The Matrix: Unbooted: The Merovignian
by
Kid Indy
The Ahab was out from Zion, this time for real, Ceres was fairly certain. Her training episode had diminished the realm that she would call certainty, but that was life in Zion. Once you have one drink of doubt, the next drink is hard to put down. The view screen jumped to life as they reached broadcast depth, the green characters spelling out the mystery that drove the war, telling a story in a tongue known only to the initiated. Sparky began to key in coordinates for their latest hop, and Ceres called out for her crew to get ready to go in. The phone began to ring.
Ceres, Dabar, Jingo, and Torque materialized in a vacant office. Glancing at a clock on the wall, Ceres noted that they had exactly forty minutes until the midnight meeting. She checked her weapons. Both the .45 pistol and the Israeli sub-machinegun were in good working order and tucked beneath her long cloak. A voice began in her ear, "You're on the second floor. Elevator is out in the hall and to the right." She motioned to two of teammates to follow, and all but Jingo made their way to the elevator. Ceres called back to Jingo, "Be sure to be at our jump point at exactly two."
"Will do, Captain."
As they walked down the street, she could see the row of bars in the distance. The city was too big to be a college town, but this neighborhood could not be anything but the realm of twelve thousand young drunks. The good news was that four people in black leather would not be conspicuous; if anything, they looked relatively conservative among the young seekers of identity and the many aging clingers to an old image. Making their way to The Vogue, they passed between baseball caps, pink hair, camouflage outfits of various sorts, and black leather. Another local band was playing tonight, making the ambience perfect and the noise particularly concealing. Dabar took the lead in their walk, slipping the door man some cash and receiving a pat on the back. They entered.
Ceres never did like the chauvinism that ruled clubs in the Matrix, and she quickly took the spatial lead as they made their way towards the bar, taking the last three stools on the end. She looked at the lead singer of tonight's band, wailing with practiced passion about the artificiality of the life around him. If only he knew. The bartender nodded to his regulars and began fixing Torque a Jack and Coke, one of his favorite virtual vices (but not, especially lately, his favorite).
The band finished their set, waving over to Ceres and receiving a wave back. The irony had amused her as long as she had been making Matrix runs--this so-called "artist" would be the last to be chosen to leave the Matrix-world; for all his fake lyricism, he was entrapped in the system more than the college kids ever would be. She scanned and saw two enter, one an overweight white kid with glasses and the other apparently of mixed descent--Ceres guessed white and Mexican. They approached the four with visible uneasiness, and the boy with glasses led the inquiry.
"Um... are you the... person?"
Ceres tried to suppress a smirk. "What person?"
"Well, you see, I got this message on my computer, and I..."
The other, becoming impatient, butted in: "Are you Ceres and Torque?"
"We are. Are you Alex and Guerre?"
The two exchanged glances, then both nodded. Ceres guessed that they were probably both freshmen at one of the city's colleges, just learning to question the system as it stood. Sometimes she wondered why the Matrix let colleges continue to exist, but looking behind the boys at the masses who did not question, she had at least a momentarily satisfying answer. "You'll have to come with us to our van. Don't look around too much, and keep quiet."
"Where are we going?"
"To answer your questions."
Dabar flanked the two boys, and Torque brought up the back. The five of them began down the sidewalk towards a parking lot to find a van to hotwire. They passed beyond the bars and into a dark neighborhood, and Ceres got on her cell phone.
"Sparky, is there a van anywhere near?"
"Yeah, Ceres. Two blocks further and you'll find a service alley behind a drug store. There's a van there. Not new, but it runs, and it's got gas."
"Good to hear. Is Jingo in place?"
"Affirmative."
Ceres hung up and increased her pace to get to the alley.
Loud voices were coming from the behind the store, and when they drew even with the building, they saw several young men surrounding a figure on the ground. They were yelling, and more than one kicked the downed figure. One reached down and pulled a wallet out of the victim's pocket. Standing up, he saw Alex gawking down the alley.
"Hey, don't I know you, kid?"
Suddenly eight people were looking at Alex. He began to stammer, "No, man, probably someone else."
"No, I know you. You just about hit me in your car yesterday. And you gave me the finger after I dodged you!"
Alex's red face sweated. Rather than deny anything further, he turned and began running. All four boys sprang after him, sprinting towards the Zion pirates. Their eyes looked beyond the danger to the prey, and their speed would have carried them past. But Torque's arm shot out in a palm strike that upended one of the robbers, and two others stopped running when they heard the sound of their buddy's face smacking the hard hand. His body hit the ground and did not move. The fourth stopped running and turned to face them. Guerre stood, staring at Torque.
Ceres drew up into a fighting stance. "Great, Torque. Really stealthy."
"Hey, they were going to kill the kid."
The three gang members had no chance in this, but as they drew their knives, they had little idea why not. Ceres cautioned her allies, "Remember, nothing fancy. We're in the open." Seeing that Alex had not stopped running, she called to Dabar and told him to go get the kid. As he turned, one of the gangers lunged, trying to put his knife in Dabar's back. Ceres sprung forward, catching the arm and redirecting his momentum into a spin. With a swift kick to his planted leg, she sent him tumbling to the asphalt. Torque had slapped one kid's knife away and driven his heel into the other's midsection. Planting that foot on the ground and whipping his fist around like a hammer, he dropped the fourth gang member. All of this took around four and a half seconds, and Guerre could only stare slack-jawed as Dabar chased Alex.
