The Matrix: Legacy
Twenty-Eight
Troubles
Horizon flopped onto her couch with a relieved sigh, kicking off her flats. That was the only bitch about her job as school librarian: she was on her feet for hours. But then, she was on her feet because she liked to be with the children, to encourage and help them… Ah, well.
"Miss Sabé?"
Horizon sat up to grin at Sati. "Hey, kid. Whatcha doing?"
"Do you have another book I can borrow?" the girl asked with a smile, holding out The Hobbit.
Horizon took the book and considered for a moment. "Well... you wanna give the Lord of the Rings trilogy a try?"
Sati nodded eagerly, and Horizon stood with a low groan, then went for the Fantasy section of her and Avalon's shared library. She scanned the titles until she came to the bookcase specifically for all of their LOTR stuff. Wisely, she selected the copy of The Fellowship of the Ring that did not have one of the movie actors on the cover. As she turned back to Sati, she saw the car on the street below out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head to the window so she could see fully, she saw that it was empty. She also recognised that car.
The book fell from numbed hands. "Sati!" she snapped at the girl. "Quickly, hide yourself!" Startled, the girl fled to Avalon's room. Horizon slammed the door shut and drew her Beretta Inox before ducking behind the sofa.
Only reason Gunner's buddies would be coming here would be if he skipped out on 'em. Shit.
Horizon never got the chance to use her gun. There was a hissing noise, and the room flooded with gas. The Inox fell from numbed fingers as the Hispanic woman collapsed.
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Morgain paused outside the door. She sniffed the air a few times, detecting the faintest traces of some sort of chemical. That was bad. Carefully, she opened the door. The smell was stronger, and Avalon started to feel woozy.
Gas.
Morgain stepped back, pulling her scarf from around her neck and wrapping it around her nose and mouth before sneaking back in. There was no sign of Horizon. Lying on the floor where it had been dropped was the Fellowship of the Ring.
Something had happened to Horizon.
Morgain saw that the door to her room was open; she'd not left it that way. The mute girl slipped into the kitchen, reaching under the table to get the gun that Gunner insisted she carry - a Beretta Cheetah. It was already loaded, but she checked it anyway, in case the intruders had found it.
They hadn't.
Gun in hand, she slid into her room and checked for any sign of intrusion. Her bedspread was slightly skewed. Getting to her hands and knees, she looked under the bed to see Sati lying unconscious on her floor. Wide-eyed, she pulled the girl out and checked her pulse; luckily, the Indian was still alive.
Horizon missing, Sati unconscious, the lingering scent of gas. The whole thing reeked of hostage-gathering. She had to get out of here with Sati. Now.
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Cain was not thrilled about his latest duty. He still hurt from the beating Abel had given him, and now he had to collect the girl that was the cause of the beating and her friend to hold up some sort of deal with a human? Bah.
He paused outside the apartment building that also housed the Oracle, giving the air a cautious sniff. Was that…?
Fear.
And some sort of knock-out gas.
Shit, the black-haired werewolf thought, running inside. Smelling broken machinery, he avoided the elevator 1 and took the stairs three at a time.
He could smell men. And the gas scent was stronger now; his nose was twitching. Luckily, he and all programs were immune to knockout gas. Under the heavy odour of the men, he could smell Avalon and another woman. No blood scent; that was good.
Cain surprised and neutralised the lookout before he could cry a warning, then entered the apartment. His nose picked out what had happened as he systematically found and killed the intruders on the principle that they had entered a woman's home without permission.
So, these men had flooded the room with gas and then taken the woman who smelled of coffee and Wingless and presumably was Avalon's roommate. Smooth move, boys, he thought; taking Wingless' woman was asking to die.
He also smelled the little Exile child; apparently she'd hidden somewhere and most likely been affected by the gas; she was the first program to be created simply to exist, after all. Quite like a human. Avalon had come in, gotten a gun - smelled like a Beretta - found Sati, and escaped. Cain felt himself gain some respect for the girl. Maybe she was worthy of Abel.
It occurred to Cain that he had most likely just killed the men responsible for kidnapping Wingless' woman.
Oops.
His nose caught a new scent, shamrocks and mist, and he whirled to see a small girl with the biggest copper eyes he had ever seen. Wait, there was another scent, this one of ocean spray. However, he couldn't see the owner. "I know you're there, kid, so you might as well come out of hiding," he said, trying not to grin. His grins weren't exactly reassuring.
A pause, then a young man who looked remarkably like Esau, sans goatee, came into view. "Who are you?" the teenager growled, untrusting of this stranger standing amidst dead bodies.
Shit, the bugger was half-progr- oh, shit, no wonder he looked like Esau! Blasted kid was Esau's! If the Merovingian found out, Jacob's partner would be in deep shit.
…
Cain could profit from this. In the château, it was a good idea to have blackmail material on at least one person, preferably as many as possible.
"They call me Cain," he answered, completely poker-faced. The first child signed something, and the boy translated, unaware that Cain's lack of a reply came from being utterly shell-shocked.
"You are Abel's cousin. Where is Abel?"
Cain opened his mouth to reply that he neither knew nor cared when he suddenly caught Wingless' scent and turned in time to receive a fist to the gut. It was a punishing blow that made his eyes widen in pain as air was violently expelled from his lungs.
The follow-up blow caught him between the legs and dropped the werewolf like a stone. Cain took his punishment in silence, not even allowing a wince to cross his face. He was given no time to recover before Wingless grabbed him by the collar of his trench coat and hauled him off the ground – Cain was only an inch taller than Wingless.
"Where," the angel demanded, fury smouldering in his eyes, "is Sabé!?" Cain blinked at him dazedly. How in the hell was he supposed to know? He hadn't started tracking her yet.
Wingless let him down a little ways so that they were eye-to-eye - or rather, eye-to-shades, as Wingless was wearing sunglasses and Cain's had been knocked off in the short beating - and spoke in German. "Answer me, wolf, or a silver bullet will find your heart," he hissed. Not yet having regained the ability to speak, Cain raised a shaking arm to press his fingers against Wingless' temple.
Within seconds, Cain had uploaded his doings of the past two hours to the traitor, including the beating he'd just taken. The angel blinked, dropping Cain and sorting through the new information.
There was no apology, but Cain didn't expect one. Seraph only apologised to those he tested, which even now was a softening of his character. Judging by those hits, though, nothing of his technique has softened…
Esau's teenage brat took pity on him and knelt beside the helpless werewolf, placing a hand on his shoulder. Soothing relief spread through his coding, and Cain relaxed as it reached his abused genitals. Source, but that had hurt.
The full implication of this sank in.
In the four Cycles he had spent in the château, Cain had never discovered what sort of programs Jacob and Esau were. Like many, neither spoke of their time before the Merovingian, but they were some of his best killers, so it was generally assumed that, like the Twins, they had been created to be assassins.
How wrong that assumption was.
Esau… was a fucking healer.
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Funkless : Are you positive they were errors? I ask only because I have a tendency to utilise UK spellings… Anyway, how'd you guess that Krsna was a program? I ask out of curiosity; I don't like being obvious. Glad you like the latest chapters.
… : I'm sorry if you think that Legacy is a cliché to other "sotries", but I'm not inclined to take criticism from someone too cowardly to post their name or an e-mail address so that I may ask what, precisely, is cliché. Last I checked, the clichés in the Matrix section are fluffy bunny Twins and Twinfics, not the Twins as sexual harassers. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm not bashing the Merovingian? No, wait, Mero-bashing is a popular sport as well… Come back when you grow a backbone.
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Music: Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve