A/N: Thanks for the reviews. Again, replies are at the end.

World of Blue

Chapter 5

By Tai Wilson

Neo opened his eyes to the sound of gunshots. He had just been thrown through a rather solid door, which, as I'm sure most of you have guessed, didn't feel good. Now, he was picking himself quickly off the ground, ignoring the pain that surged through his body, trying to find the Agent that had just been chasing him. Wait. Agent. How did he know what it was? Well, it didn't matter now. Looking around quickly, he saw Keith, still standing in the doorway. "What happened?" Neo asked as he walked over toward the Irish man.

"The Agent is dead." said a deep voice from somewhere in front of Keith. Morpheus had arrived just seconds before the Agent had pulled the trigger on his gun. Luckily, he had managed to fire of a shot before the Agent did, causing the Agent to dodge the bullet, in which making him miss the shot intended for Keith. Then, he fired a shot into the Agent's leg, causing the virus to fall, before sending a final shot into it's head.

Now, Mouse was just reaching the alleyway. He had been running as hard as he could the whole way, trying to keep up with Morpheus. Now, he was out of breath.

Looking over at Neo, Morpheus said, "So, Neo. Now are you ready to learn what you already know?"

"Who are you?" Neo asked as he walked over toward Morpheus.

"I am, Morpheus, and this is one of my partners, Mouse." Morpheus said, gesturing toward Mouse.

"What's going on?" Neo asked as he felt a cold drop of rain hit his hand. It was starting to rain; the hard, cold rain that chilled you to the bone.

"You're starting to go down the rabbit hole, Neo." Morpheus said, not seeming to notice the rain. A few seconds later, an all black car pulled up in the street next to the alley.

Looking down at his hand, Neo saw the raindrops hit it, slowly starting to fall faster. Then, something odd started to happen. They seemed to start to just go into Neo's hand, rather than splashing off of it.

"What's going on?" Neo repeated. He had started to feel lightheaded, and couldn't see as well. Then, he felt a pair of hands grab his shoulders and start to push him toward where the black car used to be. Now all he saw was one large and dark blur after another.

Neo as most passed out as the car door shut, and they sped away into the dark.

He was now in a semiconscious state, only hearing some of what was being said, and responding to commands, but his face held a lifeless look, and his mouth hung slightly open, drool lingering dangerously close to falling out.

"Did you have to drug him?" he heard a voice say. It sounded like it was miles away, echoing softly though his mind.

"It was the only way." Another, deeper voice said. "We need to get him out now before it's too late, and we don't need any complaints."

"But how do you know he won't bug out once we pull him out? And plus, how do you even know that he's the One?"

"You saw what he did yesterday. He has to be the one."

There was an undetermined amount of silence before Neo felt the car come to a stop and the same pair of hands pulled him out of the car.

He didn't know how far or for how long he walked. It could have been a few steps, it could have been a mile, but eventually, Neo felt himself sit down in a chair.

"Drink this." he heard a voice say as a glass was put into his hand. Blindly obeying, Neo took several large gulps of the liquid that he now knew was water. Instantly, he regained full conscious. Looking around the room, he saw Morpheus, Keith, Mouse, and two other people he hadn't seen before in the room. One was a woman with black hair that looked strangely familiar. The other was a man with a shaved head, who didn't look all that happy about being there.

Looking down, Neo saw that he was sitting in a chair, his arms and legs strapped in.

"What's going on?" This was the third time in a row now that Neo had asked this question. "What'd you give me?"

"Aye, did you really think that there was just rum in those mugs, laddey?" Keith asked with a grin on his face.

"The red light special." said the man with the shaved head. He was typing feverishly away at a computer.

"Cypher." Morpheus said, looking at the man. "Do you have a lock on him?"

"I've got it." Cypher said quickly, still punching commands into the computer. "We have lift off in t-minus 30 seconds."

