He'd forgotten how much he hated the place.

Day unreeled after day, all identical, all pointless. It was worse, now he knew the truth. He missed Zion, he missed the Neb, and above all, and desperately, he missed Trinity. He'd never been apart from her more than a few hours before, and as the days stretched into weeks, and all he had were phoned updates from Seraph, he began to lose heart. He knew she was healing; was grateful for it, but he ached for her, just the same. He'd expected the nights to be the worst - the sleeping alone - but in fact he slept heavily and well, his brain seeking an escape from the Matrix code. The days at Metacortex were when he missed her the most. He had too much time on his hands.

It was so basic, the work. His skills had rocketed in the nine months of freedom. He'd become the code; a code as complex and dense as the Matrix, so his old duties were quite mind-numbingly boring. It didn't help, either, that they were actually encoding their own prison bars; diligently coding away for the very system that enslaved them, like the oblivious little drones they were.

On the plus side, he could now perform his full day's work in about twenty minutes, and simply by putting in an hour a day he was attracting breathless comment and admiration. The latter didn't concern him, but the moving to a private office and out of the cubes did. He could search for news of real world activity there, try to gauge how far Zion's infrastructure had travelled since the war. To date, it hadn't. Nothing anomalous had been seen in months. Not since the mysterious "solar eclipse" as the machines had explained the Smith implosion. Nobody from Zion, it seemed, had yet reached broadcast depth. He could only suppose that restoring all systems of life support in Zion was their necessary priority.

The interpersonal side of it wasn't easy, either. He'd never noticed it before, the strictly gendered way Metacortex operated. The receptionists, the admins, the PAs, the junior and senior secretarial staff; all were women. The programmers were all male. They snickered about the girls, rated their looks, and dismissed them otherwise in every context. Unattractive or older women were valueless, and none of the professional services any of them provided were seen as having worth, either. Neo hadn't realized how far he'd shifted in the nine months he'd been free. How much he'd taken this misogyny for granted before, and how much he'd respected and trusted in the talent and experience of the women he'd worked with since. Zion women were valued for their skills, their knowledge, their intelligence. Their attractiveness or otherwise was a separate issue, and nor did anybody sneer at women who took lovers casually, any more than they applauded men who did the same. Love, in Zion, was seen as an admirable thing - the very essence of being human - and casual sex a value-neutral one. Nobody was embarrassed to acknowledge reliance on a lover. Nobody mocked Neo for needing Trinity, let alone desiring her. Yet here, he knew, there'd be swaggering talk of pussy-whipped men and lost masculinity. Here, he knew, even a woman as beautiful as she was would be seen as sexless, simply because she didn't place her worth in how she looked. Lipstick wasn't really on her radar - hell, she rarely brushed her hair - she was too focused on saving the goddamn world.

It was a genuine shock now, to hear the stupidity, the crassness, of the relations between the sexes in this place. The programmer talk veered between the crudely sexual and the tediously sporting. ESPN was worshiped as blindly as Pamela Anderson, and he wondered how these men, who spent their entire working lives manipulating code, could be so blind to the fact that she was a program. Not even a particularly skilfully rendered one - the Merovingian would never have deigned to create such an apparently plastic creature.

He never said much to any of them. They bored and annoyed him. Yet much as the Matrix might repel him, it was also his kingdom, and his total confidence within it was compelling. He'd changed, people agreed. No longer was he the self-effacing, almost invisible Tom. Neo moved as he'd learned to in the constructs, his grace, his dynamism, his sheer physical presence impossible to miss, his cool confidence so different to the apathetic, apologetic Tom of old. His office was haunted by the admin girls, and one morning he came in to find a sign on his door that read Tom's Boudoir: Open for Business. He didn't need to ask. He knew it was Caleb, a co-worker Neo was frequently tempted to silence with a roundhouse kick to the head.

Caleb had always been a piece of work. His bluster, his swagger, his boasts of drinking and partying and screwing around, his inability to take a fucking hint - all made him exhaustingly annoying company. Avoiding him became ever harder. Caleb was too obtuse to notice Neo's dislike, too keen to become Tom Anderson's new best bud, now he'd turned into a dead cert for senior management and a seemingly irresistible draw for the hottest women in the building. Caleb didn't get it - how the hell had that little squirt become... this? - but he sure as hell wasn't about to miss his chance. Tom seemed a more likely closet-case by the day, disinterested as he was in skirt - but a guy who hung out with him was likely to have good pickings on the discards.

The conversations ate at Neo's every last nerve.

"Hey man, since when were you such a pussy-magnet?"

Neo looked at the wall clock. 8.45 am. Fantastic - what a way to start the day. "Did you want something, Caleb? I'm kind of busy."

