+J.M.J.+
Under the Gun
by "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Part of this chapter was insipired by "Alina's" *EXCELLENT* transcription of the "Enter the Matrix" game script, which I cannot reccommend highly enough! My computer is too slow to handle the game, so I'm gonna wait till the comp dies and I get a new one before I get this game, so when I found this transcript at: http://www.kalime.com/etm/index.html/ I pounced on it!
But first, a few words of thanks to all my reviewers:
To Argent Inluminai: Beaming That's gotta be the best review I've had for this fic, and most likely one of the best reviews I've ever gotten for *any* fanfic of mine. Thanks! Glad it makes up for the deficiencies in the short it's based on (Not to say that it isn't the best of the "Animatrix" shorts; I suspect the reason why Ash lets the Agents kill him is inspired by a chess move known as a sacrifice -- I think -- and that's basically what he does, so that Trinity can get away.). Oh, I happen to be a *huge* fan of the Merovingian myself, too (even if I am putting him in a really bad light in this fic... what can I say? The guy is eeeevil... but that doesn't keep me from thinking he's a sexy hunk of code!)! If you've caught the subtle references in chapter five of this... well, Ref has something to say about the Mero later in this chapter, so I let her, and this chapter, speak for itself. Hope it lives up to your expectations: it was a tough one to write!
To Chase's Aces: I'd write a fight scene, but I'm not particularly good at writing them -- they're hard to choreograph! Yueh Wo Ping, the fight-choreographer for the "Matrix" series is a master at fight choreography, and my few feeble attempts at replicating his flair have been so bad, I felt it was best to avoid humiliating myself by writing something I know would hardly come close to his excellence. Plus, I'm aiming for a more dramatic/psychological angle on this story.
Mild WARNING: A slightly steamy kiss scene and references to implied semi-non-con. Not enough to up the rating, but just to forewarn you...
Disclaimer:
See chapter 1
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Chapter 6 -- White Queen, White Pawn
"If you're going in there, I'm going with you," Jack said, as Zara ran a scan on the Matrix feed, trying to place Ref's locus.
"Hey, I was dumb enough not to go into that room with her in the first place: I'm going in there alone," I insisted.
"You're a greenhorn yet, grasshopper," Jakc said. "Maybe, in that case, I should tell you the whole story: I helped unlpug ref, so I look at here... not as my child, but as my ward anyway. I worry about her, so when Trinity found you, I started hoping you were the one for Ref.
"There's a lot more to it; I know Ref well, so I know her strengths and her flaws. I know she can get to sure of herself when she's jacked in. You saw how she got with that French guy. I don't know if you noticed, but her head jack sticks out a little bit."
"I did, one of the first things I noticed about her," I said.
"There's a reason for that: her mother was pod-born, but her father was Zion-born. Ref was conceived out here in the real world, the old-fashioned, love-each-other-up way; but early on in her mother's pregnancy, the two of them made one last run, to unplug her mother's sister... their ship, the Charlemagne, was attacked by squids. Her father was killed; her mother was reinserted into the Matrix, and they removed Ref from her mother's body and put her on one of those stalks in the fields. So, as a consequence, her skull didn't grow around her jack the way yours did. That seems to have something to do with her over-confidence, or on the other hand, sometimes she goes the other way and has these 'meltdowns', for lack of a better word, while she's plugged in, then she loses her focus and she can't bend the code."
"So where do we come in?" I asked.
"We gotta get her out of there before she has a system failure," Jack said. "Or that French guy does something nasty to her."
"Either way, she's so useless, we oughta just end it all right here," Zara said, getting up and approaching Ref's chair. Her hand reached for Ref's cable. I moved between her and Ref, my fists clenching. I'd never hit a woman, but this was not a time to be discriminating when someone else's life was at stake. Especially when that person had been trying to get at me in the first place.
"Zara, leave her be; we'll get her out," Tank said, warning and soothing at the same time.
Zara backed down and let Tank take over. The phone by the console started to ring; Tank threw on his headset as he picked up the call. He looked up at me.
"Ash, it's Seraph," he said, handing the headset to me.
I took it. "Hello?"
"Ash, we have located her, but this line is not safe. You must meet me where we first encountered each other," Seraph said, with urgent calm.
"I'm on it," I said. The line cut out; I handed the headset back to Tank, who set to work punching code.
Sand couldn't jack us in fast enough...
We emerged in Chinatown and headed for the teahouse. Seraph met us at the door and led us inside.
"We have few moments to spare, so I must use few words," he said. "Ref is held by a very dangerous program, who calls himself the Merovingian."
"A program?" I asked, feeling one eyebrow twitch like it wanted to rise.
"Anyone we know?" Jack asked.
Seraph nodded. "You have already encountered him. Your paths crossed at the auction."
Even as he said it, my mind was adding two and two together. The French guy went by the name Meroveque, which sounded a lot like this "Merovingian" moniker....
"You mean that French guy is..." I hardly dared to finish that sentence. Or needed to.
"Yes, he is," Seraph replied. " I know this because I know him well, for I once worked in his service." He pulled aside the flap of his Chinese jacket and pulled down the neck of the black tank-top he wore underneath. Etched into the flesh of his chest like a brand or a scar a couple inches below the pit of his throat, was a Roman capital letter M. He pulled his clothes together. "I know where to find him: I can show you the way there."
Jack's senses must have been twigged. "If he's one of them, then you must be one of them too. Am I right?"
"Yes," Seraph replied.
"But in that case, can we really trust you?" I asked, my turn to be suspicious.
"You must decide that for yourself. My task is only to protect that which matters most," Seraph said.
I didn't know what to make of that, but we didn't have much to choose from if we were gonna get Ref out of the Matrix alive. I didn't want to find out this guy was leading us into a trap.
Well, I'd wiggled out of tight spots before, so I took the chance.
"Lead us to him," I said.
Seraph nodded once, then took a key from the chain-loop about his wrist, fitted the key into the lock and locked the door. He paused for two counts, then unlocked the door and opened us, sending us through, Jack covering our entrance, me covering the exit.
We stepped into a long hallway that seemed to go on forever, lined with grey-green steel doors.
"What *is* this place?" Jack asked.
