"The Xiao Emo is just a warrior," says Marduk. "It is what it represented that concerns us.
"In the end, Dallas repaid Jericho''s earlier compliment by, in turn, luring Agents to Melitus' hideout, where Jericho was also."
You hear what might almost be called a giggle from Dallas at this point.
"As our people made their escape from the factory, the Agents arrived and started to destroy all they saw there. But before this happened, those who had been duplicated finally met Jericho.
"They met him inside what appeared to be Melitus' AI birthing suite, within which were the inert forms, within cylinders, of the entirity of the Bounty crew, as well as our duplicated crew members, each duplicated over and over and over in an apparently endless string of copies.
"Poor Medea was there at the end also. She did not know that what she had told us about the Bounty was untrue. There was no faked destruction, no far broadcast point, no Machines bringing food. Dallas had already confirmed this with Roland at this point- the Hammer had made a detailed search of the wreckage, and found the Bounty's stamped reactor plates. Jericho and his crew were absolutely dead.
"What was in here... were duplicates of them, made be Melitus, just as he had duplicated our crew members. And should any of these duplicates ever die, they were simply replaced by a copy. Inside the Matrix, Jericho and his crew would go on forever. And Medea could never go home. There was no Zion for her any more."
Mors had never seen the suite himself, but could only imagine how eerie it must have been for the three that were cloned. The tragedy of Medea was also very touching to him.
"The Agents supposedly killed them all, but there is a likely possibility that his crew survived the assault. There were nine Agents in total, fighting their way into Melitus' realm. We let them in, too."
"Actually," says Marduk, "it seems very unlikely anyone survived. Logos had arrived by then to observe the situation after we escaped. The Agents completely destroyed the facility.
"It would have been bad for everyone there, but the Agent's primary targets were not us, but the programmes. That many Agents would be impossible to stop. We escaped, but no-one else was seen to. They destroyed the programmes, the backups, everything that was there. It seems that the lead Agent was the one Jericho humiliated the year before. He was very precise about the job.
"Niobe and Ghost returned to check out the facility subsequently. It had been recoded back to normal- just an abandoned factory. There is no trace that anything was ever amiss."
"An Army of Cloned Zion Super Warriors?" Barb questions slowly. "I'm amazed Melitus did not simply Activate them, I doubt even nine Agents could stand up to That many copies of Jericho and Crew." He continues, remembering all too keenly the Prowess of the Bounty's Crew.
Barb believes that Jericho and the rest are Alive... But keeps this to himself.
"Azrael is correct," says Marduk. "Melitus did not have endless copies active for the same reason there are not endless Machines. They need power to live, and Melitus only had do much to give. When one was destroyed, the power was re-invested in the replacement."
The scene is now of the Suite, with the endless cylinders containing dormant shells of potential AIs all around. The Agents are in here, some attacking Jericho, and the duplicates of your crew members, and a Medea close to tears, but forced to defend herself.
Other Agents are blazing away with their guns at the cylinders, destroying each in turn.
"When we last saw them, the Agents were closing in on Jericho and the other duplicates. It is very hard to see how anyone could have escaped alive, and all the spares were destroyed. Still, enough strange things have happened for us to be wary of thinking anything for certain.
"Except for one thing. We know Melitus survived."