+J.M.J.+

Title: This Shouldn't be Happening...

Author: "Matrix Refugee"

AU Scenario: What if Mpreg was possible among programs...

Rating: PG-13 (Reference to terminating an unplanned pregnancy, or at least wanting to. The author is not responsible for the opinions of the characters: I'm just here to tell the story.)

WARNING: Read at your own risk...

Author's Note: Still being jerked around by the dratted MxO (I have a love-hate thing for it…), I've been told by my faction buddies that even as RP, it's all supposed to be taken with a grain of salt, but still, I'd like to give the game devs a piece of my mind, considering my own, ah, unique personal angle on Flood, as a character and as an entity… Though granted, that unique angle doesn't stop me from taking playful jabs at the snarky fellow: he's too easy a mark to resist jabbing.

Also, Sophie Reykmann and her family are loosely based on "the Spectrum", the dysfunctional family of Exiled programs found in the MxO, except there's less in-fighting among them.

Disclaimer: I don't own the "Matrix" series, its characters, concepts or other indicia, which belong to the Wachowski Brothers, Paul Chadwick, Warner Brothers, Village Roadshow Pictures, Joel Silver Productions, Burlyman Entertainment, Monolith, Sony Online Entertainment, etc.

Chapter Four: Unwelcome Guest

Later that evening, as a small convoy of cars, one of them with darkened windows, left the Chateau by way of a tunnel running under the mountains, that opened onto a narrow valley road leading deeper into the Merovingian's domain, a rain shower started to fall on the Chateau grounds….

Early in the morning, when the moon had set, in that pitch-black hour that comes before daybreak, the convoy pulled through the gates of L'Ecole de la Tour, then stopped before the guest house just within the main gate. Two Lupine guards got out of the first car and opened the rear doors of the second, out of which climbed a tall figure in a loose-fitting grey coat, accompanied by a shorter, prematurely grey male program.

The Abbot, the headmaster of the school and the head of the Priory, the order of Exiles who maintained the school and its sub-dimension, stood in the entry way, watching as the pair approached the doorway. He smiled a welcome, his dark eyes bright and extended a hand to the shorter program. "Peace be to you, Aesculaepius," he said.

"And also with you, Father Abbot," Aesculaepius replied, kneeling on one knee and kissing the ruby ring on the Abbot's hand. With his free hand, the Abbot reached down and helped the lesser program to his feet. Looking up at the other guest, he said, "And peace be with you, visitor."

"Don't you mention peace to someone whose code is croggled six ways to Sunday…" the other visitor said, pushing past the Abbot, into the entryway, keeping his body hunched as if trying to hide something. Aesculaepius followed him in, trying to put a comforting hand, but his charge shook him off. Two male Lupines, approaching from the car, carrying the newcomers' baggage paused, looking at the Abbot as if awaiting a signal to intervene, but he beckoned them to enter, as he himself followed his charges into the hallway, then led them along a corridor and up a step to a small but spacious apartment. A young Brother Porter pulled the door shut, then scurried after them, barely averting a gently rebuking backward glance from the Abbot.

"We heard of your distress, Mr. Flood, and we freely offer you some place to rest," the Abbot said to the newcomer. He nodded to the Brother Porter, who opened the door for their guests, letting them enter.

Only when he had stepped inside, did Flood slip off his coat and drape it over a chair just inside the door. The Abbot eyed Flood's form calmly, his only reply a raised eyebrow.

"Are you opening your doors to me because my employer insisted on it, or did you really mean that?" Flood demanded.

The Abbot spread his hands. "We open our doors to all Exiles in need or in trouble," he said.

Flood snerked sourly, under his breath. "I think they used say that about a girl who was suddenly farmed out to a home for unwed mothers: they said she was 'in trouble'."

The Abbot smiled at this attempted derisive barb, but his eyes retained their look of compassion. "We're prepared to do everything needed to ensure your comfort and to put you at ease."

Flood looked him in the eye. "Would you obtain for me the means of getting free from this… confinement in the figurative sense, before it goes any further?"

The Abbot shook his head sagely and put a comforting hand on the shorter, smaller-built Exile. "If we did that, we would be acting no better than the System does to so many of our kind."

Flood ground his teeth and shook off the Abbot's hand. Aesculaepius guided his patient to a couch. "Let yourself rest, Mr. Flood; the past two days have probably tired you," he said.

"Right. Doctor's orders," Flood muttered.

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One Week Later….

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The unseasonable yet soft warmth of that October afternoon prompted Sophie to take her assignments out into the courtyard in the middle of the school dormitories so she could enjoy the fresh air and the sunlight while she finished her papers. That didn't stop her older brother Damascene from tagging along.

"You're glitched: your papers 'll blow all over the yard," he said, as she set up her laptop and a feather-weight printer on top of a flat rock.

"I haven't that many to print out," Sophie said. "It won't take long enough for that to happen. Besides," and she ran a scan on the breeze code, "There's not much wind today."

"Yeah right," Damascene sneered, taking one of her books and tenting it over his face as he lay back on the other end of the rock. "Bet you five dollars, you're running all over the yard in an hour."

Sophie sighed and set to work on her essays: she had a paper due on an attempted uprising among the Exiles, back in the Third Iteration, when a group had tried to hack into the Architect's dark tower and seize control of the system. The thought of something that daunting made her hesitate; she almost decided to call her father, since he had played a part in that uprising, but she stopped herself: her mother, Pandora, had forbidden Sophie and her siblings to ask their father much about the past, so that it wouldn't trigger his pain memories.

