The Matrix: Legacy
Twelve
Agents
Sparks wasted no time in installing his and Link's gifts. He hated it when his crewmates travelled by The Corridor, hatedithatedithatedit....
"Scan the château for any sign of Avalon," Ghost said just behind him.
"Augh!" Sparks yelped, leaping half out of his chair and banging his head against a monitor, which got a second yelp out of him. He whirled on the other man. "Dammit, Ghost, stop making like your name around me!" he scolded. Ghost shrugged an apology and repeated his query.
Sparks grinned. "Spying on the psychotic Frenchman," he half-sang as he, for the first time, got past the encryption surrounding the place. "Okay, they gave our girl a pretty nice room. It's nearly the size of the Logos; Frenchie must have a lot of room to spare. Looks like she just woke up, she's heading for the bathroom and-"
Sparks yelped as Ghost pulled him away from the monitors. "You're no fun," he pouted.
"And you're as lecherous as the Merovingian," Krsna added, appearing at Sparks' left elbow and giving him his second heart attack of the day.
"My heart can't take this," he muttered, stalking towards the medbay and muttering something about imminent cardiac arrest.
"Apparently I'm not the only person on this ship who has learned how Not To Be Seen," came Dana's quiet voice just behind him.
Krsna and Ghost heard Sparks shriek from the med bay, and Ghost smiled slightly while Krsna cracked up. "I knew it! I knew she was gonna do that!" Krsna howled in his laughter. Niobe stuck her head in, Link's right behind hers.
"What's going on in here?" she asked, giving the pair a 'Y'all Are Crazy' look.
"We're giving Sparks heart attacks," Krsna replied cheerfully. Link grinned and vanished. Seconds later there was another yelp from Sparks.
Niobe rolled her eyes. "You're children, all of you. Children!" She walked off.
Krsna chuckled and wandered to the monitors before Ghost could stop him. "Hmm, Sparky's a perv," he noted as he changed to a view of something else in the château.
"Here're some weird programs. One of 'em's readin' like a twisted Agent, but I can't figure out the other two." At the word Agent Ghost was looking over the Indian's shoulder worriedly. It took him a moment to realise who he was seeing, and his fists clenched unconsciously. Cain and Abel... the werewolves who nearly spoiled everything. Thank God Abel'd gotten cold feet and backed out at the last moment... but not before they'd managed to capture him.
Ghost caught himself starting to flush in anger over that humiliating experience and calmed himself. The programs held no power over him here.
Krsna, utterly oblivious to Ghost's actions just behind him, continued looking around, starting a careful, minor hack. "Score! Cameras!" He grinned, rerouting the feed from one into a monitor and downloading everything on the tape, before rewinding it and watching it carefully.
"Whoa! She dances!"
Despite himself, Ghost looked.
His breath caught in his throat as he saw Avalon for the first time and his heart shattered once more. His mind had run off without him and had put Trinity in her place. His eyes saw Trinity dancing, saw Trinity flipping Abel the bird, saw Trinity wake from a nightmare and wander out of the room... saw Abel with her.
Despite all of Ghost's self-control, he could not stop a jealous, possessive growl from starting in his throat as he saw Abel stroking her face, whispering something, saw Abel carrying her into the room and tucking her into bed... saw him touching her, smelling her, holding her...
"..ost? Ghost!"
The first mate shook himself, getting a firm grip on reality. Krsna was looking at him worriedly. "Ghost, you all right? You kinda wigged out there."
"I'm fine," Ghost said gruffly. "Turn off the video."
"Ghost-"
"Now." His hands were clenching and flexing, longing for the gun Sati had given him. If that... werewolf had hurt Trin- Avalon in any way, Ghost would derive the greatest of pleasures in killing him.
Krsna, worried, obediently switched back to the view of Avalon's room. She was out of the shower and dressed by now, in navy sweat pants and a pale blue baby t-shirt, according to the code. Krsna glared at the green script, rerouted the video feed again, and put the room live on a monitor. Ghost very carefully did not look at the video, watching instead the scrolling green script that comprised the code of the Matrix and told him she was dancing again.
Krsna saw the shadow outside her window just as Ghost read the change in code. "Shit!" Krsna yelled as Ghost's face grew tight with worry.
"An Agent... a rogue Agent."
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In the camera rooms, Seth and Tiger had bartered their way on duty again to get their daily fix of Young Attractive Human Woman Dancing In A Very Enticing Manner. Okay, so any sort of dancing was enticing to them - they were among the more old-fashioned of the Merovingian's men, excepting Seth's love of his Tommy Gun - but that didn't matter. It was still a pretty girl dancing.
It was Tiger with his vampire eyes who saw the shadow. "Oh, shit. Someone's stalking our girl."
Seth drew his eyes from Avalon and shot his partner a questioning look, then followed Tiger's gaze. "Fuck!" he yelped, grabbing his Thompson. "It's an Agent!"
