Archive of Our Own ^beta

Trinity is fifteen and little more than a ghost in high school. Sure, she mostly attends, sits in the back with her hoodie pulled up over her head, an earphone snaking up inside her shirt, the music quiet but loud enough to drown out the chatter of the students around her. Her grades are too good for her parents to complain about her academics or get on her case about much. Teachers tell her to speak up more, but she never bothers.

She has money though. More money than anyone would ever know or guess. More money than she has ever seen or touched, just a series of numbers that she moves around on her computer. Her years of hacking have been profitable, to say the least. Not that she’s in it for the money, that was never the draw of it for her, but she can’t deny it’s useful.

Today she leaves school after third period to go pick up the parts she ordered that have finally come in. She’s been building a state of the art computer in her room for a few months now. Her parents barely know enough about computers to turn one on without help, so they are oblivious to the cost of the parts she’s been collecting and putting together. They don’t know the difference between something they could pick up at the department store for five hundred dollars and the parts Trinity smuggles into their home in her backpack worth more than her parents make in a couple weeks.

She’s got a whole other life they have no idea about and it’s been that way for a few years at least. People always talk about how growing apart from your parents is normal so Trinity assumes it’s normal to exist so separately as to only glimpse each other once in a while as if from intersecting realities.

*

She rents an apartment when she’s sixteen with a fake ID and tells no one about it. She lets her parents think she’s spending time with a boy or a girl, even just as a friend, and they worry a little less about her, thinking she’s doing something with someone. But in truth she’s slipping off to her empty apartment and spending hours at the two computers there.

Her dingy apartment is sacred ground, utterly and completely hers. She spends as much time there as she can manage, builds a repertoire of lies backed up by evidence she forges, though her parents never care enough to ask for proof.

Her hacking hobby is escalating into something between an obsession and a way of life. She spends her time away from the computer counting down until she can get back to it. Hours feel like minutes when she’s focused on the code and it is merciful oblivion. She can’t get enough, and more than that, she is good at it. More than good. She was good before, when she was a bored kid with a computer and all the time in the world to figure out how best to break the rules someone had set in front of her, but now she’s moving beyond good into something great. In hacker circles, the only ones she cares about at all, she has a reputation already.

*

She quietly graduates early, getting enough credits to slip out of high school without ceremony in the middle of the year. The few people who notice her absence assume she dropped out or moved. She wasn’t close enough to anyone to have friends to ask after her. She didn’t care much for any of them, and they didn’t care much for her.

When she fades out of high school she puts what little of the plan she has crafted into action. She can’t explain why it’s so important for her to escape, not even to herself, but she knows she must. She doesn’t even know what exactly she’s escaping, but she can feel it, the urge to leave consuming her, the truth of it undeniable. So she lies and tells her parents that she got a scholarship, that she’s starting college early. Hell, she pays the deposit so she can show them the letter and take them on a tour of campus.

They’re so proud of her.

She never sets foot on campus again.

On the day she says she is moving into the dorms, she buys a blanket and a pillow and throws them on the mattress in the corner of her dingy apartment. Home.

In retrospect, she was already preparing, as if she already knew she would soon disappear for good. Severing ties from the world around her the way she would soon rip the tubes and wires from her body.

Even then, she just had this feeling: there would be no trace of her.

*

She sleeps the days away and spends her nights searching for Morpheus. She’s not the only one looking for him, there are whispers of him in the deepest shadows of the web, so quiet they’re barely there. But anyone who gets close seems to disappear. This should scare her, but it does not. She can’t explain why, but she knows it is important. Morpheus has answers. Answers to questions she’s just beginning to be able to form in words.

*

She breaks into the IRS Database to see if she can (and she absolutely fucking can). It takes ages, she’s tense and sweating, her heart pounding in her chest, adrenaline surging through her like she’s walking a tightrope a hundred stories up as she types and types and types.

She’s sixteen and for the first time maybe, just maybe, she feels alive.

*

She turns seventeen alone in her apartment. Sarcastically hums happy birthday to herself over a toaster waffle when she realises what time it is as she walks back over to her computer.

Two days later she finds Morpheus, the ghost she’s been chasing for over a year materialising in front of her like he was just waiting for her to see him. She feels about a hundred different emotions when he greets her. Not one of them is fear.

Morpheus calls her Trinity. She’s never heard it spoken aloud like that before. Like a name. Like it’s her. But Morpheus calls her Trinity and beckons her to follow him.

So she does.

“I’ve had my eye on you,” Morpheus says. She can’t get a read on his tone, but she’s sure he’s not angry. “Ever since that job you did with the school’s network.”

Trinity hesitates, taken aback. On her hacking resume, her tampering with the school’s pathetic system wouldn’t even make the honourable mentions. It was child’s play, half a step above rigging the payphone down the street for free long distance calls. “I was fourteen when I did that.”

“And you were sixteen when you got into the IRS database.” Morpheus says, as if the two things are the same.

“If you knew about me since I was fourteen, you must have known I've been looking for you.” She’s careful with her tone, terrified Morpheus will disappear on a moment’s notice, but the accusation seeps into her words regardless.

“People find me when they’re ready,” Morpheus replies, clasping his hands behind his back. “And here you are.”

*

He offers the truth. She’s never been offered that before. Not like this.

She makes her choice.

*

She will dream about the moment she first opens her eyes for the rest of her life. Each and every time as visceral as the first, the onslaught of claustrophobia and terror pulling her from unconsciousness as she wakes up gasping for air, blindly reaching for the tube shoved down her throat, expecting to find herself submerged once again.

*

She shivers uncontrollably the first week.

*

She is painfully grateful for Ghost, who looks as pale and bald and weak as she feels. They gravitate to each other naturally, like having a built-in friend, like a sibling, in this strange new world.

Ghost is quiet. He spends a lot of time in the small room he was given. Draino says it’s normal. Some people need time and space to process. Trinity wonders what she needs right now.

*

Morpheus took her into the first training simulation the day before, explaining where and when they are. What the matrix is. That her whole world was a lie. A dream. And it is Morpheus who gives her permission to go ahead and explore other training programs while she is on the ship before they return to the last human city.

