"Em." Morpheus says, "You are at the point of no return.  The point where you make the choice that will change your life, irrevocably, forever." 

I swallow hard and move my eyes back down from his stony face to the pills. 

"If you chose to take the blue pill you will awake in your bed and life for you will continue as it always has, this night a mere memory."

I twist my hands nervously in my lap.

"If you choose to take the red pill, then you will allow me to make this night a memory, but a dull one, compared to the color of life to come."

I feel a droplet of sweat trickle down my forehead. 

"And…Sherin?"

A shadow of a smile flits across his face.  "I admire your loyalty Em.  Sherin will be given the same choice when we come back to her.  Which we will." He reassures, and then he adds, "And if she cares for you half as much as you seem to care for her, then I'm sure she'll follow you."

I hesitate for a moment longer, and then quickly grab the red pill and pop it in my mouth.  Apoch hands me a glass of water and I down it, and then he quickly sits down on a computer, and begins clicking around madly, typing and looking at numbers, but he's quickly blocked from my view as Morpheus sits me down.

 "Take off your shirt." He says, pulling over a box that has wires attached to it.

I'm somewhat reluctant, but the seriousness of his voice spurs me to hurry.  Once it's off I shiver in the cold air. It doesn't help when Morpheus puts cold sticky medical sensors on my chest.  Ghostly green lines skip up and down with my nervous pulse on a monitor.  He sticks two to my temples and then puts a hand on my bony shoulder.  "Relax as best you can, Em…Soon you'll have all the answers you desire."   I sit back and breathe deeply.  I can't help but feel tense.  The rapid clacking of the computer keyboard, feverish mutterings between Morpheus, Apoch, and Switch, the skittering noise of the rats shimmying along the floor of the filthy old warehouse.

I become rather intrigued by the rats.  There seem to be a huge amount of them crawling around on the ground.  I'm watching one in the corner, who's nibbling on something, when I feel something brush over my shoe.  I recoil as I see a naked tail swish into the shadows.  I look back at the little rat in the corner and find he has been joined by two others.  I'm surprised to see them looking straight at me with beady black eyes.  A fourth rat emerges from the shadows.  My eyes drift to other corners of the room. More rats, emerging from little holes and cracks here and there.  All of them, I'm shocked to see, staring at me with their shining eyes.  I look back to the original corner, and the little rats are no longer there.  They're closer.  They've skittered toward me, a hungry look in their cold stares.  More of them, crawling toward me, filthy fat rats. 

"Morpheus." I say, afraid.

"Have you ever had nightmares, Em?"  He says slowly.  "What did they entail? Things from reality?"

There's a pause, and I feel frozen to the chair as the rats scuttle toward me.

"Monsters under the bed, Ghosts in the attic…Rats…Rats in the floorboards.  But are these things really something we should fear?"

I feel a hairy little hide brush by my heel, and another over my foot.  Suddenly with a yelp one crawls up the outside of my jeans, its little filthsome claws digging into my jeans.  "Morpheus." I murmur, clutching the handles of the chair I sit in tightly.

"These dreams feel so real.  What if the vivid fears and hopes of your dreams could come true?  They feel real.  How can they be though? How can any of it be real?  If it meant pain, would you still want the truth, rather than a safe, but unreal environment?" 

Morpheus turns suddenly.  "Apoch?"

"Almost there!"

"Morpheus!" I cry, as the rat rounds over my knee and its hollow eyes glare at me keenly.  It crawls up my leg further.  "MORPHEUS!" I repeat urgently.

"I've got him!" Apoch cries, just as the filthy beast leaps for my face, and suddenly my eyes roll back into my head, and I know no more.