Chapter 6 - Beginning is the End is the Beginning
Morpheus had his hand raised to knock on Trinity's door, when a strange sound from within made him pause. Someone… someone inside that room was… giggling. The sound grew louder.
"Trinity - stop it!" he heard faintly, the voice punctuated by huffs of laughter. "You'll make me late!"
He heard Trinity murmur something in reply, but her response was too low for him to make out. It did, however, evoke a short, wordless exclamation from whoever else was in there. And fortunately, her - her? - voice was audible.
"Oh yeah, right, like that'll make a difference. I'm sure Chi's figured it out by now, but I don't think sleeping with you gives me permission to be tardy!"
Morpheus felt his eyes widen involuntarily. Who was that? It had been a long, long time since Trinity had taken a lover - since Ghost, over ten years ago. And that had only lasted until her visit to see the Oracle. She seems to have a knack for ending relationships, he thought with more than a little bitterness.
The room was silent for a long moment, before the unfamiliar voice finally spoke again, and even through the thick steel door, Morpheus could hear her breathlessness. "I have to go, I have to. I've already missed breakfast, I'm sorry… I have to-"
The door slammed open unexpectedly, and Morpheus was nearly bowled over by Sorcha, who skidded to a halt in the doorframe as soon as she saw him. Her green eyes flashed wide, and her lightly freckled cheeks flushed a deep, deep red. He would have laughed, had he been able to get over his surprise.
"C…captain Morpheus," she greeted, her gaze darting between his face and the corridor beyond. "Good m…morning sir." Morpheus barely held in the chuckle that threatened to erupt from his deep chest, and smiled at her instead.
"Good morning, Sorcha. I was hoping to find Trinity - is she inside?"
"Trinity?" Sorcha asked. "Oh, well, yes… yes, captain, she's right-"
"Hello, Morpheus," Trinity said calmly as she stepped up behind Sorcha, her voice rich with amusement. All of the redness fled from the girl's cheeks - she was trapped.
"I have to go!" she managed to force out between numb lips, and squeezed between Morpheus and the wall to make her escape.
"See you later, Sorcha," Trinity called after her, but the girl was already racing down the corridor, and she didn't look back. Trinity threw back her head and laughed, and Morpheus looked at her sharply. When had he last heard that sound?
"Come in," she told him, and closed the door once he had entered. She offered her desk chair, and when he shook his head and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, she pulled the chair out and lithely straddled it. Piercing blue eyes met pools of depthless brown.
"Sorcha?" Morpheus asked simply, neither his voice nor his face betraying any emotion.
A proud, quirky smile hovered on Trinity's lips. "Yes," she replied. "It… surprised me. But it feels right, somehow." Her back straightened suddenly, and the smile fled. "Why - is there some kind of problem?" she asked, steel lacing her voice.
"No," Morpheus answered. "No, that's not what I came to speak with you about at all - I was merely curious." He shrugged. "I trust your decisions, Trinity - you know that." She didn't sigh aloud, but he saw her shoulders relax ever so slightly. You had to have eyes like a hawk to catch Trinity's body language, but it was there nonetheless.
"So," she began, folding her arms on the back of the chair and resting her chin on them, "when are we leaving?"
This time, it was Morpheus' turn to smile. "Am I that transparent?"
She returned his grin, though he thought he saw a flicker of sadness run through her face like a brief ripple on a still pond. "No," she replied. "But after a week, you become restless. And it's been nine days."
He inclined his head slightly. "Touche. Day after tomorrow. In the afternoon."
"The crew will be thankful for that," she answered, smirking. "I think they'd mutiny if you made them get up early the morning after Death Day."
"And you wouldn't?" His smile stretched.
"I might," she threw back.
"Trinity," Morpheus said quietly into the pause that stretched out before them, "I've found him."
Again, the smile slid from her face, and he watched her transform from a woman, vibrant and warm, into a sculpture - beautiful and precise, but hard and cold. So cold. He felt his forehead crease in sympathy with her unknown pain. What is your secret, Trinity? What is this memory that can transmute you from flesh to stone?
