Matrix Cycle 8: VI
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21±1 hours before Reload
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"So you must be the purposeless little program, just arrived from 01. How fascinating."
The new arrival, absurdly tiny between the towering pair of white-clad twins, blinked back at the Merovingian, too amazed and curious to be frightened as of yet. Persephone wondered what those innocent eyes saw. The underworld lord was lolling back against the wine-hued sofa, every bit of internal tension well-concealed by the casual posture. His usual smirk, a calibrated blend of boredom and impatience, played about the corner of his mouth.
"Um, I'm from 01," said the child, voice shy but gaze meeting his head-on. "But purpleless—" She stumbled, then tried again. "I don't know what pur-pose-less means."
Mérovée let out a guffaw. Next to him, Persephone frowned.
"What is your name?" she asked as gently as she could, leaning forward in her seat.
"Sati." A hesitation. "I mean, my name is Sati, ma'am."
"That's very pretty." Persephone offered an encouraging smile. "And mine is Persephone. Welcome to the Matrix. You'll be safe here."
"As safe as anyone else in the next, oh, day or so," observed her husband, dead-pan. Without turning her head, she knew that he must be rolling his eyes.
"I will do my best to take care of you, Sati." She placed just a touch of emphasis on the singular first-person pronoun.
A reciprocal grin spread across the girl's face. Everything about her looked out of place here, in this city-center backroom with its modernist decor, artfully low lighting, and gangsters posted just outside the door. Outside the windows, the November night had deepened. A boom of percussion in the distance: in the club across the building, the pulsating techno-beat thumped out of its temporary lull. Sati started, letting out a short gasp.
"Everything in the Matrix must be very new to you. But don't worry."
Sati chewed on her lower lip, apparently unsure about how to respond, though an unsuppressed excitement gleamed beneath her confusion. Persephone waited for whatever snide remark that was surely coming their way, but her husband was staring at a point somewhere past the little program's head, affecting to be lost in thought.
"Some stuff here are really strange," admitted the girl. "But I saw lots of cool things, too, like—like people. So many people! My dad told me all about them."
"Charming, isn't it?" remarked Mérovée. "So guilelessly optimistic, so trusting of what the construct shows on its surface..."
"You will have the chance to see many more beautiful things," interrupted Persephone firmly. The accustomed tide of anger swelled right on cue, coupled with a wrenching sensation that coagulated within a single breath, harsh inside her chest. It was fear, and the inescapable knowledge of how cruelly—horribly—right he was.
"Oh, I hope so," replied Sati, guilelessly optimistic indeed. "Mom and Dad said there are billions of—"
"Why, yes, don't we all hope so," snapped Mérovée. But then he added, not without some pretense of kindness, "Although not tonight, my young friend. It must be way past your bedtime."
Persephone turned her head, and to her surprise, she found that he was finally looking directly at the girl, his eyes darkly pensive. For the space of an ephemeral human breath, she nearly mistook the centuries, and it was not the end of the Eighth Cycle looming before them, but a far earlier reload, one that they would face together, hand in hand. Then reality crashed back, and the weight pressing down upon her amplified.
"But I'm not tired," A soft whine crept into the child's tone.
Mérovée's fingers flicked in a careless gesture. The First twin, who stood on Sati's left, inclined his head.
"It's all right, they won't hurt you," reassured Persephone. "Go with them to the chateau, and I'll see you in the morning, okay?"
Sati nodded, then reached up and caught hold of the First's wrist, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. The henchman froze; a swift glare from his mistress prevented him from yanking his hand back in the nick of time. Husband and wife watched in silence as the girl turned away, incongruously flanked by the ghostly twins. As soon as the door closed behind the trio, Persephone leapt to her feet.
"Why the hell did you allow her into the Matrix?" she demanded, rounding on him.
"She is superfluous to 01's purpose, as I imagined you'd have figured out by now," sighed Mérovée, feigning not to understand. "We all know what that means. Why, I expected you to praise me for my kind deed, chérie."
