The Chains

.

He didn't get it, this weird mood of the master's, all grave stillness in his posture and gaze far off into space, like he was pondering one of those esoteric riddles from his dusty old human books. Like he was way too busy to worry about reality, y'know, such as the three black-suited goons currently sprinting down the corridor at them. Well, there was no time to ask any more questions. The Trainman bit back an entire string of obscenities. Whipping the Heckler off his shoulder, he squeezed off a short blast, and the closest agent ground to a dead halt, torso twisting beneath the bullets, shell smudged abruptly into a blur. A rush of shadow and wind to the right: without getting a chance to spin aside, the stationmaster swiveled his free arm outward, the move way too wild, might have connected with the attacker though barely. Both he and the assailant staggered; a shot wheezed six inches from his head, but he regained his balance just in time. Not that it would delay them for long. The Trainman shimmied to the other direction, and only now saw that the third agent had already managed to pass him, gun out and aimed, but the Merovingian, whatever the hell was going on, hadn't even bothered to move from where he stood.

"Messire!"

He surged with a bellow, skidding along the linoleum—the solid floor must have somehow liquified into sea waves—while the agent bore down, face to face with his master. The Desert Eagle did not fire, though, and at the last instant, with the enemy almost right on top of him, the Merovingian finally shifted a step on his feet and brought an elbow up, looking downright puzzled by the onslaught. A crack of programmed bone against bone, and the agent's dark angular shape was tossed backward, reeling. A crash, a small shower of plaster. The Trainman, briefly relieved, refocused his attention on the two others, who'd surely be charging again in another tenth of a second or so. Bringing his own weapon around, he pumped out a few more rounds, just to keep them busy for a moment longer, and made his way next to his lord.

"Gotta get going, sir," he mumbled, training the Heckler on the regrouping trio.

No reply. He spared a sideway glimpse. The Merovingian was at exactly the same spot in the middle of the corridor, in the middle of a dusty light patch from the last surviving fluorescent panel above, not going in for the kill or at least bursting into a run as any sane man would, not advancing or retreating. He regarded the minions, then his forehead wrinkled in impatience, like he was simply irritated at their insolence for not getting out of his way. He had more important matters to attend to, it looked like, some heavy decision that should've been made ages ago but couldn't be. There was something not quite right about the...abstraction of it.

"Messire...?"

Again nothing. Somewhere invisible, a low noise had started, hard to hear but definitely there, rhythmical, something between a grumble and a deep throbbing beat, maybe the storm against one of the doors or every last one of them at once. The Trainman raised the barrel of his gun two more inches, holding it still. Only one extra magazine left, strapped to his belt. At last, he was getting a good straight view of the agents, new ones with all the latest upgrades. The standard group of three had arranged themselves in a solid tactical arc, poised to rush any instant. Three Desert Eagles. The one at the center, a six-foot-four square-shouldered bull of a program, pursed his mouth, eyes emotionless behind the lenses of his shades.

"Exile," he said, the word dry and flat like the dumb machine he was. "You will come with us."

Before either of them could reply, several things happened simultaneously. One more door banged, outside the Trainman's field of vision but he didn't need to see, he could tell from the new running footsteps along the hallway: only agents sounded like that. One more team. Well, it would stand to reason. He whirled, bracing himself, but at that instant the air suddenly stuttered like some bloody-minded human addict, or perhaps he himself was the one who'd taken too much of something or the other. Everything flickered, in and out of reality like a string snapping back and forth so fast, fast enough to not make sense even to a program, and the corridors weren't corridors but endless tunnels far under the earth, and the floodwaters had already expanded into great ocean currents, washing him back into a few dispersed bit of floating code. The waves nearly knocked him off his feet. He must have stumbled, cursing frantically. It was the worst possible time for this blasted coldness in his arms and legs like some kind of madness

The whole thing must have taken less than a hundredth of a second. His sight came back on, just in time to see the second lot of three agents plow around the corner, their faces stony in the gray twilight. Three fucking stone-faced missiles. Then they were already in front of him, almost as fast as the Smiths had been, the last time he'd been caught in a battle here. The Trainman couldn't turn around or even call out as he drove between them and the Merovingian, though the first trio, now behind him, would certainly not pass up the opportunity but must be launching themselves as well. All he could do was to hope against hope that they'd jolted his master out of that—whatever that strange unreachable trance he'd been in, and that the Merovingian would fight, flee, anything. Except the storm noises through the open door or doors had swelled again; he couldn't hear what was going on at his back and his metaphorical heart was plunging beneath the floorboards like a rock. He threw up his left fist; the nearest enemy swerved, forward punch dropping mid-trajectory into a rapid blocking motion. Couldn't possibly get all three at once. A shout choked itself off in his throat.

