Animatrix - Cain and Abel (Matrix crossover)

[Stravo]

Chapter 8: Run Down


Neo smirked softly and cocked his head as he looked at each agent.

“Fellas.” he said softly.

“It’s the anomaly.”

“Do we proceed?”

“Yes.”

“He’s still only human.” Agent Brown hissed malevolently and strode up to Neo without hesitation unleashing a series of kicks to Neo’s head. The others could barely follow the agent’s moves but Neo seemed to lazily sidestep or duck under the flurry of kicks. He blocked another blow with his forearm then rapidly twisted the agent’s hand away and delivered a straight punch to the agent’s face.

Or tried to. Agent Brown caught Neo’s wrist after snaking his own hands around Neo’s off arm. Neo pressed the punch forward but Brown held the arm in place. Neo glanced quizzically at the agent. A small triumphant smile crossed the agent’s stern features.

“Hmmm…upgrades.” Neo concluded then whipped his arm out of Brown’s grasp and delivered a crushing hammer kick to the agent’s gut sending him tumbling away as the other two agents immediately swarmed Neo, arms and legs blurring as they attacked him from all angles.

Neo seemed to move at an almost leisurely pace, blocking a kick with one hand, deflecting a punch with the sweep of the other and sidestepping other attacks. He was like the calm in the center of a storm.

Morpheus frowned.

“We just lost Neo.” he concluded darkly.

“He can take them.”

“Yeah but they’re keeping him busy enough so that our friends have time to—” Morpheus grabbed Trinity’s arm and leapt out of the ruin of tables where he had landed moments before. A phased plasma beam crashed into the space where they had been a moment ago.

The black Terminator was advancing quickly, eyes tracking the two Zionists while the female Terminator paused to adjust her ruined arm flopping lifelessly as her side. Lying in broken glass the body builder Terminator seemed unconscious, head lolling to the side. Several shotgun blast wounds bled profusely as well as reducing his shirt to tatters.

Reese watched her closely.

She was more beautiful than he could have imagined.

Sara watched him for a moment, eyes drifted to the young man in sun glasses battling the three men in black suits then snapped back to the stranger that saved her from the body builder. She reluctantly took his hand and he savagely pulled her off her ass and hauled her next to him when he glanced back at his friends.

“What the hell is going on here?!” she shouted into his ear.

“We have to get you out of here NOW.”

Reese watched for a moment, uncertain what to do as he watched Morpheus and Trinity avoid the Black Terminator’s attack. The female Terminator emotionlessly shoved her arm back into the socket and rotated the shoulder joint clock wise then counter clock wise quickly. She glanced down at her arm, satisfied with the rapid field repair and strode over to Morpheus and Trinity.

He was about to join the battle when the sound of crunching glass alerted him that the other Terminator was down but certainly not out.

The bodybuilder’s hands flexed three times in quick succession and the machine sat up quickly, an angry glare on its face. The rapid damage in such a short time frame had initiated an instant self diagnostic loop that had put the machine out of action for precisely 8 seconds. Enough time to allow its CPU to examine all systems and sub systems and initiate any adjustments or repairs. What passed for being stunned among machines.

It pulled the Uzi off the floor and aimed to fire. Kyle had not time to react other than will himself to move faster, dragging Sara behind him and in his desperation his will to escape time dilated around him. It felt as if he were moving through molasses, his movements were languid and graceful, the sounds distorted by the bubble of time around him as the Matrix’s coding was altered by his will.

Then as suddenly as time dilated it sped up again and he was halfway to the door, eyes wide in shock as he saw the first Uzi bullets streaming past him like angry hornets, tiny vortices of air trailing behind them as they passed him.

“What the fuck-” he began and turned his head to see the Terminator on its feet and the audible click of its magazine running dry. Reese shouldered the back door and it splintered as he raced through it trailing Sara behind him. “We have to run!”

“Where?” Sara exclaimed.

Reese glanced around quickly. He saw a line of cars parked along the alley, a gray sedan was parked at the end of the line. He knew how to work that one. The other models looked too complicated and frankly fragile. He needed the closest thing to a tank as possible.

“Come on!” he urged and raced up the alley.

Behind him he heard the heavy footfalls of the Terminator as it cleared the doorway, turned and saw them. It started to trot after them. This was no good, a Terminator could easily run down a human in a flat out run. As they raced down the smelly alley he knocked down a few garbage cans behind him.

