The Sangreal rested quietly on the floor of a tunnel fairly deep in the bowels of what was now Earth. Everything around the little ship was still, the perpetual, smoky mist barely moving and no surprises waiting in the shadows. Not this time, anyway. They'd been patrolling this area for almost a week and hadn't once run into a sentinel. A good sign, they all said, so they had taken this rare chance to go Matrix-side hopefully without interruption. There was a young girl, Roselin said, who they had their eye on to bring to freedom.

Magdalena sat at the operator's chair in the deepest part of the ship, chin in her hands, looking down at the seemingly sleeping bodies of four of the crew, laying in their reclining chairs with their eyes closed and thick wires extending from the backs of their heads. They were so still and silent that one would never guess they were risking danger and death to save people whose minds were imprisoned in another world, a digital world. So far, however, everything seemed very simple. Magdalena, unable to enter that digital world by the virtue of being a true, born human, instead watched them in symbols and colors as code scrolled down the screens before her.

"Anything going on, Mnemonic?"

The query came down the long passageway that went the length of Sangreal, running from prow to broadcast room to stern. Magdalena sighed, tucking a strand of lank, platinum-blonde hair behind one ear as she glanced over her shoulder. It was too far away to see the speaker, and he was around a corner anyway, but she knew where he was and knew her answer would be heard.

"The name's Magdalena," she shot back coolly, turning her eyes back to the screen where they belonged. "And no, they're in and I'm not seeing any Agents anywhere."

"This looks like it might be the easiest liberation in Zion's history," the voice from the navigation chair in the prow called back, sounding impressed but, as usual, amused.

"God willing," Magdalena said in answer, but too quietly to actually be heard halfway across the ship.

A moment later the metal of the stairs down into the broadcast chamber creaked, and Magdalena turned to look briefly over her shoulder, spotting her fifth and final crewmate coming into the room to join her, black braids swinging as, like usual, he jumped the last two steps to the recessed floor, using the guide rails for support. He hit the grille floor with a metallic thump that made the ship groan softly.

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Rain," Magdalena said matter-of-factly, looking back to the screens dutifully. It was her and only her, the operator, who would alert the plugged crew of Agents-- dangerous, malicious programs in the digital world who would stop at nothing to stop the unplugged from creating more awakened human beings, especially killing them, and were next to impossible to kill-- and get them exits to the real world. She couldn't afford to not be paying attention.

Footsteps came up behind her and fingers untucked the hair from behind her ear again. Magdalena twitched and swatted blindly at the hand, frowning, and heard a soft laugh from the fingers' owner as she made contact. "You tell me that every time I do it, Mnemonic," he commented. "It hasn't done any good."

"I tell you every time to stop calling me Mnemonic, too. How many times must I ask you to call me by my real name?"

"At least one more, Mnemonic, like always." Magdalena couldn't help but grin half-way at the imp before looking back at the screen.

Rain dragged a metal, rolling, highly uncomfortable chair over beside Magdalena's and dropped gracefully into it. She could see him out of the corner of her eye if she turned her head just slightly, while still being able to watch the code. He wasn't a tall man, nor was he very old-- only a year or two older than Magdalena herself, in fact. He was darker of skin than she was, though that didn't take much, with thick, black hair that he kept in twin braids slung over either shoulder and very dark eyes. He was the ship's main navigator-- there wasn't anyone better, according to Sangreal's crew-- and something of a nuisance most of the time, though good for a smile or a laugh. Magdalena didn't know how he'd gotten his name; no one she knew had ever seen rain, not that wasn't digital, anyway. Rain had once been plugged, but he'd made his choice when he was eleven. Perhaps he just wanted to be remembered by what rain was like digital. Magdalena had never even seen that much, so she just had to imagine.

"Shouldn't you be at the helm, Rain?" Magdalena reminded him. "Looking for incomings?"

"I wired the alarm in through here," Rain said with a shrug and a lazy smile, lacing his fingers behind his head and watching her.

"Right," Magdalena answered simply. For whatever reason, the annoying man found far too many reasons to bother her, usually when she was opping alone and he was left to run the rest of the ship. Mostly she could put up with him, so she didn't mind. Today was one of those times, since the mission Matrix-side was going so unbelievably smoothly. Still, she kept her eyes on the code, alert for changes-- sometimes things could go too perfectly, and that meant there was a trap.

"So we're going to be in Zion for that next festival," Rain was saying. "You going?"

"I'm drumming," Magdalena said absently.

"Drumming!" Rain exclaimed, as if surprised. "A little skinny thing like you, a drummer?" He moved to pinch the spare flesh on her arm, but she blocked him and pushed his fingers away without missing a single line of code.

"I'm pretty good at it, if you must know," she told him.

"Wow, that's impressive," Rain laughed. "Too bad, though, I was looking forward to claiming a dance."

Magdalena looked sharply and briefly at him, then back to the screen. "I don't dance," she said flatly.

"Everyone dances," Rain drawled. "You just haven't found the right partner yet."

"Oh, and that's you," Magdalena said, matching his tone while trying desperately to find a way to change the subject. She didn't dance. Ever. "Sorry, I don't buy--" She paused, distracted, by a flashing light on one of the many consoles. For a split second, she was terrified, certain they were found by Sentinels, but then she realized that the light was green not red, and on a completely different screen than where Rain usually rerouted the warning system. "Incoming message," she said, effectively putting aside the uncomfortably conversation. "Watch the code, would you?"

Obediently, Rain rolled over a bit to keep his eye on the lines of the Matrix and his crewmates while Magdalena swiveled around and tapped a few keys into the system, accepting the message. It was from a ship called Dragonchaser, aimed for-- no, that couldn't be right. Magdalena had never gotten messages before except once from her mother and twice from Saul-- Zion and the Lazarus. Messages from ship to ship were risky, even worse from Zion to ship, and so were rare unless said ships were close to each other and the messages thus unlikely to be intercepted. This was decidedly odd, especially since she'd never even heard of the-- ooooooh no, she had heard of the Dragonchaser. She'd heard a lot about the Dragonchaser, in fact. Not the least of it all being that Derfegertz, an old friend from Zion who had disappeared from her home two years ago, was serving aboard it.

"So whatcha got there?" Rain asked, glancing over her shoulder. Magdalena shoved him back.

"Watch the code, Rain," she reminded him without answering. Once he was focused where he should be, she eagerly opened the message and scanned its contents.

Mags-- next docking in four days, meet me in the Temple at your favorite drum. We've got lots to catch up on. Derf.

That was it. Hardly enough information to even be called a message, and certainly not enough to explain why her fellow Zionite would want to contact her after nearly two years of silence. But it was something. And something in the way Derf had sent "we've got lots to catch up on" told Magdalena that this meeting would be an informative one, indeed.