the matrix
second cycle

part 1: wolves' story

If you are not shooting you should be reloading or running.

Germany, 1889

Two boys lay on the floor in a white room. There were no doors, no windows, and no amenities, just four walls, a floor, and a ceiling, all white.

The larger of the two boys stirred and woke, brown eyes opening and darting around the room. "Where...?" he wondered as he sat up, raising a hand to run in through his black hair. A groan came from his companion, a brunet with a small stature, as he too awoke. Confused grey eyes opened and looked around the room before he sat up as well.

Their eyes fell on each other, then scents flooded their noses: sterilised room, themselves, and each other. "Cain?" the brown-haired boy asked as the other queried, "Abel?"

Cain rose to his feet and helped the smaller boy up. "Do I... know you?" he asked.

Abel shook his head. "I... don't know."

They both looked around the room, Cain wrinkling his nose. "Bleah. I don't like the way it smells in here. It stings my nose."

"I agree," Abel told him, wandering to one of the walls and examining it.

"What are you doing?" Cain asked him curiously.

"Looking for a way out," Abel told him as he ran his fingers over it carefully. After awhile, bored, he gave up.

"How can we be in a room with no doors? How'd we get in?" he muttered.

"Search me," Cain answered as the younger boy sat beside him. "Hey, how old are you?" he asked after a moment.

Abel thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure. You?"

"I don't know either," Cain sighed. "I don't think we're adolescents, though."

Their musings were interrupted as a door simply appeared in the wall, bringing with it three men in nice suits who smelled of forest, snow, and... nothing else.

It was so wrong the boys took a startled step back. "Both of you are obsolete," one remarked. "You will be deleted," another put in, then the last man, the one in the middle, warned, "Do not attempt to resist."

Cain and Abel looked at each other, then leapt to their feet and ran in opposite directions as the three men raised Colt .45s and opened fire.

Both were incredibly swift of feet, but bullets were faster, and Abel took a shot to the leg. He went down hard as paralysing gripped his entire body. "Pathetic," one of the men said, raising his pistol and aiming for the boy's head. Cain struck without warning, his coarse black hair spreading down his neck, over his face, and down his body as his suddenly sharp teeth sank into the suited man's throat, throwing him down and sending his shot flying way off the mark and into the face of another man.

Three opponents to one in a manner of seconds. Cain, the fur on his muzzle matted with bright red blood, helped Abel up. As fur met skin, the knowledge of how to change halfway came to Abel, and he transformed as well, his teeth sharpening as brown fur spread over his slender frame.

Both of them grinned wolfishly at the remaining man, slowly circling him like the wolves they now resembled. Not showing a trace of fear, he aimed at Cain; Abel struck him from behind. In seconds, Abel's fur was as bloody as Cain's and they no longer had to worry about guns.

Then Abel fell as that burning pain reasserted itself, a hundred times worse now that he'd changed. Cain caught him before he hit the floor and quickly dragged the younger boy out before the door could disappear. "We have to get out of here," he said, wrapping Abel's arm around his shoulders to provide his injured comrade support. "If they're trying to kill us, I doubt staying put is a good idea."

"We've got to... change back," Abel gasped. "Fur's too... obvious!" Cain spared his grey-eyed companion a worried glance - he was in serious pain - and nodded. As the walked and limped, the fur retracted and their teeth returned to normal. The blood stayed.

An alarm klaxon went off, announcing their escape, and Cain took off. Abel gritted his teeth and took his full weight, trying his hardest not to scream as white-hot pain slammed from his toes to his hip with every other step. At least it didn't hurt quite as much as it had when he was furred.

The duo fled through a seemingly endless corridor, though Cain noticed they were running up a slight slope. "There!" Abel panted, pointing ahead to a staircase.

As the words "Halten Sie rechts dort auf!" rang out behind them, they had bolted upwards. The stairs were covered by a pair of storm cellar-like doors that burst open when the boys' shoulders struck them as one with equal force; Cain and Abel exploded into a frozen, snow-covered forest.

All sorts of scents assailed their noses and Abel whimpered as the sheer amount of information flooding into him nearly overwhelmed his senses. Neither noticed the sudden drop in temperature, so intense were the odours coming to them.

Cain smelled the cold wetness of a cave nearby and hustled his nearly delirious companion inside, where Abel collapsed, clutching his injured leg and whimpering in pain. "Oh, Source, it hurts!"

Cain was at a loss; he didn't know what to do.

"Peut-être je pourrais aider?" a new voice asked in a language neither understood. Cain snarled, stepping protectively in front of his friend, demanding that the stranger identify himself. A man not that much taller than Abel came into view and bowed. "I am Wingless," he said in a more familiar tongue. "I can help him."

