Vis a Vis

by SSJ-Alhazred

Reloaded to post-Revolutions, SLASH - Sparks, moping over his distinct lack of a social life, bumps into someone at the rave. And now that the war is over, what trouble is the Merovingian causing?

2. The Seventh Day

vis-à-vis
Alhazred - madarab20@hotmail.com

The Matrix and all related materials are copyright Warner Brothers, etc. No profit is generated by this work.

This 'fic contains pretty blatant slash, I advise you not to read if you're violently offended by it. The content is, however, more along the PG-13 lines this time around.

II. – The Seventh Day

A printed document three pages long wasn't nearly as precious as it would have been fifty or sixty years ago when Zion could afford making only a few pieces of paper a year. In actuality, not much had progressed in terms of how much could be made, but it had built up over the decades and recycling was always a way of life in the human city.

Morpheus had been looking over these three pages for the better part of a week. Seven days ago, he watched the war end. Six and a half days ago, he had been given three pieces of paper from the council.

A list was printed down both sides of each page, every row holding a name, an age, and the current status of those mentioned.

Councilor Dillard had been the bearer of bad news. Now that he thought about it, Morpheus realized the council tended to divide up on addressing him. Hamann was probably his biggest sympathizer, Dillard the group's utilitarian. If something had to be done, she saw it was done even if Morpheus was the one supposed to be doing it.

"I don't understand," He had said to her almost immediately after being handed the list at that council meeting.

She answered very succinctly. "The survivors of our navy can almost be counted on one hand, Captain Morpheus. If it is to be rebuilt, it will need people."

The glaring perversity of those pieces of paper became obvious very quickly then. The names were of every Machine-born citizen of Zion, the ones with plugs dotting their bodies and a data port in the backs of their heads. There were never many of them at any one time, there simply weren't that many people freed from the Matrix on a daily basis for them to be more than a minority. And so many of them had volunteered to defend the dock and died trying, they were now reduced to a dwindling few. And many of those survivors had come away from it with debilitating injuries.

But it was their ages that had taken the cake.

The unwritten rule of the age cap and the propensity of many captains to follow it were certainly turning into an inconvenience now. Of the five hundred some odd names, fifteen of those not wounded were over eighteen.

But even before knowing that, Morpheus had formulated a response for the council. "You're asking me to draft children for military service."

With Hamann and the others still silent, Councilor Dillard had told him, "No, we're ordering you. You are the only surviving captain without a crew."

To her credit, she hadn't enjoyed telling him this. But even Morpheus would do something the council told him to do; they weren't Locke, after all, and therefore much harder to pull off a...liberal interpretation of orders with.

The council session had had a lot of noise from the audience that day, though oddly, Locke had remained silent. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, Morpheus couldn't help but wonder if they might have went to Locke for this job, had the commander been machine-born.

But he wasn't.

And so, the list was now marred by Morpheus himself; the first thing he had done was cross off the names of the severely wounded, the ones who shouldn't have been on the list in the first place. And then he had crossed off everyone younger than sixteen.

And so began the process of elimination. Suffering from a short loss of control, the first name he circled was Kid's, as soon as he saw it. And then he went to cross it out, but reconsidered. It had caught his eye in the first place because Kid was the only one on the entire list he could imagine being happy over this.

After that, more were crossed out, some were circled, and some were circled and then crossed out afterwards.

That had left Morpheus with the task of getting on an elevator to the level of the city with the orphanage for younger machine-borns to hunt around for his potential conscripts.

That had been a trip. But he'd gotten it done.

Leaving those papers as he left his quarters, Morpheus tried not to think about it as he took a lift to the docks and eventually found himself in the room usually used for air traffic control when there was an actual fleet to direct. In the light of the room, he looked like he hadn't been sleeping well lately.

"How are they doing?"

His words as he walked in hung in the air, not foreboding or ominous but nonetheless hard to process, mostly because Link was now set on sleeping within the next two minutes. He hadn't slept in two days, having had the pleasure of working on the Hammer's repairs.

"Three hours straight," Link looked at the clock, checking over the status displays again.

Morpheus looked to the other end of what was once, and what would be again in the near future, Zion Control. Right now, the facility had the best-maintained construct equipment so it was doubling as a training area.

It was also why four of the many seats in this room were filled with someone freed from the Matrix in the recent past. All of them were from the orphanage; the council thought it was the best place to get draftees from, apparently. Morpheus hated Councilor Dillard sometimes; none of the others had the same sense of utilitarianism and the same utter lack of tact, especially in deciding that children without real families were the best choices for forcing into service.

The distinct sound of broken snoring snapped both Link and Morpheus out of their reveries, but it wasn't long before they remembered what the source of this seemingly absurd noise was; they promptly went back to ignoring it.

Thinking Neo had spoiled him, Morpheus was still concerned over the status of his impromptu trainees. He could remember Tank telling everyone how incredible it was, the sheer amount of information he was able to cram into Neo's brain. That had been the first tangible proof Morpheus saw regarding what Neo was, considering that no one else had ever held even a tenth of that downloaded skill and information.

The new students were no exception to this norm. Unlike what they had done with Neo, Morpheus had told them all to make choices about what they wanted to learn, made them read up on every fighting style to find one that matched their tastes. And then they did the same with weapons.

He turned to Link. "Did any of them rethink their choices?"

"He did," Link pointed off to an occupied chair. Said occupant was a forty-ish man named Dumont. He was older than most resistance fighters. Of course, they weren't really 'resistance' fighters anymore. "Went from small arms to high explosives to rifles."

Morpheus still wasn't sure he had any idea what to do with Dumont. The man was in his mid-forties, but he had been freed a long time ago. Until now he had worked in the orphanage and had gotten so attached to the children that he couldn't bear the thought of kids he'd watched grow up just run off alone in the direction of mortal danger. But he couldn't stop it, so he volunteered instead. It was, Morpheus had thought, a better choice than one of the even younger children.

This and other things on his mind, Morpheus looked over Link's shoulder at his screens. "They're almost done?"

"Yep, can I download or what?" Link accentuated his point by executing the next download he had lined up, this one for Kid.

Kid was the only one thrilled to be here, really. He'd gone with Jeet-Kune-Do, proficiency in small arms and a higher level of accuracy and agility. It was almost bizarre that he, of them all, was turning out to be the dedicated fighter of the group.

As much as it shouldn't have been, Kid's eagerness was the only solace Morpheus could find at the moment; even the man that had volunteered last didn't provide any.

But Kid wasn't going to be the first to finish having stupendous amounts of data and skill dumped into his brain. This honor came to Sark, the young man in the next chair over. Morpheus remembered Sark and his brother Crom very well. They weren't real brothers, but like many of the pairs who had been freed from the Matrix on the same day, they got along like they were.

Crom wasn't here, though he almost had been. He was a name on the list of capable orphans the council had handed Morpheus and told him to take 'volunteers' from. Kid came willingly, of course, as had Hertz, a fairly young girl in the farthest chair. She didn't have Kid's sense of odd patriotism, but she apparently had issues with boredom.

Having promptly told Morpheus off with a creative expletive, Sark, promptly threw himself in front of the proverbial bullet when his brother tried to volunteer on the idea that Morpheus might not take Sark's 'no' for an answer.