She is determined to use this permission to its fullest extent she can. She’d done a few that afternoon, Draino acting as her operator, but when Dagger emerges from her room to take her shift at the console Trinity has to stop. Dagger is apologetic, but she has more important things to do than monitor some kid’s recreational training.

Trinity moves to leave her alone, but Dagger calls her back.

“C’mere,” she says, beckoning her over. “Want to see how we patch an old exit?”

*

Every muscle in her body aches with fatigue as soon as the needle is pulled from her neck, no one was in the matrix today, which meant that Dagger was willing to put her through her paces by running her through a bunch of training programs. Trinity had thought she had done most of them already. She had been wrong. Trinity pulls herself upright in the chair and winces, half-convinced she’ll have to get someone to carry her back to her room.

Dagger offers, but Trinity waves her off, determined to stand on her own two feet. She knew training would be hard, but she hadn’t been expecting this. Her arms tremble as she manages to stand on her unsteady legs, which feel like she just ran several marathons. Dagger is still watching her in case she falls forward, but Trinity manages to drag herself past her, and then past Ghost, who is standing off to the side of the main console, all but fading into the walls. He is watching her out of the corner of his eye and gives her a small smile which Trinity tries to return but all she manages is a grimace.

Her legs feel like the goop she’s eaten for every meal since being freed and every step forward feels like it might end with her face-planting into the grated floor, but she makes it back to her room and closes the door behind her.

She smiles before she collapses onto her bunk.

*

Trinity walks the corridors of the Neb after everyone but the person on duty has gone to sleep, following the exposed wiring in the ceiling, tracing each path in turn. She hovers near the console whenever Dagger is there, watching her work with acute interest, determined to absorb everything that the training programs can’t teach her.

*

She watches from the sidelines when Morpheus takes his crew back into the Matrix. Another ship had called for help and it was Morpheus who answered. She stares at the monitors, trying to make sense of everything as Draino seems to effortlessly keep tabs on everybody, somehow knowing exactly what’s going on.

Trinity watches him work, and watches the encoded matrix rain down the trio of monitors in the centre of the console, wondering if she’ll ever be able to understand it the way she understands other code.

*

She eats with the crew, mirrors their routines as best she can without actually having the structure of one. Ghost drifts around the ship when it pleases him to do so, spending most of his time alone in his room, preferring to eat when there is no one else around. Sometimes Trinity makes a point to double back to the kitchen pretending to be hungry or thirsty so she can sit with Ghost in silence as he eats his meal.

“You don’t have to,” Ghost tells her one day when Trinity finds him alone at the table and takes a mug of water and sits down across from him.

“I want to,” she says. And it’s not a lie. Everyone is asleep but Draino, who made it clear he needed to focus and didn’t want her hanging around the main console with him tonight.

Ghost nods and the two sit in shared silence until he finishes his dinner.

*

“How do I work on a ship?” Trinity asks Draino, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“You haven’t even seen Zion yet,” Draino says, and Trinity recognizes the dismissal in his tone. “At least get settled first. Then you can apply.”

But she already knows she needs to stay on the Neb. Seeing Zion won’t change that.

*

She lasts almost a whole additional day before seeking Morpheus out in the cockpit.

“I want to work on the Neb,” she tells Morpheus without preamble. “How do I apply?”

She feels young when he turns to look at her, her small frame smaller still in her borrowed sweater. She feels like a child next to Morpheus, who looks so at home in this world. But that doesn’t change anything. “You have to let me stay.”

Morpheus considers her. “Life on a ship is hard. It’s not for everybody.”

“But it is for me,” Trinity replies. “I can do this.”

“I have no doubt you can,” Morpheus replies. “But Zion is a city almost 200000 strong. There is so much there you have not yet experienced, so many ways to spend your life that aren’t working on a ship. There are more possibilities for you than you can imagine. You don’t ever have to go back into the Matrix if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Trinity says at once, thinking of the training program she is just short of mastering, thinking of the way everything slows down in the programmed world in ways she could only dream of. “I think maybe I’m supposed to.”

Morpheus considers her in silence for a few minutes before he nods once. “Welcome aboard Trinity.”

*

They’re heading back to Zion and Draino is still talking to Ghost and Trinity like they’re both being dropped off to stay there. It puts Trinity on edge, listening to Draino tell Ghost how everyone who goes to Zion is registered and then given options as to where they would like to live. Because of their ages, he and Trinity will be given the option of an apartment or a more communal setting that the younger teenagers are defaulted to and a lot of the younger adults prefer. Trinity tunes him out after that, falling into a tailspin of panic over whether Morpheus intends to let her stay on the crew once they return to Zion.

*

When Ghost is taken to go through the normal process for someone being brought to Zion for the first time, Morpheus tells Trinity to follow him, leading her to an important looking group of people sitting at a large table. She doesn’t need to know much about Zion to know that these people are more powerful than Morpheus, so she stays quiet when Morpheus explains to this group of people that Trinity is now stationed on his ship.

“You said it yourself,” Morpheus finishes. “My crew was at least one member short and that I needed to fill the position as soon as possible. I have done so.”

“Morpheus,” the man on the far left says. “There are qualified candidates who applied.”

“And Trinity was one of them,” Morpheus counters and Trinity feels the knot in her stomach start to lessen. “She applied in person, directly to me, after a trial period aboard my ship. She is capable and skilled and is already fulfilling her duties well.”

The man on the far left leans to the man beside him, muttering something Trinity is sure is not particularly kind, but the woman a few seats over says, “Trinity, the council formally recognizes your field promotion to crew of the Nebuchadnezzar. You will report to the ship for duty when your commanding officer indicates. Welcome to Zion.”

*

A woman behind a desk confirms Trinity’s name and information (approximate age, approximate date freed from the Matrix) before she says, “I’m not sure if anyone bothered to explain it to you, but in Zion you have a choice as to what sort of living space you would like to have. Many of the newly freed people your age choose to live on the more communal floors, where you would either share a bedroom with one other person, or have a private bedroom, depending on your preference, but all other living spaces are shared. Many find that it helps in their transition to Zion to be connected to the community this way. The other option is the standard single apartment, which—”

“I’d like the single apartment,” Trinity says, not wanting or needing to hear the rest of the pitch.

