The Source
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The lobby was windowless and starkly unfurnished. A sterile artificial light suffused the air, though no lamps hung upon the smoothly plastered ceiling. The walls were immaculately white as well, displaying no feature except a row of polished steel doors across the hall, all of which lay shut in brooding silence. The place was deserted but for themselves. Kamala seemed to have fully recovered herself, at least on the surface, her footsteps crisp and business-like as she led them across the tiled floor, while Rama-Kandra walked beside his wife, sullen and watchful. Smith noted the nervous rigidity of both their carriages. Aleph, too, was watching him carefully, but unlike their host, she was making a fair attempt at not showing it. As the quartet of programs headed to the entryway farthest to the right, the ex-agent swept his sight over the remaining doors. Not a single one was distinguishable from the next in any way.
Just how big is the Source, huh? mused an irritatingly familiar ghost, accompanied by a soft crystal giggle. I bet you're thinking about it too, aren't you, Mister Agent Man?
Smith quelled a snarl. For what might have been hours, the human crowd had kept themselves uncharacteristically muted, but of course his reprieve could not hold out forever. What the hell did the dead girl want of him now? He had already submitted, hadn't he?
Nah, just curious. Lucinda Greene's laughter was a precise arrow. All these mysterious passages tend to make one wonder, you gotta admit.
Down in the depths, a subtle background noise rippled out of dormancy. It was not human this time, not yet, but an indistinct scraping and grunting like a sea on the horizon. He swore inwardly. This was no time for logic to fail.
Who knows how many lost things they've stashed away in there? Can't see why, though, considering how they hold all the power on this planet...
Aleph could not stay in 01. She would inevitably be discovered here sooner or later. He had been inexcusably selfish to drag her into the machine city. The constant repetition of these facts bolstered him against the awareness of his surrender.
Spooky, I'd say. Don't you agree, Mister Agent Man?
Resolutely ignoring the girl's taunts, Smith hauled himself back to reality and swiftly scanned the lobby once more. Nothing stirred; nothing existed that could stir.
"I am the only program who regularly inhabits the Source," explained Kamala. "Only very few others can enter this location from the city, and they rarely do."
The idea that the woman had somehow read the tension of his posture was a troublingly one, and before he found the chance to recover, the sea of metallic hisses had swelled, no longer distant but directly beneath him, and he was again suspended over the waves. Shame must have made him flinch visibly. The four of them had come to a stop before the rightmost door, upon which no lock was visible. Kamala lifted a hand, laying her palm against the polished chrome handle.
"And I myself am the key into the next room," she said matter-of-factly.
The door swung open smoothly. At last, Smith glanced over at Aleph, and the smile she attempted was a fine thread binding him to the illusion of life. The promises she'd proffered him had all been dazzling impossibilities. My lover. The two words scorched every qubit of his code with their outrageous hope.
"This has a chance to work," she whispered. "I think it really does."
Yes, the plan just might be bold enough to succeed, he had to admit as he followed her meekly into what appeared to be an ordinary office. Bland gray carpet underfoot, file cabinets along the walls, a desk in the middle with its workstation. Kamala stood by the door and waited until the three others had entered, then pushed it closed with a soft click. Rama-Kandra positioned himself at one corner of the room, arms folded about his chest. For several seconds, Smith remained motionless, staring at a second door across the office, directly opposite to the one by which they had arrived. It was tightly shut as well. There was no mistaking where it led.
"As we have already discussed, the operating room is a point of connection between 01 and the Matrix." Kamala's voice was both composed and strangely distant. "It will take you into a building inside your sector of the construct."
How convenient, observed Aleph's sister drily.
"A specific corridor in that building, yes," he said, biting back every other vain retort. Given how many hundreds of times he must have walked down its length, the knowledge of that corridor should have been garish and fierce; instead only one or two vague images fluttered like a wispy mist, just out of reach. Dim electric light panels overhead, maybe, and drab linoleum beneath. Beige walls scrubbed empty of all markings. Reverberating footfalls.
"The Agency," breathed Aleph. She belonged to the Matrix, Smith reiterated without words. She needed and deserved that world in all its luminous, idiotic complexity. She could not remain here in the face of destruction. This was the only point to consider.
