Zillah
***
Gavin
"We shouldn't stay here long."
"Why not?"
"Bad area."
"But they're the most interesting," Nanu grins impishly as she skips ahead of him. They are deep in a network of tunnels and caves, lit intermittently by the orange glow of electric lights.
"Hey, don't run off." Her answering laugh bounces off the wall and echoes; he cannot tell where she is.
Suddenly he stumbles as a hand in the back shoves him over.
"That's not funny Nanu," he growls, picking himself up and examining his grazed palms.
"What's not funny?" she appears in front of him. "How did you fall?" she asks, kneeling.
"But, you – " he stops. Nanu wouldn't have pushed him over.
"As a matter of fact, it was rather funny," comes a voice from behind him. Nanu looks up over his shoulder, and for a moment her eyes go blank. Then, unnervingly, she smiles.
"Zillah, how nice to meet you," she gets up, and as Gavin turns his head he sees her greeting a shadowy figure leaning against the wall.
Zillah has dark brown skin, a shaved head, and wears a long grey cloak draped around her shoulders. At Nanu's knowledge of her name, she is unruffled.
"Nice to meet you too Nanu. And this is?"
"Gavin. And I'm sure you didn't mean to knock him over – "
"Oh, but I did."
Gavin pauses, half way to his feet. Zillah's clipped British accent is horribly precise.
"Well Zillah," Nanu grabs his hand and pulls him up. "That's not a very nice thing to do is it?"
Zillah tilts her head to one side and steps away from the wall.
A scuff of a foot behind them betrays the other members of the gang. Four other members, three guys and a girl.
" 'Nice' doesn't come into the equation, " Zillah smiles. She's good looking in a dangerous sort of way.
"Why can't you say that without your guards?" Nanu raises an eyebrow. Gavin tries to catch her eye but fails.
"Is that a Challenge rookie?"
Silence. If anyone is watching this show in the dim stone corridor they're not coming out of hiding.
"You're a Jack." Zillah shows one bare brown arm, indicating the scar of steel, "So am I. So you have a choice. Unarmed combat, will it be in or out of a sim?"
"I never agreed – "
"Neither did you decline."
Nanu goes very still, but to her credit does not look to him for help. She lifts her chin.
"Which sim?" There are several basic simulations used widely by ships for training, each of them tested as safe.
"Mongrel is just putting the finishing touches on one of her own creations. We'll use that."
Nanu looks at the young woman, who is dark and compact. "Where's it set?"
"Construction site," Mongrel mumbles through the hair hanging over her face.
"When?" Nanu turns back to Zillah.
"Tomorrow."
"You're on."
Nanu
They walk back in silence. She knows without listening that Gavin is very annoyed with her, the same way she knows that Neo is outside her room, knocking on her door.
She has a connection with both of them now. Whatever it is that defines the barriers of a mind, that seems to be missing here. With an effort, she can shut Neo out, but for some reason the connection to Gavin is too strong to be ignored.
"I wish you hadn't done that," he says as they reach the ground floor of Home.
"I'm sorry." She doesn't know what else to say.
"Do you know how dangerous that sim could be?" his voice is very quiet, almost calm. "You can't possibly go through with this."
"Why not?" she pauses at the foot of the stairs. "It's a sim Gavin, I'll be fine."
"It's an untested, home written sim," he keeps his voice low still, though she knows he wants to yell. "You don't know what could go wrong, an error, a glitch, a bug – "
. . . any number of things could have gone wrong. You, or Neo, could have been killed . . .
But we weren't.
"Gavin, I'll be fine. Nothing is going to happen that I can't deal with."
He makes as if to reply but Neo's voice floats down through the darkness. "Nanu? You down there?"
She looks down once more at Gavin's upraised face.
"Don't do this," he says.
She turns away and calls up to Neo, "I'm right here."
"Come up!"
And when Nanu turns around, Gavin is no longer at her back.
***
It's colder this high up. Nanu's muscles are aching after climbing 32 stories of the main atrium, and they're not at their destination yet.
"How much further?" she asks Neo. He pauses on the stairway beside her.
"Not too far, but we'll take a rest anyway."
She sinks to the ground, "Man my legs hurt."
"You've never used them for so long before. Your muscles may have been rebuilt but you're still human." He sits on the step below her and leans against the wall. It's quiet; this stairway leads off an empty living sector on the atrium's top level. Nanu doubts many people even know this place exists.
"Who does BC stay with?" she asks to fill the silence.
"Whom," Neo corrects automatically. "When Trin and I are on the ship she's usually with Achi's family. They're Zionites."
"Zionites?"
"They live here all the time."
"Same with Tank's family?"
He looks away. Unconsciously, his fingers begin pulling at the cuff of his shirt. "I wouldn't mention them around Tank."
"Why not?"
"Tank doesn't exactly have a family anymore. His only brother and his father are dead, and his mother has more or less disowned him."
She has to ask, "Why?"
"She doesn't think he should be fighting this war. A lot of people think the same, but they're less vocal about it. Tank stays with Achi's family when he's here, they're distantly related."
"Oh." She leans her head back against the wall. She never thought about Tank's family before. Or anyone else's for that matter. She knows something of Neo's history, and has had a glimpse at Trinity's and Gavin's, but she knows almost nothing about the rest of her crew.
Or everyone she's met since coming to Zion. In the brief space of a few months, she's become better friends with more people than she ever did in almost four years of high school.
Neo rises smoothly to his feet, and looks down at her. When he moves, there is something purely animal about him.
"Come on Nanu."
As she climbs up, she wonders if she's going forward to learn yet another new name.
***
The stairs open into a smallish room, dark and cold and empty except for an operator's desk and two jack-in chairs.
"Okay," Nanu shivers. "Are you going to tell me why we're here yet?"
"To see Morpheus."
"Where is he?"
"Just jack in. He'll meet you soon."
***