The Revolution

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.

~V

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.

~V

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.

~V

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.

~V

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.

~V