The Matrix: Wrath of the Grigori

Chapter 4: The Plot of the Grigori

By the time Peg had returned to the brig, the barred doors were open and Chime, Tobias, Uriel, and Quan were standing in the corridor. Red sat in the open cell. When she entered, her crew was overjoyed. There were hugs galore before she noticed Red.

“Are you alright?”

Red looked up at her. She wore a concerned look but nodded. “Fine.” She looked at the guard leading Peg and Peg understood. Not right now.

Instead, Peg turned to her escort. “The Patriarch mentioned a galley?”

“Aft, level three. Follow me?”

“Actually, I thought we’d swing by the infirmary first. We can find our way there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” responded the guard before walking away.

---

The infirmary was nearly empty. The Völund injured were nowhere to be seen. Peg found a nurse and asked where they were. Not knowing, the nurse got the doctor that had treated them. With a somber face, the doctor informed them that both had passed away. Their injuries were too extensive for him to treat.

“They were stable when we brought them in!” Quan blurted.

Peg hushed him with a look before asking to see their bodies. “You understand our concern,” she soothed.

The doctor paused as if searching the words. “We… we incinerate our dead. It prevents the spread of disease on this ship.”

Quan was furious. Peg motioned to Uriel and had him lead the youngest member of her crew out of the infirmary.

“Thank you, Doctor, for everything you did for my people,” Peg said and turned to lead her crew out.

As they exited, Marcus entered. Red and he met eyes. Anyone could see the disgust that hid just beneath the surface, tearing at the back of his face to come out. Safely out of the infirmary, Red leaned close to Peg. “I don’t believe them.”

Peg looked around leaned back to speak silently to Red. “I’m not sure I can, either. But, for now, we must.”

Red whispered telling Peg about seeing Marcus in the matrix and how he had identified Zion ship crews meeting. She also told of him mentioning the injured as taken care of. “I fear there is much more going on here than we are allowed to believe.”

Peg agreed. She was positive they would be watched at all times, but she needed to learn more about their new allies. She wanted to begin by checking out the broadcast deck and the Grigori’s matrix interface.

By the time they reached the broadcast deck, however, it was obvious there would be no secret access to the virtua-pods. The entire deck was buzzing with activity. Almost every pod was occupied. Peg watched as one emptied and another user approached. Each new user would genuflect before entering blessing their session. It reminded her of the people coming and going at all hours during one of Zion’s gatherings.

Tobias pointed. “That one just came open.”

She hurried to the pod door but was blocked from entering by the thin arm of an overly wormy attendant. “You cannot go in there,” he whined.

“And why the hell not,” Quan piped in.

“Samyaza said we could explore the ship,” Peg assured.

“It is for your safety,” the attendant responded. “You all have… implants.” The last word slithered off the man’s tongue as if it was about to make him sick. “Our engineers have warned that our interface and yours may not be compatible and it could send a feedback loop… I don’t understand the technical stuff. But they said it could fry your brain stem.”

Peg knew the explanation was garbage, but she wasn’t ready to make a scene yet. She thanked him politely and turned her crew back toward the stairs.

“You’re seeing this, right?” Chime asked.

She was. They all were. Since the brig, every Grigori they passed, everyone they had interacted with, cut eyes inspecting them. Each with disgust. They were only begrudgingly accepted despite the Patriarch’s welcome. If anything went sideways, Peg knew they wouldn’t have only the guards to contend with. They would face the entire ship.

Just then, the rapid booming of a body slamming repeatedly against the side of a pod grabbed their focus. Alarms filled the deck and a flashing light strobed on the top of a pod three rows away. The door to the neighboring pod slammed open and the occupant raced out pulling open the flashing pod.

“Agents!” the frantic man screamed. “She got too close tho one of those Zion crews and they couldn’t tell us from anyone else in the matrix and one of the Agents jumped into her! She was just erased and replaced by one of those things!”

The screaming man pulled the woman’s corpse from the pod and laid her down on the floor. Her pupils had shrunken so small that no one could see them unless they were only inches away. “I’ve never seen anything so horrid,” he wept over the body.

The attendant joined several of his counterparts and a growing crowd of onlookers around the dead woman before screaming for a priest. In short order, a robed round woman nearly as short as Pegasus waddled onto the broadcast deck. The crowd parted allowing her through. She stood over the body uttering blessings and invoking the Numinous to guide and protect her in the life that is after. She rested a hand on the mourning man still weeping over his partner hoping to calm him before speaking to the crowd, “May the Lord bless and keep you all. From ash we come and to ash we return. So, too, are we from dust, and to dust we must go. Bring this blessed child to the garden.”

“Wait. She was too close to those Zion people. Those heretics! This never happened before and is only happening now because they walk among us!” Peg knew words of panic when she heard them. She also knew that panic made people stupid and violent. She also knew the only “heretics” nearby were her and her crew.

The wormy attendant looked around meeting eyes with Peg. He mouthed one word. “Go.”

Without hesitation, she and her crew slipped from the cluster of pods and up the stairs to the level above and away from the chaos that would surely die down after the people are allowed to mourn. Still, a few things they said rolled around on repeat in her head. Agents never sought them out; never even realized the Grigori existed. They had done so little for humanity within the matrix that they went completely unnoticed for centuries. That was huge. But that wasn’t the oddest statement.

The other realization was equally appalling. They are entering the matrix in a manner that makes them indistinguishable from anyone still hardwired into the system. These people were willingly choosing enslavement so they could play tourist. Peg knew enough about data transfers to know that the energy doesn’t just flow one way. They were wiring themselves into the matrix and the machines were feeding off them.

Chime stepped close to Peg and uttered the one other thing that even she had missed. “You realize they weren’t incinerating their dead, right?”

---

Despite her short legs, the crew had to work hard to keep up with Peg as she stormed up the stairs and toward Samyaza’s chamber. The Grigori had been cataloging everything they could about Zion and her people. They have spied on her crews within the matrix and, potentially, exposed them to agents. They have derided and disrespected her and her crew. They lied at every opportunity. And they have now, most likely, murdered two of Zion’s people. Whatever these lunatics wanted from her was at an end; or it would have been if not for the conversation between Peter and two Grigori techs she unwittingly stumbled upon.

Peg grabbed Red who was nearly keeping pace and pulled her back. The rest of the crew took the cue and hid.

“…on this disk,” said the smaller tech. “To be as robust as it is, that load program is fairly small. Very efficient code. Whoever programmed this knew what they were doing.”

“And the blueprints?” Peter asked taking the petabyte disk from him.

“The Patriarch’s warhead plans.” He handed another disk to Peter.

“Is it true?” the larger tech asked. “Is the Patriarch carrying God’s wrath into the abyss?”

Peter smiled and clapped his hand on the back of the larger tech’s neck. “It is, brother. It is a glorious day. We have once again become the instruments of God’s judgment. Destroy the food supply and the machine source will fall. We will wipe every trace of the machine scourge from this world. First the source, then Zion. The world will once again be the home of the one, true human race.

“Now, go and prepare. All of us must upload soon.”

Peg and crew sat exchanging only looks in the heavy silence left behind as Peter and his techs dispersed.