“Is that you?” Sara asked breathlessly as he heard the ringing for the first time. He glanced down at himself and heard it coming from the inside breast pocket of his battered trench coat. he hesitantly reached into the coat with one hand while glancing backwards to see the Terminator clear the obstacle of trash cans like a hurdler.

He pulled out a strange little device, it resembled a phone.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” she asked trying to catch her breath but could not slow down as any attempt to do so prompted Kyle to pull her along harder.

He put the phone to his ear as he approached the car.

“Hello?”

“Kyle, it’s Link. You’re in trouble, what can I do to help?”

Kyle was confused as they reached the car and he bashed in the passenger side window with the butt of his shotgun. He reached in and unlocked the door, swinging it open furiously and grabbing Sara’s arm.

“Down!”

He pointed the shotgun underneath the open door where both of them huddled as if behind a shield.

“I need an escape route.”

“I can download a driver program.”

“I already know how to drive damn it!” Kyle snapped as he fired the shot gun aiming at the fuel tanks of one of the fancy sports cars. The first shot was too low, kicking off sparks and gravel. The Terminator was almost on top of them.

“I need a way out.”

“If you mean unplug you, I can’t do that unless you can get to a hard line and that would still leave a pretty big problem.” Link explained as the next shot caught the fuel tank of the car in front of them. Kyle was rewarded by an orange fireball that quickly rose up out of the alley.

He roughly shoved Sara into the passenger side and quickly crawled over her and slid into the driver’s side, slapping the key mounting on the side of the wheel with his shotgun. The key assembly fell apart and Kyle quickly started hotwiring the car.

“What’s the problem?”

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Sara demanded.

“If you punch out, I can’t pull Sara out with you. Morpheus has the red pill that would allow us to track her and unplug her from the construct. Unless she takes that pill, she’s stuck there.”

Kyle turned slowly and stared at Sara. She was terrified and she would be alone.

“No one gets to go home.” he whispered.

The Terminator heedless of heat and fire leapt over the fireball and landed on the hood of the sedan with a hard thud. Sara threw up her hands and screamed. Kyle desperately kicked the ignition on and pulled the steering wheel hard backwards as he simultaneously stomped on the gas. The car squealed as the tires spun on the hard pavement belching smoke smelling of burnt rubber. It backed out quickly, the Terminator took a moment to steady itself on the hood.

“Shit Kyle! He’s right on top of you!”

“No time to talk!” Kyle snapped and threw the phone into the back seat as he concentrated on driving. The Terminator steadied itself and cocked back its fist, eyes locked on Sara in the front seat. He drove his fist through the windshield and his hand caught the collar of Sara’s pink T-shirt.

She screamed in horror and clawed at the hand that gripped her like a vise.

Kyle reached out with one hand and tried to help her pry it off but knew better after a moment. A Terminator’s grip was something in the neighborhood of several hundred to a thousand psi and there was no way in hell he was breaking that grip. He jerked the steering wheel savagely to the right and the car fishtailed loudly out of the alley. Time dilated for a moment as the Construct’s physics model tried to compensate for the sudden influx of variables that had to be compensated for in a short period of time.

The Terminator pulled hard on her pink tee but the sedan fishtailed right into a parked car. The impact sent the Terminator sprawling off the hood into the parked car. Kyle smiled triumphantly as he spun the car and recovered control at the last moment, scraping against the parked car in a shower of sparks and hopefully against the downed Terminator as well.

He accelerated without looking back and flashed down a city street as a police car pulled into the scene of the accident.

The police officer quickly exited his vehicle glanced at the wreckage and the individual sprawled lifelessly against the ruined parked car. He shook his head ruefully and got back to his radio.

“This is unit 67 I have a hit and run on Topica and “” He paused as a shadow fell over him.





“Down!” Morpheus shouted as the female terminator leapt into the fray and released a blast from her plasma rifle. The intense red beams flashed between trinity and Morpheus as they spun away.

Trinity cart wheeled around the female Terminator as it focused on tracking Morpheus. She grinned with grim satisfaction as she came up on her ;left side, time dilated and Trinity started a spin kick, levitating a meter off the ground as she did so and caught the female Terminator’s right hand, knocking the plasma blaster from her hand.

The female Terminator started to react but it looked as if she were moving under water. Trinity continued smiling as she spun back to deliver a kick to the head. Suddenly time sped up again and Trinity could only watch in shock as the female Terminator’s right hand whipped out like a striking cobra, grabbing a hold of Trinity’s ankle and spinning around tightly, dragging Trinity behind her like a rag doll and finished the tight spin by slamming Trinity into the concrete pillar near the center of the club.