"These doors are access portals. Maintenance uses them to enter different sectors of the Matrix," Seraph explained.
"So you programs are programming other programs," I said. "How come no one else knows about these doors?"
"The Source is wary: it does not allow maintainers to mainfest themselves. If any program makes its presence known to the unsuspecting, the Source calls it back to itself," Seraph said.
"For what, a slap on the wrist and transferral to another, lesser job?" I asked.
"For deletion," Seraph replied. I caught an edge of fear touching his otherwise calm voice. I realized he must have been threatened with that, with deletion, so he ducked out of sight and went to work for the French guy rather than get canned permanently. But he went on, "Most choose not to go to the Source. Most choose to exist in exile; but if they choose that, then they must seek the shelter and aide of the Merovingian."
"All right, so in that case, what does he want with Ref, besides payback for insulting his French ego by outbidding him at that auction?" I asked.
"You will have to ask him that, but be on guard: he has many ways to harm you."
I got the gut feeling from Seraph's tone that he spoke from the voice of experience: first hand experience.
He paused before one of the doors, inserted his key into the lock and turned it, then opened the door a crack. He beckoned us to step through as he pulled the door open wider.
. . . We stepped through into a glassed-in courtyard garden in the middle of a big, fancy, French-looking mansion-like pile. A chateau, I think they call it. We'd stepped in through a door behind some shrubbery, that might normally have lead into a toolroom or something. If this was a real chateau, that is.
Seraph headed straight for a set of double glass doors opening into a hallway-vestibule and guided us through. "Stay close to me," he warned in a low voice. "There are many dangers here."
"Including two dangerous beings..." said a husky whisper of a voice nearby.
"... Like us," replied a second voice, exactly like the first one.
I looked up in time to see these two... ghost-like guys with pallid hair and faces and clad in silvery duster-type coats, appear literally out of the woodwork and stand before us, blocking our path. Seraph moved like he would attack them, but they lunged at Jack and me, going right through us, grabbing us from behind and holding razors to our throats.
"Let them alone," Seraph said. "We are only here to talk to him."
"If this is about the girl with the sword..." said Ghost-Guy #1 (holding me).
"...He isn't interested in talk," added Ghost-Guy #2 (holding Jack).
"*He* may not be interested, but *I* am," said a woman's sultry voice nearby. I managed to peer up the hallway in the direction of the voice...
In time to see Mrs. Armand approaching. I have to admit, she's a sight for sore eyes, but right then, the sight of her made mind itch. I needed all the focus I could manafge right then, and her showing up was tantamount to someone sticking their greasy thumbs into a newsphotographer's camera lens.
"Let the young one go, boys, and let me have a talk with him in private," she said.
Ghost-Guy #1 slackened his grip on my throat and sheathed the razor, but I got the feeling he would much rather have slit my throat than listen to the boss's wife.
She took me by the hand and led me up the hallway to a posh sitting room lined with bookcases and closed the door behind us. She turned and faced me. I'd gauged her heigh wrong at the auction: she was nearly as tall as I am, so I found myself practically looking into her eyes on a level.
"It is more than mere duty that brings you here," she said. "I can feel it in you..." She ran her gaze down me like a carress as she said this. I felt my stomach somersault inside me, but I kept my ground, my hand going for my pistol.
Her gaze came to rest on my chest. "Yes... I can see it in you, I can feel it... something I have not felt for a long time... something besides the anger that you put up as a wall around your heart." She moved in and placed her lily-white hand on my chest, over my heart.
I backed away, drawing my pistol and levelling it at her knees. "Look, whatever it is you want with me, name your price and I'll pay it." I didn't relish getting snappy with her, but I had to do something to keep my focus then. I didn't doubt for a second that her husband might have put her up to this, to lead me on a wild goose chase. Well, I wasn't about to let this little peacock make a goose out of me.
She smiled thinly. "You mistake my methods for my husband's. Perhaps they really are not so different, but we both have quite different purposes: He seeks after power, I disire only experience."
"Yeah, well, you're gonna experience me shooting a hole through your foot unless you tell me what you want with me and where Ref is," I said.
Mrs. Armand's smile turned sweet but knowing. "Such fierceness of intent can only come from devotion," she said. "Let me have but a taste of it, and I shall show you the way."
"How?" I said, not daring to lower my revolver just yet.
"I want to know a little of this devotion, this love. I once knew it a long time ago, when we first came here, but it has been taken from me... I wish to remember what it felt like."
A little trip down memory lane, courtesty of a guy who was half her husband's age, eh?
"I want you to kiss me. I want to feel as if I am the one who knows this devotion you show," she said.
I slid my gun back into my coat pocket. "All right, I think I can manage that," I said.
Closing my eyes to slits, I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, carefully keeping my body away from hers even as she drew closer to me. I leaned in just a whisker and stopped, making myself a sitting duck, letting her lips touch mine. I kept my mouth closed: anything more and I'd really get myself in a lather.
We seperated. "Dreadful," she murmured, with a slight roll of her eyes. "I would rather you had shot me: then I would at least have felt your anger."
"Here, let me try again. I've just... never kissed a married woman before," I confessed.
She smiled almost archly, raising one eyebrow, but any man would have detected the snaky little gleam in the corners of her eyes. "There is a first time for all experiences," she said.
I put one hand on her waist this time, drawing her close to me; she felt soft and warm to my touch -- just like the cat that she was. I tilted my head slightly, moving in, my mouth -- slightly open -- finding hers. Her lips tasted sweet and salty at the same time: the sweetness had a tart, fruity taste to it, like cranberries or something a lot more exotic like pomegranates, but I knew the salt came from her own tears. I relaxed my jaw a touch (Hey, I had an older brother who gave me pointers on how to kiss a girl.) and ever so gently caressed the inside of her upper lip with the tip of my tongue. I felt her relaxing in turn, her tongue-tip seeking and finding mine, carressing it gently as she slid her hands from the small of my back, up my spine to my shoulders, pulling me closer so that I felt her breasts framing my heart.
She released my face, slowly, lingering. She pressed her body against mine in a final embrace; I felt a sigh escape her lips and fan my mouth.