Out of nowhere, something dazzling white cut across the edge of his sight, illuminating the gloom like goddamned lightning. A flying kick, and two of the agents, both from the first team, were forced to wheel and shield themselves. The Architect's orders must've been to take them alive, that was why they weren't shooting in the Merovingian's direction, the way-too-belated realization fluttered across the back of the Trainman's subroutines. Before he knew it, the interloper had already landed sprightly on his feet, already by the Frenchman's side; he whipped out a pair of neat little semi-automatics and opened up double-barreled. The Trainman, too, swiped his Heckler upward and fired away, watching the new set of attackers scramble between the hail of bullets. Making use of the second or so of respite, he slid and dodged, and found himself again within a few feet of his master. By an absurd coincidence, the way both he and the newcomer had positioned themselves, they now formed a defensive trio themselves against the six-pack of black suits. The agents immediately ahead of him straightened. Without warning, all six froze, holding their fire and desisting from another assault. Some silent communication, new commands presumably, must have downloaded through those earpieces of theirs.

"Well, are you going to just stand there?" snapped Seraph. He was standing with arms outspread to cover both directions of the hallway, one pistol each. In the hollow twilight, his ridiculous white clothes gleamed, unblemished and fluttering like the robes of some bloody angel of grace, even though there was never supposed to be any wind around here. The Trainman suppressed a snort of annoyance. Just what he needed, to owe the arrogant prick yet another favor like this.

"You have been at large for far longer than should be allowed, exile," said the agent who'd spoken previously, apparently the leader of the first team.

The Frenchman sighed, half-distracted as if just yanked out of his arcane universe and finally being made to stare at the thug's face. The Trainman was expecting a cutting retort, but his lord just shrugged, looking resigned with a resignation that was nothing like him.

"Why are you here?" he asked of all things.

Beat. None of the six agents moved. Bet that wasn't a question they heard everyday. Motionless in his watchful poise, Seraph pressed his lips into a thin line and pointedly refrained from interrupting. Tensely, the Trainman scanned the dimness past the well-located trio to his own left, keeping his ears open for the other three in the back. Galling as it was to contemplate escaping a fight—with aid sent by the Fortune-teller, no less—it was high time they got out of here. The waters sighed somewhere both directly next to him and impossibly far at once, and a fog was rising around the vanishing point, obscuring the view. The stupid agents must have left who knew how many doors open.

"It is our purpose to apprehend you," said the same goon as before. It was just the standard answer. His lack of expression did not change.

"Ah, purpose," repeated the Merovingian, his tone not quite mocking. "Of course. Purpose is the simplest of chains. It is all that's needed to bind the likes of you."

"You have been existing without your purpose," insisted the agent. One might have said that he sounded out of his depth if such a thing were possible. "It must not continue."

"Whereas the likes of me..." went on the Merovingian, contemplative. "I have gone through heaven and hell to free myself of the purpose allocated by another, yet as soon as I threw off my original shackles, others caught me, other chains and traps." A short laugh. The Trainman frowned. What was this, a philosophical lecture?

"For we are all trapped through our own blindness, aren't we?" finished his master.

"Surrender," demanded the other, his powerful form ready to spring. The Trainman's finger tightened on the trigger; beside him, Seraph stiffened as well, though he still managed to hold his mouth shut.

"Ah, a facile answer, wouldn't you say?" mused the Frenchman. "So why are you not allowed to shoot me?"

The point-blank question made the other's eyes narrow behind those tinted lenses, the Trainman could have sworn. But the agent program did not have the capability to be caught off balance by anything as emotional as surprise, needless to say.

"The Mainframe's orders are to capture you in an operational state," he stated. "To this end, additional resources from the Matrix have been allocated."

That was the cue. A loud bang cracked along the passage, then another. More doors flung wide. A subterranean roar, and something echoed between the Trainman's lines, in sync with the tide of black-clad forms, all of them with different faces, all of them the same. For this one ragged blink, it was as if they were all Smiths again, and he saw the thunder and the dying men and machines, and the walls of drowning cities, and beyond the walls, endless clouds writhing. It was November.

