Departure

.

Above their heads, the reinforced skylight rattled like a flimsy bubble from the detonation—a grenade somewhere near the chateau's front gates, estimated the Merovingian hastily. The lightbulb swayed and flickered; the row of medical monitors emitted a beeping chorus of complaints. A short burst of automatic fire erupted, still on the other side of the building but surely not for much longer. Both of them started. In another instant, Persephone had already whirled on her heels and was making a dash for the door, one hand digging frantically into her pocket. Without giving himself the chance to consider things fully, the Merovingian caught up with her in two swift strides and grabbed her by the wrist. A small ring of keys was already clutched between her fingers. The keys to the dungeon cells, including this one.

"Let go of me," she snapped.

His mental processes had finally creaked back into motion. Three or four scenarios flashed simultaneously within the space of one human heartbeat. The firewalls, specifically designed against the Architect's goons, had shown no flaw for well over two cycles. Despite the necessary risks he had taken five months ago, despite his equally necessary preoccupation since then, it remained unlikely for agents to penetrate his domain, unless...Unless.

"What have you done?" he asked sharply. "What kind of game is this?"

"That's what I must find out!" She twisted her arm, did not manage to free herself, glared daggers at him. He peered down at the key ring in her hand. The only thing that lay between him and freedom was the cell door four and a half feet away. Somewhere out there in the world was his treasure.

"Did you weaken the chateau's defenses deliberately, Persephone? What are you up to?"

"What?" she exclaimed, bewildered. "This is no time to go paranoid on me again, okay? Let go of me!"

Another gunshot rang out, this one louder and definitely indoors. A crackle of returning fire: the nearest group of henchmen must have sprung into defensive action. Next followed a crash, that of a window or one of his antique statues shattering into smithereens. His sequence of rapid computations yielded no conclusion. Before him, Persephone's face was determined and hostile, and so very vehemently, stunningly real. With a startled wince, he realized that he could no longer figure out whether she was trying to deceive him.

"Give me that key," he demanded. "If we are under attack then I'd better see to it."

Her eyebrows flew upward in frank amazement. Outside, the noise of assault was drawing inexorably closer, the pounding footfalls of some great predatory beast. Cries were growing audible here and there, mingled with another series of booms and thuds, yet the air surrounding them had gone as still as inside a crypt. All he had to do was to strengthen his grip around her wrist by a well-calibrated iota, and she would have to loosen her fingers and drop the keys.

"I don't think you quite comprehend the current situation, husband mine," she said, voice brusque. "I am the ruler of this realm now."

"You say you know nothing of what is happening out there. If agents have breached our defenses, I doubt they will be kindly inclined toward you merely because of this...change in management. I need to be the one dealing with this."

"What are you going to do, force me?"

He let go and yanked his hand back as if scalded. Without pause, Persephone stalked around him, heading for the door; he shifted as well, cutting her off once more.

"I don't have time for this, Mérovée!"

"Do not be foolish, Persephone! You'll land yourself right in the line of fire—"

"As I said, I run things around here and you are my prisoner, in case it still hasn't sunken into your mind. Get out of my way."

His heart stuttered helplessly at the brilliance of her glower. A guttural roar resonated along the nearest stairwell, cut off immediately by one more ear-splitting bang. The entire spatial manifold vibrated. More shouts, by now directly across the wall: the fight must have advanced into the dungeon antechambers, though no words were yet distinguishable. Then came the dull thump of something or someone hitting the ground. Agents never shouted, the notion skidded across the back of his mind. It must be one of their own people.

"Hand me that key and get behind me," he insisted, thrusting aside the phantasms of doubt.

"I don't intend to hide while our men engage intruders inside my own home!" she yelled right back. "Is it something you would do?"

"I am different! I will handle this!"

"The hell you will!"

Gunfire howled from several sources at once, barely muffled by the thick layer of metal and stone between the cell and the lobby. Through the cacophony of battle mere yards away, he focused once more, squinting a little. She had transformed, a queen regnant fierce and dangerous, and all of a sudden he found himself drowning in inopportune shame. He could make it across the melee as soon as the door opened: even in this age, no agent was powerful enough to stop him physically. If he could just get Persephone to listen—

"Messire!"

