Anakin McFly – Thanks for pointing those out to me, I'll try to look out for that in future. Excuse my ignorance, but what's a Mary-Sue? I've heard the term, and no-one has really been able to give me an explanation. Thanks for reviewing!
Catstring – Love your name! Yeah, I liked Revolutions, but there's no denying the fact that it is a little depressing as far as Neo and Trinity go!
Anissa – Yay! I'm glad, I've read quite a few 'Daughter of the One' stories, and I wanted this one to be as original as possible. Just out of curiosity, what's the other one that you like? Thanks for reviewing!
Sydney Andrews – Thanks! Sorry this took a while, but still, thanks for reviewing!
JimmyNoName – There are so many clichéd 'Child of the One' stories, and it's really nice to know mine's good! Thanks! Yeah, Dracula's cool. Though the accents still crack me up…Merry (belated) Christmas to you too!
Bagpipes5K2 – I owe you so many Oracle cookies for reading this through, and for reviewing as well. Thank you! (gives out Oracle cookies with new year frosting)
Scarstar – Thanks! I was just looking at your Finland pics on your lj, it looks so cool there. And the Moomintroll is just…scary (joke). Hope you had a great Christmas!
Veronia – Here it is! Thanks for reviewing!
Thanks for all the reviews, they really made my holidays. Sorry this took so long, but I was at my dad's, and I couldn't be bothered to take my laptop there, and so when I could get onto a computer, I had to do my History coursework. Fun. Very.
Catstring's review reminded me of something I meant to say earlier. This takes place after the first Matrix – as far as this story is concerned, Reloaded and Revolutions never happened, though elements of them will be drifting into this story later on…
Many thanks as always to the incredible Bagpipes5K2 for betaing and helping me sort out this chapter. It was originally 4, 491 words long, so I decided to split it, and so a big thank you to Bagpipes for helping me divide it.
Chapter III: The Escape
Even though Kes was almost at the point of feeling nauseous with hunger, she made her way directly to her Operating station. The rest of the crew were there already, and they all looked up as she entered.
"Sorry I'm late," she apologised, keeping her voice deliberately calm and pitched low. "Is it time to go in yet?"
"Almost," Morpheus said. "First, we need to go over our plan. Have you got a secure location yet Link?"
Link tapped in a few final keys decisively. "Yes sir. It's at an office block near the edge of the city. There's a direct hard-line and it'll be totally empty. Give me and Kes five minutes and we'll be able to disable the alarm system, no problems"
"Good. Elysia and I will go straight there to set up the system. Neo, Trinity, if you meet the hacker Kiana and bring her there, that should give us time to set up. Is that clear?"
Elysia, a short woman with slightly curly red hair and pale brown eyes, spoke up. "How long will it take to unplug her?"
"If she picks the red pill, then it will take the machines five to ten minutes to disconnect her, and then we can pick her up from the sewers" Morpheus explained. "If we all jack out immediately, we can pick her up and move away as quickly as possible. There are too many sentinels here, and I do not want to have to use the EMP if at all avoidable"
Kes nodded, crossing her arms across her chest. "What time is it in the Matrix?"
"Just after eleven o'clock" Link said from his console. After being out of contact with the Matrix for so long, many people lost all sense of time. The timing changed somewhat in the Real World anyway, as without the sun, it was difficult to measure day and night.
"We should go in now Morpheus" Trinity said in her quiet way.
"No, wait" Kes said before she knew what she was doing. She frowned, unable to remember what had been going through her head before she had said that.
"Kes?" Neo asked her, studying her face.
"I – I don't know" she admitted, feeling confused. "It just doesn't feel right"
She knew exactly how stupid this sounded. At that moment, Kes felt every awkward inch of fifteen.
"Still, you might have a point" Elysia said slowly. "The later we go in, the less chance we have of running into any Agents"
Morpheus paused, and Kes could visualise the expression on his face, even though she was looking at the floor. She could feel the eyes of her parents on her, and she had to forcibly resist the urge to roll her eyes. She knew that they were worrying about her, and to tell the truth, she was too.
Why did I say that? she wondered to herself. Why the hell did I open my mouth?
From the console, Link muttered a small, violent expletive.
"What is it?" Trinity asked him, going over to his side to stare at the code.
"Agents. Three of them…going up to the warehouse"
"The warehouse? Where Kiana is meeting us?" Elysia asked.
"Yeah. How could they know?" Link breathed incredulously.
