The Gates of Zion
Key
Tod, Tank and Achi look up as Key enters the galley. She pours some breakfast and sits down at the bench where Tod makes room for her.
"How is he?" Tank asks, meaning Gavin.
"Okay. He wouldn't have lasted much longer. It's good Nanu got him out when she did."
A look gets passed around the table.
"Did you read how?" Achi speaks up.
"No, why?"
Tank slides the loaded reader across the table to Key. She continues eating while she goes through the decrypted code.
"Wow," she mutters.
"Where are you up to?" asks Tod.
"Lafayette roof . . . hey, it stops here."
Tank shrugs, "Achi deleted the end."
"Why?"
"It's not important," the Zion-born says smoothly. Key raises one eyebrow. Tank coughs and changes the subject.
"It's amazing she managed to carry him at all. She's so young."
"How's her headache?" Achi says.
"Not as bad as usual," Key shrugs. "Maybe she's developing a resistance to whatever it is that knocks her out."
A speaker above the door crackles briefly, then Neo's voice comes out.
- Tank, Achi, wherever you are you're needed on duty. We're docking soon -
"Docking?" The operator looks confused. "But we're not due to go to Zion until Thursday week."
Achi gets up and clips the reader to her belt. In response to Tank she just shrugs.
"Captain says we're docking, then we're docking. Now come on."
Nanu
She'd paused at the sound of the loudspeaker, now she raises her eyebrows at Gavin.
"Docking? As in Zion?"
"I guess so," he tilts his head back and sinks carefully back onto the pillow. "It's ahead of schedule, but things have changed recently."
"How do you mean?"
"Since we targeted you. Strictly speaking, Neo really shouldn't have selected you, you were too young and didn't have much skill in anything we needed."
She swallows the beginnings of hurt at the careless way he speaks, and asks, "Skill?"
"Every target needs to have something Zion can use, they need to be able to help us in this war. We can't afford to just pull out people on a whim, it takes too long to rebuild and train them." He pauses, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I guess you just weren't so obvious. Sixteen-year-old school girl turned superhero."
Nanu isn't sure what to think of that.
But he's right. A few months ago she was a clueless schoolgirl with an unhealthy fascination with a terrorist. Her primary concern had been getting her homework done.
Now . . . she looks around her. What is she now? A rebel fighter, a Matrix-born, a Jack. She runs a hand over her short spikes of hair, traces the curve of the plug in the back of her head, then the one in her arm.
It's only pen. I can rub it off.
You have definitely been here before.
Had she ever noticed her earlier self back when she had been Naiomi Harper?
Even the name is strange.
But had the memory of another life only surfaced when she'd left the Matrix? If so, why hadn't it happened before? Had she ever read minds in her old life? Had she done so by accident and then not noticed?
Footsteps disturb her, scattering the domino line of questions.
It's Key, with Tod in tow.
"We're coming closer to Zion now," the medic smiles, "I'm sorry Gav but you'll be staying where you are for another thirty to forty hours."
"We're really in Zion now?" Nanu forgets her musing quickly.
"Only the first maze, there's another four to go. Achi's flying, she's the only one besides Trinity who knows the way through."
Tod hangs back in the doorway, hunched and silent. Nanu tries to ignore the way he's looking at her.
"I s'pose that's for security," she guesses, "seeing as it's the last human civilisation and all."
"You catch on quick," is Gavin's comment, to Key he says, "Why do I have to stay here so long?"
"You're drugged to the eyeballs right now, once the painkillers wear off you won't dare breathe let alone trek around Zion."
"How long till we get there?" Nanu slides off the bunk.
"Have you slept tonight?" Key frowns at the shadows under the girl's eyes.
"Uh . . . no."
"So sleep first. When you wake up we'll be there."
***
Nanu wakes up with a sound in her ears she's never heard in the real world. Outside the ship, distant but there, is the voice of a person not on her crew.
She explodes out of bed, reaching for the door -
And collapses on her knees as pain knifes though her skull. She'd dealt with it yesterday but now it promises to get worse.
She gets up, opens the locker and takes out the canister of white powder. The painkiller is bitter, but works quickly, sending tingles up the back of her neck.
Nanu scrambles the lock, then leaves her room.
She begins to make her way deeper through the ship, clambering down the latticework of metal. She is silent, and the voices get louder. As she reaches the lowest room, light filtering up from the open hatch illuminates her in blue and grey.
She can pick out words now. "It's a good thing the Sterki left early, or we wouldn't have a port open for you."
"The Solomon hasn't come in yet?" that's Trinity.
"They called in, they'll be here by about 1130 hours."
Nanu creeps down to look through the hatch. It's like a trapdoor that slides to one side, leaving a rectangular hole. Right beside it is a wound up chain and mechanical claw, both of which look very familiar.
"How's Morpheus?" Neo's voice, barely audible.
"Same as always," says the stranger with a smile in his voice. "Half answers and double questions, that's him. But I heard you had a new kid, where is she?"
Right on cue, Nanu drops through the hatch, landing on concrete. Keeping her head down, she moves out from under the ship into the open.
"Here she is," Neo holds out his hand. "Choice, meet Nanu."
But she's too busy gawping around her to look at the stranger. They're in a huge cavern with dozens of ships parked side by side. Stone and metal surround her, one end of the hangar open to the fifth labyrinth. The other three sides are solid stone, but the opposite end is dotted with small tunnels and doorways. Only a few people are at work, clambering over the grey hulls of ships or pushing trolleys of spare engine parts.
Choice laughs, a warm sound. Nanu turns back to him.
"I can remember how I felt when I first came here. You'll get over it."
"Sorry," she holds out a hand to shake. "I didn't mean to ignore you or anything."
