Ghost knew she was annoyed the second she left the building and approached the car, but he couldn't tell if it was due to meeting with Zach, or just the needing a bodyguard.
She was still too physically vulnerable to risk fighting, but now she was living with Neo, and back in contact with Zion, the Oracle had warned she was all too identifiable. The Merovingian was not about to forgive a humiliation on the scale Trinity had administered, least of all before hundreds of people; he was, it seemed, icily determined to have her killed. The bounty on her head was very high, and it had been stressed as imperative that she be guarded at all times. She had accepted the necessity briskly, if unenthusiastically, but the reality had hit her hard the first time the guardian had been anyone other than Neo. Being coddled as a weak link annoyed her more, Ghost thought, than anything in her military life ever had.
"How'd it go?" he said carefully, as they pulled away.
"As expected."
That crispness meant distress, he knew. His heart sank. "He's coming?" he said, hoping against hope that the answer would be no - that the whole mess could be abandoned, and never referred to again. Niobe had been muttering darkly about pandering to their martyr complexes for days; if it'd been her call, Ghost knew, Zach's liberation would have been off the table.
But Trinity nodded. "Redpill. Matrix. However mad, he'll still come."
"He was mad?"
She exhaled through her nose. "You could call it that," she said.
"What would you call it?"
Her mouth suddenly tightened. "Let's just say he tried to argue Neo'd got off on it."
"I don't understand."
"Me with someone else. He tried to make out Neo'd liked it. That that was his thing."
Ghost blinked. "Christ. He's still alive?"
"Only just."
He sighed and shook his head. "God. I'm so sorry, Trin."
"Don't be." She glanced out of the window as the rain drizzled down, her face remote. "Makes it easier."
"Does it?"
She nodded. "He's just so different."
"To you, you mean?"
They'd reached the rendezvous now, and Ghost turned to face her as the engine died. But she was looking away from him, out of the window towards the factory, her eyes on the tall figure approaching them with swift, steady strides. Her face softened as their eyes met, and she opened the door, suddenly relaxed, all anger and tension gone. She glanced back at Ghost as she got out.
"To Neo," she said.
Zach froze. He should have expected it, he guessed, but somehow he hadn't. The Matrix had always been his and Mackenzie's secretly shared pursuit, after all. They stood looking at one another, the air thick with all that was unspoken between them, and for a long moment neither knew what to do or say. Then Neo frowned slightly, more worried than hostile. "Hey. You're a little early."
"That a problem?"
"No, it's fine." He held the door wide. "We're ready for you."
Zach looked him up and down, and then raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Isn't it a little... dark?"
"Dark?"
"For shades. Not much sun, this time of night."
Neo smiled slightly. "We all wear them. I'll explain later. Right now - well, you better come in. There's someone you need to meet." He turned away, and began to move towards the stairs.
Zach was suddenly uncomfortably aware that he was meeting a man in an abandoned factory, telling nobody of his plans, after spending a month sleeping with that man's girlfriend. And all he really knew about these people was that they were on the Most Wanted lists of every major law enforcement agency in the world. First rule in the How To Remain Alive Manual: don't put your life in the hands of a guy with a criminal record and serious reason to want you dead. Especially not in the outskirts of town, in a derelict building, with no apparent means of escape. He swallowed. "Morpheus?" he asked. "I'm going to meet with Morpheus?"
"Yeah," Neo said over his shoulder, then began climbing the stairs. "It's this way."
Zach followed, the long black coat flaring out above him in Neo's wake as they ascended. Zach felt clumsier than he ever had before in his life - Tom was even more of a presence in this place, in these clothes, than he had been at work, and his smooth, precise movements made Zach stumble a little, doubt his own ability to balance on two feet. He was miserably reminded that this guy could never have regarded Mackenzie as being out of his league, even if he was a fugitive criminal with serious trust issues. Tom could always have had pretty well any woman he wanted; it was just Zach's crappy luck that the woman Tom wanted was her. "Is she here?" he said abruptly.
There was nothing in Neo's swift, even movements to indicate that he'd even heard the question, let alone been thrown by it. His voice was perfectly calm as he responded in the affirmative, his stride unbroken and steady. It unsettled Zach, this man's easy dominion over a subject that still tore him, Zach, up so utterly. Tom, he realized, wasn't bothered at all. The suspicion that he didn't, in truth, give a damn about Mackenzie resurfaced, and the spark of anger gave Zach the courage to continue.