"Who is he?" her voice was flat, dull.
Morpheus pushed off against the wall and drew even with her, facing her computer. "May I?" When she nodded, he logged in and opened several files. Trinity found herself looking at a grainy, black and white photograph of a man - a dark-haired, dark-eyed man perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties. His face was angular, androgynous almost, and handsome.
"Thomas A. Anderson," she read the caption aloud slowly, then scanned the text of the bio next to the picture. "Neo." Her head abruptly jerked back from the screen. "Morpheus… he's thirty-five years old!" She turned to look at him incredulously. "If we free him, he'll either die or go mad!"
"Not this one, Trinity," Morpheus replied tightly. "Look." And he pulled up another file, in which line and bar graphs were sprinkled liberally throughout the text. It was an analysis of Thomas Anderson's neural activity, and Morpheus watched Trinity read it with a tense, eager frown over his features.
"Blue skies above," Trinity breathed. "He's changing things from inside." She whipped her head around again to lock eyes with Morpheus. "But there have been a few others like this - you, and Soren, and even Ghost was able to-"
"Not like this, Trinity," Morpheus answered her firmly. "We're not talking about him being able to mend a broken glass, or run abnormally fast. He changes entire systems at once. Look - here, traffic lights. And here as well. And here, he delayed the doors of a subway train. He even sped up a clock once, at work! It was barely perceptible, but he did it." Morpheus's index finger jabbed at the screen for emphasis.
"You've been watching him for a while," she said, proud that her voice remained steady while inside, everything - every cell - was quaking. This face… this man… could he possibly be…?
"Yes," he replied. "But I needed to be sure before I told you, or any of the others. And now… now I am sure. He is the One, Trinity."
She forced the words out past the lump that had settled in the top of her esophagus. "Who do you want to make first contact?"
Morpheus looked at her silently for a drawn-out moment. "You."
"Why?" she fired back at him almost immediately. He shrugged again.
"You did a masterful job with Sorcha. And I think he will trust you."
"What makes you think that?" she snapped again, beyond caring about the tone of her voice, feeling as though her peripheral vision was slowly dimming, giving way only to a long, narrow tunnel, lit sporadically by flickering lamps. It'll be another wild goose chase, she tried to reassure herself. Only what if it's not?
"You're a beautiful woman, Trinity," Morpheus answered quietly.
She did sigh, then - a true sigh that whistled between her teeth. But her back remained ramrod-straight, and Morpheus gritted his teeth at her stubbornness.
"Fine," she replied, her jaw clenching tightly. "I'll do it."
Morpheus nodded. "It should be safe; maybe he was flagged when he was younger, but by now, the system should have given up on him being a problem."
"True," Trinity replied, her voice changing over to brisk and businesslike. "All right. I'll read over these files and we can talk more about how to approach him on the way up to broadcast depth. Yes?"
"Good," Morpheus answered, his face now drawn gaunt in a predatory smile. "He is the One, Trinity. You'll see."
Could he be? She replied silently. Could he be the One? But… but Sorcha… She shook her head in an attempt to clear the gathering maelstrom of thoughts, and rose abruptly from her seat.
"If we really are leaving in two days, I'd better run diagnostics on the Neb," she said, and even to her own ears, her voice sounded hollow.
Morpheus inclined his head slightly. "Cypher should be on the ship as well - I asked him to take a look at the malfunctioning hydraulics."
For some reason, hearing that was a relief. Maybe I just need a good dose of Cypher's cynicism.
"You'll be at the Temple Gathering tomorrow?" Morpheus asked her when she remained silent.
"Yes." For God's sake, Morpheus, why couldn't you have waited until we left?
"Then I will see you there." Thankfully, he didn’t linger any longer, but spun on his heel and left the room without looking back. Leaving her alone. Alone with the picture of Thomas A. Anderson filling her computer screen.
"Damn you, Morpheus," she whispered harshly, staring into those dark, unseeing eyes that were somehow so haunted and yet so innocent, even captured in a bad photograph. "I was just starting to remember how to be happy."