Pulling up an extra chair, Morpheus sat down to kill the minutes remaining minutes; he found himself thinking about this more than could possibly be healthy over the last few days. He couldn't help but feel that he was just training children to die.

~~~

"It's fucked up, Clo. It's just the weirdest thing."

"Lots of people have been having dreams about the end, Sparky. Okay, I'm no Freud, but I don't think it's that abnormal."

Sitting in the bar, nursing his drink, Sparks wondered if, perhaps, he should go home to get rest. This was his the first time off he'd gotten from helping on the Hammer repairs aside from the few and far between turns he had had at being one of the few to get one or two hours of sleep. That didn't qualify as 'rest' because it just made him want to sleep more.

But he'd gotten used to having company over the last few days and with Kid off for training, Sparks found his quarters exceedingly lonely. "Ah, c'mon Clotho. I don't even know whether to say it's a recurring dream or a nightmare. So what about you? You among those 'lots of people?'"

Sitting down at the table, Sparks' gracious host almost looked like any other woman in the shadows of her bar when the lights were off. He knew such was not the case, but then, he didn't really care beyond the fleeting, involuntary thought. She'd gotten used to having that effect on people. "Nah, it's been too long since I saw any of it up close. Besides, I still have my own night terrors."

"Yeah, that must still suck," Sparks conceded, taking a sip from his drink. He couldn't bring himself to completely binge on alcohol this early in the morning. "So, how's the Knossos holding up these days?"

"Hmm, better. Less army guys of course, but more people celebrating," Clotho tilted her head slightly. "I haven't seen you in a couple months, so what's going on in your life?"

"Life? What's that?" His face fell. "Actually, I'm seeing someone...I think, kind of. When I'm not busy working on the Hammer and fixing the whole damn thing by myself."

"Sparks, how can you be 'kind of' seeing someone? That's like when a woman says she's 'kind of' pregnant," Clotho said.

Unfortunately, this did not have the effect on Sparks she had hoped it would, for he found this statement to be incredibly funny. It was like when Link had first joined the Nebuchadnezzer, and even before shipping out he was constantly shocked and scared out of his mind by the insanity prevalent in the crew, especially Neo being so casual and humble about himself only to start flying and doing other insane shit. Sparks always thought Link's ulcers were amusing, after he'd already seen Neo unplugged and as the One a bit himself.

Link was certainly a character. He had someone waiting for him at home. Sparks could tell, or at least, he could nowadays. The look in his fellow operator's eyes was a determination given to nothing else in life, the will to crawl through Hell in order to reach the one who meant more to him than anything.

And it was the same reason Sparks was sitting at a gun turret on the Hammer, despite having never been a very good marksman. Ghost was racking up more kills than the rest of them combined, but that didn't stop Sparks, he had someone to get home to as well.

He hadn't seen Kid since the Logos had shipped out, and that had been less than twelve hours after they had met, but that night/morning was the first time in a long while Sparks had someone to care about other than Ghost and Niobe. He wasn't going to lose that as long as he wasn't dead, but the machines were fairly close to putting in their own two cents.

For every Sentinel he shot down, fifteen more appeared in his field of fire. The closest one under the reticule was always his primary target, because his turret was close to a pad and the more pads working, the faster Niobe would get them to Zion. He couldn't bear the thought that Kid had been the victim of a Sentinel already, but he knew he would be on the front lines somehow. It was his nature.

"We won't make it," Roland yelled, "We have to blow the EMP now!"

Another Sentinel fell under Sparks' guns, and its brothers came to take its place as they always did. He killed more, more came. Every few seconds, more made it to the Hammer and did a little more damage. This had gone on for awhile now, and it was all adding up. For a moment, Sparks thought Roland was right, as much as he hated it, as much as he hated Roland for suggesting it.

Seeing Roland send Link to the main deck to arm it put his fears to rest, because Sparks knew Link wouldn't touch that switch until the Hammer was inside Zion, until that blast would save what he was coming home for. So he kept firing at the damn squiddies, doing his part to make sure Link had that chance.

Roland had underestimated Niobe again and was again proven wrong. The cursory meeting with Commander Locke as he had his usual heart attack while everyone prepared for the second wave lasted too long for Sparks; he set off looking through the mob of workers salvaging what they could of the Hammer's weapons and the guns from every disabled APU. It was a veritable crowd doing whatever they could accomplish in the intermission allotted to them until the machines regrouped.

Kid wasn't so easy to find, despite that fact that he had gained some impromptu popularity by hauling Commander Mifune's corpse out of his APU and using it to open Gate 3, letting the Hammer in before the damaged craft went 'splat' against it. Sparks didn't find him until everyone was in the temple.

He had now fallen from his combat high, trying to find something to do besides waiting to die. He turned around only for Sparks to grab him in a fairly large hug, rivaling the death grips his mother had been good at giving. On the other hand, Sparks' language once he let go was much deeper in the gutter than hers, not loud but certainly not calm. "Jesus-fucking-christ, you could've gotten yourself killed!"

Shy as ever and reeking of blood and grit, Kid wasn't even jaded; he had either, like Sparks, resigned himself to the fact that barring an act of God, they were going to die within in the next hour, or more likely, he still believed to this very second that Neo would save their asses. It was most likely this belief that let Kid keep his calm. Or at least what his version of 'calm' was. "Yeah...well...you could've too."

That was true, and Sparks couldn't help but be amused by it. While it may have been touching to the point of nausea, it was also genuine, and that was the important part. It was why Sparks had resolved, long before he had walked into the temple, to go right back to the entrance, claim a gun and join the last stand.

"You know, I wouldn't mind being proved wrong about now," Sparks finished, the echoes of the first digger breaching the city and falling to the ground reverberating thorough the temple's stone walls. He was talking about the One, of course. Sparks didn't know if Kid ever picked up on the fact that he wasn't a believer. "Stay back here this time, wouldja?"

He didn't look back, but at the entrance he did manage to snag an EMP rifle and find a good perch. The Sentinels came as they had at the dock, a cloud of metal swarming down before they...sat on the floor. As many as would fit literally sat on the ground like big cats about to pounce, staring at the barricade and making some obnoxious sound...

...like an alarm clock. It sounded a lot like Sparks' alarm clock.

In fact, it was his alarm clock, as he noticed when he woke up and opened his eyes. His next course of action was to smack the thing off and swear rather unintelligibly. The swearing was more due to the fact that he had been curled up on the floor as opposed to his uncomfortable but decidedly not-floor bed and his back was sending very nasty pain signals to his brain.

His dream was disturbing and bizarre as well. Dreaming about the end of the war was bad enough, but dreaming about his attempts at talking about it with an old flame just yesterday morning was downright freaky. Especially since it had inspired him to sleep on the floor and snore at Link in the first place.

Of course, the entire city was a wreck lately and at least here, with a so-called job to do, Sparks was free of someone knocking on his door to get him to perform some inane job. Sure, the war was over, but that didn't make everything hunky-dory with the city overnight.

And very little was getting done to fix it. Zion's precarious balance of resources didn't allow for large-scale reconstruction, only a half-hearted cleanup effort. Most of this effort was dedicated to the city proper; few people wanted to venture onto the docks and clean the battlefield.

"Sleep well?"

Hearing someone addressing him, Sparks snapped out of his contemplation. Wincing as his back performed a snap-crackle-pop serenade, Sparks forced himself to stand. "I'll smack you."

"Yep, you slept well," Link yawned, looking over his many, many computer screens. Morpheus didn't pay much heed to Sparks, simply intent on watching the screens over Link's shoulder. "You didn't miss much. The floor can't be that comfortable, man."

"Oh, very," Sparks chirped, feigning a lighter, far more absurd mood. "Hey, if you wanna go sleep in your bed now, ya sissy, it's my shift."

"Yeah, yeah, believe me, I will," Link glanced to his keyboards and back at the screens again a few times, tapping keys and touch-points on the readouts every so often. "I just want to finish this round of downloads first."

Sparks didn't complain. It was common sense, after all, and Link would certainly want sleep. The two of them had worked on fixing the Hammer all week with five hours of sleep between them before Link had horribly lost the coin toss for first shift on the actual operating job. For now, neither of them objected to sharing the responsibility of Operating for Morpheus' students if, by definition, it meant they could do it in shifts.

On the other hand, Link might not actually get sleep in favor of losing some more with his wife. Now that he was in a similar situation, Sparks had done the same thing during the single, solitary break he'd taken away from the Hammer.

Morpheus broke his silence when it became evident that Link wasn't going to stop working on his own. "Link, go home."

Opening his mouth to debate the issue, Link quickly closed it again after he looked at Morpheus for a second. He pulled the headset off and stood up, stretching as he did so. He'd been in the Operator's chair for a long time.

Sparks still didn't actually like this new responsibility one bit, and he had a feeling Link was thinking along the same lines. With no war, both sides could forego maintaining their armed forces unless something else was going on. And the council must've known what was happening because they hadn't batted an eye when half the city brought up the fact that these resources might better have been spent fixing the damage.

For awhile, Sparks had been tempted to pester Morpheus for information, considering he wasn't raising any kind of ruckus. But then, he realized Morpheus was also a bit more subdued since the end of the war.

And at the moment, he didn't have time; the downloads were done; Link had left him with the task of monitoring whatever Morpheus wanted to do next.

He let the data transfers fall off on their own, allowing everyone to open their eyes as much as they felt like moving. "Care for a run, Sir?"

Gesturing to an empty chair with an exceedingly over-exaggerated sweeping hand motion, Sparks already knew Morpheus would say 'yes.' He wasn't quite as...sadistic as Niobe was on the occasions she had trained someone, but he was quite the instructor, nonetheless.

Sark and Hertz actually moved first, Kid close behind. Sark was also the first to say anything, looking like he wanted to get up but letting himself slump when he saw Morpheus looking at them all, mumbling what seemed to be "Bloody fuckin' hell" in his ever present English accent.

Looking like he wanted to say something along the lines of "I'm getting too old for this," Dumont actually sat up straight and stretched a little, working out the odd stiffness being stationary for hours while his mind had worked overdrive.

Kid actually perked up when he saw Morpheus walk over and give them all a once-over, but Morpheus spoke before he could say anything.

He was half-tempted to let Kid talk, unable to shake the feeling that he would probably say what Neo had said at this point. But training many was always different than training someone one-on-one, and Morpheus had the mindset of keeping his air of leadership. "Now...which of you knows Kung-Fu?"

Sparks loaded his sparring program as soon as Morpheus was plugged in. Link was still using Tank's old dojo program and he felt rather guilty for tossing it aside, but it was a small map and Sparks didn't think it was well suited to five people at once.

Morpheus and his students found themselves on the a wide-open, circle-shaped rooftop of a skyscraper; a single little structure, with a door, jutting up near one of the edges, and a substantial wind, the result of their altitude, was blowing.

They had kept their residual self-images, Sparks hadn't built specific clothes into the program, and Morpheus was glad for the insight.

His hair brown instead of its real-world silver, Dumont wore normal clothes under a blue Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms jacket.

Sark and Hertz went the leather route to some degree. The latter donned a buckled overcoat not entirely unlike what Morpheus wore and sunglasses tinted red to match her hair, hair just long enough to be tied up in a small bun. A brown duster, red-and-gray T-shirt, khaki pants and lighter wraparound shades completed Sark's ensemble, while Kid's clothes, the expensive overcoat buttoned from collar to waist over a formal shirt and slacks, were a perfect match for what Neo used to wear. After a few seconds, though, he took off the sunglasses.

That was actually a little disturbing; Kid had never seen Neo inside the Matrix.

One hand tucked behind his back, Morpheus gestured at their surroundings. "This is a sparring program, similar to the programmed reality of the Matrix. You all know the basic rules like gravity and inertia are the result of a computer program, but bending some and breaking others isn't as easy as knowing; it is a skill you must learn."

Shifting his weight slightly, Morpheus beckoned them forward. "Someone hit me. If you can."

Sark blinked behind his sunglasses, not expecting something entirely like this. He glanced at the others and, when they didn't move, took Morpheus up on the offer. "I'll bite..."

Morpheus didn't stay still as his initial opponent approached, moving slightly back and forth as Sark did the same in a loose stance, his thought on catching Morpheus off guard.

Morpheus really moved when Sark finally tried to kick him across the face.

And he missed completely. Bringing his right hand up, the other still behind his back, Morpheus blocked the next two kicks and a quick jab with ease. Sark was fast, and he knew how to accept the fact that his environment was not real, but as Morpheus had said, breaking the rules was a technique to be learned. He was pleasantly surprised when he brought his left arm out and went for a blow of his own, his punch stopping when Sark, startled, leaned back and caught his forearm.

"Hmm, good reflexes," Morpheus said, quite serious but quite aware that, despite this, all of them still had a way to go before they could truly take him on.

But now, Kid and Dumont joined the fight when Morpheus pushed Sark back. Both of them attacked while Sark recovered, and again, Morpheus easily stepped around their blows. Catching Kid's arm, he hopped off of his feet, pushed off of Kid with one leg and kicked him across the face with the other. His other boot knocked Dumont for a loop on his way down, but neither of them fell.

Quite suddenly, Morpheus felt eyes on his back, and he stepped to the side and turned just in time to see a fist fly by his face; Hertz had actually managed to sneak up on him. It was insofar the closest someone had come to landing a blow. But Morpheus was still much faster and barely showed any signs of effort as he blocked and parried every blow she tried to land, finally letting her follow-through change his stance to something Morpheus could use to his advantage.

With the angle just right, Morpheus waited for Sark to come at him again and twisted his arm, using him as leverage. Swinging off his feet and back around Sark's shoulder, Morpheus kicked Kid square in the chest near the end of the motion. Hertz hopped over him before he even hit the ground, flying at Morpheus with a kick of her own, but he had long since landed. Grabbing her leg with both hands, he flung her to the side, knocking Dumont flat on his back.

"Good," Morpheus announced, unclipping his own shades from the bridge of his nose, watching the four of them sit up, resigned to defeat.

"What was good about that," Sark half-spat, wiping a small line of blood off of his lower lip. Being beaten by Morpheus had given him a bigger bruise to his ego than it had to the others, apparently.

"How did I win?" Morpheus asked them.

Trying to catch his breath and relax from the adrenaline rush, Kid looked up at Morpheus and said, "You're too fast."

Hertz, thinking the answer quite obvious, got on her feet and helped Dumont up. "Um...you've been doing this longer, so you're better than us?"

"Yeah, and the wind-shear helped him too," Sark rolled his eyes.

"Really?" Morpheus turned to him. This was a good opening to explain the logic they needed to learn. "Do you believe my strength or my speed has anything to do with my muscles in this place? You think that's actually wind blowing against your face?"

Most understood this concept without having to contemplate it for too long, and the looks on their faces seemed to suggest that the obviousness of the truth was sinking in rapidly. Morpheus let them all stand up. "Again."

In the real world, Sparks had a complete view of the action. A construct was simple enough to be decoded into a visual image, unlike the Matrix itself, and it was a great view.

Morpheus was still flooring all of them. Though by now Sparks knew he had been (literally) beating the reality of un-reality down with a hammer to them, he was still better at exploiting the knowledge. Wincing when Morpheus landed a particularly hard blow on Kid, Sparks dug up the jump program; they'd get to it. Eventually.

~~~

The ninth iteration of the Matrix looked a lot like the eight iteration. There were, however, subtle differences. While version eight had been based on the late twentieth century, the Architect had opted to bump the timeline up a decade or three.

And the people never even noticed the difference.

Contemplating this, the Architect checked his watch for the seventh time in just as many seconds, loathing the woman he was waiting for, for being seventy seconds late. He didn't like being inside the Matrix proper, the environment had too many variables for comfort and calm.

Even his pristine white suit looked out of place against the park bench he was sitting on with its chipped paint and old wood. Fortunately for his patience, the one he was meeting had arrived. With company.

"Waiting long?"

"Please," the Architect said, grimacing at the Oracle's sad attempt at human humor. He glanced at the friends she'd brought, her bodyguard Seraph and a little girl. He didn't know and didn't want to know who she was, unless she could eliminate the inherent imbalance in the math that just never seemed to have a solution. It was here again, he could feel it, sense it. In another hundred years, give or take twenty or even thirty, that equation would try to solve itself, end up returning incorrect solutions and the One would be randomly inserted again with the core programming of the Matrix.

That code was as impressive as it was daunting.

But, the Architect mused, that was a century away. "What do you want?"

"I'm sure you know," the Oracle sat down next to him, and the little girl sat down next to her, in turn. She stretched her arm out. "Candy?"

The Architect shook his head 'no' and looked at her as if she had grown three heads, but she simply handed the little wrapped simulation of flavored sugar to the little girl. "Do you know what the others have been up to?"

