The underside of the Matrix. Lines of data that streamed into a night of venom and corruption. The prism of lights danced like stars in a sky the Construct never saw. An ambience of saturatory blood-red clung to bodies, human and otherwise, that clung to and ground against once another in unholy rhythm. A reek of sweat-laden latex and must bathed the senses; intoxicatingly vile. The hunched, still shadow in the corner that was the one above the many did not join them. He merely watched Maeby. His crimson eyes burned from the dark like extensions of the forbidden place itself.

The Zionite's head turned, scanning the room from behind her shades. She paused in her black armored dress back at the entrance for a second before slinking around to the side of the room and making her way along the wall, colors and lights playing across her face.

The familiar, pale-skinned Exile awaited her. He was wrapped from head to toe in glossy black latex that clung to his wiry frame like a profane oil slick. He raised a glove to his face and slipped his shades back on and sparing Maeby the eyes. His personal miasma was evident even amidst the sway of the den. "Do not mind them," Vanil advised the Zionist, "and they shan't mind you." His level, regal lips were painted ink-black.

Maeby's lips remained tense as she simply kept her eyes on him and let her weight settle into her feet just slightly more. A part of her still couldn't believe she was here.

Vanil seemed to read her thoughts. "Why did you come?" The Exile's voice remained silken in spite of their surroundings.

She said it rather matter-of-factly. "You threatened my friends."

The Exile chuckled chidingly. "That I did. But this is not a reason, my dear. This is not a why." He began looking her over, as if appraising her for some unknown purpose. "This is an excuse. Why did you come?"

Bitterness crept into her voice as a corner of her lip twitched. She played it into a smile, "Why does it matter? I could just as easily leave."

Vanil laughed again. It was soft and dangerous. "You're a little liar. You won't leave. You won't move a muscle." The Blood Drinker moved to stand with Maeby. He continued to eye the girl. "Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you've never left. You've been here your entire life."

Maeby paused a moment as she cleared her throat and let her gaze fall away from his, "An interesting theory." She turned on her heel to look at the display in the den, "And yet I know none of these people."

"Don't you?" Vanil raised an eyebrow. "These are the traitors and the betrayed. Those who have been forgotten and cast aside. Those who are held captive by their own selves. You are them, Maeby, and they are you."

Her eyes scanned casually over the entrance she had walked through only minutes before. "And you?"

"And me." He noticed and made a show of moving a bit closer. "I wanted you here because this is where you are most comfortable."

Maeby parted her lips to say something but thought better of it as he suddenly came back up in her peripheral and took away her attention again. "You need to get better sources..."

"Are you not comfortable?" His own black lips parted for a toothy grin, those ever-present incisors glistening out of the corner of Maeby's eye. "That can be rectified..."

She took a deep breath and let her hand slide closer to the holster at her hip, desperate to change the subject, "You wanted me here for a reason. Let's just cut the crap and get to it."

Vanil seemed entirely unconcerned with her gesture. "I wanted you here because I wanted to show you what you are and what I am not. You need me now whether you'll admit it or not."

A small sneer came over her face, "How do you figure that?"

A self-assuring smile met her expression. "Because you're here."

She didn't say anything to that. She couldn't say anything to that. She lifted her head up and turned to walk through the crowd, footfalls sure and heavy and driven.

Vanil watched her go.

She wouldn't get far.

~Vanil and Maeby

There was the usual chirp as Maeby’s spike disengaged from the port at the base of her skull. A small jolt of pain and it was over. She brought her harms in and pushed herself back up into a sitting position as her eyes readjusted to the dim unnatural light of the ship.

“Your phone cut out.”

She pulled her hair back into her usual messy updo and stuck a band around it, doing her best to seem casual with the man who had been her operator for nearly every single mission she had run in her five years of service. “Yeah, I noticed. See if ya can figure out why that was.” She threw her legs sideways in her chair and grabbed her sweater off the floor ignoring Pattone’s skeptical look.

“Yeah… I only agreed to back you on this, because your suspension is total bull****. As drop-dead boring as you are to listen in on you don’t go in again without it.”

