LadyOfThieves – I didn't even realise I'd put that in there! It must be my subconscious taking over again…And yeah, even if you read all the updates I don't think you'd know what was going on – this story's a real mind fuck ;)

Sydney Andrews – Yay, I'm inspirational! I loved that NeoKes moment, it was so much fun to write. The narration is so totally me, as one of my friends pointed out, because it's sarcastic and full of profanity ;) My theory on this is that Neo probably can blow up sentinels, but he's never had to touch the Source, because it's not the end yet…okay, I could very easily give away great chunks of my plot here. But yes, as far as everyone is concerned. Neo can't blow up sentinels. Yep, Smith is coming back, and there is an Oracle scene in the works, but it'll probably be in the epilogue. Sorry! And yeah, there are tons of parallels between Kiana and Neo, but no Kes and Kiana falling in love. That would be pretty bizarre…lol, I think I'm getting an idea for a parody…thanks for reviewing!

scarstar – Thanks! I put in the idea of the King novel because I'd just seen Carrie…and so I was a little grossed out. Glad to know it came off though. I'm really going to need some luck with my GCSEs – I think I might just have a mental breakdown. I'd probably still have to do them though…

Bagpipes5K2 – I loved writing that bit :) I meant to send this chapter to you, but my server was being its usual useless self, and I didn't have email for a few days. Sorry! (offers apology cookies).

someone who cares – Thanks for reviewing!

Okay, this chapter's a little surreal, but bear with me, as it will become clear in later chapters. The next one will also be a little surreal, but less so. These two chapters are focusing on Kiana and Kes respectively, just to give you all some more background on them, and to develop them as characters a bit more.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter XI: Potential

Kiana was floating.

Her mind felt free of the body that was weighing her down, and her spirit soared. She could feel every molecule of her being acutely, and yet her body, as a whole, felt lighter than ever before. Sensations came to her, sensations she hadn't felt since leaving the Matrix. Her body responded easily to these stimulations; her fingers twitched as a silken feather seemed to run lightly over them, and she cried out in pain as needles embedded themselves in her forearm. But even these sensations she welcomed as signs that she was still alive. Still human.

Then again, for all she knew, this could be heaven. Or hell. Or eternity. The last thing she remembered was the sentinel's red light beaming into her eyes, piercing through her whole skull. After that, there was a blessed coolness that had erased the fierce heat of the sentinel's lasers, and now, there was the blackness that engulfed her.

Though, there was still the glaring possibility that she was dead.

Kiana cried out, a cry of desperation, of someone searching for an answer. Her cry echoed into the void all around her. The blackness went on, without ending. Eternal. Undying. Infinite. It stretched around her, seemingly complete, but at the corner of her eye Kiana was sure she could see a sliver of whiteness. She turned, chasing it, but it seemed to vanish when she focused her whole attention on it.

A part of her burned to explore, to understand this place, but another part of her simply wanted to revel in this new freedom. Her whole body felt as though it was filled with unused potential, as though she could do anything she wanted to do. Arms stretched out wide, like bird's wings, she soared on the breeze of the void, letting her body do whatever it wanted to do. This felt like being in the Construct, only better. She could feel all sorts of forces running through the void, waiting to bend to her will. She could feel them all, waiting for her.

A frenetic energy seized her, as though she was in a competition. Ambition and the need to succeed overwhelmed her, and she ran forwards on the wind, poised to perform. Using her recently uploaded martial arts files, she had only to browse to find sufficient exercises for her newly weightless body.

She flipped, jumping up into the air and spiralling around to land perfectly on the ground. From there she leapt up again, her legs doing the splits and her arms at ninety degrees to them, again landing flawlessly and somersaulting to rest in a cat-like pose. On and on she pushed her body further and further, doing the hardest things she could think of, stuff she wouldn't have even thought of doing before.

Though Kiana's body responded quickly and simply to the merest thought, a part of her mind was still wondering what was happening. When she had been in the Construct with Morpheus, doing this sort of thing had felt hard and unnatural, as though she would have to retrain her mind, and therefore her virtual body into reacting so fast and doing so much. But now, as she made a perfect scorpion kick and brought her leg back to rest perfectly upright, it felt so easy. Like a reflex reaction.

Total silence filled the void once again. Kiana wasn't even breathing hard. But as she listened to the silence, she thought she could hear the faintest sound of applause.

"Thank you" she whispered to her invisible audience. Her words carried over the sea of the void, echoing into infinity.

A leadenness started to fill her limbs, starting with her fingers, killing all sensation in them. Kiana tried to move her arm, but it was so heavy, so heavy after the lightness of a few moments ago. Panic filled her limbs, and she didn't know what to do. So, with nothing to fight, she fled.