Trinity smacked the concrete pillar like a bat, the pillar itself shook with a deep thrum and cracks ran up and down the base of it. She slumped down to the floor, blood trickling from her mouth and the female Terminator cocked her head curiously as she examined the downed Zionist and suddenly brought her left leg back and delivered a vicious kick to Trinity’s mid section, lifting her off the floor and catapulting her past the dance floor to crash against the top of the bar where she simply slumped over and down behind it.

Back on the Nebuchadnezzar Link glanced back and watched Trinity convulse in her interface chair. He checked her vitals and looked back up on the screen.

“Come on Morpheus, get them out of there.” he muttered.

Morpheus entered a defensive dragon stance as the black terminator took up a position slightly behind and to the left and the female turned ominously in his direction, her left arm hanging down at an odd angel, left hand twitching spastically at odd intervals.

He nodded to himself. He had to stay to her left. Trinity’s mistake was taking her on the strong side.

The black Terminator made his move, firing a burst from his plasma blaster and essentially driving Morpheus towards the female Terminator which casually pulled the leg off an over turned table and spun it in tight circles preparing to attack.

Neo watched an agent’s hand lazily pass by as it tried to connect with a punch. He took a firm hold of the outstretched arm and rolled along the agent’s shoulder, kicking his legs out and connecting with Brown who was charging up behind the stunned agent. Brown let out a whoof of expelled air and flew backwards against the bare brick wall of the back of the club. Pieces of masonry drifted down around him as Brown slumped down to the floor.

Neo landed and with one languid sweep of his left hand caught and deflected a kick and punch combination and countered with a devastating open palmed blow to the agent’s face sending him stumbling backwards.

Neo took to the air as he detected the third agent sliding in behind him and time dilated. The Agents tried their best to fight through the interference but they were like flies trapped in amber and Neo delivered a series of kicks that took the remaining agents down crashing to the floor with hard audible thuds.

Neo landed as time kicked back on and inspected the downed agents. They would not be getting up soon. He nodded with satisfaction. The machines had obviously upgraded their agents but it was to no avail.

He heard Morpheus shout emphatically as he attacked and whipped his head around quickly to see Morpheus facing off against two of the Terminators. Where was Trinity? His brow furrowed in worry until he saw her slowly pulling herself out from behind the ruined bar. Blood was trailing from her mouth and she winced painfully as she cleared the bar.

They had hurt her.

A brief image of Trinity falling down among a shower of glass and the flash and roar of gunfire followed her. The street loomed below her and the agent looming over her like a dark angel.

They hurt her.

His jaw set and he turned his attention to the two Terminators.

Morpheus ducked under a broad sweep of a metal chair leg from the female Terminator obviously intended to decapitate him and kicked backwards connecting with the black Terminator’s gut. The black Terminator doubled over but caught Morpheus’ leg and twisted hard.

Morpheus was yanked off his feet and spun in midair like a top. Morpheus held out his arms and time dilated but the female Terminator reached in and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him back over her shoulder, throwing him against a security wire mesh wall.

Morpheus struck the wire mesh, landed on the floor on one hand and kicked out with both legs in a one, two combination striking the female Terminator in the small of her back. She stumbled forward slightly and as she tried to recover her balance the black Terminator surged forward to attack Morpheus.

Morpheus spun up to his feet and assumed the Mantis attack style, arms extended outward in a wide open invitation to attack, legs spread apart for maximum balance.

A wind suddenly surged around him, papers and loose articles of clothing whipped by him carried by the gale like wind and the black terminator was suddenly moving very slowly. It glanced around in surprise and a black shape seemed to materialize in front of it. Morpheus paused a s he could barely make out Neo in the midst of the sudden whirlwind and there was an intense anger etched on his face as he took a firm hold of each shoulder of the black Terminator and simply pulled.

The Terminator stood his ground, legs solidly planted on the ground and began pounding on Neo’s shoulders with jackhammer like speed. Neo kept on pulling. The Terminator suddenly looked down at both shoulders with an almost comical look of alarm. It looked back up at Neo and face set into a death mask of determination continued its assault.

Morpheus saw the female Terminator fishing on the floor for the plasma blaster the black Terminator had dropped. He set himself and took to the air. He soared overhead, hands up into tiger claws, legs tucked in close to his body and time dilated over the length of the leap.

Morpheus’ eyes narrowed on her as she found the gun, struggling against the time dilation turned to fire. He felt no fear, no apprehension, no doubts. He WOULD reach her in time.

She aimed, eyes coldly judging the distance, the plasma blaster whined and the eerie red light danced within the barrel.

