By Any Means Necessary

The code falls, but no one sees it as the rain lands on the black asphalt with a light pitter-patter.

The man in the black high-collared trench coat put the phone down on the receiver as he appeared as unseen as the programming behind the rain in the parlor room of a run-down apartment somewhere in Richland. He ignored the ripped-apart couches and lounge chairs, their stuffing, their coding, hanging out of the tattered exteriors as he marched onward towards the door, his sharp black Lucien dress shoes clapping hard against the wooden floor.

As he left the house, he inspected the code. But it was not the code. Not to his eyes. Not to the mind that so willingly accepted what it saw, and yet rejected it at the same time.

He spat.

"It's all the same. Nothing's changed," he noted gruffly, rolling up the sleeve of his trench coat and checking the quartz watch strapped firmly to his wrist. "She's late."

"No, I'm right on time," came the distinctly feminine voice of another human being, as she emerged from the dark alleyway and slowly crept into the shallow light of the lamppost the man had been standing under, outside the door from which he had appeared. She brushed her blonde hair to the side and continued, "What do you want from me? I thought you didn't care for my type."

"We all change," he noted, and pulled his sleeve back down, adjusting his mirrored sunglasses with the other hand. "I know that you've had a steady supply of weapons. I want to know how to make a few myself."

"You know, they're not going to like you for this."

"Not many people like me now. I'm okay with that, as long as I get done what needs to get done."

She removed a piece of paper covered in scribbles from her sleek black trench coat and handed it to him. His black gloved hand took it and pocketed it immediately.

"Mind you, there are things on that shopping list that won't be so easy to come by."

He simply nodded and went on.

"What do you want from me?"

"Nothing," she replied. "Our goals now coincide." And with that, she had disappeared from the light, and returned to the darkness.

He removed the list and looked over it once, thoroughly, without expression, without emotion. When he had finished, a simple grunt acknowledged the task before him as he stepped back into the building and disappeared, the black phone laying haphazardly by its hook.

The code fell, and no one saw it.

But soon. Soon they will.

By any means necessary.

((An interesting opening.  Looking forward to seeing where it goes.))

If you ever need some backup, I'm not hard to find.

By any means necessary...

He was seeing green, where they were merely seeing gray.

A gloved hand tilted his sunglasses down a bit as brown eyes scanned the horizon for any sign of difference, any hint of interference.

As far as his more-than-mortal sight could tell, there was nothing.

He took one last glance at the list he had been given and relayed the ingredients necessary to his operator before he set the shard of paper on fire and let the ashes blow into the wind. There was no reason to risk anyone else getting their hands on this information.

Perhaps it was an odd scene. A strange looking man dressed all in black from dress shoe to trench coat burning a small slip of paper with a silver Zippo lighter on the streets at rush hour in front of the Kalt Chemical Complex.in Kedemoth.

For a brief moment, a smile, or rather, a smirk passed his lips.

He took a step forward and mentally reviewed the notes on the list.

91% RDX. Stored in Kalt Chemical's Kedemoth Division in Room 38. Labeled "Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine Formula Five-S."

He didn't have the faintest idea where "Room 38" was, but he was fairly certain that if it housed things like this special composition of RDX, it wouldn't be easy to reach.

Nevertheless, he entered the building amid the efflux of Kalt employees who had served their nine to five sentence for the day. Some of them joked, some of them sighed, some of them looked beaten. Still others looked like they had covalent and molecular bonds still on the mind as they exited. But regardless of the demeanor of the employees he remained dispassionate and emotionless towards them as he entered the building.

It was no more than a few paces towards the elevators before he was carded by a security guard.

"Hello, uh, sir. May I please see some identification?"

He felt around his pockets in an attempt to appear as if he had genuinely lost his identification.

"I'm sorry, I don't seem to have my identification with me. Could you possibly cross-reference me with the database?"

Goddammit, Wanzer this hack better have worked.

"Certainly, sir. What's your name and field?" the guard asked as he marched over to a security cubicle, taking a seat behind a computer screen. He beckoned him towards it as well.

"Michael Crawford, Military R&D," he responded without a pause.

The guard's fingers tapped harshly against the keyboard of the security station computer, though the resonating sound of each tap seemed to pound within his head as if imbued with the same pressure he felt coursing through his veins.

"Hmm..." the guard paused for a moment. The man glanced gruffly at him and pushed up his sunglasses as he felt for the knife in his pocket.

"Right, here we are, Mr. Crawford. Let me just print out a temporary security badge for you. Working late today, eh?"

"Yeah, well, you know what they say about military deadlines. If you don't meet them, you end up dead."

