a/n:

- Hello, all - thanks for your lovely reviews! This is a much lighter chapter, in contrast to the rather dark interior monologue from the elevator. There a few French phrases in this chapter, so I've provided a translation at the end.

- Oh, ChiaraStorm, this chapter is dedicated to you, b/c this piece is meant as an answer to your question to me (ie: with who?)

Chapter 5

Rorie was lying flat underneath the massive hull of the Neb, squinting as she picked though the complicated electrical work in the ship's aft pads. After staring at it non-stop for the better part of the afternoon, she was starting to see double. "Hey, Knight," she called out. "Can you come over here?"

A tall young man with a curly mess of dirty blonde hair knelt down and peeked under the hull. "Yeah?"

"What the hell is this?"

He slid under the ship and shone his penlight up into the tangle of multicoloured wires. "It's… uhm… oh, that's bubblegum," he stated matter-of-factly, as if ships were made of it. "Holds the electrical away from the condensation that accumulates on the sides of the ship. My invention."

"Well, if that's the case, I'd ask you to remove it," Rorie grabbed a rag out of her back pocket and wiped grease from between her fingers. "Try some tape next time."

"But gum tastes better." He picked the sticky rubber glob off the wires. "Here, you try it."

He tired to force it into her mouth, but Rorie turned her face just in time, letting out a surprised scream. "No! Get away!"

"Just try it!"

She caught his wrist and ripped the gum from his hand, rolling it up in her greasy rag. "Mother would kill you if she saw gum on her ship- she'd make you lick the hull clean."

"Oh, Trin wouldn't do that. You know… underneath that cold outer shell, she loooo-ves me too much."

Save Neo, Knight was the only person alive who ever got away with using Trinity's shortened name. He'd picked it up from Neo when he was just a child, back when Trinity couldn't find it in her heart to correct him. Of course, now that he was older, she had told Knight more than once that he was only to use her pet-name in the company of family members. Occasionally, he would slip and address her informally at a public gathering or on the ship, a mistake that was always met with the same dangerous glare of icy blue, followed by Knight's stuttered, clumsy apologies.

Neo had spotted the outspoken young boy online when he was only twelve. By that time, Knight had dug his way into some of the more exclusive hackers' circles. Of course, nobody else there knew he was less than half their age. He posed as a wealthy thirty-five year old computer engineer from Miami Beach, Florida who had made it big in silicone-valley. His profile stated that his interests included 'wind-surfing, martinis, fast cars, and faster women.' Neo smirked. The kid had never set foot outside his home-town of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, a small rural village in southern Québec.

"And the last thing we need in the army is more Canadians," Neo had joked over breakfast one morning. He loved to tease the Montréal-born Trinity about her roots. "Not that the little Eskimo wouldn't be at home in the cold."

"Just because you can't pronounce the name of the town…"

"I don't know what you're talking aboot, eh?"

"Oh, shut-up Neo."

On the night they unplugged him, Neo ceremoniously preformed the first officer's duty of delivering the Target to Trinity, who was waiting with the pills. The late-November snow had turned to sleet, and Knight was drenched from head to tow, hair matted to his head, teeth chattering in the cold. His oversized plaid shirt clung to his bony shoulders and hung past his knees.

Trinity removed her leather trench coat and wrapped it around him. Taking off her sunglasses and kneeling down to his level, she said in his native tongue, "Bonjour, mon petit prince du nord. It's nice to finally meet you. My name is Trinity."

He looked at her with bright hazel eyes, flecked with gold, and smiled beatifically. Then he spoke to Neo. "You were right. The legends are true."

"And what legends would those be?" she asked, fully expecting to hear the standard Kansas-City IRS-D base story… again.

The young boy grinned bashfully. "That you're very beautiful. Comme… une rose du nord." And then he wrapped his arms around her neck, and for a moment she doubted he'd ever let go.