"Yes..." she sighed, more a sound than a word, her eyes closed in utter bliss. "That... is how it feels... You love her a great deal, but you barely know it. Your heart is holding back, though it longs to give itself to her. I hope that she knows this."
"Yeah, I think she does... but she's got someone else already."
She released her hold on me. "No, there is another one for you. It was the love you have for her that I felt." She approached one of the bookcases. She pulled one of the books out slightly and something clicked inside the wall. The panel in the wall pivoted outward, revealing the entrance to a passageway leading into the basement, like something out of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler movie, only a lot more damp.
"He has her in the dungeon," she said, pointing the way.
I nodded in reply and hot-footed it in the direction she'd shown me.
I was just turning a corner when something dropped from the ceiling behind me. I turned to get a look at it and try shooting it. I had just enough time to get a glimpse of this tall guy dressed in black with a face like a skull framed with black hair like a string mop, when he backhanded me across the face, knocking me out cold.
* * * * * * * * *
I woke up feeling cold water splash me full in the face. I coughed and sputtered for a moment, then opened my eyes. One of those little Italian-looking goons stood over me, grinning and holding an empty tin pail, while the other covered me with a gun.
"Hey look, Abel, the sprout just needed a li'l water," said the one with the gun. Abel set the pail down on the floor and grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, hauled me to my feet.
"Time to rise and shine, gumshoe," Abel said.
"What'd you just call him?" the one with the gun asked, wrinkling his brow.
"'At's what they call detective-guys in old black-and-white mystery flicks. If you weren't watchin' vampire flicks all the time, Cain, y' might learn some history from that old stuff," Abel replied.
Cain sniggered. "*You* learn anything, Mr. Diarrhea-of-the-Brain?!"
"Gentlemen... you can fight over him later," said an all-too-familiar voice with a smarmy French accent, close by. "Mr. Ash and I have business to discuss."
I got a good look at my surroundings: I stood in a dingy grey room, like a hotel room or a small apartment, the wallpaper peeling and chunks of plaster fallen from the ceiling, lying in small piles of rubble on the warped floorboards. It looked a lot like the crazy detective's room, only minus the chessboard graffiti. I stood opposite a cheap wooden table close to the end wall.
On a rickety wooden chair behind the table sat Armand the French guy, a.k.a. the Merovingian, clad in a gangsterish navy-blue pinstripe suit, his wing-tip shod feet resting on the tabletop. He smirked at me from under the wide brim of a black fedora tilted rakishly over one ear.
He spread his arms slightly. "I would be an ungenial host if I did not have some consideration for the tastes of my guests," he said. "Perhaps the distressed 1940s decor is more to your liking?"
"Where in hell do you have Ref, and what have you done to Jack?" I demanded.
He folded his arms lazily behind his neck. "Always to the point, young man. Your little travelling companion is being suitably entertained, but your little femme du plaisair is detained elsewhere."
"Listen, cut the bushwa, you batch of code and tell me where Ref is?" I demanded.
He looked right at me. If he had any nerves or neural conductors or something like that, I'd clearly hit a tender one: he usually looked as if he'd just swallowed a cheekfull of vinegar, but his face looked even more sour. "So you know..." he said.
"That you're one of *them*? That you're just a program, another part of this system of control?" I said. "It doesn't take an Einstein to figure that out. And what do you want with her anyway, besides a quick bang with her?"
He recovered from his momentary humiliation, but I'd probably earned his eternal indignation, not that I cared a rat's behind about that.
"So you have some concern for this girl after all," he said, his smirk of a smile coming back. "Or are you merely trying to redeem yourself for not keeping such a close watch on her at the auction? Don't waste your strength, mon enfant: You'll need every ounce of it just to stay alive."
"Enough of that! Where. Is. Ref?"
I saw his eyes twitch toward a door beside the table, standing slightly ajar, which I somehow hadn't noticed before. "So you want her after all? " he continued, insinuating, fixing my gaze with his. "But this is not as simple a matter to resolve as you may desire it to be. I have something that you want. But... for me to give it to you, first you must give *me* something *I* need."
His gaze settled on my left eye, the one Trinity had extracted the bug from, his eyes narrowing, intent, like they were trying to read my thoughts. But it dawned on me he must be reading the code of my virtual form.
"Yes, I thought as much: You still have traces of it."
"Have what?" I demanded.
"When the other fine demoiselle removed the tracker from your eye, she failed to notice that it left behind its mark. The traces that remain could be of great use to those who know how to use it. *They* have already taken note of it, which is why they dog your very footsteps each time you enter this world."
I wasn't getting what he meant at first, but I was starting to put two and two together and it was adding up to a number I just didn't like the looks of.
"Give me your eyes, and the girl is yours," he said.
I started to reach for my gun, but I discovered it was missing.
Then it dawned on me...
That door behind him was just a heap of code. It wasn't real, any more than the rest of this crummy world. If I treated it as if it were a real door, it would behave like one; but if I treated it as if it weren't real, it would obey me...
Italian goons behind me and French crime boss to the left of me or none, I lunged over the table top and kicked open the door, sending it flying in a bunch of green-code splinters as I hurtled into the next room.
The only stick of furniture there was an iron framed bed underneath a dingy window. Ref lay on the bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the headboard and the footboard. The skirt of her coat-gown had been torn from the hem to her waist and her legs lay spread apart.
The cords binding her were no more real than the door or anything else. I snatched her up from the bed so hard the bedframe creaked and bent as I tore her free from the cords. Slinging her over my shoulder, I lunged at the window feet-first as a hail of bullets pelted through the open doorway behind me.
The glass exploded around us as Ref and I burst through the window and plummeted to the earth. The outside world had taken on the look of a noirish backstreet, but it oozed from the greys and blacks of the world as I had known it, to the brick red and stucco tan of the outside of the Chateau.
I hit the ground feet first, so hard we left a small impact crater in the cobblestones of the outer courtyard. I looked around for an exit of any kind and spotted a manhole-like grating just a few feet away. I ran to it, pried it up, and still holding Ref's inert form, dove in feet first.