"How close is that to the hard-line we'd have used to jack in?" Neo asked suddenly. Trinity gave him a softly questioning look.
"Humour me"
Link tapped furiously into the keyboard. "Very close, maybe two blocks away"
Neo's eyes turned to Kes, who met them. "Oh no. I know what you're thinking" she said warningly. "Don't"
"Kes–"
"I am not predicting where Agents are going to be!" Kes said, her voice rising slightly. "It was just a feeling that came out when my mouth and brain disconnected for a second"
"The more important question, I think, is how did they know where we were going to be?" Morpheus asked, diverting the attention away from Kes. "Was the line we used earlier to contact Kiana clean?"
"Yes sir. I checked it myself" Link replied. "Bad news, it doesn't look like they plan to go. They'll probably wait until you jack in"
"Or attack the hacker first" Neo added.
"What are we going to do?" Elysia asked.
"Jack in, take care of them and then meet the hacker" Trinity suggested directly.
"It's risky" Morpheus said. "If we all go in, they'll be no-one to meet the hacker"
"I'll go in" Neo offered. "If I can draw the Agents away, then you can meet the hacker and unplug her"
"If she chooses" Morpheus pointed out.
"Neo, seriously, I know you're the One and all, but holding off Agents for almost half an hour? It's too dangerous" Link pointed out.
"What can we do?" Kes asked.
"Either wait or go in now" Morpheus replied.
"If we jacked in by another hard-line, would we manage to avoid them?" Elysia asked.
"No" Link shook his head. "They'd still find us. They have a way of doing that"
An idea struck Kes. She strode over to her Operating station and started to tap in the code for the location she needed to find.
"Kes, what are you doing?" Trinity asked.
"If Kiana's still in her house, and near her laptop, maybe I can send her another message, telling her to meet us straight at the office block" Kes said, searching her way through the streams of code that flickered down the screen.
"How do we know that they're not tracing her laptop?" Link asked. "Maybe that's how they found her in the first place"
"How do we know they've found her?" Kes argued. "All we know now is that they know what we're planning. That means they probably have a tapped phone, but it's unlikely they've traced her, right?"
"Maybe she's bugged" Trinity said quietly. "Like Neo was"
"Bugged?" Link said sceptically. "That's unusual, even for Agents"
"Maybe that's why they did it, for the unpredictability" Morpheus mused. "But no Agents have been in contact with her"
"She could have been bugged for longer" Elysia pointed out. "We've only been watching her for a month or so"
"But wait a second" Neo broke in. "They bugged me in state that I dismissed as a dream. How would that appear on the code?"
Link shrugged. "Beats me. I've never seen anyone bugged. They only seem to do it in desperation"
"We're running out of time" Kes reminded them. "We need a decision"
Morpheus seemed to ponder this thought for a second. "Kes, have you got through to her yet?"
Kes shook her head. "She's already left" She knew that this tore Morpheus. There was no way to change the plan now, but sending members of his crew into a bunch of Agents was not something he wanted to do.
"I'll go in" Neo offered again. "If we carry out the plan as before, then it can still work"
"I'll go too" Trinity said, casting a quick glance at Neo, who sighed.
"I'd object, but you wouldn't listen anyway"
"Damn right" Trinity retorted. "What time is it Link?"
"Quarter to midnight. It's now or never"
Morpheus nodded. "Alright. And Kes?"
She looked up. "Yeah?"
"If you have any more feelings about Agents – let us know"
Kes rolled her eyes. "It was just that – a feeling" But she was still shaken by it. Everyone in Zion expected her to possess the powers of the One, but until now, she had never possessed a single shred of those sorts of powers. It was understandable – her father's power existed in the Matrix, a place she could not go – but this was definitely eerie.
There was no time to think about it. Kes quickly went around, loading up the monitors next to the chairs for jacking in, sending her parents to the warehouse and Morpheus and Elysia as close to the office block as possible, and Link put the plugs in. Kes was glad; she hated doing that. Sticking a few inches of steel into the back of someone's head definitely seemed unnatural, even though she'd seen and done it her whole life. She didn't even bother to say goodbye to her parents anymore. This was a war, death could happen anytime. There didn't seem to be any point in any sentimentalities. She'd always been crap at them anyway.
She followed Link back to the Operating stations. She instantly tracked the screen, following her parents as they emerged into the Agents.
