III-3

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Late afternoon sunlight filtered down into the cell from the circular skylight overhead, illuminating floor and walls built of irregular slabs of gray granite, worn smooth from long usage. A narrow bed in one corner, a plain wooden table, a chair. Two thick stone pillars supported the arched ceiling like great tree trunks, one to each side of the skylight. Except for the single lightbulb dangling between them, everything about the room felt positively medieval. Programmed to feel positively medieval.

It looked like she would have some time to think about her next steps after all.

If there were going to be any more next steps.

The door was a solid piece of steel, several inches thick from the sound of it. Aleph spent the next several hours knocking and rapping on the floor, the walls, the pillars, inch by inch, then she climbed onto the table and worked over the ceiling from one end to the other. Eventually, she was forced to the discouraging conclusion that each and every one of the stones was completely solid. The mortar between them, though ancient in appearance, revealed no gaps or weaknesses. The skylight turned out to be reinforced bulletproof glass.

Closing her eyes, Aleph mentally reviewed the situation. Earlier, when they were marching her in here, she'd seen what was just beyond the door: a narrow little hall, at which they'd arrived by descending a long, uneven flight of stairs from one corner of the chateau. There was one more heavy metal door across the hall: another cell, she guessed. A few chairs for guards at the bottom of the stairs. Some of the Merovingian's henchmen must be there right now.

"Hey," she called out, pushing against the door.

No answer.

"Hey! You! You out there!"

The yell reverberated around the chamber, and slowly faded to nothing.

"Yeah, you! What, did you drop dead or something? Rotting on the floor out there, are you?"

The silence mocked her. Before she knew it, a roar of rage erupted from somewhere inside her chest, as Aleph caught up the chair and slammed it against the door. Holding it by one leg, she banged it rhythmlessly against the steel, again and again, punctuating the noise with every insult that came to mind, until her voice grew hoarse, and her throat felt like it was on fire. But there was not even an echo of footsteps on the other side.

If she had not known better, she would have thought the whole place deserted. The guards were, quite simply, impossible to provoke. Of course. The Merovingian must have given them strict orders to ignore her. After that last trick she'd pulled...

Maybe they'd been programmed that way.

The chair—one leg now broken—dropped to the ground by her feet, skidding a yard or two across the flagstones. Defeated, Aleph took a weary backward step, and leaned heavily against one of the round pillars. Her hands were shaking. All of a sudden she realized how utterly exhausted she'd become. It seemed as if she would never find the energy to lift a single finger again, and only after a few minutes did she notice that she had slid down against the pillar to the floor. She buried her head against her knees.

This prison, this hopeless prison I could never hope to escape, said someone invisible. Aleph's head snapped up, but this time, the voice was not Lucy's. In the emptiness of the cell, it sounded eerily real, just as if Smith still stood right next to her.

They had been walking beneath the fence of a weed-choked cemetery close to the edge of the city, in a seedy neighborhood of tumble-down streets and boarded windows. Ten o'clock in the morning according to the Matrix, one list of the latest potentials in her pocket, all prospects of gaining any real information from the agent on this occasion already receding into the horizon. Smith, as usual, had grown increasingly impatient by each passing minute. In her memory Aleph could still see his eyes now, glittering harshly behind dark glasses as he stalked along, cold scorn evident in every measured footfall.

"I'm telling you, Agent Smith, the Zion mainframe is compartmentalized. Layers of security codes. And frankly I don't even know why I have to keep on saying this." She had rallied herself for another attack. It felt more like a formality than anything. "I can't help if you don't give me anything to go on..."

"It appears you are still under the delusion that you can play me for a fool, Miss Greene."

"Why, I'm disappointed, sir." Pause. Shrug. "After all this time, I thought you'd know I am not quite that stupid."

"I have yet to see evidence to the contrary," snapped the agent. "Hardly surprising, of course. Your blindness is born of the narcissism typical to your species, and it is utterly tiresome in every way—"

His jaw clenched. Aleph turned her head, and gazed down the rows of headstones slanting crookedly at their feet, the grasses flowing long and verdant over them, the dust heavy upon the grass. All those people, hostages of the Matrix even unto their deaths. But they had their deaths. Each one of them had his birth, childhood, youth, age, death, never once needing all this blasted awareness. A wave or irritation startled even herself, and the words were out before she could check them.

"What the hell do you know about us?"

Agent Smith halted in mid-stride. With a swift motion, he stalked a step closer, right into her personal space. Aleph barely remembered to hold her position as he loomed above her, sneering down into her face.

"I know far more than I'd like about you and your kind, Miss Greene. You're everywhere. I look at you and rub shoulders with you, every day, every hour. Most of you are oblivious batteries whom we feed and keep and provide for, yet who still imagine themselves the rulers of the world. A few of you call yourselves the freed, living upon righteous arrogance, though it was your boundless greed that destroyed the earth. Because you refuse to receive your just punishment, this pointless war will never end, and I am here in this Matrix, this zoo, because of you. I can never escape because of you. Do you understand?"

"Oh, that's all bullshit," said Aleph. She couldn't seem to find a better retort. A wordless moment passed.

