ReDblooDpassioN – Thanks! Um, do you mean Kes? If so, yeah, I'd agree! Thanks for reviewing!
Scarstar – Crap! Thanks for pointing that out. I would say I'd correct it, but then I'd have to come up with another excuse for furthering my plot! Thanks for the website as well, it was really helpful!
Bagpipes5K2 – Kiana thanks you (: I hate my own fight scenes, so it's great to know someone out there likes them!
Anakin McFly – Did you get my reply? I know, looking back I was using some really crappy English. It's been corrected though (didn't make it anyway). Thanks for reviewing!
willaim johns – Wow! I'm feeling very flattered, and thanks for reviewing every chapter! It felt really good to wake up and suddenly have three more reviews! Thanks!
Annisa – I think I read The Fourth Kingdom a while back, I thought it was pretty good. I need to look up The Wrong Target, thanks for the suggestion! And yeah, I'm trying to avoid the Mary-Sue trap. Thanks for your confidence!
Thanks to everyone who helped with my Mary-Sue confusion. I really hope that Kes and Kiana aren't going to turn out like that, and thank you for all the encouragement as well! If at any point they're looking like Mary-Sues, tell me so I can bang my head against a wall and then fix it.
Thanks again to Bagpipes for betaing.
Chapter IV: Choice
Suddenly, another pistol was shoved to the Agent's head, and pulled before it could dodge it. The body fell to the floor, amazingly lifeless. Kiana looked up at the leather-cad female in front of her. She was handling the firearm with competence and the air of one who is usually in complete control of themselves. She glanced down at Kiana, her expression masked by masking sunglasses.
"Are you Kiana?" she asked in a clipped tone.
Kiana nodded. The woman helped her up and shot in the direction of another Agent with one fluid movement. The Agent dodged the bullets, and continued advancing on them.
"Whoa, shit. What are you?" Kiana asked her incredulously.
"Someone who needs to get you out of here."
"That's helpful." Kiana muttered.
Out of the corner of his eye, Neo could see Trinity fighting her way towards him with Kiana in tow.
"Neo, we need to get her to Morpheus"
Morpheus? As in the Morpheus? Kiana thought.
"You go. I'll hold them off."
"No," the woman insisted. "It's too dangerous."
"If we lived by that philosophy, we'd never jack in." he replied, delivering a well-aimed kick to the side of an Agent's head. "I can get Kes to set me up another exit if I don't make it to the office block."
The woman nodded, slowly, hesitantly. "Okay." With a quick flicker of her eyes back to the man, which Kiana did not miss, she pressed a gun into Kiana's hands.
"Follow me." she said. With a combination of martial arts and shooting skills, she managed to clear a path to the door. Kiana clutched the gun tightly, but she was glad not to have to use it. A few more shots and they were outside. An Agent tried to follow them out, but another shot from within and he slumped back inside. Kiana followed the woman blindly into the street as she pulled out a cellphone, with the handgun still clutched tightly in her hand even though she no longer remembered why she had it.
Back on the Neb, Kes was desperately trying not to chew her nails, even though she was hacking into the office block security system to dismantle the alarm system. It was something she'd done ever since she was a child, and it seemed to grow more compulsive when she was in a stressful situation. When the phone rang, she was shocked out of her reverie and responded just as she had always done.
"Operator." she replied automatically.
"Kes, we need a car." It always amazed Kes that wherever she was and whatever she was doing, her mother's voice was always as cool and calm as always.
Kes tapped into the keyboard rhythmically. "There's a black Cadillac around the corner. Keys are in the ignition…now."
"Thanks Kes. How's Neo doing?"
Kes was glad she asked, as it gave her another excuse to focus on him. "Fine. He's holding his own."
"Good," Trinity breathed into the phone. She knew Neo was the One, she knew he was perfectly capable of holding off Agents, but she was still allowed to watch his back. "What's the nearest hard-line for him to jack out from?"
