River and Dale was about a fifteen minute walk so she left about eight- thirty just so she could be there in time. She paused and looked at herself in the mirror wondering if she was what they were expecting.

She wasn't tall, only five foot five. Her short brown hair never came past her shoulder, it was short enough not to give her any trouble. She looked at her blue-gray eyes for a moment, they betrayed to her the combination of excitement and doubt she was feeling. She really had no idea what to expect or what she was walking into.

But then again, she could handle herself. That was one thing she had always been able to do.

She locked the door of the apartment and walked off to her meeting.

She stood as inconspicuously as she could as she waited on the corner. There was no sign of anyone and the streets of New York are dangerous for anyone after dark.

She jumped when someone tapped her on the shoulder, almost screaming she whirled around. A woman in a long black leather coat was there.

"Unseen?" she asked quietly.

"Yes."

"My name is Trinity. Come with me," she said as she turned and walked past her and around the corner. It was only a short walk and they came to an old hotel. They walked up to the fourth floor and stopped outside an impressive set of doors.

"Through that door is the answer to all the questions you have. Still want to know the truth?" Trinity asked her seriously.

Stef nodded and Trinity opened the door for her, Stef took a deep breath and stepped through.

A tall black man in a long coat stood waiting for her near two old red chairs. He smiled down at her, Welcome, Unseen. As you no doubt have guessed, I am Morpheus."

She shook his hand; "it's an honor to meet you. And you can call me Stef."

"We are who we choose to be," he relented, though preferring that potentials call themselves by their hacker alias'. He smiled again, "I imagine, right now, you must be feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole? Do you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes Stef?"

"Yes," she said as he sat and nodded for her to do the same.

"I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of someone who accepts what she sees because she is expecting to wake up."

"Wake up from what?"

"The Matrix."

"What is it? What is the Matrix?"

"The Matrix is that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you here."

"But what is it?" She asked again. 'Something wrong with the world' wouldn't have been the phrase she used. She knew there was a truth that she didn't know but hadn't felt it to be...wrong.

"The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that the machines have been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Ok...now it was getting strange.

She wasn't quite as at ease as she had been when she first walked into the room. It sounded like he was trying to find a philosophical way to describe virtual reality.

But before she could ask if that was what he meant he started talking again.

"The truth of the matter is, that you are a slave, Stef. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage...kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. This is not the real world."

WHAT?

She sat very still while listening to him. There was something creepy about him. Some spider-sense that was screaming not to trust him.

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."

Was this why she had come? To find out what the Matrix was?

Yes...somehow that was the answer to the truth she had been seeking.

But she wasn't quite sure that she trusted them.

"How?"

He held out his hands, he held two pills. A red one in his right and a blue one in his left. She hesitated, they were probably to make her believe anything they said.

At least he wasn't rushing her to make a decision, he seemed to be a very patient man. She imagined that he had given this choice to hundreds of people, as his speech had seemed very practiced. Her hand hovered at her side, unsure of which color to pick. But this was what she had been looking for so long. She wasn't going to let it go when they could tell her what was going on.

She reasoned, that if she didn't like what they showed her she could always go home.

She reached for the red pill.

Stef didn't have a chance to grab the pill as she heard a shot and the door to the room they were in was kicked down. There was a body on the floor, one of Morpheus' men who had been guarding the door.

The man who had kicked the door in stepped into the room. He was well- dressed, wearing a suit and sunglasses even though it was night.

"What the hell?" Stef turned back to Morpheus for an answer as to what was going on but he had already fled into the next room away from what she assumed to be some fed. Seeing no choice she ran after him and the man in the suit followed her.

Trinity and whoever else had been in the next room weren't there. Morpheus was standing in the window ready to jump. He took a second to look back at Stef. He screamed "run!" before he jumped from the fourth-story window.

She ran forward to see if they had all jumped to their deaths, if she had almost joined some kind of suicide club she saw, to her infinite surprise, that they were running unharmed down the street away from the building with Trinity screaming something into her cell phone.