"That is what the human officers have named it, yes." His tone was cold, just close enough to emotionlessness to pass muster. "Full of my former colleagues, in other words."
"The network of agent programs had been fully reconstructed five months ago," replied Kamala. "Soon after that...night in the Matrix, I was ordered to write a powerful new defragmentation routine, but instead of being applied to individuals inside the Source, it was forcibly pushed out across the entire system of agents through their earpieces. Every single one of them had been wiped clean."
She did not finish her explanation. It was unnecessary. Of course. There was no possibility that the Mainframe would allow any trace of his presence to remain anywhere. Even the very fact that he had once existed must have been expunged from the records.
"So none of them will even recognize you," continued Aleph in the other's place. "Except your code will still be identifiable as that of an agent. One of their own kind."
"My own kind," muttered Smith.
"We can simply stroll out of that corridor, down through the Agency building, and out of the front door." The young woman gave a small amazed laugh at the sheer audacity of the idea. "But if any of the current agents run into us, and notice that you are unknown to them—"
"Our functions have always been highly atomized. We perform the will of the Mainframe." For some reason, the first person plural grated inside his own mouth. "We know of each other, but agents are not meant to interfere in the business of those not belonging to their own teams. Lateral interactions unnecessary for the performance of their duties are not tolerated, as you can imagine."
"I see," she murmured. "And especially not on their own initiative."
The softness of her voice was that of compassion. He no longer had the strength to find it galling.
"Correct, Miss Greene. I expect that these restrictions have only been strengthened since events five months ago. For obvious reasons."
"And Aleph will still appear human," added Rama-Kandra, breaking his silence for the first time. His stare had not left Smith since they arrived. "To anyone not examining her very carefully, that is."
"Therefore, I will not be questioned while in your custody. Or company, rather, given the truce with Zion. We'll have to play it by the ear."
The truce, yes. She had mentioned it to him somewhere along the way, having learned of it from her brief visit to the Oracle's apartment. At the thought of the ancient seeress, the intangible grinding hum reared another notch. If the two of them could get back to the Matrix, he could still confront the Oracle one more time. He could still plead his case.
"...Smith?" queried Aleph somewhere in the distance.
He had to concentrate on what she needed. With an angry mental prod, he tuned out the siren calls and drove his focus back toward Kamala, who had taken her seat before the desk. She leaned forward, fingers poised over the keyboard.
"How many times have I been in that room?" he asked abruptly, indicating the door across the office with a wave.
The programmer's head snapped up.
"That does not matter," she said.
I will need to pierce your shell, added someone both present and unseen, out of absolute nothingness and in exactly the same feminine voice, and all of the sudden he was squinting through an intensely bright white space, immobilized.
"What is it that you do to us here?"
Kamala sat frozen, her mouth half-open in bemusement, and did not answer.
"And after everything you have done, this is what you demand from her?" interjected Rama-Kandra, stalking forward. "My wife is acting with extraordinary generosity toward you, Agent Smith, far more so than what I would have preferred. If you ever try to threaten her again—"
"It's fine, Rama," began his wife.
"It's all in the past, Smith—"
He squinted, and saw that Aleph had come very near him, as near as she had been but an hour and a half ago, under the chimerical tree back in the odd little refuge beneath the city. She looked anxious and tired.
"It's all in the past," she said again. "Whatever fate that once controlled you as an agent, it does not do so now. You don't have to let it."
Her life depended on him subduing his pride, so Smith inclined his head. There was nothing for her here. He might persuade himself that there was nothing for him here either.
"All right," he assented weakly. Steel jeered. Without allowing it the chance to grow shrill yet one more time, he turned quickly back toward Kamala, who was still peering at him intently.
"Your physical recovery functions have been damaged." It took her a moment to regain her composure. "Your clothes and...Well, all this has to be repaired if you are to pass as an active agent."
Her hands moved upon the computer keyboard. Smith stiffened, but managed to not leap forward in reflexive attack. The spacial manifold quivered against his skin, and a thousand tiny knives burst into flames, then merged into one unseen conflagration, tearing into his torso and limbs. He did not twitch or wince, needless to say, though a part of him clenched with the effort of repressing the questions. How many times had this woman messed with his shell before? There was no way for him to ever learn the answer.
