Episode Seven: The Cause and the Cure
Soundtrack: Fallout Boy's "Dance, Dance" (Not because Yumi's cheating on Ulrich, because they're falling apart to half time)
Yay! I'm back from my long haiatus and shall be wrapping up the story arc over the course of the next three weeks.
This is probably my second favorite episode, for sheer cuteness factor. Another one that's more about advancing the plot then anything else, though… Also, took me longer to write then any of the others, seeing as I stopped after the first scene to take a prolonged break from Code Lyoko fanfics of any sort.
Taidine
Chapter One: Infection
It was early on a Saturday morning. The sun rose, bright and freshly washed from several days of dismal rain, over the sprawling campus of Kadic Academy. The few remaining leaves in the gardens gleamed with vibrant reds and yellows. Dew and persistent raindrops glistened on the grass of the green. Windows opened in dormitories, only to slam shut again when the sleepy students behind them felt the chill edge to the breeze.
Behind one window, a boy with spiky blonde hair and purple pajamas came awake to the sound of barking. A thick-bodied, sharp-faced dog was standing with four narrow paws planted firmly on his chest and yapping in his ear. "Oh, Kiwi," the boy said in a shrill, annoyed voice. "Okay! I'm getting up!"
The room's other occupant, another blonde boy with thick glasses and lousy fashion sense, glanced up from his laptop. By his hunched posture and sunken eyes, he had been sitting there all night. "It's about time, Odd," he told his roommate, "that dog's been barking for the last ten minutes."
Odd pushed back dog and covers with one sweep of his arm. Kiwi jumped onto the floor, stumpy tail pounding, and gave over barking in favor of licking his master's hand enthusiastically. "Good morning to you too, Jeremie," Odd said sarcastically, sitting up and rubbing his head.
"Thanks," said Jeremie, oblivious to his friend's tone. "When you get back from walking Kiwi, meet me in the cafeteria. I've got good news."
Odd shoved his feet into the shoes on the floor and groped under the bed for a leash. "You just saved a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to Geico?"
"No," said Jeremie, who didn't watch much television. "Better. I might have found the way to cure Aelita!"
- - - -
Twenty minutes later, a group of five had assembled outside the cafeteria. There was Odd, who had hidden Kiwi in his room and donned an outfit almost the same shade of purple as the swatch in his hair. There was Jeremie, looking sleep-deprived but exhilarated. The other three were a brown-haired, serious-faced boy, an Asian girl dressed in black, and a girl with shockingly pink hair and an expression almost as excited as Jeremie's.
"Ahem." Jeremie cleared his throat, a professor preparing for his lecture. "About two weeks ago, XANA attacked us using a modified flu virus." His 'students' nodded. "As we all know, we were saved by antibodies produced by Kiwi.
"Aelita-" a nod to the pink-haired girl "-has been infected by XANA with something similar: a computer virus that works on the same principals. Due to her origin in the Lyoko program, she's especially susceptible to the virus."
He beamed. Now for the best part. "However, since we aren't part of the Lyoko program, any of us can fight it off. Theoretically, this would create a kind of 'antibody' that could then be used to de-bug Aelita!"
Instead of the applause he had hoped for, there was stupefied silence. A pair of chatting girls skipped up the steps and vanished into the cafeteria. The sound of the door closing behind them seemed loud.
"Uh," said Odd finally, breaking the thunderous quiet, "You're going to infect one of us with Aelita's virus?"
Jeremie nodded.
"And this is going to help?"
"I'll do it," said the brown-haired boy, so far silent.
The girl next to him shook her head, twitching sleek black hair. "I don't think so, Ulrich. It sounds dangerous."
"Are you sure this will work, Jeremie?" Aelita asked.
"Absolutely," the bespectacled boy replied, "I ran several simulations. There's no reason any of us couldn't fight off your virus."
"I think he said that about the other antiviruses too…" Odd muttered.