Wary, Cain stepped aside, allowing the sable-haired stranger near his... cousin, he finally settled on as the right term. It was as good as any. Wingless knelt beside the moaning Abel and pulled the torn material of his pants away from the wound, inspecting it then turning to Cain.

"You two are werewolves?"

Cain was suddenly very aware of the metallic tang of blood in and around his mouth. "I... uh... that is, we..." He didn't know.

"We get furry," Abel gritted out through clenched teeth.

Wingless nodded. "Silver. Interesting, it looks as if the both of you were slated for deletion and managed to escape. That's rare. Incidentally, this is going to hurt."

A second afterwards, Abel screamed in pain as his entire body seized up. Thinking that they'd been betrayed, Cain leapt for the stranger, only to be tossed aside like a rag doll. Wingless drew back, dropping a bloody bullet to the floor. "Silver. It is deadly to you both."

"How do you know this?" Cain demanded, getting up from where he'd been thrown one-handed.

"You are werewolves," Wingless replied. "It is common knowledge."

"Not to us," Cain muttered. Wingless looked to him with interest. "Your memories were erased?"

Both werewolves shrugged, which answered the question. "Very interesting. Do either of you know who you are?"

"He's Cain, and I'm Abel," the hurt werewolf replied, a trace of pain still evident in his voice.

Cain hesitated a moment, then said slowly, "When we first woke up, I didn't know my name."

"Neither did I," Abel agreed after a moment. "But... I knew his scent and his scent said he was Cain." The black-haired werewolf nodded his agreement with his "cousin's" statement.

"Identification by scent... wiped memories... the appearance of teenaged boys... yes, you'd be them, all right."

"Who?" Cain demanded, eager for any information about himself and Abel.

Wingless, however, only informed them of the details of their lycanthropy. "This place," he added, "is Germany, circa 1890." He gave them nothing more but this, "If you are ever in need of aid, seek out the Merovingian. He will provide a haven for you."

Wingless then pointed to Abel. "You will need to stay off that leg until the silver has filtered from your blood." Then he left as suddenly as he had arrived, leaving behind a confused pair of werewolves.

Tough times don't last. Tough people do.

"Ah, mon ange. Did you find them?"

"Yes. They killed three of the new agents in their escape, though the younger one, Abel, took a silver bullet to the leg."

"He still lives?"

"Yes. The wound was non-fatal, though the silver would have crippled him had I not removed the bullet. He will recover."

"Bien, bien You gave them the information?"

"Of course."

"How long, do you think?"

"By Cycle's end."

"Two years."

The man who had called himself 'Wingless' nodded, and the Merovingian smiled. "Only boys, and yet three Agents lie dead... l'Architecte was a fool to order the lycanthropes and the vampires deleted."

"They did spend more time fighting each other than rebels."

"Oui, oui. They will not do so under me. How goes the search for les fantômes?"

The black-haired man winced. "Not well. When they phase and escape through walls, Seth is the only one able to follow them, and they attack him when he does. He's lucky he hasn't needed rebooting yet."

"I see. Zey will be perfect assassins, don't you agree?"

Wingless smiled. "Aren't I your perfect assassin?"

"Oui, oui, bien sûr," the Merovingian replied, giving his right-hand man a cheerful smile. "How many can fight themselves, after all? Les jumeauxwill be second only to you, Seraph, mon miroir angélique."

Seraph was impressed by the Merovingian's planning for the future. It was only a matter of time before the System came to view his haven for Exiled programs as a threat, so he was amassing those Exiles that had no reason to love the System. Assassins who could not be traced, bodyguards who were extremely hard to kill, even a pair of "fallen" angels.

The Merovingian and his new wife, an intuitive program rescued, nearly at the cost of his life, from the wall of water that had ended the First Cycle and begun the Second, had saved a great many of this Cycle's Agents, werewolves and vampires. Many had been recently programmed and therefore had the appearance of children. The youngest was a vampire called Tiger, who was all of ten years old.

Seraph's sometime-partner, Seth, had taken him under his wing as both sides of the species rivalry posed a danger to the boy, especially when conflict broke out, as it often did between Vlad, the vampires' leader, and Cujo, the werewolves' leader. Both of them were nineteen and had become leader by default, as they were the eldest of the programs.

Seraph had heard a rumour that these latest Agents were produced as adults, having the training embedded in their programming. Supposedly it made them better. Remembering his own "childhood" in Eden, the first Matrix, he could not help but feel a pang of pity for these latest Agents. Learning things the hard way proved much more beneficial.

Cain and Abel, as well as the ghostly Twins, would soon join the ranks of the Merovingian and round out the "collection" - the sixteen-year-old Twins were the only ghost-type programs in existence and had been deemed too dangerous, while 15-year-old Abel and 17-year-old Cain were the only speed-and-scent oriented werewolves who had escaped deletion.

Seraph smiled once more. When that day came that the System tried to get rid of them, It would find the job much harder than anticipated.

