The MATRIX: The One

16 - Peeta meets the One

Peeta POV

I shouldn't be alive right now. The pain is incredible, but the bullets are gone and the puddle of blood underneath me isn't getting any bigger. What the hell had Katniss done to me?

Doesn't matter. I can see the blurred outline of an agent approaching the subway car, stepping over the threshold, and scanning me with disdain. I consider twitching. I need to keep his attention away from Katniss. She's just there, an arm's length away from his knee. She can shoot him if I just distract him—

"Katniss?"

My heart gallops into my throat. What the fuck? Had that agent just used a little girl's voice to call out?

"Katniss? Are you here?"

It's all I can do to keep my eyes from widening.

"Sis?"

Sis. Sister. Oh my God.

"My sister's alive, but the system has her. Trapped. The agents…"

Oh, fuck. Her sister isn't just trapped. She isn't locked up in a cell somewhere waiting for her older sister to bust her out. She's hosting an agent.

Just like that, I lose all hope. Katniss is not gonna kill her own sister to save herself. No way. Now it's up to me to do something. I've got all of one and half seconds to come up with a plan and… I've got nothing. I should have something. I'm supposed to be here; Haymitch had said so. I'm supposed to be helping Katniss somehow.

But all I can do is watch as Katniss frees one hand, slowly rolls up onto her knees, and whispers, "Prim?"

The agent whirls on her, but Katniss is fast – so inconceivably fucking fast. She springs and they both crash into my bloody puddle. I scramble to grab the bastard's wrists, hold him down as Katniss presses her hands to his face. There's a subtle ripple of light against the agent's skin. His body jerks, stopping him from bucking her off. His mouth falls open.

"Get—out—of—my—sister," Katniss rasps, her eyes unblinking and so hard, harder than iron and darker than coal. I wonder if they'll turn into diamonds.

"No!" His wail is little more than a wheeze. His body spasms again.

And then it's over. From one heartbeat to the next, I'm no longer pinning a grown man to the blood-smeared floor of the subway car. I'm holding down a trembling girl. She must be in her mid-teens, but her eyes are so wide and her face so drawn that she seems half that age.

"Katniss?"

"Prim!" Katniss hauls her into her lap, alternately clutching and petting her sister's increasingly blood-soaked blond braids.

Holy fuck. She did it. She'd fucking erasedthe agent from her sister. Or pushed him out. Something that shouldn't have been remotely possible. I gape, mouth open. I can't believe this. I lean back against the doors of the train, wincing as my damaged kidney and throbbing guts shift inside me. I'm still bleeding, but I think I'll live long enough to—

Slam!

The conductor's door crashes open. A gun pops into my hand. I lean around the edge of the bench seat, aim, fire—

The agent – the one from the first subway station – dodges the bullet. His gun is trained on Katniss and Prim, but Katniss doesn't look worried. She looks fierce and flaming pissed off.

Bang!

I flinch, but she doesn't move, just scowls in concentration as the first bullet zooms toward her and then… nothing. The thing had simply disappeared. Erased.

Holy shit.

"No," she tells him firmly. Like she's scolding a misbehaving dog.

He empties the clip at her in the span of a few seconds, stalking nearer and nearer. None of the bullets reach their intended target. Not a single one. I take a steadying breath as the agent advances. The moment he's within arm's reach, I surge to my feet. My eyes nearly roll up into my head at the sudden movement, but it doesn't stop me from pressing the barrel of my gun to the man's temple. I fire once more. At this distance, I can't possibly miss.

I don't.

His body jerks. Electricity crackles in the air. The train conductor falls to the floor.

I crawl over to him to check for a pulse. He's dead. Of course he is. Oh, God. I'd just killed someone. I'd just—!

And then a hand grabs my arm, pulling me toward the tangle of limbs that is Katniss and her little sister. "Shh," Katniss whispers. "I've got you."

I lean against her for a moment, tilting my face into her neck before I force myself to calm down. I will freak out later. Later.

I reach for the cell phone in my pocket and dial.

"Operator."

"Gale," I gasp around the hot, squishy throbbing deep in my torso. "We're gonna need an exit."

"Got one ready for you—"

"With hijack stuff."

"We're on it—"

"And I need to know how to operate a subway train."

"Nooo, you need to get off of the one you're on. They're clearing the track and setting up a block. You've got about two minutes before you hit it. Get moving out the back."

I nod. "Come on," I urge Katniss, tugging on her elbow. "We've gotta go."

Katniss pulls my phone, still clutched in my fingers, to her ear. "Where's the exit?" she rasps, meeting my gaze full-on. She listens to the address Gale rattles off and answers, "We'll be there." The phone snaps shut. She further punctuates her promise by leaning forward and kissing me squarely on the mouth.

Prim sighs. "Knew it."

"Knew what?" Katniss snorts, clearly not expecting an answer from the exhausted teenager. I daringly brush a finger over Katniss' jaw before giving her sister what I hope is a friendly smile.

"I'm Peeta. Nice to meet you."

Her smile is angelic.

When Katniss moves as if to stand, I reach for Prim's shoulders so that her sister can shift her off of her lap without dumping her onto the sticky floor.

"Up, up, up, little duck."

"I'm tired," she whines.

I feel her pain as I push myself to my feet, trying not to hunch over like a nine-hundred-year-old geezer.

Katniss curves her arms around her sister's waist and angles her toward the back of the car. "I know you wanna sleep, but we've gotta move now."

Move, we do. I wrap one arm around my middle to keep my guts from shifting too much and another around Katniss' shoulders as we stagger down the length of the subway train to the rear door. Before I can lift a fist to bash it open, Katniss presses her hand to the glass window and the whole thing vanishes.

Huh. I guess that's what she'd done to those bullets.

"You and Prim go first," I tell her.

She rolls her eyes and grabs my hand. We all three jump at the same time.

Later, I won't remember exactly how we'd gotten to the exit point. It becomes a blur of crowds and alleyways and shadows. But I'll never forget the moment all three of us had been airborne in the darkness of the tunnel. The roar and clatter of the train had once again stolen my breath and I'd marveled at how our path – mine and Katniss' – had led us back to these tracks deep beneath the city. The last time we'd been here, the last time we'd laid our lives on the line, we'd survived by clinging to each other, by not letting go.

And that's the beauty of it: in the Matrix, your strength is only restricted by the limits of your imagination, and I can't conceive of anything that could ever force us apart.

NOTES: In the Matrix, whenever an agent overwrites a person's code, we see the agent. (That is, the person kind of turns into an agent. But if the agent is killed, it's the person who dies, NOT the agent. The agent is free to take over another body.) So, what Katniss does here is ERASE the agent's coding, leaving only the person he'd been using as a host behind. That's how she gets the agent to give up his hold on her sister WITHOUT killing her sister in the process. OK. Hope that makes sense.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Now's your chance before I post the final bit. (Yup, one more chapter and we're done with this fic!)