Nine

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Disclaimer: The Matrix and all it's characters and environments are the proptery of the brother Wachowski. Done and done.

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Neo let his arms drop to his sides, seeing the massive space they were stuck in. "I don't understand. We use the hardline to get out of the Matrix and wind up inside another program?"

For them, there was no doubt that was what it was. At a cursory glance, he and Trinity appeared to be standing at the center of a round platform that composed the union of three metal catwalks. All around them, they could see the circular platforms, the bright red hatches, and the familiar architectural features of the underground city of Zion.

Impossible, he thought.This couldn't be Zion. Not only was it devoid of the craft, the people, the dirt that made Zion what they knew, the fact remained that they had just been sent here by tapping into a machine phone line.

"They must have redirected this line, knowing we'd take it", Trinity decided out loud, quickly pulling back from the edge of the chasm that was all around them. To her recollection, only two people had fallen off of the real Zion's many catwalks and balconies in the past, by accident. Neither had survived the drop.

"This is still in the Matrix", Neo concurred, his voice now echoing to infinity in the empty metal space. "I can see the code. But why construct a copy of Zion? And how would they know what Zion looks like?"

"Good questions, both of them", a new voice answered them before revealing itself. The brand new Agent, the one with a flat top of black hair casually stepped out from behind a girder onto one of the walkways. "AnneMarie… No matter what else comes between us, it is good to see you again, after all these years."

"This is crazy", Neo whispered tersely, immediately moving himself between Trinity and their dangerous new arrival. "Who the hell is AnneMarie?"

The other man smiled sardonically, shook his head. "Geez boy, you are slow. Are you going to tell him AnneMarie, or should I?"

To his surprise, Trinity, bravely stepped forward, refusing to look at Neo. "That's my old name, Neo. And this man is… was my father."

He looked back at her with wide eyes, comprehending but not believing. "No."

Agent Peterson drew his gun on him, the invisible signal for Agents Jones and Brown to step onto the other two walkways and do likewise with their pistols. "So now you know", he said, taking aim directly at The One's heart. "And you know that I don't approve of you, boy. Here, or anywhere."

"This is a construct created in the farthest reaches of our mainframe's unused memory", Brown spoke up, drawing his own gun and pointing it at Neo's head. "It is far away from the Matrix, and there is nothing in between."

"We have already destroyed your entry point.", Jones said, echoing the others as he drew a bead on the other side of Neo's brain, at his right temple. "No matter what, there is no way out of here for either of you."

With all three of the guns primed, no one dared to move for nearly five seconds, the time stretched into eternal motionlessness. Then Neo, once again moving at the speed of human thought, backhanded Trinity in a very subtle way, dislodging her from the platform without hurting her, just as the three Agents fired simultaneously... But that carefully gaged hit did not consume so much of The One's concentration that he would be left helpless while three irate Agents emptied their clips at his spot on the center platform.

In the time it took the three programs to get to their respective third shots, Neo had done one better than simply freezing the six live bullets in midair. Making a whirling motion with his entire body, he instead redirected each of the shots on a divergent course much like an actual ricochet, back along one of the walkways. Agent Brown's bullets were channeled towards the open chest of the beleaguered Agent Jones. Likewise, Jones' bullets found themselves headed for Agent Peterson, and Peterson's were suddenly headed straight for Brown.

The One could interpret each of these volleys as mere coding. The naked eye of any other mortal would see the slow-motion bullet trails curving onto their new trajectory, each one missing him by inches as he spun around like a top to avoid them.

The next few milliseconds of shooting saw the trio of Agents break their previous uniformity, and not in a good way. Confronted by three of their own shots approaching them, with additional speed provided by the being who had redirected them, Agents Brown and Jones had little choice but to bail from the walkways and fall, avoiding an embarrassing deletion by their own shots.

Not Agent Peterson. Just as Neo had seen, had expected, had feared… he could manipulate programmed reality just as potential One- or in this case, the procreator of a potential One- could, even as the program side of his mind knew beyond a doubt what the fake Zion truly was. So when Jones' salvo of three bullets came his way, he did not duck, he did not run. He stretched out his hand, and redirected the bullets again, this time back towards his target.

