Chapter 5: A Pirate's life for me

Date: Unknown

Time: Unknown

Area: Tunnels of the Real

Janus lay on a table, completely bare except for the cloth covering his groin. The table was lined with white fluorescent light bulbs, giving off bright white light. The part Janus was laying on was covered by a thin white sheet. Small antennae were attached to each side of his head at his temples. In the time that passed, his eyebrows and eyelashes had grown in, with only a little bit of the hair on his head apparent. His head rested on a pillow. Irvine, Anubis, Kira, and another man all stood around the table watching over him.

Rather than their crafty black clothing they were wore when Janus first ran into them, they were now all dressed in rag like clothing. Black combat boots covered all of their feet, and they wore combat pants in several dark shades.

Irvine was wearing dark blue pants and a white baggy, raggy shirt that looked like it was made of homespun cloth but now tarnished. His hair was more messy in appearance than it was in the Matrix. Anubis was dressed in a brown shirt with black pants, and had short blonde hair still growing in.

Kira dressed in a black tanktop and black pants, her hair as long as it appeared in the Matrix, but not as treated looking. There were black plugs visible on her arms placed every few inches.

The other man standing there looked to be of haitian decent. He wore an outfit of fatigues, a B.D.U. jacket with cut off sleeves and combat pants in a matching dark shade of olive green. Under his vest he wore a black t-shirt, and combat boots of the same color like the others. He wore black knuckle gloves on his hands. His dreadlocks were tied back under a black bandana, and the surplus cloth that made up the knot was nearly as long as the dreadlocks themselves, which ran down to the base of his neck.

This man's name was Marley, and he was a ship crew assistant like Glitch, the operator. When the others were jacked into the Matrix, he would help out Glitch while he was operating, and that included anything from unplugging the others from their chairs, or piloting the ship when the ship was under Sentinel attack & pursuit while Glitch worked as fast as he could to set up an exit to get the rest out of the Matrix ASAP. He'd also help when none of them were in the Matrix, like piloting the ship or manning a turret. Sometimes if Glitch was piloting, Marley would sit in as Operator himself. The room they all stood in was an infirmary.

A fluorescent light hung above the table. There were medical supplies and cabinets here and there, and some monitors and consoles displaying the readings being taken from the antennae on Janus' head, such as heart rate, brain waves, and other important conditions that would be monitored on a newborn. The floor was solid steel, as well as the bulkheads. Black conduits ran across the ceiling, as well as pipes and mainlines, with some wires on the floor as well. A small cart stood beside the table, on which was several medical tools.

Janus opened his eyes, barely, and he squinted. He couldn't look around much, but he saw the others standing over him. He recognized Irvine, but Anubis and Kira were out of his path of vision. Marley looked down and made eye contact when he noticed Janus had awakened. He tried to speak, and could only do so in a whisper.

"What's going on?"

"Relax buddy, we're rebuilding your muscles." Marley answered. "You got a while to go yet."

"Irvine? Where am I?"

"We'll explain everything to you later, Janus. Sleep for now."

His head barely moved, but it was Janus' effort to nod. He closed his eyes, and in a matter of seconds he fell back into sleep. Hours passed. Every so often, Janus' body would twitch as a result of his nerves reacting to the muscle rebuilding process.

Irvine looked over to Anubis and Kira and nodded, and they left the room to go elsewhere on the ship. As Marley and Irvine removed needles from his body they placed them into a small basin filled with a sterilizing fluid. Marley yawned and rubbed sweat from getting into his eyes, his forehead reflecting the fluorescent light. Irvine looked up to him and cracked his knuckles.

"We have a lot of work to do still," he said to him in an assuring tone.

Marley nodded and looked down at Janus, who was still asleep. "How much longer you think this is gonna take?"

"An hour or two maybe. The hard part's over. All we have to do is get the rest of these needles out, and then work on the plugs."

"The plugs..." Marley said in a mumble, as if he had something against them. Irvine raised a brow.

"What's the matter?"

"They look freaky."

Irvine gave him a look that said "Don't go there."

Marley chuckled and shook his head. "Come on let's finish this guy up."

And so they continued working, and it took them two more hours to finish. After removing all of the acupuncture pins, they moved on to working on the plugs all over his body. This included closing up every plug on his body, except for the one located on the back of his head. The reason for this was to stop anything from getting into his blood stream that shouldn't have been there and to prevent infection.

When they finished, they covered him up in a cloth to keep him warm and left him sleeping on the table. The rest of the crew was busy attending to ship maintenance, monitoring sentinel activity, attending to themselves, whatever they could do to keep themselves busy, while Irvine and Marley did the surgery. When they came out of the room, they met on the main deck.

