It's here! The final part of the trilogy! For people who haven't read the
first two – if you want to, that's great, but I think that this one is much
better than those two. But of course, that's just my opinion, but please,
don't judge this fic by those two.
And for those who did read the first two – as I said, I think that this one's the best. Thanks to all those who've been here since the first chapter of the first story! We've come a long way, but this is the end story. And I hope it lives up to your expectations! So, enjoy!
And, despite all my efforts, I still don't own the Matrix or any of the characters, consarnit. But characters like Asha, Falcon and David I can claim to be my own creation. Yay!
Chapter 1 - Agents
A little girl looked up and down a street. It was reasonably crowded, especially to an eight-year-old. She was searching for her mum – it was a busy market day, and they'd got separated.
It all seemed so vivid to the little girl. The bright colours, the sounds, the smells from the fish stall. But something caught her eye, and walked over to examine it more closely. A man, wearing dark clothes, running along the road. He was bald, and had dark skin. He looked up and saw the girl standing there, staring at him. He had stared back from behind a pair of black sunglasses.
Suddenly she felt something growing from the depths of her mind. Fear gripped her as she felt it spread through her, getting larger and stronger. She had no idea what it was, but even her young mind could tell that whatever it was was bad, and she started crying out for her mum. She looked back to the man, who looked at her in horror, and turned to run down the street. She was about to call after him but suddenly she had the feeling of being dragged away somewhere dark; the thing was growing inside her, there was no room for her-
She opened her eyes again. The strange feeling was gone. But she had no idea where she was. She was all alone in a dark alleyway, with no recollection of how she'd got there. She did what most eight-year-olds would do in that situation. She began to cry.
* * * * *
Asha woke up. She didn't know why she'd suddenly remembered all of that now. She suddenly remembered it – her young mind had blocked it out of her memory, and now it had resurfaced. She'd been eight years old, when she saw that man running away from her. Then she'd ended up in that alley.
Why was she remembering this now? What could have prompted this memory to come to light? When she was young, the whole experience had been terrifying. She'd cried until her mother came to the police station to find her, and long after that had woken up in the night. Then the memory had just been erased. Now it had resurfaced.
She guessed now what had happened. That man was Morpheus – slightly younger, yes, but recognizably Morpheus. And she guessed that she'd been taken over by an agent, then abandoned again to get closer to Morpheus. She'd never really thought about how it felt for those people. She shivered. She'd been a vessel for an agent.
Knowing that she wouldn't get to sleep now, she walked out to the main deck. Morpheus was on duty, and searching for any clues as to how to get into the Matrix mainframe at the same time, as they'd been doing ever since Asha escaped from Agent Smith to bring the information. She remembered how she'd thought that she wouldn't get out of that one, yet she had. Someone was watching over her, and no mistake.
Morpheus looked up when he heard her coming. Asha smiled slightly, but she didn't as much as she used to. She'd been through too much in the past two months to be quite as light-hearted as she'd been before.
"Any luck?" she asked.
Morpheus shook his head. "The problem is, we don't even know where to start. Even if anyone has ever stumbled across the Matrix mainframe, they haven't come back to tell us about it."
Asha stared at the screen where the green code continued to fall, not changing in pattern any way, not showing that soon it would stop. They didn't even know how soon it would be. But they knew it was happening, and they knew they had to do something. The bad thing was that this was all they knew.
"I'll take over," said Asha, "I'm not going to get any more sleep tonight, and we have a busy day tomorrow."
Morpheus looked like he was going to argue, but a yawn blocked off any protests that he was fine. He nodded at Asha, and headed towards his room. Asha settled down in the chair, wishing there was something they could do. They couldn't be defeated already, they had to find something, anything that could help them...
A small flash on the screen made her sit up. The Matrix had changed something, and for once she wasn't the one in danger. She zoomed in on what was happening. She could see the crew of another ship trying to escape from agents. She quickly typed in a signal to see whose ship was at Broadcast depth.
It was the Aeneas. She'd only met the crew a couple of times in Zion, most recently about a week ago when they'd travelled there to warn them about the chance of the Matrix being shut down. Since then, all the ships had been on duty, looking for any information as to how to get to the Matrix mainframe.
She glanced at where Morpheus had just gone to his room, and back at the screen. It would only take a second, and there wasn't any sign of Agent Smith...
