This story is for Kim, the real Hoppity, who had the misfortune of being on the phone with me when I said "You know, I think I'll write a Buffy/Matrix fic" and then had to listen to me figure out how it was going to work right then and there. For that, and for being the beta reader, she gets to be one of the heroes.

I also want to give continuing thanks to Mary Beth, for convincing me I should stop tossing what I write without ever letting anyone see it.

Willow sat in the large chair, staring at the man in front of her. Either he was completely insane, or the truth about Sunnydale was far worse than she knew. And the truth she knew was pretty bad. That option was scary. But the first choice was far scarier. Because if he was insane, he was an insane person who wanted her to choose a pill from one of the two in his hand.

"So, let me get this straight. I take the blue one..."

"And nothing. You stay here in Sunnydale and go on with your life. You'll remember nothing. But, if you take the red pill, everything will make sense. Why Sunnydale seems so cut off from the rest of the world, why so many strange things are always happening here... The truth is far more than you can imagine, Willow, I'm offering to drop the veil from your eyes."

"Why me?"

"We've been watching you, Willow. You have the gift. You've felt the world outside the world you know. Now, you're ready to see it."

"The gift? What, you mean my witchcraft?"

The man smiled. "That's what you call it. But it's so much more."

Willow stared at the stranger, and then at the pills in his hand. She felt a little like Eve in the Garden. Should she choose to continue as she was, or to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. And simultaneous with this thought was her choice, because, unlike, Eve, Willow didn't live in a paradise. Quite the opposite. She quickly picked up and swallowed the red pill.

Neo smiled. Trinity and Morpheus would be pleased. They had just gained a powerful ally.

Willow lay on the gurney, eyes closed against the bright light, drifting. She could hear voices, but her brain couldn't focus enough to follow the conversation.

"...not as emaciated...so young...adaptable...recovering rapidly..." And then one voice, deeper and more serious. "Yes, recovering in body, but what of her mind?"

After that, Willow drifted away.

It was a couple of days before Willow felt well enough to get up, and she still felt bizarrely weak. A quiet woman named Trinity had brought her some clothes. It was while she was putting them on that Willow had gotten her first really nasty shock.

There were holes in her arms and legs. Not like little bug bites, either. Opening the size of a dime, that upon investigation had metal sockets inside them. It didn't hurt, but even though she was still disoriented and confused, she knew they hadn't been there before. As she thought about what they could possibly be (her thought processes weren't quite caught up to the absurdity of them yet) she unconsciously moved to push her hair behind her ear and got her second nasty shock.

Her hair was gone. She was completely bald.

And it was as she ran her hands over her shorn skull that she found a third thing.

Neo heard the scream and ran straight for Willow's bunk. She was huddling in the corner, looking like a trapped animal. When she saw him, she jumped up and tried to attack him, screaming "What did you do to me?" Neo easily avoided her weak blows. He was more worried she would hurt herself than hurt him. She very quickly wore herself out and just collapsed back onto the bunk, sobbing. Trinity had come in, and she went to the younger woman, putting her arms around the gaunt figure. Neo pulled up a stool and sat opposite the two women.

"Let me guess. You found the socket."

Willow nodded. "What is it?"

Neo caught Trinity's eye, wordlessly communicating what was needed, Trinity took the other woman's hand and guided it carefully around to the back of her own head. Willow caught her breath as her fingers touched cold metal. Unbidden, her other hand went to her own head, and she slipped into the refuge of analysis.

"Mine is smaller."

Trinity nodded. "You're younger. Technology changes."

"What's it for?"

A new voice came from the door. "The only way to know is to see for yourself."

Willow turned to see a tall man, older than either Trinity or Neo. She recognized the voice. He was the one concerned about her mind. But she'd never seen his face before. "Who are you?"

Neo answered for him. "This is Morpheus. He's the captain of this ship."

"Ship? We're on a ship?"

Trinity put her hand up before Neo or Morpheus could respond. "Perhaps we should start at the beginning. Why don't we take Willow up to the control deck."

The next few days were a surreal blur to Willow. While, on an intellectual level, she reacted rather calmly to the revelations about the nature of the matrix, it didn't really become real for her until Morpheus and Tank took her to see the vast expanses of pods. She had started shivering uncontrollably, hyperventilating at the scale of it all. Billions of people, living out their lives in a small vat of goo, completely unaware of the truth... It had been almost more than she could take.