Unfortunately, Guerre was not the only one to see all of it. A flashing blue light began to fill the street, and a city cop car approached rapidly. Ceres, straining her eyes, saw black sunglasses, a collared shirt, and a suit coat. "Agent!" Torque looked over at her, wondering what she would do. "Torque, get him out of here. Rendezvous at the jump point at the designated time."
Torque pointed at the squad car. "What about that?"
"I'll take care of that." She reached into her coat and pulled out the Uzi. Bracing it on her hip, she sprayed bullets into the front windshield. Tires screeched, the car spun, and Guerre screamed. Torque grabbed Guerre's hand and led him back into an alley. As the car came to rest, the door opened slowly. A dress shoe emerged, followed by a suit pants leg. The agent stood to full height and began to reach into his jacket pocket. Ceres pulled the trigger again, spraying the rest of the clip into the night air. When the flash had subsided, the agent, still standing, smoothed his hair and once again reached into his jacket. Ceres stood for a moment amazed. "They were right. Agents really can..."
She didn't finish her sentence; the agent had drawn his pistol and was firing. Ceres planted both feet and sprang backwards, landing on top of a car. She heard metal tearing through metal as the bullets shredded the door. Her legs were already bent from landing, so she extended them again to spring high and back, landing on top of the drug store itself. She turned and ran, heard the agent land behind her, sprang from the top of the building back down into the alley. This part of town had no buildings taller than five stories, so disappearing into one would be futile. She turned a corner rapidly and braced her back against the brick wall. The agent's dress shoes came to a skidding halt, and the footsteps became slower. He was looking, and he would find her soon.
A door opened slightly, and Ceres spun, pointing her pistol into the face of a lanky man standing just inside. He addressed her in a French accent: "Miss Ceres, come this way." She heard the footsteps pivot, and the agent came charging around the corner. Without any alternatives, she dove through the door into a shoulder roll. She heard the door close behind her, and then there was silence.
She looked around and saw a room much to big to be the little shop on the side street. Chandeliers hung at fifteen foot intervals, and she quickly counted nine and did the math. No, a 3600-square-foot room could not have been in that part of the city. She looked up at the man who had opened the door. Not entirely handsome, his slicked-back hair fit well with his expensive suit. Approaching from behind him were two taller men in white dredlocks and white trenchcoats. As far as she could tell on first glance, they also had abnormally white skin and appeared to be twins. She looked around the place and saw opulence embodied. The expansive chamber was filled with expensive furniture, trays of fruit on pedestals, bottles of wine next to the fruit. Soft Baroque music, coming from a place Ceres could not pinpoint, filled the air. She could only ask, "How?"
"The right doors can take you wonderful places, Ceres. You only need to open them. And to have the key." He dangled a key on a string in front of her before putting the key into his pants pocket. "I opened a door from that filthy city street into my pleasure room. Do you like?"
"Who are you?"
"I am a trader in secrets, Ceres. And I know your little secret."
Ceres' fair skin began to turn red. "What secret?"
"I know two, actually. One, there are no phone lines for three hundred miles through inhospitable mountains, and you can only get to one with my help. And two, when you were about to become a full-fledged captain, you discovered one of my favorite hobbies."
"I don't know what you're talking about, but I think it's time you let me out of here." She turned and opened the door, only to find herself looking out over a mountain range. The city was gone. "Where am I?"
The man, still attempting to act French, picked up a glass of wine and offered it to Ceres. She took it in her hand but did not drink. "You're in my palace, and you'll stay here until I let you go. People call me Merovingian, and I am valuable to those who are valuable to me."
"What are you talking about?"
"Morpheus. I know what Morpheus thinks he's looking for, and I know where he can find it. And I know that he's right to look for it."
"I still don't know what you're talking about." She knew very well, on both counts, but this strange man telling her all this was entirely too... strange. She took a sip of the wine to conceal her facial expression.
"Ceres, you can't lie to me. I'm a program. I can see the signs that you're lying. You know what I have that you want," he began. He approached and put his finger underneath her chin to finish the second part of the sentence, "and you know what I want."
Ceres snapped her head back and began to walk away from Merovingian, only to find herself face to face with the twins. Without looking back, she warned him, "I'm not going to bed with any program."
"Ceres, Ceres! I'm a married man!" This drew a chuckle from the twins. "Besides, Persephone-- my lovely wife-- does not enjoy one of my particular favorite pastimes. And I've heard from good sources that you've tried them." Now Ceres knew that he had heard about her training ordeal. She took a long drink to conceal her face again.
"Look, Mero..."
"Merovingian."
"I don't know what you've heard, but I just want to get out of here. Now I think I'm going."
The twins drew flip-handled razors and stepped between Ceres and the door. She heard the Merovingian behind her, "Not until we have a bit of fun. Now Ceres, I'm not going to hurt you. In fact, I can transport you safely to a land line and give you information that will shoot you up the ranks among your captains. What's a little... entertainment? Why would you die in a needless fight if you can just laugh for me and be done?"
Ceres stood with her back to the Merovingian. If she reached for her pistol, these two goons (probably programs, she thought) would cut her to pieces before she could get it out of her jacket. Her Uzi was still on the ground back in the city. She didn't trust this sleazy program one bit, but it seemed that she had no choice. "Cell phone."
"Pardon?"
"Call my operator on a cell phone and tell him where I'll be and when."
