Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Four
Author: Stormhawk
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer:
You should know it by now...
Sibneb and crew = Me
Chapter Word Count: 3109
Chapter Summary: ...kind of a different chapter, a lot of time in Darth's headspace, an interesting memory and a funny fantasy...
Notes: There are a couple of references in here:
Sidneb = Bendis - One of my favorite comic writers!
Bakav = BKV & AA - Brian K Vaughn and Adrian Alphona, the writer and artist of Runaways
Chen = Jo Chen, the cover artist of Runaways
...meh
Please read and Review.
Stef woke up and found herself, to no great surprise, in the medical ward. A drip with green liquid was plugged into the back of her hand and her middle had been tightly bandaged.
The doctor walked over when he saw her sit up, "how do you feel Agent Mimosa?"
"If I say I feel like shit will you report me?" she mumbled as she rubbed her eyes.
"Do not exert yourself, your code was severely damaged. You will need to see Agent Jones as soon as he is free. Unfortunately, his skills have been needed for Agent Smith."
"Smith!" she exclaimed as it just came back to her, "how is he? Is he...?"
"At the moment, he is non-functional, you will need to talk to Jones for more details."
"Fine, I'll go see him now."
"Do you have any concept of how damaged your code was?"
"Not really no, I just know I was in pretty bad shape."
"If you had waited any longer to receive treatment, you would be offline right now while we rebooted half of your subroutines. Just as a bone needs time to knit back together, your code needs time to settle. If you exert yourself in the next twelve hours, the damage will be worse."
"I can't stay still for twelve hours."
"After eight, minor exertion. Any less than eight hours of rest and..."
"I understand doctor. Does walking count as exertion?"
"Shifting would be preferable." He paused as she stood up. "You have died once in this room, I would hope you aren't intent on a repeat performance."
"Eight hours, I'll rest for eight hours," she said resignedly as she shifted to Jones' lab.
After a talk with Jones, she shifted to Darth's room. The programmer was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring off into space.
He looked up after noticing her, "oh thank god you're all right. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she said as she sat down next to him and kissed him, "thank you."
He turned to look at her, his eyes were red from crying. "How can you even look at me after what I did to you?"
"Only someone who truly loved me and understood me would have done that. Thank you. And don't feel guilty, you had to do it otherwise Brown might have shot us both."
"How do you really feel? You don't look too good."
"That's just the medical-ward-bed hair. The doctor said if I didn't stay relatively still for twelve hours then nothing he did would matter. Ander-snot messed my code up pretty good. I said I had no intention of staying still that long. He relented and said eight hours, if I push myself in the next eight hours I may as well have let jerk-off finish what he started."
"That bad?"
"Getting injuries in firewalled areas suck."
"You are going to get some sleep aren't you?"
"Actually I think I'm going to fall unconscious but it's all the same," said as she leant against him. He half-stood and wrapped his arms around her, standing up, he carried her to the top of the bed. He put her under the blanket and then walked around the other side.
Sliding in behind her, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close in an effort to keep her safe while she slept. "Now you just sleep," he said softly, "I'll look after you."
But she was already asleep.
He wanted to kill Neo for hurting her, but that probably wasn't going to happen so he'd have to settle for helping her to recover. He felt sick inside because he knew he'd come close to losing her.
At least she was resting, her breathing was slow and steady, if not a little tense. He looked down at her, she seemed so small and frail, no part agent, just a young woman who'd almost been killed.
She was younger than him, not by much, about a year but still it mattered. So many people hated the agents utterly, damned them all totally. It was understandable, it was a war but still, they were people as well as programs.
Programs are people too, it was a graffiti that was tagged around the city. No one was quite sure who did it, but a lot of the programmers in the real world liked it, even if their friends teased them about it.
The recruits to the rebellion were taught, from their very first week out, to hate and fear every person and program in a black suit as a messenger of death. Agent or recruit, it didn't matter just so long as you were the one who shot them first and survived.
The hate was so old now that it almost seemed to be a racial memory, the war between man and the machines, started so long ago that there were only a few that even remembered how it started. The teachers would always say 'we don't know who started it' in a tone that implied that it was the machines.
Even though, on average, more rebels were killed by sentinels than by agents each year, the agents were the ones who the rebellion hated. Maybe because they looked like they were human it made them so much easier to hate.
Stef twisted in his arms, and her breathing started to get shallow. Her face contorted in pain and she looked like she was having a nightmare.
"Shh..." he whispered and tried to calm her down.
One of her hands gripped at the pillow tightly, "not Whitman don't delete me!" she cried softly before exhaling a long breath and settling again.
Whitman...that name sounded kind of familiar.
That's right, a ghost story he had heard once. Sometimes, ships flying near each other would dock together for the night, that way, everyone got to sleep longer with more people on sentinel-watch.
