Chapter 7

Neo walked out of the room. He still wasn't completely sure of what to do next. He wasn't completely convinced he could trust Shadow, and that she really wanted to help him. There could be some kind of catch to this, though he didn't know what she could gain by tricking him. But something told him that he could trust her. Well, at least she didn't "convince" him to believe her. In this confusion, either way it seemed that his best shot was to trust Shadow, and face the consequences later.

Also, Neo was overjoyed at the fact that his friends were alive. He couldn't wait to see them.

When Neo walked into the living room he saw agents there. His heart jumped, and he reached for his gun, only to notice that he didn't have one. But the agents seemed to pay no attention to him. Jones and Thompson were playing chess, Jones losing by a pawn but having a much stronger overall position. Then Neo noticed Agentette Smith sitting on one of the boxes and watching the game. When their eyes met, she waived at him and smiled. The other two just gave him a quick glance and went back to the game.

This convinced Neo that there was no danger from them. He walked up to Agentette.

"Thanks," he said, and outstretched his hand for a handshake.

Agentette grinned from ear to ear. "You're welcome." She shook his hand and he walked out of the room. Agentette looked at the doorway he passed through, and went back to watching the game when he disappeared from view.

In a few minutes Thompson looked the chessboard over and finally laid down her king, accepting defeat. Then she got up and left the room, too.

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"Why did I thank Agentette Smith?" Neo wondered as he walked down the stairs. "Probably because it wouldn't kill me to do something nice for her," he decided. Or maybe it was because he felt sorry for her - after all, soon she would be deleted along with the rest of the Matrix.

But - why did he think the Matrix would be destroyed? Nothing was decided yet.

Destroying the Matrix was his sole purpose ever since he was unplugged. And now, being so close to his goal, would he really stop because of some lies someone told him?

These weren't lies! Even though Neo was back to normal now, he remembered everything he felt and thought when he sided with the Oracle. It made perfect sense then, and it still did now. They were people! Living (in a sense), thinking, feeling, human beings! They were the creators of all the people he knew. And they were once just like them. How could he throw away all their lives, just like that? And how would he know that history wouldn't repeat itself? What if after shutting off the Matrix in a couple of hundred years he will find himself in their place?

How much easier everything would be if all of this never happened! If he never spoke with the Oracle, or even if he was never unplugged from the Matrix...

Taken aback by his thoughts, Neo didn't notice that he stopped walking and now stood on the stairway, leaning against the wall.

The sound of footsteps made him turn around. As he for some reason expected, it was Thompson.

"Hi," he said and was amazed at how calm and emotionless his own voice sounded.

"Hello," replied Thompson just as emotionlessly. "Agentette told us everything," she continued, sounding even more cold. "I just wanted to ask you - how does it feel to be dead? Death, deletion - it's all the same. You went through that. I want to know."

Neo looked at her for a moment. "Dying is different every time. But after - there is nothing. I didn't feel anything from the moment I died to the moment I was resurrected."

"Thank you," Thompson said, her expression and tone of voice unchanged, her eyes hidden beneath her sunglasses. Then she turned around and headed back to the Oracle's apartment.

This confirmed something he already thought of in the apartment's living room. "They won't try to stop me," Neo realised. "They might be on the same side with Shadow. Or maybe they think that the destruction of the Matrix is inevitable, and that to interfere would be pointless."

"We are still people. Does it matter which way we were created?" his own voice rang out in Neo's head. "Death, deleting - it's all the same..." added another.

He finally moved away from the wall and continued walking down the stairs. He had a lot to do - explain everything to Morpheus and Trinity, get Render to unplug them... "I'm probably bald again," he thought. "Great. And Trinity, too. Well, at least Morpheus won't have to worry about that."

Neo pushed these irrelevant thoughts aside. First he had to decide what to do next. Now that he had seen both sides of the story, he found that he couldn't decide who should live and who should die. Whatever he did, people would suffer. He wanted to bring peace, but not at the expense of all lives on one of the sides. That meant he would have to talk the two sides into working out a compromise. Something told him that getting them to talk to each other wouldn't be easy - both of them saw the story only from their own point of view, and in their point of view they were the innocent victims fighting heartless monsters. Moreover, they all thought that there is no other way than for the other side to lose. Neo knew that something could be worked out. This was life, not an artificial game with only two choices! All they need to do is talk things through, and find an alternative. But things looked like the two sides simply wouldn't want to listen to each other.

No, Neo wouldn't destroy the Matrix now. He would find something to distract the Resistance so that nobody would destroy the programs.

His plan was simple. Neo would try to convince opponents to talk, but until he succeeded in that he would have to keep either side from losing. And that meant that for now he wasn't meant to stop the war. He was meant to continue it. At whatever cost.

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Congratulations! You finished reading my story and survived the experience! Please please please review.

Thanks to Shadow (who's also in this story, although I got the personality a bit wrong :) ) and Anonymous (what can I say? he/she/it is anonymous) for reviewing it, and to Anonymous for correcting my spelling of Nebuchadnezzar :)