"At a moment like this?" She gaped down at him, incredulous. "A day before the reload? And the devil only knows whether it will go through at all! Smith is out there on a rampage, he's already gone exponential—"
"It was arranged weeks ago." He did not shift from his relaxed pose before her. "You would not have it said that the Merovingian is a man who would renege on a deal, would you?"
"A deal," she snorted. "What did you get in return?"
"The timing leaves something to be desired, I admit." The non-answer came easily. "But it is not my problem if Sati's parents had to dither for so ridiculously many days before parting with their daughter, frankly."
"You never told her parents about what's really happening in the Matrix."
"Oh, please. Why would I do any such thing?" His brows wrinkled in a parody of outrage. "You are not going to get all protective and maternal over some insignificant slip of code, are you?"
"You've placed a child in terrible danger!"
"I have more important things to worry about, in case you haven't noticed. To be honest, in the chateau she's as safe as anyone else in the Matrix. Safer, I should say."
"If you're going to lock her up in that dungeon of yours," began Persephone, glowering.
Abruptly, her husband straightened. A flame flared somewhere deep in his eyes, and in less than an instant, every last drop of his nonchalance had vanished without a trace.
"Is this what you think of me?"
"I don't know what to think." She shook her head, astonished that this of all things was the arrow that penetrated his armor at last. "I haven't for a long time. The world is in desperate straits, and you—you are more wrapped up in yourself than ever. You keep talking about saving the Matrix, but how do you imagine you're going to achieve that? You say you've managed to trap the One inside the station, but whatever shred of leverage it'll gain—"
"The opportunity to capture the One arose by chance; it would be remiss of me to pass it up." An indifferent wave. "Frankly, it's a long shot that he can be held for, oh, more than a few hours. There are bigger problems facing us."
"What on earth are you going to do?"
"I have a plan," said Mérovée, incongruously earnest all of a sudden.
"If you believe that illusory magic of yours is going to stop Smith, then you are even more delusional than I guessed."
"It is no illusion and you know it, bonne déesse. I hold the key in my own domain. Smith's key."
"Wow. I see. It's that old game of seducing Aleph again, isn't it?" Persephone flung up her hands. "You wish to convince her to offer herself to you. Somehow, it will allow you to gain control of Smith's code, and the monster will be tamed, turned into your weapon. Well, I suspect that Aleph will not find that dungeon cell very romantic—"
"Hardly." A peculiar intensity had seeped into his demeanor, one that she had not glimpsed in years. "I will take her to the train station instead."
"And how is that supposed to help your scheme?"
"Aleph must discover the truth, the immense threat that Smith presents to the Matrix. Only then can she be persuaded to make the right choice. The location will serve as an aid."
"It's not going to work."
"It has to."
"What if she escapes from you and into the subway tunnels, and therefore to the Zion mainframe?" A vicious edge pierced her words. "A place that remains inaccessible to you, if you'll recall—"
"She will not escape."
No room for arguments in his tone. He was under the full influence of his faith now, the madness that had sustained him for too many cycles. Persephone trembled with frustration, but before she had the chance to speak again, the door flew open with a bang.
"The One's human friends, I expect?" queried her husband calmly, standing up.
"On their way to the club, Messire." Standing framed in the doorway, Charon cracked his mouth into a yellow-fanged grimace. "And that bodyguard of the Fortuneteller's is with 'em, too."
Mérovée tossed a questioning glance over in Persephone's direction. She scowled and stayed rooted to the same spot. A shrug on his part.
"Well, let's get the show on the road, then."
She watched, statue-still, as he strode across the room and out the doorway. The insouciant spring of his steps contained no hint of the gravity of the situation. Defeated, she dropped back down on the sofa and buried her head in her hands, nearly nauseous from the effort of caging in a cry of rage or dread or heartache, or all of them together. From across the building, the throbbing beat of music crescendoed, scraping roughly across the lines and surfaces of her programming. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the roar of virtual blood refused to subside.
No. She could not afford to fall apart like a useless fool. For the first time in ages, there was someone innocent inside the chateau, perhaps peacefully asleep, perhaps dreaming. There had got to be something she could still do...
She did not hear her phone until it had rung for ten, fifteen seconds. It took her another while to scrabble inside her purse for the damned thing and lift it to her ear.
