My apologies for the delay. Real life happens, as we all know. Be advised of some minor violence and two (2) f-bombs in this chapter.
PART II: ALL THAT WE LOVE
CHAPTER IV: AKIKO
The elevator doors opened to a pitch black room with a set of only slightly less black computer monitors. They were clearly on, but displaying an empty screen – it felt like a horror movie, as if something might come out of them and lunge for their throats. Jeremie, however, was not afraid. This was according to plan.
"Odd, take this and hook it up, do you remember how?" Jeremie slipped the old Gameboy – Odd's gameboy – out of his pocket and handed it to Odd without looking at him. He stared straight ahead, never taking his eyes away from the screen, even as he pulled his bag from his shoulder and pulled out his laptop.
"Yeah, I think so," said Odd, as he knelt down at a cluster of cables and pulled one from the bunch. "Here's the one we used last time, I think." He pushed his glasses up to the top of his head to get a closer look. "I just sort of… jam it in there, right?"
"Well, to be honest, I don't really know. I wasn't exactly present when you did it last time." It might have been a joke, but Jeremie did not laugh. His voice was deadpan, and lower than usual. He was lost in several layers of thought. Sitting on his lap was his open laptop, a machine now frustratingly ancient. Jeremie tapped on several keys multiple times, as if that would make it faster. It did not.
"So, how does this work again?" Ulrich spoke quietly, as if he felt like he was disturbing something.
"The Supercomputer can't complete the boot-up sequence until it receives an authentication code. The code will be sent to my laptop, but must be entered by Odd's Gameboy. Are you ready, Odd?"
"Ready, Santa," Odd said in a cheery tone. When everyone, including Jeremie, turned to stare at him, he blushed. Of course, no one could tell because the room was so dark, but he mumbled an apology anyway. "There's this… American Christmas movie..."
"Down, left, X, B, X, Select, A, X, Y, Y, Up, Select." Jeremie read the code like he was reading a list of names of dead soldiers. Slowly, deliberately, loudly, and reverently.
"I was really hoping for the Konami code," Odd muttered again. But he input the code as he was told, and in an instant, the lab sprang to life. Several of the Warriors had to shield their eyes from the sudden light of the Holosphere, but Jeremie did not. He walked up to the chair and sat in it as if he had just been there yesterday. On the screen, there was a simple loading bar.
"Aelita, the Supercomputer is initializing. Stand by." Jeremie had to fumble with the headset to fit it to the size of his head, but he spoke clearly. The loading bar soon vanished, and the screen sprang to life. Without a moment's hesitation, his fingers found the keyboard and quickly started moving.
"Scanner, Aelita."
It had taken Jeremie weeks, when they had first started coming to the Factory, to realize that major programs like activating the virtualization process or initiating a Return to the Past required both vocal and keyboard commands, as an extra layer of security – to prevent an accidental keystroke from, say, aborting a virtualization when a person's body was only half downloaded. Of course, Jeremie was such a good programmer that he had managed to find a way to do that anyway. It resulted in a certain dramatic flair in the process, to loudly and clearly announce each step in the process. Like something out of a television show. It had annoyed him for a time, to have to say it every single time. Of course, he had ended up doing it so much that he stopped really noticing. But now, as he said the words, it gave him goosebumps. It was like his first time, all over again.
"Transfer, Aelita."
The keyboard commands were not a one-to-one translation of the verbal ones. The language the Supercomputer used was not French, not English, and not a programming language Jeremie had ever seen anywhere else. Most of the symbols on the screen weren't even Latin characters at all, even though the keyboard was a standard French AZERTY layout. For a layman to have to translate three ways at once – from the alphabet to the computer's unique script, from the keystrokes to the commands needed to initialize the process, and from the commands in text to the commands out loud – would almost be impossible. Not that Jeremie liked to brag – well, he did, but that wasn't a brag, it was the truth. Only three people on Earth had ever mastered it, and one of them was descended from another. Yumi had managed alright, the others… not so much. But the Supercomputer only had three true masters. And now, there were two. One of them was at the keyboard. One of them was about to enter the computer itself.
"Virtualization."
Jeremie struck the enter key. It felt like home.
"Aelita, can you hear me?"
From a world away, a whisper came: "Loud and clear."
