Very experienced poster
Posts: 260
Location: The Power Plant
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The hem of her leather coat lifted slightly in the night air as she walked down the street. Staring up at the artificial celestial bodies in the night sky she pulled the phone out of her pocket and hit the speed dial.
"Clutch, I'm gonna need that exit as soon as possible."
"Are we good?"
"Perfect. I got the codes. And...maybe something else." She pulled the disk out of her pocket and looked at it again.
"You been out moonlighting again?"
"Not hardly. Just get me out of here."
"Can do. Try the pet store on the corner of thirty third and Grand."
She hung up the phone, put the disk away, and double timed it down the street.
The plug came out of her head and her eyes opened to the sight of a grinning face standing over her. As annoying as it was, she'd come to expect and almost enjoy her operator's non-verbal "welcome back to the real world" at the end of her missions. It wasn't as if she wasn't happy to see him eventhough her face failed to show it.
Jade got out of her chair and followed Clutch back to his station in front of the set of multiple monitors.
"Well?" she asked him. "Do we have something or not?"
"Hold on, princess. it's coming through now." Clutch bangs away at one of the multiple keyboards in front of him. "Uh huh. Well, looks like it's encrypted. Might take awhile to figure this out, but I'll get on it."
"Fine." Jade turns around and for the first time she notices that they are the only two people there. Not even Captain Cronus had been there to greet her or at the very least make sure she didn't wake up dead. He must have been elsewhere on the ship with the rest of the crew. Jade began to leave the area.
"And don't worry! Clutch is on the job!" he yelled behind him at the sound of her footsteps fading in the distance.
Jade walked the corridors of her ship, the Pheonix, in ragged fashions that felt rough against her skin. She could feel that the ship was moving and she expected that it was heading toward the city of Zion. She'd been briefed on their upcoming journey to their impending destination, she just didn't think it would take place until long after she'd been back in the realm on reality.
When she got to the cockpit she found Cronus behind the wheel with Caleb riding shotgun. They hadn't yet noticed her presence until she approached the back of their chairs to get a better look at the 3-D projection between them that signaled imminent danger they were coming up on.
"Looks like we got some traffic up ahead," Caleb said.
"Just ease off the throttle a little. We don't want to get 'em too excited." Coronus didn't seem to worried about the well-being of his ship as Jade took her eyes off of him and stared out the front window at the image of the bleak grey tunnel of metal pipes they traveled through that were illuminated by the glow of hovercrafts charged pads.
Their speed began to decrease to an almost complete stop as they approached a section where the tunnel intersected with another ahead. the Pheonix moved so slow that it seemed to float in place as they waited there for the danger the ship was alerting them to. Soon, their three sets of eyes got a visual of what the Pheonix's sensors were picking up as a barrage of sentinels passed through the tunnel directly in front of them. Jade could barely keep count there were so many. When one of them stopped, faced their ship, and opened it's radar to get a reading she assumed every heart in the cockpit skipped a beat just as hers did.
Eventhough she was sure it was aware of their presence, along with the rest of the pack, Jade watched as the tenticle collapsed it's feature and the sentinel returned to the rest of the herd and continued on. They waited there until every sentinel had passed before moving on. Apparently the Pheonix still hadn't been made aware of the ensuing truce between them and the machines.
"Wonder where they're all off to in such a hurry," Caleb said.
"Hopefully it's none of our business." Coronus remained focused on the instruments in front of him as he commanded the Pheonix on it's course.
"Doubt that's what they're thinking about us," Jade said. She didn't like the look she got from her captain but held his eyes with her's anyway.
"Nice to see you on this side of reality, Jade. Welcome back." Cronus turned back to his instruments.
"There's real and there's not real. Wasn't aware that there were sides to it." Jade walked out of the cockpit and away from the next look she was receiving from Cronus.
The gates of the dock opened in front of the Pheonix and the ship slowly pulled inside. The wreackage that took place a little over a year ago when the sentinel army laid siege to the city was hardly noticable now. The docking bay they'd pulled into had almost been completely restored, although there was still some noticable damage left that served as a reminder of the machines potential that had been warded off by the One's triumphant victory. "A victory who's meaning could all come crumbling down at any moment," Jade thought as she looked up at the cracked dome above her head as she exited her ship with the rest of her crew.
Davin, Ramrod, Viper, and Kyla exited the dock and enter the city post haste. They seemed eager to return to whatever it was the city of Zion had waiting for them in the levels of civilization that extended through the earth beneath them. Jade couldn't feel their excitement, though she believed that she should have. Eventhough she'd been freed from her pod some six years ago, Zion just didn't feel like home to her the way it did to the others.