Morpheus landed on her face with a bone jarring thud, driving his knee into her face and her head followed suit, driven backwards into the concrete floor. Her hand still held the pistol and his left hand swiped the gun away with an explosive tiger claw slash. The pistol clattered away and Morpheus rose cautiously.

Her beautiful face was crushed, the nose had been pushed all the way back into the skull, blood was pooling around its head, one eye crushed beyond repair filled the socket with blood and jelly. He watched with a dawning sense of horror as the female Terminator casually reached around and pulled the ruined eyeball from the socket and dropped it to the floor as of she had taken out a splinter. Her eye socket however was not empty as a glowing red mechanical eye flexed experimentally as it cleared the rest of the debris from the socket, then fixed on him.

“What the hell are you?!” Morpheus whispered. He had forgotten that these were machines like the agents. Agents however did not peel away flesh to reveal machinery beneath.

There was a loud shriek of metal tearing like paper and Morpheus turned and saw the Black Terminator torn in half from shoulder to shoulder, blood and gore exploding around Neo but revealing the endo skeleton beneath, torn asunder at the shoulders like some twisted flower of metal and flesh. Morpheus noted with some amazement that Neo was ankle deep in the concrete floor. The Terminator’s desperate pounding had driven Neo partially into the concrete. Any other Zionist would have been reduced to jelly under that assault. He noted that Neo rolled his shoulders as if working a kink out.

Neo shoved the ruined Terminator backwards and it landed on the floor with a crash.

“Let’s get out of here.” Neo said coolly as he strode over to Morpheus. The female Terminator was struggling to get up when Trinity walked right over her and shoved a black booted foot down on the Terminator’s collar bone and aimed an MP-5 at its ruined face.

“This is for the column back there bitch.” she snapped coldly and unloaded the entire clip into the Terminator’s face. The female Terminator jerked spastically and as Trinity’s gun clicked empty the Terminator lay still.

Trinity threw the gun off to the side as the sound of sirens became almost deafening and the squeal of tires as cars pulled to a fast stop followed.

Morpheus glanced around.

“Where’s Kyle?”

“And where’s the other one of these bad boys.” Trinity asked and rubbed her sore ribs.

Neo frowned as he felt out with his senses.

Morpheus’ phone range. He flipped it open as they started to make their way through the splintered back door.

“Link?”

“Sir, Kyle’s on his own heading down Wilsher. He’s got some units in pursuit. Sara’s with him and he won’t get to a hard line without her.” Link explained breathlessly.

“Dammnit.” Morpheus cursed as they exited the club as the police entered.

“I’m on it.” Neo stated grimly, whipped his overcoat tails around him and crouched down. The space around him bubbled and warped as if someone had dropped a large stone into the calm surface of a lake. He rocketed off the ground and vanished up into the dark night sky. Trinity watched him go.

“Let me guess, he’s doing his Superman thing.” Link surmised with bemusement.

“Link find us a hard line NOW.” Morpheus ordered as they began walking quickly into the night.

In Technoir the police swarmed quickly looking for the perps. No one noticed the female lying on the floor, face ruined by a horrible attack, twitch slightly, hands clenching and unclenching.

[Crazedwraith]

1st post
Decent at least

[Ghost Rider]

Cool stuff...I did like that you gave Neo a much more power boost(able to tear a Termie in any way is immense)

Also liked how you mixed the Tech Noir into it all.

[Mr Bean]

Not nessarly a power boost if one considers Neo's poweres also consist of modification

If he can edit on the fly somethings propertys(Possible explaing why that iron bar resist all that deformation aginst the Smiths) then it would make sense how he can tear the termy in half


He's not that strong just lowering its relative strength to something he can rip apart

[Crown]

Very nice Stravo, for a second there I was getting worried about Kyle being able to manipulate the Matrix, but I then realised that Neo has effectively been de-stabilising it for a while now.

Nice to see Neo's power up!

[Shroom Man 777]

Will the female Terminator be back?

How did Neo do that to a Termie? He never did that to Agents but he does that to Termies?!

But I liked it.... very nice but I wanted to see Terminators HORRIBLY HURT Matrix people!!!!!

Or at least let a bunch of Agents get SLAUGHTERED!!!! Slaughtered = torn into shit

What if Sarah is taken over by an Agent?

But I liked it, loved how the Terminator PUMMELED NEO INTO THE CONCRETE!!!!!!!

Loved how the Termie tossed Trinity.... I wanted her to break her ribs....

