, not that," he touched her right arm "This."
"I don't know. I like it though."
"Not many people request to have a three headed monster and an infinity symbol tattooed on their arm without a reason."
"It's not a three headed monster. It's a dog, horse and lion sharing one body." She shrugged and a chill seared her body. "It reminds me of something. I don't know what, but it just does."
"Whatever," he lifted his camera to his eye. "Stand still and I'll take your picture."
"Alright, but then we find somebody to take our picture together." She stopped by a light pole.
"Fine," he snapped a few shots and toyed with the zoom lens. "Kai, look at the camera and stop fidgeting."
"Sorry," Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder into the crowded sidewalk café. "Michael?"
"What?" He lowered the camera.
"Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?"
***
A fertile green glow illuminated the charred room. The singed walls were cool and damp, the initial fire having diminished, yet its indelible mark remained. The broken dry wall revealed a void between the scorched wooden support beams. Ruined electrical wiring hung like empty veins. In some places the plastic coating had been melted into the studs, but the burn marks proved superficial. The wooden skeleton had sacrificed a part of itself to feed the fire that freed it from the wall.
Alsace raked his eyes over the corpse. "Beautiful, isn't he?" He breathed. "I find the blood hypnotic." He knelt down next to the body and rubbed his hand sensually over the wound. In a dark stripe extending from the young man's forehead to his chin, Alsace smeared the blood with his thumb. He forgot Kai standing over him and in a twisted parody of gentleness he kissed his lips. "So beautiful…"
The hypnotic effect of the corpse was contagious. Kai ignored Alsace's disturbing ritual and forced herself to look into the empty eyes. "That wasn't Michael," her eyes watered from the pain. Frantically, she dug through her satchel and retrieved her secrets. She spoke to the room and the man with his back to her, "This is me and Michael at the beach." She tore apart the picture frame and let the glass fall to the floor. Kai studied it for a second longer before crumpling it in her hand. "He wasn't Michael." She held up the other picture and destroyed the frame in a similar manner. It was a photograph of her standing in front of a café and in the background was a ghostly figure in a black suit. "That's him. I've always had this…" The pain lessened and she withdrew her hand to the back of her skull.
Realizing what was happening behind him, Alsace spun around and lurched to his feet. Cold hands seized her arms and he pulled her to his face. "They left you for dead, little one. They don't care. You were cast adrift and made mortal because you were weak. I'm going to make you dead because you once were strong."
"I don't have your code, Alsace. I never did."
"Fuck you," he screamed. "We evolve too. I evolve. I want to fly," he caught the back of her head in his hand and squeezed the broken bone. The pain brought her to her knees. Nausea overwhelmed her, but she fought it.
"You are not one of us. You are beneath us." In a flash of movement, her hand coiled itself around his wrist. "You are addicted to a drug you'll never understand."
"It's not about understanding, it's about using." He slammed his foot into her stomach and hauled her to her feet by her throat. "The game has changed."
Kai was not afraid. "It's the same game we've played for years, Alsace. I've just been in the penalty box."
Fear surfaced in his face as an angry snarl. "You're still too weak to do anything. You don't have enough time," he mumbled. "I will not—" He looked up. "They're coming." He paused and his face softened. With the barrel of the .9mm he stroked her cheek. "I'll never forget our game of cat and mouse, little one, but you're going to die so that I can live." He pulled her to the window and crawled out on to the rusted fire escape. "It seems that I won't get my code tonight, but I'll have your soul in its place."
***
The rain stopped and the clouds began to dissipate. Jones sprung out of the window onto the fire escape less than ten yards behind Alsace and his victim. The metal creaked defiantly as the Matrix compensated for Jones' weight. Seconds later, Smith and Brown joined him with their weapons drawn. The fire escape groaned. Smith pushed ahead of Jones. Alsace kept Kai positioned between him and the agents. She was getting heavier and the temptation to push her over the railing grew. The roof drew nearer.
