Disclaimer: I do not own Code Lyoko. If I did, Sissi would not be so annoying, William would not have been turned evil, and Aelita would still live on Lyoko. Yeah.


Code Lyoko

:Dissention:

by

Amber Skye

--

Odd dodged to the side as a Creeper spat its laser at him; he had no problems evading the attack and sending an arrow right back. An instant later the creature exploded into fragments, and the number of Xana's monsters was down to four.

The Manta swooped at him, and Odd fell into an evasive roll. He came up again, wrist angled and ready to send an arrow stinging at the monster's underbelly as it passed over him. But as he loosed his shot, he felt an impact on his left shoulder and the sparking sensation that meant he'd lost some life points. Grimacing, Odd turned his head and followed the angle of the hit to its origin—more Creepers slithering into sight on one of the levels above him.

Odd growled to himself; this was part of the reason he hated Sector Five. Unlike the other regions, which were more or less flat planes, Sector Five was nothing but a huge, spherical maze of corridors, bridges, walkways, platforms, landings, and pillars, where monsters and attacks could come from any angle. And more often than not, they did. This sector was the core of Xana's existence, and as such there were more monsters here at his beck and call than in any other region of Lyoko. So while Odd wasn't particularly surprised at the appearance of more adversaries, it did nothing to lessen his frustration.

Bringing himself back to the present, and the level that he was currently on, Odd quickly fired off two rounds at the Tarantula directly across the chamber, hoping to hit it before it could launch an attack at him. The Tarantula only managed to get one arm into a firing position before it took Odd's hit, but it still found just enough time to let loose one of its concentrated laser beams before it began to break apart.

Odd knew it was coming, and knew similarly that his small arm shield could never block one of those powerful lasers. So he gave a leap from his crouched position, launching himself over the laser—and into a second. The impact plowed him backwards through the air and sent him skidding painfully to the ground, chest sparking. Odd gave a frustrated grunt as he landed, trying to get back on his feet before the monsters took advantage of his fall. A quick roll got him halfway up, and he managed to summon his wrist shield in time to deflect the sudden barrage of three more lasers that converged on his weakened form.

Disgusted with himself for being forced to play so defensively, he ducked behind the momentary safety of a wide, curved blue beam. He needed to think for a minute, find a way to confuse his enemies and regain the upper hand. He had no intention of being held up by the monsters, not now of all times.

Odd let his gaze travel upwards, to upper levels with all the countless bridges and catwalks, and the impossibly high ceiling above it. Across one of the blue pathways he could see Yumi running full tilt towards the entrance to the central sphere.

She was already heading for the core. And Odd knew that if she made it there first, she wouldn't wait for him or Aelita. He needed to catch up to her—now. But with all the Creepers and a Manta still blocking his path…

Then he noted the curve of the pillar as it arched upwards and intersected with precisely one of those bridges that he needed to be on, and an idea occurred. Maybe he could just skip battling the monsters completely.

With a wry grin and a quick motion, Odd latched onto the sheer, smooth side of the pillar and let his claws dig in. His hold firm, he began clambering upwards, away from the monsters and the fight on the lower plane and towards the bridge on the upper level.

Below him, the Creepers continued to fire at the other side of the pillar, unaware that Odd was no longer pinned down on the ground behind it. The Manta, however, was another story. It swooped around the pillar, unaffected by the limitations of artificial gravity. Finding that its designated target was no longer where it had been, the elegant monster altered its course and turned its sensors upward. It didn't take long to find and target the cat-like human crawling up the sheer surface.

The Manta's laser blast burned into the side of the pillar, inches away from where Odd's left hand was currently clinging. Letting loose a few choice words, Odd let go of the pillar immediately with that hand, allowing himself to swing freely. From where he dangled, he cocked his left wrist at the monster flying towards him, shooting off two arrows. Thrown off by the strange angle, his first arrow merely glanced off one of the Manta's wings, but the second buried deep into the target mark with the near-perfect accuracy that Odd had developed over the past few months.

The Manta shattered, its fragments curling through midair like morbid fireworks.

With the Manta gone and the Creepers below still unaware of where he had gone, Odd continued scuttling up the pillar. A few more yards up he gave a final climbing leap, and landed cat-like on the open bridge that Yumi had crossed just moments before.