Before he could acknowledge or react further, Neo felt the searing kiss of a bullet graze along the skin of his back. Either through luck or purpose, the other two missed. All the same, he felt the burn and knew it had nearly brushed his spine.

Peterson advanced, reloading and holstering his weapon even as he ran towards the center platform, the purest of malice in his eyes beneath the shades. Knowing what he intended, Neo met him right there and engaged. No one could truly see or understand the speed of the flurries of punches and kicks The One delivered. No one, that is, except for his opponent.

-

Falling… What?

She had regained her bearings just in time. That well meaning push from Neo might have gotten her out of harm's way, but it had disoriented Trinity enough so that catching a walkway closer to the bottom of the fake Zion and swinging up onto it unscathed was a feat.

Almost like the cliff jumper program, she had a second to muse before she heard another crash on a walkway further up. She was too far down to see Neo, or the enemies he now faced… but she could see Agent Jones' angry face no problem. He must have fallen off as well.

Trinity was too experienced to expect Jones to be as dazed from falling sixty, maybe seventy feet as she was. Without wasting a second, she sprinted for the circular ledges that held the hatches, desperate for any kind of cover from the five gunshots Jones had left before he had to reload.

That gave her just a few seconds to think. If they had gone to all the trouble of creating a fake Zion to trap Neo and her in- she would figure out exactly how they had learned what Zion looked like at a later date-, then some of the other features might be identical as well. One of the hatches near the bottom level should lead to the huge natural caverns the city had been built to take advantage of. It would be easy to hide there, waiting out her pursuers until she could figure something else out.

Not much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. By somersaulting the rest of the way down, she managed to avoid Jones' parting shots, and squeeze through the hatch just before he punched a hole in it, prompting her to reply with three bullets through that hole; She heard a dull grunt that indicated she had hit something fleshy.

From here on in, it was up to Neo.

-

Blow and counterblow had since become the only things in the world that mattered to the two strongest combatants in the construct. Every time Neo thought he had Peterson figured out, he would visibly become even angrier, and attack with greater ferocity than before. Blow for blow, telekinesis for telekinesis, he still couldn't expect to compete with The One. But if the Agent's speed and strength continued to increase along with his berserker rage towards him, it would not be long before that changed.

Case in point- for once, Neo was actually hit by a sweep kick. By the time he had mustered the focus to stop his plummet off the exposed walkway, Peterson had drilled him with a chop to the gut. He fell, and Peterson fell after him, down for hundreds of feet.

Neither would pass up the opportunity to use their distance weapons. Neo had brought with him a hand-held SMG that he had come to like, but had not yet seen the need to use- handguns just didn't seem as useful when you were The One. But now both men opened up, Neo with the SMG, Peterson with his eight-shot Desert Eagle.

This evaluation of their ammo and weapons, however, was of little real importance. The true measure of what they could fire was not of the bullets in their guns, but just how quickly the two of them could telekinetically redirect those bullets back to sender, quickly creating a thick thread of hundreds of bullet trails between them as they fell, as if in slow-motion. A typical bullet in this exchange would descend on Neo, reverse direction back at Peterson's face, and then loop back around again at twice the velocity before impacting with another hollow-point slug Neo had redirected, destroying them both.

To Neo's great relief, Peterson was the first one to tire of this game. Instead of returning the bullets his way, he began to move them to either side of their intended target, letting them fly hundreds of feet upwards to impact with the ceiling. Still enmeshed in swirling bullet trails, he did not dare stop to fly. He could only wait, and redirected the shots, and wait some more, redirect more shots, and then…

It was as though they had just fallen out of Zion. Instead of hard metal, Neo grimaced in pain as he felt his butt impact most ingloriously with wet, grassy earth, beneath a sky of the utmost night. If he had not slowed his descent down to a crawling rate of a second for every few inches, the fall would have killed even him. Too overconfident. I have to start taking this seriously, or he really is going to kill me!

