Fic: 'Friday Morning in Lincoln' (6/25)
Title: Friday Morning in Lincoln
Fandom: The Matrix
Characters: Mouse, Morpheus
Word Count: 1,200
Prompt: From fanfic25, 5/10: 'Family'.
Notes: Nothing worth sweating over.
Summary: 'Sometimes, he flat-out knew he wasn't related to these people.'
Friday Morning in Lincoln
If someone asked him, he would tell them he'd figured it out while brushing his teeth that night. Some time after scrubbing his front teeth and before he spat the mouthwash down the drain, Ben knew that something was wrong: something had switched around in reality, and was hiding just out of the corner of his eye. His watch read ten-fifteen, but five minutes ago, he'd looked at his wrist and his watch hadn't been there. It hadn't been there because he'd taken it off and put it on the nightstand, and he'd been in the bathroom for about twenty minutes now, showering and all the rest, so he hadn't been to get it and just forgotten he had. But there it was, on his wrist now, telling him two things. The first was that it was ten-fifteen. The second was that he couldn't trust reality any more.
In a way, Ben thought, he'd known for some time - things that he guessed every teenager thought but felt so much more real to him. Every now and then, he looked at his parents, or his brother, and felt like he'd never met them. It made his head hurt, and he occasionally suffered from the certainty that he'd just been dropped feet-first into his family without even wearing a nametag that said 'Hi, I'm a Complete Stranger'. Sometimes, he flat-out knew he wasn't related to these people. And when those attacks struck - normal enough for any seventeen-year-old but made worse by how real it felt - he stared at his mother while she sliced an onion, or his brother painstakingly glued two pieces of an Airfix model together, and was completely unable to comprehend how he'd spent so long with these people.
It was the watch, though, that put everything in perspective, and Ben lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling, T-shirt and boxers sticking to him in the heat of a Nebraska August. He wasn't sure what to do: he was almost afraid that if he moved, the bed would cease to exist under him, or that the room would shrink. Barely visible in the dark, his computer sat on his desk, a tiny green light blinking steadily on and off: he'd forgotten to turn the thing off, and it was sitting in standby. The light, now that he'd noticed it, was going to drive him crazy. Slowly, he sat up, tugged at the neck of his T-shirt to let some air against his skin, and padded barefoot over to the desk.
The clock in the corner of the screen told him it was after two. He had to be up for school in five hours, but idly he logged on to the Internet, and started the search where he'd left off that afternoon. He'd been chasing the trail of a hacker named Morpheus, and knew it had something to do with a computer network over in Europe. They'd called it the Matrix, but the more Ben searched, the more he got the impression that there was something darker going on. The Matrix was tied into a lot of things he'd never have expected, and the companies that were apparently involved were worldwide, rather than localised in one continent.
A few thwarted hacks later, he sighed and went to log off. As his cursor hovered over the signout icon, the screen went black. He sighed and thumped the back of the computer, softly so as to not wake his parents, who he could hear softly snoring down the hall. After that, his computer sat in silence for a while, then spat out a line of green text:
Tickets, please.
Ben stared at it for a few seconds, then blinked. The two words were still there, begging for a response. He hunched over the keyboard and, slowly, deliberately, started typing.
Where does this train go?
He sat back and rubbed his neck. The sweat had gone, and suddenly he felt a bit more confident. The computer responded.
Do you mean to say you don't know?
Ben was quicker with his answer this time.
I mean to say nothing.
If you want to find out the destination, the text read, this time appearing one letter at a time, as though someone were at the other end, you'll need to make it on time.
What time?
For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then, with the sound of the fan on his hard drive coming to a halt, the screen went blank again. Ben lurched forward, staring into the screen and praying he hadn't just lost his chance to talk to someone who, he felt, could be tied into what he was looking for. In the silence, with Ben not breathing out of a mix of terror and anticipation, a few words appeared.
3.30. Be fast. My time is worth a thousand pounds a minute.
Ben instantly understood. The messages had been quoting from a part of Through the Looking Glass, where Alice had been on a train. And where else did one catch a train except...?
As quietly as he could, he pulled on his jeans and fetched his sneakers from under the bed, where he'd kicked them off that afternoon. He tiptoed down the hallway, but as he passed the ajar door of his brother's bedroom, he felt a pang of guilt. He peered around the door and saw his brother, sleeping quietly.
"Hey," Ben whispered. "Hey, Jake, wake up."
Jake stirred and looked, confused, at Ben. "What's up? It's... it's nearly three."
"I know. I just wanted to say, I'm... going out for a bit. I have to meet someone."
"Who?"
Ben frowned. "It's a secret. Promise me you'll keep it to yourself, okay? If I'm not back soon, tell Mom and Dad don't worry."
Jake shrugged. "Whatever, little brother. Can I go back to sleep now?"
Ben slipped down the hallway, pausing only to look in on his parents. He wanted to go in and say goodbye, but he knew they wouldn't understand. Instead, he unlocked the kitchen door and snuck out into the hot, still night.
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The train station was eerie when it was empty. Ben wandered down the platform, pacing and glancing at his watch; syncing it up with the station clock. When it hit half-past three, he turned and gaped as a tall figure in a trenchcoat stopped at the other end of the platform, blanketed in the light from the streetlamp overhead. Ben half-wanted to turn and walk away, but inside him, the curiosity was too much to abandon.
"Good morning," the man said. Ben tensed.
"Are you... Morpheus?" he asked, and instantly wished he hadn't. If it was Morpheus, then he was in the presence of an idol. But still...
"Yes." The man strode down the platform, swiftly and confidently. Ben started to shiver. When the man stopped again, only a few paces away, close enough for Ben to reach out and touch him, Ben saw that he was wearing dark glasses. He could still feel eyes boring into him from behind the glasses. Judging him. Testing him.
"You must be Mouse," Morpheus said.