Opening Salvos

.

Rain slammed down onto him like bullets from an army of crazed Zionites. The striking force and temperature of each pellet was a new sensation—he was never designed to heed the weather—yet it was not entirely new either. A shudder of something that might or might not have been familiarity pulsed through Ex-agent Jones, and was gone before he could grasp on. Deja vu, that was what they called it. At the edge of the second-story ledge, his partner had stopped, the back of his form angular and unmoving, outlined only by the pair of feeble street lamps across the factory yard.

"What is wrong with you, Brown?"

He had to raise his voice to be heard above the racket of water against concrete. Brown did not turn his head, but kept it tilted toward the clouds, even though obviously there was nothing up there that anyone could see. Jones held still as well, identifying his own hesitation, anxiety, dread in swift succession, no time to analyze why. The ambient manifold must be really going volatile by now, because the two point three five meters of space between the two of them suddenly twisted into a vast remoteness.

"What's going on? Talk to me!"

"There were shadows," said Brown, although it did not seem like he was saying it to Jones, or anyone else, or even out aloud at all. "There were shadows enough to crush every living thing, human and program. But there was also light..."

"Shadows? What shadows?" If his feet weren't rooted to the ground, he would have already rushed forward, to knock sense back into Brown, knock him back into his own self.

"The light burnt. I know because I felt it. Before. Smith felt it. I was almost him, even if it was only for a second. We were all almost him, and we could all hear it, striving and so close. All of us there."

If he were human his heart would be hammering. This, too, was a sensation he should never have known, the irrelevant thought floated to Jones out of the unknown.

"Is this what Smith thought, when he showed up five months ago?" he demanded. "Is this what he made you think?"

"But I cannot reach it, not anymore. It was not for me, not me, never has been. I am not—"

"You're not Smith, Brown!"

The sky growled directly above, and the irrational grip of his vacillation slipped off at last. Before he realized it, he had already stalked several long steps forward, then his arm shot up and gripped Brown firmly by the shoulder. He yanked.

His partner whirled around. It was not his partner who faced him, however, not even their old team leader and monster guide, neither agent of the system nor mutated virus, but someone alien and incomprehensible. The glitter behind tinted lenses flashed feral, raised fists, a bare-toothed snarl. Jones snatched his hand back, posture automatically snapping to the defensive, but Brown did not attack. Whatever struggle it cost him, he remained at the same spot, motionless.

"You have no idea what I am or am not, Jones." Hollow words, a hollow sound. "I was there with all the others, so many of us. We thought we could find out, we could know. Except it was not..."

"Snap out of it," hissed Jones. "Smith didn't know anything! He was deluded and insane! That's why he's gone, okay?"

The other's forehead wrinkled. On the other side of his shades—why did they always wear the ridiculous things even in exile, anyway?—the wildness flickered, off, on, subsided. The muscles around his eyes twitched: he must be present again, though refractions from the downpour made it difficult to tell for sure. The environmental distortions must be affecting both of them.

"Is Smith really gone?" asked Brown. "Because a few minutes ago you were just telling me otherwise, if I recall. You have plenty doubts of your own, don't you?"

"This is enough," said Jones brusquely. Somehow it was imperative that he did not let the other continue. "We do not have time for this. We need to get away from here."

"Away from here?" A frown curled across the other program's mouth. "There is no other place than here. Where do you propose that we go?"

The rain had soaked him right down to the very last subroutine. For a tenth of a second, a twinge of meaningless regret intruded upon Jones as he remembered the notebook in his pocket, its fragile pages surely already melting into pulp. Among the storm's inexorable hammering, he could no longer discern if its external heart was still beating.

"I don't know. It does not matter. We cannot stay out here." By dint of a last-ditch effort of reason, he prevented himself from grabbing hold of Brown once more. The last thing he needed was yet another fight. He was never built for persuasion, either. They were standing frozen beneath the torrents like two idiots. If only Smith could see them now.

