AUTHOR'S NOTE: Originally, I had chapters 5 and 6 lumped into a single chapter, but damn all if it didn't get to be ponderously long. I've noticed the chapters get longer as I go on, and I'm trying to get better about it. I welcome feedback on this chapter and the next regarding the voices of the Matrix characters -- that is, does Morpheus sound like Morpheus? Would you believe Switch to say some of the things she does? Of course, I also welcome any other feedback you have.
After driving through parts of town that Meira had no desire to see, Mouse finally directed her to park near a ramshackle slum that even local drug addicts and vagabonds seemed to have abandoned. She was imperfectly pleased to be trudging up the stairs in the abandoned tenement, half-supporting Mouse's weight. On the other hand, she had little reason to be pleased with anything at all that had happened in the past few hours. It smelled like dust and years-old urine and mildew; chunks of plaster and what she hoped wasn't asbestos littered the floor. Something unpleasantly organic crunched beneath Meira's boot.
"Why in the hell did your people decide to come here, of all places?"
"This is where the exit is. Room 301," he replied, as if that explained everything. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face; he was clearly in pain, but doing his best to not show it.
"Third floor," she said, partly to herself. "They must know you've been shot in the leg. You told them that?"
"Yeah. It's okay though, don't worry. I'm just glad they can get me at all."
"You must work for some real bastards."
"No, they're good people. Just, you know, kinda serious all the time." He grinned widely, as though a bullet through the calf, a broken rib or two, and inhumanly deadly government soldiers lurking everywhere wasn't anything to be serious about.
They rounded the second floor landing, and Meira chanced the question she'd so far delayed asking directly. "What is this exit you keep talking about?"
Mouse's good humor faded after a moment. "I, uh . . . I don't know that I can talk about that."
"Don't be ridiculous. I've seen more than I ever wanted to tonight -- what's one more thing?"
Mouse frowned and shook his head. "No, I can't. If anyone's going to tell you, Morpheus will. I mean, he usually does it, you know?" She didn't. "But this is so messed up right now. You shouldn't even be here."
They crested the stairs, and Mouse led them off to the right without hesitating, as if he'd lived here his whole life. She chuckled, but her voice had no humor in it. "I'd've thought you'd be glad I was here."
"Oh, I am! But it's like, it shouldn't have happened like that. You should've become an Agent, and then I should be dead, or worse, captured." Meira had a thrill of terror in her belly she couldn't put a name to, and tried to ask what Mouse meant, but he stopped them in front of a door. "All right. 301." He took his left arm from Meira's shoulders and put a little more weight on his wounded leg.
Meira's left hand tightened on her pistol; unconsciously, she shifted her right foot behind her left. Her neck felt uncommonly tense. Even as she tilted her head to the left and felt her vertebrae crackle, she thought to herself, I must be tired. I never do that. Mama said I'd get arthritis if I did that. Mouse reached for the doorknob. Meira focused on the door and imagined who might be behind it. Three mottled human-shaped figures shimmered into being, as though she could see through the door and wall; three ghostly figures, bright, hot white in their faces, and varying shades of red and purple throughout their bodies. Cutting through the shock of the apparent hallucination was the memory of seeing a television special on night vision and infrared cameras. Before she could process what was happening, Mouse threw the open the door.
"Tastee Wheat Pizza!" he announced, laughing good-naturedly.
As the door opened, two of the mottled figures were replaced by more recognizable humans; the third was behind the wall off to her right, and with a remote part of her mind, Meira guessed she wouldn't see him until she was in the room. The swinging door first revealed the figure in the middle, a beefy, imposing bald man smiling benevolently and wearing a reflective pince-nez and a long, black leather overcoat. His forearms were folded serenely behind his back, parallel to the ground. Mouse strode into the room as if his leg was completely whole, his arms outstretched. The door swung open fully to reveal the leftmost figure, a wiry, hard-faced woman with pale, almost sickly skin and a shock of cropped, bleached hair. She was half facing the door, wearing a knee-length white leather coat and a very unpleasant look.
"Down!" the woman cried as she raised the nickel-plated pistol in her right hand. Time wound down to a crawl for Meira; even the pitch of the woman's cry slid down an eerie glissando to a long, low, unearthly howl. The immediate danger of a stranger pointing a pistol at her pierced her fog of bewilderment like a rapier. Seemingly of its own accord, her own pistol thrust out from her body, and she watched the blue sprite skip its way up the length of the blond woman's body. She had no time to wonder as other, stranger things happened to her vision: a grid of green lines snapped over the woman's body, conforming to her every curve and edge; the green lines bled into red over certain parts of her body -- the center of her chest and right flank, her face, her neck, her groin; tiny, unobtrusive numbers centered near those vital areas, all of them indicating numbers near one point five meters.
