Chapter 14

A few days passed. Tennent needed some time to get his routine sorted out with Smudge around now. After a while, we decided to go to Lyoko again and try for an Info Orb.

I had made a lot of progress on my program, but there was still a small amount to go. I had the Lyoko Warriors digital signatures in the program, and I had almost worked out the retrieval code.

In my research, I had found out a little more about Info Orbs, and now I had expanded the range from which they could be detected. This would hopefully speed things up.

When school was finished for the day, I called my friends. Soon, we were at the Factory.

"So what Sector are we going to today, Sammy?" Brittany asked.

"I don't know yet," I replied, sitting in the chair. "I'll see if I can do a scan, and pick the right one."

"You can do that now?" Sean asked.

"Yup," I said. "At least, I think I can..."

"Well, let's hope it works," Tennent said, crossing his fingers.

The range of the scanner was limited, and the scan was also limited to finding Info Orbs only. I had sacrificed being able to scan for everything (which would include monsters) for more range. I could scan nearly a third of a Sector.

It was time to put it to the test.

I opened the program, and with a few keystrokes, I launched it. I set the coordinates for the Mountain Sector.

The screen went wild. Data windows opened and closed, informing me of Orb activity. The program automatically tallied the results, and at the end, it could give me the Sector with the highest concentration of Info Orbs.

It took about a minute per scan, and three scans per Sector. So in twelve minutes, we'd be done.

In that time, I tried to explain the program to my friends. "This program utilizes the distortion pattern given off by Info Orbs. Surprisingly enough, the energy is a distortion, even though this is pure Lyoko data. I haven't worked out why that is, but-"

"Fascinating," Tennent said, interrupting me. "If you don't mind, can you dumb it down a bit?"

I sat there for a few seconds.

"Okay... Basically, the program tracks the energy given off by Info Orbs. There's more to it than that, but I don't think I can explain it in a way that you'll understand."

To me, that much was obvious. Of course the program tracks the Info Orbs somehow. I shook my head. I couldn't worry about it.

Soon, the scans were done. There were 3 Orbs in the Desert Sector. I informed my friends, and set the coordinates near one of the Info Orbs.

Five virtualizations later, we all stood in a Desert.

In the distance we saw a bright speck ducking and weaving. We also heard a strange noise. And a few seconds later, we saw a strange sight.

Klank Klank Klank Klank

That was the sound of a new beast walking towards us. It was taller than we were. As it drew closer, I could make out more details.

It was the color of sand, with silver where its joints were. It walked on six legs, which made that "Klanking" noise when it stepped down. It also had four arms. The body was straight and rigid, like a thick pole. The monster stood upright. Its head was almost spherical. On it, was emblazoned the eye of ANAX, unlike the other monsters we had seen up until now, which had an eye of XANA on them.

At the end of its top two arms were laser blasters. I knew this because lasers were coming out of those arms.

On its other two arms, it had what seemed to be swords. It didn't look like it could use them well, until I saw the Info Orb make a U-turn.

Instead of turning around, the monster simply started walking backwards, turn its body around it segments until it was facing the direction the Orb was going. First it turned the segment with the sword arms, then the laser arms, and finally, its head.

With mobility like that, it could prove to be a formidable enemy.

"What is that thing?" Alyssa breathed after she had recovered.

After a while, I answered, "ANAX must have created a new monster!"

"Well new monster or not, it's getting close to the Info Orb! We've got to stop him!" Sean yelled.

We ran after the monster. It was fast, but not so fast that we could not catch up.

When we got close to it, it turned its head around still pursuing the Orb. The monster then turned his lasers around, and opened fire.

We dodged, and came out untouched. Then, things took and interesting turn as the monster ducked into a canyon.

We blindly followed. Too late, I looked at my radar. Two more of the monsters were waiting for us... hanging on the walls!

"Watch out!" I warned, just laser fire exploded around us.

Sean spun his whip around one of the monsters' legs, and jerked it to the ground. Alyssa finished it with an Energy Field.

Tennent and I were facing another one. I tried to distract its fire, while Tennent would shoot at it. Every time he did though, the monster blocked the Laser Arrow with one of its sword arms.

After some fighting, we had destroyed the monsters, but in the fight, we had lost Tennent.

And the Info Orb was no longer on my screen.

I tried to coach Tennent in running my scan program, so that we could hopefully find the Info Orb.

The Lyoko Interface had to mouse to use. Instead, it was based on a main command window, which appeared at the bottom of the screen. From that window, you could tell the computer to do things, such as opening and running a program, or editing a program. You could always return to the main command window by hitting the F5 key.

There is one small snag. The commands are not as simple as "Open file 3. Run file 3." You were required to tell the computer to fetch the data from a certain "zone". There were many sub-zones, and whatnot. It was difficult to get Tennent to understand exactly what he had to type, so in the end, I dictated the code to him down to the character.

After a while, he had located the Info Orbs. The coordinates were displayed, and he told them to us.

I made a mental note to add my scanning program to my LI.

After a half of an hour, we had nearly captured the Info Orb.

I jumped up, and snagged it. I then downloaded the data to the LI, and rematerialized us.

"Yeah!" Tennent called. "One more Info Orb!"

"Right," I said. "Let's see what's in it."

I opened the file. It was the fourth key to Lyoko! I told my friends this. There was some cheering.

But we had other matters to discuss.

"I have something to ask you guys," I started.

"As far as you know, ANAX's most destructive attack was his most recent one, right?" They nodded, so I continued.

"And now we find a new monster that the SuperComputer has no knowledge of, because no data on it existed in the data banks. It was obviously created by ANAX."

I took a breath. "And both of these things happen just after ANAX has stolen power from a Tower."

Brittany saw where I was going. "So ANAX has definitely gotten stronger since he took that power!"

"Exactly," I told her.

So that night was a little bittersweet. We had succeeded in taking one more step towards our goal, but we now knew that we were fighting a more powerful enemy.