Chapter 23

My Rorie -

I'm not sure how to begin this letter, only to say that it feels as if a lifetime has passed since I've seen you, even though in reality it has only been three weeks. Twenty one days. And now everything's changed. The entire world has changed.

I wish I could radio you, but Trin has shut down main power and we've gone into blackout mode. It's the fourth time this week we've hidden in the sewers to avoid being detected, and sometimes we stay like this for hours at a time. Sometimes all night. It gets cold, and unbearably quiet. During moments like this, writing to you seems to be the only thing that makes any sense. It makes me feel closer to home.

I heard that you were finally assigned to an SRP ground crew, and God, I wish I were in Zion to celebrate with you. You're going to love Base Camp. I was there just last week when we surfaced to recharge. It was so surreal to see the shiny metallic skeleton and twinkling lights of a new settlement nestled into this lush, green wilderness. I'm telling you, it's like everything you've ever dreamed of, Rorie. It's almost as if you imagined Genesis into existence. At least, that's what I think when I look at it. I think of you.

Trin was thrilled to read you'd been placed. You should have seen the look on her face. Really, if you ever begin to question weather or not your mother is proud of you, just ask me to describe her expression when she read that letter. There was a glow about her all day afterwards. Neo, too. And out here, that's really something. I don't think I've seen either of them smile in a week. Trin does nothing but work her ass off to keep the ship in one piece, and your Dad spends all day jacked in. It's taking its toll, I think. On both of them.

All I can think is, so this is what it's like to fight a war. All those years studying at the Academy, those endless hours of training, practically living with Zion's greatest war heroes, and I didn't have a clue. None of us did- Dave, Kirk, Hawk-Eye. We're all just barely surviving it, like in a haze.

But in a lot of ways, we're the lucky ones. Synergy is pushing her resistance forces forward to destroy some more electricity distribution nodes, and Zion Fleet command has pledged three ships to help her do it. I couldn't imagine being on one of those ships. It's not so much the idea of blowing up a power plant that scares me, but having to fly over the fields to get there. It's the one thing I could never really come to terms with, the pods, the fact that they'd made me. Grown me. Like some sick science experiment. God, I don't know. I guess it's shame. I'm ashamed of it. That I owe them my existence.

You were right, by the way. You were right all along about Synergy's plan. She called a meeting of all Fleet members who could attend, and we assembled in the Matrix two days ago. It was the first time I'd actually seen her. Terrifying woman, with eyes like steel- eyes that make you believe she can do all the things she does. She handed over the engineering specs of Genesis, and explained that it's actually a giant dome of electromagnetic energy, an impenetrable dampening field that acts like a synthetic atmosphere. Like a bubble blocking out the Black Smoke, and so far, all the attempts by 01 to invade it. The whole thing is powered by a network of bimolecular solar panels, just like the insect wings you showed me in the lab. It was just as you said- an amazingly efficient energy conversion protocol. And the Machines want the technology badly, especially now that we've destroyed twenty percent of their raw power reserves.

It was really something to stand there and listen to this woman say that she'd allow the Machines to tap Genesis' ample solar resources if they surrendered the Matrix's administrative control codes. Just like that, and her face was like stone. Hand over the Matrix and everyone hooked up to it, and we'll share. Not only that, but she has plans for expanding the dome over the entire globe, if the Machines cooperate and contribute resources to building more solar converters. Meaning, if the entire Machine city will bow to the will of one human being.

Your mom says it'll never happen in a million years. She says they'll kill Synergy first, even if it does crash the entire system. Or the Machines will attack Zion in retribution, a scenario that is becoming more and more believable as the sentinel titer in the sewers increases. It makes me glad you're getting out of the city, Rorie. Genesis seems to be the safer place to be these days. Perhaps that's a cowardly thing for me to say, but I don't care. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you.

I have my fingers crossed, hoping that the Neb will be able to dock in time for your arrival tonight. I want to be there when you finally see it. When you look up at the stars for the first time. And I'll take you to this place I know, a cliff that overlooks the water, where you will be able to see the sun rise before the first rays even hit the settlement. The sky sparkles with a hundred different colours at dawn, and they say that it has something to do with how the light refracts through Synergy's dome. Anyhow, I'm sure you'd be able to explain it better than anyone- Aurora, Goddess of the Morning.

Your mom's sitting across from me now in the mess hall … she wants me to tell you that she loves you. She cut my hair a few days ago, can you believe that? Out of the blue, she just marches into the room with a pair of scissors, and tells me that she's had enough, and I need to shut up and bend my woman's hairdo over the sink. From the look on her face I was sure she was going for my jugular, but I actually came out of it looking pretty good. It's nothing drastic, just a trim – I think she went easy on me because it's so damn cold in here all the time. Like, I need the 'insulation.'

I told her she missed her calling and should have been a hairdresser. And she hit me pretty hard.

Best goddamn Captain in the Fleet, your mother… don't worry, Rorie – she's never going to let those bastards get to us…

The ship groaned and shuddered, and Trinity quickly reached out to keep her mug of tea from spilling.

