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.
5. Back To The Real World.
Persis worried that the fear in her face showed.
"That's not possible, I-"
"Not possible? Miss. Carlisle, how do you then account for my presence here?" Smith wryly asked, his eyebrows raised.
Taken by his confidence in his diagnosis, Persis did not realise that Smith had taken her hand in his own cool, smooth palm.
"Look at your palm, Miss. Carlisle".
"I don't see anything. Just the Matrix code". Being in such close quarters with an agent and not fighting him made the knot in her throat rise higher. Persis shook her head.
"I don't see anything".
Smith sighed like a parent trying to teach a difficult child the right way to do something.
Reaching up with his other hand, he removed her sunglasses from her face, his fingertips brushing the smooth line of her cheekbone as he did so. Persis shuddered inwardly at the gentle, restrained movement. She briefly closed her eyes.
Smith slipped the sunglasses into his breast pocket.
Persis opened her eyes.
"Look harder".
Persis gazed at her hand. She saw the green strands of the Matrix code, the lines of numbers and characters that made up her vessels, her skin, her bone, her-
And then she saw them. The thousands of green characters tipped with white, the codes she recognised from the screens on the Antigone as those of a sentient programme flowing side by side with her own characters. She was half agent. She was like Smith. She was not a complete human. No. NO. NO. NO THIS WASN'T RIGHT! she inwardly screamed.
"This isn't true". Though she spoke calmly, he saw the look in her eyes that he recognised as turmoil. Still so painfully human.
"Neither was your perception of reality, Miss. Carlisle, until you were unplugged".
It was all too true. Persis' expression took on an air of resigned recognition. She sighed.
"How-"
"That, Miss. Carlisle, is something that I would also be interested to know".
Persis looked up at Smith's face. She couldn't read his true expression as his eyes were shielded by his dark glasses. At first hesitantly, then with a coolness and purposeful manner that quite defeated him, she reached for his face with her free hand and closed her fingers around one of the arms of his shades.
Smith involuntarily inhaled. The intake of air reverberated in the space between them.
Noticing his reaction, Persis was emboldened, and slowly drew the glasses from his face, letting them fall on the roof beneath their feet with a slight clatter.
Persis looked at Smith.
Persis looked into him.
She looked into those hard, blue eyes. She looked for something of herself, and found a shadow of it, beyond the mercenary stare and his neutral gaze. She sighed, the sound drawn from her in a shuddering breath.
Smith was unnerved by the intense searching look in those dark eyes, so dark he
could hardly see the pupils. Something had clicked in him-a connection had fired between them that was almost...chemical.
The girl and the agent stood frozen. So close. So dangerously close.
Sol paced the deck of the Apollo impatiently.
"How much longer?"
"Just over a minute or so, Sir-we've almost got a lock on her".
Smith fought the impulse to press Persis' other hand in his, fusing her to him, palm to palm. He could easily join her to him, forming another Agent Smith and taking her over, making her another clone of himself. But that was the trouble-she was already part him. She was part sentient programme. She shared his exact construct, his outline, his figuration, his-anomalies. He felt her hand grow warmer in his own. He envisioned cloning her into himself, plunging his hand deep into her torso and letting the black and green liquid like formation pour over her. Then his features would envelop hers. But something was stopping him from reaching into her coat and through the material of her kimono. Smith didn't like it, didn't like this itching in the back of his head. So he lashed out.
Persis bent backwards in a fraction of a second. Smith's fist swung in a perfect arc over her, centimetres from her face. She threw her arms back and, springing on her palms, kicked him in the jaw as she flipped backwards. Smith drew out his gun and fired twice. Persis dodged the bullets easily, feeling a curious feeling as she did so, as if she saw the bullets travelling from a dozen different angles. Smith looked on as she bent in all angles simultaneously, just as he was capable of doing. She had inherited the most striking aspect of all agents; the ability to dodge rapidly fired bullets. Smith chuckled in spite of himself, throwing away his gun as he did so.
"Congratulations, Miss. Carlisle; you've managed to impress me again".
"I don't want to impress you, Smith".
"Hm".
Sol tapped his foot in anticipation. The crew of the Apollo were almost as eager as he was-it was dangerous work, broadcasting so near to the Antigone's wreck, so near to where sentinels had been raging just hours before.
"Almost there, Sir".
"Good work".
Persis flew off the roof, going through a blistering array of taught, precision-perfect
positions before landing on the sidewalk on the other side of the building, the slabs of concrete cracked into shards around her. The quiet suburb was peaceful and warm. She could hear children laughing from a house in another street.
Smith shot down to meet her.
"Establishing location in 3, 2..1.."
The Apollo herself seemed to hold her breath and wait.
Punch, block, punch. The endless cycle of moves that Persis and Smith went through in their carefully orchestrated, almost balletic fight dazzled the eye. Their fists blurred in cycles of concentric knuckles, white and rock hard. They fought, gradually making their way down the quiet street, undisturbed by the inhabitants of the endless houses.
"Preparing an exit right there, sir. The house on the corner with the green door".
Persis leapt into the air, and spun on her stomach like a human discus at Smith's head. He blocked her onslaught with his iron like arms and, grabbing her ankles, threw her into the front garden of the house on the corner of the street. Persis
scrambled up and stood on the tame, freshly cut lawn. The sprinklers switched on, framing her in sprays of clear water droplets.
"We've got her, Captain. We're opening the exit now".
From within the house the dim ringing of a phone was heard. Persis crashed through the window head first, rolled across the front room carpet and rose up in front of the ringing phone on the side table, picking the receiver up. Smith stood in the shards of broken glass. Persis looked at him. He walked slowly over and stopped, inches from
her. Persis felt her hand move up from her side and reach for him again. Her hand paused in front of his chest. She felt a rush of power and information flood to her fingertips. Smith leaned in closer. Persis' fingertips grazed the fibre of his shirt. She pressed the receiver to her ear because she knew she had to-not because she wanted to.
"Bring her out, Titus".
"Yes sir".
Titus reached his muscular arm under Persis' head and, pressing the clamp, pulled the switch out, the long metal needle emerging from the top of her spine smoothly, in one fluid movement, rubbing against the metal around the orifice as it did so. Persis
opened her eyes, gasping, like one awaking from a dream in which she had been drowning, the sounds of her harsh, quick breathing tearing the quiet of the Apollo.
A blinding light at first.The deck of a ship. A ship. She was back.
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