Scorpio slapped Gemini across the face. Her instinct was to hit him back. It had saved her many times with her old domineering boyfriend. If someone was going to hit her, they’d damn well better make it good the first time or be in a big mess of trouble. She would not tolerate spousal abuse...unless of course the woman gave as good as she got...but that was an entirely different form of dysfunction. Scorpio and her own shock gave her no chance to retaliate this time. Shoving her back into the house, Scorpio invaded her sanctum, followed by Tommy. The boy had a gun. Not good, not good, her mind screamed at her. When the hell had Tommy taken Scorpio’s side?
Scorpio was unhinged. “You little slut!” he yelled at her. “How dare you ignore me and alienate Tommy! Were you so busy boinking your sex machine that you couldn’t make one report to me?”
“Were you so busy hating me that you had to lure Tyger into your clutches?” she yelled back. Already she was angry, defensive, and lashing out. Why didn’t he try living with the stress she’d endured the past few days and see how ready he was to make a report!
“Maybe Tyger knows what a pervert you’ve become. She told me you and the Agent did it, and that you loved it.”
“You told me to do it! I whored myself for you, Scorpio!”
“You were supposed to hate it,” Tommy said. When had he gotten so malicious? Sneering in a very good emulation of Scorpio’s famous look, he waved his gun at her. “So, how was it? Was he...big? Did he hurt you? What kinds of techniques did your robot know?”
Gemini went pale with shock, then red with indignation. She couldn’t speak.
Scorpio looked as though a particularly evil thought had come to him. He bared his teeth beneath his mustache. “Well, my little whore...maybe you can share some of your robot’s techniques with a real man...” Snatching her arm in an unbreakable grasp, he reached for the front panel of her bathrobe.
“Scorpio.”
Smith’s voice stopped the leader of the Watchers. Having approached soundlessly, the Agent stood beside the couch, dressed again in his dark suit. Even his sunglasses and earpiece were restored. One could feel the danger emanating from the AI. A knight in shining armor he’d never be, but Gemini didn’t care at the moment.
Trembling, Tommy tried to keep his gun leveled at the Agent. Smith barely spared him a casual look of contempt. “You are not welcome in this house,” Smith said. Then he raised an eyebrow at Scorpio. “Nor are you.”
“I go wherever I damn well please, and you can’t do a fuckin’ thing about it,” Scorpio answered.
He’d lost his common sense. Gemini always suspected Scorpio’s charisma was partly due to madness. Maybe Tyger was right to take the position as his second-in-command. She might be able to save the Watchers when Scorpio grew unfit to lead anything but a cult. It was only a matter of time, Gemini realized. Today might even be the day she got a close-up view of Scorpio’s breakdown.
“My mandate was not to kill you,” Smith said to Scorpio, “but I can access the Mainframe and have my orders changed.” He tugged on his cuffs. “Explain why you were insulting Gemini.”
“You don’t have to tell this mechanical bastard anything,” Tommy said.
“I have no orders against killing you,” Smith said. “I believe the expression is, ‘bite your tongue’.”
“Bite me!”
Tommy was a coward at heart. When backed into a corner, he lashed out and didn’t see when he would be better off submitting. He leveled his gun at Smith’s chest, still shaking. If Smith had been fully integrated with his emotions, he might have laughed in Tommy’s face. Gemini recognized that gleam in Smith’s eyes even through the opaque glasses. At another time she might have felt insulted at Smith’s coming to her defense, gotten her feminist hackles up, but she wanted to see how this would play out. Could Smith handle Scorpio and Tommy without actually shooting them?
Did she really want Smith to restrain himself?
Slowly, Smith unbuttoned his suit jacket. He made the action seem bored. Smith didn’t reach for his weapon, but Tommy knew it was there. He still managed to keep his gun fairly even with the Agent’s chest. Gemini saw the fear growing in his wide eyes. Now he was stuck. He’d lose macho points if he backed down, but he’d never survive a confrontation with Smith.
Scorpio started a new rant. “I’ve done everything your superiors wanted me to...but they keep asking for more!” He tightened his grip on Gemini’s arm. “And how the fuck am I supposed to give them what they want when my own Watcher disobeys me?” Scorpio gestured accusingly at Smith with his other hand. “You tell your bosses to stop talking to me! They’ll get their information when I’m fuckin’ good and ready. And they...” He jerked his head to the side and spoke to his shoulder, “No. Out of the question. I already did that for you...”
Oh, God. Scorpio was hearing voices. He thought they came from the Mainframe, that the machines were making excessive requests. Had that been the whole reason she was sent on this assignment...because the leader of the Watchers had voices in his head?
Gemini tried to catch Smith’s eyes. He was scowling at the man squeezing her arm. She’d have a bruise later. If she survived until later. There was no telling what Scorpio might do to her now.