Jade entered the living quarters of Cronus deep within the city of Zion, and soon the quarters of his mind that he might have preferred to keep private for the time being but she didn't stop to consider his thoughts on the matter. She never did, so why start now.
Jade walked along the grassy field toward the end of the cliff where she saw Cronus standing with his fingers interlocked behind his back. She moved closer to him, taking not of the two toned blue sky that seemed to be covered in twilight. The stars that weren't encased in the darker print seemed to fade into nothingness against the lighter blue as she approached the edge of the cliff.
"Why do you always come here?" she asked him when she reached the edge of the cliff and stood beside him. Jade stared out at the rolling hills before her plush with green vegitation and ancient Japanese architecture that continued to brighten with each second.
"Maybe if you took your shoes off once in a while you'd know."
She looked at Cronus who stood with his eyes closed as he faced the openness and then let her eyes drop down to his bare feet as they lay planted amongst the tall blades of grass that swayed softly in the breeze.
When she let her eyes move back to the horizon, Jade saw the top arc of the yellow sun begin to peek out over the hillside and brighten the sky above them. She closed her eyes in an attempt to feel the feeling he must have been deluding himself with but failed soon enough. When she opened her eyes again she had to squint at the brightness of the sunrise.
"It's not real, you know."
"How could I forget." Cronus opened his eyes and turned to her. "You keep reminding me."
Their stint in the last mecca of human civilization outside of the virtual world was short lived. Jade soon found herself heading back aboard the Pheonix with the rest of her crew. They didn't mind returning to duty so much. Since the end of the war their journeys home had become more frequent and seemed to increase in duration with each time their ship successfully docked. Still, there was much needed work to be done. The current objective of this particular outting was one that was considered to be low-stress and low-risk. Their target; an eleven year old girl by the name of Anna.
Anna had always been special. Her parents even thought it was cute the way she would always know when they were about to have company over even before their guests had pulled into the driveway. As she got older her foresight even became the object of exploitation by her father as she journeyed with him to the horse races at the track and sat at his side during numerous sporting events that he'd placed bets on after she fed him the winners. It was all just a game to Anna and she enjoyed the quality time they spent.
As she got older and what was now being labeled as her gift increased with her age she began to scare even her father, to the point that he began limiting the time he spent with his little girl. Not only would she tell him who would win the game, soon she began spouting out the winning score, game statistics, penalties, injuries. She would tell him the play that was about to happen and it's result even before the players got set up in their position. All of which happened exactly as she said it would.
After that it was the weather, natural disasters, the emergence of new life and the events leading to the end of others.
Anna became so intune with the world around her that she eventually came to the realization that it didn't exist. It was when she began to speak to her parents of never-ending lines of computer code and the ones that came in the shape of men sent to watch over them that they had her commited to the institute where Jade and her team first made contact with the girl.
The Pheonix soared through the tunnels in search of a suitable position to broadcast while Jade, Viper, Davin, Ramrod, and Kyla climbed into their chairs and prepared their minds for transportation into the digital realm. The plugs went in, their eyes closed, and one final keystroke from Clutch placed the five of them on the top floor of an abandoned building in a room with mothing but a wooden table in the center of it. On top of it was a ringing telephone. Jade broke away from the group and approached the table. She picked up the receiver.
"We're in."
Jade gathered that it had to be around midnight from the look of the sky as she exited the building with Kyla and Davin. There was a car waiting out front that they got in and headed for the institute where Anna was being held. Jade sat alone in the backseat staring out the window to her right at the programmed reality that passed by her. "They could have just left it blank," she thought. Couldn't humanity have just existed in a thoughtless void devoid of all sensual stimulation? Why'd they have to play this game? Would it have somehow effected the countless amount of energy they drew from them? Countless. Was there even such a thing to this intelligence?
The car pulled up in front of a sidewalk that lead directly to the glass double doors in front of the institution. Jade got out of the car along with Kyla and Davin. The building's security wasn't hard to bypass and they soon found themselves scouring the halls on the upper levels in search of the quarters that housed Anna.
They located the sleeping child on the bottom bunk of a small bay room that housed five other sets of bunk beds. Jade approached the child and gently shook her awake.
"Shhhh," she cautioned her upon seeing her eyes open. "It's time to go," Jade whispered.