"Wouldn't want to be in your shoes, Mr. Crawford!" the guard chuckled and picked up the piece of paper he had just printed out and laminated it quickly before he pinned it to the man's chest.

"There you go, sir! Have a good day."

"Thanks," he said roughly, as he took his hand off of the knife and brushed past the guard to the elevators.

---

Room 38... Room 38... Where the hell is Room 38?

He didn't really have any idea where to start looking, but the Military R&D area to which his fake identity belonged didn't seem like a bad place to begin. After all, RDX was an explosive compound often used in military weaponry. Undoubtedly Kalt would have less trouble attempting to hide the substance in a Military R&D lab.

He reached floor seventeen and adjusted his tie as the elevator doors opened. Apparently he wasn't the only one in the Military R&D facility "working late."

The floor was littered with security checkpoints, armed guards, and metal detectors. None of which did him any good.

He slowly exited the elevator as a crowd of about five workers entered the small silver box. He stopped one of the workers who looked particularly cheery before he could enter the elevator.

"Hey, sorry to bother you, but I've just been reassigned. Could you tell me where Room 38 is?"

The man looked at him a bit confused, "Room 38? Oh, jeez, I really don't need to be messing around with any of you guys. Well, I guess you're still new, though. It's at the far end of the East checkpoint. Just, uh, make sure you've got your clearances all filed. And once you've gone in, well... Don't talk to me again. Forget my face."

"Thanks..." he said.

The worker went on his way and the man found a nearby wall and leaned up against it, removing his cell phone from a pocket and dialing zero before lifting it to his ear.

"Operator."

"Wanzer, I need a distraction here. Security's a little too tight for me to get into Room 38 unnoticed without one."

"What do you want, cap?"

"Pull the detonation trigger on bomb five on the 26^th floor and on bomb three in Civic parked outside. That should be sufficient cause for evacuation."

"Five seconds."

"Thanks."

He hung up the phone and ducked into a bathroom to await the explosions.

The first was a roar of fire and an immense quaking of the ground. Bomb number five had gone off.

"Oh dear god! What's happening?" came a shout from outside the restroom.

"Team four, this is team seven, we have reports of a large explosive device being set off on the top floor of the building, evacuate the facility NOW!"

"Run! RUN! Oh, dammit, I just knew this would happen some day..."

It was not long before the slamming of hurried legs and feet was gone from floor seventeen and the stinging silence took their place... For as long as another five seconds took, when the car bomb outside went off.

But there were no screams to be heard for that particular explosion. No terror, as the crowd had already disappeared. But now he had to act fast. There was no doubt that agents would be about in a moment's notice.

He removed the Glock 20-C pistol from his jacket and pulled back the slide, placing his right forefinger on the trigger as he removed a knife from another pocket and clutched it firmly in his left hand. He kicked open the stall door, and then the bathroom door, flying through with his gun aimed towards any threat that might present itself. None did.

He lunged around the metal detector set up at the vacant east security checkpoint and dashed down the hall. At best he had twenty minutes to find Formula 5-S - that was if all of the bluepills within the complex had been adequately evacuated before any of them could be turned into agents. He had less time if any had remained within the building, and even less if any of the security agents remained.

As he sprinted down the hall he removed his cell phone and dialed zero once again.

"Operator."

"Wanzer, blow bombs one and four."

"Done and... done."

He hung up the phone and skidded to a halt as he reached the end of the hall. There was a simple gold placard adorning the otherwise white door which read "Room 38 - Specialized High-Level Research and Development for Military Operations No Unauthorized Entries Permitted." There was a card reader and optical scanner next to the door.

"Dammit..." he mumbled to himself as he backed up against the wall opposite the door and charged at a speed so breakneck, it slowed everything else around him. His coat blasted back as if hit by fierce winds generated solely by his motion, his ponytail whipped about in a similar fashion. He jumped into the air and hit the door with a supernatural force channeled through his foot.

It seemed to do nothing but make a rather large, leg-shaped dent in the door.

"Cute," he huffed as he turned towards the optical interface and snapped it open. He removed his sunglasses and stared at the inner circuitry of the machine in a mixture of despair and wonder before he opened his phone once more.

He didn't even let him say "Operator."

"I need a program for how to bypass or crack a retinal scanning device. Model number is AF93B by Metacortex. Chipset seems specially encrypted."

"Coming right up..."

His head twitched for a moment as a flood of information entered and was integrated into his memory. Suddenly, entry into Room 38 didn't seem so difficult. He moved his left hand so as to position the knife directly along a circuit in the scanner and swept up carefully. The circuit was cut as desired. He moved to another and repeated the process, and then, to another where he simply dug the knife into it so as to create a new gap in the chip. Finally, he very cautiously used the knife to surgically connect two of the circuits.

