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.
13. Persis Takes Back The Gift.
Smith and Persis fell from the roof locked together. Spinning wildly as they plummeted to the busy streets below Persis lost her grip on Smith and she fell alone, above Smith as they plunged ever downwards.
"Shoot me".
Persis shook her head as she felt her speed increasing.
"Shoot me, and I'll catch you.", Smith's face was calm though the wind buffeted it.
He drew out his gun and tossed it upwards effortlessly. It hit her shoulder and she grabbed onto it. Shaking off her shades, falling head over heels, Persis steadied herself, plummeting head first and fired twice.
Green lightning crackled over Smith. Persis collided with the dead weight of the body as the street rushed up to greet her. She pushed it aside desperately.
"Shit".
She could see the individual people walking on the street below. She couldn't move now, she wouldn't land safely. Persis closed her eyes for the inevitable.
Smith stopped mid walk on the street level and looked upwards. He held his arms out expectantly. Persis promptly fell into them, forcing him to kneel on the pavement with the force of the drop. The concrete slab at his feet cracked in two.
Smith rose slowly.
Titus and Neso were undecided.
"You know what she said about endangering anyone on the ship?"
"Yeah, but she's in the Matrix now".
"And so's the Captain".
"Should we-"
"Give it five minutes and then we'll have to".
Persis winced in pain and slung an arm round Smith's neck, flicking off his glasses. "Smith-the emotion..its made you vulnerable-you weren't concentrating on-", her voice trailed off.
Smith suddenly felt a warm, flowing liquid seep through his jacket sleeve.
Persis was bleeding.
Smith re-ran the sequence of events on the roof. Persis had raced the bullet to him, and she'd got there first. But she'd been in front of him for a fraction of a second as she pushed him off the roof.
Persis had taken the bullet meant for him.
Smith stared at his hand which he'd pulled out from under Persis' back. It was soaked in her blood.
Smith marvelled again at the pigment's rich, dark colour.
Then he carried her to a empty side street with a curious empty feeling growing in
him with every step of the way.
Smith laid her down on the side of the road. Persis gasped for breath, a dark flower of blood blossoming across her back and seeping round her chest.
"Your breathing is becoming laboured".
Persis unsuccessfully mustered a withering look at him, which turned into another grimace.
"Thank you. Your powers of observation have obviously not dimmed".
Smith kneeled beside her and propped her up with his arm, holding her to his chest. Persis grasped at his tie.
"-Smith,...I'm sorry, I didn't know-"
"Sorry for what?"
"I shouldn't have done...I've made you vulnerable by giving you-"
Smith grasped her wrist firmly in his. Her pulse, he noticed, was growing weaker, harder to detect.
"You've given me a gift, Persis. It's changed me, changed the fundamental way I operate".
Persis cried out softly as the bullet inched its way to her heart.
"It's a shame-I have to take it back."
Before he could stop her, Persis immersed her fingertips into his shirt and gradually drained him of the want that had become need. She drained his ability to reciprocate what she had given him, emotion flowing back into her in trickles.
"Do me a favour Smith". Her eyes were so blue now, he noticed.
"What?"
Persis grimly held back tears, "Don't lose your purpose-I'd wandered aimlessly without knowing why I was here and you-you-"
He clasped her hand in his mechanically. He somehow understood the sentiment.
Persis smiled weakly through the pain and stretched her neck up to him. The pool of blood around her grew in diameter. Smith pressed his face to hers in an attempt at comfort he didn't know how to give, strands of her newly brown hair brushing his eyelids, feeling oddly detached from the slender body in his embrace.
Persis exhaled and went frighteningly limp.
The monitor above Persis' body bleeped electronically and her heart rate dropped into a flat line. Titus looked down sadly at her peaceful form. Neso looked over from the screens and cursed under his breath.
Smith looked down at her. Her eyes were glazed over, freezing the look of anguish and love she had gazed at him with out of her now ice cold blue eyes.
She had released him. She had returned him to his previous self.
A Smith. Impenetrable. Machine. Void of emotion.
Empty.
"I tolerated you because of your human traits, as opposed to in spite of them".
It seemed pointless to say it after she'd – died. But the agent said it anyway, without really knowing why. Maybe it was some residue of weakness left in him. Maybe not. Search running. Result: inconclusive.
Smith withdrew his arms from under her and Persis slipped onto the ground. If he had seen her from above, he would have seen the tails of her coat spread out under her like wings, her blood staining her tunic a lustrous red.
Persis. Still fatally human.
Enigmatic. Powerful. Beautiful.
Dead.