The Merovingian flashed a victor's smile. "Of course, my dear." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small flip phone. His hand on his own coat seemed to jog his memory. He signaled one of the twins and said, "Take her jacket." The other watched intently as one took her trench coat, and her last weapon, off of her shoulders. He began speaking rapid French into the cell, then he spit the words, "Translate it!" and hung up.
"What did you tell him?"
"I said that in one hour, you would be picking up a phone in a phone booth on thirty-eighth street in the same city from which you disappeared. I told him the exact location."
"I don't trust you."
"Work with me and you'll be on your way back to Zion in forty-five minutes. I'll tickle you for forty and tell you what you need in the last five." Ceres now visibly cringed; he had said the t-word. "Don't work with me and I'll bring in enough of my guards to make you do whatever I want until the sentinels find your ship."
Ceres knew that she had no aces. "Alright, alright. Forty minutes." She couldn't believe she was saying this; two minutes would be enough to drive her crazy. "Then we go."
The Merovingian's smile never left his face. "Now, Ceres, take off your shirt and pants and get in that chair for me." He pointed to a piece of furniture that might have looked like a dentist's chair were it not for the thick plush padding that covered it. Also, the arm rests were too high, making it look as if the chair were designed to expose traditionally ticklish spots. And Ceres knew that's what it was for.
She took off her shirt and once again found herself in the Matrix in her black bra. She removed one boot, then the other. "Socks too?"
"No, Ceres. I want to take those off myself. Now off with your pants." She did so and sat in the chair. When she put her elbows up on the high arm rests, padded cuffs materialized to hold her arms and legs in place. She tried to pull her arms back, but they held fast. Once again she was in her underwear, tied up, at the mercy of someone who wanted to tickle her helpless body. Or what passed for that in the Matrix. She began to wonder whether other captains faced this kind of thing.
The Merovingian ran a finger lightly down the side of her neck, making her crane to the side. "That wine you drank, Ceres, are you feeling it?"
"What? What did you do to the wine?"
"It's a program, Ceres, a kind of a truth serum. No, that's not it. It's a truth-telling potion. You see, I can now see the spots on your body that are going to tickle you the most. It's kind of like heat vision, only it's tickle-vision." He scratched under her chin with one finger, making her flinch.
She snapped her face away from him. "It doesn't matter! Just get this over with!"
"Tell me where you're most ticklish, Ceres."
Ceres could feel the skin on her face turn cold. "No..."
"Yes, Ceres. It's part of the game. Do you think I'm the kind of man who would exploit your vulnerability when you confess it to me? Do you think I'm bold enough to bluff about that wine? Am I both? Neither? It's your call, Ceres. Tell me." He began one finger at her panty line and began to trace slowly up her side until he reached the fabric of her bra. She shuddered at the touch.
"I've got an hour, Ceres. I was going to let you go after forty minutes, but I could take all the time that I've got. Maybe more. I can always call your operator back and tell him I'll be a few hours." Now he had ahold of a few strands of her hair, brushing back and forth across the top of her shoulder with it. Ceres was beginning to sweat hard.
She knew that Torque's fingers were awful when they played along the soft soles of her feet. She knew that the feather that passed between her toes, lighting up the tender skin between, was torment. She knew that she couldn't tell this program those things. "My belly! I'm most ticklish on my belly!"
"Good, Ceres!" Ceres tried not to sigh at the relief of her bluff working. "Now just let me take those socks off and I'll be able to compare what's underneath with what's already showing."
Ceres knew that she had been caught but hoped still to maintain the deception. The Merovingian began to peel one black sock back, then off the tips of her toes. He let it drop on the floor. The second sock he pulled with the same deliberateness. Ceres began to breathe more quickly.
"Now I can see, and I know that you told me that your belly was most ticklish. But strangely, I see more nervous activity somewhere else..." Ceres felt one finger begin at her heel and trace its way, maddeningly slowly, up the center of her right foot. It stopped dead center in the middle of her sole. "I think you lied to me, Ceres." Ceres could feel her eyes fly wide open.
"Please, please! No! Not my feet!"
"No, not your feet yet, Ceres. I'm going to tickle the rest of you first, starting with your belly, but since you lied to me, once I've got you quivering, I'm going after your feet. And it's going to be so nice, Ceres."
"Please! No!" But the Merovingian had already begun to walk behind her.
Fingers started to caress her belly, sliding off behind her onto her sides and then starting again in the center of her abdomen. "You have no idea how much better tickling is for a program like me, Ceres." The waves of fingers across abdomen had clenched her teeth, and she could feel the urge already to start giggling. "What you humans call sex is wonderful in its own way and fine in the manner of biological necessity, but this, this touching, this play of will against will--that is exquisite!" Ceres wanted to break his little neck, but she was doing all she could to keep herself from breaking out into fullly-vocalized laughter. As it stood, she was grunting, moaning, making the noises that someone trying to prove her un-ticklishness makes. "Actually, Ceres, your belly is ticklish enough, but you have much more interesting areas. You did know that, didn't you?"
Ceres erupted when his hands moved up to her exposed underarms. A shriek came out when he first poked his fingers into them, followed by bubbling giggles. Despite herself, she let out a squeal here and there as he worked her underarms, tracing fingernails, pushing with the tips of his fingers, pinching the skin where her shoulders joined her ribs. Ceres' head, unrestrained, thrashed back and forth, sending her long red hair in beautiful arcs through the air. The Merovingian worked on her armpits simultaneously, then staggering, pinching here and poking there, making an occasional venture down to to her ribs to give a rousing squeeze and hear a soaring whoop of laughter. She could only imagine what her teammates were witnessing back on the ship.
