Character	Clio Freemind
Gender/Orientation	Female/Straight
Type	Freed, historian and ship's pilot
Apparent Age	18

Clio watched the numbers swirling on the screens, unsure of what she really saw there. Activity that showed some difference from the regular stuff caught her attention. While the others on the Centurian were busy within the Matrix, her double duties outside were to keep the ship at broadcast depth safely - watching the one monitor for any physical presences near the ship, and keep the group inside the Matrix aware and informed of any thing that might affect them.

"Guys, heads up," she said, "there is... something moving around in there that just doesn't match up to anything I've ever seen. I'm going to ask you for visuals in a second. Get into a defensive position, I want to move you."

There was a moment of static before Ruse spoke, "move us? Clio, we're just where we need to be!"

"Sir, with all due respect, you're going to have to see this for me, our recon mission is already complete."

"Another of your ghost chases," Ruse grumbled. He was the captain of the ship, but sometimes he'd indulge Clio because she was young and wanted more than the typical thrill from heading back into the Matrix. "What is it we're gonna be looking for?"

"If I knew that, sir," Clio said with a smile, "I would not need you to go looking for it, would I?"

"I hope it's dangerous," Club chimed in. Clubbed2Deth was his 'name' and with it came a certain kind of raw simplicity. He was hardest for Clio to work with, since he literally thought with his muscles sometimes.

"I hope it isn't," Clio muttered when she initiated their move. It was hardly an easy program she worked with, but some genius had developed hacking ware that allowed an outside source like herself to literally play god with her team mates. Like playing a video game and then being able to move the players around using a copy/paste tool. Or more accurately, a click and drag.

The sensation inside had been described to her as 'like being in a sideways elevator - or was it a blender - and getting kicked in the head a couple times'. But it was safe, no one had died just from being moved. They'd tested it thoroughly inside Zion's self-contained versions of the Matrix. She picked up the foursome of crew members inside the Matrix, selected an area near where her disturbance should be in view, and set them down on a rooftop.

The typical quantities of groaning and muttered complaints came from them at first, but then came a kind of startled silence.

"Th- the hell's that?" Asked Batty, "what the hell is it?"

"It's ... not..." Ruse couldn't speak either. A few moments later, Clio noticed the disturbance had vanished.

"What was it, guys?" She asked. There was no reply, but their life signs were stable, so they were okay. "Guys?"

"I think it was a dragon," said Delete, the only other woman on their small scout ship.

***

Batty, Delete, Ruse and Club rose slowly, while Clio unjacked them. They rubbed the backs of their necks, as everyone always did when they came out. Standing up and staring, they quietly filed out of the broadcast room.

Clio followed them, hesitating to do anything more. They were all kind of stunned.

Well, it could only last so long, she thought. "So, what kind of dragon, then. What sort of image are you talking about?"

Ruse turned his dark eyes on her. He was a tall, skinny white man, with a fading hairline but a full nicely cared-for beard. He would have looked like a biker, if the world were differently made. "It was a dragon, Clio. Wings, tail, claws I guess..."

"So it was a Western style dragon," Clio said, typing. "What features did you see? Was it like a toy, or a movie prop or, just what?"

"Clio," Clubbed said, harshly, "it was real."

"Club, it was code." She spat back. "Look, I realize that whatever you all just got to see, all I saw was the code end of it. But I'm telling you that it was only as real as any of you are, in there. I've been looking over the records of the event, and it shares a tag with visitors like us. Maybe it was meant to be there, it was designed by someone quite careful. It looked like a bank of fog to everyone else out there."

"That's why no one on the ground was panicking," said Delete. She pushed her hand through her short strawberry colored hair. "They didn't see it."

"But it was... Real," Club asserted. He was definitely not the bright bulb in the box. Clio often wondered how a person like this managed to get himself out of the Matrix at all. Batty smacked the muscular tan-skinned man on the shoulder.

"It wasn't real, it just vanished like we do," he said. He was a darkly black man of perhaps three years Clio's senior. He had two scars on his shoulders, he claimed they were from having escaped a Sentinel while being awakened. Clio more suspected he'd done it to himself. Either way, he was closer to her friend than anyone else on the ship.

"Why would there be a dragon roaming about in the Matrix?" Asked Clio. She replied to herself, "checking it out, just like we do."

"You think that this thing was there, what, scouting?" Ruse asked. Clio nodded. She was usually to the point, if not curt with her replies. She appreciated honesty and quick thinking, she liked it when people spoke their minds. She hated not knowing where she stood.

Ruse grunted. "Then those idiots on their ship are looking in the wrong place..."

"What?" Clio asked. "What ship?"

Batty too looked with curiosity to the elder man. "Yeah, cap, which ship are you talking about?"

"You've not heard the rumors and talk?" Ruse said. The blank stares on the faces of his young companions told him volumes. It also made him feel somewhat older than his forty-seven years.

