Chapter Text
Neo followed Trinity up the ladder into the cramped cockpit. Mouse sat slouched in the pilot’s seat, feet propped haphazardly across several displays on the instrument panel. A scuffed paperback splayed open in his lap as he gazed out into the lightless underworld. “He didn’t say much,” he told Trinity as she slid into the copilot’s chair. “Just asked you to comm him back.”
She acknowledged him with a hum and began an arcane sequence of button punches. Mouse yawned elaborately, set his feet down and swiveled around. “I’m gonna go get— oh, hiya Neo.” He blinked in surprise. “You’re up? Here? Why are you up here?”
“I, uh-“ Neo faltered. In truth, he had followed Trinity without thinking. It hadn’t occurred to him to do anything else.
“Come on Mouse, you were a newborn yourself not too long ago,” Trinity said. “You remember the insomnia. I’ve just been using the opportunity to get some extra training in.” She glanced back at Neo and gave him a conspiratorial half-smile that sent tingles across his scalp and down his body. “He’s a quick study; at this rate he’ll be decoding the matrix better than you by next week.”
“Oh, well that’s hardly fair,” Mouse grumbled. “If he’s-“
He was interrupted by a beep and a softspoken male voice issuing from the overhead speaker. “This is the Logos.”
“Ghost, hi, it’s me.” There was a comfortable affection in Trinity’s voice that caught Neo’s attention and made him wonder uneasily who this man was to her.
“Trin. Burning the midnight oil?”
“As usual. Heard you need some help?”
“Yeah. We could use you and Morpheus for the usual backup gig.”
“The ‘usual backup gig’ is scheduled well in advance, it’s not an urgent assist call at oh-dark-thirty. What’s going on?”
“It’s our latest potential, name of Skylarker. Scrappy 14-year old hacker, real sharp kid, has run a couple of incredibly smooth siphons and worms. And he knows there’s something wrong with the world. But he’s also naive. Reckless. Talks too much on too many of the wrong forums. I just got back from a surveillance run, caught some police chatter. They have an ID and a location and they’re prepping a raid. I’m certain he’s ready to eject, we just need to get to him before the cops do.”
Trinity took a deep breath, let it out. “Ghost—“
“I know, Trin. I know. But—“
“Morpheus isn’t going to like it. Where there’s cops there’s—“
“Agents. I know. But Niobe and I are ready to go for the extraction and Sparks is setting up multiple exits right now. I wouldn’t even ask but Agent activity’s been increasing throughout the system over the past few weeks and Niobe’s threatening to scrub the entire operation if we don’t secure some backup. She’s been on the horn with a couple other ships, but nobody’s anywhere near broadcast. Mouse said the Neb is only about an hour out?” There was silence as Trinity glanced over at Mouse, who shrugged. “I don’t want to lose this one, Trin,” he continued softly. “He’s so much like me at that age.”
“Oh, Ghost,” she sighed. “I know I don’t need to remind you that getting attached to coppertops is discouraged for a reason.”
“And I know I don’t need to remind you that sometimes you can’t help it.”
Trinity shifted in her seat. “You know that’s not the…” she trailed off.
“Please, Trinity.”
Neo took stock in the silence that followed. He had so many questions, but what was suddenly abundantly clear was how little he really understood about Trinity’s life. Her experiences, her duties, her friends and colleagues. Her lovers? He felt foolish suddenly for the hope he now realized he’d allowed to blossom in their candlelit sanctum. She’d said it herself - he was just a newborn.
“Trin?” Ghost said after a moment, and Trinity swallowed.
“All right. I’ll talk to Morpheus. We could probably be at broadcast and ready to go by oh-four-hundred, is that soon enough?”
“Yes. Thank you. How is he, anyway? Your new one?”
“He’s doing well. Training proceeding normally, getting stronger every day.”
“Not what I mean and you know it,” Ghost laughed. “Is he—“
“Look, we’ve got a lot to do before rendezvous. I’ll catch you up later, okay?”
“Sure, alright. Thanks, Trin. See you in there.”
“We’ll be in touch to firm things up. Nebuchadnezzar out.”