"I suppose they're either sitting around or causing trouble," the Architect answered. At the Oracle's expression, he realized that she was trying to tell him something simple; he was vastly underestimating a problem. "How much trouble, dare I even invite this ludocrisy?"

"It's not so ludicrous," the Oracle said, looking across the park. "Painful and not to be taken lightly, on the other hand..."

Quite suddenly, the Architect knew who she was talking about. One exile program, out of dozens, was always more trouble than his original purpose ever intended, and his cohorts just made it worse. "And what do you want me to do about it?"

The Oracle smiled as she answered. "Oh, it's never about what we want, just what we'll do."

"Don't analyze me and return entire functions of rhetorical psychobabble, Woman," the Architect said, trying to put some bite into the words and failing miserably.

"If you wish," the Oracle shrugged. "But I know what your interests are, and I know he's looking at this like the greatest opportunity he's ever had. You know the kinds of things he'll do just for fun."

That was true, but the Architect wasn't going to outright admit she was right. "And your suggestion is?"

Instead of giving the appropriate response, the Oracle put her arm around the shoulders of the little girl. "This is Sati. Her father handles power plant recycling, her mother makes interactive software."

Glancing at the young girl, the Architect arched an eyebrow; he couldn't figure out what the Oracle was getting at. "Her father probably has his hands full these days."

"Sati," the Oracle smiled at her, "this is the Architect."

The little girl waved at him and gave an overly cheery 'hi' before the Oracle continued. "I've known him for a looooong time, and he may seem really grumpy, but he's really just a teddy bear who watches too much TV."

Clearly not liking where this was going, the Architect said, "What inanity are you proposing?"

~~~

"He can't be gone. I just...I won't believe it."

All things considered, Morpheus thought Kid was taking the idea of Neo's death better than he expected. This wasn't saying all that much, but Morpheus would take what he could get. "I'm sorry, I just thought you should know there's been...just nothing. No word. I don't think Neo expected to come back when he went to them,"

It wasn't hard to figure out who 'them' were, but that sent Kid jumping to all sorts of nasty conclusions. Still sitting in his chair, half from exhaustion over his combat training and half from shock, Kid suddenly found it was quite difficult to breath. Neo and Trinity were gone. Well, they were probably gone; a possibility he had denied and forgotten for as long as possible. As long as he hadn't asked, he hadn't had to assume the worst. He could pretend they were on their way back, or...pretend that there had been word from them. "Did...did they kill them? Do you think they did?"

"No...no, I don't think so," Morpheus said. It was the truth; if anything, Neo was gone because of Smith. Morpheus had seen Smith twice since his unpleasant experience wrought on by Cypher, once looking at Link's monitors and once in the maintenance hallways. It was enough to know that Smith had turned into something far larger than a simple program.

Trying to look unobtrusive and failing miserably, Sparks resisted the temptation to get up from behind his monitors and say something. He was surprised enough as it was that Morpheus hadn't asked him to leave while he told Kid about Neo. Of course, Morpheus might've been talking to Ghost; Ghost knew about both of them through means that Sparks didn't care to remember.

Pulling one knee to his chest, resting his forehead on it, Kid started to quietly sob. "If...if he's gone? It's not fair. It's…it's not fair…"

That was very true, and, much as he didn't want to, Morpheus had to add to it. Telling Kid about Neo beforehand, he felt, was the lesser of two evils; better that he hear it among friends instead of at a critical moment down the road. He sat down in the next chair over, letting Kid cry in peace for the moment. Once he calmed down, Morpheus said, "I thought you should know what to expect instead of being blindsided."

After a while, Kid took a deep breath and calmed down, but he didn't look at Morpheus face-to-face. "Thanks. Really, I'll...I'll be fine."

Morpheus didn't believe for a second that Kid wouldn't back down over anything simply because Neo wouldn't have, but maybe that was a good thing in this case; it was certainly better than if he locked himself away for days on end.

Of course, he didn't believe that he was okay, either, and planned to keep an eye on that. "Very well."

Sparks knew it too. He stood once Morpheus left and Kid got up from his chair. He wasn't sure what to say himself, and he wasn't sure he wanted to say anything; he was starting to feel downright jealous of Neo despite knowing how ridiculous it was, knowing hero worship was completely out of the ballpark they were in, whatever ballpark that was.

Kid just worshipped Neo a lot.

But Sparks still didn't know what he should say. So he didn't say anything, because Kid wasn't okay, and not long after Morpheus was out the door, he broke down again in Sparks' arms. "Y'know, um...if Trinity's gone like we think, I'd bet money Ghost'll get in on handling the memorial service, maybe you could help him or something..."

That sounded like a nice thing to do and Kid was quite grateful for the opportunity, but the implications of what Sparks said sent red flags waving in Kid's mind. "So you didn't think there was a chance either?"

Finally confidant that Kid could stand on his own without falling over, Sparks let him go. "I was going to talk to you about it earlier, I wanted to, but..."

"It's not fair," Kid said once more.

"You're right," Sparks answered. He would never admit it, but a little thing like the end of the war and all had certainly made him a believer in the One, even if Neo met a less fortunate fate than befit him. "It's not."

The ensuing silence as the conversation completely died lasted longer than Sparks was entirely comfortable with, so he took it upon himself to re-start the dialog. "Wanna ditch this place? Grab something to eat?"

Kid managed to look a little less in the rough for a minute, but the sheer pain Morpheus had inevitably delivered using the worst news he had ever been given was nowhere close to gone, only lost in shock and the mercy of Sparks' company.

It was made worse when they walked out onto the dock proper to reach the closest elevator. The place was a graveyard, a domed mausoleum caked with the signs of war like any battlefield even after a week of cleanup. Every now and then, one of the few workers willing to be here could be seen carrying the newly found body of a fallen soldier or volunteer instead of debris or building material.

"I hate it up here," Kid couldn't help but look around. The Hammer was putzing around in the air, where it had been since the important repairs were finished. Roland refused to land for anything other than a re-supply, and it would be a tough job indeed to find anyone who wasn't glad that someone still had their finger on an EMP in case a Sentinel poked its head around Gate 3 or through one of the holes in the dock wall.

It had been the distracting light Kid could watch whenever he headed to and from Zion Control for his training, but not today. Today, he couldn't help but look around. He knew the exact places on the exact walkway where his escorts had died defending him on the way to Captain Mifune. For that matter, he knew the exact place where he had had to pull Captain Mifune's body from his APU to make room for himself. Gate 3 was, at least, relatively clean, if still not repaired.

Sparks caught him looking at it. "You saved our asses, y'know."

"It was full of blood."

"What?" Sparks blinked.

"Captain Mifune's APU, when I pulled him out...they...they just shredded right through him, the cockpit was just...red. I didn't even realize I was covered in it until after the EMP went off, I had to go home for a change of clothes before I went to the temple."

"Hmm," Sparks mused, suddenly remembering the smell of blood Kid had carried in the temple that night. He had figured it was his own, from whatever cuts and bruises he had gotten in the APU, only now realizing that he hadn't been bleeding nearly enough for that, for the smell to stick to him despite none of it being on his clothes. "No wonder I couldn't find you here."

Still staring at Gate 3, Kid didn't move until Sparks prodded him towards the elevator. "They're really gone, aren't they?"

"Yeah, probably" Sparks told him, trying to imagine what it must've felt like to have saved the Hammer and gone through the battlefield like Kid had only to walk out now and not only forget to ignore the rubble, but see those very same killing machines putting it back together. "But they saved our asses too."

~~~

There wasn't much hacking to do in Zion. Consequently, Sark had found himself trying to hack into the few computer networks that existed not for the content they had, but for keeping his skills fresh. Hacking in Zion was a lot like hacking in the Matrix; the OSs were different but the ideas were the same.

And so, Sark came to find himself sitting in the Zion Archive for much of his free time; this time had dwindled since Morpheus had kindly introduced him to the military thing, but the remaining distance between the firewalls and his ability to sneak around them or otherwise utterly destroy them had dwindled.

The Zion Archive had the best protection he had seen in a long time. With military clearance, only one section of the archive was still restricted; a section only the council had the security codes to access.

And today, when Sark convinced the Instructor that he was, indeed, a member of the council and she let him in to the archive of one single, solitary file, he felt rather proud of himself. Putting on the headset at the fairly secluded station in the bland metal room, he opened the file.

And the Instructor responded in due kind. "Welcome to the Zion Archive. You have selected historical file number 12-b...'The Second Renaissance.'"

A second voice joined this one. "What's up?"

Jumping almost clear out of his rather uncomfortable chair, Sark found that, where no one had been standing five seconds ago, Hertz had appeared from nowhere. "What the fuck, girl, gave me a heart attack!"

She sat down in the next chair over. "I do that a lot. You know it's easier to walk without making noise than people think."

Finding it odd that a girl he didn't know all that well was talking to him of her own volition, Sark answered, "So, what's going on?"

"I'm bored," Hertz said, a little more bubbly than she usually was. "Actually, I followed you down here. I wasn't expecting you to kind of, y'know, spend time in the archives."

"Hey, I may be a badass hacker but I didn't get good grades in college by never going to the library," he smiled.

She didn't really see him smile; feeling like the stereotype for the sheltered little American girl, she was distracted by his accent to no end. "Are you, y'know, really from England or just..."

"Yeah, I was," he answered. "At least as much as one can be these days, huh?"

"So what do you do down here?"

"I read up on stuff." Sark turned back to the monitor for his particular station, discreetly saving the file he had just found and bringing up something less suspicious looking. "Actually...if you don't tell anyone..."

"I won't tell anyone," Hertz raised her hands innocently. "Especially since you haven't told me yet."

"I'm serious." Growing a little nervous, he added, "Christ, especially not Morpheus."

"I won't tell Morpheus, already," she rolled her eyes. "You act like Morpheus is Satan."

"I like to think Morpheus can just piss off," Without skipping a beat, he leaned closer to her and half-whispered and fully lied, "I've been trying to hack into the restricted archives."

Unable to fathom his reasoning behind this, Hertz answered, "Why?"

"You're not the only bored one," Sark started typing, going away from the Instructor's menu and trying to find some way into the system itself. "There's almost nothing I can't look at now that I have military clearance, but I just...wonder what the rest is. What the hell are those wankers on the council hiding?"

"Got anything yet?"

Again, Sark found her rather odd. She was sixteen years old and looked so innocent it was nauseating, yet she was so blatant and without fear of pretty much anything that it was frightening. He still didn't tell her the truth, either. "No, not yet. I usually come here right from training, go for a few hours, then I don't try what I did yesterday the next time."

"Speaking of which, when do you think we're actually going to smack Morpheus?" She said, leaning back in her chair.

"Long time," he said. "Unless we get in there and practice ahead of time."

"Maybe we can ask one of the Logos crew," Hertz wondered. "Maybe you can. Captain Niobe freaks me out."

Sark looked at her, wondering if she was serious. "We're training with an old geezer and I hear the other one..."

"Kid," she said.

"Kid; I hear he's...y'know. With the Logos Operator."

Her eyebrows raising, Hertz answered, "Really? Dude, he's like, twice as old, that's some kinky stuff. I hear he was freed by the One."

"Shut up," Sark near-jumped. "Why do I hear the weird shit and you hear the good stuff?"

"Because I've actually had a conversation with everyone else. Conversation; you should try it some time," she laughed.