Cypher was muttering to himself as he knelt at the side of one of the chairs in the Core, making a few adjustments with a wrench, when Trinity threw herself into the operator's chair.
"How's it going?" she asked.
"This ship's a piece of shit," he growled, biting off a curse as the wrench twisted out of his fingers and clattered to the floor.
"That good, eh?" she replied dryly. Cypher rose to his feet and groaned, pressing a hand to his lower back.
"I'm getting too old for this, Trin," he muttered, coming up behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. She had to resist the urge to flinch away; Cypher's little affectionate touches were always grating, somehow. Instead, she snorted derisively and began typing commands into the console.
"Bullshit - you're just a whiny bastard."
"And you're a coldhearted, cruel woman," he retorted, but began to lightly massage her neck muscles. She gritted her teeth and tried to relax. "Speaking of which," he continued after a few seconds, "what's this rumor I hear about you and that kid we picked up a while back? What's her name… Sorcha?"
Trinity was suddenly thankful that her shoulders were already tense. "What are you talking about?" she asked, carefully maintaining her sarcastic tone. He laughed sharply, and she knew he was smirking behind her back.
"You haven't heard? People say you're sleeping with her."
The sneer in his voice was like lightning in her blood. "How very perceptive of them," she snarled, spinning around in the chair and tearing herself from his grasp. "Don't tell me you have some kind of problem with it." The menace in her voice was palpable, but he didn't take the hint.
"It's true, then?" he ogled at her, and she felt her eyes narrow into icy slits. "Holy shit, Trinity… she's, what, seventeen?"
Trinity rose from her chair so fast that dizziness momentarily closed around her brain. She fought it off automatically. First Ghost, now Cypher… even Morpheus had seemed dubious. Goddamnit! Ghost deserved her patience - she would be the first to admit it - but Cypher? She didn't owe him a damn thing.
"What the fuck is the matter with it? Does everyone think I'm pressuring her into something she doesn't want?" She tossed her head back, and her eyes were balls of blue fire. "I assure you, she wants this!"
Cypher had wisely taken a few steps back, and his hands were raised in a gesture of surrender. "Take it easy, Trin," he wheedled. "I just want to know why, that's all."
"It's the right thing for me, right now," she replied quietly, struggling to master her strained temper but unable to keep the ferocity from her voice. "Does it have to be more complicated than that?"
Cypher's face twisted nastily. "A seventeen year old girl is suddenly right for you, but I never was?"
A crimson flood of sheer rage - rage at Cypher's irrational jealousy, at Morpheus' singlemindedness, at the Oracle's manipulation - thundered through her until she thought she would burst into flame like some kind of human phoenix. She could feel the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing rigid, electrified by the terrible surge of pure emotion. But her voice, when she spoke again, was the sound of frost.
"And you never will be." She flung out one arm to point at the corridor that led to the Neb's exit ramp. "Get out."
He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but the deadly peril of her hot-ice eyes forestalled him. When his footsteps finally echoed away into nothingness, she allowed herself to sink back into the chair. But it was a long time before she could see anything before her except a seething wall of living, pulsing redness.
Hours later, Trinity walked slowly into the Core of the Academy, unsure whether she was looking for Sorcha or just wanted to plug herself into a sim and kick something very hard for a long time. When she stepped through the door and saw Chi in the operator's seat with Sorcha plugged into an automatic console nearby, a cynical smile rose to her lips.
Double or nothing today, she thought bitterly. How the hell am I going to tell her?
"It's late," she said out loud.
"Not too late," he replied amiably. "I just wanted to get some readings on Sorcha while she thought I wasn't looking." He swiveled the chair around and turned to look at Trinity with a small smile. "She's quite self-conscious, you know."
"She's getting over it." Trinity moved closer to study the screen. Her eyebrows rose slightly. "She's gotten faster."