He began to squeeze her ribs on one side while poking around under her arm with the other. The pure, intense tickle of the underarm, punctuated by the thrills of sensation originating between her ribs, made her jump and scream between giggles. She had no way of seeing her own body through the Merovingian's reprogrammed eyes, but the placement of his fingers, the exquisite timing of each and every poke, each quick squeeze, each drag of the fingers across her sensitive skin, let her know that whatever he was using, it was working. Ceres' sweat only made his fingers move more quickly, sliding on the salty liquid and making whole streaks of skin ticklish.
He began to walk around to her right side, but the tickling did not subside. On the contrary, the addition of her right hip to the ticklish tour gave her new energy to laugh and squirm. Her armpts were getting a break, but the addition of the inner thighs and the hips, combined with the relentless poking at her lower ribs, kept Ceres' abdomen straining with the effort of continuing the laugh. Once again, she was thinking about her body in the Matrix as a body--but what kind of training could keep her from this?
The Merovingian's tongue was soon flicking in and out of her bellybutton, but she was laughing too hard and consistently to maintain any sustained objection. Her hips bucked, she could feel his face imprinted against the flesh of her midsection, but she could not stop that awful probing feeling, the sensation of a muscular thing exploring her bellybutton. One hand had returned to her underarm. The other squeezed and tickled her knee. She was sweating hard, still thrashing as if he had snuck up behind her and squeezed her ribs, only her motion was continuous. She hoped his vision could not read the fire that was building up between her legs.
One hand had moved from her armpit to her side to her belly, clawing and prodding and tickling like mad. Ceres couldn't figure out why, even after the minutes that had passed, this hadn't gotten monotonous. She figured she could get used to a sensation after a while, but being tickled, with no hopes of fighting back or covering up, never did stop being... what was it? Unpleasant? No, it did have its own feeling, but it wasn't painful. Pleasant? No, then she'd want more, and she didn't want any more. Or did she?
Speculation ended when Ceres felt a leather loop encircle one big toe--the one on her left foot--and tighten. Neither hand was tickling now; one was reaching under the chair to pull forth a swinging footrest, the other holding her toe suspended. She saw that the footrest had a ring mounted in its center, and she knew what this meant. She tried to wriggle her foot loose, and the other end of the strap slipped out of the Merovingian's fingers, but the loop around her toe only tightened. The expert tickler grabbed her ankle and pinned her struggling right foot to the bench. With the other he grabbed the leather strap and used the leverage to bring her left foot over to join the right. He quickly passed the loop through the ring and grab it. Now Ceres really began struggling. She kicked her right foot free in the transition, but her left was still stuck, secured by one digit. This did not last long. Once again, a hand grabbed her ankle and brought her foot up onto the footrest. With a deft flick of his fingers, the Merovingian looped the other end of the strap around her right big toe and pulled it taut. He stood back and watched with some delight as Ceres' squirming digits tried to free themselves.
"Now we have some real fun, Ceres."
Ceres' attempt at a threat was ruined by giggles: "If I... get... out of this, you're..." But the sentence couldn't finish. Without the Merovingian even touching her, just thinking about getting it on the soles of her feet drove her into giggling fits. He had her utterly defenseless, her martial arts and her firmness of mind rendered unusable by her horrible situation. He began to scrape just one fingertip along the center of her left sole: up, down, up, down. She wondered what kind of face she was making as she began to giggle. "No," she managed to whine, "No!" became a higher pitched giggle-plea, "NO!" took her right into a light scream. The metronome would not stop running up, down, up, down, up, down. Her voice had begun a counter-cadence to the finger: a high, clear, squeal, followed by bubbling giggles running down a ticklish musical scale. Up, down, up, down. Squeal, fall, up, down, up, down. The pure sensation, on that one sole, was itself too much to handle. She felt everything running down the center of her torso tighten as a second finger, then a third, began to trace patterns on her right sole. Her hips bucked up and down, her body-not-body starving now for release.
The metronome finger left for just a moment, and Ceres craned her neck up just long enough to see him dip it in a small bowl of oil on a stand nearby. Her eyes, filled with a mix of sweat and tears, suddenly surged wide open. His right finger descended to a position in front of her left foot, and suddenly an oil-lubricated, warm fingertip was scribbling up and down at a much quicker pace. Ceres arched her back, her voice extending into one long, ticklish squeal as her most vulnerable spot underwent a higher-speed tickling than she could ever have imagined. Her foot was now the center of the universe, this tickling finger a shining beacon of pleasure, too much pleasure, too much...
Ceres did not see the Merovignian's right hand move from her foot up to the volcano between her legs. She only felt her body wrench with satisfaction. She giggled to herself as the world spun. She heard a voice, the voice of her tormentor and pardoner, in her ear:
"Ceres, bring Trinity to me. She is the key to Morpheus' plan. If you bring her to me, I can show both of you the way."
Ceres felt four strong hands take her by the arms and lift her from the chair. She did not remember being untied. She padded along with her very pale helpers, between them, hanging from their strong hands. They went through a door. She heard a phone ring.
