A/N: Sorry for taking so long. Thanks for reviewing. The replies are at the end. And just a side note, because of the $# layout of stories on this website I have to space everything in a weird way. Sorry if it looks weird.

Chapter 3

By Tai Wilson

"What do you mean he didn't take it?" Cypher asked the one question that Morpheus had already heard three times since he had answered a corner phone that took him back into the "real world".

"I mean exactly what I said." Morpheus said with a stone face, looking directly at Cypher. "He took the blue pill and wasn't going to tell him otherwise." Morpheus had a deep voice that always stated an opinion that couldn't be changed, no matter what happened. Sometimes people believed him, and in him. Most of the time they thought he was mad. Now, however, they saw that he wasn't always right, and that all hope was now lost.

"You said he was the One! You said he be able to stop them! You said he would do it! We almost had to loose our ship and our lives to go get him, and he didn't even get out! He doesn't even know what he's gone though, or how he's going to get terminated tomorrow at midnight! All we've-" Cypher stopped suddenly. An alarm was sounding in the cockpit.

"Sentinels." Morpheus said before running to the cockpit as everyone else ran to a gun turret.

After a few seconds, the ship jolted upward slightly before it began flying quickly though the sewers, trying to loose the small cloud of sentinels that was now following the ship.

For about a minute, only one or two sentinels broke away from the cloud at a time to try and reach the ship, and were quickly shot down in ten bullets or less. Then, suddenly, the whole cloud advanced on the ship at once, and the crew opened fire.

Calmly, Neo walked through the streets of New York. It was about 1:30 p.m., and he needed a new job. First, however, he needed to get some food, and before he could do that, he needed money, which brought him to the bank.

As he entered the bank, he was immediately greeted with a loud shout from someone farther in the bank. "Down on the floor! Now!" Neo quickly dived to the floor as the robbers continued removing large amounts of money from the bank's vault.

"I thought I told you to lock the door!" One of the six robbers yelled to the one closest to him, who, even through the ski mask, looked like he really didn't want to be there.

Quickly he walked toward the door, irritated at being yelled at. In his frustration, he grabbed a woman's shopping bag and threw it across the room, the contents flying everywhere. One of which was a set of dinner silverware, skidded across the floor toward where Neo was kneeling, his hands over his head.

As the box hit his head, Neo instinctively put his hand on it to push it away. Looking up at the box, something caught his eye. His index finger was resting on a spoon. Normally, this wouldn't have meant a thing to him, but today, at this moment, for some reason, he couldn't take his eyes off it.

Once the robber had locked the door, he turned to see Neo holding the box of silverware, looking at it intensively. Figuring he was planning on using the knife that was also in the set, the robber rushed over to Neo.

"Give me the box." He said quickly. When Neo didn't respond, he repeated himself, this time with anger in his voice. "I said, give me the box!" Again, Neo said nothing. Now, the robber was really mad. Pressing the barrel of his gun against the back of Neo's head, he shouted again, "Give me the box! NOW!"

Neo's eyes widened, not looking at anything, but looking all the same. Quickly, with out a single though entering his head, Neo stepped on the man's foot, grabbed both the gun and the man's hand, and twisted as he turned around, making a large bump appear in the man's forearm, while making a sickening snapping noise. The man screamed out in pain as he let go of the gun, more because he no longer had any feeling in his lower arm than because of the pain.

As he pressed the gun against the man's forehead, Neo's eye suddenly came back into focus, and he saw what he had just done. In shock, and just plain fear, he dropped the gun.

Meanwhile, the other robber that had yelled before almost jumped out of his skin when he heard his younger partner scream. He looked over just in time to see the gun go off as it landed on the ground. Not thinking, the robber let out a yell and fired a single shot at Neo, regretting it the second it had happened.

Neo turned when the robber screamed, and kept turning involuntarily as he watched a bullet go whizzing by, missing his chest by inches.

His mind now awake again, Neo turned and ran out of the bank. After shouting "The bank is being robbed" as loud as he could, he quickly ran down a nearby alleyway.

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Stopping to sit on the ground, Neo though over what had just happened to him.

Only a few moments ago, the Nebuchadnezzar bounced off a sewer wall, several sentinels still attached to its hull. As Morpheus piloted the ship at full speed, trying to shake the last of the sentinels, Tank glanced quickly at one of the monitors that showed the Matrix's code while waiting for the EMP to charge.

"What the-?" Tank mumbled to himself as he looked at the screen.

Suddenly, the ship came to a complete stop, throwing everyone who wasn't strapped into their seat to their feet. They had hit a giant cloud of sentinels head on.

"Tank!" Morpheus shouted from the cockpit. "Hit the EMP!" Quickly Tank reached over and flipped the switch that let out a giant electric wave trough the air, killing every electrical device that was near the ship, accompanied by the sound of hundreds of sentinels hitting the ground, literally powerless.

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Tank walked over and sat next to Morpheus in the dark of the powerless ship.

"What happened?" Tank said in a quiet and calm voice, not bothering looking a Morpheus, because he knew he couldn't see him through the dark.

"I don't know." Morpheus said in his usual voice. "They found us somehow."

"But why were they coming after us? And why so many?"

"What did you see in the Matrix before you hit the switch?" Morpheus asked, ignoring Tank's question.

"I don't know." Tank said in a now slightly confused voice. "For an instant, it was like when an Agent appears, with the code changing for a moment. But then, when it changed back, it didn't. It was still normal, but in the wrong order, like things were happening before they should have, and some things that should have happened, hadn't happened yet.

"It was Neo." Morpheus said. Even in the dark, Tan could tell he was smiling.

"I thought you said he didn't take the red pill." Tank said, slightly surprised.

"He didn't." Morpheus said, still smiling. "But that doesn't mean he's not the One. He is the One. He can't avoid it, no matter how hard he tries. The prophecy will come true, one way or another. It's just than, now, the story has changed. There are new characters, and missing pieces, but the story will continue. We'll just have to improvise, that's all."

"I don't think I'll ever understand you, sir." Tank said, chuckling slightly.

A/N: Finally! I finished the third chapter! I hope everyone can read it OK. If not, I'll try and find a way to fix it. If anyone knows how to fix this problem, please tell me in your replies.

Speaking of replies...

richard the pedantic - Thanks for the review. This should start getting a little clearer as the chapters go on. And as for making the chapters longer, I think you're right. The only reason the first two chapters were so short was because they were relativly simple, and I just finished them quickly.

choice-is-an-illusion - Same answer as above. Once the other chapters get up, it should be a little more easily to understand.

P.S. if my words are slurred at all, it's becuse I'm writing this at 1:05 a.m. Hope I got all of the story up the way I wanted it. I'll have to read this over in the morning...