She flipped a few switches, then turned to Mouse. “Go get Morpheus and Tank up, have them meet me in the Core. Don’t give details, I’ll explain it to them. It’s going to be delicate getting Morpheus to agree to this.”
“Sure thing, lieutenant.” As Mouse slipped past Neo and down the ladder, she swiveled around to look up at him.
“Well Neo, you’re getting more training opportunities than you bargained for tonight. How are you feeling? Ready to observe your first matrix op?”
“I don’t like it, Trinity,” Morpheus said. “Last-minute extractions under duress have a dismally high failure rate. And I want this crew dedicated to Neo’s training. The war doesn’t wait for one coppertop.”
“I know, but this one’s important to Ghost and we do owe the Logos for the Flying Fox incident. Plus, it’ll give Neo the chance to monitor an actual mission. Tank can explain the basics of operating, he can start to learn extraction protocols—“
“Neo should be resting. It’s almost 0300 and he’s dead on his feet.”
Neo was, in fact, sitting, though he knew Morpheus was right. He was exhausted. He should be asleep. He sat sideways on one of the recliners they used to jack into the matrix, watching Trinity argue her case to Morpheus across the room. A sleep-rumpled Tank sat yawning at the operator’s station as he booted up various systems, and Mouse had returned to the cockpit to prepare the ship for the journey to what Neo had just learned was called “broadcast depth.”
Despite the captain’s reticence, the crew were behaving as if Trinity had already won him over. Neo wondered if this was a dynamic that played out often. He certainly couldn’t imagine denying her anything she felt this strongly about for long, if he were in Morpheus’s shoes.
While Mouse had awakened their skeleton crew, Trinity had filled Neo in on some of the details. Ghost was her closest friend, like a brother (Neo had tried valiantly to suppress the relief he’d felt at that clarification). He served aboard the Logos - “a sister ship to the Neb, in a lot of ways” - which they partnered with on some matrix missions due to the other ship’s unusually small crew. “It’s difficult to run an extraction with just three,” Trinity had said. “And it gets even more precarious if there’s any threat of intervention. So we assist sometimes.”
“What do you assist with?” Neo had asked.
“Whatever they need. Another set of eyes, another set of guns.” She shrugged. “Matrix runs can get dicey.”
“Dangerous,” Neo surmised.
“Sure, dangerous.” She had grinned at him in a way he found reassuring and terrifying and excruciatingly attractive, all at once. “Don’t worry. Morpheus and I know what we’re doing in there.”
Now the two of them were heading toward him, evidently having resolved the dispute to Trinity’s satisfaction if the sparkle in her eyes was anything to go by. Morpheus began entering data into one of the jacking stations while Trinity went straight to Neo.
“We’re going in in an hour,” she said quietly, for his ears only. “You don’t have to observe, and if you think you can get back to sleep, that should be your priority.” Neo shook his head. As weary as he was, his empty cabin still held no appeal and he perceived that for whatever reason Trinity wanted him to watch them work. He wouldn’t risk disappointing her.
“Alright. Good,” she said. “It’ll be a quick run, in and out in probably twenty minutes. Ghost and Niobe are in there now setting up the extraction equipment and making contact with the target. Assuming he takes the red pill, the Logos will go pick him up. Morpheus and I are only there to keep an eye out since there’s a threat of police intervention. If there is - we’ll fuck ‘em up and get out of there.”
Neo nodded. “Earlier, you said there are Agents among the cops?” He remembered the cold terror he’d felt at the mercy of those monsters and suppressed a shudder.
“Agents can overwrite anyone, but they especially like enforcers. Cops, security guards, soldiers, whatever. They’re always monitoring them, ready to take over at any sign of rebel activity. Tank and Sparks are setting up extra exits just in case they show up. They won’t get anywhere near us.”
Neo nodded. “And this type of mission - it’s standard?”
“Absolutely. It’s what we do.”
An hour later, Neo watched as Trinity demonstrated how to jack someone into the matrix. “Steady their shoulder like so,” she said, her left hand pressing down on Morpheus’s reclined form. “Squeeze the handle of the jack to depress the locking mechanism.” She held it up in her right hand and clicked it open and shut a few times. “Then insert it slowly into the plug before releasing the catch.” Morpheus’s eyes closed. “And he’s in. Easy.”