“Scorpio’s right...you machines are never satisfied,” Tommy said.
Deliberately turning his attention away from Tommy to demonstrate how he didn’t see the younger human as a threat, Smith stared at Scorpio. Could he tell that the Watcher had lost his sanity? “It’s illogical to be angry with me,” Smith said. “I am also following orders.” He still hadn’t reached for his gun, but Gemini could tell he wanted to. His fingers twitched where they lay almost innocently along his sides. He inclined his head toward Gemini. “Release her.”
Scorpio was no longer making sense. “You’ve had her long enough. You can’t have her now! I won’t betray another human to the machines! She’s *my* Watcher...”
Wrapping an arm around her waist, Scorpio started hauling her backwards toward the door with him. Tommy finally summoned the courage to fire at the Agent. In one fluid movement, Smith dodged the bullet and drew his Desert Eagle. He fired two shots, one
bullet grazing the flesh of each man’s upper arm. Deliberate warnings not intended to kill. Scorpio yelped and released Gemini, grasping at his wound. Tommy yelped and dropped his weapon.
“It’s a great effort not to kill you both right now,” Smith said.
“He’s right,” Gemini said. Everyone knew how ruthless Agents were, and Smith was being very restrained at the moment. Maybe she could be the voice of reason in this surreal situation. She readjusted the front of her bathrobe. “Go while you still can, Scorpio. You’ll get your report when this assignment is done and Smith is called back to the Mainframe. Go back to your office and be a jerkass there. And Tommy...” She looked at him sadly. “Just go home,” she sighed.
“No.”
“You don’t have any other options, Tommy.”
“Bastard...” Scorpio was trying to have a staredown with Smith. “The only reason you exist is because of us. We’re your power source. You shouldn’t go killing your own batteries.”
Dangerous. Scorpio was reciting Resistance propaganda. Since when did he care about the real world or the Resistance? Within the Matrix, he could be rich and hold power over others. He had immunity in the war between humanity and machines. Someone had gotten to him. Someone had changed his mind, and as a result endangered all the Watchers as a group. Dear Lord, Gemini thought. Was this why Smith had been sent to live with her? Had he known the Resistance was infiltrating the Watchers? Somehow Gemini hoped that Smith hadn’t known. She didn’t like the idea any more than she liked being Scorpio’s call-girl.
The Agent lowered his weapon and regarded the man blandly. “You exist only by the grace of the Mainframe,” he said. Disgust crept back into his features. “Leave. Now,” he growled.
Scorpio could have chosen to do something foolish. Gemini saw the look of mania in the man’s brown eyes. She almost felt sorry for him. This went deeper than his apparent insanity. Scorpio glared at the impassive Smith for a long moment. The Agent was sparing his life only because he had orders not to kill the leader of the Watchers. Scorpio had no choice. He left, muttering about stitches and Agents and orders.
“No!” In the moment Smith wasn’t looking at him, Tommy grabbed his gun from the floor and turned it on Gemini. He clasped a handful of her bathrobe collar and hauled her up against him. His wounded arm trembled with the strain of holding his gun. Pressing the barrel to Gemini’s stomach, Tommy snarled, “You always thought I was a harmless little twerp, didn’t you? The whole group does. Jump laughed in my face when I asked her out. Star belongs to Marco. Tyger acts like my mother. At least Scorpio recognizes my strength.” He paused. “But you...you’re nice to me. You kept that thing from shooting me before.” He jerked his head toward a surprised Smith. “Why not now?” He kissed Gemini’s ear. “You make such a nice barrier...”
Smith raised his Desert Eagle but hesitated. He couldn’t get a clear shot around Gemini. “You still have a chance to live, Tommy,” he growled. “That’s more chance than I give most Resistants.”
Tommy’s judgment was impeded by pain. Gemini felt him shaking against her in an early stage of shock. Her eyes caught Smith’s. Silently she tried to give him permission to open fire. She could take care of herself.
Still the Agent hesitated.
“Smith...” she whispered.
Tommy yanked on her collar. “Here I am holding you, and you’re calling out *his* name? Dammit, it’s not even a ‘he’!” He smelled her hair. “He must be great in bed. He must be huge...”
“That’s disgusting!”
“But it’s true, isn’t it, Gem? He must have been programmed like a horse. That’s the only reason I can see why you’d choose him over a real man.” He started to caress the back of her neck. “Come with me, Gemini. I met this guy named Apoc. I know where we can get some Red Pills...”
