XANA, the Serial Killer

by Black Yoshi

When strange things begin happening around Kadic Academy, the Lyoko gang at first suspests XANA but then a student is found dead in the empty gym. The discovery renders XANA all too innocent, until another startling discovery is made on Lyoko...

NOTE: The ONLY thing I own in this entire story is the plot. EVERYTHING ELSE in courtesy of Moonscoop, Inc. and Antefilms, Inc.

XANA,

the

Serial Killer

A Code: Lyoko Adventure

Part One: Aelita

"THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . . VIRTUALIZATION!"As Jeremy's voice shot through my ears from the speakers just outside the scanners, I closed my eyes, counted slowly to five, and then reopened them as I landed on the surface of the virtual Lyoko, next to Ulrich. I dived out of the way as Yumi came down nearly on top of me, followed a moment later by Odd. The three virtual vehicles appeared nearby and we hopped on.

"The activated tower is due north of your location," came Jeremy's voice from his headset back on Earth. "Hurry up before XANA decides to send an army your way!"

I was nearly thrown off of Ulrich's motorcycle as he punched his throttle all the way down. Odd took off after us on his hovering skateboard, as did Yumi on a flying scooter. The tower was in sight, surrounded completely by a reddish mist. Yes . . . it was XANA.

Oh yeah . . . perhaps some info on us first. I am Aelita, from this virtual world. On Earth, my friends know me as Aelita Stones, Odd's cousin from Canada. Jeremy managed to materialize me onto Earth. I am about Jeremy's height, with pink hair about as long as Jeremy's and a pink sweater with a large letter A sewn onto the front.

A little bit about my friends: Yumi Ishiyama was born and raised in Japan, and is a grade level above us at school. She has three inches in height on any one of the rest of us, and is always seen in a black sweater and black jean pants. Her medium-length black hair always covers one of her eyes.

Odd Della Robbia was born in Italy, I think. He shares his height of about five feet with Ulrich and his hair color with Jeremy, save for a peculiar grey patch just above his forehead. Ulrich Sterne is from England, and is always seen in baggy greenish pants and a white polo shirt covered by a green short-sleeved pullover. Jeremy Belpois is from the United States, and you never see him in anything else besides tan bellbottom pants and a blue sweater, and a pair of glasses. The latter three are in the same class as I on Earth. Anyway:

"Ulrich! Look out!" Yumi shrieked, and I was nearly flung into the digital void as the bike swerved sharply and came to a stop. XANA had sent an army, as usual . . . but this time he had really brought out the heavy artillery. The army this time was made up of four Tarantulas. (Tarantulas are but one of the many different sol-diers in XANA's army, the ones that resemble giant spiders but with four legs rather than eight.) Their shiny silver noses gleamed in the virtual sunlight as they lifted their heads skyward in a roar.

Immediately they fired. Odd swerved out of the way and fired a few Laser Arrows (his main weapon) at the Tarantula in the center; Ulrich sprinted, his sword drawn, toward the one to the right; unfortunately, Yumi was hit head-on and was sent back to Earth.

In a trance-like state I stuck out my hand and, slowly but sure-ly, a ramp-like hill rose from the ground, in front of the roaring monsters. Immediately the Tarantulas began helplessly firing at the underside of the hill. Realizing I was still seated on Ulrich's Overbike I floored the throttle and nearly fell backwards off of the bike as it lurched forward with amazing speed and flew over the ramp. I jumped off just as it came to the ground near the activated tower, and ran inside . . . and deactivated the Tower.

That was but one of the many adventures we have had and were to have on Lyoko, until the final deactivation of the supercomputer's main server. Little did we know that these excursions to Lyoko would soon take a turn for the worse.

"So Sissi was talking to her friends about that new makeup kit she'd ordered off the Internet, and I said to her, 'Did it come out of the printer?'" We burst into laughter at Odd's joke. Most of the time his jokes are somewhat lame, but this was one of the few that were actually funny.

I opened my mouth for a joke of my own, but the door opened to reveal a rather surprised Ulrich before I could say anything. "Uh, what are you guys doing? It's late, and Jim will kill us if we don't get to bed soon."

With that we spread out to our rooms. As I descended the stairway to the lower floor, the temperature in the stairwell suddenly plummeted. Shivering, I ran the rest of the way down the stairway and entered my dorm room, carefully closing the door behind me. The moment I hit the pillow in my room, I fell asleep.

The next morning, the first stop on my way to breakfast was the shower. Two hours passed before the girl who was first in line finally stepped out of the bathroom. An hour and about fifteen girls later it was finally my turn. I stepped into the first shower stall to my left and extended a hand toward the shower faucet.

And all of the lights in the bathroom went out.

I screamed and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me. The hallway was empty, everyone else having departed to the cafeteria for breakfast. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out in a whoosh. Then I turned and slowly pulled the door open for a peak inside. All was as normal as it should be.

"Aelita!" the familiar voice came so suddenly I jumped and near-ly screamed again. "What are you still doing here? You should be having breakfast with the guys!" I turned slowly, expecting some kind of monster. I sighed with relief when I found it was only Yumi.

"Oh — uh, I'm coming!" With that I followed Yumi down to the cafeteria for breakfast.

I sank into a chair next to Jeremy, a tray full of every cereal ever invented in hand. A few Fruit Loops went flying as my tray landed on the table in front of me with a slap. Jeremy must have noticed something, because he stopped in mid-chew, swallowed everything in his mouth in one gulp and said, "Aelita, you're trembling. Is anything wrong?"

"Oh — it's nothing."

"I can tell something's up, Aelita. I'm here for you."

"Well, okay . . . In the showers this morning the lights went out, and —"

"So?" Odd broke in, barely legible through a mouthful of pan-cakes. "The lights go out in our bathroom all the time, and all because Ulrich—!"

"Shut up, will you?" Ulrich snapped before Odd could finish.

"And the weird part is," I continued, "that no one was in the room with me at the time. I ran out of the bathroom screaming, and then I opened the door again and the lights were back on!"

"You're imagining things, Aelita," Yumi quipped. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get going or Mrs. Hertz will kill me."

Just then I realized I had forgotten something in my dorm room. "Excuse me, I think I left my history textbook in my room. I'll be right back, and then we'll go to class together, okay?"

"I'm going with you." The remark by Jeremy was not surprising in any way. After all, he is as worried about me most of the time as Yumi's parents are about her! "I just want to make sure you know where you're going."

I said nothing, and we took off, leaving Odd and Ulrich in the midst of an "important conversation about Sissi" in the fast-emptying cafeteria.

The dormitories were as empty as Odd's stomach before dinner, and as silent as Lyoko during XANA's holiday breaks. The only sounds I heard were my footsteps on the stairs and Jeremy's heavy breathing behind me as he struggled to keep up. I ascended the stairs two at a time and took off down the hall to my room.

I stopped running only upon reaching the door. I extended a trembling hand toward the doorknob — and froze as a bitter cold passed through me. It was like being possessed by XANA, but simultaneously quite the opposite. By now Jeremy had caught up, and noticing the sudden color change in my skin, he began, "Aelita —?"

Before he could finish, Jeremy became a human statue himself. By the time I was able to move I felt as though I'd seen XANA him-self. I clutched the doorknob with my trembling, nearly-frozen hand, and turned it to open the door — but the knob refused to budge.

"Jeremy — I need your help. I — I can't do this alone —!" But he remained frozen there, like a statue in mid-sentence. His mouth hung open in an almost-perfect O; his eyes were the size of Mega Tanks; and he was as cold as Arctic ice.

I gave the knob the hardest crank I could muster but the darn-ed thing still refused to budge. I had just about given up, and I turned to say something to Jeremy — and the door swung open. And suddenly Jeremy burst back to life as though suddenly awakening after being possessed by XANA.

"J-Jeremy — are you okay?!" The stuttered voice, though my own, sounded foreign to me, as though XANA were speaking rather than me. At first the only answer I got was the sound of my own heart thumping against my ribs and Jeremy's heavy breathing; an endless five minutes passed before Jeremy decided to speak:

"Ae—Aelita! Wh—what happened?" It was as though he had no memory of what had just happened, like Sissi after a return to the past. His face was twisted into a confused expression, one as easy to read as Odd's textbooks. Though the experience was fresh in my mind, I was still as confused as Jeremy was about what had just hap-pened.