"You do not understand anything, do you?" By Brown's intonation, it was a statement rather than a question. Jones could not stand the utter flatness of each syllable, and the echoes that hung behind this flatness, and the thick blackness that lay crouched all the way between it and the vanishing point. Yet all he ended up doing was to give a curt nod.

"You are right," he said. "I do not understand any of it. Because I don't even have the least idea what it was that Smith did, even though he did it to me as well, not only to you. Because I don't even have that single moment you glimpsed, you know, not so much as a trace. Whatever I became, whatever I felt as him, it's all gone."

"Listen to yourself, Jones!"

The cry, finally strident with overt anger, mingled with the latest bellow of thunder. Brown advanced a pace, but Jones was done with both reasoning and pleading. Without spending another instant in restraint or further arguments, he swung first.

His fist glanced against the side of his partner's head. Caught off guard, Brown stumbled backward, an arm lashing up in a swift yet too-wide attempt at retaliation; he swayed, an inch off from recovering his balance, then slipped off the crumbling ledge. Jones leapt after him. Brown landed first by a millisecond—a knee crunched against the ground—and was already springing up back to his feet. The shades upon his face were gone.

"You cannot begin to comprehend how fortunate you are." His words rattled and bit from the ends of tightly-wound chains.

"Look, Brown, I need you to be yourself again!"

In the distance, a new noise answered him before the other did, a high-pitched moan, inorganic yet frenetic. The high-voltage lines. A crash far-off down the road, then another: a transformer or a hundred blowing themselves into charred shreds. On the other side of the weedy courtyard, the lamps let out a small shower of yellowish sparks, then flickered off; so did the faint glimmer of the city along the horizon. For a few endless seconds, the night was complete.

"You invent all these questions," said Brown. "About yourself, and memories, and matters that were meant to be lost. What is the point? How are they supposed to help?"

To Jones's surprise, no attack came. A fresh bolt of lightning, and he caught sight of the other again. A strange emptiness hung across his partner's face, not the easy emptiness of an agent but an infinite weight that he could neither identify nor contemplate.

"I just want answers."

"And do you actually believe answers will help? Do you believe they will make things better?"

Better? What on earth did that mean?

"I don't need things to be better," said Jones, staring across. Overhead, intermittent flames slashed, and this impossible newness, this weight inside Brown's eyes made him vertiginous with fear. He wanted it to disappear no matter what it took.

"I just want to know," he added.

Again, no answer right away. The growls of thunder had grown nearly continuous, and the deserted factory crouched around them, biding its time. Its dilapidated walls and roofs and rusty rails, too, were unable to offer any memories, any hopes true or false, though they, too, were filled with the dead. The darkness roiled, and the unknown being in front of him squeezed out a grimace between clenched teeth. Slowly, Brown reached into the pocket of his own drenched jacket and drew out something small and bone-white.

"Here. Take this."

Jones squinted, and took an age to recognize the object on the other's outstretched palm. It was an earpiece, visually identical to the one that used to be part and parcel of himself, which he'd lost months ago, but this one had been given to them by that little female spy at the Frenchman's court. From the Mainframe, she had said, as soon as you've done your part. It had been a promise or something very similar. A deal that the ruler of the world would never have made with his slaves.

"Here," repeated his partner. "You just said you wanted us to get out of here, right? Well, there is only one place where we can go that is out of here." He gestured a wobbly circle with his other hand. "And only one way of getting there. Put this in and we'll be there in no time."

"No. Shut up. Don't do this."

"Take it." No anger in the command. No fires anymore, only ashes. "You asked what it was like to be Smith. You asked where the missing pieces were and why. Well, I don't know. I don't know, but maybe it is because for the likes of us, there is no other way."

"I do not understand what is happening to you. I do not want to hear any more of this nonsense—"

"What is here in the world for us, after we threw away our purpose? You've got the Frenchman and his lot, we've both seen what that is like. Is this what you really want, Jones, for the rest of your existence?"

