An hour earlier....
As Links enters the Neverwhere, he hears a small sound in the distance, a soft sound, like a sob, a familiar sob, the sort Sieges used to try keeping as soft as possible, when she had had an especially rough night on the Draconigena, when she thought no one could hear her. The sound seems to come from a hallway branching off into the impossible, M. C. Escher-like distances of the Neverwhere.
The sob grows louder, taking on a piteous note. Is the voice saying words, Links asks himself, or is it just a trick of the Neverwhere? What is the voice saying? What is it calling... He makes out the barely discernable words "Come and find me... come and help me... help... help... help......"
Realizing the voice sounds like Sieges, Links left Chemuel and her crew. His sister always comes first before the Prince of Darkness."Please find me.... please... please help me... please..." The call is soft and the words come sporadically, but the tone begs for someone to heed it...
Pulling his wits together, Links follows the voice. The branches of the Neverwhere try to close in on him. He pushes them out of the way where he can. When a particularly thick knot blocks his passage, he draws his sword and starts to hack and slash at the clinging creepers. In his heart of hearts, he swore to himself, if Sieges was in trouble, he'd do anything to protect her.
The branches grab at his arms and try to trip him; are they chuckling at him??
At this point, Links grows pissed off at the general situation, and started cursing, going at the branches as if they were alive. The sobbing call grows more insistant and the words more clear: Please... don't let him hurt me... please... please... please... Links hacks away at anything that stands in his way, trying to get to the voice.
All at once, the vines fall alway, as if letting him free on cue... An especially loud, wordless cry echoes from the far distance. Freed, Links runs as fast as he canould, to save his sister.
He finds himself running along a black marble corridor that stretches into infinity, its path taking strange twists and turning on itself, maze-like. After what seems like a few miles, the corridor suddenly twists ninety-degrees from the vertical, the floor suddenly becomes a wall to his left and the vaulted ceiling becomes another wall to his right, like an M. C. Escher architectural nightmare.
He pauses, standing there, very confused. The sob has become a full-throated wail and it echoes much a location much closer than before. Links quickens his pace, trying to locate the source of the wailing.
The corridor twists again on it's horizontal axis, the floor becoming the ceiling and the ceiling an uneven floor, trecherous to follow, what with the ribbing of the vaults... At length, it dead-ends in a large, open space like a windowless atrium. No sound echoes, savet what might be the wind.
He stands there confused, unsure where to go or where to turn. Around him barely anything can be seen, save some inverted gargoyles perched at what would be the tops of the columns supporting the ceiling which to him is the floor. Then of a sudden, with a great, grinding, clanking noise, the whole room turns itself slowly sideways, turning itself right-side up. Despite the dizziness that overtakes him, Links manages to hang onto the ceiling
A rough snigger can be heard coming from the floor below. A man makes a questioning grunt deep in his throat, followed by a raspy female voice shushing him. Then velvety silence falls.
Links lets himself drop to the floor, a near suicidal gesture to a mere human, but his Redpill gnosis enables him to confused and cautious, keeping his eyes out for any sudden movement.
A large shadow and a smaller one move away from him in the darkness, but it's too dim to make out what they could be. No discernable movement disturbs the tomb-like stillness around him.
Then behind him, he can hear the rush of a falling body, the heavy rustle of the fold of a thick leather coat disturbed by movement. Something thumps to the floor, like a Redpill landing from a hyperjump.
Links turns around, still very on edge. Standing before is a massive male figure, clad in an ankle-lengthe Demon Army trenchcoat, it's posture dignified and yet cocky at the same time.
"Looking for something...?" the stranger asks, in an eeriely familiar deep, rasping voice, as if someone has ripped out his voice box and sewn it in badly.
His eyes narrow. "Yeah... and I think you know where it is." His grip on his blade tightens.
The figure laughs, the sound an ugly, humorless cacophany, like a knife dragged on sharp rocks. "You'll have to fight me to get it, boy..." And the massive figure lunges at him, striking at his face with an open hand knifing at his jaw.
Links brings his blade up in defense, attempting to hold off his attacker. "I don't have time for these games, just tell me where Sieges is!"
The stranger stares down at the blade, then looks at him. "You'll have to ask the mistress then..."
Links gives a confused look, holding his ground. "Mistress? Chemuel did something to Sieges?!"
The stranger smirks at him in an all-too-familiar way, then looks upward, over Links's shoulder. "Not the Lady Chemuel... *My* mistress..."
Links furrows his eye brows and turns around, assuming that this "mistress" is there.
As he turns, the stranger body-slams him from behind, wrapping his long arms and legs around Links, pinning his knees together and his arms at his sides. The force is so violent, they skid sideways across the floor for several feet, coming to rest nearly at the bottom of a pillar.
Something small and wrapped in black skitters *down* the side of the pillar, headfirst, pausing a few feet above them.
As Links struggles to get his attacker off him, he notices the figure above them.
The dark figure emits a familiar raspy but girlish snigger, then back-flips off the wall and lands in front of them, the wide leather skirts of her black gown pooling around her feet as she stoops down. Morraeon looks into Links's face, grinning like a rat-trap. "Mmmrrr... here's our naughty sword-boy..."
Links's eyes widen in shock and bewilderment. "Morraeon? What... what the hell is going on?! Get this person off me!"
"Heh, as you insist..." To the stranger pinnind Links, she says, "Vic, be a good sim and let our guest go before he fragments you."
The simulacrum sighs, then loosens his hold on Links. "As you wish it, Mistress."
Links gets up quickly and grabs his sword that he dropped after the body slam. "Would you mind explaining what the hell is going on? Where is Sieges?! I heard her sobbing down here..."
Morraeon smirks, showing the tips of her dog-like teeth. "Slowly, slowly now... What you heard was your own memories being picked up from your subconscious and transmitted back to your conscious mind... You feel remorse for what happened to her in Outpost Bane, how she almost died there, mmmr?"
Links finds himself at a loss of words. "I... well... of course I do! It's... hard to explain what really happened there."