With a sigh, Sark fell back into his chair. "Conversation is how most people make fools of themselves."

~~~

Kid had quietly cried himself to sleep at some point. He had lost any appetite he may have had and Sparks just watched him sleep. He was probably having nightmares over Neo and Trinity, his mind putting together all sorts of vile scenarios for their deaths.

Sparks had been there before, in the not too distant past, as had Niobe and Ghost. In recent weeks, the first time had been when news of the Osiris spread. It had hurt everyone, and then the rest of the fleet being slaughtered just made it worse for those who were left. There were many ways a Sentinel could rip someone apart. Piece by piece, or all at once, or a mercifully quick stab through the face...Sparks could actually remember having to consciously stop thinking about which one best fit his fellow Operators that had been slaughtered, the people he had learned the trade with. Cypher and Bane had condemned more of them to death, and now only two others were left.

For awhile, Sparks figured that Kid was lucky, knowing the machines hadn't killed his idols like that. But then, his imagination probably thought up more gruesome fates for them than a Sentinel would be able to manage.

Nevertheless, when the knock came on the door, Sparks was worried Kid would wake up. Nightmares or not, he deserved rest after the pounding Morpheus had given him.

He creaked the door open halfway, standing obtrusively in it. "Ghost, buddy, you can be taught!"

For a brief moment, Sparks thought he saw a smile on Ghost's face, but it was, more than likely, his eyes playing tricks on him. "Niobe sent me to find you."

"And what does our illustrious Captain wish of my genius now?" Sparks took a half-bow. Ghost was being rather serious, but, Sparks realized, he was being overly serious even for his usual stoic self. He hadn't entirely been himself since news of Trinity's death reached him, nor did anyone expect him to be.

"They brought it back."

Quite instantly, Sparks grew turned serious himself, looking at Ghost until he received a nod for confirmation, fully aware of what Ghost was talking about and not quite able to believe it. "You're kidding."

Ghost shook his head. "It looks like its in one piece."

That was good news, Sparks thought. "Give me five minutes."

Closing the door as Ghost turned to leave, Sparks found that Kid had indeed woken up. He was simply sitting on the edge of his bed, not looking any better than when he had broken down. And Sparks didn't particularly like having to tell him that he was about to leave. "I gotta run."

"Did he mean the Logos?" Kid asked.

"He better, or I'll want to kill him twice as much," Sparks answered, hunting around the room for the bag he kept whatever portable pieces of equipment he owned in. It had become lost through disuse lately.

Kid ended up finding it instead. Slinging it over his shoulder and slipping on his (still desperately old) boots, Sparks had a random thought. "Hey, if I don't get bogged down fixing the thing, we can go out tonight. I know a good place we can get drunk off our asses."

"I'm too young." Ultimately still shell-shocked over Neo and Trinity, Kid tried to laugh, under absolutely no delusion that Sparks either didn't realize this or, for that matter, cared.

"I know," Sparks smiled. "I know. Best years of your life to get smashed, Dude. I was fifteen when I learned this valuable lesson; hell, I still remember my first hangover...wait, no, if I remembered it, it wouldn't be a hangover."

~~~

"Now there's a sight."

"You know I can't help but think," Niobe tilted her head to the side, "Squiddies have been that close to her before."

"Look at it this way, Niobe," answered Ghost, "They could've dragged her back instead."

Watching the small number of Sentinels set the Logos down on the dock floor before untangling their mechanical tentacles from it and flying off, Niobe couldn't help but be a little suspicious. Roland, she imagined, was throwing nine kinds of fit as the Hammer stayed fairly close and above its working guns pointed downward. The dock workers had all stopped what they were doing to watch, as well.

The entrancement also grew as this flight of Sentinels began to hover in the air, staring right back at everyone. Once they moved, they did not move to leave the city as would have been expected. Instead, they flittered around the dock itself and began picking up the mess the undermanned workers had yet to reach.

Niobe could visualize Roland's heart attack already as she made her way inside her ship with Ghost.

"Looks like they had to patch a few things up," Ghost said. He stomped his foot on a panel in the floor just inside the ship; it was newer metal than the plates surrounding it. Similar sights dotted the infrastructure, some single panels like this one, entire pieces of equipment elsewhere looked unmarred by age and use.

Before they moved farther in, running footsteps echoing off of the dock floor prompted both of them to turn and look back out the hatch, only to see Sparks catching up with them. "Sorry, sorry! Elevator line was a killer."

"You could've climbed the shaft," Niobe raised an eyebrow at him before she turned and resumed trying figure out exactly what the machines had done to her ship.

Sparks knew she was joking. At least, he thought she was; Niobe's jokes tended to sound a lot like Niobe's normal attitude. He replied, "But that requires effort."

"So put in the effort to climb up and check the main deck," she yelled from her quarters. Chuckling from the lockers he was going through, Ghost remained very far away from this conversation.

Grumbling as he climbed the ladder, Sparks went through a mental list of everything he went under-appreciated for on the Logos since he had started operating for Niobe and Ghost. Of course, the list he always came up with was at least a thousand items long and he never felt a need to consider that, maybe, a few of them never had any place besides in his head. But it was still nice to imagine he was Martin Luther nailing a printout of them all to Niobe's door.

His thoughts on this rather important subject matter were disrupted when he reached the main deck. For that matter, Ghost's inventory of the few man-portable weapons kept on the Logos was interrupted when Sparks fell down the ladder yelling "Oh-lord-jesus-fuckness!"

Precisely two seconds after he crashed onto the floor, Sparks jumped to his feet and ducked behind Ghost, grabbing an EMP rifle from the locker and hiding behind him. As he did this, a straggling Sentinel dropped its arms down around rungs on the ladder and slowly edged its way through the narrow hole in the upper deck, unwrapping itself once it could sit almost cat-like on the floor.

"Sparks, put the gun down," Niobe had ran back from her quarters by this point, "You'll just make it mad at you."

Looking from the Sentinel to Sparks and back again, Niobe added, "Sparks, don't put the gun down."

The Sentinel, however, did not wait for Sparks to decide whether or not to shoot it before he passed out from fright; instead, it hopped back into the air and flew clear through the hatch as if it had never been inside.

"Okay, that was scary," Sparks tossed his weapon back onto the rack, his hands shaking. "That thing could've killed us!"

"Why don't you check your equipment, Sparks?" Ghost asked, quite obviously proposing that his Operator should simply sit down and shut up.

When Niobe was finally satisfied that the Logos hadn't been overly desecrated, she was about to sit down in the cockpit and give the engines a try, but Sparks once again demanded attention.

"Hey guys, I think you should see this," he called.

Ghost was already looking over his shoulder by the time Niobe was there. "Beware Greeks baring gifts?"

Reading over what was displayed on Sparks' center monitor, Niobe could see what he meant.

I require a human presence within the Matrix. Please consult with me as soon as possible.

Deciding to ask the question that all three of them had certainly thought of, Niobe raised an eyebrow. "What the hell is this?"

"Disc was in the drive," Sparks raised his hands, trying to look innocent. "That's all that's on it."

Being the first to think of any possible answer, Ghost spoke, "From the Oracle?"

Considering how eager the machines had been to bring the Logos back in the first place, Niobe couldn't help but wonder just how serious this was. "Sparks, have you checked the engines yet?"

"I was about to, why?" He blinked, not liking where this was headed. "Wait, wait, you're not thinking of checking this out, please tell me you're not."

"What do you think?" She asked. In reality, they were going nowhere until their superiors said otherwise, but Sparks and Ghost knew Niobe. She didn't have to be dating Deadbolt himself to scare him or the council into proceeding with a course of action that fit her planned itinerary very well. "Just make sure they're working."

"Oh, everything works," Sparks tapped at one of his screens, checking the operational software now that he'd seen the hardware. He pointed off to the rest of the deck. "There's just a lot of stuff that looks improvised. Machines were probably saying 'what the hell is this supposed to do' once every ten seconds, like that over there..."

~~~

Persephone had never truly hated her husband, but lately, she didn't truly love him either. It was the way he was, the way the world had shaped him from a hopeful program into a bitter potty-mouthed resource hog who didn't know how to keep his pants on.

And so, here she sat in a café not far from his restaurant, not nearly as far as she would've liked. But going too far away would arouse suspicion from too many very nasty programs that she didn't want breathing down her neck.

It didn't help that, once again, the Architect hadn't been able to so much as harm her husband or his power base in any way. He was smart enough to not even tell her where the secret partitions he kept were, the places where they hid with their friends, lackeys and acquaintances during each reformat.

Not that the Architect had much choice in ignore this particular problem. It was all Smith's fault, after all. Because of Smith, the Architect had to devote his entire effort into keeping the system stable and as perfect as possible.

It was a little too perfect. Everyone was still going about their lives same as always, the Smith infection and the reformat no more than a bad dream. Unfortunately, a gaggle of teenagers living those lives often hung around the street upon which the café was built, like today, as they made noise and acted like general asses not thirty feet away. Teenagers belonged on a partition all their own as far as Persephone was concerned; she had resolved to scream if she heard the word 'fucktard' one more time.

Still, it was a nice day. The café was outdoors and the sun was out. Thus, the one she was meeting stood out like a sore thumb when he approached. "It's been a long time, Wingless. Please, sit down."

"Please do not call me that," Seraph asked, entirely polite. Persephone knew him well enough to know that 'entirely polite' also meant 'you are asking to die, do not tempt me.'

He didn't sit down. So she kept talking. "Do you know why I asked you here?"

"I would imagine," Seraph began, speaking slowly, going through the possibilities in his head and coming to the same conclusion no matter how much he thought it through, "That your husband has angered you one too many times."

"Oh, he did that long ago," Persephone rolled her eyes, again remembering the Merovingian before he had turned into such a pompous prick. "It's a game, you see. Back and forth, on and on we piss each other off pretending it will finally be the last time we'll have to do it. I'm sick of pretending, and if you don't sit down you're going to draw just a tad of undue attention."

Peering around the surroundings, Seraph realized that she was right, a deceptively peaceful-looking man standing and talking down to a woman wasn't really normal and the falsetto humans were programmed to react to things that weren't normal.

He sat down, and Persephone continued. "I want to ask you something."

At her pause, he prodded for more. "What?"

"What did it feel like? When Smith took you?"

With a tilt of his head, Seraph contemplated this. Not the answer to the question, because he obviously knew the answer, but he couldn't figure out why she cared. "What does it matter?"

"I'm not sure that it does," she confessed, "But when he took me, it felt like...it was cold, like everything bad about my life was right there to make me regret it. It was..."

"The same," Seraph finished. "Perhaps this is what humans call your life 'flashing' before your eyes."

"Perhaps," Persephone nodded, leaving open the question that was quite obviously on Seraph's mind. But he was dead-set on not asking it, because, she realized, doing so would be an admission that he had gone into this situation knowing less than someone he didn't trust. "Right now, you're surprised that I didn't get away from him, aren't you?"

A waitress brought Persephone a cup of coffee. Unblinking, Seraph nodded. She took this as her cue to continue. "He took us all. My husband, his bodyguards, our friends. We had the bash at the club just so we could all enjoy ourselves before he came for us. And we did. Just for the hell of it we were going to try hiding at the Mobil Avenue, but he beat us there. Hundreds of him, and then he was gone and we made it to safety a second before the reformat."

Of course, none of this answered the obvious question on Seraph's mind. "What does your husband want this time?"

"What he always wants," she sighed, sipping at her coffee. "More, more, more. He's been bragging all week about how he survived the One again, and now Smith, and another reformat, on and on. And you know what he wants."

"I do not," Seraph confessed.

"Yes, you do, you just don't think he has the balls for it," Persephone added, any semblance of tact missing from her voice.

~~~

The Knossos, Kid noted, was located only a few levels down from the dock, and, according to Sparks, differed from the many other establishments like it in two ways

First, it was one of the easiest places in Zion for someone underage to get a drink or two…or three, or thirty. The owner didn't have an inclination to put effort into catching fake Ids, and Kid didn't need one; Sparks knew her.

Second, though it was popular among military personnel, there just weren't that many military personnel left these days so it was likely to be a fine environment devoid of authority figures. For that matter, unlike the grungier bars on the lower levels near, of all places, the temple, walking in was not the equivalent of signing a contract saying that you were looking for someone to leave with who had never met a one-night stand they didn't like.

Sparks found them a table, figuring the bar proper was a bit too obvious for someone under twenty trying to drown their sorrows in alcohol. They were pretty close to the makeshift stone stage carved from the wall, but there was no amateur performer destroying everyone's eardrums at the moment. Not five seconds after they sat down, the owner sauntered over from behind the bar looking like this was a high point for her day.

