MulticoloredGypsy > Adam Street Bridge
- AUTHOR: MulticoloredGypsy
- TITLE: Adam Street Bridge
- CATEGORY: Drama, AU.
- RATING: PG
- SUMMARY: If you could ask him now, Neo couldn’t have told you why he agreed to meet with the terrorist under the bridge. His life - he wasn’t going anywhere living it - so why not die for it?
- AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a one-shot angst Alternate-Universe, so don’t ask me if I will continue, because I won’t, and don’t tell me that none of it really happened, because I already know that. I’m just expanding the horizon a little. Don’t be afraid to step outside the box. And beware the sudden increase in angst.
Adam Street Bridge
“Do you still want to meet?”
“Yes.”
“Then go to the Adam Street Bridge.”
If you could have asked him now, Neo couldn’t have told you why he said yes, why he agreed to meet with the terrorist. Anyone in the right mind would have feared for their life and safety if asked to meet a terrorist because they were afraid they were going to die. Why would that be so?
“Because terrorists kill people,” almost anyone would respond. “That’s just what terrorists do.” The stereotypical terrorist of today found pleasure in causing suffering. They found freedom through taking lives away. Unless you were raised by a family of terrorists, you were brought up to believe that if you meet a terrorist, your life was over.
Neo grew up in an average American family, but once he was on his own, living life his way, he began to realize the truth about his life - it was pointless. That’s why Neo wasn’t afraid of meeting with Morpheus-the-Terrorist. Yes, he was afraid of losing something important, but then again, what did Neo have to lose that actually was so important? His life was a blur - between his shit office job and dull hacker job, he didn’t have that much to live for. So why not die for it?
The reason people had fears in general was because they wanted to stay alive, they wanted to keep living their dull routine lives. At least they weren’t dead. But why were people so dependant on the lives they knew so well to be perfect? What good would it do them? Eventually, everyone is going to die. Eventually the sun will explode and earth will burn to a crisp, but nobody feared that, did they?
Neo wasn’t planning on going anywhere that night when he awoke to the phone call. He expected it to be another bad-timing telemarketer, prepared to convince him into buying a better sink, better home insurance, anything and everything that was better than what he already owned. But that was no good when two weeks later the market will produce something even better, or so they say. It will never end. It has the world trapped in an endless cycle of marketing, a cycle that could withstand anything, except perhaps the explosion of the sun.
But at least the phone call had relieved him of the incredibly peculiar dream he was having. There were three men with him in a room, and they talked about all kinds of things. Sounds pretty normal, right? But then when he demanded a phone call, Neo’s mouth, of all things, sealed shut. The men in suits tore off his shirt and the apparent leader of the three dropped an otherworldly bug on his stomach. The bug then crawled into his bellybutton.
Neo had never had a dream this odd - usually he never dreamt at all. He rarely even slept, spending most of his hours on his computers. Whenever he did get to sleep, he was normally so exhausted that if he dream at all he would wake up with his mind completely blank. For the first time in his adult life, Neo had remembered a dream; this was obviously a sign, something telling him he did have a future, he did have a purpose.
Nope. That was all wrong. Neo didn’t believe in signs and fate and psychics. He didn’t believe in ghosts, Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, and he definitely did not believe that God and Jesus took time some time off to plan out Neo’s entire life for him. The future was dependant on the past, and vise versa. Without one, the other could not possibly exist. But what happened in the future was under Neo’s control, and only Neo’s control. No one was in charge of him except him. And that he did believe.
So he pulled on a black sweater and off he went to meet the terrorist, maybe even his demise, or maybe his redemption. If he was lucky. He didn’t know what his future had in store for him - no, he didn’t care, remember? He didn’t believe that his future had anything in store for him because he didn’t believe there was a future controlled by anyone else but himself. He was the God of his own life.
Walking down the cold streets, rain pounding down on him, Neo wondered what the terrorist wanted with him anyways. He wondered why Morpheus wanted him to practically throw himself out a window. Maybe he was trying to trick him, testing to see how great Neo’s loyalty was to a man he had never met. Trust was unpredictable - one can work so hard to gain the trust of another just to have the other turn on him and give him up for the enemy. But that’s the way life worked. There was no other way to explain it.
Life was fucked up and Neo knew it. Something was missing, and yet something was always there that shouldn’t be, like a shield holding him back from reality. If his meaningless life wasn’t reality, then what was? Would he ever find out?
Neo’s thoughts were interrupted when suddenly his body seized up, his muscles constricted by an invisible force. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The world before his eyes was replaced with green foreign symbols moving in erratic patterns impossible to make out. Neo had no idea what was going on, but at once his body relaxed, but it was no longer his body. He watched as if from a backseat as someone, something walked for him, blinked for him, breathed for him. Neo was no longer in control.
The sleek black car containing the three revolutionists drives down the abandoned roads silently, going unnoticed by the dark roads beneath the wheels. Inside, no one moves except the man’s hands gripping the wheel and his feet on the pedals. Ahead of them stands the Adam Street Bridge in all it’s glory, if you even had the heart to call it that, rain dripping over the sides, forming almost a cave inside.
The man pushes down on the pedal with more force and the car drives through the wall of water. A man dressed in black stands alone on the other end of the tunnel. It can only be one person - Neo. They drive closer, and as they do a phone rings. The woman in black answers it. The woman in white is alert.
Woman in black opens the door as the phone is brought to her ear. Those four words will be the last she will ever hear. Outside there is a flash of green, and then nothing.
“Drive! It’s an Agent!”
Before she can react, the Agent is inside the car - before the man can drive, a bullet passes through his head, and he is dead. The woman in white screams, drawing her gun, only to have it shot out of her hand, a bloody hole left in its place. An almost identical one is soon fired through the back of her head.
It is a blur of flesh and black as the two figures struggle in the back, each having a strong hold of each others guns. Finally, one reigns, and another shot is fired. And another, and then one more. Blood and leather molded one, but the woman in black is still alive. She summons up the strength to kick the Agent out of the backseat. He flies back, crashing into the wall.
Holding herself up with one arm, the woman in black fires a shot in the dark. She fires many shots. She still hasn’t turned off her cell phone. Tank’s frantic voice is screaming on the other line, but the woman in black makes no move to acknowledge. She knows she should give Tank a break and tell him what happened, but she isn’t able to speak. Blood flows from her mouth instead, a few drops landing on the phone.
A flash of green. And then nothing. The sound of rain falling on the Adam Street Bridge fills her ears, serving as a welcome distraction from the pain. Using her last remaining strength, the woman in black pulls herself out of the car. Inside is too much pain for her to bear. She deserves her last breath to be of fresh air, not of air heavy with blood. She collapses on the pavement, cool against her body.
Red blood and black leather, united as one.
Red blood on a black sweater, almost out of place.
The woman in black struggles for consciousness, lying under the Adam Street Bridge, shot two times with the silver bullets of her enemy. Slumped against the wall, Thomas A. Anderson lies under the Adam Street Bridge, shot thirteen times with the silver bullets of his savior.
Tank sits alone before the screen of code, knowing he will never see his three companions again all because he made the call a second too late.
Apoc and Switch lie dead inside the sleek black car, the car which his now stained with blood and stained with death.
Neo and Trinity, killed by each others weapons, lying under the Adam Street Bridge.
Fin.
