Chapter Sixteen: The Final Fight
The first indication I, or any of the other agents, have that the agency building is under attack is when a grenade slams into the building lobby, killing our secretary and five guardsmen instantly. I immediately go into full contact rapport mode with Williams and Harris, as we decide what steps to take to combat this threat.
Williams in turn is in contact with the other two team leaders, coordinating who will do what where. And then we notice the helicopter coming in, spraying bullets. One of the other two teams transfers out to deal with that threat, and the third goes off to find whoever has the rocket propelled grenade launcher across the street. As the youngest team, we stay here, putting up emergency patches on the building's code and monitoring at a heightened state the rest of the building.
It is good that we do this, for soon the surveillance cameras hooked into our earpiece network pick up two rebels making their way down the main roof access staircase. Mr. Tate, and Miss Sato. I suddenly pay closer attention and focus in on those two. Miss Sato is carrying something, which looks quite a bit like the capture device the Twins had used on me.
Look, I say to Williams and Harris, pointing out the capture device and communicating nonverbally its connotations at the same time.
It's all right, says Williams, We're all patched for that.
The other two can feel my relief, even though I don't really mean to share it with them. With the heightened alert and attack in progress, we are much more connected than we even are normally.
They are looking for us, says Harris. Or perhaps for you. He is referring to me, I know. They must know.
If so, I say, We can take them, easily.
Yes, says Williams, You two proceed to the stairwell and take them on. Kill them both. He puts a hand to his earpiece. The team chasing the helicopter needs more help. There is a very high priority rebel flying the helicopter. I will go to them and help. He transfers, leaving Harris and me to deal with Mr. Tate and Miss Sato.
The two rebels come right to us. It is the easiest chase I have ever done, if walking down a hall can be called that. We open the door into the stairwell and they open fire. The world seems to slow down as I go into bullet time, dodging everything they throw at me.
I will get Mr. Tate, Harris says to me, showing me his plan at the same time. You take Miss Sato.
All right, I say. This is it. I know what has to happen, and I am completely prepared to do it.
With a smooth motion we draw our guns in unison, and prepare to fire. This forces the rebels to jump back. The large Mr. Tate retreats up the stairs, while Miss Sato runs down them.
Harris charges upwards after Mr. Tate and I go down the stairs after Miss Sato, firing my gun. She runs and leaps erratically, and none of my shots connect. I put away my gun. No sense in wasting bullets now, without a good host to transfer into. Still she runs holding on tight to the capture device, and occasionally looking back over her shoulder. She turns on a landing, a ferocious grimace on her face, and pulls out a semiautomatic she had kept hidden.
I am forced to stop and dodge the bullets, and she uses the opportunity to walk up the stairs towards me, still firing. I stand my ground and focus on dodging until she's almost at arm's length.
I close the distance between us in a flash, striking a fist down towards her gun. The force wrenches it from her hand and sends it down over the railing.
She leaps towards me, and we smash into each other, tumbling down a half flight of stairs to come to rest on the landing of the second floor. My sunglasses fall off in the tumble, and go flying off the edge of the stairs and fall. The first and third floors are on fire from the grenade attack, and a little bit of smoke leaks into the stairwell making it hazy.
Neither of us are disoriented from the fall. In the second or so before I throw her off of me and get up, she slams the capture device down and presses a button. Time seems to slow down, as if I have entered bullet time. Nothing happens.
Miss Sato makes a little 'ungh?' noise. She presses the button on the capture device on and off furiously, and still nothing happens. Our patch for it works.
And then something does happen. I grab the device from her and crumple it in my hand. I push myself to my feet, borrowing the gravity-defying trick of jumping up that is used in the first movie by Smith, in his fight with Morpheus. One of my little favorite bits, which I now use as much as possible.
Miss Sato scrambles back, away from me, her face twisted into an image of utter devastation. I advance towards her, and pause, looking down at her, curled into the corner of the landing.
I reach out with my left hand and grab where her neck meets her shoulder, pulling her to her feet. I draw back my other hand in a fist and punch her in the face. She winces away and my blow lands on her cheek. This seems to bring her to her senses, and suddenly she starts to try and fight back.
She kicks out. I grab her leg, and slam her into the wall. I do it again, and she goes right through the wall and into the second floor hallway.