The woman starts to ask if Trinity’s sure, but she looks up at Trinity mid-sentence and says, “I’m assigning you your single apartment now. Echo will take you to it in a moment.”

*

The apartment Echo shows her to is no bigger than the one she rented when she was 16.

It has a bed and by the end of the day it has a computer but still Trinity counts the hours until she reports back to the Neb with the rest of the crew, pointedly not looking at Draino when she strides back aboard.

*

She trains her ass off, both in the programs and in the real world, determined to learn absolutely everything she can. She jacks into the Matrix every time the opportunity comes up and when the ship breaks down she is there with whoever is tasked to fix it.

*

The crew frees another kid the following week and Trinity realises how much stronger she already is. Compared to the girl laid out of the surgical table, she’s in great shape.

*

She misses Ghost. The crew is nice enough, although at least two of them are still treating her like they expect her to leave for good the next time they go back to Zion. It’s just that everyone seems to know what they’re doing, everyone already knows how they fit in this strange new world. At least when Ghost was around she had someone on her level. Now she’s the new kid. Full stop.

*

Her heart is still pounding like she is still sprinting up the stairs to answer the phone ringing in the empty apartment on the left, the echoes of gunshots still ringing in her ears and she feels like shit. She’s drenched in sweat, and shivering in the sudden cold of the real world. She’s never failed a mission before.

“Surviving is a victory,” Morpheus tells her quietly, like he can hear her internal dialogue. “It doesn’t always feel like it, but it is. You did well today.”

She thinks of the kid they couldn’t save and wants to believe him.

*

She masters the driving training program by the end of the month so she sits down to build a more challenging one from scratch.

*

Trinity is in Zion for two days to recharge the ship and Trinity has no plans except to sleep as much as possible. She doesn’t own enough stuff to account for how heavy her bag is, the strap digging into her shoulder, and she switches it to her other shoulder as she waits for the elevator to take her to her floor.

She double checks she’s on the right floor before she continues on her way, determined to find her apartment without having to check her address. She’s feeling confident as she moves to unlock her door, when someone says, “Wait!”

Trinity stops and turns, assuming she got the wrong door, but there’s a woman about 15 years her senior looking right at her. “Stay right there. I’ve got something for you,” the woman says before rushing into her apartment three doors down. Trinity opens her door enough to throw her back inside, but remains where her neighbour told her to stay.

The neighbour bounds back out into the hall a minute later with a bundle in her hand that she presses into Trinity’s hands. “It gets cold on those ships.”

Trinity looks down at the neatly folded sweater in her hands. Even without unfolding it Trinity can tell it is in better shape than any piece of clothing she has. It is soft in her hands and there are no grease stains or holes or patches. The woman must have knitted it herself.

“Are you sure?” Trinity asks, looking down at the sweater, unable to comprehend a stranger giving something this nice to her for no reason. “I mean, I don’t have much to trade for it. I can fix something for you if you want?”

“I insist,” the woman says, withdrawing her hands to give Trinity no opportunity to give it back. “We can’t have you running around in clothes that are falling apart.”

Trinity smiles appreciatively, suddenly aware of the sorry state of the sweater hanging off her frame, the neck hole so stretched and tattered that she’s taken to knotting some of its loose threads to keep it from falling down her shoulder when she’s working on something, “Thank you,” she says, and stumbles when she realises she doesn’t even know this woman’s name.

“Kara,” the woman offers with a smile.

*

“When do you take people to see the Oracle?” Trinity asks over dinner on the ship one night. She’s heard people talk about it like a rite of passage, but nothing she’s read about the standard operating procedures of working on a ship mention it.

Everyone at the table turns to Morpheus, giving him the space to answer.

“When they are ready,” Morpheus replies without extrapolation.

*

She’s rewritten and modded her own driving program so many times that it is almost impossible. No one else on the crew will even attempt it on its harder settings.

Trinity loads up the latest version and she appears in a randomly generated city. She has to get to a randomised exit point while being pursued by a variable number of agent stand-ins, all determined to corner and kill her. She can use any vehicle she finds to do so.

She fails within 28 seconds the first time but she grins as she loads it up to try again.

*

They’ve freed another person, a child, which means they’re heading back to Zion immediately. Trinity is the only one not looking forward to being back. Teenagers or younger adults often spend a week or two aboard the ship before being taken back to Zion, but the younger the child is, the faster they try to get them into the hands of more qualified guardians.

Zion doesn’t feel like home to her. She’s spent less than a week there in her whole six months in the real world, so it makes sense. The apartment she was given is still practically empty. The few things she owns are on the Neb, and the handful of clothes she has she packs diligently in a bag which she brings to her apartment and then packs them up and takes them with her when she leaves.

*

Trinity cracks her knuckles before sitting down at the console. No one from the Neb is in the Matrix tonight, but people from two other ships are so she’s got them on one of the screens in the far left, just in case. She’s got maintenance logs for the Neb on another screen that predate her arrival on it by years. Something about the acceleration has been feeling a little sluggish and she’s still trying to pinpoint the cause. On yet another screen she’s designing a new training program from scratch. Morpheus is always looking to improve their skills, both through training and designing the training programs. Right now she’s building herself a testing space, a city block she built from the ground up, on her own, so that she can run around inside of it and test the limits of in as many ways as she can think of. Cities have been prebuilt by other programs, of course, but she finds herself better able to manipulate the programming from inside it if she codes a version herself. Understanding how to build something that complex has already helped her bend the fabric of the Matrix to her will. Every time she’s in the Matrix it is more familiar to her, and every time she solves the type of coding problem the makers of the matrix would have had to solve she is better able to exploit it.

So she builds her own city, codes the restaurants and the bricks and the billboards. It’s taking ages, but it’s worth it. There are times she can almost see the code shimmering beneath her feet.