He swept his newly made identification card at the reader and placed his eye before the scanner. Both signals lit up green and the white door with the rather large dent in it opened for him.

Not much time left - this had better be somewhere obvious.

The room was filled with not only cabinets and drawer, but with contraptions which had no readily apparent function, despite their obviously flawless exteriors. Yet he wasted no time in tearing the room to pieces.

He ripped drawers from their shelves and rifled through their contents, he threw every experiment he could find out of his way, he smashed glass tanks looking for the RDX. But he couldn't seem to find it.

Finally, time had run out.

Slow, steady footsteps echoed through the quiet hall, approaching Room 38 as he frantically overturned everything he had been looking through and what had yet been untouched. Two loud, resounding thuds came from the only entrance into Room 38, and then the door, now dented beyond conventional repair, flew from its frame to the wall.

A spectacularly blandly featured man walked through the door and straightened his black tie before announcing his intentions.

"Mr. Slayboughn, you are under arrest for the bombing of Kalt Chemcial's Kedemoth Division and associated attacks on Downtown structures as well as for the murders of key counter-terrorist personnel as well as espionage and treason."

"Can't you see I'm busy, Agent... Ah, who cares what they call you? You're all the same!" he picked up the nearest weighty metal project and tossed it at the agent, who dodged it with uncanny speed.

"Resistance will not be tolerated, Mr. Slayboughn," the agent remarked as he removed the black desert eagle from his suit pocket and fired several rounds at him.

The man ducked behind the long laboratory table he had been searching, which seemed to have caught the first three rounds in the seven round clip.

"You cannot escape us, Mr. Slayboughn. Terrorists will be detained and/or terminated."

"Go to hell!" he yelled as he dove from the cover of one table to another, lifting further inventions off the ground and hurling them towards the agent as he removed the glock from his coat once again and emptied his first clip into the air where the government agent should have been.

"It does not have to end like this, Mr. Slayboughn. Surrender and join our ranks. We could use a man of your experience, with you knowledge... You could be fundamental to a restoration of peace," the agent said, simultaneously firing the rest of his .50 caliber bullets at the man hiding behind the table, which again served as adequate cover, though it received quite a bit of cosmetic damage.

"Peace is dead. And you killed it," he growled, lunging onto the table and sliding across it, emptying the remaining nine bullets in his Glock at the agent who had just ejected his magazine.

In his slide, he hit something which stopped him - a very large metal case with a very distinctive marking on it - a code character, with the term "Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine Formula Five-S" written underneath it in blocky characters with a molecular diagram drawn nearby.

It had to be now didn't it?

He grabbed the oversized container with one hand at each end, leaving both arms outstretched, grabbing onto the handles. He dropped the container to the ground and backed up a few meters as gunshots started to ring out from the agent's firearm.

"Escape is impossible."

Time slowed as he charged towards the container and the agent's .50 caliber bullets whirred by his shoulders and head. One. Two. Three. Four. He was certain to fire at least three more. But his shoulder finally connected with the container and smashed forward against it, pushing it rapidly across the tile floor with his body, up against the wall that held the only exit from the room.

Two more shots were fired, and two more shots were evaded just narrowly. He grabbed the container by the sides once again and dove out the door which had been conveniently kicked in by the agent. The final bullet in the agent's chamber was fired, and it both entered and exited his lower stomach.

He recoiled in pain but managed to pull himself to his feet as the man in the suit readied another magazine and stepped out into the hall.

He dashed a few meters and turned towards a window. It was a long way down. But there was no other way out.

He dropped the case for but a second and dialed his operator once more.

"Bomb one." he said before dropping the phone into his coat pocket and grabbing the case. Time slowed once more and the three bullets flying towards him came to a near halt as he kicked off against the ground and lunged through the window pane, but not before one of the bullets dug directly into his kneecap. He screamed in pain all the way down, and not even the explosion that leveled floor seventeen could overshadow his cry.

He used the case as an item to cushion his fall as best he could, though he could easily tell that many key bones had been broken in the fall. However, he held on to the case and pushed it with his one good leg to the nearest ringing phone booth, where he accepted the collect call and disappeared along with the case of Formula 5-S.

One down, three to go.

When this time he appeared out of the phone line, he made doubly sure that there were no agents immediately on to his scent. The downtown area, following the fall of the Truce was a virtual breeding ground for the suited government men whose only existence seemed to be chasing down awakened individuals and shouting "Terrorist!" at the top of their lungs.

