Battle Stations.
Trinity
She steadies her gun, one hand still clutched in both of Nanu's. In the extreme quiet, she can hear rats scuttling in the walls, their claws scrabbling against the pipes.
She'd once escaped this building in much the same way.
Glancing away from the open door, she studies Nanu's down-turned face. He skin is paler than usual, translucent to the point where the veins show in her eyelids.
A sound, like ripples in glass. Neo is suddenly there, kneeling on the bloodstained carpet on the other side of the girl.
"Are we done now?" Trinity asks, deliberately calm. Neo doesn't reply, he only places a hand on Nanu's shoulder as if waking her up.
Brown eyes open slowly, pupils shrinking at the flooding light.
"We can go," Nanu whispers. "Soon is best."
Neo stays where he is beside her, his head down. Trinity stands carefully, pulling out her mobile to ring home for an exit.
Nanu
Gavin is waiting by her chair when she awakes, armed with a blanket and a fearsome expression. The moment she's unplugged, he's helping Nanu sit up, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders.
"What's wrong?" she manages to ask.
"It happened again. You zoned out, and this time so did Neo."
"I know. We found a new place."
"You what?"
Neo stands up carefully from his chair.
"Tank, you and Achi find a safe place to power down. Then get to the galley. This is for the whole crew to hear."
"What about Wolf?" Trinity murmurs.
"Let him sleep."
***
Somehow the table seems far more crowded than the first time Nanu had sat here. Neo stands at one end with Trinity seated beside him, Tank, Pirate and Achi are on one side, she and Gavin are on the other. There is actually one less member than when Tod and Key had been on crew, but all the same the galley walls almost press in on Nanu. She is hunched and shivering despite the blanket around her shoulders. She thought she'd become accustomed to the cold.
"The Matrix is not as we first thought," Neo begins. "For so many years it has been nothing more than a system. But in recent weeks it has almost become sentient. Why this is I don't know. Perhaps it's evolving, despite all its limitations of time loops.
"But today Nanu opened the door to an entirely new dimension. Tank, you remember Switch, Apoc and Mouse."
The operator swallows, his fists clenching on the table top. "Of course."
Neo bows his own head, leaning on the table, hesitating as if searching for the right words.
Nanu supplies them for him. "There is a world that is made of the possibilities the AI create. Every change made to the Matrix has repercussions of far greater magnitude than déjà vu. We found a world apart, made from these infinite possible outcomes, and it echoes with changes not made." She pauses, clutching the coarse blanket tighter around her shoulders. "And there are people there. People who have died as a result of options not taken. Apoc, Switch and Mouse. They're still in the Lafayette."
"That world is a gateway," Neo picks up the thread before anyone can ask questions. "There is a place beyond it. I believe it leads, somehow, back to the machine mainframe."
"The mainframe?" Pirate raises his eyebrows, sceptical. "You can reach the mainframe from an old hotel in the Matrix city, without any kind of computer connection or hacking involved at all?"
"It is a kind of hacking," Nanu interrupts. "But the code in the Ghost world isn't anything like the Matrix. It's not even green."
"A computer isn't what's needed to get through that world," Neo says, meeting Pirate's eyes with visible effort. "It's the Gift."
Gavin keeps his arm steady around Nanu's shoulders, a silent support. Tank stares at Neo as if he doesn't recognise him, and Pirate doesn't seem to want to look at anyone.
"If you can reach the mainframe," Trinity begins to ask softly, "could you somehow . . . "
Neo just shakes his head, and she falls silent. Nanu catches the undercurrent distinctly. The two of them will discuss the full implications later, and won't speak in public until there is an actual plan.
"While we have completed the recent objective of acquiring a new recruit," he says to them all, "we will not be returning to Zion in the near future. Wolf will begin training on board as usual. No other plans have been formulated as yet."
"Gavin and Pirate," Trinity stands from the table. "You two can get back to work."
They move slowly from the kitchen, as if suspicious that they will be missing out on something. And not without reason.
"Tank," Neo asks as he sits down, "what did you see when we were in there?"
"Like when Nanu zoned out that time, you both disappeared like you'd never been in the room."
"But Nanu stayed in the Lafayette," Trin sits beside the girl, offering help to wrap the blanket closer. By now, Nanu is shivering.
