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He found her in one of the common rooms in the base, the one nearest to the small cafeteria and kitchen area. He should have guessed she'd be there...the captain of the Ishtar, sitting cross-legged in a deep, plush chair, sipping on something in a mug.
"Hey," said Illyria, glancing up at him, then looking back down at her drink.
"Hello Lyr," he replied graciously, taking a seat on the couch across from her. "How are you doing?"
"I'm ok." The answer was brief, noncommittal. Most of the others would have taken it at that, and left her alone. But then, they didn't know what he knew. All they knew was that she’d had a major hand in what had seemed to be a spur-of-the-moment operation the night before: the deletion of the former Machine liaison program TIMCAMM, affectionately known to the humans as Tim. His capture by Merovingian forces had been hard on them all, but even harder were the orders Agent Gray had given over a month ago -- that because their liaison’s programming had been compromised, he was now a threat to the Machines, and any of their operatives who found him were to delete him on sight.
"I see you're enjoying one of our reheated, reconstituted, artificially flavored coffee-like beverages," the former priest observed casually, in an accent that threatened to cross back over from fake upper-class English to his usual Irish brogue. "Excellent choice, madame."
That made her smile. He had a feeling it was the first time she'd smiled since she'd jacked into the Matrix yesterday...since she and a few other Machinists just happened to be in the right place at the right time, discovering the location where their former liaison was being held by a mixed group of Merovingian operatives and EPN terrorists.
"Yeah," she replied. She swirled the contents of the mug, watching the steam rise from it. "You know, I've been told that coffee in the first Matrix actually tasted the same way it smelled. Perfect world and all that." She took another sip.
He nodded, but decided he needed to get to the point, before she could sidetrack the conversation any further. This was too important for her to keep to herself. "You, er, haven't said much about what happened last night, while you were in there."
She shrugged, still focusing her eyes on her drink. "What's there to say? We did what we had to do."
His brow creased slightly. She was clearly repeating what had been said to her multiple times since she’d jacked out last night. "Just because you had to do it doesn't mean you had to like doing it," he pointed out. "I was your operator, you know. I was monitoring you while you were fighting."
This finally made her look up. "Father Sheehan, you really should try to control this eavesdropping problem of yours," she said dourly, placing the cup on the low table in front of them and crossing her arms.
He smiled, noting her obvious attempt to change the subject, but willing to play along for the time being. "You don't need to call me that, I'm not a priest anymore," he said. He'd told this to everyone, many times over, but the appellation had stuck -- even if the articles of faith hadn't, he thought sardonically. "And if it weren't for my ‘eavesdropping problem', as you call it, I never would have ended up taking the red pill. Same as with BrightAngel."
Illyria rubbed her chin. "BrightAngel wasn't so much an eavesdropper as she was a voyeur," she said thoughtfully. "Are you here to thank me for bringing you into the real world?"
"Not exactly, but I would like to remind you of how we met."
"How you met me, you mean, because of your eavesdropping," she corrected. "I didn't meet you for a while after that, not until after you were extracted from the Matrix."
"You should be more careful where you decide to hold private conversations," he chuckled. "But I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in a booth in a restaurant, in a quiet corner near the exit. I'd just come to the USA, and to the MegaCity, trying to get my head together. I'd given up trying to reconcile my religion with what I knew was true from history, science, and archaeology, and I was wondering where to go next," he mused. "I was thinking of studying at the university in Stratford -- maybe learn some actual history, not just the ‘real civilization started in ancient Greece' line that we're always fed. I'd come in to get some dinner, maybe take a quick look through their brochures, when I overheard the two people at the booth next to mine. It turned out it was you, and someone else."
"Oh really." He'd never told her the exact details of his first encounter with a redpill before, only that he'd heard an odd conversation of hers that most bluepills would have either ignored or laughed off. But now she was curious. "Who was the other person?" she asked.