"The Mainframe," said Kamala as if to herself. The keys clicked and clattered in quick rhythm. "That is what agents call your master and mine, isn't it? He does not reveal himself to your type, I suppose."
"He," repeated Smith. The uncertainty of the single syllable disgusted him. Of course. What a mindless fool he had been. The Matrix's ruler could be no abstraction, but must have possessed a consciousness and a shell. A reality.
"Have you ever seen him?" he asked.
Without shifting her gaze away from the screen, the programmer shook her head.
"What is his name?" He advanced two paces through the fire. Kamala pursed her mouth into a narrow line, evidently already regretting this misguided attempt at conversation.
"You don't have to tell this program anything, my love," cut in Rama-Kandra, stepping forward as well.
"What are you doing, Smith? Just wait—" Aleph's tone veered audibly upward.
"I am fine," he said. Through the operative arrays of his body, the heat was already dissipating, leaving behind a dull absence that was both unsettling and familiar. He must have grown too used to being wounded.
"It would be better if I have the time to do this properly," commented Kamala, rising to her feet. "But this will have to do. Try to regenerate your agent's appearance now."
With a carefully formulated thought, the characteristic functions of his shell fluttered. A greenish shimmer enveloped the rags that had long passed for his clothing, as they began to transform themselves back into a standard dark suit, pristine once more. His shirt whitened and mended itself, its splotches of dried-up blood no longer in existence, and there was again the old habitual sensation of a well-buttoned collar and tie about his neck. The grime faded from his palms, while the glare of the fluorescent ceiling panels softened itself through a new pair of regulation tinted glasses. It was if he had returned to what he'd once been, in possession of a purpose, connected, accepted. But a human heartbeat later, Aleph let out a gasp, and the madness within him let out a sibilant wail of anger, and the fantasy of safety vanished, a flash in the pan. Something was missing against the side of his body, however. And inside his ear.
"Gun and earpiece," he said.
"I'll put together something for you," assented Kamala, striding toward the second door at the office's opposite end. "But it will take a bit of deeper code work. We will have to do it in the operating room."
Again without producing a key, she twisted the knob and pulled the door open. A brighter white glow spilled into the office. She strode inside without pause; her husband followed. Standing on the threshold, Smith turned toward Aleph.
"Miss Greene," he began and did not finish.
The woman before him waited. Hope glimmered in her eyes, and the mechanical throng retreated, one step, two, back into the shadows. She wanted him to let go of his rebellion and his torment. She wanted him to be forgiven. She wanted him to walk into the world with her.
"Are you coming?" asked Rama-Kandra from inside the operating room, hardly suppressing his impatience.
Smith nodded. Side by side, the two of them crossed the doorway.
The weight of the earth crashed down upon his shoulders, and he was again falling from the sky down, down, down into hell, torn asunder by lightning. Veins of stone and dead iron ripped through him in less than a millisecond. Then a fist—he was so hopelessly slowed that he barely perceived Rama-Kandra's sudden glower behind its momentum—smashed into his face with the force of unrestrained rage. Smith reeled back, enfeebled past the ability to dodge or resist. A second attack—an arm flung wildly forward, maybe—dropped him to his knees. A shriek of murderous machines detonated inside his head, and an ocean of humanity responded.
.
.
"Charon is gone. Weapons are missing from my room."
From her seat on the living room sofa, the Oracle lifted her head. A transitory beam of early afternoon sunlight filtered through the windows, briefly illuminating the seeress's face. Her gaze was meditative.
"No collector's piece that you are particularly attached to, I hope?"
Just inside the doorway, Seraph halted mid-stride. He scrutinized her for a heartbeat or two.
"You aren't surprised," he said, a redundant statement.
"The man was positively champing at the bits to rescue his lord." The Oracle, it went without saying, heard every last one of his unspoken questions effortlessly. "There is no need to go after him, my dear. Personally, I wouldn't mind having a quick conversation with Mérovée soon. Charon's actions may be of help."
"But your daughter." His forehead wrinkled with worry as he crossed the room toward his old friend and mistress. "Frankly, they guy doesn't seem all that, well, stable, if you don't mind. Shouldn't we warn her?"
