Stand-off
.
Beneath the bandages, the ragged shreds of his shell pulsated, flames alternating with rusty iron. With a grunt, the Merovingian shifted a few inches on the narrow hospital bed; the motion successfully transferred some of the pressure away from his left side. The heat abated only a little. Another growl. He could have ignored the physical pain if it were not for the meddlesome burden of, well, helplessness. The emotion assailed him in incessant waves, entirely predictable, impossible to beat back. Though over twenty-four hours had passed since he'd awoken inside this cell, he had not grown used to it yet.
He never should have dropped that sword.
If his own mental state would only desist from distracting him, he could have contemplated his current predicament logically. Somewhere out in the Matrix, two ex-agents were fleeing from the system, clutching his fragile notebook in their thuggish hands. If they hadn't already tossed it into a ditch like so much useless trash, that was. His wound flared again at the thought.
He never should have stuck the notebook into his own pocket as if it were some protective talisman. He never should have neglected to suspect that pair of crude villains who'd hidden among his men for nearly five months, always ducking away from attention. He never should have felt that flicker of compassion for Helena, that conniving little whore who'd returned after the reload, begging and claiming that she had been exiled for real. He never should never have.
He never should have succumbed to Persephone. How could she have failed to realize how unreliable Brown and Jones were? They could have turned on her any instant in their attempted treachery. They could have shot her in panic, or merely for the heck of it...
The code of his body twisted and throbbed. Overhead, mid-morning daylight fluttered through the single circular window in the ceiling, a muted silver-gray instead of gold: clouds must be racing across the sky above the chateau. Gingerly, the Merovingian wrapped a hand against the bed railing and leveraged himself up by a foot or so, then a bit further until he was in a half-sitting position. The blue hospital gown slipped across his shoulder. A tug of wire against one arm, and the medical machines whined discreetly behind his head. His free hand fumbled for the spot where the needle was taped to his skin; it took him two tries before the idiotic thing pulled free. A few feet to the right of him, one of the monitor screens gave a glint, then shut off, its cascade of emerald symbols melted into inky blankness. Good.
A key clicked inside the lock. Too damnably feeble to even haul himself fully upright, he could only remain still and watch as the heavy iron door ground open. Persephone strode it, face impeccably distant, posture wearily unbowed, the glow of her eyes unreadable. For two, three impossibly protracted seconds, no words were exchanged. Then she turned and pushed the door shut again behind her with a clang.
"Bonne déesse." The term of endearment was as hollow as bones in a desert. "How touching, the devoted wife visiting her husband in prison. If I may wonder—"
He coughed. Persephone stood there regarding him pensively, and the distance between them was somewhere between four point five meters and infinity. Injury-addled as he was, only now did he notice the slim laptop she carried under one arm.
"Mérovée," she murmured. Another pause, maybe an inward struggle, and she finally walked across the room and held the laptop out toward him. The Merovingian blinked at her in bemusement.
"Just...do your thing. Whatever you can." The words sounded like they were being forcibly dragged out of her, but she did not avert her eyes. A cascade of transitory sunlight poured in from the window above and danced across her hair, careless of the silence. With some alarm, he recognized the way his heart twitched suddenly—ludicrously—against the aching illusion of his ribcage.
"You wish me to heal myself," he said.
"It's better that you do." Her mouth pursed around the curt answer. "So go ahead. Take of care it."
He was supposed to offer a supercilious grin now, preferably topped off with a flippant remark. None came to mind. With an effort, he reached for the proffered machine. The instant its weight came down on his hand, he almost dropped the laptop straight to the floor; Persephone took a swift forward step and caught it just in time. Drawing up right next to the bed, she laid it down in his lap, more gently than he expected. The Merovingian's fingers hovered over the keyboard.
It was over, the rational part of himself declared firmly. His wife's benevolent mood was surely temporary, and in order to escape these dungeons and reclaim what was rightfully his, he would have to make his moves with both decision and care.
"How sweet of you, chérie."
Persephone said nothing. He had strength enough to type a few commands. A smooth green rain started down the computer screen, the faithfully recorded stream of his physical operative states, the silly old habits of breathing, synapses, blood flow. Damage.
