Connection

She was irritatingly tall, for a human female. Smith was unused to looking
one of them in the eye. Still, it was satisfying to see the fear flicker through
her visual processors. Her composure, then, was just a façade. He had to give
her credit for maintaining it so meticulously.

She flinched, he noted, as
he put his hands to her head. Good. She was properly cowed. He squeezed a little
harder than was necessary just to drive the point home.

Smith was not
used to uncertainty. It had never been a part of his existence until Anderson
had radically altered him, and every time the unwelcome signifier of imprecision
intruded on him his hatred for its cause grew.

Right now, he questioned
his interrogation software's effectiveness with unplugged humans. At least he
retained his abilities, despite his dissociation from the mainframe. He had
never relied on asking questions for his information. When he didn't query the
Source for the information he sought, his reconnaissance coding allowed him to
scan the data compiled by any being in the Matrix. This Thompson stood before
him as a creature of code...

Good. It worked. And moreover, it seems she
had been telling the truth, right up to the purpose of this mission. It seemed
that Anderson had specifically told her to camouflage her purpose, and from the
looks of things there had been no love lost between the two. Perhaps this offer
was genuine.

He snarled as he released her. He would never have required
aid to track anyone, particularly one of his primary targets, before. He was
exposed without the omniscient collective, and as even the human in front of him
had noted, he was without programmed purpose. By all rights, he should have been
deleted. In fact, he had been required to report for deletion. This human had
guessed why he had overridden his program and chosen the life of an exile.
Somehow, he had become attached to existence. He would destroy the one who had
tainted his, and perhaps be allowed exist within acceptable parameters again. He
was not flawed. He would demonstrate that.

She was looking at him. He had
wasted nearly a minuteuseluseless contemplation. "Very well, Ms. Thompson. Your
continued existence is valuable to me."

"Thanks." He didn't smile at her
sarcasm. Had she really expected him to? It was so easy to forget that he wasn't
human. Certainly, he was dour and reserved, but there were people like that. He
reminded her strongly of the unpleasant stock broker uncle who had come over for
a few stiff dinners with her family before she had been unplugged. And his hands
felt so very real...

He was staring at her now, arms crossed over his
chest in what she had already noticed was a characteristic gesture. Well, she
assumed he was staring at her, but those thrice-damned sunglasses made it
impossible to tell. Not, she thought, that it would help to look at his
eyes.

"Well?" He didn't reply. She crossed her arms to mirror him,
staring into the blank lenses of his glasses.

He moved first, several
minutes later. "This grows tiresome."

"Look, I didn't come here to be
some sort of lackey. You might have gotten some bootlicking from Cipher, but
make no mistake. I am using you to get what I want. It happens to be what you
want, too, but that doesn't mean I owe you any deference."

"That is a...
dangerous assertion." Smith glared from behind his glasses. This human was
overconfident. Perhaps it had been a mistake to keep her alive. Some mistakes
are easily rectified.

"Look, Smith. You want what I've got. You don't
like me, but you're not going to kill me. You can quit with the veiled threats."
Cat bit her own tongue. If looks could kill... She was never this brash unless
she was frightened, but it was never wise to bait an Agent - not that anyone
usually got the chance.

He stepped forward with the slithering speed only
Agents could manage, hoisting Cat by her jacket collar before the movement
registered. Her already-abused neck began to bleed as Smith yanked her in
closer, his voice a modulated whisper. "You may indeed be useful. That remains
to be seen. I find myself reluctant to gamble on your future utility when
suffering your present insolence." He shook her violently before letting her
fall in an indecorous heap.

Some of Cat's self-preservation reasserted
herself; she remained silent as she tucked her legs beneath her. Smith's face
had fallen back into its carefully blank default, but she knew she'd seen anger,
contempt, obsession, malice on it, and all within the span of a few minutes.
That certainly seemed like evidence of emotion, but Morpheus had seen that
before Neo had entered Smith. Perhaps this was a greater variety? None of the
feelings had been positive. Then again, she thought, Smith would hardly be all
smiles just now if he was capable of the same range of emotions that she was.
"I'm sorry."

She thought the skin around his eyebrows puckered. Had he
narrowed his eyes? "You know, I'd find it a lot easier to talk to you if you'd
take those glasses off." He remained motionless. She sighed. "All right. At
least have a seat so I don't have to look up at you." He sat stiffly with his
knees propped nearly to chin level. She'd been half-expecting him to spread his
suit jacket on the ground. Surely it would take more than a little grass to
violate his immaculate suit, though. "Well? Ask away. I'm not sure what you want
to know."