She went to her chair and laid back. “Ready?”
Neo tried to ignore his racing heart. “Sure,” he said. Willing his hand not to shake, he placed it lightly on her shoulder.
“You’ll want to push down a bit,” she said. “If you don’t get a good alignment with the plug the first time, there might be some… reflexive jumping.” She laughed awkwardly and Neo wondered if she could tell how nervous he was. Or perhaps she was nervous too.
“Okay,” he said, applying some pressure. She’d touched him before, he realized, to apply sensors and IVs, but this was the first time he’d ever touched her. Her sweater was soft, and warm from the heat of her skin. With his other hand he took the jack and managed to align it with the plug at the base of her skull without trembling too much. “Ready?”
“Yep, go ahead.” As smoothly and carefully as he could, he slid the jack in and released the catch.
Trinity’s eyes went blank, then fluttered closed and suddenly Neo was alone.
Tank was blowing out the candle lantern as Neo joined him at the operator’s station. The Core was well-lit now and Tank was muttering something about wasted resources.
“Are they in?” Neo asked, peering at the busy displays.
“Oh yeah, take a look.” Tank gestured toward one of the central monitors. “Here’s the target, on his way to the rendezvous point.” Toward another: “Here’s Niobe and Ghost, waiting for him at the museum.” A third: “Here’s Morpheus, scoping the perimeter to the front, and,” pointing to a fourth—
“Trinity,” Neo murmured.
“Yep, she’s around the back. Coast looks clear for now.”
Tank continued to point out features of the scene unfolding digitally before them, but Neo was unable to process the words. He was utterly transfixed by Trinity’s code, in a way he never could have explained or even described. She was beautiful, a constellation of fluid green stars, and though of course the code looked nothing like her analog body he never could have mistaken her for anyone else. Everything she was, every aspect of her mind and her personality and her soul was expressed in that indistinct cloud of rapidly evolving symbols. Neo felt like he could read her down to her cells, down to her genes, but at the same time he recognized that she was written in a language he could only liminally and viscerally interpret. He would never fully decode her, nor ever want to.
His head swam. He felt drunk, dizzy. How Tank could keep talking about ops procedures and security patrols and pill programs with Trinity’s brilliant code scintillating before them was entirely incomprehensible. He wanted to say something, declare something, ask if Tank could see what he saw, but he didn’t have the faintest idea how to formulate the words.
And then the police arrived.
They appeared as dense, spiky blemishes of code, four of them heading directly toward Trinity. Neo knew she saw them, knew she was assessing them, knew she felt she could handle them. He didn’t know exactly how he knew any of this.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Tank was muttering, typing furiously. “There are more coming, they need to get out.”
Neo didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath, but he let it out in a whoosh as Trinity’s coded form contracted, then erupted toward the attackers, engaging the closest two in combat.
Fighting, she was a phenom. Neo had heard the other crew members allude to Trinity’s legendary prowess, but witnessing it in action - even in this encrypted form - was staggering. She twisted, leapt, kicked out faster than should be humanly possible, and before Neo could decipher the capstone of her assault, the first two cops lay motionless on the ground and Trinity was taking on a third.
“Morpheus, you’ve got four— six hostiles converging on Trinity at the eastern corner of the building,” Tank was saying into his headset. “No, not yet, but there’s an exit in the lobby on the third floor. Phone booth by the bathrooms… Uh huh… Yes, as soon as you’re in proximity… I’m radioing Sparks now.”
As Tank punched in the code to comm the Logos, Neo’s stomach plummeted. One of the spiky configurations engaged with Trinity had spasmed, glitched out and reformed into something blunter, sturdier, crueler. He recognized it immediately, heard its sibilant voice in his head.
“Oh fuck, we’ve got an Agent,” Tank whispered.
Trinity’s form whirled, somersaulted, and fled faster than thought.
But not fast enough.
The Agent emitted what Neo could only construe as a projectile. A tiny fragment of itself, repulsive, blisteringly swift, and perfectly aimed.
It found its mark and Trinity shattered into a brittle rain of broken glyphs.