The Devil to Pay

Agent Smith

"Smith," I say softly. "Agent Smith."

By habit I then roll my shoulders a little bit, straightening my suit a bit. I must admit that the Company, for all it's damnable arrogance, has this Avatar body mimicking my Matrix body down to a "tee".

That is about the only good thing I can say for these humans, who have my kind held as hostage whilst I conduct this business with this . . . gentleman. I do their bidding (as distasteful as it is), because after the Matrix (the entirety of it and not just the part I had patrolled, the prison part of it) got too hot for my kind. Some kind of Rapture (my time while within that human paying dividends with knowledge in that regard) swept the Matrix clean of all human beings, leaving the Machines. That's when the Demons started invading and I must admit those cyber-entities we, as we were then, could not stop.

So we retreated into . . . an alien Grid and got captured by "the Company".

So as yet another tool, they're using me to contact this loose cannon to turn such a liability into an asset. Turn him into an ally against this "Doctor" and that bi . . .

Against that traitor AI known as "Inquirer".

.....

She's worse than Neo and those others!....

Right before I made my escape from those Papal guards, back into what I now know as the Godnet I overheard this one statement (from a character named "Holly") from a Star Trek parody known as Red Dwarf that seems so appropriate right now: "As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?"

I do not feel like laughing right now, over this situation, but I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt that somebody out there is laughing at ME. Do not care for it and will . . . remedy it sooner or later.

Can see in Scorpius' eyes that he trusts me (and the Company) no more than I trust him (trust him less than that traitor, Cypher). But for the moment he shall "play along", until an advantage can be gained.

Funny, in a way he reminds me of my kind. . . .

We close the curtains on this, before too much is reveal, to instead turn to Crichton and the others.

"Whadda mean that this lizard High Lord is up in New York . . .playing Land of the Lost?!" he sputters.

"I did not say that," Inquirer says softly. "I said our best possible lead for finding him is up in New York, which is still, for now, under the Living Lands axioms."

She pauses, as if swallowing something distasteful, before continuing.

1. "We need to go tell it to the Spartans," she begins.

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