Sorry this took so long! Truly I am! But it's a LONG chapter and I'm already pretty far into the next, I just haven't been home much, skiing and stuff, and I had exams so I didn't have time.  SO SAD! But ANYWAYS, I did do some songfic and a fanfic of this fanfic (lol sounds funny)

Callouts!

alocin- yeah I fixed the typo things, I do the 'n't' thing a lot lol, it's annoying ANYWAYS, oh, that isn't bad for him lol, he's cruel, stuff like when I take a bath in Zion he sneaks up and SITS ON MY CLOTHES! Yeah, I beat him up for that…

Nagame- hehe, thanks!

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"This," continued Flame, "is the main deck, and over there," she said pointing down the hallway, "is the cockpit and the ladder to the lower floor.  She turned and pointed in the other direction, "over there are the storage rooms, the infirmary and then engineer rooms.  To your left is the mess hall, and you just came out of your room."  It was to the right of the mess hall, "next to you is Edrahil," then the hallway to the cockpit.

"There's Loki's room and next to his is Destiny's, then Apollos, Nephilim and there's Mouse's."  She sighed, "take my advice DON'T go in there."

"Why?" I asked looking up at her she nodded her head.

"That's where he keeps, his STUFF" she said it like it was all of hell's demons, "in fact Loki's a bit scared to go in there, since the incident with, well, Loki calls it the headhunter Mouse claims it's a door warden."  She shook her head again, "Loki still has a lot of Mouse's stuff in his room, ever since Mouse ran out of room.  It's such a disaster."  I laughed to myself, reminded me of my brother with his month-year-old-stale Oreos and empty sprite cans littering the floor.  Along with his computer parts, programming books, programs.  Computer freak, I was sure he could have hacked into anything, in fact Dan called him a creep once and I knew he could hack.

"Over there," said Flame breaking my train of though and pointing past the hallway to the back of the ship, to the left of the mess hall, "is Jade's room."

"Where do you sleep?" I asked quickly.

"With her buea Nephilim," said a voice behind me, I turned.  Flame blushed.

"What are you doing Loki?  Where's Mouse?  Oh," she said turning back to me, "that's Loki."

Loki was a tall man with dusty blonde hair and blue-gray eyes.  In fact I though he was quite dashing, I smiled, I was pretty sure this guy had been well named.

"Am I not allowed to see the new girl?  Sheesh, it's not like I was lying anyways, if you want to keep it a secret get your OWN room.  Mouse said his life depended on not getting anywhere near her."  He laughed, I liked his laugh, and it almost felt like he was inviting you to join.  "Sorry kid," he said looking at me, "sometimes he can't seem to control himself.  I guess we shouldn't allow him to keep those programs if he doesn't grow up."

"I can't believe you ever let him HAVE them in the first place!" said Flame, "don't tell me you enjoy them too?"  By now I was way confused and totally not getting a word they were saying.

"Um," I said timidly.

"You disgust me, both of you," finished Flame before turning back to me.  "Never you mind, lets get you some food."  She turned back to Loki.  "Don't encourage it.  You're older then him, set a good example!"

"Let the kid do what he wants, must admit he's got talent!"  Flame turned in disgust and walked toward to mess hall.

"Guys," she muttered under her breath as I followed.

The mess hall was fairly big; there was a big metal table that filled most of the room.  It had a metal bench on both sides, on one wall was a cabinet, metal cups and bowls were stacked neatly by a sink.

Flame motioned for me to sit; I did and leaned my back against the wall.  She took out a bowl and a spoon from the drawer.  I pulled back my sleeve and looked at the plug in my arm, nothing made sense.  I'm not a patient person, I hate waiting, but this seemed worth it.

Flame placed the bowl in front of me with a thud.  I looked at it and let my sleeve roll back down my arm.

"What is this?" I asked looking at the whitish, almost chunky liquid in front of me.  I was strangely reminded of watery oatmeal from La Vida.

"Food," said Flame simply.  I looked at it, food?  I mean is it an animal or plant?  It looked kinda like nasty clam chowder, I hated clam chowder.

"What KIND of food?" I said daring to prod at it with my spoon.

"Some things are best not known," said Flame.  Okay fine, I'll wait to figure out why the hell I have no hair, where my old world went, why I have plugs all over my body, and why I'm flying on some ship, BUT I will not wait to find out what I'm eating.

"Well I'm not eating it until I know what it is; I mean is it a plant or animal?"  Flame sighed.

"Neither really, they grow it in Zion, it's mostly protein, it'll keep you alive, that's saying a lot," I made a face.  Grown? Ew.  So maybe it's fungus.  I decided that Flame was right, sometimes its best not knowing, but I was hungry.

I took a breath scooped up some and prayed it wasn't alive.

The taste was okay, cause, well there was no taste.  But the texture was so revolting.  It was sorta stringy, and then there were these clumps, and some where soft and some were sorta hard.  It was worse the scallops, I hated them too.  I let it slide down my throat, it was slimy too, and sorta sticky.