"Jeremie," Odd said to the ceiling, "I'm on the outer section of the central core. Which way now?"

Before he could get an answer, a movement caught the corner of his eye, and he saw a flash of bright pink dash around the corner on the far side of the platform. "Nevermind," he said quickly, breaking into a run after the retreating figure. He called out after her, "Aelita! Wait up!"

As he dashed after her, a thought occurred to him. The last time he had seen Aelita, she'd been behind him, on the lower levels, cut off from himself and Yumi by the shifting walls and platforms of Sector Five. He wondered vaguely how she'd managed to find a way up here ahead of him so quickly.

Preoccupied with his immediate surroundings, it didn't register to Odd that Jeremie had never responded.

Odd rounded the corner—

and suddenly found himself facing the sharp end of a blade. He managed to stop his momentum in time to keep from skewering himself, but it took another moment for his eyes to register what he was seeing. The weapon he had almost run into was none other than Ulrich's sword.

Odd's gaze traveled up the length of the blade that was aimed at him, down to the hilt where it was held firmly…in Aelita's grasp.

Aelita?!

She stood, her black eyes emotionless as she twisted the hilt in her hands and brought the sword around in a vicious swing.

There were several things that Odd was trying to comprehend at that moment: how Aelita had gotten Ulrich's sword, why she was attacking him, how he'd been led into an apparent trap. It was all too much too quickly, and he had no time to think, act, or offer any resistance whatsoever.

The blade sliced cleanly through his abdomen.

Odd felt the detached sensation of unreal pain as his figure began to break apart, and he faded from Lyoko.

--

:Four Days Earlier:

Aelita sat bolt upright, gasping as her eyes came open and the nightmare ended abruptly. It took a long, disorienting moment to realize that she was awake again and completely safe. The calming blue lights of the tower shone around her, silent and undisturbed.

Still panting as the adrenaline began to recede, she leaned back and closed her eyes. This was the third night in a row…

In this one, she had seen herself and Odd fighting on Lyoko. But she had been watching from a distance, as though it hadn't really been she who was doing the fighting. It didn't matter though—from the impact that the nightmare had on her, it might as well have actually been happening. She'd seen herself using a sword, ambushing Odd and cutting him down.

Aelita pressed a hand against her eyes. She really needed to talk to Jeremie.

She moved to the center of the platform, seating herself comfortably cross-legged. Calling up a transparent, blue-tinted screen from thin air, she tapped the few commands that would give her access Jeremie's computer. As she waited for the visual screen to appear, she sat back, thinking about the dream she had just had and why they were occurring.

She had only been materialized in the real world once, and then only for a few hours. When she and her friends had tried to shut Xana down and discovered that her life was now linked to his, she'd opted to remain on Lyoko again until Jeremie could find a way to sever the link and materialize her permanently. Aelita been on Lyoko ever since, but those few hours in the real world seemed to have had a profound influence on her, physically and mentally.

The most obvious of those influences were the dreams, though most nights they seemed more like nightmares. In relation to that, she found that she now needed regular periods of sleep that she had been able to go without before. More physical senses had been activated as well; she could now feel the cold of the polar region in Lyoko, and smell the moisture in the air of the mountain region.

A ready signal from the computer blipped at her, and Aelita turned her attention back to the blank screen before her. She activated the video monitor and spoke softly, hoping he might be awake to hear her. "Jeremie?"

The screen remained blank and unresponsive. Jeremie had shut off the video link completely—she couldn't even see into his room to find out if he was there or not.

Aelita gave a quiet sigh; not one of anger or hurt, but a simple exhalation that indicated she wasn't surprised. Closing the window, she leaned back from the floating screen in front of her, thinking.

It had been nearly two months now since Xana had created his humanoid form. Since then, he had only continued to grow stronger. Aelita's ability to launch time reversals was now severely limited, due to the fact that Xana had modified the program to re-route its power directly to him. The appearance of new monsters such as the Skipazoa had limited her ability to traverse Lyoko; if she ventured out alone, Xana or one of his monsters would note her location sooner or later, and she was likely to be attacked.

