Italics- thought

'Aelita'- Clone Aelita, identified by this, though the other pronouns or adjectives/nouns relating to her will not have it.

The Beginning

Code: Apocalypse, Chapter I

Emerald eyes flashed into the night, the pupils glinting with malicious intent at the task prepared for it. On the large, single bed in the room lay the blond, sleeping peacefully without knowing what was about to happen, slightly turning in the sheets as he continued to slumber. The owner of the emerald eyes stalked closer to the bed, gripping something in her fist, something that was about do its dirty job soon. The moonlight filtered down through the window, and it hit the blade, making it a stark contrast to the darkness of the room as it glistened. 'Aelita' crept closer to Jeremie, a wicked smile gracing her lips as she continued stalking towards him. Jeremie knew too much, she reasoned, and must be eliminated in order for XANA's plan to fully work.

She had nothing in her head except for the general wariness of the surroundings, the mission of what she was to do, and the constant feed of information from XANA. She listened, in case he might have heard the footsteps in which she tried to conceal, but all that she heard was the silence, occasionally interrupted by his soft breathing. 'Aelita' slowly raised he hand as soon as she got close enough, still clutching the dagger, and searched for the best spot in which the dagger could penetrate his skin and instantly kill him without him waking up and yelling, and without it being too messy. No, XANA wanted it as swift and as clean as possible, otherwise there would be complications and a large scale investigation. She did not hear anything else; 'her' ears were deafened by the harsh beating of her artificial heart as she prepared herself.

The dagger was raised to several feet above his heart, and the arm holding it was about to let the dagger plunge into his chest when the door flung open suddenly. Before 'Aelita' could react, a small girl rushed into the room, her face streaked with tears, and clutched the older female's leg, causing her to drop the dagger in surprise. The dagger hit the floor on its side, and it bounced harmlessly to a spot under the bed. 'Aelita' simply did not know what to do, and Jeremie was stirring once more as his body was being fully awakened. 'Aelita', basing her next movements on what human mothers did when their young child was crying, gently picked Antea up, and let her rest against her chest. Antea's crying lessened as she snuggled against her mother and fell asleep, the nightmares she had fading away into a distant memory.

'Aelita' felt something rest against one of her shoulders, and as she looked back, Jeremie have a tired smile before he curled up and fell asleep again. Antea snuggled unconsciously into 'Aelita', the latter softly rubbing the younger girl's back as a gesture of comfort. Antea's grip on the older female lessened as she curled up in her sleep. 'Aelita' looked at both Jeremie and Antea in wonder. 'Humans look so peaceful when they sleep', she thought, before shaking her head. 'Now is not the time to be thinking that. XANA?' she thought, trying to communicate with her master, finding no thought or voices in her head that was sent from him. She would have panicked and tried multiple times to reach him, had it not have been for the feeling of separation, of which she did not know about, which now plagued her.

'From where in the world do these feelings come from…' she mused, confused on why she now had feelings or thoughts that deviated from her normal thoughts and functions. A thought had alarmed her recently and it continued to plague her whenever XANA was not dictating her motions or give her a set of instructions via the mental link she had with him. In a part of her artificial brain, she could feel herself secretly enjoying the time when XANA was not dictating things for her to do, though the thought of that secretly horrified her sometimes. Against all the routines and the subroutines which dictated her motions and her thoughts, she secretly savored being in this world instead of just being data and binary code, waiting for its fate to be determined by the person or program controlling it.

However, she hid those thoughts from XANA at all times, for an irrational fear had taken over her mind somehow that prevented her from normally displaying the irrational thoughts she had, in order for XANA to "correct" the "abnormal" mental functions he usually performed when there were thoughts that were contrary to his plans. 'Aelita' gently laid Antea next to her father as she continued watching them sleep peacefully, before sighing and going to sleep herself. Oddly enough for her, she soon entered an artificial world in her mind where anything could happen as soon as she was asleep. She had achieved something that specters or clones that XANA made had never been able to successfully achieve before- she was dreaming.

-Antea and Waldo-

Antea plucked at a few strands of her hair, the color it now displayed hardly satisfying her. The hair dye didn't work, so Waldo had to go under a guise of another person, and purchase several bottles of hair dye with money that he had to rummage around for. The hair dye did not work to the effect as much as both she and Waldo would have wanted, but it still did the job, nevertheless. The color of her hair was now dyed black, with an occasional bright red streak of hair as a positive highlight to an otherwise badly done hair dye job. Waldo had fared a little better, managing to dye his hair back to the dark black color that Antea remembered in their younger years.

Both of them surveyed the exterior of the abandoned cabin. It was a tiring ride to the mountains, but they had managed to reach the mountain cabin with hardly any trouble. The spring air had definitely done wonders to highlight the soft and flowing green grass that ticked at their feet- Waldo had chosen to take off his socks and shoes, and they had chosen to look back on the fonder memories as they experienced how wonderful spring was in the mountains. Antea, now about as old as her husband, could not remember so well, but enjoyed the fairly warm weather, however. A cool breeze ruffled both Antea and Waldo's hair, and they gave the mountain cabin another quick glance before nodding to each other and Waldo started putting his socks and shoes on, both of them getting ready to enter the cabin.