Anna looked passed the kneeling woman at the two people who stood behind her. She glanced over figure of a man and woman she saw standing in the dark and then looked back at Jade. "Are we leaving now?" Anna whispered back to her. "We're going away from this place?"
"Yes. Just like we talked about. Come on." Jade took the girl's small hand in hers and watched as she pushed the covers off of her and crawled out of bed.
The three of them escorted her down the hallway towards the elevator. Eventually they were out of the building and in the car moving down the street. Jade could feel herself beginning to envy the young child about to be jacked out of the known world, her mind placed back inside its original shell and transported back to the city of Zion aboard their ship. She could remember bearing witness to the awakening of over several dozen individuals to the realization about the truth of their concept of reality, both physically from the power plant and mentally within the confines of their computer's virtual construct. The only thing she could never fully relate to was their freak out at the fact that their entire existence had been a fabrication. As Jade glanced at the little girl sitting in the backseat with her and then at the scenery outside the window beyond Anna's mental projection of her digital self. She imagined that she would accept the realization of the lie better than most given her gift tuned affliction. Jade just wondered if she would enjoy it as much as she did.
Her alcoholic mother, abusive father, and the life she found alone in her bedroom night after night at the helm of a computer built from stolen parts made it all the more easier for her to accept the truth she'd spent so many nights searching for. It an artificial intelligence was going to dream up an artificial life for her she figured their advanced knowledge for much better. She just figured they must not have liked her very much. A feeling she was more than proud to say was mutual.
The car came to a stop in front of the abandoned building and the four of them got out. Jade began around the car and headed into the building when something inside her forced her to stop. She turned around to the sight of a black trench coated figure of a man under a circular brimmed hat standing across them street from the building they were entering. Kyla and Davin turned around along with Anna to see what had halted Jade in her steps.
"What is it?" Kyla asked her.
"It's okay," Jade said to them as she noticed their hesitation. "Get her out of here. I'm gonna go see what he wants."
"Wait," Davin said as he started to walk back down the front steps of the building. "I'll go with you."
"No." Jade turned to him and stopped his movement. "I'll be right up. Just get her out. Then I want you two right behind her. As ordered. Don't worry about me."
"But, Jade."
"That's an order, Davin." She walks around the hood of the car and made her way across the street as her three companions continued into the building behind her.
"And how are we coming along this eve?" the man said to her when she got near him.
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
"This offer does have somewhat of a limited shelflife. You might want to move it along."
"In that case maybe you shouldn't have encoded the disk."
"You can't expect the whole world to be handed to you just like that. Eventually you'll come to realize the necessity for such security measures. Now I suggest you depart this place immediately. Before you miss your ride. Your presence here hasn't gone unnoticed."
"What do you mean?"
Just as she got the words out of her mouth the screeching tires of a car pulling up to the curb behind her took her attention away from the gentleman in front of her. The driver's side door opened and a man got out. A man. She should be so lucky. She recognized the face of her previous employer and assumed that he'd tracked her here to make good on their unfinished business. She didn't see the other half of the duo but had a good feeling he was nearby.
Jade ran for the car, jumped onto the hood and leaped over her would be assailants head as she flipped through the air. She headed straight for the front door of the building across the street. Jade scaled the stairway periodically stopping to fire shots down the spiraling flights to slow down her persuer. She made it to the top only to be greeted by the second pissed off program who wasted no time in charging directly into her, knocking the both of them through a wooden door in the hallway.
Jade rolled off of him and got to her feet. Her gun had been lost in the tumble so a swift kick to his ribs was the most immediate primary offensive she had to deliver. The sound of a phone ringing in the distance resonated in her ears. She looked around the room that was full of the equipment her team had used to extract Anna from the power plant. They too were long gone and the ringing phone was her ticket out. If she could only find it.
Jade bolted from the room just as her attacker was getting to his feet. She moved to the adjacent room in search of the ringing. unfortunately so had the program. The two of them made it to the room with the circular wooden table with the phone on top at almost the same time. They practically fought their way through the door to the increasingly loud sound of the ringing phone. Just as Jade broke away from him and went for the receiver the sound of gun fire replaced that of ringing as a pair of bullets shredded the device on the table.
"Must have been a wrong number."
Jade spun around kicking the gun from his hand right before planting her other foot against the left side of his face. Her next blow was a spinning back kick that sent him tumbling backwards into his partner who was coming through the door. Jade went for the window and decended the fire escape.
When she reached the streets below she pulled her cellphone out of her coat pocket as she took off on foot for the end of the block, knowing that her persuers weren't far behind.
