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THE SUNSET
* 8 *
Amidst the hum of hovercraft engines and the rattle of weathered-and-worn plug-in chairs, Captain Helios glanced to Crewman Threads on his left and Commander Million on his right, lying back in their chairs already plugged in and loaded up. Among the rows of bolts, the patches of rust, the smudges of grease, and the bundles upon bundles of jumbled cables, the familiar voice floated to him.
"Good luck, Dad."
"Thanks, Hitch," he answered, "You too."
"Come back in one piece."
"Of course... I've got my lucky cap," he smiled, and flipped the old orange cap up then back down on his head.
They laughed gently.
"Ready?" his son asked.
"Ready," he said.
Bringing the head-spike connector behind his father's headrest, Hitchhiker plugged it into his father, then called to Unicorn. "Go!"
Softly, Senior Operator Unicorn wished, "Good luck, Captain." And he pressed the on-screen 'Load' button.
"Who-Who are you?" Aaron demanded, shielding his sister.
"Let's just say, I'm an Angel," the stranger in black calmly replied, as two more strangers on horseback rode up. "We're here to cleanse your souls."
Aaron looked from one so-called 'Angel' to the other to yet another. These strangers in black weren't Angels he'd ever heard or been taught about. And their eyes...
'Where are their eyes?' he thought.
Their eyes weren't human eyes... They were hollow voids... They were bleaker and blacker reflections of the night fire that burned brightly among them... and...
'Who are they?'
These strangers were definitely NOT Angels... But if they were anything, they were Demons... black Demons... but...
'Why are they here?' he began to fear.
They weren't here to cleanse their souls... They were here to take them... And that one Demon... the one standing in the middle... had a smile so wicked, so vile, that Aaron could almost feel the smile burn his soul into absolute oblivion...
"No, get away from us!" Aaron yelled, suddenly clutching the fast-beating heart beneath his tattered shirt.
"Or else what?" taunted the center Demon, taking a solid step closer.
"I'll-I'll..." Aaron hesitated.
"You'll scream?"
"Scr-Scream," Aaron now stuttered in incoherent terror as his speechless sister hid behind him.
"There's nobody..." the eyeless Demon took another step closer. With a single-fingered gesture from their leader, the mounted Demons rode forward, one stopping several yards to the twins' left, the other to their right. "Nobody within MILES of here..."
"M-Miles," the brother stumbled back, his wild eyes flying dizzily from Demon to Demon.
"Nobody... except us."
"Nobody..." the brother gasped, his blazing eyes dimming, his right hand dropping its hold on his hopeless heart... 'We have nobody...' he thought, the pangs passing through his anguished soul, 'No mother, no father, no family, no friends... Nobody but ourselves...' And Aaron searched in slow motion for his sister... Miriam.
Then abruptly, in the blurring blink of an eye, the black Demon flashed before Aaron and grasped his forearm with the unbearable searing intensity of frostbiting ice.
"AAAHHH!" Aaron nonetheless screamed, the freezing agony forcing him to his knees, and squeezing the air from his lungs. Twisting towards Miriam, he struggled to shout, but mouthed soundlessly, "Run!... Run away!" And he fell to the firelit ground in mind-frozen unconsciousness.
"Aaron!" his sister cried out, new tears streaming down her cheeks, new drops of despair dripping from her battered and broken heart. And she swung around to escape in the opposite direction.
"Get the girl!" the lead Demon commanded.
Instantly, the Demon on Miriam's left dismounted and in another blink, grabbed her left forearm with the same stinging intensity.
"NOOO!" she cried.
But this time, it was the Demon who groaned -- "Uhhh!" -- as the sister's emerald-green markings burned into his gripping fingers. Surprised, he released her, but just as instantly, the Demon on Miriam's right dismounted and seized her right forearm.
"NOOO!"
Finally, just as her brother suffered the piercing ice-cold agony, Miriam sank weakly to her knees. As she began to lose consciousness, she happened to glance at the incredible emerald-rising spire one last time, and she recalled Aaron's awe-inspiring words...
'...I felt something,' her brother had said, 'like some kind of energy or spirit... What if this fire was a dream?... What if this life was a dream?... maybe I can fight dragons with this fire, here in this life...'