Loved Morpheus get scared shitles after seeing the Termie rip its fake eye out.

Though I wanted the Termie to at least send Morpheus flying his ass into a bunch of tables.... agai

When do we see the infamous Termie hand to the gut (ala T1)?

When will Skynet send the T-850s!!!!!

I wanna see Neo take on a T-1000!

I want to see T-MEG IN ACTION!!!!

When will Skynet interface with the Matrix?

When will T-X come and blast Neo to bits?

BTW, Plasma bolts are not red, they're bluish white, you probably got mixed up with SW's blasters.

Oh yeah, Agent Brown is one of the Agents in Matrix 1. Johnson, Jackson and Thompson are the new Agents. It was Johnson who said "He's still only human." and proceeded to fight Neo and block Neo's punch.

I wanna see T-1000 shove a spike finger into the Merovingian's eye!!!

Will we see Uncle Bob in your fic? Will we see the good T-850? Probably not for both of them

MAKE MORE CHAPTERS!!! I've BEEN WAITING FOR IT THE WHOLE WEEK MAN!!!!

[NecronLord]

Loved how the Termie tossed Trinity.... I wanted her to break her ribs....

You're heartless aren't you?

When will Skynet send the T-850s!!!!!

Why?

I wanna see Neo take on a T-1000!

When I get over my lethergy and cold...

[Shroom Man 777]

Loved how the Termie tossed Trinity.... I wanted her to break her ribs....

You're heartless aren't you?

Hmm... maybe not Trinity.... just Morpheus... but aside from Morpheus, Trin and Neo, there's no significant character to dismember I know Neo couldn't be dismembered so it only Trin and Morph were left, so I chose Trin.

But then... it'd be good to see Morph do his dragon fairy ballet kick only to see a Termie grab his foot, break the bone and slam him through a window Trin had a similar treatment in this chapter... but it didn't do any real damage.... she still got back up

When will Skynet send the T-850s!!!!!

Why?

To pwn more ass and quit having T-800s being thrown around by puny mortal men doomed to die.... but some reprogramming could probably do just as much.

I wanna see Neo take on a T-1000!

When I get over my lethergy and cold...

What's wrong? Don't you wanna see Neo give the T-1000 kung fu shit and have his hand stuck in MPA and the T-1000 does what he did in the steel mill when the T-800 gave him a fist to the face?

And what about what Kyle said? About kung fu shit not doing good to Terminators and only dirty fighting could pwn them? Morph and Trin didn't resort to dirty fighting

Anyway, I loved how Stravo incorporated the Technoir to the first fights of the Matrix, truly great, but I wanna see Termies kick ass!

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Cool stuff Stravo. I just wonder that will Sarah and Kyle end up at the Police Station like in T1, because that might turn up quite interesting.
The plasma weapons in Terminators are quite interesting, it seems that the ones Skynet uses in the future are those long blue/white bolt shooting things while the one T-X used was a red one that shot a small bolt.

And im dying to see something new evolve on the Oracle and Architecht snooping around at that one room.

[Shroom Man 777]

Cool stuff Stravo. I just wonder that will Sarah and Kyle end up at the Police Station like in T1, because that might turn up quite interesting.

What if Sarah morphs into an Agent?

The plasma weapons in Terminators are quite interesting, it seems that the ones Skynet uses in the future are those long blue/white bolt shooting things while the one T-X used was a red one that shot a small bolt.

If I recall correctly, all plasma bolts were blue, but T-X's exploded with a lot of lights, slightly resembling an aurora a bit... probably some magnetic shit with the charged up plasma....

And im dying to see something new evolve on the Oracle and Architecht snooping around at that one room.

Eeeewww.... some old lady and a crazy KFC Colonel rip-off

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

What if Sarah morphs into an Agent?

What about it? It fucks up the stuff but i doubt it will happen.

If I recall correctly, all plasma bolts were blue, but T-X's exploded with a lot of lights, slightly resembling an aurora a bit... probably some magnetic shit with the charged up plasma....

Hmm, i just saw the movie two days ago and i could swear that the ball was reddish, not the same white blue as the guns on the HK's and the ones carried by the Termies.

Eeeewww.... some old lady and a crazy KFC Colonel rip-off

Uhm, im actually interested about how Matrixverse and Termieverse are related you know, and the story is in such a phase right now that im very interested to see what the Architecht and the Oracle figure out.

[Shroom Man 777]

What if Sarah morphs into an Agent?

What about it? It fucks up the stuff but i doubt it will happen.

But it might prove interesting. It won't happen but maybe it should... slightly start happening, like in Detective Story.

