Chapter Thirteen: Theta Omega
Kami spends most of the drive back to the rendezvous point trying to convince herself that the Oracle had made some mistake, and failing utterly. And that would mean it really had been Renee who shot at her. If her friend really was an agent now... Kami just didn't know what to think.
At least Sean seemed happy with what the Oracle had told him. But then, Sean still hasn't quite realized that this is really real. For him everything must seem like levels in a game that can be beat. He hasn't yet seen anyone die, or had to kill anyone because there was a chance they'd get taken over by an agent.
Kami hated that part the most. On her third mission into the matrix an elderly granny-type had accidentally come across her group and Kami had shot and killed her in cold blood. She didn't have a choice.
Well, that wasn't quite true, she amended. She did have a choice. To live or to die. She chose to live, and as a result others died. And that was how things were.
Ajax's cellphone rang. He picks it up.
"Oh, shit," he says conversationally, and slams the gas pedal to the floor.
"What is it?" Kami says, though she knows there is only one thing it could be. Sean cowers in the back seat.
"Agents," says Ajax, "They found Chowder."
"Is he..."
"He's all right. Went to ground, lost them. But they're out in the area and looking real hard. Let's not give them anything to find, all right?"
"Right," says Kami. "We all still heading for the same exit?"
"Yes, except for Chowder. Abdiel's out already, anyway. Just us and Theta still in."
Theta. He better get out safe, thinks Kami, or else he'll have more to worry about from her than the agents.
Ajax throws the wheel to the right suddenly, screeching around a corner and into a less busy side street. "They're out there," he says, and pushes the car to go faster.
"Um..." says Kami, as the car passes a sign saying 'dead end 100 ft'.
"I see it," says Ajax. He brakes hard and fast. "Get out. Sean, come with me. Kami, you're on your own. Head towards the planned exit; it's the only good one for a long ways. Hide if you have to."
Kami nods and pushes the door open, throwing herself out before the car is fully stopped. She doesn't look back as she runs down the street and swerves around the corner of a building.
She cuts across a parking lot and then doubles around, heading towards the exit. A bullet impacts the side of a car near her and she reflexively glances over her shoulder. It's not Renee. But it is an agent, a few hundred meters away.
"Shit," she says, and speeds up, dodging between the rows of parked cars. No looking back.
Rebels in the east bay area. Top priority. All available respond. My fingers pause their typing on the keyboard as the call comes over my earpiece. Miss Sato's group of rebels is in the matrix. In a few different locations. A quick conference with Williams and Harris and we transfer in. I'm not going after Miss Sato, as we want to try and keep the fact that human can be turned into agents as low profile as we can.
My target, Mr. Carino, also known as Theta, is waiting in line at a Starbucks for a caffeine fix. Normally this wouldn't be enough to alert us to his presence, but Starbucks is highly controlled by programs and the elevated priority level on Mr. Carino's crew led us to him.
I take over a body on the sidewalk outside the store and draw my gun. A bell jingles as I open the door and Mr. Carino half turns, sees me and jumps for the other door and is out on the sidewalk and running before I can shoot.
I turn to chase him, letting the door shut behind me. He has a cellphone out and is dialing a number. Good. We can trace that. I put a hand to my earpiece and request a trace, holding my fire for a moment. No sense in killing him now if we can get the location of his ship, and then kill him along with the rest of his crew.
He runs. I follow him, he talks on his phone. The trace is almost complete. He hangs up before it is done. I aim as well as I can, with him running and weaving and me running as well, and shoot. I miss. Too bad.
Mr. Carino turns abruptly left and runs into the street. Cars swerve and horns blare. I run into the traffic after him, but have to stop to avoid getting run down by an eighteen wheeler. I transfer into a host a little bit in front of Mr. Carino in the direction he is running. He starts at my sudden appearance, and then as I draw my gun again (since it reappears back in its holster whenever I transfer bodies) he pulls a gun out even faster and starts spraying lead in my direction.
This forces me to stop trying to shoot him, and dodge the bullets. He screams and runs at me, but I dodge all that he throws at me. He gets a little ways past me, towards his exit, and then his gun click empty. I aim and shoot, but he has already turned into an alley and is running again.
I follow, becoming aware that Williams and Harris are nearing this area from another direction, each chasing rebels. Williams is following their captain and Mr. Levan, and Harris is trailing Miss Sato.