That was one of the things that she couldn't yet comprehend—not only had Xana modified his appearance, but he'd changed his motivations and his behavior as well. He'd stopped launching deadly attacks on the real world and was focusing instead on building his power in Lyoko. He was sending his monsters to attack her, here in the digital realm. Like the Skipazoa.

To make matters worse, she was left to deal with all this pretty much on her own. Jeremie had become reclusive, avoiding her and the rest of their friends. He was moping, and dwelling on his failures during Xana's last attack rather than trying to resolve them and move forward.

In contrast, Odd had been working hard since that same attack. He made a point of virtualizing himself on Lyoko three or four times a week, even though Xana hadn't made any move to attack recently. Odd would spend hours on the virtual plane, searching for and destroying any of Xana's monsters that he happened to come across.

Aelita let those thoughts drift away as a group of files appeared on the screen before her. She glanced at them quickly, sighing at some of them. One was a vehicle program that Jeremie had been hard at work on before Xana's last attack; now it lay neglected and unfinished in his data files. Another was the materialization program that Jeremie had created for her, to bring her out of Lyoko and into the real world. It too, sat abandoned, untouched since Xana had used it last as a means of materializing himself on earth.

Leaning forward again, Aelita raised her hands to the screen and began gliding them across the transparent surface, dismissing those files and watching intently as data windows sprang to life beneath her fingertips. She opened the program that contained the records of each vision she had experienced, then created a blank template. Pressing three fingers lightly to the empty window, she concentrated. A bluish-white glow of energy surrounded her hand, and data began to filter onto the transparent screen. Incoherent lines of symbols scrolled quickly by as the energy was translated into code.

She could feel the aftereffects of the dream whirling through her emotions as she held it at the front of her mind, reliving the unconscious events. It had been another frightening one, filled with vague imagery that she did not understand, and it had left a lingering aftertaste of cold fear.

After a few moments, Aelita blinked her eyes open and withdrew her hand. The file template sat open on the screen, no longer blank. Nodding for no particular reason, Aelita saved the file and stored it with the others.

Now finished with the recording of her dream sequence, Aelita drew her hands once again over the screen, bringing up more information. Within seconds the data collected from Sector Five blinked into existence before her.

She wasn't looking for anything in particular, but she needed something to distract her from the vision she had just had, and since Jeremie wasn't willing to converse with her, she might as well get some work done.

--

The all-encompassing sapphire hue of Sector Five might have seemed maddening to some. The bright, bold color, with its little variant in shade, was nearly a light source in itself. It reflected off any surface and pressed in from all angles with its stark simplicity. But while the color palette was unnervingly straightforward, the area that it adorned was anything but.

The entire structure seemed to be composed of nothing but right angles. Blocks, squares, cubes, beams, and columns that shifted and moved in incomprehensible patterns, only fathomable to the artificial intelligence that drove them.

Any living, biological being would feel oddly out of place in Sector Five, and rightly so. But to Xana, it was more than the comfort of home. It was, in essence, him. And while he was currently embodied as a humanoid figure, the awareness that was himself extended far beyond that which was his physical manifestation. The human shape was a tool, a mask used to interact with and deceive his enemies. It was a simple as creating himself in their image, Xana mused, in more ways than one.

He stood in a large chamber, its four walls filled with countless glowing screens that scrolled endless lines of information. To one side were four large pillars, which could have been mistaken for support structures if not for the fact that they were hollow and transparent. In the center of the room were what looked like three giant test tubes, large enough for a person to swim in, all of them filled with some sort of liquid.

Hands tucked behind his back, Xana was watching the swirl of bio-fluid in the center test tube. In reality the liquid was a semi-transparent white, but in the core chambers of Sector Five it was tainted with the omnipresent blue of its surroundings. Nothing but ever-shifting rivulets of an opaque, syrupy consistency could be seen in the tank, yet Xana observed it as if he could see something that was not there.

Despite the fact that it was not yet big enough to be seen by a human eye, Xana knew that his experiment was growing within that tank. All the information showed it to be functioning within expected parameters, developing at a slow but constant rate. He just needed to be patient, that was all.