Much harder.

There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.

Germany, 1890-92

No one in Kusel knew where the two boys had come from. They had simply walked into the village one day and asked politely if any would provide them with shelter in exchange for work. The village blacksmith took them on, mostly out of pity, and taught them his trade. The boys made no attempt to hide their monthly... problem, but as there was a week's grace period between each of the triggering phases, last crescent for the elder and new moon for the younger, no one was ever hurt when they changed and they drove out the local vampires, it was tolerated.

The pair, who simply referred to each other as Cain and Abel, kept mostly to themselves at first. They rarely spoke, except to each other, but they worked hard and stayed out of everyone else's way, retreating to the loft where they stayed at night except for when they changed. They were not liked, but they were tolerated.

A year and a half went by. Cain turned nineteen, Abel turned seventeen. The villagers had grown used to the adolescent werewolves and weren't as edgy around them. In return, the pair became more sociable, even joining the hunting party when invited. They were invited often, because they smelled prey before the dogs did.

They were also able to scent vampires when they attacked, so when the wind changed and the unmistakeable stink of bloodsuckers flooded both their noses, the werewolves led the hunters back in time to save their village from a raid led by a program desperate to prevent deletion of his kind by wiping out the werewolves and those who harboured them.

Cain and Abel led the counter strike, both half-changing to boost their attack power without losing their size as they simultaneously slammed headlong into the vampire colony.

It was a massacre.

The vampires had not expected a forceful retaliation led by the very cousins they were hunting, and they certainly had not expected the sheer speed the two werewolves possessed: Cain and Abel seemed to be everywhere at once, guarding the children, striking hard at stragglers, splitting apart any that managed to regroup, and causing general chaos within the vampiric ranks.

A good deal of blood was spilled before the vampires retreated, leaving many of their brethren behind, dead or dying. Due to blood loss from a great many wounds, however, both Cain and Abel were severely weakened. They were let into the house of the village elder to rest and recuperate.

While they were healing, three strangers came to the village looking for werewolves. The injured cousins were smuggled out of the village and all of the Kuselites denied any knowledge of the pair in general. For some reason, the strangers bought it, and the werewolves were brought back after they left. A week after they were strong enough to return home, another stranger arrived, this one with long brown hair. Unlike the other strangers, he inquired as to the whereabouts specifically of Cain and Abel, as opposed to werewolves in general.

Despite the stranger's ready identification of himself as Seth and his easy-going nature, the Kuselites trusted neither him nor his questions. However, his green eyes seemed to look straight through the people into their souls, and he had an uncanny ability to tell if he was being lied to.

He was able to get the information he desired and soon paid the wolves a visit.

"You two have been making quite the name for yourselves," he greeted them with a disarming smile.

Abel, who had healed more than his cousin, rose to his feet. "Who are you and what do you want?" Neither Cain nor Abel was trusting of strangers.

"My name is Seth. I work for the Merovingian. He is interested in... acquiring your services."

The cousins exchanged looks. "What's in it for us?" Cain asked, speaking for them both.

"Protection from Agents," Seth replied immediately. "Resurrection in case of deletion. Freedom to cause chaos and mayhem as long as you're subtle and don't break anything too expensive. You will of course be well-paid with upgrades and that which makes the world go 'round."

Cain motioned Abel to him, and the pair held a quick whispered conference that Seth, despite a worthy attempt on his part, was unable to overhear. Abel looked up at him after a moment. "What's the catch?"

"You work for the Frenchman until such time as he decides you are of an "age" to retire, and from then on until you feel like leaving."

"Are there vampires?" Cain wanted to know.

"Yes. They answer to Vlad, the werewolves answer to Cujo." The cousins exchanged looks that clearly read, 'Not Us.' It would be interesting, watching them encounter the brute of a wolf. Something told Seth he would not easily cow those two.

"How do these... hierarchies work?" Abel asked casually, as if out of simple curiosity and not a desire to throw a pipe bomb in the works.

"The strongest leads," Seth replied with a shrug.

Another whispered conference, then Cain poked his head out. "Any rules of engagement for dealing with the bloodsuckers?"

"Try to save any fighting for the Tournaments," Seth told them.

"Tournaments?" Abel this time; apparently they were taking turns.

"A once a month free-for-all, generally vampires vs. werewolves, but there are sane-species fights. You can fight one-on-one or in groups ranging anywhere from two to no more than five. Numbers do not have to match up. The only rules are no stakes, no silver bullets."

More discussion.

"Sounds interesting. We'll do it," Cain said at last.

Seth grinned.

"Now, kindly take one of those pistols off the wall so I can kill you in self defence!" - Mr. Nash, Life's Work

Both werewolves were rightly impressed by the château. They were not, however, impressed by Cujo. Neither cousin liked his scent or his bullying personality. He was the type who liked to see others in pain.