I grabbed what I needed out of my dorm room and accompanied Jeremy to class. But the surprise quiz wasn't the only surprise in store for us . . .

"I keep telling you, Odd, you should've studied!"

"Studying is a waste of time, Ulrich. Besides, I've got better things to do!"

"Yeah, like what?"

"Like, why don't you both just shut up and study?!"

Those words were the first thing I heard when I walked into Mrs. Hertz' classroom that morning. Odd and Ulrich were at it again, as told by Jeremy. (The third voice was that of the obnoxious girl in front of Odd.)

"Ms. Delmas, how dare you!" Mrs. Hertz screamed. "And Odd, maybe you should study instead of running off in the middle of class all the time!" With that remark everyone broke out into laughter — that is, everyone save for Odd.

"Very funny, Mrs. Hertz, very funny!" came his sarcastic re-mark.

As class progressed my notebook was filling up fast. I was won-dering if we'd ever get to do that experiment Mrs. Hertz had promised, and opened my mouth so say something to Jeremy, right next door — but just then Jeremy's laptop computer began its annoying repeating beeping, the signal for an activated Tower on Lyoko.

Jeremy slammed the machine onto the desk in front of him. The sound that followed was so loud, I jumped, and I was surprised that Mrs. Hertz hadn't heard anything, considering how close we were to the front of the room. He then flung the screen up into position and typed something in so quickly, I had no clue if he'd even hit the right keys.

"Super Scan has detected a tower!"

The usual words, spoken by Jeremy, caught Mrs. Hertz' atten-tion right away and the first thing she said was, "Jeremy Belpois, sit down this instant! You should be taking a test, not running off in the middle of class!"

Jeremy was already halfway out the door but he turned around and came back into the room anyway. As he took his seat, he was glaring at me. It was a look that said immediately, Aelita, why are you such a burden to me? Ugh! I never should've materialized you in the first place!

I tried to ignore the look and go on with my test, but the annoy-ing beeping from Jeremy's Laptop was by now the most annoying thing in the world. I felt like tossing the machine out the window, but I simply shut the machine down and went on with my test.

I had gotten about halfway through the essay portion and was so intent on finishing, I allowed my concentration to turn fully to the test — and just then someone screamed:

"Get her to the infirmary — she's dying!"

At first I thought it was nothing more than a joke, and shrug-ged it off — until Jeremy literally pounded on my shoulder and screamed, "MRS. HERTZ! I THINK SHE'S DEAD!"

I glanced up, to where the entire class was crowded around what I presumed to me Mrs. Hertz' desk. I rose to join them — but I hadn't taken more than a few steps before the door was flung open with so much force, the glassware on the shelves clattered and threatened to fall to the floor. I spun in that direction, expecting one of XANA's monsters.

It was only Jim — a very angry Jim.

"What's all the commotion?" his deep voice was enough to make everyone freeze, and the class parted as Jim stepped forward. He almost fainted when he saw what the class had been looking at.

"Suzanne!" he called Mrs. Hertz by her first name. "Oh no . . . Children, sit down, and I will personally take Mrs. Hertz to the infirmary!" He hoisted something onto his shoulder and turned to leave. I knew what it was the moment I saw it: Mrs. Hertz's body.

"To the factory, on the double!" Jeremy screamed, and rose to take off. The minute he did so, Jim, now halfway out the door himself, spun around and screamed: "Belpois, sit down!"

"Either Jim got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," I heard Odd whisper to Ulrich, "or he's possessed by XANA!" And he burst out laughing.

"Possessed by . . . who?" the girl next to Ulrich wanted to know.

"Oh . . . Odd's just trying to be funny, that's all," Jeremy lied. Then to Odd: "I told you not to tell anybody!"

"Sorry, it kinda slipped."

I opened my mouth to respond but didn't get the chance. Just then the bell rang, signaling the start of lunch. That was one thing I needed right now — I was starving! I had no idea just what XANA might have in store for us . . .

In the cafeteria we joined Yumi at our usual table, trays in hand. I had no idea what was on mine, though the lunch lady had said it was some kind of meatloaf. Jeremy's was filled with a gross-colored gelatin; Odd, the vegetarian of the group, had — of course — vegetables; and Ulrich and Yumi both had sandwiches.

For the first five minutes we ate in silence, listening to the hun-dreds of little conversations going on around us. The main voice in the room was Sissi's, as she screamed to her "friends" something about Ulrich. I was about ready to leave, when Yumi spoke up.

"So how was class this morning?"

I told her all about how neither Mrs. Hertz nor Jim would allow Jeremy to leave the classroom, especially with an activated Tower on Lyoko. "And the moment I shut down Jeremy's computer, it was like Mrs. Hertz shut down as well!"

"What?! You mean there's an activated Tower?! Well, why did-n't you tell me?!"

"Uh, because Jim kinda took away our mobiles after Sissi's rang in the middle of our final exams yesterday," Jeremy answered.

"We better get to the factory and fast — for all I know there could be ten activated Towers by now!" Yumi growled.

And we rose to take off.

"SIT DOWN!" Jim's deep voice bellowed into the room, nearly shattering the glass.

"We were — uh, just getting up to throw away our trash!" Odd was barely able to speak the entire sentence before Jim bellowed out in return:

"You're not gonna pull that one on me again. Sit down and I will throw away your trash."

We slid down into our seats.

"What has gotten into him lately?" Odd quipped, trying to sound sarcastic.

No one had an answer, but we were soon to find out . . .

The next day's lunch brought unto me the most shocking news I would ever hear in my entire life.

I met Yumi in the cafeteria, and we joined the others. They were talking about something, but the only words I could hear clearly were Odd's repeated "It's not XANA!" and Jeremy's "Well, the Super Scan found an activated Tower during class yesterday — "

"I told you, Jeremy, it wasn't XANA!"

"Oh yeah? Then how —?"

"What wasn't XANA?" Yumi broke into the boys' conversation, an angry tone in her voice. "Look, if you two want to keep yelling at the top of your lungs, go ahead, and see just how many people know about you-know-who by the end of the day!"

I said nothing, but glanced around the cafeteria. Every kid in the room had stopped talking and was staring at us, even in the lunch line. Most of their faces said, What are they talking about?; a few others said, Man, they must be crazy, making up stories in eighth grade!; and the one on Yumi's face said, Shut up, you guys, unless you want everyone to know about XANA!

"Look, why don't you just calm down and tell us what the heck you guys are talking about?" I tried to keep myself calm but my method didn't seem to work.

"Well, this morning, Jim went into Odd's room and threw Kiwi out the window. Then Odd got mad and threw Ulrich's textbook at him, and he de-pixelized on impact, as though possessed by XANA."

The blonde computer genius stopped there to clear his throat and to allow passage of a loud sneeze which nearly threw his glasses to the floor.

"So Odd left for the showers, locking the door behind him, and when he got back, Jim had vanished. We searched the entire dorm building and couldn't find him anywhere!"

"So, what you're saying is that XANA — or something — pos-sessed Jim and then just vanished?!" I quipped. "That's not like XANA at all! I mean, he can't just make people disappear!"

For the remainder of the lunch period no one spoke. And as the lunch period slowly progressed, I began to wonder if XANA really was behind this. I mean, it's not like him to possess someone and then just vanish.

Right?

Given the circumstances surrounding Jeremy's predicament, he wasn't able to leave, but that night I snuck out and ran to our factory to see what was up. Boy, did XANA have something for me.

I had tried to talk him into going with me, but all he said was, "Sorry, Jim won't let me leave the grounds" over and over. So I decided to try Odd and Ulrich, but both were overloaded with homework, and Yumi's overprotective parents wouldn't let her leave her house, so I decided to go it alone.

It didn't take long to reach the factory. In fact, I think I made it there in record time. I sank into Jeremy's computer chair and allowed it to transport me around the room, to the multi-screen mon-itor. Once there the first thing I did was to launch a Super Scan. I almost screamed when the computer started its annoying repeated beeping, then fainted at what the Super Scan found:

XANA had already activated half the Towers on Lyoko!

