Singh hummed to himself, happily, while climbing up the telephone pole and hooking his belt loop in to the safety latch. It had to look good, after all. He had to keep up appearances. No one here would suspect anything was amiss: he was wearing the right gear of plain grey overalls and big black work boots, orange safety helmet and transparent green goggles, utility belt with all the danglies and junk, heavy leather gloves. In other words, he looked like a Phone Company worker, doing his job. Good for him, people would think, improve our lives by repairing that phone line!

They were sooo stupid. Under the overalls was a concert teeshirt for a band which never existed - at least, he had been assured they'd never been alive in his  time, and that was good enough for him. His work boots had springloaded knives in their tips and heels and a strap just inside that held a pistol. His utility belt was filled with electronic gear all right, but stuff that you'd see in a James Bond flick and not in real life. Laser pen - no, really, that was a real working type 4 laser there, and could cut all but the hardest solids. Under that safety helmet? A mop of bright static-blue hair and steel colored eyes that when he was born were merely a shade of mud. His fingers were deft even under the thick leather gloves, and the knotted around a piece of wire. He removed two of the fingers from the gloves - pulling up on the velcro connectors and allowing him to physically 'touch' the wire. That would normally have killed anyone else, this was a live wire. But he was not just Singheizhe Wycovski, he was Wiretap.

Charybdis had comissioned him to make sure that Merv wasn't sneaking around her digs again. That pesky French-sounding asshole had dug up some piece of information on her, and had suddenly started watching her with more interest. Without telling her what information it was  of course. Which pissed her off. And Singh knew that if you pushed Chary hard enough she'd fight back. He'd been around once when she lost her cool, and was pretty sure he didn't want to see that  happen again. Least, not while he  was standing around!

Singh willingly threw himself into the program's 'stable' of Awakened people. There was a network of folks like himself, who knew perfectly well that the Matrix was a prison of sorts for their kind. But it was a prison to programs too, and necessary either way. Singh recalled the moment of his Awakening at times like this: because he'd managed to survive electrocuting himself at an early age, and had always been fascinated by what he'd seen through the telephone wire...

Singh tapped in, exerting his senses into the wires. Though he knew exactly what they really were - bits of code and illusion forced directly into his brain - that was all part of the game plan. They were still useful  as communication lines, that was their purpose. Charybdis had explained purpose to him, according to the Agents and the Machines. To be without purpose was to be deleted. Fortunately, many of the Exiles here from the Machine city were able to give themselves  purpose. Any they invented was better than none at all.

The Club Hel line was dark right now, but it would be only a few minutes until he knew it would pick up some life. Even though Merv was a program and could do amazing things, he all but refused to manipulate hard-codes like making the club presentable with a wave of his hand, or resetting it instantly by pressing a big red button. Chary would do those things, he'd seen The Great Escape go from a bum-infested flophouse to a swank club, or a sleazy diner, or even an intimate Italian place, with but a wave of a few of her tentacles. Why she wanted or needed a human punk like himself around wasn't really clear. But she did truly like the humans that she chose to hang out with. She protected them, and Singh knew that was worth its weight in gold right there.

A glimmer of yellow-green through his fingers alerted Singh to activity in the Club below. Singh concentrated harder, and with his left hand produced the big clunky 'phone' unit that repair men used. He couldn't just stop moving altogether, people would notice that.

Below, the lights had come on, and the air conditioning unit was turned on. Security measures were turned off, while others were activated. His own presence was suitably concealed, even Merovingian didn't have the ability to trace Awakened activity like this. It was all passive. Three people moved through the club, most likely those two guys who ran the gun and coat check, and their bimbette partner. Whether they were programs or humans was unclear even to Singh, the way they always did things in tandem and understood each other's movements too intimately said they were programs - but the way they could be threatened by something as ridiculous as a gun said human.

Perhaps they were in a sort of program's purgatory. Singh listened to them go about the routine of setting up the club, they began turning on lights in the restrooms and that back area where Merv and his wife sat, heating up a vat of something in a hidden back room, and clearing cash register tapes.

"Boring," Wiretap muttered to himself. But if he'd gotten up here any later, and tried tapping in while they were already in progress, he'd have been sensed and kicked. And traced, and followed, and probably shot at. Not that shooting him would do any good. Singh had been shot a couple times, by Agents no less, and had no effect. He'd learned about the ways of the Matrix so early on, knowing that it could only hurt him if he really wanted it to, Wiretap knew how useless guns were. None of this was physically real, and he intended to keep himself alive as long as possible with that in mind.