And in many ways, he never did. Although Knight technically lived at the Orphanage until he was eighteen, he spent more time as part of Trinity's family than anywhere else.

Not that he was ever actually invited, as Neo often commented with dry humour, eyeing his wife with an unspoken inside joke. Indeed, from the moment Knight opened his eyes for the first time, tucked snugly in a cot on the Neb, head nestled in Trinity's lap, Neo could tell his wife had taken to the boy. She and Knight would sit up for hours, having lively conversations in the indecipherable mixture of Québécoise French and grammatically butchered English they called 'Franglais' about secret topics they'd never reveal (Neo naturally concluded that they must have been discussing maple-syrup, igloos and reindeer, an assumption which made Knight laugh and Trinity scowl).

His wife even taught Knight to read the code personally (a tiresome job she usually left to the operator), and she ambitiously tuned into the NHL playoffs a few hours every day as the backdrop for her lessons. About a week in, Neo could tell their rookie had grasped the basics when he happened upon Knight and Trinity arguing about an interference call during game seven of the semi-finals.

"Franchement! T'ai folle, Trin!" the bald twelve year old had exclaimed, typing on the operator's keyboard to replay the infraction. "Kovalev was in the crease! Right there, you see that? He might as well have been sitting in the net! I'm sorry, no goal."

Trinity had smiled, and Neo knew she was proud of him. Knight couldn't have known at the time, but nobody learned the code that fast, and team sports like hockey were not easy to follow. "Canadiens still lead by two," she said evenly, holding up her hand for a hi-five.

"We've got the freest minds in the league!" Knight slapped her palm enthusiastically "Allez-y, boys! Go, Habs, Go!"

After over two weeks of such special treatment on the Neb, it was only natural that Knight would find it difficult to adjust to life in Zion. And from Neo's perspective, the only thing more heart-wrenching than the twelve-year-old's teary eyes when they left him at the Orphanage were Trinity's teary eyes in the elevator on the way home. Neo spent the entire afternoon convincing her they'd done the right thing in leaving him, which all turned out to be egg on his face when their sleep was disturbed at nearly midnight by a phone call from the Headmaster.

"What do you mean you 'can't find him'?" Trinity was using one hand to hold the receiver and the other to hit Neo awake with a pillow. "Well, no of course he isn't with me! My wonderful husband…" -she hit him again- "and I left him in your capable hands six hours ago."

By the time she hung up, Trinity was out of bed and throwing on her clothing. Neo groggily followed her into the master bathroom, still half-asleep. "Where are you going?"

"That little monster!" she exclaimed, combing back her long, wavy hair into a messy bun at the back of her head.

Neo rubbed his eyes. "What's this about Rorie?"

"No, the other one, Neo for God's sake. Would you wake up and pay attention to me!" She raised a hand as if to assault him again, but Neo caught her wrist in midair.

"Let's hold off on the domestic violence until my eyes adjust to the light. We could break something nice." He released her, yawned and stretched. "Now. Calmly, my little pumpkin…"

"Calling me pumpkin is supposed to make me not want to hit you?" She splashed some water on her face and snatched up a towel. "I hardly think cute fruity pseudonyms are appropriate right now…"

"Of course not, Trin. Don't overreact." Neo leaned on the doorframe. "I meant one of those hollow, carved pumpkins. The scary ones with the sharp teeth and glowing red eyes."

"They can't find Knight. Apparently, he ran away," she said, ignoring the Halloween barb, filing it in the back of her mind to throw up at him later when she needed it most (nine years of marriage had taught her many a similar survival-tactic). "I told you we shouldn't have left him there." She brushed past him in a hurry and grabbed her keys off the kitchen table. "'Don't worry, Trin,' you said. 'He'll be fine, Trin.' 'Trust my judgement, Trin…'"

"Calm down."

"'Calm down, Trin…'" She continued to mimic him with exaggerated gesticulation as she slipped on her shoes. "Now the poor thing is lost somewhere in a place he knows nothing about, he's probably disoriented, terrified; God only knows what's happened to him!"