I shoot repeatedly at Mr. Carino, until my own gun is empty. I throw it away, and look for another body to transfer into. There is one, in a building near the one the rebels are all running towards. Williams has dibs on it, though. His target is most important.
Mr. Carino reaches the building and breaks down the front door. I am so close I can almost reach out and grab him. A phone starts to ring on the fourth floor. I jump forward, pushing Mr. Carino down to the tile. I try to put my hands on his head and neck, to try and break it, but he blocks and rolls so that I am underneath him.
He punches out at me. I absorb the blows and then grab his wrist. I brace against the floor and twist, throwing him over my head and into a support column of the office lobby we are fighting in. He cracks his head and slumps to the floor in a daze. I stand up, walk over to him and reach out. His eyes flutter and clear, looking up at me in terror. Before he can struggle I quickly and professionally break his neck with my bare hands.
Mr. Carino dies. My first kill. It feels good, doing what I'm meant to do.
As this happens I am peripherally aware of Harris chasing Miss Sato in through the main door. She stumbles as she sees me, standing over the body of Mr. Carino. But she recovers and runs on. I turn and chase with Harris, but she is too fast and I am all out of guns.
I walk up to the now silent phone. Harris is standing there, staring at it.
"She got out," I say. Nothing like a classic line.
"It doesn't matter," says Harris. Elsewhere, the chase has quieted down.
Their captain and Mr. Levan have managed to hide off somewhere, says Williams. There is a search running.
Return to the agency? I ask.
You got it, says Williams.
Kami struggles to undo the chair restrains as soon as the needle is pulled from her head jack by Chowder.
"Theta..." she unhooks the last restraint from over her boot and all but runs to his chair. He is still jacked in, but the readout screen says [carrier lost] and the biomonitors are flat. Abdiel is standing by the monitors, head bowed.
"I'm sorry, Kami," she says.
"No," Kami moans, and takes his head in her hands. Her Tears start to run down her face.
"It was an agent..." says Abdiel, "There was nothing..."
Kami knows her eyes are getting all puffed up and red, but she can't stop crying. "Which agent?" she says, through her sobbing gasps. "I was running to fast to get a good look, and you know they all look the same—" They're going to pay. All of them. She didn't know how, but somehow she is going to hurt them, just as much as they hurt her.
"One I've never seen before," says Abdiel. "I watched on the screen, but didn't recognize her code. Must be new."
"Her?" Kami suddenly becomes very still. No. Not her. But it can't be anyone else.
"Yeah," says Abdiel, as she moves from her position by the monitors and heads for the main screens. "Gimmie a minute, I'll pull up the record."
Kami looks down one last time at Theta, feeling like her heart has been carved out, leaving her hollow and dripping. "I'll get that traitor for you," she whispers, touching his cooling hand. "Somehow. I promise."
"Got it," says Abdiel from the main screens. Kami drops her hands to her side and walks away from Theta's body. She is already sure she will know what she will see.
"Right here." Abdiel taps the frozen code on one of the side screens of the main array.
The code is a confirmation of everything Kami feared and suspected.
"It's her," she says, trying to remember what the Oracle had called her, but failing to come up with anything but Renee.
"That one you were going on about?" says Abdiel. "With your friends' face, the thing you went to see the Oracle about?"
Kami nods.
"Harsh. What'd she say, anyway? Anything you can tell me?"
"The Oracle said it's just an agent," says Kami, trying to decide how much she wants to say. "But... she used to be the person that went along with that face. I'm not sure how it works."
Abdiel sucks in her breath. "Weird. Her code isn't any different for that of any of the other agents. But if the Oracle says so..."
"It doesn't matter. She is an agent now, and she killed Theta." Kami pauses for a second. "I want to hurt that agent. I want to hurt her real bad."
Abdiel doesn't say anything, but exchanges a glance with captain Ajax, who had successfully gotten to another exit with the new kid and gotten out without incident. She remembers all the times she's seen people killed, in the many years since she was freed. It's always hard, she knows. And the agents are so impossible to move against. They always come back.
"That... may be difficult," says Ajax, placing a hand on Kami's shoulder. "I know it's hard to loose someone, but it happens. This is the life he chose. He'd want you to go on fighting, not throw your life away in a pointless act of revenge."
Ajax turns Kami around and looks her in the eyes. "We'll win, in the end. But you can't hurt them, no matter what you try. You can't fight them."
"Then I'll find some other way," says Kami. "Somehow, she's gonna pay." She pulls away and runs off towards her room. Ajax and Abdiel exchange uneasy glances. They've never before seen her so focused and hard and remote.