At this moment, there were none, though he was almost certain that in the pursuit of the next item on the list, he would encounter some form of Machine resistance - if not in the form of a bluepill grotesquely contorting into the form of a high-class antagonist, then in the form of a group of redpills doing a favor for that damned pretty face they'd put in work clothes.

He slammed the phone into the receiver and stepped away from the desk and out the door of the ornate Historic District museum building, amid several murmurs and questionable glances from its patrons who had been waiting in the hall adjacent to office had used as a gateway into the Matrix.

As he descended the staircase without hustle or hurry, he glanced around at the swarm of bluepills entering and exiting both the museum and the other gothic fixtures of the area. Every one of them was a slave to the system, every one of them was unable to understand what was going on right before their eyes. But right now, every one of them was a potential assailant.

He looked down at his black dress shoes as they slowly skirted across the paths leading towards the district's Historic First bank, questioning how it was he had come to accept the use of such force, how he had come to feel apathy towards so many while simultaneously developing a much greater attachment towards a relative few.

The answer, of course, lay within his absolute belief in freedom, and the absolute nature of the situation at hand; the absolute risk of freedom being eradicated; the absolute chance of it being permanent.

And so, if a few too ignorant to know any better must die to preserve that which they would otherwise be willing to sacrifice their lives for, he could accept that.

Tired eyes peered over the edge of mirrored sunglasses as he verified the name of the bank and mentally checked it against the name that had been written on the list. They matched.

He walked inside the busy bank and casually withdrew a Glock pistol in his right, black-gloved hand, waving it in the air as his eyes kept careful watch of the people within the bank.

"You have two seconds to get the hell out before I start shooting," he unloaded three of the weapon's fifteen shots into the ceiling, "One."

Panic ensued as the bank's clients all fumbled to get out of the building, but the man just stepped forward to the teller's window, pointing the gun at her.

"Don't push the button and I'll let you live. Give me the vault key and get the hell out of here."

She stared at him, panic stricken.

He fired a round at the glass before her, then smashed it with a left-handed fist.

"Now."

Terrified, the woman opened a drawer and patted around it with shaking hands. He took the opportunity to wave the other tellers away with his gun, and they seemed to have taken the hint.

Finally, in a mess of tears and continuing sobs, the woman slid the key to him and started to turn around.

"Wait," he said.

She stopped.

He slid her a white handkerchief, "I didn't kill anybody. Remember that. We only do what we must. Maybe with a little time you'll understand. Now, go home."

She seized the folded up piece of cloth and bolted out the employee exit in the back.

By now, all of those who had previously been inside the bank had evacuated, and he was all by himself. His footsteps echoed through the otherwise silent building as he marched towards the lock boxes at the back, wondering how it was he would get into box 744 with only one of the required two keys. Though he had been given proper direction on where to find the box and its clear chemical contents, he had not been told where to find the personal key to the box, if one existed.

And so, when he reached the vault and located box 744, he entered a single digit into his cell phone and pressed the "send" button.

"Operator."

"Wanzer, I'm going to need a little help picking this lock."

"You got it, Captain. Downloading a lockpicking skillset to you now."

For a moment, his body shook, and but a moment later, his eyes opened wide, filled with the glowing knowledge of thievery.

He let out a quiet grunt and left the vault key inserted into the box and turned his back on it, returning instead to the teller's desk where he removed two paper clips from a few documents and took the opportunity to glance around through the windows at the front. Luckily, everything seemed normal.

He stepped back into the vault room and turned the key. Then came the trickier part.

He opened each of the paper clips and hooked them slightly at the end, inserting them into the lock so that both ends were facing different ways. Slowly, but surely he pressed the bended tips of the paper clips into the small pins of the box's lock, attempting to push them into place and, eventually, succeeding.

Next, he grabbed the end of the paperclips very firmly and twisted them to the left very carefully, so as not to let the small, twisted ends of the clips break or bend out of place. After a minute or so, he was successful, and the box opened.

Mirrored sunglasses reflected two racks of beakers holding a thick, transparent chemical fluid, and a grin escaped the man's lips.

Selfishly removing both racks of beakers and marching to the bank manager's office, he let out a sigh of relief.

"Finally, I can get a little done without interference. Who'd have guessed? If only it were always this easy..."

He pushed both racks underneath his left arm and picked up the now-ringing black telephone sitting on the manager's desk with his right hand, placing it to his ear.

"Let's get out of here before my luck changes, alright?"

He stood at what many in the Matrix might consider the gates of Hell. The Government Building.

There was no way to wire explosives to this building. There was no way to shut off its power. There was no simple way of walking in, feigning a heist and walking out. This would be a trial by fire. A final test of whether or not he could make it out with the final ingredient.