We dropped into a sewer channel with a couple inches of stinking water underfoot, but I managed to pull myself and Ref up onto the ledge that ran along the dank walls. I ran for several dozen yards until I came to a bend in the sewer. Round the bend was an intersection, where another channel joined the main channel. I set Ref down on the ledge and stopped to pull out my pocket phone. Just as I opened it, the phone rang in my hand.
"Hello?" I said, answering it.
"Hey, Ash, where the hell have you been and where you think you're going?" Tank's voice said.
"I was about to call and ask you that," I said.
"Well, I can give you a general location: You're all the way up in the mountains, five-hundred miles north of the city."
"Damn," I muttered.
"It gets better: that tunnel you're following empties into a stream in the woods. You're lost, man; nothing short of a miracle or an angel is gonna get you out of there."
I was about to hang up, sling Ref ovber my shoulder again, and keep plugging on, when I heard metal grind on metal nearby. I turned, trying to find the source of the sound.
A door, obviously some kind of maintenance entrance, opened opposite to me. Jack pushed it open wide enough and stepped through, accompanied by Seraph and a small Oriental-looking guy wearing a green work apron over a rumpled shirt and pants, squinting around him through a Coke-bottle thick pair of glasses.
"Tank, I gotta run; the cavalry just showed up," I said, hanging up the phone.
"Looks like you got the brass ring," Jack said, his eye on Ref, grinning slightly.
"Jack, how in hell did you get here?" I asked.
"It wasn't easy," Jack said. "After the Mero's dame took you aside for your little private romantic tete-a-tete, Seraph and me got ourselves a one-way ticket to the dungeons, courtesy of the Mercury Twins. But we managed to get out of there in one piece, and even picked up a brass ring of our own.
Seraph put a hand on the little Chinese guy's shoulder. "This is the Keymaker. The Oracle has been searching for him since he vanished some time ago."
"The Merovingian captured me for my keys, since they would give him free access to the maintenance hallways," the little guy said. "I have been trying to escape, but for some reason, our paths were supposed to cross."
"For what reason?" I asked.
He held up a ring from which hung a single key. "This key will bring you to your exit in the warehouse district," he said. "But you must go now: the enemies are closing in."
I stooped and slung Ref over my shoulder; Jack took the key from the Keymaker.
"So we just stick that key into any door and it'll take us home?" Jack asked.
"Yes, it will," the Keymaker replied. I was tempted to ask this guy why he was doing us this favor, especially since I got a hunch that this guy was another program. But I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, not even a virtual horse. Anyone who hated the French guy was a friend of mine at that point. Especially if that friend could give us a passkey home.
I stepped across the channel and through the door. Seraph pulled it closed behind us. "You must return to your world: it is not safe here," he said.
"I get your drift," I said.
Jack fitted the key into the lock on the nearest door, then glanced at the Keymaker. "Am I doing this right?" he asked.
The little guy nodded, giving us a sadly patient shadow of a smile.
Jack turned the key in the lock, then turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.
Jack and I stepped through and out into the alleyway behind the warehouse where we'd been calling in and out of the Matrix. Ref stirred in my arms and groaned against my neck, like she was coming to. I knelt on the ground, and lowered her into my lap. I tried to tilt her face up to mine, but she resisted. I removed the gag from her mouth
"Hey, you all right, Ref?" I asked.
"I'm sorry," she said, dropping her gaze to the ground.
"It's all right, you don't have to be," I said.
"No.... it's all my fault," she said. "I should have listened to you back there at the auction."
"In that case, it's my fault too: I egged you on to buy that sword."
"But I chose to listen to you. You couldn't have seen any of this happening," she said, looking down at the rip in her clothes. "But I should have seen this coming. Armand was the first man I was ever attracted to... romantically... he knew that.... and he preyed on it, the same as he preys on everything else, the beast..."
My worst fear for her had come true. "It happened on this side of the mirror. It's not real."
"It was a dream I used to have when I was still asleep here... and it came true, as true as it can be... but it was a nightmare, a goddamn nightmare!"
The phone in my pocket twittered like a hysteric electronic canary. I pulled it out and answered it.
An earful of static scalded my eardrum. Tank's voice cut through the mess: "Hate to break up the happy reunion, but we got incoming and so do you: one's on top of you already!"
I stuffed the phone into my pocket and flung Ref over my shoulder. Jack drew his .38s and covered the alleyway as we bolted for the warehouse door.
I kicked the door open, darting a glance back in time to see a black sedan with dark windows plow into the alleyway on two wheels. The doors opened and three of those wierd Feds -- those Agents, rather -- got out. Whatever you call 'em, I wasn't about to hang around. Especially when they started shooting.
Jack at my heels, shooting at them, I bolted up the hallway to the office. The phone started to ring: a shot cracked behind me and a bullet whizzed over my head.
I snatched up the receiver and shoved it into Ref's hands. On the other end of the line, I heard a lot of racket and the line screamed with static. As Ref's form dissolved into the phone, a man's scream cut through the sound.
I threw the receiver to Jack; he leaned over it and followed Ref back into reality.
I caught the receiver as it fell; I was just raising it to my ear when I heard movement, a footstep behind me.
I whirled round. There, behind me, stood a lone Agent...
To be continued....
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Afterword/notes:
The idea for the Mero's gangsterish attire in this scene came from the Buick Rainier commercials that have been airing on TV lately, you know the ones with the gangsterish-looking guy whispering ideas over the shoulders of several car designers. Don't ask me why, but there was something about that guy that reminded me oddly of the Mero, even though the Rainier guy is about five inches shorter and a good thirty pounds heavier than Lambert Wilson (better known to us "Matrix" geeks as the Merovingian!). Also, the change in venue (film-noir decay as opposed to the Baroque/Roccoco opulence of the Chateau) was a stroke of sheer inspiration. I thought it would make a good contrast, for one thing, for another, I remember reading, waaaay back in 2000 or early 2001, back when the Wachowski Brothers were starting to drop hints about "Matrix 2 & 3", an item about the Mero. which described him as having power over the Matrix, being able to bend it and mold it to suit his purposes (We didn't see much of that in the films, although he seems to have carved out quite a little kingdom for himself and the programs who have fallen under his dominion, but maybe there'll be more of that in the "Matrix Online" RPG).
