FicWad

-I-I-I-

Light.

A light so bright it pressed against his eyelids like a physical weight.

Then voices came.

Soft, murmuring voices, whispering phrases that he only half understood.

Slowly, millimeter by painful millimeter, he levered his eyes open, flinching back as the harsh light struck them.

One of the voices spoke. "Harry? Are you awake?"

Green eyes blinked open once more, and after a moment they focused, to see a man staring down at him. Harry frowned and tried to sit up, wondering why the man looked so familiar. A hand on his shoulder stopped him, gently pushing him back to the table.

"W-what... what's going on?" Harry asked tremulously, staring at the rather large black man standing behind him.

"It's okay, Harry. We're just doing a little check-up, making sure everything's working right," the first man said soothingly. "It's nothing to worry about."

"Oh..." Harry sighed, closing his eyes wearily and relaxing. Then he frowned as he realized their aching was no longer from the light. "Why do my eyes hurt?"

He didn't see the two men exchange ironic smiles, though he did hear the first answer him. "Because you've never used them before. Now sleep. Everything will be... clearer, in the morning."

-I-I-I-

When Harry next awoke, he found himself lying on a bed inside a small, gray-walled room, curled beneath a thick blanket and wearing clothes nearly indistinguishable from those he'd worn at home. Disoriented, he sat up, pushing aside the blanket and quickly regretting it as he shivered in the sudden chill.

Curious, he reached out to the nearest wall, blinking in surprise as his hand touched cold metal. Is this a cell? he wondered silently. At least, he wondered until he got a closer look at the outstretched limb.

Or, to be more specific, at the thing sticking into that limb.

Grimacing, Harry took hold of the strange contraption, bracing himself as he gave it a pull. He then proceeded to nearly faint as every nerve in his arm seemed to catch fire, all at once. Okaaay, I think I'll just let that wait 'til later...

Now trembling from more than the cold, the young boy peered more closely at where the device entered his skin. Odd. It almost looks like an IV.

Once, when Uncle Vernon had been unusually drunk, he'd beaten Harry until he had to be sent to the hospital. The man told the doctors that the boy ran behind the car just as he was backing up, and he hadn't been able to stop in time. The injuries were severe enough that they believed him. Harry spent three weeks there, and was poked by so many needles he felt like a pincushion. One of the most constant was an IV.

The contraption was rather akin to it. Its main part was formed of a plastic tube, like the familiar hospital sight, but that was where the two began to diverge. The tube led not into a thin, hollow needle, but into a piece of metal that had attached itself to his arm. But on closer look... not all the metal was part of it.

Part of it was /him/.

As Harry's fingers reached out and traced the plug, flashes of memory began to at last return. The strange man, his uncle's death... the machine city...

The boy slowly curled into a ball, clasping himself tightly as he fought the tears burning behind his lids. He couldn't understand why they were there. It wasn't like he mourned his uncle, though he still half-expected the man to walk through the steel door and box his ears for daring to go with strangers.

Maybe it was just how different the world seemed all of a sudden. Not in his wildest dreams (or nightmares) had he ever considered that something like that place could possibly exist, let alone that it did. Assuming his memories were real, of course, and not just figments of his reportedly overactive imagination.

Sighing, Harry ran his fingers through his unruly hair in a practiced gesture that never failed to clear his mind.

Wait, hair/? But... in the memory he'd been bald, hadn't he...? So that couldn't be right. Though, there was that one time when Aunt Petunia shaved his hair off, and it grew back overnight. And if the memory /was false, then where the bloody hell was he?

Bewildered, the boy leaned his head back against the wall, idly tracing the plug in his arm. About five minutes later, he sat up as he heard a raucous /screee/, and the heavily reinforced door opened to reveal Trinity. Stepping inside, she closed the door behind her, and nearly dropped the tray she was holding as she turned around.

"Harry?!" she gasped, startled.

"Trinity," he nodded shakily. "Er... perhaps you can clear something up for me. Yesterday was real, right?"

"Uh... yeah. It was. Though, it was actually the day before yesterday." Her lips quirked at his obvious disbelief. "Don't worry, it's not uncommon for the newly unplugged to sleep for quite a bit after they're freed."

"Oh." Harry lowered his eyes, confused, until they came to rest on his arm. "Trinity? Can... can I ask you a question?"

"Of course you can, Harry!" Trinity said, sounding surprised. "Why wouldn't you?"

"Aunt Petunia said I wasn't supposed to."

She was silent for a long moment. "Well, you can with me, and with any of the others. And don't you forget it!" she concluded, folding her arms and mock-scowling. Unable to keep a straight face as her audience started to giggle, she smirked. "What was your question?"

Harry calmed down. "Er, I was just wondering what this thing in my arm is. And why I seem to recall being bald."

"It's just something to keep you monitored, and feed you if necessary. As for the other..." She looked at him bemusedly. "That's why I was so surprised earlier. You were."

"Oh..." he blinked. So it was like that one time. "That's all right, then."

Her confused expression showed she hadn't quite followed his logic, and he knew he would have to give some answers of his own later. "Well, let me get this thing out of you." She sat next to him, setting the tray down on the cot. Leaning over, she pressed carefully on a certain spot on the device, before pulling it cleanly out. When he winced expectantly, she smirked. "Tried pulling it out yourself, didn't you?"

Harry nodded guiltily.

"It's okay, everyone does. Though my husband is the only one I know of to have succeeded."

The boy shuddered. "Oww..."

Trinity laughed. "You better believe it! He never tried that again!" She picked up the tray and handed to him. "Now eat your breakfast. You've got a long day ahead of you. And I'm afraid we won't have much variety in the menu until we dock in about a week, but we do have a lot of it."