"I have to warn the others. Oh, if there was only a way to deactivate every tower on Lyoko simultaneously, we wouldn't have to stay there forever just deactivating Towers!"

As I made that statement I rose from the chair and started to the elevator that would take me back up to ground level — and something grabbed me from behind. I spun around. The Scyphozoa! Its octopus-like tentacles thrashed out in every direction as it floated toward me, the tiny XANA-like eye on its gigantic forehead glaring at me the entire time.

There was no need for a signal; I spun around and ran into the elevator. The Scyphozoa shot toward me, its two front tentacles aiming for me. I slammed my hand on the elevator button, but nothing happened.

The monstrous Scyphozoa had reached me. Its tentacles wrap-ped around me and . . .

And the next thing I knew I was bolt-upright in bed. The door burst open and Sissi stormed in, growling.

"Will you stop screaming in the middle of the night? Some of us are trying to SLEEP HERE!!"

"Uh . . . S—sorry . . . " I managed to stammer as the angry Sissi turned upon her heel and stormed out of the room, slamming the door on her way out.

That day at lunch I related the nightmare to the rest of the gang, and boy, did they have something for me.

" . . . And I woke up screaming when it was about to grab me!" I finished. Odd and Ulrich were staring at me as though I were one of XANA's monsters, Jeremy with a look of confusion on his face (Ae-lita, what are you talking about? The Scyphozoa would never come to Earth!), and Yumi with a look of seriousness upon her face.

Then Yumi told about a dream she'd had (the other night, ac-cording to her). She had dreamed of me falling into the digital void inside a Tower while trying to deactivate it. She woke up screaming that it was impossible, that it was only a dream.

"I don't know about you," Jeremy suggested when Yumi had fin-ished, "but I think there could be a connection between the dreams."

"You're crazy, Einstein!" Odd and Ulrich said simultaneously.

"Well, you may think so now, but wait until you hear this: Some-one found Millie Soloviev dead in the gym this morning. She had been stabbed — but the gym had been empty since last night!"

Odd and Ulrich burst out laughing suddenly but Yumi simply said, "Guys, this is serious. First Jim disappears and then Millie is murdered in the empty gym, and you guys think this is funny?!"

"Uh . . . um, sorry?"

"Hold your apologies, guys," Jeremy said seriously. "This is serious. We'll meet in the factory after school today."

"Gotcha," we all said simultaneously.

After the last class of the day you are supposed to report to your dorm room to prepare for dinner, but instead of doing that I ran our usual route to the factory. It didn't take long to get there — in fact, I think I made it there in record time! — and when I got there the others were waiting.

Of course, Jeremy was at the computer screen, and by the look on his face I could tell something was up, and this something was not good news.

"This is going to take forever! Jim'll kill me!"

"What's going on?" I quipped.

"Uh, XANA has taken a major step toward 'unbeatable,' " Odd answered with a pun.

"Excuse me?"

"XANA has activated more than one Tower," Jeremy replied. "Four, to be precise — one in each region."

"We'd better get to Lyoko fast!"

"It's going to be tough, guys. Each Tower is swarming with monsters — Wasps and Mega Tanks mostly, but the few Crabs are super strong — so be careful."

"We'll try," Yumi replied, and we headed for the scanners.

Little did we know that those two little words would be the last words she ever spoke in this world . . .

I had thought Jeremy had been kidding us when he had men-tioned the Towers swarming with XANA's army, but upon reaching Lyoko, I wasn't so sure about that.

The moment we had reached Lyoko I was almost struck by a Crab's laser. I dived one way, then the other, as the army of angry Crabs approached us. Odd and Ulrich were defeated almost immediately but were sent back. Yumi decided to play it safe and she dived into the nearest ice cave.

"Jeremy — vehicles, please!" Odd managed, diving out of a Mega Tank's path. The three vehicles appeared in front of us but were hit almost immediately and devirtualized. I was beginning to feel that there was no way to get past these things — the moment I froze one monster the others would fire at it and free it!

"Jeremy, bring us back to Earth —!" As Yumi was saying that, a Crab decided that was the perfect time to fire in her direction, and we could only watch helplessly as her virtual form dissipated from Lyoko. It wasn't long before we had followed her back home. Odd and Ulrich went first, then I followed from a nearby deactivated Tower.

The scanner slid open, revealing a surprised Odd and Ulrich. Jeremy had joined us as well, the look on his face a carbon copy of the one of my own.

"What's going on? Odd? Ulrich, can you step out of the way, please?"

As I said that, Ulrich slid slowly out of the way, and I almost screamed at what I saw.

"OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY. . . !"

"Get a hold of your — AAUUGGH!"

"YUMI!"

Those few words are enough to describe the gory scene inside the scanner next to which Ulrich stood trying not to cry. Odd and Jeremy were frozen, Jeremy halfway out of the elevator and Odd against the scanner out of which I emerged.

Inside the opposite scanner lay a dead Yumi . . .

Part Two: Jeremy

Aelita's jaw had dropped to the floor. Odd was the color of Lyoko ice, and Ulrich's eyes were twin waterfalls. Shock had taken over my body as XANA would, to such as extent that I could move nothing but my own eyes.

The open scanner was filled with blood — Yumi's blood — for she lay on the floor halfway out of the scanner. The shiny metal blade and black handle of a samurai sword stuck out of her upper back. Her face was twisted into an expression of terror. Her hands were clenched into fists, so hard that I was surprised her palms had remained intact.

"Yumi! — No —!" Ulrich was trying to say something between a pair of clenched teeth that didn't seem to make any sense. But no one dared say anything for fear of making him mad. (If you knew Ulrich as well as we do you'd know how easy it was to make him tick!)

In the entire five minutes since her arrival back home Aelita had been in the same position — her jaw against the floor, her eyes a couple of Mega Tanks, her skin the color of fresh snow — and the entire time she had been staring at Yumi in such astonishment, I can't even begin to describe it.

After an agonizing eternity as a block of ice, I finally brought up the courage to move, and I stepped backwards into the elevator. Soon Odd joined me, then Ulrich, dragging Yumi's body behind him. "Aelita, come on! Let's get out of here!"

Aelita screamed and I literally saw her rocket into the air. She came down trembling. "Oh . . . uh, coming!" And she joined us in the elevator.

We knew that hadn't been the end, but we did not know just how surprising — and scary — the end would be . . .

Dinner that night was full of conversations — between us, be-tween Sissi-et-al, as well as between a million other groups of friends.

Odd: "And all those monsters on Lyoko. What about that? — I mean, there were more monsters there that one time than every other time combined!"

Me: "I don't know, Odd — but if XANA was behind the monsters — and no, I don't mean literally — then we have major problems."

Aelita: "Maybe tomorrow we can head to a different sector and check things out there, huh, Jeremy — like, maybe, the desert? Or — or the forest?"

Me: "Good idea. In the meantime, I'll try to find a way to deactivate the Towers from outside of Lyoko. But who knows — by now XANA could've activated every Tower on Lyoko!"

------

I was concentrating so hard on the millions of data files on the monitor in front of me, I jumped so high I could've polished the metallic ceiling when someone screamed into my ear:

"JEREMY! XANA'S ACTIVATED A TOWER!"

"Odd!" I threw back into his face. "Cut it out! Besides, that info is so three weeks ago!"

"Just wanted your attention. So, what's new, Einstein?"

"Well, I can't say I've found a way just yet, but I've gotten off to a good start."

"Well?" By now Aelita and Ulrich had joined us.

"I've managed to recover the data for the tower-deactivation program from Sector Five, and I was working on a new program for increasing the power of the tower-deactivation program last night when the super-calculator crashed for some reason.

"By the way, Aelita had recovered the data from Sector Five, no monsters attached —"

"You mean — there were no Flying Mantas at all?!" Odd broke in, nearly screaming, his eyes a couple of Crabs and his mouth the size of the Scipizoa.

"And all those monsters you saw the last time you guys went, were gone as well. The only living virtual beings on Lyoko were Aelita and one Kankrelot, the latter never even firing!