Smith seized his opportunity. Aiming carefully, the Agent fired a shot into Tommy’s shoulder, the only place Gemini wasn’t blocking with her body. Tommy screeched, making her ears ring. Fueled by pain, rage, and unrequited love, he squeezed off a shot into Gemini’s stomach. She dropped to her knees, her last deliberate act before the pain came and kept her from thinking straight. Smith shot the gun out of Tommy’s hand, then fired three times into his stomach. The boy crumpled to the floor, grunted once, and was gone. No last words, no dramatic death scene. The Matrix wasn’t a movie set. It was reality for billions of people.
Smith stood silently over the dead Watcher, his expression unreadable. He was in his element here. This was what he’d been programmed to do. He actually looked comfortable.
The pain hit her. White, excruciating pain. She’d never given birth, but she couldn’t imagine it being any worse than this. She’d been shot before, but never from such close range. Just breathe, she told herself. You know you’re alive as long as you’re still breathing...
Smith looked down at her. “It isn’t real,” he said.
Gemini couldn’t answer him. It sure as hell felt real. The bleeding hole in her side looked real, too. Shit. She didn’t have the skill to alter the Matrix enough to heal this. This was how her little coppertop life would end: her mind telling her that she was bleeding to death lying on a carpet in a house that really wasn’t there with an Agent standing over her.
Crap on a crutch.
Strange...her life was supposed to be flashing before her eyes, but all she saw was Smith staring at her through his glasses. Holstering his gun, he knelt beside her. She didn’t expect him to suddenly turn into some romance novel hero and beg her to live, but it would be nice if he tried something to help her out. Smith looked irritated that she wasn’t helping herself. Gee, she thought, sorry to be such an inconvenience to you.
Smith pressed his palm to her wound. It did little to stop her bleeding. He looked uncomfortable at the sight of her blood. Out of his element. She couldn’t imagine why. The Agent must have seen more violent things in his time, and she was doing a rather graceful job of slowly dying. Just like a mushy novel.
“It isn’t real,” Smith told her again. “You know that.”
She was suddenly cold. “My mind says it’s real,” she said. “I can’t alter this...” Was that her voice? She sounded like a little girl.
Smith removed his glasses. The look in his eyes was so intense, she understood why the Resistance was afraid of Agents. They were right to run their asses off when they saw an Agent coming. Smith pressed into her wound. The pain served to ground her, give her a reference point for her existence. She stared at Smith’s tie clip as though it was the source of her salvation.
“Gemini. Look at me.”
His eyes flickered some unidentifiable emotion for an instant when he saw the dullness in hers. People’s eyes got dull when they died. He did have the ability to alter the Matrix...couldn’t he do that for her now? “I don’t want to die,” she whispered. “I’d like it to be more meaningful than this when it happens. Help me, Smith...”
The Agent was unnaturally still for a moment. Gemini got the sense that he was debating something within himself. Maybe whether it was worth his effort to save a pitiful little coppertop virus. Damn him. If only he was human, at least for this small moment. At least then he might understand the significance of dying.
“What does your Mainframe’s mandate say about me?” she asked.
Smith blinked. His attention returned to her. “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly.
She felt her own flesh move, coerced by an outside force. Smith’s hand shifted to cradle her ribcage beside the wound. For an instant, Gemini thought she saw Matrix code streaming behind Smith’s eyes. He was a powerful creature. The pain was less now, and she tried to relax and concentrate enough to help the Agent with his task of healing her.
Reality melted all around her. The lighting seemed to change. Sometimes she felt like this when she meditated: detached from her body, almost able to perceive the inside of her real world pod. Almost. So close. The fact that she was aware of the Matrix didn’t give her the ability to alter it; that was a skill she’d spent a long time developing. She was still poor at it. Most of this was Smith’s doing. Gemini felt the bleeding stop. She helped as best she could to mend the tear in her flesh.
She knew what it was the moment Smith’s mind touched hers. Not cold and logical, but warm and...almost understandable. But in pain. Confused. He didn’t understand that his recent feelings were perfectly normal. As an AI he had no emotional context. Gemini was overwhelmed by the sheer power of Smith’s intelligence. She felt like she was falling again. Smith’s fingers were no longer on her body, it was strings of his very code wrapping around her, healing her as she fell. Within the midst of all this beauty, she sensed his self-loathing, the belief that his programming had been corrupted, and his instinct to get away. Smith wanted out.
Her shattered world reformed itself. Gemini stared up into Smith’s blue eyes and realized that she would never see him the same way again. For a moment, he had shared something far more intimate than his body.
Her stomach still ached. It probably would for several days. The laws of physics would bend only so far. But she was alive. Gemini touched Smith’s face. “Why do you keep saving me?” she asked, when she knew she should just shut up.
“I was ordered not to harm you.”
“It’s more than that. Isn’t it, Smith?”
She saw the emotion in his eyes and knew it for the fear that it was. But she also saw conviction and a sort of fatalist resolve. “...Yes,” Smith said, his voice no more than a whisper.
They shared a knowing look.