Reality was harsh. Maybe Piper was on her own when she went into the matrix. That was irrelevant. If they didn't work as a team, they were dead. The world was too dangerous a place for any one person to see all the angles, even those involving just the matrix. You had to stop and think. You had to get other perspectives, other input. You had to think it through all the way, not once, but twice, and all the while stay aware that there was a larger world that might, maybe just by accident, get directly between you and what you wanted.