A Nightmare in the Matrix Part II
By Andrew Ohning
Based on characters created by Wes Craven and the Wachowski Brothers
***The Next Morning in the Real World
"I'm ready," said Zagan.
The crew of the Amenhotep had picked up on an unusual concentration of Agents in the vicinity of a town called Springville in the Matrix. Late the previous night, a strange sort of bubble appeared. The bubble seemed to easily allow things in, but nothing came back out. Zagan and Boreas were being sent into the Matrix to investigate. Maegera, the Amenhotep's captain plugged her crew members in and loaded their minds into the computer-generated dreamworld of the Matrix.
Zagan opened his eyes in the Matrix, finding himself in an empty room. He quickly picked up the ringing phone and confirmed that he and Boreas was in. They made their way silently out of the house and out onto the street. What they saw there was beyond bizarre. Almost half of the street they were on was enveloped by a hazy blackness of some kind. Zagan pulled out his phone.
"Operator," Moloch said.
"Are you reading this thing?" Zagan said.
"Just the same as we did before," Moloch replied, "nothing coming out of it."
"Right. I'll check back in if we find out something new."
"All right." Moloch's end of the line clicked off.
"So what do we do now?" asked Boreas.
It didn't take long for Zagan and Boreas to figure out that there was no one in the town. After searching the area, they returned to the void which had grown a noticeable amount larger. Suddenly, Zagan's phone rang.
"What is it?" Zagan answered.
"I'm picking up multiple Agents headed your way," Moloch said.
"How many?"
"At least twenty."
"Twenty Agents for two of us? Don't you think that's a little overboard?"
"Twenty Agents!?" said Boreas.
"I don't thing they're coming for you two," Moloch said. "They're probably there to investi- Oh shit, they're only a block away from you! Get out of there!" Zagan and Boreas sprinted behind a tall hedge. A school bus pulled up on the street near the void, and twenty Agents filed out. They stood outside the void for a while and then started walking in, one after the other.
"Whatever's going on inside that void certainly has them worried," Boreas said. Zagan was about to agree when a chilling laughter echoed from within the void. As he and Boreas watched, they saw the forms of several Agents attempting to escape the void. The black mist swirled more densely around them and pulled them back in. All of a sudden, the void began to expand rapidly. Not a word was needed. Zagan and Boreas ran.
"Shit," Boreas shouted as she tripped on a discarded skateboard. As she struggled to get up, the void gained considerable ground on her.
"Run, Boreas!" Zagan shouted.
Boreas limped along as fast as she could, but the void was catching up to her. As Zagan turned to try and assist her, her injured ankle gave out under her and she fell again. The void came to a halt at the middle of her calves. Boreas pushed up on her hands and knees but began slowly sliding into the void.
"No!" she cried.
Zagan rushed over and grabbed her arms. He pulled with every ounce of enhanced strength he could muster, but it was no use. Boreas was gradually being sucked into the void.
"Please don't let me go," Boreas pleaded.
"I won't," Zagan said. He pulled her arms harder. Tears began to trickle down Boreas's face.
"It hurts," she muttered.
Suddenly, a shadowy form of a man emerged from the edge of the void. It loomed right up into Zagan's face.
"She's mine now!" it shouted, shoving Zagan away.
"No!" he cried. "Boreas!"
The shadow wrapped around Boreas and pulled her all the way inside the void. Zagan could hear her screams fading away. The phone rang.
"What the fuck just happened to Boreas?" Moloch said.
"I don't know," Zagan said. "The void expanded, and something pulled her in."
"That's it, I'm patching you an exit. Get the hell out-"
"No. I won't leave her behind." Zagan closed the phone and charged into the void.
Boreas found herself in a dark boiler room. The building stank of rusting metal and another metallic scent. For a moment she couldn't place the smell, but it came to her. Blood. A fiendish laughter resounded throughout the pipe-cluttered room. It was followed by the sound of metal scraping against metal.