* * * * * *
Sorry this sequel took so long to write; I hope it's worth the wait. As always, feedback is appreciated! And yes, those last two paragraphs do point to a sequel.
by
Kid Indy
The Ahab was out from Zion, this time for real, Ceres was fairly certain. Her training episode had diminished the realm that she would call certainty, but that was life in Zion. Once you have one drink of doubt, the next drink is hard to put down. The view screen jumped to life as they reached broadcast depth, the green characters spelling out the mystery that drove the war, telling a story in a tongue known only to the initiated. Sparky began to key in coordinates for their latest hop, and Ceres called out for her crew to get ready to go in. The phone began to ring.
Ceres, Dabar, Jingo, and Torque materialized in a vacant office. Glancing at a clock on the wall, Ceres noted that they had exactly forty minutes until the midnight meeting. She checked her weapons. Both the .45 pistol and the Israeli sub-machinegun were in good working order and tucked beneath her long cloak. A voice began in her ear, "You're on the second floor. Elevator is out in the hall and to the right." She motioned to two of teammates to follow, and all but Jingo made their way to the elevator. Ceres called back to Jingo, "Be sure to be at our jump point at exactly two."
"Will do, Captain."
As they walked down the street, she could see the row of bars in the distance. The city was too big to be a college town, but this neighborhood could not be anything but the realm of twelve thousand young drunks. The good news was that four people in black leather would not be conspicuous; if anything, they looked relatively conservative among the young seekers of identity and the many aging clingers to an old image. Making their way to The Vogue, they passed between baseball caps, pink hair, camouflage outfits of various sorts, and black leather. Another local band was playing tonight, making the ambience perfect and the noise particularly concealing. Dabar took the lead in their walk, slipping the door man some cash and receiving a pat on the back. They entered.
Ceres never did like the chauvinism that ruled clubs in the Matrix, and she quickly took the spatial lead as they made their way towards the bar, taking the last three stools on the end. She looked at the lead singer of tonight's band, wailing with practiced passion about the artificiality of the life around him. If only he knew. The bartender nodded to his regulars and began fixing Torque a Jack and Coke, one of his favorite virtual vices (but not, especially lately, his favorite).
The band finished their set, waving over to Ceres and receiving a wave back. The irony had amused her as long as she had been making Matrix runs--this so-called "artist" would be the last to be chosen to leave the Matrix-world; for all his fake lyricism, he was entrapped in the system more than the college kids ever would be. She scanned and saw two enter, one an overweight white kid with glasses and the other apparently of mixed descent--Ceres guessed white and Mexican. They approached the four with visible uneasiness, and the boy with glasses led the inquiry.
"Um... are you the... person?"
Ceres tried to suppress a smirk. "What person?"
"Well, you see, I got this message on my computer, and I..."
The other, becoming impatient, butted in: "Are you Ceres and Torque?"
"We are. Are you Alex and Guerre?"
The two exchanged glances, then both nodded. Ceres guessed that they were probably both freshmen at one of the city's colleges, just learning to question the system as it stood. Sometimes she wondered why the Matrix let colleges continue to exist, but looking behind the boys at the masses who did not question, she had at least a momentarily satisfying answer. "You'll have to come with us to our van. Don't look around too much, and keep quiet."
"Where are we going?"
"To answer your questions."
Dabar flanked the two boys, and Torque brought up the back. The five of them began down the sidewalk towards a parking lot to find a van to hotwire. They passed beyond the bars and into a dark neighborhood, and Ceres got on her cell phone.
"Sparky, is there a van anywhere near?"
"Yeah, Ceres. Two blocks further and you'll find a service alley behind a drug store. There's a van there. Not new, but it runs, and it's got gas."
"Good to hear. Is Jingo in place?"
"Affirmative."
Ceres hung up and increased her pace to get to the alley.
Loud voices were coming from the behind the store, and when they drew even with the building, they saw several young men surrounding a figure on the ground. They were yelling, and more than one kicked the downed figure. One reached down and pulled a wallet out of the victim's pocket. Standing up, he saw Alex gawking down the alley.
"Hey, don't I know you, kid?"
Suddenly eight people were looking at Alex. He began to stammer, "No, man, probably someone else."
"No, I know you. You just about hit me in your car yesterday. And you gave me the finger after I dodged you!"
Alex's red face sweated. Rather than deny anything further, he turned and began running. All four boys sprang after him, sprinting towards the Zion pirates. Their eyes looked beyond the danger to the prey, and their speed would have carried them past. But Torque's arm shot out in a palm strike that upended one of the robbers, and two others stopped running when they heard the sound of their buddy's face smacking the hard hand. His body hit the ground and did not move. The fourth stopped running and turned to face them. Guerre stood, staring at Torque.
Ceres drew up into a fighting stance. "Great, Torque. Really stealthy."
"Hey, they were going to kill the kid."
The three gang members had no chance in this, but as they drew their knives, they had little idea why not. Ceres cautioned her allies, "Remember, nothing fancy. We're in the open." Seeing that Alex had not stopped running, she called to Dabar and told him to go get the kid. As he turned, one of the gangers lunged, trying to put his knife in Dabar's back. Ceres sprung forward, catching the arm and redirecting his momentum into a spin. With a swift kick to his planted leg, she sent him tumbling to the asphalt. Torque had slapped one kid's knife away and driven his heel into the other's midsection. Planting that foot on the ground and whipping his fist around like a hammer, he dropped the fourth gang member. All of this took around four and a half seconds, and Guerre could only stare slack-jawed as Dabar chased Alex.
