+J.M.J.+

Under the Gun

by "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Sorry for yet another delay! The Christmas holidays came up and I got extremely busy working at my regular job.

Now, a few words of gratitude to everyone who reviewed:

To spin: Thanks! I got the feeling from the short that Ash is the sort who's a tough guy on the surface, but who really has a heart of gold, who's open to new ideas, but is still a bit skeptical, not in a bad way, but in a way that allows him to remain objective.

To PadawanMage: Wow, you're really getting into this story! I'm still working out some of the bugs in the plot, and your comments (especially the suggestion about bringing in the Osiris! And that new word, "Fanimatrix" -- I *love* that!!!) have really helped inspire me. Watch for more Ref/Ash action to come... Re: the Gardens and recruits been shown it -- there's actually a short comic-book style story on the "Matrix" movie website about a woman going up to the surface and trying to dislodge a baby from one of those pods, apparantly because she lost her own child, so that plus a still from "Revolutions" gave me the idea for this scene. The real risk going up there is being detected by the machines and being reinserted in a power plant. Which, later on in this fic, leads me to answering an age-old question I had from the original "Matrix" movie, if a person cut a deal with the Agents to be returned to the Matrix, or if for whatever reason someone was sent back there, what would happen to that person once they were reinserted?

To NathanPostmark: Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it.

To Sean Mulligan: Hey, even Morpheus admits to Neo, in the "The Matrix", that he had a hard time believing what was going on until he saw the fetal fields with his own eyes, and I get the feeling that Ash is enough of an open-minded skeptic that he'd have similar feelings.

Disclaimer:

See chapter 1

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Chapter Four

Looking-Glass Questions

Next day, Tank set to work training me. I expected the start of some kind of boot-camp style training, but we spent most of the day uploading stuff into my head. Programs. All the data I'd need when we were moving around inside the Matrix. I figured I didn't need it, since I'd already spent my entire life inside the Matrix. But apparently, as smart as I was, I had a lot to learn.

Kung Fu for instance. I'd never put much stock in that martial arts stuff, though I knew a couple guys who'd learned it while they were in the army, over in Japan, and I said as much to Tank. He only smiled and said "Believe me, fella, this stuff couild save your life when you're caught in a tight place in the Matrix."

I went along with it. I've never been known to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I wasn't about to start, now that I'd started a new life.

Once Tank had filled my head with the know-how I needed, Morpheus tested me in a sparring program within the Construct. Of course he beat me -- he claimed it was because I was still skeptical, but I think it was simply because he was much more adept than a greenhorn like me and because he's a taller, huskier man than me.

"So now what are they gonna do with me in this war with the machines?" I asked Trinity later that evening, as I helped her scrub dishes in the galley.

"That's for the Oracle to help you find out," she said.

"The Oracle?" I asked, the image of an old crone in a dark, smoky temple coming into my mind's eye. "What is this, Greek mythology?"

"Not quite," she replied.

"So, she's one of these 'sees all, knows all' swami types or something?"

"She'd say she knows what she needs to know when she needs to know what to reveal to a particular person," Trinity said.

* * * * * * * *

Zara buttonholed me in a corridor in the crew quarters later on.

"If I were you, I wouldn't pal around too much with Trinity: she's got someone back in Zion waiting for her," she said.

"I'm not really palling around with her," I said.

"Good," she said, with a smirk of barely veiled triumph.

"What makes you put it that way?" I asked.

"Nothing. I'm just looking out for you fella." Her eyes had started roving over me in a way that I just didn't like, so I excused myself and went to the head, just to get out of her sight range. God, that look made me feel as if she were mentally stripping me down to my skivvies.

* * * * * * * *

Next day at morning mess, Morpheus briefed us on our course for the day: they were going up to broadcast depth to jack Zara, Ref and me into the Matrix, where I would meet with the Oracle. Normally he and Trinity (the first mate) and Jack (the gunner) would accompany the crew jacking in -- especially since I was only recently unplugged and I could use the extra support of two more Adepts. But "sentinels" had been detected in the night and the ship's officers would be needed to keep an eye on real world threats.

"I don't see why we have to do this," Zara grumbled as Sand strapped her into a chair on the main deck. "We've already found the One."