"So I'll do it," Ulrich replied, ignoring the pessimistic comment. "When?"
"Well, I need some time to make sure I have a clean copy of the virus. Probably this evening."
"Oh," said Odd in the tones of one who had just solved a difficult puzzle. "You don't want to go to the dance. Well, can't blame you, but you don't know what you'll be missing. I spent the whole weekend downloading songs from the Internet and burning my party mix…"
Ulrich looked uneasily at the black-haired girl to his right, who was staring at him with an accusatory expression, and cut off his friend's babbling. "The dance is tonight?"
She nodded.
"Oh… I'm sorry, Yumi, but…"
"I understand," she said tersely, and maybe she did, but she didn't sound happy about it. "Stopping XANA is more important then some- school function. I'll go with you."
In the distance, a bell shrilled. "So… meet you at the Factory," said Jeremie quickly, and the five pounded off to their classes.
- - - -
Odd dozed.
The math teacher was droning about quadrilateral equations or something, but in his mind, the spiky-haired boy was already at tonight's dance. First he would slip the DJ his party mix, then slide out across the floor solo, partner up with Sissi for a few numbers… no, this was his fantasy. Every girl in the school would decide to talk to him again, including that hot blonde who sat in front of him during science, and he would dance until he was exhausted. Mind as well enjoy it now. Thanks to Jeremie's latest brainstorm, he wouldn't be going to the dance. The whole gang would be at the Factory – just in case.
The shrill jangle of the bell interrupted Mrs. Meyer mid-drone and woke Odd from his reverie. His former lethargy was belied by the speed with which he shoved a notebook in his backpack and darted for the door.
Odd had broken several unofficial 'doorway sprint' records in his time. This probably didn't make his top ten, but it did get him out of the classroom before the remainder of the students hit the bottleneck of the doorway. He walked several steps down the hall, then squeezed himself into a nook on the lee side of a water fountain as the mass entity of the Crowd surged past.
In a few minutes, he was joined by Ulrich, looking grim and serious. This might have been due to his upcoming ordeal, or possibly the quadratic equations. "Ready?" asked Odd, leading the way back into the milling hallway.
The majority of the students streamed towards their dormitories to prep for the dance. This sort of thing only came around once a season; it was an Occasion. Ulrich and Odd broke paths with them as they walked along the green, making instead for the barely-tamed trees of the school gardens.
The noise of the students fell away as they entered the wood. Long shadows cast by the setting sun barred the forest floor, obscuring sight, and the chill of winter in the air was enough to make Odd shiver, although Ulrich stoically ignored it.
"Odd? Ulrich? Is that you?" breathed a figure obscured by the heavy contrast of light and dark. A glint of pink identified her – Aelita, walking towards them, with Jeremie trailing close behind.
There was a pause as Odd tried to think of a witty retort. "No, it's-" he began.
"Yes," Ulrich interrupted.
Odd shot him a glance and the four resumed walking. "Where's Yumi?" Ulrich announced after a few moments passed, silent except for the crunching of leaves underfoot.
Jeremie shrugged. "She said she had to go home and make up an excuse. She'll meet us at the Factory."
Ulrich's brows drew together, and his stride lengthened. He reached the hatch before the others, pulled it open, and dropped down the shaft, all without speaking.
"Great. Just great." Odd summed up the feelings of the remaining three before following.
Two skateboards and two scooters rattled through the dark tunnel, flickering through shafts of light that faded even as the four traveled. By the time they reached the Factory, the sun had dropped below the horizon and the last dregs of light were draining away.
The doors of the elevator clicked and rotated, intricate locks disengaging. Jeremie stepped out into the industrial jungle of the computer room, glasses bright with fluorescent reflections. "Aelita, come with me. You might be able to help with the programming. Ulrich, get down to the scanner room."
"What about me?" Protested Odd shrilly.