"My notebook," he said. "You intentionally allowed those two ex-agents to run off with it. You knew they were playing the Architect's game all along."
"I couldn't have known you were carrying the blasted thing in your pocket, could I?" She did not bother to raise her voice. "I told you already, it was your own fault."
The truth of the retort galled him. Several more strokes of the key, and the glittering streams of verdure swirled across the laptop. A tingle began along one side of his gauze-wrapped torso, faint as of yet.
"You knew it was important to me."
"It was a bunch of empty paper. Always has been."
"Help me find it, then. I need it back."
Persephone shook her head as if honestly incredulous. Moving with deliberate elegance, she sat down on the solitary chair next to the bed, perching primly with folded hands.
"Explain something to me, husband mine." Still impeccably serene. "What makes you think that I will do your bidding even now? Are you actually so arrogant that you do not see how matters stand between us?"
"Persephone," said the Merovingian, aiming his gaze directly into hers. The last time a tender pleading tone had worked with her had been a hundred and seventy years ago, but it couldn't hurt to try. "I am aware that you have grounds to hate me. I haven't been much of a husband to you for a while; I am fully aware of this as well. All I can tell you is that if I could go back and change things...If there was ever another choice, I would have taken it in a heartbeat."
"I've heard all this before, you know."
"But it's not simply about me. The secrets that notebook holds are necessary to the Matrix's survival, to all of us. There are too many dangers lurking in the construct, as you have seen yourself five months ago, and preciously few means of control. It is imperative that I figure out—"
"Stop it, Mérovée!"
At last, anger flashed through Persephone's eyes. Outrageously given the situation, his pulse stuttered again at the sheer vehemence of her beauty.
"I am sick of your obsession." She sucked in a sharp breath through gritted teeth, both hands squeezed into white-knuckled fists. "I am sick of you, your delusions and your schemes. I want this to end, don't you get it? But I suppose I should have seen it coming, right from the very beginning."
"Please, ma reine," he contended, then had to halt as the tingle through his shell deepened into the jabbing of a dozen invisible scalpels. The broken codes of his shell must be weaving themselves back together again, but it no longer mattered, not for this transitory minute or so.
"I should have seen it six cycles ago." Persephone lifted a hand and pressed it against her forehead, delicate fingertips holding back rage, exhaustion, bloody-raw agony. "I should have seen it the moment I met you."
The past flooded the room.
"No," snapped the Merovingian. "You cannot believe that."
"Do you deny it?" The fires in her dark eyes faded, replaced by the thinnest film of glistening moisture. "Have you forgotten what you were all those centuries ago? The great Administrator of the Matrix, still unsatisfied with the vast powers he had been granted. You still wanted more. Somewhere along the way, you grasped onto a bizarre rumor, the tale that my mother possessed some mystical key, a secret object that recorded—" A slender hand flicked dismissively. "Whatever. Demons and angels and magic concealed inside the walls of the universe. Then you learnt of my existence, this naive young girl created to study love. You conceived your plan."
No. He could not deny it. The air separating them thickened further, its weight mountainous.
"It was my original motive for seeking you out," he admitted. "But everything changed as soon as I met you. You were walking across the park near your mother's house; I can still see as clearly as yesterday. It was late summer and I hadn't even noticed that the Second Cycle was already dying. We approached each other along the path as if by chance. You turned your head, looking lost in thought, and...and at that very instant, I decided it wasn't going to be simply about the notebook."
"Everything between us was tainted from that instant onward, Mérovée."
"That is not true."
"I can't—I just can't stand having that thing around anymore. If Brown and Jones hadn't taken it away from you, maybe I would have—"
She did not finish.
"You would have...what?" Despite himself, he stumbled over the question.
"Nevermind. It's all moot," said Persephone, deflated, and the Merovingian turned his attention toward the laptop screen, unwilling to meet her stare any longer. The pain was dissipating from his left side, as lines and subroutines realigned themselves according to the commands from the keyboard. A bit more cohesion through his virtual muscles, a bit more order emerging from the wreckage.
