[Ziren Diget is pronounces 'siren dee-jhet']
¦-¦- Matrix Adventures -¦-¦
"Ziren? Ziren, where the hell are you?" This was not a safe place. It was a large, dank room, and the roof looked like it would fall at any minute, crushing the whole building. "Ziren!" Neo stood at the door, trying to let some light into the building. "Neo, get out!" He could hear her voice, but he couldn't see her. "Where are you?" A few splinters and a handful of dust fell from the roof. Neo looked up, and suspended in the air was the young woman, her long black coat flapping slightly in the cold draughts. "Neo, please, get out..." Suddenly, from what seemed out of nowhere, he could see the reflections of dozens and dozens of sunglasses. "Mr. Anderson..." The voice echoed around from every corner. "Run for it!" she screamed, making more dust fall, but it was too late, five Agents, all in Smith's image, had shut the door behind him. If he tried to escape, the whole building would collapse in the first tremor, killing both Reset and himself. It was going to be a very careful fight.
Trying to fight the Agents had never been this hard before, and he'd just have to keep fighting them. Was that it, was that the trap? Keep Neo fighting until he had to submit? Or should he take a chance and just hope that he could save Ziren before the building collapsed on them? He couldn't risk being trapped, so flying would be the only option. Seven Agents leaps at him at once, so he jumped up and spun, which gave him just enough lift to land on a pile of shaky wooden boxes. From here, maybe he could do it... he crouched down, the moulded air sending Agents falling back to the ground, and then looking up for a second, he pushed down and then rocketed up, snatching Ziren round her waist, and causing the entire industrial room to explode on collision.
Her name was Ziren Diget, although everyone just called her Ziren. Her hair, outside of the Matrix, was quite long, but it varied in length, and it was the dame grey-brown as her eyes. Inside the Matrix, however, her hair was very long, coloured like fire in all different shades of amber, yellow and red, tied back intricately. Even though her appearance changed, her character was the same in both worlds. Like her Matrix-hair, she was fiery, and had a very short temper, but this firelike spirit in her made her extremely passionate and creative, and whatever she did, she did with heart. Now she was relatively safe, back in Zion, alone in her tiny cell-house. She sat on her bed, her eyes wandering around the room with no fascination. After a while she was distracted by a tapping on the metal front door. "It's open," she called through with fake enthusiasm. "Neo..." She lowered her head, trying to avoid eye contact with him. "I'm sorry about today, if I'd known about the Agents in the-" Neo shut the door, and it locked with a click.
"There's no need to apologise, how were you meant to know?" Ziren turned away from the young man and looked down at the floor. "I don't know what I thought I was going to do. I knew there were Agents nearby, I wanted to... I wanted to destroy them, prove myself to you. I am so jealous of you, Neo, you don't know the half of it." Ziren's cold eyes glazed over with dark tears. Neo put his hand on her shoulder, and even though he'd spent no longer than a week around her, he felt like he really knew her. The same feeling he got the first time he set eyes on Trinity. "It's not for Zion, is it. The reason why you went after them." She shook her head and felt a cold tear fall down her face. "They took my family. They killed them just before they were unplugged. Ever since that day I found myself in Zion I've wanted to be like you and Trinity and Morpheus, I've wanted to go back into the Matrix..." She swallowed and breathed heavily, blinking back any more tears. Neo pulled her gently round so she was forced to face him. "Zi... Ziren, don't get upset. A lot of things..." He glanced at the door, and then turned back to her with a weak smile. "Don't let Morpheus know I said this, but a lot of things we can't control, a lot of things are determined by fate no matter how much we try to disregard them, not matter how much we deny the existence of fate it happens. You shouldn't be upset about something you had no control over. Jesus, if I could turn back time there's a lot of crap I'd change."