"For a computer program, you seem curiously preoccupied with yourself, Agent Smith," she muttered at last. "Is your Mainframe okay with that?"

Without deigning to answer, Smith turned away abruptly and began to walk off again. Aleph had to trot a few steps in order to keep up. When he spoke again, she was surprised to find that the anger had drained from his voice. This prison. Never escape.

She did not recall every detail of the rest of their meeting that day. After the surreality of this exchange, Smith had reverted to his usual supercilious contempt, and she had found her own mood darkening into a tense sullenness. She had at last witnessed the agent make a mistake—for that was a mistake on his part, surely—yet instead of taking advantage and going on the attack, all she could do was to seethe silently with inward embarrassment. Only much later, after she had left the other and gone safely to the exit, after she had once more surrounded herself with the shadows and solitude of the real world, only then had it been possible to voice her secret response, one that could not be spoken except in the faintest of whispers.

"I'm trapped, too..."

Well, duh, sis. Check out these walls! The guy sure knows how to build 'em solid, doesn't he?

"Lucy," whispered Aleph without looking up. What the hell am I to do?

Addie, murmured Lucy. Aleph remembered that tone of voice. Back when her sister had been alive, it would have been accompanied by a rolling of the eyes. But Lucy was invisible now.

"I tried." Aleph stared up into the air. "I tried to avenge you. I tried as soon as I found out..."

And that didn't work out all that well, huh?

Don't you fucking make fun of me, Lucy. I—I should have known. But it was too late, wasn't it?

Too late? Lucy's voice was blankly innocent, that same old teenager's trick. Too late for what?

Why the hell didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me from the beginning?

Hmm. Again, the dead girl pretended to ruminate on the question. Tell you what?

That he was the one who killed you, dammit!

Actually...That's not quite true, sis.

The reply came very quietly, and Aleph gulped.

"If it were not for him you never would have died!"

An endless echoing stillness, perhaps a minute, perhaps more. Then, just as she was starting to remind herself that her sister was long gone and all this was only an illusion:

If it were not for you I never would have died, Addie.

Aleph braced her hands against the cold floor. She wanted to jump to her feet, scream at her sister's ghost and tell her it wasn't true, but there seemed to be no strength left in her legs. So all she could do was curse this stupid human frailty. It was never supposed to be like this.

"Lucy."

Her sister was gone.

"Lucy." She swallowed painfully. "I think I made a terrible mistake..."

If you miss this chance, I believe there will not be another.

Another voice echoed out of her memory, skidding against the bare walls, that of an old woman, gentle and weary. It took her a while to recognize it.

"You are wrong." she retorted out aloud shakily. But the Oracle was neither ghost nor hallucination, and did not—could not—reply.

"You are wrong!" Raising her voice, Aleph struggled to her feet. She had to hold onto hope. She had to get out of here.

Hey Addie.

"Lucy?"

There's always another chance.

The room went silent. Wildly, Aleph glanced about, at the walls, up at the ceiling, as if her dead little sister might still be hovering over there. All she could see was the daylight spilling down from the window above. It had begun to fade from white to gold, and the shadows were lengthening over the stones.

In the midst of the hush, there was a soft click.

Aleph found enough strength to pull herself together a little. Keeping her back against the pillar, she shifted a step, out of the direct line of attack from the door but just within the edge of sight. This must be it. They must be coming for her at last.

Across the cell, the door was cracking open, noiselessly and very slowly, an inch at first, then half a foot, one foot, two. Then she saw a short, elderly man in the doorway, craning his head forward into the room, eyes scanning the room in apparent curiosity from behind thick, black-rimmed glasses. His clothes were shabby, stained here and there with what looked like machine grease, and on his head there was a cap with a protruding plastic visor, shading the upper part of his face. He was alone.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a rather nervous voice.

Aleph's first thought was to swore at her own mind for going fully off the deep end at the worst moment imaginable. The voices within had at last turned into visual hallucinations, obviously. Her second thought was that she could possibly still knock him over and make a break for it, and that it would take her less than half a second. There didn't seemed to be much physical strength in him. Then she realized there was something strange about the space behind him, now visible past the open door.

It was not the hallway.

At the other's back, she could glimpse another room, stony and dim just like hers. Another cell. A pillar, same as the one against which she was supporting herself, but covered with small glittering objects she could not quite make out at this distance. And the walls, too—

Her third thought was that whatever new trick the Merovingian was playing now, it sure did not seem like his usual style. Her fourth thought was that she was simply too sick and tired of it all, and she might as well stop, stop struggling in the net and just let everything be over and done with. So in the end, she did not charge forward, nor did she attack. She remained exactly where she stood.

"Um...Yeah, I'm fine." She heard herself answer. How banal. "Who are you?"

"Oh." The old man blinked owlishly. "I am sorry. I, I heard you shouting from in here—"

"Sorry," mumbled Aleph.

"Oh, no, please, that wasn't what I meant. I just thought I'd..." He blinked again, looking both embarrassed and a little frightened by Aleph's incredulous stare. "Well, I thought I'd just come over and introduce myself. I am the Keymaker, and I am your neighbor."