*

It’s just her and Morpheus in the matrix when things go bad. Their planned exit is a bust, and they have to get halfway across the outskirts in a hurry. She’s two steps behind him as they run towards a parked car, but then he surprises her by jump-sliding over the hood of the car and opening the passenger door. She hesitates for a fraction of a second and he looks at her and says only, “Drive.”

So she does.

*

“You gotta get outta here as soon as you can, you here?” Ice says to Trinity, loud enough for half the crew to overhear. “I’ve seen you. You’re good. You’ve got a future if you want it. Don’t let Morpheus drag you into his bullshit quest. There ain’t no ‘One’ to find. Don’t let him tell you otherwise.”

Ice is the first person to join the crew and then transfer to another ship almost immediately. But he is not the last.

*

“There are groups in Zion,” Morpheus tells her when they are alone in the cockpit late one night, “for people who are newly freed.”

“Support groups?” Trinity asks, trying to keep the edge of scepticism out of her voice as she steers the ship the Morpheus way is teaching her to.

“If you like,” Morpheus concedes. “But many people find them helpful, especially at first. And given that you went straight from being freed to working on a ship, you didn’t have the time most of us have to adjust to Zion. It is your home city too.”

*

She still feels awkward in Zion. Usually she just goes to her apartment and stays there for as long as there is until she’s supposed to be back on the Neb, but today she feels even more out of place as she takes the elevator down to the address Morpheus had given her.

She wants to turn around and forget it, but she wants to be able to tell Morpheus that she went, at least once, so she knocks on the door before she can change her mind.

To her surprise, Ghost answers.

“Hi!” she says, grateful for a familiar face.

He smiles. “Come in. It’s great to see you. You’re looking well.”

“So are you,” she says, taking in his appearance. He looks healthier than when she last saw him. “How’s Zion treating you?”

“It’s good. Are you still on the Neb?”

She nods.

“And you like it?”

She nods again. Then she pauses, waiting for Ghost to say something else. When he doesn’t she adds, “I’ve barely spent any time in Zion though.”

He seems to understand her meaning. “There’s a meeting in about ten minutes. I’m glad you came.”

The room Ghost leads her into is far bigger than her apartment, even before she’s inside she can tell it’s connected to many adjoining rooms.

Roaming the halls are a bunch of teenagers, many with hair shorter than a few inches long, but every so often she spots someone with hair past their shoulders. Each time they pass a long-haired person Trinity finds herself looking for plugs on their arms, wondering if they’ve been free their whole life or just a lot longer than her.

“Where do you live?” Trinity asks. “I’m about 40 floors above here.”

Ghost gestures down the hall to the left.

“You live here?” she asks, unable to keep her surprise out of it.

“I was offered my own place, but I came here first and saw how much help they needed, so I offered to stay, at least for a while.”

“That’s kind of you,” Trinity says as two children race past them making rather a lot of noise.

Ghost seems to read her mind, “The younger kids live on the next lowest level, but are welcome up here when they want to be here. It’s a lot more chaotic than the single units, but it's good for a lot of us. Keeps anyone from getting too isolated, especially at the beginning. And I’m learning a lot.”

“From their guardians?” Trinity assumes.

But Ghost shakes his head. “From the children.”

“

The meeting is fine, though she doesn’t want to come back for another one. But as Ghost is walking her out there’s a moment when she sees herself living here for a while, wandering the halls and comparing programming shortcuts with the other people here. It’s fleeting, as soon as she’s out the door and on her way back to her quiet apartment she’s certain she made the right call, both about working on a ship and choosing a single apartment.

*

Trinity hasn’t been on a mission like this before. Morpheus had told them as they were coming into land in Zion that some additional temporary crew would be joining for their next stint away. They were being tasked to free as many as ten children, which meant they needed additional crew on board to help care for them until they got back to Zion. Trinity had helped free a handful of people already, but most of them were between the ages of 13 and 20, and she’d never been a part of such a big operation.

Another ship was helping them with this mission, but their ship was smaller than the Neb, and therefore less suited to accommodate so many people. Trinity has already helped turn a larger storage room into a makeshift hospital room, and now all that was left to do was wait around for the rest of the crew to show up.

She is used to being the first person back to the Neb after leave. Sometimes she hangs around with the Zion-based mechanics on her day off, learning the ropes of the kinds of maintenance that happen when the ship is docked, but even they aren’t around today, so she settles herself back in her room and has a nap. She sleeps better in her bed here than the one in her Zion apartment anyway.

*

There’s a knock on her door and she jolts awake. “I’m up.”

“She’s already here!” she hears Draino shout to whoever else is out there. “Should’ve known.”

She runs her hands through her hair, it’s long enough now to show evidence of bed-head, but there’s not much she can do about it now. She smooths it down as best she can before heading outside.

The regular crew is there, as are four people she does not recognize. Morpheus introduces the crews to each other. The woman on the far left smiles at Trinity when Morpheus introduces her as Zan.

*

Zan is a little older than Trinity and is training to be a doctor. Her mentor is the primary doctor assigned to the Neb to assist with the influx of child patients, so Zan is there too. Her dark brown skin is smooth and untouched by the metal sockets embedded in Trinity’s flesh. At first Trinity lets herself believe that Zan’s lack of plugs is the reason she keeps watching Zan out of the corner of her eye, but after Zan catches her looking (for at least the third time) and grins Trinity finds it hard to attribute the resulting swooping sensation in her stomach as something so mundane.

*

Zan catches Trinity watching her again and Trinity’s response is to avoid her for the next two days. It’s not hard to do. Zan now has three newly freed children to monitor and Trinity has multiple shifts in the matrix while they finalise their plans for the next batch of three. Busy as she is, Trinity picks up an additional shift, ensuring she won’t be eating with the rest of the crew that evening.

At midnight, after Y2K jacks in to take her place in the matrix from the other ship, Trinity stretches and wanders towards the kitchen. She’d been snacking in the matrix, if only to have something to do, so she didn’t feel particularly hungry, but she knew she needed to eat something that wasn’t just electrical signals flickering through her brain. She’s about five spoonfuls into her dinner when she hears someone behind her.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Trinity looks up, startled. Zan is leaning against the opposite wall. Her arms are crossed, but she looks amused. Trinity eats another spoonful to avoid having to outright deny it.

