A/N: Thanks be to my fantastic Beta! Hail Mussed goddess of correct
grammar! Much luv also to Zephyr who took a look and helped with the
unplugging.
I have some specific things I wanted to explore so this is my effort to
that end.
Dedicated to the Hardline: You guys inspire and challenge me. You rock.
~Ry
Unplugged Chapter 1
Spike grinned as he watched the status bar speed across his screen. The bar showed 100% infection before his program switched over to the next file. Spike's slightly pudgy fingers flew across the keyboard as he brought up his instant message program and contacted his partners in mayhem and mischief.
"Three more files, guys." He paused and watched as his little masterpiece completed its task. The vulnerability in the new system was a recent find and Spike was sure he'd made a working exploit script. Fame in the hacking community was given to those who found a bug to exploit or made a script to exploit one. Here, his team had followed an inside tip and figured out an exploit for what turned out to be a pretty big bug. "Got it. Go!" Spike sat back in his chair and waited as Syzygy began hacking the internal system through the back door he'd just opened wide. F33r was set to upload their little package and download the information they wanted, while Griffin was waiting for the signal to patch it all up.
Alone, they were pretty decent hackers. Together? Together they were the Legendary Lords of the Clan of the Masters of the Fists of Screaming Monkey Chaos. "Tremble before our might, ye mortals," Spike smirked at his screen as Griffin signaled that he'd already begun their cover up operation. This would be their biggest hack yet; something which would move their little clan up from the relative minors and into the major league. They would be Elite.
He watched his comrades' type quick messages to one another in the homemade chat program they'd created: F33r typing in what he called 'Sith' red, Syzygy in 'night elf' blue, Griffin in 'mountain dew' yellow and himself in what he referred to as 'radioactive' green'.
"Operation Screw'em is complete. Nice work guys." Griffin said as he completed his part of the op.
"Think it will take 'em long to figure out just how screwed they are?" Syzygy asked.
"Ha! They won't know what hit'em," Spike replied with a grin. Intercom Corp. was going down. The virus in the system they'd placed would be operational exactly three hours after the start of the business day. Meanwhile, the bugs they'd placed in the system would send DoS signals once every hour for four hours afterwards before destroying themselves - and simultaneously taking out part of any server they happened to be on. Spike and the Clan Lords could sit back and have a good laugh while the fucking CEOs shit their pants in panic and watched their profit margin take a bit of a tumble.
Served the bastards right, as far as Spike was concerned. Intercon spoon fed the internet to its customers, driving their IQs down a few points whenever they were presented with something remotely technical. The IOL system was home to millions of mindless newbies and hacker wannabes. They were a plague on the internet. Recently the company had decided to take the RIAA seriously and join the fight on free file sharing. That combined with their crap proprietary software had made the company a prime target for members of the hacking community. But as noble as their cause was, the Clan Lords really just wanted to see if they could do it. Changing grades was one thing, crashing the computer system of a small business was another, but bringing down something as huge as Intercom Corp online? That was the stuff that legends were made of. Ambitious? Sure. Crazy? Maybe. But the satisfaction would be sweet.
"Aww shit," F33r said. "The 'rents are home. Gotta go do the dinner thing."
"Cya then," Syzygy replied as F33r's status flicked to 'away'.
"Bobby! Bobby! Dinner!" Spike groaned and began typing quickly.
"The old lady is calling me to dinner too. I'll be back in a few," Spike said and quickly locked his computer. He was rising from his chair when someone began pounding on his door.
"Dinner!" his oldest brother yelled as he gave the door one last good smack. Spike sighed and pushed open the door of his small room, wincing in the light.
"Curse you Day Star!" he muttered at the setting sun.
Pale and slightly overweight, Robert ('Bobby' - God how he hated that nickname) O'Neil was a 16 year old student by day and hacker by night. His parents called him Bobby, but he called himself Spike after the kickass character in Cowboy Bebop, his favorite anime. He was co-founder of the Clan Lords (though Griffin had thought up the impossibly long name) and enjoyed some small renown in the hacker community. Spike had found both F33r and Syzygy and convinced them to join forces. There were a few clan members they called on for bigger jobs and with whom they chatted and, occasionally, gamed, but the four were the Clan's Lords and the IOL job had been theirs alone.
Spike trudged down the hall and took his place at the dinner table. His mother was busy serving plates to his three sisters and two brothers. His father looked over the paper at his middle son.
"Bobby! You ready for football camp?" his father asked gruffly. Bobby hid a sigh. Sighing would only make his father annoyed.
"No. You sure I can't go do a computer camp this summer?" Bobby asked. His father's lips thinned and Bobby knew he was no closer to getting his dad to back down than he had been since the subject had first been brought up.
"Now Bobby, we talked about this," his mother said as she began feeding bite sized pieces of chicken to the twins in their highchairs. "It's not right for a boy to be cooped up in a dark room, looking at a screen all day. Some time outside will do you a world of good. And don't you want to be on the football team like your older brother?" She smiled dotingly at his eldest brother. Jim was shoveling food so fast Spike was sure he was going to choke. "Besides, your sisters are going to Soccer camp."
What his sisters going to soccer camp had to do with him spending his entire summer running around like a damn fool with a bunch of unwashed guys who together probably had the same IQ he had, Spike didn't know. But he wasn't going ask either. The last time he'd asked, his father had started to go a bit red around the neck and his mother had actually cried. But the worst part had been the threat to remove his computer: only the argument that he needed it to do class work had saved him.
"And a bit of fresh air would do you good," his mother concluded. His father grunted an agreement. 'A bit of fresh air' was his mother's way of telling him he was fat.
Spike sighed and wondered how the hell he'd been born into this family. They were nice enough, Spike supposed. But they didn't understand him at all. They were totally unsupportive of his interest in computers - not that they were entirely supportive of his activities other than computers either.
His parents didn't understand what computers were to him. As soon as he'd gotten online and discovered the world literally at his fingertips, Bobby had been hooked. Here were people who didn't give a shit what race, religion or belt size you were. Here his mind was as fast as or faster than anyone else's. Online he could ask questions and find answers, something he hadn't had much success with in real life. Then Bobby had discovered hacking and hadn't looked back.
The internet community was alive in a way the 'real world' wasn't. Here, he was accepted. Here he was free to explore as he chose and no one was his master. Not his teachers, not his schoolmates, not his parents and not even his government (though they tried).
Spike speared a carrot and began plotting. School ended in three weeks and then he was off to death camp, unless he did something about it.
*******
The next day the school was abuzz with the news. Someone had hacked the popular online service Intercon Online. Every single password from California to Maine, Oregon to Florida had been wiped clean, websites had been redirected randomly or shut down entirely and third of the company's servers were in shambles. Most embarrassingly of all, a bug in the anti- pirating software the company was so proud of was apparently the way the hackers had accessed the system. Emergency measures had been taken to restore the network, but it had yet to become stable. Spike allowed himself a self satisfied smile as he overheard his classmates talking.
"So like, I totally went to go check my email and like I could not get on. So I like called my dad and he's all "Well why don't you try restarting?", so I did. And then like nothing happened so I called up Janie and SHE was like totally kicked offline."
"Yeah. It sucked so badly. I was playing Warcraft and then Boom! My connection dies and I can't log back in."
"My dad was upset with our service anyway so we just switched to a local ISP. I was back online in an hour."
"My mom decided to get this new recipe from the 'Wholesome Family Eating' website, and she gets the Krispy Kreme website. So she tries again and gets this weird porn site and she totally flipped out."
Spike smirked and sat alone on one of the walls outside, eating his lunch quietly. The attack had been planned for months and the result was truly impressive. Spike felt a thrill of power as he surveyed the tables of eating students. Peons, he though. With his hacking success to bolster his morale, his mind turned back to the depressing problem of his annoying family and sports-crazy father. Spike let his gaze wander as he considered the merits of getting a summer job versus taking summer classes.
A tall man wearing a black coat was leaning against a tree watching the students. Spike watched the guy for a moment. He was probably one of the younger teachers' boyfriends or something. Damn, but he had cool threads. The sunglasses were excellent as well. The man turned his head in Spike's direction and Spike quickly looked away, pretending to be fascinated with his book bag. When he looked back up the guy was gone.
"Weird," Spike said to himself. Slightly creeped out, he gathered his stuff and headed back inside.