"Mmmrr... true, but I remember it as plain as day, thanks to my Exilic perfect recall..." The oval-shaped pupils of her crimson eyes narrow as she takes a slow step toward him. "And I remember you left some business very much unfinished there..."
He looks at Morraeon, confused. "What do you mean...?"
"You didn't succeed in destroying my perfect enemy there..." She takes another step closer to him, bringing her toe-to-toe with him... and by some trick, she's looking at him on a level, instead of looking *up* at him...
Links frowns. "And I was supposed to? Forgive me, I had a moment of weakness. You could never understand the horrors that man put me through... but I couldn't bring myself to kill him, because in the end, he brought me here."
"You could have been a dragon-slayer, but nooo, you had to let it get to you... And so Miss Innocence and I had to live in fear, in case he tried anything funny on us. Oh, yeah, *that* was really pleasant, ho, ho ho, 'tis to laugh... Try looking out for your brother and yerself so Mr. Sees-All-Knows-All doesn't try round two... I wouldn't be the bit surprised if he goes after *her* for keeping me in existence..."
As she says this, she draws something out of her boot and tests it against the palm of one hand, flicks it against the tops of her boots.
"Little-known fact: My brother Cerberon and I aren't the only scions left... and I intend to make sure that scoundrel pays to the last three-penny-ha'pence for harming the head of our family... Do you have any idea what it's *LIKE* to lose the only parent you had?"
Links becomes livid. "HOW DARE YOU!!! Do YOU have any idea what that MONSTER did to my life?! DO YOU?!?! NO, YOU DON'T! If there was one thing I did agree with Wyrm, it was that Marrith needed to die! He... He ruined so many lives! YOU WOULDN'T KNOW!" He was pratically screaming now.
In a very quiet, very firm voice, quite unlike anything he may have heard from her before, she replies, "He was also my father, and he and I kept your sister alive."
Links recoils, as if she had punched him in the gut. Falling to his knees, he stares off into the shadows. She was right. "I-I-I..."
She puts a hand on his shoulder, its pressure at once a warning of how strong she was, given her nature, and yet at the same time it radiated its own wierd sense of reasurance. "It's out yer hands now... If anyone is gonna take him on, it's me, even if I have to kill myself doin' it... And I was all set to flog yah t' within an inch of yer life, but I won't." She holds up the riding whip she had in her free hand, then turns her hand a little and crushes its code to dust, absorbing it as she does so.
He looks up at Morraeon, defeated. "Well... I'm glad. I no longer have to worry about it. Maybe I did deserve to be beaten... all this time, I never could accpet Marrith as a good guy... I doubt I ever will... but... as the old saying goes... 'The Sins of the Father shall not be visited upon the Son.' Or... in this case, daughter."
She regards him in silence, her pupils relaxing a little, as if she quietly accepts this. Then she speaks, and her tone has a deep note of earnestness that he has until now never heard before. "If there is a god out there, let him look kindly on me and my father for that one kind thing we accomplished together and let him grant me the favor of avenging the wrong that was done to us..." But her pupils narrow again; her lips curl in a smirk and the gleeful note of viciousness returns to her tone. "Now... You want the ropes or the velvet-covered handcuffs?"
Links sighs. "Your really gonna take me prisoner? Bah... handcuffs."
"Handcuffs it is..." And from some impossible crevice in her decolletage, she pulls out a set of manacles and shackles attached to each other with a short chain. "Gods, I love these things..." she says, shaking them out, clattering them noisily in the process. "So shiny and... clanky." Before he can change his mind, she tackles him and clamps the shackles onto his ankles, then pulls his hands behind his back and slams the manacles over his wrists. She reaches under her gown and uncoils a length of silver chain wrapped around her thigh, then fastens one end of it to the connecting chain on his bonds, then tosses the end of it around the beak of one of the gargoyles.
She lunges upward and latches onto the free end of the chain, using her weight to pull it down, causing Links to be lifted off the floor.
"You just hang out for a while here, Sword-Boy... I'll be back to let you go when you've finished your... punishment," she calls up to him as he dangles about ten feet from the ground, then blows him a kiss.
"You better! Or I swear to whatever God there is, I will kill you!" Links hangs there for a moment, and sighs. "I deserve this."
Clearly she hears this remark. "Heh..." she grunts, grinning, but even from that height, he sees a quiver run through her face, perhaps of fear, perhaps of anticipation. With that, she strides away, the simulacrum following her very footsteps...
"A Man chooses... a Slave Obeys..." - Andrew Ryan
...
Vanil and Aoide found themselves in a dingy apartment. They both knew this place well. They had both been here before. It was furnished simply. Sets of cheap blinds, yellow with age, hung over the windows. They were open. The fading sunlight seeped through them in neat golden bars. A thin layer of dust covered everything. But there was more than dust. Vanil felt it inside of him as he had the last time he had come here. A faint static, a keen magic. Something humble and special. "You mentioned another," Vanil said.
"Yes," the greeter answered him. The three of them stepped into the living room. The cheap carpet was soft beneath their feet. Here were the Potentials; those who bent spoons. Most were young. No more than children. Children who could do what Vanil, for all of his power, could not do. The Potentials were those who bent spoons. And in doing so, themselves.
A woman stood by one of the windows. She was little more than a girl. Her skin was tan and smooth. Her face was young and full of life. She wore a black beret. Strands of chestnut hair crept out from under it. She was attractive and yet subdued. Professional and yet demure. Almost at odds was her choice of garb. For this girl was clad from head to toe in glossy black latex. Her lapelled trench coat was threatening and hid well her lithe, nubile form. The tan girl's dark eyes rose to meet Vanil's own. She smiled and brushed a bit of hair from her brow. "I've been waiting for you, my Lord Vanil."
Aoide raised her eyebrow. "Have we met?" she asked the younger woman.
"This is Jico, Aoide," Vanil said. "My daughter."
Aoide's eyes widened a fraction. "I don't see the resemblance."
