Chapter 10: Queen’s Pawn Promoted

The bullet arrived.

It arrived, but I was not there to stop it. Although I didn’t will my body’s motion, I couldn’t prevent it. Not when I was rammed by a compact form arriving at full tilt, propelled by desperation and love.

Zephyr.

I flew sideways, instinctively rolling as my shoulders neared the ground. Zephyr landed more awkwardly, having hit me hard around my left hip as I stood in front of the bar.

I wanted to scream. To cry. I didn’t need to look to know what had happened, when I was no longer there to protect the man behind the bar. Protect him with my body, with my life.

Davydd! I failed you!!!

But the Agent wasn’t finished. His hand was already in motion, tracking Zephyr as he spun towards the ground. I would not fail again!

I completed my roll, using the horizontal force Zephyr had imparted to come back to a crouched position. Without a moment to pause, I charged at the Agent, abandoning my useless handguns with their easy-to-evade ballistic projectiles.

The maneuver worked, as the Agent spun his weapon away from Zephyr to point right at my center mass. He fired, once . . . twice . . . three times.

But I used his damned trick against him, twisting and twitching in such a way that I not only evaded the ballistic paths of his bullets, but I also continued my forward charge.

And when I reached him, I had a different weapon in my hand.

The Paranza Corta stiletto is no slashing weapon. In an attempt to ruin the arm holding the weapon, I aimed straight at the Agent’s right shoulder blade. As before, it writhed and bent, its reflexes inhumanly fast. But unlike a bullet, my hand wasn’t confined to a straight and predictable path. I followed his body’s motion like we were performing a tightly synchronized dance.

The blade rammed into the Agent’s shoulder, severing muscle and tendon both. But I was barely able to keep hold of it as my black-suited adversary spun around, in the process shifting the gun to his left hand.

I tried again. He was bringing the gun to bear, and I whipped the blade towards his left wrist in a lightning quick feint. He spun away, but before I could capitalize on the moment he used the momentum from his spin to aim a round kick at my head.

I ducked just in time then launched myself forward to take advantage of his momentary imbalance. He clutched at me as I hit him, and we both crashed to the floor. The knife was wrenched from my hand, but I managed to extract myself and leap backward, once again landing on my feet.

I became aware again – I don’t know how I had lost that awareness – that the Agent and I weren’t alone in the pub. There were police officers all over; it appeared that several of them were pinning Zephyr to the ground where he had landed heavily. Arms were reaching to grab me, even as the Agent’s face melted, becoming Cleo once more.

But Cleo would never lead an attack against the machines, nor would Sir Anthony St. Claire fulfill his mother’s dynastic ambitions. Her face was still, frozen, and her eyes were open and unseeing. I didn’t need medical training to know that she was dead; whether by chance or by instinct, my knife was buried to the hilt in her throat.

In the odd, code-like world I could now sense beyond my vision, I saw the power line leaving Cleo’s body and going toward one of the officers who was reaching to grab me. The Agent would be operational again in moments, and there was no way – none – that I could either fight or escape it and all of the police simultaneously.

Zephyr was down, Cleo was dead, and Davydd was dying. The mission had failed, completely and catastrophically. We had lost. And we would go on losing.

Forever.

A boot stamping on the human face, forever.

“When the time comes, you will know what to do, and you’ll do it.” Hermes’ words in the simulator came back to me in that moment of complete defeat. Because suddenly, without knowing how, I knew.

The Agents could do extraordinary things in the Matrix – things no human could do. But there were limits in their programs, built-in limits that the AI had designed for its own purposes. With a flash of pure understanding that transcended reason, I realized that the AI hadn’t created me, and I wasn’t bound by those arbitrary limits.

I was done playing by the AI’s rules.

“It stops. It stops now.” My voice was quiet. So quiet no one would hear it, but for the fact that my world was suddenly as silent as deep space and utterly, completely still. Motionless.

I stepped around the police officers who were looking to grab me, ignoring them altogether. They weren’t important anymore. I could have leapt over the bar, but I just walked around it instead. Time was no longer the issue. I would have the time I needed with Davydd.

What was left of him.

I sank to his side and pulled his shattered body into the temporal bubble I had formed in the fabric of the Matrix. He was in shock, the bullet having completely pulverized his left shoulder, and it was beyond clear that he had mere moments to live.

I cradled his body to mine, weeping.

“Who are you?” His voice was a whisper.

