A/N: After weeks of trying to focus on my darn stories and having my annoying sister, TemariTrainer, kick me off before I get two words down, here it is! The long-awaited Chapter 7! This is where it gets a little darker, and the plot is clearer, so enjoy!
Also, I still don't own Code Lyoko.
Chapter 7: Interrogation and Drafting
The room was completely dark, except for the small glow of a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling. In the center of the room was a plain white table, and across the table sat Djeral Pynchev, chained to his seat with steel cuffs on his ankles and his wrists. He had a good deal of bruises on his face, and there was a small amount of blood running out of his mouth, which was curled in a mix of a sneer and a scowl. Standing in front of him was a tall, bulky man, clad in a black and blue army uniform, and grinding his teeth at his captive.
"I don't want you here any more than you do, Pynchev," the officer grumbled, "but since it's been well over three hours and you've yet to say one word about who sent you here and what your mission is, you have left me with no alternative."
"And what does that mean, Private Hesner?" the prisoner shot back through his teeth.
"You'll know soon enough, you filth," the private replied. "One of our top agents is already en route to this location to take over the interrogation. If anyone can get you to talk, he can. And mark my words, he will."
"And who is this joker?" Pynchev asked mockingly. At this, Private Hesner turned and grinned.
"Oh, you know him," he said softly. "In fact, you know him quite well."
Just then, the radio receiver on his belt gave off a beep followed by a static noise, and Private Hesner answered the radio.
"Hesner," he said.
"He's here," the voice on the other line said. "Get him ready."
"Roger that," Hesner answered, then slid his radio back into his holster. He then turned to Pynchev.
"I'm in luck and you're in trouble," he growled at his captive. "Your new friend is here, and I hope, for your sake, that he plays nice with you."
Pynchev chuckled. "Yeah, I'm practically peeing myself right now."
Private Hesner made no comment, but simply slipped out of the room, and after a while, another figure entered. Unlike Hesner, he was not a full-grown man, but was a mere teenager. Although he was in a military-standard uniform, his blond hair and thick-framed glasses were a dead giveaway of his identity.
"Well, well, well," the chained man laughed, "if it isn't Captain Jeremy Belpois himself. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure? Did you like my little graduation gift?"
"Can the garbage, Pynchev," Jeremy growled. "You know why I'm here. I want some answers."
"And what might you be asking, my young captain?" the prisoner asked in a sarcastically polite tone.
Jeremy lunged forward and grabbed Pynchev by his throat. The gang, who were watching the whole scene from behind the bulletproof interrogation window, was shocked by his sudden behavior, even though they had seen him act this way once before.
"This is going to take a while to get used to," Sissi stated.
"No joke," William whispered.
"I said cut the crap, you trash!" Jeremy hollered at his captive. "You know damn well what I'm talking about. Or do you need a refresher course? The Black Cobras' involvement in Project Carthage, Lyoko, XANA, shall I go on?"
"Is that all?" Pynchev grinned slyly. "Anyone in your government could tell you anything about that. Why would you need me?"
"Because," Jeremy said, very slowly and in a low menacing tone, "you know something that no one in the government knows about, and that's because they weren't involved with the project."
"And that project would be…?" his captive smirked.
Jeremy leaned into the chained man's face so close that their noses were almost touching. The prisoner then said, in the same tone but elevated so that Jeremy's friends could hear, "The Third Punic War Project."
The gang listened more intensely. They didn't know anything about this project anymore than what was already said, but from how Jeremy spoke of it, it didn't sound good.
"I may know something," the prisoner smirked, "or maybe I don't. It all depends."
"On what, you creep?" Jeremy scowled.
"It depends on whether or not I feel like telling the likes of you," Pynchev chuckled, "you proud hound of the Republic."
That was apparently the wrong thing to say, as Jeremy's fist made crushing contact with his face, knocking him down to the floor, dragging the chair he was chained onto with him. The gang, still watching, jumped in shock. Aelita even let out a small gasp. Jeremy reached down and grabbed Pynchev by his neck and shook him violently.
"It doesn't matter if you feel like telling me," Jeremy hissed, "I can and will make you tell me every last detail about you and what you know about the project."
"Oh, really?" the chained man laughed. "You may want to rethink that, Captain."
"And why's that?"
"Because," he said, his voice getting lower, "you may find yourself biting off more than you can chew."