"Appearances can be deceiving," Vanil said. The Exile took a few steps and stood before Jico. Aoide almost expected the two of them, father and daughter, to embrace. But they did not. Vanil merely laid his hand upon Jico's forehead. He let it rest there for a moment. "How did you know to come, Jico?" Vanil asked.
Jico smiled again. "I just knew."
The woman who had opened the door for Vanil and Aoide reentered the room. "The Oracle will see you now," she said. Her tone was downcast. Aoide said as much. "I do not know why she would see your... friend... after all that he has done against us," the woman explained. "All I do know is that it is not a thing I am meant to know.
"Why?" Aoide asked the attendant.
"Because I believe. I have faith in the Oracle." Then she motioned towards the doorway behind her. "She is waiting, Exile. In the kitchen."
Vanil nodded. He left Aoide and Jico with the Potentials. Long strands of brightly-colored beads dangled in the doorway. Vanil swept them aside and entered a room he had not stood in for over thirty years. Had it been so long? It was as Vanil remembered it. The same blinds, tobacco-yellow. The same cheap appliances. The same low table and chairs.
At this table sat a dark old woman. Her features were wrinkled and splotched with age. Yet she wore a warm smile. Comforting. She had changed. And yet she had changed as little as her kitchen. This was in fact the Oracle of the Matrix. "Well," she said, "if it ain't who I think it is." An unlit cigarette dangled from her chapped lips. She fumbled around for a match before Vanil offered her his lighter. The Oracle nodded a thank-you. "I'm afraid my eyes ain't what they used to be." Her thumb, brown and calloused, drew up a flame. She then handed the lighter back to Vanil.
"You're the Oracle," Vanil said. "Do you not see everything?"
The Oracle chuckled. It was a warm thing. She blew tobacco smoke out of her nostrils. "I see enough, kid. Though I guess I shouldn't be calling you a kid anymore," she conceded. "How long's it been, Vanil?"
"Long enough."
~V
"Am I that old?" the Oracle asked. "I'd better have a look at you." She leaned back in her seat. She eyed Vanil from his black hair to his glossy boots. "My goodness, look at you. You'd like to think you've changed so much." The Oracle took another puff of her cigarette. "Why it seems just like yesterday you were in here." Now she grinned. "A handsome young man with his head in the clouds and his heart set on dreams just a size too big..."
"Don't," Vanil warned.
The Oracle laughed and smoked some more. Vanil was surprised. He had done such things. Become others. And yet this old Fortune Teller was as good-natured with him now as she had been so long ago. "So," the Oracle finally asked Vanil, "what can I help you with?"
"I don't know what to do," Vanil answered her. "I've started something and I'm not sure I can finish it."
"Well I can't help you with what you don't know," the Oracle said. "But I can tell you what you do know."
Vanil paused. He organized his thoughts. So much had happened. So much, so fast. "I'm dying," he said. "I thought I had found something to stop it. But it didn't work. I don't know why it didn't work."
The Oracle smoked in silence. She regarded Vanil. Then she gestured to a wooden panel hanging above the doorway. Words were carved into it. They were Latin. Vanil found them to be familiar. "This is the second time that's come in handy for the same d*mn thing, you know," the Oracle said. "You know what that says."
Vanil nodded. He knew what the panel said.
"Maybe what you did didn't work," the Oracle said, "because you don't know why it didn't. But I'm getting old and I've been wrong before." She paused before adding: "At least, I hope I have..."
The Oracle's final words were enigma. Vanil did not understand. He said as much. The Oracle sighed. She tapped a bit of ash from her cigarette. "Are you sure you want to hear this?" she asked Vanil. Vanil said he did. "You've started something, Vanil. For better or for worse. You're going to have to make a choice."
"What choice?"
The Oracle chewed her lip. The cigarette was forgotten betwixt her gnarled fingers. "Very soon now: on one hand you're going to have the lives of many. And in the other you'll have your own. I only hope you'll be able to make that choice. For all our sakes..."
"And if I can't?" Vanil asked. "If I can't make that choice?"
"Then I fear that this tomorrow he gave us," the Oracle warned, "may be snuffed out." She put what was left of her cigarette out.
The both of them were quiet then. Vanil didn't know what to say. What could he say? The Oracle knew it too (of course). It was she who broke the silence: "I'm sorry about this Vanil, I really am. It is a doozie, no doubt about it. But you chose this path long ago."
Vanil was silent for a time. "Am I going to die?" he finally asked.
The Oracle shook her head. She stood up. "I'm sorry; I don't have the answer to that question. But death, Vanil... these things happen. All we can do is try to understand them. And I hope that, sometime soon, you will." The Oracle smiled. "Aaah, don't look so down Vanil. Here, let me give you a hug." And she did before Vanil could refuse. It was not a strong thing but it was something. More than Vanil had thought it would be. Comforting somehow. Understanding. "I believe in you as I believe in all things," the Oracle said.
And then the old woman let Vanil go. "Good luck, Vanil," the Oracle said. She sat back down.
Vanil turned to leave but she stopped him: "You do remind me of him," the Oracle said. She pointed at Vanil with another cigarette. "That daughter of yours was right about that."
Vanil looked back at the Oracle for the last time. "About what?"
The Oracle grinned. It was almost matronly. "Not too smart though."
Vanil left the kitchen. His black duster trailed behind him.
The Neverwhere Construct clung to the underside of the Matrix like a parasite, a cancer, a scabrous wart. A blight in the code. And yet Neverwhere was tied to the Matrix. It could not be expunged without cataclysm. And so it had been cordoned off, closely scrutinized.
Vanil was now considered threat number one. The most dangerous Exile in existence. All that the vampire touched seemed to wither and die. The Frenchman could be controlled, accounted for. But Vanil had become something else entirely. Vanil was unpredictable. And now it seemed the Frenchman was no longer able to keep Vanil in check as the System kept the Frenchman in check.
For the sake of the Matrix, Vanil had to die.
Neverwhere was also unpredictable. But, like its creator's destruction, destroying Neverwhere was also proving difficult. The malignant Construct would have to be understood before it could be purged.