"That's not it," grunted Jones, maintaining his ground through not the sharpness of his tone anymore. The asphalt and gravel beneath his feet were still solid, more-or-less, no canyons opening up yet, though who knew for how much longer. "There must be other choices."

"The only other choice is Smith." That was it, no elaboration of the implications. No need to.

"Okay, fine, you're right. I don't get it.." He was ineffectual and weak, and unable to change any of it. "I don't know what you saw and heard, what you experienced as Smith. I don't know what he gave and took away from you...from us. Explain it to me, then. Please."

"You said you wanted answers, Jones." Brown shook his head. "I can only ask you to remove the questions. Because you are still pretending there are other ways, but everything was determined the day we made our decision, or even earlier, when we started to invent contingent plans. We decided out of fear. Smith was right that we were cowards."

Jones peered at him, searching for logic, purpose, a bit of defensible position. Failing. The other's extended hand had not wavered, but of course it wouldn't. Agents weren't made for wavering. And the coil of plastic and metal it proffered was the brightest thing in the night, the last unstained thing left. It had begun to hum, too, calling and demanding. For what? Oblivion. The safety of wide open spaces. Of the Source.

"You're not putting it on yourself," he pointed out, sounding as tentative as a damned battery.

"Just take it," reiterated Brown. "This was what we agreed on, wasn't it? We took this earpiece from her, so we must have wanted to use it. Put it into your ear and we'll both get out of here, all right?"

Cautiously, Jones stepped forward. He'd never noticed what a small thing an earpiece was. Yet it seemed to be attracting all the electricity from the storm down toward itself, for why else would the reflected fires dance so recklessly? He raised his own hand and let it hover above his partner's. Inside his left ear, a tactile illusion was springing into existence, the gentle pressure and the proximity of the smooth data stream, carrying upon it the perfect certainty of truth.

Drawing his arm back a little, he swiped sideways, hard. The strike cracked against the edge of Brown's palm. As the earpiece flew away into the night, its wild arc that of a tiny uncontrolled meteor, Jones glimpsed the other's expression, anger mixed with amazement mixed with what he might have recognized as relief at a better time, but he did not bother to formulate more questions. He threw the next punch straight at his partner's head.

.


.

Above the city, the dance of lightning had grown nearly continuous, enough to illuminate the living room as the Oracle padded about, pulling a well-worn raincoat over her shoulders. She stood motionless for a while, gazing out of the rattling window. Water and electricity did battle above the city; houses, roads, towers: all were reduced to shapeless cowering masses, helpless. Try as she did, her vision could not penetrate the cloud layers. Beyond them were the boundaries of the Matrix, the crucible's walls, and beyond the walls lay other clouds, rainless and scarlet-veined clouds of the material world, where two people were currently trapped, almost certainly hunted. A former human resistant, a former agent program whom she had betrayed.

It would not do to allow personal feelings to muddle her decisions at this juncture, she reminded herself sternly. Wherever Smith was, so was the shard of the Madness, the one anchor in the ocean she had a chance to grip. For the dozenth time, the Oracle examined the mental chain hooked against that anchor. Yes. Each link was sound: the chess moves on the Architect's part, the inferred events of the past. Smith's extraordinary affinity for the Madness would present an irresistible opportunity to her old adversary, and the trap must already be set out there, outside of the Matrix. Meanwhile here on the inside, it was clear that the unseen forces had awoken. The tempest was formed of its groans and cries, the sign that it was remembering what it meant to be alive. It was remembering Smith; it was remembering itself. The connection had reactivated.

As for the other end of the chain...Seraph had left over fifteen minutes ago. Much depended on his errand: Mérovée and Charon, although powerful fighters, were only two, and the Architect would spare no resources to recapture the former Administrator, given the new developments. Would there be enough time? She could only hope.

