Title: Choices and Chances: Chapter Seven
Author: Stormhawk
Chapter Word Count: 1979
Notes: ...nope
Oh, one: Largo is a reference to Megatokyo.
Please read and Review.
Stef nodded in thanks and walked away from Hummer and back to the strange door. She took a deep breath and shot out the hinges of the backdoor, hoping that no exiles came anywhere near her, as she wasn't quite sure she would be able to explain why exactly she was shooting up their perfect hallway - but at least the sound of the gunshots didn't echo that far.
She shot them a few more times until the locks broke and then she ripped the door away from the frame and threw it against the other wall. The door left a green and coded trail and it exploded about three seconds after impacting the wall, like a time delay, or as if it was moving at a different rate of time.
And then she was confronted by the black something nothingness, it was eerie and quiet. Something like this shouldn't exist, and yet, it did. She wondered if she was the only one who had ever seen this, the something that lay beyond the backdoor.
One day, she would have to check to see if there was anything behind any of the others.
Pulling up the bottom of her shirt, she gently tugged at her skin and pulled a surface subroutine away from the bulk of her code. She pulled it carefully out, just in case it broke, but after it seemed to hold, she pulled it out more quickly so she that she a pool of near-invisible code-string piled at her feet.
She placed the beginning of it where the lock had been, and then encased the doorframe in it a few times, luckily, it had no problem adhering to the wood.
She stepped to the edge of the doorway and let her toes of her shoes dangle over into the nothingness. She could very well be wrong, this really could be nothing. This could be death. And she hadn't even bothered writing a will.
" 'In the end we fall anyway, so we have to them know that we were here,'" she quoted.
Then without another word, she stepped off into the darkness.
It was a long fall, she could feel the wind whipping at her clothes and the light from the hallway was receding faster than she could calculate until she could barely make it out. She twisted in mid-air toward the inevitable ground.
Then all at once, there was ground, rushing up altogether too quickly. Landing in a heap on a dark stone floor, Stef jumped up and looked into the darkness, "why didn't I bring a torch?" she questioned herself.
She walked toward a faint light source. As she approached it, it got brighter and brighter until she walked into the center of...something. There were doors and passageways leading off it. Some of them had bars on them and some had gates across them.
"0x1x0x1," she whispered, "only in this world does a nonsensical, impossible statement that like create a place like this." She could see vague shapes in the shadows, "please don't be zombies," she said, "don't have time for zombies. If I come back, I'm bringing Largo."
Logically, Smith should be right where she was standing, in an open area with some light. Not because he was afraid of the dark, but because it seemed a logical place to be as it could be an entry or exit point.
But, she had no idea of the movement of time in here, if it was the same as the outside world, or if he was still alive or if the zombies had eaten him...
"Oh shut up," she told herself. "The guy can take care of himself." There was probably more than one 'rotunda' anyway.
Only one way to find out.
"SMITH!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, and with the lack of things in the tunnels and passageways, she knew it would reverb and echo enough for him to hear.
The shadow-shapes stopped moving, as if they were afraid of the loud noise. She knew just by looking at the place that there weren't a lot of loud noises in this lost part of the Matrix.
"Fine then," she said as she started down the first passageway on her left, "I'll find you myself."
"Did you hear something?" Smith asked Ivy as he half sat up.
"No," she mumbled, "now go back to sleep."
He nuzzled at her neck and drifted back to sleep.
"This place needs street signs," Stef said with a sigh. "Or a surveillance system, or a scanner or something. And a vending machine." Time was running out, she didn't have the time to search every dead-end corridor, lest she get trapped there herself.
"Smith!" she yelled again, hoping he was close enough to hear her now.
"I know I heard something this time Ivy," Smith said as he sat up. "I have to go see what it is."
"It's probably one of the other people that are trapped down here. Either that, or it's your first figment."
"I do not hallucinate."
"It's the coding of this place, I told you already, it reflects back auditory and visual feedback of what you want to see and hear. They aren't real though."
"I have to check this for myself."
"Don't leave me Smith," Ivy pleaded as she wrapped her thin arms around him, "I just got you back, don't you dare leave me."
"I have no intention of leaving you."
"I think I'll really die if I lose you again."
"I'm not going to leave you. Now...where are my pants?"
"I have no idea," Ivy said with a coy smile, "it's not like they're important anyway."
"Maybe not in here, but I would prefer not to walk around naked out there."
"Smith!" he heard someone call.
"Stef?" he whispered in confusion as he hurriedly pulled on his pants. He ran over to the door and pulled it open and saw...nothing.
"I told you," Ivy said, "it's just feedback."
"Stef?" he called down the empty hall.
