FicWad

-I-I-I-

"And you say this man fought the Agent to let you escape?" Morpheus asked again, disbelief clear in his voice and face.

Neo nodded wearily, leaning back against the sheet-metal wall. He didn't quite believe it himself, either. "Yeah." He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "He tapped me on the shoulder, and told me to follow Harry and Trin. Said he'd 'take care of' the Agent. Though I never saw them actually fight..."

"A program, perhaps..." the older man said hesitantly. "Though why would one aid us?"

All Neo could do was shrug, and Morpheus propped his head on one hand, elbow planted on the arm of the pilot's chair. He stared pensively out at the rubble that half-filled the enormous sewers. "Well," he ventured after a moment, "at least we can never say our lives are boring."

The other man snorted ironically, thrusting himself away from the chill wall. "'Interesting times' indeed." He started to leave, then paused in the entryway as a laugh forced its way out of his mouth.

"What is so amusing?" the hovership captain asked curiously, swiveling his chair around to keep his shipmate in sight.

Neo grinned. "When I was a kid, my... my mother was utterly terrified of spiders," he reminisced fondly, though not without a hint of bitterness at the reminder they were still stuck inside the Matrix and would likely never leave. "Whenever she saw one, she'd scream for my dad to come kill it. That guy in the Matrix, the way he said he'd 'take care of' the Agent... it was exactly the same way Dad would reassure Mom he'd 'take care of' the spider, just before he'd crush it."

One corner of Morpheus's mouth twitched up in a half-smirk. "A pleasant image," he commented wryly.

"Isn't it just?" They both laughed, and Morpheus turned back to his controls and activated the ship's engines as Neo left to find his wife and child.

-I-I-I-

Two days later

-I-I-I-

Trinity sat with her chin cradled in her hands as she watched Tank put Harry through the one elementary school-level simulation the Nebuchadnezzar carried in her databanks.

"You don't have to watch, you know," the operator said quietly, giving her a knowing look. He patted the computer console. "There's nothing in here that can hurt him. And it's not like he's going to ditch."

She laughed, glancing over at Harry's unconscious form in his now-customary jack chair, then back at the screen, where she could just make out his form through the graininess, bent intently over the desk. "I /know/. I thought for sure we'd have to force him into it, and he just..."

"Jumped at the chance," he finished with a nod. "Strange little tyke, that's for sure. I think the only person who hated school more than I did was-" he faltered momentarily at saying the name, "-was Dozer."

Trinity nodded silently, staring down at the floor. Dozer- and all the rest of their lost friends- was still a sore subject, even a year after Cipher's betrayal had caused his, and their, deaths. With a wordless sigh, she searched for something to say that would divert them from that painful area...

...And realized all she could think of was another painful one. As far as she could figure out, the reason Harry liked going to school was probably because it offered him some protection from his family. Any obvious or severe injuries would be noticed. She said as much aloud to Tank, bitterly, and jumped as arms wrapped their way around her waist.

"Or it could simply be that he likes school," her husband said quietly, his breath tickling her ear. "Don't sell him short by expecting the worst. He's a bright kid."

Flushing slightly, she nodded, putting a hand over his.

"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping?" Neo asked her, tightening his grip a little.

Trinity grimaced. "I know, but..." She shot another glance at the monitor. "It feels like we're running out of time."

Neo sighed. "That's because we are." He looked at Tank. "Morpheus sent me to tell you to bring him out," he said, nodding towards Harry. "Our patrol's over." Trinity felt a thrill of dread run through her.

"We're going back to Zion."

-I-I-I-

One times twelve was twelve, and ten times twelve was a hundred and twenty... add the two together, and you got...

With a triumphant smile and a vast feeling of satisfaction, Harry circled his answer on the worksheet. Twelve times eleven was a hundred and thirty-two.

It was absolutely bloody wonderful not to have to pretend to be a moron or the laziest boy in school to boost Dudley's (who was both) fragile ego. His family had hated it when their 'nasty little burden' was better at something than that mindless brute, and he'd learned accordingly, often purposefully getting problems wrong and 'accidentally' losing track of his homework. Harry had lost count of how many times his teacher had pulled him aside for a little chat about 'living up to his potential.'

Never mind that 'living up to his potential' while living in his uncle's house would have gotten him nothing but an early grave.

Resolutely he turned his attention to the next problem. All that was behind him now. Vernon was dead, Trinity would never let anything like that happen to him again...

And he was beginning to believe in himself enough that he wouldn't let anything like that happen again. There was no way he was going back, now that he'd seen how the other children lived, loved and wanted.