"Anyway — and thank goodness I decided to pull Aelita out of there when I did! — the supercomputer crashed five minutes later — and when I went to the super-calculator room below the scanners, everything was fine. I mean, the server looked like it was just in-stalled yesterday, and every connection had just been replaced after the last XANA attack. It was so weird — I still don't know how that happened!"

"Are you sure you weren't just dreaming, Jeremy?" Odd decided to inquire. "After all, you were pretty scared when I popped in!" No one laughed at his dumb joke. Maybe no one knew what he meant — but no one decided to speak.

"Why don't you just see for yourself?" I replied. "Go to the scanners and I'll begin the transfer."

Ten minutes later I saw the three blips on my holographic map of Lyoko that signaled the safe arrival of Aelita and the guys. I tapped a few keys on my keyboard and the three virtual vehicles joined them. For a while all was silent as they moved from tower to tower, from sector to sector, in search of . . . what? Well, there was a pretty darn good chance that they were searching for XANA's army, which — at the moment — was nowhere to be seen.

They circled and sideswiped one Tower after another in the Forest, jumped to the Desert — and suddenly stopped. Through the microphone came a scream of utter terror that chilled me to the bone. Aelita, definitely, I thought. But why? There was nothing on my map of Lyoko that could explain it!

"Aelita — what's going on?"

"Jeremy — !"

"You won't believe who we just saw!" Odd continued for her.

"Whom?" I demanded.

"Well — um, we just saw —" He got no further than that before the screen went blank with an unusual buzz as all communication between worlds was cut off.

"ODD!" I shrieked. I began pounding random codes into my key-board — the code for communication between worlds, the code for transfer to Sector Five, and others I didn't even know about — but nothing worked. "ODD! ULRICH! AELITA, ANSWER ME!" No reply. All communication had been cut off. I was debating virtualizing my-self onto Lyoko but decided against it.

What — rather, whom — had Aelita and the guys seen on Lyoko? It was a mystery to me, but maybe Aelita had an answer . . .

Part Three: Aelita

"Jim?! But how?! He doesn't even know about this place!" Odd's voice was pure surprise as he spoke. I didn't blame him — after all, Ulrich and I had both seen what he had seen.

"And I could swear I saw something in his pocket," Ulrich added.

"It was probably just one of XANA's illusions," I remarked. "Maybe you guys thought you saw — "

"Yeah, well, could an illusion fire laser beams at you?!" Odd broke in. I have to admit that he had a point there — we had seen this thing dive behind a nearby Tower, then it started to take off, firing laser beams at us all the way. There were so many, Ulrich nearly had to throw me off of a ledge to save me!

"Um . . . no." I started to say something else, but stopped as the bluish hue around the shiny silver tower in front of us turned red as the Tower was activated.

"Uh . . . maybe I better deactivate it while XANA's still on break?" I suggested. I took off toward the Tower, but managed no more than several steps when it began to sway — slightly at first, then increasing more violent until its hovering roof was nearly thumping against the surface of the platform — then it literally jumped right off of the platform, into the virtual void below.

The silence that followed seemed to last an eternity, but I think it was only a few minutes before someone decided to speak again:

"Okay . . . uh, does anyone know what just happened? I think I fell asleep — I mean, uh, I think . . . "

Whoever it was seemed very surprised, and the voice was so high I couldn't tell whether it was Odd's or Ulrich's. I know it wasn't me because the whole time I was staring at another Tower, some distance away, as its surrounding hue became XANA's favorite color and the Tower jumped into the virtual void.

"Guys — it's not just this Tower that XANA was after. He's going for every Tower on Lyoko!"

"How many are there?" Ulrich demanded suddenly.

"Forty, I think — ten in each sector with the exception of Sector Five."

"Oh crud — JEREMY, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

As before, the only replies I recieved were Odd's heavy breath-ing and the faint explosions of distant Towers disappearing into the virtual void. Then I heard another sound . . . someone running up be-hind us, as though just having arrived but in the wrong sector. At first I thought it was Yumi but I quickly remembered what had hap-pened to her after our last trip to Lyoko and realized that it could never be her. She's . . . well, not in this world anymore!

Or on Earth, for that matter.

Slowly I spun around to face the new arrival — but there was no one there. As far as I could see, Ulrich, Odd, and I were the only living virtual beings on Lyoko. I started to say something but barely had I time to so much as form my lips for the first word when something hit me — hard. (I don't mean in the way you suddenly get a monster idea; I mean something literally hit me.) I was sent flying, so far I could've landed in the virtual void! — But fortunately the virtual plateau was larger than my eyes perceived and I landed safely, about where the Tower would have been had it not taken its trip into the virtual void.

It took a moment for the stars to dissipate from my vision — strange, for one who gets clobbered in virtual reality normally doesn't see stars — but once I could see again I rose and started back toward the astonished Odd and Ulrich. However, I could not manage more than three steps in their direction when someone appeared be-hind Odd. Comparing the sizes of this guy and the scared-to-death Odd would be like comparing a Kankrelot to the Scyphozoa.

I opened my mouth to warn the boys but suddenly both seemed to get the message — they turned to face whoever was stalking poor Odd and screamed out: "JIM?!? WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DO-ING ON LYOKO?!?"

Jim on Lyoko?!? Okay, now this was really getting weird. It was weirder than what the Towers had done five minutes ago, weirder than my dreams the night before last, weirder than — well, you get the message: This was JUST PLAIN WEIRD. I don't know what kind of response I was expecting from the "virtual Jim" but I can darn well tell you about the response I wasn't expecting:

"Guys — you must leave this place — now. Evil things are hap-pening here and if you don't leave now they will spread to Earth!"

Then the virtual Jim (?) spun around and ran off so fast I won-dered if he was faster than Ulrich's Super Sprint move.

"Okay, what the heck is this guy talk — AAAAHHHHH!" These were Odd's final words as the platform literally ripped open beneath him and he fell through the opening, joining the many dozens of de-ceased Towers already in the virtual void.

"ODD!" Ulrich and I both screamed. I shuddered with fear and sadness over Odd's death but simultaneously I was wondering what was happening to Jeremy, back on Earth, and fearing for the safety of Ulrich and me. And just then a new worry joined the existing three that crowded my mind with questions:

Was Lyoko still the safety zone it once was?!?

Mile after unending mile the virtual desert stretched, and Ulrich and I pushed onward, ever onward. At least a dozen empty holes we had passed, in the thin platforms where Towers once stood hovering over the rest of the endless sector.

"Ummm . . . Aelita . . . How long has it been?" It the first time I'd heard Ulrich's voice since we had begun our journey. It was the first time I'd heard anyone's voice for that matter.

"How the heck should I know?" I replied, albeit a bit wearily. Okay, now that was weird — you should never be exhausted in virtual reality. "There's no way to keep time on Lyoko!"

"Um . . . Okay . . . and where in the heck are we going?"

"I'm trying to find a Tower. I'd like to see if we can materialize ourselves out of here without Jeremy's—!" The rest of the sentence spun right around and went back into my lungs as the entire platform on which we were standing began vibrating — slightly at first, then increasingly more violent until it literally became a virtual earthquake — and a small, slender crack appeared in the ground beneath my feet.

And a shrill, screaming voice rang out across the endless desert: "AELIIIITAAAAA!"

Part Four: Jeremy

My fists throbbed as I pounded frantically on the edges of the keyboard, as if that were the trick to jump-starting the super-calculator. I was surprised that the keyboard hadn't bro-ken off of the rest of the monitor and fallen to the floor yet; I had been pounding so hard a crack had appeared in one of the braces holding it in place. (Simultaneously I was glad it was the brace rather than the monitor's screen that had cracked.)

"Come on, come on," I urged the supercomputer, "WORK, you piece of JUNK!" No, I'm not crazy and I'm not XANA, but perhaps I thought that ordering the supercomputer to work would get it to reboot itself — or something. Three bangs of my fists later I gave up and let my head fall into my hands, staring at a black computer screen.

"Maybe something happened to the main server. I'd better go check it out . . . " DUH! What was I thinking?!? Try nothing at all! Images of Aelita's face upon a computer screen flashing through my mind I rose from my chair and hightailed my way to the super-calcu-lator room below the scanners. What I found in that room I would remember for the rest of my life.