Hush draped across the cell. Ages ago in the Third Cycle, she used to sit and watch him work sometimes, just like this. Exile was still a fresh torment in those days. He had been scrapped, cut adrift from the immense prerogatives of his former Administrator's station; the feeling was akin to being blinded and crippled at one fell swoop, and having to learn how to perceive, how to walk, how to function all over again. Sometimes he would hold onto her, shivering with shame at his own powerlessness, while she stroked his shoulders and hair and repeated encouragements into his ears. She told him that he could still build and create, that he would be all right. That they would be all right.
"Why?" he asked, glancing back up at her.
"I've answered you already." A tenth of a second later, Persephone's eyes had already hardened again. "If you still cannot wrap you brain around everything you've done—"
"Not that," said the Merovingian. "Not why you plotted and instigated the coup against me." He swallowed back the next automatic sentence, the one saying he understood that. He didn't. "I mean this. Now."
"I can't keep you in this bedridden state forever, can I?" she returned, irritated. "It's inconvenient. And I..." A grimace. "I don't want to look at you all broken up like this, okay?"
No more explanations were forthcoming. His mind was clearing at long last, and he gave the room a quick scan. Walls, door, lock. His own barely-mended shell, the hospital gown loose and shapeless upon his shoulders. This would not do, if he were to find a way out of here at the first available chance.
"Why?" It was the same monosyllabic question, this time from Persephone.
"Why...what?"
She did not deign to clarify. After several more rapid calculations of contingency scenarios, the Merovingian leaned forward, fingers again flitting over the keys. His beloved captor made no move to stop him.
"Why do you persist?" Her retort filtered through as if from a faraway place. "After all these years, your path has led to nothing. Why do you still chase after your mirages? Do you still even so much as remember caring about anything else whatsoever? About me?"
He considered it awhile. Against his skin, the gown's pale blue cotton shimmered, stretching into the whiteness of a dress shirt, finely made though plainer than anything he'd worn for the past three and half cycles. The clothes he'd been created in, once upon another eon.
"I care," he said, not finding the heart for the customary witticisms. The injury must have drained him more than he thought.
"This so-called magic of yours. Why do you still believe that it exists? Every evidence speaks to the contrary; you've searched and searched for six centuries to no avail. Why can't you open your eyes? Why can't you stop?"
Tentatively, the Merovingian sat up straighter on the bed, swinging his trousers-clad legs down to the flagstones. None of his physical arrays or functors cried out in protest. No mood for tie or jacket: this was what he could manage for now. Persephone made no scornful comment.
"You're wrong, déesse," he said. "Not every evidence speaks to the contrary. Haven't you also seen the Matrix burn, many centuries ago? That was evidence. You've passed through reloads, and they, too, were evidence. I have seen and sensed too much to believe otherwise. There is some flaw in the fabric of the world. It must be repaired if life is to be safe." He gestured with one hand, indicating all the invisible living dreams around them. "Safe from the nightmares we've both experienced, and what I search for is the means, the cure. I won't stop, Persephone. I can't."
"You sound sincere." There was a curious quality to her tone; it took him a second to identify it as wistfulness.
"It would be wrong for me to give up. The secret forces exist because they must."
"What you're telling me," remarked Persephone softy, "is that you are convinced that you are right. You are so consumed by your passion for power that you cannot conceive of what lies outside of it, or how much it hurts me. Is that it?"
"Call it what you will." The shield had fallen away, and he was so exposed before her that it nearly made him queasy inside. But he would not show it, not this late in the game. "I haven't yet abdicated all my principles, whether you believe it or not."
"I see," she muttered tonelessly. "And...and is the womanizing also a part of this idealistic search?"
This time, he had no answer. No way to describe the fear, the frantic need to clutch at the flesh of reality like a shipwrecked man at flotsam, to grip and tear into it without being found out and seen right through.
"I have never cared a whit for any of those females," he said eventually. "You have always known this well."
"And that is suppose to be some sort of comfort to me, I suppose?"
No, even he could not call it comfort. But why couldn't she see any of the obvious facts? How had things come to this pass, anyway?
"I'm sorry."
The film of dampness gleamed in his wife's eyes. He had to break out of the chateau and hunt down that pair of bastards who'd carried off his precious artifact. He had to stay by her side and explain everything, if just one more time. A hundred more times.