She had fallen easily into the rhythm of life aboard the ship though. Besides Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus, there was also Tank, the "operator". He couldn't get into the matrix himself, as he'd been born in Zi'On, the last place left where humans were free, and thus didn't have the necessary hardware. So he ran the computers that allowed the rest of them to go in, supplying them with the necessary tools and systems. The four of them formed the core of the crew, and had been together for a very long time. Neo and Trinity were obviously wildly in love.

The other two members of the crew were relative newcomers. Krys was like Tank--she'd been born free. She was young, barely 17, but she'd joined up with the pirate ships, as Zi'On referred to the rebels who floated through the caverns taking on the machines, as soon as she could. She had all the zeal of a true believer, and an astounding knowledge of anything to do with mechanics. It was she who kept the ship running. Hoppity was a quiet person, given to disappearing for hours at a time, only to return with a pile of relics of the lost civilization--books, for instance, or bits of hardware Krys would gleefully incorporate into the decrepit ship. Willow had once asked her why she'd taken the alias Hoppity, and she'd only laughed and said "Once upon a time, I was a rabbit..." Willow had chosen to leave it at that. In programming skills, no one could equal Hoppity, especially the discreet snooper programs the pirates used to spy on the machines' private communications. These bugs were always found eventually, but Hoppity's lasted twice as long as anyone's, and had already given the human rebels a substantial intelligence advantage.

And above them all, Morpheus, who reminded Willow of Kendra sometimes, for his ability to focus so intently on whatever the task at hand was. The others treated him with a devotion that Willow came to understand and feel herself quickly. His calm rationality, his brilliance at strategy, and his gentle but constant challenge of everyone under him were an astonishing combination. But while Willow could see what there was to worship about Morpheus, she was still in the dark as to why everyone, including Morpheus, was in awe, and even a little afraid, of Neo. She'd once asked Tank, who'd only smiled and said "Once you go into the matrix with him, you'll understand. He is The One."

This, of course, only made Willow more impatient to return to the matrix. Morpheus had said she'd have to wait until she'd finished her training, so so far she'd only gone into internal simulations that enlarged on her understanding of the rules, and how to break them. It turned out this is what she'd been unconsciously doing the whole time with her witchcraft. Once she'd grasped the fundamental concept, she was able to do far more everytime, and, although she was completely unaware of this, soon surpassed everyone else's expectations of her abilities. "She's progressing far faster than we could ever have hoped," Morpheus said, as he, Trinity, Neo and Tank sat in one of their periodic closed door meetings, long after the others had gone to sleep. "In some ways she reminds me of you, Neo."

Neo shifted uneasily. He had never really gotten comfortable with his uniqueness, and didn't like to talk about it directly. "Well, it helps she is from Sunnydale. She's far more open to things others would find impossible to believe."

"And speaking of Sunnydale," Trinity jumped in, "don't you think it's well past time you followed through on your promise and explained the rest to her? She's far too intelligent not to pick up on your evasions. Yes, it will be painful, but she has to know the whole truth, not just part of it."

Neo and Morpheus looked at each other. Morpheus nodded. "I believe it is time. As Trinity said, she knows we're keeping something from her. And if her advantage does come from her experience in Sunnydale, than the sooner we can enlist some of her friends to our side the better. We could use more people with skills like hers. And then of course..."

"...the Chosen One," Neo finished. "Yes, I believe it is time to take her back in. Tomorrow, then?"

There was general agreement, and Tank went to tell Willow that tomorrow was the big day.

It was with her mind all aflutter that Willow reported to the control room the next morning. Even though she knew it wasn't actually true, all she could think was that she was going home. To see Buffy, and Oz, and Xander, and even Cordelia again! And the sun.... She hadn't seen the sun for almost two weeks. Tank and Krys were preparing the equipment, while Hoppity sat at a console, working on her latest creation. Everyone else was waiting for her.

Neo spoke first. "Willow, before we go in, there's something we need to explain to you. Why don't you sit down?"

Now worried, Willow sat.

"You see," Morpheus began, "everything we've told you about the matrix is absolutely true. It is a machine generated reality, designed to keep humans enslaved to harvest their energy. The vast majority of the human race lives out its life exactly as if it were the end of the 20th century. But there is another section of the matrix. As far as we can tell, something catastrophic went wrong there, and the machines were unable to fix it. But the people attached there can still be milked for power. So, rather than deactivate it, they just sealed it off and never went back. This is the Sunnydale Simulation."