********* "Bobby, are you sure you don't want to go out?"
"No mom. I have to work to do on the computer. I have homework and have to study for my finals, so I can't go out." Spike yelled to his mother as he climbed up to his room. He rolled his eyes. He still needed to come up with a way to get out of a summer without his computer. A hacker without a computer? The very idea was ludicrous! Spike logged into his computer with a few keystrokes.
A screen flashed up indicating that his mother had attempted to log into his computer again. Spike smirked and changed his passwords just in case, then logged onto the internet. F33r, Syzygy and Griffin were already online.
"Hey man," F33r greeted. "We were just talking about our little success. Seems we caused a bit of a stir."
"Totally," Syzygy agreed, "check this." Syzygy posted a link to a hacker message board discussing the Clan's attack.
"Nice," Spike agreed as he browsed the comments. Already their hacking script was being employed by a hundred or more script-kiddies. IOL had hardened their system somewhat, but they were being slowed down by the traffic. It was beautiful.
"The Legion of 1337 has taken up our clarion call to arms and people who actually matter are impressed," F33r summarized. The 'Legion of 1337' F33r referred to was the numerous wannabe hackers and script kiddies who ran scripts built by other people to cause mayhem.
"Did you read to the bottom of the page yet?" Griffin asked. Spike scrolled down through the responses and saw immediately what his friends were looking at. There was a post from a hacker called Trinity. Spike whistled. Trinity was one of the big dogs. One of the truly Elite. He'd hacked the IRS-d base a few years back and a compliment from him was worth a lot in the hacker community. Not bad for the fat kid, Spike thought.
"So our next target? I vote the Matrix. It's time to tackle it." Syzygy said. The Matrix was an elusive something that the Clan had been keeping tabs on since the Clan has formed. It was something they'd each heard of as single hackers individually and together they hoped to find out what it was. They worked best as a team and the Matrix, whatever it was, was just another thing to be hacked.
"Dude, we still don't even know what it is," Griffin reminded.
"Details," F33r responded but Spike knew Griff had a point. How can you hack something which half the community said didn't exist?
"Morpheus knows," Syzygy typed. "I think he hacked it and that's why everyone's so hot to arrest him."
"Gee, not because he's blown up a few buildings?" F33r asked, sarcasm evident even in the soundless text.
"He's a hacker even if he blows stuff up. His list of cyber crimes is at least twice as long as the one the feds have posted about him blowing shit up," Syzygy replied.
"This is true," F33r conceded.
"So how do we find the world's most wanted terrorist? The guy is a ghost. It'd be easier to find the damned Matrix database or whatever it is," Griffin replied.
"You lost interest in hacking the Matrix?" F33r asked.
"Nope. Not a bit. Just being realistic," Griff replied. Spike mentally shrugged. Griffin, for all his quirky sense of humor and affinity for the odd and unusual, was the pragmatic one of the group.
"Guys," Spike interrupted, "I got a possibly bigger problem. Our summer plans might have to wait. The 'rents decided I need to go to football camp." Spike sent. There was a moment of silence before Griff responded.
"Dude. Are you kidding? A) that sucks, B) we've been planning on doing a major job this summer for months now, C) dude you hate physical activity."
"D) the meat-heads will kill you," Syzygy chimed in.
"Gee, thanks fellas," Spike replied, sure that his own sarcasm would be obvious. "But I need a hand. How can I get out of this? If I don't figure something out in the next three weeks, I will be computer-less for three months."
"Dude, you'll die of withdrawal," F33r said. Spike agreed. Despite their recent success, to Spike the immediate future looked grim and smelled strongly of unwashed gym socks.
****** The next evening Spike logged in having just spoken with his parents. His fingers struck the keys with a little extra force, fueled by anger and annoyance.
"No go, guys. They don't buy the pre-college idea. Too bad. It would have been sweet to have that kind of broadband for the summer." Spike leaned back as his friends offered their condolences and began thinking of other ideas.
Suddenly a fifth color of text appeared on the screen.
"Greetings Clan Lords." The text appeared in purple. Spike was shocked. Who the hell had hacked him Who even knew about the program? Was he the only one being hacked?
"Who are you?" Griffin asked after a moment of silence.
"You all know that that is an unimportant question," the anonymous party typed. "The Matrix has you."
"How can the Matrix have us? It's just another database, right?" F33r typed back.
"The Matrix is everywhere," came back after a moment.
"Who are you? What is it?" Syzygy typed in. Spike watched as no answer came. The Clan waited for a few minutes in silence.
"I think he's gone," Spike typed. "Who do you think that was? They were good, whoever they were."
"Morpheus?" Syzygy suggested.
"Nah. He's too Elite with a capital 'E' to contact us - even if we did just pull off a fricking amazing job," Griffin replied after a moment of thought.
"Neo?" Spike suggested. Rumor was that Neo was making the rounds in much the same way that Morpheus did: hack stuff, blow shit up and post to random hacker forums about something called the Matrix.
"Neo? Shit, man. That'd be something."
"I dunno," Syzygy said, "But now we have to find it. I don't like the idea of some sort of big system out there 'having me' or whatever. We have to find out what the Matrix is. I'm already out of school for the summer, so I'm starting now."
"I don't like secrets. That's why I hack things," F33r admitted. Spike felt the same way.
Spike watched his friends discuss the hacking and mulled over the enigmatic words of the mysterious hacker "The Matrix has you," they had warned. Was it really a database like they had theorized? Or was it something bigger and much frightening? He didn't like the idea of a big controlling system either. He sighed; it felt like he was caught up in a system already. His parents, his school - hell even the government - all seemed to chain him up and keep him from what he wanted. But what did he really want? Spike wasn't sure, but his current life wasn't it.
"It's like he just doesn't exist," typed a tired Griffin after Syzygy and F33r had finally logged off around 5 am local.
"He's good," Spike admitted. "Night, Griff. I'll try the college thing with the 'rents again tomorrow. Who knows, maybe they'll crack."
Spike's parents didn't buy the idea of Spike going to pre-college to learn better programming the next day, or the next. Despite Spike's best efforts, they weren't budging. If anything, they were more convinced that Spike should go to football camp because it "simply wasn't healthy" to be addicted to the computer the way he was. Spike backed off when they again threatened to take it away completely.
Instead, he became obsessed with finding and hacking the Matrix. His friends seemed to sense his urgency and the four began an assault on every known archive or news site, gathering information and rumors, collecting addresses and news articles. Syzygy was particularly driven when it came to information gathering. His need to know drew Spike back into the search when his determination flagged. School ended and Spike now could devote his full time to the 'net and their search for the Matrix. His parents, however, were now even more firmly in favor of Football Camp.
After another night's fruitless searching, Spike sat back, his bulky frame causing his chair to squeak, and rubbed his tired eyes. Sighing he reached over and logged off. But before he could turn off his monitor, the screen blacked out on it's own.
"What the." he said aloud. An old style green terminal cursor began blinking on the screen.
"Hello, Spike," the cursor typed.
"Hello?" Spike tentatively typed back.
"I know that you've been looking for me." The text responded. "They're watching you now, Spike." Spike swallowed. The reply was being typed in real time - he was actually speaking to someone!
"Who's watching me?" Spike asked.
"The System," the nameless person replied. "Time for bed, Spike."
Spike blinked. In that instant his computer returned to normal. He jumped as his mother rapped on his door.
"Bobby! It's 2 am! Go to bed!"
"Just going now, mom," Spike replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. How the hell had he been hacked like that? It was magic. Was his mother's arrival a coincidence with the hacker's words? Was the hacker watching him even as the mysterious 'System' was? How in god's name had he been hacked? He was sure his system was hardened against just about everything. Spike moved his cursor to check on his security programs and realized with a shock that he was already disconnected from the internet.
With a trembling hand, Spike did something he almost never did, and shut down his system.
When Spike logged on the next day, he had exactly one week until he was shuttled off to Football Camp for the entire summer. F33r and Griffin were already online, tracking down a Morpheus sighting from earlier in the year. Spike told his friends about being hacked the night before and each admitted to getting a similar message after they'd logged off.
"Think someone's messing with us?" Griffin asked.
"Messing with us? Dude, this is way beyond messing with us," Spike typed. "We were hacked after we logged off. I checked my system and I can't find out how they maintained a connection to my computer let along hacked into it like that, and for the life of me I can't think of why someone with that kind of talent would bother with us anyway." Spike paused. "Unless the big names were more impressed with our little Op than we thought."