Trinity yanked the door open, and nearly walked over the young boy on her way out.

"Oh. Hi, Trin." Knight stared up at her guiltily, fingers fidgeting with the seam of his shirt.

Neo sighed. "I'm going back to bed."

"You little monster!" Trinity gasped as Knight wrapped his arms around her waist, clinging to her as if to life itself.

"Is someone calling me?" A nine-year-old Rorie poked her head out from her bedroom door.

Neo rubbed his face with his hands and chuckled half-heartedly. "Or we could all just stay up, whatever's good."

"I'm sorry. It's just that I didn't know where else to go," Knight was explaining, though Neo noticed that the moment he saw Rorie his attention shifted away from Trinity. "I hated it there and missed you so much that I… I uhm… uhm… pardonnez, c'est qui la belle fille avec les yeux comme des étoiles?"

And from that moment on, they couldn't have gotten rid of him if they wanted to. To earn his keep, Knight spent his time programming most of the Neb's more original sparring programs, not to mention a few extra treats for the captain (Trinity still used the custom-grip Beretta 84's that he'd created for her eight years ago). As soon as he was old enough, she offered him a position onboard the Neb, despite having her choice of several more experienced candidates…

"Yeah, sometimes I wonder which one of us she loooo-ves more," Rorie remarked sarcastically, spitting on the rag and diligently scrubbing away at the last disgusting bits of bubblegum. "I mean, she lets you trips through the Matrix with her, freeing minds, fighting evil, maintaining a delicate balance of world peace, etcetera, etcetera… and she lets me..." -she spat again- "…scrub your gum off the hull. I wonder: who is the favourite child?"

"You're her only child, Rorie." Knight took the rag from her and forced eye contact. "She could never love anyone as much as she loves you." He grinned. "Even someone as and charming as I am. Give her some time. She worries more than you know."

"You sound just like my father."

"Then I'm in good company."

"Okay, suck-up. This is done. Finally." Rorie finished off her work by cocooning the free wires in several centimetres of black electrical tape, and then snapping the shiny aluminium paneling back into place. "She's ready to go."

They pulled themselves out from under the ship, and for the first time in three hours Rorie looked around the Dock. The last of the repair crews had left, and the main floodlights were shut off for the evening. She sighed her relief, basking in the welcome silence that was left in the wake of another chaotic day. She could spend all night here, she thought, just enjoying the tranquility of it. In the dim illumination of her work lamps, the surrounding ships imposed like huge, benign giants, protecting her, guarding the city while it slept. Yes, more than anywhere else, this was home.

As a child, Rorie passed entire days watching her mother direct the slow but steady rebuilding of Zion's fleet. Trinity habitually worked until long after the rest of the engineers had retired for the evening, and often Neo lent her a hand during the night shift. Sometimes, Rorie was persuasive enough to convince them to let her stay and help as well, beseeching them not to worry, because 'sleep was a luxury she was prepared to sacrifice for the good of the Resistance'.

Some of Rorie's favourite childhood memories were of those long, quiet nights under their city's great, earthen dome, lying atop the fluffy piles of insulation, listening to her parents' whispered conversation echo under the hull of some ship. Of course, within a few hours she'd invariably fall asleep, and so Neo would carry her home, only to subsequently return to the Dock to coax his wife away from her work long enough to get a little rest of her own.

When Rorie could, she'd force herself awake to wait for their return; she knew what was coming. Her mother never retired without checking on her first. Trinity would brush hair from her face, tuck the covers tightly around her, and kiss her forehead three times – always three times. Never once fooled by Rorie's act, Trinity would then playfully whisper into the tight whorl of her ear that 'sentinels loved to eat little children who didn't get their sleep.' When Rorie was feeling cheeky, she'd retort that her father would kill any sentinel which came within a thousand meters of her (he'd told her so many times), to which her mother always had the last word. "Yes, my Only," she'd say. "But Daddy's tired tonight. Best not to have to wake him."