Chi nodded, but he was studying Trinity's face. "Since she broke the record. It's the way with her, as you said in your initial report." He sighed quietly. "It's the opposite of the standard condition, but no less limiting. Her physical strength will necessarily plateau soon, and when it does…" he shrugged. "But everyone has some kind of block to work through."
"I…" Trinity began, still staring at the screen. "My concern is that if her body is weakened somehow - if she gets sick on a ship, or wounded in an attack - she won't be able to perform well in the Matrix."
Chi nodded again. "The thought has occurred to me also. But, at least she knows of her weakness. And there is time yet before she must choose a ship." He pushed his chair back from the bank of monitors. "Do you wish to spar with her? Or to plug in somewhere else, perhaps?"
Trinity's remained hunched over the computer for a long moment, undecided. To put it off, or confront her now? She sighed silently. Best to get it over with. She straightened her back and turned to Chi… and he only had time to wonder at the tight, pained expression on her face before she spoke.
"I'll plug in with her."
Sorcha flowed through the forms, letting her consciousness cascade into her digital muscles as they remembered the long-practiced patterns. Her arms and legs moved impossibly fast, and when she jumped, she rose and descended slowly, like the videos of astronauts walking on the surface of the Moon.
And then she caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her right eye, and her movements halted crisply as she converted a low kick into the "ready" stance. When she saw who had joined her, a wide smile curved her lips, but she did not shift a muscle.
Trinity moved closer, and Sorcha let her eyes wander over her RSI without shame. She wore a tight black tank top that shimmered plastically in the low light of the simulated dojo. It showed off her pale arms, lean and muscular, and Sorcha felt the familiar heat rise in her as she remembered her own hands spasmodically closing around those smooth muscles as Trinity had hovered above her last night in the flickering candlelight.
Unconsciously, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and let her eyes roam further, over the gentle slopes of her breasts, down to her waist, where the blackness of her shirt became the matching blackness of form-fitting pants. She could feel her breath begin to quicken, but she forced her gaze to rise slowly, slowly until she was staring directly into those piercing blue eyes.
Despite her confusion and anxiety, Trinity grinned at the girl's purposefully unsubtle once-over. "Looks like you're spoiling for a fight," she said.
"Am I?" Sorcha asked teasingly. "You'd better watch out - I've just discovered my signature move."
"Oh?" Trinity quirked an eyebrow.
"Yeah," Sorcha grinned. "Y'know how you do that thing where you jump up in the air and hang there like some kind of terrifying bird of prey? Well… here's my equivalent." Without any warning, she leapt high into the digital air, bringing her arms in close to her chest and twisting rapidly as she ascended. At the apex of the leap she was a blur of silver and red… and then she was descending, falling quickly towards Trinity. The older woman watched her calmly. At the last possible moment, when it seemed they would collide, Sorcha broke her spin and thrust out her left leg to sideswipe Trinity while throwing a short chopping punch to her neck. Trinity raised one arm to block the punch, and then threw herself into the air in a soaring backflip, so that Sorcha's leg passed through nothing but empty space.
Sorcha landed easily on her right leg and again assumed the "ready" stance, just as Trinity landed her impossibly graceful flip. She smiled rakishly. "What do you think?"
"Very impressive," Trinity replied, cocking an eyebrow. "But I did block it."
"I can't wait to try it against an Agent," Sorcha told her. Trinity's eyes narrowed, and she took a subconscious step forward.
"The hell you will! If you see an Agent, you run. Hear me? You run."
Sorcha shrugged, secretly enjoying Trinity's protective side. "I'll run… after I've tried that on him."
"You'll run as soon as you see one," she retorted. "If you know what's good for you." And suddenly she rushed at Sorcha, a black streak of motion that halted only to deliver a slew of combinations that made the girl stagger back slightly. But Sorcha recovered quickly, and managed to convert Trinity's attempt to throw her into a no-handed cartwheel. They separated momentarily, but neither was breathing heavily. Sorcha strafed towards her, green eyes gleaming.
"We're leaving the day after tomorrow," Trinity said suddenly, bluntly, into the charged silence. The words halted Sorcha as a punch or kick never could, but she recovered quickly.