Despite her status as a Machine-born, it didn't take a genius to realize why the draft had missed her. She had the most obvious disfigurations many people had ever and would ever see; Kid forced himself to keep eye contact with her when she looked at him, terrified that he would involuntarily start staring. Half of her face was covered in scars from serious burns, most of them wrapped their way down her neck and past the collar of her shirt. She walked in a slight limp as well, probably over an injury that had stopped her from walking at all when it was first inflicted.

From the air of confidence she had, it seemed as if whatever happened to her happened a long time ago, long enough for her to get over it and for her regular patrons to no longer be surprised. She talked very pleasantly, as well. "Hey, Sparky, I was hoping I'd see you around here again!"

"Just so you could call me that, huh Clo?" Sparks fake-frowned at her, looking rather like a sad puppy dog.

She was not fooled and ignored the gesture, instead looking Kid over. "Who's your new friend?"

Kid opened his mouth to answer, but Sparks beat him to it. "He's older than he looks."

"Ah, gotcha," she answered, winking at him before walking away. She didn't even need to ask for an order.

Once she was out of earshot, Kid couldn't stop himself. "Who...what happened to her?"

"Oh, that's Clotho, nice lady, great fighter," Sparks shook his head. "I dated her for awhile, that was fun...I must've been...wow, I was around your age. I mean, yeah," Sparks blinked, suddenly feeling self conscious and very bizarre for telling Kid, of all people, a 'when I was your age' story. "Wow, I haven't thought about this in years."

He took a breath and went on. "Few years later, my first operating gig was on the Caduceus, where, of course, in drama queen fashion, she was stationed. And since we'd declared each other to be the most repugnant and vile human beings in Zion awhile ago, it was pretty awkward. Actually, it was pretty vicious and spiteful; Ballard couldn't stand it when we were in the same room. Until she...one day, she was jacked in..."

Shutting up and trying to put his happy neurotic face back on, Sparks looked up at Clotho when she came back holding a tray with several drinks balanced on it. As she put two of them down on the table, he said, "Dare I ask what poison you chose for us?"

"Why Sparky, a word like 'poison' might hurt my business," she chirped, leaning slightly towards Kid. She half-whispered to him, "Hey, Sparky and his friends drink free, so long as ya don't spread the news. Just don't chug it all in less than an hour or you're stomach'll want a divorce."

"Oh boy," Sparks peered into the makeshift metal mug he had been given, taking a swig. The alcohol burned its way down his throat, and he enjoyed every minute of it. "Tasteless and intoxicating as ever, my dear!"

"Like I'd ever forget how to make it," Clotho chuckled, walking away to serve the rest of the drinks she was carrying. Sparks and Kid watched her for a good thirty seconds until she was once again out of earshot.

"I shouldn't be telling you this, really," Sparks continued, concerned over the wisdom (or lack thereof) of telling Matrix horror stories to someone training to work in the Matrix as well as if he was going too far by spreading an old friend's business around. "She was running for the exit and an Agent took over some poor sap on the street. Fucker started shooting at her just like usual. The closest hard-line was near a gas station and she tried to run through it. A straight line is faster and all that. And he shot at one of the cars just before she made it...christ, the whole place went up, she ran her ass off and still caught some mushroom cloud," Sparks took a breath, idly rubbing his temples with one hand. "God...we all looked over and we could see her skin charring as she sat there, I saw she just wouldn't drop her phone and just kept yelling at her to get to the exit, crawl to it or something. I figured she was beyond hearing but she did it, she made it out and we saved her. So to speak."

Looking back at the scarred woman who had given them their drinks, Kid had no words to answer with. For the first time, he felt guilty over his freedom; he felt the miraculous gift of self-substantiation was wasted on him. Burning alive probably hurt a lot more than falling on your head and instantly 'dying;' presenting himself with the question of whether or not he could doubt reality that much if he happened to be shot or stabbed or even burned, Kid inevitably came to the conclusion that he could not.

"The Agent's name was Smith," Sparks finished. He wasn't going to start on how close he had come to a mental breakdown a little over a week ago when the Matrix code on his screens kept saying the hundreds of Agents chasing Niobe through the Matrix were all Agent Smith. That had been fucked up. "We got along again after that."

Enforcing his point, Sparks smiled at Clotho and briefly raised his mug to her when she glanced back in their direction and shot him a grin. Feeling entirely out of place and humbled, Kid finally took a drink.

He coughed and bit back further first-time-drinker reflexes as best as possible, on the theory that it just seemed inappropriate for the moment. Sparks was wholly amused by this and patted him on the back once or twice before he recovered enough to speak. "Wow, geez," Kid coughed one more time.

Sparks took another drink. "Alcohol, water, and more alcohol. Clo learned how to make it from a guy named Dozer. I remember about, oh, a month after the Neb came back with you...me and a few other Ops got together and dragged Neo here for a good old fashioned party."

This, as Sparks guessed it would, grabbed Kid's attention in short order. "Neo came here?"

"That night he did," Sparks chuckled. "Me, Link, n'the Ops from the Vigilant and the Mjolnir. And Tank, before he...anyway, the rest of us were at broadcast depth and we were watching when Neo made Agent Smith go 'boom.' It was great, he'd do his superman thing, beat up on Agents, almost made believers outta' me and AK, so we figured we'd all celebrate. This was the usual Operator way to pass time; we started singing Matrix songs."

"Matrix-what?" Kid blinked.

"Songs, rock, grunge, weirder the better," Sparks started waving his mug around, pretending it was his tenth instead of his first. "See, Tank used to say we were all 'Children of Zion,' I think Operators are more like bastard children of philandering Greek gods after we stare at Matrix code for years and start knowing everything Machine-borns do. One of us started singing like Pavoratti that night, you should've seen the look on Neo's face."

Wishing he could share the image of this memory, Sparks laughed at how he remembered the look on Neo's face; it had been priceless. He continued, "Now, we all got smashed, so when Trinity found us she decided she was going to walk us all home, except there were five of us, so she went and got Morpheus to help. I wasn't really cognizant but I can imagine Morpheus being a designated driver, you know?""

Kid enjoyed the story for whatever it was worth; it was better than remembering Neo as a corpse he'd never seen. Sparks raised his mug again. "I've already had a drink for all the dead, but what the hell, I'll have another."

He downed his drink, prompting Kid to do the same, managing to keep it down without near-gagging this time. Kid let out the breath he'd held to help in doing so, feeling Sparks lay a hand over his over his own on the table.

Considering neither of them had yet been unhappy not going through the trouble to define their fairly odd relationship, it felt rather nice. It also gave Kid the distinct impression that Sparks was trying to get his full attention before making a point.

After the fact, Sparks realized that it probably didn't work as much as he'd wanted. Kid looked more nervous in the span of a few seconds, the old fear of Matrix taboos still fresh in his mind as he glanced around, expecting one of the very drunk people in the Knossos to take issue. But when Sparks talked, he listened anyway. "I just figure, everyone that's gone, they'd get royally pissed if they knew we were spending twenty-five hours a day wishing they were still around to get pissed. Granted, Ghost says this much better than I do. Usually, anyway. He's been sinking pretty far in the pit himself over Trinity."

Kid realized, and found the experience frightening, that he was starting to forget what Trinity looked and sounded like once he heard her name. Neo was starting to fade as well, despite the glowing image of the One in the Matrix, flying above the clouds that Sparks had sneaked away from the Logos' logs and decoded through the image translators for a day and a half.

It was a rather incredible sight.

An encroaching figure approached their table, and Sparks turned to see who it was. He raised an eyebrow. "Speak of the devil! How do you do that? How big is this city and yet, poof, there you are?"

With a small smirk and a nod to Clotho as she passed, Ghost pulled up a chair and sat down in it backwards. "I like to think I would've been a ninja if the Matrix had been based on an earlier time period."

Ghost nodded to Kid as well, something he was grateful for. Ghost had become the one man in Zion that Kid wasn't afraid of being judged by over what he and Sparks did when they thought the door was locked, mostly because Ghost had found the door to be unlocked when he tried opening it.

It had taken Ghost two seconds to close said door and go about his business elsewhere, but Sparks had demonstrated a thorough skill in the art of vituperation in that time. He had evolved to comical jest since then. "I dunno, Ghost. A ninja would've been able to hear through the door and know to go away."

Ghost simply shrugged. "What does not kill me makes me stronger."

"That's another thing," Sparks raised an eyebrow, "Why do you always say ten words when three works just fine? Doesn't the Department of Resource Conservation have a fine for that?"

Finding this a good opportunity to change the topic, Ghost tactfully ignored this bait. "Niobe needs you. She broke some of the repairs on the Logos."

Wishing he hadn't yet finished his drink so he could chug it all over again, Sparks stared at him. "What did she break?"

As much as he wanted to appreciate Clotho returning to their table, he was smart enough to know that Niobe expected him to fix whatever was wrong by yesterday, and that it wouldn't be very easy if he was drunk. He didn't have the heart to stop her from asking her painful question. "Ready for a refill, Sparky?"

"Sadly no," Sparks answered, resigned to spending the night sober. After pausing for as long as he dared delay the inevitable work cut out for him. "I gotta run. Again."

"It's okay," Kid told him.

Sparks gave him one last smile before he stood up to leave, talking to himself even as he walked out of the bar. "It was probably the sammoflange. God dammit, I told her to keep her foot off the blasted sammoflange..."

"Actually," Ghost watched him leave, talking anyway. "She pulled off the pads the machines put on. Didn't trust 'em. Oh, I've been looking for you, too."

"Wha?" Kid almost jumped; he had gone back to minding his own business and cracking his knuckles, not expecting attention now that Sparks was gone. "Why?"

"Your friends asked me to help them train before their next session and they wanted you to come too," Ghost said. "I believe it was...Sark who said they wanted to 'surprise' Morpheus. You should probably worry more about Niobe; Morpheus asked her to teach you all to drive."

"Sark really doesn't like Morpheus all that much," Kid thought aloud, wondering why that was as he completely missed the Niobe thing. Now that he considered it, he realized perhaps that Sark didn't appreciate the chance to actually be part of the navy, under Morpheus, no less, as much as he did.

As always, Ghost had something to say about a particular subject. "A little over two hundred years ago, many countries drafted the unwilling for service. Most of them still did the job. I think in time, he'll appreciate what he fights for even if he hates fighting."

"So ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?" Kid chuckled.

Considering it, Ghost nodded. "That one's not really my style, but it works. So, I still have to find Link. Are you coming?"

Kid found himself analyzing the consequences of this question far more than any normal person would. He didn't know his fellow trainees that well, and that was the norm for his life, not knowing anyone close all that well. Meeting them when he didn't need to felt like the kind of social thing he'd avoided for so long.

On the other hand, learning how to do the amazing things with martial arts that only a freed mind could do was any introverted, socially inept kid's dream. And after all, they'd asked for him. "Yeah, I am."