Looking at Neo, Morpheus said simply, "See you at the bottom of the rabbit hole."

"What does that mean?" Neo asked in an almost hysterical voice.

"It means, 'hold on to your arse'." some one said. However, Neo wasn't paying enough attention to notice who it was.

"10 seconds." Cypher said quickly.

"Remember, rum leaves you with one 'ell of a hangover in the mornin'." Keith said, still grinning.

Then, Neo blacked out.

Neo opened his eyes to red. It was all around him, like a pool of red slime. Lifting his head up, he felt something above him. Pressing on it with his hand, he broke through it, finding it to be a gooey cover, keeping him in a pod, just large enough to hold him. Sitting up in the pod, Neo noticed that he was covered in wires and tubes, one of which was currently stuck down his throat. Grabbing it with his hands, he pulled on it as hard as he could, which wasn't very hard at the moment. All the energy in his body was completely spent, but he still managed to pull the large, needle head tube out of this throat, allowing him to breath again.

Leaning over the edge of the pod, he saw that he was on a tower hold several hundreds or millions of other pods like the one he was in.

Suddenly, he heard an odd buzzing noise as he looked up to see something like a giant robotic spider hovering over him. Neo only looked at it for a moment before it grabbed him by the neck lifting him slightly into the air, a red robotic eye looking him over quickly. This was when Neo got the first good look at him self. Through the red reflection of the eye, he saw that his body was completely absent of any and all hair. Then, before he had time to react, the giant cable that was sticking out of the back of his head suddenly began unscrewing from his scull. Once the cable was out, the spider dropped Neo back into the pool of red goop as the bottom of the pod opened up. Out of instinct, Neo tried to grab onto the sides to stay in the pod, but with no luck.

He now half fell, half slid quickly down a large pipe, the metal scrapping his bare skin as he went. Then, the pipe abruptly stopped, sending Neo flying through the air, landing in a giant pool of water.

Looking up, he saw several bright lights as the ship above him opened its cargo bay doors, a claw just the right size for picking up humans slowly lowered down into the water. Somewhere in the deepest part of Neo's mind, he chuckled lightly at how much this reminded him of the games he used to play as a child, trying to catch the small stuffed animals. He would have laughed out loud, if all his current energy wasn't being used to keep him breathing. Luckily for Neo, this claw had a much better grasp than the ones he remembered.

------

For several hours, the crew of the Logos and the Neb, both still biting their tongues over how cramped the ship was, worked desperately to save Neo as they flew quickly toward Zion, still at least a day's time away from the city. Over this time, Neo slipped randomly in and out of consciousness.

Hours later, Neo woke up on a hard bed, feeling cold and itchy. He wanted to sit up quickly, but because of his loss of energy, it was much slower. Putting a hand to his head, he was surprised to find it shaved. Then he remembered his reflection in the red eye of the machine. Looking after he lowered his arm, he felt a slight tug at his skin. Looking down, he saw a long IV tube that was inserted into one of the many plugs on his body. Grabbing the tube, he started to pull it out and was surprised to find how long the needle it was attached to was. It was about twice as long as he expected it to be. Once it was out, he threw the IV off to the side of the bed before trying to rub the pain out of the plug that the tube had been in. He wasn't surprised that this did nothing but fill him with a cold and creepy feeling from the feel of the plug.

Just then, the only door in the room opened with a loud clank and groan from the hinges.

"Glad to see you're awake. Come on, I'll show you the ship." It was Morpheus. Neo was slightly irritated at how normal this seemed to be to him.

Morpheus handed Neo a blanket as he exited the room, walking out into what looked like a submarine. The blanket looked, felt, and smelt worse than a horse blanket, but Neo gratefully took it anyway. He had never been so cold before. It was like there was no heat on the entire planet.

Once they stepped out of the room, they were bumping shoulders with the eleven other people, all in the small deck.