Under the Gun
by "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Part of this chapter was insipired by "Alina's" *EXCELLENT* transcription of the "Enter the Matrix" game script, which I cannot reccommend highly enough! My computer is too slow to handle the game, so I'm gonna wait till the comp dies and I get a new one before I get this game, so when I found this transcript at: http://www.kalime.com/etm/index.html/ I pounced on it!
But first, a few words of thanks to all my reviewers:
To Argent Inluminai: Beaming That's gotta be the best review I've had for this fic, and most likely one of the best reviews I've ever gotten for *any* fanfic of mine. Thanks! Glad it makes up for the deficiencies in the short it's based on (Not to say that it isn't the best of the "Animatrix" shorts; I suspect the reason why Ash lets the Agents kill him is inspired by a chess move known as a sacrifice -- I think -- and that's basically what he does, so that Trinity can get away.). Oh, I happen to be a *huge* fan of the Merovingian myself, too (even if I am putting him in a really bad light in this fic... what can I say? The guy is eeeevil... but that doesn't keep me from thinking he's a sexy hunk of code!)! If you've caught the subtle references in chapter five of this... well, Ref has something to say about the Mero later in this chapter, so I let her, and this chapter, speak for itself. Hope it lives up to your expectations: it was a tough one to write!
To Chase's Aces: I'd write a fight scene, but I'm not particularly good at writing them -- they're hard to choreograph! Yueh Wo Ping, the fight-choreographer for the "Matrix" series is a master at fight choreography, and my few feeble attempts at replicating his flair have been so bad, I felt it was best to avoid humiliating myself by writing something I know would hardly come close to his excellence. Plus, I'm aiming for a more dramatic/psychological angle on this story.
Mild WARNING: A slightly steamy kiss scene and references to implied semi-non-con. Not enough to up the rating, but just to forewarn you...
Disclaimer:
See chapter 1
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Chapter 6 -- White Queen, White Pawn
"If you're going in there, I'm going with you," Jack said, as Zara ran a scan on the Matrix feed, trying to place Ref's locus.
"Hey, I was dumb enough not to go into that room with her in the first place: I'm going in there alone," I insisted.
"You're a greenhorn yet, grasshopper," Jakc said. "Maybe, in that case, I should tell you the whole story: I helped unlpug ref, so I look at here... not as my child, but as my ward anyway. I worry about her, so when Trinity found you, I started hoping you were the one for Ref.
"There's a lot more to it; I know Ref well, so I know her strengths and her flaws. I know she can get to sure of herself when she's jacked in. You saw how she got with that French guy. I don't know if you noticed, but her head jack sticks out a little bit."
"I did, one of the first things I noticed about her," I said.
"There's a reason for that: her mother was pod-born, but her father was Zion-born. Ref was conceived out here in the real world, the old-fashioned, love-each-other-up way; but early on in her mother's pregnancy, the two of them made one last run, to unplug her mother's sister... their ship, the Charlemagne, was attacked by squids. Her father was killed; her mother was reinserted into the Matrix, and they removed Ref from her mother's body and put her on one of those stalks in the fields. So, as a consequence, her skull didn't grow around her jack the way yours did. That seems to have something to do with her over-confidence, or on the other hand, sometimes she goes the other way and has these 'meltdowns', for lack of a better word, while she's plugged in, then she loses her focus and she can't bend the code."
"So where do we come in?" I asked.
"We gotta get her out of there before she has a system failure," Jack said. "Or that French guy does something nasty to her."
"Either way, she's so useless, we oughta just end it all right here," Zara said, getting up and approaching Ref's chair. Her hand reached for Ref's cable. I moved between her and Ref, my fists clenching. I'd never hit a woman, but this was not a time to be discriminating when someone else's life was at stake. Especially when that person had been trying to get at me in the first place.
"Zara, leave her be; we'll get her out," Tank said, warning and soothing at the same time.
Zara backed down and let Tank take over. The phone by the console started to ring; Tank threw on his headset as he picked up the call. He looked up at me.
"Ash, it's Seraph," he said, handing the headset to me.
I took it. "Hello?"
"Ash, we have located her, but this line is not safe. You must meet me where we first encountered each other," Seraph said, with urgent calm.
"I'm on it," I said. The line cut out; I handed the headset back to Tank, who set to work punching code.
Sand couldn't jack us in fast enough...
We emerged in Chinatown and headed for the teahouse. Seraph met us at the door and led us inside.
"We have few moments to spare, so I must use few words," he said. "Ref is held by a very dangerous program, who calls himself the Merovingian."
"A program?" I asked, feeling one eyebrow twitch like it wanted to rise.
"Anyone we know?" Jack asked.
Seraph nodded. "You have already encountered him. Your paths crossed at the auction."
Even as he said it, my mind was adding two and two together. The French guy went by the name Meroveque, which sounded a lot like this "Merovingian" moniker....
"You mean that French guy is..." I hardly dared to finish that sentence. Or needed to.
"Yes, he is," Seraph replied. " I know this because I know him well, for I once worked in his service." He pulled aside the flap of his Chinese jacket and pulled down the neck of the black tank-top he wore underneath. Etched into the flesh of his chest like a brand or a scar a couple inches below the pit of his throat, was a Roman capital letter M. He pulled his clothes together. "I know where to find him: I can show you the way there."
Jack's senses must have been twigged. "If he's one of them, then you must be one of them too. Am I right?"
"Yes," Seraph replied.
"But in that case, can we really trust you?" I asked, my turn to be suspicious.
"You must decide that for yourself. My task is only to protect that which matters most," Seraph said.
I didn't know what to make of that, but we didn't have much to choose from if we were gonna get Ref out of the Matrix alive. I didn't want to find out this guy was leading us into a trap.
Well, I'd wiggled out of tight spots before, so I took the chance.
"Lead us to him," I said.
Seraph nodded once, then took a key from the chain-loop about his wrist, fitted the key into the lock and locked the door. He paused for two counts, then unlocked the door and opened us, sending us through, Jack covering our entrance, me covering the exit.
We stepped into a long hallway that seemed to go on forever, lined with grey-green steel doors.
"What *is* this place?" Jack asked.
