Title: This One Refused

Author: Perfect Ruin

Rating: Will not go higher than PG-13

Disclaimer: The Matrix and all their characters belong to the Wachowski Brothers and Warner Brothers. I own Kiree and any other original characters that you don't recognize.

Summary: Steps have to be taken to destroy the exiled Agent Smith.

Author Notes: Not this time.

Word Count: 998

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"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Kiree cursed herself as she walked hurriedly toward her apartment. It was never a good idea to be out this late on your own.

She'd just lost track of time, but the overtime would pay for a couple of things she'd been wanting. She just hoped she would make it home before she ended up as a nameless dead body in one of the alleys around there.

Hearing something, she stopped and looked around. The street appeared to be empty. That was what scared her; she knew she had heard something.

Then she heard a bottle crash, looking up the street she saw a group of people coming out of a bar. Kiree detested drunks with a passion, her father had been an alcoholic and there was just something about drunken people that unnerved her. They started down the street so she ducked into the alley to wait for them to pass.

She walked straight into a man in a suit. She took a step back and wondered what the hell he was doing there. "Excuse me," she said and turned back out to the street. It just wasn't her night.

"Stop," he said and she took off running. She ran down the street and she could hear him behind her, pushing her way through the drunks she ducked into another alley. Hiding behind a trash can she saw him pass on by. Trying to breathe as softly as possible she waited until she thought it was safe. Standing and shaking the trash off her she walked out of the alley and continued home.

As soon as she was in she double locked the door and jammed the chair under the handle. Turning on the lights of the small apartment she grabbed the takeaway from the fridge and collapsed on her bed.

There had been something freaky about that guy, and she didn't even know what he wanted. Whatever it was wasn't above board, since he had followed her. Chased her.

But the suit made him look like some official, maybe she'd been caught. Her hacking days might be over.

No, those kind of suits came knocking on your door, not cornered you in a dark alley.

* * *

Stupid human, Smith thought to himself as he watched the human girl go into a cheap apartment building. She had actually thought she had escaped him.

No one, with the exception of Anderson ever eluded him permanently. And it was rare to elude him at all.

But she had made the night interesting.

Maybe the same could happen tomorrow.

He decided that he wouldn't let her get away the next night. But for now, he turned toward the old abandoned hotel that he had begun to think of as a sort of base.

He kicked a gray cat out of his way as he climbed the dusty stairs to the top floor.

He stood silently in the low light for a moment contemplating what he had become before lying on the hard mattress that one of the previous occupants had dragged there, probably from some dump. He could have made the money for an expensive hotel with a few idle thoughts, or manipulated the bed into something far more comfortable, but somehow this old mattress – which he was convinced had several colonies of spiders living in it – kept him grounded.

* * *

Kiree actually woke up before her alarm the next morning, and stumbled around getting ready for work. She was tired, she'd had a fitful sleep, the man from the night before had unnerved her. She had told herself to get over it, but she knew on some level that she hadn't seen the last of him.

When she got to work she drank some coffee as she was logged onto the system. The morning had gone all right so far.

Until she saw an unfriendly face looking over the cubicle wall. Flint.

"What do you want?" she asked as she stared into her screen and opened the necessary programs.

"You're a hacker aren't you?"

"Yes," she hissed as her blue eyes turned to stone, she hated Flint; he was just the office creep.

"Heard of Morpheus?"

"Yeah, of course," she said now a little more interested in what he had to say.

He came into her cubicle, sat on the desk beside her and talked in a lower voice. "You know how he contacts people?"

"Hackers, programmers and the like…" she said with a nod.

"I got a message last night."

"You're bullshitting me."

"I am deadly serious, he wants to meet me."

"Why would he want to meet you?"

"Jealous?"

"Unlikely, people that go anywhere near him are never heard from again."

"He thinks I have talent."

Kiree snorted, "The man is obviously a delusional."

Flint shrugged, "maybe or maybe not. I'm going to find out tonight."

"Do me a favor Lassie," she said as he walked away. "Fall down the well and don't come back."

"You are jealous," he said with a grin that was anything but friendly.

She hadn't known he was that much of a fool. Any decent hackers knew about Morpheus, he was called a terrorist by the government and press, but the net community knew him as a great mind and leader.

Kiree was too smart to get herself involved in anything that could get her killed.

She managed to get away from work a little earlier than usual that day, and as she was almost home she heard an animal. She stopped and listened, it sounded like an injured cat.

She walked into the alley and looked for the cat; seeing it, she knelt down to inspect its condition. As she reached out to the cat a pair of expensive black shoes walked up to her. She looked up to their owner. It was the same guy.

She stood and went to say something, but she never got the chance.

Smith drove his hand into her chest.

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No notes this time *sigh*