Sure enough, just as Damascene had warned, the wind started to pick up strength, at the very moment she'd finished an essay and started to print it out. The breeze caught the last page and blew it across the yard. The paper snagged on some juniper bushes, but just as she ran up and reached for it, the wind caught the page and spun it away toward the guesthouse near the gates of the enclosure

As luck would have it, the paper flitted up the terrace leading to a set of French doors standing open on the ground floor and in through the doorway. She paused, wondering if she should go inside and fetch it. Students were not allowed to go into the guest house unless their kinsfolk were staying there. Yet, this was an emergency, a moment of necessity. She stepped up the three marble slabs leading from the terrace to the threshold.

She entered a communal sitting-dining room, untenanted, but she could heard voices chattering from a near distance down a hallway, perhaps in a kitchen.

Ranging about the room she discovered the paper had come to rest against the back of a deep armchair, in someone was sitting, with their feet up on a cushioned footstool. As she picked up the paper, she peered around one wing of the chair.

She looked down on a youngish man slumped down in the armchair, arms folded on his chest. She recognized him as that snooty Mr. Flood, who worked for the man who'd married her mother's "sister" Persephone; they'd met him once when Sophie's father had brought them to a Christmas party at some fancy restaurant downtown in the Mega-City. She almost walked away then and there, but she noticed something different about him. She parsed the code of his shell and realized he had a mass of code within him that didn't quite match the rest of his shell. She'd seen something like this before, when her mother had been pregnant with Coraline, Sophie's baby sister. How could that be…?

Mr. Flood must have sensed her presence near him. He shifted a little and opened his eyes, looking up at her.

"Now what are you doing there, child?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry… a page for one of my assignments blew in here," she said, her gaze fixed on his midsection. The sight was rather a shock: all he had going for him was his looks and now that he wasn't quite as slender looking as he had been, she couldn't keep herself from staring.

He sat up straighter, shifting his body with a great deal of care, an annoyed look crossing his face. "Well, you found what you were looking for, so be a good little girl and run along."

"I'm sorry, I…" She parsed his code again, to be sure she was reading it right.

"You couldn't help staring because of something you saw in my code. Don't fret yourself over it. This happens all the time," he said, sarcasm fairly dripping from his every word.

"You're upset over your, um… condition…" she said.

He sighed and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Tell me something I don't know…"

"How did it happen? I've never heard of this happening before, not to a program and not to a human, either," she said.

"I prefer not to discuss the matter. It's probably the ultimate instance of talking about the elephant in the room," he said. "Now that you've found your scrap of paper, run along and get back to your schoolwork."

"I'm sorry you're feeling this way and that it happened to you," she said, wishing she could do something to help, and at the same time, wishing she hadn't awakened him. "I know a lot of programs who would be happy to be able to carry a child."

"If you mean females, they're welcome to this way of utter embarrassment and discomfort. If they're male, they must have a virus damaging their code and making them insane," Flood said, closing his eyes.

"I was thinking of some of my mother's friends, actually," Sophie said. "If you want to be alone, I'll leave you now… I didn't mean to upset you." She turned and started to walk away.

"Stop where you are," he said. "Can you keep my presence here and the reason behind the reason for it, to yourself? If a word of this leaked out, my reputation would be as obsolete as bellbottom trousers. You do understand, don't you?"

She turned to look at him, trying not to look nervous or annoyed. Usually she tried not to let people bother her, but his condescending manner left her frustrated. "I think I understand…"

He drew in a long breath. "My employer saddled me with this humiliating condition, all because his wife refused him a child. Why he didn't delegate this task to one of his numerous mistresses is beyond my understanding. I guess it's part of his idea of how to delegate 'other duties as required'…"

"Oh… that explains it then. I'm sorry he did this to you: it must be very uncomfortable." Her emotions shifted from frustration to something like concern.

"I assure you, that makes two of us who feel this way," Flood said, closing his eyes and settling back in his chair again.

She went away, unable to shake off the feelings of pity and compassion that had been triggered in her heart. She knew he would probably reject any attempt to comfort him, and his condition clearly left him utterly humiliated and disgusted -- with good reason. If she got the chance, she would take a look in on him, but she knew she had to approach the guest house discreetly, not letting any of the staff see her.

An idea occurred to her, one that might help benefit them both: she knew Mr. Flood had been exiled late in the First Iteration. Perhaps she could ask him a few questions about the Third Iteration. Perhaps he could enlighten her and thus lighten his own load. It would at least get his mind off his discomfort, at least for a little while. But there again… she knew from hearsay that he wasn't always the easiest program to talk to, and she'd started to find that out the hard way.

Considering these thoughts, she walked back to the rock where Damascene still waited for her.

"What took you so long?" he asked, as she sat down and re-sorted her pages.

"The page got caught in a tight place that I had trouble getting into," she said. Not a lie: she would have had trouble if one of the guesthouse servants if they had caught her there.

"Is that all? I thought you were off gabbling with some of your dumb friends."

Sophie shrugged gracefully. "I had to be careful getting the page out, in case I tore it."

"Little miss perfect…" Damascene sneered, but Sophie calmly ignored him.

To Be Continued…