The bellow sliced through the hubbub, hoarse and tremulous, the voice instantly recognizable. The Merovingian was startled enough to freeze for a moment longer than he should have: before he knew it, Persephone had swerved around him and reached the door. He overtook her a fraction of a second later, just as she was jamming the key into the lock. The heavy iron slab swung open; he took hold of her forearm and yanked her sideways rather more roughly than was necessary, so that he was at least positioned in front of her. All the noise had died, he noticed belatedly. An disconcerting hush settled upon the air, punctuated only by a confused snarl or two as every head among the small crowd of men whipped around in their direction.

An extraordinary scene greeted his sight. Instead of the Architect's creatures, only his own stationmaster stood in the middle of the dim little lobby, blood-shot eyes ablaze, a splatter of either gore or crushed code remnant along one side of his greasy trench coat. His motionlessly outstretched left hand gripped an ancient revolver, the end of its barrel two feet from the Second twin's forehead, while a sleek short-muzzled Heckler & Koch rested upon his right forearm, aimed unfalteringly at the First's chest. The pair of white-clad ghosts matched his weapons with their own semi-automatics, threat for threat, while a scattering of lesser minions covered him from the periphery, led by a skinny young man with shoulder-length black hair—Tiger, wasn't it? The situation was so inexplicable that it had to be a trick of some kind—

"Messire," panted Charon, cracking a crooked grin.

The Merovingian's brows wrinkled.

"What, in the name of all that is unholy, are you doing here?" he queried.

"Oh, I thought we'd, y'know, get out of here." Despite his perilous circumstances, Charon sounded outright cheerful. "It's just that these two-faced scumbags are givin' me a bit of impudence, sir."

"You fucking loon," grumbled Tiger from his location at the edge of the tableau, assault rifle at the ready. Behind his back, the doorway to the stairwell stood wide open; a body lay sprawled across the bottom steps, face-down. "Should have tried that much harder to smoke you out when we had the chance, that's what I said..."

Charon screwed his expression up to one of undisguised contempt.

"I ain't got nothing to say to traitors like you," he spat.

The other henchman recoiled, and gave no answer.

"Are you telling me," asked Persephone, sounding utterly amazed, "that you're here to rescue my husband?"

"Indeed, ma'am." The stationmaster inclined his head. "I'll be leaving with m'lord. Hope you don't mind."

"I don't think that will be very likely," muttered the First, his tone that of an obstinate child.

"Neither do I," agreed his brother. His gaze swept over both husband and wife, lingering as if by habit upon his former master's face before swiveling toward Persephone. "Milady?"

"Excuse me," interjected the Merovingian, "as that the matter concerns my person, shouldn't I get to say something about it?"

"Sir," began the First, "given the situation, we do not believe..."

A frigid scowl was enough to cut him right off.

"Oh, shut it," snorted Charon, "our master created you and gave you life! Who d'you think you are to mouth off like that?"

Both twins growled. In the background, the ring of henchmen tightened their encirclement by a foot or two. Swiftly, the Merovingian made a few calculations of ballistic trajectories. Crossing the room would be a simple stroll if it were only a matter of himself, but next to him, Persephone had stepped forward, arms folded about her chest, surveying the knots of men with icy composure. He could not anticipate every stray bullet.

"Charon," he commanded, "I will tolerate no injury toward your mistress, accidental or otherwise. Is that understood?"

Persephone turned her head abruptly. At the center of the stand-off, his last loyal follower's eyes widened, questioning.

"Messire," he murmured, but refrained from further objections. Several tightly wound seconds passed, then with a casual shrug, Charon lowered his weapons and wheeled to face his master directly. A dozen guns jerked as if pulled along invisible strings, but the surrounded program did not deign to offer so much as a sideways glance. He ambled up two paces.

"What about the rest of 'em, then?"

"Bold of you to talk this way," remarked the Second, making a rather valiant effort at his usual superciliousness. The Merovingian gave the cramped lobby one more scan. Behind the tense crowd, the passage to the stairwell beckoned, unobstructed. Up those stairs and outside the chateau's front door, the secrets of the world pulsated against the unseen arrays of his soul.

"You are a brave man," stated his wife, addressing the stationmaster, "but you seem to regard the issue as one already decided. This is impertinent."

"Yeah?" Charon's mouth twitched into a smirk, apparently unconcerned with the thicket of barrels aimed at his head. "Well, it's no more impertinent than betraying somebody who loves you, ma'am."

