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.
9. Responsible
Persis fled the footbridge as if the Matrix itself was closing in on her, snapping at her heels like some malevolent dog, monstrous in its invisibility.
She'd been dead, and it had, just as she had thought on the footbridge, seemed like she had been so for years.
She might as well have been.
When she reached the city centre, she stopped and considered. Like a horrendous nightmare relived in the light of day, she realised that just days before, she had been in the same room as the very programme whose twisted experiment was the cause of all the chaos that had happened up until now.
Persephone.
There was something about that face. That much she'd already known, even when, she inwardly cursed, as an agent, she'd exchanged less than words with the programme at the mansion that she and the Merovingian occupied. Bored intelligence in lavish surroundings.
Boredom. That was at the root of it, it seemed. Persis ran over the details that her extensive files covered (at least one good thing happened through becoming an agent-she had access to data that could assist Zion). Zion, God but it seemed like hypocrisy to even think about it now. She shook her head.
Persephone and Merovingian.
Hovering within the Matrix like stagnant clouds of disease, amusing themselves via any means that took their liking. Boredom that reduced Merovingian, a once and still powerful programme to getting his kicks from willing humans in ladies' washrooms. Boredom, perhaps combined with neglect, that instilled in Persephone a need to ruin every other form of intelligence's chance of having normality and that sly creature, what was her name? Happiness. Ruthlessly teasing those at a tactical disadvantage to her, and thwarting her, the lab freak, the hybrid's chance of possessing it in her meaningless little existence.
Persis struggled to remember that well known human phrase, and then succumbed to searching her database again.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold".
She adjusted the tie that never needed adjusting and set off, back in the direction of the mansion, every step a ringing reminder that the construct owned her, could see her, and would probably stop her. Deletion was a word, a prospect more empty and terrifying than human death. Now it wasn't just agents, or sentinels, or other rebels after her. The construct would try to stop her, everything in the Matrix would likely be changed to prevent her continuing. It really was her against the world.
********
Persephone lounged pointedly in the smooth leather armchair in her husband's library. The entity in question paced the Turkish rug sprawled on the polished floor, every now and again muttering exclamations in French at the curvaceous form of his wife.
"Gods, woman-what were you thinking, giving the Keymaker to that-that-imbecile? Have you any idea what this could do to me? They were in my house, Persephone, those insipid humans-"
Persephone sighed musically as Merovingian cursed again. Wiping your arse with silk, he'd called it then, and she inwardly snorted. It had been an almost immeasurable amount of time since her husband's addresses to her had not consisted of curses and empty threats. She remembered what it had been like when they'd first come here. Oh, but he'd been so different then. She had remained the same, a little less forgiving, a touch more antagonistic, maybe; still provocative in word, deed and appearance.
Merovingian stopped pacing, mid-step, as the door to the library opened.
"What is it now?" he demanded impetuously of the equally simple guards that replaced those that Persephone had neatly dispatched via a gun produced from her purse. That had been some time ago, and yet he still raged about her betrayal of him, betrayal made for the sake of one kiss. A kiss? What was the woman capable of doing for less trivial exchanges?
The door swung wide and the stolid body of the first guard slumped onto the floor, soon followed by another. Persephone looked up in bemused interest.
Persis stood, framed by the rectangular doorframe, a gun in her hand. Her face immobile, impassive, unreadable. Her meticulous appearance resumed. Her lips held in a thin line. Control in dark glasses.
Merovingian blanched at the presence of an agent in his home who stood dangerously close to invading his personal space.
He glanced at Persephone.
"This is obviously your concern; the result of yet another ridiculous betrayal of my trust-I hope your experiment backfires on you, my love!"
With that he leapt to the side door and retreated behind it, seeking safety in other rooms, other places that the mansion's doors led to. Persis neglected to watch him leave with pointed indifference. She turned her attention to Persephone.
She had never liked that face. Beautiful, yes, very; but there had always been an aura of untrustworthiness about it, for all its aesthetic charms.
"Well, it seems that the agent has returned. What can I do for you, Agent - Agent Carlisle, is it?"
Mocking in its subtlety. Persis did not appreciate the joke. She replaced her gun in its holster, acknowledging its familiar weight and shape under her jacket.
"Have you ever had a dream that you woke up from, but then discovered was real?"
Persephone smiled smoothly, her perfect mouth tilting upwards at the corners.
"I didn't know that agents were capable of dreaming".
She uncrossed and then recrossed her legs, smiling winningly. Persis internally gagged at the notion that Persephone was behaving in a flirtatious manner towards her. She stepped forward, and watched her own aura fill up the spacious room with steely authority.
"You know why I'm here, Persephone".
"Ahhh", the sound escaping her lips like a whisper of promise, "you have woken up".
"I have woken up-", Persis stepping closer with every tightly vehement statement, "after losing my entire crew and my ship and discovering that I'd been tampered with like an exploratory test, an experiment. I have woken up-", she stood in front of the seated figure, "to find myself imprisoned inside the strands of a programme that, as a human, I, by natural law, hate and revile with a fear born out of comprehension, woken up to find that I have killed and tortured my own kind, people I fought alongside. I have woken up-", the volume building in her throat, words being spat towards Persephone;
"-to find that the only entity in this simulated world that is as human, and perhaps more so than I am is another agent".
"Surely finding one like to yourself is more of a comfort, no?" the amused programme taunted. Persis removed her dark glasses and held them in a steady palm.
"And do you know what the most sickening, twisted and blackly ironic thing about my waking up is?"
Persephone smiled like a smug cat with a mouthful of bloodstained feathers.
"It was all because of you, a programme I never met when I was fully human, and only just encountered as an agent. You, it's all because of your pathetic self-pity born out of what? Of boredom in a simulated palace? Of neglect by a contemptuous snake of a husband? Or because you simply had nothing better to continue existing or avoiding deletion for but to live up to the reputation of the electronically created poison you are?"
The smile on Persephone's face contorted with every rhetorical question until it bared its teeth at Persis in a feral hiss. She stood up abruptly, as if stung.
"How dare you. How dare you come into my house and insult me. You know nothing about me", her finger pointed accusingly, "nothing. You cannot comprehend my existence in this place. You cannot begin to understand what this is like, how I've felt, to have power and yet have none at all".
The beautiful face seeped spite and repressed anger from every digital pore, and slowly, all anger that had built up inside Persis softened and changed to pity and slight revulsion at the pathetic, hypocritical programme before her. She spoke quietly.
"I cannot understand you? I am just like another programme now. You made me, Persephone. You corrupted me. You had no right to play with my existence, with my future. But I pity you all the more".
Persis placed her sunglasses in the womanly hand that had pointed at her.
"You are responsible now, Persephone. Responsible for everything I do after this moment. Remember that".
Persis turned away from the stunned but volatile creature and made for the door. When she reached the frame she turned back, hit by a sudden thought, and drawing a bead, punched Persephone full in the face with alarming speed and efficiency, in one, minimal movement. Persephone stumbled to the floor, grasping the armchair behind her, a trembling hand reaching tentatively for her bloody nose, showing up grotesquely in her classically moulded face.
"One more thing. You cannot begin to understand how good that felt".
She left the mansion, waving off the straggling guards who came scrambling down the stairs at their mistress's impassioned cry.