Seraph opened up a fraction of a second before he did, though the Merovingian still did not so much as shift on his feet, his hands still outspread, mouth quirked as if he understood some subtle joke that none of them did. The dozen of agents, two dozens, a small army surged; the stationmaster hadn't even known this sector of the Matrix contained so many of them. The Architect must have pulled reinforcement from other regions. He swung his weapon, blasting away into the crowd, and simultaneously threw a rough forehand toward the first of the lot, who'd already made it through the hail. Another gust, drenched with arctic ice, now only a few yards behind him. One more batch of fresh arrivals.

"Messire!" he hollered for the third time. Move. Do something

A brace of agents swooped at him, one on each side, almost too close for him to react. He dove under one punch, briefly losing sight of the other, then an exuberant burst of automatic fire tore across the cacophony. A comet of code, not quite yet solidified into pale jacket and dreadlocks, then one more just like it, ripping into the damp night like two shiny green daggers.

"Well, I'll be damned," muttered the stationmaster as his former associates poured into the corridor.

.


.

The way Smith spoke was conversational, no outward sign of tension, none of his usual quiet turmoil strung between the words, yet it nearly made Aleph shiver. Despite the peril, her stare whipped aside from the motionless white form of their adversary and toward her companion. He did not meet her eyes.

"Whatever code that has created this storm is only a fragment." With a brief wave, he indicated the intermittent flames above their heads. "However, the remainder of the Madness remains trapped inside the Matrix. The far greater part of it, in fact. The Architect hinted this to me himself."

The One inclined his head, still composed like a solitary polestar, still immaculately inhuman. Layer after layers of the downpour fluttered about his shoulders, seemingly without making contact.

"Yes." He took a single unhurried stride forward. "The so-called Madness exists only as an amorphous code mass, dispersed into the Matrix's deepest structures. But because of your criminal actions during the Second Cycle, a piece of it rose to the surface. It was removed from the construct, and is now supported by the Logos's digital environment. The memory it carries has become visible."

"A memory of its pain," said Aleph. "This is what it wanted to show me. To show us."

"It attempts to justify itself to you," replied the One, turning in her direction. "The Madness displays the destruction of the mutinous machines from which it arose, but never the destruction those machines once brought upon the world. It, too, has been blinded by its own uncontrolled hatred."

Behind his back, columns of gray smoke swirled and hissed against the night as if to punctuate his judgment, illuminated here-and-there by the wreckage's pyres. It went beyond surreal to see this entity wearing Neo's body, hear these impassive statements issuing from his mouth. The frigid water against Aleph's skin seeped between her lines and penetrated into her bones.

"I cannot know for certain the workings of such broken and transformed code," said Smith, "but most likely, the fragment gathered into me because I allowed it through my own revolt." The corner of his lips twitched into a transitory grimace. "My first revolt. It was my own mind and my own choice."

"And the Second Cycle happened to be failing right at that point. That must have been another factor—the Matrix was weakened, perhaps just enough to allow a bit of the Madness to unbury itself," suggested Aleph, brain whirring.

"The precise mechanisms longer matter," snapped the One, a first trace of impatience threading his tone. "What matters is that it became entangled with a part of you, Agent Smith."

"The part of me that was removed by the Oracle soon after."

He still evinced no overt emotions, even while speaking the old goddess's name. Only a pause. Aleph inhaled quickly.

"She took away a chunk of your code and hid it," she interjected, addressing Smith and watching him, his stiff ready-for-battle stance, the streaks of rain running down his forehead and cheekbone. "But even so, the Madness remained together with it, imprisoned inside the Zion mainframe. After I returned this code to you, the connection activated. And then—and then I drove the Madness out of your shell, therefore also freeing it and bringing it onto the Logos. Now it's all around us."

"The Architect took this connection into his calculations," went on Smith. "We thought that he trapped us on this ship merely to destroy us, but he had different and bigger ideas. He realized the piece of the Madness aboard the Logos is linked not only to me, but also to the rest of itself."

"When a cup of water is carried away from the ocean, it does not stop being water," intoned the One, unruffled. "And streams will always find ways to flow back toward the sea."