"In an emergency, the one you came in by." Using the same hard-line to jack in and out of with was quite risky, as it usually advertised their position to Agents, but in an emergency it was alright. "If not, we could set up another close by."
"Okay." Trinity hung up. She turned back to Kiana. "Are you ready to meet him?"
Kiana nodded. "Will he tell me what the Matrix is?"
Trinity nodded, figuring that a half-truth was better than the whole truth at this point. Morpheus was better at this than her anyway.
"Come." she said, leading the way to the car. Just as Kes had said, the doors were open and the keys were in the engine. Kiana got into the back, feeling a little fearful. This wasn't quite what she had expected.
Trinity started to drive, accelerating smoothly to a good speed. That afternoon they had all memorised a route to make this mission easier, and she knew exactly where she was going. There was no other way to get to the office block without passing in front of the warehouse though, so she sped up as they passed it, trying to avoid any tangles with Agents. However, as they passed the warehouse, the door opened and a dark shape hurled out of it. Trinity braked sharply, but barely had time to grasp a gun before the passenger side door opened and the man from before leapt into the car.
"Is everything alright?" Trinity asked as she sped the car away.
Neo nodded, removing his sunglasses.
"Um, I don't want to sound like a nutcase, but where the fuck are we going?" Kiana asked in a very controlled voice that was her way of covering for the shock that was numbing her system. This was all just a little over her head.
"Somewhere where you can get the answers you want – if you really want them." Trinity replied cryptically. "Neo, can you call Kes or Link about the bugging gun?"
Bugging gun? Kiana thought. This is definitely not a good thing.
Neo flipped open his cell phone, and heard Link's voice greeting him.
"Operator."
"Link? We need a bugging gun."
"Sure thing." Link replied. "Give me a second…okay, done."
Neo felt rather than saw the code change around him, and the gun dropped into his hand.
The car pulled into an alley and stopped. Kiana looked around, surprised by the lack of movement.
"Why have we stopped?" she asked with some trepidation.
Neo swung around in his seat, holding a gun that Kiana hadn't seen him draw. "This is just our insurance." he warned her, though that wasn't very comforting for her.
Trinity got out of the driver's seat and walked around into the seat beside Kiana.
"What is that!" she asked, her pale blue eyes fixated on the large gun.
"We think you might be bugged. It's just a precaution." Trinity said. "Pull up your shirt slightly."
Kiana's expression didn't change, but inside she was feeling more than a little doubtful. However, something in Trinity's manner made it very clear that this was an order to be obeyed, and so she pulled her shirt up a couple of inches.
Trinity picked up the gun and held it just over Kiana's midriff. It clamped down on her abdomen hard, stretching the skin taut.
"What is going on?" Kiana asked. No-one answered her. She found that she couldn't take her eyes away from the gun being pressed into her stomach. If she tried to turn away, her eyes were drawn to the gun barrel pointing in her face. It was making her feel slightly nauseous, really.
Trinity's expression darkened as she worked the gun, her gaze intent on the small monitor screen.
"What is it?" Neo asked her.
"There isn't anything."
"No bug?"
"Nothing."
Kiana was starting to feel distinctly uncomfortable. It was one thing to be driven over town by strangers promising answers. It was quite another to have them somehow probing into her stomach with a sort of x-ray machine.
"If there's nothing there…" Neo began, his eyes locking with Trinity's and a whole wealth of unspoken information passed between them. Kiana got the feeling that a whole conversation was happening, she just couldn't hear it.
Neo's cellphone started to ring, and he lowered the gun to answer it. Kiana breathed an internal sigh of relief. It was getting difficult to breathe with a gun aimed between her eyes.
"Dad?" Kes was speaking into her headset. "Listen, Morpheus called. They're ready for you. And we don't think she's bugged. Nothing's showing up on the coding, and even the Agents leave traces."
"Okay, we'll take her to Morpheus. Thanks Kes."
Kes hung up, feeling exhausted. She tried not to let on, but she'd been more worried during the warehouse fight than she had let on. She'd seen her parents take on Agents during awful odds, but this had felt different. And Kiana appearing in the middle of it hadn't helped anything.