A moment later, he heard and felt Peterson slam into the ground in a similar fashion. He noticed they had fallen into a thick layer of fog. It would have obscured the stones lying in neat, orderly rows through the outdoor area if they were any further away. While he was too distracted to read any of the stones yet, it was far too easy to tell what this second level of the construct was- a graveyard.

Agent Peterson rose back to his feet with a dry chuckle, not allowing the pain he felt in his ribs to hinder his hateful sarcasm. "Welcome to the bowels, O magnificent One. I assembled and wrote this line of the program specifically for you. So that you can finally come face to face with what you've done."

Instinctively, Neo's arms rose, more than ready to continue their earlier fisticuffs, but Peterson waved them away, still trying to hide the fact that he was holding his side. "Not just yet. Take a look at those tombstones first. Tell me what you see."

Still keeping a suspicious eye of his opponent, he glanced at the closest row. The first tombstone read Edwin Allister, the second Bill Steiner. Many other names shared that first row, names that Neo had never heard of before, until he saw Michael Reagan.

"Cypher", he whispered, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the cold fog, which even now was rapidly dissipating to reveal more of the graveyard. Dozens of rows lay on either side of them, which translated into thousands of tombstones. Thousands of markers for corpses.

Peterson tilted his head, offering a small, self-satisfied grin. "You're catching on. Bill Steiner was one of the guards you shot during your little escapade to rescue Morpheus. You killed Edwin Allister when you single-handedly defeated that police blockade a few days ago. Look at the other side, Neo."

He did so involuntarily. The names were all lined up before him, this group even larger than the first. Hammond, Skinner, Stephens, West, Sazaki… and AnneMarie Peterson.

"That is the last tombstone I wrote", Peterson explained, now looking at the false grave himself, sounding hollow. "I didn't want to admit it, I hoped it would never come to pass… but now I know- the girl I raised and loved more than life itself is gone."

His entire body going rigid, Neo wheeled to face the Agent, not wanting to let the wordless accusations surrounding them sink in fully. "This isn't my fault."

Peterson's eyebrows rose. "Oh? Then whose fault is it? Young men like you… you tell yourself it couldn't be helped, that it was all for a cause. Now I've given you the opportunity to face up to your crimes. How would their families view you, I wonder?"

Feeling each accusation like the gunshot from earlier, Neo helplessly looked back at rows of tombstones. They seemed even more numerous than before, lines of the dead stretching into infinity. In life, they had all been pre-placed under that insulting label of 'coppertop', that seemed to make them less than human… and he had killed every one of them.

"Never mind", Peterson said, the fury he'd unleashed before now rising in his voice, building up to one final rush, "I already know that. Because you and Morpheus are the ones who took AnneMarie away from me, I can seewhat you are."

No time to dwell further on it- anyone with a brain could tell Peterson was gathering his strength- his pure unrestrained hatred of Neo- to attack again. No more fog, just an endless horizon, invisible in the night. "I'm not a murderer. I am The One."

He gave a barely perceptible nod, and more obvious sneer. "The One prophesied to either save… or kill the world and all its people… unless I kill you first!"

Moving with enough energy so as to glide, they clashed once more in the absolute center of the graveyard, directly in front of the grave of AnneMarie. After only a half a minute of frenzied punching, kicking, blocking, and dodging, Agent Peterson was sent sprawling along the ground for meters, leaving a great furrow in the moist earth. To The One's great surprise, he rose up out of it almost instantly, as if nothing had happened, and, moving faster than thought, knocked his opponent an even greater distance, to crash into one of the larger stones.

Scraped through to my ribs. Damn. That really hurt. Dragging himself from the ruin, he could not regain his bearings fast enough to deal, and simply leapt to the sky to avoid Peterson's mad charge. Without missing a beat, the crazed program did the same, just in time to exchange another sequence of rapid-fire Kung Fu, this time in midair. Both men dropped back to the ground as one, hitting it with one knee and arm to absorb the impact, at the exact same moment.

This guy is good. Either the machines gave him the best upgrades I've ever seen, or he's just running on adrenaline. Actually panting now, he nonetheless managed to fight the pain of both the physical blows and the mass of graves all around him, stood back up before Peterson did.

