Chapter 14 - Evolution

The Twilatrix

I do not own Twilight or the Matrix. If I did I would be minted—and I assure you that I'm not. No copyright infringement intended. This is just for fun.

~X~

The city sprawls outside of the window—a vast expanse of concrete and glass, colored in various shades of cream, brown, and green.

Jane observes it through the glass. "Have you ever stood and stared at it—marvelled at its beauty…it's genius?" She leans forward to watch a stream of microscopic cars drive by on the thin black strips of road below, the swarms of humans pausing on the sidewalks before buzzing away to wherever it is that they intend to go. "Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious."

She turns around and looks at Alice, firmly bound to a chair. Jane's equipment is neatly laid out on a table beside her captive, just so she can see what the near future holds. If Alice Cullen is smart, she'll confess earlier rather than later and save herself a lot of pain.

Even if she is brave and resists, everyone has their limit, and everyone talks once they're pushed beyond it. A sweet smile growing on her face, Jane ponders the fact that this one, this Alice Cullen, seems to be a fighter.

Her face is still slightly bloodied from their altercation, her jacket had been removed, and Alice wears a dusty and disheveled black shirt. Still, she has a look of defiance, and Jane smiles as she sees the tension in the vampire-proof cuffs. They will not break—many have tried before and many have failed.

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster." Jane begins slowly making her way across the room to where Alice is glowering and clenching her fists silently.

"No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost." Jane pauses. "Some believe that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering."

Sitting near Jane's table, ready and willing to assist, Agent Demetri draws a syringe of serum, a specifically programmed substance designed to break down the defences of even the most strong-willed of subjects. He then swings around on his typist's chair, taking a strong grip of Alice's neck, and injecting it roughly.

The captive's stony expression breaks slightly as a muffled gurgle sounds in her throat as the needle stings her flesh. This is only the beginning, she tells herself. This is child's play—it will get worse.

"The perfect world was a dream your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from." Standing only two feet away, Jane pauses by her table while Demetri monitors the equipment. "Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this—the peak of your civilization." She motions towards the window with a half-interested thumb.

"I say your civilization because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization—which is, of course, what this is all about."

Alice's eyes widen as the serum hits her blood system, and Demetri smirks as the monitors tell him that he did his task well. Jane looks impassively over his shoulder, unimpressed, before making her way around to the back of Alice's chair.

"Evolution, Miss Cullen. Evolution. Look out of that window," Jane leans in closer to whisper in her ear, her hands on Alice's shoulders. The subject is beginning to struggle to keep her breathing even, her body tense yet weakening by the second. "You had your time. The future is our world. The future is our time."

The door bursts open and Agent Felix walks in.

"There could be a problem."

Pressing their earpieces, Agents Jane and Demetri receive the signal that the human informant has failed to neutralize the ship outside of the Matrix—the ship which still holds Alice Cullen's physical form even if her mind is imprisoned here.

"Never send a human to do a machine's job," Jane complains.

Agent Demetri gets to his feet. "If the insider has failed they'll sever the connection as soon as possible, unless…"

"…they're dead, in either case…" Felix continues his sentence.

"…we have no choice but to continue as planned. Deploy the sentinels—immediately." Agent Jane gives the final command.

~X~

Jasper, Edward , and Bella stand around Alice's body as it lies inert in its chair, yet the life monitor spikes and shows the stresses that her mind is suffering.

"What are they doing to her?" Bella asks.

"Breaking into her mind." Jasper replies somberly. "It's like hacking into a computer—all it takes is time."

"How much time?" Bella's mind is a whirl. Was it really this morning that they left this place to see the Oracle? It can't just be the three of them. This must be a dream—this can't be the real world. But how would she know?

"Depends on the mind. Eventually it will crack, and her alpha patterns will change from this." Jasper shows Alice's current readings, and then presses a button on the screen. "To this." The display shows Alice's already alarming readings changing to frantic red loops. "When it does, Alice will tell them anything they want to know."

"What do they want?"

Jasper looks Bella straight in the eye. "The leader and second-in-command of every ship is given codes to Zion's mainframe computer. If an agent got the codes and got into Zion's mainframe, it could destroy us. We can't let that happen."

Jasper turned to his other crewmate. "Edward…Zion's more important than me, or you, or even Alice."

Shaking her head, Bella speaks up again. "There has to be something we can do."

"There is." Jasper's face is hard and determined. It isn't just Alice's mind trapped in the Matrix, she has his soul in there with her, too. Without her he will still exist, but he'll be a walking, eating, breathing shell of the man he used to be. "We pull the plug."

Edward breaks his silence. "You're going to kill her? Kill Alice?

