The Matrix: Legacy
Seventeen
West Coast Subway
It was a bit past dawn when Morgain stumbled into the diner. She all but collapsed in a seat and just laid her head on the table. After a moment, a waitress with a golden aura came to see her. "Hey, baby, you okay?" she asked. Morgain wearily looked at her, seeing the gold aura, and dimly tried to recall how to sign 'I've become a human popsicle'. No good.
At last, she grabbed a menu after two tries and pointed to the hot chocolate. Frozen or not, she hated coffee. The waitress ignored her, taking the girl's left hand between her own. "My God," she cried. "Gabe!"
A man stuck his head out of the food window. "What is it, Kitty?"
"This poor kid's like ice!"
Morgain heard no more as cold and exhaustion overtook her.
Gabriel and Copycat were both programs who had managed to avoid being beholden to the Merovingian. Gabe was nothing more than another wall-walker program, an Agent of the Fifth Matrix, while Kitty was one of the doppelganger programs that had been used to replace humans that went missing when Agents took over their shells.
However, they were also gaining a reputation for helping others escape the Merovingian, using their diner as a stop on what the programs called the West Coast Subway. Gabriel recognised the girl's face immediately, then realised who she was.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked, coming out of the kitchen to where the other program was holding Morgain against her.
"Feel her hands, Gabe. She'll lose the right one unless we do something!" Gabe nodded, touching the hand and very slowly erasing the damage done to it by the cold, restoring life to her fingers and then spreading warmth throughout the slim body.
"Do you know who she is, Kitty?" he asked his lover. Copycat shook her head, blonde curls bouncing. "She's Trinity's sister, the one they're holding at the château. Wingless told us she'd be by, remember?"
"That's right!" Kitty breathed, recalling the visit from the enigmatic Seraph two days earlier. Both of them liked the one-time angel program who had aided them when they'd been slated for deletion and kept them from falling into the Frenchman's clutches. She smiled fondly at the girl. "Brave kid, to have walked all the way here from the château. She's probably been walking all night!"
"She can stay here for now," Gabe decided. "Keep an eye out for the Frenchman's goons, though." Kitty nodded, then ran a gentle awakening program through the girl that also cleared out the virus that had settled into her system.
She woke nearly instantly, and signed an apology for falling asleep. "That's all right, baby," Kitty told her gently. "You wanted the hot chocolate?" The girl nodded, and Kitty brought Gabe the order. It was early for anyone to be in, so both of them were able to talk in private about how to get the girl out, as well as how much of the truth they could tell her.
Copycat took the chocolate to the girl and slid in the seat across from her. "You ran from the Frenchman, didn't you?" Shocked blue eyes sprang to her face, and the doppelganger program smiled. "Don't worry, baby, we don't work for him. In fact, we prefer to work against him."
'What do you mean?' the child asked.
"Gabe and I are going to help you get out of here," she answered. "We hate it when he gets innocents involved in his little 'games', plus we think it's funny when he loses those games."
She could see the startled laugh in the blue eyes, and grinned. "C'mon, we'll get you some breakfast."
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Link was very amused when he walked into the operating room to see four members of the crew all over the place, fast asleep. Sparks sat in the chair, head on the keyboard and using his arms for a pillow; Krsna was sprawled in one of the chairs they used to hack into the Matrix; Ghost was sitting down and leaning against the wall, Danaë beside him, her head on his shoulder and his head on hers.
With an evil smile, Link walked away, returning with one of the experimental Polaroid-type cameras being produced in Zion now. What was a "road trip" without blackmail photos, after all?
"You realise they'll kill you for this?" Niobe put in from where she was leaning against the doorway. "They can try," Link replied, walking away and heading to the galley.
Niobe motioned for the pictures, and Link obediently handed them over before going for coffee. "Awww, Ghost and Danaë look so cute... but how is this one blackmail?"
"I'll threaten to show 'em to AK," Link grinned.
"Makes sense," Niobe replied. "But if AK kills Ghost, you'll have to find me another first mate."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I wonder what got them all up, anyway," Niobe mused after a few moments of coffee-drinking-induced silence.
"Who knows," Link muttered. "We'd've been awake too if it were an emergency. At least we don't have to worry about Sentinels anymore."
No sooner had these words left his mouth then the proximity alert went off. They exchanged a look and bolted for the helm, Niobe snapping, "You just had to say that, didn't you?" Link didn't answer as they slid into the cockpit and Niobe thumbed the holographics on.
