CHAPTER TWO

"Oh, for God's sake…I can't believe it, they must have lowered her dosage. Cheapass hospital," Her father sighs. "Here we go with the visions, then."

There is a hoarse breath from the woman in front of them. She is staring straight at them, lips tensing; you can nearly see her brain working violently trying to comprehend why the world just suddenly changed.

"James, don't swear. Addy, honey …Can you see me?" Her mother's voice quavers. "A…dele?"

"Of course she can't see us, Mabel. But you're right, it's funny. It looks like she almost …No, no she doesn't. Sooner or later she'll be talking to some imaginary friend behind you or something. Let's just---"

"What the hell is this?"

The girl they called Adele stares at them intensely. At them.

"She's hallucinating…or ….." her father says, changing his statement into question when he sees how her eyes search him.

Then his daughter answers it.

"No. No, Dad, I am not fucking hallucinating. At least. At least I don't think so--- and I'm not dreaming—but--- but if I'm not what the hell is wrong?!"

Trinity, beautiful, athletic Trinity, is in a wheelchair. A squeaking ugly wheelchair that groans as it pushes her weight down the hall to be analyzed after her 'breakthrough'.

Trinity's hair is no longer as trim as humanly possible. The short sleek shining bob has been mangled. Long dark hair is messily pulled into two lank loose braids, the unfamiliar weights on her shoulders. They are oily and gritty, yet dull and lifeless. She suspects that if she tried to unbraid them, they would be locked together into a pair of dreadlocked whips.

Trinity's shoulders? Imprisoned in a pair of blue hospital pajamas, her wrist encased in a hospital bracelet which rubs the tender white skin beneath it. She smells evil, of sour sweat and unwashed self. Her legs hang bloated and wear (she double-takes) dirty, fluffy, pink …slippers.

"Where am I?" she finally asks the nurse.

From what she hears as she asks unbelieving, in the Briar Institute for the Mentally Ill. She has seen the prisonlike building before, but only from her car en route to her former job, only in passing and never from the inside.

"Why am I here?"

Oh, Adele, don't you remember? You were declared mentally incompetent a decade ago when signs were displayed of paranoid schizophrenia and delusions, eventual withdrawal from the real world, living in a world made up on your own.

A world where she created artificial fighting and eating and sleeping and loving, disregarding entirely what the world was actually. She wants to cry.

Ten years…ten years gone, ten years I can't relive. Wasted!

Who for a second except an insane person would suck themselves down a tube and into a—that gray craphole? And then superpowers. Su-per-powers. My God. I gave myself superpowers. "The Matrix has you, Mom and Dad." Idiot--- idiot---And a perfect god of a boyfriend---

And then, before she can stop herself, a dangerous, wonderful, sane or insane idea follows.

Hmm.

Wouldn't the machines like to screw with the head of the One's girlfriend?

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The ancient shoutouts remain.

Bagpipes5K---Thank you! Your praise makes me sing happily. sings…happily A whole new worrrrlllld…an amazing PLACE I've never seeennn… Ah. Sorry. That happens. What do you think?

sleeping awake---Hope this chapter answered some of your questions! So far it is…dun dun dun…neither. Like?

Oshika Kogo--- Cheers, mate! pats you on head I'm sure you're very smart indeed.

wargdude Thank you, sir, may I have another? is poked with finger Thank you, sir, may I have another? ;)