Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with Code Lyoko nor Moonscoop.

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Prologue: The Recurrence

"Well, this is it," says my partner, looking out at the view. I finally catch up to him and sit down on a boulder to catch my breath. "What is it, Fjodor?" he asks me.

"You're not even the least bit tired?" I ask. I conclude that I can't catch my breath anymore because I can clearly see it spewing out of my mouth like a steam engine's smokestack. I want to wipe the sweat away from my forehead, but my parka is too thick to allow me to move my arms even a decimeter.

"Wild Russia is such a beautiful place," he says, pretending not to hear me. He looks up at the cloudless sky and down at the green valley below him.

"Says the two men from Croatia," I say.

Gavrie jumps down from the vantage point to where I am sitting. "Will you lighten up? Getting assigned to tasks like these doesn't happen very often."

"Right," I think to myself, "Being assigned to a station in the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere."

"Come on," says Gavrie. "Up. You know what we're here for."

I stand up and brush myself off, turning around, forgetting that we have reached our destination already.

"Will you look at that!" he says quietly. Before us is a huge campus of chrome – a sort of laboratory for those scientists that like to keep things top secret (if you know what I mean). To the right is a huge satellite, probably used for telecommunications. There is also a large observatory dome atop the main building. As neat as it was, it still looks like no one has been in there for years.

"Come on, Fjodor!" He takes off his wool cap, revealing his head full of red hair, and races across the permafrost to the laboratory. As always, I try my best to keep up with him. He stops by a medium-sized post. "Union Base," he reads. "Sakha Republic, Russia. We made it!" He hits a switch on the outside wall with his right hand, opening the automated door. I follow him inside and shut the door behind me.

"So this is where we'll be spending the next few weeks, huh?" I exhale, looking around through the narrow hallways.

"Wow," says Gavrie, chuckling a little. "I've got to check this place out." I hear the sound of his fast-paced footsteps slowly dwindling behind me.

It turns out that this place is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. There are many rooms in which one can study, observe, test, experiment, and more. After a couple of hours, we start to hike back to Tomtor Village.

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"Do you think there are any amazing secrets inside that laboratory?" my partner asks. Even though I'm sleeping on the bunk below, I can still tell Gavrie is still awake, hands resting behind his head.

"Nothing more than some old computer software and some broken-down machinery," say I, trying to fall asleep.

"Let's make a promise. Take this job as a sort of treasure hunt. If you find anything, you'll tell me about it. I'll keep the same promise."

"Only if it'll make you shut up."

"Sorry," he says defensively. "But on the serious side, would you get along with this proposition?"

I sigh. "Alright," I respond sincerely, but apprehensively. "We're going to be stuck here until summer anyway."

Gavrie rejoices and wishes me good night.

"Good night," I say back.

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After that, I wasn't sure what happened. I knew I fell asleep right away, but I wasn't sure what woke me up.

Days in Siberia are nothing compared to the coldness of the nights. Even though it was late spring, it was as cold as ever inside my sleeping bag. I kicked the top bunk to try to wake up Gavrie. I needed to ask him where he had stored the extra blankets. Then, I knew something was wrong. Nothing was kicking back. I sprung out of bed and looked around the cabin for my partner, but all traces of him had disappeared. There was only one place I knew he would go.

I put on extra gear and brought a lantern along with me. I opened the cabin door. Even though it wasn't snowing, the fierceness of the wind made it feel like a blizzard. I asked an elderly man who was walking around during that late hour if he had seen my partner. He only slightly remembered seeing a man dressed up like me heading east. Fear struck. I thanked the old man and headed east.

It's hard enough to walk around in the wilderness at night, but it's harder to walk around on an unsteady landscape with the wind picking up a random intervals. I saw the dim glow of some lights coming out of the laboratory windows. Thank God for the automatic doors – it would have been a burden to try to open the door against the wind.

I stepped inside the familiar hallway, now lit with very dim lights across the ground. A sound of metal hitting against the floor emanated from the left hallway, so I paced in that direction. Soon I found myself in an unfamiliar part of the laboratory. The lights were off, so the only thing I had to keep me company was my battery-powered lantern. I entered a long, narrow hallway, which seemed to have a large room at the end of it. I walked a couple of paces and felt something grab me and jerk me to the left.

"Shh!" shushed Gavrie.

"What are you doing here?!"

"I said 'Shhhh!'" It appeared that Gavrie was under some sort of pressure, like he was in panic, but in a more collective way.

"What's going on?!" I whispered.

"…They're here…" Gavrie's teeth chattered from cold and fear.

"Who's here?!"

Gavrie looked left and right to make sure no one was around (as if anyone else was in that abandoned laboratory). He leaned in closer. "The robots," he whispered to me.

"What?!" I asked, trying to comprehend what my friend was trying to tell me.

Gavrie could tell that we were going nowhere with my 20 Questions and his two-word answers. "Look, I was really excited about the things we found in the laboratory this morning. I couldn't sleep, so I hiked over here to become familiar with some of the equipment. I think a messed around a bit too much and sort of…woke them up."

I was shocked. "How could you…"

"Shh!" Gavrie shoved me into the wall with him, stuffed his mitten into my mouth, and turned off my lantern. We both heard the robots getting closer and closer. From the corner of my eye, I could see a shadow being cast in the corridor that I was just in. Soon, a 10-foot tall, metal monster came into view. I wasn't sure which was more frightening: its four menacing, red eyes, or the futuristic-like cannon on its arm. It made a series of beeping noises and kept on walking until it was out of sight.

I pulled the mitten from my mouth. "It's gone," I whispered.

PAHHHHH!!

A huge, light red beam of light zipped past the two of us, which made a huge sound when colliding with the door at the end of the hall. The laser had made a popping noise when it came out of the cannon of the robot, which was now stalking towards us.

"Gavrie," I said, "I think we'd better RUN!" The two of us sprinted frantically down the hall, barely avoiding the lasers being shot at us by the wicked creature.

PAHH! PAHHH!

We ran further down. The door at the end of the hall had to be opened manually, and unfortunately, it swung away from the hallway. Like in the movies, I knew the fate of the good guys trying to stop the monsters from pushing their way in was not a good fate.

"Lock it!" I yelled as Gavrie shut the door behind him.

He fumbled with the door handle as I held the door shut. "Dammit! Where's the lock?" Another laser was shot, almost knocking me over as I tried to hold the door. Gavrie ran to the other side of me and pressed a button, locking the metal door in front of us. We turned around so that our backs leaned against it. As we caught our breath, hoping for the robot to give up, we got our first glimpse of the room we had stole away in.

It was a huge room, with wires scaling the walls up towards the ceiling. There were two rows of computers, with computer chairs that looked like toilet seats. The monitors and interface keyboards were shining a light blue, meaning that they were functioning.

"Gavrie, hold the door," I said and walked towards the nearest toilet-shaped computer chair.

"What?! I know you're as curious about these machines as I am, but this isn't the time!"

I played around with the keyboard and placed a finger on the touch mouse-pad. A button with a red dot appeared on the screen, along with some other icons. I clicked the red dot and looked at the tiny hole near the top of the monitor.

"Hello," I said confidently. "My name is Fjodor Izum."

When I finished the sentence, I started to hear loud thumping noises echoing throughout the room.

PAHHHHH! PAHH! PAHHHHHHHHH!

My partner yelled out, "They're back!"

Finished 2/4/08