"It doesn't surprise me," she said simply, and this time, she rushed in to deliver a series of flying kicks. Trinity blocked them, seemingly without effort, and almost managed to hook Sorcha's leg before the girl darted away in a series of back handsprings.
"You've become quite the gymnast," Trinity commented dryly.
"What's Morpheus' big rush?" Sorcha asked, ignoring her sarcasm. Trinity's head jerked back at her words, and a strange grimace ran across her mouth before she could regain control. Sorcha watched the muscles in her jaws clench tightly, but Trinity's answer came faster than she could voice another question.
"Morpheus… believes he has found the One."
A wave of dizziness swept over Sorcha, and she instinctively threw out her arms, triceps tight and bulging, to maintain her balance. You knew this would happen. She told you it might. You knew, dammit!
When her vision focused again, she found Trinity's eyes with her own, and they were dark and full of pain. And anger. Keep it together! she screamed mentally. For her sake, if for nothing else!
"What do you think?" she asked, and somehow her voice was calm and quiet.
"How the fuck should I know?" Trinity retorted viciously. "I don't know him - I only just saw his goddamn photograph this morning."
From somewhere deep inside, Sorcha found the strength to try a joke. "Well, did he look like the One?" she asked, mustering a grin.
"Very fucking funny," Trinity growled.
Sorcha sighed, her selfish despair and anxiety overwhelmed by concern at Trinity's sudden bleakness. "C'mon," she said, beckoning with a jerk of her neck. "C'mon and try to hit me. I think you need it."
No sooner had the words left her mouth, then Trinity rushed again… and this time, she was unstoppable. Her arms and legs were a blur of motion, and although Sorcha managed to block the first few combinations, Trinity only grew faster. Faster and faster, until one of her kicks tripped Sorcha and brought her to her knees. Desperately, Sorcha tried a defensive throw… but Trinity was too strong for her, and she ended on her back with her arms pinned above her head and one of Trinity's knees digging into her sternum. She was breathing heavily… but so was Trinity.
"If you see an agent," Trinity began between heaving breaths, "you run." Her dilated eyes were inescapable. "Promise me, dammit!"
"I promise," Sorcha gasped. And then Trinity's mouth came down hard on hers, bruisingly, desperately hard. Sorcha winced as their teeth collided, but if her hands had been free to pull Trinity closer, she would have.
It was Trinity who finally tore her mouth away, Trinity who spoke the release code for the program. They ended up in Sorcha's tiny room because it was closer, but instead of the fierce lovemaking Sorcha had expected, Trinity was more gentle, more tender than she had ever been. And in the golden, quivering end, as they came together, their tears mingled to soak into Sorcha's thin, ragged pillow.
Sorcha stood barefoot on the Temple sands with Pegasus, Mongoose, and a few other Academy students, her feet shifting impatiently. "So… what goes on at this thing?" she asked Mongoose.
"Yeah," chimed in Pegasus. "All anyone's bothered to tell me is that today we're commemorating the death of the first incarnation of the One." She scrubbed a hand across her slowly regrowing hair. "What happens at this Gathering?"
"Lots of speeches, mostly," Mongoose replied, craning his neck to look up at both of them. "By the Councillors. And Commander Locke. Oh, and then there are the prayers, which Councillor Hamann usually does. Those go on for-ev-er."
"Great," Sorcha muttered, trying to surreptitiously look for Trinity in the huge press of people. The last night… maybe ever… no, don't think about that! Goddamn it, why do we have to be wasting time here!
"But then, there's the dancing."
"Dancing?" Sorcha asked sharply.
"Yeah," Mongoose replied, winking at her. "It's intense."
"Good to know," she murmured, her eyes flickering rapidly around the huge cave that was humming with the murmurs of hundreds of thousands of people. It was a comforting sound.
If there's dancing, Sorcha thought, still searching for that miraculously familiar face, I may as well just wait it out.