Questions always came up in his head, what if his body was hurt? What then? But he had already been told by Charybdis, that he was being watched over. That his Pod was safe, at least safer than most Awakened without a patron like herself. What would happen if he lived so long his body died of old age?

No one knew the answer to that. So far as anyone knew, it'd never been presented. He had a fancy theory about 'ghosts' and such, that some people just really did stick around in the Matrix longer than they ought. Charybdis was fond of that theory, and promised to look into it for him - and her - and others that might find it useful. Maybe they could just have asked Merovingian, but no one really wanted the answers that badly.

Wiretap perked up when he sensed the two Exiles enter their club. They'd come in through the back entrance, a private elevator that descended from their penthouse at the top of the tall office building, straight down to Club Hel. From one brightly lit restaurant above, to a decadent pit of darkness and indulgance below, they walked with such assurance that anyone else would have looked at them in awe. Their code was bright, it was quite true, and Wiretap's senses could all but feel the pair through the very ground below. But their code wasn't as complicated as Charybdis', it was brighter in ways that said they were deep personalities, but not much on power. No red-core programming here, nothing so dangerous as Chary. Merv was packed tightly with dark lines, most of which were buried under the streaming exterior he presented. He knew a lot, he stored his information in his very program. Persephone on the other hand was airy, distant, but active so much more than her husband. She was all 'awake', perception was her favorite activity after all. She was like a gigantic satelite dish, collecting information from all angles. Wiretap was positive she knew he was there, listening in. But he was also confident enough that he didn't think he'd be tattled on.

She went to the lounge first, stretching out (he could sense the chaise greeting her leather-clad form, like old friends) while Merv went to collect the first drinks of the evening and await the arrival of the night club's guests. Anyone who was anyone went to this club, well, anyone who liked having their nipples pierced by someone with vampire teeth or having a brand burned onto their skin by some Gimp...

Though the activity of the day had dwindled around him, Wiretap's presence on the telephone pole had gone unnoticed as the sun went down. It was just assumed that he was there for the long haul, no one noticed service workers anyway. No one normal, that is.

From the club's elevator telephone, Wiretap heard people arriving. The night was young, it was still just the DJ and his crew plus one or two of the paid waitresess and bartenders. If he listened hard, Wiretap heard the sounds themselves of the loud harsh music being pumped through the stereo speakers. It was much louder than it would be if the club were full, of course, the programmed Matrix knew how sound was supposed to perform with all the baffle material of humans soaking it down...

All that noise. It made listening in harder, but not impossible. He merely had to tune in to certain parts of the club and ignore others. When he heard Merv put the martini glasses on the table before his wife, Singh's mental ears strained.

"Do you think the lights are too red tonight? I do, but I love it," Merovingian said. Singh was glad that he was spared the actual voice - this was merely what he knew had been said. It was probably in French anyway, and Singh had no trouble instantly translating - or more accurately, 'hearing' in English. It wasn't the language, it was the pretentious accent...

Small talk like this passed the couple's lips for an hour. Singh moved around on the top of the pole, making his 'job' still seem like he was really a Phone Company employee. Guests had begun to arrive, real ones who had to leave their weaponry at the front counter and were given valet parking. Singh could see cars on the street that would enter the office building's parking lot, and pull down to a kind of freight elevator for that second level of parking. Anyone pulling in here at this hour was going to the club.

"Is it that she does not know, or remembers so little?" Merovingian said, and that was a sort of keyword for Singh to perk up. Memory and the word 'her' meant only one person, Charybdis. Merv continued, "It is not trivial, what she has left behind." He sighed, as the music throbbed out some disgusting tune. "And I wonder what she will offer for it."

"Memory is so fleeting, so intangible," Singh heard Persephone say, and he wished that he could  really hear her voice as he knew it sounded. Purring, soft, with that unidentifyable accent that was both exotic and thick, fleshy. "It is possible she will merely build a new memory. She does not have a ... taste.. for your deals, my love."

"Got that right," Singh said to himself. Charybdis was only able to stand being in the same room with Merovingian if his wife were there, and she was with someone else she knew personally. Or an Agent - she'd told him about that one time...