The order to run replayed in her head but the command died somewhere between her mind and her legs, she was in too much shock to do anything. The man in the suit walked up to the window, seemingly ignoring her and watched as Morpheus and his crew disappeared from view.

She looked at the man in the suit. She had no idea what was going on but now she was sure she wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it. She backed away from him and ran down the stairs and out onto the street.

As she ran from him, Smith sighed and muttered to himself, "why do they always run?"

Stef looked up toward the fourth floor she ran from the building. Even in the dark she could see that the man was still standing there. Seeing her he stepped from the window and jumped down, landing less than twenty feet from her.

She both saw and heard the concrete snap as he landed. "What the hell are you?" she screamed. He didn't answer, instead he drew his gun.

Holy shit! Her mind screamed, he was going to kill her.

A cold fear washed over her and she wouldn't have been surprised if her skin lost a couple of shades of color.

"You brought this on yourself," he said coldly.

Why did that sound so familiar? She asked herself, she knew she had heard someone say it before.

She felt like she had been struck by lightning as a memory was jolted. She remembered him. "You fixed my doll," she said quickly. She then kicked herself mentally for how utterly childish that statement sounded. Her shaking voice certainly wouldn't have helped.

"What?" he asked with the gun still trained on her. Smith faltered, unsure of what that statement could possibly mean. His filed raced overtime trying to make a connection to that statement that made any kind of sense.

"I was a little kid," she said quickly. "Some guy ran into my house. You...killed him..." she trailed off, realizing that the same thing was probably going to happen to her. "The bullet smashed my doll and then you fixed it."

Smith nodded slightly, he remembered the incident. He could remember everything that had ever happened to him. He smiled to himself, he had been right all that time ago, he did have to kill her.

Keep talking, she ordered herself. Maybe she could talk her way out of this. If he was talking, he wouldn't be shooting. "That guy back then, he's got something to do with Morpheus and those guys didn't he?"

Smith nodded once, "he was one of them."

"I have nothing to do with them. You don't have to kill me," she controlled her voice a little, not wanting to display the fear she was feeling.

He shook his head, "unfortunately you know too much."

"I don't know anything." She could tell it wasn't going in her favor. She had to think of something, anything that would save her life or at the very least give her a fighting chance.

Would it work?

"Behind you!" she screamed.

Smith turned, he had wondered if the rebels would return for her. They never gave up their potentials this easy. He realized he had been tricked when he spun away from her and saw no one. Stef took the mere second of confusion and ran for it. The agent allowed himself a smile as he watched her run into a brick wall that he had required to be there.

She had had her head turned back to watch what he was doing then she had hit something. She took a step back from the brick wall that had appeared from thin air. She knew for certain that it hadn't been there a minute ago.

Morpheus' words came back her, 'this is not the real world.' She turned away from the wall and saw the man running toward her.

Damn, it hadn't worked so now she was going to die. In a vent of pure frustration she punched the wall. An indent the size of her fist was knocked into the solid wall of bricks. She did a double take as she looked from the wall to her fist. She had never done anything like that before.

Being able to punch into a brick wall was her last concern at the moment. One higher up the list was how the wall had appeared there in the first place. Deciding to think about it later and just escape now she ran to go around the wall but three more of the same height appeared and boxed her in.

Her soon-to-be assassin leapt straight over the wall as simple as anyone climbed the stairs and landed right in front of her. This gave her cause to consider if she was in fact going quite insane. She knew for a fact that people could NOT leap over walls that high. The wall was about thirty feet high.

Although it wasn't a nice thought she accepted that she might be dead in a few minutes. If she was going to die she wanted a few answers first.

"How did you do that?" she asked him slowly. He was still holding his gun.

She could almost see him deliberating with himself whether to shoot her or answer her question. Fortunately he chose the first. She let out an enormous sigh of relief as he holstered his gun. "What did they tell you exactly?" he asked her staring at her from behind his sunglasses.

"Nothing precise," she said truthfully. "Something about this not being the real world. He also mentioned something about machines."

"Did you believe it?"

Stef made a strange noise halfway between a snort and a sigh, "I do now. Who are you? What are they?"