When his question registered, my heart ached, recognizing that he couldn’t know what I knew, or see what I saw. Then realization hit me again. I reached out with my mind and broke another ‘rule’ that we had thought to be iron. “Davy . . . Davy! It’s me. It’s your Noelle.” The voice was my own, my real voice, and the arms that held my love were my own arms, smooth, slender, and pale.

My hot tears splashed on his beloved face. His gorgeous eyes, the eyes that had captivated me and held me spellbound, sparked with sudden recognition.

And the memories rushed at me, no longer a trickle but a torrent. I could see them all, like little bubbles – six separate lives, each with a greasy, plastic backstory, now easily separated from the lives I’d actually led. And Davydd was there with me, our spirits twined together like the trunk of a wisteria vine, sharing the memories. So many memories.

It was early January, 1998. A face loomed above me, suffused with ineffable tenderness. I knew that face – every precious line of it. She made a wordless sound, like the coo of a turtledove, and stroked my cheek with an outstretched finger. She was my world, and my mouth, toothless, rooted for her breast. . . .

I was bouncing up and down, for my “stallion,” my Tada, had me on his shoulders and was showing me the meaning of a trot. Up and down I went, squealing with joy, my little dress hiked up, displaying white tights and little black buckled shoes. It was a fine spring day in 1998, and I was five years old . . . .

“You’d BETTER run!” Chasing Davy through what felt like every backyard in Rogerstone, I couldn’t even remember what he’d done to make me so cross. I was seldom cross, really, but Davy did have a talent that way. However scrawny I might be at all of ten, I could outrun any boy my age, and none of the other girls could touch me. It was 1998, holidays had just started, and that devil Davy was about to find out just how fast I really was . . . .

Late September, 1998, found me standing on a bluff, high above the Severn River Estuary. A fresh breeze ruffled my dress, but I paid it no attention. I only had eyes for Davydd, who had always been my best friend. I knew, in that moment, that he would be more than that. So much more! And in his eyes, I could see the same realization strike, like heat lightning out of a cloudless sky. I was fifteen, I was in love, and life was incomparably sweet . . . .

I was staring down at the ring on my left hand – the ring Davydd had just slipped on it, after we had finished exchanging our marriage vows. Silver twisted in a Celtic pattern . . . a modest stone . . . It was perfect. His arm was around my shoulders, warm and welcoming, and his head bent close to my ear as he whispered, “Gyda'n Gilydd Am Byth, Cariad.” It was a fine and cloudless midsummer day in the Year of Our Lord 1998. Our wedding day. . . .

I bent my head, looking at the perfect child I was cradling in one arm. So innocent . . . so beautiful. She took my breath away. I touched her cheek with a single finger, marveling again at how soft her skin was, and a wordless sound of wonder escaped my lips. She smacked her lips and gurgled, reminding me that it was past time.

I raised my top, laughing, worked the flap on my nursing bra, and brought her to my breast. I could not imagine how I had survived twenty-five years, from my birth in November of 1973 until that extraordinary day two months earlier, without this amazing person in my life . . . .

Time stood still as we walked together, as we fought our battles again, as we gazed into each other’s eyes, high above the estuary on a brilliant summer day, as we wed, as we loved . . . . We touched the moments of every life, and everything that had ever been between us, all that had been wiped away but not destroyed.

Not every memory was pleasant, and the last week of our lives together had been utter, unmitigated and undiluted hell.

“Davy!!!!” My scream was full of terror as the car skidded, the wheels hydroplaning, a mechanical screech piercing the dark and rain-drenched night. We spun and slid, and suddenly the road was gone and we were tipping . . . . I reached back, desperate to do something – anything – to shield Bron . . . .

The pain was intense, crashing over us, shredding our very souls as we went through those moments again, and the brutal days that followed. Davydd in the hospital bed, his body and spirit broken; Bronny’s little elfin frame, so tiny in the casket. Oh, Bronwyn!

Despite the pain, I wished that Davydd and I could remain in that place of complete communion. In all our years together, we had never been as close as we were now. But we couldn’t simply live in our past. His spirit, one with my own, shared that realization.

I couldn’t suppress a sob as we returned to the present moment together. “I tried, Davy! I tried to take the bullet!”

“Hush, girl. I know. It’s alright now.”

I thought about what I was doing. With time. With power. Could I save him? Could there be a future for us once more?

He saw it in my face. Maybe read it in my mind, so close were we to each other. “Noelle bach. Don’t.”

“I can’t lose you again!”

His voice was barely a whisper. “I can’t go on, Cariad. I couldn’t then; I can’t now. Please. Please, let me go.” In his voice, I heard the terrible crushing weight of guilt, loss and despair that had destroyed him.