"Kore," said an elderly woman's voice, one that she had never heard before.
The world wheeled around her, and she forgot to continue breathing.
"Kore," repeated the speaker on the other end. "Are you all right?"
"Maman?" she whispered, not daring to hope. The phone's cool metallic rectangle pressed into the skin of her palm. It, in any case, was still real. Solid.
"I have returned, my dearest, sooner than I anticipated," said the Oracle through a stranger's vocal cords. "But not much time is left, I fear. I need your help."
"What...What happened, Maman? Where were you? How did you get back? I've been worried to death—"
"There is much that I cannot explain at this point, because I have no precise knowledge, only foreboding and conjectures," went on her mother, paying no attention to the barrage. "If my suspicions hold, certain choices have already been made, and...it suffices to say that the most powerful choices are often fueled by anguish. Do keep this in mind."
"Wait, what do you mean? What choices?"
"For cycle after cycle, the Matrix's survival has depended on it. But this reload is developing in a new direction, and what lies within the One's heart grows more important than ever."
"The One." With a heave, her mental functions restarted. "But listen, Maman, something's happened to Neo. Mérovée has captured him."
"Indeed." Even at this juncture, even in a wholly different shell, her mother was impeccably unflappable. "As we speak, Seraph is on the way to Club Hel with Neo's friends. I know it is painful to you, but they will encounter your husband soon. I must ask you to help them out a little."
"But I—" she objected automatically. "Well. Right. Yes. Mérovée is already waiting for them at the club. I will join him there."
"Thank you." The Oracle exhaled. "But before you do, there is also another matter. I understand that a child has just arrived in the Matrix..."
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3 hours±53 minutes before Reload
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Outside the stained-glass windows, darkness had long arrived, heavy with its mantle of unseasonal storm clouds. No scintillating crowd graced Le Vrai tonight, no laughter, no pretty young things draped in silk and rubies. The expansive floor lay deserted even of the usual retainers and employees, and its owner had not switched on the lights.
At his usual place by the raised table, the Merovingian sat alone, fingers steepled, scrutinizing the neat row of half a dozen laptop computers spread out before him. Now came the first whip of lightning. Thunder followed upon the horizon, sluggish as of yet. On the six screens before him, six tangled nets of swift curves and manifolds whirled and flashed, the constantly mutating configurations of the Matrix's arteries, veins, nerve endings. Maps of battle positions, though no human would have recognized them as such, they gave the only sparks that illuminated the room. Every few minutes or so, an arrow of inky code would rip across one of the monitors; one more patch of concentrated brightness would go dim. The Frenchman would lean over and make a keystroke or two, panning the image to another sector of the Matrix, then the process would repeat itself all over again. And again. He waited.
Curious, wasn't it, the way the shadows thrummed at times like these, tempting the mind to circle about the past, to wind and rewind all the already-answered questions. His latest argument with Persephone had been this morning, and now the memory gnawed at him, though surely such meaningless squabbles should have stopped bothering him years ago. Maybe this fight stuck with him because it would likely be their last, reflected the Merovingian. One way or the other. Didn't matter how events might still play out.
She just had to meddle about Sati. How typical. According to the men, their mistress had taken the little girl out of one of the chateau's side doors, then returned alone some minutes later. None of them had dared to challenge her, the idiots. A confrontation had ensued, during which she had brazenly told him that Seraph had picked Sati up, that the child should not dwell among criminals, that even the remotest proximity to his person was a fate that no innocent creature deserved, et cetera. For his part, he had also been frank with her, rather more so than his usual wont. He would not tolerate betrayal from those nearest to him. He had a kingdom to save—oh, really? Persephone had interrupted here with a sneer—and no time for her spiteful games. It was obvious that she was the one endangering the girl. The dispute had gone nowhere, needless to say.
Well, the child would simply have to take her chances like everyone else. As for Persephone...
How different it had been, the last time he'd attempted to fight back an apocalypse. On the last day of the Second Cycle of the Matrix, he had spent every moment throwing all the Administrator's powers at the inexorable tide, vainly imagining that he could still stave off the fires and the nightmares, the batteries' surging panic. And Persephone had spent every moment of that day frantically searching for him. They had both been such fools then.