"Tom, I'm just saying. Some of these girls are shit-hot - some are barely fucking legal. What're you waiting for? The Second Coming?" He punched Neo's shoulder. "Come on, man - you got a wife hidden away or something?" He winked. "She'll never fucking know!"

Neo could well imagine Trinity's reaction to Caleb's bullshit, should she ever have the misfortune to hear it. There'd be one hell of a lot of blood on those cheap, soiled squares of carpet. The thought made him smile.

"See?" Caleb said, and grinned. "You're a long time dead, my friend. Live a little!"

"Uh huh. Could you shut the door on your way out, Caleb? I've a couple calls I need to make."

Bluepills, the lot of them.

Well. Almost.

Zach Hansen. Damn good programmer. Quiet, watchful, and, it seemed, fully capable of spotting a genuine asshole at fifty paces, though not of doing a damn thing about it. He reminded Neo of himself, once upon a lifetime. Frustrated by his own passivity, yet helpless to escape it. Open to people, though. Not yet given up hope. Probably because he was still young - only 26. Just inside the window, luckily enough.

If he's a bluepill, I'm a yeti.

He paused by the water cooler, where Zach was staring into space, trying to tune Caleb out. Neo remembered that expression - he'd been chanting shut-the-fuck-up shut-the-fuck-up just-goddamn-shut-the-everliving-fuck-UP in his head, whenever he'd worn it himself. He decided to stage a rescue.

"Zach, you wanna grab some lunch?"

"Yeah, join us man," Caleb enthused, but Neo shook his head.

"No. Zach needs briefing on a new project. Confidential project. Some other time maybe, Caleb. Oh -" over his shoulder, dismissive - "could you tell Sara I'll be back in an hour. Zach? No other plans? You good to go?"

"No plans. And sure thing."

As they waited by the elevator, Zach caught Neo's eye, and grinned. "Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome."

"You ever just fantasize about playing space invaders, with your co-workers' heads as the targets? Or does that sound scarily like I'm gonna go postal?"

Neo suppressed a smile. "No. It sounds - very legitimate. May have to try it myself sometime."

He liked Zach more and more as the weeks passed. The guy was intelligent, thoughtful, and definitely searching. He'd identified the question, just hadn't the first idea where to find the answer. Neo longed to put him out of his misery, but he couldn't. He couldn't risk leveling with someone who would meet Trinity. Two redpills in those cubes - when too much knowledge, too soon, could harm her - he refused to risk that. But he'd already decided; when it was time to go, Zach would be offered the chance. It comforted Neo a little, to know this horrible time would serve some purpose - that Zach would owe his freedom to it. Meantime, Neo was just increasingly grateful for his company. It felt like a little piece of Zion in this wasteland. Zach might still be a coppertop, but he was also a comrade. A free person waiting to happen.

Zach had no clue that Neo risked nothing, in allowing him to know his pre-freedom hacking history. The machines already knew anyway; were now on his side, but in Zach's mind, Neo had trusted him with an extremely illegal past. So Zach trusted Neo in return. In fact he opened up far more than seemed fair, given how little Neo was reciprocating. It troubled Neo, that he wasn't able to be more honest. He'd developed good friendships since being freed, and the misery of separation from Trinity, of knowing she was in pain and confused, was worsened by there being nobody else. Morpheus and he would have worried about her together. As it was, he worried alone.

He'd been a loner almost all his life. Yet now, he was lonely. The temptation to talk to Zach, perhaps more than he should do, was great.

"So," Neo said. "How're you finding it? The Jamieson project?"

"Boring. To be honest. It's not exactly a challenge, is it?"

"No."

Zach looked up. "Caleb... he's fucking useless." He hesitated. "He said you guys go way back, you know. Implied you watch the game together at weekends, that kind of thing. Always trying to make out you're tight."

"Hardly. We do go way back. Too damn long. But we were never friends. Never will be, either." He bit into his sandwich, then added, "Half the women in that building could program better, if they only gave it a shot. Not that I'd wish him on the admin team. He'd not be competent there either. But they're paid half what he is, and most of them are way smarter. Frustrating, the lost potential."

"I never met a woman who programmed well," Zach said doubtfully. "Don't mean it in a sexist way. But people say it's biological - women do language and interpersonal and men..."

"Bullshit."

Zach laughed. "Well, that too. I was gonna say, spatial and numerical skills."

"No. I mean that gendered stuff is all bullshit. You know Trinity - the Trinity - she's a woman?"

Zach's jaw dropped. "No way. IRS Trinity?"

"Uh huh."

"Is a chick?"

"Yeah."

"How the hell do you know that?"

Neo shrugged slightly. "I've met her."