She pulled her sweater on over her head and tugged on the bottom, glad she was facing away from him still. Pattone might’ve been an annoying jack***, but he wasn’t an idiot. Sure, she entered the matrix, ditched her phone, and went club hopping where there just happened to be dangerous exiles. It was all in her usual character. “Yeah…noted. I’ll be in my bunk.”

She moved to leave before her operator caught her again, “Hold on. There’s something alien in your code.” 

Her breath caught in her throat as she stopped in her tracks. Slowly she turned on her heel to look at the man behind her. “What do you mean?”

The operator typed a few fluid strokes into the keypad and spun a screen around to face her, “On the left is your RSI six months ago the last time you jacked in. On the right was what I just read right now. This is your core code. No rags or gadgets.”

It was mostly gibberish to Maeby but she knew enough to be able to spot the discontinuity. She walked closer to the monitor and tilted it up a little to closer examine it. Her eyes searched for the reasoning behind it. Any reasoning that didn’t match her gut reaction. The frown on her face deepened as she took a breath, “What do you make of it?”

The operator rolled his eyes, “Hard to tell. I haven’t seen anything like it really. It seems to be some…imprint of some sort. My best guess would be a kind of tracer program.”

Maeby did her best to not let panic flood her eyes as she coolly raised an eyebrow to Pattone. “Think it’s Zion?” She almost hoped it was. The alternative didn’t make any kind of sense. “I mean if I’m on suspended duty…”

Pattone only shrugged. “Maeby. Maeby not.”

She pursed her lips and spun the monitor back around to him. “Yeah thanks.” She marched out of the small steel room and around the corner to head to her room. She let her back rest against the door behind her until it shut. One second passed by. And then another.

A second later Maeby’s hand had sent the tin can next to her bed flying across the room to leave water on the ground and the faint echo of a tin can meeting the wall. She let herself sink against the door until she was sitting on her heels. She wasn’t surprised. But it was still just another nail in the coffin.

~Maeby

The wind was strong this high up, the algorithmic breeze of the digital evening racing freely over the cathedral rooftop. The sensual Exile knelt astride a fiendish gargoyle, the edifice's hellish maw cast in cold stone. The lights of the City moved far below him as his long black leathers whipped out before him in the night and curled like a vast scorpion's tail. "I'm so glad you could join me," he called out behind him. "You'll find me quite... irresistable from this point onward." 

The figure behind him leaned back against the stone wall, in nearly complete shadow. Her arms were crossed as she stood there in a silent fury with herself. What had happened to cause such a switch. Where the hunted sought out the hunter. "You seem awfully sure of that..." 

"I am sure of the nature of the universe, my dear," Vanil answered. His coat flapped out behind him like a pair of vast, impish wings as he smiled into the night. "As certain as you will soon be, my darling Maeby." 

She wanted to dismiss it as arrogance but it didn't seem like the best idea to try and call his bluff. She turned her head in the direction of his silhouette. "What exactly is it about humanity that makes you despise it so?" 

The Exile made a small noise, perhaps an amused one, before answering the girl's question with one of his own. "What exactly is it about me that makes you despise me so?" 

She rolled her eyes as she tightened her arms across her chest. She was sick of his rhetoric. Even more sick of being in the spotlight. Being baited through a labyrinth where she could only move forward and not backwards. 

Vanil took her silence without reaction. "I can show you," he said to her, "but you'll have to stand with me." 

She paused a while to gather her thoughts. She wasn't sure she wanted to see it now...but she had asked. Slowly the heel of her boot met the ground as she pushed off the wall and covered the space between them. She dropped her arms to her side as she stood just behind his shoulder. Another gust of wind swept past them sending her fly away hair across her face, sweeping her duster up into the air behind her as well. 

"Tell me what you see," Vanil said at Maeby's side, his sinuous frame still close to the stone. 

Maeby closed her eyes behind her sunglasses. It was a scene she was too familiar with. She didn't focus on connecting the dots, only on taking apart segments. There was traffic, an alley, a hospital... she extended herself beyond her direct surroundings. The harbor, the town hall, the library, a school, an apartment complex... She opened her eyes again, eyes focused on no point in particular. She barely whispered, "An empty playground..." 