Unfortunately, Guerre was not the only one to see all of it. A flashing blue light began to fill the street, and a city cop car approached rapidly. Ceres, straining her eyes, saw black sunglasses, a collared shirt, and a suit coat. "Agent!" Torque looked over at her, wondering what she would do. "Torque, get him out of here. Rendezvous at the jump point at the designated time."
Torque pointed at the squad car. "What about that?"
"I'll take care of that." She reached into her coat and pulled out the Uzi. Bracing it on her hip, she sprayed bullets into the front windshield. Tires screeched, the car spun, and Guerre screamed. Torque grabbed Guerre's hand and led him back into an alley. As the car came to rest, the door opened slowly. A dress shoe emerged, followed by a suit pants leg. The agent stood to full height and began to reach into his jacket pocket. Ceres pulled the trigger again, spraying the rest of the clip into the night air. When the flash had subsided, the agent, still standing, smoothed his hair and once again reached into his jacket. Ceres stood for a moment amazed. "They were right. Agents really can..."
She didn't finish her sentence; the agent had drawn his pistol and was firing. Ceres planted both feet and sprang backwards, landing on top of a car. She heard metal tearing through metal as the bullets shredded the door. Her legs were already bent from landing, so she extended them again to spring high and back, landing on top of the drug store itself. She turned and ran, heard the agent land behind her, sprang from the top of the building back down into the alley. This part of town had no buildings taller than five stories, so disappearing into one would be futile. She turned a corner rapidly and braced her back against the brick wall. The agent's dress shoes came to a skidding halt, and the footsteps became slower. He was looking, and he would find her soon.
A door opened slightly, and Ceres spun, pointing her pistol into the face of a lanky man standing just inside. He addressed her in a French accent: "Miss Ceres, come this way." She heard the footsteps pivot, and the agent came charging around the corner. Without any alternatives, she dove through the door into a shoulder roll. She heard the door close behind her, and then there was silence.
She looked around and saw a room much to big to be the little shop on the side street. Chandeliers hung at fifteen foot intervals, and she quickly counted nine and did the math. No, a 3600-square-foot room could not have been in that part of the city. She looked up at the man who had opened the door. Not entirely handsome, his slicked-back hair fit well with his expensive suit. Approaching from behind him were two taller men in white dredlocks and white trenchcoats. As far as she could tell on first glance, they also had abnormally white skin and appeared to be twins. She looked around the place and saw opulence embodied. The expansive chamber was filled with expensive furniture, trays of fruit on pedestals, bottles of wine next to the fruit. Soft Baroque music, coming from a place Ceres could not pinpoint, filled the air. She could only ask, "How?"
"The right doors can take you wonderful places, Ceres. You only need to open them. And to have the key." He dangled a key on a string in front of her before putting the key into his pants pocket. "I opened a door from that filthy city street into my pleasure room. Do you like?"
"Who are you?"
"I am a trader in secrets, Ceres. And I know your little secret."
Ceres' fair skin began to turn red. "What secret?"
"I know two, actually. One, there are no phone lines for three hundred miles through inhospitable mountains, and you can only get to one with my help. And two, when you were about to become a full-fledged captain, you discovered one of my favorite hobbies."
"I don't know what you're talking about, but I think it's time you let me out of here." She turned and opened the door, only to find herself looking out over a mountain range. The city was gone. "Where am I?"
The man, still attempting to act French, picked up a glass of wine and offered it to Ceres. She took it in her hand but did not drink. "You're in my palace, and you'll stay here until I let you go. People call me Merovingian, and I am valuable to those who are valuable to me."
"What are you talking about?"
"Morpheus. I know what Morpheus thinks he's looking for, and I know where he can find it. And I know that he's right to look for it."
"I still don't know what you're talking about." She knew very well, on both counts, but this strange man telling her all this was entirely too... strange. She took a sip of the wine to conceal her facial expression.
"Ceres, you can't lie to me. I'm a program. I can see the signs that you're lying. You know what I have that you want," he began. He approached and put his finger underneath her chin to finish the second part of the sentence, "and you know what I want."
Ceres snapped her head back and began to walk away from Merovingian, only to find herself face to face with the twins. Without looking back, she warned him, "I'm not going to bed with any program."
"Ceres, Ceres! I'm a married man!" This drew a chuckle from the twins. "Besides, Persephone-- my lovely wife-- does not enjoy one of my particular favorite pastimes. And I've heard from good sources that you've tried them." Now Ceres knew that he had heard about her training ordeal. She took a long drink to conceal her face again.
"Look, Mero..."
"Merovingian."
"I don't know what you've heard, but I just want to get out of here. Now I think I'm going."
The twins drew flip-handled razors and stepped between Ceres and the door. She heard the Merovingian behind her, "Not until we have a bit of fun. Now Ceres, I'm not going to hurt you. In fact, I can transport you safely to a land line and give you information that will shoot you up the ranks among your captains. What's a little... entertainment? Why would you die in a needless fight if you can just laugh for me and be done?"
Ceres stood with her back to the Merovingian. If she reached for her pistol, these two goons (probably programs, she thought) would cut her to pieces before she could get it out of her jacket. Her Uzi was still on the ground back in the city. She didn't trust this sleazy program one bit, but it seemed that she had no choice. "Cell phone."
"Pardon?"
"Call my operator on a cell phone and tell him where I'll be and when."