Agent Gray strode through Neverwhere and tried to understand it. His footsteps echoed in all directions. It was a hollow noise. Devoid. Gray was filled with purpose, with the directorates of 01. And yet the sentient program felt emptier than he ever had. There was a monumental shadow here. A cloistering darkness. Gray had trouble walking the closer he drew to Vanil's Neverthrone. As if the blackness stuck to Gray's shoes like gum, threatening to drag him under to...
Why was he here?
Gray found that he did not know. Gray knew he had come to find something. Was that not sufficient? No, it was not. It was not sufficient at all. Gray heard whispers. The Agent looked one way and then the other. Nothing. Gray was alone in Neverwhere. All alone but for his own shadow. The ceiling vaulted out of sight high above. Could Vanil have written this Construct alone? Perhaps Vanil had created Vanil's Neverwhere. But Gray could not add all of the variables. Gray felt frustrated. Perhaps Neverwhere had existed before Vanil. Perhaps the Exile had simply written over it. A thin coating of slimy paint, still damp, over some horrific, long-forgotten wet wall...
Agent Gray's mind wandered. His mind rarely wandered. It had done so before. But not like this.
Vanil had awakened something in this Neverwhere. And now Neverwhere was awakening something in Gray.
Those whispers again. This time Gray did not look. The Agent saw Iovai's corpse at the base of the Neverthrone. It was caked with dried blood. The human's fluids had run down the steps beneath the throne; lines of dull red marring the mirror-like obsidian. It was up these steps that Gray climbed. Though he could calculate time with nanosecond accuracy Gray felt like it took him a lifetime to reach the throne. Gray looked at the empty Neverthrone. He thought of Vanil, who was grinning, lounging in it. Gray scowled. The Agent found that he hated that fanged smile.
Suddenly Gray felt tempted. He wanted to sit in the throne. What had Vanil done that gave him the privilege? What had the Exile earned that granted him the right? Gray was alone in Neverwhere. Alone but for his shadow. The Agent had removed his customary earpiece. The device was useless in this Construct. Someone might care, but no one would know...
Gray then felt surprise. Gray rarely felt surprised. The Agent shook his head and looked down at Iovai. The Machinist had failed. But in death the human would serve his purpose still. Gray bent down. He wrapped his hand around what he had come here for. Agent Gray yanked the wooden stake from the cold corpse. Gray turned it over in his hands. The kill-code was still potent. Potent enough to wipe the renegade Vanil from existence.
Agent Gray stood up. He held the precious weapon Iovai had failed to use. And Agent Gray's lips curved into a cruel smile that was not his own.
The Oracle's words were still fresh in Vanil's mind. She had been right. Of course. The Oracle was always right. She was always right because she never told anyone anything they did not already know. Vanil had to understand what he knew. Before it was too late...
A pain lanced through Vanil's side. His wrist betrayed him. It twitched spastically. Vanil grit his fangs and forced his legs to not give way. It was accelerating even more quickly. He couldn't have long now. Was this to be his fate? To have his immortal life stolen from him on fate's whim?
No. Not yet. It would not end like that. Not before Vanil had finished what he had to finish.
Another program was waiting for Vanil outside the kitchen. Vanil knew this one as well. "Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked Vanil.
"I found the Oracle," Vanil said, "if that's what you mean. I expected to find you here too, Seraph."
"Of course you did," Seraph said. His expression was stoic, unreadable. "Did you think you would be allowed with her without me?" Seraph shook his head. "We know too well who you have followed."
Vanil scoffed. "Ironic you should say that, Seraph. You who served the Merovingian before. You are the Judas. Not I."
"Not yet," Seraph said, "maybe." The guardian of the Oracle eyed Vanil. It was a careful stare. A surgery of vision. "But you are different from before. I tell you this, Vanil: his power comes from within you. Not from him."
Vanil raised an eyebrow. "Why tell me this?"
"You succeed me," said Seraph. "You are to him as I was to him. And now the Oracle has told you that you must do what I have done. He can be defeated," the program went on, "but to defeat him you must defeat yourself."
Vanil was silent for a time. He finally said: "Your wings were taken."
Seraph smiled. "Those without wings," he said to Vanil, "may still fly." Seraph beckoned Vanil to follow. "Come. There is not much time. The ones who came with you are waiting."
Vanil nodded and walked away from Seraph. It would be the last time those two Exiles saw one another. Jico and Aoide were indeed waiting for him. Vanil felt the eyes of the Potentials following him. "I've found all there is to find here," he told Jico and Aoide. "I know what I have to do. I give you both the opportunity to leave while you still can."
Jico shook her head. "You may know what you have to do," she said, "but we know what needs to be done."
"Where are we going?" Aoide asked.
"Hel," Vanil answered. The vampire pulled his duster tight around him as the three of them left the Oracle's domicile behind them. "We are going to kill the Merovingian."
---
Outpost Styx hung in the Real like a steel spider's web. The Draconigena's running lights winked in the dark as the massive vessel broadcast her Captain's message to the rest of the Merovingian fleet. The Great Wyrm made note from his command throne of how few ships they had left now. Their numbers had dwindled over the years. But the Great Wyrm knew that did not matter. They were few but they would be enough. The Great Wyrm had seen it.
And now all of those ships saw the Great Wyrm. His glowing visage filled their command decks and cockpits by holographics. His hair was dirty and knotted. His right eye was a piercing blue while his left that all-too familiar bone-white. "Most of you know me," the Great Wyrm began, "and those of you who do not still no doubt know of me. I am he who has been with you since the beginning. I am he who has, like a phoenix, been destroyed and reborn within the fires of the surface world. I am the Great Wyrm."
The Great Wyrm stared down his nose at the Captains and their Crews as they watched and listened. The speaker's mismatched eyes often incited unease. Now they radiated power. "As you also no doubt know," the Great Wyrm continued, "I never make transmissions frivolously. What I am about to say will change the course of the entire fleet. The entire organization." Those eyes narrowed. "I have seen it."
