Until the day I die, I'll spill my heart for you

We make the same mistakes, I'll take the fall for you, I hope you need this now, 'cause I know I still do…

Until the day I die, I'll spill my heart for you

As years go by, I race the clock with you, but if you die now, you know that I die too… I die too

Protector of Men Ch 108

"Get out, get out!" Zandra shouted over the P.A., "We have to stop this!" She punched the door button and left Columbus in the cockpit, too concerned with her mission to wait for confirmation. She would take no gun; this was a mission of peace. If they wanted to kill her there would be nothing she could do either way.

Sentinels lay haphazardly on the ground mixed with the bloodied corpses of soldiers and the wreckage of all their hovercrafts. She had to find a way to stop the soldiers now interspersed on every floor of Zion before the next wave of sentinels arrived. Time was of the essence.

Within minutes she had reached the elevator to Zion's main levels, the weapons deck in mind. She saw Shade running towards her as she punched the button to go and shook her head. She could not wait: this was her battle.

She began to hear the humming of sentinels as the elevator creaked slowly upwards. Only a minute or so before the coming onslaught – and even Zandra didn't know what was going to happen. If the machines saw the EMP as a rejection of a ceasefire, she'd be dead. Of course, she had come to accept whatever happened, even if it meant death.

The elevator stopped and she ran for the weapons deck. The humming grew louder. She reached the door and flung it open, expecting councilors, generals – but the deck was deserted. Sparks flew from the fried control panels, and mutilated bodies lay on the ground. She paused, her breath caught for a moment. She looked for a P.A. system, but couldn't find one amidst the broken electronics systems.

There was a dull explosion outside the small room. Zandra looked – the sentinels had arrived anew, and someone had fired a rocked at the oncoming masses. She felt a rush of adrenaline as the realization came that this was the moment. It had to be done now.

She dashed outside and began climbing an abandoned ladder to the top of the weapons deck. Below, Shade was calling for her, begging her to come back down, but she ignored him. If even one soldier could see her, could hear her, maybe they would stop.

The combination of fear, exertion, and stress weighed hard on her as she scaled the ladder, but the thought of impending doom forced her to move faster. Only a few more yards to go, and now more than anytime else Zandra feared the electric sound of an EMP. Hopefully she still had a few minutes.

She pulled herself to the top of the deck, clinging fearfully to the spire of antennae bolted to its surface. From here she could see floors ten and below, all following the schools of sentinels with fearful eyes. She watched as another troop of sentinels erupted from the breach in the dock. More rockets headed for them, and more firing broke out.

"Stop!" Zandra screamed, waving her arms in terror, "Stop!"

They couldn't hear her – the sound of machine fire and rockets drowned out her pleading voice.

"Stop!" she repeated, "You have to stop!"

A few sentinels stopped midair and registered Zandra's existence. They inched toward her, one scanned her. She stood petrified, awaiting death. More sentinels paused to stare, and a few fell from the constant fire of the troops.

There was another explosion; Zandra was deafened by the sound of it and recoiled in terror. But before she got a chance to see the cause of it, she was snatched by one of the sentinels and was sent soaring into the air.

It was over; she knew it. Zandra looked up at her kidnapper; the sentinel was flying upwards and forwards, and now another arm was grabbing at hers for support. Her eyes began to black out from vertigo: she was twenty stories up, at the mercy of one of the killing machines that she had been attempting to save. A few people below had stopped fighting for a moment and watched the small figure rising through the air, dangling by her feet.

The sentinel stopped moving and used its free arms to further support her; she was now cupped in its tentacles like a delicately handled bird. She looked around, clutching the arms of the machine. People at eye level watched her, bewildered, their guns loosely trained on the sentinel that kept her alive.

"Nono," she mumbled, attempting to find her voice, "Don't shoot…"

A few more sentinels came her way and hovered close behind where she sat. There they waited; their arms curled under them, their eyes blinking in inactivity. Zandra looked around. She couldn't recognize faces – everyone was a stranger now, all watching her, unmoving and unblinking. That moment she wished more than anything else to see a friendly face – anyone: Columbus, Kesia, Shade…

In a short gasp she brought herself back into the moment. She still had a mission.

"Zion!" she shouted, cupping her hands so that perhaps Zion could hear her. There was another small explosion, and she paused before trying again.

"Zion!" she repeated, "You can end this now!"

Her voice seemed louder, and her confidence grew. She sat up straighter, and took a deep breath before continuing.

"Declare a ceasefire!" she shouted, "And they will leave us!"