"I don't know, I never saw his face. But there was something he said that was quite strange, and made me stop and listen...really listen, and on purpose this time."
"What did he say?"
He looked her straight in the eyes. "I remember this as if it was yesterday too. The man in the booth with you said, ‘When one of your shipmates out there does this, he's touching your hand. But when I do this in here, I'm touching your soul.'"
She blinked. "Oh yes, I remember that," she said slowly. "We were talking about whether a redpill's mind actually left the body behind when it entered the simulation. He said that in the Matrix we were all pure consciousness, just souls laid bare." She cocked her head. "Why are you bringing this up now? It's been a while since you were extracted."
"I'm bringing this up now because sometimes we need to be reminded of things that we already know," he replied.
She arched an eyebrow. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"I was the one monitoring you while you were fighting last night. It was all there -- your reactions, your heart rate, your brainwave patterns. You soul, laid bare. So, I...know." He paused gauging her reaction. It was just as he'd expected...surprise, irritation, maybe even a little anger. That was good. "Have you told anyone?" he asked pointedly.
"Have I told anyone?" she repeated. "Of course I haven't told anyone, they were too busy congratulating me and the others for what we did." She frowned. "For...what I did," she said, her voice becoming quieter. "It was all over so fast. I barely had time to think about what I was doing...I just kept hitting him and hitting him," she said softly. "Like who he used to be didn't matter, and nothing he'd done in the past mattered. Like we were in Mara and he was just going to come out of a hardline again once it was over, just like he was one of us. It wasn't until afterwards that it finally hit me, just what I'd done." She shook her head. "When I first heard the order from Gray, I never thought I would be part of the team that carried it out. But I was. We killed him...*I* killed him." She swallowed hard. "I did it, even if I wasn't the one who got the final blow. I was there, I was part of it, I was the one that grabbed him so he couldn't be teleported out." She was trembling now, staring down at her hands, her fists clenching and unclenching. Unable to meet his gaze, she shook her head again in both disbelief and horror. "Oh dear God, I killed Tim..."
"Lyr...Lyr," he said, grasping her by the shoulders, then pulling her close and wrapping his arms around her. "It's all right. You have to let this out. You've been keeping this to yourself, keeping it inside, but it's going to eat away at your soul if you don't let it out."
"We should have found another way--"
"There was no time. He would have told the Mervs and EPN everything he knew, every piece of information they could have gotten out of him about the Machines. He could have caused irreparable harm, and would have probably gotten a bunch of us killed, both human and Machine. You know that. Deep in your heart, you know that."
She pushed away, staring up at him. "The last thing he would have seen was my face. I was the only one close enough to him," she whispered. "He knew exactly what we were doing, what we were there for, and the last thing he saw before his death was the person responsible for it."
"Oh, Lyr..." He drew her back to himself, hugging her again as she finally broke down. Her anguished words at the start of the attack, transmitted through the monitors, still rang hollowly in his ears. //Tim, please forgive me.// He knew it would be a long time before she got over this, but at least this was a start. The first part was admitting how deeply she'd been affected by it. The old platitudes of ‘you were doing your duty’ ‘you were following your orders’ ‘you didn’t have a choice’ meant nothing if they were used to suppress her feelings. She had to acknowledge that what she'd done, even though it had been for all the right reasons, had been the hardest thing she'd ever had to do. “That's it, let it out. Let it all out," he murmured, trying to offer what comfort he could, rubbing small circles on her back until she'd finally cried herself out.
"You know, Lyr," he said gently, a little while later, when her breathing was calm again and she seemed almost half asleep. "There's something you need to remember, that we all need to remember, in times like this. When we've lost someone." He paused. "If there's one thing I've learned, both from my time as a priest and afterwards, it's that the soul isn't destroyed when the body is," he said. "No matter if that body was made up of blood and bone, or ones and zeroes."
A few moments went by before she said anything. "You really think so?" she mumbled into his shoulder.
He smiled. Of all things, this he was sure. "I know so."