Here, the floor was made out of grated metal. Wires and conduits were all over the place. They ran across the floor, they ran along the walls, they hung from the ceiling, from the bridge up above that was part of the upper level of the ship. There were pipes everywhere. Metal supports all over the place, and they all had a burnt or tarnished look. Pipes were all over, huge pipes connected by flanges or thin pipes connected with through welding.

The main structure was the core. Every chair from which someone would sit in to be jacked into the Matrix was wired to this core. Several monitors were attached to it, about four per chair, and with these came a keypad, for keying in certain modifications and configuration set ups. Not far off from the core was the Operator's station, a plethora of monitors and several keyboards all connected together by many wires. It was a mess. But a clean mess at the same time.

"How's he doin'?" Blade asked, crossing his arms and standing tall. Here in the real world his hair was more natural looking. His eyes were gray, and he wore a dark gray sleeveless shirt and dark brown combat pants and the black boots. Everyone had black boots, it went without saying. He tilted his head slightly.

"He's alright now. His vitals are normal and he's doing okay. We still have to put some clothes on him and put him into his bed." Irvine answered.

Anubis took a seat in one of the chairs and took a moment to scratch behind his ears. He never said much to anyone and was rather anti-social. He seemed to have no care at all about the new crew member, and continued on lukewarm about it as usual with most things. Solitaire stood hanging onto a pipe with her right hand. She had a white tank top and blue pants on with suspenders, her hair done up in a high ponytail. "So, what's he gonna do for us?"

"Right now there's not much he can do, but it brings one more guy onto our side once we get him trained and everything. Besides, he wanted out." Irvine replied.

Kira sat there listening. "So what's that mean, he's just as effective as we are? That's not saying much," she said.

"With our position, with the way things are looking, I know what you mean. But he wanted the truth so I wasn't gonna deny him the fact." He looked over to Marley. "Marley, go help Glitch with the sentinel watch. I'm going to put Janus in his bed. Later, we'll give him orientation."

Marley nodded and walked off with a "Yes, Sir." Irvine went off to tend to Janus, and Marley made his way over to Glitch.

Glitch was young looking, about 25 years old. He was caucasian, and stood 6'0 in height. He had short combed back black hair, and wore a dark gray baggy shirt with blue combat pants, a headset, and brown leather gloves cut short at the finger. He nodded over to Marley.

"Whatcha got?" he asked.

"Ah nothing, Cap told me to come and help you, what's new?"

Glitch shook his head and looked at the three large central monitors displaying scrolling code strands that represented the Matrix. "Nothing special really. System refresh is finished, copper tops doing what they do, no sentinels on our ass. We're doing good so far, so I guess it's just me and you watching people again and trying to fix this shit."

Marley shrugged. "Better than nothing."

----

Janus slowly opened his eyes, and his blurred vision came into focus. He had a slight headache. As he stared up at the ceiling, he realized it wasn't his apartment ceiling anymore. Then he saw that he was sleeping up against a titanium wall. A long shelf-like mesh box on this wall contained a few articles of clothing. The titanium plates that made up the wall were bolted together. The top rim of the bed was also lined with bolts.

Where the hell am I?

He took a moment to try and gain his bearings. And then, in a flash, he remembered. The entire world around him blurring, with decayed looking patches of green symbols, and the tub of red goop with the tubes. Above his pillow was a light, and behind that, an empty black rack. There was a single monitor panel on the wall adjacent to that of the light and the mesh box. Two thin pipes ran along the wall that he slept against, the wall with the mesh box. Farther along the wall was a phone attached to a receiver but with no buttons to dial.

It must be like closed circuit or something.

There was a cabinet, and a small fan above it. He looked down at his bed. It was only big enough for him to sleep in, and he had one pillow and a large burgundy cloth that was a blanket. There was a little bit of space to walk around his bed, five feet out to the side, and four feet away from the foot of the bed was the door, which was fastened by a lever, the same way a Navy ship's doors are closed by.

This must be what a jail cell feels like.

He looked back down at his bed and looked at how big it was. He looked over his legs and noted his clothes. Now he was dressed in black combat pants, new boots, and a dark blue shirt made of the home woven material.

My clothes are gone... what the hell did Irvine do with them?

He looked down at his bed on his left side. Something caught his eye.

What the hell?

A tube was going into his shirt. He pulled up his sleeve and he was taken off guard by what he saw. The needle entered his arm where it should have, but instead of going in through the skin, it was inserted into a plug in his arm that was gunmetal in color.

What the hell is this?!

Getting a grip on the tube and needle, he pulled at it with hopes of getting it out of his arm, and he felt pain. Wincing, he pulled at it slower and more gently than before, until it had come all the way out of his arm.

Then the memory of waking up in the pod came back. He remembered the huge towers of pods filled with red fluid and naked people sleeping with tubes attached to them.

Tubes...wait...