'Did I feel it too?' she wondered.
She felt something, or thought she did, when the first Demon grabbed her marked forearm... a warmth... a warm power... along the length of her arm...
'Can I fight Demons?'
But before she could answer that question, she plunged into the cold hard darkness of sleep.
"Okay, Captain," Unicorn announced into his headset, peering into the smaller and simpler side screens of the Construct, while glancing now and again at the dense code-layered main screens of the Matrix. "What's your pleasure?"
To free the teenagers from the Matrix, Helios needed the full virtual 'hardware' to (1) hook them up to the 'camp fire' exit point, (2) trace their pill-disrupted signals to their real-world location, (3) relay the 'ground' signal from the 'Nosferatu' to their real-world location, and (4) pull them out through the 'camp fire' exit point. Only then, could Helios awaken their minds, unplug their bodies, and body-scoop them up into the 'Nosferatu'.
"The 'rescue' equipment," Captain Helios commanded, holding the sleek silver cellphone to his ear.
Instantly, from the imaginary 'east' direction, against the super-bright white background of the Construct, the cluttered cables and tables of technical equipment streaked along the virtual horizon, then streaked towards the three of them at an unreal speed. Just as instantly, without slowing, it promptly stopped at their feet.
Without a flinch in the sudden 'easterly' wind, Helios hung onto his rippling orange tie between two fingers, as his long black coat billowed behind his black silk shirt and black leather pants.
As crisp as a brand-new hundred-dollar bill, Million smoothed down the frayed edges of her slick blood-red hair, as the gusts rushed along the slim curves of her maroon leather catsuit.
And in a stylish Hollywood gray, Threads buttoned the clean-cut jacket of his pin-striped three-piece suit.
"What's with all the leather?" the young crewman noticed curiously.
As if answering the question, Helios instructed Unicorn, "Motorbikes... the best ones you got."
"Ah, I see," the crewman grinned. And with a split-second morph, he updated his residual self-image with a new three-piece suit of checkered black-and-white leather.
Suddenly, from the imaginary 'north,' against the super-white backdrop of the Construct, rows upon limitless rows of the latest motorbikes -- limitless shades of blurred white, silver, and black -- flew across the horizon, streaked towards them, and stopped at their feet.
Next, Helios instructed, "Weapons... the usual."
This time, from the imaginary 'south,' three endless rows of automatic and semi-automatic weapons -- three endless racks of handguns, rifles, and shotguns, each rack tailored specifically for each of them -- appeared, streaked towards them, and stopped at their respective feet.
"Beautiful," Threads breathed.
"And powerful." Helios explained more rapidly, "While Agents can take over live humans, the clothes on their bodies, and even parts of the human body..." He looked to the motorbikes on his left and the weapons on his right, "my guess is that their own rules will prevent them from carrying big unconcealable pieces of twentieth-century technology into any other century..." He turned back to Threads, "Fortunately, WE don't have any such rules."
"Y-Yeah," Threads stammered, blinking away his stare, "That's right." Actually, the young crewmate was referring to Million in her skin-tight dark-red catsuit... the same outfit she wore when he first saw her... when she was the enigmatic Maxine de Mille... when she and Helios freed him from the Matrix more than a year ago.
Bringing his cellphone back to his ear, Helios opened his mouth to give his next instruction, but was startled to catch Unicorn in near panic.
"Captain! Agents! An Agent is approaching the kids!"
"And the glitch? Any change?"
"No, Captain, none! But wait-- I see two more Agents... approaching fast!"
"All right, people!" Helios called to his crew on the 'Nosferatu' and in the Construct. "We have three Agents..."
"Fuck," Threads whispered.
Helios continued, "If they kill the kids, then our mission is over before it even began... But I don't think they will... And in that case, it's our mission to rescue them..." He saddened at the monstrous image of hellish Machines dissecting the kids and their connection to the program glitch, then raised his eyes to the heavenly-white virtual sky, "Unicorn, Hitch, keep an eye out for any Sentinel activity."
"Of course," Hitchhiker replied through his own headset.
Unicorn gazed into his screens, "Anything else, Captain?"
"Just a few more things... and we're ready for entry."
Just a few more things, and they were ready to enter the Matrix.
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