She saw one of the crew fall under gunfire. That made up her mind. She couldn't load herself in, she'd have to go in her own way. She quickly scribbled a note in case anyone woke up and closed her eyes.
* * * * *
Phoenix, the captain of the Aeneas, looked back. He swore as he saw Gamma get hit with a bullet, stumble, and not get up again. He saw the rest of his crew freeze. "Keep going!" he ordered. Time to feel sad when they were out of this. Two agents, right behind them, were most captains' nightmare.
They kept running, running faster than it was possible for anyone still in the Matrix could run, but the agents kept up easily. Morpheus had been in this sort of mess before, several years ago, and they'd escaped with only one fatality – but that was by Morpheus sacrificing himself to give the others time to escape. He glanced back at the agents, who were gaining on them all the time. That was their only option, and he was the captain, he had to look after his crew.
"Etain," he said to the woman running at his side, "Take over. Get everyone to an exit."
"What?" said Etain, "What are you going to do?"
"Just get everyone out of here." He stopped running and started to run back towards the agents. Etain watched in horror as she realised what he was going to do. She was about to run after him, when she realised that this really was the only option.
"Come on!" she called to the rest of the crew, who were all also looking at Phoenix heading back in bewilderment. Phoenix himself was leaping into the air, aiming his feet at the agents for maximum impact. It didn't work quite as well as he'd hoped, considering they knocked him off course, and he went rolling along the road. He lifted his head slightly and saw that Etain and the others were safely around the corner. It wasn't far to an exit, they'd make it. Now he had himself to worry about.
The agents seemed to be discussing him quickly.
"He is a captain. He will know the codes to the Zion mainframe."
"You're not getting them!" called Phoenix, but the agents acted as if he wasn't there.
"We no longer need those."
"But they would be an asset."
"It is too much effort."
"Then we should terminate him immediately." That agent raised a gun. Phoenix forced himself not to close his eyes, he would die bravely.
The shot never came. A girl came sweeping out of nowhere and kicked the gun out of the agent's hands. The other agent, obviously surprised, quickly pulled out his own, but before he could even get a proper grip on it it suddenly flew out of his hands into her own. Rapidly she fired at the both of them, but they both dodged the bullets. Undeterred, she threw the gun away and leapt forward, fighting them both almost effortlessly. For a moment in the battle she turned to look at Phoenix, who suddenly realized that he was still sitting on the pavement. "Run!" she shouted.
Phoenix got to his feet, but didn't run. He waited until the girl had one of the agents held; then he pulled out his own gun and fired. The agent vanished in a flash of light, leaving what seemed to be, to his surprise, the body of a teenage boy behind. The girl was still holding onto the body, and dropped it rapidly, a look of shock and horror on her face. She stood staring at it with the same unchanging expression.
"Look out!" shouted Phoenix. An agent was still behind her. The dismay on the girl's face vanished in an instant, and she spun round, a gun seemingly appearing from nowhere in her hand; she fired once, and in another flash of light, the agent had gone, this time leaving behind an old woman. Again, the girl stared at the body. Phoenix got to his feet and walked over to her.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," said the girl, now turning to look at the teenage boy, an expression that looked almost like regret on her face.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"You never think about it, do you?" she said, looking at the teenage boy's face, "You never think about the people the agents are in. This boy... he looked just like someone I knew." To his surprise, the corners of her eyes were glistening slightly.
"Are you Asha?" asked Phoenix, suddenly recognizing her.
"Yes," she said, turning to face him and brushing her eyes as she did so, "And you're Phoenix, the captain of the Aeneas."
"What are you doing here?"
"I saw you in trouble on the monitors, and came to help."
"Did anyone else come?"
"No, they don't know I've come. In fact, I should be getting back-" She glanced back at the boy and the woman's body. "What do they do with these?"
"The agents come and remove them," he said, "They remove all evidence of them from the system, as if they never existed."
Asha shivered slightly. She shook her head as if to clear it. "Can you get to an exit OK?"
"What? Yes, it's not far. What about you?"
"I go my own way," she said with a smile, "You owe me one, right?"
"Deal," said Phoenix, still feeling slightly confused. Asha shot him a brief grin and vanished. Phoenix shook his head and headed towards the phone box.
* * * * *
Asha reappeared on the Nebuchadnezzar. She immediately checked to see whether anyone had woken up. She was quite surprised to find Falcon sitting on the floor next to the control chair.
"No 'Dodge this'?" said Falcon, an eyebrow raised. Asha smiled.