Ziren wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. "That boy... Mouse." Neo nodded in reply, though a little unsure of how she knew of Mouse. "Neo... what was it like when you were unplugged?" she asked timidly, looking right into his dark brown eyes, searching for an answer to her pain and disappointment and ultimately her shame. "Screwed up... nauseous... ever seen those horror movies with zombies in 'em? Like that." Ziren smiled weakly as she tried to remember her own unplugging. "All I remember seeing is lights and pins for a few seconds, and the time I slept between the times I opened my eyes could have been minutes or weeks... and then I woke up in this cell, and I was free. Well, if you can call living down in Zion freedom. I was free from the Matrix at least."
Nausea and insomnia took over ever aching minute of the next day as she started to feel the afterburn of trying to fight an Agent. She lay curled up on her bed, her eyes framed by dark rings. One minute she would be burning up and the next she was deathly cold, and all the time she cried, whispering listless screams, calling out for help. This is what often killed them if they hadn't been killed in the Matrix. Neo crouched down at her side and looked into her almost comatose eyes, liquidated from tears and lack of sleep. "Zi, it's me... c'mon, Ziren, don't die on me now." Her cold eyes slowly went into range of Neo and stared blankly into him, which made a chill run down his spine. He remembered the solemn stare, identical to Trinity's. "N-n-neo...?" Her speech was barely discernable. "Ziren..." He held her hand tight in his own, and was amazed at how quickly it changed temperature. "Don't die on me, Ziren Diget, don't you dare die on me, not after what you did in the Matrix."
Suddenly, she let out a loud wail, somewhere between a screech and a roar and dug her bitten-up nails into the back of Neo's hand as she wretched and arched her back, drenched in a cold sweat, before vomiting up a grey-green liquid, flecked with blood, which gave off a very acidic odour. Her body went loose and she fell softly onto her side, hardly a grip on Neo's hand at all, eyes shut, soft mousey hair tied loosely behind her ears, a little of the poison-like vomit still on her lips. "Ziren, are you alright? Ziren!" Someone was banging furiously on the other side of the door. Neo stood up and opened it, and on the other side a young woman and a slightly older man barged past him. "Ziren! Oh God..." The young woman turned round and faced Neo. "She went after Agents?" Neo went to reply but the man interrupted him. "Yeah, this is the shit alright... but I'm surprised she managed to puke it up..." Before Neo could say any more, they had taken a small sample of the vomit and disappeared with Ziren.
Trinity was waiting for Neo when he returned from Ziren's cell, and the second he walked through the door she rushed over to him and kissed him. "Neo... oh God, I wish you'd stop going off like that... I missed you so much..." She buried her head in his chest and clung to him as tight as she could. Neo stroked her hair softly and sat down, Trinity still holding onto him. "Is Ziren alright?" she asked softly, looking up at her boyfriend, tracing round the plugholes down his spine. "Honestly, I don't know. She had this freak puke attack when I was in her cell and then these two other guys - medics, I guess - came in and took her away. I hope she's okay, she had a pretty tough time in the Matrix." Trinity kissed him again and nodded. "I heard... she went to fight the Agents? That takes a lot of nerve... she has her reasons though, I guess."
"Ziren, before you go into the Matrix again, I think that maybe you should run through some of the training exercises, as, let me put it this way, a rehabilitation system for your mind. After that Agent attack, going straight back into the Matrix-"
"I've been resting for three weeks, I wouldn't say I'd be going back in straight away," she protested as her new captain, Morpheus, tried to explain the program. Her old captain had since depointed her, but Morpheus, being the person he was, allowed her to be part of his ship team. "Morpheus, I'm really honoured and appreciative of all this, but is it necessary?" Morpheus gently guided her head back down into the seat. "Alright then, how about we just run the City Jump program?" Ziren sighed and smiled. "If you insist... thanks, Morpheus. I shouldn't argue with you, but I'm just..." Morpheus nodded in reply. "I know it is hard, but see how far you have come. Who knows, you might make the jump this time."
