They asked me how we're doing getting everything out of the old city. I wish I had a better answer. The old mainframe is turning out to be an even more colossal job than anyone imagined, Sentinels are putting more pressure on our freighters, and Command...well, it looks like Lock doesn't intend to budge until he's the last person there. We're making progress, but at the rate the Machines are moving...

We'll just have to find ways to slow them down.

Good work on that extraction, Troopers. As far as we've been able to tell, Roger's entirely legit. One more for the cause.

-Ghost

That's another spy accounted for--but probably not the last, and the code's still out there. We don't have much time.

It's an odd thing, to see a dead man walk and talk.

It isn't him. I know that. It doesn't stand the way he did--doesn't have the presence he did. But there's something about the way it talks... Maybe it's the voice. I don't know. Whoever made it did a hell of a job.

The Matrix needs a reset.

That's what the One was supposed to do--part of the intended cycle--but Neo gave them the finger.

Now we have to live with the consequences: instability, code artifacts, systemic errors, random anomalies, old data that should have been purged; and I have a feeling that it's just going to get worse.

On the other hand, we're still alive. Maybe we've even learned a trick or two. That's something, anyway.

Seems like Seraph's got a lock on commandos, if not on Sati herself. If the General was smart, he'd give her up now and go into hiding, like he did before. Then again, if he was smart he wouldn't have come back in the first place.

It's funny... In the past, the Machines have liked to remind us of how our human lack of logic led us to destroy our own civilization. If the General's any kind of indication, though, the Machines could be well on their way to having similar problems in their own family. And if that's the case...we're all in a lot of trouble.

Getting the Trainman back gives the Merv direct access to programs from the Machine mainframes. The only time that's been good news for us was when he brought Sati here, and even that cost the Oracle her old shell.

"Free your mind," Morpheus always told his recruits. Apparently, that's just the beginning of the fight.

Very few Exile programs can move things back and forth between the real world and the Matrix. The General can, and he's making the most of it. It's been causing us problems, but it also doesn't seem to be going as successfully as he would have wanted. Does he have some other ace up his sleeve that will save him from getting thrown out on his ear again? Sati? Or did he make another mistake in his quest for personal revenge for imagined slights? Or is his anger a ruse, and all of this a very elaborate set-up designed to start a war he still craves?

The General is still playing games. What I don't understand is how this helps him achieve whatever goal has led him to kidnap Sati. They say that he simply wants to start a war, or bring the System down...but I can't help feel that he gets a kick out of this on a personal level--military Machine or not.

It's been nagging at me ever since EPN revealed code echoes of Morpheus' captain's beacon. The Nabonidus, Anome, Sati, The General, The Oracle, Zion mainframe access, cheat codes, Seraph, Cypherite spies... So many things keep coming up, and most of them we're still scrambling to answer. I can't shake the feeling that they're just red flags being waved in our face--distractions. Is there something behind all this? Why can't I make the connections?

Ugh. My head's going around in circles. Distractions... We're all here distracting each other. From what? Maybe the most obvious thing? Is that what this is always going to come down to?

There he is, floating above our heads, glowing. I wonder if he ever really slept that peacefully.

Down below that serene brow, things are getting complicated. The Machines are being "reasonable." I preferred it when they shot first.

Or did I? The war sucked, there's no question about that. So many friends killed. So many... But we knew who our enemies were. Now... Are the Machines right? Are we our own worst enemy?

Hm. I suppose that's nothing new.

Liaison officer Concent led operatives Catzi, Verq, MindsweepX, Xintax88, and Tenshi916 to the Pendhurst-Amaranth head branch office on a mission to get information regarding Brenda Utley's disappearance. We learned recently that some kind of orders regarding Utley came from that office. The team went there to see what they could find.

After talking their way past security, they found a records office, where a new Pendhurst-Amaranth clerk helped them search the employee database for Utley's records. None were found.

Someone at Pendhurst-Amaranth is doing their best to make Utley nothing more than a memory. Unfortunately for them, we have a long memory. We're going to find out who's been tampering with her files, and why.

Reactors caused trouble in the International District, trying to get through a Merovingian construct firewall. Someone in Unlimit might not be pleased about the Mervs capturing Beirn. Can't say that I am, either. Will they get anything useful out of him--something they could use against the rest of us?

Anome's problems ripple outward. Surface of a pond... Sometimes I wonder if it will ever be smooth again. Then I remember...it never was. At least we've grown used to the warped reflections.