She ran on nothingness, her body moving as swiftly as she could make it. She tried to kid herself into thinking that she was moving as fast as ever, that she hadn't slowed down, but she knew with every step that the same leadenness was pouring into her legs. She desperately pushed herself, trying to find the end of the void, the glimpse of whiteness, anything to get her out of here. Someone else was controlling her now and she did not like that.

As she ran, her lungs about to burst, she suddenly tripped without cause, going over into the blackness. Suddenly, her feet balanced on what felt like a marble floor, the coldness seeping into her bones, but all she could see was a continuation of the void.

Kiana tried to stand, but the heaviness in her limbs was filling her to breaking point, and it became an effort to even breathe, let alone do anything else. Every part of her ached and she could hardly believe that a minute ago she had been soaring through the air, feeling as though there was nothing to constrain her anymore.

No.

The quiet voice rang in Kiana's head like a clear bell, but she didn't know where it came from. It almost felt like it came from within her.

Free your mind.

The words, the same ones Morpheus had spoken to her earlier, came back to her, but they didn't sound like they were spoken in Morpheus' voice.

Kiana held onto the words as their last vibration died away, but a sort of strength was awoken in her. She could feel the heaviness and bulk in her body start to dissipate, and tiny waves of sensation started to swarm up her body. Everything seemed to initiate a new feeling, and her head started to clear.

She began to run forwards again, slowly and ungainly at first, but with every movement a new life arose in her body. She soon ran swiftly and elegantly along the unseen marble of the void, ending with a back flip and landing in a fighting pose. She didn't know who was the other presence she felt within the void, but she knew that it wasn't a friendly one. She was starting to feel trapped, and a well of panic rose up within her. However, she calmed it down, forcing it beneath the skin, and held her pose, waiting for an answer to her unspoken challenge.

At last it came.

Not bad.

It was different from the voice she heard a moment ago, and whilst that voice had seemingly come from within her, she knew that this one came from the void around her.

Kiana raised an eyebrow. "Thanks a lot" she muttered sardonically. "Who are you?"

Someone you will know. Soon.

"Hopefully never" Kiana snapped, feeling an instant dislike to the smooth, oily voice she could hear. She didn't know where it was coming from, but it seemed to be all around her, an omnipresent force. "You didn't answer my question"

Maybe you are asking the wrong question.

"What a cop out" Kiana responded, not knowing why she felt such a need to defend herself against this entity. "Alright, answer me this: did you build this place?"

I am…part of the system that governs this place.

"Is this the Matrix?" Kiana asked. "Or just my subconscious?"

Have you not entertained the idea that the Matrix is within your subconscious?

"That's bull" she replied fiercely. "The Matrix isn't real"

But for fifteen years you believed it was. How do you know this isn't the Matrix?

Kiana, for once, was stumped for an answer. She racked her brain so hard trying to come up with a response that it was only later that she realised that the presence had said fifteen years instead of eighteen.

"Because I know" she said simply. "I can feel it"

There was a laugh, malicious, but almost familiar to Kiana. The thought disturbed her, but she knew deep within that she had heard that sound somewhere before. It was unnerving, like part of a long-buried memory, and she felt a shiver go up her spine as a response to the noise.

But when was the Matrix most real to you?

A breath caught in Kiana's throat as she realised what the presence was talking about. "Oh no" she breathed. "How do you–"

The memory began to play itself out in front of her eyes before she even had time to finish that thought.

It was sunny on the day she was going to die.

Bright sunlight streamed through her window, throwing agonisingly dazzling and hopeful golden light across her dark room. With a decisive pull Cassandra jerked the curtains across the window, shutting all of the sunlight out.

This was it.

In one hour, at eleven in the morning, she would be seventeen. Seventeen. How could someone live for almost seventeen years and have found nothing in the world? Nothing. There was nothing for her here. She was sick and tired of wasted potential and the fact that there was nothing in the world for her except regret and pain. That was all she could look forward to in life now.

So, here she was. It was ten o'clock, on the thirteenth of September, and in one hour, she would be seventeen. To celebrate, she was sitting on her bed, with a bottle of the strongest pills she could find the house and a sharp knife, as well as a bottle of vodka – which she'd taken a sip of and then refused to have any more. It tasted too bland, and it dulled her senses. If this was the true reality of life, she wanted to feel every sensation possible. She wanted to get everything possible out of her death. Because that's all it was to her. A chance to feel something she'd never felt before.

This was as real as life got. Death. That was the reality of life. For the whole of her seventeen years, Cass had always felt like she'd been asleep. Every part of her life was ethereal, almost like a dream. But now, she was focused, she had a plan, and she felt more alive than ever. Which was incredibly ironic.

Nothing was going to make her change her mind about this. Nothing.

The whole place was quiet, almost deathly silent. Kiana knew that no-one was there, but she could feel something else…a sort of omnipresent force. She could feel it around her, every sense attuned to it.