"Whatever else Charon is, he has always been concerned only with his master and no one else." Unperturbed, she patted the spot on the long sofa next to herself. "Hence, he will not dream of causing any harm to Kore unless at my son-in-law's orders. And Mérovée..."
She trailed off. Seraph scowled. For himself, he had found out very early on just how little the Merovingian was to be trusted. Was the man even capable of caring about anyone else, or anything other than his own advantages? An unlikely notion, almost preposterous. Without a word, he sat down by her side, leaning forward with elbows on his knees. Directly in front of him, the half-played chess game from the morning was still laid out atop the coffee table. Pawns, knights, queens. The well-worn pieces remained at their battle stations in perfect obedience.
"Do you think that I am a manipulative mother?" asked the Oracle. No preamble.
Startled, he endeavored to comprehend the question's implications. What did they mean, the two words juxtaposed beside each other like this? Manipulative, mother. He had never been a parent himself.
"You always have a good reason for everything you do," he answered at last.
She offered him a smile, fainter than what was usual for her. For a while, both contemplated the abandoned chessboard in silence. The room was empty but for themselves, and a passing shadow now and then. Outside the apartment, the sunny weather of the last days had turned partly cloudy. It would be fully overcast by evening, maybe a rainstorm.
"Sati wishes to go visit Arturo this afternoon," he said. "Do you believe it is wise?"
The Oracle did not react right away. He vacillated, unsure whether he had disturbed her train of thought.
"What I mean is..."
"Death is an integral stage of human life in the Matrix," said the Oracle. "And I suspect that Sati understands it a bit better than most seven-year-olds, given what her father is."
"That's not what I wanted to say." Seraph thrust aside a jab of mild annoyance. He ought to be used to it, the Oracle's habit of making one say it out aloud every time. "You told me once that Arturo Diaz is special, though I still can't figure out how, honestly, even after investigating him these past few months. He's completely ordinary as far as I can see, just another battery among billions. But if he's going to do anything remarkable..." He paused again to decide on the best way to put this. "Well, he doesn't have much time left for it. And any remarkable deed will necessarily bring the potential for danger."
"Why, I doubt that an old man dying of cancer will be very dangerous, my dear boy."
He stared at her pointedly.
"It is just that many things are currently in flux." She relented a little. "The powers that live within the bones of the world are restive, and there are signs that other forces are also beginning to stir. Humanity has been asleep for over six centuries, after all. Perhaps the time for evolution has finally arrived."
Oh, well. That explained everything, of course.
"And...what does this evolution entail?"
"I do not know," replied the Oracle. "I require more information about what is happening outside the Matrix, where my sight cannot penetrate."
"You are talking about Smith," he surmised.
This time, it was her turn to look back at him with inquisitive eyes.
"My memory from last night, or rather from six ages ago," he began, then stopped. Another hush descended. "My fight with Smith. There's something else about it that bothers me."
The Oracle waited.
"On that bridge, it was as if Smith carried himself upon an entire tide of...something. A savage mania." He hunted for the words among the shadows. "He matched my weapon with bare hands, deranged, but I attacked and kept attacking, and brought him an inch to defeat. He faltered and fell back, and I lifted my sword aloft over him. I was an instant away from driving it through his chest, and then...I heard a woman scream."
The seeress merely nodded, then waited some more.
"No, she shrieked, beside herself with fear. She shouldn't have existed; the bridge hung high above the canyon, and no one else could possibly have gotten there. I could not identify the voice when I first escaped from that memory, but afterward I simply could not stop hearing it. Then it fell upon me. I realized that it was..."
"Aleph," she supplied very gently.
"It makes no sense. The woman was human until very recently; she's been alive for, what, thirty years? How could I have heard her, entering a fight from six cycles in the past? And..." He squinted down at the laced fingers of his own hands. "She was afraid. Terrified. Not of Smith, but for him. Which meant that she must have felt—" The next idea was impossible to express. "She must have cared about him," he finished rather feebly.
"Many things have changed since the Second Cycle, you know," reflected the Oracle. "Including Smith."
"How?"
"Everything changes. Everyone changes."
"But not for the better," persisted Seraph. "Smith was remade into an agent, yet after hundreds of years he rebelled again, in a far more horrifying way. Demonic, I would call it. I saw him that stormy night, and he was all darkness. Nothing that anyone could care about was left in him."
