Chapter 2

(Alex first person)

Crystal and I awoke in our room on the first floor. We looked at each other and smiled. It was a day like any other day.

One lived in blissful ignorance of what was to come.

We got dressed and went to the kitchen. Jeremie and Aelita were standing side by side in their pajamas humming a tune as they prepared breakfast. I poured Crystal and myself a drink and walked to the dining room. Samantha smiled politely as we entered. Odd, in a sleep deprived state with bags under his eyes, held a fork and knife staring blankly ahead. Ulrich had one arm around Yumi as she leaned against him, waking up steadily.

Peter and Angel passed through the kitchen into the dining room next, followed soon by William.

Jeremie and Aelita soon came into the kitchen with several serving dishes: Biscuits, sausage, bacon, and eggs.

Every morning had been this way. We cycled through whose turn it was to make breakfast. Sometimes, it would just be all the cereal boxes sat out on the counter. We never complained, though. We were content.

We had each other.

Jeremie and Aelita smiled at the table. Jeremie said grace and we began eating.

It's crazy to think they'd become such mature adults. It seems like just yesterday a bunch of kids were running through the sewers for the sake of exploration and adventure.

Perhaps we still weren't so different. Even in a vile world, we still saw a glimpse of good.

Jeremie cleaned food out of his neatly trimmed goatee and began talking money, about the stocks, various budgets, incomes, et cetera, not that we paid much attention. We knew the money was more than balanced and no reasonable amount of extra expenditure would set us back.

The business meeting finished and we went to play.

Jeremie stood from the table and led the way though the living room, opened the portrait, and went to Lyoko.

We could play in that world for hours. Jeremie would give us a mission like the good old days.

Jeremie congratulated us on another successful mission and devirtualized us.

"Good job, guys, Jeremie said as we reached the control room. "Another day saved." He joined us in the elevator and we took it up.

"Piece of cake, Einstein," Odd commented.

"Yeah, Jeremie," Ulrich said. "You keep trying that trick with the Hornets under the landscape. We know where to look now, and they're not surprising us."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to switch things up next time."

Punctuating Jeremie's sentence, glass was heard breaking on the top floor. We all looked at the floor above us.

"What do you think that was?" Peter asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. I teleported to my bedroom and grabbed a handgun out of my nightstand, then teleported back to the living room. I walked up the staircase to the top hall, then walked slowly, checking the windows in each bedroom and looking for anything that may have fallen from a shelf or something. I opened the door at the end of the hall leading to the garage.

Above the main part of the garage, one of the panes of glass was shattered, and on one of the cars, my Lotus, the windshield was also shattered. I opened the door, and, inside, a brick sat in the passenger seat. I picked it up and teleported back to the living room.

"What's that?" William asked. I turned it over in my hand.

"A brick. Someone has scratched something into it. It says, 'They're watching you'." Everyone took turns glancing at each other and a few at the brick.

"Who are they?" Yumi asked.

"I'm not sure. Jeremie, go start a return to the past. It doesn't have to be far." Jeremie rushed to the elevator and took it down.

Fifteen minutes earlier, I teleported up from the scanner room into the garage and sat against Ulrich's Mustang.

Fifteen minutes later, I checked my watch, looked around, expecting any minute now for a brick to come shatter my car's windshield, but nothing. I waited a couple more minutes, but still received nothing. I walked outside to the bridge and looked around – nobody in sight – then to the ground. A brick was neatly placed a foot or so in front of the door. I looked up again and saw that the gate to the bridge was still closed tight. I picked the brick up, this one scratched on two sides instead of one.

"They're still watching you," read one side. "They can see you, Alex," read the other. I dropped the brick and stepped back to the door, looking around the sidewalk on the edge of the city, yet, even with as far as I could see, there were still no signs of life.

I slid the brick into the garage with my foot, then teleported to the lab. No one else was here, probably upstairs waiting for me. I opened a video chat and called Charlie. A few moments passed, then he answered.

"Hey, Alex," he said. "Is something wrong? There was a return to the past. You never do those anymore."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry. Something happened at the house, and we had to check something. Where are you?"

"At home, why?" I paused.

"I'm not sure. A brick was thrown into the house. It said 'They're watching you'. I was pretty sure it was just some stupid kids playing pranks, but after the return to the past the brick didn't come through the window. Instead it was just sitting at the garage door with some creepier stuff on it. I'm not sure what's going on."

"What did the brick say?"

"'They're still watching you. They can see you, Alex'."

"Everyone who's been exposed to the return to the past was in the house, right?"

"That's right. It should've happened again."

"That's strange. Is there anything I can do?"

"Not right now, Charlie. I'll let you know if anything comes up."

"Take care, Alex." I hung up and teleported back to the living room.

"What happened? We didn't hear the glass break," Aelita said.

"I'm not sure. The brick was sitting in front of the door. It said something different too."

"What does this mean?" William asked.

"Either the return to the past didn't work, or whoever is doing this is immune to it like the rest of us."

"How would that happen?" Angel asked.

"Yeah," Peter said. "The only other person than us is that Laura girl, and Jeremie took care of that."

"And Jeremie's dad, right?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, but I just got off the phone with him. He's at his house several hours from here."

Jeremie picked up his laptop from the coffee table and opened the cameras. We crowded around behind him. He reversed the camera to when the return to the past hit and played. At the same time the first brick came through the window, the camera fizzed out and didn't come on for two minutes, but when it came back on, the brick was sitting clean on the ground.