The elevator door slid into place and the elevator jolted into motion. The darn thing hadn't been properly maintained in recent years and the usual grinding noises it made during operation were unusually amplified in volume.

During the entire trip down the shaft I kept seeing Aelita's face upon a computer screen that didn't exist, images of our group plus Franz Hopper in the old Hermitage in the woods near Kadic, images of XANA's Eye, images of other things which I needn't mention here. The elevator descended smoothly at first, then trembled as it usually does when it gets below the scanner room. Five trem-bling minutes later the elevator jolted to a stop and the door slid skyward into the shaft. I took three steps out of the small machine — and slid to a dead stop, fainting to the floor.

Hanging from something on the ceiling of the scanner room, through the opening between the two rooms, was the ghost-white body of Odd Delirobia . . .

Part Five: Aelita

I rolled sideways over the small crack, which had begun expanding, little by little, each tiny crack making us more nervous than the one preceding it. For the first time since I'd met him, Ulrich was actually shivering! Seriously, I have never seen Ulrich shiver, even during that one adventure through Lyoko when the Tarantulas nearly pushed him into the virtual void. I guess I was inside one of XANA's Towers when it happened.

The crack gradually spread outward until neither end was visible, even in the far distance. More cracks began sprouting from the original and even more cracks from those, each new crack a millimeter or so wider than the one preceding it. After about thirty or so dozen of the cracks had appeared everything ceased. The ground was as still as it had been the day Lyoko came into virtual existence, albeit littered with cracks, and the few remaining smooth areas reflected the virtual sunlight like a mirror.

"Uh . . . Aelita, can you tell me what the heck is going on here?" Ulrich demanded. I could tell he was confused and cranky at the same time.

"I told you, I'm trying to find a deactivated Tower so I can see if we can be materialized without Jeremy's assistance!" I know my reply sounded like something you'd hear from, say, Jeremy — his IQ basically equals Odd's, Yumi's, and Ulrich's, combined — but Ulrich seemed to get the message and shrugged off a reply.

I started to say something else but stopped as the ground be-neath my feet began rising skyward. I spun around and took off running with Ulrich not far behind. Half-a-minute and about a thousand paces later we stopped and turned to see what was going on. The spherical mountain that had begun forming kept growing, expanding skyward, soon taking the shape of the Scyphozoa's monstrous head. Then, huge slabs of ground began sliding to the ground form various places on the mountain, and three seconds later Ulrich and I dived to the ground in horror as the mountain literally exploded, sending slabs of virtual dirt and mud — and a huge dust cloud — flying in every di-rection.

For a moment my vision was hazy due to the dust cloud. I clos-ed my eyes to shield them from dust and Ulrich screamed from somewhere nearby, "Aelita! Where are you?" It was the last time I would ever hear Ulrich's voice.

As the dust began to settle and my vision cleared up, it came into view. The first part of it that became visible was a monstrous tentacle the size of the entire Scyphozoa. Soon more monstrous tentacles appeared out of the dust, followed by a GIGANTIC squid-shaped head the size of Lyoko's Sector Five. My jaw slow-ly slid down toward the virtual sand as the dust settled, revealing it: the largest monster I'd ever seen on Lyoko, a Scyphozoa nearly the size of Earth's Moon . . .

Part Six: Jeremy

Is it just me or has XANA literally become a serial killer? The thought playing through my mind I turned away from Odd's limp, lifeless body, and stepped back into the elevator. I mean, first Jim vanishes, then Millie get murdered, then Yumi, then Odd — Wait a minute . . . when Millie was murdered, what if her killer thought she was . . . AELITA!

Without warning intense shivers and chills began creeping up and down my spinal cord, nearly eliminating vertebra after increas-ingly painful vertebra, and I knew Aelita was in trouble. Big trouble. I knew I had to save her. But how? I mean, the supercomputer ser-ver was operating like a charm, there was nothing wrong with the scanners . . . unless this was all XANA's doing! He must have wanted to seperate us and get rid of Odd, Ulrich, and Yumi, so he could get to Aelita's memory — and the keys to Lyoko — faster!

As the door to the elevator slid firmly shut the temperature in the smallish elevator seemed to drop a few degrees. I shivered again, somewhat harder this time, as the elevator gave its characteristic jolt and started up the shaft toward the monitor room. Before I knew it I was viewing the mental slide show I'd seen on the way down.

I was just approaching the image of our group in the Hermitage next to Franz Hopper when the elevator gave the most tremendous jolt ever — so hard and sudden, I was forced to the floor of the car — and came to a dead halt. Three seconds passed, three endless se-conds that seemed so long I was wondering why Father Time didn't just rename them days. I had begun hoping that the elevator had merely stopped because of a mechanical problem, when without warning my stomach nearly came up and out as the car began dropping, gradually accelerating until the floor was nearly dropping out from under my feet.

And suddenly I was seriously multitasking, something not in my repertoire of talents: I was praying for the sake of my life and my friends' lives to be saved; I was hoping to see Aelita's face on my monitor when — IF — I got back up to the monitor room; and I was screaming in a shrill, high-pitched voice:

"DAMN YOU, XANA!"

Part Seven: Aelita

The mountain that was the oversized Scyphozoa rose higher and higher until it nearly was impossible to see anything above the lowest tentacle. I was wondering if maybe XANA had cal-culated my height in miles and yards this time rather than in feet and inches but shrugged the question off as a gigantic tentacle appeared in the sky from out of nowhere and swept me right off of the ground.

If the normal Scyphozoa could drain me of half my memory in the space of ten seconds then what about this one?! Half a millisecond?!? I knew an answer would come soon. The tentacle lifted me higher and higher until a thick mist shrouded the platform from view. I was glad I couldn't see the ground as the mountain appeared in front of me.

Whoops, did I say mountain? What I had meant to say was the head of this planet-sized Scyphozoa. The XANA's Eye on its forehead alone was the size of at least thirty Towers and about a thousand could fit inside its gigantic translucent cranium. As my eyes leveled off with the center of XANA's on the Scyphozoa's forehead a virtual gust of wind shoved the tentacle that was my prison from side to side, and for once I was praying that the tentacle would not lose its grip on me.

Then the sound began, the growling that reminded me of Odd's dog only three octaves lower. I shuddered at the mere thought, then shuddered again as the monstrous Scyphozoa literally began to speak:

"Aelita Hopper, you will surrender the keys to Lyoko!"

Wait a minute . . . Aelita what?!? Had this thing just addressed me as though I were somehow related to Franz Hopper? Suddenly I was imagining the look of Jeremy's face if he were seeing this . . . but all thoughts of my friends vanished as the shrill voice I'd heard earlier came again:

"AELIIIITAAAAA!"

Simultaneously the tentacle holding me a mile above any hint of virtual terra firma released its grip on me and I began falling . . .

Part Eight: Jeremy

Aelita . . .

Aelita . . .

Aelita . . .

The word kept reiterating itself in my mind as the elevator kept falling. Five minutes later it came to a crashing halt at the bottom of the shaft. I felt as though my skeleton had melted within me as I sank to the floor, and the tiny fluorescent bulbs that were the only lighting in the elevator buzzed out.

Aelita . . .

Aelita . . .

Aelita . . .

Aeli —

The last time Aelita's name was repeated the word was cut in half when a second voice entered the confines of my subconscious:

JEREMY!

The voice perfectly resembled Aelita's — it was as though I were dreaming! But I knew I was not — the floor of the elevator was so cold I was already thinking about installing a faster, more effi-cient elevator and making this elevator a refrigerated dumbwaiter; however, I was forced to shrug the thought out of my mind as the elevator gave a sudden jolt, the first in an eternity of darkness, and the tiny fluorescent lights flickered into life.

Without thinking twice I reached up as I as I could, and pushed open the trapdoor in the roof of the elevator. Climbing onto the ele-vator roof took several tries but finally I was towering above the elevator's upper pulley. I grabbed the rung of the ladder in the side of the shaft and began to climb. The ladder spanned the entire height of the shaft, from the bottom to where the elevator picked us up for past trips to the lab.