Rorie remembered clearly the first time her parents left her alone for any extended period of time. She was seven, and they were gone for over a month on a 'diplomatic mission.' The machines were withdrawing their forces from much of the western hemisphere, and Zion's army was claiming the territory. But the machines refused to budge unless The One was there to accept their 'gift of friendship.' Needless to say, it was a very delicate situation, and Trinity refused to let her husband go without her.

"Chances are it's a goddamned bomb with a bow on it. Someone's got to be there to put you back together, right?" her mother had said while packing Neo's things for the mission, not realizing that Rorie was standing in the doorway. It took them hours to get her to stop crying, with Trinity trying in vain to convince her daughter that the comment was a joke.

What Rorie never knew was that her mother spent the better part of that night lost in her own tears of dread. It was the first time she and Neo were to return to the surface since the end of the War, and in the earth's toxic, unforgiving atmosphere were demons she'd left dormant for over eight years. She could only pray that her instincts were wrong.

Indeed, it was a great surprise to both Neo and Trinity when they were met on the ancient battlefield by a pair of humanoid AI robots, ostensibly female and male, each dressed in long purple and orange fabrics. It was the woman who spoke first. "We welcome you – both of you. Vishnu, Lakshmi, you honour us by your presence on this historic morning. You are well?"

"We are, yes." Neo responded almost instantly, seemingly unaffected by the unusual greeting. "On behalf of Zion, I extend my hand to you in friendship and peace."

As they shook, the male android revealed a smooth yellow stone in the palm of his hand, about the size of a silver dollar. He spoke to Trinity.

"This is a gift for your child. May she live long and happy, and never see the horrors of War."

The stone was in fact, a piece of amber… a rare remainder of what natural glories used to bless the barren, lifeless soil on which they all stood. Inside the fossilized tree sap was a single beetle, immortally frozen inside its golden prison.

"Do you think there are any left like this?" Rorie had asked her father as she marvelled at the mysterious treasure. She'd never seen such a beautiful creature before. The exoskeleton reflected every colour imaginable: a million blues and greens and reds all at the same timeThe wings, only half-extended, caught the light in elaborate gossamers of sparkling silver.

"We've got bugs on the Neb… they live in the sewers." Neo replied, studying the strange gift under her desk lamp. "But none of them are this colourful. Not that I've seen."

From that time on, Rorie's fascination with the insect only grew. She spent hours collecting the 'bugs' from the interiors of the docking hovercraft in which they had taken residence. Over eighty different species of beetles, spiders, flies, and ants later – she still wasn't satisfied. One can only gain so much information from fireflies and millipedes. The real treasure, the real adventure… lay over thirty kilometres above her head.

"God, Knight. I wish I were going with you," Rorie said, looking up at the Neb as she shut off the remainder of the flood lights. "What I wouldn't give to just get in and go."

Knight shrugged. "Go whereexactly? Broadcast depth isn't exactly glamorous. It's cold and dark and…"

"No, not broadcast depth. The surface."

"Which is just cold-er and dark-er…"

"I want to see what my mother saw when the Logos punched through the clouds above 01."

"The sun?"

"Mom once told me it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen." Rorie smiled thoughtfully. "That is, she said, until she saw me."

"I've been to the surface, Rorie. There's nothing up there. It's desolate."

"I don't believe that. The temperature fluctuations we recorded…"

"Were sensor glitches."

Rorie sighed and reached around her neck, removing the amber stone she'd religiously worn on a necklace for the past ten years of her life. She studied the familiar details of the arthropod's delicate antennae and its tiny, perfect appendages. "No. There has to be something more up there. I know it."

"How do you know?"

"The same way you knew there was something more to life than the Matrix. I just know."