Kami stayed up late, researching the depths of the ships archive on the main screens. When that was exhausted, she turned to examining the main archives of their city through a remote connection, looking for some way you could permanently hurt an agent. She found nothing. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, though she cried no longer.
Instead she felt hollow inside, as if nothing could hurt her any deeper than she had already been by Theta's death. Even the pain and shock of being unplugged could not compare to this. It was if someone had turned a vacuum on her insides, sucking out anything that didn't deal with revenge.
Articles and records flickered before her tired eyes, as she reviewed everything connected to agents that she could find. There was quite a bit of information. She had dismissed outright the records of members of the resistance lost to agents. No helpful information there, and she certainly didn't want to see Theta's name at the end of the list right now.
Most of the rest was documents chronicling the actions and movements of the agents, with a special section dedicated to individual profiles on all know agents. Most of them didn't have their proper name attached to the file. They were identified by differences in their code, and demeaning nicknames. Also by the people they had killed.
The telephone setup connected to the matrix beeps. Kami doesn't register it at first, as focused on her own research as she is, and since there isn't anyone on the ship plugged in. On the third beep, she jumps, startled out of her research fugue. She glances around, looking for Zip or anyone higher ranking than her, but everyone else is down in the mess hall or their quarters.
Kami reaches over and puts on the headset gingerly. It is not unknown for someone to contact them from another ship through the matrix for aid or to relay a message, and for this reason the ship is hiding out in a hidden spot just within broadcast depth. She hits the command to connect the call to her headset.
"Operator," she says.
"Hello," says a cultured French voice over the line. "I would like to speak with your captain."
"Who is this?" says Kami. She can't place the voice as any member of the resistance she has ever met.
The voice chuckles once. "Tell him this is the Merovingian. I have a proposition for him. And for you, Kami."
Kami pulls back from the screens in surprise as he speaks her name.
"Uh, yeah," she says, "Just a second." She rips off the headset and runs through the ship and down the ladder to the mess hall. The captain is in there, playing some card game with Chowder and Zip on a set of handmade cards one of the other captains made him for his birthday. The birthday in question was the date he was freed from the matrix, and not the day he was 'born'. A little tradition handed down through many generations of the resistance.
"Ajax," Kami says as soon as she bursts through the door, "You have a phone call." The captain looks up questioningly, knowing it can't be from anyone on his ship, as none of them are in the matrix. Kami continues. "From the Merovingian."
Ajax jumps up and tosses his hand of cards down on the table at this revelation. "What does he want?" Ajax asks Kami, walking quickly through the ship towards the main screen setup. Zip and Chowder follow along behind with Kami, and so does Sean, who had been hanging out in a corner of the mess hall taking a bit of a nap until Kami interrupted him with the door banging open.
"To talk to you," says Kami, as Ajax sits down in the Operator chair. "I didn't ask what about, since I thought I should get you and let you know right away."
Ajax nods as he slips on the headset. "Hello," he says, "This is Captain Ajax."
"Why hello, Telemonian, isn't it?" says the Merovingian to Ajax.
"Yes," says Ajax. "Why have you contacted us and how did you get this number?" he says, trying to not be distracted by what the Merovingian knows about him, even if it is just his name's roots.
"As to the second question, let us just say that I have my sources," says the Merovingian. "And as for the first, it seems as if you and I have a common enemy. There was a tragedy on your ship lately, was there not? Involving the young Miss Kami and her friend and an agent?"
"What," the captain says levelly, "Do you want?"
"I want many things, my dear captain," there is a smug pause, and then the Merovingian continues. "I want the same thing the young Kami wants. To hurt that one new agent."
"Go on," says Ajax.
"None of you are the One, you alone can do nothing to hurt an agent. But with my help, there is some hope for your young friend Kami's desire for revenge. I have been working on a device, a weapon against agents. I may give this to you, if I can find enough reason to."
"Why come to us?" says Ajax. "You have this weapon, you have plenty of subordinates, why don't you just go and get the agent yourself?"
"Alas, I am afraid that is impossible at this time," the Merovingian says smoothly. "I misjudged an effect my actions would have. And so I must come to you. Amusing, is it not?"
"Not really," says Ajax.
"Perhaps so," says the Merovingian. "Nonetheless, here I am, offering you something that could be very useful, should you really go through with your plan against the agents. Well? What do you think? Do you want the weapon or not?"