"Finally!" she said triumphantly and ran toward the source of the call.
"Feedback?" Smith questioned when he didn't hear or see anything else.
"You're out past your curfew young man," he heard someone say. He turned and saw Stef.
"Are you a feedback error?" he asked her.
Her jaw dropped and she just stared at him, "I've been worried sick about you. I'm risking my life to save you. I'm tearing my code apart to get us a safe way back and you call me a feedback error? That's one hell of a thank you."
She ran over to him and through her arms around him, "I was really worried about you ada."
"Tactile contact," Ivy said fearfully. "She's real? She's not a feedback error?"
"Who's she?" Stef asked as she let him go and looked into the room.
"Ivy this is Stef, Stef this is Ivy."
Stef stared at the woman, in her late twenties if she guessed right, almost as tall as Smith, with hazel eyes and dull honey-blond hair. Stef looked at the clothes strewn on the floor, "I'm guessing you two knew each other before you landed in the bowels of hell."
"She was my girlfriend," Smith explained, "ten years ago, before she was killed."
"Ok, that is going to require a bit of explanation, but it can wait until later. Come on both of you. The gateway is closing."
"What gateway?" Smith asked as he threw Ivy's clothes to her.
"It's a firewalled and hacked door in that firewalled area. You have to shatter through the outer programming before you can gain temporary access to this place."
"How did you get this information?"
"I beat up one of the Merovingian's henchmen until he spilled his guts. But for you Smith, I would have beaten up Mero himself."
"Figuratively or literally spilled his guts?" Smith asked with a smirk.
"Figuratively. I did what any agent does to any exile. I beat him up."
"I always find," Smith said as he buttoned his shirt up, "that with exiles, they are easier to beat if they are dazed, so try and..."
"Later Smith," she said as she cut him off, "we're escaping on borrowed time."
She could have finished his sentence for him, it's impossible to forget what an agent does to an exile after being on the receiving end. Exiles, rather than rebels, are the ones who see the true power of an agent.
...smack their heads into a wall so hard it starts bleeding. Beat them until all they can taste is blood and until they can't even see the gun jammed against their head ...
Involuntarily, she shuddered at the memory.
"How do we get out of here?" Smith asked.
Stef concentrated for a second and then the string of code lit up with a faint green light. "Follow the breadcrumbs," she said with a smile.
"Smith?" Ivy said quietly as they followed Stef. "You said you weren't going to leave me."
"I'm not leaving you, we're both going back."
"I can't go back."
Smith stopped and looked back at her, "what?"
"If I go back to your world, if I go back to the Matrix, I will die."
"Why didn't you say something before?"
"Why?" she almost screamed at him. "Rescues don't happen. No one ever gets rescued, no one ever gets to leave this place. No one. We all have to stay here forever."
"But we have found a way out." He went quiet for a minute. "Does this mean I can't leave either?"
"Were you torn apart?" she asked him softly.
"I don't know," he said honestly before turning to Stef. "Was I?"
"No, and Jones has your perfect-condition brain-dead corpse in his lab."
Ivy winced, "see? You'll be fine. I can't. This coding is only stable in here, once we leave, it will try and reintegrate with the rest of us. The rest of me is dead, shredded, flushed and has long since been recycled. I have to stay here, but you don't."
Smith looked over at Stef, "I can't leave her here alone again."
Stef steadied her gaze, "I am not leaving you here."
"And I'm not leaving her. If she can't come back, then I'm staying here."
"You can't be serious."
"You would make the same decision if this was you and Darth."
"He wouldn't make me choose."
"Don't be so naïve."
"Are you really telling me that you're willing to spend the rest of your life in this place? To spend forever in nothingness."
"I will rather that than leave the woman I love alone in nothingness. I couldn't live with myself if I left her here."
"So what do I tell Stevie?" Smith went quiet and looked away, "so Smith? What do I tell your daughter?"
"Don't tell her anything," he said quietly, "just let her believe that I'm dead."
"She doesn't believe anything. I haven't told her anything yet. I was hoping I could bring you back so I held off telling her anything, I didn't want to make her worry."
Smith looked back at Ivy, "I've made my decision."
"You have got to be joking."
"I'm not."
"Smith..."
"I am staying here."
Without another word, Stef walked away from him, following the faintly glowing string of code and storing the excess back where it belonged as she gathered her 'breadcrumb trail' back up.
When she reached her entry point, she jumped back up to the near-invisible speck of light and then crashed back through the backdoor.
Lying on her back and looking up at the bright white ceiling, she concentrated and retracted the last of the code-string back inside. Taking a minute to do a self-diagnostic to make sure she was still working in good condition, she reflected on what had just happened.