"These doors are access portals. Maintenance uses them to enter different sectors of the Matrix," Seraph explained.
"So you programs are programming other programs," I said. "How come no one else knows about these doors?"
"The Source is wary: it does not allow maintainers to mainfest themselves. If any program makes its presence known to the unsuspecting, the Source calls it back to itself," Seraph said.
"For what, a slap on the wrist and transferral to another, lesser job?" I asked.
"For deletion," Seraph replied. I caught an edge of fear touching his otherwise calm voice. I realized he must have been threatened with that, with deletion, so he ducked out of sight and went to work for the French guy rather than get canned permanently. But he went on, "Most choose not to go to the Source. Most choose to exist in exile; but if they choose that, then they must seek the shelter and aide of the Merovingian."
"All right, so in that case, what does he want with Ref, besides payback for insulting his French ego by outbidding him at that auction?" I asked.
"You will have to ask him that, but be on guard: he has many ways to harm you."
I got the gut feeling from Seraph's tone that he spoke from the voice of experience: first hand experience.
He paused before one of the doors, inserted his key into the lock and turned it, then opened the door a crack. He beckoned us to step through as he pulled the door open wider.
. . . We stepped through into a glassed-in courtyard garden in the middle of a big, fancy, French-looking mansion-like pile. A chateau, I think they call it. We'd stepped in through a door behind some shrubbery, that might normally have lead into a toolroom or something. If this was a real chateau, that is.
Seraph headed straight for a set of double glass doors opening into a hallway-vestibule and guided us through. "Stay close to me," he warned in a low voice. "There are many dangers here."
"Including two dangerous beings..." said a husky whisper of a voice nearby.
"... Like us," replied a second voice, exactly like the first one.
I looked up in time to see these two... ghost-like guys with pallid hair and faces and clad in silvery duster-type coats, appear literally out of the woodwork and stand before us, blocking our path. Seraph moved like he would attack them, but they lunged at Jack and me, going right through us, grabbing us from behind and holding razors to our throats.
"Let them alone," Seraph said. "We are only here to talk to him."
"If this is about the girl with the sword..." said Ghost-Guy #1 (holding me).
"...He isn't interested in talk," added Ghost-Guy #2 (holding Jack).
"*He* may not be interested, but *I* am," said a woman's sultry voice nearby. I managed to peer up the hallway in the direction of the voice...
In time to see Mrs. Armand approaching. I have to admit, she's a sight for sore eyes, but right then, the sight of her made mind itch. I needed all the focus I could manafge right then, and her showing up was tantamount to someone sticking their greasy thumbs into a newsphotographer's camera lens.
"Let the young one go, boys, and let me have a talk with him in private," she said.
Ghost-Guy #1 slackened his grip on my throat and sheathed the razor, but I got the feeling he would much rather have slit my throat than listen to the boss's wife.
She took me by the hand and led me up the hallway to a posh sitting room lined with bookcases and closed the door behind us. She turned and faced me. I'd gauged her heigh wrong at the auction: she was nearly as tall as I am, so I found myself practically looking into her eyes on a level.
"It is more than mere duty that brings you here," she said. "I can feel it in you..." She ran her gaze down me like a carress as she said this. I felt my stomach somersault inside me, but I kept my ground, my hand going for my pistol.
Her gaze came to rest on my chest. "Yes... I can see it in you, I can feel it... something I have not felt for a long time... something besides the anger that you put up as a wall around your heart." She moved in and placed her lily-white hand on my chest, over my heart.
I backed away, drawing my pistol and levelling it at her knees. "Look, whatever it is you want with me, name your price and I'll pay it." I didn't relish getting snappy with her, but I had to do something to keep my focus then. I didn't doubt for a second that her husband might have put her up to this, to lead me on a wild goose chase. Well, I wasn't about to let this little peacock make a goose out of me.
She smiled thinly. "You mistake my methods for my husband's. Perhaps they really are not so different, but we both have quite different purposes: He seeks after power, I disire only experience."
"Yeah, well, you're gonna experience me shooting a hole through your foot unless you tell me what you want with me and where Ref is," I said.
Mrs. Armand's smile turned sweet but knowing. "Such fierceness of intent can only come from devotion," she said. "Let me have but a taste of it, and I shall show you the way."
"How?" I said, not daring to lower my revolver just yet.
"I want to know a little of this devotion, this love. I once knew it a long time ago, when we first came here, but it has been taken from me... I wish to remember what it felt like."
A little trip down memory lane, courtesty of a guy who was half her husband's age, eh?
"I want you to kiss me. I want to feel as if I am the one who knows this devotion you show," she said.
I slid my gun back into my coat pocket. "All right, I think I can manage that," I said.
Closing my eyes to slits, I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, carefully keeping my body away from hers even as she drew closer to me. I leaned in just a whisker and stopped, making myself a sitting duck, letting her lips touch mine. I kept my mouth closed: anything more and I'd really get myself in a lather.
We seperated. "Dreadful," she murmured, with a slight roll of her eyes. "I would rather you had shot me: then I would at least have felt your anger."
"Here, let me try again. I've just... never kissed a married woman before," I confessed.
She smiled almost archly, raising one eyebrow, but any man would have detected the snaky little gleam in the corners of her eyes. "There is a first time for all experiences," she said.
I put one hand on her waist this time, drawing her close to me; she felt soft and warm to my touch -- just like the cat that she was. I tilted my head slightly, moving in, my mouth -- slightly open -- finding hers. Her lips tasted sweet and salty at the same time: the sweetness had a tart, fruity taste to it, like cranberries or something a lot more exotic like pomegranates, but I knew the salt came from her own tears. I relaxed my jaw a touch (Hey, I had an older brother who gave me pointers on how to kiss a girl.) and ever so gently caressed the inside of her upper lip with the tip of my tongue. I felt her relaxing in turn, her tongue-tip seeking and finding mine, carressing it gently as she slid her hands from the small of my back, up my spine to my shoulders, pulling me closer so that I felt her breasts framing my heart.
She released my face, slowly, lingering. She pressed her body against mine in a final embrace; I felt a sigh escape her lips and fan my mouth.