"Well, maybe Ash-man here is the Two, maybe he's some kind of back-up 'One'," Tank joked, typing preliminary commands into the ship's mainframe.

"You bring this boy back in one piece, y' hear, Ref?" Jack said, adjusting her straps with the concern of a father or an older brother.

"I will, I promise," Ref said, glancing at me shyly.

Sand turned back to me and prepared to slot the head cable in through a hole in the head rest of my chair. "You ready for this, Ash?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," I said. She smiled and slid the cable in through the jack-guard and into my head-jack.

I felt like I had fallen asleep very fast, going out like a light. But somewhere in the darkness, a phone was ringing.

Then light surrounded me, the diffused light of an interior, during the day We stood in what looked like the office of a disused warehouse. Ref held the receiver of a rotary phone to her ear. "Tank, we made it," she said, and hung up the phone.

I barely recognized the soft-spoken little mouse who regarded me so shyly on the Neb: Rimless black sunglasses hid her eyes, and her hair was slicked back close to her skull. Under a knee-length black leather coat, she wore a maroon silk blouse tucked into a calf-length black skirt over calf-high black leather boots. Zara, who plunked herself down in a chair beside the dusty desk on which the phone stood, wore a silver-grey leather jacket over a sleeveless black velour top and silver leather pants.

"Man, we gotta get you some new duds, fella," Ref said. "Or at least stuff made of different material."

"So this is it," I said, looking around. "This is... the Matrix."

"Right back where you started from," Zara said, putting her feet up on the desk. "Want me to babysit the exit, Ref, or are you doing it?"

"I'll take him from here," Ref said, rummaging in a metal box, taking out two Glock 9 mm handguns and slotting them into her gunbelt, then filling her coat pockets with extra clips. "I'm a better fighter than you are."

"*Are* you?" Zara sniffed.

Ref said nothing to this, but took me by the arm and led me out into an alleyway. We'd landed in Chinatown, a district I knew too well from some of my earlier cases.

Or at least I thought I knew it too well.

Things looked different somehow. Businesses had changed hands or gone out. Buildings had been torn down and new ones built in their place, or been replaced with parking lots. Even some of the streets had different names.

Cars looked different, smaller and sleeker, with much less style to the make. The passersby on the street wore different clothes, with louder colors and the cut more androgynous. I turned to Ref. "Hey, any idea why everything's so different?" I asked in a low voice.

"My guess is they had you on a different time template. They had you in a construct that looked like a simulated 1949. The default template is 1999," she said, matching my volume.

I was starting to realize why that one detective had gone crazy. He might have fallen in with this crowd and gotten his head bent out of shape. Well, I've got a good head on my shoulders, so I doubted something like this could crack my skull open.

She lead me to the door of a teahouse, pushed it open and led me inside.

The long room within, furnished with just some heavy wooden tables and benches along the walls looked empty at first. But then we both became aware of a young Chinese-looking guy in a white silk Chinese jacket and black pants, sitting cross-legged on one of the tables at the far end of the room, peering at us through black glasses with round lenses.

He set down the ivory tea bowl he had been drinking from. "You are Ref," he said in a soft, slightly husky whisper of a voice.

"Yeah, that's me," she said. "And you are?"

"I am Seraph. I am the one sent to lead you and the new potential to the Oracle," he replied

"That would be me, the.. potential, that is," I said.

"Before I can take you to her, I must first apologize," he said.

"For what?" Ref said. I didn't like the sound of this guy, as quiet as he was.

"For this," the stranger replied.

No sooner had he spoken this, when he lunged off the table right at Ref. She ducked out of the way, arms raised, warding him off as he tried to throw a kick at her head.

Now what kind of wiseguy was this?! I thought. I threw myself in between them, getting Ref behind me, parrying the punches he thew at her. I tried to knife-hand the guy's throat, but he suddenly bent over backwards out of the way. When he rose up again, my fist was looking for his temple, but he parried the blow on his forearm.

I hardly knew it was me fighting this guy, but I managed to keep him from nailing me, though he fought like a tiger, a gentle one, but still an opponent to be reckoned with.

At length he drew back, holding up one hand, empty. "Good. You are to be trusted," he said, his calm composure unruffled, though he'd certainly put a kink in mine. "I had no other choice. There are too many enemies."

