She was irritatingly tall, for a human female. Smith was unused to looking one of them in the eye. Still, it was satisfying to see the fear flicker through her visual processors. Her composure, then, was just a façade. He had to give her credit for maintaining it so meticulously.

She flinched, he noted, as he put his hands to her head. Good. She was properly cowed. He squeezed a little harder than was necessary just to drive the point home.

Smith was not used to uncertainty. It had never been a part of his existence until Anderson had radically altered him, and every time the unwelcome signifier of imprecision intruded on him his hatred for its cause grew.

Right now, he questioned his interrogation software's effectiveness with unplugged humans. At least he retained his abilities, despite his dissociation from the mainframe. He had never relied on asking questions for his information. When he didn't query the Source for the information he sought, his reconnaissance coding allowed him to scan the data compiled by any being in the Matrix. This Thompson stood before him as a creature of code...

Good. It worked. And moreover, it seems she had been telling the truth, right up to the purpose of this mission. It seemed that Anderson had specifically told her to camouflage her purpose, and from the looks of things there had been no love lost between the two. Perhaps this offer was genuine.

He snarled as he released her. He would never have required aid to track anyone, particularly one of his primary targets, before. He was exposed without the omniscient collective, and as even the human in front of him had noted, he was without programmed purpose. By all rights, he should have been deleted. In fact, he had been required to report for deletion. This human had guessed why he had overridden his program and chosen the life of an exile. Somehow, he had become attached to existence. He would destroy the one who had tainted his, and perhaps be allowed exist within acceptable parameters again. He was not flawed. He would demonstrate that.

She was looking at him. He had wasted nearly a minute in useless contemplation. "Very well, Ms. Thompson. Your continued existence is valuable to me."

"Thanks." He didn't smile at her sarcasm. Had she really expected him to? It was so easy to forget that he wasn't human. Certainly, he was dour and reserved, but there were people like that. He reminded her strongly of the unpleasant stock broker uncle who had come over for a few stiff dinners with her family before she had been unplugged. And his hands felt so very real...

He was staring at her now, arms crossed over his chest in what she had already noticed was a characteristic gesture. Well, she assumed he was staring at her, but those thrice-damned sunglasses made it impossible to tell. Not, she thought, that it would help to look at his eyes.

"Well?" He didn't reply. She crossed her arms to mirror him, staring into the blank lenses of his glasses.

He moved first, several minutes later. "This grows tiresome."

"Look, I didn't come here to be some sort of lackey. You might have gotten some bootlicking from Cipher, but make no mistake. I am using you to get what I want. It happens to be what you want, too, but that doesn't mean I owe you any deference."

"That is a... dangerous assertion." Smith glared from behind his glasses. This human was overconfident. Perhaps it had been a mistake to keep her alive. Some mistakes are easily rectified.

"Look, Smith. You want what I've got. You don't like me, but you're not going to kill me. You can quit with the veiled threats." Cat bit her own tongue. If looks could kill... She was never this brash unless she was frightened, but it was never wise to bait an Agent - not that anyone usually got the chance.

He stepped forward with the slithering speed only Agents could manage, hoisting Cat by her jacket collar before the movement registered. Her already-abused neck began to bleed as Smith yanked her in closer, his voice a modulated whisper. "You may indeed be useful. That remains to be seen. I find myself reluctant to gamble on your future utility when suffering your present insolence." He shook her violently before letting her fall in an indecorous heap.

Some of Cat's self-preservation reasserted herself; she remained silent as she tucked her legs beneath her. Smith's face had fallen back into its carefully blank default, but she knew she'd seen anger, contempt, obsession, malice on it, and all within the span of a few minutes. That certainly seemed like evidence of emotion, but Morpheus had seen that before Neo had entered Smith. Perhaps this was a greater variety? None of the feelings had been positive. Then again, she thought, Smith would hardly be all smiles just now if he was capable of the same range of emotions that she was. "I'm sorry."

She thought the skin around his eyebrows puckered. Had he narrowed his eyes? "You know, I'd find it a lot easier to talk to you if you'd take those glasses off." He remained motionless. She sighed. "All right. At least have a seat so I don't have to look up at you." He sat stiffly with his knees propped nearly to chin level. She'd been half-expecting him to spread his suit jacket on the ground. Surely it would take more than a little grass to violate his immaculate suit, though. "Well? Ask away. I'm not sure what you want to know."

"You seemed quite certain of that." She didn't answer. Two could play his game. When he spoke, his head focused forward. Was he simply rude, or was this an imperfection in his simulation of human behavior? "What are his weaknesses?"

