Sarah

Written by Anakin McFly

the third intruder

should never have been able to get in.

he'd locked all the doors, and later he would find that the security cameras picked up nothing.

she's sitting in a chair, gazing silently at the unlit fireplace. she's young enough to be the daughter he almost had, and when he enters - softly, afraid, one hand on the phone ready to call 911, there was something about her that threw him off for a moment; for a moment, he'd almost thought it was...

But of course it couldn't be.

"Hello," he says, cautiously, keeping the tremble from his voice.

She turns her head. Her eyes don't quite focus on him, but the sight of her face brings again that clench of recognition. Her eyes flicker with a similar recognition, and for a second he thinks he saw-

(someone else)

"...Keanu?" she whispers. "Is it... how... I... I don't know where I am."

He moves forward slowly, sliding the phone back into his pocket. His hands spread open, unarmed. "What's your name?" he asks.

She starts to speak, then stops. There's a faraway look on her face, as though she's not quite there, as though she doesn't really see him.

"Sarah," she finally says.

"Sarah," he says. "How did you get into my house?"

More silence. She stares vacantly at him, and he gets the sudden impression of someone trying to communicate on a broken radio, of a consciousness being transmitted from far, far away, and every now and then he sees something in her eyes that's chillingly familiar; but then it's gone, and as he moves closer he can make out the struggle on her face, trying to stay afloat, stay connected to the broken pieces of her mind long enough to get them firing together.

"I don't know," she says distantly. "I... I heard you call."

He shakes his head. "I didn't call you, Sarah."

Where was she from? he wonders. Another fan, another Isis? But no; that doesn't feel right, and he knows it.

Tears roll quietly down her face. "Everything's dark," she says. "I... I don't understand... I was supposed to die." She looks down at her hands, then up at him. "I'm scared. I don't know what happened."

"You're here," he says carefully. "You're in my house. Do you remember how you got in?"

"Everything's dark," Sarah says again, her voice trembling with tears. "Help me. Please... I'm so scared."

A passing car's headlights flash by in the window. He glances over, distracted. When he turns back, she's flickering and fading away.

"No," he says. "No, no, stay with me-"

He rushes to her side, grabbing her outstretched hand even though he knows it's hopeless. He meets her frightened eyes, wide in sudden lucidity, and the full dread of knowing breaks his heart.

"Neo!" he shouts.

But the hand is gone from his, and the room is empty again.

#

he can't go back to sleep.

he spends hours pacing the room, calling, pleading, exhausting his tears, searching the air for his child/creation/offspring, his heart wrenched by the twisted grief of double loss.

dawn tinges the sky outside and sets the tree in his courtyard aflame with golden light.

he's huddled on the carpet in the middle of the room. his body still shakes with quiet sobs, slower now, breathing in the sanctuary of complete silence.

(help me)

"please," he whispers.

he isn't sure who he's addressing. but when he senses a presence and looks up, the old man is seated on his couch.

"She'd been looking for you," Dem says quietly. "I brought her here. Just as an image... an illusion."

"...Neo. How..."

"Thomas Anderson died that night," Dem says. "But the One returned to the Source, and not in the usual way. Scattered code... fragments of a mind, adrift without a body. Bits and pieces were turning up all over the city. Then, one day, Sarah appeared, lost and wandering the streets of the Matrix. The seventh anomaly."

Dem rises from the couch and crouches down next to him. "Unlike her predecessors, she remembers. Not very well. But enough."

"Is it... really Neo?"

Dem tilts his head at him, a faint smile on his face. "What is 'real', Keanu?"

#

she's not so much seventh as sixth and a half, rogue code imprinted with a purpose it can no longer fulfil, imperfect phoenix rising from the ashes of another whose memories tangle with the false history birthed with her creation.

she first emerged from a corruption of green code bursting into wild static, unconscious in an alley, pawed at by a curious cat that meowed and padded away.

around her, the Matrix formed and changed. keys settled in her pocket to an apartment she thought that she once knew.

"Thomas?" the old landlady asks, hearing someone step onto that floor; then, following after, confusion on her face - "Oh. Are you his sister?"

Sarah doesn''t know, but she has the keys. the landlady would later find Sarah Edmontons on the tenant list, and attribute this lapse in memory to her growing age.

the apartment subtly warps and changes as Sarah enters; as though she'd always lived there, since Thomas Anderson moved out years ago.

there is no computer. the desk is smooth and bare.