"Do you have any idea how cheesy that would be?" As she spoke she suddenly felt tired and leant back in the chair, closing her eyes for a second.
"Are you OK?" she heard Falcon say.
"Fine," said Asha, opening her eyes again and putting her tiredness down to the excitement of the fight, "What are you doing awake?"
Falcon shrugged. "Heard you getting up, and thought I'd come and say hi. By the time I'd been bothered to get up, you'd just gone... just been watching you on the monitors." Through Asha's teaching, Falcon had finally been able to see through the code to a certain extent, and could get the gist of what was happening in the monitors.
"Well, nice to have company." Asha obligingly moved over on the chair so that there was room for Falcon to fit on there as well. It was a reasonably large chair, and there was room for a fully-grown adult to sit on there comfortably, and just enough room for two teenagers who'd only been eating a synthetic protein combined with artificial stuff for a month.
"So do you think we're going to succeed?" said Falcon.
"I don't know," said Asha, "I mean, as Morpheus said, if anyone has ever got into the Matrix mainframe, then we haven't heard about it..."
"Can't David tell you anything else?"
Asha shook her head. "He doesn't know how we can get there either. And if he did, Agent Smith will be keeping a close eye on him now, after he helped save me that last time... and the time before..."
"Sounds like he likes you," said Falcon, smiling slightly. Asha turned to look at him.
"He doesn't," she said, "I mean, he's joined the machines. He's on their side, he's evil. No, he's just talking to us because we can do something he wants. That's all."
"I guess," said Falcon, "So do we have any leads on this?"
"None," sighed Asha, "And we don't even know when it's beginning. All Agent Smith said was that it was starting soon, and David said that the plans had been brought forward... that's why it's so terrible, I mean, it could start tomorrow and there's nothing we could do about it..."
"I'm sure it won't," said Falcon, "I mean, what kind of movie would that make?"
***
So, we're back in action. Reviews are greatly appreciated, especially constructive criticism. But nothing along the lines of a flame I got for the first story, 'in all honesty, this is bullshit. pure and simple. IT IS RUBBISH. ya happy? you can delete it now.' I'm ready to accept that this story is bad, if that's what you think, but be slightly nicer than that, and tell me if there's anything I can do to improve it.
See you all soon! Till then, keep smiling!
And for those who did read the first two – as I said, I think that this one's the best. Thanks to all those who've been here since the first chapter of the first story! We've come a long way, but this is the end story. And I hope it lives up to your expectations! So, enjoy!
And, despite all my efforts, I still don't own the Matrix or any of the characters, consarnit. But characters like Asha, Falcon and David I can claim to be my own creation. Yay!
Chapter 1 - Agents
A little girl looked up and down a street. It was reasonably crowded, especially to an eight-year-old. She was searching for her mum – it was a busy market day, and they'd got separated.
It all seemed so vivid to the little girl. The bright colours, the sounds, the smells from the fish stall. But something caught her eye, and walked over to examine it more closely. A man, wearing dark clothes, running along the road. He was bald, and had dark skin. He looked up and saw the girl standing there, staring at him. He had stared back from behind a pair of black sunglasses.
Suddenly she felt something growing from the depths of her mind. Fear gripped her as she felt it spread through her, getting larger and stronger. She had no idea what it was, but even her young mind could tell that whatever it was was bad, and she started crying out for her mum. She looked back to the man, who looked at her in horror, and turned to run down the street. She was about to call after him but suddenly she had the feeling of being dragged away somewhere dark; the thing was growing inside her, there was no room for her-
She opened her eyes again. The strange feeling was gone. But she had no idea where she was. She was all alone in a dark alleyway, with no recollection of how she'd got there. She did what most eight-year-olds would do in that situation. She began to cry.
* * * * *
Asha woke up. She didn't know why she'd suddenly remembered all of that now. She suddenly remembered it – her young mind had blocked it out of her memory, and now it had resurfaced. She'd been eight years old, when she saw that man running away from her. Then she'd ended up in that alley.
Why was she remembering this now? What could have prompted this memory to come to light? When she was young, the whole experience had been terrifying. She'd cried until her mother came to the police station to find her, and long after that had woken up in the night. Then the memory had just been erased. Now it had resurfaced.
She guessed now what had happened. That man was Morpheus – slightly younger, yes, but recognizably Morpheus. And she guessed that she'd been taken over by an agent, then abandoned again to get closer to Morpheus. She'd never really thought about how it felt for those people. She shivered. She'd been a vessel for an agent.