But when the drums finally started, she still hadn't found Trinity, and panic was settling into a hard lump just beneath her rib cage. What if she hadn't come? What if she doesn't want to see me tonight?
"C'mon, Sorcha," urged Pegasus, grinning widely. "Let's dance!"
Sorcha turned to the younger girl with a tight but apologetic grin. "I think I'm going to wander around for a bit, actually. But you have a good time." She turned to make her way through the crowd, and missed the expression of disappointment that flitted across Peg's face. But Mongoose did not, and a quick grin lit up his eyes before he suppressed it.
"Don't worry about her," he said. "She's just distracted."
"By what?" Pegasus asked curiously. This time, Mongoose let a broad smile creep across his face without censure.
"Not what - who."
Sorcha's head swiveled left, then right. Nothing. Dammit, Trinity, where are you?
And then, a long, pale arm stretched over her right shoulder, and the hand was holding a tall glass filled to the brim with a clear, sweet-smelling liquid.
"For you," a husky voice murmured, and Sorcha whirled around so quickly that she made herself dizzy. "Who were you looking for?" Trinity asked, laughing. Sorcha took one look at her dilated eyes and knew that she had partially succumbed to the glorious haze of the viola.
"You," she answered simply. The time for subtleties was long past. The last night… She shook her head and took the shot from Trinity's hand, purposefully brushing her fingers. "I hope you have one, too?"
Trinity revealed her left hand, which was also clutching a shot, and they brought the glasses together with a light clink. But Sorcha was at a loss for what toast to make.
"To the freedom to make your own choices," Trinity said suddenly, lucidly, into the drumbeat-filled pause.
"Yes-" Sorcha replied, not knowing what else to say, and drank.
The burning overtook her much sooner than did the shot, as Trinity snaked one arm around her waist and pressed herself tightly against Sorcha's back. "Anyone will see," the girl protested weakly.
"I don't the fuck care," Trinity murmured into her ear, taking the opportunity to lave Sorcha's sensitive earlobe with her tongue. She smiled as the girl shivered in her arms. "Looks like you don't care anymore, either."
And then the shot kicked in for Sorcha, and she truly didn't care, she didn't, because she was surrounded by Trinity - by the smell and feel of her, and nothing else mattered, nothing…
But eventually Trinity caught Ghost watching them, watching with his big, sad eyes, watching as she let her lips trail down Sorcha's neck, as she let one hand stroke the rippling muscles of Sorcha's stomach beneath her shirt. She pulled her hands away with an effort.
"We need to leave," she whispered harshly. "Now."
"I was hoping you'd say that," Sorcha muttered back. My skin… is on fire…
And so they left, and staggered through the corridors of Zion, and every time the stretch of tunnel before them was deserted, Trinity pressed Sorcha into the walls and kissed her until they heard footsteps. Sorcha knew she would have bruises, from Trinity's lips and from the rough earthen walls, but she didn't care. She didn't care… about anything.
They stumbled together into Trinity's room, and Sorcha doubled over laughing as she watched Trinity try to light the candles on the nightstand next to her bed. Their bed. But her laughter turned to gasps as Trinity pushed her onto the woolen blankets and kissed her way from Sorcha's mouth to her navel, removing clothing all the while. And then her lips moved lower, ever lower, until Sorcha's upper body was writhing frantically as Trinity's lips and tongue explored the beyond-soft folds of her swollen, ultra-sensitive skin.
They made love all night, and each time was more fiercely passionate than the last.
"I love you!" Sorcha gasped in the throes of her last orgasm. "I love you, Trinity!" And finally, her strength and emotions taxed to their limit, she fell asleep in the circle of Trinity's strong arms.
"I wanted to love you, Sorcha," Trinity murmured as she heard the low buzz of the hallway lights turning on, heralding the start of a new day in Zion. "I wanted to. If it had been up to me…"
But her words trailed off, and she left the sentence forever unfinished. For there, in her mind's eye, she could see Neo's pale, innocent face… and a part of her - dark and barely realized - knew that he was her destiny.
He. The One.
Chapter 7 >