"Somehow, I don't think it was related to Operation Screw'em," Griffin said.
"The Matrix?" F33r suggested after a moment.
"Could be. Speaking of which, we have a week." Spike said. The four bent to their task.
Spike was sure his life would end with the beginning of Football Camp. Either he would die from being pounded by the jocks, or he'd die of computer withdrawal. For now, though, he was determined to make the most of his time online. One thing that worried them as was the fact that Syzygy hadn't appeared online yet. He wasn't on that evening nor the next day either.
"Maybe he got grounded?" Griffin suggested. "Or maybe he's on vacation. No, he would have told us. Maybe he hacked his school and he took some heat and he's sitting in juvenile detention with a bunch of pot heads and gang members. No, wait, he was abducted by a bunch of Feds and now he's sitting in an interrogation room and they're pushing alien truth drugs into his system as they slowly break down his mind!"
"You watch too much of the X-files," F33r told Griffin.
"Either of you know where he is?" Spike asked. "Like, in the real world. He hasn't been online in three days and after the stuff we've been pulling and that message? Dude, it's too creepy to be a coincidence."
"I know Syzygy was supposed to be in Arizona someplace. No clue other than that. I'm in South Carolina," F33r said. "No way for me to check physically."
"I'm in Florida," Griffin said. "Central Cali," Spike admitted. The four had never met in real life, though they'd talked about it a couple of times.
******
Syzygy didn't reappear online again. His friends had tried to track him down in Arizona, but hadn't had any luck.
"We had more luck finding information about what the Matrix than finding a person. What sort of sad hackers are we?" F33r typed.
"We tried man," Griffin said.
"Hopefully He'll be back soon to help you guys. Cya in three weeks," Spike typed, his mood desolate.
"And then there were two," F33r typed out, the last thing Spike saw as he logged off.
Spike shut down his computer for the last time. He considered for a moment then removed the power cord from the strip and the back of the case. He coiled it and stuck it down the front of the deep drawer he kept his school books in. The reason for this was two fold. First, his computer would definitely be protected from any extreme power surges. Second it would deter his parents from casually trying break his passwords. If the computer had no power and they had to search for the cable, they'd be much less likely to try and get in.
Spike's bags were packed and his dad was loading up the car to take his sisters and him to the buses which would take them to their summer camps. His sisters were loudly yelling as they raced one another down the hall. His mother was screaming for them to be quiet and not run in their soccer cleats in the house and would they please not wake up the twins? The twins, of course, awoke a moment later.
Spike pushed out of his chair and left the house. He sat on the large, supposedly decorative, rock in the front yard and watched the street. His father and brother were grunting over the car. They gave the roof rack another tug and then, slapping one another on the back, trudged inside. Spike pointedly ignored them and stared down the road.
A FedEx truck turned down into their street and Bobby watched it make a few stops before coming towards their house. The truck rolled to a stop and the delivery guy got out. Spike walked over to meet him.
"Robert O'Neil?" The guy asked. Spike nodded, signed the clipboard shoved under his nose and took the package. The truck roared away and Spike turned the package over.
He opened it and withdrew a very expensive-looking cell phone. The phone rang and Spike nearly dropped it. He looked at it as it rang again, and then cautiously answered it.
"H-Hello?" he asked.
"Hello Spike," said a calm voice. "Do you know who this is?"
Spike paused a moment, he had no clue. Then he had a thought.
"Syzygy?" He asked. The voice chuckled.
"No. But your friend is safe. You are not. They're coming for you, Spike."
"Who is this?"
"Morpheus."
"You're shitting me man," Spike said. But he didn't really mean it. This was so bizarre it almost had to be real. No one he spoke with in real life knew he was a hacker. No one he knew would send him cell phones in a FedEx package. No one knew he was Spike.
"No, I'm not. Look down your street. Do you see the dark sedan?" Spike squinted down the street. There was an unfamiliar dark car parked in front of the McNally's driveway.
"Is that them?" Spike asked.
"Yes. You can either go to camp and then with them, or you can run through the woods behind your house to the next neighborhood over. The choice is yours."
Spike looked at the car. Low-slung, boxy, and with shaded windows, it was evil in an almost clichéd way. Spike could picture the G men sitting in it. He looked at his house and winced as one of his sisters started to shriek excitedly about camp. He didn't need more than half a second to think about it.
"Straight through the woods?" Spike asked.
"Yes."
"Ok then." Spike casually made his way indoors, through the house and out the back, carefully concealing the phone in his pocket. Everything seemed oddly surreal. Why was he trusting a voice on a cell phone unexpectedly delivered only moments ago? It was sheer lunacy - but he was doing it anyway.
Once outside he began jogging for the woods. He pulled out the phone.
"What happens once I get out through the woods?" Spike asked between heaving breaths as he sped between the trees, praying he wouldn't be seen and hauled back by his brothers or father to the house. Spike wasn't even going to think about what spooks in dark sedans could do to him.
"Go around this house to the street. Hurry. I have to end this call now." The phone went dead in Spike's hand and he shoved it back into his pocket.
It was hot and Spike was not in the best of shape, so it was rough going through the woods. He thought he was going to throw up then pass out by the time he made it through. He sprinted out through someone's backyard and into the street, half collapsing on a mailbox while he caught his breath. Another dark car drove up, stopped by him and opened a back door. Spike looked up and saw the darkly dressed man from nearly a month ago seated in the car's back seat. The man quickly looked into the woods behind Spike and then slid over the seat, making room.
"Get in." Wordlessly, Spike got into the car and slammed the door behind himself. The woman driving stepped on the gas and Spike was thrown against the back seat.
"You're lucky," the man said with a smile. "When I did this I had a gun to my head and I was bugged."
Spiked blinked stupidly at the cryptic statement and completely missed the woman's smirk.
"Where are we going?" Spike asked when he'd caught his breath. He was having some second thoughts. Hadn't they taught him in kindergarten not to get into cars with strangers?
"Morpheus." Neo answered. Spike's gut did a bit of a flip as his mind went into overdrive. This wasn't some strange dream. This was real.
"Ok," Spike said, trying to regain some sense of reality and balance. He felt jittery. Like he'd had too much coffee and was now wired. He had to calm himself. He was going to see the man with answers. Basics first. If this guy was with Morpheus, then maybe he knew what had happened to Syzygy.
"What happened to Syzygy?" Spike asked, proud that his voice wasn't shaking too badly. He could be professional.
"Syzygy is safe. Morpheus can tell you the rest," the man told him kindly.
"What is the Matrix?" Spike blurted, instantly feeling like a little kid. So much for professionalism. Neo and the woman smiled.
"He cuts right to the chase doesn't he?" the woman asked. The man nodded.
"That is something that I am definitely going to let Morpheus answer," the man told him. "Relax, we're almost there." The man sat back in the seat and almost seemed to be enjoying the ride.
"Who are you then?" Spike asked.
"I'm Neo," the man said with a small shrug, as if it wasn't important that he was an up and coming person on the ten-most-wanted terrorist list.
"You're kidding," Spike said. Morpheus and Neo? It was almost too much to believe. Almost.
"Nope, not kidding."
The rest of the short ride passed in silence as Spike wondered what he'd gotten himself into.
"We're here," Neo said as the car slowed.
The car pulled up next to an old abandoned banquet hall at the edge of town. Spike, Neo and the woman got out. Spike did a double take. The woman looked like she had walked directly out of an anime. She was dressed from head to toe in black leather and wore an impressive looking gun in each of two thigh holsters. Her eyes were shielded by an expensive looking pair of sunglasses and her jet hair was slicked back and stylish. All the black set off her perfect ivory skin. God, was he drooling?
"Who are you?" Spike asked in a small voice. Neo chuckled and the woman's lips twitched upwards slightly.
"I'm Trinity," she said simply and held the door open. Spike blinked.
"Trinity? The Trinity?" he asked, eyes widening. For some reason this made Neo laugh harder. The older man pushed Spike along towards the doors.
"Yes," Trinity answered.
"I- I thought you were a guy!" Spike protested.