During the entire trip of, say, three hours, the only thing I did was reminisce about past adventures, about the day we discovered Lyoko, the day we began referring to it as Lyoko rather than as Xan-adu, or whatever we called it back then. I remembered the first time I saw Aelita's face and literally fell in love with her. I remem-bered my surprise at finding out about Franz Hopper and Aelita's virus-a-la-XANA; but before I could reminisce any further I was pulling my sweating, aching self up onto the tiny ledge between the closed scanner-room door and the thirty feet of height between my feet and the elevator ceiling. I barely managed to yank the door halfway up and slide underneath it without falling, then I climbed up the ladder from that room into the lab.

XANA, you may have tried to kill me once, but you will not suc-ceed. The thought lowered me into my computer chair, and I began a desperate attempt to reboot the system from the lab. Franz Hop-per's notes told me of a system crash and of how he managed to re-boot the system from the lab, so if he could do it, I can find a way to do it.

Fifteen minutes later of frantically fumbling with codes and ciphers the screen in front of me flared to life. And as I sat there staring at it, I began to wish it hadn't . . .

Part Nine: Aelita

At least a mile of nothing but virtual air seperated my feet from the ground, a mile of virtual air that quickly became a thousand yards, then a thousand feet, then a thousand inches, then . . . nothing, as my feet collided hard with the virtual platform. I hadn't been upright for more than three seconds before my legs buckled and collapsed, and the rest of me followed suit. I could do nothing but stare the miles-high, thousandfold-sized Scyphozoa in its gigantic eye — rather, XANA's gigantic eye.

"AELITA HOPPER, YOUR KEYS TO LYOKO ARE MINE!"

As the monstrous Scyphozoa spoke its latest words the tenta-cle reappeared and I began rising once more. Three seconds later the sound of metal against metal met my ears and the tentacle re-leased its grip on me, and I fell the three thousand or so feet back to the surface of Lyoko. Simultaneously, the shrill, screaming voice rang out over the emptiness of the rest of Lyoko:

"AELIIIITAAAAA!"

And suddenly I recognized the voice, and I couldn't believe whose it was.

"No way . . . " I managed to mutter as the tentacle returned for a third time. You know about that saying, "Third time's the charm?" That saying really seemed to work well for XANA just then, as the tentacle gave extra grip as it returned me to the Scyphozoa's stare, a mile into the sky. As I watched, the monster donned the usual red-dish hue as my vision began to fade.

"HAHA! THE KEYS ARE FINALLY MINE!"

As XANA spoke his latest statement through the Scyphozoa I was beginning to think that was it, that I wasn't going to make it out of this, that Lyoko was no more, that I would never know for sure if I would ever see my friends again — but suddenly someone appeared on Lyoko that would end the reign of XANA forever. As she appear-ed through the layer of virtual clouds a mile below me, I studied her features for a minute, then nearly fainted in surprise when I realized whom this mysterious visitor was . . .

Part Ten: Jeremy

The monstrous Scyphozoa that had appeared on Lyoko during the three hours or so between the time of connection cutoff and now was the largest monster I'd ever seen. The holographic map next door to my computer showed a Scyphozoa that shrouded literally half of Lyoko from view, its tentacles practically wrapped completely around the rest. There was no way Aelita could survive with this thing around; her memory would scream and run the minute those tentacles made contact with her.

Then I noticed something else on my computer screen, a second blip on the screen besides the one that I knew was Aelita, which was wrapped in a tentacle that could dwarf a large train and was as long as at least thirty trains. The second blip bounced back and forth, trying, perhaps, to take down the seriously oversized Scyphozoa, as I began frantically typing in code after code in an attempt to devirtualize the monster.

Just then, however, something on my holographic map appeared in my peripheral vision and I turned toward it. As I watched, the monstrous Scyphozoa unwrapped itself from the virtual Lyoko and went flying, as though Aelita had managed to pick it up off of the ground and chuck it. I estimated that it would've taken at least a million Aelitas to even move it an inch.

"Aelita!" I called out, the first thing I'd said since cursing XANA half an hour ago. "Are you okay?"

No reply. I was really beginning to worry, not only for Aelita's safety but about the identity of the mysterious second person on Lyoko, but when Aelita finally did reply, the identity of the myster-ious second person was revealed, and I will remember his name for the rest of my life . . .

"Jeremy?"

There was no way I could be both on Lyoko and in front of the monitor simultaneously — unless, of course, she was speaking to me. The latter was proven three seconds later as Aelita's managed to spring up onto my monitor screen.

"Aelita! Are you okay?"

"Jeremy, listen. You've got to find a way to get me off of Ly-oko, fast!"

"Duh, Aelita, you could just use a—!"

"There are no Towers left on Lyoko! They all jumped into the virtual void!"

"Aelita, what the heck are you talking about?"

"I'm completely serious, Jeremy. Trust me."

"Okay, I trust you, and I've got a plan. I'm going to modify the materialization program for Yumi and the guys to materialize you."

And with that Aelita's face vanished and I set to work. However, a large number of questions remained. Who the heck was the other person on Lyoko? Yumi had been murdered, Odd was hanged, and Ulrich . . . what had happened to Ulrich? Why hadn't I heard of him since he and Aelita departed? There were just too many ques-tions and not enough answers. This was tough even for me, that coming from a guy with the combined IQ of all of his friends, besides Aelita.

Maybe she had some answers . . .

Part Eleven: Aelita

"Sissi? What the heck are you doing here?" I stammered out, groping through the air trying to find something to hold onto to hold myself up. Of course there was nothing. The plateau was flat as a pancake for a thousand miles in any direction. Sissi Delmas was the only thing besides myself that cast a shadow for miles around.

"I'm asking myself the same question," she answered. "One min-ute I'm in my room studying, then Odd's mutt starts barking next door, and Jim barges in looking for the source. I told him the little mongrel was next door, in the room to his right, but he grabbed me instead and knocked me out. When I woke up, I was floating inside some miniature skydiving ride of sorts. There was a bright flash of light and I ended up in this virtual dump."

"What about that monster Scyphozoa?"

"Monster . . . what?"

"Scyphozoa? The monster XANA uses to steal my memories?"

We hadn't been able to speak any longer before a bright flash of light followed. I was blinded for a second as I felt myself being lifted off of the ground as though by the Scyphozoa's tentacles. When I could see again, I found myself staring at the inside of a scanner. Jeremy had succeeded! Oh, I had thought I would never see Earth again!

Overflowing with joy, I practically pulled Sissi up the ladder of the elevator shaft as though she were a kite, and during the entire five minutes of our trip to the lab, memories of past Lyoko adven-tures flooded into my mind as though they'd just been released from a broken dam. However, those memories didn't stay within my mind for long . . .

What seemed like miles of climbing later we finally arrived at the open doorway to the lab. I pulled myself up into the doorway, then tugged a limb Sissi up and over my shoulders. Three steps into the lab I tripped on an exposed wire and Sissi went flying, landing flat on her back a few feet away from Jeremy's chair. And suddenly she was bolt-upright and demanding to know where she was.

"Where the heck am I?"

"Uh . . . well . . . Jeremy can explain that — "

"Yeah, well, he won't be explaining it to me. He will be telling it to my father, the principal." She said something else but the mountains of joy in my system blocked her voice from my mind as I ran over to greet Jeremy.

"Jeremy! It's me! Aelita!"

But the blonde computer genius didn't move, didn't even think of responding. He just sat there staring at a holographic map of what was once a beautiful but dangerous Lyoko but was now nothing but a few rocks in each sector. XANA had sure done wonders with that Scyphozoa, that was for sure. What wasn't for sure, however, was what the heck was with Jeremy?

I tried again:

"Jeremy? Uh . . . h-hello? Anyone home?"

But Jeremy remained the perfect statue of Jeremy Belpois, not bothering to move or reply. I tried lifting him out of his chair, to force him to stand up, to at least make him say something . . . but it was as though he had been glued into his chair. He just wouldn't budge! I opened my mouth to try a third time; however, this time Jeremy took it upon himself to reply, even though it cut me off.

"I am not Jeremy."

"Excuse me?" I stammered out, the mountains of joy within me quickly become mere foothills then simply vanishing from the face of my mind.