"Smith. Agent Smith. And they are the rebels. Would you like to know more?"

This was a good thing. Fatality didn't seem to be in the picture anymore. "If it will keep me alive," she said. Not pointing a gun at her he didn't seem so bad and she still wanted the answers she had come searching for. Simply, she wanted to know what the hell was going on.

What happened next was as unbelievable as the brick wall appearing from nowhere. They were standing in a box of brick walls one moment and the next, she blinked and they were in an office.

Smith sat behind his desk and motioned for her to sit in the empty. "This is not the real world," he said, "you are inside a computer simulation."

She shook her head slowly, he was as insane as the rest but unlike Morpheus who had been interspersing philosophical junk and making it confusing Smith was stating facts.

"What?" was all she could manage.

He saw her expected confusion. "Let me finish. This world, the rebels call it the Matrix, is exactly like the real world used to be like before it started to destroy itself. About two centuries ago it became virtually unlivable and the Matrix was constructed. In here humans can live and flourish whereas in the real world they would simply die."

It really did sound insane but somehow Stef felt that there was some innate truth to it all. She did believe him no matter how fantastic it sounded. And it sounded more truthful coming from him than it did from Morpheus.

Which was strange, as Morpheus and Trinity were names that everyone in the online community knew and trusted. The feds in the suits were the ones that caused you the trouble. Hackers were supposed to be able to trust one another and those who talked to feds were traitors.

She was reconsidering her whole value system because the...rebels as Smith had called them had left her to die without a second thought for her health or safety. Now that was the mark of one not to be trusted.

"Where do you fit into this?" she asked him.

"Agents are..." he took a moment to find the right word. "Guardians simply. Sentient programming but guarding nonetheless. We make sure the Matrix runs smoothly so that its inhabitants may have normal lives."

"You're a program? You are AI?"

"Yes."

"Cool," she muttered to herself. "What about the rebels?"

"The rebels believe that a life in the real world no matter what to be better simply because it is the truth. The truth is that the real world is dead, all that is left is the Matrix."

Stef sat back in the chair taking it all in, after all it was a lot to process. "What are they trying to accomplish?"

"They wish to destroy the Matrix. If they succeed the majority of the human race will cease to exist." He stated in the same tone he had said everything else in. Stef was confused, why would anyone want to destroy the world that they had grown up in? The rebels sounded like impertinent children rebelling against their parents.

Lost in her own musings Stef become aware that Smith was staring at her. "What are you going to do with me?" She asked unsure of what was going to happen. A large portion of hackers that are found by feds were never heard from again. She wasn't a hacker but she was close enough and had just been associating with what seemed to be some of his organization's top enemies. She didn't want to go to jail. Hopefully she would get away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

"You have two choices Miss Mimosa," he said and she was only slightly surprised that he knew her name. "You can either go back to your normal life with no knowledge of these events. Or...you can work with us to protect your world from the rebels."

She looked up as he said the second option. "Why would programs need help? I saw what you could do. I can't do anything like that."

"There is an inherit limit to our programming that the human mind alone seems to be able to surpass. We take advantage of this the same as the rebels do. I believe you could be trained."

"Okay. Sign me up." It sounded cool to her. She had no idea how cool it was going to turn out to be.

He stood up and walked to the door, she followed out. They walked down a few corridors, past a gym where other recruits were practicing seemingly impossible techniques.

"This is actually possible?" Stef asked him as she looked at two boys who were fighting in midair, defying gravity with ease.

"Yes," he said, all the recruits asked that question.

He opened another door and they walked into what she assumed to be the test area. They probably couldn't recruit anyone without testing them to see if they were worth the trouble. Agent Brown and Agent Jones were already waiting with their own recruits.

Smith joined Jones who had walked over to the side and Brown stood in front of the humans to explain what they needed to do.

"This is the first test," the tall agent, who was the combat agent, stated. "Those who pass it will progress to the next stage. Those who don't will be expelled from the program." Behind him three thirty-foot brick walls appeared.

Well, Stef thought, they look familiar.

"Simply jump over the wall and then jump back over. Begin." The three recruits stepped forward. All of them had seen things recently that they would have considered impossible not that long ago.