"There are several ships being used by Zion for scouting, like ours," Ruse said, standing and indicating the others get back to their stations. He could continue to speak while they got out of broadcast depth and back to Zion. "A handful with serious weaponry on them, warships that defend Zion. More than a dozen used for retrieval and pod duty, the ones we scare up when we get a live one."

They all knew that much, but it was to be put into context. Ruse cleared his throat and sat down in the command seat. Clio's navigation board next to him came to life when she sat down. Batty's sensor array responded to his touch, while Club sat back and relaxed. He was their engineer and fixer, while Delete ran double duty as medic and programmer.

"But there are other ships out there. One or two have been stolen by unhappy awakened," he said, and duly noted Delete's little gasp. "Some of those were never retrieved. But... well, the Dragonchaser wasn't stolen so much as appropriated by its crew. They..." He paused. "I knew a few of the Lil' Girl's crew, good women. But they found something they didn't expect to find, out there."

"How did you know this?" Asked Clio.

"They told me, Clio," Ruse said, "I just said I knew them."

She rolled her violet-brown eyes and sighed. "Yeah, duh."

He told of a rumored second Matrix, a place that no one had known. How the captain Yana and her very small crew discovered something more dramatic than the human pod city.

"Dragons," grunted Club, "yeah. Okay, right."

"Well you saw it," Batty said, "they must have been on to something, then, right?"

Ruse nodded. "Before you lot came on board here," he reminded them that they had only been crewing with him for less than four years - half the time that Clio had been Free - and that he'd been privy to information shared by other ship captains and no others. "There was talk. There was something more than talk, really. One time they tried to come right into the docks... No one knew what to do with em. We don't have enough food for something that size, dragons..."

"Then..." Clio said, "they're real? Dragons that ... that jack in like us?"

"And have human help to do it," added Batty. Delete shook her head.

"We should send a call out for this Dragonchaser ship, then," she said.

"They don't often respond," Ruse said. "They're rogues, so far as the council feel. I can't blame them for running."

"They're just chicken," Club said. "They're running from their responsibilities."

"They're still freeing minds, as far as I know," Ruse said. "I can't fault them that. Even we're not really equipped to do that."

"You wish we were," Delete said with a smile on her face. Ruse grew his own quirky grin, showing around the round cheeks and his beard.

"Yeah," he said.

They spent the rest of the three hour trip back to Zion talking about his old command crew and exploits that would make Club's toes curl...

***

It turned out that they didn't need to hunt up too much on the Dragonchaser - it was docked and the crew hanging out in the main Zion bays. Apparently there was something going on with them and the council - and that couldn't be good could it? Clio unloaded her gear and waddled down the catwalk to the elevator which would lead back to her Zion dorm.

She did that as quickly as she could. Something about this all made her heart race. Another Matrix? Dragons? A council meeting up with the barely-tolerated dragoners themselves? She had never seen the dragons, maybe her head had been buried in books too much recently.

But now where were they? Where could they be? They flew - but unlike the ships of Zion's fleet dragons had to have a wingspan, right? They were much wider than ships, right?

She clung to the corridors near the council's chambers. Knowing that she would never be allowed in, she kept an eye on the guards there, and tried to look casual.

They knew she was there - along with half a dozen other curious types. Some were just local gossips, and some were just there at random. One or two of them looked to be pensive for other reasons.

"Hey," she said to one nearby, "do you know what's going on in there?"

The boy she spoke to jolted a bit, but smiled weakly. "Yeah, I think, it's not really clear." He had a faintly Mexican look to his features, a healthy body if a bit skinny. He looked a little younger than Clio. He was jacked, though, and that for some reason made her trust him more than the local Zionites.

"Aaaand?" Clio pressed him.

"Well, Taludir isn't being very helpful right now," he said, "but he says that the Dragonchaser's going to be headed out to Vere again and trying to pick up more dragons..."

About that time, his own eyes got very wide. "I ... don't think I was supposed to tell you that," he whispered.

"It's okay, I was ... well," Clio shrugged, "I was here to find out about the dragons anyway. I've been out on the Centurion for a while, and I hadn't even heard about them at all."

"Well that's okay, we're new," the boy said.

"We?" Clio asked, and her throat tightened.

"Yeah... Um, I'm Point, pleased to meet you. I'm an artist." He was torn between holding his hand out to shake hers, or holding up his art book. He had apparently found a real paper-book somewhere. While cloth arts abounded here, paper was something of a luxury. Clio chose to peer over the top of his book, which relaxed the boy.

"Clio," she said, "say that's neat... That's... a dragon."

Point nodded. "Yeah. It's my dragon, Taludir."

With that, Clio's heart almost stopped entirely.

"Man, I keep forgetting that that's kinda news to everyone," Point muttered to himself. He turned away from the council chambers, and shrugged. "Come on, this is really boring. And... Maybe you could give me some advice too, while we're walkin'..."