Nac
“ He would have none of it. He knew nothing of this "Matrix" and he was sure it had nothing to do with his crusade... and if I didn't believe in dragons, then he'd simply show them to me.
”― Nac[src]
Nac was a redpill who survived the crash of his ship, went missing for a month, and then somehow returned to Zion. He shared his story of being rescued by a crazy old man to his friend Leet.
History[]
Nac, along with crew members Heater and Split, were on a hovercraft for a routing recon flight to look for weaknesses in the Machine defenses. Heater then suggested to check out one of the fetus fields. Split and Nac tried to talk Heater out of it but Heater convinced the two that they could use the dumping ground on the perimeter as cover so long as they flew low enough to the ground.
Flying too low, the craft clipped something and ruptured the starboard input tank. Heater and Split immediately died from the ensuing crash and explosion but Nac, with a broken arm and leg, three cracked ribs and a head trauma, still managed to drag himself away and found cover just in time not to be seen by sentinels. The sentinels, however, continued to search the area, digging right above Nac, as he lost consciousness. Fortunately for Nac, an old man came from the tunnels and rescued him before he could be discovered by the sentinels.
Nac surprised by an inactive sentinel
When Nac woke up in the old man's hideout, he was startled by the sight of the empty shell of a sentinel, being tinkered on and salvaged by the old man. Seemingly delusional, the old man also called Nac a fellow "brother of the order", pointing out the "silvery bites" in their bodies and how he had also felt the "sting of dragons" in battle. Nac also suffered a fever and, as the days passed, the crazy old man kept Nac alive through his fever, feeding him cockroach paste and more of his speeches. Nac observed that the old man had no idea of his origins nor of the nature of the Real World and was, for better or worse, living in his own fantasy world of knights and dragons.
When Nac's fever finally subsided, Nac found his old ship's radio, salvaged by the old man, and started working on repairing it. Nac also attempted to share the truth of the Matrix to the old man but the old man simply rejected all of it and instead believed that it had nothing to do with his own crusade. The crazy old man, using a periscope, also tried to show Nac the "dragons" he aimed to defeat, which Nac realized were harvesters.
One day, Nac just woke up to find that the old man had left him a package but had gone, taking the sentinel with him. Nac looked through the periscope and, expectantly, spotted the sentinel shell in the field attracting a number of real sentinels before exploding.
Nac was soon able to return to Zion, presumably using the radio and the supplies left by the old man. In Zion, his friend, Leet, volunteered to nurse him back to health. Nac learned that he had been missing for a month and recounted what happened to Leet. After re-examining the package the old man left, a book on the "Trojan War" and a drawing of Nac and the old man entitled "FREEDOM", he no longer believed the old man to just be crazy.