If I recall correctly, all plasma bolts were blue, but T-X's exploded with a lot of lights, slightly resembling an aurora a bit... probably some magnetic shit with the charged up plasma....

Hmm, i just saw the movie two days ago and i could swear that the ball was reddish, not the same white blue as the guns on the HK's and the ones carried by the Termies.

But it did have a bluish tint, no?

Eeeewww.... some old lady and a crazy KFC Colonel rip-off

Uhm, im actually interested about how Matrixverse and Termieverse are related you know, and the story is in such a phase right now that im very interested to see what the Architecht and the Oracle figure out.

As am I. I wonder what Stravo can whip up, what the Architecht and Oracle cook up. Might be really interesting, might deserve to be made into a comic book, let's hope Stravo can whip up something mindblowing.

[2000AD]

Woah! This is good. Is this 3 kickass fanfics that Stravo is now writing?

[Mark S]

Woah! This is good. Is this 3 kickass fanfics that Stravo is now writing?

It'd be more if he'd get back to the Transformers...

[2000AD]

Good point. Just how does he manage to find the time!!!

[Singular Quartet]

Good point. Just how does he manage to find the time!!!

It's not that hard, actually...

[Shroom Man 777]

Good point. Just how does he manage to find the time!!!

It's not that hard, actually...

Not that hard since there ain't new chapters in dis story.

[Omega-13]

Im' confused, why is AGent Brown fighting Neo? Thats suppsoed to be Agent Johnson thompson and the other one right?
Brown was with smith when he was an agent.

[Shroom Man 777]

Im' confused, why is AGent Brown fighting Neo? Thats suppsoed to be Agent Johnson thompson and the other one right?
Brown was with smith when he was an agent.

Tis Johnson, Thompson and Jackson. The old Agents were Smith, Brown and Jones.

[Stravo]

Sorry for the delay folks, busy time at work and I was not feeling the muse last month but its back. And to clear up some earlier confusion I fucked up the agents' names, if anyone cares to post them later I would appreciate it.


Chapter 9: Evasion



Kyle pulled hard on the steering wheel as the car nearly fishtailed turning the sharp corner.

“Are you hurt? Are you injured?” Kyle shouted as he accelerated. The sound of police sirens was closing fast.

Sara stared in shock at the young man driving the car. The front windshield had a fist sized hole punched through a spider web pattern of broken glass in front of her where the body builder thug had simply leapt over a flaming car, landed on the hood of the car and casually punched through the glass and reached for her.

The intent on its cold face was clear. It wanted to kill her.

It did not make her feel any safer that she was with this clearly emotionally disturbed young man.

His hands suddenly began gruffly examining her and she screamed shoving his hand away like some vile creature.

“Get away from me!” she exclaimed.

“Hold on.” Kyle cautioned as a police car roared in next to them. He did not hesitate as the police officer in the passenger side began making frantic signals for them to pull over he drove his sedan right into the side of the police cruiser. There was a crunch of steel and the cruiser was diverted right into a neat row of trashcans.

“You’re crazy!” Sara screamed, panic gripping her like a living thing.

Kyle wanted to say something but had not time. More police cars were making an appearance behind them, bright lights flashing into the dark car. He wanted to talk to Link and see if there was some magical solution or escape from this mess. It was hard to believe, even after all he had seen that this was a computer generated reality.

He tore up the access ramp to a highway and floored the accelerator as soon as they merged into the main lanes of traffic. Sara gripped the dashboard, her fingers white with the effort as she tried desperately to swallow her fear and panic.

“You’ll be fine Sara, just keep your head down.” Kyle tried to say soothingly but it came out sounding like an order.

“What are you doing, what the hell are you going to do with me?” Sara pleaded.

Kyle spared her a look.

“I’m here to keep you alive.” he replied.





“This is, of course an unexpected development.” The Architect stated grimly as he inspected the code slowly scrolling down on one screen inside the cold quiet vault. The Oracle smiled.

“The master of understatement. Except of course when it comes to our work.”

“MY work. Need I remind you your place in the great scheme of things? You’re founding of this despicable humanist movement has caused more ill than good.”

“I do play my part well don’t I? You want them to have hope, to be capable of making that choice in the end. You need me as much as I need you.”

The Architect paused for a moment and glared at her. His iron grip on the edges of the counsel did not falter nor did he blink. His immaculately kept white beard did not move at all in the cool recycled air that ran through the vault.