Brown's recruit, who was taller than the other two went first. He ran quickly at the wall, jumped fifteen feet straight up and then smashed painfully into the wall. He slipped back down the floor with blood all over his face. He had several small cuts along with his broken nose.

Stef smiled to no one in particular. There was no time like the present. She took three running steps toward her wall, remembering everything about the world being fake and the human mind breaking the rules and launched herself upward. She landed with a dull thud on the other side. Jones' recruit, a boy named Kyle shook his head in determination. He was not going to be beaten by a girl. Especially one that was younger than him.

He jumped up, landed on the top of the wall and back flipped down to the ground, landing near Stef.

"Beat that," he dared her.

Not afraid of any challenge especially now knowing that she was capable of jumping a thirty-foot wall with no trouble whatsoever she smirked at him and replied, "I shall." And she did. She walked back a few more feet so she could get a better run up. She ran at her wall, launched upward, flipped high above the wall and landed on the other side.

It was strange she had realized at the pinnacle of jump. She wasn't afraid of being thirty-five feet in the air. Something she thought was very cool.

Kyle had been beaten, he simply jumped back over the world and refused to look at her. But they both looked down at Brown's recruit who was slowly rising to his feet, holding his bloody nose. Brown looked down without concern and a mild but completely expected disappointment. To him, recruits were a waste of time.

"You failed," were his only two words as he led the ex-recruit out. His memories would simply be erased for there was no sense in wasting a perfectly good battery.

"Congratulations," Jones said to Stef and Kyle. "Follow me to the next stage." The followed him through to the next room, which was even larger than the last. It was a mockup of a part of the city and an exceedingly real mockup at that. Stef looked up to see the moon as well as a few faint stars.

The two recruits were issued weapons. Kyle looked slightly nervous at handling a gun, for he had never held a weapon before. Neither had Stef but she wasn't afraid of it, holstering it immediately after checking the safety was on.

Jones, who was shorter than the other two agents spoke, "keep these for the further stages. In this level you will be partnered with another recruit and patrol the city as if you had already made it through the rest of the tests. In here are simulations of places that rebels are often recruited from."

Two other recruits walked through the door to the room, Stef reasoned that they must have already done the jump test. They split into partners and walked into the simulation. Her partner pointed to a club and they walked in.

"I know a place just like this," he said. He was around her age with light color hair and brown eyes. "Did you ever come to places like this before this happened to you?"

"No, I wasn't very social," Stef understated distractedly while looking around for anyone who looked like a rebel.

He shrugged, "You missed out on a good thing. Clubbing is sweet." He said as his eyes wandered to check out a pretty but very drunken girl to Stef's right. "Makes you wonder if we're doing the right thing," he said in a much quieter voice. Maybe these so called 'rebels' do have a point."

Stef's blue-gray eyes burned coldly at him. "They want to destroy the world. How can that be right?"

He shook his head, matching her glare. "This world is fake. I think I'm..." the next word never made it out of his mouth. Stef had drawn her gun and fired. Her partner fell down as the sound of the gunshot died away. The simulated patrons of the club didn't even turn.

"Why did you do that?" Stef turned and saw Agent Jones standing behind her.

She felt a pang of doubt; maybe she should have just knocked him out. They hadn't actually specified yet what to do once they came in contact with a rebel. It wasn't the fact that she had killed someone that was bothering her, it was the worry that they might wipe her memories and she might not remember any of this.

But she stood by her decision; "he was a traitor. He was agreeing with the rebel's point of view."

The technical agent nodded, "good. You passed."

Stef's eyes grew wide, "passed? Passed what? This was a test?"

"Of course it was," Jones said matter-of-factly. "We had to see where your loyalties lie." The simulated cityscape and the digital people disappeared from around them. Kyle looked up from talking to his partner as the mockup faded.

"Did he pass too?" Stef asked Jones as he walked away.

"No," Jones almost sighed. "He was too indecisive." Jones left the room with Kyle. His partner, to him he had been speaking also disappeared, he had also been a simulation. Though it only peeked through on her impassive face Stef was exceedingly happy with herself. This was the first thing she had ever done in her life with this degree of success.