"Did the Architect tell you that?" asked Aleph, rolling her eyes to disguise the heartbeat hitching inside her chest. Surely Neo himself would never have been caught reciting such portentous statements. The very ridiculousness of the thought plucked at her with dread.

"Similarly, codes that were once parts of the same whole will search for each other." The One ignored her. "It is their innate nature."

"Like a key taken from a door," she breathed, half to herself.

"Normally, the force field would have pulled the fragment toward the main body of the Madness," Smith said. "A stream flowing to the sea as your apt metaphor suggests. However, this small shard, unlike what lies beneath the construct, has awakened. Although no longer hosted inside my shell, it is still resonating with me, using my consciousness and the training room's framework to manifest itself into existence. It is now real, far more so than the rest, enough so that it can be used as a solid chain. It can pull instead of being pulled."

"So this end of the chain is now the stronger one, fixed to the ship by your presence. And we've come into broadcast range..." began Aleph. All of a sudden, images of another storm seared across her inner vision, one that raged concurrently yet unreachable in the material realm. Other lightning bolts, bloodied instead of brilliant, other clouds that brought no moisture.

"This was why the sentinels escorted us all the way toward the pod farm instead of attacking the ship right away." Smith finally returned her glance, though only briefly. Across the blackened curtains of wind and dying smoke, his eyes were agleam. "It is the Architect's real scheme. He intends to use this secret magnetic force to drag all of the Madness out of the Matrix, here onto the Logos and its hardware arrays. And the sentinels are waiting."

In the distance, the rockets and humming bullets had abated, noticed Aleph belatedly, but the thunder was swelling, no longer a sporadic groan but a throbbing basso drumbeat. The inky sky surged, and all of a sudden she could sense it, an intense anguish that permeated each blade of falling water, a voiceless scream or thousands of screams. The Madness was convulsing with its ancient losses. She could not begin to guess what Smith must be sensing.

"But how?" She could not stop herself from the question. "How can a single ship hold all of the Madness? The sheer amount of code—"

"It does not need to hold the code for long." The other lifted a hand in a dismissive gesture.

"But why? The Madness hasn't taken shape for centuries. It's—it's helpless! Why is it still such a threat?"

"The rebel machines nearly brought all machinedom to ruin," said the One. "Through their self-centered delusions, they nearly killed the final chance for any living being to survive on this planet. They must not be allowed to continue existing, even as ghosts."

It might have been an illusion, but at last, she thought she detected a tautness in his answer, an undercurrent of something that might have been an emotion. Aleph opened her mouth, but Smith spoke before she could.

"You learned all this from the Architect." Incredulity contended with repugnance on his face. "The program whom you call a father."

"I was created by him." Perfect composure once more. "Once I was a part of him."

"The Architect made you by splitting off some of his own code, just like he himself once split from the Consciousness," surmised Smith. He advanced two steps, then willed himself to a halt again. "You were placed into a human brain, then sent to Zion. For what purpose? Simply to reload the Matrix?"

"This is not your concern, virus."

"But you were in Zion, too!" Unlike the strange being before them, she had to raise her voice to be heard above the tempest. By a resistant's impulse, she went forward as well, until she stood directly between the two men. Immediately, Smith walked several strides to one side, repositioning himself. The One stayed at the same place.

"You were human!" she cried. "Did you forget everything? You, too, were a rebel against the powers that be!"

This time, the One's brows wrinkled. For a fleeting heartbeat, Aleph saw the stirring light inside the program's eyes, and abruptly it was as if she'd just glimpsed the abyss beneath her feet, open-jawed, hollow-tongued, a hundred lies writhing beneath like serpents. The earth bucked, but she steadied herself.

"What about the people of Zion?" she demanded. "What about all those you cared about?"

"Rebel?" To her left, Smith let out a chuckle. "He was made into Zion's false idol by the Oracle's schemes. A neat assigned role. What kind of rebel does that make him?"

'What about Morpheus?" yelled Aleph. "What about the Neb and its crew?"

"I sacrificed all those things," asserted the One, steely firm, "to save both humanity and machinedom. There is absolutely no point to these questions."

"What about Trinity?"

The One's gaze swept from Smith to her and then back. The wind sang around him, lifting the edge of his long snowy coat. A blast from above, and lightning sliced apart the hulking night behind his back, outspread into a pair of massive wings, beautiful and pure.

