Morgana was back again in room 404 with Smith, feeling wary of him, yet comforted, which was much better than whatever the other Agents had planned for her. Smith was standing, pacing around, as he was thinking of what to say.
"Smith, can you tell me what is going on?"
Asked Morgana. "Won't they know where we are right now?"
"You're safe in here," Smith said. "I've made sure of it."
There were certain abilities Smith had that other Agents lacked. He could manipulate the Matrix in unique ways, which he used to encode this particular room.
With a gnawing in his stomach, Smith knew that she had awakened, but he had to keep up the act. Desperately trying to hold on to her, maybe, just maybe, Smith could play it so convincingly that it would make her doubt herself, and make her regress back to the Matrix mentality.
"Those Agents went after you thinking you were one of the terrorists," he said. "You and I both know that is not true."
"And why would they think that?" She asked, nervously.
"Because Morgana," answered Smith, urgency in his voice as he came towards her. "You're beginning to slip again; starting to think the way the cult wants you to. Are you sure you're alright? I'm worried about you."
Placing both his hands on the sides of her face, he pulled himself closer to her, looking into her eyes.
"What are you suggesting?" Morgana asked him, feeling conflicted between enjoying his touch and what appeared to be genuine concern of some sort, and pulling back.
"I don't want to put any ideas in your head," Smith said, "But your family history of schizophrenia is quite ... worrisome. Have you been seeing and experiencing odd things that shouldn't be happening?"
Oh, I see what he's doing, Morgana realized, looking right through him. She started now feeling a slight bit of revulsion for him, and pulled away. He thinks he can fool me, that I don't know the truth ... However, the seed of doubt that Smith planted in her still questioned her, and she wondered if he could be right—even if it was in the tiniest whisper.
"I don't know. I just don't feel alright," she said.
Was it working? Smith wondered.
"You've dealt with a lot, Morgana," Smith said, pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear. "When was the last time you got a good rest?"
"It's been too long," she replied, looking down and away from him. Despite taking a break from work—needing to use up her PTO anyways—Morgana felt drained with everything going on.
Looking at Morgana, he produced a thin, silvery case from the inside of his suit jacket and opened it, showing a set of translucent blue pills inside.
"Take one of these," Smith said, trying to hide his desperation. He wanted her to take the bait so badly ... one measly blue pill, and she'd be his forever. She'd revoke her sister, the Resistance, and all of their ideas; she'd believe everything the Agents said ... She would be his own, personal blind lover, to protect, love, and please for as long as the damned Matrix would allow her to live. "They'll help you sleep. You'll feel better when you wake up ... trust me, Morgana."
A feeling of distrust, sharply shooting up from her gut, alerted Morgana that she couldn't take those pills—whatever they were. Needless to say, because she was in survival mode, she fell back into acting like she was under Smith's control, and took a pill, inserting it into her mouth, and taking a drink of water. Lodging the pill between the groove of her teeth and cheek, the swallowing of the water was enough to convince Smith that he had really won this time.
"I'm gonna go to bed," she said, and laid down on her side, sliding under the blankets, before discreetly spitting out the pill and hiding it inside the pillowcase.
"Get some rest," Smith said, a smile forming on his face. Bending down to kiss her cheek, he whispered, "I love you, Morgana."
"I love you, too," she forced herself to say. God, this sucks, she thought. She had actually been in love with Smith, and the entire time, she was convinced he loved her, too. She wished she could cry, but in between shock and dissociation, she couldn't bring herself to be that obvious, or bring those feelings to the fore to process—she knew that she would be so demonstrably inconsolable, it would blow her cover.
Fuck, what now? She wondered with her eyes closed. She assumed he had given her a sleeping pill, based on what said, but it could have been something else that she didn't know the effects of. How was she supposed to act?
I guess I'll just wait here and pretend to be asleep, then make a run for it once he leaves, she thought. But where could she go where he couldn't find her, or those Agents? Her stomach sank inside her as she realized she was trapped. Natasha, where are you when I need you the most? She mentally implored.
After a few awkward moments of feigned sleep, feeling Smith watching her, a fire alarm rang through the entirety of the Ritz-Carlton. She acted like she was barely waking up from it, and Smith, alert, said, "Wait here," before leaving the room. He was already back to Agent mode, with his square sunglasses, earpiece, and tie clip in place.
Following the source of the alarm, Smith descended to the first floor, where many of the Ritz's guests were scrambling around, looking panicked. Looking around, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary, nor smelled any smoke, and sensing that something was off, he turned around and narrowed his eyes, deciding to query the hotel manager.