"I wasn't all there. I had to stay in both places at once, to be a bridge for Neo to get back."
Neo picks quietly at threads unravelling from the cuffs of his shirt. Achi speaks up. "What did you see in that place? It's not just the gateway to the mainframe that's worried you."
He looks up, startled that anyone has noticed a difference in him. But before opening his mouth, he looks to Nanu.
. . . light. rushing abstracts and forms . . . burgundy black and red . . . a figure. someone like himself but drastically not . . .
"Fate," she whispers, her head spinning with the suddenness of it all. Somehow these three souls are tangled in this mess, Trinity/Nuala, Neo/Raven and Nanu/Juno. Somehow the paths they've all led end in the realm beyond the door.
"Fate," he nods, turning his face away. Tank frowns, looking as if to speak, but falls silent. There isn't really anything he can ask.
It is Achi who sends Tank up to the bridge, who lifts Nanu from the chair and half carries her to her room. Trinity and Neo walk silently behind the Zion-born, side by side and silent. Even with her eyes closed and her head against Achi's shoulder, Nanu still understands their words without sound. It is unlikely that they will sleep tonight.
Through closed lids Nanu sees the woman again, cloaked in shadow and blood. She smiles, curling her lip to reveal teeth, and Nanu somehow accepts that Neo will not return from his next mission alive.
Achi pushes open a cabin door, entering and lowering Nanu's thin form on the bunk. As the darkness closes again, the girl lets the vision slip aside, and sleeps. And forgets.
Trinity
"What did you see?"
"I saw where my path ends."
She leans forward, placing a hand under his chin to lift his head. The two of them sit on their bed, crosslegged like children.
"Morpheus used to talk about it . . . " his voice sounds lost.
"I remember. That time with the copter, he said there's a difference between knowing the path, and walking it."
"He said a lot of things," Neo dodges her gaze, looking back down to the cuffs of his sleeves. "And look where his path led him."
"What did you see in there?" she insists on the question, gently.
"Fate. There was light, colour, sound . . . it was a world apart. If anything could be a dream encoded, that place is it. And there was a woman there."
She takes his hands, carefully untangling his fingers from the threads of his sleeves. He clenches her bones together without noticing.
"She told me that I had been fighting her as long as my soul has existed. She told me that I wanted to destroy her. But when I asked her who she was, she only said 'I am your Fate'."
She pauses before answering. "Did you believe her?"
He looks up. "Yes." There is a stark simplicity to him now that Trinity almost does not recognise. If she'd seen his face when he had resolved to save her life at the possible cost of his own, that time with the copter, she might find a parallel with his expression now.
"You said you saw the way to the mainframe – "
"There are answers in her eyes," he cuts her off as if he cannot hear her. "She's the core of everything. She's everything we aren't, but so, so simple. She's what I was born for, what I've lived to find."
"Neo?"
When he looks back to her, his eyes are wide and dark. The irises show as a narrow ring of colour.
"Neo, you're talking in riddles. What is this woman you saw?"
"She is truth. She's the end."
"I don't understand you."
"If I destroy her, we'll win. The war will finally be over."
"But how Neo? How can you even get there again let alone defeat something not human?"
"She's everything but human. It is humanity that will break her."
Trinity shivers at the tone of his voice. It doesn't belong to him. It's somehow older, and unnervingly certain.
"You should sleep now. I'll see you in the morning."
He obeys her silently, uncurling and stretching out on the bunk. She stands, taking a step away from him.
Tonight she'll sleep in the room Wolf is yet to claim. This is not truly Neo. Trinity leaves, closing the door behind her, and repeating the irrational belief that everything will be alright tomorrow morning.
Nanu
Small hands wake her, creeping up her shoulder and tugging at the blankets. Nanu rolls over, opening her eyes carefully. Bobcat clambers onto the bed beside her, eyes big and solemn.
"What's the matter Bobby?" Nanu makes room for the little girl, sitting up with her back to the wall.
"Daddy. He's confused."
The understanding in those eyes outstrips the childish lilt of the voice.
"What's he confused about?"
"Fate. The lady he saw."
Burgundy and blood. Nanu remembers what she saw.
"How long have I been asleep for?"
"Half the day. It's almost night time now."
"Have you been here all that time?"