"You talk about the reload, and nightmares," she stated. "So you must also recall that night five months ago, when you betrayed me to the one who called himself the Architect. He sent two full teams after me, you know. Six agents in all."
The Merovingian steadied himself. The familiar armor of pride clanged and clattered as it went up again, bringing solidity and truth.
"I am saddened to hear of it, ma chérie. It was shocking overkill." He inclined his head. "But you returned."
"Should I thank you for it?" No more overt anger seeped from her. Her walls, too, were rising back with practiced speed. "I did not act as you expected of me that night of the reload, did I?"
"No, you did not." He was halfway back to his old self by now, at least on the surface. "Do enlighten me, what did happen inside the Source during that dreadful storm? I was worried to death, darling."
"It has never occurred to you to ask before." Persephone let out a sarcastic snort.
"I beg your pardon for my previous neglect. I am all ears now."
The corner of her lovely mouth curled, but not quite in disdain, and the facade almost crumbled once more. But then Persephone shrugged.
"I will tell you a story, husband mine," she said.
.
.
After the Source's sterile white walls, the unbounded darkness beneath the city always sent a shiver through Kamala's codes. Fear was an emotion she recognized much too frequently these days. At this moment, however, it was tempered by another sensation, the comforting knowledge of a familiar presence, still beyond the shadows but drawing rapidly closer. It was not a part of her purpose to notice the proximity of other programs outside the Source, yet in recent years, it had begun to happen with Rama, at first very faintly, then with ever-increasing distinctness and frequency. Her husband must have also just returned from his work.
A second later, the strength of his emotions struck her, almost lifting all the lines of her programming straight up and out of the ambient spatial formation. An unmistakable and impatient wonder, mingled with relief. Elation.
Sati? she cried out in silence.
The pale glow and soft verdure of their home flickered into existence around the two of them at the same instant. Before Kamala could find her feet and look about the garden, Rama had already grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her next to himself.
"There's news, my love. Sati—Sati is all right. Somebody has arrived. I don't know how, but they're from the Matrix, and they've seen Sati and she's alive and well..."
Startled by his uncharacteristically disjointed talk, she squinted into his face. The name of their daughter, coupled with the wrenchingly beautiful phrases—all right, alive and well—were so dazzling that her mind stuttered, slow to react.
"Rama, what do you mean? Who has arrived and seen Sati?"
"We have guests. From the Matrix." His eyes were round with excitement.
The shimmering breeze froze around her. Belatedly, Kamala whirled, at last surveying her surroundings. Then her legs almost turned to water all over again.
"Agent Smith." The gasp came out before she was able to stop herself. A hand flew up toward her mouth in shock.
Across the garden, Smith stood under the tall outspread boughs of her favorite tree. His suit was in tatters, and his shirt blood-stained. No tie or shades, shoulders tense, fist raised into ready-to-pounce stance. She had never seen him—or any of his kind, really—like this before, but she could identify the coiled energy that radiated from his form, the barely controlled aggression. It was her job to identify these things. The agent's icy blue glower was focused unblinkingly upon her, but he did not charge. Not yet.
"Kamala," cried Rama, "our guests have met Sati recently! They told me that—"
"That's an agent in the middle of our home," she breathed, sotto voce. She had to stay calm. She had to think. There was still some distance between them, ten or fifteen meters, and Smith was still standing at the same spot under the tree, not advancing. Maybe he, too, was caught by surprise and not yet decided on an immediate attack. They could still run, get away from this place and into the night. If Smith gave chase, they could still lose him. She and her husband were more accustomed to the abyss underneath the city; surely they would have an advantage out there.
"I know him." Explanations would take far too long. "He was one of my subjects."
"But they are able to enter here," insisted her husband, alarmed. "You know what that means!"
Gradually, Agent Smith lowered his fists, though without unclenching them. He took a long forward stride, then another. His sight did not stray from her for even a millisecond. Some difficult and unexplained emotion crossed his face, partly suppressed turmoil, partly entrancement, partly...something else, which was far more complicated than a program of his type should possess. Kamala fought back the urge to backpedal. They were not in the Source and he must have gone rogue, but she could handle this. She had handled him before.