A distant part of her mind wondered if this was what a drug addict felt when taking psychedelics. She felt as though she could move her body just as fast as she ever could, but everything else was happening at a languid, leisurely pace. She knew she could shoot at any time and be safe from this woman, but would she get the answers she needed? No. I can't kill her. I don't even know if I'm capable of it. Glancing quickly at the others, she saw that the large man in the center had turned his head towards his blond companion, and his mouth was also open in a cry; by the shape his lips made, she guessed he was saying, "No." Mouse was to her right and looked alarmed -- it would be dangerous for him if the blonde actually fired and missed. Obscured somewhat in the dimness of the room was a Latino man with his hair slicked back into a ponytail, and a nasty little snubnosed machine pistol pointed in her general direction. He had the gun turned about ninety degrees to the left, as though he were a street hoodlum. An identical green grid with red indicators of vital areas settled over his frame as well; the numbers indicated he was four point three meters away. She knew then that a shooting match in this small room would be an exercise in slaughter.
A bloom of fire erupted from the barrel of the blond woman's pistol, obscuring her screaming rictus for what seemed like an entire second to Meira. Though she'd never fired a gun before that night, she knew that the flashes should be all but imperceptible, under normal circumstances. These were anything but normal. The flash died away, and she could see the pistol's slide was locked back, could detect the rippling of tendons in the woman's wrist, tense from recoil. Panic coursed through her for a moment, but then she spied something moving towards her at a startlingly normal speed. A blunt coppery slug was moving at a slow walking pace towards her, leaving circular disturbances in the air in its wake. A grid of bright red lines snapped over it. The resolution on the lines was great enough to even see the curve of the hollowed out tip. She focused on the bullet a moment, and numbers sprang into being next to it, indicating its velocity and distance (both with scrolling, steadily decreasing numbers) as well as its caliber. She wondered briefly where it would go if she got out of its way, and thin, purple vector lines sprouted from the back and front of the slug, pointing in one direction back towards the pistol, and the other direction right towards her left armpit. She knew her anatomy well enough, and hypothesized that a hollowpoint .45 piercing her there would leave quite a mess inside, and outside as well.
By this time, the bullet was within reach of her outstretched hand, if she wished to grab it. While she could only wonder why all this was happening to her and blessed the fact that she wasn't already dead, she didn't want to push her luck. It looked as though it were simply floating along on wires. Just as the bullet passed under her elbow, another flare burst from the blond woman's pistol. The large bald man was still crying out, and had begun unfolding from his meditative posture. The Latino hadn't moved at all, and hadn't fired, thankfully enough, though she could see a thin purple line sketching the distance from the barrel of his machine pistol to the center of her chest. Mouse seemed to have backed up somewhat, arms coming up in a defensive posture, shock on his face.
Just before the bullet touched the leather of her jacket, she leaned backwards a little, throwing her right hand behind her to counterbalance the out-thrust left. The slug passed her in its languid way, twisting leisurely on its own long axis, bare inches in front of her sternum. The purple vector line pointed somewhere beyond the open door now -- it would take quite some time to get there. Some of the rings of displaced air broke over her body as the ocean does on the rocks; she could feel as well as hear the sonic disruption the bullet left in its wake. The other bullet would be here soon enough, and a third, likely, as well.
She bent back, like a reed in the wind, her arms stretched out like wings. Her own movements seemed so fluid and graceful, as if she had all night to act, as if she could watch every bullet from the blond woman's magazine pass by her and merely step and weave out of each one's way. But twin worries niggled at separate corners of her mind. One clamored for Meira to contemplate whether this was the same phenomenon the Suits experienced when they danced around bullets. The other, more immediate concern, called attention to the encroaching sense of fatigue. Whatever was happening to her, she knew she must be exerting her body a great deal to do it. There was also the matter of bullets flying everywhere. The blonde's barrel flashed a third time. I've gotta end this. Now.
After the first bullet was well past her, Meira took three quick steps over to the snarling blond woman. The large bald man was reaching for his companion now; the Latino had his machine pistol still trained on the spot where she was standing a moment before; Meira couldn't see Mouse at all. The blonde's forearm was bent slightly with recoil, and the pistol's slide was racked forward -- another round in the chamber. Batting aside a slowly falling shell casing, Meira stepped behind the blonde and wrested the pistol away with her empty right hand. It took a moment -- she might have been moving impossibly fast, but the woman's grip was strong. That didn't matter, though, not a bit. Something thrummed through Meira's mind: facts and figures of the blonde's pistol. There were five rounds remaining in the new pistol, and seven still in the one she took from Yorick, but with any luck at all, she wouldn't have to pull either trigger.
In one smooth motion, Meira pointed the nickel-plated pistol back at the blonde's face with her right hand, and rested her left arm on the blonde's shoulder, pointing her original pistol at the Latino. The blue dot rested comfortably in his center of mass. Taking care that the blond woman's body was interposed between her own and the Latino, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She willed herself to relax. Nothing was going to kill her. At least, not right then.
