Part 2
"Morpheus thought I was the One, once."
"No shit." Neo craned his neck up to see her, propping his chin on his crossed arms. He was stretched out full-length on his belly amid the hopelessly tangled blankets, Trinity curled in a relaxed position slightly at an angle to him. Their heads lay near each other, near enough that either could lean forward and claim a kiss if they wished it. After they realized that resuming their separate quarters again was quite out of the question-there was no point in it, after all-they had gone to work with saws and welders, enlarging the bunk-box that made up Trinity’s bed. Her cabin was slightly larger than Neo’s, and it only made sense for them to make the most of the space if two adults were to share the same cabin.
She wasn’t looking directly at him, but she was talking and Neo figured that was a good thing. Information about the problems in Zion, information about the other members of the crew-that was all forthcoming. But information about her private life, or before she was unplugged…even now, weeks after they’d first made love, she spoke little enough about that and what little she said was forcibly dragged out of her.
But here she was, in the aftermath of love, speaking of her own free will. Neo didn’t know whether to act enthralled or to pretend this was an everyday occurrence-didn’t know how to keep her talking.
"I’m serious."
"What happened?"
She sighed and shifted, pulling one of their many blankets up to more fully cover her body. The Neb was always cold, but there were plenty of blankets for those who wished to make use of them. "I was raised a good Catholic by my parents," she said softly, the words filled with sarcastic intent. "My mother stayed home with the children, my father was an accountant and a religious philosopher of sorts." She shifted in the blankets again, and Neo reached out a hand to trap her fingers. He pressed his palm to hers, playing with her fingers and trying to lend her comfort to continue.
"It was a very…patriarchal household. I never questioned anything my father said. My mother never questioned anything." She shook her head, knowing that the memories she shared weren’t technically real, but…they had been real for her. They had been real, and even now, years and miles and realities separating her from them, they were still frightening in their intensity. "I heard things. Things that weren’t really there. At first my mother didn’t worry. She thought I had normal imaginary friends, like all children have at some point. But I guess something I told her must have frightened her, because she told my father."
"What did he say?"
Her hand moved in his, rubbed against his palm, and she wound her fingers through his. "At first he didn’t believe her, and then he thought that maybe I was like Joan of Arc. That I could hear the voices of saints."
"Christ, how old were you?"
"Six, maybe seven."
"What a mind job." Neo grimaced as he recognized the words as Cypher’s. Well, they fit here, somehow.
"For a while I was someone important in my household." Trinity shifted uneasily, and Neo wondered just was behind those words. "Then things started happening that made my father change his mind."
"Like what?"
"The voices came more often." Trinity tried to free her hand, but Neo held it firmly. Her eyes flicked up to his, surprised-never had he refused to release her, ever-but she did not push the issue. Neo knew that a month ago she’d have given him hell for that very same thing, and that the only difference now was that she trusted him. She trusted him, and he wanted to give her comfort.
"What did they say?"
She shrugged. "It’s irrelevant. They spoke, and then I started getting flashes of the future."
"What?"
"I’m not sure how to explain it. But I’d see something, someone walking down the street, and I’d know without anyone telling me that something was going to happen. I caught a pickpocket with his hand just above my mother’s purse. I stopped her from stepping into an intersection right before a car ran a red light and there was a head-on collision in the middle of the crosswalk."
"Jesus."
"Scared my mother so much she didn’t want to have anything more to do with me. She had four other kids and her hands full with all of them. One more-and a problem girl at that-didn’t matter one way or another." She moved again, sliding her hand but not attempting to remove it. "My father took me up to the big cathedral in the city. The bishop there didn’t know what to do, so he pronounced that I was possessed." She swallowed. "He wanted to try an exorcism, but my parents refused because they didn’t want the blemish of having a child like me in their household. So they paid the bishop to enroll me at a Catholic boarding school even though I was too young to be there, really. I didn’t learn a lot-it was brainwashing, not education."
"What happened?"
"Morpheus found me before it was too late," she said simply, shrugging. "But it took a long time for me to work through what my parents and their beliefs did to my mind."
"How old were you when he found you?"
"Twelve."
"Christ, they did wait a long time for me."
"You were hard to find." She rolled over on her stomach, the blankets tangling around her lithe frame. "We also pulled you out fucking fast."
"What do you mean?"
"Morpheus waited nearly half a year from the time he first met me until he offered me the truth."
"No shit? What’d he do?"
She shrugged. "Talked to me. I didn’t trust anyone at that point, and twelve-year-old girls don’t trust very easily anyway. But he seemed to know how I felt-knew what I had gone through with my parents. He knew so much that by the time he offered me the truth I didn’t care whether he was the devil or not. I would have gone with him no matter what."
"Wow." Neo nudged closer to her, feeling somehow that the physical bond they shared was nothing to the bond of trust that had allowed her to tell him all this. Yet still, after the whole story, she lay beside him dry-eyed. Her admission to him earlier, that she would not cry in front of him, seemed to be holding true. He didn’t particularly want to see Trinity cry…but sometimes tears were healthy and had to be shed. He had a feeling that, whatever she had suffered and not told him, it was not finished yet. The little girl pushed out of the home by frightened parents-frightened of their own child-was still very much alive. And until Trinity dealt with her face-to-face she would never be truly at peace.
"Enough!"
It was a rough voice, a voice rough because it was unused to shouting. Daniel Evansworth didn’t need to shout. Shouting wasn’t part of the duties of a CPA, and at home all his commands were obeyed without the need to raise his voice.
"Voche," he said, and the words were stony. "What have I said about tattling? It is a sin. And you-" Here he stood up, over six feet of tall, wiry man, and grabbed his eldest son by the arm. "Michael, I have warned you about touching your sister!" He wrenched the ten-year-old around to face Trinity, who huddled in the corner, her curiously light eyes wide with shock as she watched her father toss around her older brother as if he weighed nothing. The black eye and split lip she’d received as a result of Michael’s fists felt like nothing in the face of her fear, now. Her father was furious.
"She is special, you hear me?" Daniel demanded, jerking the boy again by his arm. Michael bit out a yelp as his shoulder was wrenched by the quick motion, his feet not fast enough to keep up with the agile man holding him. "Do not strike her!"
Trinity knew it was this preferential treatment that had caused her brother to lash out in the first place. She bit her swollen lip, knowing it was her fault he was bearing the brunt of her father’s anger now. She heard the familiar jingle of the feared belt buckle, and tried to shy away. But she was backed into a corner and there was nowhere for her to go. Forgotten now, she stared, unable to move, as her father forced Michael to his knees on the ground with his arm bent behind his back, then touched his belt again.
"Pay attention," the man said severely, "I’m not going to warn you again. This belt can come off, you know." He let go of the young arm abruptly, and Michael dropped completely to the ground, not even bothering to scamper away or try to defend himself as his father nudged his prostrate form with the toe of one shiny shoe. "Go. Get to confession before dinner, boy, and don’t come back until you’ve told the priest all that you’ve done. Get!"
As her brother skittered away, head hanging, his left hand massaging his wrenched shoulder, all Trinity could feel was the overwhelming weight of guilt lying on her small back.
"I don’t know what to do anymore, Daniel." That would be the voice of her mother. "The other children tease her when I’m not looking, or they avoid her. They can’t stand to be around her. Even little Voche-and they used to be such good friends! I’m scared, Daniel. What happened today…with the accident in the street…it’s not natural! There’s something wrong with her. The good Lord knows I’ve prayed and prayed for some kind of help with her. I can’t do it anymore. You have to help me, Daniel."
"I’ll take her down to the bishop tomorrow. If what you say is true-I know how women like to distort the truth-then something has to be done. I cannot allow her to poison this household any longer."
Sitting at the foot of the stairs, hidden from their late-night conversation by the curve of the wall, Trinity felt her heart growing numb. Her parents didn’t want her. And her father was going to take her to see the bishop-of all the adults in the entire world (well, all the ones she knew) the bishop was the most frightening. He was tall, taller even than her father, and his nose had a large hook in it. He stared down at her as if she smelled bad, or as if she were something a dog had pulled out of the poison river…
"Hello, Trinity."
She remembered looking up into the face of a dark man. That was the first unusual thing, because there weren’t very many ethnic minorities around the school at all. He was separated from her by the chain-link fence of the school. She felt it was there to keep her in rather than keep him out. Fanciful though she knew the thought was, she wondered if anything could keep him out of where he wanted to be. There was something about him…
She looked up from what she had been doing-digging idly with a small stick at the bottom of the fence-and squinted against the bright sunlight. "How do you know that name?" she asked. Even the sisters who ran the school didn’t know of her late-night forays into the school computer lab. They were one of the first Catholic schools anywhere to be wired to this new thing called the Internet. On it, people all over the world could talk to each other.
She was on probation here they said, on account of her voices and premonitions. That basically meant she wasn’t allowed to use the computers at all. But even nuns had to sleep sometime, and at three in the morning when Trinity herself couldn’t sleep there was no one to tell her what not to do. She invented a handle for herself and began learning all she could about computers and what they were capable of. Eventually, she met people not very much older than she who showed her the new, exciting world of hacking and the endless possibilities it created.
Even at twelve, she knew this was what she’d been born to do.
"I know a lot about you," the strange, bald man said companionably. He was dressed nicely, in a casual suit, and Trinity suddenly felt awkward in her Catholic school uniform. He wasn’t very old.
"Like what?" she asked, not willing yet to believe him. Trust was a long time coming.
"I know why you left your home at such a young age," he replied, still in the friendly, unperturbed voice he’d used before. It was like they were discussing the weather. "Why you don’t want to make friends, why you’re in trouble at school, and why night after night you sit at your borrowed computer…"
Okay. He had her attention.
Trinity slowly climbed to her feet, her eyes never leaving the funny sunglasses he wore over his eyes-they had no earpieces, and she wondered how they stayed on. But more importantly-"How do you know all that?"
"How isn’t important right now," the man said. "I’m going to give you a homework assignment, all right? You don’t have to do it unless you want to."
"Won’t get me in more trouble, will it?"
His smile grew. "No more than you put yourself in anyway. My name is Morpheus. Ever heard of me?"
She shook her head negative.
"Well, the next time you go on-line, I want you to look me up. Then, look up any information you can find about something called the Matrix."
"I already know what a matrix is; we learned in math class."
"Not A matrix," he corrected gently. "THE Matrix. See what you can find. I’ll stop by again sometime…" And with that he strolled away down the street, and Trinity was left feeling very confused.
"You’re a terrorist, Morpheus," she accused the next time she saw him. He smiled, a very satisfied smile, the way some of the nuns would look at their favorite girls. Trinity felt a tiny sliver of warmth tickle her somewhere near her belly, and she didn’t know what she could do to stop it. She was beginning to like him.
But trust him? Not even close.
"I see you’ve been doing your homework," he said, and he knelt down to her level, not caring at all that his black suit-identical to the one he had worn before-was getting dusty. "What else do you know."
"Practically every government in the world is looking for you," she said, with no small touch of pride in her voice at her detective skills. "Nobody’s ever been able to catch you."
"And what about the Matrix?"
Here she scowled. "Some people’ve heard of it. Nobody can tell me what it is."
"Maybe it’s something you have to find out for yourself."
She looked at him with purely childish skepticism. "I’m gonna keep looking."
"You do that." He rose to leave. "I’ll be around every now and then-tell me if you find out anything."
He held to that promise, disappearing for weeks only to turn up when she least expected him. Always he would meet her near the playground fence, for that chain-link was her only window to the outside world. Never would he be allowed to visit with her inside the walls of the school, nor was she ever allowed outside.
She could always tell him where he’d been in his absence-London, Seattle, LA, New York-and some of what he’d done. Never could she tell him more about the Matrix, except that high government officials seemed to be guarding the secret.
It became an obsession-partly to find out the truth and partly to prove to Morpheus that she could find it. But always she came back to him empty-handed.
The disturbing premonitions and voices had vanished a year or so after she entered the school, but they returned with the arrival of Morpheus in her life. She didn’t connect the two, but did allude to her problems when she spoke to him. She didn’t want to tell him too much, for fear that he would abandon her just as everyone else had.
She had found a strange sort of father figure in this bald terrorist with the funny sunglasses.
Then one day Morpheus waited at the fence for her and she didn’t show up.
Trinity didn’t know that, of course, and didn’t know how he-in a fit of worry-had personally rigged her room with an exit line, hacking into the Matrix to do so from an old console within Zion. Then he’d gone up to broadcast depth in a courier ship and entered the Matrix right in her very room.
It was more cell than room, a tiny closet with cement flooring and a steel-frame bunk bed with a thin pallet and single blanket. She was curled in the corner, tall and skinny for her age, all knees and elbows but obviously in pain. She was crying.
"Child, what’s wrong?" he asked.
Her head snapped up, and though she did not seem shocked to see her terrorist-mentor suddenly appear in her room, she was certainly surprised. "Are you the devil?" she asked him through the tears that still clogged her voice. "Because if you are, I’m ready to go with you now."
"Oh, Trinity." He shook his head and opened his arms, not knowing what else to do. Crying children were not part of basic training. "I’m no devil-I’m no less human than you are."
She climbed to her feet, then, and ran the few steps across her bare cell of a room and into his arms. He hugged her, feeling lost, as she cried.
"I hear things…see things…that aren’t really there," she said into his shirt. "The sisters say I’m possessed-cursed. They want to-"
"Hush now." The words were almost a command, and Trinity gulped and stopped crying. She looked up at him with teary eyes.
"But-"
"Trinity. I know you don’t trust me completely yet, but it sounds like there just isn’t time." He glanced around the cell, trying to speak quietly for fear someone on the other side of the walls might hear. "I know you have been looking for the Matrix, child, ever since I mentioned it to you. Honestly, that’s partially what I had hoped. But I know the secret." He looked at her measuringly. "You are young yet, but I think you’re ready. Do you want to know the truth?"
"Yes," she said immediately. There was no hesitation.
"It will mean giving up everything here and running away," he said, cautioning her. "I will be with you through it all, and you will meet others who know the truth. I can’t promise you happiness."
"It has to be better than this," she said, her eyes suddenly hard. And Morpheus knew she had made her choice and wasn’t going to go back on it.
Trinity remembered swallowing the red pill, remembered sitting there alone with Morpheus’ promise that he would return as soon as he could. She remembered vague scraping noises, and suddenly three or four people just materialized in her cell, with some very strange-looking computer equipment.
She remembered the fear that one of her neighbors would wake up at the noise in her cramped cell-it was really too small for all the machinery and people in there-and call the sisters. She remembered her utter relief when Morpheus kept his promise and appeared again with his friends. She remembered everything, down to the cold feeling of the electrodes as they stuck to her skin, and Morpheus’ calming presence, telling her that everything would be okay.
Then it was a blur, for she closed her eyes one moment and the next she was gagging on some foul-smelling substance that was completely foreign to her and there was something in her throat preventing her from breathing.
She remembered nothing else except for vague glimpses of bright medical lights and strange voices. Among them she could sometimes hear Morpheus, which always calmed her fears.
Trinity woke bathed in sweat, Neo spooned protectively around her and his arms holding her tightly. She couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, and she forced her shallow breathing to slow down.
Memories. Normally she pretended she didn’t have any, and that worked pretty well. This sudden rush of vivid scenes from her past had been completely unexpected, and though they came in dream-form, there was something so frighteningly real about them that she didn’t know what to think. They didn’t have the flavor of her premonitions, or of the strange voices that had plagued her childhood.
Neo’s head moved slightly, and Trinity tensed. Or, tried to, but he brushed a sleepy kiss across the base of her hairline and she melted again. His touch usually had that effect, no matter how she tried to hide it.
"Think of a good memory," he mumbled sleepily, and she knew he was awake…but not quite. "Something you," he yawned, "want to remember. Then they don’t hurt so much."
"How’d you get so smart?" she asked, but he was gone again and breathing deeply, his warm breath tickling the little hairs on the back of her neck.
Sleep wasn’t coming back any time soon, not after those kinds of memories, so she decided to take his advice. Closing her eyes, she thought back to a time a little more recent than what her mind had chosen to show her.
"Think of her as a guide, Trinity."
"I don’t believe in fate."
"Be that as it may, there are things she knows. Please, Trinity, don’t fight me on this."
She shifted, uncomfortable in the elevator. She’d been growing again, and her RSI reflected the changes. It had taken her a while to learn how to change her clothing to match her new curves and added height. Months on board the Promised Land, the ship she and Morpheus served on, had tempered and honed her into the pure essence of her true self.
"Well well well. Hello, Morpheus." The Oracle had opened her own door, something Trinity found vaguely surprising. But then she figured that nothing should ever really surprise her again. "And your young protégé. The first of many."
Morpheus nodded to her and gently pressed a hand against Trinity’s back, urging her forward.
Trinity turned her head and glared at him, then stepped toward the Oracle of her own accord. She saw amusement on the face of the older woman. "Hello, Trinity," the woman said. "I know you don’t believe in me, or in what I see. But why don’t you hear me out anyway?" She beckoned, and Trinity followed her into the apartment, leaving Morpheus behind to wait in the hallway.
"I usually train children in how to use the gifts they’ve been given," she said, "but none of them are here today. It’s just you and me." She settled herself in a rocking chair and motioned for Trinity to seat herself, too. Instead of taking a chair, Trinity chose the floor.
"Well, for starters, let’s deal with a little misconception of Morpheus’," the Oracle said, lighting a cigarette and smiling. "You’re not the One, kiddo. At least, not in the way he means. Eventually, you’ll be part of the One."
Trinity frowned. "I don’t understand."
"You’re fifteen. I don’t expect you to." The woman smiled again, seemingly imperturbable. "Oh, child! Your unplugging was probably the kindest thing that ever happened to you. But don’t worry; things will only get better from here on out." She rocked absently, her feet pushing against the shag carpeting. "You know, even though Morpheus will eventually find the One, you will still always be his favorite. You’re his first-the first of his children, so to speak. He loves you as your father never really did." She sucked on her cigarette and blew a puff of smoke away from Trinity.
"I can’t shield you from pain. Make no mistake-you will lose your mentor, child, just when you feel you need him the most. You will lose him, and it will take a great leap of faith for you to regain him…if you dare. But, young one, you won’t have to take that leap alone. I foretold the coming of the One who will bring about the end of the Matrix a long time ago. That was my first prophecy, you know. Well. You’ll fall in love, Trinity, and it won’t be just any love. This will be a lifebond, something to last forever. And that man, the man you love, will be the One."
The only thing she’d told Morpheus was the first admittance-that she was not the One.
It had come in the hallway just outside the Oracle’s apartment, her eyes searching him as she spoke the words she feared would cast her away from him forever.
"I’m not the One, Morpheus," she’d said, a mixture of dread and relief filling her. "I knew it all along, but I was afraid to tell you. I’m not the One." She looked up at him, still shorter than he. "I…will I have to go back again, now?"
"Of course not!" he said, and his gentle hand was laid on her shoulder. Its pressure was comforting in this world she didn’t understand. "Trinity, I could honestly care less if you were the One or not. You’re the most promising young programmer we’ve ever trained. You move with unparalleled grace and speed in the Matrix, and you have learned to free your mind in ways that most of us only dream. Trinity, One or no One, we could not bear to lose you now. In fact…"
"In fact what?"
"In fact…" He started walking again, and she jogged a few steps to keep up with him. "I’m leaving the Promised Land when we reach Zion, Trinity. I’ve saved up enough to buy my own ship-she’s waiting for me even as we speak. She isn’t much, but…well. I was wondering if you would like to come with me. As my second-in-command."
"Yes!" There was never any hesitation, and Morpheus chuckled at her eagerness.
He would never quite understand.
"And you think you’re ready for this, do you?" Trinity chuckled. Time and the quiet calm of the past few months had added a certain warmth to her character that had never been there before. The crew had always loved her-that was never a question. She had always been there for them, always a shoulder to lean on when they needed it. But now there was something distinctly different about her, and Tank knew what it was. More than being in love, more than finding the other half of her soul-she was just plain happy. And that happiness was contagious, just as the spark of excitement was contagious when Morpheus said there was an anomalous figure within the Matrix that he wanted to check out.
Neo’s fear and uneasiness within the Matrix had vanished quite some time ago, and he now fairly itched to be inside it whenever they had a job to do. Slowly, the rest of the crew had caught his enthusiasm and used it to combat their fears of returning to that place where they had died-or, in Trinity’s case, almost died. It wasn’t easy, and it took a very long time. But now, nearly a year after their big trial, things were almost back to normal.
Well, changed, but still. Nothing stays the same for long. The world doesn’t work that way.
And Tank, though he missed his brother just as if a piece of his own soul had been torn away, knew that this new-era, if you like-was much better than the previous one.
"Ready for anything," Neo said, flinging himself into his chair and resting his head back against the cushioned restraint.
"Hold on there, tiger, it’s not time yet," Switch said as she flicked her eyes back up to the gleaming code of the Matrix. "You have to be briefed first."
"The Matrix doesn’t wait around forever," Neo countered. "If we don’t hurry, we might lose it."
"Won’t lose nothing," Apoc argued, joining in the fun. For fun was all it was-Neo was subordinate to them and he knew it. That they let him get away with harping on them was because he was now family, and he knew that, too. Time had taken away their awe at having the One as their crewmember-time, and Neo’s own constant reminders that he was still as green as anything. "Whatever the hell’s been doing this, it’s been going on for a long time. It won’t stop in the next half-hour; trust me."
Neo made a face but sat back up, waiting expectantly as Trinity turned to face them. Mouse ran in, late and still rubbing sleep from his eyes, and she hid a smile as she turned disapproving eyes upon him. He gulped and crept to his own chair; Trinity still had the power to cow others when she chose.
"Okay," she said. "Morpheus is busy right now, so I’ll handle the briefing." She motioned to Tank, who tapped one of the Matrix screens and it froze. "Here’s what we’re dealing with-an anomaly in the Matrix. Somebody’s been tampering, we think, and we don’t know who." She looked at them, measuring each reaction. Nobody showed the faintest traces of fear, only competence and a faint eagerness to be on their first real mission since hobbling, broken, into Zion nearly a year before.
"It’s been turned back in time…sort of. It’s a time that never really existed."
"Damn hard to load into the Matrix things that don’t really exist," Tank broke in, and everyone nodded. They’d heard him rant often enough about the kind of electrical equipment they’d created in the construct and then tried to load into the Matrix. If it didn’t exist within the perimeters of the Matrix’s operating system, it took a lot of skill and a lot of time to make it exist within the Matrix.
"But someone has dumped a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really exist right into one little corner of the Matrix," Trinity went on, allowing the interruption. "Someone is changing things-and we have every reason to believe he is changing them from the inside."
Dead silence.
"In-inside?" Mouse finally stuttered. "Inside? You mean…"
Trinity nodded. "That’s exactly what I mean. Someone who is still plugged into the Matrix and conceivably knows nothing about the real world is changing things."
"Shit." That was Switch. She shook her head wryly and the tiny hint of a smile touched the corner of her mouth. "Here we go again."
"Neo and I will be in co-charge of this mission," Trinity continued. "It’s to give him practice in there so eventually he can spot potential candidates for unplugging and bring them out himself-like Morpheus did for me and we did for the rest of you. We’re hoping that cuts down on the amount of time it takes searching for potentials. If he can speed-read their codes from inside the Matrix…"
"We’re not sure yet if it’ll work," Neo interrupted her, a worried frown crossing his face. He didn’t like anyone placing too much weight on abilities he wasn’t sure he actually possessed. The stuff he knew how to do-well, that was fine. They wanted someone to fly, well, he was their man. They wanted to kick the shit out of agents, well, he’d do it happily. But every time they tested something new it brought him great anxiety that only Trinity’s calm presence and quiet faith in him could ease.
"That’s one of the things we’re going in to see," Trinity answered, her eyes watching him for a moment. Whole conversations went on between the ice-blue and doe-brown of their eyes in the space of a few seconds. Then she turned back to the rest of the group. "We’re entering right in the middle of the anomaly. There are no exits set up in that area, Tank’s pretty sure. So we have two choices for getting out. One-we’re going to try another experiment and see if Neo can will exits into being."
"They say that’s how the original exits were constructed to begin with," Neo said, almost apologetically. "The first One did it."
"If that doesn’t work," Trinity continued, "we’ll have Tank isolate our codes and pull us out manually. It takes time and patience, so we’re hoping we won’t have to leave in a hurry." Her eyes flicked around to everyone. "I realize how risky it sounds. Morpheus wouldn’t even be letting us risk it, but Neo’s going to be with us."
Neo wanted to object, to tell the full truth she wasn’t saying, but he knew better than to backtalk Trinity when she was in her superior-officer mode. What Morpheus had really said was that he had faith in Neo to get them out quickly in an emergency and he had faith in Trinity to protect all of them-even Neo himself. It was only her damn selflessness that had kept her from saying it, and Neo knew she wouldn’t thank him to bring up the point here, with everyone listening. They knew she was indispensable to the crew. Why reiterate the point?
They all strapped in at that point, hooking their own foot restraints and then leaning back in their chairs. Tank went around the circle, plugging them in, and then hit the button that would send them away. "Peace be the journey," he said as their alpha patterns changed and they were sucked into the computer-simulated world that was the Matrix.
Suddenly, Tank frowned. Trinity’s code was different than it had been the last time he’d loaded her into any sort of program…but that had been months ago. Trinity had preferred working with her hands in the real world to reentering the Matrix, and the few times she had gone in it was to train Neo in the role of Operator. Everyone on the ship had to know how to do everything they possibly could, just in case…
Tank pulled up the huge database of human code on another screen and ran it against the change in his friend’s RSI. It clicked to a stop at the exact match, and Tank stared at it for a long time before banishing the information and switching off the monitor. If she had decided not to tell anyone, well, then he supposed that was her own prerogative and nobody else’s.
They opened their eyes to a forest.
"Woods?" Mouse said, obviously surprised. He, privately, had been expecting them to materialize in some dark, shabby room full of expensive computer equipment, next to a brilliant hacker kid who would look up and say, "What took you so long?" and then laugh at their dumbfounded expressions.
But no. They were in a forest, a forest of the tallest trees Trinity had ever seen. They were so wide that Trinity doubted the entire crew, holding hands, could span their width. Spanish moss blew green, lacy tendrils around them from some of the lower branches. Even the light in here seemed vaguely green, and very dark though she knew it was still daylight. The floor of the forest was carpeted in moss and bracken, little pale flowers twinkling up through the green. There were some bushes, some scrub, but mostly just the giant trees and a great silence so complete that it sent chills up her spine. On the ship it was never completely silent. They could always hear the whirr of the engines and the dull hiss of recycled oxygen being pushed through the ventilation shafts. There was clanking whenever people moved, squeaking doors, echoing voices, the click of keyboards…even during quiet periods the ship was never silent.
"Whoa." Apoc slowly drew away his sunglasses, staring at the forest around him. "I…whoa."
"No kidding," Neo said, turning a slow circle. He then went up to one of the trees and put his hand against the bark. It felt smooth and old under his palm.
His head and Trinity’s jerked up at the same time, and immediately at that action Mouse ducked behind a bush and Switch and Apoc drew out their guns.
"Something’s coming," Trinity said. "I can hear it."
"Is it dangerous?"
"Can’t tell," Neo said, his forehead creased with lines as he scowled in concentration. "Damn it!"
"Why not?"
"I’ve never seen this code before."
They all ducked behind the bushes and trees, then, and Switch and Apoc heard the noise too. It was pounding…pounding like drums and cymbals, but with a strangely light quality. They stared out from underneath the scrub where they hid, only to see the flash of hooves pass by. The creature, whatever it had been, didn’t stop or even pause.
As the sound of its passing faded into the distance, they pulled themselves out of the bushes and stared after it, though the trees were in the way and they could not see.
"A horse," Mouse said dully. "We got ourselves worked up about a horse."
Neo shook his head stubbornly, the fact that he hadn’t recognized the animal bothering him greatly. "Not a horse," he said. "I’ve seen the code for horses; I’d recognize it. This was something else."
Trinity touched his shoulder briefly, then glanced at the others. "Let’s get going," she said.
"But where?" Everything looked the same, no matter which way they turned. Trinity turned to Neo, who merely shrugged and shook his head.
"So follow the beastie," Apoc said, gesturing in the general direction the animal had gone. "Maybe it knows what it’s doing."
As there were no better ideas forthcoming, they decided that traveling in the general direction the creature had gone was no worse than anything else they could do. So they set out, walking cautiously, though they neither saw nor heard anything else, alive or dead, save the trees and an occasional rotting log.
After about an hour of this, sliding in their boots on the damp moss and sweating in their leather, Trinity finally called a stop and pulled out her cell phone.
"Tank."
"Was wondering when you’d get around to asking me for a change of clothes," he laughed into the microphone.
"You might have warned us."
"Didn’t know where you’d be until you were already there," he said. "Check the other side of the tree on your left."
Moments later Tank, true to his words, send them clothing from the construct. It looked very like what they wore on the ship, though the clothes he sent were warmer, cleaner and not torn or frayed in the slightest.
"Better?"
"Better?" Apoc and Switch quickly agreed. Neo and Mouse exchanged amused looks-neither chose to wear leather. But changing their city boots for treaded hiking boots was welcome, and they changed their clothes too, to fit in with the rest of the crew.
They left their old clothing in a heap at the base of the tree. It wasn’t real anyway, and if they needed another change they could always ask Tank for one. Trinity waited until everyone was dressed again, and then they resumed their hike through the woods.