Willow tried to wrap her mind around this, but found she couldn't. "I just don't understand. Sunnydale is some kind of alternate matrix?"

"No," Neo said. "Sunnydale is like a subroutine that doesn't work quite right. Rather than try to fix it, they just excised it from the main program. They only care about the power being generated anyway. The quality of life for the residents is irrelevant. We've been able to partially reconstruct what happened. There was some kind of event, what, we don't know, maybe a power surge. Anyway, it corrupted that section of programming. An agent was dispatched, but when it came into contact with the corruption, it too became contaminated. Eventually, they came up with a kind of super-agent, but even this agent was only able to keep even with the corruption, not destroy it, so rather than risk it spreading to the whole matrix, they slammed the door shut, with all the people, the super-agent and the rogue agent still inside. And that's how matters stand. While the rest of the matrix lives life as it actually was, Sunnydale is filled with demons, vampires, and other supernatural phenomena, all spawned by the original corruption."

Willow sat there absorbing this new information. The rogue agent in league with the corruption... That would be the Mayor and the First Evil. It had to be. But then, who was the super-agent... And with the question came the answer. "Buffy."

Trinity nodded. "Buffy is the super-agent. The Chosen One is a sophisticated program, designed to keep the corruption at bay. Within the context of the simulation, this casts her as the defender of the humans. It's ironic. An agent working for humanity instead of against it."

Willow felt like Trinity was talking from down a great hallway. The words echoed without her actually hearing or understanding them. Buffy was an agent. Her best friend. An agent. Willow knew agents. She'd seen what they could do. She'd heard stories of even worse. But Buffy... "Does she know?"

"We honestly don't know," Morpheus said. "The Chosen One agent is unlike any other agent in the matrix. We're lucky its great strength comes at a price. If the machines had deployed her kind throughout the matrix... Well, let's just say, the war would have been over long ago."

"You're the first person we remove from the Sunnydale Simulation. We didn't even know it existed until a few months ago. We still don't have a really solid understanding of it, and have a hard time jacking in. But we think that Sunnydale and the Chosen One agent could potentially represent the end of the machines. We need you to show it to us. Because if we could get a Chosen One into the regular matrix, working for us... Think of the possibilities."

Willow did think, with the part of her that wasn't crying at the truth. An agent programmed to protect humans. One so strong it had kept another, corrupt, agent at bay for centuries. With an effort, she put aside the emotions that were threatening to tear her apart, and turned to Morpheus. "Okay, where do you want to start?"

Ironically enough, they emerged in Sunnydale in the same mausoleum in which Buffy had saved Willow's life when they first met. She started to smile at the memory of the good times until she noticed how dark it was. "Oh no! It's night! We have to get out of here."

Hoppity looked around. "Granted, I'm not real keen on being in a cemetery at night, but what's the big rush?"

Willow started to answer, then stopped and pointed over Hoppity's shoulder. "Them."

Everyone else turned and looked. Neo had seen one before, but for everyone else, it was their first experience with vampires. There were 8 of them, already fanned out and coming at them from every side. Trinity pulled out a gun, but Willow stopped her from firing. "Guns just slow them down. What we need are some wooden stakes or holy water."

Wordlessly, Neo pulled out several stakes from under his coat and gave them out. Willow took one, reminded the others the only kill shot was directly to the heart, and got ready. With a growl, the vampires rushed in, and the battle was joined.

Dimly out of the corner of her eye, Willow could see the others fighting, but she was too caught up in her own skirmish to concern herself too much. She'd killed lots of vampires before, but never in a direct one on one fight. She'd done a number of hand to hand fighting programs during her time on the ship in the real world, but this was the first time she'd put it to direct use outside of a simulation. And the simulations didn't have a vampire's strength or speed. Even Morpheus seemed to be having a problem. The only person who was winning was Neo, who was moving with a speed Willow found blinding. She couldn't even focus on where he was at any given time. Before she had time to wonder at this, though, there was suddenly a familiar blond blur in the middle of the battle. Buffy threw one off Hoppity and into a tree, where a handy branch did the job for her, and then started in on the rest. A roundhouse kick brought down another, giving Trinity the opening she needed to stake it, while a few well placed punches brought down several more. Neo, with that astonishing speed, staked two with one motion. At the end, there were six small dust piles, two fleeing vampires, and a few shaken, but unbloodied defenders. Buffy turned to Willow.

