Chapter One: Awake.

After…there was darkness… a darkness I haven't even seen in my 'dreams'.

It was as if I was dying… or being born for the first time…again.

I felt wet…soaked to the very core of my stomach… and for the very first time I smelt life.

I couldn't see because my eyes wouldn't work. And every time I tried to open them, I felt a headache behind the protective human eye shields that scorched the very light from my mind.

Then soon I realized why I felt so wet… I was drowning in the most disgusting water I could ever have imagined to have fallen in.

Where the hell was I?

I saw a mans figure soon after, hovering over my dead-like body and speaking a few whispered words.

"Welcome… to the real world."

After a time I would wake up for a moment between sleep… or was it recovery? My head would hurt and then my arms would burn and again and again it would circulate around my whole body. I was in agony and I sometimes forgot completely why I felt this way. And then I wouldn't have to wonder because my mind would always panic but my body could never read its signals and never move, I couldn't move.

When I opened my eyes for the first time I saw what looked like a cellar. I saw a door at the foot of my bed that resembled a submarine ship door, with the large wheel handle in the center of the metal base. I heard a large squeal before the door opened and I realized that would be one of the many unfamiliar sounds I would be hearing for the rest of my life… or to the end of the world.

The man I saw before was standing beside me with a tray of food and I sat up to retrieve it.

"How do you feel?"

"Like hell." I retorted before gulping down the liquid, then something came over me and I turned to the side to spit the ugly drink out. I looked at the empty cup and then up at this man with a scowl, "What the hell is this?"

When he chuckled I felt like I've made a huge mistake by making a fool of myself in front of him.

"That is water." He knelt down in front of me so he was facing me and I watched him in awe, "You call this water?"

"I have not yet told you about the real world yet, as I attempt to do in the near future so you most likely will not understand yet about our food supply. Let me escort you to the docks. We are at Zion now; we've landed thirty minutes ago."

While I followed him I couldn't help but to ask, "Tell me. Why did my eyes hurt when you… freed me?"

"You've never used them before." Was his ridiculous answer. I decided to leave the book closed and stared ahead at the most significant place I have ever seen in my life. This…city was remarkably dirty and messy with uncontrollable wires running to probably every corner possible to run this underground world and I found myself confused yet again, yet still amazed.

The elevator took us to Dock 6 where the doors opened to a bridge. But we turned to walk along the wall and soon I couldn't trace how we got to a large room with so many different cultured people. I thought I have seen them all when they've visited my homeland of Japan touring but when I now looked at these people I realized there were cultures I never even knew of. Their ridiculous clothing and the jewelry was so odd and unfamiliar to me I wanted to scream but I stayed quiet as this man took me to wherever he would put me.

It was strange to me, this place. When this man asked me to take the red pill and to learn this wonderful place I never dreamed it to be this surreal.

My body felt weak ever since I've been unplugged from the matrix but after a certain amount of time it would subside and I would feel yet again as comfortable with my body as I was when I was plugged into that dream world. My hair started to grow back and I found myself bonding with others who lived around me on Dock 6.

I had a best friend now, her name was Tomoyo, the charming girl who's captured every single boy's heart and hasn't even known it.

One of those boys was my neighbor and good friend, Eriol. He had a strange black cat named Suppi that would always mysteriously 'sneeze' on my legs every time it walked passed me, but I secretly knew it hated me.

I began to love it here and love the people around me and every week I would visit the captain of the Zeraris, when he wasn't on the ship patrolling the sewers or in the matrix.

I would always sit at the same table drinking the very same water that disgusted me at first. I soon realized it tasted the same and fresh as fresh could be down here in Zion. My body just wasn't use to it after waking up from a dream world for seventeen years I couldn't get use to anything for a very long time.

I would always be waiting for him and always expect him to be late, yet still arrive at the same time.

"Hello Evan." I didn't have to look up to know who it was. I heard the usual uneven breathing of his and he sat down across me.

"Hello Sakura." He laughed and I looked up to smile back at him. He had his thinking face on and I knew he would turn serious soon, and when he sighed I was unsure about the conversation we will have this afternoon.

"How long has it been?"

"Five months, seven days and thirteen hours." I spoke casually before taking another sip.