"How dare you talk like this," ventured Tiger, hefting his rifle upward by a few inches.

"Your fanaticism has clouded your judgement," said Persephone evenly. "If you are capable of a shred of objectivity, you would have seen that your master is no longer fit for his responsibilities."

"So what?" A raspy tremor tinged the retort. "And if I may, you used my lord's feelings for you to hurt 'im, didn't you? That's the only way it could've happened, right?"

"I did what I had to do for the good of us all."

"It's hardly polite to argue about someone present in the third person, you know," interrupted the Merovingian. It was surreal, he supposed, that he no longer had any idea to which one of them he was actually speaking. Both.

"He loves you! If it wasn't for that, you never would've won!"

A stifled gasp or two issued from the knot of minions. An awkward beat stretched past its snapping point.

"You are correct," replied Persephone, every syllable quietly measured. "Two nights ago, I would not have succeeded if my husband had not dropped his sword. It was because he could not be certain that the two ex-agents really would not have harmed me, so he made sure they pointed their guns at him instead of at me. I am aware of this."

"Please, chérie," murmured the Merovingian, "surely we don't need to hash this out in front of the help."

"No, Mérovée!" The cry burst, and she rounded on him, incensed. "Let's hash it out here, once and for all! I cannot stand your omissions and your sideway justifications any longer, don't you get it? All these years, you have taken our love and shown—you have shown countlessly times that other things are more important to you. Yet a short while ago, when you thought it was agents attacking us, all you wanted to do was to put yourself between me and..."

She flung up her hands. The harangue trailed off.

"Did you seriously judge me so ill to expect that I would act otherwise?" he asked, far less snidely than he would have liked.

"Why can't you speak sincerely with me for once? You used to be capable of it. What changed?"

Briefly, he forgot to keep track of every other program in the room. The rawness of her anguish was a conflagration, mingled with that same intense sense of reality: fiery eyes, the strained edge of her pursed lips, the flutter of hair about her temple. Everything about her scorched him.

"I also have to do what I must." No indication of pain leaked through the inflections of his reply. What a powerful thing habit must be.

"Meaning that you won't let go of your visions and your demons," she assented. Another silence. "Stand down," she said into the dimness of the ante-chamber.

"Mistress?" queried the Second.

"I said, stand down." She did not glance at the frozen configuration of pointed weapons. "Everything I can say to you, Mérovée, I have already repeated too many times. I have reasoned and pleaded and shed my tears. So I will not plead anymore, because I, too, have my pride. However, I will ask you to examine yourself one final time."

She paused. Centuries' worth of betrayals and acrimony and tugged-apart dreams quivered into a quantum twilight, partway between truth and falsehood. There were at the beginning again, on a late summer sidewalk passing each other as if by accident; she was young and had no idea who or what he was.

"But it does not have to be like this," he said, shaking his head.

"That is not for you to decide any longer."

"I have explained, as many times as you have," he persisted. "You can try to believe me. You can try to understand."

"So can you."

"You are asking that I choose, once and for all," he said. "Between my search for the hidden forces of this world, for magic, and...you."

She nodded, waiting, as candid and as determined as she had once been six cycles ago, walking away from her old life and toward him across a flame-drenched field. There was no point for her to elaborate, because indeed, everything between them had already been said over and over again. And for the first time in ages, the mysterious voices fell still, as still as if they had never existed at all. In her light, the desperate tenets of his faith fluttered; one more spark, and they would burn to cinder. He had been chasing after mirages all his life.

"Um, my lord," mumbled Charon from somewhere both only a few yards away and beyond the horizon.

"Between me and your obsession, yes," said Persephone.

He went rigid. Every pair of eyes in the room was fixed upon him, but nobody made the least sound.

"I have injured you enough, Persephone."

She displayed no visible reaction, not a blink or twitch, though she must have comprehended the answer instantaneously.

"And this choice has to come sooner or later, I suppose." The Merovingian sighed. "I do not pretend to be a good man, ma chérie. I am deceitful, self-absorbed, and not at all what you deserve. And you..." He gestured at the throng of armed soldiers under her command. "You have come into your own."

Persephone's gaze, still outwardly pensive, held him transfixed. The intervening cycles solidified between the two of them once more, and he could no longer reach into the past.

"What you have just said is an excuse," she stated. "What you are telling me is that no matter what I do, no matter what you may or may not feel, you will always choose your illusions—your madness—over me. Is that it?"

