AUTHOR'S NOTE: All original characters from the Matrix trilogy belong to Warner Bros. and the brothers Wachowski; I'm just ad-libbing.
alocin-hey again! Thanks for the review; I also thought Seraph's comment sounded like an interesting back-story when I saw Revolutions, though my initial reaction was something along the lines of, "Seraph won? And you're not going to show any of that fight, not even in a flashback?? C'mon..." Asking too much, I suppose.
Agent Smith-no coincidence that you're reading this fanfic with that pen name, right? ^^ Writing a Smith Christmas story? Challenge accepted. I may even weave it into this story, who knows...
Catherine Ace-I've been reading your Zelda/Matrix fic...interesting idea; two genres that you don't see getting put together in a crossover fic! Great stuff...and yeah, I also think Seraph should get a little more coverage in fanfiction, he's an enigmatic but definitely cool character.
seatbelt37-thanks a lot for your review! I like Paradise Lost as well; it's such a sprawling but beautiful epic piece of poetry.
Selina Enriquez-hey girl ^^ nice hearing from you again!
Yuuzhan Vong Jedi-Well, as to the spelling of "programme"... I'm British, so that's how it comes in Ye Olde English Dictionary ^^ Thanks for the 'military complex' suggestion-I was thinking that what I was using didn't sound quite right...LOTR fan as well, huh? Excellent.
Morithil.
SERAPH
"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good."
- Paradise Lost (bk. V, l. 153) [God]
The garden flashed before his eyes. Perhaps 'flash' is too dramatic a word. It suggests a rapidity of movement, a lightning crack of image and light and then nothing. It was more of a memory, a recurrence of thought that seeped into his awareness from time to time. Seraph did not taint its memory with analysing the precise time, long ago it had been since he had walked in it.
Bars closing it off from humanity forever. The sanctuary of ignorance, gone. The bliss of naivety, gone.
No one would accept. No-one would accept that such a perfect world, such a paradise, could ever be truly real, deeply tangible, and Seraph granted humans this; that their intuition was sometimes more accurate than the artificial mind could ever understand. He paused once, only once, before walking silently out of the bustling crowd that inhabited the narrow market streets of Chinatown.
It would be some time, he accepted, before he would ever return there again.
He travelled quickly, with ease. He could cover great distances, jump trains, cross borders, and they would always be two steps behind him. But Seraph did not flatter himself. One day, he considered, one day it will change. Agents do not tire, and though I am immune to weariness, I am only as powerful as those I fight.
You do not know someone until you fight them.
And so far, so far, Seraph had never allowed the distance between himself and the sentient programmes to narrow into combat. Having never fought an agent, how would he cope? Although Seraph was quietly confident in his abilities, he knew.
You cannot read an enemy you have never allowed yourself to know.
He did not follow agents, did not analyse how they operated. In that sense, Seraph's combative style was one based on pure instinct, as human an impulse as was accessible to something machine created. Him, created to protect, instructed to obey, living on the run, turning on the tide.
Seraph. Angel. Guardian. Protector. Barrier.
I protect that which matters most. Once, that was something else entirely, something beautiful and pure and inevitably too perfect. Now, what matters most is across town, smoking a cigarette and looking out onto a world that she knows she shared in creating.
I was created for a reason, a purpose. I was given abilities to carry out a specific purpose. But, I will use my abilities to carry out the duty I have given myself.
Seraph, the literal Firewall, crossed the street and ran as quickly as he could to the train station. Thinking such things was dangerous enough. Remaining in one place while reflecting on these things was fatal.
SMITH
"Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void."
- Paradise Lost (bk. IV, l. 96) [Vows]
The agent stepped out of the car first, nonchalantly taking in his surroundings before looking back to the other agents that followed him.
Jones and Brown. He was their superior, that much all three knew. Yet sometimes Smith wondered-there, again; wondered, such a human thing to do - wondered if by some incomprehensible coincidence his anomalies, as he had christened them with no small degree of frustration, were in fact the reason for his superiority.
Incorrect, as well as illogical. Humans were the slaves, not the machines. How could possessing any percentage of any one human attribute make a machine or a programme effective, let alone superior to its peers?
Smith frowned, the arches of his eyebrows quirking upwards until his face became a familiar mask of distaste.
Humans.
He sniffed noiselessly at the offending odours permeating his awareness. The savoury scent of cooking from an open window in the apartment block the stood at the foot of floated down to him like a poisonous fume.
Smith snarled.
He was beginning to smell things. At first, he had disregarded it as a natural aspect of his programming; another feature to convince the ignorant humans that he was merely a law enforcer, merely one of them. Now, now he reviled every perfume that dared to permeate his consciousness, every fragrance was aggravating, pulsating as each one got, to use a rarely accurate human phrase, "under his skin".
For now it was just these produced smells, those that resulted from a chemical reaction; food, liquids, etc. Smith made a silent vow to himself to rid himself of these annoyances, these disgusting sensations, and coupled it with a promise to find this ghost, this Seraph.
Jones turned inquisitively towards his superior. Brown did likewise, but with a subtle hint of resignation that made Smith consider the possibilities of the other agent being aware of more than just the discrepancies within the Matrix. Did Brown suspect that he, Smith, was deficient?
"What is wrong?"
Smith strode away from the questioning face.
"Nothing".
He waved them off to cover both ground level exits of the building. Seraph had been traced to this building, but that was some hours ago, and Smith doubted that the elusive being had lingered longer than was necessary. There was something mercenary in that action that stirred something not unlike admiration in the begrudging agent. Seraph did not attach himself to others, did not allow anything to cloud his judgement, to lead him into the many traps in the Matrix for renegade programmes, except for one exception.
The, "Oracle". Such a ridiculous name, attaching some feinted stature and importance to a particular programme that was not remarkable at all; each did what they were meant to, therefore why should any individual be singles out for renown?
Smith, for all his reasoning and numerous attempts to decipher this, could not fathom why Seraph had assigned himself the perilous task of protecting another system of control within the Matrix.
An hour passed and nothing had been ascertained. Four hours and three other desolate buildings later, and still nothing.
As he walked evenly back towards the black Audi sedan, parked for the fourth time at a perfect parallel to the sidewalk, Smith stopped and turned to the bridge over which a late night train was progressing. He pressed a finger to his earpiece. Through the blurring faces seen through the bleary windows, Smith made out one face, obscured by semi-opaque glasses.
Seraph.
Smith turned smoothly on one heel and began the process of following the ghost.
He would seek him out. He would terminate him. It was his purpose.