CHAPTER
ONE

(Quinn (red head) is an original character)

Claire sat in the back of her first period class, it was always that way now, no one really wanted to sit next to her so she'd respect their wishes. For the third time this week the teacher stopped teaching. He swiveled through the desk rows and finally to Claire's seat. She was dozing off like she had been for the past two days. Mr. Prontognasophenthisentiment (everyone calls him Mr. Pronto or Mr. Pro for short) slapped the desk with the yard stick that he was so conveniently holding. Claire shot up, eyes wide with confusion.

"That is the third time this week I've caught you sleeping through my class, get your act together, Claire, or you'll be sleeping in the office." The agitated teacher warned before heading back to the black board.

Claire sat alone during lunch, at the end of a table. After Lani this what she always did. Sit, eat, and leave. Nothing more, nothing less. But today was different, she sat but couldn't stop thinking about her computer and the words that showed on the screen. After she had gotten to sleep she hadn't had a dream or at least she didn't remember it.

After staring at her food for about 10 minutes, silently contemplating last nights events, a popular cheerleader walked towards her. Claire, of course, had not noticed the cheerleader, Claire was unaware of most everything at this point. The cheerleader cleared her throat. Claire still wasn't used to anyone speaking to her out of freewill and assumed the cheerleader to be talking to someone else.

"Excuse me," The cheerleader piped up in a valley girl voice.

Claire finally turned to look at the stranger that entered her lonely end of the table.

"Here," the cheerleader put shortly, dropping an envelope on the empty table space next to Claire and trotted off. Claire stared after her only to see a crowd of people engulf her.
Claire reached over and picked up the envelope.

On the back of the letter it said her name: Clare in beautiful handwriting. Claire carefully opened the envelope and slipped out the card inside. It was an incitation. To a party.

Claire nearly did a double take of the invite. The first thought was that she never gets invited to anything. The truth of the situation sunk in. the thing she should be worried about the most.

The rest of the day had gone by quickly. Claire didn't really remember most of it. She had spent the rest of the day pondering whether to go or not.

She still was making up her mind as she gave her mom the invitation when she got home.

"Do you want to go?" her mom asked reading the invite carefully.

Claire thought about it for a moment. She wanted the dreams to go away, but at what expense? She didn't want to end up getting date- raped.

"Yes, I want to go." Clare declared as if yes alone wouldn't convince her mom.

"Ok, Claire, you should get ready. I need to go to the store anyways. I'll just take you then go shopping." Her mom thought aloud before heading off to reapply make- up and find her coat.

Clare, on the other hand, drug her heels all the way to her room. Slowly, she decided to found her Claire leather pants and coat to put on over her Bloody Mary t- shirt. Something told her this would be a long night. The only thing she didn't know was whether or not this was a good thing. And that's what scared her the most.

When she finished changing, she found herself back in the living room, her mom dragging her out the door. She knew her mom feared for Claire's social life.

"Come along, this is your first social event in a while." Her mom rambled

"Oh! By the way, here's a package for you." Claire's mom said, handing Claire a small package.

Claire carefully studied the package and stuffed it in her back. Meh, she thought, I can open it at the party. She didn't want her mom to know about the strange thing that contacted her via computer. That would ruin the night. And her chances of riding herself of the dreams and sleepless nights.

The car slowly came to a stop and Claire found herself standing in front of a local teen rave club. The party was in a club. She tightly held the strap of her messenger bag and walked in.

As soon as she opened to door, music, blasted out and nearly knocked her down it was techno music, clearly it would be since here is was a non- stop dance party. Claire was somewhat surprised that her mom let her come.

There was smoke in the air, evidently someone was smoking. Whether or not they were legal Claire did not know.

Finally Claire closed the door behind her and began to walk around. It was a strange arrangement, the teen club. They always seem to let teens and adults in. this worried Claire because that wasn't really a good thing. Did they even consider what could happen?

Clair was looking for an empty wall, in the process bumping into someone. She stepped back.

"Sorry," she yelled so that the person she had bumped into could hear her. Instead of letting Claire go on her merry way, the person grabbed her and dragged her off.

Clair was in shock, is this the person contacting her through the computer? The person dragging her was a wearing a black trench coat and sunglasses, which undoubtedly Claire marked as odd. The person was male and had raven hair, was rather tall, and had a strong grip.

Claire found herself following willingly, probably out of curiosity.

Her led her to a deserted part of the, party, where the sound of techno wasn't booming through her ears.

He stopped and turned to face her. His sunglasses reflected her image; it was, for some reason, intimidating.

"You're Claire." It wasn't a question or a statement or a kind of declaration, it was more like… a thought.

"Yes," Claire said attempting to mimic the thought.

"You know Lani," the man thought again in a deep voice.

"Correct," Claire almost but not quite stuttered. She took note of the way he said know and not knew and figured it meant Lani was alive like she had suspected.

"would you say you had a strong friendship with Lani?" he asked.

Claire had to think about that. It would seem that they had a strong friendship. But she didn't know if he'd forgive her for leaving him in the net. For not helping him. But she thought they had had a strong friendship,

"I believe so," Claire replied, trying to sound as professional as he looked.

"Then follow me."

He led her over to a door that was marked: Exit. The exit led to a deserted alley way. Apparently rain had started falling in the short period of time she had been in the club stopping for a second the man spoke up, "My name is Neo, by the way."

Clair was about to say something like 'nice name' or 'I'd tell you my name but you seem to have already figured it out.' But a car appeared, screeching through the alley way. It stopped in front of them.