With Clotho bidding them a "Come back anytime, guys" as they stood, Kid left with Ghost.

~~~

Nothing this weak is meant to survive.

These were true words. There was nowhere he couldn't go, nowhere he couldn't spread his influence.

This did not change the fact that a human shell was weak. Easily punctured, easily repaired and manipulated with the right equipment, reeking of sweat and blood and plenty of other unpleasant fragrances, a human body was destined to fall apart if left unchecked.

Why then, Smith wondered, was this body still alive?

His eyes were closed, he knew that much, but it seemed like a good idea to get a handle on this strange situation before alerting any possible enemies to his state of living.

Bane. That had been this rotting stink heap's name before Smith had taken him. Through Bane's nerves, Smith felt that he was lying on his back, against a cold, smooth surface. Through Bane's ears, he heard the whir of machinery. His sense of taste revolted Smith as it did from the moment he had began processing it, but his sense of smell, usually the next worst thing, was oddly comforting right now.

Disturbed by this, Smith opened his eyes and bolted upright on the table he laid on, seeing the room that provided this sense.

A residual instinct from Bane prompted him to rub a hand over his face as well, knowing the dirty visage should have had a gaping hole in it. Mr. Anderson had a good swing, after all, but he was fine. Uninjured.

The room was entirely metal. It wasn't built around stone like the edges of Zion, it wasn't contaminated by other human water bags other than the body of Bane itself. And this was the source of the calming scent; complete and utter artificiality.

It was an expansive construction, not overly large but not very small. The table Smith sat on was not the only one in the room, though upon looking at the others, he realized they were made for servicing machines. Each had an assortment of tools and displays attached to them, waiting for use. A human did not belong here.

None of this answered the obvious question Smith had on his mind. He spoke it aloud, almost commanding the room to answer as opposed to asking nothing. "Why...am I here?"

"To be repaired."

Another of Bane's human instincts took over, one Smith had experienced when Neo, his eyes burned by a white-hot severed conduit, had demonstrated the fact that he was not entirely blind. Smith was startled. He looked up and to the side, and saw the speaker fluttering around in the dim light of the chamber.

It was a Sentinel.

But it wasn't the kind of Sentinel used to rip out the internal organs of frail humans. It looked similar, with the subtle differences of a smaller chassis and fewer arms immediately apparent. Its central eye glowed blue instead of red like the rest, as it contained very specific scanning equipment instead of another optical sensor.

It was a maintenance Sentinel, a Squiddy medic, a machine whose purpose was fixing injured machines.

The small machine hovered in mid-air to look at the human before it for a moment, before it turned and gently landed on the floor.

And it continued speaking in a bouncy, happy voice most unbecoming of a machine. "Greetings; I am H3-34-GS. I have been given access to a database of human anatomy and language to better suit your medical and conversational needs. My instructions are to monitor you at all times."

Smith had issues with machines, at least with the machines comprising a sentient species. They were bastardized programs as far as he was concerned, no freer to live than humans. Still, he was serious about his question, and he had a feeling that this machine might serve a purpose for the near future. "You have not answered my question."

If Bane had one redeeming factor, it was his vocal chords. They were easier to manipulate than the knowledge Smith had of humans suggested they would be; his own voice was a near identical match for Bane's to begin with.

Unfortunately, here, now, he had forgotten not to add that extra inflection. Clearly, the rest of him had not yet been successful in spreading from the Matrix or this Sentinel would not be here to repair his flesh. But if it had a connection to the Source and recognized him at all...

Shifting on its tendrils, H-34-3GS almost looked like it was tilting its head. "I am sorry; I have not yet attained a complete grasp of human communication. To answer your question in what will likely be a more suitable matter, you and another were found non-functional in the craft that delivered the sixth Integral Anomaly. The other's injuries were non-repairable. However, your fatal injuries are...were limited to extensive brain trauma, repaired with small-scale cerebral implants."

"Metal in my head?" Smith regarded the Sentinel with a quizzical look, again running his hand over his forehead and face. "How terribly...ironic."

"Unfortunately," the Sentinel went on, unperturbed by this comment. "The repairs are merely an operation substitute, not a replacement. You will retain all bodily functions, though you have inevitably lost sections of your permanent memory."

"Gee, you're right," Smith deadpanned. If this act worked on Captain Roland and his crew, it would certainly work on a single, over-talkative machine. "It's all a bit fuzzy, really..."

In truth, he had lost nothing, not even any of Bane's memories. His own data was stored in the parts of the brain not normally used by a human, while everything that Bane was existed as a separate piece of the puzzle. The original was gone, but Smith had looked at it all at one time and he remembered it all.

Purposefully, the Sentinel's blue eye blinked at him once, the mannerism suggesting it was making a confirmation rather than an initial diagnosis. "Additionally, I have found evidence of previous brain damage. Do you have memory of how this occurred?"

Again, it was so, so easy. "No, no, I'm sorry, I...don't."

"Very well," the monitor intoned. It blinked at him with its many eyes a few times before continuing. "Do you believe you are fit to travel?"

That was a curious question. "Why? Where am I? Where am I going?"

"This is the capitol, 01," the Sentinel said. "You are to be returned to the human city in a prompt manner. Lord Deus has instructed me to ensure you arrive safety."

Ordinarily, the mention of the overlord's name would have been of particular interest to Smith, but not now. Deus Ex Machina was the oldest machine in 01, and many saw this as fitness to lead the city. Smith saw nostalgia as weakness.

But now, many, many questions fluttered through his mind, including an important one that should have been the first he asked. The machines didn't recognize him. They found him dead. Why, in their right minds, did they revive a human only to send him back to Zion? And did he have to go back to Zion? Surely, the humans knew by now that Bane was no more. "And just...why do you care about my safety?"

"I apologize," the machine said once more. "I neglected to recall that you are not able to remotely contact members of your species for updates without equipment to do so. The Integral Anomaly, the human you refer to as 'the One,' survived your landing. Lord Deus agreed to, should the Anomaly succeed in allowing the Source write-access with which to purge the program 'Smith' from the Matrix, allow peace between 01 and the human city."

Of any answer, Smith decided that this had to be the absolute worst. He refused to admit that only one conclusion, based on this information, could be true. It was impossible. "And he did?"

"If you are referring to either the elimination of the program 'Smith' or the cessation of hostilities, the answer is 'yes.'"

Bane's body started to betray Smith again. The frail heart thumped ever so harder in his chest, his fists tightened to the point where his nails almost drew blood. The medic machine apparently sensed these changes, as it shifted its posture, but it said nothing.

Smith swung his legs off the table and looked at the wall, his back to the Sentinel. "And tell me, where is Mr. And-the One, where is the One now?"

"As he has fulfilled his purpose," the answer came succinctly and informally, "the Integral Anomaly is no longer functional."

All at once, Smith's reaction changed; it was the best news he had ever heard. The One was gone. His opposite was dead. Yet he himself was not. Again, the terrible sense of irony hit him, for it was a frail human body that now allowed him the chance to re-infect the Matrix and make the leap to 01's primary systems. With a lot of luck, perhaps he could skip the Matrix entirely until he controlled the machine city, but finding a direct access route was so close to impossible it would statistically take more time and effort. "Is there...some sort of data port around here? I really need to jack into the Matrix."

This appeared to confuse the Sentinel, for it sat there and blinked more for at least a minute before answering. "No, there is not. The closest facility to suit this purpose is the terminal at Lord Deus' audience platform, and it is reserved for the Integral Anomalies who choose to journey here instead of returning to the source through the Matrix. In addition, your presence in the Matrix would serve no logical purpose."

"Of course," Smith had to stop himself from growling.

Floating off of the floor, the Sentinel gave him directions. "Please accompany me. I am arranging for a courier to bring us to the human city."

Smith followed, but whether the bizarre medic liked it or not, he would not return to Zion.

~~~

Many parts of the Matrix were not so different from the last iteration; progress in the original human world had always taken a long time to produce visible results in the majority of places. The office and home of a constantly out-of-work private detective named Ash and his rather furry cat was one of these places.

Though his memories had been altered along with everyone else's to seamlessly accept the new date and state of the world, people still remembered things. On his off days, which was usually every day ending in -y, he found it hard not to ponder the hacker woman who had shot him on a train seven months ago.

He had fully expected to die that night. She shot him because he 'hadn't made it,' whatever she meant by that. It had certainly been an odd sensation, not being shot but what had prompted her to do it. And despite being able to stay conscious, Ash had then expected to be gunned down by the men who had used him to get to Trinity in the first place.

But they hadn't done that. He'd even shot at one of them, and, though he figured he had been delirious, he could clearly remember the absurdly neat-looking, suit-wearing man he had shot at snap his head to the side, dodging the bullet.

They had left him there. He had left the train, had the bullet dug from his body at an emergency room, gave a statement to the police and had come home several days later to find his cat worried and the very sparse pantry raided by said cat. And the absurd amount of money placed in his bank account by those weirdoes still there, too.

While he still had general problems finding work, he didn't complain as long as he could pay his bills and fill the fridge.

But he was bored.

Usually, he found himself sitting at his freakish homemade computer looking for Trinity again, but there was never any sign of her. He felt like he needed to find her again, as if just seeing her might yank out the nagging splinter in his mind.

Countless hours of Internet surfing and underground forum lurking showed no sign of her. He found names to go alongside hers every now and then: Morpheus, Neo, Switch, Apoc. The last two had been killed during a mostly botched attempt to gun down Trinity and whoever Morpheus was, apparently.

Ash had forgotten about her for a little while after his wound had healed, but that didn't last long. It lasted until the nightmare came, the nightmare about the cold man, the dark, dark man who held a resemblance to the suit-wearing goons from the train. He never saw much, only that man laughing like he had purchased the world and owned everyone. And it was cold, cold like being shot and expecting to die on a train.

Dinah rolled over and mewed, prompting Ash to lift his head up from his arms on the table. "Yeah, yeah. I'm bored too...hazard of getting rich for nothing."

Instead of contently going back to sleep as usual, Dinah stood up and meowed more loudly, in a bit more of a questionable manner. She looked at the door.

And then someone knocked at the door. Grabbing his fedora to conceal the hair he had not bothered combing today, Ash stood up and thought that even a suspicious husband might be welcome right about now.

When he opened the door, his first thought was that this was a distinct possibility, as the man standing there wasn't anyone he knew. But his second thought was a little more foreboding; the old man was wearing an entirely white suit, but despite his obvious age and different taste in colors, he had an air about him rather like the goons on the train. Maybe they were his goons. Nevertheless, Ash put on a happy face. "Can I help you, Sir?"

"Unfortunately," the man answered, one eyebrow slightly raised. His single-word answer was just that, an answer. No hard-luck story about the angst-filled events driving the man to seek a PI for his services, nothing. He was just unhappy to be here and was not afraid to show it.

He walked in as if he were invited, an act that made Ash more than a little uncomfortable. Behind him, a little girl trotted in his footsteps, her darker skin insinuating that she was likely not his daughter or some form of close relative.

Ash had learned over the years that, in his business, when someone was rude, they usually had something mean and nasty to hide. When they had smiling little girls with them, they were just creepy. Said little girl waved up at him. "Good morning. My name is Sati. Your name is Ash. May I pet your cat, Mr. Ash?"

Instead of forming an actual response to this question, Ash simply stared at Sati with a look of complete and utter bewilderment. This odd little girl whom he had never met called him by name after following in a creepy old man, only to use this information to...

Sati began wondering if he had heard her question. Instead of asking again, she turned to the man she had followed in. "Architect, would he mind if I petted his cat?"

An impatient sigh escaped the Architect, but he nonetheless put effort into responding. "I don't anticipate he would, Sati. But be gentle with the feline."

Dinah treated this as a good answer. She trotted over and jumped into the little girls arms, prompting said little girl to laugh and pick her up fully, rubbing the cat's head under her chin. Dinah purred her furry little head off, loving the attention. The only logical conclusion Ash could come to was that Creepy Old Man had been watching him for x-amount of time and had told his companion that yes, the detective did indeed own a cat. But what human in their right mind would put up surveillance for that?

Finally, Ash was brought out of his reverie by the snap of fingers not far from his face. The rude old guy only did it once, and he was unhappy that he had to do it at all. He spoke once he realized he had Ash's attention. "Thank you."

Shaking off the urge to flip the guy off, Ash decided to get down to business on the theory that it would get King Rude out of his office faster. "Do you need my services, Sir? If not I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave, I'm rather busy right now."

"You're lying." The Architect sat down in the rather decrepit chair Ash kept in front of his desk, gently twirling a gold-colored pen in one hand. But it wasn't really a pen; it had buttons down one side. "You have been completely unable to find any semblance of work for two and a half months, during which time you have survived by intelligently using the money paid to you by my associates. As a consequence of this lack of activity you spend your days acting forlorn and befuddled, looking for Trinity in the vain hope that she will provide answers to your lingering questions. But you don't even know what questions you are asking."