"Yes..." she sighed, more a sound than a word, her eyes closed in utter bliss. "That... is how it feels... You love her a great deal, but you barely know it. Your heart is holding back, though it longs to give itself to her. I hope that she knows this."
"Yeah, I think she does... but she's got someone else already."
She released her hold on me. "No, there is another one for you. It was the love you have for her that I felt." She approached one of the bookcases. She pulled one of the books out slightly and something clicked inside the wall. The panel in the wall pivoted outward, revealing the entrance to a passageway leading into the basement, like something out of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler movie, only a lot more damp.
"He has her in the dungeon," she said, pointing the way.
I nodded in reply and hot-footed it in the direction she'd shown me.
I was just turning a corner when something dropped from the ceiling behind me. I turned to get a look at it and try shooting it. I had just enough time to get a glimpse of this tall guy dressed in black with a face like a skull framed with black hair like a string mop, when he backhanded me across the face, knocking me out cold.
* * * * * * * * *
I woke up feeling cold water splash me full in the face. I coughed and sputtered for a moment, then opened my eyes. One of those little Italian-looking goons stood over me, grinning and holding an empty tin pail, while the other covered me with a gun.
"Hey look, Abel, the sprout just needed a li'l water," said the one with the gun. Abel set the pail down on the floor and grabbing me by the scruff of the neck, hauled me to my feet.
"Time to rise and shine, gumshoe," Abel said.
"What'd you just call him?" the one with the gun asked, wrinkling his brow.
"'At's what they call detective-guys in old black-and-white mystery flicks. If you weren't watchin' vampire flicks all the time, Cain, y' might learn some history from that old stuff," Abel replied.
Cain sniggered. "*You* learn anything, Mr. Diarrhea-of-the-Brain?!"
"Gentlemen... you can fight over him later," said an all-too-familiar voice with a smarmy French accent, close by. "Mr. Ash and I have business to discuss."
I got a good look at my surroundings: I stood in a dingy grey room, like a hotel room or a small apartment, the wallpaper peeling and chunks of plaster fallen from the ceiling, lying in small piles of rubble on the warped floorboards. It looked a lot like the crazy detective's room, only minus the chessboard graffiti. I stood opposite a cheap wooden table close to the end wall.
On a rickety wooden chair behind the table sat Armand the French guy, a.k.a. the Merovingian, clad in a gangsterish navy-blue pinstripe suit, his wing-tip shod feet resting on the tabletop. He smirked at me from under the wide brim of a black fedora tilted rakishly over one ear.
He spread his arms slightly. "I would be an ungenial host if I did not have some consideration for the tastes of my guests," he said. "Perhaps the distressed 1940s decor is more to your liking?"
"Where in hell do you have Ref, and what have you done to Jack?" I demanded.
He folded his arms lazily behind his neck. "Always to the point, young man. Your little travelling companion is being suitably entertained, but your little femme du plaisair is detained elsewhere."
"Listen, cut the bushwa, you batch of code and tell me where Ref is?" I demanded.
He looked right at me. If he had any nerves or neural conductors or something like that, I'd clearly hit a tender one: he usually looked as if he'd just swallowed a cheekfull of vinegar, but his face looked even more sour. "So you know..." he said.
"That you're one of *them*? That you're just a program, another part of this system of control?" I said. "It doesn't take an Einstein to figure that out. And what do you want with her anyway, besides a quick bang with her?"
He recovered from his momentary humiliation, but I'd probably earned his eternal indignation, not that I cared a rat's behind about that.
"So you have some concern for this girl after all," he said, his smirk of a smile coming back. "Or are you merely trying to redeem yourself for not keeping such a close watch on her at the auction? Don't waste your strength, mon enfant: You'll need every ounce of it just to stay alive."
"Enough of that! Where. Is. Ref?"
I saw his eyes twitch toward a door beside the table, standing slightly ajar, which I somehow hadn't noticed before. "So you want her after all? " he continued, insinuating, fixing my gaze with his. "But this is not as simple a matter to resolve as you may desire it to be. I have something that you want. But... for me to give it to you, first you must give *me* something *I* need."
His gaze settled on my left eye, the one Trinity had extracted the bug from, his eyes narrowing, intent, like they were trying to read my thoughts. But it dawned on me he must be reading the code of my virtual form.
"Yes, I thought as much: You still have traces of it."
"Have what?" I demanded.
"When the other fine demoiselle removed the tracker from your eye, she failed to notice that it left behind its mark. The traces that remain could be of great use to those who know how to use it. *They* have already taken note of it, which is why they dog your very footsteps each time you enter this world."
I wasn't getting what he meant at first, but I was starting to put two and two together and it was adding up to a number I just didn't like the looks of.
"Give me your eyes, and the girl is yours," he said.
I started to reach for my gun, but I discovered it was missing.
Then it dawned on me...
That door behind him was just a heap of code. It wasn't real, any more than the rest of this crummy world. If I treated it as if it were a real door, it would behave like one; but if I treated it as if it weren't real, it would obey me...
Italian goons behind me and French crime boss to the left of me or none, I lunged over the table top and kicked open the door, sending it flying in a bunch of green-code splinters as I hurtled into the next room.
The only stick of furniture there was an iron framed bed underneath a dingy window. Ref lay on the bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the headboard and the footboard. The skirt of her coat-gown had been torn from the hem to her waist and her legs lay spread apart.
The cords binding her were no more real than the door or anything else. I snatched her up from the bed so hard the bedframe creaked and bent as I tore her free from the cords. Slinging her over my shoulder, I lunged at the window feet-first as a hail of bullets pelted through the open doorway behind me.
The glass exploded around us as Ref and I burst through the window and plummeted to the earth. The outside world had taken on the look of a noirish backstreet, but it oozed from the greys and blacks of the world as I had known it, to the brick red and stucco tan of the outside of the Chateau.
I hit the ground feet first, so hard we left a small impact crater in the cobblestones of the outer courtyard. I looked around for an exit of any kind and spotted a manhole-like grating just a few feet away. I ran to it, pried it up, and still holding Ref's inert form, dove in feet first.