"What the hell happened back there?"
Jade was surprised at how glad she was to hear Clutch's voice. "My exit got blown to shit. I'm gonna need another one fast."
"Gimme a minute. I'm working on it. Make a left at the next corner."
Jade made the corner and picked up her pace. It wasn't long before she felt the breeze and heard the whisper of bullets whizzing by her head. She didn't bother turning around to take a look. She just kept her focus on the path before her. The phone in her hand began to ring.
"Tell me you got something!" Jade said.
"Westchester apartment complex. Make a right on Pico. Room 512."
"Got it."
Jade reached the entrance of the apartment complex as the bullets shattered the glass windows of the doors all around her. The elevator was out of order so she went for the staircase at the back of the lobby. She could hear the foot steps closing in behind her as she scaled flight after flight until she finally came to the fifth floor. Jade pushed the door open and immediately began checking the apartment numbers on the doors for number 512.
She was so involved with her search that she nearly collided with the three men standing in the middle of the hallway when she made the corner. Three suits. A pair of sunglasses adorned on each of their expressionless faces, and those unmistakable earpieces coming out the side of their heads. Agents. Three of them. Right in front of her face. Jade was unarmed, in a tight space, and boxed in between them and her persuers who were currently making their way up the stairs behind her.
"If we're gonna party, you boys think you could buy a girl a drink first?" Jade was so nervous she couldn't believe she actually got the words out.
Agent Williams: Go on your way.
Agent Green: We have no business with you.
Agent Carter: We're here for the exiles.
Jade wanted to faint. Instead she just stepped to the side of the hall and eased along the wall right past them to continue her search for apartment 512. The sound of gunfire exploded from around the corner behind her as she tried to pay it little mind. Apartment 512. She found it. The ringing phone she could hear coming from inside the apartment brought a sense of relief to her that she hadn't felt in a while. A relief that she was sure would come to an abrubt end when her mind was once again aboard the Pheonix and she had to explain to Cronus what happened.
She kicked open the door and walked into the darkened apartment. She found the telephone on the kitchen wall. Jade picked the receiver up from its wall mount and held it in her hand for a second breathing out a sigh. She put it to her ear and in seconds the phone dropped from her hand and was left dangling it the air by its cord next to the wall.
Cronus twisted the plug and pulled it out of the back of her head. Jade sat up in the chair and looked over the faces of her crew members who stood around the room, seemingly in anticipation of her arrival. She got out of the chair and turned to face Cronus. She wasn't exactly getting the warmest reception.
"What the hell do you think you were doing?" Cronus hung up the jack and walked over to her. "I thought we already had the discussion about your constant deviations?"
"I'm fine. Thanks for asking."
"I'm being serious, Jade. Now what was that about? Why didn't you jack out with the others?"
"I thought I saw someone who could use my help. That's what we're here for isn't it? To help people?"
Her tone only managed to infuriate him even further. Rather than drag out this discussion Cronus simply walked past her and stormed out the room. Jade let her eyes follow him until he moved by her then she focused on the pondering glances she got from Ramrod, Davin, and Viper.
"Got something on you mind, fellas?"
"We'd just appreciate a little heads up every now and then that's all," Davin said. Jade watched his blond locks bob over his eyes as he walked toward her. "Might help, seeing as we're suppose to be watching each others back." She watched him leave the room with Ramrod and Viper trailing behind him.
"Wouldn't hurt if you went a little easier on the captain either," Kyla said to her with a smile as she prepared to depart the area.
Soon Jade was alone in the room with nobody to keep her company except Clutch who approached her cautiously, keeping an eye on Kylas back until it was gone.
"You gonna start in on me too?" Jade asked him.
"Not exactly," he said leaning backwards as he stood in front of her with his head turned to the side. Jade looked in the direction he was hoping to get a glimpse of what ever it was he was expecting to see. "What is it?" she asked.
"I just wanted to make sure everyone was gone," Clutch said, now standing up straight and facing her.
"Well, we're alone. So spill it."
"I decode part of that care package you brought me on your last trip to neverland, and I gotta tell I'm a little freaked."
"What are you talking about?"
"Where'd you get it from?"
"Just tell me what you found, Clutch, before I pop you one."
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over to the array of monitors set up around his chair. Clutch climbed into his seat and brought up part of the information he'd translated. "I don't know who gave you this stuff but they know a hell of a lot more about computers than I do." He tapped away at his keyboards. "I had to look half this stuff up using the archive back in Zion. Now you see this here?" He pointed at one of the screens to his left next to Jade. "I think this is part of a virus program. I haven't finished with the encryption yet, but that's what it's shaping up to look like."