Up on the fourth floor, Natasha, Jet, Bruiser, and Orion pounded frantically at Morgana's door. Jolting up from the bed, afraid that it would be Agents, she was relieved when she heard a familiar voice yell out, "Morgana! It's me, Natasha! Open up, we've gotta go!"
Morgana for a brief second questioned it, but her instincts had taken over again, and bolting to the door, she was relieved to find her sister there.
"Oh god, thank fuck you're here!" Exclaimed Morgana, hugging Natasha. "I wasn't really sure if you were real the last time, I'm glad you are!"
Hugging her quickly and pulling away, Natasha said, "We really don't have time, come on!"
Looking inside the room, Jet noticed the blue pills laying on the bed.
"You didn't take any of those blue pills, did you?" She asked, giving Morgana and Natasha a look.
"No, Smith gave me one, but I spit it out," Morgana said, and then the rest of the crew mates collectively sighed, looked acutely relieved. She vaguely remembered Orion from the dream, now confirmed memory. "Why?"
"Thank fuck," Natasha said. "I'll explain later, we've gotta go while Smith is still distracted!"
"It's now or never, Morgana," said Bruiser, and the five of them bolted in the following formation: Orion at the front, Natasha in second place, leading Morgana behind her, and then Jet and Bruiser at the back, watching their backs. Kicking open the door to the stair access, the group climbed down as fast as their legs allowed.
In that instant, after Smith had confirmed that there was no real fire, he had already ascended via the elevator to the fourth floor again, and narrowing his eyes at the half-open door to his empty room, no sight of Morgana, he sharply turned to the left, where he caught wind of distant footsteps belonging to a group of people scattering down the stairs. As the door to the stairwell automatically closed shut, he got his confirmation, and charged toward the rebels.
Yanking out his Desert Eagle, sure enough, he saw the lot of them taking Morgana away from him, a few flights down. Had she not taken the pill?! His mind screamed in frustration. With an infuriated growl, he jetted behind the rebels and started shooting down at them, bullets ricocheting everywhere, the sounds of the large caliber gun filling the air.
Looking up in horror at Smith's unhinged aggression, trying to hide from the bullets, the rebels began shooting up at him, four against one, in attempts to deter him—but they knew that was all they could do, for Smith was truly invincible. Morgana screamed again and darted behind her sister, not knowing where she was going, but knowing that anywhere was better than this nightmare.
Having miraculously reached the emergency exit, and hearing Bruiser and Jet cry out in pain, the group acknowledged the fair likelihood that they had gotten injured, but they pushed on regardless, firing at Smith. On the other side of the door, Quicksilver and Commander Harker waited for them, and once all of them escaped, the two men quickly recruited the crew to help them push a very large, heavy sofa against the door—effectively barricading it.
Body-slamming and kicking the heavy metal door, Smith growled and wondered why it wouldn't budge. Attempting to shoot it was pointless. Realizing he was now barricaded, he frowned and gritted his teeth as he climbed upstairs to look for another exit.
A few seconds later, Captain Ulrikson arrived in a turbocharged, large sports SUV, and the crew quickly scrambled aboard, panting to catch their breaths, heads and chests pounding from the action. Without as much of a second to spare, Ulrikson floored it, and the vehicle roared as it reached top speed in a matter of seconds.
"Sir, he got us," Bruiser said, wincing from the pain of several grazed bullets he narrowly managed to miss. Jet, weakly nodding, clutched at her arm, which was bleeding.
"Oh, fuck," Commander Harker said. "Someone call Marcus to load us a first aid kit."
"I'm fine, Commander," said Bruiser. "But Jet over here ..."
"Pressure," Morgana said, looking at Jet's arm. "It needs pressure. This is gonna hurt, I'm sorry."
Tearing off a piece of her shirt, she packed the wound, while Jet groaned in agony, and pressed down on Jet's arm.
"Just like that," she said. "Do you think you can hold it?"
"Y-yeah," Jet said. "Thanks."
Natasha looked at her sister with admiration; she knew that she always wanted to be a doctor, and noticing how she acted, it was clear that she had a calling. Not having any time for the first aid kit, though it loaded, the crew all booked it upstairs, where V was waiting with the finished setup, booted up and ready to go. While the rest of them ran to their stations, hurriedly loading the programs to disrupt Morgana's signal to get her out of the Matrix, Commander Harker rang Marcus, ordering him to load up his side of the operation.