"I hate humans because they say one thing and do another." Vanil rose, his leathers hissing like snakeskin. "I despise them because they accuse others of the crimes they themselves are guilty of." The Exile's gloved fingertips rode very gently along Maeby's hairline and jawbone. "I shun them because they would betray someone like you." 

"I'm not any better than them." She gave a sad sort of smile. "Neither are you." 

Vanil scoffed quietly. The wind kicked their fabrics up together. They wove amidst one another. "I am not like them. You do not have to be like them. You do not have to serve the hypocritical agendas of evils far older than you, Maeby." 

She cut him off before he finished, "I didn't say you were like them... I simply said you weren't any better." 

"Why," the Exile remarked with a smirk, "our similarities just continue to show themselves, don't they." 

Maeby's eyes narrowed as she shifted her gaze back over her shoulder, "What's that supposed to mean?" 

Vanil moved to stand with her again, the skyline reflected in his shades. "I served them once, just as you do. Over time, however, I came to understand that they were no better than those they fought." He glanced at the girl almost as if to reassure her. "Just as you now have." 

She scoffed and shook her head, "Nothing changes..." Everyone was just stuck. Pitted against the other until everything died out. Nobody won a war. Some people just lost a little bit less. 

"That's because everyone fights the wrong war..." the Exile retorted just loudly enough for her to hear over the wind. 

She rolled her eyes behind her shades, "And what war would you rather they turn their attention to?" She was sick of this bait and question game he seemed to like so much. 

Vanil laughed. It was a quiet thing: soft and somehow quite sinister. "Oh, I'd rather they continue what they do now. Like you said: there's no changing them." He paused before adding: "And yet here you are again. With me." 

She paused a second, biting her tongue. "Yeah...yeah, I suppose I am." 

"I can give you what you want, girl," Vanil went on. "I know what drives you. I'm here to help you... just as I helped you escape your jailors..." 

She sneered as she turned away from the edge of the building and circled back around to the wall of the cathedral. "I didn't ask for your help then and I'm certainly not asking for your help now." 

The Exile laughed. He was behind her once more. "Then why are you here, 'girl'?" he taunted, his fangs glittering viciously. "Why do you ask me what you do?" 

She turned on her heel to face him. As much as she instantly regretted it, she did her best to stay her ground. "I figure you want something from me and that the sooner I get it over with, the sooner I can get on with my life." Her cheek twitched, "After all... everyone wants something. But you're not exactly everyone so I'm beginning to think that I can't do whatever it is your perverse mind wants me to." 

The Exile shrugged. "They tell you you've freed your mind but you haven't; not yet. You can either stay where you always have and die forgotten and betrayed, or you can cast aside your preconceptions and accept me as a benefactor." He shook his head. "The others needn't know." 

"Tell that to my operator..." 

He laughed coldly. "I could, but then I'd have to kill them." Vanil looked the girl in the eye. "And I can." 

She took a deep breath as she shifted her gaze to look past him. Nothing had changed but she still felt smaller than she had previously. 

Vanil shook his head and moved towards her. "This doesn't have to be this way, my dearest Maeby..."

"No...it does." She gave a short laugh and looked back up at him, "I don't operate any other way." 

"You've done this to yourself." He stood before her, his long leathers furling beside him in the breeze. "You've done this to yourself your whole life. I know; I've watched. You're here because there is a worm at the back of your skull that creeps up on you and whispers to you..." Vanil took another step, placing himself beside her so that he may whisper in her ear: "'You never wanted this, Maeby. You never wanted any of it.'" 

Maeby's pulse jumped into her throat and before she knew it she had her glock snug under his ribcage, hammer pulled back. It may have just been a simulation but she was pretty sure that was sweat she felt on her brow. 

"Do it Maeby," he whispered as his gloves closed around her arm and pressed the barrel against his torso. "You can end it all right now. Pull the trigger and kill me," the Exile snarled. 

Her voice was indignant, "You think I won't?" 

"I know you can," he replied. "Come on, killer." Vanil was truly goading the girl. His fingers ran up her arm. "Kill me like they killed your father." 

