Title: Bodhidharmazan 3

Author: TheRedPony

Rating: PG

Disclaimer:

Matrix universe and associated characters: Wachowski brothers.

Agents universe: co-owned by Stormhawk and Overlord Mordax.

Every thing else is mine Baby.

All Chapters of this story are covered under this Disclaimer.

Word Count: 9595

Summary: The last of the trilogy. In total 36143 words. Wow Any ways we reach the end of Zane's battle for internal peace with his role in the Matrix.

Notes: This is a slash based story, but the rating if for violence only. Sequel is now in the works. There is a lot of religious ideas in this story, as there always is in my work.

Please read and Review.

Does it kill
Does it burn
Is it painful to learn
That it's me that has all the control
Does it thrill
Does it sting
When you feel what I bring
And you wish that you had me to hold

-Maroon Five

"Well? What is wrong? I need my recruit back to work Agent Jones." Agent Brown was irritated. This was not uncommon, but he was irritated about the state of health of a recruit. This was very uncommon. Jones looked up at him head slightly turned. He was sitting in his chair while Agent Brown loomed menacingly like a dark shadow above him.

Before the smaller agent, a human was laid out on a medical table. Monitor windows hovered like holograms or ghosts in the room. They were free floating pictures like the whole room its self was nothing but a giant computer monitor. Jones reached his arm across the red haired recruit's body and drug one of the shimmering windows to his side of the room.

His fingers brushed through several key spots into the screen, like he was taping at gossamer strands. The window expanded to show a diagram of the recruit's body. Large sections of the diagram mostly around the sides and head were tinged blue, and three sections along his ribs were red.

"As you know to repair these broken ribs after Recruit Kembrick faced Mr. Anderson, a code patch was utilized by Medical Agent Wilson, in these three locations." Jones motioned to the three red bands that out lined the three ribs that Neo had broken. Agents Brown, Smith and Mimosa studied it closely.

"What is a code patch?" Agent Mimosa asked curiously. Agent Brown growled but did not comment on her lack of knowledge. He seemed very distracted.

"Code patches are standard and help to stabiles any damaged code when any recruits or agents face code type weapons."

"But Zane was attacked by Anderson, not by a code weapon."

"Correct but Mr. Anderson puts a considerable amount of strain on coding with the force of his attacks. We have found without proper stabilization damage caused by him tends to heal very slowly. Medical Agent Wilson opted to go ahead and use a code patch with my permission. Code patches are created from the same source code as we are, but they are programmed to repair the damaged sections and then disintegrate. This process takes in whole about forty eight hours." Brown glared at him, and Jones nodded back knowing that he was pushing the patience of the combat agent.

"Zane entered the exile stronghold less then 12 hours after he received the three patches. He was there because the building was surrounded by a particularly nasty firewall. We have since upgraded our personal firewalls and can no longer be harmed by this virus but at the time it was deemed highly dangerous."

Jones passed his hand through the screen again and it zoomed closer to the section near the recruit's ribs. "This virus reacted vigorously to several code markers found inside of our source code. The same source code found inside the code patches used on his ribs. The virus gained access to his personal code and the code of the patch through this manor."

The screen shifted showing the waterfall of symbols that was Zane's code. It was the code that attached his body in the real world, to his avatar in the matrix. Sections of the green flow darted in red. "These high lighted areas show were the virus damaged Zane's personal code. It was extensive, with forty-eight point two percent damaged beyond repair. When he destroyed the fire wall generator the virus died off. While it was strong, it is very short lived with out constantly added power."

Brown eyed the code suspiciously "How do you mean, damaged beyond repair?"

"Simply that he would die if he had to heal naturally. It is uncertain how he was detected by the exiles but on one hand he is very lucky that he had a code patch on him. It started rebuilding the damage almost immediately."

Agent Brown stood stiff "And the other?"

"The patch has glitched due to the virus. It has not and never will dissolved like it was programmed to do."

"What does that mean for Mr. Kembrick?"

"He has forty-eight point two percent of patch code." The screen dilated to show the whole diagram again. "The areas most affected were his eyes. It is uncertain what side effects will come about. His vision may be enhanced, or he may be blind."