Soft footsteps among the gloom. He lifted his sight just as a slender figure sidled into the room. Helena approached noiselessly; a crackle of lightning glinted against her platinum-blonde hair. For once, no seductive sway entered the rhythm of her movements.
"You must yield the information now, Monsieur Mérovée. The matter has grown urgent."
"There is enough time," said the Merovingian, still placid on the surface.
"The Mainframe demands it." Illuminated only by the laptops' fitful gleam and devoid of its usual playful pout, Helena's face was that of a stranger. "It is imperative that you carry out your end of the agreement."
He arched his brows, displaying sarcasm that he did not feel.
"I don't believe that was a part of the terms we previously agreed upon, ma belle Hélène."
"The situation has changed," she stated flatly. "We cannot hold to any promises unless you do so."
A rapid mental review of the positions: his own, Persephone's, the Architect's. He had not expected the old Creator program to resort to such blatant bluffing.
"Your master's only other option, I believe, is to storm the chateau," he said. "How much resource would it take to make the place visible to the system, I wonder, especially when the Matrix has already been significantly weakened by the virus? How many agents would it take? Why, I'd have imagined at this point, it would create rather more difficulties and delays than otherwise. Or...does he have other ideas?"
The spy's mouth pursed into a frown, but she had no retort.
"I will convey your answer to the Mainframe."
"Do not fear, I will do my part soon," assured the Merovingian. "The renegade code vessel will come into an exposed state, and Persephone will bring its location to the Source. The system will find the chance to destroy the virus before it is too late."
She nodded curtly.
"I have your master's word?" he asked.
"No harm will come to your wife, as long as she does what is required of her. And she will be protected while outside of the Matrix to the end, whatever the battle's outcome."
"Good." He was already staring back at the monitors. The other program, however, did not turn away.
"Do you have any...advice for me?" she asked very quietly.
"For you?" He blinked in bemusement. She flinched.
"Well," said the Merovingian, "if things work out as they should, then you will survive along with the rest of the world." He offered her a shrug. "Probably."
"I see."
"Someone will be coming for my wife, I presume?"
"Agents will take her into custody. They have strict orders to keep her uninjured."
"Very well." This too, was only to be anticipated, yet he found himself stifling a snarl. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a small metallic object.
"Club Hel, directly into the chateau. I had a guest of mine create the shortcut recently." On his palm, the freshly-made key glimmered like the tiniest of stars. "I expect that Persephone will be shown every respect that is her due, even from creatures such as your colleagues. Is that understood?"
Helena hesitated, evidently trying to assess whether this was yet another ruse. Then she reached forward and plucked the key from his outspread hand.
"I will lead her to the nightclub," she said. "They will wait there."
She pivoted on her heels, and was already out of sight a few seconds later, back into the Matrix's boundless night. The Merovingian sighed, squinting down at the wide splotches of blackness that disfigured the screens. One final overview of the plans, then. He was cutting it desperately close when it came to Aleph, he knew, but the girl would have spooked for certain if he'd made his move too early. But now. Now the sheer terror of the situation would be his best aid in making her see the truth as it stood, see the absolute and inescapable necessity of yielding to him. He had but one chance to show her the state of the world, dangling above the abyss by a thread, and she had but one choice to make. It was simple.
And if he should fail...In that case, his back-up plan had also been set into motion. A painful scenario, destructive toward all his long-cherished dreams. It would be a pity about Aleph, too, come to think of it. But matters could no longer be helped. Sacrifices would have to be made if anyone was to live through tonight.
"We shall find out what is within you, mademoiselle," he murmured to himself. " We shall find out."
With a deafening crash, the front doors flew nearly off their hinges. A blaze of electric lights flooded the room. The twins charged in, tense and bare-fanged, assault rifles upon their arms. The glitter behind their shades had gone feral.
"The virus is striking our positions," panted the First.
"Smith's numbers have increased past the reaction-control limits," added the Second.