–
Aelita landed on her hands and knees, and stayed there for a few moments. The entire world was spinning and she did not have the strength to look up. She knew that what she was looking at was a virtual construction, but her mind could not conceive of it as anything but real, and it made her head spin metaphorically as well as literally. Below her hands was a floor of polished blue glass, inlaid with curved stripes of white. Around her were walls of gray, not quite metal but not quite anything else either. The wall was made of adjacent columns, asymmetric, no significant section even, reaching up seemingly into infinity, or at least they did while she refused to look up.
"Aelita, can you hear me?" A voice came from thin air, at once from all around and just next to her ear.
"Loud and clear," she said softly. Here she was.
Carthage.
After another moments hesitation, she stood up and, by instinct, brushed nonexistent dirt from her knees. She couldn't exactly feel the clear miniskirt as her hands brushed it, but she could tell that it was there and solid, and her brain seemed to fill in the blanks for her and told her it was vinyl. Not that she would ever wear it in real life, but she had always thought it was stylish for Lyoko. The pink and purple bodysuit was the same. Her legs were more slender than they were on Earth, she noted, and as she looked around, she realized she felt shorter. There were no mirrors on Lyoko, but she had a sneaking suspicion that if there was one, she would look into it and see a 12 year old girl. Her form had not changed. Never in her life had the realization that time had passed and she was no longer a child been so clear as this moment.
"Aelita, you haven't moved, is everything alright?" Jeremie spoke from nowhere again.
"Yes," she said, louder than before. Forcing her feet to move, she stepped forward and the wall opened before her as the sea had split for Moses – but accompanied by a sharp chorus of metallic thundering. She walked forward along the narrow path and tried to calm her heartbeat. She was unsuccessful.
"As far as I know, you will still have to deactivate the switch, but obviously there aren't going to be any monsters to get in the way. It should be simple enough to do on your own, but let me know if you need assistance. Odd is standing by at the Scanners."
"Acknowledged," Aelita said. But when she stepped into the chamber, it was simply a vast, open space with the switch on the far wall, along a set of narrow steps. It was the easiest "challenge" she could remember. Perhaps XANA had increased security measures when they were there before, or perhaps Lyoko recognized its only living master. She mustered a quick jog and realized a moment later that she was pressing the button without really having paid attention to her journey at all. Her trip to the elevator was the same. Her feet slammed onto the floor without her realizing she had jumped.
It felt different to be in Carthage now, knowing that it was the remnants of everything her father had fought to destroy. Not just named after it, but its very essence, and its still beating heart. And as she mediated on the fact, her thoughts slipped to her father. He was gone now. XANA was gone now. There were no monsters. She was the only "living" thing in the entire world. It was an empty universe, hollow, with almost nothing to give it purpose or meaning anymore. Lyoko had once been an adventure. It had once been her home. But suddenly, Aelita felt scared and isolated and almost like she was drowning. She wanted this to be over with. She wanted to go back home.
Maybe if she asked, Jeremie would send Odd to her. But she wasn't sure she wanted to deal with Odd either. Surely even his sense of boundless energy would be quashed by the crushing emptiness of the place, and that would just make it worse to be here.
She did not feel any less constricted when she stepped out onto the terminal platform. It was like standing in outer space, with a deep blue "sky" miles away. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and like she was vulnerable to some attack that was lurking, but she tried to dispel the thoughts. There were no mantas anymore.
Just like there were no more wolves, right?
Her own thought made her jump, and for a moment she lost her balance and feared she might fall off the platform. But she righted herself and took a deep breath. "Jeremie, I'm here at the platform," she said, as if Jeremie could not obviously see that on his screen. "You're about to lose terminal access."
"Right," Jeremie said. "Let me know what you find."
She pressed her palm to the blue screen and her pulse immediately slowed. She could feel a sense of relief wash over her, perhaps just an old relic from the times when her palm on the screen meant the world was safe. Of course, in a way, it still did now.
Initializing Terminal…
Interface...loaded
Index...loaded
Archive...loaded
Automated systems...ERROR
Automated Natural Algorithm could not initialize. Location X:/ANA not valid. File not found.
User authenticated...Aelita
Administrator privileges granted.
Terminal online.
Welcome to Carthage.
"Administrator privileges granted." Aelita stared at the words for a few minutes. They made something tingle in the bottom of her chest. The interface she was looking at was different from what she remembered. XANA must have prevented access to these systems while he was present, but as the bootup script noted, XANA was no longer present. Just like the Hermitage and the Factory, this world was hers now. Hers and hers alone. No longer a princess, Aelita was the queen. Queen of an empty dominion, full of nothing but memories and regrets. Twelve years ago, seeing this would have been like finding a gold mine. She never would have imagined there were systems like this underlying Lyoko. Before her in all its ASCII-designed glory was a genuine, 1980s style text-based interface that led to the most fundamental layers of the world her father had created. But looking at it just made her feel more sick.
