San keeps you guys covered as you stumble to the phones. Cloud is the unlucky one- as you guys jack out, Cloud is still inside and the Agent has caught him. Your jacking out is extremely loud and distorted, and takes a full seconds for each of you, as Ariadne's counter-signal deals with Melitus' obstructive coding. Obviously the others have been up to SOME good whilst you were all away.
On the Shez, there is noise everywhere as the proximity alert blares at full strength.
"They won't do us much good right now," says Dallas, in answer to a question you didn't hear.
He flicks open the EMP cover.
"Cloud's out," says Ariadne, as her upload completes.
"Got it," says Dallas. Still he waits.
-
The Percy races through the tunnels of the Real, the sentinel cloud behind it by mere feet. Some leading elements of the sentinels have caught the tail end of it. A hover-engine part is nearly sliced off by their cutting lasers and clashes noisily to the floor.
"Down! Down!" yells Finn.
"I'm losing control," says Marduk. "I'm trying my best. How much longer?"
"That's the last turn!" says Finn. "Cloud's out!"
"Get him comfortable," says Marduk. "You've done all you can do."
-
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" yells out Dallas, to all the questions being asked to him. "This is important!"
He approaches a removable drive and hits the eject button. A computer chip comes out. Dallas picks it out nad looks at it.
"Ha-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" he yells out, picking up his hat and throwing it into the air. "We got you, you son of a *****! We got their codes, and the System don't know it! Dallas wins again!"
And as he says 'again', he twists the EMP activator, as a screeching sound comes from overhead.
-
The Percy has flown to the Shez's position. At this very moment, the smaller ships passes at full speed over the Shez. The EMP wave explodes outwards at high speed, misisng the Percy by inches, as oit tears on by and outruns it.
The sentinels chasing the Percy, however, fly slap bang into it. For the next ten seconds, heavy metallic sounds are heard througout the Shez as the sentinel husks drop onto it.
Thirty seconds later, the Percy wobbles uneasily to a stop nearby, the remaining sentinels still cutting away at it... before the Percy's guns smash them into oblivion.
"Smooth..." says Marduk.
"The System's codes," says Ariadne. "Remember? That we came out for in the first place, at the airport?"
Combat Path is whooping and hollering, Rade. Also breaking out the secret alcohol stash.
"Plot us a course for Zion, Ariadne," says Dallas.
The ships are close enough together at this point for people to walk out and talk to each other; it'll be a few minutes before take off, and no more sentinels are expected just yet.
"Were you driving that thing?" asks Dallas, after embracing Marduk. "No wonder they won't give you a bigger ship."
"You know what they say about people who need big ships..." says Marduk.
"No," says Dallas, earnestly. "Wgat is it?" Marduk blinks.
"Never mind..." he says.
"Well, whatever. I guess that just about wraps up that one," says Dallas. "Though it was a bit of a freak-out of a mission."
"A few things left unresolved, also..." says Marduk.
Marduk is pressed about what he means.
-
Well, before we move on to the final, discussive period of the game, now the two Paths have met up, it is time to summarise what everyone was up to. This is a brief summary- a full stopry re-cap will be written after the game is over.
If you remember, you split at the CCC building. You were there to meet Jericho, but got jumped by Agents instead. The Philo path met up with Medea and escaped, but the Combat path were trapped in the basement after a large explosion.
Medea, acting out of guilt and not being happy at Jericho's plan to get you all killed, reveals that Jericho had used a 'spammer', a device used a while ago that causes deliberate interference with the Matrix that brings Agents running- it was used as a distratction; Jericho used it as a trap for you. Medea then described to the Philosophy path the truth of how Jericho and the Bounty came to be in the position they were in- how Jericho, one of Zion's greatest Captains, had concluded after a long strategic study of the sotuation that the war was lost. Although no-one could dispute his findings, he was forbidden from making them public. Soon after, Jericho- who had been in communication with Melitus for some time- took the Bounty out on a test run, without Operators, and flew it away from Zion for several weeks, pausing only to fake the destruction of the ship using parts from a previously destroyed vessel. His crew were all a part to this scheme. He arrived a ta point given to him by Melitus, where the System could not find him, and robotic resources organised by Melitus provide food, water and power for the ship. The location also has a faint point to hack into the Matrix. From there, Jericho and his crew could work for Melitus, in the Matrix- a place of safety and survival. No friend of the System, Melitus used Jeirhco in a similar capacity that they had worked for Zion.
However, Medea did not wish to actively fight Zion, hence her coming to save the players. She had to leave again though- Jericho controlled her real-world body, and she could not risk being discovered doing what she was doing.
Dallas, however, did not trust Medea any further than he could spit her. From this point on, his counter-plan was in operation. He told the Philosophy Path that the Combat Path was dead. He did this because then Medea would believe it and tell Jericho, who would also believe it, and because Dallas then sent the Philo path to 'reckon' woth Melitus, who would ALSO then believe it.