"No." BC shifts closer, cuddling into the curve of Nanu's side. The ship is a lot colder than Zion. Nanu awkwardly strokes the little girl's hair.
She's not sure how to treat her. She has no experience with children as it is, but BC does not have the soul of a child. She neither thinks, speaks nor acts as any normal three-going-on-four-year-old would. That's without taking into account the world she's been born into.
"Don't feel sad for me," Nanu hears a whisper.
"Alright then," Nanu hugs the little girl carefully. "Was there something you wanted to ask?"
"Daddy needs your help."
"What can I do to help him?"
"Remember."
"Remember Juno?"
BC nods, her hair ruffling. Nanu has never felt raven feathers, but she imagines they'd be as soft as the girl's hair.
She tilts her head back against the steel wall, listening to the ship hum around her. What does she know of Juno? The last image that comes to mind is that twilight in September, when she flew with Raven above the city, daring the world to look up and see, and believe they were living a lie.
But how does it relate to the Ghost world? What does it have to do with Fate?
Burgundy and blood. Dark threads and ribbons, like lines of code, code that drips and runs in rivulets down the stone of a tower. Scent of thunder. Rain that glows green. Texture of a silk lined coat, the feel of hair like feathers. A world apart, years away from her. Curled with her father, crying salt as the clock roars the twelfth stroke. On her knees in the church courtyard, sobbing in the mud as what she holds fades to nothing. A deep breath as a ringing phone wars with a lightening strike, staggering to her feet as she finds herself alone.
Feathers, black feathers falling around her.
Inhale a feeling like flying. Code shines through the rain, blinding bright. A sudden knowledge, and inhuman speed as she runs into the church, bursting through the doors and snatching the receiver in the back room where they keep the flowers.
Feathers.
Nanu opens her eyes, looking down at BC.
"Do you know what I just saw?"
The girl nods mutely.
"How will that help Neo?"
"It will." Such certainty. "I have to go now."
"Alright then."
"Sleep Nanu. You won't dream."
Neo
He wakes slowly, gradually becoming aware of a small warmth against his side. BC.
"'Lo rascal," he murmurs from instinct.
"'Lo daddy."
Neo tries to remember how he got here, but can't. There's a fog over his last waking hours, and he cannot get a fix on what happened to him. He shifts, trying to find a more comfortable way to lie. It's dark; the only source of light a thin strip of white along the vent in the door.
White haloed doorways. Burgundy.
Glimpses of what he said to Trinity come through the haze, but they dissolve before he can remember them entirely. He'd been so stunned then, and now his conscious mind cannot recall what the subconscious understood instinctively.
He holds his daughter closer against him, shutting his eyes tight.
"BC?"
"Hmm?" He is thrown for a second by how much she sounds like himself.
"You told me what happened to Nanu before, without words."
"Yes."
Neo lets his head roll to one side, breathing carefully. How can he ask this? There's so much confusion and blur over the past few days, he's not certain if there's anything concrete left in his world.
There was a woman. That he's almost certain of. She spoke to him; he knows that in his blood. What she said is more of the issue. As for who or what she is, that's a mystery he's nowhere near guessing.
"Do you think you could help me, BC?"
She wriggles closer in the way only children can. "About Fate?"
He inhales. He's never totally put his faith in the Oracle. Nanu's skills spook him at the best of times. Yet when his four year old daughter calmly reads his mind, he finds himself not scared at all.
"I don't understand what she wants," he whispers aloud.
"She's what you were made to destroy. You've always been meant to free us. Raven began it, but it was too much for one lifetime. Your fate is to destroy the Matrix, end the war, and bring freedom to our people."
He shudders violently at the memory these words bring, but her small hands only hug him tighter.
"If you destroy your fate, it will be fulfilled."
"How do I do that?" his mouth is very dry.
"She's logic, nothing else. You must defy that if you are to break her."
Neo forces the muscles in his neck to unclench.
"Sleep daddy. Tomorrow will come soon enough, and you'll know what to do in the morning."
"How can you be sure?" he rasps, one hand resting distantly on BC's hair.
"I'm sure. Just sleep now. I'll stay here."
Odd as it seems, Neo finds this profoundly comforting. He turns onto his side, his child under his arm, and manages to fall asleep.
***