Harry glanced at the tray and smiled. It was the same porridge he'd eaten at his uncle's, but in much... much larger proportions. And, when he tasted it, there was honey! He'd never been allowed to have any before... He sent his new-found guardian a grateful look and dug in.

Trinity watched him wolf down the simple porridge as though it were his last meal, and her mind drifted back to the medical report Neo and Morpheus had given them. Malnutrition, for one, and half-a-dozen poorly-healed broken bones, mostly fingers and ribs. Plus the bruises, and the scrapes... now she really wished she'd let his uncle live, so she could have some... fun with him. Not that she particularly supported torture; it was just that in some situation it was called for.

Like this one.

And that business earlier, about not asking questions... Children were supposed to ask questions. Curiosity was such an integral part of their makeup that it was hard to imagine a child without it. Thankfully, Harry didn't seem to have been too affected by it, judging by the fact he was asking questions, if many fewer than the newly-awakened usually did.

Though maybe she ought to have included the aunt in her plans. Unlike her husband, Trinity had no compunctions about hurting other females. And she had to wonder just what the woman hadn't wanted the boy to find out...

Ah, well. There would be plenty of time for all that later. First, she had to get through enlightening her charge as to the current state of the world.

Brought out of her thoughts as Harry slowed, and stopped, she made an inquiring noise, and he looked up at her. Setting the tray back down on the bed, he gave her a small smile. "I'm not used to eating a lot. If I eat any more, I'll be sick."

Nodding in acceptance, she stood and gestured for him to precede her out the door. He stepped out into a corridor cluttered with an impenetrable maze of pipes and wiring, as well as things he could only guess at the purpose of. The boy tried to ignore the odd weakness in his muscles as he looked at Trinity for where to go.

She led him down the corridor, and eventually up a steep ramp into a wider one. Discerning a distinct lack of windows, Harry screwed up his courage. "Umm, Trinity? Where are we?"

She looked back at him, smiling, and he relaxed, having unconsciously tensed. "This is our home away from home, the hovership /Nebuchadnezzar/, based out of Zion."

Hovership? Zion?

Storing his questions away for later, he frowned. "Nebu-...Nebuka-..." Harry sent her a helpless look, and she laughed.

"Don't worry, you'll get it eventually. Just don't think about how to spell it."

Nodding dubiously, he followed her through another doorway, trying not to grin as she had to duck through the portal while he continued blithely in. Then the urge to grin, to do anything but gape faded as he took in their surroundings.

It was some kind of cockpit, with two swivel chairs, banks of instruments, and a single, large window directly in front. Harry almost didn't notice the two men sitting in the chairs, Morpheus and another man he didn't know. Instead, his attention was taken up by the view out that window.

Walls bathed in perpetual shadows moved past them at incredible speeds, brilliant spotlights briefly illuminating metal beams and girders that jutted out into their path. For the first time Harry was aware of the sensation of movement as the ship traveled gracefully around them, a deep thrum sounding in the floor beneath his feet, both soothing and disturbing in its nearly undetectable intensity.

"Have you found a place yet?" Trinity asked quietly, leaning over the seatback to peer over Morpheus's shoulder.

"Not quite... ah, there!" the other man said, studying a computer screen intently. "About 400 meters north by northeast, in between those two pillars. There's a pretty good hardline above it."

Harry watched as the ship decelerated, coming to a hover above a small depression in the rubble that covered the ground. Gently, it sank down, until there was the slightest of jolts, and Morpheus released the controls. "Alright, we should be safe. The next patrol isn't due for a couple of days." Massaging his hands, he turned, to repeat Trinity's earlier stop-and-stare performance.

"What- " the new guy turned around, wondering what so fascinated the normally stoic man, and joined in the impromptu staring contest.

"What is it?" Harry asked nervously, wondering what he could possibly have done wrong already.

"Oh, it's nothing," the second man said in a broad Hispanic accent, shaking his head as though to clear it. "It's just that you were bald as Morpheus when we picked you up, so we were just a little... surprised by that mess up there." He gestured towards the boy's hair.

"Oh," he said, relieved that it wasn't him. Or at least, not directly him. "Er, who-?"

The man grinned cheerfully, holding out his hand. "We actually met a couple days ago, but since you were kinda unconscious at the time, I'm Tank."

Harry couldn't help but grin back as he took the proffered hand. The man practically exuded an air of caring geniality, one that convinced the boy he would never hurt him. "I'm Harry." He looked out the window. "Where is this?"

"The old sewer system. It's not safe to go up to the surface, so luckily there are enough of these to get around."

Harry was getting quite tired of being confused by these people. Though, he seemed to be confusing them just as much, to judge by the way Morpheus still hadn't stopped staring. Apparently, his sigh of irritation was audible to his companions, because Trinity put a hand on his shoulder.

"We could just tell you the answers, but for you to really understand them, we need to show you. So if you're ready?"

About to reply as he was led out of the cockpit, Harry frowned instead. "Why does that seem like a trick question?"

Tank laughed as he followed them out. "Smart little niño, ain't he?"

-I-I-I-

Trinity helped the undersized boy into the chair, adjusting it to fit his small frame. Shifting his head slightly to the side, she turned and swung herself into another chair. Behind her, Neo prepared the jack, and Tank finished downloading the loading program and walked over to Harry.

Harry himself was trying not to fidget nervously as he listened to the sounds behind him. Careful not to move his head from where Trinity had positioned it, he strained to see, and flinched in surprise as a cool hand placed itself on his forehead. Then Tank spoke.

"Alright, Harry. Try to relax; this might feel a little odd."

The boy only had time to think a single thought before he felt cold metal touch the back of his head, and the world exploded.

Not again...