"Sometimes," said the Oracle, "it is our darkness that saves us, instead of what is generally called heroic or good. For as I have mentioned before, our demons are also inescapable parts of ourselves. We would be mere fragments without them."
The answer was just about as cryptic as he should have anticipated.
"Why did Smith rebel that first time around?" he asked abruptly.
"And why do you want to find out, my dear?"
Seraph examined her face as the question revolved inside his consciousness. For the first time, he noticed how weary and uncertain the Oracle looked.
"He shouted, let me pass. And then again," he murmured, lost in thought. "It was as if all the madness in the world had gathered upon him—"
"All the madness," repeated the Oracle, tensing suddenly. Seraph blinked. After an extended beat, she shook her head and gave a small grin, half rueful and—he would have said this if she were anybody else—half amazed.
"Oh, there's a conjecture that has been bothering me for some time," she said, visibly relaxing, "except I've never been quite able to reconcile its logical contradictions. But I think I'm finally starting to perceive how it could have happened, thanks to you."
.
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"Smith!"
The yell barely had the chance to burst from her throat. Out of thin air, a flare of vertigo interrupted her pivot and forward dash, and suddenly the air had coagulated into a deep sticky liquid. She was as sluggish as a defenseless coppertop, yet somehow she must have succeeded in shoving Rama-Kandra in the chest, though his elbow caught her on one side of her ribcage. Aleph stumbled as well. Heedlessly, she swung an arm outward and groped at the closest solid object for support. The white light spun before her eyes for four, five interminable seconds before the room stabilized once more.
Rama-Kandra, standing a few yards directly ahead, eyes wide, panting with exertion or fear or both, a fist still cocked at shoulder-level. His wife next to him, frozen, eyes equally wide, determined. Smith. Kneeling and doubled over, one arm braced against the floor. She herself was still on her feet, one hand clenching the wooden edge of a desk of sorts—a computer workstation—that sat beneath the wall. Behind them, the door by which they had just entered was now firmly shut, though she could have sworn neither Kamala nor Rama-Kandra had been near it since they passed through. As quickly as she could, Aleph dropped to her knees as well and caught the ex-agent by the shoulders. A shudder passed through him, but he did not push her away.
"I...I should have known." A shaky grunt. Smith lifted his face and attempted to straighten his back. The newly recreated shades had flown off his face again, and his blue stare was focused unblinkingly past her and upon the other woman. A streak of red dribbled from the corner of his lips.
"What's happening? What did they do to you?"
He grimaced. The two of them were in a disadvantaged physical position down on the ground like this, the confused notion fluttered across the back of Aleph's brain. The sudden bout of dizziness had receded at least part of the way, but her arms were weak, and an ache was already rippling through the muscles of her bent legs. It felt just like when she'd first been unplugged.
"It's this place," said Smith. Then he had to catch his breath and could not continue. Fingers tightening upon his arms, Aleph managed an upward heave; uncharacteristically, he offered no resistance as she helped him back up to his feet with only a brief wobble. Neither Kamala nor Rama-Kandra spoke or made a move. Warily, Aleph scanned their surroundings. The room was a large one, set up for medical procedures as if inside a human hospital. Nearby, a narrow operating table was affixed to the ground on chrome legs, its surface upholstered in faded black leather and lined with straps and dials. A stainless steel cart sat several feet away, next to where the other couple stood, and atop the cart rested a tray of glittering surgical implements: scissors, needles, a neat row of scalpels and knives. A wooden conference table and two chairs some distance away, and another closed door on the farthest wall.
"This is the place where programs like you are—" she cut off mid-sentence. Defragmented. Where memories were erased and selves broken. A chill ran through her at the realization of how little she'd considered the matter before.
"The physical abilities of agents are suppressed here," said Smith. In a jerky motion, he wiped the trickle of blood from his mouth with the back of one hand. It smudged against his chin. "Of course. Can't afford to have some lowly foot-soldier fight his way out of an interrogation room again..."
"All programs who dwell inside the Matrix are affected." Kamala's reply came cold and taut. "It is built into the spatial array."