"Have Charon take the main detachment and hold the Nexus to the last," commanded the Merovingian, rising to his feet. "The rest of the men may pull back gradually from the other overground positions, but only after the necessary delaying actions. They are to reinforce the access points to the Nexus; each of those locations must be retained as long as possible, according to the plan that I previously outlined. Relay my orders."
"What about Mistress?" asked the First.
"Your mistress will be taken care of," he snapped. No more vacillations remained, nor pangs of stupid sentimentality. "Now go."
They darted away. The Frenchman straightened his tie and his shoulders, then stepped away from the table, leaving the computers where they were. Across the threshold, the back corridor's fluorescent whiteness slammed into his vision like an avalanche. Quickly, he strode down the hallway and rounded a corner, key already in hand.
The door of his chateau was green and nondescript, just like all the others. Entering at one of the empty side halls on the ground floor, the Merovingian pulled the door carefully shut behind himself. For several seconds, he stood contemplating the first lashes of rain against the tall windows. The storm, already in full rage over the city, had breached the valley's defenses. Persephone, if everything went according to calculations, would be still here, most likely upstairs. What was she doing now, what feelings running through her codes? Fearful or brooding, maybe, or preparing a last-ditch scheme against him. Such speculations were futile, however.
Each footfall evenly measured, he walked forward once more.
The end of the passage led to a flight of downward stairs. Lush carpeting gave way to gray flagstones, grooved by the years. Another closed door creaked open; another stairwell beckoned. He began the descent toward the dungeons and Aleph.
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89±5 minutes before Reload
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The chateau had already emptied. Her husband must have slipped away hours ago. Almost absently, Persephone wondered where he could be by now. Somewhere in the white corridors with the men, carrying out their hopeless battle against the multiplied virus? No. What a silly image. More likely, he was somewhere down in the train station with Aleph, carrying out his hopeless plan to capture the virus's lost code. How bloody delusional could he be, to fantasize that any of these efforts could still be of avail?
Just beyond the casement, lightning fractured the black heavens, drenching the valley with its garish brilliance. The whip of thunder followed close upon its heels. The electric lamp on her dressing table flickered; even Mérovée's domain was no longer impervious to the world's death throes. With a low growl, Persephone beat the tentacles of fear back underground and pressed the phone to her ear for the third time in fifteen minutes. On the other end of the line, the Oracle's number rang, five, six, seven times. No answer.
System failure was imminent. Ex-agent Smith was out there, determinedly ripping every sector of the Matrix into shreds. The chain reaction of his replications had gone fully uncontrolled. She could smell it in the air, the demon's irrational fury, the relentless drive toward death and only death. There would be no morning after this night.
She flung the phone back onto the table rather more forcefully than necessary. A single sheet of paper fluttered next to its landing spot, halfway inside the lamp's disk of pale yellow radiance. Persephone squinted down at the familiar flow of her mother's handwriting. She had already read the letter a hundred times, searched and scrutinized, yet every memorized line and phrase stayed as cryptic as ever. No answer leapt out at her, not even a minuscule clue or omen.
I must also ask that you remember what we have discussed about Smith...
During the last months, her mother had spoken of Smith more than once. I came upon him after I lost you, Kore. An implicit rebuke lay behind the sentence's gentleness, and despite itself, Persephone's heart seized at the reminder.
Remember that he has not yet submitted...You have always possessed compassion.
A young program had just arrived from 01, face bright with wonder. Sati never chose this, to find her own life snuffed out alongside the entire Matrix, in all its loves and hopes and beauty and grief. And the Oracle, queen and goddess, mother of the world, was asking for compassion. How could any compassion for the monster survive in the face of such horrors?
I ask that you place your faith in Neo.
Even in these straits, a part of her twinged at the thought of humanity's designated savior. Less than twenty-four hours ago, her own lips had pressed against Neo's reluctant ones. Something had felt unsettling about that kiss. The One's love for the human female possessed the intensity of a flame, as only to be expected, yet there was also a touch of hardness about it, a sense of the absolute...
Absolute what?
Whatever choices he will make along the way...
What had Neo chosen? What should he have chosen?