"No, I meant since your last relationship." He laughed and I looked at him startled. We've never spoken about my single status and quite frankly, I didn't know how to respond to something like that.

I was frozen to my seat and I only realized it when he started to look guilty.

"I'm sorry… was that an area I shouldn't touch again?" He looked sympathetic now and I cringed.

"No… not at all. It's just that…" I looked at the cup in my hand before continuing, "I've never had a relationship with anyone." I felt somewhat relieve after saying this and I assumed it was a good thing.

Evan blinked several times before speaking, "You've…never…?"

I shook my head with a silly smile, "Nope." Then I looked at him again, "Why does that shock you?"

He laughed nervously before looking down as he scratched the back of his head. My guess was that he was nervous about something.

"That's just…" he looked down again and I started to wonder what made him loose the will to speak. "Weird."

I stared at him, wondering what he meant, "What's so weird about it?"

There was a very long pause after this until I regretted ever asking. He had to have been staring at me for ten minutes now, looking as if he shouldn't say what he was thinking and soon I found myself staring back trying to read his face.

"You're… beautiful."

This struck me to a certain height I've never reached before. He's complimented me before but with this certain atmosphere it changed everything. I felt edgy and tried to look at anything but his face. I was twitching in certain areas and I played with the weird pieces that made up this table.

All my life I was never truly approached by someone. No one asked me out or hit on me so suddenly and after a time I actually wondered if I was ugly. Right now I felt like I could cry. My life plugged into the matrix wasn't as confusing as the real world but the things that have happened in it still got me lost every time something tried to either ruin my life, humiliate my life or mock it.

Right now I've just been flirted with for the first time and it overwhelmed me. I held my tears as I looked back at him, "If I'm so beautiful why was I never approached?" I whispered and I knew he could hear me. I saw him gulp and I lost the will to look at him again.

"My guess is that they were afraid." He said to me, causing me to look up at him in shock for the second time.

"Or at least shy." He smiled.

And out of all the awful feeling I felt, I never thought I would have the will to smile back. But I did.

A week later there was a knock on my door so early in the morning I would have done something violent to the person behind it until I realized who it was.

"Tomoyo? What are you-"

"The Cirus is back." She said urgently and my eyes widened.

Tomoyo slammed her body against her father when we got to the top docks. When she embraced him I was happy he was alive. They've been gone for over three months we were all beginning to worry and Tomoyo started to loose it. He kissed her temples and spun her around and she tightened her grip in the embrace I began to feel that feeling again as I looked away frantically; that feeling of loneliness.

I have neither parents nor siblings. In the matrix I had Touya as a brother and then my father but… they were only illusions blinding me from the truth. Tomoyo was born here without holes and with a family.

Evan was practically my father in this world. He gave birth to me and raised the mind I have now. But it was never the same.

"Sakura are you okay?" Tomoyo asked me after the reunion was over. I smiled at them and assured them both I was fine.

I had diner at Tomoyo's that night and it had to have been the loudest diner nights they've ever had, considering Tomoyo's father was back. Her mother sat at the end while Tomoyo and her father sat across from me.

"There's talk from the Neberkanezer… Morpheus has found the one." Her father turned regal and serious and looked at Tomoyo's mother. They shared looks and Tomoyo seemed to understand what he had meant also.

I made a sound for their attention and they looked at me, "What does that mean?" I furrowed my eyes as I listened to his story about some prophesy and then more information between the machines and humans.

"Not everyone believes what Morpheus believes. I even have my doubts on this one but … sometimes he seems so… sure."

I stared at him, intrigued, as we all sat in silence.

After diner I said my farewells and walked back to my room. I wasn't quite ready to go back inside yet so I leaned against the railing and stared out at the city around me. It was a shame I could never see the stars again or stand in the fields where the wind would caress my body and I would watch the sky without any worries anymore.

Now the lights from the city turned into my night sky, and the air around me, even though it wasn't wild, it would now be my wind. And the metal beneath my feet will be my grass.

For a while it was unsettling, I couldn't come to believe anything and I would have nightmares. Now it's as if all this never happened, I never had that dream life and I was never unplugged. It felt as if I were here my whole life.

Once I stepped inside my door I suddenly felt tired, so I went to bed.