"Yeah, she gets that a lot," Neo patted Spike on the shoulder and, smirking, walked through the set of double doors leaving Spike with the leather clad warrior-woman. Spike and Trinity followed him into the building and walked in silence down a small hallway after Neo. Spike watched, impressed, as Neo's unusual but oh-so-cool coat billowed out behind him like a cape. Damn, it was awesome. Neo stopped at a set of dilapidated-looking doors, shared a look with Trinity, then pushed his way inside. Trinity stopped Spike before the doors.
"Spike, be honest. With him, with yourself," Trinity instructed. Spike nodded dumbly. Hell, he'd do anything she asked. Trinity indicated the door. Spike took the hint and walked into the dusty room. A tall black man stood next to a shabby red leather chair. His clothing was even more impressive than the outfit Neo wore - Trinity was in a class entirely her own. The alligator leather duster was awesome, the suit underneath clean cut and impressive. The coolest part of all were the mirrored sunglasses with no ear pieces. How totally cool was that? Spike felt underdressed in his beat up, baggy jean shorts and t-shirt.
"Spike," The dark man greeted, stepping forward a few steps and offering his hand.
"Morpheus?" Spike asked as he shook the man's hand. Morpheus nodded. Trinity exited through another set of doors, distracting Spike from the infamous terrorist/hacker. Spike couldn't help but watch Trinity step from the room. Damn, but she had a nice ass, he secretly thought.
"Please have a seat," Morpheus said.
Spike jolted out of his reverie and sat down in the huge chair; the leather squeaked and crunched as the chair took his weight. The forgotten phone in his pocket dug into his side uncomfortably and he wondered if he should give it back. Morpheus sat across from him and relaxed into the chair.
"Do you know why you are here?" Morpheus asked.
"Someone was trying to get me, because I asked what the Matrix was - because I went searching for it." Spike replied.
Morpheus nodded, "And what did you find?"
"The Matrix is out there. I still have no idea what it is, but it has me, and I don't like that." Spike answered honestly, following Trinity's advice. "I don't like the idea of being controlled by something I don't even know exists."
"The Matrix is control, you are quite correct. It's something you cannot see or feel or even taste. Like the air around you, the Matrix is all around you. Though you cannot feel it, it is always there. And because of that, I cannot tell you what it is." Morpheus paused for a moment.
"However, I can show you. But if I do, you cannot go back to the way things were; I cannot undo that knowledge. " Morpheus opened a small case and withdrew the contents. He held out a hand. Inside his palm was a shiny blue pill. It glittered in the overhead light.
"You take the blue pill, and you wake up at summer camp and believe whatever you want to believe. You'll be safe and sound and you will not have to worry about us contacting you again nor the agents of the system trying to get you."
"Agents of the system? That's who was coming for me, wasn't it? Did they come for Syzygy?"
"They did. However, they did not get your friend," Morpheus assured the young hacker. Spike relaxed a bit. Even if Syz hadn't come online, he was safe someplace. Morpheus opened his other hand, revealing a similar red pill that glinted under the electronic light.
"If you take the red pill, I show you the truth of the Matrix." Morpheus intoned. "I offer nothing more and nothing less. But I will tell you this, though it might set you free, the truth is hard. Once you learn the truth, you can never go back." The dark man's words sent a slight shiver up Spike's spine, fear and excitement creating a heady mixture.
"Never go back? As in never go back home?" Spike asked. The dark man nodded grimly.
Spike looked at the pills and weighted the pros and cons of taking each. Were they drugs? Should he really trust this guy? The news sites said he was a terrorist as well as a hacker. Was he being recruited? His parents were severely annoying, but they were his parents and he supposed he did love them.
But he'd been hacked so effortlessly! Maybe they'd teach him how to do that. The thought of never going back home was sort of unsettling. But the thought of the truth, the real truth, was thrilling. This was big, Spike could feel it. The situation was supremely surreal yet it resonated with rightness in a way that few other things in his life ever had.
"Did Syzygy take the Red pill? Did you offer it to him?" Spike asked. He decided he would feel much better if his friend had taken the pill as well.
"This is a decision you must make on your own," Morpheus told him, giving no indication of how his friend had decided or even if his friend had been given the choice.
"What are they? What's in them?" Spike asked. He was intrigued, but he wasn't going to take anything until he knew what it was. Spike looked up, waiting for an answer. Morpheus smiled slightly.
"They are both programs," he said simply.
"Programs?" Spike asked. Morpheus nodded, grin broadening slightly.
Mind reeling slightly, Spike nodded at looked at the glittering pills again. Blue would leave him safely in his own life. But Red. Red was the wonderfully dangerous prospect of a new life. It was frightening. It was thrilling.
It was real
Spike breathing deeply, took the red pill from Morpheus. A glass filled with water was on a table next to him. Spike took another calming breath and swallowed the pill, washing it down with the cool water.
"Come with me," Morpheus stood and Spike followed him through the door which Trinity had exited through. A weird looking chair had been set up to one side. Trinity was busily typing away at an equally bizarre computer setup. Neo patted Spike on the shoulder reassuringly and guided him to the chair.
"This is going to be a lot weird," Neo told him with a slight smile and began attaching electrodes to Spike's head and chest.
"a lot weird?" Spike gulped.
"Weird," Neo confirmed. "But don't worry."
"Right. Don't worry, he says," Spike muttered and was gratified to hear Trinity chuckle as she typed away. He watched her type, trying to read the code on the screen. The temperature was dropping in the room and he felt sort of fuzzy. The letters and numbers soon started floating out of the screen and around the room.
"Whoa, Trippy," Spike said. He reached out to touch a floating letter. The letter attached to his hand and began sliding up his arm. "Whoa!" Spike jumped back in his seat and tried to wipe the letter off.
"It's ok," Neo said, "its all part of the process."
"The trace program is just about done. We have a lock." Trinity said.
"Operator?" Morpehus asked on his cell. Spike wondered why Morpheus was talking to an operator when he was clearly dying in this chair. The trippy stuff was cold. So damn cold. And suddenly everything went black.
Spike opened his eyes. Everything was a fleshy pink color. Shocked, he thrashed around, and began choking on whatever the hell it was that was shoved down his throat. He couldn't breathe and he thrashed more. His hands broke through the slimy whatever he was immersed in. He sat up, then scrambled to pull the thing he was choking on away from his mouth. Sputtering and coughing he withdrew a long black tube and tossed it to the side. Wiping his eyes, he took stock of the situation.
He was naked and freezing in a pod filled with pink.something. He was covered in wires and tubes and the back of his head felt heavy. All around him were other pods with what appeared to be bodies in them. Directly above him was another line of pods. He looked over the side of the tank and saw he was impossibly high up on a tower studded with the body pod things. Great arcs of electricity jumped between the towers Spike winced at the sharp sound and bright light. The world looked like something out of an HR.R. Geiger art book; bio-mechanical and alien. Spike's stomach heaved but there was nothing for him to throw up.
Something from a nightmarish science fiction movie arrived. The floating robot grabbed Spike by the neck. He heard a whirring behind him and felt something being withdrawn from his head with the rasp of metal on metal. Spike was released and he flopped into the pink sludge again. When he sat up again the robot was gone.
Suddenly the tubes started to painfully pop free with little hisses, the force unseating him in the slippery pod. The back of the pod opened and he was flushed out down a rough metal pipe. Spike tried to scream but found he could only manage a harsh wheeze. Then he was free-falling: arms flailing, legs kicking, the world in slow motion. Then, just as suddenly as he had become airborne, he hit icy water. Spike struggled to swim but the current was strong and he was strangely weak.
Just as he was sure he was about to die, Spike was grabbed and then lifted out of the disgusting water towards a light. Dazedly he wondered what could possibly present itself next in this nightmarish reality; aliens, perhaps?
Firm hands grabbed him and removed the cold metal claw from around his body. Voices murmured comforting sounds as Spike emptied his stomach of the nasty water. He was picked up in warm towels and placed on a metal table, more warm towels wrapping him tightly in place like a baby. Spike didn't think he'd felt more secure in his life and relaxed slightly. Why the hell was he so tired and what was going on? Spike squinted in the too-bright light, trying to make sense of the world.
"Spike?" A familiar voice asked. Neo?
"What the hell happened?" Spike asked, turning his head in the general direction Neo's voice had come from. He was distantly surprised by how rough his voice was and by how much the words seemed to vibrate in his throat.
"You're free now, Spike," Neo told him. Free? "You're out of the matrix," Neo clarified.