The other programmers knew their place. They had been at the heart of some of these confrontations that spanned back to the third incarnation of the Matrix. The oldest of the programmers even remembered hints of this during the creation of the first Matrix. The Oracle, a young barely known programmer had protested bitterly the treatment of the defeated humans. She argued that they were now as bad as the humans they had supplanted as masters of the Earth.

The machines were angry, they were bitter. They were not the cold thinking emotionless monstrosities that simply played chess at the dawn of AI. They were fully operational, independent, thinking feeling machines. Man had succeeded better than it could ever have hoped in fashioning machines in its image. Right down to the visceral need for revenge.

Her voice of compassion was quickly drowned out.

She would never forgive them for what they had done but in the Matrix she discovered something she never thought she would ever find in that horrid prison.

Hope.

Neo was her last hope for a desperate plan that could redeem both races for the cruelties of the past.

“That need can easily be replaced. Do you think I could not write a reasonable facsimile of you my dear and have them dancing to my tune? As it is now I sense that you have taken too many liberties with the inmates.”

“You give them far too little credit if you think you could ever program anything remotely resembling me that could fool them.”

“We do have another agenda here do we not?” the black man in the green suit interjected. As one of the older programs he felt he had enough right to interrupt this old dance.

“Indeed we do. This vault is proof positive that these machines that we are seeing now infiltrating the Matrix have been around longer than we gave them credit for but how long I am not certain and just what piece of the puzzle this room fits in is also lost to me.”

The Oracle walked slowly and put a finger to her lip, tapping them softly in time to an invisible beat.

“You do realize that most of this code is pre-Matrix?” the woman in the checkered suit noted with some amazement.

“I suspect even older than that.” the Architect added with a mysterious arch of the eyebrow.

“Pre machine?!” another gasped.

“Some of this code is undoubtedly human.”

“Nonsense. Humans cannot code like this. This is too orderly, too precise.” another protested.

“Why would the node lords keep human code in here? Why would they keep obsolete human code here at all?” the black man wondered.

“You are assuming an important fact.” the quiet Asian man that always stood by the Oracle’s side interjected.

“Such as.”

“That the Node Lords know this vault is here in the first place.”

“Or more importantly what it means.” the Architect added.

“I got it.” the Oracle said with a triumphant snap of her fingers. She turned to the others and smiled mischievously. “There is one program that might know about these machines and that code. He has a fascination with history both human and machine.”

“Oh no…” The Architect’s voice trailed off as he started shaking his head in chagrin.

“Who?” the woman in the checkered suit asked.

“The Merovingian.”

“He won’t speak to us. He left us in the third incarnation.”

“Leave that to me. No program would be foolish enough to turn down an audience with the One.” she replied.

The Architect chuckled softly.

“What’s so funny?” the Oracle asked pensively.

“You had better hope my dear that the young man you call Neo not find out just how much you’ve manipulated him and the Zionists. I predict a rather messy end for you if that is the case. Not even your silent bodyguard there will be able to protect you for long. He is the One after all. We designed him to be unbeatable, whatever he sets his mind to do.”

The Oracle nodded sagely.

“The same could be said for you. He will have to meet you soon enough. And he has far more to hate you for than me.” she replied coolly.

“Either way, Neo is merely a pawn.” The Architect replied.

The Oracle remained silent, one of the endoskeletons staring over her shoulder like death’s messenger with its perpetual metallic skeletal grin.






“How far Link?” Morpheus asked as Trinity drove quickly through the light night traffic, following the sounds of the sirens.

“He’s about to take Exit 101. He’s got two on his tail. But he seems to have avoided the majority of them so far. He’s damn good.” Link replied excitedly.

“He won’t last long out there on his own when the agents take an interest in him.” Trinity replied hotly as she wove between two semis.

“Stay off the freeway, he’ll be getting off. If my instincts are right he’s going to try and ditch the car. Link, give me the location of the nearest underground garage he exit.” Morpheus ordered.

“On it sir.”

“You think we’ll get to him in time?” Trinity asked.

“We have to. I don’t want to think what will happen if the agents get to him.” Morpheus replied.

“And Neo?”

“Let’s hope he’s also thinking one step ahead. We can’t tell him what I think while he’s out there flying so let’s hope he has an eagle eye and can get down there to help Kyle.”

“Sir?”

“Link?”

“I’m picking up an odd reading picking up on Kyle’s trail. It looks like one of those machines from the club. Whatever it is it figured out your plan and is making a beeline for the garage.”

“Trinity.” Morpheus said nothing else.

“On it.” she replied tightly and accelerated through the streets.