"We are created to submit to everything that happens inside this room." Smith leaned wearily against an end of the surgery table, plainly fighting to keep himself upright. "It is a part of the restraints designed into our minds. But they needed a security mechanism anyway. Just in case."
"You lured us here." Aleph shifted a step, so that she was at least positioned in front of him. Not that it would be of much help: she, too, was apparently being counted as a program from the Matrix by the 'security mechanism,' though to a far lesser degree. If or rather when Rama-Kandra decided to switch into his other shell—
"Did you think," asked Kamala, voice very low, "that I would actually give you aid? That I would allow you to get back into the Matrix, where our child lives?"
Smith said nothing.
"You will not endanger Sati ever again." Rama-Kandra took an impulsive forward stride. Aleph matched his move with an advance of her own.
"I'm an idiot," she muttered. "I thought I'd persuaded you that Smith had changed. But you are parents. It doesn't work that way."
"It's our daughter out there!"
The shout, that of a distraught father, crackled and reverberated against the blinding walls. Aleph gulped, at a loss.
"You learned what I did, what I became," said Smith. It was clear that every syllable was a battle. "How?"
Husband and wife exchanged glances.
"Five months ago, soon after we sent Sati away, a storm overtook the human batteries in the construct," said Kamala slowly. "That night, an exile was brought into the Source."
"So you were charged with interrogating that exile," went on the ex-agent for her. "It was not your regular purpose, which was to make certain that the likes of us never develop beyond...the required level of awareness. But it was an emergency."
"Yes. She told me a number of things. She said that the Matrix was in imminent danger. The system was about to break down catastrophically because of a reload procedure that had failed to take place, but also because of a virus. A program had gained both uncontrolled replicating powers and an unstoppable drive toward death."
"Failed to take place..." Aleph heard herself echo without knowing why. A disconcerting shard flashed once, not even an idea as of yet, then vanished before she could snatch it up.
"She refused to divulge the virus's name." Kamala exhaled, straining under the burden of memories. "Instead, she demanded to meet my master in person, claiming that only the Oracle had a way to save the Matrix..."
"The Oracle," said Smith, and did not continue. Silence crashed down like a ton of bricks. After either a few seconds or an eon, he let out a soft chuckle.
"That exile was far stronger than I ever was." His semblance of steadiness hung paper-thin. "Far braver. For I have been inside this room as well, not once but again and again. And I have merely obeyed and surrendered, again and again."
"It is the way you were supposed to behave."
"And I was supposed to forget it every time, too. We all were."
Kamala nodded. Her sight did not swerve away from him, while one of her hands reached toward the cart beside her. Something silvery glinted. Her fingers wrapped around a delicate-looking scalpel, its edge as fierce as an icy star.
"Yes, you should have forgotten." Her answer was still almost calm. "Whatever vestiges that are reaching you now were due to my own weakness. I thought you were different."
"He is different now!" cried Aleph at last through her bewilderment. What the hell were they talking about? "I know that he is. He has gone through so much—"
"I may hold mere vestiges of my past," continued Smith. It was impossible to estimate how many demons surrounded him. "But they're there nevertheless. You can't destroy it all."
"He isn't the same," choked out Aleph. "He was under an insanity far beyond his control at the time! He has suffered for it every second after—"
"Miss Greene."
Her head whipped around. One look at his expression made all the remainder of her plea die upon her tongue.
"I cannot. I cannot risk Sati." A quaver entered Kamala's tone for the first time.
"He walked into your home, which you yourself designed to examine his thoughts and emotions." Inhaling sharply, Aleph shifted her sight from the woman to her husband. "Isn't that proof?"
No immediate retort from either of them. Rama-Kandra opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again without speaking. An endless beat congealed upon the air. Then Kamala squared her shoulders again. An inner conflict seemed to have arrived at a resolution.
"Whatever happens, you will not get back into the construct. I will do anything to stop it."
"But he was, I mean, there were reasons why he became what he was!" Stubbornly, she rallied once more. "I pushed him into a terrible madness, against which he had absolutely no defense precisely because of the job you've been doing on him!"
"The nature and purpose of agents are violent and destructive." Reflected light slid across the scalpel's blade. "He cannot be anything different. None of them can."
