alocin-thanks for your suggestion regarding rating – I must have taken ff.net's policy of "if you're not sure, go for the highest rating" too seriously ^^. Here's to more reviews now that I've made the necessary changes!
Selina-so, Persis/Agent Carlisle reminds you of the TX in T3, huh? Interesting…thanks for the praising one word reviews!
Morithil.
NOTICE: Unfortunately, I do not own any of the original characters from the Matrix trilogy. HOWEVER: All other characters in this fanfic do belong to me, as they're all products of my overactive imagination.
5. Fight Test.
Smith had not been prepared for the approaching literal shock to his system on entering the room. He had composed himself admirably in the space of 2.36054 seconds exactly, to be precise, but the after effects were raging through his proverbial bloodstream.
He had walked into that room and-
Persis had risen from the chair and stood neutrally in front of him.
The nonsensical and insignificant thought reverberating round his brain was persistent in its certainty,
She never sat in that chair. Never. Once, he'd offered her the chance to sit in one like it, when he had led her to the government building. She'd refused, dripping water onto the bland carpet.
Persis. Persis who died. Persis who raced a bullet to save him and took it instead of him, who plummeted from the top of a skyscraper and bled to death in a quiet side street, having rid him of the emotion talent she'd nurtured in him. Persis, formerly captain of the ship Antigone, rebel fighter, human, notorious in select rebel circles, suffered unusual after effects as a result of her connection to the Matrix being partly severed. Hybrid, part human, part machine/sentient programme. Incredibly powerful. Recognised as being remarkably beautiful for one of her kind. Often distant, aloof. Complex.
Dead.
That train of mechanical thought ran through Smith's consciousness, and it was only due to the aforementioned removal of the emotional reciprocity that he was able to acknowledge all that, and more, with something as minute as a partially raised eyebrow.
He stood in silence while the three, yes he supposed she was an agent now, conferred in similar silence, the only outward signs of communication demonstrated by an occasional nod of a head, a change in stance.
Johnson, or one of the other upgrades-they were so alike, Smith joked weakly to himself, like artificially created triplets born from the same A.I. womb-addressed him.
"This is the agent in question. Agent Carlisle".
Smith came dangerously close to doing what humans had called, "a double take" at the mention of her name. That was a coincidence that defied belief. He offered an emotionless hand, though internally, his intelligent mind was in turmoil.
Agent Carlisle took the preferred hand firmly and loosely shook it. Just once. Then, that elegant organ returned to its owner's side almost robotically, a movement that instilled in Smith a quick but briefly painful animosity, as if the movement was incorrect, out of place. Which was false in itself, as the agent that stood before him was indeed, an agent.
Smith only realised that the upgrades had left the room when the subtle click of the latch in the door stirred him from his thoughts.
Strange she seemed to him now. Strange and beautiful.
That same face, the lines of her body. Her hair was black once, he remembered, not the shade of brown it is now. Her eyes are veiled by dark glasses. The eyes regarding him are his. She is so much like him, so much more than before she ceased to exist. It's not right to respond in such a human way, but Smith feels angry at the change in her. He's not sure why-change, after all, is inevitable. But not in one who had died.
There's a moment when he's back in that hallway, and Neo stands up again after being killed, and proceeds to destroy him. The memory, combined with the rebellious fury that Persis' changed self has stimulated, overflows.
Smith punched brutally at Carlisle's face. She swayed to avoid it with a finely honed ease. They fight with the distanced attitude only agents can keep.
The same set of prescribed moves, the punches, the blocks, the offensive and defensive manoeuvres. Smith knows them well, because they are his. Carlisle wields the offensive moves with unbelievable skill, all the more amazing because as only he knows-
She wasn't an agent to begin with. She was human.
Smith punched again, repeatedly, his fists swerving perilously close to her face. Carlisle remains as impassive, Smith thought with a hint of bitterness as he remembered, as he had been when they had first fought. He felt the knot of what he grudgingly admitted was frustration and anger rising in his throat and struck out again. Carlisle's response confirmed his suspicions that she was, in fact, though seemingly ignorant of it, Persis.
Carlisle flipped backwards with a lithe grace that seemed elegant, cat like, flexible, and about as far away from the robotic moves of an agent as was possible. She sprang up from the carpet, vaulting on her hands, and leapt onto the metal chair she had previously been sitting on. Perching, one leg raised on the back of the chair, the other balanced on the arm of the piece of furniture, she raised both fists, one in front of her emotionless face, the other at a right angle to its partner, held perfectly in a horizontal bar of unfeeling flesh.
Smith restrained the smile of recognition that threatened to curve across his normally stern face. Carlisle tilted her head questioningly at his pause.
"What is your assessment regarding my combat technique?" she interrogates, her voice like a flattened version of the subtly deadpan, naturally authoritative tone he remembers. Smith relaxes, if only momentarily, and throws back his answer.