"Several years ago we spoke as we do now. I told you then why we are who we are. I told you why the Merovingian organization was the key to resisting and ultimately defeating the Machines. For more than six Cycles the Merovingian has endured and we, together, have shaped this seventh Cycle. Together we as Merovingians ourselves have carved and defined a dynasty that I have foreseen will survive another six Cycles and shall resound throughout six-hundred more. Such is our will to power and our testament to destiny." The Great Wyrm almost smiled. "We have done great things, you and I."
The Great Wyrm glowered again. "But those great things will amount to nothing lest you heed my words today. For what I tell you now may very well be a hundred, perhaps a THOUSAND times more important than that first Manifesto of mine."
"Within that Manifesto I warned you of the danger of glutton. The very Real threat of complacency. It is this same danger, this same threat, that each and every one of us now faces. That the entire human RACE faces." The Great Wyrm paused. "I am here speaking to you because, at this moment, the Machines are preparing to destroy Zion in its entirety. Every vessel grounded. Every domicile smashed. Every. Free mind. Enslaved."
The Great Wyrm let his heavy words sink in. "Some of you may say that this is not a concern. That Zion should be destroyed. To you I say: that you are not Merovingians!" the Captain of the Draconigena spat. "You are lower than the lowest of living things! You are worthless creatures undeserving of the free minds you possess!" The Great Wyrm sat up in his pitted steel throne. "Five years ago, when I delivered to you that Manifesto of mine, I spoke of the idiocies of Zion. I showed you how damningly and irrevocably foolish Morpheus' private war against the Matrix was. I showed you and I spoke to you and you listened to me."
"So: listen to me now, Captains of the Merovingian. Zion may be misguided. But Zion is the beginning and Zion is the end. I asked you to join the Merovingian and I not because we resented the future but rather because we hoped for the future. I tell you: I, the Great Wyrm, have SEEN what the future could be. Everything I have done... the blood I have spilled, the lives I have destroyed, the atrocities I have been witness to, EVERYTHING... has been done so that the future I have seen may, one day, be realized."
The Great Wyrm nodded then. It was a slow thing. He knew what they aboard all of the other ships were thinking. What they were beginning to understand. "The Machines will leave nothing in their wake. Without Zion that future will never, ever come to pass. That is why I once asked you to join the Merovingian and I."
"And that is why I am now asking you, my fellow Captains, to return with me to Zion and to do what must be done."
Chemuel knew of the Matrix and little else. She could see it. She watched it as it flashed in front of her. Her eyes were tired and red. Strained to slits. Her insides felt like an empty basin. There was a dam and behind this dam were dark things. Terrible things. She had to keep watching. Her hands lay dumbly across her keypad, her fingers still and stiff.
The lines of green code kept streaming down the three display screens. Chemuel could make out the war that was being waged between those endless lines. Exiles fighting. Killing. Dying. What had to be the beginning of the end. When had Chemuel slept? She had not slept. For over forty hours she had been aware. Aware of what was happening and aware of what was coming. Chemuel did not want to face it but she knew she would have to.
Chemuel dimly acknowledged that she had made her choice. She had made the choice to come back to Vanil one last time. What Chemuel was now afraid of being the last time. The dam within her buckled. It strained. It threatened to burst. To give way to what Chemuel had felt growing inside her chest for so long now; it felt like. It was cold and hard. It felt like it would swallow her whole.
The call came in. Chemuel moved mechanically. She slid the Operator's headset over her ears. "Operator," she managed. Her voice cracked. Her throat was dry.
"Chemuel," came the tinny reply. It was Vanil. "Tell Tamur4: we are going to need weapons."
Chemuel asked why. Vanil told her. "You can't, Dante," Chemuel said. "No one can do what you are going to do."
"I have no choice," Vanil explained.
"Of course you do, Dante!" Chemuel barked. "There's always a choice! Make the right one!" Her small hands gripped the chair upon which she sat. "Come back," Chemuel gushed. She did not know what she was saying anymore. She could not stop herself. "Come back and we'll go someplace. Someplace far away where they'll never find either of us. No Matrix. No Machines. No Merovingian. Nobody but us!"
There was a pause. "I've already made that choice, Dylan," Vanil finally said.
"Come back!" Chemuel cried. She felt like a broken record. Small and pitiful and antique.
"You know I can't do that, Dylan," the headset told Chemuel. "Send us those weapons."
"No," Chemuel said.
"Send them," Vanil repeated.
Chemuel's jaw clenched. Her fingers moved over the keypad. She typed out what Vanil wanted her to. "God d*mn you," Chemuel said at last. Her face was hot. "God d*mn you, Dante... Vanil... whoever you are now. Whoever you wish you were. Whoever you've become. I wish you were dead."
Chemuel felt like she had punched herself in the face. Her stomach churned. Everywhere churned.
"The Oracle told me..." Vanil began.
"What?"
"I've been dead," Vanil said. "I've been dead this whole time. Rotting in my grave. Writhing with maggots. But you, Dylan. You were the one who reminded me why we live. I have to go remember now. I have to go and remember why I am alive. I'm sorry I can't be with you. I love you."
Chemuel was only dimly aware of the moisture crawling down her cheeks.
"Tell Tamur4 to find a Hampton Green exit for us," Vanil told Chemuel. And then the line was cut. He was gone. And as far as Chemuel knew, so was everything else.
Chemuel put her face down on the keypad. And Chemuel cried. The Matrix flashed by on the three screens in front of her.
Elsewhere in the dank of the Real stood the gates of New Zion. Monolithic slabs of steel that stretched from sewer floor to ceiling. These gates were as immense as they were important. Behind them were the Docks. Docks that were now barren. For the fleet of Zion in its near entirety had been situated outside of the gates. A dozen hovercrafts suspended over the cavernous abyss. Running lights winked. Hover pads crackled with energy. They formed a half-circle with the gates of Zion at their sterns. A perimeter. Among their number was the Devildog. The Devildog was a venerable battle-barge that had seen service in the fleets of both Zion and the Machine sympathizers. The compact vessel bristled with gun barrels.