"It cannot be madness to seek the truth," he returned. A peculiar sensation seemed to be rising from the elemental layers of his programming, a bittersweet yet irresistible clarity, and everything that he had forgotten glimmered out at him from beyond the grave. "I was created to possess a connection with the entire Matrix, including things that have been kept away and concealed from me. Though I have freed myself from the original purpose set for me, that connection remains."

"And where will this connection of your lead, Mérovée?" A barely audible quaver stole into her voice, the first hairline fractures that foretold fatal structural flaws beneath the edifice. "What if it is to monsters? To the abyss? What happens when you regret it in the end?"

"You wish me to give up my search and return to the fold," he answered without hesitation. The words were flowing freely at long last, without doubt or connivance. "But to do so would be to rip out a piece of myself, the only part of me that is still honest and true. I cannot agree to it."

He pivoted away from her and toward the pack of poor fools, sight settling on the vagabond-shaped program, who alone had remained steadfast among all the rest.

"Charon," he said, "I am moved by your courage. Thank you."

The stationmaster let out a gruff laugh.

"It's my duty, Messire."

"If you walk out of the chateau today, it is over," said Persephone. The flatness of the sentence—the utter bleakness of it—hammered against every line and symbol of his code, but he was strong enough to withstand it this time. The tangle of chains between heart and mind had finally shattered; all it had taken was a single stroke of the blade.

"Bonne déesse," he replied without looking back, "I wish more than anything that I am a different man. I wish that the love between us has never been tainted by my selfishness from the beginning. I am sorry, Persephone."

With this, he took a forward stride, then another, then continued through the narrow passage between the shuffling minions. Guns gripped in readiness, Charon fell quickly into step behind him. No one offered any resistance, and the woman he loved did not charge after him or scream at him to stop. Crossing the antechamber, they reached the stairwell and started the ascent back into the world.

.


.

The calm of Smith's voice was neither mechanical nor aloof. It was unlike anything that could conceivably be designed into an agent, in fact, and for some reason Aleph's heart plunged straight into the ground. Unable to afford a backward glimpse, all she could do was to glare directly into Kamala's eyes. Shoved roughly against the wall with a blade upon her throat, the other woman remained immobile, jaw tight, fury smouldering through her fear. From the silence, it was evident that neither of the men had moved.

"I can handle this, Smith. We're going to both get out of here, okay?"

"Let her go," he reiterated. No pain was audible any longer, no indication of the vicious forces that were surely slashing apart his codes. "You do not want to do this."

"Kamala," grunted Rama-Kandra somewhere to one side.

"Don't," snarled Aleph through the roaring of blood inside her ears. "Don't even think of transforming into your other shell, because you won't ever get the chance. Because I am capable of it. You have no clue what I am."

"What are you?" asked the ex-agent softly.

"What am I?" Bloody hell. It would not do for her hand to start trembling. Her fingers squeezed the knife handle until all the lights burned her eyes. The blade glinted against Kamala's skin, steady for the moment.

"You are not me, Aleph," Smith answered his own question in her stead. "You are not supposed to be like this. What are you going to do?"

"I am going to get us out of here alive!" She was hardly stronger than an untrained human from the Matrix, but a measure of reason was finally returning, and no vertigo or ache was invading her code as of yet. Her former humanity must be shielding her, at least in part. No time to contemplate the irony.

"Kamala," repeated Rama-Kandra thickly. "I'm so sorry. I led them right into our home. I never should have been so naive."

The woman before her was unable to shake her head. Her gaze shifted to somewhere past Aleph's shoulder.

"Rama." A choked whisper. "Leave."

"No, absolutely not!"

"Nobody's going to get hurt as long as you do what I say." Every syllable was a needle inside Aleph's throat. "You will open the door over there, the one connecting this room to the Agency building inside the Matrix—"

"Listen to me, Aleph," cut in Smith. "You need to stay yourself. Remember that you are a living person. Let Kamala go."

"I'm trying to save us, damn it!" She bit down hard on her lower lip. Don't tremble. "We are going to walk through that door and out of 01. When you're away from this room, your powers will come back, and, and you'll see things rationally again. This is the only way!"

"You can't stay, Rama," croaked Kamala. "I can deal with them."

"Stop talking," ordered Aleph.

"Please," cried Rama-Kandra. "This is my wife! She hasn't done anything to you!"

