In a fit of anger, I go to sleep.
And I have another dream again. I'm flying slowly, over the clouds, into the atmosphere, crying hard, trying to go back down. But I can't.
I call out so many names...ones I can't hear in my dream. And then I know that in my dream, I'm dead, heading for judgment by...by...someone powerful, maybe. And everything is vivid enough for me to think this is real. But this is a dream.
Another dream after that. A strange one, blurred all together. It makes me feel pain, suffocating pain, like being locked in a cocoon. Being shut into a sunless land. Nobody but me for company. No Xana, even.
I've been wronged by someone I don't even know, someone who plucked me off the streets with promises of a better life. It's all a lie. I'm used in some terrible experiment that goes horribly wrong and leaves me bitter...
Bitter...against all humans...
Bitter. I have only heard of this word once, but I know the tone well.
Xana.
This is what happened to Xana. What made him so cruel. What made him delete my memories. What drove him to kill Ulrich. And none of us even tried to hurt him. I've been wronged.
And all of this makes me wake up in a cold sweat. Xana, in me, is still tossing and turning in his own night terror thing. I get up silently and eye the clock. 2:39 AM. Still a while before that sun comes up.
I pad across the carpeting of the hallway, upstairs. Headed to Aelita's room for absolutely no reason other than comfort. Atilea doesn't offer much in the way of comfort. (sigh)
A hot flash makes me drop to my knees in pain. Holding my hands over my head, I experience a vision, and I drift into a strange dream. Xana's dream, which seems...much too real.
A factory...the elevator...a weird blue-green room...a scanner-thing...a desert, forest, glacier, mountains...to a tower-like building...into the tower...to a data screen, which reads
XANA
CODE:
FUSION
STATUS: FAILED
WHY: MANIPULATION BY HOST
ABORT RETRY EJECT
And then the memory fades.
I get up, confused about the 'dream,' and softly knock on Aelita's door. No answer. I silently open the door (yes, I now know what a door is) and silently tiptoe over to her bed. But before I get there, a picture on Aelita's wall makes me stop.
I stare at it. The man was familiar, and yet...his face brings a terrible alarm bell to my thoughts, ringing mercilessly, warning 'Danger! Danger! Get the hell out of here!'
"Aelita...I had another dream."
Aelita sits up and yawns deeply. "What was it?" she asks sleepily. (I still don't get it.)
"I think it was Xana's recount of when...when he was...when he was a human," I whisper. "Right now, he's asleep, so we may want to keep our voices quiet."
"Xana...human? Jeremie, are you sure this isn't just some wacko dream you conjured up and then somehow made sense out of it?" Aelita asks, suspicious.
"Well, in the beginning of the dream, I felt...like I couldn't breathe. It felt like there was this stone in my chest, near my heart. Then I felt like someone had done something unforgivable against me, someone I didn't even know at first. I was used in some experiment that went wrong...and left me bitter...bitter against all..." I trail off.
Aelita stares at me, wide-eyed, her hands squeezing each other.
"All that was left in the dream after that was a feeling of regret."
"But...Xana can't feel emotion..."
"Aelita..." I point to the man who scared me. "Who is that?"
"That's my daddy...Franz Hopper."
"DON'T EVER MENTION THAT NAME TO ME, EVER AGAIN!!!" Xana snaps, suddenly wide awake. "That man...I can never forgive him for what he's done..." "What did he do?" Aelita demands, anger building in her eyes again.
"He...he made me who I am today. Evil. Franz Hopper mutilated me. I'm not human, not anymore. AND IT'S ALL HIS FAULT!!!!!" Xana rages, pent-up fury in his voice. My sight flickers once and begins to disappear, as I begin to lose myself in the madness of what is 'possession.'
A terrible shriek like iron against iron forces me to my knees. I glance down and note that my shadow is gone. Remembering that Xana possessed Aelita once through my shadow, I quickly assume: Xana left me.
"Urgh..." moans a voice in my head. No, he didn't leave. Xana passes out momentarily from sheer exhaustion, but my shadow is still gone.
Aelita also notices. "Your shadow isn't there anymore...that's weird. It means you aren't part of here...you don't reflect light? But then I wouldn't be able to see you, and I can. You aren't dead either, or else I'd be crying so loud nobody would get any rest."
"But then...what the...what just happened?" I demand, asking Xana directly.
"...Who am I? Who are you?"
Those familiar questions suddenly strike a nerve in my head. "STOP THIS CHARADE, YOU MORON!!! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL EVERYONE, WHY DON'T YOU JUST DO IT NOW?!!!!"
"...Jeremie, I would never do that!" cries Xana's voice, filled with pure shock. "I'm not evil! I'm not a murderer!" "Then explain Ulrich to me!" Aelita cries, fists clenched so taut her skin was turning white.
"That wasn't me!" Xana insists, voice failing. "I...am not evil. I am pure good. As for Zahnne..." "Zahnne?" Aelita and I repeat. "Yes. Zahnne. MY evil half. He's broken off. It all started when I began to have doubts about destroying your memory, and then I knew I was breaking away from Zahnne's control."
"So Jeremie's shadow was a reflection of your taintedness?" Aelita asks. I'm trying to follow the conversation, but it's hard.
"Yes, it was. But since I am pure, and Jeremie himself is cleansed, he does not have a shadow. Why do you think that when you first came to Earth, you didn't have a shadow?"
"Because I wasn't actually real...that was what we all figured."
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Wow. Xana split at last! But Zahnne's pure evil, and that's not satisfactory. Pure evil doesn't have remorse and what's worse, it doesn't care about its actions.
How is the Lyoko gang gonna stop the menace AND free pure Xana from Jeremie, not to mention Ulrich from Odd?
Preview:
"So that's what it is."
The screen across from us flickers once, then flares white, with a black symbol in the background. I glance at my hand and recognize it as Xana's Sign. But this one was almost leering at us, and I could hear the cruel laughter.
In the center, instead of a regular dot, there's an upside-down star.
Zahnne was paying us a visit.
And I remember that nobody likes unexpected visitors.