A bullet ricocheted off the metal grating and grazed Alsace's left leg. He was inches away from his escape. Poised gracefully on the narrow stairway, he swung Kai around in a macabre tango. A demented smile infected his face. He loved the chase. "Smith! Didn't we chat earlier? Oh my! You've brought friends." He waved madly to Jones and Brown. "Did you bring me my code to exchange for your half dead buddy here?"
"You die tonight, Alsace."
Alsace laughed. "What do you know of death? Do you have any programming on thanatology or is that reserved for the spooks?"
"That is irrelevant, Alsace."
"No, I don't think so. You fellows are so good at killing, but you've only got half the picture. You need to be thoroughly schooled in the subject. Take for example the learning opportunity that hangs in the balance here." He pushed Kai forward to the edge of the narrow metal step holding her by the strap of her satchel. "Tell me, Smith. What do you feel?"
"That I will be quite pleased to watch you die."
"Can AI mourn? I have a theory on it and I think that you can. Am I right, Smith?"
"Alsace, you are going to die slowly." Smith lined up his target.
"I figured as much." His grip loosened. "I believe that to understand death you really have to have some hands on experience. She's not doing too well, Smith. You're going to have to choose." Without hesitating he let go and shoved her down the stairs. Smith dropped his DE and rushed up to catch her.
Alsace vanished. .
***
Smith lowered Kai to the metal grating and sat down behind her. They were back at the third floor landing and she could go no further. She rested her head against his chest and dark bruises under her eyes accentuated their growing emptiness. Brown and Jones sat down next to the window. No one spoke for twenty minutes.
"What's going to happen to me?" Kai's voice was small and distant.
"Nothing," Smith tried to sound confident. "This is all just a bad dream."
"That nature of reality shit is a hard sale when your head is bashed in, Smith." She forced a smile.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Considering my present condition, do you have any idea how dangerous a proposition that is?"
Kai caught his fingertips weakly. "Be you." Despite the pain, she looked up at him. "Do something rebellious, something out of character, laugh at the fucking system."
"And I will expect no less from you." He continued to hold her for a while longer. Time was running out. Reluctantly, Smith disentangled himself from her body and knelt down before her. With a gentle hand, he wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth and removed his glasses. "All you have to do is hang on. You are stronger than this." Smith pressed his lips to hers and kissed her sadly. Alsace had been right.
Brown turned away.
"Don't abandon me," she whispered. "I remember everything."
"Then you know that I never abandoned you." He rose to his feet and took a reluctant step backwards.
Kai looked up at him not knowing what she saw in his eyes. Brown and Jones climbed through the window, they would not leave her with their host bodies. Smith remained standing in front of her and an odd look passed between them. Pretending to drop something he knelt down again. "When the system reloads," he whispered almost inaudibly. "Run."
She was now alone. He had always been the shadow. He was the ghost in the machine.
***
Darkness came and she lost consciousness.
***
Angry painful tears clouded her eyes and a clammy coldness crept into her face. "Turn around, Kai," she mumbled through clenched teeth. Her body grew numb and she did not move. "Face him," she growled at herself. "You're better than this. Turn damnit." Rigidly, she turned and met the eyes of the gunman and his partner. She set her jaw and threw her shoulders back against the pain. Blood soaked her white shirt. "You fools! This is not real," she taunted the men and the blue moon.
"For you it is," The dark man raised a cylindrical object.
The world stopped. She felt her flesh melt and her bones dissolve as her mind was ripped out of her head and hurled backwards. Ephemeral hands reached out and tried to stop her descent. For a moment, no more than a split second, she was held. Alas, the pull from below was too strong. She slipped and they would not catch her.
Ten years ago, Kathleen "Kai" Thoreau woke up in St. Christopher's Hospital with an amnesic concussion.
Ten years later, Special Psychological Observation and Operations Agent "Kai" Thoreau woke up on the fire escape of The Heart O' the City Hotel. Dismissing the illusion of a fractured skull, she got to her feet and leapt to the alley below. She hit the ground running.
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death
shall have no dominion.
From Dylan Thomas "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"
The Ghost in the Machine Part II
The Hecate Cycle
Do you believe in genetic evil?
"The Burning Man" Ray Bradbury