Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Seventeen

Author: Stormhawk

Chapter Word Count: 1476

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"I'll take you to one of the temp's rooms. Boss can fix your room later."

"Think I can get something brought up from the restaurant?" she asked then grabbed the wall. The hacking was messing with her equilibrium.

"I'm not a waiter, use the phone."

"Still extension 107?"

"How could you possibly know that?" he asked as she experimentally pushed herself off the wall and started walking again.

"You will find that I know a lot more than I should."

"What do you really want?"

"High class mansion, holiday house in the Caribbean and a private jet. You?"

"I already live in a mansion, don't need to fly and I have a place in the Bahamas."

Stef laughed, "so Brown really is the evil twin, you're just a jerk."

"Only to people I don't like."

"Are we talking like civilized people?"

"No."

She smirked, "didn't think so."

Carlson pointed to the door, "your room for the moment."

"Thanks," she said as she walked in and closed the door. Picking up the phone she dialed 107 and waited for an answer.

"Le Vrai, an order to the chateaux?" the accented voice asked.

"Yes please. Coke, fries, three of those big chocolate cookies and...make it two cokes."

"All right," the voice said, not used to such a commonplace order. "Ten minutes."

"Merci," Stef said and hung up the phone. She walked to the window and looked out to the mountains. It really was a nice view...

She sat on the window seat and peeled off her jacket and tie, she didn't believe that she hadn't managed to lose them yet. The Master Key was still wrapped around her neck, she wasn't quite ready to give that up, she probably wouldn't ever be, it was too much of an advantage.

Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, "come in."

Carlson pushed open the door, carrying a tray. "I thought you weren't a waiter," she remarked sarcastically.

"The delivery guy didn't know where to take it."

She walked over and looked at the tray, "I hate you," she said sardonically.

"Me?" he asked innocently.

"Strychnine in one of my cokes, cyanide on one of my cookies and arsenic on one of the others. Great, just great, now I have less caffeine and sugar than what I wanted."

"How'd you know?"

"Before I eat or drink anything in this place I scan it, too many bad rumors and truths."

"Boss wants to know how long till the hacking finishes. He's about ready to call out the vamps to get rid of Smith."

"Give me twenty minutes, it's almost done, it's not fun you know."

"Neither is having half of you program get destroyed while you're in the Matrix, believe me, I know about pain."

"I look at you and I see Brown, I see an exile, but I don't see an agent."

"No matter what crap the system says, it's just a job, a job finishes sooner or later, or they fire you rather permanently. If they wanted automatons they should have used constructs and not AI. The Mainframe is separate to Machine City, I wouldn't mind living in Machine City, they live under a whole different set of rules out there..." Carlson cut himself off and went back to his angry and steely expression.

Stef was quiet, this definitely wasn't how she had expected her day to go, "you aren't the person I thought you were."

He smirked, "don't tell anyone."

She nodded and ate a chip and watched silently as he walked out. She shook herself when the door closed, that had been freakish. Carlson was a jerk, Carlson was a killer, Carlson was a traitor, Carlson was an exile, Carlson deserved to die.

Carlson was just a person. Just another program.

He'd been manipulated beyond his will into inadvertently starting the war. He had helped the first one. He was a variant copy of Brown. He had been rebel before he had been exile.

And every word the exiles had said about the system was true.

She had been intending this to be a charade, just a trick, just something to ensure they got out of there in one piece, and that she could get the copy of the security hacks she know that the Merovingian had put onto a flash disk - the information on the computer had told her that.

But it didn't seem like that anymore.

She picked up the coke and went back to the window seat. She was scared that she was thinking like this. She was considering not going back to the Agency. Part of her wanted to stay exile, to stay free. At least Mero wouldn't have her executed if he found out that she had a boyfriend...with his sources, there was a chance he already knew.

The last time she had been exile...which no one except Jonas, Carol and a world of fanboys knew about...all she had wanted was to go home, to go back to the only place she felt she belonged, to go back to the Agency, to the system and to Smith.

The system would delete her at a drop of a hat, the only things she would miss about the Agency were Jones and Greer and as for Smith...

She really didn't want to think about him at the moment, but unfortunately she didn't have a choice, there were never enough choices, and most of the time, the right choices to make were the hardest ones of all.

Agent, exile, human, whichever one of these she chose to be right now was going to have serious consequences for a lot of people. For the exiles, the agents and the humans...well at least the rebels.

She felt her hands go slick as the moisture from the glass of coke wet the blood...Smith's blood...that was on her hands.

She wanted to hit him, she wanted to hurt him, she wanted him to feel so much pain that he wished he was dead. To pay him back for almost beating her to death with his bare hands, for breaking her ribs and making her too afraid to scream. A small, dark memory that was forever burned into her mind. Even so, she didn't think she could bring herself to kill him - at least, she didn't think she would - after all, she wasn't Whitman.

At least, she wasn't the Whitman who murdered people. Carol, pity her corrupted soul, hadn't wanted to go insane, hadn't wanted to murder people in the way that she did, Jonas had made her do all of that. The damn and damned bastard man who believed himself to be a god.

At the moment, she really didn't know what she wanted to do.

Leaning against the window, she saw an angel flying in a carefree pattern, dipping and twirling, falling toward the ground before catching itself. The freedom of someone without the weight of the world wasn't on their shoulders.

This wasn't a game, she knew that. She knew that all too well. She wasn't a game in the sense that she could throw a fit and go home, but it was a game - chess. People placing their pieces on the board, sacrificing players for their goal, tricking their opponent, all with their eyes on the goal. Check, then checkmate.

Checkmate. Victory. Besting your opposition.

Stef Mimosa wasn't even sure that she knew who the enemy was anymore.

The agents and the system who had made her who she was, but would ultimately get rid of her for being at least some part human. Or the exiles, whose major crime was as simple as wanting to live. That was no crime, that was the prime directive or any sentient being.

Life was a game of chess, and she wasn't sure which piece she was, or even which side she was playing, playing for, or being played by.

"Hey universe," she muttered, "give me a break. I'm too young to deal with all of this shit."

The Merovingian was dangerous, no matter what side you were on, she hadn't forgotten that. He was cold, calculating, cunning, a perverted intelligence that used everyone and everything around him for his own advantage and gain. A man who, if trifled with, would cut off an angel's wings as punishment.

A man who could find his way out of a checkmate by luring his opponent into it.

A program who respected her intelligence, but also used it to her disadvantage. Who manipulated circumstances so that the pieces would fall exactly where he wanted.

Was she falling where he wanted to? Or was she acting on her own? Was there anyway to tell?

In about twenty minutes, she was going to have to make a choice. And one way or another, everything was going to change.