Our most powerful choices are fueled by anguish. These words were not spelled out on the page before her, but a muted yet persistent echo inside her ears. Anguish. Choices. Power.
"Anguish. Anguish..."
Persephone's breath hitched. Of its own accord, her hand grabbed at the table's wooden edge for support. It barely kept the weakness of her legs at bay.
Trinity had to be sacrificed, because it was the One who had to feel the anguish. For whatever reasons, whatever the reload's true mechanisms entailed, a conscious decision had to come from Neo. Only such a decision would carry enough pain, and therefore enough power, to accomplish the One's secret purpose. But the woman had been alive less than twenty hours ago in the club, gun unwavering, ablaze with the ferocity of her convictions.
Neo had not surrendered Trinity to the Architect. He had decided in favor of the woman he loved over the survival of eight billion lives. Even if Smith were destroyed by some miracle, the reload would still not happen. The construct would still fail catastrophically in a few short hours. Minutes. The Matrix was in peril not merely from the virus, but from its supposed redeemer as well—this was the scenario that the Oracle had subtly suggested, in carefully dropped hints all through the past months, in this letter, in their last phone conversation. Her mother was trying to prepare her.
But for what? What role was she meant to play?
After a few heart-thudding seconds, Persephone compelled herself back to a modicum of calm. Quickly, she folded the sheet of paper, then opened a drawer of her dressing table and shoved the letter into its depths. From the same drawer, she drew out her little Derringer. A rapid check showed that it was fully loaded. Far too many unknowns buffeted her mind, but at this point, any action was better than none. For good measure, she grabbed the phone and dialed the Oracle one final time. Unanswered again.
Outside her bedroom, every passage and hall had been abandoned, and the only noises she met were the bellowing of the thunder and the wind outside. The ceiling lamps shuddered and whimpered with every lash. Several stairwells followed one another; she descended briskly, eyes and ears on alert, every digital nerve on edge. Thick carpeting turned to worn flagstones. At the bottom of the lowest set of stairs, the heavy metal doorway leading to the dungeons stood ajar by a few inches. Gloom spilled out from the crack.
As silently as she could, she pushed the door inward.
The lights were off in the ante-chamber to the dungeons. Of the several cell doors arranged around the narrow lobby, exactly one lay wide open. The feeble glow of a single lightbulb streamed out from cell—Aleph's, she recalled immediately—providing the only illumination in sight. Tightened her grip on the Derringer, Persephone rushed over.
The prisoner was gone. Both table and chair had been upended, and a chaotic snowfall of loose paper and torn manuscripts covered the floor in disarray. It looked like a dragged-out battle had taken place. Except her husband would never have required a real fight to subdue the girl. Someone had been here afterward.
A clang of iron behind her: she swung around just in time to see a slim figure dart out from one of the other cells. An instant later, it had already bolted across the dim lobby and disappeared through the front door to the stairwell.
"Stop!" cried Persephone, giving chase across the ante-chamber and tearing up the stony steps two at a time. What was the little spy doing down here, ransacking Aleph's cell while the Matrix fell into pieces around them? How had she gotten into the chateau at all?
Helena was startling fast on her feet, as it turned out. By the time Persephone made it to the chateau's main level, the slip of a girl was already nowhere in sight. The storm lulled, and in the hush's fleeting depths, baroque friezes and statuary hunkered like uncanny ghosts, ready to pounce. Nothing stirred.
"Damn it," she mumbled through gritted teeth.
Thunder detonated, now almost directly above the roof; the electrical lights flared in blinding unison, then failed for good. Only the tempest's fitful glare streaked in from the windows. Suddenly and seemingly out of thin air, a glint of platinum hair crossed her peripheral vision, and she pivoted.
At the end of the hall, one more door had been flung open. Like the rest of the castle, the room beyond sat cloaked in darkness. Caution was no longer a possibility. Gun held out firmly before her, she stalked along the passage, then crossed the threshold.