Calm. She walked forward as well, the same way she always walked forward into her operating room.
"Who are you?" asked Smith. Low voice as taut as a wire, though not quite a growl of anger. More of defiance. She had heard him growl in defiance on several previous occasions.
"My husband says that you have seen our daughter," said Kamala, doing her best to keep her reply even. He could hurt her here, the awareness pulsated against the inner configurations of her mind. He could hurt both of them terribly in less than a blink. "When did you meet her? Where?"
"Who are you?" he repeated, a notch more loudly. They were standing only a short distance apart now. To Kamala's astonishment, she detected a hint of a tremor in the syllables, savagely restrained. This, too, was not supposed to happen with an agent. But he was not an agent. Not anymore.
"Please," cut in her husband, drawing up beside her, "she just wants to know..."
"What are you? Answer me!"
"Kamala is my wife." Rama gulped nervously. Though without direct experience of agents, he had learnt from her what they were. "Please, Aleph, tell your friend that he must not behave like this. She can do you no harm, and neither can I."
"Aleph?" she whispered, not daring to take her sight off Smith.
"Why, yes, the other traveler who is here." Her husband hesitated, casting about for an explanation. "Uh, her nature probably isn't included in your usual purpose. She is a program from the Matrix, but her code looks human."
Oh. Kamala frowned at the program in the shape of a scruffy-looking young woman, now standing next to Smith. Torn clothes, black hair, worried gaze fixed unwaveringly upon the ex-agent. Without speaking, the strange female—Aleph—came up another pace and stretched out a hand toward Smith's. He did not snarl or round on her, or even turn his head. Her fingers made contact, then wrapped loosely about his wrist. He neither shook her off nor relaxed.
"You know my child," Kamala heard herself speak, rather more firmly than she'd imagined possible. "How?"
"Actually, I'm the one who met your daughter, and much more recently," interrupted Aleph. "It was two days ago, give or take. I visited the Oracle, and Sati opened the door for me. She looked without a care, really, skipping down the hall...It was clear that she was happy."
"But now could you have met Sati, Agent Smith?" asked Kamala. "How did you learn her name?"
The renegade program recoiled. The involuntary motion was so slight that it would have been impossible for anyone else to perceive, but she did.
"Tell me who you are," he said, far more quietly than a moment ago. "I recognize your voice. I should know you, shouldn't I?"
For a pinched beat, no one spoke. The last time she'd seen him had been over a year ago. He had been normal then, more-or-less, except the underground pressure of his hostility and impatience had again veered out of acceptable range. She'd done something about it, hadn't she? Not as thoroughly as she should have. A mistake, Kamala now realized.
"No." Stubbornly, she held her ground. "You are never supposed to remember me."
"You are..." Smith stopped mid-sentence, then made another attempt. "You inhabit the Source, is that correct?"
"I am an interactive software programmer. Yes."
"Smith," ventured Aleph. "She is Sati's mother. She hasn't—"
"She is what meets me whenever I am ordered into the Source, Miss Greene."
The young woman froze. Frantically, Kamala shoved aside a wave of confusion. She had her purpose just like he had his. Even if Smith had thrown it all away, as some programs from the Matrix did, he should still understand how things worked.
"It's only her job," murmured Aleph.
In one single careless movement, Smith yanked his hand out of her grasp and advanced two further steps. Rama and Aleph moved simultaneously. The ex-agent halted as his companion cut into position in front of him.
"I was told that you had been destroyed," stated Kamala, pushing past her husband. Rama should not be here, not so physically close to one such as this. "You chose exile instead?"
A guttural and mirthless laugh that chilled the sunlight.
"Oh, yes," he answered. "They have done everything to destroy me, but I survived, and I saw. I have strove to break my chains, and I have..."
He trailed off, staring at a point just above her shoulder.
"I'm here, Smith," reassured Aleph urgently. "We're here under 01, in Rama-Kandra and Kamala's refuge. She's not one of them."
"I have died and fallen. I have seen the stars and heard their message. And I have begun to remember what they told me."
"The stars," repeated Kamala automatically. The last time Smith had been brought into the Source, she had asked him about those inconceivable specks of fire, designed cunningly into the Matrix sky. In her notebook, every entry about starlight had been from him.