"The little girls were always my favorites," said the same voice she'd heard laughing. Boreas whirled around to see a man in a faded red and green sweater standing behind her. He wore a tattered brown fedora atop his horrendously burn-scarred face and a set of knives on his right glove.
"Time to die, little girl," the man growled. He rushed at her.
Boreas jumped up and delivered a roundhouse kick to the man's head. He was sent sprawling on the floor. In an instant he was back on his feet. Boreas flipped over him and planted a hard kick to the small of his back. He crashed into a wall, and was suddenly facing back toward her.
"One, two," he said as he advanced, "Freddy's coming for you!" He lunged at Boreas who easily evaded the strike. "Three, four, better lock your door!" He appeared suddenly behind Boreas. Again she dodged his attack. His knives ended up only slashing her coat. "Five, six," he said before sinking rapidly into the floor, "grab a crucifix!"
Now the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. "Seven, eight, learn to stay up late!" Boreas was trying to be ready for an attack from any direction. "Nine, ten," the fiend erupted from a wall high above her. He came down, knives outstretched. Boreas threw herself backwards, planted her hands on the floor, and spun her legs to kick the descending monster across the room. Before he even realized what had happened, Boreas was on him, pummeling his chest and abdomen with a flurry of kicks.
Suddenly, the fiend grabbed one of Boreas's feet and slashed her thigh with his knives. She let out a shriek of pain and fell to the floor. No sooner than her back hit the ground, the thing was on her.
"As I was saying," he growled, "nine, ten, never sleep again!" His knives flashed, cutting open her throat.
"Boreas!" Zagan's voice cried. She tried to call out to him, but she was already dead.
Boreas was dead, and Zagan ran like mad. He could still hear the.whatever- the-hell-it-was cackling in the distance behind him. Every shadow around him seemed to take on the form of the fiend's clawed hand. Such surreal things kept happening that Zagan began to wonder if this was perhaps some new kind of Upgrade.As he rounded the corner at the end of the street, he glanced absently up at the street sign. The sight stopped him in his tracks. Somehow he was back at the other end of the street.
"Hell no," he said under his breath. He pulled his phone out and dialed his operator. The line clicked as the other end was picked up. "Moloch, get me the hell out of-"
"There is no 'out' anymore," crowed the voice of the whatever-the-hell-it- was over the line.
Zagan threw the phone aside and started to run again. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the phone was melting into the pavement. From the puddle of black rose the whatever-the-hell-it-was, laughing. Zagan turned back and suddenly found himself inside a house.
"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted.
"I'll tell you," the fiend's voice growled behind him. Zagan turned around to stare straight into the wild green eyes of the monster's burn-scarred face. "You're one of my children now."
There was a flash of light on metal and a tearing pain in Zagan's chest, and then there was nothing.
***The Next Day
"The void is growing bigger by the minute," Maegera said. She was briefing the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar on the situation that had recently arisen in the Matrix. "We first started watching the area when we noticed several Agents being sent there."
"So far," Moloch said, "nothing that goes into the void has come out. It's as if the area is being cut off from the rest of the Matrix."
Morpheus, Trinity, Neo, and Tank all watched the code screens, noticing the blackout bubble Maegera was referring to as the void.
"Any idea what's causing it?" Morpheus asked.
"None. But whatever's going on in there, the things that happen in the void are even more real than in the rest of the Matrix," Maegera said. She led them into another room in the ship where two bodies lay under shrouds. "I'll warn you, this is very strange." Maegera lifted the shroud. The sight took the others aback. Zagan's chest had four deep gashes in it. It looked like someone had taken a quartet of knives to him. The other shroud was lifted to reveal Boreas with her thigh and throat cut.
"What could have done this?" Trinity said.
"This happened to them in that void?" asked Tank.
Moloch nodded.
Neo and Morpheus were speechless.
"The more alarming thing," Maegera continued, "is that the void is not only growing bigger, but faster as well. At the time Zagan was killed, the void only encompassed the street where it started. Now, it has consumed the whole town."