Up, and once again moving at speeds Neo had previously thought were his domain alone, the crazed Agent now kicked another one of the graves- the fake tombstone of Michael Reagan- directly at Neo. As fast as it flew into The One's outstretched fist and shattered, it was merely a diversion- Peterson appeared on the other side, grabbing the black-sleeved arm hanging out so invitingly in front of him, twisting it into a position no man's left arm was meant to assume.

Not happening- I can play that game too. Spinning with the velocity of the blow, The One launched into the same midair spinning kick he had use Morpheus use on Peterson in the alleyway brawl only eighteen hours earlier, knocking the man off-balance for only a moment, then revolving a second time to deliver an open-palm blow and sending him flying twenty feet.

Standing up amidst the ruins of an entire row, Peterson brushed himself off, still totally focused on his goal as though his injuries were but minor irritants. "You bleed, boy", he remarked darkly, straightening his tie. "Just like a human."

Out of sheer reflex, he pressed one palm to the lightheaded spot on his flesh to confirm Peterson's observation. Yes, he was bleeding warmly from a spot near his right ear, and it was getting all over his face now. He recalled now how Peterson had kicked him in the face while he had been spinning around for the open-palm blow, and so quickly that he hadn't felt it at the time. Should be fine so long as it doesn't get in my eyes. Got to distract him while I wipe it off. "Why are you doing this, Peterson? You were human once."

"Once", he emphasized, busy wiping his own blood from his flesh as well. "My humanity died with my wife and daughter. I suppose that's why they brought me aboard- for that special power a machine can never emulate."

That's it then. Our emotions… the rage that consumes humans who lose those they love! That's his weapon! "I didn't kill your daughter, Peterson- I love her as well, every bit as much as you do, or did."

Peterson's violent reaction to this shocked Neo. He kicked another gravestone into oblivion, stomping the earth like a feral animal, but the biggest change was the venom and tearful pain injected into his gravelly voice. "Wrong. You cherish the Zionite bitch terrorist, code-named Trinity. But thank you anyway for pointing that out to me, Neo… so I can take her from you as you took her from me!"

Without being consciously aware of it, Neo was up and charging, gliding along the ground yet again, bound towards this… this… thing that dared to threaten to take Trinity's life solely to spite him. He told himself he should have seen it before, in the Matrix code: Peterson wasn't human. Neither was he a program. Instead, he was some kind of hybrid combination of the two codes. A mutant. A thing that should not be.

They both began with their fists, the impacts often connecting with, but never defeating, the opposite man's blows. Certainly, the resulting impacts could- and did- lay to waste everything else in the entire level of the program… but both men were far too incensed by now to care or give way to the other until both were utterly spent.

Far too early, Neo felt the blood vessel that had burst earlier begin to flow once again- a fatal distraction that Peterson took full advantage of. He elbowed The One in the chin at full force, knocking him into an upwards flight that was only partially under his control. Before the younger man could react, he followed after him.

Peterson couldn't really fly, not like Neo could. But being an Agent, he could jump. He could jump quite fast and high, in fact. High and fast enough to give him the hang time to strike Neo's exposed spine dead center, where the bullet had grazed him before. High and fast enough to utter a mad, screaming cry to the black skies, as if calling for Deus Ex Machina as his witness, and empty all the strength in his arms into the two-handed hammer blow.

Without even a grunt, Neo fell away from the blow from on high, impacting with the earth below. Slowly, both as a by-product of caution and utter exhaustion, Peterson staggered over, examining the fallen body of the The One, making certain that while his pulse was thready, his eyes were closed with the sleep of unconsciousness. Finally, once he was absolutely certain that his target was helpless, he reached for his gun holster…

…and gave an extremely loud curse. He had already used up his ammo in all the shooting from earlier. Normally, an Agent in his predicament would be awarded as many reloads as necessary, but they were so far away from the Source here that that obviously wasn't going to happen. His eyes danced wildly behind his shades, now furtively searching the area he himself had made. Still… there must be something around here I can use. Something that can kill him for sure.

