'It needn't have been this way. Do not forget, you alone chose this end, Mr. Anderson.'

I glanced towards the phone, watching it vibrate dust off the edge of the table from the collapsed concrete overhead.

'I can break you down, rest assured and have no further doubt in your mind… I shall do it.'

For I'm here 'Neo', in your mind, the last defence of this resistance against us.

'Too late, Smith.' Small words exchanged, but pointless. They don't matter now; only that this is the moment I have waited for.

And I believe.

I set myself like stone; a feeling like hot acid emanates from my centre, spreading through my veins.

I reach towards him. About my fingers, the edges of the air start to blur and shimmer like a vapour trail, twisting the fabric of space between our bodies.

'I am the One.' I say it with the same conviction I'd have if the One were a grenade. All the title shit didn't much do it for me before, but things are different now.

I turn my hand over, clenching a tight fist, carving the particles of the non-existent world apart to reach the program that would bring me down.

Yet I blink and he is already beside me, stirring up his cold thread of doubt inside my chest that I've fought long to master. The shaft of a gun, that I know isn't there, presses against ribs that are not mine either.

'This isn't real.' I repeat to myself, hearing the shot like a slow-motion rewind. My body twitches backwards. I look down at the blood spattered across my fingers, covering the wound to stop it being real. Smith's face curls with malice, and he fires again, and again. I stumble backwards to the wall and collapse down.

My faith enters the death-throws of disbelief, my breath not so much struggling as simply not coming at all. I can't fight this feeling - my own fatality, experienced only with a voyeur's sickened, curious detachment.

I am witnessing my death, not living it.

It's not even real. As though that changes anything now.

Real enough, Mr. Anderson.

My mind struggles to keep hold of the imitation world, but the body is defeated, and the agent stands before it knowing satisfaction at my conclusion.

I want to reach out and burn the core from his program like a virus. Ruthless as the others died, he deserves that much…

But I am only human, and tremble with frustration like an old man.

Even in my anger, this body betrays me, or perhaps it's my mind that fails it. Yet neither can hold the blood inside me, it runs out so fast between my hands that my heart shudders, seizing up with the shock of it.

Neo.

I hear it in her voice, and finally this shell of a man can stop fighting.

In this dream, and in the remains of a real world, I know I am already dead.