The Merovingian flashed a victor's smile. "Of course, my dear." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small flip phone. His hand on his own coat seemed to jog his memory. He signaled one of the twins and said, "Take her jacket." The other watched intently as one took her trench coat, and her last weapon, off of her shoulders. He began speaking rapid French into the cell, then he spit the words, "Translate it!" and hung up.
"What did you tell him?"
"I said that in one hour, you would be picking up a phone in a phone booth on thirty-eighth street in the same city from which you disappeared. I told him the exact location."
"I don't trust you."
"Work with me and you'll be on your way back to Zion in forty-five minutes. I'll tickle you for forty and tell you what you need in the last five." Ceres now visibly cringed; he had said the t-word. "Don't work with me and I'll bring in enough of my guards to make you do whatever I want until the sentinels find your ship."
Ceres knew that she had no aces. "Alright, alright. Forty minutes." She couldn't believe she was saying this; two minutes would be enough to drive her crazy. "Then we go."
The Merovingian's smile never left his face. "Now, Ceres, take off your shirt and pants and get in that chair for me." He pointed to a piece of furniture that might have looked like a dentist's chair were it not for the thick plush padding that covered it. Also, the arm rests were too high, making it look as if the chair were designed to expose traditionally ticklish spots. And Ceres knew that's what it was for.
She took off her shirt and once again found herself in the Matrix in her black bra. She removed one boot, then the other. "Socks too?"
"No, Ceres. I want to take those off myself. Now off with your pants." She did so and sat in the chair. When she put her elbows up on the high arm rests, padded cuffs materialized to hold her arms and legs in place. She tried to pull her arms back, but they held fast. Once again she was in her underwear, tied up, at the mercy of someone who wanted to tickle her helpless body. Or what passed for that in the Matrix. She began to wonder whether other captains faced this kind of thing.
The Merovingian ran a finger lightly down the side of her neck, making her crane to the side. "That wine you drank, Ceres, are you feeling it?"
"What? What did you do to the wine?"
"It's a program, Ceres, a kind of a truth serum. No, that's not it. It's a truth-telling potion. You see, I can now see the spots on your body that are going to tickle you the most. It's kind of like heat vision, only it's tickle-vision." He scratched under her chin with one finger, making her flinch.
She snapped her face away from him. "It doesn't matter! Just get this over with!"
"Tell me where you're most ticklish, Ceres."
Ceres could feel the skin on her face turn cold. "No..."
"Yes, Ceres. It's part of the game. Do you think I'm the kind of man who would exploit your vulnerability when you confess it to me? Do you think I'm bold enough to bluff about that wine? Am I both? Neither? It's your call, Ceres. Tell me." He began one finger at her panty line and began to trace slowly up her side until he reached the fabric of her bra. She shuddered at the touch.
"I've got an hour, Ceres. I was going to let you go after forty minutes, but I could take all the time that I've got. Maybe more. I can always call your operator back and tell him I'll be a few hours." Now he had ahold of a few strands of her hair, brushing back and forth across the top of her shoulder with it. Ceres was beginning to sweat hard.
She knew that Torque's fingers were awful when they played along the soft soles of her feet. She knew that the feather that passed between her toes, lighting up the tender skin between, was torment. She knew that she couldn't tell this program those things. "My belly! I'm most ticklish on my belly!"
"Good, Ceres!" Ceres tried not to sigh at the relief of her bluff working. "Now just let me take those socks off and I'll be able to compare what's underneath with what's already showing."
Ceres knew that she had been caught but hoped still to maintain the deception. The Merovingian began to peel one black sock back, then off the tips of her toes. He let it drop on the floor. The second sock he pulled with the same deliberateness. Ceres began to breathe more quickly.
"Now I can see, and I know that you told me that your belly was most ticklish. But strangely, I see more nervous activity somewhere else..." Ceres felt one finger begin at her heel and trace its way, maddeningly slowly, up the center of her right foot. It stopped dead center in the middle of her sole. "I think you lied to me, Ceres." Ceres could feel her eyes fly wide open.
"Please, please! No! Not my feet!"
"No, not your feet yet, Ceres. I'm going to tickle the rest of you first, starting with your belly, but since you lied to me, once I've got you quivering, I'm going after your feet. And it's going to be so nice, Ceres."
"Please! No!" But the Merovingian had already begun to walk behind her.
Fingers started to caress her belly, sliding off behind her onto her sides and then starting again in the center of her abdomen. "You have no idea how much better tickling is for a program like me, Ceres." The waves of fingers across abdomen had clenched her teeth, and she could feel the urge already to start giggling. "What you humans call sex is wonderful in its own way and fine in the manner of biological necessity, but this, this touching, this play of will against will--that is exquisite!" Ceres wanted to break his little neck, but she was doing all she could to keep herself from breaking out into fullly-vocalized laughter. As it stood, she was grunting, moaning, making the noises that someone trying to prove her un-ticklishness makes. "Actually, Ceres, your belly is ticklish enough, but you have much more interesting areas. You did know that, didn't you?"
Ceres erupted when his hands moved up to her exposed underarms. A shriek came out when he first poked his fingers into them, followed by bubbling giggles. Despite herself, she let out a squeal here and there as he worked her underarms, tracing fingernails, pushing with the tips of his fingers, pinching the skin where her shoulders joined her ribs. Ceres' head, unrestrained, thrashed back and forth, sending her long red hair in beautiful arcs through the air. The Merovingian worked on her armpits simultaneously, then staggering, pinching here and poking there, making an occasional venture down to to her ribs to give a rousing squeeze and hear a soaring whoop of laughter. She could only imagine what her teammates were witnessing back on the ship.