The sentinels hummed with energy; Zandra buzzed with it. With the machines every Zionite could hear her voice; electricity pulsed through her like lifeblood and it invigorated her. She stood, and the sentinels adjusted.

"I promise you, Zion – put down your weapons and we will have peace!"

Everything was quiet, and all of Zion looked to her for direction. The sentinels offered their power to her; she now stood a thousand feet in the air on a tower of living machinery, five thousand sentinels tall. They came to her for protection because now, Zion dared not destroy the machines that held up their messiah. Zandra looked to her people, and they stared back, frozen.

"Turn off the batteries and they will leave!"

Her voice came booming from every speaker in Zion, her image ingrained permanently in the minds of free mankind. They looked up at her and they knew: the war was over.

The war was over.

It seemed like her attempt was finally working; Zion's battalions had stopped firing, and it seemed she had finally gained their full trust. Perhaps it would only be a few moments before the sentinels would put her back on solid Earth and leave…

"It is they that ask for peace!" she continued, palms outward. In the distance she heard one officer telling his troops to put down their weapons. It's alright, Zandra told herself, it'll be over soon.

There was a whizzing noise and Zandra stumbled backward on her tiny tower of machinery, knocked off balance. The sentinels struggled to accommodate her, rapidly moving backward to catch her feet. She couldn't breathe; she looked down – blood was staining her shirt, falling from her chest in intermittent spurts. She recoiled and stumbled further, and as she fell, everything became dark.

Zion watched with horror as their messiah fell; watched with hope as the sentinels flew down after her, knowing that they too depended on her.

But it wasn't enough, and seconds later everyone heard the pitiful crash of flesh onto metal.

They stood motionless, speechless. They gaped down the innumerable floors of Zion, sometimes crouching, sometimes leaning, sometimes sitting, all with their faces turned to the ground. Was this true? Was this real? Had they really killed their own messiah?

She was too far down for them to see her clearly. She was only a dot among the wreckage. A few searched for her with binoculars, but inevitably they threw them aside in tortured exasperation. Still everything was quiet. The troops put down their guns, fully sobered. Sentinels began gathering around her body and still Zion made no movement.

Shade watched from only a floor above, silent as everyone else. She meant as much to him as she did to everyone. Dread prevented them from looking too closely. She wasn't gone – she couldn't be; she had saved his life, she had saved all of their lives. Alias put a comforting arm on his shoulder. The sentinels crowded around her body and a faint light grew from their center. Certainly they could save her.

Emory watched from outside his apartment with a mixture of accomplishment and resignation. She had stopped the war – Zion was completely in her hands. But after this… either the machines would save her, or they'd eradicate Zion for good. They had attacked their own messiah.

The sentinels moved from their formation and retreated momentarily from Zandra's unmoving body. Two of them moved back forward and picked her up, her limbs splayed helplessly against their metal bodies.

She wasn't conscious, but she wasn't too far-gone, either. Somehow, whether it was a construct of the machines' making or a hallucination, she found herself in a hospital bed. Too tired to speak, she merely watched as nurses hurried in and out of the small room she lay in.

"Sorry kid," one of them said, approaching with a mask that she gingerly placed on Zandra's face, "You're gonna go out for a little while."

Shade continued to watch in silence. Alias had long removed her hand from his shoulder and now stood leaning heavily against the banister that separated them from the docks below. He felt guilty that he wasn't any more emotional. Certainly if she were dead he would be more forlorn than any. She had to be alive, why would they be so nervously hovering around her still? She couldn't die.

"What do we do?" a voice asked, the words echoing in everyone's mind. No one answered.

"Alright hon," a nurse said with a gentle smile, "You're all done."

Zandra stared back, and the nurse patted her forehead tenderly.

"You'll be back up in a few hours," she continued. "We'll leave before then. Be careful at first though: you're more metal than flesh, now."

The nurse laughed good-naturedly and left. For Zandra, everything went dark again.

Within ten minutes the sentinels had all left; Zion still stood where they were, wholly speechless and devoid of thought. All of Zion was quiet. A fire burned faintly in the distance, illuminating the city in a dim warm light. And still, Zandra lay on a corridor not far from where she fell. There was a brief beeping sound, and six people ran to her from an elevator behind her. They wore white, and two of them carried a stretcher. Carefully they picked her up and soon she was off to the infirmary. Zion's healing would begin.

And still the sentinels stayed away. The war was over.

A/N – hooly crap that was a long chapter. Well, it was important, so I guess it's okay. Technically this is the 'end', but there will be multiple afterwards. Maybe two.

Alocin – too weird? Was your mind open enough?