"By our calculations, the void will overtake all of the Matrix in less than forty-eight hours," said Moloch.
***Meanwhile in the Matrix
Agents Reinhart, McCoy, and Roberts stood outside the void. Roberts and McCoy looked to Reinhart for what to do next. So far, none of the Agents that had been sent into the void had returned. Reinhart intended to change that. He nodded to the other Agents, and they walked through into the void. It was daytime in the Matrix, but it was somehow night in here. As the Agents walked along the dark streets, they noticed a trio of girls in white dresses jumping rope.
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you," they sang as two of the girls twirled the rope for the third. Reinhart and the others ignored them as they searched for the source of the error. So far, none of the three hundred Agents sent to investigate had made any contact since entering the void. Reinhart and his team here highly specialized Upgrades. They would not fail.
The Agents found what appeared to be a human standing beside a flickering streetlight. He was dressed in a striped sweater and a hat. He also wore a set of knives on the fingers of his right hand. He laughed as the Agents approached.
"This is it," said McCoy. "He is the source of the error."
"He does not identify as any known program in the Matrix," Roberts added.
"If that is the case, then he is-"
"Only human," Reinhart said.
The Agents all attacked at once. Reinhart lunged forward with a punch strong enough to penetrate steel. McCoy and Roberts each brought a kick whistling through the air toward the human. They didn't realize that the human was gone until their attacks followed through without touching a thing.
"Only human am I?" the human's voice said. McCoy's head was severed before any of the Agents had time to look toward the voice.
Reinhart and Roberts attacked. The human ducked underneath Reinhart's kick and extended his arm toward Roberts. Suddenly, his entire arm stretched as if made of rubber to impale Roberts with the knives. Now, only Reinhart remained. The Agent was confused. How could this thing be human? If it was human, how could it be doing these things? Before Reinhart had any more time to ponder this, he was speared by the very streetlight they'd spotted the human under.
By Andrew Ohning
Based on characters created by Wes Craven and the Wachowski Brothers
***The Next Morning in the Real World
"I'm ready," said Zagan.
The crew of the Amenhotep had picked up on an unusual concentration of Agents in the vicinity of a town called Springville in the Matrix. Late the previous night, a strange sort of bubble appeared. The bubble seemed to easily allow things in, but nothing came back out. Zagan and Boreas were being sent into the Matrix to investigate. Maegera, the Amenhotep's captain plugged her crew members in and loaded their minds into the computer-generated dreamworld of the Matrix.
Zagan opened his eyes in the Matrix, finding himself in an empty room. He quickly picked up the ringing phone and confirmed that he and Boreas was in. They made their way silently out of the house and out onto the street. What they saw there was beyond bizarre. Almost half of the street they were on was enveloped by a hazy blackness of some kind. Zagan pulled out his phone.
"Operator," Moloch said.
"Are you reading this thing?" Zagan said.
"Just the same as we did before," Moloch replied, "nothing coming out of it."
"Right. I'll check back in if we find out something new."
"All right." Moloch's end of the line clicked off.
"So what do we do now?" asked Boreas.
It didn't take long for Zagan and Boreas to figure out that there was no one in the town. After searching the area, they returned to the void which had grown a noticeable amount larger. Suddenly, Zagan's phone rang.
"What is it?" Zagan answered.
"I'm picking up multiple Agents headed your way," Moloch said.
"How many?"
"At least twenty."
"Twenty Agents for two of us? Don't you think that's a little overboard?"
"Twenty Agents!?" said Boreas.
"I don't thing they're coming for you two," Moloch said. "They're probably there to investi- Oh shit, they're only a block away from you! Get out of there!" Zagan and Boreas sprinted behind a tall hedge. A school bus pulled up on the street near the void, and twenty Agents filed out. They stood outside the void for a while and then started walking in, one after the other.