This left the Combat Path free to act without the bad guys knowing they existed. After a protracted escape from the CCC building, they met up with Marduk, who re-armed them, in time to proceed to Dallas' next mission. Tracing Medea on a monitor, he had tracked Jericho, who had just flawlessly intercepted the courier bringing the security codes in, thast you guys had been after from square one- new codes weree arriving after it had become obvious, after the firefight at the airport in Assignment One, that someone had grabbed the old ones. The Combat Path was sent to 'relieve' Jericho and his team of those codes. Sadly, their Heist went badly wrong, and Dallas himself had to intervene to stop the team being wiped out by the Agent who had turned up; Jericho and co beat the crapout the Combat Path and got away clean. There was some good news though- Ariadne had found a way around Melitus' encoding that was stopping you guys leaving the Matrix.
The Philosophy Path had met with Melitus and run into a dead end; Melitus was impervious to harm (or, more accurately, harm seemed irrelevant to him; you could hack his head off but it didn't seem to inconvenience him) and seemed to be able to predict everything the players would do, like the Oracle. The players elecxted to follow his offer of following Jericho's Journey in return for their release- not that they trusted Melitus, but they had little choice. Their good news was that Dallas and Ariadne had found out how to see where they were, and watch them.
The Journey was complex and will be anazlysed in more detail post-game, bit iot basically involved finding out the player's philosophical disposition on certain important subjects, in the malleable arena of Melitus' realm. This all built up to the final conondrum, where the players were set up against perfect copies of themselves, made at the point they started the Journey. The copies were so good that they did not know they were copies- in fact, the players themselves did not know if they were copy or original. Melitus would only let one of each person leave alive, and the players were then asked to come up with a convincing arugment to convince the other to die in their place. Of course, players being players, several elected to follow the idea of them tryng to kill themselves and hope the other was the real one... weirdos. Anyway, far more analysis- and scoring, though Trickster won, I shall tell you right now- later. The situation ended with the p;layers squaring off against... themselves.
In the final mission, the Combat Path comes storming in to try and resuce the Philo guys. Being able to take on Jericho's men one by one, with the advantage of numbers (in a set of individual duels), they fared better than when taking them on as a team, and emerged victious, though extremely battered.
The Philo guys, meanwhile, had to stay alive for as long as possible, whilst one of them who had declined to follow the Journey- Heph, in this case- tried to get the door to Melitus' realm open form the inside, which was the only place it ciuld be opened from. He squared off against the vicious Xiao Emo- Melitus' heavy. One other good reason the Combat Path prvailed is because Jericho was actually upstaurs squaring off against the Philo guys. The philo guys did not do well; Heph lost his fight, and Jericho and the copies of Rade and Castor defeated the others, but they managed to stay up long enough to be resuced. More to the point, the Philo Path finally got an answer to why. In Melitus' realm, they discovered his AI birthing suite, a room where AIs were created. There, they found endless 'shells' of each of Jericho's crew, and Jericho itself, and each player who was on the Journey. The further truth was discovered that each time one of Jericho's crew died, it was simply re-created in this room. This put some aspects of preivous knowledge into doubt. It certainly surprised Medea who, when she came to rescue the players again, found the suite, and soon caught on that she herself was a computer programme. Even worse, she realised her truth- that she had no choice but to side with Jericho. Jericho himself was a man of intelligence and wisdom, whom the players found hard to out-argue. But certainly there is much about him they do not understand. In the end, Jericho made the point that re-locating to the Matrix, with this apparent immortality, was the only acceptable strategic choice left to him.
Circumstance caught up with things before Jericho could kill the players though. By this time, the Combat Path had met Melitus and opened the secret packagae Dallas gave them. This contained an already activated spammer- a trick that Dallas found amsuing to pull, as now Melitus' realm was being invaded by nine Agents, who were there both to deal with this anomaly and Jericho (whom, as an aside, had been their target from square one, which is why they often ignored you). And so they did, taking out Melitus' operation, assailing Jericho and the clones, and destryoing the Suite. In the confusion, you guys escaped... just about.
-
"So for a start," says Marduk, "although the suite was destroyed before the new copies activated, we have no confirmation on the demises of Jericho, Medea, or the clones of Rade, Castor and Azrael."
Ares asks what Dallas means.
"Because Captain Roland doesn't do sloppy work," says Dallas. "I got a message from him in return to a query I sent to him regarding his ship discovering the wreck of the Bounty. He didn't just do a quick scan. He landed and salvaged the reactor core. The machine parts were all stamped; proof positive that that ship was the Bounty.
"Faked my ass. All that about the ship escaping somewhere, all that about being fed and powered... if she wasn't lying, then Medea had had her memories re-arranged. Bounty was destroyed three months ago. Its crew went with it. Jericho and the others are dead."