"Jeremie, this is an entire interface I've never seen before," she said. "It's… actually pretty archaic. I'm not familiar with these systems. It might take me a moment to make heads or tails of this." Aelita stared blankly at the screen as she spoke. It asked her to type the name of the directory she wanted to search.
In the real world, Jeremie snorted in his seat. "Is there a wizard to help you?"
"As far as I can tell, XANA was the wizard."
"Well… let's not re-install him." Jeremie allowed himself a chuckle. "I think you'll be alright."
"Yeah," Aelita said. "Just give me a few minutes."
Jeremie turned to face the rest of the gang, who were circled around the monitors and watching. "Aelita's in. She's looking for the right systems."
"Good," Ulrich said. "Do we know how long that will take?"
"No," Jeremie said. "This isn't like anything else we've seen before. It was all programmed in the eighties. It might be a little while. Odd, you can come back up, I don't think we'll need you." He spoke into the headset, but he swore that even a floor up and with layers of metal between them, Jeremie could hear Odd groan in disappointment.
The room was silent until the elevator doors opened and Odd walked back in, and then again after he rejoined them. Jeremie was slightly uncomfortable; the chair's height from the ground appeared to be unchangeable, and he was quite a bit taller than Franz Hopper had ever been. He had to slide down significantly so that his long legs could find a comfortable angle. But that made it harder to type, and made his back hurt. He was no spring chicken anymore, it would seem.
"Hey, has anyone told Elisabeth?" Odd piped up suddenly, causing Ulrich to jump.
"She's still at work, probably" Yumi said idly. "I think she said she had to work a double shift."
"Yikes." Ulrich did not look up as he spoke; his gaze was fixed on the floor in front of him. He was rubbing his bad knee, perhaps unconsciously.
"We'll bring her up to speed when she gets out, or perhaps even tomorrow. We probably won't need to stop her from getting rest, if she needs it." Jeremie was silent for a moment. "Who knows. We might even have found William by then."
No one responded. No one seemed to wanted to jinx the possibility.
"Oh hey," Yumi said after a moment. "Here's Elisabeth now." Her phone, which Yumi had pulled out of her pocket, was buzzing. "Hey, are you out of work?"
There was silence.
"What's going on?" Yumi's voice had risen several octaves. "What… what… she was fine this morning, she even-" Yumi stopped quickly in the middle of her sentence. When she spoke again, her voice was shaky, but her words were slow and deliberate. "Sissi, I can't… I can't understand you, you need to speak-" Yumi stopped again. "Alright. I'm on my way. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Alright. I'll see you." She stood up and faced the elevator. "I need to go," she said simply.
"Yumi, what happened?" Ulrich's voice was also slow and deliberate, and much shakier than Yumi's.
"My mother is dead." Yumi was already halfway to the elevator.
In a mad scramble, Odd and Ulrich leapt up from the floor and Jeremie hurled himself from the chair. Yumi spun around on her foot and with a face furrowed in anger said "No" in a voice so sharp it made Ulrich flinch. "No," she said again. "I don't… you don't…" She sucked in through her teeth. "I just… don't." She turned again and slammed her hand on the button. "I don't… want… it needs to just be me."
"Yumi..." Ulrich was whispering now. It was a pleading tone.
"No," she said again without looking back. "This place kept me from my parents plenty enough when they were together and healthy. And now there aren't any more chances to make it up. I don't need to be reminded of all this now." The elevator doors opened. "God, I've always hated this place. I hate it so fucking much." She stepped inside and faced the assembled warriors as the doors began to close. "Besides, you have work to do." The doors shut.
The room was silent.
Ulrich took a step towards the door, and then another, but Odd grabbed him around the middle to stop him. "Let her do what she needs to do."
"She can't be alone. Not like this." Ulrich struggled to get free from Odd's grasp, but somehow he could not break it.
"Odd is right," Jeremie said softly. "Yumi has always… family has always meant more to Yumi, in a different way, than it did for any of us. Her family was always close by, and yet, the farthest away. She needs to deal with this in the way that works best for her. And Yumi is… accustomed to being alone, I think."
