RATING:  R.  

DISCLAIMER:  I claim no rights to the Matrix characters or concepts; they belong to the Wachowskis and the WB.  And I’m useless to sue since I have no money.

SYNOPSIS:  What would have happened if Neo had safely escaped the subway station before fighting Agent Smith?  An alternate universe story.

THANKS:  To Kirstma, who gave me this idea by first asking the question I’ve attempted to answer here.  To Scottishlass, for saying “finish the damn thing, would you?!”  And, of course, to the great and wonderful MTS, who edits all my pieces so beautifully and asks nothing in return except my undying affection.

A/N:  This started as a pretty standard what-if story, dealing with the question above.  But it’s evolved into something beyond just that, really.  What do I mean?  Oh, that would spoil the fun. . . you’ll just have to read it, I guess.  The Wachowskis have given us such wonderful characters to play with, what can I say?  Part 1 basically sets the scene; parts 2 and 3 are more plot-driven and will follow shortly.  

THREE BULLETS - Part 1

This one fact the world hates:  that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past. . . .

            -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

I.  TODAY 

We do not touch each other.

Each of us is a microcosm, a universe contained within the envelope of our own flesh.  We have our own worlds and we do not understand each others’ beyond recognizing that they are different from our own.  We are gods in our own right, defining existence behind our own eyes and latching onto it, white-knuckled, as to the string of a good kite on a windy day.  To exist is to be perceived, so we perceive existence and hope, every night, that we will live to see this time tomorrow.

We do not touch each other.

Shoulders rub in the corridor and it burns like a branding iron.  Fingertips brush when we play cards, and it stings.  Skin becomes thick and tough and so hypersensitive that it’s numb.  Contact opens a portal between us, as though bits of our own realities leak into each other and neutralize.  Matter and anti-matter.  A frightening moment of peace, loss of self.  

But then there are the cold nights.  We cannot tell the seasons anymore, but there are cold nights all year, so cold that we ball up beneath extra blankets, knees to chest, and still shiver.  Those are the times we come together.  We seek out each others’ rooms and lie down together, and beyond the burn and the sting, we are finally warm.  We lie man with man, woman with woman, or men and women together—this is not sexual.  We grow close.  And on the worst nights we find ourselves all together, all of us, curled together, holding each other stiffly and loosely, awkward.  We do not speak.  The burn of contact is aching and somehow it becomes easier to breathe.  We do not speak.

The next morning we creep out, one at a time as we wake, to our own cells.  There we sit, shivering, alone, regrouping.  Recollecting ourselves within ourselves.  We do not speak of those nights when we fall asleep together, fully clothed, and let ourselves go, silently gasping at the ecstasy of sleeping in the warmth of other people.  Released.

And then we are ice again.  We do not touch each other.

***

The subway station was dark and hollow, empty like a soul cage when they arrived.  Their footsteps echoed through the tunnels as they sprinted down the steps, the ringing phone calling to them.  

Neo got there first, Trinity a brief half-step behind.  Morpheus came shortly after that, limping a little from his brutal beating, and clutching at his bloodied, still-handcuffed wrist.  A brief glance passed between the three.

“You first, Morpheus,” Neo said quietly, holding out the receiver.  And the captain, too tired to argue, accepted it gratefully, pressing the portal to his ear.  The remaining two watched as his code thinned and vanished, the telephone receiver falling to dangle at the end of its cord.  Neo replaced it in its cradle.

“Neo, I want to tell you something.”  Trinity’s voice broke the silence.  There was an intensity in her tone to which Neo had become accustomed, but this time, there was something more, an edge of something—

Was she nervous?

He brought his eyes to meet hers, and was befuddled by what he saw – an uncertainty, a lack of confidence that Trinity would rarely ever let show.  In an instant he thought of a million things to say – Are you all right, Trinity?  What’s wrong, Trinity?  Can I help you?  Can I do anything?  Can I ask you if you felt what I felt up on that rooftop, after you jumped out of that helicopter—

He remained silent, and waited.  The quiet was pierced by the phone as it began to ring again.

Trinity looked down, “But I’m afraid of what it might mean if I do..."
 

No, you’re not.  Trinity is never afraid. Somewhere in depths of his senses, Neo heard the distant rumble of an approaching train.  He stepped closer to her.  