Suddenly, the light in the room started flickering more brightly than before, and the others noticed the lights in the other room they were in start to flicker as well. Right then, everyone felt a small tremor in the ground, coming from the interrogation room that Jeremy and Pynchev were in. Aelita instinctively moved to the door, hoping that at least she could find out what was happening, but when she tried to turn the handle, it didn't move an inch.
"It won't open!" she cried. "The handle's locked!"
"But Aelita, Jeremy didn't lock it when he went in," Yumi stated.
"Then Pynchev must've locked it somehow!" Ulrich replied.
"Uh, guys?" Odd said, rather shakily, pointing at the window, "something really freaky is going on in there!"
The others turned to Odd, and followed his wide-eyed gaze to the window. As they looked inside, they all expressed the same expression of terror. Pynchev had suddenly started glowing brightly and his body was crackling with a bizarre purple shade of electricity. To top it all off, his forehead started glowing with an all-too familiar mark on it. Both of these phenomena were enough to make everyone, except for Sissi, recoil in fear.
"XANA?" Aelita shrieked. "It can't be!"
Pynchev, now freed from his chains, raised his arm and a bolt of lightning shot out from his hand aimed directly at Jeremy. Luckily, he dodged away just in time, rushed forward at Pynchev, and quickly grabbed the back of his head, and then forced him against the wall.
"It was foolish for you to challenge me, agent of Carthage," Jeremy said coldly, "and now you will receive your punishment."
As he said this, Jeremy pulled a small device, not unlike a flash drive, out of one of his uniform's pockets and pressed it into the back of his neck. Gradually, the gang noticed that the flashing lights were diminishing, and the rumbling stopped. The gang took a closer look inside and saw what appeared to be a stream of zeroes and ones traveling from around the man's body all the way to where the flash drive was "plugged into" on his neck. After a minute, the markings faded and the man let out an exhausted groan before he collapsed to the ground unconscious.
After he put the small device back in his jacket, Jeremy then walked to the door, and opened it. No sooner had he done that than Aelita rushed forward and pulled him into a tight hug.
"Thank God you're all right," she said, holding back tears. "I was so scared for you."
Jeremy gave Aelita a reassuring pat on her back. "It's all right, Aelita. I'm just fine."
"But what about Pynchev?" Ulrich asked. "What's happened to him and how did he do that stuff with the lightning and why was the Eye of XANA on his forehead?"
Jeremy took a deep breath. "How can I put this?" he started. "Before I turned on the supercomputer, XANA had formed an alliance with the Cobras, and he gave some of their men a power to help them in their goals in exchange for them helping him. I wouldn't be surprised if we went to check up on his 'investment' while they were all in prison."
"So that guy had part of that XANA guy's powers inside of him?" Sissi gaped. "That's just crazy!"
"I know this is true," he said sharply, "because I was doing this in my army days."
"You mean they had these powers during the Third Cobra War?" Odd retorted.
"Well, we didn't call it by that," Jeremy stated, "but that's a good name nonetheless. And yes, they did have XANA's powers when we fought them." He then showed them the device he used against Pynchev. "This device is one of many that we used to counter these new soldiers. We, for lack of a better way to put it, plugged it into the back of their heads where the base of the brain would be, and this thing sort of downloads the code from their DNA into itself."
"What happens to the code after you take it from them?" William asked.
"In the past, we've stored it in our R&D headquarters in Brussels," Jeremy replied, "but the team never found out use those codes."
"Well how do we fight off an army of these cyber-creeps without our Lyoko powers?" Yumi griped.
"Couldn't you just use those scanner things to give yourselves these powers?" Sissi asked.
"I don't think they work that way," William said, "otherwise they would've used it by now, wouldn't they?"
"Now who said that?" Jeremy grinned.
"What do you mean, Jeremy?" Aelita asked.
"The scanners you're thinking of don't work that way, yes," Jeremy responded, "but there are a set that do work like that."
"What?" Yumi gasped. "There are more scanners?"
"There are," Jeremy said, "but they're not well known among the lower-class in the military, but my dad knows about them."
"How come?" Sissi asked.
"Well, he did build them."
"WHAT?" The whole gang jumped back, shocked beyond words at this statement.
"He's not just a jock, you know," Jeremy added, "he's pretty good with high-grade power tools."
"Well, where are these scanners?" Odd asked eagerly. "I've been itching to jump back into those old Lyoko duds again!"
"Same here!" Ulrich chimed in.
"Hold your horses, guys," Jeremy held his hands up. "It's in the laboratory back home in Sceaux, and it's kind of never been used before, at least not for the purpose you are thinking of."