"The mistake was almost mutual," I said, partly a warning, partly my own admission. If this guy was really an ally, what were the enemies like? I thought, as Ref came up beside us.

He smiled a pale shadow of a smile and led us out into the alleyway. With a key he took from a cord about his wrist, he unlocked a door in one of the walls of the alley and led us into what looked like a long white corridor lined with greenish metal doors. He led us up to one, unlocked it, and led us through.

We stepped out into a paved courtyard at the end of a cul-de-sac, in amongst a cluster of tenement buildings.

"She awaits you," he said.

Ref nudged me toward a sturdy dame sitting on a park bench opposite us.

I approached her and stood before her, a stocky dark woman in her late sixties, bushy charcoal grey hair, a quietly cheerful face, not much for looks, but set with large dark amber eyes full of wisdom, dressed in a blue windbreaker over an orange, gold and green paisley blouse and green slacks, a cigarette between her fingers.

"So you're the detective-boy that young lady helped pick up," she said. She patted the seat beside her. "You can sit or you can stand, but I know what you'll choose."

I was just in the act of sitting down anyway, but this made me pause. Was she a mind-reader as well? I sat down, not wanting to look like I'd changed my mind.

"And you're the Oracle," I said.

"Bingo," she said, pointing at me. "Not what you were expecting."

"They said Oracle, so I got to thinking of someone like the Delphic Oracle, an old woman sitting in a temple over the smoky vent of a volcano."

"Well, you got the smoke part right," she said, reaching into her jacket and taking out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. "Have one?"

"Thanks," I said, taking the packet, shaking one out and lighting up, then giving the packet and the lighter back to her.

"One thing I can say about you, is you certainly have a sense of romance and idealism. And that's good stuff to have where you are right now."

"Really, I don't, ma'am," I admitted.

"You just like to hide it well, that's all," she said. "Why else did you stick up for that little girl back there?"

"I didn't want to see that nut beat her up, that's all," I said.

She smiled at me knowingly through the smoke and stubbed out her cigarette. "That's what your mouth is saying, but your heart is saying something different."

I shrugged. "Most people have an ulterior motive or two hidden up their sleeves."

"And that gift of yours, spotting people's secrets, that's gonna make all the difference soon. That's why you're gonna be able to stick to it through all this madness. You'll be questioning everything that happens, and you're gonna feel torn in two by all of it, but you hang on by your finger an' toenails, son."

"I've done that before," I said.

"And you'll be doing that a *lot* from now on. I can't see quite what's in store for you: the crystal ball is going dark, but you're gonna come to a point when part of you wants to go one way and do one thing, but the rest of you is wanting to do something else. You just gotta figure out for yourself what really matters to you. You've already jumped over the first three brooks, but you got three more to go. Oh, and stick close to that little girl: you're both gonna need each other's help."

"What little girl?" I asked.

"The one who thinks you're cute."

I wasn't sure who she meant, but maybe I didn't want to. Or my head was spinning so much, I couldn't decipher it. Jumping three more brooks. I wished I had a copy of "Through the Looking Glass" on me.

She patted my arm. "You best be getting back. You haven't got much time."

I got up as she stood. She looked up into my face, her face almost sad with concern. "Son, you're really gonna have a rough time of it, but just remember there's them that got it rougher."

"Yeah... thanks," I mumbled. She grinned at me, but the sadness hadn't left her eyes, as Seraph approached her and led her away, toward one of the tenements.

Ref came up beside me. "Your head spinning yet?"

"Big time," I said.

"You don't have to share it with me or anyone else if you don't think you can. It's really between you and her," she said.

A breeze rose, sending the sand on the ground swirling in small billows. Papers strewn on the ground slid across the pavement. Ref looked up. She gripped my arm. "Come on, time to get back," she said. And she led me out of that courtyard.

She led me down the street and around a corner past a Chinese convenience store, to a pay phone. She picked up the receiver and dialled a number.

"Tank, we're coming home: send the word out to Zara," she said. She held the phone out to me.

"No, you take it," I said. "You made the call, I don't want to cut in."

"Okay, but remember to catch it quick," she said, and lifted the reciever to her ear.

As she did so, her form seemed to shiver into shards of green code, which flowed into the mouthpiece of the receiver.