"So.where am I?" Spike asked, fighting to stay awake.
"Welcome," Spike turned to see Morpheus loom into view, "To the real world."
And the real world faded into a cozy blackness.
Unplugged Chapter 1
Spike grinned as he watched the status bar speed across his screen. The bar showed 100% infection before his program switched over to the next file. Spike's slightly pudgy fingers flew across the keyboard as he brought up his instant message program and contacted his partners in mayhem and mischief.
"Three more files, guys." He paused and watched as his little masterpiece completed its task. The vulnerability in the new system was a recent find and Spike was sure he'd made a working exploit script. Fame in the hacking community was given to those who found a bug to exploit or made a script to exploit one. Here, his team had followed an inside tip and figured out an exploit for what turned out to be a pretty big bug. "Got it. Go!" Spike sat back in his chair and waited as Syzygy began hacking the internal system through the back door he'd just opened wide. F33r was set to upload their little package and download the information they wanted, while Griffin was waiting for the signal to patch it all up.
Alone, they were pretty decent hackers. Together? Together they were the Legendary Lords of the Clan of the Masters of the Fists of Screaming Monkey Chaos. "Tremble before our might, ye mortals," Spike smirked at his screen as Griffin signaled that he'd already begun their cover up operation. This would be their biggest hack yet; something which would move their little clan up from the relative minors and into the major league. They would be Elite.
He watched his comrades' type quick messages to one another in the homemade chat program they'd created: F33r typing in what he called 'Sith' red, Syzygy in 'night elf' blue, Griffin in 'mountain dew' yellow and himself in what he referred to as 'radioactive' green'.
"Operation Screw'em is complete. Nice work guys." Griffin said as he completed his part of the op.
"Think it will take 'em long to figure out just how screwed they are?" Syzygy asked.
"Ha! They won't know what hit'em," Spike replied with a grin. Intercom Corp. was going down. The virus in the system they'd placed would be operational exactly three hours after the start of the business day. Meanwhile, the bugs they'd placed in the system would send DoS signals once every hour for four hours afterwards before destroying themselves - and simultaneously taking out part of any server they happened to be on. Spike and the Clan Lords could sit back and have a good laugh while the fucking CEOs shit their pants in panic and watched their profit margin take a bit of a tumble.
Served the bastards right, as far as Spike was concerned. Intercon spoon fed the internet to its customers, driving their IQs down a few points whenever they were presented with something remotely technical. The IOL system was home to millions of mindless newbies and hacker wannabes. They were a plague on the internet. Recently the company had decided to take the RIAA seriously and join the fight on free file sharing. That combined with their crap proprietary software had made the company a prime target for members of the hacking community. But as noble as their cause was, the Clan Lords really just wanted to see if they could do it. Changing grades was one thing, crashing the computer system of a small business was another, but bringing down something as huge as Intercom Corp online? That was the stuff that legends were made of. Ambitious? Sure. Crazy? Maybe. But the satisfaction would be sweet.
"Aww shit," F33r said. "The 'rents are home. Gotta go do the dinner thing."
"Cya then," Syzygy replied as F33r's status flicked to 'away'.
"Bobby! Bobby! Dinner!" Spike groaned and began typing quickly.
"The old lady is calling me to dinner too. I'll be back in a few," Spike said and quickly locked his computer. He was rising from his chair when someone began pounding on his door.
"Dinner!" his oldest brother yelled as he gave the door one last good smack. Spike sighed and pushed open the door of his small room, wincing in the light.
"Curse you Day Star!" he muttered at the setting sun.
Pale and slightly overweight, Robert ('Bobby' - God how he hated that nickname) O'Neil was a 16 year old student by day and hacker by night. His parents called him Bobby, but he called himself Spike after the kickass character in Cowboy Bebop, his favorite anime. He was co-founder of the Clan Lords (though Griffin had thought up the impossibly long name) and enjoyed some small renown in the hacker community. Spike had found both F33r and Syzygy and convinced them to join forces. There were a few clan members they called on for bigger jobs and with whom they chatted and, occasionally, gamed, but the four were the Clan's Lords and the IOL job had been theirs alone.
Spike trudged down the hall and took his place at the dinner table. His mother was busy serving plates to his three sisters and two brothers. His father looked over the paper at his middle son.
"Bobby! You ready for football camp?" his father asked gruffly. Bobby hid a sigh. Sighing would only make his father annoyed.
"No. You sure I can't go do a computer camp this summer?" Bobby asked. His father's lips thinned and Bobby knew he was no closer to getting his dad to back down than he had been since the subject had first been brought up.
"Now Bobby, we talked about this," his mother said as she began feeding bite sized pieces of chicken to the twins in their highchairs. "It's not right for a boy to be cooped up in a dark room, looking at a screen all day. Some time outside will do you a world of good. And don't you want to be on the football team like your older brother?" She smiled dotingly at his eldest brother. Jim was shoveling food so fast Spike was sure he was going to choke. "Besides, your sisters are going to Soccer camp."
What his sisters going to soccer camp had to do with him spending his entire summer running around like a damn fool with a bunch of unwashed guys who together probably had the same IQ he had, Spike didn't know. But he wasn't going ask either. The last time he'd asked, his father had started to go a bit red around the neck and his mother had actually cried. But the worst part had been the threat to remove his computer: only the argument that he needed it to do class work had saved him.
"And a bit of fresh air would do you good," his mother concluded. His father grunted an agreement. 'A bit of fresh air' was his mother's way of telling him he was fat.
Spike sighed and wondered how the hell he'd been born into this family. They were nice enough, Spike supposed. But they didn't understand him at all. They were totally unsupportive of his interest in computers - not that they were entirely supportive of his activities other than computers either.
His parents didn't understand what computers were to him. As soon as he'd gotten online and discovered the world literally at his fingertips, Bobby had been hooked. Here were people who didn't give a shit what race, religion or belt size you were. Here his mind was as fast as or faster than anyone else's. Online he could ask questions and find answers, something he hadn't had much success with in real life. Then Bobby had discovered hacking and hadn't looked back.
The internet community was alive in a way the 'real world' wasn't. Here, he was accepted. Here he was free to explore as he chose and no one was his master. Not his teachers, not his schoolmates, not his parents and not even his government (though they tried).
Spike speared a carrot and began plotting. School ended in three weeks and then he was off to death camp, unless he did something about it.
*******
The next day the school was abuzz with the news. Someone had hacked the popular online service Intercon Online. Every single password from California to Maine, Oregon to Florida had been wiped clean, websites had been redirected randomly or shut down entirely and third of the company's servers were in shambles. Most embarrassingly of all, a bug in the anti- pirating software the company was so proud of was apparently the way the hackers had accessed the system. Emergency measures had been taken to restore the network, but it had yet to become stable. Spike allowed himself a self satisfied smile as he overheard his classmates talking.
"So like, I totally went to go check my email and like I could not get on. So I like called my dad and he's all "Well why don't you try restarting?", so I did. And then like nothing happened so I called up Janie and SHE was like totally kicked offline."
"Yeah. It sucked so badly. I was playing Warcraft and then Boom! My connection dies and I can't log back in."
"My dad was upset with our service anyway so we just switched to a local ISP. I was back online in an hour."
"My mom decided to get this new recipe from the 'Wholesome Family Eating' website, and she gets the Krispy Kreme website. So she tries again and gets this weird porn site and she totally flipped out."
Spike smirked and sat alone on one of the walls outside, eating his lunch quietly. The attack had been planned for months and the result was truly impressive. Spike felt a thrill of power as he surveyed the tables of eating students. Peons, he though. With his hacking success to bolster his morale, his mind turned back to the depressing problem of his annoying family and sports-crazy father. Spike let his gaze wander as he considered the merits of getting a summer job versus taking summer classes.
A tall man wearing a black coat was leaning against a tree watching the students. Spike watched the guy for a moment. He was probably one of the younger teachers' boyfriends or something. Damn, but he had cool threads. The sunglasses were excellent as well. The man turned his head in Spike's direction and Spike quickly looked away, pretending to be fascinated with his book bag. When he looked back up the guy was gone.
"Weird," Spike said to himself. Slightly creeped out, he gathered his stuff and headed back inside.