"Jesus." Knight looked up from his laptop. "What the hell?"

"Shh."

They sat together in silence as the vibrations subsided. Then, another thunderous rattling nudged the ship to and fro. "Seismic charges," she said, confirming his fear. "Don't worry. They're a few miles off."

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…" he barely sung it, voice low and mirthless.

"Bright copper kettles and warm whollen mittens." She smiled faintly.

A few more detonations in the distance interrupted their sober von Trapp duet, and David poked his head in.

"Captain, your orders?"

Trinity's eyes narrowed as she thought about it. "They don't know where we are."

"Ma'am?"

"They're trying to scare us out," she said evenly. "Stupid sons of bitches are not only trying to kill me; now they're insulting my intelligence."

"So we're staying?" the co-pilot confirmed.

"Yes. Keep running sensor sweeps of the area, though. Let me know if they start getting warmer. Arrogance doesn't preclude them from dumb luck."

Trinity then turned back to her tea, and took a long sip. She looked at him, seemed to be studying him. "You miss her," she concluded softly.

Knight nodded, heart in his throat. How did she always know?

The lights in the mess hall flickered, and then suddenly died, leaving only his computer screen to illuminate the room. The ghostly blue glow made Trinity look even more washed out than she already was, the shadows on her face betraying her age and everything she'd been through in the past few weeks.

Knight didn't want to mention it in his letter to Rorie, but he was worried about her. Worried about both of them. Trinity and Neo weren't sleeping, Neo because he refused to leave the Matrix, and Trinity because she was left with the unenviable responsibility of keeping the Neb clear of sentinels long enough for him to do his job. But Trinity answered the challenge with remarkable ingenuity, rewiring their power distribution system to boost the range of the external sensors. If they were detected, she could give Neo up to ten minutes to get to an exit, which was about nine minutes and fifty eight seconds more than he needed.

And yet these days Neo had begun to cut it very close, so much so that once Trinity had ended up with her finger on the EMP just as he reached the exit. He made it out with only a fraction of a moment to spare, with their hull breeched and two pads disabled. Hands shaking, Trinity had practically yanked the needle out of his skull, eyes ablaze with a mixture of terror and angry, blue fire. And they didn't say a word to each other; Trinity just stared at him with incredulity, as if to ask why in God's name he'd put her through something like that. It really wasn't necessary. If anyone could take care of themselves, after all, it was the Great and Powerful Wizardress of Oz, Synergy.

Ever since then, the tension between them had been palpable. They never openly showed it in front of the crew, but Knight had known them long enough to tell something was wrong. Perhaps it was the stress, or their lack of time alone together that had done it, but with every passing day, they became more isolated. There were times when Knight would watch them together, and Neo could hardly look at her in the eye. The intimacy between them had evaporated, and it was only now that it became evident how much strength they'd drawn from each other in the past. Separated, they were tired, unhappy, and strangely… haunted.

The talk around the ship centered mostly around Neo, whose preoccupation with doing his duty on the virtual front had gone well beyond what any of them considered reasonable. In fact, Knight's unexpressed opinion was that Neo had become downright obsessed, though he was the last person to pass judgement on the man who was the closest thing to a father he'd ever had. But Neo's behaviour had caught the attention of the others as well, and although the crew hesitated to voice their concerns, they often didn't have to. They could all see for themselves.

A few days ago Hawk-Eye had come to the core to check on him, having been concerned for some time about the effects of his being plugged in so long. The kind of hours he was putting in were unprecedented, and it had happened more than once that Neo's mind had begun to reject the programming, leaving him dizzy and disoriented in the middle of a fight. He denied it of course, but Hawk-Eye could see it from the biosensor readings. It was too much for him.

"He's been in there for seven hours now," Kirk hadreported to the doctor, trying to sound casual as he rubbed his eyes and refocused on the screen.

"Will the goddamned agents ever give up?" Knight mumbled.

"Well, that's just it. There aren't any left. He and Smith cleared the last wave over an hour ago. Now he's just…" and Kirk trailed off, not knowing what to say. "Talking."

"Talking? With Smith? That's new. He can barely stand to look at the guy."

"No. He's talking with Synergy."

Knight squinted to make out the code. Synergy's pattern of symbols tended to warp everything around her, as if she possessed some kind of strange, digital gravity. Much of the time, she'd cleverly disappear behind some hidden back door, and they couldn't read her at all. And it wasn't unusual for her to take Neo with her.

"It looks like they're in the mountains," Kirk pointed out. "God knows how they got there so fast. I've given up trying to figure her out. She just… is the code."

Knight shook his head. "Why would they go to the mountains? To talk?"

Kirk shrugged, and then lowered his voice. "They go there a lot."

Nobody spoke as Hawk-Eye hooked Neo up to a sugar saline solution to prevent dehydration and hypoglycaemia. She took note of his vital signs, and commented softly, "Well, at least his pulse is down. Blood pressure's still not good."

"Kirk, can you clean this image up anymore? Cut through the interference so we see just the two of them?" Knight asked.

"Yeah, I'll try."