"Don't worry you get used to it," said Flame getting up to get a glass of, well I wasn't sure yet.  She placed it on the table.  I made a face and dared not look at what it was.  "It's water, sheesh!" said Flame, slightly annoyed.

I ate 'dinner' and was finishing my well whatever it was, the door opened.  It was Destiny.

"Apollos says she's ready, he wants to see her now," Flame looked sort of uncomfortable.  Destiny seemed a bit sad.

"Ready for…" I asked, this didn't seem good.

"An explanation," said Flame, as she picked up my bowl and mug.

That's how I found myself being shoved into a chair that was way too high for me.  They scanned my eyes and finger.  I didn't both asking, I knew I wouldn't be answered.  No one spoke.

Not until someone brought out a really long metal needle like thing.  I let out a nervous laugh.  Disclaimer laugh.

"This will take some getting used too," said Loki, I just gave in.

Then he shoved it in the hole on the back of my head.

Okay, that'll take A LOT of getting used to.

Whoa, whitewash, I mean that's worse then blizzards in New England.  What the hell is this?

"Araval," said a voice behind me.  Then I realized, no one had said my name, and now they were calling me by a character from a book of mine?  An old book too, that name goes back at least two years ago.

Sacred royalty, that's what it meant, whoever though I was that was gunna get a fist in the mouth.

Apollos was behind me, I turned.  He was wearing a suit like he was before, wherever I was before.  Then I looked at myself.

I had on jeans, a sweatshirt, tennis shoes, and I had my hair back, every strand.  I wanted to squeal in joy, but this didn't seem like the right time to start talking about my hair.  My plug were missing also, thank God, those were starting to gross me out.

"Look at yourself," he said I glanced at my feet again, it was my exact shoes I always had, they still had, 'Cat is sooooooooooo hott!!!' written in black ink, courtesy of Abby.

"Yeah," I said softly.

"It's what you looked like, no plug and your hair is back."  Thank God.  "It's called redusual self image, or RSI."

I gave him a blank stare.

"Its how you perceive yourself within a computer program."

"WITHIN A WHAT?!?!" I yelled back.

"A computer program," said Apollos calmly, I assumed then he had done this several times.  Like a broke tape replaying over and over.

"You mean this isn't real?" I said glancing around, I mean sure it was all white and glowy, it appeared I was standing on nothing and there was no ceiling, but yeah seemed plenty real to me.

"Well, reality is what you perceive it, you should know this already."  He was right, Mr. Shailer had drilled that.  I sighed, so now what?

"Yeah I know, but am I really here?" I asked.

"Not in body, but your mind is here," I was a little confused, not getting the big picture.  He seemed to get this, he snapped his fingers.

Suddenly it wasn't all white; I was standing in a field.  The blade of grass swayed in the breeze, nearly cloudless skies where overhead.  I could smell, feel, hear, taste and see everything.

"How can you tell this from reality?  If I hadn't told you how would you know this wasn't 'real'?"  I still wasn't getting it quite yet, call me slow but it was way too much for me to handle, he cut my thoughts short.  It turned white again.

"Well let's go back to the year 1999," said Apollos changing my train of thought completely.  "That's when humanity thought they were so smart, so great, they thought they were God."  He paced around me.  "We created a machine like a human; we thought it was so smart.  We thought we were better then them; something went so terribly wrong though, man versus machine."  The scene changed, it was like a charred desert, black and moody.  Huge burned buildings reached into the sky, thunder cracked overhead.  It was like a huge rain cloud that never ended.  "Machines got energy from the sky so we decided to cover it.  Somehow the machines survived and doubled the attack."  He looked back at me.  "We lost, machines took who was left.  It took years but they found a new energy source."

I was making a puzzle in my head, I was missing a piece.  I was staring to shake.  I felt like I was about to crash, a bad feeling.

"Have you ever felt like you weren't alive?  Like nothing was truly real?  Like you didn't belong?"  I didn't answer, I was supost to.  Silence was my answer, a yes.  "What was the energy source they found?" continued Apollos, "what are you generating now?"

I found the piece of the puzzle.

"It hasn't been real, you were a slave, a battery."

      I screamed, so what?  I wanted to kill him.

      He broke my reality, and I didn't care if it explained everything.

      Mr. Shailer did it once, he promised to never do it again, but Mr. Shailer caught me off guard, but it wasn't as big as this.  Nothing was bigger then this.  This was everything, not a piece of wood, everything.

      I understood what happened to me, I bet the others didn't.  I wondered what they had done, yelled, screamed…cried.  In case he didn't know, this is how you BREAK trust, not build it.  Guess he never took a theatre class.

      It was a mental impulse, a reaction that the human body can't hold it, because its mind is to strong.  Not a scream of terror, a scream of defiance, of hatred.

"I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!  Get me out of this!  I don't believe this bullshit!"  I knew it was true, but like when Mr. Shailer shattered the reality I had, I still held on.

I wasn't letting go anytime soon.