Zan is wearing a tank top, despite the fact that it’s pretty chilly on the Neb, and Trinity is working pretty hard not to stare at her muscular arms. She’s not entirely succeeding and Zan notices, obviously, and sits down across from her still looking amused.

Trinity keeps eating, trying not to look flustered.

“You’re new around here, right?” Zan asks, leaning forward.

“You mean on the ship?” Trinity asks.

“And to the real world,” Zan replies. “Don’t worry. It’s your hair that gives you away.”

Trinity instinctively raises a hand to touch her hair, now almost two inches long but still nowhere close to what her residual self-image thinks it should look like.

“It looks good,” Zan adds. “Even if it doesn’t feel like you yet.”

Trinity recognizes the practised tone of someone who consoles a lot of freshly bald teenagers. “How much of your time is spent telling people their hair will grow back eventually?”

Zan grins. “A lot. Everyone feels so embarrassed for caring, even a little. I reassure them it’s normal. I never saw you around Zion though,” she adds thoughtfully, “and I drop by the newly freed groups at least a few times a week.”

“I never lived on the group floors.”

“I should have figured you were the type to take a solo apartment and not look back. It took you what, a couple months to make it back onto a ship? Must be a new record.”

Trinity shakes her head. “I never left.”

“Really?” Zan asks, looking surprised for the first time Trinity has seen. “That’s rare. Usually they want–”

“People to adjust to Zion first,” Trinity finishes for her. “I know.”

“So what makes you so special?” Zan doesn’t sound accusing, just curious.

Trinity shrugs. “I asked to stay.”

“That’s it?”

Trinity shrugs again before standing and takes her dishes over to the sink to wash them and changes the subject, asking how the kids are doing. After a brief conversation they fall into silence.

“Wanna make out?” Zan asks a minute later.

“What?”

“Do you want to make out?” Zan repeats herself. “It’s cool if you don’t. But you’re all new and cute so,” she grins, “I’m in if you are.”

“Uh,” Trinity hesitates as she finishes rinsing her spoon. She had almost no experience with this sort of thing in the matrix and exactly none in the real world since. And Zan is a little older and Trinity can only imagine a lot more versed in this world than she is. And yet…

Trinity sneaks back to her room when she’s sure everyone else is asleep.

*

Trinity doesn’t see Zan at all the following day. Trinity is in the matrix helping to coordinate the next wave of freeings, and Zan is attending to the smallest child they freed, who is still very weak. The day after that, however, Trinity runs into Zan over breakfast, and when Zan asks what Trinity’s up to after she doesn’t have an answer, she’s not on duty until much later that afternoon, so when Zan says, “Great, you can help me.” Trinity agrees.

*

“You didn’t say I was helping you operate?!” Trinity says, trying to keep the distinct note of panic out of her voice.

“I’m a medical apprentice, what did you think we’d be doing?” Zan asks.

“…Paperwork?” Trinity asks hopefully, before remembering that she’s seen very little paper left in the real world.

“Relax,” Zan says as she finishes washing her hands and pulls on some gloves. “It’s barely surgery, we’re just cleaning the area around the plugs to make sure they heal well. You’ll be handing me equipment when I ask for it. That’s it.”

“I don’t know any of the names of the tools,” Trinity points out.

“I’ll teach you,” Zan says. “I’ve been assisting with this kind of thing since I was 14. It’s a piece of cake, and on the very off chance that it gets more complicated, you’ll immediately be cast aside and one of the fully trained doctors will take over.” Zan gestures to the medical room, where four other people are working in sets of two over freshly freed people.

Trinity smiles. “Glad to know I’m indispensable.”

*

Trinity finishes her late shift, one of the extra shifts she volunteered for when she was trying to stay out of Zan’s way and couldn’t back out of. She’s exhausted but wide awake from the jolt of shifting from the matrix back into the real world and she casually walks by Zan’s closed door three times in a row trying to work up the courage to knock.

Draino wanders by and asks if she’s lost and Trinity mumbles no and goes to her room without further delay.

*

The next day is a flurry of activity as they head back to Zion and the medical team transports the newly freed children off the ship to recover so that the Neb can return to their more regular schedule. Zan is off the ship before Trinity gets the chance to say goodbye.

*

Trinity still picks at the skin around her plugs, unable to get used to them.

*

She makes a point to drop by and say hello to Ghost (he’s considering applying to work on a ship and wants to talk to her about it), but then she goes straight to her place and sleeps. The Neb isn’t scheduled to leave for another 31 hours and she’s determined to sleep through as many of them as she can. The phrase “unplugged” drifts across her mind as she sinks deeper and deeper into her exhausted haze before she surrenders entirely.

*

Trinity wanders back to the docking bay, hoping to catch the tail end of the recharging. One of the mechanics, Slice, is always good about letting her tail him. He’s always happy to let her ask questions about what he’s doing and why. There are training programs about ship maintenance of course (and she has taken them all), but she loves getting to get her hands dirty. Besides, Slice has all kinds of little tricks and tips that his years of experience have given him. Slice was born in Zion so he hadn’t been through the training programs (“no shortcuts for me” he had said the first time Trinity had asked him. “I had to learn all the stuff the old fashion way.”) But Slice isn’t around today, so she sits on a railing and watches the mechanics work on the other ship.

“You don’t have to be back here for hours.”

She turns towards the sound, but she would know Morpheus’ voice anywhere. “I know.”

Morpheus tilts his head. He doesn’t need to say it for her to know he knows she knows.

She bites her lip to hold back the obvious rebuttal: Morpheus is here too.

Morpheus seems to hear what she’s not saying because he moves towards the ship without further comment and Trinity follows him aboard.

*

She turns 18 on the Neb, the crew crowding around the table to sing, a single candle sticking out of a small muffin someone had brought with them from Zion for the occasion. They all watch her inhale and lean forward, but then she hesitates.