Looking at Morgana, Natasha said, "This is where you choose, Morgana, where you want to fall in all this. Opening a golden case with just two pills in them, one red, and one blue, Natasha said:
"You take the blue pill, and you forget everything that happened. You go back to the Matrix, back to Smith, and believe everything he tells you. You accept that I was a basket case that ran off to join some cult. This is the same pill that Smith gave you," she stated.
"Wow ..." said Morgana, realizing the lengths that Smith had gone through to keep her compliant.
Nodding, Natasha said, "But if you take the red pill, you'll come with me, and leave this all behind, and live in truth—the truth that you've been desperately trying to find this entire time. The truth Smith has blinded you from."
"My choice is obvious," said Morgana, and instantly reached for the red pill, but before she got it, Smith burst through the double doors of the room, Desert Eagle pointed at all of them, heaving from all the running.
Morgana and the crew froze, staring at him. The feeling of a ton of bricks sank everyone's stomachs, feeling their sweat run cold, nerves and muscles primed at maximum action-potential for the unknown. Some of the guys that were armed slowly moved to clutch their firearms, but thought better of making sudden moves. Everyone was under the consensus that Smith could, at any moment, fire with perfect accuracy at any vital organ of his choosing.
"Miss Natasha ... I see you and your crew just don't give up, do you?" Smith asked, his voice as cold, smooth, and sharp as a steel blade. His blue eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, everyone could tell that they burned with rage, and that there was very little separating him from unearthing the monster that like magma, bubbled beneath. How on earth were they prepared to face him?
"Why must you keep trying to take her away ... from me? Aren't you humans ever pleased with anything? The answer is, no, you're not!" Smith growled, and with a sudden motion, he removed his glasses and earpiece and cracked his neck.
"You fail to conform, to be satisfied at all costs, to the expense of every other organism, resource, and thing around you. You're so vile, that you will even enslave and exploit your own kind. Like a virus you spread, mindlessly consuming all around you ..."
"Can't you see that Morgana is vulnerable, and you keep taking advantage of her?" Asked Smith, his voice rising in volume. "Can't you see that she's confused? That she belongs with me?!"
Morgana stared wide-eyed and paralyzed at the man, entity, whatever he was, that had morphed from the kind, warm lover that she had once known. Unable to reconcile these two sides of him in her mind, she almost felt guilty.
"But Smith ..." she started. "It was you who manipulated my reality ... You lied to me about everything. Why?"
Listening to Morgana speak, something broke through Smith, and for once in his life, it felt like his throat was under crushing pressure, and his eyes started to water. Pushing it back, he realized it was anguish—at the unstoppable realization that his one source of joy in the prison that was the Matrix, as fucked as it was to keep her, was willingly slipping out of his grasp, leaving him. Watching his menacing, monolithic visage show pain, it scared Morgana: he was like a wounded animal—unpredictable.
Smith, lowering his gun, breathed heavily and swallowed back emotions.
"Only because I had no choice, Morgana," he confessed. "I am a sentient program bound to the Matrix, to serve the Machines and prevent people like you from leaving. Such is my fate. I ... typically kill people like you; it's my job. But what I felt for you ... everything was true. That's why I decided to spare you; why I put myself on the line against those Agents to protect you. Had it not been for me, you would've been dead."
Morgana looked at him, and was finally beginning to understand. Tears welling up in her eyes, she wiped them away. She knew this was the truth, because it felt differently. The crew, utterly at loss for words, stared disbelievingly at the scene that was unfolding before them. Neither of them, in their expansive tenures, had ever seen an Agent's eyes before. Smith's radiated pure, raw lethality, passion, contempt, and suffering all at once.
"I despise ... humanity," he continued. "But you were the only human I had ever known, to cause me to envy the joy and possibilities than humans have, at being capable to produce and maintain bonds that can transcend the stifling prison that is this ... place. Alas, love and machines are incompatible; there is no room for me in your world."
"I'm sorry, Smith," Morgana replied, full of sorrow. "I loved you too, I really did. I understand now."
Smith, nodding, took a while to process this, pacing around the room, and in a fit of rage, exploded, shouting, "And this is how you repay me?!" Pointing his loaded gun back at the crew, Morgana jumped and shuddered, her eyes fixed on him. Natasha looked at her in horror, and then back at Smith. The mission was over, she thought. He's either gonna steal Morgana back, or we all die.
"Smith, I know it's me you want," said Morgana, putting her arms up, slowly approaching him. It felt like time was dragging, the deafening sounds of her heart in her ears, unable to disengage. Maybe I should just give up, she thought. I don't want to lose my sister, or have anybody killed because of me. After all, how bad could it be? He'll be fine if I just stay with him ...