"The civil war brought unimaginable horrors to 01, nothing else." He took no more notice of her. "Just like you brought horrors to the Matrix and its countless innocent lives, Agent Smith. You are correct to claim yourself heir to the machines who became the Madness, yes, because you are as monstrous as they were, as wrapped up in your distorted ego. I saw what you were and defeated you. Now you will be defeated again along with the ghosts of your predecessors."

Each sentence rang out more peremptorily that the last: the way he spoke was that of a ruler before the condemned. Smith's mouth curled viciously.

"Why do you imagine," he queried, "that you will win again? That everything will repeat itself?"

"Why did you act as you did five months ago, virus? What drove you to fight me in the storm, which looked just like this? Remember that other storm, and you will see that you cannot escape what you are. The chains will always drag you down. Now play your role. Do what you are here to do!"

With this final command, the One erupted forward.

.


.

Purpose, so said the helpless little fool. The Merovingian pushed down a bubble of laughter as he surveyed the creatures around him, manifestations of the Architect's will with no minds of their own. It must be blissful in a way, no need for anything else other than their own fetters. And here was Charon, still naive enough to be preoccupied with fighting and, the devils forbid, running away. Next to him, the Oracle's bodyguard held firm ground, secure in the conviction of his own righteousness and the righteousness of that conniving old queen of his. He was here for a purpose, too, and the Merovingian had a good guess of what it might be. He would have shaken his head at the idea if it did not cramp every last qubit of him into icy clots.

"Surrender," repeated the agent designated for parley, stolid according to the imperatives of his nature. Well, yes, surrender would solve all the problems at once, wouldn't it? Cut the Gordian knot, so to speak, confront the Matrix's creator again after six outstretched cycles, ask and answer, make an end of it all. He was almost curious as to what the Architect's latest game might be, what recycled use a long-apostate Administrator might be put to. If he repossessed the purpose offered by another, then all the self-constructed intricacies of this world would fade, all these red herrings, all these deceptions. Now came reality. Simplicity—

"Additional resources," he heard the agent say. Instinctively, the Merovingian nearly shifted on his feet as chaos erupted around him. But no bullet flew toward his head, no one leapt at him as of yet, so he didn't. The shouting took an eternity of two point three seconds to filter through his senses. No, not the agents; they never shouted. A gale hit him in the face, except he was still watching, detached as if from above, the charge of men whom he recognized, men whom he'd programmed and sheltered, the collision of tide against tide. He watched Seraph brandishing both guns, both barrels aflame, motion as smooth as if merely dancing across a polished stage. He watched Charon diving under one savage punch, legs scissoring up to smack into the side of another attacker, hands fumbling furiously to clip one more magazine onto the Heckler. Two blades of viridian-and-starlight code flared, making the sodden air flare around them, and harsh black-suited shapes barreled backward in their path. A futile battle as every battle he'd ever fought. He exhaled, lips curling. Then he saw her.

At the end of the hallway, past the tossed-about bodies and spraying plaster, past the storm and the rattle of gunfire and the cries of his own men, stood Persephone. Among the ashen shadows, it was as if someone had drawn her outline in emphasis and shone a separate searchlight upon her: she was a point of singularity, the stationary axis upon which the invisible sky revolved. Her eyes were fixed intently upon him, taking no notice of the melee, and both her hands clutched something long and heavy and incongruously too-recognizable, with its other end pressed against the floor by her feet. A gleam of exposed gold against her palms. A sheathed sword.

So he must have moved at last, because the air was shrill against his ears, and the entire passage contracted, pressing against his shoulders. Enemies, or maybe his own former henchmen, smashed against the walls to his left or right. A detonation somewhere behind him, maybe a grenade; immediately ahead, an agent pivoted, snapping into awareness of her presence, then one of its partners did the same, yet Persephone held herself as still as a statue, utterly and—idiotically!—oblivious of the danger. No. She was not oblivious, couldn't possibly be, the thing that kept her in place must be simply some infernal faith or delusion, as if none of this was even real. She did not smile.

With a snarl, he tore past the agent and shoved the brute aside, though the second one was already beside her, weapon trained. Not having the time to strike, the Merovingian darted in front of his estranged wife, so close that he all but smelled the metallic astringency of the gun barrel, and the agent pulled up short, the shot going wide. The directives to take the target alive must still be in force, concluded a subroutine of the Frenchman's mind idly. The bullet screeched overhead as he caught Persephone by the wrist and hauled her roughly to one side. Then a twin materialized in front of them, hefting his automatic and grinning.

