William knocked on Jeremie's door after he had been shut into his room for a few days. He had just missed an entire day of school and the staff was beginning to take notice. Not hearing a response William jiggled the handle to see if it was unlocked, which it was not. Knocking louder, William waited for a response.
"Jeremie it's William, let me in," William said, waiting for a reply before curling his fist and pounding on the door. "Open the door." William half shouted.
"Maybe I'm not in the room," Jeremie said from down the hall, carrying a plastic bag that was filled with some food he carried from the to go line in the cafeteria.
"I'm surprised you're eating to be honest," William said, Jeremie opening his room with his key and walking in, "Seriously though, you need to be in class."
"I managed to fake a stomach virus and get stuck in my room for three days. I'm covered on that front," Jeremie said, flipping on the lights and closing the door after William. Jeremie placed the food on his bed and slid his chair out from his desk and sat down.
William leaned against the door before seeing something from the corner of his eye. Turning to the wall above Jeremie's bed he saw the Einstein poster had been removed and replaced with a sprawling wall of pictures and documents all connected with strings of yarn and by the looks of it, one shoelace when he ran out of yarn. He recognized Aelita's parents and Lowell, but some of the faces were new. Looking closer at the documents they were articles from multiple news sources reporting on suspicious events, linking them to some of the faces on the wall. In the center of the web was the logo for Fabius Security, a turtle with a shield for a shell.
"The only thing you're missing is a tin-foil hat," William said after examining the wall, "What have you found out?"
"I compared some notes with inspector Beaumont, and I asked him to look into something for me. Check this out," Jeremie said, motioning for William to look at the computer.
"Aelita's mom hasn't been hiding for a few years now. She's the public face of Fabius. I imagine that name is a big FU to her dad. Hannibal couldn't defeat Fabius, much like Scipio defeated him."
"I know the history," WIlliam said.
"Not as frequently seen, but Lowell isn't hiding either," Jeremie said and pulled several dozen pictures of them at press releases or product demonstrations, including demonstrating the scanners, "Nothing out of the ordinary, and they're not dumb enough to put the information we need on their network servers. They probably have a closed system for the incriminating stuff, unless I'm plugged straight into that, I got nothing. Looking at these pictures of the releases, I couldn't help but notice someone else."
"Who?" William asked, leaning in further, hoping to see who Jeremie saw.
"This guy," Jeremie said, pointing at a man that William recognized from the wall a moment earlier. Turning his head, William saw his picture and looked at it, tied to Anthea and Fabius.
"Who is he?" William asked.
"No idea, but he's in nearly all of the pictures. The only one's he's not in are the ones with just Lowell. I was thinking he's her bodyguard," Jeremie suggested.
William looked at him again in the pictures. Always in the background, in a suit, looking conspicuously like a bodyguard.
"Makes sense. CEO of a company having her security detail. Not weird at all."
"It is if we're running off the theory Lowell is the center of this," Jeremie said, catching William's attention. "No one is protecting Lowell, but there is always someone on her mom. I had the inspector look into him. Guess what he pulled back."
"He's bad news," William guessed.
"Seventy four percent biometric match he's Julian Dubois who was confirmed dead in two-thousand six. Former GIGN officer, burned to death in a car fire. Not the first person linked to this who was an assumed dead special operations guy. These guys are not protecting Lowell however."
"They're protecting Aelita's mom," William said and looked at the wall again. "We've been hoping Aelita's mom was just swept up in Lowell's manipulation. Everything seems to suggest…"
"...she's the real puppet master."
Aelita was let out of her confined room and allowed to walk onto the street with her mother in Zurich, Switzerland. She could still instinctively feel the presence of the men who put her into the room, but Anthea requested they keep some distance.
"I can still feel them watching," Aelita said, looking around the street for them, passing people as they walked.
"You get used to it. I'm not sure I'm ever truly safe. Many people still want your father's research, and now as the face of a multinational security company, I would probably still need them regardless," Anthea said to alleviate Aelita's concern of the guards.
"I guess," Aelita said, looking at the buildings and smiling, "It is beautiful here."
"You know you were born in Switzerland?" Her mother asked, Aelita looking at her, "Not in Zurich however. You were born in St. Gallen. My family owned a home in the Alps we frequented."
"I remember the snow," Aelita said with a grin she couldn't hide, "I don't remember much else, but I remember snowy slopes and trees. Building snowmen with you and dad. I held onto those memories."
"I did too. I spent years in denial that you were gone. That your father had somehow faked it to make me give up. Now I know my instincts were correct," Anthea said.
"I want a real answer, why did dad run? What happened?" Aelita asked.
Anthea stopped walking and took in a deep breath. Aelita pivoted her body to keep facing her and stopped in front of her.
"Your father did not like the direction Carthage was moving toward. Waldo signed on under the premise the technology would not be weaponized or used militarily. I told him from the very beginning he was naive for believing that trajectory could be avoided. There were legitimate non-military applications for the technology as well, probably even more. Like a fool who ignores all of the positives of nuclear energy and only sees a mushroom cloud, completely ignoring the fact the only reason we ever truly examined it at all was because it was a military application first. Like confucius said, 'When a wise man points at the moon, the imbecile examines the finger.'
"He scuttled his own work, took the research he needed and disappeared into the wind with you. I think he gave up on humanity at that point, choosing to finish his work in order to live in an elevated digital existence. My project X.A.N.A. proved too malleable."
"Your project X.A.N.A.?" Aelita asked.
"I was the head of digital security software development for Carthage. I was still developing X.A.N.A. when he deserted the project. X.A.N.A. behaves much like Cordyceps, a fungi that can alter the behavior of insects. It attaches itself to foreign code streams and can rewrite their operations. He finished it, but didn't think to develop controls to keep it from naturally expanding as rapidly as it could. Thankfully it was only stuck in Lyoko, until it wasn't and invaded the world net like the parasite it accurately is. I already killed it."
"What?" Aelita asked, "X.A.N.A. is gone?"
"When we received the information off the Lyoko network, we found your friend's multiagent program. Exceedingly impressive work for anyone, regardless of age, but the fact he's a teenager is nearly incomprehensible. We used that as a stepping point and purged it from the net just last week. There is not a trace of X.A.N.A. anywhere. We could not have done that without you. We're not enemies."
"You develop technology for militaries. You're a war profiteer."
"Your point is what exactly? War is bad? It is, I won't attempt to refute that. War is worse than hell. The amount of life saving and civilization building technologies developed from war far, far exceeds what is developed during peace. War produced Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance while Switzerland has been in perpetual peace and has only produced a cuckoo clock."
Aelita stared at her mother, unsure how to perceive what she just said. Never had she been so conflicted on a statement.
"Let me show you what we're doing with your father's work. The world is not black and white, or a battle of evil and good. Let me show you the deep, deep grey the world truly is."