"Where have you been! Your mother's going nuts--she came back from her conference and you were just gone. None of us knew anything. I've had Giles chanting at the spirit gods for the last week, but they just said you were no longer in this world and wouldn't say what that meant. I thought maybe you turned yourself into a rat by mistake, and Oz has been out prowling around every night and day, trying to catch your scent."

Willow was too busy studying Buffy to pay much attention to the rant. An agent. Buffy was an agent. Were there any obvious clues? How was Willow going to find out if Buffy knew or not? Finally she came too, realizing Buffy was still talking. "And who are these people? You know better than to bring outsiders into a cemetery at night. Really Will. What's going on?"

Willow looked to Morpheus for guidance, but he just shrugged. No help there. So she took a deep breath and launched into the story she'd put together that morning. Buffy didn't buy a word of it.

"Willow, you're forgetting I *know* you. You'd never go to LA on your own without telling anyone. Not even for a 'sudden, amazing job opportunity.' Not with the full moon in three days. Not with the Mayor and Faith running around getting ready for god only knows what. Now, how about some truth?"

Morpheus interrupted. "I fear it is all our fault, Buffy. We met Willow here and asked her to come with us. The best way I could put it is we made her an offer she couldn't refuse."

Buffy looked at Morpheus with the distrustful look she reserved for mysterious strangers she met in graveyards. "Who are you and what offer could you possibly make that would send Willow to LA for almost two weeks? And while we're on the subject," she added, turning to Neo, "what's your deal? I've never seen anyone move like that."

Trinity and Morpheus exchanged a look. Neo just looked at the ground for a moment, then back at the enraged Slayer. "I'm like you. Different."

Buffy puffed up, then turned to Willow. "You told them? Willow, what were you thinking, telling total strangers?"

Willow shook her head. "I didn't tell them, Buffy. They already knew. They're from a kind of alternate reality. That's where I've been. But they needed to learn about here, so now I'm back. I'm really sorry. I would have sent a message if I could." She paused, and the awkward silence deepened. It was Morpheus who finally suggested they get out of the cemetery and to somewhere safer. Willow made the introductions as they walked to Buffy's house. Luckily, Joyce was out, so there was no need to explain the 4, em, interestingly dressed, strangers. Sunnydale had never seen so much vinyl.

Once there, Willow called her mother and Oz to let them know she was okay. Her mother, uncharacteristically, seemed genuinely upset. Oz yelled at her for 5 minutes and then went to hang up so he could come over and do it again in person. She was only able to keep him from coming over by putting Buffy on, who assured him that Willow was okay, and being properly chastised for her disappearance. She called Xander too, but he wasn't home, so she left a message on the machine. Everyone settled into the Summers' comfortable living room.

Willow was in torment. How was she going to explain to her best friend, who may or may not already know, that the whole world they knew was nothing but an elaborate virtual reality scheme designed to power an intelligent race of machines? Morpheus saved her the trouble by jumping in just as she started to speak.

"As Willow told you, we are from a world that parallels this one. In our world, we are at war with an enemy that has been beating us for centuries. We believe Sunnydale may hold the key to changing that."

"Sunnydale?" Buffy was incredulous. "All Sunnydale has is demons and vampires. Not a whole lot here that can help you."

"Well," Trinity said with a studied carelessness, "there is also the Chosen One agent."

Willow had been watching Buffy carefully, and the look on her face told her all she needed to know. "You knew!"

Buffy closed her mouth and nodded slowly, not saying a word or meeting Willow's eyes.

Morpheus took a deep breath. He would have to proceed carefully now. One wrong word, and all was lost. "Then you must know why we would consider you a powerful ally."

Buffy smiled bleakly. "An agent programmed to defend humans. Yes, I can see it."

"Would you... Could you... go up against your creators?"

Buffy studied a wall, and then her fingernails. "I can. The algorithm puts a priority on defending biological life, but there's a flaw. There's no condition in there telling me why. If they'd said Defend Life to Preserve the Power Source, that would be a different story, and you'd all be dead already. As it was, they probably just assumed my own instinct for self-preservation would made me want to keep the power going. Will I...." She got up and walked to a window. From outside there was a scream. "I spend all day, every day, fighting the virus. I've been doing it for almost 200 years. They made me, threw me in here, and then locked the door." She turned back. Willow caught and held her eyes. "I'm tired of this life. I say screw 'em."