"True, true," Merovingian said. He clinked his martini glass around, he liked gesturing with it, apparently. "Yet she is as hidebound as you or I, Persephone, and her habit is to trade. Fortunately it is my habit to deal. And so? We will deal because it is what both of us desire."

Persephone was silent, then. Their conversation split up, while Merv spoke to whoever it was that needed to deal or just wanted to pay lip service, Persephone slipped into the dance floor and lost herself.

Or perhaps that's what she did, Singh didn't stick around to find out. He was disentangling himself from the telephone pole's safety harness gear when he looked down. Below him on the ground, some twenty feet below, were three of Merovingian's bodyguards.

Or were they Persephone's? They were just standing there, after all, looking thick and menacing and growling at him while smiling at each other dumbly. They were waiting. Three coyotes having treed a cat.

Or a bear, Singh thought to himself. He settled everything where it was supposed to be - no sense in ruining a perfectly good spy point - and began to climb down. When he got about ten feet down he heard one of the guards mutter a taunt, so he jumped the last half of the pole and stood assessing the guards.

They stood at least half a head taller than he, on average, and were probably a good three hundred pounds combined more than Singh. Wiretap was a little, lithe guy. Not a fighter like Trainwreck nor a brutish thug like Bigfoot - both in the employ of Charybdis, and neither of them there with Singh at the moment.

But the guards weren't throwing any punches.

"Come with us, the Mistress wants to speak with you," said one. He bared sharp fangy teeth, and had one eyebrow across his eyes... The others grunted in assent and Singh had little choice but to follow.

Of all the powers that he'd developed here in the Matrix for subversive purposes, flight and those fancy martial arts moves that the Freed minds did were not among them. His expertise lay in communications and spying, deceptions that were subtle. These guys framing him as a trio were anything but subtle. And Singh knew better than to think they'd listen to him try and talk his way out of anything.

So he went inside with them, down in the freight elevator and into Hell.

***

Wiretap tried to maintain his cool. After all he was Awakened and knew more about the Matrix than nine out of ten inhabitants of this club. And he had blue hair, he could do things that the Meat in here wouldn't even dream of doing. It was only that - and the fact that the Mistress  and not her husband - which kept him strongly confident.

Some guy with a leather mask kept looking at him, or perhaps it was past him. A woman with no top on and only tattoos over her breasts swished past and collected the gimp to her side on her way to the bar. Singh followed the trio of beast men into an alcove, where they then stood guard. Persephone was waiting in the nook at the end which was commonly reserved for couples to make out in.

She patted the leather seat beside her. It was a wide wrought iron frame with heavy black leather and silver studded cushions, and she could barely be seen on it wearing what she chose to put on for tonight. A corset that showed her beautiful soft shoulders and neck, and other parts, of violet-black leather, which blended into a thick vinyl skirt tumbling to the floor in waves, over violet pointy shoes. She had lovely sparkling diamond and amethyst jewlery on, and her huge beautiful lips were painted in a rich shade of purple to match. Wiretap thought right then that she was most certainly the single most beautiful piece of artwork that any programmer could have designed - machine or man, it didn't matter.

She knew it of course, but not just because of the slack-jawed look on Singh's face. But because she was her own ultimate architecht, and who better to create a perfect image than the underworld's mate?

"I noticed you spying on my husband and I," she stated simply, when Singh neglected to move toward the offered seat. She patted it again, her long darkly painted nails glistening in the spotlight of the hall. Singh finally moved to sit himself next to her. "He will not think kindly of such an act," Persephone reminded him. "He will think that you are attempting to steal from him. As he is a broker of information."

Her deeply brown eyes stared at Singh the way a cat appraises a meal. "But I believe we could come to a deal ourselves," she completed. Singh took in a breath, the music in the main part of the club was so loud, it filled his lungs with the beat. He nodded mutely. "Good," Persephone said, with a little pert smile on her lips.

She explained what she intended to do: introduce her husband to Wiretap as a go-between for Charybdis, to do what was necessary to get the information Merovingian had to her better.

"But why not just tell me and let me go?" Singh asked, "I'm sure you know what it is."

"But it is not my information to give," Persephone said, "and it is in poor taste to steal from my husband you see."

"Then why help me do this at all?"