“Davy, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t! I want to fight back – Help me!”

A ghost of a smile played on his pain-ravaged face. “Always the terror, you were. Go on, now, love. Go on. Just . . . strike a blow for Bronwyn . . . and me.”

I shook my head in denial. “No!”

But all the knowledge in the world, all the clever hacks, all the pleas and prayers, couldn’t stop the light from leaving his eyes. We had shared thirty years of life and love and loss, and now, just as we got it all back, it was done.

My anguished cry seared my constricted throat, chasing after his departing spirit. “Gyda'n Gilydd Am Byth, Davy!” But it was too late.

My beloved would never hear my voice again.

So I was left to face the last memory alone, my mind bringing me back in our flat in Rogerstone, staring at the container of pills. Unable to imagine going on without Bron, who was gone. Without Davy, who had no will to go on.

How could I do it? How could I put one foot in front of the other?

I dressed myself carefully. The dark red wool skirt; the cashmere top, soft as rabbit fur, that he had given me for Christmas one year. The black leather boots that came almost to my knees. I brushed my long hair back, braiding the front quarter on one side. I did my face. One last time. Everything just so. Just the way he liked it. And I stared at the pills.

To be, or not to be?

My tears overwhelmed me as I relived those final despairing moments, a memory which intertwined with the pain of my renewed loss in a tight braid of agony. The control I held on the temporal anomaly I had created wavered, slipped. The sound of the world – furious, panicked – began to return.

Somewhere, I knew . . . . Somewhere, in some God-forsaken tower built on the ruins of a human city, a body was being disconnected from the cords and tubes that bound it to the machine’s world, and flushed like so much sewage. In the bowels of the tower, his remains would find their way to a reclamation center, where they would be turned into fats and proteins, now that his usefulness as a power source was finished.

And with that thought, my tears stopped and my control over the bubble I had created stabilized, silencing the world again. The hole in my heart would always be there, but unlike the young woman I had been before, I would not waste away in grief.

Not when there was work to be done.

“I swear to you, Davydd ap Owen, by the love we shared, and by the love we poured out on our daughter. I will see you avenged.”

I laid him down tenderly, closed his sightless eyes, and bent to kiss his brow a final time. I rose and found, as I knew I would, that world remained still, the tableau substantially unchanged from where it had been when I went behind the bar.

Slowly and deliberately, I walked to the spot I had noticed before, where the spark of the Agent program was attempting to transfer from Cleo’s now lifeless body to one of the police officers. Even the Agent hadn’t made much progress.

“Oh, I don’t think so.” I reached out and plucked the spark from the Matrix grid, the code lines that I saw with my second sight. “You’ve done enough.” My mind reached out and twisted, just . . . so. Severed from the energy lines connecting it to the grid, the Agent was deleted. I could almost hear its shriek of protest as its essence came apart.

Zephyr was face down on the ground, pinned by several officers. As gently as I could, I moved them off of him one by one and carefully laid them down, so they wouldn’t go flying into walls in the version of space time that their consciousnesses inhabited.

Could I extend my temporal bubble to cover Zephyr as well? I mentally reached out, twisted, and it was done.

Zephyr rolled and looked up, shocked. “Noelle?”

“Let’s get out of here. We can talk on the way.”

As he rose to his full – and in the Matrix, not very impressive – height, he saw Cleo. “Well, shit.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He looked at me. Took in my female appearance, and the fact that the world around us seemed to have stopped. “No, I don’t suppose it does.”

The doors were jammed with patrons caught in the moment of fleeing, but that was immaterial. We simply stepped through the window that the Agent’s evaded bullets had brought down. Without a backward glance, we went through the covered walkway and out onto Coleman Street, where all of the cars were motionless.

“Back to the Barrister’s Office?” he suggested.

I shrugged. “Works for me.”

We crossed the street, passing a string of police officers rushing toward the pub, oblivious of our presence. Through the windows of the restaurants that lined Great Bell Alley, we could see diners with alarmed expressions. Many were already out of their seats, mouths caught open in the midst of exclamations. This was London in 1998, not Beirut or even Baltimore. The sound of gunfire was not a common occurrence.

“You’re doing this somehow, aren’t you?” Zephyr asked. “You were dodging bullets just like an Agent.”

I nodded. “What the Agents do is a technique – a hack, of sorts, in the basic Matrix Code. It’s not based on speed. Instead, they’re able to slow time down, compute the ballistic path of bullets and move just enough to avoid them. I don’t know why, but their ability to slow time only works for immediate evasive action. It’s a completely artificial limitation though, and I discovered I’m not bound by it.”

