Part 3
Three days into the slow float down the murky river Tank lost sight of them in the Matrix code. Morpheus was worried, but not enough to pull them out, for they still communicated well with the cell phones. Why they were no longer showing up on the monitors was a mystery, yes, but one he felt they did not have to answer at the time. He and Tank kept a continual watch on the Core, one catching a few hours’ sleep while the other monitored alone, neither leaving the main deck to do anything except sleep and eat. Morpheus even slept in his loading chair occasionally, though he trusted Tank completely.
Three days was a long time to be in a boat.
They stopped several times a day, pulling up on the shore to stretch their legs, eat whatever they had Tank send down to them, and generally try to act human. Tempers were running short, as the long hours of drifting down the river were plainly boring.
Boring, and yet they felt guilty at the boredom. This was supposed to be a never-been-tried, exciting mission. It was a mighty search…but one they were beginning to think differently about. Switch snapped at Apoc, who in turn harped on Mouse for acting like a kid. Neo pulled into his own little world, refusing to talk much to anyone as the sun trickled down through the trees, dappling them with ever-changing patterns of light. Mouse sulked, afraid of saying anything for fear of being corrected. Trinity tried to get through to Neo for a little while before giving it up and letting him brood.
She knew he was bothered by his inability to innately understand this place, and she could sympathize. Finding something you simply could not do-well, that was always difficult to handle. And Neo had been trained to approach everything in the Matrix as his own plaything. Now the toy was seemingly out of the hands of its owner, and it was natural that Neo didn’t like that one bit.
Natural, yes. But Trinity still didn’t have the patience to coax him along like a spoiled child. He needed to understand that, just maybe, there were things in the Matrix that even the One could not control. She almost wished he was back to acting cocky about his abilities; even a jackass would have been preferable company to the silent form beside her at this point.
And to add to all that, Trinity wasn’t in the best of moods, either.
It had badly shaken her faith as well, to see something that Neo did not understand here within the Matrix. If we even are in the Matrix, still, a little voice inside her head muttered, and Trinity firmly put a stop to that frightening thought. Because, if they were not in the Matrix, Neo could not keep them safe. If they were not in the Matrix…where were they? And how would they get out again?
The answers didn’t seem likely to come anytime soon. Neo insisted that the source of all this unfamiliar code was ahead of them, and that the river was taking them closer. But how much longer? Trinity thought. She and Apoc, at a loss without something to occupy their hands and minds, had taken to paddling the canoe-boats until their arms tired. This took up hours and occupied their arms, but left their minds frightfully empty-a prime situation for thinking.
Trinity didn’t want to think anymore; she was tired of thinking. She wanted to do something, not simply sit in the bottom of the boats Tank hadn’t sent them and worry about what they would find when-if ever-the river ended.
They slept a lot, though never all at the same time, and Trinity and Neo had taken to sleeping at different times. This meant that they did not sleep together, and Trinity preferred it that way. While Morpheus would not fault them for curling into each other’s arms to sleep, she did not want the physical closeness when Neo was so clearly trying to separate himself emotionally and mentally from them.
And so the five crewmembers floated down the river and waited.
Occasionally they saw the flicker of movement off in the deep woods beyond the riverbanks, and it was obvious that Neo didn’t know what had moved. The trees, thick and dark, came all the way up to the water’s edge, grass trailing in the current, but nobody could say for certain whether or not this was normal behavior for a forest. These were city slickers, computer savvy and environment be damned so long as the system held.
They were utterly and completely lost in this place.
Trinity woke early in the morning of the fourth day to see that the trees had grown even closer together, only tiny speckles of soft golden sunlight winking through the verdant canopy. She sat up and blinked sleepily, rubbing the stickiness from her eyes. It was then that she realized that, though the boats were rocking softly in the sway of the river, they weren’t moving forward anymore.
"Shit," she mumbled and leaned over the edge, the polished canoe-boat rocking dangerously with her movements. Graceful though she may be on rooftops, she had not managed to duplicate that grace in a water-bound vehicle. There, in the murky depths of the river, beyond the shine of her own muted reflection, she saw the green, curling threads of water-plants. They held the boats tight; the oars were stuck and though the current moved lazily through the weeds the boats were far too big and cumbersome to follow the fluid example.
At her voice Mouse and Neo stirred-strange. For the first time since entering this damned place, they had all fallen asleep at once. Even Switch and Apoc were just waking. Trinity didn’t like it. This smacked of-
"Took you long enough."
The voice sounded infinitely amused, and much more childish than Trinity would have expected. Her eyes jerked upward, toward the source of the noise, and there on an overhanging limb perched a child.
Child was the only word Trinity could use to describe the creature, though she was a little too old to honestly be labeled such. She wasn’t near an adult yet; of that Trinity was positive. Younger than Mouse, definitely, though how much Trinity could not tell.
"Who are you?" she asked. The girl was straddling the branch, the soles of her boots dangling freely about ten feet above Trinity’s head.
"We’re travelers," Trinity replied, glancing at her comrades. They were all awake and watching the exchange very closely, but all of them-even Neo-seemed perfectly content to let Trinity take the lead. "Can you tell us where we are?"
The child smiled and leaned over to the side, hooking her knees behind the branch and swinging. Trinity, Switch, and Apoc all made gestures as if to catch her as she fell, but she caught herself with her knees and swung above them, a long, dark braid falling loose from her head and dropping like a tail.
"Jesus, don’t do that again!" Mouse said, glaring as he caught his breath. Trinity had actually stood up in the boat, and now she cautiously lowered herself to her knees, not taking her eyes off the child dangling above them.