"Well done," Smith said walking up to her.

She couldn't hold back a smirk, "what's the next stage?"

"It will come soon enough," he said. "Do you know that only one in fifty recruits make it this far?"

"Then that would make me the one," she said with a grin. She had actually accomplished something that a lot of other people had failed. His eyes narrowed at her last two words but she didn't notice.

"And only one in those ten that have made it this far make it though the next stage."

Stef wasn't scared, "I usually don't listen to statistics. More often than not they are wrong."

"Then if you're ready follow me," he said as he turned and walked toward a third door. Without a second of hesitation she followed him through. This level was clearly a fighting simulator. A dozen SWAT team members and a few people dressed like rebels were facing her, all frozen as if they were on paused.

That was until Smith said "Begin."

Stef gulped, obviously all these programs were going to try and kill her. That became obvious as some of the SWAT guys knelt and started to fire. This was something new, and she had never been a very good fighter.

This was going to take some skill and some luck. Luck not being her strong point she decided just to go for it. Pushing all her fear and doubt out she gripped her gun and focussed on what she needed to do.

As she focussed it was almost as if the world slowed a little. She aimed at the closest SWAT and fired, the bullet went through his goggles and he fell back. That had worked well enough but now she had the rest to deal with.

Not taking notice of the fear that was coming from bullets zipping all around her she ran and hid behind a column, then she peeked out and fired after they had wasted all the bullets blowing the concrete out of the opposite side of the column. One by one all the swat went down, her gun clicked empty and she ran out.

A rebel ran at her and a SWAT knelt behind her to fire, remembering the ease of the jump level she flipped upward so that the SWAT's bullet killed the rebel instead. She landed near him and then jumped again, kicking him with such force that she heard his neck snap.

The SWAT rifle being too big and bulky she grabbed the rebel's handgun and took three more SWAT out and the last by snapping another neck.

All that were left were three rebels. The rebels could move faster but unlike the SWAT didn't wear any body armor so any bullet that made contact meant an injury. The first two were easy but the third, a tall man in a black trench coat threw a knife at her.

Unable to react quickly enough to avoid it, the blade was lodged partly into her upper arm. Seeing that she was hurt he jumped toward her to finish the fight. She rolled out of the way, pulling the knife out, twisting upward she stabbed him in the heart with it as he landed in a three-point crouch where she had been. She twisted it and he stopped moving. He fell forward and she let go of the knife.

She dropped her head back to the floor and closed her eyes for a second before getting back up. She looked around at all the carnage, shaking her head as she let everything that had just happened process. A clock on the wall informed her that the whole battle had in fact taken less than two minutes.

"Very impressive," Smith said stepping back into view. He looked down at one of the bodies and rather than having to step over it, he ordered the simulation to end and all of it disappeared from sight.

Stef shook her head, "but I didn't pass."

Smith looked at her in confusion; "I never said that."

She brandished her arm toward him; "I was injured."

Smith smiled his own slightly strange smile, a not completely wrong expression, "If you survive this level you pass."

She sighed in relief, "well that's good, what else do I have to do?"

"Nothing more, your testing is over."

"That's it? Just those three tests?" She asked incredulously.

"That's it," he confirmed. "You may want to get that looked at," he said referring to her arm, which was staining her sleeve.

Right, she'd been stabbed. Her adrenaline-charged brain was only now getting around to processing the pain, processing the fight had been more of a priority. But then she remembered something, "I thought it wasn't real."

"I thought it wasn't real. I thought nothing was real."

"It hurts doesn't it?"

"Yes..."

"Reality is what you perceive it to be, your arm is bleeding because that's what happens when skin is cut. Some rebels have trained themselves against great pain thresholds. But the rules you were just breaking? Speed and gravity? Those rules are easily broken in the Matrix. Better by human minds than program ones for humans have a habit of breaking and bending rules."

"That's why you need human recruits?"

"Precisely."

"But only strong ones."