********* "Bobby, are you sure you don't want to go out?"
"No mom. I have to work to do on the computer. I have homework and have to study for my finals, so I can't go out." Spike yelled to his mother as he climbed up to his room. He rolled his eyes. He still needed to come up with a way to get out of a summer without his computer. A hacker without a computer? The very idea was ludicrous! Spike logged into his computer with a few keystrokes.
A screen flashed up indicating that his mother had attempted to log into his computer again. Spike smirked and changed his passwords just in case, then logged onto the internet. F33r, Syzygy and Griffin were already online.
"Hey man," F33r greeted. "We were just talking about our little success. Seems we caused a bit of a stir."
"Totally," Syzygy agreed, "check this." Syzygy posted a link to a hacker message board discussing the Clan's attack.
"Nice," Spike agreed as he browsed the comments. Already their hacking script was being employed by a hundred or more script-kiddies. IOL had hardened their system somewhat, but they were being slowed down by the traffic. It was beautiful.
"The Legion of 1337 has taken up our clarion call to arms and people who actually matter are impressed," F33r summarized. The 'Legion of 1337' F33r referred to was the numerous wannabe hackers and script kiddies who ran scripts built by other people to cause mayhem.
"Did you read to the bottom of the page yet?" Griffin asked. Spike scrolled down through the responses and saw immediately what his friends were looking at. There was a post from a hacker called Trinity. Spike whistled. Trinity was one of the big dogs. One of the truly Elite. He'd hacked the IRS-d base a few years back and a compliment from him was worth a lot in the hacker community. Not bad for the fat kid, Spike thought.
"So our next target? I vote the Matrix. It's time to tackle it." Syzygy said. The Matrix was an elusive something that the Clan had been keeping tabs on since the Clan has formed. It was something they'd each heard of as single hackers individually and together they hoped to find out what it was. They worked best as a team and the Matrix, whatever it was, was just another thing to be hacked.
"Dude, we still don't even know what it is," Griffin reminded.
"Details," F33r responded but Spike knew Griff had a point. How can you hack something which half the community said didn't exist?
"Morpheus knows," Syzygy typed. "I think he hacked it and that's why everyone's so hot to arrest him."
"Gee, not because he's blown up a few buildings?" F33r asked, sarcasm evident even in the soundless text.
"He's a hacker even if he blows stuff up. His list of cyber crimes is at least twice as long as the one the feds have posted about him blowing shit up," Syzygy replied.
"This is true," F33r conceded.
"So how do we find the world's most wanted terrorist? The guy is a ghost. It'd be easier to find the damned Matrix database or whatever it is," Griffin replied.
"You lost interest in hacking the Matrix?" F33r asked.
"Nope. Not a bit. Just being realistic," Griff replied. Spike mentally shrugged. Griffin, for all his quirky sense of humor and affinity for the odd and unusual, was the pragmatic one of the group.
"Guys," Spike interrupted, "I got a possibly bigger problem. Our summer plans might have to wait. The 'rents decided I need to go to football camp." Spike sent. There was a moment of silence before Griff responded.
"Dude. Are you kidding? A) that sucks, B) we've been planning on doing a major job this summer for months now, C) dude you hate physical activity."
"D) the meat-heads will kill you," Syzygy chimed in.
"Gee, thanks fellas," Spike replied, sure that his own sarcasm would be obvious. "But I need a hand. How can I get out of this? If I don't figure something out in the next three weeks, I will be computer-less for three months."
"Dude, you'll die of withdrawal," F33r said. Spike agreed. Despite their recent success, to Spike the immediate future looked grim and smelled strongly of unwashed gym socks.
****** The next evening Spike logged in having just spoken with his parents. His fingers struck the keys with a little extra force, fueled by anger and annoyance.
"No go, guys. They don't buy the pre-college idea. Too bad. It would have been sweet to have that kind of broadband for the summer." Spike leaned back as his friends offered their condolences and began thinking of other ideas.
Suddenly a fifth color of text appeared on the screen.
"Greetings Clan Lords." The text appeared in purple. Spike was shocked. Who the hell had hacked him Who even knew about the program? Was he the only one being hacked?
"Who are you?" Griffin asked after a moment of silence.
"You all know that that is an unimportant question," the anonymous party typed. "The Matrix has you."
"How can the Matrix have us? It's just another database, right?" F33r typed back.
"The Matrix is everywhere," came back after a moment.
"Who are you? What is it?" Syzygy typed in. Spike watched as no answer came. The Clan waited for a few minutes in silence.
"I think he's gone," Spike typed. "Who do you think that was? They were good, whoever they were."
"Morpheus?" Syzygy suggested.
"Nah. He's too Elite with a capital 'E' to contact us - even if we did just pull off a fricking amazing job," Griffin replied after a moment of thought.
"Neo?" Spike suggested. Rumor was that Neo was making the rounds in much the same way that Morpheus did: hack stuff, blow shit up and post to random hacker forums about something called the Matrix.
"Neo? Shit, man. That'd be something."
"I dunno," Syzygy said, "But now we have to find it. I don't like the idea of some sort of big system out there 'having me' or whatever. We have to find out what the Matrix is. I'm already out of school for the summer, so I'm starting now."
"I don't like secrets. That's why I hack things," F33r admitted. Spike felt the same way.
Spike watched his friends discuss the hacking and mulled over the enigmatic words of the mysterious hacker "The Matrix has you," they had warned. Was it really a database like they had theorized? Or was it something bigger and much frightening? He didn't like the idea of a big controlling system either. He sighed; it felt like he was caught up in a system already. His parents, his school - hell even the government - all seemed to chain him up and keep him from what he wanted. But what did he really want? Spike wasn't sure, but his current life wasn't it.
"It's like he just doesn't exist," typed a tired Griffin after Syzygy and F33r had finally logged off around 5 am local.
"He's good," Spike admitted. "Night, Griff. I'll try the college thing with the 'rents again tomorrow. Who knows, maybe they'll crack."
Spike's parents didn't buy the idea of Spike going to pre-college to learn better programming the next day, or the next. Despite Spike's best efforts, they weren't budging. If anything, they were more convinced that Spike should go to football camp because it "simply wasn't healthy" to be addicted to the computer the way he was. Spike backed off when they again threatened to take it away completely.
Instead, he became obsessed with finding and hacking the Matrix. His friends seemed to sense his urgency and the four began an assault on every known archive or news site, gathering information and rumors, collecting addresses and news articles. Syzygy was particularly driven when it came to information gathering. His need to know drew Spike back into the search when his determination flagged. School ended and Spike now could devote his full time to the 'net and their search for the Matrix. His parents, however, were now even more firmly in favor of Football Camp.
After another night's fruitless searching, Spike sat back, his bulky frame causing his chair to squeak, and rubbed his tired eyes. Sighing he reached over and logged off. But before he could turn off his monitor, the screen blacked out on it's own.
"What the." he said aloud. An old style green terminal cursor began blinking on the screen.
"Hello, Spike," the cursor typed.
"Hello?" Spike tentatively typed back.
"I know that you've been looking for me." The text responded. "They're watching you now, Spike." Spike swallowed. The reply was being typed in real time - he was actually speaking to someone!
"Who's watching me?" Spike asked.
"The System," the nameless person replied. "Time for bed, Spike."
Spike blinked. In that instant his computer returned to normal. He jumped as his mother rapped on his door.
"Bobby! It's 2 am! Go to bed!"
"Just going now, mom," Spike replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. How the hell had he been hacked like that? It was magic. Was his mother's arrival a coincidence with the hacker's words? Was the hacker watching him even as the mysterious 'System' was? How in god's name had he been hacked? He was sure his system was hardened against just about everything. Spike moved his cursor to check on his security programs and realized with a shock that he was already disconnected from the internet.
With a trembling hand, Spike did something he almost never did, and shut down his system.
When Spike logged on the next day, he had exactly one week until he was shuttled off to Football Camp for the entire summer. F33r and Griffin were already online, tracking down a Morpheus sighting from earlier in the year. Spike told his friends about being hacked the night before and each admitted to getting a similar message after they'd logged off.
"Think someone's messing with us?" Griffin asked.
"Messing with us? Dude, this is way beyond messing with us," Spike typed. "We were hacked after we logged off. I checked my system and I can't find out how they maintained a connection to my computer let along hacked into it like that, and for the life of me I can't think of why someone with that kind of talent would bother with us anyway." Spike paused. "Unless the big names were more impressed with our little Op than we thought."