"Squiddies. Six of 'em. And they ain't broadcasting a friendly signal," Link breathed before being shoved out of the way as Sparks, awakened like the others by the alarm, took his usual place as co-pilot. "Link, you get Kris and get on the guns; Danaë, you go find Ghost and stay with him unless he sends you away. And tell him to strap in if he hasn't already."
"What's with the calamari?" Sparks muttered as the ship roared to life and took off. "Aren't we at peace now?"
Ghost had indeed strapped in, but he had other orders for Danaë. "You were a signal hacker, right?" She nodded, scared. "Good. See if you can't hack their signal and figure out who they're working for."
Danaë wedged herself into a corner near the radio and began fiddling with it as Ghost opened fire.
In his gunner's pit, Krsna had concentrated his fire on the right squids, seeing that Link was focusing on the left pair and Ghost on the central ones. "Come get some," he whispered.
The Logos barrel-rolled and then flipped up over on her nose, earning a yell of displeasure from Krsna and nearly throwing Danaë to the ceiling; Ghost, used to Niobe's idea of evasive manoeuvres, had reached out and pushed her down against the floor until the ship straightened out.
Danaë didn't notice, so intent was she on what she was doing. At last, the sentinels Ghost were tagging exploded, followed quickly by the ones flanking them, courtesy of Link and Krsna. The signal cut off, and Danaë looked stunned. Ghost unstrapped and crouched beside her. "You all right?"
She nodded. "Those sentinels... they were under the Frenchman's control."
"You're not serious!?" Sparks howled after Danaë repeated her findings to the others.
Danaë sighed. "I could be wrong... but hasn't he proved that he's got a grudge against everyone on this ship?" she asked.
"He has," Niobe answered, "but that doesn't matter. What matters is that we need to warn Zion and the other ships that he can get control of sentinels and kill us. We will definitely be needing to add EMPs to the ships we're rebuilding."
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A tour bus had pulled in on its way down the mountain. Gabriel had a conversation with the driver and the tour guide in which a nice sum of money exchanged hands, then Morgain was told that she would be leaving the diner on the bus, which would take her off the mountain and pass through a few cities on the way out. She could take her leave at any one of those cities.
"Wolf alert," Copycat said when negotiations were concluded, nodding to where two of the Merovingian's programs had arrived and were carefully looking around.
"Go for it, Kitty," Gabe replied. "I'll get the girl on the bus."
Copycat made sure no one was watching, then changed her code so that she looked exactly like Morgain, right down to the voice and the scent. It would be enough to fool the werewolves, she knew. But how long would they buy it?
"I smell her now," Cain said, as if Abel's stomach growling for the past two minutes hadn't been signal enough that Avalon was nearby. It had taken Cain half the night to find Abel and change him back, then another good hour for them to find the girl's scent once more. Abel more than made up for his slip by tracking her when Cain couldn't smell her. Either Abel's nose was more sensitive than Cain's, or he'd been faking it and had gotten lucky.
"There!" Abel pointed to where Avalon was walking to the diner. She heard his cry and turned, startled, then bolted. The werewolves ran after her, Cain pulling ahead of his smaller cousin and subsequently slipping on the icy ground. He managed to keep his balance and use his speed to slide across, but the transition from ice to gravel caught him and he fell. Abel, on the other hand, slid across and handled the change by making a small leap to non-icy ground, earning a mutter of "Show-off," from his cousin, who got to his feet and resumed pursuit.
"Now," Gabriel said softly, and he gently pushed Morgain into the line trooping steadily on board the bus. "Good luck, kid."
Cain and Abel had the girl cornered. Cain walked forward, smirking; Avalon stepped back, then pushed off the ground, flipping over their heads and landing on her hands, kicking Abel in the back and slamming him into Cain.
"Avalon can't do that," Abel muttered, turning to see her grinning at him. Then everything changed; her eyes turned black as her hair lengthened and lightened to blond and her scent altered from vanilla and mist to syrup and snow. "Doppelganger!" he snarled as she laughed.
"Have fun catching her now, boys," she said teasingly.
"Kill her!" Cain snarled as he and Abel drew their guns and fired simultaneously. She, however, was already gone, over their heads and on the roof.
Then Abel saw the bus pulling out and Avalon - the real one - watching him from the back window as it left. "We are seriously fucked," Abel said, pointing the problem out to Cain.
"Very much fucked," Cain agreed "Damn doppelgangers."