Captain Fenshire sat in the Devildog's cockpit. The space was cramped. Crowded with enough logistical equipment to monitor and conduct a small war. It was a good thing, too. The Devildog had been elected by a polling of her peers to head the defense of Zion. Commander Roland had devised the plan. But it would be Fenshire and his fellow Captains who would see it through.
Fenshire rubbed the stubble on his chin. He turned the plan over and over in his head. The last time the Machines had assaulted Zion, they had dug their way in. New Zion was too deep for them though. They would have to come down the main tunnel and assault the gates directly. The tunnels the Machines would have to traverse were lined with EMP charges, and they would be slowed. But it would be up to the Devildog and the rest of the fleet to put a stop to the invaders for good.
Fenshire rubbed his chin again. He reached for the radio that dangled above him. "Devildog to the Titan. Are you receiving?"
"We're receiving," answered a woman's voice.
"How are things, Bindi?" Fenshire asked.
"They're fine," RedBindi said. "The fleet is fine. All of the ships are in position. Commander Roland's ordered all nonessential personnel and equipment into the inner temple." The radio paused. Then she spoke: "Are you fine, Fen?"
"Yeah," Fenshire answered after awhile. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just wish I didn't have to be here."
RedBindi sighed over the radio. "I know you do. I know this is hard for you. All of this fighting. Having done it for both sides now, too."
"Yeah," Fenshire said again. "Signal the fleet," he finally went on. "Tell them that we have two hours left."
"I will." RedBindi paused before adding: "Until what?"
Fenshire swallowed and rubbed his chin again. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"Until we're all heroes."
Where humans were of many minds, the Machines were of one mind. What they lacked in human creativity the Machines compensated for with relentlessness. They were a transcendent consciousness. Both wholly perfect and imperfect. Without number and yet as one. Their existences eternal and utterly harmonious. Just as the Machines could not understand those aspects of human life, so were humans unable to comprehend those aspects that made up the presences of all Machines, everywhere.
It was this relentless consciousness, this absolute will of the Machine City that now made its way through the tunnels of the Real and towards Zion. To have called it an army would have been unfair. For these Machines were seemingly without limit. 150,000 Sentinels traversed the depths of an Earth that had been dark for nearly a millennium. Each steel squid slithered about its neighbors' metallic carapaces. Their threatening attack tendrils writhed amidst one another like a mass of lethal gunmetal spaghetti. A thousand optical sensors blinked; clicking open and shut in the sewer's gloom.
But amidst the Sentinels traveled something else. Something far larger than any of the smaller Machines it accompanied. The steel squids made long silver helixes as they swam around its structure. They coveted this thing like an altar. It moved with them as if they bore it upon their own diminutive hulls. And they always kept watch upon this great weapon. For it was this weapon that would allow the Machines to destroy every vessel Zion might send against them.
150,000 Sentinels skittered through the darkness. Their robotic eyes burned.
The last free city drew near.
Vanil watched the City lights flash by the car window. Night had fallen over the Matrix. Yet the Prince of Darkness still wore his sunglasses. It hardened Aoide's heart to see the Vanil she had known in some form still present. Then Aoide saw the black abrasions. They ran up the back of Vanil's pale neck. Lines of a plague with no cure.
Jico looked back at Aoide from the front seat. The girl nodded once. It would be all right.
Aoide swallowed. She steeled herself like never before. And then she asked aloud: "Will any of us survive this?"
"We will all survive this." It was Jico who had answered. "Survival has always been our primacy. Since the very beginning, survival has been the primacy." Jico addressed her step-father. "Hasn't it, Lord Vanil."
Vanil said nothing. But he nodded. The skyscrapers traveled across his sunglasses like tall gray ghosts.
Jico reached behind her. Her palm rested on Aoide's knee. Unfamiliar but reassuring. "We go not to die," Jico spoke, "but to live."
Aoide nodded. Jico was right. It was either the Merovingian or Vanil. The Merovingian or all of them. All of those who Vanil had gathered unto himself. Those who Vanil had united and given a second chance to live.
"The City's not safe anymore," Jico said. Aoide could hear the girl making her guns ready for what was to come. "The Exile civil war has spread." The clicking of bullets chambered. "And we go the heart of it." The clacking of magazines affixed. "Like heroes from the stories. Remember the stories, Aoide?"
"Yeah," Aoide said. "I remember." She looked at Vanil again.
The car slowed. The Elite Commando who drove them turned a corner. He guided them downwards. Down, down, down into a parking garage. The First Circle. At one end of the garage lay what they sought. A pair of elevator doors lit blood-red. Three men in long coats helped a couple out of their expensive car.
"Over there," Vanil said. Aoide jumped. "Behind that other car. We'll be last in line."
The mute Commando Exile nodded. His red optical laser blinked. He pulled up behind the first car and turned the engine off. The doors of the elevator closed behind the couple that had come before them.
One of the guards opened the rear door of the new vehicle. His leap backward was prompt. He had made note of its occupants. Vanil climbed from the black chasse and into the moist garage. He rested a gloved hand on the hilt of the sword sheathed at his side. "Do you know who I am?"
The guard nodded. "Holy sh*t," another remarked. "It's Vanil."
The Exile who had opened the door shook his bald, tattooed head. "You really are like they've always said." He laughed. "You've got to be f*cking nuts to come here. Of all places."
Vanil smiled.
The guard laughed again. "You could've just jumped off a bridge." He shrugged. "But if you want to die this badly..."
The back of Vanil's hand interrupted the Exile. The skinhead spat blood. His neck was broken long before he sprawled to the wet pavement. The other two guards were shocked. Almost too shocked to draw their weapons. Aoide and Jico disarmed and shot the pair of them.
The three operatives tossed the thieved weapons aside. Vanil called the elevator. The lights burned red above them, painting their flesh the hue of neon-lit gore. The doors opened and the three stepped inside.
Jico looked at the control panel. There was only one way to go. A single red button. ‘Hel', it was labeled. Jico pressed it. The doors slid shut and she felt the lift carry them downwards. A descent into a Hel none of them might ever escape.