After about twenty seconds of looking, Peterson knew what he had to do. How appropriate, too…

-

Trinity's strained legs were begging for a stop, a meditative trance, any kind of escape. But with Agent Jones and who knew what else rapidly closing the distance between them, that wasn't possible. All at once, it felt like she was back in the old days, before they had located Neo: run like crazy, and pray you find a way out before they catch you, because they always will!

But there wouldn't be a way out, in this case. From what she had gathered from their prior conversation, Robert Peterson and his new masters had designed this construct as an elaborate trap for The One and whoever else was with him at the time. Of course they would leave no exits, no passages back to the Matrix proper. Just like before, she was stuck here… and Jones' footfalls were getting louder with every second.

She tore through more of the consciously vacant limestone caverns, that in the true Zion were always inhabited, lungs aching. Her earlier volley had allowed her to lose sight of the Agent, at least. But now, even as she ran, she caught occasional glimpses of him rounding the same corners. Pouring on the speed in desperation, she nearly flew to the passageway into the machine rendition of Zion's main dock.

She flung the hatchway to the massive outer area open, revealing Agent Brown's coiled form, ready to strike her in the gut as he had done days before. She reluctantly doubled over, knowing that to stop moving was to embrace death, and Brown leaned back to throw her over his frame and out into the dock- the dock that wasn't really a dock at all. It was merely a steel bridge, staring out into infinite nothingness.

Unused memory, she thought grimly, seeing it upside-down from her spot on the floor. Anyone could tell you that the Matrix required more processing power than any other program yet to be designed. The machines, being big on redundancies, had enacted a mainframe with far more space than was needed to that purpose. What was lying before her now, and what this construct must have been mere weeks before now, was an endless black void without simulated image, sound, physics, or even simulated oxygen. No one could pass in or out of it.

Of course, that observation was now purely academic. She and Neo couldn't even think about escaping until their captors were dealt with… and hers were on the edge of victory already. Brown twisted Trinity back to her feet and slammed her against a wall in the same motion, leaving completely helpless before the two enforcers.

Then, he arrived. While his suit and the blood on him did much to mar it, they could not conceal the telltale signs that registered in her mind in spite of everything: the wide eyes, his hair, every bit as shiny and oily black as her own, that familiar swagger that always suggested a rugged enthusiasm, especially on the rare occasions when he came home for a family dinner.

Jones and Brown, confident in their own victory, turned to face program 67P with a keen interest apparent to everyone there. "What happened?"

Peterson's voice was still unnervingly familiar, but also altered by a kind of emotion he had never shown in his old life. "I did it," he said, slowly in order to get his message's true import through. "I did it. I did it. I have beaten the anomaly into the ground… literally."

Strong reactions came from everyone present. For Trinity, it was like her father had slapped her. Neo! No. No no no… you can't be dead! Not now, not at his hands!

Oblivious to her torment, Jones adjusted his headpiece to be certain of what he had heard. "You have defeated him? On your own?"

This can't be happening…

"I did", he answered confidently. "I made him suffer, buried him down in the bowels of Hell- small repentance for his crimes."

It took Brown and Jones even longer to digest that. They still couldn't believe it was true, and Trinity didn't want to believe it was true. After a long pause, Jones looked up. "Congratulations, then. Your plan to demoralize the target worked, I take it. All that remains now… is to dispatch of the other intruder."

"And Morpheus", Peterson interrupted him urgently, at once sounding like a child pulling on a parent's leg for candy- that was all he could focus on. "We have to kill Morpheus. Now."

"Indeed", Jones answered calmly. Behind him, Brown produced from his vest the only loaded gun they had left, passing the weapon across to their new champion. "But her first. Perhaps you would do the honors…?"

"No!", she burst forth. But Trinity's scream of anguish for Neo was silenced just as effectively as her physical self when Brown muffled her. Black spots appeared on her eyes from lack of oxygen- she could only watch her father take the Desert Eagle in his hand, suddenly looking considerably less confident.

In fact, she could have sworn he was sweating- something that Agents never did. "It's your weapon, 31B", he finally answered. "You go ahead. Finish it."

Jones' civil, but displeased tone made it perfectly clear just much of a wrong answer that was. "Consider it, if you will, a final test of your loyalty, Mr. Peterson."