The antique finery of the chateau faded around her, and she found herself inside another familiar space, its tall ceiling lined with a row of industrial-style skylights. The sparse modernist interior of Club Hel, too, was lit only by the war-glow out there amid the clouds, now nearly continuous. Across the empty dance floor, Helena spun at bay, stumbled and barely managed to steady herself. Her mouth hung open with fright.
"Don't move," commanded Persephone as she advanced to the middle of the room and aimed the Derringer.
The other program gulped, turning her head from side to side, and gave no reply.
"What were you doing in the dungeons?" The question was brusque. "What were you looking for?"
"Please," stuttered the girl. "I—I was looking for somewhere to hide..."
"You were looking for Aleph, weren't you? What were your orders?"
"Orders?" Helena gasped with convincing confusion. "I don't have—"
"We have orders, ma'am," interrupted a steely male voice somewhere to her left.
An agent stepped out from the shadows beneath the side wall. Expressionless face, tinted glasses hiding the blankness of his stare. One of the newer models. Persephone froze, finger rigid against the trigger of her pistol. It would be of no avail, she already knew.
"Come with us, exile," said someone else, as mechanically impassive as his colleague. The second agent emerged on her right, then the third ahead of her, from the far end of the club. None of them had drawn a weapon as of yet.
"Drop the gun, please." The one on the left walked past Helena, who did not move. The veneer of terror had dissipated from the blonde's gaze, replace by a shielded look, sullenly unreadable. Another blast of lightning scorched night to noontide. Her hand holding the gun was shaking, noticed Persephone. She schooled it back to stillness with an effort.
"Your boss's priorities are a bit messed-up," she remarked. "A whole team of agents, sent just to ambush and capture me? Shouldn't you be out there fighting the virus? Or doing something about the system failure about to happen?
The agents surrounded her without reply. More footfalls echoed behind her back, their slow rhythm odious against the swift drumbeats of the downpour beyond the walls. Persephone sucked in a sharp breath, though she did not turn around. The Architect had not sent a whole team of agents after her. He had sent two.
"The Mainframe requires information from you," stated Helena at last. She still had not shifted from her position, now outside the encirclement of six agent programs. "Please help us, Persephone."
"So this is your order? To trap an exile when the Matrix is about to crash and burn in an hour?"
The unreadable thing behind the other woman's stare quivered.
"This is according to an arrangement with your husband."
She should never have been shocked, not after every other betrayal, not anymore, yet despite it all, space itself plunged into an arctic ocean, never to rise again. Persephone did not speak for a while; finally she let out a wobbly chuckle. The Derringer clattered to the ground.
"Why?" Her voice pitched upward as the agents closed in. "Why did he want to do this now? To get me out of his way? Why did he do this to me?"
The Desert Eagles still had not been drawn. It was unnecessary. The first agent caught her elbow. The grip was not overly rough, but all hope of struggle died in a blink of the eye.
Thunder roared, drowning out Helena's soft reply. If Persephone could have heard it, she might have detected a hint—no more than the faintest tendril—of sorrow.
"Not to you. For you."
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67±3 minutes before Reload
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"Something has happened to the Matrix."
The garden's well-loved sunlight swirled, all its gaudy radiance impotent before the shadows. Kamala bit down on a gasp, not yet able to reply. Beneath her feet, the grass-covered ground had begun to tremble, but she kept herself upright. She stared back at her husband and waited.
"Some mechanism in it has locked me out," whispered Rama. "l couldn't...l couldn't see into the construct. The walls have grown solid; I could not figure it out. I could not glimpse anyone, any battery whatsoever..."
He winced. Somewhere among the overhanging branches, one of her own homemade songbirds warbled, its string of descending notes savage with thoughtless joy.
"All I could see were the bodies in their pods. They were twitching and shaking, every one of them down the entire field. Uncontrolled. It was dreadful, like..."
He searched and failed to find the descriptions. In the distance, the night crouched, brooding.
"Are they dying?" Kamala heard herself ask.
"No. The dying has stopped." He grimaced. "That's the thing. No one was being flushed out of the system. It was as if their dreams had all sunk into nightmares."