"What d'you mean, irrevocable?" Zach was getting annoyed - the guy was speaking in riddles, in a way that sounded like nothing so much as Philosophy 101. It wasn't Zach's favorite class even back in the day, and he was unlikely to get any credit for it here.
"There can be no unknowing. Once you know the truth, you can never see the world in the same way. You join us, and you will find what you seek. It will not be easy. But it will be the truth. But if you prefer to remain in comfortable ignorance, oblivious of true freedom - the freedom of the mind - then you need only take the blue pill, and you will. It would be better for you if you did. If that is your preference."
"But if I do that, then I'll always wonder. What it is that's hidden."
Morpheus shrugged, but didn't speak. He seemed disinterested - in the process. In the explanations. And above all, in Zach.
"You want me to take blue, don't you?" Zach said suddenly. "Why?"
"This is not about personalities, or others' preferences. It is a decision purely for yourself. I am merely here to show you the door and proffer the key to that door. You are the only person who can decide whether to walk over the threshold."
"How well do you know them?"
"Know who?"
"Mackenzie and Tom. Or Trinity and Neo. I know you're all in this thing. But that's all I know. So. How well?"
Morpheus looked at him without affection. Then he said, "Well enough."
"Well enough to want me the hell away from her."
It was a statement, not a question.
Morpheus looked at him again, this time for longer. Then he said, "No."
Zach snorted. "No?"
"No. You give yourself too much credit."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Morpheus smiled. "I have no desire to keep you and Trinity apart. She can protect what matters most to her without requiring any assistance from me. You are here because she has identified you as an individual seeking the truth, who is capable of embracing that truth."
Zach leaned forward in his chair. "What truth?" he said.
Morpheus looked at Zach then; looked at him properly for the first time. There was a pause, before he said, "The reason. For the splinter in your mind, working away at you, troubling you. The insistent sense that there is something wrong with the world. As indeed there is. The Matrix."
"What is it?"
"Nobody can be told the answer to that question. You must see it for yourself. But I must warn you again: it will not be easy, and it will not be reversible. You cannot retreat back into oblivion, if you dislike what you find. The choice you make here will be the choice you must live with. The truth is often harder than lies. It is why we choose to believe in them."
"But if you don't tell me what that choice is, how can I make it?"
"Every one of us had to make it, just as you are now. There is no other way."
"Can I speak to her?" Zach said abruptly.
Morpheus shook his head. "I would counsel against it. This is not a decision to make on a transient emotional basis, or under influence from another. It must come from deep within."
"But I trust her. I don't even know you."
"The question is whether you know yourself - whether you trust yourself. And it is not a question anyone else can answer."
Zach looked at him for a moment. Then he looked at the pills, lying between them, a glass of water standing sentinel.
"Take all the time you need," Morpheus said, his face impassive.
"I don't."
"You don't what?"
"Need time," said Zach, and reached for the red pill.
The whole thing was frightening, surreal, and above all, utterly confusing.
He could hardly see, he could hardly move, and the blurry impression he did have, now the terrifying metal spider had departed, had dumped him on some kind of metal ramp for the humans to deal with, was that he'd somehow wound up inside a giant steel trashcan. And then it hit him - she'd done exactly as he had, bare minutes after him. She'd accepted a pill from these people, too. He'd seen her, Tom walking by her side into another room after Morpheus, as that black woman and this Asian guy dealt with Zach. But she wasn't here - there was no sign of her at all. He had no faith that these people and those... things meant well by them, and he was suddenly terrified for her.
"Kenz?" He coughed then, his throat agonizingly raw; it made him retch which brought up more of the bitter fluid. Then an arm was braced round him and the Asian guy - now wearing shitty, dirty, ragged clothing - spoke.
"You're safe. We'll look after you, Zach."
"Where is she?"
There was a silence, and the people around him seemed to be exchanging glances. Zach was suddenly certain, in a way he hadn't been before, that every one of these people knew everything. Knew everything... and were very determinedly on Tom's side. It made him mad. If anyone had come off worst in the whole fucking mess it was him, not Tom.
"Where's Mackenzie?" he demanded again, his voice so raspily hoarse it tore his throat, before exiting as a strained, barely audible whisper. He found himself wondering what fresh hell this was - what brand of insanity came with a side order of laryngitis, for God's sake?
The man beside him sighed a little, then spoke. "Her name is Trinity. Not Mackenzie." He hesitated, then added, "Trinity is the name she chose for herself. She will not thank you for using the other."
"She's okay?" Zach whispered insistently, annoyed by yet another goddamn lecture. As if they all knew her better. As if he, Zach, had had no relationship to her at all.