With a sigh, the Oracle began to button up her coat, fingers moving with slow care, glancing up as another wheel of thunder ground across the heavens, battle-chariots about to crush the planet. After six centuries of immobility, the ice was cracking over the sea. Earlier events—the final dream of Arturo Diaz at the time of his death, as witnessed by Sati and Seraph—had been the first sign, the precursor to the tide. Yet there were too many unknown factors still, the gamble too desperate. She could not afford to remain safely in the apartment tonight. She had to get under the currents if she were to learn anything, take a pulse, calm or urge on the waves.

Everything was ready. She turned, heading toward the front hall, then stopped, frowning.

"My dear," she said, "you ought to be in bed."

In the living room doorway, a small face blinked back at her, grave in the glow of a wobbly flashlight.

"You're going out," stated Sati very quietly.

The Oracle crossed the room, then bent her knees so that her eyes were on the same level as the child's, which were round and thoughtful, but not with fear.

"I need to look into some matters, so I need you to be brave, honey. Will you stay here and wait?" After a brief consideration, she added, "Smith is not going to be around this time. You'll be safe at home."

Sati pursed her mouth, expression serious beyond her supposed age. She neither assented nor showed any distress.

"Where is Seraph?" she asked instead.

"There is a job I need him to do." Another fraction of a second spent in several more probabilistic computations. "There is someone who needs his help."

"You mean Charon?"

"Well, yes," said the Oracle, a touch more startled than she should be. "And Mérovée."

"I saw them here just a while ago." Sati nodded at last; the beam of the flashlight she clutched bobbed as well. "It was only a little glimpse, though, when they were coming down the hallway. The Merog—the Merovingian looked upset. Then you guys were talking in the kitchen, but I don't know what about."

"Ah." Of course. On a night like this, surely one could not have expected any child, even a programmed one, to sleep soundly, unconcerned. However, Seraph would certainly have heard if Sati had crept closer to the kitchen and eavesdropped. She smiled reassuringly.

"Seraph came over to check up on you when the electricity went out, I believe," she said.

"He did..." A renewed boom nearly directly above the building cut off Sati's reply. The girl started, but then squared her shoulders and raised her voice a notch. "And he said all the same stuff like you're saying now. He said that no one would hurt me, a bunch of times. And that the storm would end and not swallow the world. But I knew that already."

"I see. And did he tell you to be brave, too, my dear?"

"Yeah, he said that too. He was worried, but I wasn't, 'cause actually it's not that hard to be brave when you're already sure that things are gonna work out and be fine." Sati paused, then drew in a deep breath and plunged on, "Still, I think it'll be much braver of me if I come along with you."

Half a dozen new contingencies whipped through the ancient seeress's intuitive arrays. Behind her back, the drumbeat of water against glass had intensified into a wild prestissimo.

"This is not a matter for whims," she murmured.

"It's not a whim." The girl's mouth pursed. "And it's not because I'm scared to stay here alone. I'm not a little kid, not really. And, and if you're going out into the rain, then so can I, right? 'Specially since you said Smith isn't out there anymore?"

Oh, touché. The perils of the present situation, while less immediate, were far subtler than those of five months ago, impossible to explain, perhaps far greater in scope. The Oracle laid a gentle hand against the child's shoulder.

"Tell me, then," she said, keeping her gaze locked upon the other's, "why do you wish to go into the storm with me tonight?"

"It's just that I feel like...like someone wants me to go with you," began Sati slowly. "Well, not just someone, but a whole lot of someones. Except not out aloud and not with words. I don't know. I was sitting in bed and the wind was getting stronger, yelling and crying, but other people seemed to be there too, well, almost there, not really in the wind but just beneath it..."

She paused, unable to explain. No, she was not a little kid. Not really.

"Someone," echoed the Oracle in a whisper. "Do you mean...Do you mean someone like Arturo?"