There's something going on, but it seems that we aren't meant to know what it is yet.

I just hope they know what they're doing.

Something's up. Anome's making a move--south, into Westview and Richland. Attacking warehouses... Careful, Anome; you might step in a mouse trap.

But what cheese is he after?

Niobe's good at a lot of things, but taking it easy isn't one of them.

She's still not back at full strength, but she's insisting on making public appearances. She puts up a good front, but she can't even get out of the seat by herself after jacking out.

At least this time she was meeting with Zionites. Oh, the Mervs and Machinists were outside, trying to get in, and whining up a storm about Niobe being thankless--actually, it was just the Mervs who were whining. They must not have noticed that she's already met with a large number of them separately.

It's interesting to watch her. She is getting stronger. And she's gradually coming to grips with Anome's betrayal. Niobe has been very reluctant to trust anyone for years now, yet she trusted Anome, and he turned and shot her in the gut. Will this harden her further?

You'll never have reason to doubt your trust in me at least, Niobe. You could have, for my failure to be there when Anome turned traitor, but it isn't in your nature to blame people for their own shortcomings. You may curse them out in public if you're really mad at them, but deep down, you blame yourself. I can tell, because I do the same. Maybe that's why we still get along.

She's going to be the death of me.

Just a few days after she's out of Anome's prison, and she wanted to go face about fifty of the top Mervs. "To thank them," she said.

"No *CENSORED* way," I told her. "You can barely walk, let alone take on that many of them if something goes wrong."

"I won't have to." She smiled at me. "You'll be watching my back."

I pleaded with her to let us take more backup into the club, but she wouldn't hear it. Didn't want there to be a chance for some kind of provocation spoiling her meeting. Finally, I had to give in; otherwise she might have gone and tried to do it solo.

I'll give them this: they were pretty well behaved. The Merv must have told them to keep their claws sheathed. But some day they'll come out again... I just hope it doesn't happen when I'm standing with Niobe in the middle of a room full of them.

Niobe is back in Zion.

It took a lot of hard work over these past weeks from our operatives, and from operatives working for the Merovingian, who decided to help us for reasons of his own. His man, the Effectuator, while sometimes maddeningly irritating, nevertheless was able to track down the construct in which Anome had imprisoned Niobe, after operatives aided him by tracking down network junctions, and clearing Anome's people out of the way.

On Friday, with the final network trace made, and Niobe's location pinned down, we stormed Bishop Imports--the site of Anome's treachery, and her disappearance--to pull her back into our simulation. Anome's men had sealed off the upper floors, requiring teams of operatives to free specific hardlines from his control in Bathary Row and Chelsea, so that the Effectuator could gain the necessary network access to disable these blockades. Still, with teams working simultaneously in Bathary, Chelsea, and Ueno, we were able to overcome Anome's forces, and finally, near the top of Bishop Imports, pull Niobe out of her prison.

She was desperately weak from her wounds and long imprisonment, and even her body in Zion had suffered due to its extended period of inactivity. But with the help of those around her, she somehow found the strength to stand, get to the rooftop, and jack out once the doctors had cleared her.

She hasn't said much since she's been back. She's still weak, but resting, and getting stronger day by day. I think this ordeal has worked some changes on her--for better or for worse, I don't know. People who say "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" have never been in a war. But if anyone can come back stronger than ever after something like this, it's Niobe.

The doctors aren't sure what lasting effect, if any, the cheat code she drank will have on her. They say it kept her alive, but it didn't prevent her from jacking out, as it has Anome's lieutenants. It didn't give her any obvious powers, either. There's a theory going around, I think started by Machine operatives, that the cheat codes mutated after Anome got his hands on them, or that he changed them himself, somehow.

I don't know about any of that. I do know that with the captain back, Anome's days are numbered. If I know Niobe, she's going to want a little payback for what he did to her, and what he's done to the Matrix.

I've spoken to some operatives who wished they'd been able to participate in the Ueno operation. I tell them not to worry; there's going to be more than enough action for everyone before this is over.

They're stepping up their attacks now: going after specific targets, trying to prevent us from finding wherever they're holding Niobe. Hitting these network hubs has slowed us down, but they can't--they won't--stop us.

I'll give them this, though: they don't go down easy. Fortunately, bullets come cheap in the Matrix.

Message Edited by Rarebit on 07.18.2006 08:55 AM

Message Edited by Ghost on 06.07.2006 08:59 PM