The low surf roar of noise in the room wound back up abruptly, and Meira could hear the sharp echo of gunshots as well as the tail end of three astonished cries: the blonde's angry shout, the bald man's stern order to desist, and Mouse's dismayed whimper. In the measurable fraction of a second that followed, silence reigned.
Meira knew timing was critical if she was going to prevent a bloodbath. Before the four criminals could survey the suddenly altered tableau and regain their bearings, she shouted, "Drop it, mijo, or Snow White gets one in her ear. Savvy?" She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt, and hoped her exhaustion didn't show.
The Latino's eyes and pistol tracked over to Meira like a turret. The blond woman tensed visibly and breathed in sharply. A purple vector line from his weapon wavered between her own face and the blonde's. He'd as likely kill her as me -- I expect that bullet would keep going, too, and poke out my eye for me.
Before she could shout another warning, the bald man spoke a single, soft word that didn't make much sense to Meira, but sounded like it could have been a name. The Latino squatted slowly and set his machine pistol on the floor, a minute scowl on his face. Meira relaxed; the blonde didn't.
"What the fuck are you doing?" she asked tightly. "She'll kill us all."
"No, she won't!" cried Mouse from the doorway, his voice cracking. "She saved my life. She brought me --"
"If she was going to kill us, we would already be dead." The voice was sonorous and serene, but rumbled with authority. The bald man resumed his monk's pose, his arms folded across the small of his back. A detached smile played over his lips. "You undoubtedly have questions. I, too, have some questions. Perhaps we can sit?"
He gestured broadly to two dusty, overstuffed burgundy leather chairs with ornate oak scrollwork Meira hadn't seen before. Between them was a small matching end table with a single glass of water and a black bakelite telephone that would have been old forty years before. It seemed utterly out of place.
"I guess you're Morpheus. I have to say, I don't feel too comfortable having a little chat when your thugs are shooting up the place and Suits can show up any minute."
"I don't think you have to worry about Switch," he replied generously, nodding to Meira's captive. "And Apoc was good enough to set down his weapon."
So that's what he said before. Don't any of these people have regular names? No one named Frank, or Susie? She took two steps back, training one pistol on Switch, the other on Apoc, and kept her attention on Morpheus. Nobody moved.
"But first, business. Thank you for bringing Mouse back to us. He's a valuable member of our crew. He's been wounded, and would probably like to get back." Morpheus reached into his coat pocket, and Meira immediately shifted both pistols to bear on the man. He paused, and slowly drew a cellular phone of the same model she took from Yorick. Meira relaxed, but only a little, and slowly pointed the pistols back to her original targets.
The phone's receiver slid open with a click, and Morpheus touched a button. A moment later, "Mouse is ready. Please extract Apoc and Switch afterwards." He cut off a cry of protest from the other two criminals by holding up a single finger and speaking over them. "I'll need to have a chat with the young lady. . . . No, I realize we usually have more than one person in, but we'll make an exception. Yes, I'm sure." He slid the receiver shut, and half a second later, the old-fashioned telephone jangled to life. A faint green luminescence seemed to sheath itself around the telephone and its cable.
Morpheus exchanged a look with Mouse, and the lad walked gingerly towards the little table and picked up the receiver. He mouthed a quick "Thank you" to Meira, and pressed the receiver to his ear. A slack look overcame the boy's face, and his eyes rolled up to show the whites; the ghostly green light covering the telephone swept over Mouse as well. Then, something astonishing happened: Mouse seemed to discorporate, his skin, hair, eyes, clothes, submachine gun, everything dissolved into strings of glowing green letters and numbers. The columns of numbers, letters, and other characters Meira hadn't seen before, but somehow recognized, scrolled downward like a neon waterfall. After a moment, the characters faded away, and Mouse was just gone. The receiver clattered to the floor.
Meira was trying to form words, but her lips were failing her. Switch spoke, her voice deadly soft. "Are you sure she needed to see that?"
Morpheus replaced the receiver. The action seemed so surreally normal that Meira almost laughed. "I think she has seen far more than she expected. And she will see things more extraordinary than that in the coming days."
The antique telephone rang again. The quiet Latino left his weapon on the floor and answered, not sparing a look at Meira at all. He vanished the same way Mouse had, and as Morpheus replaced the receiver, Switch turned to face Meira.
"I don't trust you. I don't know what you are, but I don't like it. You better watch yourself." Meira was speechless. On one hand, she admired Switch's guts, to stare down two barrels and not flinch. On the other, she knew that if she didn't watch herself, she might not ever see the bullet that killed her. Switch must have seen the uneasy look on Meira's face, for she smirked as the telephone rang a third time. Switch answered, and dissolved.
Morpheus smiled benignly at Meira and motioned her over to the chairs.