There was a sharp thud as Ulrich fell to the ground, his legs splayed behind him as he landed on his knees. He fell again, to his hands, and made sharp, pained intakes of breath. His eyes were clenched tightly, and he looked away from Jeremie. Odd sat down next to him and kept an arm over him, rubbing his back softly. No one said a word. Jeremie turned back to the screen and idly tapped his fingers on whatever they could find. He slouched further and further into his chair until he had almost fallen out. He held himself there, staring at the ceiling, and spoke into the headset. "Aelita? How is it coming?"
"I'm getting there," she said. "Obviously he hid the files on purpose, but I think I'm in the right directory."
"Good," Jeremie said. "Look… there's something that's happened that you should know about."
–
Hospitals were not alien to Yumi. They were practically a second home. By now, she was able to navigate the halls without even thinking. The emergency room attendants all knew her name by now. She looked down as she walked past them, wondering if they knew. She did not want to talk to them. She did not want to talk to anyone. She even dreaded seeing Elisabeth.
The white tile floor had a sheen to it, as if it was freshly waxed. She could see part of her reflection in it – her black shoes and black jeans. But the reflection was warped and distorted, parts of her legs bent or curved and parts completely missing. She felt as if her whole body were bent just like that. With each step forward, there was a bigger hole inside her, filling up with fear and trepidation. For a moment, she almost wanted to turn around. For a moment, she feared she wouldn't be able to face it. But from down the hall, she could hear Elisabeth saying her name. She hadn't yelled, but it still reached her ears like a gunshot.
Elisabeth was wearing scrubs and her nametag - apparently still on duty, or having just gotten off. Next to her was some doctor Yumi did not recognize, a portly, balding man. His face told her he had no idea what to say. She hoped he didn't say anything at all. Yumi did not quicken her pace as she walked towards them. When Elisabeth stepped forward, she held out her hand, palm out. Elisabeth stopped.
Yumi stopped at the door frame, looking into the room. She could only see part of the bed, with her mothers legs under a white sheet.
"What happened?" Yumi did not face the doctor.
"She was found in her home, collapsed," he said. "She was brought here in a catatonic state, with most of her body systems in a state of shut down. She was unresponsive to any treatment, and she passed very shortly after arrival. I am-"
"What caused this? Why were her systems shutting down?" Yumi spoke quickly over the doctor. She didn't want his platitudes.
"We… aren't sure. As your friend was telling me, she had been stable previously. I… can't imagine what-"
"Thank you," Yumi said quickly. "That's all." She stepped into the room, side-stepping the doctor and keeping her back to him.
Akiko Ishiyama could have been sleeping. There was no expression on her face. Somehow, Yumi could just tell that she was dead – she wasn't sure if it was the pallor of her mother's skin, or the unnatural position she was in, or something else. There were various sensors on her body, under her gown and on her neck and arms. Her hair was still in a bun, which meant that her mother had had the energy to put her hair up. For several weeks she hadn't even bothered because she was so weak all the time, but of late she had been doing it again. It had been a sign of progress. A glimmer of hope.
There were countless thoughts inside Yumi's mind that were all vying for attention. Regret, sadness, emptiness, confusion, anger, fear. There were so many that Yumi didn't know what she wanted or how to react. She thought of having to call her father and her brother, insurance companies, and funeral directors. She thought of waiting in more stuffy government offices trying to get records and certificates. She thought of days at the park, of the flowers in the closet, of shouting matches and giggling fits. She thought of the day Hiroki was born, looking down at her mother under blankets just like these, holding her brother with an exhausted smile on her face. She tried to remember the last words her mother had spoken to her – probably "I'll see you later."
No. They were "have fun." Yumi had dropped in to check up on her the previous afternoon, then said she was going to stay over with Elisabeth and her friends. "Have fun," she had said.
It was Yumi who had said "I'll see you later."
Here was later.
"Yumi, I'm so sorry," Elisabeth whispered. "I'm so, so sorry." She was standing behind her, but not touching her. "If you… whatever you need, you tell me, I'll do anything."
"Just leave me be," Yumi said finally. "I'll… text you." Yumi sat gingerly at the end of the bed and placed her hand atop her mother's. It was not as cold as she had expected it to be.
"Okay," Elisabeth whispered. "Okay."
"Are you done with work? You could go to the Factory. Everyone else is there." Yumi was looking at her mother's face now. She hated how plain and expressionless it was.
"Wait, what?" Elisabeth's voice was suddenly sharp. Yumi's head snapped up.