Sarah sits on the bed, head in her hands, and wonders why she can't remember who she is.

she can recall no friends or family, though surely she must have had them. far off in the broken pieces of her memory, she remembers love, and the warmth of friendship.

there's a hollowed-out book on her bookshelf. Simulacra and Simulation. she doesn't know what draws her to it, but inside are stacks of hundred dollar bills.

she buys a sandwich, and gazes distantly out at the street.

there's something about the sandwich that feels like home.

#

she doesn't understand the nightmares that come each night: of pain, and dying, and blindness and loss, of tubes running through her flesh and a woman tumbling from a skyscraper, of red-eyed tentacled machines swarming viciously towards her or an everlasting avalanche of suited men piling onto her body in a suffocating mass. she wakes up in cold sweat, scared and alone, and curls up trembling on the sheets, waiting for dawn.

the sunrise each morning is always so beautiful.

sometimes she finds herself staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring.

sometimes she helps her landlady carry out the garbage.

sometimes the fevered dreams and disjointed thoughts concretise into something more. Sarah writes words in an empty journal, trying to pinpoint the source of her distress:

'What is the Matrix?'

and a name, underlined and circled: 'Keanu'.

sometimes she drops the pen and just cries.

#

Dem has his ways.

So it was that not-Tim came home one day to find Sarah lying on the floor of the living-room, dragged through another world's pixels into reality; unconscious, weak, but alive.

There's a note on the ground, from Dem:

'happy birthday :-)'

#

"Sarah?"

she opens her eyes.

he knows those eyes. he knows them so well, and the soul they hold within them.

his body wracks with emotion.

he holds her close, and cries.

#

Conor nudges Jjaks so hard he nearly spills his beer.

"Jjaks!" he hisses, transfixed by the two figures in the next room. "That's a girl!"

Jjaks blinks and looks over. Not-Tim is there with the stranger, unsteady on her feet, being helped onto the couch.

He glances back at Conor, who looks as though he's just fallen in love.

Not-Tim trudges by shortly after on his way to the fridge. He grimaces.

"Conor?" he says. "No."

Conor doesn't hear.

#

Not-Tim doesn't know when the hell Conor managed to get Sarah alone. He starts forward to say something; but then he hears her laugh, and it stops him dead in his tracks.

He's never heard her laugh before.

He's never heard Thomas Anderson laugh before, either.

It's the most beautiful thing he's ever heard.

#

They're cuddling on the couch. She's tenderly stroking his hair, Conor gazing at her in worshipful awe.

not-Tim tenses as they kiss.

if that were his daughter, he would never let Conor... Conor, of all people...

but she's not. she never was, no matter how it feels, no matter the protectiveness that instinctively rises in him every time he sees her.

still, it takes him some effort to quietly walk away.

#

not-Tim lies awake in bed, troubled.

he wonders if Conor knows.

he wonders if he should tell him.

he wonders if he could.

he remembers the way they looked at each other.

he wonders if it matters.

#

she remembers only flashes. names, faces. visions. ramen.

instead, she talks haltingly of a life that not-Tim never knew of. perhaps the machines put it there. perhaps she's forming it as she speaks. he doesn't have the heart to say so.

she can't remember how she knows him.

she speaks of Neo as that mysterious, mythical figure who saved her world.

she doesn't know why he keeps asking. it doesn't seem important.

#

who are all of them, after all, not-Tim thinks, but varied souls reaching out for each other from behind the facade of near-identical shells.

who are Sarah Edmontons and Conor O'Neill, but two strangers in love, with the faded memories of a past life when they were something like friends.

#

he tries calling the Wachowskis, but the only one at home is their couch, and it still can't speak much English despite Lana's best efforts.

"hello?" not-Tim asks.

"mmm," the couch says.

"um. who... is that?"

"mMMMm," the couch replies.

"beets," the couch whispers, as not-Tim puts down the phone.

#

"Mr. Reeves?" Conor asks nervously the next day. "Sarah... she's not... your daughter or something, right? Because that would be... weird, and I wouldn't..."

"She's a friend," not-Tim says.

Conor's shoulders visibly relax. "Ohh. Thanks." A pause. "I just thought... because she looks like... you know..."

"Many of my friends do," not-Tim says innocuously, taking another sip of wine.

Conor stares at him, but reads nothing from his face.

#

not-Tim thinks of the erstwhile One living with Conor in that ratty apartment with used pizza boxes propping up the TV and drug dealers banging down the door, and wonders what the hell he's doing.

#