"I can’t get hurt here," she said, swinging from the branch idly and seemingly not caring that she dangled over the river.
"Why not?" Trinity asked.
The child shrugged. "Because. You probably wanna get out of those canoes now." She smiled and pulled herself back up onto the branch, bits of moss falling into the water as she scraped them with her shoes. Agile as a squirrel, she lowered herself from branch to branch and finally landed on the grassy bank.
"You sent us these boats," Trinity said. It wasn’t a question.
The girl nodded, unconcerned. She watched with calm, childish eyes as Trinity slowly stood up and the canoe wobbled frighteningly again.
"Keep three points of contact," she said, reaching for a blade of grass and plucking it down near the root. "Two hands and a foot, or two feet and one hand. It steadies the canoe." She set the grass between her thumbs and blew, the resulting whistle sending chills down everyone’s spines. Mouse actually winced as he followed Trinity’s lead and climbed onto the bank.
"Why didn’t you just let our operator send what he was going to send in the first place?" Trinity asked, dusting off her hands-the side of the boat had been grimy where she’d gripped it.
The girl shrugged. "Too loud, those boats he was gonna send. Besides, you wouldn’t have seen my forest." She smiled and held out a hand, the gesture somehow encompassing the river and trees at once. "How d’you like it?"
"It’s amazing," Trinity said honestly. The child beamed.
"Thank you. I tried very hard."
"How did you do it?"
The girl paused and tilted her head, watching Trinity. It was a childish gesture, one of a small child appraising whether or not to trust an older person. Trinity saw this, and tried to look as non-threatening as she possibly could. It wasn’t easy-she was more used to looking threatening.
The silence gave all of them a minute to study the girl who stood before them and had, apparently, brought them all this way into a world of her own creation. For what purpose, no one could guess. She was younger than Trinity had originally thought-young enough to still be called child-and even though she was dressed like something out of Peter Pan she looked ordinary enough. She had long brown hair that fuzzed around her face, a sure sign that it would curl if it were not pulled back in the confining braid. It lay in a thick spiral down her back, the curly tail ending just below her tailbone. Her eyes were a light green-blue that somehow reflected the dark freckles smattered across her nose and cheeks, and her nose and forehead were lightly sunburned.
"I confuse you," the girl said finally. "You don’t believe me; not really."
Trinity merely stared. The girl smiled. "That’s okay. You’ll have to believe me someday." And with that she beckoned them with one of her little fingers, dirt under the short, broken nail, and began walking into the forest.
"Wait!" Neo said, speaking up for the first time. "Where are you going?"
She turned back around. "Come with me and find out," she replied, then continued on into the trees.
"We don’t even know your name," Switch called after her.
The girl turned again and held out her hand. Switch glanced at them, then stepped forward, almost close enough to take the child’s outstretched hand.
"My name is Eve."
They followed her deep into the woods, not knowing how long they walked. She was strong, for a child, or so they assumed because she didn’t stop to rest at all. She also seemed disinclined to talk while they traveled, so a tense silence hung about the group. Trinity and Switch exchanged nervous glances, for this was not what they had expected at all. Neo was still wrapped up in his own little bubble, his single outburst not curing him of his new, brooding silence. It was all Trinity could do not to smack him, but if he wanted to sulk like a child she knew it was not her job to stop him. He was too old for that, and she was not his mother.
Trinity had her doubts that this child-if child indeed she was-was the source of all the pretense around them. Though she couldn’t imagine why anyone would try to create this, it was too ordered, too perfect, to be the work of an immature and untrained mind. Even Neo got things wrong sometimes. So, as far as she could figure, either this "child" was no child, or she was not the true cause of this anomaly, no matter what she claimed.
Neo was no help either way, and Mouse and Apoc had apparently decided that it was best to let Trinity and Switch handle this turn of events. Whether that was because they were women-seemingly better prepared to deal with a child-or because Switch and Trinity ranked them, Trinity didn’t want to say. She didn’t like the answer her mind kept returning to.
Finally, after what seemed like another eternity, the child paused. They stood before a dense wall of bushes and low scrub, just tall enough that they could not see over it. Eve turned, regarded them with another strange look, and spoke for the first time since they’d started walking.
"This is my home," she said, one hand resting upon the bush. With that, she pushed it firmly aside, and the leafy tendrils swayed away from her hands like thistledown. Beyond the dense scrub, where the stunned crewmembers now filed, there was a low cliff, and below that, a small village seemingly carved out of the very forest. "Welcome to the Fourth Kingdom."
Morpheus lay upon his bunk, his face a mask of unhappiness. He hadn’t liked putting his crew-not to mention Neo-into such danger as this. But what else could he do? He had orders from the one person he still allowed to boss him around.
He’d gone into the Matrix to see her before he sent them in. She looked just as she always had, though the living room of her small apartment was devoid of children. Morpheus frowned, then smiled again as the realization took him-Neo had been found. There was no more need to bring potentials in to be judged by the Oracle.
"Hello, Morpheus," the Oracle said, smiling as she brought him a steaming cup. "Tea, just the way you like it."
"You never made me tea before."
"Does that mean I don’t know what you prefer?" she shot back, an amused smile on her face. "Oh, Morpheus. So much have you learned in the long years since your unplugging. But I wonder-"
Morpheus did not question her as she broke off her thought mid-sentence and took a swallow of her own drink. The Oracle said exactly what she meant to, and no amount of questioning could change what she would and would not say.
"There’s something odd in the Matrix," she said.
"Yes. We’ve been requested by our contact in Zion to investigate it, bring back whoever’s causing it if we are able."
The Oracle stretched her tired fingers, and Morpheus could see the arthritic joints struggle painfully. "You’ll be able to," she said. "A child could do it-just make sure she doesn’t!"
"Who?" Morpheus queried, unable to help himself this time.
She chuckled. "Got you that time, didn’t I? You don’t know her yet, Morpheus. Maybe you never will. But I can tell you this-the healing isn’t over yet."
"Is it ever?"
"Oh, yes," the Oracle replied, smiling. "But I have a favor to ask you, now that you’re here."
"Consider it done."
"Hold on, big boy, it’s not that easy." She shook her head and took another swallow of tea. "Drink-you know you don’t like it cold."
Morpheus obeyed, an ironic smile on his face.
"Now. What I’m going to ask you to do has never been done before, but you guessed as much already. I want you to send your crew-yes, Neo and Trinity too-blindly into the heart of the anomaly."
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, they’ll be in no danger," she assured him. "But there are things they need to know. And there’s something-someone-there that I need."
"You want us to unplug him?"
"Her," the Oracle corrected, "and it’s entirely her choice whether or not she wants to be unplugged. Either way she must come to me-whether or not she stays within the Matrix."
"You can’t want someone that important to remain in the power plant."
"Can’t I?" The Oracle chuckled. "Morpheus, you are such a noble man. You want so to do the right thing. But have you ever thought that the dream of the Matrix might be better for some than the real world? Some minds can’t handle it-can’t handle being unplugged and confronted with the truth."
Morpheus bowed his head, accepting the rebuke. "We’ll go, then-" he started, but the Oracle shook her head firmly.
"No, Morpheus. They need to do this on their own this time. You can’t help them." She stood, staring at a distant spot on the wall. "And I may need you later."
"If you promise no harm will come to them…"
"No harm, Morpheus. I would not send your family into danger."
He nodded, though he didn’t like the request. "Then they will go," he agreed. "But only on the strength of your word."
"When you believe them, my words are strong indeed."
Some houses seemed to be the hollowed-out trunks of trees. Others were true tree houses, built high up in the leafy branches. There were only a few-perhaps six or seven-and only three or four people strolling along the dirt paths between them.
Just then the child took off, skidding down the cliff at a reckless pace Trinity was sure would get her killed. Without thinking she took off after her, an arm stretched out as if she could calm the wild creature if she could just reach her. Neo followed Trinity, snapping out of his self-induced seclusion when he saw her skidding wildly down the cliff. Switch and Apoc followed him in their bodyguard mode, and Mouse followed, not wanting to be left alone.
"Be careful!" Trinity gasped when she finally caught up with the girl at the bottom of the cliff. Pale dust rose in a cloud around them, settling on their clothes and making Trinity sneeze, though the girl seemed not to be affected by it.
Eve looked at Trinity strangely, then shook her head. "I told you," she said. "I can’t be hurt here."
Trinity glanced back up at the cliff above them just as Mouse skidded down to join the group. It was at least fifteen feet high, and though from here it didn’t look quite as steep as it had from the top, running down cliffs was hardly a safe activity for a child.
"But you don’t really believe I am a child," Eve said, a small smile lighting her face. Trinity noted, for the first time, the girl had lost her front baby teeth and she had one and a half big ones in place. It fit, somehow, with the rest of her appearance that her teeth had not grown in yet.
Then Eve smiled and reached for Trinity’s hand. The older woman made no move to stop her, and the child took her hand easily. She then led them, Trinity casting a quizzical glance over her shoulder at Neo and Switch, into the village proper.
"Hello Eve, darlin’!" a man called, and he changed his path, angling to meet them. He swept up the child, who released Trinity’s hand and laughed happily, and tossed her into the air. "How have you been?"
"Fine," the girl said. "Brought home some friends."
The man didn’t seem terribly interested in the newcomers, which Trinity found disconcertingly odd, but he greeted them sincerely. "Glad are we to see some new faces," he said, and the phrase had an air of formality around it. Trinity wondered if, here, it was a traditional phrase of greeting.
"Come on," Eve said, then, taking Trinity by the hand again as the man let her go. "I want to show you my house."
"Wasn’t that your father?" Switch asked as they left the man behind.
"No!" the girl said. "Why should he be?"
"Where are your parents?" Trinity interjected, trying to pry more information about their young guide.
"Haven’t any." She sounded utterly unconcerned.
"Grandparents?"
"Haven’t any."
"Aunts? Uncles? Family?"
"Haven’t any."
"Friends?" Switch tried, unable to think of any other caregivers.
At that Eve turned and smiled beatifically. "You are my friends!" she said, her smile both proud and delighted. "You came to see me."
They traveled up the valley a little ways, passing out of the village and encountering no more.
"Well, if he wasn’t your father, who was he?" Switch pressed, trying to make her voice sound light.
"No one," the girl replied lightly. "D’you want to see a gryphon?"
"Gryphons don’t exist, sweetie," Trinity said as gently as she could. Neo and Apoc exchanged glances; she might have not noticed herself calling the child a pet name, but they had caught it.
Eve laughed. "They do, too. Here they do."
Not wanting to argue with the child, Trinity kept her mouth shut. They walked a little farther, and then she stopped and pointed. There, in the side of the cliff wall, was a cave. "That’s my home," she said, puffing up proudly. "Let me show you!"
Trinity allowed herself to be dragged to the entrance of the cave. It was pitch black inside: she couldn’t see a thing.
"Light," the girl said calmly, and suddenly the very walls themselves seemed to glow with a soft, golden radiance.
"I don’t even have to say it," Eve said proudly. "But it makes me feel more special when I do."
"Oh." Trinity couldn’t think of anything else to say. She looked over at Neo, and the grave expression in her eyes worried him. He stepped up to her and she found his hand with her free one, clasping it tightly.
They looked about the cave as they stepped inside, eyes growing wide with wonder. There were three different caves, it seemed, linked by child-sized archways that looked quite natural, carved out of the rock. It was like the cement caves Neo vaguely remembered from Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland, hazy memories from his long-ago childhood.
The main one they stepped into was obviously where the child did most of her living-when she was indoors, that is. It was littered with grimy pillows and dusty blankets, all of which had seen better days. There were some books scattered about-old hardcover things that the child likely had never read-and mounds of paper bearing the mark of childish drawings rendered in charcoal.
The source of the charcoal Trinity found after poking her head through the small doorway into the second cavern. This was smaller than the first-barely large enough for three fully grown people to stand in, though certainly adequate for a child’s needs-and contained a low rock shelf littered with a few cracked clay dishes and a cold fireplace.
"You light your own fires?" Trinity asked. Neo had a suspicious feeling about the answer to that question, which was confirmed when the child laughed.
"Fire," she said to the room at large, and instantly a large fire was burning cheerily in the hearth-without anything but charcoal to feed it. "Most of the time I put wood in there anyway," she said, as if confiding a big secret. "It’s harder to keep going when I don’t."
"I can imagine," Trinity murmured, a strange expression on her face that Neo didn’t recognize. She looked…lost, almost.
The third chamber, on the other side of the living cavern, was obviously her bedroom. There was a hollowed-out depression in the rock where she had heaped blankets and pillows in no better shape than those in the other cave. It was obvious that, powerful though she might be, Eve was still a child and knew little about hygiene.
"It’s lovely," Trinity was saying to the little girl, who beamed happily. She knelt down to the child’s height, hands on Eve’s arms, and looked into her blue-green eyes. "I want to talk to my friends for a minute," she said. "I’ll be back, all right?"
"All right," the girl agreed calmly, and she squirreled away into her bedroom, from which they could hear the sounds of rustling paper and heavy objects-presumably more books-being thrown haphazardly around.
The crew of the Nebuchadnezzar stepped outside into the pale, dappled sunlight, all of them staring wordlessly at each other.
"Jeezus," Mouse spat out, sitting on a boulder outside the cave’s entrance. "I wish I could do that! Wow! Just bam! and shit happens. I mean-"
"Shut up, Mouse," Apoc flatlined, and Mouse swallowed the rest of his words.
"She can change things," Switch was saying. "Change them-like Neo does."
Trinity shook her head. "No. No, I don’t think it’s exactly the way Neo changes things," she said, frowning. "There’s something different here, but I don’t know exactly what it is." She paced, biting one knuckle while she thought. "Neo. Is she the source of what’s happening here?"
He nodded. "I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but she’s it. She’s what we’ve been looking for."
"Okay, then. So, no matter what’s going on here, we found what we came looking for," Mouse said. "We offer her a pill, we wake her up. Case closed."
Trinity shook her head. "It’s not that simple this time, Mouse. Morpheus told us to find out how she’s been doing this."
"Are you sure she’s not unplugged?" Apoc asked.
"Completely," Trinity answered.
"Okay, then, let’s try to think about this logically," Switch said. "Morpheus tells us there’s an anomaly in the Matrix, and we have to isolate the cause of it, find out if that cause is human, bring it back if it is, and find out how the hell it was managing to change stuff. Step one, accomplished; we found her. Step two-Neo?"
"She’s human."
"Accomplished. Step three-can’t do that yet. Step four-we ask her how she does what she does."
"I don’t think so," Trinity said. She frowned. "Eve is a child. She hasn’t the thought processes yet that make us capable of abstract thought. She probably doesn’t even know how she does these things, and if she does, I don’t think she’ll be able to explain it to us."
"Could we pull her out first and ask her later?"
"I don’t think that’s a good idea," Neo interjected.
"Why not?" Mouse looked a little affronted.
"I don’t think the rest of you grasp what she’s capable of," he said slowly, choosing his words carefully. "What she’s doing, I’ve never tried. Never even thought about trying."
"Well?"
Neo watched Trinity out of the corner of his eye as he spoke. He knew she was still upset with him because of his silent act earlier, but he’d needed the time to think. "Those people-that man back at the village?"
"What about them?"
"They’re not real. They don’t exist. She made them."
"No."
"Eve, please. We only want to help you." Trinity looked into the child’s eyes, willing her to believe.
"You don’t understand me."
"You’re right," Trinity agreed. "We don’t understand you, but we want to. Please. Let us help you."
"I can’t get hurt here," the child said stubbornly.
"I understand that," Trinity pressed. "Just let us take care of you for a little while, please? Then you can come back here if you want to. A little vacation. Everybody needs a vacation once in a while, right?"
"A vacation?" The child looked skeptical.
"Yes." Trinity nodded.
Eve looked around at the adults hovering around her. She scowled, then. "I can’t make you go away like the others," she said. "You’re not like them."
"No, we’re not," Neo agreed. "We’re like you instead."
"No." She shook her head adamantly. "You’re not like me, either."
"How do you know that?" he asked, kneeling down next to Trinity. "How can you tell?"
She scowled again, and one of her small, dirty fists clenched. "I’ll go," she said finally, "but only for a little bit. And they can’t come with us." She motioned to Switch, Apoc, and Mouse. "They don’t like me. And-they’re scared. They think I will hurt you." She looked up at them, anger in her eyes. "I don’t hurt anybody!"
"But you’ll come?" Neo asked as Trinity and Switch shared a glance. A tiny, imperceptible nod from Switch confirmed it. The other three would wait here, near the cave, while Neo and Trinity took the child and tried to reason with her-figure out the mystery. It was the only thing they could do.
"I’ll go," the child agreed, and Neo tried to smile. "Good," he said. Children made him nervous, especially girl children. Especially this girl child. She looked at him with those uncanny eyes, and he just knew she saw more than anybody else did. Possibly more than Neo himself saw, with his ability to change the Matrix in all its depth and complexity…
This child could do that, too.
As they walked away from the cave, the child in between them and one of her hands clasped by Trinity, Neo put his phone to his ear and speed-dialed Tank.
"Tank, we need a cabin for a while," he said. "Nothing too modern, and nothing too big. Enough food for three people, electricity, running water…."
"Three people?" Tank demanded.
"Nobody’s hurt," Neo assured him. "We’ve just got a little too much on our hands right now. Trinity and I are trying to take care of it."
"Where are the others?"
"Safe," Neo said. "I’m going to try the…you know."
"Okay. I’ll be waiting for the signal."
The last thing Neo did before turning the corner and following where Trinity and Eve had walked ahead of him was force a phone booth into being. The phone inside was already ringing with a patched call from Tank when the dust cleared. He hailed his three comrades before walking away.
Trinity was very close to the end of her patience. She gritted her teeth and swallowed the anger she felt as she emerged from the bathroom with a towel draped over her arm. "I’m no housewife, Neo," she said, collapsing into one of the overstuffed leather chairs.
"Don’t I know it," he replied, dropping a kiss on her forehead. "I’m sorry, Trin. Don’t know why she’s decided to latch onto you."
"I don’t know either," Trinity said. "Christ, if I knew that, I think I’d know the answer to half this God-be-damned puzzle!"
He dropped his hands on her shoulders and rubbed them firmly. "I know. I keep thinking that there’s something completely obvious staring us in the face. Damned if I know what it is, though."
"The answer is here," Trinity said. "We can’t just give up now."
The muted sounds of splashing came from inside the bathroom, and Trinity shook her head ruefully. "Duty calls," she groaned as she levered herself up and out of the chair. "You’d better have dinner for us when we get out of here."
"Eager to eat my cooking?" Neo asked. "I don’t know how wise an idea that is."
"It’s better than eating mine," Trinity shot back, and then she disappeared back into the bathroom.
Steam coated the mirror and swirled in lazy tendrils around Trinity’s face as she closed the door behind her. The bathtub was an old-fashioned one with clawed feet, and the child seemed to be enjoying the bath. Trinity had noticed the lack of any sort of lavatory in the child’s cave, and wondered if this creature had ever actually bathed in something other than the river before.
Some of the dirt encrusted on her knees and under her fingernails seemed determined to stay there, but after so long soaking in hot water it seemed to have given up. Trinity knelt on the plush bathmat and poured a generous amount of no-tears shampoo into her hand, rubbing it in her palm to start the foaming before she carefully applied it to the child’s head.
"Fire!" Eve squealed delightedly, and she flicked a stream of water from one of her toy boats to another. The second boat dunked underwater briefly, only to return to the surface. She kicked, splashing water around in the tub and creating waves for the little boats to bob violently. Trinity scrubbed at the child’s scalp, careful to use her fingers and not her nails on the young skin. She found half-healed bruises and scrapes, evidence of the girl’s heavily active lifestyle, but absolutely nothing worse than that. There was no sign of previous injury-knotted bones, bad joints-nothing. For the first time, Trinity began to give some belief to the child’s oft-repeated phrase, "I can’t be hurt here."
"Lie back; careful now," Trinity said softly, cupping her own hand around Eve’s eyes so the soap wouldn’t wash into them as she gently rinsed it away. The child was tractable and sweet, and now that Trinity was in charge and the girl was out of her element-partially, at least-she no longer felt so uncomfortable around her.
In fact, Trinity realized, she was starting to like her.
The tub was almost too big for the child to climb out of on her own, but she managed, and Trinity was waiting with a large, fluffy towel that completely enveloped Eve’s small body. She climbed into the towel Trinity held for her, and it was reflex that wrapped Trinity’s arms and the towel around the child’s body. They ended up with Trinity still kneeling on the bathmat, the child swathed in a towel and seated on her lap. Trinity reached down and brushed wet, clinging tendrils of the child’s hair out of her eyes. Eve only smiled.
"What do you think?" Trinity asked as she raised Eve to her feet again and rubbed at her wet hair with a corner of the towel. "Neo’s cooking for us tonight."
"Who doesn't know?" Trinity asked, forcing the rising panic in her stomach back where it belonged. This was only a child, she told herself.
"The others," Eve said, reaching for the flannel pajamas Tank had sent for her. They were white, and had red balloons on them.
"Did your parents cook for you?" Trinity asked, buttoning the pajama shirt for her.
"You don't wanna talk 'bout your secret," Eve said.
"Did they cook for you?" Trinity pressed.
"Don’t have any parents."
"All children have parents," Trinity said, holding out a sock. Eve held onto Trinity’s shoulder with one hand, and with the other she slid her foot into the sock. Trinity pulled it up over her ankle, tugging it into place.
"I don’t. Never wanted any."
"But doesn’t it get lonely?" Trinity asked, pressing the issue even though she knew the child didn’t want to talk about it. "Isn’t it lonely when your only friends are the ones you invent yourself?"
"Didn’t make you," Eve pointed out.
"That’s true," Trinity allowed. "How can you tell? What makes me different from the others?"
"You can do things I don’t want you to," Eve replied, seating herself before Trinity and handing back the wide-toothed comb Trinity asked for. "I don’t tell you what to do."
"Doesn’t that make me the same as you?"
"No."
The finality of that answer was something Trinity could hear clearly. She didn’t press the topic any more.
Neo walked around the living area of the cabin, his thoughts bordering vaguely on disgust. Whatever he had had in mind when asking Tank for a cabin, this wasn’t it. His hazy memory brought up pictures of beachfront bungalows his parents had rented, or the weathered structure of mosquito netting and warped pine boards that his grandparents had lived in during their summers, out at their riverfront property in Mississippi.
This was nothing like either memory. Neo guessed Tank must have taken him literally when he asked for a cabin.
It was a manufactured log cabin, or that was as close as he could get to explaining the damn place. The inside was posh, but livable, with shiny wood floors, textured walls, and large plush furniture. Everything had the look of rustic trappings without sacrificing any functionality. Idly, he wondered if the child had some hand in the look of the building as she had with the boats. But, no. This was more Tank’s own odd sense of humor. The place looked like something a couple would rent up in the mountains for their honeymoon.
"Shit, shit, shit," he muttered as he stared blankly into the pantry. It was well stocked-with things like flour, sugar, oil, spices…. How the hell was he supposed to figure out what to do with them? "I don’t fucking cook!"
Finally, in the freezer, he found something he thought he could figure out. Hot dogs. Smiling to himself, Neo pulled out the frozen mystery meat and threw a pan of water on the stove to heat. He mentally reminded himself to do something equally dire to Tank once they got out of this mess.
Using scissors he found in a drawer, Neo cut the plastic wrapping away from the hot dogs and dumped the whole frozen mess into the water. Rummaging in the cupboards, he managed to find hot dog buns, mustard, and relish, but the only catsup he could find was the kid-oriented kind in the purple squeeze bottle.
"If there is no spoon," he told himself, "there is no purple catsup either." But he still couldn’t bring himself to taste it.
Things were too weird, and Neo knew there was an answer simmering just beneath where his mind could get at it. It was a simple answer, too; he knew that as well. Simple, too simple for his adult mind to grasp.
"Okay. Think like a kid," he muttered, sliding into a chair at the dining table and smacking his forehead against his cupped hands for a moment. "Think like a kid."
His mind stayed blank. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to figure out the puzzle by trying to think like Eve did.
The sound of the child’s clear laughter, muffled by the walls, floated to him. Children. This was one thing he didn’t understand. Nothing in his previous life or while on the Nebuchadnezzar had prepared him for acting as a caregiver to a little girl who, while seemingly powerful, still threw temper tantrums and got excited about the smallest things. A sign of civilized life-the cabin-was utterly foreign to her, and it had taken the better part of an hour for her to tear through every square inch of the place when they first brought her here. She had inspected every minute detail, from light switches to the "phenomenon" of hot water running from the tap. She’d jumped on her steel-spring mattress, tried to walk on the waterbed in Neo and Trinity’s bedroom, flushed a full container of bubble bath down the toilet (they’d had to call Tank to clean up the mess), and ran into the big picture windows because she hadn’t realized there was glass there. Thankfully the glass had not broken and she herself was not hurt. But now, not long after the child had entrusted herself to his and Trinity’s care, Neo felt worn out. Completely out of his league.
The sound of hissing alerted Neo to the stove, where the boiling water holding the hot dogs was now spilling over the sides of the pan. "Damn it!" he said, knocking over his chair in his rush to turn off the heat and remove the pan from the stove. "Never again. No cooking. No domestic life. Never."
Fighting renegade AI was so much easier.
Eve was delighted by the purple catsup and used so much of it that she was soon covered with the sticky purple mess. Trinity had merely raised her eyebrow when she saw what Neo had made, hiding an amused smile. She ate dinner without comment, but Neo saw the calculating look in her eyes and knew that something would have to be done about their dining situation. Either she would have Tank send them down pre-packaged dinners that they could throw in the microwave, or Trinity herself would take over the cooking. Which, Neo reflected, would mean she would give him more child-duty. He wondered which was worse.
But now Eve was nearly falling asleep over the last of her dinner, and Trinity rose, clearing dishes from the table. That was a clear sign, Neo saw, that her time with the child was done and it was Neo’s turn now.
Wishing to be anywhere else, nearly, Neo wet a dishrag at the kitchen sink and then returned to the sleepy girl, trying to be gentle as he wiped the sticky purple mess from her hands and cheeks. "Food goes in your mouth," he said. "Not on it."
She shrugged and let him finish before climbing down from her chair and padding over to the big picture windows. She looked smaller, somehow, in the pajamas and with the ends of her hair trimmed straight. Neo watched as she climbed onto the couch and knelt, pressing her body against the back of it and staring out the windows.
"Uh…nice night, huh?" he said, sitting on the opposite end of the couch. She turned her head and stared at him dispassionately before returning her attention to the dark world outside.
"I see Trinity cut your hair."
She ignored him.
Neo cast his mind into the deepest shadows of his Matrix-born memory, trying to find something that would capture her attention. His mind alighted on something and he clung to it, stubbornly deciding that if Trinity could make this child like her, well, than he could, too.
"Would you like a story before you go to bed?" he asked, remembering the shelf full of children’s books that he’d glimpsed in Eve’s new bedroom.
She turned, at that, and looked at him again. Then, as if she’d made a decision, she nodded. "Okay. But it has to have unicorns in it."
He hoped at least one of the books fit that bill, and hesitantly held out his hand. Eve took it calmly, and together they rose from the sofa and walked into the hallway that separated the living rooms from the bedrooms.
Trinity hid a smile, watching them from behind a wall as she stacked the dishes and turned on the sink tap. Neo still had a lot to learn when it came to handling kids. It seemed that now, with Eve, he would learn it.
"…and they all lived happily ever after."
Neo looked down at Eve, curled among the stuffed animals and fat blankets like a doll. When she slept, all the cunning fled her face and she looked like nothing so much as a waxen image of a child, the ones crafted to make children look like angels fallen from heaven. One of her small hands was curled into a loose fist, holding the edge of a blanket. The other was tucked underneath her somewhere.
She’d fallen asleep not halfway into the fairy tale, the only book Neo could find on the shelf that dealt with unicorns. As she slept, Neo held the book in his palm and willed it to move back to the shelf where it belonged. Relief filled him that he could still manipulate the Matrix in this place.
For, no matter what she called it, this was still part of the Matrix. He knew it with an innate surety that few things could give him. He was sure of it in the way he was sure he was the One, the way he was sure he loved Trinity and she loved him, the way he was sure that together they would bring this war, eventually, to a close.
The sound of running water from the kitchen stilled, and soft footsteps approached the room. Neo turned his head and saw Trinity glide in, her movements slow and quiet so as not to wake the sleeping child. He couldn’t know how she had slipped into his cabin aboard the Neb with this kind of effortless silence countless times, never waking him. He couldn’t know it was she that had brought him dinner when he’d fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion right after training sessions with Morpheus, or how she came and went from their bed without ever waking him. He’d never questioned it, but now, seeing her practiced quiet movements he wondered just where she had learned to walk with such stealth. It hadn’t been part of training-at least, not his training. They learned how to run, and it didn’t matter how quiet they were. Staying alive was about being faster than the Agents, not about sneaking around them.
"Sleeping?" Trinity asked, her voice no more than a murmur. Neo nodded. She echoed the gesture and crept around to the other side of the small bed, her hands straightening the blankets and tucking the little girl in more securely. Neo watched as she smoothed the child’s unbraided hair and then, to his surprise, leaned down very slowly and kissed her forehead. He started to say something but caught himself, not wishing to disturb the sleeper.
Neo followed Trinity out of the room, snapping off the light. Immediately, he saw a small glow in the corner of the room flicker to life-a night light. Shaking his head, he closed the door as softly as he could.
Trinity looked about as tired as he felt, and they returned to the warm living room without a word. They piled logs in the fireplace and Trinity lit them with a burning roll of newspaper.
"You’re beginning to like her, aren’t you?" Neo said.
Trinity shrugged. "She’s a likeable child. It’s hard not to." She didn’t even bother to hide her smile this time. "You do, too. Admit it."
Neo shuddered. "I don’t like children. They make me nervous."
"They may make you nervous, but you like her just the same." Trinity chuckled. "I saw you tuck her in, Neo."
"Move like a Goddamn ghost, you do," he growled. "Never know where you’ll pop up next."
She shrugged. "It’s a gift."
They sat in silence for a while, until Neo moved to pull Trinity closer to him on the long sofa. She let him draw her close, leaning back against his shoulder as she stared into the flames. "I still think there’s something we’re missing here," she said.
"Me, too. And I don’t think we’re going to be able to find it by sitting here and playing house."
Trinity tensed. "I know this doesn’t look like work to you," she said, "but we are getting somewhere."
"But where?" he pressed. "I don’t know any more now than I did before."
"Maybe you don’t," Trinity said, "but I do."
"Like what?"
"I know that she understands we’re not like the other people here, the ones she’s made herself. I know that she’s uncomfortable talking about it. She wants things to stay as they are. She fears change, and we represent change. But she likes us. For some reason, she trusts us."
"Maybe she’s just lonely."
"It’s possible."
Neo sighed. "I mean…I don’t know. Don’t you ever feel…" He trailed off and shook his head. He didn’t have words for what he was trying to say. "In the Matrix."
"Yeah?"
"Walking in the city, with all those people who don’t know the truth, who go on with their meaningless lives without stopping to question the nature of their reality-don’t you ever feel…alone? Like you’re the only real person in the entire world?"
"I see what you’re getting at," Trinity said slowly. "It’s the same for her, really, even if she doesn’t know the truth."
"Maybe if we unplug her, she wouldn’t feel as bad," Neo said. "She’d be with other people-real people."
"But-"
Neo suddenly sat up, breaking off whatever she was about to say. "What the fuck-" He craned his neck, staring out the big picture windows. "Trinity, look."
"I see it, Neo. Jesus Christ, I didn’t know she could do that!"
"She’s asleep," Neo argued. They were both kneeling on the couch by this time, staring over its back at the night outside. "How could she be doing it?"
"She’s dreaming," Trinity said. "What was her bedtime story about?"
"Unicorns, but…" Neo stopped mid-sentence. "Holy shit."