"Yeah, they think they can use the Supercomputer to find William. We found out from his dad where he might be," Yumi said. There was an echo of confusion underlying her voice. Elisabeth almost seemed angry.
"What? When did this happen? Today? Why didn't anyone..." Elisabeth glanced down at the bed and then took a deep breath. "I'm… I'm sorry. I just… okay, I guess I'll go there." She took another deep breath. "Is there anything you need before I go? Water, or anything?"
"No," Yumi said simply. "Thank you."
"Of course," Elisabeth said. "Call me for anything. Anything."
"Yeah." Yumi did not look up.
–
It was late in the night by the time Elisabeth had reached the Factory. She couldn't remember the path they had told her to take in the sewers, and she knew if she got lost down there, there would be no saving her. Instead she took trains and a taxi, and then eventually walked several blocks to reach the island. She had seen the Factory before, driving around town and such. In high school she remembered hearing about kids who said they had gone there to look around, but they never said anything interesting about the place. Just that it was empty. Eerily empty.
It was a long, squat, grungy building, peppered with graffiti and surrounded by sun-bleached, pale grey asphalt that perhaps had once been black, and even some grass, overgrown as it was. That Factory had never made anything for as long as Elisabeth could remember. She wondered why it was still standing. Of course, now she knew what the answer probably was. The secrets that lied under it.
Elisabeth walked along the bridge and then stared into the building. Giant doors were open – probably permanently, since it would have taken some kind of machine that was no longer present to move them back – and there was a giant gap, almost a cliff, between the bridge and the floor of the Factory. There were ropes that hung from the ceiling down to the floor. "Seriously?" She eyed the ropes suspiciously. How old were they? Were they ever replaced? She grabbed one and swore she heard snapping and fraying. The one next to it seemed more sturdy, but when she went to hang her weight from it, she felt too scared and let go. "This place doesn't have fucking stairs?"
After walking around, she did in fact find a door that led to the correct level, without needing to hang from ropes. It was a long walk though, perhaps why they never used it. And it was another long walk to find the elevator, which scared her at least twenty times more than the ropes had. The rumbling and metallic screeching sounded as if Satan himself was sending a cage to drag her down into Hell.
You deserve it, something from the back of her head told her.
It's for your father, she told whatever it was. Everything is to get my father back.
The doors slowly opened, and Elisabeth stared at it, afraid to step forward. It was not until the doors began to shut that she screeched and ran as fast as she could to get inside. There was another big red button inside – just one. No up or down. Not knowing anything else to do, she pressed it and waited. The screeching was even worse from inside, it made her cover her ears and ran up and down her spine. When the doors opened again, she ran out as fast as she had run in.
There were three people staring at her when she entered the room. It was a fairly dim room, clad in some kind of green metal, with giant clusters of wires everywhere. In the middle was a giant hologram, like something right out of Star Wars or something, and a setup of computer monitors. Jeremie sat at a chair in front of them, slouched down. Ulrich and Odd sat on the floor next to him. Ulrich was red faced. Odd looked tired.
She stepped forward and her feet clattered on the metal. She stumbled for a moment; there was little traction on the sheer metal tiles. Still, as ominous and imposing as the room was, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had been here before, in a dream or something.
"How is she?" Ulrich looked up at her and went to get up, but Odd grasped his hand and pulled him back down.
"She… she's a- well, she..." Elisabeth closed her mouth and thought for a moment. "She wanted to be alone," she finally said.
Everyone in the room nodded.
"What happened? Do they know?" Odd spoke now, still holding Ulrich's hand. He was rubbing his thumb back and forth, though he didn't seem to notice he was doing it. He was staring up at Elisabeth, with a somber expression she had never seen from him before. It almost made her sick to her stomach.
"No," Elisabeth said softly. "She was found collapsed in her kitchen. Her body systems just… shut down."
"Her whole sickness has been such a mystery," Jeremie said. "Yumi was saying that they just never seemed to know what was going on. Like it didn't match anything they'd seen before. I would hate… not to know." He, too, was staring at Elisabeth. His gaze seemed almost piercing. She felt like he could see into her head. Suddenly tense, she turned away and looked wildly around the room on impulse.
"Where's Aelita?"
"In Lyoko," Jeremie answered. "She's accessing old Project Carthage systems to find programs that we can use to monitor Internet traffic to find William."
"Why are there Project Carthage systems in there? I thought Franz Hopper made this to stop them? And where is William? Yumi said that you had learned where he might be." Elisabeth rubbed her temples.