It was less a hike and more a forced march, Neo decided, because they walked so fast he couldn’t really see anything. He was fast, but not fast enough to keep up with Trinity, concentrate on not tripping over the roots and stones in his path, and watch the entire damn thing encoded so he could look around him at what had happened to the code to make this place real.
A huge shadow passed over them once, and they looked up to see a bird so giant that a human could easily have perched on its back. Trinity had done nothing but stare, Switch and Apoc had trained their .45’s on it (and what good would they do against such a huge beast?) and Mouse had sworn vividly. Neo had done nothing, obviously trying to read its code like he had the other beast, and the bird itself had ignored them completely.
In several places they came across trees with long gouges in them, as if something with very sharp claws or horns had repeatedly beat itself against the bark. Trinity ran shaking fingers down the gouges in one of the trees. Sap oozed slowly from the slices, and strips of bark hung in tatters at the base of the tree. The gouges were easily an inch thick.
Finally, as the group was beginning to despair of ever getting out of the damned forest, a new sound hit their ears. It was water.
Water.
Trinity glanced back at Neo, who shrugged and started forward. They followed, and as they topped the rise of a hill, the forest opened up and they were standing at the shore of a fast-moving river. The other bank was a wall of rock rising at least thirty feet up into the air. Cool, leafy trees blew in the wind atop it, but they knew it would take a lot of work and more equipment than they had to actually scale such a cliff. Unless Neo was willing to fly them up there.
"Whoa."
"What?" Trinity whirled, turning on Neo, who had spoken. He touched his temple lightly, as if it pained him, and then pointed down the river, where the water sparkled briefly before curving round a bend.
"It…whatever it is, it’s down there."
"How do you know?"
"Just changed something," he said. "I think…I think he knows we’re here."
"Damn." Trinity pulled out her phone and dialed Tank again.
"Operator."
"We need boats, Tank," she said.
"What kind?"
"Something fast," she replied. A second later two boat appeared, half-in and half-out of the river. They were either skinny rowboats or fat canoes, and they were made of some dark, shiny wood she could not place.
"I was thinking more along the lines of an outboard motor, Tank," she said, a touch of sarcasm in her voice as she spoke into the phone.
"So was I," he said back, his voice warring between confusion and shock. "That’s what I sent you!"
"Then what are these?"
"It changed on me, before they reached you," he insisted. "Fuck, what’s going on?"
Trinity paused, then shrugged. "Never mind, Tank. This is fine, for now."
"What’s wrong?" Switch asked as Trinity stowed her cell phone.
"This isn’t what Tank sent us," Trinity replied, staring dubiously at the boats. "Neo?"
He shrugged. "They’re fine, as far as I can tell. Just boats."
"Okay, then." Trinity took hold of one of them and shoved it all the way into the water, her boots getting wet but not leaking-thanks to Tank’s foresight-as she stepped into its wide bottom. Neo followed her and Mouse followed Neo, obviously more comfortable close to the One in this place. Switch and Apoc took the other boat, and they headed out into the river.
They had oars, much like canoe paddles, but the river was carrying them swiftly and they used them only to steer as the current brought them closer and closer to where they wanted to be.
Nobody had any idea of the passage of time, but the sun had moved considerably in the sky by the time the current slowed down. They were deep in the forest by this time, and the embankment on the other side of the river had dwindled until it was just the same on both sides. Grass grew up to the edge of the river, swaying as the clear water caught its bent tips and pulled it this way and that in the little eddies their boats caused. Mouse was nearly asleep.
The current slowed and the water grew deeper, or so they assumed. It took on a thick quality though it was still clear as anything, and in the shadows of the overhanging trees it seemed deep, green, and murky. Occasionally a small splash alerted them to the possibility of fish, or frogs, or something else…other strange creatures-ones that lived in the water?
"I think I like the city better," Trinity muttered.
"Me, too," Neo replied, almost in her ear, and she tensed. She hadn’t realized he was that close. "Sorry," he said, a little sheepishly.
"It’s okay. Just jumpy."
"I can understand that," he muttered, and then sighed. "This is my world, Trin, but it isn’t at the same time. Somebody else is doing this."
"You’re still the One, Neo. Nobody can take that away from you."
Neo glanced at Mouse, asleep and snoring in the back of the boat. He turned and placed a quick kiss at Trinity’s throat and sighed. "You’re my faith."
She just laughed.
Part 3 >