Connection

Cat had never been a morning person. In some ways, that was her favorite
thing about life on a ship. The lack of sunlight made "morning" a relative term
anyway, and a good many of her shipmates had shared Cat's fondness for silent
staring immediately after waking.

That all seemed irrelevant as she
stumbled down the stairs, wet and sore and in no mood to deal with Smith's
barbs. They were bad enough when she started out relatively cheerful; she'd be
damned if she was civil about them now.

She could hear motion in the
living room. Speak of the devil, she thought sourly as Smith came into the
foyer. She half-growled at him, giving him a wide berth as she headed for the
refrigerator. It was probably too much to hope for... Ah. Bliss.

Cat
wrapped her hands around the Diet Coke and slid into a chair, closing her eyes
and savoring the taste. Smith was silent, for once when she wanted him that way.
By the time she'd drained the can it seemed very easy to find his good points.
For one thing, he must have gotten herbeverage of choice in the first place.
Thoughtful, that.

Cat snorted to herself. "Thoughtful" had nothing to do
with it. The computer in Smith's brain must have noticed that she drank the
stuff whenever she could get her hands on it. It was nothing but logic circuits
at work. Still, maybe she'd turn that old adage on its head. It's the effect
that counts.

She flashed a wide grin at Smith. "Hey, thanks. I'll be
twice as useful with my caffeine jones taken care of."

Smith raised an
eyebrow. "Your... jones?"

Cat half-shrugged, embarrassed. "I just focus
better with some Diet Coke in my system."

The Agent knit his brows
together. "It is not possible for a physical dependency to exist.

You
have not been exposed to the substance when outside the Matrix..."

Cat
sighed. "Trust you to analyze it to death." She cradled the now-empty can in her
hands, staring at it to avoid looking at Smith. "How would whatevs ins in charge
of code here know that I shouldn't have a dependency, anyway? Every time I've
been in the Matrix I drink Diet Coke like th's n's no tomorrow. I certainly
didn't think to tinker with that in the Construct, and I'm pretty sure you
people 't t't track what I do and don't eat outside of the Matrix. Everything is
telling your codemaster, or whatever, that I ought to have a dependency on
caffeine. And I'll be damned if this headache is all in my mind."

She
started as something cold pressed into her hand. Smith moved back into his own
chair, smirking as Cat stared at the can she now held. "The contents of the
previous canister significantly improved your mood."

She shot him a dark
look, but popped the can open anyway. At least Smith had the good manners to
stay silent as she polished off the beverage. She was almost ready to believe he
was tolerable by the time she was finished.

Now or never, she thought.
Smith's relatively congenial mood was rare enough that she'd better seize the
day. "Let's play a game, hmmm?" No response. She snorted at the table.

"I
can hear you frowning. I think you'll like this game, though."

She
couldn't resist drawing the silence out just a little. For one thing, she was
pretty sure that she could hear Smith's teeth grinding. "It's called quid pro
quo. You ask a question, and I answer. If I won't, you get to ask another. After
I answer, I get to ask you something."

Smith positively glowered. "That
is a most inefficient..."

"It's not supposed to be efficient, it's
supposed to be fun. Oh, come on. You don't have to answer anything you don't
want to. Humor me."

She could see a little muscle working in his jaw, and
trailed off for a moment. Why oh why had it been necessary to program that into
Smith? Was it even programmed at all? Maybe it was some part of Neo channeled in
through the connection... She tried to remember if she'd ever seen that
particular twitch in Neo. She snorted to herself; Neo had probably never been
worked up enough to twitch in his whole life.

She started as the hairs on
the back of her neck began to rise; she could feel Smith's stare. "I believe
this... game involved questions," he purred. The combination of that gaze and
that voice made her shiver in a way she didn't want to analyze. Mostly fear,
part... something else...

Cat swallowed. "I just, er, drifted off into my
own little world for a minute there, sorry. Er, I'll just start, then." She
shook her head rdlesdless of residual soreness; Smith had wiped all thought of
the game out of her mind, and she struggled to come up with a question that
would be useful but not suspicious, at least for a beginning.

She had to
resist the urge to shrink back in her chair under Smith's continued
scrutiny.

Somewhere between Diet Coke and twenty questions he'd turned on
the menace. The pause was stretching out, Smith was beginning to smirk, no doubt
about to deliver some scathing remark about her failure at her own game... "Why
are there always three agents?" she blurted.

"I mean, why not four, or
seven?"

It felt as if an actual physical weight had lifted from her chest
now that she'd said somng, ng, anything. Those icy eyes turned downward instead
of straight through her, the cold face settled into its familiar frown. Cat took
the moment to bring her breathing back to normal. She hadn't noticed when she
began panting. Damn the man, kick-starting her fight-or-flight instincts without
so much as twitching a finger.

"That is irrelevant." Smith still stared
at the table.

"Come again?"

"Your inquiry is
irrelevant."

"Idleiosiiosity. That's how the game works, Smith. I ask
what I want to know, and if it's irrelevant it can't do you any harm to answer.
Besides, don't you want your turn?" She gave him a hard look. "It's much more
efficient that running instant replay on my memories, for one thing."

Cat
couldn't resist imagining little gears whirring as Smith fell silent again. She
wished she could pry into his head, find out just what it was that made
answering even this trivial question such an ordeal.

He sat quiet for so
long that his answer seemed more like an interruption than anything. "Agents are
constructed to apprehend and interrogate. A team of three allows for the
necessary specialization."