"I… forget you aren't up to speed. All this happened while you were at work. I got in contact with William's father. He said William might be in Andorra. And there are Project Carthage systems inside the computer because-"
"Jeremie, I've got it." Aelita's voice was exhausted but triumphant. "I'm going to initialize the program. I think… when I do it, it should free up the terminal, because that isn't the system that displays the information."
"What… what is?"
"Lyoko itself," Aelita responded. "Have you ever wondered why Sector 5 is surrounded with screens?"
Jeremie laughed. "Well no, because I've never seen it. But that makes sense. Elisabeth is here. I'm getting her up to speed."
"I'm engaging now."
The light in the room flickered as the monitors and the Holosphere faded in and out for several seconds. From the depths, there was a deep humming sound that seemed to fill the whole Factory. Every phone in the room beeped to inform its user that service had been lost. Suddenly, Ulrich clasped his knee. "Jesus! I can… feel it moving, as if something is… pulling it."
Odd moaned and grabbed at his cheeks. "My fillings are squealing!"
"It's electromagnetic energy," Jeremie said in awe. "The Supercomputer is… is reaching full potential. I bet you anything power is out in Boulogne right now." Jeremie slowly got out of his chair, looking around. There was a giant grin on his face. "This is incredible." Just as Aelita had predicted, his monitor returned to its normal display, and full control had returned. Very slowly, while still turning his head to look everywhere he could, Jeremie sat back down. His sense of awe was almost palpable.
"Jeremie… I can see everything. It's incredible. You… you wouldn't believe… The screens all come down when I reach for them, they answer to my thoughts... God, I can see why my father wrote a program to process this for him, it's just… so much, so fast. But it's glorious." Aelita's voice was in just as much awe as Jeremie's was.
Everyone stood in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, the humming subsided and Odd let go of his face with a sigh of relief. "Is it still working, Aelita?" Jeremie called out.
"Yes," Aelita responded. "I've set up a filter script to only pull from Andorran IP addresses. Right now I'm searching for usernames that William was known to use, email addresses and Myspace and stuff. Even such a small country, it's still so much."
"Don't… get overwhelmed, Aelita," Jeremie said. "Be careful."
Aelita laughed. "Said the pot to the kettle. Yes, dear."
Jeremie did not respond, but his face did break into an involuntary smirk. "She's looking," he reported. "The system is working."
"What's it telling her?" Elisabeth leaned into the screens to see if she could read anything.
"Pretty much everything. Right now she's trying to filter it down. It's… not gonna be on there," Jeremie said. "Only Aelita is going to be able to see it."
"Is she saying anything? Can you make it so we can all hear her?"
"Uh, yeah," Jeremie said, reaching over to unplug his headset.
"Aelita, can you hear me?" Elisabeth spoke loudly, almost shrilly. "It's Elisabeth. What are you seeing?"
"What am I not seeing? Right now I'm looking at instant messages, trying to see if – oh God, ew, I hope that's not him – any of these people are William. But there's Netflix accounts streaming and I think one of these is his Spotify… I'm just trying to… sort it all out." Aelita's voice was strained. "I'm going to be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if this is what drove XANA insane."
"Can you send us the information you have?" Elisabeth was leaning over Jeremie to speak into the monitors.
Jeremie, who was making a face at Elisabeth as she appeared to completely disregard him, tapped her on the shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"I just… if we all see it, maybe we can help her make sense of it." She made a face at Jeremie, as if he were the one in her personal space.
"You're kinda... throwin' me off, Sissi," Ulrich said. "You seem tense."
"Well, am I wrong? What's better, one set of eyes or five?" Her tone of voice was one that Ulrich had not heard in many years. It made him scoot back, away from her. "And don't call me Sissi."
The monitors suddenly shifted. Suddenly, they were full of live chat logs, videos, music, and emails flashing back and forth. The sound of three movies and two playlists all played at once, making it impossible to make anything out. Text ran along the bottom of everything, indicating IP addresses, web locations, even bit rate. "This is what I'm looking at," Aelita said. Nothing stayed on the screen for longer than ten seconds, as Aelita flipped through what she could see. Elisabeth leaned in closer to the monitors, as if being closer would help her understand more.
"How will you know it's William?" Elisabeth's voice had gotten increasingly sharp as time had gone on.
"Well… I can make an educated guess," Aelita said. Her voice was annoyed now. "I'm trying, I just need to concentrate."
"Elisabeth, take a step back." Jeremie's voice was sharp now, as well. "You're just going to get more confused leaning in that close."
