Epilogue: End and Beginning

Ajax turns away from the three bodies lying dead and draped in blankets on the cold metal floor of the ship, his hand on his forehead. He agreed to let Kami try her scheme and attack the agents, and it had killed her. He really thought it would work, that was the only reason that mattered when he decided whether or not to let her and the rest of his crew do it. That, and because he knew if he did not let her go, the need for revenge would consume her utterly and the next time she met an agent, she would stand and fight and die. Ajax had thought it better to let her try a planned attack that just might worked. But it didn't. Things went wrong. Sean didn't run when he should have. Chowder and Kami...

Despite all the tests, the device the Merovingian had failed, or perhaps didn't even work at all. It was a risk dealing with the Merovingian, and that risk had caused the death of most of his crew. At least Abbie's part had gone as planned. She was an experienced operative, and had made it to her exit and gotten out all right.

Abdiel comes up beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's not your fault," she says. "It's that bastard Merovingian. If he hadn't given us that thing-"

Ajax drops his hand and turns his head away from Abdiel. "No," he says. "If he hadn't, Kami still would have found a way to follow Theta. Though she might have not dragged Chowder and Sean down with her. It might not have been so soon, either. But one way or another, she would have found a way to go up against that agent, and she would have died just the same."

"You don't know that," says Abdiel. "Sean volunteered really quickly to help her out on that— suicide mission. Kami might have found happiness elsewhere."

"No," says Ajax. I've seen this before. In literature. In the history of the resistance. In my own family, from before."

"You were an orphan. I thought all your plugged-in family had died?" Abdiel's voice wavers, against her will.

Ajax nods once, cold and silent. "They did."

Abdiel hadn't lived as long as she had without learning when to drop things. She pulls her hand back, and looks down at the bodies.

"What do we do now?" she asks. "We've lost so many. Where do we go from here?"

"We go back home. There are always new recruits looking to join crews." He pulls away, walking towards the flight deck, ready to go.

"Zip," Ajax calls. "Time to move. We're going home."

Zip has been staying at the main screens and letting his two surviving crewmates have some room. He turns them off now, the auxiliary screens going black, while the three main screens still run with the green code. They stay on always, though they only pick up the code within broadcast depth. He gets up now, and walks towards the copilot's chair. Zip stay quiet, and only looks once towards the three bodies lying covered on the hard metal floor.

The ship comes on, hovering pads glowing blue and crackling as they leave the hiding spot and move through the tunnels, heading down towards their buried city. No one watches them go.

A new day dawns. The building is long since back to normal, the dead human workers have been replaced. I stand at my office window, looking out on the streets. There is very little fog this morning, and it is shaping up to be a beautiful day.

Rebel activity is down as of late, which usually means they are planning something. I do not worry. Whatever they do, we will meet and counter and force them back.

After Miss Sato's attack on the agency and subsequent death, we had gotten the building backup loaded and operational within four hours, and taken about the same amount of time to deal with the bodies. It had taken that long because of the human files and databases that needed to be adjusted in order for bodies to show up and be buried. The two rebel bodies also needed to be moved to different sectors of the matrix, but with the backdoors this didn't take very long at all.

I helped Williams move Miss Sato's body through the white walls of the backdoor hallway, taking her on a gurney back to Tucson.

Agents Miller, Clark, and Davis met us at the main Tucson agency backdoor. I wheel the gurney through the backdoor and into the Arizona sector proper. Miller and Williams lock eyes for a minute, communicating something between team leaders that I'm not privy to.

Lee, says Williams from the hallway, and letting the other agents overhear, You should stay in Tucson for a few hours, and help with the disposal of the body. Miller also wants to have to a talk with you.

All right, I say to him, letting Miller and the other two hear, as I step clear of the door. Outside of my usual sector, I feel strange. My links to the other agents here seem somewhat different, and also lessened from what I'm accustomed to. Something like the difference between two apartments with identical floor plans and furniture, but with the furniture in slightly different positions. Just strange enough to be a little disorienting.