The operator on the Sidneb was a neo-religious fanatic. Neo as in new, as in new religion, not as in the First Church of Neo the Savior (which actually exists in Zion...) would take points to an extreme. And when he couldn't make an extreme point without people getting scared, he would relent and put things in story form, usually altering a ghost story or scary-campfire story to fit his point or express his opinion better.
The Exodus had been docked with the Sidneb the night Bakav had told the story about a girl named Whitman.
Carol Whitman was a story told on dark nights when the tunnels seemed to be filled with the shadows of sentinels. How much of it was actually true and how much had been made up he wasn't sure, but he would find out one day.
About fifty years ago, the agents had started recruiting. There had been a captain at that time called Zeus. Zeus was a man respected on the same level as Morpheus, but unlike Morpheus, he had actually been a brilliant man.
That's where this story begins.
"Are you Exy brats going to calm down so I can tell the story?" Bakav asked the two new Exodus recruits, Cray and Niq.
"Sorry," they said and finally found a comfortable place on the floor.
"Zeus, the god of thunder. Zeus, the captain of the Chimera, was a great man. And one day this god among men found an angel."
"Just tell the story priest," Galli muttered.
"An angel named Carol, who was just as sweet and innocent as the Christmas songs she was named for."
"How many people do we contact that are really sweet and innocent?" one of the Sidneb crewmembers piped up.
"Just let me tell the story," Bakav said as he rolled his eyes. "But then this god and his second in command were taken by the very hand of death. The grim reaper who carries no scythe, the Agent known as Smith."
Bakav smiled, now his listeners had shut up. "He stole this young angel away and corrupted her with his lies. Turning her against the very people who she had once loved. One of the people she had loved tried to give her the only release he could, to end once and for all her corrupted life. But the evil programs would not let her rest. They did not let her have the rest that she had earned from living. They did not have the decency to let her die."
"Huh?" Chen, a member of the Sidneb crew asked, "say that again in English."
"Machines and programs and especially agents have no soul or even a concept of one, therefore they do not and did not how very wrong...no, wrong isn't the right word...the taboo of it, the corruption of the life cycle, the violation of a person's right t death..."
"Stay away from the engine degreaser," Chen said.
"By the use of their technology, they brought her back to life. They ignored her nurture and changed her nature. They made her into a soulless, black-hearted, suited killer like them. They made an angel into an agent."
There was complete silence in the room.
"The agents stole her humanity from her. I imagine that most of it was lost in the transfer but some part of her must have survived. Can you imagine what it would be like for your soul to turn black against your wishes? For the light in your life to be snuffed out? To have to live your life everyday knowing that you are something different to what you were born? To have to exist with the knowledge that you are no longer human...that you are something less? Can you imagine what it would be like to have to live as a half-formed ghost in a machine?"
Darth stared at the wall, he'd heard this story so long ago and hadn't remembered it until he had heard the name Whitman just then.
She must have been the prototype, the first one. And also, the one who hadn't lasted. A lot of people knew the other half of the story, that one of the Agents' own had tried to destroy them. Only a few people put two and two together and realized that Whitman was that person.
Can you imagine what it would be like to have to live as a half-formed ghost in a machine?
Stef wasn't like that. She wasn't a half-formed ghost. At least, he didn't think she was. She didn't seem to be but then again, he didn't know everything about her. He would one day, but he didn't yet.
From what he did know, her memories and consciousness had been uploaded in entirety, with no problems.
But...some of what Bakav had said...being treated as if she wasn't human or less than human. Being hated and feared for what she was, not who she was, that had to be a tough burden to bear.
He wondered, with a mental chuckle, what their situation would have been like if he was the agent and she had been the rebel.
A dashingly handsome young man in an agent suit stared at a group of rebels who had just said the strangest thing, that they wanted to be collaborators.
Their captain stood out in front, and his second in command stood beside him, and just off to the side stood a young woman who for some reason caught his eye.
There wasn't really anything out of the ordinary about her, certainly not the standard rebel outfit she was wearing, but for some reason he couldn't look away.
He didn't feel right, always visiting the collaborator mansion. Partly because he wasn't sure if he was entirely welcome and because he felt selfish for visiting. Spending time with humans to feel less like a program. Not that he disliked being a program, he loved it and for someone who had been a programmer, it almost seemed like some kind of ultimate destiny.
He was Agent Kinnell (as even Smith refused to call him Agent Darth) through and through, but before that he had been Tyler and Darth. He hoped that Unseen would see that. He had told her that he hadn't always been an agent, but he wasn't sure how human she thought he was.
He'd kissed her and she'd kissed him back. And that had been that.
His little fantasy had made him realize one thing. That had been that. And nothing would change that, he didn't want anything to change that. The accepted each other and they loved each other, that was enough for them so why couldn't it be enough for Ryder?