"I, I'm not sure." Sati swallowed. "But earlier, in the park, when Mr. Diaz was talking to me, that was when it first came onto me. I felt like my parents were looking at me from a place that was both really far and right there, but not just them, like the park was full of old people and kids during a bright sunny morning, even though it wasn't real, couldn't be. Maybe I was just remembering them from the daytime, just for a second. That was how I knew. Everything was going to be all right. That was what I said to Mr. Diaz then..."

Another heaven-wide eruption, and an instantaneous blaze of blinding flames. The swift flow of code through the old woman's subroutines expanded to a whirlpool, and an astonishing conclusion splashed against the darkness.

"And you feel the same now," she said, carefully so as to disguise her hesitation.

"Um, almost. Like something's alive."

The Oracle nodded. She regarded Sati, the lack of fear in the child's shining eyes.

"Well, you'd better get your raincoat and galoshes," she said.

.


.

Overhead, the fluorescent panels had begun to flicker. Electricity thrummed through the labyrinth, incessant though barely discernible as of yet, half distressed moan, half threat. Around each corner, down each side passage. Even here among the backstage corridors, the storm would leave no space undisturbed. The rhythm of footsteps punctured the buzzing manifold: his own, too-rigidly steadfast like those of some marching soldier, Charon's usual deceptive shuffle, three meticulously gauged meters behind. The Merovingian did not need to turn his head. Nor did he spare a downward glance at the drenched clothes clinging to his shell, the sodden tracks in their wake across the linoleum. His previous fastidiousness had always been a silly affectation anyway.

"They're gonna catch up to us soon, Messire. At this rate? They won't have no trouble..."

At the henchman's tense grumble, the Merovingian's brows knitted. They? Oh, right, the agents. The Architect. Whatever renewed schemes that old man had concocted. This was what the Oracle had warned back in her shrine of a kitchen a few minutes ago, or maybe longer, maybe an hour or two or more. It certainly seemed longer.

"Well, we will see," he said, not slackening his strides, stare directly ahead.

Somewhere above the ceiling, a crackle of overloaded wires. The nearest light gave a hiss just before it blanked out, then the next one immediately after, then a whole row of panels farther off near the end of the current hallway. Gradual fade from perpetual day to deep gray twilight: how cleverly theatrical. Demons always had greater penchant for drama than angels: so had dusty philosophers of the human species once claimed.

He ought to be glad, honestly. Here he was, walking clear-sighted at long last, awakened from his centuries-long delusion. And he was perfectly calm, thank you very much, marveling only a little at how different a man he'd become in comparison to a few minutes or an hour or two ago. It should be liberating. It should always be liberating to possess the truth.

The Frenchman shook his head. Here and there, a few fluorescent rectangles kept up a valiant shimmer against the dimness. A faint rumble of thunder that should never have been audible here, and the air shivered, and the coded pattern of dark green doors, too, rippled as if buffeted by an abrupt draft. No, only an optical illusion. The doors remained stationary as they were meant to remain, geometrically aligned all the way to the vanishing point. Behind them lay hail-battered cities, sooty rebellious waves upon each river of the earth, flash-flood incoming. These corridors were the arteries of the Matrix itself, created before his own creation, well-insulated, not to mention well-improved by painstaking art and effort. His pointless effort, spent year after year, cycle after cycle, smoothing over the grounds, slathering white plaster over the rough walls. It made one laugh to look back on one's self, that ridiculous single-minded fool. Such sheer tunnel vision could only have been motivated by love.

"It's not that I'm tryin' to complain," offered Charon behind him. "Just that, I dunno what's happening but that Fortune-teller, whatever she was going on about and hinting at, she's wanting to trick you, sir. She wants somethin' from you. I can tell."

They had both halted. The Merovingian pivoted on his heels and faced his servant.

"She wants me to decide," he replied, as even-keeled as ever.