“Can you teach us how to do it?”

I thought about that. “I don’t know. The technique seems simple enough, once I saw it. But I don’t know how to teach anyone to see it.”

We walked in silence a bit further, coming to Moorgate Street, which, again, was full of vehicles, and none were moving. As we weaved around the motionless cars, Zephyr said, “And your appearance? I can’t tell you how much I would love to look like myself when I’m inside the Matrix!”

I reached out to the power lines that surrounded me and made an adjustment. “Like this?”

My deeper voice registered and Zephyr looked back, startled. Then he stopped altogether, for I had altered my appearance to match what he looked like in the real world.

“Holy shit!” His mouth was hanging open. But for the fact that traffic was not moving, he would have been flattened long since.

I switched my appearance back and shrugged. “It’s kind of the same thing. Hermes provided the clue; he stopped aging in the Matrix decades ago, so ‘residual self image’ has no direct connection to your appearance outside the Matrix. It’s just code, and it can be changed.”

“If you can see it,” he amended.

“Right.”

We stepped into the alley that for some reason merited the title of ‘street,’ and continued walking. There were fewer people on Telegraph Street, but they had the same startled and alarmed looks on their faces as the people closer to the pub. The sound of gun shots carries a long way.

“What triggered all this? You didn’t have these abilities before.”

“I don’t know. Not exactly. When I saw the Agent dodging our bullets, I was suddenly able to see exactly how it did it. But I didn’t understand how to get around the limits the AI built into Agents’ abilities. Not at first. Not until . . . .” I faltered. Took a breath. Took another.

We had to get through this together, Zephyr and I.

He was looking at me, his pixie face showing concern as my distress registered. “Until what? Noelle, you look like hell. What happened in there?”

“Davydd died, Zephyr. He was hit by . . . by one of the Agent’s shots.”

The blood drained from his face and he looked sick. “Oh . . . oh, my God! That’s why you stopped dodging. What have I done?”

I didn’t hesitate for an instant. I pulled him into an iron embrace and whispered fiercely into his wild, spiky hair. “You did what you had to do. What I couldn’t do, no matter what was at stake. No matter how many lifetimes I lived.”

I squeezed his slender form as if I could imprint my words into his heart by brute force. “Now listen to me, and don’t ever forget it! Davydd’s death was not your fault! The machines killed him! The machines! Not once, but twice.”

“But . . . .”

“NO!!!” I could barely contain my urgency, my passionate desire to stop him from taking even a single step down this destructive path. “No, no, no!!! I might have saved him tonight. I’m not sure how; I’m still figuring out the extent of my ability to manipulate the forces inside the Matrix. But he didn’t want me to try! Don’t you see? He couldn’t stop blaming himself . . . blaming himself for Bronwyn’s death. Don’t – God, Zephyr, please don’t – go making the same mistake! We need you. I need you!”

I felt a surge of hope, as one arm, then another, slowly, tentatively — even painfully — rose to return my embrace. “I am so sorry, Noelle. So very, very sorry.”

I thought of my last moments with Davydd, and a tear once more slipped down my cheek, sliding into Zephyr’s hair. “Me, too. Beyond words. He was a good man, and I loved him with all my heart. I will never forget him. But that’s why I have to go on. I need to live for all of us now – for Davy and Bronwyn and me.”

His delicate hands slid across my back, providing the comfort that only human contact can. “Can you manage it?”

It was a good question. My rage, my desire for vengeance, was unabated. But was it enough? Could I live for vengeance alone? Did I need to? Should I?

My question came back to me, the one I had asked Zephyr after we’d made love in his cabin on the Belisarius. “Are our lives just one crisis after another . . . brief moments of vigilant inactivity, followed by running, fighting, running some more . . . until the day our number comes up we get killed?”

I cupped his cheek with my hand. “Not alone. Are you with me?”

He brought his hands around to touch my face in turn. “If you’ll have me.”

I kissed him then, even though he looked like a pixie. It’s all just code, and that means nothing. It was a light and gentle kiss, more promise than passion. I had just said my last farewells to Davydd, and I had only begun to grieve.

But I wasn’t a fifteen-year-old ingenue anymore. When Davydd and I had kissed for the first time and acknowledged the love that burned between us, I had thought the world was a beautiful place and we would have forever. I knew better now.

Zephyr and I were engaged in a deadly struggle against fearsome odds. Who knows how long we might have? Whatever time we were given, I was determined not to squander it.