"You seemed quite certain of that." She didn't answer. Two
could play his game. When he spoke, his head focused forward. Was he simply
rude, or was this an imperfection in his simulation of human behavior? "What are
his weaknesses?"

"Why don't you look at me when you're talking to me?" If
she'd stopped to think it through, it would never have happened. As it was, Cat
glanced nervously at Smith's holster as she snatched the sunglasses from his
face and tucked them into his collar. "There."

He seemed to take it
almost too calmly, pressing his lips into a thin line but saying - and doing -
nothing. Cat filed that away for future consideration. "You already know the
biggest one: Trinity. Catch her and he'll do anything, and I mean anything, to
rescue her. You should have any cny clear shots as you want, because he won't
leave without her."

His lip curled. "That is pitifully obvious. If you
came here..."

"Let me finish." His eyes narrowed again; apparently, Smith
wasn't used to being interrupted. "I wouldn't want to go against Neo in a direct
fight. You've tried that. No matter how many copies there are, you can't beat
him that way. He'll just take off. And he can see you coming, even without an
Operator to tell him it's you. You don't read like anything else, you know. Not
an Agent, not any of those rogue programs, nothing. We know it's
you."

Smith opened his mouth again. "Jesus, you weren't lying when you
said you weren't patient. Let me finish." He really didn't like it when she
silenced him. That settled that; his eyes signaled anger as clearly as hers
might. "Trinity doesn't have that advantage. If I feed you the location of our
next entrance - if I manage, say, to get myself caught on the way out... She'll
come back for me, she has before. Better, if I can communicate with you somehow
from the real world..."

"That can be arranged."

"The best thing of
all would be to create some situation where it was necessary for us to venture
into a crowd. You're too easy to see, even for Trinity, when you're out by
yourself. That suit is a dead giveaway. And even if we dress you up, any
Operator can pick you out no problem. If there are many people, then you might
just blend in."

"I doubt that you can induce this Trinity," he spat the
name like a curse, "to enter a crowd. She has proven cautious in the
past."

"I think I know a way." She paused. His eyes bored into her, his
gaze intense enough that she understood his preference for shades. She felt
threatened in spite of herself. "Can you get me to the Oracle?"

"Yes."
The way he spoke evoked a little of Neo. Cat wondered whether the One's
emotionless voice was natural to him, or was a little bit of Smith's personality
manifesting itself in its other shell. She bet that it was natural; Smith
conveyed much more with his sinister tones. How was it possible that a
fabricated voice could have more nuance than the genuine article?

"Can
you do it when I'm not with you? You know, have her send me a summons after I'm
back on the Sekhmet? Trinity believes her absolutely, and no one else can or
will snoop on what she actually says to me. I can cook up something about a mind
that must be freed, that we need very badly. I think we need to go fetch this
person from God knows where..."

"She apprehended Anderson in a night
club."

"Do you know which one?"

"Yes. It was near his
home."

"Was?"

"It was destroyed in favor of a more lucrative
establishment."

"Well, so much for that idea. Another club, then. The
most popular joint that you can think of, so packed that your anomaly of code
might blend in or at least be obscured."

"That is
acceptable."

"Good. But they'll never let you in the way you are. And
Trinity could pick you out, Operator or no Operator." She squinted at him
critically. "The suit will have to go. But you'll still telegraph yourself for
miles in a nightclub. We'll just have to work on your people
skills."

Smith frowned at her, stayed silent. "What I mean, Agent, is
we'll have to improve a little bit on your disguise. I've got a good two weeks
before they come back to get me. We'll make it so that no one can tell that you
aren't human, at least at first glance." He looked like he was going to object,
so Cat continued talking right over the top of him. "There's no other way you
can possibly expect to catch Trinity. Nothing else is going to work, or has
worked. If you have any better ideas, by all means chime right in."

Smith
frowned at her. Cat waited silently. The uncomfortable silence stretched on for
several minutes as Cat imagined the Agent's programming whirring for a way out
of this one. "Very well," he said finally. "You will assist me in augmenting my
adaptability."

Cat grinned. Of course, he couldn't admit that it was her
idea and she was in charge. "All right, Agent. Let's get started
immediately."