Cat was half-afraid to speakcasecase he
thought the better of his 'confession.' Now or never, she thought. He's
certainly never been this open before. "Ah, but that's half an answer. What sort
of specialization dictates three, and not seven?"

Smith's frown deepened.
"One Agent is constructed specifically for speed, another for strength. A third
is endowed with more substantial intelligence, to facilitate
interrogation."

"And also, I would imagine, to come up with ways to
deploy the other two effectively." Cat smiled. "That's you,
then?"

Smith's face slid back into blank. "I am now entitled to an
answer. Quid pro quo."

Cat grinned. "Fair enough."

Smith stared at
her in disconcerting silence. Cat swallowed, feeling frozen in that gaze. What
could the holdup possibly be? She couldn't believe he needed so much time to
formulate a question... "I think you're just trying to make me
nervous."

Smith's lip curled; was she mistaken, or had there been a
little less contempt in the expression this time around. "You are incorrect. I
am making you nervous."

Cat grinned at him. "Right in one. And here I was
thinking you hadn't any good question to ask me..."

Smith's smirk
broadened. "You have been most... forthcoming."

"By which you mean, you
asked me all you think I know that you want to know."

She paused at
Smith's sudden reversion to his "blank face." "Or," she said, "you don't want to
ask me a question in this context when I will scrutinize just why the
information is important to you.R>

Smith's eyes turned to ice; Cat grinned
at him. "Don't like it when I meet you on your own playing field, huh? Prove me
wrong, then. Ask me something ridiculously trivial, like my favorite color or my
birthday or something."

Those flint eyes didn't move away. "Why did you
allow Thomas Anderson to gain control of your ship?"

Cat felt sick to her
stomach. "That's cheating," she said, her attempt to sound jovial wavering along
with her voice. "You're not supposed to ask questions you already know the
answer to."

"Quid pro quo."

"All right," she said, shrugging. "I
needed a crew, and he was the only person who came along offering one. That's
about the size of it."

"That is half an answer, as you say. Why were you
in need of a crew?"

"Why are you asking me this?" Cat struggled to push
the grief she could feel rising, swamping her as it had so many times in the
past. She would get hysterical , Smith would get violent, and this little
display of emotion would let him know just w ano another weak spot could be
found....

Smith remained silent. The mocking glint in his eyes, his
slightly upturned mouth froze Cat's swelling panic. He was enjoying this, the
bastard. And she was giving him information she'd rather he didn't have. Her
voice was cold and steady as she said, " Well, my last crew died, all of them,
in the Matrix."

"And how did they die?"

"Agents," she whispered.
"I didn't see them coming. I was too scattered, trying to keep track of all
three groups like that and they just came out of nowhere..."

Cat fell
silent, staring at nothing and trying not to see the faces. The look of horror
on Binary's face was always there, waiting to surface accusingly... If only
she'd been paying more attention. If only she was a little bit quicker, if only
she'd had time to think it through. But she'd been stupid, she'd sent them all
to the same exit where the Agents were waiting, waiting and there was no
escape.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she was aware again
of the kitchen and Smith's penetrating stare. She shook her head, tried to
smirk. "Clever boy. You managed to get two for one."

She avoided his eyes
as she pushed her chair back and fled upstairs. To cry now, in front of him...
It was too shameful to think about.

She bit her lip hard enough to cut it
as she made her way to her room, barricading herself in and plopping down on the
bed. She expected to burst into sobs like she had too many times before, but
only a few silent tears squeezed out. Maybe it was Smith, she thought. Screaming
griegrief where Smith could hear her seemed to sully it somehow. Oh, how he'd
mock her human weakness, both for failing them and mourning it later. If he
laughed...

She shook her head. Smith never laughs, she told herself,
because Smith isn't human. If he were human than he'd understand. He'd be
mourning, too; Neo had told her about the new and improved agents that must have
replaced Smith's team.

The sadness faded, replaced by sudden, angry
resolve. Cat leapt from the bed, wiping her eyes on a sleev she she threw the
door open. "Hey, Smith?"

She half-jogged to the kitchen. He was sitting
silently at the table, just as she'd left him. "Hey, Smith," she interjected
before his smirk and the cutting remark it undoubtedly heralded could fully
form. "Quid pro quo." She paused to catch her breath. "Do you miss them? Your
teamdid they get destroyed because of you?"

Tiny spots of color appeared
at Smith's cheekbones, his mouth compressing almost to nothing. He rose from the
table and almost before Cat could register it he was gone, the living room door
closing behind him.

She stared at the space where he'd been sitting, the
anger melting away so she could feel the hurt again. A little built of guilt was
there, too, for hurting him on purpose... Nonsense, she told herself. You can't
hurt him, because he doesn't have any feelings to hurt.

But that look...
She couldn't believe that there hadn't been any pain in it. He deserved it, she
though furiously. He did it to me, after all. Quid pro quo.

But she
couldn't quite believe that either.

She walked to the couch and huddled
miserably on it, ignoring the tears that trickled down her cheeks as she settled
in to wait for Smith's return.

A/N: This chapter benefited greatly from a partial beta-read by Logos, who recalls having read another theory about Jones and Brown as specialty
enforcers/pursuers; if I inadvertently borrowed this from somebody, I am sorry
and if you'll tell me I will be of course delighted to acknowledge you... I
thought my version up myself, so please don't think I'm a horrible thief.
:P