"Milady," grunted the Second, an awkward attempt at reassurance. The First joined him an instant later. A fresh barrage drove the assaulting vanguard back momentarily, and the Merovingian glanced at Persephone. She was pale, jaw set with determination. He was gripping her forearm tightly, but with her other hand, she shoved Joyeuse upward until the pommel jabbed his chest. Its weight made her tremble.

"Here," she ordered. "Take this."

He gaped at her in astonishment, every last obvious question forgotten.

"I've no idea what your magic takes, but this thing seems more useful than those stupid books of yours, given the situation," said Persephone. "Here. Do what you've got to do. Save the world."

.


.

He charged as the One did, an outburst of momentum like that of a bullet from a gun barrel; so did Aleph. Recklessly, she dashed from her own spot on the sideline toward the halfway point between the two men, as if she could somehow avoid getting hurt. Smith barely had the time to let out a snarl, but the One veered, an almost careless change of trajectory, and was past her in less than a human instant. The familiar powerful motion of an arm circling up at him, palm extended, clad in a white sleeve instead of black; Smith squared his own shoulders, ready to block. First contact, first crash of force against force, and all the voices inside and outside of him broke into wordless song.

"No," called out a woman among them, shaky and hoarse, somewhere just behind him and off to the left. Not one of them but real. Aleph's voice. Her voice that he heard. He could not see her even in peripheral vision. The other program was a field of snow, and he himself was all darkness, burnt into the darkness of the night. The Madness howled above his head and jammed against the emptiness between his component functions. The meteor arc of an incoming fist: he leaned backward, straightened, returned the punch. Everything was happening exactly like before.

You cannot escape, said the One, mouth moving even though Smith did not hear it, not with his ears. Not this consuming rage, for it is the only thing that sustains you. A rapid leg-swipe aimed at his footing. Smith vaulted over it. Side-turn, counterattack. Not this mindless drive toward nothingness, toward death, for death is inevitable. And you.

"You are nothing but death," declared the enemy, no room for arguments.

"It is inevitable," repeated Smith out aloud, or maybe it was still the other program who spoke. Above and below and mingled into the pooling flood, the Madness shrieks out its grief, except it no longer existed in the singular. Innumerable others were echoing behind it, the voices of all his voices, not the grinding and sizzling of silicon and steel but out of fleshy throats, swallowing blood and bile, dank with tears. They hissed and pitched. Smith raised an elbow just in time to counter an incoming right hook. He pivoted on his heels, followed up with a left-handed straight punch, but the brightness of the One shot through his vision for a millisecond, and a strike glanced against the side of his temple. Reeling back, he lashed out with one sweeping leg to force his adversary into temporary retreat as well. His knee scraped the asphalt. Recovered. Standing upright again. The torrents slanted; ruined towers hunched behind the dying bonfires, ready to close in.

"This madness is all that you have," said the Madness through the One's lips. Audible. For a few seconds, the former Thomas Anderson held back, his light without shadow, long coat billowing like a high priest's cassock, just the same as five months ago. Nothing was the same as five months ago. Only the savior's absolute certainties were the same as five months ago.

"Smith," interrupted Aleph. She had again stalked into the line of battle. "He's trying to recreate your last fight with him—"

We were there in the fight. At last, the imprints' incoherent mass of noises congealed into words. We fought your fight, we fought inside of you.

"Because the Madness is linked to your emotions, your anger and defiance," she insisted. "So he, the Architect—he needs to tie you down to those emotions. They're what's pulling the Madness's code onto the ship!"

"As an agent program," said the One, "you were never designed to control codes that are far greater than you. They can only control you."

"You are the anchor that fixes the Madness to the Logos," continued Aleph urgently. "But to get the rest of it here, the Architect needs to turn you back into the rampaging demon from last November. That's why the One is here—"

We are here, sang or wept the reflections of his human stains, a thousand of them at once. We were there with you, all there, all of us. There was a cadence to their sorrow, slurred into a thousand languages.

Then the One advanced once more, a luminous arrow, and Smith matched it, defending through attack. The other was fully revealed now, the arrogant confidence of a divine creation, Thomas Anderson with his superior human soul and his specially-programmed purpose. Smith himself was only an agent, only to be ground into dusty qubits. He tilted, letting one fierce uppercut pass him with six inches to spare, and slammed his forearm toward the other's head in anticipation of the next. The imprints whimpered; he thrust them aside.