"Yeah, but a virus that does what?" Jade said as she moved her head closer to the screen.
"From what I've been able to gather," he hit more buttons on the various keyboards in front of him, "Once you get into the system and upload it the virus blocks out all other points of access to the system, shutting down pass codes, booting out current users, and shutting down any and all immediate security protocal, essentially placing the network in the complete control of whoever's crafty enough to get this sucker in."
"Get it into where? Is there some mainframe inside the matrix that this stuff was specifically designed to screw with or can we just do with it what we pleased." Jade looked over the information on the screen with an intensity and curiosity that she never even knew she had.
"Well, that's the scary part. Whoever wrote this virus, it's nothing less than a work of art. I mean a thing of beauty is a joy forever, right?" Clutch laughed out loud to himself nervously. The look he got from Jade forced him back into the game and he turned to the monitors once again.
"Well for starters, there's nothing in the matrix that would require anything this complex to gain access to."
"You telling me this thing is overkill for every mainframe in the world? That's gotta be a mistake. Maybe you just deciphered it wrong or there's something you missed."
"No, I didn't say that. There might be one system on the planet that this little puppy might be a match for." Clutch punched in some more information on his keyboards and brought up the same display on every screen that he had in front of him. "This was with the information you brought out of the matrix with you."
Jade watched the green lines that moved over the screen and guided themselves along until they formed the shape of a three dimentional cylider. First one and then another. And after that another formed right next to the other two. More began to follow along with the lines of text that accompanied them at the side of the screen. The others grouped around the previous cylinders that had formed.
"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Clutch asked her.
"The power plant." The expression on Jade's face remained the same dispite the cartwheels her mind was turning. "But how?"
"I got an access code. But you're gonna need more. Five more sets of code from what I can read if you're gonna finish it. I'm gonna need a lot more time with this thing. What are we suppose to do with what might potentially be an all access pass to the power plant?"
"What else would we do?" Jade thought out loud.
"Jade, what is this?" Clutch asked as he typed away on his keyboards.
"I think we just got the world handed to us, my friend. On a silver platter. Have you told anyone else about this?"
"Are you crazy? I debated whether or not to even tell you."
"Good. Don't tell a soul about this until you hear from me." Jade walked away from Clutch as he began to blank out the monitors. "Keep working on it. Let me know when you get all the access codes."
"What if I can't?" Clutch yelled behind him to an audience that had already left the room. He looked back over his shoulder at the emptiness then back at the screens in front of him. Typing away at the letters in front of him he tried not to think of what a maverick like Jade was prepared to do with the information he'd just given her.
Jade walked through the ship, her head spinning in a million different directions as she tried to get her mind around what she'd just learned. What it might possible mean. She soon came across Kyla walking down one of the corridors in the opposite direction.
"You alright?" Kyla asked her as they both stopped walking.
"I'm fine. Just a little rattled that's all."
"You should be. I could have sworn I heard Clutch say he was reading Agents nearby."
"They had other things to tend to," Jade said with a wave of her hand. She saw the bewildered look on Kyla's face. "So how's Cronus?" she said before her shipmate could respond.
"Still mad. He's up front with Caleb preping some things for Anna. I'd avoid him as best you can. For all our sakes."
"I'll see what I can do."
Jade continued her walk through the bowls of the Pheonix until she came to the bay where Anna was being kept. She walked over to the bed that the child lay on and stared down at her pale hairless body. Jade picked up a small cloth and gentle patted the girls forehead with it. Jade had long envisioned the day when the salvaging of human life from liquid filled pods this way would no longer be neccessary. She just never expected it to be this close within their grasp. If what Clutch told her was right then the they could very well be on the brink of ending the mechanical threat that continued to plague humanity once and for all. She couldn't understand exactly how it came into her possession, and as long as it didn't prove to be some sort of trap she couldn't say she really cared. Whoever, or whatever, that old man was he must have had his reasons for giving her the "gift". Whatever they were she was sure to find out about them soon enough. Jade doubted that she'd seen the last of him. What she didn't doubt was the threat she was about to pose to the machine world once Clutch finished deciphering the information he had. If it was indeed possible to take control of the system operating the power plant then would she would be sure to see to it that Anna would have a lot more company soon and that the future of the machines was winding down to an end. Because as long as the matrix exist mankind will never be free.
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