"Somehow, I don't think it was related to Operation Screw'em," Griffin said.
"The Matrix?" F33r suggested after a moment.
"Could be. Speaking of which, we have a week." Spike said. The four bent to their task.
Spike was sure his life would end with the beginning of Football Camp. Either he would die from being pounded by the jocks, or he'd die of computer withdrawal. For now, though, he was determined to make the most of his time online. One thing that worried them as was the fact that Syzygy hadn't appeared online yet. He wasn't on that evening nor the next day either.
"Maybe he got grounded?" Griffin suggested. "Or maybe he's on vacation. No, he would have told us. Maybe he hacked his school and he took some heat and he's sitting in juvenile detention with a bunch of pot heads and gang members. No, wait, he was abducted by a bunch of Feds and now he's sitting in an interrogation room and they're pushing alien truth drugs into his system as they slowly break down his mind!"
"You watch too much of the X-files," F33r told Griffin.
"Either of you know where he is?" Spike asked. "Like, in the real world. He hasn't been online in three days and after the stuff we've been pulling and that message? Dude, it's too creepy to be a coincidence."
"I know Syzygy was supposed to be in Arizona someplace. No clue other than that. I'm in South Carolina," F33r said. "No way for me to check physically."
"I'm in Florida," Griffin said. "Central Cali," Spike admitted. The four had never met in real life, though they'd talked about it a couple of times.
******
Syzygy didn't reappear online again. His friends had tried to track him down in Arizona, but hadn't had any luck.
"We had more luck finding information about what the Matrix than finding a person. What sort of sad hackers are we?" F33r typed.
"We tried man," Griffin said.
"Hopefully He'll be back soon to help you guys. Cya in three weeks," Spike typed, his mood desolate.
"And then there were two," F33r typed out, the last thing Spike saw as he logged off.
Spike shut down his computer for the last time. He considered for a moment then removed the power cord from the strip and the back of the case. He coiled it and stuck it down the front of the deep drawer he kept his school books in. The reason for this was two fold. First, his computer would definitely be protected from any extreme power surges. Second it would deter his parents from casually trying break his passwords. If the computer had no power and they had to search for the cable, they'd be much less likely to try and get in.
Spike's bags were packed and his dad was loading up the car to take his sisters and him to the buses which would take them to their summer camps. His sisters were loudly yelling as they raced one another down the hall. His mother was screaming for them to be quiet and not run in their soccer cleats in the house and would they please not wake up the twins? The twins, of course, awoke a moment later.
Spike pushed out of his chair and left the house. He sat on the large, supposedly decorative, rock in the front yard and watched the street. His father and brother were grunting over the car. They gave the roof rack another tug and then, slapping one another on the back, trudged inside. Spike pointedly ignored them and stared down the road.
A FedEx truck turned down into their street and Bobby watched it make a few stops before coming towards their house. The truck rolled to a stop and the delivery guy got out. Spike walked over to meet him.
"Robert O'Neil?" The guy asked. Spike nodded, signed the clipboard shoved under his nose and took the package. The truck roared away and Spike turned the package over.
He opened it and withdrew a very expensive-looking cell phone. The phone rang and Spike nearly dropped it. He looked at it as it rang again, and then cautiously answered it.
"H-Hello?" he asked.
"Hello Spike," said a calm voice. "Do you know who this is?"
Spike paused a moment, he had no clue. Then he had a thought.
"Syzygy?" He asked. The voice chuckled.
"No. But your friend is safe. You are not. They're coming for you, Spike."
"Who is this?"
"Morpheus."
"You're shitting me man," Spike said. But he didn't really mean it. This was so bizarre it almost had to be real. No one he spoke with in real life knew he was a hacker. No one he knew would send him cell phones in a FedEx package. No one knew he was Spike.
"No, I'm not. Look down your street. Do you see the dark sedan?" Spike squinted down the street. There was an unfamiliar dark car parked in front of the McNally's driveway.
"Is that them?" Spike asked.
"Yes. You can either go to camp and then with them, or you can run through the woods behind your house to the next neighborhood over. The choice is yours."
Spike looked at the car. Low-slung, boxy, and with shaded windows, it was evil in an almost clichéd way. Spike could picture the G men sitting in it. He looked at his house and winced as one of his sisters started to shriek excitedly about camp. He didn't need more than half a second to think about it.
"Straight through the woods?" Spike asked.
"Yes."
"Ok then." Spike casually made his way indoors, through the house and out the back, carefully concealing the phone in his pocket. Everything seemed oddly surreal. Why was he trusting a voice on a cell phone unexpectedly delivered only moments ago? It was sheer lunacy - but he was doing it anyway.
Once outside he began jogging for the woods. He pulled out the phone.
"What happens once I get out through the woods?" Spike asked between heaving breaths as he sped between the trees, praying he wouldn't be seen and hauled back by his brothers or father to the house. Spike wasn't even going to think about what spooks in dark sedans could do to him.
"Go around this house to the street. Hurry. I have to end this call now." The phone went dead in Spike's hand and he shoved it back into his pocket.
It was hot and Spike was not in the best of shape, so it was rough going through the woods. He thought he was going to throw up then pass out by the time he made it through. He sprinted out through someone's backyard and into the street, half collapsing on a mailbox while he caught his breath. Another dark car drove up, stopped by him and opened a back door. Spike looked up and saw the darkly dressed man from nearly a month ago seated in the car's back seat. The man quickly looked into the woods behind Spike and then slid over the seat, making room.
"Get in." Wordlessly, Spike got into the car and slammed the door behind himself. The woman driving stepped on the gas and Spike was thrown against the back seat.
"You're lucky," the man said with a smile. "When I did this I had a gun to my head and I was bugged."
Spiked blinked stupidly at the cryptic statement and completely missed the woman's smirk.
"Where are we going?" Spike asked when he'd caught his breath. He was having some second thoughts. Hadn't they taught him in kindergarten not to get into cars with strangers?
"Morpheus." Neo answered. Spike's gut did a bit of a flip as his mind went into overdrive. This wasn't some strange dream. This was real.
"Ok," Spike said, trying to regain some sense of reality and balance. He felt jittery. Like he'd had too much coffee and was now wired. He had to calm himself. He was going to see the man with answers. Basics first. If this guy was with Morpheus, then maybe he knew what had happened to Syzygy.
"What happened to Syzygy?" Spike asked, proud that his voice wasn't shaking too badly. He could be professional.
"Syzygy is safe. Morpheus can tell you the rest," the man told him kindly.
"What is the Matrix?" Spike blurted, instantly feeling like a little kid. So much for professionalism. Neo and the woman smiled.
"He cuts right to the chase doesn't he?" the woman asked. The man nodded.
"That is something that I am definitely going to let Morpheus answer," the man told him. "Relax, we're almost there." The man sat back in the seat and almost seemed to be enjoying the ride.
"Who are you then?" Spike asked.
"I'm Neo," the man said with a small shrug, as if it wasn't important that he was an up and coming person on the ten-most-wanted terrorist list.
"You're kidding," Spike said. Morpheus and Neo? It was almost too much to believe. Almost.
"Nope, not kidding."
The rest of the short ride passed in silence as Spike wondered what he'd gotten himself into.
"We're here," Neo said as the car slowed.
The car pulled up next to an old abandoned banquet hall at the edge of town. Spike, Neo and the woman got out. Spike did a double take. The woman looked like she had walked directly out of an anime. She was dressed from head to toe in black leather and wore an impressive looking gun in each of two thigh holsters. Her eyes were shielded by an expensive looking pair of sunglasses and her jet hair was slicked back and stylish. All the black set off her perfect ivory skin. God, was he drooling?
"Who are you?" Spike asked in a small voice. Neo chuckled and the woman's lips twitched upwards slightly.
"I'm Trinity," she said simply and held the door open. Spike blinked.
"Trinity? The Trinity?" he asked, eyes widening. For some reason this made Neo laugh harder. The older man pushed Spike along towards the doors.
"Yes," Trinity answered.
"I- I thought you were a guy!" Spike protested.
"Yeah, she gets that a lot," Neo patted Spike on the shoulder and, smirking, walked through the set of double doors leaving Spike with the leather clad warrior-woman. Spike and Trinity followed him into the building and walked in silence down a small hallway after Neo. Spike watched, impressed, as Neo's unusual but oh-so-cool coat billowed out behind him like a cape. Damn, it was awesome. Neo stopped at a set of dilapidated-looking doors, shared a look with Trinity, then pushed his way inside. Trinity stopped Spike before the doors.