"She is."
"You swear?" He began to retch again, speech far more effort than he had strength for, and the man wiped his mouth with a new gentleness. " I heard," Zach gasped, as soon as he could manage. "In that room, waiting for me to - whatever it was. You were scared for her."
"Yes," the man agreed. "We were. We were afraid she might... struggle. But she's doing well." He smiled suddenly. "Trin's tough. She's never been beaten by anything; this'll be no exception."
Zach's voice was gone completely now, and he had to struggle to form words at all, even in his own mind. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"My name is Ghost."
Zach closed his eyes, suddenly giddy. "Her husband?"
"Hardly. No. I'm more like her brother."
This was too much. Zach clutched feebly at the air and struggled to breathe, a roaring in his ears, as the world dissolved into a pointillated blur of black and white stars.
The memories after that were a disconnected, hallucinatory patchwork. He was pushed, prodded, probed and electrocuted with tiny charges all over his body. His muscles didn't obey him - messages from his brain somehow getting lost en route - and he found himself wondering confusedly if he'd been abducted by aliens, who'd somehow assumed human shape. Those whackjobs on cable had described not dissimilar experiences, after all, though none had involved pills... and then he started to consider the chances of this being a really, really bad trip. But he couldn't buy that, either. Not when Mackenzie had been so relaxed about swallowing her own, moments after he had. She wasn't someone he could ever imagine tripping, even back in college. Kenz was way the hell too controlled, too guarded for that. No, whatever this was, it was... real.
The day came when he asked where she was. The skinny medic by his side looked across at Morpheus, and then looked back at Zach and said with forced cheerfulness, "She's doing fine. She was sicker than you, I gotta admit, but we spoke to Neo just an hour ago and she's gonna be just fine."
"You spoke to... she's not here?"
The man smiled patiently. "She's... kinda next door. She needed more specialist care than we can offer. But she'll be transferred over here tonight, you'll see her for yourself." He paused then, before adding, a little awkward, "Her, and Neo."
Zion was hell. Literally, he believed at first.
The rushed, hazy impressions were of dirt and chaos and walls of people at every turn, all whispering and looking, staring, from the moment he was wheeled off of that ship. They were staring at Tom and Mackenzie. Mackenzie had refused a chair, quietly but unarguably, and was instead walking ahead of everyone else, next to Tom. Morpheus had been greeted by some kind of welcoming committee on board the ship, which Zach hadn't been privy to - these people, clearly important, had smiled at him politely but without interest, when the time came to leave. They walked now alongside Morpheus and Niobe, Zach in a wheelchair behind them, pushed by Link.
As the little group approached the wall of people stood aside, creating a pathway through, and closed again after them, when Zach passed, like the Red Sea. The closure was so rapid he could feel the breeze from their movement on his skin. Heads bowed all around them, and there was a buzzing of words he couldn't catch, from thousands of throats.
They were... famous.
But it was more than that. This was more than mere celebrity. They were being stared at with worshipful, hungry eyes. He'd once seen the President inaugurate a building at his school, and this was nothing like that had been. There wasn't just fame or power or glamour - this was something more. It was as if every single person there had been saved from death by them, personally.
It was insane.
The hospital was quieter, but no more familiar. Endless treatments, endless needles and tiny electric shocks and his eyes slowly adjusting. Neo was there sometimes, silent, but somehow oddly protective, and once he woke to find Trinity beside him in a chair, her eyes grave. He'd cried then, seeing her, and she'd slipped her hand into his and spoken quiet words of reassurance, before a nurse had come in and insisted that she be taken away to rest herself. Her face was much rounder - she was no longer the startlingly thin woman he'd known - and her hair was gone, just a prickling of regrowth in its place.
The day came when he was able to touch his own head, and find it equally bald.
"Why?" he said to Neo, who'd been there at the time, standing silently at the foot of the bed. "We've lost our hair - you. Me. Kenz. Why?"
"It'll grow back."
"But there has to be a reason - what is it?"
"When you're stronger, I'll explain. I'll do it personally. Try not to worry, Zach. I promise there's nothing to worry about."
"Am I... " He looked around, terrified. "Have I gone mad?"
Neo looked at him, his brown eyes very honest. "No, Zach," he said. "You've not gone mad. You're saner than ever before."
Sorry the update has been so long. I'm struggling with severe writer's block, which is infuriating when I know what I want to happen and how. The words just aren't flowing. I'll update as soon as I write anything I'm remotely happy with - sorry to be a flake. :/