She has no idea what to wish for.

*

“Trinity,” the newest crew member says and Trinity can tell by the tone of her voice what is coming next so she pushes her goggles up onto her forehead in the hopes of getting it over with. May is at least 20 years older than Trinity and has been free since she was a kid. She’s worked almost every job one can on a ship, as well as a bunch of different ones in Zion. She doesn’t like to do the same things for too long. Trinity likes May. She’s great with repairs and is an invaluable source of knowledge, so Trinity was hoping the talk that everyone seems to give her would be bypassed, but here it was, right on time:

“You’re good. And you’re going to be great one day. But not if you stay on the Neb. You’re too smart to get caught up looking for The One. Ask for a transfer. Work on a different ship for a while. Work on all of the ships. You’ll make captain in no time. What?”

“Nothing,” Trinity says, turning back to the tool she was cleaning. “I’ve just heard this before.”

May looks at her as if seeing her for the first time, “You like it here.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” May says and Trinity thinks that maybe the conversation is over but May can’t resist adding. “But if you ever need a reference…”

“I’ll let you know.”

*

“There’s a gathering in Zion the day after tomorrow,” Dex tells her like it’s supposed to mean something to her as they approach Zion. Dex has only been on the Neb a month, but Trinity likes that he hasn’t told her to transfer yet. When she doesn’t respond he continues, “Down at the temple. and we’ll actually be there for once. Wait. Have you ever been?”

“No.” She’s been to the temple, once, with Ghost on a semi-tour during one of her early trips to Zion. The place had been almost deserted at the time.

A smile spread across Dex’s face. “Just you wait. You’ve never been to a party like this before. I guarantee it.”

Trinity is certain Dex is right, though it’s more a victory by default than anything. The birthday parties she attended as a child probably do not count.

*

She wasn’t going to go at all, to be honest. Everyone else on the ship was talking about it like it was something they were looking forward to but none of them could really articulate why, just that Trinity had to experience it for herself. She had gathered that there was dancing, and she did not dance. Trinity would rather spend an uninterrupted evening working on the latest build of one of the six programs she’s working on.

But then Zan shows up at her door. She’s wearing far less clothing than she ever did when she was on the Neb. Just simple shorts and a loose shirt made from very thin fabric. Trinity can see her nipples and is pleasantly reminded of the time she spent pinned beneath her in one of the cramped guest rooms on the Neb.

“You ready?” Zan asks, like they had made plans. Which they had not.

“For what?”

“What do you mean for what? For the gathering. It’s about to start.”

“So?”

“So let’s go.”

Trinity considers making some excuse but Zan is grinning at her like she has a rebuttal for any excuse Trinity can come up with so Trinity relents and moves towards the door.

“You’re not going like that,” Zan says, looking over Trinity’s outfit.

“Why?” Trinity demands. It’s one of the slight variations upon what she wears every day: pants, shirt, sweater, boots.

Zan rolls her eyes. “You’ll die of heat exhaustion before we even get there.”

*

Trinity’s never seen this many people all in the same place before.

She leans in to speak in Zan’s ear. “I had no idea there were this many people in Zion.”

Zan looks at her and smiles, like she knows she’s already right for making Trinity come with her. There are several people speaking. Two of them share information that was already pretty common knowledge by those who work on the ships, but the third tells a story about the history of the cave they are standing in. Listening to that woman speak while standing there amongst the population of the city that Trinity still feels like a tourist in, she feels the first hints of connection to the space. The cavern was found, almost exactly as it stands today. The earliest refuge for the few humans who managed to escape the unrelenting machines. Zion as she knows it grew from the cave they now stand in. The dirt under her bare feet was the same dirt that provided shelter to the free humans before her.

Then the music starts, just drums at first, and Trinity turns to Zan. “I don’t dance.”

Zan grins. “Relax.”

“I don’t dance,” Trinity says again, looking for the easiest way out of the crowd.

But Zan moves in a little closer. “Maybe you didn’t dance in the matrix, but you’re in Zion now. In Zion we dance.”

“How?” Trinity asks, already overwhelmed by the sheer number of people moving around her.

“Don’t worry about them.” Zan says. “Just move with me.”

And then Zan’s hands are on Trinity’s hips, encouraging her to sway, to loosen up. The music is loud, the cavern amplifying it. Trinity can feel the drums in her chest. Zan is already on a level Trinity will never be, moving so fluidly Trinity’s half sure the music is flowing from inside her.

*

Trinity is sweating, her hands are on Zan’s body so that their movements are shared, so that she is a part of the beauty Zan creates as she dances. Trinity’s skin is tingling and her blood is hot and she feels vividly alive.

She wants to kiss Zan and not stop for a long while. That’s all Trinity’s been able to think about for the last– oh god she has no idea. It’s been a while and all she can think about is wanting to kiss Zan and how nice it feels to be pressed up against her as they dance. And Zan must know this, must share this feeling, because she’s doing everything in her power to make sure that Trinity thinks of absolutely nothing else. And somewhere along the way Trinity realizes they’re going to fuck tonight. She’s not sure when or where but it’s going to happen.

*

Trinity wakes up in Zan’s bed and has to rush back to her place to grab her stuff to make it back to the Neb. It’s the first time she’s been the last to arrive before departure.

She doesn’t realise her shirt is on backwards until she’s getting ready for bed that night.

*

Trinity has no idea why Ghost suggested settling up a call between them. He’s not predisposed to be good on the phone, so any voice conversation between them is full of long thoughtful pauses she associates with him. She figures he just wants to hear a familiar voice. He’d officially applied to work on a ship, short term, to see if it suited him, and had been surprised when he was accepted so quickly.

When he answers her call she can hear the training exhaustion in his voice, and she is struck by a wave of nostalgia for her few weeks of training. She asks if he’s mastered the jump program yet.

He chuckles, and she swears she can hear him gingerly touching his rib cage in response, “Not until the ninth attempt,” he says. “Captain was getting tired of watching me try.”

“Nine’s not bad!” Trinity says, although she’s only seen one other person other than her take the test and they only took five tries.

