Verity (part 13)

Jim sat watching Blair breathing, sitting still as a statue. God, I hope this works, he thought. Minutes crawled by.

Three things happened at once. Blair gasped and opened his eyes, someone started pounding on the front door, and Jim's cell phone rang.

"I did it, Jim, I did it!" Blair exclaimed, grinning.

Jim jerked his head toward the door and stood up. "We've got company. I think They know you did it too." He pulled out the phone and flipped it open. "Yes?"

"Two Agents," said Neo's voice.

"Thanks, I had noticed," Jim said. "You get out of here. We've got it out, we can make our own way."

"But --"

"We aren't trapped," Jim said, hoping he was right, hoping that he could Guide Blair to one more thing. "Beat it."

"Crap. I didn't come here to stand by and do nothing."

"Neo!"

The phone disconnected.

"Damn!"

The Agents had given up on the door and were now battering at the walls. Jim could hear them cracking.

Jim knelt down where Blair was still sitting. "Chief, we haven't got much time, but we've got one trick up our sleeve. You wanna get out of here, right?"

Blair rolled his eyes. "Like I really want to get beat up by inhuman bad guys? "

"You want to get to the real world? It will be scary at first -- we can't get to you until after you actually wake up. And it will take a little while to get there. But I'll be there when we do get you, I promise."

"Jim, so long as you'll be there, I'm cool," Blair said. "So what do I do?"

"I think this is going to be easier that what you just did," Jim said. The pounding on the walls continued. Jim could smell plaster dust, and a breath of water. They'd made the first hole. "What you have to do, is go, as you just did, to the nexus, but instead of looking, go through to the other side."

"The other side?"

"To the real world," Jim said. "The land of the Laleo."

"Kelai will follow Tema there," Blair said.

Jim shook his head. "Tema will guide Kelai there, then follow. Don't worry about me, I've done it before."

"Okay, Jim." Blair shut his eyes.

Jim murmured to him as he'd done before, all the while trying not to be distracted by the sounds from the front, as the Agents made the hole larger, large enough for a man to get through. Then there was a shout, and the sound of running.

Blair's breathing slowed, and then he started to glow. His skin and hair and clothes were outlined in light, were made up of light, which sparkled, dissolved and vanished. Jim breathed a sigh of relief.

He could hear the Agents entering the house. No. There was only one of them. Neo must have distracted the other one. Damn fool. Should I leave, or should I try to help him? Then again, he'd be more help out of here, able to go back in, than caught.

He shut his eyes, and reached for the awareness of where he really was -- strapped into a chair on the Nebuchadnezzar.

When the Agent ran into the room all he caught was a flash of light and the stink of ozone.

###

Jim opened his eyes on the Nebuchadnezzar. "Is Neo out yet?" he asked Tank, startling him. "I saw Blair go, he should be awake now. We can move as soon as we've got Neo."

Tank shook his head.

"Put me back in," Jim demanded. Moments later, he was back in the sun-spattered hotel room. He looked out the window, wondering which way to go. Should he retrace his steps, try to find the house? But Neo would be nowhere near there by now. Movement in the sky caught his attention, and he saw what at first was a large black crow. Then he focused on it and realized that it was Neo -- flying! They weren't kidding about his talents.

He opened the window and stood back, allowing Neo to fly in. Neo grinned at him. "Thanks," he said. He jerked a thumb behind him. "That was fun. They may be fast, but they can't fly."

"Thanks for the distraction," Jim said.

"You're welcome."

"Now let's go get Blair."

###

One moment he was meditating, following the light, and the next moment he was choking. Calm down, Blair, Jim's been through this before, remember? He remembered the incident in Alex's room, when Jim had thought he was choking. It's just a breathing apparatus. His heart pounded, and he opened his eyes to a sight he'd heard of but never seen. Darkness, and flashes of light, and an eerie red glow illuminating a curved casket and the black cables coming out of his naked body. I'm here. I'm actually in the land of the Laleo! Or the land of the A.I.s. Whatever.

Well, I'm not going to just lie here waiting for Jim. He put one hand up, and pushed it through the translucent covering. It was like pushing through tough jelly. He broke through, sat up, pulled out the breathing apparatus, and coughed up the liquid he'd been breathing. He was coughing so hard, he didn't notice the metal thing that suddenly hovered in front of him until it seized him by the neck.

Oh shit! It's going to kill me! But it didn't. After unscrewing the cable at the back of his neck, it dropped him like a sack of potatoes and darted away again. The cables snapped off his body with the sound of demented popcorn, and he found himself falling down and down with the liquid from his casket, as if he were inside a warped Gothic waterslide. By the end of it he was almost enjoying himself, and let out a whoop when he emerged into the air at last, almost choking when he landed in the water with a splash.

He felt very weak, but he knew how to float. God, Jim, I hope you know where I am.

His heart nearly stopped when the spotlight hit him. Something huge was hovering over him; he could hear some kind of engines, but the light was too bright for him to see anything. He heard a chain rattling, and then a huge metal claw-thing grabbed him, like he was a car at a wrecker's yard, and he was pulled out of the water. He shut his eyes tight, prayed that whoever it was wasn't about to drop him, and tried not to think about how high he was going.

The chains rattled one final time as he was pulled inside the hatch of the -- ship? -- and square doors shut below him with a clang. Voices. Warm hands took hold of him, pulled him out of the grip of the metal claw, laid him on a gurney.

"Jim?" he whispered. "Jim?"

Warm hand, warm voice. "I'm here, Chief."

Blair blinked, but everything was blurry. He blinked again. It was Jim. "Jim!"

"I'm here too, sweetie," came from the other side.

"Naomi?" he said incredulously. "You're here too?"

"Welcome to the real world," she said.

"Welcome to the war zone," Jim said dryly.

"Doesn't matter," Blair said. "The two people I love most are here, and that means I'm home."

"It's going to be dangerous," Jim said.

Blair smiled. "Been there, done that, have the scars to prove it." He blinked. "Though I guess I don't, not here."

"You do," Jim said. The gurney moved, as they pushed Blair toward the infirmary. Jim moved alongside it, still holding Blair's hand.

"Why?" Blair asked.

"It's a mind over matter thing," Jim answered.

Dart, who was pushing one end of the gurney, said, "Doesn't he ever shut up?"

"No," Jim answered.

Naomi laughed and said "No" at the same time as Jim.

Naomi patted Blair's shoulder and said, "Now, sweetie, you do what the medic tells you, and concentrate on gaining your strength." She added, softly, to herself, "Because now that we have the Two, the battle really begins."

### the end ###

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jonathan Burns for mucho multiple brainstorming about the nature of the Matrix, and how that would interact with The Sentinel. Many of the cool ideas were his.

Thanks to Queen Lila Her Trekness for Poking.

Thanks to Susan Williams of Skeeter Press, whose editing and back-and-forthing made this a much better story.

Thanks to the folks at Cascade Times for help with information about Jim's bedclothes, Blair's night attire, and Jim's serial number.

Thanks to Mary Shadinger for her story "Unit Commander/The Shepherd" for pointing out to me the existence of the Ranger's Code, and to Google .com for pointing me to a site which had the whole text (which I now can't remember).

Thanks to the Venice Beach site and Yahoo Maps for a map...

Lastly and most importantly, thanks to the Author of us all, without whom there would be no subcreations.