He reached out and magnified the small cluster of anomalous code, then typed quickly on the keyboard. Slowly, the image came into focus, and when it did, neither of them knew what to say. Neo and Synergyweren't talking, they were embracing. His arms were wrapped tightly around her, her tiny frame resting against his chest.

"How's he doing?"

They both jumped, spinning around to see Trinity join them. Her eyes fell onto the screen, and her face suddenly turned expressionless. Kirk closed the window. "It's a really bad image, Captain," he said apologetically. "It's hard to read anything clearly."

She nodded. "Well, keep trying. Stay on top of it."

And then she was gone, and didn't return to the core for the rest of the evening.

The crew respected them too much to gossip about it. And the truth was, Knight didn't believe for a moment that it was what it looked like. Synergy was stunningly beautiful and gifted beyond reason, but she was not Trinity. And if there was one thing that Knight was sure of, it was Neo's love for only one woman (to say he idolized Neo would be a stretch, but he certainly respected him, and could not imagine his ever behaving so dishonourably).

What Trinity believed, however, was unclear. She'd become very quiet, but worked harder than any of them combined, never wavering from her mission of keeping them all safe, Neo above all. She'd jacked in several times when he ran into trouble, as she was quite good at killing large troops of law enforcement before they could mutate into agents, and this would slow down the onslaught long enough to give Neo and the other rebel fighters a chance. They still fought well together, instinctively shadowing and moving in a graceful synchrony that was the stuff of legends in Zion. But outside the Matrix, Neo and Trinity remained quietly alienated.

Then yesterday, Knight had heard her calling out in her room. It was a muffled wail, heard through the thin wall that separated their cabins, and it didn't sound at all like her. 'Thank God they're finally having an argument,' was his first thought, though he couldn't hear Neo's voice at all. It was only Trinity, mumbling, moaning incoherently. Lamenting the syllables. Then, he heard one word clearly, Rorie.

In all his years of being close to Trinity, he'd never seen her cry. She wasn't the type of person who cried, not outwardly. Trinity and her daughter were very different that way. So he almost didn't believe his ears when he pushed his head to the wall, hearing what was unquestionably anguished weeping. "Rorie, oh… God, no. Not again… please…my poor little girl."

He probably should have let it go, went back to bed and minded his own business. But Knight couldn't, his compassion was too great and his care for Trinity too fundamentally instilled as part of who he was for him to ignore it. He knocked softly on her door, and called her name several times before opening it, just a crack, to make sure he was not intruding into a conjugal nightmare.

But he needn't have worried, because the room was dark and Trinity was in an otherwise empty bed, asleep and thrashing her head back and forth on the pillow. She was dreaming, and what horrors of her subconscious were giving her this much grief he couldn't begin to imagine, because she was visibly shaking, and called Rorie's name again, this time with such terror that it struck Knight's soul to the core.

"Trin," he called out, hesitant to enter her bedroom, which he'd never do under any other circumstances. "Trinity!"

But she didn't respond, and Knight resolved that he had to wake her; his heart was aching with her pain. She was remarkably strong, even in sleep, and he had to forcefully wrestle with her to shake her awake. Both her wrists in his hands, Knight called her name again as she screamed and opened her eyes, blinking several times before she could place herself. And tears poured from her eyes.

He released her instantly, feeling awkward and embarassed as she turned her face away and wiped her cheeks.

"Oh, God," she choked. "Oh, no."

He picked her covers off the floor and handed them to her, and Trinity used them to wrap around her chest, covering the thin undershirt she was wearing. He was about to leave her, was about to apologise, or ask if she would be alright, but instead, another question come out of his mouth automatically, "What can I do, Trin?"

There was some sort of unspoken understanding between them in that moment, there must have been, because he intuitively knew her answer before she said it.

"Just… don't let anything happen to her," she whispered in the dark. "Knight, promise me you'll take care of her. Always."

"Yes, of course. I promise." Their eyes locked. "Forever."

And she sighed, nodded, as if in relief, or gratitude.

They hadn't spoken about it since, and it was probably true to say that they never would. There really wasn't anything else to say. He was in love with Rorie. Completely and hopelessly in love with her, and he had been for weeks. Specifically, he'd loved her for twenty one days of such cruel separation, he found himself wondering how he'd ever been without her. And somehow Trinity knew his suffering. But what was even more miraculous to him was that the infamously protective mother had decided toallow him what she no doubt considered the privilege of pining for her daughter.

He could only prey that Rorie hadn't inherited her mother's uncanny talent for reading his thoughts. Although, upon rereading his letters to her, Knight could hardly imagine he sounded like anything but the lovesick soldier that he was, writing home to the beautiful princess, begging her to wait for his safe return. In particular, the 'My Rorie' salutation sounded particularly presumptuous, so he tactfully changed it. But the truth was, that was how he thought of her. As his. As much as he was hers, if only she would have him.

The sentinels had not given up, wrenching Knight's attention from Rorie to the mess hall, back to Trinity's knowing eyes. He checked his watch and sighed.

"Don't worry," she said softly, rising from her seat and putting a hand on his shoulder. "There's time."