Nodding to himself, Xana allowed a serene smile to cross his features. Patience. That was what he had been missing before, all those times when he tried and failed, launching attack after attack at the humans and getting nowhere because of Aelita and her human friends. He'd been frustrated—angry even—and unwilling to take his time.

But then again, he hadn't had time to waste. Jeremie had always been working towards making Aelita human, and the moment he was successful, Xana had known they would shut him down. Xana had been forced to work quickly, for the sake of self-preservation. But his actions bred from desperation had been frighteningly unsuccessful.

And then, then he'd managed to create his virus. Xana nearly laughed out loud at the thought. That glorious virus, now thick in Aelita's veins, the virus that tied her life to his. And while she was infected, they couldn't touch him.

He had all the time in the world.

And he'd been using it well, Xana decided, giving himself some mental congratulations. The latest version of his project was even a bit ahead of schedule—ready for the next phase, perhaps.

Xana mused over that possibility for a moment. He was eager to test his theory and see if the biological material would have the proper effect. He'd run the calculations numerous times, and all the results had come back with favorable indications. The chances were good that this first project would succeed, but even if some unknown variable caused it to fail, he still had the two secondary organisms for backup.

The humanoid nodded to himself. Yes, he was ready to continue. The next time they set foot on Lyoko, he would take the human.

Behind him there was the soft, leathery sound of something moving and a whoosh of air. Xana turned to see one of his graceful Mantas drifting towards him, slowing to a stop in midair. It let out a smooth hooting sound that modulated and echoed, strangely calm and haunting, like a whale song.

Xana nodded at the creature, pleased. "Aelita is awake again, then?" he asked for no particular reason. "Let us see what she has for me this time."

Dismissing the manta ray with a wave of his hand, Xana crossed to a point near the wall and summoned a transparent screen from midair. From there it was all too easy to gain access to Aelita's private stash of dream files.

--

Aelita was starting to feel tired again. The nightmare had interrupted the normal eight-hour sleep cycle, and the fatigue it left behind was starting to catch up with her. She yawned—another thing she had never done before being materialized—and was about to close her screen when a tiny alert in the corner caught her attention.

Immediately all thought of sleep fled from her mind. She dismissed the other files and quickly accessed the warning system. Xana was hacking into her systems again. Biting back an angry expletive, Aelita opened a new screen along with a file that Xana hadn't accessed, and activated her new tracer program.

This was the fifth time Xana had stolen from her private dream files. Each time, Aelita tried to create a new firewall to keep him from getting them, and each time, it failed. But this time, even if she couldn't keep Xana out, maybe she could find out where he was storing them, or even why he was taking them.

"Your Skipazoa steals my memories…your hacking program steals my dreams…" she whispered to the screens, "What are you looking for, Xana?"

She watched with nervous anticipation as her tracer began to follow the hacking trail that Xana had left behind. Codes and data flickered by, and she realized that it was working. It was following the files back to Xana's computer core location; in a few moments, the tables might be turned, and she would have access to his files…

But then the tracer stopped, blocked by one of Xana's security levels.

Letting loose a breath of frustration, Aelita leaned back from the screen and stared upwards at the infinite ceiling. She couldn't do anything from here. Xana's programming was more sophisticated than her own, and he was too practiced at covering his own tracks. Probably the only reason her tracer program had made it as far as it did was because Xana had allowed it.

The only way she might be able to find the files was if she could access the Sector Five program directly. But she'd have to actually be in Sector Five to do that.

An idea tickled the back of Aelita's mind at the thought.

No. Too risky. Her common sense stated it simply, immediately, and under any other circumstances she would have accepted her first instinct. But tonight the restlessness and frustration were gnawing at her rational thoughts. She felt restricted, cut off from the rest of the world since Jeremie no longer spoke to her, and a chance to do something, to vent some of this pent-up energy, would be welcome.

She would contact Ulrich. Moving a hand across the screen, she started to access his mobile, but then stopped when she saw the chronometer and groaned. It was almost three in the morning—no one would be awake. She'd have to wait.

Dismissing the screen, Aelita dimmed the tower lights and settled back against the platform, wondering if she would dream again.


Author's Notes: Woo-hoo! So here it is, the official sequel to 'Regression.' I'm so excited about starting this story, I hope everyone likes it!