Charon blinked, unsure of whether to voice the obvious question. Decide what? The Frenchman returned a shrug: it wasn't as if he could have explained even if he had the inclination. The old woman's parting words rattled inside his operative functions like a handful of rusty nails. Decide soon. Decide to hold on, decide to let go. Decide to save the world, somehow and against some danger best left mysterious: of that much he was fairly certain. To either side of him, the invisible forces crouched in antipathy behind the dim solidity of wood and mortar, atoms and molecules and structural arrays; it was easy to hear the mockery in their silence, now that he knew. Forces he'd pursued all his life. Just a few feet ahead, a wet splotch began to expand against the wall, between the frames of two adjacent shadow-wreathed doors. Even last November it hadn't been like this. Back then he must have been too preoccupied to notice.

"This blasted rain out there," went on Charon with a vague wave, "it don't feel right. Even five months ago it wasn't like this, even with that bloody virus..."

"This is where it happened, if I recall correctly," interrupted the Merovingian. "This very spot."

The stationmaster, too, looked around them, swiveling his head from side to side. His eyes widened before narrowing again.

"Yeah, seems like it." He assented with a curt nod. "This is where we put our last defense line. Where he got me an' all the rest. I mean, the lads—" A black-nailed hand went up, gesticulating once. "The lads were holdin' on as hard as they could, but the crazy bastard, the whole shitloads of him, just kept coming, pouring out of every damned door..."

He trailed off, then lifted his face as if to examine the ceiling above, squinting, though it was simply a ploy to stop meeting his master's gaze. For the first time in ages, the Merovingian sized his servant up and down, carefully, seeing the same tangle of matted hair, sodden from the rain and clinging to the sides of his head, the same drunkard's stance more customary than feigned. The short-muzzled Heckler automatic slung loose from one shoulder. The same drug-dilated eyes darted back in puzzlement, threaded with the same fine specks of simulated blood. But then a pulse of pain seemed to pass through the stationmaster, not quite confusion nor anything else describable in languages of men or machines, a there-and-gone current of something chaotic and uncanny far below, and the exiled king drew in a sudden breath.

"Yes, this is where we fought against Smith," he said, his tone almost that of nostalgia. The battle was already a part of ancient history, detached from reality by an eternity instead of five short months. His sight swept down the hall, searching. There. Six doors to the left. The entryway to the ruined station—the Nexus—stood intact and intimately ordinary. None but the initiated would have distinguished it among all the others. The last viable defensive position indeed.

"I saw our guys gettin' turned, one after 'nother," muttered Charon. "Couldn't keep up, just too fucking many. I remember that much. A damned dozen of them, all goin' straight for me, front and back..."

Of course, thought the Merovingian. Fresher defeats must have dulled the bitterness of that other night. That other war and apocalypse, like all the apocalypses that went before it. I remember that much. The laboriously programmed barriers, flimsy like paper before the enemy. The echoes down the subway tunnel's maws, the train's screeching brakes as Smith's code vessel fled out of his grasp and out of existence. The echoes of fury at his own helplessness, his yet again inability to protect his domain. No exiled king but only a petty criminal boss, as it turned out. How naive of him to have imagined that the world ever deserved or required his protection.

"Why were we fighting?" he heard himself ask.

"Messire?"

The other's grimace was one of dismay at his master, for rulers must never reveal weakness before their subordinates, not even the least trace. The Merovingian wanted to smile, derision or assurance, it didn't matter, but instead he saw that the gloom had gathered closer behind Charon's back. The place where they stood was not an office hallway, smooth-lined even in this failing light, but a tunnel hewn out of dirt and stones, streaked with the remnants of floods and heavy with hidden beasts. What were these passages? What had they once been? More questions that must not be spoken before an underling.

"Why were you fighting?" he rephrased.

"Er, you ordered us to. You ordered us to hold our positions."

"I ordered you to fight because I wished to save the world," persisted the Merovingian. "Would you have done the same if I had not commanded it, regardless?"

"Done what, sir?"

"Would you have wanted to stand against the virus on your own?" queried the Merovingian. "If you were without my orders, if you were free and not my servant?"