By now, the captain would have informed Pandora, Phoenix and Galli. They would have to be ready for their reactions as well. He rolled his eyes, that was not going to be a fun day.
And slowly, his mind filled with a million different thoughts, he fell asleep.
When he woke up the next morning, Stef had curled up into a ball and was still holding onto the pillow. He tried to slip his arm out from around her middle without waking her, but failed.
"Nurg," she groaned as she opened her eyes. "Where did that light come from?"
"The sun?" he offered helpfully with a grin. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're cute when you're asleep?"
"I wasn't asleep, I was unconscious."
"Nope, sleeping."
"Really?"
"I wouldn't lie to you."
"Nurg," she said again and sat up. Undoing the lower half of her shirt buttons, she started to unwrap the bandage.
"Is that a good idea?"
"I feel like I'm mostly back together." Pulling the rest of the bandage away, she found an ugly bruise in a pattern that denoted that she had been a lot closer to shattering than she cared to think about.
"I thought you didn't bruise."
"It's only superficial," she said as she required it away. "And it only happened because the doc treated me instead of Jones."
"Why didn't he help you?"
"He was trying to help Smith," she said softly.
"Did this happen to Smith as well?"
"Smith is dead."
"WHAT?"
"At least, Jones thinks so, I'm not sure."
"...thinks so?" Darth echoed, "shouldn't it be obvious?"
"Not in this case. Smith's code has been wiped clean, his physical body is there but it's just an empty shell."
"Did he get deleted?"
"No, if it were that simple, his body would be gone as well. This is something different."
"You've got to tell Stevie."
"I am not telling that girl anything until I know whether or not she has to grieve. I'm willing to bet that the data is something, I just have to find it."
"So how are you going to do that?"
"I'm going to go straight to the source of the problem, the one who made the virus, Mero."
"The um 'evil French guy'?"
"It would be best if you forgot that little conversation with that taxi driver. You see, I'm supposed to shoot exiles on sight, but I don't want to do that because PAPT."
"PAPT?"
"Programs are people too."
"I know that graffiti."
"I know the artist."
"Cool. Now, can I get you anything?"
"Um...coffee would be nice, I can get it though," she said as the cup appeared in her hand.
Darth went quiet and listened for a moment, "is that your phone ringing?"
"Huh?"
"You phone, where is it?"
She held out her hand and the ringing phone appeared in it. She answered it and held it up to her ear. "Hello?" she arched an eyebrow, "Jones, how did you get this number?" She hung up a minute later and looked longingly at her coffee.
"You have to go," he said knowingly.
"Emergency. I have to give my report about what happened yesterday so that we can judge the best course of action for Smith."
"What do you think is going to happen?"
"I think I know, I just don't want to say it incase I jinx it."
"That bad?"
"You have no idea."
He took the coffee cup off her, "go, you can tell me what happened when you come back."
"But I wanted coffee," she said with a pout.
"You're going to miss your meeting." She sighed and disappeared.
Appearing outside the conference room, she looked down and made sure that her suit was as tidy as possible before she walked into the room.
Brown was the only one in there. "Sit," he ordered, "and report exactly what happened to Smith."
"Where are Jones and Clarke?"
"They aren't coming," he replied curtly.
She sat across from Brown, as straight as her back would go, even though her middle still hurt a bit. Not all of her subroutines had finished knitting back together.
"At three PM yesterday afternoon, Agent Smith and I were ordered into a firewalled area..." she started.
It took her about five minutes to give her report, and she could practically see Brown mentally killing things when she mentioned Carlson. The fact that Anderson hadn't finished shattering her code seemed to be the only thing that disappointed.
"Is that all sir?"
"For the moment. And just so you know experimental, until Smith or his replacement are online, I am in charge of this facility." Was what he said but what he didn't say was: So watch your back, because without Smith to protect you, how long do you think it's going to be before I convince the mainframe to get rid of you?
Even though he didn't say it out loud or over the earpiece, the meaning was clear between both of them.
"So if Smith's data cannot be recovered, Jones is going to bring a copy online?"
"Of course," Brown said as he walked out of the room.
I was afraid of that, she thought as silently prayed they could get Smith back online. She swore that if they brought a copy online, she was just going to quit and go exile. If he was really dead, she could learn to get over it, but not with a copy around. A copy that looked and sounded like Smith but wasn't really him.
Exiles...
The Merovingian would be the only one who knew about this virus, but wasn't likely to tell her. Well...she'd just have to persuade him, she thought with a smirk and shifted away.
Given that it was daytime, he would probably either be in the chateaux or the restaurant. She had no way into the chateaux and had no wish to go there anyway, too secure and too few ways out.
Then to Le Vrai it was.