Knowing that she wouldn't get to sleep now, she walked out to the main deck. Morpheus was on duty, and searching for any clues as to how to get into the Matrix mainframe at the same time, as they'd been doing ever since Asha escaped from Agent Smith to bring the information. She remembered how she'd thought that she wouldn't get out of that one, yet she had. Someone was watching over her, and no mistake.
Morpheus looked up when he heard her coming. Asha smiled slightly, but she didn't as much as she used to. She'd been through too much in the past two months to be quite as light-hearted as she'd been before.
"Any luck?" she asked.
Morpheus shook his head. "The problem is, we don't even know where to start. Even if anyone has ever stumbled across the Matrix mainframe, they haven't come back to tell us about it."
Asha stared at the screen where the green code continued to fall, not changing in pattern any way, not showing that soon it would stop. They didn't even know how soon it would be. But they knew it was happening, and they knew they had to do something. The bad thing was that this was all they knew.
"I'll take over," said Asha, "I'm not going to get any more sleep tonight, and we have a busy day tomorrow."
Morpheus looked like he was going to argue, but a yawn blocked off any protests that he was fine. He nodded at Asha, and headed towards his room. Asha settled down in the chair, wishing there was something they could do. They couldn't be defeated already, they had to find something, anything that could help them...
A small flash on the screen made her sit up. The Matrix had changed something, and for once she wasn't the one in danger. She zoomed in on what was happening. She could see the crew of another ship trying to escape from agents. She quickly typed in a signal to see whose ship was at Broadcast depth.
It was the Aeneas. She'd only met the crew a couple of times in Zion, most recently about a week ago when they'd travelled there to warn them about the chance of the Matrix being shut down. Since then, all the ships had been on duty, looking for any information as to how to get to the Matrix mainframe.
She glanced at where Morpheus had just gone to his room, and back at the screen. It would only take a second, and there wasn't any sign of Agent Smith...
She saw one of the crew fall under gunfire. That made up her mind. She couldn't load herself in, she'd have to go in her own way. She quickly scribbled a note in case anyone woke up and closed her eyes.
* * * * *
Phoenix, the captain of the Aeneas, looked back. He swore as he saw Gamma get hit with a bullet, stumble, and not get up again. He saw the rest of his crew freeze. "Keep going!" he ordered. Time to feel sad when they were out of this. Two agents, right behind them, were most captains' nightmare.
They kept running, running faster than it was possible for anyone still in the Matrix could run, but the agents kept up easily. Morpheus had been in this sort of mess before, several years ago, and they'd escaped with only one fatality – but that was by Morpheus sacrificing himself to give the others time to escape. He glanced back at the agents, who were gaining on them all the time. That was their only option, and he was the captain, he had to look after his crew.
"Etain," he said to the woman running at his side, "Take over. Get everyone to an exit."
"What?" said Etain, "What are you going to do?"
"Just get everyone out of here." He stopped running and started to run back towards the agents. Etain watched in horror as she realised what he was going to do. She was about to run after him, when she realised that this really was the only option.
"Come on!" she called to the rest of the crew, who were all also looking at Phoenix heading back in bewilderment. Phoenix himself was leaping into the air, aiming his feet at the agents for maximum impact. It didn't work quite as well as he'd hoped, considering they knocked him off course, and he went rolling along the road. He lifted his head slightly and saw that Etain and the others were safely around the corner. It wasn't far to an exit, they'd make it. Now he had himself to worry about.
The agents seemed to be discussing him quickly.
"He is a captain. He will know the codes to the Zion mainframe."
"You're not getting them!" called Phoenix, but the agents acted as if he wasn't there.
"We no longer need those."
"But they would be an asset."
"It is too much effort."
"Then we should terminate him immediately." That agent raised a gun. Phoenix forced himself not to close his eyes, he would die bravely.
The shot never came. A girl came sweeping out of nowhere and kicked the gun out of the agent's hands. The other agent, obviously surprised, quickly pulled out his own, but before he could even get a proper grip on it it suddenly flew out of his hands into her own. Rapidly she fired at the both of them, but they both dodged the bullets. Undeterred, she threw the gun away and leapt forward, fighting them both almost effortlessly. For a moment in the battle she turned to look at Phoenix, who suddenly realized that he was still sitting on the pavement. "Run!" she shouted.