“I know you did it in three,” Ghost says with a self-deprecating scoff. “But we can’t all be destined for greatness. I bet the Oracle had a field day with you.”

“I haven’t been to see her yet,” Trinity says as casually as she can manage.

“Really?!” Ghost replies. “I went to see her yesterday. It was a strange experience.”

“You’ve been to see the Oracle?” Trinity asks, her stomach tightening with nerves that have nothing to do with Ghost.

“Yeah,” Ghost says. “Captain takes everyone as soon as they’ve passed the main training programs. Doesn’t Captain Morpheus?”

“He takes us when we’re ready,” Trinity replies, trying not to sound too bitter about it.

“I’m sure he’ll take you soon,” Ghost says calmly.

“Yeah,” Trinity says, not wanting to talk to Ghost much any more. “Hey listen, I just realised I was supposed to fix the back up generator tonight. Talk soon, okay?”

“Yeah,” Ghost says, though he sounds disappointed. “Soon.”

Trinity severs the connection between then and then stares through the monitors in front of her. She doesn’t feel great about lying to Ghost just now, but she didn’t want to listen to him ponder the reasons she hasn’t been to see the Oracle yet. She has enough trouble quieting the voice inside her head that’s constantly looking for a reason. She doesn’t need an external source joining the chorus.

She opens a program she’s been meaning to punch up for a while but doesn’t make any progress, too lost in the cycle she can’t stop whenever someone mentions the Oracle. She’s been on the ship over a year and she still hasn’t been taken to see the Oracle yet. She tries not to let it bother her, but it does, more and more with each passing day. She is impatient, desperate to get it over with, not because she’s invested in whatever the Oracle is going to tell her, but because she feels like she’s still on some unspoken probation until she does. Everyone on the Neb who was born in the matrix has been to see the Oracle. Everyone. She’s helped take children to see the Oracle. Even Dex, who joined their crew six weeks ago has been. He went to see her on his second trip back into the matrix. Trinity had to drive him there, and she spent the whole time trying to seem as neutral as possible to the scenario unfolding around her, as Morpheus sat impassively in the passenger seat beside her. It felt like a test at the time, but that was over a month ago and Morpheus still doesn’t think she’s ready to see the Oracle, so she can only assume she failed.

Which means Morpheus still doesn’t think she’s ready for whatever the Oracle is going to tell her.

She tries to quiet her mind, to be as still and calm as Morpheus always is, but she can feel her anger burning through her core. Who the fuck is the Oracle anyway? She doesn’t even believe in shit like this. She just wants to go to get it over with.

*

She’s trembling, her hands are shaking, her body unable to contain the righteous fury within her. The injustice of her circumstances of humanity’s circumstances are so unfair, so beyond her capacity to comprehend that she can barely concentrate on spooning her pathetic meal into her mouth. Not everyday is like this. Some days on the ship are almost mundane, some kind of normal, but other days are like today: her every nerve exposed, her body internalising the pain of every person still enslaved in the matrix, every person in Zion struggling just to stay alive, every person fighting just to continue to exist on their own terms.

She hates how helpless it makes her feel, all of that injustice, all of that pain, the reality of every human life screaming within her. And no matter what she does to try and help, it never feels like enough. Sure she helped save a person from the matrix last week, but there are hundreds of thousands still trapped inside it. Nothing she does is enough. Nothing she does will ever be enough. Never. Not even close.

She wants to grab the sledgehammer she made a few months back (to replace the one she broke, long story) and march into ZeroOne and take out the machines the old fashioned way. Bash them into pieces, one by one, until there are none left. Just piles and piles of scrap metal, like the mountains of debris she scavenges through in the tunnels, looking for parts to keep their ship flying.

She’s half-certain she would succeed.

*

“You’re so far away,” Zan says as she traces loops around the plugs running down Trinity’s spine, propped up on one elbow beside Trinity who is lying on her stomach in Zan’s bed.

“I’m right here,” Trinity murmurs. She’s about three hours into her 45 hour leave from the Neb while it recharges and she came straight from an overnight shift on the ship to Zan’s.

“It’s like there’s still part of you in the Matrix,” Zan says thoughtfully. “But not in the way that’s common. You’re not like the ones who are freed but who regret their choice.”

“I like it here,” Trinity says.

She can feel Zan smile before she replies, “I can tell.”

Trinity grins against the sheets. “You know what I mean. I like it here here, obviously. But I like it here, in the real world.”

“But not in Zion.”

Trinity’s not sure how to express it. All she can come up with sounds quaint, even in her own head, but she says it for lack of alternatives, “It’s not home.”

“And your ship is?”

Trinity thinks of the exposed wiring running through the ship like veins, and her tiny room practically carved out of the metal itself, of the way she can drop into the Matrix and then leave again, helping to free more people. She thinks of the way she feels as she is jumping between her duties on the ship and her missions in the matrix, of the way the matrix feels more and more like something she can control every time she goes back in.

“Yes,” Trinity replies. “It is.”

*

Ghost and Trinity are on a mission together in the Matrix, but the mission turns into more of a stakeout, which turns into more of a ‘waiting to see if the stakeout was even necessary’, but neither of them mind the change in plans. Trinity hasn’t seen Ghost in months, and when she had seen him it was just in passing in Zion, she had been on her way back to the Neb so they hadn’t been able to say more than “hello” and “take care”. They messaged each other more often now that Ghost was stationed on a ship (he didn’t seem too concerned with computers while he was in Zion), but it had been a while. Sitting in an empty diner with Ghost in the Matrix feels right somehow.

Ghost keeps his hair short, both in the real world and in the Matrix. There is no discernible difference in his appearance beyond his clothes, which Trinity can’t help but point out. So many people take advantage of having a residual self image to have a little fun with their appearance, especially when the first few months of reality come with very little choice in terms of hairstyle.

“I’m just boring I guess,” Ghost says.

“Not boring,” Trinity corrects. “You just don’t like to stand out. It’s why they send you on jobs like this. You’re a natural.”

“And why do they send you?” Ghost asks.

“Because I can get us out of here if they do notice us,” Trinity answers with a slight smirk.