Lost in his thoughts, the nine-year-old nevertheless finished the next few problems without incident or true difficulty, and then the worksheet itself. With a sigh, he dropped his pencil on his desk and leaned back in his kiddy-sized chair to stretch and look around.

Of course, this quickly grew tedious, since the other students- well, programs- were fairly generic. The teacher wasn't much better, as 'she' was the general stereo-type of elementary teachers everywhere, with dark brown hair pulled into a bun at the back of her neck and the kind of face that was vaguely pretty but that you forgot the instant it left your sight.

At least, Harry thought she was boring... up until the point when he looked away and saw her body shimmer from the corner of his eye.

He nearly gave himself whiplash, twisting his head back around to look at her again, but there was no evidence that anything unusual had happened. She still sat at her desk in the corner of the room, doing paperwork.

Experimentally, Harry slowly turned his eyes away again, and stopped the instant her form was replaced with a shimmering pale green light. This time he didn't move his head, trying to study her without looking at her directly.

At first the glimmering seemed chaotic, without any purpose he could comprehend, though somehow it seemed... familiar. Then he realized it was falling into a repeating pattern, and that the waves of light weren't solid, but made up of small things that he couldn't make out from this distance. He was just contemplating getting up and taking a closer look- she wouldn't mind, after all; from what Tank said the programs in this simulation weren't all that advanced- when abruptly the glimmering vanished from his sight, leaving only a normal-seeming teacher at a desk.

Surprised, the boy stared at her and tried turning his head again, but nothing happened. He frowned and returned to openly watching the woman, wondering what the hell was happening now. He really, really hoped it didn't turn out like the last surprise had. Sure, he'd already come to love the Nebuchadnezzar/, but he did /not need to go through another life-changing event again...

"Harry?"

He jumped as the voice rang from the classroom intercom, and after a second recognized it as Tank's. "Er, yes?"

The man sounded apologetic. "Sorry, niño, but we've got to cut this session short. I'm bringing you out."

For the moment, all speculation over the program's mysterious light show was dispelled, as Harry tried to figure out why his school lessons were being interrupted. They'd been one of the few things Trinity was adamant about, though admittedly, he hadn't argued much. "Okay..." he answered uncertainly, and almost immediately heard the faint buzzing and saw the flash of light behind his eyelids that heralded his return to the real world.

When he opened his true eyes, he found his foster mother's face hovering over him, with Neo's not too far behind. "Trinity...?" he murmured in worried confusion.

Seeing the anxiety in his face, she was quick to break out into a reassuring smile. "It's okay, kiddo. Morpheus just thought you should come up to the cockpit for a while."

Carefully he sat up, shaking the incipient cramps from his muscles. "What for?" he asked curiously.

"We'll be arriving in Zion within the hour," Neo answered. "And the captain thought you might like to watch while we came in."

Harry smiled uncertainly at that and jumped down off the chair. "Um, sure..."

-I-I-I-

It couldn't have been more than half an hour later that they were being challenged by Zion's automated and human-controlled defenses, and passed through them safely. Harry watched it all with a hint of wonder from the copilot's seat next to Morpheus. Neo stood behind them, while the last two members of the tiny crew stayed down below in case there was an emergency.
And then at last they came to two enormous metal doors that sealed off the last human city from the armies of the machines. The dark-haired boy stared suspiciously at the gleaming multitude of large guns that surrounded the doors as they crept back into the rock, able to imagine all too clearly what might have happened to the ship had they answered even one of the challenges incorrectly.

With a final noisy creak and shudder, the doors stopped moving, almost fully retracted into the stone walls, and the Nebuchadnezzar floated past. As soon as the ship was clear, they began to slide shut again, and Harry turned his eyes forward, and gaped.

They were just entering a cavern the likes of which he'd never even heard of before. Its dimensions were incredible- the far side could barely be seen, and the ceiling rose even further away. In the cavern's center was a steel-and-glass citadel that gleamed brightly in the harsh electric lights that cast the miniature world into permanent near-day. Surrounding it were old-fashioned ship's docks... well, if docks had ever before stood half a mile off the ground, for that was how high they seemed to be.

Other ships were already at rest in their berths, and slowly the Nebuchadnezzar drifted forward to join them. The various docks were crowded with people, and even more covered the bridges that led from the control tower into the city proper in a never-ending swirl of brown and gray.

A movement from their assigned dock attracted his attention, and the boy saw several technicians impatiently waiting to service their ship. Finally, with the sound of metal scraping over metal and a thud that shook the hovership, they stopped.

Harry could almost hear the fond chuckle in Neo's voice as the man hugged him from behind, but he didn't turn, still too busy staring at the bustling city.

"Welcome home, kid..."