"Why don't you look at me when you're talking to me?" If she'd stopped to think it through, it would never have happened. As it was, Cat glanced nervously at Smith's holster as she snatched the sunglasses from his face and tucked them into his collar. "There."

He seemed to take it almost too calmly, pressing his lips into a thin line but saying - and doing - nothing. Cat filed that away for future consideration. "You already know the biggest one: Trinity. Catch her and he'll do anything, and I mean anything, to rescue her. You should have as many clear shots as you want, because he won't leave without her."

His lip curled. "That is pitifully obvious. If you came here..."

"Let me finish." His eyes narrowed again; apparently, Smith wasn't used to being interrupted. "I wouldn't want to go against Neo in a direct fight. You've tried that. No matter how many copies there are, you can't beat him that way. He'll just take off. And he can see you coming, even without an Operator to tell him it's you. You don't read like anything else, you know. Not an Agent, not any of those rogue programs, nothing. We know it's you."

Smith opened his mouth again. "Jesus, you weren't lying when you said you weren't patient. Let me finish." He really didn't like it when she silenced him. That settled that; his eyes signaled anger as clearly as hers might. "Trinity doesn't have that advantage. If I feed you the location of our next entrance - if I manage, say, to get myself caught on the way out... She'll come back for me, she has before. Better, if I can communicate with you somehow from the real world..."

"That can be arranged."

"The best thing of all would be to create some situation where it was necessary for us to venture into a crowd. You're too easy to see, even for Trinity, when you're out by yourself. That suit is a dead giveaway. And even if we dress you up, any Operator can pick you out no problem. If there are many people, then you might just blend in."

"I doubt that you can induce this Trinity," he spat the name like a curse, "to enter a crowd. She has proven cautious in the past."

"I think I know a way." She paused. His eyes bored into her, his gaze intense enough that she understood his preference for shades. She felt threatened in spite of herself. "Can you get me to the Oracle?"

"Yes." The way he spoke evoked a little of Neo. Cat wondered whether the One's emotionless voice was natural to him, or was a little bit of Smith's personality manifesting itself in its other shell. She bet that it was natural; Smith conveyed much more with his sinister tones. How was it possible that a fabricated voice could have more nuance than the genuine article?

"Can you do it when I'm not with you? You know, have her send me a summons after I'm back on the Sekhmet? Trinity believes her absolutely, and no one else can or will snoop on what she actually says to me. I can cook up something about a mind that must be freed, that we need very badly. I think we need to go fetch this person from God knows where..."

"She apprehended Anderson in a night club."

"Do you know which one?"

"Yes. It was near his home."

"Was?"

"It was destroyed in favor of a more lucrative establishment."

"Well, so much for that idea. Another club, then. The most popular joint that you can think of, so packed that your anomaly of code might blend in or at least be obscured."

"That is acceptable."

"Good. But they'll never let you in the way you are. And Trinity could pick you out, Operator or no Operator." She squinted at him critically. "The suit will have to go. But you'll still telegraph yourself for miles in a nightclub. We'll just have to work on your people skills."

Smith frowned at her, stayed silent. "What I mean, Agent, is we'll have to improve a little bit on your disguise. I've got a good two weeks before they come back to get me. We'll make it so that no one can tell that you aren't human, at least at first glance." He looked like he was going to object, so Cat continued talking right over the top of him. "There's no other way you can possibly expect to catch Trinity. Nothing else is going to work, or has worked. If you have any better ideas, by all means chime right in."

Smith frowned at her. Cat waited silently. The uncomfortable silence stretched on for several minutes as Cat imagined the Agent's programming whirring for a way out of this one. "Very well," he said finally. "You will assist me in augmenting my adaptability."

Cat grinned. Of course, he couldn't admit that it was her idea and she was in charge. "All right, Agent. Let's get started immediately."

~~~~~ A/N: Do I have a post-Reloaded Smith characterized tolerably? I worry a little about him. For one thing, I can't possibly live up to the perfect capture of Drucilla's Smith in her wonderful "Understanding." (Insert cheesy pitch here.) Yell at me if anything sounds off.

Audrey A: I promise that I didn't steal Cat from you. :P I hadn't read your fic until I read your review; it seems as though our Cats share nothing but a name, in any case.

Draco: This thing's a bit longer than the others. I am tempted to put this thing out in bite-sized chunks because then I can update more frequently, but I'll try to keep the chapters at a more reasonable length.

Reader: You know, I had hardly spared a thought for Neo after Cat finished ripping on him. You're right; he bears a little more of a look. Let this next chapter be on your head. Cat may think ill of him, but she sees far from the whole story.