Jeremy took what seemed like years to reply, during which the only thing I did was stare into the eyes that were once blue and filled with more life than there is water in the oceans, but were now brown, cold, and as lifeless as ever. When he finally did reply, he merely repeated his former sentence:

"You heard me. I am not Jeremy."

"Well, ya look like Jeremy to me!" Sissi screamed furiously, closely inspecting the blonde computer genius as though she were planning to give him one of her signature makeovers.

"Well," came the deep-voiced reply. Jeremy had never had a deep voice so this couldn't possibly be him. My worst fears were confirmed with this imposter suddenly took on a demonic appearance. His hair suddenly became jet-black, the deepest jet-black imagin-able, and began whipping in all directions as though he was caught in a hurricane; his eyes began firing tiny electrical sparks as they began glowing with evil energy, sending his eyeglasses flying across the room; and as he finally rose from the chair I realized that he was now towering over us.

"I am not your pathetic Jeremy!" the demon continued. "Oh no, dear child, I am much more powerful than he!" And as he said this the room began shaking violently, sending Sissi and me crumbling to the ground. The computer keyboard managed to break off and soon joined us on the cold metallic floor. The holographic map disinte-grated and the outside monitors followed suit with Jeremy's bifocals, flying across the room and smashing into the wall, sending pieces flying in all directions.

"Who . . . who are you?!?" I said slowly, staring this thing in its glowing yellow eyes. The visible electricity was now stretching its limits to the overhead lights, and the flickered and died completely, rebooting themselves a few harrowing seconds later. The demonic Jeremy took no time before replying, and when he did, it was the strangest reply I'd ever heard:

"I am XANA, in the flesh!"

"You're . . . X-XANA?" I stammered out, taking three steps backward, toward the elevator shaft. Simultaneously, there was a muffled thump as Sissi fell to the floor across the room in a faint. Again the demon hesitated to answer.

"You heard me! Now, are you going to give me your keys, Aelita, or must I take them from you?" What in the world was he talking about? I had no keys on me, and even if I did there was no way I'd give them to this demon!

"What keys?" I stammered again, staring this thing in its eyes and mentally asking it to leave me alone and to get its butt back to Lyoko pronto. "I — I don't know what you're t-talking about."

"This is your last chance, Aelita," the demon answered without hesitation. "Either you give me your keys to Lyoko or I'll take them from you."

"I told you, I have no idea what you—!"

But the demon did not let me finish, as he dived at me so fast I thought he would send me flying into the wall. I managed to dive out of the way before he could reach the ground and change direc-tion, and I ran into the elevator shaft and started up the ladder. Halfway up to the ground level, however, the ladder suddenly ended, and glancing down, I noticed the remaining ten feet or so laying atop the smashed and literally useless elevator.

Okay, XANA, you're out of the supercomputer. You murder my friends and Millie, and possibly Jim; you destroy half of Lyoko; and then you turn Jeremy into this demon. Someone's got to take you down sometime . . . and it looks like I'm that someone. The lengthy thought accompanied me back to the lab, but screamed and ran when I arrived to find the lab empty. No demon, no chair, no monitor or keyboard, no Sissi laying unconscious on the floor; the only thing that cast a shadow down there was me.

I suddenly felt like screaming, like admitting my defeat and let-ting XANA take these 'Keys to Lyoko' things so he would let me go. XANA had probably blocked every possible escape route from the lab, even some we hadn't found yet but that Franz Hopper guy had. He was pretty much invisible now. Oh, if only Sissi were awake right now rather than half-dead on the floor nearby. I couldn't believe I was mentally asking for company and assistance from Sissi. Even her cohorts Nicolas and Herve wouldn't think of that.

The solution to this problem wasn't the usual go-to-Lyoko-and-deactivate-XANA's-Tower sort of things; that was impossible, con-sidering the fact that XANA had destroyed every Tower in Lyoko . . . Wait a minute, I may have spoken too soon. Maybe there was a Tower hidden somewhere in Sector Five! There had to be! However, deactivating one tower just wouldn't cut it this time. I'd more like have to deactivate all of Lyoko — rather, all of what's left of Lyoko. Boy, I thought, an excursion to Lyoko hasn't been this much fun since that time we thought we saw Franz Hopper on Lyoko. (Well, actually what we'd seen that time was XANA in virtual disguise, leading us on a wild goose chase around Lyoko. He even got Jeremy into it!) That settled it. I would have to take just one more trip into Lyoko, to de-activate Lyoko from inside Sector Five.

As the doors of the scanner slowly slid closed I braced for virtualization. The entire process took no more than ten minutes at the most, but this time it felt like ten hours. During that time I could think about nothing but my friends, taken down one by one by a XANA that was more evil than ever. A tear slowly streamed down my face and I gave myself the worst possible migraine trying not to collapse to the ground bawling as I felt myself being slowly lifted off of the floor of the scanner. And as I materialized out of virtually thin air and dropped the several feet between my feet and Lyoko's surface, I couldn't help feeling that eerie feeling that I was not alone . . .

The Desert sector was a complete mess of scattered plat-forms big and small, with a gap in the center that would ri-val Sector Five in size. A virtual sandstorm had to have occurred recently, because a fine layer of dust covered the surface of the re-mains of the sector that had never been there before.

The edge of the sector approached quickly, albeit I was a bit late: I nearly missed my bus to Sector Five and had to dive off of the sector to enter the Transporter Orb; it was a good thing I was good at timing or I would've kissed the virtual void in the face for the first and last time. The transporter opened just wide enough to let me in, and I settled onto its virtual floor as it sped off to Sector Five.

The receiving area of Sector Five was no different from the last thirty times we'd been here, and it spun around several times be-fore coming to a halt as usual, leaving a small opening in the wall. That was the cue for the countdown to death, as Odd put it (actually it was nothing more than a time limit for escape, for if one did not activate the Carthage Key within three minutes he or she would remain in Sector Five forever) and I took off running through the portal then through a hallway that had appeared in the next wall.

One long platform stretched all the way across the room at the end, from the entrance at one end to the Key high above the floor at the other. I took three steps down that platform . . . and reeled back in surprise as a section of ceiling dropped from out of nowhere, nearly crushing me on its way to the surface of the platform in front of me. A moment later the platform disappeared into the ceiling and I took off in a mad sprint across the platform, dodging crushers this way and that, nearly diving sideways into the nothingness below.

When finally I reached the key at the other end I was wiped out, more than I would usually be on Earth; despite that I managed to leap higher than I ever had before I reach the key. I had no idea how much time was left on the countdown, but I figured it was several minutes at least, for once the key was flush with the wall, a door opened in front of me, revealing the path to the outermost inside wall of the dome.

A well-timed jump was all it took to land me on the moving plat-form known as the Elevator. The platform moved upwards for a while, then stopped, switched tracks, and moved about three doors to the left. Another opening appeared as the elevator stopped, and I ran through, and out of the dome. There was something weird about this particular expedition to Sector Five. Maybe it was the Overbike which had somehow appeared alongside the platform, or maybe it was the fact that I hadn't seen but one monster the entire time I'd been on Lyoko; but whatever the case, this was way too weird.

As I stepped up to the edge of the platform and a data terminal screen appeared in front of me, the whole thing got a whole lot weirder; for as I began extracting the necessary data to literally delete Lyoko from the inside out a sound like a flying Manta rang out from somewhere nearby and someone said softly, "Ahem."

I spun around. There, atop what looked like one of XANA's Manta monsters, was Franz Hopper.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Hopper's voice was stern, somewhat like Mrs. Hertz's when she's upset over something like a bad grade on one of Odd's or Ulrich's school assignments, but in a good, assertive kind of way. "Believe me, you do not want to mess with the core of Lyoko."

"XANA has killed almost everyone I know, sent every single Tower on Lyoko into the virtual void and destroyed half of Lyoko," I replied, nearly breaking out into virtual tears. "Deleting Lyoko is the only way to stop him, Franz."

"Please," he burst in, "call me Dad. And do NOT touch the core of Lyoko!"