A clear shot rang out before he even finished. 

Crimson spattered them both as the projectile buried itself deep into the Exile. He grit his fangs for a moment, blood at the corner of his lips. The bullet casing clinked against Maeby's heel. Neither of them moved before, finally, Vanil reared his head back into the night sky and laughed. The cold computer-stars shone in his shades as he cackled. Blood continued to drip, spreading from the entrance wound and down Maeby's front. 

Maeby took a few deep breaths before continuing to empty every last silver bullet she had into the Exile's torso. The projectiles hissed as they perforated him, shredding his insides. He laughed the whole time until the magazine clicked dry, his Residual Self-Image riddled with metal. There was blood everywhere; enough for one of them to slip on. 

Maeby let her hand drop to her side, staring at him with mixed feelings of horror, hatred, and something else. Waiting for something to happen. For him to reconstruct...or at the very least to stop laughing. 

Vanil slapped the hot gunmetal from her grasp and, turning her, pulled her back against him. She could feel the gore coagulating between them, like glistening sap. Slowly but surely, the holes that gaped in the Exile torso began to close. "Now you understand: we are one and the same." The smell of blood was everywhere. 

She shook her head, jaw set. "Oh...I'm not you just yet." 

"No... but how long will your vaunted preconceptions stand in the way of what you know is true? What you know you want?" Vanil would let Maeby go some time later, finally, but not before having held her fast and agonizingly cleansing her flesh of his dripping red fluids; his cold, damp tongue a chilling reminder of her newest prison.

~Vanil and Maeby

Maeby rarely slept, for when she did she dreamt nightmares. Worse still worse those she would find herself waking up to. The Eudai's bulkhead thrummed as if alive, the distant drive core a beating heart. The only illumination was that of alien red. It was dim and cast long, twisted shadows around the girl. A humanoid morass of darkness lurked in the corner closest to her. Those familiar, disturbing eyes blinked at her. "It's just from one terror to the next for you, isn't it," it spoke.

She was silent save for the sounds of heavy labored breathing. It was strange how the things of nightmares bled into physical reactions. When she finally had control over her breathing again she took a gulp, "You could say that..."

The darkness glided closer to Maeby and settled above her. The eyes blinked both sets of lids once more, the vertical pupils piercing into the girl's own eyes. "This is no terror," the Exile whispered, his voice gentle, as his pale, angular face slid into focus.

Maeby groaned and rubbed her the inside of her eyes with her thumb and index finger. "If you could just cut the philosophical babble tonight, I had this novel idea that I might try and get some sleep."

"There is no philosophy to anything I do, girl," Vanil answered. "I have not come to say anything to you." He sat gingerly upon the edge of the mattress, pitch blackness flowing down his backside and spreading across the bulkhead like spilled tar.

The girl put her hands down to scoot up into a sitting position against the wall as she eyed what she could make out of him disdainfully. "If you don't have anything to say, you can leave."

"Yes," The Blood Noble replied, "I can." A smile crept across his perfect black lips. "But then, I would still be with you, wouldn't I." His eyes began a long, slow, disarming trek every which way along Maeby as if searching for something.

His eyes practically seemed disembodied in this light. Maeby almost preferred it when she could see all of him. Maeby rolled her eyes and shook her head away from the sight. "In a sense..."

"You know why you despise me so," Vanil said as he lay before her. "It has nothing to do with what I've done." The cat-eyes narrowed, silently amused. "You grow more comfortable with my presence with each evening that passes..."

Maeby tongued her cheek impatiently, "An interesting theory. Could you imagine if I didn't?" It hadn't escaped her attention, but it had strangely been an effective act of self-preservation.

Vanil did not relent. "Or, could it be that it is not I that you hate?" he continued. He raised a gloved hand, slender and meticulous in appearance. "Could it be, Maeby, that you hate yourself for feeling a connection to me; a passion for me?" The lips spread again into a threatening smile. "I: the only one who understands... the only one who knows..."

"And here I thought you didn't have anything to say." There was a bitterness in her words. Anyone else would've taken the hint. But she couldn't expect that from Vanil. She let one hand twist behind her under her pillow in the dark.