"Whatever's going on inside that void certainly has them worried," Boreas said. Zagan was about to agree when a chilling laughter echoed from within the void. As he and Boreas watched, they saw the forms of several Agents attempting to escape the void. The black mist swirled more densely around them and pulled them back in. All of a sudden, the void began to expand rapidly. Not a word was needed. Zagan and Boreas ran.
"Shit," Boreas shouted as she tripped on a discarded skateboard. As she struggled to get up, the void gained considerable ground on her.
"Run, Boreas!" Zagan shouted.
Boreas limped along as fast as she could, but the void was catching up to her. As Zagan turned to try and assist her, her injured ankle gave out under her and she fell again. The void came to a halt at the middle of her calves. Boreas pushed up on her hands and knees but began slowly sliding into the void.
"No!" she cried.
Zagan rushed over and grabbed her arms. He pulled with every ounce of enhanced strength he could muster, but it was no use. Boreas was gradually being sucked into the void.
"Please don't let me go," Boreas pleaded.
"I won't," Zagan said. He pulled her arms harder. Tears began to trickle down Boreas's face.
"It hurts," she muttered.
Suddenly, a shadowy form of a man emerged from the edge of the void. It loomed right up into Zagan's face.
"She's mine now!" it shouted, shoving Zagan away.
"No!" he cried. "Boreas!"
The shadow wrapped around Boreas and pulled her all the way inside the void. Zagan could hear her screams fading away. The phone rang.
"What the fuck just happened to Boreas?" Moloch said.
"I don't know," Zagan said. "The void expanded, and something pulled her in."
"That's it, I'm patching you an exit. Get the hell out-"
"No. I won't leave her behind." Zagan closed the phone and charged into the void.
Boreas found herself in a dark boiler room. The building stank of rusting metal and another metallic scent. For a moment she couldn't place the smell, but it came to her. Blood. A fiendish laughter resounded throughout the pipe-cluttered room. It was followed by the sound of metal scraping against metal.
"The little girls were always my favorites," said the same voice she'd heard laughing. Boreas whirled around to see a man in a faded red and green sweater standing behind her. He wore a tattered brown fedora atop his horrendously burn-scarred face and a set of knives on his right glove.
"Time to die, little girl," the man growled. He rushed at her.
Boreas jumped up and delivered a roundhouse kick to the man's head. He was sent sprawling on the floor. In an instant he was back on his feet. Boreas flipped over him and planted a hard kick to the small of his back. He crashed into a wall, and was suddenly facing back toward her.
"One, two," he said as he advanced, "Freddy's coming for you!" He lunged at Boreas who easily evaded the strike. "Three, four, better lock your door!" He appeared suddenly behind Boreas. Again she dodged his attack. His knives ended up only slashing her coat. "Five, six," he said before sinking rapidly into the floor, "grab a crucifix!"
Now the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. "Seven, eight, learn to stay up late!" Boreas was trying to be ready for an attack from any direction. "Nine, ten," the fiend erupted from a wall high above her. He came down, knives outstretched. Boreas threw herself backwards, planted her hands on the floor, and spun her legs to kick the descending monster across the room. Before he even realized what had happened, Boreas was on him, pummeling his chest and abdomen with a flurry of kicks.
Suddenly, the fiend grabbed one of Boreas's feet and slashed her thigh with his knives. She let out a shriek of pain and fell to the floor. No sooner than her back hit the ground, the thing was on her.
"As I was saying," he growled, "nine, ten, never sleep again!" His knives flashed, cutting open her throat.
"Boreas!" Zagan's voice cried. She tried to call out to him, but she was already dead.
Boreas was dead, and Zagan ran like mad. He could still hear the.whatever- the-hell-it-was cackling in the distance behind him. Every shadow around him seemed to take on the form of the fiend's clawed hand. Such surreal things kept happening that Zagan began to wonder if this was perhaps some new kind of Upgrade.As he rounded the corner at the end of the street, he glanced absently up at the street sign. The sight stopped him in his tracks. Somehow he was back at the other end of the street.