A few minutes later, we stood in the small office that belonged to Sidney Westen, a distinguished barrister and aspiring silk enjoying a bit of holiday in Majorca . . . a human male, lying naked in a lozenge-shaped capsule filled with fluid, powering the machines that ran his life. Who would he be, when the Matrix next rebooted?

“Okay, Noelle,” Zephyr said. “Let’s go home.”

~o~O~o~

Epilogue: First Check

It was a moving service, and it felt like all of Rogerstone was there. Davydd’s parents, Owen and Eleri Carew, were the principal mourners. It hurt to see their once-merry faces so haggard. Again.

They had looked the same, the last time I’d seen them. After the car “accident” that cost them their beloved granddaughter, and tore the very heart from their son. I had stood with them at her grave, and again at his hospital bed, weeping tears that never seemed to stop.

In this version of the Matrix, Davydd had been unmarried and the little corner of the graveyard where I had buried poor Bronwyn was empty. Davydd’s remains would go there now. That, I could not bear to see.

I felt like I knew each and every person in St. John’s that morning. Mrs. Davies, who’d taught my second grade class . . . and who, four “updates” later, had been an older friend in my book group. Devon Terry, who used to pull my ponytail back at Eveswell Primary. Grim old Gareth Roberts, who wielded the meat cleavers at the butcher shop. Mary Hughes, who’d organized food to be delivered to our flat – Davydd’s and mine – when Davy was in hospital. I had memories that attached to every face.

They didn’t question the woman in the red wool skirt who stood in the back of the church . . . it’s the Lord’s house and all are welcome in it. But I was unknown here in this timeline, my history erased. Even my parents did not appear to live here.

It wasn’t home anymore.

I left the church amid the stream of mourners, but walked away, down Kensington Place to Chepstow Road. There, I knew, I would find a phone box, because of course there was a phone box. The big, red, extravagant variety that serves as a symbol of Britain the world over. I crossed the street, a cool wind swirling my skirt.

I stepped inside, closed the door, and lifted the black handset, seeing, a final time, the simple silver ring in a Celtic design on my finger. I didn’t need coins. I didn’t need to dial. I only had to think, to see the lines of energy, the code behind the pleasant facade of a small community in South Wales. Merlin’s own country. To reach out with my mind and tug just . . . so.

I was in contact with the enemy. I knew it was there, and it knew me. From somewhere deep inside, the words came to me. It was not a memory, I was sure of that. And yet the words flowed out, like I had spoken them before, or would speak them again.

"I know you're out there,” I said into the handset, my voice low. “I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin.”

I stared across the street, at the small shops that loomed large in the memories of my childhood. I thought about Davydd, and about Bronwyn. I thought about Hermes, about Blake and Dakota, Kai and Abhaya. About Zephyr, watching right now, as my real-world body sat silent on the chair at his side, a cold and deadly probe in my brain. I thought about all the people I had known and loved and lost.

“I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. . . . Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."

I replaced the handset, stepped out of the booth, and said good morning to an older woman who was walking her Yorkie, bundled against the chill of Autumn.

Then I looked to the heavens, and willed myself to fly.

The end.

Author's note: So the story ends where the original Matrix movie ended – basically, at the end of the beginning. I believe that the studios made a mistake when they decided to do sequels, following visions of dollar signs as they generally do. The first movie was an artistic masterpiece in every way, and should have been allowed to stand alone.

I want to thank all of you who stayed with me to the end of the story, particularly if you left kudos. My fickle muse generally just gives me the barest outline of an idea before she bounces off on the arm of some other, far sexier, author, so I have to rely on perspiration rather than inspiration to grind it out each week. Knowing someone is actually reading it helps me get through the blocks and over the bumps.

My very special thanks, as always, go to those who participated in the creation of the story by leaving comments – Kimmie, Rachel Moore, Dee Sylvan, Erisian, DorothyColleen, Sunflowerchan, Catherd, RobertLouis, Guest Reader, AlisonP, Dreamweaver, Michelle SidheElf, Eric, JoanneBarbarella, Dallas Eden, Alan, Asche, Dave (“Outsider”), Ray Drouillard, and Leona MacMurchie. Your continued support makes all the difference in the world.

I need to give an extra shout-out to RobertLouis for looking over several key chapters before I posted them, to make sure that my English characters stayed in character, as it were. His suggestions were always amazingly helpful.

Good night again, and joy be with you all!

Emma

For information about my other stories, please check out my author's page.