"Sorry for the small space." Morpheus said as he maneuvered his way to the center of the group of people. "Our ship, the Nebuchadnezzar, was downed shortly before we rescued you. Now, we're on the ship the Logos. It wasn't built to hold this many people, but we needed to get off the ground before more sentinels arrived."

"Sentinels?" Neo repeated.

"I'll explain more later, but first, you should meet both the crews. A few, you already know. There's Trinity, Mouse, and Cypher." Morpheus gestured to the people as he said their names. "The way you've been acting, you might remember Apoc and Switch, but then again, you might not. The other two are Tank, and his big brother Dozer." Then, Morpheus turned to face the other side of the deck, where three other people were standing. "This is the crew of the Logos. Niobe, Ghost, and their operator, Sparks."

After introducing everyone, Morpheus turned back toward Neo. Setting his hands on Neo's shoulders, he said, "Follow me. It's time you see something."

"What?" Neo asked hesitantly.

"The truth." Morpheus said as he led Neo over to one of the handful of Ecto chairs.

Sitting down in the chair, Neo looked around nervously while Morpheus, with the help of Trinity, prepared Neo to go into the Matrix. After clamping his feet down with two large bars on hinges, Morpheus had Neo lay his head back while he grabbed the jack.

"Just try and relax. This is going to feel…" Morpheus paused while trying to think of the right words. "…A little weird." Hearing this, unfortunately, didn't help Neo relax at all.

Then, Neo felt a very sharp pain the back of his head as the jack was inserted. He tried to yell out, but no sound came out. Closing his eyes from the pain, Neo opened them a second later to nothing but white.

Looking around, he heard a voice from somewhere behind him.

"Welcome, Neo, to the Matrix." Morpheus said, suddenly appearing, seemingly from thin air, along with two chairs and a very old looking television.

"Is this… the Matrix?" Neo asked, hesitantly.

"Not exactly. This is the construct, our loading program. We can load just about anything from here: Sparring programs, gun, clothes, anything…"

-----

"He's gonna pop!" Cypher yelled almost comically as Neo knelt on the rusty grate floored deck of the Neb, ready to vomit. Then, he did, followed by passing out.

-----

Neo woke up to the feeling of eyes on the back of his head. Knowing it was Morpheus, Neo said, "I can never go back, can I?"

"No, and I should apologize to you. There's an age limit when we unplug people from the Matrix, and you're obviously over it. Not to mention that we had already given you a chance earlier, and when you refused, we drugged you and made you unplug." Seeing the look on Neo's face when he heard this, Morpheus quickly continued. "We had no choice! If we hadn't unplugged you, you would have died. Also, we all saw you in the bank. You are the One. I think everyone knows that. Even you do, Neo."

"Well, since I can't go back, what can I do?" Neo asked, sitting up in the bed, letting his feet fall over the edge and rest on the cold floor.

"You can train." Morpheus said simply.

"Okay, you're supposed to start off the operation programs first, but I think we can skip that and go on to something a little more fun." Tank said a few minutes later as he flipped through a handful of disks. "How about, combat training?" he said as he held up a disk for a moment before putting the disk into a slot and starting the program.

-----

Neo had been training for several hours when Morpheus walked up next to him and Tank.

"I know Kung-Fu." Neo said, looking up at Morpheus.

"Show me."

A/N: Well, that took longer than I would have liked… Now, onto replies!

richard the pedantic - "Your use of dramatic dramaticness is effective to say the least." I had to read that a few times before I got it, but now I think I have an appropriate answer: Riiiiight… Thanks for the compliment, though, uh, I think… And yes, I think I did fall over. I don't know what kept me from updating this sooner, but I'm sure it was something having to do with school, end of semester exams, and the holidays. …Even though none of that was going on when I finished my last chapter…

I think we should just blame writer's block again and leave it at that before I write a full letter for your reply…

LiMiYa - Yes, it is interesting, isn't it? Also, I plan on continuing.