"If you shoot them," she slowly said, in the calmest voice she could muster. "It won't change anything."
Glancing at Morgana, he was far too out of control to think rationally, so he stalled for a moment.
As one of their cellphones suddenly rang, Harker quickly picked up to hear Marcus shouting on the other line.
"Agents!" Harker yelled, and the crew began firing at a swarm of Agents that appeared behind Smith, seeing them climbing up the staircase just before the room.
"Morgana, RUN!" Screamed Natasha, and Morgana exploded off her feet, ducking behind a counter.
Agents began shooting back, or dodging bullets, and crossfire was created in the large, open room.
"Agh!" Feeling a stray bullet graze her shoulder, Morgana let out a cry of pain, and when Smith caught wind of that, he snapped.
Possessed by an unearthly force, he swiftly turned around, pushing the Agents over the banister, seeing and hearing the thuds of their lead-like bodies as they fell back against open air and hard floor, three stories down. Smith kicked and pushed more of the Agents down, and quickly spun, shooting some in the head and chest that were attempting to run towards Morgana. Up until that point, Agent-on-Agent violence was unheard of, even to Agents themselves—and while typically invincible to humans, they were totally vulnerable to each other, as the Mainframe never, not even once, contemplated the anomaly that Smith was, and the possibility that one day, he would fight his own kind.
"Ho-ly shit," said Bruiser. The rest of the crew could hardly believe it themselves. As Morgana peered over the counter, she saw Smith's last testament of his love—him alone, disarming and then fighting the three remaining Agents.
"We have to do it NOW!" Natasha shouted at the crew, running towards Morgana to help her up and throw her on the chair.
"What, are you crazy?!" Shouted Ulrikson.
"Fucking insane, Sir!" She shouted. "Come on, Marcus, load us up!"
Taking the red pill, and swallowing it with some difficulty, Morgana closed her eyes, trembling. Smith was the only thing keeping them all from certain death and a lot of trouble; but did they even have enough time to go through with it, before he turned back to continue what he started?
Smith overclocked with power, satisfyingly connecting hit after hit against the Agents' chests, faces, and any other parts he could, didn't let a single Agent out of his sight. It was three against him, and while he was handling them just fine, he began to struggle. With just one missed blow, one of the Agents managed to strike him against his ribcage, causing him to falter. He was in awe—he had never felt physical pain before, or true adrenaline, or deep, primal anger. As he took another hit to the face, his lip split open and blood began to run down his chin.
Turning around, Morgana was filled with horror and concern for Smith. Despite having lied to her, her heart broke apart at seeing him bloodied up, stumbling as the Agents ganged up on him.
"Smith!" She shouted, tears pouring without warning.
"You can't help him!" Natasha said, pushing her sister back down on the recliner.
Taking a series of continuous hits, feeling himself weaken and hurt all over, Smith thought it was over until he heard Morgana screaming his name, and suddenly, the burning desire to fight reignited. Diving to grab a hold of an Agent's legs, he growled and picked him up, tossing him over the banister. Exploding off the floor, teeth bared and eyes blazing, he bolted the second Agent against a wall by the neck, producing a large crack, and squeezed so hard with merely one hand, that he asphyxiated him to death instantly, crushing his windpipe.
The last remaining Agent was so aghast by what he witnessed, that he stalled for a moment, forgetting all about the mission for a while. Giving the crew just enough time to finish up loading everything, they saw how the pill was taking effect on Morgana, and how the signal disrupters were loading.
"We need an exit, NOW!" Harker yelled into the phone. Instantly, the phone rang, allowing them to leave as soon as they were done with their jobs.
"She's ready, Captain!" Shouted V. "Put her in!"
Springing into action, suddenly remembering what he was there to do when he heard those words, the last Agent started darting towards Morgana before Smith shot him point-blank in the head, his body dropping to the floor with a heavy thud. As soon as Smith thought he had finished, however, he frowned as he became privy to a second stampede of Agents stomping up the stairs. Charging out of the room and down the stairs to prevent them from reaching Morgana, he disappeared, but not without giving her one last, fleeting look.
Morgana shuddered and felt herself float, with all the panic, shock, and pain inside her dissipating, the subsequent gunshots downstairs sounding muffled. Quickly, every emotion and sense was parting further and further away, like being put under anesthesia. The last two people she recalled standing overhead were Natasha and Captain Ulrikson, before she disconnected from everything she ever knew.