"Fix his code," Agent Brown growled.

"I cant if I remove even a section of it, he may destabilize and die."

Smith cleared his throat, drawing the attention of the other three agents. "There is nothing to do but wake him. Are you ready Jones?"

The tech. agent nodded, "Ready sir." Beside him Agent Brown clenched his fists.

Jones required a glass syringe with an ominous looking needle, it contained a crystal like substance, almost metallic in the way it refracted light. He ejected the stimulant in the recruit's neck. The agents gathered near curios to see what his health would be like.

Zane took a deep breath inwards, his throat made a harsh sucking sound like water being drawn out with the tide. The agents looked down in earnest. The recruit opened his eyes. They were green, healthy, and showed no sigh of blindness. Above him the four agents all smiled in different degrees; Mimosa openly, Smith reserved, Jones tentative, and Brown suppressed nearly beyond recognition. It was not for a few moments that they noticed the blue.

It started at the very edges of his iris, it spread out devouring his green eyes. Then it leaked and pooled into his irises making the black opening into bright azure blue sinkholes. They watched in a mixed ballet of shock and amazement. Then all hell broke out.

The blue swirled, and all but the whites of his eyes were etched in the bright and forbidding hue. Zane was breathing still, but his body coiled up. He scrambled getting his legs under himself, then hurled head long onto agent Jones. He knocked the other agent clean to the ground and they somersaulted once before skidding across the floor. Zane fingers made contact and managed to slice a long and bleeding scratch into the side of Agent Jones face.

The next few moments were a blur, as the programs scrabbled to free their comrade. The small recruit was tossed across the room and crashed into the observation window that let to the hallway. The glass warped then splinted and rained down like diamonds covering his skin with a billion tiny serrations. The code from the glass melted into Zane's skin and the cuts flickered green.

Agent Jones rose from the floor and sputtered angrily. "The patch isnt dissolving, each cut makes him more program then human."

Smith looked at him confused. "He is becoming an agent?"

"No the patch is only agent source code, not agent code."

Brown grabbed the agent's tie and forced him to face him. "What is he becoming?" The words were hissed out.

Jones paled wishing he could be telling any one but Agent Brown this. "He will be eaten until his human mind dies and he becomes nothing but an exile, and a monstrous one at that. He can walk through walls, we must fire wall this room now."

Zane stirred then slipped into blackness still surround by shards of glass.

A few hours later the room was empty again, except for some chrome furniture and stark white bed sheets. Zane was sitting crosses legged on top of the medical table, his eyes staring blankly into the white void. He wasn't blinking, but occasionally his eyes would dart to the window that separated the room from the observation hall. No one ever walked by, he was at the end of the hall.

He was hissing through his teeth, and drew his legs up under him. Zane had never been so confused before. He ran his hands over his arms it looked the same, but it felt different. Like he wasn't real anymore. Of course he knew that he had never been real but right now it was more like a dream then it had ever been before.

He held his hands out in front of him self and turned them slowly watching how the light flowed over his finger, he watched until the light became like sticky pooling strand, and then became code. The light flowed over his hands then up his arms. He flailed and try to rip the strands from his skin. Something was fighting his hands, pushing him down on the bed. The code was poring over the room, he tried to scream but it flowed into his mouth and into his lungs.

"What is happing!" Agent Brown screamed as two medical agents rushed into the hospital room were Zane had been lying for the last three hours. It was now twelve hours after the recruit had been torn to pieces by a hail of bullets. He was not expected to wake for several days. His mind was not connected to his body, which is why Zane's sudden screaming and flailing motions were unexpected and worrisome. The recruit was clawing at his skin, and managed to rip his skin in several places.

He was quickly forced down and strapped to the bed. Agent Jones was in the room a few minutes later. He injected the recruit with a silver liquid and Zane quickly relaxed. A slew of diagnostic windows flew open; several diagrams, scrolling screens of code, and all sorts of monitoring charts. Jones frowned then zoomed in on a smaller section of a screen.

"Well what has happened?" Brown bit out.

Jones knitted his browns and turned to face the other agent. "Look at this code pattern. Its the same one that shows up when an agent glitches."

