NOTE: All characters are owned by their respective owners.
This story takes place before The Matrix.
Yes, I know it's a borrowed title.
Let's begin.

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Jack ran with his gun cocked and ready. His earpiece beeped. He tapped it.
"Bauer."
"Jack." It was Mason. "What's your status on containing the terrorist?"
"We're on the third floor of the old White Rabbit building as we speak. We're right outside the door. Tony's here also."
"Good. I can tell Chappelle that it's going well, then." He was gone.
"All right. Tony, the Delta team is going to go into the room from the west entrance. You are going to the balcony on the north side, and I'll wait here. Our orders are to shoot if he tries to escape, but they'd prefer it if we kept him alive."
"You got it," Tony said, exhaling sharply. He was under stress, Jack could tell.
Tony quickly and quietly ran to the balcony.
The Delta team took action.
It blew the door down.
"Freeze! Hands on your head!"
The figure in the middle of the room, clad in black leather, stood stock-still. He began to raise his hands to his head, but at the last second slipped a small firearm from his sleeve and tried to flee.
However, he was paying too much attention to the downed agents. Tony deftly tackled him, and before he could recover, Jack had a gun to the man's head.
Breathing heavily, Jack said to Tony, "Good work." Tony grabbed his gun and pointed it at the man as well.
After a sigh, Tony said, "One of the ten most wanted in the whole world."
"Yeah," was Jack's simple reply. Turning to face the captured man, he said, "Oh, how the mighty have fallen...Morpheus."

-----------------------TO BE CONTINUED---------------------

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That was really cool. You should make another one.

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I like how you took different parts from several existing ideas, yet you twisted it to make it new. Keep it up, Snoop.

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Of course it's not a one-shot thing! To prove it, here is...Part II.

----

"Good work, Jack," Mason said. "Thanks for coming back for a little bit to help us with this."
"I was the only logical choice," replied Jack. "Chappelle pleaded with me over the phone. How could I not?"
"Hmmm." Mason turned to see Tony leading Morpheus, who was surrounded by several armed guards.
"Can I take him in for questioning?"
Mason smiled. "Sure. Why not? You always enjoyed that."

----

MEANWHILE

"Please hold for the President," the grainy voice of the secretary chimed in over the phone line. 'Great,' Chappelle thought, 'quite possibly the biggest takedown of my career and I've got to wait on the stupid phone to tell the President.'
Presently, the President came in. "Mr. Chappelle."
"Mr. President." It had been some time since he had spoken with President Palmer--if one could call a week "some time." But Ryan had been sick, and the case against the infamous Morpheus and Trinity had stalled. But a tipster had suddenly called in.
"I hear you have some good news for me, Mr. Chappelle. I hope it's not that you have saved money on your car insurance by switching to Geico."
Chappelle chuckled. "No, it's not that, Mr. President. It's much more important."
"Oh?"
In spite of himself, Ryan Chappelle could not hold back a smile. "We've caught Morpheus."
"THE Morpheus?" the President asked, incredulous. "Are you sure?"
"Very, sir," Chappelle responded.

----

MEANWHILE

A woman clad in a shiny black leather suit drove down the freeway in a black bulletproof Hummer H2. She was going to Los Angeles. She put her cell phone to her head.
"Operator."
"I need to speak to the President of the United States."
"You got it."
She was on hold, and it seemed like an agonizing eternity before she got a response.
"Hello?" the secretary said, gaily. The woman thought that the secretary was very dumb to have said it like that, and then thought that they all were the same. She was ticked off majorly, and understandably.
"I'd like to speak to the President."
"And who shall I say is calling?"
A pause. Then: "Tell him...it's Trinity."

-----------------------TO BE CONTINUED---------------------

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The secretary's face immediately lost all color. She swallowed.
"Well?"
Still the secretary could not move.
"I'm waiting..." Trinity said in a singsong voice.
"All right. All right," was the secretary's reply. "Hold on." She dialed President Palmer.
"Yes, Marianne?" the President, unconcerned, said.
"I have a phone call for you."
"There's something you're not telling me," Palmer said with a cold note of seriousness embedded in it. "Your voice. It speaks to me." More softly, but still audibly, he added, "Oh, great. That was not how I wanted to say that."
"Well...it's the caller, sir."
"Oh?"
"She...it's Trinity."
The President's expression changed. "Put her on," he said, becoming angry.
Marianne switched to Trinity. "Here he is, ma'am. Please hold for the President."
"Thank you." There was a click.
"Ms. Trinity."
"Hello, Mr. President. And please drop the 'Ms.' It's just 'Trinity.' Got it?"
"We have Morpheus," Palmer said, unfazed. "I am not going to give into any terrorist, no matter how famous or demanding."
"Really." Trinty actually chuckled. "Don't make us use force."
"'Force'? Define 'force.'"
"As of this moment we have ten nuclear devices set to detonate in ten major centers around this country. And that's just the pregame show."
Palmer swallowed, and it was audible over the phone.
"Well, perhaps 'pregame' was an exaggeration. But mark my words, we will have Morpheus returned to us."
"I...will NOT...give in...to terrorists," Palmer forced himself to say.
"Then maybe you'll like to fly on Air Force One to New York. Be sure to bring a pair of sunglasses, a pack of hot dogs and a lead apron, 'cause we'll be making Manhattan the world's largest barbecue grill." She paused to let Palmer think it over. "You have four hours." She hung up the cell phone. On a whim, still driving, she cracked the phone case open, tore out the prepaid wireless card, opened the window, and threw it off an overpass.
She closed the window and sighed. She wished it hadn't come to this, but now events were the way they were.
And that wasn't even the scary part.
They did have the ten nuclear devices. They even had twenty. They could have as many as necessary, provided they told the Operator.
Even that wasn't the scary part.
The scary part of it all was that the Oracle had said that this would happen, and so far, she had been exactly right, down to the smallest detail.