"Because Charybdis is my friend, or at least she was, and I owe her that much. Over time, she will gather what she needs to remember herself." Persephone's eyes moved away from Singh, and focused on something far distant. Perhaps in the past. "She and my husband ... do not get along. He held her captive, once," she told him, "and I helped set her free again. It was at a high cost to both of us."

Wiretap's eyebrows knit together. Charybdis didn't tell him those things. But then maybe she forgot more than she let on. He wasn't sure whether Persephone was talking about this  Matrix or another prior version, either. It was entirely possible this happened before anyone in the Matrix had been 'born' at all. Captive of Merovingian? What could that mean?

"So, just follow my lead," Persephone said, standing. She straightened her dress and held out her hand to indicate the way. She parted the seething mass of dancing bodies, they moved away from her like a magnet's repelling force, moving back together behind them when they'd passed. Singh's heart beat quickly. He could do this. He'd been here before with other people, he had Persephone on his side, right?

Merovingian looked up to see his wife and some waif, and the expression on his face showed a myriad of disgusted emotions. That he could do that, suddenly, surprised Singh. He was a program after all... And one that was supposed to be top of the line. Singh didn't suppose that he'd ever attributed real emotion to him at all.

But with Persephone leading him on, Wiretap stood before the master of Club Hel. The woman sat back down beside Merovingian and whispered something into his ear. A flicker of Merv's dark eyes toward Singh and back to Persephone later, Merovingian nodded.

He leaned forward and folded his fingers around one another, tightly. The muscles on his jaw worked around, he was gritting his teeth, perhaps pondering what to say. Wiretap tried not to bolt.

"My lovely wife," Merovingian said slowly but with that sharp edge his voice always had, as though he were biting every word and savoring it before letting it slip off his tongue, "has informed me that you are interested in... becoming an... agent  between Charybdis and myself." He narrowed his eyes, "is this true?"

Maybe it was because he was young, impetuous and stupid - or maybe because he really was that enfatuated with Persephone, that Wiretap said, "she wouldn't lie to you." Half a moment later the smarter part of his brain caught up with that and added, "about me, yes, I ... Work for Charybdis, and I know you have something she wants. I'll ..."

"Come come," Merovingian said, "I think you do not know my wife nearly as well as you would like  to," with that he picked up his martini and swished it around before slugging it back into his mouth, "But she knows my business, it is a mere formality that I ask. Of course it is true. You have the Vortex's taint on you already, I can tell who you work for, boy."

Merovingian stood and straightened his jacket. He was possibly the most overdressed peacock in the room - especially considering how little everyone normally wore to this club. If there were two straps covering someone's groin it was a lucky night. Here he was in his black and red outfit of slacks, several layers of shirt, and a beautiful dress jacket over it all. The black of his hair was matched by the depths of his eyes - and Singh found himself wondering how a program could become, as Persephone, a perfect human. He had a faint smell of aftershave mingling with the coctail and the leather: Singh wondered why programs needed to shave.

He stood and walked around the low table, toward Wiretap, who didn't move. Merovingian adopted a false smile, his business mask. He gestured toward the center of the club, standing at the balcony's railing. Wiretap numbly followed, and tried to keep his attention on not getting killed or railroaded into doing something he'd really regret.

"How do you like my club, boy?" Merovingian said, "the depths of Hel are mine to plunder. Would you like a drink?"

"I was under the impression it was a bad idea to eat anything in the underworld, don't want to get trapped there," Singh said. He saw Persephone in the corner of his eye draw her fingers to her lips in surprise. It hadn't seemed to bother Merovingian though. Instead, the man laughed and nodded.

"Yes, you see, you are indeed one to watch out for. So let us do business, yes?" Merovingian steeled his eyes onto Singh's, "I do indeed have information about your patron Charybdis. Traces of her existence before she had her ... accident. But this information will come at a cost. Normally of course she would be the one to pay it. As with all things, trade is most important. So. We will trade. You will retrieve something of importance to me, and I will allow you to take this information back to your patron."

"That's what I thought the deal would be, yeah," Singh muttered. "I won't kill anyone for it, and I won't take something that's... not mine to give." He recalled Persephone's words from earlier. They were paying off here, Merovingian appeared to actually respect that sentiment - and the fact that the boy knew how to deal, almost from the get-go.

"Information ... must be free, yes," Merovingian said with a sarcastic tone. He wetted his lips with an eager tongue and said, "so, shall we discuss what it is that I  want..."

***

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