He came to see them shortly after they arrived, towering over Cain and the still-growing Abel and demanding their names. Cain ignored him; Abel leaned casually against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. "Who wants to know?" he asked, looking very unimpressed by the other wolf's bulk.

Cujo blinked, momentarily taken aback, then he advanced menacingly on the smaller man. "Cujo, leader of the Werewolf Pack!"

Abel snorted. "Dog pack, you mean, if they follow a mongrel like you." Cujo snarled and tried to hit Abel; his fist smashed through the wall as Abel ducked behind him.

Cain came to stand beside his cousin. "He seems quite slow, don't you think?"

"Physically or mentally?" Abel asked with an irritating smirk directed towards Cujo.

Cain's expression mirrored Abel's. "Both, of course."

Cujo snarled and started to change, growing a bit larger as fur spread over his body; Cain and Abel did the same. All three stopped halfway, the cousin's lithe, sleek bodies much more pleasing to the eye than Cujo's ungraceful bulk - his beautiful black-and-silver fur did much to improve his appearance, however.

Before either party could strike, however, Seth's head poked through the wall. "Cujo, go intimidate someone else. Cain, Abel, de-fur and get over here."

"This isn't over," Cujo snarled at the pair as he walked away. The Merovingian's left hand was to be obeyed.

"Good," Abel muttered to Cain. "I'd hate for people to think we're going to obey that idiot."

"I heard that!" Cujo yelled back.

There was another pair of boys standing before the Merovingian, the man who had saved Abel's leg standing just behind them. The pair was identical, from their shoulder-length white hair to their once-white clothing to their cold silver-grey eyes. Four of those eyes regarded the cousins in such a way that Cain was positive that they were both considering the optimal way to either kill them or torture them.

Possibly both.

One leaned towards his twin and said softly in a language neither wolf spoke, "They do not look like much. We think they will be easily defeated."

The other regarded the wolves again. "We do not agree. They both bear battle scars; their eyes have seen death and their hands have caused it. We think that they would make formidable opponents and even better allies."

Four could play that game. "Ich wettete, daß wir sie nehmen könnten," Cain told Abel.

Abel, in turn, sized up the twins. "Ich weiß nicht, Vetter. Beide von uns sind hier, weil wir in der Lagewaren, Mittel zu töten und weil wir Niederlage eine Vampirekolonie halfen. Ich habe ein Gefühl, daß sie hier aus ähnlichen Gründen sind."

Seth and Seraph exchanged knowing, superior smiles. Both hands of the Merovingian could sense the rivalry already starting between ghost twins and wolf cousins. Judging the moment to be right, they simultaneously uploaded knowledge of French and the language of the rival pair to their charges: German to the Twins and English to the cousins.

All four boys jumped in surprise, then glared suspiciously at each other. "Come," said Seraph. "He's waiting."

The Merovingian smiled as he regarded the four teenagers. At last, he had the assassins and bodyguards he wanted. As the only ghosts, the Twins would answer to neither of the two hordes, and the werewolf cousins would most definitely defy Cujo's pack. Exactly as he had wanted it.

There was a ripple in the Matrix as the Second Cycle ended and the Third Cycle began. As anticipated, the werewolves and vampires in his territory were unaffected.

The Merovingian was well pleased.

Halten Sie rechts dort auf! - German. "Stop where you are!"

Peut-être je pourrais aider? - French. "Perhaps I can be of assistance?"

Oui, oui, bien sûr. - French. "Yes, yes, of course."

mon miroir angélique - French. "My angelic mirror."

Les jumeaux - French. "The twins."

That would be it for this chapter's translations. The stuff left untranslated was done so on purposely because I think you're intelligent enough to figure it out, yes?

Part Two of my Cycles fanfiction, which deals mainly with the Exiled programs in the Matrix. It gives some back story for our favourite exiles, mostly the ones in the château. What can I say? Each part of Cycles will be posted in an unusual matter, aka 'whichever era I feel like doing at the moment.

Oh, for future reference: The château is in America. Why, because Merv figures it'll take the system some time to find him over there, plus that's where it is in the movie. Listen very carefully when Link is talking to Neo: "Right in the middle of the city, about 500 miles due south." Trin and Morpheus come out of the parking garage in (it is assumed) San Francisco, mainly because the 101 leads to San Francisco (yes, it does, look at a map of CA), and in the Freeway Chase, we see San Francisco in the background. Believe me, I asked my mom, who lived in CA most of her life, and she said that was San Francisco back there.

Now, I know a lot of us are bad at math. I certainly am. However, and this may be hard to believe, France is not 500 miles due north of San Francisco! Believe me, I've been to France, and if Merv were to live there, he would sonot be on a mountain top! He'd be in the southern part of France, near the Mediterranean, or in/near Monaco. Better wine in that area.