Authour's Note: Ok, chapter 1! more to come in a few days, stay with me, I'm a bit of a slow writer. Now…let us begin! please review it and stuff, to tell me how much it sucks and how much of it I should delete =P So yeah…here it is!

Stalking through the black back streets of the grimy city he now knew was fake, Paradox took great care not to be heard. He knew the agents were ahead, he could sense them growing more confident. Moving with complete stealth, in the shadow filled alleyway, he stood a couple of meters away from them. Making sure all his calculations were correct, but clearing his mind of all doubt at the same time, he leapt up with a flick of his coat to the roof, making sure there was plenty of space between him and the ground of the ally.

Once certain everything was in position, he cleared his mind of everything except his goal. Although he was only 19, he was an expert at clearing his mind, after going to the temple with his father often before being unplugged. Leaping away into the night, he heard a momentous blast and a massive fireball flew into the air, with burning pieces of black suits flittering up into the air, driven by the extreme heat created by the precision bomb. A grin could be seen on his face from the light of the fireball.

The phone in his pocket rang as he eventually came to the ground, a few miles away from the explosion. With a swift action that came from reflex, he took it out of his pocket, answered it and was holding at his ear in less than a second.

"Yeah?"

Reflex, the operator answered "Dox, that was some insane shit you did back there! They had no idea. You sure you wanna come back though? She's pissed you know"

"Yeah, I thought she would be, but I wanted to try that out, and they were trying to track down a new suspect, a dude that's awakening."

"You can tell her that, she's by your chair, waiting for you to get unplugged"

Paradox winced. Lewar, Captain of the Shadow, was a great captain as well as friend, but hated it when Paradox did things she called "stupid life wasting risks", which he happened to do quite often. Lewar was quite young for a captain, only 20. Not the youngest Captain in Zion, but still very young by most standards. She was devoted to her ship, her crew and her duty. She had a special bond with Paradox, as they were released a week between each other and were friends in hacker circles, and had been reunited in Zion.

"Ok, man, you got an exit for me?"

"Yep, Keen and Manor, a public phone."

"Thanks dude."

"Why do you keep calling me that?"

"Old habit, I guess."

Hanging up the phone, he walked to the intersection where the phone box was, his ticket home. Sure, the Matrix was home for a while, but the Real World was his true home, where he didn't have to feel paranoid, or worry about the ever frustrating feeling that something just wasn't right, but you couldn't put your finger on. It was like forgetting someone's name, and having it on the edge of your mind for hours, but never getting there until you heard it. Well, Paradox heard it alright. It was Niobe who released him from the Matrix, and he was a member of her crew for a long time, until he bumped into Lewar in Zion, and found out she was building her own ship, so joined up as first mate. Snapping back to what was happening around him, he saw the phone box in the distance, just as it started to ring.

As he walked up to it, he was now aware of everything that was around him, down to the smallest detail. He had to be, to survive in his line of work. Picking up the phone, he felt the odd releasing feeling as the socket was taken out of the back of his head, but also the small pang of regret and pain as he came back into reality, where everything was real, especially pain from inside the Matrix.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Lewar, Captain of the Shadow, was waiting next to the still body of her first mate, Paradox, waiting for him to open his eyes. As soon as he did, she undid the plug in his head and stood next to him, with her arms crossed and scowling.

"What the hell was that?! You were right next to them! You know how sensitive their scanners are, you're so lucky they were preoccupied. I almost think you deserved to be found, pulling off a stunt like that! And another thing, next time yo-"

Paradox put up his hands and cut her off. "Can we continue this somewhere else? I'm really quite hungry. Protecting a potential rebel does that to you."

Her face softened slightly. "A potential?"

"Yeah. Do you think we could continue this in private? It's starting to look like something out of a bad soap."

Indeed it did, as Mace the legendary programmer's had stopped typing as she stood listening, her current duties forgotten. Lewar gave in, raised her eyebrows at Mace who quickly went back to work, and she followed Paradox into the small steel room he called home. Unlike the rest of the crew, he had decorated his quarters with drawings of his friends back in Zion, the rest of the crew, and memories from the Matrix. Lewar looked at them in wonder.

"These are really good, you're a great artist. I can't believe you never did an art class inside."

"Yeah, well I never started drawing 'til I got out."

Lewar nodded, but didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Everyone who had been unplugged seemed to have a need for a passion, something they could put their emotion into. It could be anything from writing to working. Paradox drew. He drew pictures of the crew, of the ship, and of things he remembered from the Matrix. He was amazing, and could draw every detail just from memory.

Paradox was sitting on his small bunk, putting the finishing touches on a new picture, but she knew he hated it when people looked over his shoulder, so she sat down next to him.

"How did you know they were going after a potential?"

"I could hear them talking about him."

"Who is it?"

"A kid called Tom Murrik, but his real name is Fear."

"How old is he?"

"11"

Lewar's heart sank. He hated the thought of someone so young being chased around by agents, and she knew Paradox did too. She had only been 12 when they were first contacted by the Real World, and he had been 13.

She shook her head. "That doesn't matter, you still shouldn't have done what you did the way you did. It was too risky. Think of all the things that could've gone wrong! The calculations could've been incorrect, and the building could've collapsed, the agents could've turned around, anything could've happened. You would've had no chance against three agents. Only someone like Neo could take them on."

Dox's eyes shone with admiration at the name Neo, but Lewar was so used to it she didn't notice. Almost everyone in Zion thought of Neo of a sort of God, but one they could see as a real person. Stories of Neo's exploits were legendary, and no one could really remember fact from fiction. All anyone knew was that he was the hero of Zion, and would always remembered as long as humans were free.

"It's not like it was a pointless act, you probably just saved his life -for now, anyway- but I can't bare to loose a member of my crew. Right now, I don't think I could take anything else going wrong. You're too important right now, we have to tell Zion about this new potential." She paused. "And for the record, it was a pretty good plan. How did you plant those explosives before the Agents came?"

"Well, it was tricky, but I dropped them onto garbage bags while jumping

from one side of the ally to another, while making sure that no one saw me, 5 seconds before they came past."

Lewar's jaw dropped, and then she opened her mouth to scold him again, but he got their first.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! I'm not that crazy! I felt them coming about 2 minutes before they came, so I was able to plant them in the perfect spots, so that

no copper-tops would be killed."

She felt much more relieved. "Just tell me next time, OK? You scared the shit out of me!"

"OK. I'm really sorry, Lee. I didn't want to scare you as much as I did those black-suited pains in the arse. I'm not saying I won't do it anymore, it's too damn fun! That and I was only doing my job to piss of those Agents, hit them back." He grinned, and Lewar couldn't help but to grin back.

"I'm going to the rec. hall, you want something to eat?" she asked.

"Yeah, sure, I'm too tired to get up."

Smiling to herself, she got up and moved towards to door, but not without casually glancing at Paradox's work in progress.

A/N: OK! hope you enjoyed that, more is coming, really. so review, please please please, and be HONEST!!!! I don't want to be told "yeah it was great" when you're thinking "what a waste of time…I could be on a matrix message board right now!" so be honest and expect more from me

Torak