Zach eyed him for a moment. Then he shook his head in amazement. "You're not even bullshitting, are you? You really have met him. Her. Jesus. Them."

"Yeah."

Zach laughed suddenly. "My God. It's like every day's a revelation lately. You know kung fu..."

"A little. And I couldn't just stand back and watch..."

"...you can hack like it's a career path..."

"...I'm a programmer, it's hardly a stretch..."

"...you've found THE Trinity..."

"...no, she found me..."

"...you know something? It's like you're Clarke Kent by Metacortex day, then at night... kapow!"

"I wouldn't say that. My life's pretty normal."

"That's your normal? Christ, I've been sheltered. Wanna take me to your kingdom?"

"It's a deal," said Neo gravely.

"So what the hell did you say?"

"Say?"

"When you met her."

"Oh." Neo smiled, remembering it. "I said, 'I thought you were a guy.'"

Zach began to laugh. "Seriously?"

"Unfortunately."

"Oh my God. So what did she say?"

"She said, most guys do."

"Did she laugh?"

Neo shook his head. "No. Think she'd heard it a few times too many for that."

"Was she smart?" Zach said curiously. "I mean, obviously, but how smart we talking?"

"Off the scale."

"Yeah. I figured she had to be."

"And she's... interesting. Very interesting person."

"Okay, this is gonna sound really bad, but..." Zach started tearing his serviette into small pieces. "Did she look the way you'd expect? From a chick who could do that? Would want to do that?"

"I don't know. How would you expect her to look?" Neo said curtly. Then he saw Zach's embarrassment, and was ashamed. Who was he to be sanctimonious? He'd once thought the same way. "She's beautiful," he said. "Not just attractive. Beautiful."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. She's an amazing person, too. You could talk to her for hours, never get bored."

"You don't happen to know if she gamed?" Zach said, his tone wistful.

"What?"

"Well, she sounds the perfect woman. So, you know. Does she game? Smash Brothers, Soul Calibur, Counterstrike, I'm not particular..."

"Virtual reality asskicking sessions?" Neo said gravely. "She was the best. Especially martial arts, guns. Could take out a SWAT team without blinking." He thought for a moment. "She had a Ducati, too, now I think of it. Terrifying on the thing. Fearless."

"Okay, now you're just mocking me..."

"I swear to you, I'm not."

Zach was looking at him, head shaking. "Man."

"What?"

"You... you dated her, didn't you? Holy fuck. The Trinity." He shook his head again. "No wonder you can code like that."

Neo smiled. "She never taught me to code."

"She didn't?"

"No." He was thoughtful for a moment. "Showed me everything else worth knowing, though."

"So what happened?"

Neo looked up. "Hmm?"

"Well. She sounds amazing. You sound crazy about her. So what happened?"

Neo had no idea what to say. She died - again, actually, but this was in the real world, so more of an issue - and is currently being reconstructed in a biopod by the elite race of machines that have enslaved us all and drugged us with a virtual reality dreamworld known as the Matrix... yeah. Perhaps not. But how the hell to explain this in a way that wasn't a lie? She's kind of busy at the moment - be back at some point? No. The fact the machines would protect her now, rather than hunt her down - that being THE Trinity was no longer a death sentence, no longer mandated fugitive status - didn't alter the fact that her identity wasn't his secret to share. It was hers. And once she started at Metacortex, Zach might well work the connection out. Shit. He'd been a fucking moron. Loneliness and grief was fucking with his head, his boundaries. And living in a program full-time was shaking his grip, too.

The silence lengthened, and then became uncomfortable. Zach coughed. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean... hey, it's none of my business."

"It's okay," Neo said. "But I don't... it's kind of private."

Zach reached for his Dr Pepper, but he didn't drink. He toyed with the glass for a minute, shooting a swift look at Neo from the corner of his eye. "I heard... I heard some weird rumors online about, uh, Trinity."

"Really." Neo's voice became cool. The machines were capable of playing very, very dirty. If they'd spread vicious gossip, he didn't need to know. They were at peace now. The machines were helping her - hell, they'd saved her life. Residual anger wouldn't help anyone.

"Yeah. Supposedly involved with this... Matrix business."

Neo looked up. "Matrix business?"

"Yeah." Zach frowned. "I knew some guys who were dead set on finding out what it was."

"Past tense?"

"Excuse me?"

"Past tense. You said you knew them. That they were dead set."

"Yeah," Zach said uncomfortably. "That's just the thing. They disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

"Yeah. One day they were just... gone. No trace of them at all. Weird, right?"

"Yeah."

"So I'm sorry. Didn't mean to be insensitive. If - well." Zach hesitated. "Like I said, it's none of my business."

"Forget it." Neo glanced at his watch. "Shit, is that the time? We need to get back."