"What is this weapon?" Ajax asks, trying to keep the Merovingian's way of speaking from ticking him off.
"Ah, the weapon," says the Merovingian. "It is... a capture device. Stick it on an agent and press the button and the agent is sucked into the device. Of course, to use it, one must first get close enough to an agent to touch it with the device, but if you truly want revenge..." he trails off.
"And it works?" says Ajax, already going through in his mind the many situations something like this would have been useful in the past, as a last resort when cornered at the very least.
"Yes, of course," the Merovingian says, sounding a little annoyed. "It does everything I says it does. Have a little trust, captain."
Captain Ajax snorts, but quietly, so the Merovingian doesn't hear and possibly decide to take offense. "All right," he says. "We'll try your weapon. How do we get it?"
"I can transmit the code for it to your ship right now," says the Merovingian. "Just have a file in your construct prepared to accept it."
The captain turns on some of the auxiliary screens and starts typing furiously, preparing an open file for the transfer. He spends quite a bit of extra time firewalling it off from everything but the link to the matrix, just in case. You don't get to be captain by taking stupid risks, though a very occasional stupid chance is all right.
"Okay," the captain says to the Merovingian as he hits the last button to initialize the link. "It's ready."
"Excellent," says the Merovingian. "Here you go. It is a pleasure doing business with you."
"Yeah, whatever," says Ajax.
A dialogue box pops up on one of the screens, asking what to do with a file ready for download. Ajax routes it into the ready slot, watching carefully for any sign of something bad slipping in. The file transfers normally and without incident.
From what Ajax can read, it is just what the Merovingian says it is. He wonders what exactly the Merovingian is getting out of this deal. Ajax knows that 'ol Merv isn't just doing this out of the goodness of his programmed heart.
"Have fun," says the Merovingian, and hangs up.
Ajax closes the link down once the download is complete and takes off the headset, trying to process just what exactly happened. He had never talked with the Merovingian before, though of course he had heard about him. This had been a far too trying month, he thought, wishing vaguely that things were as they were before all this started and that he didn't have to worry about agents kidnapping and brainwashing humans, or Kami's new suicidal revenge wish, or anything of that nature.
"How can we trust him?" says Kami. "He's a program."
"We check out what we got from him," says Zip, as he moves to stand by a screen and pull up the downloaded file's specifications from a safe place beyond the firewall.
"Hmm, interesting," he says after a minute. "As far as I can tell, this thing should do exactly what the Merovingian says it should. It is a weird program, I'll give him that."
"How?" says Kami.
"The code's all kind of twisted around. Like there's more space inside it than there should be. Like nothing I've seen before. But it looks like everything is in order. It's not a virus or anything. Just weird."
"Zip, make a copy of that file and send it in to Zion for some further testing and for distribution, if it does what the Merovingian said it does," says Ajax.
Zip nods. "One copy coming up," he says.
"Strange," says Kami. "So supposing it works like he said it would, why would the Merovingian give us something like this... whatever it is?"
"The only reason I can think of that he would do something like this," says Ajax. "Is that he's desperate. The agents must be getting pretty close to him, and he wants a distraction."
"Then we'll give him one," says Kami. "We have something that just might give us enough of an advantage to fight the agents and win." And totally destroy that traitorous killer, she adds to herself.
"This... is a very dangerous idea, Kami," says Ajax. "It doesn't work, we all die. I don't know if I can let you take that risk."
"I have to," says Kami, her face a mask of stone. "This is a chance to really strike back. The agents have killed more of us than just Theta. Many more. If we can hurt them, even just one of them, that is enough. Show 'em we won't take all of this. That we can fight."
"And if you can't and you die?" says Ajax.
"Then I die showing what one person can do against them." Kami says resolutely.
"Not just one," Sean pipes up. "I want to help."
"I will too," says Chowder. "Those agents need to be brought down a peg or two hundred."
Ajax sighs, and looks over at Abdiel. "I suppose you want to do this, too?"
She nods. "And I have a plan, too."
Ajax sighs. "Fine. But I have to stay out of it. If this doesn't work; the agents still can't be allowed to capture me. They can't be allowed the opportunity to get my access codes."
Abdiel nods, satisfied. "That's what I think, too. You staying out means we'll need one more crewman, though. I can talk to Jax on the Nanshe. He owes me a favor, and he also might come along just for the hell of it, 'cause he's that kind of guy." She sighs, and rubs her hands together. "All right, then. This is how we're gonna do it..."