Phoenix got to his feet, but didn't run. He waited until the girl had one of the agents held; then he pulled out his own gun and fired. The agent vanished in a flash of light, leaving what seemed to be, to his surprise, the body of a teenage boy behind. The girl was still holding onto the body, and dropped it rapidly, a look of shock and horror on her face. She stood staring at it with the same unchanging expression.
"Look out!" shouted Phoenix. An agent was still behind her. The dismay on the girl's face vanished in an instant, and she spun round, a gun seemingly appearing from nowhere in her hand; she fired once, and in another flash of light, the agent had gone, this time leaving behind an old woman. Again, the girl stared at the body. Phoenix got to his feet and walked over to her.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," said the girl, now turning to look at the teenage boy, an expression that looked almost like regret on her face.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"You never think about it, do you?" she said, looking at the teenage boy's face, "You never think about the people the agents are in. This boy... he looked just like someone I knew." To his surprise, the corners of her eyes were glistening slightly.
"Are you Asha?" asked Phoenix, suddenly recognizing her.
"Yes," she said, turning to face him and brushing her eyes as she did so, "And you're Phoenix, the captain of the Aeneas."
"What are you doing here?"
"I saw you in trouble on the monitors, and came to help."
"Did anyone else come?"
"No, they don't know I've come. In fact, I should be getting back-" She glanced back at the boy and the woman's body. "What do they do with these?"
"The agents come and remove them," he said, "They remove all evidence of them from the system, as if they never existed."
Asha shivered slightly. She shook her head as if to clear it. "Can you get to an exit OK?"
"What? Yes, it's not far. What about you?"
"I go my own way," she said with a smile, "You owe me one, right?"
"Deal," said Phoenix, still feeling slightly confused. Asha shot him a brief grin and vanished. Phoenix shook his head and headed towards the phone box.
* * * * *
Asha reappeared on the Nebuchadnezzar. She immediately checked to see whether anyone had woken up. She was quite surprised to find Falcon sitting on the floor next to the control chair.
"No 'Dodge this'?" said Falcon, an eyebrow raised. Asha smiled.
"Do you have any idea how cheesy that would be?" As she spoke she suddenly felt tired and leant back in the chair, closing her eyes for a second.
"Are you OK?" she heard Falcon say.
"Fine," said Asha, opening her eyes again and putting her tiredness down to the excitement of the fight, "What are you doing awake?"
Falcon shrugged. "Heard you getting up, and thought I'd come and say hi. By the time I'd been bothered to get up, you'd just gone... just been watching you on the monitors." Through Asha's teaching, Falcon had finally been able to see through the code to a certain extent, and could get the gist of what was happening in the monitors.
"Well, nice to have company." Asha obligingly moved over on the chair so that there was room for Falcon to fit on there as well. It was a reasonably large chair, and there was room for a fully-grown adult to sit on there comfortably, and just enough room for two teenagers who'd only been eating a synthetic protein combined with artificial stuff for a month.
"So do you think we're going to succeed?" said Falcon.
"I don't know," said Asha, "I mean, as Morpheus said, if anyone has ever got into the Matrix mainframe, then we haven't heard about it..."
"Can't David tell you anything else?"
Asha shook her head. "He doesn't know how we can get there either. And if he did, Agent Smith will be keeping a close eye on him now, after he helped save me that last time... and the time before..."
"Sounds like he likes you," said Falcon, smiling slightly. Asha turned to look at him.
"He doesn't," she said, "I mean, he's joined the machines. He's on their side, he's evil. No, he's just talking to us because we can do something he wants. That's all."
"I guess," said Falcon, "So do we have any leads on this?"
"None," sighed Asha, "And we don't even know when it's beginning. All Agent Smith said was that it was starting soon, and David said that the plans had been brought forward... that's why it's so terrible, I mean, it could start tomorrow and there's nothing we could do about it..."
"I'm sure it won't," said Falcon, "I mean, what kind of movie would that make?"
***
So, we're back in action. Reviews are greatly appreciated, especially constructive criticism. But nothing along the lines of a flame I got for the first story, 'in all honesty, this is bullshit. pure and simple. IT IS RUBBISH. ya happy? you can delete it now.' I'm ready to accept that this story is bad, if that's what you think, but be slightly nicer than that, and tell me if there's anything I can do to improve it.
See you all soon! Till then, keep smiling!