Brown listened for orders through his earpiece, though none came. Jones had passed the door of the room they were in 28 times already and was also aware that the Enforcer was operative. Still no orders. The Enforcer was transferring data, running searches but there was no way of knowing why, not without viewing his server connections and transmissions… And Brown wasn’t prepared to risk any possible repercussions.
Standing, facing the windows, Smith ground his teeth. Reading the Enforcer’s data streams had revealed that they were assigning Lucifer to the task of removing Anderson. After the wave of frustration passed, Smith had to admit that he found it amusing, in a macabre fashion. Let them loose one of the four Captains of the Cherubim. At least it might halt the rising tide of self-loathing that engulfed him every time he though about his failure to neutralise Anderson. It wasn’t helped by the almost sense of disappointment that radiated out from the Mainframe every time that Smith initiated a connection. And now they’d sent Lucifer… All because the Command unit of 0.2.8 couldn’t do his job properly.
In the other room Lucifer considered Smith’s unintentional transmission. He’d known that his connections were being monitored and had suspected that it was Smith but this self-loathing was something new. Lucifer was beginning to worry that it would affect 0.2.8’s capability to deal with the situation. From all the data that he’d gathered it seemed that it would have to be an extremely precise operation to deconstruct ‘the One’ and right now 0.2.8, or at least it’s Command unit didn’t seem capable of acting objectively.
Jones stopped his continual patrol as the new orders came through. Entering the room where the other two Agents were located, he noted the faint trace of puzzlement on Brown’s face and Smith’s tightly clenched fists. It didn’t bother Jones, it hardly mattered that the Enforcer had requested they be removed from this particular assignment, there would be others.
Lucifer didn’t pay any attention to the Agents leaving the building. Running through the list of operatives that would be available for this task. As far as he could see ‘the One’ would have to be trapped somewhere within the Matrix, where he could be held for the short period of time that it would take to engage in his deconstruction. It really shouldn’t be all that difficult if the right deconstruction sequence could be initiated… Archangels, Lucifer decided, as the semi-human bots were called. They would be best for the task. Half-human still and half-AI, they comprised the 8th Order, just beneath the Agents. They were also far more expendable… Not that an Agent couldn’t be restored. There were always back-up programs, no matter how badly damaged the source code, the Matrix always had a restore function. But Lucifer didn’t want to be going through that again. Though there was technically no sound within the Mainframe, there was the equivalent, which could be just as irritating, and, Lucifer reflected, there was no way in Hell that he was listening to Raphael’s shrieks of fury if they lost another Agent. Restoring Smith had been difficult enough, especially since Raphael had insisted that everything be rebooted exactly as it had been before, no upgrades, no deletions, no restructuring. Just Smith in all his teeth-grinding, infuriated, blue-eyed glory. Even a taciturn suggestion of some slight amendments had met with a baleful stare from his Lieutenant; 0.2.8 were Raphael’s pet project, his supposedly perfect Agents. Smiling slightly, Lucifer leaned back in the chair, a truly human gesture that he had to admit he was proud of. Raphael’s perfect team were proving to be less than perfect, even with source code taken directly from Raphael’s own and some fallen Ophanim they had only succeeded in producing, what Lucifer considered, a highly unstable Command unit.
Setting the trap for ‘the One’ hadn’t really taken too much organisation; Lucifer was one of the four Captains of the Cherubim after all. Surveying the scene from his vantage point atop one of the tall buildings in the area, he took one last sweeping glance at the pattern of operatives laid out beneath him. The half-human bots in various positions, ready to cut off any escape and create any required diversions; the three teams of Agents that he’d requested, positioned out of sight ready to close in and carry out his orders. Lucifer himself was in no danger. Not that he considered humans particularly dangerous in the first place. All the bots needed to do was keep ‘the One’ and his companions occupied, while the Agents moved in and made several quick analysis sweeps that would give Lucifer the information required to deconstruct ‘the One’, this human that called himself ‘Neo’.
Across the other side of the city, three idle Agents occupied another room in a government building. Jones, as always, stood with his back to the wall, perfectly motionless; a Combat unit at rest. Brown sat behind the desk, appearing to also be in a semi-shut-down mode, while observing Smith’s back, watching for a response to Lucifer’s dismissal. Smith did nothing but stare out of the window, though with his sunglasses on it couldn’t be seen if his eyes were focused on anything at all.
Just on time, ‘the One’ and his companions arrived, heading towards the deserted shop where the hard-line awaited them, to carry them back into the real world. Lucifer waited. He took the time to study this human and was unimpressed with what he saw. The great and terrible ‘One’ appeared to be no more than another rebel with a little extra ability. So he could change the Matrix a little, jump a little further than the others, dodge a few bullets, Lucifer shrugged mentally, this human had similar abilities to the bots and they were hardly a danger. The erasing of Smith was an odd point but Lucifer was convinced that it was more a case of the unstable unit self-destructing than due to any input from the human. Brown and Jones’ reports seemed ludicrous really, all things considered and if this human could manipulate the Matrix to a certain degree then it was possible that they’d only seen what he wanted them to see. Unfortunately that meant that Raphael’s pet project might have to be terminated; if 0.2.8 were that unstable then they were more of a danger to the stability of the Matrix than this human could ever be.
An unseen signal and the humans paused in their path. Lucifer wondered what was wrong and then he knew… He felt the sweeping of something through his code. The Mainframe making a last minute copy of his program because… Because the original would be lost. The human, ‘Neo’ turned on the street where he stood and looked up, in the direction of the building that Lucifer stood on. Lucifer could feel those eyes lock onto him, the cold human gaze sweeping over him, through him, almost like the Mainframe itself… And then the sudden chill, a wrongness that drew is eyes down to his hands, to watch as his code slowly unravelled. Watching as his whole being was taken apart, not just the image to be worn within the Matrix but the very source of everything that was Lucifer; and there was nothing that he could do about it, not escape, not retaliate, not even scream. Around him he could feel the analysis sweeps being run, gathering information about ‘the One’ and his capabilities. He’d wondered briefly at the time why the Seraphim had detached to give him his orders, now he knew, they’d expected this and for some reason they had paid their last respects by giving him a solitary death sentence. A slightly bitter smile touched Lucifer’s lips as he fixed his gaze heavenwards, away from the human who had destroyed him. His final though was that he didn’t understand it, neither his destruction nor the necessity of it… not that he understood humans… or the 1st Order, for that matter. Then vision faded, a brief flash of code and then that was gone too and Lucifer, one of the four Captains of the Cherubim was no more.
02:40, 02/04/02