"Hell no," he said under his breath. He pulled his phone out and dialed his operator. The line clicked as the other end was picked up. "Moloch, get me the hell out of-"
"There is no 'out' anymore," crowed the voice of the whatever-the-hell-it- was over the line.
Zagan threw the phone aside and started to run again. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the phone was melting into the pavement. From the puddle of black rose the whatever-the-hell-it-was, laughing. Zagan turned back and suddenly found himself inside a house.
"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted.
"I'll tell you," the fiend's voice growled behind him. Zagan turned around to stare straight into the wild green eyes of the monster's burn-scarred face. "You're one of my children now."
There was a flash of light on metal and a tearing pain in Zagan's chest, and then there was nothing.
***The Next Day
"The void is growing bigger by the minute," Maegera said. She was briefing the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar on the situation that had recently arisen in the Matrix. "We first started watching the area when we noticed several Agents being sent there."
"So far," Moloch said, "nothing that goes into the void has come out. It's as if the area is being cut off from the rest of the Matrix."
Morpheus, Trinity, Neo, and Tank all watched the code screens, noticing the blackout bubble Maegera was referring to as the void.
"Any idea what's causing it?" Morpheus asked.
"None. But whatever's going on in there, the things that happen in the void are even more real than in the rest of the Matrix," Maegera said. She led them into another room in the ship where two bodies lay under shrouds. "I'll warn you, this is very strange." Maegera lifted the shroud. The sight took the others aback. Zagan's chest had four deep gashes in it. It looked like someone had taken a quartet of knives to him. The other shroud was lifted to reveal Boreas with her thigh and throat cut.
"What could have done this?" Trinity said.
"This happened to them in that void?" asked Tank.
Moloch nodded.
Neo and Morpheus were speechless.
"The more alarming thing," Maegera continued, "is that the void is not only growing bigger, but faster as well. At the time Zagan was killed, the void only encompassed the street where it started. Now, it has consumed the whole town."
"By our calculations, the void will overtake all of the Matrix in less than forty-eight hours," said Moloch.
***Meanwhile in the Matrix
Agents Reinhart, McCoy, and Roberts stood outside the void. Roberts and McCoy looked to Reinhart for what to do next. So far, none of the Agents that had been sent into the void had returned. Reinhart intended to change that. He nodded to the other Agents, and they walked through into the void. It was daytime in the Matrix, but it was somehow night in here. As the Agents walked along the dark streets, they noticed a trio of girls in white dresses jumping rope.
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you," they sang as two of the girls twirled the rope for the third. Reinhart and the others ignored them as they searched for the source of the error. So far, none of the three hundred Agents sent to investigate had made any contact since entering the void. Reinhart and his team here highly specialized Upgrades. They would not fail.
The Agents found what appeared to be a human standing beside a flickering streetlight. He was dressed in a striped sweater and a hat. He also wore a set of knives on the fingers of his right hand. He laughed as the Agents approached.
"This is it," said McCoy. "He is the source of the error."
"He does not identify as any known program in the Matrix," Roberts added.
"If that is the case, then he is-"
"Only human," Reinhart said.
The Agents all attacked at once. Reinhart lunged forward with a punch strong enough to penetrate steel. McCoy and Roberts each brought a kick whistling through the air toward the human. They didn't realize that the human was gone until their attacks followed through without touching a thing.
"Only human am I?" the human's voice said. McCoy's head was severed before any of the Agents had time to look toward the voice.
Reinhart and Roberts attacked. The human ducked underneath Reinhart's kick and extended his arm toward Roberts. Suddenly, his entire arm stretched as if made of rubber to impale Roberts with the knives. Now, only Reinhart remained. The Agent was confused. How could this thing be human? If it was human, how could it be doing these things? Before Reinhart had any more time to ponder this, he was speared by the very streetlight they'd spotted the human under.