"It's cool, rookie," red-brown hair falls in his eyes from under a grubby bandanna. Neo seems about to say something when a small voice calls,
"Mommy!"
At first Nanu thinks the child is calling Choice, but then both Neo and Trinity turn around and the little girl runs toward them. With a cry of "Daddy!" she throws her arms around Neo and he scoops her off the ground.
"You've grown rascal," he laughs.
Nanu stares.
Trinity ruffles the little girl's hair as Neo shifts her onto his back. "Did you miss us BC?"
Nanu consciously closes her mouth.
"You're not meant to see us until after Detox BC," Neo admonishes over his shoulder. The girl, about three years old, just bites her knuckle and smiles at the back of his head with big dark eyes. "She's doing that face isn't she?" he asks Trinity, who gives the slightest smirk in response.
Nanu shifts her weight from one foot to another, feeling like an outsider. But the change that has come over Neo is worth watching. On the ship he often looks like he'd rather not be there, but now with his daughter, he actually looks happy. Trinity herself looks more relaxed, but not all that relaxed.
"Nanu," the captain turns around, "this is Bobcat, our daughter."
Nanu raises a hand and waves awkwardly, "Hi."
Bobcat just looks through her bangs with her wide brown eyes. Neo's eyes, in a face that will look like Trinity's one day.
This is suddenly very weird.
***
Choice leaves to join his work group after the rest of the Neb's crew arrive. Gavin is still in the infirmary on board, and will be looked after my medical staff who live in the Detox area.
"Detox," Key explains to Nanu as they walk toward the medical wing, "is like a suburb of Zion. People off the ships stop here to make sure they don't transmit any kind of illness into the main city. They got really serious about quarantine after a flu epidemic back in 2113."
"But what about the people who work here? Wouldn't they carry stuff into Zion?"
"No, they live here a few months at a time, then go through the same treatment themselves and go back to the city. It's like living on a campus or something."
"Here," Trinity interrupts. "We go this way." They've reached the other end of the hangar where dozens of corridors lead into the wall. There are no signs that Nanu can see, but the captain seems to know where she's going. After passing BC from one person to another, Key, Achi, Trinity and Nanu turn down the hall away from Neo, Tank, and Tod.
They pass doors on both sides, heading down the passage as it turns and slopes. Then Trinity stops before a numbered door,
"We're in here."
"You book rooms?" Nanu asks before she can stop herself.
Trinity steps into the room, "They're actually allocated to us before we get here, this is for the Nebuchadnezzar's women."
The room is small, grey, and plain. Benches line two walls, and a doorway is in the far wall. It resembles a public changing room at the beach, with not quite so much sand.
Key closes the door behind her as Achi sets Bobcat on the floor.
"Who wants first shower?" the medic asks, pulling off her jumper.
"You can go first." Trinity explains to Nanu, "She likes to get this over and done with."
"Get what over and done with?" Nanu's getting a bit nervous.
"Chemical shower," Achi undoes her belt, all her tools are still on the ship. "It stings a bit, Key hates it."
"Stings?"
"Not much," Trinity assures her. As the woman pulls off her long sleeved shirt, Nanu sees a tattoo. It's a small black snake, curled around the plug on her forearm.
"What's that?" she points.
Trinity just sits down to pull her boots off. Achi smiles a little and says, "The Zion equivalent of a wedding ring."
"Oh." Nanu quietly unclips her boots, trying to sort this out. Wife and mother don't seem to be terms that could apply to a soldier, a fighter. But then again, there is so much she doesn't know about Trinity.
BC hops up beside Achi and begins to inspect the buckle of her belt. Achi carefully removes it and places it on a shelf above her head. Instead of looking upset, BC just smiles and bites her knuckle again.
Key, in the meantime, has stripped to singlet and underwear. Now she takes a deep breath and steps into the next room, pulling a perspex screen closed behind her. Nanu hears a creak, then there is a hiss as water pours down, followed by something white, then once again water.
Achi is next; she enters the shower as Key leaves from a door in the other side.
"You'll go next," Trinity tells Nanu. "When the shower finishes, you'll get fresh clothes on the other side. Key will take you through for a check up and your shots."
"Great," Nanu hates needles. As Trinity distracts BC, she reluctantly gets undressed, removing each layer with growing awkwardness. Beside the captain's smooth muscles Nanu feels thin and gangly. Red weals still show on her skin from where numerous small plugs were removed, while Trinity is pale, and her scars do not mar her . . . beauty.
But then the shower is empty and it's time to face the music.
After pulling the door closed behind her, Nanu looks around the tiny cubicle. There are two levers on the wall, with labels scratched into the metal. She pulls down hard on the water one.
Whoomp! Water pounds into her like lukewarm fists on her shoulders and head. Her singlet and underwear are instantly soaked, and she can barely move to pull the other lever.
Then the white stuff is coming down, an odd sort of foam that smells like bleach. She rubs it into her skin and short hair, grateful at least for feeling less grubby.
She forces the soap lever up again and bows her head for the rinse, shivering in the cold.
Nanu turns the water off then staggers through the other door.
Key wraps a towel around her, rubbing feeling back into tinglingly numb skin.
"How was that?" she asks gently.
" . . . ow."
She helps Nanu into dry underwear and clothes. Nanu is momentarily too dazed to care or notice, and besides, Key is a medic. Doctors are different from captains somehow.
The pants are even bigger than her last pair and have to be rolled up, and the shirt only just fits. After a jumper Key produces something that faintly resembles a jacket, an oversized shirt with a split down the front. The boots are different, and are a little too big.
"Come on now."
Nanu gets to her feet, sore and woozy, but she follows Key out of the room and down yet another corridor.