Figure the God of this forsaken world will give me his grace or his scorn here...

As the city's population brushed past him at a brisk pace, his phone began to ring.

He removed it from his pocket and opened it, answering with a cold "Hello."

"Are you about ready to proceed, captain?"

"Yes..." he paused for a moment, "But have her monitor the hardline, and keep her on standby to finish up if I don't make it."

"Affirmative Captain. I'm sending her in now."

"Good man. We'll be in contact."

He put the phone away and jogged back to the side of the building where a beige hand dial telephone was placed nonchalantly against the exterior wall, with a conspicuously long brown wire running from its input jack all the way to the nearest building - some many yards away.

It was the one thing he could do to prepare for the near inevitability of a chase - place an exit as nearby as possible. Naturally, the long cord made it vulnerable, which is why he had told his operator to have her ready to protect it.

He whistled calmly to himself as he walked away from the phone, both hands stuffed into deep pockets in his leather trench coat. He carefully inspected the looks that the ordinary pedestrians had been giving him as he marched towards his destination - imagining to himself that they had been rehearsing beautiful compliments for him such as "freak," "terrorist," and "lunatic." All without even knowing his name or history.

Funny how correct first impressions can be sometimes.

Finally approaching the front of the building, he redirected his gaze to its revolving doors, inhaling deeply before he pushed on the handle and marched into the small open-access area, entering into a vacant line where the guard behind the metal detectors raised an eyebrow at his appearance.

He swallowed hard and dug his toes into the solid stone of the room, readying himself for a charge. By the time the first guard had his hand on the butt of his still-holstered pistol, the metal detector was screeching, and his black trench was blowing in his own generated wind at around the midpoint of the hall. By the point he reached the elevator, the more armed guards had unloaded clips at either side of the room, putting a few holes in the bottom of his coat, but leaving his body otherwise unharmed.

His hand darted with an unholy speed toward the elevator's call button, hitting it just a split second before he crouched low to the ground, his chin almost brushing against the floor as five bullets from any and every direction flew over him, one severing more than a few hairs in the process. He concentrated hard and pushed off against the ground as he heard the magazines fall out of the guards' weapons.

As they reloaded, his momentum rocketed him up in the air further and further towards the high ceiling of the building until he caught himself against the wall adjacent to the elevator and the ceiling. He lingered for a moment as he heard the guards shout.

"Holy hell - what this guy?"

"Who cares - just kill him!"

"And yet, they expect me to be a humanitarian," he mumbled to himself as he launched off the wall toward the pillar not too far in front of him, avoiding a few rounds of fire.

He repeated the process to effect, maintaining a slow descent to the room's floor until he heard the ding of the elevator doors opening, whereupon he slid the rest of the way down the pillar, timing his movement so that the exact moment he kicked off of the pillar and into the elevator doors, they were closing, and the guards' weapons, though running entirely out of ammunition by this point, could not hit him.

The man hit the button labeled "B2," and took a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow before crouching on the railing just to the right of the elevator doors, drawing a military "k-bar" knife from a sheath strapped to his left arm, pulling the gleaming silver blade from out of his sleeve and flicking it in his wrist for just a moment before leveling it into position for a kill, if necessary.

As the doors opened, a man in a white dress shirt stepped in and immediately felt the cold steel of his knife plunge into the top of his head. He died immediately. The man withdrew the knife, wiped the blade on the man's shirt, cleaning it before he hopped down from his position just in time to grab the falling corpse and eject it some forty feet out of the elevator with a powerful kick.

As the body flew, he jammed the emergency stop button of the elevator and resumed his position, lest anyone try to attack him as he emerged from the elevator and into a vulnerable position. However, he heard a loud thud, and was surprised by the lack of any screams.

Pushing the "door open" button of the elevator and surveying the corridor outside the tiny metal room, he noticed only a long hallway, dark blue and seemingly carved of marble, though he doubted that was the material actually used to build the hallway. The man in the white shirt's body lay at the end of the hallway, warm blood still trickling down the top of his head and staining his already bloodied white shirt.

He glanced from side to side around the hallway, noticing several glass doors on either side, all labeled. He removed a small, handled mirror from a coat pocket and used it to peer around the corners of the elevator for any guards that might be waiting for him immediately outside the elevator doors. He saw none. What he did see, however, was a security camera hanging from the ceiling.

Carefully sneaking out of the elevator and pressing himself into the elevator's blind spot, he withdrew a silenced USP pistol and fired straight up into the camera. In a flash of sparks, it ceased moving.