"That is why we have these tests. They sort out the unsuitable humans from the suitable recruits," a trickle of blood was now running down her arm. "Unless you plan on bleeding all over this facility I suggest you get that attended to."

"Is there a nurse's office?"

"Because of their habit of getting injured we have a medical facility. And for the less fortunate we have a morgue."

Stef winced from the pain as it was finally starting to register fully, "I'm not ready for the morgue yet." Did he have a sense of humor? The first part of what he had said sounded like a dry joke.

*****

As the Nebuchadnezzar flew through the old sewers of the real world, everyone was having a good night's sleep except for the operator, Tank, who was searching for the potential they had forgivably abandoned. No one wanted to risk fighting an agent for a potential when they could organize for another meeting.

Morpheus climbed into the seat next to the operator and looked blankly at the scrolling code.

"Any luck yet Tank?"

"None. Smith got her then she disappeared. I haven't seen anything since then."

"There was no choice Tank," Morpheus said tiredly, more trying to convince himself than his Zion-born friend.

"I didn't say anything sir. You know what you're doing."

"Keep looking Tank."

"Sir?"

"Yes Tank?"

"You don't she's going to become a recruit do you? You know they grab some of our potentials."

"I don't believe that anyone that the Oracle found for us would sink so low as to become a traitor. No Tank, I think she can still become one of us."

"Yes sir. I'll tell you as soon as I see anything."

*****

A medical agent, who was a little shorter than Smith and his hair a few shades darker, tended to Stef's shallow flesh wound. She was lucky as it could have been a lot worse.

He finished tying the bandage and looked up at Smith with a nod. "All yours sir."

Smith nodded curtly to him and looked at Stef, "follow me." Stef stood and followed him down yet another similar corridor of the agency. It was going to take a while to get used to, and maybe getting lost a few times before she learnt her way around.

"I thought you said there weren't anymore tests," Stef said with a slight note of accusation in her voice but with one arm injured she wasn't in the mood to take on another set of digital enemies at the moment.

"This isn't a test," he said as they stopped outside of a door. Yet another door, she shook her head, why didn't they just have them all in the same place? "Welcome to the place only one in five hundred recruits get to see." Stef followed him in, not knowing what to expect.

For all she knew it could be the place they kept the Roswell aliens. No, that was Nevada. She stepped in to see...a storeroom. She was slightly disappointed, so far this was the most boring she had seen. But then again, only one in five hundred got to see it, maybe it was special. In a dull kind of way.

But when she looked up and saw the shelf of guns it suddenly got a lot more interesting.

There was a rack of what looked liked hundreds of perfect-condition agent suits. All were hung meticulously waiting for a recruit to claim them. The rows and rows of guns and ammunition and to her amusement, an entire stand of sunglasses.

"Only one in five hundred to the 'last suit you'll ever wear' room? Is that why it smells so dusty?" He just gave her a look. "Right, no dust," she said with a casual shrug.

He turned away and selected a suit for her. "This will fit you."

"Thanks," she said distractedly as she pulled a Desert Eagle off the shelf and slammed a clip into it. After the fight simulator it was already becoming a second nature to her. And this kind of second nature she could handle. "When do I start?"

"As soon as you change. There is an assignment you can take."

"Especially for me?"

He shook his head, "No. It was for whichever recruit made it through the tests or whichever recruit finished their current assignment. Now it's yours."

He handed her the suit and motioned to the changing room. With a nod of thanks she grabbed a pair of sunglasses and stepped in and closed the door. At least in here she had a couple of seconds to think by herself as she changed.

Everything had happened so fast. The contact. Trinity, Morpheus and his speech. The chance of the truth. Smith. Smith wanting to shoot her. Being given the truth she had searched for, for so long. Recruitment. Passing the tests and now this.

She tied the knot on the tie and looked up.

Wow.

Someone she didn't recognize was looking at her from the mirror. The person kind of looked like her, but dressed in a nice suit and a look on her face like she finally knew what was going on and was happy about it. Someone who had been given what she wanted.

Hey, Stef thought, that's me. She smiled and nodded. She stepped back out and looked up at him.