The front door of the cabin swung open with a loud groan- the hinges have not been oiled in decades since its abandonment. Waldo was grateful that he had not sold the mountain cabin at all- there was information there that was important to both of them. The floor was extremely dusty, and the cabin's interior was in shambles- papers strewn about on the floor, pieces of broken glass that seemingly had come from nowhere dimly glinting in the light, parts of the cabin looked like it was about to come crashing down at any moment, light hardly came through the windows, and there was a definite musty smell of age and of air not being circulated within a closed space. Through the light, though what little of it there was at the moment, there was the unmistakable growth of black mold, as well as other types of mold. The mold had grown from the moisture that was provided by a leakage of a pipe, which was due to the lack of maintenance on the building. The sparse furniture that had remained in the cabin, because it was too heavy for it to be moved to the Hermitage, was just about as dilapidated as the rest of the cabin, and signs of damage from weather and insects showed throughout the interior of the building.

Both Antea and Waldo coughed as dust from the surfaces of the objects remaining in the cabin found their way into their lungs. They continued coughing and sneezing violently, the air seemed to be getting thicker around them as more dust particles were stirred into the air again, until they both went out of the cabin to get some fresh air. Waldo cupped his hand and lightly hit Antea on the back, in order to help her rid her body of the foreign contaminants in her lungs. Antea coughed out the last of the dust from her respiratory system, nodding and thanking her husband as her breathing slowed down to normal again, taking one more look at the interior of the mountain cabin.

"It's probably just as bad as the Hermitage would have been right now, had not Aelita and Jeremie renovated it and used it as a summer home for their family." Waldo commented, still coughing a little from the dust particles.

"Unfortunately, it is." Antea affirmed, sighing. "We need to get the thing we need and get out before we die there."
"I am not pleased to say that we cannot just do that- the item might have been to damaged to function correctly, and we don't have a place to hide in- the Hermitage is too far from here, and my daughter would have known to put in a lock too complex for a person even at my skill level to break it open."

"… so we're going to have to do some home rebuilding… I was afraid you were going to say that."

"The problem is that the whole structure is greatly weakened- it might take months or a year or two to fully replace all the rotting wood and basically rebuild the house." Waldo said, sighing as he knew the difficult task that lay ahead.

Antea rested a hand on his shoulder as a sign of comfort, and Waldo gave a grim smile to his ever-aging wife. Both of them were not as young as they used to be, and they could not get any outside help, for there was always a chance that the person re-building their home might see through the little disguises they had and report them to the government. Waldo knew that his strength would soon be all but gone, and that he was not a scientist, and not a person that would be out trying to build muscles. The gears in his head were now spinning at a pace that was deemed to be fast to the normal human being, but it was too slow for a man that was used to have thoughts and solutions to complex formulas come to him at a lightening pace. Within moments, Waldo had found a way to reverse their age back to around their young 30s, something that most scientists would have dismissed as impossible. For a man that built a supercomputer that could convert large masses of matter into atomic particles and store it into the computer system however, hardly anything was impossible.

Jeremie and 'Aelita'

Jeremie plucked at the grass under himself as he watched his children run with each other near the picnic site. It had been the children's idea, in fact, that the family will have a picnic outdoors in the park after both of the parents had gotten back from work. Both of the parents had managed to convince Alexis, their manager, to let them off earlier from work, so they could spend quality time with their children. 'Aelita' quietly observed both Antea and Waldo's nature as both of them fell to the ground and immediately started play-wrestling with each other. 'It's fascinating how children can make fighting seem so childish. Then again, men are always like little children when it comes to fighting- no matter how big or small the war or battle is- they always end up sulking if they lose…' she thought, taking a bite of her sandwich without knowing it. Humans were always fascinating to her, and there was not a day where she observed something and discovered another thing that ran contrary to her master's viewpoint on what the humans did in the past, and what they do in the present.

The sun set down on the family as they continued to express happy feelings- something that 'Aelita' rarely felt, and was ecstatic to participate in. The children's features became darkened as the light from the sun faded away, the lights from the streetlights not having any effect on the family, as they were too far away from them for the streetlights to effectively shine on the small group. 'Aelita's' thoughts were interrupted as Jeremie laid his hand on her shoulder, much like what he had done last night when Antea came into their bedroom. Jeremie was smiling as his face came closer; his eyes were twinkling in the fading light. Before 'Aelita' had any rational thought, Jeremie pressed his lips against her lips in a kiss as he hugged her, leaving her stunned.

Her routines and the programming in her system had no information on what to do in this type of situation as Jeremie continued to kiss her- something else taking over her as he continued. By the reaction a human might call an instinct; 'Aelita' found herself kissing him back, Jeremie deepening the kiss. None of the children noticed their parents show affection to each other; they were too busy arguing over who had successfully pinned the other to the ground and won the match, starting another wrestling match in the progress. Jeremie pulled back slowly, looking at 'Aelita's' dazed face, all logical thought was evidently vaporized from her mind as he performed a kiss. Jeremie knew that he was kissing a clone, but he just wanted to know if there was any chance that there might be any chance that the clone would make any attempts to kill him for a few days at most. Judging by the clone's expression, Jeremie gave a smile, to which it looked like he was happy. 'It's quite ironic.' Jeremie thought, gazing into the clone's eyes. 'I suppose it's to get back at XANA for his attack in which he kissed… Aelita… A kiss for a kiss- they're both being to betray or to deceive someone.'

'So… so this is what it's like to be loved…' 'Aelita' reasoned, having the thought as she held Jeremie's hands in hers. The simple thought filled her with emotions that any other of XANA's specters would have been able to feel. She had been made to be different- to be equipped with some of the basic emotions, the purpose being that she would be able to look and act similarly to the person she was pretending to be. 'Master is incapable of feeling love… It's wonderful… I wonder why he hasn't felt this way' she wondered, lightly rubbing her head against him. His response was to lightly stroke the back of her head as the light completely faded over the ends of the Earth, 'Aelita' feeling more and more loved as he continued. The setting sun just signified the impeding start of a new day- a day that would never end.

[This is not] The End