“Everything the Oracle told me has come true,” she looked up, “everything but this...”

The rumble grew to a roar and a train whizzed through the abandoned station, the sudden rush of wind breaking their attention for a moment.  It was enough.  With an almost pained look and a subtle shake of her head, Trinity slipped past Neo into the phone booth and pressed the receiver to her ear.  Neo stared numbly as she vanished, then watched as the phone fell to the end of its line.  For a moment he stared at it blankly, wondering what on earth that had been about, before picking it up and resetting it.  

A few seconds later, Neo’s eyes fluttered open on the ship, his consciousness settling uneasily back into his body.  As soon as he was released he turned to Trinity’s chair—

But she was already gone.

***

Trinity cleaned and wrapped Morpheus’ bloody wrists, then sent him off to keep watch while she took care of Tank.  Morpheus was tired and his head swam, still, a little, from the Agents’ injection, so she had offered to take care of the medical duties by herself.  A patch of skin the size of her open hand had been blown from Tank’s side, exposing muscle and oozing red blood.  He had sprayed it with a numbing salve before Trinity and Neo had returned to get Morpheus, allowing him to keep working, but that let him move the wound in ways it shouldn’t have been moved.  It was stretched and torn, now. 

“Thanks . . . thanks for doing this,” Tank said shakily as he lay on the table, arm bent above his head.  Trinity crouched beside him, cleaning the wound and packing it with sterile gauze, stitching up the edges with the uploaded skill of a surgeon.  The latex gloves, selected for the regular medic, were too big on her hands.

“No problem,” she said quietly.  Nobody mentioned Dozer.

She was just finishing up, peeling the gloves from her hands, when the alarm sounded.
 

Morpheus and Neo were already in the cockpit when Trinity arrived—Morpheus in his seat, Neo hovering behind him in the doorway.  Trinity pushed past when she arrived, flipping switches and pressing buttons before she had even fully sat down.  The holograph flashed “proximity warning” over the scrolling images of various machine hunters, finally settling on one—

“Sentinels,” she said with a shaky intake of breath.  In the corner of her eye she saw Neo step closer to the wall.  He had his blanket wrapped over his shoulders and he sunk further into it, pulling it tighter across his chest.  Beside her, Morpheus activated a comlink:  “Tank, charge the EMP.”  

They touched down with a soft bump, Neo taking a firm grip on the pipe beside him but still stumbling a step back.  An instant later, the control panel went dark, the lights fading.  “Power offline,” came Tank’s voice, “EMP armed.”  

The squid flashed into their field of view, then, greeted by the humans with a quiet gasp.  Morpheus tied a rag over his head, Neo pulled his blanket over his almost-bald scalp.  They sense body heat, Morpheus had told him, so you have to cover your head when they’re around, until your hair grows back.  Neo touched his hairline, now, and felt the soft fuzz there.  Not too much longer, now.  Soon.  

The sentinel seemed to swim through the air, floating with supernatural grace through the tunnel.  Then another, following it, and another.  They zeroed in on the cockpit almost instantly, lasers up and poised.  In the cabin all was deathly still and silent, four people holding a collective breath.  These were the times that Trinity’s life really flashed before her eyes—Matrix fights didn’t faze her; she could leap off of forty-story buildings without batting an eye.  But out here, when the threat was real and not just in her head, everything seemed so much more personal; like the sentinels were looking them in the eye as they killed them, peering into them so they’d know exactly whom it was they were butchering.  It was as though they revelled in death.  

But it wasn’t for herself that she worried now – not for her own life, anyway.  There was only so much death she could take in one day, and if she lost anybody else she wasn’t sure how she would react.  Especially these three, who meant more to her than any of the others.  In the frozen stillness she felt herself cross her arms over her chest, holding herself.  Morpheus did the same.  They were all on edge tonight.  In the corner of her eye, Trinity could see Neo’s white-knuckled grip on the pipes, tendons bulging in his hands.  We’ll be okay, Neo.  We’ll be okay.  

And then the sentinels were gone, swimming away through the tunnels.  Neo let out a shuddering gasp.  Trinity relished the feeling of the air as she inhaled again.