From the woods all around them stepped white, hoofed creatures, their hair finer than featherdown and their footsteps light as silver. They ringed the small cabin, staying just out of the glow emanating from its windows, wreathed in forest mist. Other than their spiraled horns and ethereal light, they looked remarkably like regular white horses.
"Hang on a sec," Neo said, dropping his voice though he couldn’t quite explain why. "I want to check something." And he closed his eyes, willing the Matrix to appear to him. It took no more than an eyeblink this time-he was getting faster. And there, beyond the windows, were the unicorns. He stared at them for a long time, trying to memorize as much of the code as he could, but his mind was far from photographic when it came to memory. There was something not right about them, something…
And it hit him. "There!" he said excitedly, and he banished the sight of the Matrix. Trinity was watching him, waiting for an explanation. With a wildness that was born, Neo knew, of his excitement at finally having at least one answer, he grabbed her and kissed her.
Trinity let him hold her for perhaps a fraction of a second before pushing him away. "Answer. Now," she said, but her eyes twinkled and belied her sharp tone.
"It’s not real!" he said, and without knowing quite why, he burst out in relieved laughter.
"What the hell do you think you’re doing?" she asked, completely nonplussed. Neo collapsed on the couch and drew her with him, Trinity waiting still for her explanation.
"It’s not real!" Neo said again.
"Of course it’s not real," Trinity said, a hint of impatience in her voice. "It’s the Matrix, idiot."
"No, no, that’s not what I mean," he said, finally calming down. Trinity propped herself up on an elbow and raised an eyebrow.
"Ready to act like an adult again?" she asked.
"Sorry," he said. "But it’s just…relief, I guess."
"About what, for Chrissakes?"
"I…"
"Neo." Trinity shook her head. "How many times do we have to tell you? You are the fucking One, and no child, no matter what she may be capable of, is going to take that away from you."
"I know," he said. "But sometimes I need reminding."
Trinity rubbed her temple with two fingers as if she had a headache. "Neo, the last thing we need right now is soul-searching on your part."
"No, Trin, I’m serious. I think I might know what she’s doing." He sat them both up, his hands on her shoulders as he looked into her eyes, willing her to understand. "Those ‘unicorns’ out there? They’re not really unicorns."
"What?"
"They’re horses, Trinity-horses. Horses that glow and have horns stuck on their heads. It’s the coding equivalent of taking glue and sticking a fake horn on the head of a horse to make it look real."
"But-"
"She’s not making these animals that don’t exist," he said. "She’s just changing ones that do so they look like fantasy creatures."
Trinity nodded. "So the gryphons, the unicorns, the big bird…they’re just manipulations."
"Right. Anyone with enough computer knowledge could do it, and it’s a lot easier than putting new things in the Matrix. Tank could load a horse into the construct, doctor it up, and send it to us probably in under a minute."
"Shit." Trinity shook her head. "Okay, that’s one answer. But we still don’t know why she’s doing it, or how. We just know what she’s doing."
"Wanna make a list like Morpheus does?"
"Sure." Trinity ticked the points off on her fingers. "Who-Eve. What-is making things appear to be magical. Where-somewhere in the Matrix. Why-don’t know. How-don’t know."
"She’s lonely."
"What?"
Neo shrugged. "It’s as likely an answer as any. She could be doing this because she’s lonely, and making these things helps her feel better."
Trinity looked at him. "Why does everything with you turn to loneliness?" she asked, her voice turning slightly playful.
"I used to be," he said, lying down as she crawled over him, pressing her body against his. Neo’s arms snaked around her, eventually hooking around the jutting angle of her hipbones.
"Used to be?"
"Yeah?"
"When did that change?" she asked, her lips coming to rest a breath away from his. Neo wanted to do nothing more than reach up and kiss her, but she was firmly holding him down. "When Morpheus unplugged you?"
"No." He fought against her weight, but she merely chuckled and didn’t let him up. In strength, Neo had to grudgingly admit, they were pretty equally matched. His extra weight and size didn’t stand for much-she knew how to use her muscle and weight to make the most of what she had.
"When, then?"
"You know damn well when," he said, arching his neck up to try and reach her. She kept just out of reach, a smile playing along the edge of her mouth. "When you kissed me, and I knew I wasn’t alone anymore."
Having heard what she wanted, Trinity dipped her head and her mouth met his, hungry and wanting. The false unicorns still danced outside, but neither person particularly cared about anything other than what was going on within the circle of firelight, on the sofa.
It was Trinity who ripped her mouth away from his, finally, catching his wrist with one hand to grasp Neo’s attention.
"Neo…"
"Mm." He made the noise that meant he wasn’t really listening and pressed his lips to her collarbone.
"Neo, stop it." She sat up, straddling his waist, and her eyes flicked toward the hallway and the closed door behind which Eve slept. "There’s a child in there that could wake up at any second."
"So we’ll go into the bedroom and lock the door." He reached for her again, but Trinity slapped his hands away.
"Not that easy, flyboy," she said, climbing reluctantly to her feet. "Maybe you’d better take a cold shower before coming to bed."
"Why?"
"Even though Tank and Morpheus can’t see us expressed in the Matrix code anymore, they’re monitoring our vitals," she reminded him. "They’re not stupid, and if they see-"
Neo flushed violently red and cursed. Trinity chuckled at his embarrassment and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead. "Wait until we get out of here," she said, her hands smoothing his hair down.
The unicorns were still there as they left the living room, headed for bed.
Part 4 >