The man pocketed the gun, keeping his knife in the right hand as he trod down the rest of the hallway, inspecting the labels of the glass doors, and some of the contents past them. One read "biological research," another, "alternative fuels." He laughed silently at the futility of technological progression within a simulation where time stands still and the airplane is the most advanced method of transportation available.

As he proceeded to examine the doors, he finally found the one he believed he wanted - "Kalt Military Research, Storage Facilities." After first attempting the slim silver handle of the door and finding it locked, he once again removed his pistol and fired through the lock before trying once again, and this time opening the door.

The room was much smaller than anyone may have guessed and, he imagined, was off-limits to bluepills due to its uncommon methods of storage. He opened one seemingly small file cabinet drawer only to narrowly avoid being hit by a drawer filled with files so long it hit the other end of the room.

As he rebounded from dodging the drawer, he scratched his chin and tilted his sunglasses up so that he could better see the items in the dim room. He rolled under the cabinet drawer and glanced around, noticing a lab table and a few drawers near it more suited toward the storage of laboratory experiments, rather than military records.

When he pulled on the handle to the lab drawers, he was surprised to notice that its contents were virtually empty. Of course, he figured that Kalt kept most of their chemistry restrained to their nearby offices, but he never figured that the drawer would have housed only one compound - the one he was looking for.

Next to the large, open metal case filled with vials of a liquid rubber compound, he clenched a small note scribbled on loose-leaf paper in his black-gloved hand and read it to himself.

Thought I'd make this one easy for you. -S

He grinned slightly and pocketed the note, closing and clasping the metal case with only a glance at its contents before pushing it under his left arm and storming back toward the open doors of the elevator.

So far so...

But his thoughts were interrupted by the hard crash of feet against the elevator's roof right as he re-enabled its function.

Well, *poop*, I shouldn't have figured it would be so easy.

He pushed the button marked "G," and dropped his k-bar before removing an Ingram MAC-11 from the coat pocket opposite the one housing his USP. Uncaringly, he slid the top of the weapon against his chin, pushing the disc at the top back, effectively cocking the weapon and preparing it for battle.

"Whoah, wha-?" he heard a grunt as feet shifted uneasily against the rising ceiling of the elevator.

"Seems like we got a live one, boys," he heard another voice say.

Silently, he pointed his weapon upward toward the first voice, and fired a three round burst which shredded the metal of the elevator's top and, apparently, dug into the man leg.

"AH! OH, SON OF A *CENSORED*! HE'S ARMED, GET HIM, GET HIM!"

The man dove to the rear corner of the elevator as several semi-automatic shots opened small portholes to the top of the small, moving room. He raised his weapon once more and fired another burst into the man he had hit before, hearing a satisfying scream as each round dug into his body, finally resulting in a loud thud as the man collapsed against the steel below him.

"Oh Jesus... Jesus... I don't want to die here..."

"Shut up Arnold. There's only one of him, and he's trapped in that little cell. Let's just hurry the *CENSORED* up and get down in there."

"*poop* Jesse, you saw what he did to Jake, what's to stop him from doing that to us when we open..."

"Just shut the *CENSORED* up and let's get him."

They fired down into the cell once again, and continued to hit nothing but the floor of the elevator as it the light above the door blinked "B1."

"Go, go - what the..." the voice tapered off as the service door to the elevator was kicked open and one of the men on top was thrown helplessly into the tiny room, where he was promptly met with a rip of gunfire, and became lifeless as it met the floor.

As the elevator continued to rise, another body dropped in far more quickly than the last, far too quickly for gunfire to hit it. The black-suited man stood upon the tactical guard's corpse and adjusted his clipped tie before reaching his right hand backward and flipping the elevator's operation controls to "off."

"Seizing government property without a proper requisition is a federal offense, Mr. Slayboughn," the man said without emotion, casually removing a black Desert Eagle pistol from the inside of his suit and pulling back the slide on it.

"And here I thought harming government employees was too - but hey, I guess you need to break a few rules to uphold them," he growled, diving off the wall he was stationed at and flipping midair, his heel heading towards the agent's head.

The agent easily moved his head out of the way, making it seem as if he were merely cracking his neck, as the heel of the man's dress shoe caught the elevator's operation switch and flicked it back up to "on" with a kick, he rolled and landed behind the agent.

"Resistance is futile, Mr. Slayboughn. You really should have joined our... organization... when you had the chance," the agent spoke, playing down the shift that his feet had given as the elevator resumed its charge towards the main level. The agent slammed his hand down against the control, halting the elevator's travel once more before he sent a round from his Desert Eagle toward the man, narrowly clipping his ear with the large .50 caliber round.

The man whipped his fist back against the elevator operation switch and pushed it back to "on."