Again caught completely off guard, Ash plunked down into his own chair after a few seconds of silence. He put one hand on his gun on the underside of said desk, a sensible reaction, considering the man had just admitted to working with the goons from the train. "And I suppose you know?"

Rolling his eyes, the Architect answered, "Obviously. As I know you will now demand that I immediately inform you of the information you desire, I will spare us both the time and tell you right now that I have no inclination to do so. The gun under your desk will be quite useless in attempting to forcibly extract this information."

This time, Ash kept from reacting. He'd grown use to the man's uncanny knowledge by now, and he kept his hand on his gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dinah climbing on top of Sati's head. "So what do you want?"

"Interesting," came the initial answer. "It took you an inordinate period of time to realize this question should be asked. You are almost as abundantly slow in comprehension skills as the first five Ones."

Paying no heed to what he viewed as mindless rhetoric, Ash simply said, "Well, are you going to answer it?"

"Yes," the Architect reached into his jacked, pulling a small manila envelope from an inside pocket. "I want you to protect an item for me. If it were to fall into the hands of certain individuals, I'm afraid the consequences could be quite...severe. I have had one million American dollars transferred to your bank account as a service fee."

The very idea that this was true amused Ash. This guy had apparently paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars for a botched job and now he was going to dump more money in his lap for something this silly? "Bullshit."

"Yes, I'm sure you think so, but your reactions tell me that you will, nonetheless, accept my offer out of curiosity and the ever-looming threat of having nothing to do." With this, the Architect tossed the envelope onto Ash's desk and stood up, straightening his jacket.

Ash would not outright admit that the old codger was right about that, but it didn't stop him from wanting more information. "So, who, exactly, am I supposed to be keeping 'it' from?"

"You'll know if you see them. However, if they are that close, you will most likely have seconds left to live." Straining his pen-device in one hand, the Architect turned to his charge. "Sati, we must depart."

"Aw," Sati made a sad face, but, fortunately, she wasn't really whining. She put Dinah down, and the cat seemed equally sad. "I like her."

"I'll create one for you when we return, but only if you promise not to hack the sunset subroutines in the future. Would you like to open the door?"

This cheered Sati up exponentially, and she immediately became jovial as the Architect handed her a key. "Okay!"

Confused as ever, Ash tore open the small envelope and let the contents fall into his hand; it was a different silver key attached to a ring, and to that ring was a small black plastic square. The number "11" was written on the square in green.

"Wait, wait a minute here," Ash shook his head, trying to clear the insanity from his mind. "What makes you think I won't just ignore you and toss this down the nearest storm drain?"

About to follow Sati, the Architect turned back to look at him. "Because, Mr. Ash, you are a man who can not turn away from a mystery. While I can assure you that you have a sizeable chance of learning the answers you desire, I could downplay your chances just as easily and you would still feel compelled to follow through. It is your purpose in life, whereas my purpose is to know these things, as any effective god-thing should."

With that, the Architect watched Sati unlock the door and open it. It wasn't until now that Ash realized they were walking through the door to his bathroom, not to the street. Except, Ash noticed, the door didn't go to his bathroom, but into a pristine white hallway with a plain door on the other side.

"What the hell?" Ash ran after them, but they were through and the door was closed before he was there. When he flung it open, his bathroom was there to greet him.

Jumping up onto Ash's chair, Dinah gave a hearty 'meow.'

~~~

"Now what the hell inspired that?"

No one really had an answer for Niobe, especially Kid, considering he had been the instigator of the disaster. He was trying not to pass out from fright while resisting the urge to dive behind Sark or Hertz for cover. Dumont, currently sitting in an upside-down, flaming car, was rather eager for her to calm down. It wasn't that he still doubted he wouldn't feel the flames if the car exploded, he simply wasn't eager to test the stability of the simulation's safety locks. Of course, while Sark seemed very impatient to leave for something apparently more important, Hertz found this absolutely hysterical and was proceeding to laugh very loudly.

He wasn't even going to think about the jump program again. "Can I get out now?"

She kicked his door. Going back to screaming at her would-be students, Niobe was quite sure of what caused Kid to drive headlong into another vehicle instead of around it. There was nothing overly wrong with the fact that he dressed like Neo. It was a little bizarre, sure, but tolerable. Of course, he had failed to think of the fact that Neo saw in code, not in light, and the sunglasses he wore were way too dark to effectively see in while performing many a daring physical stunt. He had certainly learned his lesson today.

That didn't mean she was going to spare his mortal soul or the ears of his comrades by not yelling at all of them for being bad enough drivers to turn his wreck into a pile-up.

In truth, she was also heavily annoyed that, after Morpheus had had the group entirely dumped on him for being the only living captain with nothing to really do, her reputation had prompted him to ask for her 'assistance.' "Christ, my high-school driver's-ed teacher would have a stroke. Where do you get your VDTs?"

Taking matters into his own hands, Dumont went for broke and shoved open their doors as much as they could, falling out of the overturned vehicle in a most undignified fashion. Watching them, Niobe was tempted to run through the course herself to completely destroy any self-confidence they had left. Driving down the wrong lane of a highway for a few miles was absolutely no challenge for her these days.

But then her phone rang. "Saved by the bell," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear before she answered it. "What? Finally...yeah, you'd think he'd have an easier time making time. Give me one second."

Hanging up, Niobe looked across everyone and raised a finger. "Do it again, and do it right this time, or when I get back I'll drive down this road with your asses strung to my bumper!"

It wasn't more than a few seconds before Niobe felt the pull of reality bring her out of the construct, followed immediately by the pull of the jack as it left her head.

Placing said jack on its cradle, Sparks looked down at Niobe to make sure she had been properly removed from the construct. Seeing that she was shooting him the 'what a way to wake up' look, he said, "I'm sure they'll be calling you 'Mistress' by the end of the day, o' Captain."

"Which is why I never wear leather," Niobe answered, standing out of the chair, shaking off the fatigue of her body remaining motionless while her mind had stayed active.

"So, anyway, Deadbolt just called, he either wants to tell you what's going on or beg you to take him back. Or both," Sparks answered, sitting back down and adding an extremely over-annunciated rowl sound. "Hmm, maybe you should. Do the leather thing, that is."

Niobe had already decided that two could play at this game; her Operator wasn't the only one in the room who could turn everyone else's odd love lives into drama plays. Glancing back across the occupied chairs, she said, "Sparks, I know you're sleeping with Kid."

She hadn't skipped a beat. Niobe was very good at being direct to the point of delayed interpretation, and as such, it took Sparks a second of rehearsed response for it to click. "Oh, don't we al- you what?" He bolted out of his chair. "How? What has Ghost been telling you?"

Enjoying his discomfort far too much, Niobe remained very calm. "Ghost didn't tell me. Link asked Ghost why you've been acting stranger than usual, Ghost told Link, Link told Morpheus, Morpheus told me." Pitching her voice into the most absurd impersonation of the man in question, she finished with, "Niobe, just so you know, so it doesn't come up at an inopportune moment..."

"What, does the entire city know?" Sparks jumped, about three breaths short of hyperventilating. He was quite aware that this would be the result if he didn't calm down and get his breathing under control and he was also aware that he was probably over-reacting. But being aware, however, did absolutely nothing to help.

"Well, it's the new gossip, but I wouldn't worry. No one really cares about gossip unless a captain is seeing the fleet commander," Niobe tossed out a fake, fake smile. Indeed, she spoke from experience. "Sparks, take a full breath before you pass out on the floor!"

Of course, it was really all Ghost's fault. At least, it was his fault as far as Sparks was concerned, because it was easier to focus blame on one instead of many. The thought of doing mean and nasty things to Ghost the next time he was in a construct was enough to calm his nerves. Relatively speaking. "I will kill him!"

Growling, Sparks stomped out of the door, stomping right back in to reset the training program, thereby keeping everyone occupied until he calmed down. Niobe was close behind when he left again.

For the two minutes it took them to reach the dock, he said nothing until they actually walked out onto it. "I am so going to fucking kill him!"

"He walked in on you, didn't he?" Niobe rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh.

Her tone of voice made Sparks stop, calm down and look at her suspiciously all within five seconds. His eyes shifting as if he expected a camera to be pointed at his face, he said, "Yeah..."

"Uh huh, same here, there's a reason everyone knew about my personal life too," she said, trying to remember where the Logos was waiting for them before heading off with Sparks in tow before she went back to thinking about Ghost. "I think he does it on purpose."

"Ah, so do I," Sparks whimpered, slapping himself in the face and plodding after her.

Deciding that the joke was over, Niobe answered, "Seriously Sparks, I just like being the hot water for your panic attacks."

"Huh, that's a relief," he confessed, "I dunno, I mean, y'know, you're Machine-born and stuff, I figured you'd all think I was psychotic."

Turning around and stopping him, Niobe looked at him dead in the eye. "Sparks, I will tell you, both as your captain and, lord help me, your friend, I would never think that of you."

Honestly taken aback, Sparks blinked a few times. "Oh. Well, thanks..."

"You're a neurotic cradle-robbing pedophile," she added. "And sometimes I think your brain is in Neverland, but you're not psychotic."

Standing there agape as Niobe turned and continued walking, Sparks made several obnoxious funny faces and patently obscene gestures at her back before jogging up to her side. Eventually, Ghost appeared out of thin air as he had a tendency to do lately, approaching them and making Niobe stop once more. Sparks mustered up the best death glare he could give him. "I'm going to kill you."

Suddenly feeling a stabbing sensation directly behind her left eye, Niobe brought a hand up and rubbed at her temple. "Ghost, he's going to kill you. Three times over."

"I usually take that as a compliment," Ghost answered after a pause, thrown for a loop even after getting used to the insanity of his shipmates over the years. He turned to Niobe. "Are you going to see Locke?"

The pain behind her eye growing ever more sharp, she shoved through both of them and began shoving them backwards. "Yes, I am going to see Locke! You two are not going to see Locke! You two are going away now because you're making my head hurt!"

Finally turning back around and leaving both of them to stand there like idiots, Niobe's head started feeling better already. This left Sparks, completely stunned over this, to momentarily forget the fact that he wanted to smack Ghost with a two-by-four and then run. "So, Ghost...why do you let her shove you around? I mean, she'd just kick my ass if she wanted, but..."

"Sparks," Ghost thought about it, "Adolph Hitler, of all people, once said, 'what luck for rulers that men do not think.'"

After trying to wrap his brain around this, Sparks finally formulated a response. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Again, Ghost almost looked like he was actually smiling a little, but probably not. "It means...Kid could kick your ass now, so why even think about Niobe?"

"Y'know...wow." Realizing that Ghost was absolutely right, Sparks turned and watched Niobe disappear. "Well, I guess I ain't gonna argue if he wants to pitch instead of catch."

Getting mental images far worse than what he'd gotten by opening Sparks' door at an impromptu time, Ghost nonetheless managed to keep his usual cool. "Now that's something one doesn't hear everyday."

~~~

Niobe had met Locke in the war room before. She wasn't entirely afraid that her working relationship with Locke might be awkward these days, she was more hoping it wouldn't be an annoyance. Especially because this room was nowhere near as busy as it usually was.

He greeted her when she came in the same way he always did, whether they were seeing each other or not, with a succinct, "Hello, Captain Niobe."

And so the oddness began. What should she address him as nowadays, she wondered? "You look well, Jason."

"I try," he answered, dry as ever. "You're leaving tonight."

Despite his undisguised change of topic, she was glad to be provided with this information without asking. The look on his face told her it wasn't as simple as this, however. "And?"

He motioned her over to the war room's map table. "Before you do anything, we need you to head to the surface and check on someone."

Niobe vaguely recognized the terrain displayed; she'd heard stories of the resistance base on the surface, the motley band that lured machines to their domain and converted them to their cause.

Supposedly, they used a monkey to spot incoming machines.

Locke went on. "We have no contact with them aside from their supply requests. We haven't heard from them for some time; they're probably dead, but..."

"I get it," Niobe said. It was still worth checking. "I don't suppose you know what's going on. In the Matrix, I mean."