Neo opened the door of the backseat and motioned for Claire to get in. once Claire was in Neo sat down in the window seat next to her and closed the door. On Claire's other side there was a women dressed in all shiny, plastic black and had short black hair, she was probably in her twenties or thirties. In the passenger seat there was another women dressed in all gray and had short red hair, although she wasn't hold, she looked about 20 or so. NShe looked the youngest.

Claire couldn't see anything but the back of the driver's head and ha hand and an arm. The driver's hair was put up in a weird way that she had never seen before. It looked like mini buns all over the person's head. The driver was wearing a red reptile-skin coat or jacket. And telling by the had the driver was dark-skinned.

Everyone in the car besides herself, Claire realized, was wearing sunglasses. Which was strange because, first off, it's the middle of the night and also sunglasses can hurt your vision. Yet the sunglasses looked really cool. Claire noticed that she did somewhat blend in with her Claire leather pants and jacket.

"Hello, I'm Trinity." The women sitting next to her said. The wiggled around to get comfortable.

Claire was surprised the shiny plastic black of trinity's pants didn't cause any noise.

Neo, Trinity, the driver, and the red- haired woman led her up the staircase of a building they had stopped at. The soon reached a door that, thank god, they stopped at, Claire didn't know how much longer she could've gone if they hadn't stopped. Trinity opened the door and beckoned Claire to go inside. Claire stepped through the entrance and into the room. Inside was a dark-skinned bald man dressed in a black lizard skin jacked and a green tie.

"Hello, Claire, I am Morpheus," The bald man said, "Please, have a seat."

Morpheus motioned at the chair before him. He looked back on the others that still stood in the door way.

"Go guard the exits." He said before turning back to Claire who had found the chair extremely comfortable.

The others obeyed and shut the door behind them. Clair could hear the sound of their steppes as some traveled downstairs and some traveled up. He could hear them murmur things but couldn't exactly hear the words.

"Do you know what the Matrix is?" Morpheus asked.

The Matrix? Claire pondered. The last time she heard the word matrix was her dad saying they needed to get rid of their old matrix printer a long time ago. Why would these people care so much about a printer? But she decided Ignorance couldn't hurt anyone.

"A Matrix printer?" Claire questioned.

"No, I'm not talking about the old matrix printers," Morpheus laughed. "I'm talking about what surrounds you, what you see everyday. When you go to school, to band practice, to a club. The matrix surrounds us, we are living in it."

"The matrix is a computer simulation of the world that our minds are plugged into. It is a control." Morpheus went onto explain, "Sadly, there's no way to properly explain it unless I can take you out of it."

Claire sat in complete silence; she was confused, so utterly confused.

"I have in my hands two pills," Morpheus stated putting both hands in his pockets and pulling them back out again in fists, "My left hand," he opened his left hand, "Holds a blue pill, if you choose this you will wake up in bed and this would have just been a dream."

"In my right hand," he opened his right hand, "I have a red pill, if you choose the red pill I will show you the truth, for the truth is all I have to offer you."

Without even thinking Claire's hand reached for the red pill, on some subconscious level she wanted to know. She wanted to know what everyone else didn't. She wanted to know what the matrix was. And at this moment her hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Something must have possessed it.

She took the red pill and put it in her mouth, grabbing at the glass of water in front of her and washed it down. Morpheus smiled at this. It seemed to him that she was doing this out of pure curiosity. He was, for the most part, right.

Claire sat in a cold chair, they had led her into another strange room. She looked around. Beside her there was a cracked mirror, in front of her there was Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, the red haired woman, and Niobe (she had learned her name on the way here) they were typing things into computers and watching the monitors. Claire looked back to the mirror, it wasn't broken anymore. Claire's eyes, for the third time today was confused. She reached out and touched it, but found that it was like a metallic liquid and stuck to her fingers. She simply stared in wonder at the liquid, that is until it continued to spread to all of her remaining skin. It was a strange sensation; it was like being in a freezer.

It
Was
So
Damn
Cold

Claire screamed as the liquid spread to her throat and into her mouth. She could hear things being said, but everything went black.

Claire staired at the ceiling. She would've never thought that everything in the world that she had lived in was, in fact, not real. It was hard to believe, she had found it impossible to believe when Morpheus had fist told her the truth. But now that she thought back on it, it all made perfect sense. However the thing she couldn't believe, and still wouldn't believe was that Lani was a program that had been deleted but had chosen to stay in the matrix and hide. That couldn't be true. Lani had feelings. Lani was... almost too perfect. On some subconciounce level she did know he must've been, but her mind was denying it.

The reason she had been brought here was Lani, of course. Their "Oracle" had told them that Lani would be a big help in the battle between their race and the machines. But they needed someone to identify Lani and possibly persuade the program to join them. Claire had agreed, she wanted to see Lani again. She wanted Lani to tell her that he was not a program.

"Was she above or below the age level?" Neo asked.

"She was right on it." Morpheus stated tapping his fingers on the metal table.

"She didn't seem to take it so well," Quinn (formally known as the red haired one) pointed out.

"No, she took it the same as all the others." Morpheus argued, "The only thing she got upset over was the fact that Lani is just a program that didn't choose exile."

The room went silent for a minute. Everyone contemplated Morpheus' words, everyone thinking exactly the same thing:

Is Claire going to help us find Lani?

I would like to thank my friends Dani (for at least trying to help me come up with a title) and Anna (for bothering to read it).