"We don't have any other choice." Jasper already feels empty, yet he forces himself to say the words. His voice is slow, part of him dragging out his love's last seconds. "Alice, you're more than a leader to us. You're our sister. We'll miss you always…"

As he wraps his hand around the plug embedded in the port buried amongst Alice's short, black hair, he feels as if he's holding a knife to his own chest.

"Stop." Bella's voice is quiet as she struggles to resurface from her thoughts. Only this morning, she saw Esme, the Oracle. Only this morning she thought about how there was no fate but what she made for herself…"I don't believe this is happening."

Jasper and Edward stare, frozen in position, not daring to move a muscle until Jasper speaks. "Bella, this has to be done."

"Does it? I…I don't know." She purses her lips and shakes her head in denial. She'd convinced herself that she didn't believe in all that crap—she was in charge of her own destiny. "This can't just be coincidence. It can't be."

"What are you talking about?" Jasper knows that every second they wait is another second given to the agents, but if Bella knows something…

The Oracle's words echo inside her. You're going to have to make a choice. In one hand you'll have Alice's life, and in the other hand you'll have your own. One of you is going to die—which one will be up to you.

"The Oracle—she told me this would happen. She told me that I would have to make a choice."

"What choice?" Edward had never believed in the Oracle before Bella arrived on the ship, and maybe for a short while after, but slowly, without him even noticing it creeping up on him, he had become a believer.

Bella looks between them both and then suddenly makes a move towards the main consoles, her decision made. Edward and Jasper follow behind her.

"What are you doing?" Edward watches Bella tap on the screen, preparing a loading program as if she's been doing this for years.

"I'm going in."

"No you're not."

Bella turns around and stares him in the eye, her voice quiet but determined. "I have to."

"Bella, Alice sacrificed herself so she could get you out." He leans in toward her to let her hear the weight of his words. "There's no way that you're going back in."

The small girl with short brown hair and large eyes looks up at him, but the kitten now has claws and there's a fire in her voice. "Alice did what she did because she believed that I'm something I'm not."

Jasper's face gives the slightest crack of emotion, but it's Edward who has difficulty comprehending what he's hearing.

"What?"

"I'm not the one, Edward. Esme hit me with that, too."

"No, you have to be."

Bella had always taken Edward for one of the more skeptical amongst the crew. Certainly, he'd never given her any indication that he believed that she was the One even a fraction as much as Alice or Carlisle, but standing there at that moment, Bella felt like she'd just punched a hole through his faith.

"I'm not. I'm sorry, I'm just another girl."

"No, Bella. That's not true. It can't be true."

Confused, Bella asks, "Why?" but Edward turns away, just like he did in the car on the way to the Oracle.

After Edward falls silent, Jasper steps forward. "Bella, this is loco. They've got Alice in a military controlled building. Even if you somehow got inside, those are agents holding her—three of them!" Inside he's hoping, wishing, praying, but the reality of the situation keeps nagging at him. "I want Alice back, too, but what you're talking about is suicide."

"I know that's what it looks like, but it's not. I can't explain to you why it's not." Bella looks at the expressions on the faces of the two men before her, and tries to find a way to make them understand without speaking the words out loud—my life for Alice's life.

Jasper himself had said that Zion was more important than anyone, and the Oracle had said that without Alice and Carlisle they were lost. This was the reason she'd been unplugged. This was the choice fate had put before her, and Bella decided that the needs of the human race meant more to her than this cold, strange existence outside of the world she'd dreamed for the first nineteen years of her life.

"Alice believed something, and she was ready to give her life for it. I understand that now—that's why I have to go."

"Why?" Jasper asks, with half a mind to stop this madness now, and the other half wanting to grasp hold of the stick this girl was offering him.

Setting up the monitor over her chair, Bella replied confidently. "Because I believe in something."

It was Edward's turn to question her. "What?"

"I believe I can bring her back."

Jasper and Edward look between each other. There's no doubting that Bella believes it—it's written all over her face, and both of them know just how hard it is to change the mind of someone as set on a course as Bella is, especially when you want to share in that belief with every fiber of your being.

Edward thinks for a moment, and then walks over the chair next to the one Bella is preparing.

"What are you doing?" Bella pauses for a second.

"I'm going with you."

Bella's response is instantaneous. "No, you're not."

"No?" Edward stops her in her tracks and walks over, standing closer to her than he'd ever been. "Let me tell you what I believe—I believe Alice means more to me than she does to you. I believe that if you are really serious about saving her you're going to need my help. And since I'm the ranking officer on this ship, if you don't like it I believe you can go to hell…because you're not going anywhere else."

With Edward in her face, Bella wrestles with her conscience. The choice was Alice's life or her own, not Edward's. Before she can argue back, Edward commands Jasper to load them up.