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Morgain didn't realise anything was wrong until the glass door leading to the balcony shattered, heralding the arrival of a man in a brown suit. He, like the other Agent programs, was remarkable in that he was so very unremarkable, the sort of man you could meet on the street and mistake to be someone else entirely; he had One Of Those Faces.
Her eyes widened as he smiled ferally at her. "Well, Miss Davidson, we meet again."
He may have had One Of Those Faces, but Morgain knew she'd never seen him before. She took a step back as he stepped forward, adjusting his tie.
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Seth bolted to the halls, making for the girl's room. The door was bullet-proof, missile-proof, and Cujo-proof, but it sure as hell wasn't Seth-proof. He ran through the door without stopping to open it.
He readied his beloved Tommy Gun and hollered, "GET DOWN!" The girl half-turned, saw the gun, and dove for cover as he opened fire on the Agent.
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Cain, Abel, and Brown were eating and/or drinking in the kitchen when Brown twitched. "There's an Agent here," he murmured, reaching under his trench coat to assure himself that his new gun, a Glock , was there before rising to his feet. Seconds after he had done so, Tiger burst in. "There's an Agent in the kid's room!" he panted. "Seth's gone to slow him down."
Abel was off like a shot, Brown and Cain hot on his heels.
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Seth was absolutely stunned. He had emptied his entire Tommy at the Agent, and had only grazed him. It had been less embarrassing with the One: Neo had simply stopped the bullets. But would Agents do that? Nooooo they had to go employ super-human-speed and dodge every last friggin' bullet. Fucking Agents.
Seth dropped the Tommy Gun and charged at the Agent; like all the Merovingian's programs, he was trained in hand-to-hand combat. It didn't occur to him until after he'd been thrown across the room that this one could be one of the upgraded Agents meant to deal with the One specifically. The ones who'd only been running around for two or three days before the Matrix was reconfigured to Version 9.0
Then his back slammed into the desk that even Cujo would have trouble lifting. Seth felt his spine snap and had enough time to think, Oh, shit; not again! before darkness closed in on him.
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Ghost and Krsna could only watch the unfolding drama in Avalon's room. While the Agent dealt with the strange program (Ghost noticed that the Tommy-carrying program had a code oddly similar to Seraph's), Krsna encouraged both the stranger, who he was calling 'Tommy' after the gun, and Avalon, who'd hidden herself after 'Tommy' had opened fire.
Kris swore in Punjabi. "Tommy's down!" he called, and Ghost could only watch hopelessly as the Agent - Agent Jackson, he saw - closed in on Avalon.
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Morgain had picked up the discarded Tommy Gun and was holding it awkwardly when the suited man found her. He smirked. "Come now, Miss Davidson, what can you hope to accomplish with that? The gun is empty."
An empty gun is still a weapon, Davis had once told her when teaching her the merits of automatic and sub-automatic machine guns. Morgain knew this well. As the man closed in on her, she swung it viciously at him. He caught it easily.
"Is that the best the infamous Trinity can come up with?" he asked condescendingly.
No. Bastard, she thought as she brought her knee up into his groin. He snarled a curse and grabbed her by the neck, lifting her effortlessly off the ground and increasing the pressure, cutting off her air supply. Morgain desperately pulled on the stranger's hand, but his grip was like steel and the pressure was increasing.
She could feel the pressure building up in her head as no air could pass to her lungs and no blood could pass through her veins... her ears heard a rushing sound... her vision was going dark....
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The door was bullet-proof, missile-proof, and Cujo-proof, but the walls sure as hell weren't. Cain, Abel, Tiger, and Brown each brought up an automatic assault rifle of varied types and let loose at the wall, forcing their way inside. Brown, as a former Agent, was the quickest of them and therefore the first inside.
His former colleague didn't have time to blink before Brown's smaller body crashed into him, prying his fingers off Avalon's neck. The girl fell limply to the floor, where Tiger caught her as Jackson threw Brown aside easily.
Cain and Abel advanced on Jackson, snarling as their bodies altered according to their programs: fur spread over their bodies, black for Cain and brown for Abel, as their faces elongated slightly and sharp teeth replaced their human-seeming ones; their ears shifted and drew up the sides of their heads, becoming wolf ears; yet they were still on their feet, still humanoid.
However, their strength, size, and speed had increased; oddly enough, while Cain was pure black, Abel had some grey fur mixed in with the brown.
As one, the werewolves set on Jackson, joined by Brown. Jackson might have been able to handle the half-transformed cousins on his own, but with another ex-Agent thrown in the mix, he stood no chance.
He managed to get Cain in a stranglehold, but the werewolf simply bit Jackson's arm, shattering the bone and taking a good chunk of skin with him as he pulled his head back, the Agent's blood running through the fur around his mouth. He then twisted and would have torn Jackson's throat out had Abel not pulled him away. "Matthias has him," he said softly, and he was right: Brown was wailing away at Jackson calmly, but with a determined expression. "I take it Jackson was the one who replaced Matthias?" Cain asked after spitting out some of Jackson's blood and flash.
Abel nodded, then they heard Tiger yell, "Abel! She's not breathing!"