She stood on the rooftop, a light wind making the few strands of untied hair dance about, the tail of her burgundy-red coat gently hovering behind her. "Free your mind..." She stook a deep breath and stared across at the other side. For a brief moment, she felt Agent Smith's hand snatch at her shoulder again and pull her back, and in her chair outside the Matrix her heart rate inscreased rapidly. Link watched over her from the code-seat of the Neb. "C'mon, Zi..." Trinity wandered tiredly out of Neo's room, wearing only a towel, woken up by the sound of the bleeping monitors. "What's... going on?" she asked through a yawn. Suddenly, her pulseometer peaked so much it looked like a thick band on the screen, and stopped dead still like it. "Holy shit-" Inside the Matrix, things were even more chatoic.
Morpheus could only stare in awe as the fiery-haired young woman stood still in the air. "Holy shit..." Her breathing was coarse as she looked down at the city below her. "Keep walking, Ziren!" Outside, the screens were going haywire. "The program's crashing? The program's crashing!" Link yelled, typing furiously as he tried to fix it. Morpheus was pulled out safely enough, but Ziren was stuck inside. "If we try and pull her out with her heart rate so high she could die!" The sky started to rupture and fray as the program fell more and more into decline. "It's a virus! Shut the program down before it spreads!" Link could only stare at the screen as dripping text fell like a thick blur. "Sir, it's frozen up!" Morpheus looked back at the young woman in the chair, her hands clawing at the arms, scratching the metal. "We have no choice, we're going to have to pull her out, and just hope she doesn't die." Trinity clutched at the hem of her towel anxiously, unable to do anything to help. "Okay... three... two... one..." Ziren shot up with a yell, nearly breaking the arms of the chair. "HOLY SHIT!" she roared, breathing heavily. "Ziren- Ziren, are you alright? Ziren!" Trinity tried to get her attention as best she could. "What happened? Agent Smith- and the sky- and I froze-" She tried to put everything into sense but it just wasn't working. "Whoa, back up a second - there was an Agent?" Link interrupted, leaving the frozen screens. "Morpheus?" Morpheus shook his head. "But... I... felt him, he was there, he touched me, I felt it!" She put her head and in her hands and drew her knees up. "I know he was there." Trinity sighed and put her arm round the younger woman's shoulders and looked up at Morpheus. "Shut down the program operation at the mains. Trinity, get dressed, wake up Neo and take her back down to Zion."
¦-¦- Matrix Adventures -¦-¦
"Ziren? Ziren, where the hell are you?" This was not a safe place. It was a large, dank room, and the roof looked like it would fall at any minute, crushing the whole building. "Ziren!" Neo stood at the door, trying to let some light into the building. "Neo, get out!" He could hear her voice, but he couldn't see her. "Where are you?" A few splinters and a handful of dust fell from the roof. Neo looked up, and suspended in the air was the young woman, her long black coat flapping slightly in the cold draughts. "Neo, please, get out..." Suddenly, from what seemed out of nowhere, he could see the reflections of dozens and dozens of sunglasses. "Mr. Anderson..." The voice echoed around from every corner. "Run for it!" she screamed, making more dust fall, but it was too late, five Agents, all in Smith's image, had shut the door behind him. If he tried to escape, the whole building would collapse in the first tremor, killing both Reset and himself. It was going to be a very careful fight.
Trying to fight the Agents had never been this hard before, and he'd just have to keep fighting them. Was that it, was that the trap? Keep Neo fighting until he had to submit? Or should he take a chance and just hope that he could save Ziren before the building collapsed on them? He couldn't risk being trapped, so flying would be the only option. Seven Agents leaps at him at once, so he jumped up and spun, which gave him just enough lift to land on a pile of shaky wooden boxes. From here, maybe he could do it... he crouched down, the moulded air sending Agents falling back to the ground, and then looking up for a second, he pushed down and then rocketed up, snatching Ziren round her waist, and causing the entire industrial room to explode on collision.
Her name was Ziren Diget, although everyone just called her Ziren. Her hair, outside of the Matrix, was quite long, but it varied in length, and it was the dame grey-brown as her eyes. Inside the Matrix, however, her hair was very long, coloured like fire in all different shades of amber, yellow and red, tied back intricately. Even though her appearance changed, her character was the same in both worlds. Like her Matrix-hair, she was fiery, and had a very short temper, but this firelike spirit in her made her extremely passionate and creative, and whatever she did, she did with heart. Now she was relatively safe, back in Zion, alone in her tiny cell-house. She sat on her bed, her eyes wandering around the room with no fascination. After a while she was distracted by a tapping on the metal front door. "It's open," she called through with fake enthusiasm. "Neo..." She lowered her head, trying to avoid eye contact with him. "I'm sorry about today, if I'd known about the Agents in the-" Neo shut the door, and it locked with a click.