"Uh… I hadn't thought of that." Jeremie made his brisk way across the room, footsteps echoing in the cavernous space, and sat down in the computer chair. Aelita took up a position behind him, one hand on the headrest. Odd shrugged and stepped out of the elevator, leaving Ulrich alone as the doors hissed shut.
- - - -
In the tunnel that led to the Factory, Yumi grabbed the final skateboard and tossed it to the floor, black clothes and dark hair merging with the shadows so only the pale oval of her face was clear in the spitting, inconsistent illumination of the fluorescent bulbs set into the walls. A flashlight dangled from her wrist, switched off. Although the lights spaced along the tunnel were fitful and ill kept, she knew this stretch of sewer well enough to run it in the dark. She kicked off smoothly with one foot, sending her skateboard rattling along the tunnel.
Light-dark-light-dark. Incandescent light made her face and hands unnaturally pale. Light-dark-dark. She passed a set of burnt out bulbs. Light-dark-light. Ahead, a shaft rose into the darkness, striped with the bars of a built-in ladder. Yumi turned her board and skidded to a stop next to a pair of scooters, kicking back to flip the front end up and leaping off before the sparks had died. She caught the tip and leaned it casually against the wall before grabbing a rung of the ladder and climbing up hand over hand.
This side, the hatch opened to a heavy shove. Yumi's fingers dug into the long handhold and, bracing herself with an arm jammed between a ladder rung, shoved the heavy metal disk to one side. Lithe as a panther, the girl scrambled through the resulting gap to lie, panting, in the grass.
The lights from the city across the river were too dim to do more then define shadows, but by their dirty glow the hulking silhouette of the Factory and the spidery shape of the bridge leading to it could be distinguished. Yumi squinted. Was that a flicker of movement at the base of one slender pylon?
Rising into a wary crouch, she aimed her flashlight like a gun. She didn't want to get into trouble if she could avoid it, but there was someone, now a smudge against the city lights, now a glimmer in the dark, and that someone was moving right towards her. Even with the dim lights from across the river and the paltry illumination of a crescent moon, they couldn't miss her… or the hatch…
Her heart thudded against her ribs. It was one thing to sneak around school grounds hiding from monsters. Out here she felt like a criminal. She didn't have an excuse; she didn't even have a plan. All she had was desperation.
The figure was nearly on top of her now, its goal obviously herself or the hatch she guarded. She adjusted the aim of her flashlight and flicked it abruptly on.
Yumi only got one glimpse of the person's face, shocked and staring like a deer in the headlights, a brief glimpse before she flicked off the device, yanked the hatch cover shut and took off for the bridge, trusting the temporary blindness brought on by sudden, bright light to hide her. That glimpse was enough.
- - - -
Numbers flickered across the computer screen, captivating Jeremie's attention; a human figure slowly filling with green held the gaze of Aelita and Odd. A small notation in the corner flicked up to 20.
"Mmm?" Jeremie made a small noise, tilting his head.
"What is it?" Aelita asked, instantly transferring her attention to the numbers. Some of it was comprehensible, but she wasn't as fluent in it as Jeremie; her knowledge was the more intuitive sort.
"I thought I saw something I took out," he answered, hand hovering over the 'esc' key. "Maybe I should…"
"If you took it out, it's not there. Relax, Einstein," Odd advised. Aelita nodded her cautious agreement.
Jeremie kept watching, then gave a little sigh of relief. "Never mind. The secondary loop was gone, and I couldn't have taken it out without disabling… uh, we're good. I mean, unless someone put it back in." He smiled at the ridiculousness of the idea, then resumed his intent study of the dancing numbers.
There was a click, and the elevator doors opened. Yumi stumbled out, panting slightly, and sat heavily on one of the metal protrusions emerging from the floor.
"Yumi," Aelita greeted. Jeremie didn't even look up. "Is something wrong?"
"Probably not," said the black-haired girl, inhaling deeply. "But… is there any reason for William to be hanging around the Factory?"