Knight watched her as she stared up at the earthen ceiling of the Dock, like an astronomer gazing up at the heavens, wondering what mysteries the undiscovered cosmos might hold. The idea that there could be anything besides permafrost on the crust was radical at best. The last SRP mapped most of the surface before beginning their work at the poles – they never recorded anything but deserts of infertile earth covered with multiple layers of filthy ice. Still, he had to admit, something about the look in her eyes… made him want to believe her.

"You know what you need to do?" Knight said finally, taking the necklace from her and refastening it around her neck. He chuckled, "You need to go and see the Oracle. She has the answers."

Rorie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, unfortunately, I don't have the required outlet. We free-borns have to figure our own lives out."

"Well, I went to see her. And I asked her about you." Knight added jokingly, "she told me your destiny."

"Oh really? Okay, then, oh wise one. Tell me… what is my destiny?" Rorie laughed as she sat on the edge of her workbench, as if preparing herself for a very long and interesting story.

"Not what, my dear. But who."

"Oh, even better! Who is my destiny, then?"

Knight leaned very close to her, and whispered, "The seventh anomaly. The One!"

Her giggles echoed off the walls as she shoved him away. "I should have known I'd be stuck with the family curse! What nonsense: the seventh anomaly! Not that Dad isn't about due for retirement, mind you."

"Hey, they rebooted the system, so there's gotta be another One, right?"

"I suppose."

"Well, baby, he's all yours."

"And how am I going to find this wonderful man, Knight? I'm stuck at the bottom of this giant hole in the ground!"

"Also not a problem, hon. You're looking straight at him! The One… has come to you." Knight bowed dramatically and dropped to one knee, extending a hand out to her, a look of undying devotion in his eyes.

"Oh, please!" Rorie hopped off where she'd been perched on her workbench and crossed her arms in scrutiny, raising an eyebrow and shaking her head. "You may have had me there, Knight. But now I know you're lying."

"What!" He leapt to his feet in mock outrage. "God! What's a guy gotta do to convince you ladies?"

"I dunno… my Dad can do some pretty cool stuff from what I hear."

"That's a good point." Knight rubbed his fingers against his chin pensively for a moment, then reached out and grabbed her around the waist. "What if I told you… I could fly?"

"I'd say… take me with you."

Before she knew what was happening, Rorie found herself captive in his arms, then hoisted over his shoulder, her feet kicking in the air. "Alright, babe. Where do you wanna go?" He spun her around. "We have right… or left…"

"Put me down you impostor!" She screeched, completely consumed with laughter again. "Do you hear me? You can't do this to me… to me! Do you realize who I am? Who my father is? I'm the next Queen of Zion!"

In no mood to let the 'little princess' go, Knight continued to spin her, laughing as he tried to keep her sharp fingernails from doing any real damage. It was only when he heard another voice come from behind him that he realized that they were not alone.

"I suggest you do what the lady says," Neo said, arms folded across his chest.

The younger man turned around, face ashen as he tried to focus on the person whose only child he had hoisted precariously above his head. The room was still spinning. "Oh… g- good evening, Neo... sir."

"Who's there?" Rorie tried to bend her head around to see who Knight was talking to. "Daddy, is that you?"

Knight very carefully bent down to restore Rorie to solid ground. As soon as she was able, she smoothed out her hair and cleared her throat nervously. "Hi, Dad. I'm glad you're here… I was starting to worry that you'd forgotten."

Neo's glance shifted from Rorie to Knight and back again. Both their cheeks were flushed, and Rorie couldn't meet his eyes. Neo had a feeling that he had been the farthest person from his daughter's thoughts that evening. Feeling betrayed and foolish at the same time, he forced a smile. "Of course I didn't forget. But I didn't realize you had company."

"Knight saw me working late and stayed to help me finish your upgrades."

"Goes faster with two," Knight offered.

"They're a great set of pads, Dad; you're really going to like them…"

"I'm sure I will," Neo replied absently. His mind and heart were racing, and with every passing moment, he felt more and more out of place. What a mess he'd made of things. Clearly, he should have stayed at home with Trinity. She was probably furious with him, and for what? So he could come and rescue their daughter from the horrors of an evening alone with the tall, blonde and handsome guy who has doted on her ever since she was ten?

