Chapter 15, Part 3

Genesis, circa 2220. Twenty Years After the War Ended

Synergy. Try as he may to dismiss the thought, Neo couldn't recall the events of that horrible time in his and Trinity's life without thinking of that striking young woman with eyes like ice sickles and skin like marble. Trinity was sleeping, her head in his lap, she and the rest of the crew bundled in blankets by the fire. The only one awake, Neo poked at the red hot embers with a stick, wondering if, had she decided to answer Kirk's question, what Trinity would have said about those three months in limbo. Nothing about a lost baby. Nothing about the source of his present turmoil. To this day, he'd never told her.

Synergy reminded him of Trinity, a long time ago before they were married. Her voice, her figure, the way she moved and spoke with more confidence than her youth merited. No, Neo decided. Not of Trinity. She reminded him of Aurora.

He'd searched for her for twenty years. Twenty years of not knowing and of never daring to imagine he ever would. But in spite of this apparent hopelessness, his obsession with finding her, the compulsion to look persisted. He'd sit in the Core late at night, skimming the Matrix for a girl of the right age, with a wealthy family; perhaps she'd have siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. He'd always imagined she'd look like her mother, a youthful beauty in an aubergine dress, knowing nothing of the war, knowing nothing of the father who loved her, who ached for her despite never having seen her face.

That this beloved child could be the same strong-willed young woman who, over a scone and a cup of Earl Grey, matter-of-factly declared open war against the object of her torment was a chilling possibility. Neo thought of her looking out the window, beautiful, powerful, trapped. Alone. The heavens literally wept for her. And yet she was far from helpless. The telepathic connection with Smith gave him cause for concern, and her escort to the surface had been less than gentle. No, he didn't completely trust her, although he wanted to. He wanted to for reasons he was unable to dismiss, and until he had answers, would persist in affecting his judgement.

Trinity stirred in his arms and Neo turned his head. He'd heard it as well.

"Neo?" she said, voice still heavy with sleep. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure, but I can feel them. Suddenly… tens… hundreds now. Maybe more."

She grabbed her flashlight and did a quick count of her crew. "Sentinels?"

He shook his head, I don't know, looking back at the Neb, cast in shadow. "There. Inside the ship."

Neo took a few steps towards the cargo hold, but Trinity caught him by the arm. "You can't stop that many. Don't go."

The nonsensical prattling in his ears persisted, fluttering, chattering and beating palpations, sounds he'd never heard before, a benign busyness he'd never sensed around the Sentinels. They were all speaking at once; the din was like the hum of a beehive. Rush, hurry, faster, go.

"Take the crew," Neo said.

"What is it?" David asked, pushing blankets off himself and Hawk-Eye, joining Neo and Trinity on his feet. The others were up as well, startled awake by the conversation.

"Is there something out there?" Hawk-Eye said, accepting David's hand to help her off the ground.

"I'm not sure what it is… in the ship. I want you all to stay with Trinity," Neo said, looking at his wife. "I'm going. One of us has to."

"Not alone." It was Knight who said this. "I'll go with you."

"You stay here." Trinity glared at him dangerously. "We don't have time for mock heroics." She spoke to Neo. "We need to know what we're up against, but that doesn't mean we have to pick a fight. I'll go and sneak a look, you will stay here and protect the crew if need be. That's the plan. Are we go?"

Neo nodded, and Trinity turned off her flashlight, heading for the ship in the dark, creeping along the ground in stealthy, silent strides.

"We can't let her go in there by herself!" Knight argued to Neo, who shushed him quiet as he guided the crew to the edge of the woods, keeping to the shadows. He didn't like the idea either, but Trinity's plan was the most logical one presented. And it wasn't up to the crew to challenge it.

"Knight, trust her." Neo said quietly. "She can handle it."

The blood-curdling screams from the ship ripped through the darkness, shrill cries so chillingly unlike Trinity's voice that Neo felt his heart freeze in his chest. Then, before he had a chance to stop him, Knight was sprinting towards the cargo hold.

"Trin!" Knight yelled, followed close behind by Neo.

The Captain ran back out the way she entered, stumbling into the clearing, hands in her hair. "Get them off! Get them off me!" she screeched, throwing her sweater over hear head and tossing it to the ground.

"What, what, what!" Neo took his wife by the shoulders.

"Spiders everywhere! Thousands of them! Tens of thousands…" she panted, terror-stricken, hands racing all over her body, shaking uncontrollably. Neo had never seen her like this; she was hysterical, nearly incoherent. "They all… they jumped on me. Crawling all over me… and… webs…!"

"Shhh. It's okay." Neo snatched her hands from the air, noticing a stringy, sticky material covering her fingers. It looked too thick and silver to be a spider's web. In the dark, the substance was faintly luminescent; Neo could see it all over Trinity's face and hair. "Calm down, Trin. I'm here. You're fine. Hawk-Eye? What do you make of this?"

"Some sort of enzymatic biopolymer. Chemically, I'd classify it as a highly conjugated organo-metallic compound," she said, touching the Captain's hands, rubbing the goo between her fingers. "But it's just a guess. I've ever seen anything like it."

Knight shone his flashlight on Trinity's sweater, and as he picked the sticky cotton garment off the ground, a handful of eight-legged insects fell around his feet. Quickly, he snatched one up in his hands. "Gotcha!"

Trinity backed away, drying involuntary tears with trembling hands, humiliated but still too shaken to think clearly.