"Zane cant glitch he's human."

"Excuse me, Agent Brown," the one who spoke was a rather tentative looking medical agent. He flinched a bit when the cold gaze of his superior fell on him. "Look Sir," he pointed towards Zane.

Jones and Brown looked down at the redhead recruit. The cuts on his skin were being eaten over in green code, and replaced my healthy skin. Brown looked at Jones horrified. "How is he doing that?"

The smaller agent, poured over his screens then stepped back in shock. "Oh, by the source. We sent him in to a firewall zone designed to eat agent code, with a code patch still in his body. That's why his code is corrupted, that patch is eating his code alive."

"Code patched only make repairs then dissolve"

"This one is malfunctioning, it looks like it trapped his mind in the matrix, he's not connected to his body because he is here."

"He has been uploaded?"

"Exactly."

"Is he agent?"

"No, I don't know what he is. He does not have the backup programming to handle the strain of the incoming code caused by the agent source code inherent to the patch. Our only option is to fill him with the human to agent programming used to upload Agent Mimosa, it should stop eating his mind then. At this point it looks like he is still forty seven point one percent human. I will make the request, you contact Smith."

Shortly Zane was in a new room it was full of computer monitors, and agents of all types. The Source had given its permission. The ruling was that 'There is no reason to allow a well trained recruit to die if he was already uploaded to the system.' The agents were waiting now. Waiting for him to wake up.

The reprogramming had taken several hours but they had managed to halt the progress of Zane's deletion at forty-eight point two percent. Enough that he could not be considered an agent of the system. He was still a recruit, just a programmed recruit. And the agents had gathered from several sectors to watch the birth of this new half-breed.

Some of the agents growled that this was foolish; he would become nothing but an exile. Others whispered that this is what should have been done to Whitman and Mimosa. This half upload was something more controllable. Command agents and field agents watched and wondered if this was to be the future of their sectors. Tech agents barked at subordinates who were running scans and filing data for future use.

In one instant of perfect synchronicity the room came to dead silence and all the faces turned to look at the recruit in the center of the room. His eyes opened and one agent stepped forward to inspect him. Agent Jones, scanned over Zane flow of code, then steeped back and with a nod declared him operational. In small groups the agents vanished from the room, in a soft swirl of displaced code.

Zane blinked once, watched the swirl, then blinked again. This was something new. It was like a sweeping and gentle tide that rushed to fill the vacant places, where agents once had stood. He pondered on this oddity. He now saw not the code as he had seen it dancing on the computer screens, but something more akin to air or water. It simply was and had no need for explanation. He could not see the green katakana that he knew; the code had become such fine strands that he saw it with out vision. Like smoke dancing in the air.

He let his mind fancy that each agent was not an agent but in fact a sort of flickering flame. The code was bright around them, and they shown just softly in the room, highlighted, like they existed slightly above every thing else. When they left, the place around them went out like a light, and the wisps were all that were left. Soon all the agents were gone, all except for one.

Agent Brown stepped into the field of vision were the recruit was staring off into. "Zane, are you well again?" His voice was just a bit flat, a bit more hallow and cold, then if he had been human.

"I am fine Agent Brown" The more human entity's reply however was even more dead sounding.

"You are certain?"

"Yes." He finally turned to face the agent, a bit of malice in his eyes. "When may I return to duty?"

"Soon, I should think. Do you know what you are now?"

"I am me." Zane sounded very innocent and very certain. He turned his head and looked blankly into the room again.

"You are a program."

"I am what I have always been."

The Agent flew around so he was inches from the recruits face. His voice was a muffled scream. "You are a program now, if you become a danger or an exile, I will be forced to delete you Zane. If you are not exactly perfect they will defragment you. Do you understand what that means?" The agent was panting a very human action. " You will be gone forever."

The recruit slipped around Agent Brown, and slid to the cold tile floors. With out thought and with a wisp of his hand, the hospital garment melted in blue and became a black suit with a black shirt and a blue silk tie. In his hand appeared blue mirrored sunglasses. "Agent Brown, I am going on patrol." With out waiting for reply he vanished from the room.