Deep Freeze
Plot Summary: The Hammer never found the Logos, and thus Neo never made it to 01. Zion has fallen. And after a failed attempt to see the Oracle, Niobe, Ghost, and Sparks are all alone with no power in the tunnels of the real. What can the three soul survivors of free humanity possibly hope to accomplish all alone?
Spoilers: Post-Enter the Matrix, spoils about half the plot of Revolutions.
Category: Alternate Universe, Drama
Legal Stuff: I don't own these wonderful characters, but who can resist borrowing for a while?
Deep Freeze
Chapter 1
Niobe's eyes fluttered open slowly, pulling her blanket around her shoulders. It was cold, damn cold...
Ghost sat just behind her, fast asleep, while Sparks had taken up on the floor. They'd discharged an EMP to stop those sentinels, but no one had come to find him. Or rather, there was probably no one left to find them. They'd had no word for weeks from any ship, and their supplies were almost gone. Barely two day's worth of food and water left, and every day it got colder.
She stared at the ice that had solidified over the control panels, and smiled bitterly. Take the red pill, escape to reality...die anyway.
"Sparks?" she breathed softly, as not to wake up Ghost. She could see her breath freeze into tiny particles in front of her. How cold did that mean it was? Somewhere near zero maybe?
"Yeah?" came a tired grunt below her.
"How much water?"
"Just enough for today and tomorrow. Then we'll have to start peeling ice off the bulkheads..." He rolled over slowly and sat up, looking at Niobe with a broken spirit.
She just stared at him a moment--ice crystals frozen in his hair, his skin turning a darker blue each day. Though Sparks tried to hide it, he was very sick. He wasn't his usual witty, loudmouthed self, and though Niobe used to wish for nothing more than for Sparks to shut up, now she wished that he would just talk more, crack a joke, anything.
"Is there anything we can do to get a message out?"
"Not a damn thing." How odd...his breath seemed to be even colder than hers…
"I wonder...what happened to Neo and the others?"
She'd had a lot of time to think about things while they'd been stranded. A lot of things... The fact that she'd never made it past Seraph to see the Oracle, and probably had missed something important. No, she knew she'd missed something important.
"You know, I screwed up, Sparks," Niobe muttered, still watching her breath crystallize and slowly filter down to the floor.
"What do you mean, Captain?" His rasping could be heard clearly in his voice.
She sighed. "When I went to see the Oracle, I was supposed to prove myself to her guardian. I...failed. He told me that the Oracle was mistaken, and I couldn't be of any help..."
"But you were sick, Niobe. It wasn't your fault."
She closed her eyes. "Doesn't matter," she told him. "All that matters is I failed... I couldn't even get us away from the sentinels, and I doomed us to die slowly."
"That's not true. It was either this, or the machines would have killed us." Sparks broke out into a fit of coughing, turning away from Niobe completely.
She grimaced as she stared at him, trying not to let her concern show too much. "Maybe..."
Niobe felt like a failure. A huge, monumental failure. She didn't save Zion, she didn't make it to the Oracle, and hell, her crew was dying all around her.
But the Oracle wasn't the only thing she thought about. She thought a lot about Persephone... And realized that she had been right. She didn't love Lock, not a damn bit. She loved Morpheus, but her pride had kept her from admitting this little fact the last time she'd seen him. And now it was too damn late…
"Maybe we should start another fire?" broke a new voice through the air.
Niobe turned her head slightly to the side, a frown on her face. "Sorry Ghost, we didn't mean to wake you."
"I was already awake."
Sparks coughed again, his thin, pale form shuttering. "Do we have anything left to burn?"
"Maybe there would be something outside we could use?"
Niobe groaned slightly. "There's only metal out there. And if we open those doors, it'll get even colder."
"We're going to die anyway." Ghost sounded completely at peace with this, his composure surprising even Niobe. "At least we could die a bit warmer."
Niobe's head drooped. "Both of you...I'm sorry about all of this. I'm sorry we don't know what the hell happened to Zion, I'm sorry that we're trapped here. Whether Zion fell, or whether it didn't, we tried…"
Though she couldn't see his face, she was sure that Ghost was smiling. "Like Augustine, we were devoted to a cause higher than that of our own lives."
"Geez, speak for yourselves..." came the grunt from Sparks, causing them all to chuckle. "I still value my own damn life a lot…" He rolled over slowly, his knees popping as he stood to his feet, clutching the blanket around him. "I'm going to go get some water…"
Niobe listened to Sparks' footsteps as he walked out of the main deck, silence once again falling upon them.
"I asked you before, 'what if they don't find us,'" Ghost sputtered, shivering against the extreme cold. "And you said you knew they would."
Niobe closed her eyes. "I was wrong. I'm sorry, Ghost."
He was silent for a moment, but Niobe was sure that he was nodding his calm, peaceful nod on the other side of the seat.
"They haven't found us, so what are we going to do?"
She sighed. "We can go out into the sewers and see if there is any fuel, or any damn thing we can use out there. I know its way below zero, but we don't have any other choice." Another moment of silence passed before Niobe added another comment. "And I think Sparks should stay behind."
"Agreed." Ghost was quick to answer her, just as concerned as Niobe about Sparks' illness. "When do we go?"
"After we eat…" She slumped down in the seat, pulling the blanket up to her chin.
"Ghost…I'm sorry that I've doomed you to die of something, and not for something."
Hmmm…what do you think? Please R&R!