The Marquis and its entire crew is made up by me, as well as certain other characters. The rest of it is the property of their respective owners. So here it is.
MATRIX
ACE
CHAPTER 9
OVERDRIVE
A black car, followed by a black van, followed by three police cars barrelled onto the freeway. Some might have been surprised at the fact that the police cars seemed to be driven only by what appeared to be Secret Service agents, but that assumed that the people doing the thinking lacked a small but important piece of knowledge about the way their world worked.
"I have a bad feeling about this," said Plyon.
"You always do, but I think you're right this time," said Styx.
Tenshi stared at the codes. "There's a chance," he said. "And most of the time, that's all you get."
Pylon adjusted his headset. "Okay, Ace, I'm gonna hang up so Ice can call you."
"Okay," said Ace, and hung up. The phone immediately rang again. "Hello?"
"Ace, this is Ice," said the voice on the other end. "See if you can jump across to our car when we pass you by, and throw on the emergency brake at the same time."
"You say it so casually," said Ace.
"Hey, kid, no one said it would be easy," said Ice. "You gonna jump, or no?"
"Didn't have any other plans for this afternoon," said Ace, shifting to the right lane so the van could get next to him.
Pylon was visibly sweating. "I can't watch this ..." he said.
"Jumping to the other van will be the easy part," said Tenshi.
"Yeah, but if he doesn't make it ..." began Pylon.
"He'll make it," said Zephyr.
"What are they doing now?" asked Agent White.
Agent Black didn't get a chance to respond, because the black car had suddenly screeched to a halt, while the red-clad figure suddenly leaped from the car to the van. Agent White swerved, but slammed into the back of the car. The police car behind them, with Agent Grey and Agent Roberts, slammed into them.
"Nice jump," said Reynaldo. "I'm Reynaldo, by the way, and this is Tetsuo."
"Hello," said Tetsuo, waving from behind the machinegun.
"Pleased to meet you," said Ace. "Now what?"
"Well, it'll take a few minutes for the MIBs to get another chance at us, and by then, we hope to be pointed in the opposite direction," said Reynaldo casually.
Ace stared blankly.
"Take a look in the back," said Reynaldo, grinning.
Ace looked in the back, and gaped.
"You like?" said Tetsuo.
"So ... the reason we'll be pointed backwards," said Ace, "is so we can get these babies out the back door."
"Bingo!" said Reynaldo. "I coded 'em myself -- they'd be a bit better, but I ran into limits on what I could do. Physical rules in the Matrix, that kind of thing."
"This has not been my day," said Agent Roberts as they drove towards the freeway.
"Speak for yourself," said Agent Grey. Agents didn't have any emotions -- or at least, not much -- but what there was allowed Agent Roberts and Agent Grey to form a great dislike for each other.
"I submit that reorganizing to compensate for our incompatibility will be in order," said Agent Roberts.
"Agreed," said Agent Grey.
Each touched their earpieces. A moment later, Agent Grey transformed in a blur into Agent Adams. "I like that trick of host-switching," he said.
"Focus on the mission, Agent Adams," said Agent Roberts.
They arrived on the freeway, and saw the black van heading towards them. Agent Adams climbed out of the police car's window and onto the roof, as Agent Roberts moved the car out of its path. Adams then jumped into the air, soard towards the van, and slammed downward into its hood, smashing the engine. The back of the van began to tip upwards, and Agent Adams leaped into the air again, soaring over the ruined van as it toppled over backwards, smashing upsid-down into the pavement, killing everyone inside ...
... which wasn't anyone, since four people were accounted for, and there were now four custom-designed motorcycles driving away at top speed.
Agent Adams slammed feet-first into the road and glared. Motorcycles were easier to destroy, but were hell to actually hit.
Pylon exhaled loudly. "That was too close," he said.
"I'm sure they'll agree," said Norton sardonically.
Fate said, "How much farther?"
"Another half-mile," said Pylon. "And then they'll need to come to a stop so they don't do the same number on the pay phone that that Agent did on the phone booth."
Fate nodded, and then glanced over towards one of the empty beds.
Ace grinned. "This is awesome!" he shouted over the noise of the engine.
"You won't have it for much longer!" shouted Ice. "The exit is in that building over there!"
Ace nodded. The fact that, simply by entering the Matrix, he was placing himself in a life-threatening situation, was one that seriously put a damper on any kind of fun.
They screeched to a halt, jumped off without bothering to turn them off, and burst into the warehouse, handguns drawn (and Tetsuo with his machinegun at the ready).
A figure was waiting for them in the shadows. A figure in a blue trenchcoat, in fact. "Fate!" said Ace, as somewhere in the building a phone began ringing.
"I thought I'd come to the party late and bring a surprise," she said.
"Ah, excellent," said Reynaldo. "It appears that in this situation, Fate is smiling on us."
The three police cars screeched to a halt in front of a warehouse. Fate smashed an upper-story window, pulled the pins out of three grenades, counted to four, and tossed them out at the cars.
They smashed through the windshields, and exploded even as the six Agents hurriedly threw the doors open to try to escape. The triple blast sent shrapnel everywhere, and Fate had to flip backwards to avoid the chunks of molten glass and metal.
She grinned, looked out to make sure that none of them had survived, and then took out a small tape recorder.
"Okay, what was that about?" said Pylon as Norton unplugged Fate from the bed.
"Just thought I'd leave a message," said Fate, sitting up.
"Well you really didn't need to do that anyway," said Tenshi. "Taking the time to record a taunt to leave them might have given them enough time to cut the hardline."
Ace watched them argue for a moment, and then turned to Zephyr. "I just had a thought -- how come you looked different in the Matrix than you did in the Construct?"
Zephyr shrugged. "I didn't want to surprise you that much yet," she said. "Figured I'd leave that to the Captain."
Ace looked over to the Captain, who was informing Fate, calmly but firmly, that freeing people from the Matrix was more important than injuring the Machines' power plant, and should be tried first.
"Eh, enough of this crap," said Styx. "What's in the package that we just risked our butts for?"
"Well, let's find out," said Tenshi. "Pylon, load the program up. And see if you can contact the Copernicus again."
"Here's the package, opened and ready to go," he said. "Ah, a text file written in the code of the object itself. Anyone who opened it would've found it empty."
"Let's take a look-see," said Jaxter, going over to another screen. "Huh. Looks like a map of known useable hardlines ..." He hit a key and a dialogue box came up. "... and a list of people who've been unplugged. If this is accurate, that Rogue must've used one hell of an intelligence system. Wait a second ..."
"What's up?" said Fate, as the crew began to crowd around it.
Jaxter narrowed his eyes. "There's a footnote that says ... 'This was given to us by a Rogue known as Sneaker,'" he read.
"What's a Rogue?" said Ace.
"A program from the Machine world," said Fate.
"They're slated for deletion, for one reason or another, so they hide in the Matrix," said Styx.
"There's more," said Jaxter. "Um ... 'Starred names are ones that "the Oracle is going to pay attention to", in his words ...'"
"Let's look at some of 'em," said Fate.
Jaxter scrolled up. There were plenty of people on the list -- it listed ship names, who they were, dates of release ...
Suddenly, he felt a chill run up his spine. He stared at the next name to appear.
Klaymoore, Michael. "Ace." Zion hovership Marquis.
And there was a blue star in front of it.