"Spike, be honest. With him, with yourself," Trinity instructed. Spike nodded dumbly. Hell, he'd do anything she asked. Trinity indicated the door. Spike took the hint and walked into the dusty room. A tall black man stood next to a shabby red leather chair. His clothing was even more impressive than the outfit Neo wore - Trinity was in a class entirely her own. The alligator leather duster was awesome, the suit underneath clean cut and impressive. The coolest part of all were the mirrored sunglasses with no ear pieces. How totally cool was that? Spike felt underdressed in his beat up, baggy jean shorts and t-shirt.
"Spike," The dark man greeted, stepping forward a few steps and offering his hand.
"Morpheus?" Spike asked as he shook the man's hand. Morpheus nodded. Trinity exited through another set of doors, distracting Spike from the infamous terrorist/hacker. Spike couldn't help but watch Trinity step from the room. Damn, but she had a nice ass, he secretly thought.
"Please have a seat," Morpheus said.
Spike jolted out of his reverie and sat down in the huge chair; the leather squeaked and crunched as the chair took his weight. The forgotten phone in his pocket dug into his side uncomfortably and he wondered if he should give it back. Morpheus sat across from him and relaxed into the chair.
"Do you know why you are here?" Morpheus asked.
"Someone was trying to get me, because I asked what the Matrix was - because I went searching for it." Spike replied.
Morpheus nodded, "And what did you find?"
"The Matrix is out there. I still have no idea what it is, but it has me, and I don't like that." Spike answered honestly, following Trinity's advice. "I don't like the idea of being controlled by something I don't even know exists."
"The Matrix is control, you are quite correct. It's something you cannot see or feel or even taste. Like the air around you, the Matrix is all around you. Though you cannot feel it, it is always there. And because of that, I cannot tell you what it is." Morpheus paused for a moment.
"However, I can show you. But if I do, you cannot go back to the way things were; I cannot undo that knowledge. " Morpheus opened a small case and withdrew the contents. He held out a hand. Inside his palm was a shiny blue pill. It glittered in the overhead light.
"You take the blue pill, and you wake up at summer camp and believe whatever you want to believe. You'll be safe and sound and you will not have to worry about us contacting you again nor the agents of the system trying to get you."
"Agents of the system? That's who was coming for me, wasn't it? Did they come for Syzygy?"
"They did. However, they did not get your friend," Morpheus assured the young hacker. Spike relaxed a bit. Even if Syz hadn't come online, he was safe someplace. Morpheus opened his other hand, revealing a similar red pill that glinted under the electronic light.
"If you take the red pill, I show you the truth of the Matrix." Morpheus intoned. "I offer nothing more and nothing less. But I will tell you this, though it might set you free, the truth is hard. Once you learn the truth, you can never go back." The dark man's words sent a slight shiver up Spike's spine, fear and excitement creating a heady mixture.
"Never go back? As in never go back home?" Spike asked. The dark man nodded grimly.
Spike looked at the pills and weighted the pros and cons of taking each. Were they drugs? Should he really trust this guy? The news sites said he was a terrorist as well as a hacker. Was he being recruited? His parents were severely annoying, but they were his parents and he supposed he did love them.
But he'd been hacked so effortlessly! Maybe they'd teach him how to do that. The thought of never going back home was sort of unsettling. But the thought of the truth, the real truth, was thrilling. This was big, Spike could feel it. The situation was supremely surreal yet it resonated with rightness in a way that few other things in his life ever had.
"Did Syzygy take the Red pill? Did you offer it to him?" Spike asked. He decided he would feel much better if his friend had taken the pill as well.
"This is a decision you must make on your own," Morpheus told him, giving no indication of how his friend had decided or even if his friend had been given the choice.
"What are they? What's in them?" Spike asked. He was intrigued, but he wasn't going to take anything until he knew what it was. Spike looked up, waiting for an answer. Morpheus smiled slightly.
"They are both programs," he said simply.
"Programs?" Spike asked. Morpheus nodded, grin broadening slightly.
Mind reeling slightly, Spike nodded at looked at the glittering pills again. Blue would leave him safely in his own life. But Red. Red was the wonderfully dangerous prospect of a new life. It was frightening. It was thrilling.
It was real
Spike breathing deeply, took the red pill from Morpheus. A glass filled with water was on a table next to him. Spike took another calming breath and swallowed the pill, washing it down with the cool water.
"Come with me," Morpheus stood and Spike followed him through the door which Trinity had exited through. A weird looking chair had been set up to one side. Trinity was busily typing away at an equally bizarre computer setup. Neo patted Spike on the shoulder reassuringly and guided him to the chair.
"This is going to be a lot weird," Neo told him with a slight smile and began attaching electrodes to Spike's head and chest.
"a lot weird?" Spike gulped.
"Weird," Neo confirmed. "But don't worry."
"Right. Don't worry, he says," Spike muttered and was gratified to hear Trinity chuckle as she typed away. He watched her type, trying to read the code on the screen. The temperature was dropping in the room and he felt sort of fuzzy. The letters and numbers soon started floating out of the screen and around the room.
"Whoa, Trippy," Spike said. He reached out to touch a floating letter. The letter attached to his hand and began sliding up his arm. "Whoa!" Spike jumped back in his seat and tried to wipe the letter off.
"It's ok," Neo said, "its all part of the process."
"The trace program is just about done. We have a lock." Trinity said.
"Operator?" Morpehus asked on his cell. Spike wondered why Morpheus was talking to an operator when he was clearly dying in this chair. The trippy stuff was cold. So damn cold. And suddenly everything went black.
Spike opened his eyes. Everything was a fleshy pink color. Shocked, he thrashed around, and began choking on whatever the hell it was that was shoved down his throat. He couldn't breathe and he thrashed more. His hands broke through the slimy whatever he was immersed in. He sat up, then scrambled to pull the thing he was choking on away from his mouth. Sputtering and coughing he withdrew a long black tube and tossed it to the side. Wiping his eyes, he took stock of the situation.
He was naked and freezing in a pod filled with pink.something. He was covered in wires and tubes and the back of his head felt heavy. All around him were other pods with what appeared to be bodies in them. Directly above him was another line of pods. He looked over the side of the tank and saw he was impossibly high up on a tower studded with the body pod things. Great arcs of electricity jumped between the towers Spike winced at the sharp sound and bright light. The world looked like something out of an HR.R. Geiger art book; bio-mechanical and alien. Spike's stomach heaved but there was nothing for him to throw up.
Something from a nightmarish science fiction movie arrived. The floating robot grabbed Spike by the neck. He heard a whirring behind him and felt something being withdrawn from his head with the rasp of metal on metal. Spike was released and he flopped into the pink sludge again. When he sat up again the robot was gone.
Suddenly the tubes started to painfully pop free with little hisses, the force unseating him in the slippery pod. The back of the pod opened and he was flushed out down a rough metal pipe. Spike tried to scream but found he could only manage a harsh wheeze. Then he was free-falling: arms flailing, legs kicking, the world in slow motion. Then, just as suddenly as he had become airborne, he hit icy water. Spike struggled to swim but the current was strong and he was strangely weak.
Just as he was sure he was about to die, Spike was grabbed and then lifted out of the disgusting water towards a light. Dazedly he wondered what could possibly present itself next in this nightmarish reality; aliens, perhaps?
Firm hands grabbed him and removed the cold metal claw from around his body. Voices murmured comforting sounds as Spike emptied his stomach of the nasty water. He was picked up in warm towels and placed on a metal table, more warm towels wrapping him tightly in place like a baby. Spike didn't think he'd felt more secure in his life and relaxed slightly. Why the hell was he so tired and what was going on? Spike squinted in the too-bright light, trying to make sense of the world.
"Spike?" A familiar voice asked. Neo?
"What the hell happened?" Spike asked, turning his head in the general direction Neo's voice had come from. He was distantly surprised by how rough his voice was and by how much the words seemed to vibrate in his throat.
"You're free now, Spike," Neo told him. Free? "You're out of the matrix," Neo clarified.
"So.where am I?" Spike asked, fighting to stay awake.
"Welcome," Spike turned to see Morpheus loom into view, "To the real world."
And the real world faded into a cozy blackness.