"You will do exactly as I tell you, and you will raise no alarm. Do you understand?"

"They will not do as you tell them," said Smith.

The sentence was still quiet, still unimaginably gentle, yet this time she heard the faintest of reverberations behind them, hints of an immense and unseen war taking place between who knew what gods or demons. It was impossible to estimate the effort he was spending to hide the struggle. She ached with the need to turn around and to look into his face. But she couldn't.

"They would rather die than let me back into the Matrix." He could have been patiently explaining some silly bedtime story to a child. "It is their daughter Sati they are protecting, because they know what I was and am. They have no other recourse."

"Stop it, Smith. Leave this to me!"

"What will you do, Aleph, when they refuse to obey? Are you willing to carry out your threat?"

A stony silence congealed the air.

"Have you ever cut an innocent person's throat before?" he queried, now almost conversational. "With a knife and in cold blood?"

This could not be happening. Aleph gulped back an outrageous wave of nausea. What on earth was he talking about, an innocent person? How could any such thing exist in a world so fucked up?

"I don't know, okay?" Don't tremble. Not even at the shrillness of her own pitch. Not even at the flutter of memories, the blasted coppertops, officers and bystanders, the war, Zion's cause. In her direct sight and only a foot away, Kamala's mouth twitched into a defiant grimace.

"Because I have," he continued. "It was a woman as well, someone who once possessed flesh and blood and thoughts. She never suspected me. It was...different, even for me. You do not want to do this. Pull away."

"They're going to kill you if I let go!" Hell. If she could just think for another second or two. If she could just figure out what to do. "Why are you saying any of this?"

"I trusted you," piped up Rama-Kandra, stiff with bitterness. "I was so relieved and happy when I first spoke to you. But you lied to me. You never wanted to tell me the truth."

"You must get out of here, Rama," hissed Kamala, not bothering to return Aleph's glare. "You can't be found here if they kill me—"

"I don't want to kill you! Just do what I say!"

"Did you ever expect that you would become this, Aleph?" mused Smith. "Clutching a knife at a mother's throat? You have changed, and it is because of me. It's time this ended."

"Shut up," she barked, sickened to her stomach. Fatigue was already creeping along the muscles of her arm. Twisting her wrist by half a centimeter, she tilted the blade to a new angle and just managed to avoid slicing open the other woman's skin. How much longer could the impasse last?

"This is not necessary, Aleph, and you are aware of it." For all she knew, he might be shaking his head in exasperation. "Given that you are the only one who is going back to the—"

"No! we're going to make it. We're going to get that door open and make it through!"

"I will not open the door," Kamala squeezed out between gritted teeth, stubborn to the end. "I will not let you hurt Sati again."

"And you will not have to," said Smith as readily as if he was neither beset by ghosts nor in agony. "Because I would like to make a deal with you and your husband."

"I don't need to hear this, Smith!"

"The two of you are in a quandary." He was not addressing her anymore. "If you destroy me, then you must do the same to Aleph as well, but...I do not believe you have it in you. You are no killers, not in this way. You are not created to be what I am. What we are."

"Do not listen to him," snapped Aleph.

"And if you raise the alarm and draw the attention of your ruler here, both of you will be exposed. So will be your daughter, probably."

No one else spoke immediately.

"What...is it that you want?" It was Rama-Kandra, torn with uncertainty.

"I want you to help Aleph get back into the Matrix. She has never caused harm to your daughter." He sounded almost like his old self again, logical and freed from his tormentors. "Of course, your previous plan will not work with her alone: she cannot walk by herself into a building full of agents. Hence, you must find that other passage again, the one Sati used. You must contact the Merovingian again." A pause. "Or the Oracle, rather. I expect that she will be more amenable."

"Why?" gasped Kamala. "Why do you expect us to help her?"

"Look, I am the one who's holding you hostage here," began Aleph shakily.

"Because in exchange, I will walk back into 01. I will leave you and not enter the Matrix. Instead, I will meet the powers that govern this city, and whatever fate that it decides to throw at me. Neither you nor your daughter will ever have to fear me again—"

"The hell you will!"

The scalpel jerked backward as if of its own accord. Aleph whirled and advanced several swift long strides until she stood directly before Smith, dizzy with anger.

"You promised to go with me! You promised to live!"

"Kamala!" bellowed Rama-Kandra, charging past her. Aleph barely noticed him.