"Another return to the-" Aelita said, but her voice was cut off by more glass breaking overhead. Jeremie quickly fast forwarded the camera, but all that could be seen was the brick flying through the air, faster than even I could throw with my hands, all the way from the city, too far to be seen by the camera.

I teleported to the garage and opened my car door to pull out another brick.

'Stop trying to call help'

'They're listening'

I threw the brick at the garage door, leaving a large dent in it. I teleported back to the lab and started another return to the past.

I teleported outside and waited.

This time there was no brick thrown. No brick delivered. No sign of a marauder. I walked to the other end of the bridge and looked around. The guard shack was locked with no brick inside. I opened the gate and walked out.

Laying in the grass next to the guard shack was another brick.

'I thought of that'

'Never forget 6-6-94-2546'

What was that even supposed to mean? Was it a combination lock? With a combination past two thousand? That's ridiculous. A date? But what kind of date uses four digits, once again, with a number past two thousand. Mathematics doesn't seem to come to any clues either. I couldn't come up with any algorithms that would put all those numbers together. In a bout of rage I threw the brick into the river and teleported back into the living room.

"What did you find?" Crystal asked.

"'Never forget 6-6-94-2546'."

"What does it mean?" Jeremie asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine." I sat on the couch with my head in my hands.

"Should we call the police?" Sam asked.

"No, no calling for help. They said someone's listening to us."

"Who are they, and how do we know we can trust them?" Yumi asked.

"Yeah," Ulrich said. "So far all we know is this person is throwing bricks through our window."

"They know who I am, I think it's safe to assume they know who all of us are."

"If they're immune to the return to the past, maybe they're close to us?" Odd suggested.

"No way," Jeremie interjected. "Everyone who's been to Lyoko is in this room with us."

"Maybe they have access to a similar super computer? Like with Professor Tyron's computer?" Crystal said.

"As far as we know, Tyron's computer was never able to link to our return to the past."

"And if someone else was able to?" Aelita asked.

"That's impossible. Not without XANA's help," Jeremie said. Everyone looked around the room at each other, all trying to figure out how they should react based on every other person's facial expression. "Stop being ridiculous. XANA is dead. Absolutely dead. Undeniably dead. Not up for debate."

"That seems like exactly the kind of thing you said last time XANA came back from the dead," Ulrich said.

"It's not the same. XANA was only being sustained by Tyron's computer. When his hard drive was wiped and we cleared the codes out of you guys, everything left of him was destroyed. It's not questionable." The room seemed to accept Jeremie's explanation with his authority, but was still apprehensive, perhaps just because people were talking about a threat of XANA again and not because they felt they had a reason to be afraid.

Not to say any of us did have a reason to be afraid of XANA. Right now, the only real enemy was the person throwing bricks at our house. We had no reason to honestly suspect another entity involved, whether it be XANA or some suspect third party that the brick thrower was trying to warn us of. Though, of course, we couldn't call the police for fear that the brick thrower was correct, but it also made us anxious to think the brick thrower was lying, and that he was the stalker instead. We could trust no one, but trusting no one meant suspecting the brick thrower was against us, and that seemed worse than the unknown.

"So what do we do?" Sam said after a momentary pause.

I shook my head and looked at Jeremie, hoping he had some idea of what should happen next, but he looked back at me, then shook his head, looking away.

"I'm not sure," I said. I hated being unsure, but, even more, I hated Jeremie being unsure. All of his answers were usually calculated and immediate. His decisions never took long, but, when they were, it was usually because he had an answer and just didn't want to tell anyone what he thought, for fear of there being a better option, or, even worse, that someone would get hurt because of what he thought. Crystal seemed to understand what I was thinking.

"Let's get some lunch," she suggested, leading the way to the kitchen. "I'm starving."

"I second that motion," Odd said, right behind her. Everyone followed Crystal to the kitchen, but I grabbed Jeremie's bicep as he passed.

"Come on, spit it out, Jeremie."

"What?"

"What are you thinking about?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You always have a plan. I can see the look on your face. You're the most paranoid person around, you have to have some kind of plan." Jeremie looked at me for several seconds, then to the kitchen.

"I think it's best… if I take Aelita somewhere safe."

"Are you out of your damn mind?"

"Alex, don't get too caught up."

"You're crazy if you think I'm letting you take her away from me."

"I'm not saying that. You should come with us, you and Crystal, at least until everything gets sorted out."

"And what about the others?" My voice rose slightly, which caused Jeremie to instinctively check the kitchen to make sure no one heard, then he grabbed me by the arm and led me down the hall so we couldn't be heard.

"Don't you think it's a bad idea to be in the same place at the same time with someone after us?"

"We don't know if anyone is after us right now."

"And what happens if there is someone after us!? Today, tomorrow, if one of us gets, whatever – shot, kidnapped, murdered, raped – do you want it to be Crystal?"

"Of course I don't. Don't do that. That's not fair, and you know it."

"Alex, we have to protect the ones we love."

"Yeah, we do, and you know who I love? Every single person in this house." Jeremie straightened his back, ready for what I was going to say. "There's no way I'm going to let anything happen in this house to anyone. You know that, don't you?"

"Alex, listen-"

"No, you listen to me. I'm going to protect you, and Aelita, and Crystal, and Ulrich, and Peter, and everyone else, do you understand? I can't do that from your vacation house in Tahiti. Alright? The only place I can keep everyone safe is in this house. Brick throwing isn't anything. Are you prepared for what could happen the second you go out that door?" Jeremie avoided my eyes. "Even if I go with you, we're essentially dooming the others, you get that right?" I paused. Jeremie didn't respond. "We're staying together. No matter what."