"I have begun to remember you."
The way the sentence reverberated was all wrong, noted Kamala almost idly, though she could not quite pinpoint the code corruption. Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms.
"Did you meet Sati after you were exiled?" Another effort, and the inflections of her own question stabilized. Smith's forehead wrinkled in concentration.
"I have met countlessly many." He seemed to have returned to the present. "I have committed countlessly many acts."
"Damn it," snapped Aleph.
"You said that you recalled Sati very well," interjected Rama, stiff with dawning apprehension. "You said that she was brave."
Against the skin of her shell, the sweet spring breeze sharpened into one of her own instruments.
"What did she need to be brave about?"
Less than a second after the demand left her mouth, it struck Kamala how scared of the answer she really was. The exiled agent, however, merely shook his head and remained mute before her.
"Um, actually, a lot of things were happening inside the Matrix just around then." Valiantly, Aleph stepped forward, once more pushing herself into the spot directly between them. "The construct had to go through a reload, you see, and several sides appeared to be each playing its game. It was my fault, actually..."
"I have been the Matrix and I have been her." Smith regarded her with hollow eyes. "I have been all, staining all and stained by all."
All the pieces clicked together, and the truth nearly knocked her to her knees. She had been blind to not have figured it out much much earlier.
"You are the virus," she said slowly, trembling. "Five months ago, a program from inside the construct mutated, gaining the ability and the drive to self-replicate and take over the mind of all who dwelt there. It threatened to destroy the entire construct utterly. It was you."
By her side, her husband let out a half-choked cry.
"You were the one who endangered our daughter?" He whirled, facing the two intruders with a wild glare. "You concealed the truth from us—"
Before anyone else could react, Smith sprang. Never before in her existence had Kamala actually seen what an agent program was capable of while in full possession of his powers, and she did not get the chance to dodge or run, or even to register a flash of terror. The ex-agent's hand seized her elbow like a vise, yanking her almost off her feet, then a swift arm was already tightly wrapped around her neck from behind, inexorable with the force of an overwhelming madness.
"Do not raise any alarm." The command was a feral hiss next to her ear. "Do not attempt any trick. If you do, or your husband does, I will destroy you, faster than you can process a single operator string. Understand?"
"Smith, no!" yelled Aleph. By some instinct of her species, she, too, lunged forward as if about to join the fray.
"Miss Greene," grunted the ex-agent. A flicker of gray metal, and all of a sudden Rama was standing directly between them, jaw clenched with fury. The young woman skidded to a halt.
"Let Kamala go," she said.
"You need to get out of here, Miss Greene!"
"No," retorted Aleph. Her stare hardened. "Release her. They cannot harm us."
"I will not allow them to do so," snarled the virus.
"What did you do to Sati?" wheezed Kamala. The sound of her own question was unrecognizable. For all her clawing and shoving, the arm pressing against her windpipe was as immobile as a wall. She had no doubt as to how easily it could snap apart every syntactical array of her shell.
"You must allow Miss Greene here to leave freely, get out of this place. This city. Then…" His voice wavered, but his grip did not. "Then I will tell you about your daughter."
"Stop this," panted her husband. "Do not forget what I am. Death. And your friend here." He gestured with one shaky hand in Aleph's direction. "She is still human enough to fall under my domain."
"Help her leave 01," reiterated Smith.
"I'll—" Rama gulped audibly, almost but not quite stuttering. "I'll kill her, if you do not let go of my wife this instant! I can do it. With a thought. Believe me."
"Wait a second here," protested Aleph, advancing another pace. "Smith, please, just cool down and listen!"
A shrill grind of metal, and Rama was no longer standing in his gentle human-like shell at the center of the confrontation. In his place reared a powerful mechanical thing, multi-segmented, multi-limbed, lithe and determined upon the grass. Steel and titanium glinted beneath the sunlight.
.
Note: As previously hinted, in this fic, Kamala's job title of "interactive software programmer" means that her purpose is to defragment agents who are called back to the Source (and possibly to perform other code operations on them). Hers is the contralto female voice Smith has begun to remember hearing in Chapters 9 and 14.