We dropped into a sewer channel with a couple inches of stinking water underfoot, but I managed to pull myself and Ref up onto the ledge that ran along the dank walls. I ran for several dozen yards until I came to a bend in the sewer. Round the bend was an intersection, where another channel joined the main channel. I set Ref down on the ledge and stopped to pull out my pocket phone. Just as I opened it, the phone rang in my hand.
"Hello?" I said, answering it.
"Hey, Ash, where the hell have you been and where you think you're going?" Tank's voice said.
"I was about to call and ask you that," I said.
"Well, I can give you a general location: You're all the way up in the mountains, five-hundred miles north of the city."
"Damn," I muttered.
"It gets better: that tunnel you're following empties into a stream in the woods. You're lost, man; nothing short of a miracle or an angel is gonna get you out of there."
I was about to hang up, sling Ref ovber my shoulder again, and keep plugging on, when I heard metal grind on metal nearby. I turned, trying to find the source of the sound.
A door, obviously some kind of maintenance entrance, opened opposite to me. Jack pushed it open wide enough and stepped through, accompanied by Seraph and a small Oriental-looking guy wearing a green work apron over a rumpled shirt and pants, squinting around him through a Coke-bottle thick pair of glasses.
"Tank, I gotta run; the cavalry just showed up," I said, hanging up the phone.
"Looks like you got the brass ring," Jack said, his eye on Ref, grinning slightly.
"Jack, how in hell did you get here?" I asked.
"It wasn't easy," Jack said. "After the Mero's dame took you aside for your little private romantic tete-a-tete, Seraph and me got ourselves a one-way ticket to the dungeons, courtesy of the Mercury Twins. But we managed to get out of there in one piece, and even picked up a brass ring of our own.
Seraph put a hand on the little Chinese guy's shoulder. "This is the Keymaker. The Oracle has been searching for him since he vanished some time ago."
"The Merovingian captured me for my keys, since they would give him free access to the maintenance hallways," the little guy said. "I have been trying to escape, but for some reason, our paths were supposed to cross."
"For what reason?" I asked.
He held up a ring from which hung a single key. "This key will bring you to your exit in the warehouse district," he said. "But you must go now: the enemies are closing in."
I stooped and slung Ref over my shoulder; Jack took the key from the Keymaker.
"So we just stick that key into any door and it'll take us home?" Jack asked.
"Yes, it will," the Keymaker replied. I was tempted to ask this guy why he was doing us this favor, especially since I got a hunch that this guy was another program. But I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, not even a virtual horse. Anyone who hated the French guy was a friend of mine at that point. Especially if that friend could give us a passkey home.
I stepped across the channel and through the door. Seraph pulled it closed behind us. "You must return to your world: it is not safe here," he said.
"I get your drift," I said.
Jack fitted the key into the lock on the nearest door, then glanced at the Keymaker. "Am I doing this right?" he asked.
The little guy nodded, giving us a sadly patient shadow of a smile.
Jack turned the key in the lock, then turned the doorknob and pulled the door open.
Jack and I stepped through and out into the alleyway behind the warehouse where we'd been calling in and out of the Matrix. Ref stirred in my arms and groaned against my neck, like she was coming to. I knelt on the ground, and lowered her into my lap. I tried to tilt her face up to mine, but she resisted. I removed the gag from her mouth
"Hey, you all right, Ref?" I asked.
"I'm sorry," she said, dropping her gaze to the ground.
"It's all right, you don't have to be," I said.
"No.... it's all my fault," she said. "I should have listened to you back there at the auction."
"In that case, it's my fault too: I egged you on to buy that sword."
"But I chose to listen to you. You couldn't have seen any of this happening," she said, looking down at the rip in her clothes. "But I should have seen this coming. Armand was the first man I was ever attracted to... romantically... he knew that.... and he preyed on it, the same as he preys on everything else, the beast..."
My worst fear for her had come true. "It happened on this side of the mirror. It's not real."
"It was a dream I used to have when I was still asleep here... and it came true, as true as it can be... but it was a nightmare, a goddamn nightmare!"
The phone in my pocket twittered like a hysteric electronic canary. I pulled it out and answered it.
An earful of static scalded my eardrum. Tank's voice cut through the mess: "Hate to break up the happy reunion, but we got incoming and so do you: one's on top of you already!"
I stuffed the phone into my pocket and flung Ref over my shoulder. Jack drew his .38s and covered the alleyway as we bolted for the warehouse door.
I kicked the door open, darting a glance back in time to see a black sedan with dark windows plow into the alleyway on two wheels. The doors opened and three of those wierd Feds -- those Agents, rather -- got out. Whatever you call 'em, I wasn't about to hang around. Especially when they started shooting.
Jack at my heels, shooting at them, I bolted up the hallway to the office. The phone started to ring: a shot cracked behind me and a bullet whizzed over my head.
I snatched up the receiver and shoved it into Ref's hands. On the other end of the line, I heard a lot of racket and the line screamed with static. As Ref's form dissolved into the phone, a man's scream cut through the sound.
I threw the receiver to Jack; he leaned over it and followed Ref back into reality.
I caught the receiver as it fell; I was just raising it to my ear when I heard movement, a footstep behind me.
I whirled round. There, behind me, stood a lone Agent...
To be continued....
* * * * * * * * *
Afterword/notes:
The idea for the Mero's gangsterish attire in this scene came from the Buick Rainier commercials that have been airing on TV lately, you know the ones with the gangsterish-looking guy whispering ideas over the shoulders of several car designers. Don't ask me why, but there was something about that guy that reminded me oddly of the Mero, even though the Rainier guy is about five inches shorter and a good thirty pounds heavier than Lambert Wilson (better known to us "Matrix" geeks as the Merovingian!). Also, the change in venue (film-noir decay as opposed to the Baroque/Roccoco opulence of the Chateau) was a stroke of sheer inspiration. I thought it would make a good contrast, for one thing, for another, I remember reading, waaaay back in 2000 or early 2001, back when the Wachowski Brothers were starting to drop hints about "Matrix 2 & 3", an item about the Mero. which described him as having power over the Matrix, being able to bend it and mold it to suit his purposes (We didn't see much of that in the films, although he seems to have carved out quite a little kingdom for himself and the programs who have fallen under his dominion, but maybe there'll be more of that in the "Matrix Online" RPG).