"You're really going to use a clumsy little gun like that on me here, damaging government property? I thought that was against the rules too. My, my, the sacrifices we're willing to make. Perhaps you understand this more than you'd like to believe you do."

He dropped the MAC-11 from his right hand and swung a fist furiously at the suited program, praying for a connection, though knowing its impossibility, he did his best to guard the switch with the metal case under his left shoulder.

The agent, having dodged two of the man's punches dropped his weapon just in time to vocalize a "Very well, Mr. Slayboughn. Your pain may be an extension of my form if that is what you wish. He could have sworn he saw a grin on the program's face as fists flew at furious speed into his face and gut, thrusting him up against the elevator doors a split second before they opened, forcing him to tumble backward through them, and onto the floor of the government lobby, where the many guards who had fired at him before prepared their weapons for arrest or, possibly worse.

And then one fell, a rush of blood flying through his head. And then another fell with a scream, and another, and another.

The agent quirked an eyebrow as the security guards fell to the ground in a bloody mess and, about to launch a kick at the man in the trench coat on the ground, he reacted quickly to dodge the fifty caliber round flying from the barrel of Microcoulomb's Barret sniper rifle, giving the man just enough time to recover to his feet and start dashing out of the building, through the large pillared hallway, though the metal detector, through the broken glass of the windows where she had fired the bullets that killed the security agents.

And just as he had leapt out of the window, he felt a sharp tug on the collar of his trench coat. The agent had caught up with him. Another bullet whipped by his head, toward the agent, but it retained its grip on his collar, pulling him into a neck grip. He attempted to hit the agent to beat him away, the agent grabbed his arm and contorted it into pain. As bullets continued to miss the agent who had prominently placed himself behind the so-called terrorist, using him as a human shield, the man cried out.

"Do it!"

She took the shot that pierced the man's skull, leaving him lifeless and bloody on the ground. She took the shot that shattered the agent's glasses, forcing his form back into that of a lifeless tactical security guard, into a body which fell beside the man's.

She leapt off of the building and examined their bodies for but a moment before seizing the metal case that had dropped out from under his arm and rushed to the phone that they had placed, picking up the ringing receiver and disappearing after a brief utterance of...

"Is he okay?"

##Begin Visual Feed
##Camera Feed Downloading From Furihata Area
##Visuals Retrieved

##Begin Audio Feed
##Downloading Audio Feed TIN809B
##Audio Retrieved

Man: You have something that I want.

Man: You have-

Tin Can: Ah yes. The militant. She told me you'd be coming here. I'll need you to do a few favors for me.

Tin Can: First-

Man: No. No, I've jumped through enough hoops. You're just going to hand over as much oil as your well's produced in the last three years.

Tin Can: Hah! And what makes you think that I'll do that?

Man: ...See this gun?

Man: ...Heh.

Tin Can: You really think that'll work on me?

It's in the bullet, you see. Enough to rip you to shreds and make it... difficult... if not impossible, for you to put yourself back together. It's no love lost on my part.

Tin Can: ...Alright... Let me just get it.

Man: Good boy.

Tin Can: There you go, enough to last a *CENSORED* lifetime. Now just let me be. And don't come back.

##Voice and Image Analysis Complete

Neoteny: ...I won't.

That night, the first of many code bombs were fashioned in the Loading Construct program of the man, Neoteny's, hovercraft, The Saltpillar.

That night, they looked on with a mixture of awe and horror as the first bomb was detonated in the center of Baldwin Heights.

It was a success.

"God help us all..."

[[Brilliant! Great use of detail...well done screenshots]]

I underestimated you....

Gotta love those EPN code bombs.

Illyria

Neoteny's a Zionite.

Gotta love that Machinist ignorance.

Three months prior.

He stood at the threshold of wisdom. The door to the Oracle's apartment. She had called him in order to arrange an appointment, for even for all of her supposed omniscience, she still needed to act in order to get any sort of result.

He wasn't certain whether or not to go. His trust in her power and benevolence was at an all time low, though, admittedly that wasn't much lower than normal. The war had been waging for a time, without cease, until this mysterious wireframed "intruder" had shown up in the Matrix. And then, there was nothing.

He wasn't sure whether to rejoice or whether to mourn the loss of action. Granted, Zion had been on the losing side and a lack of Machine acton had given them ample time to make strike upon strike against the Machines, but they were... preoccupied... by the intruder as well.

Too preoccupied. No one was doing a *censored* thing. He couldn't stand it.

If ever there was a time for the Oracle's wisdom, this was it. And if it turned out to be hokus pokus, he wouldn't let her waste his time.

He didn't bother knocking. He knew he was on time.