Slowly, Elisabeth pulled away from the monitors and stood next to Jeremie's chair, with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. "How long could this take?" Her voice was soft now.
"To be honest? Days. We might have to all take shifts." Aelita was still audibly annoyed. "Would you like to be next, Sissi?"
"Elisabeth," she muttered.
No one spoke after that. In fact, no one spoke for quite some time. Eventually Elisabeth grew less tense and uncrossed her arms. Even later, she quietly sat down on the floor. Her eyes never left the monitors. Eventually, the sound of snoring overlaid upon the sound of all the music and videos. Jeremie got out of the chair to walk around. He did several laps around the lab before sitting back down. Behind him, Odd and Ulrich were leaning on each other as they slept while sitting. It was not long before Jeremie himself fell asleep. Elisabeth remained.
"Aelita?" She had no idea how long it had been since they last had spoken. Perhaps hours. "Are you… doing alright? Everyone else is asleep. Do you need to sleep?"
"Not when I'm on Lyoko, not really," Aelita said. "I'm used to it. I used to live here." She was silent for a moment. "I'm not sure I've made any progress. It's all just… blending together." After another, shorter silence, Aelita spoke again in a softer tone. "Has anyone gotten in touch with Yumi?"
"She hasn't texted me," Elisabeth said. "She wanted to be alone, I… I'm not sure if I should..."
"We should probably leave her be," Aelita said. "I'm sure she's gotten a hold of her family. Who knows, Hiroki could already be here. Or even her father. What time is it?"
"It's almost three in the morning," Elisabeth said on her phone.
"On the 20th, right?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Sometimes it's… hard to keep in touch with the concept of time when you're on Lyoko. Time has less meaning here. Or at least, the measurements of it do." Aelita did sound fatigued.
"Maybe you should come back," Elisabeth said. "Ulrich and Odd have been sleeping a while, they might be okay to do it if you were serious about the shifts. They're actually leaning on each other, it's… kind of adorable."
"Let them sleep," Aelita said. "Like I said, I'm fine. You should be more worried about yourself, haven't you been awake… almost 24 hours?"
"Twenty-two," Elisabeth said. "I'm used to it. I just… don't want to miss anything."
"It's… very touching, that you care so much. We weren't all that nice to you back at Kadic," Aelita said.
"Well it's not like I was any better to you," Elisabeth responded bluntly. "But William and I… connected, on a certain unique level. I was after Ulrich but couldn't have him. He was after Yumi and couldn't have her. It was all we could think about. We didn't talk regularly, but we… had that understanding."
"Sissi, have you been awake this entire time?" Jeremie's voice was thick with grogginess. "I mean Elisabeth?"
"I was just telling Aelita, I'm used to it." Immediately after, she yawned.
"Listen… I think you should go home," Jeremie said. "You've obviously had a long day, and that was before… what happened. Don't you have work tomorrow? You can't just-"
"I have a night shift tomorrow. I'll be okay for a while longer. I can keep watch while you all sleep." Elisabeth whispered, but her tone had regained some of its former sharpness.
"Well, alright," Jeremie finally said. His lips were a thin line across his face. "But really, you have people who depend on you for their health, we all underst-"
"Oh, can it," Elisabeth snapped.
Silence returned. Elisabeth pulled out her phone and stared at it absentmindedly for a while, then suddenly gasped. "Yumi just texted me," she said.
Jeremie turned to face her. "What did she say?"
"She… wants to see you," she said with a tone of surprise. "She… didn't say why. She's still at the hospital."
"Why didn't she text… oh." Jeremie had pulled out his phone, but the screen was dark. "It's dead. Um. Alright." Hesitating for a moment, he got out of his seat and gently shook Ulrich. "Hey. Yumi asked to see me. I'm gonna head out. Can you keep an eye on things? Do you remember how to devirtualize someone?"
"Um… no?" Ulrich rubbed his eyes. "You, uh, hit the Enter key one or two times."
"Well, Aelita can walk you through it. Aelita, did you hear that?"
"Yeah. Send her my love."
"Yeah," said Ulrich.
"Yeah," said Jeremie. "I will." He turned and walked to the elevator, and was gone in a few moments without another word.
Ulrich gently moved Odd off of him and onto the floor. His snoring continued unabated. With a groan and popping joints, Ulrich stood up and walked over to the chair. "Sissi, have you been awake this entire time?"