"There's no need to apologise, how were you meant to know?" Ziren turned away from the young man and looked down at the floor. "I don't know what I thought I was going to do. I knew there were Agents nearby, I wanted to... I wanted to destroy them, prove myself to you. I am so jealous of you, Neo, you don't know the half of it." Ziren's cold eyes glazed over with dark tears. Neo put his hand on her shoulder, and even though he'd spent no longer than a week around her, he felt like he really knew her. The same feeling he got the first time he set eyes on Trinity. "It's not for Zion, is it. The reason why you went after them." She shook her head and felt a cold tear fall down her face. "They took my family. They killed them just before they were unplugged. Ever since that day I found myself in Zion I've wanted to be like you and Trinity and Morpheus, I've wanted to go back into the Matrix..." She swallowed and breathed heavily, blinking back any more tears. Neo pulled her gently round so she was forced to face him. "Zi... Ziren, don't get upset. A lot of things..." He glanced at the door, and then turned back to her with a weak smile. "Don't let Morpheus know I said this, but a lot of things we can't control, a lot of things are determined by fate no matter how much we try to disregard them, not matter how much we deny the existence of fate it happens. You shouldn't be upset about something you had no control over. Jesus, if I could turn back time there's a lot of crap I'd change."
Ziren wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. "That boy... Mouse." Neo nodded in reply, though a little unsure of how she knew of Mouse. "Neo... what was it like when you were unplugged?" she asked timidly, looking right into his dark brown eyes, searching for an answer to her pain and disappointment and ultimately her shame. "Screwed up... nauseous... ever seen those horror movies with zombies in 'em? Like that." Ziren smiled weakly as she tried to remember her own unplugging. "All I remember seeing is lights and pins for a few seconds, and the time I slept between the times I opened my eyes could have been minutes or weeks... and then I woke up in this cell, and I was free. Well, if you can call living down in Zion freedom. I was free from the Matrix at least."
Nausea and insomnia took over ever aching minute of the next day as she started to feel the afterburn of trying to fight an Agent. She lay curled up on her bed, her eyes framed by dark rings. One minute she would be burning up and the next she was deathly cold, and all the time she cried, whispering listless screams, calling out for help. This is what often killed them if they hadn't been killed in the Matrix. Neo crouched down at her side and looked into her almost comatose eyes, liquidated from tears and lack of sleep. "Zi, it's me... c'mon, Ziren, don't die on me now." Her cold eyes slowly went into range of Neo and stared blankly into him, which made a chill run down his spine. He remembered the solemn stare, identical to Trinity's. "N-n-neo...?" Her speech was barely discernable. "Ziren..." He held her hand tight in his own, and was amazed at how quickly it changed temperature. "Don't die on me, Ziren Diget, don't you dare die on me, not after what you did in the Matrix."
Suddenly, she let out a loud wail, somewhere between a screech and a roar and dug her bitten-up nails into the back of Neo's hand as she wretched and arched her back, drenched in a cold sweat, before vomiting up a grey-green liquid, flecked with blood, which gave off a very acidic odour. Her body went loose and she fell softly onto her side, hardly a grip on Neo's hand at all, eyes shut, soft mousey hair tied loosely behind her ears, a little of the poison-like vomit still on her lips. "Ziren, are you alright? Ziren!" Someone was banging furiously on the other side of the door. Neo stood up and opened it, and on the other side a young woman and a slightly older man barged past him. "Ziren! Oh God..." The young woman turned round and faced Neo. "She went after Agents?" Neo went to reply but the man interrupted him. "Yeah, this is the shit alright... but I'm surprised she managed to puke it up..." Before Neo could say any more, they had taken a small sample of the vomit and disappeared with Ziren.