Also disorienting is that this is where Renee lived. It is strange to see the city for what it is now, with those memories still inside me, though truly separate now that I have lived for some time as an agent and nothing else. I do not let what I was rule me now, and behave as I should, as an agent.

There will be a van from the cemetery along soon to pick up the body, says Miller. There is a casket waiting downstairs for it, as well.

I nod, and the four of us proceed down the hallway and to the freight elevator.

Welcome back, says Agent Davis.

Thank you, I say back to him. I don't just mean thanks for the welcome, and the three Arizona sector agents know this.

The body is quickly taken downstairs and moved into the coffin, which is then lifted back onto the gurney, ready to go off to the cemetery.

"Lee, come with me," says Miller, after we are through.

I nod again and follow him out of the building's morgue. Clark and Davis stay with the body.

Miller transfers away somewhere and I follow, tracing him since I don't really know where we are going. We end up in a graveyard, though not the one Miss Sato's body will be taken to and interred.

I follow Agent Miller along the rows of graves. He is quiet, hands clasped behind his back. I stay silent as well, wondering why he has brought me here. And then I see the grave marker, and I know.

Why have you brought me here? I ask.

"I thought you should see it," says Miller. He talks out loud much more than any other agent I have met, and about more personal things than is usual to not speak of through direct earpiece link. "It helped me to see mine. Gave a real sense of finality."

The gravestone is a simple granite marker, flat with the earth. It has a name, and two dates, and an age. Along with another line simply containing the words Remember Me. I remember the latter date well, and the former not at all. The latter is October twenty-ninth, two thousand and three. I also recognize the name, of course, as it used to refer to a part of me.

"We went to the funeral," he says, "Clark, Davis, and I. It seemed the least we could do, as we were the ones 'investigating' Renee's death."

"Thank you," I say, succumbing to Miller's habit of speaking out loud. "I'm sure it would have meant a lot to her."

"Third person, eh?" says Miller. "I do that too. I think all of the agents in our situation do. All the ones that passed their test and lasted, anyway."

I remember the night on the highway set, and wonder briefly how many did not make it. I don't bother to ask, as it doesn't really matter to me now since I did pass.

"Those years feel like a dream, now," I say, still looking down at the gravestone. "Especially since my final meeting with Miss Sato. They feel like something that happened to somebody else." I gesture towards the stone. "That isn't me, and I find it difficult now to believe it ever was."

Miller nods. "You are an agent, and will forever be. I am glad you understand."

I hesitate for a moment. "What happened to her family?" I ask. Another thing I could easily look up, but don't really need or perhaps want to.

"They will survive," says Miller. "Tragedy often has the effect of bringing the survivors closer together. And the mainframe has made sure they were compensated for their loss. Standard procedure."

I nod. "That is good," I say. "It would have been a comfort for Renee."

"And for Lee?" says Miller.

"Irrelevant to my function, and easily dismissed," I say quickly, and then pause. "But still comforting."

I turn away from the grave, looking out over the cemetery, past a graveside ceremony taking place, and towards the mountain range in brown and green to the north of the city. The air here is clear and dry, and strangely about the same temperature as it is in the bay area right now. Though it is quite a bit sunnier. My sunglasses are actually useful for their standard purpose, here.

I've seen what I needed to, I say. Do you need my further help here, or should I return to my team? I have work to do.

There is always work to do, says Miller. He follows my gaze and also turns to look towards the mountains rising above the city. This is all I wanted to show you. You may go.

I look up at the mountains one last time, and transfer first to the Tucson agency, taking over the same host I walked here from San Francisco. From there I reenter the backdoor hallways and return to my sector and my life.

Harris meets me at the door in.

Are you done with what you were doing? he asks.

Yes, I say, meaning every word to its fullest extent. I am done.

Harris nods, and we walk down the hallway and towards our offices. The day is still young, and we have much to do.

The End.