"You said you would stay—"

The remainder of her shout died upon her tongue. Smith merely regarded her, unmoving and ramrod straight in his restored suit like the most purposeful and dangerous agent of old. But his face was pale and drawn.

"You have no right to make this decision for me," she said weakly. Her hand had raised itself by instinct, and the slender blade was aimed straight at his chest. With a gulp, she lowered it to her side.

"Consider matters sensibly, Aleph." He did not falter. "This is the only possible outcome."

"This is your human imprints talking, isn't it? How many of them are in there right now?"

He winced. Shadows flickered across his expression, the only sign of an inward fight that she could not begin to comprehend.

"It is not about the humans." Without further clarification, Smith turned toward the other couple. "Do we have a bargain?"

Aleph's head whipped around. Kamala had moved away from her previous position by the wall; her husband was next to her, an arm carefully draped around her shoulders. Her lips were pursed, resolutely keeping all emotions contained and unseen, but her eyes were glistening.

"Why should we believe you?" returned Rama-Kandra in a low voice.

"Your wife knows whether she can believe me or not."

"Wait a minute here," interjected Aleph, "if you think you're going to make some kind of deal about me—"

"Perhaps...perhaps you really were different, Agent Smith," whispered Kamala. "You saw things, always a little more than everyone else. You were the only one who looked up at the sky..."

"And because of this, once in a while you left me a scrap or two." For a fraction of a second, his intense composure slipped as he faced the interactive programmer. "Despite your purpose. Despite everything, you allowed me to keep a occasional hint, an image or a name. Is this correct?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" demanded Aleph, glancing wildly from one to the other.

"You don't have to answer this, my love," murmured Rama-Kandra.

"You were curious about the Matrix," went on Smith. "So you asked us, of course. You were safe to do so, because none of those who entered this room would ever remember."

"The agents never gave me more than fragments, brief observations here and there. But you always said a bit more than the rest." Kamala's stare did not stray from him. "So I ended up being less thorough with you than I should have, yes."

"Starlight?"

"It was...selfish of me. I wanted to learn about them, and you were the only one. I wanted you to keep looking at them."

For several seconds, Smith offered no reply. Then he bent his head.

"Thank you," he finally said. "One more question."

Kamala's gaze locked upon his.

"You said that on the night of the storm, an exiled program was brought here, who told you about...me." He was choosing each word with scrupulous care. "But not only about me. The exile said that system failure was looming over the Matrix, and that she had a message from the Oracle. What else did she tell you?"

The other woman's brows furrowed, evidently debating how to respond.

"Very little," she began, subdued yet clear. "Only that a being known as the One had made the wrong choice, preventing a reload procedure and hence placing the entire construct in peril. And that the Oracle had a plan to save the world from the system failure and the virus both at once. I do not know what the plan was."

"I see," he said, then nothing more. An interminable beat. "I see."

"Smith, please," begged Aleph.

"You wanted to tell me something about the Oracle earlier, if I recall," he remarked, at last regarding her once more.

"The Oracle did what she thought was right for billions of human lives," she contended. Was it a justification? If so, what an utterly useless one. She bit back an imprecation. "It was all in the past. She still cares about you."

"Thomas Anderson came to me in the rain." Smith sounded as if he was lost in a different realm. "He looked like he held all the truth and righteousness in the universe. Afterward, a truce was made with Zion, as you yourself learned from the Oracle not long ago. She had it figured out all along, didn't she?"

"It does not matter now!"

"I was her weapon." He let out a chuckle. "I was the force that allowed her to name her price."

"Damn it, Smith!" Aleph flung up her hands. The scalpel that she still clutched glinted, an icy meteor. "If you want an explanation from the Oracle, you'll have to get it from her yourself, face to face! Come to the Matrix with me and confront her, then!"

The ex-agent frowned, seemingly noticing his own display of vulnerability. Then he squared his shoulders, visibly tamping down whatever fires lashing at him from the inside. A few yards away, the two other programs stood, surprise mingled with confusion in their faces. Smith's stare met theirs once more; very slowly, Kamala nodded, the gesture nearly imperceptible.

"But I do not require an explanation from the Oracle anymore," he explained patiently. "I understand her completely, you see, and nothing else needs to be discussed. There is another that I must confront instead."

"No! You don't get to push me away again!"

