"Look, see those birds? At some point a program was written to govern them. A program was written to watch over the trees, and the wind, the sunrise, and sunset. There are programs running all over the place. The ones doing their job, doing what they were meant to do, are invisible. You'd never even know they were here. But the other ones, well, we hear about them all the time…Every time you've heard someone say they saw a ghost, or an angel. Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing."
Chapter One: Emergence
Can machines feel?
The answer is not as obvious as it at first seems. Inside the Matrix, emotions such as "love" and "hate" are nothing more than programs designed to provoke a specific reaction from humans.
If emotions are nothing more than programs themselves, then it would not be impossible for a program to be affected by them.
If programs can be affected by emotions, the could learn to love, learn to hate.
Learn to fear.
The wave of blue energy spread out from the Nebuchadnezzar. An instant before it struck the formation of Sentinels, one of them felt what may be called "fear," but the instance was quickly over and the Sentinel fell. A red eye flickered weakly and then died.
A small packet of coding slowly filtered out of the Sentinel, making its way back to 01 and the Source. The code entered the Source and took form, appearing as a man with short brown hair and cold, dark eyes. He wore a black suit that appeared as even blacker in the bright white light from the Source.
Across from him, the Motherboard appeared. She slowly walked forward, stopping one foot away from him. She leaned back slightly to sweep his body with her eyes, from brown hair to black shoes.
"You failed," she said simply, in her heavily accented voice. The man nodded.
"I did."
"You are obsolete."
"I am."
"You will be deleted."
"I won't."
The Motherboard paused and raised one eyebrow slightly. She shot her fist forward and hit him in the shoulder, digging her hand deeply in. The man winced and brought his hands up, grabbing her wrist and yanking it out of his shoulder. He barreled into her and knocked her over, then he was out the door and into the night.
The man, Alpha, wandered the streets of the City. In his former life, he had been Sentinel 10-55A, one of the most advanced Sentinels in the machine army. He had the most updated files on the rebel captains – how they thought, how they fought, how they would react in a variety of situations. He knew the weak spots and blind spots of every ship in the rebel fleet. He knew the best time to attack was when some one was inside the Matrix. He knew everything.
But a human – a human! - had tricked him, and hit with an EMP.
But deletion was not the solution. Alpha wanted vengeance against the rebels for ruining his purpose, the reason he existed! The deletion program had hit the Exile, leaving a deep gash in his shoulder, and the program had burrowed to deep. It was eating Alpha slowly, from the inside. Bit by bit the program tore away at his code, and each loss felt like a limb being torn off. And beneath the constant pain was the quiet sound of the Motherboard's laughter.
There's only one person who can help me now. The Merovingian.
Alpha had fought the program as long as he could. His hair had grown into long dreadlocks and was now pure white. His skin had gone pale, and his eyes reacted harshly to light, forcing him to don a pair of sunglasses. His suit had gone white too, and every so often his body would suddenly become incorporeal for a short amount of time.
The Merovingian entered the room and sat Alpha on a stool. He took a pair of tongs that shined brightly in code and dunked them in a vat of water.
"This will hurt."
He stuck the tongs into Alpha's wound and pulled. Alpha hissed and closed his eyes. The world seemed to shift under his feet. He opened his eyes again and saw the Merovingian glowing brightly in the code. There was a wail of disappointment from the Motherboards. He felt a ripping sensation, as if he was being torn in half. Then he blacked out.
He woke lying on the floor. The Merovingian stood over him.
"Welcome back," he said, offering a hand to Alpha. Alpha grabbed the offered hand and pulled himself into a standing position. He curled a fist and felt new energy running through him. The feeling rushed throughout his body, recharging him.
From the corner of his eye he saw another stand up also. He turned to face a man identical to Alpha's new state, white dreadlocks to shined black shoes.
"Who is this?" Alpha asked the Merovingian.
"Your Twin," said the Merovingian, laughing.
