Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed and stuck with me this long! Those of you who are here from Livejournal (coughkittyjammiescough) may kill me for this chapter. runs/hides We're not to the end yet, though, so please don't kill me TOO hard.
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I felt a little better the next morning, and over the next week or so, the redpill threat seemed to fade. There was no new information, and it seemed perhaps they were just content to posture and threaten. Life seemed to go on as usual.
It changed one morning as Smith was over-sugaring his coffee, as usual. Or attempting to. I stood at the cabinet, waiting on the toast and trying to tie my silk robe closed. I yawned and kept a close eye on the toaster; it had been burning things lately. Sometimes I wished I'd been a hacker instead of a vulcanologist; I could've programmed a new toaster instead of going out to buy one.
"Empty again?" Smith complained to the sugar container, and stepped toward the cabinet to get more. I opened my mouth to tease him about talking to inanimate objects when his coffee cup, sitting on the table, exploded where it sat.
"What in the he--" I started to say, but Smith had flown the rest of the distance across the kitchen and pinned me against the cabinets, away from the window.
"Look at the window," he said crisply. I saw it, then. A clean bullet hole in the window, and another in our table, where it had gone through the coffee mug. Where Smith would've been standing if he hadn't moved to get more sugar. I was never teasing about his sugar habit again.
"Gods, Smith, who is--" I started, but was interrupted for the second time, this time by a rain of bullets through the kitchen window. They shattered every inch of the window, shredded my favorite Thai linen drapes, pulverized the kitchen table, then stopped.
"GO," commanded the agent tone, and I didn't question it. We darted from the kitchen into the bedroom, where we started to throw on clothes suitable for...whatever. We didn't have the first clue what we were facing, yet. I threw open the trunk at the end of the bed and started passing him weapons as fast as I could.
"We're going to be running. There's no way we can carry all these."
I sat back on my heels. He was right. I cleared my head. "Fine, then." I handed him two handguns and a belt of clips. "Desert Eagle. You're faster with those than anything else." I strapped two rather vicious daggers to either side of my waist. I looked down at myself; it felt like a long time since I'd worn this getup. I'd instinctively thrown on the worn brown leather I'd always worn when protecting redpill couriers during the War.
"Knife to a gunfight, Etna?" Smith quipped at me, pointing at the daggers.
"Ha," I said, not laughing. "If I've learned anything from 60 years in this place, it's that we always run out of bullets at some point, and damn it, I want sharp objects when that happens." I was damned good with them, too. They somehow felt more natural to to me than a firearm. "They're versatile," I explained, tucking a Browning into a shoulder holster on each side. "Where are we going?"
"Ghost's crew is at the Oracle's today. First thing to do is warn them that this is happening," Smith said. All efficiency. I'd always wondered what it would be like to run with an agent, rather than away from one. Looked like I was about to find out.
We took the stairs to the roof. Stealthier, or at least slightly smaller, than Smith, I checked the surrounding rooftops from our vantage point. Once I'd cleared it, we took off, leaping from roof to roof until we reached the Oracle's building. I was afraid he would have to slacken his pace to allow me to keep up, but if he did, he didn't let me know it. We dodged into the roof access door.
"Do you think they're on us?" I asked him.
He nodded. "There are 12 of them, three buildings behind." They'd sent 12 people to assassinate one agent program and a human program anomaly. I ground my teeth. I wouldn't let them have him if they'd brought an army. Seemed they weren't as fast as we were; not a surprise. We headed for the Oracle's apartment as fast as we could move, knocking several people and a hallway plant over very rudely. I wondered if one was expected to apologize for that sort of thing while running for her life.
We made it to the Oracle's apartment and burst in through the door to find the Tamar, Haruka, and Ghost in the living room with the Oracle. It looked as though they were there so Haruka could speak with the Oracle; the two were absorbed in a spirited conversation. Sati & Tirzah sat on the floor, playing with a Strawberry Shortcake tea set. Ghost and Tamar leaped to their feet instantly. I started to babble.
"Etna," Smith said sharply, cutting me off. I bit the inside of my cheek and glared at him, but he was right. I shut up and let him. His eyes sent me a "thank you". "I believe the radicals have made their move." He told them about the failed sniper and the dash across the rooftops in much fewer words than I would have.
"Shit," Haruka said, and produced two handguns from somewhere. Where she kept them in outfits that consisted mostly of t-shirts & pleated skirts, I'll never know.
"Close the blinds," Ghost ordered, and I ran to comply. "Tamar, take the girls & the Oracle into the bedroom and make sure no one can see in through the window." Tamar snatched the girls and the Oracle followed them into the bedroom.
Haruka, Ghost, Smith, and I stood there in the silence, every weapon trained on the front door. We didn't wait for long. The door slammed open and the radicals poured in.
"Hello, Lucius," I said. He sneered at me.
"So. You're on their side after all," he said.
"She was right, Lucius. We're all supposed to be on the same side, now," Ghost told him.
"An agent, Ghost," Lucius said, as if he were explaining something to a very small child. "Agent Smith. Or maybe you've had so many cookies you've forgotten exactly who it is that our little human-program there is fucking." He indicated me with his gun. I ground my teeth again; I was rising to the bait.