Trinity was waiting for Neo when he returned from Ziren's cell, and the second he walked through the door she rushed over to him and kissed him. "Neo... oh God, I wish you'd stop going off like that... I missed you so much..." She buried her head in his chest and clung to him as tight as she could. Neo stroked her hair softly and sat down, Trinity still holding onto him. "Is Ziren alright?" she asked softly, looking up at her boyfriend, tracing round the plugholes down his spine. "Honestly, I don't know. She had this freak puke attack when I was in her cell and then these two other guys - medics, I guess - came in and took her away. I hope she's okay, she had a pretty tough time in the Matrix." Trinity kissed him again and nodded. "I heard... she went to fight the Agents? That takes a lot of nerve... she has her reasons though, I guess."
"Ziren, before you go into the Matrix again, I think that maybe you should run through some of the training exercises, as, let me put it this way, a rehabilitation system for your mind. After that Agent attack, going straight back into the Matrix-"
"I've been resting for three weeks, I wouldn't say I'd be going back in straight away," she protested as her new captain, Morpheus, tried to explain the program. Her old captain had since depointed her, but Morpheus, being the person he was, allowed her to be part of his ship team. "Morpheus, I'm really honoured and appreciative of all this, but is it necessary?" Morpheus gently guided her head back down into the seat. "Alright then, how about we just run the City Jump program?" Ziren sighed and smiled. "If you insist... thanks, Morpheus. I shouldn't argue with you, but I'm just..." Morpheus nodded in reply. "I know it is hard, but see how far you have come. Who knows, you might make the jump this time."
She stood on the rooftop, a light wind making the few strands of untied hair dance about, the tail of her burgundy-red coat gently hovering behind her. "Free your mind..." She stook a deep breath and stared across at the other side. For a brief moment, she felt Agent Smith's hand snatch at her shoulder again and pull her back, and in her chair outside the Matrix her heart rate inscreased rapidly. Link watched over her from the code-seat of the Neb. "C'mon, Zi..." Trinity wandered tiredly out of Neo's room, wearing only a towel, woken up by the sound of the bleeping monitors. "What's... going on?" she asked through a yawn. Suddenly, her pulseometer peaked so much it looked like a thick band on the screen, and stopped dead still like it. "Holy shit-" Inside the Matrix, things were even more chatoic.
Morpheus could only stare in awe as the fiery-haired young woman stood still in the air. "Holy shit..." Her breathing was coarse as she looked down at the city below her. "Keep walking, Ziren!" Outside, the screens were going haywire. "The program's crashing? The program's crashing!" Link yelled, typing furiously as he tried to fix it. Morpheus was pulled out safely enough, but Ziren was stuck inside. "If we try and pull her out with her heart rate so high she could die!" The sky started to rupture and fray as the program fell more and more into decline. "It's a virus! Shut the program down before it spreads!" Link could only stare at the screen as dripping text fell like a thick blur. "Sir, it's frozen up!" Morpheus looked back at the young woman in the chair, her hands clawing at the arms, scratching the metal. "We have no choice, we're going to have to pull her out, and just hope she doesn't die." Trinity clutched at the hem of her towel anxiously, unable to do anything to help. "Okay... three... two... one..." Ziren shot up with a yell, nearly breaking the arms of the chair. "HOLY SHIT!" she roared, breathing heavily. "Ziren- Ziren, are you alright? Ziren!" Trinity tried to get her attention as best she could. "What happened? Agent Smith- and the sky- and I froze-" She tried to put everything into sense but it just wasn't working. "Whoa, back up a second - there was an Agent?" Link interrupted, leaving the frozen screens. "Morpheus?" Morpheus shook his head. "But... I... felt him, he was there, he touched me, I felt it!" She put her head and in her hands and drew her knees up. "I know he was there." Trinity sighed and put her arm round the younger woman's shoulders and looked up at Morpheus. "Shut down the program operation at the mains. Trinity, get dressed, wake up Neo and take her back down to Zion."