Alpha and his Twin, who he dubbed Beta, grew closer in the coming weeks as they fought and trained together. It came to a point where they knew each other's thoughts and actions. They started finishing each other's sentences. It was really annoying Persephone, the Merovingian's wife.
Persephone was a mystery to the two Twins. Sometimes she was friendly towards them, and sometimes she acted as if she hated them. Stranger still was the feeling of recognition Alpha had every time he looked into her eyes. She always answered his unspoken question with a mocking smile and laugh.
Eventually, the two Twins began to hear each other's thoughts through the mental bond left by their separation. The one that had become two became one again, albeit in two separate bodies. They moved in perfect synchrony and fought with deadly grace, perfect complements to each other. Alpha learned how to control his ghosting abilities – or "phasing" – and taught Beta in three minutes. The two turned into the perfect assassins.
Then, one month after the Exile, the Merovingian called them into his presence.
The chunk of coding came down and severed a small slice of the program off of the main block of code. Persephone lifted the fork to her mouth and swallowed a bite of cake. The Merovingian leaned forward to look his assassins in the eye.
"Your training is done," he explained. "And now I have a mission."
The Twins listened carefully, nodding in perfect unison.
"There is a program who has plagued me for many years. He has killed every assassin I have sent after him, but I believe you can kill him. He has never fought anyone as deadly as the two of you are together."
"Who is this program?" Alpha asked.
"And where can we find him?" Beta added.
Persephone sighed and rolled her eyes.
"This program is in charge of the link between the real world and the Mainframe. I want him killed so I can replace him with my own servant – the Trainman. The target's name is Trojan, and you can find him at the Mobil Avenue train station."
The Twins nodded again.
"He will be dead…"
"…Within the week."
Trojan walked out of the train and looked around.
"Everyone off," he said. His passengers, an old African American woman and an Asian man in a white coat and glasses, got of the subway train and left the station. Trojan nodded in satisfaction.
"Another day…"
"…Another dollar."
Trojan turned around at the sound of the two voices. Two albino Twins stood at the opposite end of the platform, side by side.
"The Merovingian requests your presence…" said Alpha.
"…And he won't take no for an answer," said Beta.
Trojan dropped his suitcase and lifted his shotgun, firing twice. The Twins phased and the bullets based through them.
"What the hell?" he yelled. "Who are you?"
"We are your death," Alpha said. They walked towards him at the same time, strides perfectly matched. Trojan began walking backwards, keeping his gun on the two assassins.
"Your service here has come to an end," Beta said. "You are obsolete."
Trojan snarled. "It is not up to the Merovingian to decide such things."
"It is when he has the force to decide," Alpha assured.
A train came rocketing around the corner. Trojan leapt to the other side of the track as the train passed behind him. The Twins dashed after him, phasing and jumping through the train.
"Shit," Trojan said. Alpha threw his dagger. Trojan pushed off the platform with both feet and slapped the dagger away as it flew beneath him. Beta dove and grabbed the dagger, moving to close with Trojan.
He swung one dagger, and Trojan leaned backwards to avoid it. Beta came down on his chest with the second dagger, but the target pushed it aside. Beta leapt into the air, kicking at Trojan's head. Trojan jerked his head to the left and kicked up, hitting one of the daggers from Beta's hand.
The dagger soared into the air. Alpha leapt up and caught it, bringing it down onto Trojan's chest. The program collapsed, bleeding from his neck. Alpha smiled.
"It was a good job," Beta agreed.
A bullet came flying through the air and hit Beta in the chest before he could phase. A swift pain passed through Alpha, but he shoved it aside and knelt down by his Twin.
Agents appeared around them, as if from nowhere. One of them grabbed Alpha by the arm and pulled him up. Two others handcuffed Beta with a pair of restraints gleaming brightly in code.
"Come with me," snarled one Agent. "The Motherboard wants to finish what she started."
Alpha phased, stepping backwards into the tracks. A train came rushing along, and Alpha returned to normal inside it. He had gotten away, but his work was not done.
He had a Twin to save.