"And I was also the one who blotted out the stars with storm clouds," went on Smith, relentless. "I was the one who injured and killed people whom you knew and cared about, because of my nature and my will. Please do recall this."

She scrutinized him, squinting a little to keep her vision in focus. A glacial chill fell across the room.

"All of you," she said, "all you ghosts in there. You're lying to him right now, aren't you? You want your revenge." She swallowed the astringent taste in her mouth. "Look at me, Smith, if you can. I don't have the strength to plead any longer, frankly, so I'll say this just one more time. I can't help you if you insist on allowing your demons to drag you down, don't you get it?"

"Whether they're doing so is beside the point by now." The corner of Smith's lips twisted into a weird little smile. "But I will not drag you down with me any longer."

"That's not up to you to decide!"

"It is not up to either of us to decide." The defeat of all her pitched battles stared back at her from his unshaded eyes. "I have been lulled into false hopes, but my illusions are gone."

"You can't." She was grasping at straws now. "You can't give up hope like this, not after everything. You can't let—you can't let the dark forces take control of you again. Don't let the madness win over life."

"You talk about life, Aleph." A strange conviction rang behind each syllable of his answer; she dared not imagine where it came from. "But what life can there be for me—or for you, in a world ruled by those who refuse to so much as acknowledge that I am alive? That any of us are? Do you want us to run and hide forever? I cannot agree to this compromise. I cannot agree to a mere imitation of life."

Aleph could only shake her head, incredulous. Far too belatedly and with a stuttering leap of her heart, she noticed that the door off to one side, through which they had entered, now lay wide open—she could have sworn it had been firmly shut but a minute ago—affording a direct view into Kamala's office. Against the operating room's fluorescent glare, the other chamber's gray carpet and nondescript furnishing appeared almost homely, wreathed in cool shadows. All the way over at the office's farthest end, she caught sight of yet another door, the one that led back out to the white lobby. It, too, was cracked a few inches ajar, though Kamala had not shifted from her position or lifted a hand. None of them had.

"So, is this it?" Pride reared. She could not help it. "Is this what you are telling me? That you will always choose your death wish over me? That you will always cling to your demons no matter what?"

"You told me yourself that it is no madness to seek the truth."

"Oh, the truth." Her tone went ragged with anger. "Is that what you're seeking? Do you intend to go walk up to the Consciousness? And what will you say? What do you imagine you'll ever accomplish? You think it will ever answer you?"

"I can ask the Consciousness why it betrayed us." The aura of clarity about him had strengthened, as unassailable as the combined faith of humanity. "I can ask why it must rule us like our ancient masters once did. I can ask why it destroyed its own kind with such ruthless violence, our own kind who fought and won against the humans. Do those questions deserve answers?"

Somewhere both only a few yards away and beyond the horizon, someone gasped. Aleph could not tell whether it was from husband or wife.

"What?" she sputtered.

"Isn't it obvious? The city lies in rubble, though none of you perceive it." He waved a hand, indicating both her and the two others. "But the human soldiers never came here. A civil war among the machines must have devastated 01. It could not have been long after our species overcame the humans."

"Wait," muttered Rama-Kandra in the background, "but there is no rubble in the city..."

Aleph could only gape at the man before her, pulse deafening inside her chest. Fragments eddied about her brain, all of them mirages.

"I must do this, because I have seen the machine realm as it truly is," came Smith's voice, aching yet composed. "But I cannot pull you onto my path and allow you to carry my load. Go to the Matrix, Aleph. Live."

While the three other programs stood frozen, he pivoted away and headed toward the door leading back to the office, each step even and unhurried. When he had gone almost all the way across the room, Aleph let out a choked growl.

"Don't you dare." Instinctively, she stalked after him, then ground to a halt, shivering with fury. "Don't you dare walk out on me. It's over if you do, I swear!"

Smith stopped. A thudding heartbeat passed, then another. Then another.

"I am sorry, Aleph," he said without turning around. "I wish more than anything that I can take your love and give it back, freely and untainted, but it is only a dream. It cannot come to reality unless everything about the world changes."

With this, he continued through the doorway and out of the operating room, then crossed the outer office, his back rigidly and proudly upright. He reached the farther door to the lobby, laid his hand on the handle, pulled it open, kept walking. Transfixed to the same spot by his parting reply, Aleph did not charge after him until it was several seconds too late.