"Your technique is most interesting, though it would seem appropriate to test its appliance in different situations to fully assess the viability of its use, given that it differs from the standard procedure".
He could almost swear that she frowns at this remark, frowns at him questioningly from behind those dark glasses. Smith wonders if her eyes are still that unique shade of blue that they turned soon after-
Carlisle flew into motion, after nodding submissively at his comments. She spun rapidly, her leg suspended at a right angle out from her body, her foot pointed like a dancer's. Smith ducked to avoid its spinning heel. He turned round swiftly and grabbed her leg fiercely at the juncture of hip and thigh-he paused for milliseconds and realises that this was how he had responded to her attack when they'd first met. The too-brief-to-be-realised pause was all the other agent needed. Throwing herself backwards as if to do a handstand, Carlisle did just that, allowing her weight to be held by Smith's iron grip. Her hands locate the floor just in front of his rubber soled shoes, and shifting some of her body weight onto her splayed fingers, kicked out with her free leg. It flicked upwards like a blunt knife and caught Smith neatly under the jaw, sending his head back like the effect of whiplash in a car accident. Smith stumbled backwards at the unexpected improvisation. Carlisle pirouetted lightly on one foot before cartwheeling back towards the corner of the room. Smith watched, impressed, as she jumped over the desk in the corner before defying gravity, sprinting up the walls and round the corner of the room, finishing via a lightning somersault in mid air and landing, defiant, on top of the desk, her right leg bent as if she was preparing to spring out at him, her hands in an unmistakeable piece of martial arts imagery, exotically held out, on behind her head, the palm flat and aimed at the window, the other held in front, palm up, unwittingly beckoning him.
She stands there as if she's waiting for the tail ends of her trenchcoat to swish behind her before settling against the backs of her long legs.
But there's no undulating ripple of leathery fabric, no graceful, seraph like cream coloured wings suggested by her long coat. There's no kimono to emphasise the Oriental tinge to her movements and features. Her gold tinted, visor - like sunglasses aren't positioned before her eyes to catch the last glints of sunlight or tempt him to place them in his pocket and feel their light weight against his body through the suit that they both wear now.
Smith inwardly grimaced at the stark contrast between the Persis he once knew and the agent standing, tense and ready, looking down on him through the dark lenses of her glasses.
The agent flicked a curious eyebrow at his thoughtful demeanour.
Smith looked up, confronting the vision in front of him that mocked him with every attribute that screamed Persis and every feature that knelled the word 'agent'. He smiled grimly, trying to separate himself from the error of judgement that was clamouring to be heard inside him. The silent voice crying out in horror against what the machines had done to her, what the Matrix and other programmes had bent to their will and what just being in the room with the one entity he had ever desired to remain in the company of was doing to his emotionally distorted consciousness.
He sighed as if bored with her tactics.
"Agent Carlisle, you give me no choice but to test you above and beyond the extent of your abilities".
He hissed the last word menacingly, cold fury taking over. The door to the room they stand in bursts open and one after another, the many clones of himself that he's made flood into the room in a tidal wave of ruthlessly cold wrath. They pool into the compact space and Smith joins them as they surround Carlisle, suspended, her knees at eye level to the baleful agents surrounding the desk and seething in unison as one automated unit.
When she finally soared into the air above the many heads, he's ready for it and tackles her as she hovers in the space above the sea of Smith copies. They crash, undignified, to the floor, Smith's arms wrapped tightly round her, pinning her hands and arms to her rigid sides as the crowd of agents pile on top of them, creating a pyramid of dead weights and iron grips. She struggles so fiercely in his grasp that in the space of ten seconds, she's nearly thrown him, as well as the others, completely off her. They've created a small pocket in the cavernous mountain of bodies on top of them, and its in this tiny space that they fight a contained battle, fists flying in close range, Carlisle's legs kicking out at in a variety of moves whenever he shifts above her and unwittingly gives her a window of opportunity to attack again and again.
He's on top of her, crushing her under his weight as he looks through the darkly opaque glasses. Smith found himself on a tangent to his normal train of thought, found himself alone in a similarly dark and heated space with her, where he's been before and which now compels him to lower his mouth to hers and make her remember.
He's still in the midst of his self indulgent illusion, still stroking the warm cavern of her mouth with his tongue, and feeling her slide her tongue provocatively along his as they kiss, when he realises he's still on top of a rather detached Carlisle, and practically breathing down her neck.
When she finally succumbs to the-he admits-unfair advantage he's had, he concludes that she is completely unaware of who she once was. With that summation, Smith also confirmed that her powers in the Matrix had doubled and that his memories and data logs of his time with her when she was Persis, and still partly human, held more significance to him than he wanted to admit.
She walks out of the room after he's summarised the points on her fighting technique as well as notifying her that he'll be monitoring her work in the field. After she leaves, Smith breathes heavily with effort and the re-emergence of an emotion long forgotten. She leaves him alone with himself, alone with a crowd full of others.
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