Seraph opened the door and stepped aside with a grace Neoteny had grown accustomed to after watching him both on video and in the field. He clapped his hand on the program's shoulder and brushed past him and through the large living room of especially gifted children into the room where he knew she was waiting.

The kitchen.

She sat at a small, wooden chair, nibbling gingerly at a cookie and looking up at him through thin, rectangular glasses positioned low on the bridge of her nose.

"My, my. You've changed so much."

"I'm worried that I haven't changed at all."

"Oh no, honey, no. These eyes never lie," she paused for a moment and pushed a tray of cookies towards him, a gesture which received only a slight raise of a flat hand in refusal. "Once there was a boy who was uncertain where to go. While I liked the fact that that boy came to me more often, he had no resolve. He simply did. Later on, that boy found a voice, but he was still going with the tide. Now, admittedly I liked that tide, but I suppose it was destined to crash."

"And now?"

"You've got resolve, kiddo. There's no question about it. But the guppee's become a shark. You're not small enough for this pond anymore."

"I don't even take in the same kind of water."

"So where do you go?"

He scratched his chin for a moment and shrugged.

"I've always done what I've done for Zion. For a free humanity. That direction isn't changing anytime soon."

"So you're still swimming with the current, eh?" she grinned and lit up a cigarette.

"These days it feels more like I'm swimming against it. I had friends that saw things the same way that I did during the Truce. People who worked with me towards a Man-Machine alliance. People who now do everything they can to condemn me, to condemn Zion - to kill us - all because the Machines changed their policies. I've had former comrades who have gone Cypherite of all *censored* things. And now, more importantly, my friends, my superiors in Zion, don't even see the writing on the wall. They're giving up on war first chance they get because no one is using their goddamn head to come up with an attack plan, and no one is risking their *censored* to make one work."

"Maybe they haven't forgotten the peace they worked to maintain."

"That's a load of bull. They know that when this falls down, the Machines will be right back our doorstep roaring to tear down the door and rip our skin open."

"So what do you propose to do?"

He paused for a moment, looking down at his lucien dress shoes before looking back up and straightening the black leather collar of his trench coat.

"You already know, don't you?"

"But you don't believe that. So tell me yourself."

"Increase military strikes on Cypherite and Machinist vessels in the Real. Conceive of a way to attack the Machine city by proxy, since direct strikes are going to be suicide - Wireframe man or not."

"And?"

"Do what they tried to do in the old days. Take out the Matrix."

"You're aware the Frenchman has evidence-"

"I'm wary of any of his evidence. I'm aware that they have their ways of maintaining survival without the Matrix, but I've heard they're undesirable."

"And..."

"Forcing them into those ways might be a good way of ushering in a new Truce if nothing else. Otherwise, it will cripple them and give us an advantage similar to the ones they've been taking over us."

"Do you really think you can force peace?"

"If we actually work to maintain it and can uphold the power in this one, what difference does the way it was initiated matter? This one was brought about in the most cooperative method possible, and look where it's gone."

She took a long drag from her cigarette and nodded sadly.

"I can't argue with you there."

"So?"

"So, what?"

"So, aren't you going to offer me some sort of advice on what to do? Aren't you supposed to tell me that I'm a madman and that there's no hope in this kind of thing?"

She laughed.

"Honey, I think you gave yourself all the advice you needed just now. Besides, if I gave you advice, you woldn't listen to it anyhow. The same goes if I would try to stop you."

A slight grin escaped his otherwise emotionless face.

"Well, you're right, there."

He turned his back and made to walk away.

"Aren't you going to even say goodbye?" she asked, a hint of jest in her tone.

"What's the point? We'll see each other again."

"Oh, I doubt it," she muttered, still with an intonation of joy. "Take care, honey. I don't think you'll have any problem finding your way."

"That, I do doubt. Very much," he growled as his sharp black styled dress shoes lay down against the carpeted hallway outside her apartment and the door behind him was shut by the same pair of simulated fighting hands that had opened it for him.

Though still in question of himself, his motives, and more importantly, his intended actions, something felt more clear. His direction, his purpose. His thoughts seemed less muddled and these concepts which he had considered as bordering on the immoral began to seem more necessary than wicked.

He knew that they were still wicked, but he could accept that evil in exchange for the good they had the power to bring about.

Finally he realized what Morpheus must have realized. To achieve your goal, you must be willing to do so by any means necessary. As long as the end good will outweigh the evil necessary to accomplish that goal, it was a viable option. Before, he had hated himself for even considering it.

Now...

He realized that it was the only viable option out there. "Any means necessary" was the only means necessary.

And so, he set out to hatred, to fear, to self-loathing, and to death. And a sliver of the hope of success.