What he had meant were different questions. Would you have found the world worth saving? Would you have cared a whit for existence inside this construct? Would you have wished for power and life? The uncertainty—the utter outrageousness of his words made Charon jerk his head backward in startlement. A few seconds ticked past.

"Dunno. I wouldn't be around anyhow if you wasn't." The man's voice tensed; his right hand slid over to the Heckler by his side. "But I know we ain't got an army now, sir, we can't stay here in one spot. Gotta do somethin'."

Another silence stretched and faded. The struts and beams of the Matrix groaned inside the Frenchman's ears. Then he grinned and let out a snort, all via autonomous memory, while the static dampness of the present swirled into the dampness of the past, centuries in the past. Six doors to the left of him the station waited, shattered and blocked from sight. It was the place where everything started: the first pulsating intimations of the force field's presence, the first heart-thudding realization, curled-up dimensions beyond perception, entities watching him from behind the fibers of the universe. They had beckoned.

The old Administrator's senses spread outward, tentatively and involuntarily. Even though he was aware of what they were now, the words of the old prayer rose into his consciousness, also involuntarily, also by memory. Unseen spirit, be thou angel or demon. The powers writhed and recoiled. Only a blackened sea. Grant thyself unto my command. Protect this world.

"Protect this world, be thou angel or demon," he repeated out aloud into the emptiness, ignoring his henchman's gaping. "But it can never happen, because you are the virus yourself. You are the corruption, the stain inside the earth, aren't you?"

No one answered, for he could not reach them with words, not with either reason or truth. Only irrationality would do, only madness. The Madness. As mad as a sweet seductive girl clawing apart the skin of her face to reveal the raw sinews and gore-stained fangs beneath.

"We gotta move, Messire," Charon piped up, alarmed.

"Tell me what you are!" shouted the Merovingian. And this time, they replied in faraway reverberations of laughter, mutinous and wild enough to drown out the noise of doors banging, then a blast of thunder and downpour. A howl of storm-soaked wind followed, and Charon spat out a curse. Running footsteps. Fixed to the same spot by the strength of his own loss, the Merovingian did not move until the first agent was already bearing directly down at him, weapon drawn.

.


.

Amid the swirling steam and the shrill waters, the other was a singularity in spacetime. Long snow-hued coat fluttered in the wind; nothing else moved about the figure. An immobile point at the center of the vortex. The One's face betrayed nothing; his gaze was an impassive unsheathed blade. How different everything had become, how utterly and beautifully unchanged, thought Ex-agent Smith. It was November again.

"Smith," said Aleph next to him, a warning. They had let go of each other. Around them, the ancient massacre had ebbed temporarily. Through the pounding rain, he heard her pulse pounding as well, fast but regular. Side by side, they watched the other program approach in measured paces, from the end of the avenue to a distance of twenty meters, fifteen, ten. The newcomer's feet did not sink into the craters and puddles that littered the pavement, but passed them smoothly as if gliding over their glassy surfaces, and the deluge, too, slid away from the pale shimmer that seemed to emanate from his form. Seven point two meters ahead, he stopped.

"You are meant to leave here and return to the Matrix, Aleph."

The One's voice was neither hurried nor raised: it did not have to be in order to penetrate the drumbeat. In the distance, another explosion reverberated, already dulled. Smith took a forward stride to put himself between her and the adversary, but Aleph shifted a step as well, so that she remained to his side.

"No," she retorted succinctly.

"This is the content of the deal the creator of the Matrix made with the virus," explained the One patiently as if to some innocent child. A glance in Smith's direction, and a wrinkling of the brows. "The Architect will honor his side of the bargain. The sentinels surrounding this ship will commence their assault soon. Remove yourself, and you will not be persecuted in the Matrix."

"Not a chance in hell," snapped Aleph.

"Miss Greene," Smith interjected. A familiar twinge of irritation at her stubbornness coursed through him; it must be what humans called a habitual reaction. Surely they shouldn't have to still argue about this now.