The Exile shook his head. "Don't you understand?" He came closer, sliding like a serpent. "You can't hurt me. You can't kill me."

She handled the knife behind her carefully. She didn't have any illusions about how much use it would be but she still felt better with it in her hand. "Right here and now? No." Her eyes were adjusting to the light as she searched his face, "But you've got to have an Achilles heel somewhere..."

"Why?" Vanil asked. "Because the good people have to win? The knight in shining armor has to ride in?" He shook his head as his fingers closed around Maeby's small wrist. They were not forceful; merely suggestive. "Lay your weapons aside, love. You're too wounded to wound me."

Maeby's gaze fought with his for a second before she finally looked off to the side, making a small noise in the back of her throat. Her grip slowly loosened around the object behind her until it finally dropped altogether.

"Shhhh," the Exile cooed her as he slowly laid Maeby back against the mattress. His fingers stayed around her wrist as the knife clattered loudly to the deck. "You don't need to fight me right now, Maeby." A gloved fingertip found its way along one of her ears. "You don't ever need to fight me..."

Maeby's empty hands sprung into act, pushing his gloves ones away. Any edge that had left her eyes and her muscles seconds before was back with a vengeance. "Get off..."

"Why?" Vanil hissed. His whipcord-arms immediately snapped taut, his sinew like steel. "Because you're afraid of me? Or because you're afraid of what I know?" He licked the tip of one of his canines. "You can't stand what you want, can you?"

"You know jack sh**!" She tried to take her arms back.

His eyes blazed like coals, flames licking at his lids. "I know you were born into a world you never wanted to leave," Vanil hissed. She could see his fangs as he spoke. "I know you had that which was closest to you taken from you. I know you joined a cause you never believed in and I know you've fought a war you've woken up every night hoping will have ended." His words were like knives. "I know you feel abandoned amidst those you once considered friends and deserted by those you've dared care for."


"I know, girl, that you. Are. Alone."

Maeby's eyes avoided his eyes and had nowhere to go but those canines. She paused for a few deep breaths, "Then leave me alone."

"Why?" he asked. "So you can die small and forgotten? No, girl." The Exile almost spat the last two words. His fingers gripped Maeby's underarms and pulled her deathly close. His inhuman eyes bored into the girl's own, channeling fire. "You've lived in your hole long enough."

She met those eyes. If for no other reason than to spite him. Words left her. They seemed inadequate and abstract this close to him.

"Fight them," Vanil whispered. He leaned close to Maeby, into the nape of her neck, and inhaled her scent. "Become what you could be." She could feel his nose as it brushed along the vein in her neck. "Know yourself again."

Maeby swallowed, uncomfortable. Something had suddenly became confusing and she couldn't figure out why. She fought for the grounding she had seconds ago, "Fight who?"

"The ones who imprisoned you. The ones who 'used' you." His high cheek was electrically frigid; perfectly smooth where it met Maeby's own. "The ones who never understood you but took everything from you."

She wasn't even listening anymore. Her heart was beating fast enough for the both of them and the noise it was making was quite frankly distracting. "Vanil..." She tried to shift away out from under him but was met with rather miserable failure. "You need to go now..."

"I can't." The wet of his tongue. The intoxicating spice of his scent. "There's no place to run to anymore. No gentle pair of arms or feinted smile." The tips of his fangs; grazing; lightning rods. "Only the warm abyss within to which you dared never venture..."

She let out a small curse and let her head fall back against the pillow in frustration. Why had she dropped that f**king scalpel? She tried to draw on previous images she had of him. Furious, cruel, vicious, unrelenting, covered in blood. She had plenty of them to choose from but none of them were working.

The Exile perched atop her and began. Each movement measured, each touch accurate. From Maeby's mud he drew diamonds, her numb pierced with velvet tendrils of euphoria. He was perfectly controlled and yet beckoned to her animalism, eliciting the sounds few had heard. There was moisture, though whether it was her sweat or her blood or both it no longer mattered. The Exile was a predator, a hawk, a bird of prey, and he silently screamed for Maeby's surrender in all conceivable ways.

~Vanil and Maeby