DISCLAIMER: Matrix-orientated wonders belong to the Wachowski Brothers, I hope they notice this before they consider taking legal action.

Thanks to Selina and Gypsy-Fire for their reviews! I've been looking forward to writing this sequel myself...

Morithil.

TWO

"Will the wind ever remember

The names it has blown in the past,

And with this crutch, it's old age and its wisdom

It whispers, 'No, this will be the last.' "

Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary.

Smith woke up drenched and alone.

The former agent slowly got up from the dry ground, upon which he noticed the damp outline of his body was now stained. Momentarily disorientated, he closed the startling blue eyes behind his dark glasses and pressed some internal button marked, "Rewind".

Yes, that was it. He saw the sky darkened, lit up sporadically by bolts of lightning set in motion by himself. He felt again the raw, rushing, almost overwhelming power he had become, the electric pulsing in his fingertips, the comfort of clones, everything dark, twisted and familiar. His. Smith almost sighed in recollection, the sensations of being so powerful reinstalling the holier-than-thou look he had greeted the last hope of the remaining free human race with. Anderson may have looked exactly the same, the clean-lined poster boy for Zion, but the agent knew, knew that somewhere in the Real World Anderson was stumbling, a searching hand reaching out to grope his surroundings. A leper as well as a blind Messiah. But where was he? Where was he now? The strange, almost unearthly desert in shades of pale monochrome appeared, to the unprepared eye, to be endless. Smith relived the victory, a veritable swell of - yes, emotion - rising in his throat as Neo submitted to the inevitable, was overcome by him, Smith.

It was meant to be all over. It had been over.

Then he remembered it. The pain, the emptiness, something within the depths of his artificial intelligence that howled as he fragmented internally, existence and awareness crumbling inside him, and still the rain fell down.

If that harrowing experience was anything, it was deletion. Termination. So many names for the simple action of cutting off something from the world around it. Removal from the Matrix. Destruction. But if that was so, why was he here? Why was he standing, apparently intact, apparently conscious of everything around him-for all intents and purposes, still existing in whatever dimension of the Matrix this was. If indeed this was part of the Matrix.

The tall figure straightened and, removing the dark glasses, fixed his icy gaze, spanning 360 degrees, turning slowly with a certain grace that only made his strength more deadly.

I am Smith, and I still exist, he thought to himself. Some inner streak of rebellion coursed through him. If human, Smith would have been compelled to punch a defiant fist in the air and deliver a rousing, "Fuck you!" to the machines that tried to stop him. Stop him. Who else would send that insipid renegade to try and stop his takeover, who else would have been able to send Anderson back into the Matrix. Three words.

Deus. Ex. Machina.

Smith was oddly relieved at the wave of solitary that came over him. This he had already dealt with; the Oracle had opposed him, as, no doubt had the Architect, alone in his visual box on the world he designed. Agents seemed particularly mistrustful of him; and as well they should be, the tall figure couldn't help adding to himself. He was a tumour, a freakish variation on a tried-and-tested program, and the machines had thought best to simply cut him out. Disownment. With a dry sense of humour that was unique to him, the former agent attributed himself a title not unusual to certain humans. He was the bastard son of the Matrix. Those that had played key parts in his formation had aimed to delete him altogether, remove him from the imperfect/perfect world they had simulated.

Which begged the questions; why was he still conscious, and where was he?

Smith looked around, the grey, flat landscape opening up before him. He analysed the area, for once almost thankful for the agent abilities installed in him that he still retained. There were other programs here, he discovered, knitting his brow as he glared at the barely-there horizon he knew wasn't real. But they were defunct, obsolete. They were not even functioning; some of them fragments of programs, trails of formulae, codes. Shut down and lingering here, wherever here was, exactly-

Then Smith realised it. The urban legend of the machine world. He took a few steps forward, away from the slowly evaporating darkness on the ground where he had lain, and felt a bitter taste reproduce itself on his tongue. An anvil in the pit of his stomach. Across the desert of grey and white a mournful wind stirred tiny clouds of dust up from the ground. Already Smith was running methodically through possible means of getting out, but the practical logic that permeated him forced the acceptance of his situation.

He was alone, and in the Machine Graveyard.