Slowly he moved his hand to the back of his head to where his headache was coming from, that being right above where his nick connected to his head. Gently running his fingers across that area, he felt something he didn't expect. A round, metal plug, on the back of his head, with a small hole in the middle. His eyes widened, and he hit his hand down onto the bed from the spontaneous reaction.

What is this!?

He stood up from the bed and put his hand on top of his head and felt short tiny hair.

My hair's gone!

He began feeling his chest and his arms and felt more plugs, and pulled his arms away and looked at himself.

What the FUCK happened?!

There was a knock at the door. Snapped out from his moment of hysteria, he looked towards the door. The sound of the crank turning came about, and the door whined as it was pushed open. There stood Solitaire, and smiled when she saw the freaked out look on Janus' face. To him it looked like she was holding back laughs, causing him to calm down and be more concerned as to why she was there.

"Hey newbie. You alright?"

The look on his face made it obvious that he had tons of questions. He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off.

"I'm Solitaire, I think we met a few hours ago," she said, and extended her hand to shake. He accepted and shook her hand, and then she took back her hand/ She gestured with her head for him to follow her. "C'mon, everyone wants to say hello."

She led, and he followed, leaving the door open behind him. He studied the hallway as he walked behind her, noting how it was all made of metal, and had a blue tint to it, and how it was lined with wires and pipes. They passed several other doors, and he assumed that this was the quarters level of whatever it was he was on. They came to a ladder and she climbed up, and he followed. They passed a level as they went up, and came up to the main deck on the opposite side of the floor from where Glitch and his set up was located.

Janus narrowed his eyes as he looked around, noting the wires and the pipes all over the place and shaking his head. That's a lot of wires.. He looked at the the core setup and how complex it was. His eyes roamed all over the place, from the floor to the ceiling, over to the chairs, of which he counted six. And then finally, he looked over to the others that were staring back at him.

He saw recognized Irvine, Anubis, Kira, and Blade. Solitaire joined the others, and there were two more he didn't recognize. Realizing he was standing alone, he began walking over to the others. It felt kind of weird to be walking, and why he didn't know, but he got used to it and in short time it felt like normal walking. He stopped about seven feet away from the rest of the group. Irvine stepped out and took his hand and shook it firmly.

"Welcome aboard, Janus."

"Where the hell am I? Is this a warehouse or some shit?"

"This is my ship, the Nemesis. It's a hovercraft, but not the same as the kind you're used to."

"Hov-hovercraft?" This was ridiculous, it seemed. "What the fuck's going on here, what'd you do to me? You cut my hair, you took my clothes, you put these metal things all over me. Tell me what this is! I had these insane dreams, cause of that pill you gave me. Is that what 'the Matrix' is? Your pet name for the trip you get off of the red pill?"

The crew couldn't help but get a laugh out of that. "Looks like he's got us all figured out, Boss," Glitch said with a laugh. Irvine himself smiled with a brief chuckle.

"We'll explain everything one thing at a time."

He nodded as if to be referring to something behind Janus. Janus turned his head and saw a bronze plaque attached to the center of the core and it read "Mark VII No. I NEMESIS Made in Zion Year 2202". 2202? He turned back to Irvine.

"What's the date?"

"Actually to be honest we don't know. We estimate that the year is sometime around 2203, two hundred years after your time. But we'll get to that later. Right now, it's time to introduce you to the rest of my crew, but in a more formal manner."

They all stood in line. First Irvine came to Blade. "This is Blade, my first-mate." Blade nodded. Then he moved onto Kira. "This is Kira." She gave a nod. Next he moved onto Anubis. "This is Anubis. He isn't too talkative but he might warm up to you." Anubis simply greeted Janus with a cold stare, and Janus gave it right back.

"Lancaster," Janus responded. Anubis continued to stare.

"His name is Anubis." Irvine said, guiding him a long. "This is my Operator, Glitch." Janus nodded, and Glitch nodded back in return, replying with "Nice to meet you." Next Irvine came to Solitaire. "You've already met Solitaire." She winked at him, and he nodded back. Irvine then came to the last person. "This is Marley, secondary Operator and a great help among many other things." Then he turned to his crew. "You all know Janus. Let's make him one of us." They all smiled. All except for Anubis. He kept the cold stare. What's his problem? Janus wondered. Irvine looked back to him and continued to speak.

"This is the real world. You have yet to see how it really is, but it's nothing to rush at. In this world, survival is a struggle. We do whatever we have to do."

Janus arched a brow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"We've broken off from a major fleet to take a neutral side in a war. However we are looked upon as rogue pirates."

"A war? Pirates?"

"We steal and salvage, we attack, we hijack, we hack, we crack, we shoot to kill. All of this is necessary to survive. It's the life we live, but the way we see it, the ends justify the means."

Janus thought this over. He still had so many questions.

A pirate's life for me.
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