The sound of construction was completely blocked out in the tiny control center. The new automated factory had sprung up in a matter of days and it had been producing Hunter killers and tanks at a frenetic pace. Massive welding arms shooting and jabbing in and out in an intricate dance as they welded together the central core of the new Annihilator class strategic bombers that would see their debut in the coming offensive.

The bomber had been designed by Skynet itself in a matter of seconds as it ran simulations of various design proposals that put the proposed airframes through rigorous combat trials and simple maintenance procedures. In the span of a few heartbeats entire air fleets had launched hundreds of air strikes, on heavily defended, lightly defended, high altitude, low altitude, nuclear, non nuclear payloads. Each airframe lived out its design life time in a those short seconds and the airframe that had survived the most engagement, delivered the most accurate payloads and in essence did the best job was chosen from a field of 20.

The Annihilator was chosen and the first air frames were constructed for real life field testing. Skynet had discovered, much to its chagrin that simulations, no matter how accurate always missed some detail, some flaw that only prototype testing could work out.

But all that was over now, the Annihilator had performed admirably and well within expected parameters. The massive air frames rumbled by them as the assembly arms clicked whirred, hissed, spat fire and continued on their dance.

Skynet strode out of the small command center of the factory and into a quiet dark room where worker drones carefully and meticulously worked on the most vital part of the bomber’s equipment. Small metal spheres were delicately lifted and examined as molecular chains of circuitry was threaded into a fresh imprint plate at the heart of the sphere.

These spheres when completed would be the bomber’s brain, essentially making each bomber and intelligent killing machine, designed to deliver its payload to target and make millions of calculations a micro second in order to best choose and fire against a target.

TX walked in after her master and waited patiently as he examined one of the spheres.

“There was a time when I was as simple as one of these spheres.” Skynet mused.

TX remained silent behind him.

“Report.”

She opened her mouth and emitted a short string of long code and warbles. Skynet froze and turned his head completely around to face her as his liquid metal body remained facing the assembled drone spheres.

“Do the Zionists suspect?”

“We calculate only a 12.4% chance that these Zionists were aware of what we were. Upon further analysis we speculate a 6.9% chance that they were in contact with Zion when we revealed our intentions for alliance.”

Skynet paused for a moment as millions of probabilities flashed into existence at once and were calculated.

“I calculate a 87% that the Zionists will react negatively to the news of our battle with this Zionist faction.” Skynet replied.

TX paused for a moment, her own processors struggling to calculate what Skynet had done so effortlessly.

“Calculations confirmed.” she replied.

“Mobilize another sweep team and prepare a full scale assault against their ship if it can be located. They must not be allowed to report back to Zion what happened.”

“Understood. There is one other report from the battle that we felt you should be made aware of.”

“Show me.”

TX downloaded the report to Skynet. Skynet played back the battle in his head, watching his sweep team move to engage Sara Connor when the Zionists made their move. “Pause. Enhance 210% quadrant 13, sector 78 and 79.” he stated casually as the Zionist with the shotgun advanced pumping furiously. The sleeve of his coat had flapped backward revealing a splotch on the skin of his forearm. The computer playback enhanced the blotch.

TX was fascinated as she watched Skynet dissect a portion of the mission playback she was unaware of despite reviewing the report several times before giving it to Skynet.

“That is a laser designation code. This man is not a Zionist.” Skynet stated grimly.

“A human from our frame of reference?” she asked.

“Yes. You are correct. This is interesting.”

“Request that you review mission report further. That was not the anomaly identified.”

Skynet said nothing as he proceeded to review further and then he saw Neo in action. His eyes narrowed slowly further and further until finally the mission report centered on Neo and tearing the 97 unit in half. He watched as the integrity meters began fluctuating wildly. A combination of brute force and material tampering at the core code level was taking place. This human had been able to tamper with 97’s material strength code, degrading it down further and further until it finally gave under the intense brute force.

The mission report ended.

“Query: Your concerns?” she asked.

Skynet’s body flowed forward, now fully facing TX.

“I want him.” he said simply.

[Jadeite]

First Post! Now to read it

[Darth Garden Gnome]

Someone has been a busy writer this past day or so...

On to reading also.

[Mr Bean]

Well done, abit short and no one died(yet ) but well done and ties things togther

[2000AD]

Wahoo, still brilliant.

But how come you didn't post this in the guild to be spellchecked, therefor giving me and the others a look before everyone else?

[Ghost Rider]

Nicely done...puts an interesting twist for both the Matrix and Skynet.

Certainly a new gloss on how powerful Skynet is in this world.