He began to squeeze her ribs on one side while poking around under her arm with the other. The pure, intense tickle of the underarm, punctuated by the thrills of sensation originating between her ribs, made her jump and scream between giggles. She had no way of seeing her own body through the Merovingian's reprogrammed eyes, but the placement of his fingers, the exquisite timing of each and every poke, each quick squeeze, each drag of the fingers across her sensitive skin, let her know that whatever he was using, it was working. Ceres' sweat only made his fingers move more quickly, sliding on the salty liquid and making whole streaks of skin ticklish.
He began to walk around to her right side, but the tickling did not subside. On the contrary, the addition of her right hip to the ticklish tour gave her new energy to laugh and squirm. Her armpts were getting a break, but the addition of the inner thighs and the hips, combined with the relentless poking at her lower ribs, kept Ceres' abdomen straining with the effort of continuing the laugh. Once again, she was thinking about her body in the Matrix as a body--but what kind of training could keep her from this?
The Merovingian's tongue was soon flicking in and out of her bellybutton, but she was laughing too hard and consistently to maintain any sustained objection. Her hips bucked, she could feel his face imprinted against the flesh of her midsection, but she could not stop that awful probing feeling, the sensation of a muscular thing exploring her bellybutton. One hand had returned to her underarm. The other squeezed and tickled her knee. She was sweating hard, still thrashing as if he had snuck up behind her and squeezed her ribs, only her motion was continuous. She hoped his vision could not read the fire that was building up between her legs.
One hand had moved from her armpit to her side to her belly, clawing and prodding and tickling like mad. Ceres couldn't figure out why, even after the minutes that had passed, this hadn't gotten monotonous. She figured she could get used to a sensation after a while, but being tickled, with no hopes of fighting back or covering up, never did stop being... what was it? Unpleasant? No, it did have its own feeling, but it wasn't painful. Pleasant? No, then she'd want more, and she didn't want any more. Or did she?
Speculation ended when Ceres felt a leather loop encircle one big toe--the one on her left foot--and tighten. Neither hand was tickling now; one was reaching under the chair to pull forth a swinging footrest, the other holding her toe suspended. She saw that the footrest had a ring mounted in its center, and she knew what this meant. She tried to wriggle her foot loose, and the other end of the strap slipped out of the Merovingian's fingers, but the loop around her toe only tightened. The expert tickler grabbed her ankle and pinned her struggling right foot to the bench. With the other he grabbed the leather strap and used the leverage to bring her left foot over to join the right. He quickly passed the loop through the ring and grab it. Now Ceres really began struggling. She kicked her right foot free in the transition, but her left was still stuck, secured by one digit. This did not last long. Once again, a hand grabbed her ankle and brought her foot up onto the footrest. With a deft flick of his fingers, the Merovingian looped the other end of the strap around her right big toe and pulled it taut. He stood back and watched with some delight as Ceres' squirming digits tried to free themselves.
"Now we have some real fun, Ceres."
Ceres' attempt at a threat was ruined by giggles: "If I... get... out of this, you're..." But the sentence couldn't finish. Without the Merovingian even touching her, just thinking about getting it on the soles of her feet drove her into giggling fits. He had her utterly defenseless, her martial arts and her firmness of mind rendered unusable by her horrible situation. He began to scrape just one fingertip along the center of her left sole: up, down, up, down. She wondered what kind of face she was making as she began to giggle. "No," she managed to whine, "No!" became a higher pitched giggle-plea, "NO!" took her right into a light scream. The metronome would not stop running up, down, up, down, up, down. Her voice had begun a counter-cadence to the finger: a high, clear, squeal, followed by bubbling giggles running down a ticklish musical scale. Up, down, up, down. Squeal, fall, up, down, up, down. The pure sensation, on that one sole, was itself too much to handle. She felt everything running down the center of her torso tighten as a second finger, then a third, began to trace patterns on her right sole. Her hips bucked up and down, her body-not-body starving now for release.
The metronome finger left for just a moment, and Ceres craned her neck up just long enough to see him dip it in a small bowl of oil on a stand nearby. Her eyes, filled with a mix of sweat and tears, suddenly surged wide open. His right finger descended to a position in front of her left foot, and suddenly an oil-lubricated, warm fingertip was scribbling up and down at a much quicker pace. Ceres arched her back, her voice extending into one long, ticklish squeal as her most vulnerable spot underwent a higher-speed tickling than she could ever have imagined. Her foot was now the center of the universe, this tickling finger a shining beacon of pleasure, too much pleasure, too much...
Ceres did not see the Merovignian's right hand move from her foot up to the volcano between her legs. She only felt her body wrench with satisfaction. She giggled to herself as the world spun. She heard a voice, the voice of her tormentor and pardoner, in her ear:
"Ceres, bring Trinity to me. She is the key to Morpheus' plan. If you bring her to me, I can show both of you the way."
Ceres felt four strong hands take her by the arms and lift her from the chair. She did not remember being untied. She padded along with her very pale helpers, between them, hanging from their strong hands. They went through a door. She heard a phone ring.
* * * * * *
Sorry this sequel took so long to write; I hope it's worth the wait. As always, feedback is appreciated! And yes, those last two paragraphs do point to a sequel.