"Only three" she mumbled. "Come on…you've had worse odds than that"
"First sign of insanity" Link reminded her.
Kes fixed him with her best sardonic glare. "And you think it's taken me this long to recognise my own insanity?"
Link let out a laugh, which quickly turned into an expletive. "Oh shit!"
"Yeah, I'm seeing it too" More Agents were streaming out of thin air to meet Trinity and Neo. "The words 'oh shit' don't even begin to describe this situation"
Kiana was regretting not wearing a jacket. The night air was chillier than she had expected, and her thin grey t-shirt was not suited to the cold. It had been surprisingly easy for her to get out of the house. Her mother had fallen asleep after a few shots of something and her sister was never in anymore. Kiana had been able to walk straight out of the house without hesitation.
The streets had been quiet, eerily so. Only a few distant sirens and wailings had been heard, but the street was decidedly devoid of human life. Kiana would have felt a little scared if her other emotions hadn't been working in overdrive. It wasn't excitement, but a deep, numbing sense of right. If it was possible to classify the world in right and wrong, then this was the right part.
When she got to the warehouse, the eerily quiet feeling didn't go away. If anything it intensified. Kiana waited outside, sitting on the kerb in the cool darkness, not quite sure what she was waiting for. She checked her watch – not quite midnight. She'd been early intentionally. However, the voice of doubt rose up in her head, and she began to look at this sceptically. It was past midnight, no-one was around and she was here freezing her ass off. It definitely smacked of suspicion. But when she'd said yes on the phone, she'd meant it. She'd say the same thing again now.
A crash tore through the silent air, and Kiana started. The sound echoed around the street, and just as the sound died, another followed it. Kiana stood up and turned smoothly, following the sound. It was definitely coming from inside the warehouse. Kiana stood up, walking slowly towards the warehouse. Her rational mind told her not to go in, but curiosity was getting the better of her. She slowly walked towards the warehouse, pressing an ear towards the door. She knew that to the outside world she must have looked insane, but she could hear better this way, and what she could hear was a lot more crashing, as though something or someone was being thrown around.
Before she properly knew what she was doing, Kiana thrust the door open, and found her way in. What she saw stopped her cold.
"Oh my God" she breathed.
The warehouse was packed with, say, fifteen men in violently conformist suits. They all were wearing sunglasses, and had some sort of earpiece. The only two people in the room that didn't fit this pattern were in the centre, fighting them with both impressive martial arts and weapons skills. Both of them – a man and a woman – were clad in black leather and trenchcoats.
Now, one of the suits had noticed her. His smirk was malicious, and the gun in his hand did nothing for Kiana's confidence over the situation. She moved backwards, meaning to escape out of the door, but it was blocked, and she had no intention of trying to fight her way out. Flight seemed like the more sensible option, but she had nowhere to run to. She glanced around, looking for another exit, when she saw the handgun, lying abandoned on the floor – it must have got knocked out of someone's hand. She dove for it, picking it up carelessly. The Agent, wearing the same aggressively dull brown suit as the others, pulled out his own gun. Kiana reacted instinctively. She held the gun up, aimed wildly and shot, the trigger cutting into her flesh. She hadn't realised how much effort it took to pull a trigger. The range was almost point-blank, and her aim, while not perfect, should have shot him through the shoulder, if not the chest.
Kiana gasped, partly with the disbelief that she had actually shot a gun. The lump of metal, with a freezing cold handle and a warm barrel, felt like it was searing her flesh. It was amazing the desperation that had driven her to shoot, almost instinctively. She wanted to cast it away, try to forget what she'd done, but the Agent merely twisted, moving too fast and too agilely for a human, and the bullet embedded itself in the opposite wall without passing through him.
The Agent was still coming at her, and Kiana tried to raise the handgun again, but she was too slow. The Agent knocked the gun out of her slack grip and it clattered against the wall. Now Kiana was defenceless and vulnerable. Staring down the barrel of a gun, she thought that she would see her life flashing before her eyes. Instead, she only saw the silver barrel glaring at her in the face, and a few expletives flaring through her mind. It was amazingly simple, dying. In the work of a moment, someone could take their last breath and die, just cease to exist. Kiana drew in a deep lungful of air with the ominous feeling that it was her last.
Ooh, cliffhanger…Tell you what, I promise to update in a week, but if I break 10 reviews for this chapter before that, I'll update the second I get the 10th review for Chapter III. How's that? Seem fair?
Hope you liked it, please review!