Five seconds of procrastination later, Brown gave an exasperated sigh. "Just pull the trigger, program 67P, and we can leave this stinking hovel behind us. Your purpose will be fulfilled."

At first, those words seemed to hit home- he pointed the gun barrel straight at Trinity's heart, very slowly applying pressure to the trigger. Then, his arms simply slumped to either side, as though his strength had leaked from them. "No. She's no threat to us, or our world. The anomaly is gone. She only murdered because Morpheus brainwashed her."

"What would you have us do, then?" Jones said, tilting his shades to reveal his eyes, so that Peterson and Trinity could both see just how very pissed off he was getting. "Do you deny that you have always hoped we could duplicate the process we used to create you?"

Peterson was looking more nervous by the second. "No, I-"

"You forget- we own your body and mind. You can hide nothing from us, Mr. Peterson. That is exactly what you had hoped we would do to her."

"The process will not be repeated", Brown echoed his harsh sentiment in that familiar way they had once known at all times. "You destroy her now, or we eliminate you both. It is that simple. Make your choice."

All at once, Peterson looked very tired and breathy- as though defeating Neo had drained all his energy away through his drooping arms. While he still kept the gun trained on the young woman who shared his blood, he seemed less and less certain of which choice to make.

As for Trinity, the wait was an exercise in the most difficult of restraint. If what this Agent had said was true- if he had truly buried The One, then the least she owed Neo was to kill Peterson in return. But a large part of her also knew that the slightest movement would invite Brown and Jones to kill her themselves; and they were certainly not paralyzed by emotion as their colleague was.

Okay. Three seconds. I'll nail Jones and dodge back to the hatch. Hopefully they won't be too willing to risk-

Before she could swing her own desperate plan into action, however, Peterson's head shot up along with his arm… to his right. Eyes closed, he shot Agent Brown directly through the chest. Before the impossibly loud gunshot finished echoing in the massive metal dock, Brown had dropped to the floor and disappeared.

As wicked fast as he was, Peterson had not turned around fast enough to shoot Jones as well. Jones, the program who had always been his greatest critic, reacted with the same kind of snap-kick Brown had used countless times to knock a gun from a Zionite's hands. Instead of doing so, it impacted on Peterson's outstretched arm, the blow knocking him a ways back on his feet, nonetheless.

Trinity, at least, had never heard Jones- or any program- speak with such rabid anger suffusing their voice and manner. "As I thought. We were beyond illogical to help you for a microsecond, Mr. Peterson! We gave you the chance to surpass your species, we altered your mind and body… but inside, you have always been the same stinking, sweaty, wad of walking, talking MEAT as the rest of them!"

Not bothering to answer, Peterson ineffectually emptied all that remained of his clip- from the heavy Desert Eagle that had originally belonged to Brown- at Jones, and then closed for fisticuffs. No longer stunned by fear of death, but by awe of the display before her, Trinity watched, as they both erupted into action atop the dock's main walkway.

Should she help him? Could she? Whatever incredible strength Peterson had used to defeat Neo had obviously gone on holiday- so far, he was the clear loser in the battle. Still showing signs of his distaste for the machines' betrayer, Jones now directed a wide kick at Peterson's gut and knocked him sprawling into the railing.

That was the railing of Zion's primary walkway. Which meant that a fall from there would end at the very bottom of the city. The black void of unused memory yawned wide beneath them as Jones slowly approached, each footfall clanging on the ductile metal. "The fault is ours. The Omnior protocol is as defective as we initially suspected. Two different minds, sharing one body… was there any doubt that you would eventually be driven insane by it?"

Trinity saw a haunted look in Peterson's eyes- Jones' last statement had definitely caught his attention. "Wh-what did you say?"

And then, at a patch of metal reflected in all the shades of those present, the chaos Trinity thought she had overcome manifested itself once again. The bare metal warped and curdled along with the gate, making it impossible for any craft to leave even if this was the true Zion.

"So it is", Jones sneered nonchalantly. "Two diametrically opposed thought patterns, tearing each other apart by merely coexisting, destroying the very brain they inhabit. You're inherently disposable, Mr. Peterson. As we had always feared, you have gone completely… well, humans prefer the term 'mad'. Apparently, it runs in the family."