Was it God? Or paranoia?

"Well God," she whispered, "if it's you, here's to the shit you've put me through. And here's to the fact I'll get to say it to your face soon"

A twisted smile crept over her face. Despite the blackness of her mission, she felt light hearted. There was a solution now. An answer. Something that she was sure of.

She'd never had this feeling before in her life. Never this. She'd never had an answer before in her life. Only indecision, and self-doubt. The whole world had made it their mission to tell her that she was always wrong, that she would never do anything right. She was going to prove them wrong. She was going to do something right, for once. One right action, one deed that was going to solve everything. One right action in seventeen years. That didn't seem fair. But life wasn't fair. Here was her chance to shorten the odds.

Sitting on the bed, cross-legged, she slowly tipped the pills out onto the blanket. They were small things, white and nondescript. Was there really the power to end a life in something so commonplace? She would certainly find out soon.

Cass ran some of them over in her hand. The feel of them on her skin made her tense up involuntarily. Did she want this? Truly? For the first time, she felt an inkling of self-doubt at her own plan. Couldn't she step back? Wasn't there another way out? Couldn't she live a little longer, and maybe find something, something worth living for?

There was no point.

Cassandra suddenly closed her fist, trapping the pills inside and digging her too-long fingernails into her palm. It wasn't fair. She'd never be able to come back from this. In a few minutes it would all be over. It wasn't fair. She should have been able to live like anyone else. She should have had the same chances as everyone else. But she knew she didn't. No-one else had a family like hers. No-one else had a mentality like hers. No-one knew what it was like to be her.

It had taken her every day of her life to try and convince the other people around her that she wasn't crazy. Every action of hers had prompted another round of questions, more tests and more treatments. And while Cass had protested her sanity at every possible point. But no-one believed her. Every time she tried to prove her own mentality in all its glorious normality, it had gone wrong and further enhanced the belief that she was mad. At seven she'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia – a tall order for a seven year old. But even Cassandra herself had admitted that she heard things, things that no-one else seemed to hear. And she could see things too. Every now and again, when she was in the city, she caught flashes of green, lines of it running through roads and skyscrapers, like the very structure of the city. But no-one else seemed to see them, and after a while they stopped listening every time she tried to tell them.

A tear began to well up in her eyes, and she dashed them away. There was no more crying, and there were no more lies. Those days were behind her. Though she still heard people talking that no-one else seemed to hear, and she still saw things that were invisible to everyone else, she had stopped talking about them, and her mother was happy to forget her daughter's period of insanity. So that was that. A whole part of her life swept under the carpet, and locked away because it was 'inconvenient'. It was a blot on her life, the fact that she could never trust her own judgement because no-one else could. It was a mind-fuck of a life. It wasn't fair. It simply wasn't fair.

Which was why she was here now.

Cass glanced at her watch; it was almost eleven. Good. Without anymore deliberation, she placed the delicate pills, warmed to the temperature of her blood from sitting in her palm, onto her tongue. They felt light and heady, almost sweet, but richer and darker than the word 'sweet' could ever describe. She swallowed them dry, almost enjoying the sensation of them going down her throat.

One more thing to do…

She took the knife in her hand, running it lightly over the tip of her forefinger. It was sharp enough, she could feel the steel edge through the thumb layer of skin over her digit. This was her insurance. If the pills didn't take her, the knife would.

She pressed it lightly to the underside of her wrist, feeling the pressure of the blood circulating in her veins. It was all so delicate, so pristine. And she was going to destroy it in order to destroy herself.

She moved the knife across her left wrist in one fluid, liquid motion. She could feel hot blood staining her hands, her bedclothes, but she didn't care. As the pressure of her blood dropped and a sickness settled in her stomach, she could only feel the heady rush of adrenaline, a promise of something different, if not better, awaiting her.

She lay back and closed her eyes, eagerly awaiting the embrace of the darkness.

Kiana was on the cusp of shaking as the memory played out in front of her. Seeing her own emotions painted blandly out in such a remote, detached way was more than she could bear. It drew her right back into that moment, where she had no hope left and the only faith she had was faith in the next world, the next life, whatever lay beyond.

"That wasn't me" she whispered. "That was Cassandra. I'm Kiana. Kiana…" Her words sounded hollow, even to her, and they floated through the void like plastic bags caught in the wind, without substance.

She was suddenly shaking and couldn't stop. Everything seemed to overwhelm her at that moment, and for a second, it felt like she had lost control. Like her destiny had suddenly been taken out of her hands. She knew that feeling well. It felt like being back in the Matrix.

It was too late. She was lost.

Kiana floated backwards on a sea of unconsciousness. Her mind shut off as it overloaded with emotion. There was too much to handle, even in one memory. So she sank back and let exhaustion and oblivion take her.

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