Her stomach was begging her for food. Kes tried to ignore it, but it was very insistent. She sighed. This was going to be a long night.
When Neo got off the phone, he relayed the message to Trinity, who slid back into the driver's seat, leaving the bugging gun next to Kiana on the seat, who just sat there passively as the car started again, waiting for explanations that never came.
Finally, the car pulled up to a tall building. Kiana followed Trinity and Neo as they led the way through the deserted building. The rational part of Kiana's brain told her that it was way too easy to get into a high-profile office building with expensive equipment everywhere. The other part of her brain was a little scared by the sterile atmosphere, the darkness and dim blue light making it all seem eerie.
On one of the top floors, they stopped outside a room with closed double doors. Kiana felt a great sense of anticipation.
"Here's some free advice." Trinity said abruptly. "Be honest. He knows more than you could possibly imagine" She opened the door, and Kiana walked through it without hesitation. She was expecting someone huge, someone instantly impressive, someone whose presence made the air around them almost shimmer. She got all of that.
Morpheus was the sort of person who made their surroundings seem insignificant and any other details irrelevant. Kiana also felt like she could instantly trust him.
"Welcome Kiana." he greeted her from his high-backed chair. "Please, sit."
As she sat down, she suddenly had a feeling that she'd walked through a one-way door. She might have been able to get out, but she didn't want to. Something inside her told her that this was exactly where she was meant to be.
The reason they had picked the room at the top of the office building was that the room beyond the one Morpheus was in with Kiana, the room they had set up all the equipment to unplug her had two entrances. One was through Morpheus' room. The other was through a corridor that followed around the shape of the building. Trinity and Neo walked through this.
Neo smiled suddenly. "What's so funny?" Trinity asked him.
"You said practically the same thing to me before I met Morpheus."
Trinity returned the smile. "After so many unpluggings, I guess I got bored of trying to be different." She brushed a strand of hair away from her face, and Neo caught sight of a sharp, deep graze down the side of her neck and face.
"You're hurt."
"It's nothing" When she saw that he didn't believe her, she furthered her plea. "It doesn't even hurt. I can get it sorted when we're back on the Neb"
"I just don't want to see you get hurt." he assured her, and Trinity saw the sincerity in his dark brown eyes.
"Trust me, I'm not going to." she said, gripping his hand with her own. She let a second pass before gently steering the conversation back to more mundane matters. "Come on. Elysia could probably use our help"
"If she accepts." Neo reminded her.
"I've only known two people who refused. And if not, we just have more clearing up to do." Trinity said with a small smile as they pushed through the door into the equipment-filled room.
Kiana stared at the pills in front of her. She knew before Morpheus had even shown them to her which one she would choose. She picked up the red pill within a matter of seconds, washing it down with a conveniently-placed glass of water.
Morpheus smiled at her. "Come with me."
"This is some of my crew. Elysia, Trinity and Neo." Morpheus indicated each person in turn. What fascinated Kiana was the equipment they were working with. Elysia and Neo were both at computers, but the screens were filling with scrolling green characters that ran down the black background. Kiana was dying to examine it more carefully, but there was no time, as she was directed to a chair in the middle. She sat down, feeling like a victim being sent to the electric chair. Morpheus opened his cellphone and spoke into it without dialling.
"Kes? Have you got a lock?"
The response must have been yes, because Morpheus looked up and nodded at Trinity. Kiana followed the motion, but never knew what happened next, because after that, the world she had known vanished from her sight.
At the Operating station, Kes leaned back in her chair and sighed briefly.
"That little unplugging took almost two bloody hours." she complained. "I'm pretty sure I came close to having a couple of embolisms, and I haven't eaten for about eight hours. I need a new job."
I'm sorry, I really love Kes. She's just so sarcastic. She is also occasionally a spoilt brat, but that's okay. The bratty side will come out more at some point, I promise…that's going to be fun to write.
Please review!