They pass the hours with unhurried conversation, filling each other in on bits and pieces of their lives that the other had no idea about. It’s strange, Trinity thinks. She and Ghost hadn’t spent that much time together when they were first freed, but those few weeks had been enough to cement their friendship. They were twins in this world, reborn on the same day, and she is grateful for her quiet and thoughtful brother.

“Zan says hello,” Ghost says after some silence. “She made me promise to remember to tell you.”

“You know Zan?” Trinity asks, her thoughts snapping back to their conversation.

“She filled in for our doctor when he took leave,” Ghost says. “She said she knew you.”

Trinity bites her lip but otherwise tries to control her reaction, “Is she still on your ship?”

Ghost shakes his head, “No, she left last time we were back in Zion.”

“Oh,” says Trinity, aware that she sounds disappointed, which is ridiculous. Even if Zan was on Ghost’s ship, it’s not like Trinity would get to see her.

“How did you meet her?” Ghost asks, and Trinity is about to answer that Zan helped out on the Neb a while back, but Ghost continues, “She said she practically had to drag you to the last gathering in Zion. I didn’t know you’d been to any of them.”

“Just that one,” Trinity says, trying to keep her face neutral but her heart is pounding. She’d never had to come out to anyone before. In the matrix, before she was freed, it didn’t matter if she was bisexual, because exactly zero people in her high school were of any interest to her. And in the real world it didn’t matter so much. Zan certainly hadn’t made a big deal out of flirting with her, and Trinity knew that at least some of the people on the Neb assumed something was going on between her and Zan, but she never had to say anything. But Ghost had spent a lot more time in Zion than she had, so he knew the general vibe of a Zion gathering. Zan telling Ghost she took Trinity to the gathering was almost equivalent to confirming they’d fucked afterwards. Somehow it is different with Ghost. It feels more like a moment and she doesn’t like this kind of moment. “She was on the Neb for a couple weeks, back when I was really new.” She almost adds ‘that’s all’ but then she doesn’t.

Trinity’s not ashamed of Zan (on the contrary, the fact that a woman like Zan wants anything to do with Trinity, even recreationally, is a source of quiet pride), but she isn’t sure how to navigate this conversation. Ghost is respectful in his silence, and Trinity feels, as she always feels with Ghost, that there is a lot more happening beneath the surface than he is willing to show her. She envies his ability to operate so subtly.

“She seems nice,” Ghost offers, when Trinity falls into silence.

“Yeah,” Trinity agrees.

*

“Ghost is in love with you,” Zan says, point blank, with no lead up or reason, just flinging that into their conversation that had previously been about her work schedule.

Trinity dismisses her immediately. “No he isn’t.”

Zan laughs as she hands Trinity a piece of bread. “He is.”

Trinity’s three bites deep into the first solid food she’s had in weeks before she bothers to respond. “Did he tell you that? That doesn’t sound like him.”

Zan looks at Trinity like Trinity just suggested Zan volunteer herself to be permanently placed in the Matrix, “Of course he didn’t say that. He barely spoke to me. He barely speaks to anyone as far as I can tell.”

“Now that sounds like Ghost.”

“He wants to talk with you though,” Zan says with a hint of slyness. “When I mentioned you in passing he practically interrogated me about you.”

Trinity, her mouth full of bread, does not point out that Ghost doesn’t seem like the type to interrogate anyone.

“Well,” Zan says. “I’m just telling you so that you know and can act accordingly. He’s kind of cute in that strong silent type way, so if you’re into that,” she pauses, looking at Trinity curiously. “Are you into that? Usually I know what my people are into, you know, besides me.” She grins and Trinity rolls her eyes. Trinity loves how open Zan is about her people, the sort of nebulous assortment of people Zan is involved with at any given time. Zan had been upfront about it from their second make out session, and it had been the first of many lessons Trinity had learned about the social differences between the Matrix and Zion. Not to say that people aren’t monogamous in Zion, many are, but it isn’t assumed as the default position the way it had been in the Matrix. And knowing that Zan isn’t expecting whatever this is between them to be any more than it is at any given moment is exactly what Trinity needs.

“I like being one of your people,” Trinity says.

“Mhmmm,” Zan says. “And I like that you’re one of mine. But you could have people too. Ghost could be one of your people.”

“Don’t try and find me more people when we get to see each other,” Trinity says. “When we’re together, you’re my person.”

Zan leans in to give her a quick kiss, “Got it. Do you want another slice of bread?”

Trinity nods.

*

This is the third time in a month that an agent has crashed what was supposed to be an easy surveillance shift. The agents have been finding them much faster than any of them are comfortable with lately. Draino suspects there’s been an update to their programming, but Trinity doesn’t have time to listen to his theories right now as she sprints through the alleyway behind an abandoned movie theatre, an agent close behind her.

Her heart is pounding, but her mind is strangely calm, she’s so used to a surge of adrenaline triggering her focus that everything in the matrix seems to slow down as she blurs past the hordes of people who don’t know they aren’t even awake.

She makes it to the exit by the skin of her teeth, an agent closing in on her as she picks up the ringing phone, and when Dagger pulls the needle from her neck she swears in frustration.

She wants to stand and fight but it feels like all they ever do is run.

*

“I wonder,” Morpheus says quietly one evening, just the two of them in the cockpit of the Neb, “if I made a mistake by not having you go live in Zion for a month or two before coming to work here.”

“You didn’t,” Trinity says without hesitation.

“Oh?” Morpheus says. “And why’s that?”

“I asked you not to.”

*

“Trinity,” Morpheus says one day at breakfast with no warning. “We’re taking you to see the Oracle.”

Trinity drives a variation of the path she has driven at least thirty other people towards the Oracle with Morpheus in the passenger seat, but this time there is no one else in the car with them. Morpheus spares her his usual spiel. She could recite it by heart by now anyway. He walks her to the door of the building she has only ever parked outside of, but before they go inside he pauses and Trinity stops dead in her tracks, waiting for him to speak.

“Whatever she tells you,” Morpheus says. “You are ready.”