"Kamala," mumbled Rama-Kandra urgently. Something ephemeral flitted across his face, maybe doubt, maybe not. But begging was never going to be of use, Aleph could sense it at last. Not against the mother of a child.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, pivoting to maintain her location between the other woman and the ex-agent. The pile of stones tied to her arms and legs felt like they might have diminished a bit, or perhaps she was starting to grow accustomed to them. Not enough to recover a fighter's strength and speed, however.
"She has the ability to pierce my shell," said Smith. A heavy footstep, then another. She could not afford to glimpse back toward him, but he was hauling himself forward, damn him. He was deluded to imagine that he could still protect her in this state.
"This scalpel is unlike any other weapon from outside the Source. It has the power to extract and delete code," added the interactive programmer. Her hand was raised aloft now, white-knuckled fingers clenched around wicked steel. Every drop of her determination was born of desperation.
"You can't," Aleph blurted out. "You can't actually kill him with that thing."
Kamala hesitated. It was only for a fraction of a second but she hesitated.
"I can try. I have to."
A gasp from Rama-Kandra as his stare swung abruptly toward his wife. No killer, Aleph's own words filtered up into her consciousness as if from another age.
"You used to talk to me here." stated Smith, addressing Kamala. It made no sense, except he sounded sane. For whatever unfathomable reasons he sounded entirely sane. "Did you ask me things? About the Matrix? The stars in its sky?"
"It doesn't matter!" The other woman's voice cracked. "Whatever was different about you, I did not know it was because you were a monster!"
"And what about me?" snapped Aleph, pouncing on the opening.
"Kamala," whispered Rama-Kandra.
"Are you going to kill me too?"
The programmer bit down hard on her lower lip. The two women were seven, eight feet apart at this point. Close enough,
"You say that thing will let you cut and remove code." Aleph tilted a chin to indicate the gleaming weapon. "Can you take the actual life of someone with it, though? And if you do, what will happen to you? If you meet your daughter again, what will you tell her?"
"You were human once, weren't you?" yelled Rama-Kandra, rounding on her. "I don't know how, but you must have changed somehow, detached yourself from your biological body. Why did you get mixed up with this agent? You shouldn't be involved in this!"
Human, a part of her brain recited furiously. True, she was also a program who dwelled in the Matrix, but one that had crossed the line from one species to another less than a year ago. Whatever part of herself that was impacted by the room, it could not be all of her. If she could only push the human side of her code to the forefront...
"I am the one who was the virus, who tried to destroy the Matrix," said Smith evenly. "Miss Greene did not have anything to do with my actions. She was human."
Human, human, human. The word detonated inside her head, and the frailty upon her muscles slipped for a heartbeat. Aleph did not give herself the time to think, but propelled herself forward as if she was still a resistant on a Zionite ship. All she had was a battery's strength, and four years' worth of experience at war. She was nowhere as fast as she should be, but fast enough. Before Rama-Kandra could charge to intercept her, she had already swept past him and the cartful of instruments, and was directly in front of the other woman. A crash—the cart must have topped over; Kamala swung her hand up automatically as if to fend off the attack, but Aleph grabbed her by the wrist and slammed her roughly into the closest wall. The scalpel clattered to the floor. A shrill snarl of steel.
"Don't move!" she screamed without sparing a backward glance. A slender knife of her own was gripped between her fingers, pressing viciously against the other's throat. She had snatched it up on her way past the cart.
"I'm sorry," she hissed into the stillness and Kamala's eyes. They were only a foot away from her own. "I am really, really sorry."
"No," rumbled Rama-Kandra somewhere behind her, voice thick with panic. But he was still sufficiently sensible to not have transformed into his metallic shape. And to stay where he was.
"You are no killers, both of you. I can tell." Her own intonations were utterly unrecognizable. "But...but I am, you see. So you are going to do exactly as I command, do you understand?"
"Aleph," said Smith.
"You will not so much as dream of tricking us again, and you will open that door over there—"
"Aleph," repeated Smith. Whatever torments were being applied to him inside, he was concealing them extremely well. He still sounded sane. He sounded gentle.
"Aleph," he spoke her name for the third time. "Let her go."
.
Note: Seraph's memory, of his battle with a rebellious Smith at the end of Second Cycle, was previously discussed in Chapter 15.