"Dad, what happened to your other boot?" Rorie scowled at his feet. "Don't tell me you and mom are fighting again…"

"What? No, of course not." Neo tried to think of any other explanation for his half-dressed state in the middle of the night. Finding none, he chose to simply let the question of his missing footwear slide. "Speaking of your mother, have you seen her tonight?"

"No… why? Was I supposed to?"

"Nothing, forget it." Neo puzzled over where in the world Trinity had gone if not to the Dock. The thought of Ghost hovered unpleasantly in his mind for a moment. He wouldn't blame her, especially given the unkindness he'd shown her that evening. In fact, Neo would be surprised if Trinity came home at all tonight. And how he needed to talk to her… now more than ever. Besides the obvious anxiety he'd been feeling with regards to Smith's apparent resurrection from digital oblivion, Neo wanted to tell her about how he could literally feel their daughter slipping through his fingers. That at some point today, between dropping out of school and flirting with his tactical officer – she'd stopped being the innocent, vulnerable child he remembered from her youth. She was a woman – a woman who needed things that he couldn't give her, and who faced the kinds of dangers he couldn't protect her from.

Neo sighed wearily. "Knight, have you heard that we're leaving early? Tomorrow morning."

"Yeah. Trin called me earlier today. She didn't say why…"

"It's not important, just a scheduling thing," Neo lied, looking at his daughter's concerned face. "Rorie, I want you to come to see us off tomorrow morning. It's important to your mother that she sees you before we leave. She misses you."

"Yeah, of course."

Neo took her in his arms and hugged her close, murmuring in her ear, "I don't want you to leave each other so angry, please… for me."

Rorie pulled away and nodded in response. Satisfied she understood him, Neo then took Knight's hand firmly. "And as for you, crewman. I need you here early. The ship should be ready to go by seven. So… after walking the 'future Queen of Zion' home, you'll get straight to bed?"

The question was asked with a subtle squeeze of his hand, and Knight finally seemed to relax, smiling boyishly and muttering an affirmative. As Neo turned to leave them, he added over his shoulder. "Oh and Knight? Take it from an expert. Conditions are bad for flying this evening. Better to take the elevators instead, yeah?"

Translations and notes:

"Bonjour, mon petit prince du nord";Hello, my little prince of the north.
Trinity's use of the phrase "mon petit prince" isn't mere whimsy. It's meant as a reference to the well-known children's book, "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It's a story about a little golden-haired prince who travels the universe for a home. Although it is meant as a children's tale, the book makes many profound observations about life and love, muchas "Alice in Wonderland" does.Notable is an observation made to the prince, which translates to "You only see rightly with the heart, what matters is invisible to the eyes."

"Comme… une rose du nord" ; Like... a rose of the north.
In the novel, the little prince lives on a small asteroid with three volcanoes and a single beautiful rose, who has many thorns, whichthe prince"tames." - this is Knight's clever (if not presumptuous) way of letting Trinity know he understands the reference to Saint-Exupéry's work.

"Franchement! T'ai folle /"Allez-y, boys! Go, Habs, Go!" ; Frankly, you're crazy, Trin/ C'omon, guys! Go, Habs, Go!"
Habs is short for "habitants" or "farmers" - those of you who watch NHL hockey know that Montreal's home team'smoniker is "habs" b/c the team was originally formedfrom a bunch of rural farmers.

"Pardonnez, c'est qui la belle fille avec les yeux comme des étoiles?" ; Excuse me, who is this beautiful girl with eyes like the stars?

Anyway, I know it's a bit of a stretch to make Trinity a Montrealer, but this is my way of putting a bit of my own culture into the work. I hope you enjoyed it. Next chapter is withSmith/Synergy... and we will discover more aboutour mysterious human anomaly.