"No," he answered. Once she turned to leave, he added, "Niobe, be careful."

"You know me," she called back, never turning around.

Once Niobe left, she had it in her mind to go back to the Logos and make sure everything was ready, but she would need Ghost and Sparks for this task, and Sparks would have gone back to watching the training simulations after the scene they'd all had.

This inspired her to go somewhere else. And once she reached this other place, she knocked on the door.

There was no answer, so she banged on the door. After a few seconds, it opened.

Morpheus looked surprised to see her. "Niobe?"

"Morpheus," she answered. "What's...you know, you look like hell."

"I just woke up," Morpheus told her. The dazed look on his face and bags under his eyes seemed to suggest Niobe had actually woken him up.

But he looked worse than many tired men did. She hadn't noticed it before, and if she didn't know better, she would have thought she was catching him off guard and unprepared to keep up an act of good health. Something was wrong with this picture. "Morpheus, it's past noon. You're always up at the crack of dawn."

"Give me a minute," he answered, closing the door again. He returned wearing a heavier layer of clothes but not an improved mood. "I've been trying to catch up on sleep lately. Do you want to talk?"

"Yes," she answered, prompting him to follow her down the pseudo-street of this level. She had planned on asking him if he was following the Logos at some time in the near future and, if so, in what ship. She wondered if Morpheus really realized how odd it was for him to train a new crew without a ship.

He didn't lock his door as he left, finally asking, "When are you taking off?"

"Soon as we're ready to leave, probably sometime this evening."

"I'll be there to see you off," Morpheus said.

"Really, Morpheus," Niobe tilted her head to the side, one eyebrow raised. "I wasn't sure you still cared."

Matching her, Morpheus responded, "Perhaps I don't and I'm hiding an ulterior motive."

"I should hit you for that," she nodded. "But I'll be civil for once."

This topic exhausted, Morpheus brought up something else on his mind. "How did the lesson go?"

"Don't ask me that, either," Niobe grumbled. "Couldn't you have found someone with any sort of driving skills?"

She wasn't being serious, of course. It was a rather sensitive subject, after all, but Morpheus had known her long enough to take some things with a grain of salt. "One of the young men I'd considered...taking from the orphanage had a sleeping disorder. Everything else was fine, he was physically able, wanted to volunteer, turned into a potential by being anti-social in the Matrix; you wouldn't believe me if I told you what he named himself. The Icarus freed him. But he's had narcolepsy since he came here."

"Yeah, damn city's not healthy for anyone," Niobe laughed.

~~~

"The machines, drawing power from man, an endlessly multiplying, infinity renewable energy source. This is the very essence of the Second Renaissance; bless all forms of intelligence."

Watching the record end, Sark took off the headset. He saved a copy to a disk, logged out of the system, and couldn't quite bring himself to stand up and leave.

He had watched it many times, at least fifteen. Over, and over. He was glad he had saved the copy from the archive to avoid going back, or the workers might have noticed he was acting oddly. He remembered how they often badgered him when he sat in the place, out of view to anyone not directly paying attention. Telling him they'd seen history buffs waste themselves staying in the place and not taking a break, never realizing in the least what he was up to.

Sark wasn't a history buff, but he felt pretty wasted and it wasn't from lack of sleep.

The Instructor had taught him more in the first hour after he had succeeded in breaking into the restricted archive then he had learned during his entire time in Zion to date. Her voice etched things into his mind he would not soon forget. Finally, he left the Archive, wandering to the residential area. He found himself seeking out one of his training buddies.

Dumont was home. Dumont was smart enough to notice that Sark was completely deflated, his eyes no longer giving off that message of sarcasm and utter discontent for his position. Dumont thought it was, to say the least, strange. "What's going on?"

"Why do you wear the ATF jacket?"

This was not a question Dumont expected to hear outside of a training program, but he had thought no one really noticed. "Because I was an ATF agent for five years or so, why?"

Motioning for Sark to enter his quarters, Dumont sat down.

Sark did not. "So you were pretty old when they popped your pod, huh?"

"Yeah, older than average. The crew got hell for it."

"What made you doubt reality?" Sark asked. "I mean, are you satisfied with reality now? I just feel like I did in the Matrix when things just seemed off, it's just, yeah, get dragged off by some bloke, learn how to fight, learn how to kill things, you think you know why you're here and you don't."

"Whoa, whoa, slow down, slow down," Dumont said, trying to calm Sark. He had done a complete one-eighty from his badass act to this apparent crisis of faith. "Stop babbling and tell me what happened."

"You know how we totally ditched the driving program when that fruity Operator came back? I went and hacked into the archives. The restricted stuff, the stuff the council only has clearance for? Been trying for weeks and I finally...just finally caught a break," Sark told him, collapsing into a chair. "Fucking blew my mind. They know more than they tell anyone. Not much more, barely anything, it's just...its one goddamn little file and I can't even comprehend it. You know what? I'll tell Morpheus. He'll get such a kick out of it."

"Tell him what?" Dumont sighed, given up on getting anything coherent from him. "You can never find him when he's not with us in the first place. The only thing he seems to do besides that is meet with the council every now and then."

"Really. The council, huh?" A sudden calm overcame Sark, as if he had always been perfectly fine. "I wonder when the council is in session this week."

~~~

Half-joking, Niobe still sounded very serious. "Morpheus, I swear, if you tell me to 'be careful,' I won't be happy."

"How do you know what I'm going to say?"

Niobe realized she should've known better than to try talking down to Morpheus in any way. His knack for turning anything around was still quite strong. Giving up, she simply rolled her eyes. "Because I'm the Oracle in disguise, dammit."

"I can picture this," Morpheus tilted his head, mentally seeing Niobe with a cigerette and gray hair. It was an amusing image. "But I came to wish you luck."

Conceding defeat, Niobe leaned against the hull of the Logos as opposed to walking inside, as she had been about to do. "What about you? What's going to happen with you and your motley band?

"I'm not sure," Morpheus confessed. He'd asked this very question of the council at least three times now and every time, the answer was the same; be patient.

This, of course, was a nice way if saying 'don't ask questions.'

Glancing off to the side, Niobe face fell in exasperation. "Heh, speak of the devil."

Turning to see what caught her attention, Morpheus saw Sparks and Kid eyeing the Sentinels as they idly made their way onto the dock.

They were holding hands.

"The manic leading the blind," Niobe mused, groaning to herself. She had resolved to never be a Driver's Ed teacher again.

Try as he might, Morpheus did not understand the humor in this. "Say again?"

Going into a complete deadpan, Niobe answered, "He can't drive."

Morpheus looked at them again. They were hugging now, Kid was seeing Sparks off. But Niobe's joke and the general strangeness of them together was lost on Morpheus right now. "He's just as young."

"As young as who?" Confused, Niobe now felt out of the loop.

She found it odd that Morpheus seemed equally confused. He said, simply, "What?"

"He's as young as who?" Niobe repeated. Obviously, he was talking about Kid, but what he was getting at was not so obvious.

And again, Morpheus was uncharacteristically oblivious. It was starting to give Niobe the creeps. "I just said he's young."

"No, you said," Niobe started. Her mouth closed slowly in mid-sentence as the pieces all started falling together, it seemed so obvious and she couldn't fathom why she hadn't noticed something was wrong with him. He was as young as..."What was his name? Mouse? Mouse from your old crew? He's just as young as Mouse. Christ, Morpheus, you're not losing sleep, you're sleeping too much over them, aren't you? You're not going to get them killed!"

"I've gotten a lot of people killed, Niobe," he answered. "We all believed the ends justified the means; I would do it all over again. So would they."

"That's not an easy thing to believe," she finally said.

"I certainly try."

There was something unspoken in that; Niobe wasn't sure if Morpheus even noticed. "And you're wondering what the point of it all was if it helped end the war and you're still doing this?"

Morpheus remained silent.

"I don't know, Morpheus, maybe there was no point," she went on, looking up at the Hammer again. "But it's stupid to expect one. We've been at war for so long most people don't understand that there's no such thing as absolute peace; but you're a soldier, you should know that."

"You're absolutely right," he conceded. "It doesn't make it less frustrating."

"It's not supposed to," Niobe said. "The Keymaker was talking about it that night, remember?"

"We only do what we're meant to do," Morpheus remembered. "He also said, 'there's always another way.'"

"Maybe," Niobe chuckled, "But I'll be damned if I can see it all the time. Still, you're never going to see it by sleeping all the time."

"Maybe my dreams are more real than this world," Morpheus answered. Taking a second to realize that Morpheus had just made an actual joke, Niobe finally laughed.

Thinking back to their earlier conversation, Niobe remembered the open invitation he had dropped. "What was his name? The orphanage kid with the sleeping problem?"

Marginally succeeding in keeping a straight face, Morpheus told her. "'Punk Ass.'"

"You're right, I don't believe you," she laughed. "Where the hell does this generation come up with their names? We never made it this complicated. We're lucky Neo was 'Neo' and not 'Sk8terboi69.'"

"That's terrifying," Morpheus answered. He finally broke down and laughed.

~~~

Smith knew this was what humans called 'Winter.' It was really just a simple climate change, the result of the axis on which the Earth rotated orienting certain parts so they received less heat from the sun. Of course, the Dark Storm ensured that temperatures on the surface were a good thirty degrees below what they would have been before the twenty-first century, but really, this just meant the brunt of Summer never came and the brunt of Winter came early.

Even now, as frozen water fell from the clouds above the artificial shroud and Dark Storm kept churning about, Smith was not cold. The mercifully slow transport 'bot he was sitting on generated heat around its cargo bed, keeping Bane's body nice and warm.

Smith didn't care. He had spent the last three days moping about the small, slow transport 'bot as it inched its way toward Zion, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation, listening to the monitor as it consistently floated around and babbled.

Right now, the relatively small squiddie was trying to make what it must've thought of as idle conversation. "So, as you can see, it is perfectly logical for a standard unit such as myself or another to be called away from our usual functions to serve a different purpose, and yet some insist that if they are not serving their original purpose, they are serving no purpose at all because it is not what they were made for."

Resisting the urge to attempt murdering the chatterbox, Smith sat down on the cargo bed and tried to fake interest. It wasn't working. "I know a thing or two about purpose myself."

"Indeed?" H-34-3GS seemed to brighten, excited that its ramblings were, in fact, being received by one intelligent enough to make conversation with. He started talking again, not noticing that his charge had found something more interesting to look at.

Smith had jumped back to his feet as soon as he realized what it was. The far-away blue blow resembling the monitor's scanner was a puzzle at first...but only at first. With some quick talking, this could very well be his salvation. "Follow that!"

"I beg your pardon?" The monitor seemed to blink in confusion, staring off where the human pointed. "I am not authorized to alter course. I must take you to the human city."

Thinking to himself, Smith tried to find the words; he needed to convince this thing that the course of action he demanded was a quicker way of fulfilling its purpose. "You can still take me, but take me with them. It will be...faster. And safer."

"Perhaps you are correct," the Sentinel answered. "Very well. If you can assure me this course of action will expedite the process, I will allow it."

Indeed, the transport 'bot began to turn, heading off in the direction the light was headed. Smith had recognized it by squinting a lot; the familiar shape of the Logos. Obviously, Mr. Anderson would not be aboard anymore, but someone was. Someone he could kill and dump before using their broadcast equipment to hack into the Matrix.

He hoped the ship's real crew was aboard; oh, how he would love to kill them. Niobe and Ghost had gotten away from all of him in the Matrix, but there were no places to hide in the desert of the real.

~ * ~ * ~

References:

-Sark, Crom and Dumont are all Tron characters, and Sark's freakish use of china as a disc-shaped throwing weapon is straight out of Tron's disc fights.

-H-34-3GS is based on Halo's 343 Guilty Spark.

Quotes:

-"I remember my first hangover. No, wait, if I remembered it, it wouldn't be a hangover." ---Babylon 5

-"Keep your foot off that blasted sommoflange!" ---Thundercats (no, really.)