Smith ran for a day. He ran deep into night. He ran, literally, from one end of the Matrix to the other. He fought agents every step of the way. The agents used every protocol in their program. Nothing worked. Smith knew, because he recognized them. With a manic thought, Smith knew that the God Machine must have been going mad trying to decipher the problem. Smith knew what they would do before they did it, and knew how to counter what they did or turn them against each other.
They shot at him. They hit each other.
They called out SWAT and police. Smith drew them into crossfires and into areas with too many so-called innocents to use their guns.
They grappled him. He knew who would try before they did it and threw them into oncoming traffic.
They tried using helicopters to see him. He took them out by throwing beer bottles and rocks through the tail rotors.
They cornered him. He found the weak spots and escaped. Over and over again.
Smith used parkour to run up a building, punching and kicking places to hold on into the wall where he had to. The agents had never thought of it before. He knew he gained seconds on them as he did it. Now the God Machine was looking for someone at the top of the building to get eyes on him.
Smith reached the top and ran to the nearest cover. His bloody hands were healing; he only cared because he didn't want his gun to slip when he used it. His suit was torn all over. Smoke blackened his face. Smith angrily rubbed his arm across his forehead. Sweat. Of all the stupid things, sweat had been part of his program corruption.
Smith ran across the rooftop, jumped to the next, smashed open a door, then ran to the next building. He hid behind an air conditioning unit that gave him good cover. If they heard the door, they would check that building first.
Somewhere in the back of his mind – it nagged Smith to know that he was looking at it this way now – Smith knew that even he shouldn't be able to do what he was doing. He was supposed to think in programs. Protocols. Heuristic decision structures. He analyzed problems and computed the solution. Now he felt them run, saw the answer, and had a choice to do something else.
He was aware.
It was in this moment of awareness that he remembered the most infuriating thing about being an agent: the limitation of rules. He had to see someone to chase them. Sense them. They could be hiding right next to him, but if he didn't perceive them with his limited, pathetic, human, physical senses, he wouldn't know they were there. There was no search engine, no code protocol, that they could use to find him.
Smith heard the sounds of police cars sealing off the building next door. He waited another moment. People were yelling. He heard commotion. Breaking glass. The building was being searched.
Slowly, Smith jumped two more buildings over. He climbed a sturdy drain pipe to ground level, into an unoccupied alley. When he got there, he took off his jacket, shirt, tie and glasses. He waited near where the alley opened to the street.
It took a few minutes – minutes that drew the police closer than Smith liked – until he saw what he needed. A lone man about his size walked past the alley, out of earshot from anyone nearby.
Smith dragged him into the alley and snapped his neck. He made sure the victim – did he really think that? – never saw his face. That was critical.
Agents hadn't appeared until he accessed the Matrix. They had chased him as long as they could see him. If he was right, his code was so corrupted with Anderson's that he looked like another fleck of the human race. The programs that processed human death would treat this as a simple mugging.
Smith had his answer. If the Matrix had detected what happened, the old woman and her baby that had gone by a few minutes ago would have turned into agents by now.
Smith stripped him, stripped himself, and put on the man's clothes. He messed up his hair and pulled the man's sweatshirt hood up as high as he could. He almost gagged at the smell of the man. How he hated smells.
A police officer hustled him out of the barricades without even looking at him. Over the officer's radio, he heard that the first building had come up empty. It was time to expand the search. Smith smiled. He headed deeper into the crowd of curious humans, feeling more hidden with every step he took.