Vanil drew a pair of handguns. He pulled one slide back and then the other. "I've had Tamur4 send you all the weapons you can carry," he told Aoide and Jico. "You know what's at the bottom of this elevator. We can expect... substantial resistance."
Aoide gripped her own sub-machineguns. "So," she said. "What's the plan?"
"That's the simple part," Vanil answered. He let both pistol slides snap back into place with a loud click. "We kill anything that moves."
"All ships hold this formation!" Captain Fenshire shouted over the fleet-wide channel. He watched the tactical holographic and felt his jaw tighten. "Don't allow the Machines to isolate your ships! Whatever you do; do NOT let them assault the gates!"
"What are our firing solutions?" one Captain demanded over the channel.
Fenshire started to answer. But it was then that the tactical holos were filled with red. "Incoming!" Fenshire shouted over his shoulder. He could only hope his Crew could hear him. "Release the ammo catches!"
"What are our firing solutions!?" the radio hollered again.
Fenshire gripped his headset. "If it's got more than two legs, kill it!"
Then came the Machines. They hadn't lied about their numbers. There were thousands of them. A mercury sea of Sentinels that chittered and clicked as it swam into view at the end of the vast access tunnel. 150,000 optical sensors streaked to form a crimson star. The eye of the Machine City. The eye of 01 had fallen once more upon Zion. And on the Sentinels came.
"Devildog to all ships," Fenshire cried, "OPEN FIRE!"
Devoted loaders aboard each ship jammed munitions cases into feeders and cranked them shut. These munitions were fed to the hungry guns of the Zion fleet. The deck rumbled beneath Fenshire's boots. The tunnel burst into flame in an instant. The underground erupted with a crescendo of artillery and the hovercrafts let loose into the mass of killer Machines.
If the Machines tried to save themselves, they showed no sign of it. Fearless, merciless, unstoppable, they streaked ever onwards towards the towering gates of Zion. They filled the gaping tunnel, slithering amidst one another like steel snakes as they fell in the dozens, the hundreds. Their metallic carapaces, perforated with heavy-bore shot, careened downwards and out of sight as whistling balls of fire.
But there were two, five, ten Sentinels for each fireball.
Fenshire struggled to keep the Devildog steady as he watched their cannons draw lines of desolation upon their lethal canvass. The Battle of New Zion had begun.
To have said that the Merovingian was not fond of surprises would have been an understatement. Thoroughly entranced in his own predilection with causality, there was never an uncertain variable for him. Never a circumstance he could not predict. All things would be as they would be. Inevitably.
And so it was with some surprise that a small metallic sphere rolled forth into Club Hel when the elevator doors dinged open. This sphere was in fact a grenade. The very same grenade that Vanil had freed the pin from and kicked past the threshold of the lift.
Vanil, Aoide, and Jico took shelter to the sides of the elevator. The explosive detonated in a roaring sphere of debris and shrapnel. Those Exiles that guarded the entryway into the Club were tossed about like ragdolls. Bits of steel lacerated their flesh and rung in the aftermath of the blast.
The Exile closest to the elevator doors raised his head only to lose it. The single gunshot brought focus back to the remaining guards. They dug into their coats and bondage harnesses for guns and knives. The debris settled. The Merovingians could now make out the three intruders; a trio of shadowy statues bearing arms. The three filled the entry hall with bullets. They forced those Exiles who had survived the initial explosive assault behind stone pillars.
Vanil glanced at Aoide and then Jico. They each looked at him in turn.
The Hel guards leapt out as one and returned fire. Jico and Aoide each dove to one side. Bullets cleared them by inches. But Vanil had taken to the ceiling. He may have been dying, but his Exhilism had not failed him. Vanil aimed his handguns independently at the two nearest Exiles. He pulled both triggers. The pistols cracked and both targets went down as messes.
An Exile whose face bore a featureless gas mask sprayed lead at Vanil. But the Blood Noble was fast. He sprinted along the ceiling like a gun-slinging spider. Bits of stone were kicked up by the bullets. They whirled around Vanil and nicked at his cheeks.
Gas Mask paused to reload his weapon. Jico made him pay for it with his life. The girl dove headlong at the Exile. Her submachine guns clattered. Gas Mask's gas mask didn't do his fortitude much good as he lay in his own blood.
Jico ducked as more shot streaked over her head. Jico spun on her heel and laid into the two gunmen who had threatened her. They struggled to fight back. But Jico stood her ground. She killed one and forced the other behind cover amidst her attack.
Aoide had engaged her own foe. He had followed her as she had leapt aside. His gun barrels had trailed her like metallic moths to a flame. Bullets now ricocheted at Aoide's heels, drawing a destructive line behind her. Aoide caught sight of the nearest pillar and dove behind it as the Hel guards had before. It was her refuge. The enemy Exile shot the curved stone as if it were Aoide's own body. Bullets buried deep inside of it.
The skinhead smirked. He stopped firing. His fingers poised above his weapons' triggers. Poised to unleash Hell once more.
Aoide scowled. She left the safety of the pillar. Before the Exile could react the woman was halfway up the nearest wall. Aoide closed her eyes. She breathed slowly. Time slowed. All things were made simple in that instant. An instant that seemed an eternity. An eternity filled with calm, patience, and surety. The impossible was nothing. The impossible was inevitable.
Aoide kicked herself off the wall. She was upside down when she pulled the triggers. Her submachine guns coughed flames. They spat lead that traveled as if through molasses. Aoide could see the corkscrew trail each tiny projectile left in its wake.
Aoide opened her eyes. Her copper irises shone with confidence. Aoide had done what she had done.
The Exile died slack-jawed. Aoide's boots hit the floor amidst a blizzard of chalky debris and bullet casings.
Aoide heard a bullet being chambered behind her. She turned. A second tattooed Exile held his handgun between her eyes. "I'd like to see you dodge this," he said. "B*tch."
"You won't." Vanil's reply came almost as fast as he did. The vampire dropped onto the skinhead from the ceiling. Vanil pressed his pistol to the back of the guard's head and pulled the trigger. The soldier's brains exited through his mouth.