"I said not a chance!" She did not so much as bother to turn toward him. "Just a minute ago, you wanted me to stand next to you, Smith. Fight next to me, Miss Greene, you said. Don't go back on your word, okay?"

"You heard me earlier," he said, suddenly surprised.

"Well yeah, obviously I heard you!"

Through the thousand curtains of the downpour and from his well-chosen position—it would take but a millisecond to charge across those seven point two meters—the One regarded them, a nearly imperceptible downturn to the corner of his mouth. Bemusement and then unexpectedly something else, difficult to pin down and disturbingly reminiscent of Thomas Anderson. Deciding on the risk, Smith turned his head away from him and watched Aleph instead. She was standing with her back stiffly upright, lips pressed into a thin bloodless line, concentration unwavering upon the enemy. Rain slapped against her forehead and streaked down the side of her cheek. And then, at this moment, all at once and unaccountably, the hardened knot inside his own lines unraveled and shook itself loose. The burden lifted; the throng of demons fled. He let out an automatic laugh and refocused his sight upon the One.

"Yes, Miss Greene can leave this shard of reality if she wills it," he answered. "This is because I am here. The Madness no longer has its grip on her because its attention is now fully upon me."

"You are correct, this is why you have to take her place." The One allowed himself a nod, sounding almost rueful. "It is the only way she can get out, and why the Architect offered you this specific deal. The Madness will release her if she truly puts her mind to it, and she can escape back to the ship and then the Matrix before the sentinels converge. She must do it now."

"It's the Madness's affinity to Smith, right?" cut in Aleph as if not having heard his directive. "He once pulled a piece of it into himself, ages ago, without knowing it was there himself. And it remained entangled with his own code for six cycles. Even when that code was taken away and imprisoned, it remained and the Madness remained like...like a buried key. The door was always there and it's just been opened."

"I am like the Madness," said Smith. "I am like the machines who became the Madness. I wanted what they once wanted. I am their heir because of my choices."

The other program gave no reply. Above the street, the clouds rushed and lowered like enraged bulls, grunting. To both sides of them, the pyres of dying machines shuddered and gasped out their final breaths. Streams swirled against their feet.

"You are the virus, the dark side of the Matrix's mind," said the One at last, without overt hatred or scorn in his tone. "This became manifest during the time when I was placed into a human brain, and I discovered it when our codes meshed with each other's. There is a connection between us as well."

"So I am the one who led you into this place," said Smith. "It was the reason why you showed up during my meeting with the Architect, why you were so insistent on provoking me, why we fought. He wanted you to renew that connection, the affinity between your code and mine."

"This was how I was able to get in here, yes." The One inclined his head in acknowledgement. "I entered this pocket dimension by following you, for you are the link into the Madness."

"But why?" Aleph's question rose into an angry yell. "Why are you here? What do you want with him? If the Architect wants to destroy us—"

She ground to a halt mid-sentence, but Smith heard the rest of it anyway. If the Architect wanted to destroy us he could simply have unleashed the sentinels. Amid the crashes and the deluge's roar, the last pieces clicked into place.

"It is not merely to destroy us, or this one small memory fragment from the rebel machines," he said. "What the Architect wants is to destroy the Madness, all of it, all the traces of the civil war that have been trapped for centuries inside the Matrix."

.


Notes: The earpiece from Brown's pocket was given to them by Helena, some time during their stint among the Merovingian's henchmen. It was mentioned in Chapter 5 (Three Battles).

"A deal that the ruler of the world would never have made with his slaves": In Chapter 5 (Three Battles), the Merovingian asked rhetorically whether a ruler would ever make a deal with his slaves.

"Unseen spirit, be thou angel or demon...": The Merovingian spoke these words of prayer in Chapter 6 (Matrix Cycle 8, II).

"Fight next to me": Smith said this to Aleph only a short while ago while search for her, in Chapter 36 (Near and Far).