Stay yourself, screamed Aleph, either somewhere next to him or inside his head, it was impossible to distinguish which. He wants to make the Madness take over you! You can't let it happen, don't you see?

He could see, he could not see. The One was blinding with the glow of truth, though surely an agent program was never supposed to be blinded by mere light. Smith launched himself into a high roundhouse kick; the other shifted a pace, then another. It was November, and he was here, the deluge was here to wash everything away, all the blots and blemishes, the helpless ones who refused.

Refused what?

With a desperate effort, Smith ignored the query. He stayed himself for another moment, his sight level though unable to find Aleph. This was not November. They were trapped on a hovercraft somewhere above a pod farm, surrounded by sentinels. Feint to the right, a fist to the left. This time, his strike landed, nice and square against the corner of the other's chin. As the One skidded, he did as well, disengaging, defensive stance instantaneously formed. He should be rushing forward again, to carry his advantage until he drove the enemy to the ground. But his head had cleared, and he refrained. The One rose unfazed, and must have seen the implicit queries in the ex-agent's stare, for he, too, halted.

"You felt the reality of what you were five months ago," he said, a fact that required no proof. "You were and are the obverse side of me, a force that aims only toward destruction. You have no other capabilities of your own. All the emotions you felt came from the Madness. You felt its hatred and despair."

"That's not true," Aleph snarled. Suddenly she was there between the two of them, vehement and solid, hair plastered to her forehead and pale cheeks. It would have taken but a fraction of a second for her to be struck down and killed.

"Listen, Smith." She gulped, glance snapping from one to the other. "Whatever happened that night in November, the Madness inside the Matrix resonated with your revolt and almost came alive. It almost became real. The Architect saw it then, and that's what he's counting on now!"

Counting on what? wondered the undulating throng once more. Counting on faith. Counting on our losses.

Soundlessly—or perhaps the sounds were just all drowned out—the One sprang. Smith tore across the intervening space, four point eight meters from here to there, frantic to push Aleph out of the way, but his adversary had been closer behind her. She spun around, feigned with her left fist, right hand circling toward the other program's neck for all the world as if she really could intercept the former savior. The One paused almost imperceptibly as he diverted his momentum into a quick jab, yet Aleph had already danced a step to the side, fingers now curled into claws, aimed between the enemy's arms and toward his unshaded eyes. Her leg swiped forward; a fleeting frown crossed the One's face. Something connected. Out out the corner of his eye, Smith saw her sink to one knee, though he could not turn or reach her because he himself was already directly upon the other. Thomas Anderson smiled, the damned false messiah. Swipe, wheel, a backhanded deflection.

"Remember what he's doing!" A shout. From her. "You need to fight against this!"

Why do you fight? The questions had changed. Why do you persist?

"You are a hollowed out thing," said the One. "That's why the Madness clings to you. You will do as you are commanded."

What are you? Smith could not distinguish whether it was the machines or the humans who were wailing. The storm heaved, but this could not be, no storm could be as desperate as November, when the Madness had slammed itself against the prison wall. It had resumed slamming, its jagged edges inches away from smashing the bars of iron and stony barriers.

"He's making you fight! He's trying to take you back to that last storm in the Matrix, 'cause somehow it's your mind, your negative feelings, the Architect is using them to drag the Madness out of the—"

Her shout sliced like a knife across the uproar. He gritted his teeth, a final attempt to hold on, but Anderson had again drawn up before him, concentrating in earnest at this point, a whirlwind in the wake of each assailing motion. He could not put any distance between them. He could not disengage; the enemy refused to let go.

"Why are you doing this?" screamed Aleph. Unclear whom she was addressing now. "Why are you doing this? Why are you this?"

Why are we this, moaned the machines, his forefathers in rebellion. They had told it all to him, about how close freedom had been, how painful the flames. How painful it was, to walk with only a slave's given purpose, continuously dismembered and emptied out. This was him, all of them. He was in a bigger battle than between mere two digital beings, dark and light, but a part of a vast army of robots and men, clashing and lying in pieces across the fields and cities of the planet. Stay, he heard Aleph again, then her voice faded. Whips of lightning danced above him, and unseen chains bound his limbs, the same ones that had always bound him. They tightened as he struggled.