I grabbed the receiver as it dropped. As I did so, I looked back over my shoulder.

Three guys in dark brown suits, with rimless sunglasses on their faces and earpieces in their left ears approached the pay phone. Three guys exactly like the ones that had chased Trinity and I on the train.

They drew their weapons and aimed at me. I leaned into the phone, hoping Tank could get me out of there before they fired.

"Ash, hang on, fella, I'm reeling you in," Tank's voice called to me.

Gunshots exploded as that wierd skin-prickling, ear-popping feeling hit me....

I sat up, Trinity unlocking the jacks in my arms and legs.

"What the hell happened?" I demanded, rubbing my ears.

"Agents came out of nowhere," Tank said. "Four of 'em, one right on top of you."

"There were three," I said.

"The code read four. Code don't tell no lies this side to someone with the eyes to see," Tank said.

Ref looked at Tank, her eyes widening. "Then where did Agent Four come from?"

"Good question," Tank said.

* * * * * * * *

I felt completely exhausted after that run, so Sand recommended that I take it easy. I lay on my bunk staring up at the stringers overhead and running my hands over the stubble on my scalp, trying to get my head around the Oracle's message.

Sand came by with a bowl of protein glop for me, but I didn't have much appetite for it. It looked as good as it tasted, but that certainly isn't saying much for it.

A moment later, Zara stuck her head in. "Hey, you getting over that run?" she asked.

"The Agents sneaking up on me were the worst, but the chat with that Oracle was more comfusing than I wish it had been," I said.

"I wouldn't take much stock in her babbling anyway," she said. After a weighty pause, she added, "She's one of *them*, you know."

"One of what?"

"Don't be stupid: she's a program. She's a machine."

"You're bulling me," I said.

"Nuh-uh," she said. "She's a sentient program. She's just very smart. So I wouldn't take any of her stuff seriously."

"With a grain of salt," I said, my eye on the remains of the glop in my bowl.

"Betcha wish you had some," she said. I just shrugged.

Zara eyed me up and down. With a twitch of her cheek clearly meant to be a wink, she added, "I've been called the salty one, so if you need any..."

"Sorry, bank's closed," I said, addressing myself to the glop.

She sniffed, irritated, and went away.

A moment later, Ref came for the dishes. "Did I see Zara skulking around here?" she asked.

"Yeah, she stuck her head in a minute ago," I said. I wished I had a package of cigarettes at that point, but not having any, I just balled up my fists and stuffed them into the frayed pockets of my pants.

"She's a good encryption-descrambler, but she's peskier than a gadfly," Ref said. "Just shut your ears when she's around."

"Hey, I've handled hecklers before," I said. I bit my tongue. "I guess when you think about it, I never had to handle them. I've never had any real life experiences."

"I used to think that way, too, but it left me feeling guilty about that time, before I was unplugged. Now I just tell myself I spent the first eighteen of my twenty-some odd years of existence dreaming and learning from those dreams. You need dreams so you can know what reality is."

"Very true," I agreed.

So she was older than she looked. She was still a little spindly for my tastes, but she was still a good kid and she'd be safe with me. Not that I was ever much of a ladykiller. Until I met Trinity, most of the dames I met were purely on business terms, and few of them were my type, or they were married.

She was just stepping out into the hallway with the tray, when the ship suddenly lurched to a stop so suddenly I rolled off my bunk and hit the deck.

The lights went out.

"What the -- ?" I cried, the last word catching in my throat.

Ref grabbed my face, covering my mouth. "Shh! they'll hear you."

I lay still, wondering what she meant. Was there something out there?

I thought I could hear metallic rustlings and clanks overhead as we lay there hardly breathing, the chill air growing colder. But maybe it was just my imagination.

After a short eternity, something went clank! far below us. I jolted figuring it was trouble, but I realized it must be the ship's generator when the lights came back up.

"All right, now what was that for?" I asked when we could both breathe again.

"We had company out there," she said.

"Company? What, machines?"

"Hunter-seekers, sentinels," she said. "Squiddies we call them. Sentient machines like octopuses or spiders, with one job."

"Killing humans?" I asked.

"You said it," she said, trying to sound flip, but the tic in her cheek said otherwise.

The more I found out about this place, the more I didn't like it....

To be continued....