-----------------------TO BE CONTINUED---------------------

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"Tank."
"Operator," Tank replied.
"What is the status of the first nuclear device?"
"The one in the Mojave Desert?"
"Yes, that's the one."
"Coming right up," Tank said as he typed in several commands on the various modified keyboards. On one of the displays, the Matrix feed vanished, replaced by a schematic of a 1980s-style thermonuclear warhead in a suitcase, along with several lines of text, histograms, and charts. "It's all good."
"Time until detonation?"
Tank rolled his eyes to spy on the decreasing timer on the screen. It currently read:

03 : 08 : 34

"Three hours, eight minutes, thirty-four seconds, Trinity. Plenty of time."
"Thanks, Tank."
"No problem."
She hung up. She gently applied more pressure to the accelerator. She knew where she was going.
She knew what she had to do.

----

MEANWHILE

The door gave its annoying electronic buzz, signaling that it was unlocked. Jack Bauer entered. Turning the chair around and leaning on the back in his usual manner, he faced the captive.
"So tell me about yourself, Morpheus. Who do you work for?" he began. He moved his fingers through his hair. "Or do they all work for you?"
Morpheus remained silent, regarding Jack with a piercing stare.
Jack sighed and got up from the chair, starting to walk around. He turned away from Morpheus and faced the mirrored window. "Okay. Now, I can make this painfully--I was going to say easy, but I can make this easy or painful."
"No pun intended, I gather," Morpheus replied, finally.
Jack suddenly turned around. "Well, it's a start," he confided, and moved back to the chair. "Why did you choose the way you have?"
"Do you want the Special Edition or the Cliffs Notes?" Morpheus said with a slight sarcastic smile.
Despite himself, Jack smiled. "It doesn't matter."
Morpheus reclined in the chair. "I was very young. It was sometime in summer and it was about midnight. I'd been reading about this theory of the Matrix."
"That we're all some sort of machine or computer and that reality is all a dream, that really we're in a kind of fantasy that we put ourselves in by choice, that sort of thing. Right?"
"Wrong. That's not the mainstream idea, either, although you are on the right track."
Jack's face turned harder. "Talk to me."
"What year is this?"
"1999," Jack replied, somewhat startled at the question.
"Wrong again," Morpheus responded, smiling again. "We're not quite sure, but it's actually closer to 2199."
"Why the 200-year discrepancy?"
"At the start of the twenty-first century, all mankind was united in celebration. We heralded the advent...of AI."
"Artificial intelligence."
Morpheus continued, unfazed. "It started out easy enough--the Invention Machine, ALICE, //H4RrY. But soon, the world was like an Isaac Asimov novel. Then it happened."
"Go on..."
"We don't know who struck first, us or them. They fled and set up their own country, 01, but we refused to recognize it. But we do know that it was we who scorched the sky."
"What is that?"
"We figured that the Machines would need a constant source of energy--solar energy. But by blocking out the Sun, we sealed fate for ourselves. Coupled with a form of nuclear fusion, we provided, and continue to provide, all the energy the Machines need."
"Really? So why the Matrix?"
"To disguise the truth. Out of sight, out of mind."
"Except it's not out of mind. You're here."
"There was a man born in the Matrix who had the powers to change the Code as he saw fit. When he died, the Oracle prophesied his return. That is why--"
"The Oracle?" asked Jack. "Who is that? What does she know?"
"She would say she knows enough. She is the wellspring from which our answers flow."
"Hmm." Jack scratched his chin.
"That is why we do what we do. To find the One."
"And what makes you think you'll find this 'One'?"
"Because the Oracle told me I would find him."
Jack was taken aback. Regaining his composure, he got in his face, and said, "You're crazy." He hit the intercom button. "Tony? Bring in David..."

-----------------------------TO BE CONTINUED----------------------------

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