The realization hit her like an EMP blast. He was responsible for the chaos that had appeared now. He was the one who had allowed the stress- hurting him as much as it had her- to gradually chew away as his mental well-being. Now, that same effect was obviously getting even worse as Peterson rose up in front of the dock rail, crushing his shades underfoot to reveal twitching eyes that had lost a great deal of their black.

"YOU" he whispered violently, his thunderous voice cracking as though his mind was already frying itself even faster. "You knew I was doomed all along, whether I won or lost. You knew!"

Across from him, Jones simply nodded. "From the moment you accepted our proposal, it was… inevitable."

Again surprising both Jones and Trinity, he let loose some kind of cross between an animal screech and the scream of a human caught between agony and madness. The reckless blows he rained down upon Jones now were neither aimed nor skillful. All they did was force him to back up and throw up a weak guard, too busy warding off the rush to notice that the sole remaining gun in the construct had now changed hands.

Trinity clipped him with a shot to the left hip as he was dodging backwards. Her leg was twisted, but her aim was lethal as ever- Jones' injured hip impacted with the rail a second later, and the very last shot in the gun took him in the temple, bowling his form over it and off the walkway into the black void darker and more alone than the depths of space. He was gone.

Which left just two, silhouetted against that same void, neither able to hide their doubt or their exhaustion from the other. Trinity dropped the hammer of Brown's gun one more time to make certain she was correct about the clip being empty, then tossed it over the side after Jones' body.

Of course, she could not forget what Peterson had said about having killed Neo- not for a microsecond. But her lungs and throat could not manage any sort of a spiteful reply to the adult who shared her hair color, memories and blood.

Don't be stupid. That man was your father in the Matrix, not in reality. Every coppertop gets cloned from a tube, not from a human. You only think you remember him.

Across the way, Agent Peterson seemed no less haggard, no less doubtful of everything that had come before. He broken all discipline, had killed his colleagues while in the field. Treason. That was it was called in the armed forces he had grown up in. No doubt the machines had far harsher means to deal with treachery from one of their own.

Everything. He had lost everything but his mind and body. If Agent Jones was telling the truth- and he had no reason to suspect otherwise- he was about to lose even that. Even AnneMarie backed away from him, and from the warped code he was creating by merely existingwith wide, alert eyes, ready to offer some kind of struggle if he decided to kill her as well, leaving him completely alone here.

"You touch me", she waswarning him dangerously, "and I swear I'll kill you."

Under other circumstances, he would have laughed that off as an idle threat. Now, he didn't even have the energy to give his usual chuckle over the irony of it; AnneMarie was threatening a person doomed to die. Come to think of it, she is doomed herself, trapped here forever.

But, his head suddenly snapped up with the realization. I can prevent that, at least.

Abandoning any pretense in his speech or actions of being even remotely stable, he finally spoke to her. "Come with me, AnneMarie. I will save you from this place. Yes."

Making it obvious that she hated him outright, she pulled back as best she could on her bad leg. "Not a chance."

Then she gasped- he had risen up again, suddenly filled with a new purpose to replace the one that he had lost along with Neo. Even on a good day, even with his brain broken as it was, she would never be able to resist him taking her now.

"Yes, yes. That's right." he murmured, speaking sinuously both to himself and to the injured woman his black-suited form now loomed over like a predator. "I am going to save you, AnneMarie. Yes… You'll be with mother again, yes... Don't cry… Everything is going to be all right from now on, safe, oh yes, you'll see…"

-

'We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?' -N. Bates

---

M: Amazing how different this chapter seemed once it was completed. I had no idea I had put so much fighting in it, or made Peterson out to be so Mary Sue-ish. Still, the last chapter should counter-balance both of those potential flaws. Took a while to do both of them, but the next chapter is already done, and I will post it just after I finish the 'Epilogue' piece at the very end.

Like it? Hate it? Want to see it made a movie? Let me know.

PS: Props to anyone who can tell me how to stop this site's script format from removing spaces from between the words at random. Makes me look like a bad speller.