Matrix verse fic - getting out

[psychette]

For new verse with knowskungfu and follows this.

Wet. Confused and wet, that's the two words that stuck with her from all that Neo had been trying to tell her those last few seconds. The rest had gotten lost as she was pulled so far away, it seemed to take forever and no time at all in the same moment.

And then it was over.

Jackie tried to open her eyes and move but she felt distinctly like she was under water. Her hands reached around as if in slow motion, trying to find something....and found a tube stuck to the side of her stomach. Everywhere her hands moved, there were tubes or something similar and they all seemed to be attached to HER.
There had to be a way out of here, she didn't even know how she got in here in the first place. She could barely move, she felt so weak all over, but there was no way she was staying here. Her hands found the top of some sort of membrane, scratching at it and trying to get it open.

Something else broke it, not her. A giant metal claw reached in, puncturing the pod and pulling her out by the neck into the cold air. Jackie struggled against it in vain, blinking her burning eyes against the light and trying to make out the impossible robotic shape in front of her. She was choking against something down her throat.

It happened so fast, there was a hum of a drill and Jackie got the most incredible uncomfortable feeling right in the back of her neck before the robot dropped her back into the soup as if it was done with her. She choked and gagged, finally able to pull out the tube down her throat and breathe on her own.

She was having a hard time sitting up in the slippery pod being that A: she had no clothes and B: she was sitting in a slightly warmer than the air pinkish soup of sorts. Jackie tried to keep low with it up to her neck, shivering as she tried to look around.

....next to her was a person. In the same pod as her. And beyond it another. And another. Whole rows of people all hooked up. It stretched up so far she couldn't even see the end of the...building? they were attached to.

Coughing, she said hoarsely, "No...way..."

It was then that tubes started popping off of her arms and legs and the pod purged everything inside of it. Jackie managed to catch a breath before she went under again. The sides were too slippery on the tunnel, she couldn't get a grip.

And then she was falling....straight into freezing cold water. Hypothermia, that's all she could think of. Fighting the urge to panic, she remembered what her uncle told her about what to do if you fall through the ice and curled herself into a ball, still holding her breath. Amazingly, it worked, she floated to the surface slowly but her lungs ached, she thought she would never get there in time.

Something splashed into the water with her, grabbing her...Jackie couldn't help it, she panicked thinking it was another robot and accidentally inhaled some of the water.

Next thing she could remember was someone giving her mouth to mouth and waking up coughing on a very hard floor, shivering under a blanket.

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[knowskungfu.livejournal.com]

Neo had never experienced it from this angle before. Last time, it had been him waking up in the pod, panicking as he tried to understand what had happened to him. It had been him, flailing in the liquid that had been his home for thirty-five years. It had been him, drowning in the waste repository, unable to see, unable to control his limbs. And it had been him unconscious on the table, a veritable pincushion as his muscles had been rebuilt.

Watching it from this vantage, Neo had to admit that he was glad for the lack of awareness. It was frightening enough, going from a world of light and color to this dark and dingy one. The Nebuchadnezzar might have been his home now, but that fact didn’t change the truth. It was a difficult transition to make.

It looked like a painful one too, as the crew worked in shifts to remove the extraneous hardware from Jackie’s body. Neo had never been vain, had barely given his appearance any thought, but he couldn’t help thinking that it all might have been easier to bear if there weren’t so many reminders. He could ignore the metal in his own skin now, go long stretches of time without touching the port on the back of his head or picking at the ones on his arms, but he never forgot them. Never was completely comfortable with them. Especially when he looked at Tank and saw someone who didn’t bear the mark of the machines.

But he stayed throughout the duration of the process. Sitting in the corner or leaning against the wall, out of the way but always present. Because he’d been the one to bring her out. And just as Morpheus had been there for him, Neo was going to be there for Jackie, to help her make the transition from the imaginary world to the real one. He couldn’t do more. He didn’t know how to do more. But he could do that. And he would.

Once the process had been complete and she had been transferred to the empty room that would now serve as her quarters aboard the hovercraft, Neo scrounged up a chair, positioned it in the corner of her room, and took a seat. He didn’t know how long it would take her to wake up, but he intended to be there when she did. She’d probably be angry with him, and she had every right to be, but at least she wouldn’t have to face it alone.