CHAPTER NINE

The bullets fly by the dozen as we tear through the streets. She is ahead of me, clutching my wrist. I find myself travelling at her speed, and the strange thing is, I feel no strain or physical exertion. We almost glide as we run. She dodges a bullet that whistles past her ear. We do not know where they are coming from. Wait a minute. There's a man, high up in the apartments above us, overlooking the alleyway through which we are speeding. I can see him now. He stands in the window, clutching a hand pistol, shooting violently at us as we thunder along the road. I stare up at him, confused, trying to recognise him. He is fading into the distance now, and from what I can tell, he has run out of bullets.

Now he is clambering out of the window, shinnying down the ladders. I can see his face more clearly now. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, I recognise him. It is Mr Smith, Eric Smith, my boss. The one who Trinity claims is trying to kill me. And I realise for the second time. It is Agent Smith. I remember him clearly now. He is identical. Only this time, he is not wearing a suit. He is wearing an old polo shirt and faded jeans. And sunglasses. He seems to go nowhere without his dark shades.

Funnily enough, I am not afraid. With Trinity leading the way, I am not scared. I don't fancy the idea of Smith catching up to us, but I know that if he does, we can kick his arse. At least, I hope so. I know Trinity has that capability. But do I? Do I still have those phenomenal, out-of-this-world abilities that set me apart from all the rest, that almost guaranteed my success in any fight I got myself into? I don't want to even consider the possibility that I don't.

Suddenly, without warning, Trinity whirls me around and hurls me behind a large dumpster. She spins, whips out a handgun from the folds of her jacket, and fires a simultaneous parade of bullets. They surge towards our pursuer, our attacker. He comes closer, avoiding the bullets. But then one hits him in the chest. Another gets his stomach, and then his shoulder as he crumples to the ground, blood gushing from his body alarmingly fast. I sit there, watching all this with a mixture of horror, astonishment and pleasure. It is always a pleasure to see the enemy, the evil one, perish at the hand of the good guy (or any guy, for that matter). But it always horrible to watch anybody die. To watch such a quantity of blood escape that one body. Trinity yanks me up again, and she slips away her gun, while pulling out her phone. She punches in a number, and it amazes me she can do this and still hold my wrist, and still run so swiftly.

'Link, get me back in there,' she says, and I hear a muffled voice on the other end, though I cannot make out what they are saying. 'Smith is dead.' Pause. 'I shot him.' Pause. Pause. 'In alleyway 596a.' Pause. 'Good idea. You do that.' Another pause. 'Just get us back in, goddamnit. Someone's on our trail. Not just Smith.'

She flips the cover of the phone back on, shoves it in her coat, and continues running. She does not speak to me. She runs into an old, derelict building several alleyways later. She slams the door shut behind us, and bars it with several heavy wooden planks.

'We're getting out of the matrix in a few minutes,' she said, 'but first, we need to get you out.'

She takes a bottle of pills from the folds of her cloak, and hands me one. It is yellow.

'But it's not red,' I said. 'Or blue.'

'Does it have to be?'

'No, I suppose not.' I swallow it whole, and feel my stomach squirm uncomfortably. 'Well?'

'You won't notice anything,' she says, 'or at least not until Link gets us outta here.' She sighs. 'Someone's following us, but I don't know who. It's a good thing I killed Smith. He's one of the central problems in all of this. If only we could nab the rest of the agents…' Her voice trails off, and then she sighs. 'It would make our job so much easier. Just find a way to get to the source, and eliminate the matrix. Easy. But not with this mob of arseholes running around.'

'When can you tell me about all this? I still don't understand.'

'You still remember, don't you?'

'Yes, but…'

'Well, then, that's all you need to know.'

'But you said…'

'For now, at least.' She stops. 'In the meantime…'

She takes a step towards me, and I take a step towards her. I remember so much now. How much I missed her when we were apart. The heart-wrenching anguish I felt when I watched her die. The happiness I felt when we first kissed, when we held each other tight and tried to hug the pain away….

We wrap our arms around each other. Nobody does it first. It is a mutual thing. We hold each other so tightly, and then our lips find its partner, and we don't let go. We kiss and kiss until I feel my lips begin to bruise. My eyes are closed and I am drinking in the moment. Drinking in Trinity. She's all I want. All I ever want. I can't believe it has taken me this long to remember, to realise how much I love her and how much I need her.

We continue kissing, occasionally surfacing for breath.

'I missed you,' Trinity says, smiling, her eyes still closed.

'And I missed you,' I reply.

At that moment, her phone rings. We pull away, eyeing one another.

She pulls it from the folds of her cloak. 'Hello?' Pause. 'It is?'

She grabs my arm tightly. 'Okay. We're ready.'

I feel a wrenching sensation in my stomach and then, the next moment, I find myself inside the metallic world that I knew for so long.

'Welcome back, Neo,' says Trinity.