Elisabeth did not look up from the text she was typing, nor did she seem to notice Ulrich had called her Sissi. "Yes," she said. "And I'm just as fine as I was each of the other two times someone asked me."
"Alright," Ulrich said. "Aelita, how are you holding up?"
"Fine," Aelita said. But actually, I think I'm going to turn on the terminal again, so your screen is going to go blank. Traffic has quieted down and I'm not seeing anything more promising than anything else, so I'm going to look at this information some more. There might be some more information about Project Carthage in here. Like who they are, for instance."
Elisabeth's eyes shot up and she looked at the monitors just as they went blank. "Hey, I, just got a text from my boss. They… need me at work."
"At 3 in the morning?" Ulrich's eyes were wide.
"I work at a hospital. I'm on call. That's how it is." She stood up. "Who knows, I might catch up with Jeremie and Yumi. I'll let you guys know if I learn anything."
"Take care of yourself, Elisabeth," Ulrich said softly.
"You too," she replied as she walked to the elevator. She was not even out of the elevator before she pulled out her phone. "That text I just sent you? It's urgent," she said as she walked briskly across the Factory floor. "They might have information on who was with Project Carthage. And they're still looking for William, but either they can't make sense of it or they don't want to tell me. I think Jeremie is suspicious." She paused. "Yes, I sent him to the hospital. He thinks Yumi asked for him, he'll probably go to the desk and ask for her." She stopped in her tracks for a moment as the voice on the other end spoke. "No. She… she isn't going to be a threat. I mean, think of what just happened. She'll… be involved with family. It's just Jeremie I'm worried about. He's the brains of the operation."
The line went dead, and Elisabeth stared at her phone for a while. She had no idea who she had just spoken with. They always used some weird voice modulator. But they were her father's boss, which made them her boss. She tried not to think about what she had just asked them to do, and she prayed that they would stay away from Yumi. Lord knew that they had done enough already.
She stepped outside and looked at the river in front of her. It was murky, she knew, but all she could see then was the glint of the moonlight atop it. She felt drawn to the glimmer, and walked up to the river bank. She could see her own face look back at her now, with dark circles under her eyes and hair splayed in several directions. There she was. A traitor.
Elisabeth bent over, grabbed her knees, and vomited into her reflection.
–
The hospital was eerie at night, even more than it was in the daytime. The lights felt even more sterile when they were the only light there was, and he felt sick even just being in the building. There was an oppressive hush in the building that made him feel like an intruder just walking through the doors. He worried that every step was a disturbance. He felt wrong.
There was a man reading a magazine at the information counter. He looked more tired than Jeremie felt, which was an accomplishment in and of itself. He looked up at Jeremie and said "Canihelpyou" in a single, groggy slur. He seemed unable to keep his head lifted.
"I'm, uh… looking for… um, Akiko Ishiyama."
"Can you spell that for me?"
"A-k-i-k-o I-s-h-i-y-a-m-a," Jeremie said.
"… One more time, please? Slower?"
Jeremie repeated himself, crossing his arms across his chest. They put this man in charge of life and death?
"Uh. Not getting anything, are you sure you spelled it correctly?" The man was already putting his head back down on the desk.
"Yes," Jeremie said. "Look, she uh… she died today. I don't know, uh, how long they stay, but I'm looking for her daughter who's here somewhere, but my phone is dead so-"
"Wait, stop," said the attendant, contorting his face as if he were in actual pain. "Look, if someone has died, they typically get moved to the hospital morgue. Your friend could be- hello, can I… help you?" The attendant suddenly pulled his head back up, and his expression seemed to be… confused. Perhaps fearful.
Jeremie turned to see two men, each just as tall as he was but three times his weight, in identical black suits and black sunglasses standing behind him. He knew immediately to run, but they knew immediately to grab him. They grabbed him so tightly by the arms he worried it was broken, but he was not worried for long. He could hear as they shot something at the attendant, probably a tranquilizer, and then they shot one at him. He had the strength of mind to begin shouting, but he could hear his own screams fade out just as the colors around him faded to black.
–
"Ulrich, are you there?" Aelita's voice sprang from nothingness and jolted Ulrich awake.
"Huh? What? Yes." He fumbled for the headset and put it on, only to remember that it was no longer plugged in.
"Listen, I've found some information on people in Project Carthage," she said. Her voice was shaking. "I don't recognize most of the names, but there's one… there's one you aren't going to believe."
"Who is it?"
"Apparently, my father had a personal assistant during the project. Her name was Suzanne Hertz."
END OF PART II