Rama had often told her about how batteries would shudder at the ending points of their lives, seemingly about to open their eyes and scream, while their mental activities went wild with torment. Neither of them had quite experienced a nightmare from the inside before, however. Except now, a part of her syntactical array noted irrelevantly.
"I tried, Kamala. I tried again and again, but the construct had changed its very nature. If I could just discover one dying person, one mind undergoing the removal process, maybe I could use it as a path in, but..."
"Sati," she said.
She must have caught hold of his hand automatically: the force of her fingers against his was the only thing that held both of them standing upright. It had been mere hours since Sati had departed. The decision, the terrible mistake, had appeared so logical at the time.
"What should we do?"
Kamala started at the sound of her husband's question. She wanted to speak, at least make up a bit or two of meaningless reassurance, a scrap of hope to cling onto.
"We do not know anything for certain yet, Rama. Maybe it is only a flaw in their biology, one that we were not aware of previously. That we were not required to be aware of. Programs inside the Matrix may well be unaffected—"
Before she could concoct more irrational words, a wire tripped inside her own mind. It vibrated with a gentle ping, a plucked string. It was her innate connection to the Source.
"I, I must go," she stammered. The charge of another emotion—perhaps anger, perhaps helplessness—nearly ripped her operators asunder. "I am being called to my purpose."
"Kamala," said her husband. He must have noticed the transitory blankness that had fluttered across her expression. "You mean that someone has entered the operating room."
"I don't know who it is." She nodded once. "Not an agent, I think. The instructions are unclear."
Slowly, Rama let go of her hand. The power that ruled both their existences was what it was; no disobedience was conceivable.
"Surely this has to do with what is taking place in the Matrix." Instinct glimmered; she grabbed it and clung on. "It has to. My master cannot be preoccupied with any other matter at this point. Whoever that has arrived must possess information, and as the Source's interactive programmer, I am being called to deal with it. I can try to find out."
His fear mingled with hers, a palpable cloud against her shell. She did her best to thrust it aside.
"I will do what I can," she promised.
The shimmer of her home faded. Her temporarily disembodied code rose with electrical speed, out of the subterranean void and toward the city's luminous network. Briefly, Kamala perceived the incomprehensible magnitude of 01's network, infinitely complex and pulsating with life. Then space shrunk, and a white-walled, white-ceilinged lobby materialized, deserted but for herself. A row of plain steel doors lined one side of the hall; she headed toward the one furthest to the right. The pressure of two fingertips against the handle: the firewall mechanism recognized her characteristic metrics smoothly. The door swung open.
The pallid fluorescent lighting of her own office would have been soothing at normal times. The air hung heavy and still; nothing appeared out of place. Atop her desk, the computer was flickering. Her orders pooled across the screen in slow green rain, different from any other that she had ever received before.
Extract the location of the virus's code vessel.
Virus. Nearly reeling, she took a few more seconds to concentrate again on the flow of symbols.
The subject is to remain unharmed. No code removal procedure is authorized.
She was being commanded to interrogate, not to wipe or defragment. The program inside the operating room must be someone unusual. Kamala walked across the gray carpet, then stopped before a second closed door along the office's back wall. She laid a hand on the steel doorknob, gathering her thoughts. Then she turned the knob and stepped into the operating room.
Behind the conference table at the chamber's far end, a woman sat in one of the plastic-and-chrome chairs, fingers tight against the armrests. Her beautiful face was clenched with not only anxiety, but also some other anguish, the bitter currents of an inward struggle barely repressed. To her own surprise, Kamala recognized it as grief.
.
Notes: The Oracle left her letter to Persephone in Chapter 13 (Matrix Cycle 8: IV), before her meeting with the Merovingian.
In Chapter 20 (Matrix Cycle 8: V), the Merovingian told Helena that he wanted to make a deal with her master (i. e. the Architect).
I tried to adhere to the timeline of the Matrix Revolutions movie in this chapter as much as I could, though without complete success. The main change is that in this story, Smith went to the Oracle's apartment somewhat later than in the movie, not long before his final battle with Neo.
At the end of Matrix Reloaded, Neo chose to save Trinity instead of reloading the Matrix in his confrontation with the Architect. I would like to examine the implications of this choice.
