"Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"
Prologue: Rebirth
The bullet flew through the chest, shattering bones, veins, and arteries. Blood seeped through the wound and onto the floor. Neo's vision began to fade. He saw Smith standing over him, watching. Everything went black.
Neo's heart beat slower. The flow of blood stopped. Death overtook him.
"Did it succeed?" the Agent asked.
"Yes. It is done."
"What do we do know?"
"Repair and recover. Destroy the Virus. Eliminate Zion. Send someone to gather the code."
"Yes, master."
"You did a good job, Matthews. But every good thing must end."
The Agent bowed low. "Of course."
The restart of the Matrix was more a shockwave of code restoration passing out from the Mainframe building. It caught Lynx in mid battle, shocking her. It passed Ghost as he lay in the dungeons of the Chateau. It passed the spot where the Oracle had been deleted, wiping out the last fragments of her codes. It flowed through Myst, yanking the Oracle's code from her, but leaving her with a vision.
A figure stood with his back to Myst. He raised his arms and yelled. Destruction rained around him.
A train sped through a station. Morpheus lay on the floor, unconscious, while a large, unkempt man laughed hysterically.
She saw a hovercraft fleeing a horde of Sentinels through the tunnels of the real world. Sentinels swarmed into Zion, spreading blood and fire in their wake. Shattered APUs littered the docks.
A massive ship, unlike any she had ever seen, floated beneath the ruined sky of the real world. It gave an almost bestial roar and launched bombs towards a glittering city on the horizon.
She saw a tall building. Smith stood on it, laughing. Seraph lay on the ground beside him, dead. She saw Trinity fighting the Twins. She saw Lynx running, Smith chasing her. She saw herself – burnt and bloodied – cradling Phoenix's head. Then she saw a single strand of code descending into blackness, and the Oracle's voice filled her thoughts.
"Change is the only constant in life. It is a dangerous game. Meet it well, Myst."
The wave of rebirth swept the Oracle's code into the recycling bin of the system. Ever efficient, the bin's manager recycled the code, filtering it into two lesser programs.
These programs quickly took form. One was a woman with long, white hair and green eyes. She wore a swirling white cloak and black sunglasses. The other was a man, with black hair and pitch black eyes, who wore a black suit, black undershirt, black dress pants, and a dark pair of sunglasses.
The wave of code renewal passed through the clones of Smiths, destroying the, and returning the bodies to the control of their original inhabitants. The one surviving Smith stood over Neo, laughing still.
The wave also swept up Neo's code. It gathered the fragments spread over the Matrix by his death and bonded them into one program. This program suddenly found himself standing in front of a large pair of doors. He pushed them open.
The two programs created from the Oracle's code greeted him.
"Welcome to the lands of the dead, Neo."