NOTICE: I do not own the following characters: Agent Smith, Agents Jones and Brown, Neo, or the location Zion. HOWEVER: I do own the characters Persis, Calyx, Priest, Aei, Seefa, Sol, Titus, Neso, Echo, Syenes, Syllis and the ships Antigone and Apollo.
3. Human Behaviour.
Smith tore the phone booth's plastic door off and grabbed Persis by the back of her coat collar. Holding onto the receiver as if she realised the full enormity of pressing it to her face, she attached herself to the insides of the booth.
"Miss. Carlisle, you know this is pointless. Why try to delay the inevitable?".
"Nothing's inevitable", Persis whispered in a small voice.
On the Antigone, sentinels cut into the hull, opening up wounds of metal and slipping into the wounded ship like poison. Calyx remained, numb, at his post. He watched like one who does not fully comprehend what he is seeing. And to be fair, he didn't. He was watching Persis die.
Persis fought. Tooth and nail she battled Smith, but he was holding back. He was letting her weaken herself even more. He stood, expressionless, while she swayed slightly in her hopeless but defiant stance, her fists ready.
"If I were attempting to act like a human, Miss. Carlisle, I would do the gentlemanly thing and offer you the chance to rest and regain your strength before I crushed you. As it stands, I am a programme. Therefore I will not".
"It's too late for that Smith".
A flicker of consternation showed on the normally impassive agent's face.
"You're already acting like a human".
Calyx remained faithful. He remained in his operator's chair, facing the screens with the green codes of the Matrix running down them like tears. He did not remove his earpiece. He did not move from his position. Even if he wanted to, it was too late for him to do anything. He would not move again.
Persis watched Smith charge at her. She ran.
She ran back into the booth and pressed the receiver to her ear at the same moment he pressed her up against the wall of the booth. For a fleeting second, Persis revelled in his hands pressed on top of hers, crushing her into the wall, while his breath-his breath?-blew heat into her ear like the radiation from an open furnace.
A red laser beam passed across the deck on the Antigone, dangerously close to the cord in the back of Persis' head.
Silence.
The sentinels had been unusually sloppy in their disposal of the crew of the Antigone. Although all members onboard were dead, they had only managed to partly severe the cord connecting Persis to the Matrix. She remained, motionless in the chair, while her crew lay motionless around her.
Persis gasped as a new sensation gripped her. The Matrix floated before her, blurred and distorted. This wasn't how she normally re-entered the real world. She felt as if she were in two places at once. She saw the ceiling of the Antigone, but it was mauled, seared open. She found herself looking at the roof of the top deck. Why was everything so red?
The receiver in her hand trembled and fell to the floor of the booth.
Persis registered Smith's grip on her slowly loosening. No, she felt like saying. Don't let me go. Keep me anywhere, just let me stay in one place. This hurts-it feels like, I'm being-torn...
Instead of tearing the Antigone to shreds like they had so many other ill-fated ships, the sentinels turned their artificial intelligence to the walls around her, perhaps a
changed command, perhaps a collective thought. Maybe rumours of the imminent uprising of Zion reached them and they left to join the army surging on the surface. Probing, grasping tentacles of metal broke down the crumbling walls of the sewer chamber, and the Antigone was buried. Submerged under a mountain of rubble.
Their objective achieved, the sentinels moved on.
Darkness fell over Persis. Darkness engulfed the Antigone in her dreamless sleep.
* * * * * * *