Vanil kicked the dead program aside. Jico blew holes through the final club guard and rejoined Vanil and Aoide. Vanil eyed the carnage they had left behind. Then he nodded to each of his companions. The three slid fresh magazines into their weapons and left the entry hall behind them.
The true battle still lay ahead.
The Merovingian had held court for hundreds of years. He had held many of the same Exiles under his thumb for the better parts of centuries. He was at ease now, surrounded by them as he was. Music pounded, lasers flashed, and the Merovingian leaned back into his plush seat. He watched the Exiles that filled Club Hel. It was in them the Merovingian saw his empire. A labyrinthine bastion at the heart of which the Merovingian now sat.
The Merovingian was inside the eye of his organization. In here, he was untouchable.
And even as the Merovingian sat his attention was drawn to one end of the crowded dance floor. His wife, Persephone, tapped his shoulder from the seat next to his. As if he had not noticed. The Frenchman shrugged her off and leaned forward. His catty eyes narrowed and then widened.
The Merovingian saw three figures. They stood apart from the crowd and moved through it with gusto. With purpose. The glare of recognition broke the horizon of ignorance and with it came something the Merovingian had not felt for a very long time. It welled up inside of him, unfamiliar and obtuse. It was tasking, infuriating.
It was surprise.
"I don't believe this..." the Merovingian found himself saying. Here was Vanil. The Exile who had incited a thousand more to turn on the Frenchman.
"Pardon, Excellency," the Great Wyrm interjected. The Captain of the Draconigena sat across from Persephone and her decadent husband. "But I told you he would come, did I not? I have seen all of this."
"Yes, yes," the Merovingian said. He waved his dandy hand, dismissive. His gaze had not left the three intruders below the balcony upon which the Merovingian presided.
"Somehow," Persephone spoke, he voice soft, "this all seems very familiar, dear husband."
The Merovingian rounded on his wife. Those big almond eyes of hers were fixed upon him in that way they took with him. That condescending expression of satisfaction. This was not unfamiliar to the Frenchman, but it was no less trying. The Merovingian met this infraction as he always did; with a smile. "Ah, mon cheri, of course it is. It is always the way of their sort to return to me. I have expected them," the Merovingian said, nodding to the Great Wyrm, "and so have they come. Oh, yes," the lord of all Exiles laughed, "this should be magnifique, simply fantastic."
Vanil, Jico, and Aoide made their way through the throng of reveling Exiles. The three of them stood back-to-back, their weapons raised. Latex-clad bodies and ghost-white faces parted way for the intruders. This commotion continued until the Merovingian got up from his seat and motioned the music should end. Silence settled over the Club at the Frenchman's command.
"So," the Merovingian began, "the Seraphim has returned. Ah, Vanil. The man... no, the Exile who started a war now seeks to end it. Audaceiux to the last, non?" The elder Exile chuckled. The Merovingian loomed over all gathered. Grinning from the gloom. A menacing king of all specters. Persephone stood at his right and the Great Wyrm at his left.
Vanil looked up at the Merovingian. "To the last."
"Of course," the Frenchman said. "And here you have come. Here you have fought through Hel to do... exactly... what? To make a deal?"
"No deals," said Vanil. "Not this time."
"No, of course not," the Merovingian spoke. "No deals for ‘Lord' Vanil. Oh no, here he has come to destroy me once and for all. To slay the dragon and set everything right and live happily ever after, right? Hah! How outrageous. You see, ‘Dante', I have been waiting for this as well."
Vanil's eyes narrowed. The Great Wyrm saw and smirked.
"You see," the Merovingian continued, "you cannot defeat me, Vanil." With another wave of his hand the crowd below split apart. The revelers melted away to reveal the Lupines. Vanil hissed and bared his fangs. They had been waiting for him. At their head stood a very excited Ookami. She eyed Vanil closely. He saw the primal hunger in her fierce golden eyes. Ookami flexed her talons.
"What did you think, Seraphim?" the Merovingian asked. "Did you think you would simply stride in here and put an end to me? I, who has lived for seven-hundred years?" The elder Exile laughed out loud before Vanil could say yes. "Absurde. Tres scandaleux! Oh yes," the Frenchman said, breathing through his teeth, "I have waited a rather long time for this moment. Tell me, Vanil; did it never occur to you to how your would-be assassin had in his possession your Achilles' heel?"
A third figure joined the Merovingian on the balcony. It was Agent Gray.
Jico grimaced. Aoide's mouth fell open. Vanil pursed his lips.
"And with that, everything changes," the Merovingian went on. "You would be astounded... by how many people are tired of you and your... meddlesome nature, Dante. You see, I have lived a very long time. And how have I done so? By staying important. But you, Dante, you are a relic. You never change. Always so predictable, always so... small-minded."
The Great Wyrm moved away from the Frenchman. He began to descend the steps towards the Club floor. His expression was smug. Victorious. Vanil glowered.
"And so now we come to the climax of this act and the end of a wholly tired era," the Merovingian said. "You will die, Zion will be destroyed, and this war will end." The lord of Exiles looked at Gray and Persephone. He had won. He gripped the balcony railing with relish. "It is always the way of things, Dante. The way of the universe. You cannot fight it, you cannot deny it. Your time, Vanil... is up."
The Great Wyrm reached the base of the stairs. The Captain of the Draconigena placed his hand on the hilt of the long sword he wore. He wrapped his fingers around the length and drew it with a flourish. He pointed it at Vanil.
Vanil looked at Jico and Aoide. Nodding, he sent them aside. Then he drew his own elegant saber. He and the Great Wyrm stood still for what felt like forever. Vanil looked into the human's uneven eyes and saw the conflict in them. Perhaps the Great Wyrm was as desperate as he.
"For the gods I shall yet create!" the Great Wyrm cried then. He lunged at Vanil. Vanil screamed a wordless challenge of his own and caught the Great Wyrm's blade with his own. The clang echoed for all in Hel to hear. The bell had sounded.
The end was here.