"Call you . . . what?!" I said, stepping back in surprise as his face suddenly turned as red as the hue around a XANAfied Tower. "What are you—?" But before I could finish he grabbed me and started to tug me toward him, toward the edge of the platform. Suddenly the Manta beneath him turned toward me and raised its nostrils into the air, as if trying to fire at me.

Before it could, however, I broke loose and dived onto the Overbike, taking off toward the nearest open tunnel. The Manta beneath Hopper continuously fired at me the entire time, and I realized that the real Franz Hopper would never fire at any of us, unless . . . unless he were XANA in disguise!

That was it!

Franz Hopper was nothing but one of XANA's polymorphic clones! Wait . . . if XANA sent a polymorph to distract me, then that means . . . there was a Tower somewhere inside Carthage. That was the tower whose deactivation would delete Lyoko for good. Oh, if only Jeremy were here.

JEREMY, WHERE ARE YOU?

My frantic thought accompanied me around and around the gigantic virtual jigsaw-puzzle sphere hybrid that was Carthage. If the Tower was somewhere within Carthage, finding an opening and diving back in would be the only way to stop it. I circled the sphere's extensive hemisphere, finding no opening whatsoever within the smooth surface. Throughout the entire trip I wondered if Hopper and his faithful Manta were following me. A risky glance backward told me negative, and I started to sigh with relief. Hmmm . . . I suddenly found myself wondering, I wonder if there's an entrance anywhere on the top of the sphere . . . With that I pulled up on the Overbike's nose, turned toward the sphere, and climbed up the wall. Sure enough, the top of the sphere was punctured by a large hole I had never seen before. I began to dive toward it.

Just then, a beam of red light appeared from out of nowhere and struck the jet exhaust nozzle of the Overbike, and before I knew what was happening, the vehicle had vanished from underneath me and I had fallen to the outer surface of the sphere.

I clung to the smooth virtual surface literally for my life. I know I had landed on the top half of the sphere but the surface was far more slippery than I had thought it was. I began sliding downward as I slowly turned around to face my attacker. Of course I found myself looking into the eyes of Franz Hopper. The Manta beneath him was now glowing more brightly than Hopper had been.

Hopper raised a finger toward me. "Poor, poor child. When are you going to learn that you cannot win? That you cannot outsmart me, your creator?"

I tried my hardest to keep my mouth closed — perhaps for fear of say something that would stimulate Hopper to attack — but before I knew it I had blurted out: "My . . . WHAT?!"

"You heard me," Hopper shouted back. "Now are you going to hand over your keys to Lyoko now or am I just going to have to take them from you the hard way?"

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about!" I screamed in return, and began to scramble up the surface of the sphere, toward the large hole I had seen — but I had traversed no more than three feet of the slippery surface before a second laser beam from Hopper's Manta stopped me dead in my tracks, and I began to slowly slide back down the surface of the sphere.

"YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE, YOUNG LADY!" he screamed. I could tell he was getting angry. "YOU'RE STAYING RIGHT THERE!" Was he referring to me as his daughter or something? This was too weird.

But I could not contemplate that right then and there. I had to concentrate more on not sliding off the edge of the sphere and into oblivion. As I started to climb again Hopper screamed: "GET HER!" and I stopped, preparing for a third beam from the Manta — but nothing happened. I began to climb faster as the surface incline decreased.

"YOUR KEYS ARE MINE!" Hopper screamed, and he began to laugh, a wicked, evil laugh which could never have come from anyone besides XANA himself. I wondered what he meant by that as the edge of the hole appeared in the far distance. I began to crawl even faster.

Just then a hollow, translucent tentacle appeared from virtually nowhere and began to encircle me, and I was lifted off of the slippery outer surface of Carthage . . . straight into the face of the Scyphozoa.

"JEREMY!" I screamed as my vision began to fade. It was the most random thought my mind had ever thought up. As if on cue Hopper began to laugh again, that wicked, evil laugh. I knew it was all over for me.

Just then Hopper was cut short and I was falling to surface of the sphere again. I glanced up just in time to watch the demonic old man tip backwards off of his faithful Manta, nearly falling through as the monster disintegrated from underneath him, followed by the Scyphozoa. This was weird, as there was no way the Scyphozoa could be devirtualized . . . at least, Jeremy hadn't discovered a way as if yet.

"GO, AELITA, GO!" someone screamed. It was a familiar voice, emanating from somewhere below me, but it was a voice I had never heard on Lyoko before. I turned in the direction of the voice . . . and nearly slid off of the sphere as my eyes came upon . . . William Dunbar. He was dressed in a black jumpsuit and held the largest virtual sword I'd ever seen.

"DON'T JUST STAND THERE, GO SAVE LYOKO!" he screamed again, and I spun back around and made the last leg of my journey up into the hole. On the count of three, I told myself. One . . . two . . . three . . . GO! And with that I dived forward into the hole.

As I expected, the room beyond was black as pitch. The pitch-blackness surrounded me like XANA's red hue would have surrounded a Tower. I couldn't tell whether the floor, if any, was right below me or a million kilometers down. A hard headfirst crash-landing told me the former.

I rose to my feet . . . and jumped out of my virtual uniform as William screamed down to me again: "HURRY! DEACTIVATE THE TOWER AND SAVE LYOKO!"

"WHERE IS IT?" I questioned him. "I CAN'T SEE A DARN THING!"

"RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!"

Sure enough, the faint red hue of a XANAfied Tower was visible just in front of me. I stretched out my hands and slowly walked inside. Three rings of light appeared one at a time on the floor be-neath my feet, which was shaped like XANA's signature eyeball. I floated up, up, up, to a second platform high above me. This time the three rings lit up all at once. I took three steps forward, and a blank virtual interface screen appeared in front of me. I stretched out my hand and placed it firmly onto the interface. My name appeared on the blank screen in white letters, which were replaced with the words:

CODE:

LYOKO

The tower was deactivated.

The millions of interfaces surrounding me descended into the abyss below me, gathering in a white orb of light which flew out in all directions. It was the largest return to the past in our history of fighting XANA. As the light engulfed me I hoped for my life that my friends would be alive when the light vanished.

A big surprise was waiting for me after I had "Returned to the Past" . . .

Part Twelve: Jeremy

"Aelita!" I shouted the moment I saw the face of the girl whom I loved more than anything. (Oops . . . did I say that out loud?) I hadn't seen her in what seemed like days! I wrapped her in the tightest hug I could, while Yumi, Odd, and Ulrich laughed themselves to tears.

"You won't believe what happened to me after you guys died!" Aelita explained once I had finished hugging her. As she said that everyone froze.

"Uh . . . what are you talking about?" Ulrich stuttered. Odd's jaw dropped and Yumi fainted. As for me, well, my eyes became a pair of Mega Tanks.

Aelita quickly explained the whole thing. I gasped at the parts about everyone dying, about XANA turning me into a demon, about the monstrous Scyphozoa, and Jim, Sissi, and William on Lyoko, about the Tower in Sector Five, et cetera. "And now," she finished, "XANA is no more!"

"Ditto for Lyoko," I replied. "I can't seem to get the supercomputer up and running again. Oh, and did I tell you someone somehow decoded Franz Hopper's diary? I found the finished disk in my room when I woke up this morning. I have no idea how it got there, but get this: when Franz Hopper virtualized himself onto Lyoko, he wasn't alone."

"Huh?" everyone but Jeremy said simultaneously.

"Hopper was a father not only to Lyoko, but to XANA and, liter-ally, Aelita."

"Wait," Odd said, "I didn't know Hopper had kids! And what weird names!" He broke into sarcastic laughter but Ulrich gave him a stern look that stopped him cold. "Oh, you're just being figurative on us, huh?" he finished after three long seconds of silence.

"Yes and no," I answered. "Yes for Lyoko and XANA, and no for Aelita."

"Hopper was my FATHER?" Aelita screamed in surprise. "So that's why XANA was always calling me Aelita Hopper!"

"And speaking of XANA," Yumi broke in, "this is going to be one heck of a boring summer without a XANA to fight! Hey, I shouldn't be talking, because I have a bratty little brother to fight at home!"

Even though we all knew in our hearts that it was all over, that XANA was no more, I couldn't help feeling that XANA would be back. If so, we'll be ready for him.

THE END

Or is it???