I get off the landing and through the door fast, while she is still wondering what just happened. I walk up to Miss Sato, who is lying cut and bleeding on the beige floor, trying to crawl away on a broken knee.
I lean over and pick her up again by the neck, pulling out my gun.
Miss Sato tries to push me away with her unbroken arm, and opens her mouth. "Renee, no," she says weakly. She rallies, and speaks louder. "It's me. Your friend. Remember? Why are you doing this?"
I pause, hand on her neck. She deserves an answer, part of me thinks. The majority of me says to just kill her right now.
"Renee?" she says again, a tiny spark of hope growing in her eyes when I don't kill her right away.
"My name is Lee," I say, keeping my hand on her neck and raising my gun. I stare her in the eyes, my face cold and emotionless, just as it should be.
Kami closes her eyes, hope crumbling into dust. So Renee is truly gone, beyond any chance of revival.
"Do it," she whispers, wanting more than anything for it all to just end, to be over. It has all been in vain. Her great revenge plan failed utterly. She is about to die, and for all she knows the rest of her crew is dead as well. She risked all, and lost just as much.
A sudden emotion envelops her. She wants to just wake up in her bed a few years ago, before anything ever happened, before she saw the movie that consumed her.
I hold back my final strike, sensing a sudden change in Miss Sato's code. Something changed in the last few moments. She had done something. She made a choice. I had thought she had already made her final choice in throwing in with the rebels, but it appears I was wrong. At some level, Miss Sato wants back in.
But she cannot come back in. The red pill doomed her to one fate, and she won't escape it, even with her apparent change of heart. She changed her mind so relatively easily this time and might change it again.
She is contaminated, has gone out of our control, and is to be exterminated. She is part of a story that can have only one ending. I prepare to squeeze the trigger and kill her, but something stops me again.
Harris has come into the hallway behind me, and is staring at the frozen tableau of agent locked in deathgrip with rebel. I communicate rapidly the situation to him, and we quickly come to an agreement on the interpretation of our programming of what we are supposed to do in this situation. It is not our decision to make, at least as the rebels would think of decision making. It is not a decision at all. It is our purpose.
All it takes is a tiny move of my finger. Miss Sato's gasps as I fire three times, using up the rest of my bullets. She blinks once and opens her mouth as if to say something. Instead she goes limp, head lolling to one side. I open my hand and let her slump to the floor.
She is dead. Gone, irretrievably. Harris and I twist our heads to look each other in the eye.
"The rebel has been exterminated, and-" He says, waiting to see if I react in the proper way. He doesn't have to worry. Miss Sato and Renee were friends. Lee and Kami were mortal enemies.
"We have work to do," I say, buttoning my jacket. I lost my sunglasses in the fight, and mussed up my hair a little, but that is all easily restored.
Harris nods in response, reassured that I haven't had my code corrupted by contact with the late Miss Sato.
We turn and walk out of the wrecked office and into the equally damaged hallway, leaving the body where it fell. We do have work to do, repairing the code of the building and restoring it to normal, and dealing with the large number of humans who saw the explosions and battle.
All will be restored. The fires from the explosions are already out; the human witnesses corralled by another team of agents and taken offline briefly as it is determined whether we will use this incident as bad press for the rebels or simply erase the memory.
Harris and I put a hand to our earpiece. Williams has been unable to terminate the two rebels he was chasing, and will be returning to headquarters to help with fixing the code.
We transfer down to the street outside the building to meet him. My sunglasses are back on, my gun is in its proper place, loaded and ready. My suit is still buttoned; whether the jacket is open or not stays constant through transfers. It would be awkward to have to undo it every time to get at your gun in a fast moving chase.
The lobby is almost totally destroyed, along with small sections of the building higher up. The human workers that survived have been evacuated. The building is now ready to reload from backup.
The rebel bodies inside, and the human worker casualties, will be removed with the reload, and the code for their corpses placed in a holding file pending relocation to a cemetery. The two rebels already have graves, somewhere in the matrix. The four humans killed in the explosions and subsequent fires will have to be dealt with. Their death in a car crash or accident fabricated, their families located and notified. New workers will be brought in, and everything will return to normal as if nothing had happened.
Williams walks up, taking in the damage to our building. We have work to do.