"It's not a spider," Knight said, uncupping his hands and looking at the creature he'd captured. "It's some sort of… machine."

Neo looked back at the Neb. "Knight, let it go. And come with me."

The two men carefully entered the ship, shining their flashlights along the walls of the hull, which was covered in silver webs, metallic insects scurrying along the scaffolding. Tiny golden eyes peered at them curiously, scattering away from the light.

"Try not to shine it at them," Neo instructed, listening closely to the chorus of whispers droning around him. The tiny appendages of the machines rattled on the hull and tapped at the floors as they hurried by. "God, no wonder she freaked out," he whispered, imagining his wife stepping into the arachnophobe's chamber of horrors. "It's like a giant hive."

Neo ducked under a net of webs at the cockpit entrance, consciously trying not to touch the walls. "Whoa," he gasped. "Knight, come look."

The control panel was aglow with a myriad of organisms, but not all of them were of the spider variety. Many had wings, paper-thin and nearly transparent, sparkling a tropical spectrum of metallic colours in the beam of their flashlights. Even the air was alive with light, hundreds of individual flight-paths etched through the darkness by violet laser beams. Beetles, butterflies, moths and wasps of every kind swarmed around the indicator bulbs and switches, filtering in and out through the floor grating, attaching themselves to live wires.

Suddenly, the power relay sparked, and though the voltage seemed to kill a few of the mysterious, tiny creatures, others dutifully took their place. "What are they doing?" Knight wondered aloud, supposing perhaps they were attempting to feed off their power cells.

The relay sparked again and the console lit up with flashing green lights. "Communications," Neo said. "They've powered the broadband transmitter."

Knight was back at the operations station. "Sir, I'm reading main power being rerouted through the B-chip. Into Main Bus B and C. 30 terrajoules and rising. 40… 50. What the…? It looks like we have live pads… five? Maybe more. It has to be an instrumentation malfunction."

"Perhaps not," Neo said, confirming Knight's data from the pilot's computer, entertaining the possibility that these little helpers were actually on their side. He thought of Synergy, instincts telling him she had something to do with this. Indeed, the dazzling, iridescent show in the cockpit reminded him of her code, twinkling its perfection in colours he hadn't even known existed, symbols and matrices flowing in an infinitely complex pattern of harmony.

Knight joined him at the radio, moving aside webs to turn some dials. "Permission to place a call, sir?" he asked eagerly, not wanting to waste a moment.

"By all means," Neo replied. "I'm feeling a bit homesick myself."

"This is the Nebuchadnezzar Mark Four calling Central Command," Knight said loudly. "Is anyone there. Over?"

As the sound of static reverberated, Neo reached out and gently caught a bright blue moth between his fingers. Pin-like legs frantically vibrated against his palm, the carbon-coloured exoskeleton glistening in an array of colour not unlike oil spilled on black asphalt. He closed his eyes and tried to listen, half expecting to hear her voice. But there was nothing but white noise.

"This is Zion Central Command. Jesus Christ, it's good to hear from you, Neb!" Link's voice was unmistakable, a warm welcome to Neo as he carefully let the moth go. "Is that Neo? Everyone alright?"

"Yeah, Link," Neo said. "Everyone here is okay. And our status is… on our way home, I think."

"You think?"

"We encountered some trouble but we're making repairs. It's a long story. I'll give you an update when I have one."

"That's good news, Neo. We look forward to it. We lost your signal over twelve hours ago. What is your present location?"

"Hard to say. Navigation is down," Neo said, not revealing any more than he was willing to explain on the air. "We'll try to get underway ASAP."

"Roger that. Oh, Neo. One more thing. I have a very special young lady here who'd like to say hello. Can I put her on?"

Neo and Knight both smiled broadly. Rorie. Responding simultaneously with equal enthusiasm, "Yes!"

Neo scowled and looked at the young man questioningly, who had already averted his eyes to the floor. And he should be embarassed, Neo thought. After all, Rorie was not asking to speak with him.

"Daddy?" Her greeting was like the sweet wail of a violin. Neo could tell she was barely holding back tears. "It's me. Everyone was so worried. Are you okay? Is Mom okay? I thought… I was scared…" (with a stifled sob) "I was scared I'd lost you, Dad… "

"We're fine. We're on our way back. Soon, I promise. Don't cry, my angel."

"I'm not. I'm not," she lied, pausing to pull herself together. "I just… what happened?"

"It's complicated," Neo felt a rush of excitement for his daughter, imagining her reaction to the real story. "I'll tell you everything when we get home."

"Is Mom there?"

"She's… busy. I don't know if we'll be able to get her near the com." Neo looked around the infested cockpit. "It's… a little crowded in the here with all the repairs."

Knight chuckled at the brilliantly-crafted reply, imagining Trinity's reaction to sharing her ship with such unlikely allies. "Might be a long ride home for her," he mumbled.

"Oh, is that…?" The excited timbre of Rorie's voice chimed over the radio. There was an awkward beat before she rephrased her question. More calmly, "Is Knight there?"

Neo looked at his tactical officer, beaming at the sound of his name, grin wider than a child's on Christmas morning. They could have powered the remaining pads with the electricity in his eyes. Sighing and handing him the com, "Yes, dear. He's here."

a/n: Okay, so that's it for chapter 15 (phew!) pls review!

- Syd

PS: next chapter we go back to Synergy