"You just said it worked, didn't you?" Odd whined.
"Well, yes," Jeremy stuttered, "but the program's never really been used before because no one's ever tried it before."
"Why not?" Ulrich asked.
"Well how did you first feel about being digitally transported into another world?" Jeremy asked.
Odd and Ulrich were silent for a while. "Okay, you make a good point there, Einstein," Odd said after a while.
"Well, then how do we know it works?" William asked.
"I said no one in the military used the program," Jeremy said slowly. "I didn't say no one used the program at all."
"You mean someone used the virtualization program before we did?" Aelita gasped.
"Yes," Jeremy said, looking closely at Aelita, "and that someone… was your mother."
Aelita gasped, and the others jumped in surprise.
"Mom?" she shrieked.
"Aelita's mother went to Lyoko?" Odd jolted.
"Exactly," Jeremy said, "and that's not all she's done."
"Really?" William asked. "What else has she done?"
Before Jeremy could answer, the prisoner in the interrogation room, whom they all completely forgot about in the rush of the events that recently occurred, began to get back on his feet, groaning heavily. Jeremy acted fast, rushing into the room, and locking the door behind him, so that Pynchev could not escape. Jeremy lunged forward, grabbing the man by his neck, and rammed him against the wall.
"Now do you feel like talking, you slime?" he said harshly.
"Go to hell," Pynchev smirked.
"Wrong answer, you first," Jeremy growled. To add to this, he reached into another pocket on his jacket, and pulled out a rectangular device which was larger than the one he had previously used against him. Before the prisoner could react, he was suddenly literally jolted by the 5000-volt burst of lightning that came from Jeremy's tazer. He gave a final moan of anger before he collapsed to the ground, again unconscious.
"Nice one, Einstein," Ulrich said.
"It was nothing," Jeremy replied, dusting himself off. "It's something I've done countless times in the past to save myself. I never leave headquarters without a good tazer."
"Well, that's one way of being prepared," Yumi shrugged.
"Well how do we get the info out of him now?" Sissi asked.
"Simple," Jeremy said, holding up the flash drive machine again. "We don't need him anymore. We can get what we need to know with this."
"How's that?" William inquired.
"When a person who's been fused with XANA's code has his code copy taken from him," Jeremy replied, "a copy of his recent memories is taken as well."
"So, we just plug it in at the headquarters," Yumi said, "and we can see what he's seen and figure out what we're dealing with?"
"And the scanners?" Ulrich asked. "Will we be able to translate or whatever so we can have our powers on Earth?"
"Yes and yes," Jeremy said hesitantly, "but it's kind of dangerous."
"How so?" Aelita asked.
"If you use the scanners at headquarters to translate yourselves," Jeremy explained, "you will have your costumes and powers, but there's a danger. Once you use translation without virtualization to Lyoko, I don't know if the changes made to your genetic code can be undone."
"Meaning that…?" William started.
"Meaning that you may never be able to return your original forms." Jeremy finished. "Your translation may be permanent."
"Whoa," Sissi gawked, "that is a drawback."
"How do you know this?" Yumi asked.
"When Anthea entered the scanners," Jeremy said regretfully, "she never came back out. She's still out there in the Network, but we don't know if she can get back. Believe me; we've tried all that we know."
For a long time after that, no one said anything. But before long, Aelita broke the silence.
"I believe that Mom's coming home," she said reassuringly, "and I believe that we can translate without having it become a permanent change to our genes. I've trusted Jeremy up to now, why shouldn't I trust him now? If translation is the only way to deal with these new Cobra soldiers, then I'll be the first to translate."
Jeremy looked at his girlfriend surprised, but then smiled. "Thanks for that, Aelita." With that, he called over a nearby trio of troops.
"Make sure this creep is locked up for good this time," he said gruffly. The officers saluted, and made off with Pynchev in tow. After that, Jeremy motioned to the gang, and they all filed out the building and back to the helicopter. Once the chopper started flying back to Sceaux, Aelita looked at Jeremy.
"Jeremy?"
"Yeah, Aelita?" he said, turning to her.
"I'm scared," she said. "Just when we finished our war with XANA, we find this war just around the bend."
Jeremy pulled his girlfriend in for a soft hug. "It's going to be alright, Aelita," he said. "War is scary, but all wars come to an end, and this will be no different. Once all this is over, I promise you that we'll all still be here for you… and I especially will."
A/N: Cool, huh? What will happen to our heroes now that they're going into a war? Wait until next time and find out!
-JeremyX signing off!