"Ah, Lucius, you don't have to be so jealous..." I taunted.
"Fuck you," he hissed.
"As you so recently pointed out, that is Smith's job, but thank you for the offer," I said, honey dripping from the words. This time it was Lucius who took the bait. He fired; I dodged. His jaw dropped open in what seemed like slow motion. To him, it must have looked precisely like an agent's movement. I'm no agent, but one or two bullets is nothing after 60 years. Not taking my chances with any more shots, I ducked behind the makeshift barricade that Ghost and Haruka were inhabiting.
All hell had broken loose around us. Smith and Ghost had flipped the couch so that Haruka and Ghost could duck behind it. Smith moved precisely as agents always did; not a single bullet so much as grazed him. All the while he managed to fire back, winging several rebels and taking out a few kneecaps. After all the years I'd cursed his ability to do that, I found myself admiring the artistry of it. Lucius may have been impressed by what I'd done, but if I lived for a thousand years, I doubted I'd ever hold a candle to Smith. In the middle of a hail of gunfire, I found myself wondering if he was avoiding killing shots on purpose.
As it always did, the shooting seemed to go on forever. The carpet ripped up in chunks around us. Glass broke, plaster fell, pictures ripped loose from the walls and fell with resounding crashes. We would peek over the couch barricade only enough to find a clean shot and take it, and the rebels were doing the same around the door frame. Both sides had their casualties already. Haruka had taken a shot in the left upper arm, and Ghost had several graze wounds on his head & shoulders. I prayed the radicals didn't think about the Oracle & the girls in the bedroom.
"You give us the agent and we're gone," one of the radicals yelled during a momentary pause.
"There is no agent here, for the thousandth time," I yelled, swinging around the couch long enough to fire a shot in the direction of the voice. A yell of pain, then a curse, and more shots fired. Another pause. Then the most horrifying sound I'd ever heard in my life. Sati's high voice, taut in panic. "Tirzah!"
I whirled up and around the couch in panic just in time to see Tirzah standing calmly in the room and a tall, thin radical raising his gun. I couldn't move fast enough. There was no way I could make it in time, and no way I could start firing again without the possibility of hitting Tirzah. The tall man fired at the tiny girl standing halfway between the two groups. Haruka and Ghost stood horrified as I leaped toward the girl, feeling as though I were moving through syrup. Tirzah was looking the tall man straight in the eye, fearless, as if she knew precisely what she was doing.
For the first time in the history of the Matrix, an agent program used his blinding speed, not to dodge a bullet, but to intercept it. I was fast, but Smith was faster. Smith was across the room and in front of Tirzah faster than the human eye could see. The bullet took him in the center of his chest.
The sound of his knees hitting the floor will resound in my head for the rest of my immortal life.
I don't remember crossing the room. I don't remember drawing the daggers. I don't remember a lot of what happened that morning, but I remember the stunned look on the tall man's face as I wrenched my dagger from his ruined throat. I heard a voice screaming--a horrible sound of terror mingled with rage mingled with grief mingled with pure hatred. I didn't realize until long afterward that the voice had been my own.
I whirled around to find Lucius bearing down on me. Dagger under the chin, and I drove it straight up through his jaw & into his sinus cavity. Two women next. Twins, it seemed. I punched one in the stomach & the other in the face, and thrust the daggers between both their lowest vertebrae as they stumbled past me. I wondered idly if doing that here would paralyze them in the Real. I took both eyes from a boy of no more than 17, then whirled halfway around to bury my left dagger to the hilt in the chest of a stunned woman with green hair. Then, as quickly as they'd come at me, they were gone. No more came.
I looked up to find the last rebels had dropped their weapons & were staring at me with a horrible mix of terror and awe. I shook with restraint; I wanted to rip their throats out. A young girl looked me right in the eyes, gave a strangled cry, and seemed to try and hide inside herself. Then I heard Tirzah crying. Tirzah. Smith.
I flew across the room. He was lying against the wall, blood pouring from his chest, soaking one of his favorite blue shirts. "I rather liked this shirt," he told me, gasping. Color was draining from his face.
"Oh gods, Smith, I'll buy you a thousand shirts just like it. Please, just be still and don't talk," I told him. My voice was quivering. I tried to stop the bleeding.
"I'm sorry, Etna," his voice was a little more firm. I looked at the azure eyes I was always admiring. "I don't think that will do any good."
My world seemed to tremble. "Smith...Smith what are you talking about? You'll be all right. Just don't move." My voice was high and frantic now; I was starting to panic. "Smith, please... You promised." I wouldn't have to grieve his death.
He gave a half-smile. "I didn't mean to lie to you, Etna. I really didn't think..." He looked at me. His eyes were sad; I could've drowned in the sheer misery in those eyes. "I'm sorry." His eyes changed just slightly; I could read love in them now, and he smiled. Not the smirk or the smug grin or the polite quirk of the lips. He gave me a genuine smile that touched his eyes. Then he sighed, closed his eyes, and his hand went limp against mine.
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Another Author's Note: Again, I had to listen to music to get a scene right. During Etna's momentary insanity, I listened to "One Step Closer" by Linkin Park and "Halloween" by Dave Matthews Band (which my husband refers to as the "apologize to Dave Matthews right now so he doesn't kill us all" song).